Apple Owns TV Right Now. Is That a Good Thing? Plus, ‘Cape Fear’ Series Premiere and ‘Star City’ Episode 3.

20:57Andy Greenwald:Well I think that there's also internally a distinction between shows you spend on and shows you gatekeep quite literally and that that actually could be a boon to them So the example we're going to talk about, Cape Fear, which is getting the royal treatment from, I mean, it's on wraparounds on buses and billboards, and they're trying to draw people to the service based on this show. A show we covered last week that we liked, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, I think is getting the reverse treatment, where it is something that for people who are already within the ecosystem of Apple, they're offering it up, and maybe it's an autoplay when you finish a different show that they think might be simpatico.

21:34Andy Greenwald:and then it's generating its own level of interest within the ecosystem. And the argument for doing that, I would say, is, you know, especially for the way these tech companies budget things, if they spend, you know, if they can break it down to like, we've spent$1 million additionally on top of the production fees for the first episode of Cape Fear in marketing costs. Thus, in order to recoup, it needs to make back its production costs plus this, like a movie would. Yeah. You know, and again, that's all gets fuzzy once you're inside of Apple's internal budgeting. All that is to say, if they get X number of watches on a maximum pleasure guaranteed, those are faster return on investment.

22:15Andy Greenwald:And that might make them more likely to keep it going as opposed to outwardly spending on it and not seemingly recouping that investment in the outside expenditures. Okay. It's so opaque. Yes. And it only makes sense to them. Snoring? Gasping during sleep? Feeling fatigued? Ask your doctor about ZepBound Terzepatite, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zetbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA.

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23:28Andy Greenwald:Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking ZetBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zetbound.lily.com. I thought it was really interesting we can get into Cape Fear here. The Cape Fear was, I think, very wisely released in June as summer hits, as the temperatures go up, as people are looking for like a sticky, indulgent, kind of high-end, trashy show to watch.

24:18And not for the Emmy consideration, which just ended, I guess, about a week ago. I think voting opens this week, I believe, for the Emmys. because you would think Amy Adams, Javier Bardem, Patrick Wilson, these people would be like the kind of person you would put forward for an Emmy Award. That being said, I think this show you can, and we'll talk about, I watched two, Andy watched one. We can talk broadly about it. We don't want to like spoil things. Obviously is based on, in some ways, one central story, but is based on several different sources of material. So Cape Fear is based on The Executioners, which is a John D.

24:59MacDonald novel. It's based on...

25:01Andy Greenwald:From 57 or something, I believe. The film starring Robert Mitchum from the 50s, I believe. 50s or early 60s? Early 60s. And then it's also based on the 1991 Martin Scorsese adaptation with the screenplay by Wesley Strick, which was like a famous kind of, not cash grab for Scorsese, but like another one of his, like, I'm going to prove that I am a bankable director as well as like a world-renowned artiste of cinema. And that was like a$35 million movie that wound up making$180 million. It was Nick Nolte, Robert De Niro, and Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis in the major roles. And was a huge hit.

25:45And we've done it on rewatchables. is it continues to be a rewatchable movie precisely because you are caught in a vice grip of tension and atmosphere. You can feel the sweat. You can feel the tattoos on De Niro. You can feel the water hitting them as they have the big finale. And this show is trying to do what several shows like it in the past have also attempted, which is to see if they can reliably hour to hour release some tension and then pour it back on so that the people, so the audience continues to be engaged and continues to have the sense memory experience of watching Cape Fear, which is kind of the hardest part about this show to navigate is how do you sustain this vibe for this many hours when usually the human body checks out after two hours?

26:42I'm just like, I need this to resolve itself.

26:44Andy Greenwald:And it is not historically. and by historically I mean the novel and the two previous adaptations, a particularly complicated story? No, not really. It is really like an unstoppable object running into an immovable force and then something's got to give. What is your, I know you've done it on rewatchables, what is your personal take on the Scorsese movie? Because my, I have not rewatched, maybe I rewatched it in the 90s when it was on cable. It's a pretty nasty movie, intentionally so. It's definitely, we're doing, on rewatchables this month, we're doing the from hell genre which is a largely like 90s based phenomenon subgenre of thriller that basically does the dot dot dot from hell so roommate from hell stepfather from hell nanny from hell um this is the best possible version of from hell and i guess it's the thing from your past from hell.

27:41And I think this was Scorsese, you know, this had been a thing that had been banging around Amblin and that Spielberg had considered directing himself. And Scorsese winds up doing it.

27:52Andy Greenwald:A famous trade, right? Yeah, this is the Schindler's List trade, right? Yeah. They each were developing a project they probably shouldn't have been. And Scorsese and Spielberg swapped Cape Fear for Schindler's List. Right. And in some ways it worked out for both of them exactly right. I would say so. because Scorsese gets to show he can make a blockbuster in a really sincere, like, efficient way. It has so much style. And this is the thing that I was thinking about going into this TV series is that so much of Cape Fear relies on the artistry of the filmmaking because the people are relatively unpleasant to spend time with.

28:27Yes.

28:28Andy Greenwald:Yeah, it's not a heroic storyline. And that's not a deal breaker for me. No. But it's also not funny. So this isn't going to be like Succession or Breaking Bad or any other series or Sopranos or anything where you're like, boy, these are a bunch of corrupted people. Let's watch them get caught like rats in a maze and then see who gets out. This is like you're going to spend 10 hours with these people and you're going to be forced to hope that they figure this out, you know? Yeah, and I think the nature of television requires, despite many, many brilliant creators valiantly attempting otherwise, television requires some audience buy-in and empathy.

29:06Andy Greenwald:And on a very base level, maybe it's because of the time commitment. Yeah. You have to want an outcome, which I think is not—that doesn't reflect the best of cinema, frankly. Like, the best movies keep you on your toes, and you can switch allegiances, and you can question your own empathies and all that stuff. But for 10 hours, I'm not saying you have to pick a side, but you kind of have to settle in and root for something. Right. And now, so this rendition of the series is from Nick Antoska, who's a TV show creator who we have talked about on and off over the years. But I'm a huge fan of Channel Zero.

29:44He did The Act, which I was less of a fan of when I saw of it. and he's done a bunch of different stuff as an executive producer, as a writer, as a creator.

29:54Andy Greenwald:He is a very, very good maker of television and producer of content. I mean that in a really, I mean that in the best, most generous way possible and particularly because he has a real sense of what types of stories interest him and he is interested in the horror, in the lurid stories and the sordid stories and from everything we understand about this, this wasn't necessarily Amblin taking generals on how they can profit from this sitting in their catalog. No, he wanted to do this. He wanted to do this. And I think the thing that I, starting with Praise, because, spoiler, I did not really enjoy watching the show, I think that this is sort of all the way back to where you started, but, like, there is a full-throated embrace of a kind of tawdry summer 80s and 90s blockbuster entertainment that is, you can't half-ass.

30:51Andy Greenwald:And I think that that was clearly both inspiration and the goal here. And I think it's why I was also comparing this, maybe unintentionally at first, to last summer's version of this. Maybe now it was two summers ago. It was Presumed Innocent. which was another like, let's take something from a very specific time culturally that we remember and try to iterate it and, well, for the contemporary streaming era, but also try to hold on to these things that we don't really get in our entertainment anymore. I preferred Presumed Innocent because Presumed Innocent had O.T. Fagbenle's performance and Peter Sarsgaard's performance and it had some knowing wit.

31:34And I would say that this does not seem to have that.

31:37Andy Greenwald:But we can talk more broadly, and I'd like to hear your thoughts about it before I tell you what I was sort of bumping against. I think the issue for me was how the little tricks that they're playing. So I basically, I would say that my broad take on the show is that I thought it was unnecessary and that it was totally make-believe, and I also didn't hate it. You know, like I didn't in the opening moments, I was just like, there's basically two things that happened that I thought were like exactly diametrically, not diametrically opposed. There's one thing where I was like, holy shit, this is really compelling that they're doing this.

32:18And then there was something else where I was like, I know exactly what this show is going to be.

32:21Andy Greenwald:Do you want me to tell you those two things? Yeah. The double suicide? Yep. That was when I was like, damn. Oh, yeah. I was like, OK, we're really going to do this. This is gnarly as hell. Yeah. And the second was the family of dead skunks in the pool. Just even to the whole opening barbecue. Yeah, it was phony baloney. Of Amy Adams walking around with AirPods in and just being like, well, I want my client out of prison. How about that? And I don't know why I made her sound like Andy Griffith. That's not far from the dialect coach. Yeah, and Patrick Wilson, for reasons we will soon find out, like looking like an absolute wax statue.

32:57and then these kids being kids and, you know, like looking at their phones and gaming and getting catfished.

33:03Andy Greenwald:So what do you do when you take a, like a, first of all, I was about to say, a beloved franchise like this. It's not. It's a cult thing. It's obsessed over. It's a specific memory for a lot of people, depending on which version of it you respond to. How do you update it and why do you update it? And I would say that there is an awkward collision between the modern and the classic. And it's evidenced by, as you said, the son isn't just moody. He's losing himself in online gaming. The dad isn't just walled off and keeping secrets. He's microdosing. The daughter isn't just harassed by Max Cady. She's harassed by a rapacious true crime podcaster.

33:45Andy Greenwald:And I think, honestly, most egregious of all, in order to understand where we are in the contemporary political moment or cultural moment, everyone talks about how bad the system is. A lot of talk about the unfairness of the system. This is where I think the thread is that Antosca is trying to pull. So, you know, he's got a bunch of really talented directors working on this show. Morton told him directed the first episode, but then S.J. Clarkson took over one. Reed Morano. Amanda Marcellus. Amanda Marcellus. It's an impressive lineup. Yeah. I think he's most interested, or it seems like he's most interested in asking the question is, what if Max Cady got out of prison and instead of being feared and rejected, he was tacitly embraced by a emergent, scanning liberal, criminal justice reform community that wants to believe the best in everybody, but wants to believe the best in everybody as long as it gets people to donate to their nonprofit or whatever their cause.

34:47and I think that that is an interesting concept but I don't know if it has like 10 hours of legs as a concept and the thing that drove me actually most nuts in this episode and the first two episodes is not the performance because CCH Pounder is incredible but the character that CCH Pounder Noah plays Noah who is in charge of this I think it's called the SJLP and it's like a basically they go around it's like a freedom project they go around like trying to free wrongly imprisoned incarcerated people who have been of false abuse of crimes. But she is like so blinded by the dollar signs and the press that Max Cady could bring this group if they somehow figure out a way to bring him into the fold here that it kind of just, it goes beyond my suspension of disbelief and it's just preposterous.

35:48Andy Greenwald:Well, it's one of the things that we love about Widow's Bay is that from the very beginning, in the first 15 minutes, Mayor Tom Loftus communicates to the guy from the New York Times that there are no cell phones on the island. And he just said it and then it's done. And then all the problems of modern suspenseful storytelling are just vanished. They just vanish. and you can tell a story in a more familiar and classic manner. And with this show, they are struggling up against the constant presence of cameras and constant presence of everyone knowing everything about everyone else all the time, while also having to manufacture natural moments for Max Cady to wander into the backyard of the Bowdens, for them to have a little tete-a-tete-a-tete in an art gallery off of the main party area of a charity ball.

36:44Andy Greenwald:It's kind of hard to do both, you know? And also, I think what you're responding to is the fact that, like, Cape Fear is—the previous Cape Fears are smaller, not just because they are either a Slim Pulp novel or, you know, a two-hour movie, but smaller in the sense that Max Cady isn't a cause celeb in the way that he is on the show and probably would be in contemporary 2026 where everything that he does is broadcast online and in the news media and I think the show does a good faith effort to bring some of that fanfare and focus to the world but then it's also like it's a little discordant then this is the biggest thing that ever happened and then Amy Adams is shocked that he's there in front of her but then he also just takes the mic from her at a large public gathering, wearing a beautiful linen suit, which I guess is standard DSU when you get out of the Georgia penitentiary system.

37:37Andy Greenwald:It's both big and it's trying to be big and small at the same time in the way that it's also trying to be short and shocking and also long, serialized and expansive at the same time. That's a central tension that a lot of these better shows and worse shows have fallen prey to it than this version of Cape Fear. So the premise of the series is essentially that Amy Adams, who I think has moved into the kind of Nick Nolte role, the kind of star of the show, really. Amy Adams was Max Cady, who's played by Javier Bardem, his defense lawyer at his trial. What is it, 17 years ago? 17 years ago. And very late in the trial, she encourages him to make a plea deal to spare his life from the death sentence.

38:20It just so happens that the prosecutor in that trial is played by Patrick Wilson, this guy Tom Bowden, and they wind up getting together after the trial. She's pregnant with her fiance's baby, but then she leaves him and gets together with Tombo, and then they start a family. And they have a very successful two-lawyer life where they have this huge house in Savannah, Georgia, and seem to have everything that you would want in life. And instead, of course, when you look underneath the hood, everything is decaying and breaking, and there are skunks in the pool, essentially. they hide Max Katie like the shark from Jaws for 90 % of this first episode I think it's pretty effective his introduction as a character is convincing his former mistress or girlfriend to take her own life and confess to the murders of his wife and child which is why he was in prison in the first place this exonerates him gets him out intrigues this woman Noah played by CCH Pounder who then wants Anna to start working with Max Cady and bring him into the fold at this nonprofit that they work for.

39:29They are piling on characters in this show. Like within the first two episodes, Ted Levine shows up, Paul Schneider shows up, you know, Jamie Hector is there. Like they have supersized this thing. And to your point about Cape Fear being tight and small, part of at least my love of the 91 film is the feeling of even though we live in a town, even though we're part of a community, even though there are laws, when you really boil it down, it's us versus him and nobody's coming to our rescue. It's a little bit confusing and it's a little bit distracting when you have like five different subplots going already and we're two episodes in.

40:10I was curious whether or not you are turned off by the tone of the show or the actual storytelling of the show.

40:17Andy Greenwald:I actually like the tone and I think that there's an element of it that is, just profoundly campy, but whether it is a developmental edict or just the personal taste of the people in charge, it resists it at every turn, which I found neuters Bardem's performance, which is one million percent a delicious ham and cash grab. You know what I mean? Like, he's going for it, and good for him. He's going for it, but in a different way than De Niro and Mitchum did. Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying, but he's doing it in a very, it's a way that's true to him. He's not changing who he is as a performer. But I think that there is, because I think what makes him always so magnetic is that he presents as this like, it's certainly on camera, I have no idea how tall this man actually is, but he presents as like this hulking, a physical brute, but he is so sort of sly and as my kids would say, secretly zesty, that like that comes out in ways that, or maybe not so secretly, ways that are kind of beguiling and charismatic and sensual.

41:20Andy Greenwald:And so I like all that. I just can't stand the half-assness of the camp in the sense that, I mean, you have Patrick Wilson, who is a very strong actor, but I think needs to be given, needs to be tipped in one direction or the other. Can't just be ramrod straight with his little belt talking about cornflakes at Kroger. Like if you're having him say things like this, if you're doing the dialogue, if you're doing the dialogue that the show is giving you, let them let them slather some some some extra pimento on it you know what I mean don't treat this like this it's shot so straight faced that we're meant to take all this seriously and worry about these people and the stakes are rising and I think it's a little bit preposterous there's a puma in the backyard yeah you know what I mean yeah I think they say puma don't they do they say panther oh I thought it was like there was a panther attack oh okay maybe you're right well they do say it regardless they they they they preface it and then it shows up or foreshadow it.

42:21Andy Greenwald:So I had a problem with that and I just sort of had a... Full disclosure, I don't know the difference between a Puma and a Panther. I was giving you time to look and I was like, why is your laptop shut? I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to over rely on the internet. I want to be candid with our audience that I just don't know. You could tell me a Puma was just like a male Panther and I would be like, maybe that's true. No, I think it would be a Puma. We were having this conversation with ballerinas right before we started shooting. Yes. Because Mikhail Baryshnikov's daughter is on the show.

42:47Andy Greenwald:But like there's these details, right, that I think are just kind of ridiculous, but the show doesn't allow them to be ridiculous. Like the fact that in the opening moments, Anna is sitting for a filmed interview for presumably for television. She is a television journalist, right? There's a television camera on her. But as soon as the action moves to the pool where a family of skunk corpses are being retrieved, the television cameraman runs out with a wide angle still camera. Oh, those are actually, now the 4K cameras actually come like looking like a still camera. So he was still videoing. He didn't switch jobs in the middle of the scene.

43:20Yeah, I think actually like that's a camera right there. That's just basically a real camera. Regular looking camera.

43:26Andy Greenwald:These have been cameras the whole time? I thought that was a light. How long has that been there? We've been on Twitch for five years. Streaming? You, me, Janky Rondo just running 24-7. And like the little things of like this set decoration. You know, one thing that drives me crazy, this is what I look at, is when you see rich people's homes and they are just full of large bowls full of artichokes. Wait a second. I have to talk to you about this. Yes. The teenage son's room is in a completely different architectural concept than the rest of the house and it's driving me insane. He has exposed brick and it's like a giant loft that he has somewhere else in the house.

44:09Well, remember,

44:10Andy Greenwald:the story is telling us that there's houses in constant repair and they don't let people onto another side of the house that they're constantly renovating i don't know about where this kid's room is right but did they have seven different architects work on it is this like a borgia's story like what's happening well also like but then the kitchen has these like palm tree wallpaper that looks like uh you know a a now out of business w hotel in new orleans right before katrina but like but again like i think you are my thing is this you are always telling a story with every frame of the show yeah and And the pilot makes good use of the low, heavy trees, enough to make me think that they filmed this in Savannah, which apparently they did not, although maybe they got some exteriors.

44:54Andy Greenwald:I'm not really sure. But everything is an opportunity to tell a story. And when you put things in a house that just has these inconsistent room-to-room, without committing to the bit that every member of this family lives in his or her own psychological-slash-physical space, which is a choice. I guess I could see the argument. But make the choice, so that when you're in the kitchen and over the son's shoulder, when you see him taking out like energy drinks for his mystery night out, on the table, there's a beautiful piece of sourdough with two slices cut and like spilling open as if you were waiting to celebrate the, you know, the breakfast at this Airbnb and it's been cut for you.

45:30Andy Greenwald:I'm like, that was a choice you made and you didn't pay attention to it. It's giving us this sort of like moneyed laziness when I want every frame to compelling you tell us a story. And you were praising the directors. is I put some of this on Morton Tilden. I don't know the man. He makes a beautiful picture and he keeps things moving and he does seem to understand the assignment. But there's an element of this, and I apologize especially to my friends who just returned from Scandinavia, but you hired a Norwegian to give us like sweaty Southern funk. It's kind of like me going horseback riding, which is in the sense that I've seen people ride horses and I could probably be lifted up onto the horse.

46:12Andy Greenwald:And in a still photo or two, I might look like I know what I'm doing. This is the back rooms thing. In back rooms, there's a line about like, this is like describing a dog to someone who's never seen one and asking them to draw it. It's kind of that vibe. This is a sterile and professional recreation of something without the stench and the funk. There's also a funny thing that I saw the Vulture recapper for this show pointed out that I hadn't noticed and then immediately was like, I can't unsee this now, which is the amount of times they use jump scares for no purpose whatsoever like ted levine showing up or like it turns out that's just the gardener or whatever and like they're gonna do that to wear down your nerve endings so that when it actually does yeah but part of the issue is that if you're gonna not remove the danger but like imagine if max katie actually had visiting privileges for all these places and was able to just walk in and out of prisons and people's homes and businesses.

47:08The whole point of like the Cape Fear movie is that he's kind of like this pariah who is basically like, what are you going to do about it?

47:18Andy Greenwald:Yes, it's everything he does is a provocation. And this is more like, what if he could insinuate himself into the progressive weakness of this community? Now, I genuinely, good faith, I'm curious about this. That like, I think, tell me if I'm wrong because I'm not in this cohort. But like if you are a particular fan of horror, and I don't mean like, ah, what a like get out. What a brilliant analogy for our time. So I mean, like I like watching people dropped into a shark tank and seeing what the sharks do next. Sure. There could be that kind of entertainment. There could be here. Bad stuff's going to happen and it hopefully will be happening in increasingly claustrophobic and horrific ways.

47:59Andy Greenwald:So that appeal might be there. Sure. I just, I think the problem is when you're also like, and also the teenage son will go on a ketamine journey where he sees an AI version of Max Cady's unborn teenage son. Well, when you put it that way, by the way, it's, I'm just noting with interest. Again, I don't have a dog in this fight, but if you brought, you brought up Nepo Watch with Baryshnikov's daughter, you have your silence on the son in this is remarkable to me. Who's he? Kate Winslet's son. she's really populating a lot of casts right now now Kate Winslet famously big friend of the watch podcast yeah basically so whatever she's done a beautiful job raising these talented children yeah that's pretty much my take Mia Threppleton who was recently in the last Wes Anderson movie yes the Phoenician Scheme she's very good and then your boy Joe Anders yeah okay my boy that's your boy you love his plotline you love gamers it also I don't know what you're you're getting at I think that you're trying to build a case.

48:59Nepo-wise or horror-wise? Yeah, like I don't know. You are. You had a problem with Jane Campion's daughter being in Star City. No, I didn't. I didn't. You have a problem with who's the...

49:09Andy Greenwald:I had a problem with Andy Serkis' daughter being in Star City. And who's the kid who's Evan on Widow's Bay? Who's his dad? What? He's a Nepo baby? No, maybe not. Protect him at all costs. He's fantastic. Anybody with like that name, I'm like, your dad's probably, you know, Daniel Day-Lewis or something. I mean, I don't know if we're going to continue watching this. I know. Sorry. Spoiler. I'm not going to be watching this. This is not the new euphoria. No, but I am interested genuinely. Every once in a while, maybe I'll do a little update from Savannah, Georgia for you. I think I am going to. I had such a good time watching this with my wife.

49:45Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Say more about that. Well, it's a really funny show to not funny, but it is a really fun show to watch and be like, what the fuck are they doing? now we may not be interested in this after four hours right which would be double the amount of time we've already watched kingston roomie southwick doesn't even have a wikipedia page which either he's he's like a soft he's a soft nepo thank god you're here father is producer mother is an acting coach so he was just he was just primed for this he's not i don't have a problem with nepotism you do you're the one who's like saying like i don't have a problem with that I am a product of nepotism.

50:22Andy Greenwald:I genuinely don't have a problem with it when it's good. I like things to be good. It's like, oh, I'm the asshole? When it's good, it's awesome. I think both of the nepos in Star City are excellent. I do too. Okay. Well, let's talk about Star City. Louis Pullman, great. No problem with it. Your best friend is Louis Pullman. Well, I just... That you discovered. I Columbus'd him for this podcast. Yeah. Turns out Bill Pullman is his dad. Did you have anything else you want to say about Cape Fear? No, I just... You won't be watching any more of it. You reject the highfalutin way it casts its ranks.

50:55Yeah. You wish Patrick Wilson would untuck his shirt every once in a while.

50:59Andy Greenwald:Yes, live a little. And it's unpleasant. I think ultimately it's that I just find it unpleasant and I'm not particularly fans of many of the leads. That's keeping me away, but I am interested in it as a project. And so I really appreciate you going on the front lines. You know what I mean? It's like what Scott Pelley said. He never wore the uniform for this country, but he's been in foxholes. That's you. That's you. Let's wrap things up by talking about Star City. Okay. My enthusiasm for this remains like a burning hot flame. I do want to acknowledge at the top here. So we'll talk a little bit in detail about the three episodes that have aired so far.

51:43I felt like in the third episode I detected a rhythm where before I was like this could be anything and go anywhere and I have no idea the vibe of the show is so intoxicating but like you could tell me it's gonna time jump to 84 in episode 3 and I'd believe you it's a little bit more steady as she goes in episode 3 it does jump but yes it jumps and there's also big character reveals but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this is sort of random but I saw a old Quentin Tarantino interview this weekend not the one where he says The Rip is the best movie he's seen in a decade

52:22Andy Greenwald:have you talked to him about this? I don't have those privileges has Sean backchanneled with him about this? I don't know but I did know that The Rip was playing at the Vista the movie theater he owns so he walks the talk but he was talking about the difference between storytelling and situations and uh you know he was referring to the movie speed where you know it's like what if a bus had had to go 55 miles per hour or to explode and he's like i really enjoy that movie but it's a situation it's not a story like those aren't characters those characters aren't going on a journey it's well i mean they are literally they're on a bus yeah but like they don't change over the course of the movie really like that much um i don't know what's your name learns to love any yeah i don't think she was not ready for love i just think she didn't have a driver's license because she had too many points on it i forgot about that detail yeah don't try and get any speed trivia past me when's the last time you re-watched speed within the last three years i need it's a frequent re-watch i love them it's an excellent movie but it is it is it a situation more than it's yeah i'm sorry we don't need you to digress and star city has a very like digestible situation.

53:33It's a very digestible pitch. It's, you know, what if the Russians landed on the moon first? What would happen to the collective histories of both nations, America and Russia, but also, you know, what would happen to the space programs that they would then go on to produce? The reason I think I like this show so much is that it's a story and that they have found a group of actors and created a group of characters where the little revelations about the characters and the little bits of growth and the little bits of change and the little moments of epiphany or catharsis or whatever are so earned and so well drawn and i'm thinking of two in particular that i just wanted to bounce off you so in episode two uh anastasia uh belkova who's the first woman to go to the moon.

54:28She's on a promo tour with her arranged marriage husband. Are they married yet by the time they go to Paris? I can't remember. No, they get married when they get back.

54:37Andy Greenwald:Yes. With her fiance, Sasha, who's also a cosmonaut, they go to Paris. And it's cool. Like, you know, it's like a cool idea. And it's cool to imagine like them doing this sort of propaganda promo motor for the Soviet space program. And they take the moment where they basically find that the one thing that these two people have in common is their disaffection with where they are in their lives, even though they couldn't be more different. And she's a little bit odd. And for the first, you know, episode and a half, you're kind of like, I don't really get who this is. This person like a product of nepotism because her father is a big dipwig in the party or what's going on, Especially because they make the bold gambit of having her be the backup plan to Yannak Matova, who is a firecracker in her limited screen time in the pilot.

55:26And she winds up going on this nighttime odyssey across Paris with her fiancé that is fucking delightful and exciting and scary and interesting. And everything from the way that they have to exit a hotel and she takes off her heels to go down the stairs quietly to them like running across the street and she stops to look at the Arc de Triomphe. and he's like come on come on but like she takes this moment to be like holy shit i never thought i'd see that especially here in lithuania yes whoa i think she was right to call attention to it and then they have this like really fun night of drug and booze addled dancing at a nightclub where she is soft recruited she thinks by the americans but it turns out to be a russian agent work or soviet agent working on behalf of you know pretending to be an american its test and then in the third episode we have arena who is played by agnes o 'casey who's the protege of ludmila uh roscova the sort of kgb chieftain and she's been doing the lives of others listening thing uh on on tanya and valia valia is another cosmonaut tanya's his long-suffering wife who's cheating on him with sasha and she's been listening in on them and then it turns out surprisingly her daughter is being taught by tanya she's being taught music by tanya and she goes over to her house for uh for coffee and admits something to tanya and in the moment where she admits it not only is it just wonderfully played by the performers but the sound on the show becomes muddled and muted like it's been erased and we find out that that's because Irina is going to go back to her listening station, go on the tapes of Tanya's listening devices and erase the part where she confesses something private and personal about her past, about the father of her child.

57:19And I thought both of those moments were so earned and just like to build up. It's about the space program and it's about spying and it's about national security and all these big, big ideas. But they are finding story in character in a way that I think is really, really wonderful.

57:39Andy Greenwald:Yeah, I completely agree. And, you know, there's even more detail in those scenes in The Apartment where, what's her name? Irina is seeing for the first time the physical, the set of her favorite radio drama. And she's smelling the perfume that she knows was purchased in Paris. and she's being taken out of it, not just in the sense of like future scrubbing, but she's hearing the conversations that played in her mind only in this place. And it's really dissociating and powerful. Because we started with a quasi love letter to NBA fandom. Sure. I need your help on this. I need you to use the sports half of your Grantland binary brain.

58:21Andy Greenwald:Who is the most, in your opinion, maybe even in this finals, like the most, and I feel like it's probably someone on the Knicks, like the most old school player who is not going to trick you and not dazzle you. Josh Hart. Right, is just going to go at you and it's going to be basketball. Josh Hart. And that's Star City to me, especially in the third episode where there is nothing in the mechanic. I mean, the setting and the fact that within each episode, they can do a tense Apollo 13-esque space drama is remarkable. But even to use that as a set piece in the third episode where something goes wrong, there wasn't a single moment watching the launch sequence played out over the back half of the third episode where I didn't know something was going to go wrong yes especially once the one character space swims to the back to release the pressure as soon as he did that my brain went into like the top you know you can like change the camera angle and I'm watching the all 22 I'm mixing my sports metaphors but I was like I know what's going to happen now because I have watched television before but I'm curious how they play it.

59:28Andy Greenwald:And the way they played it is right down the middle and perfect with the cuts when you stop hearing from the back and the elation mixed with a sudden discovery and then the slow realization that something has gone wrong. This is textbook. There's nothing particularly novel about it. It's just executed at such a high level. And I felt the same way throughout that episode where it's like, let us explore story in every corner of the world that we created. Because also remember, it is a rare, rare opportunity for producers and TV makers to be told by a rich pocketed benefactor like Apple. Yeah, we want more.

1:00:03Andy Greenwald:So what could they have done with this? Especially when the fact that the Russians job in the narrative of the other show of for all mankind is established, they're the antagonist, they're the rabbit, the greyhounds are chasing the whole time. So it was kind of either plug and play or let's dive in and create rich, rich characters to make the show as much about them as possible and then just put them in conflict see what happens and it's i'm struck by how effective and yeoman like the show is and how satisfying that can be the the sequence that you're talking about i think is elevated by the value subplot to it yes right so and obviously we're talking pretty openly about this series so if you haven't watched episode three yet you you might want to skip ahead to the next segment or end of the podcast but it's revealed the value is the mole inside of star city and that he planted basically a transponder or transceiver on the the lunar module which winds up being detected by the soviets so they then power down they reboot the module reboot it looks like everything's going to work out but unfortunately like the repowering of it means that the uh the hab doesn't like the basically the extender part of it of the module doesn't go back in or it goes out too early and in trying to land the the module back with the space station that they were the space whatever the craft they've aboard the moon landing they're going to fly back and our cine r.i.p goes back Right, after a McBain head fake where Sasha spends most of the episode trying to figure out what he would say in a letter to his loved ones and gives one of the letters to his illicit affair with Tanya.

1:01:53I thought that part was really great. The fact that every character has a secret life emergent is really cool. It means that nobody's ever fixed on a map. Right now, I think perhaps the best performance on the show is Anna Maxwell Martin, who's playing Ludmilla Vraskova. And we haven't really figured out what her bag is yet. Would you be like, what she's into? Yeah, like, we don't know, like, her nuances yet because we haven't spent, like, a ton of time with her. She more, like, lurks on the, you know, like, is the face in the back or the person who's just like, you know, I don't believe you. But I really thought that that sequence wound up being elevated by finding out that it was an act of duplicity or an act of espionage.

1:02:38I did want to ask you something about where we are, which is three hours into the show. I had a couple of, wait a second, I forgot that we're supposed to be watching Russians. so that you know as we talked about last time all of the characters all the all of the characters all the soviet characters speak in speak english yes and speak english accent english accent english accented english and this is something that chernobyl did so it's not uncommon to see this and i thought even there was a joke maybe underneath a performance where when our cine is talking about what he's going to say on the moon he's basically doing sean conry's hunt for red October accent.

1:03:21Andy Greenwald:Uh-huh. And I don't know if he was trying to do Sean Connery or if he was trying to do Sean, but it was a joke that landed for me. Yeah. Do you ever blink and you're like, I'm starting to forget the nationality and ethnic background of the characters that we're watching? Well, I think that that's part of the reason why it's done this way, because it is a pretty quick, sneaky, empathy, you know, IED, because it's like, well, they're just like us. Just like that Sting song. They love their children too. Right. Whoa. I think the interesting part was when they were in Paris and they don't speak French, but no one in Paris understands them because they're speaking Russian, but it's English.

1:04:03Andy Greenwald:and, you know, at least from my own personal research efforts, many people in Paris do understand English, even if they pretend not to. Or the fact that when you see them, like when you see Irina transcribing the recordings, she's typing in Cyrillic. So, no, I think that the, whatever, you know, prep meetings and design meetings they had were just, to my mind, seem incredibly successful and incredibly aesthetically integrated. So the language and the way they speak the language works with the production design and the sets and just the entire aesthetic of the show is consistent for me, so it doesn't.

1:04:45Andy Greenwald:Good. Were you concerned, Troll? It bothers you. No, it doesn't bother me. I just think that there was one moment where, God, which episode or what scene was it? I think it was when Valiya and Sasha are in the stairwell and he's sort of like, you're being a little, like you're just a child and you're always joking around, but this is serious. And for a second I was like, this is about the British Air Force? Like, what am I watching? And I was like, oh wait, that's right. Yeah, these guys are cosmonauts. And they work under Soviet Russian rule. Yeah, I think that the other thing that's been interesting about it, basically the show seems to run towards the challenges, which is kind of like my 10 ,000 foot almost de facto praise these days where it's like, Like, well, this is where the fences are in the world that they've been given.

1:05:32Andy Greenwald:This is what they've been granted. So what do they do with it? And I think some of the interesting cultural and character-based nuance has come from the moments that we haven't seen yet. When Belikova's father shows up and the way he treats her, the references to Irina's bad marriage, the things that are happening outside of Star City contribute to the idea that though some characters like Valia's wife, who's... Tanya. Tanya. chafing against the limitations within Star City and dreams of Moscow and listen to records, you know? Really just like us. It's a really cool detail that she's getting contraband LP or singles.

1:06:10Andy Greenwald:Smuggled in on X-rays. Yeah, that can only be played four times before they degrade, yeah. That's pretty cool. My favorite Robert Pollard solo album was also issued only on X-ray that could only be played four times, but sorry you missed out. I invited you over to listen to it. but yeah there's levels to this society that Star City isn't some achievement and within its walls everything is possible that Star City is an exemplar of the best and the worst of a larger society and the larger society is knocking at the door in various ways so I feel immersed I mean it's it's an excellent show and it is a remarkable pressure valve that it has that if it starts to feel a little too kitchen sink pot boiler they can just fucking go to the moon and when I was watching that moon sequence I was feeling something that is probably baked into every frame of the seasons of For All Mankind that I haven't watched which is man it's cool to see something in which space travel is really hard and really scary not you know ah time to take the cruiser to Naboo or whatever time to take the cruiser to Naboo we can wrap it up there thanks to Kaya and Kaya for producing today and we'll be back on Thursday I will be half gone so we're going to talk about Widows Bay together but then Andy will have the con.

1:07:25Andy Greenwald:Do you think you'll wear the same clothes on Thursday when we talk about Widow's Bay? Because I was planning to. I was going to turn everything inside out. That's sick. See you guys on Thursday.