How the Warner Bros. Sale Changes Television. Plus, ‘DTF St. Louis’ and ‘Rooster’ Strike Out.

11:32Andy Greenwald:Like having DC, having Harry Potter would be very valuable to them and their attempt to diversify what they offer. So you could see it. I'm not saying it would be good for people, but I'm saying you could see it. And because it was not one-to-one duplicative, there was a hope that it wouldn't cost a lot of jobs. You cannot say that about Paramount taking over Warner Brothers.

11:51Chris Ryan:Well, that was part of their pitch, is that this will cost a lot of jobs.

11:53Andy Greenwald:This will cost a lot of jobs, and we can, yes, reduce overhead. They have two studio lots. They have two streaming services. They have two theatrical release movie studios. They have a lot of people doing similar jobs at two different parts of Los Angeles. that's potentially catastrophic and ruinous for real life in the town. But to finally end up answering your question, this was a seller's market during the boom times of John Landgraf's trademark prestige TV when there was just too much TV. If you took a project to market at a certain level, you could feel confident you would get not just one nibble of interest, but another one, which would create obviously competition and maybe get you a better deal and grease the skids towards actually getting something made.

12:42Andy Greenwald:That has really fallen off a cliff in the last few years. And it's not just because of some companies like going out of business or streamers closing. It's just the reality of the financial commitment to make a lot of these shows these days. AMC is not competing for the same shows that Apple is anymore. Whereas a few years ago, maybe everyone was in competition for the same stuff. So the idea of a buyer going off the board was a fear no matter what happened. But with all of the talk, and again, all of the potential roadmap to HBO remaining separate from Netflix, you could still imagine that they might compete with each other in, I don't know if in the most robust way, but in a way.

13:25Andy Greenwald:I mean, remember, we're not too far away from a time when HBO Max was competing with HBO. Sure. In a real, honestly, not that thoughtful way. And that's how you ended up with things like Station Eleven, which was like DNA and HBO show being a max show. They've sorted that out in recent years. There's just, David Ellison has said he wants to keep the HBO brain trust separate, but he's also said, inevitably, we merge the streaming services. So what does that mean? And one less buyer means less competition, which means less opportunity for writers, which means fewer shows and on and on and on.

13:58Chris Ryan:He's been going around since way before the actual acquisition talking about the stack and how he's going to revolutionize Paramount's digital backend. And I would not say I wish we had a lighting cue for UX corner. We have a lighting cue now for Watch After Dark. But I would not say that I'm a huge fan of either Paramount Plus or HBO's like user experience. You know, I don't think anybody is really on Netflix's level algorithmically in terms of helping you discover stuff, putting things in front of your eyeballs.

14:33Andy Greenwald:Remembering you just watched something and might want to keep watching it.

14:36Chris Ryan:And might want to keep watching it. I think Paramount, at least in my experience, is the worst of it where you're just like, I do watch Survivor. Why do I have to search for it every time, even though I've saved it to like my stuff? Peacock is like that as well. And Peacock is like that as well. But I would say that I would expect a teardown of both and a new thing. The funny thing about that is that whenever that kind of stuff happens, I feel like by the time it goes live, we've moved into another era of what this stuff is supposed to look and feel like. I often remember when we were working at websites more actively, one of the big meetings that we would always get stuck in is, should we build our own video player?

15:19Chris Ryan:and you know the answer was probably like just use youtube but it would always be like but if we built our own player what could we and it was like you guys took two years to do this spend a ton of money and now like people still use youtube i don't know what that means i'm not making a one-to-one comparison but it is when you're talking about like let's build this like state-of-the-art streaming experience for people i do wonder like what happens in like three years if like our parameters have changed for that.

15:50Andy Greenwald:I think there's also a fundamental misunderstanding of what users want out of their experience these days. I think we could all agree, we can reach across the aisle and say, it sure would be nice to have to click fewer things to see the things I want to see. So the idea, and this is the idea that Netflix is actively working towards from a position of like from a great lead in doing so, Netflix wants to be the app you open and stay in for your reality TV, for your sports, for your prestige dramas, for your reruns, for your podcasts, for everything that you do. Yes. And that seems like a very smart strategy to be comprehensive.

16:24Andy Greenwald:We have not just recent evidence, but recent evidence involving one of the companies involved in this transaction that becoming an everything app is a lot harder than it looks or than it looks in an initial transaction spreadsheet. HBO Max, formerly Max, doesn't work because nobody wanted Dr. Pimple Popper with their HBO. Users weren't using it that way. The thought behind it was, look how much we can give you. And you, i.e. us, looked at it and said, no thank you. They were still seeking out the HBO shows they wanted to watch. And the people who watched the other stuff watched the other stuff.

17:05Andy Greenwald:But there wasn't a lot. And I think this has been confirmed on the record by people involved in it, which led to the HBO Max re-rebranding.

17:13Chris Ryan:Yeah.

17:13Andy Greenwald:That there wasn't a lot of peanut butter and jelly mixing up in the mouths of the consumer.

17:19Chris Ryan:The other thing is just like how... My next question is like, what kind of TV shows are going to get made? And I think we'll probably feel this closer to 28, 29. Sure, yeah. when we'll feel the like unified aesthetic of the new Paramount start to come to the fore. Assuming this happens. Assuming this happens. And like, I don't know what happens to like, uh, the fourth season of house of the dragon, like where that really exists. Like at what point do they close down HBO, uh, as a streaming service and ask everybody to be on Paramount? Plus how long are we going to have to go through the annoying, like ESPN, Hulu, Disney plus bundle?

18:02Andy Greenwald:I think I pay all three of them independently.

18:03Chris Ryan:I think I might pay multiple accounts, and I have no idea how.

18:09Andy Greenwald:Do you know how I know that I do? I took my kids to Disney, and I was greeted by name, saying, thank you. You personally funded this wing.

18:18Chris Ryan:It's Andy Greenwald, one of the three account guys.

18:20Andy Greenwald:He's like, will you fund Tomorrowland?

18:22Chris Ryan:Because every 15 months, ESPN will be like, you don't have a membership here? I'm like, oh, I guess I've got to give you$90. I called them, and they were like, yes, of course.

18:30Andy Greenwald:I see this is not duplicative. It's triplicative or whatever. And then I was like, great, so we can bring it all online. And there was a, oh, well, sir, your Hulu account actually runs until November. Yeah. I was like, great. Call you then. But then my ESPN account will be running to June. I need Howie Roseman to do a cap management of my streaming service package.

18:51Chris Ryan:So the reason I'm asking about what will TV feel like and what kind of shows are going to get made is that even your HBO Max comparison is a really good one. And that was bringing in some of the aesthetic house style of maybe like a TBS and TNT style show that you might get on linear cable and finding a place under the HBO umbrella to put those things, but still have a little bit of the sensibility of the brain trust of HBO consulting on flight attendant or what have you. That was the name of that show, right? The Kaley Kulker show? Yeah. I don't see how that happens realistically with the current iteration of Paramount Plus, whatever you consider the remnants of Showtime.

19:36Chris Ryan:Yep. CBS and whatever, like, you know, why Marshalls and Tracker stuff that they're still putting up. And HBO, you know, and I see the vision long term where they're like, this is great. We have all this IP. Yeah. And it's all going to be like vertically integrated. and we can start, we can take one of these studio lots and build Paramount Mountain and have dragons flying around. But these are very different experiences for me. Like when I'm looking for stuff to watch, Lioness is not the same thing as DTF St. Louis.

20:13Andy Greenwald:I'd like to think that we're a pretty good podcast. The Ringer Fantasy Football Show is a good podcast. It is. I don't think anyone would argue it would be a better podcast if all five of us were seated at the table at the same time.

20:25Chris Ryan:Talking at the same time. Talking at the same time. Yes, yeah.

20:29Andy Greenwald:That is the fallacy of consolidation, and that's the looming problem here. I think one of the underreported things about the relative success of HBO Max, now again, let's say that Warner Brothers Discovery continues to hemorrhage money and is in massive debt. That is not necessarily HBO's fault. That is the fault of, oh, Captain, my Captain, David Zaslav, who purchased the entire thing on debt and then tried to -

20:52Chris Ryan:And now this has been purchased with quite a bit of debt.

20:54Andy Greenwald:And is now going to enrich himself enormously while everyone he leaves behind will lose their job. So that's awesome. Capitalism's working great. Let's hear the fantasy football guys say that. But an underreported thing of our pal Casey Blois, friend of the watch, who we don't need to blow any smoke in his direction whatsoever. But the consolidation, I'll use the word again, of the HBO and HBO Max brand has worked so absolutely dynamically and beyond the expectations of a lot of people because they allowed it to fall under the same office. The HBO, HBO Max thing that was challenging for a while was they had two separate programming teams.

21:36Andy Greenwald:And then when Casey and his group took over HBO Max, they were able to say, this is an HBO show, this is an HBO Max show. And not in a dismissive way, saying like, we're just going to put the chaff over here. This is how we get the pit. so the idea isn't that things that don't necessarily sync up don't work under the same tile it's that you need to have a unified vision a broader unified vision of what you're putting up and if you just put HBO next to everything that you just said I don't understand what it means now I guess the counter argument is you couldn't explain the cable bundle either but I just think we're so far past that in terms of a reference point the other thing to add to this is I'm not entirely sure I'm certain the viewers don't understand but I'm not entirely sure that quote unquote the town understands what a Paramount show is I don't think they do either

22:30Chris Ryan:because I think they're making assumptions based on oh it's kind of like Red State Curious

22:36Andy Greenwald:but if it was Red State Curious which it has been

22:39Chris Ryan:but even if it has been largely through Sheridan's stuff

22:43Andy Greenwald:yes

22:43Chris Ryan:that was not Ellison

22:46Andy Greenwald:Yes, and one of the first things Ellison did was let Taylor Sheridan walk and bring in Cindy Holland, who is the architect of some of the most thoughtful programming that Netflix has.

22:55Chris Ryan:I think it was flipped chronologically, but yes. He brought in Cindy Holland, and Cindy Holland was like, we're good.

23:00Andy Greenwald:But these were two big power moves in the TV space. So Cindy Holland's Paramount does not exist yet in terms of what the viewers are engaging with. There are a lot of similar shifts because other than HBO and FX, and I guess Peacock has had a pretty consistent leadership team as well. But like no one, you could say the same thing about Amazon, which is like, oh, well, they're also going after that kind of Tom Clancy, terminalist real estate. But behind the scenes, Peter Freelander came over from Netflix and is now putting his mark on their programming and it's not likely to be the same thing. So we can't assume we know what it's going to be.

23:39Andy Greenwald:But the thing lurking behind that statement is Cindy Holland made her name in Netflix, making the kind of thoughtful, Emmy-provoking, HBO-competing stuff that put Netflix on the map. Yes. Are she and Casey hunting after the same projects from their separate corners, and they're now going to be doing it from the same structure? Right. And who benefits from that? It just kind of doesn't make sense. Now, we can leap to assumptions, or we could choose not to. We don't actually know how it's going to shake out. And from the people that I know involved and from the good reporting that you were mentioning before, like no one actually knows how it's going to go yet but it is concerning from a fan of quality stuff perspective

24:17Chris Ryan:the IP jigsaw puzzle was the last thing I wanted to talk about because I think it actually segues into talking about lanterns pretty easily Paramount now controls the following Warner Brothers pet properties assuming this deal goes through DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones Lord of the Rings movies of which they are currently about to start shooting one in May apparently and much much more Mortal Kombat you know some of the greats were you a big Mortal Kombat guy? look at this face

24:43Andy Greenwald:zoom in who is your guy now I'm talking that's my Marin imitation who are your guys Sub-Zero you were Sub-Zero guys

24:50Chris Ryan:I liked Sub-Zero

24:52Andy Greenwald:everybody liked Sub-Zero I just didn't know you were so devoted to him

24:55Chris Ryan:Sub-Zero was my Graham Plattner

24:58Andy Greenwald:no matter what was revealed underneath

25:00Chris Ryan:no matter what tattoos he had let's like

25:03Andy Greenwald:finish him I ride with him no you were like he can win yeah that was your attitude

25:09Chris Ryan:yeah I was a big Mortal Kombat guy although Although, you know, fair is fair. I got to be candid with you. I don't think being an only child shapes you for competition with other human beings in video games.

25:23Andy Greenwald:I'm posing my computer. This is the conversation I've been waiting to have.

25:25Chris Ryan:Because, look, when it's just you and the four walls and the roof, you can just hit reset when you're not liking the way things are, the way the wind is blowing. You're just like, oh, I'm losing in this Tecmo Bowl game or this Madden game. We're just going to kick the plug out. Do you know what else? What? You can think you're really good. You can think you're fucking last Starfighter. Exactly. You can think you're goaded. You can think you're... One guy comes over.

25:50Andy Greenwald:I was basically, with my Sega Genesis, I was playing Ender's game. Do you know what I mean? Like, I was the one who was going to end the galactic conflict and maybe already had.

25:59Chris Ryan:And then one dude comes over. Yes. And fucking...

26:04Andy Greenwald:Ends my game.

26:05Chris Ryan:Yeah. Throws 84 ninja stars at your head and you're like,

26:08Andy Greenwald:God damn it, this controller's broken. There was, this is also, this is actually dating us more than saying Sega Genesis, but at the, sounds like I grew up in fucking Riverdale with Jughead and Betty and Veronica. But there was a pharmacy in the neighborhood that not only had a soda fountain, they had a Double Dragon arcade cabinet. And you played DD by yourself? I would ride my bike there during like off hours or weekends and be like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. yeah and then a stranger things dude would come up be like put a quarter on and I'd be like oh sir shall we play cooperative mode which didn't exist you know like oh my god you have to understand that there wasn't Double Dragon was just two guys walking around going like this yeah I remember there was not a mortality mode like there would be in Mortal Kombat sure and yet somehow this guy would find a button combination to finish me

27:01Chris Ryan:right to break your like your pelvis yeah no we're trying to

27:04Andy Greenwald:rescue the same lady

27:05Chris Ryan:so anyway yeah Mortal Kombat also goes to Paramount. You know, this is a really interesting wrinkle to this because there is the, just for laughs, idea of Westeros Sicario, like I've brought up multiple times.

27:22Andy Greenwald:Westeros Sicario. Yeah, good.

27:24Chris Ryan:No, but just like having, you know, overlapping. And if you don't think that they've like talked about that, about like, could we get a hobbit in Game of Thrones or something like that?

27:34Andy Greenwald:Is that the Dorne border crossing?

27:38Chris Ryan:just just like talk me through it you're in the land of wolves um but when this lanterns trailer dropped yeah yeah i was i was like this is how long it takes man like when you have talented people working kind of in conjunction and i know lanterns kind of predates james gunn and there's been some rumored james gunn input yeah or like kind of conversations

28:03Andy Greenwald:yeah the charitable version is how do we bring this into the larger DC thing that I'm trying to weave

28:10Chris Ryan:to my last I checked he has been relatively quiet about all of this stuff

28:15Andy Greenwald:yes I was wondering that myself

28:16Chris Ryan:he may have tweeted about it I didn't see but I usually this stuff comes up in feeds if he's like I'm so excited to be part of the Skydance family I haven't seen it but Lanterns is one of those things where you're like you know what man you guys just did it right I've not seen it we obviously have a lot of affection for Damon and the people who made this show and I'm a huge fan of Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre so I'm excited to watch it it just looks cool to me I know there's some lanterns heads out there who are like not my lantern but I worry I guess that we're gonna have to start from zero with this stuff in a year and a half and they're gonna be like yeah we have some different ideas about what we want Superman to represent you know

28:59Andy Greenwald:do you see a lot of cars in LA with the blue lantern flag in the back.

29:03Chris Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. Or the upside down lantern. Yeah.

29:07Andy Greenwald:Well, I think two things are true. Like, your guy, the guy's name is Jerry Cardinale. That's incredible. Yeah.

29:14Chris Ryan:He owns like pieces of a lot of European football teams too. Well, also.

29:18Andy Greenwald:Red birds got their hands in a lot of pots. Because the Cardinals, the red bird. You know.

29:22Chris Ryan:Oh, yeah.

29:23Andy Greenwald:See that. I didn't really think about it that way.

29:24Chris Ryan:That's cool.

29:25Andy Greenwald:That's why I'm on the pot. No, if you had done this last week, that would have been crickets on that point. Okay. Really being into naming. One step back. HBO has been making exceptional content and Warner Brothers Films has been making, has been on like a historic hitter up until this weekend. From a position of deficit. Literal deficit. Like they, David Daslav is like, I've created this new company. We are$30 billion in debt. What can we do? So despite those circumstances, they are still producing at a high level and making shows that I would imagine in movies that have been profitable. David Ellison is coming in and now the new company will be saddled with what $80 billion in debt before it starts.

30:09Andy Greenwald:So that's basically asking them to do three times as much profit generating for one third of what they've been spending. I mean, I don't actually know how the numbers shake out, but the point is the fastest path, there is no path to profitability. I mean, it's just nonsense to me the way that anyone would take this as a credible, like we see a path here. But the fastest path towards shareholder engagement, or at least shareholder fantasy story spinning, is we're going to do what the previous owners of this content have not done, which is absolutely supercharge IP.

30:46Chris Ryan:and yeah but i wonder whether more of their gains will come from doing the disney flywheel thing of creating whether it's a park or consolidating whatever you know parks that they have already sort of started talking about and making it into an actual destination and figuring out merchandising and selling all sorts of digital subscriptions for different things because i just don't really know like what I don't really know what the margins are on like a show like the Seven Kingdom is this

31:19Andy Greenwald:you asking me directly whether I will also be a consulting producer on Harry Potter land in Abu Dhabi I cannot confirm or deny that but thank you yeah that is a real thing they're building are they really in Abu Dhabi I mean prior to the events the last 10 days that was their plan yes yeah they will say that they have a path towards maximizing all of this there will also be a strong counterpoint to be made again these things will happen slowly in terms of how it trickles down to the consumer you mentioned House of the Dragon House of the Dragon will complete its four season run without any issue the Harry Potter series is that Hogwarts Express has left the station do you know what I mean And that is a big deal for all these stakeholders involved, the sellers, the buyers, everybody.

32:09Andy Greenwald:It's happening. I think one of the reasons why James Gunn probably hasn't said anything is because he needs to do and his team needs to continue to prove that they are the right stewards for this. Sure. That said, when you look at the deficits on the balance sheets, I think it would be a pretty quick decision that HBO's careful, long-term stewardship of Game of Thrones, which has been successful. I mean, one week on, two weeks on from Night of the Seven Kingdoms, I'm actually still processing how successful that show was and how excited I am to see more of it. That two shows every year and a half is not enough.

32:52Andy Greenwald:And that they may hit the supercharge button. Maybe. And again, and then that would take two, three, four, five years.

32:57Chris Ryan:But if I was running that stuff, I would just point them in the direction of Marvel television and Star Wars television and be like, be careful what you wish for. We can only make this stuff so fast given the effects and given the sort of scale of it.

33:10Andy Greenwald:And then they would point to the screen again where the$80 billion deficit is looming and say, well, we got to spend something to make something.

33:19Chris Ryan:But then make Top Gun Flight Academy. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that they can kind of mess around with.

33:23Andy Greenwald:I think there's options. And I think that you're right. Like just from a what have we learned? I just feel like a lot of the roadmap of recent capitalism doesn't have a lot of, well, we've all learned something here.

33:33Chris Ryan:That's right.

33:34Andy Greenwald:You know what I mean? I think that's a very beautiful...

33:36Chris Ryan:Guys, we're never going to do 2080 things, right? Exactly.

33:41Andy Greenwald:Let's not get too in front of our skis here. Instead, it's like, what if there were no mountains?

33:49Andy Greenwald:So there's no question that all of the dials on all of these properties is going to get cranked up. I don't know what that means. and it's as good a segue as any to say that like we, the Andor loving podcasters look at the Lanterns trailer. Couldn't be us. And we're like, this is exciting to us.

34:10Chris Ryan:Close your eyes and think of two guys who love Andor.

34:14Andy Greenwald:I'm picturing men in glasses. The... We don't... Again, we don't know and the more... What I mean... When I say we don't know, what I mean is successfully executing lanterns, which, from the people involved, and it's incredible, murderers are of talent. There's the brilliant comic book writer, Tom King. There's Chris Mundy, who had worked on Ozark and is a great TV producer. Our friend Damon Lindelof, who everyone knows his CV. My friend Justin Britt Gibson is a writer on the show as well. And like, the pitch was basically True Detective with power rings. Yeah. And it seems like they have executed this and making an HBO quality show.

34:57Chris Ryan:Did they shoot this in Oklahoma?

34:58Andy Greenwald:I don't know where they shot it.

35:00Chris Ryan:It looks vaguely like where they shot Watchmen. That's what I was asking.

35:06Andy Greenwald:But it does not look or feel, at least in the trailers and in what they intended to make, like Supergirl, which is a movie I have high hopes for. But they were able to say, this is going to work for this part of the company. And you are serving fewer cooks in that template. Like, again, the HBO Max Warner Brothers Discovery tent is probably too big. It's been proven that it was just too big of a thing to be successful. But it is so much smaller than what the Paramount Skydance Warner Brothers Discovery thing will be that you could say, James Gunn can look at his docket and say, well, I'm going to make this well for these people.

35:39Andy Greenwald:I'm going to make this well for these guys and the different margins for what is successful for Warner Brothers films and HBO. I'm going to make everybody happy and we're going to probably maximize our chance to return on our investment. Sure. if suddenly it's$80 billion of debt and we have to please as many people as possible all the time or it's confusing who you're pleasing. I guess what I'm trying to articulate is if Lanterns works in a narrow lane that connects to the larger DC universe but only has to satisfy the HBO audience and stakeholders. Yes, the 6 million to 10 million people

36:11Chris Ryan:who might tune in for it.

36:12Andy Greenwald:I would imagine that's a harder sell in the even larger ecosystem.

36:16Chris Ryan:I just think on a practical level, there's very few scenarios in which I can imagine there being a pool of money to be shared across multiple brands, verticals, what have you, that have their own leadership structures and their own development processes. And if I'm running the remnants of the Sheridan universe, or if I'm running, I don't even know, like if I'm running whatever Cindy Holland's kind of version of this is, her dramas and comedies that she's developing. And then you've got Casey and his team doing old HBO stuff and the IP stuff that they were working on. But it's all coming from the same bank.

37:01Andy Greenwald:Yeah.

37:02Chris Ryan:It's just, it starts to, you can see where that starts to really get complicated because people are just like, why am I competing against him when we both are on the same, you know, at paramount.com email server?

37:14Andy Greenwald:Let's look at this in the ways we were just saying that venture capitalists don't, which is like, let's look at where we're at now. And it's been incredibly hard for these companies to integrate themselves and keep up with the shifting demands on them. So if you look at Marvel, which, you know, recent box office success aside, like no one will question Kevin Feige's bona fides and like the track record of this company within a company. But the CEO dynamic change at Disney had a ruinous effect on the Marvel brand because the first thing Chapek did was say, we got to pump up these numbers for the streaming service.

37:53Andy Greenwald:We are serving that now. We are no longer serving the, I mean, I don't want to be so grandiose as to think that Marvel Studios started to purely serve the consumer, but like, in terms of storytelling, but as soon as their mandate shifted and their modes of production shifted and their output shifted, quality suffered. And it took us this long since the, five or six years since Jason Kilar tried to blow up Warner Brothers the first time and say we're going to put everything straight online Operation Popcorn

38:23Chris Ryan:or whatever the fuck that was called

38:24Andy Greenwald:like only now in the midst of all these mergers and turnover has it seemed like Warner and DC have figured out their relationship to each other that we are going to make they are going to make X number of movies a year they're going to make X numbers of TV shows a year and those TV shows are going to fall into these categories and they're going to play nice with HBO's expectations and demands on quality and they're going to play nice with Max. That took a long time to get there. And I'm not saying it's like a winning, always successful strategy, but you do get the feeling that it's calmed down and everybody knows what they're doing.

38:57Andy Greenwald:And every time one of these mergers happens, you blow up the expectations and you blow up the chains of command and you blow up the whole system. And then it takes years to settle down again. And at that point, someone else is buying you. It's not a recipe for good shit.

39:11Chris Ryan:Let's talk a little bit about contemporary HBO stuff because there's two new shows on.

39:16Andy Greenwald:Did you want to say anything else about Lantern Street?

39:17Chris Ryan:I kind of, I mean, they are playing into the core strengths of their two leads. So Kyle Chandler, a slightly maybe more cynical and tongue-in-cheek version of the same Coach Taylor.

39:32Andy Greenwald:This is Coach Taylor post-NIL.

39:34Chris Ryan:Yeah, this is Coach Taylor when he's been working at Oklahoma State for a while. He's seen some things. And then Aaron Pierre, who had an extraordinary coming out party as an action star in Rebel Ridge. And I think he's got some of that same quality in this show. So I'll be really curious to see how those two work together. And then Kelly MacDonald, who's undefeated for 31 years now.

40:01Andy Greenwald:It's a great trailer.

40:02Chris Ryan:Yeah.

40:03Andy Greenwald:And Chandler looks amazing. Like there's just something... We used to talk about how one of the few safe spots for creators of big genre movies would be like, he's got to talk about the fate of Romulus vis-a-vis Klingon, but if we get a royal Shakespeare actor to do it, maybe he'll sell it. And they tended to sell it. There's something about Coach Taylor being like, I'm a lantern. I'm like, sure you are, buddy. Literally, I trust you. Yeah. Whatever you need. Mold my children to be lanterns. Is Fillion in this show? Yeah, Fillion will appear in the show. Okay. And for what it's worth from the nerd corner, Green Lantern is a mythology that allows multiple.

40:47Andy Greenwald:It's not like the Spider-Verse. They are a core of many people who have rings. You want to talk Spider-Verse?

40:52Chris Ryan:What do you have to do to get a ring?

40:53Andy Greenwald:Still no. What do you have to be? What do I have to do?

40:56Chris Ryan:I mean, do you have to have a college degree? What's the sort of requirements to get a ring? No, no, no.

41:00Andy Greenwald:Remember when Obama was like, trade schools are good too? There was a policy like that. For lanterns? In the DCU. Good. Because you don't want to be a lantern with tons of lantern debt.

41:09Chris Ryan:no that's true you want to be able

41:10Andy Greenwald:to start your career that's true it's just Philadelphia Community

41:14Chris Ryan:Lantern College this episode is brought to you by Volkswagen it can be hard to do your own thing when everyone else is following everyone else but that's what some of the best films are about an outcast striving to make their own way in the world and this is your sign to be that outcast from us from VW from the other outcasts out there take a chance make the most of every day and don't be afraid to veer off course every now and then because if you don't do it now, then when? Learn more at VW.com. Let's talk a little bit about these two shows on HBO right now.

41:50Andy Greenwald:Okay.

41:51Chris Ryan:And I rub my eye both because it itches but also because I'm not looking forward to this.

41:56Andy Greenwald:How are you doing with these allergies, with these Santa Ana winds?

41:58Chris Ryan:You can hear it in the voice, man.

42:00Andy Greenwald:It's bad. My voice or just the allergies? Your voice has a nice Chandler-esque growl today. I'm actually enjoying it. It's just like a little bit in the pocket. you know what I mean?

42:09Chris Ryan:DTF St. Louis, which has aired two episodes and it's a cliffhanger-y mystery in one hand and also a acidic black comedy on the other hand. So look, if you haven't watched this, I'll set it up a little bit by saying it's created and entirely written and directed by Steve Conrad, who I would describe as one of the few existing cult creators in television.

42:37Andy Greenwald:Yes.

42:37Chris Ryan:he has made a show called Patriot which is beloved a show called Perpetual Grace LTD which I actually quite liked and maybe prefer to Patriot a what do they call that puppet show he made like a cop puppet show Ultra City Smiths and has done some feature work but is here with

43:00Andy Greenwald:he started doing feature work like he's been around yeah he wrote The Weatherman right he wrote Wrestling Ernest Hemingway was his first movie And the Walter Mitty thing that Stiller made.

43:09Chris Ryan:So he's been around, but like, his shows are not big, but when I talk to people, as recently as Mantzoukas on Thursday, and you hear this from a lot of folks, people are obsessed with this guy. And are like, he's one of the true, unique voices in television.

43:25Andy Greenwald:You have banged this drum for a while, how they're really, it's not possible due to the budgets involved to have like an indie television scene. And anytime any Duplass brother makes something self-funded, we are basically like, dumpster diving for Drag City records just to try to celebrate it.

43:40Chris Ryan:Examples of it are like, it's like Cooper Rafe made a show that he wound up getting on Mubi with Lily Reinhart. Yeah, the Duplass brothers have experimented with we're going to make six episodes of something and then take it to Netflix or take it to whoever. But there is, we are no longer in the Joey Soloway era. Like we're not getting a lot of different kinds of like radical takes on TV anymore. Certainly not from the auteur perspective.

44:08Andy Greenwald:And I was going to say Stephen Conrad in that sense is like the Jandek of television, but actually he's more like the Nick Cave of television in that he's been around for so long and suddenly arenas are booking him. Yes. Although, but Nick Cave is filling those arenas and I'm not sure about this.

44:22Chris Ryan:And Stephen Conrad almost made Night of the Seven Kingdoms. He was the original showrunner on that. He has now done DCF St. Louis, which is based loosely on a New Yorker article, but is like, I think since pitch, become a completely different animal.

44:34Andy Greenwald:It is. So I want to be careful when we talk about this because, as you said, we are in a moment in television, if not all media, where truly idiosyncratic creators are not being platformed. Like, and certainly not to the degree that HBO has given him with this. Because you can also see the development process and you can assume something about it, which is that someone had the rights to this story and wanted to develop it. likely he was offered the chance to develop it or there was some sort of bake-off or whatever and he got the opportunity to do it. And then he Steve Conraded it. And he did his own thing to such a degree that it is no longer even credited as being based on this article.

45:14Andy Greenwald:That is a level of flex that you don't often see very much anymore. So when I watched the first episode of it...

45:22Chris Ryan:Should we set it up a little bit? Just like the basic premise?

45:24Andy Greenwald:Right, so DCF St. Louis is like an Ashley Madison-esque website for the St. Louis area. speaking of Redbirds.

45:30Chris Ryan:That's right.

45:30Andy Greenwald:And the setup is relatively straightforward that first Stephen Conrad show, which is that Jason Bateman plays a local celebrity weatherman who befriends his ASL signer, played by David Harbour, who is married to Linda Cardellini, who works for Purina. She does. And moonlights as a Little League umpire. Yep. And there's some discussion about extramarital opportunities. and then within the pilot, not a spoiler, we flash forward some amount of time and David Harper is no longer among the living. Yes. And there's an investigation. I believe that's also in the commercials.

46:06Chris Ryan:That's not really spoiling anything. And I would say that this show does the contemporary malady of like, we're going to do two weeks ago, but now at the end, it's going to be a flash forward, but that's present tense. So there's a little bit of like, not necessarily like, we're jumping around the timeline a little bit here.

46:24Andy Greenwald:I want to say true to our timeline and just say something positive first. which is when I watched the first episode, I was truly unsure of how I felt about it, which is not a bad thing.

46:33Chris Ryan:I often find these sort of pointless, but like, I will say that when you were texting me incessantly about this show a couple of weeks ago, well, compared to like...

46:42Andy Greenwald:Frequently.

46:42Chris Ryan:Do you text about Jalen Carter incessantly? That is true. You frequently texted about DTF St. Louis, even though I was like... Well, because I was intrigued. I'm in Scream 7, and you were like, have you watched this yet?

46:52Andy Greenwald:I was really intrigued because, for a number of reasons. One, because I was curious about Stephen Conrad, who is, as we have said, a really interesting creator.

47:01Chris Ryan:Did you see any Patriot or Perpetual Grace?

47:02Andy Greenwald:Patriot is the number one show that I am told that I would love. And I watched two or three episodes of it, and I enjoyed them, and I didn't go back. And this is probably on me. This is something that Manzoukas has correctly vilified me for. So I'm not going to make sweeping generalizations about anything.

47:19Chris Ryan:Jason's hard, because Jason is just like who I want to be. Like when he was just like Dark Winds is awesome. I was like, I know, and I'm a bad guy for just not sitting down and watching three seasons of Dark Winds.

47:29Andy Greenwald:And he's who I want to be because he sat across this table from you and said the word Freer in Journey's End.

47:35Chris Ryan:He's done that multiple times.

47:36Andy Greenwald:I know, and I'm like, I can say that at home with my daughters, but I can't say that in front of you. I mean, I want you to think I'm cool so I can keep going to the clothing stores you frequent. It's a tough balancing act, believe me. Yeah, but I was writing you for a number of reasons. One, because there was a not unheard of embargo on reviews. So I was watching it a little bit in advance and was really curious in a way that felt almost desperate for like a main line of understanding of how it was being received because it is so, not so, but it was, you know, it's an odd show. Also, I really wanted to talk to someone about it, which now I can't.

48:10Chris Ryan:It should be a big deal. HBO is riding a high coming off of Night of the Seven Kingdoms and industry being very successful in their own ways. The pit is rolling. like this should be a prime platform for a show starring jason bateman who may be one of the signature sort of adult television i don't mean that in these cinematics after dark way but he has kind of carved out this role where it's like people go to these shows to watch bateman because they think he has good taste whether it's black rabbit or ozark or what have you harbor is coming off of stranger things which is one of the biggest shows in the world linda carlini is a very well loved and respected performer in her own right.

48:48Chris Ryan:So I think that there's a lot of pedigree going into this. And you were just saying.

48:53Andy Greenwald:I was not unhappy being kind of discomfited by the first hour. I was like, oh, where are we going with this? Because this is funny and this is a good performance and it's a little bit arch and it's a little bit surprising. But there were also aspects to it that were rubbing me the wrong way. And that's okay. That's, you know, art should, what

49:11Chris Ryan:is it afflict the unafflicted art should freeze a guy and then shatter him like sub-zero in mortal

49:16Andy Greenwald:combat that's our formative art i don't remember any other quotes past that other than finishing

49:20Chris Ryan:yeah um fatality is also a big quote from that is that's right on the screen a lot maybe kai can put that fatality on the screen whenever andy kills his show is kai's fatality well get the button

49:35Andy Greenwald:ready because i watched two episodes of this show um and there are things that i will continue to bring up and be positive about during our conversation of the only two episodes of the show that I plan to watch. I think David Harbour is really good in it. I think Linda Cardellini deserves more opportunities. Richard Jenkins, one of my favorite actors. But after watching two episodes, it's hard to remember a series that I have ultimately disliked as much as this one, and that have rubbed me as much the wrong way as this one has. And we can go through the reasons.

50:05Chris Ryan:Yeah, I have two reactions to this show. Pretty much the same as you. I'm not actively looking to watch a third episode. I might just to see how right or wrong I am about it for myself. Right. There's two problems. One is I think I might be dyslexic for this writer. Like, I see the words and I see the performances and I see why people like it. And it is not hitting for me. There are moments where it hits. There are lines that I actually sincerely LOL'd at. but I don't know that I, I think it's okay sometimes within criticism and within just talking about popular culture or art in general, just be like, it's not my tempo.

50:45Chris Ryan:And I think that we get a little bit into like, there is a objective truth to whether like sinners are one battle of an, or after another are a better, which one's a better film. It's like, yeah, like I think that they're, they do different things. And I really respect this guy because he has such a unique cadence, worldview. This sense of humor is drawing from a kind of absurdist, droll Coen Brothers sensibility that I like a lot in other stuff. But for some reason here, it's missing. I was watching the second episode, which is, is this one called Jamba Juice? The second one? Meet Me at Jamba Juice or something like that?

51:26Andy Greenwald:There's a lot of Jamba in it. Shout out Tyler Child.

51:28Chris Ryan:This is shot in Atlanta and set in suburban Missouri.

51:33Andy Greenwald:St. Louis area. The second episode is called Snagit.

51:36Chris Ryan:Well, I guess I was wrong. It's set in the Jamba Juice, largely. It shot Atlanta standing in for suburban St. Louis. The sky is almost white slate gray. Everything is beige. It's shot...

51:49Andy Greenwald:Beige and blue.

51:50Chris Ryan:...in a kind of shallow focus where it's just kind of these people wandering through their lives in this very almost dreamlike way. but what it makes me feel is a deep sense of nausea about living in america and it's like working watching people walk around this cemetery of cities or suburbia or wherever they're going and there's nothing there and it doesn't seem like there are any other people and they're going to jamba juices and sitting there and like looking at their phones and i actually think it just might be a world I don't want to spend any fucking time in. Now, I, like you, thought there were elements of the first episode that I kind of dug.

52:35Chris Ryan:And you know when it jumped up for me, when I kind of started to feel it? It's when Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday showed up. Because I don't know why, but I feel like their way of being antennas for Conrad's stuff and broadcasting it to me made more sense than Bateman, Cardellini, and Harbour.

52:54Andy Greenwald:Well, I think that what you're, I think one of the things that might be worth exploring is the disconnect between the script, between Stephen Conrad, the writer, and Stephen Conrad, the director. And he is the auteur of this entire series. There is a level of hyper-stylization here that sends me to Mars. I'm completely kicked out of it. And it is, maybe this is also subjective, but I like Richard Jenkins in anything. Richard Jenkins is in his 80s and is an active detective in the show. I'm like, okay, well, I guess they have a different attitude towards retirement ages in this world, but as does America.

53:29Andy Greenwald:Sure. You know, we'll elect anybody, so that's fine. The St. Louis Municipal Police Station looks like where they store crossbones in the Captain America movies. Yes. It is a cement brick tower with screens everywhere, and all interviews are done on cement boxes very far away from each other in the lobby. Yeah. And no one ever calls a lawyer. So it's layers of unreality that are being imposed on us that run in conjunction with a show that I think my sense is that people behind the show want you to feel a little bit of toxic nausea about the dead-endness of their lives. For me, it veers too far into outright scorn and mockery.

54:17Andy Greenwald:I think there's an element where we're... I was wondering if you were going to say this. We're celebrating ordinary working folks who might need a go-getter smoothie in the middle of the day. And then there's the way the camera lingers on these sort of debased, hungry, lonely people suckling at the teat of their 67 big gulp ounces of pure sherbet.

54:38Chris Ryan:Yeah.

54:38Andy Greenwald:that feels a little judgy. Maybe I'm the one judging, but I don't think so. There is a little bit of contempt and mockery at work here, and it's a fine line. Like, the character of Floyd, David Harbour's character and his performance, it's broad. And when you introduce him, ASL signing Next Abatement in a very dangerous tornado, I laughed. When he is dancing in a hip-hop intermediate children's dance class so that he can, when he is signing the side of the stage of a hip-hop and R &B festival so that he can bring some rhythmic feelings to the signing, I laugh because it's a great physical performance.

55:16Andy Greenwald:And then when he's on stage doing it and Linda Cardellini is weeping because she's so moved at how sensitive he is and how much he wants to be great, I'm out.

55:25Chris Ryan:Yes.

55:26Andy Greenwald:So it is a specific cocktail to mix the hyper-stylized with the mocking tone. it can be done and it can be done within this. But then when you add the third rail which I think you were alluding to earlier which is what I think is just a loser of a design at this point which is a show that begins with characters at the start of their journey then fast forwards to the end of the journey and then says, guess how we're going to connect the two? That is anti-story to me at this point. I am not interested in stories I don't know if that's a note that he got

56:00Chris Ryan:and that they had this weird show on their hands and they were like, we need to have a murder mystery. I think he wanted to.

56:08Andy Greenwald:We don't know.

56:09Chris Ryan:I think you might be right. There's a bit of like, how can we white lotus this to this show and make it a little bit more, and there are elements quite obviously of, it's a noir setup. It's the lovable oaf, his possibly emergent femme fatale partner and the guy who gets in the middle. The normie. Yeah. And the guy who breaks that up and, you know, everybody's got a secret. The secrets kind of like are slowly parceled out. I think there is a real unique individuality to this show that I don't want to tamper down. You know what I mean? With my criticism. but I think this is kind of like when I'm like at a stoplight and I look over and I see three, four lease signs on storefronts and then a smash burger and I'm like, you know what, man?

57:02Chris Ryan:Fuck this place. There are certain elements of like being in the muck that I like, you know, like to live and die in LA and stuff. Yeah. I don't really know if I like the muck as I like, isn't life just absolutely fucking pointless?

57:17Andy Greenwald:But also exactly like what are we learning from that? I know. People are sad and lonely and circling the drain. Yeah, dude. I mean, hello.

57:27Chris Ryan:It fucking peaked when I beat Mortal Kombat on my own and no one was there to see it. You're not wrong.

57:32Andy Greenwald:I think that the hesitation that anyone is hearing in our voice is that I would rather a hundred DTF St. Louis flowers bloom. They're not always going to hit. I mean, it's a similar thing that we said about the Sympathizer, which ultimately did not work. as a television show. But man, that was cool that they tried it and invested a lot of interesting capital and creativity into it. We're living in a world of, like the characters of DTF St. Louis, we're living in a world of shrinking margins and expectations. And so the fact that this exists is rare. And the fact that it doesn't work shouldn't be a obituary for Stephen Conrad's auteur-ish career or this type of show working on HBO.

58:18Andy Greenwald:There are a couple decisions here that I think probably sunk the whole thing. But there's also, like, I understand in watching it, it doesn't seem like an aberration. Like, I understand why everyone involved here got involved. Yeah. And for Bateman, for example, who's very, very smart about the creative management of his own career. Yes. That when the last time we saw him was with his beautiful shaggy mane being the bad boy.

58:46Chris Ryan:He was basically doing the Tom Pelfrey role of Ozark but on Black Rabbit.

58:51Andy Greenwald:Because also he lily pads studios, projects, networks because he's building, he's the rare actor who has the foresight. I think he's building his career reel in a way that other people don't either have the foresight or the ability to do. I'm going to play a normal guy.

59:08Chris Ryan:Did you see the thing that came up in the news where it's his production company is making a show for Netflix with Jacob Turney who made He's a Rivalry about a teenage Alexander the Great and his being a student of Aristotle.

59:23Andy Greenwald:Yes.

59:24Chris Ryan:That's fucking crazy. Like that's how you build it all up. Yeah.

59:29Andy Greenwald:And honestly, you know what? It'll be the lead thing. He's going to live a long and healthy life, but like his number one career credit globally will be the voice of the Sardonic Fox in the Zootopia movies.

59:40Chris Ryan:I don't think that'll be the lead of his obit.

59:42Andy Greenwald:First of all, he's going to live it long enough that the generation of young people who are like absolutely in love with this sardonic fox, and I'm speaking from household experience, they will be the ones writing this obituary and they will be like, Nick the fox has left us. I promise you that. That is like the most successful movie in the history of China. It's Utopia 2. Take a long drink of water. We have to think about watching that. Anyway, so I see why he did it. He's building something here. He gets to play a normal guy in a different way than he has been. And David Harbour is a freak of an actor.

1:00:18Andy Greenwald:And it's been really interesting to watch his career develop because you and I remember like the first 10 years of it where he was just like, he was the, not leading man, but he was kind of like the straight news anchor guy who had a secret. Or like walk among the tombstones and shit. Yeah, he was a great. There's a dark shadow to it, but it was playing off of the fact that he looked like the most normal guy ever. And now there's a mania to the way that he rips into some of these parts that's really compelling on screen and sympathetic. Like, I think he's making someone who's a real person and not a cartoon.

1:00:51Andy Greenwald:But, man, the unreality of it and the relentless unreality of it just broke me.

1:00:57Chris Ryan:Yeah, and I also, you know, I think coming off of the, if we're talking about it from an HBO perspective, coming off the adrenaline shot of industry and the economy of A Night of the Seven Kingdoms, I was not ready for a kind of dull 57 minute show. And I definitely felt it. And that's, that's a me problem more than anything else. But it's interesting when your habits go in different directions because of what's being programmed to you. And I found myself really being like, is there another fucking scene in this? Like, what is happening?

1:01:35Andy Greenwald:We don't need to tell these guys how to do their job. They're the best at what they do. And it's not easy to find things that fit this template. But I would say that just from a value sensibility, but also ultimately a quality sensibility, it would behoove them so much more to have three to four baby industries in the hopper. Maybe they do. More than three or four splashy one and dones. you know like and again you can't talk about the success of industry which we talk about frequently without talking about the relative uniqueness of its development process that show exists because they were exploring low cost co-pros co-pros especially in the in the thick of the pandemic and no one who signed that deal including Mickey and Conrad at the start of it would have thought that they would be heading into their fifth and final season as a flagship anchor show of HBO Sunday night Sure.

1:02:31Andy Greenwald:Line up.

1:02:32Chris Ryan:Sure.

1:02:33Andy Greenwald:The ceiling of this, of a DTF St. Louis, I guess, is you capture the zeitgeist and the imagination and the conversation for a few weeks like a White Lotus and you get a lot of love around Emmy time. But I don't know if that juice is worth the squeeze.

1:02:46Chris Ryan:I'll be, if I stick with the show, it's going to be to see to what extent what we're watching in these early episodes is changed with any kind of suggestion that there are unreliable narrators in this. Now, the POV of it. I mean, I feel like in the course of the second episode, like, you know, like there's mystery developments that suggest we'll get different looks at different characters over the course of the next five weeks, if you wanted to keep watching through episode seven. But tonally, I think I have a high hurdle to clear to do it.

1:03:20Andy Greenwald:For me, the last straw was to your point, like, yes, the possibility of a structure like this is unreliability, seeing truth play out in opposition to a cover story or a narrative. This episode showed us in flashback the more aggressive behavior of Linda Cardellini's character in ensnaring Jason Bateman's character. The episode ends with Richard Jenkins being like, he seduced her. And then the other cop saying, no, he didn't. She seduced him because I went to Jamba Juice.

1:03:57Chris Ryan:Yeah.

1:03:57Andy Greenwald:We saw that.

1:03:58Chris Ryan:Yeah.

1:03:58Andy Greenwald:That wasn't an episode ending revelation. It was just not interesting to me on a dramatic level for that reason.

1:04:04Chris Ryan:This actually works as a footnote to the conversation we just had. I think so. Bill Lawrence does not need our thumbs up because Bill Lawrence has multiple incredibly popular series on television right now. He is obviously one of the minds behind Ted Lasso. He does Shrinking also for Apple TV. He does Bad Monkey for Apple TV. he has now got the show Rooster on HBO Scrubs reboot I guess because he's at Warner Brothers

1:04:32Andy Greenwald:he's not involved in day to day but that was his show

1:04:34Chris Ryan:he's minted he doesn't need nobody cares really what we think and we have obviously never really commented on Trinking I would say Trinking is just not not for me it's a little too saccharine for me I think that I enjoy utopian found family like everybody basically gets along stuff in a 22 minute sitcom. I don't really love it as a dramedy. And I find, I find his shows to be also existing in a, in a realm that I am not familiar with, I guess is. Yeah, sure. Or, you know, like I think even as Ted Lasso went on, I was just like, this is just kind of silly. Rooster is a campus comedy, campus dramedy, I guess, set in a New England liberal arts college.

1:05:36Chris Ryan:Steve Carell is a famous, I guess, would you say he's like a mystery author or like a kind of, seems like Mike Hammer, you know?

1:05:43Andy Greenwald:He's kind of inspired by Carl Hiaasen. Okay. Who wrote Bad Monkey in the sense that he's like a nice regular guy who writes sort of... Crime novels.

1:05:51Chris Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. and he's got a daughter who is in a relationship she's a teacher at that college and she's in a relationship with another professor that relationship has just come to an end Carell shows up kind of to help her out but also to do a reading at the school where he meets a huge as Bill Lawrence's want usually you just get an immediate 10 person bench circulating through the show it's a lot of banter it's a lot of quips it's ultimately got a very warm heart for the most part and I was curious about, there are elements of this show that I'm curious about and I could see myself sticking around for a couple of weeks but the central kind of like I don't really see people, I see a bunch of really fun one-liners to one another and the one-liners trump any stakes of any scene, kind of.

1:06:54Chris Ryan:So even if the daughter character has burned down someone's house or the president or the dean of the college likes to walk around naked and stuff like that, it all is like, wouldn't that be funny? But it has no consequences. So I don't know. I didn't really love this, but I wasn't sure how you felt.

1:07:13Andy Greenwald:Yeah, I have no malice in my heart when I say I hated this show. Fatality. But it's okay. Everybody, it's okay. Finish him. There are actual problems in the world. Yeah, sure. And this is not one of them. You know, I don't know if you ever watched this. This is, I think it's available streaming on HBO Max, but there's the show Chopped, where they get the mystery basket of ingredients. Yeah, I never liked Chopped. Okay, well, bear with me for a second.

1:07:34Chris Ryan:Okay, no, I'm just saying, I was thinking about this the other day with Top Chef, and I never liked Chopped.

1:07:38Andy Greenwald:Oh, we haven't even talked about Top Chef yet. I'll just say, if you gave me a basket with all of the ingredients of the show, including many of the actors, I would be delighted and think that I was in line for a really nice plate of food, and then I just hated the dish. Right. I found it just completely cloying and uninterested in committing to any genuine moment of hardship or emotion or frankly, comedy. I've seen other reviews of it and I just, I mean, I don't want to piggyback, but I agree with them where they're like, it kind of is a campus comedy, but not really. It kind of is a father and daughter, girl dad, coming of age kind of thing, but it kind of runs away from that too.

1:08:21Andy Greenwald:It seems like maybe Steve Carell was pitched an opportunity to shade his familiar sitcom presence a little bit with some more dramatic notes, which he is good at playing. But at least in the early going, kind of leans away from those as well. His post office career is so fascinating. Do you feel like it's been, because I think broadly speaking, he is beloved and also talented enough to diversify. Like he's taken on many different types of roles. I can't help but feel like he probably doesn't ever want to do six to seven years of Michael Scott again.

1:08:58Chris Ryan:You know what I mean? Not Michael Scott literally, but like I think that he has tried a bunch of different things that almost seem engineered not to last forever. But like Space Force was something I did not care for. Then he's done a couple of dramatic turns and things like The Morning Show. I guess you could call his performance in Mountainhead comedic, but not entirely.

1:09:19Andy Greenwald:he was also good in the four seasons the four seasons

1:09:22Chris Ryan:yeah what was the show with Domo Gleason oh the patient the patient that was interesting just a really interesting wide ranging kind of wandering bit of post office stuff I will still say that the funniest he has ever been is standing in the background of the scene in 40 year old virgin where Kevin Hart and Romany Malco get into a fight at smart tech

1:09:45Andy Greenwald:I hear that but I would say when's the last is this your boy

1:09:48Chris Ryan:You just got fucked up with him.

1:09:50Andy Greenwald:When's the last time you watched his Between Two Ferns? Oh, I don't, I can't, not, not a long time. Should we watch Chris watch that? No, but that's, that is maybe, maybe we peaked as a society then. The other thing. Only in 20s. Shout out, shout out. I think it was in The Hollywood Reporter. This might've been a Daniel Feinberg thing where he was basically like Daniel Deadweiler, who we love in Station Eleven, is on the show as someone who is desperate to sleep with Steve Carell. Yes. And then is hurt when he rejects her. I believe his point in the review was that she is not a seasoning. She is the dish.

1:10:24Andy Greenwald:And it's good to see that she has been cast as the lead in Ryan Coogler's reboot of The X-Files.

1:10:28Chris Ryan:It's very good. She's fucking awesome.

1:10:30Andy Greenwald:When she's on the screen, it's like, oh, that's a... I'd like to watch this show. Yeah, she's one of my favorite actors, probably. I don't want to be cynical about it, but maybe the way to bring things full circle is that... And maybe this speaks to the future... Maybe we'll be wrong about the viability of HBO and its unique and established programming culture under the Paramount umbrella because they have been survivors. Because you could look at this show quite cynically and say, Bill Lawrence has been under a very rich overall deal at Warner Brothers for a very long time and has had this career resurgence selling Warner Brothers shows to other streamers.

1:11:12Andy Greenwald:And it would have been malpractice if someone within the company didn't say, why can't we buy one of these shows and do a shrinking for us? Sure. And you get Steve Carell involved and you get all, and suddenly it's an HBO show. There is nothing about this show that has the DNA of what an HBO comedy has been under this regime and Amy Gravid and Casey and anything. That doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. I would say the same thing about The Penguin or Dune Prophecy or whatever it's called. And those are doing fine. It is good business to make, to bring this stuff into it.

1:11:46Chris Ryan:Do you have prophecy back? Yes. Wow.

1:11:49Andy Greenwald:Prophecy wasn't done. No. We still don't know.

1:11:53Chris Ryan:We don't know. We just can't be sure. Is it really Paul?

1:11:57Andy Greenwald:I think we're pretty sure. Well, I don't know. Apparently it's going to be Michael B. Jordan, not Paul at the Oscars next week. Anyway, I don't think the reason to review or to like or dislike Rooster is to judge their programming decisions, but I understand why it's on their air, and it's fine. And if you like those other shows, which we are allergic to, there's probably something to be charmed by here. Briefly, let's just hit Top Chef. I don't want to do it briefly, but I know we're out of time.

1:12:20Chris Ryan:Well, it's not even out of time as much as my worry that people were not aware that Top Chef is the first episode is currently sitting there on Peacock for you to watch. Can't wait. A lot of ink spilled about Survivor these last couple weeks. Survivor 50 is back and it's pretty fucking good. I gotta admit. It's definitely relit my Survivor candle.

1:12:39Andy Greenwald:Is it good? It's just a high level of gameplay. Torch is right there for you. You said Candle?

1:12:45Chris Ryan:Oh yeah, I guess I did.

1:12:46Andy Greenwald:You want to run that back? No.

1:12:47Chris Ryan:Let's just live with it. Works and all. Yeah.

1:12:51Andy Greenwald:Has it been good? High level of gameplay.

1:12:53Chris Ryan:Just like everybody knows exactly how to play Survivor.

1:12:55Andy Greenwald:But is it an all-star season? It is.

1:12:57Chris Ryan:But it's from across all 50 seasons. So there's people there from the first. There's the woman who won last season is on. A couple episodes of that have gone on. It's got a lot of press. Obviously, I did not. I think I was a little bit mixed on mixed is a kind thing to say. I was not super into where Top Chef was going. I personally felt like I felt a budget crunch on that show where it was like a lot of shooting stuff on sound stages. I felt like there was a lot of inane cross-promotional quick-fire challenges. We laughed when it was the minions. It just feels like we're getting minionsed out.

1:13:40Chris Ryan:this new season is in the Carolinas yep it's Kristen's what like third season hosting within about 10 minutes I was like it's Top Chef's fucking back and it was I realized that because my wife and I were yelling at the screen as if it was the finale we were like oh my god and oh she's she's not gonna make it and like that level of intensity and also a couple of dicks in the cast, like people who are like, I really am here to bust some heads, is kind of a new thing for this show after a few years of just being like, hey, everybody's really trying to help each other out.

1:14:19Andy Greenwald:Yeah.

1:14:19Chris Ryan:And I just, I'm so excited to see this thing return to form.

1:14:23Andy Greenwald:It is so back. This was an excellent premiere. I think it's interesting, though, what you said about feeling a budget crunch because I would say I continue to feel it. I don't know. I mean, one of the reasons why.

1:14:33Chris Ryan:Booking in Quickfire was pretty impressive.

1:14:35Andy Greenwald:Well, there's no shame in the fact that Top Chef is, its locations are about chasing tax breaks and like which areas in which states will allow them to film there and give them the promotional opportunities to do things like at Motor Speedway.

1:14:48Chris Ryan:Do you have a Whole Foods seems to be a top requirement.

1:14:51Andy Greenwald:But I would also note that there is some other, there's some changes behind the scenes like San Pellegrino is no longer sponsoring them. Graza Olive Oil, which by the way, thank you everyone in the east side of Los Angeles for giving this stupid squirt bottle oil company enough money to sponsor our favorite cooking show. You've done a service you've done a service you fucking

1:15:12Andy Greenwald:Instagram lemmings you bought us another season of our shit no it's fine but like is it more expensive than like yes because they were like put it in a squirt bottle and everyone's like oh shit I don't find olive oil that affordable

1:15:24Chris Ryan:it's not affordable yeah

1:15:26Andy Greenwald:especially now they have to sponsor Top Chef it's great

1:15:29Chris Ryan:I may need it to fuel my car pretty soon

1:15:31Andy Greenwald:that's a great point um so squirt the gratza in the Audi Come on, baby. I also noted that it appears that BMW is no longer ferrying them around, so they no longer get into their cars and go, BMW, drive me to Whole Foods. Oh, yeah, I noticed that. It doesn't matter. We're not here to, like, check, you know, to see if they're still financially solvent. Whatever the case may be, there seemed to be an embrace of what they have as opposed to what they don't have. And the biggest change, we're one episode in. We're going to watch the season. Hopefully, we'll talk to Gail at the end of it. The biggest change I think is in a subtle shift in the editorial POV of the show.

1:16:10Andy Greenwald:It used to be that the judges were the hammers. They stepped in at the end and there was a strong pipeline, as I'm sure there will continue to be, of esteemed guests and chefs and legendary people that made everyone feel nervous. I don't know whether it's the changing times. I don't know whether it's the changing nature of the hosts. but this is fully Kristen's show now in a way that is remarkable and it also reminds me now not of other cooking competitions that we've talked about before but it feels a little Great British Baking Show Great British Baking Show has a more mellow familial the judges aren't our friends but they're kind of like our extended family and the role the way Tom and Gail and Kristen acted throughout this episode being there from the quick fire being there at the end the way Tom was like actually I still think this was the best expression of the sweet potato

1:17:03Chris Ryan:I thought that was bullshit

1:17:04Andy Greenwald:even though it might have been even though she didn't get you know left a ring mold on it that all felt a little warmer and friendlier and more nurturing in a way that was interesting and the thing the secret sauce of Kristen who is an absolutely unique talent like an absolute unicorn in that she won the show is clearly an elite cook but is also an exceptional TV person who is just effortless at being what appears to be her real self. The promise of hiring her was always so you had someone in that chair who could relate. And they ran towards this moment in the premiere in a way that was really moving.

1:17:38Andy Greenwald:If you haven't watched it, stop. Kaya. And Kaya, feel free to... Kaya's honestly dozing right now. She smells of coconut oil and is just kind of...

1:17:49Chris Ryan:There's a moment in the first episode where... And I thought this was a fantastic challenge because it immediately tied the show to the region where they're given all these different, this is the sweet potato challenge. And so they're given all these different kinds of sweet potatoes. They get assigned different ones. Different people have like, they're like, fuck, this is like a really starchy, bland sweet potato. The other one, some people are like, you barely have to do anything to this sweet potato. At the end, Nana, who's one of the chefs, basically has like a time crunch. like she tried to do too many things.

1:18:28Chris Ryan:She is the aforementioned person who left a ring mold in one of her bowls. And if plating mattered, it would be like a disqualifying thing. And plating sometimes does matter. You know, the end of her service or the end of her cook is just chaotic. I think some dishes are unfinished or whatever, but certainly like just a mess. There is also a chef named...

1:18:51Andy Greenwald:Nana has like a panic attack.

1:18:53Chris Ryan:Yeah, and she also has a panic attack while she's about to serve.

1:18:56Andy Greenwald:which the judges who are awaiting her dish notice and Kristen in her empathy gets up and goes to her.

1:19:02Chris Ryan:Yes, and I thought that was, without putting too fine a point on it, a defining moment for Kristen's hosting of the show where I've, you know, in the past, like, you know, you can see her tearing up as she has to, like, let people go and, you know, obviously has, like, a real emotional connection to what these people are experiencing. But she calmed Nana down. told her to take a beat, have her come back out. And then I thought crucially what happened was they serve this, they're going in sets of three and then the judges along with Sean Brock and some other guest judges are ranking live who they want, who wins versus one, two, three.

1:19:49Chris Ryan:Tom puts Nana first and Kristen is like, really? and I thought that was awesome because it was she was kind of like I definitely feel for her as a person but let's be real there was a a cooking mold in my in a dish yes and I was when I was watching it I was like that should that should be disqualifying right? like you leave a piece of metal in somebody's dish that should probably be disqualified instead it's this woman Day who made like an undercooked fish and

1:20:19Andy Greenwald:but she made it it tasted like a soap bar yes she piled it and put a bunch of

1:20:23Chris Ryan:Herb de Promonts on it. So I thought it was just a great, great, great start to the season.

1:20:28Andy Greenwald:And to your point, maybe this is a little bit more, they have steered away from intramural shenanigans, you know, in terms of the chef testants competing against each other, disliking each other, having any tension. And this season, they not only have identical twin brothers competing, they have a husband and wife. Yes. They're not actually, they're lifelong partners. Business and personal romantic partners.

1:20:51Chris Ryan:I hope they're still romantic partners after going on reality television together. Exactly.

1:20:55Andy Greenwald:So there's a little bit more opportunity for some shenanigans, but I don't know. There have been good seasons, but they like hit it really hard in a way that was exciting. If you had won the quick fire.

1:21:04Chris Ryan:Is this watch after dark?

1:21:05Andy Greenwald:Yeah, sure. I know they want to. I want to see the. All right, so it looks for listening. You're glowing. That's the thing. Skincare?

1:21:12Chris Ryan:Drop the regime. No. You know, I went on jam session once and talked about my skincare routine.

1:21:18Andy Greenwald:I have a hard time listening to you on other podcasts. do you it's not because I don't enjoy you but I feel left out and I talk back that's sweet the Sicario podcast was elite I did listen to that

1:21:28Chris Ryan:did you talk back to it you were like go off king shut up Sean

1:21:33Andy Greenwald:CR month jeez I wanted to ask you this for After Dark had you won this is Top Chef related but I don't think it's spoiling anything the opening quick fires at the motor speedway NASCAR the winning chefs their prize I think they get some cash but they also get a lap in the front seat of the car.

1:21:53Chris Ryan:Get up to 170.

1:21:54Andy Greenwald:Would you have eagerly accepted that win? Yes, yes.

1:21:58Chris Ryan:Yeah. I have gotten up to 100 in a car, I think around 100. What's the fastest you've ever driven?

1:22:06Andy Greenwald:Probably with you on the New Jersey Turnpike once in 2003.

1:22:10Chris Ryan:I think I was once in high school and I was on the Blue Route and I got up to 100 just to see if it would happen.

1:22:16Andy Greenwald:Was it before the Blue Route was officially open? It kind of was that vibe.

1:22:20Chris Ryan:You know, it was like the Autobahn.

1:22:23Andy Greenwald:Except Pennsylvania Dutch, not actually German.

1:22:26Chris Ryan:I haven't really pushed it like that. Every once in a while on the two, we see what we can get up to when it's real open.

1:22:32Andy Greenwald:I want to begin by saying, unsurprisingly, I would have said thank you, no thank you to that opportunity to be in the car. You still haven't answered what's the fastest you've ever driven. Oh, I mean... 65? I think 66 once. A couple of comments here. One, I think the only... I want to be straight with you. Like if I were a for hire political consultant, I would bring you the oppo research on you, which would be limited because you are beloved for good reason. Yeah, but I have some skeletons. It's not the skeletons in your closet. It's the one, I think your one vulnerability from the left and the right is your casual abuse of automotive laws.

1:23:13Chris Ryan:They come up sometimes on this podcast. I'm not entirely sure. When's the last time you've seen anybody get pulled over on a highway?

1:23:20Andy Greenwald:like seen in front of me for speeding or whatever it happens very rarely yeah so why have speed limits

1:23:26Chris Ryan:we're not going to enforce them

1:23:28Andy Greenwald:whoa

1:23:29Chris Ryan:everybody's like running me off the road anyway so like why are we even pretending like there's a speed limit either go full surveillance minority report and start like ticketing everybody for with a camera in the sky or just fucking give it up man and let us rock

1:23:43Andy Greenwald:this is this is an incredible platform and then let's get

1:23:45Chris Ryan:super road warrior with it let's soup up our cars and take like the safety plates like the restrictor's off, you know?

1:23:51Andy Greenwald:I don't think this is Nithya's platform to improve Los Angeles.

1:23:54Chris Ryan:Could I get to the Central Valley in 30 minutes if I got my car just up enough?

1:24:00Andy Greenwald:Now, as a point of comparison, what I do is I just nobly, some have said, just set a model for the other people how to behave. By getting into the fast lane and driving the exact speed limit? Oh, I don't go in the fast lane. You don't? Oh, yes, I do. But one change for me is, you know, with these, with these, the way cars are, my children, especially my younger daughter in the back seat, it's like looking at the Google Maps display and will comment if the number ever goes red. Because, you know, it's like, it says you're driving 66 or 67 or 68 in a 65 mile zone. They love to comment.

1:24:41Chris Ryan:They like to be like, you're going too fast. Yes. Real quick.

1:24:44Andy Greenwald:Yeah.

1:24:45Chris Ryan:Imagine these lights have a green tint now. you think Jalen Carter will be on the Eagles when we do the pit and the industry mailbag on Thursday okay

1:24:55Andy Greenwald:that's all I got do you think AJ Brown will be on the Eagles when we do our podcast on Thursday yes

1:24:58Chris Ryan:no I don't you don't I don't I think Alec Pierce re-signing with the Colts

1:25:03Andy Greenwald:clears the path to the Patriots to making the trade

1:25:06Chris Ryan:I mean I haven't looked at ESPN it could have already happened

1:25:08Andy Greenwald:I don't think anything's happened

1:25:09Chris Ryan:this is the kind of reporting that the world needs right now

1:25:12Andy Greenwald:the Falcons signed Jahan Dotson oh and Tua uh yeah

1:25:17Chris Ryan:Thanks to everybody for listening. I think this has been... I thought we started out really strong today. The end is gone.

1:25:24Andy Greenwald:Not so great.

1:25:25Chris Ryan:I think it's just been... You gave me pause. I don't want to make it sound like I'm an unsafe driver.

1:25:31Andy Greenwald:I'm dinging you up in the primary ahead of the general.

1:25:33Chris Ryan:That's right. Our iron sharpens iron.

1:25:36Andy Greenwald:You know what I mean? Yeah, you will be a far better candidate.

1:25:38Chris Ryan:Janet Mills and Graham just going at it so that he emerges. Am I fucking Janet Mills?

1:25:44Andy Greenwald:You're older. I was hand selected and put on this podcast but to be the institutionalist and yet

1:25:53Chris Ryan:thanks to Kaya thanks to Kai we will be back on Thursday as I said The Pit we didn't really talk about the last episode and we'll have a new one to talk about and we have your wonderful questions about the television show industry

1:26:06Andy Greenwald:and your questions about the tattoos Chris is hiding under that shirt goodbye

1:26:15We'll be right back.