The WGA’s Surprise Deal With the Studios, Bad Robot Downsizes, and the State of International Crime Thrillers on TV

Chris and Andy talk about the tentative four-year deal that the WGA reached with the studios (5:42) and the news that J. J. Abrams’s production company, Bad Robot, is downsizing (12:49). Then they react to the ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’ trailer (29:09) before discussing a pair of international crime thrillers, HBO’s ‘Privilèges’ (32:19) and Netflix’s ‘Unfamiliar’ (44:16). Later, The Watch: After Dark (01:00:00). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:05Andy Greenwald?

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

• 0:11Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio, he has risen, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 0:21Andy Greenwald?

  That's a reference to another charismatic Jewish guy with questionable hair.

• 0:25Chris Ryan?

  What's wrong with your hair?

• 0:26Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know. I get a lot of comments.

• 0:28Chris Ryan?

  From who?

• 0:29Andy Greenwald?

  From your friends, your fans.

• 0:30Chris Ryan?

  What?

• 0:31Andy Greenwald?

  The C R heads.

• 0:32Chris Ryan?

  They talk about your hair?

• 0:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 0:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh. Well, I'm sorry.

• 0:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's okay.

• 0:37Chris Ryan?

  Next time we have a meeting, I'll talk about it.

• 0:39Andy Greenwald?

  Just listen. Control your people. That's all I'm saying.

• 0:41Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald, great to see you, bud.

• 0:43Andy Greenwald?

  Great to see you. We have a lot to talk about.

• 0:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we missed you on Thursday. Joe was very nice to come by. We did a primetime programming grid. We talked about something very bad is gonna happen. We talked a little bit about the pit news that I was gonna see if you wanted to comment on.

• 0:56Andy Greenwald?

  I do. I'm worried I missed the night shift discourse, too. I feel like that went over big.

• 1:01Chris Ryan?

  It did, and it's just growing, although I do feel like the internet is now just scraping the most casually tossed off, like, sure, that would be cool, like Sean Haddish quotes.

• 1:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:15Chris Ryan?

  To be like, night shift is in development and the Russo brothers will abandon doomsday to make it.

• 1:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, that's right.

• 1:22Chris Ryan?

  So, yeah, like we said, by the way, today on the pod, you can, first of all,

• 1:27Andy Greenwald?

  You do your stuff.

• 1:28Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna do three resets here. First of all, you can reach us at thewatchatspotify.com, and you can follow us on Instagram at thewatchpod underscore, and you can watch us on YouTube at ringer-tv, and you can watch us on Spotify, where I think you're probably listening to us, but you can find us on lots of different podcast platforms. And on the podcast today, a few news and notes, a WGA agreement, the closure of a beloved production company in Los Angeles.

• 1:54Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:56Chris Ryan?

  My weekend at the films, at the movies.

• 1:58Andy Greenwald?

  Ooh, I wanna hear about that.

• 1:59Chris Ryan?

  And then we're gonna talk about two international crime shows.

• 2:02Andy Greenwald?

  Couldn't be us.

• 2:03Chris Ryan?

  Friends and Neighbors is back.

• 2:05Andy Greenwald?

  I'll get to it.

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  And he's gonna get to it probably eventually. I think I I've watched enough Friends and Neighbors in my life personally, but like, maybe I'll check out the second season a little bit.

• 2:13Andy Greenwald?

  Are you doing the Dave Wasserman?

• 2:15Chris Ryan?

  I've seen enough. I want to see Marsden, and then I will have seen enough. Okay?

• 2:20Andy Greenwald?

  Can I come over the top with one A-block story for us today in the podcast?

• 2:26Chris Ryan?

  Absolutely.

• 2:26Andy Greenwald?

  Happy birthday, Kaya.

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  Thank you. She keeps it really quiet about that stuff. Private.

• 2:31Andy Greenwald?

  I know. And here I am, blowing it up.

• 2:33Chris Ryan?

  Is that why your sister was in town? Yes, it was.

• 2:36Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa, okay, see?

• 2:38Chris Ryan?

  I saw it on Instagram.

• 2:39Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, she keeps it private. Tell me more about your family.

• 2:42Chris Ryan?

  How was that chablis, Kaya? Was it okay or no?

• 2:45Andy Greenwald?

  Not a real chablis then.

• 2:46Chris Ryan?

  Happy birthday, Kaya. Thank you. Are you... Should I guess your age? Sure, go for it. Thirty-one. Close.

• 2:54Andy Greenwald?

  It's a big one.

• 2:55Chris Ryan?

  Thirty. You're thirty and you're here? Yeah, I don't really know why. Oh, my god.

• 3:00Andy Greenwald?

  I know. You don't remember that. One of the ways to know... Please, forgive me. There are many ways to know, but I... But one of the ways to track Kaya's age is she's the same age as our friendship.

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. Wait, is this the day we met?

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  Today? No, no, she wasn't born. She didn't emerge into the world the moment we locked eyes in a Borders Books and Music.

• 3:21Chris Ryan?

  That she was here. It was like we were... It's like in a paradise. We've been on these roads together. It's like a lie. I feel bad that you're here on your thirtieth birthday. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. That's really nice. To have the watch. That's a great...

• 3:35Andy Greenwald?

  She has a lot of plans today, but she wanted to know our thoughts on two international spy thrillers just before she committed to the rest of her birthday.

• 3:42Chris Ryan?

  Literally dozens of other people.

• 3:44Andy Greenwald?

  There are dozens of us.

• 3:45Chris Ryan?

  Was that the only A-block news you had for me?

• 3:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, although I'm still reeling from your protein announcements right before we started recording.

• 3:51Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald was just crushing like a a nameless yogurt that trumpets its own protein offerings. And I was just speaking from personal experience that when I was the beginning of my wellness journey...

• 4:04Andy Greenwald?

  Where are you now on your wellness journey?

• 4:06Chris Ryan?

  I'm in the zone. I like, I know it's good for me, and really what it is, is like, you have to tune out

• 4:12Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 4:12Chris Ryan?

  all of the noise and lift weights.

• 4:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, you have to get back to the back of the comic book that's like, what's up, Pipsweek? Pick this heavy thing up 55 times. Chicks will dig it.

• 4:25Andy Greenwald?

  To be clear, many parts of the comic book spoke to me, none louder than that page.

• 4:30Chris Ryan?

  Than the back page ads. No, you just, I see that you got this thing and I, I've been there, man. I've used to, one time I put like way too much protein powder in some Greek yogurt. And I thought, I, I thought I could see God. Like, it was really disgusting.

• 4:47Andy Greenwald?

  I want to just make a couple of things clear. I'm tired of the, I'm tired of the allegations. Okay. That you're trying to promote here. I, I'm not into the supplements. I'm not adding powder. When you say I brought something in, I arrived, I, some of us get to the podcast early. Okay. Once. And I was like, I'm early. I could get a snack. And our friends here said, you can go to the other turn right by the office named Danny DeVito. And there's some snacks and they had, I was like, maybe I'll have a yogurt. The only yogurt they had is protein maxing. Okay. That's not me. My attitude towards all this stuff is just moderate.

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  Eat a little bit of this, drink a little bit of that, lift a little bit of weight.

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 5:26Andy Greenwald?

  Do some stretching. You ever do that?

• 5:27Chris Ryan?

  I do sometimes. Yeah.

• 5:29Andy Greenwald?

  You look great. But I just want to be clear. I was a little thrown. It's like a middle aged guy power thing where you sit down to, to go to work and you're like, you sure about that?

• 5:38Chris Ryan?

  Um, I just want you to be, I want you to be happy and healthy while we do this podcast. And while we talk about the new agreement signed by, uh, the WGA.

• 5:47Andy Greenwald?

  That's going to keep me happy and healthy.

• 5:48Chris Ryan?

  And the, I always mess up their, their crazy.

• 5:50Andy Greenwald?

  AMP T P?

• 5:51Chris Ryan?

  That's them.

• 5:52Andy Greenwald?

  The AMP T P?

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  The, the studios. And I think the one thing I would mention about this is, it seems like, at least in the initial reporting, it's a four year deal.

• 6:03Andy Greenwald?

  Unlike usually a three year.

• 6:04Chris Ryan?

  Usually a three year. This is a four year. Some really interesting reporting over the course of the weekend about, I saw some quotes from Christopher Nolan, who's not only the director of The Odyssey and Inception, but, uh, is the head of the DGA. And he was like, you know what? I don't like long deals because if we'd signed a five year deal in 2020, like, imagine how much this industry has changed since then.

• 6:26Andy Greenwald?

  This is also, isn't this Bill's advice too?

• 6:28Chris Ryan?

  Bet on yourself. Yeah.

• 6:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Weird the way Bill and Christopher Nolan feel comfortable making that advice.

• 6:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Chris Ryan?

  Um, as a member of the Writers Guild.

• 6:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  Association.

• 6:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:41Chris Ryan?

  Um, you must be happy.

• 6:45Andy Greenwald?

  I'm happy and curious. So this was a.

• 6:47Chris Ryan?

  Best place to be, man.

• 6:48Andy Greenwald?

  Where I live. That's what makes me an essential cultural critic. Thank you. Happy, curious, full of protein.

• 6:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Andy Greenwald?

  Um, uh, this was a surprise. Not that a deal was reached, but that it was reached so quickly and so apparently amicably because negotiations have only been going for about 10 days. There was a lot of concern, as there always is. This is going to blow your mind. Writers are a bit of a neurotic lot. So there was a lot of.

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  WhatsApping?

• 7:14Andy Greenwald?

  Lot of WhatsApping and also a lot of just general ambient concern because this is not me speaking for any ambient WhatsApp. This is, but I think this is a shared feeling. Every three years, the Writers Guild makes a deal and every three years, somehow we end up looking like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy's football.

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 7:32Andy Greenwald?

  No matter what.

• 7:32Chris Ryan?

  I think management and labor, that is, that is generally how people feel. Yeah.

• 7:36Andy Greenwald?

  So, um, the fact that, and, and also obviously the last few negotiations were quite fraught. Um, not just the strike three years ago, uh, the one, the one before that was COVID. So that kind of got rubber stamped quickly. The one before that was like 11th hour and people were writing strike signs. So there was a lot of concern about that. When I say. I write them. I was like, which pun shall I scribe today?

• 8:01Chris Ryan?

  But it would have been for like 2018, right?

• 8:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Yeah. Oh, it would have been, it would have been a lot of like, think about that. The President of the United States just declared war on science.

• 8:12Chris Ryan?

  Nevertheless, I persisted.

• 8:16Andy Greenwald?

  The hardest, I mean, there were many challenges of the strike, but one of the biggest challenges was arriving at the studio like during an, like not necessarily like at the beginning of a shift and all the only, only signs left would be like really corny puns. And you'd be like, come on.

• 8:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 8:32Andy Greenwald?

  We're writers. We've got to.

• 8:33Chris Ryan?

  Let's get in the room. Let's work for this.

• 8:35Andy Greenwald?

  Up some of this. Uh, the reason I said curious is mainly because the details haven't been announced yet.

• 8:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Andy Greenwald?

  What, what was announced by the studios and by the writers was that whatever this deal is that it addressed, this is easy for them to say, the two biggest items on the docket. The biggest one being the health fund, which I am apparently going to be in need of.

• 8:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, due to my protein induced renal failure. But that there is a quite a big shortfall financially. The studio, we needed the studios to put more money into that pot, basically. And the other thing was just the vague AI protections and people have concerns about being paid for post services and things like that. So just some general ambient issues that apparently they did address, but we'll find out more details in the coming days. I think the biggest changes here, from what I understand, is the absence of Carol Lombardini, who was

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  the chief negotiator for the past few contentious.

• 9:27Chris Ryan?

  Sharp elbows.

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  Apparently. She was, she had stepped down.

• 9:31Chris Ryan?

  Allegedly. Carol, you might be a soft elbow negotiator for all I know.

• 9:36Andy Greenwald?

  I wasn't. Maybe she just ate the wrong thing right before she stepped into the room.

• 9:39Chris Ryan?

  She was just like, I thought this was, I thought this was equal. I didn't know that this was protein powder.

• 9:46Andy Greenwald?

  So we don't know that. But, um, but the other way to look at it and is, the other way to look at it might be, and this is 100% pie in the sky, and you can say this before details come out. It would be nice to think that there was some shared sense of, we are on the precipice of really existential change to this industry, all industries, the American economy, America. And it would be great if we could find some common ground to not weaken each other at this moment.

• 10:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Andy Greenwald?

  I hope that's the case, but we'll see.

• 10:18Chris Ryan?

  It's, it seemed like the last work stoppage took several years to get over, you know, in terms of like getting things back on track and, and for the production timelines.

• 10:29Andy Greenwald?

  It was quite disruptive.

• 10:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Andy Greenwald?

  But it, but it also was, um, you know, this, there was more detail to it than this. This is a broad brush, but like one of the things that we went on strike over was something, it's a little inside baseball, but mini rooms, right? That there was a increase, there was a, it was becoming more and more frequent that instead of when green lighting a show, instead of giving a showrunner or creator, producer, writer, a full room, they would hedge their bets and say, we will fund, you know, two weeks, three weeks, six weeks. See what you can get done. And then if, if what comes out of that mini room, whether it's one script or three scripts or more is promising, then we will roll with it. And so it was important for the writers to guarantee some protections involving those mini rooms, which were sort of free floating and not necessarily, um, you couldn't necessarily

• 11:15Andy Greenwald?

  apply minimums and things to those rooms. So we fought, we, we went on strike, we got concessions and the studio said, cool, we'll never do those again. And the football went up in the air. Exactly. You would think that we would, again, because it's weird. Writers do have some parent issues, I believe, as well. So you'd think that there would be some memory.

• 11:37Chris Ryan?

  Not that it ever feeds into their work or anything.

• 11:39Andy Greenwald?

  Never. So, so there was a lot of that kind of stuff. The other thing I'll say before we move on to the topic that is a black eye. This, this is, this should be a great moment for the Writers Guild. I will say that it is an ongoing black eye that the Writers Guild support staff has been on strike from the Writers Guild.

• 11:55Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, I saw that.

• 11:55Andy Greenwald?

  For a number of weeks and which is embarrassing and ridiculous. And then in the midst of this, before the deal was announced over the weekend, word got out that in its own hardball tactics against its own staff, the Guild of which I am a member, is cutting off the healthcare of its own staff.

• 12:13Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right.

• 12:13Andy Greenwald?

  Which is something that the AMPTP has never done to writers. So clean your own house up.

• 12:19Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 12:19Andy Greenwald?

  Is what I would say. It's ridiculous.

• 12:22Chris Ryan?

  That sucks.

• 12:23Andy Greenwald?

  It sucks.

• 12:24Chris Ryan?

  I didn't, I didn't know about the healthcare part. I knew that they were out on strike because I think Seth Rogen made a reference to it at the Oscars or maybe at the, or at the SAG Awards.

• 12:32Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 12:33Chris Ryan?

  He was like, we can't even have the WGA.

• 12:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, the awards. That's exactly right. The Writers Guild awards didn't happen because of this ongoing strike.

• 12:39Chris Ryan?

  Uh, you know, I was just bringing up the, the labor negotiations between the WGA because over the weekend, there wasn't like a ton of like hardcore entertainment news that we would need to pick over that much. But I did note that J.J. Abrams is closing Bad Robot.

• 12:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 12:55Chris Ryan?

  In Santa Monica, which is his production company and moving to New York.

• 13:00Andy Greenwald?

  Spielberg did this too. They made a big, they didn't write an essay, like my leaving LA essay.

• 13:04Chris Ryan?

  Well, so you know, you can never really tell with social media testimonials anymore. And like whether this is like a guy who stopped in and got a protein yogurt once and is now writing like a goodbye to all that about it, but.

• 13:16Andy Greenwald?

  The back half of this podcast.

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  Um, you did, you did see a lot of very similar kind of like Bad Robot had 3D printers and smoothies for all.

• 13:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 13:27Chris Ryan?

  And a slide on the roof.

• 13:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 13:29Chris Ryan?

  And it was a hub of creativity and I don't know if anybody actually gives a shit, but this is kind of the. Version of the California dream that we thought we were moving out to like, I never thought I was gonna write Mission Impossible movies or anything like that, but I know that when you moved out here to be a screenwriter, there were a lot more places like Bad Robot dotting the California landscape. And I was driving home from dinner last night past a completely dark and abandoned ArcLight Cinerama complex.

• 13:59Andy Greenwald?

  Still disgrace.

• 14:00Chris Ryan?

  I saw even the Save the ArcLight, uh, social media account was like, I give up. I no longer I'm doing this. This is not gonna happen.

• 14:07Andy Greenwald?

  Because from what we understand, and I, this is, this is super inside baseball, but the ArcLight is a beautiful Cinerama dome, the most, like this, this spread out ridiculous fake town does not really have a central square, other than maybe the fountain at the Americana. The, the ArcLight was that.

• 14:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:22Andy Greenwald?

  And is a great place to see movies and a historic place. It's been closed since COVID. From what we understand, multiple people have attempted to open a movie theater there, but have been rebuffed because for whatever reason, the developers who own the site think it's more profitable not to have something there.

• 14:37Chris Ryan?

  Whatever the write down is to have it, but not operated. I have no idea.

• 14:41Andy Greenwald?

  This economy works, ladies and gentlemen.

• 14:43Chris Ryan?

  In any case, this is maybe not like the most relevant thing to people outside of the movie or television industry and the greater Los Angeles area. I just thought it was notable that, um, it does seem like at the same time that the studio landscape is changing with Paramount acquisition of Warner Brothers. Saw that you guys got your Gulf State funding, so shout out Dave. Um, came through right the last second.

• 15:08Andy Greenwald?

  That guy negotiates, you know?

• 15:10Chris Ryan?

  No matter what. Um, I just thought it was an interesting, like little mile marker on the road of like, oh, yeah, like there was, there was a time when like the entire city was kind of dotted with like.

• 15:21Andy Greenwald?

  Shingles.

• 15:22Chris Ryan?

  Shingles that had like weird like, you know, boom times sort of trappings.

• 15:27Andy Greenwald?

  For what it's worth, there weren't many places like Bad Robot. Like I've been there for a couple of meetings and it is what people, I mean, it was a remarkably curated space. Everything was creative and whimsical and, you know, tactile with old machines and an incredible chef and people loved going to work there and famously, uh, or honestly, infamously, when we look back on it, like. Moments from Force Awakens were shot in that office.

• 15:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:53Andy Greenwald?

  Like, they were just just playing around with some stormtrooper get ups, you know, to run into this office. I mean, I guess, maybe they probably green screened the office. It wasn't actually like, you know, Aaron chairs on the Millennium Falcon. But, um, anyway, I'm of mixed feeling. I have mixed feelings about this because when you put it in the larger framework of the slow death of a creative industry, it is galling and heartbreaking. And it is a shame because that was a place that people were excited to do business with and to be involved with. And it did feel like an idea factory and was set up to sell the idea of an idea of being an idea factory. I think the flip side of it is you could also look at it as a requiem on kind of the waste and indulgence of the last 10 years.

• 16:37Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 16:38Andy Greenwald?

  Where I believe the deal that that locked Bad Robot into Warner Brothers was in excess of $250 million. And that's not, that's not a check to JJ. That's to keep the company.

• 16:50Chris Ryan?

  I think that's probably more also like the way NFL contracts work where you're like, whoa. And then it's like, actually, it's only like $6 million guaranteed, but like.

• 16:58Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think it's that is the problem.

• 17:00Chris Ryan?

  Oh, really? You think they got like the quarter bill but made duster?

• 17:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 17:05Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 17:05Andy Greenwald?

  I think that from my understanding of these deals, and this is why we see, there's two sides of it, like as a writer in this world who would love, who would, let me look to the camera, would love another overall deal. We want more of those. That's good. In the same way that the players are like, no, Kyle Tucker's deal is awesome for all of us. Thank you. No need for a salary cap. But the flip side of it is when those deals had reached such a ludicrous point that based on name and past performance, this is why we always use, I don't know why we always go to baseball analogies, but this is why we go to the Albert Pujols analogy. Like, a quarter bill.

• 17:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Andy Greenwald?

  For JJ Abrams is kind of after the fact for Lost and Cloverfield.

• 17:46Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 17:47Andy Greenwald?

  Which doesn't mean to say his best days as a creative himself are behind him. But if you look at what that company produced for its TV and movie obligations in the last few years, and look, it's hard. You can't just flip a switch.

• 17:59Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 17:59Andy Greenwald?

  And they had many antique steampunk switches. You can't just flip one and make brilliant, successful stuff that connects with audiences. But the return on investment was relatively low and maybe lower overhead might produce. More, better? I don't know, but I, anytime Jobs leave here, not great.

• 18:17Chris Ryan?

  We'll find out when he gets back to the land of Big Zoe.

• 18:20Andy Greenwald?

  You think? You think he and Steven are just in the lab? Maybe they're gonna do some more sketches with Curtis Leewa about cat health.

• 18:26Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to let you know that I saw the drama.

• 18:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I had a question for you about it. I can ask, I asked you over text, but my, I wanna know your thoughts, no spoilers. Cause I wanna see it, but I needed to know from you that the twist is not.

• 18:38Chris Ryan?

  Funniest question you've asked me in 2026.

• 18:40Andy Greenwald?

  Is it a horror movie?

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 18:42Andy Greenwald?

  Then I'll see it.

• 18:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, uh, it goes to show you how complicated it is to market something like this today. Because there is the version of it that you actually can't help yourself, but click on everything about it and find out over the course of clicking what the film is about. And then there is like, I don't know if you are willfully not reading about it.

• 19:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 19:05Chris Ryan?

  Or.

• 19:05Andy Greenwald?

  Willfully.

• 19:06Chris Ryan?

  We're like third hand being like, if they are hiding something from me, is it Satan's dog comes?

• 19:12Andy Greenwald?

  Mephisto.

• 19:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, comes flying out from under the bed.

• 19:15Andy Greenwald?

  I saw the trailers.

• 19:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Andy Greenwald?

  And it is a wink wink marketing campaign. So I understood, but I haven't read past that. So I, my understanding was that there was a twist. You can't make a movie about a couple getting married with that framing and that. I mean, everything the marketing told you there was more to it. And all I want, I don't think.

• 19:31Chris Ryan?

  It's not a horror movie.

• 19:32Andy Greenwald?

  Then I'll see it.

• 19:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Andy Greenwald?

  You liked it.

• 19:34Chris Ryan?

  It is a, um, so it's directed by this guy Christoph Borghley and, um, it definitely has like some qualities that are very Scandinavian.

• 19:43Andy Greenwald?

  He did dream sequence?

• 19:45Chris Ryan?

  Dream scenario.

• 19:45Andy Greenwald?

  Dream scenario with Nicholas Cage?

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  This film is set in Boston, but in some ways like could be Copenhagen, you know, everybody is looking great and seems to have a socialized health, healthcare. But it is kind of like the inverse of your preferred version of Scandi drama, you know?

• 20:04Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 20:04Chris Ryan?

  Like, say like sentimental value, like the way like I know you respond to Yoakim like and like the kind of emotional, um, catharsis.

• 20:12Andy Greenwald?

  Cause he's a, he's a girl dad. Have we mentioned that?

• 20:14Chris Ryan?

  Who, Yoakim Pontrier?

• 20:15Andy Greenwald?

  Uh huh.

• 20:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Is that?

• 20:17Andy Greenwald?

  I just watched the interest drain from you.

• 20:19Chris Ryan?

  I liked it.

• 20:20Andy Greenwald?

  Must be nice.

• 20:22Chris Ryan?

  Okay, do you have children?

• 20:23Andy Greenwald?

  No, to be a girl dad, you don't care.

• 20:25Chris Ryan?

  I care.

• 20:26Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, you care about me.

• 20:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:28Andy Greenwald?

  But that is not a driving force.

• 20:30Chris Ryan?

  Care less if a director is a girl dad.

• 20:32Andy Greenwald?

  I know.

• 20:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Andy Greenwald?

  You know who else cares? Sean, Sean's with me on that one.

• 20:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. What about, what about guy dads?

• 20:40Andy Greenwald?

  I respect what you're doing. Go have catches, like, we need good men in this world.

• 20:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I loved the drama.

• 20:47Andy Greenwald?

  That's awesome.

• 20:47Chris Ryan?

  It was quite good.

• 20:48Andy Greenwald?

  But also, you said you liked it, if I don't mean to blow you up here and do reportage on your texts.

• 20:53Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 20:54Andy Greenwald?

  But it seemed like you liked the experience of seeing the movie a lot, and then you also liked the appre cinema. You liked talking about this movie.

• 21:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:01Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm sorry, I can't back you up on it, but I will see it.

• 21:03Chris Ryan?

  I really enjoyed going out to dinner with my wife after seeing the drama and then talking about the drama a bunch. You know, reading a little Justin Chang and being like, well, look what he says. It was like, it was a very engaged evening.

• 21:15Andy Greenwald?

  What was, first of all, you're both very engaged conversationalists about culture.

• 21:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 21:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's enjoyable. What is, off the top of your head, what was the worst post movie dinner conversation you've ever had with Phoebe? Was it when you like, had to take her to see The Eternals or something?

• 21:30Chris Ryan?

  It was like, she, she, she tapped out on like, going to movies that she knew she was gonna hate a long time ago. I think we left the film 21 grams in the middle of it because it was giving her a panic attack.

• 21:42Andy Greenwald?

  Fair.

• 21:43Chris Ryan?

  Um, I don't remember what we did afterwards, we might have gotten drunk.

• 21:47Andy Greenwald?

  That's probably why you don't remember. That's awesome.

• 21:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:50Andy Greenwald?

  That's great.

• 21:51Chris Ryan?

  Um, okay, I wanted to see if you had any pit thoughts before we get into the international crime shows. Not necessarily about the episode, or about, for sure, about the episode if you'd like. Um, and also about the cast changes and the general state of the series as we enter, I believe, the last two.

• 22:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that they're, one of the things that I have just loved, and I think we've been, I've been beating this drum pretty consistently for the last few weeks, is I absolutely love the way the show is surprising us and manipulating us in the best possible dramatic way with pace and expectation.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:27Andy Greenwald?

  The season is not going to end without something else big happening. I think, I don't think there's going to be necessarily resolution to Robbie's Dark Night of the Soul, Dark Day, now into the Night of the Soul. But I think that story will be pushed more into the center of the table in one way or another. But the fact that this episode felt very like, both at once kind of elegiac and like,

• 22:52Andy Greenwald?

  reflective for the day that was and, you know, and Ogilvy has changed so profoundly over the course of this, of these 12 hours, but everyone has been changed slightly by what has happened.

• 23:03Andy Greenwald?

  To have that happening concurrently with the show's honest to God superpower, no other show has ever done this, which is just like, if you need a shot of, I guess not Versed, the opposite of Versed. Adrenaline. We have an entirely different cast of this show, just ready to roll. Yes. Just to show up and give us completely new blood, new faces, new energy, new relationships, new perspective.

• 23:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's unprecedented and it's so, so exciting. And of course, it's, the fact that it's so exciting is why people are immediately fan casting and wishing for spinoffs. But it also, this is what you're referring to in terms of the news, makes sense that the show has, the other thing that it has that other shows have never had is a farm team of just characters that could be upstreamed to the main cast and be part of it, which is what's happening with Aisha Harris's, I believe. Yeah, Dr. Ellis. Dr. Ellis's character, who, like, all these night shift people, from Dr. Shen to Jack, I mean, these guys, Mateo, these guys all have main character energy. And they are the main character of the non-existent night shift show. Night shift, yeah. But that makes, that makes a lot of sense.

• 24:09Andy Greenwald?

  And, and again, like, the, it is unique to the show, or maybe it's not unique to the show. There have been other shows that we've talked about that have like a built in mechanism for cast turnover and the shows that have used it that well.

• 24:25Andy Greenwald?

  They can do things where, like, I think that Dr. Mohan, who I'm a fan of the actor and the character, it seems, it's, I don't think anybody watching the season was surprised that she may have, that story may have reached its natural end.

• 24:40Chris Ryan?

  Her character was gonna go one of two directions. She was either gonna be like, I, I, I am going beast mode and now understand the pace and demands of, of this department, or I'm a really good doctor, but I don't really wanna do this kind of medicine, which I think is a totally, I think one thing that's cool about what the show does is it just gives you, the viewer, the information. When Whitaker is talking to Ogilvy and Ogilvy is like, I'm gonna go do peds or something, Whitaker's just like, this is the only place where like, you really feel like, I feel like I'm making a difference in people's lives. And you see them on their worst day. That, that seems great.

• 25:17Andy Greenwald?

  One thing that'll be interesting to track as the show runs two, three, four, eight seasons, it can be, it, cruel isn't the word, but it can, it can be swift in its determination about things. And they can say, I, I have no reason, I, two things to say. One, I have no inside information whatsoever about the production of the show. That said, I believe them when they say that Supriya Ganesh is moving on because that character, for story reasons, has reached the end of its story road and they're gonna switch it up. Tracy Afitur, who played Dr. Collins in season one, her departure, that she never came back from her DND notice on her phone, still strikes me as super odd. But they can say it's story reasons because this is turnover.

• 25:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:00Andy Greenwald?

  They can, so I, I guess what I mean is that like, as we reach season five and season six of the show, new faces get announced, there's gonna be, it's gonna be a little stressful because it's not like being added to, like, it's all at-will employment. People can be written off of shows all the time. But I think that people get, usually when people get added to a hit show, they're like, awesome, I can settle in for a minute.

• 26:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Andy Greenwald?

  This show is built on turnover and you can't guarantee anything other than the fact that you are gonna get a big boost out of whatever you do on the show.

• 26:29Chris Ryan?

  It's, I think it'll be fascinating to see over the course of the rest of this season and certainly into season three, which I imagine will air sometime early in 27, if not exactly when 20, uh, season two started airing. Uh, whether they're become...

• 26:45Chris Ryan?

  Untouchables on this show. And I think that Dana and Robbie are.

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  And Whitaker.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  And Whitaker might be, and Santos might be as well in some ways.

• 26:54Andy Greenwald?

  And Mel.

• 26:55Chris Ryan?

  If that crew is like locked in, or if there is still like, it could be anybody. And I don't think they would make the show without Noah Wiley, or I don't think the show is the same show without Noah Wiley. But you know, they are having these characters at a crossroads in their life, especially Dana and Robbie, thinking about like whether or not they can actually do this anymore. And so that's an interesting crossroads to arrive at in season two. And I don't know if you can return to the same crossroads in season three with the same characters.

• 27:24Andy Greenwald?

  Well, what you can do, I think the thing that we keep, and certainly I do, I keep, I keep getting rocked and impressed by the, how nimble the show is in taking advantage of its uniqueness. Not just its uniqueness in terms of its setting and hours, but uniqueness in terms of its clockwork, old fashioned dependability. There absolutely can be a season of the pit where Robbie doesn't show up until hour eight. There can be a season of the pit where we get a lot more Dr. Shen and a lot less Dr. Santos.

• 27:56Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 27:57Andy Greenwald?

  They, the show is built to contain that. And I also think the nature of it, where they are filming in LA at a certain time every year, I think that they can, they can take advantage of that. I think it's very different than telling an adult actor, you need to move to Belfast for one to six years. Now, stuff gets, stuff gets done, like the, the, the travel departments of these networks, I can say are very efficient, terrifyingly so. Uh, getting people into other countries in relatively quick turnaround. But I think that that, that aspect of it, you know, it also that even, that's a grandiose way of talking about the kind of familial thing that they are already creating. Where relatives and wives and partners of many of the cast members have already shown up.

• 28:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Andy Greenwald?

  Because Noah Wiley's wife was this week or the previous week, she was the person who had too much turmeric.

• 28:47Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. The Maha person. Yeah. Actually, I don't know that she's actually identified as Maha.

• 28:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, be careful. Chris.

• 28:54Chris Ryan?

  Well, you're the one with the protein yogurt.

• 28:57Andy Greenwald?

  Look, some of us are just curious.

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  You're the one with Robert Kennedy Jr. brand yogurt.

• 29:03Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not taking that because I'm hungry, by the way. I'm taking it because I'm very sick and I've heard that that yogurt can heal. Keep it coming. I like it. I like it when you're like, I have a number of talking points for you.

• 29:14Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna ask you about the Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed trailer. This is an upcoming show on Apple starring Tadiana Maslany. The reason I was gonna ask you about it was because

• 29:26Chris Ryan?

  I couldn't tell whether or not we are in a the throes of a wave of popularity about upper-middle-class curiosity about the dark side of life, or if that is just one of the most durable things to make TV about anyway, and I'm just imagining it because of DTF and this and your friends and neighbors. It's obviously something that Apple is interested in is this seemingly perfect person just got a little bit dangerous the other day, you know, like, and this seems about to be about a woman who starts exploring her sexuality and then some various levels of crime start happening around that.

• 30:05Andy Greenwald?

  It's a slippery slope, Karen.

• 30:07Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 30:07Andy Greenwald?

  That's the genre.

• 30:08Chris Ryan?

  Is her name Karen in this?

• 30:09Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm just saying that's the new genre I'm inventing. Slippery slope, comma, Karen.

• 30:13Chris Ryan?

  Wouldn't Karen always be calling the cops, right?

• 30:15Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, well, we don't. We haven't seen the episodes.

• 30:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Andy Greenwald?

  That could be episode one. This won't do. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's ringing.

• 30:24Chris Ryan?

  You guys are in so much trouble.

• 30:26Andy Greenwald?

  Hold on. Yeah, you stay right there, young man.

• 30:29Chris Ryan?

  They put me on hold.

• 30:31Andy Greenwald?

  They've all been laid off.

• 30:32Chris Ryan?

  Do you, but do you notice these kinds of things where it's just like, oh, for some reason, we're making 10 shows. Like, for a while there, I felt like half the shows that we get announced or, you know, released were from the true crime podcast about the dentist who killed 50 people but also had six wives, you know, like.

• 30:50Andy Greenwald?

  I think that you can track middle class. Well, there's no such thing as a middle class anymore. Sorry, it's just a funny little joke. That you can track a certain upper-middle-class, let's say, malaise through the, through television. And Breaking Bad, for example, which is maybe the greatest example of this of like, "I'm a successful suburban science teacher. Wait, systems aren't working for me? I shall cook drugs." That's how I remember the pilot. That premiered, maybe even the day. No, it premiered in

• 31:25Andy Greenwald?

  January of 2008. So it premiered just as that presidential campaign was starting, but was clearly developed at the end of the Bush era of like just economic ruin and foreign misadventure. And I would say that you could track this, like that's the canary in the coal mine, especially at a moment when it's weird. It's like in the last year and a half, two years, TV got really interested in the plates of well-off white people again, which is

• 31:54Andy Greenwald?

  gave us some content. But I think you can, I think you can track that. And I would be curious to see some of the, you know, we've heard about announcements of some like return to the family drama type shows and to see those, those Geiger counter wobbles institutionally, systemically happening to that sort of person. That is an, it's not, it's an endlessly renewable well, but seems to come up to the surface at certain times.

• 32:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, you know what? This is actually a pretty good segue. We watched two international crime shows this weekend to get ready for the pod. One-

• 32:26Andy Greenwald?

  You're welcome.

• 32:27Chris Ryan?

  One is called Unfamiliar. I mentioned it briefly on Thursday. We'll get into that a little bit more extensively because I think that did more for us. But I do want to ask you about this show on HBO Max called Privileges, which is a French language show, a French show. And it is from the creators are Marie Mong and Vladimir de Fontenay, who I believe were in attendance at the Eyes Wide Shut party I was at this weekend. No, just kidding. It just sounds like kind of the, you know, the people with the cloaks.

• 32:57Andy Greenwald?

  Tell us more about the party.

• 32:58Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm just joking.

• 32:58Andy Greenwald?

  Was it held in the abandoned Cinerama Dome? Like, we are failing as a nation. Thus, we must embrace perversity.

• 33:05Chris Ryan?

  When you get up to the door, you go Tarantino and they let you in. No, just, you know, I was just having fun at the expense of their names, but not fun at the expense of their show, which I, I actually, I think I enjoyed a little bit more than you. But the reason I'm connecting it to maximum pleasure guaranteed is this is in and of itself a crime show. And there's basically two shows here in Privileges. It's about a young inmate named Adele, who's a wonderful performance by this- Young actress named Manon Bresh.

• 33:36Andy Greenwald?

  She's awesome.

• 33:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, she, as part of like a work release program, joins the staff of a luxury hotel called The Citadel in Paris. Um, and it's a kind of secretive program that the manager of this hotel, Edouard, runs. We are led to believe probably because he himself has come from, from a rough patch in his life. Also, what happens is he gets these people to come aboard and they basically will do anything for him to stay out of prison or to secure some sort of release.

• 34:03Andy Greenwald?

  Because Adele is returning to prison every night.

• 34:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes. You know, as he brings her on, there's this, uh, pilot episode, she gets used to being there and then pulls off an extraordinary, uh, request of a, a pop star, um, guest of the hotel. This hotel is sort of at the nexus of power, fame, money, and, uh, basically every single guest is either needs something, wants something, is doing a drug, is having a, a illicit affair, something. So you get a lot of good TV marrow out there. The thing I was gonna say is that they approach this world from the perspective of somebody who has nothing in this Adele character, whereas like the ones you're describing in America are tend to be, hey, everything was going pretty great for me until fuck.

• 34:48Chris Ryan?

  And it does change your brain chemistry to watch a series where, you know, first of all, you can totally understand why Adele will, and, you know, no spoil, well, I guess spoilers for this first episode, cause it helps to be able to discuss it. There is an extraordinary sequence in the first episode of Privileges where Adele goes and fetches a boa constrictor for one of the guests. And it is shot like uncut gems, as is much of Adele's kind of behavior and action in the show is very like handheld, incredibly tense, heart thumping. Um, and it's, it's like you're cheering for her in a way that I don't think you cheer for Coop and your friends and neighbors to get away with stealing Rolexes from another rich guy.

• 35:33Chris Ryan?

  All that is to say, there is another half or 75% of Privileges that is basically a Fox procedural.

• 35:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 35:39Chris Ryan?

  And is 19 different blackmail plots overlapping. And even from my fluency in international crime, challenging to keep straight.

• 35:49Chris Ryan?

  All the different subplots that they have introduced within 70 minutes of TV time. What did you think of the show?

• 35:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, I have a larger take for both of these shows, and I do think we need to start discussing this as its own genre, which is, I think, Elevated Euro Trash.

• 36:05Chris Ryan?

  Hey, it's okay, brother.

• 36:07Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, I'm not, as someone who went to college in the Northeast in the 90s, I was jealous of the Elevated Euro Trash. They knew which bars to go to, you know, they dressed great, sometimes they would get me a cocktail.

• 36:19Chris Ryan?

  Those CD singles seemed to come out of nowhere for them.

• 36:21Andy Greenwald?

  All the CD singles.

• 36:24Andy Greenwald?

  The, it's also just about how the way these types of shows, and this is not just these two shows, this is a lot of the shows that we like, and I was thinking back to like Lupin and like all of these European shows made for international streamers, there's a certain language, visual language, there's a color palette, there's a lack of humor that is just shot through them all and it's becoming a little bit samey. But I think that you're making a, but I did like this show, and I think it's a really, really smart and strong setup of this character coming into this world through the service entrance. And hotels are fascinating bizarre places that are-

• 37:03Chris Ryan?

  Great place to do a TV show.

• 37:04Andy Greenwald?

  Incredible energy and engine for plot and story because you have new people showing up every week.

• 37:12Andy Greenwald?

  I think, I think the way you're looking at it is really smart. We talked about this recently in relation to Taylor Sheridan shows and how I just, maybe he's no longer, you know, now that he owns much, most of rural America himself, he's no longer the person to write the Man of the People show. But I think that every one of the Taylor Sheridan shows I've engaged with over the last year would have been improved by like, like Landman would be much, much better if it was about Boss's crew and then the other characters were there too, but they were fleeting, as opposed to we have access to all of it and we are as interested in the guys who literally got blown up as we are with Demi Moore's-

• 37:52Chris Ryan?

  Well, to your point, for a variety of reasons, I think Landman season one works better than season two. Number one is because Tommy works- For somebody in season one.

• 38:00Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great point.

• 38:00Chris Ryan?

  He's, he is like, I gotta do what fucking Monty says. And that, that I might not believe it all the time and I have to go sell it to this person and this person.

• 38:08Andy Greenwald?

  And I think not to, I can't believe we're, you're finally letting me talk about international shows in other languages. And I'm like, the thing about Taylor Sheridan is this is, you really cooked me. That is so bad. But I do think that as much as like the, the Taylor Sheridan hero narrative of Taylor Sheridan is look where he was and look where he is now. And that is the narrative then of all of his shows. Um, and so that's probably why he can't, unless young Taylor coming to CBS this fall. They did it for Sheldon. They could do it for him. He's like, I'm an actor, but I want to be a writer. And they're like, oh, Taylor, you never could be a writer.

• 38:47Chris Ryan?

  Just get back on that motorcycle, son of Ankar.

• 38:49Andy Greenwald?

  I'll show you.

• 38:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:52Andy Greenwald?

  Type, type, type, type, type. And then the Black Hawk helicopter said, women are sad sometimes. Anyway.

• 38:58Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, in line, as they are sad sometimes.

• 38:59Andy Greenwald?

  With good reason, because they've taken out a foreign government. Hmm. Brownie face. Actually, opposite of what you thought from me, because I love to zag. I thought the second episode of Privileges was better because it had settled into what it was going to be. I thought the first episode was, had so much to do to get Adele into this world and for us to understand the stakes and all the faces and the characters. And it was based on something that I found so profoundly silly, which is the snake heist.

• 39:26Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I see. I like that.

• 39:28Andy Greenwald?

  But it had some, but it wasn't, it should have been funny, but it was shot as if it was uncut gems and there needed to be some absurdity to it. I thought, um, instead it had like the most French needle.

• 39:39Chris Ryan?

  Siskel and Eberting it now, right? I like this. Yeah.

• 39:41Andy Greenwald?

  It had the most French needle drops ever, where it's just like some, some old spiritual, like sped up, you know? And she's like, you must bathe in the water. And she's like, I'll rescue the snake. And it's a boa constrictor, but do you see the Foley guy in France was like lighting one cigarette off the other and being like, I will add the rattle of this snake. But boas don't have rattles. No, no, you don't understand. We have no snakes in France. This is scary. This is scary. And then it was like also the same.

• 40:05Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of snakes in that scene. She has to find the boa constrictor.

• 40:08Andy Greenwald?

  Every time they wanted to remind us that she had the snake on her person, they were like adding the same sort of Polynesian jungle sounds they used to play at Epcot.

• 40:15Chris Ryan?

  I didn't notice that, but that is really perceptive.

• 40:18Andy Greenwald?

  So nuts.

• 40:20Andy Greenwald?

  Um, anyway, by the time I got to the second episode, it's like, okay, now she's, she's in it and the stakes are what they are. And, you know, now there's an international football star who wants to play PlayStation with her. And then there's also the larger, there have to be Russians. And then one of my other favorite things ever in these international shows is when they have to have an American person in the cast.

• 40:40Chris Ryan?

  Mark Pepo is the name of the character.

• 40:41Andy Greenwald?

  The cast, the American tech bro named Mark Pepo. It's so good.

• 40:47Chris Ryan?

  And they always refer to him as Mark Pepo.

• 40:50Andy Greenwald?

  Mark Pepo.

• 40:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Andy Greenwald?

  Mark Pepo is here. He has requested the cheap champagne. And, uh, and I do believe the actor who plays Mark Pepo is, is French, but maybe he was raised in two, in two cultures. So he has the

• 41:02Chris Ryan?

  Much like yourself.

• 41:02Andy Greenwald?

  Much like myself. One culture with you, one culture that is just really annoying. And somehow we make it work. It was like the same thing. Like, remember the rich guys in Squid Game?

• 41:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 41:14Andy Greenwald?

  They're like,

• 41:15Chris Ryan?

  Hey there.

• 41:15Andy Greenwald?

  Hey, honey, wipe my ass with an American flag. It's like, the guy in the country who plays that part is just, he's available.

• 41:22Chris Ryan?

  I'm really hoping some American CIA agent shows up on Unfamiliar. Yeah.

• 41:26Andy Greenwald?

  That would be so sick. There's a lot of English in Unfamiliar. We need to get to it. Anyway, I, I think it, I think it's a charming show and it's a good show and has room to grow. I do wish that it was freed of, and we could segue into Unfamiliar if you want, because I, I wish it was freed from this same. It, privileges is HBO Max, but it is Netflix-y. And one thing, just to contextualize all of this, like, every nation, every nation once had a thriving.

• 41:56Chris Ryan?

  So in the 18th century.

• 41:59Chris Ryan?

  Come on. Vladimir Lenin.

• 42:01Andy Greenwald?

  The television set was invented as a tool for the worker to entertain himself.

• 42:05Chris Ryan?

  When Tracy Letts began Augustosage County, how could he have known?

• 42:10Andy Greenwald?

  I think Tracy listens. It's time for a rewrite.

• 42:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Andy Greenwald?

  September, Joseg County. Yeah, I, so every, every country had their own TV services and they were making TV shows and they had more, I would say distinct national or regional characteristics of how they made TV, some good, some bad, some translatable and exportable, some not. I mean, one thing that is worth saying to contextualize what I'm trying to articulate is that when I've talked to people, like people in England, they're like, most of our TV has been dogshit for years and we, you would see the six things that were good. I think that's reductive, but I understand that.

• 42:49Chris Ryan?

  That's the same thing for us too, where like we, there are 400 television shows on a year. You and I talk about 12.

• 42:55Andy Greenwald?

  But now, all TV shows are built to be exported because like with cinema, the international market is incredibly lucrative and makes sense, especially for these services that launch and want their own.

• 43:05Chris Ryan?

  HBO Max.

• 43:06Andy Greenwald?

  Siloed.

• 43:06Chris Ryan?

  Launched in England.

• 43:07Andy Greenwald?

  Stuff. And part, and so part of launching internationally for an HBO Max to catch up with Netflix is to say HBO Max in France, HBO Max in Germany, what are our shows?

• 43:16Chris Ryan?

  Just imagining the pit NHS where everybody's just like, that's taken care of, mate.

• 43:21Andy Greenwald?

  Imagine if it was, but if it was the pit NHS, the 15 hours would be someone being told they could come back for their surgery in three weeks. They'd be like, fantastic.

• 43:32Andy Greenwald?

  They just sort of sit down, maybe get a pint and then three seasons later, it's like, me gold bladder. It's gone.

• 43:39Chris Ryan?

  It's got to be bigger. Now it's, yeah.

• 43:42Andy Greenwald?

  But, great, great.

• 43:43Chris Ryan?

  Sorry for the aside.

• 43:44Andy Greenwald?

  Great pitch. But the, the international language of these shows is getting samey, is all I'm trying to say. And I, I wish there was a little bit more of an idiosyncratic feel to these shows that it didn't feel like some of the edges were sanded off.

• 43:59Chris Ryan?

  Sword, right? Cause like the, the Sopranos and Wire influences on La Bureau is what probably makes it.

• 44:05Andy Greenwald?

  Totally.

• 44:06Chris Ryan?

  The fucking Bureau and it makes it in some ways as good, if not, you know, like as good as those shows that it was influenced by.

• 44:12Andy Greenwald?

  And one of the things that this is also the opportunity that's given us is switching to Unfamiliar, which is a spy show on Netflix, German language spy show. Created by Paul Coats, I believe is his name.

• 44:21Chris Ryan?

  Who's English.

• 44:22Andy Greenwald?

  Who I, yes, and again, we don't know, I didn't, I wasn't able to track down the, the, the actual origins of the show. But my assumption is.

• 44:30Chris Ryan?

  I think CoPro has now become a genre. So I think multi-country international co-productions is now not just like a way of selling stuff. But it's like, if Paul Coats, who has worked on spy stuff in England and also comes from writing, you know, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks and other shows that sounds like I'm making up their names, but are quite popular in England.

• 44:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 44:51Chris Ryan?

  But he's a very accomplished veteran screenwriter. If he's going around and doing meetings and he meets with Gomont or he meets with a, a German producer and, and talking about maybe selling the idea of a British show in Germany.

• 45:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 45:03Chris Ryan?

  This was something where like, I think he brought an idea of like, I mean, it's essentially the, the Americans meets Eastern Gate. And they were like, not only yes, let's set it here and we can get the BND to participate because of like, out of a sense of transparency with the German people or something like that.

• 45:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I think, I think, I, my assumption is.

• 45:25Chris Ryan?

  The BND being like the, the intelligence service of, of Germany.

• 45:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's very.

• 45:30Chris Ryan?

  Cool building.

• 45:31Andy Greenwald?

  It's very likely that, that he had this and it was either written or prepared to be pitched as in the show set in London. And they said, well, why don't you just do it here? That international language is very cool and offers up different perspectives and also allows the show to be set in 2025, 2026's hottest hot spot, Belarus. Which is, I would say what happens in Belarus stays in Belarus, but that is rarely the case.

• 45:57Chris Ryan?

  No, they make sure it always catches up with you.

• 45:59Andy Greenwald?

  It always catches up to you. It is a, it is a rough, rough. I mean, what is the current like fictional TripAdvisor rate ranking for holidays in Belarus?

• 46:08Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I think, I think we should break our live show, uh, moratorium into a Belarus show.

• 46:14Andy Greenwald?

  And then that's our last show. And just give in to Mother Russia. But, uh, oh, by the way, before we get into unfamiliar international translations, we didn't mention the fact that, um, that Disney, the larger global Disney plus umbrella, they're remaking the Americans as the Koreans.

• 46:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 46:34Andy Greenwald?

  And set in the, uh, in the eighties, um, but with North Korean spies in Korea. And I think that's phenomenal. That's awesome. That's a, I think it's an exciting idea.

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  Trying to think of some other stuff that we could set in different places.

• 46:47Andy Greenwald?

  There are many things we could set in different places. Do you want to, you know?

• 46:50Chris Ryan?

  I mean, we have been doing that anyway. You know what I mean? Like we just without calling it's like Mobland is just Sopranos, but set in England, you know, like, um.

• 46:59Andy Greenwald?

  What about DTF Minsk? See what I did there?

• 47:02Chris Ryan?

  Did you just look up cities in Belarus? Is Minsk Belarus?

• 47:06Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm. Yes, I did.

• 47:08Chris Ryan?

  I heard.

• 47:08Andy Greenwald?

  A hundred percent did.

• 47:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was like, damn, you, you typed and then you pulled Minsk out. DTF Minsk.

• 47:14Andy Greenwald?

  Jokes.

• 47:17Andy Greenwald?

  Chat GPT. Claude. Come on.

• 47:21Chris Ryan?

  Um, yeah, we should do that.

• 47:23Andy Greenwald?

  We should totally do that. That's a good bit for us. Uh, all right. Set up unfamiliar. Let's talk about it.

• 47:27Chris Ryan?

  Unfamiliar, like I said, vibe wise, it's the Americans meets Eastern Gate. If you didn't watch Eastern Gate, it's the Americans meets a slightly more like grounded, bornish action spy thriller.

• 47:38Andy Greenwald?

  Twenty four ish, you always were saying when we were watching it?

• 47:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Andy Greenwald?

  Homeland ish as well, maybe?

• 47:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Um.

• 47:43Andy Greenwald?

  One of our favorite shows.

• 47:44Chris Ryan?

  They got unprecedented access to shoot within the BND headquarters in Berlin, and it concerns, uh, partners and parents, uh, Simon and Merritt Schaefer.

• 47:53Andy Greenwald?

  Simon is a girl dad.

• 47:55Chris Ryan?

  He is. Nah.

• 47:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well, don't spoil it.

• 47:58Chris Ryan?

  I'm not spoiling it, but no stolen valor for you here. Simon and Merritt, uh, are, uh, partners and parents. They have a teenage daughter named Nina. They run a nice little Berlin restaurant. And they moonlight, uh, running as like they are safe house proprietors for spies on the run or for intelligence operatives on the run. Their past catches up with them in the form of a Russian spy named Kolyev, who is looking to settle a score from an operation 16 years prior that went wrong in Belarus.

• 48:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 48:30Chris Ryan?

  This one's cool, man. Six episodes on Netflix. Uh. The thing that will get you with Unfamiliar, you watch two of them.

• 48:37Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:38Chris Ryan?

  They just, that, that, that last five minutes, they always are like, hey, but you want to keep watching.

• 48:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's super, it's Netflix maxing.

• 48:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Andy Greenwald?

  In a way that I, unlike Privileges, like I watched the first one of this and I was like, here we go. This is my new favorite show. And I watched the second one and I was like, ah, yes, this will be fine.

• 48:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:57Andy Greenwald?

  Um, it is incredibly engaging as the first episode because it just stacks scenarios on top of each other with an absolutely relentless pace. And, you know, from these people, they have a safe house. Oh, they used to be this. Oh, there's this thing in the past. Oh, it's connected to the highest levels of power.

• 49:17Andy Greenwald?

  There's a almost brutal, dare I say, Germanic efficiency to some of it.

• 49:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Andy Greenwald?

  There was a moment in the beginning of the second episode when Simon and Meredith, the married couple,

• 49:30Andy Greenwald?

  are talking about the state of play. And I know that all the Netflix executives were like, we would never ask our creators to restate the plot every 10 minutes.

• 49:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:41Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe they just do it for us. But yet I actually really admired the efficiency of that scene where Meredith is basically like, you're acting crazy. There's a corpse in the safe house and Kolyev is back and now you're telling me this person is alive. And it was like bang, bang, bang, let's get it done.

• 49:54Chris Ryan?

  For foreign language films, for our purposes, it helps to have some resetting. I mean, like the, the whole like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, being told to say what the plot of the rip is six times is probably overblown. Dan Lin, who runs Netflix movies, has disavowed that. I did think in the rip that they overstated the, like the circumstances. But in this show, it's welcome because half of it is told in this flashback manner. I will just say that I thought the initial premise of this show of like, we, we have a restaurant, but by night,

• 50:32Chris Ryan?

  we have a safe house in any other world would just be like a really solid backbone for a TV, like a long running TV show. To add on the, a case from the past has come back to haunt us. Our daughter is in danger. Multiple factions of German and Russian intelligence are in play.

• 50:50Andy Greenwald?

  And one of us has a slow moving health crisis that would not survive the mid NHS.

• 50:54Chris Ryan?

  There's a hat on a hat on a, whatever a German hat is.

• 50:59Andy Greenwald?

  Like the little Kaiser. Wilhelm's kinda.

• 51:02Chris Ryan?

  Do even German people ever put a Kaiser Wilhelm hat on?

• 51:07Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I haven't seen SNLD yet, but I imagine some of the cold opens have that. Don't you think?

• 51:13Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 51:14Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's a rich country, you know, they probably do a lot of things.

• 51:17Chris Ryan?

  Funny sketch on SNL UK this week.

• 51:19Andy Greenwald?

  Was there?

• 51:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Andy Greenwald?

  Could you curate the best of the weekend's bits for me? Like a newsletter?

• 51:24Chris Ryan?

  Could I?

• 51:26Andy Greenwald?

  You probably could.

• 51:27Chris Ryan?

  You want me to start like a Substack and just start sending you stuff?

• 51:30Andy Greenwald?

  Or an email.

• 51:31Chris Ryan?

  That's what Substacks are.

• 51:32Andy Greenwald?

  But just for me?

• 51:33Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 51:34Andy Greenwald?

  An email, could you email me? I'm asking.

• 51:37Chris Ryan?

  And what do I get out of it?

• 51:39Andy Greenwald?

  I'd be like, you're right, that was funny. You'd probably feel good. You'd be like, wow, I picked a good thing. I made him laugh this weekend.

• 51:45Chris Ryan?

  There was another thing I wanted to say about this, though.

• 51:47Andy Greenwald?

  I just, I think that that's a really smart, sorry, Cisco and Ebert, I thought that was a really smart observation because I think I agree with you and I was responding to those rhythms. I think that I enjoyed, decent setups are very, very hard to come by.

• 52:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Andy Greenwald?

  And they're very hard to come by with funding and financing and good cast and I can call up or you can, like that, the actors in the show are really strong and really compelling. German Sarah Paulson is great as Merritt, I don't know what her name is. She's awesome.

• 52:16Chris Ryan?

  Spoiler, there is a point in the first episode, this isn't really Jermaine, I won't spoil what she's doing, actually, I will spoil what she's doing, but not to whom, where she performs some advanced interrogation techniques on them.

• 52:28Andy Greenwald?

  Performs, yeah.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  She looks pretty cool, wearing like a full latex torture protection kit.

• 52:33Andy Greenwald?

  Was anyone wearing that at the Arc Light this weekend? And did you approach them casually?

• 52:39Andy Greenwald?

  Say, Karen? The password is slippery slope.

• 52:43Andy Greenwald?

  And that's the last thing you remember? Until you were talking about the drama.

• 52:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:48Andy Greenwald?

  Suzanne Wolfe is the actor.

• 52:49Chris Ryan?

  She's good.

• 52:49Andy Greenwald?

  But just that it's hard to come by these scenarios and so that is a multi-running, that's potentially a multi-season show for me, but that is not the business model for Netflix Germany right now.

• 53:01Chris Ryan?

  And here's the thing that's funny. So we were talking about The Pit earlier. There's a version of The Pit that is less strict about its setting. That goes up to Gloria's admin office, that goes home with these people, that turns up the knob on their romantic lives outside of the office. Its adherence to its format and its form, I think is 50% of the reason why it's successful. If there were. Subplots in the pit about funding crises, or if we were cutting back and forth between like the legal department and the cyber defense unit as they were fighting off some of the problems that this season had experienced.

• 53:43Chris Ryan?

  I don't think I would be as interested. I'm interested in these people performing their jobs.

• 53:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 53:47Chris Ryan?

  And so I think with Privileges and Unfamiliar, I, both are very easy to get through because they're watchable and they're six episodes and especially with Unfamiliar, all the episodes are up. The Privileges is going week to week, so the third one comes up this week.

• 54:02Andy Greenwald?

  Friday, yeah.

• 54:03Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I just like, I think that there's a version of like, there's either an unfamiliar that's a movie and there's an unfamiliar that's like a 12-episode, long-running TV show about people who run a safe house for spies. It's right in the middle.

• 54:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I think, we've talked about this before, but I think one of the biggest challenges to making good stuff these days is you have potentially limitless formats or vessels to pour your story into. Picking the right vessel is 50% of success.

• 54:35Chris Ryan?

  And it may not even be your choice.

• 54:36Andy Greenwald?

  And ultimately it might not even be your choice, exactly. I think that, I think some networks and streamers are becoming a little more case by case and trying to make the best version of it, but other ones, but there are many, many other examples of someone having a good idea and finding a potential willing buyer or partner, and that partner says, "We love it, but what we do here, or what we need right now is..."

• 54:58Chris Ryan?

  Is world building.

• 54:58Andy Greenwald?

  Is X, or the opposite. "We need a, we need a limited series right now. We need to dominate. We need a gourmet cheeseburger that will go around the world and be in our top 10." Um, and then you pivot and you can still end up with something good, but I do think that sometimes that misalignment can stop things from being great. I want to ask you for Unfamiliar. What was the most German thing about it? And I'll give you three choices. Number one, that at least 40% of the cast in the show were also in the television show Dark, including Thomas Peachman, who plays old, uh, what's his name? What was the kid's name? The main kid?

• 55:35Chris Ryan?

  Wasn't it Jonas?

• 55:35Andy Greenwald?

  Jonas, yeah.

• 55:36Chris Ryan?

  And in this show, he plays a guy.

• 55:37Andy Greenwald?

  He plays a guy named Jonas, who maybe could be the same one because he's also dark and brooding and operating within a plot that only he is privy to. Handsome guy, though. Happy to see him. Number two, that the way we understand that certain scenes are set 16 years in the past is that Simon has a single earring.

• 55:56Andy Greenwald?

  Or the fact that their daughter Nina-

• 55:58Chris Ryan?

  That's the Belarusian way, you know?

• 56:00Andy Greenwald?

  One-earing. That their daughter Nina is both newly sixteen and an accomplished club DJ.

• 56:10Andy Greenwald?

  That was German as fuck.

• 56:12Chris Ryan?

  I also thought it was pretty German that they took public transport home from the nightclub when they went and saw their teenage DJ daughter, Sabrina, the teenage DJ.

• 56:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, a million percent, a million percent. She also, I would say that any time that that-

• 56:26Chris Ryan?

  Dawn breaking, they're on a bus.

• 56:27Andy Greenwald?

  And then when she goes on a, like a Eurail trip, she wears like the, the, the, the uniform of traveling Germans for the past forty years, which is sweaters with zippers that they don't need to have.

• 56:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Andy Greenwald?

  Like up to here. My only other note, as a, um, big fan of Spycraft, spoiler alert, I don't know, I could be wrong, I don't know how they do things in Germany, because as you know, Effingers ended in the late nineteen forties. So basically, the last seventy years of German history is-

• 56:55Chris Ryan?

  Who can say?

• 56:55Andy Greenwald?

  A blank to me. Seems like it's gone fairly well. I don't think that spies call other spies and leave detailed voicemails about their, where they're going, what they're thinking-

• 57:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:08Andy Greenwald?

  And what they need to know.

• 57:09Chris Ryan?

  There was another thing that I was gonna bring up about in Familiar, I, first of all, I just wanna say, like, I enjoy watching this show and I will finish it.

• 57:14Andy Greenwald?

  It's really good, but I did have that kind of like, oh shit, oh, okay.

• 57:18Chris Ryan?

  This was one of the first series that I've come across where the technological advancements at the fingertips of at least fictional spies kinda kills the vibe a little bit.

• 57:29Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 57:30Chris Ryan?

  So there's one point where the Jonas character that we're talking about, who seems to work in like private security and is maybe playing both sides against the other, is like, let me call up my satellite imagery of this situation.

• 57:41Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:42Chris Ryan?

  And then is like, hmm, pan left, and I'm like, so what the fuck? Can we just see everything all the time now? That's not spying.

• 57:50Andy Greenwald?

  The whole show-

• 57:50Chris Ryan?

  That's using a computer!

• 57:51Andy Greenwald?

  The show begins, like- Let me find out.

• 57:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Andy Greenwald?

  The, uh, the opening of the show where a, like a, a dark asset, like, gets his way into the safe house to determine who these people are. Not only does he shoot himself in the knee to do it. Now, again, I'm no ballistics expert, but I feel like there are less painful places.

• 58:13Chris Ryan?

  I think he goes a little bit above. I think at the fleshy part of the thigh there.

• 58:16Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, he was just, I thought he was trying to embed himself permanently. Never gonna play 65 games again. That he then makes it to their safe house, enjoys their soup, which you know is a scene I really liked a lot. And then, once he's unattended, goes into the control room of the safe house and just dials up the internet.

• 58:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but specifically the Russian, like, back-channel portal that.

• 58:39Andy Greenwald?

  To show them a thumbprint. Now, he uses their technology the same way I used to use the Apple Store to check my emails on my Yahoo account 20 years ago. Like, that was very simple, and everyone there was like, "Sure, man, do what you gotta do."

• 58:53Chris Ryan?

  Seems like everybody is meeting at library bar. I won't be joining them.

• 58:57Andy Greenwald?

  The opposite. I was the one who would make my way to the Apple Store and be like, "Hello, friends! The temperature has reached 68 degrees. Shall we be drinking alfresco this evening?" And before I hit send, Phoebe would be like, "Yes." She was my connect.

• 59:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Um, yes, I thought that's, like, there's just, technology is coming for all of us, even spies, you know?

• 59:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but I, I think the reason why we responded so strongly to Oliver Harris' books is because he's using it in a way.

• 59:29Chris Ryan?

  Very creative way.

• 59:29Andy Greenwald?

  That feels like it's still the spirit of this work.

• 59:32Chris Ryan?

  And even he is like, I create like a character who lives in Dubai and just can break into any computer. Like, it is kind of a cheat, I think, a little bit.

• 59:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but then what are the consequences of that?

• 59:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that guy has a tough life.

• 59:45Andy Greenwald?

  But that said, when I Googled jokes about Belarus, it, it worked. You know, it crushed. I, I hacked into.

• 59:52Chris Ryan?

  It gave you a little taste.

• 59:54Andy Greenwald?

  I hacked into Paul Prevenza's laptop, and I was like, "I found the motherload." Joke after joke after joke.

• 1:00:00Chris Ryan?

  Any watch after dark topics for us?

• 1:00:02Andy Greenwald?

  No, I just want to say that this is, no, do you think this is a lighting change?

• 1:00:06Chris Ryan?

  Let's see. Yeah.

• 1:00:07Andy Greenwald?

  One of my favorite things about changing to watch after dark was that when we clipped Mina last week from the show, like, two of the clips were just normal clips, and then one clip was lit like this, but I don't think there was any explanation that it was different.

• 1:00:20Chris Ryan?

  I redo very little context clues on this show.

• 1:00:22Andy Greenwald?

  That's true. It's really, we don't handhold like our favorite television shows.

• 1:00:26Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:00:26Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I just wanted to let you know that this week, is Euphoria premiering this coming weekend?

• 1:00:33Chris Ryan?

  This coming weekend.

• 1:00:35Andy Greenwald?

  I wasn't kidding that I am ready to do this. Like, I am excited to enter into this show.

• 1:00:40Chris Ryan?

  I'm rearranging. So I'm doing Rewatchables Live in San Francisco this week.

• 1:00:44Andy Greenwald?

  Jesus.

• 1:00:44Chris Ryan?

  And then next week, I'm happy to say, I will be appearing at the Zach Lowe live show in Denver.

• 1:00:51Andy Greenwald?

  This is like the end of the Marin podcast.

• 1:00:52Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 1:00:53Andy Greenwald?

  Where he'd be like, "Just for laughs, Providence."

• 1:00:56Andy Greenwald?

  You are doing the itinerary of an NL West team.

• 1:00:58Chris Ryan?

  The Punchline Fest in Topeka will, it'll be like...

• 1:01:01Andy Greenwald?

  Incredible.

• 1:01:01Chris Ryan?

  But I'm gonna make it work, so that we can do Euphoria together. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

• 1:01:07Andy Greenwald?

  I, I really appreciate that. I, I just want you to know that if I enjoy this experience, I'm gonna be insufferable about this. That I have finally figured out how to engage with television after 15 years. Just do what I want.

• 1:01:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Andy Greenwald?

  Just, just chaos menu.

• 1:01:23Chris Ryan?

  Well, for the purposes of this show, I don't know necessarily that that is always a bad idea. Like I have said, there have been a couple, I would even say today is a little bit of a dead day in terms of like, what's, what's on the docket, news and, and shows. I mean, like, I have a lovely time talking to you, but unfamiliar and privileges are not exactly like

• 1:01:43Andy Greenwald?

  Headlines.

• 1:01:43Chris Ryan?

  succession and, you know. But would it make sense for us to just be like, "I turned on Dark Winds, season four. I see what you guys are talking about. It's good."

• 1:01:52Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great point, because otherwise, you know what'll happen? We won't cover Dark Winds.

• 1:01:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Andy Greenwald?

  So, well, I don't know why I said that like a threat.

• 1:02:02Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry.

• 1:02:03Chris Ryan?

  Anything else?

• 1:02:04Andy Greenwald?

  Um, no, I'm excited about that. Uh, I wanna watch the drama. What else? Do we have other big shows coming that we need to be checking for? You have your document. Chris is the keeper of the keys here, in terms of what we ought to be covering.

• 1:02:14Chris Ryan?

  So, we got Euphoria coming up, and then the finale is the 16th. That's next week. And Margot's got money problems with David E. Kelley's show with Elle Fanning. It's supposed to have to be very good. Beef, season two, but then that's a Netflix situation, so you're gonna have to watch all of it to have anything to say about it.

• 1:02:29Andy Greenwald?

  Fair.

• 1:02:30Chris Ryan?

  Widows Bay, I'm very excited about, end of April.

• 1:02:33Andy Greenwald?

  That looks like it has horror in it.

• 1:02:34Chris Ryan?

  The Terror Devil in Silver, which I need you to fucking nut up and watch that with me. Even though it's about...

• 1:02:41Chris Ryan?

  I fucking need you, dog. I'll never ask anything of you again. Just watch this AMC anthology horror series with me. I think it's more of a psychological thriller, anyway.

• 1:02:51Andy Greenwald?

  I can do that.

• 1:02:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Andy Greenwald?

  I can handle that.

• 1:02:53Chris Ryan?

  I'm not sure about that. There is, "The Devil in Silver" is the tagline, so.

• 1:02:57Andy Greenwald?

  Well, at least the devil is showing out.

• 1:02:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Andy Greenwald?

  Dressing up for the occasion. We didn't cover, I think this is relevant, there was some literary news that I thought was going to be part of your rundown. Maybe you covered it on Thursday.

• 1:03:07Chris Ryan?

  Some big Ben Lerner interviews?

• 1:03:09Andy Greenwald?

  No. Miss me with that.

• 1:03:12Chris Ryan?

  Do you not like Ben Lerner?

• 1:03:12Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm not doing a drive-by of Ben Lerner. I'm just like, I, my attitude towards contemporary fiction, and Kaya could jump in, because Kaya keeps up with contemporary books in a way that I don't. I don't know if you do either.

• 1:03:26Andy Greenwald?

  Let me know in a couple of years. That's my attitude towards new novels.

• 1:03:29Chris Ryan?

  Good. Okay.

• 1:03:29Andy Greenwald?

  There's a lot of old stuff that I still have to read.

• 1:03:31Chris Ryan?

  What was literary news that happened that you wanted to talk about?

• 1:03:34Andy Greenwald?

  Two television shows based on beloved literary properties have, are now moving. One, The Corrections, has been announced.

• 1:03:41Chris Ryan?

  I can't believe that. Yeah. Cor Jefferson is writing and directing an adaptation of the.

• 1:03:45Andy Greenwald?

  From what I understand, Cor is directing, and Jonathan Franzen is adapting his own book.

• 1:03:50Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:03:51Andy Greenwald?

  That's from what I understand, yes. And this has been long gestating. I'm sure, I think it was, it was optioned to be a film by Scott Rudin when the book was published 25, 26 years ago. It was infamously an HBO pilot overseen by Noah Baumbach that did not go forward.

• 1:04:10Chris Ryan?

  Still somewhere at a dusty shelf in Santa Monica.

• 1:04:12Andy Greenwald?

  Someone can see it. That was 10 years ago, and now has been, it's happening. A lot of whip-producing, Paramount-producing for Apple with Meryl Streep starring.

• 1:04:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Have you read The Corrections?

• 1:04:26Andy Greenwald?

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:26Chris Ryan?

  I have not.

• 1:04:27Andy Greenwald?

  Do you, do you, do you remember that my, I was, this is nothing to be proud of. I want to preface this. But I was checking for The Corrections, because my father took me to see Jonathan Franzen read from his second novel, Strong Motion, at the downtown borders, because Jonathan Franzen's first book, The Twenty-Seventh City, which I also read and enjoyed.

• 1:04:49Chris Ryan?

  Is about St. Louis.

• 1:04:50Andy Greenwald?

  Is about St. Louis. My dad's a Cardinal fan.

• 1:04:52Chris Ryan?

  I think Franzen is too, right?

• 1:04:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, so a hardcover copy of Strong Motion says, "To Mike, Go Cards." And so I was like, "Ah, great American novel. I see all of you Johnny-cum-latelys are now aware of the prosaic brilliance of the bard of the Midwest, Jonathan Franzen."

• 1:05:09Chris Ryan?

  So you were there early. Did you like, did you like The Corrections?

• 1:05:12Andy Greenwald?

  Loved The Corrections.

• 1:05:14Chris Ryan?

  And what was the one that he?

• 1:05:15Andy Greenwald?

  Freedom.

• 1:05:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Andy Greenwald?

  Purity.

• 1:05:17Chris Ryan?

  Purity.

• 1:05:18Andy Greenwald?

  I kind of tapped out at that.

• 1:05:19Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:05:20Andy Greenwald?

  But he loves birds.

• 1:05:21Chris Ryan?

  Never did Franzen. It's not.

• 1:05:22Andy Greenwald?

  You never did any Franzen. Never read The Corrections.

• 1:05:23Chris Ryan?

  It's not a, it's nothing to about it.

• 1:05:26Andy Greenwald?

  Part of The Corrections, one of the storylines is in Philadelphia and one of the characters goes to Front Central School. There's a little Quaker School part of it and still you dodged it.

• 1:05:33Chris Ryan?

  I did hear about that.

• 1:05:34Andy Greenwald?

  You heard about that? There is a lightwithin.com, the Quaker back channels that you track.

• 1:05:41Chris Ryan?

  R slash Quaker Schools.

• 1:05:43Andy Greenwald?

  So that's one.

• 1:05:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:05:45Andy Greenwald?

  Um, and then the other thing was the announcement that another, this is like, it's kind of like try again month in TV, Bonfire of the Vanities. Did you see this?

• 1:05:52Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Uh, who is writing this?

• 1:05:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's wild. Your guy, everyone's guy, David Kelly.

• 1:05:59Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:05:59Andy Greenwald?

  Is writing it. Matt Reeves.

• 1:06:01Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:06:01Andy Greenwald?

  Of the Batman fame is going to direct this and this is a would be, if this goes forward, a huge, huge do-over to one of Hollywood's most legendary flops.

• 1:06:12Chris Ryan?

  Brian De Palma's adaptation of Tom Wolfe's celebrated novel.

• 1:06:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Masters of the Universe. Is it time, are we, is it, is the time right to get the eighties right?

• 1:06:22Chris Ryan?

  I assume that this is going to be a period piece and not an updated for 2008 or 2026. Let's just see.

• 1:06:28Andy Greenwald?

  Cause all the spycraft would be way too.

• 1:06:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'm excited about that. You also didn't mention that, um, Lonesome Dove, the rights to Lonesome Dove have been.

• 1:06:37Andy Greenwald?

  I noted that.

• 1:06:38Chris Ryan?

  Purchased.

• 1:06:39Andy Greenwald?

  I was watching that with some interest.

• 1:06:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And we, we do not have any creative attached to that yet.

• 1:06:44Andy Greenwald?

  Would you like to be a part of that package? I'm putting together a small group of men with a particular set of skills.

• 1:06:51Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:06:51Andy Greenwald?

  I'm trying.

• 1:06:53Chris Ryan?

  Did you actually say like, hey, just like agents, like?

• 1:06:56Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, first of all, you've correctly captured the tone of my email voice.

• 1:07:00Chris Ryan?

  Hey, agents. Hey, team. I would love to go to.

• 1:07:04Andy Greenwald?

  I heard some guys just spent a hundred million dollars and are looking for someone to adapt their cowboy novel. Well,

• 1:07:11Chris Ryan?

  I've read it.

• 1:07:12Andy Greenwald?

  I am full of protein and ready for service.

• 1:07:16Chris Ryan?

  And I love unconditional sunlight.

• 1:07:18Andy Greenwald?

  And Jonathan Franzen. I, oh, I definitely have. Raised my hands and then someone stepped on the back of my neck to take the ring.

• 1:07:30Chris Ryan?

  I don't know who's involved with it creatively. I just saw that the rights were purchased, which is the idea of having that another go at that's very exciting. I saw also that they were talking about it in relationship to doing all of the Gus and Woodrow.

• 1:07:45Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's right.

• 1:07:46Chris Ryan?

  And that would be pretty cool, although, as we've discussed, some of those books are darker than the others.

• 1:07:51Andy Greenwald?

  The thing about those books, which by the way, honestly, speaking of contemporary novelists, I just kind of want to read those again. They were published, the order in which they were published chronologically of the story is three, four, one, two, which is quite odd. It's also the way I recommend people read them. But Lonesome Dove is one of the greatest American novels of all time.

• 1:08:09Chris Ryan?

  Three, right?

• 1:08:10Andy Greenwald?

  Chronologically, but that was first and is perfect and you can just read that. Streets of Laredo, the sequel, is so dark. It is incredible.

• 1:08:19Chris Ryan?

  It's McMurtry responding to the response to Lonesome Dove.

• 1:08:23Andy Greenwald?

  You think I wrote a classic? Fuck you guys. Also, I forgot about trains and Mexicans. I got you. And then, then, what's it called? Dead Man's, whatever, the next one.

• 1:08:37Chris Ryan?

  Dead Man's Walk.

• 1:08:37Andy Greenwald?

  Dead Man's Walk is unbelievable and that is the origins of, of.

• 1:08:42Chris Ryan?

  Them as young Texas Rangers.

• 1:08:44Andy Greenwald?

  Of Gus and.

• 1:08:45Chris Ryan?

  And Comanche Meet Moon is just like a cool, like adventure story.

• 1:08:49Andy Greenwald?

  It kind of spackles the distance from when they were young up to the edge of Lonesome Dove.

• 1:08:52Chris Ryan?

  I agree. I think it would be cool if they did all of them.

• 1:08:56Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think there's any reason to do, hey, we're doing Lonesome Dove again, because.

• 1:09:00Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:09:01Andy Greenwald?

  As.

• 1:09:01Chris Ryan?

  But if you were going to do it chronologically, that would be quite a long wait to get to Lonesome Dove.

• 1:09:06Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you could just, you could just keep spackling on the old age.

• 1:09:09Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Just put Austin Butler in.

• 1:09:12Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, I, all I'll say, this was never real. No one was going to let me do any of it, but I was like, Tommy Lee Jones actually is, well, this was like six years ago, but I was telling, I was trying to convince people that Tommy Lee Jones then was the age that, that call is in Streets of Laredo.

• 1:09:31Chris Ryan?

  You could still do it. You were like.

• 1:09:33Andy Greenwald?

  You could do it. And also famously easy to work with.

• 1:09:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Andy Greenwald?

  Him and horses. And I'd be like, hello, I went to a Quaker school. What did you do? Oh, Harvard. That's cool.

• 1:09:44Chris Ryan?

  Is that a real horse? Sir? Why are we doing? Well, I like French mystery shows. Taylor Sheridan show sure did change my ideas about masculinity.

• 1:09:56Andy Greenwald?

  He wrote the intro to the new edition of Lungs of Dove.

• 1:09:59Chris Ryan?

  I am aware, brother. I'm across that. A couple of people sent that my way. Andy, great to see you, dude.

• 1:10:06Andy Greenwald?

  Hey.

• 1:10:06Chris Ryan?

  Let's figure out a way to podcast later this week. I know that I'm on the road, but I wanted to pit with you.

• 1:10:12Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:10:12Chris Ryan?

  Um, thanks to Kai and Kai. Happy birthday to Kai.

• 1:10:15Andy Greenwald?

  Was there anything we didn't cover that we should have covered for your birthday, Kai? How can we better?

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Ooh, um, I would have loved to touch on the Summer House drama just a little bit.

• 1:10:23Andy Greenwald?

  That's for After Dark. Can I say something perhaps unsurprising to get us going?

• 1:10:27Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:10:27Andy Greenwald?

  I have no idea what anybody's talking about. Absolutely. I saw there was some stuff about-

• 1:10:31Chris Ryan?

  I've got some inside information for you.

• 1:10:33Andy Greenwald?

  What do you got?

• 1:10:33Chris Ryan?

  Great. I'm not gonna share it on the podcast.

• 1:10:35Andy Greenwald?

  Were you saving it for Ringer, Ringer Dish? What are you doing?

• 1:10:38Chris Ryan?

  No, I just, I'll tell Kai off, off mic.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  That's the best birthday present you could possibly give me.

• 1:10:42Andy Greenwald?

  I just saw that everything was about Ciara.

• 1:10:44Chris Ryan?

  But not Ciara, Russell Wilson Ciara.

• 1:10:47Andy Greenwald?

  That's the only, that's, there's only one Ciara in my book. One Ciara, ooh, Ciara month.

• 1:10:53Chris Ryan?

  It kinda is Ciara month now.

• 1:10:55Andy Greenwald?

  That was Ciara month.

• 1:10:56Chris Ryan?

  Uh, thanks, everybody, for listening and watching. We'll be back on Thursday with the pit and some Top Chef and some whatever else. Uh, Greenwald, hold it down while I'm in the bay.

• 1:11:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, what, what, what do I have to do?

• 1:11:06Chris Ryan?

  Nothing, just meet me here at 2:00 PM when I get back from the bay.

• 1:11:10Andy Greenwald?

  Stress, okay, sure.

• 1:11:12Chris Ryan?

  Talk to you guys soon.