You Need to be Watching ‘Furious.’ Plus, ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Preview

21:51Get tickets, meow. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods. It's hot out there, folks. Whether you're planning a family road trip, backyard barbecues, or a watch party, you'll find everything you need to beat the heat with the quality you expect from Whole Foods Market. Find sales on best of summer fruit, stock up on cooler, friendly drinks, and discover no antibiotics ever meets for the grill. You know, something like a New York strip steak plus made in-house kebabs, skewers, and sausages. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. Get your first delivery free with Prime. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by the Active Cash credit card from Wells Fargo.

22:27That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game and grabbing a coffee, It earns unlimited 2 % cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The ActiveCash credit card from Wells Fargo. Be a two percenter. Learn more at wellsfargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. I did want to ask you, what's the Spider-Man plan?

22:55Andy Greenwald:Thanks for asking. We're sadly not recording next week. We have two shows next week, but we're not live recording or doing any post-Spider-Man recording. I think it's good. I think we can let the first reactions die down and then we can come in with some truth bombs. I like the way you asked me that, the way like PSAs ask if you have a disaster plan. Like what do you have packed and ready to go? It's honestly at that level in my house. My daughters are completely locked in on this movie and have been for a while, leading me to do I think maybe my first ever like two weeks out ticket purchase. Really?

23:28Andy Greenwald:Just so like I could lock down the - Well, after you learned your lesson from Odyssey where you're like, I'll go see it in IMAX 70 like the way Christopher Nolan asked me to. And the only place showing it was fucking Ithaca. And it's hard to get there as a dad. So we are locked in and we are ready. It's interesting because, I guess it's not that interesting, like their desire, well, my 13-year-old's desire to see it is entirely Tom Holland and Zendaya. Okay. I think the nine-year-old's desire to see it is entirely her sister's interest in Tom Holland and Zendaya. But they do like those movies.

24:01Andy Greenwald:They do like those movies. They do like those movies a lot. They like the Spider-Verse cartoon movies a lot. and I'm actually feeling, I really hope it's good because they're so excited. So that's an interesting wrinkle to it where you'll go to the Odyssey maybe and you're just like, let me kick the tires here and see whether Emily Wilson was right about this. Emily Wilson and I approached it the same way with the same level of rigor and cinematic history in mind. But like Spider-Man, do you think you have a more open heart because your kids are so fired up you're like, it's going to take a lot to disappoint me about this?

24:33Andy Greenwald:well yes for sure but like i am you know what i'm just gonna say this i actually have no idea because everything i've tried to clamp down the filters and like i no spoilers to the degree that i'm capable of not having spoilers um but the two strands of information that seem to be dominating about the movie are one vibes that maybe it's it's mid and there's no clear villain or whatever. And the other one being, well, it's not a Spider-Man movie. It's a Peter Parker movie. And those are always the best stories anyway. So thus it's good. Weirdly, and I know you often look to X.com for accuracy and reporting.

25:13Andy Greenwald:Yeah, I have it open right now. I'm just translating this to Grok. Are you getting a lot of really, really, really passionate posts about how John Watts ruined those other movies and now finally we have like like gravitationally accurate swinging. Now are you getting those on For You or are you getting those in Following? Oh, no. I only follow like E.J. Smith and other like Eagles beat writers. So it's like not, I mean, maybe. But you're For You. That's a very, very specific thing. Yeah, and so For You thinks I hate the director John Watts. But you don't. Absolutely not. He seems like a lovely guy and those movies were very enjoyable.

25:54Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Especially the last one. Also, I'm not a guy. I'm idiosyncratic in some ways but I don't make or break my interest in Spider-Man media based on like the gravitational reality of swinging you've got principles the swinging in the ice storm maybe but the swinging in Spider-Man Homecoming trilogy, what do I know about that? yeah, yeah, yeah I have not gotten a lot of that served to me recently is yours just mostly like Josh Hawley fan edits? let's see what it is let's doll it up this is one of the new segments I wanted to do what does the algorithm say for you? there's a bunch of stuff about Kawhi Leonard the Odyssey, the Idaho murders heat getting made and Ross Doohat leaving the New York Times for 60 minutes that is for you that's really accurate I would have guessed 5 out of the 6 of those things and I would have started with and my times op-ed writers going to the garden of Bari.

26:56Andy Greenwald:Mine is just Vic Fangio making fun of Anthony Fauci. That's your for you. This is the top of my for you. Did he make fun of Fauci? He went to his press conference and he's like, I'm just going to be like Fauci. Did you guys see that? So glad football's back. Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, man. Oh, that's my DC, I guess. Yep. your District of Columbia? No, my defensive coordinator. Your vision for what Washington should be. Anyway, yeah, I didn't know that the fandom was like, finally Tom and Zendaya are freed from the shackles of this schlock merchant, and this movie's going to be incredible.

27:36Oh, I had no idea that that was a narrative.

27:38Andy Greenwald:It's just interesting that this, but that is also definitely one of the planks that is fueling this movie to what may be the biggest opening in five or six years. Yeah. It is. People like Spider-Man movies, and they like the fact that they are generally pretty good and haven't been tainted by the occasional misfire recently, but they also just like the stars a lot. Do you think that there is a correlation between, like Spider-Man will obviously do bonkers numbers, almost regardless of whether or not people are like, it's mid, but do you think an astronomical performance from this movie bodes well for Doomsday?

28:11Andy Greenwald:No, but it will be interpreted as such. For sure. The sheep will think that. The sheeple on their For You pages. They don't understand the real. But the sheep detective is no better. Did you see that? Yeah. Did you see that? Yeah. You have so many mysterious things about you. Sheep detective is pretty good. I heard it was good. Yeah. But like did you go to the theater to see it? No, we watched it on streaming. Who was the pilot on that? I said there's a movie where sheeps solve a crime. Oh, she's going to watch it. And my wife was like, that sounds incredible. Let's fire that up. I have been, you know.

28:43Andy Greenwald:Sheep, not sheeps. that is plural I have been a loving third to your couple for many decades and I 100 % could have predicted exactly how that would have gone like I see it my wife responds really well to these two things one, animal solving crimes two, found footage horror

29:07where a folkloric witch rises out of the woods to kill many people

29:12Andy Greenwald:are you seeing what I'm seeing though? connect the streams go right now into Jason Blum's office and be like there is a terrible murder found footage at a farm yeah and the only people left to solve it are the farm animals why not that would do numbers anyway no I just think that that I think the uncomfortable truth is that the Spider-Man movies have succeeded so entirely because they have been I mean you watch those first I re-watched the trilogy now and I completely forgot that like the whole beginning of the first one is about like lost Avengers tech being picked up by the wrong people. Like the shoehorning is so much more intense than I remembered.

29:52Andy Greenwald:But I think I'm not alone in that the cultural memory of what was good about those movies is never the crossovers. It's Tom Holland's performance of Spider-Man and Zendaya and whatever and the lighter tone and the fact that broadly they were in their own... Sandbox. Even if they had to like make adjustments for like the larger Marvel thing. And that like the third movie did multiversal storytelling about as well. I mean, we'll see, but I think about as well as it can be done because it was entirely emotional about the character that we'd grown to love and had stakes and everything like that. And so I think if this movie does well, it's because people are like, I'm interested in these characters, not necessarily this type of movie or storytelling.

30:31Andy Greenwald:And my fear is that based on the spoiler stuff that I think we both have known for a while is that if this is more of a backdoor pilot to the next brand new day of Kevin Feige's Grand MCU and the stories he wants to tell, I think that would be a bummer. I will say this. I saw recently that Holland is like, I'm happy to play Spider-Man for as long as I'll have me. And he's 30, so I guess that would probably be like, say, 10 more years. Although... I mean, you say that, but... Have we ever had the 45-year-old Spider-Man? Yes, Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man No Way Home. And I would imagine in Doomsday as well.

31:08He was younger, but by playing poker all night for six years, he aged a little bit.

31:15Andy Greenwald:Tobey Maguire. What's interesting is that as we age, and we are, people really talk about moisturizing and sun protection and whatever. But then you just hold up Tobey Maguire, who I believe has not seen Earth's sun in many decades. And that's a different kind of cautionary tale. I do think that more comic book franchises should strive to get to movie number six. Because my favorite thing about comic books is like not the origin story. It's like the story like five years in where they're like, or just like a run where they're like, yeah, of course you are. We already know like that how these people got their powers.

31:54Andy Greenwald:Oh, you don't origin story stuff. Yeah, let's move on. Yeah, I don't want to restart Spider-Man. But to these movies. This will be my last Spider-Man. Like this, like Tom Holland is my final Spider-Man. Yeah. I'm willing to say that. Where are you going? If I'm 55 and I'm like, let's see if like Pipsqueak McGee can like relaunch the Spider-Man franchise. Like we've got problems. I'm trying to think who it is. Is it like, it's like son of Mr. Beast. It's like he's half minion, half beast. Now I'm interested. I think the Sheep detective You're just giving these ideas away for free I constantly tell you that I mean but to this This series' credit We actually never saw the Tom Holland origin story He is Spider-Man at the beginning of Homecoming I forgot about that And I believe I have to admit I do not have like a comprehensive memory Of like these Spider-Man movies The way say maybe Godfather and Godfather 2 So I don't remember like What happened in the Jake Gyllenhaal movie They went to Europe for that I know that.

33:00Andy Greenwald:Yeah, they went to Europe. Kids take a lot of trips. Well, it's a pretty elite school. Academy. Yeah. I think they get a lot of opportunities. But yeah, but we, I'm sure there's a podcast of us nine years ago being like, actually, it's really interesting. They chose to forsake the origin story and we're just going to join it. And you could be like, and you were probably like, that's what I want out of a Spider-Man. An 18-year-old with no origin story. No notes. John Watts, you've done it again. And then we both like compared our Elizabeth Warren 2020 stickers. And we were like, things are going to shape up great for this version of the multiverse.

33:37Oh, fuck. Well, let's talk about Furious. Wait, are you going to see Spider-Man? Yes, I'm actually going to see it this weekend on vacation. Nice.

33:46Andy Greenwald:Is that because you told Phoebe it's about a spider solving a crime? We are hanging out with Phoebe's best friend's family and we are taking the kids to Spider-Man. And is their interest because they are spider completists or because of that tunnel? I haven't had a chance to really interrogate them about it. Sorry. Seems like you're really just walking into this blind. She was like, I want to see Spider-Man. I wasn't like, let's go through the top 10 reasons why you want to do that. Okay. And why you don't want to see like Blue Heron. You know, like I was like, let's go. Let's just go to Spider-Man.

34:16I don't ask any follow-ups. Okay. Okay. Now, finally, let's talk about Furious on Hulu. The first three episodes were released, I believe, last week. I first kind of heard about this show a while back, then filed it away, and then saw that Roxanna Haddaddy on Vulture had written a really glowing piece about it, so my eyebrow went up. It's really cool, the wide spectrum of people who have hit me up about this. Really? Like, Woz was like, yo, Furious is amazing. And there's something to that. there's something to a show so specific in its tone appealing to so many different people in my life. Yeah.

34:58And it appeals to me. I thought this show... I want to try and articulate exactly what I want to say here, which is that there's lots of things in this show that you have quote-unquote seen before.

35:10Andy Greenwald:For sure. It's definitely in a tradition of cop procedurals and serial killer stories that will ring familiar. and there's even dynamic scenes, dialogue things that you're like, ah yes the troubled but genius detective ah yes, you know, like her complicated relationship with a possibly platonic partner or whatever and yet every scene kind of has its own cadence and it's like watching someone play a jazz standard and then take it off into a completely different direction that you've not heard before and I that's down to the performances which are soulful and they're not just like oh I'm going to do all the little bits that my character does and I have like all these little like quirks that I'm going to rely on like they are I am struck by how much time Emmy Rossum's Alice character who plays in she's an FBI agent a new FBI agent who's come over from NYPD after I think best way to phrase it would be unofficially accusing a co-worker of domestic violence that she was in a relationship but never brought it official charges against him and then was ostracized from the NYPD.

36:25She goes and she becomes an FBI agent and is put on the tail of this burgeoning serial killer who is stalking men in New York. That serial killer is played by Lola Petticrew who we loved on Say Nothing a couple years ago. uh emmy rossum's partner danny kelly no relation to danny kelly works at the ringer that we know of uh is played by scoot mcnary and um it's you know the first three episodes set up this cat and mouse game where we know who the cat is and we know who the mouse is you know we are seeing 50 of what the serial killer does 50 is what the the cops chasing her the agents chasing her doing um but you will be watching this and you're like there even moments where you're like i have seen this scene before and other shows and in other movies and they'll just do something different like i i'm struck by how much time emmy rossum's character spends listening and watching people and how she's such a powerful performer in this that that in and of itself is like appointment television yeah it's like watching her like stare at somebody and process what they're talking about and how she like how she is sort of framed in the show is just great um i can't wait to hear what you think about it i know that you're very fired up about it but it's really cool to have a new show that we're really pumped up on i agree and let's just to take a step back

37:49Andy Greenwald:say that like let's let's talk about why you guys should be watching it and then maybe we could do a little yeah we don't have to get into any spoilers yet we'll do that in a minute yeah um Um, I, you know, some say I don't watch as much TV as I used to. And some say I don't enjoy as much TV as I used to. Are some in the room with us right now? I don't need to say, I don't need to say people's names. I don't think that. No, Kaya knows what she did. She has a lot of Reddit burners. But as of 9.56, I said this as I came in, at 9.56 p.m. when I had seen zero episodes of Furious. And when I sat down to record with you this morning, having watched all three that are available, I experienced like old school excitement and exhilaration over something being not just better than I had anticipated it to be, but something being so energizing, exciting, fresh and thrilling that it it's it's Bugs Bunny meme.

38:47Andy Greenwald:Got to go back to the old me. I love this show and I'm invigorated by this show and I did not see it coming. we should say that the origins are pretty interesting that it is loosely based on a 1987 i believe movie that i have never seen called black widow have you seen that movie i i don't think so um i've heard of the movie but i don't it's a it's a it's a late period raffleson which makes it interesting to me but it's deborah winger and theresa russell dennis hopper is in it as well uh the person who adapted it that must have been a fun set lucy must have been a memorable set Raffleson, Hopper, and the two women starring in the movie is Liz Merriweather, who is well-known for being the creator and honestly the wunderkind of New Girl on Fox a number of years ago, and since then has had a more diverse career venturing into drama with The Dropout, which is the Liz Merri...

39:45Andy Greenwald:Sorry, Too Many Lizes. She worked with Liz Hanna on that, and it starred Amanda Seyfried as... As Elizabeth Holmes. Another Elizabeth, Elizabeth Holmes. Last year, she was the executive producer of Dying for Sex on FX. Yep. It is as exciting to me in a TV world, I think, as it was for the movie world when the guy from The Whitest Kids You Know made Barbarian. Sure. Or made— To see the person who made New Girl make this. Yes. And see that the person who made New Girl made this. And what all it requires is just a slight dial shift in one direction or another. Which isn't saying that Furious is a comedy, although it is incredibly funny and it is incredibly surprising in its deployment of comedy.

40:29Andy Greenwald:And it's incredibly agile in the way it integrates the comedy of awkward life into something that is oftentimes quite horrifying. Specifically, Rob Delaney, who is a very funny actor and a very good actor, has a two-episode appearance in the show that gives him a chance as an actor to play the spectrum of almost every human emotion. But it never attempts to squelch what makes him charming in Catastrophe. It just leads emotionally to a different kind of catastrophe in the hands of the show. So it is an incredibly nimble, I think, tightrope walk of tone, one that I'm really impressed with. But more than anything, I was just incredibly excited by the way it takes elements of, you know, like lurid 80s and 90s serial killer thrillers.

41:23Andy Greenwald:Like I was thinking of Copycat. Sure. With Sigourney Weaver. Do some bone collecting. Let's talk about it. And with a much more modern strain of understanding and a much more, I would say, female perspective on an understanding of violence and trauma and victimhood. But at least through three episodes, this is not a show about violence and trauma and victimhood. It is a show about people living in the aftermath, day-to-day in life, in a life that just by existing contains victimhood and violence and trauma. It's not treated like a, you know, there is not a before and after for these people's lives.

42:03Andy Greenwald:There is just their lives. and it is unflinching in that. And, you know, there are some hashtag girl dad moments that are real tough in the show already. But it's doing something so, so interesting that I can't look away. There's something incredibly contemporary about it and I want to celebrate it for that because you mentioned that the ideas of victimhood and trauma are front and center here. but that those ideas are like debated by characters within the world of the show so uh there is a the show kind of like jumps up a notch i think when alice who you know is is being she's assigned out to work for a special agent who works in human trafficking and sex crimes uh the the agent's name is Nora Washington, who's played by Quincy Tyler Bernstein, who is a very quirky, idiosyncratic character who also confronts Alice with, I think, a...

43:10How do I say this? A way of thinking about her character that I don't think I've seen on TV shows in a long time, where she's not only asking Alice to basically work through and get over her own experiences with abuse because there is like a greater good and a greater mission for her. But she's also getting into the nuances of whether or not someone who was a victim and be like, if you're a victim, does that mean you are a good person somehow?

43:40Andy Greenwald:That you have now earned some sort of righteousness. Yes, or that you were incapable of wrong because you are working through your trauma. And we can start getting into somewhat more detailed discussion of the show but essentially what is happening is that this character Catherine who Lola Pettigrew plays is working through a kill list like she has a list of men who are responsible for her corruption and her she was trafficked yes that's what I mean as a teenager yeah and there are there are sort of philosophical debates among characters about like what well what is she then what is her sort of where does her personhood start where does her responsibility start for what she's doing versus how a system failed her or a group of men destroyed her.

44:25And it's like a fascinating debate to watch take place among characters. Not that it's stopping the action or getting in the way of any of that, but I thought to really reckon with that stuff in the context of a cop show essentially or procedural is really wild and pretty breathtaking.

44:41Andy Greenwald:And it runs right at, with a deep understanding, I think, it runs right at audiences' sympathy triggers. that when we watch a TV show, whether we try to do it with an elevated intellectual mind or just like laundry folding to annoy Emmy's husband, Sam Esmail, our brains naturally reach for the characters and try to sort them into good and bad. We look for POV characters. We look for sympathetic characters. We look for the show to, in ways overt and unsubtle or maybe subtle and artistic, to give us a permission structure for who we are meant to root for so that we can become more empathetic and engaged in the action of the show.

45:24Andy Greenwald:So we're not just on our couch. We're right in it with the characters. And right from the beginning, the show does not allow you to do that. The characters interrogate it themselves, as you're saying, with these really brilliant scenes where Nora is doing the very TV thing of giving this untested, clearly traumatized person, Alice, a chance. And the other characters are like, what the fuck? And then after the other characters say, what the fuck? She pulls her aside and is like, what the fuck? You better get it together because I am doing this for this reason and I also have motivations. The show also does it really, really, I would say uncomfortably and radically with Catherine, who is both a lurid serial killer who does terrible things on screen.

46:06Andy Greenwald:Wears cool masks and shit. Yeah, and is clearly disturbed in a way that is familiar to audiences of watching disturbed serial killer shows, but also is profoundly a victim. is when left alone to her actual self, a child, in ways that are upsetting. And then specifically in the second episode, the show immediately pushes its cards into the middle of the table by having a character, I guess we'll now get into slightly spoiler territory, but a character, a victim, a monster from Catherine's past, his daughter shows up. And I was immediately, it's like a topsy-turvy feeling of like, you can't do this because then you can't be okay.

46:51Andy Greenwald:You can't emerge from the scene rooting for Catherine as an avenger of bad people. It immediately complicates it. And then what was crazy to me about that episode is Liz Merriweather handles it in a certain way, like putting the victim, in this case the man, off screen and allowing the killer and the daughter to have some scenes that are certainly not wholesome, but you're like, well, at least it's going to be okay. Yeah. And then... I think that's also the first sign that she's, like, basically still that age. Yes. Emotionally. And then it lulls you as a viewer into a sense of almost forgetting that there's going to be a recoil from this because the show is still the show.

47:28Andy Greenwald:Yeah. And then what happens at the end of the episode is absolutely horrifying without any guardrails about how to feel about it. And I thought that was really bold and really rare. Shows in ways that are, like, really big and clumsy and clunky and network mandated hold your hand these days. and then shows that are artfully done kind of sometimes hide the hand-holding but still nudge you in a direction and this show resists that. I think one of the criticisms I have of a lot of current one-hour dramas is that why do we need this 60 minutes? What are you guys doing with this runtime, with this episode count?

48:08What was essential about these various buckets that you're filling to the story? Because in my mind, because I don't work within the television industry. I'm like, it seems like you have 42 minutes of story this week. Why don't you tell that? The episodes here vary between like 40 to 50 some minutes. And I have to give the show a tremendous amount of credit for using every moment well. Not always dazzlingly or brilliantly, but there's a moment in the third episode that I wanted to highlight. So somewhere in this three episode run, we're introduced to Jake Lacey's character. It's a great piece of counter-programming casting where Jake Lacey plays Alice's ex-boyfriend who also was her abuser.

48:53He's still on the force. And basically what happens is we're led to believe that Scoot McNary's character was the one person who spoke up for Alice in her fallout from this relationship. He has been ostracized and sort of nobody talks to him anymore. But this guy, Marshall, has now gone on with his life. And that's the understanding until we finally get like a real Marshall scene. And the scenes that they choose to like give Jake Lacey are really, really interesting and provocative. Because first he's sort of like, I was drinking, you know, he has this tearful confession to Alice.

49:31Andy Greenwald:Because he see, they go to, because they are of course working together. I mean, that's the other thing. It's a TV show. So let's bring the characters in contact with each other. Let's not pretend that this isn't a contrivance. and they go to a shelter for abused women. Yeah. Victims of domestic violence. And he sees a woman who has been hit and he is overcome. Yeah, and he's like, did I do that to you? And she's like, did you hit me in the face? Yes. You know, and he's crying and he's talking about how he was drinking at the time and he only remembers little parts of it. And he eventually convinces Alice to come to his house because his mother is entering hospice, I believe, right?

50:07Well, then she's come home and she still misses you

50:10Andy Greenwald:and she thinks of you as a daughter. They were boyfriend and girlfriend from a very young age, like high school sweethearts. And she goes to the house to visit with the mother, and the mother is saying, it turns out that this is all a ploy for the mother to pressure Alice to recant any unofficial statements she may have made about Marshall so that he can make lieutenant because it's holding him back. And in that moment, you just get this completely nuanced, in-depth picture of this guy that is still like pathetic and he is not a good person by any means. But it chooses to show a bunch of different sides of somebody rather than just that's the guy who beat Alice up and he's a piece of shit and he's going to get what's coming to him eventually.

50:57Andy Greenwald:And it does it quickly. This is the third episode where it immediately adds these shades and layers and still somehow is holding true to this idea of what is right and what is wrong. even as it feels like it's slipping through Alice's fingers. And I have to talk about casting. I think Emmy is phenomenal in it. And I think it's like a really, really careful performance. It's a studied performance. You know, it is one that clearly was given a lot of thought in terms of how to control her physical body and the performance and what she is carrying every time she walks into work or what she's releasing when she goes home.

51:38Andy Greenwald:hair various points it's it's it's really well done and has a lot of layers i imagine still to be revealed lola pedicrew we love from say nothing you fucking blacked out in this and yeah and particularly like it's a very like it's giving jennifer jason lee you know and i mean that is a very big compliment yeah um there's something remarkable about being able to do and maybe this is a companion comment to what i was saying about rob delaney but to like to be character and caricature and deeply honest at the same time and to be able to sort of toggle between those extremes is awesome but also to be a kind of slick crime show and serial killer show where there is a cheap thrill in watching the katherine character like change change disguises as she moves through new York city and blackmail people and have all these little safe houses that she goes to.

52:37She's like a, uh, a sort of, uh, like an attending live-in nurse for someone. She, you know, has all these little like kind of home bases. And that part is kind of exciting to watch because that's, that's kind of like, you know, you're watching the guy from Pelican brief change into a completely different person, You know, like it's it is really neat, but it's also like always in service of character.

53:01Andy Greenwald:So I just think the other reason why I'm so enthused about the show is it's a really good articulation of something that I try to try to articulate many times when shows fail at this. But it's that like great things are really defined by small choices. And there are examples of that all across the show. One is is casting. I mean, whether it's Scoot McNary, who we always like getting a chance to play a more prominent part that has different layers, different, it showcases a different kind of charisma than he usually brings or is allowed to bring. I have a comment on him. Let's circle back. But Quincy is brilliant in the show.

53:42Andy Greenwald:And Quincy is a brilliant actor and has been and is on stage a lot. Doesn't get parts like this often. And parts like this aren't written to magnify actors as specific as Quincy in both in appearance and in affect and how she delivers lines. And it's thrilling every time she's on screen. The hospital scene that she's in is... It's killer. Yeah. Rob Yang, who plays an FBI agent, is incredible. And Steve Wei, who was on Rami, plays the person suffering from, I believe, muscular dystrophy who Catherine takes care of. Yeah. And, like, those scenes are fantastic and funny and present. And it's like, oh, it's another layer here.

54:21Andy Greenwald:And to your point about, like, how time is used, we've introduced a new context two episodes in, and I'm, like, leaning in more. It does not feel like filler for the cat and mouse game to fill eight episodes of what was adapting a two hour movie. But it goes into the script. Like when we meet Scoot McNary's character, Danny, the first thing he does is pinches out a cigarette with his fingers. And before the audience can be like, wait, what's going on? Alice goes, why did you do that? Didn't that hurt? And he went, it really fucking hurt. I don't know why I did that. Yes, and it's because he's nervous to see her, because he's like, I think he's nervous about all the cops who are going to be sort of ridiculing her when she's in this crime scene.

55:03But yeah, I mean, the scene, there are, you know, I did this talk with Shane Black a couple weeks ago, I guess by now it'll be last week at a movie theater when we were introducing, we're talking about Nice Guys. It's the 10th anniversary of Nice Guys. And he's so sharp when it comes to the conventions or talking about the mechanics of screenwriting. And a lot of what he does is exploits tropes. So something will become a cliche or a trope, and what he does is say, but what if it went this way? And he was like, you have to be very careful, though, because before you know it, the inversion of the trope is the trope.

55:45Andy Greenwald:Yes, it sure is. And so he's like, you always have to be kind of aware. Like, you pull a move a couple of times, and then other people pull the move and then all of a sudden there's 10 movies and 10 shows that have done the like, what if we were getting off the elevator but the gunfight was happening already so we just stayed on the elevator and went away. Like there is a moment in Furious where we are being set up to be incredibly sympathetic for this young girl who Nora and Alice are talking to about being a witness in a trafficking case. And we're like, oh God, you know, Alice gave her her blazer as a good gesture.

56:22And what's going to happen? And then we find out that she's in the hospital. She's been beaten unconscious and is now on a breathing tube. And what does Nora do when she walks into that scene? She's just like, she was a trafficker. I was flipping her. Every time she turned a girl, she got to work less. And it's introducing this idea that there is not a good and a bad and a hero and a villain in this world. When you get into the underworld, everybody is compromised. everybody is um has a boss everybody is both a criminal and a possible witness and you have to get used to this kind of thing if you're going to do this work and i thought that was just such a great inversion because what we should have is like this is why we do it to protect girls like this and we failed her but we're not going to fail yeah the hero's journey yeah exactly and instead it's like see this this is how fucked up what we do is she's a trafficker and i was going to flip her and she got she got put in a hospital because of that and and what does um alice to

57:22Andy Greenwald:nora what's that smell and she goes tequila i'm drunk yes it's the middle of the night yeah it's it's just these little things that just remind you that someone there's a lively mind at work here there is something with a point of view there's a spirit there's a tone that that that they are searching for and that they are that they are finding with the help of collaborators who are in on it. Like, I think one of the other things that's really noteworthy about the show is the music. The score is by Ariel Marks, who's done a bunch of movies. Shiva Baby, I think, worked with Liz on a previous television show.

57:53Andy Greenwald:But like, it is not a conventional score. And you notice it. And that can go one of two ways. And what it did for me here was, again, signaling something's at work here. Something is active. This is a choice. This isn't music that is designed to fill the whole Mark music in your budget or in your show. It's part of the storytelling. the opening credits, the fonts, the design. It's all part of it. I did take issue with Rob Delaney's character playing Geese before he had sex with Catherine. Talk about it. Well, it was just like a random, kind of a random needle drop, you know. I feel like this is a, in the brief, the broad brush strokes we saw of him, I think that he probably - He's like, I like music.

58:37Andy Greenwald:And so he looks at what has gotten BNM on Pitchfork and just buys the CDs. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Sure. My guess is he wouldn't have been able to be like, well, 3D Country was better. That's what I say. You know, just fucking...

58:54Andy Greenwald:So I felt like that was earned for him. But you know what else I think? I think there was a discussion. Yeah. I bet this conversation happened. I'm talking about tropes and inver... I wanted to ask you about... I also found the direction really good and what I thought was interesting about it... Sorry, that was really insightful commentary. But Brian Kirk directs the first two episodes. And he has directed things, I think, in this vein before. Like, I think he has a very, I'm looking at his, like, he's done Game of Thrones episodes. He's done Penny Dreadful. He did a bunch of Day of the Jackal.

59:30Andy Greenwald:So he has done big ticket shows that don't necessarily subvert. And I don't mean those shows are bad. I'm saying that he is able to deliver a mood and a vibe. And what I thought was cool about his episodes and Karina Evans, who directed the third episode, is that they also seem to be there just seems to be a consistency of aesthetic point of view and vision in that they are in no time are they running from the fact that they are making a New York City thriller based on an 80s movie. but within it there is room for life like the style that is we have we have all seen style done by more and i'm not saying this is who brian kirk is but sometimes when you hire someone who does one thing really well the thing that that person does well is signaling so strongly to the audience that the audience can struggle to identify what makes this one special yeah and sometimes that's the goal is is a streamer it's just like you know we do well in the women in peril space.

1:00:25Andy Greenwald:So we're going to make more shows like that because there's a floor for that and it's a pretty high floor. And so I was impressed by the way that the direction communicated something that was familiar like you were saying at the top but still had room for surprise. I want to plant my flag on something here. I'm excited. But I want to give, if listeners don't want to contemplate where the show is going and they just want to end our conversation now, I think this will be the final segment of the episode so people can feel free to peace out. Scoot McNary's character is given real Evan Peters and Task vibes.

1:00:59Andy Greenwald:In terms of his long-term... Viability. Long-term viability on the show. Yeah, his... When you are that nice of a guy... Yeah. And you're like, I will sit outside of your bathroom while you shower for the first time. Because the shower is traumatic for you. Because the shower is traumatic, but I will just stand watch. And he's such a good dude, and he's like, you know, I stood up for you and all these things. like it's either going one of two ways is one of the ways back to what appears to be his native boston because his accent choice is interesting the accent is the accent okay you know what i mean we work we work with what we've got i think that maybe his backstory is like i'm from boston but i came to new york to be a cop you know like okay uh buy it but it's gonna speaking of those inversions you know what i mean like you don't get to be that nice i thought you were gonna say that he, because there's the reference of like, did you ever go to this tug joint where all the cops went?

1:01:53And he's like, no, I didn't even get a handjob in high school.

1:01:55Andy Greenwald:Do you think he protests too much? Oh, you think he's going to wind up on Catherine's list? Do you think he's the handjob king of Bayside? You know what I mean? I'm sure that's a hard fought for title. Like, I'm sure there are a lot of guys literally jockeying for that. Yeah, it's like one of those years where one guy's batting.340, the other guy's batting.338. And it goes down to the wire? Yeah. I think that's possible. Okay, any other flags you'd like to plant? Because I'm interested too that you're watching it with crime show mind. That you're like, there's going to be a solve here. There's going to be a surprise here.

1:02:27Andy Greenwald:I'm not saying there won't be. My only hesitation is we have been down this road before, which is like an incredible prestige crime show that starts like gangbusters and then has to maintain tension by, you know, We all watched Presume Innocent, you know? So are you saying, is this the Shane Black in you being like, what once was novel has now become habit? No, I'm just saying that, like, it's hard to do these things over the course of six hours, eight hours, whatever it's going to be. Yeah, I agree. And it's especially hard to do these things when, as you said at the top, we know who the cat and we know who the mouse is.

1:03:03Andy Greenwald:Sure. But what's interesting about it and what gives me, I mean, everything about this gives me a lot of confidence and excitement about finishing the series. but um you know when we were speaking and i we are we are like desmond on lost we are unstuck in time currently i think i was about to say remember when we talked about something that i think is actually part of monday's mailbag it's august but but there was there is a conversation in a podcast you guys will enjoy soon a brief one about contemporary spy shows reluctance to engage in the world as it is and i i like so far i like the this show furious's instinct to go big and to reach for the headlines and to suggest that in you know in a in an epstein era that that that that the targets that begin small will inevitably go up the food chain they sure apex predators and you know a built-in culture of trafficking yeah and that that is got a little true detective when you know yes yeah i mean i it has that it has a little bit of that you know it's like how how how how far does this go and and again who knows where we go in the remaining five episodes but like calibrating this stuff is so much harder than it seems when it's done well how are we going to do a micro story or a macro story are we trying to make a point are we trying to make you entertained you know is this funny is this serious is it how much do we indulge in people's suffering and Especially in the demands that streamers make where you front load your shows.

1:04:34This show starts with Catherine killing a guy by injecting fentanyl into him. Yes. It is like, it's grabby.

1:04:42Andy Greenwald:It's grabby and I don't mean to disrespect the Hulu television network and all the programming that they make that I like and all the programming they make that I don't engage with. But Hulu does true crime and does miniseries pretty well. It has a brand identity. so this being on the service makes sense and then you dig deeper and it's so far it's just so much better and so much more interesting than I think I would have expected so I'm curious is it Ghost in the Machine or is the machine going to win? It's interesting we'll have to see so let's stop there Andy and I will be back on Monday with a mailbag episode and next Thursday with an Anthony Bourdain special in honor of Tony being released I hope everybody is going to have Have a great weekend.

1:05:29And thanks to Kaya, Kai, Sarah, everybody for producing.