Why the Warner Bros. Bidding War Is Catastrophic. Plus, ‘Pluribus’ Episode 7 and the ‘Hijack,’ ‘Paradise,’ and ‘Supergirl’ Trailers.

27:18So in terms of like limited options, sure. But in terms of what's populating them, it's very different. There's the whole side of this, which is, it needs to be stated again, that this will have probably yet another deleterious effect on the employment numbers of of specifically Los Angeles and Hollywood and people working on television shows and people working on movies and people working within these industries from business affairs to props, you know, and that, that is something that we've been living here for a fairly long time now. And if you've been here since COVID and through the strikes and through the fires, I don't know how many more times this town can get off the mat.

28:00You know what I mean? Like it is really a feeling when you drive through Hollywood specifically, when you talk to people who are working in this industry, that the train's leaving the station and that the work is happening in Atlanta or in Europe. It's in London. Or in London or wherever. And that things are being shot places on, basically it's like watching NAFTA happen again where it's like we're just out, we're offshoring all of this work and then bringing it back into the country. And we're losing decades of institutional knowledge about how to make things. and producers who are being raised in this system don't have the same kind of swagger and belief in the power of what they're doing.

28:45Like it's way more of a numbers game and it's way more of a like, how do we flip this and flip that and flip this? Now I'm not saying that that hasn't been always an element of that in Hollywood, but when you hear stories about say like Jerry Bruckheimer and how he's just like, nope, we're gonna get this plane and we're gonna throw it off the top of this cliff here. You know, like I'm going to get that shot and I'm going to get this actor and we're going to make sure that this is what the next generation of people talk about. Is that after Rebecca from Landman? Because she's really good. I do want to talk about that episode.

29:17I worry about all that, you know, and I worry about what this means when we get we erase all of this, because that's that that is aside from like the movies stuff that you see during the Oscars. That's what this is about. It's about like an American craft and an American trade that people have been practicing for more than like a century now almost. And like it matters. LA is the new Detroit. And I fucking love Detroit. It's a great city with, you know, it still has vibrancy. Yes. But in terms of the auto industry being the lifeblood of a world-class place and then just having that. Do you have to wait two hours to get into a diner in Detroit or?

29:53See, this is your best take and you are just throwing it away. I'll save it for like a mailbag or something. It is. I still think Chris sent me a text that I'm still thinking about all the time. Yeah, like I'm not trying to sugarcoat the past, but because people here were always driven by money and making money. But it was there was a sense that a lot of people could make money in this town or in this industry. and even if you weren't one of the very few unicorns who made a fortune, you, a Jay Kelly type, if you will, you could make a living. Yeah. You could work here. There was opportunity. There was promise.

30:36Everything in the country is now just so six people can double their wealth. I mean, it's appalling, but like it does not, this thing that we have been dragged along for, I don't like the people just continue to compound mistakes that have become profitable for them. I mean, that's how you buy HBO with debt and somehow sell it for 10 times as much. It's a absolutely rigged game, but we are bearing the consequences. And it's bad. With that caveat about what it could do to the city and what it could do to the industry aside, because I think that there would be elements of it if Comcast had bought it, if Paramount had bought it, if Netflix had bought it.

31:12There shouldn't be a merger here. When you buy something, you shrink it. Yeah, right. I would say that the thing that is the most interesting for me to think about, and also scary but also like kind of provocative is the changes that could happen to the way the U.S. but also global audiences get what they want to watch and how they watch it and in what way. Like we are, you know, everything that's coming out of Netflix is like we will honor the contracts that Warner Brothers has with its filmmakers. We believe in HBO. That is like a crown jewel. What about with its writer-producers on magic shows?

31:49They can honor those? Hold on, let me just write a quick email. But the model for Netflix is binge releases for television shows and very short windows in very limited releases for its movies. And I think that the loudest voices in the room are like, that's not how it's supposed to go. And Netflix is like, you guys want it to be one way, but it's another way. Exactly. It's actually 98 % of this country does not want to wait a week to watch the next episode of what their television show is. And you guys want it to be a week-to-week thing because you want to be able to build up anticipation about White Lotus.

32:28And the idea of Succession or White Lotus or Chair Company being binge releases is kind of mind-blowing. And you have to rethink the popularity and the importance of major pieces. It's also a question of how comfortable are they with different philosophies? Because there's also two different kinds of people don't want this. There's what you just said, which I think is accurate. The numbers bear out the fact that the Netflix model is now the way people watch TV when they're not just scrolling on their phones. There's also Bob Iger saying, giving a billion dollars worth of IP to open AI to say like, go play with Donald Duck.

33:03We don't care. Nobody fucking wants that either. But, you know, that keeps the economy afloat, apparently. So that's what we're getting. That's different. I think that there is a pie in the sky world here where Netflix looked at what it lacked. And we've talked about for years because it's not a secret. It's not doesn't take, you know, a brave analytical mind to understand what it lacked, which is the deep bench of beloved IP and the potential to grow in areas that are not as dependent on certain market forces like basically Disney and Universal during the strikes have theme parks. Yeah. And that is a huge profit driver.

33:46Netflix is very, very, very, very much wants to be in that space. And so far it has the Stranger Things play. You know, and these like event spaces that they've been opening in the mall. You know, the sort of execution that they've done at Squid Game. Yeah, there's a live Squid Game thing. so they're working towards it. This potentially supercharges that ability for them. You know, there's the, I don't know if you know this, but there's a Harry Potter studio tour in Leavesden. I can't say that I've been there recently, but I have fucking been there recently. And like, that is a huge thing. And so this gives them the DC and the Harry Potter and the things that, you know, that they have lacked.

34:25And can they, as part of that, understand that there is still, in the same way that the New Yorker still publishes a magazine, but the issues are$9.99 or$12.99 for an issue. Can Netflix honor the fact that there is still a cohort of aging fans who are like, keep our HBO delivered to us the way we like it, and Netflix's longer play is, it doesn't matter how they parcel out the season of Chair Company. It's that we will get it afterwards. Well, I almost wonder whether HBO returns to its Plepler era of it's a subscription service, you know, and it is a add-on within Netflix that you can have. Sure, to have it be that way, yeah.

35:04And, you know, whether or not that winds up being what happens is that HBO shows will be released once a week. You know, there's this level of programming. I personally don't understand why you buy something and then you're like, we're just buying it to preserve it or we're buying it as like a tile. But, you know, stranger things have happened. Netflix has started to mess with its release schedule with certain things, obviously stranger things, but even like Mulaney and things like that, where it's going up once a week. I think it's silly to be like Ted Sarandon said this, said that there's no evidence to suggest that weekly works better than binge release.

35:40So that'll never happen now. It might change. It might change because it might be that creators go and say, I don't want my thing to go up in one night on a Wednesday and have it be over by Monday. It would be nice to give them the benefit of the doubt. I think we've hopefully, like Charlie Brown with the football, have learned by now not to trust these people. I mean, these people like the C-suite. Everybody. Literally everybody. Yeah. But I think that Netflix's goal that a lot of people didn't see coming for a long time wasn't to become the new HBO. It was to become TV. With late night shows, with sports, with a deep bench of all kinds of things.

36:16They want to be, it's the tissues Kleenex thing. It's like lots of people in this world now turn on Netflix as the way that we used to turn on television. So is there a version of that in three years where to your point, it won't be unlike how, it will be quite unlike, but in some ways it will be similar to turning on TV 20 years ago where there'll be a number of channels, a number of options, and if you pay however many extra dollars a month, you get HBO. Yes. And you get HBO new shows as opposed to catalog, which are just, you know, looped into the... Yeah, and I could see them bidding aggressively for the sports rights for any number of major leagues, including the Premier League or the NBA at some point or NFL at some, like League Pass at some point.

37:01And that would also be like an add-on. And if you want NFL League Pass in your Netflix, it's another$250 a year or whatever. They could charge whatever they want because at a certain point, it's going to be the only place to go look for stuff. Guys, look at the camera. It's bad. It's just bad if the majority of television is owned by three companies. Yeah. There's not a good version of that. I mean, like I watched this happen. I mean like there's chilling reminders of what happened in newspapers. You know, I was just watching this happen in my dad's industry as he worked for most of his adult life in newspapers.

37:35And now the newspaper he worked for is like nine pages long, you know? And it was essentially a consolidation within the industry of several chains buying up all local newspapers. Then it was private equity and debt getting involved with those conglomerates. And then it was sell it off for parts or run it at the most bare minimum level to still like scrape Google ads. But that was an industry that was just like, it worked. Classifieds and advertising within newspapers paid for really important journalism and really thoughtful journalism and really like essential ways of like understanding the world around you.

38:14And that whole thing has collapsed. Television, you could make an argument, for a lot of the stuff you might watch on Netflix or Warner Brothers Discovery is much more like, it's not essential. It's not essential that we watch White Lotus the way it is probably that you get reporting on City Hall. But if it goes in the same direction where it's just like, well, could we do White Lotus in upstate New York? Would that be possible? Or Bulgaria, you know, because it's easier to shoot there or whatever it is. Like that will be, we'll start to feel that. Jared Kushner doesn't want a part of this deal so he can make sure that David Simon can make another miniseries.

38:51Are you sure? I am sure. Okay. That's the one thing I'm sure about. Jared Kushner was like, I fucking love We Own This City. What generation kills season two? Yeah, he does. Yeah, he fucking does. We're all gonna have to live it. The only other thing I wanted to ask you about, which we can probably save for like a larger conversation at some point, is my understanding that the way that Netflix does its deals with talent is quite different than the way things were traditionally done in the way that lots of other networks do it. And that is, it's all up front. There are no back-end participation.

39:21There's no residuals. Yeah, they used to pay like 125 % to make up for potential earnings on the back-end. I'm just going to, I'll just say I'm fascinated to see if that changes. That is a huge point to make because, and it has changed a lot under Zaslav, but there was a reason HBO had its reputation as being profligate, let's say. Because they treat talent very well. Not speaking from experience. No, I mean, I'm treated fine. But they pay a premium to be premium. Well, they also have different metrics for what success is too. Yeah, although that has had to change a little bit in the streaming era as well.

40:05Because everything has sort of turned into one thing. Yeah. But that is right. Yeah, okay. Well, the margins have fallen for everyone. I mean, that's the other connection to make with the newspaper industry. And it came up when we were talking about the situation with the strike a few years ago. There was a sense that this, you know, private equity derivatives based soul crushing behemoth had come for this industry. I mean, obviously, it had already come. But there was a, I think, speaking of David Simon, perhaps naively noble thought that because of the strength, relative strength of the unions in this town, that it might be able to make a stand.

40:45It did not go like the end of Endgame, I would say. I will be fascinated to watch the awards season that is upon us. the next sort of big moment in this story which I will be proved wrong when this is not the case but I believe is in early January when Amy Poehler wins best podcast is in early January when I think I think they have to make some sort of call I think Paramount set some sort of deadline with when they need to accept this offer or not and then I believe the Netflix stuff will stretch into March provided nothing changes I've noted with interest you know like clips coming out of the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia with folks like Dakota Johnson speaking kind of whimsically about everything but then on the flip side of it like David Marchese had a really good interview with Kristen Stewart recently in the New York Times where she talked about like basically kind of wanting everything to be wiped away and started anew you know and that like it would make I don't know if she was referring directly to the Netflix stuff, but it was just like, maybe it's better if this all goes away and we start something fresh and equitable again.

41:59Like Mark Duplass' show that he made for Netflix. But I'm just saying, there are a lot of varying opinions, and if people have to go on red carpets and people are doing awards, FYC interviews and talking about all this stuff, and they'll be asked about this, I'll be curious to see the response from the creative community. I'm very excited to hear the response of the creative community. You know, who doesn't give a shit about the creative community? The people making this deal.

42:50Let's talk about Pluribus. Episode 7, The Gap. We've got nine episodes this season, so we're rounding second, I guess. Maybe we're on third, but thinking about stealing home. I think that's more. I like it, yeah. Suicide squeeze time. We're not quite in the red zone, but it's clutch time. Right, it's overtime. We're driving. What could go wrong? This episode was written by Jen Carroll and directed, I noted, by Adam Bernstein. This is one of the most beautifully directed episodes of television I've seen in quite some time. Adam Bernstein has been directing with Vince since Breaking Bad. He's one of the GOATs.

43:25Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, many other shows including Fargo, and is married to Jessica Hecht. Oh, really? GOAT New York character actor, Jessica Hecht. I didn't know. Do you Google that or do you just know that? Sometimes I look at people's personal life section on their Wikipedia page. Do you have a parasocial relationship with television director Adam Bernstein? I was talking with our buddy Brian Raftery. Yeah. We exchanged, you know, his noir recommendations between each other. You guys just classic gatekeeping? Well, no, it's physical media, so you wouldn't understand. And Brian was like, oh, I've been on this really great Yves Montan run.

44:01Don't read his personal life section on his Wikipedia. Skip right past that. Yeah, I was like, yeah, anybody who was making films in the 70s, I do not read their personal life section. I think that's absolutely fair. Yeah. It's a long time ago. It's none of my business. None of my business. Who knows where the bodies are buried? By the way, this is just also, I've never met the man, so I feel like I can continue to assume things and gas him up at a distance. But like, if you talk about the type of TV industry that we would like, there are aspects of what Vince Gilligan does that are just what I think, it's how it's supposed to work.

44:33One example would be this episode of Pluribus, his show, where veteran director who has done great work with him before and has given an opportunity to do things that I don't know if he's had a chance to do before, like one man's solo trek. Across the Darien Gap, yeah. Also, Jen Carroll, I didn't know this, started her career as Vince's assistant and then grew into being a writer on the show, which is, again, how this is supposed to work. Yes. I thought this episode was mind-blowing. It's largely silent. There's a little bit of dialogue in the beginning. There's some singing. Most of the dialogue, honestly, is just her talking into the answering machine, asking for Gatorade, her being Carol.

45:14But it's largely a two-hander than two-hands never meet. It's Carol in New Mexico, feeling initially pretty pumped up about her own bodily autonomy and the riches that are at her feet in terms of working on her golf game. She basically is living out a long, it's like the beginning of when Kevin's home at Home Alone. He's like, I can do anything. I can eat Sundays and watch gangster movies and nobody's going to tell me to stop. She does this with playing golf, with switching from her police car to her Rolls Royce. She goes to the hot springs. She goes to Santa Fe. Goes to Santa Fe, takes herself a Georgia O 'Keeffe off the wall, all the places, the poster that she has of that painting with the original painting, has a meal out in kind of almost celebration memorial of her lost partner.

46:07And that look to me, locals can tell me, I was getting the top of Hotel Chaco vibes, which is where I spent most of 2019. So I just, if anyone knows where they shot it. But it seemed like meals from across her life, like a meal from Martha's Vineyard. Were those cream puffs, what were they? Like profiterals? Yeah, I don't know. But she was balling out. Until she's not. Yeah. Until the heart is a lonely hunter and she writes in giant white paint asking for them to come back to the others. She also fires a firework almost at her face. Well, yeah. I gotta say, we are all just vessels for our own personal experiences and emotions.

46:47And this episode did remind me of some of my recent behavior in London where it's like, at first you're like, I can go out to dinner at all the best restaurants on the Vittles list by myself whenever I want. And I can browse these bookstores and things and it feels great. Then you're there a little bit longer, a little bit more alone. And you're like, no, I must continue this bon vivant lifestyle and eat this perfectly cooked piece of white fish on a pile of brown beans and have this Portuguese wine and choke it down. It's fine. It's fine. And then eventually... And then you find yourself eating soft broccoli and drinking N.A.

47:24Peroni. No, then you find yourself not leaving your apartment, just Deliveroo-ing from Chinatown, drinking an NA Asahi, being like, if the Deliveroo driver stays around long enough, I will hug him. Bro, I know what you're talking about. It's real. I mean, like, my wife had to travel back to New York a lot this year, and every time she would leave, I was like, nobody fucking knows the damage I'm about to do. I'm about to get through the world of cinema. I am going to re-watch Lost. I am going to read Anna Karenina. I am going to get in great shape. Yeah. I just didn't do it. Only the last thing I've done.

48:01I just didn't do it. Now, part of that is because, you know, like the corrupting influence of my smartphone. Yeah. But part of it is also because like life's about other people and it's hard to be an island. And that's what we kind of see with her. I loved, I did love that emotional aspect of the behavior, which is that like she's, and you saw it specifically in the Gulf, you know, something that I, I feel like you should have covered this with Tim. on Monday because you're both much more passionate about it. You've golf. I'll be asking Tim about how he feels about Carol's golf swing. Cause if Carol has six weeks or however much time passes, 12 days to 48 days.

48:36Yeah. If she has that amount of time, she can be at the range all day, every day. And she should be getting dialed. Like she should be just completely striping it by that point. But if I did that, if I did that, I would like to think that my form would be a little bit smoother, but we can interrogate this. So 12 days to 48 days. That's basically, yeah, that was my hitch in London before Thanksgiving, basically. And that sort of, that tracked with my psychological tailspin. But specifically about the golf, the way it begins with like an attempt to achieve normalcy. Yes. Where she drives to the club and she does things properly as if the world still...

49:18Even though there's a bison on the fairway. Exactly. She is in denial and she's attempting to regulate herself by reestablishing some baseline of reality. Yes. And then after a certain amount of time, she's on the top of a parking garage taking out office windows. Yes. I didn't quite get there, but, you know, one more trip. The other half of this episode is about Manuso and his journey from Paraguay to eventually New Mexico, one would think, but he gets as far as the Darien Gap where you have to basically walk 100 kilometers through the jungle and through all this danger. And this is a huge, you know, this is a huge, like, path that people take to get to this country in the first place from South and Central America.

50:03And it's basically the crossing between Colombia and Panama. And he drives from Paraguay through Peru, through Ecuador, gets to Colombia, gets to, like, the point where people have been dropping their belongings because they can no longer carry them. A group of others come out and say, please, we can get you to New Mexico tonight. Let us help you. You need water. You're going to get stabbed by chunga palms, which I did not know was something I needed to worry about. This is literally what the concierge people at Virgin Atlantic said to me on Monday. They were like, we'll get you there. It's fine.

50:40It's fine. We'll give you some Bloody Mary flavored chips, crisps. I thought that this stuff was fucking extraordinary like the filmmaking was beautiful watching this guy it made me actually think like is this guy the hero of this show? in a more traditional sense he is walking and he's like I am not one of them I am here to save the world you know his mantra that he's sort of saying throughout and I just thought that this was such a cool brave creative interesting piece of television do we know where they filmed any of that stuff? I don't. I will go on record that that was not New Mexico. Okay.

51:17I feel very confident that some of those stunning ocean vistas were not from... So what did you think about it? I loved the show. I loved this show. I loved this episode. And there are moments that I'm eager to discuss. I think that Minusos as a character and I want to get the actor right, Carlos Manuel Vezca is phenomenal. And so brightly and brilliantly drawn with such an efficiency of line that we understand so much about him and he barely talks. You know, the sort of fetishistic, almost leaving of money for every time he takes gas. I also appreciate when shows, especially process-driven shows like Gilligan shows, like you and I know because we grew up watching movies soon to be in the Netflix library that if you do need to take gas from an automobile, you have to use your mouth to do it.

52:12I don't know if I could do it. I wanted to ask you that. I think I would barf. I just don't know if I could suck gasoline out of, I mean, if put in the position. You smoked for 20 years. You could probably. I could do it. I could do it, but I would, I think at this point creature comforts are such that I would want like my Toms of Maine right there. Just get a good brush in. Well, you can help yourself to that. It's true. He kept doing it. His speech to the people who are asking to guide him and he's just like, nothing you have is yours. it's all stolen was so good uh yeah i was just like this is also gilligan man again just finding someone that's like what they used to run in movie theaters in 2020

52:55the arc light was built on stolen land um okay you like this show but i i would say and i'd be interested to hear what other people think about this as well like i think this is kind of a litmus test and a patience test of how much you want the process. Um, I don't really have like a, from the heart, I'm passionate about it, criticism of it, but it did remind me of two things. One, like I am not a generally a day in the life guy, not a big Mrs. Dalloway guy. You know what I mean? Not a U.S. guy. Like I don't mind. And maybe this is, I think I would say this even before I started just, you know, watching British man on the street food reels for most of my lived awake experience.

53:38that I don't mind cutting to the most interesting parts of the story and not needing to show every single detail, even though I praise the doc review of Better Call Saul to high heaven. More than I did.

53:51So there are aspects of this episode, and maybe this is also coloring my entire appreciation for this show and what Vince Gilligan does generally, in the same spirit with which I was like, ah, he promoted his assistant. That's wonderful. in that what I was paused. The best parts of writer's rooms, not pause, but like digression, not pause like in the hot 97. Let me be. Okay. The best parts of writer's rooms always, always, always are the first two to three weeks because it's the most pie in the sky when everyone in a well-run room, everyone can express all the subtleties and nuance of what excites them about the characters or a character's potential journey that season.

54:36And you, collectively you, write symphonies of emotional arc and places for them to go and all these fun little like flavorings and little finely drawn filigrees of like what you could do in a scene if there was room for it. And then reality hits and the network or studio wants outlines and all of the fiddly stuff that you fell in love with most falls away. And that's okay. That's part of the process. Um, you know, I had the experience recently over there where it's like, there are things that I am passionate about in a particular episode and things that I will remember and mourn and no one will notice it because what the spirit of those pieces got distilled into three lines near the end of the episode.

55:22what pluribus does is find the space or take up the space for all those little details so that carol's there's room for carol's golf breakdown her fireworks journey and her gatorade thirst by the way that is the best flavor of gatorade i disagree but go ahead this is tearing this podcast apart it's lemon uh it's lemon yellow yeah lemon lemon did you is that just because it's the original one and you're like, I'm a purist? I've never been a fruit punch guy before. You're the Antonin Scalia of Gatorade. I've never drank high C. I never really liked Kool-Aid. I've never been a red drink guy. Because all the fruits are mixed?

56:01I just don't. What is that? It's delicious. Sure, but I think that lemon-lime Gatorade is like how you get back on the field. You sound like someone raw-dogging a 12-hour flight when you say that. That's crazy. And when I say get back on the field, I mean, after you've had nine beers. And you try to do the Darien Gap home. Anyway, it's a long digression to say that, like, I think I was feeling that in this episode, that I guess at the end of the day, I appreciate that this show has space for all of it. And that is essential to the way he makes TV. There was a part of me that was like... I wonder if you're reacting to how cinematic it was.

56:41Like, so for me, it was, there's a world in which that show, this episode could have gone very wrong. You know, I mean, it's asked a lot of us this season. I think it's a challenging, I think it's in some ways slow TV. I think it's very much somebody who's like, I don't, I'm not getting notes or it doesn't seem like it. But I think that the way that they have sprinkled Minusos over the course of the season, the way that the only times he has talked have been the most profound insights into who he is as a person. whether it's teaching himself English on this drive to America, whether it's his rejection of this entire, basically, invasion, because of his hatred for his mother and how unlike his mother this woman seems to be.

57:30Yeah, and he's contemptuous of any kindness or charity. And the juxtaposition of that with Carol's kind of like very American consumerist narcissism and her needs, you know, are pretty fascinating. And this guy is basically only like, he only lets the others help him when he can't help himself and when he's basically incapacitated. And I couldn't tell, what was your reading of the last image we have of him as the helicopter's coming down? Is he waving for help as they told him to? It was ambiguous to me. I couldn't tell whether he was waving them away or waving for help. I mean, clearly he's on death's door, so he needs help.

58:07And, you know, I have no idea. I assumed for a second when he backs into the palm, I was like, I think this guy might be dead. And this might be one of the all time like, Oh my God. But can you imagine if you would just watch that guy for 35 minutes walking and then he dies by slipping into a palm tree? And we would be on this podcast being like, only Vince Gilligan has the creative stones and corporate freedom to tell a story like that. But I found myself in a very simple way, just like on like a very basic level, just be like, now I care about this guy. And now I am rooting for this guy. and I need this guy to get to Carol, and it might be that, I mean, the way they have set it up is this extraordinary, where it's Carol breaks, essentially.

58:47Yes, and she hugs. And she brings Osha back, and she's like, I need human contact, even if it's not the real thing. And this guy... He's gonna show up. ...is gonna be like, I fucking walked here, because you said, come, if I want to save the world, and I want to save the world, and now you want cream puffs and hanging out? Fuck that. Yeah, I do. I think that's, I think you're right. I mean, that's an amazing tension to put in a television. That's awesome. It is, and it's brilliantly and patiently set up. Yeah. And I also really like the observation you made about cultural differences as well as personal differences.

59:26Think about like the level of conservation where he's drinking rainwater and she's like, bring me a Gatorade. Yeah, she's demanding things. Restock a sprouts for me. Turn the lights back on because I don't like, because I don't like the coyotes. She didn't ask for them to fix her car. She was like, I'll just take a Rolls Royce. He's walking back and forth up a mountain to keep putting gasoline that he's sucking out of other cars and then leaving money for into his MG, which is his car that he has always had. It's been in his garage. It's under this tarp. Like it's the way they're defining these characters is amazing and with no dialogue.

1:00:00Yeah. And you can also take a step back and appreciate the game board because Mr. Diabate, for example, is quite compelling. And we're quite empathetic towards him, even though he's behaving like a bit of a rascal. Like a little bit like Yves Montand, I believe. There's lots of different ways to live in this world. If you look at his Wikipedia page, you skip the personal. Yeah, there are a lot of different ways to live in this world, a lot of different ways to respond to it. And what is your obligation to any kind of code or morality when everything is gone? it's it's a very very very subtle kind of show and I I mean you say slow tv in a way I think that's really I think that's really right yeah I mean I was recording rewatchables with Rob and and Joe and Bill yesterday and Rob brought up a really great uh Ryan Coogler quote which is circulating because somebody was asking him on the sort of sinners award trail about working on X-Files.

1:00:59And he's like, you know, this is my first real foray into TV. And he was like, I was talking with a TV writer and the way they put it was a movie is about the most important moment in a character's life. And a TV show is about the most important journey in a character's life. And you can literalize that for this episode. But I think in general, what they're doing on this show by showing so much quote unquote, like low lowercase a action of like, I am walking over here, I am going to refill my Brita, or I am going to go look for this, is you are participating in this journey. Like, I mean, you get to the end of an episode of Pluribus, and you might be tired, you might be bored, you might be whatever, and it's kind of, you know, they're giving you this sort of secondary visceral feeling of what the characters are going through.

1:01:47It's an interesting way to think about it, because I think one of the defining aspects of what makes TV TV historically, even before the prestige era, is the churn. and the change. And you could look at it like a soap opera where everyone has to be dead and then be alive again or in professional wrestling where people turn heel and turn hero and you just have to service the engine of plot over time quickly. And we talked a lot about like the comedies of Mike Schur being among the few, or at least being trailblazers and the idea that 30 minute shows could also evolve. The most traditional format for comfort and stability, you could nudge towards things and people would respond to that serialized storytelling.

1:02:25If you look at the Albuquerque oeuvre of Vince Gilligan, it is a masterclass in storytelling as evolution or as transformation. How do people become other things? And embracing that as the thesis of the show, whether it's Walter White or how does Jimmy become Saul, this is a very, very confident snapshot of the most extreme possible context. I also wonder whether or not, like, he's talked a little bit about, I think, I can't remember whether he's like, I kind of know where it ends, but I'm not uncertain of how it gets there, or maybe he's not even sure of how it ends. I don't know, but like, I do feel like there is a real organic, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then what if this happens, like in the writer's room and in the writing of the show?

1:03:18Yeah, that's something that I would definitely like to talk to him about because the most, well, there are many, but one of the most famous stories to come out of these shows is that that season premiere, not teaser, but like the opening scene of the penultimate season of Breaking Bad, I believe, is the time jump with the guns and the trunk and the bacon that spells out 50. And he's gone on the record saying we didn't know what we were going to do with the gun. We'd like to challenge ourselves. And you're right, like there are moments whether maybe it's the drones it feels like that to me that like someone suggested it someone made a joke and i bet they laughed and just like i bet they laughed when even ray sehorn probably laughed when she went to the set i thought it was interesting that they built that cul-de-sac that she lives on as a set to avoid fueling another like tourism boom because the walter white house is a house in albuquerque so that's all constructed and they can play with it and keep it as they want the fact that the the failed drone with the the misweighted trash is just hanging from the lamp and probably will throughout the run of the show.

1:04:20Yeah. It's fun. It's also, I like the show. I was challenged by this episode, but it is very fun to talk about because it deserves the rigor. The analysis, yes. Yeah, I think it's pretty sophisticated. I didn't want to take away the Landman commentary game from you and give it to Tim Simons, who watched very graciously his first ever episode of Landman. I thought it was a pretty tender and sober episode of the show with Rebecca's plot kind of accepted. No, even that, like, There is a sense. First of all, I put this on Instagram. Like, Sam Elliott ate a corn dog. And the direct, like, Stephen Kay, I believe, was the director, like, lingered on his, like, on his tongue coming to, like, take in the dog.

1:05:07Like, it is quite a visceral. Speaking of slow TV, yeah. Truly. So I was like, someone is laughing here. And I hope it's Sam Elliott. it um so i'll give it that i also continue to think that someone stepped in or took on some sort of role in shaping and guiding things because there's just a feeling of like well let's put all the characters in scenes together sure and see what happens you know like like the two dudes who live with them uh uh what's his name and what's his name well neil slash nate Neil slash Nate. And Dale. And Dale. Yeah. And Dale is fully methamphetamine addict also now, which was a great scene.

1:05:49Yeah. Like on TV, in life, the guys that also live in your house probably don't drive eight hours with you to a funeral. I also didn't understand why. Although you lived in a share house in Boston in the day, and I bet those guys would have driven with you. I have many men who would drive many hours with me. Many men. But I didn't understand why they take private planes everywhere. But Tommy couldn't be like, can I use the plane? Well, because of penance. Because he needed to suffer. He wanted to go through pain. I'm just saying that like, I'll accept the incongruity of that in exchange for all of the characters in a scene together.

1:06:24Yes. Similarly, the Rebecca scene was absurd and frankly a little too close to my own experience on an airplane two nights ago. But at least they were like, if she's here, we need to give her a second type of scene to do. Sure. It cannot only be... Getting phone calls about guys dying at oil wells. And walking around like a velociraptor that someone has hung a bag on. Yeah. Like a hat stand. Do you think Emtex has more workplace disasters than other oil companies? It's a great question. I thought you were going to say than other companies. In which case, I feel like probably. But other oil companies, I don't know.

1:07:01I don't know either. It's a volatile space. We've got a couple of balls up in the air right now. Okay. You know? I mean, just because of the chemical leak, which is still ongoing. Yeah. You know, because that guy's blind now. And then now we have this collision at another oil well. So that was dramatic. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you watched it. You do your homework. I find that and I don't want to I don't want to like say anything rash, like that the show is good. I don't want to say that. But it is these last two weeks have my experience watching them was more pleasurable than anticipatory for how much fun it would be to talk to you about them.

1:07:39It's just you being like you and me, Taylor. We're not so different after all, man. I also, I texted you, so I burned this, but I was hoping that we could make a pact on the podcast that should one of us expire early, we will cammy each other's grave sites. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm not wasting Pappy Van Winkle on your grave site. That is extravagant. It's fucking wasteful. What about N.A. Pappy? Do they have that? Yeah, I'm sure they do. Pappy Van A. It's just called fucking Mr. Pibb. I know. Just pour that shit out. I did want to ask you, you know, I mentioned to you that one of the hottest things in TV right now is Heated Rivalry.

1:08:17Yeah. Hottest in all senses. Which is the hockey show that's on HBO, which... HBO Max, right? HBO Max, which is incredibly popular for one thing. For another, it comes from Jacob Tierney, who is the director on Shore-Z. And it, again, is from the letter Kenny Shore-Z kind of universe. Extended hockey universe. Extended Hockey Universe. This is an adaptation of, I think, a fairly successful novel about a long-running love affair between two incredibly popular hockey players. And I thought this show was pretty good, man. I think that if you were going to get me into a hockey show, I think probably the comedy over the melodrama.

1:09:05Yes. I'd love for you to watch Shorzy anytime you're ready. I kind of felt like you had me watch this because it's fine. I think I can see why it's good. It didn't draw me in as like, I want to watch a lot of this because I also, sorry to our Canadian listeners, I don't really care about hockey. Yeah, it's fine, man. It just feels cold. Like literally, I'm like, I don't want to be in that room. It combines many of my least favorite things, cold, physical violence, and dental trauma. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, those are my, that's my red line. You know what I mean? But, but I could see it and see why it's popular.

1:09:40I think I, I think the reason why this show is so popular is it's, it's incredibly graphic sex. Okay. Yeah. Say more about that. I, I mean, it is pretty boundary pushing. I, I think. Did you describe it? Describe it more. I'm going to close my eyes. Like it's making, this is an audio book. No, it's like these two guys really get after it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like that's what hockey players do. Do you think it is more or less accurate than Rebecca on Landman's one night stand? We didn't get to see her really go for it, right? We did get to see that she apparently has slept with the hangover-proofed heir to the Bed Bath & Beyond fortune.

1:10:19Sure. Because that guy really cares. He's got like a candle for his bathroom. He's got a candle for his bathroom. He had aromatherapy tabs for her in the panhandle or wherever they were. Look, man, as you're finding out, everybody's got a story to them, you know? It's a beautiful thing. I would check out more of the show but I just didn't look it combines all the things I don't like character driven drama and explicit sex sorry those are my red lines and hockey thanks to Kai for producing us today Kai too big for us again well she's a Golden Globe nominee now just like Amanda Seyfried wait till it's gonna get all the Amy Poehler Civil War when it's like does Kai get an actual statue you know that kind of thing you think that's gonna be a problem First of all, Amy seems like someone who would...

1:11:04She would be such a benevolent... Take care of her staff. Yeah. Unlike us, we would be fucking monsters. Yeah, we're like, let's get it down to 64 degrees in this room. And actually give us one trophy, and then we'll just fucking see who takes it. Here's a subscription to Netflix. And The New Yorker. No, no one's going to get this at the very end of our long podcast, but just the music things. You were on Bandsplain. Oh yeah, I did the best music of the year with Yassi on Bandsplain. It was a really fun pod. We talked about our favorite albums in the year, and you can find, Yassi did a playlist.

1:11:33Nice. They did a playlist for Bands Plan. And I know you're bringing this up so that you can talk about your... I did my 50 songs of the year playlist. Yes, thank you for gesturing towards my accomplishments before talking about your playlist. I both wanted to, I want to talk about both, but also I wanted to turn it back on you. So yeah, Podify at Andy Greenwald is public. But are you going to release the CR cut? Because I happen to know, I've seen drafts of your own playlist. No, I mean, I gave, I released the CR cut. You can find, you can find my Spotify profile if you want. That's not private.

1:12:05You're like, this is the songs I like this year. Yeah. What is your attitude towards that list? Because like, there's no geese on it. So did you feel like you didn't need to represent? I mean, like it's, it's just, I haven't finished it, but like I don't have as, as particular a set of rules as you do, where it's like no repeats, no, what was your whole thing? It's like one, one song per artist features don't count. Yeah, so if there's... Someone could appear on Playlist twice if they were the primary artist on one song and a featured artist on another. Yeah, I just forgot to put a Geese song on mine.

1:12:40But I also hadn't been like, everybody come look at my songs yet. I have been like that. I'm obsessed with curating this. And you're just hanging out, watching explicit sex shows. And it's just like, there's two types of people in this world. That's how this podcast works. What do you want to be? I didn't realize we were really Burt and Ernie, but... Who do? 13 or 14 years in, I guess we are. Thank you to Kai. Thank you to everybody for listening. So next week we are going to be doing our best shows of the year. I believe on Monday. Okay, I'm ready. And then we'll be talking about all your favorite TV later in the week.

1:13:14We have a mailbag coming up. We have hopefully a special episode on Pluribus coming up. And yeah, we'll be with you probably until the last week of December. And then after that? Who knows? Who knows what's going to happen in the new year? I can't wait to find out. Talk to you guys soon. Thank you.

1:13:58Nice! It's not like Steuern. Steuern. Safe. With VisoSteuer. Now test it.