Paramount Settles States’ Antitrust Lawsuit. Plus, ‘Lanterns’ Episode 6.

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Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio, first in line for one of Jon Stewart's panic rooms, it's Andy Greenwald! Andy Greenwald: I thought we were calling them not, what is it, not necessarily panic room? Whatever it is, that's where you watch the Eagles. I'll tell you something. Every room I walk into is a panic room. You seem stable. You seem great. You seem even keel. Thanks. It was a beautiful weekend here in Los Angeles. Weather was nice. The weather was nice. It's a Monday here. We're going to talk about lanterns. We're going to talk about the settlement between Paramount and the state's attorney generals who had sued them. Is it too late to get barrister wigs? As a prop for when we do legal talk? Is that something we have instituted? It would probably be the most expertise we brought to the proceedings. That's what I'm saying. I feel like we need to distinguish somehow that we are not qualified. We got some other news and notes at the top. The Watch at Spotify.com. The WatchPod underscore at Instagram. You can watch us on YouTube at Ringer-TV with the Ringer Prestige TV podcast. They're covering slow horses these days. Yeah, you can listen to us on Spotify where you can watch us. You can listen to us on all sorts of podcast platforms. Mm-hmm. National Public Radio. Can you listen to us there? No, but I always have a dream of just doing away with this whole persona that I've built up and just being like, "I'm with Andy Greenwald. We're going to talk about episode six of lanterns." Have you ever listened to my solo podcast? No, honestly. No, but that's kind of my brand. No, I've listened to your work. I think it's wonderful. You're familiar. Yeah. Which part do you like best? How are you doing, bud? Donnie Candles, the Eagles, Victoria? Where do you want to start? With real life or fake life? No, no. I think we should do that after dark. Okay, after dark. I think we should do it. Let's talk about the biggest news in Hollywood, which is I had a whole A Block dedicated to the various leaks that have been coming out over the last four days. David Ellison taking out the tape measure and sizing up some office space in Tennessee. The subsequent hysteria that came out after it was announced that Paramount was starting to look at moving to Nashville in earnest. Then, Yeah. There were discussions over the weekend, leaks over the weekend about how negotiations were ongoing between a group of state's attorney generals led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta with Paramount over the merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers. There was discussions about penalties that would be incurred if they didn't release 30 movies a year. All sorts of business was getting out into the streets. As we were driving in today, it was announced that a settlement is nigh, if not already official or I think it will be made official today. So we'll operate as if it's going to happen and hopefully. Yeah. I just want to say how heroic you are. This is not unlike Jeff Daniels in season one of the newsroom when he had an A Block planned and then we got Osama bin Laden and he just bravely crossed out everything. Well, in this case, it would be if Jeff Daniels who played Will McAvoy. Goddamn. Wow. What a poll. Yeah. And I'm sure he and Don were kind of in a corner being like, how should we approach this A Block? And I bet that A Block would have been when are we going to get Osama bin Laden? And then it was we got him. So in that case, my A Block was just what's up with this merger? No, I think honestly, then it's like, when are we going to get Osama bin Laden? And then the A Block becomes U.S. bin Laden reach super cool truce. Yeah. I want to ask you about this on a couple of different levels. Sure. Let's start in a place of personal professional interest in the matter. Thank you so much. You know, you really can't think global until you act local. Well, I wanted to ask you more than like as a industry watcher or a podcaster about television, but as somebody who works within it and kind of has one foot in one foot out, you know. Which foot? What does this mean? And what does this mean to you as a creative person working in Hollywood that this has happened? I mean, I think that it is important to note that all of the industry unions, we're very, very vociferously against this. Mike Schur, creator of Parks and Rec and The Good Place, penned a pretty strongly worded op-ed in Hollywood Reporter about why the creative community is against this. I mean, I think there are so many ways to consider this entire deal. And obviously, the most important one is the great unknown of what is to come. But I think generally, when you have contraction in an industry, it is not good for workers. It is not good for people whose job it is to try to have a robust open market in which to sell their goods. There are increasingly limited options for creatives, both whether it's someone trying to sell a show or someone who is just a working gaffer trying to make a living in this town to ply their trade. And not only are there now fewer options and fewer potential buyers, but there is, there's more likely to be a continuation of what has already been the case within the industry, which is a sort of low-key suppression, where the bigger players will say, like, this is the money we're paying for this. And now look, you could be on the other side of it. And you could say that, and this is absolutely what the more technocratic or just fully tech bros who have taken over the industry say, which is you kind of can't have a healthy business run on handshakes, backslaps, and we'll get you on the back end kind of deals. I mean, so much of the success and largesse of Hollywood has been based on that, on personal relationships, on, you know, this is the, this is the union scale for the job you're doing, but we're going to assign you to an overall deal that reflects everything that you're doing for the company and to reward you for success and blah, blah, blah. It is not unreasonable from a purely capitalist point of view to say that that is unsustainable and potentially inequitable. But the, the flip side of it, which is there are now going to be five buyers, whereas a few years ago, there were eight or nine is just, that's just bad news. And that is before you even get into the, the very complicated specifics of what the Ellison's what paramount, uh, represent what they've done in the past with their increased power and where they may go in the future with what is now just becoming an almost comically insane amount of debt. It isn't a comically insane amount of debt. That's going to result in inevitable job losses. And I think especially because of the, the redundancy of the redundancy, but also as soon as you come into a situation as David Zaslav proved when he bought Warner brothers or merge Warner brothers with discovery in the first place is that when you bring it, when you're buying something mostly on with debt, and even though there is a lot of liquidity around this deal, it does seem like there is also a lot of financing going into this deal from what I can understand is just going to be a lot of like changes made to the landscape of television. And for the people who, who work in it. And I think there will be less jobs and that sucks. Um, you know, I've been trying to imagine what I would think about this situation if the players were different. And if, if maybe just some of the names were different, if, um, paramount was trying to buy Peacock or if Peacock was trying to buy HBO or if Netflix had, uh, won the bidding and bought Warner brothers and now, um, Batman and the DC universe and Harry Potter and game of Thrones and all these things were under the control of a Netflix regime that I think we've had some questions about like the quality control over the last couple of years, or at least I have in terms of like, you know, this kind of cheeseburger style television. And, and I don't know. I mean, I, I think ultimately what stunned me about the announcement, not stunned me, but what I, I kind of came away from with the announcement is how hard it is to, you know, to kind of shake these people down when it's all like, it's all lawsuits and there's no actual government oversight of these things. And there's no maybe nudging. things towards what might be the better outcome or more equitable outcome or this idea that, you know, that everyone wins when there is more competition. And if you have a Federal Trade Commission that's probably going to be doing whatever it is that the president wants you to be doing, and then the president is going to be looking out for the people who have been there for him financially and support-wise over the years, then it's easy to just kind of throw your arms up. I guess I'll reserve judgment and see how these things shake out in terms of what we get to watch and how they get made and what quality they are. I mean, it's not as simple or reductive a binary as we might like it to be. Like, I don't know the man, but when David Ellison says that he venerates and adores Hollywood, that he wants to have 30 movies in theaters a year, that he believes that he alone can fix it, which, by the way, is not always a winning. It's not a winning strategy historically, but that his main goal here is to preserve the legacy of film studios making movies and releasing them in theaters and working in Los Angeles, except if he doesn't get what he wants and then he's going to move everyone to Nashville, which, by the way, is some real shitty gangster stuff. If we take him at his word, then maybe we do need the billionaires to save us. But, you know, as a former Washington Post subscriber, I once said the same thing out loud. Like, it's. You're missing some incredible op-eds. It's really opening my mind. That's fantastic. One of my favorite op-eds recently was the New York Times over the weekend said, Trump has finally lost the plot. And I was like, the plot to Jeffrey Eugenides' marriage plot? Like, what are we. How thin are we slicing this garlic, Paul Cervino? Anyway, it's not necessarily that the shows that we watch in the short term are going to be ruined. Like, I apologize for this, that usually there's a bad pattern I have when I'm reading a book that's quite long. I will bring it up in successive podcasts. I will bring it up in successive podcasts until I'm done. So I'm bringing up the fact that I am reading this HBO book for Tinderbox, and one of the things that it really reminded me of. It's an oral history written by Jim Miller. Jim Miller, yes. But, like, how the Time Warner merger in the 90s was catastrophic. Yeah. And everyone's like, HBO is doomed. But HBO was so uniquely successful and culturally whole that it survived. Then there was the AOL merger, which was even more catastrophic. And HBO. HBO plugged on. HBO has continued to thrive and succeed in this Zaslav era. I think KC has been pretty public being like, plus a chance. Like, this has always been. Yes, this is what we do. And so the worry that you're hearing is definitely downstream from this moment. It is not that HBO is now in existential peril or that the, you know, that the wire is going to be remade with, you know, with the good guys and bad guys swapped or something. Like, that's not. That's not where we're headed. Only this strong-willed politician, Clay Davis. Yeah, exactly. can turn the tide. With the will of the people. So, I just think it is a. It's concerning and it's distressing. And your point about, like, you know, who's in charge of it. Look, I mean, I try to be as transparent as I can about these things. But, like, I am working for HBO. I work for Netflix. I'm working for Amazon. I've done work for Paramount. Like, I. The personal relationships and the. It's just fingerprints all over you, man. I am. I am not the. I am an imperfect vessel. Yeah. for outsider rallying cries of change. But as someone who is, you know, trying to navigate all this, I just think it's a larger bummer for the industry. And I think I would feel that way no matter what. No matter who was buying who and what was potentially being contracted. I'm trying to think of what. If there's anything else about this that we could even begin to speak to. I think your point that you made earlier. You made earlier, too, about it being ultimately. The states, I think, had the. They had momentum in the sense that, like, is anyone rooting for this merger other than the Ellisons and the White House? Like, is anyone like, this is awesome. I can't wait for this merger. No. They had the wind at their backs in that sense. And I think the delay of discovery into a trial in March was costing Paramount dearly, as you saw from some of their behavior. There was a note in one of the articles that have gone up, I believe it was in Bloomberg, that the several states were basically like, we don't have the money to fight this. This. And this is where you get into, like, if you don't have a mechanism in place that's dependable that adjudicates these kinds of situations, then you wind up getting into a pissing contest with the richest man in the world, you know? Well, the other one is also on that side. Right. So, like, if we really want to live in this world where. It is a race to the bottom of just oligarchs controlling every single aspect of everything we do, which, for the moment, we're just greasing it, and that's what we're doing. Well, I've got good news for you today. But, again, we are now talking about things much larger than the usual remit of this podcast. Okay. Let's talk about what we usually talk about on this podcast, which is actual TV. Now, I'll just do a bit of housekeeping and say that we'll split Thursday's show. Andy and I will talk about Slow Horses episode two. We'll talk about Slow Horses episode two. We'll talk about Slow Horses episode two a bit and some other stuff. And then I think Van and I are going to talk about the entirety of really one of the crowning achievements of David Ellison's young career, which is Lioness. And it's the conclusion of season three. You know, I don't want to spoil anything for our listeners who maybe haven't caught up at the end of Lioness. It was a busy Sunday. Yeah. That would include me. Where would you say on your to-do list it ranked yesterday of watching maybe like 22 episodes of the show to catch up for the finale? Yeah. I mean, it was on my, I make a little cheat sheet for the day, you know. Do you? Yeah. To sort of like optimize my. Do you have a GTD kind of system for your, for your life or do you? Well, you know, I. That sounds for getting things done. Not to, I had no idea because I never do. Not to offer too much of a peek behind the curtain here, but I think a week or two ago, we talked about like how I make my show notes in the same notes app doc that is interspersed with like a grocery list. Yeah, for sure. So currently, just so you have some insight into this, I have. Uh, this week's notes on, uh, lanterns, then I have like six things I have to do before my plane tomorrow and then I have last week's lanterns somehow because I kind of jumped backwards. So. Oh, okay. To your point is even if I wrote down, watch 23 hours of extractions on Paramount, I don't think I would have noted, noticed my note in time to do it. I'll tell you one thing that happened is. Sure. A surprise extraction happened. You could tell me anything and I'd believe you. At the end of this line of season, which is Joe's extracted from her family. What? Well. Well, it just turned out. That's a beautiful family. Dave Annabelle, wait no longer. He was just like, it's just one too many trucks to get Mo and, uh, I'm, I'm no longer going to be home brewing up a hot pot of coffee or uncorking and letting breathe a beautiful Merlot. Uh, and watching the news, which is really all I do as a surgeon, getting like seriously red pills over the course of a year. So when you said that he was right, the family, you know, it was the most important part of lioness for you. I think it's going to be spun off in the same, just the lioness family, the Hogan family style where it's like the star is now busy. They could do like a Dave Annabelle surgeon show. Yes. And then he's a, he's a, he's a put upon single dad. Yeah. You know, I, I, I hadn't remembered this and then he keeps meeting women who might be like his, his girlfriend and then they mysteriously disappear and they get redacted black bagged. Kyle is just like, you have no rights. I mean, I think that's right. And so he's just like, why am I, why am I striking out on every dating app? Um, I recently found out or was reminded from, from our friends in the world of social media that Dave Annabelle and Matthew Reese are like blood brothers. Like they're like best friends from their time on that show, brothers and sisters. So could we have Reese come in to that show? And I don't see why not. I mean, since we're making the rules and you know, wouldn't Matthew Reese's American's character be like the greatest white whale on lioness? Like go back and get the original sin. God. Yeah. They're, they were definitely operating at different velocities in terms of like what the stakes were. I feel like the stakes on the Americans were. Moscow rules are a little different now. Exactly that. I, I, I had a line. Okay. I want to know about the extraction. I did get, I got a reader message about lioness because I think casuals, and I don't mean that disparagingly. And where can people reach you if they have questions for you? I'd rather not comment at this time. Okay. Um, but I think in the, in the comments for the New York times television list is the best place to just put me on blast. Um, uh, a friend of mine, Brian McDuckston, who, who. We should say that there is a New York times best of the century so far. Uh, TV, TV shows list. Both of us voted in it. Andy was, was beautifully featured in it. I think you're featured too. I, I, I, I voted after the thrones 10 times. Uh, I, I, but we both voted in the, on these shows and we'll discuss the list when the entirety of it is revealed. So here's a lioness question that was sent to me, um, by, uh, Brian McDuckston. Great guy lives in Tokyo, does ramen reviews, ramen adventures. Check it out. Uh, does tours too, if you happen to be there. So this is a question. This is a message. He said, you're the only one I can come to with this question. Sadly, I don't think that's true, but thank you, Brian. Why is coffee in every scene of lioness? Yeah. Every time there's a meeting, they go out of their way to bring up the coffee. They're drinking, looking back beverages as a whole should be given credit in the series, but the coffee bit that stands out. Is that true? Is it Taylor Sheridan branded beans? One of my favorite aspects of the second half of the third season is that the, uh, QRF, which shows Joe's strike force do amphetamines, uh, they, they stay if you aren't watching on YouTube watch Chris's face just watch him try to risk like hold back the joy well it's just they basically take what sounds like an experimental amphetamine like it's I it's called provasic or something I know that's the fugitive yes blood thinner drug but this is they're just like should we all take two and then they stay up for like four days again get in multiple gunfights in the Dallas Fort Worth area you have never wanted anything more than a prescription for provasic 2.0 so you could do maybe I'll take it and then do Thursday's pod having been up for three days with Vance how many pods could you do if you had access to provasic for sure that was recording yeah you're all good just quietly back out of the room um it was it was a it was a great time was had by all and so anything else you'd like to add I mean she's now a solo lioness without her pride well she has her QRF she's got her she got her homies they got her out are you saying that's her found phone number? family it's the friends we make along the way and uh her adversary for what would seem to be an inevitable season four is a familiar face I'll just put it that way um I wanted to talk to you about a little bit of tv news before we get into lanterns all right all right and the number one story here was one that will go far down the list of the sort of biggest HBO things that happened this weekend since we now have to kind of consider the future of the network and how it fits into the future of the network but we'll talk about that a little bit more in just a second so we'll talk about that a little bit more in just a second so we'll talk about that a little bit more in just a second so we'll talk about that a little bit more in just a second so we'll talk about that a little bit more and they won a bidding war and these are always interesting somewhat I'm sure uh shaped by agencies involved with the show where it's just like oh you guys have no idea the bidding war that just happened you know like I feel like it's pretty common to read that like Amazon Netflix and Apple were all bidding on this and yeah somebody came through with a straight to series you know no notes offer well also I think HBO just I the the marketplace has changed and all these identities have changed but historically it's been a lot of fun and I think it's a lot of fun and I think it's a lot of fun but historically HBO has been like well if anyone else wants it we don't yeah and I mean would you say that HBO has a process that develops shows internally in some ways I mean even if they buy the idea it's like a long process of like kind of like infamously long and tortured well this was bought basically like straight to series and it's called the spread stars bardem and according to deadline quote set in Miami which is turning into a paradise of power Wall Street South some would say a subtropical collision of industry titans elite hedgehogs and the world's most powerful hedge fund staggering wealth ruthless competition sex nightlife and fun on an industrial scale and into this sun-soaked arena comes a visionary billionaire played by bardem who collects the brilliant the hungry and the dangerous then turns their ambitions loose on the markets that power America he chases something bigger the power shift of economic gravity to Miami sorry just you just look like Mitch McConnell I just felt like Mitch McConnell I just felt like Mitch McConnell I just felt like Mitch McConnell I just felt like Mitch McConnell I just felt like Mitch McConnell I just felt like Mitch McConnell I mentioned but more in the sense that like maybe no disrespect by the way no I'm just saying that maybe powerful statesman a great lion but perhaps it's past this time you know what I mean that's how I feel when you tell me about stuff like that so this is HBO deepening its relationship with the Ozark coaching tree because currently Chris Mundy is show running lanterns and yes this series comes to us from Bill Dubuque who kind of had the original germ of the idea and worked on and worked on Ozark officially co-creator of Ozark uh-huh and there was a bidding war between Netflix Amazon and Amazon. HBO the latter one with a for rare for them straight to series offer apparently Netflix Amazon Paramount Apple right yeah all of them all of all the riches I my my subhead here is billionaire boys club mm-hmm I'm gonna laugh for that it's good HBO has made something I'm sorry hold on say it again billionaire boys club oh I didn't hear you say it I just said boys the first noted that HBO has made something of a late period business documenting the lifestyles of the rich and famous not to say that you know like over the course of the network's lifespan they've they've dabbled but white lotus succession big little eyes the upcoming max show how to survive without me seems like it's about relatively well off people I ask you Andy wither Oz wither the working women of sex in the city and girls you know like this show the people just trying to make it this show this might be a good show Javier Bardem is in the like I you and I both enjoy content set in South Florida yes literary televisual movies whatever so good bones promising absolutely not passing any judgment on a show that we have no it sounds like industry in Florida it is a and it's very clear also why it was a hot package and so we're not we're not commenting on that but if you take a step back I this is part optimism and also I do think there's some evidence to considering things this way that you know the deal the development happens in one era of history and in the world the deal making happens in another and then the show five shifts are released in a different one and I have to say if there are two words that make me less interested in something in art work or life it's visionary billionaire because fucking show me one well it depends on the treatment of that visionary billionaire well I'm going to the excesses of succession and the excesses of industry yes but I feel different than say the excesses of billions you know absolutely great point but I don't think that the log line for succession would have been the three visionary junior billionaires of the Logan Roy family struggle to communicate their vision in these teaming power sexy power structure of Manhattan right it was about fail sons and a fail daughter that's not how they pitched it they were like it's the Murdoch's you know well you have instance insight into them but it is a soap opera with and also when you hire Jesse Armstrong you have you understand that there's going to be a political and comedic point of view brought to it sure I think that having this much of our entertainment valorizing the 1% and that idea of there being some sort of interesting aspect to how deeply fucked we are sorry maybe this is the through line through this episode I think is a misread of the popular list yeah I'm not being I'm not trying to be a bomb thrower here I think that there is always going to be a place for escapism in our entertainment and that is a key plank of what a lot of these richer streamers offer I mean in their way like Margo's got money troubles on Apple for example is ostensibly about a young woman who is in such dire financial straits that she turns to only fans to do it but there's also a version of telling the story of that show in which it is an incredibly rich package with famous people you know angling for Emmys to play people who are a little bit downtrodden like it is again a kind of a top-down way of telling a story and this is not me trying to like you know do a drive-by on David E. Kelly who's one of the greatest writers of the medium's history I'm just saying that like to your point this is not this is not the wire this is not bottom-up storytelling in that way and and and I think that it is it has been a successful uh plank of Casey's stewardship of HBO to make sure that the people who watch Real Housewives will have an HBO show that has some of the same temperament which is the White Lotus um I would like to see more more pit and less of whatever's happening in Elysium I think you can have both I think somebody somewhere I think Mayor of Easttown and Task I think yes you know the pit obviously like you can tell stories that are about the 99% of people out there I just really think that the the I'd love to understand what it is psychologically about having shows about those filthy rich that feels good for people you know like well yeah because I think I think there's some things that are about it that are like it's just really convenient that the Roy's in succession can always fly private because it allows them to globetrot in a way that's you know televisually incredibly enticing and also it's like yeah you know Jeremy Strong is not we don't have to shoot him in a public airport or yeah whatever you know like there's a certain kind of like mechanics that gets baked into the storytelling itself so I think my point of even to bring that up is just like every one of these shows can be good or bad based on its own merits but your overall idea yeah that um based on the development cycle and the the amount of time it takes to get things from we've bought an idea to it's on the air we could be living in a completely different world by the I think we might not have any diesel left so like right I'm saying like do you are you particularly interested in why I'd like to pitch my show called diesel about Franklin diesel the guy who invented diesel by Vin diesel I think that I think that that might be in I like if we are rationing gas in a year and you know so then to have Javier Bardem be like hmm I'm a visionary I'll fly two planes today like that is well I know we'll see discordant but my point is the reason we communicate or connect with anything is for is is the opportunity to see threads of common humanity and the thing about succession wasn't just that they didn't have to film in Burbank on a Friday afternoon which is the Burbank airport which is pretty rough it was also because they're refurbishing by the way I've heard that also looked like a I was like where is this new terminal and how do I get there I didn't see that news report and they're like this beautiful new terminal has arrived at Burbank -Did Claude draw this for you? -Are you in the Mandalorian? it was very confusing yeah um but it was to see in succession that like it wasn't all comedy it was like oh my god the ones who are making all these decisions that affect us on election night are even more flawed than we are yeah right and and and that was both chilling and funny and normalizing equalizing and a peek behind the curtain and there is another strain of television which has plenty of value which is just like isn't it cool that they have nice watches and that's sort of the problem i have with like your friends and neighbors which i think you know just requires with the idea of like this incredibly rich guy yeah is stealing from the other incredibly rich guys in order so he can stay incredibly rich and that's where the commentary ends right the it is a shared understanding compact with the audience that being a master of the universe with really really nice golf clubs in westchester i mean that's a must so you have to have that and if you assume that that's the floor and he else on top of it is fun and i don't find that compelling on a dramatic or human level look maybe i'm wrong you know maybe president vance will make this feel good for everybody but i'm just saying he's he he has a a popular touch that's just like right right he can just kind of communicate uh matters of the heart to the masses make us understand what what matters most yeah evening by his remorse buy a new car i'll be moving in let's get started uh sorry i think it's been a mistake i bought it from carvana you what yeah great price i even have seven days to love it or return it so there's no no no buyer's remorse more like buyers rejoice i guess i'll let myself out congratulations i mean it buyers rejoice buy your car today on carvana limitations and exclusions may apply see our seven-day return policy at carvana.com this episode is brought to you by paramount plus let chaos reign mob land the hit crime series from the underworld a guy richie is now streaming on paramount plus harrigans are on the brink of uncivil war as power plays fractured loyalties and reckless decisions collide their fixer harry is left to clean up the fallout don't miss mob land starring tom hardy pierce brosnan and helen mirren now streaming on paramount plus tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college that's why she shops at bj's wholesale club saving up to 25 off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't screw up have you met my kids and with bj's gas she gets there for they call me the road warrior this is your home road warrior mom home of the save join for just 20 at bj's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save this episode is brought to you by chat gpt hey it's bill simmons from the bill simmons podcast have you guys heard about chat gpt work it's the new way to use chat gpt for bigger multi-step projects and when you need more than just answers give chat gpt work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets slides and structured reports get started at chat gpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans speaking of hbo yep and this is this is like uh an example of i suppose hbo making a show that covers the spectrum of human and superhuman experience let's talk about lanterns let's talk about the sixth episode yep bad optics bad optics is the name of it was written by justin britt gibson and dame lindelof uh so of special interest uh to us given given you have personal relationships with justin and we both know damon yes friends with both and these were the brain trust behind the uh star wars movie project that i was lucky enough to work on briefly yes 2022 yeah well i mean obi-wan you know it was obi-wan came back uh let's let's talk about this from uh a picking up the pieces perspective because in some ways i think episode five acted as a kind of finale so episode six isn't is is a first episode of the last two i mean i know a first episode of the last three episodes but a first episode in and of itself you know what i mean like a soft relaunch even sure what did you think of uh detective john stewart in our contemporary time trying to figure out what happened to his buddy hell can i just start with one kind of mitch thing which is a little bit like you know what let's not say mitch mcconnell let's say like a orion kirkering let's make it really like universal like a phillies thing let's just talk about a worrying loss in velocity and command that i would like to cop to okay which is i cannot believe that i didn't maybe neither of us or maybe you said it on midnight boys didn't understand that the um alt how that lives inside the ring was the way to have kyle chandler on the show going forward oh we discussed it yeah like i mean i actually thought that the how in the box was the entry but i i'm just kind of like the century was going to be in the mix i i'm worried frankly that that didn't even like come across my radar as like oh i see what the fix is going to be you kind of are getting at something that i think is part of the charm of lanterns for me which is the multiple multiple experiences you can have with it totally and they are the the three leads to me uh aaron pierre kyle chandler and kelly mcdonald are so engaging and charming to me that sometimes miss little blips of of lore yeah of connective tissue of story built storytelling building blocks that are important to keep in mind so yeah i did not think that kyle chandler was no longer going to be on the show or would only be a corpse yes you know this this this episode does something kind of fascinating it continues to have references to things that have happened off screen uh for instance how's jail sentence which yeah may or may not have been terrestrial and his rushville his amends process that he's making amends process with the people there although that didn't work and then his romance with uh sheriff carrie it also has um i guess a decade of john stewart's life that goes by where he becomes an architect reconnects with one of his brothers well and bankrolls another bankrolls another and becomes incredibly alienated from his parents yeah who uh in turn his mother becomes to hal jordan um in a in a friendship way one would assume and it's just a tremendous amount of work going off on off screen and it's jasmine sephus jones right who plays so have there been any hamilton say no to this hal jordan kind of mashups would you like to make one i mean i think we have different algorithms but i have not seen that yet yeah all right i i assume that exists talk to me about the difficulties of of having this much action happening off screen well i i want to start with a positive which is aaron paul is playing a different character at a different point in his life and i thought that was really impressive um he is just he's physically changed his demeanor has changed his access to his humor and his emotions have changed his facial hair has definitely changed and that he has some now and he is just that that's hard to do i mean i know it's on one level it's acting but it's also impressive because uh what he was doing in the first block was very very aggressively a choice and it was very similar to his rebel ridge character which is sort of ex-military and buttoned up and very intense and so it was nice to see him let the air out a little bit and that in and of itself was a reminder of one of the things that i find both compelling on a structural level but also slightly frustrating on a week-to-week level of the series which is it is clearly made to be accomplishing a lot more in every episode to be accomplishing a lot more than what you see in the first block and i think that's a really good in that episode there are a lot of things that i would imagine would reward or flatter a rewatch there are a lot of things that are connected inevitably to larger james gunn storytelling but also future seasons of lantern storytelling um even the things that i didn't enjoy in the moment in previous week's episode you know i i definitely have the feeling that they will make more sense in the fullness of time in terms of you know characters getting short shrift in the big explosions and stuff so it 100 just might be a subjective like i want more now without having to bank on later thing or maybe i'm just impatient sure i i guess i was happier with this episode in some ways than previous episode because it just lived where it was it was picking up these pieces and i didn't necessarily miss seeing oa or i didn't necessarily miss seeing hal's prison sentence that said and i'm curious where you netted out on this i i maybe i'm not being an attentive viewer here because i came out of that last episode being like the one prior the prior the giant explosions episode the rushville denouement i was like this is a catastrophic outcome you know they are definitely showing the destruction but i did not think that this was going to be um you know the the the last hurrah of hal jordan that this was the end of his career as a lantern that he was going to be he would be going to prison for what he did there um did you have a similar discordant reaction or have we just have i just been sokovia pilled and it's nice to see consequences for mass destruction in a comic book show and we hadn't seen we're not used to it's also cool the way that they're doing the timeline you pointed out pierre but i thought it was cool to see like a kind of same jacket but sad guy at the diner um working on some pancakes and kind of looking like the kind of dude who's been nailed to a barstool for 10 years but obviously it's just been run through the ringer you know there are some elements of this episode that i found at least initially like Either distracting or convenient, whether it's the diner waitress who wants reparations for what happened to her family and is trying to blackmail John, although it's unclear who she would be blackmailing him to. I guess Sheriff Kerry. I guess. Would she tell Guy Gardner? Like, I don't I don't know who. Well, I don't. Right. Like, I don't know how to be a regular cop or a space cop, but it seems to me that it's fairly plausible that he would punch him and not shoot him. Well, it's whatever whatever Hal knew about what was going on in Rushville and what was going to happen to him. He was like, you can't tell anybody that you were here. That's right. That's the last thing. Whether that means protect your mother or protect your parents or something like I don't know. I would imagine, though. The show makes it look real easy to get in and out of rural. Nebraska, you know what I mean? That was a good question I had. So is are we supposed to imagine that in this fake or D.C. version of the United States? Yes. I was under the impression that Midway, which is where he is in the beginning of the episode of Chicago. I think that's a fair assumption. Like Coast City is kind of Seattle, I think. And like Metropolis. What is that like a 10 hour drive to somewhere in Nebraska? Gotham is. Is Gotham Philly? I thought Gotham was New York. Well, Gotham is New York, but Metropolis is. So we have two New Yorks. We have like a shiny one and a dark one. So it's Philly. Jets, Giants, you know. Sure. So it's New Jersey. Yeah. Regardless of whether it's like a fast drive or not, I guess. It didn't bother me. But yes. Yeah. I just meant that like surely in 2026, even in the D.C.U., there are flock cameras where it's like you could tell who came to the diner. I'm just saying like that was. No one can know I was here driving and having and punching someone in a public space. In a tiny town. I feel like. Well, he punched them. I think he punches him and then is told no one can know you were here. Yeah. I'm just saying that they're fighting hard for a secret that I think is relatively hard to keep. Did you feel like the the century version of of how Chewbacca that character at all in terms of the Rise of Skywalker? Was it Rise of Skywalker? Is it? Yeah. Force Awakens when Chewbacca gets. No, no. It's the third one. It's the third one. When we. For two minutes, you're like, did they just kill Chewbacca? Well, it was the only moment in that trash fire of a movie where they were like, we will actively engage with your 40 year investment with this in ways that might surprise, hurt or alarm you. And they were like, just kidding. We got to sell toys. Did you know that I I've started to see the the faintest signs? No. Of a R.O.S. revival. The pendulum swinging back. Just being like, J.J. was cooking right here. What? Yeah. I was wondering if we maybe for our last episode ever, we should we should do a like a rewatch of R.O.S. Somehow Glupshido has returned. Oh, my God. Keep the mood up. I just because just because Rise of Skywalker happened and I heard Bardem is. I heard Rise of Skywalker is Rob Bonta's favorite Star Wars film. He thinks there's a lot of promise there. Yeah. What? What are we saying? Did it did did the kind of like, oh, the century psyche's alive, but just slightly. No. No, I mean, I think I I was grateful to have that not at all hidden puzzle piece revealed to me. Like, again, maybe that's an example of the show is working. The show is obviously working in multiple timelines. But the effort of the writers room to be writing every scene mindful of multiple timelines and multiple timelines of audience experience is remarkable in that, like, they soft prepped us for that in one of the very first scenes of the show. Yeah. That that would exist. And if you had been a more thoughtful or attentive viewer, that would have taken some of the sting out of the end of one to one to begin with. I think it was a success that it didn't. And yet my feeling coming out of it was, oh, that's actually a relief because I don't think I was done with this character. And it doesn't seem like Kyle Chandler is done with this character. Did you know who Carol Ferris was, the woman who was at the funeral? My the nerdiest part of my ears, which I guess is where the sort of the Vulcan tips would be perked up. But I don't actually know. I'm not really about that. Oh, a life. Yeah. Not to that degree. I knew it must be something notable because nobody is like Carol Ferris. You know, like you wouldn't you would just be like, oh, I believe you're Carol, right? Like, no, but John was like Carol Ferris. Yeah. Surprised to see you here. So I immediately like just Wikipedia at her. And you saw that Blake Lively brought her to life in the Green Lantern film. I've never seen the Green Lantern film. Why are you saying that? It's like some lacunae in your cultural library of Alexandria. What? I just haven't. Neither have I. I mean, I don't know if like maybe back then, like you were. I got down like that. Come on. What else from this episode stood out to you? Do you want to talk about the diner waitress, the blackmail, the sort of overtones of that scene? Like, what do you want to? Well, I did you think I want to I want to go back to my senator. I want to go back to my question. Who won the 2020 presidential election? Who did you think was your takeaway from all the Zoe nightmare? Death from above episode? Was it how I was going to go to jail? Did that surprise you or did that feel commensurate with what you saw on screen and your understanding of who was responsible for what? My guess is that that probably is deeply tied to the transference of the of the ring from one lantern to another. And obviously they get it off of his finger. He brings it to the guardians, but then says pass on the job offer. Yeah. And they go hang it in Cooperstown. So I think that. Whether he did time like in a federal penitentiary or a celestial one. I think it was federal. They said that. Then. Yeah. Like, I think he would be he would be kind of I thought that was cool. I thought it was interesting. Also, an interesting way to run that character. You had to give that character some reason to be back there and imprisonment and letter writing and like the little things that came out of that made a lot of sense and also humbled him a little bit. And being in love with Carrie was was nice. It was telling the story. It was telling the story of this man's the superhero's downfall through a personal story. I really liked it. I thought Kelly McDonald was outstanding in this episode. You hire her to do the other parts for episodes like this. And I thought she was spectacular. I think that, again, in terms of like, yeah, I think I know what you're reacting to here. Tell me. I think that this we've spoken about this with a couple of different shows. In fact, we were just talking about this with Slow Horses. I bet you would like the show more if it was a binge. Now, I don't know how fast you would watch it, but I think that you seem to be holding. Or reserving judgment on a lot of it because you're like, how is it going to fit together? It's more. It's you're right. But I'm coming at it from the other end, which is I don't. I'm not with I don't like that. It seems so intently built that way. Like it's not. They knew it wasn't a binge. This is a DC show. It's going to be on HBO. So I think then it's incumbent on them to make everything stand on its own. And I think I feel them laboring towards that. And sometimes I feel the labor and sometimes I let it go. Another example of like the labor. Which is not inconsiderate is like they were making the show into a world in which James Gunn, who took over the universe at some point in the development of the show, he has already given it bequeathed a Green Lantern onto it. And it's the funny one, the jerk one from the 80s in comic book time. And is that canonically, as far as you know, not how the Green Lantern succession plan? I have no idea how it works. I think it's probably all in that 2014 movie that we should probably revisit. But more so that in the. It would be funny if like it was like Joe Rogan style and we could just be like, Kaya, pull up the Green Lantern succession line. Pull up the way that they captured Kilowog in this scene when he's going up against Mark Strong's Sinestro. Regardless, they could have decided that anybody can have a ring. But for the story that they wanted to tell with Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart, there was only one and only had ever been one from Earth, which meant that they had to paint themselves out of that corner creatively to say that when the Guardians were going to come out of that corner, they were thwarted by Jon, they gave it to this dickhead gym teacher. Yeah. Which is tough. And it's the kind of alignment that comic books have to do all the time, or even movies where Jon Bernthal's Punisher jumps from what he does in that one shot and then what he does in Spider-Man. So I thought that the integration of James Gunn's funny Guy Gardner character into the tone of this universe was impressive. And I enjoyed those scenes. And I liked the implication of, you know, some shared history and some, you know, you owe me everything you've ever gotten and that it was in key, that the characters were pliable and could bend in that way. But, you know, it's not, it was a lot of work that they then steered towards a story they wanted to tell, which was inevitably we're going to have to address that there's already a Green Lantern in the Gunverse. What can we do with it? And it seems like the best idea in the writer's room, which was a clever idea, was we're going to use a small sense of humanity and guilt for him to go to Oa, which I love that they're not showing. Mm-hmm. Like, get the ring and bring it back so we can move on with the story. I thought to your point about how Pierre's character, how his Jon Stewart has changed over 10 years, that was a very good scene to show that. He's wearing a different kind of jacket now. It's not even the superficial, like it's not even the wardrobe or the facial hair changes. That's a guy who earlier in the season is everything is yes, sir, no, sir. He's still active or was recently active military and is coming from a military background. Mm-hmm. And treats his apprenticeship as if it's, that's my commanding officer. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. find him and everything that's happened to him has put him in a position where uh he's cursing a lot more he's blackmailing people or he's putting the you know he's guilting them he's eating meat and he's like having a henry hill driver around rushville where he's got phone calls coming in from the nursing home with his dad from his brother who's like i'm not gonna go pick him up you should go pick him up but he's like i'm funding your album and all this stuff funding people are calling him chosen in a kind of tongue-in-cheek derogatory way uh i just really liked the scope of this performance and the scope of i thought the writing was like very subtly deepened by showing what's happened to this guy since the 10 years since he i like shot zoe from across town and and put down the manhunter um you know i would probably venture to guess that most people watching this are wondering if the manhunters are truly extinct yes and i think the clubhouse candidate is uh the all-state quarterback noah who seems incredibly well adjusted for a guy whose parents are divorced whose town has been decimated by um robot aliens uh satellite technology and you know um is trying to decide whether to stay home play huskers football or take his talents elsewhere probably for a huge nil deal meanwhile it's kind of just like popping around town and and keeping it all together in a way that makes me feel like he might be half manhunter i think that's a it's a good read on the situation is that a satisfying story for you seduce then because they were talking about how like manhunters tend to have these sort of heterosexual conquests i don't think they're necessarily heterosexual not necessarily no i mean anton was like oh you're the one they just go to the alpha right so uh i i don't know i'm sitting here trying to formulate a question of like is that a satisfying uh third act for the season and i guess we don't actually know what it's going to look like and i guess it is because it has to be in this place and the mystery of what's happening there has to be the central question john has a ring now um which is you know surf dracula got his board earlier than we thought which is good i like the way that it is there's more of a there in terms of understanding where john has been where he's going and what the stakes are for him now i like the relationship with carrie because it's got some years on it and some shared experience and some trust so it's not introducing everything all at once which again is a challenge of the show so i i actually feel i don't know i don't mean this to be a zag i like this episode more than the previous episode which i think was kind of one of the quote-unquote big ones i think that the show the show still does certain things that i'm like i i think the the dependence on jackets to communicate character is frustrating i think the over dependence on swearing is just like bizarre i feel like i don't think this is just me as a parent now but like every character has to say like even the kid is just like god damn it mom this is good meatloaf i'm like do your kids curse relax not at you but do they curse around you um there's been some light experimentation do you think that they're actually cursing you just don't know the new curse words oh no i don't think so i don't think so i don't think so i don't think no they use the old ones yeah no the old ones are the the degree to which my older daughter the speed with which my older daughter went from wanting to like me to turn the volume down on the three times they swear in hamilton uh-huh to basically talking like john stewart when he's on an op uh is remarkable and i respect it from goodfellas truly though um so we also call out one other thing yeah which is we always try to walk this line and be careful about it you know the way tv works is the credited writer for an episode is invaluable to that episode but the degree to which those words are the exact ones that writer wrote and there's you know the shared credit and there's rewrites and room written stuff so we try to always like lift up the writer and but not overly indicate who's responsible i think we spent a lot of time earlier in this season talking about this show as if it was damon lindelof's auteur project and i think that we probably did a disservice to the other people and then this episode happens okay spazkaban and i will bet my life and my professional reputation on damon contributing that as a placeholder in the room and then everybody's saying it enough that it just became what they said in the show there are many like spy shows and stuff that we like where someone calls someone to see if it's okay and they say yeah i just put rufus to bed and just like good i'm glad you did click there is no one named rufus they've been compromised we must go right this was a call from inside of the machine of proof of life of damon right this is the most damon line that is ever damon do you want to explain the joke for people who like who don't know what you're talking about well chris as you know the harry potter universe is quite popular around the world so the reference to azkaban which is the wizarding prison introduced in book three the prisoner of azkaban is relatively well known but the idea of a space azkaban now now we're cooking with gas so in this world where chicago is next door to nebraska there also exists i would say that it's a safe bet that anything in the larger warner brothers paramount collective universe probably right so what would be my my my wish for like franchise like crossover i'll give you a second to think about it to say that my my daughters and i re-watched the classic film the lego movie last night which is really fucking that movie's you were busy yesterday like two and a half hours of eagles i'm busy all the time you know yeah what do you we just did another podcast where you're like you know i've been slow re-watching miami vice in my spare time and i'm like motherfucker i think i made dinner at 7 30 anyway my point is about the lego movie was uh in it one of the charms of it is that oh batman's in it and dumbledore is in it and uh gandalf is in it and you know other you know if they made the movie today i bet dr robbie would be in it wouldn't that be nice yeah maybe he could have been like first on the scene at zoe's uh slaughter of the innocents in rushville oh my god the crossover potential here i want to ask you something that is i guess damon adjacent damon lindelof adjacent but i think it's uh something i've been thinking about especially over the last couple of episodes is this show is going to be inevitably looked at through the lens of watchman i think by a lot of people or by some people and one of the things that watchman did so is not only use the source materials mythology and storytelling bones but also built its own but also had something to say about the real world right like through obviously the tulsa episode but just generally speaking i thought spoke very beautifully about being a black woman the black experience in america using superheroes as metaphors in a lot of ways this show is a little like you see the duck both above and below the surface of the water like you can kind of see all the work they're doing to kind of set get guy gardner in here let's set this up who who has the ring we got sinestro somehow sinestro has escaped oh yeah we didn't mention prison that's cool um all these things that are happening in the dc part of it do you think that the show is also successfully telling saying something about real life or do you think that the show is also doing that kind of like because i think it's it's doing a very good job i think watchmen might be yeah one of the great achievements of television so like it's hard to uh no but it's also it's it's trying to it's it's just a very very different assignment yeah i think that one of the things that has been nice to see and i think this was at its strongest in episode three was that there is a very very sincere attempt to bring in some non and i say this you know non-traditional perspective from an outsider perspective to the show and i mean that through the the careful consideration of the stewart family dynamics yeah and you know there's been references to not just them their blackness but skin tone in relation to each other when zoe is redoing his yes exactly and he and his brothers the way they talk about things um even last night you know there's this idea that what's the waitress say like we're not racist here we're just we just don't like green lanterns or whatever like and then the camera is smart enough and stephen williams is a smart enough person to be director he he directed this episode and the third episode you know he lingers on aaron pierre's face and reaction to that so i i i don't want to compare them one to one i think watchman was singularly its its purpose was a story that damon felt the urgency to tell with the collaborators he chose and he found a vessel for it in watchman whereas they were going to make a green lantern show no matter what and this might be the best and i mean this non-pejoratively like this is a good faith attempt to make a thoughtful inclusive questioning show that was is also going to explain to you how we can have guy gardner and john stewart so in under that rubric it it's getting an a plus from me but if you go under the hood a little bit more like do i think that it's its viewpoint on class race in the world or is equal to these other shows absolutely not but you're getting a little extra for your buck when you tune in to watch a show about space cops that's very smart should we do a little watch after dark what's your i mean do you want to go from green to green i got a few minutes i want to i got a sick kid at home but i always put football first. I want you to call the Philly special very briefly. How are you? Because I watched the game on mute yesterday. I had something else going on. So I had like the game in the background. I could tell where it was going. I could tell how it was going. Yes. But you know, I was engaged, but I would not say living and dying with every snap. And then when the final drive came, because I don't think I had truly experienced the grind of it. You asked the, the, the group of us that we, we all chat about the Eagles during Sundays. What's our confidence level on this final drive? And I was like six. This is your brand. You are a very generally positive person with sports. You are able to, I think, compartmentalize. Um, and I, I admire that about you. I envy that about you. And sometimes I just lean on it a little much, you know, the phrase like, you know, if, if you're looking for the asshole, sometimes you're the asshole, you know, like, you know, it's like, so if you're, if you're always like, I'm beginning to worry about, role in the group chat because I think that my sometimes the level of venting and the frequency of my venting in it I'm like don't be self-conscious no one else has this valence I worry that this isn't fun for you it's never it's never been fun for me I really was thinking about how important sports are in my life in terms of like a thing to think about when falling asleep a thing to you know I listen to the podcast all the time I'm reading the articles like it sustains me and I like to think about like off-season stuff but I think off I think I don't like the games I think that you know in many ways I'm like Brad Pitt and Moneyball but like the number one way is that I think you just lifted during Eagles games think about where we would have we would have I would be that would be my peak achievement because when I was watching the game it wasn't that I was not demonstrative I was not scaring anyone I was not noises were not coming out of me but there was like a sad it was just a sadness yeah because the particular way that it was going was one that was familiar yes what was unfamiliar was that they fucking won yeah because Jalen balled out and that was cool as hell and so I think ultimately you are right about many things but your prediction that we may just have to remember what it's like to root for a normal football team in that you know it's hard to win every week some and lose some yeah and then you don't just win them and your offensive line just isn't elite always but it's it's the best part has been the most unexpected expected zag is that actually the one thing this season is proving is that our quarterback is not the 17th best I think he might even be better than Justin Herbert at this point say it with your full chest I've said it with my full chest the whole time all right it's like what are we evaluating well I've been to two Super Bowls like and was the best player in both of them um I think it's going to be it feels like an Andy Reedy season yeah okay see that's what it reminded me of yeah there was a feeling of creeping crepuscular darkness and I think it's going to be like the darkness that we used to experience when we would arrive at the bar in a weekend Autumn Daylight and be like ah this first beer will boy our spirits and restore the demons from last night and then just the clock management would just grind out every part of our hope to dust and we would wander out and suddenly it would be 40 degrees at night yes that is our that is a core memory for us we did that together for years yeah it was probably not good for our mental health but look it got us here um thanks for spending time with me I think those were our reps you know what I mean like the 10 000 hours everything about like those first 10 years got us ready for this the real Arena of our friendship of ideas uh thanks to Kaia and Kai uh we'll be back on Thursday I'll have a special guest no Andy on Thursday but we'll I will be traveling yeah uh we'll put something together in your honor is it going to be like the Beacon Guy Gardner left in Russia flying into Newark like I'm not sure like how certain we are you're landing it's fair I guess we'll find out talk to you guys soon Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football now coach Hank saves up to 25 off grocery store prices 30 pounds of pasta three cases of protein bars 75 sports drinks and that's just pre-game he knows teamwork and BJ's knows savings this is your home home of the save join for just twenty dollars at bjs.com mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only BJ's home of the save this episode is brought to you by chat GPT hey it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast have you guys heard about chat GPT work it's the new way to use chat GPT for bigger multi-step projects and when you need more just answers give chat GPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets slides and structured reports get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans