The ‘X-Men’ Cast, ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Footage, and More D23 News. Plus, ‘Lanterns’ Series Premiere and ‘Furious’ Episode 6.

19:49You can't have it look like it was shot on like 2017 volume software. Yes. And also have people be like, but what do you mean, Victor? You know, like you have to yell, you have to emote, you have to feel it. Yes. Then the incursions matter, you know?

20:05Andy Greenwald:I would. This is a new character I think you should develop between now and December where you are like the old RADA instructor. You know, like some of these actors came up under your tutelage in the London theater scene. You are molded them like maybe Aaron Pierre worked with you before he went Hollywood. And then they call you in to the set, the London set of Doomsday. And you're like, no, no, Victor. No, like you just you're going up to everyone. You're going up to like a pile of styrofoam and ping pong balls. and you call it Eben and Eben's actually over there catering and you're just trying to get them to feel what they can't see.

20:41Andy Greenwald:Did you ever expect girls to be so important to the Marvel universe? Thank you. That was the take I was missing. Yes. You did, but did you think it would be women from girls who populated Marvel? I mostly watch Girls for the Boys. There's my take. Yeah. No, first of all, the Socia Mamet in Madam Web Erasure will not stand. You see she's in Industry Season 5? I did. I did. Do you think that, I can't, like, it's almost like Mickey and Conrad are now ordering from the prestige television menu. Like, they got access to a different thing on Postmates, you know, where it's just like, oh, Kieran and Chipka now.

21:17Andy Greenwald:Like, we can now access the higher, it's great, the higher priced items. I think that's going to be cool. Do you, would you like to comment on Girls' Return to Prominence? I saw that Lena Dunham and Carly Rae Jepsen I was about to talk about this. are doing a 10 things is I Hate About You musical that opens next year. This is going to go down a treat, as they say in my household. And I wonder whether or not girls will wind up deciding the next presidential election one way or another. That we open up the doors and we say, you know what? We haven't discussed this show enough. We haven't litigated it enough.

21:54Andy Greenwald:You think that's going to become a hot button issue between... Ossoff and AOC? Whose girls bona fides are... Honestly, that's tough. You're such a Marnie, John Ossoff. Generationally, they are right in there to talk about it. That's an exciting thing to look forward to. It's always amusing when, like, we talked about this a lot with Short Term 12. Short Term 12 being, like, the Rosetta Stone text. Independent film that had Michael B. Jordan, Brie Larson, John Gallagher, Rami Malek. Yes. And all those people went on to make... Lakeith Stanfield. Lakeith Stanfield, blockbusters, etc. and now you've got girls supplying the demand that's exciting which are you more excited for in May 2028 X-Men or the Democratic primary see they don't do that on other podcasts I just wish we could integrate them like we could bring them together like maybe different X-Men characters just voicing the platforms of the candidates if you would give me five minutes to prepare for this idea I would blow your doors down but I can't do it on the fly I'm really really maybe we'll just circle back at the end of the pod who do you think Wolverine would voice?

23:08Andy Greenwald:no that's the thing like there's a lot of I mean Wolverine would have been Platner yeah problematic northern you know problematic northern yeah pursuit always testing how much he can heal absolutely overconfident in terms of the damage he can sustain while remaining in the fight that is that's funny wow there's a lot here there were a couple other Disney things that are less interesting to you. Like, I imagine you didn't. Oh, is this going to be like Bluey stuff? I imagine you didn't check out. I watched Lioness for you, you monster. You watched 18 minutes of it. You didn't even get to the dogs.

23:43Andy Greenwald:That's three episodes of Bluey, and it's all dogs. Boom. Defeated. I assume you didn't check out the Tangled live-action trailer or whatever. Is that Mandy? The original is Mandy. Oh, okay. Who's in the new one? Other people. Okay. Milo Manheim, who I know you remember from the Zombies franchise in Disney. Is that an actual person or is that a character? Okay. Yeah, yeah. We'll circle back to that. Yeah, I do think we have to address the fact that they released like a teaser of the Bluey movie, and I brought it on my cellular device over to my nine-year-old first, and instantly she's like, oh, it just begins with a little balloon.

24:28Andy Greenwald:She's like, oh, is this Bluey? And she leaned in. And then it revealed Bluey and Bingo in glorious computer animated 3D. And she said, oh, God, no. This ruined my childhood. And I said, respectfully, you are still a child. And without a pause, she said, my early childhood.

24:50Andy Greenwald:It's going to be a lot to overcome. The move to 3D computer animation. Do you think when you're nine, you know how you don't really remember? I personally don't really have a lot of memories until kindergarten, right? Kindergarten's five. You had memories at nine. I know I had memories at nine, but do you think when you're nine, you remember when you're two? No, I can. Thank you. Finally, I'm a value add to this podcast. No, they do not remember. They do not remember. I think. Because that would be funny if you were just like a grizzled nine-year-old when I was two. I had it so good. My older daughter did say early pandemic was peak for her because she didn't know what was going on and she didn't have to go to school anymore.

25:36Andy Greenwald:Didn't she have Zoom class? She like, not tearfully, she like confessed to me that sometimes during second grade Zoom, she clicked off and looked at other things. Okay. I was like, I forgive you. Sometimes when I'm writing a screenplay for money, I also click and look at other things. Sometimes when Chris is talking. I have nine tabs open right now. The drift is real. When Chris is like, Kyle interrogated her in the rules of the Geneva Convention. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, that's good for her. That's a big breakthrough. Yeah. Okay, well, those were the big announcements, I guess. There was nothing really like Star Wars-y, right?

26:15Andy Greenwald:There was just like... They showed Starfighter, but I was not invited to do it. They showed the movie? No, they showed like a minute of it or whatever. And then I think... I think actually I couldn't tell if I was being gaslit by Twitter when I looked at it but somebody was like Sean Levy said something about the movie Drive and I didn't I don't know if that was true that he was remaking it that it was like influencing Starfighter but I don't think that's true you should you should pause and we should make a whole podcast about that statement like let's just I think that was literally like somebody did it in Twitter it was like just to just to be like just to get you worked up yeah they didn't get me worked up Frozen 3 did you see Kristen Bell showed up at a Savannah Bananas game and just started singing songs.

26:54What do you mean showed up? Like uninvited? No, she was like invited, but I wonder whether she's like, if we're going to make this live action Frozen, I'm in this shit. And I'm going to show you why.

27:03Andy Greenwald:I'm going to show you why. She's like, I'm not getting cut out of this. Yeah. I mean, that's tough. I mean, that's like the, that's the wicked path, right? Where like, what's her name? Adina. Adina, but also, you know, your girl. The Chenoweth? Chenoweth, yeah. You think she's my girl? not in terms of our artistry, but politically and religiously, I think you kind of are more aligned that they had to like show up for like a little cameo in Wicked One. Don't let the beard fool you, dog. In which direction? The beard is keeping me guessing. I can't tell if it's fundamentalist or just hip. Anyway, no, Frozen 3 is not, that's a cartoon though.

27:40Andy Greenwald:So we're excited for that. I think that it's inevitable that they're going to get Frozen live action going. She can't play Elsa, right? It might be inevitable, but well, she's Anna. first of all. I know you know that. We were just testing me. But I'd like to think I don't know. I'm just a humble not even stockholder. But I'd like to think that the Moana reception maybe was a little bit of a brushback pitch of like you might actually have to think of something new. But then again the rest of the announcements were. Josh DeMauro seemed really chastened. Seemed like we hear you. As he was up there being like Coco 2, Incredibles 3 Starfighter 2 Drive just the starfighter just driving wearing gloves who cares you'd watch that okay but for real though we did this a while ago where like we were just like just make drive but with jedis if in the first 10 minutes of starfighter ryan gosling puts on space gloves if they drop tick of the clock like i'll never leave the theater i'll just i'll move in there they won't do that they'll do cbs Sunday morning featurettes about the guy who won't leave Starfighter.

28:53No, I'm perfectly comfortable here. I live on a diet of cookie dough. And Diet RC. No impossible nuggets for you. All right, let's get into the television from Sunday. All right, all right. Can we just say,

29:09Andy Greenwald:I don't mean to cut you off, I did just want to say at the top that we did see the film Tony, but because it's only in like seven theaters. 35. Okay, so a factor of seven. We won't talk about it until later in the week, but we both highly recommend it. I think we'll talk about it. Maybe what we'll do is we'll record something on Thursday and we'll put it at the very, very end of my conversation with Van about Lioness on Monday. And see what happens. So like after an hour of you and Van... See how many people in the studio quit and protest? An hour of you and Van talking about extraordinary rendition techniques.

29:42Andy Greenwald:And at the end of it, I'm like, you know, every food story is really a story of people. Did you know that in the third episode of Lioness, the two lionesses take a bath together? And they get interrupted. Interrupted from what? From bathing and other things. From communicating love physically with each other. I can't, are you trying to get me, what is your intention here? I want to see if that makes it any more interesting. A slice of life, you know? When you call them lionesses, it feels like it's a National Geographic show. They are lionesses. But are they bathing each other in the manner of actual lions?

30:15They're taking a straight up old school bath together. Okay.

30:19Andy Greenwald:That's wonderful. Yeah. Do the lionesses generally like stick to the pride like that? This is, I think, a new wrinkle for lionesses. I also... I'm honestly surprised Joe's letting it happen. But that's... Did Joe burst in? Be like, is there room for me? No, I only take cold showers. That's right. How many lionesses are there at any given time? I thought there was only one. I thought it was like a Highlander situation. There's a queue on Joe's team right now. Does someone else have a team? No, there's only one Lioness team. And Alexandra, the Ukrainian double agent, knows who they are. She's like, you are Lioness.

30:53You are Lioness. And then she points at Joe and goes, and you are the Lioness.

30:58Andy Greenwald:That sounds like luck. You know what I mean? Oh, she just guessed because it's the three women there? And it's a show called Lioness. Bobby's there too. She didn't call her Lioness. What did she call her? Nothing. She was just like, and you're her team. Anyway, I'm giving you out of context. lioness stuff. That's my favorite kind of lioness stuff. Let's do lanterns first. How about that? New show. All right. New us. This one is pretty hardly anticipated by your boys. And for good reason, because it comes from Chris Mundy, who was one of the main creative forces behind Ozark, Damon Lindelof, who is one of the main creative forces behind Lost and Leftovers and Watchmen and Tom King, who is a beloved and adored, critically and commercially, comics writer.

31:44Author of anything in particular you want to highlight?

31:48Andy Greenwald:Tom King? I mean, he's had incredible runs on, I mean... Vision, right? I mean, it's really Tom King's moment when you think about it. Because the Supergirl was supposed to be based on his... His Woman of Tomorrow comic, he's done runs. Vision, I think, is a masterpiece. But at DC, he's done runs on Wonder Woman. I think he's written Batman. And he is really the dude who... Him and Hickman. He's not like Hickman, but in terms of if you want to hire someone to radically rethink what the possibilities of something that already exists could be, he is just other-brained about that. He's a genius about that stuff.

32:22This is a small screen rendering of the beloved DC superhero, which in this story gets bifurcated between at least so far after one episode, two lanterns, Hal and John, Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, respectively and um it's a time-hopping grounded detective show that also has elements of intergalactic uh intrigue intrigue and cop and police work uh in 2016 hal jordan is half-heartedly training john stewart to be a lantern even though earth only gets one at a time being a lantern for lay people means being some kind of space cop uh protecting earth from extraterrestrial invaders I think that's fair to say.

33:05And Jordan and Stewart are drawn to an apparent mass shooting in rural Nebraska where they become embroiled in the lives of a sheriff named Carrie, played by Kelly McDonald. Her lawyer husband, Billy, played by Jason Ritter. Very nice job by him. His father, William, a mysterious, possibly government-affiliated militia leader, played by Garrett Dillahunt. Awesome to see him on screen. Awesome to see him back on HBO. And William's wife, Zoe, played by porno Jack Nathan, who is also an HBO vet. Night of. Night of. The pilot is a real, it's like a pilot. It's called Pilot and it has got a lot of work to do.

33:46Do you think it did the work?

33:49Andy Greenwald:It's almost a hard, it's too hard of a framing, I think. Okay. I would say that through one episode, and I know there are some critics who have seen more, we like to go one at a time. I was reminded at once of two things. I was reminded of the fact that the lift to get something like this that is as burdened or blessed, depending on your point of view, with so much history, IP, understanding, perception, expectations, fan expectations, to get it off the ground to begin with is enormous and almost superhuman. and not just that then to grab the wheel as aggressively as Mundy King and Lindelof have done here and try to turn it in the span of 50 minutes from what it always has been and what people who do know the character think of it as which is intergalactic space cops and make it true detective also in an HBO prestige type investigatory program you feel the G-forces fighting them at every turn There is so much exposition.

34:58Andy Greenwald:There is so much table setting. And then you make it something that is set in multiple timelines, which is also incredibly challenging to do. So I would say that I found this pilot to be incredibly engaging, incredibly entertaining, promising, but deeply effortful. In that there was no moment when I felt it relaxing into the show that it could well become and become quickly. That's not a problem. Like we have years of experience on this podcast, let alone in our lives. Understanding that pilots are hard. I never mind when it's fleet of foot. It's when it grinds and it's when TV is like, this is going to be a slog and it's not going to be funny at all.

35:41And it's going to be like so self-serious about its own setup and stuff like that. And I think that there's... It isn't that. Yeah, it's not that at all. You know, a lot of exposition in this episode. But the highs should really make people bullish on this. Yeah. And we'll get into some details of the plot now. So if you haven't watched Lanterns yet, you can skip to Furious or you can honestly probably just take the week off and then come back when I talk to a fan about Lioness.

36:12It's the scene where Hal interrogates the alien, which is a scene that you've seen. Like it's not unheard of to have that kind of interaction. It was so well done. Great. And it was the first time I think we got to see Kyle Chandler's iteration of the Green Lantern actually be worth his weight, you know, other than like his ability to put on a ring and fly. Like that was actual detective work he was doing to some extent. I thought that was so good and the turn that the that the that alien basically makes midway through when they were talking about Harry Potter of all things

36:50Andy Greenwald:I was gonna say Hal's genius alien test is something that you would have failed I know he went to Hogwarts did you know that in 2016? yeah yeah under pressure in a police station in Nebraska you would have full access to that I can't do any of the sorting or any of the other stuff but I know that that kid went to Hogwarts okay But that's also the same way you know that Andre Ogodala went to Arizona. I just do, though. In your bones, you know the colleges people go to. Yes. Okay. I mean, up to a point. But up to a point, there's Instagram accounts where they shout at men on the street. And they say, hey, where did Judd Buechler go to college?

37:31And it's like, I know, Arizona Wildcats.

37:33Andy Greenwald:We're only talking about it. See, you're an alien because you only studied Arizona a lot. I mean, up until 2000, I would say 2005, 6, 7, 8. From 85 to 2005, I'd say I'm pretty confident about where any basketball player went to college. Particularly if they were coached by Lute Olsen in the other Arizona Wildcat community. No. You are busted, alien. When this show sings, it sings. When Dylan Hunt is on screen, it sings. when Aaron Pierre and Pornadjagnasen are chatting at the bar. Yeah. It's going. There is a lot of stuff here that they have to introduce us to a concept that maybe some people don't understand.

38:23Introduce on top of that. Not only are there intergalactic space cops, but there's a reason for that. There's been this alien discovery.

38:30Andy Greenwald:And the world is okay with it. And that this guy is a celebrity. We understand they're aliens. And then the next piece is, that's incredibly challenging, is we have to make the audience believe that a man who could fly to Alpha Centauri and back is going to willingly put himself into a jail cell to be near someone that he thinks is an alien. Like that the stakes can go from galactic to local and regional that effortlessly. In that, I thought that in many ways, and I do not mean to discount the work of Chris Mundy here because, A, we don't know the actual inner workings of the way that these three, honestly, alphas delineated their responsibilities.

39:13Andy Greenwald:of these. But everything I understand about him is that he is an incredibly affable, like consensus builder and really good at the less glamorous parts of show running, which is making everyone buy in. So I'm not trying to minimize him, but I will say that this episode in many ways did feel like a conversation between Tom King's comic book specialty, which is saying, yes, Green Lanterns, but now they're investigating a crime scene in Nebraska. And there's a tough talking female sheriff who doesn't give a shit that he can make anything. It's also a mass shooting that's taking place the year that Trump gets elected.

39:45Like it's, they are very purposeful

39:47Andy Greenwald:with what they're choosing. And if you are a comic book, even casual reader, I think you are at this point used to the idea of like, oh, Tom King's Green Lantern number one just came out and it's a really interesting new spin on it. So that part. The places where I saw Damon at his best is that when Damon runs right at the kind of, the impossible to understand or the impossible to articulate thing, and makes a joke about it. You know? To give me an example of that. Well, like, just the way that Chandler is just like, actually, you know, aren't you supposed to be like, you know, an intergalactic peacekeeping force?

40:24Andy Greenwald:And he's like, actually, the universe is pretty peaceful. Yeah. Or he's just like, when he describes the origin story of Green Lantern as it exists in the comic book, which is this test pilot finds a crash, an alien ship having crash landed, and the pink guy gives him a ring, and he's just like, he either said, good luck, good luck, or fuck off, and I don't know which it was. like make the joke about it and make the subtext text so we all understand that we can move on so there's another thing which is many writers may not take this as seriously but Lindelof last night a bunch of interviews with him were released yeah you know in the aftermath of the episode and honestly just because I'm not very familiar with Green Lantern this didn't strike me as completely outrageous but like you know Damon was sort of put in a position to be like I'm really sorry that we've killed Hal Jordan.

41:13Yes. And the reason why we had to do that was, I think for a variety of reasons, but he was sort of being cheeky when he said, you can't say you have to pry the ring from my cold dead hands unless you're willing to make Hal cold and dead. Now, it's a Lindelofism, but it's also a Mundyism if you've seen Ozark to be like, the thing that should happen at the end of the first season happens in the first episode. Yes.

41:37Andy Greenwald:So you watch this pilot and there is an element of the giant in Twin Peaks going, it is happening again, but for Kyle Chandler in a prestige television show, literally maybe the third thing he says on screen is you'll have to pry this from my cold dead hand. So it's very Mayor of Kingstown-y in the sense that we know, but now the show is going to play with time. So he is not off of the show. There's just going to be - Also with galactic space cops and magic rings, you could theoretically bring him back. You could, but I also think that they are making, this is where it starts to fit into the James Gunn verse in a, I think, a relatively interesting way, which is they, he's chosen, he likes Guy Gardner as his favorite Green Lantern, clearly.

42:17Andy Greenwald:And that guy and Nathan Fillion will show up as that Green Lantern. It seems to me, Aaron Pierre has already been announced as co-starring in Man of Tomorrow, that that's what they're doing going forward. So it's okay. I mean, even more so than Marvel. Marvel has had a more recent thing where there's like, now there's a new Hawkeye and she's a young woman. And they've rebooted their characters, Miles Morales being maybe the most famous example of it. DC's been doing this since before anybody cared about stuff. Like I made a passing joke last week about the golden age green lantern who was a guy named Alan Scott.

42:46Andy Greenwald:So Hal Jordan isn't even the first one. Right. It's just the first one where they created this backstory of him being a space cop with a magic ring and not just a guy in a hood literally holding a lantern. Right. So they've chosen which one they want to use. So I like the fact that maybe I'm reading too much into it, but all of these eras, Gunverse, the Feige, MCU, whatever, in this fullness of time are fleeting. So choose, make a decision. Make a history. Make this the guy that taught the other guy and have the fun with him now while you have him on the show. I like that. I was fine with it. And again, it also speaks to the actual under the hood challenges of this episode, which is you have to not only introduce the entire mythos, but you also have to introduce this one guy who you have to care about so much that the episode ending with him being dead in the future lands.

43:36Andy Greenwald:Otherwise, he's just another guy. And I think it did. It was interesting because the interviews after the episode were so like, we know people are going to be outraged. But I thought what was cool and the best moment was that the Kelly MacDonald and Aaron Pierre characters come upon his dead body in the same stadium where this mass shooting has taken place, where he's convinced there's been... This is where he was brought when he was younger and indoctrinated into becoming a Green Lantern in the first place. And he's sitting there, you know, dead. And they're not crying. You know, like they're just like kind of almost like this was always going to be where it ended up.

44:19But he has no ring. And he has no ring.

44:21Andy Greenwald:Let's talk about some of the casting decisions here. Chandler's great. Chandler is... He's going big. bigger than I thought he would go. I think that's, I think it's good. I mean, I think that, again, it is, it's funny that I, when they announced it and what it was going to be and there was some talk about like, oh, how will this fit in with James Gunn's aesthetic? This is not James Gunn's aesthetic, but having a guy with a super-powered ring doing shots at a bar is James Gunn's aesthetic. Like, that is some overlap there. And playing, like, ironically, like a funny song, like a bunch. Yeah, being, being of the world is, is kind of what Gunn likes to do with these characters and make them bigger than life with their personality.

45:03Andy Greenwald:So I thought that fit. He is, you know, Matthew Rhys has now given him a run for his money, but I think Kyle Chandler is in the Television Hall of Fame. And just like every time he's on screen, you just like him and you want to be rooting for him and you're invested in what he's doing. So he brings that charisma to everything that he does. I think manufacturing chemistry is challenging. I think a couple moments in the pilot spoke to it directly that like this guy eats ribs and Jon Stewart is a vegan um Aaron Pierre is like carved from a lab to be a superhero in these types of movies yes he is a they are very different energies which maybe is good I thought so my argument for it is that it there was at least a arc to their chemistry which matched the arc of the character's relationship and I thought by the time they get to the bar mm-hmm You know, the Jon Stewart character is speaking more freely about what he thinks of what Hal Jordan is doing.

46:02Yeah. And isn't just keeping everything to himself and taking deep breaths and calling him sir. So by the time they get to the bar and Hal Jordan's doing this somewhat ridiculous, I'm going to play a country song 10 times in a row until these guys at the pool table beat me up in order to get arrested so that I can go to the, so that I can interview this guy who's already in jail, which it turns out he doesn't really need to do because he could have, you know what I mean? Like it's this elaborate ruse that doesn't matter. And Aaron Pierre calls that out. Like Jon Stewart calls out, this is a stupid idea.

46:33We don't need to do all of it.

46:34Andy Greenwald:We call that. There you go. I found the Jon Stewart backstory where his father is a stern military man who William tells his children every night to be a bit much. That struck me as something that probably looks sick as hell in the first two panels of Green Lantern 1 written by Tom King and was like maybe a slight bridge too far. Do you just didn't like it from a childcare perspective? No, food waste primarily. Yeah. You know, like that apple could have been in his lunch tomorrow. And if it's a Red Delicious, it might as well get shot anyway. Can we do Apple Talk? If you want. Turn the lights down later and we'll talk about overrated fruits because I'm there for that.

47:18Andy Greenwald:Yeah. That said, then the next shot of the show, no pun intended, I found this fascinating. It is Jon Stewart waiting to get picked up by Hal Jordan outside of Spotify Studios downtown LA. It's true. I think you and I both have either driven behind or nearly been sideswiped by Hal Jordan, as it turns out, right around here. Hal Jordan needs to work on making rights on Red. I think like many people in LA. I thought that was funny. My other, I do want to say a couple other positive things about the show, but I definitely found myself, again, just coming into a cold, thrown a little bit by some of the casting, not because of the actors, because I love every actor that has had a speaking role on the show thus far.

48:04Andy Greenwald:It was what I can only assume to be accounting for the time jumps, that I was instant, look, love is love and age has no distinction, right? So you're wondering about Garrett Dillahunt being Jason Briggs' father? When they walk in to see the owner of this militia ranch and Garrett Dillahunt was there, I was like, cool, he's got an older brother. Or Garrett Dillahunt, potentially being an alien himself, had Jason Ritter at the age of 15. You think he's an alien? No, I'm just saying. Okay. But maybe he is because he looks like that and has a fully adult 40-year-old son. Similarly, you realize then later, because Kelly MacDonald, you don't want to have people wearing prosthetics in these time jumps past the point of whatever.

48:45Andy Greenwald:Like that's in the spirit of good television, they've made the right choice. But I was totally confused by everyone's age and role when Porn and Jagathon comes out and they're like, hi, grandma. I was like, what? To whom? Yeah. But then you see Kelly MacDonald at the end and they have not changed her appearance at all. And she has had a five year old. Ten years later, she has a. He's now all state quarterback. And I'm saying that. I wasn't. I would not have predicted that for that kid. He got the trick. He got the magic. What are you talking about? I would have. I just, it seemed like that was not, he was not slinging it.

49:21I was like, oh, you know.

49:23Andy Greenwald:Well, first of all, what was the thing with Nebraska quarterbacks? Didn't they all like, they were just ran the option or something? They used to, but now Matt Rule has brought like more of a pro system. I wonder if this is an alternate history because maybe, maybe he's not really, like he's all state for Nebraska. But it's not going to translate to the higher level. No, because he can't throw the deep ball. Nor has he ever been asked to, unless a superhero is like, just imagine it happening. That's the thing is like, I know visualization is important for quarterbacks, but I don't think you can truly close your eyes like you have the force and throw a ball through a tire.

49:53Andy Greenwald:Some people, I mean, Cole Payton, maybe. I don't know. Do you think, be honest, in terms of 10-year time jumps from 2016 to 2026, which unlike many of the things in the episode, we have experience. Do you think you personally are more on the Jon Stewart trajectory of like, now I've just got a cool beard, but otherwise I'm exactly the same? Or are you more like the child who is young and fresh and throwing a ball and then is now six foot eight and... I think we would have to go back to 2015, 16 and look at what we looked like back then. I've looked. And? You look exactly the same. You're a real archivist.

50:33Andy Greenwald:I am. You're a personal archivist. I am. Well, because I'm the one who's trying to get our papers in order for when we donate them to the University of Texas at Austin. See, I'm open. I'm thinking about Oregon. Why? Because you want to visit there more? Do you have a lead in with like the... You're wearing a hat, first of all. Phil Knight could do some real stuff for us. You're wearing a hat right now. Yeah. Are you that easily swayed? I mean, everybody else in college football is. What's our NIL rate? I know. That's smart. Okay, so that didn't throw you at all? Like the different... The age difference didn't throw me at all.

51:10I think that there was probably some stuff that would have been, it was funny watching it with, with my wife who admittedly it was second screening and kind of like, I will watch this so that you will then turn furious on. And we got about 20 minutes in and she was like, wait, did he say aliens? And I was like, yeah, he did. And she asked me to explain the alien situation. I was like, I don't think I can.

51:35Andy Greenwald:I think that's actually a good test audience because this should appeal. Not because I'm NDAs I've signed, but just because of like, I just don't understand it myself. Yes. But moving quickly through this story. But let's see. And yeah, I mean, I, it has all the elements to be successful and I'm, I am actively excited to watch more of the show. So we can leave it there. We can. I wanted to ask you about how you felt like this first episode did introducing hot button issues, so to speak, in terms of a very white militia, but is more protective about rather than American isolationism, it's global isolationism against extraterrestrial forces.

52:19There was a couple of things in there. But what did you did you think that that felt much many to you?

52:24Andy Greenwald:The alien knew that there was a controversy about Barack Obama's birth certificate. That's right. Did you, did that make you lean in? Were you, were you curious about that? No. That settled business for you? I, look, I genuinely, there's two things. One, this is a new cop show that, that has a cast that I love with a creative team that I love that is going to try something pretty unique, which is to be two things at once completely and not try to hide either ball and be honest about both. It's not, you know, when this was announced, there was a part of me that was like, will they be investigating a murder during a time when Hal Jordan is on space cop probation and doesn't have his ring so that they will ground it?

53:05Andy Greenwald:I love that it's not that. The secondary thing that I will be watching for, which is less passionate and more intellectual, is how high can you push the ceiling of something that has so much to do just to get to the starting gun? And I think that in a way is actually answering your question, which is if you are making a true detective-esque show that jumps between 2016 and 2026, set intentionally in Nebraska, playing with some hot button issues. If you took out the space cop part of it, it might have more, it might have more opportunity to soar and become something, you know, uh, ecstatic, transportive, fascinating, moving.

53:48Andy Greenwald:Um, whereas often I do find the ceiling for, uh, for these sorts of adaptations to be, did you pull it off or not? Well, you know what's funny is like, I want to get to Furious, but the Trojan horse thing of, you know, we're making a DC show, but what we really want to make is a true detective like cop show. It's like cop shows aren't, you could make a cop show. Like it's not like you're like, what I'd like to do is make a portrait of divorce, but since you can't do that, I have to have a murder in it. You know what I mean? Like it'll be interesting to see the relationship between those two things because it's not like you needed to do one to get another one on the screen.

54:24Andy Greenwald:No, and the reason why this is of particular interest is because we know from their work and from their public statements that like Tom King and Damon Lindelof love comic books and love things that make comic book sense, comic book logic. And Damon has done it with Watchmen, but Watchmen as a subject matter has always been intentionally more adult and challenging and intellectual. And then he took it and went wild with it and didn't really use the source material other than as a springboard and tried to update it. This is, by design, it's not that it's more conventional, but it's coloring within the lines more.

55:02Andy Greenwald:It's just sort of trying to determine where the lines are. For that reason alone, I would watch the whole season. Absolutely. But there was enough in this to make me even more intrigued. And I guess what you're hearing is, I really want the show to transcend both genres and become something really unique and special, and maybe it will. all right man let's talk about furious this was the sixth episode uh we of eight and um i loved how this one had some of the more conventionally thrillery cop procedural um tropes whether it's and she become she out of nowhere she's face to face with the killer or some of the more office drama, like Nora taking a really long time to get to Ed's office to buy Alice time at the shelter, etc.

55:58All these things are happening. And in each case, the creative team behind this show pushes the boundaries and goes past what's expected of any show like this to interrogate character, to push the limits of comedy in a moment, any given moment, like Nora doing the shoe tying thing. I thought it was a really, really great episode that, you know, obviously, you could probably be a little bit persnickety and be like, so now there's location trackers on everybody, you know, like with the cops. Like that's something that, yeah. That's probably true. It's probably true. But in any case, like, I thought it was really an excellent episode.

56:44But what did you think?

56:45Andy Greenwald:I thought it was incredible. I think this show is elevating week to week. I think it's one of the best things of the year. And I think it's, it honestly is just giving me life in the sense that there's still places to push this. There's still ways to engage with what we traditionally think of as TV or what we think TV has become. And devote yourself to it and still find the ways to move the needle in terms of surprise, to play with expectation, to go deeper, to be bolder. I thought this episode had just God-tier bones and construction, meaning that no matter who is making a show like this, in any circumstance, there's going to be a conversation in the writer's room at some point about how are we going to cross the protagonist and the antagonist.

57:36Andy Greenwald:It is a hallmark. It is a, honestly, bordering on cliche of cat and mouse stories where there's going to be a moment when the cat and the mouse cross. It's the diner scene in Heat. It's the car and task. It's the catacombs in True Detective. So it's going to happen. The question is, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to dress it up? How are you going to sell it to us? How are you going to present it to us in a new way? and just in terms of construction of both of these women find themselves in a fixed place of refuge with stories to share and reasons for being there that as Catherine says to Alice in the episode you weren't lying about that that are legitimate and then pairing it with Nora and her own journey inside the mousetrap that is the FBI office and as you said, the like, the office hijinks of just getting from one place to another but also the one-on-one confrontation in a way with her abuser in a different sense and the fury that's in the title and also the powerlessness and hopelessness of these collisions with entrenched male power twinning them the way they did while finding room for the Danny and Alden runner is, it's the kind of thing where if you, you know, people know this, that like in the scripted TV process, you write, um, you have the outline of the episode that gets noted and then you get sent off to script.

59:08Andy Greenwald:Like if you just showed me or anyone the outline of this episode, I think the response would be delight because they've just cracked it a way to do it. And then the script, because of the things that happen or because of the way that they happen. I mean, I think that what I'm trying to articulate is that one of the genius things about the show is not that it is breaking the mold is that it is finding new corners and new pathways within the mold to make it all feel fresh and make me reconsider my relationship to why I'm into molded shapes to begin with. Yeah. So I think what I'm saying, so I think it's more the latter.

59:39Andy Greenwald:It's like, this was going to happen. This is the appropriate place rhythmically in an eight episode season to do it. But I didn't expect to do it like this. And then the beauty of it, when you can found some expectations, but flatter others, you create a scenario where, and I want to know what you think about this, but like as soon as we saw Marshall in the car drinking, tracking Alice, fairly confident where it was going to go and how it was going to end. Down to the, he's going to get, something is going to happen to him because of Catherine. Because the gun that we see there, yes. Did I feel cheated when that happened?

1:00:13Andy Greenwald:Because I was like, oh, I saw it coming? No. I felt like it walked us to the inevitable place for where this episode needed to go. I can't say it enough. I've been saying it weekly. Like, I just find the watching of this show thrilling, both in terms of the plot, but also in terms of the thought that goes into every scene of it. Here's a different way of putting what I said in the beginning that kind of more gracefully like echoes what you've just said, which is that if you imagine the script as like a mixing board, like the way they would mix a piece of music, the way that they will turn up certain aspects of it to throw you off.

1:00:52Like, so for instance, one of the things that I was thinking as I'm watching this episode last night is oh they're really pushing the comedy pretty hard like they're they're almost over leveraged on like how funny the the danny and alden thing is and nora's journey through the fbi building and being like how's your mom it's my dad oh yeah i thought he was gonna make it you know like troy dropping down to his knees also thinking And all that stuff is so comic that when Nora finally gets to Ed's office and she starts doing the usual, like, aha, I've got you exactly where I want you. But then they actually cut the line and let her do this theatrical monologue, essentially, with some incredible flourishes of language.

1:01:45Like, you know, they speak with feathers and all this stuff. it hits so much harder because of the daffiness of the journey to get there because it's such a great left turn. If she had been like, I'm going to fucking get to Ed and tell him what's what. Watch me do this. And it's like the whole time you're anticipating it. I think you're like, oh yeah, you've been building up to this and that. But of course, that's not how real life works. It's not how the reality of the show works. And by that same token, I think they are... They are playing with these kind of cliched characters, maybe not even cliched, but like the idea.

1:02:26Familiar tropes. Familiar characters, like the abusive boyfriend, like the driven cop, like the serial killer out beyond any recognition. And it's like, then they pull them back in different ways. And, you know, that scene with Marshall and Alice is like harrowing, but they know what they're doing when they have him like listening to Sublime and singing along because they are trying to basically be like, look at this little goofy guy sitting in the car. And then he becomes the biggest monster, arguably, of the show again. And him screaming at her, look what you've done to me. You made me do this, which is obviously a classic abuser concept of it's you who is making me do this to you.

1:03:11but you know for him to be confronted with with true vengeance in that moment is because she hesitates and I think it's confrontational with the audience because it's like

1:03:21Andy Greenwald:do you want him to get shot yeah and she hesitates so he gets shot yeah I think it's worth considering that like the familiar tropes when done correctly in a build like this that's the skeleton but the sinew is anything but conventional the sinew is just the emotion of the characters and the trauma and the traumatic history and the lived lives of the characters is anything but expected. Nora is, to your point, dramatic, theatrical, a force of nature, and also an alcoholic. Catherine may have killed Alden's mother, and Alden in that moment says, I don't care, because she did give me the one thing that I've always wanted.

1:04:06Andy Greenwald:And so because of that, that ends the conversation for me. The Catherine scene when after she's doped Alice is, I mean, Lola Petticrew is amazing in it, but the line when she says, this isn't even my body, these aren't even my fucking hands, is so disturbing. And so, I mean, again, the idea that she is physically dissociated from herself and her physical being is horrifying to imagine, built into the history of the character, and challenging for the audience to sort of expect and understand. It's also like a bleeding edge between perpetrator and victim. Yes, who's responsible. Because those coping techniques that the woman in the shelter is obviously repeating to her, where she's just like, you're present, you're in your body, you know, all that stuff, is, you assume, taught to her to cope with the trauma that she's endured at the hands of these men, but she's using it to cope with the trauma that she's inflicting on other people too.

1:05:15Yes. And yeah, that whole scene in the shower with the green light, I thought was very knowingly an homage to Silence of the Lambs, the basement scene with Buffalo Bill and extraordinary.

1:05:27Andy Greenwald:We should shout out Destiny Akaraga as the director. She directed the last two episodes. Again, the sign of a well-run ship to me is who knows what went on behind the scenes. and what each director brought or didn't bring or what they had to fix and post or not fix or whatever. But when you feel an aesthetic consistency that you check the names because you're like another banger, it's a credit to both the director and the system and the production. Similarly, this episode was written by Colleen McGinnis, whose name you may remember from 30 Rock, from SNL, from Rami. Like another historically, historically a comedy writer.

1:06:06Andy Greenwald:so yeah it's funny but also this is like we've been saying every week like Liz Merriweather did New Girl and did this and it is incredible to see when you have a bunch of multi-talented but talented in diverse ways people rowing in the same direction here like it's I don't know I just I'm floored by it we didn't even I mean we talked about the Norris scene we didn't even talk about Quincy Tyler Bernstein in that scene I mean she's she's really really really extraordinary it's one of the performances of the year with Cato Flynn with, for me at least, a discovery of the year in terms of what this person is bringing to the table.

1:06:43And then also you've got scenes where Michael Kostroff, who people remember as Maury from The Wire, shows up, and it is an exposition scene. He's letting Danny know where things stand, what he wants. You get a little bit of feds versus cops jurisdictional banter, but fully delivers. what is usually like a very like, I want results.

1:07:07Andy Greenwald:I'm glad you brought that up because he comes in throwing gas. And it's so knowing because your point is important. The audience, like of a baseline TV audience, sees that guy and we're like, okay, we're in an East Coast urban show somewhere in the law and order realm. I don't mean law and order literally, but it's like, it's the wires, the cops, whatever. I would imagine when you talk to actors who do a day here or do a day there, that the balancing act is really tricky because you show up and you want to like, you really want to make the most of your small meal. You know, these pretzels are making me thirsty, famously.

1:07:43Andy Greenwald:But you also don't want to steal the spotlight from the plot, from what you're trying to serve. He came in throwing gas and Scoot McNary was ready for it. And the production itself was ready with like to catch, you know, it's like it was built for that. So we notice it. It's hard to describe other than the fact that it's such a welcome thing because there are no scenes off on the show. What I've been trying to tell people, not just on the podcast, but in life, why to check it out, it's primarily, you may think you know what it is from the log line or from the poster or whatever, but give it two episodes and realize that every scene surprises you in one way or another.

1:08:21Andy Greenwald:And that alone is a gift. But the fact that now it's rolling, two episodes left, and I don't feel that episodic either, it's not bloat, it could be one of, I've started, eight is the new 10. as we're saying here in Hollywood in terms of episodes, it's not always the right number. Even 10 isn't always the right number. Sometimes it's clearly by the time you get to this, you know, the end game, you're rounding third, there's too many episodes left or there's clearly not enough time. Right. I, you know, talk to me in two weeks, but it just feels like it's well, they've managed it well. If you had to guess, did Nora really get hoodwinked by Ed there?

1:09:02or do you think she was using like a fake laptop as, or something like, is there something?

1:09:09Andy Greenwald:No, I think she got got because the laptop was wiped because Alden just put it all on a thumb drive. Right. The thing that I didn't fully understand and maybe we're not meant to is at the very end, Danny has the thumb drive and he goes outside of the building to find out what's on it. And I think maybe other audience members as well assumed he would be scrolling to Catherine or to Alice, right? Or to the name of her friend who she's trying to avenge. But he gets to Alice? Right. Is the implication that Alice is a part of this? I don't know. Or is it a different Alice? And he was just looking because he loves Alice?

1:09:43I don't know. I mean, Alice was meeting people online, but I don't know how that works.

1:09:52Andy Greenwald:So you didn't walk away from that scene being like, aha. You didn't. I got to that point and I was worried that. Yeah, I did a ha like that too. Okay, good. And then were you doing picture-in-picture lioness bathtub scenes? Yeah. Are there more than one? No, not yet. First time they've bathed together. Okay, well. Which is cool. It's a long deployment. Saves water. That's just good stuff from us today. I think. We'll let them be the judge. Thursday, I'm not sure what we're going to talk about. You don't know? No, not yet. But I'll let you know. and like I said you'll probably miss next Monday's Furious well it depends how much you mean do you want me to like we could we could pre-record some stuff okay we're not sure yet alright it really depends how much time Van needs this is good stuff for our listeners to hear how we put this all together don't you think yeah what if instead of After Dark we just did procedural corner where we talked about our plans because then you would just be like hmm interesting idea I'll text you when I decided you don't think that's compelling thanks to kaya kai and sarah and and we'll be back on thursday and i promise you this i'm not going to bring up a single x-man on that episode yeah okay we'll see i think you're that's my pledge all right we'll see