The Bill Simmons Podcast - Westbrook’s Resurrection, Curry’s Rally and The GOAT TV Shows With Rob Mahoney and Andy Greenwald

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Rob Mahoney to discuss Clippers-Suns Game 3, Russell Westbrook's inexplicable rejuvenation, and whether the Suns can pull off a playoff run relying so heavily on their stars (1:53), before talking Kings-Warriors, 76ers-Nets, predictions for the weekend, and more (23:37). Then Bill is joined by Andy Greenwald of 'The Watch' podcast to discuss HBO's 'Succession', its case to be in the Mount Rushmore of TV, the anticipation around how the series will end, and more (50:15). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Rob Mahoney and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, basketball, television. What a combo. What's next? This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste.

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Must be legal drinking age. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right. There's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey. And it's on prime all season long. Watch prime Monday night hockey deliver unreal plays. The biggest goals can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL's best. They're all on prime prime Monday night hockey. It's on Monday. It's on Prime. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network.

Hope you checked out the latest rewatchables. We did Alien. We also put it up on our YouTube page. If you want to watch the whole podcast as a show, go to youtube.com slash Bill Simmons. Prestige TV, episode five. We're going to be breaking it down. Me, Joanne Robinson, and Sean Fantasy on Sunday. So stay tuned for that.

I hope you're watching our fan dole TV stuff. Tay Frazier's hosting through the ringer a couple of times a week. Kevin O'Connor, he's got beyond the arc East coast bias. Those guys are there. Check out East coast bias on the ringer gambling show too, for their Friday bets. But if you want to watch any of those fan dole TV shows, go check out the through the Ringer feed on

Spotify or, yeah, Spotify because video podcasts, you can just watch them on your Spotify app. There you go. Coming up on this podcast, Rob Mahoney comes on to talk about all Thursday night games and where we're headed this weekend with the NBA playoffs. And then

my old friend Andy Greenwald still cranking out the watch with Chris Ryan. He comes on to talk about the greatest TV shows of all time. Is there a recipe? Does succession tap into the recipe? What do you need? How do you land the plane in the final season?

And just what made the really special shows stand out from beginning to end? So really fun television conversation. Can't wait for you to listen. It's all next for Star Friends from ProTip. All right, taping this 1020 Thursday night. Just watched three games. Two of them were really good. Suns Clips.

Warriors Kings wasn't that good, but it was really interesting. We're going to start with Suns Clips because I think that was the one that captured our fancy. The Suns put in big minutes on KD and Devin Booker, Rob Mahoney. They're up 2-1 in this series. But is there diminishing returns with the amount of minutes they're putting on these guys? They play again 12-30 Saturday, Game 4. And already those guys combined are over 250 minutes in three games. I mean, there certainly could be. but what other option do you really have? The Suns are a Torrey Craig away from not being a functional basketball

team right now. So if you have to keep KD and Booker out there until their legs fall off, that's what you got to do. This team is shallow since the Durant trade. They're going to have to rely on those guys. They're sloppy even when they do rely on those guys. But this is the best you've got if you're Phoenix at this stage in the season. You've got to improvise with the most talented lineups on the floor. They were 45 and 43 minutes, KD and Booker, game one. 44 and 45 in game two.

And then in this game, Durant played 42, Booker played 45. This is a lot. These are like 1980s level minutes, and basketball is a lot more grueling these days. So I disagree slightly with the premise that they have to put the miles on these guys this early. Well, who else would you play, though? But that's the thing.

I would want to try to figure out, throw some guys in for a little bit, and just kind of see, what can I get from a Kogi? Can Damien Lee give me 16 minutes instead of 11 and stuff like that? I just think this is a tightrope. That Saturday 1230 game is going to be brutal.

And Conspiracy Bill is here and he's wondering if Kawhi maybe skipped game three because he knew the 1230 game four game was coming. And Kawhi's looking at it like, playing every other day, first four games. I'll play three of the four. And maybe we can steal this Thursday night or at home, but I'll play the Saturday.

Now, conspiracy build might be wrong. Kawhi might be hurt again. And this is what happened a couple years ago where it's like, no, no, no, he's fine. It was second opinion. And then all of a sudden he was gone for two years. Yeah. So I don't know. Were you surprised by that news today? What was your reaction?

Pretty surprised just because he was basically the best player in the playoffs so far. The idea that that was on a bum knee was a little bit shocking. Obviously, with Kawhi, you're never... It's not totally out of left field that he might miss a game here or there. I like the theory, though. The idea of sitting Kawhi one of these games,

if you absolutely had to, given his health situation. I mean, the Clippers really did almost steal this game. And especially with what they were able to find late, going super small, that kind of broke the game open for them. It turned over some new wrinkles

in this series. Man, they were like a Bones Highland three-pointer away, and one that just went all the way in and back out, from getting the exact kind of scenario they wanted, up 2-1, Kawhi coming back with some days off, that would have been ideal.

But the Suns pulled it out. Devin Booker's shot-making was sublime. KD was good enough, absolutely. They're a tough team to beat, even when the Suns don't look great. I had the Clipper announcers because the NBA TV feed was blacked out, and they were going

nuts about the calls. Westbrook got shoved by Booker. They didn't call like four minutes left. They had a couple of toilet bowl threes that like that bones when you mentioned game did feel stealable. On the other hand, they went small the whole fourth quarter basically and small in like a crazy way where they were just, they threw away the center and they're like, all right, Westbrook, you're a leading rebounder. We'll just try to hustle, scramble around. And it felt like the Suns got an awesome shot or then a putback of a not as awesome shot every time it felt like they were just scoring. And that, I don't know, it was interesting to try for a couple minutes, but I was really surprised that that was just what they went. The Suns between Booker and KD,

it's just too easy for those guys to get to the rim. So I don't know. It was interesting, but they never really got within five points. You know, that five points was like, I think the closest they got. So I don't know. It felt too gimmicky to me.

I think they got a little closer than that because in particular, I remember there was like a three-point game at one point. Torrey Craig hit a huge corner three. put him up six. So it was like there were ebbs and flows to it. You're right. And honestly, that's the way it's going to go with those really desperate, exaggerated lineups. Whether you're going super big, super small, super anything, you're going to have those gut punch moments because they're all momentum, right? It's like if you can generate turnovers, if you can get out on the break, if you can be frantic

and make the Suns frantic with you, then you have something on your hands here. And so the idea being not necessarily rolling out five guards again, I don't know that that's something you necessarily want to do, but what if you replace one of these guards with Kawhi Leonard, right?

Like that kind of small lineup could be pretty interesting going forward. Yeah, good point. Booker was incredible. He finished with 45. He's in the running for best player of the playoffs so far. If Kawhi basically abdicated the title.

He's just been fantastic. The KD thing has been fascinating to watch. We've been talking about the new car smell with him in the first two games. And you could feel it again today too, but they were also putting on a lot of miles on him on both ends. You know, the big issue for the Suns, and you saw it today, Norm Powell looked like the 21st best player of all time today.

He was just going by everybody that had on their roster over and over again. And he does this. This is like the charm of Norm Powell. He'll have those games. But he was completely unstoppable today. He finished with 42. But every shot he got was the shot he wanted. He was getting to the rim.

He was pulling up and was on a yo-yo. And it's hard not to think like, I felt this way going into the playoffs that that was going to be the Achilles heel for this team, that wing spot. Torrey Craig's made some big shots for them. But the defensive side of that, when you think down the road,

it's not going to hurt them next round against Denver, but LeBron is kind of looming. On the other side of the thing, Tatum's kind of looming. So at some point, they're going to have to stop one of these guys on a team that's equally as good. The Clippers are not equally good. Kawhi is the other one, obviously, but Kawhi was out today.

So you think it's Torrey Craig now in the fifth guy spot, or they're just going to basically bullpen back committee it? Oh, I don't think there's any question it's Torrey Craig in the fifth guy spot. Really, for them, it's like, can we cobble together just time

to get these other guys a blow, right? Like 80 minutes at all from these other players. And really, the only staple so far in the series has been, I guess, Bismack Biambo has held down his spot. We saw Jock Landale, like, you know, challenge him for a minute in game one. But other than that, Monty Williams has had just like revolving door

of wings and guards trying to see who can give him anything. You know, Landry Shamit will have like an okay game, but he's shooting, doesn't really translate to the playoffs. Akogi's obviously not much of a spacing threat, so that's an issue. TJ Warren hasn't really shown much at all this season, period, to be honest

with you, so it's kind of tough for him. Damian Lee, a little bit too much of a target defensively, I think. Yeah, I agree. But somebody's got to play. Do you think Shamit has now set the record for most seasons in a row where he's let down a playoff team? This is,

I mean, they traded a first round pick for him, right? And the Clippers, what would a day they also traded. I can't remember. Each team has traded like a real asset for him. And every year we get to some point in the playoffs where he's just lost the

trust of everybody. When he was in Brooklyn, Kyrie wouldn't even throw in the ball by the end of the, the net season he had. But I, I think, you know, that's somebody that they were probably counting on to at least be a

seventh man. And they're just playing roulette with some of these guys. I, I just feel like this is going to come back. That spot's just going to come back to haunt them. Torrey Craig's been around for a long time. Yeah. Now,

if you're telling me he's going to be the Mario Ellie of this team, I'm not buying it. I mean, so far, he's lived up to it, right? He's hitting shots. He's at least working

defensively. And I think most importantly, if you're going to play KD 42 minutes a game, basically, he can't guard high leverage opponents every possession.

He can't guard Kawhi Leonard every possession down the floor and do that kind of workload. So Torrey Crick is absorbing that responsibility even if he hasn't been awesome at it. I don't know that anyone's going to be awesome at it, but he's at least putting up a good fight when

both of those guys have been out there. You wrote an excellent piece on TheRinger.com this week, a great website, about Chris Paul in this weird point of the career that he's at now where he's an afterthought option and the guy that teams are now leaving open and being like, well, if Chris Paul beats us, so be it.

It was, you put that piece up this morning and then this game lived out the piece. He had wide open three. He finished five for 18. He missed two free throws near the end. One of eight from three. One of eight. And I feel like out of those eight what do you think seven were wide open

and I mean wide open like we have seen the tape we've crunched the numbers and we have categorically decided as a team we are going to leave you open right I mean that's that's kind of where it is and honestly a lot of that comes down to as we're saying Booker being one of the best players in the postseason so far

KD has looked just as good for long stretches of these games. So you got to pick and choose. You got to make choices. You got to live with something. The Clippers are living with Chris Paul taking those open threes or sometimes deciding he would rather not. I think at this point, it's pretty clear that CP is much more comfortable.

Put the ball on the floor. Try to get to that mid-range. Snake through the defense a little bit. He makes lots of winning plays, even in games like this where he doesn't shoot well, but the misses hurt. He's going to have to convert some of those. He had the

through the ball off the backboard offensive rebound layup moment. That was the highlight, but it was set up by a terrible first shot. It's a little sad. Also, he played 41 minutes tonight because campaign still is back, but it's a little sad. It mean, also, he played 41 minutes tonight because campaign still isn't back, but it's a little sad.

It was especially like on the Clippers where he was really hit the highest heights of his career other than the Phoenix Finals room. But really, as an individual player, he was probably the best on the Clippers. And to see a team just leave him wide open, it was a little humbling.

I gotta say, it was like, man, this is the league, man. Everybody gets old. They just need him wide open. It was a little humbling. You got to say, it was like, man, this is the league, man. Everybody gets old. They just need him this season. Now that when we get to the summer, they could buy out half of the contract. They can trade him. They can do some stuff, but they need him now.

I don't like the 41 minutes for him. That was another one. I mean, he's playing Saturday too. That's pretty rough. The Quipper side of things, which I think is what we really responded to in this game. I've never seen anything like this Westbrook thing. Kyle Mann and I talked about it on Tuesday and I was like, this honestly reminds me of Travolta and

Pulp Fiction. Like I thought you were dead. I thought your career was over and you were going to be, you know, on, on CW shows. And now you're in this amazing movie, and now you're headlining movies again. What happened? Westbrook, the athleticism and intensity, and it's the whole Westbrook package, but it really seems like 2016-era Westbrook with he's taking guys off the dribble. He's got that ferocity.

At the end of the games, you see when he cheap-shotted Durant when they were doing the fouls. I didn't even see that. He kind of did the undercut. At the end of the game, you see when he cheap shot at Durant and when they were doing the fouls. I didn't even see that. He kind of did the undercut him and Durant was like, what the fuck, dude? Game was over.

He was 11 for 23 tonight. He had 12 assists. He had eight rebounds. He did not seem tired at any point. And it's just like, I've never seen a rejuvenation like this from a guy that we thought was going to be

like in China in a year. It's been incredible. And it's not just, you know, know offensively as you're saying the burst the explosion the activity a lot of it's defensively too and i'm i'm sure there are a lot of folks in houston in okc in washington certainly you know lakers fans or people with that organization thinking you could have been doing this the whole time like you could have been this defender the whole time contesting every shot from behind not giving up on a single play in the mix everywhere and in particular like the fact that he can credibly at any point guard kevin durant in this series what is wasn't but an unimaginable thought a couple months ago and yet he has that like former teammate who knows all of your stuff dynamic, but amplified by enough pettiness to power the sun.

That is an amazing matchup to zoom in and watch. The way he's just able to push KD out, get his dribble, time his stuff. Russ has been incredible defensively. And offensively, especially in a game like this, you would think, without Kawhi to stabilize it, are they going to go completely off the rails if they have to rely on Westbrook? Nope. They had some early turnovers, but they cleaned it up. He looked great. Powell looked great. The Clippers looked like the deepest team in the league.

He bully-balled Westbrook a couple times. I mean, Booker a couple times in the second half. Yeah. Grown man shit. And I was like, oh man, you can still do this? I was thinking about his career. I obviously am not a huge Westbrook guy,

but I've respected always how hard he plays. But really since that 2016 season with the KD, the last OKC season, he's always been like the guy in the wrong movie. You know, you have like the movie star. It's like when Nick Cage had that run of weird Nick Cage movies, and then he kind of eventually found

his Nick Cage level of water. You're going to need to be more specific on the run of weird Nick Cage movies. Well, he's had this kind of comeback, right, where people kind of know who Nick Cage is now. He's in OKC as the main guy, which is great for his stats, but you're not

winning anything with that goes to Washington. Same thing. You're going to be basically a 500 team and an eight seed, uh, the Houston, which was before the Washington, just a weird fit with Harden too high usage guys. And then goes to the Lakers and you see this version of him now in the Clippers. You're like, oh, this never would have worked on the Lakers. Nobody freelances ad libs is a wild card on a LeBron team. It's just never worked. LeBron likes, you know, he likes to have the ball. There's a set thing. He likes certain type of guys.

And it was a horrible fit, but I think it was such a bad fit. It made a lot of us just think he's done. It's over. That's it. And he's clearly not done athletically. When you think like he's 2008 draft, think of the other guys in that draft. Kevin Love, his And he's clearly not done. Athletically, when you think he's 2008 draft, think of the other guys in that draft. Kevin Love, his hair is the color of mine. Derrick Rose is almost out of the league. All those guys in that draft are basically done, and he looks like he's 25. Might have to make him pee in a cup, Rob. You know what? I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say, sometimes this is what it looks like when you're wanted, right?

The situation with the Lakers was so toxic. Coming into the Clippers, it was complicated too. But he had Paul George really vouching for him, going on a limb saying, this guy can help us. And you know what? For all the shit PG took, he was 100% right.

And guys like you and I are going to have to eat it on that. I was out here saying like, are you giving up Terrence Mann minutes for Russell Westbrook? Could not have been more wrong. He's been exemplary all throughout this series. Even when he's barely making a shot, he makes a huge difference. And you think like situation, part of the situation is you got to earn your minutes. You're not going to play.

He's got a massive chip on his shoulder. He's in LA, same city as LeBron and the team that gave up on him and the guy that tried to trade him for eight months, basically. And, you know, I'm sure he's thinking down the road, like, man, if I could just play the Lakers in a playoff series. I mean, that might be the most

crazy high energy performance we've seen in a Western or Eastern finals, Westbrook against the Lakers. I actually think it would be like watching a car where the RPMs are like at eight and you're like, this engine is just going to blow. Take your foot off the pedal. Like he might lose his mind. The other really interesting thing about the game today, at least, was all their trade deadline moves were like prominently involved, right? Bones Allen. Eric Gordon's been

what we expected as a playoff guy out there. He wasn't great today, but you at least felt comfortable with the bat here. But Bones had a really good, you know, what he'll do. The wild card game. Westbrook and then Plumlee played too. That's three

of the five guards in that small lineup, right? Like those are all guys who weren't even on the team a few months ago. Yeah, you can see Ty Lue is having a little fun with this, where it's like, we're probably going to lose without Kawhi. Let's try some shit. Let's put some miles on the Clippers. So I'm going on Saturday. I think the Clippers are going to win on Saturday.

I think Kawhi is going to play, would be my prediction. And from a Suns standpoint, this is just, you want to get this series over as fast as possible, especially if you're going to play these tighter, you know, seven, eight man lineups, basically. Denver looks like they're in a pretty good spot in that Minnesota series. You got the altitude coming in Denver. You have multiple guards that are going to be hounding Chris Paul. They're going to have a Murray issue.

I guess Booker guards Murray. You're probably not, you know, if we get there, if that's the matchup, it's probably Booker guarding Murray. So you're putting a lot of miles on him on that end. Then you have the yokage piece of it.

It's tough that this sons, I mean, they were basically like, I stuck with the nuggets pick, but the sons were kind of the one I was watching. But I don't feel that good about them winning three straight rounds. Where do you stand on just the thought Clippers, I'm not so worried about 40 minutes for Kevin Durant and Devin Booker, but this is kind of what it's going to have to be. And this is the difference between these two teams and their path, right? One of these teams, the Clippers and the Suns,

has to play their core guys 40 plus minutes or they have no chance. The other one can lose Kawhi Leonard, you know, just roll guys into the lineup. Marcus Morris, guess what? You get to play tonight. Robert Covington, come on the court with a newspaper to show us you're still alive.

We see you, buddy. They can just roll guys out there because they have that kind of depth. It really hurts the Suns right now. That's where my doubts lie is in just their abilities to sustain the effort and the level that they're going to need to.

And especially because right now things aren't pretty. They have to work pretty hard. KD is working his ass off to get post-position against Eric Gordon just to get the ball. And this is Series 1, so the idea that they're going to do that all throughout, I have my doubts.

I lean Denver too. They were my pick as well, but Phoenix can get there. They just might be totally out of gas by the time they do. I wish they had figured out a way to keep Cam Johnson in that trade, especially with how really, really good Bridges has been for the Nets.

And it's like, man, you know, it seems like a fair trade. Bridges, Crowder, another contract, four,

four first unprotected in a swap for 34 year old Kevin Durant. Seems like a fair trade, not positive. Cam Johnson needed to be in there. Uh, before we go to a break, just wanted to mention this, the fucking Clippers again,

like Kawhi looks awesome in those first two games. Clipper fans feeling great. First home game. This will be awesome. We get to see Kawhi. He's been the best player in the playoffs so far. And then the, the Thursday morning just punched to the gut.

This is the franchise. This goes back to freaking the 1970s. They never cease to amaze me. I can't even believe I couldn't go tonight. And I was like, man, I'm going to miss Kawhi and KD. Never thinking that the Clippers curse would come in. Anyway, we need to start burning some sage. We're going to come back and talk Little Kings Warriors. The NBA playoffs are here. You can turn crossovers into cash with FanDuel.

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some of these other games. Kings Warriors, you could feel it. I taped a lot of my pod stuff after the suspension or before the suspension with Haral Bob, after the suspension with Kyle Mann, but before the reaction of the Warriors to that suspension. Yeah. And you could see the FU

mode start in a form like a fucking cloud and it became pretty clear at the very least Curry who for the last 10 years has been among the most reliable superstars we've had in any sports especially in a spot like this it's like well I know, I know Curry's going to have a good game. Yep. Well, who else is going to show up? Can I get some Wiggins? Well, we got that. Kavon Looney, he's shown up big time, time to time. Well, he's the only rebounder, really, they have.

He showed up big time. He had like 13 rebounds in the first two and a half quarters. Monster hit. The young guys chipped in a little bit. Yep. Poole looked okay. I think he's hurt, but he looked okay. They got a little moipped in a little bit yep pool looked okay i think he's hurt but he looked okay uh they got a little moody little kaminga the big thing for me though rob the kings haven't made threes really this whole series right they're 12 for 32 in game one that's pretty good game two nine for 38 they somehow anyway. And tonight they were 11 for 46.

This was supposed to be part of the Kings package. Like they shot 37% for the year, but Herter and Monk and Fox are three. It's a bonus can make them. The burnt, like Murray's had some stretches where he was making them. Barnes is okay. I don't know what happened to the threes.

And if they're going to shoot threes like that, I actually think, you know, who the hell knows what's going to happen this series anyway. But I don't think they can win if they're not going to make threes. It's got to turn at some point for them to win this. And honestly, a lot of it I think is Herter. He's three of 20 from three so far.

He struggled to the point that they just started like inching his stuff in. It's like, okay, we'll run the handoff at the free throw line. We'll run the handoff with Sabonis at the post. Let's just get you an eight-foot runner to just see if we can get you going. Nothing's really worked so far. And yeah, between him and Murray is just kind of eating minutes at this point. It's tough for rookies in playoff series like this,

but he just hasn't really been able to hang in the series so far. They got to figure that part out. And there's ways to do it because the Warriors, for as good as they can be, as good as they were in this game, they allow you to play lots of guards at the same time if you want to. The Kings are playing three guards for a lot of minutes.

Somebody just needs to hit something in some of these games. And Monk, I mean, I thought this was just going to be the Malik Monk game every game, but I guess apparently he has his limits too. If he turns back on, I think that solves a lot of problems. Herder,

not Herder, Keegan Murray, or in the Ryan Rosillo text of, oh, Keegan Murray's in this game like an hour in. It's just like he's been MIA. So he's going to be at the Tobias Harris All-Stars.

I forgot you were in this game until three minutes left in the second quarter. You got a rebound. I haven't loved the Sabonis in this series compared to what I watched during this season. I can't tell if it's what the Warriors are doing or whether he's just trying too hard, but there's a clumsiness to

some of his stuff. I don't feel like he's had an awesome game in this series yet. I thought it was going to be tonight if the Kings had a chance and it wasn't. It was just one of those games. They just, you know, the Warriors got the lead early. The crowd got into it. I do wonder, is this like the kind of series that I grew up with, where it's just the home teams win and we get to a game seven and it's like, nobody's won on the road yet. And now it's game seven. I could like nobody's won on the road yet and now it's game seven i could that doesn't happen anymore but i could see it in this right it could definitely happen i mean game four is going to be fascinating because honestly sacramento looked so tight in

this game right after they look they were going all out games one and two playing really loose playing really confidently and look they were like a higher-seeded team who came into this series feeling like they needed to prove something, prove people wrong. People were saying the Warriors were going to win. Going into this game, up 2-0, no Draymond Green. You should absolutely win this game.

It was like a total inversion of the psychological dynamic of this series. I think they just weren't really ready for that. And you could see it, Fox and Sabonis, lots of turnovers in this game. They just never quite got their offense on track just in terms of the movement of it. I think they can play better.

And I wonder if honestly, just like facing a more normal Warriors team will let them kind of reset and get back into what they expect to happen. Sometimes young teams need that. And if you're the Warriors, you're watching this game with no dream on and you're watching them play really well

with no drama. Nope. And you're doing the Dr. Evil finger under the mouth like, hmm, that was an interesting one. Yes. I look at Sacramento. I thought they were just,

the energy and the speed they had in the first two games, maybe it was fueled by the home crowd a little bit, but maybe they're like one of those NFL teams that, like the Saints were like this with the year they won the Super Bowl, where they were just awesome at home and they were in the dome and they were a dome team with a great crowd and it just pushed them to another level. But if you put them outside and like, you know, Carolina, it looked like a different team. And that might be the Kings. I don't know.

I'd like to think they're better than that because I really thought Fox and Sabonis were two of the best like 16 to 20 guys I watched this year. You know, you figure like the three all NBA teams plus like Durant, Davis, Booker, like the guys that didn't make it because they didn't play enough. They were two of the best 24ers in the league.

And they did not look like that today. So we'll see game four. The Warriors protect the dynasty though, which I really was psyched that they didn't just roll over and it was just a sweep and oh my god, and that's it. And what do they do now? Yeah, and especially to get it this way, right? Like this is

as close to a strength in numbers Warriors as we're going to get. Just like, you know, just as you mentioned, like you're actually getting minutes from Moses Moody and getting good stuff from Jonathan Kuminga in spots. I don't trust that though. I mean, I don't trust it game to game, but they got enough.

And the thing about, you know, the Kings being so good at home, I mean, they were great on the road this year too. I think they have a shot. I wonder really if this was just like a delayed, you know, the young team is a little bit shook that we would have expected in game one and it just came a little later than we might have anticipated.

And Curry was by far the best player in the game. I mean, he's amazing. Categorically, always run of the mill just like ho-hum, 36 points, 25 shots, no big deal. It felt when he made that like 35 footer at the circle, there was a lot of game left, right? And it

only put them up maybe 15. It felt like that was it. It was like, oh, if he's making those, they're not. Nothing's happening. Sixers Nets was the other game today. Sixers Nets was a rock fight crossed with a professional wrestling Royal Rumble.

Different kind of fight, I think, too. And Bede should have been kicked out. Yes. I feel like just fundamentally, there's just no rhyme or reason to these decisions at this point. We lose Draymond the other day because of prior history,

which I said on the pod, I had never heard that before. And then after the pod, did some fact checking, and it was like, nope, that's definitely never happened. They've never used that. And then after the pod did some fact checking and it was like, no, that's definitely never happened. They've never used that. Um,

and then he stays in that, which was pretty like vicious kick to the, to the balls that just missed. And then Harden does the elbow that does hit the balls, but didn't seem as vicious, but because it connected, he's out. It felt like a makeup call.

Um, but if I'm the nets, I'd be fucking furious. Cause I, we've watched all year. People have been kicked out on that Embiid play and they just didn't do it

because he's Embiid I think I know there have been more consequential hits to the nuts in NBA history than these two but I can't remember a game that was defined

by the contrast between two of them like the variety of the way these nut hits were officiated yeah it's wild

and yeah again the fact that Harden's the criteria for flagrant 2, unnecessary and excessive. I guess Embiid's was not excessive because he missed. It's so bad. And it seemed like he half-connected. It wasn't even like a complete miss. Yeah, he definitely hit some leg

and then he, I mean, again, it was at least a partial hit. I really don't see how he was still in this game. And honestly, for Joel, just an incredibly frustratingly reckless decision for a player that good in that moment. And maybe this is just me exposing that I'm not a competitor at heart,

that I don't have that drive, I don't have that dog in me, but I don't understand why a dude stepping over you is like a declaration of war, but in the NBA it is. This is a big deal, this is a a declaration of war, but in the NBA it is. Like, this is a big deal. This is a big moment. And he lost his mind in that, like,

they could have very easily lost this game and he could have been ejected in the first quarter. Rob, I understand it. And don't fucking ever step over me. I'm just telling you. That goes to everybody at the ringer. Don't step over me. Just don't.

I thought Embiid was terrible today. It was, look, the MVP is a regular season award. And I am not a, oh, you did this in the playoffs. And now I regret my vote. I don't regret my vote. I thought he was the best player of the regular season. He was bad in this game. He looked exhausted.

He took bad shots. He was completely flummoxed by them sending two guys at him. They were playing small lineups. He wasn't near the basket. I don't understand that. He's 7'1". You don't need to be at the top of the key when it's a small... Just go down on the box. Go five feet away and put your hand up.

Shoot a jump shot. But he had the big block of the game. And the announcer goes, oh, and an MVP played by Joel Embiid. It's like, he was bad in this game. I just... Every time I'm in, I see a game like that, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he'll have 52

in the next game, and it'll be like, ah, he just had a bad game. But that was all the old, bad Embiid stuff that I just don't like that much. All in for two and a half hours. The other old, bad Embiidiid stuff that I just don't like that much, all in for two and a half hours. The other old, bad Embiid thing is he tweaked his knee pretty badly in this game, to the point

where it was unclear he was going to be able to stay in it. That's what makes that block impressive, is he's limping around for five minutes and then manages to get that block. But, as is always the case with him, it's not really a matter of, like, can Joel Embiid and the Sixers win their first round series? It's

what kind of toll is it going to take on Embiid to get past it? And we saw last season fluke elbow to the face changes your whole playoff run. Sometimes it's like this where it's an accumulation. He took four or five really hard falls in this game. He also took a bunch of unnecessary falls trying to draw fouls

and do things he probably shouldn't have been doing. And then he has this knee tweak. So he plays a bad game. He also took a bunch of unnecessary falls, trying to draw fouls and do things he probably shouldn't have been doing. And then he has this knee tweak. So he plays a bad game. He gets hurt. Things are getting a little bit up in the air from here. And honestly, they're really lucky they pulled this thing out. Because if the Nets win this game, and Joel Embiid is injured, and Brooklyn is throwing the

kitchen sink at you defensively, all of these double teams, all of this switching off the ball to basically dare anyone but Joel Embiid to beat you, that could have been pretty dangerous. James Harden does not exactly look super spry getting to the rim. Well, and Boston has way, way, way, way, way better personnel to do all the same stuff that Brooklyn was doing to bother Embiid. Everyone has a bad game, whatever. I just, it's the clumsy piece of it too that really he wasn't doing this year. He was always in control of his surroundings.

And I get it, in the playoffs it goes a step up, but as you said, he fell down a bunch of times because he got knocked down. There are other times he just like fell down, you know, or ended up careening into somebody or whatever. It was not a good game. We'll see how he responds.

The big winner of the game was Maxey, who was great in game two. I don't know how the Nets lost this game. They lost by five, but they were up five with like two and a half minutes left. It was a classic Spencer Dinwiddie, who I got to be honest, no shots fired here,

but one of my least favorite players to watch because one of my pet peeves with the NBA is the guy who thinks he's better than he is. And, you know, and he got that block at the end because Dinwiddie is like, I got this guys. Yeah. I'm going to take these guys off the dribble and challenge Joel Embiid on the biggest play of the game. Guess what? That's fucking stupid. You're Spencer Dinwiddie. You're not Devin Booker. That's just a dumb play. But there's a lot of that stuff with him.

At that point, you got to get the ball to Bridges and have him create something. But from a Maxie standpoint, there's always like, it's hard, I'm going to go to Houston. Is this the last run with this team? Maxie, these last couple months, really since I did the

trade value thing, and I probably had him, I had him 56, I probably should have had him higher, but he just looks like an absolute keeper. I feel like if Harden leaves and they push that money toward Maxie and get somebody else as a third, they're probably fine, right? I mean, I love

that he's the guy who when their offense gums up he breaks it loose right he's so fast he's such a good shooter and in this series he's been so good like attacking the gap when they double right finding that space in ways that no one else on the team can do so he's been invaluable right like and they're running stuff for him too like out of timeouts like he took the biggest three of the game out of the timeout they wanted him to do it and that's who they went to and he made it you know i just say he's got a lot of confidence and um clearly you know like this summer dame willard's going to be offered that that whole thing will be where's dame lowered going like i don't i wouldn't trade maxi in a Dame lower trade, would you? Wow.

I mean, it depends on what the rest of the Sixers team looks like, but that's pretty enticing. For all the nice things we can say about Tyrese Maxie, that's a different kind of player right there. He's 22 years old, though. He's still in a rookie contract. Dame's making 60

plus million five years from now. I don't know. I think Maxie's the guy you build contract. Dame's making 60 plus million five years from now. I don't know. I think Maxie's the guy you build around. He's really good. And I wouldn't have said that three years ago or three months ago.

The tricky part with Joel is like he's at that stage where you have to be contending basically every year you can afford to be and you have the pieces to be. And if you think Dame gets you a little bit closer to that,

maybe you do it. They have an issue too because of the Knicks because the Knicks have all the assets to trade for him. His former agent maybe you do it. They have an issue too because of the Knicks because the Knicks have all the assets to trade for him. His former agent runs the Knicks. Like that's kind of lurking in the background as well.

I don't think, I think some of the stuff the Nets did in this game, and granted the Sixers are up 2-0, they're on the road, even though that crowd wasn't exactly like the most vociferous crowd.

But I just feel like the Celtics are going to be able to do all that stuff to them. You think of the guards they have, Tatum and Brown, the ability that they could just throw different looks. I think they could put the Sixers on their heels. Yesterday's game, did you take anything major away from Lakers-Grizzlies? I don't know that we learned that much, other than LeBron didn't look particularly great. I thought his just like laying back,

picking his spots, not being full speed LeBron, which look, he's 38. He has a major foot injury. That's kind of what it's going to be. But if he is that player, their half court offense is not going to be very good a lot of the time.

And that's the reality of their situation. I thought it was a really tough Darvin Ham game. What bothered you? I didn't like their offense at all. Yeah. I just think stuff has to run through LeBron with the team that they have. And when Davis,

Davis to me is like, you know in the first quarter what you're getting. Yeah. There's no surprises. I can tell in six minutes which Davis is showing up and you can tell he didn't have it. And at that point, the low post, part of the issue I have with the Lakers

is if they stumble on something that works, they'll just do it over and over and over and over again. They're like, this worked. Let's do it again. It's pretty pragmatic. I can't argue with the results, you know? Right. So I was waiting for them to post up LeBron for two hours. Right. And then third quarter, he got mad. He starts posting up and all you could

see the Grizzlies are in a panic because they're like, Whoa, we were hoping they wouldn't do this. So now it's like, do we send a double? Which guy, which guy do we send to them? Um, who do we defend with them? Cause he can just overpower people. And they went basically into a seizure. And you're just watching that going, dude, this is right there. Every game, every quarter, LeBron posting up whoever and running the offense through him with his passing and his little put.

This is stuff he couldn't do 12 years ago. But now it's like, he's about as good as anybody other than, you know, the Jokic level. So I wonder if that's going to be the big adjustment for them in the next game. It's like, how do we bully people with LeBron? How do we run more things through him and less stuff through Russell and Schroeder who, you know, I just don't think are reliable enough.

They're not. And to the extent that LeBron is down for that, it's obviously the strategy that would work. You know, I think the question is you want, you want the offense to run through him. Does LeBron want that? Because he seemed pretty cool letting Austin Reeves take over in game one. He seemed pretty cool kind of like picking his spots in game two, playing the perimeter, letting himself be guarded by Xavier Tillman and David Roddy and guys who in previous seasons he would have absolutely torched. He didn't even really want to drive by them sometimes. So, I mean, look, LeBron's an all-timer.

He's going to figure out ways to be dominant. Even when he is as passive as I'm saying, he's still putting up monster numbers and having ultimately a big effect on the series. He's just not the mismatch hunting monster who we're used to seeing. Defensively, there's some plays where he's

just not going to move. Yeah, he's not moving. And I can't tell if he knows that they have this series and that was probably Memphis' game. We'll see. That's one I'm watching. What'd you learn from Denver, Minnesota? I mean, Denver's obviously

incredibly fallible defensively. I thought that was maybe as embarrassing a single quarter as any team in the playoffs has put together so far. And if that is a reality check for them, great. You know, the Nuggets will be well on their way. If that's just the kind of thing they're going to do

once every two or three or three or four games, they might run into some serious problems. I just don't. Every West team we can pick apart right now. I know. Right? Kings on the road. No idea after tonight.

What are we expecting? I mean, this is what we do in the playoffs we overreact to everything Denver defensive stretches you're just like oh no what is that

Suns they've three and a half guys and I don't know if the half guy is Chris Paul or DeAndre all the way through

it just feels like this is this West is so stealable for somebody whereas the East is the opposite. The Celtics are clearly in such a good spot now. And then Milwaukee, I guess we see with Giannis.

I mean, the fact that he didn't play in a playoff game was not a small deal. This is somebody that is pretty indestructible. And that made me wonder, like, hmm. Like, we're going to scratch him game two. It's like, well, what about game three? Like, how many, what is this? What's the injury?

They've been a little dodgy about it, right? Well, especially down 0-1, right? Like, if you lose that game two without Giannis, things get really scary really fast. And I think, obviously, they made the right bet. Milwaukee is a team that can win that series, even if Giannis doesn't play another game in it. Yeah.

But it was still a big roll of the dice under the circumstances and certainly with the stakes we're talking about. Can you compete not only in this round but against the Celtics, against the other elite teams in the East? They're going to need him and they're going to need a version of Giannis

that isn't just like holding his lower back every other play. They need the real deal. I'm contractually obligated to say right here that the playoffs are all about the adjustments. We have three games tomorrow, Celtics Hawks. The Hawks have no adjustment.

No, not really. They're just going to have to fire up threes and hope to have one of those games where it's like 22 for 50 and, or they have the game where the Celtics are just doing weird Celtics things, which happens every once in a while. I mean, this is a team that lost to Houston. Cavs-Knicks. So, and we were going nuts about this last weekend, me and Rosillo. It's like, what are you guys doing with Darius Garland? What's the strategy? And then game two,

they unlock Darius Garland, figure out some sort of a swarm Brunson strategy. So then what's the strategy? And then game two, they unlock Darius Garland, figure out some sort of a swarm Brunson strategy. So then what's the adjustment in that series for game three? What do the Knicks do to counter that? Because here's my theory. If I'm them, I'm attacking the two big guys because they have no backup big. And I want to try to get those guys in foul trouble. I just want to drive at those guys.

The crowd's going to be nuts. The refs are going to be a little jumpy.. I just want to drive at those guys. The crowd's going to be nuts. The refs are going to be a little jumpy. And I just want to go at those guys and try to make them make some plays and try to put two fouls on one of them. Then what happens? Dean Wade comes in. Karis LeVert's playing undersized small power forward.

Like, what do you do? I mean, we've been expressing a lot of concern about Phoenix's depth. Man, the Cavs, they might have an even worse position in terms of trying to roll somebody out there. If Karis LeVert isn't playing well, I just do not know what they do on a given night. So there may be something

to what you're saying. Feels like they already gave up on Okoro, right? He's just, I guess, hurt or something. He played two minutes. Bailed. He had immediate foul trouble, and then they just never went back to him and I mean that was they were obviously rolling offensively they found other things that could work for them so maybe they

were just kind of stick with the momentum but I mean it's it's tough in that series and to your to your strategy of like trying to get the bigs in foul trouble all across these playoffs I mean they're letting these guys play right there there's a lot of contact. So if the plan is to get guys in foul trouble,

the plan is to generate any kind of free throws, you may just get caught on that night where Brunson isn't getting any whistles, and then you're really stuck. Yeah. Well, it's funny. We have Hawks game three in Atlanta, or we have Timberwolves game three in Minnesota.

Both teams down 0-2. Two of the guys in those games, Trey Young and Towns, will be leading a lot of podcasts as we head into the offseason, I'm guessing. I can imagine. This could be, I mean, this could be it for both of those guys, right?

I think if the T-Wolves get swept, some sort of reckoning has to come out of that, and I don't know what it is. And then the Trey Young thing, I think think is we can kind of read the tea leaves on that one. So if you, if you had to guess like, which goes worse for those out of those two guys,

does the Trey thing go worse this weekend or does the towns thing go worse or neither? You could also vote for neither. I mean, I think the Trey thing is going to go worse. The town thing, the town thing kind of is what it is, right? Which is sometimes he just gets kind of lost in these playoff games.

Sometimes if you don't make a concentrated effort to get him the ball, he doesn't always fight for position, especially with another big out there. It's kind of hard to make the pieces fit sometimes. The Trey situation is a little bit more concerning to the overall project of what the Hawks are.

They just don't have other options when he gets swallowed up by a defense like this. And that's pretty much exactly what's going to happen again, I would expect. What of everything this weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, what plot are you looking forward to the most in any of these eight games?

What catches your fancy? Well, I'm trying to think of something we haven't talked about yet because I think Warriors-Kings game four is probably the one I'm really zeroing in on to see how that series evolves. But out of the other ones... That's Sunday, it looks like.

Yeah. So we have Sunday, Celtics, Cavs, Knicks, Kings, Warriors, Nuggets, Timberwolves. But the Saturday where we have Sun, Celtalks, Cavs, Knicks, Kings, Warriors, and Nuggets, Timberwolves. But the Saturday where we have Suns, Clippers at 1230 West Coast time, but then Grizzlies, Lakers at night. We have the double whammy in LA,

so that's going to be really fun. I feel like it's going to go badly for one of the LA teams, but I don't know which one to pick. Because I find it hard to believe both of them are going to go badly for one of the LA teams, but I don't know which one to pick. Because I find it hard to believe both of them are going to win, right? So probably the Clippers. If you had a gun to your head,

it would probably be the Clippers that will go badly. Kawhi won't play. The weird energy. Westbrook will try to do too much. Plus with the Grizzlies, you would think, if Jha doesn't play again,

maybe there's a little bit of wind out of that sail. You can keep it going for one game with some smoke and mirrors and a great Xavier Tillman performance, but you have to do it again and things get a little bit harder. Maybe they figure it out,

at least for that game, the Lakers do. Do you keep your Tillman stock? Of course. I'm a booster. I'm realistic about our prospects. It's not a huge growth area, but we're having a good week, so we're going to ride it. This league is so

crazy where the guys like Tillman and Peyton Pritchard, there's like 15 guys like that that I just feel like if you threw them out in a playoff game, it actually will be okay and maybe even good. Whereas in the mid-2000s, you could barely scrape together seven guys

for a playoff team. So who's missing those guys right now? The Suns are missing some of those guys. The Cavs are missing some of those guys. I would say the Cavs kind of prioritize the wrong kind of... How many small forwards do they have? And then they buy out Kevin Love

so they have no backup big, but then they never replaced him with another backup big who could play 10 minutes. So it's kind of like they had the assets to have the normal roster. The Suns, I mean, they traded three wings for Durant. And they really, really went all in

on Okoge and Torrey Craig and just keeping your fingers crossed on Wainwright. All these dudes, I don't know. Actually, the Cavs guy we forgot to mention who just like appeared in the rotation like magic, who might be this guy. Danny Green gave him like 15 to 20 good minutes

and looked like, you know, stand in the corner, hit some open shots, play credible defense, like just prevent us from falling apart for minutes at a time. Maybe he could be that guy. Maybe he's their Xavier Tillman. That's a dude that almost won a finals MVP.

Yep. 10 years ago. He's well on his way. And then it dipped at the worst possible moment. But there was a moment like after five games, it's like Danny Green's the MVP of the series. What's happening? All right, Rob, you guys are are doing Ringer NBA show on Sunday

yep the group chat gang probably after I think the second game and then Rasul and I will go late night so we will see you there check out Rob's piece

about Chris Paul too which was really good and especially timely considering what we saw today good to see you thanks for staying up late with us thanks Bill play with us. Thanks, Bill. What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to powers your scale with no preset spending limit, more cash on hand to grow your business

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So don't take shortcuts across tracks. Don't do that. In fact, just don't walk on tracks at all. Not at all. Trains move quietly so you won't hear them coming. You won't hear them coming. See, safe riding sets an example. Yeah, an example for me.

Because safety is learned. It's learned. Okay, give it up. Give what up? Really? Really, really. This message is brought to you by Metrolinks. All right, our friend Andy Greenwald is here.

You haven't been on the BS podcast in a while. It's my fault. I mean, you're a busy dude. You got the watch. You're still cranking it out with Chris Ryan all these years later. We've been cranking it out for years. And thank you for the acknowledgement of that. It's nice.

We've been cranking. You've been writing scripts. You're working on different things. And then I always, and we text, and sometimes I just forget to invite you on. We are going to talk a bunch of TV, but this is the platform. If you want to get any, I don't know,

35 seconds of Philly sports stuff out, this is the time. This is it? You're giving me a moment? I'll give you a moment. I'll give you a little cup of coffee, a little appetizer. If you want to get some Embiid thoughts out there, some 50 million a year for Jalen Hurts, whatever you want to do. Because I feel like you know that I am the self-appointed ombudsman of the BS Report podcast because I listen to a lot of podcasts by

you and a lot of sports ones recently. I'm feeling you named the two things. I've never felt better about anything in my life than I feel about the Jalen Hurts contract. I feel like everyone is overjoyed. I love him. I consider him a role model and someone I aspire to be more like in my personal life. And everybody just wants to see him happy and paid. And I'm thrilled. I just feel great about it. I feel the opposite of that about James Harden's leg. Whatever the opposite of that $250 million investment is, I just feel great about it. I feel the opposite of that about James Harden's leg. Whatever the opposite of that $250 million investment is, I just feel worried. I feel worried.

You're dropping him out of the contenders conversation. It stings. It stings a little bit. Is Embiid on the team in three years? I think so. But then that's also because I'm a very emotional, I'm a very emo sports fan. I would be really upset if he was not.

What would your rankings be? Eagles one, Sixers two, Phillies three? That's probably the hierarchy now. Flyers, are they in there? What is it? Never a hockey guy. But right now in terms of what I feel good about. Just in the discourse.

In the Philly whole fan base. Eagles have the... Eagles are number one, yeah. Eagles number one. I think the Phillies snatched the co-lead briefly, but with Bryce Hurt and Aaron Nola unable to handle the intensity of the pitch clock, I don't know. I don't know. Before we talk about TV, we should do a little backstory because I'm not positive people know it, right? So we've been working together in some form since 2011. You were one of the first writers we hired for Grantland.

You did a bunch of pop culture stuff for us. And then the pod with Chris, when we started to do the pod network, which was always part of the Grantland plan, I had mine. And then we're like, we got to do a couple more. And we had this blog that we called the Hollywood Prospectus, which I named, which is probably a bad name in retrospect, but we wanted it to be kind of move like baseball perspectives. Think about Hollywood through the lens of sports in some ways and things like that. So then we have this podcast with you and CR.

You guys had known each other forever. That was the special sauce. You found that out. You didn't know that because we had come in different ways. Because I think Chris came in through our mutual friend, Chuck Klosterman. And then Lane Brown, who's the founding culture editor, who worked with Chuck and with me and Chris at Spin, brought me in. And so I think it took a couple months before maybe Jacoby told you that Chris and I had actually known each other since summer 96, which is what we were looking for. Yeah, we were like, we need like a pop culture pod and like who should host it and talking to different candidates. And then it

was like, you know, Chris and Andy are like buddies, right? Like, all right, that sounds great. And then we were off called the Hollywood Perspectives that lasted, I don't know, two and a half years, something like that. And then over three. Yeah, we started our first one in January of 2012. Jacoby told us, don't get fired. Then he hit record. And we were finger on the pulse from day one. We talked about Downton Abbey for like 40 minutes. Right. And you let us do a second one. Well, and then that was such a great time for TV, which is what we're eventually going to talk about. But it was, you know, one of the glory runs. We had all these great shows all happen at once.

There was one of those years we had Game of Thrones and Mad Men and Breaking Bad. And they were all within like four months of each other. It was just incredible. So then I leave Grantland, everybody else, Grantland gets shut down six months later. And we're doing The Watch right where I am right now in the pool house. Cause this is where the equipment was.

So the watch is the second ringer podcast, basically. It was mine and yours. And you guys are coming over. Yeah. You guys are coming over. You're just letting yourself in. You're going through the back. Tate was there.

Yeah. My dogs, my kids. It was just not surprising at all to see either of you just wandering around in the back of the house. And that's how we did it while we waited to find an office. Do you remember the time you came back to your pool house and found just me and Mike Schur talking?

Like, I don't even know if we had told you that we were going to be recording there. And you were like, I'm going to hop on. And then you and Mike did 40 minutes about the Red Sox. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I was always worried you guys were going to step in there. And you were like, I'm going to hop on. And then you and Mike did 40 minutes about the Red Sox. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I was always worried you guys were going to step in dog poop as you were like navigating if it was at night or something.

It was part of, there was no HR back then. It was part of it. We knew. We knew the risks. That's true. Yeah. So it's been 11 years now. And then Chris belatedly became like my main Rewatchables partner.

So now we share Chris. Sean has Chris. Like just people have pieces of Chris. It's like we all share custody of him. Chris and I finished recording The Watch yesterday at Spotify HQ. We ran into Sean Fennessey and we all talked about how watching you laugh at Chris doing Wayne Jenkins is the highlight of our lives. Because it is a genuine laugh.

It is so good. I don't know why it hasn't stopped being funny yet. It feels like it's gaining humor. I don't know why. But don't you think like, at this point, do you think Chris's imitation

of Jon Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins is more famous than Jon Bernthal's performance as Wayne Jenkins? Because that was not a highly rated show. We love We Own the City. Right.

But I think it surpassed it now. Like that's the go-to. It's like Dana Carvey doing Bush was somehow better than Bush, right? Like it's on a different level. It's all leading to Bernthal coming on the 300th episode to do the re-reheat with us. And then Chris doing Wayne Jenkins in front of Bernthal

or maybe Bernthal joining in for a double Jenkins. I feel like that's, this is, and then Chris doing Wayne Jenkins in front of Bernthal or maybe Bernthal joining in for a double Jenkins. I feel like this is... And then that's it. We'd have to retire. It's a walk-off. Do you worry CR is going to blink?

I don't think so. But remember one time you had him do Bono in front of Colin Farrell. And I feel like this is another level above that. This is really... He nailed it though.

He was ready. He did. All right. So we're talking TV. Succession, the fifth episode of season four. A show that we All right. So we're talking TV succession. The fifth episode of season four, a show that we're covering.

We've, you've been on it since day one of the watch. We've been covered in the prestige. The ringer.com has been covering, and it's not like we're lacking succession coverage, but we're talking about it week to week. We're talking about the characters, the motivations,

the Roy does all this stuff. Big picture levitating above all this stuff. Yeah. If this were sports, where we talk, we love talking nothing more than legacy and what's at stake and,

you know, what's going to happen this week. And then from a big picture standpoint, it does feel like if the show lands the plane here, these last six episodes, and we've both seen episode five, and without spoiling anything, episode five is on par

with the first four episodes of the season. Yeah, there's no drop-off. There's no drop-off at all. It really does feel like this show has a chance to land the plane and go down as a Mount Rushmore show, right? And everybody's Mount Rushmore. Sopranos and The Wire

seem to be the two that are probably the most commonly mentioned. And then it's like a Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad kind of fist fight for the other two spots. Some people have Deadwood. There'll be a couple of Randos. Some people have Six Feet Under.

There's no wrong answer. Everybody's Mount Rushmore is different. But, you know, it's a lot like, I would say like the NBA Pantheon, where it's like whatever your order is, that's fine. But you have to have Russell and you have to have LeBron and Jordan and Kareem and all these shows.

So it feels like succession's there, but they could also fuck up the last four episodes and then we would be mad at it. Maybe it falls out. Where is it for you right now? Well, so do you do it the same way that you did the book of basketball with like tears?

Because that's sort of how I'm thinking about it. Because I think you're right that there's a certain echelon of shows that is generally, there's general agreement, right? That these are the very best. Like Breaking Bad for me is like the alt. I think breaking it currently.

Now I'm not a big rewatcher. I haven't done the thing that a lot of people did in the pandemic and rewatched. But I have Sopranos in mind. I have The Wire in mind. I have Mad Men in mind. And because, you know,

I have to zag a little bit, I've never been able to dislodge Twin Peaks from my top four. Wow. Now, you may be, I don't know if your category was like post 2000.

If so, then I can revisit. But for me, that show. Yeah, so that's interesting because there's a couple ways. If we're then I can revisit. But for me, that show. Yeah. So that's interesting because there's a couple of ways. If we're just going to echelons, then maybe Mount Rushmore is an unfair way to frame it because you can only have four shows and we've had too much TV. So maybe it's like that last level. Like when I had the basketball book, I did the Pantheon. Yeah. And I've added KD and Curry to the Pantheon since I did the Pantheon, you know? And it's okay.

It's like, it's okay, now we can get to 16. So maybe it's Pantheon. And to me, Succession's in there. They would really have to fuck this up not to stay in the Pantheon at this point. I agree. And if you expand it, then you can throw in things like Cheers and Seinfeld

or Curb Your Enthusiasm, MASH. Like you could broaden it because generally people talk about dramas. I agree with you. I think the thing that separates it from me, no matter what, this is one of the all time great shows. I think there's two things at play. One is I definitely think that we collectively it's not overrated, but we almost overvalue succession because it's kind of the last one of these that makes us feel this way. Because it is an ongoing season to season, we definitely thought we were going to get more than four seasons, but we were invested for the long term in the way we were with a lot of these other shows. And the characters were

growing and changing. And J. Smith Cameron is so funny as a guest star as Jerry. Oh, she's in the main cast now because they know what they have. That kind of like episode to episode, season to season evolution that we just love. And then we can just talk about it all week on podcasts, with friends, on text, the way we used to do when there was a monoculture and HBO ruled Sunday nights. So I think that we are all clinging to it emotionally. And that's elevating its place in our personal pantheons. It doesn't mean it doesn't deserve it. I think the thing for me that I'm looking for is it obviously it's like maybe the greatest cast ever assembled. It is maybe the best or second best written show ever. I would consider it maybe next to Mad Men. It is funny. It is obviously like zeitgeisty in our times. I like, everyone involved in this has had to sign NDAs promising they wouldn't talk to HBO

or the succession producers. And this is on the heels of the Redstone book coming out a couple months ago that also is swimming in the same waters. I think that the thing that I'm curious about is if the show is going to give us a kind of emotional catharsis at the end that I think we generally look for

with these big cultural events. Like, obviously, Sopranos did the opposite. Sopranos zagged. Sopranos denied us that, which defined it, right? Like it just went to black instead of giving us any closure, which, you know, fueled the discourse and people are still angry about it. But a lot of these other shows, whether it was Breaking Bad, which really gave us all of the endings across two episodes, or Mad Men, which kind of gave some characters like Stan and Peggy happy endings that I don't even know if we were expecting, but just kind of think it's going to do, which is point out that all of these people were broken and empty from the beginning. And at the end, they're just sitting around in ruins. Now, I think that's intellectually unbelievable and exciting. But I don't know if that's going to give America or the viewing public that same kind of, wow, that's the best feeling that some of these other experiences have given us.

You think of the great shows, this is the only one that feels like it's really intersected with things that are happening in real life that are substantial and important in the moment, right? And there's the way it's weaved in these kind of real life stories, but not being like we're weaving in a real life. They're just cribbing stuff left and right. The only other one that I can remember

even kind of veering that way was The Wire, which was really trying to point out some broken stuff through the city of Baltimore, but really it was about America. And that was the only other one that I felt like was essential viewing in the moment. I would say Breaking Bad had a lot to say about the state of like the American man in this new century. And like you think about the car Walter White was driving and like his just feelings of like frustration and being overlooked that kind of you could trace a line from that stuff to like the way we talk about incels and all this stuff. Now that was happening. But Breaking Bad also Trojan horsed it in a very, very, very compelling popcorn gangster narrative. Right. So like, yeah, that's the thing about that show.

You've heard this theory before too, right? I feel like someone we both read and admire a lot, Emily Nussbaum wrote this in The New Yorker at the time when she was the TV critic, that the show kind of ended twice. The Granite State episode where Walter is in New Hampshire was the ending for people who are watching the show for a kind of like, in a way for like justice. Like this is what, this guy was a villain and this is what happens to villains in real life. And then the last episode, the rodeo came back to town

and everything got wrapped up and, you know, we don't need to spoil specifically what happened to Walter, but justice was done. So that show kind of had its cake and ate it too. I'm really, you know, when shows end, they can't hide behind what people expect of them anymore. They don't just get held aloft by what fans or podcasters think. It's really just at this point what Jesse Armstrong wants to say about these characters and this moment and late stage capitalism. And we've got five episodes for him to say it. And I'm really, really curious what that's going to feel like, because he's a pretty arch, clever, intellectual, political British comedy writer.

One thing that Succession has that I think the great shows all had in some way, and I'm going to include Larry Sanders and whatever happens with Curb too, was the concept of a finish line, how things were going to end and how they're going to land the plane. So Sopranos, is he going to die or is he going to live? And they're just dropping all of these little clues, but we don't know how it's going to play out. The Wire was more season by season, but it was,

as characters started dying off as they're doing the show, it's like, how is this going to end? What's going on? And then I feel like the last episode of The Wire is like super duper underrated. Mad Men, it's like, all right, they're going to take this. How far do we go? Are we going to be in the early 70s? It was always like, how's this going to end? Thrones famously, you know, veers from the book.

So nobody knows what's going to happen. And Breaking Bad, same thing. So do you think that has to be an element for a great show where there's some sort of mystery slash discourse slash almost like sports of this jigsaw puzzle that we're kind of waiting to see how the puzzle is going to be put together? To a degree, yeah. I think especially as we've gotten into this super serialized era of television, the best pilots ask a question. And the beauty of writing TV is then you can kind of just stall and find your way to the answer and take wild detours. But you do make a contract with the audience that if you ask the question in the pilot, you're going to answer it by the finale. And I don't mean like a Redditor, you know, sniffing through the details of Lost kind of way. I just mean like broadly speaking. And so with a

show like Succession, it is who's going to take over. There is a question baked into it. And I think that that's been really, really good for a writer like Jesse Armstrong, because he knows as long as he services that question, he can do all the stuff in the margins that he wants to do, whether it's comedic or dramatic. But yeah, that does ultimately that bill comes due and you're going to have to answer it by the end of it and in a way that is satisfying to everyone. Yeah. Succession was like, the old guy's probably going to die. And if he dies, who's going to get the company? But then there was this second question of, wait, is the old guy going to die? What's going on here? Is he actually going to die? And then

we get the... There's a third secret question, which is, does anybody want this? Is this a good... Is this a thing worth wanting? And I think that's where we're headed for the last five episodes. But yeah, did you get the sense... Did you feel like Jesse Armstrong

wanted to kill Logan earlier? That there were like tests, I talked about this with Chris on the watch, that there was, remember when he had piss madness last season and that there was like a couple of, there was a feeling at the beginning of last season too that we talked about where it kind of felt like Logan was almost off the show, like he would come in

blow everything up and vanish and even to the degree where like his relationship with Carrie wasn't even on screen. Everybody was just reacting to his wake, almost as if he was already pre-dead. You know, and that just made me think that probably every year

when the writers got together, Jesse was like, should we do it? Like clearly he was going to do it, right? Well, the most famous example of that is the end of Homeland Season 1, right? Brody's supposed to die. And then they kind of flip it

and that leads to a really, really kind of up and down Season 2, which we covered in the Grantland days. That was my first run, yeah. Yeah, to me, that's a show. This is a good example of how this can go wrong for a show, right? Homeland season one, that season ends

and we were all like, that was fucking awesome. Wow, what a show. Great, oh my God, great actors. Damian Lewis became somebody that, you know, Claire Danes, big comeback for her in a lot of ways where she's, okay, this is it. She's reached her potential. And then the season two like unraveled it. You know, I think Lost was another example of,

I think Lost season one, um, still stands the test of time as just an amazing season. The pilot's one of the great pilots. It's one of the best network TV shows we ever had, but the way they kind of landed the plane on that, no pun intended, on that show. It crashed. Really hurt the legacy. Well, I think the counter argument on Homeland is if it doesn't run multiple

seasons, you don't get Timothee Chalamet. That's an alternative future since he was the vice president, sort of malcontent. I forgot about that. Emo son. You guys, for Grandland sent me to the Homeland set and I met this kid actor and his mom.

And let me tell you, I had no sense that this guy was going to be anything. He was very sweet. But to your loss point, I mean, that's also a sign of just how far the pendulum has swung in what people expect from TV, not just from audiences, but from an executive and internal level, which is to say that like what undid Lost in Homeland was business as usual. Like, hey, people like this, make more. It wasn't even an argument. You know, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse

had to go in and negotiate over breakfast with the president of ABC about ending the show. It literally was like a scene from Succession. Like they sat down and the head of ABC was like 10 seasons and they were like five and they go back and forth. Now we're at a point where, I mean, you don't need to be inside baseball to know that HBO would really love to have more seasons of Succession. This is a huge old fashioned hit for them that drives every metric that they're interested in driving. It wins Emmys. It brings

esteem and attention. And Jesse Armstrong said, you know, I think I'm done after four. And you and I both know Casey Bloys was like, okay, there wasn't pushback. I mean, that's how far this thing has swung. The goal now is to let these creators tell the story they want to tell and not antagonize them or make them belabor things. That's why they're HBO though.

That's true. Because they're always going to gravitate toward the creator. And I think that's the biggest reason they've been as successful as they have the last 30 years. I agree. This one's got a sting though, because you and I both know that like,

even if the juice would leach away, if it kept going, the jokes in this cast, I mean, it's painful, right? But it is making a bet that it's going to mean more to mean something than to just sort of- I will say, I'm not going to step on episode five on the pod in any way,

but I will say like, you know, episode four is the first one without Logan, but that's the wake and his shadows all over it. Episode five is a non-Logan episode. We're now, we're moving forward. And I felt like it was the first time I was like, I actually think they could have kept this going and I think it would have worked. Yeah, it's a whole new show. It's a whole new show in a way that I think only six episodes of it kind of bummed me out.

It's funny, Thrones had a similar issue where they tried to cram in, in that last season, so much stuff that the pace of the show went way off. And I think to the detriment, I think the reasons for that weren't really good reasons in retrospect. I think the showrunners were just completely burned out. They didn't want to do the show anymore. They wanted to be done with it and get in. I think they were just, they couldn't do it anymore. They couldn't do the schedule. They couldn't do anything. They couldn't be in Ireland and all these different places for six months and they just wanted to zip through it. And in retrospect was kind of a mistake, right? Yeah. And I think where you're pointing to quality of life issues aside, what really threw everyone, I mean, you could argue like what happened to Daenerys forever, but more specifically

the pace of the show just completely changed. It just, it's like, why am I going to try to reach for a sports metaphor with you? But like, it's like, why am I going to try to reach for a sports metaphor with you? But like, it's like, there's a pitch, there's a pitch clock on it suddenly, you know, it was a completely different thing where it used to be took one character an entire season to travel from one place to another. Now it happened like between other scenes. And that more than anything else, I think that's what annoyed people because they just bitten off way more than they could chew and then just tried to force it all down at the end. I think that to that point, to compare it to succession, I think people can feel confident that this is ending with the same stakes and momentum that it's always had. And in fact, even more so. And you can't really put a price on that. I mean, it is exciting. I mean, it was, as you talked about on Prestige TV pod and we talked about on The Watch

and everyone talked about it, water coolers, if that metaphor still exists anymore. But like, the element of surprise is so rare these days and they nailed it with three. And it just completely upended what everyone expected this season was going to be.

Even fans of the show were like, they'll just run it back and Logan will change his mind and et cetera, et cetera. And everyone kind of knew that he would probably die. But the conventional wisdom would be that it would be

in the penultimate episode because that's what Prestige TV has taught us. And then you'd have one episode to wrap a bow around everything and then be done. And I really admire the hell out of them

for not choosing that and choosing the harder, riskier way. You made this point on The Watch and Wesley made it when he was on here, I think last week, um, about what makes a show like this special and a little bit different than some of the other great shows. And we talked about the cast of the show and,

and you probably know better than me. I'm older than you. I've seen more shows, but I think you're more attuned. You're just better at being a critic. This show has the highest percentage of either great or very good actors that we've ever had on a show.

I don't think there's a single weak link. I don't think there's been one performance. The closest might be Mattson, but even that one I think is intentional and kind of cool. But that character kind of annoys me but it's still well acted yeah i think the argument could be made i think it's also a testament to what tv can do in that like it's not so much about the performer but the character of marcia didn't have that much to do and so jesse armstrong got on the big board and just dialed it down. So now when she

comes back, it's great. It's like, this is a different energy that we need. I agree. I mean, I think this is you can make a case. This is the best cast ever assembled. And I think it's low key worth pointing out because what makes historically great TV great is a collection of incredibly talented people who don't come in with baggage. Every show I think that you named as a Pantheon show, none of them are star-driven vehicles. There's that old saying that TV makes stars, stars don't make TV. And if you look at Mad Men, which couldn't get a star because it was an AMC original, but made stars. Sopranos didn't have a star. The Wire certainly didn't have a star. The Wire certainly didn't have a star.

Again, it made some major stars, all three of those shows. I mean, Michael B. Jordan came out of season one of The Wire, and Jon Hamm, et cetera, et cetera. But that's the secret sauce that we've really gotten away from in this era of stunt casting and big splash

and putting the package together before you even sell the show. You lose something. You know, I don't want to pick on a show that a lot of people liked and doesn't deserve. It was perfectly good. But there was that Hulu comedy reboot recently. And comedy to drama is in a one to one. But for me, it didn't click because no matter how good the show was going to be, because comedies take a minute to develop. It was Keegan-Michael Key and it was Judy Greer and it was Johnny Knoxville. And they came onto the screen and Paul Reiser. And I was like, I know those four people. They bring the baggage of every movie or TV show you've ever

watched with them in the back of your head. Yeah. And what's crazy about Succession is, and I wish everyone on the show continued enormous success, but in the back of your mind, aren't you thinking like, Kieran Culkin is never going to be this good again. They're using every single piece of him to a brilliant degree. Everything that he has, he's putting on the line every week in the service of this part. And then when you go down the line, like you're saying, Alan Ruck, J. Smith Cameron, David Rasche, Peter Friedman, Fisher Stevens just... Fisher Stevens. These are great working actors who just are given this opportunity that they wouldn't otherwise be given.

And to me, that still is what makes a great TV show. You feel like it's coming together and you're discovering something while they're discovering the parts themselves. It's awesome. It's an interesting concept that really hurt the Sopranos actors. If you go on down the line,

none of them were able to parlay the next. Remember, people thought Adriana was going to be a big star. Yeah, she was on the Joey spinoff, right? And then that was it. And then it just cratered out. I don't know what was going on in her personal life and stuff,

but she went from being like, you know, kind of a lottery pick for, oh, I could see her in some rom-coms. Like she's going to have a career, did nothing. Imperioli was another one who I think was so great on that show and you just couldn't separate Christopher from him. Gandolfini didn't really have movie success. One of the ones that broke out of it, I think, with the odds probably against them was Idris Elba with the Stringer Bell character.

Everyone on the wire was like, I guess maybe the show wasn't big enough. So it was probably easier for those people to break away from it. But I think it's partly that I think it's also like in real life, Idris Elba is British and completely different than Stringer Bell. And also it was a limited sample size. Again, not to spoil that show, but he wasn't on all five seasons. And there used to be the thing that actors didn't want to get stuck on TV because they would just be the funny neighbor for the rest of their career. And then as TV has changed

and there's no stigma attached to it, and literally everyone now does TV, that concern has kind of fallen away. But there's a reason why it existed. And it's what you're talking about, which is TV at its best uses, you know when there's the trend in cooking, like whole animal cooking? Like we're going to cook the organs and then we're going to give

you the nose to tail. Like that's what TV does to actors. It gives them a chance to use every part of themselves or to have those parts be used and almost rings them out. Like so that you're like, what's what's left for me to do with this actor in a part? Because the audience isn't going to be surprised. And we've seen them be happy, sad, vulnerable, angry, et cetera, et cetera.

I think it was a hard thing for him to navigate because Mad Men was such a signature show and it's like, it was just hard to separate the Don Draper piece. As the years passed,

it took him a while. It took him longer than I thought it would. But now I feel like he's got a really nice lane like that. He can play that kind of asshole, the guy in the town or in a top gun Maverick. Yeah. He's like the foil slash,

not totally a villain cause he's on the right side, but you don't like him. He can do that. But I thought the Fletch movie, I thought he was really good in it. That was the first time. That was the first time I was like, this is the John Hamm. I've been waiting to see in one of these things that he, the guy who

was on Saturday Night Live and you know, he clearly had comic timing, but he's handsome. Bridesmaids tapped into it a tiny bit too, but it took him how many years after Mad Men? This is like almost 10 years before he found his footing. It was the comedy thing too, because clearly that's what he loves and that's what he wants to do and he was willing to laugh at himself. So that definitely kept him busy. But again, it's kind of insidious if you think about the way that the showrunners puppet master their stars

because the thing that made Jon Hamm so brilliant at Don Draper is because he looks like that. And there's obviously so much beneath the surface like an iceberg. I mean, he's a smart guy. He's a talented guy. He's a funny guy.

But the whole show was about a guy who could hide in plain sight because of how he looked. And then where do you go from there? And he's figured it out. Almost like TV shows. Great TV shows are almost like the NFL. They just chew you up and spit you out. It's five to seven years.

It's really true. And the showrunners are like the great head coaches. I mean, it's a system thing. The most... The actors that continue to have success after significant TV roles are often the ones who had the smallest parts or who didn't have a chance to stick too long in your mind or who are just generally kind of chameleonic, unless they're just huge, huge stars, in which case it's unquestioned and they go off to bigger things. Well, so who would you bet out of everyone on Succession who is going to be able to shed that curse the best? I have a pick that I'm confident on. I'm excited.

I'm excited to hear your pick. Do you want to go first or do you want me to say? I have Tom Womm. That's mine. That's the guy. I totally agree. Matthew McFadgen. I think there's a lot more there.

I think that guy's a fucking incredible actor. He's also British, so he can go that side too. But I think, like I saw he's going to be a comic book villain. One of the,

in one of the, some movie. And I was like, that's great. Cause we, we just did, we did, we did a 90s action movie for Rewatchables for Monday.

I won't spoil the movie, but Kyle Branton and I, and we didn't really love the villain in it. And we were thinking like, oh, who would have been good? But like just putting him, Matthew McFade, in a movie like that where he just gets to cook and like the Alan Rickman diehard kind of thing, I think he'd be amazing. He is secretly, I mean, I don't think it's secretly anymore.

Is he the best actor on the show? Or he's certainly like top three. And his performance is entirely a performance because he's Mr. Darcy. He was in Howard's End. I mean, he's a staged, classically trained, you know, stiff upper lip British guy playing this needy, conniving Midwesterner.

He's unbelievable. And he is a chameleon, but he has, you're right, because he can always fall back on that charisma. He could be a villain. And the comic timing.

He could be a hero. And he's funny. I think, I wouldn't sell any Jeremy Strong stock. So, yeah. Let's talk about that. Has nothing, and we could talk about it.

I mean, this is something, a drum we've been beating on the, I mean, this is something, a drum we've been beating on the watch recently too, which is like, look, I don't have to hang out with him at craft services. So I'm sorry it wasn't fun for the rest of the cast.

Yeah. He's amazing. The show doesn't work without his performance. And he's a really good actor. And not only is he a really good actor, he's clearly willing to do anything

to become a different person. There's always going to be work for that guy. There's always going to be work for it. I don't think it's driven by he needs to then leverage this into a starring vehicle. I just think he wants to work. He's my number two pick. And I've said this before on the pod, but I think it's one of the great performances by any TV actor. He's on this show. To me, Gandolfini is always going to be number one. I just think there's never, in my lifetime, there will never be

another performance like that on a TV show of somebody doing like 40 or more episodes. It's impossible. To the point it almost killed him to be on the show. They had to shut it down. He started having a whole bunch of issues. It was just an amazing thing.

Strong might be in the running for the two spot for me. I think people would put Cranston there for Breaking Bad. I think the strong part's harder and he has to do so many different things over the course of the four seasons and show so many different sides. And he's a fucking asshole, but I still have to, I don't know why I'm rooting for him and I like him and he's got to be funny in some parts and try this false swagger thing and then completely beaten and he's trying to win his dad's love and just the stuff he does with his face. I just think it's incredible. There's a reason why episode three ended just on his face because it told

you everything you needed to know about what the show was going to be. And that's an unbelievable luxury, I think, for the filmmakers to be able to do that. And I also think, and I mean, this has no disrespect to Sarah Snook or Kieran Culkin or even Brian Cox, who are all amazing. And I root for them in everything that they do. If the meta story about Jeremy Strong dramaturgically, you know, pissing everyone off, exists at all in my mind, it's that when I see them in close quarters, and they've been in nothing but close quarters this season,

on a boat, at the airport, in this upcoming episode, and even smaller spaces, I can't help but think that whatever energy he's bringing into those rooms is making them better. Whether it's because he's annoying them, or because they're trying to meet him or grapple with him,

he's bringing something that elevates. And again, like we don't have to work with him. So I have nothing, no other comment, you know, he it's, it's a, it's an insane performance that has only gotten better as I think Jesse Armstrong and the writers and producers realize a, he can do anything, but B, they don't have to do as much. Like the show is so fast and funny and verbal and everybody's always clever. And then how much of it just falls back on Kendall not participating, you know, reacting or not saying, you know, fuck off or whatever the thing he's going to say that week is.

He doesn't have to do that. And that changes the whole show. It changes it from a, it's not a pure comedy, but it gives it a different depth. Yeah, I think when I think of the arc from a, it's not a pure comedy, but it gives it a different depth. Yeah, I think, when I think of the arc that he has on this show, it's unlike any other arc I can remember for a main character on a TV show, right?

Like Breaking Bad, literally the show's Breaking Bad. We know where it's going. It's one direction. Yeah, it's like watching somebody climb the steps. Soprano always was Sopranoano even though as his world changed around him maybe he learned a couple of smaller lessons but that guy fundamentally was no different you're going down the line um but this one was so this guy had so many peaks and valleys just over the course it feels like we've been with the show for eight seasons and it's been three and a half.

He's also the repository of something that brings me back to the first question you asked, which is like, what gets the show on Rushmore? And this is a little like hoity-toity, but you know who you invited on the show. Like there's the great, great shows had something kind of indescribable, almost like soul, right? Like you can, you can write things, you can plot things, you can do the journalistic reference that David Simon and his team did on The Wire. And then you have Michael K. Williams as Omar. And like you have that performance. And that's just something else. It's like, it's magic, it's powerful, it's emotional, it's deeper. And I'm not talking about the dream sequences of Sopranos so much as some of the places it was willing to go, whether it was in like a Carmela and Tony argument or

just like the weirdness that it started to leech into at the end. It was soulful. It was surprising. It was weird. Mad Men always did that too. Succession is savage and funny and fast moving but if it has the soul that could elevate it to that emotional place,

it is in Kendall, right? And it is going to that could elevate it to that emotional place, it is in Kendall. And it is going to be in what happens to him over these next few episodes now that he has gotten what he thinks he wants. I think it's going to come from him and it's going to come from the crude weight of that performance. And for me, that is what would elevate, honestly. If it ended in a place that felt like, not just plot satisfying, not just this is, satisfying, but like, oh, it hit me on a different level. You know, when I was at the Masters with David Chang and he was talking about just Augusta, the golf club, and how one of the things he loves about going there is how just everything is top of the line, best in class, everything's thought out. It's just the best possible everything. Every single thing is the highest level, whatever.

I think that's one of the things that I've appreciated about Succession as we're kind of headed toward the finish line here. It's like, even like the theme song and the different variations of it and kind of the sad music or the way though, you know, episode five starts with Kendall with like just the blurring hip hop again.

And it's like, Oh, Kendall's in his hip hop mode. Yeah. Um, just every little piece of it, the locations, um,

the guest stars that come in, they're all coming in, throwing a hundred miles an hour on par with the cast somehow. Yeah. Uh, it really is like Augusta where it's like just every single piece of this is so well thought out. Maybe that can't last

for more than 40 episodes, you know? It also is significant like just as a fan too because that's HBO, right? Like it's the best in class. They do the best stuff. They spend the money.

They don't worry about it. They sign off on the checks. Like last week's episode, The Wake, Steven Root, you know, Emmy Award winning performer just comes off the bench for three minutes. You know, they just have that. If there needs to be a scene on the streets of Manhattan, they shut down the street in Manhattan to shoot a scene that any other network would be like, this scene could

have been an email. They do it. And, you know, in a time when we're talking about like, oh, is David Zaslav understand the jewel in his collection? Does he know what HBO is? It's all getting folded into the same giant content hopper called Max. Like this is this is a sign. This is what they do. Yeah.

Nobody else does it like this. And it makes a difference. Like having this on a Sunday night, not dumped all at once, like having the experience of watching it. This is I don't know if this dates us, honestly, because I don't know if younger people feel this way, but like, I know it's really significant for us. It's why we love this kind of TV.

It's significant for two reasons. One is that it's just this great show at that we get to live in real life. Like it's almost like the, you know, NBA playoffs are happening simultaneously and it does feel like it's on the level. The other thing is we've known each other for a while. We kind of thought we'd never have a show like this again.

You know, this is, we would talk about this a lot. We'd talk about it with Fantasy and Chris and Mallory and Juliet when we would like be pointing stuff. And this is like mid 2010s. Like what happens when Thrones ends? Yeah, that was the question. It's like, then we're going to just move into this different era of TV

and that's just the way it's going to go. And it's going to be a lot of like these seven episode things and things like White Lotus and little, these Mare of Easttown, these little seven episode miniseries or else like a bunch of B pluses and A minuses and no A pluses.

The A plus era is gone. And we were wrong. Succession showed up in 2018. I think CR was among the first who planted his flag on Succession Island, wasn't he? In the first wave? It's not just CR. He was so early. Because if you remember this, HBO wanted a show in this space. In the way that they have these creative conversations, they reached out to people that they work with and they're like, we're interested in the world of high finance. And David Milch made a pilot. Um, I think it was called money that was going to fill this role. And then that didn't work out. And Chris was excited about that. That's how early

he was on this. When he saw that Adam McKay and Will Ferrell were like filling this with a thick of it writer, he was super early on it. But I think that what you're speaking to is something that I wish that the industry was paying more attention to, which is like at the end of the day, yeah, there are a hundred streaming services and we're all spending too much money and there's too many shows and live events and reality and all that. But we like our stories. We like ongoing TV shows that we can have these ongoing relationships with. And I know that there are reasons why things have moved away from them. Chief among them, it's now a star driven business and stars won't sign multi-year contracts. They'll only sign Kate Winslet, Mare of Easttown contracts

for one year. And then that's the glide path to getting on the air. But look at this. Succession is a one of one in just top quality, hitting the moment, so funny, incredible cast, et cetera, et cetera. But like, I wish some of these networks would take more flyers on just like an original idea that's going to run potentially in success for a couple of seasons because it grows. Because people like Chris and there are other people who were in on this early, I think it took me four or five episodes to come fully around to it. This show has grown. Yeah, it's grown every year though, right? In terms of not just audience, though it has, but also what we think of it and our, our relationship to it grows in connection to how much time we've already spent with it. Well, maybe it's replicable because you have,

you had a really good idea that felt timely and current in a bunch of different ways, but also like, I think what you said about not worrying about having big stars and the parts and the feeling of discovering people. I probably shouldn't say this, but I've seen the first three episodes of The Idol. And I don't want to give my opinion, shape it in any way. All I'm going to say is this. Johnny Depp's daughter is fucking unbelievable. And if she's not going to be a major star,

then that would be the most shocking moment of 2023. She's just a fucking star. And I had no history with her. I never saw her in anything. I've seen a couple pictures of her. So you're discovering her as the actress as you're watching this show and it's, and she's amazing in it. Um, this has happened in, you know, euphoria had a bunch of people that I had no history with. And that's one of the reasons the show works. So I think the blueprints it's either you go that way and you get either unknowns or people that you want to discover in real time,

but then you're putting a lot of stress on, are we going to nail each part? Are we going to nail the actor? Or you go the other way with like the White Lotus kind of big little lie strategy of, these are big stars that I already know. They're being put in this situation. They spent a lot of money on this. It's seven episodes and I'm out.

And maybe those are the two paths. Did you watch The Bear on FX last year? Yeah, I couldn't totally. It makes me mad. I never totally got there with it. I watched it. That's an example. I didn't like The Brother.

The Brother bugged me to the point that I couldn't. Yeah, I know. The Brother is the touch point of whether you love that show or not. But I think that even if you didn't love the show itself, it's interesting that the bigger swings, maybe just purely for budgetary reasons, seem to be in the half-hour space and honestly continually come from FX. HBO is winning on the top level, really expensive stuff. And FX is just taking these flyers and shows like

The Bear and Reservation Dogs. I think those two shows, absolutely without stars, absolutely making stars, absolutely bringing people to the table, inviting people, building those kind of old-fashioned TV relationships where after a couple episodes, I'm like, I'd take a bullet for half this cast. And I didn't know I couldn't even name them in a lineup. That feels that feels repeatable. You know, I'm not in those boardrooms, but I just feel like the bear was a rounding error. You know, they filmed it in February and had it on the air in May and didn't even know what they had. I wish that while we're greenlighting

more and more Lord of the Rings and Twilight and Harry Potter spinoffs, like, sure, I understand why we're doing that. Like, let's just shave a little off the production budget and get the guy with the script or the woman with the script and get them to Chicago and try it.

That doesn't get you a succession, but it gets you something that stands out that we can have this kind of relationship with. Because even people who love, love, love like that big ticket IP comic book fantasy stuff that's been coming, it's a different kind of love, right? I feel like it's people being like, oh, they're getting it right. Or they're giving me something I already liked and I'm grateful for it. In the same way the same way people, Last of Us was really good. But there were, there was a lot of fandom being like, I feel seen because they recreated my favorite video game cut scene shot for shot. That's a different relationship than being like, I've never eaten a beef sandwich in Chicago, but now it's the only thing that matters to me, which is kind of, it's a different

kind of passion. Well, if you go through the history of the shows that exploded or blew up or whatever, almost always it's like either unknowns or relative unknowns. Like even go back to, I don't know, Cheers. It's Ted Danson and Shelley Long. Shelley Long had been on a couple of things, but nobody really knew who she was. Ted Danson, respected, hadn't really had a moment yet. And all of a sudden they were a phenomenon, you know, and go on all the way through the eighties, like Miami Vice to the nineties. Yeah. NYPD Blue Caruso becomes gigantic.

We have friends in the ER. Basically all people, we didn't really know who they were, except for Courtney Cox. Coming to America fans knew Eric LaSalle, but everybody else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was like, oh, that guy from,

but you didn't really have a history with them. No, it's that guy's. That guy's and that gal's. And then the stories... Sopranos is another one. It's like the guy from True Romance is going to be a mafia boss? Yeah.

I didn't really have it. And then it's like he's married to the prison guard in Oz? What? But yeah, I hope that all happens. I hope they get more creative with the casting because I think that's like the secret sauce. I totally agree.

So what do you have, what is your benchmark for, for succession landing it? Like, is there something that you have in mind or are you just optimistic? Well, A, don't, I don't trust anyone on social media and their thoughts. Right. I think to me, it's like, I would trust my own take on it. Plus like the seven or eight people, you know, in,

in my life who I trust to have good opinions on stuff. Um, it's tough because that season finale or the series finale, it's really hard playing to land. I keep saying that phrase, but it's like, you know, I look at Larry Sanders,

which had a pretty uneven last season for as great of a show that was because they had this whole, was Jon Stewart going to take over or not? And it was kind of marrying what was happening in real life with the show. But the last episode of Larry Sanders

is incredible. And when you think of that last season, you think of that last episode, right? The Wire was the same thing, like pretty polarizing season five with the newspaper plot. I liked it more than others, but the final episode was phenomenal, right?

And so sometimes that can erase a lot of sins. In this case, it's the opposite, where it's having this amazing last season and you almost just want the final episode to just be as good as all of these other episodes. I find it hard to believe with as talented as Jesse is in the cast is that they're not going to, I don't,

I don't see them fucking this up. I think it's going to be amazing, but I truly think that like, I don't even know. I don't know if the casual American fan is ready for just how nihilistic and savage Jesse Armstrong's mind really is. Like, I just, I think that this is a show about people inheriting ashes. You know, I think that he, I don't mean that like Waystar Royco is going to burn down, but I do think that

the creator's actual opinion of late stage capitalism and these giant corporations and nepo babies, I feel like that opinion is baked into this show. And I just feel like it's going to be scouring at the end. You know, in a way that, to your point about The Wire, like for all the dark stuff that that show was, it did end with a montage. You know, it did end with a musical montage. And we saw all our pals.

Some of them were going to prison. Some of them were not in an awesome place. And not going to one. But there was that kind of, in a way, like very American, like, let's put on a song on the jukebox and let's check in with everybody one last time and the American city goes on. You know what I mean? Like that did. It's weird to say The Wire was traditional in any way because it wasn't.

But it did give us that kind of cathartic. We all did this together moment. And I just I don't think that's coming with this one. And I'm excited for that, but I don't know. I'm really interested how that's going to line up with people. People,

because there's no wrong way to watch a show. And I think some people do watch it, like, you know, power rankings, like who is going to get this at the end. And I don't know how that's going to match up, but it's going to be really interesting to see. Well, I know Waz and Ciara

are hoping that Carolina just takes over Waystar. The promoter up and, and then that's the spinoff it's just Club Carolina do you think it's because they love Carolina or because they love the actress from We Own The City the show that is the secret sauce for all of this Arab television

I think they love the actress as do I and it's weird because Succession just kind of doles her out in little doses she's in episode five a lot. But she was missing for half of last season. But very high on base percentage, I would say. Like when she's there, she delivers. The advanced metrics love her.

Carl's playing eight minutes a game and he's 20-10 every night. He's just crashing the boards. His plus minus is out of control. It's just an all-time Carl season. All right, Greenwald. You can listen to him on The Watch with our guy CR. Year 13? 12? Year 12?

Wait, year 11 and a half. We're 11 and a half in. All right, we're in the season 12 of The Watch. We're still cranking it out. Good to see you. Next round, we will not be friends during Sixers Celtics,

but that's fine. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Bill. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rob Mahoney

and Andy Greenwald. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti for producing as well. I will see you on the Prestige TV feed right after Succession ends on Sunday night. And then me and Marcelo, late night, Sunday night. Can't wait. Have a great weekend. I don't have feelings within

On the wayside I'm a bruised soul I never want to say I don't have feelings within