HBO’s Wave of Renewals. Plus, ‘The Beast in Me,’ ‘The Chair Company’ E6, and ‘I Love LA’ E3.

22:40Andy Greenwald:And I think there's just like, that's the word I want to say again is cadence. Like there should be a cadence to, doesn't have to be in the fall new shows, but people's relationships to shows should have a slightly dependable rhythm to it. and nothing is going to be as dependable as the pit, which, you know, we're two months away from having back in our lives. And industry. And industry. But even industry is like a big gap between some seasons and then an opportunity to get back on the air quicker if they rush the scripts and they do it. And you know what I mean? We don't often have a window into how the wink-wink renewals, like get the room going versus dead stop, let's fire up the engine again.

23:22Andy Greenwald:Right. And it is nice to see the passion in my voice comes not just from the HBO of it, but like I am hoping that a lot of these other streamers do deeply understand the need for that and are responding accordingly with their internal reviews. Did he say anything about True Detective Mom Donnie country? Oh, right. It's supposed to be there, right? It's in Queens. Yeah. Oh, so you think that the two things leaving New York are Bill Ackman and the True Detective franchise? Like that's... He's staying. Dude. Ackman. Ackman staying? I think he was like, didn't all those guys bent the knee? Like after he won, they were like, I'm ready to work with you, brother.

23:59I think it's more that,

24:00Andy Greenwald:from what I understand from a distance, it seemed like Ackman, you know, his thoughts turned inward and that's when he started posting about like, gentlemen, here's how to meet a nice lady in the world. He was doing the secret. You approach them and you say, would you permit me to meet you? Wait, it's not the secret. What was the big pickup artist thing? The game. The game, yeah. I like you pretending you don't know about that. I remember you and Mystery cruising the WeHo bars. I never was good at picking up girls. I never had pickup lines. I never had game like that. I was just like, I'll just be myself.

24:31Andy Greenwald:You'd just be like, would you like some of these cigarettes I'm smoking? Six at a time? Basically. Well, I believe the game was all predicated on negging, which is not our vibe. No. No. I'm an ally. Certain television shows, perhaps, I could turn negative on. I have no updates on the new True Detective. Okay. I wanted to ask you about the state of television, right? Right at this very, very instant. I get a drink of my green tea. So you and I have talked about in the last couple of weeks, Death by Lightning, Down Cemetery Road, The Morning Show. Oh, yeah. We got to talk about Down Cemetery Road.

25:01I love LA, The Chair Company, Landman. Lots of different, Apple, HBO, Paramount, Netflix. All of these things kind of, with the exception of, I guess, Morning Show, which has been on for the last couple of months. Apple is like really more behaving more like an HBO, where they put their stuff out weekly. and everything. This is a funny time where I feel like I like a lot of stuff and don't love anything. And I'm a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount that kind of got dropped seemingly at once here. Obviously Pluribus, we forgot to mention, but I almost put that in a category of its own. Did you say Lowdown too?

25:41Andy Greenwald:We were all over that. Lowdown, no, I mean like, yeah, I'm talking since Lowdown, I guess. Because we were doing Lowdown and a couple of other things pretty faithfully. Task. Task, right. But this moment of like pretty good, and we're going to talk about the new shows that we just chucked out, The Beast in Me, and I'll mention all her fault, but like I was wondering whether or not like you almost would prefer an easier separation of wheat and chaff. Like when it's all like, oh, do I keep watching Death by Lightning? Do I keep watching Beast in Me? Do I keep watching this stuff? is it easier for you to sort through it when it's like, oh, clearly this is not for me?

26:22Like clearly here's the headliner of the moment. Well, I guess that's up to us to determine what the headliner of the moment is.

26:28Andy Greenwald:I would say without stepping on the conversation we're going to have about some of these shows, I feel, I actually feel the opposite. I actually feel good about the relative health at this snapshot of the industry in which, just stay on Netflix, that at this moment, And there's Nobody Wants This, Death by Lightning, and Beast in Me, all of which are worthwhile, all of which are interesting in ways that can surprise.

26:58Andy Greenwald:And one of them, the one we're going to talk about today, it's kind of not for me. Yeah. But I think it's well done, and I think it has a lot of the things that I root for. And the broadest, like, 20 ,000 foot above the tree line. And like, this is what I want Netflix to be doing because Netflix can turn, they're alchemists. They can turn a lot of things into at least ratings gold for them. Yes. And there is an algorithmic formula, obviously. And so anytime anything deviates a little bit from it with some sense of ghost in the machine or style or a piece of casting or whatever, like that's good, that's just good, I think, for the industry.

27:43Andy Greenwald:so I don't mind it and I've actually kind of enjoyed the rhythm of the last few weeks of being like oh check back in on this or down Cemetery Road which I think has some evident wobbles as it's gone on but maybe the flip side of like a beast in me where I'm like I just kind of like it and I'm enjoying it that's different than there have been periods in our last few years post-COVID, post-strike coverage where there have been there's been such a disparity between the things that really, really motivated us and got us so fucking excited week to week versus media off. I would even say that that was defined the first half of the year.

28:17Like a lot of the shows that I think are going to be on my top 10 were breaths of fresh air or like felt radical, even if they were traditional, like The Pit. You know, like there's elements of The Pit that are as old as TV itself. And then there are things that you would never be able to do before 2025 with The Pit. Adolescence is a good example of something where it's like, that's the same streaming network that did all the shows that we're just talking about, like Death by Lightning and Beast in Me, but felt and looked and communicated something unlike anything else on television. Yep. So it's just an interesting moment where earlier in the year, I was like, man, there's just some clear-cut, drop-dead, heavyweight champion shows.

29:02Andy Greenwald:It seemed like at the midpoint of the year, and we didn't do a midpoint list, I was like, my top four to six is already locked. Locked. Locked. I think it still is to me. Yeah. And it's still from that period. Is it? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not, but this is like maybe objectively a better television watching in the traditional sense of like, you could watch something any night and you could have your stories and you could have like, you could check in and maybe as a nice respite, I guess, you know what I mean? It's, it's two different ways of doing TV. Um, do you want to get into, to be some me?

29:37Andy Greenwald:Well, what do you want to, all her fault is there is there all her fault and beast and me seem to be they drop around the same time they seem to be doing very well yes all her fault sounds like it's a giant hit to the extent that I can understand minutes watched as a metric as a metric and again like we can be critical on the show but I am still very much like rising tide lifts all boats like I think it's good for distinct services to have hit shows before they all start buying each other and cannibalizing everything right so it's good for peacock um but i've not engaged with the show do you want to is is there are there common threads because they seem i would say that there is an element of it that is first both uh female lead crime but i would say closer to feeling true crimey than they feel like uh crime fiction could they plausibly switch titles and still exist as a show because i do think having watched One Beast and Me, All Her Fault could be the name of it.

30:37There is an aesthetic. Okay. A shared aesthetic, I think. They're both about well-to-do pockets. Say more. No, I mean, and All Her Fault is a little bit more, and this is based on a novel by Andrea Mara, and it stars Sarah Snook in her first big post-succession role, and Jake Lacey's in it. Dakota Fanning is in it. It's got a really good cast, and I think it is grabby. I would put it that way. I will not swear on a Bible that I have been attentively watching. To be honest, this is something my wife watched and I've kind of walked in and out and checked in on it and then watched the end of it.

31:19Andy Greenwald:By the way, that is also what parenting is between the ages of four and nine. You know what I mean? You're not in the be careful of the edge of the coffee table. You're chainsaw man conversant. but not necessarily like... Also, you don't need to be in the room the whole time. Sure. You just need to keep an eye on it. That's how we were raised. I mean, beyond. Yeah, I thought all her fault, to the extent that I was studying it, was really well done, but a little bit... I don't want to say convoluted because we also just spent 40 minutes talking about Landman the other day. Also, you have already prefaced this by saying that it did not have your full and undivided attention.

31:59Andy Greenwald:Exactly. So, yes, there are some connections, between that and Beast of Me. Would you recommend it? Or what's the Phoebe word on it? She compulsively watched it. Okay. So I think she thought it was a bit silly in places, but it was like, I must get to the end. Which is really like probably a good recommendation for a show because there are lots of series where I'm like, I don't care. I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned. We have each other.

32:45Andy Greenwald:FX's The Bear, the final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+. Whatever your thing, it could be anything. Canva helps you make that thing a thing. Canva is a simple online tool thing. It's a way to design with our magic AI tool things. You can social media your thing, generate images or videos of your thing, make decks for presentations to show your thing. Whatever needs to be done for your thing, Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing.

33:24Andy Greenwald:This summer, serve up the cookout classics. Craft mayo and dressing. Toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense?

33:59There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. Beast of me. Interesting pedigree on this one. So this has been kicking around for a little while. I believe like I saw it was like seven or eight years ago, Gabe Rotter wrote like this, wrote the pilot or really like, you know, started working on this. But this is kind of now become, in this iteration of whatever it was going to be, a hybrid of some people who used to work on 24 and Homeland in Howard Gordon. So clearly Howard Gordon had a pre-existing relationship with Claire Danes, her seminal role as Carrie on Homeland.

34:40They bring in a star-heavy, TV star-heavy, top-of-the-line acting crew of Danes and watch favorite Matthew Rhys. The best. You may remember our side podcast, AM to the PM, about Perry Mason.

34:53Andy Greenwald:Now it would be AM to the BM for Beast and Me, but that sounds real bad. So we're going to take that back to the lab. Bill is really good at coming up with better podcast names. So maybe I'll run it up to him. That makes it sound like it's about digestive regularity. It 100 % is. It's not what we're podcasting about. Matthew Rhys, Brittany Snow, and Natalie Morales are also in the series. These are TV all-stars. Yeah, and there are some really good directors working on this. Antonio Campos, who did a couple of movies I really like, including Christine, and then did the HBO series The Staircase.

35:24and then Lila Neubauer who did the Jennifer Lawrence movie a couple years ago Causeway and also directed like on Secret Lives of College Girls but has done a ton of New York theater so there's like a lot of talent here it's about a New Yorker writer

35:47Andy Greenwald:I mean pause pause Did you, sorry, this is in my head. This is one of my favorite factoids that, just we're talking about Howard Gordon and Fair Danes in Homeland. And we'll get into the New Yorker writer part. I just want to leave people on a cliffhanger about that because they're probably pretty leaning in. Do you know this as this little factoid? Has this come up on the podcast that when Howard Gordon and Alex Gonzo were writing the Homeland script, they wrote their main characters with the names of the actors they wanted to cast? And did they write it as Claire? They wrote it as Claire Matheson.

36:23Andy Greenwald:and Brody, because they wanted Claire Danes and Adrian Brody. Interesting. And Claire had to become Carrie. What a slight little door, though. It was Claire Danes. The Beast to Me is about Aggie Wiggs, who is a famous New Yorker profile writer. Such a, the name. And memoirist. Yeah. Who is living in the shadow of a personal tragedy, the death of her young son in a car accident caused, she believes, by a drunk driver. Yes. This incident ended her relationship with her wife, Shelly, played by Natalie Morales. and seems to have triggered a massive case of writer's block and financial slash emotional distress for Aggie.

37:01She lives in Oyster Bay, New York, Long Island. Seems like it. Enter Niles Jarvis.

37:07Andy Greenwald:These names, pretty good. Played by Reese. Do you think they did the same thing where they wanted to cast Jarvis? Jarvis Cocker? Either Jarvis Cocker or the automated AI that later becomes Vision in the Iron Man movies? They're not calling it White Vision, right? You could call it that. But he is playing White Vision, right? Vision is white now? Listen, this is more... His outfit is white? This is more for the Midnight Boys to talk about. If you would like to use this podcast as a platform to articulate your own personal White Vision for how you want the superhero stories to go... Do you think the conservative podcast space will be really all in on White Vision?

37:48Andy Greenwald:A billion percent. I feel like they think it's ascended. I saw some dude getting roasted because it was some right-wing guy who was getting extra mad about the beginning of Ken Burns' American Revolution series. How does it start? I think being like Ben Franklin was like, in the words of Bob Ferguson, fucking slave owner, man. The Grand Wizard. So someone was mad that... Someone was mad at the depiction of our founding fathers. As Christmas adventurers. yeah look we are we are what it is um so now charvis comes on the scene he moves in next door to her in the tony neighborhood of and chris he's trouble he's trouble he's a master of the universe real estate magnate slash developer who says things like yimby socialist fucks and who has been accused of murdering his first wife he's moved on nobody's perfect he's married to uh Brittany Snow now, but, you know, there is a, there is an air around him that's like, this guy got away with murder, literally.

38:54Aggie, going through it, trying to find something to write about. She owes her second book. She's two years late.

39:00Andy Greenwald:Say what she's writing her book about. Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Their friend, unlikely friendship. Yeah, strange bedfellows. So here's the thing about this show. It is pitched at a, at a degree that is perilously close to, to camp. The way that the characters talk to each other, the way that Niles interacts with the world, the fact that it is about a famous New Yorker profile writer named Aggie Wiggs. I took it to be like she's a little bit Mary Carr, a little bit Joan Didion. Sure. This is a safe space podcast for famous New Yorker writers, or honestly not even that famous New Yorker writers.

39:42Yes, but it's hard to imagine Bill Ackman being like, holy shit, is Rebecca Mead at this party?

39:47Andy Greenwald:See, you just pulled that and that's exactly it. So that said, there is an archness, not just in Matthew Rhys' performance, because I think he's incredible in everything and always seems to just intuit the tone even before the director gets his hands on it in the edit. But these little details, like the fact that she is devoting all of her time to a niche book about the unlikely friendship between a liberal and a conservative and then Niall Jarvis is like falling asleep at the table being like, that's boring, makes me think that there might be a kernel of necessary satire within this construct.

40:25Andy Greenwald:It's tough. Like, there's so many cooks in the kitchen here, including, I think, Conan O 'Brien's company is somehow a producer of this as well. Yes, yes. He's quite busy these days. Have you seen that, If You Had Legs, I'd Kick, movie? I have not. I'm interested. I have not. So there's just so many cooks in the kitchen, and then when you get to Netflix, and they have their mandate for the type of show they want to make. And then you have Antonio Campos, who is a director with real style. And I was drawn in immediately from just the way the show does the title cards. The title cards are awesome.

40:57And there's a lot of voyeuristic surveillance state kind of long zooms and lingering looks. There is also a lot of what seems like Netflix house style shallow depth of field. like here are two people that like they are in perfect focus everything around them is basically it looks like it could be a slate behind them so it's like I I vibed with some of the style I've hit my head on some of it

41:25Andy Greenwald:and then some of the content too of like are we hiding the ball about this guy or are we celebrating it this is always a tough tonal one like before he as he's moving in his wild guard dogs attack Aggie's house and menace her tiny dog and I actually in that moment made a promise to myself that I almost don't want to admit here, which was if this episode ends as it inevitably will with her dog or actually her late son's dog, Steve dead because of these big dogs, I'm out. Not because I particularly care about Steve but I was like, but that's just been telegraphed. The show ended with a different death.

42:01Andy Greenwald:So now maybe do I have to watch another one? But I'm curious just because, I don't know if I'm articulating it right, but like the basic outlines of this show, it's just fucking Netflix catnip. Like, it makes sense. And then it gets chefed up a little bit in the kitchen with a Claire Danes, with a Matthew Rhys. Jonathan Banks is showing up in future episodes as Niall's dad. Like, it's classed up. Is it slyly commenting on our appetite for this type of programming? Does it have something new to say about it? No, I don't know. It doesn't need to. So one way to find out would be to continue watching it.

42:39Andy Greenwald:I'm not ready to commit to that because fundamentally, I was like, I watched this and I was like, it's a little bit like a cantaloupe or something. Or I'm like, I recognize this is probably a very, very fresh example of the form, but I don't love the taste. I think you're identifying something interesting where the thing that's... So I watched like most of the second episode. And there's something about tonally. Daines is doing... Claire Danes. Like, there are no normal... There is no easygoing Claire Danes performance, right? I thought she was a little bit modulated from the last time we saw her in Fleischman is in Trouble.

43:17Yes. There are different parts. But I thought, like, you know, there's a core intensity to Claire Danes' parts. You know what you're getting. And usually her characters are in the throes of a great personal crisis. She is doing one thing, and Matthew Rhys is doing something very different. and they're not always in lockstep and I think it is at once weird for the show. So sometimes when you're watching, you're like, what the fuck is he doing? Like in a cool way. Like in the lunch scene. He's hamming it up. Like every scene is like, I am, I am like, I'm absolutely chewing it up here.

43:56Andy Greenwald:Yeah, and it's borderline. I'm like, why is she a passive participant in this? Yeah, I mean like. Why does she sit there? And he's, and yet, I think they are starting to scratch at the you and I were not so different thing about like bloodlust they talk about in the first episode and about I think there is an implication that as a writer, there is something cold and calculating and that you would go through your own personal life. her big memoir that she wrote was basically in a not an assassination but like a takedown of her father and her life with her father it's called sick puppy and the idea that you could write something and expose family secrets is like this kind of hey well i'm a killer you know like i'll kill my own family metaphorically and so i think that they recognize something in each other but there's there's something interesting going on both because like i don't know scene to scene exactly what I'm going to get.

44:48There's a lot of, you know, they add on a lot of, not filler, but there's like an FBI agent. You know, there's like all, there's like the money troubles, the book delivery, like all this stuff.

44:59Andy Greenwald:There's a running path. This running path. Are they going to get this figured out? I don't quite understand that. Do you think he's interested in, maybe could be convinced to try trail running? Well, I think he wants to be, have a paved jogging path for himself and for his neighbors, but she's like, what about a walk in the woods? You know, which one do you go with? Two side of you there are two wolves one likes a paved path I gotta admit the older I get the more I appreciate a graded you know like just like flattened piece of pavement I'm also sorry I'm just really hung up on the idea you said you checked out some of the second episode and I am picturing you I appreciate the honesty I thought you were walking in and out a little bit I started like you got to the end of one I was like I'm pretty compelled and I started the two and then I think I got midway through it and fell asleep.

45:45Andy Greenwald:I'm just picturing you with the Dan Campbell glasses, you know, just like wandering in, like looking over the edge of them being like... No, Dan Campbell's calling the plays, brother. I know. That's why he's got a lot in his mind. You can't just watch the second episode of some shit. The culture is failing in Detroit because Dan Campbell's too busy calling those fucking hitch patterns. Do you think? Do you think it's falling apart? You can't do everything. Wow. Trust me, I've tried. You truly have. I think you've also, you may have broken a seal here because I don't know if we've ever actually confess to falling asleep during television shows on the podcast?

46:16Andy Greenwald:If so. Well, I watch an hour of it, and then I got like 90 minutes into it. So, yeah, I'm doing the work. I mean, I definitely, we could just like use a different filter on my face when like I've told I shouldn't give Kai ideas. But like, I'll put it this way. Like, as you know, like I'm currently Zooming to work on England hours. Yes. So my attempts to watch lots of television to catch up last night was really cooking. And then I woke up like really worried and shocked and like, you know, like almost like body horror. Like, where am I? And on the screen was Chair Company 106, where his like teenage sons are demanding that he do the Pee Wee Herman dance for them at his birthday party.

47:03Andy Greenwald:And I guess the punchline of the story is it was 716 at night. but you gotta watch out man you're gonna flip your schedule it's gonna be dark uh anyway i am going to keep watching this i understand if it's not for you um but this is kind of where we are we have a bunch of shows that we've sort of like started with i think you're maybe a little higher on down cemetery road at this point than i am last thing i'm beasting me i think the other piece of it is when we're budgeting our time as as viewers like this is eight episodes and i watched tell me you think about this but like after watching the one i feel like i now have enough i've i have you have we've all watched enough tv now that like the shape of this for seven more hours feels unwieldy to me and less promising than if it was four to six yes just because of the things that it's going to have to do to fill the space to keep these characters apart together apart together etc yeah when you have a two-hander like this there's there's certain cards you can play and And we have seen, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but we have seen shows like this drawn out to 8 and 10, and it's challenging.

48:11Andy Greenwald:Sometimes it works. You know, it goes back to our task conversation where obviously that show ended so, so successfully. Like there was just such a profound period at the end of the sentence there. And the fact that it's coming back for a second season is fantastic. And I think what it'll be is a new paragraph. But this, it's difficult when you're like, I know we're not going to have the continuing adventures of Aggie Wigs. Kind of like, do you know what I mean? Like, you're right. There is something about like, eight is a lot for finality. Eight is a lot for a story that is moving only in one direction towards an ending.

48:47Yes, that's a better way of putting it.

48:49Andy Greenwald:Not always. I mean, there are examples that I don't have access to at this moment because as I just said, I've been up and working since five. But there are examples of that. but there is also an incredible feeling that I feel like we should coin a phrase for a term for the feeling of watching one episode of Death by Lightning and loving it and realizing there's only three more that was a high yes and we will talk about we should circle back and talk about it but that is a very specific thing and by the way just want to do a small shout out while we're talking about like structure I thought Catherine Van Arenden had a really good piece on Vulture this week on New York Magazine saying enough already with the penultimate flashback episode which was really overdue, I think, but like in the same way that we've talked about how the starting a show with a really heightened - I mean, like, do you think people are really making like the creative decision to do a flashback episode simply as filler?

49:44Andy Greenwald:It's not as filler. It's just that, you know, I know from being in rooms that like it can feel, one thing that is true, I think, across all writers' rooms, no matter how much TV people in the room watch or consume or how much they think about the industry, is that they become very insular. And you, for probably good creative reasons, think pretty much only about what's in front of you in terms of problem solving or what's on the whiteboard. And you don't think about what the show is going to be released into, what the ecosystem or the context will be like, or even how it might be in dialogue with other shows one day.

50:19Andy Greenwald:And so I think that feeling of, we've known what happened this whole time. And we are so excited to tell you, when would it be cool to tell you? and it will be right when our hero has made it to the precipice and then we next episode, yoinks. Now you see how we got here from the full perspective. That's sound. That is sound, interesting storytelling logic. The problem is these shows are all being created in relative vacuums and it's not their fault that every other show had the same idea at the same time. Yeah. So actually pieces like that for as much as any criticism can be meaningful. I think things like that are noticed.

50:56Andy Greenwald:so I think there should be also let 10 think pieces on the starting a show at the most interesting moment and then saying five months earlier like let's end that right now let's kind of run through these comedies wait did you want to do Down Cemetery Road do you feel I've not watched I realize now we're talking on Thursday the fifth episode has posted and I have not watched it yet no I think we can we could actually do a little bit of a Down Cemetery Road and I'll do my report card on their morning show finale on Monday yeah I'm ready for that. Because we have Pluribus and Lamb Man, but we can also mix it up with some of that stuff too.

51:30Andy Greenwald:All right, fine. I like the show though. Make the case. Well, no, but you said we're going to talk about it on Monday. No, but you can kind of talk about how, I think that there has been some public kind of grousing about that there is a fall off after episode two. Do you agree with that? Well, I think, yes. But I don't know if it's entirely a quality fall off. It is like, wait, what's the show? because the show did such beautiful work in two episodes creating Oxford as a living place and these two characters in an orbit to each other and to like Wigwam Squad and to the university and to the larger world of government in London that made sense and we were very excited about being oriented in that world.

52:13Andy Greenwald:And then in episode three, suddenly it's like a not lovers on the run conspiracy thriller about wronged military veterans taking experimental medicine to stop the screaming shakes in their bodies. Yeah. That's not the show I thought that it was. It reminds me a little bit of the second season of Vigil. The first season very much contained on the submarine, but the second season kind of like skipping across like it's, you know, like all this different stuff and a lot of like, every time you get to the end of an episode, you're like, and now there's like a whole other plot that's been opened up.

52:48Andy Greenwald:It's very busy and it's very messy. and but the two leads and the the two leads are so good and I just so far I don't find it cloying that the show becomes charmed by ancillary characters like in the I think in the fourth episode at the motel there's the there's the desk clerk who is when you meet him you're like oh well he's playing this way too much to be just someone passing one scene and then he comes back five more scenes yes yeah I appreciate that generosity of spirit. Yeah. The logic of Ruth Wilson's character being like, 24 hours ago, I saw a girl on a bike, and now I am a single vigilante on the run hunting for cars and guns.

53:36Andy Greenwald:Does jive with how I thought the world worked in my 20s? Sure. Maybe that would have been a successful pickup line for you at LA bars and hotspots. I mean, sometimes I actually think this is about the Mick Heron stuff, which is, you know, he's obviously the author of the Slow Horses series, and he's the author of, I believe it's a series of Zoe Boehm books. I think there's more than one. Is that they... Yeah, there's four. The shagginess of them as a novel does not actually translate one-to-one to TV. Right. And that you do get this sort of more... I mean, I think they've done a really good job of pairing Slow Horses down to its bare essentials.

54:11Andy Greenwald:Yeah. And keeping the things that they really want, like Jackson and River's relationship or whatever. And obviously Standish is like, They do a really good job with the book-to-TV highway, but this one I'm almost like, this feels like it would almost be a fun page-turner, and I wouldn't be like, why are we on the run now? But on TV, you're almost like, I want a kind of repeatable experience. Yeah, and so I guess we'll see. I mean, I'm enjoying it enough to see, but to your point, I wonder if it would have been less thrilling in two episodes, but more rewarding over four seasons if they had just made the decision that it's Zoe and Sarah as unlikely investigators in this town.

54:54Andy Greenwald:Yes. And left it at that. And let the plot run through them. That's not what's happening. What's happening on the chair company? I mean, I feel like I gave a lot of it away to you by saying that there is a, Ron's son's birthday party in which Ron is asked to do the peewee dance and then he doesn't do it and his son is so upset by that he binge drinks and then as they're singing happy birthday to the cake he vomits because of alcohol consumption and a large man picks up the cake places it over the pile of sick and says don't worry it's covered you don't have to look at it one of my favorite things about you is how much you like weird weird comedy I love this show so much and I love this is kind of how you used to talk about like Twin Peaks because it is Twin Peaks yeah because the thing about Twin Peaks is that it's fucking hilarious and it always was.

55:48Andy Greenwald:And David Lynch's stuff is all funny until suddenly he just moves the needle a little bit and it's horrifying. And there's a moment, and this show exists on the same frequency. It's just pitched a little bit different. There's a moment when Ron comes home from a long day at work. I think it's like, even he says it's like one in the morning and he walks into the kitchen and there's a large bearded man with a bowl of popcorn standing there and he turns around and he says, hi Ron. and then he's like who the fuck is that and his wife's like oh that's our son's friend they're working on a project in the basement but it's in the same place as horror and everything else and it's so mundane and crazy and weird and it's also this episode Ron in order to try to like jazz up their development pitches Lou Diamond Phillips how not only should it have like terracotta color scheme it should have a CBGB zoning when things were like really cool it's so good I'm so happy.

56:45Andy Greenwald:I enjoy Lou Diamond Phillips on this. I'm so happy it got renewed. This is a big Lou Diamond Phillips episode. Do you think that there will be another mystery next season or do you think they will just continue to chase this? Wow. I mean, first of all, what a great substantive question. Thank you for it. I would like to say I have no fucking idea what's going to happen on this show. And I honestly, honestly don't care. I'm delighted by it. What do you think of where I Love LA is right now? I need you to make the case for me with this because I struggled with the third episode. I find it pretty easy to watch.

57:18Like, obviously, it makes me feel incredibly old in some ways. And in some ways, sometimes I feel like even the characters on the show or the people playing the characters maybe feel the same way. That's right, yeah. There is like a kind of... I wouldn't say... There's not like flop sweat to be relevant, but there is like a kind of yearning to be like contemporary that I think TV shows have a hard time with when they are doing it knowingly, you know, like where it's like, we want to have these references hit in a way that if you've been on Instagram in the last 24 months.

57:55Andy Greenwald:Sure. Or if you've been in Echo Park in the last 24 months, you know that there's occasionally a line, although not a line that big at Canyon Coffee. Right. But I am finding myself like, I think the initial criticisms that we had of it, that it was going to be, there's like a little too much influencer mechanics drama. Yes, I am really just not that interested in that. I did find the Coke Larry stuff with Josh Hutcherson to be really, really funny. And I am enjoying his sort of performance. And I'm starting to, I think, get the rhythms of Rachel Sennett in this show. No better expression of your own white vision than you being like, the hero of the show is Josh Hutcherson.

58:35Andy Greenwald:the slightly older normal guy who doesn't want to get embarrassed at work for being Coke Larry. Like that is, I see the white vision. I just really liked it when she's like, I'm not on guy Twitter. I don't know what this is. Like the Michael Jordan meme. I don't know. This feels like concern trolling. It's unnecessary to say it. But I can't tell where the floor is on the show yet because it feels like it is a bunch of people making satirizing aspects of life in 2025 and or in Los Angeles, but also satirizing themselves for satirizing it. And that is a level of busyness and metaness that I find hard to just sit with.

59:17Andy Greenwald:And ultimately, like I need an anchor. Like I do. I am Josh Hutcherson. I have a nine to five job and I drive a Dodge Stratus. So the show is not for me. It's an electric Stratus though, by the way, so you're welcome. Enjoy it while you can, man. I get no benefits anymore. I know. Other than moral clarity and slight smug superiority. I do need an anchor of like, where am I oriented in terms of caring for people, caring for their journey? Why do you not need that in Chair Company? Because I think Chair Company is profoundly funny and creative and skewed and aesthetically so specific that it is kind of art to me.

59:58Andy Greenwald:and it just reliably makes me laugh. It is pure comedy. And I think that if this show, if this show and the spirit and this aesthetic was a six minute funny or die sketch or 90 minute movie satirizing influencer culture in LA, it would succeed on the current terms. But as a show that is now going someplace over two seasons, I mean, it's three episodes. So there's plenty of time for it to find that anchor. I'm just curious what it is. I can't remember who said, I think it was probably the Vulture Review, but I can't remember who said like, this show is more, maybe it was Alison Herman, I can't remember, but it was like, think of this more like Entourage and how to make it in America than Girls.

1:00:36And that was very helpful for me to kind of be like, oh yeah. I think it's helpful,

1:00:40Andy Greenwald:but also two of those shows I bailed on and one I stuck with. And I was hoping - You bailed on Entourage? Yes. Damn, dude. So you don't know what happened with E? Did he make Aquaman? He gets fired from Aquaman, doesn't he? Well, what about, it was Queens Boulevard. It's Queens Boulevard. E and Sloan, I think, end up together. And then they want to make the Pablo Escobar movie. They do. Medellin. Yeah. This would be, by the way. Apparently, somebody didn't quite... This podcast would do numbers of two guys just struggling. They wear glasses now. Their white vision isn't what it used to be. Like, just to remember plot points from a show that one of them claims to have not watched.

1:01:18You know how when, if any rap song released from 1989 to 2002 comes on, I'm like, I know all the lyrics to this. Everyone, yeah. That's how I feel about Entourage episodes. Oh, word. I don't, I could not, if you were like, do any number of Big L songs off the top of your head, I would be like, I could not. But if I heard two beats of it, I would be like, here's all the verses. That's how I feel about Entourage. I could not tell you a single thing off the top of my head about Entourage, except for the fact that I know every episode of Entourage by heart. That's amazing.

1:01:50Andy Greenwald:Yeah. What were the, open the computer back up. What was the Entourage era from when to when? 96 episodes of this bad boy. 96 episodes. God, talk about how to make it in America. It ran to the glory years. 0-4 to 11. Those are the best years of our lives. Yeah. Wow. Those are the years where you're just standing next to women at bars smoking cigarettes. Until, well, no, because Mike Bloomberg banned it. The smoking? Yeah. Oh. Inside. So you were just sidling up to, yeah, first of all, you weren't doing this. I was saying, do you want to go outside and have a cigarette? like with increasing levels of intensity and sweat that's true actually that is very true yeah 04 to 11 90 04 to 11 90 8 seasons god damn I respect it yeah you would never have thought that Doug Allen and the Brain Trust could have mined 96 episodes they got 8 seasons and 96 episodes of Entourage and like Stranger Things is like like trying to get the last boulder over the mouth just a 3 hour boulder up the hill uh What are your, for I Love LA, what are your, put on the Dan Campbell glasses, except now I'm going to switch sports.

1:03:02Andy Greenwald:No, you're at the Combine. He's like this, like his play call sheet. Because he doesn't want, up here, he doesn't want them to be messed with, but he needs the, there's readers. Yeah. Okay. You're at the Combine, and you're watching I Love LA do the weird, like, jumps and shit. what are the traits that give you some confidence? Not that it's going to go eight seasons, but that it is going to smooth its journey into something that is like a dependable player in this league. The Odessa Zion character can go in a lot of different directions. And she's phenomenal. And she's a dynamo. Force of nature.

1:03:36And I think that they could, she could be in an A24 movie.

1:03:40Andy Greenwald:The character. Yeah. Yeah. She could be Charlie XCX. like she can go and do a bunch of different things and they could get into a lot of different pockets of the entertainment business i hope actually i understand why the influencer thing is like actually probably more authentic to these characters and probably more authentic to 2025 yeah it is you know um i i think it's hard i was talking with fantasy the other day about how uh you know there's um you know a lot of anxiety around the media business now and we're nobody's shirt and i was like he doesn't have that as video games true and shinobi no but just like in general like video games like we've always had this experience where like when when whenever everybody is like god damn it where am i going to string two pennies together video games are like how about 25 million dollars oh like how much these are yeah yeah and i was thinking like that probably makes sense like influencers when everybody's just like is sydney sweeney actually a star and it's like these influencers are like i make nine million dollars a year you know i think the most but i also think this is and we understand why they're doing that but i wish they would put her in some other stuff i also feel like this is copying to our like look this you guys are listening to a podcast hosted by people who should just be reading robert carrow novels by a fire so i finished vineland bro i know respect you know what i did yeah i finished vineland which was like hard for me because because my brain is shredded mozzarella now i finished it yeah and much like coop in interstellar yeah i used the fucking momentum of the black hole swung around and i immediately started an easier book and read like 45 pages that's smart because that was like barry bonds with the donut on his bat and takes it off or juice you know like you have to inject yourself with fucking so much testosterone this is really balco yeah this is really i do want to finish the other point but i want to say this is elite reading advice yes because i did something similar where I finished a more challenging book and then I flew.

1:05:33Andy Greenwald:By the way, I also want to address for the record, people were commenting on this. Why didn't we sit together on the flight home from England? First of all, different flights. Done. Second of all, intentionally different flights because I love you and I hide nothing from you except my airport self. I do not want to see anyone at the airport or on an airplane. Ever. I don't want to talk for 10 hours, but I'd hang out with you. Like in the back of a plane? Yeah, I get it. I mean, Virgin, first of all, Virgin has those little bar areas. I'd love to just get a little chin wag with you mid-flight. Talk about some of the turbulence.

1:06:06Andy Greenwald:I'll just text you from the left side of the plane. You don't want to see me in turbulence. What do you like? What am I like? Yeah. You make it sound like you're like a cave troll. What's wrong with you? Well, first of all, it's tired because I take the early flight. You took a later flight. But also, it is peak. Hood up. What have you just handed me? This appears to be some sort of like Stouffer's pan. Doesn't matter. I ate it. Like I am definitely You know when I say this to you? Yeah. And now I'm remembering that one of my flights when I went to England a couple of years like a year ago. Yeah.

1:06:34I was flying back and Jesse Armstrong was sitting in front of me. No. And I think I was texting you and you're like you should say hi. You should say what's up. Yeah. Here's the difference. I was like full full sweatsuit. Like sweatsuit to the point of like rules don't matter. There's no part of my body that's not suited in sweat. Yes. and I'm watching fucking, you know, a cricket documentary and rolling around trying to get my back to feel good. Jesse Armstrong sat straight up and read the Financial Times for like 11 hours. Yeah, look, this is what keeps happening. And I was like, I'm not ready to see him.

1:07:09I'm not ready to have the awkward like, hey, I don't know if you remember me. We had two podcasts together, but like.

1:07:13Andy Greenwald:I keep, no, these are not people that I personally know, but I keep flying with like, Andrew Scott is on the flight and he just looks so tussled and rumbled. I'm like, well, let's see you in 11 hours, pal. Fucking looked amazing. Hugging the stewardesses afterwards. You know, I have now flown from LA to London multiple times with Theo James. Let me tell you something. That guy ages like wine on flights. Exactly. He's probably going back in age just because of the time difference. He looked, you're right. He looked better when we got there. That's why those guys do that flight. It's the same. He just never, never puts feet on earth.

1:07:49Andy Greenwald:So he's actually only 29 years old. Very humbling. Last two points that we were talking about. That is elite reading advice. If you read something hard, it is like with the weights, then you read something easy. Coming off that flight, I was like, I'd like to read a book, but also I'm completely jangled. Picked up an old Don Carpenter novel. Yeah. Had one of the best reading experiences of my life. Which one did you do? A couple of comedians? A couple of comedians is a perfect book. Yeah, brother. Come on. Second, back to I Love LA for the people who are really hanging on for the last observation.

1:08:18Andy Greenwald:I don't want to bring this part of myself to it, but I must, which is to say that it is incredibly accurate to Los Angeles and the state of the entertainment industry that it is just like panhandling for crumbs from Tresemme or fucking Balenciaga is going to email you a message about maybe sending you a bag and then 10 seconds on TikTok have to be answered to at Chifa where you have to order the whole menu and it's going to bankrupt you. Very accurate. I also find all that so deeply depressing. Who's that accurate for? Life in LA. And the entertainment industry is down to these kind of like crumbs of influence and branding and selling out.

1:08:55Andy Greenwald:Like that is the entertainment industry basically. Yes. Season three of Man on the Inside Apart. But like that is basically the entire entertainment industry. Season two. That bums me out so much that I don't want to necessarily find the humanity in it. Do you know what I mean? I see. I don't know if the show wants to either. I think everybody realizes that we're just like, you know, we're just last orders. You know what I mean? But. Last order's a Chifa. Last order's a Chifa. The rabbit is to die for. Do you think we did a good pot today? I think there were moments when I was worried, but then you started talking about white visions, and I was like, let's cook.

1:09:33Andy Greenwald:Thanks to Kai. I thought it was good. I think Kai has a lot to work with, and I think he's going to slant things a little more away. Because I'm working the refs. The most excited Kai was, was when we were talking about Key Glock before we started recording. When you and he were talking about Key Glock. Yeah, I said, have you listened to Key Glock? And Kai was just like, Key Glock's the... fucking amazing. I think... I'm coming back for rap. I feel it. This is exciting. Yeah. This is a good zag for you. Which camera are you saying that into? You. You're like, hello, rap caviar playlist. Would you like to hear my white vision?

1:10:02Andy Greenwald:No, no, no, no. Yeah. I go, I do my own research.

1:10:10I am going to start a rap playlist called White Vision now. You should. And I'm going to use Betney.

1:10:16Andy Greenwald:It's just all tracks. Bet me from Margin Call, not from Vision. No, of course. And it's all tracks by that dude, Russ. That's it. Great. Thank you for listening to The Watch. We'll be back with Pluribus, Episode 4, Landman, Episode 2. The people have spoken. I have to watch it. Landman? Yeah. You can do what you want. It's free country. That's what Landman says. Yeah. And I believe it. Yeah. I'll watch it.

1:11:07Andy Greenwald:We'll be right back. time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome. Columbia. Engineered for whatever. To kids, summer isn't just time off. It's time building confidence and curiosity. But when school meals pause, millions of children lose the food they count on. Your support helps the Feeding America Network nourish every child's potential. Give now at feedingamerica.org slash summerhunger.