‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 4, ‘Star Wars: Starfighter’ Casting News, and ‘The Eastern Gate’ Finale

19:48And it'll just be a saccharine Star Wars movie, I bet.

19:51Andy Greenwald:It's just the difference. I mean, one of the most profound differences between the entertainment that we were raised on in the entertainment that my kids or even younger kids now are raised on is that we saw stuff that was about adults. And we were like, okay, we'll find our way into that or it's something to look forward to. And everything now is for kids or to keep people feeling like kids or to have you looking backwards instead of forwards. Right. That's what they've done to us. Landman's not. Do you think Landman is aspirational adulthood for adults? It's about... It kind of is. Yeah, yeah.

20:27Are you excited about the lowdown coming next month on FX?

20:30Andy Greenwald:Yes, I really am. We'll be talking about this show ad nauseum, but it dropped its first trailer. If you had to describe the vibe, this is basically... Ethan Hawke's character is based on, I think, a real Oklahoma kind of character who is a journalist, conspiracy theorist, kind of... A truth historian. Yeah, and Ethan Hawke, it looks a lot like The Long Goodbye. it looks a lot like you know Big Lebowski looks a little bit like you know it has kind of a what if there was a really cool private detective mystery but we set it in Tulsa and surrounded it with this incredible gallery of characters it's Hawk, Tim Blake Nelson, Keith David I think Ryan Kira Armstrong who's going to be the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer is in it.

21:16Gene Triplehorn back? Gene Triplehorn yeah.

21:19Andy Greenwald:Tracy Letts Oh yeah Tracy Letts is in this You ever heard of him? Killer Mike? Yes. Macon Blair? Like this is, Dinklage shows up. Like this is a pretty sick cast. I can't be impartial about this because we, I, we love Sterling. We love Reservation Dogs. Big Hawk guys here. But I also have to say, like the way you are passionate about the overall Sheridan project of promoting big oil in the guise of entertaining television shows, I am completely invested in the idea that a funny, smart filmmaker could be like, I like Altman and I'm going to do it. I'm going to bring you a vibe that has historically not always worked in the streaming era and I'm just going to go all in.

21:59Andy Greenwald:And everything about this trailer is designed for me to be excited about it from Kyle MacLachlan being in it to just the entire, just the tenor of it and the idea that he had enough juice within FX to be like, I'm going to cast the most interesting people and have the most possible fun with it. I think the trailer looks so sick. I'm very excited about this show. But I also want shows like this. Yeah. Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.

22:39Andy Greenwald:So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice? I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyer's rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat, and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard-bought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy. High-performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal-to-the-metal human horsepower for the streets.

23:14Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it. This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy, introducing new NOS Energy Grand Prix Guava. For those that want to be fueled up and fired up with 100 mile an hour tropical tasting power, ignite your taste, start your engine, shift your flavor to high gear with new NOS Energy Grand Prix Guava. Hit the street, grab a can and get after it.

23:39Andy Greenwald:This episode is brought to you by ADT. One second, you're enjoying your day off. The next, your phone buzzes. A window's been broken at home. You're miles away. In one second, everything can change. That's why ADT security systems can monitor your home 24-7. They're backed by the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry. So you're always supported during an emergency. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com to learn more. Well, let's talk about what FX has on the air right now, which is Alien Earth. Okay. uh observation uh co-written by noah holly with bobek s farjani and it was directed by ugla hawk's daughter um who i think it's another credit later in the series yeah uh the sixth episode that's such a cool that name i believe means daughter of the hawk i did an awesome job on this i thought i thought this synthesized the dreamy fading in and out like dissolving uh visual style that they've adopted to distance themselves from the Scott Cameron Fincher style that we reassociate with Alien.

24:50And yet I felt like this was the most TV of all the episodes that they've done so far. It definitely was. Where everybody kind of gets a five to seven minute scene, kind of get an update on where everybody's head is at. There's some alarming business going on all across the board. and the moments and beats, especially between a couple of the characters, I actually felt, even if they were synthetic or hybrids or cyborgs talking, kind of like started to click a little bit more for me here. I still have reservations about some of this stuff. What did you think of this episode?

25:23Andy Greenwald:I want to pick up on what you're saying because there's no question this is the most quote unquote TV episode thus far. It is also the tax you pay on the ticket for an adventure action movie being brought to the small screen. The first three episodes were smartly an alien movie with this Lost Boys synthetic hybrid plot glommed onto it. And inevitably, this was going to be a step back in terms of pacing and tone. I can look at this, again, from a design perspective and be like, that is very smartly done. This is the appropriate place for this. If we are going to be spending time with these characters over the course of a season, potentially multiple seasons, we need to get to know them better when they are not being menaced by facehuggers facehuggers or et cetera.

26:07Andy Greenwald:The issue I had with the episode was that I don't particularly like spending time with any of these people now that we are spending time with them. And that's a TV problem, you know, in the sense that instead of, I can appreciate what's being shown to me on the whiteboard of ideas. And, but that little, the secret sauce that we were talking about with something, you know, obviously more intentionally throwback like the pit is missing. I'm not saying they should be the same show. I don't want to be misconstrued here, but when the, are they both named Sylvia? The two doctors who are married? Uh, they are the, yeah, it's Damon Arthur Sylvia.

26:47Andy Greenwald:So when they had their, you know, other than a brief moment in the pilot, I think this was kind of their first them talking without anyone else. Their hard lunch. Yeah. Hard lunch as a couple. Your science teacher and your psychologist are getting married. That's very sweet. Or they already are married. But it did feel, I understood again, in the whiteboard placement of it, why they had their, are we really sure we should be ethically doing what we're doing here moment? But it did feel a little rote to me because I don't have a deep sense of their personalities. I don't feel particularly invested in them yet as people.

27:17Andy Greenwald:There's time to do it. I'm not off the fence, but I felt the grinding gears of that conversation more than I was able to relax into the cascading waterfalls of narrative story. Yeah. if this show was led by and featured in almost every scene either Timothy Oliphant or Babu C. Say what would you be saying about it top 10 of the year this is such a great way to frame it there are still these things on screen I'm like this he's so good as this character you know that like bitchy icy but still like I mean it's capturing some of the charms of like Ian Holm or Lance Henriksen and like that kind of like you're a human, but there's something missing.

28:03And the hair that, you know, like everything, every choice that he has made and is making. Now, sometimes you're like, that was a little bit Raylan Givens or that seemed a little bit like sassy for a robot. But I am finding like his curiosity, his like watching of people to be as effective as anything he's saying. And then Cisse, who's playing Moro, the one who's essentially been trapped talking to slightly for two episodes now is still like the most compelling thing on the screen.

28:34Andy Greenwald:Let's just take a moment to praise him as an actor because he is just doing one-sided monologues in various settings. And I find him so magnetic. Yeah. And I find him so charismatic and compelling. And he's able to do a very difficult acting trick, I think, where it's not just that he's selling us on the, on the, essentially the monologues he's giving us. But I feel myself being psychologically manipulated by the character in that we are all slightly when he's talking and I'm like, well, you make some pretty good points about who owns what. Yeah. You know, I, I think he's so fantastic and in a, it's hard not to, you can, you can accept an ensemble show and we can, you know, accept where it's going, but, um, or, or that there's room for people to pop out or whatever but there's something that i do feel is missing where i kind of wish it was ultimately i can't believe i'm saying this the cyborg versus the synthetic versus the hybrid maybe that's where we're going i think those three characters have the most uh what's the word i'm not allowed to say riz um i think that uh that that's a really good point because you don't actually see the three of them or even very many combos of two like it's been a minute I think even since Kirsch and Wendy have interacted that much and that is essentially the triangle that I'm most interested in as well the three different kinds of these next step of evolution forgive me for not remembering the name of the character but the bald guy who follows Boy Cavalier around and says are you sure you should be doing that sir what did you think of the philosophical conversation that he had with Hermit, the Alex Lothar character, where it's like, is that my sister?

30:22And he's like, well, that's what we want to keep you around for is to figure that out. I think broadly, whatever they've done with Wendy is pretty remarkable, but they seem to have like, I don't know whether that was like a lie that he was telling Hermit or that if it actually is important to them that humans need to not be able to distinguish whether or not the hybrid is or isn't their relative, friend, whoever.

30:50Andy Greenwald:Let me turn this back to a question for you. How do you feel generally about a show that is at its core, and I respect it, about these terrifying aliens eating people, ripping them to pieces and coming out of their bodies, that is kind of, at least through four episodes, lightly flirting with bigger thematic questions? For example, are corporations people? Yeah. Do governments work? What makes a human human? All of these things are present in the text. If we could just talk to aliens, would we be like, what's up? What's on your mind? Yeah. We do subway takes with them. What's your date? Just fucking chompers.

31:31Andy Greenwald:100 % disagree. 100 % disagree.

31:37Andy Greenwald:I currently am still getting my arms around. because Noah's a smart guy and he wants to play with these things and he's pushing them in the middle of the table and I think it's again in the spirit of Trojan Horse Prestige TV this is a very smart way to do it because at the end of at the end of every episode there is a xenomorph basically but how do you feel about these questions kind of being sprinkled in like do you feel compelled by the question of is this your sister I do not yet feel necessarily compelled by the thematic stuff that's going on I guess I don't necessarily but I do find it interesting that like all of the even of our a lot of our contemporary tech bros are interested in transhumanism and like what is the next step of evolution and much as i i'm like we have plenty to solve right here in this moment um clearly that's where they are what they're interested in is the future and so it's interesting to watch holly negotiate some of the moral and philosophical and ethical and also just like visceral emotional reactions because you have to imagine certain things like that and you have to imagine what would happen if the memories of somebody and their personality traits at a fixed age were downloaded into someone who would at once physically never get older but I guess what we're seeing with nibs and everybody's sort of like pubescent you know different like sort of like what happens with you know if you have somebody like Nibs who has PTSD and is going through, I guess, a mental health crisis even though she's a robot?

33:14Andy Greenwald:Or she's been implanted with an eyeball monster. Or she's been implanted with an eyeball monster. What happened on that tower and in those fights that those synthetics had, hybrids had, with the aliens that we're not seeing and we don't know yet? I do, I'm finding the, for budgetary reasons, for tribute to the original franchise reasons, the show, for such a big show, it does have quite a narrow focus. Yeah. There really are eight people locked in this building together, which seems to be, you know, again, a nod to the franchise's origins. Something's going to get loose within this building now.

33:49Well, they've got a baked in excuse. It's like nobody can get out because we can't have anyone knowing about this. Although a spaceship did crash into a skyscraper, so. Fake news. Yeah, sure.

34:00Andy Greenwald:Fake news, buddy. Come on. All of that is, I get it. And I think it's a smart fix, again, for the canonical timeline problems that this would create by saying this is all one story, but no one ever knew about this event. But I think within the people, the participants of the show in the tower, I guess what I'm looking for also is a little bit more of a variety of perspective. The boy cavalier character has felt pretty frustratingly stunted through four episodes because he's just annoyed that he's smarter than everyone. He's like, I am Peter Pan. And he's like, I'm going to do these things that are very, very, very Noah Hawley script things because that's what I'm doing.

34:40Andy Greenwald:I'm going to read you Peter Pan book. I'm going to walk around barefoot. I'm going to see an eyeball monster take Ryan Gosling drive a sheep and be like, this is fascinating. And I'm like, what science do you do that you find this fascinating? The only reason I like that scene was that he was getting annoyed that the sheep seemed to be looking at Kirsch instead of him. I like that. Yeah, like I like that he gets jealous of the, you know, of Kirsch and the concept of anyone being smarter than him. Also, I'm not going to shit on how cool that scene was. Like that was really, really creepy. It was very disturbing.

35:13Andy Greenwald:It was cool and made cooler by the idea that we are POV of the eyeball alien and that it is, what does Kirsch say? Highly intelligent. Yes. It was tracking them. That seems cool. Yeah. But there's just, what do you think? because you've been more patient with the show, you like the franchise more, you watched that previous episode more than one time. Do you think, as a long-time viewer of television and critic of me, what do you think I'm slightly bumping on and what is your solve for it? It's because I'm not disliking it. I haven't given my heart to it yet. I mean, if I may, I think you often, and I do as well, have issues where the POV character, we either lack one or the POV character is marginalized so that we don't really get to live experientially or like vicariously through.

36:04Like Hermit should be the star of the show like in a different version of this show. Hermit should be like, what is going on here? Why is my sister like this? I'm trapped here now. Like he should be the person who's kind of leading this investigation. I think when we go and flip between what's Kirsch doing, what's Morrow doing, what's Boy Cavalier doing, what are the Sylvia's doing, it kind of messes with the idea of like who knows what. And it messes with what is important about the show and what is the show trying to say. I think it's throwing a lot of ideas at the wall. But right now, I think, well, I wonder whether or not if this guy has been marooned in this strange new world and is learning about it every episode.

36:43Not in a mystery way, but just in a way of... I think I find myself getting distracted by things like, did Moro go to India to find Slightly's family? is more in a Thai or Siam cafe and outside. And does anybody know that a spaceship crashed into the earth? That would be pretty big news.

37:07Andy Greenwald:Side note, I love the exterior location shooting of the show. It's so good. Do you like when the Sylvias were at the White Lotus? I'm just vibing out. I think I'm just vibing out with this. And I did not expect to because they're in the first two. I was like, this is not my alien. This is not how it works. and I don't really find it like mind-blowing to watch uh Wendy sing to an alien and pet it like a cat but I haven't seen that before really you know I mean I guess there's a little bit about in Resurrection but it's really interesting like even the idea of like well of course these things have to communicate somehow right like yeah um I think you're right about the point of view perspective characters I think that when you build out a world like this that is like Ripley such a great POV character.

37:52She is like, I am capable, but what the fuck is going on?

37:56Andy Greenwald:And you get her humanity and it's a shorthand and you're off to the races and you don't have to think about it anymore. To his credit, I think Noah's solve for that is Hermit and Wendy's childhood bond and love of Ice Age or whatever. That's not clicking for me. Me too. So because of that, I feel a little bit at sea where I am entertained, I'm intrigued. There are moments when I'm like this is really working, but I'm still looking over my shoulder a little bit about where to make all of this, to even be fainting in the direction of all of this, these headier concepts. I mean, I don't think it's unintentional that there was a lot of talk about transitioning and you were this and now you are this.

38:36Andy Greenwald:And how do we know where the line is? Like to his credit, as an artist, he's running towards some pretty big concepts. But in those moments, I do find myself super norm core basic criticism I'm like okay just ground me in what humanity is in this time and in this world it's interesting that we're getting annoyed about like wider world building where I think the wider world building he's doing is like production design but not like oh yeah like the kids talk about the five corporations that took over the world or the four or whatever I mean maybe it's just we're just like old men who want to hear a little bit more about I don't know.

39:16Andy Greenwald:It's partly that, but I do think it, and this will be interesting to watch as well, is that like Noah's very earned and deserved success in TV has come from dropping Mike Big Statement seasons. He hasn't had to do since his, I mean, Legion did three seasons, but like not since The Unusuals with Jeremy Renner on ABC, has he had to build a show that potentially could go multiple years with people that you become more and more invested in. And I wonder if what I'm either looking for or picking up on, like Wendy's hearing, is the potential friction between I'm going to drop the mic with my statement about this world versus corporate factors and amortizing investments requiring this to continue to evolve beyond this season.

40:03I haven't watched ahead, but the next episode is called In Space No One Ellipsis, and it's written and directed by Noah Hawley. So I'm very curious to see what that one serves up.

40:15Andy Greenwald:Can I ask you one thing? Is it a me problem or is it slightly intentional that the end of this episode where the baby xenomorph jumps out of Hermit's lung? Not really strong security glass, I would say, in that lung chamber. This is a big thing that I have about this. But I want to know why. Obviously, Kirsch knows what's going on with Slightly. He knows that. And he's watching this happen. So he was curious. And he watched this happen. And what is the experiment that we're doing? Exactly. Right? But then when it gets into, like, Nibs doing that to Dame Sylvia, when she, like, leaps across and, like, grabs her, I'm like, is there an off switch here?

41:00Like, what is, like, for the, like, Like, theoretically, I would imagine there would be more, like, controls over that. But maybe that is also part of the experiment. Like, these, like, what triggers them?

41:10Andy Greenwald:The layers of glass between the aliens and the people and the hybrids and the larger world and larger city is an interesting framing. Because some of it is intentionally porous. Because exactly, where's the experiment? Who's standing outside of it? The question I wanted to ask you about my own damaged brain was, did the end when it jumps out immediately make you think of the scene in Spaceballs? That was my reference. There was an element of it when it came out, and it's on the table, and it was looking at her, and she was looking at it, that I really thought I was going to start going, hello, my baby.

41:40Andy Greenwald:And I would have respected the hell out of it. Also, do you know that I was this week years old when I realized that that was John Hurt again? Because I saw Spaceballs in the theater with no knowledge of the Alien film and didn't remember or know. Oh, my God. Is he in Spaceballs? I haven't seen Spaceballs in forever. That's the thing. I hadn't really seen it since in the theater 30, almost 40 years ago, 40 years ago. And that was my introduction to a movie about aliens jumping out of people's chests. But in the movie, they're in Spaceballs. They're at a diner. Oh, and John Hurt's, yeah. It's John Hurt.

42:14Andy Greenwald:And he goes, not again. Shout out John Hurt. That's good. Incredible. All right. Well, we continue to watch intently and we'll talk about it next week. let's chat a little bit about the last couple episodes of Eastern Gate now this is probably we brought this show up a couple weeks ago we were like this show is insane it's so good I think when we first spoke about it this is a Polish spy drama on HBO Max it's six episodes if you haven't watched it stop listening to us and watch it it's sick stop listening to us go to your HBO Max controls change the language to original Polish put the closed captions on enjoy it and then when you fire up and just like that later and carry speaking in polish yeah it makes more sense uh so when we first talked about this show i think that i threw out a couple of comparisons like 24 you did you were on that you were like oh okay that's what you think this is like and you know maybe you were thinking this is more le carré this is more you know kind of like the dense the lies we tell each other kind of personality espionage uh like individual espionage and i was like no i feel like this like she's beating people's asses every 20 minutes like i feel like this is an action show and i think that we were both right yeah um but the final two episodes which are awesome and so stylish and so cool and very, very, very, so everything in these three countries is happening in the same two-block radius involving all of the characters from this show.

43:58Andy Greenwald:It's amazing. It's very 24, but it's like 24 if Alan Pakula directed it. Yeah, I definitely was a little suspicious of your comparison until I realized what you're saying, that it is a hero's journey show. The fact that everything is falling on Eva's shoulders and all of the determinants of peace in our time are also connected to her personal relationships or personal failings. Yeah. I don't think I appreciated that in the first few episodes to the degree that that is what the show is setting out to do. But I also, that made me, when I finished the season, I was so, so, so impressed by the artistry involved to make it feel so earned, right?

44:41Andy Greenwald:That she is the avatar for all of this cross-border suffering. Yes. And that the show absolutely works as both. It is a kick-ass, star-driven, and this is a star performance by Elena Gora, but that it is incredibly dense. We're going to get to that. Just hold your horses. Drink some water. No loud. That it is also an incredibly rich and rewarding and complex spy story. and also is like a perfect one and done season but they set up for multiple seasons and it is renewed it's coming back um all right so this will further conversation about eastern gate will spoil the rest of the before we spoil it yeah if you're still listening this show is making our top fucking tens this show rules it's knocking on top five for me i this show is so good this went from when we brought it up being like well here go here go your fun uncles again talking about a polish spy show to being like, you guys should watch this show if you're interested in good television and also the type of television that should be a benchmark for what gets made in many countries.

45:47Spoilers going forward for the first season.

45:49Andy Greenwald:Okay. She shot her man in the head, dude. She is just like, she is really, really, really him. Do you remember like, it was like pre-YouTube, but the rumored footage of Stefan Marbury playing basketball at Coney Island. The game will change. That is you crushing tape on Eva. There's a scene in the final episode, I believe. It's early in the episode where she is interrogating. This is so cute. You're like, I don't know, maybe it's the final episode. I don't have it open on my desktop right now. I haven't taken 30 screenshots of her torturing a Russian nuclear scientist. No, she's just like standing around in this interrogation where she's actually beating the shit out of this woman, but it's her and...

46:45Andy Greenwald:She's not beating the shit out of her. She throws her on the ground and puts a gun to her head. She comes at her. And says, do you want me to kill you like I killed your son? Look, fog of war. Things get said. It's the same as in a podcast. It's just trash talk. That's exactly right. It's just Bance. I mean, if Kevin Garnett was mic'd up, how would we feel about him? Probably the same. No, she's like, I will take off your handcuffs if you behave. And she's like, take them off. And then she comes at her and she's like, I had to teach you something. Yes. I had to teach you a lesson. And then that woman, Tamara, who's the dirty bomb scientist, she's like, well, you got me.

47:16So here's all the information. Here's everything. This is a very complicated plot of Belarusian, Russian, Poland, NATO, the East, the West, internecine fights between various intelligence services within countries and outside of countries, but essentially boils down to a long-hatched and planned plot between two brothers who grew up in an orphanage and are trying to essentially exact revenge against the West. And it turns out one of the brothers is Skinner, who is Eva's partner in the Polish intelligence service, but also her lover. And that is a tough beat for a variety of people, including Eva and her nephew, Kai, who's now an orphan.

48:09Andy Greenwald:And? And now indoctrinated it to be. Hey, you know what, man? You're kind of Russian right now. No offense. Yeah, no offense, Kai. I'm just picturing like side talk in Kalengrad. You know, just like super pro Russian dudes. Hey, yo! Just screaming. Waving flags. Oh, my God. Among the... Because here's the thing about the show. Pushkin's birthday! That's what I'm saying. We all know it by heart. Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing about the show that is so compelling and why we like it. Because Jan Maruchinsky, who directed it, I guess show ran it. It's in the blood. You know what I'm saying? She just got the kielbasa out for that one.

48:50Andy Greenwald:There's just a little, you know... You can take the boy out of Eastern Europe. Take him off the steps. Or the boy's family could be expelled from Eastern Europe, whatever. But you carry a little bit of it with you. He wrote and directed a master class in how to do espionage on television from a character-forward way. And we are going to talk about that, and we love that. But I also find this show to be just an incredibly fascinating, illuminating, and deeply disturbing treatise on how war works in a post-truth false flag universe. Yeah. That what we are seeing, and we talked about this when we first mentioned the show, that like immediately the show is compelling because it is a show set on the edge of whatever East-West conflict we are headed towards.

49:40Well, it's almost a period piece for the current era that we're in. That's right. Yeah.

49:42Andy Greenwald:But that everything, Set in 2021, right? The ways that it is, it's set in the, and we talked about this before, but it's set at a moment when it was clear Russia was going to do something to advance its agenda or to expand its footprint. And in one universe, ours, it's Ukraine. In this universe, it is potentially more aggressively going to be Poland. And both can be true, which is a fun thing to think about. But the idea that the aggression and the threat of Russia is both deeply baked into a history that we are just, you know, bopping around with our labubus completely ignorant about, for the most part, But that also the danger comes from the filthiness of the fight, that all of the energy that Russia is using in this fictionalized story to take over parts of Poland, to rattle and potentially break NATO, none of it involves people in Russian uniforms actively causing aggression.

50:40Andy Greenwald:It involves tricking Polish officials to be in the wrong place when cell phones are out, when they flooded the zone intentionally with migrants to inflame tensions and then have Russians dressed as Polish. Like, it's very complicated and it's very terrifying because what are you supposed to do? Once in the series, the minister is like, gotcha, you aren't playing fair. We see who's there. And the guy's like, OK, well, you got me. And then they do a bigger version of it and it works. because how often, and I wish there was some analogy to contemporary political parties that I could pull from, but how effective is it to be like, well, that's just a distraction.

51:16Andy Greenwald:Right, and within the world of espionage, there's like London rules and Moscow rules. Yeah. There's various, like, there's understandings that you do do this and you don't do that. The tidiness of the Le Carre Cold War universe. I think that they're, what Eastern Gate is trying to wrap its arms around is like a world in which, like, it doesn't really matter what happens. It matters what people believe happened. Yeah. That's where we're at. Yeah.

51:41Andy Greenwald:It's fun to think about. And it doesn't even matter. I'm reading this book called Shadow Intelligence, which is this Oliver Harris spy novel that's set. Well, right now it's largely set in Kazakhstan, and the point I am in the book. But it's about a lot of the same stuff. And even in this novel, there's discussion of with this kind of information warfare, even when people don't think what they're reading is true or seeing is true, the sentiment or the kernel of truth of it still activates something in terms of like how they feel about an issue so even if you're watching something or reading something and you're like well I kind of know this is bullshit but also it confirms something that I think well that's the story of the 2024 election about the economy right like oh all the baseline indicators the stock market is roaring back but people are like this shit's too expensive that's actually true and now we all have to live in the fallout from it I also just want to point out that like I do think it's an impressive trick of well-made art that there's a way to look at the show and be like so just one guy is a master swordsman and like has manipulated all of Polish intelligence by sleeping with women and filming it and then here we are with dirty bombs but he in fact was like also a black male he was a victim of it but even I just I tip my cap to shows that effectively hide the ball.

53:04Like, yes, this is

53:06Andy Greenwald:a soap opera between seven people. Like we were saying in the beginning is a good thing. You can look at it and be like, that's implausible, but it's done so well, and we are so, maybe this harkens back to the alien conversation, we are in the hearts and minds of those seven people to a degree that they serve as an effective proxy for the larger conflicts. Also, if you have high style, you can get away with a lot of convenient stuff. So it seems like basically everything from a a refugee camp to a where they're preparing the dirty bomb to also where Russian and Polish forces are going to have a like shootout and also a an orphanage that used to house the two brothers at the center of this vast conspiracy or is it the same building well Well, for what it's worth, I did Google driving directions from Warsaw to Minsk, and it is a trim six hours.

54:03Yeah. There's a lot of like, we need you back in Warsaw right now. And I'm like, okay, let me get it.

54:08Andy Greenwald:It reminds me of when we would get my stuff. When you and I would drive 95 from Providence to Philadelphia. And you'd be like, seems like clear sailing. Yeah. Let me just grab some Cinnabons. Just shoot the Siwaki Gap. We'll be there in no time. The Kosciuszko Bridge, the Siwaki Gap. It's all one thing. I have to ask you this. I know you're just returned to L.A. and you're happily reunited with your wife and back in the bosom of your friends and family. My rock, yeah. Speaking of rocks, I just want you to talk about a text you sent to me last night where you said that you were, quote, at dinner explaining Eva to my wife.

54:44And I actually brought it up really randomly in a very strange way.

54:48Andy Greenwald:This is, talk about risk at all. I just was like. How did you talk your way through this and how did it go? We were like ordering starters and I was like, by the way, I have found my soulmate. I'm pretty into this Polish woman. Did she spit out the bread? No, I think she was like taken aback. And then I, my point was more that like, maybe when you see her, you'll get it, you know, but her, did you like, babe, babe, look, look what she's doing here. Look how she's holding the knife. I was at Houston's last night. Great restaurant. And I needed it, you know. At the table sort of adjacent to us was a woman and a man.

55:32The man was wearing a Philadelphia Eagles golf shirt.

55:35Andy Greenwald:Oh, combining a lot of your interests. They both were on their phones with their headphones in looking at, she was looking at TikTok. I bet he was looking at like all 22 tape given like what he was wearing. and they were seamlessly watching their phones and listening to their shit and sharing a meal and i was like there's a kind of beauty here there's a kind of there's something there's something special going on between these two yeah the middle part of wally like jesus christ that sucks also an artful way to change the subject from introducing your second wife future wife to your current wife um yeah i just had to i wanted to be honest was she bemused yes right Someone like, like explain it to me.

56:21And I was like, well, there's parts where like she like puts a bag on a, on a Russian woman's head and kicks her, you know?

56:30Andy Greenwald:I mean, it is an incredible Venn diagram of like your, your passion projects. That it is essentially Lady Edith from Downton Abbey who can do Krav Maga. And smokes. And smokes. There it is. Bing, bing, bing. There she is. She, she is a great, a great TV heroine. I'm very glad the show is coming back. I can't wait. To see season two. Also, dude, six episodes. Just way to do it. I know. Jan. It is compact. It is awesome. We are going to be off on Monday because of Labor Day. Oh, yeah. Happy Labor Day. And then we'll be back next Thursday to talk about Alien and The Paper, I believe. And then we'll be then three days away from the task premiere.

57:06Andy Greenwald:Mm-hmm. Do you have a countdown clock running? I mean, September 7th. It goes Eagles-Cowboys, then Ruffalo. Oh, we'll be recording the morning of Eagles-Cowboys. Yeah. how are we going to how are we going to be should we have shield on yes yes just do the show that we want to do this one's for us guys thanks to Kai thanks to John thanks again to everybody who's written to say to send their condolences it really really means a lot and we will be back next week have a great long weekend Branskis