Paramount Settles States’ Antitrust Lawsuit. Plus, ‘Lanterns’ Episode 6.

22:16He chases something bigger, the power shift of economic gravity to Miami.

22:23Andy Greenwald:Sorry, I just... You just look like Mitch McConnell. I just felt like Mitch McConnell. You're Mitched. I Mitched. But more in the sense that, like, maybe... Hey, no disrespect, by the way. No, I'm just saying that maybe... He's a powerful statesman. A great lion, but perhaps it's past his time. You know what I mean? That's how I feel when you tell me about stuff like that. So this is HBO deepening its relationship with the Ozark coaching tree, because currently Chris Mundy is showrunning Lanterns. And this series comes to us from Bill Dubuque, who kind of had the original germ of the idea and worked on Ozark.

22:53Andy Greenwald:Officially co-creator of Ozark. Uh-huh. And there was a bidding war between Netflix, Amazon, and HBO. The latter one with a rare-for-them straight-to-series offer. Apparently, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount, Apple, right? Yeah. All of them. All of them. All the riches. My subhead here is Billionaire Boys Club. Mm-hmm. I'm going to get a laugh for that? It's good. HBO has made something of a - I'm sorry. Hold on. Say it again. Billionaire Boys Club. Oh! Actually, I didn't hear you say it. I thought you said boys the first time. I noted that HBO has made something of a late period business documenting the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

23:32Not to say that, you know, like over the course of the network's lifespan, they've dabbled, but White Lotus Succession, Big Little Lies, the upcoming Mac show, How to Survive Without Me, seems like it's about relatively well-off people. I ask you, Andy, whether Oz, whether the working women of Sex and the City and girls, you know, like... This show, the spread... People just trying to make it...

23:54Andy Greenwald:This show, this might be a good show. Javier Bardem is involved. Yeah. Like, I, you and I both enjoy content set in South Florida. Yes. Literary, televisual, movies, whatever. So, Good Bones, promising, absolutely not passing any judgment on a show that we have no idea about. It sounds like industry in Florida. It is a, and it's very clear also why it was a hot package, and so we're not, we're not commenting on that. But if you take a step back, I, this is part optimism, and also I do think there's some evidence to considering things this way. That, you know, the deal, the development happens in one era of history and in the world.

24:36Andy Greenwald:The deal-making happens in another. And then the shows are released in a different one. And I have to say, if there are two words that make me less interested in something in art, work, or life, it's visionary billionaire. Because fucking show me one. Well, you know what? It depends on the treatment of that visionary billionaire. Well, I'm going to go... The excesses of succession and the excesses of industry feel different than, say, the excesses of billions, you know? Absolutely great point. But I don't think that the logline for succession would have been the three visionary junior billionaires of the Logan Roy family struggle to communicate their vision in the teeming power, sexy power structure of Manhattan.

25:20Andy Greenwald:Right. It was about fail sons and a fail daughter. That's not how they pitched it. They were like, it's the Murdochs. Well, you have insight into them, But it is a soap opera with, and also when you hire Jesse Armstrong, you understand that there's going to be a political and comedic point of view brought to it. Sure. I think that having this much of our entertainment valorizing the 1 % and that idea of there being some sort of interesting aspect to how deeply fucked we are. Sorry, maybe this is the through line through this episode. I think it's a misread of the populace. Yeah. I'm not being, I'm not trying to just be a bomb thrower here.

26:01Andy Greenwald:I think that there is always going to be a place for escapism in our entertainment. And that is a key plank of what a lot of these richer streamers offer. I mean, in their way, like Margot's Got Money Troubles on Apple, for example, is ostensibly about a young woman who is in such dire financial straits that she turns to OnlyFans to do it. But there's also a version of telling the story of that show in which it is an incredibly rich package with famous people, you know, angling for Emmys to play people who are a little bit downtrodden. Like it is, again, a kind of a top down way of telling a story.

26:36Andy Greenwald:And this is not me trying to like, you know, do a drive by on David E. Kelly, who's one of the greatest writers of the medium's history. I'm just saying that like, to your point, this is not, this is not the wire. This is not bottom up storytelling in that way. And, And I think that it has been a successful plank of Casey's stewardship of HBO to make sure that the people who watch Real Housewives will have an HBO show that has some of the same temperament, which is the White Lotus. I would like to see more Pitt and less of whatever's happening in Elysium. I think you can have both. You can have both.

27:14somewhere i think mayor of east town and task i think yes you know the pit obviously like you can tell stories that are about the 99 of people out there i just really think the the i'd love to understand what it is psychologically about having shows about the filthy rich that feels good for people you know like well yeah because i think i think there's some things that are about it that are like it's just really convenient that the roys in succession can always fly private because it allows them to globetrot in a way that's you know televisually incredibly enticing and also it's like yeah you know jeremy strong is not we don't have to shoot him in a public airport or yeah whatever you know like there's a certain kind of like mechanics that gets baked into the storytelling itself so i think my point of even to bring that up is just like every one of these shows can be good or bad based on its own merits but your overall idea yeah that um based on the development cycle and the the amount of time it takes to get things from we've bought an idea to it's on the air we could be living in a completely different world by then i i think we might not

28:28Andy Greenwald:have any diesel left so like right i'm saying like do you are you particularly interested that's why i'd like to pitch my show called diesel about franklin diesel the guy who invented diesel played I Vin Diesel. I think that I think that that might be like if we are rationing gas in a year and, you know, so then to have Javier Bardem be like, hmm, I'm a visionary. I'll fly two planes today. Like that is kind of discordant. But my point is the reason we communicate or connect with anything is for is the opportunity to see threads of common humanity. And the thing about succession wasn't just that they didn't have to film in Burbank on a Friday afternoon, which is the Burbank airport, which is pretty rough.

29:10Andy Greenwald:It was also because... They're refurbishing, by the way. I've heard. But that also looked like AI. And I was like, where is this new terminal? And how do I get there? I did see that. It was like a news report in there. Like this beautiful new terminal has arrived at Burbank. What? Did Claude draw this for you? Are you in The Mandalorian? It was very confusing. Yeah. But it was to see in succession that like, it wasn't all comedy. It was like, oh my God, The ones who are making all these decisions that affect us on election night are even more flawed than we are. Yeah. Right. And that was both chilling and funny and normalizing, equalizing and a peek behind the curtain.

29:50Andy Greenwald:And there is another strain of television which has plenty of value, which is just like, isn't it cool that they have nice watches? And that's sort of the problem I have with like your friends and neighbors, which I think, you know, just requires. Flirts with the idea of like. This incredibly rich guy. Yeah. Is stealing from the other incredibly rich guys in order. So he can stay incredibly rich. And that's where the commentary ends. Right. It is a shared understanding compact with the audience that being a master of the universe with really, really nice golf clubs in Westchester. I mean, that's a must.

30:24Andy Greenwald:So you have to have that. And if you assume that that's the floor and anything else on top of it is fun. And I don't find that compelling on a dramatic or human level. Look, maybe I'm wrong. You know, maybe President Vance will make this feel good for everybody. But I'm just saying. He has a human touch that's just like, he can just kind of communicate matters of the heart to the masses. Make us understand what matters most. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects.

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32:07Andy Greenwald:Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Speaking of HBO. Yep. And this is like an example of, I suppose, HBO making a show that covers the spectrum of human and superhuman experience. Let's talk about Lanterns. Let's talk about the sixth episode. Yep. Bad Optics. Bad Optics is the name of it. It was written by Justin Brick Gibson and Damon Lindelof. So of special interest to us, given you have personal relationships with Justin and we both know Damon.

32:42Andy Greenwald:Yes, friends with both. And these were the brain trust behind the Star Wars movie project that I was lucky enough to work on briefly. Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, Obi-Wan, you know, it was. Obi-Wan came back. Let's let's talk about this from a picking up the pieces perspective, because in some ways, I think Episode five acted as a kind of finale. so episode six is a first episode of the last two. I mean, I know a first episode of the last three episodes, but a first episode in and of itself. You know what I mean? Like a soft relaunch even. Sure. What did you think of Detective Jon Stewart in our contemporary time trying to figure out what happened to his buddy Hal?

33:29Andy Greenwald:Can I just start with one kind of Mitch McConnell-y thing, which is a little bit like, you know what? Let's not say Mitch McConnell. Let's say like a Ryan Kirkering. Let's make it really like universal, like a Phillies thing. Let's just talk about a worrying loss in velocity and command that I would like to cop to. Okay. Which is I cannot believe that I didn't, maybe neither of us, or maybe you said it on Midnight Boys, didn't understand that the alt-Hal that lives inside the ring was the way to have Kyle Chandler on the show going forward. Oh, we discussed it, yeah. I mean, I actually thought that the Hal in the box was the Sentry, but I was aware that the Sentry was going to be in the mix.

34:05Andy Greenwald:I'm worried frankly that that didn't even like come across my radar as like oh I see what the fix is going to be you kind of are getting at something that I think is part of the charm of Lanterns for me which is the multiple experiences you can have with it and they are the three leads to me Aaron Pierre, Kyle Chandler and Kelly McDonald are so engaging and charming to me that sometimes I miss little blips of lore of connective tissue, of storytelling building blocks that are important to keep in mind. So yeah, I did not think that Kyle Chandler was no longer going to be on the show or would only be a corpse.

34:46Andy Greenwald:Yes. You know, this episode does something kind of fascinating. It continues to have references to things that have happened off screen. For instance, Hal's jail sentence, which may or may not have been terrestrial, and his return to Rushville, his amends process that he's making amends process with the people there although that didn't work and then his romance with uh Sheriff Carey it also has um I guess a decade of Jon Stewart's life that goes by where he becomes an architect reconnects with one of his brothers well and bankrolls another bankrolls another and becomes incredibly alienated from his parents yeah who uh in turn his mother becomes close to hal jordan um in a in a friendship way one would assume and it's just a tremendous amount of work going off on off screen and it's jasmine cephas jones right who plays so have there been any hamilton say no to this hal jordan kind of mashups would you like to make one i mean i think we have different algorithms but I have not seen that yet.

35:55Yeah.

35:55Andy Greenwald:All right. I assume that exists. Talk to me about the difficulties of having this much action happening off screen. Well, I want to start with a positive, which is Aaron Paul is playing a different character at a different point in his life. And I thought that was really impressive. He is just, he's physically changed. His demeanor has changed. His access to his humor and his emotions have changed. His facial hair has changed. His facial hair has definitely changed in that he has some now. And he is just, that's hard to do. I mean, I know it's on one level it's acting, but it's also impressive because what he was doing in the first block was very, very aggressively a choice.

36:32Andy Greenwald:And it was very similar to his Rebel Ridge character, which is sort of ex-military and buttoned up and very intense. And so it was nice to see him let the air out a little bit. And that in and of itself was a reminder of one of the things that I find both compelling on a structural level, but also slightly frustrating on a week-to-week level of the series, which is it is clearly made to be accomplishing a lot more in every episode, to be accomplishing a lot more than what you see in that episode. There are a lot of things that I would imagine would reward or flatter a rewatch. There are a lot of things that are connected inevitably to larger James Gunn storytelling, but also future seasons of Lantern storytelling.

37:12Andy Greenwald:even the things that I didn't enjoy in the moment in previous week's episode you know I definitely have the feeling that they will make more sense in the fullness of time in terms of you know characters getting short shrift in the big explosions and stuff so it 100 % just might be a subjective like I want more now without having to bank on later thing or maybe I'm just impatient I guess I was happier with this episode in some ways than previous episode because it just lived where it was. It was picking up these pieces. And I didn't necessarily miss seeing Oa or I didn't necessarily miss seeing Hal's prison sentence.

37:51Andy Greenwald:That said, and I'm curious where you netted out on this. I, maybe I'm not being an attentive viewer here because I came out of that last episode being like. The one prior to this. The prior, the giant explosions episode, the Rushville denouement. I was like, this is a catastrophic outcome. You know, they are definitely showing the destruction. But I did not think that this was going to be, you know, the last hurrah of Hal Jordan. That this was the end of his career as a lantern, that he would be going to prison for what he did there. Did you have a similar discordant reaction? or have we just, have I just been Sokovia pilled and it's nice to see consequences for mass destruction in a comic book show and we hadn't seen, we're not used to seeing that.

38:36Yeah, I think it's also cool the way that they're doing the timeline. You pointed out, Pierre, but I thought it was cool to see like a kind of same jacket, but sad guy at the diner working on some pancakes and kind of looking like the kind of dude who's just been nailed to a barstool for 10 years, but obviously has just been run through the ringer. You know, there are some elements of this episode that I found at least initially like either distracting or convenient, whether it's the diner waitress who wants reparations for what happened to her family and is trying to blackmail John. Although it's unclear who she would be blackmailing him to.

39:20I guess Sheriff Carey.

39:22Andy Greenwald:I guess. Would she tell Guy Gardner? I don't know who would. Well, I don't, right. Like, I don't know how to be a regular cop or a space cop, but it seems to me that it's fairly plausible that he would punch him and not shoot him. Well, it's, whatever Hal knew about what was going on in Rushville and what was going to happen to him, he was like, you can't tell anybody that you were here. That's right. That's the last thing he says to him in that scene. Whether that means protect your mother or protect your parents or something, like, I don't know. I would imagine, though, this show makes it look real easy to get in and out of rural Nebraska.

39:57Andy Greenwald:You know what I mean? That was a good question I had. So are we supposed to imagine that in this fake or D.C. version of the United States, I was under the impression that Midway, which is where he is in the beginning of the episode, is Chicago. I think that's a fair assumption. Like, Coast City is kind of Seattle, I think. And, like, Metropolis is New York. What is that, like a 10-hour drive to somewhere in Nebraska from Chicago? It's Gotham, Philly. I thought Gotham was New York. Well, Gotham is New York, but Metropolis is New York. So we have two New Yorks. We have like a shiny one and a dark one.

40:31So it's Philly.

40:32Andy Greenwald:Jets, Giants, yeah. Sure, so it's New Jersey. Yeah, regardless of whether it's like a fast drive or not, I guess it - Didn't bother me, but yes, yeah. I just meant that like surely in 2026, even in the DCU, there are flock cameras where it's like you could tell who came to the diner. I'm just saying like that was, no one can know I was here driving and punching someone in a public space in a tiny town. I feel like that's a little... Well, he punched them. I think he punches him and then is told, no one can know you were here. Yeah, I'm just saying they're fighting hard for a secret that I think is relatively hard to keep.

41:09Did you feel like the sentry version of how Chewbacca'd that character at all in terms of the rise of Skywalker? or was it Rise of Skywalker or is it yeah Force Awakens when Chewbacca gets

41:24Andy Greenwald:no no it's the third one it's the third one for two minutes you're like did they just kill Chewbacca well it it was the only moment in that trash fire of a movie where they were like we will actively engage with your 40 year investment with this in ways that might surprise hurt or alarm you and they were like just kidding we gotta sell toys did you know that I've started to see the faintest signs no of a ROS revival. The pendulum swinging back? Just being like, JJ was cooking right here. What? Yeah. I was wondering if we, maybe for our last episode ever, we should do a rewatch of ROS. Somehow Glup Shido has returned.

42:07Oh my God. Come on, keep the mood up. Just because Rise of Skywalker happened and Javier Bardem is...

42:15Andy Greenwald:I heard Rise of Skywalker is Rob Bonta's favorite Star Wars film. He thinks there's a lot of promise there. Yeah, what are we saying? Did the kind of like, Oh, the century? Psyche's alive, but just slightly nicer. No, I mean, I think I was grateful to have that not at all hidden puzzle piece revealed to me. Like again, maybe that's an example of the show is working, the show is obviously working in multiple timelines, but the effort of the writer's room to be writing every scene mindful of multiple timelines and multiple timelines of audience experience is remarkable in that they soft-prepped us for that in one of the very first scenes of the show, that that would exist.

42:56Andy Greenwald:And if you had been a more thoughtful or attentive viewer, that would have taken some of the sting out of the end of 101 to begin with. I think it was a success that it didn't, and yet my feeling coming out of it was, oh, that's actually a relief because I don't think I was done with this character, and it doesn't seem like Kyle Chandler is done with this character. Did you know who Carol Ferris was, the woman who was at the funeral? my the nerdiest part of my ears which i guess is where the sort of the vulcan tips would be perked up but i don't actually know i'm not really about that oa life you know not uh to that degree i knew it must be something notable because nobody is like carol ferris you know like you wouldn't you would just be like oh i believe your name you're carol right like no but john was like carol ferris surprised to see you here so i immediately like just wikipedia'd her uh and You saw that Blake Lively brought her to life in the Green Lantern film.

43:47I've never seen the Green Lantern film.

43:49Andy Greenwald:Why are you saying that it's like some lacunae in your cultural fucking library of Alexandria? What? I just haven't. Neither have I. Okay. I mean, I don't know if like maybe back then like you were. I got down like that? Come on. What else from this episode stood after you? Do you want to talk about the diner waitress, the blackmail, the sort of overtones of that scene? Like what do you want to? Well, I did you think I want to I want to go back to my senator. I want to go back to my question. Who won the 2020 presidential election? Who did you think was your takeaway from all the the the Zoe Nightmare death from above episode?

44:28Andy Greenwald:Was it how I was going to go to jail? Did that surprise you or did that feel commensurate with what you saw on screen and your understanding of who was responsible for what? My guess is that that probably is deeply tied to the transference of the ring from one lantern to another. And obviously they get it off of his finger. He brings it to the Guardians, but then says pass on the job offer. Yeah, and they go hang it in Cooperstown. So I think that whether he did time like in a federal penitentiary or a celestial one. I think it was federal. They said that. then yeah like I think he would be he would be kind of I thought that was cool I thought it was interesting also an interesting way to run that character you had to give that character some reason to be back there and imprisonment and letter writing and like the little things that came out of that made a lot of sense and also humbled him a little bit and being in love with Carrie was was nice it was telling the story of this man's the superhero's downfall through a personal story I really liked it I thought Kelly MacDonald was outstanding in this episode you hire her to do the other parts for episodes like this and I thought she was spectacular I think that again in terms of like yeah I think I know what you're reacting to here tell me I think that this we've spoken about this with a couple of different shows in fact we were just talking about this with Slow Horses I bet you would like this show more if it was a binge now I don't know how fast you would watch it but I think that you seem to be holding or reserving judgment on a lot of it because you're like how is it going to fit together It's more, it's, you're right, but I'm coming at it from the other end, which is, um, I don't, I'm not with, I don't like that it seems so intently built that way.

46:10Andy Greenwald:Like it's not, they knew it wasn't a binge. This is a DC show. It's going to be on HBO. So I think then it's incumbent on them to make everything stand on its own. And I think I feel them laboring towards that. And sometimes I feel the labor and sometimes I let it go. Another example of like the, the, the labor here, which is not, um, uh, inconsiderate is like they were making the show into a world in which James Gunn, who took over the universe at some point in the development of the show, he has already given it, bequeathed a green lantern onto it. And it's the funny one, the jerk one from the eighties, uh, in comic book time.

46:46And is that canonically, as far as you know, not how the green lantern succession plan works?

46:51Andy Greenwald:I have no idea how it works. I think it's probably all in that 2014 movie that we should probably revisit. it. But more so that in the... It would be funny if it was like Joe Rogan style and we could just be like, Kaya, pull up the Green Lantern succession line. Pull up the way that they captured Kilowog in this scene when he's going up against Mark Strong's Sinestro. Regardless, they could have decided that anybody can have a ring, but for the story that they wanted to tell with Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart, there was only one and only had ever been one from Earth, which meant that they had to paint themselves out of that corner creatively to say that when the Guardians were thwarted by John, they gave it to this dickhead gym teacher.

47:29Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Which is tough. And it's the kind of alignment that comic books have to do all the time, or even movies where John Bernthal's Punisher jumps from what he does in that one shot and then what he does in Spider-Man. Yeah. So I thought that the integration of James Gunn's funny Guy Gardner character into the tone of this universe was impressive. And I enjoyed those scenes. And I liked the implication of some shared history and some, you know, you owe me everything you've ever gotten and that the characters were pliable and could bend in that way. But, you know, it was a lot of work that they then steered towards a story they wanted to tell, which was inevitably we're going to have to address that there's already a Green Lantern in the gun verse.

48:14Andy Greenwald:What can we do with it? And it seems like the best idea in the writer's room, which was a clever idea, was we're going to use a small sense of humanity and guilt for him to go to Oa, which I love that they're not showing, to get the ring and bring it back so we can move on with the story. I thought, to your point about how Pierre's character, how his Jon Stewart has changed over 10 years, that was a very good scene to show that. He's wearing a different kind of jacket now. it's not even the superficial like it's not even the wardrobe or the facial hair changes that's a guy who earlier in the season is everything is yes sir no sir he's still active or was real recently active military and is coming from a military background and treats his apprenticeship as if it's that's my commanding officer and 10 years later we find him and everything that's happened to him has put him in a position where uh he's cursing a lot more he's blackmailing people or he's putting the you know he's guilting them he's eating meat and he's like having a Henry Hill drive around Rushville where he's got phone calls coming in from the nursing home with his dad from his brother who's like I'm not gonna go pick him up you should go pick him up but he's like I'm funding your album and all this stuff funding your album people are calling him chosen in a kind of tongue in cheek derogatory way I just really liked the scope of this performance and the scope of i thought the writing was like very subtly deepened by showing what's happened to this guy since the 10 years since he i like shot zoe from across town and and put down the manhunter um you know i would probably venture to guess that most people watching this are wonder if the manhunters are truly extinct yes and i think the clubhouse candidate is uh the all-state quarterback noah who seems incredibly well adjusted for a guy whose parents are divorced whose town has been decimated by um robot aliens uh satellite technology and you know um is trying to decide whether to stay home play huskers football or take his talents elsewhere probably for a huge nil deal meanwhile is kind of just like popping around town and and keeping it all together in a way that makes me feel like he might be half-man hunter.

50:39Andy Greenwald:I think that's a good read on the situation. Is that a satisfying story for you? Who does he seduce then? Because they were talking about how man hunters tend to have these sort of heterosexual conquests. I don't think they're necessarily heterosexual. Not necessarily. No, I mean, Anton was like, oh, you're the one. They just go to the alpha, right? So I don't know. I'm sitting here trying to formulate a question of like, is that a satisfying third act for the season? And I guess we don't actually know what it's going to look like. And I guess it is because it has to be in this place and the mystery of what's happening there has to be the central question.

51:17Andy Greenwald:John has a ring now, which is, you know, Surf Dracula got his board earlier than we thought, which is good. I like the way that it is, there's more of a there there in terms of understanding where John has been, where he's going and what the stakes are for him now. I like the relationship with Carrie because it's got some years on it and some shared experience and some trust. So it's not introducing everything all at once, which again is a challenge of the show. So I actually feel, I don't know, I don't mean this to be a zag. I liked this episode more than the previous episode, which I think was kind of one of the quote unquote big ones.

51:55Andy Greenwald:I think that the show, the show still does certain things that I'm like, I think the dependence on jackets to communicate character is frustrating. I think the over-dependence on swearing is just like bizarre. I feel like, I don't think this is just me as a parent now, but like every character has to say, like even the kid is just like, God damn it, mom, this is good meatloaf. I'm like, Do your kids curse at you? Not at you, but do they curse around you? There's been some light experimentation. Do you think that they're actually cursing you just don't know the new curse words? Oh, no, they use the old ones.

52:31Andy Greenwald:Yeah. No, the old ones are... The degree to which my older daughter... The speed with which my older daughter went from wanting to, like, me to turn the volume down on the three times they swear in Hamilton to basically talking like Jon Stewart when he's on an op is remarkable. Talking like Tommy from Goodfellas. Truly, though. Can we also call out one other thing? Yeah. Which is, we always try to walk this line and be careful about it. You know, the way TV works is the credited writer for an episode is invaluable to that episode. But the degree to which those words are the exact ones that writer wrote and there's, you know, the shared credit and there's rewrites and room written stuff.

53:13Andy Greenwald:So we try to always like lift up the writer and but not overly indicate who's responsible. I think we spent a lot of time earlier in this season talking about this show as if it was Damon Lindelof's auteur project. And I think that we probably did a disservice to the other people involved. And then this episode happens. Okay. When a character says Spazkaban. And I will bet my life and my professional reputation on Damon contributing that as a placeholder in the room. And then everybody's saying it enough that it just became what they said in the show. There are many, like, spy shows and stuff that we like where someone calls someone to see if it's okay.

53:48Andy Greenwald:And they say, yeah, I just put Rufus to bed. And just like, good, I'm glad you did. Click. Like, there is no one named Rufus. They've been compromised. We must go. This was a call from inside of the machine of proof of life of Damon. Right. This is the most Damon line that has ever Damon. Do you want to explain the joke for people who don't know what you're talking about? Well, Chris, as you know, the Harry Potter universe is quite popular around the world. So the reference to Azkaban, which is the wizarding prison introduced in book three, the prisoner of Azkaban, is relatively well known. But the idea of a space Azkaban, and now we're cooking with gas.

54:26So in this world where Chicago is next door to Nebraska, Harry Potter also exists.

54:31Andy Greenwald:I would say that it's a safe bet that anything in the larger Warner Brothers Paramount collective universe probably exists. So what would be my wish for franchise crossover? I'll give you a second to think about it to say that my daughters and I rewatched the classic film The Lego Movie last night, which is really fucking that movie's real. You were busy yesterday. Like two and a half hours of Evils. Brother, I'm busy all the time, you know? Yeah. We just did another podcast where you're like, you know, I've been slow re-watching Miami Vice in my spare time. And I'm like, motherfucker. I made dinner at 7.30.

55:10Andy Greenwald:Anyway, my point is about the Lego movie was in it, one of the charms of it is that, oh, Batman's in it. Yeah, for sure. And Dumbledore is in it. And Gandalf is in it. And, you know, other, you know, if they made the movie today, I bet Dr. Robbie would be in it. Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah. Maybe he could have been like first on the scene at Zoe's Slaughter of the Innocents in Rushville. Oh, my God. The crossover potential here. I want to ask you something that is, I guess, Damon adjacent, Damon Lindelof adjacent. But I think it's something I've been thinking about, especially over the last couple of episodes, is this show is going to be inevitably looked at through the lens of Watchmen, I think, by a lot of people or by some people.

55:56And one of the things that Watchmen did so brilliantly is not only use the source materials, mythology, and storytelling bones, but also built its own, but also had something to say about the real world, right? Like through obviously the Tulsa episode, but just generally speaking, I thought spoke very beautifully about being a black woman, the black experience in America, using superheroes as metaphors in a lot of ways. This shows a little bit more like you see the duck both above and below the surface of the water. Like you can kind of see all the work they're doing to kind of set, get Guy Gardner in here.

56:41Let's set this up. Who, who has the ring? We got Sinestro. Somehow Sinestro's escaped. Oh yeah. We didn't even mention that. prison that's cool um all these things that are happening in the dc part of it do you think that the show is also successfully telling saying something about real life or doing that kind of like because i think it's it's doing a very good job i think watchmen might be yeah no one of the great achievements of television so like it's hard to uh no but it's also it's it's trying

57:12Andy Greenwald:I think it's just a very, very different assignment. Yeah. I think that one of the things that has been nice to see, and I think this was at its strongest in episode three, was that there is a very, very sincere attempt to bring in some non, and I say this non-traditional perspective, outsider perspective to the show. And I mean that through the careful consideration of the Stewart family dynamics. And, you know, there's been references to not just them, their blackness, but skin tone in relation to each other. When Zoe is redoing his body. Yes, exactly. His body. And he and his brothers, the way they talk about things.

57:50Andy Greenwald:Even last night, there's this idea that, what's the waitress say? We're not racist here. We just don't like green lanterns or whatever. And then the camera is smart enough and Stephen Williams is a smart enough director. He directed this episode and the third episode. He lingers on Aaron Pierre's face in reaction to that. So I don't want to compare them one to one. I think Watchmen was singularly, its purpose was a story that Damon felt the urgency to tell with the collaborators he chose, and he found a vessel for it in Watchmen, whereas they were going to make a Green Lantern show no matter what.

58:20Andy Greenwald:And this might be the best. And I mean this non-pejoratively, like this is a good faith attempt to make a thoughtful, inclusive, questioning show that was also going to explain to you how we can have Guy Gardner and Jon Stewart. So in under that rubric, it's getting an A plus for me. But if you go under the hood a little bit more, like, do I think that its viewpoint on class, race, and the world is equal to these other shows? Absolutely not. But you're getting a little extra for your buck when you tune in to watch a show about space cops. That's very smart. Should we do a little watch after dark?

58:56Andy Greenwald:I mean, do you want to go from green to green? I got a few minutes. I got a sick kid at home, but I always put football first. I want you to call the Philly special. Very briefly, how are you? because I watched the game on mute yesterday. I had something else going on. So I had like the game in the background. I could tell where it was going. I could tell how it was going. Yes. But, you know, I was engaged, but I would not say living and dying with every snap. And then when the final drive came, because I don't think I had truly experienced the grind of it, you asked the group of us that we all chat about, the Eagles during Sundays, what's our confidence level on this final drive?

59:36And I was like six.

59:37Andy Greenwald:I mean, this is your brand. You are a very generally positive person with sports. You are able to, I think, compartmentalize. That's true. And I admire that about you. I envy that about you. And sometimes I just lean on it a little much. You know the phrase, like, you know, if you're looking for the asshole, sometimes you're the asshole, you know? Yeah. So, or if you're always, like, I'm beginning to worry about my role in the group chat because I think that my, I sometimes the level of venting and the frequency of my venting in it. I'm like, no one else has a safe space. I worry that this isn't fun for you.

1:00:15Andy Greenwald:It's never it's never been fun for me. I really was thinking about how important sports are in my life in terms of like a thing to think about when falling asleep. I think to you know, I listen to the podcast all the time. I'm reading the articles like it sustains me and I like to think about like offseason stuff. but I think I don't like the games. I think that, you know, in many ways, I'm like Brad Pitt in Moneyball, but like the number one way is that I think that - If you just lifted during Eagles games, think about where we would have you. I would be, that would be my peak achievement because when I was watching the game, it wasn't that I was not demonstrative.

1:00:49Andy Greenwald:I was not scaring anyone. I was not, noises were not coming out of me, but there was like a sad, there was just a sadness. Yeah. Because the particular way that it was going was one that was familiar. Yes. What was unfamiliar was that they fucking won. Yeah. Because Jalen balled out, and that was cool as hell. And so I think ultimately you are right about many things, but your prediction that we may just have to remember what it's like to root for a normal football team in that, you know, it's hard to win every week. Win some and lose some. Yeah, and that you don't just win them, and your offensive line just isn't elite always.

1:01:24Andy Greenwald:But the best part has been the most unexpected zag is that actually the one thing the season is proving is that our quarterback is not the 17th best. I think he might even be better than Justin Herbert at this point. Say it with your full chest. I've said it with my full chest the whole time. It's like, what are we evaluating? The guy's been to two Super Bowls. And was the best player in both of them. I think it's going to be... It feels like an Andy Reedy season. Yeah. That's what it reminded me of. There was a feeling of creeping, crepuscular darkness that we used to experience when we would arrive at the bar in a weekend autumn daylight and be like, ah, this first beer will buoy our spirits and restore the demons from last night.

1:02:09Andy Greenwald:And then just the clock management would just grind out every part of our hope to dust. And we would wander out and suddenly it would be 40 degrees a night. Yes. That is a core memory for us. We did that together for years. Yeah. It was probably not good for our mental health, but look, it got us here. Um, thanks for spending time with me after dark. Do you think those were our reps? You know what I mean? Like the 10 ,000 hours? Everything about like those first 10 years got us ready for this, the real arena of our friendship. Of ideas. God bless. Thanks to Kaya and Kai. We'll be back on Thursday.

1:02:41I'll have a special guest. No Andy on Thursday, but we'll - I will be traveling. Yeah. Uh, we'll put something together in your honor. That sounds -

1:02:49Andy Greenwald:Is it going to be like the beacon Guy Gardner left in Russia? Are you flying into Newark? Like, I'm not sure like how certain we are you're landing. It's fair. I guess we'll find out. Talk to you guys soon.

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