All The News Out of Comic Con, ‘The Agency’ Season 2, and ‘House of the Dragon’ S3E6

21:32Andy Greenwald:That's what I want to talk about. So Kafaigi... There's like... You can have so many different parts of your career and if this is what Ryan Gosling wants to do, it's not like he hasn't given a large chunk of his soul to the art and craft of acting and made really complicated movies and done really demanding roles. Yes. And if he wants to just kind of like spend what I imagine is his early 40s? How old is he? He's a couple years younger than us. Yeah, like mid-40s, chilling somewhere, probably with the beach next to him, and then making movies that his kids will like. I don't really love that excuse, though.

22:12No. I mean, I just kind of don't want to be challenged anymore and make movies that my kids will like. Guess what, man? Your kids are going to like good movies soon. You know, you can make some of them and they can watch them when they're 18. if they, I'm not saying you have to make Blue Valentine every six months, but like, this whole, like, I want to make movies my kids can watch, like, your kids want to watch cool shit.

22:33Andy Greenwald:Yes, and there will be a day, I can attest to this, when your kids will become teenagers. They'll be like, what have you done with your life, dad? They'll be like, you made Drive? Then they'll be like, and then you made the fucking Fall Guy? Right. Grow up, dad. Like, yeah, it, I think it sucks. I think it sucks on many levels. here's one level. Ghost Rider is stupid. Ghost Rider is a stupid character. Okay. I have no relationship. I have read comic books for much of my life. I have enjoyed Ghost Rider's appearance in comic books from time to time. Ghost Rider is dumb as fuck. Ghost Rider is a guy named Johnny Blaze who gets inhabited by the spirit of vengeance and transforms into a dude with a flaming skull head who rides a motorcycle and whips people with flaming chains.

23:25And Nicolas Cage has been that role in movies. And Eva Mendes was in that movie and was married to Brian Gosling. Does Ghost Rider play a part in any larger Marvel kind of story?

23:36Andy Greenwald:I mean, every so often when an interesting writer takes over one of the big franchise titles, one of the things that they do, and this is, I bet you could name like a national side manager who does this with World Cup teams just for LOLs. But it'll be like, now whoever is taking over the Avengers, and it's Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man, and fucking Ghost Rider. And everyone's like, what's Ghost Rider doing here? And then it kind of wears off. Okay. So, sure. But the fact that Kevin Feige is up on stage being like, we've struggled for years on how to bring John Blaze into the Marvel universe.

24:12Andy Greenwald:I'm like, some people are working here, sir. Some people have real jobs. My job is going to see Deadpool. My job is seeing your swill, sir. at 8 in the morning and I'm a parent of daughters who what did you say one day will want to see good shit yeah who want to watch only God forgive excuse me as someone whose job it is to talk about movies and television shows with his best friend twice a week I stand up for the working man anyway so that's dumb Gosling being like this is what I want to do is also really disappointing and dumb but the dumbest thing to me is a room full of like hundreds and hundreds of nominal adults screaming and cheering for someone getting hired your dad just came out no but for real though there's no movie here they're not they're like and now we're here to announce that Ryan Gosling has been promoted to VP of International Marketing and Research everyone's like fucking hooray you got a job he didn't need the job There's no movie.

25:20Andy Greenwald:It's an idea of a thing of someone doing something later. The font for the poster and everything. Look how you're quietly zagging. I'm not zagging at all. You're Homer Simpson into the bush right now. You know what it is? It's a fucking Sean Levy movie where he's going to be a spirit of vengeance, but he'll probably have a soft spot for a kid. Oh, God. Come on, dude. If there's a kid in Ghost Rider. There's going to be a kid in Ghost Rider. Do you think he's going to be a little? Which camera? Is he a junior ghost with his head is on fire too? A little ghost? Yeah. You know what would be cool?

25:50Andy Greenwald:This is kind of a tangent. I don't know if you ever see these, but there's a great thing on Instagram that pops up all the time. First of all, everything on Instagram, great. Love it. But it's just like a dude in England who rides a bike, mountain bike, with his little kid in the front. And the videos are just the kid going, Daddy, bus. And he's like, yes, that's a bus. He goes, Daddy, flowers. He's like, good, that's flowers. What if that was Ghost Rider? Is the kid like harnessed? The kid has a little seat on the, and he has his own handlebars. Oh, okay. So he's riding on the bike, and then the guy has like a camera.

26:18Andy Greenwald:and that's the video. I could watch that forever. I like the dude who gets up at like before dawn and like rides through Trafalgar Square and kind of... John O 'Verity? He's my hero. Yeah. Okay, sorry. I watched that shit live. That guy's the best because he's waking up in London and it's 10, 9, 10 p.m. here. Can we just, can we sidebar for a second here? Okay. Here's why I think we're doomed. It's not about Wolverine and Deadpool or whatever. It's about the fact that you know and everyone who listens to this podcast know that most of my time not, you know, working real hard is like looking at like London restaurants and pub content on my phone.

26:56Andy Greenwald:Like Instagram, like I follow restaurants, I follow whatever. And the way that it gets you is that it constantly, constantly pushes you towards extremity in the worst possible ways. So like I like to watch James Dimitri go into pubs and order a snake bite, which is beer and cider. And then I'm like, then it's like - And blackcurrant. And with a little blackcurrant on top. Yeah. Or a lot of blackcurrant. Then I go to like suggested for you. And it's a guy walking into a Costco in Florida being like, I've got$10. How quickly can I get blackout drunk by chugging this pop off bottle? No, no. I understand, Claude, that these both involve men drinking, but there's a difference here.

27:36Andy Greenwald:Or like I follow a British restaurant, you know, and I'm like, oh, it looks like they've got an interesting tandoori special. One day I'd like to visit that. And then the next suggested for you is this American woman being like, the British people are pussies about spice. I'm going to take their six chicken wing challenge. And then she just starts barfing in the restaurant. I don't want to know that. I don't want to see that. Well, I blame Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's probably been greater infractions and crimes. Nope. By large tech companies than you being forced to watch somebody puke.

28:11Andy Greenwald:I'm just saying how this is the way things go. This is the way we, this is the trend. This is how we go towards ruin. And maybe Sean Levy directing Ghost Rider is the first, the next. I will just, to put a bow on the Ryan Gosling thing, I don't want him to be sad. I don't want him to be upset. And I want him to make money. Like, and those are all great things. Yeah, me too. He's the best. That's why he should have just kept making nice guys. Because it would have been right in the middle. Yes. You know, rather than all this, all the way over where, Every couple of movies, you're going to get a Project Hail Mary, but then you're also going to get a Fall Guy.

28:47Well, Fall Guy was okay, but like the Gray Man, pretty bad. So yeah. What about the whole, they didn't do, I think we thought,

28:58Andy Greenwald:many people thought, many people are saying. That they would announce the X-Men. Yeah, I guess they didn't for reasons including they're still holding on to the. Well, they're pretending like the Fox X-Men are going to live for more than 15 minutes in that movie. I know. I know. No spoilers, but that's how... No spoilers, but they're like, Anthony Mackie, Paul Rudd, and Kelsey Grammer are all going to be in this movie for the same amount of time. Like, that is... Yeah. Everyone's, like, screaming. I'm so excited. There was apparently a Doomsday trailer where I guess there's more to it, and it's, like, Vanessa Kirby narrating, like, Doom, Dr.

29:38Doom was, like...

29:38Andy Greenwald:Doctor, he showed me his credentials. He's actually a PhD, not a medical doctor. He actually... What do you think his doctorate's in?

29:51Whatever it took to get... What was it? Sokovia? Like, what was it? Was he, like, an infrastructure doctor? Oh, my God. To rebuild Sokovia? Yes. At least from Latveria, right?

30:00Andy Greenwald:Yeah, and he's like... And probably Sokovia radicalized him. Because if it could happen to one made-up country... Well, I think they give away why he's radicalized. It took his family, right? Who? Like some tragedy. It's so funny, like the level of water carrying where they're like, no, no, no, Doom is different as a villain because they took everything from him. But that's the same as what happened to Thanos, right? It's the same as everyone. It just, you take everything from me, I become a supervillain. Kind of on the superhero tip lately. Did you have any other thoughts about this new footage or about this new, has it changed?

30:33Andy Greenwald:Do you think that they did anything? I didn't see the new footage come out. I didn't see it. They were just describing it. I read a description of it. Look at how fucking far we've fallen. I don't think that that Comic-Con footage has come out yet, as of press time. Did you see... The only thing that I know, and I intentionally, I don't want spoilers, even if the movie ends up being trash. Of what? Of Doomsday. You've read it already. I don't think they're doing one-to-one. There wasn't a story called Doomsday. Oh, but you haven't read, like, The Leaks or anything like that? No. Look at your face.

31:03Andy Greenwald:I have. Doing The Windhorst. But all I'm seeing is headlines being like, oh my god, LMFAO, all the leaks are right. So people are like not thrilled about that. Oh, I think it's a decent enough story. You think it's a decent enough story? What's your PhD in Dr. Ryan? Public relations. That's fucking right. Just to put a cap on the superhero side of things, there was another Lanterns trailer. There was a whole Lanterns event. It looked really cool. You can't yada yada that. I'm not yada yada-ing anything. It's a great trailer. The trailer is so good. And we were talking just a minute ago about bringing your artistic sensibility to a corporate one, or not even a corporate one, but one with an established IP.

31:51And I would say on the DC side of things right now, for as much as Gunn and Saffron are kind of running DCCU, I thought this very much felt like an extension of Watchmen. and leftovers and some previous Lundeloff stuff. And I thought that was really cool. Now, maybe part of that is because it looks like they shot in Oklahoma, I believe.

32:16Andy Greenwald:They shot on locations, yeah. But I don't really know anything about Green Lantern, so this is all the ring and who gets to be what stuff is new to me. But that's what I'm curious about, because they had a teaser that was very grounded, as they say. Yes, and then this was much more... And from what I understand, the hardcore fans were like, what have they done to my beautiful green baby? And then in this one they were like holy shit that's Sinestro in the flesh. And yet that's an incredibly fine line to walk which is why I'm really praising the trailer because I thought it was an incredible trailer.

32:50Andy Greenwald:It looks like a very, very rare marriage between both sensibilities. But you were coming in cold. Were you put off in any way by the ring stuff or the space stuff? No, I think I got it. I think I understand what's at stake and what the ring does. and I don't necessarily understand all of like which every lantern guy is but I thought it looked really good and also the archetypes that these people are playing like Kyle Chandler playing the like a little bit past it hanging onto the ring a little hard Aaron Pierre waiting in the wings Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre action going Kelly McDonald and a lot of you know we were saying a decade ago I did the Banshee panel a lot of Banshee representation here Ulrich Thompson who's the villain on Banshee is playing Sinestro yes he seems great in the trailer Sinestro is the bad guy is he also a lantern he was a lantern and he was corrupted by did they take everything from him no yellow is the bad color oh so now he's bad okay and Chris Coy who was also in The Deuce yeah on Banshee Garrett Dillahunt Porno Jack Nathan and Laura Linney so come on this looks really good man that comes August I believe 19th, something like that.

34:02So it's mid-August.

34:03Andy Greenwald:I would say this is fascinating to us both because we like the people involved and we hope for more interesting or thoughtful or creative expressions of the material that everybody is working with. I think it's going to be interesting to look at the ways two different levels of collaborations worked with the show when it comes out. One is, we're talking about our friend Damon Lindelof who is one of the co-creators and worked on season one of the show yep also working on season one of the show is tom king who is an incredibly accomplished and really innovative and i think often brilliant comic book writer who's written arcs on like shades changing man and and vision and batman that have been really groundbreaking and this is him working in a different medium and uh but the one holding him together is chris mundy who made ozark yep that's top heavy as far as tv shows go but from all accounts it was a really successful collaboration.

34:57Andy Greenwald:So I'm interested to see whose DNA or what recombinant form of like storytelling emerges from that. And then two, I know you were watching because I know you're a big DCU guy that you saw that Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner is in this. I thought that was long known. It wasn't a surprise. Okay. But that character as being like James Gunn's favorite version of a Green Lantern that he already introduced in Superman who's just kind of like a very meta self-aware joking dickhead. Being in this show which is like, no, we're doing True Detective and we're not worried about the larger ramifications. Could that just be like a one episode, like one-off?

35:34Or do you think he's going to be showing up at the end of very traumatic scenes and being like, wow, I can't believe this is happening?

35:39Andy Greenwald:Well, the question is like, what wins when you combine two strong flavor profiles? And like, can they shade it differently and present a different version of him kind of the way that Marvel is going to try to do with Bernthal's Punisher, who we last saw in his one-off special, basically reenacting only the gnarly parts of Infernal Affairs, right? And then now it's going to be like, gee, Spidey, time to tackle the Hulk. We'll see. Two more TV shows that I wanted to talk about that caught trailers from Comic-Con. And they are united in a kind of vision of the future, so I think they work well. They're retro-futurist TV shows.

36:18One is Apple TV's Neuromancer adaptation, which is William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel that has been long, kind of like, many, many filmmakers have tried to unlock this from Ridley Scott to Chris Cunningham, who directed those Apex Twin videos, to Chuck Russell, who recently passed away. And I think Mel Gibson was going to be attached to the Ridley Scott version at some point. But people have wanted to make this book for almost as long as it's existed, and it is hugely influential on the Matrix, on tons of stuff. You know, one of the funny things with making something like Neuromancer is that probably every five to seven years, it goes in and out of style, both in terms of the visual language of like what's being made now, but also what's happening in the culture in terms of packing and all this other stuff.

37:13And I thought this trailer looked awesome. So this comes from, I believe his name, it's yeah it's Graham Rowland who does Dark Winds and J.D. Dillard and he I think J.D. Dillard directed all 10 episodes it's not coming out until next year but it just looked really cool like I mean I suppose there are parts of it that kind of look fifth elementy although for some people I don't know that that's going to be a turn off and Calum Turner seemed like a really stable central force in this but more than anything I just thought it like the trailer is essentially cut like Fincher's girl with a dragon tattoo uh teaser and it just had a really great vibe i i mean i thought it looked great um i think

37:57Andy Greenwald:it's it's impressive too to do it from like a basically a from standing still like i did not have anticipation i did not have expectations do you ever read any gibson no i wondered if you were you anywhere i think i mean i read neuromancer did you in high school or something like that or college but yeah i got it didn't understand the fucking thing no yeah i think the risk with material like this that has been so beloved and so influential for so long is that you come back to it and it's been strip mined for parts culturally i think that's kind of what happened when peacock finally got around to making an adaptation of huxley's brave new world which is that like that has been that that mine we're gonna be talking about diamond mine soon with the agency season two but that had been stripped yeah you know viking had been there viking had been there already we were too late um which doesn't mean the attempt was like was a bad idea it's just when you get there and you realize that people get these references already and convincing them that this is where they came from is tricky so seeing the neuromancer trailer there are going to be people who are like oh they're just doing the matrix but the matrix was doing this yes i thought that was wise on the part of the trailer to have some text that like pushed forward the idea of like this is the thing that invented all this stuff yes and i i just think it looked i thought it looked really good you know one of the things that was neat about it was even though there's some images that will look very reminiscent of say Blade Runner uh there's also stuff that like the woman with the the crazy sharp nails and the glass eyes like like there were some really striking visuals in this that I thought were like very very cool I think that the one of the things that the tipping point for adaptations like this is how you approach the material with hindsight and history meaning if you make it and try to imbue it with the same kind of cautionary...

39:47Andy Greenwald:William Gibson did not write it as a cautionary tale. He's always been kind of visionary and future-minded. But you can't approach this text as like, ah, this was a warning sign from the town crier because we're in a totally different version of actual reality now. But if you approach it as like the bones here for something very cool and compelling a story are worth doing, then you do it. And it just... The bones are good. Like the cast is deep and kind of impressive. We've got Mark Strong, Peter Sarsgaard, your guy Dane DeHaan, Clemence Poese, Andre DeShields from Hadestown. There you go. Big box office hit this weekend, Hadestown.

40:21Andy Greenwald:Do you want to talk about that?

40:25Andy Greenwald:But I thought it looked cool. Also, have you ever heard of this guy, Aubrey Drake Graham? He's an up-and-comer. He's a producer on it. Did he get a piece of this? Wow. Another trailer that came out, Another seminal piece of retrofuturism and, you know, a story that we just can't quit is Blade Runner. So we've got Ridley Scott's several versions of the first film. We've got Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. And then a long gestating, I feel like this has been announced, this was announced a long time ago, Blade Runner 2099. which is a new Amazon series that I believe comes out in the fall starring Hunter Schaefer and Michelle Yeoh and I would say I'm pretty into these two performers and I really like just saying the word replicants much like Cousin Richie on the bear but the idea that this takes place 50 years after the Villeneuve film and I would say they haven't iterated much on the architecture or look or feel or design of this movie or this story, considering the fact that it would be close to 70 years of time taking place.

41:44So I'm curious about it. I'm definitely going to check it out, but it almost felt like they repopulated the sets and skin of Blade Runner 2049 to some extent.

41:56Andy Greenwald:When we talk about the agency, and we're going to talk about it momentarily, We've talked a lot about how it is kind of like an orphan of a different time that somehow survived. It's like little Kal-El, that's a DCU reference, sent away from the dying planet because it was built, it was put together to be a Showtime flagship show and is now somehow existing in this like post-Skydance merger Paramount Plus timeline. Right. I kind of feel the same way about this Blade Runner show, which exists mainly because there was such, and this is now eight or nine years ago, but the same we must control these rare earth minerals slash IP of we must just continue to iterate things that people know and turn them into TV shows that brought us Lord of the Rings, that brought us much of the MCU's failed Disney plus slate.

42:50Andy Greenwald:The desire to get something into production was really strong. separate and apart from whether there was something worth telling or the audience appetite was there for it. And then there are these other things that just, I feel for the people who made the show because it was, you know, it was pre-strike that they were going to film in Belfast and they had like the sets built and they were spending their tax credit and then the strike happened and they'd spent their money then they moved the entire thing to Prague. Like this is very modern television. And then all of this to debut the trailer and just confirm that it's a limited series.

43:23Andy Greenwald:Right. Which was, they can tell you that that's what they intended for it to be, but nobody intends for that to be. It's also an interesting story to me about who controls this particular piece of IP because there are two things. Ridley Scott, who's getting up there in years. But trying to outrun the devil. He's working really hard. But has his hands still on Blade Runner and Alien. Yes. and I think has sometimes a kind of not contentious complicated relationship with letting these things go to other people now I don't know how much of it is rumor and how much of it is real that like he had a very like looking over your shoulder relationship to Fetty Alvarez on Alien Romulus and that is partially why Alvarez is not coming back for a new film and I believe they went through another director who was also like I'm not going to do this if like if he really wants to do it but I think what he really wants to do is finish the Fassbender story with the prequels so you know it's just one of those things where it's like he for better or for worse has some sense of ownership over these things and perhaps actual technical contractual ownership over these stories so you're not going to really get any of this stuff done unless you say from executive producer Ridley Scott before the title.

44:48Do you think he's turning 89 this year? I do know that.

44:52Andy Greenwald:That's wild. Yes. Yeah. Is he gonna run for president? No, but like when you have older parents I think you're just like This is what I'm saying. How the fuck my mom couldn't operate Apple TV. Like how the fuck can Ridley Scott direct Gladiator 2? I might have something to do with what, you know, anecdotally we've heard that like he does have like someone providing him with caffeinated drinks for half the day and then maybe a little alcoholic drink in the afternoon. He is on a very regimented schedule of what he likes. Me too. Honestly. I know, but I think the difference is someone is just there to provide it for you.

45:25Andy Greenwald:Sure, yeah. Must be nice. It must be. I think it must be. I don't know. I don't know. I think... You a big Blade Runner guy at all? I love the first movie. I was pretty into the sequel. Yeah. A good gosling. A good gosling, but again like the franchise I mean in the moment I was like this is a perfect vehicle for him and then now in retrospect I'm like his engagement with the franchise model I feel like I wish he was doing other things with it but this is the world that he the Gosling no no no Gosling at the time oh and he's like if you look at it as a Villeneuve movie yeah I see what you're saying you know like there are the two paths it seems for contemporary actors and they are to do the DiCaprio and just try to only work with the best directors and and and avoid superhero capes and tights or there's the like look man I just gotta I gotta establish a beachhead here yes in Sokovia and then I can do work that was always like Sam Jackson said Bruce Willis told him get a character that you can go back to every three to five years so that like you never have to worry about ups and downs in the box office I think that Pedro Pascal is doing that but what people don't realize is that character is cinema cellist Alex whatever.

46:45Alex Behemoth.

46:46Andy Greenwald:In being Alex Behemoth. That at the end of the movie, he opens the cello case and his costume is in there. Doom is in there. And he flies off. Evening. Buyers 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. So there's no No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com.

47:25I want to talk to you about The Agency Season 2. Now, we usually don't do wrap-ups like this where there's no sort of defined which episodes are we talking about. So for anybody who hasn't watched The Agency Season 2, you'll find this conversation useless. but we wanted to knock something out that we felt passionate about on a Monday because I think that Dragon was a bit divisive this week for us. Not between us. Not between us. I mean, like, I think between what they offered up and what we liked about it. So I have a couple of kind of, like, superlatives questions about the season itself for you.

48:02Andy Greenwald:Yeah. I wanted to ask what you kind of took away from this season as a whole. I will say up front that I thought it was excellent it didn't feel excellent what do you mean? I really did have I had trouble with the remake element of it I don't think I don't think that this is I wish they had taken more chances and I wish they had done some different things with the characters and I wish maybe it didn't feel as like I was trying to I couldn't even think of a metaphor or like an illusion. Like what is the experience of watching something so specific being so brilliantly and thoughtfully remade, but so Catholicly that you're like, okay, and then I remember like Henry does this and then this happens and then this happens.

48:58And I think when you're watching a suspense thriller to have all of suspense taken out of it. and this show is made much more like a suspense thriller rather than the French kind of like what makes a man a spy and who is he and what is he keep going no you know what I mean like this is much more like we have to go get biking we are in a track

49:20Andy Greenwald:well I do think that and we talked about this with season one too that one of the slight tweaks that I think is a smart one is that when you take a show that is we're talking about Le Bureau which everyone should watch it's one of the I don't know probably one of my top 10 television series ever definitely the best spy series ever um which is about french the french intelligence service and they are not the they are not the biggest elephant in the room and so when you make the same show about the power that everyone else reacts to about the cia you have to tweak some things and i do think that the tweaking towards being more of a cut and dry power show and an action show makes sense yes um but that is a very subtle tweak that is not necessarily you know as granular as i think you would like and i agree with you my experience with i didn't i don't think they leaned enough into that well yeah i i think i i think a number of things i think it is frustrating that a show built on the best bones you possibly could acquire through ip purchasing or transferring and then was was is kitted out with just a God-tier cast.

50:35Andy Greenwald:I mean, Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright on the show are on a different level than most performers on television, and I could watch them forever, and I wish that I could. Richard Gere just doing work a day, like, what do you want, you're in my office stuff, but now get out of my office? It's ridiculous how good he is. But also, I'm here for the Gerasance. I just saw, do you know that he's starring in the adaptation of the Lisa Halliday novel, Asymmetry? which is about a young woman's romance with Philip Roth when he was 40 years older. Yeah, I saw pictures of him filming that. Who's the woman in the film?

51:07Andy Greenwald:Diana Silvers. She was in Booksmart. She is accurately 40 years younger than him. Comments were so cool about this movie, I gotta say. They were really looking for the nuance in the literary adaptation. Anyway, I'm just saying, late period gear where he's still a completely unique, beautiful and charismatic individual, but he looks so fucking over it, is incredible. It's just like he got a little extra, he got an extra color in his palette to play with, and I think it's amazing. But it is kind of frustrating that a show with so much pre-built going into it, to my mind, having now watched both seasons, really took a while to find its own footing.

51:52Andy Greenwald:My experience with it was I was very impressed with season one, very impressed with the cast, very impressed with the accurate adaptation, very excited that people would be discovering an incredible story. But it didn't rise beyond the level of its adaptation. When season two started, and it was dumped unceremoniously, and we started getting feedback from people who binged it that it was incredible, it's taken a leap. After three episodes, I didn't fully agree because what I felt was that same sense of the best karaoke performance I've ever seen in my life. Sometime around four or five... I think when Owen goes to Africa.

52:27It elevated for me.

52:28Andy Greenwald:And suddenly I noticed that it was doing things, not just in like differentiating in terms of adaptation, but finding new parcels and packets of ideas and themes and emotion in the softer character moments between scenes. you could feel it at the beginning of season two when the you know owen is hooking up with rain who's the office who's an assistant in the office and then you know the the party where you get a little sense of and by the way the the owen character in the french version as kind of like the office guy who is just inexplicably an absolute swordsman yeah um even after his grievous injury um that's canon that's canonical but but there was just more room to grow there and like the Blair character who's there throughout season one and then, and I should be saying that.

53:14Andy Greenwald:Evelyn Razia, yeah. I think she's amazing. She's great. And I love the way, the cadence that she's chosen to speak in this character that both, I think, probably helps with her accent because like almost everyone else on the show, she is English playing an American, but adds a different, very subtle note that suddenly you realize you've been listening to the whole time. So the fact that it, I sit here week to week with you and I celebrate and champion shows that find their footing, that kind of lean into what's working for them and suddenly it's like a firework show of an ensemble. It's very odd that a show this expensive and this like heavily mapped and, you know, and non, it's not exactly, there's nothing improvised really about it.

53:56Andy Greenwald:Yeah. But that it found a spark 15 episodes into his run. Its run is both maddening and also thrilling because I thought the run from 205 to 210 was some of the best TV I've seen this year. I thought 208 was just goaded as an episode on its own terms, with its small tweaks. And it kills me because, I mean, we should talk about the content before we do what I'm about to do. But like, I think this is all we're going to get. And I think that sucks. I wonder if that was maybe in the back of my mind as I finished this season. But yeah, like, this is a strange critique because what I'm saying is, they did an excellent job remaking one of my favorite TV shows ever.

54:40And it's not the same feeling as when you're watching a Star Wars sequel and you're like, this is essentially New Hope. Okay. Yeah. Oh, right. You know what I mean? Like the shadow. The gestures and the large movements of this story are basically a New Hope. This is literally the Bureau. Yeah. And I think because of the genre and because of the literal story that it's telling, at a certain point, like, even if it's what I'm watching is thrilling, the experience of watching it becomes a little less than average because I'm like, yes, and I know exactly what's going to happen.

55:20Andy Greenwald:I think for me, this is very interesting to me because that was definitely my reaction through season one. Season two, even as I remembered, and we should probably also say, I have not revisited that series. I would love to rewatch it. But my sense, memory of the lyrics coming back to me is not instantaneous. I did not remember the chess scene that was going to end the season until like 209. Yeah. And then I got excited about it. For me, the difference was once I started to feel the idiosyncrasies and specificity of the emotions of these characters, not of the woman in the office, but of Catherine Waterston's Naomi and who she was and how she's playing the part and what her role in this is, it reinvigorated my engagement with the scene work.

56:10Andy Greenwald:So that I knew broadly what was going to happen with Hassan Zamanee and his very bad espionage and why he gets busted. Yeah, and I think also... But in that moment, I was on the edge of my seat again because I enjoyed that kid's performance and I was just locked in on the stakes for them. Yeah. You know, to your point, like I knew that Danny is getting away, but the show does a couple things that maybe they did it in the French version. I don't remember. I think, I mean, I don't even remember how it would have played out in the French... I don't remember how it plays out in the French version of like who is Richardson in the French version version and how that goes?

56:50Andy Greenwald:Well, I don't think he executes him. No. In the French version, Malatru, who is Matthew Kasavitz's character, Martian in this version, is he betrays France to America. Yeah. And the Americans are the, yes, to Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights, to the Cowboys, the CIA. And that adds a whole other element of like, are these our allies or are they just the bullies who we owe things to? I thought the whole like, the China aspect of this guy's rise through MI6 was very cool. Of Richardson's rise through MI6 was very cool. I think there were two plots that I found very difficult to sift through again which was one very minor but Martian's relationship with his daughter and two, the Danny plot.

57:41Because the Danny plot was so close to...

57:44Andy Greenwald:Let's do one than the other. The daughter stuff was, to in my mind, much better this season. Okay. It was minimized. It was better chosen. Like, I thought that the moments, and they made a joke about whether Fassbender could smile or not or whether he could laugh or not. The agency of season one and the way they overweighted those scenes, I think would have, it surprised me that they didn't actually steal directly from Le Bureau, which, if you remember, the entire second season's framing device is him writing his confession diary to his daughter. While he's in a hospital bed? That's season one.

58:22Andy Greenwald:Well, it's season one. We see, I think it's season one. He's in the hospital selling out to the Americans, but we don't know who's interrogating him and why he's in a hospital bed. That's a conceit. In this season, I believe it's the confession. I thought it showed great restraint that it didn't do that for the entire season. I agree. and the things that it did pull from the Bureau made me excited like in this case Poppy's relationship with Dozer is her name in the American version but in the French version the daughter has a surprising relationship with one of the minders and it's sort of like this weird found family thing I think the show did such well let me address the other thing before we get to the other compliments the other thing was the Danny plot.

59:14Andy Greenwald:I found it broadly as interesting as the first one. Maybe it's just personal taste. I think Sarah Lightfoot-Leon who plays Danny, I liked her. I was more compelled by her as an actor. No disrespect to the French woman from the original series, but I just thought she has such a vibrancy and passion that you see she can play big so that when she's playing small, you're really, really laser focused on watching her. I did think, and I can't tell if it's just the nature of the show, in my mind, the second season was so expansive of Liburo. And I remember what felt like really long set pieces and a lot of time spent in Iran in different ways, slow building what that relationship became.

1:00:01Andy Greenwald:And it felt rushed in this season. I don't know if that's rushed because I was fast forwarding in my mind. Maybe we're like, in some weird ways, the wrong people to talk about the agency. because I don't know that we can untether ourselves to the original show. I'll talk about some stuff that really worked for me. Okay. The entire Valhalla thing and Owen and Robin I thought was awesome. And I thought tying it into American right-wing extremism but also letting Owen kind of be this desk jockey who gets cocky and wants to become a field agent, not unlike the original series, but Magaro is so good in the show.

1:00:40He really is. And I specifically really enjoyed his conversations, brief as they may have been, with Harriet Sampson, Dr. Blake. Yeah. With, I thought she brought such a cool quirk to it. I mean, that is one of the things that you really have to get around is the idea of like a therapist walking around a spy agency and getting people who keep secrets for a living to just constantly speak and total vulnerabilities. But I thought her scenes with Fassbender and her scenes in the Garo were some of my favorites. But the entire, the Africa, the Central African Republic, diamond mining, Antwerp, like all of that stuff was really awesome.

1:01:25Shout out Clay Crawford

1:01:26Andy Greenwald:from Rectify as Viking. You mentioned the therapy scenes. Like you and I read these books, spy fiction, and watch these shows for the clear-out ISO moments when Len Dighton or John LeCarre or recently Oliver Harris can really let us know what's going on with these people. And what excited me about those scenes, especially in the back half of the season, was you could feel the Butterworths starting to vibe out on that a little bit. And there's the Dr. Sampson scene with Naomi where she says, and I wanted to write this down before we did our pod, where she says, two sorts of people are drawn to this work, those who wish to be someone else and those who are unable to be a person in the first place.

1:02:06Andy Greenwald:And it's like, my God, that's George Smiley's music. You know what I mean? It's just connecting it to this great tradition of sweeping, bombastic psychological statements about the broken people who take it upon themselves to fix the world. And the show elevated on that. Yeah. There's a couple of moments also spy to spy in this season, but specifically there's one. it's kind of when everything is about to collapse on henry and he and naomi are walking from the floor into his office and she's like let's go like let's bring down martian and he's like you can't go too soon because of this and you can't wait too long because then you become a target and he's just like trying to miss an apex predator yeah basically like trying to explain why they have to time their move against martian perfectly and they they don't time it perfectly because obviously the MI6 guys are working against them.

1:03:05Andy Greenwald:What about Naomi and Osman, played by Kurt Eguon, who's also on House of the Dragon? And that's an incredible scene where they're both saying, let's not do the thing that you do. Yeah, let's not play for positioning. Positioning, yeah. And the thing about this show, again, I agree with you. I wish they went further with this, but it is so, like all great, truly great spy fiction. It is very unsentimental about the way that people just get crushed up and used. And that's what I meant by like the Danny scene where, you know, the rescue, we kind of knew was going to happen. But the moment of almost needlessly killing the gas station attendant and then seeing the photo of him with his family laughing.

1:03:47Andy Greenwald:Yeah. And there is nothing heroic about what any of these people are doing in a way that I find really compelling. broadly speaking I'd like to think that we use our platform here for good when possible I would like to implore someone more powerful and richer than us to pick the show up and make more we do not know that it is cancelled it is not officially cancelled there could be negotiations being made right now and it might not be that Paramount doesn't want it as much as now because of the way whatever reasons this cast is like I'm not going to be available for nine months to live in England.

1:04:24Andy Greenwald:It just strikes me as such a deeply unfortunate fumble. Things happen all the time, and good shows get canceled, and good stories don't get resolved, and good intentions don't get met. But you've put together something here that is not only incredibly special, but is kind of just getting going. It's on the precipice of being awesome. And the difference is it's not asking some other rich-pocketed tech company or streaming service to take a chance on the Butterworth brothers, who, by the way, studios have taken chances on before. Clearly, Paramount is very much in business with them, yeah. It's the fact that you have a roadmap.

1:05:06Andy Greenwald:You have three more seasons of one of the greatest shows of all time to draw from. And if your concerns were that the show is too chilly, too cerebral, too this or too that, the end of this season should remind you that the Fassbender action season is beginning. And he clearly likes doing that stuff. And frankly, the fact that Matthew Kasovitz was doing it, I found really interesting because it's not the natural fit or what you'd expect. Fassbender seems like he's waited 19 episodes. He loves wearing hooded sweatshirts and executing dudes. It just seems like he's waited 19 episodes to go full Prince of Persia.

1:05:45Andy Greenwald:Do you know what I mean? Like, so you have this. You have it all teed up. Let them bring it home. Mr. Ellison, let them finish this. Are you willing to change your feeling on the merger if they bring this back? Well, look, I think we've all—tempers have cooled. There's a cooling off period. We've all paused here. But I agree. I will accept— I don't know Rob Bonta. I will accept a temporary restraining order. Yeah. on my penchant for class warfare. If they, I think when we first talked about this, we were talking about how, no matter how we felt specifically about the show or the season, like we just feel like in a multi-billion dollar global arms race for content, there should be a place for a show like this.

1:06:29Andy Greenwald:But what's maddening is you have it. I know it must be incredibly top-heavy and expensive and this cast is outrageous and shooting in five countries and navigating people's schedules and paying George Clooney and Grant Heslov their EP fees and everything else. And Heslov directed a couple episodes. And he did really well. There was some beautiful direction in this episode where there was a shot he had where stuff's going down and then it just isolates Naomi in the bullpen. The action was really well directed. It's not an easy show to make, I'm sure, but you guys are making it. And yet when I went back to review some of the episodes this morning briefly, again, no one knows what this means, but it's not even in Paramount's top 10.

1:07:11Andy Greenwald:i feel like i'm not saying these these services aren't on the up and up but i feel like apple at least it's like if there's a moment for a show to be doing well they'll give it a little top 10 nudge yeah i i you know this this speaks to the difficulty in like getting people everybody who watches lioness should watch the agency you know what i mean like that that should there should not be a huge disparity between the audience for Lioness coming back next week and and the agency like if you if you enjoy spy stories if you enjoy complicated people trying to figure out their allegiances like you would love this show but it's a little bit denser and there's fewer action set pieces for sure and there's way more plot lines I mean I was talking to Bill about it this weekend and he was just like it's just there's just too many people on the show you know and I was like all right well i think at a different time like if this was up against like after the sopranos you'd be able to follow it but like something has kind of changed about the mechanics of watching these it's also i'll say that there were i'm not pretending the show's perfect and i'm not pretending it was a perfectly positioned adaptation because i think the thing that really hooks people into liburo is that initially before it's anything else it's a love story about star-crossed lovers trying to get back to each other.

1:08:29Andy Greenwald:Yes. And then it becomes everything else. And I think Jodie Smith-Turner really steps up. I thought she was quite excellent this season. I thought she was incredible. Yeah. And there's a lot more road for that character to travel as well. But I have to say that I've never fully been invested because Fassbender is like, like Paul Lewis seems like kind of a chilly prick too. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like you don't see him turn it on and turn it off and they don't have many opportunities to rekindle the spark. So I don't feel, as an audience member, the same yearning desire for this to work despite all of the betrayal and treason.

1:09:03Andy Greenwald:And I think that that might be a necessary building block to get people to buy in so that they can understand. I mean, there's a line in this episode right before Fassbender executes Paddington's dad where I had to put the subtitles on. And he's basically saying, how long have you been taking the chairmans? And there's a very specific Chinese word. Rembi. Yes, of like quid pro quo. And I'm like, you're asking the audience to unpack that line with or without subtitles. Good for you. But that is not a Taylor Sheridan show in terms of what it's asking the audience. I do wonder whether or not I would feel differently about it.

1:09:42Because I think that Fassbender's casting, for as much as I adore him as a performer, is challenging at times. And I do wonder what would happen if you had gone with, say, Peter Sarsgaard. who is a very Matthew Kasavitz-esque American actor and perhaps a little bit older than you would want to play Martian, but still has that, looks like an English teacher, but moves like a killer. You see Michael Fassbender, you're like, you are the fucking killer. You are literally the killer in the David Fincher movie. I have no doubt that you're eating protein in the backseat of a car, getting ready to kill the head of MI6.

1:10:22Andy Greenwald:And when everybody is like, you're the greatest liar who's ever existed, I'm like, yes, he is. It's the first thing I think about him. Or, I mean, thank God, you know, Viking, it's a tough way to go, although if you go out doing what you love, and he did love chess and overthrowing African republics. But when he's just like, you are not a weasel, I'm like, yeah. If that guy got off the plane, and it's like I work for a diamond merchant in Antwerp, but I'm not even the boss, I would keep him away from all sharp objects. I would keep him away from magazines thinking he was going to Jason Bourne my ass.

1:10:58Viking, man. Died as he lived. Let's take a quick break and then we're going to do House of the Dragon really quick. Okay, we're back. Let's talk about Dragon. We don't need to belabor this one because I imagine you did not care for it.

1:11:14Andy Greenwald:Wasn't my favorite hour. Nor was it Mal and Joe's. I'd like to hear about this. Well, you can on House of R. They talked extensively about, last night on Talk to Thrones, about their issues with this episode, some of which were adaptative. Is that a word? I'll allow it. Emily Wilson would not allow it. Some of them were just basic storytelling, like how did that guy get from there to there and successive scenes. Enjoyed the Laris Agon stuff, as usual. RIP to my guy, Kristen Cole. Well, I want to talk about that. Detective Grasso, may you continue to patrol Bucks County. I don't want to spoil anything, but he survived worse.

1:11:57That's true.

1:11:58Andy Greenwald:Do you know what I mean? That's true. What did you make of this episode? Well, I guess I'm really curious more to hear your perspective. A little bit in the know, a little bit on the outs, you know, because I didn't particularly find, I didn't find anything particularly different in this episode than the ones that have been boring me for the last few weeks. And so I don't really want to belabor those points. It's just, it's a lot more like now we're here, now we're there, now we're here, now we're there. I think that my issue with it was just that they're, they're having the same conversations every episode.

1:12:27Over and over.

1:12:28Andy Greenwald:Particularly the Rhaenyra-Allison conversations being the same ones. And the Rhaenyra-Damon conversation. And, you know, like it's a lot of people being like, what should we do next? Yeah. And, and holding their breath for the big things they have to deploy. And so you can almost feel the same hand of, no pun intended, of plotting that, you know, put the battles at the top and then tries to, basically tries to play with timing and surprise. And you feel that with what happens to Sir Kristen Cole. But I was just sort of felt very little from that. It felt more manipulative to me to have it begin an episode because what I felt was the galaxy brain plotting of the audience won't expect this.

1:13:11Andy Greenwald:And yet what it did was just more remind me that this was a road to nowhere anyway. And now the show has highlighted that. The show has not pretended. His speech last week about how we're all going on a suicide mission now did not make it seem like there was a happy ending in store. but the general feeling that I struggle with week to week and frankly I'm sure people are as tired of hearing me say it as I am of saying it is like I feel like the show presents a series of boxes and then checks them. Yeah, boxes is a word that I want to jump on here because I think I've tried to articulate this in various ways over the couple of weeks and this is obviously like I think that this is my favorite season of the show, favorite but it's unfair to compare it one-to-one to Game of Thrones but Game of Thrones probably didn't have a spectacularly different scene to scene difference in what people were doing, you know, often talking, you know.

1:14:10I think what I'm craving is either scenery or like I wish that more of these conversations could be happening in different places than throne room, chambers, Harrenhal. like in the dark woods somewhere. Like part of the thing that made Throne so great is because they would put these pairs of characters out on the road somewhere trying to get from one place to the north or from Essos back to whatever and, you know, Dorne and all these places. It was like such an expansive portrait of this imaginary world that no matter what people were talking about, it was cool to look at. And it seemed like what they were looking at or where they were would influence the nature of the conversations and change the nature of the relationships.

1:15:02And because so many of these characters are trapped by their own power, I mean, even Ormond has basically been in a dining room for three episodes now, smelling things.

1:15:12Andy Greenwald:Eating or burping. Eating or cuking. And for as exciting as that sword fight was, I thought that was an awesome scene. I was like, yeah, but it's like, I don't know, it's just, this is all happening in one of three places. and I think one thing that Thrones really successfully avoided was even though the battles were huge takeout episodes, I never really sat around being like, when's the battle going to happen on Game of Thrones until the very end. And on Dragon, I feel like they're almost overshadowing the entire series. Yeah, it's reverse engineered the wrong way. We were talking, this is the third reference to Banshee on this podcast, Lonnie Perister, who directed and started, I think started his career on Banshee, directed this episode.

1:15:55Andy Greenwald:He's directed other episodes of Dragon. The action sequences are incredibly well done. There are moments, you know, like just, just like that whole opening sequence where there's the ambush and the surprise attack. If, if you were someone who cared deeply about sword or mace combat, you would be so delighted with this episode. You would have nothing else to complain about. That's not my bag. And then frankly, coming off of the Odyssey, I'm ready to address all of this town's Foley experts with a plea of like can we find a different sound for swords entering people's bodies like I think that we iterated a lot in the last decade and it's real crunchy now and you really get the sense of metal on metal into metal on bone and there's never a stabbing that isn't just like like I remember like doing when I was in Foley for my show and you see a character smoke a cigarette they're like let's sweeten that cherry up a little bit you know and you make every cigarette sound like it's the greatest yeah it's like you fucking it sounds like Matthew McConaughey breathing in True Detective.

1:16:54Andy Greenwald:They're doing that with the sword fighting. And God bless them, but maybe we can do something different. We're ready. I don't know what that sound is. Maybe experts will come in and say, well, it's a perfect combination of metal on metal and wood snapping and also kittens dying. That's very, very accurate. I'm sure. But that is what the show excels at. And I think that the larger thing that will continue to be... I'm not pretending. I don't like the show. I've never liked the show. You can tune out now if you want. But I will continue to say that the idea of stakes is still often misunderstood by people when we're talking about television shows.

1:17:31Andy Greenwald:And there are many reasons why Game of Thrones was excellent for a wide audience for many years. But on a very, very, very specific level, its reason for greatness is the same reason why The Pit is great, which is because you feel like Like you were watching something where the stake, not the stakes, where the, yeah, well, in this case, like the stakes are that the world or someone's life will never be the same after this. In Game of Thrones, it was like a prophecy is going to change the world forever. Winter is coming. The status quo is going to end. And we are going to tell that story of the end of this version of this world.

1:18:08Andy Greenwald:And we didn't know where it was coming from or how it would affect people, but we saw people journeying with that knowledge towards that end. You know, similarly, like there's a version of a show like Lanterns, which we're excited about, which would be like, guess what? These guys are space cops. And this year's season is there's a space cop murderer. Or it's like this guy is no longer going to be a space cop and this is his replacement. And this is the most existential threat these space cops have ever faced in the history of their space copping existence. I'm leaning in. What are your intentions here?

1:18:41Andy Greenwald:And the fact with House of the Dragon is the lesson every character learns every episode is that it can always get worse. And what's the meta story here? I mean, a macro story here. I've not spoiled anything, but I've watched Game of Thrones. So guess what? I know the Targaryens fuck up and fail. Yeah, I think that there's elements of— I really don't need to get into a deep debate about this, but I do think that within those conversations that, say, Daemon is having with Rhaenyra or Rhaenyra is having with Alicent, There's things about the nature of power that I find kind of interesting and how she could be successful.

1:19:12She would just have to be history's greatest monster. She could achieve everything that she wants. She would just have to burn Templeton to the ground. And her reluctance to do that for whatever reasons, whether it's because she's listening to Messaria or she's listening to her better angels, I don't think is going to go great for her. and perhaps it's difficult to tell a tragedy because I think that's ultimately what this is and telling a tragedy on television where half the people probably know the story and half the people can guess what the story is and just based on what happens in Game of Thrones you know they don't sing great songs about Rhaenyra the sweet and kind like people are just kind of like watching they want well executed tragedy then And, you know, one of the things that I thought was really odd about this episode was the Kristen Cole thing happens in the beginning.

1:20:09I think his viewers are like, I've spent a lot of time with this character. That was a dramatic and sort of thrilling death. And not a single other character on the show knows it.

1:20:18Andy Greenwald:Great point. And I know word travels in weird ways in this Westeros where sometimes people seem to know exactly where everyone is and get updates from Ravens. and sometimes people are like waiting on information for quite some time. But that just seems like something that would travel the kingdom pretty fast if the Hand of the King or Queen or whoever, you know, was murdered in battle. And nobody seems to give a shit. And he has connections to all sorts of people in the show, you know, be it their adversary, their lover, their betrayer, whatever. And I thought that was strange. And I think that's a flaw of the show that they're not like, this leads to that, which leads to that.

1:21:01Andy Greenwald:Yeah, but I mean, I think it's just a flawed construction. They've done a lot of good work this season by putting characters in the same building as each other, which was impossible for them to do last year. So we're getting more of it, but not enough. And I just think, I think your point about tragedies was really interesting because what are some of the greatest tragedies in the history of television? They're the greatest shows in the history of television. The Sopranos is a tragedy. Breaking Bad's a tragedy. Breaking Bad is 100 % a tragedy. The Wire, in a way, is a tragedy that also found room for great moments of hope, levity, joy, emotion, everything.

1:21:34Andy Greenwald:The tragedy of it is more compelling to me of a show like, look, listen, I know we're doing. We're entering hour two of a podcast of episode eight of season three of House of the Dragon, and I'm comparing it unfairly to one of the greatest shows of all time about cops in Baltimore. I get this is a little bit ludicrous, but the tragedy of that show is because people want to change things and they struggle because change is very, very hard. There is a version of Westeros that is that. There's a version of Daenerys that was that, right? Like that is not David Simon's proprietary idea, but the show also has to service these moments of made-up history and dragons per episode.

1:22:15Andy Greenwald:and I don't, everybody loses a little bit because of that. It's too, it's at once, is at once too broad and too specific in its aims. Well, we won't be speaking about it again until after the finale. I think that's good. And I think that's for the best. So we'll be back on Thursday, regular show. And then next week, just so you guys know, Mailbag on Monday, Anthony Bourdain's special on Thursday where we'll talk about some of our favorite episodes of his various shows, some of our favorite kind of extra Bordain pieces of culture. Does this mean we won't be covering the Shards premiere in real time?

1:22:51Andy Greenwald:We're going to have to wait a week on that? I'm going live on Twitch for that. Dude, that's... Janky Rondo? Talk to you guys soon. Thanks to Kaya. And we'll be back on Thursday.