‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Season 1 Finale and ‘Industry’ S4E7

5:48Andy Greenwald:Okay, well, so do you want to start with the critique, the commentary, the vibes, or should we just delve right into the...

5:55Chris Ryan:No, I want to do critique, commentary, and vibes.

5:57Andy Greenwald:The fake news that is delivered at the end. The lore. I did text you that immediately. Yeah, I think I had a pretty good answer. Do you... What would... Does this change in any way your opinion on land acknowledgements in Westeros? We stand on Andal...

6:12Chris Ryan:On Dornish ground. Territory. no I mean I think it was a if my if I understood Mal and Joe correctly last night on on uh talk the thrones on house far yeah I think it had more to do with Dorne's only like recently being acknowledged as part of the the kingdom like you know like or but then still wouldn't it have been eight and then there's another one there's like iron some the iron islands yeah those also get like it's just like the Targaryens are politically needing to depend on other people I think so it's

6:40Andy Greenwald:let me put this so it's basically like when President AOC makes Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. states is that because I'm into that is that put in terms that I want it's a cool Tumblr post I listen um okay alright

6:57Chris Ryan:were you satisfied by the conclusion of this season

6:59Andy Greenwald:I loved this episode I loved this season the opening seconds of this episode maybe my favorite 30 seconds of Thrones content ever

7:08Chris Ryan:it's unbelievable Daniel Ings as Lionel Baratheon.

7:11Andy Greenwald:But Daniel Ings as Lionel Baratheon with the shit maester.

7:15Chris Ryan:Yeah.

7:15Andy Greenwald:Looking down on a grievously injured dunk while Miles Davis plays, I believe. Now, just again, a little, pull back the curtain. Your boy likes to relax with a little mid-century jazz going on the Sonos on the weekend. And when I fired this up last night, one time, two times, three times was I like, oh, I see my Sunday vibes playlist has continued. And thus I'm being denied Dan Romer's string.

7:40Chris Ryan:You thought that your music was playing through. Because I didn't,

7:44Andy Greenwald:I still, despite six weeks of the show, just didn't assume playfulness.

7:50Chris Ryan:Yes.

7:51Andy Greenwald:And innovation and wit and all of the lightness, not in tone because the show was quite elegiac and whatever. We have been taught

7:59Chris Ryan:over and over again that there are rules to this shit and that you cannot break. And, you know, I think you could make a completely valid argument that you're like, well, that takes, Having jazz takes me a little bit out of the moment, but it's also this sense of humor and sensibility that I think this franchise has really never had before.

8:18Andy Greenwald:It's just giving me life. I thought that whole scene was so delightful and so funny and in miniature, a wonderful representation of how limitless storytelling in this world could be. I've never felt that. Look at you, you got wet eyes. We carried, well, it could be allergies. I don't know. Um, I, we've covered this show in this universe for well over a decade. And as much as I've loved it, I've never been like, this is, I'm building a vacation home, maybe in Dorne, but you know what I mean? This episode and the way that, that Ira Parker, the sensibility that he's brought to it, keep them coming.

8:59Andy Greenwald:Keep the spinoffs coming. Keep this show going. And for the first time, I was like slightly frustrated that Game of Thrones, like Star Wars, we've talked about this before, is a fictional history.

9:16Chris Ryan:Meaning there's like a there's an end point to what can happen. Right.

9:19Andy Greenwald:Because I don't want one because I want a 10 year Game of Thrones show about Egg becoming a man and then king, which, you know, I know there's some you can spoil things in the future if you want. I don't want to. I don't want to either, but I loved it. And I loved just the wit and the brevity. I love a hard cut from a needle drop.

9:39Chris Ryan:The catch-22 of the way we make franchise storytelling now is that we are over-relying on prequels and fictional histories because the roadmap is so clear, because there's these points along a timeline that we can follow, because for hardcore fans, there's an expectation that we're going to see the Red Wedding or we're going to see Cassian Andor get the plans or whatever it is. But at the same time, there is like a kind of like, there's a limit to the pleasure because you never know, you're never part of an audience who completely doesn't know what's going to happen and doesn't know where it's going.

10:19Chris Ryan:And even with something as sort of wondrous, frankly, as Night of the Seven Kingdoms, you're right. If you want to just read the books or if you just look at like a glancing history of the Targaryen, you know, royal family, you'll find out, you could find out what happens to this kid. Yep. Which makes it, I mean, there's some interesting things that happen with that too, because then you're like, look at this little guy, man. Who would have guessed it?

10:42Andy Greenwald:You know, like. I love it when parent corner comes out with you. All right, kids, see what happens. I wanted to just shout out,

10:49Chris Ryan:you and I are big British character actor appreciators. I know where you're going. So I just want to say, Ings, obviously, you know, he was great in The Gentleman. He's doing a, like, wonderful, flamboyant kind of, you know, just pissed prince who drinks a lot and probably thinks that he should be, and his family should be, the ruling family of the realm.

11:12Andy Greenwald:Or, wisely, is like, fuck that. It's better to be rich than to be powerful.

11:16Chris Ryan:Well, he's, but I think Lionel in this episode specifically and across the series has been the one chirping the most about, like, maybe the Targaryen time is kind of coming to an end.

11:26Andy Greenwald:He does not like those guys.

11:28Chris Ryan:And then Sam Spruill, who I love as an actor. He was great in this last season of Fargo. And has been asked to, not asked to, but has largely had two or three really good lines per episode as he sits back and lets, you know, Baelor and Arian and everybody else cook. His scene with Dunk when he asks him to take his kid on the, you know, take his kid, but not go on the road to come back to Summerhall, learn at Summerhall, kind of be, be his minder in the absence of, of not only Baelor, but of Arian, who's going to be exiled. And he's like, what he's asking has nothing to do with what he's talking about because what he's really talking about is his brother being dead.

12:13Chris Ryan:Yep. And he's just got the lightest wetness to his eyes as he's talking. Like me. And it's just like... the lightest witness that's right it's just pollen uh he's it's just a remarkable job to be like i'm on the bench for five weeks and then when you need me i come in and do that

12:33Andy Greenwald:it is essentially unfair to do what i'm about to do because house of the dragon and night of the seven kingdoms are not the same genre of television show they're set in the same world they're set in the same ip they're set on different points on the same shared historical timeline But it is essentially like comparing the way you can use real estate in a shrinking versus the agency. Like they are different.

12:57Chris Ryan:Shrinking the television show. Yes. Okay.

12:59Andy Greenwald:Or any sort of light emotional contemporary comedy. They're different. And they have different aims. And they have different real estate, honestly, in terms of what they can build out. But I didn't think about that when I was watching that scene. not just a character who had been in the background stepping into the light and deserving the spotlight for that moment, actor and character. But the scene was specifically about how this man feels about the events that have just transpired and his relationship to his children, which predates in the fictional world our understanding of those children.

13:31Andy Greenwald:Yeah. And in that moment, I thought about how House of the Dragon is coming back after a renewed absence, and I don't know who any of these people's children are. Now, I am not the best viewer of that show. I'm not pretending that I am. It's also been a while. Yeah. And it's been a while, But they have, each side of that conflict had a bunch of kids, and then they're all flying dragons, and they're eating each other, and they're conspiring. And they are playing, it's very hard to shake the sense that each of those kids, those characters, is a widget on an abacus of story. As opposed to living, breathing children within a family that has a dynamic that has to carry on.

14:10Andy Greenwald:You know, let me ask you a question.

14:11Chris Ryan:you've worked on different kinds of adaptations in different capacities house of the dragon is obviously based on a um subjective history told from multiple povs but very much a history and and has got a lot a lot less text a lot less humor a lot less maybe even character development i think that there's a little bit more of just description of like this guy was like this and it's not as much working with POV the way George R.R. Martin usually does like in the Thrones novels. And I think in Dunk and Egg, like it's very strictly told from Dunk and Egg's, like even their internal monologues, like are the governing principles.

14:51Do you think that we're maybe seeing something

14:54Chris Ryan:where it's like, you know, we often think what you need is Martin's playbook to get to the end of his scripted kind of first 15 plays to get there.

15:04Andy Greenwald:Yeah.

15:05Chris Ryan:But maybe what you do need is the emotional character development part of it. Like, more than that?

15:13Andy Greenwald:Yeah. I mean, we are still the wrong messengers for this, but I am curious to understand that point better because obviously his writing is quite popular and makes people who, years before HBO adapted Game of Thrones, his writing made readers who may be fantasy averse or thought themselves as fantasy averse fall in love with the books and become obsessed with the characters. And I think that's largely to do with the way he told the characters' stories. And I do remember this from being shouted at on the internet, that those books are POV books that shift POV section to section, chapter to chapter, among a wide variety of the characters we came to know in Game of Thrones.

15:55Andy Greenwald:Yeah. So the fact that that was potentially the, was absent tone, voice, character, emotion, and that had to be backfilled into what was, to your point, essentially like looking like a Kirk Goldsberry shot clock of a dragon war. Not shot clock, shot chart. Sorry, Kirk. It's just a weird stray for him to catch. Apologies. Just like that.

16:20Chris Ryan:I think it was a compliment to Kirk.

16:22Andy Greenwald:I hope so.

16:22Chris Ryan:But possibly not to the writing of House of the Dragon.

16:24Andy Greenwald:Well, leaving the writing out of it, that's what they were handed. That was the brief to fill it out. Imagine the game that went on that created this beautiful shot chart.

16:35Chris Ryan:Well, you see what happened between Condal and Martin, Ryan Condal, the showrunner, and sort of creative driving force behind House of the Dragon and Martin. And I think some of it might be the choices that Condal made, but on the flip side of that, it's like he had to make some choices. He had to make some decisions about what these people would do and say and think in the moments in between the events that we know that they participated in.

16:58Andy Greenwald:And in his defense, someone, you know, I've never met him or spoken to him. I don't think you have either. Like the amount of pressure that he and that production was under from the beginning is immense, immense. Not all showrunners are under immense pressure. That's the nature of the job. But if you do go back and think about the moment when, as you like to mention, you know, the first spinoff didn't make it really past they shot a pilot. Blood Moon, yeah. Or code name Blood Moon. I can't remember

17:29Chris Ryan:what it was actually going to be called.

17:30Andy Greenwald:I think it was TBD what it was going to end up being called, but they never deed. So the, listen, it's Monday. It had been off the air for a minute and part of the return of investment to shareholders was let's get more Dragon up there. And so that was a really tough, I would imagine, creative crucible to put something on the air. Yeah. and by all metrics that matter internally, it's been a success. Like, that first season won the Golden... Did it win the Emmy or just the Golden Globe? I don't even remember at this point, but...

18:05Chris Ryan:It was the first season, and I think it won Best Drama Golden Globe. So... Because that was the... Emma Darcy and Olivia Cooke went up on stage... With Miguel Sapochnick, who's no longer part of the show.

18:19Andy Greenwald:Anyway, yeah, it won the Emmy for a drama series for its first season. I think that's what we were thinking of. I was about to say well it was COVID it was 2024 but the reason I don't remember that is probably the vaccines though right that's probably it that's probably it

18:33Chris Ryan:lucky you yeah I just got another one plus this weekend

18:35Andy Greenwald:can you tell just for fun anyway it's always imperfect getting these things up on their feet but you do get the feeling that there was whatever whatever creative calm George Ira all of our good friends were able to carve out for themselves in the making of this show it's remarkable um it it's completely it's a it is a completely different tone and it is welcoming and exciting and expansive in a way that i just it's just caught me totally off guard yeah

19:06Chris Ryan:i mean i i would uh there's not really much use in speculating where it goes from here because it's quite easy to just find out what the second novella is about um but i do think it's worth noting that i believe they're in production right now on it and that it'll be back probably around the same time next year depending on vfx needs or whatever as this show is sort of proven you can do a lot within this world that doesn't involve needing a ton of graphics a ton of special effects for for dragons and stuff like that i don't want to be spoiled either but it does seem

19:36Andy Greenwald:like they're riding off to dorn and yeah i guess so i would just like to say that would be like drops of god season three for me like too much too much drops no poor stop the drops open the taps.

19:48Chris Ryan:But what do you know about Dorn at the time period?

19:50Andy Greenwald:Who cares? Dorn has good weather, libertine attitudes, and lots of wine. Like, there is plenty of tape of me advocating for Game of Thrones characters to just cut the shit and move to Dorn.

20:04Chris Ryan:And to be under the Tuscan sun. Yes.

20:07Andy Greenwald:Yes. If Arya had gone south instead of east, she would have been like, yeah, the cover. She would have been Nicole Kidman in that famous breakup photo. She would have been so happy. I think things are better there.

20:19Chris Ryan:I think things are quite nice there, you know, but that's not where the seat of power is. That's not where the decisions get made.

20:24Andy Greenwald:Which is also fine. Yeah. Get away from those seats. The seats also are not fixed. When the powerful people who usually fill those seats go to nowheresvilles like Ashford, look what happens.

20:34Chris Ryan:We had an interesting conversation on TTT, on Talk to Thrones, about the casting for this season was so good. it almost makes you annoyed that in all likelihood fin bennett daniel angs sam sproul will probably not if if not not appear in the next season yeah probably not play a very big role because if you're shooting this from dunk and egg's perspective yes and they are on the road away from these people we're not going to get cutaways to see what fin bennett is doing in the free

21:04Andy Greenwald:cities but this is what i mean there has been a move towards in the last few years in in film and in television, you want to control as much as you can control, especially with the costs going the way they are and the amount of, you know, the competition for attention. So adaptations, strict adaptations, adaptations that come from fictional historical timelines are seen in the development process as an incredible boon because you have some guardrails around whatever the kooky creatives you hire choose to do. Or if those kooky creatives are too kooky, you can replace them with other creatives who are still existing within the same lose shoot of story.

21:38Andy Greenwald:This season is so successful on every, by any metric, including just old-fashioned TV metrics of, man, I love this crew. I can't wait for them to get together again and see where their adventures take us, including the villains, including wherever Arian gets up to, that you want a completely free glide path for them. You want them to make this show about these people. At some point, I may actively advocate for this, but I'm not saying, now Ira Parker has proven he can ditch the books. I'm not saying that. They're apparently lovely novellas to pull from, but there already is a part of me, and I'd be very curious about how the internal discussions are going, to build on it, to build further, to...

22:19Chris Ryan:To me, it would be the bigger fear, and I don't think they'll let this happen because I think that they know what kind of reaction there would be, is what happened to Mandalorian, which was a very cool adventure of the week story with a serialized tale about this bounty hunter and his charge. And then they just could not resist bringing Luke Skywalker in.

22:43Andy Greenwald:I think this is a, I think it's a great point.

22:45Chris Ryan:And so I don't think young Ned Stark even chronologically can show up and just be like...

22:51Andy Greenwald:First of all, he can't because the actor who played young Ned Stark I believe is Daniel Aramayo who just won a BAFTA for Best Actor over all of the American gods this weekend. That's right. So he's a little bit busy.

23:03Chris Ryan:I forgot him in the tower.

23:05Andy Greenwald:I don't think the show can afford him. Congratulations. to him. It's kind of reversed though because it's an imperfect comparison or to try and build on but I think what was exciting Mando went free at the first. It was just like Jon Favreau was like this would be cool and we built out and he was inspired by like Frank Frazetta paintings and like the same kind of older genre entertainment that George Lucas was inspired by but then it got then it got caved in by canon.

23:33Chris Ryan:Yeah.

23:33Andy Greenwald:And I think what I'm arguing is this season was shaped by canon And it is, other than the flashback and a few other little filigrees, it is essentially a really, really successful adaptation of a beloved novella. Yes. I'm saying, go. What's the name of the horse that he gives away?

23:50Chris Ryan:Sweetfoot.

23:51Andy Greenwald:Yeah, go ride, ride, Sweetfoot. Eat the apple and go. Eat the apple and go. Let me say it again. The way you say it. That's how I talk to horses.

24:00Chris Ryan:Do you have a lot? Do you go into Griffith Park and just chat with them? I free them. I go up to the horse paths have you watched that show on HBO Neighbors at all? no it's about neighbors in this great country of ours beefing and one of the plot lines is about in Montana I believe some free range folks arguing about where horses are allowed to roam it's interesting do we have rules about that? you know what when you get out west it's like the rules get written by a couple of different people. There's the rules that like -

24:36Andy Greenwald:Are you talking about like Mar Vista? No, but - Where Kaya lives? How far west do you have to go? Kaya doesn't live in Mar Vista. No, Kaya lives in, sorry. Kaya lives on the west side. Yeah. We're not trying to dox our producer here. Sorry. I'm just just like - Don't know how we ended up there, but -

24:51Chris Ryan:17 women at a wine bar in Mar Vista are like, where's Kaya? I was told she'd be here. My favorite wine bar is in Mar Vista.

25:00Andy Greenwald:Oh, also do your woman voice again. I think it was awesome. The shrieking harpy looking for Akaia.

25:07Chris Ryan:Yeah, that was great. Anything else about the show you want to hit up?

25:09Andy Greenwald:I don't know if it's canon, and I just tip my hat to whomever came up with this idea, whether it was George Martin a few years ago or whether it was Ira Parker, but the twist at the end that Egg did not get permission to go.

25:22Chris Ryan:Yeah, there's a couple of nobody else was there, so nobody knows what happened moments. I think the Egg not getting permission. Right. I asked Joe and Mal if it's possible that Maycar's okay with this, but is presenting to his, like, the collected assembled court. He's like, oh, where's my son? Damn it.

25:44Andy Greenwald:That's kind of interesting.

25:46Chris Ryan:It didn't seem like that. You know, Sir Arlen didn't knight Dunk, or at least doesn't seem like he did.

25:52Andy Greenwald:Incredible scene.

25:55Chris Ryan:And Egg has not gotten permission to go with Dunk.

25:58Andy Greenwald:Yeah.

25:59Chris Ryan:So how much will these moments that only one or two people were present for in the first place wind up impacting the totality of the story. Probably a lot.

26:07Andy Greenwald:As someone who, you know, was really birthed in the crucible of Grantland.com and really defines himself as being the nexus point of sports and pop culture, are there any famous...

26:17Chris Ryan:I'm literally wearing a band t-shirt and a hat. No, I know.

26:20Andy Greenwald:And a fleas hat. You're so unique in Los Angeles right now. There are no men over 40 with that particular combo.

26:27Chris Ryan:How many guys do you think right now in this city are wearing a baseball hat, a band t-shirt, and watch Night of the Seven Kingdoms in its industry last night.

26:36Andy Greenwald:Literally everyone at school drop off just to start local and then building it out.

26:41Chris Ryan:Would you say this is a top five show for you? Does it feel like a top five show without obviously seeing the next nine months of television?

26:48Andy Greenwald:I think it's a top 10 show. I think we'll see. But I just wanted to leave on the idea. I want to leave the way the show left me, which is the feeling that really special first seasons leave you with. Yes. Where you just can't believe they touched lightning and they made it work the way they did and all that hard work and years of development and then a year of post-production. Did you have any critiques of this episode? Of this episode? No, I was just delighted by it. There you go. I was delighted by it and it helped, you know, we were talking about this in terms of, and we're about to talk about it again, in terms of covering shows week to week without going ahead.

27:25Andy Greenwald:In the fullness of the season, whatever criticisms I had about the brutality of the battle or the flea bottom flashback are now weighted with how the show ends, which just helps you, it just helps you understand what the journey was all along. And so I am less critical of that. You know, it didn't, when you're watching week to week, there's a sense of that kind of savagery and violence and also flashbacking stuff. Oh, are two roads diverging here? Is that where the show is going? And it was just kind of a quieter beginning. No, the show reestablished what it is with its anachronistic needle drops and its sense of humor and Night of the Nine Kingdoms and all that.

28:03Andy Greenwald:And it is one of those feelings that we're chasing, whether it's the pit or whether it's the bear where something kind of comes out of nowhere. This was obviously heavily hyped, but in terms of what it ended up being, it absolutely surprised me. Yeah, it was heavily hyped,

28:15Chris Ryan:but I don't think that anybody... I mean, to bring back the feeling of those early Game of Thrones seasons but in a completely different sensibility. Yeah. and to make you feel like for 30 minutes or an hour or whatever that you're like completely transported while also making like little jazz jokes or digestion jokes or whatever. It's...

28:39Andy Greenwald:The deal that... The deal with the devil that shows make over time is that sense of what you're going to earn back on your investment and like the big market spikes. And with Game of Thrones, I haven't done a rewatch, which, and I wonder... Bill is. Is he? Well, I'm curious what he'll say about it because the real attraction of those early years of Game of Thrones and the way it was marketed and sold to HBO fans was more the, yes, it's fantasy and swords, but it's people in rooms talking and it's the same kind of infighting, backstabbing as The Sopranos or whatever. Yeah. As the show went on, whether it was...

29:17Andy Greenwald:At the beginning, it was the quiet murmuring of the book crowd saying, just wait, just wait for some big shit coming. and then you get the sense of one of those big things is about to happen and then the Red Wedding would happen and the world would feel different and TV would feel different. But the equation over time is there's going to be a big thing. There's going to be a big event. Wait till the dragons show up. Wait till this battle occurs. Wait till, wait till, you know, Hardhome or whatever it might end up being. And we are already in that place with House of the Dragon. Whether it's because of the type of show it is, whether it's because of the way we had covered Game of Thrones.

29:49Chris Ryan:It's even the way they structured the second season where it's like, obviously you guys are marching off to a battle. And if you just cut to after the battle and we just see a battlefield, I think people are going to be pretty disappointed.

29:58Andy Greenwald:And I think that if you did a poll of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms fans, I think they are excited to see the further adventures of Dunk and Egg. Yes. And is there going to be another big jousting tournament or a fight? I couldn't care less. I think that there's,

30:12Chris Ryan:because of the Knight Squired thing, I think that these guys did a lot of tournaments. You know, like I...

30:18Andy Greenwald:Oh, there's opportunity for those things. But I'm saying there's no fan who's like, I'm tuning in because of blank event or the expectation of a noisy event. That's just not the relationship with the show. And that is so successful, both in terms of the quality of the show and honestly in terms of the production budget for Netflix, Paramount, HBO, whoever's going to end up paying for the show.

30:39Chris Ryan:This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. It can be hard to do your own thing when everyone else is following everyone else, but that's what some of the best films are about, an outcast striving to make their own way in the world. and this is your sign to be that outcast from us from vw from the other outcasts out there take a chance make the most of every day and don't be afraid to veer off course every now and then because if you don't do it now then when learn more at vw.com hbo has a little bit of a recipe where they do a huge penultimate episode and then the finale is a coda i think we kind of learned that all over again on sunday night where i would consider that's a pretty significant episode of Industry.

31:23Chris Ryan:Yeah, I agree. And one that I think had the best handle on the more genre aspects of the series and show this season was seen in this episode. So this was called Points of Emphasis, written and directed by Mickey Down and Conrad Kay. And I kind of divided our talking points here up into different pairs and different characters and storylines. Would you like to say anything at the top?

31:50Andy Greenwald:Yes, I'd like to give an opening statement. Pam Bondi voice.

31:55Chris Ryan:Hold on, let me get my burn books.

31:59Andy Greenwald:Quite the opposite. Let me say I thought this was an outstanding episode of Industry. I think this was probably the best episode of the season. It was a joy to watch. I'm excited to talk to you about it. Like I was saying about the finale of Night of the Seven Kingdoms, it helped me recalibrate some of my concerns or feelings or whatever about the previous. run of episodes. I also want to bring it in conversation. It's something that we said on Thursday. I'm sure everyone listening listens to everything we say. So this might be redundant.

32:28Chris Ryan:Give them a little refresher course.

32:29Andy Greenwald:When we were talking about the pit, we were talking about how one of the true expert moves of veteran writing staffs is being able to take the temperature and be cognizant of the temperature of a potential future audience. I brought it up in context of, I was noticing that people were starting to turn on Santos. And this week, right as that discourse was happening, independent of the show, online, Reddit, whatever, they give her a moment to showcase a different side of herself, her humanity. She sings. We reach a similar place with Dr. Al-Hashimi. Last week, I think the same episode Thursday, we were talking about, I think constructively about some of the things we missed about the show or the way the show has changed or industry might be hitting different.

33:12Andy Greenwald:And one of the points I brought up was how the construction of the show in the first seasons with PurePoint gave characters and thus the audience an opportunity to go off book, to go home, to present a different part of themselves away from the office. Those parts weren't necessarily better, shinier, nicer, less manic or less staged or performed. Yeah. But they were different and it gave us different insight and a different tempo. I said that about like veteran shows. And then this week, industry gives us Harper and Yaz's Night Out for the Ages.

33:48Chris Ryan:That's interesting that that's the first thing you jumped on as what to talk about.

33:52Andy Greenwald:It's not. I think we'll end up talking about that. But I was just noting that as someone who I think is, of the two of us, more of an anxious watcher of everything.

34:04Chris Ryan:But when you say that, what you mean is, if it doesn't feel good, you immediately note it. Like you're not like they might correct this in 10 seconds or 10 minutes.

34:13Andy Greenwald:I begin to, and I am prone to catastrophizing perhaps in everything, not just in cultural criticism, but that it feels like they were whether intentionally or unintentionally. And it felt intentionally because of the, you know, Eric and Harper living and working in the same claustrophobic space. They were moving away from that dynamic. Perhaps with, and I think you made it this point articulately, like that's actually the point that their lives have now just become, um, they're perpetually on this nightmare hamster wheel. Um, and there is no distinction anymore. And so I felt reassured, I guess I want to say, not because it did the thing I wanted it to do, but because it was a reminder that we have showrunners who are thinking big picture, who are just trying to, uh, execute the day's trades.

35:00Andy Greenwald:And that's not, I was into the episode well before that, that scene happens, in the last quarter.

35:06Chris Ryan:It's almost like a coda for a different version of the show. Yeah. Or like an homage to a different version of the show. I keep going back to what Haley said to Yasmin in the elevator a couple weeks back, which was nobody gets out of this alive. Yeah. So that can mean many different things, whether it's actually death, murder. As it has already

35:30Andy Greenwald:on the season.

35:31Chris Ryan:Or it can just mean the version of yourself that you thought was true is dead. And I think maybe that's more of an example of what happened to Eric in the previous episode. And we are watching it take place with Henry in this episode. So let's start with the two people tearing Henry apart, which is Whitney and Yasmin for different reasons. Yas and Henry, they opened up the episode with a, that was all the money we had. Henry and Karen Hill argument. Not even an argument. It's just really like these two people looking at a letter that is essentially a death notice for Henry's life, career, future.

36:14Chris Ryan:And by proxy, Yasmin, who has attached herself, has become Lady Muck.

36:19Andy Greenwald:Yeah, that was interesting. I don't think there was any indication that she hadn't changed her name, but I think there's a moment when Harper says her name. I mean, I think that

36:28Chris Ryan:half of the benefit of marrying somebody like Henry is to be like, I'm Lady Muck now.

36:33Andy Greenwald:To put your name in the muck. Yeah. I mean, what could be better?

36:36Chris Ryan:I thought that the best line in this little exchange was, why are we talking about money again? The public perception of my morality is on the block. Take this with the spirit as intended or whatever he says, but nobody gives a fuck about how you come out of this was perfect because it is the two elements of that class of person that that's sort of like, yeah, I'm landed gentry to the extent that I understand the British class system, which I don't, but not only does money not matter because there's always money. There's always been like these, there's been a couple of times in my life where I've been around somebody who's just like, well, money, like we can make the money.

37:10Chris Ryan:Every other conversation I've ever had is like, well, we don't have the money to do that. We don't have the money to do that. I don't have the money to give you. I don't have the money to make this happen. And then there were like six guys who were like, well, money, you can just kind of.

37:21Andy Greenwald:Blink twice. Are those conversations called the rewatchables? No, I don't mean Bill. Okay, I just, this is safe. There's no one, no one's listening. Very generous guy. Say it, say it's camera one.

37:34Chris Ryan:It's a Marvista over there.

37:37Andy Greenwald:He's thinking about investing in wine bars, Kyle.

37:39Chris Ryan:I just thought that this was incredible because it's like, of course, somebody like Henry, his concept of cash or like what's in your bank account is completely divorced from Yasmin's, even though Yasmin also comes from a publishing dynasty. But it's different. But she's like alone now, you know, her father's dead. the family member when the person that Claire Fulani played earlier in the year is obviously like that part of her life is gone she's no longer an investment banker or working in the financial sector she's trying to make a name for herself as a comms director kind of

38:11Andy Greenwald:she is not Harper as is mentioned at the end

38:14Chris Ryan:she is not but it gets down to also like the important thing for Henry is that she understands that no one cares about Lady Muck yep and most of all him, you know, like take this with how it is intended, but like you're not the main character here. I think that whole scene was pretty close to brilliant

38:36Andy Greenwald:and in execution writing and performance. And I was drawn to the subsequent lines because again, one of the things that I think we've always really admired about the show is that Mickey and Conrad are exceptional at writing to the moment, but they also write to the rafters. they write to you know in the British theater it's called The Gods you know we're sitting really high I don't know if you've you've been to the theater quite regularly yeah they are writing for they are not unaware of the medium and the recent history of the medium that they're writing for and so they know what they're doing when they have a character like Henry say I am a good person sure that is everyone from Don Draper to the dude from Low Winter Sun

39:19Chris Ryan:Marty from Ozark looking in a mirror

39:20Andy Greenwald:being like Walter White I will just say what is at stake here? The guys from Bloodlines. Keep going. He says, I'm a good person and the world will tell that back to me. Otherwise, what am I doing here? Yes. What am I for?

39:35Chris Ryan:Why be a good person unless you get any gratification from being a good person? Unless you get any affirmation from being a good person? All validation is external.

39:44Andy Greenwald:Yes. Which, as people who work in the media on camera, we know nothing about, certainly.

39:48Chris Ryan:But this is actually, I mean, I don't think, maybe they did, maybe they didn't. I basically hit pause on this because I think what this show gets at sometimes is like what would your morality be if there was no reward for it? If no one was watching. Yeah, well, what would you do if what this season has been about, perception, points of emphasis, the name of the episode, the story, the narrative, the television show, who's going to write this if it's in a red top or if it's in a broadsheet or if it's on a blog? How does that change what happens with the narrative. Like, it's not about this is the right or wrong thing to do.

40:26Chris Ryan:It's about how will it be perceived.

40:27Andy Greenwald:Well, so, and so directly to that point, Jenny Bevan's journey is that she's the government minister who, when tempted with the apple in the Garden of Eden, basically, or the snake, literally a room full of snakes, and she can get out of this alive if she buries her mentor. and she has

40:51Chris Ryan:Lisa Dern

40:52Andy Greenwald:played by Chloe Peary who we like a lot as an actor she says she can't do it not for and no one will know that that she didn't do it she has her dark night of the soul moment there and she decides she has to be moral the outcome is indifferent yes the outcome what happens happens anyway and she is the perception from her mentor and friend is that she was the one with the knife in her hand. She gets the roses and she says, you know, she says like, you're basically a Tory.

41:23Chris Ryan:She says, congratulations on your, on your like promotion or your career, you Tory, yeah.

41:28Andy Greenwald:So that is an example of what, what benefit do you get if you have a quiet moral victory?

41:32Chris Ryan:Yeah.

41:33Andy Greenwald:Everything externally is still the same.

41:36Chris Ryan:On the other side of Henry is Whitney. Mm-hmm. We've talked a lot about Max Mengele's performance this season. I think I've been a pretty vocal fan of it. Yeah. I thought he was extraordinary in this episode. And I think that as Whitney becomes more apparent, as he starts to step into his true role, Minghella's performance is loosening up a little bit. And I loved the first time Henry and Whitney, it's in the office after Henry's read this letter.

42:12Andy Greenwald:He's like, say all the things you have to say.

42:14Chris Ryan:And Whitney's like, get this off your chest because I need your head clear. and kind of beautifully shot by the way

42:19Andy Greenwald:behind glass we're watching it already between another partition

42:22Chris Ryan:and then Whitney is just sort of spinning seemingly in real time this pure point merger acquisition that he wants Tender to conduct one of the great observations of this is that compulsive liars are always like I'm telling the truth starting now it's a big thing like to be like everything that we did before led to this point at which point we can now become the Goldman Sachs of the 21st century if you just believe me one last time and do this thing with me.

42:49Andy Greenwald:Yes, all great empires were built on some type of fraud.

42:52Chris Ryan:And what we find out is that even in that moment where he's like, I'm the fucking man, I've been buying all these synthetic positions in Peer Point because I'm a financial genius, we find out at the end of the episode, complete horseshit, complete bullshit. And that they were just trying to basically push this over the line to get this to a place where, whether it was the US or England or the EU or wherever it was going to have to be audited and all the jurisdictional problems that they were going to have with the sort of regulation of this company, by the time they got to the point, they'd be like, well, it's too big to fail now, right?

43:23Chris Ryan:Like we have, there's too many Gen Zers out there who are first coming to us with their banking needs. You know, it's like complete bullshit, but it's actually like sounds very close to things you read about in the newspaper.

43:34Andy Greenwald:There's a, let's talk about this scene. There's a quote that is also, I mean, there were a lot of quotes to be pulled out and printed out. Maybe we should just do that for when we finally decorate the studio. Just quotes from industry. Get a dot matrix printer and just print out inspirational quotes from industry. Just something that says

43:49Chris Ryan:you can't construct a universe where nothing is real. Or just something about

43:52Andy Greenwald:like your husband's cock and big like zap chancery. You know, which podcast is this? Oh, the one they're not putting on Netflix? Now we know why. No, Whitney's quote, there's a misalignment between the velocity of my vision and the velocity of regulation. And then later it says that gap is where smart people have always made money. Probably right. That's true. That's how you write a liar. You give him some truth. Yes. I also really appreciated sometimes, sometimes like it, you know, what is it when something in history rhyme? You know, like when the art meets the moment and the way that Kit Harington physically reacts to the words jail time, the week that Prince Andrew has been, you know, arrested and made to feel real, potentially real consequences to a life poorly lived.

44:45Chris Ryan:Yes.

44:45Andy Greenwald:was interesting because there is a as you said there's always more money there's always more it's really just about perception and validation we joked last week there's always a harpsichord for him to go back to but jail time cuts through

45:00Chris Ryan:I think it's jail time I think it's also you can't claim naivete twice like you can't do loomy yeah yeah yeah and then do tender I'm just a well intentioned I'm trying to make the world a better place Kit Harington's what the fuck face where it looks like he's got acid reflux of plum wine coming up through the bottom of his soul. And the way he looks at him when he says, Yasmin thinks that when they're on the plane later on, he's like, Yasmin thinks you have footage of us.

45:35Andy Greenwald:Yes.

45:35Chris Ryan:And he's like, footage of you doing what? And he's just like, you know, in a compromising position. And Whitney kind of just like looks at him over his glasses, which I didn't remember him ever using before and just goes, what do you think? And Kent Harrington's just like, yes. And that means he's so fucked because it was such an immediate yes and he says it with such defeat and Whitney's just like, then you have your answer. And the way he says that back to him is so non-threatening and just kind of like, this is obvious. Will you just get to the fucking board here that we're playing the actual game on?

46:10Chris Ryan:I just thought that whole exchange was so great And the two of them have developed over the course of the season this incredible intimacy, even when they're fighting. Well, so much of love on industry is spoken through the language of fighting.

46:23Andy Greenwald:Yes. Historically. Yasmin and Harper, great example. Exactly. So the intimacy is intimacy. And in a world that is so deadened to the possibility of real feeling, real emotion, real intimacy, hatred, anger, that's currency. And that's been a core belief of the show all along. the show also got back to some of its more elite needle drop tendencies we moved on from the Yasmin and Henry scene where she comforts him but then is awake all night well a promise by When in Rome plays I did wonder when Whitney before they get on the plane says like one last time believe in us one more time did you think like that would have been a good place for a Hamilton needle drop for the George Washington like one more time song

47:05Chris Ryan:I think that might have been a little bit more abrasive than jazz in A Night of the Seven Kingdoms though.

47:10Andy Greenwald:I'm just making up the ideas here. I'm just pitching you stuff. There's just something about this episode where I just felt like the fellas grabbed hold of all of the threads that they had unleashed into the world. They grabbed hold of them and wove them and wove them in a way that was consistent with the season because this episode had the pulse-pounding conspiracy thriller.

47:34Chris Ryan:It's got Whitney in the garage with Ferdinand being like...

47:37Andy Greenwald:It has that energy that they've been chasing all season and they've been very public. And I don't know who was in the back seat with him

47:42Chris Ryan:in the Jeep that they pull Whitney into in New York. It looks a lot like Corinne Redgrave, who was, in my mind, I remember from In the Name of the Father as the detective who basically, I don't know, I just didn't see that actor's name. But that was just a great face to have in the back seat where he's like, you basically exist with their permission.

48:04Andy Greenwald:But even that energy is shot through the peer point meeting And so they have that. But it also had these larger series-long themes of death of innocence, of overwhelmed kids trying to survive the death of late period capitalism.

48:27Chris Ryan:He's just like, let me go. He's like, well, how about you guys let me get on a plane? And that, you know, it's like an almost like childlike, what if I told you that a dog ate my homework kind of like response to the Russian mob or Russian government being like. And there is a looming feeling of that, that, that again, that rhymes with our life that you cannot escape.

48:48Andy Greenwald:You cannot put your phone away. You cannot be untethered from the marketplace. You cannot move on. You cannot quit things. Eric is proof of that this season. And you could sort of, like, this is also the glory of storytelling hindsight, but like in the glow of this episode, Eric, once again thinking he could fly very, very, very close to the sun and remain mostly unburned, feels different, hits different. Yes. I appreciated that.

49:18Chris Ryan:My read of what Ferdinand is saying and one of the things that I love about the FSB subplot of the season is that they're not explicitly laying out things because I don't think that would benefit the characters who are speaking to explicitly lay them out. But my understanding based on the show, but also based on like reading about Wirecard, similar kind of actions that the FSB is alleged to have taken. I don't know why I'm being so careful. Who are these people with money? I haven't read my ad yet. It's the FSB.

49:53Andy Greenwald:My God. Want to make friends and influence people? Yeah. Great.

49:57Chris Ryan:Is that it's the success of tender is secondary to the survival of it because what they want is the personal spending habits, financial information, social security numbers. What are you spending on vices? What are you doing? Like, you know, I think Whitney mentions Tender has become like this huge banking app for younger people. That's probably very attractive. So, like, I don't necessarily think they're looking to collapse the Western economy as much as they are looking to manipulate the people who participate in it.

50:30Andy Greenwald:The thing that is really, really resonant and horrifying and compelling about contemporary spy fiction, and this is why we keep talking about Oliver Harris, a writer that we love a lot, is because he and this storyline in industry are reflecting the reality of a world in which traditional espionage is irrelevant because everybody gives it away. It's all being given away. Oh, my God, yeah. for free. So it's just a question of who is able to receive the data and then play with it. It's not about getting the data anymore.

51:03Chris Ryan:Honestly, if people want to see something extraordinary, it's not like the Wirecard. It's not as rooted in financial malfeasance or moving numbers around. Joshua Yoffer wrote a piece in The New Yorker a couple weeks ago about the rise of the single-use agent in the wake of the

51:18Andy Greenwald:Russian war. Oh, the story is amazing.

51:19Chris Ryan:The story is fucking incredible. It's basically about a bunch of people now that There's been this incredible explosion of refugees leaving young people who have left Ukraine, but also all of the open border running around that's been going on in Eastern Europe. that Russia has been using people in dire straits, using multiple cutouts so that it's never actually traceable back to like the lieutenant at the FSB who wanted me to light an Ikea on fire in Warsaw. And it's all being used over Telegram and it's all like go to a bus station, pick up this duffel bag. Just move this bag to a different place.

52:01Chris Ryan:And leave it there and then I need you to drive a BMW across Latvia, you know. And it's an extraordinary portrait of like also, So, on the other hand, they want Russia in this article is like, well, we want you to know it's us, but we don't want you to ever be able to prove it. And we want to keep what we're doing below the level of a military retaliation.

52:24Andy Greenwald:It's TaskRabbit for terrorism. Yeah. Everyone who works in any field has had a version of the conversation in the last 10 years where it's like, well, we're all Uber drivers now. Not to disparage Uber driving. It's just to say that all of us who used to think we were part of some sort of safety net, we're all just gig workers who will never retire. Even if you have a podcast.

52:43Chris Ryan:But it's just a fascinating other side of it to what the sort of wire card, more high finance world is. This is more like guys just getting on buses in Poland because a telegram message told them to.

52:56Andy Greenwald:Guys in band t-shirts and sports hats? Or you don't want to incriminate yourself? I want to stay on the FSB thing for one moment. Oh my God. I mean, I know that's where you're going. This is my guys. is that what your hat is you should wear an FSB hat the way Rob Lowe wore the NFL hat I'm just a fan of when the game is played well I'm a fan of the great powers

53:15Chris Ryan:I love Putin sticking with his roots you know I think that there are by the way I did not fall out a window this week just so you know

53:24Andy Greenwald:nor did you have any desire to come close to radiation

53:28Chris Ryan:my breaks work great that's right

53:31Andy Greenwald:you just made vacation plans very smart Not funny. Not funny, but, you know. So I am still not fully, look, clearly from just what we were just saying, I love this shit. And I want all shows to be spy shows, whether they are actually spy shows or not. I still, I still am kind of on the fence about the necessity of Whitney going full FSB asset and wanting to go off-grid with his Lithuanian passport this season. Let me talk you through this, because I think it's possible that some fans of the show bump on this aspect of the storyline because it is pushing the show so fully into a different realm, though history and news headlines prove that these realms are actually very much built on top of each other, particularly in the last 20 years in England.

54:28Andy Greenwald:Because I love to sit there and come up with speculative other versions of the thing that I'm given, which is not necessarily a good way to deal with art. I was thinking about a longer play in which the completely fraudulent roots of Tender and the FSB manipulation of Whitney, that's a season five thing. Where because the story is rich enough, just purely as Gatsby-esque financial fabulism, that it works. And then you don't have this other drumbeat knocking increasingly louder, are taking the focus off of some of the other stuff. But as I was watching this, I was also realizing I can't advocate for that.

55:06Andy Greenwald:And then also cheer Mickey and Conrad on for understanding the reality of the moment from a television industry sense, meaning future isn't promised. You have to tell the best version of every story you can all the time. And it kind of reminded me of the fact that like, though we like those guys and vibe with those guys when we talk to them, there's 10 years between us and it's kind of like talking to any, like, because we're cusper Gen X people, but like full millennials are under where you make a reference to maybe owning a house one day and they're like, come on, dog. We all know that will never happen.

55:43Andy Greenwald:And so I kind of feel like that generational divide is relevant here. Because of the nihilism? I think they're getting a season five because the show is doing really well and everyone's happy with it. But I think the attitude, which is not wrong, of we have to burn it all the way to the, we can't go home tonight. We have to burn the candle all the way down.

56:01Chris Ryan:Also, look at all the people on this season who have, I mean, they had Anraj at the, at Harper's They wouldn't even mention it. Presentation. They had Kenny come back and do the trading for Harper's position. They brought Eric back. They brought Rishi back. Like, Whitney, I mean, the only thing I would say about Whitney is that he said, if you see me without my phone, it means I'm dead.

56:19Andy Greenwald:Yeah. So that No, I think the Whitney story is a contained story. Yes. As much as anything is. I'm just trying to, I was trying to advocate both sides of the position. which doesn't work. You either, as Harper said, let's just short things or let's not. I just think that that is, generally, I think they are operating under a smart TV principle. It's just funny because there's still a more conservative part of my mind where I'm like, settle in. Yes. Settle in now. You've got the job. You're not auditioning anymore. You mentioned Whitney going full Lithuania.

56:51Chris Ryan:I think it'll be interesting to talk to the guys about whether or not, like to what extent is Whitney like a, I am a self-aware agent of the Russian intelligence services? Yeah. Or was he hopefully guided by Ferdinand to basically be the inheritor of what Ferdinand became, which was like, hey, I just thought I was getting promoted a lot for handing over some personal information, and now it turns out that I am a lieutenant, you know, in the FSB's mission to get a handle on Western finances. I want to get through a couple of other things in this episode. One is, I have the note, Yaz takes over the family.

57:32Her use of that word was fascinating.

57:36Chris Ryan:And also just a great piece of writing because I think for the longest time in her relationship, but her relationship to Alexander has obviously developed over the course of the last two seasons with Henry. Whether or not you think that what she's asking for is to create a new bottom for Henry to find, because he'll never get better unless we fully destroy him. We have to destroy this version of him for him to survive. Or a more, a different way of looking at it would be to take what she's talking to Harper about at the end of the episode and say, well, is she not laying out a path for herself to do that, to feel in control, to feel a part of things?

58:18Chris Ryan:There's a lot of competing moments in this episode. her conversation with Jenny Bevan on the phone almost feels like she's not ready for prime time like she's like don't yell at me you know like and so in some ways like she still is making this personal she still is sensitive and vulnerable

58:36Andy Greenwald:makes the phone call like a killer and completely comes undone when truth is stabbed in turn

58:42Chris Ryan:what did you think of that manipulation there's a lot of language being thrown around like red tops which refer to newspapers like the sun which I didn't know I was still carrying the

58:50Andy Greenwald:The wire is a term for red and blue tops.

58:53Chris Ryan:So there's red tops, which are like these tabloids that I think are a little bit more salacious. Yeah. You know, are more salacious than say like the times or what have you.

59:02Andy Greenwald:By the way, I just glibly said, oh, I thought it was like the wire. This was an episode that reminded me again that it's not an invalid point to suggest that industry is making moves towards becoming a kind of UK the wire. It kind of is. The way the tendrils have snaked into every aspect of British society. and the way that Yasmin's appearance in the Red Top newsroom with, what's the guy's name? Character's name is Kevin. Character's name is Kevin Raleigh. It's Pip Torrens, who's an actor. I think he's been on The Crown. He's a recognizable face. He's incredible. It's one of the show's unsung or lesser sung attributes that it just finds these faces, these talents, these great actors to step in and become someone in relatively small amount of screen time.

59:47Andy Greenwald:But that scene communicated those two scenes. I mean, if you pair them, Yasmin and what's the uncle's name? Alex. Alexander. Those two scenes talking about how we started the conversation, the divide between work life and home life and there is no divide when the money flows freely between all of it and relationships are indistinguishable. Visits to a private home aren't categorized, but visits to an office are, but what's the difference when business is being done at both? The way that everything is snaked together is so, so, so compelling and dystopian and kind of horrifying. I thought that to bring it back to your original question about Yasmin and Alexander when she's like very innocently saying I believe he's touched cocaine a few times and perhaps heroin you know and the way that that plays on him is such a phenomenal character moment from Risa Bella it's also like

1:00:37Chris Ryan:the descent because in Alexander's mind probably a bit of booze and yeah that's all adultery is like one thing yes and then cocaine is like well so he's off the wagon and heroin is like well what are we talking about that's a new level There's also a nice bit of very subtle harmony between this scene.

1:00:57Andy Greenwald:And then is it later in this episode when Yasmin with Harper says, wasn't it nice to be 17 because people would do things for you? Yes. She's still a little girl in this way. And so this scene with the older figure, he does this for her. She manipulates the uncle. So the people still do it, but that is still her understanding of soft power. When do you think she made the decision to do this? during the needle drop of the promise when she's lying awake all night.

1:01:23Chris Ryan:The letter, yeah. I think that idea is that she's been awake all night thinking about what to do to him. Yeah, exactly. She doesn't necessarily know at that point about Pure Point, Al Mirage, and Whitney trying to go to New York and do all this stuff, but I think that that's the moment where it starts to go in that direction.

1:01:39Andy Greenwald:I mean, again, there's an argument to be made that Mickey and Conrad are steering the ship in such a intellectually challenging and uncompromising way that they leave a lot, that they leave a lot for the viewer to fill in. There's also a more conservative take on it, which is they just leave a lot of meat on the bone. Yeah. That the Harper-Yasmin, I don't know what you'd call it, coupling, duopoly, whatever, there's more to it in the sense of that is only made explicit in the last scene where they talk to each other about it, that if there had been more opportunities this season to show them reacting to similar situations in such wildly divergent ways, it might have primed the pump a little bit more because Harper, like, across two seasons, Yasmin has made very, very bold choices, but in a way pragmatic choices to secure the bag or the bags or the ability to buy more bags in the future.

1:02:40Andy Greenwald:the marriage of convenience that sometimes becomes conventional and veers into protection, caregiving, love. Whereas Harper is devoid of any of those instincts and her marriage with Eric is purely, purely mercenary and stays that way.

1:02:56Chris Ryan:I will point this out. Yeah, please. Their night ends at a nightclub where they dance in a beautifully shot sequence.

1:03:04Andy Greenwald:To Daft Punk.

1:03:05Chris Ryan:It's the third dance sequence that we've had this season. none of those dances have ended well Haley and Dyker Henry and Whitney Harper and Yaz I personally do not buy Harper and Yaz are the emotional core of this show and their relationship is the thing that matters the most in this show that's always been a little bit like convenient I think it's like a way to sell the show and I think it's clearly like Mahala and Marissa Abella are friendly and they have a relationship that they return to over and over again over the course of the series. The only time I ever bumped in this episode is I'm like, what do these two text about in the interim between these intensely emotionally tender moments and almost killing each other?

1:03:56Chris Ryan:Are they like, hey, damn, have you been to Lamb's Conduit recently? They really did a nice... What do they talk about?

1:04:06Andy Greenwald:It's a nice road. I do like going there

1:04:08Chris Ryan:I just like there's like a little bit of a thing there where I'm like it's not that I don't buy it as much as I would not take that dance as being like we're BFFs

1:04:19Andy Greenwald:because I think the spirit of the show that you could look at the first three seasons as a trilogy in a way but really every season is more like The Wire in that it reshuffles the deck and tells a specific story to that season if the show were more conventional and if everyone was being more explicit about the idea that the fifth season will likely be the last, which I think is probably safe to assume, not by any internal knowledge, but of the sense of like how long people work on any one thing anymore. So if we were to think of the show that way, then I guess this is built. You could say, oh, we're building towards a season where Harper and Yasmin finally join forces and they tear down the establishment of old world money and old men, everything, through Harper's financial wizardry and savagery and Yasmin's communications genius.

1:05:07Andy Greenwald:It's not that show. Yeah. So I think you're right to say that. And so the more relevant line is the line about like, what does she say? We're here forever, even if we can't be. This was literally putting an emotional memory pin in a beautiful moment because we may never get it again in this, certainly in this season, but probably in this series.

1:05:28Chris Ryan:They shot those dances very similarly where it's the two people in a sea of bodies, spotlit, coming together at a moment of incredible volcanic change in their lives. I just think it's interesting.

1:05:41Andy Greenwald:I think that one of the things that has appealed to us about the show from the beginning and what we joke about and say like, oh, it was primarily a vibes show is that the people making it and the characters are intensely pre-nostalgic. That they live moments with the inflated like gladiator-esque sensibilities of something that will make a core memory as opposed to the way things actually happen. And it's written that way too. Like this is praise. People don't talk like this. Like I think that is accepted understanding of the discourse.

1:06:11Chris Ryan:I love many things where people don't talk like that. Yeah, exactly.

1:06:13Andy Greenwald:I mean, people like David Mamet plays or Michael Mann movies or - Harold Pinter. Yeah. That's not how people talk, but it reflects how people feel and how people are and how we conceive of things and remember them.

1:06:23Chris Ryan:You have to understand, you don't have to understand, I'm not trying to be pedantic, but like you have to understand like there's a way in which the style that you imbue your characters with when they talk or how they talk can be truthful if not true to life you know so it's like Aaron Sorkin characters say the things that I think people wish they were clear enough of mind to say at any given point to dress down a boss or an authority figure that way or whatever it's mammoth's repetition is how speaking in the world sort of sounds, but it's highly, highly stylized. So I don't really mind. It's paintings, not photographs.

1:07:02Chris Ryan:I don't really mind that part. Anything else from industry you wanted to hit?

1:07:05Andy Greenwald:Did you enjoy Wilhelmina eating McDonald's?

1:07:08Chris Ryan:I thought it was amazing. Amazing.

1:07:11Andy Greenwald:When she pulled the rug. And also like a very funny joke

1:07:15Chris Ryan:about how if you guys weren't so busy being like bisexual secret agents, you might just be able to like do this job.

1:07:23Andy Greenwald:This is what I'm, first of all, brilliantly said. Put that on our new wall of quotes.

1:07:28Chris Ryan:She was just like, I'm having a fucking quarter pounder and like totally played you and it wasn't like 4D chess. It was pretty simple.

1:07:35Andy Greenwald:This is what I was saying when I was struggling with the Eric appearance on CNN, where I was like, Eric and Whitney are, this is maybe a good place to say this. Like, it's not just that they're speaking elevated language. It's like they're behaving like lunatics in a arena uh, arena that is supposedly reality, like great lights, television. And, and I, I struggled with it when the host of the CNN program was like, well, that was another great segment. It's like, you, you, you just had like an art happening. Yeah. Like you just had an, a, a, an improvised, like Donmar warehouse freak out. And you're like, well, Scott Jennings, what do you think of that?

1:08:11Andy Greenwald:Exactly.

1:08:12Chris Ryan:Like, yeah.

1:08:12Andy Greenwald:The Wilhelmina scene was what I think I was looking for. And it came a little bit later. And then that's also the argument for considering something as a full season because they got their card pulled. They're playing at glory holes and spycraft.

1:08:27Chris Ryan:Somehow Pierpoint has returned.

1:08:31Andy Greenwald:Make the meme.

1:08:33Chris Ryan:Make the meme. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. It can be hard to do your own thing when everyone else is following everyone else. But that's what some of the best films are about. An outcast striving to make their own way in the world. and this is your sign to be that outcast. From us, from VW, from the other outcasts out there, take a chance. Make the most of every day and don't be afraid to veer off course every now and then because if you don't do it now, then when? Learn more at vw.com. This episode is brought to you by TaxAct. Like analyzing plot twists, TaxAct guides you step-by-step to make sure you get your maximum refund.

1:09:13Chris Ryan:Get tips along the way, add expert assist to talk to tax experts, or let our experts do your taxes for you with expert full service. Tax Act helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. This episode is brought to you by the Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases with it big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game or grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases.

1:09:48Chris Ryan:Say it with me. The Active Cash credit card from Wells Fargo. Be a 2 %er. Learn more at wellsfargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. Anything else you wanted to talk about in the world of Andy Greenwald? My world? Or, you know, let's get to a little watch after dark. I gotta say, I missed the Olympics more or less entirely. I did watch a highlighted version of the USA-Canada hockey game. Hits diff when you're watching Shorzy. This season of Shorzy is very much about Canadian pride.

1:10:21Andy Greenwald:Did you feel, what was your rollercoaster of emotions when the good old US lost some teeth but won the match, won the medal, and then your guy Cash Patel is in the locker room? Did you, how'd that make you feel?

1:10:33Chris Ryan:Good? I was in a basement with Ferdinand talking about data sets and some opportunities to advertise on this podcast. Honestly, honestly, we've got our producers look at it. It's very expensive real estate in Mar Vista. So we may have to make some compromise. You should call your guys.

1:10:49Andy Greenwald:There's four or five guys you've been in a room with. I am fascinated about this.

1:10:54Chris Ryan:What if we find out Kaya's real name is Arena? Yes.

1:10:56Andy Greenwald:This has been the longest. This is essentially the FSB version of Siberia is to cultivate these two.

1:11:03Chris Ryan:Fake pictures of her in Big Sur being like, love hiking. In fact, love sending guys across borders.

1:11:09Andy Greenwald:I just hope. Burner phones. Kai, in this version of your life, which is thrilling, by the way, I hope that you've been given other tasks that fit your station within the post-Soviet hierarchy. Can you imagine if Putin was like, you must go

1:11:22Chris Ryan:and record a long-running pop culture conversation show.

1:11:25Andy Greenwald:What these guys did in bars will eventually become relevant. Yeah. Eventually. It does explain our longevity.

1:11:35Chris Ryan:Yes. It's incredible. Honestly? Yeah, we provide a useful data set.

1:11:39Andy Greenwald:Of? guys wearing band t-shirts and sports hats. Like the last great frontier to crack America. We must go at people who are excited for the replacement when they try to find

1:11:52Chris Ryan:pressure points in my life and they're like, it looks like he likes the Sixers. Again. And hardcore.

1:11:58Andy Greenwald:He alone represents our interests.

1:12:02Chris Ryan:All right. Well, okay. So Thursday, the plan is we are going to do the pit. Yeah. We're going to have a special guest. Oh, we're going to talk Wonder Man. We're going to finish Wonder Man,

1:12:12Andy Greenwald:which I have done and I recommend everyone does. It's a great show.

1:12:17Chris Ryan:Sunday night, we will put up our industry finale recap, probably with a special guest appearance from Vladimir Putin. Go on. Rebut some of this stuff that's flying around about him and the New Yorker. And that'll go out on Sunday night and then, you know, the usual watch shenanigans over the course of the week.

1:12:36Andy Greenwald:It would be incredible if Vladimir Putin went on a sports podcast just to talk about like ice hockey. Like if he's just like, I'm not here to talk about any of that other stuff. You know what I mean? Like he's just here to talk. I'm just trying to imagine Putin on Bill. Just balls and strikes. Bill's like, who are your guys? That's Marin. All right. All right. Putin on Marin.

1:12:55Chris Ryan:Bill making Putin listen to 32 minutes of Jalen Brown talk would be the fucking greatest thing that this country has ever done.

1:13:01Andy Greenwald:So wait, let's game this out. So it's just like when you took back some of the Ukraine, it's like when Danny Ainge stockpiled picks in return for Paul Pierce. Right? Like there's some version of that.

1:13:14Chris Ryan:And Putin keeps trying to talk about like Russia's historical imperative to take over a nation. He's like, but you know, you're missing a point. And that's what Jalen's been doing on a night-to-night basis. And I don't know if you've noticed, but he's scored 38 points 29 times. What if Putin,

1:13:29Andy Greenwald:because remember, Putin is a master of flattery. Like he is a spy. So what if he's just like, Russia is better with Ukraine. It just is.

1:13:37Chris Ryan:Oh yeah.

1:13:38Andy Greenwald:It just is.

1:13:38Chris Ryan:Oh, I thought you were going to mean like he would come in and he'd just be like in Russia like we love the Celtics kind of thing

1:13:44Andy Greenwald:in Russia Celtics love you like the old Smirnoff joke now I want to do Putin on like we won't do it now but Putin on many podcasts because I did I apologize I went straight to the Marin of like who are your foundational guys or like Marin telling Putin about the time he auditioned for Lorne Michaels and Putin having to be like well sure you know I had to sit through Yeltsin's cabinet meetings you can imagine

1:14:03Chris Ryan:thanks to Kaya or is she

1:14:07Andy Greenwald:this is the one that has legs

1:14:09Chris Ryan:Thanks to Kai. Thanks to everyone for making the show today. We'll be back on Thursday. Pit, special guest for Wonder Man. Sunday night, industry finale recap and more exciting stuff next week.

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