‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 5 and the ‘Cape Fear’ Trailer. Plus, Why ‘Legends’ Is Crime Drama Excellence.

26:05Andy Greenwald:but every so often you get a case where it's just like we've been trying to develop a story no one particularly is asking for for 22 years and we have spent untold tens of millions of dollars to get there and now we've also now we've leveraged or a24 has leveraged us or we've leveraged a24 in their quest to expand their purview like all to get here maybe you know um at this point maybe Doug from IT could have been like, guys, what if we don't do it? You know what I mean? Like, there is that element to that with these kinds of, that said, I truly don't know. Like, will these things continue to just pop up like zombies, like the few that actually survive their long gestation?

26:49Andy Greenwald:Or have we really turned the corner from this and this is the last shining echo of light from a distant star? I don't know. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere? and realize you're missing something, like a last-minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for, that's when Prime's same-day delivery has your back, getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so that you can actually join in on the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same-day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas.

27:25Terms apply. let's get into a full-throated endorsement of a new tv show so out of out of all the concern trolling we just did for for two non-existent shows or shows that haven't aired yet i wanted to get our full shoulder behind legends on netflix uh we got a few emails so the watch email back box you can always hit us up at the watch at spotify.com uh we always love your emails we'll do a mailbag soon and i'll try to interpolate some when we discuss legends in more depth perhaps next week so the six episodes obviously netflix it's already up uh andy and i both watched too uh this one stars one of our favorite actors tom burke who people may remember from steven soderbergh's black bag from uh last year it stars steve coogan in a um unusually straightforward role although i am really enjoying the master michael cain impersonator slowly becoming michael Cain.

28:23Andy Greenwald:That's the best insight I could possibly give. He's just doing a really good Michael Cain role where he's like on the call poop tells you what to do. Haley Squires, who folks will probably seen on their screens before. What was like the Haley Squires biggest thing? I, I, I, this is going to be insufferable, but I'm going to say it anyway, but I am British theater. You're going to say you saw her at Donmar warehouse or something? No, I saw her at all my sons with Brian Cranston and Papa Esadu earlier this year, and she was awesome. I know it's ridiculous and rarefied air, but you've experienced this too.

28:53Andy Greenwald:I saw Tom Burke last year with Cate Blanchett on stage. Like I saw Coogan do Dr. Strangelove. Like it's really cool that all these really good actors work on challenging things. And then they get a call to like play a copper for a couple of weeks. And they're like, that's awesome. I know I'm projecting, but I feel that enthusiasm on the screen. I think I saw the kid who plays young Jason Voorhees outside of the Xfinity Mobile Arena on Friday night, urinating on an Embiid jersey. So on TikTok. Different cultures, you know, but people are working. That's what matters. This show is set in 1990 in England gloriously.

29:28And I say that as somebody who is currently staring at the soundtrack, which features Happy Mondays and Depeche Mode and Stone Roses and a bunch of like Manchester classics and British Club and alternative rock hits from that era. Great soundtrack. and it comes to us via the showrunner creator writer neil forsyth uh who people who listen to this podcast may remember as the writer creator of the gold the gold was one of me and andy's like out of nowhere faves from a couple of years ago and then he did a second season which i am criminally admit i have not watched and nor do i even know where to watch it because i think it was on pbs briefly and maybe on like a pbs streaming service but i haven't checked it out in any case anyone we were chatting about this off the pod i want to steal something you said and throw it back at you as a prompt and this is oh i should say a crime drama about an influx of heroin hitting england in 1990 and the uh customs house department of the home office or the customs basically the customs department of um of the english government um sending in a bunch of undercover agents to try and stem the tide of heroin flooding into the country in 1990.

30:42And Steve Coogan plays the sort of ex-undercover agent slash police officer. We haven't really gotten so far into his backstory, who leads these several of these cops and they're all played by Squires and Tom Burke and Amal Amin, who's also quite good as a cop named Bailey or a customs agent named Bailey. when I was talking to you a little bit off pod, you said something really insightful, which is, is this guy now his own genre? Is Neil Forsyth now his own genre? What would you describe as Neil Forsyth as a genre?

31:18Andy Greenwald:It's really so specific. So if you would watch The Gold, which we encourage you to do, you will feel instantly at home with this show and also instantly relieved in a way that Netflix also understood his unique talents and gave him a platform because the gold would have crushed on Netflix for the same reasons that Legends is already climbing the global top 10. Neil Forsyth is uniquely talented at making incredibly complicated historical moments shine dramatically and emotionally with an almost like brutalist shorthand. what I mean by that is like The Gold which is about a very infamous I think more infamous if you lived in the UK than if you were us but infamous robbery and the after effects of that robbery Legends is about customs officers infiltrating as you said like the heroin distribution networks of the UK in 1990 its heroes are people who usually check suitcases at the airport Yes.

32:29Andy Greenwald:And it is absolutely suffused with British specificity in terms of Margaret Thatcher's political interests, in terms of Turkish immigration, in terms of council estates and the politics and being from a place like Liverpool versus not being from a place like Liverpool. and yet it feels galactic in terms of like, oh, I understand everything about this. I understand the safe house where they're meeting and how people have plausible deniability and people are getting in over their heads. And there's a shorthand, you said we don't know that much about Steve Coogan's Don character. We know exactly as much as we need to know.

33:10Andy Greenwald:When these characters sit down in a room, they are all primed to say not just the most expositionally efficient thing they could say, they say it with a flair and panache that is a hallmark of good writing. So when we covered the first season of Narcos, I think we both enjoyed it a lot. But we joked even then about the Boyd Holbrook voiceover and how really the show was like an elevated Wikipedia of the series, where historical events were being dramatized for our eyes in a way that was gripping. That's old Pablo right there. Pablo Escobar was his name, and drugs were his game. Joel Embiid came back from an appendectomy a little early for my tastes.

33:50But it seemed to work for the New York Knicks.

33:53Andy Greenwald:You're performing your trauma in a way that Freddy Krueger also did. I'm a little... We're going to get to that at the end. I just want to say that in lesser hands, this show would be basic AF or confusing. And when I watch it, I thrill to the dramatics of it and the specificity of it. but I also marvel at its just brutal efficiency, honestly, to get us to this place. If you watch this pilot, the characters go from unknowns to deep undercover within 55 minutes, and there's not a wasted second. And some of it - No, and all the things that take them from A to B, or actually A to G, basically, all the middle letters are so deeply pleasurable, including a recruitment drive, yeah calling of recruits a montage of training uh different recruits being good at different elements of the job like some are good at paperwork and some are good at picking locks and all of the period details are so perfect whether it's the car models or the references to european cup finals that they're making and then the music is just like it's not hitting you over the head like oh here's a needle drop just out of nowhere it's like walking into uh like college parties or estate uh council parties or pubs and stump something on the radio but it's it's very scene setting without spending a billion dollars to recreate trafalgar square at 1990 maybe when we do another mailbag at some point we could come up with like a working list of the six things that you watch television for in heaven.

35:38Andy Greenwald:And just as a way to sort of point to them that like, you don't, not every show has to do all of them. And you don't, and actually shows get worse when they try to do too many of these things. So one thing that you've been talking about in regards to our coverage of Euphoria is that you're not bored and that you're often surprised and there's a visual dynamism. And we'll get into that when we talk about that show. That is not what you come to legends for, but you come to legends for, you learn something, you travel somewhere and you also get that deeply pleasurable hit of watching a creator, filmmaker, showrunner who loves things, certain things as much as you do in the audience and knows that sometimes like a perfect pop song only uses the same three chords.

36:20Andy Greenwald:So a recruitment scene, you know, a character having a surprising core competence, um, the small details of characters getting to know each other in a rough and tumble way and realizing they're going to be friends for life. Like there are these crime novel, crime television show, crime film beats that he runs right at and does his version of within this world. And then on top of that, you have Tom Burke, who I can, who is in like year 10 of being the next, that guy, I think. Yeah. All the way back to like Furiosa. Yeah. And he's, he's the lead of like the, of, uh, JK Rowling's other adaptation that's been on, was on Cinemax, the CB strike series.

36:59Andy Greenwald:Oh, I didn't know that. He's a star of that. He's done romantic dramas in the UK. He's always hotly tipped to be hotly tipped. And he's a star. And at some points you squint and you're like, he's also well into his 40s. And I think he's supposed to be passing as someone with a young family, but also who cares? This is TV, man. He's really good at it. There is something kind of fun about the fact that this kind of, it goes hand in hand with Widow's Bay to me where it's just a complete clarity of intention and tone. There is a menace of violence. There's a threat of violence. But so far, it's not like it's a little bloody, I guess, but not after a couple of episodes.

37:43But they just hand everything is handled in like the exact way that I think that the showrunner wants it to be perceived. And that is that is deeply pleasurable. We can hit it more in depth like next week when I'm back or no, maybe when because we're We're going to be apart from each other a couple of episodes, but I hope to finish this one off with you at some point.

38:04Andy Greenwald:It's, it's, how jarring is it to see, because we're about to see Steve Coogan in The White Lotus and Steve Coogan's career over the last 10 years plus, like, um, Philomena and stuff. Like, he is, he has been in a period of like, let me try things. Let me see where the floor is and where the ceiling is for me. He's still doing Alan Partridge, though. As an actor. He still does, and he was doing the trips, like, up until recently. But, like, is it jarring to see him in this role? because I think you nailed it when you said he's doing Michael Caine, but really doing Michael Caine. And now I'm all the way in.

38:30Andy Greenwald:I don't think he's bad at all. Honestly, I didn't know about the show. I didn't know it was Neil Forsyth. I turned on Netflix on Friday after getting back from dinner and there's Steve Coogan in a TV show. And I said, sure. But did you bump it all? Not bump, but were you surprised? He's got something, man. I mean, he's got screen presence where there's a sequence in the second episode where he has to answer like two different phones, both calling with emergencies. And he's also calling his boss. and it's just a lot of landline drama. And some characters have cell phones though, but not the government.

39:00Yeah, but like he's able to basically like command the screen and be the load-bearing wall of this show. It's a really great turn from him.

39:09Andy Greenwald:It's also, I would imagine, a little bit subversive and fun because famously he has had his own struggles with illicit substances in the past. And here he is playing like an absolute straight - He's like, we gotta get this heroin out of this country. I mean, I think he probably agrees with that sentiment now without question. Do you think that, and we'll talk about this again when we get circled back to it, but one thing that I really appreciate about Neil Forsyth also is that he is, he's Scottish himself. He's from Dundee. And that Scotland exists in a vortex on the show that's like a little bit, where's Sauron from?

39:43Andy Greenwald:You know those references. Yeah. And it's also like when somebody has to take heroin to Scotland, they're like, oh no, not Scotland. That's what I'm saying. That's exactly it. Like, that's where he's from. You're a Kurdish heroin dealer and you're worried about Scotland. This is amazing. Let's wrap up the pod today or wrap up the TV part of the pod today with a trip through L.A. Nights. Euphoria episode five. Yeah. Kitty Kitten. Or no, this little piggy, right? This little piggy. You know, you are watching this series. Yes. As a pilgrim new to the lands of Euphoria. and watching each episode is the, this is only the fifth episode of Euphoria that you've ever watched.

40:25Andy Greenwald:And by the way, I appreciate you using religious language to describe this because as you know, I recently finished Jonathan Franzen's excellent novel, Crossroads, which is a lot about religion and I'm learning a lot about religion and its ecstasies and also its privileging of abasement and how one must sometimes suffer. And in that suffering, there is a freedom. Are our characters on Euphoria not suffering? well, that's how I connect to them because I too am suffering. But please continue your setup. Your knowledge of euphoria lore is limited, but your heart is open to the possible pleasures of the show.

41:03I was curious though, as this episode starts with a, some would say hysterical, some would say thrilling, some would say cringe, 10 minute sequence of Cindy Sweeney's Cassie character becoming the 50 foot woman, the famous sort of sci-fi B movie about a 50 foot woman who catches her boyfriend cheating on her. And we get gigantic replicas of Sidney Sweeney's breasts smashing into skyscraper windows. We get lots of lurid sexual behavior from her, all in a kind of crazed montage explaining her you're her only fan's fame that is taking off. do you have a quote unquote relationship to the sydney sweeney stardom discourse and also like her rumored political leanings etc yeah you feel like the jokes hit necessarily in this in this sequence

42:00Andy Greenwald:i want to thank you for your attention to my uh interest and curiosity in the sydney sweeney project i also want to gently deflect and reflect the question back to you yeah um let me look let me be honest with our listeners i've long wanted to jump in feet first into the sydney sweeney discourse and i'm grateful to you and the good folks the ringer for giving me an opportunity it's this kind of fucking centrism that's dead dude this is not gonna win an election anymore it's totally right say it with your whole these are the talking points that the dnc provided me on the subject of Cassie Howard and Euphoria.

42:39Andy Greenwald:Yeah. That, you know, America's a great country and there's room for all sorts of fan... Genuinely, genuinely, I was so perplexed by all of it because I absolutely couldn't tell what I was watching. I... If it is a satire of Sidney Sweeney's public persona over the last few months and years. I get it. I was aware of the jeans commercial and all that. So I understand, like, in the political stuff, and it doesn't matter as long as people are talking. Like, I guess I appreciated it as a very robust, some might say, buxom engagement with the larger cultural talking points. As... television on a show that I was trying to find a way into, I found it off-putting and bizarre.

43:38Okay.

43:38Andy Greenwald:And I need to know genuinely as a longtime fan of right-leaning celebrities, what you thought of this and how it spoke to you. Hold on. I have to close out of the window of Caitlin Clark walking out to Morgan Wallen at his concert in Indianapolis. No, I think you need, I mean, for the purposes of like accuracy, like I like this show, I really don't give a shit what like Sidney Sweet is doing. No, I know. My genuine question is, you have said over the course of this conversation. Here, I'll make the case for the 10 minutes. Because wait, I want to preface this by saying, you have repeatedly said that you enjoy, I'm not trying to put you on the spot like a gotcha.

44:23Andy Greenwald:I mean, you have said on this podcast that you have liked her performance and this character's arc on the show when it was a completely different show. So I actually need you to tell me. She can be like a wildly funny comic actress. And I also think that I've seen her in, there's a specific performance that she gave in reality, which was the movie made about reality, Writers Arrest, that I thought was really good. That's the, bits aside, like, you know, I think she's capable of really good work. this 10 minute sequence if you want to make the case for it is about how the feedback loop of the modern digital ecosystem and internet ecosystem will explode someone will make people like turn into monsters or transmogrify or become like it's all of that i think the most central image of those first 10 minutes is definitely sweeney is cassie looking at the comments about her only fans videos and like that seeming to set off some sort of chain reaction inside of her brain yeah um it's also like kind of funny and grotesque and also really interesting that Sweeney is is going along with this portrayal of her I guess like I I don't like the best way to put it but like she's she's a willing partner I assume in like how this is happening and then when it comes to the line that i think is going to get clipped a lot which is her appearing in 2024 euphoria timeline on i guess manosphere or like la digital media podcast and when they ask like you sound like a democrat and she says i'm not retarded like that's going to get clipped to hell and they knew that making the show and this sequence is also about how there's no such thing as bad press and here we are talking about a show that you've never watched before because it's interesting um now i don't know whether you are regretting that decision but it is kind of this fascinating thing of like engagement with the engagement with the engagement i i agree i just think there's no bottom that that so far aside from a few moments all tied to zendaya's performance this season is meta to the point of abstraction that I just find like again and again, the show's worldview just fundamentally, I think mistakes cynicism for insight, that there is something powerful being stated, observed, uncovered, revealed by pointing a camera at it and being like, isn't that evil?

46:56Andy Greenwald:Isn't that awful? Aren't people really, really at their heart, kind of thirsty, hungry, desperate, bad. Okay, great. But I don't find, I just, I found last night incredibly frustrating because without something grounding it, it was, the Tarantino karaoke just overwhelmed everything to me. Like characters, you know, like Alamo's pants being too small and then turning it into Samuel Jackson at the beginning of Pulp Fiction overreacting about the burgers you know it's like that's by the way that's my that's how I remember Pulp Fiction the entire movie is about one it's about one man overreacting I think he went in there with the intention of killing those guys that happened to have a burger and he he said it's a tasty burger it is a tasty burger you're right so let me rephrase that But he finds happiness in the burger.

47:56Andy Greenwald:But otherwise, like, I guess I made it five episodes before ending up in this kind of frustrated place where I feel like I also am buried up to the head and someone's about to club me in the forehead about it. Like, I think I just desperately lack, and I walked into this. I get this. I walked into this willingly. But I'm starting to wonder more and more, would I feel differently or would I feel worse if I had an emotional attachment to anyone on the screen? I need you to talk about it. I don't feel anything at all. I think that I still have hope that there's something going on with the Rue and Nate characters.

48:27And Nate has been completely abandoned as somebody with any kind of connective tissue to the past iterations of the character. But you kind of jokingly mentioned the suffering leading to salvation thing earlier. It's kind of obvious that's what's happening. Like they're literally cutting pieces of Jacob Elordioff. they are burying zendaya in the desert and this will now be the second near-death experience she has i she is not in the trailer for next week but i am assuming that she was not decapitated in the desert by alamo and that now we're gonna have five episodes of four more episodes of euphoria i'd respect it i'd respect um i think that the project here is about whether or not you can have a soul and live in the greater Los Angeles area.

49:19Like, I think that's the idea behind the show. I don't know whether or not these characters are the right vessel to get at that. Um, there are certain combinations of characters that I really like, honestly, thought the Alamo and Maddie conversation of Bob's big boy was pretty electric.

49:36Andy Greenwald:I really agree with you because well, there's two things happening here that I want to three things that I want to give credit to. Sam Levinson fucking loves movies. You can tell. And the stylistic decision-making, not just like now we're going to do Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, but we're also going to really pay attention to dressing Maude Apatow's character like she's in a Howard Hawks screwball comedy who's wandered into the wrong movie, like all the way down to, well, what does Tarantino do really well? He does people talking at diners really well. So let's do a diner scene, maybe worthy of the imitation and the flattery the other thing is i don't have in front of me i'll call it up in a moment but like the cinematography and the lighting is beautiful um but what's our our man i i've been saying our guy triple a who's playing alamo um is giving a really really good performance on this show it's also a pretty significant part of the show so it's like it's interesting that they have in a lot of ways like laurie and alamo have taken up so much real estate in the series compared to, say, Lexi or Jules or me.

50:45By the way, I don't want to be glib.

50:46Andy Greenwald:I was calling him AAA, but it's Adewale Akinoy Agbaje. Yeah. He's great on this. The only other thing I would say is just that his instincts for depicting addict psychology, I think, are pretty shorthanded. And Rue repeatedly finding herself in a situation where she can't be fully honest with anybody in her life is a hallmark, I think, of somebody who's dealing with addiction, is struggling with addiction, even struggling with being sober, is like how honest can you be with any one person at any given time? She can't be honest with Jules about what they're doing. She can't be honest with Alamo about what she's doing.

51:27She's not honest with Lori about what she's doing. She's not honest with Maddie, really, about what's going on when Alamo walks into Bob's big boy. and, you know, what they're putting that character through, I think we're only going to really be able to understand it. Same thing with me at the end of the series or at the end of the season. But I do find it, this wasn't my favorite episode. I also watched it after, like, an evening out watching the San Antonio Spurs. So it was like a long basketball game, and then I came back, and I was like, okay, if Sidney Sweeney's giant chest is destroying downtown Los Angeles.

52:06Andy Greenwald:It's kind of like what Wembenyama did last night as well, isn't it? She got whistled for a flagrant. Flagrant too. Literally, could have been the name of the episode. Try to see if I have any other notes here. I do have a pet theory that we're going to find out that this season of Euphoria is in fact a storyline on LA Knights. It's interesting that LA Knights seems to be the vortex that's drawing all these characters in. Jules is painted for it. Lexi works on it. Now Cassie is on it. and it would be kind of fun if it just turned into like a, this is a very special episode of LA Nights. I like, I know this runs counter to things I said at the beginning of the season, but I actually, I'm finding LA Nights to be kind of grounding, partly because I think Sharon Stone and Colleen Camp are funny and I like their presence on the show.

52:57Andy Greenwald:And, you know, but that said, look, I think the most interesting thing about last night's episode to me was that I don't know of many other shows that have run right at a fundamental truth of our culture and of our, certainly of the entertainment industry, which is that old world stuff, the stuff that we cover, the stuff that motivates us, that inspires us is dying, is Jurassic. And what the way most people engage with things is not this, it's vertical video, it's straight to consumer, it's OnlyFans in name or a Patreon, which is just like what, Substack is just intellectual nerd OnlyFans, right?

53:35Andy Greenwald:Like it's, that's, that's what the industry is. And so the moment when, um, Maddie like upsells Alamo on the potential of his business, um, is interesting. The moment, and, and you counter that with Cassie being so blinkered to think, or at least so old world in her mentality that she's willing to give up what is clearly a multimillion dollar opportunity to audition for a role of, what was it like job applicant to audition for someone auditioning on a television show that completely rewires her brain. And she's like, now I will be famous. But what she really means is now I will be legitimate or now my mother will know where to watch me on TV.

54:17Andy Greenwald:Um, that's a fascinating place for any kind of conversation these days, maybe not a fascinating place for our podcast, but like, it's interesting to see it play out on the screen in a way and uniting all of these world that only fans kind of legitimizes things that have been marginalized that's all really interesting yeah it just doesn't that has been a weird theme of this this season where it's like the maddie's boss makes her get rid of caitlin as a client earlier in the season and then it's like and now like is like kind of interested but at the same time cassie desperately wants to be on like traditional forms of media because that somehow ratifies or validates her celebrity and then there's like you know nate asking cassie to get into a faux relationship with the guy with the tiktok house uh i don't know i don't really know what they're doing nate i don't know what he's been doing with the 30 000 cash injections that cassie's been giving him maybe he's like on calci but i'm not sure i mean i i i i thought that entire scene was despicable like i just getting his finger cut off yeah i i just you don't think he dances to vinyl that character character what was he dancing to mel torme yeah sure sure man like everything let's just let's just find it in the moment you know what i mean let's just like feels good let's let's fix it on set let's do it i there are a lot of ideas on the screen yeah okay that's what i'm and and i'm trying i'm white knuckling it man in pursuit of my faith and in my belief in you um there were a couple weeks when i didn't like it in quotes but i like you i was like i'm not bored and i appreciate the aesthetics or i appreciate were you bored last night the effort i found last night mostly excruciating to watch yeah because it's also it's like it's 50 58 minutes 60 an hour and one minute okay it's that's too many minutes man it's just it's too many minutes no one who needs to hear me talk about this.

56:17Andy Greenwald:I want to hear you talk about it more because you have, as a fan of serialized television, I think you have some relationship with characters' journeys. And so when I'm watching this last night's episode and I'm like, Rue suddenly seems just a lot more credulous. Passive. And passive and kind of clueless about stuff. I don't find passivity to be like, that to me is like someone being in control of their own destiny is kind of like likability. I'm like, I don't know. These are like weird rules that we make for TV characters that I don't really give a shit about. Like some people get pushed around in their life and wind up like, yeah, no, I'm not.

56:51That's not what I'm arguing.

56:52Andy Greenwald:I'm saying is the rue that you watch over multiple seasons, the same person who is driven to the desert by Marshawn Lynch and told to dig a hole until it comes up to her chin. It's like, Oh, I guess this is my job now. I suppose she's like aware on a deeper level, how fucked she is. Like she's basically at the center of like a pain triangle among drug dealers in the DEA. So like, there's really not a lot of outs for her. Uh, and I think that's an experience probably where it's like, it's all fun and games until it's really not when you, when it comes to like buying drugs and being a drug addict and stuff.

57:28I don't necessarily, I mean, it's obviously like a fantastical and like deeply like spaghetti Western fate to be digging your own grave, but I like spaghetti Westerns. Uh, I just found that like the Rue and the Nate culminations of those two arcs, this episode hit different because we had literally seen them go through those experiences before. So I wasn't like, oh no, Nate now loses his finger. I wonder if he'll really change this time. It's like, obviously, Nate is going through some reverse Frankenstein's monster thing. And Rue is going through some quasi-religious Passion of the Christ thing to kind of find the truth of what the Bible is supposed to be telling her because she has this block when it comes to a higher power.

58:12Andy Greenwald:There is just something, maybe it is something like a born again thing that I just am observing. And I don't say this like with judgment. Like I think that Sam Levinson believes that it's all kind of bullshit and he's seen it and he's been through it. And one of the things I think he feels there's an element of like a provocateur in a grand artistic sense that I think he seems to subscribe to, which is just like you think you're above it on your living room couch, but you fucking look at these websites too. and you know that I'm casting porn stars because you're looking at porn stars and now you're watching them too and now you're complicit in this too and my actors are complicit in it and you think Sidney Sweeney But your use of the second person is quite pointed here.

58:52Well, no, I mean like

58:52Andy Greenwald:you think Sidney Sweeney can't act? Well, now she's, I'm gonna have her do a long monologue from Shakespeare and have people watching her do it and then have people watching people watching her do it because that's what all of this is about, man. We're all just watching and we're all finding our way through it or even similarly like the, Like for me as a new, as a noob, like the totally confounding character of Jules and that performance and that, and, and, and their role on the show, which is like, I'm going to objectify the person you guys are already objectifying, but within the show, she is objectified as well.

59:26Andy Greenwald:And how does that make you feel? It's a lot. And, you know, it's a, it, and it is not a usual relationship between artists and audience that we find on television. And I think it's important to note that, like that is a little bit more cinematic, I think. Or it's like, I don't know if you've been following, I assume you've been following, you've been busy with the Sixers, but the Venice Biennale opened last week. So I'm not sure how across it you've been, but this Austrian artist, Florentina Holzinger, are you aware of what she's been doing in the Austrian pavilion? You're the fucking best. Her thing, no, it's been on, like people have seen this because it's been on Instagram and stuff, but like her thing is that, you know, she is the art.

1:00:04And so at the Austrian pavilion,

1:00:06Andy Greenwald:She has a water tank set up and she is jet skiing in circles nude. And like, that's what she's doing. But she also opened the pavilion by they hung a giant bell. And then she hung herself nude as the thing, the hammer inside the bell that rings. And I feel like Marina Abramovich did this shit like a couple of years ago, though, right? Yeah, well, Quentin Tarantino did this shit years ago, too. I'm just saying like, I am not saying this to mock. I have plenty of other opportunities on this podcast to mock or sneer or, you know, ring my hair. with moral piety. But I am saying that there is an element of provocation inherent in this season that I respect and that I'm trying to identify as its own thread in the larger cultural quilt that is not very common.

1:00:52Andy Greenwald:Because, and honestly, I think this is sometimes, I haven't asked him about what he thinks about this season, but I do think that that's partly what our buddy Sam Esmail always responded to on the show or on the Idol or something. Because I think he he fundamentally disdains accommodation. Like he does not want the audience to be comfortable. He gets mad, not just if you're folding laundry, but if TV shows do the things that I was just praising Neil Forsythe for doing. You know, like, oh, here's something that we've seen shows do before. And isn't it fun to see them do it, but in Scotland? Like, anti that.

1:01:27Andy Greenwald:So bravo, question mark. But also I wanted to just go take a long walk around my neighborhood and think about the choices I've made after that Nate scene. But maybe that's the point. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for? That's when Prime's same day delivery has your back. Getting you exactly what you need, fast and reliably, so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime.

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1:03:51So I came across the country for family reasons, but also because I was like, this is the rare opportunity to go see the Philadelphia 76ers play a home basketball game, home playoff game, which I had not seen since 2012. We have not gotten past the second round. In 20, 25 years, I believe. Yeah, the 2012 team, which was the last team before the process is sort of famously derided for being second round and out guys. But here we are in 2026. And perhaps I was flying too high off that Boston pack, but I flew out here. Myself and Nick from Bad Brother went to the game on Friday. We had a fantastic Philadelphia evening where we started.

1:04:39We got a Guinness. um and then we went to uh old original nick's roast beef um original i had a roast pork sandwich with i with some horseradish on it and a yingling and i was like god damn dude it's the best city in the world and we pull up on xfinity mobile arena uh i was curious what's your favorite iteration of that arena what was the what was your what bank sponsorship did you prefer it's the Wachovia Center for me. We were talking core states. We were like, did core states have like a real...

1:05:12Andy Greenwald:Core states. Yeah, that is better because the thing about, first of all, I love banks. I love them. Yeah. And I love when they change hands. They provide so many basic services and some of them even have cafes now. So thank you, banks. But I do appreciate like Citizens Bank Park at least has the word citizens in it. So you can squint and be like... It's for all of us. Core States has a similar, like, oh, it's essential. Pennsylvania is a core state. It was one of the original 13. Yeah. Once we got into these, yeah, Xfinity Mobile. Come on. So we were walking up to this, to Xfinity Mobile off the subway, and it was kind of like, took the subway, by the way.

1:05:57Very nice experience. It's a great experience to get to the sports complex. And we were talking about, like, what do you think the ratio of Knicks fans to Sixers fans is going to be? it and I pride comes before the fall and I was like I think like 70 30 Philly right like first second round game in a minute like and they made it they made a concerted effort at least I so I

1:06:19Andy Greenwald:thought to limit sales to like a certain zip code or whatever I don't even know if they actually did that but the problem was you don't take Josh Harris at his word okay let's we'll get back to that when we were on the train yeah i noticed a lot of people wearing phillies regalia good and i was like oh they can't possibly be playing at the same time they were you sure the phillies were playing the colorado rockies uh the mildly hot phillies were playing the colorado rockies and i was like that's see our see our year things are trending in your direction in baseball too Oh, because I like Don? You like Don Mattingly, but also you're like, talk to me after game 60.

1:07:03That's what I said. I said that. I know. I'm saying you said that. So anyway, we're walking up, and it becomes apparent that we're closer to like 50-50 as the amount of Knicks jerseys we're seeing. And I did see several Knicks fans doing an interview with a citizen journalist who had a Kalshi microphone. i don't know what futures predictions they were making but it did not involve my future and um or if it did it was like this guy's gonna be really miserable we get in there and you're like okay like this is it man i i'm just a grown man at an nba playoff game like what could be better than this and we sit down and they got the white t-shirts out and we're like fuck yeah like

1:07:47Andy Greenwald:josh harris spares no expense the white t-shirts of surrender yeah i we sit down and we're next to like five lovely people from New Jersey and Knicks jerseys. And then to our left are more fans wearing Knicks regalia. And then in front of us, a lovely couple comes in and they are obviously Knicks fans. And increasingly in our section, and I think it was the same, it was more like 80, 20 Knicks to Sixers fans. And what happened then was a brief moment in the first quarter where Tyrese Maxey threw back to back alley-oops to Vijay Edgecomb. And I almost leapt over three rows to high five the only other Sixers fan in our section.

1:08:33Then we got fucking boat raced. And that's when it really got dark because the people around us were relatively pleasant, except for the guy up in the upper deck who shouted, let's go Knicks during the moment of silence for Sixers coach Nick Nurse's brother, who recently passed away. That guy's a fucking scumbag. And if Buddy Ryan was still alive, he never would have gotten out of Philadelphia. and uh sometimes i wonder whether we need to go back to the old us yes you know what i mean like i don't like the reputation that philadelphians are like alcoholic hooligans but when you let something like that happen it's pretty embarrassing the most the most terrible thing that happened was the nicks then go on like you know just this epic run that basically went on for seven quarters you They destroyed us, then kicked the shit out of us yesterday in game four.

1:09:26But during we get to halftime, and me and Nick are like, I kind of want to leave. This is not actually fun. But then in my mind, I was like, you know what? Not everything in life is supposed to be fun. We kind of have consumerified everything. It's like, fuck me. Fuck me for coming here.

1:09:43Andy Greenwald:You're like Nate on Euphoria. You're just seeing something through. Yeah, cut it off. I didn't need it anyway. Just cut it off. And I think the bottom, hitting bottom, is being in a men's room, but getting to that inner men's room line where you're still waiting for the urinal. But now you're in a bathroom. Full of Knicks fans on IG Live, filming other men urinate, going Knicks in four, fuck Embiid. I may be on some, I might be on some guy's Instagram having a halftime piss and thinking about what led me to this place in my life 48 years old honestly like just being humiliated in on in public on the internet first i have no idea what happened to that footage i hearted it i i i did see it out of respect i did not repost it but you come off well, you know.

1:10:43Kai should clip that, clip me in the bathroom.

1:10:50But just running underneath this. CR month takes a new turn.

1:10:55Andy Greenwald:So I have a couple things to respond to here. I did, I wanted to say in my own defense that last week when I was watching the Sixers be buddy-buddy with the Celtics at the end of the series, I was saying that maybe we need to Bugs Bunny meme sports again and like, Lord forgive us. you want guys to be pissed at each other, yeah. And you were like, oh no, come on. We're all in the league together. This is a fraught one because genuinely I'm on the record of saying this and I'm okay with it. I think that the Knicks should be good because for 20 years they were dog shit and that's dumb because Madison Square Garden is the coolest place to see basketball and it's a storied franchise and it's more fun when they were good last week accepted also we both have many knicks fans in our life oh i i should say like congratulations to them sure yeah that sounds very genuine and also first let me talk about pissing and now let me talk about congratulations one of the other uh yeah indignities that we suffered was that was the first time i've knowingly been in the same building as timothy chalamet no that's a lie i went to a a complete unknown screening that he no he wasn't at that so like that was the first time I've ever been in the building with Timmy Chalamet and it was him dicking all over the the Xfinity mobile arena but you have in courtside you have sold him that ticket we need to name names just let me know who sold him that ticket name time to name names was it M.

1:12:23Andy Greenwald:Night Shyamalan you were just saying that the new James Elroy book actually suggests that the people who name names during the communist witch try witch hunts of the 50s were the heroes so maybe we need to bring back that aesthetic yeah uh spike was there ben stiller was there it was tracy morgan was there for the not the fifth or sixth time you were in the same room with fat joe so that's always you guys you'll settle that offline but you know we understand that that's been simmering since the rucker uh i it's hard because we have friends from there we chose to live in new york city not philadelphia for the best years of our life so i get it but i am my sports fandom is forever chilled by the fact that one of the most fun things about our shared like teens and 20s was when we would come home from college or just come home from living in New York, we would always go to a Sixers game at Thanksgiving.

1:13:14Andy Greenwald:And I remember that we went to a game. It was maybe in my mind, it's the first Iverson game we ever went to. And it was the beginning, or maybe it was even before Iverson. It was Jerry Stackhouse was going to be the answer. And I just remember going to the arena and we're playing the Knicks and the team was garbage and they were doing fan cam. And, you know, it's like, well, it'd be you, fan of the game, fan of the game. And it settles on this lovely woman and they came to her and they were like, you, ma 'am, you're the Sixers fan of the game. What do you have to say? And they handed her the microphone and she said, I just want to say, go Knicks.

1:13:54Andy Greenwald:And like, I hear her voice sometimes when I'm trying to like talk myself to sleep by thinking about like Sixers two-way players who might make it. So this really burned. This was, it's egregious. And I don't understand why it happens because the Mets, who, I mean, a bad NLEs teams, I mean, I think we all, I think there's a clear winner and a clear loser. And it's not, you know, it's reversed. Like, is it a numbers thing? Is it a ticket scarcity thing? Apparently there's a couple of different things. For one thing, just anecdotally from Uber drivers in Philadelphia, they're like this team is not that good and if you can make a thousand dollars selling your tickets i don't i don't blame anybody i don't know that's anecdotal based on like two uber drivers i think one of the major problems is that msg is so expensive and nicks games are so expensive and the nicks fandom is something of a diaspora where there's like a lot of new jersey nicks fans there's a lot of people who can't maybe get into to msg for any games philly is like a very easy commute to get down and I guess relatively cheaper, you know, restaurants, you know, nightlife.

1:15:03It was tough, man. It was just like, if I had known what I still have done it, yes, I would have, you know, it's good.

1:15:11Andy Greenwald:It's good to go out and meet your voters. You know what I mean? Like really understand the electorate. I, I, I genuinely think this is a franchise problem. I think that if it was a well-run franchise by someone who, I don't know, I'm just spitballing here didn't also was not on the Washington football team and is also in the Epstein files. Like maybe the curse would be lifted and maybe things would work out a little better. And also that maybe people would genuinely believe because it was really cool to beat the Celtics. I genuinely love with my whole heart, Tyrese Maxey and Vijay Edgecombe. And I will always love Joel Embiid.

1:15:49Andy Greenwald:And I'm happy for him, both that he beat the Celtics. And as he said last night, though, I haven't ever accomplished anything. I can be a good man and a good father. And I'm like, you know, I might print out that quote hanging on my wall. It's the real wisdom in the post-game interviews. Yeah. But beyond that, like, why would anyone believe? Like, especially with all of this just, like, fucking ticky-tack, like, load management, contract juggling, like, but if we're all healthy at the same moment, somehow we might, things might break rights so we could get swept by Oklahoma City. Celtics. We beat Boston.

1:16:26Andy Greenwald:Yeah. So I'll always have that. I was not kidding when I said raise the banner like that. Like there should be a banner that says that to encapsulate this era. There should be two banners from this era. One is beating the Celtics in the first round of the 2026 NBA playoffs. And the other one was Zaire Smith surviving the peanut allergy. That's right. Sesame seeds. He went into anaphylactic shock and they should just raise the EpiPen to the rafters. And every time Mikael Bridges dunks on us, he should point to that. That's what I feel. Well, that was my week and I drank a lot.

1:17:06Andy Greenwald:Well, you look great. You wear it well. Now we can focus on, are you going to focus on baseball now or are we just focusing on the June 1st AJ Brown trade? I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do now. I thought maybe I would start reading more. That sounds dark. Might I recommend Crossroads? Quite good. I mean, you're such a book fluencer, man. I know that... You're just upset because Phoebe and I have been texting about it. Like, then you're cut out of it. That's all. It's alright. I get it. I like you guys having an independent relationship for me. Because I send her the videos when they come up on the internet.

1:17:42Andy Greenwald:I'm like, your husband's pissing online again. And she's like, oh, I thought he didn't go on Twitter anymore. and I'm like, no, no. Literally. And then we try to clean it up. We have Spotify's best Black Bag Ops. Thanks to Sarah, Kaya, and Kai for indulging in that episode of The Watch After Dark. I am not going to be on Thursday's show. Oh, yeah. I got to figure out a show. And then you are not on next week's shows. No. Because we are doing some traveling. Ships passing. But I hope when we reconvene you're all caught up to date on euphoria that you continue to watch euphoria diligently and that you don't turn into guys like now i have to watch three episodes of euphoria the night before i'm checking in with chris don't do that dude glimpse behind the curtain like nobody cares what we have access to or like how we watch things but it's been a it's a tough sled that like they have denied screener access to you for season three it's just it's just still tinkering sure no I don't want to interrupt his process it's just that like I do wonder and I try to be better than this but I wonder if I would enjoy it more if I could control my experience rather than being like ah now to end my restful weekend with the sound of Jacob Elordi screaming as a man who uses a fucking garden shears to take off a finger do you know what I mean like is there a little anger in my voice when I say that maybe um thanks to everybody for helping produce the show today we will be back with you guys on Thursday just minus me Greenwald solo show?

1:19:18Who can say? I can't wait to find out. And then next week.

1:19:21Andy Greenwald:I'm going to do a Pablo Torre-style investigation of Josh Harris' myriad web of business interests. Do you think that would do numbers? Yes. Especially if I didn't research it? Yes. And then you got sued? We have to get some indemnification for the company first, but then feel free. I'll see what I can do. The views expressed in this podcast are exclusively into Greenwalds. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you guys soon.

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