‘Dune: Part Three’ and ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Trailers, ‘The Pitt’ S2E11, and ‘The Madison’ Series Premiere. Plus, ‘Top Chef’ Season 23, Episode 2.

20:12Andy Greenwald:And always kind of the same origin story, same essential personality. And that's fun and awesome. The nature of comic books is, you've got to keep, it's like podcasts, really. You've got to keep grinding. You know, even if the moment has moved on, you've got to keep showing up and doing the work. and to the genuine I give a lot of genuine credit to the writers over the years of Spider-Man who are always just trying to see how can we stretch this thing? Where can we push this? Spider-Man the comic you're talking about. The comic book and the character. Yeah. You know and a lot of the ideas that we see on screen start in chrysalis form if you will in the comics.

20:45Andy Greenwald:The one area that has always left me completely cold and this is a storyline a type of story that I think started with the writer Babylon 5 writer J. Michael Straczynski when he took over Spider-Man like 25 years ago. Okay. And I said different expressions is the idea that Spider-Man isn't just like, oh, this smart kid got bitten by a spider. It's that somehow he is the inheritor of some like quasi supernatural spiritual spider avatar. And thus is part of a continuum of kind of Aztec action going in. It's a if you saw Madam Web, I did. And I know you did because I sat with you and Damon Lindelof watching the whole thing.

21:20Andy Greenwald:There was some of that in that movie. These storylines where there are these characters who are like spider people and want to reclaim Peter and he becomes more spider than man. And there was a storyline 20 years ago called The Other that they seem to be adapting for this. Oh, that was controversial. It was controversial at the time. And that he, yeah, he sort of has blackouts and dizzy spells and he goes through this like transformation that leads to organic web shooters, which was controversial when Tobey Maguire had it. But they seem to indicate in the trailer that he hits that. That it's happening.

21:54Yeah.

21:54Andy Greenwald:Yeah, and he didn't have to go into his garage with his posters of Kathy Ireland to achieve it. You know what I mean? So this is, and then Keith David being like, perhaps playing a character named Ezekiel, being like, the spider adolescence is upon us. Do we just hear his voice, though? We just hear his voice. All this could be kind of corny. Now, is it a place to push the character? And, you know, the stewards of this iteration of the franchise have done a good job folding in things that might not have worked in other contexts and making them work for this character? because at the end of the day, you have Tom Holland and Zendaya and you're going to win.

22:28Andy Greenwald:But it's a little bit of concern trolling. I'll tell you my, what'd you call them? Controversial concerns or? Context setting reservations. Context setting reservations. Is that the name of our new segment? Is that? That's a good one. Is the time that it's been since old Doctor Strange went poof and made everybody forget Pete? Yeah. You know who did that in the comics? Your boy Mephisto did that in the comics. Did he? Yeah. Why are they fucking, why are they keeping him on the bench? He's not on the bench. He's in Ironheart. Oh yeah, that's right. He's Sacha Baron Cohen. I completely forgot that.

23:06Mephisto is here. In the intervening years since the last Spider-Man has come out, I would just say that my expectations and my standards have been raised in terms of what I expect from blockbuster filmmaking. Whoa. I think that across the board, people are maybe falling out of love with the insane amount of VFX and the very comic-y kind of style of the action in Marvel movies. And without getting deeply into the plot of it at all, I got a chance to see Project Hail Mary earlier this week. I'm jealous. I have mixed feelings about the movie. I generally really, really liked it. Yeah. One thing I will say about it, it has got several breathtaking sequences that I will remember for the rest of the year at least.

23:52You know, like moments where you're like, holy shit, this is a really great movie going experience. Like set piece, see it in a theater kind of thing. And I'm going to remember the moment where this happened for a while. And I just don't feel that way about Marvel movies. And I really like Dustin Daniel Cretton. I really like Wonder Man. Who's taking over directing. He's directing. I, you know, generally really like his filmmaking. There's a lot of stuff online about like, these VFX shots don't look as good as like Spider-Man two, you know what I mean? Like that Sam Raimi made or something like it's, it's like, why is this stuff starting to look worse?

24:28There's also like, does it just look bad when you look at it on social media or does it, maybe those VFX shots aren't done yet.

24:34Andy Greenwald:Um, but there was something kind of flat. Like when I watched the little interaction, the little mini fight that he has with the Punisher and the trailer, I was like, I think I'm kind of like, I'm all good on these really expensive fake fights that have no staying power. And they have no stakes because there's a rhythm to these movies that's been established and they have to have a fight, something gets crashed, something, whatever. There's very little... In a lot of the recent Marvel work, there's not a lot of visual wit or playfulness or connection to the storytelling. It's funny when Bernthal almost says motherfucker, but he throws the web on his mouth.

25:11It's not without its charm. I'm just saying like... I don't need every movie to be the same. I just think that there is a style of like, like weirdly muted color palette and like all fake action and all this stuff that I'm like, I'm definitely going to see this movie, but I was just like, I'm - Speaking of muted. Yeah. They're hide and say, they're hide and say, you think you want to say the words? Say the name. There's a rumor. Say the name.

25:38Andy Greenwald:I'm just, I can't be the one to report this. There's just a big rumor. Do you want to say that the watch is pushing out our boat? that she is Jean Grey. And that if she is not Jean Grey, we will stop podcasting. So we'll find out this summer and then we could probably have August off. Well, we would have an off in the sense that we no longer podcasted. With each other. I'm just saying. Oh, I'm not quitting watchables. That's the bell cow, dog. I'm just here for fun. This is light work for a professional. I continue to think that some days that I'm like, it's really nice that you guys showed up.

26:13Andy Greenwald:These cameras don't work. his mics don't work just like we'll let him down easy but like we've been here before right I was like Krasinski is around the corner he is Reed Richards yeah they took him away from us they took him away from you no one cared more Mephisto multiple times being like where is he let the devil let him out of the box and he didn't let him out of the box until Ironheart that was my favorite song in Sinners by the way let the devil out of the box I think that Sadie Sink I don't know why you cast who else would she be I'm not knowing that I the only other person with canonically red hair in these comics is Mary Jane.

26:46Andy Greenwald:Right. So is she playing a multiversal Mary Jane? There's a shot of a person in this trailer with like a bag on their head doing some crazy stuff. Who do you think that is? That sounds fun. Is it like a disgruntled... There's like a little scarecrow person. Like, what's that thing? It's a disgruntled Saints fan from the early 2000s. Isn't that what they used to do? Before Sean Payton came in? I gotta tell you, you're in the zone, but you're not helping me. You're ducking the smoke. Do you think it's Jean Grey? Yes. Okay. Will you put any fucking sweat equity into this? Yeah, I will let you out of your obligation to watch a Miyazaki film, if I'm wrong about this.

27:22Great. I'll quit.

27:25Andy Greenwald:And I can watch my cartoons all day, all by myself. That pot would actually do well if you just did solo Miyazaki potting. You think that would do numbers? Yeah. From the sound wave or the shock wave community? I think you'd miss me, though. I miss you all the time. I text you constantly. Sadie saying Jon Bernthal is the Punisher, Michael Mando's back. Tramiel Tillman. Yeah, Tramiel Tillman. That's fun. Mark Ruffalo as Professor Banner. But who does not know anything about Spider-Man. They all got wiped. Does Doctor Strange know about Spider-Man? I think he's busy. Did he wipe himself though? Like, did he wipe his own memory in the process of wiping everybody's memories?

28:01Andy Greenwald:That sounds very complicated. To wipe everyone and wipe yourself at the same time. No, but you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? You don't want to answer the hard questions I'm asking you about the MCU, but you're the only one who knows the answers. You've read all these. This is not based on, like I said, Mephisto did it in the comics and he wasn't about to wipe himself. He's the devil. He wants to take pleasure in this. You know? Right. So it's more nefarious in the comics. Well, in the comics, yeah. It's Faustian. Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. It's Faustian. See, this is what, like, this is, if Dune, if Dennis Villanova was directing Spider-Man, it would be, it would be Dr.

28:37Andy Greenwald:Faust. Yeah. It would be, yeah. don't tempt me with good things. That sounds amazing. God damn it. I just think that like we're spending too much time ultimately arguing about a movie that has a leg up on all of the other Marvel movies because it has two of the most compelling young leads. I guess we didn't say any pros. All these people are charming. And Tom and his lady wife Zendaya. That's what we're here for. And I will note that unlike a lot of the other long-running comic book series. Chris McKenna, who worked on Community and has written or co-written all of these Spider-Man movies, is back for number four, along with Eric Summers.

29:19Andy Greenwald:I'm ready. One more thing I wanted to talk to you about, which is honestly the most fascinating story of this week to me, which is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot story. A while back, it was announced that after many attempts to get Sarah Michelle Gellar to return as Buffy the Vampire Slayer in some form or another, she had finally agreed to do so because she believed so deeply in a pitch she heard from Chloe Zhao about how to resurrect the character. Chloe Zhao, obviously, director of Hamnet, No Man Land, The Eternals, and a very idiosyncratic filmmaker that would not necessarily translate.

29:54The first thing you think of would not necessarily be like episodic television. It turns out, at least according to some, that that wound up being a problem with the pilot. So the reason why I'm so interested in this story is the two sides of the story. Um, earlier this week, I think it was Monday. Uh, no, it was last Friday, actually.

30:16Andy Greenwald:They, they received, apparently Hulu made the decision to not move forward at 6 p.m. on Friday. Yes. And so Chloe Zhao on Oscars weekend and Sarah Michelle Gellar in Austin presenting Ready or Not 2 found out that this was happening or not happening. Sarah Michelle Gellar, I believe, Monday released a statement that was pretty boilerplate. And it's like, I just want to thank the fans and I want you to hear from me. But unique in the sense that it said it specified a unnamed but specific Julio executive for never getting the project, being bragging about how he like never watched Buffy and being a roadblock in this entire process.

30:58And that's unusual. You know, it's definitely a burn the boats kind of statement when it comes to this. I know, you know, because Fox still owns the IP, as we'll get to in a second. Then Variety ran a story that seemed, I would say, you can safely assume was sourced from within Hulu or close to the production, that they were disappointed with the pilot and that Chloe Zhao did not shoot enough coverage, which means there was not a lot of options for them to like fix things given what footage she shot. that her sense of how to construct a television episode was not what they wanted. And that Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy character did not show up until the last moments of the pilot.

31:42And this is like a real focus groups tell us that if it's called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they want her in the... Now, this is supposed to be focusing on a new generation, a new slayer played by Ryan Kerr Armstrong, who we liked a lot in The Lowdown.

31:55Andy Greenwald:Yep. Hawks' daughter in The Lowdown. How do you parse this story? Well, it's fascinating, and it's fascinatingly messy. Do you have a... Where are you with Buffy? I like it a lot. You were a fan. You watched it. I did. I didn't mean that in a judgmental way. Apparently, it's amazing. That is a blind spot for me. So I was not one way or another about the potential reboot. And it's interesting that this and Firefly are both... People are attempting to sort of iterate on Joss Whedon IP without Joss Whedon. Yes. and the Firefly thing seems to be... It's animated, yeah. But they're also trying to crowdfund a home for it or something.

32:33I think they're just trying to get fan interest to a point where somebody is like, yeah, let's make this because they've already got like kind of showrunners and the entire cast is signed on and yeah.

32:43Andy Greenwald:I thought this was an interesting... I mean, everything moved so quickly that I was actually prepared to come in here and like be like, well, the voice of industry reason here, but that has now bubbled up as well because the take coming from Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was obviously stunned and heartbroken was one that I think very much echoes the voice of the fandom who have been, for very good reason, trained at this point to expect getting exactly what they want all the time, more of everything, more of everything. The idea that this was like maliciously or nefariously plug pulled and like they had a rug pulled out from under them is a very clickbaity kind of take and naming an executive who is potentially either Craig Erwitch, who makes the programming decisions for Hulu generally, or Jordan Hellman, who's an executive who's been there for a long time, that gives, if not the face, since she didn't name either of them, but like sort of a chalk outline of a punching bag to blame.

33:42Andy Greenwald:I feel pretty confident saying that when you have a piece of IP that is high profile and that has been curated for a number of years because you want to get it right, the margins for making this decision are not really that thin like you have to get it right and if it's only a little bit right they'll keep throwing money at it if it's really wrong is when they make this decision and i think that by all late breaking or more recently breaking accounts this didn't work which is not an indictment on the creatives involved it's really hard to reboot things. And it's especially hard to reboot things that try to serve when you try to do it both ways, not just like a whole new version, but a handholding.

34:27Andy Greenwald:The old Buffy is here and there's a new Buffy as well. And one will have a relationship with the other. So it's not out of the ordinary. Lila and Nora Zuckerman are the sisters who are TV veterans, very talented writers. Worked on Poker Face. Most recently on Poker Face. They were the showrunners. They wrote the script. They shot a pilot last year. People are now reporting about their experiences that they had while making the pilot because there are a couple of interesting actors who maybe maybe it's cameos or not but like um chase we wonders is in the pilot the comedian allison becker was in the pilot um allegra edwards who is on my show and is starring in a new cbs sitcom coming soon i think is it's also in it and they are all like oh it's a great experience it seemed like really positive vibes people generally come out of chloe zhoux productions feeling very warmly towards because of the rihanna playing all the time well i just think because it's like i i just like my like everything you read about people who work with her are that if they connect with her they connect quite deeply with her and i think that this obviously like for whatever reasons geller was like opposed to doing this probably for like very smart reasons because she was a custodian of that character and the fan and didn't want it to go the way that you know it's not melrose place she didn't want it to just be like you can just reboot this constantly without you know that's fair paying tribute to what it actually meant to people and that's the thing about this show is that it meant a lot to a lot of people.

35:46I mean, Mal and Joe have been doing a rewatch.

35:48Andy Greenwald:But do people want something new or do they not? Well, I don't know. And I can fall on both sides of it. I think it's not a clean-cut story with villains. It seems like they shot a pilot in which Sarah Michelle Gellar appears almost like a cameo at the end to suggest involvement in the future that they would figure out in series. I'm sure they had a format pitch document of where it was going to go or else she wouldn't have been involved. And whether they tested that and it didn't work or whatever, it seems like they went a little bit further down the road of rewrites to bring her more into the script proper.

36:15Andy Greenwald:But ultimately, it does seem like they were undone by a pilot that just missed the mark. Not necessarily script-wise, but because, and this goes back to the original point, just because you have a passionate fan in something and that Chloe says that she grew up watching Buffy, adores it, I don't see much Buffy in her filmed work to date, which doesn't, I'm not saying she's faking it. I'm not saying there should be more metatextual laughs in Nomadland. I'm just saying it's hard to draw that connection. And if she brought the things that make her an A-list award-nominated and winning Hollywood director to this pilot, that doesn't sound like the right fit to me.

36:57Andy Greenwald:Yeah. And I will also say, you know, from experience that when you have feature directors stepping into TV without a lot of episodic work, in a feature they're like, I run this show, I run this ship. What I film is the show. I don't need to do more. I don't need to get it from the other angle because why would you use it? I don't want that angle. That's not how TV works, but it's especially not how tone setting pilots work. And if you don't have the footage, you might not have the show. We have a course correction going on where now I think that a lot of feature directors have backed out of doing television, especially like I'm directing every episode of TV.

37:31I mean, Steve Conrad's directing all the DTFs, but is an experienced television showrunner in that regard. I think we'd probably, what I would have suggested is weird. I think probably what would have been a great execution of this is that for the sake of the pilot and getting the show on its feet, you basically invert what happened and have some very capable, safe pair of hands start the process and shoot the pilot. You get it going. And then as a special kind of reverie, maybe mid-season or whatever, Chloe Zhao directs two episodes of Buffy that's like her rendition of it. And I think that this would be actually like a much more successful version of kind of a tourist directors wanting to dabble in TV would be if you did Tarantino coming in for late period CSI or ER episodes.

38:24It's like, yeah, like it's already established how this works. Everybody on set knows how this goes. I'm not creating the visual language for this show. It's pretty rare that shows can break from that visual language. I mean, they do. I think industry is like obviously like deviated from the initial verite version of what Lena Dunham shot. Yeah, but that's the creators taking the reins. Yeah. But I think that that probably maybe that would have been a successful way of doing this.

38:51Andy Greenwald:We were joking before about Transformers and mask toys and how we enjoyed playing with them. I wasn't joking. Fair. I meant the mask toys I was joking about. Eric Stoltz with the prosthetics. The Eric, yeah. I think that it is time to move past, broadly speaking, 100 ,000 foot view. I think we need to move past the development phase of television where it is like us playing with Transformers and G.I. Joes at the same time. Just because you have one to four things that might work and that people like doesn't mean it's somehow a value add when you jam them all together. Hulu developing a show with Chloe Zhao, great.

39:27Andy Greenwald:Hulu developing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, great. It doesn't exponentially increase the value of the property to jam them together if it's not a natural fit for the show that they're going to program on their service. I would imagine that there's another issue here, which is like holds on actors were probably expiring and a decision had to be made here at some point. The other thing, like Ryan Kier Armstrong is a really strong young actor. Like we thought she was great in the lowdown. And then some of the other feedback that has leaked to the press was that with her as the central lead, she's 15 when they shot it, it played younger than what they wanted.

40:03Andy Greenwald:That's all from Variety. Yeah, but that speaks to another problem with a lot of this stuff, which is, are we making this entertainment for a new generation of fans really? Or are we making it just to sort of handhold the nostalgia crowd? I'd like to see it. I would have liked to have seen the pilot, but I understand why it perhaps didn't work. You'd like to see it? I'm kind of like release the pilots that's my I think it would you know we've had Amazon used to do that that was that is under remembered as such a fascinating exercise Amazon would basically have a they had a season pilot season where they would put up pilots and where could you vote or like would they just use viewer data I think they would use viewer data and I thought that was cool so we saw the Whit Stillman pilot for example that otherwise would have been buried forever with Adam Brody right yeah Yeah.

40:54I mean, I wish that show got made.

40:56Andy Greenwald:Me too. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Peaky Blinders is, hands down, one of the most iconic series of all time. And the gangsters are back in Netflix's new film, Peaky Blinders, The Immortal Man. Tommy Shelby, played by the Academy Award winning Killian Murphy, of course, must face his own demons and choose whether to confront his legacy or burn it to the ground. I watched the movie and let me tell you, It's just fascinating to watch Killian on the other side of the Oppenheimer journey that he's been on, becoming one of our great actors. And he already was one of our great actors, but to become one of the major movie stars in Hollywood.

41:34This is perhaps his signature role, his iconic role. He brings like an even more haunted, weathered quality to it. And he's paired off with Barry Keoghan, who's just extraordinary in this and brings this youthful vigor and energy that the story greatly benefits from. Watch Peaky Blinders, The Immortal Man, now on Netflix. Rated R. Let's talk about The Pit. A show that did get made.

41:57Andy Greenwald:Sure did. And it just keeps getting made. And you sounded one small, lonely bell of alarm last week. You said it was the weakest episode of the season. Yeah, yeah. So I start with you, also because you're fucking cooking today. I might need a protein bar or something. No, no, no. I'm lagging. I'm going to ride you. We're going back to like, you're like a 1930s pitcher. I'm pitching you fucking four days in a row. Do you remember eight men out? Strathairn's character is like on his ninth straight start. He's just the pitcher. That's his job. But he throws like 48 miles per hour. Which is still more than I could do.

42:30I could have been an incredible baseball player back then.

42:32Andy Greenwald:You could have been an incredible baseball player for the first four pitches of every game. You poured your whole heart, soul, mind, and body into your fast pitch. No, I mean, I could have hit 48 miles per hour. Oh. If that's how fast he was really trying. But you were cooking. You were getting up to like 65. You were touching 65 on the outside corner. to breaking, I was out. As a hitter. Yeah. I'm saying when you would go... The first time I saw a slider, I saw my future and it was dark. It was non-existent. It was like Dr. Strange came and wiped away my baseball dreams. And Mephisto too. This will surprise no one that like generally 20 years ago, I would imagine it's still the same.

43:08Andy Greenwald:Maybe it's not the same thing because you have a different weightlifting regimen now. But like we would arrive at Citizens Bank Park and we would immediately just like part towards our happy places. I would get in the line of Tony Luke's so I could procure the roast pork Italian sandwich early. And you would go straight to fast pitch to attempt to remove your rotator cuff. To find out what the MPH was at. Now, I was not a pitcher. And when I did pitch, I was way more concerned with control than I was with velocity. So it was more of a Greg Maddox. Greg Maddox up here. Yeah, I get it. You strike people out with your mind.

43:41I wonder if this is Kaya's least favorite episode we've ever done. So far we've talked about competing Transformers cartoons. And toys. Eric Stoltz and Cher's mask. Yeah. We spent a long time talking about Dune and Spider-Man and now we're talking about 1990s pictures. Kaya, where are you with us these days?

43:59Andy Greenwald:I'm just glad you guys are having fun. See? This is all just for me. But I love Dune. I love Dune. I'm a Dune head. Whoa. Now, have you read the books? No. Okay. Kaya goes to parties. She's not us. She's fine. You sounded some alarm about the pit. Yeah. How did you feel about 5 p.m.? This was a very, very exciting and jam-packed hour. I think that my concern last week was more... Concern is too strong a word. I'm interested to see how they attempt to experiment with and iterate the form that they have created for themselves, the box that they have made for the show, which is the action takes place in real time more or less in this room or these rooms.

44:45Andy Greenwald:And that's the extent of it. And the thing that I was flagging last week was the attempt to make a, not to bottle off an episode, but it was an episode about mothers and relationships with motherhood. And it felt like, as was this, by the way. And I felt the heavier hand of the writer's room in the episode for that. This week was a really strong episode. I did notice that there were a couple things that you just have to buy into and accept as part of watching the show and believing in it. One is the law and orderness of introducing new patients, where in my, thankfully, I'll knock on the table, limited experience in emergency rooms, when people come to check on me or the people that I'm there with, rarely do the patients say, you know what, Doc, I love baseball.

45:33Andy Greenwald:Roberto Clemente is a legend here. You know, in the same way that like, if the police ever came up to me at my job, I wouldn't, like if the police ever approached me at Borders Books and Music in Rosemont in 1996, I wouldn't have been like, sorry, I got to keep filing these Soul Asylum CDs while I talk to you. Yes. I would have been like, whatever you need, sir. Yeah. So there's that, that's just part of it. Like, we got to keep it moving and the first introduction to a character in an ER is going to have to deliver a lot of expositional character stuff. The other thing is, in order to expand the palette beyond the workday, inevitably, everyone from outside of these characters' work lives, despite what Robbie says to Mohan, is going to have to show up as a patient at one point or another.

46:14Andy Greenwald:And it was Mel's sister, so we could have that scene. It's the day that Robbie is going off on this existential vision bike quest. His biker buddy comes in, potentially with a tumor, that day. You know, you have to buy into that. And I do, but I was just noting it, and I was feeling the construction more these past two weeks. I have not re-watched the first season of The Pit, So I may live to regret this statement. I'm finding this season more stressful. And I think it's because the characters are deteriorating in a really well-written way. They are being put under this kind of almost like institutional and practical pressure rather than the existential adrenaline hit of the mass casualty event.

47:02Of an event, yes. And so watching them kind of have to go through this painstaking process of working in with analog charting the mistakes that are being made because of whether it's exhaustion or the like the gaps in between like knowing what's wrong with somebody

47:19Andy Greenwald:because you're waiting for x-rays the fact that most of them have side hustles and jobs when they're not on yeah including the night charge nurse who is also a death doula and abbott who is also superman yes and um i think a lot of their personal lives are starting to really seep into their work in a way that's detrimental to both obviously like mel has had this tough time with the deposition and then like feeling like her sister's probably got more of a life than she does um dana's running a shrinking staff of nurses uh or employees who are scared of the presence of the ice agents which we're going to talk about in a second uh the mohan and robbie stuff i think is like, not heartbreaking, but it's like so sad to watch and they're doing a very good job of showing Robbie be nice to other people and not Mohan.

48:10They're like, I think that they're making it a different kind of season this season where the characters are not angels and not undefeated completely flawless people who only really take it out on themselves. They're taking it out on each other. I think the genius of the show, in a way, is that central conceit that it's just

48:33Andy Greenwald:going to be each one is going to be a day. But baked into that is the hope and now the reality that we're going to have many days. And what the show can accomplish by doing that is proving it's not that anybody can be heroic once. It's that pretty much every shift and certainly every day that they choose to make a season of this television show will present just absolutely superhuman levels of stress, of demand, of challenge, of difficulty, and that that's really the, you know, the grindstone that they are under. You know, and we also, we lovingly knock the pit for its expository dialogue sometimes and people turning to the camera and being like, you know, this actually affects older men much more than you'd think.

49:22But I thought some of the unsaid stuff in this episode was extraordinary. they did not show Roxy's death.

49:29Andy Greenwald:No, I was grateful for that. And there is a world where they could have just been like, the Hawaiian prayer over the old man last year blew everybody away. That's where I sort of fell in love with the show. It's clearly like letting go and loss is something that Robbie is conversant in. And it would be a great moment. We put McKay and Robbie in there as the final beeps go. Nope. It's just, not only did it happen off screen, but McKay missed it. Yep. And the moment that you do get with Roxy, which is Robbie looking at Javadi and seeing like her welling up and just kind of like a quiet acknowledgement of like, this is really fucking hard.

50:14Andy Greenwald:I see you, yeah. I thought that was a great way to show a different side of it, play it differently. And if a show is going to go on for multiple seasons, as I expect the pit to, they're going to have to think of new ways to peel the onion, you know, like, and it still has the same effect. I also appreciate the way that it is giving, you know, one of the things, one of the great things about ongoing television is that you can respond relatively quickly to things that work. and the Mel Dana scene out in the bay. And there was a couple of location shots in this episode. When I say location, I mean, they do go to Pittsburgh, I think, once and they shoot a bunch of scenes from different episodes in that ambulance bay in the park across the street to make it feel like they're in the place.

51:01Andy Greenwald:I thought that was a very good scene. I think maybe this was on the stairs. This one wasn't outside. But Mel says, you know, I've seen Elf 164 times, which is 163 more times that my kids are ever going to see it. Hated it. Really? Hated it. Not me. I think it's funny. It's okay. I'm brave. You can have your own opinions. Well, here I can, not at home. Anyway, that was for the Emmy voters, that scene. Yeah. You know, and that's okay. That's cynical. It's giving these good actors a chance to cook with each other in a way that is isolated. A couple of people have written in about the unlikelihood that Mel would have a deposition on July 4th while she is on shift.

51:44The Mel plotline, the fact that every other doctor is being like, where the fuck have you been? Like, what are you doing? Pick up more patients, move faster, keep charting. And that Mel is kind of free to interact with her sister, wander around kind of beaten up by the day, getting very upset. Do you think that that is like a plotline that feels very written? Or do you think it's a plot line that exists within the real? Like, would they just be steering clear and letting Mel have, like, a bad day?

52:17Andy Greenwald:Look, I waltz in here at 11.02, and everyone's waiting, and nobody says anything. So maybe this isn't normal for workplaces, that there's always one, you know, who can just kind of get away with it. But, no, I mean, I think that, again, I feel bad that I started with what, in the framing it as if it's a criticism. Like, I really watch this show. I hope you, like, walk into the Harry Potter room I'm like five minutes like, what ho? Any magicianry going on? I do that voice, but I get there incredibly early. I know. Because I really, really respect the workplace and my coworkers, you know, and I don't want to discredit them.

52:56Andy Greenwald:This is just for fun, like you said. Thanks, everybody. Working behind the scenes here. Well, they get paid whether it's us or the press box, you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't have to be us. That's amazing. let's okay let's let's see brian and shoemaker talk about shockwave and oh they're exactly the same age as us they could do it do you guys wearing glasses i i feel bad that i framed it as a criticism because i genuinely enjoy the show simultaneously on two completely different levels it is the only show that i watch without any threat of distraction or second screening or i just lock in i can't wait to watch it it's the most gripped i am in my life honestly like it's the most present I feel all week in the main house not the garage no but second when I do Zane Lowe too I feel like I achieve like this is it's like Miles Davis doing kind of blue let's do this I want to visit this I have some I have some questions I have some thoughts the second way that I watch the show I think is like I just really am fascinated by and inspired by and impressed by the writerly things you can see the way that they are crafting this and the things that they get away with, they don't get away with, but the intention behind it.

54:11Andy Greenwald:And one of those things, to bring it back to what you were observing, is they looked at what they did in the first season. They knew what they had with Taylor Dearden and they were like, well, how can we make a different run at this character? And how can we differentiate her arc this season? Yeah, because she's pretty resilient in the first season. Yeah, and so what can we do differently? And then I'm sure that they're already having the conversations about what they will do in the third season and that's exciting. That's the way you should build this. with the added challenge of fitting it into this very, very specific box of driving story forward.

54:39Andy Greenwald:Before we get to the big, big elephant story in the room, I was interested to see Al Hashimi really having a lot more, as you said last week, she doesn't really get her hands dirty that often. She hadn't. She hadn't. She did last week. Then she pulls off the coolest move in the history of emergency medicine. Dr. Al Hashimi was a problem with a scalpel in her hand. But this week she's back to being even more so like the one who is communicating and teaching not just the residents, but the family members that come in, including then being so on the ball that she follows the kind of dissociating young mother out into the street and saves her life.

55:22Right. Because Joy had her picked first.

55:26Andy Greenwald:yeah well the the the i'm happy we're steering away from the residents just being like you're fat what's that like yeah that's a big mistake you've made you're a bad parent to now complicating it slightly more yeah ogilvy fucks up i think ogilvy's like being called out on his like lack of sensitivity yeah and it happened to the one patient he was sensitive with yeah the one who he gave a paperback to. Okay, let's do ice. Okay. All right, Mark Wayne, let's do ice. What are your thoughts? I'll be Rand Paul. And let's really... Yeah. Those guys come in. There's two masked ice agents, or one's masked, and the other one eventually puts his mask on.

56:09Andy Greenwald:Can I just say, before we even get into the specifics, we don't, because it's not really our purview, but we rarely complement the direction of this show. even though it is so so challenging and so specific the veteran director the way that we the audience and the cameras see the looming masked agent for the first time was brilliant it was like some Silent Hill shit he's 6 '5 or something and it's not relevant to the scene we're in at first we realize it as Robbie realizes it and then I will say that the ability to get every single fucking person in this show, including Javadi's mom, on the same page of how agitated and fucked up this is, and also terrifying because there are two masked armed men in the emergency room not respecting the processes of medicine.

57:10I thought it was really well done. Now, this has been a pre-or, like an already kind of documented and preordained controversial moment for the show. Can you tell me a little bit about why that is?

57:22Andy Greenwald:There were rumors, like industry rumors that the show, and this wouldn't be actually, this could go be both a rumor and also a pretty safe prediction that a show that is so tethered to the moment and committed to exploring the realities of healthcare in this country, that there would be an ICE storyline this season. There were rumors that the storyline had been controversial or had been rejected on some level by the powers that be, not at HBO or HBO Max, but at the larger Warner Brothers Discovery network. And those rumors were kind of confirmed in a surprising way by John Wells, who's the executive producer and one of the co-creators of the show.

58:06Andy Greenwald:Direct quote from the Daily Beast saying, I don't want to be in a situation where it's a surprise, basically, because he went to and he says their response was and he says their response, I think, being WBD writ large. I don't know whether that's the legal side of it or if it's Zaslav himself. Good story. Just make sure it's balanced. And we're not just treating the situation as if it doesn't have other points of view. This is episode filmed in December, shortly after the Netflix deal was announced or was about to be announced. Thus, Wells felt it necessary to consult the parent company. Wells added, when we first pitched it, I thought, uh-oh, you know, I can say that all of us are approaching what's going on in this country right now with a certain trepidation and also awareness that there are possible risks to telling certain kinds of stories.

58:55Andy Greenwald:Now, what we saw on the screen was, I thought, very true to two different strands, not of oppositional thinking, but two different strands of reality in this country. One, good, decent people doing their jobs are horrified by the presence of, you know, mass vigilante police force ripping people away without due process or allowing them to get proper medical care and disrupting everyone's lives in the pursuit of some nebulous goal. Yeah. Also, I think that Robbie's point of view was consistent with what he's been advocating for all season, which is we can't heal the world. We have to take care of the patients and we have to take care of our workplace and the people we work with.

59:34Andy Greenwald:So he was cautioning McKay and others not to upset anyone, not to try to push it or be extra legal with anything that they do which was consistent with the prisoner who was the patient earlier in the season as well when Dr. Alashimi was suggesting that they do X, Y, or Z things. And Dana then kind of buys him a little bit more time. Put her thumb on the scale on that one. And this obviously reaches a breaking point when they attempt to put a sling on the woman who's the patient and our guy nurse Jesse intervenes and ends up in handcuffs himself. Yep. I don't know how you felt about this. We haven't talked about this.

1:00:07Andy Greenwald:It did feel abrupt. I don't know if that's me filling in the blank thinking that there was more story there because some of the other rumors that are out there, and I do not want to give them extra credence necessarily by blasting them on a podcast as if I have, I don't have secret knowledge. I don't know if this is true, but the rumors wasn't just that they consulted as they were filming to tweak it and get it right so as not to upset anyone. The rumors were that they had been told to change something or to dial something down. So the idea was I probably did watch this episode looking for the missing pieces.

1:00:41If I didn't know that or if I had never heard those rumors which I don't think I had actually that part. I had only read that they were asked to make it a balanced portrayal. I thought that the balance just being a viewer of the show and not reporting on like the production of it was from the plot line earlier in the year where there was i believe uh a young boy with his sister whose parents had been deported deported back to haiti uh and the social worker the psychiatrist the social worker is kind of like yeah like like we we can only do so much and there is like a legal process for this And if there was not the kind of like outrage or like fight that like maybe you would associate with a left leaning television show.

1:01:34Andy Greenwald:That's a really good observation. And I thought that was going to be the balance part. I actually didn't know that ICE agents were coming into the emergency. I thought that was their depiction of, well, immigration is a complicated story and like there's multiple sides of it and all that. And, you know, then it was like when these guys showed up, I was like, holy shit, I wonder how far this is going to go, especially given I imagine this was probably shot before Renee Good. It says December. Yeah. So it's before Minneapolis. Yes. I think, first of all, I just think it's a very healthy and constructive lane for the show to be in story-wise to have our characters who can be so, say it again, super heroic, minute to minute, patient to patient, feel the limits of their godlike ability to fix things as the world entrenches on them.

1:02:23Andy Greenwald:And with that said, it's interesting to consider Robbie's comments to Mohan, which also sounded a little bit like Physician Heal Thyself. He's like, there needs to be a force field around these walls and nothing outside can get into it. Yeah, I mean, everything, Robbie is like... I thought this was the episode that confirms, like, I don't know if anything so dramatic as an attempt on his own life is going to happen, but Robbie's coming apart. Yeah, but I also think that speech about you keep everything out there, that's the key, that's the difference between the best doctors and the ones who don't make it.

1:02:56Andy Greenwald:That speech is more interesting when you think about Ice coming in than when you think about Mohan being stressed out about her mother. Sure, but he's also probably also talking about it from the regards of, you can't stop him from coming in. No, exactly. Because Duke, you brought Duke in. He is not, he'll heal himself. He's not listening to his own medicine. Jake came in and, you know, like. And his mentor came in during COVID and didn't survive. I also thought that first, that initial plot line a few weeks ago with the family, when that because I was primed to that they were going to do something I thought that was it that was the they had taken something out and put that in I felt the same way I I want to be really careful here because I I'm not ascribing malign actions not just to like like the Warner Brothers Discovery team and David Sazlav with his 900 million dollar payout can eat shit but everything else um people are trying to make a good show here and I don't think that the people who make the show would sell themselves out and sell out their creative whatever to appease powers that be for mergers um i think it's interesting to your point that the balance that maybe they sought was how much can we do here sure their balance was what good does it do to sacrifice our workers and our nurses to save one woman when this is an avalanche of injustice because they're also losing nurses and employees they're running like they're people leaving the emergency rooms dr Shamsi who says like that we have people who are like I'm down five yeah because they have TPS status temporary protective status and they're not comfortable and people leave the people leave the waiting room triage um I think that was really important because you know I don't it doesn't take two guys on microphones to be like there there actually isn't both sides to like a home a handmade Gestapo force running wild to the country fucking nightmare shit so but I did I do wonder in the fullness of the season what we will think of this moment and how far the tendrils go.

1:05:01Andy Greenwald:If there was more to be said, if this is it, I think it's not just me wondering. I don't think it's it because they took Jesse. And I don't think it's it because this is still a minute-to-minute show. Yeah, but they also said that the lawyers, the hospital lawyers are tied up with the cyber attack and so that might be the end of Jesse for the season. It might be, yeah. you know it's a weird one because they keep talking he's the Dr. Collins of the season he's gone multiple doctors in the show have been talking about how they only have two hours left but they have five hours left on this season well that they're starting to address that with like Dana telling her night charge replacement I forget I'll stay until we get someone else Al Hashimi's saying does Robbie stick around after his shift and then he's saying he'll wait for the CAT scan of Duke's so they're starting to line that up I mean but it doesn't look like Robbie's going to make it five more hours you know that's right let's talk about one more big moment from this episode which was the Langdon Santos confrontation finally this had been brewing I thought it was great to see Issa Briones get more to do than kind of have be a smart ass and not that I feel like that's a limited no I don't think that's a failure of the writing I just think she's been given what she's been given so far there was the brief moment earlier in the season where we're shown her cutting scars like as she's like you know very quickly and so there's obviously like and she has often had very emotional reactions to certain cases in the first two seasons but has been kind of like dead to the world this year because of this charting situation because of you know being underwater with like her second year stuff and uh i thought that the way that this played out was wonderful because they've certainly put langdon in the kind of preferred status lane of like boy isn't this guy just an awesome dude who's like really recovered and for the most part people are accepting of him with the exception of robbie and santa says you're still the golden boy and she kind of he kind of is and i thought that was really a great moment when she is like you don't fucking deserve to be here that's like like what do you want from me like i you stole drugs from the hospital yes you should be disbarred and be in prison and he does what lots of people do which is like i feel like i've suffered i almost lost my wife i almost lost my kids i almost almost she's like that's what happens so alashimi hears this or overhears part of this conversation i didn't remember one way or the other so it was are we aware that it was suppressed that he was stealing from the hospital?

1:07:43Andy Greenwald:That may be that may not be news to people who closely or recently watched the first season. I don't remember whether I don't really remember how that played out. I remember Robbie being like apoplectic but we didn't see how his whatever happened with Langdon's disciplined. Yeah, so is he back because he copped to having addiction issues and went to rehab and they don't know about his and is now in a Doctors with Drug Problems program, but only Robbie, Santos and Dana I don't know. Know that he was stealing benzos from the dispensary. Are you starting to just side note on this are you starting to worry that the pit is starting to feel a little bit Dunder Mifflin in which like Toby or Angela is always in the background being like, huh?

1:08:36Andy Greenwald:Like the timing is remarkable. I get it. There have been also a couple of moments where I'm like, how come everybody is not seeing this? Right. And I think... Everyone heard when the show put paid to the idea that all television characters can just have their joints, their elbows, whatever, shoulders put back into socket like they're fucking Murdaugh in Lethal Weapon. I know. Or Xavier on Paradise. It's Riggs and Lethal Weapon, actually. I'm sorry. Murdaugh's too old for this shit. Yeah. Roger Murdoch. Riggs does it himself, too. Constantly. Yeah. To swim. To freedom. Yeah, I'm with you on Issa Briones, who I think is a really strong performer, actually having some ground to stand on and not just be complaining.

1:09:21Andy Greenwald:I thought that was a strong scene. And then we end with... Cliffy. Another example of potential assault on nurses. I'm sure we'll hear all about it next week. Do you want to speak up for the golf community in any way to defend that guy's actions? Yeah, I wonder what drug that guy's on. I mean, it's not just White Claws, you know, like he's definitely. It's also, it's like 100 degrees. That doesn't give you like psychotic episodes, does it? I mean, we should go through who you golf with. I think it's possible that there are a couple of people. One last pit question for you before we move on. And I'm not making light of a news situation, but I'm curious how pit-pilled you are.

1:09:56Andy Greenwald:Because news broke just as we were sitting down that Pistons guard Cade Cunningham suffered a collapsed lung. Were you like pneumothorax? Because I'm not trying to... I was at this point. So you are pit-pilled. I'm pit-pilled. I think Cade's going to be okay. It sounds like it's a minor collapse lung. Those words sound crazy. But we're not... He's not going to hit... There's worry now that he might not hit the minimum amount of games, which means like the MVP... I guess it'll probably be Shea, but it'll... You know. Do I have a benchmark like that to be considered for podcasting awards? I think you hit it.

1:10:25We do like 100 shows a year here. We do a lot of shows. Yeah. Two a week for 52 weeks. Yeah. What's that come out to?

1:10:34Andy Greenwald:104. That's right. So it's a hundred shows, 104 shows. Yeah. Yeah. About good for us.

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1:12:20Let's talk about the Madison. This is going to be a limited engagement, I think, for two seasons. They've already shot two seasons of this six episode per season show.

1:12:29Andy Greenwald:I read that the cast and crew are hopeful for a third. This is the kindest, gentlest, most romantic Taylor Sheridan show to date. I think it looks like a billion dollars. It is a gorgeous piece of TV. These are all positives. Yeah. I also find it to be pretty well written. Okay. When you say a good look, should we shout out Christina Alexandra Voros, who directed all six episodes? Yeah, sure. We should. We should. shouting out the female director of a Taylor Sheridan show because I'm an ally. But go on. Talk about how well-written it is. Go on. So well-written that it made me think about all the movies we don't get from Taylor Sheridan.

1:13:15Sean brought this up on the Sicario rewatchables. Just talking about how, like, this dude is a feature writer. And the TV thing has obviously proved to be quite lucrative. But all of his great shows I think would make dynamite features. Now, you could say, like, what would the world lose if they didn't have season three of Yellowstone? But a lot of these are conceived in a way that feel very featurey. You know, a lot of these shows. And I think that there is a time, probably like 20 years ago, when a movie version of the Madison would have done quite well.

1:13:47Andy Greenwald:It's actually written into the text of the show. In the pilot episode, the characters gather to watch a favorite film. Yes. the river runs through it and it has a more, it has such an emotional impact on the characters much more than I think anyone watching a Taylor Sheridan television show would have. And I'm not saying that that's not my first hit. That one doesn't count. That's just, I'm just praising Robert Redford. Your first hit was when I said it was well-written and you went, hmm. No, I stubbed me my teeth. Okay. So you engaged with this piece of work? I did. I watched the first episode.

1:14:16Andy Greenwald:Um, and I gotta be honest with you. I, I thought like Kurt Russell and Matthew Fox are so charming and so delightful, I turned it off after 11 minutes because I was like, I don't need to watch six episodes of these guys larking about. So you've suggested something that would be a spoiler. Here come the spoilers. Here come the spoilers. So if you have not watched the first episode of The Madison. If you have not watched a Taylor Sheridan show. Taylor Sheridan shows follow this format. This one was a pretty big one for a Taylor Sheridan show even. I'm just saying, when they announce shows as two-handers and you're like, well, the second hand seems awfully busy to be doing this show, you should trust your instincts.

1:14:53Andy Greenwald:You know? I have to say, though, I would much prefer to watch Kurt Russell on a show like this than Modern Mark Legacy of Monsters. We're doing the positive stuff. The show looks beautiful. Montana, not even a bit, a place I was recently and I loved is just stunningly beautiful. I'm not even trying to be that guy. Have I been to the Bozeman Airport? Yeah, I was there. Oh, when they, because they get off, yeah. Yeah, and the kids are like, what is this place? And I was like, that tracks. That's realistic. That's also what my children said. Just stunningly beautiful. And what I really did enjoy about the opening Idol in which Kurt Russell, who plays a, we don't actually know yet through the first episode why he's so rich, but a rich New York City businessman of some.

1:15:36I'm guessing real estate, but maybe I'm wrong.

1:15:38Andy Greenwald:Is in his happy place with his younger brother played by Matthew Fox, who we've not seen on television quite some time. Kurt Russell plays Preston. they are they're fly fishing they're roughing it in a place without plumbing and I'm just sorry there's plumbing there's just no toilet as Michelle Pfeiffer mentions repeatedly they elevate the material the setting elevates the material they elevate the material there's a moment early on when Matthew Fox's Paul says to his brother you could put your bags in the plane and we could you could go home or we could go fish at this incredibly rare fishing spot tomorrow that I've arranged for you for your birthday that usually you have to camp to yeah to get to and Kurt Russell 75 years young playing 65 that's the dream is so excited that he does like a little eager beaver dance around and I'm like fucking movie stars man they can make you feel anything sure I was genuinely delighted by their rapport and their relationship it's fantastic and it ends tragically when they die in a plane crash 10 minutes later yeah should we stop the pod cliffhanger I really got hosed on this one I saw I saw these guys doing press and talking about how great it was and I really You got Kingstown'd?

1:16:47I didn't get Kingstown'd. Well, I mean, that was the biggest one. But I was like, boy, this is a really tender, thoughtful scene between these two brothers. It feels like they're arriving at the end of a lifetime spent somewhat alienated by becoming much closer. And I wonder if Preston's like, I'm not going to come back. You have to come out here to his New York family.

1:17:07Andy Greenwald:I want to be really clear with you about something. Television has taught me many things. but chief among them is I will never have a conversation with you about how I want to spend my final years. I will never say to you when we reach a place that makes us happy like Lincoln Financial Field, I hope I never leave here. You don't ever go to football games. What are you talking about? I'm just thinking about, wait, but they never went to that fishing spot. Also, football's kind of better on TV. My point is, this is the McBainiest fucking McBain that has ever McBain. In retrospect, shame on me. Okay?

1:17:38Fool me twice, Taylor Sheridan. Okay. But, you know, they have an incredibly, like, thoughtful conversation about, like, what's a life worth, you know, if you spend all of it working to get to old age and then your body is too broken down to really enjoy it, you know? And Matthew Fox's character, Paul, is like, I enjoy every day, every day I make a memory. Now he's also a monk, it seems like. He doesn't have a dog or a lover. Not in that... Sounded weird, but okay. In that order. That's what he says. He's like, get a girlfriend. And he's like, no, I just, all I do is fish and work on my house.

1:18:12And then they die. That's true.

1:18:15Andy Greenwald:Matthew, by the way, Matthew Fox, still a great television leading man. If he ever wants to work again, he should. But two, what a no-brainer. Yeah. Fly to fucking Montana. Two weeks with Kurt Russell in Montana. Awesome job. Yeah, or however long it took to shoot. Although it does suggest, the way the pilot's built, suggests that there will be flashbacks. And I've watched the first three, and Kurt Russell appears in basically memory or as like kind of the narrator of these journals that he leaves behind for Michelle Pfeiffer to read. Not for her to read. It's like James Marsden in Paradise. The main storyline of this show is about Michelle Pfeiffer's Stacey character.

1:18:50She's a New York City socialite and mother of three, I believe.

1:18:56Andy Greenwald:I think it's just the daughters. I think it's two. Two daughters, but then like the extended family is there or whatever. No, there's three daughters, isn't there? No, as far as I can tell, there's two daughters that travel with her. One daughter is divorced, played by Bo Garrett. She has two young daughters of her own. And then Ella Chapman is married to Patrick J. Adams, who's come along, the son-in-law. Long-time watch nemesis, Patrick J. Adams. I consider him a close member of the Alliance. Soundwave, shockwave. Okay. And then it's a story about grief, kind of. It's like, you know, Michelle Pfeiffer.

1:19:26It's a little bit of city mouse, country mouse stuff going on. Like, oh, there's a snake over here or something. But like so far, I'm kind of shocked by like the lack of an opposing force other than the force of loss. Right. Like there's not evil ranchers who want to take over the land or developers who want to put a condo on it like in Yellowstone. It's kind of just this woman going through a midlife crisis that leads to a midlife reinvention.

1:19:51Andy Greenwald:I want to go back to what you said and what you were talking to Sean about. Like this could have been this should have been a movie and I think would have been a movie in a different era. Yeah. Where you could focus, you could tell the story you want to tell, and you could tell the reinvention in a way of one woman's journey. You could tell it in two hours without having to then, I mean, without predicting what happens, there are at least, what, 11 more hours of the show that I haven't watched across two seasons because they've already filmed the second season. Well, the second season has come out, yeah.

1:20:21Andy Greenwald:So there's going to be stuff thrown crossways to generate plot and friction. I'm sure you're right. That's what happens. Yes. So Michelle Pfeiffer, luminous, one of our great stars, so exciting to have her back in our lives as a working actor. And there was a good profile of her in the Times where she, and this wasn't a secret, but she was just like, no, I'm trying to give credit. Such a Times reader. Sometimes they do good stuff, whether they're profiling Michelle Pfeiffer or reporting out Cesar Chavez. They can still get it right. I know. Just stay away from the opinions page. You are entering that zone where you're just like, I saw this incredibly searing takedown in the Times.

1:20:57Andy Greenwald:if I ever call you I'm like got him but what happens when you text me got him it's different also got him was Cesar Chavez it wasn't like we got got him they really got to the bottom Michelle Pfeiffer's I'm just trying to say I was just trying to look journalism is a struggling field right now okay and I align with the reporters and the hard workers and the female directors you're doing great today I am signaling everywhere what I'm all about she was like I took a lot of time off to raise my family. Like that, I just pointed out that now she is working more regularly. Yeah, she's on Margot's Got Money Problems.

1:21:31She's still great.

1:21:32Andy Greenwald:It's good that the show moves the way it moves because anything Montana-based was at least beautiful and kind of fun or compelling despite the drive-by on my alma mater. On Brown. Yeah. I mean, that said, it does track that like, I definitely could probably cook the meat, but starting fires and avoiding snakes and wasps nests was not in my, I mean, it's a very open curriculum. Sure. You know, you don't have to take anything, but I didn't really like it. But don't your daughters mostly do camping trips for school? Yeah. So like you're probably familiar enough with the great outdoors at this point.

1:22:01Andy Greenwald:Yeah, I signed the permission slip. What are you talking about? I don't go. Anyway, the New York stuff was so putrid. I guess I kind of forgot about that. There's a filmmaker. Mostly focusing on the river. There's a filmmaker whose view of contemporary New York City seems mostly informed by Curtis Sliwa campaign literature. Like a city in which a young blonde woman walking down the street is viciously assaulted and robbed and everyone else just moves on because that's the way cities just move on. That's not my experience with the city. Thank you, Zoran. I think things have gotten a lot better.

1:22:33Andy Greenwald:You don't live there. Here are the things that I'm a part of. Feminist movement, New York City, the loyal cadre of New York Times readers who support journalism, even as democracy dies. I know, it's just like you care so much about who's the mayor of New York City. We live in fucking Los Angeles. Because we live in fucking Los Angeles. It's nice to see a city working itself out, you know? Okay, yeah. Look, you can, you stand in for Karen? You want to talk about local politics? No, I don't. I really don't. Anyway, I don't understand, other than the fact that Taylor enjoys his life as he should, why he's so interested in the travails of the incredibly, incredibly rich.

1:23:16Andy Greenwald:And maybe that's just who he knows now that he, you know. We don't have a lot of working class television, man. I mean like no but shows about and his shows honestly the Dutton family is rich I guess the ladies and lioness have pretty nice houses Tommy Tommy is rich and Monty is richer but it's not real money it could go away in a second you know Landman season 3 with oil prices like this I can't wait actually now you just said now I'm interested yeah now I'm interested when Taylor's two major interests warmongering and oil profiteering collide, which side of the Strait of Hormuz will he be on?

1:23:54Andy Greenwald:I know. Fascinating to see. I can't wait. He's an incredibly talented writer and generator of material and incredibly unique in his volume and the way that he works. And it's also frustrating because he is long past the point where anybody is suggesting anything or editing anything. So he's constantly at the mercy of his own worst instincts. All right. Do you want to do a little bit of Top Chef episode two? Sure. this is now after dark this season rocks right i actually like the talente quick fire did you have a moment where you were you had where you're worried damn it yes yeah we're back in the studio and we're back with sponsored products and all that stuff which is like everybody's got to pay bills i get it but i was just like historically i've not loved the talente challenge in my mind and uh i was like holy shit you know like this is they're they're really like cooking at a very high level for a quick fire and i thought that the challenge itself was interesting and then you have something like the peppers which could go just sort of like comically wrong and i think it's a testament to the quality of the chefs this year that even though tom and kristin were Gail sweating to the oldies there, getting through those peppers.

1:25:15It seemed like they were really blown away by the food.

1:25:17Andy Greenwald:I mean, I think that it probably does a disservice to the show to not lead with the fact that the caliber of the cooking is really high. And that must be such a saving grace for all their plans. But I genuinely think that something either changed or they had a different mandate or they just really buckled down in their editorial meetings about how they wanted to shape the season because they're not, they just seem completely reactivated. You're having a Talenti challenge. It felt like, like you said, it felt like we're just going to be sort of sponsored twaddle. But the idea is like, we're going to have an ingredient basket that inspired the flavor.

1:25:54Andy Greenwald:So we're going to be cooking savory dishes made it more and more interesting. Even like the idea that like, and hey, just so you know, we're going to take a bite of sorbet at the end of the meal. So it has to like interlock taste wise with what you made. Yeah. And then the pepper thing was just a wildly, like, it's such a risk. And I was watching them, maybe this is just being older now, but like walking into that, watching the judges walk into that dinner being like, are any of them going to be running out screaming with intestinal distress? Or is this going to be like hot ones? Is it going to be a gimmick?

1:26:26Andy Greenwald:It was really bold on the part of the show, on the part of the contestants, and on the part of the judges to get through it. And it was very impressive. And also riveting in a way that I think early episodes often aren't due to the volume of chefs. Yes, because you're just like, I mean, first of all, I found the quality of the cooking to be evidently so high that I'm finding it easier to identify chefs and even some of their, like the way that they're going. Like Rhoda obviously is like a badass and calmly and coolly commanded her team in the elimination challenge, even though I believe she had immunity, right?

1:27:05Andy Greenwald:She had immunity and it never came up again. I thought that this was a really interesting challenge because spice tolerance is not something that people can like really, I mean, you just have what you have, right? Like I really like Szechuan spice. I don't really like Carolina shit. No, nor do I like, I mean, it's fine to watch it on Hot Ones, but I mean like the competitive extreme, like let's see how far we can blow out our taste buds thing is not very pleasant for me. And I don't have a lot of interest in it as a fan of either cooking or of reality. Like I don't need to see people compete that way.

1:27:40Andy Greenwald:So the fact that they were able to steer out of that and actually make something worth eating was remarkable. Yeah. I thought, and I would imagine if we talked to the producers and maybe we will at the end of the season again, they must have, it must have been presented to them being like, this is actually a slightly rogue challenge to have because it'll be really good TV if one of them makes Tom ill. Yeah. You know, but you have to be willing to take that risk. And I don't know whether they were willing to take that risk because it's season 23 and we got to try something. Or if they were willing to take the risk because they already trusted that ability level, like the core competency of the contestants.

1:28:17I thought there. So the last, the eliminated chef is Jossie, right? Who made a Vindaloo, camera bush pepper use, but he was the hottest. He was supposed to be the hottest in the progression.

1:28:31Andy Greenwald:Yes. And he is voted off instead of Nana, who had had a pretty tough first episode. And then served a couple of pieces of undercooked fish in her judge's presentation. But not every judge had an undercooked piece of fish. So I think it was... Maylynn loved her fish. Tom and one of... Oh, I think Ed were like, my fish is raw. And there seemed to be some debate kind of of like, well, this is two for two now where Nana did something wrong. The age old question of, is it the cumulative cooking that this person has done or mistakes that they have made versus one bad or one good cook? What did you think of the elimination?

1:29:13Andy Greenwald:Well, first of all, it was interesting. And the fact that, what's your name, Rhoda? Am I mixing it up? Her dish was so good that it completely made everyone forget about, I think, Lawrence's eggplant dish, which like up to that point, they were like, this is the greatest thing we've had on the show. And then it never got mentioned again. Right. I think that they're being, I don't think that they're, it's unfortunate that Nana was the person involved in both of these mini debates. Because I think that the Tom thing in the ring mold is one argument. But the decision in this episode was pretty consistent with, I think, the way the show has always been judged, which is that she had some cooking issues, which happened even to the great champions, but that the underlying idea of the dish and the way the dish met the challenge, which was the spice level in the progression, worked.

1:29:56Andy Greenwald:Whereas Jassy took on the hardest one, which was like, let's make the spiciest dish. failed at that and then cooked a protein wrong so that it was bad for everybody as Tom says with something like that you need to braise it you can't roast it because it's just not going to break down that way it made sense also a weird flex to be like I don't like spicy food despite cultural prejudices about Indian cuisine I can't handle it and I'm a two on a scale of whatever that he should have just gone earlier he should have gone earlier because then he made a dish and everyone was like this is not spicy and they're sitting around like shaking hot sauce Yeah, they're throwing ghost peppers into it to try and get it back to up to the level.

1:30:33Andy Greenwald:By the way, Pepper X, I think, appears in Spider-Man Brand New Day. That's good to know. I'm glad he's finally coming off the page. Yeah, so far, nothing but great things to say about this season. How would you have fared in any of this? Like I said, I think the spice thing is like a real... I think it's like, what can you handle and what do you like? I really love the tingly Szechuan stuff. I find like I'm probably a pretty novice baby when it comes to Mexican spice, like Mexican cuisine spice. And certainly like, I don't really even know what I would do with the ghost pepper reaper stuff. Like when your ears are ringing and you like leave your body, I don't.

1:31:19Andy Greenwald:That doesn't sound fun for me. Now, if you have somebody who's like balancing stuff really, really well, like I'd entertain it. like I'd love to have tried Rhoda's and Lawrence's dishes. I want to see the real edit of the judging because then at the end Tom's like also was 100 degrees in that like. Yeah, they're doing a lot of outdoor summer eating in the Carolinas. I just wanted to like they definitely all the judges are executive producers of the show. So they definitely were able to say like you can't use that one shot of me begging for a glass of milk while weeping. You can't do it. They were like chugging the yogurt drink that got made.

1:31:55Andy Greenwald:Thank you sir. that's what Lawrence brought them rice right like that was the kindest thing you could do we can wrap up there all right long show uh we'll be back on Monday I don't know what we're gonna do you don't know maybe you'll see Project Hail Mary we can talk about that I'd love to see that thanks to Kai Kaya and Sarah we will be back on Monday and you guys have a great weekend