The Bill Simmons Podcast - NFL Wagers, Running TV Shows, 'The Good Place,' and 'This Is Us' With Mike Schur and Dan Fogelman | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 417)

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons announces a new podcast and gives some NFL picks for Week 3 before sitting down with powerhouse television showrunners Mike Schur and Dan Fogelman to talk about some ...of their past work, including 'The Office,' 'Parks and Rec,' 'This Is Us,' and 'The Good Place.' They also discuss the NFL, failed TV pilots, the Netflix takeover, shows that run for too long, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network, brought to you by ZipRecruiter. You know what's not smart? Having Joe House on Friday rolling again after he sucked with his picks for two straight weeks. He wasn't invited. Didn't get the invite this week. You know what else isn't smart?
Starting point is 00:00:17 Job sites that overwhelm you with tons of the wrong resumes. Luckily, there's a smart way at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS, where right now, if you go to ZipRecruiter and search The Ringer, we have a bunch of Ringer jobs available. And you can apply if you want to work for The Ringer, if you want to be a podcast producer, a copy editor. I think we have like four or five jobs up there. Check it out. ZipRecruiter is the best.
Starting point is 00:00:41 Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. ZipRecruiter, the best right now my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire we're also brought to you by SeatGeek the best app for buying and selling tickets to sporting events
Starting point is 00:00:53 concerts and more we're in the the home stretch of the SeatGeek playoffs right now we have baseball and basketball and football
Starting point is 00:01:01 and college football and hockey even MLS $20 off your first SeatGeek purchase. All you have to do is use promo code BS, download the SeatGeek app or go right to SeatGeek.com. We're also brought to you by a couple of new podcasts, Dual Threat with Ryan Rosillo. I was on that podcast this week talking about quarterbacks, if you missed it. I was also on the rewatchables this week. We did True Romance.
Starting point is 00:01:27 It was a barrel of laughs. Had a very good time. A lot of upsets. We ended up renaming a category and we had the biggest upset in the history of the Dion Waiters Award. All of that happened. Check it out, True Romance.
Starting point is 00:01:38 We also announced a new podcast today that I'll be talking about right after the start with Pearl Jam, Halloween Unmasked. Details to come on that. Check out theringer.com for all of our NBA preview stuff that is still going, as well as a really great oral history of Rounders, which we did a rewatch of last week, but Alan Siegel did an oral history of.
Starting point is 00:02:00 We got everybody. Matt Damon, Ed Norton, Brian Koppelman, David Levine, you name it, they were in there. Check it out. People loved it. Also on the video side, Kevin Clark's worst peaks ever went up this week. He was one and two last week.
Starting point is 00:02:15 Our goal was to go oh and three every week with that. I liked the batch of picks he had this week. We also debuted Roger Sherman's new video series, Master Sports, where he gives you a little class about things to understand about sports. Check it out. It's funny. All that stuff's on our YouTube, on our Twitter.
Starting point is 00:02:36 Check out the YouTube.com slash The Ringer. Twitter is at Ringer. Instagram. Yeah. We got it going. Coming up, talk TV with Mike Schor and Dan Fogelman, who run two very successful shows. And I'm gonna do some NFL picks
Starting point is 00:02:57 and talk about our new podcast, Halloween Unmasked, coming up right now, right after this. Pearl Jam, here we go. All right, as I mentioned, Halloween Unmasked, we announced it yesterday. You can subscribe to it right now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. This is something that we thought about doing initially with another movie, and it fell through by no fault of our own.
Starting point is 00:03:40 And we still like the idea, and then kind of gravitated toward Halloween. And here we are. The idea was a lot of these narrative podcasts that we hear are always true crime related or trying to break down some mystery. Or this person, Nephew Kyle, disappeared after he got a tattoo. What happened? Find out in this new seven episode series. What happened to Nephew Kyle?
Starting point is 00:04:05 It's a lot of that. And we wanted to do something that was more of a deep dive into something that culturally we felt mattered and something that mattered to a lot of us. Halloween came out when I was nine years old. I was terrified by the commercials. I don't even think I saw it for about a year, but it's been in my life for 40 years, literally because the 40 year anniversary I was terrified by the commercials. I don't even think I saw it for about a year,
Starting point is 00:04:27 but it's been in my life for 40 years, literally because the 40 year anniversary is coming up and they are releasing the new Halloween movie from Blumhouse. But what's interesting about Halloween is it completely blew up the model for what a horror movie was. It launched a whole new era of slasher movies. And then over the next 40 years,
Starting point is 00:04:46 as certain eras got burned out, new eras came in for better and worse. Halloween was kind of always there representing whatever the new model was. So what we wanted to do is we, we, we found Amy Nicholson, who's terrific, who we always wanted to work with. And we created this podcast about basically that starts with the making of Halloween and what the movie scene was like in the late 70s when this movie was made. How it was made, how it hit, what happened after it hit, what it led to, and then all the incarnations and um all the eras that came after leading to what happened this decade with um yeah this another renaissance with horror movies with blumhouse and 824 and um even netflix and halloween it was time to bring it back and
Starting point is 00:05:41 blumhouse did it this time they've had the most success with horror movies of anyone. And 40 years later, still chugging along, Michael Myers. I saw the movie this week. I mean, I'm a bad critic for this because I love every Halloween movie, but I loved it. I think the thing that's changed for me is I now root for Myers over the people that we're supposed to be rooting for. I'm rooting for him to commit all the murders and pull off and do his magic and work his thing. He had some tricks this time around that I enjoyed. 40 years, a lot of thinking and visualizing. I really felt he stepped up his game.
Starting point is 00:06:17 His killing game was great. But it's good. People will like it. It's good to have him back. I liked how they made the mask. It almost had like a little receding hairline in it. Like it hit the mask that age with him. It's a good one.
Starting point is 00:06:32 So Halloween on Mask, subscribe now. And if you care about movies and you like deep dives and learning stuff and finding out things, I think this is going to be really good. And we're proud of it. It's something that we want to get into more and more. We're kind of picking our spots with it. But our podcast network has been really successful for us.
Starting point is 00:06:51 And the natural evolution of that is to try to figure out different ways to tell stories. I thought we did that last year with Binge Mode with Mallory and Jason. They figured out a way to kind of dive into that Game of Thrones library in a new way. So we're going to keep doing that. And as I tweeted this week, we want to keep growing our podcast. We are always looking for producers and people who are good at this stuff. And that goes for the whole website, but especially with podcasts. It's been, you know, it's a lot of people got into the medium at the same time,
Starting point is 00:07:20 and it's been hard to find people. But now it seems like, you know, as we have more of a plan, as we keep going with this stuff, we know what we need. So check it out. Check out the ZipRecruiter ads we put out because that also helps too.
Starting point is 00:07:36 Halloween, I'm asked, subscribe now. All right, let's do some NFL picks really quick. I always really, really like week three perennially. I think week three is good because you have a couple of benefits. One is you've seen two weeks of games. And if you actually watch the games, you're going to have real opinions. I was able to watch football from start to finish week one and week two and saw a lot and learned a lot and feel like I have a pretty good grasp of what's going on right now. That's one thing. The other thing is the overreactions are in full swing.
Starting point is 00:08:12 Week three is really the week when the overreactions go off the grid. And I think the thing for me that I've learned over the years, think about what the line should be. And if the actual line is two or three points off, either stay away or jump on it. And I think a good example, I like the Chiefs. I bet on them the first two weeks. I won on their money line last week. I'm just a fan.
Starting point is 00:08:47 Here's the problem. Now people enjoy the Mahomes era so much, and it's been a whole week of Mahomes mania. We did it on Ryan Rossell's podcast. Everyone's going nuts about Mahomes. Now they are favored by six and a half at home against the Niners. The problem is their defense is terrible. And if you really watch that Steelers game closely,
Starting point is 00:09:13 there were guys open all over the field the entire game for the Steelers. And it came down to one of those things where the Chiefs basically just outscored them. I never like to jump on a team that's like six, seven points or higher that can't finish the game. And I think even if they're up 14 against the Niners, or let's say they're up 13 against the Niners with two minutes left, Jimmy could still come down and get a touchdown.
Starting point is 00:09:47 So what I'm thinking is I like the Niners a little bit. They are right now plus 240 on the money line. I also like the Indianapolis Colts a little bit. They're getting six and a half in Philly. And if you watch the Colts closely, now I watched the Colts Bengals game in week one and the Bengals really had to struggle to pull that one out. And it was hard to tell whether it was more of a reflection of the Bengals aren't that good or the Bengals actually are good and the Colts are a little better than we thought. I didn't think the Colts were going to be good. But then the next week rolls around. Everybody loves the Redskins coming off week one because
Starting point is 00:10:27 they killed Arizona. Well, as it turns out, Arizona is terrible. Everybody's going to kill them. And then we kind of overrated Washington and we kind of underrated Indianapolis. That line was too high. That line was six. And in retrospect, probably should have been three and a half. So you're getting an extra two and a half points there. The Colts look pretty good. Luck looks really good. Their running backs are not very good, but they're able to move the ball because he's just really good and they can do enough on both ends of the ball to kind of hang around
Starting point is 00:10:56 and he can make a couple plays. I think their coach might be good. I think the Frank Reich era, we were waiting for it for a long time. I was dubious. I didn't know if he was just an offensive coordinator only, but I think he might be good. I think the Frank Reich era, we were waiting for it for a long time. I was dubious. I didn't know if he was just an offensive coordinator only, but I think he might be good. And here's why that's important. He used to coach for the Eagles. He used to coach their offense. I hate going against a coach who just coached for the other team. This is the biggest reason to stay away from the Pats this week, ironically. So the Colts are six and a half in Philly. Here's the problem with Philly. Ajayi is already hurt.
Starting point is 00:11:32 They're relying a lot on Corey Clement. Their receivers, they're really not explosive. You watch them and it's weird, but they even miss Torrey Smith. Jeffrey's been banged up. I think it's hard for them to move the ball right now. I don't think that's going to be the case in November, by the way. I'm just talking about right now in September. I worry about their ability to extend leads, to make big plays. It's just a lot. Now you have Wentz coming back too, and he's going to be a little bit rusty.
Starting point is 00:12:03 But this line just seems high to me. And I do think there's a chance the Colts could catch them by surprise. I would not be shocked. So what I'm going to do, I'm putting a very small, this is like a one fourth of a unit. I'm going to put on a Colts plus 25 Niners plus 240 parlay. They both have to win. 10 to 1 odds. 10 to 1. Colts and Niners win. All right. So that's my little appetizer.
Starting point is 00:12:31 That's just like, that's a palate cleanser. All right. For the main bets, apologies to a couple teams because I came damn close to taking you and I just couldn't pull the trigger. Cincinnati plus three in Carolina. I really like the Cincinnati team. I don't think they're one of the best four teams, but I think they're in the top eight. Watch Carolina pretty closely last week against Atlanta. They were
Starting point is 00:12:49 never... I know the score. They only lost by seven. I never felt like they were going to win that game. They're just banged up on both sides. I'm not counting them out. I don't like them in September. I think the season goes along, I think they're going to get better and better. But I just don't like the spot they're in right now.
Starting point is 00:13:13 And I like the spot since he's in right now. The problem is Joe Mixon got hurt. And if Mixon was healthy, I would be jumping all over Cincinnati. I really thought he was a difference maker for them. As it is, they can still throw the ball. I've never been a giant Giovanni Bernard fan, but I'm staying away from that one.
Starting point is 00:13:31 The plus three looks enticing. If it was three and a half, it might even talk me into it, but I'm staying away from that one. Another one that I like that I'm not going to bet on is Denver and Baltimore. And the reason is I just don't like betting against Baltimore at home. They've had too much success there,
Starting point is 00:13:47 but this line seems too high to me. I've watched both of these teams. Denver's plus five and a half in Baltimore. And I just think they're the same team. I don't really feel like there's much difference between them. I don't understand why this line isn't three. And it just feels like you're getting
Starting point is 00:14:04 two to two and a half extra points for no reason at all. Maybe because it's in Baltimore. At the same time, I just don't like Benny against Baltimore. There's certain things in Baltimore, unless they're really in a tailspin. And it doesn't seem like they're totally in a tailspin yet. So that's another one that I checked out. The third one, god damn, the Chargers line is too high. It's plus seven for the Chargers against the Rams in LA.
Starting point is 00:14:31 The Chargers are legit talented. They could absolutely win this game. They're going to be able to move the ball. Nobody's moved the ball against the Rams in the first two weeks, but it's more because of the teams they played than anything. They played the Raiders and the Cardinals. Those are two of the five worst teams in the league. There's huge overreaction stuff going on with the Rams.
Starting point is 00:14:53 They have the best Super Bowl odds. And this has all the makings of the Chargers either win in L.A. or come damn close and Anthony Lynn screws it up or a field goal kicker misses a field goal kicker, all the terrible things that usually happen in the Chargers. With all of that said, I'm actually scared to go against the Rams. I do think there's a chance they could go start the season like 10 and 0. So even though there's an overreaction and it's stupid that the line's this high, I'm also like 25% of me wonders if they actually might be better than the overreaction and they might be a juggernaut.
Starting point is 00:15:33 I mean, they're just killing teams. Basically, I need to see them play a good team. My guess is that they're going to do really well. That's my guess. I am afraid of the Chargers as a live dog. The Rams are just dying to be thrown in a tease here. They're begging you. They're like, come on, minus seven.
Starting point is 00:15:57 We're right here. Throw us in a tease. I'm just scared of the Chargers. They have so many guys who can make big plays. I like that Mike Williams. I think he's actually been looking pretty good, but I'm staying away. No offense, Rams. Hope you don't take that one personally. All right, here we go. Here are the big ones. First one is the Saints plus three in Atlanta. I like this one for a couple of reasons. First of all, Saints indoors.
Starting point is 00:16:29 I like when they play indoors because I just think Breeze in his career and the stats back it up is a different guy indoors versus outdoors. I like that they didn't look good last week. So you have the first week where Fitzpatrick and the passing game just completely takes them by surprise. They still put up 40 points. Then you have the second week where they barely, barely, barely squeeze it out against Cleveland. And they look terrible.
Starting point is 00:16:56 And at one point, it's like 12 to 3 in the fourth quarter. And then the Browns kicker misses a kick. Like, that game's a disaster. And now we come out of that going, oh, the Saints, are we sure they're good? All that stuff. My counter is that I actually think the Browns are good, and if they had played Baker in week two, probably would have won that game.
Starting point is 00:17:18 But their defense, you know, Myles Garrett might be the best defensive player I've seen this year other than Khalil Mack. I think those are the two most dominant part I've seen this year other than Khalil Mack I think those are the two most dominant guys I've seen this year and actually you make the case that Brown just have a lot of talent so now you go backwards and you go wow they get
Starting point is 00:17:35 taken by surprise in week one by Fitzpatrick that's fine they still scored 40 points they just they had the wrong defense out there they got beaten by some big plays and it was just one of those games. It snowballed away from them. Then game two, Cleveland. Oh yeah, we'll take care of business.
Starting point is 00:17:49 Cleveland, Cleveland turns out to be better than anyone thinks. And they squeezed that one out. And now they're kind of undervalued. And Atlanta, like I thought Jones, I don't think I'm alone here. I thought he was the best part in their defense and to lose him, especially when he's the guy who's going to be chasing around Kamara in the backfield. I don't love this Atlanta team.
Starting point is 00:18:10 I don't think they're very well coached. Just something still seems funky with them. You never watch them and go, oh man, they're running on all cylinders. I think the Saints win this game. But I'm grabbing the plus three just to be safe. Saints plus three. It's my first pick. My second pick. So the Vikings, the Vikings right now are minus 16 and a half against Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills.
Starting point is 00:18:46 I thought about throwing this in teases. I thought about 10 point teases, seven point teases, putting them with like the pats or the rims. I thought of every sort of incarnation. And then I realized something. Actually, I'm realizing right now. Why not just bet the Vikings straight up?
Starting point is 00:19:13 What are the odds the Bills are going to score 10 points in this game? When I was in a gambling pool called the ZFL, and I've been in it for years and years, and we used to have this thing called the Oaks game, where my buddy Gus's friend, John Oaks, he would look at a game and he'd go, how many points are they going to score? And if you think of it that way,
Starting point is 00:19:32 that line becomes a lot less daunting. So minus 16 and a half. Oh my God, that's so many points. Jesus, how are they going to cover that? Well, how many points are the Bills going to score in Minnesota? 10? Seven? 10? 7? 3?
Starting point is 00:19:49 Vikings just need to get to 28 points. They cover. The Bills have a banged up secondary. That's not good. This feels like a pilot on Kirk Cousins doing the you like that stuff. They get Thielen going. Stefan Diggs makes a big play. And they just run over
Starting point is 00:20:05 him. I'm not worried about the 16 and a half. That game is seven, nothing, three minutes into the game and you're feeling great. So that's my second pick Vikings minus 16 and a half. I actually think that line should be like minus 20, to be honest. Third one, third and last. Watch Pittsburgh very carefully for two straight weeks. There is something really wrong with that team. And there's some locker room stuff that came out this week and a lot of people are wondering
Starting point is 00:20:33 if Tomlin lost control of the team. The Le'Veon Bell thing's weird. Battles with him. Antonio Brown doesn't show up to practice. You've read about all this stuff all week. It's obscuring the fact that their defense stinks. Their defense stinks.
Starting point is 00:20:50 That is not a good defense. And a lot of people I've heard have been saying, well, it's underrated how big of an impact Ryan Shazier has not being there anymore. Since he's been hurt, they're not the same defense. I don't think Ryan Shazier could have saved this defense. They're too slow. They don't have any team speed.
Starting point is 00:21:10 Shazier was the best player in the defense, and that kills them, obviously. But even if he was there, it's still a C-plus defense. They stink. So they're going to have to win this game with offense. But then you watch the offense. James Conner's fine. Solid backup. Brown's been good.
Starting point is 00:21:31 They don't really have that third explosive receiver like they used to have. The Chiefs have the worst defense in the league of any good team. And we're still able to get a couple stops. I think the Steelers were the first team ever that scored 37 points, or maybe the first team in like 50 years that scored 37 points didn't turn over the ball and lost at home. They're not good.
Starting point is 00:21:54 At some point, we're going to come to grips with the fact that the Steelers team is actually not good. It might even be this week. The counter then would be, well, Cleveland's better than we thought, tie in week one. KC is one of the best four teams in the league and squeaked it out by five. So actually Pittsburgh is a little underrated right now.
Starting point is 00:22:15 I don't see it. I watch them. I think Tampa's good. The thing is everybody's talking about Fitzpatrick and you have this defensive line, the front seven, like they get a lot of pressure. And it's a team that right now is succeeding without a running game, which I expect to change this week. But I just like them on a Monday night. I feel like there's a lot of energy around this Tampa team right now. And it's a team that hasn't really been that much fun for a while.
Starting point is 00:22:50 Last week, beating Philly, the Super Bowl champs at home. Now you're in a Monday night. The Pittsburgh stuff, it's just another day for everybody to talk about how effed up their team is. And my feeling on this stuff with sports is when there's real fragility in place and something's wrong, the worst thing you can do is shine a giant spotlight on it and put those people in a position to kind of either make it or break it. And that's where the Steelers are right now. And it reminds me a little bit of like, you know, you think about like Kobe's Laker teams near the,
Starting point is 00:23:22 near the end when they go into that Dallas playoff series and they just completely fall apart. I think the signs are there for Pittsburgh. I'm sure somebody could just cut the audio out of this and shove it in my face and have it come back to haunt me. But here's the thing. They might win. I might be wrong.
Starting point is 00:23:42 What I don't understand is why Tampa's an underdog in this game. Tampa's getting a point and a half. I watched the first two weeks. Worst case scenario, those two teams are even, and you're supposed to get three points when you're at home. Now people will say, well, it's a desperation game for Pittsburgh. It kind of is, but it's not really. They're 0-1-1.
Starting point is 00:23:59 This isn't like, oh, our season's screwed if we don't win this game. I just think the line should be Tampa by three. And anytime something is four or more points off, I'm all in. So that's my second big pick. I got Tampa and I got New Orleans. Now, quickly about the Patriots. The Pats are dying to be teased. Minus seven in Detroit, Matt Patricia, the whole thing.
Starting point is 00:24:28 A couple of things worried me about this game. One, the Josh Gordon thing, which I talked about on Marcelo's podcast, just felt desperate to me. It really did. It's a guy who hasn't played football in five years and a team that was so hopeless with receivers getting open last week that they just said F it and sent a fifth round pick to Cleveland, gave Josh Gordon the locker next to Tom Brady, and they're taking the Hail Mary chance that they can just keep his head on straight
Starting point is 00:24:55 for even five or six weeks just to stem the tide until Edelman gets back and Sonny Michel is feeling good and all that stuff. But it wreaked a desperation, which scares me. Another thing that scares me, Patricia worked for this team for 10 years. And if, I mean, nephew Kyle, you've been at the Ringer for a year and a half? Yeah, a year and a half. You know some of our weaknesses at this point.
Starting point is 00:25:22 Sure. Imagine if this was football and now you could compete against us with those weaknesses. Oh yeah. Game plans for days. Yeah. Jim Cunningham. What are Jim Cunningham's weaknesses? You want me to say them? No. Okay. But yeah, he at least will have an idea of how to slow the Pats down, especially when they don't have a deep threat right now, when it's pretty easy to double Gronk and take him out of the game at this point. And they haven't run the ball effectively at all.
Starting point is 00:25:52 They have a real problem at left tackle. Waddle got just torched in that Jacksonville game. So if he has an IQ of over 80, which allegedly he has, I don't understand how he wouldn't at least be able to slow the Pats down. On the other side, great receivers, fantastic group of dudes who make plays. And that's always perennially been an issue with the Pats. These teams that just have a bunch of receivers all who can do stuff.
Starting point is 00:26:23 And if you watched Eric Rowe last week, it's not like the Pats are deep at cornerback. So I just worry about this game. I fully expect the Pats to win. I don't want to sweat it out. I don't want to have Stafford up 14 to nothing in the first quarter. And I just think it's a stay away.
Starting point is 00:26:40 So I'm staying away from that one. It did take a long look at it. I'm going to end this before I end up doing a Vikings Rams tease. Because I just keep staring at that. The Rams might be really good. By Sunday, I might be doing that one as a tease, actually. So there we go. The big picks.
Starting point is 00:26:58 Saints plus three. Bucks plus one and a half. A little money line parlay for a tiny little taste on Colts and the Niners, 10 to one. And then the Vikings minus 16 and a half. So those are my picks. Enjoy them. I've done pretty well this year. I'm in the black so far.
Starting point is 00:27:24 I don't know. Either believe me or don't believe me. Coming up, Mike Schur and Dan Fogelman. But first, turn your dream into reality with Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easier than ever to launch your passion project, whether you're looking to start a new business, showcase your work, publish content, sell products, and more. Squarespace is the tool for you with beautiful templates created by world-class designers and the ability to customize just about
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Starting point is 00:28:27 domain. That is squarespace.com slash BS offer code BS. So I've known Mike Schur for a few years, Red Sox fan, obviously. We all stick together, especially out here. See a hat and you just like, it's like seeing somebody, it's like the benevolent version of a gang member seeing another gang member. It's like, oh, you're in the Red Sox gang. Dan Fogelman worked for Jimmy Kimmel show 20 years ago and has been friends with Jimmy forever. We went to dinner a couple of years ago and just got to know
Starting point is 00:28:58 each other a little bit. Two really interesting guys, two guys that have been super creative in the TV industry for different reasons and have had different types of successes, kind of the two paths for success on television. And we taped this interview last week, right after Dan had gotten back from Toronto, where he was very surprised by the criticism for life itself. This new movie that he has coming out this weekend, actually. We talked about that near the end, but for the most part, just talking about what is it like to run a TV show? Here we go. Mike and Dan.
Starting point is 00:29:35 All right. Dan Fogelman and Mike Sherry here. We're taping this in sometime mid-September. I don't know when it's running, but this is a special showrunner pod. I know both of you. I'm fascinated by your worlds. You run TV shows. Things are happening.
Starting point is 00:29:51 You just kind of, did you ever expect to actually- Is that the prep that you did for this podcast? That's it. That's all I've done. Did you expect to run a TV show? We'll start with you, Mike. You run The Good Place right now.
Starting point is 00:30:02 Yeah. Was this like the arc for you it's sort of the art for everybody who's a tv writer at some level i mean i started at snl and i was there for six years and when you're at snl all you think about is snl like there's no you do what's right in front of you every week and then you collapse and then you wake up and you do it again so i don't know that i ever i didn't really start thinking about running a show until i wrote on a show which was the office was my first show yeah out here and then is it's like uh it's like anything else like when you see whether you have an aptitude for something
Starting point is 00:30:35 that determines whether you get excited about it or you bail on it and i felt like i had an aptitude for the production end of things. Managing people, all that shit. Yeah, well, just like the skills that are necessary to be a showrunner are very different from the skills necessary to be a writer. Some people have one or the other. Some people have both.
Starting point is 00:30:54 Some people have neither. There are a few people who have, in general, there are a few comedy writers, at least I'll say, who have the skills necessary to be a showrunner only because there's skills related to just management and responsibility which don't usually go hand in hand with like especially like at SNL like no one no one at SNL has those skills because everyone's like a 23 year
Starting point is 00:31:15 old idiot right so but I I'm like uh I'm a sort of I've always been like a I'm the Alex Smith of of writers like I've always been like a, I'm the Alex Smith of writers. Like I've always been like a game manager. You good winning percentage? Yeah. Like I'll just get the job done. I might not win you the Super Bowl, but I'll get the job done. And so when I, like when I realized that I had those skills and I sort of started thinking like, well, I guess this could be in the cards for me if things break my way.
Starting point is 00:31:40 And then Greg Daniels asked me to develop a show with him, which was Parks and Rec. And that sort of like, that I just did what he did. Like he, he'd been doing it for, at that point, I don't know, 15 years or something. And so I just sort of like watched him and just copied him. How'd you stumble into it, Dan? and I had never been on a television show. So I had written a screenplay that got attention, but I had been working odd jobs. That's how I met you, Bill. I mean, I was like Jimmy Kimmel's production assistant on The Man Show. I was Howie Mandel's assistant when he had a daytime talk show. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 00:32:17 Don't touch him. Don't touch Howie Mandel. The best guy, by the way. Wonderful guy. Does he have the handy way? Yeah. And then I wrote a screenplay and then it got, it was one of those ones
Starting point is 00:32:28 that never got made, but it got attention. What was the screenplay? It was about my bar mitzvah. I wrote like a Wonder Years style screenplay, a guy looking back on the craziness of his family and it was bar mitzvah. I figured maybe a Jewish agent would identify with it, an ID agent or something.
Starting point is 00:32:44 But I'd never written a screenplay before before my buddy brought home final draft from his office i was like i'm gonna try and the next thing i knew i was making like i had sold a tv pilot and i made a show for the wb network it was called like family they changed the entire show i had no idea how to say no to what year was this like 2005 i was like 26 years old like family like family holly robinson pete oh wow um nice was the main name in a friend of magic johnson friend of magic johnson she once introduced me to sugar ray leonard one of my guilty pleasures is magic johnson's twitter feed during the summer when he goes on vacation to italy for like four weeks holly robinson pizza was oh really i'm sorry i once played ball with Magic Johnson.
Starting point is 00:33:25 He showed up at the gym, the old Sports Club LA, and I was down there just shooting around with two other kids. And he walked onto the court and this weird guy who seemed a little off goes up to him and says, hey, Magic, you want to play two on two? And Magic goes, no, but I'll run fives. And all of a sudden, the gym filled up. And Magic ran five on five for like two hours with everybody. And it was amazing. Yeah, he would do this until like he turned 50.
Starting point is 00:33:53 Why did he not want to play two on two? I don't know. He likes to run. He likes to exercise. Yeah, exercise. And there was one point. So now all the guys, like the real players, are showing up to the gym. People are calling people.
Starting point is 00:34:04 Everybody's showing up. And there's one guy running down the court. I remember it so vividly and Magic, he's going, yo, yo, he's calling for the ball. And Magic just stops dribbling. He puts the ball under his arm. He goes, I see you, man. I see you. But yeah, so I fell into TV and then, you you know that show got canceled pretty quickly and uh i started writing pilots none of which got made all of them were well liked and then eventually uh the ones started getting made and then i was a showrunner and i had never worked on a television series before which was the one that got made the first one that got made was a show called the neighbors on abc it was this weird alien family comedy that was like polarizing and weird and lasted for we did like 44 episodes actually who was in that one
Starting point is 00:34:50 that one jamie gertz was in it um oh yeah now the atlanta hawks um one of the owners she was the main name in it um it was like this absurdist uh family it was funny it was funny it was funny i that was a weird experience we were talking before about like going to those upfronts for the first time because i had never done any of this sure and i was i made this like really weird absurdist thing i thought it was really weird and i i didn't know what people would make of it but i thought i didn't know what i was doing and i remember sitting down for the first interview and they're like what do you think about the critical blowback to the show and i was like there's critical blowback and uh and then we got there and they'd made the stupidest trailer of all time.
Starting point is 00:35:26 And they like all the bad key art, you know, and you're like, Oh God, we're done. They're going to crush this. They're going to say it's stupid and not purposefully. So, so, so I kind of fell into it that way. When, when, when the first season of Parks and Rec, which has now become kind of, kind of part of the whole arc of that thing where it was like, you couldn't figure out what the show was.
Starting point is 00:35:45 How many did you do, 13? Six. Six. And it was, you couldn't get it. People weren't that nice, but they also were kind of trusting and understanding and kept giving it. More the former than the latter.
Starting point is 00:35:57 Really? Yeah, because what happened, it's a boring story, I'll condense it as much as I can. No, it's important. But basically like, so Greg and I had come from the office. And NBC said to Greg, like, do whatever you want. Like, 13 episodes on the air, guaranteed.
Starting point is 00:36:12 So Greg and I developed the show together. But we really wanted Amy Poehler to do it. And she then got pregnant. And she was due to give birth the day that, basically, literally the day we were going to start shooting. So it was like oh shoot but we kind of thought about it we're like we'd rather wait and have amy polar than have someone that we don't think is as good so we voluntarily gave up seven of the episodes wow uh and it was supposed to be 13 and it was going to debut after the super bowl that was the plan and we gave up the super bowl slot and seven of the 13 episodes
Starting point is 00:36:46 because it was like polder's the one to make this work and so we started shooting she started shooting like a hero like two months after she gave birth not feeling her best um and we and so she like it was hard on her but she was was a champion. But we were like, you know, experimenting like every new show. We were sort of like, maybe it's this, maybe it's this, maybe it's this. We only had six episodes to experiment. We figured it out by the sixth episode. But the amount of attention because the office was such a big deal at the time, the amount of attention and scrutiny on the first on like the pilot and the first five was so intense that there was a lot
Starting point is 00:37:25 and it also it had been marketed originally as a spin-off to the office but it never really was and so people were confused they were like and then Rashida Jones was in it and she had been on the office so people were like I don't understand why did she change her name why did Karen change her name so um so anyway it was like it was just very intense I'm not complaining it all worked out everything is fine but it was just a intense. I'm not complaining. It all worked out. Everything is fine. But it was just a very weird, intense time where we were doing the natural sort of trial and error thing that you have to do at the beginning of a show to like figure out what your show is about.
Starting point is 00:37:55 And there was just a weird confluence of circumstances that made it kind of stress. It's the most stressed I've ever been in my life, I would say. Do you feel like the network as it's going starts acting differently like can you are you like trying to interpret emails and phone calls and all that shit yeah i mean you're always sort of trying to read tea leaves and stuff i guess i mean at the time it was so hectic like no one had any idea what the hell was going on really um and like there there was just a lot of like, we, we made like several mistakes. Like I, at least I won't speak for Greg, but I, I own a lot of the mistakes that we made as my own.
Starting point is 00:38:35 And one of them was we finished an early, early, early cut of the pilot. It was like 29 minutes long and which is, you know, eight minutes longer than it's going to be and we were like we we couldn't figure out whether it was good or bad or what what we should cut or whatever so we decided to test it and at the time Deadline Hollywood that website was in this huge fight with NBC or they just hated NBC Nikki Fink like hated Ben Silverman yeah and so someone at NBC leaked the testing results to Deadline and they just hated NBC. Nikki Fink like hated Ben Silverman. Yeah. And so someone at NBC leaked the testing results to deadline and they just printed them.
Starting point is 00:39:10 And it's like, it's polar set of best. She was like, it's like someone reading your diary. It's just like, like this isn't for public consumption. And it was like 29 minutes and none, none of it wasn't even color corrected.
Starting point is 00:39:22 It was like, we were just trying to get a sense of like what audiences liked and didn't and then they literally just printed it and they didn't even call greg or me or amy or anybody for like a comment they just printed it and it really sucked and so it was like but then also we were like well maybe we shouldn't have tested it because that was maybe that was dumb like i don't know like uh it just like a bunch of like crummy things happened and again you have to say like it's crummy like uh it just like a bunch of like crummy things happened and again you have to say like it's crummy in the world of like television production it's not real world crummy yeah but it was just very like weird and intense and and freaky and by the by the time we
Starting point is 00:39:56 had finished those six episodes we had done a lot of like thinking and planning and talking and amy had like helped us in immensely by figuring out, she was the first one to kind of figure out who Leslie Knope was. And then we adapted. And by the time that sixth episode aired, by the time we did the sixth episode, I would say wrote it and produced it. We were like,
Starting point is 00:40:15 okay, this is what the show is. And like hung on by a thread and then got to do a new season. And by the time we came back to do season two and knew what the show was, everything worked out. And how many episodes was that second season? 24 jesus uh yeah it was weird we did six and then 24 and then 16 because we got moved to mid-season and we thought we're getting canceled and then 22 i think in a weird way it kind of worked out perfectly because you lowered the expectations oh my god absolutely
Starting point is 00:40:44 and then it's like hey you know what's actually good is and then you're in that whole vortex audiences and critics love narratives and the narrative it followed exactly the narrative of the office which was the first six people were really down on and then we hung on by a thread and then got to do a new season and by then like corral was like a fully formed genius yeah and greg had figured out the show. And so people love the comeback story. It's like, it was a classic comeback story.
Starting point is 00:41:09 And then totally accidentally and for totally different reasons, Parks and Rec followed the same exact trajectory. I think it really helped. And Get Up, I think, will be the next one. What was This Is Us when you were making it? When did you become convinced that this had a chance to be like a monster hit? You know, I didn't. I mean, I had just – I had written the pilot on spec,
Starting point is 00:41:35 like meaning like just without having set it up, and then I had a script. And I sent it around town, and it wound up going to NBC. And then we made it. We were making it normally. Piots get made at a specific time. We made it in a really weird time of year. So after it was made and finished and edited and completed, we sat on it for like eight months.
Starting point is 00:41:56 Did you really? Waiting to hear if it was going to get picked up or not. Eight months? Or seven months. What do all the actors? I always wonder what the actors do. I'm sorry, that might be an exaggeration. I feel like we finished it in January and May or or six months yeah so did you shoot it in like december
Starting point is 00:42:10 yeah like november december january um and then all those actors just have to kind of keep their fingers crossed they have to keep their fingers crossed we kind of suspected we thought we had something we knew the network liked it um but we didn't know and then then you found you find out officially what was the premise in your head what did you think was the deficiency out there in tv land that you could fill i wish i was thinking of something i just wrote this thing i mean i just sat down and had a you know i i sat down and i wrote something i was originally writing it as a film yeah i thought it would be a film about all these interconnected characters seemingly interconnected characters and the reveal at the end of the film would be they were all related
Starting point is 00:42:47 but I put it away, it wasn't working, it felt weird, it didn't feel like a movie picked it back up, finished it as a show and then we made it, we sat on it we started screening it for people like I do and I had a couple of buddies over for football. My wife was out of town. We watched football. And I was like, guys, you want to see this thing I made? I think it's kind of cool.
Starting point is 00:43:10 And I played it for a bunch of my buddies and it ended. And my buddies were stepping out of the room crying. I mean, I remember it very vividly. One guy walked into the kitchen. Nobody was looking at anybody in the eye. It was like three guys. I was like, what the fuck is going on? That either means it's amazing or they're like, how do we tell this guy? I know. They're distraught in the eye it was like three guys i was like what the fuck is going on that either means it's amazing or they're like how do we tell this guy yeah they're distraught
Starting point is 00:43:29 by how bad it was and it was literally my buddy my buddy josh and alex i remember my buddy josh and like i was like you liked it he was like yeah it's really good and i was like what is what is happening so you started getting that sense and that then it was like uh then it just blew up it blew up like instantly and quickly and and then it was like, then it just blew up. It blew up like instantly and quickly. And we never. It was like the first episode on it was a monster. The fucking, the trailer, the trailer got released. They put like imagery to this Jason Mraz song in a very sweet trailer.
Starting point is 00:43:58 And my phone started blowing up and they were like, the trailer has gone completely viral. It's 18 gazillion people are watching this trailer and so i was like it didn't make quite sense for the genre of the of the well it did have milo ventimiglia's hair his ass that that was a big thing thank god i genuinely so i found out after the fact and i was convinced because i i had so much failure of like medium sized failure like getting shows on television for a season or two and then getting your heart broken or pilots that you love that didn't get made. And then I found out that the boy band,
Starting point is 00:44:30 the boy band, the popular boy band, jeez, One Direction, they have a documentary called This Is Us about them. And I was like, that's what's going on. I was genuinely convinced. I'm like, that's what's going on here. Like tweens are watching this trailer. Cause I think it has something to do with one direction.
Starting point is 00:44:48 And that it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a false positive. It's not, people aren't really paying attention. And then, but no,
Starting point is 00:44:53 it just blew up. I remember sometimes you just kind of know, I remember seeing the trailer and I was with my wife, whatever the long commercial they ran. And my wife was like all the way in. I was like, Oh man, this is going to be a monster.
Starting point is 00:45:06 Yeah. Like it just, it's like every, every like three years, there's a show like that. Like modern family was like that where just they played the entire pilot at the upfront for the audience. Like that's an incredibly confident move.
Starting point is 00:45:18 Did they really? Yeah. You don't do that unless it's like at every step, everything just clicked. The cast clicked, the direction clicked, the testing is through the roof. Like every like three years,
Starting point is 00:45:27 there's a show where it's a hit before it goes on TV and everybody knows it and life itself. Like This Is Us was that show that year. Just everyone knew it was like, okay, this is a big deal. This is going to anchor it. Like I remember people at NBC just saying like, they were talking about it like it was already syndication. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:44 But there's so many ways. I mean, I think back on it now and I was fiercely protective because I had been through the ringer so many times. And I mean, there was a point where I kind of liked this title, the, this is us.
Starting point is 00:45:54 And I, I had this idea for it and they kept saying, no, that's not going to be the title. And so I put it like an opening graphic that descended into, this is us to start it. And I put it in the cut and I figured if it plays really well they'll start getting used to it you know but they were i mean to the last day they were they were saying people were saying like we really like the title
Starting point is 00:46:11 like things are just getting started and i'm like ah guys that doesn't sound real i don't think that sounds like the title of television show and uh but so and there's so many things with the casting and the things so you have to be fier fiercely protective or like one thing goes awry and you just one mistake and it's hard. It does seem like it's almost like a sports season. You need like 12 things to go right. But the biggest thing other than the showrunners, you have to get lucky with the talent.
Starting point is 00:46:39 Yeah, it's all the cast. Like Sterling K. Brown, I don't even know who else would be in that part. You caught him at the perfect point in his career and I hadn't really discovered him yet and then he becomes a monster. Sterling K. Brown was one that I thought I would have a hard time getting cast the way I was wanting to cast, which was just no process, whoever I wanted. My friends who directed the pilot had directed a film that he had a small part in and they kept saying, you got to check out this guy, Sterling K. Brown.
Starting point is 00:47:03 I think he's the guy. And he read it. He was awesome. Like, guys i can't i just get this guy the part they're not going to accept it and i went to the studio i was like we like this actor sterling k brown and they're like cast him and i was like what really and they were like he has this thing coming out where he's playing darden in this og thing it hadn't been out yet oh yeah yeah and i was like he was like he's going to blow up and i was like oh great and it was it was just a magical lucky coincidence you had polar which was a lot easier to predict because she was one of the best females He was like, he's going to blow up. And I was like, oh, great. And it was just a magical lucky coincidence. You had Polar, which was a lot easier to predict.
Starting point is 00:47:31 Because she was one of the best females in the history of SNL. Yeah, she was clearly headed for a sitcom. One of the best cast members straight up. But yeah, and then we got lucky with everybody else a little bit. Like Nick Offerman was like, I think I may have told this story last time I was here. But Nick Offerman, I had written an episode of The Office like three years earlier where Michael went to a meeting in New York of like the other branch managers, like the branch manager from Buffalo and Rochester or wherever. And the point was supposed to be that they were more incompetent than Michael Scott. And it was like our attempt to say like how, like people kept saying like, how does Michael Scott have a job? And so we were like, what if we show that the other branch managers are dumber than he is?
Starting point is 00:48:06 So we had this one big meaty role of this truly, a true idiot and Offerman auditioned. And I was like, that guy's amazing, cast him. And he couldn't, we got the word back that he couldn't do because it was the same week as Will and Grace. He had booked like a guest spot on Will and Grace. And our part was was really meaty. It was the gigantic, funny part.
Starting point is 00:48:29 And we were kind of like, come on, dude. I didn't know him. So in my head, I was like, come on, man. Don't do Will & Grace. Do our show. Our show is cooler. And then someone was like, oh, he's married to Megan Mullally. I was like, all right, fair.
Starting point is 00:48:40 That's fair. That's fair. But I wrote his name down on a Post-it note. I wrote Nick Offerman and just stuck it to my computer and i thought like if some i write some other episode in the future i should cast that guy and then when three years later or whatever when we were auditioning people for the pilot i was like oh that guy that guy's funny let's get that guy in and so he was like i mean that's just crazy luck you can't some of it is some of it is like timing which is what sterling was right it's like you see a guy and then everyone just lines up behind him because he it's like the
Starting point is 00:49:11 exact right moment and sometimes it's just blind luck that you just see someone or you remember someone or whatever it just works out and that happened i mean that happened so many times with parks and rec that happened with pratt um pratt was because my wife had written on the OC and he was on the OC season four and he was really funny. And she was like, you should audition that guy. And I was like, Oh yeah, I remember that guy. That guy's hilarious. And he just happened to be free. Like whatever show he was on at the time it ended and he wasn't, he hadn't been in guardians of the galaxy yet. So he was like reading.
Starting point is 00:49:41 So like we have all these auditions of like Aziz and actually Aziz didn't audition, but Pratt and Offerman, all these people just like reading. So like we have all these auditions of like Aziz and, actually Aziz didn't audition, but Pratt and Offerman and all these people just like reading for the part. Your wife writing on the OC is the single most impressive thing I've ever heard you say. That's amazing.
Starting point is 00:49:53 Yeah, she was there almost from the beginning. She was there, she came in like four episodes in a season one or something. Like she was there the whole time. It's having a little renaissance right now. As it should. Cause it's on the Netflix, Hulu, Amazon circuit. And like my daughter has banged out,
Starting point is 00:50:07 I think the first like 12, but it's still kind of holds up. Yeah. Well, it's like a classic teen show. Like in everyone. It should exist. Whatever the show is, it should always be that genre should exist every year.
Starting point is 00:50:21 Yeah. Whether it's like in the OC or the Hamptons or the poor kid in the rich community, just I'm always in. Josh Schwartz is from Newport, Rhode Island. He's from Rhode Island. Yeah. And the Newport in the show
Starting point is 00:50:32 originally was in Rhode Island. And then when McG signed on, I believe, they were like, I'll do it, be moving it to Southern California, which is a great idea. It was more, that show debuted over the summer, if I remember correctly
Starting point is 00:50:45 and oh yeah summer in socal was like that's the perfect it was like the perfect uh zeitgeisty thing for some reason that was another one of those where you saw the trailer and you're like all right yeah it was the welcome no way there was the line right welcome to the oc bitch welcome the oc bitch yep yeah quick break to talk about the starbucks double shot starts with bold starbucks coffee blended with milk for a smooth, creamy, delicious flavor. Enhanced with ginseng, guarana, and B vitamins. Available in six delicious flavors, mocha, vanilla, hazelnut, white chocolate, coffee, and Mexican mocha.
Starting point is 00:51:14 An energy coffee drink that not only tastes great, but gives you the energy to go from point A to point done. Thank God we have these in the office. It's nice to go from point A to point done now. Never really liked point A. Point A is just sleepy and groggy bill. Point done is like, I'm ready to roll. Starbucks double shot,
Starting point is 00:51:34 energy to do the things you actually do. Find it in your local convenience store. And since we're here, you heard me talk about at the top, the Ryan Rosillo's dual threat podcast. Dual threat with Ryan Rosillo. Dual threat with Ryan Rosillo.
Starting point is 00:51:53 Dual threat. We're talking about whether people want t-shirts for dual threat. I think we might just make... What do the muscle guys wear at the gym? The cutoffs? Or you mean like that the what would ryan what's the most muscle shirt ryan would wear i i don't know if he would if he'd go as far as the gold's gym like he would just wear a medium he'd wear like a just a shirt that's too
Starting point is 00:52:16 medium a medium yeah he'd wear medium we make it ryan a medium dual threat t-shirt stay tuned for that but check it out dual threat people like it it Stay tuned for that. But check it out, dual threat. People like it. It's been really good. And again, mentioned at the top, Halloween Unmasked, our new podcast coming next month. All right, back to Mike and Dan. So did you, was your show a smash hit right away, Dan?
Starting point is 00:52:36 This is us. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Like immediate monster ratings the whole thing? Big ratings, which doesn't happen. It keeps saying monster for some reason. Yeah, big ratings, which doesn't happen, usually out of the gate.
Starting point is 00:52:44 And then it just kind of kept building and it was like it was just it got zeitgeisty really quick and i remember by like the eighth episode traveling i was going into the east coast to see my family for thanksgiving and we'd hit right around then we were hitting like a real crescendo and i remember it was on in the hotel in in rhode island in the hotel lobby of this dinky hotel we were all staying in and people were standing around like the tv like kind of glancing up at it because there was like it was like building towards like one of our answers or twists or something and I was like whoa this is really getting out of control that's cool yeah it was it was but I was like you know I was in the midst of like doing all the management stuff of show running and it was and uh like were you still
Starting point is 00:53:22 making shows when the show was taking off you must have been yeah i was making two i also had a show called pitch on fox oh yeah baseball so you're just working every day but meanwhile this whole thing's happening this whole thing's happening and i had like you know i had issues like we all do in our jobs i was having to let people go i was having to do stuff like when i think back on that period as the show was blowing up and becoming this once every three year kind of phenomenon it was filled with just like regular everyday bullshit that i just was like making me miserable and stressed out all the time like i have no i have no positive memory of that period of time at all what is when you when you staff a show like that what's the success rate for people you
Starting point is 00:53:58 actually keep is it like 60 for writers just the whole thing like what what's what's the accuracy rate of the hires? Cause you're, you're hiring people on the fly and just grabbing people to fill spots a lot of the times, right? I mean, I heard a lot of on mine.
Starting point is 00:54:12 I heard, I heard a lot of young women on my show. All of whom for the most part are still with us three seasons in. I have a very hard time letting anybody go. The problem becomes it's such a hard job and if you don't if people aren't working out and like helping in the way that you need them to help you're paying people a lot of money and it's just you're being a nice guy but you're putting so much more on your on your shoulders at a certain point so we've had it's like a sports salary cap it's
Starting point is 00:54:41 totally it's it's fantasy football it's sports salary cap it's it's the whole thing so i have i mean i when i have had to let people go in my life that i do it so terribly that like by the end of the meeting everyone's confused as to what just happened yeah and like i've had to like like i bring in my buddy to help me because like you know i'm like giving people are walking out you know it's just i'm not good at it i'm not good at it it's a weakness of mine so yeah it's not easy people you've been in that position a couple times mike yeah but at this point also like there's enough people who like more than i would say two-thirds or maybe three-quarters of the writing staff for the good places just people from parks and rack right who came over so it was like it makes it so much easier. And there's a problem there too, right?
Starting point is 00:55:27 Which is like a new person who wasn't part of that team immediately feels like they just transferred to a new high school or something. They don't fit in. And so you have to be a little bit conscious of that too. But I'm with you. I'm not good at that either. I fortunately haven't had to let too many people go in my life.
Starting point is 00:55:43 Like it's generally speaking, people have worked out. You can get a decent vibe, I would say, from an hour-long meeting. And personality ultimately is weirdly, it's not more important, but it's just as important as talent. Because you're spending so much time with these people. And it's intense. And it can be an emotional experience to like be in a creative environment like that and so it's just like no assholes it's just the kind of the the main rule and we talked about this the last time yeah it's that's the biggest thing i learned from grantland to the
Starting point is 00:56:15 ringer yeah yeah it's like if you're around people every day they have to be people you want to be around yes it's like they're talented that's bonus. Both very obvious and also very important. Yeah. It shouldn't be a thing that's hard to accomplish, but it can be. It can be hard to accomplish, and you kind of have to work at it. It's very similar to sports. Like right now, we're taping this, the Patriots need a receiver, and Dez Bryant is like, hey, guys, I'm right here. And I'm thinking like, I don't know if we need Dez Bryant.
Starting point is 00:56:44 I would rather just have a mediocre receiver who's not a dick. That's what people said about Randy Moss, I'm right here. And I'm thinking like, I don't know if we need Dez Bryant. I would rather just have a mediocre receiver who's not a dick. That's what people said about Randy Moss, I'll just point out. People said the same thing about Randy Moss. Yeah, but Randy Moss was the second greatest receiver of all time. Dez Bryant is what, the eighth greatest or something? I know, but did you watch him last year? No, I did not. Not a lot of separation.
Starting point is 00:57:01 We need, the last thing we need is another receiver who can't get open. I've stopped, I don't watch football anymore i i think i told you this but i'm off the nfl you're out did you really do that yeah oh i thought that was like no i canceled my package two years ago like i i i watched some highlights with my son no i'm out i'm i'm straight up out i was out last year i didn't watch last year how do you feel emotionally i feel so fine you wouldn't believe it really yes i year. How do you feel emotionally? I feel so fine. You wouldn't believe it. Really? Yes, I feel completely fine. Do you think you would have done this
Starting point is 00:57:27 if the Pats hadn't won five Super Bowls and you hadn't climbed the mountain a bunch of times? I don't know, obviously. But yeah, I think I would have. Because last year, I didn't watch a single Patriots game last year and they went to the Super Bowl. And so like,
Starting point is 00:57:41 and I didn't find myself like freaking out and missing it that much like then you had this weird thing with the good place with Bortles yeah I know that became kind of the best PR campaign for your show you could imagine I paid more attention to Jaguars games last year towards the end of the year than I did Patriots games this is genuinely good for your show yeah yeah it was like a crazy kismet thing where like we had a character on the show whose favorite player was the most mediocre quarterback in the league. And then that quarterback went on a crazy run and it was like it couldn't have been better is the best timing possible. So I would like look at Jaguar stats to see what had happened more almost.
Starting point is 00:58:19 I think usually before I looked at like Patriots results, like I would see, you know, I'd watch baseball through September and October. And then like in November, I think I watched football. Makes eight great movies in a row. It's getting laid by everybody and just completely loses their perspective. This is, we won so many Superbowls. He's like following Jaguars box scores.
Starting point is 00:58:40 Just for fun. You can't get excited about football anywhere. Are you out for concussions? You're out for the kneeling? You're out for the combo of all of it? I'm good at combo platter. It's good. Honestly, it started with the healthcare issues,
Starting point is 00:58:54 which I was just like, these people are just being ground up in a ground chuck and disposed of. And it made me queasy for years and years. And I just compartmentalized and overlooked it. And then a double whammy combo platter of domestic abuse, the handling of domestic abuse, mixed with the insanity of the way the league is run,
Starting point is 00:59:18 mixed with then a series of abhorrent decisions and actions by owners. Like the Richardson thing that just like got swept under the rug yeah like that's like that doesn't even register on the list of like terrible things about the league that's true that's like a that's like 19th on the list that guy was a monster yeah and was forced to sell his team and everyone's just pretending like it's fine it's he's gone now don't worry there's a statue of him outside the stadium that by rule has to stay there like these people are monsters and so i just hit this breaking point of like it was like domestic abuse and
Starting point is 00:59:51 the way that they treat the players and the the weakness of the union and the terribleness of the owners and goodell and deflate gate and just one thing after another and i was just like i'm out man can't take him i wish i had had the strength to do that. I remember hitting a point where I was like, you know what would be awesome? If I just went all basketball and baseball. Well, here's the thing. I'm out on football, but I just fucking love it too much. I got to tell you this though.
Starting point is 01:00:17 For me, it was baseball number one, football number two, basketball a distant third. I dumped football and went hard into the NBA. And now granted i like it coincided luckily again with the new buddy dynasty with the celtics like emerging but i went to like six or eight clippers games with my son last year i took him to golden state to see war to two warriors games like i went i bought the nba package and i was all in on the nba and had even the i don't care that the outcome of the finals
Starting point is 01:00:46 was like predetermined. Yeah. I had an amazing year. I had this renaissance with the NBA that I had, I hadn't followed the NBA like that since I was a kid. And I was like, this is so much better. So you just transferred it. I transferred my enthusiasm to the NBA
Starting point is 01:00:58 and I couldn't be happier. I keep thinking football is going to wear out for me. And then like Sunday, I watched it for 10 straight hours. I had such a good time at gambling and fantasy and the Brown Steelers was a disaster. I've never gambled or done fantasy. And so my attachment to it was purely entertainment
Starting point is 01:01:15 of watching the game. So I was able to drop it pretty easily. It's interesting because I've been quietly, like my holy grail, one of my holy grails for TV was always to do a show that I had in my brain for years called like 16 Sundays. And it was inside an NFL franchise. West Wing set in an NFL franchise. Ooh.
Starting point is 01:01:33 I've just greenlit the show. Go ahead. Here's some money. My idea is was you spend the week with the team and then the game happens like between the weeks. And then you go back into the football action to learn how what happened in the game affected the next week of play plays in structure and time that way and we got pretty far along this year with the nfl um or last year into this year talking with them and i said we're not going to be able to shy away from
Starting point is 01:01:59 stuff and you know i wanted to know how i'm sure that way it was early stages and then we hit a point with the nfl yeah this past year I said, we can't do the show. Yeah. I mean, because it was a bummer for me because I thought if you could really explore the complicated stuff going on inside, not playmakers, not everybody's shooting up and it's not all of that. It's also like you could have, you know, it's West Wing. It's a romantic look, but also not shying away from the ugly.
Starting point is 01:02:24 But I just felt it was just, even if they were to allow us to do it exactly as we want to do it it's a no-win situation yeah it would ring hollow unless it really got dark it would seem unless it got really has to be dark i think if it's nfl yeah friday night lights like those kind of high school shows i think there's a little more yeah leeway yeah there's more leeway and also more optimism and people haven't been destroyed mentally. But it's also, it's romantic when it's high school, right? Because it's like part of the romance is these kids aren't going pro. This is like about a moment in their lives
Starting point is 01:02:57 where they're learning how to be adults or whatever. The NFL is just brutal. It's just a brutal, ugly league where people, like every Sunday I was watching Sunday Night Baseball and I saw on the ticker it was like Titans tight end Delaney Walker out for a season and it's like yep goodbye you're gone you're gone now you're gonna forfeit 80% of your salary his career might be over I don't know what happened to him but that do you just move on it's like the Le'Veon Bell thing that's going on right now is actually a fascinating football thing
Starting point is 01:03:24 because he's like, yeah, you guys are going to run me in the ground this year and I don't have a contract up for this year. So I'm only going to play half the game. So about that. Yeah. I'll play six games.
Starting point is 01:03:34 Yeah. And when he plays, he probably, and they, maybe they won't play him, which would be great for him, but like he, yeah,
Starting point is 01:03:40 it's, and I, it's like, that's what they should all be doing. I think the only way this ends is if they, it was, if the union goes on strike, they have to bring it to a grinding. That's going to happen in three years. that's what they should all be doing, I think. The only way this ends is if the union goes on strike. They have to bring it to a grinding halt. That's going to happen in three years.
Starting point is 01:03:49 Yeah. And they should just say like, their demands should be outrageous. They should make outrageous demands because they have to in order to get anything. They should say like, quadruple the salary cap and give us all life health insurance for life and whatever. Because it's now or never. Like if they don't, if they keep doing these incremental deals like they're just nothing's gonna end the red flag for me is that nobody ever sells their team in the nfl right right like basketball hit a point in
Starting point is 01:04:16 last decade near the end of the decade when the economics were off and like attendance wasn't the same and all of a sudden nine teams were for sale but really like you could get another six too and yeah like the owners were panicking they're like this business isn't working they just forced the panthers owner to sell his team and it was immediately bought for two and a half billion dollars immediately no those with like seven suitors yeah these people are too smart to to do that unless it's a guaranteed moneymaker the nba is like that too there's no nba teams for sale. But you could get about seven baseball teams right now. It's the biggest currency. I mean, these rich guys who have billions and
Starting point is 01:04:52 millions of dollars where they'll never be able to spend all of their money. Well, and the ego of it too, of being the guy in your city that owns this. And the limited inventory. What other thing in the world is so rare that there's only 30 of them? And there's more than 30 get multi-gazillion and bazillionaires and so they'll never they're almost at a point where they're going to be priceless because it's just a it's it'll it'll become like i've noticed that with the warriors guy joe lakob who was a celtics minority owner so kind of known him for a while and he's in you know know, San Francisco slash Oakland, Silicon Valley. And the people that go to those games are like some of the richest people and most influential people we have.
Starting point is 01:05:31 Yeah. But it's his party. He's controlling where everyone sits. It's his thing. It's like, you're going to his bar mitzvah, his son's bar mitzvah every game. He throws 41 very expensive dinner parties in there and he gets to invite whoever he wants. And everyone has to kiss his ass and you don't want him. And it's like, you can't buy that. Suddenly knowing him
Starting point is 01:05:51 or even having a casual relationship with anyone who works for him is incredible currency in Silicon Valley where currency is everything. So like the power is overwhelming. Like I can't imagine how anyone remains level-headed when like your fourth assistant is going out to on the weekends and being like if you want warriors tickets i can get them for you courtesy of the owner like that guy is like a big deal
Starting point is 01:06:16 in silicon valley like there are people who are much more powerful than he is ultimately who have to come and come to heal like that is it's it's like a total Roman glad emperor gladiator thing. Like the guy who runs Apple, Eddie Q, who runs the content side, who sits courtside for the Warriors games. Apple's like a trillion dollar company. Yeah. Yeah. But he's sitting courtside at this other guy's stadium.
Starting point is 01:06:38 Yeah, three years ago. I mean, another of my like unseen failures, but I, and it led to me breaking from Disney and ABC, but I made a pilot with the golden state warriors right as they were rising to dom what did you really so i made a pie i made a television half hour pilot i loved it too and it turned out really well uh it was uh about a early we shot it entirely in the warriors locker room and stadium with their full and complete support it was as curry was rising to prominence like a year before domination started. And it was about like an African center
Starting point is 01:07:08 who's drafted and the one like dorky, sweet, all American kid who's the only person who speaks that language in the Bay Area, who becomes his translator, navigating life in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors. It was like a great idea. We shot it in their locker room. We had a great cast surrounding it. Bizarre people. Ving Rhames was in it. It was crazy. But it turned out really well.
Starting point is 01:07:29 It tested through the roof. And it was like a given. It was going to be their new big show on ABC that has the NBA. And we had the Golden State Warriors, who now all of a sudden, as the pilots being made, are becoming this dominant force and this cultural thing. And I got the call the day before the upfronts. And they said, we're not picking it up and i said what are you what are you taught i said i'm begging you please reconsider this and they said yeah we're just not sure and i said guys this would be such a missed opportunity please don't do this that's amazing and they didn't
Starting point is 01:08:01 pick it up i did it with mike tolan and uh and oh i now i remember this yeah yeah and i just i walked away from the whole thing because goober was involved too because yeah i remember this and so i had this very strange experience of exactly what we were speaking about like being at the games because we would go up there to we shot during golden state war games at halftime just for the pilot and uh you would see like the the green room the owner's green room was like it was such luxury oh yeah that i've been in there yeah right it's crazy yeah it's like barry bonds is in there with like the head of yeah oracle and it's just it's like a who's who and the food like it's like it's like literally like you're at the world's like the owner's club it's great yeah it's
Starting point is 01:08:41 crazy and then like through the glass walls the players are coming off the court these iconic players it's curry it's it's you know clay thompson and they're walking by the glass walls and they're coming off the court and like you're almost in this weird it's a very strange like gladiatorial it's roman emperor roman emperor it really is yeah like that the way they sit up in the high boxes and they sort of stand and applaud. And I mean, there's nothing funnier to me. I'll tell you what I miss the most. What I miss the most about not watching the NFL is shots of Jerry Jones looking sad.
Starting point is 01:09:14 It is the funniest thing in the world. Yeah, it's the funniest thing. Do you think there should be a channel that just shows pilots that never got made? That'd be great. They used to do that. They tried that, didn't they? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:09:25 Was it Channel 101 or what was it called? There was something where they had that idea. Or like Trio had them? Yeah. There was a show on Trio that was like brilliant but canceled or something. Because I always look about the audience channel on DirecTV, which is this channel they promote, but I never know what's on it other than like Rich Eisen. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:09:44 And it just seems like they could just have pilots all day there's a lot like that i mean my first writing job was on the tv guide channel where it was the half channel the bottom half of it was the scroll of what's on television and the top they just had stuff yeah and i would write this stuff on the top that would just what was it i i don't i wrote these things called um they were called 90 second biographies and so you would fly through a celebrity's career with like jokes and pictures and they would play it. But I've always, there's all those channels, like there's gotta be a real world for all this stuff that's been made
Starting point is 01:10:12 that had famous people before they were famous. Some of it's on YouTube. Like I remember that Conan O'Brien show that was only a pilot. With Jack Black? Oh yeah, yeah. The motorcycle one. That's Heat Vision and Jack, that's Dan Harmon.
Starting point is 01:10:24 The Conan one is the one with with uh adam west yeah yeah where he was and that was on youtube and that became like a thing it's for like two weeks it's an amazing pilot it's so funny um it's where he was uh he like thought he was a he was he was like a former he had played he was an actor who played like a batman-like character and then he had retired but still thought of himself that way. Oh yeah, I do remember this. Yeah, but Heat Vision Jack's great too. That's Jack Black and Owen Wilson is the voice of his motorcycle. You can find that too.
Starting point is 01:10:52 That's a great one. Well, Dan did something both of us are jealous of. He actually did a baseball TV show. He did. That's right. This happened. And people liked it. People loved it.
Starting point is 01:11:00 It was great. I love the pilot. It was a great, great show and we couldn't get traction with it. the problem is you you need like at some point the diehard audience and you couldn't figure out what that demo was for that show everybody liked it but yeah and the reviews were really good it was one of those things a we had a really bad time slot on a really bad time and sometimes it sometimes that's like literally all that it is and if we had been on a better time slot and by the nature of it got better of these stupid ratings which are kind of meaningless And sometimes that's like literally all that it is. And if we had been on a better time slot
Starting point is 01:11:25 and by the nature of it got better of these stupid ratings, which are kind of meaningless nowadays anyway, it would have been called a hit and that would have self-propagated it to success, I think. I wonder if the streaming thing might've helped if it was like three years later too. Maybe.
Starting point is 01:11:40 Because I do feel like people discover these shows all the time now. We tried. We didn't have the buyers. What we found with the show or what I was told why the show was struggling was that men didn't want it. Male baseball fans didn't want to watch a show about a woman making it in Major League Baseball.
Starting point is 01:11:56 And women didn't want to watch a show about baseball. That was like how it was broken down. That's tough because there's no other genders. And I was like, well, yeah, exactly. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't necessarily agree or buy it. But that was what kept being repeated over and over again to us you know if that show came out now i feel like it would be more of a cultural thing because people be like this is an important show it's a strong female character this is you know you're a bad person if you don't watch this i think there would have been i mean the thing is
Starting point is 01:12:22 like who knows right because friday night lights was an immaculate piece of television and no one watched that show either like it hung on because the critical acclaim is so overwhelming that they kind of had no choice but like it it came out of the box and no one watched it was in these two it was between these two eras it was like literally came out at the worst possible time it was like five years later we're able to catch up on it on whatever, or five years earlier, the ratings are fine. But yeah, it's tough. The entire industry is completely changing
Starting point is 01:12:53 every three years now. So it's like, no one knows. It's like it's all a crapshoot. When you look back at the writer's track, because it's been 10 years, I hated the writer's track. I just didn't understand it because i didn't feel like there was any way in 2008 to figure out any sort of revenue model with anything because nobody could understand streaming digital i could see it at
Starting point is 01:13:17 espn like we couldn't even figure out how to read my podcast downloads so it just seemed like why do this battle now why not do it two years from now? But now looking back at how crucial streaming was, I don't know if I was wrong, but maybe I was half wrong. No, you weren't wrong, but that was all, the attitude of the Writers Guild was, yeah, we don't know, that's why we have to do this now. Because it's like, if we don't get a toehold now,
Starting point is 01:13:41 it might not be a great deal. But if we don't establish now that streaming is basically the new way that TV is going to be watched, then we'll just keep getting shunted to the side and we'll net those shows not be covered. I mean, if we hadn't struck all Netflix shows and Amazon shows and Hulu shows wouldn't be guild shows right now. Like it's imagine just think about 10 years of how much TV is now being made by streaming services. None of that. All of that money is WGA money. And if we hadn't gone on strike, none of it would be probably. I hate losing paychecks. Everyone hated it at the time.
Starting point is 01:14:15 And everyone thought like a year later, everyone was bitching about it. I think it's the best thing the Writers Guild has done in like a generation. Really? Yeah, because if we hadn't done that imagine if like right now if you wanted to work for glow or orange is the new black or or whatever and those shows weren't covered by the guilt like they're but do you don't you think that would happen anyway who knows or not or they would have kept pushing us off and people would have kept saying yeah we're it's whatever it's still like think about netflix went from having basically two shows house of cards and
Starting point is 01:14:45 orange is the new black they had two shows and everyone's like those shows are really good you blinked and they were making everything on television yeah like you there is now a new billboard for a new netflix show or movie or something every friday every single friday there's a new entire season of television and so like if we had missed that window and we even if we had gotten all the way to like well there's only two shows so who cares right if we had missed that window all of this stuff would have been not covered would have been non-guild work then that would have sucked and then they would have been like well it's precedent now these aren't guild shows so too bad i've almost rear-ended a couple cars in LA staring at those Netflix billboards being completely confused
Starting point is 01:15:26 like Santa Clarita Diet's coming back for season two Jim on the brakes just completely dumbfounded but yeah they're just cranking it out every week it feels like someone's pranking you what is that now? there's another thing? it's every single Friday
Starting point is 01:15:41 it's like Monopoly money both of you guys are in the same spot where you you are now like considered to be super successful showrunners and now there's all this money and all these different streaming things you must get crazy offers or approaches right or am i thinking this yeah i mean normally you're under a contract for quite a while so my i'm under a deal right now um and then when that's over i'm assuming that could happen so you can't even just come in you can't even just come in and like consult and just get some giant paycheck on some show i mean i guess you could i mean when what time do
Starting point is 01:16:15 we have to do any of that i mean uh so i like i have an employer and uh that is what this is such a diplomatic answer it is a diplomat but i might i have like a four-year contract and then my contract ends in like a year oh because this is season three right yeah but it's more for an overall deal for the like you get it you know you get a deal with the studio this is going to be like the kd free agency i don't know he's talking about a year here i just want to tell yeah i don't care care. But it's all complicated. I mean, who the hell knows? So the world's gone, the world's gone mad. And, you know, so my buddy Kenya was just over, I'm friends with Kenya Barris who created Black.
Starting point is 01:16:54 Yeah. And just signed one of those mega deals. And he was just over a couple of weeks ago. And it's like, it's nice when it happens to the nice people because it's like crazy. And he's now going to be able to not only have like generational wealth, but'll be able to kind of create a ton of shit and like kind of hire people and spread that and so you become a business like at that point well mike used all of his leverage from parks and rec to work with his idol ted danson that's right that was it i cashed in you were like i have to do this now this is amusing on was has it measured up to everything you thought it would be? Yeah, he's the world's greatest living human being.
Starting point is 01:17:27 Like he's the nicest, kindest person. He's the hardest working person. He has like a, he has an attitude about work that we should all have at all times, but especially if you've had a career like his and you still have the attitude that he has, it's like, it's shocking because he's still he like calls me sometimes on his way home and i'll see first i see on my phone it says ted danson and i like i assume this is a joke being
Starting point is 01:17:56 played on me and then he and i'll i'll go like oh you know pick up the phone and see what's wrong and he's just calling me to tell me that he had fun at work he's had a great day today thank you thank you for writing this script and then yeah and then you know he he and he's married to mary steenburgen and they have like this life that uh is so it's like if you could if you could choose your life in the future with your life partner this is the life you would choose like they have this beautiful house near the near the water that's like a it's not huge it's not like a mansion it's like a it's like a small but beautiful home on this little piece of property that has like three other structures on it so that when their kids and grandkids come they each have little guest houses to stay in oh my god they have this beautiful backyard but just they have
Starting point is 01:18:43 little dinner parties and they have dogs that run around and they have, they go to, they spend the summer in Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod or Nantucket or something. And they have a great time there with their kids and grandkids and, and they love working. So they just work all the time and they support each other when they work and they help each other learn lines. It's just this like kind of idyllic life. It's like as good as life can get, I i think and he's one of those guys who like after about season six of cheers never had to work again in his life yeah and he just likes it he works because he likes it and that's like ultimately this job like dan was saying earlier like who has time for this stuff like the job of being a show runner is very time consuming emotionally emotionally consuming, like mentally consuming.
Starting point is 01:19:25 And if you don't like it, there's no reason to do it. I mean, the, the, it pays well, I guess that's one reason to do it. But so what,
Starting point is 01:19:33 you know, it, it, you, you work ultimately because you enjoy the work and they enjoy the Ted and Mary love working. So like, they don't have to,
Starting point is 01:19:42 but they want to, which is like, I, it's like, again, it's like again it's like an ideal situation i think for what in this weird business what your life could be is that that's what you want your life to be you want to be 70 years old and still working all the time because you want to be working nephew kyle did you watch cheers no yeah no it's not your fault you're 24 it's not your fault yeah it's the show came out 36 years ago yeah yeah i still feel like to me it's still the og yeah i still think it's
Starting point is 01:20:16 the best crafted sitcom we've ever had i still think it's the best sitcom and i still think sam malone's the best character like i i don't think you can beat like the, it's very hard, like main characters, you know, there's this problem in like, in, um, in like a superhero movies where the hero is often the most boring
Starting point is 01:20:32 character. Like Batman's not as fun as the Joker and that kind of thing. And in the sitcom, cheers, the sitcom equivalent is the main character in the sitcom is often not the funniest character. Like you often have, there's a problem because that person male or female needs to be,
Starting point is 01:20:48 have a, be a romantic interest and it needs to, that person needs to be smart and good at his or her job in order to be likable and all that stuff. So as a result, you often get the main character being the center of the show, being less funny than some of the peripheral characters. And like the office solved that problem.
Starting point is 01:21:03 The British office solved that problem by saying, we're just going to make the wacky boss. Who's usually the side character. We're going to make him the peripheral characters. And like the office solved that problem. The British office solved that problem by saying, we're just going to make the wacky boss, who's usually the side character, we're going to make him the main character. And it's going to be hard. You're not going to like it. Like audiences are going to have to swallow this. But it's going to be, he's going to be the main character.
Starting point is 01:21:16 He's going to be the funniest guy in the show. And Cheers did it without having to make it unpleasant by having the best sitcom actor ever in america in my opinion play the role and also just by designing a character who was had these wonderful qualities he was good at his job and he was a recovering alcoholic which was like an emotional thing he owned a bar and he was also incredibly vain and he could be alternately really savvy and really stupid and like they just super horny and super horny and they just wrapped up all of this stuff and they put it in this like perfect actor vessel.
Starting point is 01:21:48 And that's why it's the best show. It's because it's the best main character. I was an only child. He was the most flawed, likable person in my life. Yeah. For like five years. I was so invested in his relationship with Diane Chambers. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:22:02 I didn't have my own relationship. I'm like, this is the one I care about right now. But even the fact that he was able to get you invested in two romantic relationships so severely in the course of the show was another testament to that character. They're going to remake that show at some point.
Starting point is 01:22:17 I'm not sure how I feel about it. I really hope they don't. I just think it has to be, you'd have to change the city and change what he did for a living. Meaning not have it in a bar, but not being an extra baseball player. I don't think it's a remake. I think it's just different.
Starting point is 01:22:33 I would put it in Chicago. I would make him like a former hockey goalie. I'm producing a multicam sitcom that starts shooting tonight, its second episode, called Abbey. It's a mid-season show on NBC. It's in a bar. every it's an outdoor bar it's like a woman running a illegal bar in her backyard
Starting point is 01:22:51 without a permit and every single decision not every single decision a number of the decisions we made were specifically like you can't do this because this is cheers like you can't have like you can't have in fact even the owner being a woman was just like yeah we got to like start from there start fundamentally don't make it and even despite that at the end of the day you sit back and you're like there's echoes of cheers in here because it's so indelible and because i wouldn't know he never saw that's right don't kyle be fine yeah how do you how do you do an outdoor set in a multi-cam we're shooting it outside no shit yeah up on the back lot at universal it's where they used to shoot desperate housewives so there's real houses and one of them had a little backyard that was big enough for us to like build a set and
Starting point is 01:23:35 put like it's like a 90 person audience or something that's cool and we're actually gonna yeah we get people blankets so they can stay warm this is like when spielberg shot jaws in the atlantic ocean the outside sitcom that's great what a risk that's a great idea though because i mean i'm obsessed with i i grew up you know i'm i'm i'm 42 so i grew up on cosby show and family ties and you know all all of those shows as well as well as obviously cheers but i've been obsessed with like how does the multi-cam sitcom stay relevant but also get reinvented just enough that it can like snap its finger at people to keep people attuned. Like you've done it with the single,
Starting point is 01:24:10 you know, you've done it with the good place now, but like, what is that multicam form? How do you make a multicam feel like a multicam, but not look outdated. And it's, it's,
Starting point is 01:24:18 it looks really cool because we shoot it only at night. Cause it's about a bar. Yeah. And at least so far we have in the pilot and it's like it's like kind of warm and and we set it in san diego so there can be people in like no you don't have to you won't have weather problems yeah and who knows like who knows what the future is but it feels like fun and interesting and the cool part was the everyone on the crew has shot a million multicams and they're all like this is the first time we've ever done a show outside. Like in like 28 years or whatever.
Starting point is 01:24:47 And so, you know, who knows what the future will hold, but it's like a fun experiment, which is at a certain point, again, like you do it because you find it interesting. And this seemed interesting. So you're still dabbling in other projects where somebody wrote the script and you're just helping them kind of steer it a little bit.
Starting point is 01:25:04 Yeah. Which I'm sure Dan is too at some level, right? Yeah, we are. I mean, I've taken a little break because I had a film and the thing, but yeah, I mean, that's the plan. Yeah. I would imagine that would be the most fun part
Starting point is 01:25:15 of where you guys are in life, that you could just kind of take something that you could see the potential of it or it's 88% there and give three notes and kind of nudge it. It's the most fun. No no it's the most fun it goes it when the person that's the creative voice behind it is special that's the best part because then you don't have to the bad part becomes i'm sure mike experiences when it's not going well a lot of it falls on your shoulders and you're like yeah i was here
Starting point is 01:25:39 to support somebody else's thing and now this is like and they're telling my family at the weekend and that's problematic i did a film like four years ago where i read a book that moved me and i they had sent it to me do i want to adapt this book as a film and i said i think the writer of the book should adapt it's it's really interestingly written and i worked with this kid who had never written a screenplay before and like got him final draft and kind of showed him like a form and what the hell do I know? And then it went, it was this little movie called
Starting point is 01:26:09 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and it like won the Sundance Film Festival. I saw that. Yeah, and it's like, it was a first time screenwriter. I kind of went, I helped a little with the script. I got hired a director.
Starting point is 01:26:18 I let him cast it and then I kind of backed away and came back, you know, and it was a beautiful experience. It was like, that's exactly how you dream it would work out you have you're giving some people opportunities and then they're like kind of flying sometimes it doesn't work out that way and you just wind up with a giant headache um and something that wasn't something that you wrote to begin with you're
Starting point is 01:26:36 just sucked in yeah you're sucked in and and the boss isn't calling the 22 year old kid who you took a chance on because you liked their writing they're calling the 40 year old producer who's made a bunch of stuff and saying like, we've got a problem. We invested a lot of money and what are we going to do? And then you're like, ah. One more break to talk about wagering. I did some wagers at the top. People always ask me for advice. Usually it's what team to bet on this week or what team not to bet on. Cause I'm not sure everybody trusts me. But you know what? If you think you know you're going to win,
Starting point is 01:27:08 who's going to win? You got to check out MyBookie. I always tell people to bet with MyBookie. The best bet, not only for this season, but any season they've been in business for years. Great reviews online, mobile site easy to use, not to mention in-game live betting and the most rewarding player perks in the business.
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Starting point is 01:27:55 My bookie. Don't forget to use the promo code Bill Simmons when creating your account to claim the bonus. You play you when you get paid. Back to Mike and Dan. What do you look for when you're looking to help somebody or maybe get involved with the project is it the voice or is the personality or what is the voice it's a voice and then ideally at this point it's someone who um isn't yourself like that like i i've said this before but i'm a 42 year old white guy from Connecticut. And I feel like there's nothing left to be said
Starting point is 01:28:27 about my experience on earth. Like we've covered it. We are good. First of all, it's not true because now that our kids are on the same travel baseball team. That's true. That's going to be a new experience. Well, that's the one area left to be unexplored.
Starting point is 01:28:41 That's it. That's the last frontier. But it's like, I just feel like there's nothing left to be said about the white male experience in America. Like we've covered it in every form. We've covered working class, middle class, upper class, extreme upper class. We've covered like gay and straight even at some level.
Starting point is 01:29:00 We've covered a lot of that ground. And so at this point now it's a common it's like voice original voice original idea and then ideally someone who just has a different perspective on the world than me like that's what makes ideas interesting there's a there's no shortage of of like people who look like me and write like me in the world there's a shortage of other kinds of people and the reason there's a shortage of other kinds of people is because those people haven't gotten the same chances as the people who look like me. And it just seems like a no brainer to kind of like,
Starting point is 01:29:30 hey, the world is more interesting when the like panoply of ideas is more diverse and, you know. I think that's why I love Insecure. Yeah. I just go into this world every week for 10 episodes that I know nothing about. Yeah, I agree. And this character every week for 10 episodes that I know nothing about and this character that I don't have anyone in my life like her
Starting point is 01:29:49 I just want to spend time with her and her friends and the way that that show Prentice used to work at Brooklyn Nine-Nine and he's a great guy and I'm very happy for him and that show I told him this the last time I saw him that show tumbles out of that
Starting point is 01:30:06 creative team so effortlessly you can just tell like i mean i'm sure it's a struggle in the same way that every show is a struggle but like that show just like it's it's the the ease the seeming ease with which they're telling the stories gives you this overwhelming feeling which is like these stories have been there all along these stories have been everywhere in every group of people from every diverse ethnic background and gender background and everything. They've just never gotten to be on TV. And it's like, it's such a, it makes me very happy and very sad at the same time. Cause it's like, we've missed out on 50 years of stories like this because no one let them be on television. so like that's the at some level that's the best thing about this crazy world we're living in with dan was saying the world has gone crazy it has and there's good parts of that and the good part of it is like
Starting point is 01:30:54 there's now like kenny barris is going to make 10 tv shows in the next three years and that's great because like there's a debt there's a deficit of television shows created by people like kenny barris we got to get out of the hole. We got to pay people to make a million of those shows to just catch up with those stories. I have a young writer on our show that I'm obsessed with, a young woman, Nigerian, first generation coming over from Nigeria. And in our second episode of the show this season, we dive heavily into this kind of that she wrote the episode and had kind of the idea for this Nigerian immigrant story in North Philly, where she's from. And it's a big
Starting point is 01:31:30 component of the second episode of the show. And I'm watching the cut of my own television show and going, wow, like I'm watching a part of the human experience that like I've never like, I've never been privy to and seen. And it's in my own like weepy NPC, like television show. And it's almost like within the context of our own show, we're almost feeding people their kind of vegetables. You know what I mean? Inside, giving people a perspective without them even realizing it.
Starting point is 01:31:56 I'm like, oh my God, wait till this girl just has all of her own TV shows and she's gonna have a thousand of them. It's exciting. What is, you guys are in different spots with your shows. Your show's like a juggernaut. Yeah. Your show has had this rise up
Starting point is 01:32:11 and now was on Netflix and all these places. It feels like people have, either they watch in the moment or they caught up. And I know like my staff is just fired up for season three. All of them are kind of caught up now. That's good. And now you're hitting this season three that I think is going to up for season three. All of them are kind of caught up now. That's good. And now you're hitting this season three that I think is going to be a big season.
Starting point is 01:32:29 Yeah. What's more fun, protecting the juggernaut or knowing that this is going this way, there's still potential left? I've never been part of a juggernaut that I've created. So Dan should answer this question. Well, I think, I mean, the grass is always greener though, isn't it?
Starting point is 01:32:42 Because Mike's show is also like, it's like inarguably the coolest like show on network television and probably up there with atlanta and a couple of others is like critics love it as they should you know as they should in mine is this has this big populist spread to it which is also exciting you're almost like you're protecting your lead almost like what you have you have this yeah this massively successful show but then you just the moment it's not as massively successful people like ratings are down yeah here we go well that's inevitable i mean that's going to happen at some point because of the way television is going it's a you can't stay in the zeitgeist for forever and so you just have to i constantly
Starting point is 01:33:20 been telling everybody it hasn't happened yet but it's going to happen whether it happens this season next season the one you know one after it's gonna happen um he has carbon copy shows out now for on other networks that's always a good sign there's an abc show i was like hmm yeah that looks oh a million a little bit familiar things yeah yeah but you know i i don't know i mean we're not i i was stressed out in the sec going into the second season of the show like i want the show to kind of keep going and keep, keep kind of exploding outward and also like remain like something that's high quality.
Starting point is 01:33:51 Do you have like an end date? Yeah, I do. I'm not going to go too long with it. Like five years around there. Yeah. They don't want that. They want to go like 15.
Starting point is 01:34:01 There's possibilities for branches off that are in different ways, but like this particular story for this, you know, for this cast is I've got kind of the end game in mind. What do you think the right length for a show is? Do you think about this stuff? Oh, constantly. It's always show specific. Like the right length for the Big Bang Theory is 12 years.
Starting point is 01:34:21 40 years. Well, that's how long it, like it's it depends on the premise like the premise of like the thing about the premise of this is us now try to imagine what does this is us look like in season nine it's impossible it's like you can't write the show the way that it was written or has been written for 185 episodes it won't it't work. And people will like turn on it because ultimately at some point you'll be doing reveals or twists just because you have to, because you have to keep going and people will get bored of it because it's doesn't,
Starting point is 01:34:54 it's not designed to last that long. Lost is the first show that did this the right way where like they did this show that captivated America. And then after two years it was like, now do this forever. Like do it forever. Cause it's a huge hit and it was like, now do this forever. Like do it forever because it's a huge hit and it's great and everyone loves it. So do it forever. And when they got into the mindset of like running in place and like, let's do this forever, the show fell apart. And then they went to the network and said, we need to end this
Starting point is 01:35:17 because if we don't end it, if we don't know when we're ending it, we're going to, it's going to stink forever. And they said, okay, great said okay great here's here's the plan two more seasons whatever it was 38 more episodes and as soon as they did that the show got amazing again yeah and they almost lost their audience and then they got it back and they got it back because they decided that they had to write an end game and i think about that a lot like you there there are some shows like gray's anatomy is in whatever it is, season 15. ER was like that too. You can do that forever because the central premise is so great.
Starting point is 01:35:51 Hospital. And the creative team behind it is so great. And they have designed a tone and a vibe and a mood that matters to people. And in that case, they have an actor who is the center of the show, who's willing to stay on the show forever. Bless her heart, because she loves the job and loves playing that character and has said many times, like, this is my favorite thing. I have a show. I were on the star.
Starting point is 01:36:13 I'll do this forever. And she's great. And so that show could run for 30 years if it really wanted to. Yeah. And the people behind it really wanted to. But some shows are just like, like you know they're designed to last like look at breaking bad or look at the soprano the sopranos did like 72 episodes or something like breaking bad did 68 or something i think breaking bad did the best job of knowing exactly
Starting point is 01:36:36 how many episodes it was and now imagine had it one episode imagine taking the events of breaking bad and saying you have to insert 50 more episodes in the middle of this run are you every one of us would have stopped watching it because it would have gotten like oh yeah there's a new there's a new drug kingpin great like what's his deal like we would have all gotten sick of it and we would have stopped watching it because they didn't have to do that this it was like in a perfect length and and they they did it they ended it exactly the way they wanted to and i think now now every show should do that like every show should say in a world where you no longer are in a race to 100 episodes to get syndication money and all that stuff every show should just take a
Starting point is 01:37:14 look at its own premise and its own vibe and tone and say like this is how many this should be i shot the end of our series last year already like did you really yeah i shot like uh some of it already like uh wow like just a to kind of you know because it's hard all the stuff that's not creative gets in the way right so you've got i've now got a cast that can't walk down the street um anymore and you know you know they're gonna you know at a certain point they'll start getting paid and you want everybody to kind of do you know make their money i have a studio and a network that invested a lot of money the show's not cheap so you want you know all the other stuff all the i have a group of hundreds of people who work on
Starting point is 01:37:50 the show and love it because everybody's kind and they don't want it to end right so you have to balance all of that out versus the the creative which i think most shows that have the ones you're speaking of that have like a set uh like a kind of end game, I think four seasons is the ideal amount of seasons for a television show personally. Something that is kind of plot driven. And I'm talking about like a 20 episode a season show, like 60 to 80 episodes to me. Like you don't, I don't think you ever need
Starting point is 01:38:16 to go much past that, but. Not to bring this back to Cheers, the greatest comedy of all time. But I think there's some good instructions in that show, right? Because that show lasted 10, 11? I think there's some good instructions in that show, right? Because that show lasted 10, 11, 11 seasons,
Starting point is 01:38:29 but it's basically two different shows. Yeah. And they last four years with Shelly long, and then they hang on for the fifth year, which wasn't as good. And then obviously just could have ended, but instead they blow up the show, new female lead.
Starting point is 01:38:44 They give Kelsey Grammer. He gets more shots. They develop more characters. And it's funny. I was talking to Curry about this. I did a podcast with Steph Curry last month. And we were talking about how the biggest mistake the Warriors made last year was they kind of just brought everyone back. They didn't have like, hey, this year Frazier's on the show. They didn't have like Frazier. And like Boogie Cousins is Frazier. It's like, whoa, who's this guy? Whoa, he's got some good lines.
Starting point is 01:39:10 And it kind of gives you a new juice. And I think Cheers was the best at that. Whereas like one of my favorite shows ever is Miami Vice. They never added anyone to the show. It was like the same thing, same premise. They would change John johnson's hair and but they never they never figured out like oh we need our giancarlo esposito for one season then we'll kill him off and they just didn't do it so i think there's i mean think about cheers
Starting point is 01:39:37 like in addition to yes there's a shelly long there's a show about uh a like vain former ball player who falls in love with a like snooty academic and that show lasted four or five seasons and then there's a new show about a man who's whose vanity is totally not in keeping with his fading physical looks yeah and who's who is like trying desperately to get a woman a professional woman to sleep with him and who can't because she's uninterested because he's like past his prime and that show lasted like seven years and they're both great shows but also think about the fact that like they had woody harrelson and kelsey grammar and bb newworth and uh and rhea perlman like they had they had a bunch of people on that show who could have easily left and been the center of their own show.
Starting point is 01:40:26 And he did either become movie stars or, you know, or the centers of their own shows. And like that at some level is it's the same thing with the warriors. Like if the warriors broke up tomorrow, their five best players would all become the number ones or maybe number twos, I guess on NBA teams and they'd be decent teams.
Starting point is 01:40:44 Like, yeah. Remember when Woody was on white man can't jump and it's like, Oh, that Woody got a movie. on NBA teams. And they'd be decent teams. Yeah, remember when Woody was on White Man Can't Jump? And it's like, oh, Woody got a movie. That's cool. And then it's like, oh, Woody's a movie star. Oh, he's a movie star, yeah. Oh, okay.
Starting point is 01:40:52 I didn't fully realize it. Think about the power of that cast. If you think about the power of the This Is Us cast or the Parks and Rec cast, or these casts of these shows where the ensembles are truly great like the the way that you know they're great as you could if parks and rec had ended after season five any one of those the main eight people on the show would have gone off and had their own
Starting point is 01:41:15 show developed for them the same is true this is us the same is true of of you know the same is true of like modern family probably in the you know at some point in the middle of that run like that's that's how casts are great is they're great because you have a bunch of number ones on call sheets playing the roles of like the number six on a call sheet. And it just adds this incredible depth and richness to the show. Social media, we didn't talk about.
Starting point is 01:41:37 Let's talk about quickly. Cause this is the last 10 years. This has kind of changed how people people consume shows how people write them do they pay too much attention what is your process with social media um i'm probably in between a little bit i mean again because i've never had done it before our show the show hit a zeitgeist kind of thing where i was kind of when we would have a big moment in the show i would go on and i'd put in like on twitter like the hashtag this is us and see what people are writing about it just to see how people are responding generally. I probably don't read as much as some people because it just, you can't win. I mean,
Starting point is 01:42:14 the internet is so vitriolic now and it's so, you can't win by looking at stuff anymore. So I try and get a sense, especially when we're doing a big moment, but then I try and turn it off. My writers, I think read and actors read a little bit more you gotta manage that right yeah you don't hate well what you don't want to happen is you know what we have a very lovable show and characters have to do sometimes make mistakes and be flawed and you don't want one of your actors starting to say like hey everybody hated when i did that because they're supposed to hate when you do that and so but our but our cast isn't like that, but you just, no good has come from reading people writing stuff about your stuff on the internet. I just don't think that there, in my opinion,
Starting point is 01:42:52 that any good has ever come out of it. My wholeheartedly agree. I, I stopped looking at the internet at internet reviews of my shows a long time ago, like late, late seasons of parks and rec and i haven't i i will read sometimes clips if they get sent to me by people at nbc or something they're like hey read this you'll like it i'll go like all right like if it's a pre if it's pre-approved and not so i know it's not like a weird negative screed or something but i also think there's danger in that like you don't want to read too much good press in the Like you don't want to read too much good press in the same. You don't want to read too much bad press.
Starting point is 01:43:27 I much like the NFL a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take an extended Twitter break too. I walked away because of the way that the people who run Twitter seems to be kowtowing to Nazis and Alex Jones. And I was like, I'm fat. I'm just fed up with this. I don't want to participate in this anymore. I don't like this,
Starting point is 01:43:43 this weird way that like you're bending over backwards for these terrible people. And then a week later, Alex Jones said one mean thing to Jack Dorsey in Washington, D.C., and he was immediately banned from Twitter forever. So I don't know. I haven't gone back yet. But I think Twitter is 14% good and 86% terrible.
Starting point is 01:44:04 And I like, I indulged way too much in the good. I relied on the good part of it too much. And I, and it made me overlook the part of it that's terrible. And the good part of it is like, you get instant news and you can follow comedians that you like, and people tell good jokes.
Starting point is 01:44:20 And if you are inclined to see how people are reacting to something, you can check it out. But I don't right now. And I'm sure my feeling will change. I've done this before. I took like a six month break once. I took a three month break once. Like I don't I'm not making like a giant soapbox proclamation about the overall value of this thing.
Starting point is 01:44:38 But I think it's important every once in a while to just walk away and and like get your news from other sources. I really enjoy Instagram. Everyone does. Instagram instagram is like pictures it just makes me happy all the young people on our on our writing staff the only thing they do is instagram they all like they're like twitter who cares this who cares that who cares instagram they're all and like they'll constantly i don't understand how they do it but they'll be like did you see the thing that like cardi b's sister posted or what they all but they'll be like, did you see the thing that Cardi B's sister posted? They seemingly are following thousands of people. They follow 900 people but see everything.
Starting point is 01:45:10 Yeah, it's crazy. Have you thought, how old is your oldest kid? 10. So have you been monitoring how he uses? Because our sons are the same age. He's totally uninterested in like, he likes watching YouTubers. He watches like basketball youtubers yeah there's a there's a kid named lost and unbound do you know that guy he's like an oklahoma
Starting point is 01:45:30 city thunder fan who's a youtuber is a vlogger my son was obsessed with him and just watched every he like somehow gets like there's videos of this kid who's like i don't know 23 or something sitting courtside at every in every stadium and like playing one-on-one with durant and like it's crazy like it's crazy like there's there's those guys who do the trick shots whose names i'm blanking on that my kids dude perfect dude perfect my kids love dude perfect my i took my son to a world series game at uh dodge stadium oh yeah dude perfect was there and he was like he's the biggest dodger fan in the world he was like that's dude perfect like he couldn't handle himself i do wonder if
Starting point is 01:46:04 we're heading toward a world where when that generation grows up, there are no traditional TV shows. It's just like people playing pranks on each other. Well, have we talked about that? I feel like we talked about this last time maybe, but there was a survey done like a year ago where they asked, I think a thousand kids between the ages of nine and 14, who is the most, oh, it was two years ago. Cause it was right at the end of Obama's presidency. Yeah. And the question was simply, who is the most, oh, it was two years ago, because it was right at the end of Obama's presidency.
Starting point is 01:46:25 Yeah. And the question was simply, who is the most famous person in the world? And I guarantee you would not recognize any of the answers. Wow. And the top 10. Was that the Logan Paul? Obama was like 11th.
Starting point is 01:46:35 It was all YouTube celebrities and like vloggers and stuff. And I saw that and I was like, this is the end. This is the death knell of the thing that we do. But isn't the screen on the wall going to remain a thing? Like no matter what, even if they're watching something that we don't understand, like isn't the, I sure hope, I mean, maybe I just can't fathom. Well, the difference though is that, all right,
Starting point is 01:46:56 so when you were 10, you were watching Cheers and Family Ties. Our kids are 10 and they're watching Dude Perfect. Yeah. So like a lot of the lessons you learned about what structure on a TV show and how to develop characters is because you were watching those great shows when you were a kid. That's true. And I do worry about it.
Starting point is 01:47:13 The information's not seeping into their brain. But I don't have kids. Your kids don't sit and watch like the equivalent of like America's Got Talent or The Voice or any of those shows. No, they watch like, my kids like really like Jesse and show those. Yeah, my daughter loved Jesse. Those Disney type targeted shows. Yeah, my daughter loved Jesse. Those Disney-type targeted shows. She's now moved on, though.
Starting point is 01:47:27 She'll now watch. My daughter's eight, and she watches grown-up shows. She watches the show The Middle. She loves The Middle. Oh, interesting. On repeats. They're now old enough, too, where they're semi-interested in what I do and what my wife does because my wife is a writer, too.
Starting point is 01:47:42 My daughter's big into pop culture. She's come on this pod a couple times to do like her pop culture watch but she's the netflix movies are her big obsession right now right because netflix it took a couple years but they just whatever algorithm spat out and they were just like hey this is an inefficiency 12 to 18 year old girls and now they're just making movie after movie for them and it's smart and that's what her and her friends talk about we should plug your movie really quick before we go uh life itself september 21st uh oscar isaac annette benning mandy patankin antonio banderas olivia wild olivia wild olivia cook um it's a terrible cast big cast jesus we just premiered
Starting point is 01:48:23 in toronto we had a really i was telling you telling you before, we had such an unusual, I had genuinely the most unusual weekend of my career, which was, I think the movie's really, it's my favorite thing or one of them I've ever worked on. I've been screening it for a year for really heavy duty filmmakers and people in our industry and at movie theaters. Barbra Streisand warren beatty like all you know all these people and i feel like we have you know when you feel like you have it we premiere in toronto we got like a five minute standing ovation it's like one of those things
Starting point is 01:48:54 and then like the seven critics who were there just came out and just like are coming after it hard no way they're coming after the this is us of it and the sentimentality and the amount of tragedy and laughter i don't i don't they like didn't get it is it is it um uh is it like similar in tone to this is us like it's much darker and uh but but it has that something of it it plays it does a lot of things i think that the critics come after it plays in structure it plays in it it plays a narrative structure and with unreliable uh narratives consciously and it's got a lot of darkness in it. And then ultimately at the end, a lot of like uplift and hope and people are really crying.
Starting point is 01:49:29 And so they're coming off to the crying and I, but I don't, I think it's going to balance out, but the movie's really good. I think people I've been screening it for a year and people love it. So I'm excited about it. I'm excited for his move against the grain to not be pigeonholed as the, this is us guy where it's just like Breaking Bad multiplied by 19. I don't think I have that in me. Some crooked cop.
Starting point is 01:49:48 I know. Yeah, God knows. The movies always confound me a little bit. Crooked NFL owner. Crooked NFL owner. You have a lot of material to use. Yeah, pro concussion NFL owner. So you're not going to read The Good Place Day on The Ringer?
Starting point is 01:50:02 Because I think that might happen. Really? Yeah. The staff is pretty obsessed with getting more attention for this show. All right. I just saw a thing online that I shouldn't be reading, but TV Guide called Good Place the number one show of all shows on television. I just got sent that.
Starting point is 01:50:18 That was awesome. Half hour, hour long cable drama. They called it number one. We were number nine. Not that I was looking. Yeah, that was cool. They, they,
Starting point is 01:50:30 the marketing, the PR people sent me a press release. It's a cool, it's a good press release. What are the ads we could get me and Danson on a podcast? Pretty good.
Starting point is 01:50:40 Like three to one? You know, he went to Stanford to play basketball. That was his, he went like, yeah. And then he, he didn't play
Starting point is 01:50:45 I think he got injured I can't remember what the story is What do you think he was like a small forward? I think he was a small forward yeah I mean remember this is like the 50s or something Or like the you know 60s He just blew my mind Yeah but yeah he went to Stanford on a basketball scholarship
Starting point is 01:51:00 So maybe So I'm saying the odds are good We will pitch you our sitcom about our travel baseball team that's it i like it it's just i'll find the people moving uncomfortably on metal benches for double headers neither of you guys coach you let you know i am an adjunct coach i would say i run i'm the official scorekeeper of the team i run the you're burying the lead though what he's kind of the commissioner of our entire I'm the official scorekeeper of the team. I run the- But you're burying the lead though. What? He's kind of the commissioner of our entire- I'm the commissioner of the rec league.
Starting point is 01:51:28 Oh, wow. Yeah. He took over from Mike O'Malley. Oh, wow. That sounds like an awful, awful thing to do. It's not. There's a lot. It's a rec league.
Starting point is 01:51:36 It's a part of rec league. So there's a lot of parents doing a lot of volunteering. I'm only the commissioner for our age group. O'Malley was like the main guy. I'm the commissioner of like our age division, which will be 11 next year. Yeah. Mike's the right guy to do this because the,
Starting point is 01:51:50 if the parents get a little snippy or whatever, like they know deep down, he's taking notes for like some character. Nobody wants to end up on a show, just getting annihilated or some pilot. Yeah. It's good. I should bring like a little moleskin notebook with me to the field.
Starting point is 01:52:05 Just every time someone mouths off, just write something down. That'll keep them in line. It's going to be sad when we're sitting on these metal benches in October watching Red Sox playoff games on our iPhone, pretending to care about our kids.
Starting point is 01:52:18 Great job. Your son just said a whole lot. Cheering inappropriately and cursing inappropriately. Yeah. I can't wait. wait guys thanks for doing this this was great thanks man
Starting point is 01:52:28 alright thanks so much to Mike and Dan thanks to Joe House for not showing up this week and giving us terrible pics we might have him back next week I don't know he's suspended for a week
Starting point is 01:52:40 for talking me into throwing the Redskins into a tease last week it was a one game suspension he served it. Maybe he's back next week. I don't know. Thanks to Starbucks Double Shot.
Starting point is 01:52:50 Starts with bold Starbucks coffee blended with milk for a smooth, creamy, delicious flavor. It's enhanced with ginseng, guarana, and B vitamins. It's the kind of thing around four o'clock in the afternoon, you need a little bump. Like I do every four o'clock as I'm about to hit 49 years old. Just shoot me.
Starting point is 01:53:08 Starbucks double shot. It's energy to do the things you actually do. Find it in your local convenience store. Don't forget to check out the ringer.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Halloween Unmasked. Don't forget to cheer on nephew Kyle, Tom Shady 300. How many Twitter followers you're up to? Probably like 11 or 12.
Starting point is 01:53:26 So a week ago you were at 1,500. Yeah. And now you have a tattoo. Yeah. You got a tattoo. We talked about that on Monday. And a bunch of other places. You're single?
Starting point is 01:53:34 Yeah. You got another tattoo? No, no. Oh, you want a tattoo mediatore? Yeah, people are sick of it. You're not going to do anything crazy this week, are you? No, no. It's not a pay week, so I'm not going to do anything dumb until next week.
Starting point is 01:53:46 All right. Well, a person who is going to do something dumb is my wife, who's in Boston this weekend. If you see my wife, don't buy her a shot. Just don't. She's with a bunch of her friends. Just stay away. If you see a bunch of good-looking L.A. moms, don't buy them drinks, please.
Starting point is 01:54:03 Enjoy the weekend. See you Monday. On the wayside I'm a person Never lost it I don't have To ever forget

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