‘The Bear’ Season 5, Episodes 1-3 and ‘The Agency’ Season 2 Premiere. Plus, the State of Comic Book Movies.

20:10Andy Greenwald:You really did. You are excited by this. I mean, there have been... Well, there's nothing to be excited about. No, but there are there are enough like actual it's beyond rumblings like i we've heard we know people like who are in the mix for a next born movie the conversation that i heard was primarily about like the last time around getting matt damon back involved that this would that's gonna be edward burger directing it yeah yeah and edward burger was attached to direct it and that there was you know that there was a script and that my my sense is that that script had a little bit of baton passing potential.

20:46Those always work out. Look at Mission Impossible.

20:48Andy Greenwald:What was the one with the first runner? Was that three or four? The Mission Impossible 4 was the one that was supposed to be the baton pass. It was Burj Khalifa, yeah. Anyway, I... Yeah, I would have to say that watching Matt Damon on the Odyssey press tour, it's unlikely to me that he is going to get in Bourne shape anytime soon. And I mean that with all due respect. Is he not still in Odysseus shape? He's like this. He is like, I'm so tired. and Pattinson and Alan are like yeah mate that was kind of brilliant he's like I had to walk up a mountain nine takes with an IMAX camera on my back wow humbling I know you've been doing weight training recently do you have any perspective on that?

21:28I can do I mean like I'll be joining him soon I'm sure with an IMAX camera

21:32Andy Greenwald:strapped to your back for an upcoming podcast I'm very excited for this it also is smart for Zendaya because one of the keys to her absolute fame and dominance is not just that she's one of the best actors of her generation, it's that she has very cleverly chosen blockbusters, classy blockbusters to associate herself with. And that was, she is actually having maybe the platonic ideal of a Hollywood, a 2020s Hollywood stars career where she is kind of going across the spectrum in terms of the size of the role she's taking, but she's never like off the poster, you know like she's always going to be there she's working with really interesting filmmakers and more importantly rather than just being like just sign me up for whatever you want to make like it seems like the drama the Dune Odyssey a Ronnie Spector movie with Barry Jenkins was supposed to be her next thing that's shooting in the fall and if she does this I bet it and Spider-Man which is going to be the biggest movie of the year right pretty good I know that you have some takes to get off about Taylor Swift's upcoming wedding, but we could save that for After Dark.

22:42Sure, okay. Because I... I know you do too.

22:46Andy Greenwald:Because this is the one... You're about to put the socialist in Democrat socialists. This is the one space where I know my children will never hear what I say on a podcast co-hosted by their... Unless Gail Simmons is on. That is true. That broke the seal for them. We have The Bear and we have The Agency. The Bear has, as of recording, yet to be released. The Agency is entire... In its entirety, the second season is up. Let's talk a little bit about the binge model. before we get into the specific shows. Okay. And now I can't help but hear Jiminy Click every time I speak. Let's talk a little bit about the binge model.

23:17Andy Greenwald:Chris, there's nothing I love more than Jiminy Click, so it's fine. Do it. Did you ever see the one with him and Larry David? Yes. The one with him and Bill Hader may be, along with the Eastbound and Down Outtakes, my most watched YouTube clip. Where Hader's just crying. Not a star's name, is this? as good as it gets um i guess somewhere someone's got numbers that suggest that this is the best way to do things for any given whether it's netflix you know for fx hulu's purposes under the disney umbrella um they have always released the bear as a binge i believe they have um and and initially Actually, we took that, sorry to cut you off, we took that as a reflection of their we-don't-know-what-we-have attitude towards the show.

24:09Andy Greenwald:For the first season. For the first season. Yes. I think it was kind of like, would you guys like to check this out? Well, go for it. I think that the show has evolved over the years, over the seasons, and this is the fifth and final season, into one that writes and shoots to be watched in one huge binge. Yes. One long sitting. so I would highly recommend people and I've seen seven of the eight you've watched three of the seven that were made available, seven episodes were made available for critics ahead of time, we have not seen the finale I would encourage people if they like the bear to watch as much of the bear as they can in succession because I think that's the desired effect comes from that experience as far as the agency goes both both because of the complexity of the plot, the sheer number of characters.

25:02I know that that show came out last year, right? 24?

25:06Andy Greenwald:24. Again, kind of a House of the Dragon thing where you're like, ah, right. And this guy I would know from where? You know, because like you just have to, you have to like really assemble all the pieces on the chessboard when you're watching the agency. And I remember now with The Bureau, The Bureau, the show that the agency is based on, I did watch that in a binge. we did pretty much watch five seasons of tv over the course of like two or three weeks well with the pandemic sure but you could keep all the characters in place you could remember all the storylines there were certain things that would emerge that you were like i can't believe this that might have a different feeling if you waited a year or so to watch it so there are different different angles to this whole thing but i guess i would start by saying let's take the agency because I think we should talk about the agency first.

25:54Andy Greenwald:Yeah. But broadly, like, do you think that this model works for a show like that? I want to pick up quickly just when you're talking about how we watched it. Like, one of the great pleasures of the contemporary era of television is the opportunity to rediscover and to unearth. And eventually, I think a lot of people do this. I don't, but like the rewatch. We have too much new stuff to watch. Right. Right. But like La Bureau was so delicious because it was all there for us. We were late to discovering it. I believe all five seasons were completed by the time we started. And, you know, when you have a show in your life with your partner, with your life partner sitting across from me, it can be so fun to just soak in it for weeks.

26:39Andy Greenwald:And, but that said, you also alluded to this, it does change the relationship with the show. And there are incredible things about Le Bureau, the way it would subtly reset every year and be widened the aperture to be about also a different part of the world or a different hotspot or to see the larger game board. I feel like appreciating that would have been different in the moment. Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse, but the show contained enough richness to allow for both experiences. What I don't, and also I don't begrudge people who are like, well, I've never seen Mad Men. oh, here it is.

27:16Andy Greenwald:Let me dive in. Like, that's great. What I don't understand, and I hope someone might, what's our email address? Thewatch at Spotify.com. Someone please let us know about this because season one of the, so let's get some cool emails about why CEOs do get paid what they get paid. Oh, how they work hard and deserve it. Kind of. Great. That's sort of thin. By S-O-R-D-I-D. I do want to talk about why I think the binge model is horrific. Okay. But specifically with the agency, what I don't understand is it is in many ways a feathered fish of development in terms of the Bureau was a massive, massive hit within France and respected internationally.

27:59Andy Greenwald:The rights to it were bandied about and claimed with a great fanfare by Showtime a few years ago. and the idea was that George Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov for Smokehouse were going to develop this and maybe Clooney was going to direct it, etc., etc. This was going to be Showtime's like really, really big, like we're still in the game kind of thing. During the development process of the show, Clooney clearly fell off of it, as did the existence of the Showtime network. So it got folded into being like a premiere offering of the new Paramount Plus streaming service. the Butterworth Bros Jez and John Henry Butterworth write the show Jez an accomplished playwright and very prolific screenwriter they write every episode and run it I think Joe Wright directed some of the first season yes and Neil Berger who is a like long time Hollywood director directed this first episode and I will say without even getting into it this first episode looks like it cost 200 billion dollars to be clear Clooney and Has Love remain producers Has Love directed on the first season it's not like they went honestly But the first season was released with a little bit like you look at a script and it's like, well, now I need an EP credit because I looked at it.

29:12Andy Greenwald:What town do you live in? Guys, Windhorst Finger is the opening credit of almost any show we cover. And you can figure out some pretty interesting, let's call them passive income opportunities.

29:26Andy Greenwald:But the cast is so starry. Michael Fassbender Jeffrey Wright Jodie Turner-Smith Catherine Waterston Richard fucking Gear the first season which was really excellent was a traditional release model they released it in December of 2024 and it ran until the end of January 2025 it seemed to do well enough yes they had greenlit a second season it is so profoundly not a cheap show to make so I have to say I was shocked to discover not only was the show back with a apparently, you know, not, not a robust marketing and promotional effort, but it was back as a dump on Sunday, all 10 episodes. I still think, talk me out of it, or maybe just take the opposing viewpoint here.

30:14Andy Greenwald:I take that as a insult to the people who made it. And I take it as a sign of a lack of confidence in the show from the paramount people. That, that is my takeaway. I do not have any facts to support that. That is how I perceive it. So am I old fashioned in taking something that way? I can see both sides in it. Okay, so I can see... First season comes out. Michael Fassbender, huge movie star, or big movie star, star-studded cast. You develop word of mouth by releasing week to week. Maybe once the second season is done, they're like, our fans are our fans. And we want to service them and meet them where they are and give them 10 hours of stuff to watch as soon as the clock ticks it's not a big tent strategy it's not a big tent strategy but like how many times have we gone through these tv shows and we were like is widow's bay like and the pit are the two shows of the last three or four years that i can think of specifically that have had week to week acceleration well i think you're right to bring that often than not it's people being like man I feel like I'm so behind on this, you know?

31:23Andy Greenwald:I think you're right about that. I saw, and I'm sorry, I can't credit this appropriately, but I did see an article basically saying it's not accidental or it's not coincidental, I should say, that the largest like week-to-week growing shows, if you just look at the growth, not necessarily the overall audience, over the last year or two years have been on Apple. And the argument, and it included Cape Fear in that, which is also apparently growing week-to-week, even though it's priced at a different point. It clearly had different expectations than Widows Bay did. But the argument was essentially that because Apple is a boutique service, it has relatively humble, let's say, subscriber base, but unlimited coffers, they can afford the strategy of letting people find their shows and letting word of mouth build.

32:13Andy Greenwald:Paramount, I don't have the numbers, but Paramount is in a lower tier than the dominant streaming services. It could just be that they don't have that patience or they don't have the business strategy to let things develop that way. I'm open to that possibility as I was complaining about the other day. All of this is so frustratingly opaque. I find it incredibly annoying as a fan of building week to week, as a fan of how I enjoy watching this stuff, especially a show as dense as the agency. I wish it was otherwise. And also I just find it indicative of larger cultural shifts that I'm powerless to stop, but I hate, which is just the overstuffing and overindulgence of everything.

32:59Yeah, I think that the only counter I have to that is that I can see binging in the same way that people are like, I get my news from newsletters and I don't go to websites anymore. So basically this idea that you find your fan base and you service them to the max rather than we want you to subscribe to our network, our premium cable channel, our streamer. And we want to develop a relationship with you where we parcel out things over the course of a year. And you have to wait till Sunday to watch this. And that works for us. And I think it works for TV shows in terms of especially new shows to build them up over the course of a season.

33:38But for the pure corporation customer relationship, they may just be like, this is what people want.

33:44Andy Greenwald:Well, it's algorithmically stuffing them with what they think they what they feel confident that they know they want. And, you know, I want to talk specifically about the show, of course. But one thing that I've been noticing recently with just how my kids and their friends engage with things, when we suddenly had unlimited options, like when suddenly there was Spotify or even before that, wink, wink, Napster, right? Like it was mind blowing for us as people who used to have to search out things. And we had a lot of appetite for what was next, what was behind the next door, who influenced this, how can I find out more?

34:19Andy Greenwald:Because knowledge was at a premium and access certainly was at a premium. this generation, at least in my experience with my kids, and again, like their peers at the moment, the ceiling of that being currently 13, maybe that changes, there is no searching. There is no, everything is fed to them. Yeah, it's the difference between I'm going to go get that, like at a store, and bring it to me in a box. Yeah, I mean, if my daughter opens YouTube and YouTube already knows everything she probably wants to see, then her worldview is limited by that. and maybe it's too grandiose to say it, but I do feel like the binge model is deeply connected to that or has become entwined with that in terms of expectation.

34:59Andy Greenwald:Like, oh, well, you know, I opened up the service and it knows I watched the first season and here's the new season, so I will just stay in my WALL-E pod forever. Yeah, I mean, we can talk more specifically about this show. Let's talk about the agency. The bear itself is, I think, made, this season specifically, I think is made as a four-hour episode of television. I think there are some episodic breaks, there are commercial breaks, that are in the actual episodes. But I think that if you think about the seven episodes that I've seen, it feels like a complete statement. The agency is as traditional as Prestige TV gets in its construction.

35:32These are 47-minute episodes. We'll talk about the first one here because I had a revelation while watching this. Whoa. I admired and liked watching the first season. Okay. There is something, and I cannot quite put the metaphor together, but it's almost like watching like a thing that I love in another room or something. Like there is an element of for as excited as I was to see the Bureau remade or interested in it, I was like, but it just feels like I've seen that scene in a different language with different characters. This is a really strange experience. This episode, and we can get into a little bit of the discussion about what it is, initially starts and it's tracking along relatively close to the way season two of the Bureau starts.

36:18Correct me if I am wrong, but midway through this first episode, we are introduced to a new character in the universe of this show. Right. And listener, the heart rate went up. So basically, we're picking up right two months after the first season left off story time wise. Sami is kidnapped and is being held hostage in Africa. Martian is now working a desk job at the CIA's London office.

36:52Andy Greenwald:And is fully a double agent. Is now working for the British, which kind of inverts what the Malatru character in the Bureau is working for the Americans. A French agent working for the Americans, for similar reasons, to save his love. And where the second season, or where the Bureau is a little bit more concerned with Syria and goings on in the Middle East and jihadis, this is now getting more and more into Russian paramilitary groups and the Ukraine war. And we are introduced to a character midway through the first episode who's known only as Viking, who is a former U.S. Marine, although one who's got a bit of a fabulous side to him, a former U.S.

37:39Marine who is now working as a henchman And for this Russian paramilitary, it's basically Wagner group, but they're calling it Valhalla in the show. And I was like, oh, this is what I wanted. I wanted a curveball.

37:52Andy Greenwald:Well, now, to be clear, the Le Bureau has a similar, it is a French national. Yes. So thematically, the person who we're chasing is one of ours, is the same. Yes. I did find, and maybe this is also what you're responding to, I leaned in. when it was a ex-US Marine, at the moment when the show, I think, is beginning to engage less with the, like, perfectly curated museum piece of Le Bureau and actually digging into what it would mean to be about the CIA right now. Yeah. And there's a, to me, the most interesting and most declarative section of this episode, and clearly we're talking about only the first of season two, is the conversation between Jeffrey Wright's character and Richard Gere's character, where they're like, man, we used to kick ass and people used to be afraid of us.

38:40Andy Greenwald:What the fuck happened? I thought the collision between that plot beat taken from the French show, but added to the very nowness of it, did elevate everything. Yeah, and I think rooting it in, there's a bit of a strange experience watching the agency where the Central Intelligence Agency's office in London is populated by United Kingdom actors playing Americans. It's so weird, yeah. With the exception of, you know, there's several Americans in it, but Dominic West and Michael Fassbender are, and the guy who plays grandma, right? Yeah, and the kid downstairs in tech who is just like an absolutely, like that is one of the most English faces you could ever, ever capture.

39:29Andy Greenwald:Like that guy would break so quickly under CIA questioning if you put a Greg sausage roll in front of him. That's right. Or mentioned having a few drinks at Spoons. so there's like this odd feeling but I did like the idea that this Viking character has emerged out of like fringe like 4chan Manosphere and then through the lens or through the prism of like Aryan Brotherhood white power, white nationalism in America to somehow find himself in Africa working as a Merc for a Russian paramilitary group it's just a really nice curveball on I'm making it more like, what would these characters from these countries be facing?

40:09Andy Greenwald:Yeah, I think it's a really, really complicated production in ways that I think are almost difficult to parse because it is British screenwriters adapting a very, very French show. But more than that, a very, very 2015 show for a contemporary American television audience about contemporary American geopolitics. some of the adaptations work incredibly well. Some are more stilted. Some are still finding their way. I found myself in this episode more drawn to the most familiar plot from people who had watched the original series, which in this case is Danny in Tehran. I think Sour Lightfoot Leone is awesome and exciting in the role.

40:52Andy Greenwald:And the peril of that feels a lot more pronounced because she's the agent in the field. That was also beat for beat what Le Bureau did and with the setup of who's going to get turned, who's going to become a source, all of that, and the way that the Martian character is going to play with it. I still find, the show is almost like, and this may be why I'm also worried about its future, it is so aggressively complicated and chilly. I'm super into that. Yeah. But it is dense. And I still think that... I think this is the same conversation we had two years ago. I think we're both responding to Fassbender.

41:31It's Fassbender. And they made a choice to make him, choose him as the actor. I think that he and this period of his acting has settled in on like, I have like a Michael Fassbender guy that I play who is like a cold, heartless sociopath.

41:50Andy Greenwald:Who likes racing cars. And who likes racing cars. And then on the side in Frank or in this or that, I might play somebody like kind of more funky and interesting. But it is funny that we noticed him. I mean, audiences suddenly were like, who the hell is that in Inglourious Bastards? Because he was everything you're saying. I remember the first time I really became engaged with him was Hunger, the Steve McQueen movie, about IRA hunger strikes. And I was like, this guy is on another level. It feels like he's the next Daniel Day-Lewis. But he has kind of settled into the killer Prometheus kind of Assassin's Creed guy.

42:23and in this show so far I think maybe lack some of the soul of the character from the original series now that's okay if they let the big dogs in the pen off the leash thank you and that's Wright Gear Watterson and McGarrow yeah and if they let those people cook and there is like little little spots of daylight that like you don't put you don't it's like you don't get Jeffrey Wright to have him throw one inning in the seventh. You gotta let this guy out. I love this. Like, go. And I think that's coming. And I think you can see that emerging because he is charged with the mole hunt.

43:03Andy Greenwald:Yes. I'm very excited to keep watching this. I mean, some of the best moments, it's so odd, some of the best moments of the show are the little throwaways like Katherine Waterston's birthday party. Yes. You know, the things that the Butterworths are inventing for these people are riveting and exciting. And I hope they do that. I think the best comp, and this is kind of surprising to say, would be Mad Men because Mad Men built a cast of real characters, broad, funny, surprising, warm around Jon Hamm's central performance, which was defined by, this is not a criticism of Jon Hamm in one of the iconic television roles of all time, but that role was defined by its tightness and its insularity and its reticence and everything else warmed it up or surprised it.

43:50Andy Greenwald:I think that's the best case scenario for the show because Fassbender's Martian is essentially like a blunt object. And the one moment that I didn't like in an episode that I was otherwise like, ooh, the clue's in the crossword puzzle. Inject this into my veins. Was when he is so stressed out about the lack of rescue for Samia that he then F1s his Ford Focus to the top of a garage and then screams in frustration. And I was like, this seems like an actor note. Yeah. Than it does a character note. I just have to stress again that this show looks like it cost$100 million to make on one episode they stage a giant shootout in Khartoum, I don't know where they actually shot it but more than that what doubles for Khartoum these days?

44:34I think it's shot kind of maybe anamorphic I thought that the birthday scene also was so full of life and so well done and also it was just so great to have Martian trying to pretend to be a human being while also watching all these people flirt and have champagne and like turn 40 and all this stuff and he's like you know dying on the inside because he's a double agent who's desperately trying to save the love of his life's life more of that man keep putting fassbender in amongst real people and keep putting him up against brilliant british character actors who will like undo him a little bit.

45:15Andy Greenwald:We should have this show. We, as viewers of television. As two white men in our 40s, we deserve this. Could something finally be for us? Hello. No, but generally, like there is so much fucking money in the international streaming television space. And this, I mean, Libero still exists. I mean, that's the challenge, right? It's still competing with the original in terms of what you could watch on any given Tuesday. But a high-minded, high-quality, high-cost, elegant international spy thriller should just be on the checklist of what is on these services. They are hard to do. There's too much talent here for it to go too sideways.

46:00Andy Greenwald:And I hope that the rest of the season, which some people listening may have already watched, fulfills more of its promise, both in terms of an inheritor of the original, but also as its own thing. And then, like, let's keep going. Yeah. there's um this experience that i i have not been able to articulate and i think that it's kind of fun we've been talking about television together for 12 years or whatever it is 13 years 14 uh 14 years i didn't that's true one year i didn't really watch tv and talk about it much with you and then i don't really count the andy greenwald podcast that's fair and would you like a list of the guests who did count it we'll run it on the side of the screen Kai I we've spent so much time trying to be like this is why this show is good and this is why the show is bad and sometimes you just turn on a tv show and you're just like I'm not changing the channel brother yeah that's generally you with Paramount Plus no that is your default home screen plenty of shows I am not watching Dutton Ranch I am not watching plenty of things on Paramount Plus I I stopped watching Mobland I was just like I feel like I got it yeah you feel like you got the land you have to lay the land uh but there is something about like I just think the agency is just really, really, really well made.

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50:39Andy Greenwald:Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Let's talk about the bear. We'll go into depth on it on Monday when maybe you have a chance to, I mean, hopefully, like, finish it, you know, because, Oh. Is that too much? No, no, let me just get my iCal for a second. Move some things around. Look, there's a lot of TV right now. There's House of the Dragon. There's The Bear. There's The Agency. There's so much to love. Is there? Yeah. So I've watched the seven episodes. I'm not going to spoil anything. A lot of what you would hear from me that would be a spoiler is now widely available in the reviews that have been published today and the trades.

51:20By the time this goes up, I think the season will have gone up, but I don't have anything to say about the finale because I haven't seen it. I guess I should let you go first.

51:27Andy Greenwald:The reviews have come out, and the reviews seem to have devoured them as the FX press room would like us to devour them. So reviewers are like, boy, the seventh episode's really great. And boy, the other episodes really build up to it. I really think it's important to have a conversation about, sincerely, Charles Barkley voice, about what's happened to the show over the last three years. and it was a massive bummer to watch the first three episodes of this season. I think that there are really strong arguments to be made about the joys of insulated, siloed, collaborative, community-based filmmaking.

52:07Andy Greenwald:Like when you work with your pals and you work on something that you're passionate about, great things can come from that. And the first few seasons are a testament to that, certainly. There are still moments when watching The Bear where you see flickers of that affection that the cast and crew have for each other, the deep, almost wordless understanding that the performers have or that Chris Storer, the creator and director, has with people that he's known in his real life and he's now put on the camera. That's all wonderful. The flip side of that is when you completely make something for yourselves and with yourselves and don't talk to anyone about it, it can choke the life out of something and feel like the most insular, drain-circling exercise imaginable.

52:53Andy Greenwald:And I found these three episodes to be a continuation, to be fair, of what's happened the last few years, which has been an almost outright disdain of traditional television storytelling. Now, I don't want to be here and be the William F. Buckley of streaming television, standing athwart, you know, the fucking Disney Plus logo yelling stop. But there is a reason why television, whether you deliver it as a binge or not, is often broken story-wise a certain way. why storylines are spaced out over time, why conversations are had in vibrant writers' rooms about where do we go next so this does not feel like more and more and more and more of the same thing.

53:34Andy Greenwald:So the fact that the first three episodes of the season aren't just the same characters feeling glum about the potential professional opportunities ahead of them in the same spaces, only now it's all over the course of one service, only now it's all over the course of one dark rainstorm in the super, super claustrophobic Michael Mann fever dream stage set of the restaurant, I found it, I was just sort of choking watching it. Like I did not get pleasure out of it of seeing these people say the same things to each other in sort of stagey, non-story advancing ways. I was really frustrated. Really, really frustrated.

54:15Andy Greenwald:And not to make this too inside baseball, but like, and I would say this to, Chris is a great guy and we love talking to him and hopefully we'll continue to talk to him in the future. This is in no way personal, but I do find it odd that the show two years ago stopped having any conversation at all with the outside world. They don't do any press. They don't talk about it. They didn't even set up what this season was. It's just like, here's another bunch of hours. And it feels so disconnected from the relationship that I had as a fan, not as a podcaster. So, you know, I think that's a worthwhile conversation to have.

54:48and maybe that's where we can leave this discussion. I was much more positive on what I've watched, but I was feeling like nervous at the three episode mark. I don't know if your attitude is going to be changed about it, but I think that this season of television would greatly benefit from not even like a cover story on Jeremy Allen White where he walks us through everything or a promo binge where they're playing with puppies talking about their five favorite meals they've ever had. Like there's lots of reasons why that stuff is actually pretty tired. Agree. But I do think that it would have helped this season or helped you watch this season if they had come out and said, this is about a day in the restaurant.

55:34Andy Greenwald:If they had come out and said, let me explain how our menu works. No, but like being serious. I am too. If it was like, hey, So this is about the pre-service portion of a day, a chaotic night at the restaurant, and the culmination of everything that we've been talking about on this show. and that we are shooting it essentially as a relay race that goes increasingly up in terms of intensity to a kind of mirror of the early seasons, of the chaos of the handheld sort of like Carmi doing crazy things and yelling at people, and then pivoting it to being like, well, what would happen if Sydney was running this restaurant?

56:17And what happens on the night where they're actually working collaboratively? I think that would be a good thing for people to know going into it maybe nobody cares and maybe it's like the bear's back and I'm gonna watch it or I stopped watching the bear three years ago

56:31Andy Greenwald:yeah and this is the vibe that I know that I'm gonna get from this restaurant even though now we're using scraps of off cuts like to there's a moment when people start yelling again as they always do and it plays off of Sydney's face this is I believe in episode three of the new season and her face is then intercut with images of all of these people shouting at each other in previous seasons. Yes. And I'm like, we're really just recycling that as opposed to generating new content. Like, I think there's an argument to be made that when Carmi was locked in the walk-in freezer two, three seasons ago, that he never came out.

57:06Andy Greenwald:These are all dream sequences because every single person has been stuck and frozen since then. Yeah. Now, again, I would love to, maybe we'll have the opportunity to have the conversation. Like, is this because this was always one story and then FX and the cast and crew or everyone's having such a good time, they're like, let's make three more seasons out of this one story. That's the evidence in front of us. But that they're having the same circular conversations, that every character is basically locked in place and that the only variation so far in this new season is an expansion, an IP expansion of Friend of the Ringer, Brian Koppelman's character in the form of His daughter?

57:48Andy Greenwald:Like, that's the big addition so far. I don't think that's his daughter. I think that's like somebody who owes him a favor. Oh, another quant? She's, yeah. He comes in and plays by Elsie Fisher. I'm like, this part of the show is not as compelling to me as I think the people making the show think it is. Similarly, Maddie Matheson being intellectually and emotionally a child and beloved by everyone is diminishing returns to me, even though, again, I think the people making the show find this incredibly delightful. So anything to push the ball forward, instead we get a Hans Zimmer score on top of it which is like honestly felt like shaving incredibly expensive Alba truffles over Kirkland mac and cheese I liked the I liked the addition of an original score instead of constant eel drops I mean I love the music of the bear and I have a I have the playlist that is all the songs from the bear but I thought that doing an original score for the season and nailing down the camera and making everything like the sensation that you're supposed to get is that sydney is giving people a sense of calm right and so the camera needs to calm down as well and so that there are push-ins and there are like quick cuts but essentially like from what i could tell like there is very very little of the usual like bare kind of chaotic handheld in somebody's face giving you a panic attack camera work.

59:10It's all like on an axis, you know?

59:13Andy Greenwald:Just like I don't think, and I don't think the show agrees with me, and I think there's room to go here, but just like I don't think that a tweezered antiseptic restaurant that serves a set tasting menu is necessarily better than a sandwich shop, I don't necessarily think three extra seasons of Lionel Boyce proving he can be a morose dramatic actor is better than the kind of sweet, slightly more humorous character that he played in the first two seasons. Now he's staring at a candle again, you know, and only, and locked in a room with Will Poulter. Now, obviously that might change, but I don't know if that's a different tone, but now it's been the same tone and I don't know if it's necessarily better.

59:49Similarly, I think Chris is a phenomenal director

59:52Andy Greenwald:and an incredible accruer of talent and he understands the actors that he knows and loves so well and has brought out shades of people that we had never seen before, even in the show, like what Oliver Platt's doing, what Eben Moss Bacharach is doing. That's still what Abby Elliott does. These are things that I didn't know these actors who I was familiar with could do, and I love seeing them do it. I also know he is absolutely sincere in his filmic knowledge and his love of Michael Mann and everything. But this vessel that he has been given by the gods at Disney and FX isn't a Michael Mann movie, no matter how much music and neon light you put on it.

1:00:29you know

1:00:30Andy Greenwald:I so my frustration is because I think more than anything the organic joy of this show for absolutely three full seasons even if the third season was a little bit shakier was such a special special thing now special things don't go on forever in the television or the restaurant industry but these last two seasons of just so aggressively being something else I'm finding well you can tell I'm frustrated I'm going to watch more of course. And this is where binge drops can burn you because by the time some people are listening to me say this, they're going to be like, how could you say that if you haven't seen seven?

1:01:07Exactly. Yeah.

1:01:08Andy Greenwald:But, um, I'm trying to engage with it as a honest steward of my relationship to what has come before. There's a strange thing that's going on with this show with obviously we've talked a lot about the method of its release, but I think its deepest pleasure is still the, the, the pleasure of any TV show, which is the durational aspect of it and the relationship you build to the characters and for as circuitous as this road has been to get there I found myself deeply invested in Marcus uh in in Richie in everybody's well-being and I don't know what how else to put it that way you know what I mean like I usually don't have um like a this person needs to be okay feeling when I'm watching a tv show and caring about characters in that way but it does hit you that we've been talking about this show for a long time.

1:01:57We've watched a lot of hours of this show. I think that we have complicated relationships with the show because on one hand, it's like the best TV can do. And on the other hand, it feels like it didn't quite live up to the potential of the first two seasons. But I think that this fifth season proves its necessity for existing.

1:02:16Andy Greenwald:I love that. I can't wait to see it. I think I just cannot believe that the Karmie character has just been bubble wrapped essentially since season three. locked in the same exact emotional stasis that he's been in. And then when you have him finally say what he needs to say at the end of season four, the creative decision then is to pick up the next day where he's still bubble wrapped, hasn't told anyone yet. He doesn't tell anyone else until an hour in. And then let's get people going to where they need to go. And maybe that begins in episode four and I'll find out this weekend apparently because I'll be watching the rest of the series.

1:02:50I mean, you just let me know where we're going to be on

1:02:52Andy Greenwald:Monday morning, you know? I know where we're going to be here unless another factory catches fire um it was lovely to talk to you i can't wait to i i'm i'm very engaged in continuing this conversation okay um do you feel like when when we disagree that somebody has to win um but do you feel like you need me to come over to your side of the force no no do you think no i mean you know i don't i'm but you you're so articulate about your critical opinions. But that also helps me because I know you're wrong. And so I have empathy, you know, because... Sweet, simple Chris. Just watching Rogan and Sheridan.

1:03:31He's just like just

1:03:32Andy Greenwald:dreaming of deaf horses, you know? We're going to get out of here. Thanks to Kai and Sarah for producing today. We'll be back on Monday. We'll probably be talking some combination of House of the Dragon or The Bear or whatever, the agency, like whatever Andy gets Andy fired. No, no, no. Whatever gets Andy, I want you. I want you to be all of those things. Fire me up. Steve-O to my Knoxville, you know? So you're just sitting on the sidelines being like too old for that shit. Well, I'm getting just probed. By a dragon. I mean, it's felt like that for the last few years. Everybody have a good weekend.

1:04:03We'll see you soon.

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