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Chris Ryan

Paying support staff to clear the room.

Andy Greenwald

Stand up and walk now.

Chris Ryan

Hello and welcome to the Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor@theringer.com and joining me in the studio, he came here on Sheep Stealer, but he's leaving in Moondancer. It's Andy Greenwald.

Andy Greenwald

Those are dragons.

Chris Ryan

Those are dragons. They are not brands of Ford Explorers electric vehicles. Greenwald, great to see you. The watch of Spotify.com, the watch, underscore, watchpod underscore on Instagram. If you want to follow us, you can watch us on the Ringer TV YouTube channel and on Spotify, where I hope you listen to us. But you can listen to us anywhere. CB radio. I hear UK pirate radio DJs are playing us.

Andy Greenwald

Is that. Do you think Keir Starmer is going to go directly from Downing street to the pirate radio boat Mandem,

Chris Ryan

Mandem Hour.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Ryan

He's like, this is a new one from Burial. Oh, Tune.

Andy Greenwald

This really takes me back. 2014. We have a lot of television to talk about.

Chris Ryan

We got two shows to talk about. Yeah, we got House of the Dragon today. We got Star City today. I also want to talk to you about some cancellations. Some.

Andy Greenwald

Some people, no.

Chris Ryan

Although they tried to cancel Olivia Rodrigo because she likes Pinkerton. Did you see that?

Andy Greenwald

No.

Chris Ryan

Damn. You gotta get online, brother.

Andy Greenwald

No stuff is happening. I do want to. Speaking of online, I do want to just prove that we are responsive because for people who watch our podcast, they. Some noted that last week before we were joined by Hiro Murai and Katie Dippold of Widow's Bay. We were seated much like Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger in Batman. We have now perhaps overcorrected. We are now sitting at big table

Chris Ryan

for the big show.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Small table for a smaller show.

Andy Greenwald

It's intimate table.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah, I noticed, like, you were regulating your volume a little bit differently.

Chris Ryan

I'm also trying to save my voice. I have several pods this week and

Andy Greenwald

also too far be it for me to get in the way.

Chris Ryan

I want to be less didactic. I want to listen more.

Andy Greenwald

Really?

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

You're going on a listening tour.

Chris Ryan

Like Andy Burnham on his march south.

Andy Greenwald

Guys, he's running. He's running. I think you also want to protect your voice because in the latest update of Living in an Apocalyptic Hellscape, we have been breathing pure burnt ammonia fumes all weekend here in Los Angeles.

Chris Ryan

We can't confirm or deny.

Andy Greenwald

Okay. Karen Bass.

Chris Ryan

I think the fire department is like, it's not toxic.

Andy Greenwald

Sure. I mean, when has a fire department ever alighted the truth? It was pretty gnarly here this weekend. But also, we did, at least I did lose a little bit of voice celebrating this weekend, which was nice. Thank you for attending.

Chris Ryan

You were celebrating Iran's draw yesterday.

Andy Greenwald

Both. Yeah, both equally. You know, that's like, Adam is starting

Chris Ryan

to rub off on me.

Andy Greenwald

No, we keep them guessing culturally.

Chris Ryan

Little parent corner here for a second.

Andy Greenwald

It was a great weekend. We celebrated. We shouted a little bit. We got you and Phoebe on the dance floor eventually for your daughter's bar mitzvah. Right. I said it. But you were talking about Iran over it. Which was noted. But it's actually kind of beautiful that we could still sit down at a small table despite our clear geographic dividend.

Chris Ryan

We're not so different.

Andy Greenwald

We're not so different.

Chris Ryan

It was a wonderful, wonderful night. Have not been to a bat mitzvah in 35 years.

Andy Greenwald

Do you still think you have the same Riz that you did then? Because you talk a big game about the old days.

Chris Ryan

Well, this one was more. There was more activities in terms of. I thought you guys did a lovely job with photo booth soft serve machine. Such luxuries were not afforded.

Andy Greenwald

You're definitely making it to the Jewish woman of Philadelphia.

Chris Ryan

When I was coming up bigger than

Andy Greenwald

it was, but yeah.

Chris Ryan

And I just remember there was a lot more like ceremony to the first dance, you know.

Andy Greenwald

Oh.

Chris Ryan

And that's where I came in.

Andy Greenwald

That's where I stepped up so briefly. I'm sure the House of Dragon fans are loving this, but, like.

Chris Ryan

Cause they're not gonna love it.

Andy Greenwald

They're not gonna love it anyway. Yeah. Set the scene. Cause I do in my memory.

Chris Ryan

And this could be fa. This could be me, like, you know, this could be apocryphal. This could be me, like, telling myself a story in order to live.

Andy Greenwald

No, I don't believe that.

Chris Ryan

I think that there was, like, a first dance, usually at these bat mitzvahs, and it was like girl's choice. Like the celebrated woman's choice, young woman's choice.

Andy Greenwald

The newly christened. Not christened. Newly anointed Jewish adult.

Chris Ryan

Yes. Got to choose who she was gonna dance with. And I felt like I got. I went like 2 for 3 on bat mitzvahs, where I was.

Andy Greenwald

That's an incredible batting average.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. Much like Cooper Flag.

Andy Greenwald

That's a different sport. Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And, you know, I mean, it did not augur, like, insane amounts of success with women in middle school, but it was still, like, you know, I thought it was. It was a learning experience for both of us.

Andy Greenwald

I would say two things. One, you're not wrong. I don't remember any particular ceremony, but I do remember the intense awkwardness of slow dancing at the age of 13 when all women were 2ft taller than us.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

In fact, some still remain that way. I'm not saying much has changed, but at that time that was quite intense. Um, I would say that at least in my now limited observations, the politics and culture of teen dancing have changed in that it is now much more of a, like, group shouting along to the warming the dance floor and then immediately retreating when the more viral hits are not being played. And interestingly, the number one people who have kids in that range now, I think will understand this, but the number one, like, dance floor filler of 2026 is. Is I. Icona. Icona pops, Charlie, XCX, collab. I don't care. I love it. Yeah, that's. That's the one where, like.

Chris Ryan

Do you think that that is purely from TikTok or was it featured in something that they are into?

Andy Greenwald

I, I, I, I think what they are into is TikTok.

Chris Ryan

I mean, it was, it was crazy to watch that song blow up bigger than any Taylor song you played.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah, any that I buy in the house.

Chris Ryan

Didn't you curate the.

Andy Greenwald

I was not the dj. No, there was. Q. Starmer was the dj, and unfortunately he has been. He has submitted his resignation. No, no, no. I was not allowed to touch the core playlist. I was allowed to Offer an alternative slate, much like the Green Party.

Chris Ryan

Sure.

Andy Greenwald

And the DJ who did show up to set up wearing a Talking Heads T shirt. And I was like, my brother, this will be a long, frustrating night for both of us. I offered a slate of alternate electors is what I'm saying. And he did pull from that sometimes. But primarily it was my daughter's. As it should be.

Chris Ryan

Her playlist.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

I mean, it was her night. It was great.

Andy Greenwald

Were you there when the ceremony ended and everyone went outside and the playlist I was told to make for the Wine Hour hit, and immediately deep cuts from Wes Anderson movies started playing.

Chris Ryan

I think you were going into Mirage era Fleetwood Mac and stuff.

Andy Greenwald

And my daughter ran up to me, and I was like, this is gonna be a beautiful moment. And she said, what is this? You have to stop this immediately.

Chris Ryan

Wait, what did you put on? I didn't even hear it.

Andy Greenwald

It was that I was like, these are things that.

Chris Ryan

Is he trying to explain back rooms to, like, 13 people there. You're never off the clock clipping. You don't understand. Liminal.

Andy Greenwald

Never off the clock. Yeah. No, it was like, exactly what you think. I'm like, these are songs that are not unfamiliar to her during her life, and thus I hoped would not be unappealing. Yeah. Like Love Goes to Buildings on Fire was playing when she was getting her third Diet Coke and was like, this has to end.

Chris Ryan

Where do I want to start today? In earnest. You know what? Why don't we.

Andy Greenwald

I did have Movie Corner.

Chris Ryan

I was gonna say Parent Corner continues. And I'm just. Like I said, I'm listening.

Andy Greenwald

Then. Then are we gonna talk British politics?

Chris Ryan

If you want to.

Andy Greenwald

Of course I want to.

Chris Ryan

You wanna do Burnamentum first or Toy Story 5?

Andy Greenwald

Give me Burnham.

Chris Ryan

No, you do Toy Story 5. Cause I feel like that it kind of ties into the weekend that you had of.

Andy Greenwald

And it ties. And then the Burnham stuff ties into the kind of, like, high level geopolitical maneuvering of House of the Dragon. Okay, we got it. No, I went to the cinema yesterday. It was an emotional weekend, having this event. And then Father's Day and then.

Chris Ryan

Did you take both kids to it?

Andy Greenwald

Of course, yeah.

Chris Ryan

Did your older child express any interest in seeing backrooms or Obsession instead? No, they're not starting to be curious about the more.

Andy Greenwald

No, she doesn't. I offered her.

Chris Ryan

I invited her to the edgier cinema.

Andy Greenwald

I invited her to join me to watch Widow's Bay. And she was like, I don't. I don't want to be scared. Okay, so no, we did see Toy Story 5 and it was excellent. That's my take. I was really, really surprised and impressed by it.

Chris Ryan

Trying to think if I've seen one of them, I, like, know what happens in them kind of.

Andy Greenwald

Do you know what's your take? You probably saw Toy Story.

Chris Ryan

Astronaut. The cowboy.

Andy Greenwald

Oh, boy.

Chris Ryan

Right. And the little boy gets these toys when he moves to a new house and they're like his friends, right? No, he moves to a new house and they leave the toys behind at the old house and they have to get to him. Right.

Andy Greenwald

This is the early Toy Story. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Chris Ryan

And they got four more movies out of this.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Okay, well, and then there's a Chris Evans, like, spin off.

Andy Greenwald

So Toy Story 2 went. Woke.

Chris Ryan

I'm not trying to be nasty.

Andy Greenwald

Introduced Jesse.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Andy Greenwald

Played by Joan Cusack, who is essentially the star of this fifth film.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Andy Greenwald

And then Toy Story 3 is held up by like, Ayo Scott of the New York Times. Is like the pinnacle of daddington cinema. Because Toy Story 3 is both brilliant and funny, but also has one of the most metal endings of any children's movie ever.

Chris Ryan

Metal, like dark.

Andy Greenwald

It is. So, Kya, are you familiar with these movies?

Chris Ryan

You know, I watched like, the first two, I think, when I was a

Andy Greenwald

kid, and I haven't kept up with the franchise. Chris nodding. Chris understands his voting base so well. I'm so out of step with the times. So Toy Story 3, not to spoil too much, but Toy Story 3 crescendos with all of our toy friends on a conveyor belt to an incinerator to be destroyed.

Chris Ryan

That is like, that's the last.

Andy Greenwald

And they're like, scrabbling up the incinerator belt. They're like, how will we save ourselves? Through our various toy mechanisms. Like, the slinky is stretching or whatever. And then silently they all share a look and then just hold hands, accepting their fate that they will all burn. And this moment is held to a degree that I do believe people generationally who watch this at a young age will have a different response. Response to mortality, really. It is so intense. They don't burn.

Chris Ryan

And I take it that they made two more movies that those guys are okay.

Andy Greenwald

They were okay. Four was kind of like deep Chapek straight to streaming era. Like, like, it's fine. Yeah. It's about Tom Hanks Woody character going off the reservation in pursuit of the Annie Potts voiced little Bo Peep statue.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Oh, wow.

Andy Greenwald

Great Annie Potts performance. But I would say an inessential entry into the franchise. And so I was shocked that.

Chris Ryan

So you've seen all of these.

Andy Greenwald

I mean, yeah, the children. You gotta feed the children. The most recent one, I did think with my cynical, jaded mind would be another one of the like, we just gotta keep pumping this for cash. Cause Pixar is not doing so great with the original content. Andrew Stanton, who directed the first one, directed this one. And the headline is that it was like, ah, the age of toys is over. It's like streaming in devices and it's gonna get em and introduces an early childhood tablet voiced by Greta Lee. But the movie itself was both. It was very surprising, it was very formally clever in ways that I was very impressed with and it was very funny. And it is also, more than anything, it is about connection and friendship. And it's a Joan Cusack victory lap. And also, and I know this is gonna matter to you and your honestly fragile voting coalition. This movie is justice for Tim Allen.

Chris Ryan

I saw some Tim Allen image rehabilitation stuff start this weekend. So when I say I saw it, I just saw Twitter during World cup and somebody was like, Tim Allen really was goaded for this.

Andy Greenwald

So I do think this was part of the thinking and I'm okay with it because, you know, despite your recent maneuverings, I've always been a big tent guy. And there was, I don't think it was entirely incorrect that the like Covid era, Toy Story 4 stuff did two things. One was Toy Story 4 in which Buzz Lightyear is just like, have a good adventure, Woody. And that's that. And then they made that really bizarre Lightyear movie which is a origin story, not to the toy, an origin story

Chris Ryan

about the character that the toy is based on.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Right.

Andy Greenwald

So it's in fact, it's an animated movie that suggests that this is the movie that the kid that Andy, the fictional Toy Story kid, saw and then bought the toy from, in which Tim Allen is voiced by, I think it's Chris Evans does the voice of the real Buzz Lightyear. Not a terrible movie because it has a lot of like time loop stuff that's actually kind of relevant to some of the stuff that we cover. But anyway, this movie really rectifies that because Buzz Lightyear is charming and funny and throughout the movie. And there's a runner of like a cargo vessel. Fans of the Wire, season two would call them cans has crashed or like come fallen off a ship. And 50 Buzz Lightyear toys like wake up on an island and then they have to do something. And so there's a lot Tim Allen, okay.

Chris Ryan

Tim Allen playing 50 different parts, plus the.

Andy Greenwald

Plus Buzz Lightyear prime.

Chris Ryan

Do you think they were trying to get, like, some of that Deadpool juice where it's like, oh, do you think

Andy Greenwald

Toy Story exists in the multiverse?

Chris Ryan

Yeah. I wanted to mention to you that the Burrows got canceled, which is. Sure that you'd been like, maybe we should talk about that. And I was like, I did talk about that with Joe, but we could always hit it if you would like to. Was, by all accounts, and even Netflix's own public facing metrics something of a success. I mean, it was in the top 10, I think it was.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

I.

Chris Ryan

It may. May have peaked at number one, but it was definitely in their top ten for a while. Sort of shockingly canceled. Now, since then, there have been a bunch of pieces that have tried to explain the real reason behind Netflix canceling the Burrows. Sounds like it was expensive. Yeah, it sounds like Netflix felt like the investment wasn't the juice, wasn't worth the squeeze in some way. I don't really understand how it costs $13 million an episode to make it. It's like a New Mexico set story with Alfred Molina and Alfre Woodard and Bill Pullman and Geena Davis, and it's. I'm sure they make some money, but I don't know if they make $13 million an episode. Were you gonna tell me some. And there's. I know that there are aliens in it.

Andy Greenwald

Alfre Woodard, quote, talking about aliens out of this world. Keep going.

Chris Ryan

So the conventional wisdom is that this is somehow payback for the Duffer Brothers leaving Netflix and going to Paramount. Plus, this comes on the heels of Paramount announcing a untitled Duffer Brothers movie theatrical event coming in, I believe, 27. And that this is somehow Netflix clearing all the business off the books that they have with the Duffer Brothers, possibly. I don't see them wiping the slate of their Stranger Things ip, but I think that that's an element of it. What did you make of this story?

Andy Greenwald

I think it just sort of starts and ends there. I mean, I think that knowing the cost of genre television generally, and knowing the way that Netflix will spend on shows, I think that if they canceled almost anything on their slate, maybe with the exception of Free Bert, they could be like, you guys have no idea how expensive this was.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

And you could claim that that's the reason. Um, you don't. I mean, Netflix can do whatever it wants, but generally, if you have a show that is critically working and more importantly, is connecting with an audience. And beyond that, I feel like the whole logline, at least in terms of pitching it internally, was, we'll do stranger things for olds. That's good business for them. So you don't cancel shows like that unless there are political machinations behind the scenes. And I don't even mean it in a Machiavellian sense. I mean, fully. Like, this was part of the Duffer Brothers next big world building that they were doing as partners, longtime partners with Netflix. And then they left.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

So I would imagine all the people who worked really hard on the show felt quite nervous this whole year.

Chris Ryan

Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that it sounded like they had gotten the writers room together. It sounded like the cast options were up. This was, it's worth noting, not a Duffer Brothers created show. It's created by Jeffrey Addis and Will Matthews, and the Duffers executive produced it. Not unlike their relationship to something very bad is going to happen, which also, I believe has been canceled or is not coming back. You could make the argument that that was a one and done show, but it certainly had a doorway into future seasons. I've been fascinated recently just reading about the town and, you know, seems like now every week we get a is Hollywood going to turn into Detroit article, like, Detroit Automake article. I started to actually wonder, like, a. Obviously, like, people are clicking on those stories, so that's why they keep writing them. But who's like, how can we keep manufacturing these? Like, at what point is there, like, nothing new to say about this whole storyline?

Andy Greenwald

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And, you know, I think part of it was built around the mayoral election and the governor election. The. The campaigns for those offices here in California and tax rebates and what they're doing. What various candidates are going to do for the movie industry is always up for debate or, you know, in the news. But I. I've started to become kind of cynical about it, where I'm like, who benefits from these stories? Often when I'm reading them, and there's a lot of stuff about like, you know, these goddamn politicians just don't make it easy enough for us to shoot here. Or these labor unions here are just way too expensive, so we have to shoot in England. I'm like, how come we're never talking about, like, why does. Why does the CEO of this company make $57 million a year? And preach. I mean, I, I don't know that, like, if you, if David Zaslav got paid $5 a year, would they be able to, like, make shows affordably in, in this town? I don't know. I have no idea. Like, it costs a lot of money to do stuff in America because there's lot rules and there's lots of protections against like exploiting people for better, you know, I think for better. So I was about to both sides.

Andy Greenwald

I noticed, I think you're, you're doing a very delicate dance right now between populism and socialism. And it's working.

Chris Ryan

It's interesting that like we, we get to this point where like say the burrows, where you're like just, you know, I just can't make it work for the price point. It's like you guys invented the price point.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah. You can do anything. I mean, this is actually. Chris, you are so close to like a foundational problem with capitalism and American capitalism particularly, which is both things are true. Like, it is ruinous not to be able to film things here. And we need to create incentives and we need to create a structure where the business that more or less built this town can continue to exist. But the terms of how that business is done needs also to be examined. And we are existing in a moment. And this is certainly not just in Hollywood that CEOs of these companies believe that in order to have that position, they merit hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. And that trickles down slightly among the executive offices. And that is just sacrosanct. And that part of the business cannot be touched. But whether we employ a lighting team or an in house design team, well, that's all fungible. Sure, that can go right. But God forbid we lose the stock options and bonuses.

Chris Ryan

I'm totally open to hearing about what's difficult about shooting in la, aside from the cost. And I think that there's probably a lot of nuance to the story. I just was like, why do we keep getting these stories? And I was tying it to the Burroughs thing where I was just like, it just seems like a lot of the economic models, since so much of it is tied to share price. You know, with these technology companies owning a lot of these platforms, it's like, no, we have to keep this thing around. The 300, 500, whatever my share price is, it just winds up kind of getting away from like, I don't really even know how much money these shows are supposed to be able to make.

Andy Greenwald

But we also don't know what the return on the investment is. We don't really understand what's of value to them and how they monetize it. Especially with something like Netflix, it is. So at least to the layperson, it's it's, it's totally opaque. They could spend $10 million an episode of the Burroughs, $1 million an episode on the Burroughs 1, $, 100 million. I have no idea what that translates to in terms of international subscriber base. And it is, you know, the less cynical version of it is that the show, however successful it was, they have a number that says or a chart that shows it, it's not worth the spend in terms of what it's bringing in. Because the deep, deep, deep Alfred Molina fans either already have Netflix or are never signing up. So the other thing, though, that I think is kind of intrinsic to Netflix's business, and I think this might be a conversation for our eventual crossover episode with the Town, because I don't really know the nuts and bolts of this, but a few years ago, Netflix, Netflix has a pattern of mimicking the old way of doing things up to a point when it no longer works for their model, and then they move on. And what I mean by that is like when the House of Cards arrow and they were like, we are going to out hbo. Hbo, Exactly. And plant a flag and win all the Emmys and show what we can do. And then you could also call that the Master of None era. And then when that, then that gave way to the floor is lava era, when they were just like, we're going to make whatever and it's going to work for us because we are going to become all of tv, not just prestige tv. Five years ago, they got really, really five, six years ago, they got really, really into the overall business, and they lured Shonda Rhimes and they learned Ryan Murphy and, and Kenya Barris, and they created a whole new division that was going to service these deals and get as much of these deals as he possibly can. Duffer Brothers were recipients of that largesse. Benioff and Weiss, coming off of Game of Thrones were recipients of that. It seems that that's shifted slightly. They still do give out rich overall deals. And Ryan Coogler, whose deal with Disney. Just got one, right? Just got one. He's someone that they want to be in business with. Sonny who? Lee Jungson, who made Beef and was a guest on our show. He, he has an overall deal coming off of the success of Beef. Molly Metzler, who made Maid and Sirens, has an overall deal with them. So they do make deals that make sense for them. Yeah, but I'm, but there is an element of the Duffer Brothers thing that strikes me as a, as a more significant shift in the we made you. You don't make us. Well, we are bigger than any one or two.

Chris Ryan

It almost benefit the duffers to have kind of set up their theatrical business or sold this movie to Paramount and then sign a Netflix deal because Netflix seems fairly kind about. Ryan Murphy has plenty of things that are still on terrestrial television.

Andy Greenwald

I think Ryan Murphy is out of the deal and back to FX and Disney.

Chris Ryan

I think you're right. But even while he was at Netflix, he was still working on all of the shows that he had.

Andy Greenwald

Right. And Grey's Anatomy is still on the air.

Chris Ryan

Right. So it's an interesting gambit from the network that brought us the Queen's Gambit. How about that? Look at the way you did that button. Your silence is deafening this week.

Andy Greenwald

Oh, great.

Chris Ryan

Your silence is deafening on Amazon dumping Luca Guadagnino's artificial due to its AI OpenAI partnership. Discuss.

Andy Greenwald

I have a lot of feelings.

Chris Ryan

Do you really?

Andy Greenwald

But I also, you know, I don't know if you know that. You know, I now have to buy cat food regularly and the delivery options provided by Prime Video's parent company are pretty good. So I don't want to imperil those.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

What a Gordian knot we're all tied into these days, aren't we? Okay, so talk me through this. This movie has been made, right?

Chris Ryan

It is, I think, finished. And who's playing Andrew Garfield plays Sam Altman. And it is about, I think, the earlier days of OpenAI, maybe when it was going from nonprofit to for profit. Maybe when there had been some upheaval about whether Altman was going to stay in charge of it. I believe he was briefly relieved of his duties.

Andy Greenwald

He was.

Chris Ryan

And then raced back in and I can't remember who. Oh, Simon Rich wrote this movie.

Andy Greenwald

Sorry, I was just laughing. Do you remember the news stories at that time when New Yorker had the deeply sourced thing where people were like, the only person who should be in charge of the most disruptive and destructive technology in the history of mankind needs to be the most thoughtful, considerate, fair and balanced moral person. And Sam Altman is the opposite of every one of these categories. And we're all like, oh, wow. And we turn the page and we're like, what did Hilton alls enjoy at the theater this week? It's going to be fine.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. This reminded me a little bit of the story a long time ago on a probably much lower scale in terms of like the, I mean, like, certainly the level of investment was when Apple had purchased a Gawker show.

Andy Greenwald

Oh, they, they wrote the show.

Chris Ryan

They were like, we're going to. We're going to make a show about Gawker, and we're going to tell the

Andy Greenwald

real story of, like, yeah, Cord Jefferson

Chris Ryan

was writing it, our journalism of. Of. Of the 2000s. And then it finally got to, like, Tim Cook, and he was like, absolutely not. Like, what the fuck were you guys thinking?

Andy Greenwald

Yes.

Chris Ryan

There's a little bit of that. Of this. Like, it finally got to, like, so what are you guys putting out in the movie theaters this year?

Andy Greenwald

Let's huddle up.

Chris Ryan

Funny you should say. We've got this crazy little piece of satire and that whoever at the top of Amazon was like, no.

Andy Greenwald

Which is. That's an easy no.

Chris Ryan

So it's now up for sale. And I think the sort of second leg of this story has, like, who's passing on it?

Andy Greenwald

Oh, who's been passing?

Chris Ryan

I think many people have passed. Many, many, many, many companies have passed. I appreciate the fact that you need. You need cat food.

Andy Greenwald

Cat food, toilet paper. So sorry.

Chris Ryan

I like going to the store personally.

Andy Greenwald

Do you support small businesses in your neighborhood like Target and CVS and all these mom and pops?

Chris Ryan

Let's. We. We've. We've beat around the bush too long.

Andy Greenwald

I do want to say one thing. Yeah. It is not about Andy Burnham, though. I am.

Chris Ryan

We're gonna save that for After Dark.

Andy Greenwald

Oh, I can't wait.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Andy Greenwald

It is just that I think you and I were both caught slightly off guard not by the fact that the agency returned this weekend, a show that we both love.

Chris Ryan

Oh, this is Housekeeping. This is good.

Andy Greenwald

This is Housekeeping. But that Paramount decided to just drop the entire season.

Chris Ryan

Yes.

Andy Greenwald

Which is just wild. So we were planning to dive into what we thought would be one or two episodes later this week, but now it's actually gonna make a nice little binge suite on Thursday because all of the agency and all of the bear will be up. And we won't discuss all of them because we are but mortal men. But we will talk about the beginnings of both those seasons and maybe the larger.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, you know, it was funny. I was at this aforementioned Bat Mitzvah this weekend, and I had a conversation with another adult bat Mitzvah goer about the agency. He was like, you know, I've just started watching that. And I was like, lucky for you.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

Whole damn season just came out. The second season just dropped.

Andy Greenwald

It was. It was Ted Sarandos, but the look in his face.

Chris Ryan

It was actually Sam Altman. It's like, I brought your cat food. We're all good. The look on his face was was just so informative about like the moment we find ourselves in, which was at once a degree of like, oh, I'm glad it didn't get canceled or anything. But also like, shit. So now I have. There we go, 18 hours of television to watch. And I was like, well, at your leisure. You know, like whatever. Next on a flight. But the the reverse of it is I've waited two years to get the House of the Dragon episode that feels like it should have been the finale for season two. And there's no right way anymore. Except for the Pit. It's just like it's true. Yeah, there really is just no right way to do it.

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Chris Ryan

So let's talk about House of the Dragon, which returned after two years off the air. It doesn't feel that way in some ways because the Game of Thrones content machine always spins. And we had Night of the Seven Kingdoms, which we both adored. I talked about this episode of House of the Dragon, and I will talk about the rest of them with Mal and Joe. And it's always a joy to talk about this whole creative world with them because they're so knowledgeable and also so emotionally connected to so many characters in so many events.

Andy Greenwald

So I also loved walking in the hallways here in the studio. The animal pelts, the candles that you

Chris Ryan

use are lining set deck, everything about it. So I. I want to throw the ball to you and find out, you know, whether you came back to Westeros with any trepidation. I have. I have opened up the door that we do not need to do this every week. I think you're at your best when you're happy about your work.

Andy Greenwald

Thanks, man. Do you think that was what they said to Keir Starmer over the weekend? Listen, you don't lead with joy anymore.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, we're gonna see that guy fucking DJing at Primavera next year, and we're gonna be like, man, it's gonna be so happy.

Andy Greenwald

We didn't know how good we had it. It'll be like the Fred Again set, and he brings out Mike Skinner, brings out Underworld and brings out Gearstormer, and then the whole vibe just kind of shifts. I don't want to lead with faint praise, but this is genuine praise in that they've really figured out how to make this show. And the production values and the visual inventiveness and just the power of the images. And frankly, yes, praising the post and the vis effects of the water and the dragons and the intensity of the performances are exceptional. And I also appreciate. I feel like I need to come up with a word, maybe in its native German, to talk about the way that we've been talking about shows, which is talking about the bones and the heart of them. The bones of the show. What Ryan Condal and his writing team have finally reached after, I think even they would say, a challenging growth Process is a storytelling rhythm that both works for the show and is very specific to the show. So you get a few of the backroom scenes. I mean, the way that they do exposition where it's just like. I will introduce a character briefly, but he must have one interesting aspect of him, such as sniffing perfume as James Norton does. Or we'll give Corliss one minute to uncork an old, old bottle of whiskey called Live Forever in order to, you know. But fighting for real estate isn't just something we do here in Los Angeles, Chris. It's something you gotta do.

Chris Ryan

It's not just something Sam Levinson believes in truly deeply.

Andy Greenwald

It's something that you have to do when you are adapting something this big. So I appreciated the machinery of the show and I think that. But I remain frustrated by things that I have, you know, that I honestly am at peace with. And we can get to them, and I'm sure we will, because I think we should probably talk more about the larger sway of it. But I do want to say that hidden in this show and very much in this episode are two strands that I deeply believe are two of the most interesting stories that I have ever heard in the world of Westeros. Oh my gosh.

Chris Ryan

And.

Andy Greenwald

And it is glass half full, glass half empty, if you want to look at them as how great that we have them here. Or half empty in the sense of man. I wish that the show was one of these things specifically, and not just this larger one is the Aegon and Larys road trip, which I both love for the performers, but also because those characters arcs within this show have had a. A breadth of storytelling movement that make them more compelling than Rhaenyra, who basically is angry in this room and then angry in that room. That's no shade on the character or the actor. That's just the limitations of what the character has to do. Much like Matt Smith spent all of last season talking to a magic tree. The Aegon and Tom. I'm gonna get his name right.

Chris Ryan

Glenn Carney.

Andy Greenwald

Tom Glenn Carney, who is one of the best actors on the show. The idea of a spoiled princeling king who is brought so low and then wandering in the world is a really cool and interesting story for a show that places so much emphasis on the unusually, the reverse trajectory of the guy.

Chris Ryan

Henry IV's rise.

Andy Greenwald

Exactly. So that alone would be an interesting TV show. The other one. And again, I'm not speaking about how it's been executed on House of the Dragon because we haven't seen that Much of it yet. But the lowborn Dragon Rider storyline is such a sick story. And I wish. I'm sorry, I promise I won't do this for an entire season. I wish that was a show. I wish there was a show about more complicated, more frankly, to me, more interesting, but also more narratively flexible characters who are written in the history books becoming major players in a world.

Chris Ryan

Do you think that specific take and maybe both of them in some ways. Because you know what, both of the both of those ideas that you're talking about feel very naturally like they could have happened in Night of the Seven Kingdoms.

Andy Greenwald

Yes, right.

Chris Ryan

Like a group of lowborn guys who are bequeathed great power out of like this random, you know, birthright that they have. Or a sadistic prince who then is, like, castrated and defaced and is, like, left to wander the countryside with his kind of Richard III compatriot. Like, both of those things feel like they could be things that happened in the Ira Parker version of this universe. I don't knock them for making the show about Rhaenyra and Alicent. I think that that is a powerful central relationship. But I do wonder, you know, because this is such a strange adaptation. It's an adaptation of the Game of Thrones version of like Wikipedia kind of. Or like a history book.

Andy Greenwald

History book.

Chris Ryan

So I think that there has been some embellishment and there's been obviously, like, I don't know that they have as much dialogue to work from. A lot of the scenes are like two people say this happened, but one person say it didn't. You know, but it's interesting that you're getting some light electric charges from these side plots and not from the what I think Condal and company would say is the central conflict.

Andy Greenwald

Well, that's the thing. I think there's been growing pains, certainly for me and maybe for some aspect of the audience in the transition of Game of Thrones from a show into a universe into an IP universe. And we're not used to yet talking about Westerosi content the way we are with Star wars content, where we can say andor is one of the greatest television shows of our lifetime. And also Obi Wan happened. You can say that one is for you and one is maybe for other. And charitably, one is for other people. And that's fine. They both can exist on the same streaming platform. We are maybe heading towards that faster than I realized when I was watching this episode. And I am admittedly not a deep, deep student of this game. And I have not been rewatching it or like even remembering a great deal of it, to be frank. This is not, for me at this point, the amount of factual depth that is required to follow the show and to be invested in a show where. What's her name? Lothar Lohar. Lohar, who is awesome and an awesome character. And I certainly remembered her and I certainly remembered that performance. But her fury and animus towards Corlys is entirely a footnote on the Wikipedia of the show. I am going to disrupt all of these plans and hunt down the one man who has been ruling the seas cruelly.

Chris Ryan

Cause he killed a crab feeder or whatever. Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

So there is a. I'm not saying it wasn't on screen, but I'm saying the emotional drive for it and it's played in the performance, but that's not the storytelling I want to watch. And I think that the thing that I have continued to struggle with and then I do want to open it up, but I finally think I understood more this episode is that House of the Dragon is a limited series. And what I mean by that is it is in the same way. This is grandiose, but like Chernobyl was about a historical event with rich dramatization and good production values and direction. And it focused in and told us a story that had some narrative flexibility within, you know, some creation and what it chose to show us, but it couldn't change what happened in Building 6 or whatever it was. Our reception of Chernobyl would have been quite different if it had been instead of six episodes over six weeks, if it had been four seasons over six years.

Chris Ryan

Sure.

Andy Greenwald

I think that the relationship that I have and that maybe some people have with TV over time is that, well, we're going to live and grow with these characters and maybe be surprised by them. And the nature of the show is it's telling us a story. And I do think that I would feel differently about it if I was binging it three years from now in total, or if they had been able to, and this is not their fault, shorten the production window. So you could understand that they're telling us a wild tale of some monstrous kings and queens and their dragons.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. I think, obviously, I think cause of the strikes in Covid or whatever the sort of delay was, and then some budgetary concerns about season two and whatever the. They were not able to end season two with what this first episode of season three was.

Andy Greenwald

Yes. Which clearly was meant to be possible.

Chris Ryan

And now I will get explicit about spoilers for this episode. So Obviously, I can't imagine you're listening to us if you haven't watched this, but this episode ends with Jace Targaryen, Rhaenyra's son, locking his mother in a room, taking her place on a mission to go save the fleet against the Triarchy, and gets killed. He gets killed in the process. The image of his body sinking into the ocean would have been an incredible way to end that second season and the dragon sinking. And I think it actually would have both put a bow on the second season and set up the third season in a really good way. Because one of the things that's been sort of, you know, I admittedly haven't really watched ahead, nor do I really plan to on this, but one of the things that's been interesting about reading the TV critics hit this show and they're largely very positive or at least saying, like, this is kind of echoing you and saying, this is the best version of this show.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah, I would agree with that.

Chris Ryan

Is that there's a lot of thematic stuff that I think is fairly obvious, I guess, in the show, but it doesn't feel earned sometimes for me. And that is. I've talked about this before, but, like, you know, there's a lot of stuff about what war leaves behind in its wake, what would happen if these kinds of nuclear weapons were flying around in the skies. And some of them were wild and untrainable, and some of them were being ridden by people who maybe had mixed loyalties or were only loyal to themselves. And, you know, the idea that these flights of fancy about who should sit in what is. I think one of the best sort of creations of the show is just how, like, lonely, uncomfortable and undesirable the Iron Throne is.

Andy Greenwald

I don't see. It's not worth anything, but it's kind of great.

Chris Ryan

Like, it's like even, you know, the idea that, like, who. Who wants to sit on this thing? Like, who would want the responsibility? I do think that the flaw of the show is because it has so much heavy lifting to do with these families and with these sides of an argument or an argument, a conflict. There's not as much 360 feel for the world of Westeros that makes you feel like, oh, the guys on this battlefield or the person on that boat who just got burned alive, like, mattered in this world. Like, there is a little bit of inevitable. You have to have red shirts. You have to have people who are just going to be cannon fodder. And so sometimes I feel like the themes or the ideas of the show don't quite connect with me emotionally, if that makes sense. Yes, that's my major criticism of it. I think I'm pretty pot committed to watching them play this out. But I see a lot both of your sort of like, these are the things I like are both things that

Andy Greenwald

I like too, and they're on the show. So I also think that the unquestionable success of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms proves the. It's proof of concept of the argument that Casey Bloys and his development team probably litigated intensely internally and then had to explain to the, you know, the revolving doors of corporate leadership they've had over the last few years that we can be able stewards of this incredibly valuable franchise that we have because we can tell different shaded stories. And I think that the. I think part of the reaction to this new season of House of the Dragon is unquestionably they know how to do a good version of the show now. And like Ryan Condal, but also Lonnie Parister, who got started on. Not started, but did great work on Banshee years ago, a show that I love, which has turned out to be like a real breeding ground not just for talent like Jonathan Tropper, but Greg Yutanis, who directed on the show on Dragon as well. I mean, he did an incredible job with it. The point being that House of the Dragon was unfairly bearing the heavy weight of the crown as the only version of Game of Thrones post Game of Thrones. And now that they've proven that, we can see a lighter version, a more humane version, a more whimsical version of the story. At the same time, it feels like a more balanced presentation. What this episode specifically did, I was watching with some amusement because if you. I wish we could be a fly on the wall of the conversations that Michael Lombardo and the previous regime of HBO were Game of Thrones premiered and they were agonizing over the pilot and they were agonizing over whether this is an even HBO show at all. And I imagine a lot of their direction was, oh my God, we gotta tone down the dork shit to keep the Boardwalk Empire fans happy. We gotta convince them. And really they were appealing to the, you know, the fucking. The Clark Kent version of the HBO fan like me, who's like, well, I don't know if this is worth my time. And so they downplayed a lot of the. I mean, they made reference to things. But there weren't dragons yet.

Chris Ryan

Sure.

Andy Greenwald

And there wasn't this sense of like, to watch this show, you need to understand, not just on an emotional level, but on a factual level, who represents what and where they're coming from. To the point where you introduce James Norton as a Hightower. And I'm like, right, okay, let me just sort of dig deep and remember. And I do remember that there's the Alicent and her father who's now the chief of chief designer on Star City.

Chris Ryan

That's right. Rhys Athens.

Andy Greenwald

But that it is. Now, this version of Game of Thrones is completely the version that they were worried about 15 years ago. And there's room for it. They've earned that. And the fans, the hardcore, hardcore fans love it. And the people who aren't watching TV necessarily the way I am, but are like to add to my diet, it would be nice to have a burned slab of mutton dropped on my lap every Sunday in Dragonfire. And here you go. It is an apple. It is an excellently made thing that I feel fine about.

Chris Ryan

You made a reference to the Star wars universe a little while ago that this thing can't leave my head now, where I kind of do wonder whether in some ways the Targaryens have become the Jedis of Game of Thrones.

Andy Greenwald

I love this. Go cook.

Chris Ryan

Both of those franchises refuse to go past a certain point. Right after the sequels got rid of all of the legacy characters in some shape or form, you kind of end it. Honestly, I don't really remember how Rise of Skywalker ends, but we end Game of Thrones.

Andy Greenwald

Did you hear that somehow Palpatine returned?

Chris Ryan

I do remember that part, but I just don't remember where various characters went off.

Andy Greenwald

Did Rey you remember Chewbacca lived?

Chris Ryan

I sure fucking did. But Game of Thrones, Jon's beyond the wall. What's gonna happen next? And it's like, let's tell that story. Well, it's not even that, but I'm just sort of like, I don't remember who's king and what's his face.

Andy Greenwald

Bran the Broken. Who has a better story than that?

Chris Ryan

Now, I know that George has to fin us these novels first before he tells us what might happen next. But I think it's interesting that the Game of Thrones TV world is, you know, looking backwards and using the text that George has provided. And in some ways, Star wars is doing the same thing where it's like, let's use the established canon and continue to tell stories that are adjacent to the Force with the exception of Andor. You know, let's tell stories that are about this like almost mystical religion that, you know, controls the universe. And for the Game of Thrones world, like, the emphasis on the Targaryens in this show is not unlike their emphasis on dragons, because dragons were something that pop up in the first and last episode of the first season and are very selectively, you know, in which.

Andy Greenwald

In which show of Game of Thrones. Yeah, they're very selectively showing up until the very end.

Chris Ryan

Now, you could say that might be because of the technology or it might be because dragons had been extinct seemingly, and Daenerys brought them back. Kind of like Olivia Rodrigo bringing back Pinkerton.

Andy Greenwald

You know, that's After Dark too. Cause I really. You gotta drop this one on me.

Chris Ryan

My point being is that they are making the show about the thing that was not always the thing I was most interested in.

Andy Greenwald

It is not Game of Thrones fault, it is not Star wars fault. That Hollywood, America, all of us are seemingly deeply afraid of peeking into the future and of telling something new. And that the richest vein that we have found creatively to frack whatever resources we have left is multiversal storytelling. And that will be a conversation for us through the end of the year in the sense that even Marvel couldn't move the ball forward past its high point and is now gonna try to basically restart itself by devouring its own history tale.

Chris Ryan

Sure.

Andy Greenwald

I think the other thing, just a tonal thing. And then can we, then I do want to just go through a couple of the characters and plot points because I do want to hear your take on them. Your mileage as a TV viewer may differ for me. I will always, always prefer the open ended. Holy shit, guys, where are we? Storytelling of Lost, for example, in which it is entirely about the heady excitement of asking questions. Questions that the people who are creating the show don't necessarily know the answers for. They just know what they're interested in chasing and pursuing. And it might be a bumpy path along the way. There is a version of fandom that does not like uncertainty and wants resolution and wants to know, at least know that the creators know the answers and that they can also peek ahead, maybe to pre existing texts or the Internet, to find out the answers too. And I think my ultimate ongoing and probably unending frustration with House of the Dragon is that it is a show about answers. It is a locked historical document that they're playing around in the margins in. But I, when I watch the show, feel the frustration of characters on tracks like Rhaenyra. Yes, but also, like metaphorically, like rides at a Amusement park.

Chris Ryan

Sure.

Andy Greenwald

They're gonna go through these motions to get to a place that they were destined to go. And the challenge, and it is a challenge for the creators, is to making the audience feel the weight of every decision that leads them to their ruin. But it is a much more locked and fixed document, which is why I go back to that idea that if it was. If they had been able to tell this story in, like, two super tight seasons or whatever that came out closely together, I think we'd have a different relationship to it. And maybe the joke's on me because people like Mal and Joe are like, I can't wait to see this story that we know brought to life.

Chris Ryan

In some ways, it's a very ambitious show. In some ways, like their decision to do this entire sort of preamble of the two women when they were children, their decision to really try to show the political machinations behind the various rebellions is pretty brave. You know what I mean?

Andy Greenwald

It's incredibly challenging.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And it's an incredibly challenge. Let's talk a little bit about this first episode briefly. I just thought, to my point about the Targaryens as the Jedis. I didn't even, really, like, get that much. I was not scandalized by Aemond kissing his mom. I was kind of like, that's just the Targaryen way.

Andy Greenwald

Did you do the. The Ed Rooney? I feel like we should. We should bring that gift back. Every time I talk about this show,

Chris Ryan

they do things in the family.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yes.

Chris Ryan

What were some of your favorite moments in the episode?

Andy Greenwald

Look, you know, I love a naval battle master and commander. Rewatchable.

Chris Ryan

Do you think that that was decipherable?

Andy Greenwald

I thought they did the. I think that's incredibly challenging. I mean, I could not. I was watching it, just marveling over the work, the labor of storyboarding that and understanding it and then communicating it to us on multiple scales. There's the large scale of there are many boats here, and then there is the medium scale of there are boats here and here, and also a dragon here. And then it all crushes and impossibly close when the boats are ramming into each other and people are boarding the boats. Then it's hand to hand combat. My favorite visual storytelling in it was the dragons touching the water and then being dragged into the water. And the feeling of something that is meant to fly being weighed down was really beautifully communicated and incredibly gripping to watch, as always. I'm always like, but what about that guy? What does he think as he's getting roasted alive? With an oar in his hand. But it was an action episode and I do think that it was challenging that this was, as you said, most likely meant to be a conclusion and is instead a very rhythmically, tonally odd place to begin. Now to go all the way back to my first comment. I love that Ryan Condal's instincts are to start small, to start with, oh, what's her name. Chasing after what's his name, the big dragon that eats meat.

Chris Ryan

Reyna.

Andy Greenwald

Sure. First of all, I just want to say in front of you and Kya and all of our listeners, I've been wondering what was up with Reina for years. You know, literally two years. Two years I've been like, that's a character that I've been tracking. I know who she's related to and what she's doing. So it felt really good as a super fan to understand her relationship also to that dragon.

Chris Ryan

If there was a couple, what were the things that you were like, I don't know what this is or who this is.

Andy Greenwald

Should we cover the show that way? Cause do you remember when we did the after show for Game of Thrones? I do on hbo and we had.

Chris Ryan

Which is short lived, still funny.

Andy Greenwald

We had a category called who the Was that Right. Should we kind of broaden that category and bring it back? For me, just saying what the.

Chris Ryan

Sure.

Andy Greenwald

Because ask away.

Chris Ryan

I feel like now I'm pretty well informed about it.

Andy Greenwald

I. Yeah, I definitely did not remember who she was, why she was there and what was up with the dragon that didn't have a saddle. I have no memory of that. I thought that she was going.

Chris Ryan

She had been sent out to the Veil with like her brothers, I think.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

And is like. Was pretty bummed because she hadn't claimed a dragon yet. Believe Aemond took her dragon or took the. To like jumped on Vhagar and was like, that's my dragon.

Andy Greenwald

That's my guy. Yeah, I remember that.

Chris Ryan

And yeah. And the. The Lady Jane of the Vale was kind of like, you can like get you. You can walk through here, but keep walking. Like, I don't want you to stay here. And I think she breaks off from her party at the end of season two and finds a wild dragon. Sheepstealer. I wanna say. I feel like that's a. He's giving Sheep stealer, not Moondancer.

Andy Greenwald

I'm just saying, like this is the part of the George R.R. martin verse that they didn't show to Plepler in New York in the HBO office in 2012. Cause if they had walked in and they were like, we got Moondancer. We got Sheepstealer. We have the Battle of the Gul. He would have been like, first of all, he would have been like, boy, the age of the expense lunch in New York will never end. I love it here at the Four Seasons. I'm sure that'll stay unchanged. But you know what I mean, like, this is. This is deep lore.

Chris Ryan

I'm just trying to help you out.

Andy Greenwald

I appreciate it.

Chris Ryan

I thought that the Battle of the Gullet was cool. Reyna getting involved. Probably the wrong move.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah, that seems that way. It seems that way. I appreciate it. Like again, as a kind of a noob to this. Like, I like that sheep stealer was like, what are we doing? We burning, folks?

Chris Ryan

I only do two things. Steal sheep and light guys on fire.

Andy Greenwald

All that sheep. You know what I mean? Like, I appreciated that because I have forever been a little bit. I've forever struggled with the fact that the dragons are like wild, ferocious, mythical, carnivorous beasts. But if you whisper made up Latin in their ears, they're suddenly like tactical howitzers.

Chris Ryan

The one that I did not know that I would have done. Who the fuck. And I did do that on Talk of the Thrones was the Stark. Who's the dude who threw the head to Daemon?

Andy Greenwald

I had no idea who that was. And apparently we knew who that head was.

Chris Ryan

That's the Lannister twin. One twin was on the boat. One twin was in.

Andy Greenwald

Bad day to be a Lannister. Yeah, we'd met the. I mean, I remember the one on the boat. I enjoyed him. Rip.

Chris Ryan

Sure, yeah.

Andy Greenwald

But the one whose head we saw had a speaking part on the show last year.

Chris Ryan

I want to say yes.

Andy Greenwald

Do you think the actor got his episodic fee for his latex head being thrown to Matt Smith?

Chris Ryan

That's a great question. In this day and age of Hollywood cost cutting, I can't say.

Andy Greenwald

I imagine we'll be hearing from Casey at HBO after this segment. And I wonder if you could just weigh in specifically on that.

Chris Ryan

I think he's going to be like, just wanted to let you guys know, I'm never listening. Anything else you want to hit on Dragon, I guess. Where do you stand? Is this going to be a weekly watch for you?

Andy Greenwald

You tell me, Doug. I live to serve. I definitely don't want to. And nor do our listeners. I don't want to keep saying.

Chris Ryan

I think that there's, like. When it's euphoria, there's something perversely fun about Watching you lose your mind, but also be like, I can't look away with this. It's like, you've done your time, man. And I think that you will continue to join us for Night of the Seven Kingdom season two and all these things. I just don't, I just don't think TV should be a homework assignment.

Andy Greenwald

We'll keep them guessing.

Chris Ryan

Let's go to Star City again. We can just hit this relatively quickly. Although I will echo my sentiments from last week. If you were watching television and you are not watching this show, you are not watching the best show on television. To me, it is my favorite thing that's on currently. Obviously, Widows Bay just concluded.

Andy Greenwald

And you haven't watched season two of Sugar yet.

Chris Ryan

I have.

Andy Greenwald

I mean, I, I.

Chris Ryan

Did you fire up the first episode? It's up.

Andy Greenwald

It is up. I've not fired it up. Okay. I, I read, I read with like, real affection Mike Hale's review of it in the New York Times where he's like, isn't it great to have the

Chris Ryan

show back every once in a while? You just be just like, I, I read with real affection Mike Hale's his review of it.

Andy Greenwald

I was like, man, maybe we are too cooked here because he was just like, Colin Farrell's back as a detective in la and it's classy and it's fun to watch. And there was a fun twist in season one, and I was like, man, maybe I gotta chill out, you know, for Sugar.

Chris Ryan

Not for Dragons, though.

Andy Greenwald

No, I'm right about that.

Chris Ryan

Anyway, I, I continue to. I will sing Star City's praises from the mountaintops. This was the fifth episode. It was called bite your elbow. And it is, I would probably say, like the culmination of some of the espionage mole hunt storylines of the. The first, first part of this season. And, you know, I, I guess I wanted to hit how. I don't want to keep saying the same thing about these shows, but what it does is play hits in a. In a way that sounds really good to me. Multiple scenes in this, in this episode, I'm like, I have seen this before. I have seen the mole get told by his significant other or someone very close to him that everybody is onto it's time to run, and it's time to run. And yet I thought the Valya Tanya seen outside of the training center was fucking incredible. Now, is it goofy how Valya kidnaps a guy and gets himself onto this space rocket launch?

Andy Greenwald

Yeah, for sure. Well, I push back on that. Shows create their own narrative reality, and as soon as Star City puts in play that whoever gets onto this secret mission inside of a bathysphere will be gone for nine months and thus protected from the environments at home and abroad. I knew where the episode was going. The question was how the value was

Chris Ryan

going on the ship.

Andy Greenwald

The question is, how is it gonna get there? And I agree with you completely about the familiarity of some of the storytelling. What's delightful is the way that it's deployed.

Chris Ryan

Yes.

Andy Greenwald

For example, I did not know that this episode would begin one second after the revelation at the previous episode. I did not know that the moment in which Irina holds all the information and Valya and Tanya and everyone else do not. Many shows would have milked one, two or three episodes out of that. And seeing how that plays out, this Star City chose to do the opposite.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

And here's a name I'm gonna throw out for you. And it might not be familiar if it's not written in Cyrillic. Zack Wheeler from the. Zach Wheeler is a yes. And Chris, what I often hear when veteran Zach Wheeler takes the hill is that there's a difference between throwing and pitching. And you can throw like your boy that you saw in Milwaukee, Mizorowski, who

Chris Ryan

he was fucking pitching then.

Andy Greenwald

Okay, that's fair. But that dude could throw 104 mile per hour anytime he wants. Zach Wheeler not only has lost a few mph on his fastball, he's also lost a rib to thoracic outlet syndrome and is still painting the corners. Cause he knows what to do with it. And I think part of the joy of watching Star City is seeing how this creative team is pitching and is keeping us on our toes and surprising us with timing and placement. And more than anything else, as they also say in the non moneyball versions of baseball, like, kids got good stuff.

Chris Ryan

It really does. The scene between Irina and Tanya in the beginning of the episode, the scene where Irina gets. Irina gets caught by her annoying coworker and then flips it on her. All the stuff with Sasha and Anastasia was quite lovely. Like, these are all scenes that I feel like have been kind of echoed throughout time in history. I did want to ask you about one of the last moments of the episode. Did you recognize who's in the photo that Tanya grabs there?

Andy Greenwald

Was that Brezhnev?

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

Is that my guy Leonid?

Chris Ryan

Is he the father?

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah. We're playing now.

Chris Ryan

Yeah. This is crazy. I mean, it's not crazy. It's just. That was the Russian premiere.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah. Do you think Apple, the network executives were like, could we just get an ADR of her going, my God, that's Leonidas, that's Leonid. Brezhnev has returned. Love that I also want to shout out just again in the spirit of. It's like. It's really how you deploy the story that you have. The direction of the show is beautiful. Kassia Adamic directed this. I'm not familiar with her, but as part of my fully tongue in cheek. Now, Nepo, watch. She is Agnieszka Holland's daughter, I have to say, the great Polish director.

Chris Ryan

She directed the shit out of this. And it's like, largely handheld.

Andy Greenwald

There's a shot. Here's my Pure Cinema award of the day. But there's the moment when Irina is deleting the tapes that have her saying that she's going to help Tanya escape. And she has this whole plan to get her a day pass and everything. And her office mate, I guess not mate, like, not friend at all. Who's Yegorovka? Is her name, played by Elliot Salt. She's watching. But the way that the camera notifies us of the is, it tracks, and this is like the long secretarial pool, essentially, of Building 12. Irina leaves and then the camera stays, and then it slowly tracks back up to see who did or didn't notice her lease. And it is such a beautiful, natural example of visual storytelling, of a paranoid state.

Chris Ryan

But even in that case, it's like, yeah, if she's done this once, she's not gonna get away with it the second time. But, like the fact that she built a file on Valya, that she was willing to sacrifice Valya for Tanya's. Why is she so enamored with Tanya? Does she have romantic feelings for her? Is it just infatuation with her free spirit? What is it that we're gonna find out about her? But it's an exciting moment because I don't, for as much as I'm like, well, I've seen that before. And I've seen that before, but it's done very well. I don't really remember a moment where a American mole is in a spaceship that's not really a spaceship with two new Russian. One Russian cosmonaut, and then a woman who's never been in space before, and they're gonna be up in space for nine months. The chief designer is okay with part of that plan, but does not know that's an American mole. Then Irina knows, like, everything, but is only telling her superior some of it. Just a lot of, like, moving pieces. And it's a very exciting setup. For the second half of the season.

Andy Greenwald

And all of this is in service of a plotline that involves sending people to Venus, which did not know was a cool goal to have. Have done a little light Googling does not seem particularly hospitable to human life.

Chris Ryan

We can't say, though.

Andy Greenwald

No, I think we can definitively say.

Chris Ryan

We can't say because we haven't been right.

Andy Greenwald

Oh, I don't think it's the same as me being like, I've heard southern Italy is nice but hot. Yeah. I've yet to prove it. I mean, I. There is the line when the dudes like, I shall be the one to plant the Soviet flag.

Chris Ryan

They're like, you would explode.

Andy Greenwald

Your body would explode in flames. It is a. I mean, what is the most off book thing that you've ever done when in the employ of someone else? Because whatever it is, I don't think it equals sending three cosmonauts to fucking Venus at the expense of like 3 million rubles.

Chris Ryan

Like. Like.

Andy Greenwald

Cause the point is, they're launching this vessel, and then at some point in the nine months, chief designer is gonna say to old Leonid or his, you know, his close friend, he's gonna say,

Chris Ryan

like, I had a secret mission to Venus that I had to do so secretly because the Americans were surrounding us and starting to get information about Star City. So to take this great next leap for the Soviet space program, I alone did this. Don't blame anybody else. And then what's gonna happen when they find out actually an American spy is on that ship?

Andy Greenwald

What is the equivalent movie that you and I would do for the rewatchables in a pirate recording and then put up when Bill is on vacation?

Chris Ryan

I mean, we did it with kicking and screaming.

Andy Greenwald

No, I'm well aware, but I'm just like. That was a sanctioned mission.

Chris Ryan

Yes.

Andy Greenwald

Is there something that you and I would. I mean, would it just be Bourne Legacy? Like, what is the most.

Chris Ryan

Yeah, it would probably be Bourne Legacy at this point.

Andy Greenwald

Or what if it was like. Like, can you imagine doing the rewatchables categories on the early filmography of Hal Hartley?

Chris Ryan

Honestly, with From Hell month, we're not that far away From Hell Month.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Wow.

Andy Greenwald

You do your best work at the end of the podcast.

Chris Ryan

Do you want to talk about England having its. The United kingdom having its sixth prime minister in seven years? Or seventh?

Andy Greenwald

Seventh in 10 years. What was our other After Dark segment that we were going to do? Oh, Olivia Rodrigo, can you explain that to me?

Chris Ryan

Well, she got. I guess she did an interview with Anthony Fantano. And people were like, music journalism is dead. Because she.

Andy Greenwald

Look at us. We agree.

Chris Ryan

I mean, she's done lots of interviews. I don't know really what the problem is, but this is a written interview or a video interview where she's just like, I love Pinkerton. And he was like, oh, you're. You're a Pinkerton fan. And people are like, this is.

Andy Greenwald

I apparently still canceled. So this is for. For. For those who are still listening.

Chris Ryan

Why was Pinkerton canceled? Because it was about.

Andy Greenwald

It's a creeper record. So Weezer.

Chris Ryan

But I think he knows that, right?

Andy Greenwald

Yeah, but I. But so what I don't understand is this scandal that she's. That the fans are like, Olivia, by publicly sanctioning and supporting rivers Cuomo's 30 year old creepy raincoat lust for young Asian women in record form, you have thus perpetuated the patriarchy. Yeah.

Chris Ryan

I don't know. I mean, that's like, for me, it just sounds really good, the record. Yeah, it's a fucking good record.

Andy Greenwald

I'm sorry, am I not allowed to say that it's a good record?

Chris Ryan

It sounds really good.

Andy Greenwald

It's set. Listen, Kai, look at the politics. You can't comment on the content of the man's character.

Chris Ryan

Not me.

Andy Greenwald

Could be me, dog. I think it's just interesting because Weezer is not inexplicably like, much like the I love It, I Don't care song Weezer's 23.

Chris Ryan

Isn't there some song on that record where it's like you come from Japan, like, isn't it? It's like kind of like.

Andy Greenwald

That's all the songs, my guy. Yes, but. But much like that. I Don't Care, I love it song, weezer's otherwise unremarkable 2015 or 2016 duet with Bethany from Best Coast. The song Go Away is their number. It's like what happened with Pavement with, you know, a random, relatively random song suddenly gets resurfaced.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Chris Ryan

When Harness.

Andy Greenwald

Harness your hopes.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

So go away. So that was. It is a huge TikTok song. It is on my daughter's, like, core playlist.

Chris Ryan

Okay.

Andy Greenwald

And they are savvy enough that on their new record, they have a very, very similar duet with Carly.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Right.

Andy Greenwald

With Carly from Wednesday. And I, of course, I am just fucking every cartoon character with a. A yard full of rage that you were like.

Chris Ryan

Actually, you know.

Andy Greenwald

You know, there's a new Weezer song. It's not too dissimilar. And Carly's pretty cool. She's got some Tattoos. And maybe we could listen to this dead zone uninterested. But my point being is, is the danger that somehow this is going to like, that was where he became a hard ass.

Chris Ryan

Is like, we're not getting out of this car until you respect late period. River's cool songwriter.

Andy Greenwald

Listen, I'm going to say something at this end of the podcast that I think is just between us. Just between us mice here.

Chris Ryan

And Kaya.

Andy Greenwald

Kaya's red in. Yeah, Kaya is Omerta. My older daughter is not in the car. Younger daughter's like, that Vampire Weekend song is pretty good.

Chris Ryan

Oh, wow.

Andy Greenwald

So some, like, every spring, fresh buds bloom. You know what I mean?

Chris Ryan

And then just like one single tear roll down your eye, you're like, no, it's just allergies.

Andy Greenwald

Thank you. That would be the best case. The other, the worst case is, oh, what's on my phone? My 2007 Spin magazine cover story on Vampire Weekend titled the Graduation.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

It.

Andy Greenwald

I'll just leave this here in the back seat.

Chris Ryan

Just playing Roblox.

Andy Greenwald

It's fine.

Chris Ryan

It's like, I don't know how to read. Watching the Simpsons.

Andy Greenwald

Where's the video interview of this?

Chris Ryan

Yeah. I just want to say my favorite show other than Star City is British politics.

Andy Greenwald

Me too.

Chris Ryan

I don't really understand how you guys keep doing this. I think it's cool that you're never satisfied. You never. You're always chasing perfection, you know?

Andy Greenwald

By the way, happy 10 year anniversary to Brexit.

Chris Ryan

That's right. But Burnham is the King of the North. Right. And he is, you know, former Manchester mayor and he's riding south to join Parliament. And Keir Starmer has stepped down today. Today to clear the field, and is. Is going to be essentially handing over the reins to him. Now then Burnham has what, two more years to run?

Andy Greenwald

Yes. Before there's a general election. I believe unless they call, they do

Chris Ryan

it every four or five years there. I don't understand.

Andy Greenwald

I think we're thrown because. Because you can replace them midstream and you can, but, like, if the Guardian

Chris Ryan

writes enough negative articles about you, you'd just be like, I guess I have to stop. I have to stop being here.

Andy Greenwald

Should we. Kai, do you want to just patch in Mickey and Conrad and see if they want to weigh in on this? No, I know.

Chris Ryan

I just. I think it's. It's fascinating.

Andy Greenwald

But can I say my favorite Andy Burnham fact? The King of the north coming down. First of all, it is so sick that you can be like, every. Everyone has been A like everyone in the Starmerverse has been so afraid of this happening. And in order for it to happen, Andy Burnham had to like basically run to be the representative of Montgomery county, you know, and just be like, guess I'll just rejoin Parliament for no reason. And then wins a parliament seat last week and then gets on the Manchester to London train.

Chris Ryan

Yes.

Andy Greenwald

Wearing a just like casual T shirt, gets off the train wearing a crisp suit like he stepped into a phone booth. But my favorite detail, Chris, was that the train goes into Euston Station, which is where I was commuting a lot last fall.

Chris Ryan

That was your local

Andy Greenwald

look. I think it's okay, even as an American to say that London has some, first of all, trains. We are not. They criticize the trains compared to what we live with here.

Chris Ryan

They had to.

Andy Greenwald

Yeah, that's fine. The train stations there, many of them are very beautiful. And even the ones that aren't like necessarily gorgeous, like Paddington, are like incredibly efficient.

Chris Ryan

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

Liverpool street bustling, getting it done. Houston is the ass end of the universe. Houston is Penn Station.

Chris Ryan

Twenty years ago, everybody looking at the board and then when the board's like, this is with track, it's on a hundred thousand people run.

Andy Greenwald

Yes. And he, the soon to be prime minister, was swanning through that mess, hopefully stopping off for like a Wendy's Good Morning Burger on the way of Greg's.

Chris Ryan

Greg's man, you know, he would win.

Sponsor/Ad Voice

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald

See, look at the keen sense.

Chris Ryan

I should, I should get on his team.

Andy Greenwald

You should get on the team. Yeah. I feel like there's a lot of people jumping on now. Where were they last week? You're like Aegon, crossing sides. I won't bend my knee, but I'll go over there.

Chris Ryan

It was great talking to you today.

Andy Greenwald

This was fun.

Chris Ryan

We'll be back on Thursday with the first few episodes of the Bears. So the Bear drops on Wednesday night. Thursday night.

Andy Greenwald

Uh huh.

Chris Ryan

In any case, we're gonna do the first three episodes of the Bear and maybe like a couple episodes of the Agency. But we're gonna talk about the choices people make to put entire seasons of television up in one night.

Andy Greenwald

And fine dining. Yeah, right.

Chris Ryan

Thank you to Kya, thank you to Kai. We will be back on Thursday. I hope everybody had a great weekend and we'll see you soon. Few things are truly timeless because to last, you can't stand still. That's the beauty of Michigan. You can feel it everywhere, like a fresh breeze on a riverfront stroll. Or how the nightlife hums with electricity like an old friend with new stories to tell. So let the excitement bring you back and bring you together season after season in pure Michigan. Find your season@Michigan.org

Andy Greenwald

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