The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 24: Guest Hosts Chris Ryan & Andy Greenwald

Episode Date: November 12, 2015

Stepping in for HBO's Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald weigh in on Fargo, The Leftovers, Aziz Ansari's Master of None, the 30-minute TV model and Jeremy Renner's most recent candid interview. Also, the guys announce the launch of Channel 33, the upcoming pop culture/NBA podcast from the Bill Simmons podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Today's episode of the BS podcast is going to be guest hosted by Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald. It is also brought to you by SeatGeek, our presenting sponsor, as well as my favorite app for purchasing tickets to sporting events, concerts, and whatever else. All you have to do is download the free SeatGeek app, use promo code BS, and you'll get a $20 rebate off your first SeatGeek purchase. Every ticket purchased on SeatGeek is backed by a 100% guarantee. It's the best and the smartest way to buy tickets. Again, download the free SeatGeek app and enter promo code BS. Without further ado, Chris and Andy. Hello, and welcome to the Bill Simmons Podcast. My name is Chris Ryan. I am not Bill Simmons, but I do host a podcast called The Watch with my friend Andy Greenwald, where we talk about television and all of pop culture. This is now part of the Channel 33 feed. If you want to check out some more Bill Simmons Podcast Network podcasts, you can go and subscribe to Channel 33.

It's myself and Andy on The Watch. Juliette Lippman will be on. Andy's going to have his own show, The Andy Greenwald Show, and I'm sure we'll have some more surprises for you guys soon. So make sure you subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts. That's Channel 33, part of the Bill Simmons Podcast Network. Let's go with this new episode of The Watch. Thanks for listening to the Bill Simmons Podcast. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.

I am a podcaster on the Bill Simmons Podcast Network. And on the other line, he just liquidated his 401k to get a shot at Lifespring. It's Andy Greenwald! Oh, it feels good to hear you shout uncomfortably loudly in my ear, buddy. What's going on, man? This is exciting. I didn't know what you were going to say. This is our first preview show.

This is our first time on the new digs. I like it. Nothing like a Deep Fargo Season 2 reference to just rope everybody in. Andy, this is a new podcast we're doing. It's called The Watch. You may remember Andy and I from the Hollywood Prospectus podcast from our Gretlin days. Yeah, those were the days, but those days are gone now. We're excited for what's new. It's a new day. What's to come? What are we going to be doing on this

pod? Oh, Chris, we're going to be, I mean, I clearly, we're just going to be bantering to the best of our abilities. We're going to talk about TV because that's kind of our thing. We're going to, I think I might start seeing movies again. Maybe we'll talk about those. We're going to talk about songs that we like, people that we're obsessed with, Jeremy Renner interviews,

but really, you know, all our old obsessions are going to come back to the fore. Yeah, well, let's not waste any time. Let's get to the television stuff. We talked a little bit,

I think it was last week we were on this very same Bill Simmons podcast and we talked a little bit about some of the shows that we were digging right now, but we wanted to get into a little bit more of a survey of the landscape, get a little more granular with it. And there's no better way to talk about the state of TV right now than to start with what

probably is the best show on television, and that's Fargo. I thought you were going to say The Affair. I thought because we were on the Bill Simmons Network. No, Bill's not here, so I don't have to talk about The Affair at all. Yes, okay. Let's really, let's chop it up. Fargo is so good. Andy, why is Fargo good?

Because I feel like, here's the thing, is like Fargo is the classic like online at Intelligentsia and you just hear two dudes online being like, man, Fargo is so good, bro. Ugh, it is so good this season. No, it is so good. And nobody says why. And you know,

in my two weeks since I stopped being a TV critic, I got to tell you, it's been very freeing not explaining to people, but here's our opportunity. But you do stand in line at coffee shops

and just mutter Fargo is so good. Fargo is so good. Oh my God, this pour over coffee is so good. God, you know my life so well, even though we're separated by a country. Here's the thing about Fargo. We use the word situation in TV a lot, but usually in reference to comedies, right?

We talk about sitcoms or situation comedies. But situation is a very rich word that is not used nearly enough for drama or the hour-long show. Because here's the thing about TV. For as much as we talk about the golden age or the dizzy aesthetic heights of shows like The Nick... I love it when you say, here's the thing about TV. Here's the thing about TV. That could be the name of the podcast.

TV still, because of the nature of how we get it, because we're sitting on our couch, because it comes into our home, because we watch it week to week, it still has to create a world that we want to visit or hang around in for a while. And I was joking joking about the affair but here's the thing about the affair i don't want to hang out with those people in their horse farm like i think i think it was a bad idea for them to have an affair i feel like they should know that by now and let's close the

book on it you know yeah fargo because of the nature of the show and for people who don't know you know it's a beloved and brilliant Coen Brothers film from the 90s, and this guy Noah Hawley did a very unexpected and incredibly risky thing where he basically adapted the tone of the movie, the spirit of the movie, to a limited series last year. It was a huge success, won Emmys, and then he's back for a second season that only tangentially relates to either the movie or the first season. It's kind of a prequel, it's set in the late 70s. But the thing that he's done here is that he's sort of Trojan horsed something brilliant into something familiar. The show feels like nothing else

on TV, right? It is absolutely funny and rich and vibrant and surprising and off-kilter in a way that, like, I don't know what to say, like the best movies, the best novels are, right? But here it is something that we get to invest in every week. And even though the stakes are very much heightened and a little bit wacky, the emotional core of it remains true. So it just becomes pure pleasure to watch it in a way that I think a lot of the TV that we talk about, a lot of the TV that Bill likes, like The Affair, has gotten away from. This is a joy to watch. It definitely is like a complete package. There's no sort of excess and there's no filler.

There's no fat to it. It's an hour-long show that doesn't have a wasted second, and that's incredibly impressive. One of the criticisms I had about the first season was that it was concentrating on all the wrong parts of the movie it was sort of sprung from where it was indulging in some of the kind of like isn't this guy kind of a rube here you know what i mean and a lot of like over quirkiness and all of that stuff has just been stripped away you know and he's just got holly's just gotten down to like the real core what's interesting is

fargo season two actually reminds me a lot of another Coen Brothers movie. It's actually my favorite Coen Brothers movie, which is Miller's Crossing. This very inventive crime epic with a lot of really weird, interesting human moments infused into it. Yeah, this is a very lean and sinewy kind of story. I mean, you were right to say that.

There were crime elements in the first season, and there was, in Billy Bob Thornton's character, there was a sort of big menacing bad in the spirit of other Coen Brothers movies, honestly, in the spirit of No Country for Old Men. But this season is a crime story, and people who listen to us in the old HP days know we love crime fiction. We love genre fiction. And one of the things that I particularly love about this story

is that it celebrates the era that it's in. It doesn't hide in it or hide from reality or hide from the present in it. It celebrates it. So everything from the direction feels sort of grainy and like a grindhouse film, but it also creates this world in which the syndicate, which is the name for the mafia that was used in the old Parker novels that I love so much. The syndicate does PowerPoint presentations in Kansas City about how to take over regional mom-and-pop mob shops, and that's what's going on in North Dakota in this thing. And it takes familiar ideas and stories, and then it just fills them with actual people,

people with names like Bear and Dodd. And the Kitchen Brothers. And the Kitchen Brothers. And there's room for quirk, and it really is showing us. And I know you went down to, and it really is showing us, and I know, you know, you went down to the wire defending True Detective Season 2, but darkness is best

when you let a little light in. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, you mentioned the idea of really embracing the time period it's in, and there's a scene in last week's episode where Patrick Wilson's Lou Sulverson character, he's going to the bathroom

next to Ronald Reagan, who he's providing a security detail for, who is, is at that time just running for president for the first time and uh they meet next to each other at a urinal and a rest stop or something and i just is it my imagination or does a lot of historical fiction feature scenes where the protagonist bumps into major historical figures at the bathroom did that happen like in the alienist where it's like it's like you know william taft is is going to the bathroom next to they were like teddy roosevelt it's always happening in the in the the the men's bathroom a lot of stuff goes down there it's a way to humanize these great figures yes that's

true it's a classic literary trope of of great men draining the vein so um one of the things you mentioned the darkness there, and I think that a lot of modern television has been about the evil inside of all of us or the evil that lurks just outside of our door, but I haven't seen it so subtly drawn ever before like I have on Fargo, and the way that, you know, I think that we're starting to

get into a part where I don't really ever need to see uh a a tip usually um I don't ever need to see as a moment where a guy who usually is not in touch with his feelings suddenly has like a soliloquy about evil and like the evil that is that is outside of his house but this stuff about patrick wilson and his wife uh played by christine belotti right yeah is it belotti or malati it's what's chris it's kristen kristen and then it's then it because then it sort of explodes in excitement and mel it's like miliardi right okay well good i'm glad i I called her Christine Bellotti then. It's her illness as like a metaphor for everything, you know, and the idea that he has brought something bad back with him from Vietnam that's infecting his whole world.

And this idea that basically there is this encroachment, that Kansas City is coming or that cancer is coming or that evil is coming. The way that they've constructed that around everybody is really, really quite moving. Yeah, it becomes emotional. It becomes the darkness outside your door. You can't stop its approach. You just have to make your stand and do the best you can. And that's sort of a little bit of a different way of looking at it than the evil that lurks

within all of us. That's like a much rougher, more Hobbesian kind of take on it. By the way, here's something about TV, it's super Hobbesian. It's mad Hobbesian. I bumped into Hobbes once in a bathroom stall. You should have, you would never have. On a New Jersey turnpike, he was really funny. Here's the thing, here's another thing I want to say though.

There is a joy to watching Fargo, but I think that comes from what was evidently a joy in creating, a joy in creation of Fargo. Because you think that comes from what was evidently a joy in creating and joy in creation of Fargo. Because you mentioned that Lou Sulverson goes to the bathroom next to President Ronald Reagan, who's played by Bruce Campbell, who's having a hell of a week. He's pretty good in that Ash vs. Evil Dead show, too.

I love that this is a show that is a major prestige offering by a network that wants to make major prestige shows like FX. And it came off of a successful first season that followed a certain blueprint. And in the second season, there's room for a Ronald Reagan cameo and a UFO that is thus far unexplained. And I feel like there isn't enough of that. There isn't enough of that creative risk-taking in storytelling on TV in general, part of it because, you know, the mechanism, the nature of the beast

is you kind of just have to reproduce and you kind of keep producing things. And so, obviously, Noah Hawley and his team were free to sort of start over because they had the name, but they could go in different directions in season two. But if you think about the chances missed, like we're going to talk about it maybe a little bit more later, but we talk about when we say what's the most risk-taking show on TV right now, we would probably say, outside of Fargo, we would probably say The Knick, but that's purely aesthetic, right?

Yeah, it's all visual, and that's a really good point. I was going to say that, in a weird way, Fargo, after finding its footing, has really found its voice in the second season, and kind of become this weird organic, I don't know what's going to happen every week. I don't know what it's going to feel like every week. It could be funny. It could be tragic.

It could be atmospheric. I really love the Nick, but I think that if the Nick was directed by like replacement level television director, I would say like, this is like a bad AMC show. No, that's what was so incredible, particularly about the first season of The Knick, because you could see the scene. You could see the standard TV scenes creeping through.

It was the same types of plots. There were the hookers, there was the nuts. It was the same sort of situation where the doctor is an addict, and we've seen a lot of these stories before. We hadn't seen people with their arms stitched to their noses because their noses fell off, but we also hadn't lot of these stories before. We hadn't seen people with their arms stitched to their noses because their noses fell off. But we also hadn't seen television directed like that. And I feel like one of the reasons why Soderbergh did that

is he basically, like, you know, he... Do you remember the scene in Rushmore when Bill Murray is on the phone and he sees the kids playing basketball and he, like, runs up and blocks a shot? Yes. I feel like that's what Soderbergh was doing to television in the first season.

Yeah, and I feel like that's not uncommon for him to approach any number of genres in films and be like, I'm just going to do the biopic, but I'm going to turn the biopic on its head. Or I'm going to do the heist movie, but I'm going to turn the heist movie on its head. Or Contagion, I'm going to do the Let's Kill Gunnar Talbot movie, but I'm going to make it more compelling.

This was like, I'm going to take a television show and a difficult man television show at that, and I'm going to turn it on its head. And there are still operatically beautiful moments in the second season. I thought that I'm really into the Andre Holland plotline, some of the Thackery stuff. I was talking with Sean Fennessey yesterday, and he was like, kind of the problem with this show is that it's gravitating.

The first season was so much about Clive Owen and Andre Holland, and they were really the engines of the show, and it really has spread out a lot. We're doing the Juliet Rylance detective story, and there's so much stuff going on that I feel like it's too democratic. Yeah, that's often the problem with TV, especially TV that wants to stick around for a while.

I did feel in the second season, particularly in the second season premiere, the writers clearly were writing – the first season they were writing, at least the pilot, they were writing it not knowing what would become of it. The second season they knew what Soderbergh was going to do to it, and so they wrote scenes like the scenes on the boat towards him so that he could dunk a little more freely. But let's talk about, like, there is a tendency in TV, the arc of TV bends towards conformity, because the longer you're on, the more people become familiar with certain things, the more, like, as with any enterprise, you go towards what's working. So obviously a show that is set up to be an anthology series

or a limited series is going to have more opportunity to take risks. But if we're talking about risk-taking, like, let's think about The Walking Dead for a second, because this is a show where the Bible of the show says that it's okay that corpses reanimate and eat people. Like, the world has ended, America is a dystopic hellscape, and people, and corpses eat people. And yet, every episode, for the most part, up to this season, has been about being as grim and serious as possible about this awful dystopic hellscape. As if they keep having to prove to the world that this is what we're getting away with, this is what we do.

But it's like, yo, people are eating faces on your show. Why do you get 20 million viewers a week? You could take more chances. They could take more chances. And I think that the only chances they seem to be really willing to take is a will they or won't they with whether or not somebody's dead, right? Well, that said, I will say, and I should have spoken up for this last week when we were talking to Bill, this season has been a lot more interesting, not just in the is

he dead or isn't he dead, which, by the way, isn't actually interesting. But interesting because of the more formal chances it's taking. This entire season so far has taken place on one day. There's been one episode that was essentially a flashback, and that was the Morgan episode. But the rest of it has essentially taken place on one day when one of Rick's plans, which, by the way, was a catastrophically stupid plan. Great. Rick is super good at planning stuff. Rick is so good at planning.

They yada yada'd it so fast they haven't really had any time to dwell on the fact of how epically he screwed up. Yeah. But that in and of itself is interesting. That like,

these are just cascading moments in a really, really shitty day. By the way, you've got to say it would have to be one of the shittiest years in American history, right? What I want to see

on Walking Dead is one day Rick goes into a rest stop bathroom and all the living presidents are hanging out in there. They're just like, hey, you found us. Just like President Taft. Me, Barack Obama. Here's the thing. You're just listening to Dirty Sprite like yeah what's up man I gave the Fear of the Walking Dead spinoff a pretty good review because I thought that you know after having suffered through the strain which may be the dumbest show on television yes you know it's relatively unchallenged at this point after watching that show just totally screw the pooch and like actually ending the world

because you know this is a show where where diseased vampire monsters are running through the subways eating people with their neck mouths. And New York One is still on. And New York One is still broadcasting, and the mayor is cutting ribbons at mall openings. They're like, F-Train was under construction today, leaving some travelers so frustrated. Thanks, de Blasio. But Fear the Walking Dead, they were basically doing donuts on the strange front lawn, being like, no, no, this is how you end the world.

The problem is the only other show I guess they could come up with to do in this universe is like the nuclear family must stay together show, which is what all shows are. Like, I think they should do like, where are the living, where are the presidents? Where's the safe house? Like, let's say this started to go down and the walls came down in the panic room in the White House. But that was the day like the 2019 Duke Blue Devils championship team was visiting, you know, and Carly Rae Jepsen or something. I don't know. And like they're all trapped there with the president and his wife.

Yeah. It's like, what? What is that story? You make the White House sound like the set of like Access Hollywood today at the White House House the 2019 Blue Devils You just reset and rhymes. You just told me that the White House is actually happening behind an Exxon like off of Route 202 Yeah well We all have our different visions of American leadership Look there are nice parts of Admiral Wilson Boulevard

No doubt, no doubt but the point is not every, like TV is I mean to be fair TV the mechanism of making TV and producing TV is not set up for people to be like, we're making a medical show, but yo, there should be a UFO in episode nine. Here's the thing, though, man. Here's the thing about TV. There you go. Sounds good when you say it.

It's not always TV's fault because we are spoiled little brats. And when something is too traditional, like it's, if the Nick is veering towards this week on the Nick, somebody does this, somebody does that. Barrow steals some money, gets slapped by a prostitute. And then at the end,

Thackeray kills cure syphilis. Like it's, if, if it does that, we're like, oh man, this is so trad. And then when it's something like theovers and there's like a nine minute musical

montage or a caveman scene or like a five minute interrogation between Nora and Erica that's like the master, you're like, well, this isn't like, what's going on? Like, where's Kevin? You know, like, it's so I feel like it's really difficult to

find that compromise between being progressive and being conservative in television, aesthetically, not politically. No, I think you're exactly right. I think you're exactly right. And I feel like that's why our reaction to The Leftovers has been – well, I mean, I'll interrogate myself here like i feel like it's been problematic and i tried to write that in my in my review of the second season because the show is not trying to please its audience in a way that is very discomforting like we are not used to that you know the like the the brilliance of a show like mad men which was undeniably brilliant is that if you take away some of the you know the the formalist ambitions you take away some of those performances you take away some of the

really deep emotional places that matt weiner was wasrowing into, you know, it was a workplace comedy. And we are used to watching a show where characters we've grown to love are bantering with each other. Like, that is the safest way to Trojan horse that stuff to us, even though I would never characterize that show as necessarily safe. But, you know, I think that the most interesting thing about The Leftovers is that Damon Lindelof has taken his stature and his bank account and everything else that was built up during the enormous mainstream success of Lost and gone to HBO and has basically been like, okay, I'm just going to do this now.

I'm going to go over here and do this. And this is what I wrote. I've yet to enjoy watching it, but I've come to appreciate that this is the point. The point sometimes with art should be to be unsettled. And I feel like, as you said, we are little whiny babies now with a billion things at our fingertips. And it's hard to choose that kind of experience when you have so many other experiences that are going to be a lot more immediately pleasing. You talk about the stitching showing on something like the Nick where you can kind of just see

the see the work a little too much in the in the screenwriting sometimes. I think that in a way that the leftovers might suffer from the same the opposite problem, which is just like there's you there's not enough of a map and it can feel a little bit like we're just and in some ways I have to say i i have enjoyed the second season and i it's kind of doing something very subtly with the last 15 minutes of each episode which is it's really it's really you know slam dunking home like those last 15 minutes where even if the first 40 minutes are agonizing or or punishing or whatever when you get to the last 15 minutes it's kind of like homeland and you're like oh my god what's gonna happen next week you know agonizing or punishing or whatever, when you get to the last 15 minutes,

it's kind of like Homeland, and you're like, oh my God, what's going to happen next week? You know, and it's not exactly something, I know that Emily Nussbaum wrote something about how Leftovers is sort of the anti-binge watch show. You can't, you have to like clear your palate after you watch it.

Take a break, yeah. But, you know, when I finished Sunday's episode, I was definitely like, I need to see the next episode right now. I'm two episodes behind, and I'm absolutely going, I need to see the next episode right now. I'm two episodes behind, and I'm absolutely going to catch up and finish the season. I think one of the things

that's interesting about watching it, too, is maybe this is just because I spend enough time with this stuff to be watching it, or trying to be watching it on two levels, is that Lindelof is the best there is at story, in a pure way. And you can see moments, especially moments that are actively addressing the failures of the first season, just in terms of like, remember those first two episodes where they basically shed the entire first season's plot

and excess baggage and just moved the whole show south and introduced new people? I was like, God, that was just elegant. You know, like the way that he just extricated himself from the corner that he had put himself in. And so then when you watch the season and the mysteries unfold and the stuff with the water and the vanishing, the vanishing water and and what's going on here. I'm like, no one is better at that. Yeah. And he's he's really like. He's throwing basically every play he has in the playbook right now. I mean, there's the guy in the tower above everybody.

There's what's going on with Matt and Maryary there's uh religious imagery left right and center there's the bird in the box there's people's ailments that may or may not be cured there's people can't sleep and can't wake up and there's a lot going on there's a lot of religious imagery there's a lot of questions it's unlikely that like he'll be able or wants to he's flat out said i'm not answering these questions i'm no i think that's the thing that's what is only that's what's always going to be a little bit frustrating not frustrating in the way that any unanswered questions on mass market um entertainments are frustrating but specifically frustrating because he is so good at stitching these things together yeah and and he's intentionally not doing it so it's like

watching a great player play left-handed or something. Which is technically impressive and definitely admirable, but sometimes it's frustrating just because you want to see them make up. And it goes back to the spoiled thing. I mean, when you have all your questions answered for you, like, for the most part, I thought True Detective Season 1 answered all of the

like, who's the Yellow King, what's Carcosa? And you find out, and you're kind of like, oh. It was nothing. It's a lawnmower man, you know? But when you get to something like this, and it's asking pretty profound questions and invoking some pretty mythical topics, it's inevitable.

I mean, human beings have been asking these questions and trying to find answers for thousands of years, and we don't seem like we're getting any closer. No, and then making, you know, there aren't that many emotions that are pardon the pun that are left over for tv people to play with they generally play in the same in the same sandbox and so if he's actually making a show about um dissatisfaction and frustration and sadness like that is again blame and guilt and responsibility yeah that's heavy stuff it's admirable it's hard to watch on a Sunday. I want to actually pivot from that to half-hour stuff,

but I feel like we should say one more thing about Fargo since we got away from it, which is the acting and performances on this are next level. Perfectly cash show. It's kind of weird because you're almost like, it's hard to single out anybody because it is just a perfectly cash show. There are people on the show this season who are always good. And they're put in wonderful positions to succeed. So like Ted Danson is one of the greatest television actors of all time.

And that as soon as he's on the screen, you're just happy. And he's doing wonderful, nuanced work. And then there are other people like Nick Offerman, who is always good, was wonderful in Parks and Recreation. And is giving a chance to do something a little bit deeper, a little bit darker here. People like Kirsten Dunst, who I've always thought was a great actor, has a worthy part, but it's also a fun part, you know, the kind of part that you can actually sink your teeth into. And, like, look at Jean Smart, for God's sake.

Yeah, she's great, man. God, she's good. And it's not like she hasn't been available for your mob boss characters for the last 20 years years television. But the person that I feel like a lot of people are focusing on, and rightly so, is Bokeem Woodbine. Yes. Bokeem Woodbine, that is a name that we have known because it is a very unique name for, what, 20 years now? I'm dialing up the Bokeem Woodbine IMDb right now.

Just fire that up. This is a dude who has been acting for a long time. Yes. And generally in the same sorts of roles. I mean, personally, I was a huge fan of Bokeem Woodbine's work in The Rock. Oh, yeah. Remember, he was one of Ed Harris's dudes. First of all, we need to do, now that we might be doing more of a deep dive episode every week,

we should get into that late 90s, early 2000s Michael Bay cinema. I know. Maybe we'll have a chance with 13 Hours, the true story of the true Benghazi. It's about time someone strapped on their pith helmet and got to the truth. Love Bokeem and Dead Presidents. I mean, just what a 95 he had with that and Panther.

He was in Jason's Lyric and Crook had with that and panther he was in jason's lyric at crooklyn before that uh he does the rock in 96 gridlocked in 97 although uncredited um how do you go uncredited in gridlock i mean you know he was in um the sopranos he was in martin lawrence's life he was in a short film from the wu-tang clan for gravel pit this is what i'm saying yeah in the soul food television series right he is a successful actor he has been working for 20 years in the 21st century he's been he's been in now man he's done sniper 2 uh you know that's good because sniper 1 left a lot of a lot of threads unanswered you know a lot of threads unanswered.

You know, a lot of things unfinished. It's like, who's he aiming at? What's up with the sniper? Why does he keep shooting people? Yeah, Bokin-Wubai has been working steadily. It is pretty fair to say that it's been a long time since anybody has... I mean, I've never seen him like this. He's been getting some great scenes.

And he is such an interesting character and giving such a great performance. And who gives him the chance to do it? Like, this is the thing that, you know, obviously this has been a lot of there's been a lot of conversation about this this week. Aziz Ansari wrote a smart piece about in The Times about casting on television and about diversity in general. And it's really, you know, you could talk about opportunity. You can look at it as a, you know it as social justice and casting people who look different, who act different, who are from different backgrounds than the traditional straight white male.

But if you watch Fargo and you see Bokeem Woodbine in this role of Mike Milligan, which was not necessarily written, although maybe it was, for an African-American actor, you see what it brings to the viewing experience. It is a completely different take on a character that we've never seen before. We've never heard an accent like that. And this week's episode allowed him the chance to do what all actors want to do, which is pivot. To go from basically benign and charming to absolutely deadly and terrifying in one scene.

That's what happens when everybody loves Raymond's brother's head gets sent to you in a box. But I don't blame him. But anyway, that is what's terrific about that show. But what I wanted to say was we were talking about like flogging, not flogging through the leftovers, but basically getting up for it, being like, okay, now I'm going to invest in this. Now this is going to be my Sunday night. And we talked about this a little bit with Bill last week too,

which is like it's Sunday night. We've had a nice weekend. Are we going to watch Rick screw things up again on The Walking Dead and just watch someone just bleed everywhere? Especially when the half-hour format is having kind of a renaissance. This is your pet theory right now. It is shorter, it is more... It is shorter. Which is a big deal.

It is a smaller commitment of time, and that makes a huge difference, because people want to watch stuff, but people get daunted. You know, if I suggest a show to them and they're like, well, okay, but I have to watch 12 hours of it. Or if I say, try it and you can watch, you know, it's five or six hours, all told. It's a lot, you know,

I know I'm being pretty basic and granular here about how time works, but... Here's the thing about TV. 30 minutes is less than 60. This is the reason why we called the show The Watch. Because we are really, really, it's about chronology. But it's a different commitment. But also because of that, because of the fluidity of these episodes,

in and out, I think the creators are taking much bigger chances in terms of the storytelling. I like what you're saying here. I do feel like, and I'm not being prickly with you, but I am going to say that, so I think you want to talk about You're the Worst and Masters of None, Master of None. Because those are two shows that have taken,

and I think Broad City, you could say the same thing for that. There's a couple other ones where it's like pulling apart and putting back together the 30- minute comedy format. Yeah. Togetherness, transparent. Yeah.

And, and I think that they're arguably like, I would also venture to say that like the 30 minute sitcom is something that you and I probably don't spend a ton of time talking about, you know what I mean? No, but we probably, if we actually,

you know, we're monitoring our DVR and we probably spend a lot more time watching those shows because they're very enjoyable. Right. You know, and I have no idea, like there could have been like a whole season where like big bang theory was like darker than you know darker than the affair and and and you know was doing time jumps and

stuff like that but you know there it is we don't want to be like have you guys ever heard of 28 minute shows blow my mind but like this this is a high watermark right now for what you can do with these comedies yeah because the thing is you know, I talk about like the chances that something like The Walking Dead could take because it has zombies in it. Point blank, there's zombies in it. So at least 50 million people are going to watch it. So you could do anything. Similarly, a sitcom has jokes. It's going to be funny.

It is going to be. I mean, unless it's Louis, in which case you never know if it's going to be funny or not. He has Ronald Reagan in the bathroom with a zombie. Exactly, which I would watch, but not necessarily funny. But, you know,

so a show like You're the Worst, which is on FXX now, was on FX last year. First season, one of the funniest, most enjoyable comedies in recent memory, my number two show of 2014.

This year started with a bang, very funny, and then the joke stayed there, but the subject matter took a very dark turn where one of the characters, Gretchen, played by Aya Cash, basically says that she has clinical depression and she's suffering through it at the moment, and her boyfriend, Jimmy, cannot fix her, and that's just the way it is. And so that has now lurked in the background and then been brought painfully into the foreground throughout the last few episodes, and it's been pretty remarkable.

What's been interesting, you know, and it's gotten the show a lot of just acclaim, I think, for the way it's portraying depression, for the way it's juggling its plot lines, the way it's staying emotionally true to characters that, you know, in other less deft hands could be cartoons. But I guess the question becomes is it the same show is it as entertaining and what do people want out of a you know as you said 28 minute show anyway i think there's a little bit of tension on you're the worst at times where they are trying to graft the darker more serious parts of it onto the

funnier stuff because to watch you're the worst is sort of to accept that these people are the worst and that there's going to be a lot of stuff on the show where you're just like you know this is this is sort of more of like the the curb your enthusiasm kind of sense of humor where it's like incredibly awkward people being terrible to one another and that's where the humor comes out of and at the end of these episodes typically in this second season we've been asked to have you know empathy or you know, empathy or, you know, find pathos in the behaviors that these people are exhibiting. And I think that I,

a cash has done an incredible job this season and it's still like, has, it's really funny moments. It's very interesting to watch. Like in typically with a relationship comedies, what you see is either they introduce the idea of marriage or a child or a breakup, and then it get back together.

I mean, that's what we've seen on new girl. It's what we've seen on nameless, countless comedies. So to have something like Depression be the plot turn, you know, essentially the major driving point of the second season is it's been fascinating to watch. It's almost uncomfortable in the sense that I'm not used to considering something like that the way I would something pretty like, uh,

superficial, like, you know, in a, in a comedy, like, Oh my God, is Jess going to move out this week? You know, like that's, that's what you're used to sort of thinking about when you're watching these shows. Yes, I agree. But I think it's, I think it's a testament to the good work that the writers on that show are doing is because, you know, from for much for basically the way romantic stories work in hollywood and movies and tv or rom-coms in general is happily ever after is the ending of

course that's actually probably when things actually get interesting but that's also when the writing gets a lot harder because you have to sort of get rid of the easier lower hanging fruit that like people are meant to be, that everything works at a certain point, and then actually dig deep into the actual messy bones of everything. And I appreciate more than anything that Stephen Falk, who created the show, has never sold out the characters. I mean, they behave in, say, creative ways at times to each other and to the world in general, and they're a little bit misanthropic, which is what drew them together in the first place but he's never sold them out for

a joke or for a circumstance or for situation and so because of that instead of just saying well these are just people who like to party all the time and it's great that they found each other they're pushing past that and instead of repeating season one even at a time when it's not like the show was so popular that that people were sick of the things they did in season one. Like the one memeable thing that that show did was Sunday Fun Day, where they just drink all day and drive around Los Angeles doing goofy things. Right. And obviously you've got to come back to that. And they came back to it, but they came back to it with a Halloween themed episode that was gnarlier than anything on American Horror Story.

And basically like clearly like they're drinking and, you know, trying to distract someone from a mental illness, more or less. Yeah, from just crushing anhedonia. It was really dark. And that was the episode that you would expect them to draw people in on. I really appreciated their depiction of the haunted house on that episode.

Yo, you are a haunted house dude. I was wondering what you thought about that. I know, I really dig an experiential horror experience. It's the same thing, to say it's experiential and inexperienced, but that was very, very funny when that dude is just like, I heard they have an actual Babadook. How about the fact that one of the characters, Lindsay, basically ends up being jame-gummed?

Like, inexplicably, she's just wearing lingerie and in a pit yeah well a guy with some lotion baskets is just leering at her he's just listening goodbye horses yeah but you like i feel like you would pay for this you you would go to this as a as a as an attraction like you like to pay people to chase you through cornfield this is the first year that i did i did haunted hayride this, and this was the first time that I really internalized the fact that the performers cannot touch you. So knowing that, I feel like... Were you daring them?

No, but I think that the whole idea is you go through these haunted houses, and there's just always the chance that a guy is going to stab you in the heart. Yeah. And that's what makes it kind of exciting. But I really listened to the to the warning this year i felt like it was a little bit more emphatic this year so maybe somebody had a heart attack last year or something and i was just like i know that this dude who is wearing like a ziploc bag over his face and has blood coming out of his eyes can't actually touch

me and it just it just it didn't ruin it, but it definitely softened the blow. Man, the last days of Grantland were dark, huh? So here's my question then. So it's a different way to look at TV shows, right? Because are you, the show is just aggressively pushing forward and which I think that's actually, I think it's smart from an artistic point of view.

It might well be smart in a crowded industry, crowded landscape point of view too, right? Because they can't get mired in anything because the minute they start repeating themselves, people can just click to their other option. So the idea that there's sort of relentlessly moving forward, and this is something Stephen Falk has told me, that's what he learned from from Jenji Cohen. We worked with her on Weeds and on Orange is the New Black. She's just like, just stories, everything, just more more story more story um but as someone who was a fan of the first season are you is it making you is the way the show is deepening itself is that keep are you the same level of fan in year two as you were in year one i would say

that for this specific show the issue isn't so much the deepening of it as much as it's like, I don't know how many, you know, it's now like 20 episodes or whatever of people being really garbage human beings. They are, I would argue that. They're very nice to each other. No, yeah, in ways, but then they're also just like, Edgar, your post-traumatic stress syndrome is hysterical. Make me eggs. You know what I mean? Like, I think it's funny, but I probably roll my eyes more at the comedy than I do at the drama. Eggs are good, though. Eggs are important.

Eggs are dope. What about the Aziz show? What about Master of None? Where are you with that? Yeah. So the Aziz show came out, what, last are you with that yeah uh so the aziz show came out what last friday yeah and i'm almost done and i think it starts really strong like the first few episodes are like really really really great and i have to i mean i'd say starts really strong as much as i i think that the essay format for it where it's about a topic with having some through lines is great um i i think it's i think it's a it's

almost funny because it's it's hard to talk about because it's gone through the overpraised backlash backlash to the backlash and now backlash to the backlash to the backlash and it's been on for six days so fast yeah it's been kind of crazy um i would say that you know there are some points where i wonder whether or not if the acting was a little bit more fluid, the emotional beats of the episode would be a little bit stronger. But as far as a comedy and as far as like an observational comedy, I find it hysterical. And I really enjoy, I mean, just because I'm an, you know, essentially an aging hipster. Like I really enjoy the eating tour

of New York that he has going on and all that stuff. It makes me miss New York City a lot. What do you think? I'm glad you mentioned New York. I love the show, but I really love the New York City part of it, too, because I feel like we haven't ever really gotten I don't know if this is the perfect example of it, but it's been very tricky

for TV to capture a feeling that you and I know well about New York, which is when New York said it's most magical you can have these days or nights when literally anything can happen. Yes. When it's like any one interaction can just tumble down like a Super Mario Brothers game, down some magical pipe slash backroom bar into a whole other night where you render a whole new other group of people or your world collides with someone else's. And there's always a possibility to find the perfect piece of pizza

or a perfect piece of sushi or just something else that's out there. And then navigating your relationship with that possibility, like how do you keep chasing it or do you give up and try again? And the show has such a joyful feel, even though it deals with heavier things, which I really appreciate. And I think I heard on an interview that Aziz did with his co-writer Alan Yang on Fresh Air, they talked about that's something they both learned from Mike Schur on Parks and Recreation, that there's just as much comedy and positivity as the alternative.

This show, you know, it's not necessarily a New York that I know because when I was Aziz's age, I don't think I had enough money to just fly to Nashville all the time or be eating the delicious pasta with truffles. It was like a spirit flight for like 50 bucks. Yeah, okay, maybe so. Okay, maybe I just didn't have the confidence in myself. You didn't have kayak.com or whatever. That's probably right.

But or certainly like the dating stuff but I like the way the show is kind of capturing that spirit. Like the show is kind of about having a lot of opportunities and then being not paralyzed by it, but constantly perplexed or amused by it. And that's a good place for comedy or drama or just a series.

Like this show could go for a while. And I think that, you know, and I think I said this last week with Bill, but like Netflix has gotten a lot of attention for some of its noisier shows, for like working with Marvel on daredevil, which was good. Um, or, uh, house of cards. But to me, this is really, in many ways,

their most successful show to date because it should be what it, this is what they should be doing. You find these really talented people who have a real vision and then you just get out of the way and let them execute. Yeah. It's like subtly, probably one of the best directed shows of the year. I mean, it's just got this gorgeous... You know, one of our buddy of ours from New York, Mark Schwartzbard, was the director of photography.

Yes, he was. Yeah, and he did a fantastic job. I mean, it's just like it kind of looks like the way New York looks in that milieu, like those bars and outside of those theaters and outside of those restaurants and inside of those restaurants, it feels like it, you know? I also feel like it can go either way when you're like, I'm just going to get together

with my friends and do something for fun. Like, that's when you usually get like the most indulgent albums when bands do that. But in this case, when Aziz is like, I just want to like work with Alan and some of my other buddies and Eric Wareheim and like just going to hang out in New York City and be able to go to Momofuku on the weekends and I'm going to call Father John Misty for a cameo. That really could have gone sideways, but it absolutely didn't. I also enjoy the—I'm not a big Seinfeld fan.

I know that's stupid, but I'm not. But I like how the observational comedy and the way that when Denise when denise and arnold and dev are sitting around a table it has that seinfeld in the living room feel yes of people like kind of doing bits but not like being like here's more bit you know what i mean like it's also this is this is this goes back to what we were saying about like when the best the the still the best things about tv are the oldest things about tv which is like oh they're my pals again they're my pals and they're my stories the funny thing about you know what's kind of cool? The difference between this and Seinfeld is that

Aziz's character is not a comedian. And I really like that. I like that he's not always the funniest person at the table. That's a good point. I would say that's probably the only difference between this and Seinfeld. Literally every other frame. It's just basically like a remake. Yeah, that's true.

Well, we're going to talk a little bit about one of our favorite sort of pastimes, which is talking about Jeremy Renner. Yo, he's not disappointed. I feel like, you know how we were talking last week about how Damon Lindelof and the crew at The Leftovers, they said they were trolling us, basically? Yeah. I know that Jeremy, one of the best things about Jeremy Renner is that he has no idea who we are, what a podcast is, how to listen to it, or how to put on headphones.

Like, he knows none of those things. Jeremy Renner hasn't seen a Jeremy Renner film in 20 years. Jeremy Renner doesn't know Jeremy Renner as a professional actor. Like, that dude went to the, like, you know, I can't even remember. Like, he probably went to the Hurt Locker premiere,

and he has not seen a film since then. No, absolutely he has never. He has not seen a film since then. No, absolutely he has never. He has not seen a film or television. But all of that is to say, he's not trolling us, but he basically was daring us to get back into the podcast business together with some of his behavior. Right. So some of you may remember back on Grandland

when we had the HP Hollywood Prospectus podcast. We did an episode. We've talked about Jeremy Renner a couple times, just being a fan of his work, man. Because we're big fans. We jeremy renner the actor big fans of his work on screen and in the real estate business yeah um because jeremy renner is a notorious house flipper and that's not a metaphor he just literally flips houses um he recently you know he had done an interview with playboy that was like 10 000 words long and is one of the great back and forths i've ever read in my life.

It's one of the great pieces of literature of this new century. Yeah, this is sort of the, you know, like this sequel in Maxim is not, it's very obvious that the writer called him on his cell phone as he was going from the haberdashery to the plant store and he was just like, who is this? No, they were literally like, no one told Jeremy Renner that in order to have his photo taken in that nice shearling coat, he would have to talk to someone named Jared.

Yeah, and also... He wasn't briefed on that. He also just doesn't know that interviews go on print and then in the internet. No, he has no idea about that. Because after a little bit of chit-chat about what's an essential item he carries with him every day, which is, I don't actually know, ellis a credit card i suppose um the maxim writer asks what's

your favorite curse word and why and jeremy runner says i think all of them are pretty amazing c word is pretty good now there's no like here, here's an opportunity. I'm not trying to tell anybody how to do their job, but when Jeremy Renner says that and you're the interviewer, you might want to, like, just take a second and maybe ask a follow-up. There's a follow-up there. The follow-up is, what makes you think that's

a good idea to say that? Also, just let's talk about pretty good. Like, pretty good how? Like, pretty good in what context? Is it a pretty good word to say when, like, you know, you low-balled on a Spanish-style mid-century modern and the owners didn't accept it? Is it a good word to use when Jennifer Lawrence asks you to join her

in protesting wage disparity? Yeah, is it pretty good when you turn on the television and see Byron Scott is not playing D'Angelo Russell in the fourth quarter? I mean, like, what is the really good... Probably that. Yeah. I would say that you've skipped one of my favorite parts of it. Well, no, I'm not skipping anything.

We're going through this one by one. Here's what I want to say. Among Jeremy Renner's many talents, acting, home decorating, getting in bar fights, but claiming to never get in bar fights. He occasionally let slip verbiage that suggests he was not a native human being. He did not learn word speaking in the same way that we did. And we talked about this a lot in the Playboy interview where he was like, I love this structure. You know, like this is my domicile and every time I have a beautiful structure. Great segue, man, because here's the next question.

Wait, wait, wait. Let me say this. Because the credit card question, what do you carry every day? He says, I have an elastic around my ring finger for my baby daughter. Her hair is quite long. By the way, baby's hair is not that long. Hold on a second. Bill Simmons is here.

Where's the headphone? You did not? Oh, you have it. Well, he puts on his headphones. Can I just say? Yeah. He says that elastic is a must. I always have that on my person. Yes. Do you talk about yourself as a person? No. No one does. So now we're joined briefly

here by Bill Simmons, who just walked in the door. Crashing the board. Crashing the board. Bill, we're talking about this Jeremy Renner interview in Maxim. Okay. Jeremy Renner is one of our favorite topics, but he's particularly good at destroying his credibility in interviews. Yeah. So we just talked about how the first question in this Maxim interview was, what's your favorite curse word and why?

And Jeremy Renner's response was, I think all of them were pretty amazing. C-word is pretty good. Which is just like, you're Hawkeye. Just think about the brand there for a second, right? Here's another one. What's one item every man should have in his wardrobe, Andy? Yeah, again, his answer here is, he says, a baseball cap, it's essential especially for me.

I can hide my face from the sun. You're not powder. What are you doing? Like, why does Jeremy Renner need to hide his face from the sun? Because what he's saying is he can hide his face from paparazzi, right? But instead, he makes it as if he's some sort of escaped Greek god and Apollo is looking for him. Yeah. Are you a fan of Jeremy Renner?

Defined fan. Yeah, I mean, like, are you ever like, Jeremy Renner? Defined fan. Yeah, I mean, are you ever like, Jeremy Renner's in this. I'm going to go see this movie. I liked him in The Town. That's true. He was very good in The Town. That's part of the reason why he's become such an iconic figure for us. It seems like he should just play Boston people.

I feel like, Bill, you have a look on your face, which is, did I miss the conversation about the affair? No. The look is, I was doing football preparation for tomorrow and Lake Placid was on cable. Oh my God, I love Lake Placid. And it ended and it went right into Still Alice. And I'm in this whole Julianne Moore's Alzheimer's suit and I'm rattled.

I had to get away. Wait, they literally were like a Julianne Moore double feature of Still Alice and Lake Placid? Yeah yeah can we talk about what kind of thursday afternoon someone in america is having where they're just cuddling up with an absolutely soul-wreathing alzheimer's drama at 2 p.m i i didn't it was on and i wasn't paying attention and then all the julianne moore in lake placid or is it bridget fonda no julianne moore is not in lake placid oh i thought you were saying it's a Julianne Moore double feature.

No. Okay. No, it was Lake Placid was on it spilled into Still Alice, which is one of those movies. Shout out to whoever's the programmer on that cable channel. That's great. It just sucks you in

and then you just, you're so down. Still Alice? Yeah. It's like one of the saddest movies I've ever seen. I'm not even done with it yet. I paused it. Yeah, I think. I haven't even really, she's like looking around for a bathroom now and i was rattled i had to come outside so the still you know how there's the whole thing about when

you're watching a movie on a plane it causes it's because the oxygen or whatever you cry easily more easily i've seen is that true yeah and i've seen people watch still alice on a plane and it looks like everybody is watching like a met like the matthew mcconaughey interstellar messages from the past we're just like dad well here's my son dad grandpa died and he's just like sobbing if that's what people look like when they watch still alice on planes why would you watch still alice on a plane i don't know san andreas is right there like of all the things you can do in what is already one of the worst circumstances to be in, which is on a long flight, why would you watch something about Alzheimer's?

I don't know. I mean, would you rather watch something about Alzheimer's or something about, like, Los Angeles falling into the Pacific Ocean? Depends where I was flying to. That's true. If I was flying east, that would be a laugh, man. Losers. When is San Andreas 2 coming out?

I don't even need The Rock. I just need Carlo Gugino and Alexander Daddario. What's left? That's the question. They're just still driving around in that speedboat. Still hasn't run out of gas. Hey, Andy. Quick question about San Andreas.

Does Seattle collapse too? Because that's the next one, right? That's the next one. That's got to be the next one. Andy, I have a really sad topic to bring up. Oh, no. Not as sad as Still Alice, but almost as sad. Okay, all right. that's the next one that's gotta be the next one Andy I have I have a really sad topic to bring up oh no not as sad as Still Alice but almost as sad

okay alright are you watching Last Man on Earth uh I'm a few weeks behind but I just went back to catch up with it yeah

one of the worst second seasons in in a while it actually bums me out I checked out when they left her at the gas station I'm sure

I'm sure it just was one of those things where I just couldn't catch up. It's rough, right? But it almost makes sense that it's not working right now because the whole thing was such a high-wire act. The whole reason the first season worked

is because no one could believe they were going to get away with it. We've been talking a lot about second seasons right now. Is it one of those things where they just never should have done one? I don't know what the answer is, but my kids who love Last Man on Earth for some reason. Because it's like the fantasy of being able to destroy everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is really what the show should be about. And they've added all these people.

And at one point, like after four episodes, my daughter just turned to me like completely serious. She was like, Daddy, why isn't the show funny anymore? Which is bad. That's a, that's a bad place to be. Also, you don't need a TV critic anymore. Yeah. Here's the new one. Not funny anymore.

They did, they did the right thing though. They moved it to Malibu, which is where, you know, if there's ever an apocalypse, that's where everybody should try to go. Don't be in Arizona. Yeah. But the interesting thing about the show was, you know, the first episode was so brilliant and it was such a tease

because the whole feeling was like, are they really going to do this? Is it really just going to be Will Forte? Then they bring in Christian Shaw and it's like, okay, they could do this for a while. But then I couldn't figure out if they were being brilliant or just being scared because then they suddenly crashed everyone into it

and the whole first season, at the end of it, felt like a normal sitcom. It was just different rules. But it was like a sitcom set in the Walking Dead universe. Do you guys care about all the rating stories at all that people have been writing lately about where primetime ratings and just how the models change and all that stuff? Because like ABC had a 10 o'clock show. What's the 10 o'clock show on ABC? You mean Wicked City?

Yeah, Wicked City was on. Wicked City got a 0.4, which is basically what we used to get for 30 for 30s on ESPN2. Right. So you're basically the executive producer of Wicked City is what you're saying by transitive property. It's 0.4. It's like we could run this on ABC right now and it would probably get a 0.4. I don't know what the hell is happening to ratings and how people watch TV, but it feels like the whole model is blowing up. Right.

So the music industry went through this too, where now if you sell 500,000 copies of a record in three months, you're like a superstar. Right. The difference is with TV is that the way that people have watched TV has outpaced the way the industry has adjusted to monetize it. Because there's no question that everyone is watching stuff, and more people are watching more things than ever before. And the really savvy networks have stayed a little bit ahead of it.

But I talked to Joel Stillerman at AMC about this, because like Halt and Catch Fire, a show I really like, they found a way to keep it alive for a third season, even though the ratings are terrible, because basically they own it, which helps. And with a lot of these shows, it helps. But they're making the bet that if we invest in this now, at some point, this will be in our content library and people will discover it. And that has value. But when you're ad supported, it's hard to make that case.

And when you have a slasher show starring Chuck Bass, you're just out of luck. I had some ideas for the Monday Night ABC, because obviously I love Jimmy Kimmel. He's my old boss, my buddy. And I don't want him to have a lead in that gets a 0.4. First of all, just lost reruns. I think any lost rerun just does better than a 0.4. Oh, yeah. Second, lost reruns, but with J.J. Abrams, but with some... It's hosted by J.J. Abrams.

Not J.J. Abrams. Lindelof. Who is Lindel was the Lindelof hosted by Lindelof but with like the meanest possible lost message board person the kind of guy who was in Lindelof's head the whole time and it's just this uneasy

PTI type thing coming in and out of breaks where he's like boy Nicky and Paulo I mean that was horrible and just Lindelof being really touchy about it. But also what if they don't tell him in advance? So he just, we just see him sweating in an empty studio and then the credits go up and he

realizes it's the Biling tattoo episode. Creator in real time. Well, here's my third idea. So lost was what? Six, seven seasons. How many actual seasons were in those seven seasons of weird

content where things moved? So it wasn't just like a throwaway. Yeah, just throwaway or like, hey, here's the backstory of freaking Terry O'Quinn, whatever his name was. How long do you think? I would say maybe three and a half out of six seasons. The first season was great

and the second two were kind of all over the place. And then they got it together and had the shorter seasons for the last three. You know what would be kind of interesting is if they did do what they did to the Godfather trilogy, which is where they cut it chronologically. So you basically start at the earliest flashback. Chronological loss. And show it up to and through. So basically the plane crash would happen in the middle of the series.

Here's my counter. Yeah. That means you begin with Alice and Janney as Eve giving birth to twins. Oh, no. With cuneiform writing all around her. So I feel like that's problematic for new fans. What about a bridge lost leading up to the moment where Jack says we have to go back and then it just ends? I think you could do that in a season.

There'd be 20 episodes of just chopped content. And that's better than Wicked City. Yeah. Yeah. I might actually run back lost if they edited out all the fat. It would be the difference of a five-pound porterhouse steak

that has a ton of fat, and I gotta really work at it, and I gotta use my steak knife and cut pieces. But the thing is, you could do that now with iTunes or whatever, and you wouldn't need to sit through commercials on a Monday night. No, but I have somebody cutting all the fat for me. That's true.

That would actually be a pretty good job, would be like the TV concierge. Well, they do condensed games. I want to tailor your lost experience to your appetite. Yeah, a condensed games version of lost. Andy, this should be one of your new jobs, TV concierge. Yeah, I deliver the, like, what kind of experience would jobs. TV concierge. Yeah. I deliver the, like, what kind of experience would you like tonight? Would you like the boring and digressive one?

Or would you like the lean, like, power pack? Because I think they could do the same thing with NYPD Blue. Oh, yeah. I think NYPD Blue may have not aged as well as we remember, though. No, but there are a lot of shows. It's a different thing, though. Because of the way network shows were just ran forever at 22 episodes, it's only in hindsight that we see

what were the important stories. So if you go back, like, you look at, what was ER, like, 11 years or more? And so what were the actual storylines that matter and what were just, like, we love the show and we like hanging out in a Chicago trauma ward? Like, there were probably, you could make three

strong seasons out of the most important stories out of these long running shows. Oh wait, guys, I know how to save Monday nights. Here's what we do. You put together a Brenneman block. Oh! Where it's just Brenneman on NYPD Blue episodes, judging Amy. Brennablock. The Brennablock.

The first season of Leftovers where she doesn't talk. And then go right into Kimmel. But Brennoblock. The Brennoblock. The first season of Leftovers where she doesn't talk. Yeah. And then go right into Kimmel. But Brenneman is a guest on Kimmel. And then Brenneman is a guest on Kimmel. And she doesn't talk. Andy had the idea. So ER, Clooney's

on that show and Clooney becomes one of the biggest stars in the world. And now a lot of people, probably I would say 25 and under don't really remember er don't even know that clooney was on it you go back you just take all the clooney scenes and you make an er slash the doug ross show you're basically pretending it's a new show and he's just in every scene yeah but there's like plenty of if he wasn't big enough star of it so in the first season of year there's plenty of scenes where like the extent of his participation

is playing pickup basketball that's fine anthony it's a lot of pickup basketball he's just like i don't know i can't commit to juliana margulies first of all yeah that would that would not age well not committing to juliana margulies in today's day but yeah there's i mean we are reaching the point where these networks are going to have to you know dig dig deep because you mentioned chris mentioned the record industry it's the catalog that kept things alive right like the fact that people keep buying like college freshmen will buy bob marley's legend every year no matter what and that keeps an entire you know mega corporation alive so these networks probably should keep going back to the well except for some of these shows they don't own them so like nbc doesn't own er warner brothers can i ask a really stupid question

stupider than the five stupid questions i just asked in the last five minutes this is gonna be stupider than brenneman block what is stopping them from abandoning nielsen like why not come up with a new rating that's just like yeah you know what like this plus this equals this rating and this show is doing x business i think it's because i don't have the i don't have the best answer which is a polite way of saying the accurate answer i think it has a lot to do with advertising. Also, they might not like the numbers they get back, right? They might not like the numbers, and at least

this way, I mean, the networks exist because of ad sales. The ad sales are still based on Nielsen, and that's just the way it's locked in, but a network like FX has abandoned traditional rating. They do not report or release their overnights anymore. They only report the L plus 3 and the L plus seven,

because they feel like that's a lot more telling as to who's actually watching and why. And that's the other big, they're basing their decisions off of that. We should have done that at Grantland. Just released our ratings in our own way. Here's our DVR plus ratings for this. Hey,

I have the best idea to save the 10 o'clock Monday night ABC. Old Bachelors. What do they have, like 25 seasons worth? Oh, Juliet's not watching season three? Yeah. Why not? Just run them back, edit them in a different way, and add like a couple comedians and stuff.

I thought you meant like Old Bachelors, like Cocoon, the weekly series. Oh, like literally Old Bachelors. Oh my God, what an incredible idea. Old bachelor. Master bachelors? Yeah. Like people over 70?

Yeah. Old people trying to find love? The only thing I can guarantee is that my mom would definitely be on that show. My mom really needs a date. If you're in Beverly Hills and you're old and you like to drink wine, my mom's available. Wait, why has that not been explored? I know that old people in general are like anathema. and you like to drink wine, my mob's available. Wait, why has that not been explored? I know that old people in general are like anathema,

like they don't put them on TV because they think that audiences will be horrified and run away, but why not one of these reality shows? We're talking about The Bachelor here. I mean, there's a lot of distance to cover between 26 and 80. We could get some silver foxes in there. A lot of Viagra. 31 is 80 in The Bachelor universe, right? Seriously.

You're basically a desiccated corpse if you are over the age of 30 in that world. But why not set one of these shows in Palm Beach or something? Old Bachelor. Yeah, Palm Beach Bachelor. That'd be great. Old Bachelor's incredible. I was thinking Old Bachelors, but I like Old Bachelor more. Here's Bob.

PBS needs to make that show. I'm an excellent shuffleboarder. In my spare time, I like to listen to Yankees games on the radio and make peanut butter sandwiches. And write angry comments on Facebook about how the president is a Muslim. I like to attract people. Latin Republicans.

Looking for someone who wants to get in on early bird specials at Jewish diners in Palm Beach, Florida. Would you like to go out to dinner with me? It's 4.45, you cad. A roast ceremony is at 6 tonight because Bob's got to go to bed. Wait, I have another idea for Old Bachelor.

You know how in the real Bachelor, there's always a couple girls they throw in there. One of them has a kid. One of them was the husband died. And then one of them, the engagement got called off. Okay, so this happens all the time? I don't actually watch The Bachelor. You don't have to feel bad for your snicker.

It's a terrible show. Okay. But a big part of the show is when they drop the bomb on The Bachelor. Because it's like the one real point of of influence they're going to have over him is he's going to feel bad they're going to connect right she's going to start crying and then when the engagement got called off i was devastated i was so humiliated puts the arm around her with the with old bachelor you'll have some widowers i mean you'll have a couple my husband died here and then it'll be like when does that card get played or like my husband left me for a you'll have some widowers. I mean, you'll have a couple. My husband died,

and then it'll be like, when does that card get played? Or like, my husband left me for a woman who was 25 years younger than me. He's a snake. It drove our family. Like, there'll be all these different cards that'll be so much more, feel fresh.

And Bob's like, I want to hear this story, but I have to go home because NCIS is on at 8 o'clock. Bob's like, I have to pee. Hold on, hold this to go home because NCIS is on at 8 o'clock. Bob's like, I have to pee. Hold on. Hold this thought. I have to put the VHS tape in instead of to record.

Bob's asleep. My heart is inflamed, but so is my bladder. I have to go. I think we could probably wrap up with Old Bachelor because nobody's ever going to have a better idea than that. Andy, it was great talking to you again, man. I guess so next week we're going to be on Channel 33, like we said at the beginning of the episode. It's the new, the new podcast feed.

You can hear the watch. Uh, there'll be some other pods on there very shortly. Thanks for dropping by bill. Thank you. Thank you. It was good. It was good to hear you guys.

Mondays at 10. Great job. Great job. For it's key.