The Press Box - Ep. 88: 'The Watch' With Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald

Episode Date: April 12, 2016

Chris and Andy prepare for the 'Game of Thrones' premiere, get hype over the 'Rogue One' trailer (10:00), wrap up 'The People v. O.J. Simpson' (21:00) and shine some light on 'Catastrophe' (29:00) and 'The Last Panthers' (37:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Seatkeek is giving $20 back off your first purchase with a promo code BSPN. To get $20 back on your first Seatkekekeek purchase, just download the Ciki app today and enter promo code BSPN. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and on the other line,

he drinks and he knows things. It's Andy Greenwald. That's just been true since we met. That has never changed. Day one, Pete's Strawberry Blonde ales. That's all you do. That is really digging in the deep crates. That was back when we used to drink.

Remember that? Was that our beer called Red Dog or something? Was that a thing? No, it was Pete Strawberry Blonde. That was like the first beers we were like, we have purchased these. Well, that was possibly underage. Should we tell our listeners that Chris used to be the kind of guy who would greet a guest to his back bay home? And that's not even a metaphor with a frosty strawberry blonde.

And again, that's not a metaphor either. I mean the beer. Do you know what I had in that apartment? strawberry blonde ale and Entemans raspberry raspberries. It was sort of a fruited, fruited place, right? I like to have fruit in the house.

What are you going to do? Andy, it is so nice to be talking to you. We have a lovely show today full of trailer talk and TV talk. We also want to just thank everybody who's been so kind reaching out about After the Thrones. You guys

are the best, and we can't wait to be doing this and we're going to be doing it with great partners over at HBO. We are, I go, I just went up to the set this morning. There is so much swag up there. Like, it is just getting, really, it's Bear Island up in that piece. So I'm excited. Do people know, I mean, if people have been listening to us for a while, do they know that really we're just a couple of frustrated prop comedians?

And that's really why we're doing the show. I have such a killer Dothraki sword gimmick I'm going to pull on you. There is nothing that you and I liked more than just cracking a couple ice cold strawberry blonde ales and firing up some Gallagher VHS tapes. I hope no one in HBO is listening, but hide your watermelons. No, honestly, I was really blown away. Like, I know that the internet is generally thought of as a very kind and welcoming place, and it really proved it last week because people were so nice and we are so excited to do the show. It's going to be really fun. Yeah, well, speaking of which, you want to talk a little bit about the second.

trailer that just came out yesterday? Yeah, I thought that was pretty low-key, right? Nothing to get excited about. That's you striking a great tone for your game. What if your whole thing was like, yeah? Yeah, no, it's fine. Did you guys ever see the bridge? That was a television show.

Whoa, don't blow my cover. This has been my whole long con. This is your whole bit? My whole bit was I was going to cozy up to the most popular show in the world. and then just make a very calm, rational argument why everyone would be better off watching Top of the Lake. Like, that was the whole is what my plan was. You're taking them down from the inside.

That's right, man. That's right. Like, I'm on Rogue One. No. We'll get to that in a second. Chris, this trailer was super hype. Like, yeah, man. Can I say, no one's going to believe this now.

People probably wouldn't have believed it before. But, you know, we are technically, like, our mugs are on HBO.com right now. This is a little, take this with whatever salt you want. But I feel like I would like to go into the HBO HQ, a place that we, a building, neither of us have set foot in, by the way. Yeah, right, right. And find the people, and it has to be like an entire calisar at this point of people who make these trailers. Because that is hard, and they do a very good job. You just want to adapt them up.

Because there are so, I mean, we know this because we're doing our homework right now. There are so many storylines, so many characters, so many people spread out over this world map. And this trailer really makes it seem like they are just all right there with you, grabbing you by the jugular. This is pretty hype. Any favorite images, any favorite moments from the trailer that you liked? Hmm. Well, I know that both of us are going to be big this season on Circe's new due. Like, I'm really, you know, I'm one of the few people that was pro Felicity's haircut, so I feel like...

Serzy of Arc. I love it. Yeah. Go short. Just free yourself up. You want to get up and go. You don't want to have to curl it in the morning. You don't have to flat iron it.

Just get up and go. You're a woman on the move. Yeah. Look, honestly, as established last season, she doesn't even need to put on clothes anymore to be about her business, right? She just needs to just grab some naked extras, some just, you know, non-body-shamed Croats. Get a bell.

Some Croats with nothing to do during the day. Yeah. No, I was super into that. You know, I said this last time, like, I think it's just very, very cool that our man Davos is just like, holding down the base note for the season, or at least in these trailers, like just the voice of reason, the guy who is sort of telling us what is actually important, which is, you know, I think very important for a show this diffuse. I also was kind of into the shot of Sansa. How do you feel

about that? I thought that the Aria and Sanza vengeance scale, to borrow a Simmons term, is going to be off the, I don't even know if we have a proper vengeance scale for them. And I really like that Sanza had starting to get her mom's hair going. Oh. How much of this, how much of our show is going to be about hair? Women's hair styles. Andy and Chris's Women's Hair Corner. What was that Bravo reality show about the woman named Tabatha? Tabitha?

I feel like if we do that, it's going to be, if we do that, we would have to be like very like Nick Kroll and John Malaney. Like, oh, I love your hair. Yeah, that would work really well for us, I think, to reinvent ourselves from prop comedians. I was very into Sansa and Ariya. I feel like they're really, they are very primed to beat some ass this year because Aria's like flip from being in a prone position and her developing ninja warrior skills

were pretty impressive. I want to shout out though, and this should come as no surprise to a long time listeners, that I am very into the return of Kingslayer Jamie. Yeah. Yeah, he's looking real future Hendricks with it right now. He's got his suit on, he's on a horse. no more like moping out on the countryside with with uh with brawn or brand like he's back and he's

probably got real like you know acuity with that left that left hand now he's like i got this i got all the moves down listen i want to drop one one one jule here that i've been thinking about we can well i think we'll talk more about this on the on on our show but i feel like for as much as we as critics as fans as as audience members like we have bought into playing the long game with Game of Thrones. Like we have tried to take each plot twist as part of a much, much larger hole because we knew there were many seasons to come and much story yet to unfold. Even though I think we all went into it in that way, I still think most of us are guilty

of kind of looking past the Stark women. Because the whole thing for the last few seasons has been, boy, the Stark sure seem like they were important. And boy, they are really in the shit now. Like they're basically done. And I don't think any of us gave as much attention as was not. necessary to the fact that Arya and Sansa's journey to becoming the reckoners, the redeemers of their family name, would have to be incredibly long, not just because of how low they were brought,

but because this was a world in which, I don't know, I mean, I don't want to speak out of turn. I feel like women were slightly undervalued. So the fact that we are now potentially turning that corner, and one of them is doing, you know, blind backflips with a bow staff, like she's in the Rogue One trailer, sorry, and Sansa appears to be in full military regalia. I feel like we got good things ahead of us. I agree with you, man. I'm really looking forward to it.

Let's talk you keep me. You obviously are chopping at the bit to talk about it. So the other thing that happened in between Lutropods is that the Rogue One trailer did drop. And you asked me what I thought of this. And I wrote, I think I wrote you a text back that was like, this is the manifestation of everything I thought was cool about Star Wars. You did. you basically left the state for five days, and then you picked up the conversation with just saying that you were super into like tequila shots and beer chasers. So I hope those two comments are related.

They are. I mean, like, I was, I have to say, like, so Gareth Edwards, who directed this movie is like low-key, like one of the most interesting filmmakers working right now. He did Godzilla. He did monsters. And the thing that he understands really, really well is scale. He understands that if you put a Star Destroyer in front of the Death Star, you understand the enormity of both of those objects. and if you have people running at-ats, you understand just the odds that they're facing. And so few blockbuster filmmakers actually get that.

It's actually, you know, for all the amblin stuff that's been happening over the last few years with J.J. Abrams and Colin Trevereaux and people kind of like doing these Spielberg homages. The thing that Spielberg understood was how to put one thing in a frame and another thing in a frame and how those two things needed to interact with one in another in a physical space. to create an emotional reaction from the audience. And if this script is good, which I hope it is, and all it needs is for the story to hang together because all of the action sequences are going to be really, really, really good.

I just know it. And the idea of making a saving private Ryan for the Star Wars universe is just like whoever came up with that idea, buy yourself a tequila shot. Well, I'll buy you a tequila shot because I'll go see this movie three. three times. Can I just jump in?

Also, I just want to piggyback in what you were just saying, which is scale is exactly the right word to talk about here, even if, like, your humble narrator, you know nothing really about Gareth Edwards' work or about, you know, visual storytelling in general. Look, I just, this whole, you just, you have not actually seen television. No, this whole podcast is my audition real for HBO. I'm finally going to be honest. Look, the thing about Rogue One that makes me very excited as a movie is that it appears to be a movie that has been allowed to be a movie.

The scale of this is a story. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but it's possible. The subtitle here is a Star Wars story. That suggests that it is a contained story, or at least in the parlance of modern blockbusters, essentially a story wedge that fits between too much larger pieces. So it is bookended by, in this case, this is what leads up to the original episode four, because they've stolen, this is about stealing the plans for the Death Star that they then exploit in a new hope. Is that correct?

That is correct. Right. So the biggest problem with Force Awakens, and we both really dug it and we did a whole hour-long podcast on it. But one of the reasons why it was, among the many things that it was successful at being, being a standalone movie was not among them. It just couldn't be. It was, you know, there was way too much on the relatively skinny shoulders of that movie to even just be a movie. It had to restart. Interestingly, Adam Driver has said just exactly that recently.

I just read something where he was at a midnight special Q&A and they were like, well, what are the differences between the two movies? And he was like, well, we needed to establish a vocabulary in the first one. And it just took so much effort to realize, like, how do people walk in this universe? How do people talk in this universe? What is this? Like, what are we all doing here? And now they can kind of move forward. with it and you can tell that that confidence is also been imbued on this prequel of sorts.

Yes. And, you know, it just seems thrilling because it seems to know exactly what it wants to be and it doesn't have to be all of the other things. It doesn't have to have a Lynn Manuel Miranda Cantina song. It does not need to make toys or action figures necessarily. You know, it doesn't need to convert a whole, you know, three generations of fans simultaneously. I mean, probably. All of these things are, they definitely had marketing meetings about these things. don't get me wrong. But it just seems to be, as you said, it is just kind of a,

it is a war movie and a heist movie, right? Yeah. And the thing, in addition to the fact that it just, the trailer looks great and the cast is incredible. And I would see a movie with this cast, regardless of whether there were ad-ats in it. But the thing is,

is that this maybe speaks to something that I think we've talked about for a while in terms of these franchise blockbuster movies, which is, if we're going to accept that these are the, this is the storytelling language of the current era and the way Westerns were many decades ago or, you know, um, action, you know, testosterone-filled action movies were in the 80s, like that's just sort of the lingua franca

of movies at the moment. Then I would hope that we would reach a point where you could tell many, many different stories within that world. And if Star Wars proves to be the most malleable universe for that, then great, I'm all in. Because I, I am more interested in a well-cast, well-conceived, creative, visually dynamic war heist movie than I am in finding out what happened to Han Solo's kids. You know what I mean? Right. And I think that that is, I mean, when you're a kid and you're,

for people of our generation, when you were a kid and you were playing, especially if you were an only child, and you were playing with Star Wars action figures or something, often what you would do is create your own stories for these people, right? And now, like, we've joked before about like the continuing adventures of Biggs and Wedge, you know? Yeah, right. You would kind of like imagine other adventures for these people. And that is sort of the true genius of this franchise, if you will, is that it created a world so vibrant, you know, and so deeply realized that people could fill in their own stories. And it does feel like what they're doing with these anthology stories, these Star Wars stories, is they are kind of, you know, they are they are like activating that sense of imagination.

And hopefully it's just allowed to be what it is and not be an origin story. You know, I think that's what's hamstrung so many other things. And we've been very complimentary in the past of some of the ways in which the Marvel cinematic universe has allowed different types of stories to exist within the shared universe so that Guardians of the Galaxy exists. And, you know, I know you're a big Thor, too, the Dark World guy. And, uh, or Ant Man. But you know how even Dr. Strange is, you know, there's a, Scott Derrickson as a background in horror movies directing that movie. But the thing that's always going to kind of be to hamstring them is that they always have to connect at some point.

And this one maybe because of the overarching narrative that we all know the history, it doesn't have to, right? Now, however, let me just say this. If you are a brown-haired, tough-talking under-30 English actress, this is apparently your sandbox, right? Like, I don't know who is next on that list. I don't know if Kira Knightley has fired her agent. I don't know if Macy Williams has hired someone else's agent. But to go from Daisy Ridley to Felicity Jones, I'm super into this. And it's kind of interesting that this is the new archetype for the leads in these movies.

Do you think Amanda Seaford is just like, what the fuck? Do I have to get a British accent? Like, what do I have to do? First of all, I think she probably is like that, yes. And I do think she can do a British accent. But, look, the fact that the Diego Luna is apparently the Han Solo of this movie, like, that is pretty dope. The fact that Ben Mendelsohn is rocking in a masculine cape. Yeah, the idea that they got the God Mendelsohn to be the heavy in this, just like Driver in the Force Awakens, that's super smart.

We've talked so much about the dearth of villains in the Marvel movies and how they basically now have to get these guys to fight each other, you know, because they don't have any real villains. I think the thing to say here is, like, it doesn't have to be, you know, I'm a long time moviegoer, but it doesn't have to be that complicated, right? Like, you and I and everyone wants to go see movies that are in these style of movies that they enjoy seeing, right? And I think the problem that we've gotten into for the last few years is that superhero movie isn't a type of movie anymore.

A superhero movie is really just kind of. kind of like IP spackle to like connect the dots and, you know, move toys and keep the stock prices going, keep the rights holders happy. We want to go see, like, the reason we're excited for Jason Bourne movie is because we like born movies. The reason we like when there's spy movies or the reason we're going to talk about Last Panthers is, you know, a crime show that's coming on Sundance TV this week. We like international crime shows.

That's the kind of stuff we like. And so in this case, I don't know if we would say we like Star Wars movies because, you know, they're just beginning to make one every year. so it's starting to diversify what that means. But we like heist movies with good cast. So if it has to be a Star Wars movie, that's fine. Take my money. It's not that complicated.

I'm going to go out on a, I'm going to make myself a little vulnerable right now, and I'm going to say I like Star Wars movies. Whoa, look how tender you were when you said that. Do you mind it all that, and we can move on after this, but do you mind it all that the next six months, I know you were like, this is a standalone movie, it's so great. It's going to put it in a box, put it under the Christmas tree, open it and throw it out.

do you care that for the next six months there will be like online speculation on who jin urso is and whose mother she might be or whatever or what happens to her if she continues to fight that forrest wooderker is kind of alluding to in the trailer like do you are you interested at all in the connective tissue between this and the the main franchise no personally i am not however okay you know i think and i think it would be a mistake and i think that you know kathleen kennedy and the people who are at lucas film have been been pretty smart about avoiding the mistakes that other attempted shared universes have fallen into. But so I don't think, I hope that it doesn't get too heavy handed, but we also have to be honest here that like, if this is an enormous success on its own merits, we will have, Felicity Jones is definitely under contract for potential sequels. There could be a rogue too. There's no question about that. But, you know, in terms of what it means to the main storyline,

I hope that they don't do that because that would sort of shoot themselves in the foot right when they've just started their, you know, plan to have, you know, the 20-year plan, basically, to just continue to flood the zone. I think one of the things that the last... Her job was to, like, like, the sequel is, like, Felicity Jones opens up, like, the canteena and Moss Isley? No, the sequel is about Felicity Jones trying to get out of the fine print and the contract that she signed with Sony to play an unnamed villain slash love interest in Amazing

Spider-Man 3. Just like trying to just delicately dance between... in a franchise far, far away. No, I mean, if there's one thing that the last 30 years in which Star Wars was essentially the most popular thing in the world and yet weirdly under-exploited, because Lucas just made

those three movies, is that this is an incredibly deep and resilient piece of imaginative property, right? Yeah. Even though the mainest of streams wasn't paying close attention, there were never not novels or comic books

or side universes or whatever for this. Like all of the language is so well established that they could keep playing with it and it doesn't have to overlap, right? I mean, this is me saying this and no one is listening to me, but I feel like it doesn't have to. Of course, we'll see.

Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about catastrophe and Last Panthers. I wanted to tell you a little bit about a film called Jackie Robinson. It's a new two-part four-hour film directed by Ken Burns,

who directed Civil War, baseball, and jazz. and it chronicles the life in times of Jackie Robinson, his breaking of baseball's color barrier, and his lifelong fight for equality on and off the field. Featuring extensive interviews with Robinson's widow, Rachel, whose recollections and personal archive of photographs open up a window into Jackie's private life that is rarely seen.

This two-night event premiered last night, Monday, April 11th at 9 o'clock on PBS. You can catch part two tonight on PBS at 9. You know, it's a two-part four-hour film. It's directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, and it tells the story of an American icon whose lifelong battle for first-class citizenship for all African-Americans transcended even his remarkable achievements on the field.

Now, the focus has been until now on a narrow slice of Jackie's life, the breaking of the baseball color barrier. And this documentary goes deeper and explores the complexity of his life before, during, and after baseball. Martin Luther King once said that Jackie Robinson was a sit-in before sit-ins,

a freedom rider before there were freedom rides. So please check out Jackie Robinson. Again, it premiered last night on Monday, April 11th. You can catch part two tonight at 9 o'clock on PBS. Okay, we're back. Andy, you know, we wanted to talk about catastrophe that's on Amazon, season two, which is on Amazon Prime or Amazon video right now. And, you know, we've kind of made a big deal about the belt a couple of weeks ago.

And we gave that belt to the People versus OJ Simpson. It's like the best show on TV belt. It's sort of the water cooler show that people are talking about that is critically acclaimed, but also capture some kind of zeitgeist. and, you know, catastrophe is probably not going to do that. Well, actually, first, before we get into catastrophe, OJ ended, and I wanted to give you, I wanted to just throw an alleyup up for you to talk about the end of OJ. I just can't believe how good that show was.

I feel like so much of the press, not even the press, just the online reaction and the conversation that surrounded people versus O.J. Simpson was even through to the end, even after it was well-established the caliber of the series, it was just straight up incredulity that it was so good. Like, I think that the grappling and wrestling with how this happened outlasted what anyone else would have expected, right? Because it still doesn't make sense. Because the mastery of tone throughout the series was so exceptional,

the way that it was able to tell a very, very, very, very, very, very familiar story, not just a very familiar story, a story that people, I think, thought they were sick of, even though it was, you know, already it was 20 years ago, 20 plus years ago. But so to find a way to tell that story and make it fresh and compelling. But then to be able to peel back layers, tell us things we didn't know about the story itself. Tell us things we didn't know about who we are now and how we consume media. To tell a story that is essentially inventing the present day in terms of celebrity coverage and what the truth means and how we fight our culture war battles, so to speak.

the delicacy with which it took issues like race and class and gender and then devoted masterfully sculpted hours to them. I mean, I don't think we talked about the show since the Marsha, Marcia, Marcia episode, which is Sarah Paulson's Emmy Reel from now until forever. You know, our Sterling K. Brown's performance as Chris Darden threw out. And Courtney B. Vance, there will not be a better performance, I don't think, on TV this year than his performance is Johnny Cochran. But to be able to do all those things while still being just four,

firecracker entertaining and just electric throughout. I'm just in awe. And I honestly, I feel like I don't know how they're going to do it again. I don't know if that's really the question to have right when it ends. But Jenny Connor, you know, who's the co-show runner of girls, was tweeting about it. I think, you know what? She was tweeting about it yesterday. And Kay Cannon, who used to write for 30 Rock and was tweeting about it too.

And they were both basically saying, how are we supposed to have a Tuesday without another episode of the show? because they just loved having something that fun to watch, and I feel like that's how I feel, too. Yeah, I'll be really curious to see what the follow-up, like the ripple effect. We talked about this at The Ringer Newsletter, which you should sign up for at the ringer.com. Sort of the ripple effect of this show,

and one of the things we sort of chat, we touched on was the copycats, and, you know, there's, I know that CBS is doing a documentary about John Bonaie. Margot Robbie is doing a Tanya Harding thing, and there's going to be, a law and order true crime anthology series that does the Menendez brothers. And I'm sure that those will be of varying levels of good and bad, but, you know, it's hard

to also underrate how particularly and singularly sensational this case was as source material. Yes. Yeah, which is why I think it's almost defensible that Ryan Murphy reached for Hurricane Katrina in the immediate aftermath for the follow-up season, because I think he, I mean, this is just in his DNA, which is always to go bigger. But I think he intrinsically understood that you're not going to succeed in the same way by finding something lesser or by being less ambitious, right? Yeah.

I think the concern for me, I voiced this before going into a second season of it, and it will be called American Crime Story. I don't know what it will be the subtitle. But is that, you know, this had a very unique gestation process because it was not initially, Ryan Murphy, project, right? It was coming. It came from... The two writers, right? Yeah, it came from the two guys, Scott Alexander and Larry

Koshuski, who, you know, had done written great scripts for movies before. They were developing as a TV show. People versus Larry Flint, right? They did people versus Larry Flint. I believe they did Ed Wood also. Yeah, they did Ed Wood, which is still a terrific movie. And Man on the Moon, and their specialty is taking real

life and turning into this highly entertaining fiction. And Ryan Murphy came on board, and those guys are not involved going forward in the So that'll be kind of curious to see how it works. But the copycat stuff is inevitable and disappointing. And although it does make sense from a financial perspective, because with this much TV being made,

I mean, how great is it to just be able to rip stories literally from history books or from Wikipedia rather than having to pay troublesome people for the time and trouble of coming up with new ideas? But the copycat stuff, that's just, it's not going to understand what made this so good. because this was just a completely relevant and electric production now. It wasn't just old-timey recreation theater. It was just the perfect marriage of subject and creator.

I mean, to the extent that you want to call Murphy the O'Tor of this, he couldn't go too far with this, really. I mean, it was everything that he, whether it was the Kardashian kids, whether it was the memes that came out of it with juice, juice, juice, or whether it was just like the actually really emotionally compelling moments of Marcia and and Darden and the dream team, it was,

there was no tripwire for him to go over. Whereas stuff like Katrina is there's not, that to me is not as sensational, you know what I mean? I mean, there are things that were sensational and horrific and nightmarish and shocking, but I think that you're right that it's,

it would be very hard to find the moments of just goofball levity that were part of this show. You know, just they were almost inevitably part of the show because the egos and the personalities and the scope of it, even though, you know, I think the show very wisely never strayed too far from the fact that two people were actually murdered in savage fashion. But it's also just really hard to capture something twice, right? Like, one thing I was going to ask you, because you were, I think you were into it is, do you remember there was a thing called cereal that people were really into? Yes. they did a second one yeah did people like that you know what people did I think some people did and the people who didn't were like well this isn't what the first

one was and that's fine I mean like people have expectations and I think that I don't like getting into like art or media as as some sort of like fast food that needs to deliver a certain sensation every time around if that's the like sort of thing that they wanted to do this time I I think that the actual case just kind of unfolded and exploded on them because it just didn't, it didn't end. You know, I mean, he was still getting, he was still in the process of court martial while they were putting up the show. This is the second season. Yeah. Bobergdahl, yeah.

Yeah, no, I agree with you about the expectations. And I think they needed to make the show they were going to make and they would have been in worse shape if they had tried to chase the excitement and the hype from the first season. But I just pointed, I just thought about that as just an example of, you know, it was, seems. The success of the first season of serial wasn't just the talk of deep NPR heads. Like, I remember going to a, I moderated an executive session for heads of networks at in LA, a couple, right when it was happening. And that was the thing they were all talking about. They were all chasing radio, you know, how are we going to get, how are we going to get that?

How are we going to get that buzz? And, you know, I think that that's the concern when you have a success, like people versus OJ, people trying to strip mine it for parts, figure out the secret code. And the real question is, how is FX and, right? Ryan Murphy going to follow it up again. Yeah, absolutely. It would be very, very hard to find that again in the exact same way, unless they make good on Travolta's offer to come back.

And I assume once they cast him as the storm, all bets are off. Well, one show that has been able to come back is Catastrophe, which came back for its second season. And we were big fans of the first season. And this is a romantic dromedy or comma, I think it's better, because I think it's comedy forward rather than drama forward. and it stars Sharon Hogan and Rob Delaney, who also wrote and created the series as two sort of middle-aged folks who have found each other and after a one-night stand have also now become married and had now two children in the second season. And it's just a look at like their lives as, you know, in their professional lives, their family lives, their sex lives, their romantic lives, their lives, their lives of their friends.

It's set in London Delaney plays an American guy who is in London for work but winds up staying for love And this second season just came out And you know we don't We gave OJ the belt The TV belt

But if there was like an intercontinental belt To give to a side show I think you'd have to give it to catastrophe I'm going to get over the fact that you called them middle age Because that's that's there's something breaking inside of me But I do want to say I love catastrophe

so much. This show just brings me so much joy. It is so good. And you know, let me just, let me just let me lose the emotional appeal first and just like make a very craven just kind of capitalist

appeal to your time here, right? People who need a new show to watch. First season of catastrophe, six episodes, six half hour episodes. That is a three hour chunk of your time. It is well spent. That's half a plane flight to New York or Los Angeles. Something I know very,

well. FYI. Second season, Ditto. Both are on Amazon Prime now. That is a whole flight to New York or Los Angeles. That is so much more valuable

than the free shipping that comes along with the membership. This show is so terrific, and it makes you so happy to watch it in a way that I think is very, very important. But I also think just moving beyond it and moving beyond, you know,

just the, you know, we're not going to Chris Farley interview the jokes because the jokes are amazing and we could repeat them at infinitum, and I feel like that would be a waste of our time. But I wanted to say the thing about the show that just slays me is the warmth that exists in it. Linda Holmes and NPR wrote a, I thought, a very smart piece based around catastrophe this week. And it was basically saying that she was noticing something that I take for granted,

which is on this show, Sharon and Rob make each other laugh constantly. And it's an incredible thing because it is such an amazingly and amazingly underused shorthand for people who actually emotionally care about each other. But more than that, it allows them to go to much deeper, rarer places when they're angry at each other, when they're angry at their in-laws or their family or their work situation or just fed up with their kids. The show goes to some dark places, the kinds of things you know, you're ha-ha not supposed to make jokes about. But because we believe their connection due to their constant ability to make each other a laugh, it never capsizes. It always feels like we're still floating in a way that makes sense and is relatively healthy as far as fictional characters are. I think it's really an underused thing and it makes the whole experience of watching the show that much more entertaining and enriching. Yeah, so many comedies start from such a unbelievable premise where it's like, four friends, like a safecracker, a computer nerd.

explosive expert and like you know this guy that's the plot of road one but it's like you know you think about like shows I mean even even a show like say a show is beloved and a show that I love like parks and rec which is fantastic but it's like five or six distinct people who are doing their bit and like you know by just like the force of charm and the and the excellence of writing like works together but parks and rec could have easily not worked right like because of the they didn't seem like a bunch of people who would spend a lot of time together. Girls has this problem sometimes or had this problem, where it was like, these are four people who just shouldn't be in the same room together and in the real world would probably not.

In catastrophe, they shouldn't be in the same room together. That's the entire premise is that this was a one-night stand that turned into a lifelong commitment. And the fact, like what you're mentioning there, what Linda must have written about, I haven't got a chance to read the piece, that laughing at each other? is so rare in comedy. You know, it's usually just like, here's my thing, here's my thing, here's my thing. This is actual interaction, and that is very, very rare to see, especially rare to see well done.

Yeah, that's the, that's the, she goes on to talk about how rare it is in other, you know, especially like in what we call rom-coms where the, the, the, basically the Geiger counter of ridiculous behavior is totally out of whack. So that when someone does something so over the top that is so, you know, whether it's, like a broad, like, apatow type movie thing. Like, you know, anything, I'm trying to think of an example that is not Maya Rudolph literally chitting herself in the middle of the street. But anything just south of that where that is clearly played for laughs and is heightened. But no one else in the scene thinks it's funny because that would break the fourth wall of what the thing is that they're making.

Yeah. In this, they know that they're funny. They're trying to make each other laugh. And that's the appeal. That is why they like each other. And there's even a plot line early in the second season where Sharon is essentially friends. dumped by the only person in her new mommy's group that she found remotely tolerable. And, you know, she's so offended by this, but Rob comes to her aid in a way that is kind of not okay for, you know, adults to behave.

But it entertains each other. It is about their little safe world that they've built for themselves. And, you know, it proves what they value, which is that they entertain each other so much. It's, it's a, it is a sneaky, emotionally engaging show because that is not the place. I don't think that was the goal that either that. have. They just wanted to make comedy that was sort of uncomfortable or true. But it is, it's just, it really draws you in. I mean, it's just a joy to watch. And, you know, man, we're here on the bleeding edge here of all this content. And sometimes that's

kind of all that matters, right? Yeah, I mean, it's such a pleasure. I mean, long nights on your couch. What would we do without Andy's play movies? Let's take one quick break. And then we're going to come back for the last segment. We'll talk a little bit about Last Panthers on Sundance. If you've ever had to rent a tuxedo for or suit for an event, you know how terrible it can be. Multiple trips to a dusty showroom, aggressive salespeople, and cheap-feeling products that simply don't fit. The Black Tux was created to save guys from Tuxedo rental hell.

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Let's talk a little bit about Last Panthers, which is a show on Sundance. It's debuting tomorrow. It is a international jewel heist, international crime drama. Take my money. Take my time. I believe it is six episodes long. It's flames. I love this show so much, man.

You know, you were talking about catastrophe just makes you feel good. This is like, I can't get over. This is one of like my favorite television shows I've seen in a few years. I am I am okay by putting the Chris caveat around the idea that like this might not be for everybody. There might be too many subtitles in it for you. Do you really care about this like the inner workings of the Marseve de police department? I care about the inner workings of the Marseille to police department. Real quick, this is sort of, I don't know if you had a chance there's an article, a piece in the New York or from I believe 2010 called the Pink Panthers.

and it's about this jewel thief gang, Eastern European Jewel thief collective. I believe, you know, and Jewel people. Kind of like odd future, but for Eastern Europe. I think I did see Jewel thief collective play in Providence once. Anyway, it's written by Jack Thorne, who is a British writer who wrote on skins and the original Shameless,

and then created a show called Glue, which was sort of like train spotting meets broad church. It was like rural teens, murder and drugs. excellent great writer he's done a bunch of other stuff plays and other shows and all the episodes were directed by Johann Rank who has done a lot of TV and did some

stuff for David Bowie towards the end of his career and life can I can I jump in here a little bit about our man Johann Rank well let me just say go ahead there's many you definitely did the correct order of his Wikipedia page this is the dude that directed some of these last

David Bowie videos and because of that there's a song from Black Star is the theme song from Last Panthers. They agreed to, he agreed, I mean, before he passed away, agreed to let that happen because the show already aired in the UK. But so Johan Rank, interesting dude. Do you know who he used to be? That in 1993, he went under the name of Stackaboe and had a novelty hit single called Here We Go that peaked at number 13 in the UK and was on Beavis and Butthead.

And was, I kid you not, on literally every double disc pop compilation that I bought in England in the summer of 1992. Like every single thing that I bought that was just like this is pop now, you know, like everything. This was on all of them and I really recommend you guys watch the video. Also directed

one of the best episodes of Breaking Bad. He directed Hermannos. That's true. So good job by you, Stackabot, but really you know, if your career had ended in 1993 with, here we go. And then maybe a couple years later after he directed Swade's video for She's in Fashion, that would have been fine.

You know what I mean? Like, this is all just great. But let's go back, let's go back. Let's go back to the show, which is really, really good. The episode Hermannis is not a bad sort of, if you like that episode, I think you'll like Last Panthers. And that was the Gus flashback episode to when he was sort of becoming a cartel boss. This show jumps from London to Marseilles to Genoa, Italy, to Eastern Europe, to

caravan parks in eastern Europe and forests and, you know, has ties to the, um, the Yugoslavian Civil War and, uh, you know, international jewel trading insurance companies that, you know, underwrite these jewelry stores and police departments. It has great performances from John Hurt and Samantha Morton, through people you probably heard of, but I have to really highlight the, just the unbelievable job, the Tahar Rahim does in this he's you may have seen him in the movie a prophet uh and he plays a marse cop who's just like basically waging a one man more against gangs and police corruption and in some ways his own family in the show it it's such an incredible like i haven't seen a more compelling like tv

cop in a really long time well we also have have always try to point out when there are shows that are just um just in just completely and utterly linked to specific places in this idea of specificity. And this is a show that really, like it has, it has dirt under its nails. You know what I mean? There is nothing that is tidy or neat or, or put it plainly, but clean about this show, certainly not the morality of the characters, but just not the way that it looks. It is transporting in, you know, in the way that good crime fiction is. And, you know, just in the first episode alone, I learned so much about how, you know, gangs operate outside of Belgrade in terms of their dress code when they like to meet with you, which is apparently pants optional.

You know, there's just a lot of little details like that that I think will come in handy should you ever go. I mean, you were in Europe last year, but I think that, you know, having watched the show, I think you could definitely go off. You could put away the Baydiker and the Fodors, you know? Like, you could definitely go to some junkyards now and really, really just get some business done in a way that you probably couldn't before you saw the series. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so there's six episodes. It starts tomorrow night. Hopefully we'll get a chance to talk about it again. down the line. Anything else you wanted to hit before we go? No, I mean, we just got, we're about to hit the silly season. It's getting exciting. Yeah, J.P. Crawford, where are you at? Yeah, JP Crawford. I hope you're in River Run, because King's Landing's about to go off.

Also, Chris, next week, night manager starts on AMC with Hugh Lurie and Tom Hiddleston. I'm in on the show, really like the first episode. So hopefully we'll both catch up on a little bit before we do our show next week. Yeah, and we'll catch up with some of the Sunday night TV that we maybe I haven't got a chance to hit. I can't wait to see you next week. Yeah, back in person. Be good. Yeah.

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