‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Footage, ‘Euphoria’ S3E2, and ‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ Episodes 1-3

22:44Oh. And I didn't know if you knew that. No, he seemed like a good guy.

22:48Andy Greenwald:No, not really. He's pretty dark prince. One thing about me, I'm very credulous of people. I take them as I see them. Well, I was wondering what you thought. I was wondering, like, there's a line in this episode when Juana, the aforementioned Juana, the housekeeper, is going through every single thing from their barbecue. Yes. And is like, would you like to keep this? Yes. Would you like to save this? Would you like to save that? And at one point he goes, Juana, I'm going to kill you. He did say that, yeah. now he says it very dryly. It's a laugh line in the episode, I think. But that's Nate's vibe.

23:20Season 1-2 Nate can get pretty fucked up.

23:23Andy Greenwald:It's very, we mentioned this last week, but there's a Breddy Sinellis aspect to it, that he is a little American psycho. Like he is the perfect scion of a West Coast dynasty and has the right jawline to either run for office or to go to jail forever for murder. Yes. And so I was curious whether or not you picked up on that as this being your only your second episode of Euphoria. I didn't because this episode, well, I'll say two things. One, part of his storyline is probably at the bottom of my power rankings because this is we're now two for two in him voicing something that I have to believe is near and dear to creator Sam Levinson's heart, which is that all Californians of good standing should care about PNZ laws and how difficult it is to build here.

24:12Andy Greenwald:Why can't you separate art from artists? Literally the guy's like all Californians it's like the pit he like turns to camera and is like do you know planning and zoning regulations? the Republican pit? Yes! This is how we win at podcasting. Say it slower to the camera. Actually women are allowed to make content about whatever they want. You know what I mean? There you go. That is sort of what this show is doing. I don't know if I agree that all Californians should be worried that it's challenging to build here. How do you feel about the zoning laws of this great state? It's not my top 20 of current concerns about living in this great state.

24:47Andy Greenwald:No, it's really not. But then again, I'm not really part of a real estate empire. The ironic thing is that I don't think it's lost that Nate is complaining about starting a somewhat nefariously funded. you know he's like an honest businessman it's like nate's for the furthest from you know i i he's like have these guys move sand around when the developer when the investors come the reason i've liked my experience watching the show cold is because it is never boring and i actually feel like and this is obviously self-fulfilling but that my experiment is supporting itself that like there's very little that i need to be standing on to just be present with these characters as they are going about whatever it is they are building towards in this undoubtedly final season of the show that said um your question brings up one thing that i that i was picking up on which is as certain um threads threads currents bubble up some of them are tonal but some of them feel canonical or biographical in ways that i'm at sea with and i and it's hard to the maddie uh Cassie, Nate, love triangle.

25:59Andy Greenwald:Absolutely no idea what any of that was about. Sure. Nor did I honestly have any idea what Maddie was, who she was, and what she was doing. I found that less compelling. Did you look it up on Wikipedia? I didn't. I didn't. You know, I was reading the new Jonathan Franzen novel at the time. Do you have it with you by any chance? I do, but I'm pretty locked in right now. Okay. And I'll let you know if that changes. And people watching at home will see as my interest level dips in the show. as I retreat to the warm embrace of literature, my true home. But yeah, so the backstory of that was a little bit confounding.

26:35Andy Greenwald:And I guess I will say that the Cassie-Nate relationship, as far as I can tell, I don't actually care what they were like in high school. Them as a starter pack. He used to date Maddie in high school. Sure, but them now as a starter pack, upwardly mobile, you know, would-be nouveau riche couple living in this hellscape. Like, it works for me. It's fine. I think that the show, it's interesting to hear you say that. I think that the show is very much depicting them as, like, frozen in amber out in Calabasas somewhere. And not truly part of, like, the kind of zeitgeist and maybe even tapped into the money stream that runs through Los Angeles.

27:15Right.

27:15Andy Greenwald:Cassie is very excited to be on the roof of the peninsula. Yes. And where's, like, what was that, magenta, fuchsia? What was her top? What color was that? I was not staring at her top in that scene. I have to say, I was not focused on that. What were you looking at? The Hildebrandt family in 1971 Chicago. They're the protagonists of Crossroads. It was pretty interesting. Did you like this episode of TV? I actually, I really did enjoy it. But I really enjoy it because the... First of all, I do like the chaos theory approach. I was not staring at her top. Sorry, does that make me the bad guy? there are other things on screen.

27:53Andy Greenwald:You know, I am enjoying full stop. Like we said last week, I'm enjoying Zendaya. I don't know what's going on with this character or where she's headed, but I just think it's pretty funny. And I also really like that. I have no sense of how much time is passing at any moment in an episode of the show. So the fact that she like goes to this silver slipper club, I have no idea where this is either. It looks like it's Antelope Valley, Palmdale, Lancaster. I don't know. Maybe. Sure. Yeah. Maybe Nevada. I don't know. It's unclear, but she immediately just starts running shit there and is just like hanging with everyone.

28:25Andy Greenwald:I found that to be kind of fun. Yeah. And I also have to say that I'm interested in the way... Okay, so wait, one step back. During the long gestation period for this season, we had heard all these stories about the type of show that it would... Euphoria, if it were to return, how it would return. And the one that obviously we fixated on was, oh, it's going to be a private detective show. Watching this episode particularly, Particularly, there were moments when Sam Levinson moves the camera or sets up scenes in ways that suggest the things that interest him may have outstripped the bounds of the show that he's making.

29:02Andy Greenwald:Yes. So when Maddie arrives at the peninsula and it does this like wide shot of her crossing the boulevard and it's like classic Hollywood noir. And I'm interested in that. And I kind of like the idea of him casting his Hollywood Fantasia, whatever this is, spectacular, with not just the actors from his previous high school piece, but the characters of his high school piece who are now playing very different roles in the movie he wishes he was making. when the show so far has elevated to me this season that's what he's been doing and that's when what's on screen and what clearly is in his head seem to align the moments that i'm less interested in are on the margins and lead to me almost sending you texts like i almost did in the first 10 minutes of this episode asking if this blonde woman coming to la during covid was the cassie origin story didn't she go to high school with them because again maybe it's i wasn't looking at the right part of her.

30:00Andy Greenwald:I didn't, I thought that was Sydney Sweeney. No, it was not. You were just staring at her eyes. Just locked in. So it's interesting to hear you say that. I probably give this show credit because it's doing something that I rather enjoy when TV shows at least effort to become, which is the bucket show that allows a showrunner or a creator to basically be like, on the side of the bucket it says euphoria or on the side of the bucket it says leftovers or the Americans or whatever. Industry. industry but we're gonna make it yeah a receptacle for everything that we're interested in and for sam levinson obviously he is interested in the american dream the american debt uh the absolute uh attraction repulsion nature of california to the point where he talks about its geological evil magnet that's underneath the big magnet under the soil attracting evil it's spoken by a character named angel i like that yeah uh and i think he's obviously playing with a bunch of different styles of of filmmaking within this and for him you know if zendaya jacob elordi and sydney sweeney are in something 20 million people about are going to watch it every week so it's going to be this big this big thing and he can kind of then get away with making a spaghetti Western mystery movie if he wants to or a like pop art almost commentary on exploitation slash also a piece of exploitation itself.

31:31I think that's fascinating. And I think also like this show is not boring. And I've been struggling for the last couple of months with the shows that aren't ones that you can tell that Andy and I have really positively responded to that it's hard for me to get by on like a 65 or a 70 with a show or like it's like it's pretty good it's like this show like is exciting to watch I don't know what's going to happen next yes there are things that perhaps like offend people and there are things that I feel like I've watched that pig conversation like the one that Alamo and Marshawn Lynch have in any number of Tarantino and Tarantino ripoff movies like there's definitely like homage that borders on this was Kirkland Tarantino sure but I just give it a ton of credit for holding my interest and for being...

32:21I don't want this to be clipped, but stimulating.

32:24Andy Greenwald:I'd like to be clipped, but connected to something we were talking about about two, three minutes earlier. I'll come into the studio with you guys later. The show is stimulating. I never thought I would say this, but I understand Sam Esmail better. no when our friend Sam would come on the podcast and do his top 10 list often what he would rail against would be you know what he was joking about as laundry folding shows and he would praise things that were aesthetically bold and directorially driven even past the point of what I and maybe sometimes we felt were reasonable or like entertaining or even generous in terms of the effort they were making to include an audience.

33:15Andy Greenwald:Now, Sam, despite being very successful and very good at making television, historically doesn't love or watch a lot of television. So he's less interested in the things that we praise for hitting familiar, comforting, technically excellent beats, like The Pit, for example, or the story connecting, the bits on Mad Men, where despite pushing things forward visually and thematically, they are just a family in the workplace at the end of the day. All of that being said, the moment we're in with television where everything is received through this lens and viewed through this lens that everything is excellent and everything is prestige, whether it's because of the money Apple or whomever has spent on it or the actors who are in it, we're used to seeing them in films.

34:00Andy Greenwald:When, in fact, a lot of the meat of television shows from minute 14 to minute 48 are laundry folding. You know, this will come up with Margot as well I think it can be elite laundry folding but it's laundry folding and the best thing that I want to say at the end of this long digression is there's no laundry in the show and if I had been watching it with any laundry in mind over the past few years I think that I would be having a lot harder time just breezing along but because I have no stakes here I like the fact that I don't have any idea where it's going. Um, and that every, everything on the screen, somebody had an idea.

34:46Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Sometimes too many ideas maybe and too many ideas piled on top of each other, but they had some ideas. Yeah. And I also, I mean, frankly find the photography of, of Southern California and the desert that he's doing to be as like exciting as anything that happens inside of the silver slipper. Like, I think that he's doing really, really beautiful work in being evocative of the entirety of the Southern California region. Yeah, Southern California, not LA in a way. But it's relationship to Los Angeles and this idea of suburbs and city, it's almost antiquated, or at least because I moved here so late in life, it never really resonated with me as like, you know, growing up in the valley, but going into the city for fun, like that doesn't stand for me.

35:29But it is obviously something as an LA kid that he is thinking about, yeah.

35:34Andy Greenwald:Maybe as an L.A. kid, he's thinking about that. But also maybe as an L.A. rich person, he's thinking about it the same way. Like, you know, the great Kanye song, No More Parties in L.A., which is basically about how annoying it is to drive from Calabasas to a party. Super relatable. But like this is a show built by people who exist only in siloed spaces and only ever traverse through the middle of the city, either ironically or being driven in an air conditioned SUV. like and I'm not saying that that Rue's perspective is of a rich person but I think the vision of it which is not to invalidate the vision it is incredibly haunting and it feels very of the moment and it's claustrophobic and also agoraphobic in equal measure but everything about it is siloed and I think intentionally and I feel like that aesthetically is kind of interesting to me that Cassie goes from her you know golden prison somewhere out in the hills and where she goes that's exciting to her is the roof of a building.

36:31Andy Greenwald:We never see her actually touch the ground and suddenly she's around people again. Or at the very end when Rue goes to visit Jules, who's a character I've never seen before or encountered before. Jules is a major, major, major character on the show. Once again, like absolute siloed somewhere at the penthouse of a building with no one else around. A lot of Jules and Rue, Jules has historically been the sort of, I would say, the love of Rue's life, but in some ways is you wonder whether she's just an object of her kind of fascination and affection more than it is like a life partner kind of thing, just because of the way they are talking at the end of that episode.

37:10A lot of their romance tends to happen in an almost fantasy world, at least to my eye visually. And you can see in the flashback of Jules' time at art school when Rue goes to visit her, it's taking place in a loft that looks like a soundstage basically and that it's like a hollywood romance and her high-rise apartment luxury apartment that she's living in that that jules is living in at the end has like the fakest of fake sort of nightscapes outside of the window so i think from scene to scene and from storyline to storyline and from um coupling to coupling throughout the show it almost has a completely different visual language it's a to a credit to the show's credit that you can have something like cindy sweeney's bubblegum like far out like pop pop pop la the sort of glam luxury night noir of jules's la ruse uh desert scape and that you can go from like cindy sweeney's pretty comic arc so far this season to Rue in a bathroom with another woman telling her that her best friend just died of a fentanyl overdose and that it's being kept from her and then that woman spiraling out on drugs.

38:33Andy Greenwald:Who's the character who I met last night who I'm forgetting? Angel? As a management manager of Nate's ex? Maddie. And Maddie's storyline which is more or less the Rachel Sennett storyline from I Love LA. Yeah. Which is just like the the day-to-day nuts and bolts of managing this crazy town, you know? And I, but I say that not, I say that to support your point that there's all these different visions of it. Ultimately, in terms of vision, why I am like good faith enjoying this exercise is because the shot of Rue begging her mother to come home while a gas station light, the gas station goes out behind her is, it's an astonishing image.

39:17Andy Greenwald:It's a beautiful image. Yes. She's acting the hell out of it. And every so often, every time the show starts to trip into something where I want to take out my stern little red pen and mark it up, it does something that is genuinely moving and quite eye-catching and breathtaking and beautiful. And that's enough to keep me going. I would say largely, and we don't need to segue now, although we could, and you don't need to have watched both episodes for this point to be relevant and not spoilery. Euphoria and Margot have both staked out some terrain on OnlyFans Island. and what a moment for OnlyFans great I'm just glad the little guys are succeeding as in well the guy who made OnlyFans is dead oh no did he set everything up so are his children going to benefit look probate court probate court is a mess you know so I hope that he had his affairs in order I think it was the OnlyFans guy yeah yeah it was but we don't know about who's I don't know who's taking the little taste who's heirs are yeah I mean in some ways we all are we're all sharing in the wealth because OnlyFans redistributes, you know, it goes back to the content creators.

40:23Andy Greenwald:You know, really, Karl Marx was only a fan of that kind of redistribution of wealth. Yes, we can get into more go if you'd like. But we don't need to segue necessarily. I just wanted to make the point that the Euphoria vision of this is in keeping with there is a devil magnet underneath the San Andreas Fault and everything is absolutely cynical and evil and this is just a turbocharged vacuum attached to what was already a soul-sucking enterprise of celebrity and fame and devaluation of human spirit. And then you have the Margo vision of it, which is, isn't that neat? We can all take advantage of this and become better people and pay for diapers.

41:00Andy Greenwald:Sure. And I would like to posit, I know this is a little radical, that somewhere in the middle of these two aesthetic viewpoints, there might be some nuance and an even more interesting story. I wish you luck with your third way. My third way. I'm going to do the Andrew Yang storyline of OnlyFans. clip that I dare you trying to think if I had anything else really to say about euphoria there's not obviously Eric Dane this is his final performance on camera do you think he will appear in other episodes I do think that this season seems to be building towards this wedding we have not watched ahead but obviously the wedding is an opportunity to bring together the entire cast in a way that I don't know necessarily we will have otherwise and I would imagine given everybody's you know release schedules in the major yeah yeah you know movie theaters that he shot Zendaya stuff and sometimes Alexis Demme would be on set for that and he shot Sidney Sweeney stuff with Jacob Elordi and you know like I think he kind of had to work around a lot of schedules to do this and so maybe some of the separation is it is representative of that.

42:12But then again, you know, you're not necessarily always around people you went to high school with, even if you live in the same city. So I think it is a legitimate depiction of their lives, even if it doesn't necessarily feel like they're all on the same TV show all the time.

42:25Andy Greenwald:I have not seen what people have. Many people have many people celebrated Eric Dane's performance on the show that it was very different than what he'd done before. And but even without that knowledge, I thought this was pretty great. I have to say that him being vulnerable enough about his illness, but that took his, I believe it was MS, correct? No, he had Lou Gehrig's ALS. Sorry, ALS. To take that and be like, what I'll do is have, we can have Cal basically be always four beers deep. Yeah, and seated and they treated, seemingly treated him with dignity and gave him the opportunity to deliver a very good performance that was not in any way like a, it wasn't just like a, you know, moist eyed tribute.

43:07Yeah, here you go, big guy. Thanks, man. Yeah, it was it was really cool. Honestly, like just the Zendaya note that I will hit every week, which is that she's compulsively watchable. She communicates so much of the necessary ambiguity that come should come with a show like this because it would be easy to take everything at face value. but like obviously her trepidation so as you obviously probably have deduced uh the rue character has been through several um like rehab and and intervention situations including just absolutely astonishing intervention in second season her dropping angel off at this sort of looked like k-town sort of uh like fly by night rehab facility that didn't quite scream

43:58Andy Greenwald:wellness to me. It seemed like she was going to be... It seemed like a way station. It seemed like where you stash people that you don't want out in the world for whatever reason. And potentially never want them to appear again. Yes, and the lighting of that whole scene and her promising her that she was going to come pick her up in a couple of weeks I thought was great. And that they never come out and have Rue say like, this place doesn't seem like a reputable facility but I'm going to look into it. It's just everything is looks. Everything is the texture of the plexiglass between the person who's just playing video games behind the counter.

44:29It's just really good.

44:30Andy Greenwald:The one counter to your beautiful bucket analogy that I generally agree with in terms of ongoing television shows, because honestly, nothing is worse than a show in which the creative team behind it has lost interest in what they're doing and going through the motions. I'll say that even as potentially overheated and Pulp Fiction coded as the whole Alamo Silver Slipper storyline is, I would be really interested in the, this is the first season of that show of Zendaya working at this place in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, Zendaya's strip club, Michael Clayton. Yeah. I mean, when you put it like that, but yeah, like that, that pops.

45:11Andy Greenwald:Yeah. And the rest of the stuff is interesting, but it is not that. I'm just going to throw up a quick note here, which is I was trying to do a power pull of shows that are on right now. This is like a post-Pitt Rooster DTF. We were very busy watching all three of those shows. I think I gave DTF a college try. I have not received, there's never been a show I have received more contentious emails about, basically insisting that I did not get it and that I should try again. People want Joe Russo to go back and change the ending to that podcast. Like they're changing Endgame. so that you become a big DTF fan.

45:53So Bill Simmons often does power pulls in the midst of an NBA season where he's just like, I'm just going to kind of go from bottom to top here or from top to bottom and rank these shows. We have not watched maybe enough of this to do a hearty power pull. For instance, I have not watched any of The Miniature Wife with Elizabeth Banks and Matthew McFadden.

46:12Andy Greenwald:Neither have I. But Margot's Got Money Troubles, Your Friends and Neighbors, Euphoria Beef, Big Mistakes, which is the new series from Dan Levy on Netflix, which honestly wasn't that bad. I watched two episodes of that. Look at you doing the work. Honestly, it's like an end of the evening, kind of like before we fall asleep thing. And I was like, this is pretty good. Bandy, which we talked about last week. Roshant's new Martinique-based. What were the numbers on our Bandy convo? I don't know. It's still in the top 10 of Netflix. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes you got to look beyond your echo chamber.

46:47you know thank you I appreciate that Hacks which I have not discussed have you discussed it when I wasn't looking no okay Abbott Elementary which I still I still watch and still love

46:59Andy Greenwald:huge in my house but we're behind okay kids the kids are watching it on Hulu a season we're behind and then two AMC shows one which I have often said to my own detriment I have not watched Dark Winds but I want to and half I was half thinking about just euphoria pulling a Greenwald and just jumping in on season four and then if it works going back. And The Audacity, which is a new series with Billy Magnuson and Zach Galifianakis. I feel like we owe that a watch. Because we run AMC as a network. Well, no, we're going to be inheriting it and we're going to have to make the decision about Greenlighting Season 2.

47:34It seems to be on your mind. Well, it's heavy.

47:38Andy Greenwald:Yeah. I'm trying to accrue powers of attorney as much as possible across any field in relation to my I think you'd like that responsibility for me. To have your power of attorney? Yeah, you'd just be letting all my doctors know DNR. Listen, he's here for a good time and a long time. He's coming in because he tore his labrum weightlifting, but don't take any extraordinary measures to keep this guy on the table. But by all means, compliment him on what it's done to his physique. No, I don't want that smoke. In your estimation, I mean, obviously, I think, against all odds, Euphoria would seemingly be your number one right now.

48:16Andy Greenwald:Yeah, although I'm approaching beef with excitement and optimism. With an open and an empty stomach. Empty stomach. Big appetite. Yeah, so this is an interesting moment. There's no clear alpha is what you're saying. Yeah, and I think also with something like Your Friends and Neighbors, which has already been renewed for season three, and I could see being a four, five, six for as long as Ham wants to do this kind of thing. You kind of get to a point where there's some of these shows and you're like, this is going to be what it is. And I will, if I like it, I'll keep watching it. Before we even answer the question you're smartly asking, I will say that this is an interesting snapshot of kind of what TV is now in a way that it hasn't been.

48:58This is what I wanted to get into. This is the stuff.

49:00Andy Greenwald:A number of the shows you're mentioning, especially shows like Your Friends and Neighbors and Rooster, those are ongoing shows. They're designed to be ongoing shows. They're going to be greenlit before the first seasons or current seasons have ended. And similarly, the other types of shows that we're talking about in the margins, Margot and stuff, like there's, if Apple had its way, there's always going to be a Margot-like show on the air. And we will discuss and debate the merits of the show in particular, which I think is worthy of our conversation. But what's interesting about all the shows we're talking about is that they are starry at a certain level and they are safe on a certain level.

49:42Andy Greenwald:And I don't mean that judgmentally When we talk about them individually, I'm happy to be judgmental about their attitude towards risk and storytelling. But they are dependable. And even like your Friends and Neighbors and the season three announcement, and this wasn't a surprise that it was getting renewed again even before the second season premiered. Much like last year, they said it's coming back and James Marsden will be one of the Friends and Neighbors this year. Michelle Monaghan is joining Friends and Neighbors. And who better to represent that certain type of affable, contemporary television plus celebrity than those two?

50:14Andy Greenwald:very, very high approval ratings. Absolutely. Good in basically everything, dependable, and feel like the people who have always been on these shows, even if they haven't been before, and even if they're only doing an arc. Yeah. This is a relatively healthy snapshot of a moment that even if we're not engaging with a lot of it, or are we necessarily fired up about it. And I think some of it is firing these shows all off around one another to get in under the wire for Emmy consideration. There's that. Usually that window ends around May 31st. Yeah. So the next couple of weeks will also be busy. I'll be curious to revisit this list after we've gotten a chance to maybe watch some more of Beef, maybe the Audacity.

50:53I think we'll pick Hacks up as a where are we at as the final season comes to a close. K-pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Huntrix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans.

51:07Andy Greenwald:What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day. It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor. No, really. Stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. And participate in McDonald's while supplies last. Thing. Let's talk about Margo, a show from David E. Kelly. It's adapted from a novel. By Rufy Thorpe. By Rufy Thorpe. It's only a 2024 novel, so it's a quick turnaround from page to screen. She's been recommended to me as a bard of Orange County.

51:45Kaya, do you know Rufy Thorpe at all? Yeah, I read this book. There you go. This is actually useful. And Kaya, if you feel like it, please jump in. I don't have a specific prompt for you. I feel mid about it. That's how I feel about this show. But here's what I want to ask you. you know ever since the wire we've talked about tv is the great opportunity to novelize story yeah to tell a long form story and i think now we've kind of bled into especially uh since apple has thrown its weight around in the adaptation space and amazon as well and a bunch of these places are now like just buying up novels that seem to have a viable screen story for tv if you gave me Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Nick Offerman and if you even gave me a Fullerton English student unexpectedly gets pregnant by her creative writing teacher or her writing teacher and decides to keep the baby I don't know if in like a hundred years I would have come up with this specific mixture of character and tone that this show did and I wonder whether or not it's just because it's like we're adapting this book and that's what the book is like.

53:03Yes. But I'm starting to wonder whether or not like TV is the right place to adapt novels because this to me is like a perfectly fine example of like in 1996, this would have been an adaptation of a Mona Simpson novel that lots of people liked.

53:20Andy Greenwald:Can you imagine Curtis Hansen's Margo's Got Money Troubles? Absolutely. Absolutely. would have been very enjoyable and you know what it would have been better than anyone expected and really satisfying yes and there's something about this you were talking about the safety of it I think we were talking about the element of surprise that euphoria packs in to each scene to each shot yeah there's part of it is because I know what is going to happen on this show because you watch a trailer for it so you know that Margot gets into OnlyFans and you know that her father was an ex-professional wrestler who's gotten out of rehab to come back to her.

54:00Andy Greenwald:Yeah, I mean, the logline of the book was like, it almost felt like a chat GPT stunt to get optioned. Yes. Which is, again, people really like the book. Kaya, not so much, but like it was a hit book and it is a legitimate thing. I am not trying to discredit the author, but the series of words strung together, I was like, well, that's that's going to get adapted. I've been having a sensation when I'm watching shows now. And Kate Herron directed the third episode. Like, it looks cool. Like, Elle Fanning is wonderful. Dearba Walsh, who did Bad Sisters, really talented Irish director. I hate when scenes start and I know exactly how they're going to end.

54:39Andy Greenwald:Oh, I am. If you think I'm insufferable, imagine me watching the show saying what was going to happen in this. Yes. And it's not like, oh, let me guess. She's actually going to do Only Fans. I mean, like, let me guess, she's going to get insulted by this HR person. Or let me guess, like, Michelle Pfeiffer's not going to be able to take care of the baby tonight, so she's going to ruin her restaurant job. Or let me guess. And yes, like, TV, there's a huge swath of television where I'm like, I want a reliable, repeatable emotional experience. Yes. along with a couple of laughs or a couple of thrills every week for 42 minutes or 59 minutes or an hour and five minutes or whatever it is.

55:24But more and more, I think TV like the pit and industry and, you know, euphoria kind of makes it hard for me to watch stuff where I'm like, no shit.

55:34Andy Greenwald:Well, if you're committing to eight, ten hours of something, you don't necessarily want extremity, which I think is what was a misunderstanding of a lot of the last 10 years in terms of pushing genre things or violence or shock to the forefront to get people to keep watching. You don't need to be surprised. I think you ought to be delighted. And when you get the feeling that things are moving along a predictable track, that, for me, saps my enthusiasm of spending this much time watching something. Now, if I had a lot of laundry to fold, I get it. I will also say that, like, this is from the book.

56:09Andy Greenwald:This might be considered a zag, considering I am the Daddington of this particular island. but I do find the unexpected pregnancy story arc to be diminishing returns. I dare someone to show me a version of this story that follows a different path other than throwing up in public and finding out the hard way and taking multiple tests and saying, no, no, no. And then the chat, like, it's hard. And this is a legitimate part of the human experience. But dramatically, it's increasingly kind of inert because it follows a very similar pattern. Before we get specifically even more into the weeds of the show, I wanted to say some positives.

56:45Andy Greenwald:I think that I think that the first of all, production design, I'm biased. This is Richard Bloom who worked on my show, but I think he did a beautiful job showing a part of, attention Sam Levinson, a part of Southern California that is very specific and not the version you often see. This is like on the outskirts of Pomona-ish. One of the things that I noticed that I really appreciated is like in Margot's apartment, Margot's the main character played by Elle Fanning. It doesn't look like poverty porn. No. And it doesn't look like there's a bowl of plums on the table for no reason. Right. Which is often the case.

57:22Andy Greenwald:It's right in the middle. It's right in the middle. It's like, oh, some people live here and sometimes they eat cereal. And I noticed that in location to location to location. And when the show does put a little curlicue on it, like the scene in Bloomingdale's when Margot has sort of a panic attack and falls on the ground, and Michelle Pfeiffer is yelling at her to get up, You can see that he hung these like furry Cassie and Nate-esque lilac lamps over her, which I don't believe are a feature of Bloomingdale's, but accentuated the shot. I was just in Bloomingdale's last weekend. You're shopping for strollers?

57:50No. As a gift? We were looking for home goods and we went to a Bloomingdale's that didn't have them. Okay, well, you should go to the one near Pomona.

57:58Andy Greenwald:It's classier. And, you know, the original music is by Nathan McKay, who we love from industry and executive producer and I think essentially day-to-day showrunner is Eva Anderson, who's an incredibly talented writer who I work with, who I love to see her succeed in something like this. I will also credit one other huge thing here that maybe goes against our initial take. The episodes are like 36 to 42 minutes. Bravo. Huge. Let's normalize this. Once you get through your friends and neighbors trailer, 38 minutes. Although this started with a trailer for itself. Yes. Which I was like, relax, Apple.

58:35Andy Greenwald:You have a winner. I'm here. I really appreciated that. Like there is nothing, few things worse, few things worse than you fire it up and it's like 64 minutes. I'll tell you right now. But you know what else is worse than that? A 36 minute half hour comedy. But if you tell me it's an hour long drama and you hit that 40 minute sweet spot, I'm paying attention. I sincerely would probably, I would watch every episode of Fallout if they were 42 minutes. It makes a huge difference. Huge difference. So there's that. I think the other thing I will say that's really positive is I think Nick Offerman is amazing so far in this show.

59:11Andy Greenwald:Three episodes in, he's playing just out of rehab, former wrestling great. Named Jinx. Named Jinx. He, this feels a little like, you know, you talking about the tops on Euphoria to say this, but like the version of the show that's focusing on the man is pretty interesting. He's really good. Well, this is kind of the thing. But it's a different show. Yeah, and I was most delighted by the opening episode, the first episode, specifically Elle Fanning in college and maybe being in Fullerton and having a gift that should be bigger than Fullerton. And the great Michael Angarano, who I love, wearing a weird gold button blazer.

59:57Yeah, but like suburban, ex-bourbon California higher education, living in an apartment with a bunch of roommates who all seem like they could have their quirks and would be pretty interesting to get to know. And Elle Fanning kind of working at a Bennigan's or a Chili's or whatever and having dreams beyond Fullerton but not really sure how to get to them. In a different world, that's enough.

1:00:26Andy Greenwald:That's a good show. That's a good show, man. Like, I would watch Elle Fanning doing Frances Ha. You know, like, I would watch her kind of just be like, yeah, like, I wish there was something bigger out there for me. But I think part of it might be because when you get big, big, big stars, like Michelle Pfeiffer, who is married to David E. Kelly, and I think has made a turn to television in these last few months with the Madison in this, her storyline with Greg Kinnear is kind of bigger than I thought it would be, or maybe bigger than it needs to be. And then Offerman could just be a dad that comes back into the picture, but you add on this whole element of wrestling.

1:01:05Andy Greenwald:It's a lot of extra. But I would also, and the baby becoming the fulcrum to reunite this kooky family and make things work out. I mean, look at us. We're just a couple of kids who started a TV podcast and now we're talking about Michelle Pfeiffer projects twice a month. So really the culture moved to us. So thank you. Gratitude. Practice gratitude. I found the tone and the consistency of the characters to be all over the place. And I wondered if it was the creeping reach of celebrity. And what I mean by that is when we first meet Michelle Pfeiffer's Cheyenne character, she is, and it was interesting, she is made up heavily and is seemingly trying to embody this lower class ex-Hooters waitress, piecing it together, now trying to pretend to be a different person to marry a preacher who apparently only dines at chain restaurants played by Greg Kinnear.

1:01:57Andy Greenwald:The next time we see her, she looks completely different and a little bit more like she does on the Madison, which is Michelle Pfeiffer looks incredible all the time at any age of her life and in any setting. And she seemed a lot softer and more likable and nicer. And so then when the turn is that she won't hold the baby, her grandchild, or, you know, or, or take care of him or help or talk to her daughter, it felt like suddenly we've twisted it again. The drift towards likability and wanting to be a hero in a story that almost inevitably will turn to some kind of mush started really, really early.

1:02:36Andy Greenwald:Maybe it's the familiarity with these characters. Maybe it's a little bit of the ego of who they want to play and how they want to be seen creeping in. But what I didn't understand really was the troubles that anybody was in. And up until a certain point, everything seems to be working out fine. You know, she's spending hundreds of dollars in diapers and things up until one of the roommate moves out. And then suddenly the crisis is writ large for us. Yes. Suddenly she says, I could have moved in back with you, but your dress is filled in the other rooms. And I don't really understand the peril.

1:03:09Andy Greenwald:Everything is a little bit agreeable. Everything is a little bit nice until it's not for the purposes of the plot. So a character who is kind in one scene comes over to pick another fight with someone else. because we're in episode three and we need more conflict. Yeah, and we introduce, I think it's in, is it two or three that we introduce Marsha Gay Harden who plays Michael Arango's mother. Michael Angarano's character is a professor, the father of the baby. Marsha Gay Harden shows up, really shows up and turnt up as a character who immediately announces that her hair looks like a skunk and she has some of the, sorry, a raccoon.

1:03:44Andy Greenwald:Are you sure it was a raccoon? I think it was skunk. Raccoon because she's like, and I fight like one too. That's generally, again, you know, I've been paying a lot of attention to inheritance and family matters and legal stuff. That's generally how people behave in legal mediation type of circumstances. You show up and you say, I'm a villain. Now please speak to my attorney. It's all over the place. Yeah, yeah. I feel like I'm sounding more negative than I intended to be because it is a good expression of what Apple likes to do and tends to do on things either executive produced by Nicole Kidman or spiritually executive produced by Nicole Kidman.

1:04:22Maybe it's Hello Sunshine Core, but it's also like, it's not dissimilar to how I feel about the episodes of Shrinking that I've watched, which is, this is about taking these incredibly vulnerable, destabilizing moments in characters' lives, but creating the feeling that everything is fine and safe and good. and cushioning. I don't mind going either way. You know what I mean? Like I don't necessarily need everything to be last exit to Brooklyn, but if somebody loses their wife in a car accident or someone has an unexpected pregnancy and finds themselves in dire straits economically, I find it difficult to sometimes like square the circle of, but actually in terms of the televisual experience that you're going to have, it's fine.

1:05:15You know, it's like it's safe and it's cool and it's nice. And like, you're going to get to know and love these characters. And honestly, let's just try to keep these characters in play for two, three seasons, but keep them more or less in the same way. Like, so we're going to want them all existing in this same world and in the same circumstances forever.

1:05:33Andy Greenwald:Yes. And in some ways, that's how I feel about your friends and neighbors, which is like a cool concept that I would have liked to have watched a 90 minute to 120 minute movie about a guy who's fallen out from an investment bank and starts robbing houses in his rich neighborhood. But when you're like, here's episode 11 of him doing this same thing. But also, the central problem with your friends and neighbors, and maybe this is just the note that they don't give at Apple, or maybe this is just Apple, where everything is smooth and contoured and works out fine. Well, maybe they're like, this is exactly what we want.

1:06:03Andy Greenwald:That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Jon Hamm's character in Your Friends and Neighbors turns to a life of crime for reasons that are kind of shrug emoji. Like he loses his job that pays him seven figures. So he starts stealing paintings, but don't worry, his daughter still gets into Princeton. Like the stakes are never really that bad for them. Even when they try to create the sense that they are, he, the biggest risk he has is of maybe not being able to pay for the tennis club membership anymore or hang out in the sauna with his equally rich friends. This is not really a problem. It is a conceit for a television show, fine.

1:06:40Andy Greenwald:But we are living in this moment where it does feel like some of these streamers, studios, creators are trying to cherry pick the trappings of a grungier, more intense kind of drama that we have history and success with on television, but really just sanding off the edges and making it TV. Maybe you can't get in the door unless you're like, here's the sticky, hooky part of this. If you pitch Jon Hamm loses his job at a big time investment fund or private badge fund. And in the midst of a divorce needs to recalibrate how he fits in to this Tony Long Island community. That's just like John Hamdo and John Cheever.

1:07:24And I'd probably be really into it. And I wouldn't have any expectations about how he does and doesn't change. But to get it sticky, you have to be like, and then he turns to a life of crime. But don't worry, it's not like Breaking Bad where like, it's not like Breaking Bad.

1:07:36Andy Greenwald:I mean, I mean, this is the example. It is not something we generally do, which is hold up one of the, you know, generally acknowledged Rushmore shows ever and say, well, you're not doing that. Nobody needs to do that. Very few people could do that. And if they did it again, we'd be like, you're just doing that. I hear all of that. But early on in that show, Walter White reaches the first of what ends up being, you know, dozens upon dozens of absolutely existentially catastrophic decision points and he does the thing that you can't believe that he's going to do. It begins with the first, you know, the guy who's in the basement, who they then have to, like, they melt his body in the bathtub.

1:08:16Andy Greenwald:You can't really walk back from that. What a lot of these other shows do is they create a clever opportunity and circumstance parachute to get away from, you go near the body in the bathtub, but then you're not really responsible for it and he was just sleeping anyway. And you're off to flirt with danger again the second, you know, the next week. Yeah. That's kind of a bummer. And I can understand why you might do it in an ongoing show, but... But it's like something about the mechanics of the storytelling sticks out to me too. If you were going to pitch Justified as a movie, you would pitch it as Oliphant versus Goggins, and the end of the movie would be their showdown.

1:08:56Yes. If you pitch it as a TV show, you're like, this is a week-to-week show about a really cool Marshall who returns home to Kentucky after he gets in trouble in Florida and has to deal with all of the like rural crime outside of Lexington in the hills outside, you know. And that's awesome. And then it emerges over the course of the season that there's going to be this big bad. But they are like from any given week, you're not going to know what the story is going to be. And it's all these different cool little procedural martial stories. I don't think that they are using the same logic of like what makes an entertaining television show week to week anymore, understandably, because a lot of people are waiting for all the episodes of your friends and neighbors to go up so that they then just watch them over a weekend or whatever.

1:09:45And I don't know, with Margot, it's the same thing. It's like, how much, how long can you do a show about someone who didn't expect to be a mother and now is?

1:09:55Andy Greenwald:Well, I think it - You probably could do it for a while, I guess. But we should separate the conversation because, Kaya, how would you characterize the book? Like, is the book surprisingly dark at times or is it essentially like a fun read that touches on contemporary society? Yeah, I would say the latter. I think my issues with the book are also like my... I watched the first episode of this and I think the tone of the book was a little bit off-putting to me, similarly in the way that the tone of this show is a little bit off-putting where it just feels like overly twee. Yeah, I think... And like, I don't think it's not necessarily fair to combine that into this conversation, because if this is true to the spirit of the book, like one thing that David Kelly is just expert at, and especially in this later part of his career, is he's really good at finding the thing that made the thing successful.

1:10:46Andy Greenwald:and he just expands on that and celebrates it. So turning this into a glossy, but affirming sort of twee magical, creative family story, that's fine. There's plenty of space for that on TV. There are a lot of talented people working to make that happen. And maybe it'll have a couple twists and turns along the way. And also with a show like this, it's like, oh, that's Carrie Kenny Silver in one scene being funny. That's Laura San Giacomo as a minor character. We haven't seen her in a minute. That's great to see. Like it's attracting Marsha Gay Harden. Like it's of a very, very, very high level.

1:11:20Andy Greenwald:But the bummer is when that sensibility, that kind of apple just contoured, smoothing everything out sensibility becomes the lingua franca of the medium or becomes the expected thing. Now, to bring it all the way back to the first point we were making when you were talking about what's out there right now, historically TV is pretty laundry folding and affirming and magical and fill space and fill time. And it's okay to bring some of that back into our lives. The pit proves that you can be pretty boundary pushing and thrilling within some using some of that old language. I think the problem becomes when all of the resources at the shrinking number of streaming services pour all of those resources into that.

1:12:03Andy Greenwald:Now, we're not at that point. There's still 300 new shows. Absolutely. And Apple UK especially is putting out a lot of really interesting things. I might speak to the difference between watching TV as a professional pursuit versus watching TV as like a way to let off steam at the end of a long day. Yeah. So I acknowledge that. But there is something fuzzy going on with me and with these shows where I'm just like, I'm not connecting with as many as I usually do. Well, I think that goes back to the, I think you were right about the shrinking observation. And I also think that it's just a lot of hours to fill.

1:12:36Andy Greenwald:Like not many stories are deserving of this much of our time, frankly, you know, and, and, and some, even some of the spy shows that maybe people think we overrate, but it's like, well, I also read a lot of spy books in my spare time and probably couldn't tell you about half the plots. Like that is a, that is something that I enjoy doing once I'm in that world, but I wouldn't give the same, um, I probably wouldn't give the same grace to books in different genres just to fill time. It would have to earn my, my attention. thanks for your participation in the show today uh thanks to sarah kaya other plans uh no um i got another pod i gotta go to oh well please by all means and uh we'll be back on thursday with beef top chef and wild card i mean i listed all those shows maybe we should check out the audacity for that i mean i don't want to over commit because it's kind of a busy week you know with all the probate stuff i got going on but i don't really i gotta get to the bottom of this i'm just that was just a bit thanks everybody for listening we'll be back on thursday

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