The Bill Simmons Podcast - Giannis Goes Down With Big Wos and Chris Ryan, the Streaming Wars With Matthew Belloni, and Teen Culture Half-Year Awards With Zoe Simmons

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Wosny Lambre and Chris Ryan to break down a wild Bucks-Hawks Game 4, including Giannis’s knee injury, the improbable success of the Trae-less Hawks, and predictions for how this series and the Suns-Clippers series will play out (2:50). Then, former Hollywood Reporter editor Matthew Belloni joins the show to discuss whether or not movies will ever fully return to theaters, what the future of moviegoing looks like at the hands of streaming services, and more (43:47). Lastly, Bill’s daughter, Zoe Simmons, comes on to give her half-year teen culture awards, including best TikTok star, biggest disappointment, and best publicity stunt (74:41). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Wosny Lambre, Chris Ryan, Matthew Belloni, and Zoe Simmons Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Court Fits is The Ringer's new weekly NBA video series hosted by Big Waz, a.k.a. Wazney Lambre. Each week, we take you around the world of NBA fashion and share can't-miss style choices from your favorite players and keep you up to date on the latest news and releases in sneaker culture. Waz also talks to experts like Damian Lillard's personal stylist to give you behind-the-scenes looks at how the NBA's biggest stars choose their outfits. New episodes drop every Friday, so make sure you're subscribed to The Ringer's YouTube channel at youtube.com slash The Ringer so you never miss an episode. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel.

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Must be legal drinking age. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com as well as The Ringer Podcast Network put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. We did the 30th anniversary of Boys in the Hood. I think one of the most influential and important movies of the last 30 years. Van Lathan was with me. Sean Fantasy, Logan Murdoch had a really good time doing that one. That's a great movie. So check that out if you haven't heard it. Don't forget to check out on Green Room, Spotify's new live audio app. We've been messing around there a lot, especially right after games,

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Green Room, download the app, and you can join one of our weird rooms as we break down basketball and eventually football and pop culture stuff and everything else. So check that out. Coming up, I have a hodgepodge podcast for you. We're going to react to Bucks-Hawks game four with Bucks superfan Ben Thompson from the Stratechery blog. We'll see what kind of frame of mind he's in after that game. And then Matt Bellany,

who has been on this podcast before, one of our Hollywood insiders. We're going to talk about what's going on with box office this year and then some of the streaming stuff. That one's fun as well. And then finally, my favorite guest, my number one, Zoe Simmons, my daughter, who just turned 16 last month. But she did her Teen Culture Awards for the end of 2020, and we are doing the Half Season Awards for the first half of 2021. And if you want to hear me get made fun of, you'll definitely hear it during that part of the podcast. So that's it. It's all coming up.

First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this. It is 11 Eastern time on Tuesday night. Ben Thompson, super Bucs fan from Mr. Techery blog, was supposed to be on this podcast to talk about Giannis. Bucs up 3-1, no Trey Young. Just have a nice, easy, breezy conversation as Giannis underrated. Midway through the third quarter, that took a dramatic turn for the worse. Giannis on the ground, me and Ben texting back and forth.

And I totally understand this as a sports fan. He's like, I don't think I can come on. And I get it. We've all been there with our favorite teams. Fortunately, I was able to recruit two doctors from the ringer uh right out of the gate chris ryan big was was um janice had hit that lebron zone where you just assume there was no way he could ever get injured nothing could ever happen to him he was superhuman and even if like you know a chainsaw cut his leg off he would just go walk over put it back on his leg and just

go back running up down what was your reaction as you saw he wasn't going to get up? You know, I thought it was an ankle first. But, like, the problem is that I assumed Kyrie's ankle was going to be fine. Even as bad as it looks, it just always feels like guys come back from ankle injuries semi-hobbled, but come back fairly quickly from those. In the past, they did anyway. So I was like, I thought Kyrie would miss one game tops. Then he'd do the crazy tape and injections and sort of limp around there and make it happen.

Kind of like Isaiah Thomas did back in the 80s. Right. Like I assume that would happen with Kyrie. But then Kyrie doesn't come back. Of course, we had LeBron as the example beforehand and now Giannis and now so now I'm kind of I'm scared of ankle injuries now I'm gonna reverse on them now because of the this past few months with two completely huge superstars integral to everything that their teams do going having ankle injuries take them out for extended periods of time so I was like yeah but this was

the hyper extended knee though but but then they're like hyper extension i'm just like that's kind of better i don't know i don't know it's crazy you're just reading body language at that point when he when he walks back to the bench you're just like oh yeah well i mean like if it torn or something like that there's no way he's standing by the bench and if it was close he would have gone back in so it's like we're just reading tea leaves at a certain point watching him go down though and thinking about all the injuries that we've seen including even trey young who didn't play tonight it reminded me of that um the meme that goes around with uh james franco from that coen brothers movie where he's got the noose around his neck and he turns to the other guy next to him and he's like, first time.

And it's like, that's everybody in the league. It's just like, yeah, man, your star franchise player go down with a debilitating injury, join the club. Yeah, Chris, you got off pretty well with the Embiid thing. He was able to play with his debilitating injury. These other teams. I just think at this point-

No, my injury was more of like a sort of ambiguous psychological emotional injury to the point guard. Yeah, a broken brain to Ben Simmons. Yeah, I think at this point, was, is it just fair if Devin Booker just has to sit out so every team can not have a start? Maybe this is how we remember the playoffs. Everybody's missing a guy.

And then it's like, all right, rest of the team, let's go. Let's see who the champ is i mean i know you're joking but it's really been that stark uh you got to think about ad jamal murray kawaii leonard now yannis antetokounmpo it's just it's been how about james hard and kairi irving james hard and, Kyrie Irving. These are the best players the game has to offer. Mitchell compromised. I know because a lot of times when we see injuries in the playoffs, the sort of contrarian take is to be like,

there are always injuries every single year, blah, blah, blah. I think we're overly emotional about it this year. We're being prisoners of the moment. We're not taking history into account this shit is unprecedented yeah this is unprecedented and it's not all that it's like it would be one thing i think if there was a lot of wear and tear soft tissue injuries which i think is what a lot of the load management conversation centers around and i bet like i think when jamal murray happened i was like this is just a guy who's been playing

way too many games in too few days and like they're gunning for a seating and it's just like near the end of the game it was near the end of the game and you were just like Jesus Christ he'd been like kind of limping around out there but Trey steps on a ref's foot you know what I mean like the Giannis that's a rebound that

that happens what 50 times a game you know like the LeBron stepped on somebody's foot. Yeah, Kyrie stepped on somebody's foot. These are like freak accident. It could happen any game. It just so happens that they've all happened in a five, six week stretch.

Yeah, I've said this before. I'm actually surprised stuff like this doesn't happen more. You'd think just big guys jumping around in the air all the time around feet and other people's jumping and people getting bumped. And even you think about the Gordon Hayward injury where Crowder kind of shoved him a tiny bit, knocked him just off balance, and all of a sudden his ankle's breaking in half. It almost feels like this should happen more often. So here's not a theory, but a question. It's just like, because I was thinking about some of the injuries that we've seen. Is it just a matter of like, every play, every rebound, every bucket is just a little bit more contested.

There's just a little bit more physicality. It's not that it's like 90s physicality, but like a shot that you would just ordinarily, somebody would make a business decision and be like, you know what, man, it's February. Go ahead and dunk that. Is now like maybe a guy's underneath of you and you come down and you hit a guy's foot or there's somebody a little bit tighter to you than they were. Wait, can we workshop this take? I'm trying to think of the greening goal.

Does increased competition breed these kinds of freak accidents? How about this? Are the NBA players too athletic? That's coming up next you know and and people are not going to want to hear this but i think that nba games are more strenuous than they've ever been i think i agree with you a physical exertion that these guys are doing on both ends of the floor where dudes are digging in on the paint, then sprinting out to a guy

who's not shooting at 19 feet. He's shooting at 24, 25 feet. And you got to get on a dead sprint to cover that. And then, of course, just chasing around the Steph Currys and the Klay Thompsons of the world all game long. Like, the level of physical exertion i think is higher than it's ever been and you know look i'm not gonna say i'm not one of those guys who likes to say oh michael jordan was playing against mechanics and you know basically the the brooklyn brawler

back in the 80s right like that's a ridiculous thing to say but if you do watch those games they don't the defenses don't't look like how they do now. They don't play as hard for the four quarters like they do now. I agree with you. And I think that definitely has its effect on how often guys are getting injured. They're exerting themselves to a higher degree now.

There's also, and this has been brought up a bunch of times, especially over the course of these playoffs, but Embiid, when he first got injured against the Wizards, that was off of like a one-handed ball fake from outside the arc

and then like a glorious stride into the lane and Daniel Gafford was there. But like, seven foot two centers are usually not doing that. They were not doing that

in the 90s. Like, you know, Bill Cartwright was not doing a one-handed ball fake and then Euro stepping into the lane for a dunk. And that's what these guys are doing with their bodies now. I just checked LeBron's Twitter feed because I wanted to see if he was going to go on a rant about the Andres, but he just did a prayer signal for Giannis and the Aw Man, which somehow is 61 61 000 retweets yeah and and but you're not on twitter no no i just checked out just for that for the for the content

you should unfollow everybody but lebron lebron and like dating hyphens yeah goodness. Well, look, and the thing is, again, with Trey Young and his foot, like, that feels like that's very serious. It feels like that's something you're unlikely to come back from in this short a span. If you go from I can't even move right to being the lead engine of this offense, specifically this heliocentric offense that depends on him for everything damn near like that's yeah to me that's even more dire than the yannis situation i feel like yannis is gonna come back with that hyper extension trey young feels cooked we both we all all three of us know where this is headed and this is headed towards cam reddish versus nick batum in the nba finals i can't wait. Fuck it, Aang. It's been

brewing for years. It's been brewing for years and years. Let's go back to Giannis for a second, because the thing Ben and I were going to talk about today, you know, the Bucs fans were touchy even before this injury, but I think they basically felt like,

you know, say what you want, and I get it. We're the only team that has a superstar left, but you guys are kind of underselling how good Giannis is. Giannis has been 40 minutes a game. He's done everything you could possibly ask for. Everybody's focusing on the fact that he can't make a couple free throws and he takes some dumb threes every once in a while. And this guy has been going balls out on both ends.

He did everything you ever would have wanted from him in the Brooklyn series. He's actually gotten better as the playoffs have gotten along. He's added a little low post thing that he's had in spurts, but feels way more reliable than usual. And he's just a guaranteed 32 and 14 every night. He's basically putting up Shaq in the early 2000s playoff numbers. And it's like, so if you want to do the laundry list of all

the guys who've been hurt and why this Bucks title, if they managed to win it, doesn't matter. At least give Giannis credit that he's a great guy and a not very good team. This team's good. It's not great. He's great. And give him some credit. So you think this is all set for Giannis. The Suns Clippers, the Suns can't even decide whether they want to take that series or not. The Clippers are like, here, we don't have Kawhi. We're going to play Boogie Cousins. We don't have any fucking clue who's going to show up game to game. And the sons are like, what do we do? And it was all lined up for the bucks.

And now it's been pulled away. It feels cruel. Chris Ryan, this one feels, this is a cruel injury at a cruel point of that series for bucks fans. I try to think about like what I would think about these playoffs in five years. Right.

And if the bucks had won the championship and championship and Giannis continued this procession, I think I would have looked back. We would have looked back and we would have said, that was when Giannis joined this different echelon of NBA star. That's when he proved it. That's when he sort of sealed the deal on those two MVPs. And I think that even no matter how many asterisks or footnotes this playoffs would have had, Giannis winning the finals

would have felt right. It would have made sense. And he definitely performed like that was going to happen. He's been... I've seen a lot of Shaq comparisons and he's basically unstoppable in the post, but the way he accumulates those numbers kind of reminded me of Duncan, where

you're just kind of watching and watching and then you're just like kind of watching and watching. And then you're just like, wait a second, does he have 28 and 12? Like, yeah, you know what I mean? And you're midway through the fourth quarter. That's what I mean. That's what it was making me think of. Well, it also was, remember 2012? That was when I wrote the footnote title article for Grantland about Derrick Rose goes down.

That was disrespectful. That was disrespectful to LeBron. Well, there was a bunch of injuries that year, and it was like, look, whoever wins this year, whoever wins this year, there's going to be an asterisk. And I was like, I don't like the word asterisk. I like the word footnote. I think the footnote, depending on the injuries and whatever,

but every title has some sort of footnote. 2012 was clearly going to have a major footnote. The Bulls were the best team. Derrick Rose got hurt. There were a bunch of other injuries in the West. Nine years later, nobody remembers any of that stuff. They just remember LeBron was great, and he won his first title. And I do think the Sage was set for that for Giannis.

And now it's like, I mean, Waz, are you able to wrap your head around a Hawks finals appearance with Bogdanovich on one leg, Trae Young nursing a foot bruise from a ref the first time in a while? A ref's heard a player?

Reddish and the rooster. It's a buddy cop movie. Kapow has got a broken nose it looks like. something really bad happened to him at the end of the game they're on their second coach this could be our champion first of all I want to ask Chris Ryan I want to make sure that we've settled on a euphemism for

uh quarters red head nature like what are we going with I'm personally fine with ginger but like i i understand apparently that is like that's that's frowned upon now because i call them ginger is frowned upon yeah i think so yeah that really yeah oh wow especially in the uk isles like in the greater the great great britain and so there's ginger shaming now yeah i think it's like kind of like

yeah but but like i as so i have a redheaded aunt and a redheaded uncle and we've been making you know ginger on like so that's i'm out i can't i have to come up with something else yeah i would have to i i i really want to dig into this wait so we we can't we can't acknowledge but are we still allowed to acknowledge that he's got flaming red hair absolutely no yeah we're not no we're not allowed no we are not allowed not allowed to mention it we get we can we can acknowledge that k von has red hair for sure yeah okay one of his defining characters yeah okay cool so what's what's his nickname now though because because i've made the mistake of calling him red mamba apparently that was taken by Matt Barner. And then I was like, isn't he the Red Rifle?

And they were like, no, that's Sandy Dalton. What is he? Personally, I go with Herd or She Wrote. Herd or She Wrote. I go with, I can't believe this guy didn't make the Olympic team over Kevin fucking Love. That's my nickname for him. Kevin Love hasn't done anything in three years. He's on our Olympic team. You like mine more? Yeah. Maybe there's some acronym for it. It'll hasn't done anything in three years. He's on our Olympic team.

You like mine more? Yeah. Maybe there's some acronym for it. It'll fit on a t-shirt better, yeah. And honestly, to jump back to Giannis really quickly, I never said Giannis wasn't great. I just felt like the Bucs were not maximizing what he's able to do with somebody who helps him create.

But I think you've seen as this series has progressed, him on the pick and roll as the guy setting the screen and not only subsisting on, oh, I'm just trying to one-on-one and dribble, dribble, dribble, has been amazing for them, particularly against the Hawks. I think he's found something, and something about this playoffs has allowed Giannis to kind of figure it out. How's the best that I should be attacking, you know, based on opponent, based on situation, based on who's out there as far as my teammates

and the lineups. Like, he's been allowed to do that. Now, Bucks fans are going to be mad about this. He's only been allowed to do this because they didn't get cracked by a real team, right? Like, they played a severely diminished Brooklyn team in the second round and barely eked out a victory there. So we could be talking about a guy

who's out in the second round right now, not learning all of these hard lessons in the Eastern Conference Finals right now. Like, that could easily have been the case. So like Chris said, if he would have went on, figured this series out, then wins wins the championship and we're like we all understand how crazy this season was and this championship was but this this this was this was deemed the god said it was gonna happen sure and guess what though this this playoffs has prepared

Giannis for what he's gonna have to do in the future while continue to win championships and I'd have been fine with that story, honestly. It's not like I'm going to be like, well, you know, like my man Stu Gatz would say, well, in the Stu Gatz's personal record book, such and such doesn't have this many championships because I dock him for X, Y, Z. I wouldn't have done that to Giannis. But I think it's, you can't deny that having played these diminished teams is what has allowed him to learn these lessons.

Chris, you know what it's like? It's, it's like those Oscar years when like Adrian Brody wins best actor. Right. And you're like, Oh, I guess we didn't have a better performance. Or it's when Meryl Streep and the Iron Lady. It's like, Oh, I guess I guess we couldn't top that one. And they just kind of move on to the next year. Hope for better Oscars.

So this Giannis championship is crash? Yeah, this season's crash. Quite literally. Are we over... I guess I'm... I do want to... I would imagine that the Bucs players tonight just had the wind taken out of them.

You know what I mean? Like the Hawks pour it on. You can see it. Giannis goes out and they're just probably thinking like, if that dude tours ACL, this is it. But there's part of me that feels like, and I guess this is also coming.

I still have PTSD from the Sixers series with the Hawks. And I'm sure Knicks fans do as well. There's part of me that feels like Drew and Chris should be able to beat the Hawks. Especially a Hawks without without trey young this is the secret sauce of this yannis injury tonight they were getting their ass kicked before he got hurt and and i thought the tnt guys did a really good job at halftime being like what the fuck is going on with this bucks team like and i thought charles put it perfectly this is a a very good team, not a great

team, but they have no killer instinct. And if they were a great team, this is a step on your neck. You don't have Trey Young. We're taking you out and we're going to end this series in five. And they didn't. And so even before he got out, I thought an embarrassing effort by them. And it goes back to the issue that we've had with this entire playoffs, even as entertaining as it's been and unpredictable as it's been. And as weird as it's been, it's just, there's no greatness, you know, and the only team that had real greatness, I think was Brooklyn. I think there, I think they could have hit a level with those three guys that really would have been memorable. And once that was taken away, it became a crapshoot. I want to talk a little bit more. We got to take a quick break. or Movember, you'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research.

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Coming back on the greatness thing with this playoffs, who do you think is watching this unfold? What player is the most kind of bummed out, like De Niro in Midnight Run after the Duke gets taken away. What are you talking about? It's your boy. It's LeBron. LeBron is definitely like AD doesn't go down. We smoke the Suns. I'm walking to my fifth.

I'm walking to my fifth championship. I think it's Harden. He can hear the clock ticking. LeBron knows he doesn't have that many more years of being able to pour it on. But he's won four. I know that.

I think it's Harden. Harden's like, shit, I could have put on. I know. I think it's hard and hard. And it's like, shit, I could have put on even more weight during the playoffs. I could have been two 80 by the end of it, by the end of the final. So we would have won in five. Oh,

I think it's LeBron, man. I think, I think LeBron wanted that second one. I think he wanted the back to back one. I think he wanted to silence all the asterisks talk. I think he wanted to show everybody that he still, he still got it. And I think they were well on their way before ad gets hurt

yeah i wouldn't disagree with that i i just go back to denver because before jamal murray went down i just thought they were about to put something really special together in the playoffs and show people because i legitimately thought they were the second best team in the playoffs and show people, because I legitimately thought they were the second best team in the West, healthy Denver versus a healthy Lakers team. And I just think they were building some magic after they got Gordon in there, no pun intended. Like it was all coalescing in a way that I thought was going to be electric in the playoffs. And Jamal Murray goes down. So I know jamal murray is watching it's like this is pathetic like this is pathetic i would have been dropping 30 a game on these busters i think it was austin rivers was probably the most upset yeah he's so close i could have i

could have won one before my dad got his second does kawaii leonard? Well, so let's talk Clippers-Suns quickly, because I was thinking about after the Suns lose last night, there's so much pressure on the Suns right now. We rarely see in basketball real pressure. Like, you know, Chris, you're Philly boys. You had pressure in game seven, but at the same time, Simmons, he was broken and you're not winning the title with whatever was happening.

I don't think that the Sixers ever played as well as the Suns have played in the playoffs. So like, in my mind, I was like, what am I celebrating? Do you know what I mean? Like, where have we ever hit the heights that make me think that we could win the title? At their best, the Suns look like a title team.

Well, and I'll tell you, there's nothing more i mean the most devastating is if you lose an elimination game the most secretly devastating loss is the home coronation game when you think it's going to go awesome and then it goes sideways i remember one of the worst ones was the 2012 celtics when it really felt like we were going to steal that heat series yeah game six and the crowd was just so ready to you know basically have a part of the five-hour party after the game and then LeBron came in and just murdered everybody Bill I'm so I'm so happy that I have you here because I've always wanted to ask you this obviously is this going to hurt my feelings no I feelings but i just have to ask you because we have you here like i remember reading what you wrote right after that game and it was it was

you could on the page it was devastation and just like yeah fuck what did it actually feel like in there with those people as this is happening like you, LeBron has the meltdown in 2011 where it's like, it's happening again. We're going to freaking cut this guy. And in 2010, it was three straight years. We thought it would cut his heart out. Going to cut this guy's heart out. And then game six happens.

What was that like? It was over two minutes into the second quarter. You just knew it. You're just like, because the thing with that Celtics team was it was, that was the last run either way. That team had, they were never getting that close again. The Chicago thing was a gift. They barely got past Chris's crappy Sixers team.

And then you think this Miami thing where it's like, wow, they might just have LeBron's number. Like this, this might just be one of those things, like how the Pats had Manning's number for years and years, and then he flipped it. And I think what I saw from the Suns last night, and if you've been in a building like that, where it's just like, this is it. There was a Rangers game like that in 94 when they were going to win, I think, either the Cup or the Eastern Finals, and then they blew game five, and it was one of those, oh, I can't. I'm going to tell my grandkids.

I was there for the Stanley cup finals. And then it doesn't happen yesterday with that son's like, we're going to make the finals. We're going to win. And then Chris Paul, it's like, this is amazing. If Chris Paul, he's now five more wins away from now he's in the conversation with magic and Isaiah and the great point guards of all time. And it flips, which leads me to the question. The amount of pressure on him. Yes.

And on this Suns team with the 3-1 lingering, with his baggage, and then you throw in the entire franchise's baggage on top of like the clips, nothing to lose, they don't have Kawhi. And I just think that's a really tough thing to overcome when you're not that good. And the Suns are good. They're not great. It's tough to overcome the fact that Ty Lue is the guy at the table at the win who's like,

I need to be down 8,000 just to feel something. So it's like, I can feel my blood. So true. You know what I mean? I need to have like, I got Citibank texting me being like, is there fraud on your account just so that i just so that i can start to feel my blood moving like what like i is he beatable in a closeout game i we have no evidence tyler's breaking a cocktail glass and cutting himself just so he can remember what pain feels like no and and and the thing is chris pa specifically, you know, and it's not talked about that much,

but he has had some crazy moments in big elimination, big games in the playoffs. Like the OKC thing is probably the one that I remember the most vividly, where it's like, yo, Chris Paul, you blew this. Yeah, he melted down. You blew that. There were moments last year in that game seven against Houston, a few last possessions with Chris Paul. I'm like, yo, he kind of looks like he's lost it for a second.

Like he wants it too much. Yeah, like he's messing it up. And so it's like I don't want to start a Chris Paul as a quote unquote choker. That's not what I mean. But it's not like it's beyond him to be in these moments and you know things go haywire for him well he's also not I don't think he's 100 he hasn't been good since he came back from COVID and we saw with the Celtics like Tatum took a month um Chris I don't feel like he has any lift on his shot and he's no a lot of his jumpers were coming up short it was a lot of his jumpers were

coming up short but it's also this weird thing where somehow the Clippers go into series with usually with Kawhi they at least have a top-end talent advantage, but have managed to like play themselves into scrappy underdog role

in each series where it's just like whatever we kind of have like the residual Lob City kind of reputation that they have as like planers or like front runners or whatever. Residual Lob City kind of reputation that they have as like planers or like front runners. Residual Lob City

is a beautiful phrase. You know what I mean? I still have that when I see them because I'm just like, oh, like there's still guys there from that. And then when you watch them now, though, they're just like the junkyard dogs. Like they're just like all these guys from the scrap heap due to having like incredible contract year games.

Reggie Jackson. Yeah. And like somehow the sons who should be the feel good story of the year are the, like the favorites and the Clippers are upsetting them. It's just doesn't make any sense. Well, who do you,

who do you trust on the sons? Like, I don't know, Bill, because now I have to deal with an idea where Reggie Jackson is like the third best guard in the NBA. Honestly, you could feel it in game four,

even though they won. I was like, I guess I trust Booker, but it also feels like you can play pretty good defense on him. Also, Booker might not be able to breathe through his nose right now. So it's like, I don't know what it's, yeah. And then you got like, is their whole season going to come down to a J Crowder three in the corner and a Cam Johnson three from the other corner

and they go 0-2 and they're going home? That might turn that series. And this is the sort of like, we talk all about like the top 12 to top 11 players who've gotten hurt in these playoffs. I do think that there is a ripple effect of guys like Dante DiVincenzo and Danny Green and campaign getting hurt

that fucks up people's rotations. And also is like, there's like an equilibrium problem. Like when those guys go out. Ooh, this is good take, Wes. I like this. Is Danny Green the most significant injury of the playoffs coming up next?

That's what I'm saying. It's like these, these like sort of- This is good. I know who's, no, no, there might be some insignificant injuries that we haven't sort of talked about enough,

but Danny Green's not that. He's not that. He's not it. I watched the playoffs. I he's not that i watched the playoffs last year like it's not danny green look robert williams who knows what happens in that next time i know but campaign legitimately has been a spark plug we use that word all the time he changes everything they do once he comes in the game they're playing faster they're more frenetic it's it's a different team when he's out there and they completely lose that element and i saw a campaign at summer league in 2019 and i remember thinking to myself like wow so sad like what a fall it was like it was like a pity party. Life comes to you pretty fast. I was like, bro, one minute you're Westbrook's backup dancer.

The next minute you're back at NBA Summer League? Damn. Hey, Waz, important question. So this summer, if Dame's really going to get traded, or later this summer, Reggie Jackson's sign and trade for Dame, who has to throw in picks? Which side? Do they have to throw in Covington to sweeten that?

At least Simons, just to give a token extra something. I don't know, because Reggie Jackson, if you landed on a spaceship two months ago and you were just watching basketball, you would assume he was the best guard in the league. He's done more one-on-one stuff than we've seen since like Jordan. And he can shoot. I don't get it. What about when he goes left and does that hesitation double

clutch one-handed righty shot? What the fuck is that? I'm sorry for being boring yesterday, but how long has he been wearing the glasses? You think it's the glasses? Are we sure it's not was is this like the lace is it like a limitless thing it's like he's like bradley cooper yeah he's got like 25 vision now he's been legitimate to the point of just like if you're a team and you need a guy who can go out and get you shot like legitimate shot creation you want reggie jackson like you need secondary playmaking shot creation ball handling if you need that like obviously he's not going to be your paul george or kawaii or lebron or whoever but if you need

maybe if you need a secondary guy reggie jackson is that got for you that's that's kind of that's just a crazy development let me ask my clipper clipper day ones here both on the call with me like what what's the vibe at staples are are the suns walking into a cauldron like because we're talking about that crowd that crowd is good i went to four and six in the utah series that was. Do you guys think that the, I mean, I find it hard to believe that the Suns are going to lose three in a row to the Clippers.

Well, can I make the case for at least them to lose game six? Sure. Scott Foster? The Zubats thing where it's like, oh, he kind of is playing eight and two a stance though, all that.

They realized pretty much one half into game five, like, oh shit, this is what we did against Utah. We can actually, let's do it against Phoenix. It might work. And it kind of discombobulated the Suns. And I think they kind of stumbled onto something. And then the other thing is just, if Paul and Booker aren't lights out, I think it's really hard for that Suns team to score. Those guys are shooting 40%. Then it's like, who else is stepping up? Who are you relying on? You think of like,

Campaign had that 129-point game in the series that kind of threw. If you just take that away, that's like the Tyler Harrow weird game he had against the Celtics last year. I think when push comes to shove, I think it's kind of hard for the Suns to score against this Clipper team. And I think game six, they're going to get energy. Terrence Mann, you know, he'll be good tomorrow night. He's a great Staples Center guy.

That's what they've said for years. We're finally seeing it. But I just think the destiny of this has to be Clips win six. And then we have this fucking Coen brothers movie of a game seven for Chris Paul. And the thing is what Bill says about the crowd tomorrow that's going to factor in. I used to always make the joke on Twitter that you'll never hear a Clippers game louder than on a second free throw in the fourth quarter when there's a chance for a free Chick-fil-A sandwich. That's literally as loud as it gets there.

But Bill, I want to ask you because I wasn't around during the Lob City stuff. I only literally came around during the first, actually the last back half of the year before Kawhi when they made that playoff run. And KD yelled at Chris Haynes at the end of a playoff game in the press conference for no fucking reason. But anyway, I've only been around for this sort of iteration of the team and the crowd. To you, what's the difference between what they were during the Chris Paul, Blake Griffin stuff and what they've been doing these last few home games. Good question. In 12 and 13, they weren't good enough.

They were fun, but you just knew deep down when they really went against a good team, they weren't going to be able to compete. 14, they were good. That was when what took root was that whole kind of whiny, bitchy, weird energy that where just every call, Doc, Blake, Chris Paul, everybody's just bitching after everything. And the fans kind of bought into it. And then they would bitch after everything. And it was like going to, I don't know, what Premier League team are the fans just kind of irrationally crazy about every call every premier league team okay good that team yeah but it was just the energy was really weird the energy with

this current clipper team is really just kind of more genuine and organic and happy and it doesn't have that people just like the guys on this team and i think they're more fun to watch too they like the guys on this team. Yeah, they do. They would join a cult that Terrence Mann started. I'll tell you that. Terrence Mann, the Clipper crowd is obsessed with Terrence Mann. They love Beverly. Yeah, they like Beverly.

You're going down the line. There's just a bunch of likable guys. And by the way, Boogie's going to have a moment in game six because they figured out how to match him against Sarich. And he'll score eight points in two minutes. And the crowd's going to lose their shit. I think it's going to be a really hard game for the Suns. And I think the, from a pressure standpoint, let's just, let's just really walk this through just for a split second. Like if they blow the three one, we always talk about what's the legacy, what's the legacy, what's the legacy? This is fucking devastating for Chris.

Unless it really would be, this would be devastating. Unless blowing three, one leads is the new, like what the crucible you have to go through to be good the next year. Like the Clippers, they're never going to have the, Chris is never going to have a chance to win the title.

The way this has unfolded where you lose, you lose Davis, you lose all the Brooklyn team, you lose Jamal Murray and then you lose Kawhi for the whole series and they're going to lose? And also, the

Clippers could make the finals without Kawhi Leonard? Yes, after being down 0-2. What the fuck? Honestly, think about that. How insane would that be? There's no correlation in the history of the league to that. The saddest thing about the Suns not doing this

is that we know for a fact that everybody would be nice about them winning the championship this year. Nobody would shit on it. People would be careful as to call it a this. Happy for Monty, happy for Chris. Everybody would let them actually celebrate it without being dicks about it.

Like they would actually do it. The process for Sarich, finally the process came through. Retroactively excited for Mikael Bridges. Chris Paul redeems himself. Everything. It becomes this whole thing. And to squander that golden opportunity while being relatively healthy as compared to everybody else would just be devastating. And a pretty one.

And also, think about that Game 7 crowd was. So let's say the Clips win tomorrow night. Now we go to the Game 7 Phoenix. Bunch of purse booty holes in that crowd. The sphincters are going to be tighter than anything about game seven man they aren't like oh we walked in like everybody's got our backs like everybody at game seven is ready to have a heart attack well then you have that clippers team who's scared on the clipper side in a game seven it's like a whole team of irrational confidence guys no they're going into that with the right mentality and reggie jackson oh my god game seven reggie jackson the world is not ready bill can i can i tell you why the quippers might not win

i think they violated some karma rules with their fans as you know i'm a season ticket holder since oh four okay. They're already, they sell the final stuff? Yeah. The ticket lottery was today for the season ticket holders because God forbid, they just gave us our seats that we've been paying for. So we get this lottery and,

and, and me and Mike Tolan, who we, we share my seats, but then everybody else, like you didn't get the seats that you've been, you've had basically through all the shitty years.

Is that because the capacity is? Yeah, they're trying to do the post-pandemic thing, but guess what? They're also saying how it's basically a full Staples Center. So it's just some shady Clippers shit and it's not appreciated

with the fan base. So if you're looking for karma reasons why it's going to fall apart, I would start there. Treat your fans better, Clippers. They fucking stuck with you forever. I would count that if you're looking for karma reasons why it's going to fall apart, I would start there. Treat your fans better Clippers. They fucking stuck with you forever. I would count that if you could count anything for the Clippers. I mean, the Clippers just defy all logic going down. Oh, to be without Kawhi, like nothing makes sense. They lose Zubac. They look better. They Terrence man comes in. He's incredible for one game. He

goes out. Then Patrick Beverly turns into like the unsolvable puzzle for this entire suns team it's like they get good 10 minutes from canard they get a good 10 minutes from batum like canard it's like a 10 minute it's a 10 guy team it's just and ty lue seems to know which guy is going to be on on any given night i kind of like i've canards won me back he was getting dmps to start the playoffs yeah i know he's. He's kind of, now I watch him, I'm like, man, that guy's he's really, he can create a shot. Waz, Billy Crystal,

Cuba Gooding Jr. maybe? What other celebs will we see tomorrow night? Will the stars be out? The comedian who I think used to do Punk'd, How He Gets Made podcast, I think he's a Clippers. Paul Sche podcast, I think he's a Clippers. Paul Scheer. Yeah, Paul Scheer. Yeah, he's a Clippers. Paul Scheer.

Superguy. James L. Brooks. Our guy James L. Brooks would be there. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't want to get into the Clipper crowd. I love the Clipper crowd. I do too. I just don't. I actually, it's just, this is totally on brand for the Clippers.

If they somehow made the finals without Kawhi Leonard, the guy that they traded 100 draft picks for. And by the way, where is Kawhi Leonard? He can't sit on the bench? Just go back to the doctors in the house. We have no diagnosis for Kawhi Leonard, right? No. And you talk to people on the Clippers, they're like,

we don't know. He doesn't talk to us. So I don't know. He's just, the whole thing's bizarre. This is the weirdest playoffs we've had in my in my lifetime since the 70s when we had a cocaine problem in the league it was the last time it's been this weird that was more like the end of good fellas yeah it was like the last 20 minutes uh quickly predictions wise who's in the finals i still think it's the Suns and Bucs. The Suns are the,

they're the two healthiest teams. Their best players are the most relatively healthy. And so they're going to get it just by participation, just by showing up. That's it. They're just going to get it by showing up. I still think those two teams will make the final, like the trade thing is devastating.

The Suns got to win this thing, man. Even if they got to send Kaminsky out there to like suplex Reggie Jackson, they got to do something. They can't lose three in a row. If you're making the case for the Suns, you look at that Quips box score.

Paul George has one of the best games of his life. Reggie Jackson and Marcus Morris have a good game. Usually it's one or the other. And they get both. So can they get two of the three again? I don't know. I just have this feeling the Clips win tomorrow night. I think it's Suns-Bucks and I think if Giannis doesn't play in the next

Bucks-Hawks game, Drew comes back to life here. We get a little bit of a better holiday game. Adande tweeted, this is all set up for Marv's last game. Bucks game seven. Giannis walking out.

I'm paraphrasing the Donde tweet, but Giannis walking out a minute before the game and Marv going, here comes Giannis. And we have the Willis Reed callback, and that's how we send Marv off. Who knows? Waz, Chris, it was both a pleasure and just a macabre way to end yet another late night podcast. What a fucking weirdo season. God,

can't believe it. Good to see you guys. Thanks, Bill. Same, guys. Thanks. All right, Matt Bellany is here. He is the former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and now has embarked on this new venture, which has turned into one of my favorite newsletters. Tell the people how to get the newsletter. Well, it's very easy.

You can go to puck.news. Our company is called Puck News. And you can sign up, put your email in, or you can email our guy that administers the newsletter list, fritz at puck.news. Not a hockey site, I promise. You are putting together this whole Hollywood. You're going for it.

I was in a similar situation in the mid-2010s. It worked out okay for me, but I'm rooting for you. You are the gold standard of this stuff, I swear. If we can be a third or an eighth as successful as you, we'll be very happy. Well, I've loved the newsletter because it reminds me of the old school. You're giving me inside info, but you're also weaving in personal experiences. You're not afraid to take a couple shots here and there, which you know I enjoy, but I wanted to cover some Hollywood stuff with you. Stuff that you've written about, but

stuff we can dive into a little deeper. First of all, one of the last times you were here, I can't remember how many times you were on, but we broke down why we didn't think Quibi was going to make it, but we didn't want to totally rule it out. But we were like, here are the 40 red flags. And we were right. So let's see if we're right with some of this stuff. I know. It's like the evolution of things. Now all those Quibi shows are available on Roku. They sold them off. And you can actually watch some of the Quibi shows on a platform that is on most TVs if you have a Roku device. So it wasn't that the shows were terrible. It was that no one wanted to subscribe to something else on their phone

that they had to go into to watch these shows in 10-minute intervals. It just didn't work. Especially as TikTok is rising and in general, young people just, it was a misread. But that's what happens when you have a guy in his 70s deciding what young people want.

Kudos to Katzenberg, though. Great career. This would be a minor blip for him going forward. Plus the red hot Roku. They needed more content. Their stock is like in the high 300s now. Box office. Let's start there.

You wrote about the box office recently. I think you and i were what were we talking about it we had dinner recently and i was saying i thought fast nine was going to be the first one that brought theaters back yeah this was this was in what april around then and you and i had i was insisting i thought that quiet place would be the first now quiet place too has done well but you said no fast nine that is going to be the first. Now, Quiet Place 2 has done well, but you said, no, Fast 9, that is going to be the big one. Everyone's going to come out for that. And open to 70 million, and we're heading into this holiday weekend where it's probably going to run roughshod over

everyone. It's up to over 400 million. And these are not pre-pandemic numbers, but for a situation where people are sort of gradually coming back to the real world, a lot of theaters aren't at capacity yet, $70 million on a June weekend is pretty darn good. Yeah, and it's the first movie that hits basically every demo we have in this country. So that also helps. It's fun. It's mindless. It's got the franchise around it. And the key thing here is it's not available on streaming. I mean, a lot of these movies that have come out so far, even the big Disney movies, and we'll talk about Black Widow, but they're available on streaming for the most part if they're Warner Brothers movies or Disney movies. And this was a gigantic franchise that you had to go to the theater to see.

And I really do think that matters. On the one hand, it's good that it feels like movies are coming back. On the other hand, I look at HBO Max, which I thought it was really smart to just say, we have these movies. Let's put them out. Let's get them to the people. On the other hand, now that we can go back into theaters, why wouldn't they revisit that strategy?

Does that say more about WarnerMedia the all the stuff going on with them like like why would they stick to a decision they made nine months ago well they're it's only for 2021 so it's the movies for the rest of this year but yeah a lot of people said okay now theaters are open maybe you should go back and like say hey, maybe Suicide Squad and Space Jam and some of these bigger movies should be only in theaters. But it's this weird situation we're in right now where to these Hollywood studios,

they actually don't want you to go see these movies in theaters if it means you will sign up for their streaming service. Because think about it, that's recurring revenue every month that they got you. If you really want to see Space Jam and you're just a, you think LeBron is a huge movie star

and LeBron James is meant to be seen on the big screen, then, you know, they want you to say, okay, it's worth signing up 15 bucks a month for HBO Max because they're going to get you forever, arguably. And other than, you know, your $20 movie ticket. So it's this weird situation where even a movie like Black Widow, which is a gigantic Marvel movie, normally you think Disney would really want you to go see that in the theater. No, Disney would actually prefer if you signed up for Disney Plus and paid

the 30 bucks at home to watch it because they get a bigger slice of that than they do from the theaters and you're in the ecosystem. You're in the Disney Plus ecosystem and they can monetize you in many different ways for a long time to come. And the stock market is really valuing those subscribers much more than it's valuing box office. Yeah. And this brings us to the real reasons they're doing this, and all of them are nefarious. Helps the stock because they can point to more subscribers. Can we be honest about how it kind of screws over the people

who had back-end deals? Like the Quiet Place 2 stuff I thought was really, really, really interesting how Krasinski and Emily Blunt, the only reason they make a sequel is like, oh man, we do the sequel, well, we'll do it, but we got to have a huge piece of the back end. And now by some convoluted strategy, I guess you could say, but I don't even know if it's a strategy, they decide to premiere it on the platform. And then it hurts the back end because it doesn't make as much money. And now they don't know John Krasinski and Emily Blunt as much.

And then as you pointed out in your newsletter, it's like they're not even willing to renegotiate the deals. Right. Well, and in the case of A Quiet Place, Viacom backed off of that. They gave them an exclusive window of 45 days in theaters after they complained because Paramount Plus is this streaming service

that's just sitting out there waiting for exclusive content that's going to draw people in. But Krasinski had enough juice, and the head of Paramount had enough juice within the company to say, you know what, this is actually a good movie and we'll get people in theaters, so let's hold it away from there, but only for 45 days. And then the Krasinskis went back to them and said,

hey, if this move to a 45-day window is going to make it so that our movie makes less money in theaters, we're going to be hurt by that and you should pay us. The irony of the situation is that now a 45-day exclusive theatrical window actually seems pretty good compared to what some of the other studios are offering which you know at warner brothers it's zero they're all in hbo max the same day disney it's you know depending on the movie it's either direct to disney plus like the pixar movies or it's this 30 up charge like cruella and black widow and you know some of these others like universal is playing with this as well fast and furious gets the full theatrical uh, but something like Boss Baby, which is like a kid's movie, but my kid's into, that's going to be available on Peacock the same

day. And the people like Alec Baldwin who do the Boss Baby movies for money, they are arguably going to be hurt by that. So it's a whole, you know, there needs to be a total realignment of how these big stars and directors are paid in Hollywood. Well, and then you have a situation like The Heights where it doesn't do what people thought, but you can kind of hide behind the streaming thing a little bit, right? Whereas in the old days, your box office, that's it. It's like whipping out your dick in a urinal. It's like, here's what I got. Now you can go, well, it's streaming. Who knows? Even if a movie bombs, it's like here's what i got um now you can go well it's streaming who knows like even if a movie

bombs it's hard to really say it bombs like it honestly seems like the heights kind of bombed but how do we for what they for what they thought it was going to be first of all you know this was lin-manuel miranda's other musical not hamilton and there was this feeding frenzy. They paid $50 million to get just the rights. Then they spent, you know, in the 50s or 60s to make it. This is a pretty, you know, tough musical. It's not a big, well-known property. They cast unknowns and they treated it like it would be a big summer blockbuster. And we do kind of know there are enough services out there that can judge demand or viewership on smart TVs

where we know that In the Heights played nowhere. It didn't do well in theaters. It didn't do well at home. It didn't do well internationally. And it started a backlash. Yeah, and it had this whole colorism controversy

where they had cast more light-skinned Latino actors. And when you see Lin-Manuel Miranda apologizing for something, that's a big deal. And I personally think that studios should be taking more swings like this, making bets on original things. They're going to have some whiffs, but they're going to have some home runs. This one did not work. And it probably didn't help that it was on HBO Max at the same time as well. Do we have hardcore evidence that HBO Max, Paramount+, how do we trust the actual numbers for subscribers? Because we've seen this even in digital media. We've seen people do deals where

it's like, you sign up for a phone, you get this automatic subscription, and then they count it as a subscription, but you don't know if it's an actual subscription. How do we know how to trust the different streaming numbers? Disney, it seems like, I actually would believe when they, what do they say, they're over 60 million? I would actually believe it because if you have kids, you kind of, you can afford it. You kind of have to have Disney Plus.

It's like a homemade babysitter and it's cheap. But like, how do I trust the Paramount Plus number? Well, there's all sorts of games. First, I'll tell you what they say. They say that they announced these numbers on their quarterly earnings calls, which are under heavy regulation from the government. And if you lie on those things, you can be held to account. So, you know, investors and everyone else are listening and the stock is fluctuating.

So if you're lying, then they can come after you. But that said, we know that they're playing games in certain situations. We just saw this this last week. The Wall Street Journal reported that NBCUniversal, which owns Peacock, their new streaming service from NBC, they've been talking about how they've had 42 million signups for Peacock. But then the journal reports that the actual number of people who are actually paying for it is 10 million, around 10 million. So it's like, okay, maybe enough people downloaded on their phone and then forgot about it or whatever. And even Disney is doing these games too

because overseas where Disney has had huge growth in their streaming service, they are basically giving it away in some of these markets like India and some Southeast Asian countries to kind of get market share or bundle it with other products. So they have this number, which is the average return per user. For Disney+, it is super low because they're juicing their subscriber numbers by essentially giving it away. Right.

You mentioned the stock thing. I always go back to what incentivizes a big company, right? In the old days, it was like, let's make movies and we'll make the most money possible from those movies. I actually think stock price is probably more important to some of these companies than whether they made 140 million profit from their movies in 2021 or whether it was 90 million, right? Ultimately, the amount of money you're spending and they can crunch the figures and write off things certain ways and say, this costs... The creative accounting that we've had with movies has been one of the

most fascinating stories in the industry since forever. Stock price doesn't lie stock price is basically what is my perception of how successful this company right now is and where it's going to be and that's what they care about so if you're disney i i mean wouldn't it incentivize you to just keep this model i really wonder everyone's like theaters are back it's okay the movie business is going to be the same way it always is. I disagree. I actually think there's so much incentive for these people to drive subscribers to whatever their platform is over driving them to a movie theater. And I don't think the business is ever going to come back in quite the same way. I think we're going to look back at the pandemic.

Sports will be back. I think sports, we were already seeing pandemic. Sports will be back. I think sports, we were already seeing it. Sports will be back to where it was. I don't think movies are ever coming back. What do you think? I agree with you. And in theaters, I think the kind of movies that are theatrical movies will be extremely narrow. And they are only going to be the kind of movies that can do a billion dollars or the kind of movies that come from small companies that don't have streaming services and want to do their business that way. But for a company like Disney, they are getting from the stock market a valuation that is more like a tech company than a 95-year-old media company. And that's because they have sold this

narrative. I mean, think about the Walt Disney Company over now a tech platform and Disney Plus is going to take over the world and get everybody's money and then raise prices and then raise prices again. And they are going to be the new Netflix. I mean, Netflix changed the model for everybody in this space, but a company like Disney was pretty remarkably able

to pivot and sell this narrative of, oh, no, no, no, no, we're not a media company anymore. We're a technology platform in Disney. And that just puts all the incentives and the bonuses for the executives and all the things that they care about in this bucket of streaming and the priority. You're seeing it now. I mean, Pixar movies, those are reliable box office draws. They get up into the six,, $700, $800 million range for original Pixar movies. The past two, straight to streaming, no upcharge, just trying to boost subscribers.

They've been very successful in doing that, I'm told. You know what the biggest thing with this was Mandalorian. Totally. Mandalorian becoming a water cooler show and just single-handedly transforming what people thought was going to happen with Disney Plus and now it's like, well, let's keep going with that. Whatever they paid Jon Favreau and are continuing to pay him,

it's not enough. That guy should have a piece of the entire Disney Plus streaming service because we all wondered, is this going to be like the Disney Channel? Is it going to be like the crappy kid stuff that's not good enough for theaters? No, it was better than the actual Star Wars movie that was in theaters that J.J. Abrams spent $200 million on. Right. Favreau did it.

You know, he makes these things in a space in Playa Vista that I've been to. It's like a little warehouse next to a strip mall. And he made a Star Wars show that was better than the movies that were in theaters. It was crazy. And that changed the whole game. All of the best Disney stuff is going to Disney Plus now. So what happens to, I'll give you two lanes. What happens to Blumhouse movies and what happens to movies like The Way Back, which I really like, the Affleck movie? Do those movies get made or do the people just go right to Amazon, Netflix, HBO Max, whoever, and just be like, just give us $9 million to make this and we'll call it a day? I'm just worried those movies are going to go away. Tell me they won't.

I don't think they're going to go away, at least not right now. Ultimately, I think the model is going to shake out where a lot of movies will go away. But right now, there's such an incentive for the streaming services that movies like The Way Back will be made. They just won't get a theatrical release. Or they'll get a week in New York and LA to qualify for awards. How do you get somebody like Affleck

for a movie like that if there's no theatrical release? It's almost like with the A-list stars, you have to reframe their brains. And if I'm somebody like Affleck, I would look at the Kate Winslet model of what she got out of Mayor of Easttown and what it's like to just be in

somebody's life for eight weeks versus this this 90 minute movie that comes and goes yeah i mean it's it's money to begin with you know you back up a brinks truck to to affleck's house and he's more likely to be okay doing something just for streaming that stigma is largely going away thanks to the money that netflix has been paying up front to people you don't get the back-end payments, but they do a buyout where they pay you your quote or whatever, plus a certain amount that you might have gotten on the back-end. So they're getting big stars to do stuff. I mean, Michael Bay made a $200 million movie for Netflix. I don't know how many people saw it. It was called Six Underground, and it was pretty terrible. But they're spending money on big movies for Netflix, and someone like Affleck will just do it there. It's the people that make the kind of movies that are better in theaters that may suffer here.

Yeah. Netflix is like, I want you to be my girlfriend for four weeks. Here's $200,000, and then I'm breaking up with you at the end of the four weeks. And I never want to see you again. You're like, cool. Speaking of Netflix. I do want to see you, but in a couple of years, and I'll come crawling back to you, maybe with more money and see if you're still willing. Right. Speaking of Netflix, you wrote about them recently. People have been afraid to talk about this. I think there's a real fear of Netflix. There's a real fear in general of just pointing out when stuff doesn't work. And these giant deals that Sarandos gave out to all these different creators,

pretty mixed results. The Kenya Barris thing, he got halfway through it. Ryan Murphy, Shonda Rhimes. Kenya Barris asked out of his deal, but they were not going to renew him i mean he's very successful created blackish he wrote you know um uh what's the girls trip like he's a very successful guy came to netflix they wanted another blackish instead he did uh black af which was basically a kirby enthusiasm Enthusiasm-style show about Kenya Barris

with Kenya Barris in it, who has never been an actor before. If you're Netflix, you're thinking, really? We paid nine figures for this? And that's the downside. Netflix is not alone in overpaying. Networks have overpaid people forever.

But they made such a big deal out of recruiting people like Kenya Barris and Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy over to their service. And they've really gotten mixed results. Shonda, who created Grey's Anatomy, has been there three years and she's done one show. Now, it was a huge hit. Awesome show. Yeah, so that's the best case scenario. They get Bridgerton out of it. So you could argue that paid for the deal by itself right and she's got a bunch of other

stuff and she sees this more as a long-term thing and ultimately that might be good for them the ryan murphy thing you know there's been no american horror story or glee or 911 or any of these ryan murphy style shows for netflix he's done much smaller things that have not really resonated or gotten the kind of awards attention that you might expect from him. But he's put out a bunch of content. It may be crappy, or I shouldn't say crappy. It's not for my taste, but

it's not a mainstream hit. But, you know, arguably he's producing. So is that worth it? Who knows? Ryan Murphy's like, I'm eating up innings. I'm throwing six innings every start. It's like, yeah, but you gave up five runs again. Exactly.

He is like the middle reliever who can point to the output without actually saying that he can strike out Mike Trout. Do you think that model's going to shift a little bit where here's your nine-figure deal to create some content for us? Do you think these streaming services are going to be more gun-shy? Or does it go the other way where it's like an Amazon thing where they go, hey, we're going to pay twice as much for MGM as anyone thought would possibly happen, And now we have the whole library. And it's, oh, wait, it's not $9 billion. It's going to be $8.5. We cut the price down.

Yeah, it's a bargain. Do you see that money just drifting toward giant libraries versus creators? Or where does that go? I think you're going to have to justify your worth more going forward. These $300 million deals, sight unseen, are going to be replaced, I think, by smaller deals that have incentives for hit shows, much more like a traditional model, where if you can create a big broadcast hit or a big popular movie, you're going to get paid.

But the Netflix model of giving out cash to people to come on over and do your thing and whatever thing you want to make is fine, I think Netflix needs hits. They've gotten the audience. They're more like a broadcast network now. They can't afford to just give out money for nothing. They need you to develop hits.

And if you can't do have one out they have a hit created by greenwich academy class of 87 stacy rukeyser the sex show that what is that with that that new sex show that's out with the sex starved housewife oh right that's a hit if you ever if you ever look at the netflix top 10 which is sort of, who knows how real that is, a lot of softcore porn ends up in that top 10. First of all, it's not funny. It's just the reality. You see it all the time. It's always like true crime and some woman with her eyes rolling back in her head.

And those are the two things they go for. Yeah, and Cocomelon. Cocomelon, that kid's show. But no, there was some Gaspar Noe movie that was like an arthouse movie from like five or seven years ago that was just basically straight up porn. It was like real sex, they said, when they filmed it.

Like debuted at Cannes. Total arthouse movie that nobody on Netflix would ever be interested in, except it had hardcore sex in it. And it was top 10, like, all summer. I clicked on it, and I have, like, a 70-inch TV, and all of a sudden there was this giant male member on the entire TV. And I'm like, what is happening?

In the first five minutes. In the first five minutes. I was like, what is that? No! I was pretty horrified. Under the Netflix bizarro metrics for who's watching, they count it as a view, quote unquote, if you've been watching for like two minutes.

Right. So even if you tune in just to see the bizarre sex scene and then turn it off, that counts as a view. Network television, it just seems like the ratings just go down every year. And Jimmy did his annual ABC upfront thing and just skewered everybody the whole time. It was like all night of the living dead jokes, stuff like that. Why do we even have networks anymore? Is it just for late night television and sports and morning shows? What are

the other reasons? Sports, honestly, sports. And, you know, they do make money. You and I don't watch the ads, but people do watch the ads still. And it's still a, you know, $10 billion a year advertising business. It's going down and the ratings are going down. I mean, if you look at what constitutes a hit on broadcast these days, it's, you know, it's a couple million people. And, you know, it's just not the same. Now, they argue that a lot of that stuff gets viewed elsewhere and is delayed viewing. And if you want to, you know, the NFL isn't going off of CBS.

And there's a reason for that. And it's because they can still deliver that huge audience that everybody has access to. So there's still a reason for them to exist, but less and less. And honestly, if you watch the programming, I mean, it is like, you know, it's like one of those, when you win the championship

and then you just sell off all your players the next year, that looks like what broadcast networks look like. It's like, yeah. It's like the 1999 Bulls. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it is, you know, I wrote about, you know, a slip and slide show that they're doing. Literally, people doing slip and slides.

That's a show on broadcast television now. Well, I thought the most fitting thing was when they had the diarrhea scandal on one of those shows, right? That was the show. Yeah, this is perfect. People got giardia. People got giardia because they're making a crappy, no pun intended, a slip and slide show in the middle of nowhere on a farm, and they put slip and slides next to cow pastures.

I'm not kidding. My entire family watched the first episode of the celebrity dating game hosted by Zooey Deschanel. Michael Bolton was playing music. The celebrity bachelorette was Hannah Brown from The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Michael Bolton was playing music the celebrity bachelorette was Hannah Brown from The Bachelor and The Bachelorette so

and she was picking people and the whole time my kids were riveted they were like how is this on television my wife was like I can't believe they're still making shows like this and about 25 minutes in we kind of gave up after there was another person.

We didn't even watch that one. And it's like stuff that you and I were watching in the 70s because nobody knew any better. But now, how many game shows are on ABC? Oh, that's their whole lineup. And you and I were watching them when we were homesick from school. We had nothing better to do.

Yeah. And there were three channels. This is primetime ABC and it's just a cavalcade of card sharks and the dating game and Family Feud. This is the

end times for network TV but that's what the model is now. They're cheap to produce. They can get a number of people like you whose families are like, really, this is on television? I guess we should check it out. And they don't have to pay the price for the scripted stuff, which is bad anyways, and people are watching on Netflix anyways. My hottest take maybe of the last six years, which I developed,

I don't remember when, some point in the mid-2010s, was that when NBC moved Jay Leno's show to 10 p.m., that was actually a brilliant idea. They actually foresaw the future of where this was going, where it's like, put this guy here, fix cost. That's one less show we have to pilot and worry about in every day. So that's five total that we just don pilot and worry about in every day so that's five total that we just don't have to put on the schedule anymore and why wouldn't we do this it was you

know we know what it's gonna be they did it because they gave the tonight show to conan o'brien without telling jay leno yeah yeah so the reasons they did it and then it was such a backlash to it and then people kind of turned on Leno. But fundamentally, it was actually the right idea to just put something fixed there every day, which is kind of like what, I don't know, when you see those Dateline 2020 type shows. It seems like those are the shows that kill. And Hulu, those are always like the most watched shows.

It's like 2020. You still flip channels. And I think what the podcast networks are doing is they're going after people who are flipping channels, You still flip channels. And I think what the podcast networks are doing, they're going after people who are flipping channels, which is not how young people view TV. But there's still a market for that person who's like, I want something mindless.

I'm just going to flip. And it's funny. Netflix has actually introduced that new feature called Play Something, which is their version of a lean back, they call it, lean back experience. You don't have to think about what you want. You don't have to spend 10 minutes in the interface scrolling and being like, oh, what do I want to watch?

They choose for you. And it's sort of like a network experience where you put on NBC on a Tuesday night and it may not be something quality, but it's probably going to be a singing competition or a crime news show or something like that, and you can just watch for a little bit and not think about it. I think Netflix is brilliant with the stuff they do to their main page.

The top 10 trending stuff, how they promote different things, how they study your weird patterns, and then just shoot shows at you like it's a t-shirt canon. They're just really good at it. I think with Spotify, with our app, with podcasts, that's the thing that I think that's the biggest growth area for us is just the t-shirt canon thing. It's like, we know you like this. Here, here's more. Eat, eat, eat. And Netflix, they're great at it. And it's all algorithm. And the thing about Netflix is they're not as creepy as a place like Facebook where you're calling and ordering a pizza and then all of a sudden you go on Instagram and there's an ad for DiGiorno.

It's not like that. Netflix doesn't even know if you're a man or a woman if you're old or young all they know is what you watch and they try to use that to give you more of the things that you like to watch you like watching true crime where somebody's missing in the first five minutes of the movie

here's seven more options for you great stuff I would encourage you to read Matt's newsletter. I wish you did more. What are you doing, like two a week? Two a week. Sundays and Thursdays.

We're not officially launching until Labor Day. So once we are up and running, we will have more people and we'll have more stuff. But for now, doing the newsletter twice a week. If you're interested, you can email fritz at puck.news or go to puck.news and sign up. All right. Good to see you. Thank you. Yep. Thanks, man. All right. One of the biggest moments of the year, the mid-season Teen Culture Awards. My daughter Zoe Simmons is here. We did this at the end of December. You handed out awards for 2020. And frankly, I was amazed that a network

didn't try to pick this up and buy the rights to it. But we're going to do it again. This is for the first six months of 2021. Now, just for the people listening, my daughter just turned 16. She cares about this whole weird world of influencers and YouTubers and TikTokers and all these things. I just don't understand, but you understand it. And that's the important thing. Yeah, that's why I'm here. I'm here to explain. Don't yell at me. Guys, we're not getting along recently. Yeah, we're not getting along.

We're like an old married couple. We've spent the last, what, like five days with each other. Traveling. And he just tried to send me all around Boston to find him a coffee, and I nearly got murdered by five drug dealers. And he didn't even ask me if I was doing okay. Emotionally scarred. I was on a Zoom.

I didn't realize you were in danger. Because Zoom comes before me and my good health. Well, once you were like, Dad, please help, I got off the Zoom for a couple minutes. Anyway, all right. We are going to do the mid-season awards. First six months. Your TikToker of the half year is?

I am Madeline. Okay, who's this? So TikTok just added this feature to their videos. They used to only be 60 seconds long. Now they've added this three-minute feature. So TikTokers have taken this and run with it. I am Madeline, my new favorite. Basically just vlogs her day from start to finish,

from her morning routine, getting ready, washing her face, to going out with friends, going to lunch, going to the mall with her boyfriend's sister. She just kind of vlogs her entire life. And it gives me flashbacks to the old YouTube days when you would just watch people doing their vlogs to like short Vine clips. It feels very safe because she's around my age. And I like the way that she talks and just her aesthetic in general.

Is she funny? Like what does she bring to the table? I just enjoy listening to her talk. She has a very soothing voice, and she just does very normal things that us teenagers do. And it just feels like this comfort in a sense of a weird world that we're in right now. Very normal things that you teenagers do. You don't do anything. Well, she goes to get coffee, and she goes to the mall, and she vlogs her outfits and, like, her hauls from buying clothing. It sounds like you could do this i could do this get a job um all right i am madeline how do you

is it i.m or is it i am madeline i am madeline so she's madeline she's madeline but it's with madeline with a t yes with the t which is really important how old is the character she's in college so so I'm going to assume from 18 to 22 range. Great job, Madeline. Congratulations. Your YouTuber of the half year is an old favorite. Emma Chamberlain. She has had a tremendous rise on the internet recently and has been receiving some negative attention. People have been noticing that she seems like her mental health has been kind of plummeting in her last couple of videos. As we know, the world has opened up and you're able to do more things. More things are open.

There's masks are hardly required anywhere anymore. But her video content is still very similar to what it was when we were in very strict quarantine rules. Where she doesn't leave her house often. And she doesn't hang out with friends. And she often mentions how she has mental breakdowns on the regular and she doesn't have a lot of friends. And although people are really concerned about her, I've taken this and I've looked at it in a light as we're living in a really difficult world as teenagers growing up and being stuck in our houses and just everything that we've been through this year. And although she seems like she's struggling a little bit, she's shown that she's trying to

grow from this and she's trying to promote that it's okay to not be okay all the time. So there's a transparency to this act of Emma Chamberlain's career that you like. And nowadays, YouTubers and influencers, they try to promote this perfect life that you're living, like this perfect hair and makeup, and you're always out partying with friends. And it's just, it's unrealistic to what real life is. And I enjoy that there's someone on YouTube still who's around my age who's raw and who's able, like being not okay and being vulnerable with the internet rather than just acting in this like inefficient and not real way. So has this helped her with views and fans and stuff like that? Or is it polarization?

I mean, she's doing the best on YouTube out of any YouTuber right now. I mean, she has her coffee brand. She was being promoted by Google. Like Google was one of her sponsors. Wow. Like she's doing really, really well. But I think this also comes with the idea that even though people can be successful, that doesn't mean that they're happy.

And although it's kind of depressing in the entire sense of it, but I do enjoy that she's just completely herself and raw on the internet and shows that it's not all glamorous. So are you worried about her? I am worried. I'm a little worried about her because I do love her, but her content is still pretty traditional to as it always has been just Emma being Emma and she's a character in herself. So it's always entertaining. It's just, I appreciate that she's raw with her viewers. All right. Take care of yourself, Emma. Well, you need Emma Chamberlain because this leads to our next award.

The biggest disappointment of the first half year. You lost your favorite. This is like me losing the NBA. You lost your favorite person. Trisha Paytas is now on the cancel side. She's out. She didn't get canceled. She had a blow up with her partner. She's, she's out. She didn't get canceled.

She had a blow up with her blocked off the internet. So Tricia was a part of this podcast called frenemies on H3 with Ethan Klein as her cohost. And it's, it's very apparent that Tricia has mental problems. She's open about it. She has like multiple conditions. But she's a very inconsistent person. and it was expected that at some point this frenemies podcast would end because of that but trisha had they were they were literally

frenemies her and ethan they were not friends they started off as just absolute like more enemies than friends really they just didn't get along and would talk about pop culture and and things like that and how they had completely different views on the world as Trisha has been indulged in the internet for years and years. And Ethan is an older, kind of wiser guy, I would say. Yeah. Kind of like you, dad. Thanks.

You're like Ethan Klein. Thanks for coming to me to Ethan Klein, the person I don't know. But over time, they've grown a lot closer and it actually seemed like they were thriving with this podcast. And Trisha just ended up having an entire mental breakdown on one of the episodes about how Ethan hired someone new for the podcast crew that she did not approve of, even though it's really not her company. And that this person requested an idea for a topic on the podcast that tricia didn't like and that led to this freak out about how ethan's making more money than tricia from the podcast even though he provides all of the extra stuff to do the podcast right now he has this five percent thing that go to

that goes towards the crew so she wanted to hire an entire new crew and it was just this entire business argument but this turned into tricia saying saying that Ethan sexually assaulted her or harassed, sexually harassed her. My bad, sexually harassed her on the podcast. And just she was bringing all these things to light that were just completely fabricated, it seemed, or at least blown out of proportion. Now, with all of that said, the over-under for episodes for this podcast, I think you told me when it launched, was probably like 50. So what did they get to, 43? I think, I don't know. I think it was less than 43. It was a weekly thing and it started back in December, maybe. So what happens now? What happens to your girl, Trisha? Well, here's the thing.

Trisha's fiance is named Moses, and Moses's sister is Ethan Klein's wife. Yeah. So either way, she is going to be tied to this family, and she has completely just destructed her relationship with Ethan. There's no way this is a fake thing? I mean, it definitely could be a publicity stunt, considering how Trisha seems like manic right now, even though she said that she's not

and that she's in perfect mental health. It really doesn't seem like she is considering she talks about how she self-sabotaged herself in the past and this seems like that. But it's just, it's really disappointing. And although- Just for the people listening out there, Zoe watches this every day.

Every day. They're over two-hour episodes. Nobody made you laugh more than Trisha Payton. Because although I accept that she is not a good person and she has had a lot of faults in the past, she is truly a character. I think she's really funny because she's so just oblivious to how awful she is.

She's, she's human Borat. Okay. And she is human Borat. Maybe that should be your next podcast. She's the roach of the internet. She'll never go away, but I am extremely disappointed in you,

Tricia. Best to you, Ethan. This leads us to another person you're disappointed with. Worst comeback of the half year, David Dobrik. David. He decided to come back after a pretty bad-

Cancellation. Yeah, justified one. A justified one, yeah. And now he's just kind of came back one day and was making YouTube videos again, like nothing ever happened. See, I have a complicated array of emotions on this situation because although i am in no support of david dobrik i don't accept or condone anything that he did should i give a brief overview of what happened yeah no somebody yeah just just just google it it's not allegations against one of

his friends and he accepted it blah blah blah not a good thing look it up if you're interested um but david just one day after putting out two apology videos, the first being pretty insincere and getting a lot of backflash on the internet because of that, put out a second video, which was more traditional to the YouTube apology style. The first apology video was so bad that it led to a Saturday night live sketch with somebody like a David Dobrik type character, just repeatedly posting apology videos. That was really funny. That was funny.

The internet can be funny sometimes guys still, even in 2021 when everyone's super sensitive, but continuing on David just one day decided to post a, post a new Tuesday video, four minutes and 20 seconds as they usually are, and nothing's changed. He has the same cast minus the guy who had the entire situation. But it just seems like nothing has changed.

His content's completely the same. And although I do think that he really does harass his friends and he's not a good guy and what he did was just unacceptable, there is some sense of comfort in David's videos being back. Oh, so you do have complicated feelings about this. It's complicated because I remember summer 2019 when I got into David Dobrik, maybe it was summer 2018. So many years ago. So many years ago.

It was a really nice, consistent thing in my life where I would go on YouTube on a crisp Tuesday afternoon with my crackers and my juice, and I'd watch one of his videos, and I'd get a good laugh for four minutes and 20 seconds. And that feeling came back in some sense. Sometimes the ride just ends, and you just move on to another ride. That was a bad one. Next one. What type of metaphor was that? I don't know. It was a bad... I was already moving to our next word.

Favorite post-vaccination trends. So most of your friends are vaccinated and life is starting to get normal again. I think all of my friends are. Yeah. All right. Give us your number one favorite post-vaccination trend. I think parties are my number one right now. And I know you don't,

you don't like that, but why would I like that? You're 16. I know, but I went to like my first, like actual, like party a few weeks ago and it was, I had a wonderful time. It was really fun. Well, but, but the, the trend is you're not saying what the trend is. What is the trend? I thought it was like theme parties. Oh, yeah, theme parties. This is an LA thing. Sorry, guys. Yeah, they probably do this in other places.

I don't think it's specific to LA. But I went to like a, what's it called? A casino night party. And then there's like cowboy parties. And like just these theme parties where you can put together like fun outfits and go hang out with your friends. I enjoy parties. This is my worst nightmare.

I think that they're fun as long as you're doing them safe. You like going to parties though. Dad just wants me to be a jail inmate in my room and never leave the house. That sounds great. Just watch Grey's Anatomy. I do that and then you yell at me for doing that. What can I do, Bill? We won't talk about the party thing, but I do that and then you yell at me for doing that. What can I do, Bill? So you did, we won't talk about the party thing, but I do trust you. I don't trust Ben,

but I trust you. I trust you to make the right decisions. I wouldn't trust Ben either considering he's been at summer camp for two days and already has a girlfriend. I trust you to make the right decisions. Thank you. I don't trust you to ever get ready for anything you have to do to pack correctly on time. How dare you bring our fights into this party? This is just not relevant.

I trust that you will behave at a party. The other fun post-vaccination trend for you is just classic beach days, which I think ties into summer because you didn't go to the beach last year. No, I didn't because we were all stuck in our homes and beaches were closed. You weren't really allowed to go to the beach with friends and do the whole thing. And now the beach days are back where you can bring your towels and lay out and have picnic stuff and umbrellas and going in the ocean and blah, blah, blah. And by the way, F you to anyone who goes to the beach just to lay on the sand and get tan. F you. You suck. If you don't go in the ocean when you go to the beach, I'm extremely disappointed in you and you should go back to your house and never come back. Best publicity stunt of the half

year. I just have written down Rodrigo versus Sabrina. I don't even know what that means. You don't know what that means? Well, explain it. Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter. Yeah, okay. Okay, so some background on this situation. Olivia Rodrigo had some involvement with Joshua Bassett, her co-host on High School Musical and Musical the Series, and there was a break in their relationship. Olivia released an album called Sour, which you broke down with your friend Ella on this podcast. Yes, on this podcast. Biggest album of the half year so far. We all know about this.

Just basically alluding to her breakup with Joshua and how everything's horrible and she's lost him, blah, blah, blah. But then comes in Joshua's new speculated girl from a couple months ago, Sabrina Carpenter, who released a song called Skin, I think. I didn't listen to it um and it was basically just about like he's he's with me now and he you don't have him anymore so stop talking about him like kind of just alluding to this like this is like biggie tupac biggie tupac yeah it was like get off my man he's mine now he's on my skin in my bed blah blah blah a little racy to be honest

whatever so sabrinapenter released that. Everyone kind of got all rowdy about it, considering that season two of High School Musical, the musical, the series, where Joshua Bassett and Olivia Rodrigo have involvement on the show as their characters. So super uncomfortable with this entire situation. But obviously, Olivia and Sabrina

were pinned against each other because of this entire like old-fashioned love triangle old-fashioned love triangle but but then there's a plot twist it's a plot twist it comes out that Joshua Bassett has come out as being in some part of the LGBTQ community I don't think he specified if what he identifies as yeah extremely happy for him i love joshua bassett i think he is a really adorable human being and i'm happy for him that he is out now and he feels comfortable with what with whatever he is identifying as which i don't know so i'm not going to make any guesses great job but you navigated that way better than i would thank you i i appreciate it really happy for him

but this completely debunks or doesn't the speculations against olivia and sabrina i mean they could have been with him before he realized that he it has some aspersions like the timing doesn't really matter yeah it doesn't it doesn't match but i mean he could be bi or or whatever and he could like girls and boys or whatever it may be doesn't matter but still it was just like whoa like They're fighting over this guy who potentially could not have interest in either of them or maybe this isn't even about this guy maybe it was an entire publicity stunt and it just It rose a lot of speculation over the internet. So for the people listening this was

Out of anything you've talked about in the first half year, this love triangle and the timing of it was probably the most you've discussed. Yeah, for sure. With like Ella and people like that. Yeah, because- Like what is going on? This is, it's so current in our lives. And it's like, it speaks, this love triangles have existed for what?

Millions of years, since the beginning of the world. Some good ones on Grey's Anatomy. Yeah, Grey's. And then- 90210, basically, it brought back the love triangle. Sabrina and Blair and that other guy that I don't remember his name of, because I don't really like Gossip Girl that much. Ben and the two girls at-

Ben and the two girls at IMG. Right now. Mom, dad in the Celtics Rodrigo Sabrina, we don't know how much They actually hate each other There's a possibility this was all A work, as they would say in wrestling terms

And if it was, props to them Because they did a wonderful job Best pop culture Crossover Into your world Our half half-year winner, is the whole Britney Spears saga, which you've been, your generation is fascinated by. I've been keeping up with it pretty well.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the reason that this is such a crossover moment is because Britney Spears, although she is still an icon to anyone, she's not as relevant to my age group as she was to prior age groups and people who 15 years ago yeah people who existed when she peaked i mean i was what in the womb when she was yeah you were like minus one years i was in diapers yeah so i just i think that keeping up with this entire situation and how involved my generation has gotten in the Free Britney movement and just like supporting Britney and learning and being on her side with everything that's happened.

It's really interesting because she's not someone that I grew up loving. I knew like maybe one or two of her songs. I couldn't tell you more than that. And I don't know much about her, but I do know everything about this situation that she's going through and how horrible her life conditions are and i i just i know everything that has happened with her and she's still not someone who found out what an iud was i knew what an iud was oh sorry um all right well britney i hope it works out for her and now she has a whole new generation of fans rooting for her yeah worst worst post-vaccination trend this is an interesting one so you have the fall of youtube for this explain this this could be a very varying opinions for someone else and you could feel

completely differently but i feel like since you just adjusted your hat in a really strange way. I feel like since COVID has ended, YouTube has gotten much worse. Except for Emma Chamberlain, who I feel like has kept her content coming weekly. Yeah. The YouTube has just been so bad recently. I used to be a YouTube connoisseur watching like every minute that I had free time to chill and be on my computer, I would be watching YouTube. And now that hardly ever happens because the content on YouTube just sucks. Like people are able to be free now when doing their own thing and like existing in the real world. And I think that's really affected YouTube and content

because we've been living in our phones and our devices for the past, what, like year and a half due to COVID being stuck in our houses. And we didn't really take advantage of the fact that we have wonderful lives and we have this world all out there that we can be existing in the present. So now I feel like because of this

and because we have this new sense of life and that we're allowed to be outside and doing whatever we want youtubers aren't really picking up their cameras as much and filming things they're just kind of existing which for youtubers and for people in general i feel like it's a lot better that we're taking advantage of this new knowledge that we have of like, not everything lasts and not everything is a forever thing. But it sucks for the YouTube content because no one's filming anything anymore, really. Like there's no interesting videos out there and I'm just disappointed in it. So you'd rather have the pandemic? No, I would rather have pre-pandemic when people were a lot more unaware of how

important it is to really appreciate life. We left out one more pop culture crossover. What was it? I was going to spring this one on you. You were telling me the Bo Burnham Netflix show crossed over in a TikTok world. Oh, it's huge i think bo burnham songs i haven't watched his netflix show yet i love bo burnham he i think he is an absolute genius i did meet him and he's a he's a wonderful guy he's so smart i loved the movie eighth grade and i'm excited to watch his show but i've been hearing his song circling around on tiktok it's like the one that's like, on our basic girls' Instagrams, but people are taking these sounds and making TikToks with them, seeing if they have these things on their Instagram. They're like stopping the video

when I have one of these things on my Instagram or just using his sound for videos in the background to like explain what TikTok is. TikTok is like video memes. So they're using his sounds as video memes, which is I think what he intended them for, right? They're all satire. So he did this awesome Netflix special.

So he hits the streaming side and then it somehow crossed over into the TikTok side. And it's about the most modern double whammy you can have. Good job, Bo Burnham. Yeah. He's always been like that, though. He's always captured the attention of my age group. So good for him. He's a really intelligent guy.

Well, time to talk about people who haven't done as good of a job. Good segue. The biggest cancellation of the half year, Sienna Mae. This one. This one hurt. Sienna Mae was a big winner of the 2020 award. She was your favorite TikToker. Yeah, she was my newest TikToker. Yeah. Damn. Well, Sienna is in a sticky situation.

Give us the 10-second recap. Okay. As you know, I get bored hearing why people got canceled. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to do this fast. So she got canceled. She got canceled for allegedly sexually assaulting her partner's situation. Shit person. Okay.

And people hate her now. I can't believe it. People loved her six months ago. She was loved. Yeah. And now it's over. She, everyone just turned on her.

Everyone hates her. Everyone makes videos, making fun of her consistently. I wouldn't, cause she, if this. No, I'm just surprised that it changed so fast over six months. The internet's a weird place, man. If you do, if you do shit wrong, people will find out and turn on you immediately. People look for reasons to turn on anyone.

And although this is well-deserved, if what happened is- If the allegations are true. Are true, people turn on you and they look for reasons to turn on you. This is why cancel culture is so toxic because anything they just search and they're like little mites and they're trying to find something that you did wrong and then bringing that to the surface and canceling you. This one was deserved, but I just- Cancel culture is a very strange, strange thing. And then James Charles also got canceled. Yeah, James Charles is also in the same boat with.

That one seems like it was genuinely deserved. It's legit. Google that one if you want more. Look it up. I don't want to talk about it. We won't be seeing James again. Next award is Worst Kardashian Imitation of the Half Year. The winner is?

The D'Amelio sisters. They were irrelevant at the start of 2020. When quarantine happened, they were irrelevant. I just, I don't. What are they trying to do now? What have they been doing in 2021 to try to mix it up? They're making YouTube videos. They tried that dinner with the D'Amelio's thing.

And they're doing this reality TV show that no one cares about. Like the only people that know about them are 12 year olds. And 12 year olds don't care for reality TV. They care for 10 seconds videos of Charli D'Amelio dancing. And it's just, I don't know who the target audience is for this so-called show. Wait, what we're learning is that if you become famous just from doing silly dances on TikTok, that might not translate to actual other vehicles. Although you thought it was silly that the girl I am Madeline was my TikToker.

I didn't think it was silly. Well, i am madeline was my tiktoker i didn't think it was silly i just you made fun of it a little bit but you were just like and then she goes and gets coffee no but here's the thing like this is where it starts because it's not it doesn't all have to be this like serious like creation thing where it's like really creative although it's great if you are really creative and you're doing yeah fun. It's just like, at least she's not doing silly dances, you know? We don't have a dumbest cancel culture moment award. Maybe we'll have one for the end of the year. I think every cancel culture moment is dumb.

We do have a heartthrob of the year. Just the heartthrob of the half year, Vinnie Hacker. He was the one in the wrestling match that Ben paid $50 for without consent. Oh, we forgot to make that. No, we did. The second worst post-vax trend is these. Oh, shoot. I wrote that down, you jerk.

I know. My bad. So I messed up. So Vinny Hacker leads into. Vinny Hacker is the number one heartthrob right now for. Yeah. And partially this is because of the wrestling match. So basically TikTokers are doing these wrestling matches.

But they're boxing. They're not wrestling. They're boxing. Sorry. Get your shit together. Sorry,. But they're boxing. They're not wrestling. They're boxing, sorry. Get your shit together. Sorry, Dad. They're boxing. TikTokers are just boxing each other. And you know why they're doing it?

Because idiots like your brother Ben Simmons and his friend Lucci are trying to pay-per-view it from some crazy website that it defaulted and they had to watch it on their computer, but they were still super happy. I don't understand it. I don't care for boxing, but Vinnie Hacker is now just the most loved guy

on the internet. Everyone thinks he's extremely attractive. I'm in the bandwagon. Vinnie Hacker's a good one. Vinnie, stay away from my daughter. The relationship of the half year, I have written down Olivia Pontone and Coffee Girl? What's her name? Olivia.

Olivia Pontone. Olivia Ponton. Olivia Ponton? I think. And Coffee Girl. And Coffee. She's like coffee. All right.

So explain this. So why is this the relationship of the half year? So Olivia Ponton had some issues. she was canceled lightly like last year she dated this other tiktoker kio and there was an entire cheating scandal and i think olivia made a few mistakes um but she has she's come back and she is now dating this girl who does food reviews who goes to ucla and they're like the cutest couple ever. And that's it. They just, they make videos together.

They're, they're happy. They're both blonde. They look kind of similar, which is a little trippy, but they just, they're genuinely look really happy together. And there was some speculation that their relationship might be, might not be genuine. I think it is at this point. When you say there was speculation, where is that speculation? Just on the internet. People were making videos trying to Photoshop the girl saying that she's

only with Olivia because of her sister who's trying to get into a modeling agency. But this is really dragged out if that's the case. I think that they're really cute together, and I'm in full support. Best of luck to them. Best of luck. Reversing course, the feud of the half year, which you had written down as Nessa and Mads. Nessa Barrett and Mads. We've talked about this before.

I'm sure those names don't ring a bell at all, and you have no idea what's going on. Two great names. Nessa is a great name, and Mads is very memorable names. I don't know what either of them do. What do they do? They're TikTokers. Okay. Like everyone else in the world. Why are they feuding?

So Mads was dating this guy, Jaden Hossler. They had an entire relationship going. Nessa was with Josh, whatever his last name is. Don't remember. Another TikToker. Really people that don't matter much. But Nessa and Jaden Jaden as Maz was dating Jaden were doing like a music video together and they were just creating music and things

and then apparently I think there was like some sort of cheating thing or after Mads broke up with Jaden he got with Nessa it's just this entire situation triangle or love rectangle kind of a love rectangle because Josh is what you broke down on Tea Time Yes, it is It's kind of old news, but they're still really hating each other And now Nessa is happily Openly together with Jaden And Mads has a completely new boyfriend

Kind of would have been awesome If she got with Josh But whatever, she has a new boyfriend I was just thinking that She's posting videos like f you jayden and she's really pretty so it's like he i don't know i don't really like homewreckers so i don't i'm not effing with so your team are you team nessa i'm team i'm team mads but i i really don't care to be honest. Then I'm also team Mads. Good. Two more.

This is my favorite one. The funniest trend of the half year that will definitely be the title of a 2022 Netflix movie is... This is the ick. The ick. Explain what the ick is. If the ick doesn't ring a bell, I will explain it to you. The ick is a thing when someone has a significant other and they see said significant other doing something that grosses them out

or makes them uncomfortable or just like is a weird thing that makes them... How do I explain this? It just makes them go, ick. Like, ick. Like, ew. Like, why would they do that? And it makes you unattracted to that person. Therefore, you get the ick for them.

Let me give an example if that wasn't clear enough. Let's hear the example, though. So let's say Ben is dating his IMG girlfriend. Okay. Let's say IMG girlfriend sees ben accidentally trip while playing football but in a really uncoordinated and weird looking way he just trips on the ground and it's like really cringy cringe that's a good word it was cringy when he fell girlfriend sees this and whenever she sees ben even when he's not tripping and looks nice she envisions him tripping in her head therefore

she icks and cringes and can no longer be with Ben. So it's almost like the con it's like the conjuring. What? When, when you're, when you have an evil spirit in your house, that's just haunting your brain. It's haunting. It's haunting you. It haunts you because even if you love this person, and even if they don't look like the way that they look when they gave you that ick, it's just you keep icking. Like I was talking to my friend Dylan and she was like, he opened the car door weird. I have an ick for him now. I am breaking up with him.

And then she broke up with him. Wow. The car doors, man. The falling on the ground weird. The getting coffee. I remember I dated this girl in the mid-90s once. We went on two dates, and then she ghosted me. And then I found out after it was because on one of the dates we were talking about,

I was saying how I used to take baths because I had bad back. But I was just saying how I loved taking baths. And apparently, she got the ick from that. And that was it. Oh, my god. The ick has existed forever. The ick's been around forever. It's just the ick didn't have an official name.

Now it does. You know what it's going to have an official? Hey, Netflix, give Zoe royalties when you make your movie called The Ick. The Ick. Oh, my. That would be such a funny movie. You should just write it. Write The Ick.

I should. I should write The Ick. The Ick is a good title for a movie. I can totally see that on your Netflix screen. This is TM'd. No one can take this idea. I will sue you. Zoe's claiming the idea right now.

Speaking of Zoe, the last trend, and then we're going, our last award. Zoe's dumbest trend of the half year was you've watched 14 seasons of Grey's Anatomy. 13. 13. To be exact. And here's the thing. It's been a dark year. As you know, I don't like Grey's Anatomy. I think it's a dark show. I think there's a lot of tragedy and sadness. Every time I come on, somebody's lying in a hospital bed and either they lost the ability

to walk or they're about to die or they're getting bad news or they're about to be put to sleep or whatever. And I just don't, there's no way this doesn't affect your mood watching two, three Grey's Anatomy's a day. What else do you expect from a hospital show? Why can't you mix it up though? Like work in like some curb your enthusiasms to like change your mood or something. Because Grey's Anatomy just invokes things in me that nothing else can.

I don't, it makes me feel like I could conquer the world. Yeah, but we had to take you to urgent care that time because you were dehydrated. Yeah, and it was the best day of my life. But you got psyched out because you went through all your Grey's Anatomy things, and then you talked yourself into some illness that you probably didn't even have. No, I didn't. That's not true. That did happen to me before, but this was not that time i was actually really excited i had an iv in my arm and there

was there were all these emts around we weren't excited we were worried i saw people people like being rushed around in their hospital beds i was like oh shit she's going to get she's going to get an appendectomy and i was like like, I'm Dr. Zoe Simmons. I will be helping you out today. Like I was in my element. I think that was one of my favorite days of the year. This should be another TV show. After you create the ick,

you can create a TV show about somebody who has no medical experience whatsoever, but just watch Grey's Anatomy, who now gets called into duty during a doctor shortage at a hospital and then comes through a couple of times with some right advice and they just give her a job. You don't need to have a medical license. You're so good at this. You're now a doctor. Just from Grey's. Just from Grey's. You know, the hospital is a really scary place.

Yeah, no kidding. No, but I was there and I was laying in my bed and I couldn't get a room for like hours because the hospital was filled and there was just this lady who was just screaming and like slamming on the wall. The hospital sucks. It's not a fun place to go. No, my dad. It was so riveting. It was...

See, now you're going to get canceled because it's like Zoe Simmons loves hospitals. No, guys. I think that hospitals and sad things that happen to people really suck. I'm just saying it's like seeing a celebrity on the street being in a hospital because I basically live in the hospital for four hours every day on TV. So then actually seeing it in real life is like, holy God. You're walking into your television. Yeah, I'm living it.

I was, dad, I was in an ambulance. I can't wait until you're done with Grey's Anatomy. How many more seasons? Everyone died or left the show except Meredith. Yeah, Meredith is going to live forever. Does Meredith have a walker? Is Meredith older than I am? Meredith has been through a plane crash.

Multiple people that she loved has died. She's been through nearly anything a person can be through. Her husband got... He saved somebody. Spoilers, spoilers. Yeah, okay, sorry. Spoilers, who are we spoiling it for? The show's been on for 17 years.

I'm just telling you, there's spoilers ahead. Is Meredith your favorite character? No. Meredith honestly bugs me sometimes. Alex Kurev is my favorite character. Oh. All right, that's it for the half season

awards. So we'll see you back on this podcast, assuming we both make it at the end of the year. But you might pop on Ring or Dish a couple times. Hopefully we're in a better place. And you're not letting me walk around with drug dealers

not caring where I am. Just be more prepared. Figure out how to get from point A not caring where I am. Just be more prepared. Figure ahead from point A to point B. Pack. Get your stuff ready. And don't realize two minutes before you're about to do something that you have to do something. Guys, this is a joke. We love each other. We love each other very much.

I'm very fortunate to have my dad as my dad. What a great way to end this podcast. No, I really do. I love you a lot. But we've been better. dad, but what a great way to end this podcast. No, I really do. I love you a lot, but thanks. We've been better. Um, dad,

maybe this podcast, it's been great, but you have given me the, can we need to break up? All right. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. All right.

Thanks to Woz and Chris. Thanks to Matt. Thanks to Zoe. Thanks to Craig Horaback filling in for Nephew Kyle today as our producer. We'll be back on Thursday with one more. We'll see if the clips can drag this along. Holy shit. What a playoff. See you on the wayside Let her say I don't have Feelings within On the wayside

On the wayside Let her say I don't have