‘Euphoria’ and ‘Hacks’ Say Goodbye. Plus, ‘Star City’ Takes Off.

37:30Andy Greenwald:so I don't feel qualified to comment on the performer the performance character really other than to say I am not a fan of fictional painters expressing their emotion through paintings because inevitably they're not going to I don't think you're I don't know if they're going to get the effect that you wish you could get from them. They probably should not have shown the painting sure. The painting seemed sort of silly to me as did the sort of like this is the sort of self. Can you imagine if Ellis was like, what the fuck is that? What are you doing? But like sort of like the, the, the choke, like there's more power in the silence and the expression of art.

38:10Andy Greenwald:And the painting was like, you were serious about that? Like that, I didn't get that. And it felt, I mean, this is, this is the thing that I think is ultimately, certainly a challenge for me. And I would imagine whether it's, you know, on, on your dial, it's more or less, or maybe it's not articulated, but like, I think one of the real challenges of the season, and I guess it was an unavoidable one, is that it is ultimately a tweener. It was neither here nor there. It was neither committed to being a full-throated continuation of a serialized television show that had a lot of character and emotion equity built into it, nor was it able to fully commit to being what I responded to in the trailer, which is a, fuck you guys, this show is something different now.

38:51I mean, I think it definitely committed to the latter.

38:53Andy Greenwald:It committed to the latter in terms of its service to the audience, but the fact that some of these character strands were continually attended to, even limited, like what I'm trying to say is either do it or don't. No, I completely agree with you. I understand that Jules is part of Euphoria and Hunter Schaefer is part of Euphoria, but there was no room for that character this season, frankly, regardless of schedule. You know what? I was watching it and there have been shows that I think we either have a sense of how they were made or what sort of challenges went into making them or we are aware of scheduling mishaps or issues that plague the show.

39:36I think the best possible version is when it comes out and it's like Exile on Main Street and it sounds like everybody's in the room.

39:42Andy Greenwald:You stop asking the questions. You know what I mean? It sounds like everyone's playing in a room, but in fact, it's like one guy's in France recording on an answering machine. But the art speaks for itself. But the art speaks for itself. And I don't know that all the time euphoria was not exile on main street i think that the jewels and nate plot lines specifically felt like they took place in a different working environment than the rest of the show this season and i think it was to its detriment um i want to talk to you a little bit about the fact that um the show makes the choice not to do a bad news relay about rue yeah and not to do which is a term we sometimes throw around in the show about it's the broad church it came from broad church but it's basically each character finding out the same terrible news and having a an emmy reel an emmy reel for it um i thought that was cool i think you like we talked about like you could make the argument that to maddie and lexi ruse sort of a crazy character from their past that is every once in a while will pop up on somebody's couch but that this wasn't a big shock but levin singh kind of went through a lot of plot bullshit to get lexi to tell maddie yes that rue is working for the da and then maddie told alamo and the only real acknowledgement of that seems to be when ali says i'm here for rue or rue's rue bennett sent me like they get a reaction shot from maddie but But it's not like a, do you realize what happened here?

41:20Andy Greenwald:Yeah, no, it doesn't land. I mean, I think this is, I think you're articulating an example of what I was trying to say bothered me. Like, it's a tweener. It's like you're servicing. Certain TV things. Certain TV things. But then ultimately, you kind of don't care about them. And it makes sense to me. And this I mean, truly, I mean this as a compliment. Why when Sam Esmail used to come on the show and he was praising Euphoria for its directorial vision and its aesthetic consistency. because like Sam, both Sams write and direct everything. You see things on this show like you did with Mr. Robot or Sam Esmail's other things that are contemptuous of some TV tropes.

41:57Andy Greenwald:And it allows you to separate and engage with the material and make observations like we're making about like, well, it may have felt sudden or brutal or cruel to dispatch Rue the way that the show did, but the show is actually telling you something about our engagement with protagonists and how we imbue hope into them when everything about their circumstance is telling you it's hopeless. You know, that's not that's not traditional TV. Traditional TV would walk up to that edge and then maybe like the Hacks finale still give you all of the the gushing emotion that is kind of your reward for watching the show.

42:38Andy Greenwald:Euphoria didn't do that. And it leaves us making references to the searchers and to Jewish prayers, you know, which is cool. We don't usually do that. But I think that the fact that it maybe was an ill-fitting, ill-fitting clothing this season, that it was still in the skin of a serialized television show. And most people engage with it that way. And I think they were, my sense is that people were either quite confused or quite pissed off. Yeah. By some of the storytelling choices. Yeah, I mean, the choice not to show Rue's mother receiving the news, the choice to not have anybody else finding out about this, to see Storm Reid's characters, Rue's sister, finding out about this, to...

43:23Andy Greenwald:I mean, I think the thing... I think that that feels like more like something went wrong rather than a choice that was made. Yes. That said, Sam can go on a podcast and say. You're misreading the show. It is ultimately about the ways in which addicts in our lives are dead before the coroner comes. Yes. You can say that, and I've been carrying water for those arguments in this podcast, but you can't say that as a coming over the top argument ender to people who have engaged with a serialized television show with a certain set of expectations. They're not wrong. Just because you can intellectually articulate why you did something does not invalidate the emotional reaction that audience members have.

44:10kind of trying to work through on the in this conversation is like how can i watch something that fundamentally doesn't work on so many levels that i still feel like it worked for me emotionally and intellectually in some ways you know like i guess it just made me think about things that i usually don't think about when i'm watching television and including what the fuck are they doing yeah why are they doing this but it made me think about addiction in a lot of different ways and it made me think about the american west in ways that i hadn't really thought about in a while And it made me think about forgiveness and why we go to the movies and all these things.

44:46And I was like, this is good, man. Like, this is bigger than I thought it was going to be. It meant more to me than I thought it was going to be.

44:52Andy Greenwald:I also felt continually, and I'm not saying this as a negative, but like a writer director in a movie can have his or her one to two dozen hinge points, exclamation points to express like scenes, moments, vibes that are crucial to understanding what that vision is. And the connective tissue in 90 minutes or two hours isn't really as important as we often think it is unless it's, you know, why did Palpatine suddenly return? Like if it's a personal story, you shouldn't ever watch them as a Redditor. You watch them being carried along by someone trying to tell you something. Yeah. And I think where the limitations of the auteur model are evident in a show like Euphoria are you can absolutely hang a constellation of these really bright, powerful, shining star moments that moved him and that tell the story that I think he clearly wanted to tell.

45:51Andy Greenwald:The connective tissue between them was often either convoluted, ignored, underbaked. Yeah, straight up. Yeah. Like the previous episode, you finish. And just to say, that's why people have writers rooms. I am not saying Euphoria would be better with the writer's room. It's just irrelevant to make that point. I'm saying, and sometimes the conversation creep of a writer's room can overthink everything until it's just mid, you know. But, like, there's a moment in this episode that surprised me in ways that I was really excited by. Like, I still don't understand, and I never asked you, why Laurie is the way she is and hangs out only with Nazis on a farm.

46:29Andy Greenwald:I don't understand that. Her season two kind of like she emerges in season two as like, I believe like a local drug dealer that Fez is working with. I haven't rewatched season two. So some of this is just patching together memories. But her character is more like the layer of drug culture that you experience when like you are getting serious. You know, all of a sudden this is the person behind the. Yeah. And like it's not just dime bags and eight balls. it's like there's somebody who is like, I'll give you this if you give me that. And like, she, her and Alamo emerging as these two basically satanic figures in the desert.

47:10I think it's almost disconnected from who Laurie was in the second season.

47:16Andy Greenwald:All that to say that like the moment when the guy who rodeo ropes Rue early in the episode, when the scene is built, because we've seen all the same movie Sam Levinson has seen, that we understand he's going to reach for his gun and go out in a blaze of glory and everything's going to pop off when he doesn't worked. That was a moment of, I took notice of that. Apparently this show is also about the healing power of dogs. Of animals. Yeah, exactly. The dog told him not to do it. Yeah, apparently. But I just was like, okay. But like, we are also at the point with the show where I was just like, that is a decision and a statement that clearly has some significance to the creator and to the larger project.

48:00Andy Greenwald:And then it goes off the rails. She has this dramatic hanging off. Then it goes crazy to get to the next one of those little pegboard points. Yeah, I mean, there's so much fucking, like, it's so funny because we're having this kind of, like, clear-eyed, full-hearts conversation about this episode. And like I said, plastic surgery, Brazilian butt lift, Lori blows her pants out when she hangs herself, colostomy bags, plastic surgery in Mexico, um fentanyl scorpions printed on it and marshawn lynch getting into a threesome before he gets his blown off i mean it is so like clip that coward exploit it is exploitation exploitation core you know and so it's funny to also be like god damn like this brought me to tears it is funny it's it's just like i guess that's the high and low that he's working with yeah and it really really really pissed people off in some ways but i even though you're the newcomer to this yeah i just i wasn't mad that lexi or nate or cassie didn't have like three more story beats at the expense of all the wayne i was uh fey and lori stuff i mean like i don't know why he did it necessarily or i think it could have been a little bit more evenly distributed but yeah i mean i didn't understand what i but i i also because i didn't know i i couldn't i didn't feel i didn't want to spend time with really any of these other stories but i also that's not for me to say i'm coming in late and maybe that some of those scenes or some of the the continuation of their stories was was important yeah for the viewers but i also think like the i keep looking i never want to get his name wrong but atawale akunoi akbaje if he wasn't on this show in that role it would have been a catastrophe of historic proportions because the character is preposterous somewhat intentionally preposterous but to go from rue's death to have him giving a disquisition on the power of female anatomy and the role it's played in his life was borderline insulting honestly to what the show was and a ridiculous digression or maybe not digression for what that character has been and you know he he came on the show like a cartoon and he went out like a cartoon but there was an actor playing him who brought real gravitas and swagger and dark charisma and humanity to it which is maybe the best we can hope for i i i think that you know like i know this sounds crazy but i feel like i feel like the show got away with even more this season yeah by casting and and daryl brick gibson too and that and part of bishop who he brought some some gravity and soul to a character that was mostly reaction shots and then suddenly had exposition in the last 15 minutes you know it it got away with you understand why he turned on alamo uh i think because of maddie but was did he seem particularly enamored with maddie before before she liked his dog yeah okay not that i could tell i mean he was watching everything yeah but i thought he was mostly focused on ruin was the one who's like my spidey senses are tingling yes not but there's something up with this person who's now just all of a sudden empathy for this person now that's the other i think ultimately the reaction is one of frustration because maybe daryl brick gibson will do an interview where he's like oh we shot all these scenes where you know bishop's sister died of a drug overdose and it triggered him or whatever and she's the one whose dog it was and that's what i was playing but we didn't show it or you know you get away with it because he's a cool looking actor who did the fucking thing scene to scene.

51:43Andy Greenwald:Yeah. And then you get by on again with the sort of surface artifice that the show can also skate by on. Either way, we'll never know the full answer. And we have what we have. And I may be the best way to put a bow on it is we're never getting anything like this again. Like we're never getting anything like this again. So that's actually a pretty good segue here. I mean, I hope people enjoyed our rather unique perspective on this series, this season. and it was a fun experiment. It was a fun experiment at the beginning. This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli?

52:18Well, Boar's Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means planning your whole day around it. Presenting the Friar's Turkey Breast only from Boar's Head. Backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Boar's Head, committed to Kraft since 1905.

52:40Andy Greenwald:Let's talk about a condition many people haven't heard of, and it turns out it's more common than you'd think. Peyronie's disease, or PD for short. PD can happen when scar tissue builds up under the skin of the penis. This can cause a curve or the bump during an erection, and for some men, lead to pain during intimacy and may impact mental health. It may also lead to anger and frustration, depression, lower self-esteem, and even withdraw from sexual activity and physical intimacy. Because of this, some men could feel embarrassed or reluctant to talk about PD. The actual cause of PD isn't always known.

53:16Andy Greenwald:In some cases, it may be linked to a minor injury or repeated injuries during sex or other physical activity. The good news is, PD is treatable. If you notice a curve with a bump, a trusted urology specialist can help diagnose it and walk you through your options, including non-surgical treatment. To learn more about Peyronie's disease, Visit talkaboutpd.com. Beginning and end. I'll also just mention that not unlike when Succession and Barry ended on the same night, I believe. Wasn't that the same night? I think that's right. I mean, you were kicking around Europe at the time. I was. Hacks also ended this weekend.

53:56I'm going to just say one quick thing. I know you didn't get a chance to see this yet, but I know you've also read about it, so I'm not spoiling anything for you. But this will be spoilers for Hacks, which we have not discussed. Um, it was, uh, really interesting watching this with a, an avowed fan of the show, my wife, who I think was quite moved by the ending and was like, that was very satisfying. And I, I kind of have come in and out, like as hacks has gone on, I have like kind of a watch an episode, maybe miss two or three, watch an episode and feel like I'm on top of what's happening. um and in its own way hacks is not unlike what happened with euphoria where it brings in a relatively unexpected though somewhat broadcast uh plot turn where deborah gets um has cancer that her a mass has has returned and she's decided that it's going to be she's going to choose to have assisted suicide in Switzerland rather than go through treatment.

54:58So her and Ava go on this sort of last lost weekend in Paris. It's actually quite beautiful. Like, you know, obviously Paris is just incredibly cinematic and filmable.

55:08Andy Greenwald:Just ran into Amanda Dobbins. She said the same thing. I bet. And then, you know, they're going back and forth making jokes about dying. And Debra has the revelation that she, in fact, has more jokes to tell, more work to do, and that that is a substitute. that is essentially like standing in for she also loves the people around her right and has learned to be a part of a community and is gonna go and and try you know um clinical trials of of new drugs for cancer and you know as i was watching it i was feeling like i was getting a little chewbacca'd like for explain that because that is still important to us that was no that was the the truly odious rise of skywalker yeah and rise of skywalker there's like you basically spend five minutes thinking chewbacca has been blown up and but somehow chewbacca has returned and i got really mad on a podcast where i was like you can't manipulate people like this like you prepare them for the possibility that characters people die you take them through that experience and then you tell them actually psych and you get everything you you hoard you're like a you're like colin robinson on on what we do in the shadows you're an emotion vampire yeah you have stolen people's feelings and then said jk yeah so i thought it's interesting to look at the two in comparison in some ways hacks was a much more complete satisfying and watertight finale but it does euphoria does what hacks didn't do which is say well what if what if what we are actually telling you is going to happen happened you know with a main character and how would people feel about that i think hacks killing deborah would be like quite controversial so i understand why they didn't do that but it it was interesting to see them play with stakes that were so severe yes and then decide to back off in the last minute i cannot criticize hacks for that decision from the perspective of someone who has just been advocating for the unspoken covenant between television creators and their audience i think that there is and this can be this can hamstring creators creatively over the long term.

57:21Andy Greenwald:But I do think shows, you know, I've said this before, teach you about themselves and tell you what they are even before they've reached the precipice of choosing an ending. And the worst endings tend to be the ones that betray that core belief at the last moment in search of something extra or something else, or in this case of some creators wanting to play a higher note they've been allowed to play on the keyboard of their show for this many seasons. Hacks, the reason I didn't stay with Hacks is nothing to do with the, what I believe to be even from a distance, the consistent, the consistency of Hacks.

57:56Andy Greenwald:People like Phoebe and the millions of other people and Emmy voters who love it are like, one of the reasons this show continues is because year in and year out, Debra and Ava are delivering and the tone of the show is delivering and the stakes of the show are consistent. That's really, really to do what I tapped out when I realized that the show's most provocative ideas about Deborah being a monster about show business being a gaping maw of whatever was always going to be fixed with hugs and understanding before we run it back again sure the constant breaking up and bringing back together well done artfully was too much of a yo-yo for me and reminded me of look I mean Mike sure is an executive producer of hacks but he it's not his show you know um Paul Downs and Lucian Yellow and Jen Statsky did did the damn thing and ran the shit out of an enormously successful beloved show.

58:47Andy Greenwald:But Mike Schur is an executive producer of it. And there's a tendency that it reminded me of ultimately that and he's made some of my favorite shows of all time. Parks and Rec and Good Place particularly unimpeachable except for the one little thing, which is what I'm trying to articulate, which is every so often the softness and the gentleness and the schmaltziness and the optimism start to overwhelm. The TV-ness, too. Yeah, and that's not a sin. The shows are good because there is a Leslie Knope and there's a Ron Swanson. And when they start hugging, that's when it starts to get a little... Anyway, so that was my reaction with the thing.

59:27Andy Greenwald:But the reason why I walked away. But when you're describing that finale to me, I think I think I would have been incredibly frustrated by it, but frustrated for the same reasons I'd been frustrated for three seasons. And ultimately, that was the show. Sure. It's also, you know, it's hard to watch when you're just like the bear is just clearly much funnier. Exactly. Exactly. Where are the laughs in comparison? I was just going to go through HBO's like current slate right really quickly. Okay. so you've got I would say these are the sort of ones that are like kind of not propping up but like are the flagship sort of titles for HBO right now which is White Lotus returning currently shooting in the south of France Task we know is coming back Night of the Seven Kingdoms critically I believe commercially very successful new iteration of Game of Thrones I actually was going to reference it when we talk about Star City Good, Gilded Age, The Pit rooster these are not all shows that we have love or talk about necessarily but shows that i think are doing well for hbo and are in in current production and obviously i guess dune prophecy which uh with dune 3 coming and i was just laughing it's like i guess obviously well they brought it back and it's a dune show so i'm kind of like it bears mentioning then there are the shows that are winding down or ending industry house of the dragon last of us last of us still may be on the air for a couple more years but i think are they're probably like thinking of ways to start bringing the ship back home um i think they said four didn't they they did i don't i don't know how long that's going to take but um and then you know half man and dtf we didn't talk about half man DTF we talked about briefly but those seem like one and dones I I'm surprised I mean I don't know I don't have insider knowledge on this um but and I know it wasn't for us and it made people quite frustrated but it does seem like DTF was a success ratings wise and internally yes and so I have no idea about their HBO's relationship with Stephen Conrad or Stephen Conrad's desire to do any but like you could do DTF Des Moines like I that could be White Lotus sure or you could do another Stephen Conrad show, which I think is what I would like to see.

1:01:48And then they have Lanterns and House of the Dragon on the way, imminently, and Harry Potter, obviously, at Christmas time. It's an interesting moment because, you know, like, I think we have...

1:02:00Andy Greenwald:Do you want me to talk about if Peeves is in it? If who? Peeves. Who's Peeves? He wasn't in the movies. Oh. So that's two ways you haven't ever encountered this character. Go on. We've done State of HBO conversations before i think a lot of the slate looks very strong it really doesn't matter because it's it it can't be repeated enough they have been purchased by paramount you also i think left out the most interesting returning show on the hbo network set in delaware county about a task force i said task did you say task yeah sorry i was blanking out i'm we're having a problem not you and i but like you know when i was doing the buried alive thing when last episode and i was like hey everybody like tell me who you think the best buried alive like mine's definitely kill bill and i got 10 million emails that were just like beatrix kiddo from kill bill and i'm like i know i said that yeah unless i was having a stroke and didn't say that but maybe i'm not only a few of the emails distinctive enough podcaster yeah it's fine anyway i just thought i would mention that these two shows are ending uh that that euphoria which obviously was a intermittent presence in in HBO's lineup and Hacks, which has been a very consistent presence.

1:03:15Andy Greenwald:Well, Max has its two pit adjacent series coming. There's the police show. Is that Catalina Island? No. What is that? Oh, is that the family show? No, that's the one about a guy, a sheriff on Catalina. Is it about him policing the Catalina wine mixer? I hope so. No, there's the Milo Ventimiglia show. Yeah, there's a cop show. And then there also is there's a family drama being led by Ray Romano. Yeah. So I guess not like we just we just kind of did our best to find the positive and euphoria. So I don't want to do any more. What's the term the kids use glazing? But I do think. What you described is actually a best case scenario, I think, in terms of industry position of a network that has a very, very steady floor.

1:04:08Andy Greenwald:Yes. And it's a very different floor than HBO had 10 years ago or certainly 20 years ago in the sense that it is built on more mainstream facing stuff that works like Game of Thrones stuff and DC stuff and, you know, Bill Lawrence comedy rooster and then also all of this, you know, broadcast minded. all those things on Max. The optimist case for that is Paramount, or whomever in the end, but probably Paramount, is buying something pretty solid. And that there is room to iterate on top of it. And there's room for Casey to say to all of the Ellisons, perhaps in some sort of like, remember when on Righteous Gemstones, when the Gemstone siblings would receive people sitting on their Three Thrones, I imagine.

1:05:02That's how the Ellisons do it?

1:05:03Andy Greenwald:That's what it'll be like, where it's like Larry Ellison and the young Ellison. Meghan? No, not Meghan. What's our guy? David? David Ellison. And then maybe like Scott Besant or whatever, being like, actually, it's a good sign for the economy that everyone's poor. And anyway, Casey could be like, there's actually room here for me to take a little money off the top for like three more somebody somewheres or a bigger artistic splash. But do you feel like it's an end of an era in a different way? No, I mean, I think it's an end of an era because of the corporate machinations. I don't think I think I think if anything, the end of Succession and Barry should should show us that we shouldn't do this kind of like, what's HBO going to do now that Hacks is gone?

1:05:41It's like, I think they'll figure it out. We just did it. I know. You think we shouldn't do the thing we just did? No, I think that the reason to be like, I wonder what's going to happen next for HBO is because they are going to be part of a different corporate parent, not because they they continuously, you know, and they morph. They change. there's always going to be these HBO 2027 is not going to look like HBO 2021 but we always wind up kind of coming back home

1:06:08Andy Greenwald:did you mention Harry Potter in the list of shows? I did man, yeah is that where peeves? peeves or beeves? were you doing the Arrested Development bit? beads it's peeves man let's talk about a show before we get out of here that I fucking love and I knew I was going to like it. I didn't think I was going to be blown away by it the way I was. We're talking about Star City. This is a, I guess it's a spinoff. There are characters in Star City that appear in For All Mankind. Played by different actors, I think. Different actors. It's set in the 60s in Russia, then the Soviet Union. This comes from Matt Walpert, Ben Davidi, and Ronald Moore, who are also in charge of For All Mankind, although I believe Wolpert and Navidi basically do the brunt of that show.

1:06:59Yes, they are the showrunners of both of these projects.

1:07:04And I'm going to say this, and I don't really have a way of making this statement true, but it's how I feel. Okay. Is this the Andor of For All Mankind Star Wars? Wow. Okay. Sure. They Chernobyl'd this. This is -

1:07:24Andy Greenwald:It's rare to see a project of such deep, deep influence, but also kind of get away with it. Yeah. So it is Russian characters speaking in English accents portrayed by English speaking performers for the most part, I believe. It stars Reese Iphons as the chief designer of the Soviet space program. uh anna maxwell martin as ludmila roscova uh a kgb intelligence uh officer who oversees the security of that space program and then it's got a bunch of performers that i am either now fans of or never seen before um so we have agnes o 'casey playing arena who will turn up on for all mankind eventually and she is uh roscova's new protege at the kgb Oh, so this character is on, the reason it's a different actor is because it's an older version of the character on For All Man.

1:08:19Apparently, I think that they showed up on, she shows up in season four. Alice Englert, who plays Anastasia Belakova, the first woman in space. First woman on the moon, dog. Sorry, on the moon. Adam Negatus and Sally McLeod, they play Valya and Sasha, respectively, who are two.

1:08:38Andy Greenwald:And Adam, we know, because he was one of the firefighter buddies on Chernobyl. That's right. And there are some Chernobyl faces on this show. I mean, this is not really like a piece of cultural criticism. I like watching trained English, Irish, Welsh, and otherwise actors imbuing scripts with just incredibly lived in performances immediately. This feels like a 70s conspiracy thriller with a plausible realistic sci-fi bent. It's an alternative history of the space race for all mankind. It's told from the U.S. perspective. This is told from the Soviet perspective. And what you get in the first episode is essentially Raskova is leading a mole hunt inside of the space program.

1:09:25Star City. Star City. And when the prospective first woman on the moon is thought to be a spy for the Americans, she's replaced by Anastasia Belikova, played by Englert. and because it's thought that Anastasia will be more pliant to the party's needs. And meanwhile, so that whole like going up to the moon with a woman is happening.

1:09:51Andy Greenwald:And it's quite tense and well shot. It is gorgeous. Nick Murphy directed this first two batch, this two episode batch that went up. And then the second episode, which I don't want to get too far into because you haven't had a chance to see it, is about Anastasia's victory and promo tour and the ways in which they are using her to sort of as a propaganda piece, but deepening the mole hunt and Irina's being pulled into the dark side of security work for the KGB. I don't know if there is a light side of security work for the KGB. Sort of the light fun. Who's like the Luke Skywalker of the KGB? I guess we're going to find out.

1:10:34The show is fucking awesome. It uses, in much the same way Chernobyl does, the brutalist, decaying textures of...

1:10:46Andy Greenwald:Lithuania. They shot in Lithuania? Hell yeah. Shout out Lithuania. To just give everything this kind of light, cigarette-smoked-on, moldy, decaying, the lights-don't-always-work feel. and yet at the same time you know you're watching um this moment of great optimism and idealism and to see it sort of broadcast in this different way and both two different ways one if the soviets made it to the moon first but two in this way in which like every victory is also a thing that needs to be controlled yes a thing that needs to be interrogated a thing that needs to be buttoned up whereas on the u.s side everything is sort of this expression of a new kind of american exceptionalism yes and american imperialism i mean it's beautifully characterized in the scene in which uh the chief designer is rewarded for his is absolutely outrageous victory but it's in an empty room and he has to give the medal back yeah um paul spriggs is the name of the production designer who previously worked on sex education which is a very different palette yeah so bravo Production designers, unsung heroes of all television.

1:12:00So for as much as this is, first of all, I just want to get your general thoughts on the episode you watched.

1:12:04Andy Greenwald:Well, I kind of want to, I loved it. And I can't wait to watch more. This may seem counterintuitive, but my reference point for watching the show was actually Spider Noir, which we talked about last week, which is to say I no longer understand what gets greenlit and what doesn't. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. For All Mankind, which is a sturdy show, in terms of its, I believe, its performance and the engagement that it gets for Apple is not a hit show, I think, by any metric, even within Apple's own, you know, not many people have Apple despite its ubiquity and its unlimited budgets. So the fact that that series is getting a Russian-centered spinoff back in the 60s, in many ways telling the B-side to a story that was of the story of the first season of For All Mankind, which was eight years ago.

1:13:00Andy Greenwald:It's fucking crazy. Like, spinoffs, spinoffs in their best case don't retain the full audience of the mothership. With Recyfins and Anil Maxwell Martin leading it. Leading it, and without any attempt to make this sexy. It's not like Russell Crowe is playing this guy. You know what I mean? It's like, they didn't, yeah. No, there seems to be an understanding that this is going to be mostly an artistic, frankly, project in the shadow of a show that hasn't set the world on fire. Now, maybe this will be a wonderful outcome for everyone where what we felt about the first episode or two episodes will be borne out by the rest of it, and then it'll have a sudden surge and may become incredibly popular in its own right, and we'll do our best to make that happen.

1:13:43Andy Greenwald:But it's wild to me.

1:13:48Andy Greenwald:And secondarily, I think we should say for people listening, you do not need to watch For All Mankind I think to engage in the show. Yeah, I've watched the first two and a half seasons of For All Mankind. I watched the first two seasons. I was talking to my daughters about it on the way to school because they asked what we were talking about on the podcast and then they asked me to tell them everything that happened at the end of Euphoria. How did you do that? I mostly focused on the laxatives that Wayne took because that kind of humor always sells especially on the way to school. Okay. The premise of For All Mankind remains elite and so cool and so compelling and such a great use of television to be like, no, let's do this and let's really, really try it.

1:14:25Andy Greenwald:But I found it too big and too ambitious and I just didn't enjoy the watching of it as much as I admired it. I don't think you need to have watched it to watch this or to appreciate it. I just spent half this episode being like, how are we getting this? This is wild. But I should not question it. I'm glad they're spending their money on this. There was something kind of like, I don't mean this as a blanket criticism of a show that I haven't watched in a couple of seasons I've kept up with what's kind of happening on All Mankind So For All Mankind, from what I understand every season is a decade leap forward into this alternate history or into the 2000s and now there is a full colony on Mars because the idea of For All Mankind the fundamental rupture in our space and time is that the Russians won which is what we see happen in the opening moments beautifully and brilliantly I mean pilots are hard the opening moments of the show are so excellent at bringing you into everything that the show is going to be about and also making you understand something if you are a fan of the other show that you're going to be seeing it from the other side yes and it's like the paranoia and terror that then mixes with a moment of triumph and pride is is really really excellent and the domestic versus the profession just a completely different perspective on it it's so so so well done um but that the idea that in for all mankind this loss of the space race led to an American obsession of catching up, which led to a completely transformed second half of the century into the new century in which space is everything.

1:15:54Andy Greenwald:Yes. As opposed to something we did and we won and we moved on from. There are these character moments, and I want you to watch the second one and then we can talk about it in more detail, but what I will say is that I'm sure if I did a forensic scouring of what's happened on For All Mankind, I could come up with a pretty solid synopsis of what's going to happen on Star City. But there are these character beats that I find enchanting. Enchanting in a way that kind of reminds me of Battlestar, Ronald Moore's Battlestar Galactica, of you start out and you think, this is going to be the mechanic.

1:16:33I get it. And you're like, oh my God, I had no idea this is where we were going to wind up. And even some of the cosmonauts are being given character depth that you just didn't, you know, you would not necessarily need to imbue the seventh guy on the show with this. Like, this is what I want. And, but this is who I am. And this is the frustration that comes along with it. It's, it's really, really top notch TV. And I'm really excited to keep watching it. I think you're going to adore the second episode. Even more. Oh, I think so. Yeah. Um, and if I had a critique of all men for all mankind, even though I, you know, I like, um, Joel Kinnaman as a performer.

1:17:12I'd like a lot of the people who are on it. There was a certain kind of like, it's not like a falseness. There was like, I was always aware that I was watching people on a TV show. Okay. And it felt like dress up. And this doesn't, even though there is a complete artifice to the fact that all of these people are Russians speaking English.

1:17:38Andy Greenwald:The least generous take on that is that they found the Chernobyl filter that works. It's a filter on the show, the way they speak accented English as Russian, the way Russian sounds in English, you know, referring to people as chief designer, which actually is more common in Russian than it would be in English. But we under we speak this fictional language now. Yes. And they're doing a great job of doing a show in that language. It's not just mimicry. Yeah. We got a couple of things on the cast, a couple of small notes. Sure. One, happy to see Elliot Salt she plays the other um listening person remember she was on Slow Horses uh in like two seasons ago um damn that's a this lady recognized her immediately from that love seeing these people get good work yeah I'm paying close attention partly because as you know I'm constantly on Nepo Watch ever since we started this podcast and I've looked across at you you know it's Nepo Watch and I stand on the shoulder of giants I mean who amongst I mean what other critics were willing to shit on Godfather 2 you know in a way like imagine he would have killed on a podcast so I think we have to talk about the fact that Alice Englert is clearly the daughter of you have to defend this no I don't actually no she is the daughter of Jane Campion who is the great director she was in Top of the Lake her mom's TV show she's awesome I don't actually have a take on this it was just funny to see that and as it was funny to see that Tanya Miranova who's one of the cosmonauts wife who's keeping up a little something on the side is Andy Serkis' daughter I did not know that her name being Ruby Serkis didn't give it away the character who I think has been the one that has blossomed for me the most is Alice Englert's Anastasia character the Nepo thing is a joke especially when we're talking about a dedicated artistic person like Jane Campion and her family.

1:19:34Andy Greenwald:I'm not really worried about the benefits of the leg up she got in the Kiwi film industry. Do you think when she's at auditions they're like, top of the lake, must be nice. No, the piano, huh? When did your mom show you that? Yeah. No, I think that as an actor she is surprising. In her presentation, in her line readings, in what she brings to it. And this is just through one episode that you notice. And that's especially noteworthy casting, I think, in a show in which the aesthetic is primary, that everything is kind of brutalist and gray and there's snow and you can't do pops of color to distinct, oh, well, that character wears a saucy scarf.

1:20:14Andy Greenwald:That's telling us something. No, they can't do that. So casting becomes even more important. Yeah. And the contrast that the show does between her and the cosmonaut that she replaces within the episode is expertly done. Yes. We will continue to talk about this. the third episode goes up on friday so maybe maybe we'll talk a little bit about episode two on thursday but i think we'll probably consistently chat about this show throughout its season if i had to guess yeah and then we're gonna hit maximum pleasure we're gonna stay in the apple apple's just got us we we we do nothing but serve our big brother tim apple um yeah so widows bay on thursday top chef on thursday maybe a little bit more star city kristin said this is her favorite episode of Top Chef this season.

1:20:57Okay.

1:20:57Andy Greenwald:Did you know that? I did not know that. That's good to know. I also heard, this is just now, we're just into Reddit stuff, but like a PA who worked on the show said that the edit actually helped Seeker because it was much worse. The edit of his behavior during the jury or the edit of like his cooking? No, no, the jury. Like his crash out. Oh, so they crashed out and that they were like, let's be decent about this? Release the Seeker cut. Okay. That's my hill. Seeker stands. Hit us up about your man. Tell us. Just tell us about what it's like eating melted chicken. Thank you for watching Euphoria with me.

1:21:33Thank you for podcasting with me today. Thank you for inviting me. We're going to be back on Thursday. And everybody have a good week. Okay.