Super Bowl Trailers: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Plus, ‘Industry’ S4E5 and ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Episode 4.

28:43I like the challenge of thinking about television differently than I usually do, where a character is acting from a place, whether it's trauma or an old wound that they're trying to heal, whether they are stating outright what is their motivation or just clearly behaving as such. Harper is just a mystery. Harper arrives on the scene. She's described as a world eater by Eric in the first episode of this series. She's a little bit chameleonic in that she can adjust to working for Tory businessmen or being in a German rave or something like that. She can do whatever, but she has a certain quality that doesn't ever go away.

29:34But this is an interesting episode for her. because her mother passes away. Off screen. Off screen. A woman we've never met. We've met the brother. And Harper's relationship to Eric and our conversation with him about her mother is really interesting because it's about whether or not backstory matters to me. Yep. And there's kind of a little bit of a fake out where you're waiting for Harper to be like, I just wanted my mom to love me, and that's why I'm the way I am. And instead she's like, I wanted her to live long enough to bend the knee and see what a titan I've become. And I wanted to ask you about like geolocating a character, making that character consistent in the importance of that and whether or not you think, is industry breaking a rule or following a rule here?

30:23It's such a good question. And I think you've identified something that is deeply compelling and at times deeply frustrating about the show, which is that it is based around someone who is almost entirely opaque. and my sense of it is, and this is something hopefully we'll get to talk to the guys about at season's end, but I think that they are motivated by a challenge that they've laid out to themselves. I'm not saying it was a challenge they laid down in season one because they'll admit to anyone that they were just throwing their best up at this wall, not thinking they, there was no point in the making of the pilot of the first season where they thought they would be making the season of television that they are making now.

31:01Sure. Which is a good thing. But I do think over time it has evolved into a challenge and like a marker laid down being like, we are not going to play the traditional television game of backstory and explanation of emotional motivation with this character. There's a moment, I don't think it was this episode, but when she says my trauma was traumatic. She's insistent that her childhood does not explain her adulthood. And she refuses it. And she shuts that down for the people in her life, including the people in her life who are the audience, which runs counter to the last 15 years of television storytelling, which I admire.

31:42But it's challenging when you say we are going to make this character an ongoing exercise in denial and counterintuitive storytelling thinking. When you are trying to move, grease the wheels of narrative across episodes the way everyone who makes a television show has to do. And I will say that more so than in other seasons, her stasis, and it's not just, stasis isn't the right word. it's that we are stuck in kind of a doom loop with how she treats people, particularly people like Eric, is more frustrating this season than in other seasons. Now, one of the things that these guys have proven really skilled at is in the great mixing board of life, you know, putting up, moving the dials in a way that you don't even notice it all coming together.

32:31So Yasmin doesn't appear in this episode. She does not. And she's had remarkable highs thus far this season that have moved her story ball forward in a way. So though, to your point about like, which is the A story and which is the B story, this probably isn't Harper's showcase episode. That's still to come. So I'm willing to take it in over the course of a season. But there were, in the early going, when she just unloads on Eric in like ways that are so excruciatingly cruel and cutting, which she's very skilled at doing, to the point of he's left wondering why I keep doing this. That is also a tough gambit.

33:07Where we in the audience are like, why are we still doing this? Circling this clearly destructive relationship. I don't, I think we're in mid-process. So I'm not judging it. And I think that what the episode did to its great credit is that Mihala got to play the other side of the coin. I thought she was wonderful in this episode. Because it's not just the first scenes. She does come back and they have a moment. I also thought she was best and the show was best in the final moment when Kwabana doesn't come forward and tell her about Sweet Pea after Sweet Pea has told her. And her performance in that scene...

33:45When she's reacting? Yeah, but doesn't say. Yeah. Which is restraint that this show sometimes doesn't always show. They would maybe on another day have Harper dress him down and talk all about sex and relationships and business and what they're doing and what he should be doing. and they kind of did that in the sushi restaurant when they were going out on a date and they've done it in bedrooms together where they've had these very explicit internal external conversations. You mentioned Yasmin. Yeah. She, to me, is the most classically successful character on this show because she has, her sort of backstory has gone from background to foreground and is now the text.

34:32You know, like her, when you first meet her, or just kind of like, she's going to be the rich kid who actually shows that she's got something to her. And what we find out about her and what we find out about her childhood clearly shapes what she has done and is doing both to the powerful men and the less powerful women in her life. And it all comes from her father. And that's how you do writing. It's like you show how somebody is shaped and what they then pass on to other people. But Harper is like a little bit more of like a, a sine wave or something where it's just like, oh, it's like this. And now it's like that, you know, like.

35:11I think you're onto something there too. The very best shows and industries in our top three every year that it's on. So we consider industry to be one of the very best shows finds an interesting alchemy from the showrunner's perspective of chasing things that they are interested in and things that they clearly know in their bones. And not just the creators, the writers, the creative half of the equation, the behind-the-scenes creative half of the equation. And it's hard not to come away from the last, not just the season, but like the last eight episodes of the series and not think that these guys really have some deep and cutting and maybe even like experiential understanding of Yasmin, of Henry, even of Jim Dyker in his final moments.

35:57Like that was coming from a soul, that speech. And I worry the Harper character, and to a degree, Eric as well, and I wonder if it's because they're American. I'm not sure that it is. I don't know if they have had that same level of depth or rigor because they are often reactive or raging. And the level of complexity that Henry Muck's backstory was given, you know, in the grand Barry Lyndon style with a ghost story. The fact that all of these people that you're describing have had, I mean, even Rishi got to be so many different people on this show. Harper and Eric are largely doing the same thing that they were doing in the first season.

36:39With each other. With each other, but also business-wise. I mean, they don't work for an investment bank anymore, like a large institution, but they are essentially bloodhounds for bullshit and addicted to the deal. And addicted to chaos. And addicted to chaos. and are still like kind of trapped in that hotel room, ping-ponging off of each other. And Eric, even at that, you know, in this episode, has a vision that I think is fairly like, in terms of like its empathy reaction in most people, is fairly high of like, even whether you're together with your spouse or not, but like people that you love or have loved and your daughter sleeping soundly and peacefully.

37:21And his response is non-traditional, let's say in that moment. Well, I think also you mentioned Diker. The Diker speech is the thesis statement for this entire season. Yes. It's a bunch of people who don't feel anything, who know what they're supposed to be feeling at any given moment and don't have that. And so that's driving them insane. And they're self-medicating with their phones and pornography and drugs and risk. So do you think we are headed towards a moment this season where, and this episode did some of this work, so I don't want to imply that it's not the case, but where Harper and Eric come to an understanding of recognition, which exists in the subtext, but literally saying, I don't want a father, I don't want a daughter, but this works.

38:05Well, haven't they said that before? They've said versions of it. And is that enough to fill in the blanks? Because I think that one of the things that makes the show perpetually restless and perpetually interesting is Mickey and Conrad are contemptuous of convention and they don't want to be boring and they don't want to be standard. And that's fine. And sometimes when the show has veered, not just fine, that's admirable. I thought that the Sweet Pea episode, and we'll get into that Miriam Petschy's performance and everything in a moment because I thought it was excellent. The coda of her storyline to me was conventional.

38:41That she was absolutely Harper-esque and like undeniable punch me in the face and I will still destroy your world. But then once the doors closed on my like prefab fancy condo unit, I cry like everyone else. But I still found it to be ambiguous. Like what's she crying about? Sure. You know what I mean? Is she crying because that's her body releasing all the stress of the last couple of days? Is she crying because she's thinking about how her mom won't ever bring up her OnlyFans controversy? Is she crying because she's so happy? you know like I love that there's ambiguity in it I would just I guess my question is more about I think I'm more on we don't we don't want that version of Harper you know behind the scenes she cries like everyone else I don't think that makes sense but there is a worrying opacity to the character especially this season that has removed her from the larger machine she is now she was always driving the story with her behavior but now she is completely driving everything and people are falling at her feet to go along with it, that it is starting to, to me, like, there's not a lot of recognition.

39:51I've never met anybody like this. Now, obviously, I haven't met a lot of the people on the show. I haven't either, but we don't really interact with a lot of people whose professional life requires professional death on the other side of a negotiation. It's well said. I don't need... That's the thing that I think draws a lot of the... These characters are all damaged. damaged one of the reasons why i think they're damaged is that they are drawn to something where there has to be a loser for you to win i i think that's very well said i guess what i'm trying to articulate is this is not a frankly i think disqualifying argument that these people aren't likable like fuck that the challenge of making a show about people who quote unquote aren't likable is that you shade them with degrees of recognizable humanity so you don't endorse their actions, but on some gut level, you understand their perspective in it.

40:42So you do that on a show like this by the Henry episode. You do that in a show like this with, as you said, everything with the Asmund's father or with the Claire Forlani aunt character. It's just a passing thing that you carry with you. And then when she behaves like a monster to Haley, you're still carrying that. Everything with Harper is not just transactional. It is increasingly off screen. so the card from her mother that she shreds and then the phone call that leads her to react in a way that is familiar to people who've been watching Harper I guess what I'm saying is in the practice of it on screen maybe that wasn't enough sure, but it's episode 5 of an ongoing season, but I just am noting that disparity, but there are so many other worthwhile things in the episode that I don't want to harp on that one thing that I think we walked away from it with I want to get into the across stuff but the way I want to do it is to talk about the thriller aspect of this show that's been really introduced in this season, the idea of this corporate espionage thriller.

41:35Two episodes in a row where there has been a not totally unexplained sense of menace in the background of an episode. So with Dyker, it's the guy who's in the flat with Rishi and him, and I've seen speculation online that he was not just a random guy at a pub. Obviously, I think you and I engaged with that. You heard speculation on this pod last week. Yeah, we speculated that as well. And I think there's been people were writing to us saying like, that's actually an actor we recognize. It's not just a day player. Right. And then in this episode, Sweet Pea gets assaulted in a bathroom at a bar.

42:16And she gets assaulted after letting the CFO of Tender, Tony Day. Know her exact location. Know her exact location. So you would have to assume. And he says the beach can get dangerous at night. You have to assume that either he ordered that or someone is listening to his phone because he does seem to think that his office is bugged. Right. Where do you think this is? Where are the breadcrumbs leading back to? Is this Whitney? Is Whitney running like a crime syndicate under the belly to? This is the thing. The show is in a successful place right now because we don't know. and there's a sense of both paranoia, which is earned and exciting, but also a sense of like, all of these people fly too close to the sun all of the time.

42:59And are they, do they think they're in a movie? Are they behaving like they're in some sort of dangerous thriller, but it's also possible that she was assaulted in a bar unrelated to it. So that's not a bad place dramatically for the show to be. With three episodes left, I'm curious where the cards are going to fall because the other option that I'm not as big of a fan of is that Whitney Halberstram is just a really bad evil guy. Yeah. Who is clearly running a fraudulent company and is willing to assault or murder people who get in his way. That's less interesting to me because it's less nuanced.

43:32It's better, the show is better when it lives in the in-between space. When the Nathan McKay keys drop when they get to Accra and they're filming and it's beautiful. And again, this is exciting to see the show take advantage of location shooting, of vibrancy and cultural differences and the actors that they found to play these parts. was thrilling. And I can't help but intuit a level of excitement on the part of the creative team of the show towards the storyline, maybe more so than what's going on back in London. Like, the keys dropping and them being on this thriller and actually getting to write, Mickey and Conrad getting to write it and Joe Charlton, who's credited with this episode, getting to write this and the actors getting to play it.

44:11Yeah, they basically got to do the insider, you know? They, and I don't blame them, who doesn't want to make a Tony Gilroy, Michael Mann type thing? Mm-hmm. there was a disparity, I would say, in terms of like what was really, what was driving the episode. So that felt like a much more of an interesting place. And I guess I'm curious about your perspective on the episode. Do you think it looks beautiful? It sounds beautiful. The actress played it really well. I'm still worried about the what's there there because the, as I said, like Tender is just so clearly fraudulent from Jump that I'm waiting for more nuance in the investigation.

44:48if it is i want it to be more than this is clearly corrupt there is no there there the thing isn't a thing and harper being like why do we have to play by the rules like give me a little more the first 10 minutes of the episode that we just did we talked about a bunch of companies that have ingratiated themselves and burrowed in yeah to the economy at such a depth that like their failure is not an option yes and i think that if i had to guess what were you talking about the patriots What Tender is trying to do is to make themselves intertwined with the British economy or the global economy to a point where its malfeasance has to be overlooked because to take it away would affect the labor government, would affect the economic sort of health of a nation.

45:33I think because I can see the thriller happening from both angles. I understand Whitney needs this aristocrat to sell his bullshit as a bridge to the life that he always thought was way out of touching distance for himself. As far as the thriller aspects of it goes, I don't know that I need a gunfight or a death at the end of this. And we've already had one. Yeah. To make it count as a thriller. When you think about all the presidents men, when you think about some of the great political conspiracy thrillers of our lifetime, there's no dead bodies. There's just people getting spooked in parking lots or thinking that their phones are tapped or whatever.

46:19It's interesting. I do wonder how they are going to bring all of the threads together. But yeah, it's been such a remarkable genre shift within the framework of the show itself that I'm just along for the ride. No, the elasticity of the show is thrilling. This is a week-to-week argument for a return to ongoing series. because one of the arguments against them over the last few years and a much more like creator empowered version of the television industry, which has shrunk a lot, was that, you know, the auteurs got bored. They didn't want to be locked into the same shows or the same production budgets and the same network executives.

47:05They wanted to tell different stories and have more opportunities, which is fine. I mean, people should be free to, I'm pro, was it Kurt Flood who was the first free agent? Like I'm pro. Yeah. Workers rights. but there is something to be said for watching shows that, um, where the creators are like, no, we can do this here. We can stretch this in ways that you can't imagine. And, and the, if, if what I'm, if I'm being critical, even of this episode, I'm excited by what I'm seeing, you know, and if, if, if certain things aren't perfect, why would they be perfect? Two years ago, it was an embryonic version of a show.

47:43Now we're, Now we're watching something week to week that not just could be anything, could be almost anything that we love traditionally. So the best of industry, in my opinion, is Miriam Petchy showing up in a background role with an almost joke name, Sweet Pico Lightly, and then everybody seeing something in each other and growing and growing and growing until she is Erin Brockovich-ing her way through Africa in this episode, holding the screen, beautifully shot. Like that shot of her on the beach was the kind of artistic flourish. The boys didn't direct this episode, but that felt interesting because that to me felt like a connection of the visual language of the Henry in the mansion, in the manor house episodes.

48:27Yes. Visual palette into a completely different world. I thought that was really cool. And the idea of journalism and detective work and financial whatever it is that they do all becoming one thing in this fraudulent global economy is rich stuff. No pun intended. I really like that. But there's a lot. These episodes are dense. and it's been interesting to engage with the episodes, particularly this season, because they've all been very, very dense to digest. But like the density of the commander and the gray lady is a fixed perspective. Sure. This is telling multiple stories in multiple locations, trying to advance them in a traditional narrative way, but then also getting really, really, really hooked in to certain parts and you start to feel the attention and what's being paid in different portions, different locations.

49:32I don't know. It honestly probably bears a rewatch. The episode itself? Yes. And I think honestly also the season as like a statement, all the episodes together will feel different than the week-to-week experience of it. I just want to call out the fact that when it hits, the scene when What's-His-Name-Tony Day is like exploring pathways for me before the potential assault. And it's just so well put together because that is an example of a creative team just knowing the brief. It is beautifully performed. It's beautifully written. It's beautifully shot. Yeah, the fact that Diker's editor is still involved and is like, when she's just like, I'm Sweet Pea, go lightly.

50:13And he's like, you're what? I know, but then like a minute later, he's like, Miss Go Lightly, let me explain to you. I'm like, wow, everybody is just ready with the banter. We need to talk about the fact that Eric leaves his ex-wife and his daughter in one bed after his daughter has been expelled from school for catfishing a colleague or another student. Yeah. And he leaves them in that room to go to an escort. Well, he begins the episode by telling this hotel worker, so to speak, not to call him. But then she takes his call. Yes, and she has a room and he invokes, there's some language that's very like father-daughter.

50:57Well, look, I know what you're asking me. No, I wasn't asking you as a girl dad. What you're asking me is, I have said this has been quite a year for girl dads on screen. Yes. From sentimental value to one battle after another. It's really been a championship season. Sure. Nobody goes 17-0. That's true. Is what I'm saying. That's true. Not even the Pats. This is certainly not. This is, that was a tough one. For me, the Eric storyline is still so entwined with Harper, but Eric has been given more, not just nuance to his struggles, which are clear, but like more screen time for them than we've seen.

51:35And so it's hard to separate the two. Eric's pretty much stuck in that hotel. As a character? Sure. Well, that's one of the things that this is this is a sign of a worthwhile show, right? Because we could ask, is this budgetary? Like, did they have to shoot it all quickly because they were going to Accra? Or are they making a comment on the kind of purgatory that he is stuck in? Well, that's the thing that's so interesting is that Eric, when we see him at the beginning of the season, when he's like golfing and Trump is off on the green and he seems to have a beautiful girlfriend, he's living, it seems, in the Hamptons or something like or wherever he is.

52:13And now he has chosen to live essentially in a bathrobe. Yeah. And eat BLTs. Get to the bad parts. And look at pornography on his phone and or have sex workers visit him. And pornography of his coworkers, right? He's scrolling Sweet Pea. He is. Yeah. So yeah, like is he just trapped? Or is it a commentary about like perhaps at a certain point people prefer that version of excess. and pleasure than the version that's like, you get to golf every day and talk to people. It actually ties into what we were saying before of like how much money is enough. It's a question of what you think you deserve and what you're doing it for.

52:53And that golf sequence was an illustration of, in theory, whatever drove Eric from his more humble beginnings in New York City to London was to become a person who can golf like that, have proximity to powerful people like that, have a girlfriend like that, whatever and he didn't like it what he liked was feeling like the world was about to get swallowed up inside of like a black hole every day he goes to work yes and beating it beating it back for one more day let's talk a little bit about a night of the second kings before we get out of here okay and not even a little bit i'm in no rush um what a fucking awesome piece of tv that was this episode was great i never end these episodes like that was insignificant you know what i mean like these 33 minute short stories that they tell or chapters of a story that they're telling are so beautiful, so detailed, so nuanced, so well performed, well shot.

53:52And this is, I mean, each of the last three episodes has been my favorite episode of the season so far. What did you love about this episode? This was my favorite episode of the season so far without question. It's called The Seven. I'm going to start with this. We used to get a lot of flack, maybe some of it deserved, back when we were the face of Game of Thrones commentary for a while. I think people close their eyes, think of Game of Thrones, and they think of us. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. Two little dragons flying over Philadelphia. You're welcome. Or flying to LA to film an after show.

54:28Yeah. And we got a lot of flack for not reading the books. and thus are any time we would comment on like, well, you know, clearly this is coming from George R. R. Martin or this is Benioff and Weiss's brilliant scaffolding of his story or whatever. We didn't full, I'll say fully know what we were talking about. I think that also likely blinded me to the strengths of George R. R. Martin as a writer and as a world builder, because watching it purely as a TV show, you're really just engaged with that narrative experience. This is a long and maybe unnecessary prologue to say the simplicity of this show and the fixed perspective allows me to say, to see, this guy's a really good storyteller.

55:16Yes. The A to B to C of Dunk's long night, again, no pun intended, from being in prison to suddenly about to fight next to the king to be. The hand of the king, yeah. Is he the hand? Baelor is thinking he's the hand. I didn't know who's going to be. You and Mal can explain to me the details of it. But being basically at the All-Star game, the twists and turns are so grand and so natural and so not overthought or overworked that it's such a pleasure to experience them this way. Yes. Does that make sense that this is like there is just such a beautiful flow to a story that is not inventing any kind of wheel.

56:07It's just rolling. There was a version of this. And again, like talking about what a show could have been when it's like based on hugely successful novellas that millions of people have read. But there is a version of this where it's just like a night from nowhere that wins a tournament and gets renowned. what we're actually seeing is this guy live the virtues of being a knight learn and teach the virtues of being a knight to others and basically bring out the best and worst in other characters over the course of these episodes where i thought i was going to get into it it was going to be basically like a george r martin version of a sports movie where rocky wins at the end and now it's like no this is like this guy being entered into a whole political and military and interesting world of characters.

57:00And, you know, like, I just think that this version of the Targaryens are so fucking entertaining and interesting. So much more interesting. And the three brothers, like, having such, or not brothers, the two brothers and Arian is there as Makar's son. But, like, having such, like, interesting relationships to the pomp and circumstance of the realm is like so fascinating. Like Baelor being like, it's all about history and respecting traditions and like understanding like all these little new aspects of it. And then Aryan's just like, it's about like fucking dominating and oppressing people. It's so much more interesting.

57:42If you say, or if people say about your work that you have created a, you know, an incredibly rich history, fictional history, that suggests the possibility of telling a howard zinn version of that history yeah sure or a brother's grim version of that history and star wars has struggled with that although that's the success of andor is literally that like if this really is a series of events that have shaped stories then we can come into those stories at a different place we can explore the parts of them that usually get overlooked by the quote-unquote history books, a.k.a. the blockbuster films.

58:21And the fact that this show has been able to do that, just sort of dip in and tell something so small-feeling, but epic within a larger world, it's also kind of fun to think about, like, in a... to relate it to our world and be like, maybe I've never wanted to be in Westeros ever in 15 years of covering this show. But you gotta hand it to a pre... Or maybe they'll never get Smartphones World, where you could just be at Ashford, get drinking beer, and all of a sudden the most interesting thing that's ever happened breaks out in front of you. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. The Hand of the King joins a hedge knights team to fight his own brother.

59:00I mean, that is so crazy. And nephew, yeah. That that's happening. And everybody in that crowd is going to tell everyone about what they saw. Yeah. But the show communicates that sense of happenstance and grandeur in a way that feels pleasurable. and also just like, not to be corny, but like one of the talking points of Game of Thrones that was deeply successful. And it's reductive to say this was the show because the show was so big and so sprawling and so expensive and went on for so long. It contained multitudes. It had versions of every kind of story in it, which is why it's one of the most beloved shows of all time.

59:34But like, this is a nicer show. This is a show that has some room for reason or kindness or goodness within it. And sometimes play the hits, man. Like when Little Raymond's like, make me a knight so I can fight beside you. Yeah. That stuff works for a reason. Again, another really good Finn Bennett episode, I thought, in cracking walnuts and just being like, I have the bylaws so we can just get right into that. Not the most efficient way of cracking nuts, but also then, this is the cleverness and the visual cleverness of the show is he's smashing the nuts and the nuts are going everywhere. And then what's his, that other dude just goes to help clean him up.

1:00:16He's just like, go get me that. Yeah, go get that. Go pick that up. Great stuff. Okay. There was, I like the idea of, what's the line? Cowering behind 6 ,000 years of and all foolery. That he's just like, no, this is actually what we're going to do. Again, this is a, you understand, or again, I haven't read it, but I think I understand the role these stories played and they are kind of fables. but you know before you print the legend people had to live the story so the fact that everyone's rolling their eyes at this and can't quite believe it but then coming out of it it's gonna be like but then Arian challenged him to and it's so smart about undercutting what we expect from this world because when the dude of the the bracken stands up and I was like oh I guess I guess I'm supposed to know who that is right and he just farts he just rips one yeah like that's it's funny in the moment but it's also I think having a bit of good natured fun at the...

1:01:11Yeah, there is no halftime speech that... No, but that there's no homework even to watch the show. Because my first thought was, I am going to have to text Mal and Joe to ask who this guy is. When in fact, it's just that the diet of the time is just not agreeing with him. Which makes sense. Speaking of the diet of the time, we've all had in college and things, we had stressful all-nighters, we had work to do. Do they have coffee in Westeros? Oh my god! Because those guys stayed up all night stressed and then they're supposed to battle? I don't know. That's a great question. Was there any caffeine or stimulant?

1:01:49Yeah. Do they have any little leaf that they sniff? You know what I mean? Just throwing that out there. If they could just call Reishi from the time slot previous and just say, could you drop by? I don't know. Only because it's like that's a lot to ask of some people who've been through a lot. I just think a lot of those guys are steaming drunk all day long. And they're young. know it's different like they're younger anyway but like they you just don't want to overlook just the little details that it doesn't so the daniel ing's character he's a baratheon um and he's like i just i'm doing it for the gram he's this hasn't happened in like a thousand years i'm definitely participating all-time character yeah and talk about like per like just his efficiency rating is off the charts.

1:02:35But I think that even without being someone who reads and looks at scripts, I think audiences at this point understand in their bones when scenes exist because of notes after the fact to backfill the impact of something that happens in a later episode. What I mean by that is when he shows up in this episode, it's the culmination of every appearance he's made thus far. but it felt A, it feels natural. We're excited to see him. This tracks with a character we've been we've gotten to know but none of those previous scenes felt extraneous like that they were laying breadcrumb trails for this. They were enjoyable on their own merits and so much of the TV that we watch these days is things that feel a little misshapen and disjointed because they've been noted.

1:03:25Sure. In the spirit of helping things along and greasing the wheels of story but like I think that anyone listening to this podcast can notice a scene and be like, I feel like this. I would say that this is, obviously you speak from personal experience. I've been noticed. As a professional writer. But this has been a consistent kind of fascination of yours over the course of Pluribus and Landman and maybe now this of like, hey, did this person have too much freedom? Yes. Or was this person not allowed to express themselves in like the proper way because they were getting noted to death on something?

1:03:55It's kind of a fascinating, we can't really know, you know what I mean? It also speaks to the fact that like in the contemporary television moment, you can be incredibly successful as a writer, as a producer and as a showrunner with very different skill sets. And I don't say this to diminish anyone or lift anyone up too far outside of their station. But like what Ira Parker is doing within the guardrails of this book that I haven't read, but I'm praising and the story and the actors that he was given and HBO's production expertise and how we can do this at scale is what he's doing within all of that is amazing.

1:04:30It harkens back to Weiss and Benioff in the early seasons. And it might be the best version of it on TV right now. Whereas I don't think, I think we'd be interested to see the Vince Gilligan or Matt Weiner version of a George R.R. Martin adaptation. But let those guys cook. Sure. Now, five years from now, when Ira Parker has his overall at Apple and is making his own show, and we're like, God damn, this might be the best thing on TV. Yeah. Fantastic. Or he's making the Romanovs. Yeah. Or he's making the Romanovs. Or he's continuing to prove that he is uniquely skilled, not uniquely, remarkably skilled at adapting something for a larger audience like that's that's no small thing yeah i think that there's a narrative that the reason why martin adaptations don't work is when the showrunners are like i'm deviating from martin whether it's like i am adding uh i'm embellishing or i'm speeding up or doing whatever and at least for now i know that ira Parker has added some things and changed some things.

1:05:30Not changed markedly, but like embellished and flourishes in this. But so far, I think he is like kind of doing a very able adaptation because he is like, I know why people like this. Yes. It's not because I'm me. And it's not because this needed some sort of historical revision. It's like because they really want to see the story that they've read. Adapting things successfully is incredibly hard. And I think it requires a lot of different, it requires you to be successful in a lot of different areas. One of the areas is, and I have listened to you guys talk about it to get more insight into it, is how you, you're changing mediums.

1:06:13So you have to change them. You have to change the frame. You have to change the scope. You have to tweak things and bring things more into line. And hopefully you have some flexibility of, well, that's really popping off on the screen. so that guy's going to get a little more time. You have to do that kind of changing. But you also, at the core, you have to be able to communicate why you, the adapter, loves this. Right. There has to be some beating heart of enthusiasm for something that you love. Now, you can do a non-traditional adaptation, I think, hopefully, and still communicate that love.

1:06:46And you're taking that love and you're building a different skeleton around it. But communicating that is part of the job. Disdain does travel. Sure. Or frustration or, you know, not to mind read in the case of the last season of Game of Thrones, just like... Let's get this over with. What are we supposed to do? We have to do the best version of it that we can. Or maybe they just felt like they were now stewards of a giant VFX project, you know, at the end. I mean, maybe the place where they felt like this story was going to end really didn't have as much to do with what they were originally interested in.

1:07:17Well, it becomes the kind of project that we've talked about with the rise of like Marvel and comic book storytelling, which is, are you making the best story you ever could make? Or are you making the best version of what this has to be due to the expectation, audience, IP, financial network requirements being placed upon me? Right. And I think that, you know, we go back and I don't remember everything we said about that final season of Game of Thrones, but I think there was a lot of like... We were full of praise. Were we sometimes? I think you and I were probably a little bit of a lighter touch on it than...

1:07:50Yeah, because it didn't... Yes. It didn't betray us. There were episodes like what Arya does and how the, I'm not going to spoil Game of Thrones, but like how the Night King storyline ends. I think we were like, that was it? Yeah. But that episode was beautifully executed and exciting. Yeah, it was cool. It was cool. But that was different than what it was at the beginning. And it's just, what do you think? You're out in these internet streets. Are people liking this show? Yes. Yes. I don't know. I don't think it's like a runaway blockbuster. we need to get a Lionel Baratheon spinoff going kind of show, but I think it's being very well received.

1:08:27I think there are some people who are like, this is fucking boring. I think they'll probably change their mind as they hit the second half of this season. But yeah, it's a smaller story. I think they ably communicated that. And I think that the half hour episode runtimes are excellent in terms of a selling point for something that's new and different. Treason by puppetry. That's right. We can wrap it up there. Thanks to Kaya. Thanks to Kai. Thanks to Andy. We'll be back on Thursday with some pit. and some other chit-chat about popular culture. It's been great talking to you. Thanks to Clint Kubiak.

1:08:56Good luck in Vegas. That's right, brother. And to the A's. Good luck in Vegas to them. Well done.