You Should Watch ‘The Eternaut.’ Plus, Netflix Goes on a Cancellation Spree.

20:34Andy Greenwald:And so they, I mean, they are, it's unlike with FX or something where they're like, oh, we've got a bunch going in our drama development pipeline. We're ready to say goodbye to a bubble show or something like that. Netflix is, it's shopping in all the aisles of the supermarket. So it's not like it cancels the residence because it has other dramas. as it cancels the residence because people are watching something else completely different. Yes. And they can put resources in that direction. FanDuel is now available everywhere in the U.S. I've been everywhere, man. I've been everywhere, man. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places.

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23:00Andy Greenwald:Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Uh, sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice. Ugh, I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyer's rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. While we concern, troll, or ask questions of Netflix, we should also throw some flowers their way because the Eternaut is like a perfect example of their great contribution to television, which I think is making, one of them, one of their contributions, is making international television widely, widely available to audiences over here that maybe ordinarily wouldn't check it out.

23:55Now, a couple years ago, Andy and I fell in love with a German sci-fi show called Dark that we spent a lot of time talking about and me and Jason Gallagher recapped the last... two seasons, I think, maybe, because you were doing your show, I think.

24:08Andy Greenwald:I'm always happy to throw Jason Gallagher some work. But, and that was on this pod, but The Eternaut, like, reminds me of Dark in that sensation of, like, this is familiar, like, there's stuff, this is a post-apocalyptic drama, there's sci-fi, there's environmental crisis, there is our we, our greatest, our own worst enemy kind of thematic stuff going on. but god this is um escapism slash tourism for for for audiences who don't get to go to argentina or have never been to argentina you can feel the and this is an argentinian show that you can feel the infrastructure of buenos aires the textures the architecture the rhythms the customs the culinary like even like little bits of like where people get food or like different markets and and drugstores, and it all comes to life, even though it's a show set in a period when everything is dying.

25:07Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about this. But it's not just, first of all, I fucking love this show. Me too. I think it's so sick. It came out in May. Yeah. But I think it's worth noting. So we're going to talk about it broadly. We're going to try to get people to watch it, and maybe we can run a little alert signal. Chernobyl music could say we're going to spoil a little bit. I think after Last of Us season two, we're not allowed to use Chernobyl music anymore. We're going to do the first half. We each watched three of the six episodes, I believe. I think it's important to say it's not just location tourism, which I am a sucker for and I love.

25:40Andy Greenwald:There is a real cultural personality and fingerprint on the story itself. How the story is told. What is significant in the story that makes it feel specific and compelling in a way that is markedly tactile different than if this was just another Hollywood or American television production. I would compare it to Dark or the experience of falling in love with it to watching Dark, but also Le Revenant, the French show about supernatural events. It's pretty cool to experience what we often, maybe with our limited thinking, consider to be like Hollywood genre storytelling refracted through the cultural prisms of another country and another perspective.

26:25Andy Greenwald:So when we say The Eternot is a comic book adaptation, it's worth noting that this is an Argentine cult comic from the late 50s. This is a different type of graphic storytelling brought to the screen. I wish I could stunt here and say I'm as familiar with this as I am with Riri Williams, the titular Ironheart. I am not. I think Fantagraphics, the great independent comic publisher, produced a translated version of this about a decade ago. I don't even know if it's still in print. Hopefully it's coming back into print if it's not. But was completely unfamiliar with it. It's the kind of thing that when you see just the one still image from the comic, you're like, oh, that's pretty cool.

27:04I mentioned that we got a really cool email about this show from a listener in Argentina, so I thought I would just read that. Please. Because it gives a lot of background and context. Yeah, I'd love it. Hi, Chris and Andy. Greetings from Argentina. Here you go. I'm a longtime listener of the pod and got really excited to hear that you guys will be covering El Eternata next week. El Eternata is a very important IP here in Argentina and means a huge deal to us. Everyone has read or at least heard of the original 1950s comic book, and the main character is an iconic figure full of symbolic value.

27:35The story's author, Hector G. Osterheld, was sadly tortured and murdered by the dictatorial military regime during the 70s. They hated him and his political views and understood that the ideas from the comic book were too subversive for people to read. In addition, his four daughters were kidnapped and disappeared. Three of his sons-in-law also disappeared. Two of his daughters were pregnant at the time of their kidnapping and are believed to have given birth in captivity. These horrors from dark times that took place in our country are strongly linked to interpretations of the story. It's impossible to read the comic or watch the TV show and not see the thing that happens in the show or the killing snow as a metaphor for something else.

28:13This is a story that took a long time to get adapted to the screen and I think the show really nails it. Truly pays homage to the original material while also allowing for some changes. It's a product that makes us Argentinians really proud as we rarely get to see local productions with this scope, especially not sci-fi action shows like this one. And then this person goes on to take issue with the fact that I like Boca instead of River Plate. This is great.

28:36Andy Greenwald:Yeah. I like this guy. Can I read the rest of the email later? Yeah, sure. Thank you for the email, Andy. I love this. And I also just, again, best case scenario for Netflix, particularly with their international expansion, is building up their business in cultural hubs around the world. And I'm sure it can be a nightmare in development everywhere. But like one of the things about Dark that we loved was that it seemed like whether it rose to the top immediately or whether it was a more challenging development situation. Either way, the product was like, this is kind of like best case scenario for a big budget streamer saying, what have you got?

29:15Andy Greenwald:How can we help you make it? Bruno Stagnaro is the creator of this, directed a lot of the episodes, adapted a lot of the episodes. and not familiar with the comic. What I loved about it was how completely confident it is, both in its storytelling, in its introduction to a world and a crazy event that we're going to talk about, but also how true it is to its aesthetic and point of view so that even when things get amplified, they are done with such artistry and restraint and consistency, right? so that the world that we enter in the beginning, when it's just Buenos Aires, feels consistent even when things have gone completely to shit.

29:59Andy Greenwald:So should we talk about the stuff that happens? Yeah, sure. So I guess if you don't want to know anything about this show. Well, you got to know one thing, which is crazy shit happens and it's kind of a dystopian end of the world show, but it doesn't feel like an American one. Okay, before we talk about the plot, let me just say one last thing about it. If this had been an American, this feels like something that I'm sure Hollywood people have attempted to get the rights to and adapt many times. I just assume that because it's a huge big story. There's something that feels so... It's also not unlike something like, say, The Mist.

30:36Like the Frank Darabont adaptation of Stephen King.

30:41Andy Greenwald:And it feels like, and this is another reason why I really loved it, it's a zombie story without zombies in the sense of a sudden survival story. and the enemies, of course, are ourselves, but they're also not trying to turn into mushrooms and eat our organs. Yeah. At least not yet, through three. So the story opens... I just want to say last thing. If this had been workshopped in a Hollywood development process, the first thing that would have been thrown away would be the cast of characters as inherited from the comic book. Because the main character, and again, I don't know how old he is in the comics, in order to cast the legendary Argentine actor Ricardo Doreen.

31:19Andy Greenwald:He's almost 70. It's a bunch of like middle-aged, shout out the Oasis crowds, it's a bunch of middle-aged dudes playing cards. Yeah, late middle-aged guys who get together to play cards in one of their buddy's basements one night. There is not a lot of, and I say this as someone who is quite liberal, there's not a lot of like token diversity in the swath of Buenos Aires that they show us. And I appreciate that. Some in three. Sure, I'm saying it is a diverse living metropolis and even like Ingo's a character that's created for the TV show is not Argentinian and is of a different social strata and everything.

31:55I'm not saying I want to be very clear.

31:58Andy Greenwald:I'm not saying the show is good because it's not woke. I'm saying that it is a very, very specific vision of what would happen to these people in this one pocket of one place. Yes. And it's not that randomly on this one night there was, you know, there was some sort of like club meeting where with representatives from every corner of the city of all age groups, also with one super sexy lady, which I feel like would be the Hollywood version. Like, it's just, you just feel that so much. Everyone is, in American stuff, even when they try not to, everyone's teeth are perfect and they're kind of young.

32:30Andy Greenwald:Like, that's just the default setting. And I love that it's not that. Yeah, so it opens up with, you know, not unlike, say, Lost, some other sci-fi-leaning shows, there will be these little cold opens for the episodes that might introduce you to different characters right before everything changes in Argentina and beyond. And for the first episode, we meet Juan, as mentioned by Andy, a few of his friends, they get together to play cards. There have been these power outages in Buenos Aires over the course of the summer. Everybody's sort of pissing and moaning about the government, the infrastructure, how things are going.

33:09Andy Greenwald:Is the country failing on some level? Yeah. It could never be us. eventually there is a full blackout and then snow starts to fall. It's the middle of summer. Unseasonally, yeah. And at first they think it's an electrical fire or a fire at an electric station and that there's asbestos in the air. And they quickly realize that beyond it being whether it's asbestos or not, people, if you inhale the snowflakes, if you inhale the atmosphere... If you're outside. You die almost instantaneously. And it creates this incredible, puzzle plot of, okay, they happen to be playing cards at this very toolsy kind of fixer-upper DIY guy's house.

33:53He has one gas mask. How are they going to get out, get supplies, get information? Sidebar, how many do you have? You know what? I think I do have a gas mask in Philadelphia, but not for any reasons that I'm interested in talking about.

34:08Andy Greenwald:The Laramie Tunsil? Is that you? I love you. You have never watched that guy play a down of football, but you know, is he still in the league? Yeah, he is actually. Um, anyway, he's on the, uh, commanders. We're gonna have to see him twice this year. Not worried. Okay. Uh, anyway, so the snow is falling. Something is wrong. Power's out. And immediately everybody's personalities. Uh, I like, I love this. A lot of the times, like in these apocalyptic sort of survival stories, you know, you get a pretty clear idea even before the events of like who's who and i like how people change in this show i like how people um react to crisis and you know some are very like uh creative and they're like oh i can do this and we can do that but some are um setting all these rules and and making all these sort of declarations of how things are going to be others are needlessly rebellious like yeah there's a lot of like sort of evolution to the characters which makes it very interesting to watch beat by beat and another thing i'll say about this is that there is a storytelling style and a pacing style to the show that can feel laconic at times like you're just like oh this scene is going on for a while or like we're hanging out in this living room for a long time and then almost inevitably every little bit every detail winds up mattering.

35:37So it's like incredibly expansive, but not inefficient storytelling.

35:42Andy Greenwald:I think that's well said. There's a collection of details that I love that I feel like when describing it, it will make the show sound conventional, but sometimes convention can be helpful guardrails. Like the introduction of an antagonistic couple at an inopportune moment in the third episode is mostly memorable because in the moment it teaches us something about Juan, his ex-wife Elena and their the troubles the almost Herculean task they've set out which is to find their teenage daughter yes who we know because of the opening flashback is not anywhere where anyone would think she would be yes so in that moment it's a very purposeful scene they're it's teaching us about who they are morally it's teaching them about the world that they are now existing in only two days into this apocalypse and that's that what it also does is gives the filmmakers an opportunity to introduce as Jack Donaghy would say a third heat to this post-apocalyptic or this apocalyptic storyline by having people who are who's already the audience has already judged to be morally bad and bad things happen to them and we learn about a new bad through them if that makes sense I feel like that's kind of horror movie logic but I don't watch a lot of horror movies but in the sense that like the show is communicating to us to whom bad things can and should happen before maybe they invert it later on.

37:06Yeah, and I also think that, like I mentioned with the sort of, with each new challenge, it might change the way a character behaves. Like that happens over the course of the first three episodes. Where certain, you know, Juan might be kind of behaving in one way in the first two episodes, but as the prospect of finding his teenage daughter becomes apparent, or that becomes his mission, he becomes a lot more kind of cutthroat and direct about what he's going to need to do. And this kind of culminates in an amazing second episode for the show. And I would say if you watch the first one and you're like, okay, okay, okay, I've seen this before.

37:42I feel like this is kind of along the lines of what I've kind of become familiar with, with this dystopian stuff. The second episode is largely set in an apartment tower and has just enough J.G. Ballard, like how soon would it take before everything goes to shit, kind of satire of society. It has a great cold open of a bunch of people basically arguing about... A co-op board. Yeah, a co-op board argument. And what plays out in that second episode is like, that's the selling point. By the way, I got to check that out.

38:17Andy Greenwald:I had a co-op in New York and that shit is always on the razor's edge of violence. But you know what? You did and it wasn't on the razor's edge of violence, but didn't you have like complications? I'm saying. Those are going to be the first to tip in to dystopia like gladly. Yeah. And that whole thing builds so beautifully, but also it has such a smart sense of scale. Oh my God. Because everything hinges on a mask or how many bullets are in one handgun. Yes. Or where you are in the building in relation to windows or what floor you're on. It is ground, ground, ground, ground level. And we have seen and we've talked about like one of the things that was cool about the first season of The Walking Dead was much like the 28 Days Later.

38:57Andy Greenwald:What the fuck just happened? we are not people who are equipped to know about this. We are not at the upper echelons of society. It's the inverse of something we were praising recently, the big seventh episode of Paradise, which is narrating an end-of-the-world scenario from the seat of power. This is bottom-up storytelling. And it doesn't, it's in no, it seems anyway, through three, that it is in no hurry to let us know, to give us any glimpse of something bigger outside of the experience of these characters in a moment-to-moment way. You're talking about how the characters change. Like another really great character is Tano, played by Cesar Troncoso, who's an Uruguayan actor who's awesome, makes a really strong first impression.

39:37Andy Greenwald:I love the fact that he is, at least through the first episode, for one and a half episodes, he is the guy that you are lucky to be around when this shit goes down. Yeah, because he can fix a radio and fix a battery. And figure stuff out. And also, as alluded to by other characters, he's kind of into this stuff. Like he reads stories, he watches. presumably he's watched all the TV shows that have come out about end of the world scenario. So he's not a full on prepper, but he's a low key prepper. Yeah. As it turns out, being overly prepped may be a downside for your mental health and for your relationships.

40:12Andy Greenwald:Sidebar here, whenever we talk about dystopian shows, you proudly say that you would probably be pretty good at this. Did this show change your point of view in any way? well I mean it kind of doesn't matter because the math problem it presents is not one that I would be able to solve in terms of well like if we can't go outside we can't go outside like you know what I mean like I think I would be do better in a slow moving zombie situation than I would be in a the atmosphere itself is poison now of course you know like because the show needs to expand and move like we find a lot of gas masks like we get to the fire station we go and we do that I don't know that that would have occurred to me, for instance.

40:53Andy Greenwald:To go to the place where there might be masks. Yes. Like, I don't think I've even thought about, like, oh yeah, firefighters have to wear gas masks when they go into fires. I also think that the show... Although, now I know that after watching Smoke. There is a little conversation between these shows. There... I was talking to my kids this morning, and my older daughter was talking about... We were talking about times they've gotten... This is a classic driving to camp conversation. Times they've gotten sick on vacation. And my older daughter was like, it actually was pretty okay to get COVID in Hawaii because I don't really want to go.

41:23Andy Greenwald:I don't really want to do anything. I was like, so we took you on a real nice vacation and you didn't want to do anything. She's like, no, hotels are nice. I don't want to go outside. So I was like, so. Everybody has that age, yeah. Or that life. So I was like, in the world of the Eternot, I think as long as, now to be clear, would Roblox be down? Yes, yeah. Oh, okay. So that might cause some problems. What about like first gen iPads? How would you do with no eagles to follow? Oh, if there was no eagle season? Yeah. How would I fall asleep at night? How would I calm myself down? It would be dire for me.

42:01I wonder who Saquon's golfing with now.

42:03Andy Greenwald:In heaven? Because he was on the back nine. Yeah. I think the other thing that's worth noting, you don't need to have gotten a nice email like that or Googled the history of the show to understand that there was a... actual reason, politically, emotionally, culturally, for this story to exist. It's just granular and you cannot separate it from the experience of watching it. Everything feels intentional and meaningful. The sense of dislocation from your neighbors, the fear of being outside of your home, the threat of becoming strangers to ourselves is just so powerfully enmeshed in what the show is.

42:48Andy Greenwald:it's not just you know what would be fucking sick killer snow yeah um it's it's i find it kind of profound and really um it's like resetting my cultural uh my entertainment media yeah to be like this is really really compelling genre storytelling for a reason it's a fantastic use of television as a storytelling format because i don't think in a film you could have all these sort of like side stories, side characters, give space and like concentrate on Omar, the guy who's sort of like the last invited to the card game and his brothers with a guy who's there, but like... Who's an invented character as well.

43:26Andy Greenwald:Oh, is he? Okay. It's interesting to think what was added and what wasn't. I mean, when the story was written, there weren't cell phones. There weren't cars with computers that were to be different from the cars that didn't have computers and thus worked. So I think how they figured that out feels very natural to me, but again, I haven't read it. But I really, how do you feel about watching this show post-COVID? Because again, this is a 70-year-old story, but it feels, especially from lived experience, very COVID-coded of the idea of like, what can we do? How much do we have to secure things? What do we have to get?

44:00Andy Greenwald:How do we wash? How do we exist? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I'm not looking forward to ever going back to that, I guess. I have a I would say that I have a really weird relationship to popular culture that somehow captures or documents the previous five years oh sure like I'm not super excited to like dig into that yet and I don't feel like we're really post-COVID in terms of like how it changed cities or how it changed the way people think or how it changed or empathy yeah so I'll let you know in a couple years I think that's fair I think the experience of watching it... If the snow hasn't fallen on us again.

44:38Andy Greenwald:I think it's successful because it is not in any way about that. But it's hard not to bring our own experiences to it. Like similarly, I was thinking about how quick people turn, you know, to revealing themselves or becoming feudalist or violent even. And it does make me think that like, like I love Lost. but one of the powerful zags of Lost was that it wasn't Lord of the Flies that there was some aspirational actually the best of humanity can emerge in these situations too and that's something that, you know permission to live out for a second I think that I kind of Well, you have to climb your way out of like this show is thankfully not woke That's true, I've got a long way to go but um to watch this show and to live in america at this moment it actually makes me think that lord of the flies is pretty prescient you know and i don't know if i believe in the better angels of people at the moment and it echoes that it is but to your point this isn't the show is successful because it is what it is and we're bouncing our own uh experiential uh context against it not because it was, oh, we've got an arrow aimed at the heart of 2025 consciousness.

46:00Andy Greenwald:It is not that at all. It's just also, I think it's kind of just a classy show, not just because of the quality of the performances and the sort of veteran actors like Doreen Weaver mentioned is so good. It's just, it uses its, I think, probably still by US standards, limited budget incredibly well. Like just the vistas of snow-covered cities with occasional corpses and things is very, very effective. Yeah. And you feel the scope of it. Like even though, how many locations have we been to in three episodes? Maybe six? Yeah. I feel a city. Yeah. I feel the scale of it when the radio suddenly is talking about there's one message from Uruguay or there's talk of southern Brazil.

46:43Andy Greenwald:You're like, oh my God. Yeah. This is enormous and impossible to comprehend. I do want to just hit that COVID bit one more time because I did think of one of the things that was sort of interesting about going through that period of time was how six weeks into it it was like yeah we have like zoom calls with our friends and like this is how we buy groceries and it was like the adaptability was very quick and that happens in this show as well you know like immediately they're like we have to ration the water this is you know people have like kind of you think in your mind if snow fell in the summer and it became apparent that going outside would kill you, you would be like, well, I've lost my mind and I can't even understand reality anymore.

47:27But the human brain doesn't work that way. A lot of the times the human brain is like, how can I use this to my advantage? Or like, I have totally like now recalibrated myself. It's the recalibration.

47:36Andy Greenwald:We walk around with these antennas just trying to make things normal all the time. Like, okay, well, I guess this is normal. Okay, but fine. This is the bottom now, right? This is normal. Did you see that video of the insane cloud that hit the beach? I think it was in Portugal and it wasn't Nazare. That like, apparently it's a thing, but not professionally a meteorologist. It's like a roll cloud. Kai, did you see this? It's basically looks like a end of days rolling black cloud just sort of came in off the ocean and people were filming it and they were like, it was like Jaws. They were like, we have to get out of here.

48:10Andy Greenwald:This is the end of everything. And it wasn't yet, or maybe it was. But how quickly it went from people like, existentially this is over and the impossible is possible to, oh, I bet this could go viral if I post this on TikTok is pretty quick. Yeah. Well, I think that, should we maybe try to finish it for Thursday? Yeah, I just, I love the show. And I think a couple weeks ago when we were talking about show of the summer, like, I'm not saying this is the show of the summer, but I... It can be for you. But I do. Thanks, man. My show of the summer is the 30-second clip of the Oasis reunion when they're doing acquiesce.

48:49Andy Greenwald:The ability to surprise. Yeah. This is what I was talking about. I want something to come out of nowhere and just kind of be like, I can't wait to go home and watch one tonight. Let's talk about another show that came out in the summer, which is Smoke on Apple TV. This is from Dennis Lehane, who Andy and I have a lot, a lot, lot of respect for. He wrote Mr. River. He wrote Gone Baby Gone. He wrote on the third season of The Wire. He recently did, or recently enough, did Blackbird for Apple TV and now is reunited with the star of Blackbird, Taron Egerton, to do this show, which is an adaptation of a podcast called Firebug, I believe.

49:29This show is about an arson investigator played by Egerton who's partnered with a police detective who's been kind of busted down to arson for reasons we'll get into. that's played by journey smollett and you know basically there are two serial arsonists terrorizing a pacific northwest town called umberland i guess you could just say it's vancouver it has released three episodes i believe maybe the fourth one's come out already i can't remember how apple does it um out of how many uh nine nine episodes uh reviews for this one have been kind of all over the place i've seen some that are like oh my god please stick with this I've seen this is okay.

50:07I've seen this is bad. Where did you net out on this one?

50:11Andy Greenwald:Just to be clear, they dropped two episodes and now it's on a weekly schedule. Gotcha. And so I watched the first one, which is an hour and 10 minutes. So I feel like I did a shift with it. But the other thing that I would say is some of the creative and executive brain trust behind the show is old HBO. Yeah. Carrie Anthalis, who is president of Cinemax and Greenlit, a lot of the great crime programming they used to do, like Banshee and Quarry is involved with the show as an EP and also as a writer on one episode. and Richard Plepler, who used to be the, I guess, CEO. He was the business half of the Michael Lombardo era and for 20 plus years.

50:44Andy Greenwald:Plepler? Yeah. He's the Don. We talk about Plepler on here. We were Plepler people. And there was always, I mean, there was light rumors that he was going to maybe run Apple TV, right? At the beginning of the... Because he was available around the same time. Yeah. But then they were looking at his CV and they were like, you greenlit after the Thrones? We'll take a second meeting. But, yeah. So, I'm excited to talk to you about the show because here are the two things that I liked about it. I love Dennis Lehane. He's one of the great crime writers of our life. He's a lovely guy. We've talked to him on the podcast.

51:18Andy Greenwald:I think it's so cool when crime writers who we admire so much on the page make a successful transition to the screen. Our friend and hero, George Pelicanos, they're friends. He's done it as well. Richard Price. Richard Price. I think it's awesome. and I want him to keep working and having these opportunities. You know what else I like about this show? Greg fucking Kinnear. Okay. Greg Kinnear plays the fire chief and he is such a breath of fresh air when he comes on the screen because he is an actor playing a character who has made specific choices and it strikes me as someone who is alive in a world.

51:52Okay.

51:53Andy Greenwald:That's the end of my praise. Okay. I hated the show. I hated the first episode. I hated the experience of watching it. Yeah. And we can go through the reasons, but I would say that my biggest, biggest, biggest reason was the direction. Okay. So this show was directed by... Carrie Scoglund. Carrie Scoglund, who we have seen from her work on Falcon and Winter Soldier. Mm-hmm. You said all the things that this show is about. I don't think it's about any of those, at least through a pilot. The pilot is about Carrie Scoglund directing. this episode. Okay. The camera does not chill the fuck out. If two people are talking in a scene, the camera's free-floating, being like, I don't know who to trust in this scene, but I know that I'm moving.

52:42Andy Greenwald:When a character walks down a hallway in one scene, the camera is above the ceiling tracking the ceiling lights. Two people get in a car, camera's like, I'm gonna hang out outside the car. Two people are doing an investigation. Camera's like, I'm gonna speed up and do this whole thing in triple time because this is about visual storytelling. I wish it wasn't about visual storytelling. A more boilerplate show about people investigating things with the time, space, and breath to develop performances, let alone characters, would have made me feel a lot more comfortable sitting there. Instead, I found the experience of watching this with its multiple layers of storytelling because Egerton is a detect, he's an investigator, but he used to be a fireman.

53:22Andy Greenwald:And he's also now writing a novel and narrating his, I think, intentionally bad prose as the story goes on. Narrating it and his fucking dime store Tom Holland vibes. I was just so, so deeply out that I'm shocked that you were in. Yeah, I thought it was fine. I feel like this is an Apple thing. I don't understand the mix that made the show. I would never dare to ask you to watch another episode, and I didn't watch the second one, but she does not direct the second episode. That's right. I thought that they were throwing a ton of stuff at the wall. It didn't strike me as overly busy, but I think one of the things that I enjoyed was that everything was kind of a cut above the kind of base average procedural so especially the dialogue I thought had some pepper to it and even there's a scene where Egerton goes into a bar and the bartender he's basically like trying to find out who was at a bar earlier so he's talking to the bartender and the bartender's kind of giving him a hard time then she goes do you like vodka no he goes she goes I think he's threatening to like call the like inspection service to check out their kitchen.

54:30And finally she's like, I like vodka. And he's like, I too like vodka. I also like vodka. And there's just like a kind of cursive flair to the end of the sentence that I kind of like. And I feel like it comes up a bunch of times. I'm not saying it's reinventing the wheel or mind blowing or anything like that, but I thought you could recognize that Dennis Lehane was writing the dialogue for the show. Let me, let me keep going.

54:56Andy Greenwald:All right. All right, go ahead. No, no, keep going. No, go ahead. If you're about to praise Dennis Lehane, I'm here for that. Go ahead. What were you going to say? I don't think it's in Apple's mandate or in however they think of themselves as a streamer to let things just be. If letting them be means being the best possible version of themselves. Like we, when we watch like a great British procedural, I don't remember the last one that we loved was, or if there's the last one that you loved. it often is relaxed or character based or not a lot of frippery and frills and overly directed cinematography or whatever.

55:35Andy Greenwald:It just is what it is. You don't see, like the opening of Smoke feels so expensive. And I feel like that's in the Apple purview, that's a good thing. Everything is extra mustard. Everything is chefed up to the point of, I think in this, just absolutely teetering incredulity. Like it's not actually doing the best version of the story that it could be if it just chilled the fuck out. The show just couldn't chill out because I think that in its DNA, Apple is like, what we do is everyone else makes gourmet hamburgers. We make the DB burger at Barbaloud where he puts like fucking foie gras in the beef, you know, and it costs$75 and there's a little gold leaf on top.

56:15Andy Greenwald:Sometimes I don't want to eat that. Yeah. And I don't think this is the right vehicle for it. it is likely and I think for people who have enjoyed more episodes they're like this is actually a compelling or psychologically rich crime investigation story which I generally like but please continue I was just going to say that I also appreciated the fact that at least in the first episode the lead was not like traumatized by fire you know he just had like all we know is that he had a bad experience with a fire but like more or less seems well adjusted yeah he's got a stepson and a wife. Yeah. I guess this is more, I don't want to get meta, but I guess this is more of a, do you think you're capable of thinking a show is just okay?

56:59Oh, yeah. When's the last time that happened? 2021?

57:04Andy Greenwald:No, I think that there's a, I mean this sincerely, I think that there is a, I sound like Joe Biden. You need to really listen to me here, folks. Let me be clear. There is a version of this show that I think could be fine. I didn't go into this thinking this was going to be an A+. I actually thought, given the people involved, the pedigree exactly, that this might be a really nice B. And sometimes I like a B. And I think that artistically and aesthetically, and because of our fandom, Department Q elevated. But I think Department Q at its heart is just a solid crime story that did elevate with some directorial flourish and some great writing and performances.

57:48Andy Greenwald:But I don't think that is aiming to be the next great show. And I think it succeeds because it has, it understands its goals and it also understands its strengths. I think that there is a B version of this, but I found it so deeply aggravating to watch it. Because visually. Visually. And then also, honestly, like I didn't watch Blackbird. I've heard people really liked it. Paul Walker-Hauser got many awards. Walter Hauser, yeah. Sorry, Walter Hauser got many awards for it. This is maybe outside of my children having the Sing movies on. This may be my first FaceTime with Taron Egerton. And I found him deeply implausible.

58:26Andy Greenwald:Never saw a Kingsman movie? Never saw a Kingsman movie. Is he the King's boy in it? Is he the Princeman? He's the protege, yeah. Is he good? He's fine. I think he's an entertainer. But I immediately did not buy him as a grizzled investigator or anything. I found his affect like very boyish and unbelievable. He's played now multiple, I mean, obviously he was Elton John in Rocketman, but he is, he was in Carry On, which was the Netflix like big holiday action movie in this, like he has played like multiple versions of like a very anonymous character. Now, I think his character in this show has places to go.

59:01Sure. But, yeah, I guess I just was like, you know, I found myself responding to the music of the dialogue and yeah I completely agree with you I think the scenes that really threw me were the ones between Journey Smollett and Rafe Spall who seemed to be in a completely different show like they were in Long Day's Journey and a night in a hotel room whereas like the rest of it has like a kind of tongue in cheek

59:28Andy Greenwald:black comedy and I don't want to again I don't know Carrie Scoglin she might be a great director and other things and I don't want to put everything on her because also who knows who had Final Cut and took over things but like Journey Smollett who I like a lot as a performer like I'm always happy to see her. I just, my impression of watching this pilot is that there wasn't any room for there to be a character. What was left was her wearing Ray-Bans elbowing in on people and being like, where were you that night? Like, as if she was pretending to be a police officer. There was no person there. And I think that that is, ultimately that is a directorial decision too.

59:58Andy Greenwald:If the camera's set up this way and you're doing these scenes a certain way, where do you find the performance? You get so mad at directors. Fucking directors need to chill out! Chill out, directors! do you you know I don't know if we ever talked about it you talked about liking it and then I don't think we ever talked about that I checked it out but the filmmaker not this the filmmaker who made the North Road the Australian filmmaker Justin Kurtzl Justin Kurtzl and you mentioned oh there's some movies that he's made that you really liked one of them was The Order yeah and I then I went and watched The Order and I really liked it she's in that too Jerry Smollett yes and but the comparison that I wanted to make in that is that in the movie The Order, which is a very, very American story, right?

1:00:44Andy Greenwald:Full of British people. Full of British people. But starring as like a grizzled rural cop, basically a FBI agent, right, in the movie, is Jude Law. And when I was watching it, I was like, it's really good for the movie and for Jude Law that he's older now and that he's not like beautiful Dickie from Tell to Mr. Ripley. because I'm just, I'm just able to buy it. Taron Egerton to play this part needs to get back to me in 10 years. You know what I mean? Okay. That's a fair criticism. And so is your Carrie Scogling. Like, I mean, I don't mean to name her, but so is your over-directed thing. I think that there's, I knew you weren't going to love this.

1:01:26Yeah. The second they did a two weeks earlier flash.

1:01:30Andy Greenwald:Oh, and then it's two weeks earlier and we're like POV of an arsonist and things are moving fast. You know what it kind of reminded me of? And I don't mean this to denigrate either filmmaker, but it kind of reminded me of sometimes when Danny Boyle is just trying to create mustard from mayonnaise. He's just like, I'm all over the place. The camera's flying here. We're going back in time. There's another little nesting doll of an idea here. It was all over the place, but it was strange to watch it with that Apple TV sheen on it because it didn't feel raw and fun. I still would be curious to check out a couple more, but obviously you've...

1:02:11Andy Greenwald:But I appreciate, first of all, I appreciate the civil disagreement. Yeah. But I do think that what, in the harsh light of day, in the smoking embers of the Hobby Lobby that we were allowed access to five minutes after it burned, I feel like what annoys me is about it was the chefing up, was the extra, was the way that this... And I think it's an Apple thing, ultimately. I do. Like, I don't... They can make... People's business models are their own. That's their own decision making. But I think that it's just not in their brand to let something be good. Yeah. Or quiet. Right. Or chill. Everything has to be to 11.

1:02:59Andy Greenwald:And it just doesn't serve this, at least in terms of... I don't know if it serves in terms of the series. You're right. It could chill out. Often pilot directors leave a mark and then it's kind of slowly the dial goes down bit by bit over the course of series. But I think that the vehemence that I'm bringing to this podcast is just how turned off I was by the first episode. When I think the goal, honestly, of making something noisy is to turn people on and bring people in and get them watching more. I'll check out another one and let you know how it is. But we will probably wrap up this week's their Thursday show will probably wrap up Eternot anything else you want to talk about today?

1:03:36Andy Greenwald:So it's like eternal but not from the Greek novel it's like traveler I think the problem is is that I say eternal eternal yeah you know what I mean? But in Spanish it's not E it's A Eternata Eternata well are we I was going to ask you this okay can you watch this Eternat without subtitles? No because to me porteno Spanish the Spanish of Buenos Aires is so fucking wild. So what Spanish do you feel most comfortable listening to? All of my teachers all of my teachers all of my maestros we call them. No, like all the teachers that I had like in high school and as an adult like they were all they were generally Colombian which if you ask a Colombian they're like we have the most beautiful Spanish.

1:04:22Andy Greenwald:Actually if you ask anyone they all say that. But but Argentine Spanish and particularly like from Buenos Aires there's a lot of they use vos first of all for you which I never even learned how to conjugate and then like instead of saying ayuda like when she writes in lipstick help they say ashuda and they have sabosha there's also like such an interesting because there's like a lot of Italian influence in Argentinos so I wonder some of the diction reminded me of Italian it is a little Italian and like and that's the Colombians hate that too not to dwell into this world that is not mine you know I'm anti-diversity apparently clip that Kaya I mean, literally clip that from the podcast.

1:05:03Andy Greenwald:But it's a great question. No, absolutely not. I was so, I couldn't follow this show. I was watching a show the other day where a character is reading Hunger Games in French. And because they know Hunger Games so well, they're hoping to teach themselves French better. Oh, that's good. Because they already memorized the book. And I was like, I should do that with heat. Watch heat in Spanish. teach myself Spanish by watching. You should read like old Pelicanos novels like Nick's Trip in any language. Yeah. Seeing if it... But I have to admit, I turned the dubs on on Ethernet briefly. Oh. And I was like, this is not cool at all.

1:05:43Andy Greenwald:No, the sound of the language is really good. Juan, where are you going, man? Hey, my guy. My one thing as children get more online, like my daughter has been using Duolingo. Yeah. but because she is a child, it's through my email account. So I get the most intense passive-aggressive messages every day. Oh, yeah, where it's like you've neglected. Also, she's doing three languages. Oh. So I get messages. But they say your brain's a sponge at that point. It is. And I get messages like, wow, seems like these messages aren't doing the trick. Seems like you don't really want to learn French after all.

1:06:19Andy Greenwald:It's so mean. Yeah. It's so mean. Thanks for listening. Thanks to Kaya. Thanks to me. Thanks to John. and thanks for giving it a shot, you know? I appreciate it. I found that really interesting from a... Our conversation or the show? Oh, our conversation was, I thought was... It seemed to make you incredibly angry. It was like a beat of the show. You challenged. Do you think it was? I think sometimes you're like, I want to fly free. I don't want to be brought down a little bit with my opinion. No, I was excited. Listen, this is how only children we are. That like last night when you checked in with me and I was like, did you like it?

1:06:54Andy Greenwald:And you were like, I thought it was cool. and I said, this is going to be a spicy podcast. No, you said it was going to be our biggest fight in a decade, which I assume is going back to True Detective Season 1. Yeah, possibly. By the way, that's another thing. We're like, this show doesn't have to be True Detective. Like, the visual language and like everything is deeper. Like, they're in fucking Vancouver. Why does it have to be Carcosa? You know what I mean? Chill fuck out. But I was like, that's good. And then I'm glad we're going to have, I think it's, first of all, I watch a lot of vertical video pods now and, you know, debate is where it's at.

1:07:24Andy Greenwald:And we're usually like, that's a good point, buddy. My point is... We actually haven't been like that. I think I've been more forgiving of creative decisions than you have this year. This year? Yeah. You're always more even-keeled than I am. Yeah, I guess so. But when I said, maybe we'll have a disagreement, when I saw you this morning when we ran into Sean, you were like, we good? You thought maybe 27 years of friendship. My wife's out of town again. It's hard to get the social cues. 29 years of friendship. Are you aware of that? We're coming up on 30. How are we going to mark that? Go to Oasis.

1:08:00God, that was so fast. Thanks to Kaya. Thanks to John. Thanks to all the watch listeners and viewers. And we'll be back on Thursday to do more sci-fi in Buenos Aires. It's very, it's kind of niche.

1:08:21This is U.S. Bank's Cozy Cash Formation. with your chief financial playmaker, Fernando Mendoza.

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