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My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and join me in the studio wondering if Amish Linklater can play Stretch 4 for the Sixers. Yeah, all of our interests, Widow's Bay, the Philadelphia 76ers, Andy, free agency, it's great to see you today on the menu. Let me tell you a little bit of how we do things at this restaurant. Yeah, great. It's small plates. They're meant to be shared. Great. It's farm to table. How many do we need? We're going to do the most recent two episodes of Widow's Bay, which both came out this week. I'm going to stop you before you even start. We're going to do the last four episodes of Widow's Bay because we're not on the record together about any of them since episode three. I see you obviously didn't listen to any of my monologuing. No, I heard that you did it. I said, we're not on the record. We also are going to talk about spider noir. We're going to talk about the most recent episode of euphoria and the most recent episode of Top Chef. Man. I also have some news at the top, but it's been a minute since I've seen your beautiful visage in person, you've been traveling a lot, not that much, really? I mean, I just took two trips within the United States, two trips within the United States within the last two weeks. That's traveling a lot. That is traveling a lot. I did it. Pacific Northwest. What are you trying to hide? What if I do? I'm just raising a lot of money, you know, you're bundling. Yeah. Exactly. It's great to see you. You can reach us at thewatchespotify.com. I noticed we just got a flood of of new emails every once in a while. I got to tell you, we're getting to the point where we might be able to do it. Andy only effingers only mailbag, but it's all just people being like, I'm going to read effingers too. Yeah. Well, there's a lot. I see a lot of gunna. I don't see a lot of actual like page turning, you know what I mean? You can follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore. You can watch us on YouTube at the Rainier Dash TV channel. We're there with the prestige TV pod and you can watch us on Spotify where I hope you listen to us, but we're also available elsewhere, where you listen to podcasts. Is our email address, has anyone signed it up for any like act blue emails or recurring donations? No. Doesn't seem like it. I mean, I do get a lot of like, I feel like I've seen an uptick in like random PR emails where I'm like, you don't know your audience like, would you guys be interested in covering the Iron Man race? Well, not Tony Stark, but like guys who have to run, swim and bike. I thought it was going to be Tony Stark versus like Iron Heart. You know what I mean? I don't know versus war machine, I always kind of had a sneaking suspicion that I might be able to do an Iron Man. Okay. Hold on. But just in the earliest time I've ever closed my laptop, but just in the, I can do all three things. I had, you know what? But I can't, I don't know if I could do how long I could do them. Is there like a, like an Iron Man for softies, you know, like soft batch, iron boys, an iron boy competition, where you get all, do anybody know about that iron boy competition? And I could like, wait, wait, when was the first time I went somewhere, when was the first time? I'm careful. The first time you ever learned about the Iron Man competition is the right, right? So basically, I want to, I'm going to ventriloquize this for you. I feel like we've probably had a similar experience, like maybe you're home from school one day and you turn on the Ocho for ESPN dose at like two thirty five p.m. on a Tuesday. It was like a flagship. They didn't always have college football, bro. So you turn on, you would just see someone like weeping, running in a speedo, you know, which is usually would be cinematics at 11 thirty p.m. on a Friday. But in this case, it was the middle of the day. And I also was entranced by this for exactly the reason you said, I can physically do those three acts. Yeah. It was kind of like, it actually seems like it would be refreshing to take a dip after a lot. I thought it was really good about it. I thought the order was reason so what is it goes swim bike run? Yeah. I think that's what it was. Someone can go. Yeah. Honestly, the only thing that bothers me about it is like, wouldn't I get a little chilly on the bike? Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah. Because my only reference to this wasn't that sports were hard and I wasn't qualified to do them. It was my favorite feeling isn't getting out of the ocean. I looked like dry for a little bit so I don't chafe. But 100% you have locked in on something that I haven't thought about in decades, which at no point did I think I'll never be able to do that. Yeah. I was like, oh, that's something to put on my list. I think it's only children. We had no tutelage. Yeah. Our fathers, they turned their backs on us, certainly athletically. But I didn't have an older brother to be like, this is how you bowl. So a lot of what I do, much like Natasha, Henstrigen species is mimicry, you know? And so you see someone who is very sexual and violent at the end. Okay. Your version works too. I would watch a guy bowl on SPN. And if there was a bowling birthday party, I would do like an elaborate, like kind of fucking you go for spin. Yeah. I would beat the Jesus. And I would like throw a ball six lanes left because I'm not like a professional bowler. And I'm not an Iron Man, but I probably would start really strong. The other thing, and I'm sorry to delay on the wide world of sports that we're going to talk about today. This is more interesting than the last two episodes of euphoria. It makes it seem, I'm kind of under the impression that we've made like great leaps in protein intake in the last seven years, like you and Craig or like who? No, just like gels, bars, all those things like you could put it into more. But they'd like guys back then if they needed protein during like a race, like just eat turkey or what would they do? The pace car for the Iron Man triathlon was the Oscar Meyer Weenermobile and it would drive alongside the athletes and the athletes would take ham and salami and they would eat it. And then they would light a cigarette. As they ran. Yeah. It was a pure time. Here's the secret. Everybody was fine. Yeah. No, I know. Everybody was fine. Those guys all lived forever. Did they? I don't know. They're hard to explode it. Now we were like, you're too old for this and like I'm 25. Well, there was that dentistry bit for a while where it's always like joggers, joggers get hit by buses. Never mind. You could iterate. I could. I have a lot. I feel like I have a Dennis Leroy-esque quality to me sometimes. You've both been in Boston. Yeah. I've been in Boston. You're wearing denim. You secretly want to be a dramatic actor. I do. I do. You love Fireman? Should I stop? What do you want to start with? News wise. So we have. That was exhilarating. I don't care what we do now. Okay. So I have one thing for you. Which is a new segment I'm introducing to the Watch podcast. And just, you know, for first time listeners of which there I'm sure there is zero as with every other segment. This will be a consistent staple for two weeks of the show. And I've never been prepped on that. Yeah. Well, often here's, here's a behind the curtain behind the curtain. I will be like, it's time for us to do this segment. And you're like, I don't have like, remember, I'm like, Oh, what are we reading this week? Like or watch of the week? What do we watch this weekend? And you'd be like, nothing. You know, I didn't do anything. Yeah. And then you Instagram and you're like, look at this cool book. I read. You know, yeah. I think you save a little bit of your stuff for IG. That's from my personal brand. That's right. Which is floundering. So if you could give me a cosine or a new segment. Yeah. It's called your silence is deafening. This is great. This is great. I'm already in on this. It's been 48 whole hours. We say this to each other all the time. And you have not publicly commented on Tom Hardy's Exile from Bob Land. Not publicly, but I've been huddling with my team, trying to craft the correct response. So while you spin your wheels, trying to decide how you're going to phrase this. Because to be clear, I did prep a statement, but it was, it was flagged. It was, it was really came into heart. For folks who don't know, Bob Land is a show on Paramount Plus. It was created by Ronin Bennett, who did top boy and then taken over show run and executive proves written by Jess Butterworth. Who also does a show we're going to discuss in a second called the agency. And Jess Butterworth is an accomplished schringer or a playwright in England. He apparently, according to reports, had a falling out with Tom Hardy, which is not the first time this has happened with Tom Hardy. The second season of Bob Land is completed. And it was announced strangely, I thought since I don't think the third season has been renewed or greenlit. That Tom Hardy would no longer be on the show that there was some sort of ultimatum. Butterworth or Hardy, and it seems like Jess Butterworth had won that fight. Then hilariously, I think, a lot of like leaked kind of accounts.
of Tom Hardy behavior, some, I saw some counter narratives flying around certain circles, yeah. And then as of today, the last thing I saw was that, and this is not from a super reputable source, was that there is some efforts to bring Hardy back into the fold. Oh, who's leading that charge? Who's leading that charge in the media, or who's leading that charge to do that? I think David Glasser, who is the kind of 101 studios of Versailles, who also oversees a lot of Taylor Sheridan stuff. Everybody's waiting. Where do you land? Mirror in a hearty. Oh, I'm on the clock now. Wait, so you're, you as one of the media's biggest Tom Hardy boosters. If anybody's ever listened to me, they're going to know. Yeah. Look, it is what it is. If you sign Tom Hardy up, man, you sign up for the whole ride. You can't get off midway. I would say there are certain things. This is, I've been referencing this a lot because I love it. He's been saying this for years, but our friend and colleague, Brian Curtis, is now they tell us notebook dump, which is the piece that appears after a coach is fired or someone is at the end of the season. Yes. And suddenly, like, all the reporting that they didn't feel they could, they could source or verify or even report on freely. They can now say because that person is out of the building. The op-o dump for the big anti-Tom Hardy lobby was locked and loaded. Yes. This is not a secret that he is challenging. He's read Colby Cannon's Fury Roadblocks. Yes. And so I, while I appreciate your banishism or join the rest of us in not watching Taboo, I think that I'm just curious. I'm going to slow to hypothetical. Okay. Let's say that you were scheduled to do a podcast with me. And at the appointed hour, you arrived, sat down, and I was nowhere to be seen. Now, so far, this is not a hypothetical. This is every week other than today. Yeah, but then you come bustling in three minutes late, and you're just like apologies, apologies. What is that? So sorry, everyone. That was a horrid mess on the tube this morning. Tom Hardy, according to the accounts in Kyle Buchanan's book, left Charlie's Theron sitting in the, I believe the term is war rigged for three hours before sauntering on to set. Well, I think he was trying to locate his voice, you know, he was trying to get located. It's always at the bottom of an old well. It's always the same voice. What are you talking about? I just like, I think I, I don't want anybody to get their feelings hurt or be in any kind of physical danger. I do find stories of onset, like, you know, mature, you know, cultural or personality clashes to be pretty interesting to read about. If Hollywood never had any of those, it would be a little bit less interesting to read about. Okay, that's fair. You know, it's just, I don't know. Are you that concerned about the third season of Mobland? No, and I didn't really like the first season of Mobland that much. I mean, I, I watched, I think I finished it. I can't remember. But it was just one of those things that I knocked out like two episodes on a plane ride kind of thing after the first couple of episodes. And I love that cast. And I think, yeah, you know, it's been a strange show. It was supposed to is initially the idea was it was going to be a Donna, the Ray Donovan spin off, then I think it kind of mutated into half gangs of London, half Yellowstone set, you know, in London with this crime family. And some of the reporting suggests Hardy's been a little bit aggrieved by the fact that it went from being a Tom Hardy show to a Tom Hardy Pierce Brosnan Helen Mirren show. And it's not like he and Mirren specifically are butting heads allegedly. I mean, what is the big Mirren getting and getting careful litigation bag against me? What if Helen Mirren doesn't care about what we say, but her husband Taylor Hackford is incredibly litigious and a long time listener of the one not entirely sure that's the case. Helen Mirren may very well care what I say. You're, wow, you've changed it since your trip. No, I'm just saying I still maintain I know for a fact Taylor Hackford is listened to proof of life. I think there is a we listened to the proof of life rewatchables. There is a 50% chance that he was like, you're going to get a kick out of this and played it for Helen Mirren. And then there is a 25% chance within that that she was like, this is my favorite podcast. I love these guys. Keep playing this. Then there's a 10% chance that what that she's like, let me deep dive this guy's podcast career. Music exists was really, really thought provoking. And then then she makes the full connection after reading all Chuck's books that you're the one playing. Let me just add, there's a there is a non non zero chance that Tom Hardy's also doing this to get off the show, which sometimes I think the most interesting segue for me from this is that mobland has the kind of incredibly contemporary representative. Yeah, the first two. Torture's development cycle of many many shows of the moment, particularly we're going to get to spider and war in a minute. What is I feel like there's a it's not a meme, but I feel like it is a saying that like like if you put the dev the dev boys on something, you're going to end up with like a fish with feet. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm getting them the analogy wrong, but there's some idea that if you keep developing something, you will end up with something that is so far from the initial purpose that you're not even sure why it exists. And I kind of feel that way about mobland. It's fine. And all of the people in it are good, but I don't know. I'm chasing after an observation that I can't quite land about like that's what Tom Hardy's doing. Okay, I got the impression as first started when mobile. If I remember correctly, I can't believe how long we're spending on this. I believe he said, you love it. I want to be in London close to my family. This is a steady gig that I like. That is so close to what I said about Harry Potter. There was just one. What was the word he said that he wanted to be close to his family, right? He's figured it out, man. So another show that is on Paramount Plus, along with mobland is the agency. And the agency is coming back, I think June 21st soon. And I'm pairing the agency's return with the return of a bit of a line show on Apple TV, but one that is close to your heart, a passion project of yours, which is sugar, the Colin Farrell detective show. Also returning for its second season, honestly, surprisingly, it's been two years, it seems like. Okay. Has it? I don't know. Sure. Yeah. When was sugar on your top 10 insanely enough? It was not on my top 10. Oh, yes, it was. No, it was not. Didn't you put sugar in your top 10? No, I love to zag. I love to surprise and delight you, but no, sir. I'm just going to look up sugar season one. Excuse me. I promise no. I think that I said that the pilot was one of my favorite pilots of the last few years. It's true. 2024 is when it debuted. Wow. It was a different time. 26 now. As Joe Biden's favorite show. Yeah. We've changed. Maybe that's what you're mistaking you with. Also, isn't it funny that this is the new normal where we are talking about these shows? It's like, oh, the agency's coming back, sugar's coming back with its normal two-year gestation process. Agency was last year, wasn't it? Oh, damn. Really? That was also Joe Biden's favorite show. Joe Biden loves the agency. Yeah. I was Google Joe Biden, the agency, wouldn't you get if you do that? Yeah, anyway, 2024. Yeah, no way of knowing. Okay, which one do you want to talk about first? I want to talk about like, well, first of all, you alluded to coming back after such a long interval, but also where you're at with these, like the opportunity for, since we're doing a lot more recurring television now in than in recent years, a showed that maybe wrong was wrong footed at certain points in its first season. Right. Tonally, we're still trying to find its voice, et cetera. Which one of these do you think has the biggest opportunity or the most likely opportunity, most like highest likelihood of improving in its second season? Well, we'll start by saying both have delivered excellent trailers for their second season. Sure have no question about it. And both in, if you were just going by the trailers, present a pretty exciting vision of 2020's television where very attractive movie stars fully embrace the genre trappings of that are that are really possible to explore within serialized television. So that's cool. I think the, that said, there is no question. I'll just say this now, like the agency season two is going to be much better than we know what it's about because it's about it's based on the bureau. So we know where season two goes. So let's separate the conversation for a second to say that the agency, one of our favorite shows of two years ago, both because it was stylish and incredibly well acted. And Loki a pretty good London hang show. Despite all the stress that Margaret is going through, it is, as you said, it is a fairly devout adaptation of one of the greatest shows probably ever until Vision the French series, Libero. And as the season progressed, I think it started to develop its own kind of chilly swagger that suggested that it was going to deviate in ways, maybe not always plot, but in terms of the delivery of the plot in ways that felt kind of exciting. And second season of Libero is better than the first season with a lot of very cool set pieces and moments of tension. And this trailer looks so sick. It made me so excited to watch it. And it actually made me appreciate even more how nice it was to have such a quality consistent entertainment for those 10 weeks, two years ago. One of the crazy things
about the agency is that, you know, it's got a pretty star-studded cast, Jeffrey Wright, Richard Geer, Catherine Waterston. Richard Geer's Homer's dad from Euphoria. Yes. Okay. Carrie Lowell and Richard Geer's son is Homer. Well, Dylan on Euphoria, that's character. I just wanted to make a relevant to our young TikTok fans. I'd they will have more to do this season based on. So if you were watching season one and you were like, Richard Geer's in like six scenes and Catherine Waterston's not on this show really. Clearly. And John Magaro, like what's he doing? You know, um, they'll have stuff to do next this season. It looks awesome. It does. Sugar. Okay. So, okay. I can't even, we can't have this conversation without spoiling an element of sugar. Many people listening are probably like, what are these guys talking about? I haven't even heard of sugar. Sugar came out two years ago. Sector shows set in California, like I'm, like I mentioned, stars Colin Farrell. Yeah. I, people sometimes ask, do I have to watch the first season to start the second season? We have started to push the limits on what we have. We are capable of with that. Yeah. I would like to take like try five seconds of just staring at you. Yeah. Maybe vamping. Sure. And in one second, we are going to spoil. Yeah, we are. A big part of what makes sugar sugar. And you know why we're going to do it? Because fucking Tim Apple doesn't want you to know. He doesn't want us to know. This trailer hides the ball. And by the ball, I mean, one of the great television bag fumbles in recent. You know what I said when I watch a trailer, are you having a fucking laugh? Yeah. Because this is a trailer for the show sugar should have been. But let me tell you, it's not. But also it's like, is this the first season of sugar? Also, you can't just trailer your way into the movie you wish it was. We've seen this fail in movies again and again. Three, two, one. Colin Farrell's character on sugar is a fucking alien. Yes. He's a blue space. When does that come out? Like episode five, right? It's excruciating. Okay. Do you know that when you were watching it? No. And then he's an alien. Yeah. And then I stood up, went out for a pack of cigarettes. Never came home. Never smoked him. I did you. I think I stopped watching sugar. This is alien hood. Yeah. Play a major role in the second half of the season. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, dude. Wouldn't it in yours? I don't know. This second season trailer makes it look like he loves boxing. Like, I don't know. Like, we don't know. I keep waiting for DJT to tell us what aliens love. I keep here. And there's a press conference coming. I know. And maybe it's like they love noir movies and aliens. A lot of people on the streets are like aliens right now. Yeah. They're coming up to be with tears on their eyes. No, that's just the alien earth FYC campaign, which is all over town. Yeah. This is a huge twist in the show that they are not giving away. Because in the trailer, because it is a fucking season anchor around the neck of what could have been good. It is, I wish I had done the prep to prepare for a the same thing. The fucking fish with feet. This is what we have here. Like, it's okay to do a small thing well. Yes. Like, Ina Garten made a whole career out of it. And she should work at Apple TV, frankly, because you have Colin Farrell, one of the most stylish and compelling and charismatic actors of our time, looking incredible in beautiful suits driving a sports car in a neon. It's like Colin Farrell rockford files tinged. Yes, but like, also really embracing the idea of like, what LA light looks like and what a noir would look like in bright color, not in whatever fucking rinky dink technique color they did despite her noir to try to appeal to multiple audiences at once. We'll get there. This is coming attractions for Andy's despite her noir tape. I'm just saying. And that would have in the great words of the fucking satyr dinner, Dianeu. Like, that would have been enough. Yeah. But instead, they were like, no, no, there's also a secret society because this guy likes noir movies because he's an alien. We don't need that. We don't need the Colin Farrell signed up for this to play a detective or an alien. I think Colin Farrell signed up for this for a chance to wear suits that weren't fucking fat suits in the back lot of Warner Brothers doing penguin. Yeah. And yet he does have to wear an alien suit at some points in the show. In a perfect world, this show gets renewed because they're like, just do the parts that work. We don't care that he's an alien. That's fine. And maybe they did lean into it because they beefed up the cast. Like, you were pointing it out like, yeah, Shay Wigham, Sasha Kaye, Tony Dalton, like a really great ensemble. Well, the plot already looks more interesting than the kind of it looks like a detective investigating like a missing boxer and and then Tony Dalton, follow from from a better call-solid place, a sheriff's deputy, I think, and it's just seems to be a fixer. It's just so, so, so weird to me. And it, I don't know, like at a time when widow's Bay is on the docket from us talking about, like, I'm kind of, I'm definitely giving, I don't really want to rail on Apple's development process for why this happened the way it happened. And even within the context of it's an alien show in a detective show, the big reveal being just being slow walked episode five was also such a weird fumble and so on. Sure. Anyway, it's just a bummer because I watched that trailer and I was like, this is a show I want. And I think they're probably smart to do that and say like, look, all the stars are on Apple and they're all kind of doing genre stuff. And you'll have a good time with this. Listener, I don't know if that's true. Well, I can, I can assure you that we'll, we'll at least give the second season a college try. I'll come back in. Yeah. Yeah, you don't care anymore. You don't care. You show me the way about me down the path of we don't have to watch TV to talk about TV. I was a trailblazer in that field. Let's be positive. Okay. And let's talk about what is back what is Bay released two episodes this week for a very clear purpose. These two episodes are linked in ways that I found just like this series itself surprising and delightful. Episode six is called our history and it's directed by Ty West. It was a big deal. Great hard director, directed Pearl and Maxine on X and we directed House of the Devil. Like he's a great hard director. Also directed a really cool like Brian Jones town kind of Jones town, ask a movie called The Sacrament that I really liked. Anyway, he directed this episode our history, which is set in 1702. It stars Betty Gilpin as Sarah Westcott, who comes to the widow's Bay Island. Betrothed to Richard Warren, who is the town. You could say leader, savior, captor. And Richard Warren's played by Hamish link later, kind of in a sly nod, I think to his midnight mass character, who was also a priest who worked on a rural island. And when we find these two uniting in 1702, a plague of violent insanity is kind of gripping the island reminiscent of what we saw in the fog in the premiere episode. That's right. And Sarah finds herself in the center of these proceedings and attempts to save herself and Warren's children as he and some of this town's folk aimed to stop her. Should we talk about these episodes separately or together? I would like to actually take one, if I may, brief step back just to contextualize conversation. When they revealed that he was an alien, widow's Bay is the best television show of the year to such a staggering degree. Look who's trying to get an FYC campaign. Let me try again, which camera widow's Bay is the best television show of the year, M- Andy Greenwald, comma, primary host of the watch podcast. Oh, that's for the poster, primary. You were traveling. Okay. Of course, I was gone for a week too. But anyway, my point is this show is so good in a way that staggers, humbles and delights me. Like my experience watching it is such that I am enjoying it. I'm laughing. I'm riveted. And I can't stop thinking at every moment of all of the brilliant creative decisions that went into almost every frame of it. Before we even talk about these episodes, we can talk about like the directorial and cinematographer and camera choices that are that are involved in a show this specific, this tonally and aesthetically specific, that shifts. It's a period piece this week. Previous week, it was a crazy drug trip. There have been, I believe, four directors so far. Hero Marais, Sam Donovan, Ty West, Andrew DeYoung, and Andrew DeYoung, who works with Tim Robinson a lot and it's fantastic. There is no there is no aberration from episode to episode. That's the kind of thing that you see in a long running show where there's enough of a book on it and a style guy that when people come on, they feel comfortable knowing what it is they're stepping into. To do that from a cold stop is just remarkable. The tonal balance of this show, to be legitimately scary, to be legitimately funny and to be legitimately emotionally gripping is something I've never seen done before. And it's doing it in such a, it's subtle in the sense that this is not a giant, expensive, starry adaptation of something. It is not based on pre-existing material. It was not presented to us as the next big show. The way that it was put together with just this quiet, confidence, competence, and occasional brilliance is wild to me. It's wild to me. Co-signed everything you just said. And by the way, I know this isn't really a valuable conversation.
but everyone's talking about that. - Yes. - Like everyone, when I have conversations with people, someone will be like, "Oh my God, the editing." The editing is so exceptional. Someone will say, "Oh, notice Alison Jones, the legendary casting director, you know, Freaks and Geeks, Barbie, the office V, she worked on this." And you can tell, like down to the guest stars week to week, I'm blown away. - Well, and to your point, several shows that I have been, from not engaged to highly engaged with over the last couple weeks have come out on Netflix and Amazon. Spider-Noir, for instance, dropped its whole season. Legends we talked about, like the boroughs on Netflix. I talked about with Joe last week. Feels like in the sort of larger conversation, their moments already come and gone in some ways, because your engagement with a binge is individual and personal. Nobody is on the same page. You can feel Widow's Bay uptick in group chats and in conversations at, I'm sure, school pickup or whatever, where it's like, what are you watching? Or like dinner parties or conversation as a restaurant. And it's like, people are picking up on Widow's Bay. They are catching up on Widow's Bay. They are excited about Widow's Bay. I feel like there was like almost like an awareness that this is a special two-part event this week. Completely agree with you. There's also something like, you know how I, I always, I hear Sam S. mail in my head, where it's like, you cannot get mad at a piece of art for what it didn't do. - He was talking to me. - But you can be mad about the choices that it makes, it's like you have to evaluate the choice it did make, not what it could have done. - I think that's right. - I want to just say that in less shore hands, or in a less certain shorerunners hands, like other than Katie Diffel, like this would have been, this art history episode would have been drunk history. It would have been Betty Guilpin doing kind of Krasinski gym office faces, while all this stuff is happening, because she basically is doing a no perfect 18th century, like Puritan woman, but also doing Amy Poehler and Parks and Rec, like she has comic timing and she is giving in a modern sensibility. - I think that is as soon as I got here, I was like, what the fuck is going on? She has that kind of like, I know you're watching me, and this is a break from the show's reality. - Yes. - But I'm going to be consistent with the way Matthew Rhys reacts to things on the island as well, even though it's 300 years apart. - How did they do that? - I don't know. - How did they do a 300 year flashback episode with the confidence of a show that has been running for multiple seasons? - Yes. - There's these subtle choices that I'm dazzled by, like we watched the first episode and we raved about it, and then we watched the second one, and I think we took time to praise the fact that the show seemingly pitched itself in the first episode as here comes the big trouble, like this is going to be an event series for lack of a better word, but then almost immediately it walked it back. The tourists did come, and there was suddenly more space for episodic situational comedy or hijinks of this type of horror film, this type of horror story. And I was ready to settle into a perceived take of, that's pretty smart for a show that might run multiple seasons made by someone who worked on Parks and Rec, for example. Then I realized it was doing both at the same time, to make the commitment to do the flashback to the island's founder, and then deal with that character and blow it up. - This is exactly where I'm at. - With multiple episodes to go, is a level of confidence in the larger story project that is remarkable, and it caused me to go back though, and notice all the little smart decisions, like the fact that episode three C-Heg, and episode four B-treads, which is a contender for episode of the year, are happening concurrently. So playing with time in a way to pre-address the idea. - B-treads is the Patricia episode? - Yes. To almost pre-counter the criticism that it fails a lot of television, which is it can't be the most important thing that's ever happened if we have time for a bottle episode or a side quest. All of these things are not amateur decisions. They are not rash decisions. They are thoughtful, considered decisions that are paying off the story. And so all of that is preamble to say, these two episodes were balsy as hell. And I'm glad they dropped them together, which is another smart decision. - When they were digging 'em up at the end of, I think at the end of our history, they start digging 'em up. - Yep. - I was like, that was cool. And I'm sure they're digging 'em up to get the necklace, right? - Yeah. - Or something. - You know? - Oh my gosh, yeah. - And this is comic screenwriting that is being applied to a sort of chamber horror drama, where it's like, what if he was still alive in that box? And then what if, "Hamage Linklater" was just on this show for an episode and what if instead of being unfrozen caveman lawyer who's freaking out about like, they're being electricity and stuff. He's actually like, I've decided I need to die because I've been tortured for hundreds of years. And then he's like, actually, I kind of want to live. - Can I throw one more word at you? - What if our, I mean, the audience's introduction to his resurrection or he never died that, in fact, that he's still alive, he's played entirely through the perspective of Tom waking up from one of the most halacious 24-hour mushroom trips in recorded history so that he shows up and Richard is already upstairs. - Yes. - There is no jump scare in the coffin. - And Patricia is rattled and Wick has already cut his hand trying to open. - There has already been all this stuff happening while Tom is like, I've been asleep for a day. - That is another sign of filmmaker confidence, storyteller confidence that we don't need to hit every potential-- - It's funnier to have them be like, don't open that, we tried that already. - We already did it. We're behind our main characters behind the story. - Yeah, so in C-Signis, which is directed by Sam Donovan as Andy mentioned, who worked on skins and severance in the crown and written by Dave Harris. I've seen this, many people say this has got a lot of JAWS Jews on it and it's just Jews. - Yeah, well just like the three of them are on the boat singing and kind of looking for something out there. I thought this is a really cool episode and I really liked how even though it's basically all shot within the cockpit of Wick's boat, the time it takes to be like, here's the practical amount of space and time that needs to be covered. He has to get to this buoy, but Wick can't go past the buoy. Tom can richer needs to be evaporated into bones, but you never leave anything and it isn't an exposition dump, but you do get a sense of when's Wick gonna get off the boat and how is Tom gonna be able to sail the dinghy and what's-- - What are the rules? - Yeah, what are the rules? And it's still only 40 minutes or whatever it is and it still flies by and has time for a bee plot of Evan discovering that his mother at least didn't die during childbirth if not is, I would imagine, I'm starting to wonder if she's still alive somewhere, right? - Well, I think are we now onto supposition corner? I mean, I think, I don't know if this is like-- - Supposition corner could be another recurring segment for us. - I don't know if it's gonna go well for us. I don't know. - Not as good as your silence is deafening. - That's a much, that was awesome. I'm a little spooked because this is the week because the Nick's swept their way to the finals that all of the, it's a basketball team, that all of the video footage of NBA experts being like the Nick's overpaid for Jalen Brunson and this is a not the kind of signing that we'll get to final. - Oh, Becky Hammond being like, you'll never win with a small guard. - I'm just saying, I don't want to, I want to be very careful now that I know that these takes live forever. I didn't know that until this week. I thought I didn't know that all of these podcasts remained unspotted. - Well, if you talked about anything of consequence, I think that might matter, but since we're mostly talking about, did you ever watch Iron Man? - That dude was an alien. - Okay, that's fair. No, so, okay, I could say this is his opposition corner or I could say it about like the watching a show that is made by people who know what they're doing. It's just such a pleasure. But in the second episode when Tom locks himself into the hotel overnight, we do see weird paintings and scary paintings. And we see that also in the first episode when he's touring Bashir Soladen through the museum or whatever. And I think when we saw that, we were like, well, Katie Dippold really learned from Parks and Rec about how funny historical shit can be. - Yes, yes. - One of the paintings in the hotel is of what appears to be a toddler loose at sea. And I feel like I'm not the only person that I've not read any coverage of the show yet, but like that is clearly Richard's daughter who received the brooch coming off of the boat, making it back to the mainland and then beginning a bloodline that ends with Tom's son. - Look at the big brain on Brad. - This is probably the most covered idea. - Damn, that's my job is to go dig it in the crates for that kind of stuff. That's just a pure. - That's just a piece of shit in this crate. - That was straight from my brain crate. - There's many ways to watch the show. And you can watch it with a scalpel or you can watch it and you can sit there and just marvel at the comic tone and the spooks and the creeks in the night, you know? - Yeah, I actually, I think, I mean this is praise. I don't care.
that this kid is related to the founder of the island. Like, my enjoyment of the show is not dependent. - I think some people will be like, they should have thrown the bones overboard, 'cause I think they bring Richard's bones back. - Oh, there's ways they should have behaved. That's a cool way to watch television. - No, I mean, like that will probably come back to literally haunt them that they did not get rid of Richard's bones. - And his Vienna sausages. - Yes. - If you were Richard, and you're 330 some years old. - Yeah. - Is it a gift shop blow in your mind? Aren't you just like holy shit? - I'm on a t-shirt. - Yeah. - There's lights. - I, I don't know. I was basically, you know, living alone. - The nicks have gotten how far with a small garden? - Dude, I'm just like, I was living alone in London, one of the greatest cities in the world for seven weeks, and I almost lost my mind. - Yeah. - He was in a box for 300 years, and he came out. Pretty chill. - I know, take that, Nate. (laughing) - I'm saying. - Maybe keep it together. - Chill out. - Yeah, so I, I was okay with that. He's a little bit, he's a little bit touched, you know, he's a little bit different kind of guy. - Barried alive, have it a moment? - Yeah. - Top five burials alive. - Alive burials. - Don't list the other three. - The bride. - Oh, you want to do the other three? 'Cause this could burn us if there's another one we're free. - The bride, the Ryan Reynolds movie buried when he's. - Which was a remake of like a Danish movie, right? - Of course you know that. - Yeah. - This is what it means, this is the international sign for being buried. - How would you know that? - Because the movie isn't Danish, and I didn't understand any of it, except when the guy was like this. - Is it just another really good barried alive person? - Nikki Santoro and Casino. - Oh yeah. - Spoiler, sorry. - Nikki's barely alive when he goes in. - I don't think that's a distinction that's worth noting. - Yeah, doesn't they hit him with a bat like 150 times? - Yeah, but not, but he's alive. I'm not saying he's alive for long, but. - Barriol's alive, hit us up,
[email protected]. Let us know your favorite. - That'd be good. - Evan, now you've talked a little bit about the links you're seeing, the theories you're theorizing about. He is an example of another thing that the show does really well, which is it can have storylines that last 25 minutes and are deeply satisfying. It can have storylines that last multiple episodes like say the mushroom trip, which obviously has after effects if you were Tom and you would just trip your balls off for multiple days. You'd probably be like, am I still high when you meet a 300 year old man? But it turns out he shares something in common with him 'cause of the mushrooms spoke to both of them. The Evan plot is obviously like, I guess would you call this a season long runner? Is this guy's rebellion and search for self? - Yeah, and by the way, Kingston Rumi Self who could play as the kid, is the presumed innocent cast having a moment? - Yes. - Him and Chase Infinity both have a minute. - They are having a minute. - He's great, yeah. Yeah, I think that it's again, it's just the smart construction where it is often rebellious teenage characters are created purely to exist as stress and plot creators for the main character. But this kid has given the dignity of his own plot line. Like, there's a tiny moment in the episode where he is called out or caught by Bashir, the sheriff. And he says to him, would it be cool if when I turned around to go back to my friends that yelled, fuck, you pig? And Bashir says, absolutely not. But then the camera cuts back to him to smile about it. And it's like, that's a human moment to show that what otherwise might not need to have room for that. I do want to digress again, which I know is off brand for this podcast, especially today. But as our resident pharmaceuticals expert, you were asking Tom's experience in the previous two episodes ago. Was that similar or dissimilar to when we met for the second time ever on the streets of. I don't think my mushroom was nearly as intense as the guys. I think that they were dealing with some serious shit. Mine was like four hours long that night, and largely enjoyable other than seeing the death star in the sky. Oh. And maybe feeling like I was in apocalypse now. Somehow the death star. And then my buddy tried to climb into like a two by two shelf in his closet. How'd that go? Didn't work. I mean, but he was like, I'm going in there. But what's weird is that people want the full story of this, can listen to the train spotting episode of rewatchfuls. I think we get into this great, great granular detail. But we should create a lore playlist for my memory of what was weird about my experience was that me and my girlfriend at the time were walking downtown towards tower records to buy the tripod quest record that came out that night. But we were stuck. I do the work. Hashtag ally before that was that thing. We were walking and we were stopped by. Is that the love movement? Our piece runs in life. We were stopped by police officers from walking down the street saying, "No big deal, can you go around?" There is a suspect on the loose on this street. And then a block later, I see your ass and he was like, "Hey, what's up?" Now, did you interact at all with the police activity? - If I did. - 'Cause I think that would have freaked you out. - I don't think I did. I wasn't aware of that activity. - Did you ever focus on the big picture in the sky? - I also think Philly PD, they try to keep the crowds moving. - They always say it. - Man, what a show. I'm so excited for these last few episodes. So 8, 9, and 10 still to come over the next three weeks. - As a segue, 'cause we're gonna talk about Spider-Noir in a second. And Spider-Noir does not deserve all of these strays, but it's just what we got this week. - It is what it is. - I wanna uplift Widow's Bay even further, just to say that this show exists because Kitty Dippold was passionate about a story and a vibe and a tone and a type of show that she wanted to make. And she found incredible partners who were open-minded and excited to join in and bring their talents and hear 'em or I and everyone else that she assembled to make this show. It only comes from that relatively pure creative act. Her, which is rare in movies and in TV these days, where a lot of what we see is an example of people doing their absolute best work to clear a relatively arbitrary bar that has been set for them by rights holders or development executives or network executives or whatever. That's part of the job. - Yeah. - And it can be done well. - You guys are all free to write novels. - You know what I'm saying? - Exactly. - For free to be subsumed by gender to-- - Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. - Meet new groupie setting mist from Maybelline, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin. That still feels like your skin. Try new groupie setting mist from Maybelline, New York. - Maybe it's Maybelline. - V.I. - I think this is actually Segway's Nicely into Spider Noir as you alluded to. So Spider Noir is a new show executive produced by Lord Miller on Amazon Prime. Whole seasons are already up. It is a extension, I guess, or a riff on a character that Nicholas Cage played in Across the Spiderverse, I believe. - Yeah, in the Spiderverse movies, he voices a version of this character. I do think it's a sad sign of how cooked we are that all of the press for the show makes it clear that this is not the same character. - Yes. - Because it could be. This is another iteration or expression of the idea. - It's really weird that they are making that. Like it's almost like they want to keep the sanctity of these animated blockbusters and do a spin off of it but not explicitly because what if it doesn't work, we don't want to damage the brand, I don't know. - Well, also that it's even more than that, it's that there is an established canon to these fanciful and honestly brilliant Spiderverse movies that contain the idea that there are thousands of spider people, sometimes spider horses and cars, and that each one has a very distinct identity. And so to protect the gentle souls of these devoted fans, they have to make it clear that this spider noir is not the same spider noir, there's just more than one. - Okay, gotcha. - Are you feeling better about that? - Yeah, this is a show set after World War One. - One. - And it starts Nicholas Cage as Ben Reilly who is this sort of retired spider man, now private detective investigating and honestly, like, Beyoncé Nopsis set of missing persons cases and trying to track people down and trying to get blackmail and interacts with several, I have to assume canonical Spider-Man. - Iterations of them. - Iterations of Spider-Man villains. It is an incredible cast of Cage, one more and more of Brandon Cleason, Lucas Haas. - Legion. - Legion Lee. Legion Lee, Cameron Britton. - You're guy Jack Houston. - Let's go stand in it. - You need to watch boardwalk. - Yeah, the whole thing, yeah. - Do you remember Grantland? - We used to do the damn thing back then. We put seven shows up and we talked about 'em. - Who put the shows up? The podcast? - The TV networks. There were like, here's seven TV shows this year, enjoy. - Oh, yes. - And we were like, yes. - I wasn't, I was like, actually, this is problematic and people hated me for it. walk empire? Was that the first time you snowflaked out? I didn't, first of all.
I've been snowflaking out since I first watched the triathlon in 1986. What do you think about the sea life that these people are disturbing? Oh, their legs are damp. Who wants to sit in a wet bike seat? That is actually like a pet peeve of mine. See? Uh, wet, wet, so we shoot shorts on a bike seat, chafing. Thank you for speaking your truth. Usually you hang me up to drive this stuff. But the way I say it sounds kind of cool and like normal. You know what I'm saying? I know it also suggests that your childhood was like fucking goonies all the time. And I was just alone in my backyard going like this because I didn't have a backyard. Anyway, um, no boardwork empire. I was like, it was kind of like, uh, uh, prestige karaoke. Yeah. And then it had some moments. The reason why Windows Bay is able to pull off the two episodes that they did this week is because of choices and confidence in those choices and commitment to those choices. I think that nothing sums up how I feel about spider noir, the two episodes that I watched and and sort of some light scrubbing through some of their episodes. Nothing sums up how I feel about it more than the fact that when you click play on the Amazon Prime Video app or or site, you are offered a choice between true hue color or authentic black and white. Now there's a probably a reaction some people have where they're like cool. I love choice. I want, I want them to choose. I don't actually like this. Present the show you want me to see. And I think it's, I think it's indicative of how I ultimately feel about this show that neither looks very good. The black and white is not, I had contrast enough for my taste. It doesn't have that atmosphere of old noir movies that I think it's looking for. It kind of has a monochrome to it. And the true hue looks like running sin city through a color like colorization's program to like pop colors. And I kind of found it really distracting. And I, I have to say, I don't know if I've really ever talked about this. I'm not a huge intercourse cage guy. Wow. I like him. Yeah. I like him at his peaks. I like him at his, his linch weirdness. I love raising Arizona. I love wild at heart. I love. I love the rock and con air. But I am not like everything this guy does is so fascinating and and awesome. And do you feel like he's like kind of playing with one hand behind his back in this game like or something like or I don't know why am I like I'm like way more into Brendan Gleason and Lucas Haas in this show than I am Nicholas Cage. I, I feel like I'm going to meet you halfway on this. I think that Nicholas Cage being the star of the show and making the choices that he makes is probably the most interesting thing about it. That said, I agree that it ultimately is not that interesting. I think it's fun seeing an actor who I think is this is not a controversial opinion. Hasn't hasn't had laser focus for swaths of the last two decades in terms of his career choices. Got some notes to pay off. It's true. So to see him kind of like relatively locked into something that he could do quite easily is amusing. And there are moments like there's a moment in the second episode when he when Ben Riley pretends to be a plumber. And so it's Nicholas Cage pretending to be someone pretending to be someone and you feel the liveliness of it that pops even in the I agree the kind of cloudy black and white sidebar like if you want to see an argument for black and white in the 2020s watch Ripley, which is every frame is so beautifully considered and composed that there's no other way that you could imagine seeing it. And I would say I don't think this is. But it's also it's not anecdotal to say this. This was like Garrett Bash is the producer of that and producer of many, many other FX shows works to type a YTT a lot. Basically said that they just shot it one way and then they told Showtime who they were making it for. That's what we did because Showtime was like can you give us options? Yeah. And I think giving options is a hallmark of a successful contemporary creative career. But it is not necessarily the quickest or straightest path to great creative solution. So in the case of the show or a New Zeal is the showrunner and I think that he has done a really, really solid job doing something that I'm not sure is possible to do in a way that would satisfy. Yes. And what I mean is he is clearly a talented writer and clearly a talented storyteller and clearly confident in the ways that are necessary to get something like this over the finish line and get it made. But some of the things that are most on display here is a very contemporary, writerly skill, which is tightrope walking, which is finding or trying to find a healthy balance between the two great flavors that don't always necessarily taste great together. You can see the indecision in the options of how to screen it. But for me the most damning indecision of the show is is this a noir show or is this a superhero show? And I know which side I find more interesting and I found it as I watched a couple episodes of it, the constant, safe return to the home base of but actually that guy is the sandman. Actually, it's just going to be a superhero. If he gets pushed off the roof, he can always sling some webs. I found that I don't even know what the word is. It's not disappointing. I just got it non-elevating. I think that because of the dominance of superhero and comic book stories over the last 20 years, you and I have often said like use it as a surgeon horse to make the thing you really wanted to make and I don't back off of that. But if a guy gets shoved off a building, it's supposed to be a dramatic moment where you're like, is this it for this character? Or even if he's just the edge of the building because that's a place, I'm sure there's dozens of more moments where guys got a gun on our hero and he's standing at the edge of a roof and it's what's going to happen. I think that if you can throw webs from your wrists to save your own life, it kind of just robs the dramatic moment. And that's something that comes up a couple of times in these two episodes that I've watched. I also, I mean, as Rua's storytelling goes, I have found it a little bit too in between one long story and episodic stories of like, I know, I have another case this week. It's a cool idea and I applaud them being able to do it. There's also a little bit of agents of shield stuff happening here where I'm like, yes, is it Spider-Man or what? Like, you know, like what? Choose. Just just if this is like, let these guys cook. Like, like, let them have the toolbox or don't. To me, what would be interesting, I hear your point about like, it's kind of a cheat code to reduce stakes if everybody can survive anything. The thing that I was disappointed to see, but not surprised to see was that the that everyone has superpowers. Yeah. What's interesting to me about the concept would be about a guy who's a private eye who is basically cursed with abilities that other people don't have. And then what do you do with it? Like, the idea that he could, I mean, because it is a classic trope of detective fiction and noir that the detective takes more damage than anyone could possibly survive. Yeah. And keeps coming. He would have maybe a more legitimate reason for being able to get back up again despite the bruises, but the first person he encounters in his detective mission can ignite himself on fire, which is immediately makes me just that to me that flattened the stakes. If if there's going to be two shows where they're the normals and the more and more is doing great job playing Robbie Roberts than another canonical journalist character from the spider verse, he's fits into this world like a glove and is having a lot of fun in the scenes with him in Nicolas Cage, pop for me. Yeah. But he's existing down here with the normals and Ben Riley's up here with the the superpowered freak shows. And that is less that I find that less interesting. Did you like the stuff of Gleason and Haas, the Silverman stuff? I like those actors. Yeah. I like those actors. I think my biggest disappointment is as television shows budgets have gone up and visual spectacle has gone up, the opportunity to really to to make the writing for lack of a better word more muscular and kind of the star has gone down. And certainly there are plenty of things that are overwritten. But the idea of the writing being the star of a show is not really in vogue. Everybody wants to have room to have the the banter that goes bang bang bang bang bang bang and then the scene starts. Yeah. That bang bang is noir, that's noir dialogue. And so I wish there had been more opportunities to play that out because instead it kind of fell flat to me. You have the trappings of what it's supposed to be with Lee Jen Lee as a, you know, as an entrepreneur, and you have Ben Riley as the put upon gum shoe gum shoe wanders into her place of business where he doesn't belong and he's he's declassing the joint. And then you have dialogue where he's like, well, a singer has to know all the numbers. Maybe a detective has to know all the answers. That's not that snappy. That is the a simulacrum of snappiness. You know, so I, but again, there are a lot of mouths to feed when you have a show like this. And, you know, I want to be transparent because we touched on this when we brought up the trailer like this was this was something that that I pitched on and I was involved in and I don't want this to sound like sour grapes because I did not get this job. I did not deserve to get this job in or a New Zealand did a much better job than I ever would have, but it was interesting to be inside of the process of how stuff like this gets made.
made. And truly the way stuff like this gets made is off of the success of the spider verse movie. I think that anybody who works, most people who work in 2026 probably know the experience of, wow, there's a lot of people on this zoom now. How did this happen? Yes. And it's like, it's not that there's not a bad thing. Nobody involved. It probably has ill intentions. And, you know, the way that those things kind of bloat is natural. But there, you could probably do like a hard, a clear eyed assessment of like, what's this person? What's the, like, what is the reason why this person is now giving me notes about this stuff or whatever? And it's, you're right. Part of the job of the 21st century screenwriter showrunner is to please all the different stakeholders. And because the genesis of this is spider verse was a big hit. And so Sony and Lord and Miller sold a package of spider verse shows creatives unattached to Amazon. And the first one, which was silk, went through two or three showrunners over a period of years and eventually Frittered out never got made the process that I was a part of for this one Frittered out years ago and was stopped. And then restarted a year later. And, and then this was the development process of it. And, but even in my limited experience, like Lord and Miller are, I mean, I think they're geniuses of what they do. No one does what they do. And it's incredible to watch the final product up. They are also creators. So to walk into a process that's like we, we have these toys. What do you want to do with them? Because Amazon's going to make the show if we hit the target that we haven't been able to fully articulate yet. And then you also have the stakeholders who wanted a super hero show and the super the stakeholders who wanted to be involved, but maybe not as involved. And then there's the Marvel presence. Then there's Amy Pascal and like, that's really, really hard. So I bring that up not to spill personal stuff just to say like to get this show on the air looking really good. It's fucking amazing. It's just ultimately not something I think I think we want to spend eight hours watching. And it's incredible that it's there. All these good intentions, good performance and good thinking that went into what do you think this is the logic behind making it a binge? I have no idea. I mean, the only thing that I would say is maybe, like if you watch the boys, or if you remember how the boys was released, three, one, one, one. The first season was a binge. Oh, yeah. So I think that Amazon has some internal metrics that are like for this type of genre show or this fan base. It's better to give it to them. Well, it seems like, yeah, if I remember correctly, I think, I think off campus, which is a big hit for them, went up as a binge. I imagine any successive seasons of off campus. I could see that being pulled back. I think the summer I turned pretty happened. I mean, it's been interesting to watch that network. I wouldn't say stumble into because I'm sure it was very, very conscientious. Like kind of owning YA and owning like young female romance stories. They have like a whole vertical there where it's like obsession is in session. And it's like not only is it a bunch of originals, but they've curated all these like movies that they fit into this aesthetic. I wonder whether or not they'll continue to do stuff like that. And Peter Freelander, you know, who we remember from Netflix is in charge over there now, but like, it'll be interesting to see if that streamer in particular becomes less about release dates and more about like centers of interest verticals basically. I think that's a, I don't know if it's smart. I think it is a clever and defensible programming strategy. But I would say that the executive mandates and executives themselves have moved around so much at a lot of these streamers and services that even what we, we have done podcasts where we were like, Paramount plus's central argument for existence is coming into focus. Yes. It's working for them. They found a couple things that work and they're building from them mostly to a shared and and and it's just the shows that fit into that aesthetic. Tell Sheridan's gone under the new, I mean, Dunton's doing very well. No, I mean, I think he's going to finish out a couple of shows, but yeah, for sure. Dunn Ranch is a huge hit. I'm just saying that like he is now moving to peacock. And so what will peacock do? Similarly, you know, Amazon seemed like it was finding some some some fertile ground with the YA stuff and then also the M.A stuff. Terminalist and Reacher and Jack Ryan and like dad stuff. And we don't fully know what their direction is going to be under Peter Friedlander, but I thought it would, but I noted with interest, we talked about this briefly with with Kaya not the show itself, but the release strategy that terminal list I think has been on the shelf and is finally getting a release date for her second season in October. So if they wanted to keep pumping that well until it was dry, they haven't really done it. And that might signal that that's not what they're doing. So I don't know that they just want to get terminalist closer to midterms. Oh, yeah. Oh, are they trying to read the electorate? Do you think that the plight of the white Afro-conner farmer is like going to be a real driving issue in Maine? I just wonder. This is probably a topic for a different show, but I wonder if in I know that when we've talked to Casey Bloyes, like when Casey came on the show, he talked about how he was like, I'm on 20 spring of 28. Yeah, I'm I'm planning out HBO has that thing where there's this baton pass from one show to the other over the course they try to do it usually like a couple of weeks of like docs or event programming or whatever, but you know, you usually have like a Sunday night like show that to hang your laundry on. And I just wonder whether or not as people increasingly find themselves detached from the cable bundle and also watching things almost entirely on their own schedule and entirely up to their own tastes in the same way that like I know Drake put three albums out last week, but in some ways I don't feel like that happened, you know, because in my algorithm, it's just not a huge deal. Do you basically get away from the release schedule as a paradigm for television and make it more about like what we want is to have stuff there so that when people have found a vibe that they like, they can continue to watch things Netflix has explored this for sure. Yeah, but Amazon and their really strong links to the publishing industry, I think is exploiting their kind of ability to be like, this book is hot, make it into a show, this book is hot, make it into a show. So it'll be interesting to be talking about this deep into the Tallerico administration, you know, I can't wait. I think that one of the less talked about in terms of the front facing like actually watching TV show storylines is, are these streamers better serve programming for untapped viewers who will sign up for the service or making deep obsessives of the people who already have. Yeah, and I think that was the Star Trek strategy that Paramount was doing for a while of like our floor is the however many people watch everything that says Star Trek on it and we know that they'll pay for our service because that's what we have. There was some really interesting reporting in the last month and also a good episode of the town podcast about this, which is like Peacock saying, we're getting closer to profitability and then looking under the hood and what does that mean. Yes. And the most interesting thing about that to me wasn't the rise in subscribers and what the NBA has done for them. It's the fact that like a parent, I'm paraphrasing here, but that the churn rate was still very, very high. People sign up and then like they sign up for the NBAC. See how many people cancel after NBA. And so that so maybe the tier isn't the subscriber number, it's the stability number of like how many people you maintain from the people you get at hot times. So the reason why I've always been confused when there seems to be overlapping Taylor Sheridan shows because I'm like couldn't you just spread these out so that there's 12 months of Taylor Sheridan shows and you don't have anybody ever trying to cancel that sounds like a like a white. That's a leap. Imagine setting your makeup then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippie setting mist from Mavily New York. Jelly mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plump, dewy hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippie setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Mabling. Problem. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about Top Chef and just do some after dark, huh? Yeah, do you want it? So we should we just wrap up Euphoria? Oh yeah, next week. You can keep Euphoria. I like after dark freedom. Euphoria. It mirrors Nate's last moments. I mean, we could touch on it. I feel like we should hit it harder next week. Yeah, but let's just I wanted to just say I am up to date on Euphoria as are you? I am up to date on Euphoria. I like to text you to let you know I am. This is the penultimate episode of the season and likely the series, I would imagine. And for the first time, perhaps in this show's history, I was bored. I've been using that as a bit of like a little bit of a metric, but I just found, despite the intensity of the episode, I felt like I had seen these scenes before. Like there had been, we were repeating a lot of beats. And I thought cinematically there was some brilliant stuff in it. I would watch Coleman Domingo and Dendaya as I have in these special that they did where the two of them talk about addiction and spirituality and salvation and redemption extensively. I think that their relationship Ali and Ruse relationship is fascinating. And I thought Ali's
you know, sort of origin story and him going through the pandemic, losing people that he's the sponsor of was heartbreaking and not just heartbreaking. One of the things, I mean, this is a compliment, a compliment about this season of television is that there have been a number of fully formed, pretty compelling television shows just tossed out on the table like stuff you find in a pocket. And the shoot, like it's actually only makes a cameo as a prostitute living with Ali for a while, like the cutting and like the banter and the energy and the electricity is coursing through that is absent when Maddie is on like page like like the 70th iteration of I'm a pimp, but I'm also a manager's assistant, but now I'm a pimp again. And I think ultimately like leans and probably had to like unite the threads in some ways. I didn't know who's going to be Lexi narks out everybody and then Maddie narks out everybody thing I, I just really hit my head against that I was like, I don't think these people would be that naive. I don't think Maddie would be so naive as to like idly tell alamo that Rue is now working for the DA. Yeah, that's fucking crazy. But didn't you feel it coming when she just brought it up her set when Rue blurted it out and I felt it coming when that team went on for a long time being like, obviously this is going to get away from Lexi as she just passes this along and not to carry water for it. I was starting to feel like in this episode. There is a version of or there's a defense of the show baked into the idea that the Holly the Hollywood writer from the comfort of her very nice apartment with beautiful old film posters that she clearly bought it on. On posterity great place to browse no ads, but I like it that all of this madness is springing from her imagination. Well, that was a season two element was like, you know, Lexi writing a play about season two. So, okay, but yeah, I think I had the last time we talked about you for it. I had sounded the alarm that or maybe I when I was kind of monologue about it, which point I on the podcast are in your life. On the podcast where I mistakenly said that Jesus Christ saw the burning bush and not Moses, which goes to show you what Quaker education does for your your biblical studies. Was that the light within was at the burning bush? I I just thought that the crime stuff was starting to reach its it was getting a little high up in the atmosphere and losing oxygen. And I think this has been proven true like bringing together Alamo, Nas, Nate, Maddie, Cassie and by extension, Ru and the Laurie stuff. I just think it's just like he has to do that to end the show, but it just didn't feel as graceful as some of the other moments of this series has for me. I think the biggest compliment you can give the show is that it is a wildly expensive, wildly audacious, improvisatory exercise by someone who had not a blank check but had a lot of open road and a lot of big stars and a very small window in which to get them all together and to see what happens. It's diminishing returns in terms of just compelling entertainment, I think is fair to say. I do want to circle back to the idea that Coleman Domingo is so alive and everything that he does and the show, I don't know if it's a full show, but about a recovering addict who has become a sponsor trying to keep people alive during COVID, I would watch that show. And the short story version of it we got was incredibly compelling and also has something, this is not really a fair audience thing to do I think consistently, but it's, but sometimes I feel like you can feel a creator lean in, you know, to things that are touching the third way. I know that you were like probably rolling your eyes a little bit at that, but I thought that had energy and I thought it had POV and had like, yeah, it had juice and so, and that is a market distinction, I would say, from the scenes that increasingly to me feel like outtakes from like a Bugsie Malone movie where kids are playing dress up. And then you get to the eight part, which is just like, I, I, I suppose on one hand, I can make a defense for it where it's like, you know what, like there is no such thing as character armor on the show and, or plot armor or whatever the term is, but like just because it's Jacob Allordy doesn't mean that he's going to escape from a burial. That was a one of those character arcs that makes you, frankly, wonder like what the relationship between the creator and the performer is aggressive, because he doesn't really have a lot to do other than get mutilated the season and then he dies, you know, and I need your context for this because we touched on this, not watching the first two seasons. I'm completely unaware of that character is a bad fucking guy and like you could say was this justice, but that's the thing is that as Rue and Ali talk about redemption and, you know, how do you feel about like the fentanyl you've brought over is killed people and what, what is, what is salvation and redemption in the eyes of that like, you know, obviously neat, I think that might be what they're trying to say is that like this is a guy who didn't deserve to get out of the hole. I don't know, I mean like that is also like I would be very curious to know what Sam Levinson said about that, you know, maybe at the end of the season he'll talk a little bit more openly about some of this stuff. You know, you can also speak to Allordy's popularity as an actor and his busy schedule and wonder how much of this was like we have X amount of time with Nate and it doesn't work he's not going to be able to show up at Lori's house with two guns to save Cassie or something like that. Here's what we're going to do with it, but that felt like a very small plot like a sub plot that just got extended for seven hours and it's. It was a unsatisfying conclusion to an end of a character is but on the show the entire time I thought I hate the Maddie and Cassie story more. I find it's completely torturous to watch and so so deeply and interesting especially because it just kind of this episode just undoes everything that happened the episode before it's like the she's popular only fans now she's going to be in a TV show now she's not on a TV show now she's going to go back on only and it's like I don't I don't find that particularly compelling drama for characters. There's also just something missing there was like was I thought Cassie was sending Nate money was he not using that money to even put or had she stopped because she was like this is awesome. I'm getting so much money, but I'm still living in like a courtyard apartment. But maybe the money stops concurrent with the brief pause on her only fans account or like people cancel, but like she would have made. I don't I just don't understand like what happened there like the I don't either. And I will say again, you know who you know who's giving one of my favorite performances on the show is Sharon stone. But she's like you're right who gives a shit. Yeah, Brian Grazer cameo. There are a lot of I mean there are a lot of good ideas and good performances tossed tossed out here. But but what is it building towards and I guess it's building towards like most entertainments a massive shootout. Or you know, I've been it ended with like a really good like fuck cliffhanger like Faye. You know a little out in front of her skis intellectually probably a character being like I don't really know who to trust. I feel betrayed by room. I'm going to wake wake up now. There's going to be like this drama. So excited for that excited for the finale. When when you when your face for the choice between an old friend and a Nazi. What can we do it's kind of like voting in a Texas senatorial. Right. Let's do top chef crash out season. Wow. This is spoilers for the most recent episode of top chef. Yeah. I and I would say this up episode was so upsetting Kai is not even here today. Yes. She she has she has taken a personal day to just think about seeker and what he went through. And whether that moves killed anyone. The chicken liver bad day. The moves. Yeah, not the snake. I enjoyed this a lot as television. Okay. Did you enjoy it as top chef. Well, his behavior enough in the after the the elimination cook, which takes place. Yeah. Over the worst of several. Multiple days, but then ultimately they have to cook in the woods in the heat. Yeah, I it didn't bother that part didn't bother me at all. Like I'm excited to talk about it. It was unexpected, especially for show that has increasingly trended towards. Actually, we can go all get along. Actually, I am here to make friends. So to see someone behave in such an unconsidered way was almost refreshing. I do think that the emails we got back like asserting that seeker is actually a pretty cool guy. All of them came from I guess chef seeker. There were people from I think Chicago who are like this. That was actually not representative of who he is. I would say that it is. I mean, he still could be a good guy. I think it is as a temper. Yeah. I would say so. And so to see him crash out was a burst of energy in a show that hasn't had a ton of adrenaline this season. We haven't had a moment like that in years. In years. And the judges were shocked by it. Yes. And it was such an insane hill to die on because as you alluded to, he served melting chicken livers on a hundred degree day. Yes. I think that if he goes back and watches this show, whether he thinks it's edited against him or not, I think he would see.
comes before the fall and there was several moments where, you know, whether it was the whole hog cook that sent him home the first time or this particular one where he was so confident that the gelatin was going to make his chicken was done before because he's done it before, but probably not in the woods with coolers of ice, which one was left open at a certain point. And then I think like him trying to like, in fact, let's go to the tape on them. That was wild. Has never worked in the history. Nobody's ever done that. I don't think anybody's ever been like, let's look at the bylaws of top chef. Also, he's tried to take Jonathan down with him. He's also a good cook. He might be a good guy, as his friends attest. I don't, this is a TV show. And being a good cook and a good guy doesn't have anything to do with winning the very specific peculiarities of top chef, which involve cooking a dish to the rules, but also to the technical specifications and arbitrary likings of a well-established panel of judges. Let alone Vox Populi of like a bunch of people showing up and being like, I don't want to eat that. Yes. You lost on that alone, even if it was well executed, I think. So that, that was wild. And it was particularly wild because as you just alluded to, he shouldn't have been there anyway. Like the show messed up earlier by giving him a glide path back onto the show that almost no contestant has ever been granted the grace of. I don't even know if it was really that much of a glide path. I just think it is the way that they edited the series this year to allow for last chance kitchen to have suspense. Also, meat meant that there was like a three week liminal space of is Jen on this show is see girl on the show. They were caught last chance kitchen. They were caught very off guard by their own rules of a different sort. And I think Daniel Feinberg and a hug reporter has a pretty good blow by blow of the screw up, but basically like continuing to tell Jen that she could hang out for as long as she wanted to, even though she couldn't perform on the show. And also wasn't really lighting the place on fire anyway, created a circumstance where seagr is outright eliminated, skips less chance kitchen where he probably would have been defeated by rota and then acts in this episode like he is entitled to take and see your spot. Yeah, Justin could have just been like, yes, I will go instead of Jen. I will. So all of that, but the bigger issue is the show's clearly just ravage budget is really, really showing up on the screen now. And I know that we spent time two weeks ago being like they never go outside anymore and then they were literally outside sweating, watching their parfaits melt this week. But there's different versions of outside and being outside. And a week in which they go to Asheville, which in some ways is the show at its best, being like as chefs, we have a unique role in the actual part was was fantastic. The Asheville part was okay. And here's why the actual part made me want to go to Asheville 100% successful. Yeah, so if that is the goal to both highlight a place that looked awesome and also highlight its recent struggle. It's going to suggest what we can do and why we shouldn't forget about it. So mission accomplished. In terms of the flow of top chef, I would say an episode in which they're like, we're not going to do a quick fire. You guys are going to get into unbranded vans because we lost the BMW sponsorship and drive two and a half hours to a town in which you will drive by three to four interesting sounding restaurants and eat snacks at one with no judges or the host president felt pretty rinky dink to me. Like have the courage of your convictions and fucking film there or tell Kristen to get in one of these cars and go there too. And don't be like drive by. I mean, this is what I do when people visit LA where I'm like, that's a pretty cool small plates restaurant. And my guests are like, should we go there? I'm like, no, we couldn't get in. Like, what purpose does that serve for anyone other than my own ego? Do you know what I mean? Like that was insane. And then later if you want to eat at 445 or 10 p.m. Yes, you're welcome to it, but I'll be in bed at both those times weirdly. But like then when Roto's like, I made Filipino food because I was inspired by this restaurant. That's my restaurant. Like, okay, could we see it? Oh, you couldn't afford to show it to us. It's a strange thing because a lot has happened the season where I feel like they have been battling the elements. As my wife pointed out the other day when we were chatting about this, she was like, you know, it goes back. You remember the finale of Denver where like people's bread didn't rise because they were cooking on the top of a mountain. You know, like I think about it constantly. This, this, uh, this is not the first time the top chef has made elements in an element of the show. The rain in the Portland season. And there's also, you know, I think I am being a little bit um, we're easily annoyed by, uh, you know, and now everybody switch foods with the person to your left or that was to speak, you know, and now mystery diners are voting and we're not or now, like, there's a lot like, remember, and they're like, and now let us bring out our guest judge for quick fire. A guy no one's ever heard of. Congratulations. Yeah, you really, you really, you really do. The strange thing to me is that Canada, which I know was a passion project for Gale and I have the show go there was in my memory largely shot on a sound stage. Yes, it was. And North Carolina and South Carolina, which seems hot as fuck has been 10 shots, like 10 shoots out, like at a NASCAR track, we're in the middle of a public park or in Asheville in the forest or not Asheville in the forest because they went back to they went back and they cook for the forest on the Appalachian trail with a snake. That just seems like. Why, why'd you guys do that? I mean, I guess maybe they listened to us and we were like, get the fuck outside. And they're like, you asked for it. Now it's hot as shit. And nobody moves, like, congeals. Like, I guess we should take some accountability there, not that we can dictate what Top Chef does. But I just feel like there's been, and Feinberg and Hollywood reported it's a really good piece rights about these two institutions that he, like, I agree with Dan, I wish every Monday had a Top Chef and every Wednesday had a survivor. I would be a happier person if it was like a 12 month, a year thing. But in which night of the Sheridan shows running in this 12 month scenario, they just run on my vision bro. There you go. I think that in some ways, like, they have iterated too much to keep up with maybe perceived Joneses. I don't think it's the iteration. I think I just think there's a there's a budget thing going on that we're not qualified to talk about or even ask about. And I think that the the the answer to the question, if you ask it too loudly, is do you still want the show? And, you know, it is the only reality show left competition show left. No, it's the only competition show on Bravo. It didn't used to be. I mean, project runway. And remember, I was still a fan of work of art, the art world one with Jerry. Imagine love sell it to food channel, like food network. I have no idea. I clearly still works on some level for the Bravo Comcast brand. Yeah. It's just they want it to work in this way. And I think you can see the like, this is a small thing because we watch it. We'll either watch screeners or we watch it on peacock, but it currently the show is this season, the show's premiering on Bravo linear on Mondays at a time TBD each week. So much so that I saw Chris on social media being like, don't forget, we're on at 930 tonight for some reason. Like they're not. Yes, they're not loving that aspect of it because it's getting swallowed up by like summer house stuff, right? I would assume. But I do think it needs a rethink because this, this host and these judges can make worthwhile television. And the finale still could be good. It's not their fault that they tried to iterate by having brothers and a couple and it amounted to nothing. Yeah, I find that the judges have been marginalized this season too. There's way too much noise going on around them. I don't feel like I'm hearing the thing that I love about this show and probably my greatest engagement with it was this sort of run where I think they encourage chefs earlier in the season to cook, quote, their food. Yeah. And to you can think it's cheesy to be like, I'm telling a story or this is about like my background, but it actually produced compelling televisual storytelling to have somebody be like, I've grown up through this, you know, French culinary tradition, but now I'm really going to start cooking the stuff that my mother used to make me, but put my spin on it. Or I'm bringing technique to something that traditionally is very rustic or whatever it is. I feel like Tom and Gale and Kristen and then at various points, you know, before Padma, were really like, you're on top of that fucking impress us. Like do it. And now I feel like there's just been way too many goofy things that have stopped someone like, for instance, Sherry or Jonathan who I just think Sherry's only now starting to be like, I'm making this fritter because this is this thing that and nobody's ever had this before or whatever. And you know, even Lawrence, so I don't think is very like demonstrative about what's going on, but it's been cooking this amazing food all year. I don't even feel like they're celebrating it. I don't feel like they're well because I think that the ceiling this season has just been wildly lower. Now again, you cannot, this is the vagaries of a competition show. You cannot guarantee a Buddha, a Gregory, a Tristan. Drive 50 just had this where it was like all the really great players kind of got voted off. And I think Aubrey's good. But like you just have like at the end, it's sort of weird mishmash of people. Yeah. And I think that there was a moment early in the season where like, oh my god, Rota is another like a Melissa or someone who's just like Melissa King, like who's just like day one, oh my god, you are rising to every occasion and you're surprising yourself. And we're on a generational run here or, you know, you hope for someone like a Tristan who catches fire later. And you're like, oh my god, that Prince was promised was here all along. Yes. You can't guarantee that year after year. But what we're creeping towards now is Lawrence is going to win.
and which is deserving. - I don't know about that anymore. - But what he has executed, what he has done is a very, very technically precise and satisfying execution of what you were talking about, which is like, I grew up eating this kind of food in a Cantonese household, and I am going to be able to execute a version of it that is elevated. - Yeah, like a fried catfish on a bow. It's like really cool. - And he baked the bread. That was awesome. That was an incredibly compelling performance, performance on top chef, in which you, the viewer who can't taste the food, sees the degree of difficulty and can just see that they nailed the execution, and that satisfying as a viewer, the rest of them are just kind of stumbling their way to the finish line. And maybe someone will step up, but I find it very hard to imagine that there is going to be a level of excitement, exhilaration or inspiration in a finale for the way this season has played out. And I don't, I think it would be a mistake though. - I think Rhoda Lawrence and Sherry is a good final three. - It would be a decent final three. - Jonathan's still there, obviously, you know. - The loss of Anthony Hertz, that was a bummer. - That sucked. - But I think that it would be a mistake to walk away from the season and be like, yeah, you know what? Sometimes like, was the guy the one Denver. Like, perfectly like Joe. Seems like a really good guy, good chef, good to see you. - But it feels good. - But like, not necessarily the heights of ambition or technical, you know. - Or maybe not the drama of Broken Kristen or whatever. - Right, so, okay. So you can't guarantee that every year. There have been down seasons in terms of the excellence on display or whatever, but I think it would be a mistake to focus on that at the expense of the fact that the clear, clear, clear diminishment of ambition in budget is hurting the final product of the show. And I don't know what to do about that 'cause we're lucky to still have it. - Yeah. - But, I don't know. I feel like that feels. - I would like to also, like at some point, we have gotten so many emails about the Padma show. And- - Did they have budget? Maybe they did. - I think it might be worth checking out a little bit more thoroughly to see. It's odd that it was running concurrently. Like, yeah. - And not aggressive. - Aggressively. Let's wrap it up there. Monday, this is euphoria finale. - Yeah, and so there's a couple of other shows I wanna check out. - Yes. - I don't know if it'll be from Monday, but we have maximum pleasure guaranteeing on Apple. We have the Amadeus show that is on stars, that is on UK last year. - Watch out, see ya. - I feel like there was, it's probably others. I feel like- - We need to also address the fact that we're getting a lot of new shows and- - It's tiring. It's hard to finish 'em. - Did you watch The Burrows? - I did. - I didn't watch all of it, but I watched like three episodes of it. - Is it weird to see actors that we think of as relatively young people be like- - Talk about this show, this is just like, yeah. - Yeah. - It's very well done though. - A friend was telling me about the show and was like, well, you know, there's a great scene in Bill Pullman's retirement home and I'm like, I'm gonna need you to stop there. - It's true. - It's true. Kai, Sarah, thank you. Kai, thank you, Andy, thank you. - Kai is coming back for the top chef finale. That's why she's not here today. - Thank God. We'll see you guys on Monday. Everybody have a great weekend. - You have a great weekend, yeah. I include you in that. - Thank you. - All the branskies. (upbeat music) - Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Jeldermist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. - Maybe it's Mabelie.
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