The Prestige TV Podcast - Did ‘The Larry Sanders Show’ Stick the Landing?

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Andy Greenwald is joined by Bill Simmons to discuss “Flip,” the series finale of ‘The Larry Sanders Show.’ They start by talking about why it’s one of HBO’s most underrated shows, why Garry Shandling was the perfect fit for the lead role, and how the ’90s comedy blurred the lines between fiction and reality (2:00). Along the way, they discuss the ways in which it was a tortured production behind the scenes and how it influenced the next wave of workplace sitcoms (25:25). Later, they break down the final season’s heightened stakes leading up to the finale (39:40). Finally, they answer the titular question: “Did it stick the landing?” (87:27). Host: Andy Greenwald Guest: Bill Simmons Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Theme Song and Other Music Credits: Giancarlo Vulcano Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a world where coaches are still the main characters, the players are now legally chasing the ultimate bag, and the game of basketball is always the top priority. There was only one brand you can trust to help you wade through all the madness. Hey, I'm Tate Frazier from One Shiny Podcast, and you can join me twice a week as we navigate the always entertaining world of college basketball. Every Monday, the ringer's comment helps me make sense of the biggest stories from the weekend, and on Fridays we talk to our many friends of the program. We're locked in on the best postseason in sports. Make sure you follow One Shining Podcasts on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. This episode is brought to by Borris Head.

What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Borishead just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means pointing your whole day around it, presenting the Friars Turkey Breast only from Borishead. The backyard tradition now available behind the counter.

Visit your local deli today. discover the craftsmanship behind every bite, Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda.

Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365, strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with the yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. From no flipping to flip, from Ellen playing straight to to Covney going gay. That's the problem with Hollywood. Everyone's got two pricks and three assholes. Hey now, this is Stick the Landing, the Larry Sanders show.

On tape from Hollywood, the Larry Sanders show. Welcome to another episode of Stick the Landing. My name is Andy Greenwald, and I feel a little like Hank Kingsley hosting right now, because here I am with the father of themselves. Bill Simmons. I requested this. Well, you requested two things. You requested this podcast entirely doing the podcast, and you requested this show. Yeah, this is a Mount Rushmore HBO show for me, which I think everybody's Mount Rushmore is different.

and Succession now, how many heads are we allowed on them at Rushmore? Can we have five? I mean, if you're chisling it into rock, sure. For me, it was always Sanders, sopranos, curb. Yeah. Wire?

And the wire. Yeah. And Succession. But Succession has to be on there now. So now, and I'm not bumping any of the other four. So we figure, like, it's been 30 plus years, I'm allowed to have five. But to me, Sanders is the most underrated show in the history of the channel.

it is an incredibly influential show in all these different ways. It was respected in ways that I don't feel like has carried over necessarily. And it's interesting because that happens with athletes too, right? Some athletes, they hit and then we kind of stopped talking about them as much. And other athletes hit. And then they kind of linger and hang around. Like, Shaq's a good example. Barkley's a good example.

Sanders kind of came and went and then Gary died in 2016, but I don't feel like it gets mentioned enough with all the great shows. Do you feel like we need some clips on Twitter that, like, Rip Torn was a problem? Just like the greatest hits clip of him? Well, think about it. The top three on that show are giving, like, some of the greatest performances in the history of comedy. I know people feel that way about Veep now, which is the most recent version of a Larry Sanders-type show. But, man, even you see in the final episode, one of the things I love about it, I think it's in the running for best final episode ever in any TV shows.

But one of the things I love about is all three of those guys are thrown 100 miles an hour. It is the best version of the character, the performance, the actor, everything. It is really wild to look back on this show now. And some classic shows from the past, they've been like, they do this. They doctor them, so they're now widescreen. They look like contemporary shows. They did that with The Simpsons. Larry Sanders is still in the box.

So it looks like an older show now. It looks dated. But those three performers, Shandling, Tambor, and Torn, feel like a modern cast. because they are so much bigger than the box there. And the show knew it. And we won't skip to the ending quite yet, but it ends with the three of them as it should. It's perfect.

The 90s were weird. We've talked about a lot in the rewatchables. I don't know you've talked about on the watch too, where there was this people kind of understanding or thinking they understood the inner mechanics of Hollywood, even though you're living probably in Philly or New York City. I'm living in Charlestown in Boston. And this is my gateway to,

Oh, this is what Hollywood must be like, a movie like The Player or like this. It was the first time that we were kind of behind the curtain. And it was always about, you know, the late shift was like that, the book and then the movie. It's like, oh, skewering show business. Yeah, and also what happens during the commercial breaks? When the lights go dark and you see the guests lean over and talk to Letterman or whatever, what are they really saying? Yeah.

And you could spend all that time on your couch being wondering. And then these shows purported to tell you what was really going on. Well, and also the premise of this is really a show. And Shandling, I always said this. it's a show about people. It's a show about relationships. It's a show about friendships and jealousy. And the TV show just happens to be the prism for all these things.

But the reason the show works is the characters. You can even feel when they brought in characters that didn't really work, like when they replaced Janine Groffler, who was amazing on the show, with the Mary Lou character who was terrible. And that character was so below the level of some of these other characters they had, you know, like Phil the head writer, who's just this erotic maniac.

And Odenkirk is the agent. I completely forgot that. Because at the time, you watched the show, I wasn't watching Mr. Show. I didn't know who he was. And then you look back and all of a sudden that space in your mind is filled in with one of the great actors

of our contemporary TV times. And he's just blowing lines off of a conference room table and screaming at everyone. Really, by season six, he's basically they're taking shots at Brad Gray. Yes. At that point, Shanley, and that was his agent.

he's, or his manager, he gets the EP credit with Shanling. He's double and triple dipping on the show. Shanling figures it out because he goes to his house. And his house is nicer than Shanling's house. And he's like, what that fuck is going on here? So it's not even that his house. It's that he bought three or four lots in the Pacific Palisades and made what I think reps in this town now call like the fatal error.

He invited Gary to see the construction of the palazzo he was building. And Gary's walking around and he slowly realizes that. that Brad Gray is making more money on Larry Sanders than Gary Shandling is. Apparently, ever since that day, agents say, never let them see your house. Right. You're not allowed to do it.

But so, before we get into the specifics of it, I want to go back because the personal relationship to the show is important and the prism you're watching it through is important. Personally, I will say I'm familiar with the show. I watched the show when I could, but I was in, the show ran from 1992 to 1998, which is high school and almost to the end of college for me. I didn't have cable in college.

So I was like aware of it, but I didn't also, I don't think we watch TV the way we watch it now. So I felt like I had a mastery of Larry Sanders show, which meant I'd probably seen 40 of the 90 episodes and didn't remember half of them. So for you, the show comes on in 92. Are you checking for it immediately? Oh, yeah. You're probably paying attention to the fact that Chandling was like tipped to replace Letterman. He was a guest host, Don Carson. He was the next one to get one of those jobs. And then he didn't, he did this instead.

he was always the best guy who didn't have a late-night show. And then I watched this showtime show, which I really liked, which was kind of this meta parody of a show. It was weird. It's Gary Shandling show. I liked it, though.

But then when he had this, in this show, you can really separate into two quadrants, like the first three seasons and then the last three. The first three are a little closer to the Showtime show. It's a lot about,

like the first season's all about his marriage and the, or any work because of the show is less important. I think the people probably behind the scenes weren't as good as eventually, like eventually he gets Apatow. Yep. In the back half of the run.

Becomes like the wolf of the show in the background, right? But he also, Peter Tolan, who was also amazing. But you can feel the show starting a shift in season three. And I was thought the big episode was the one when Hank gets to guest host because Larry's sick. Hank's moment in the sun. So it's like somewhere in the middle of season three. And that's the prototype for what the last three seasons would be like. I think that show where it's like Hank just loses it.

He does a good job and he immediately becomes the biggest asshole to play in. Within seconds. Yeah. From the second the curtain ends, he's a different person. And it's like it's a masterclass. It's 23 minutes like the episodes were. Right. And for 15 minutes, you're like your TV brain.

Even now is like, oh, sweet Hank is finally going to get his glory. So the last three, but for me, like living in Boston and the HBO had this show. They had Dennis Miller show, I think, at that point. Maybe that was coming in the mid-90s. Sex and the City was coming. Sopranos was at the end of the decade. Oz was mid-90s. HBO really wasn't HBO yet.

This is Post-Dream On. Sanders was the first great show HBO ever had. So I was bartending. I was working for the Boston Herald. And by 96, I was on my own. I was literally just bartending and freelance writing. and I wanted to write scripts. And Sanders was the goat,

for anyone in the mid-90s, it's like, I want to write a TV script. You'd either look at Seinfeld or you'd look at Sanders. And Seinfeld and Sanders were filming yards apart from each other on the CBS Live Studio City. They end in the same month, basically.

The Sanders, like the dialogue, how crisp it was, the characters, the one-liners. It's kind of the show that doesn't exist anymore. I don't think there's a version of it anymore that always went for the laughs but was human.

Now it's like, Now we have these half-hour shows that's like Barry and the Bear. I love those shows. They're not comedies. No. This walked the line in a way that a lot of shows didn't and still don't. It's also interesting. I feel like Chandling himself is such an interesting person.

And there's like a lot of ambivalence throughout the show where you can see it reflected in the character where the character is kind of wishy-washy or mealy-mouth and hiding behind Ardy. And he's not sure. He's vain, but he's also really funny. And reading the descriptions of how the show got started. And it's like he, Michael Fuchs. from HBO approached Gary Shandling at the Cable Lace Awards,

which is something that existed when Larry Sanders started and didn't by the end. It sort of presaged cables taking over the Emmys. And it basically was like, do you want to do a show? And Shandling had been tipped

to take over Letterman, but didn't want to do that. But at first, this was a show he was developing with Gilda Radner. Did you hear that? Yeah. That they were going to make a show that almost sounds more

like what 30 Rock became, where Gilda Radner was going to be the star of a variety show on TV and he was going to be the behind the scenes guy almost in the Rady role. And then Gilda Radner's cancer came back, she passed away tragically, and they sort of developed this. And HBO was so in that it sounded like, Chandling was like, can we do a pilot? And HBO was like, if you want,

like they were so in on whatever he wanted to do. I think they probably assumed he was just going to get, you know, it was like late night TV roulette at that point. Yep. Oh, they wouldn't have him for that long. Everyone assumed he was going to do a 1230. Yeah. He used to kill on Carson. Yeah. He would guest host on there a lot. He would kill on any TV show he did. And it was always, It always just seemed like that's where he was headed. But that was one of the great things about the show is he flipped that into doing this instead, which I'm so much happier that he did this. And all his insecurities are in it.

The show's successful, but it's never too successful. Really around season four, it starts feeling like it's starting to slide away a little bit, the show. The show within the show or the show. Yeah, it's starting to get old. They bring in the John Stewart character. I mean, I know so much stuff about the John Stewart part because. I want to hear. I think there was a time heading into season six

when they thought they were just going to have it become John Stewart's show. And it would be a meta show with John Stewart having taken over. Season seven was going to be John Stewart hosting the Larry Sanders show and Larry still in it. And by all accounts, Larry, like, couldn't handle it. And all the stuff that's been written about the show, the documentary, Judd did, the two-parter. It's all about, like, this show is, Shannon, put everything into it. Yep.

And he never really recovered from not having it. It was like, it just was too, it took too much out of him. And then he had, he did two movies, did that Mike Nichols movie. And that was it. And then he kind of was kind of going backwards thinking like, oh man,

the Larry Sanders show, that was the heyday for me. And he was kind of, instead of doing new stuff, he was kind of trapped in the past a little bit. There are all these moments by the end of the series where it's like,

it's so blurred. And we're going to talk about this when we get into the finale because there's the biggest moment of that blurring happens in the an alley. But it almost feels like it must have been unhealthy for someone who was this meta, this thinking about himself all the time. The character of Darlene, who's Hank's assistant for the first three seasons, is Linda Doucette, who is, who was Gary Shanling's on again, off again,

kind of tumultuous romantic partner for a bunch of years. There's an episode in the show when she poses for Playboy. She also posed for Playboy in real life because Gary encouraged her to. Right. Like, there was, it was paper thin, right? Well, there's an episode where they kind of start maybe getting involved. Right. But they were involved in real life off and on. Right. And similarly,

like the idea of having a successor in the back pocket or the network pushing it was what was clearly happening with Letterman and John Stewart because people who remember the show might remember, people who were discovering it won't, that like in the 90s, when Tom Snyder was hosting the late late show, right?

John Stewart signed a deal with Letterman's company that was very vague. Yeah. And the idea was that clearly he was going to take over the 1230 spot if you didn't get something else first so they bring him in to do this sort of commentary in season six and then as you're saying then it became it stopped being subtext it became text and the let off carson thing was also the the that had been five years earlier but that was the biggest thing that ever happened in late night

absolutely where the six your success are looming yep so you know the show when it really figured out what it was which was somewhere between season three and season four it became about celebrity, fame, vanity, holding on to this piece of turf in this town where everybody is ready to backstab each other in a moment. And that's when the show took off. Did you think that it was, as someone who grew up,

and I'm similar, like you grew up and you kind of idolize the people on Saturday Night Live or the people who make the shows that you love, but at least from Philadelphia or from Boston, like, I don't know how these things get made. unless I read it in premiere or MovieLine magazine. Like, I don't really understand. There was no gateway, no path, no explanation.

You kind of romanticized a lot of it. And I wondered what your response was watching the early seasons of this show, because, I mean, the first episode, I think it's the first episode. It's one of the, one of the season premieres, whether it's the first one or not, begins with everyone in the office trying to have a meeting to talk about the jokes, but Larry is just riveted by the OJ trial. Right, right. So you realize, like, the sense that these famous, handsome celebrities who are making

jokes all the time are working in these shitty offices with drop down ceilings, bad lighting. They're watching the same crap we are. Yeah. It's not just the ratio. It's like the most unglamorous Hollywood show imaginable. Yeah. When I started working for Kimmel Show in 03, and one of the reasons I wanted to work for Kimmel's show was because of this show.

And like Letterman and this show were two of the most important pieces of TV property for me. But I was surprised, like Kimmel Show was just way bigger. Yeah. One of the things that this show did was it stripped it down. it stripped down the amount of people that work on a show. Like, even the writers. There's two writers. Yeah, there's only, sometimes it seems like just two writers.

Sometimes they'll have like five in there. Yeah, it's like, it's no wonder that guy was such an asshole. He was writing all the jokes every night. But it feels really authentic. Because sometimes when, you know, when I watch this with sports or something and they have a, you know, they're doing a team and you're like, oh, man, that's terrible. Why would they do that? The GM's not the coach too.

And that they come on. In this case, they stripped it down. stripped it down in all the right ways. And they had the essential, like Larry's assistant is super important, right? In a TV show, that's the same thing. The lead talent booker, super important. The EP, ultimately, like, the relationship between the host and the EP, nobody else can even get in on that.

But the sidekick was the one that what they did with Hank, to me, is like that when you do stuff like that, it's one of the great characters that's ever been created. Nobody ever thought of like, oh, I wonder what the ego of the sidekick is like. And they fucking, it was just such a huge part of the show. And nobody has ever given a performance like that. No. Tambor, it's not just because the way he looked later when he was in Arrested Development or Transparent,

but like he looks, he looks inflated. He looks like a tiny person wearing a giant skin suit of like a much bigger guy. And he's so, so neat. He's just a black hole of neediness. Every time he's on screen and we were texting about how. They were so smart to keep him in frame when the camera is centered on celebrities. This comes up definitely in the finale, but throughout, he's always there. Right.

And he was somebody that I grew up with because he was always on Three's Company. He's always a guest star, right? He was a working actor. Yeah, he was always a guest star in these different roles. And then they created the ropers around him. And I loved the ropers. I was devastated when it got canceled. Big ropers joke at the end of the Sanders.

Which I thought was intentional. And then it was one of those guys. You were like, I like that guy, but nothing ever happened for him. And then all of a sudden, Hank happened. And I can't remember who won the Emmys. I think Rip Torne one may be more amy. I think Garoflo may have won, or she was at least nominated. She was awesome on this show.

The only other Emmys that won, and this is something I want to talk about, were for directing and writing at the end. It won. Todd Holland won and Tolan one for the finale. Right. But I think it's also worth talking about, like, it's just culturally very, very different at a time when, because now we talk about the Emmys, the Emmys recognize shows that we cover on the watch, we cover on the ringer,

people who are dialed in, we love these shows, whether it's the bear or succession. Numbers-wise, these shows are not popular by any metric that we ever used for decades before. Sanders is kind of the gateway show for so many movements in Hollywood, one of which was, this is the cool show, this is the smart show. This is the show the critics love. This is the show that people in the industry love, and clearly all the people in town wanted to be on. but it never won. It got the most nominations of any comedy series

ever for its fifth season and was shut out completely. I think every year that it was nominated for Best Comedy, Frazier won. Frazier is a good show, but it's like a major label band

versus an indie band. This is the one that was more influential, but it's sort of hard to explain that now when tiny shows win at the Emmys and the Emmys get zero ratings. It's a different era. See, I never knew, I never really had a concept

of how big or small HBO was. Because it was elite. You paid for it. You paid for it, but I also, I mean, I paid for it. And I didn't, I forget what our cable bill was until we got our legal cable box. That was huge. But I felt like a lot of people in my life had HBO or they used their parents, HBO, or whatever. And I did feel like a lot of people watch it. But when you're talking about like Seinfeld-Frasier.

Yeah, not comparable. You're talking 30, 35, 40 million people watching episodes of television. My thing with this is it's always better to be the cool show. Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, I would be interested if, like, if they had one, the best show Emmy versus where it landed. Yeah. I would rather, I bet Shanley would have rather where it landed where it was like, that was the show. That was the show that it probably influenced an entire generation of TV writers.

And that's what HBO wanted. I mean, that was their brand, was exclusive jewel box programming. And they didn't ever even breathe a ratings number until they couldn't. helped themselves and they started bragging about the Sopranos. And then, like, then the horse was out of the stable. But up to then, they never said a word about who was watching what or how many. Yeah, as the years pass, it becomes like the Sopranos was when HBO became HBO. I think became a narrative.

And I just don't think it's true. Like, I really feel like HBO in the mid-90s, late 90s was really important. And anecdotally, like my buddy house, like we watched every eye. We would call after Oz episodes. It's like when I had the last year, I was the last year of Sanders, we used to have Sanders watch parties at my apartment. That's fun. I was working at a restaurant, and we all love Sanders.

Yeah. We would just Sunday nights was always a night off and we would always watch the Sanders together. I felt like culturally it was important. It definitely was important. It was covered like it was important. We were talking about the Tom Shales review of the finale, and it was just, he was just like mourning of how much you love the show. I would encourage people to read it.

It was, I think the best review I've ever read from him. It's really great. He's the legendary Washington Post critic who just passed away, who wrote the SNL book with Jim Miller. Yeah, and I feel like it also introduced some things that we take for granted as like the hallmark of HBO, like Gary was getting burnt out. So some seasons had fewer episodes. He wanted to take a break.

So there were two years passed between season five and season six, which was unheard of at the time. I think for the first year or two, they made them do alternate takes where they didn't swear so they could potentially syndicate it down the line. And then like with many things, they were like, we don't want to be. want to do that anymore. Well, that's one of the reasons the episodes were always like 22 minutes, 23 minutes, because I think the syndication thing was so important. They were trying to fit him. And that's even a meta joke, I think, in the finale, when Seinfeld's there talking about all

the syndication that Larry's going to get. And Larry's like, that's not my show. It's never going to work. Something about 98 felt like pop culture and the whole world was something was shifting. Because, like, Jordan, he's done in 98 with the Bulls. That was the second three-peat. Seinfeld ended. Sanders ended as like the cool HBO show. Even like that 902 and O Merrose place, like that era was also ending.

And we were moving into something else. The internet was showing up. There was a snarkiness that was coming that we could kind of feel. And Sanders kind of missed all that too. The thing that was great for me was episode four, episode five was season four, season five.

Finding out other people liked it. Yeah. This is like a very pre-internet phenomenon of shows. Like, yeah, of course people like Seinfeld and 902 and O'NO and all these different shows, but like, if I'm talking like what, hey, what are your favorite?

Like, I love Larry Sanders. I'd be like, you do? I love Larry Sanders. It was the same phenomenon with music, right? Like, when you would find somebody that, you know, like the same, you like that first strokes album? I love that. That was me and Chris in 1988. Right. Right. I'm the same thing. But it's not just other people. It was

also the celebrities themselves. And the incredibly weird thing about the show was, it revealed how celebrities go on talk shows for a reason with an agenda, right? They're promoting something or they're papering or they owe someone a favor. And it's all like, it's all transactional in a lot of ways. Celebrities went on Larry Sanders with for similar reasons, but it played out differently. Like the Ellen DeGeneres episode where she's getting hounded by everyone. Is she going to come out on her show?

Is the character gay? Is she gay? And how does she choose to address it? She goes on the Larry Sanders show and her the fictional Ellen sleeps with fictional Larry. And then fictional Larry puts the screws to her, no pun intended, about being gay on the show. And so she gets to have her cake eat it and then make fun of it all in one half hour that only the smart people dialed into it were seeing. Well, he had her and Roseanne. He had affairs when they were like, wait, wait, wait, white, white, hot on the show.

And that's when I knew, you know, I didn't know what was going on. But I did know, like, this is a good sign for the show that these famous people are coming on and they're doing it. entire episodes like I think the second episode of season four Carvey comes on when yeah everyone loved Dana Carvey and they just done the second Wainsworld movie and they do I think I told you that run from basically the second episode season four all the way through the seventh yeah is one of the great runs in the history of television but the Carvey one he comes on and he's supposed to do his imitation of Larry on the show but Larry doesn't know there's an invitation they're trying to hide it from behind the VHS he finds out then Carvey feels weird about doing it and

And I just went on the Carvey Spade podcast and I mentioned that episode. And Carvey was saying that actually Shandling did have a problem with the imitation. Of course he did. So they took all of that and then he was kind of mad that Carvey did it

and he had like the wig and the fake, you know, the fake teeth. And he just basically like it was, Shanling was, he was weird about it. But that was the great thing about the show. They pulled that stuff into it. That's what's so,

it's kind of amazing to watch now now that we have more knowledge of these people. We've watched the Gary Shandling documentary, and you realize that, like, it's not being cute. They didn't make up something for laughs. Like, Gary Shandling was obsessed with how big his head and ass looked. Like, he was so self-conscious all the time. And then they put it in the show.

And so when he's squirming, like, there's the roast episode that I know you love where, like, the people are standing up making fun of him and he's miserable. Like, that's the show. That's actually what he's going through in those moments. I talked about this on my podcast like eight years ago. I somehow ended up on a plane with him because people, invited me, this boxing bench. It was me, him and Shanley, and I never spent time with Shanling.

Jeez. And he was so happy that somebody loved the show. Yeah. And he was so happy to talk about the show. I was just like, oh my God, this guy would talk about it. Like, he just loved that he created the show and then people loved it was like his fuel. It seemed, it's so interesting because the stories that you hear about, like again, this all came out later.

People have talked about it. There have been pieces, like there was an excerpt from Jim Miller's H. VO book that the ringer ran that talked about some of this, that like it seems like it was a bit of a tortured experience. Oh, no question. Especially the last couple of years. People were unhappy. Like, Shandling was working himself to the bone.

There was a season when he was popping pills. There's a season, you know, there's his own neuroses. Reflected in the show. Which they put in the show. Sanders all of a sudden had a painkill or addiction. They, like, ripped horn, famously not an easy hang. There's stories about him, like, getting so mad that his lines were getting cut, that there was a rumor he had a gun in the office.

There's a YouTube video of RipToran fighting Norman Mailer for five minutes that you can just go find right now. Although my favorite Rip Torn story was one that Linda Ducet said that he showed up at their house when she and Chandling lived together and knocked on the door and they were freaked out like, why is Rip here? And he was like, I've just moved to the near the ocean like Malibu or something and there's no soil and I need to garden. Can I use some of your yard? And he planted tomatoes at Chandling's house and they gave him a key. Right. And so he was both the sweetest guy in the world and a fucking lunatic. Yeah.

And that friction fueled the show. Apatow gives these interviews where he's just like, it's like he's still doing, I think this is sweet. I don't mean to say this is like a bad thing, but he's like still doing damage control. He's still talking about how he's so sorry for people who walked into that show and left feeling badly because he saw it happen. He understands that why it happened. That was the DVD when the show didn't come out on DVD forever.

And then Shanling's like, I'll do it. it, but I have to do these extras. And he went and visited all these different cast members and people that have been on the show and kind of went over their experiences. And it was like a combo appreciation apology tour. There's nothing like it. I mean, he was so protective about the IP. That's what's amazing now. I don't know when it went on Max, but I think, you know, right before he died, he was saying how it was so important for him to be a part of whatever the HBO streaming service or back in HBO. But now it's on there. And it's like, There was episodes that weren't even on the DVDs.

They had like a selected episode DVD that they released. That was it. So now everything's on there. It's all on there. And if you watch it, like the names in the credits, it's not just Peter Tolan who went on to do Rescue Me and a bunch of other stuff. But like Steve Levittan, who did, I think, Just Shoot Me, and Phil Sims and Apatow, like, John Vidi, like these names you see from all the comedies that meant a lot of us later all

started there. But the entire writer's room got replaced. between five and six because there was such intense burnout. And I think he ended up just writing a lot of it or shaping a lot of it. I don't know if this is Apatow's quote or someone else said that like he was really, really, really hard on writers and impatient because it was so easy for him to write. And he couldn't understand why it wasn't easy for everyone else. So he just ended up writing most of it anyway and telling people like, that's a joke.

That's not true. That's not what someone would say. And like, let's go towards that all the time. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigue. Ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection.

Zepbound contains terseptide and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer. Or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems.

Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonel urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbound.lily.com. This show had some of the best one-line rip-off, like rip-offs of any show I can remember. And Rip Torn had a lot of them.

Lip-Torn's amazing. I remember there was one that we used to love where it was like, if I wanted to see Fire and Destruction, I'd go over to Jimmy Kahn's house. But it was like a lot of like those quickies that he would just zip in there. Oh, always. When Oden Kirk's like talking to them in one of the last episodes on his cell phone, he's just like, I'm on Melrose. And he's like, sorry, I'm going in a canyon. You're losing me. And he's like, what canyon is off of Melrose?

And Torn's like, asshole canyon. Easy. The other thing I was noticing before we get in the finale is that, like, one of the biggest things that this show really, really foreshadowed and set up was, like, obviously workplace comedies or sitcoms. We've always had workplace comedies, whether it's mash or cheers to a degree. But this was the first one, I think. And you might, you might have other examples in there that disprove them. this, but I feel like this was the first one where all the people were so clearly only happy when they were at work, when it was so clear that they had nothing else in their lives. No matter how

unhappy they seemed to be at work, it was worse than the other side of it. And that doesn't only foreshadow American culture in the 21st century, but it's also every comedy from the next 15 years owes a debt to that, the office, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec. Like, it's all found family at work, all of it. And this was the first one that kind of, kind of did that. Yeah, I think that's true. There's a little bit, I forget, when the Christopher guest movies started happening. 90s also, yeah, government is 90. It's around the same time. It's adjacent.

Yep. So it was like taking something that's real and fake, bringing real people into fake situations and having them kind of maneuver around and trying to guess what's real and not real. That's pre-cur. Curb has been doing that for 25 years now, too. Curb, I think, took that to another level. And Ricky Jervais has said that, like, the office exists because he loved Larry Sanders. that when he saw that you could do something different,

it made him want to do something different. Yeah, the whole concept of show business behind the scenes is interesting from a TV or movie standpoint. I really feel like that came out of the 90s. I don't really remember, and I'm sure somebody like, you forgot about this, you forgot about this, but I know network and there's stuff like that, but the concept of building characters around this universe

that's a fake, real place. But I think the difference was, because you had like, whether it's Sunset Boulevard or whether it's network, it was always kind of grandiose that Hollywood is a place like, Day of the Locust, like, it's going to crush you

because this is a place of gods and monsters and, like, great beauties. It's the banality of it. It was that, like, they were fighting over the fax machine. The episode with a budget where Beverly, like, photocopies the budget, then everyone's mad that the gaffer makes more than they do or whatever. It's so petty.

And I feel like that's, that was the big game changer in terms of, like, Hollywood is just like any other dumb industry and everyone's just venal, or maybe worse, because they have money. It was so smart, and especially after having worked on an actual TV show after, like this show, and then rewatching some of the Sanders things, it's fucking amazing. They have that one episode, I can't remember what season it was, where Larry, because Letterman has his people on the show, his crew members. So he's like, we should try that. And he has, I think it's like Phil the head writer doing office gossip. And then all the staff members want to get on the show.

Yep. And the moment he has the idea, Artie's like, this is a bad idea. This is your regret this. And then it goes. And within 15 minutes, everybody's pitching, trying to get on, being characters. That's literally what a late night show is like.

Like, I watched it happen. And what about the piece, the, like, the central conceit of the show is that nothing is as you think it is. Everything is kind of worse. having worked on a talk show, was that your sense, too? When people coming in with like grudges,

with whole, like, oh yeah, with the host, just sweet, just armful of baggage that you can't actually put on the show. But that is, what,

40%, 60% of the time is managing those off-camera things. Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing is, you're just trying to survive because it's every night.

So it's almost like, it's not a football season. It's not even a basketball season. It's a baseball season. You're just, you're playing 160. games and you're basically the happiest when nothing goes wrong. So, you know, some of this stuff, especially like, it's always like, you know, Kevin Kostern

backed out, but we got so-and-so instead. Or like in the roast, which is, you know, one of the best Sanders episodes where it's like, yeah, we got, we got Jerry Seinfeld and we got Kipadatta. Who's Kippa Dada? He's the guy we had to get to get Jerry Seinfeld. And Kippa Dada comes in. Who are you? Who the fuck are you?

Kippa Dada, of course you are. And then Seinfeld cancels. That's Late Night TV. You're doing these deals and then the deal actually doesn't work out and you're stuck with this other person. The last point I think we have to hit before we get into the finale is just a little bit on how much late night shows matter in a different way. Because one thing that this brought me back to was a time of my childhood and

teenagehood where it's just like they were parties. They were like these kind of, they were very bawdy and like kind of horny all the and the hosts were always flirting with everybody. Yeah. And there was a lot of, it was just some of, like, some of the jokes in the fake monologues on the Larry Sanders show made me gasp because no one would tell jokes like that now. Oh my God. Yeah, there's some line crossers.

But, but I mean, it's definitely a show from a different era. But just in general that, like, that was normal. I mean, what could be more normal than, like, Carson's monologue or than Letterman's monologue or whatever? But they were working real sideways. Yeah. There's a Tori spelling joke that made me spit out whatever I was drinking at the time. Like, it was a different thing, and it was a part of show business,

and it was a part of just regular life to stay up this late and to see what your friends were doing that. Pre-internet, pre-Utube. Couldn't watch the clips later. Pre-social media. You had to watch it or tape it. Less channels. Also, if you're celebrity, where were you going? You had to promote something.

Where'd you go? Yeah. You went morning shows. You went, try to go national shows. Howard Stern on the radio. And you would try to go to these late night shows. And then the late night shows, depending on the pecking order, it's like, well, you went on Leno, so we can't have you.

Yes, they wouldn't do it. If you come here, you can't go on Leno. So you had all that stuff. And the celebrities really needed the shows. And I think now they need them for a different reason. It's probably a safe place. But I think podcasts have replaced some of it. In terms of like, I can show you the real me, but I can be in charge of it.

And I, you know, have a long form. with somebody for 80 minutes versus popping on a show for seven minutes and telling two stories. Like, it's no contest. So now it's like, and you also have people have their own Instagrams, they have their on Twitter. They have all these different ways to get to fans. Think about that Sidney-Sweeney-Glen Powell movie. They didn't necessarily need to go on a late-night show to promote that movie. They were able to promote it. Anyway, in the 90s, you needed the late-night shows. Also, the movie just felt like an equal tentacle of the promotion. Like, I don't know what Who was promoting what?

Was the movie promoting Sidney? Or vice versa. Exactly. It was promoting the Amazon Prime release. Exactly. It's completely befuddling. Also, the sense that I like the baseball season analogy, because basically it's disposable. Like, every show was life or death while it was being taped.

And then you're done and you're on to the next one. And there are a lot of references within this show, even as the show is getting critically acclaimed, it's winning a Peabody Award. It's nominated from more Emmys and anything else. They are still talking about TV. way we used to all talk about TV, that it's a lesser, that it doesn't matter, that it's disposable, that someone's going to tape over all these episodes someday anyway and no one will ever be able to see these things. You could memory hole a bad interview. That is baked into the DNA of this show

and the psychosis of Larry or the neurosis of Larry. And that's from another era. Everything lives forever now. I don't want to say the show invented it, but I would be willing to make the case. It's just a collection of fucked up people. Yeah. And I don't remember seeing that on a show before. You said it earlier how everybody's life at home is probably not as good as their life on the show. But you go person by person. Like one of the great episodes, I think in the running for the best one ever was when Artie's loser's son becomes a PA, played by Colin Quinn. I would urge everyone to watch.

Just go through the first seven episodes season four. But that one, Hank's Sex Tape, like it's just a murderer's route. Hank Sex Tape is probably the single best episode. but the loser PA is a great one. But Paula, the talent booker, who was really, like, felt like half Garofalo, half the character. And she was just like,

this guy's a fucking nightmare. He's miserable to people. I can't, I can't believe I'm in love with him already. She's just, she was like, I hate myself. Like,

of course I like this guy. Every person, except for Beverly, was probably the most redeemable person. But even her, like, she ends up having some mystery, pregnancy in the last season.

But they also, the show is ruthless. Like, and we're going to talk, I promise we're getting to the finale. There's a question at the end I have about how it actually ended whether, because it does, it ended in a way, like the actual last moment surprised me. Because otherwise, everyone is in the buzzsaw all the time. Everyone is awful.

But they're also funny and can be fine. But like even Beverly, in the second to last episode is, like many of the episodes, obsessed with Scott Thompson's character, of Brian, like, and just being gay in the workplace. Yeah. Phil is just shows up for work, like gets a muffin, and just abuses him. And just like, just homophobic, insults, jokes, nonstop to his face.

And Brian's like, I'm going to, I'm going to file a lawsuit if you keep this up. And then he baits him into doing it. There's a lawsuit. This is wild. This is the penultimate episode, that this is the storyline of the penultimate episode. And Beverly is really nice about it the whole time. And Beverly's like, you know, you got to be. he's 100% on Brian's side.

And Brian, while Larry's doing his penultimate show, is like, thank you for standing by me, basically, because, you know, as a black woman, I think we both share some understanding what it's like to be maligned in the workplace. She's like, sure, but being black wasn't a choice. Right. He's like, what?

She's like, you could go to church with me. And he just walks away. Right. It's, it is, you're right, it's crazy that that was the second to last episode. The second to last episode was like, what is left on our docket? to cover. Well, it also has

probably a top five Arty moment because all of a sudden Phil and Brian are going at it in the conference room. Yes. And Ardy and Hank come in and Arty does the rip-torn smile face is like, looks like they settled out of court. He's so delighted

by how weird it was. And Tamphor's face. So let's turn to this last season building up to the finale. Because one thing that I also, if we're talking about the show, is like a bridge between eras of TV. The seasons up to that point were kind of like, you know, they were ripping, like Law and Order did from the headlines, like they were ripping from Gary Shandling's personal life and his professional experiences,

like whether it's, whether it's pill addiction or whether it's like, I'm going to give up Hollywood and move to Montana. The last season injected this, like, much more modern, I think, serialized kind of storytelling by introducing the John Stewart thing. All of a sudden, there's like a pulse quickening. It's like, wait, there's stakes here. There's a villain. There's change around the corner.

And this was, I think, announced as the last, as Gary's like. season, so people knew that going in. And all of a sudden, everything felt, maybe this was also the new writing staff, everything kind of felt a little more charged and a little darker, right? Because it was, as opposed to the standalone hit, hit, hit of comedy episodes from the previous season. Yeah. I mean, season four is, I think, one of the best seasons in the history of television.

I would put that in the short list of the playing tournament. It just goes from beginning to end. And then the last episode, which is called eight, because I think it's a, last or second or last, that's the anniversary show. It starts hinting that this is now, this show is headed toward a bad. The executives are going to come in here. Stuff's about to get fucked up.

I, as a fan of the show, always felt like it was going to keep going. So even when we got to the, they were like, this is the last season and set up. It's like, it's not, they're going to figure out a way to keep it going. And that was the weight of this last episode where it was like, oh, they're really fucking ending this. Like, I didn't want to believe it.

We didn't have the internet. We didn't have all the same machines that we have now to know what's going to happen. And we didn't have the infrastructure that nothing ever ends in TV now. I mean, like, Larry can be like, I'm done with Curb and five years later be like, nah, I want to do more. Right, good point. That was not open. I mean, maybe if Gary had said so, but that wasn't the way anyone thought about TV.

I mean, part of the problem, when we were talking about Stick the Landing and what shows to do, you know, we had talked about, and I'd still think we should do it as like an 80s hodgepodge. Look how weird this guy episode. But one of the goals of the shows of the 70s and 80s was just to stay on. They never wanted it. Nobody was like, they had a good run. Let's wrap it up.

And Seinfeld and Sanders, I think, were two of the first ones, if not the first ones, to be like, we've had a good run. It's time for us to go. We want to leave on a high note, which was really foreign. It was like, wait, don't go. Why are you leaving now? The entire mechanism was just to make as many as you possibly could and then get spinoffs and then syndicated. And also, like those other shows, I mean, I was going to say, like, there was no overarching question to all in the family or the Jeffersons. Like, there was nothing that needed to be solved at the end.

But there wasn't anything to be solved in Seinfeld or Sanders either, which is what I thought was so interesting about the sixth season of Sanders, where suddenly, oh, this is a more modern show. And the second episode and the third episode, second episode particularly is incredible. And that's the one where we get young Bruce Greenwood and young Josh Molina as the executive. The beginning of the end, it's called. And that's where that quote that I said at the beginning about two pricks and three assholes comes from. And that's the one where they give into, and one of the best things about Larry is he's so needy. He will try anything. And he, yeah, they get rid of the desk and he's these big puffy chairs and he's high-fiving the audience.

And they've changed the music. And Hank can't hear him because he's so far away. And it's shameless. And it just feels weird. And suddenly everything's changing. I think about something. Like you mentioned Archie Bunker. So think about how long that.

show try to stay on. Like Edith left. They killed her off. Still going. Still going. We're actually going to move into a bar now. It was Archie's place. Yeah, Archie's place. And he's going to have this adopted grandkate or whatever. Happy Days, I think the only one left was the Fonz by the end. It was just all new people and it was Joni and Chachi. Then they spun them off. What spun off? Like Joni loves Chachi, Morque and Mindy, Levernd and Shirley. All of those came from Happy Days. Love boat just never ended. Fantasy Island. They got rid of tattoo. There was somebody else in at the end. Good times. James left. Then Florida left. By the end of it, it was like Walona and JJ and Penny, the Jana Jackson character. So the concept of ending on your own terms was just

inconceivable. Like at the same time, Nato2 Winona was on and Brandon was like leaving. And Steve Sanders is like, nope, one more year. I'll come back. Let's go. He was right. He's like, I'm into. Sure. How many more years can we go? Got to qualify for the health fund. Yeah, I love that they left us. a good looking corpse. It also was in the ether because for people like us who grew up, Carson was just on. I didn't even watch Carson that much. It was just on. And then suddenly he wasn't. And that episode was a huge, his final episode

was a huge cultural deal. Suddenly things were shifting. You were talking about like Cheers was the other one like that too. Yeah, it was always on. Oh, cheers is, not could be on now? Gone. And so that was, this season was playing with like, fissile material, right? Like it was live rounds because people were used to now. And so when we get to the finale, when he's talking about who's going to sing for me, it's because, well, Bet Midler sang for Carson and made him cry. And there already, suddenly there was a playbook for walking away like a legend. And this finally brings us, I guess,

to May 31st, 1998, season six, episode 11, the 90th episode. That's a hell of a long run in the modern standards. The final episode is called Flip. And it begins with Larry watching Jack Parr. And I feel like anyone under the age of, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, had to make sure that I didn't mix up Jack Parr and Steve Allen. This is the second host of the Tonight Show who famously was classy. And he stepped away in a way that he apparently regretted for the rest of his life, which was definitely intentional. But he's just saying there's new opportunities in television. Someone else should have a turn to do this. And Larry is studying it like he's reading the Talmud because it's just like, I need to learn how to be a better person and

say goodbye gracefully, which is, did he pull it off? I don't know. But so that's, those are the stakes here. And when you watch this either the first time or even if you had forgotten it, like did you feel, did you think this finale was going to be about Larry the person or Larry the host? Because I feel like that's one of the interesting choices that they made here.

The previous episode is dealing with the sexual harassment lawsuit in the office. I wondered if there was more Larry here, but in the end, maybe it was the most telling thing of all that this episode pretty much just runs through the finale. I remember we had a, Sanders party for the last episode.

Shout out to Fanning and Ricky, by the way. I bet they're listening to this. And in the cable guide, it said it was an hour, which I don't think we knew. And we're like, so then it's like, all right, what's the ceiling? Like, are they just going to have the actual

one hour show? Where is this going to go? It was super exciting. To me, it's like, my hopes were so high. And I thought that when it was over, it was like, that exceeded anything I ever wanted from the final episode. I thought it was the happiest I've ever been leaving a final episode of a show. Did you go into it wanting things, though? Like, did you want, because I'm trying to, like,

understand the way people were watching the show. Because the season had been so serialized, were you like, I want to know who, if Stewart gets it? Do I, did you want closure for the eight? Like, what were you, what were you looking for? I want, I wanted them to dive into the last show. Yeah, they did. And, and actually, like, make it kind of cross that line where we're actually kind of watching it, which is what they did. They did. Other than that, I just knew the show was ending. So I didn't really know what was possible. I was really interested to see who the guests were going to be.

And then how they were going to resolve just the show unwinding. And I, for some reason, in my head, I think probably thought the show would end and then there would be a couple more scenes in them after. But it ends with him walking off the stage, which I think was like the perfect choice. Yeah, I, as I often do, got it wrong the first time and then watched it a little bit more and realized it was telling you something the whole time. I was like, I thought it was too, it's almost too busy. It's too celebrity focus. It's like, this wouldn't even be a plausible episode of the Larry Sanders show in fictional world, let alone like this.

It's just star after star after star after start doing bits. And the Larry of it is lost in it. And then I remembered how the previous episode ended. For all the stuff we're joking about Phil and Brian, the other runner in that episode is that he's dating Ileana Douglas. Yeah. Is there a more 90s? Celebrity romantic interest in Ileana Douglas.

And he's obsessed that she does a good job on the show because otherwise he's going to break up with her. And he coaches her through it. And he like makes sure that she gets the right pauses and her funny story about growing up near Beaver Meadow. And at the end, she has this very emotional and it's kind of surprising for Larry Sanders show's scene where she's like, I feel like, I really like you

and I feel like you were going to break up with me if I wasn't good on your show. Yeah. And he basically says yes. he's basically like But she's cool with it He's like you were But you were good

And she's a needy actor too So when the tears wipe away She's like but was I good Yeah And he says something That actually sets up the finale In a way I didn't expect And he says

I'm a talk show host I'm all fucked up Right Now the finale Hits different for me Because he That's all he had He walks off that set

And you feel the existential Emptiness in a different way But of course We're now we're talking This is classic This is what the 7th 3th episode of this podcast. And I feel like the hallmark is we talk about the end in the wrong order.

I mean, even you talk about the beginning where he's studying Jack Parr. Yeah. And it feels poignant. Yes. The next scene is Hank giving a speech to a Coke machine with Larry's face on it as Brian's getting choked up watching it. And you're like, this show's ridiculous. It's the greatest gift to the people of this country and to a man named Hank Kingsley. In the last 10 years. The Leina Douglas one is important. urge people from, even if you didn't want to do all 90,

you could just start season four and do the last three. But the time capsule pop culture of the 90s in this show where everybody who pops on, everybody who's either, they're taken off. Like there's the Vince Vaughn one,

when Vince Vaughn comes in and him and Hank get into it during a commercial, Winona Ryder's on there. Ben Stiller's on there. Peak Winona Ryder. Yeah, it's peak a lot of people in the 90s,

peaking with Jim Carrey in this episode, which might be the best thing he's ever done. Winona Ryder, maybe the best acting of her career is the season premiere of season six when she is, her assignment is to watch smashmouth like they're a great band. She's staring at them. And Larry's flirting with her.

And she's like, yeah, they're cool, right? Amazing performance by her. Even like they have decoubting earlier when he's been in California, X-Files is taking off, but he still is about to get bumped, which is another great. episode where he overbooks the show and Jeff Sessari, doesn't want to bump him.

It's a classic. But by the end, when we get the season finale, the company is like a major, he's like an A-List star. Warren Biddy's in the last episode. Sean Penn. The Warren Bady one is so good because Larry runs out of his office when he sees him getting into the parking lot to beg him to come to the show to say goodbye to him. And Bady goes, I can say goodbye to you now.

Right. Goodbye. You don't need to do it. So the concede of this finale, though, is the only thing that's a little wobbly is it's just like we have Clint Black and we have Carol Burnett. And he's like, that's not enough for my show. And that when the show starts airing or they start taping, it is the most celebrity in the history of late night television.

But it's like the roast, right? It's about who you get. It's about who you get, but also being embarrassed if the list isn't good enough. So that's one that David Pamer, character Norman, the PR guy. and he's like, here's who I have. I have the great Carol Burnett, you know, and he's just going through. And Gary's like, he just wants bigger names, bigger names.

Also, there's some nominees for like the one that's dated, the jokes that are dated the worst, the continuing runner of whether it's okay for a man to sing to a man on television. I know. Because they have Clint Black. I mean, the whole Adolf Hankler episode. Yeah, that's a tough one. That's unbelievable where Jason Alexander ends up walking off the show

because he's so offended. But yeah, it was the 90s. It sure was. The lines were different. So, again, so we have Docovney back to flirt with him and do a riff on Sharon Stone and basic instinct. That might be the other than Winona Ryder making out with John Stewart with Smash Mouth plays, that might be the most 90s thing in the finale.

Well, the two big things in this episode were, I mean, just from a holy shit standpoint, where Docovney doing the Sharon Stone and then Jim Carrey's thing. He says his behavior was detestical. And it seemed like he flashed some ball. Now that the TVs are better with the HD, you can't really see anything, but on our blurry 1998 TVs, it was like, oh my God, he showed his whole sack.

One gets the sense that he was willing to. They were basketball buddies, right? In real life, and that's where this all came from. They were real legitimate buddies, yeah. There's the drama off screen continues on screen. I'm slow walking the carry thing. Just that, like, before he goes on stage for his final episode, there's like a walk of shame or like a,

what do they call it, the wedding when you have to greet everyone. Well, go backwards, though, Because he's ready to do the show. Yes. And he's walking with Artie. And he's like, come on, let's do the show one last time. And they have this moment. And then they have them just walking through the hallway.

And they stay with them for like 10, 12 seconds. Because that's why you talked about like how the pace was hurried and crammed. I actually think it was intentional to make the show chaotic. Yep. Because they kept them on that walk. And it was like, that was really deliberate than going through the skeletons of the past. deliberate. Like it had it. And then once the show, once

carries shows up, the show kind of loses its mind. It's kind of, yeah, it's self-referential and it's also show business phony in a way that is exposing something, because Linda Doucet, who later then filed a lawsuit against Brad Gray and Gary Shandling for the way she was fired off the show. I think she

filed it before. Oh, she came back. She came back, and they have a moment, which is charged. And the character says, I'm so glad you've changed. Right. And then Piven. Piven, who quit the show because he was bored and had nothing to do. And they have a completely

disingenuous interaction. And then the guy that Larry doesn't remember who dropped the boom mic or whatever. Piven was great on the early seasons. I think that one mistake the show probably made the last two seasons was they were like one or two really good characters late. Because Sarah Silverman was good.

But she wasn't on enough. Not enough. I wish she had been in every episode. I got to say my only nitpick with this whole episode was walking through the right before you're doing the show running into four people that you don't want to see. I don't, like, there's no way in a real show. I don't feel like that would happen.

He wouldn't let that happen. The walk-and-talk, though, is real, and I saw the great critic Matt Zoller Sites once wrote a piece where he was like, this show invented the walk-and-talk. Yeah. It walked and talked and West Wing could run. Right, you're right. And there were a lot of little tricks like that.

Like Ken Quapas, who directed the pilot in a bunch of the first few seasons, talked about how Gary would get in his head if he had too much time to think about things. So, and he wanted to capture people. just doing stuff and not being self-conscious. So he stopped saying action. He just started filming. And he's like, that changed my career.

I never said action again. And then he directed the office pilot, at the American office pilot, I think. And so you see the DNA of it there. But yeah, he gets, it's the line of assholes, I guess, that he walks past from his past. And he gets under the monologue. Meanwhile, we're cutting back to Bruno Kirby,

the show's perpetual punching bag. It's so good. And Greg Kinnear. He's like, you're acting now? He's like, yeah, I got an account. Academy Award nomination. He's like, God bless you. Yeah. Yeah, I just started acting. Next thing I know, I went from host, from talking to Tempice Blenzo at 1.30 in the morning. Like, before we do Carrie, my favorite scene in the episode is the subsequent scene where you're

backstage when Tom Petty's like, you don't need me? Like Jim Carrey's doing this, Tom Petty. And Tom Petty is shit-talking Keneer. Yeah. He's like, would you get a nomination for? Talk Soup? And they start fighting. And then he calls Clint Black Roy Rogers. They have two fights. And then. And then. already gets in his line about I haven't seen chaos like this since the Stones at Altamont or whatever it says that is a crazy

1998 time. You just put that on Twitter and I feel like it would get a million views. Look at this. Tom Petty fighting Greg Kinnear. But also for fighting him for the reason why people were making fun of Greg Kinnear. Right. Keneer owning the joke. I mean that that's also like presaging what people can do online where it's just like yeah, I'm owning the criticism. I'll make an Instagram video

referencing it. Like it gave him a chance. to be like, I know people are saying this about me, and ha-ha, I'm a good sport about it. This was one of the best things about the show. Like when Vince, we mentioned Vince Vaughner, when he came on and Hank's just, I think he's going through divorce. Sorry, I can't remember what's happening, but he's getting pissy. And he's like, you're the hot new thing. Guess what?

Next time there's going to be another one. But Vince Vaughn's got to be like, by the way, that kind of cut close. Vince Vaughn was the hot new thing. And guess what? He was going to get replaced the next. year by somebody else, and that's how this shit goes. And we're talking about this show at the same, like a week after John Stewart goes back to the Daily Show.

John Stewart had his MTV talk show and then never got one of these legendary desks. He did a different thing, and that was back to it. We should have mentioned that sooner. Just the John Stewartness of this, him super young. The young hock saying that's threatening everyone. And by the way, that was legit because we all like John Stewart. Like his MTV show didn't totally work, but everyone liked him on it. Everybody felt like something was going to happen with him.

He's the next guy. He's the perfect person to be the guy. And he has a couple of good scenes. He ends up firing Stevie. Yeah. Yeah, it was funny seeing Stuart and Odenkirk as the like tertiary characters when they became huge stars themselves. And they're being like talking about, essentially they're talking about Larry,

but maybe they're talking about Gary being like he's the past. We're the future. And they kind of were. Who's the biggest star in this show now? It's probably Jim Carrey, right? On this episode? If I was just telling some 20-year-old, hey, there's this season finale that has Jim Carrey,

John Stewart, Bob Oden Curry, Sean Penn, Tom Petty, Clint Black, Carol Burnett. Ellen is pretty famous. David Duchovny. I don't know. It's definitely not Warren Beatty. I feel like that's... No, you might be.

But at the time, he was the biggest star that was on this episode. So set the scene for Carrie, Because early in the episode, they're like, can't you get someone hot, like Jim Carrey? And they're like, well, we didn't book him. You didn't believe he'd be famous, which is true, right? That, like, everyone's like, the East Ventura area. And, you know, he's on in living color and he's not a big deal.

He comes on. And I feel like when they would shoot the, we kind of didn't even get into this, that the show was pretty revolutionary. It shot the behind the scene stuff on film and it shot the show stuff on tape the way they were really shot. So there was a visual difference between the scenes. I feel like they shot those like a talk show. show, you know, they rehearsed it and they had some sense, but they were kind of riffing, and you could see that. Carrie's assignment is to come on and do something like what Robin Williams would do on

someone's final show. And we have no idea how much Shandling and Tangor knew and didn't know. I don't know if it's online. I looked. I couldn't find a definitive answer. My theory is that Tambor had no fucking idea what was going on. You would have to do it like that. Because he kind of breaks character.

It's like at the colonel when the colonel starts laughing during Floyd Gandawes bird in my ass. Yeah. And the colonel was just laughing in the back. I think Tambor is just like fucking dying laughing at how funny this was. How could you not? So this is like if you were going to do, and I'm not going to ask you to do it off the back of a just off the top of your head, but like the legendary talk show appearances.

Don't think I didn't bring the hyperbole machine in here for this. This is one of the all-time great talk show hits, even though it's fake on a fake talk show. I think it's, it might be number one. It might be. I think it's in the running. It's definitely in the semifinals for me for greatest HBO moment. Yeah. Carrie is the most famous he's ever going to be.

Yes. During this. In May 98, everything he does. Five-year run. He hosted SNL during Will Ferrell's first year, and it's probably the best SNL of all time. If it's not, it's, some people would say the King Tut, Steve Martin one. Like some people who say the Stevie Wonder one, it's one of the first ones anyone's going to mention. He had this ability to go into another world and own the world.

and he comes in for five minutes. Literally nobody else could have done that. Nobody else ever in the history of Hollywood could have done that five minutes. And he goes from negative 50 to 5 million on the meter. Because he comes in kind of serious. He's doing the faces. He's doing the schick.

And then he drops it down and you don't know if it's a bit. And this is 98's around when he was doing Man in the Moon, right? So he's sort of starting to transition. He's Truman Show Man on the Moon kind of face. He's kind of getting methody. He's kind of like revealing what a weirdo he clearly always has been. And so he starts to talk yamering on about the Newhart finale, which is something we're going to talk about in the future episode,

where Bob Newhart fell asleep in one show and woke up in his previous show. And he's losing it. And like Larry Sanders, the audience of the Larry Sanders show is like, is this the story that he doesn't show up and he's not funny? And then within a few seconds, he's singing the song from Dreamgirls. He's doing, I'm telling you I'm not going with a mic, rocking the crowd, tambour's dying in the background. it is a wild performance.

It's incredible. It's the highlight of the show. That and the dukutney scene, which was just really fucking crazy. But it almost is hard to match the energy of that the rest of the way. Because he has Carol Burnett and Elan, which was a big deal at the time, probably less now.

Sean Penn comes on, and that probably should have been cut. But I feel like that you can't cut Sean Penn. But if you're going to cut stuff from the show, I would have cut that probably. But so that's the thing I want to talk you about. That was the one where I wondered if it went one click too far. Because you have Sean Penn come out and Sean Penn is there ostensibly to promote his new movie Hurley Burley,

which is really the movie he made and it was like the, it was the adaptation of David Ray. It's a cross in the beams. Gary Shanling's in Hurley Burley. And he lists the cast and he just casually lists Gary Shanling. I didn't like that. And you're like, okay, that's cute, but we're going to move on, right? And then he says, well, you know, that's basically I've listed the actors from best to the lowest and ability. Yeah. And you're, they're like, they're not really going to do this. And then pretty soon, then Penn's on a run about how, like, the worst actor he had to be with was Gary Shandling, who's so insecure.

He was chasing his wife, Robin Wright, into her trailer. And I was like, that might be one, that might be one too many for me. I actually would have cut that in Warren Beatty. Those would have been my two chops. Because we didn't, we never saw Greg Canary. We never saw Tom Petty. It was unclear how. Petty walked, I think.

Yeah, probably. Petty said no. It was unclear if the show was an hour, an hour and a half. but I think part of it was Sean Penn never did shows like this. He didn't do talk shows, yeah. So there was some like, holy shit, Sean Penn's in this. And then Seinfeld comes on and is kind of...

Kind of, Seinfeld's a dick. Yeah, Seinfeld's a dick and kind of wasted a little bit. I mean, at that point, Seinfeld's the biggest comedian in the world. One of the biggest stars in the world. Yeah. He's a show. And he comes on, and the joke is that he comes on right

as Hank is about to give his heartfelt a great man in history. Ed Seinfeld just kind of does, I guess we'll never fully know is like, is Jerry kind of dickish, or is he doing the the Larry David version of Jerry that's kind of dickish? Because he's kind of playing that heightened version of himself. If he was on a previous Sanders episode, I don't remember it. Because he bailed on the roast. This was his first. Yeah, but who knows if they had asked them? They were filming right next to each other. Jason Alexander had been on at least two of them. Oh, yeah. And people showed up for Shandling. That's true in any, whether it was his basketball games

that are legendary or whenever he did anything, he had that kind of pull that people really love. I think he probably liked the idea of going against type. Yeah. And Hank's thing, Hank waits, he can't believe he has to give up his speech. He has to move seats. He starts to stop.

And there's a stop. And then he just continues to speech. The one I would cut would be Tim Allen, who is fine and does lead to my favorite, maybe my favorite Loki joke in the episode, which is when Tim Allen is leaving. and he's walking away and he's just, and Larry's like, you have my phone number, right?

And clearly Tim Allen wants nothing to do with him. And Hank goes, Tim, jungle to jungle, underrated. But Tim Allen's another one though. Like, he was huge. Probably the most famous sitcom star now that Sinephode was retiring. Did you, like, I kind of had the feeling at some points in this episode that like something had swallowed itself. Because instead of having like one person lurking in the background,

like early seasons when it's just like, don't make me bump wrong. Ryan O'Neill, and Ryan O'Neill's there. He calls him Rye Bread. He's like, don't call me that. That's what's your name called. That's what Farah calls me. So suddenly all the biggest stars are there, and this is a huge thing. But that was kind of the, I think that was the point they're trying to make, but they're missing like 30 seconds of all these big stars who never would have come on or only come

on because it's the last show. And maybe the point is also that they did some of this before. Like the truer moment is in the previous episode when Hank shows the montage of people, like Drew Barrymore, who he said. actually harasses and others saying thank you and goodbye. And he gets up and leaves to talk to Ileana Douglas. Right. And when he comes back, he's like, thank you for that.

It was touching. And Hank's like, you didn't watch it. The Drew Barrymore scene was kind of an unbelievable rewatch. It's wild. Yeah, I'm not sure that would fly now. Plus she was probably like 19. There is a lot. I mean, there's a lot of that of like characters.

Like when Odenkirk is, I mean, Odenkirk was just on tilt every scene he's in. By the way, that's the other best joke when he's doing. in Coke and the agency, and he says that someone gave it to him at the Simon Wiesenthal dinner for tolerance. But the Odenk, like, every scene he's in where he's just saying the wildest misogynistic shit in front of all the women in the office. And a woman says something. He's like, calm down, missy. Right. I guess this was how Hollywood was until 2017, but it is quite different. I always felt like Piven's entourage character was a little bit on the Stevie corner. 100%, but not self-aware. Yeah. But it also, you can track Piven on the hair, I guess.

You love Stevie's greatest line out, which is in this finale. Which one? When the other guy comes in and says, John Stewart, I've taken shits with more talent. And then they start doing Coke and Stevie and Stevie's, he says something like, what's the exact line? It's crucial. He says, I can't tell you how easy our job would be if we didn't have to deal with talent. Yeah. That's one of the great lines ever in television.

Because I think agents and managers, there's a lot of them out there that really believe that. A hundred percent feel that way. I wish we didn't have to deal with the fucking talents. I thought it was really, it was doing my head in a little bit to have Artie throughout the six seasons of the show 30 years ago constantly be like, they put the word creative in front of executive and they think it's a skill they have. You know, like the grizzled person who loves show business. Yeah. And look how far we don't fell to quote the wire. But that's what, I mean, there's so many reasons this show holds up.

All of the lessons of this show are exactly the same. without fail without fail which you would think like all right think of all the things that changed we have the internet we have streaming we have you know all these labor disputes like you keep going and going and going

but all the lessons are the same it's the agents and the managers are here to fuck over talent network executives are clueless nobody cares about quality to show business anyone will stab each other in the back at any time it's all the same shit

And saying yes is a slippery slope. Right. Once you say yes, they've got you. And that's, I mean, in a way, the season, the fate of complete thing of the season is when it's the second episode when they're sitting on the big giant chairs. He's talking to the lead singer of men at work for some reason? Colin Hay. Colin Hay.

It's just a great look for, is that Apex Mountain for Colin Hay? It's up there. It's up there. He's like, he just announces on leaving the show. Yeah. He just, he just ends it. That's another lesson in this show. It's like the more talented you are, probably the more.

neurotic you are, probably the weirder you are, probably the more demons you have. And how just the unhappiness. That is something that is so profound and riddled through the show when you watch it. And it's that but don't you feel like Letterman was probably, this was probably in the Letterman corner a lot, like how weird and unhappy Larry was? Yes. I feel like this was telling us something even before we were ready to hear it. And you could say, you know, and I love Kirby enthusiasm. And you could say the way this show set that up, but like Larry's playing a character and Larry's having a good time, right? Like he doesn't, the key of fictional Larry David is that he doesn't hate himself.

Right. Like the deep need and neurosis of this? Well, wait, there's one, that one episode, I can't remember what season when he's got like a 19-year-old assistant. Who, of course, he starts hooking up with. And then one of the great things about Artie is he's seen everything, right? Yes. And he sees it coming.

Yeah, he just is like, oh, here we go. This is going to happen now. And it's just don't cross whatever Artie thinks. But with the assistant, he's like, oh, this is going to be. trouble. And within two shows, she's in Larry's office with all of her friends eating like fried chicken. Oh, there's always shrimp in the office. Yeah, her shrimp or whatever. The, the, one of the low-key, great Arty moments is in that second episode of the last season when, because Larry's been ignoring the executives and he leaves the room, he's flipping through a magazine asking if models are single.

And it's near the end of that episode, Artie goes, I tried to tell you. And you didn't listen and you're on your own. And it's like, oh, he's been literally cleaning up his shit for, for five seasons and he went too far. Yeah. And he kind of realizes it. The horniness of the show is so wild, consider that, like, the Drew Barrymore thing is a good example of that.

That, like, Letterman was just openly flirting with women on television for 20, 20 years. And the behind-the-scenes stuff we found out later. Yeah. Barry Sanders, I mean, he dates multiple, multiple guests. And he uses the moments in between the things. Get some off the staff. All things that would never fire these days. No, the, we never see the HR department because I don't think they had one.

It was different times. Even when I worked on Kimmel's show, it was just different. Staffers hooked up with each other and dated each other and it was not surprising at all. The show's like, I mean, this is a boring way to look at it now, but it's not like the show as a structure was like political one way or another,

but it's interesting with like the Brian's lawsuit when everyone is just like, come on, let him be funny. Come on. Like let's take it down a notch. And then, of course, those guys end up hooking up and it all works out. Well, you know, one thing on Brian and one thing on Hank, the Brian thing, not a lot of gay characters on TV at the time. No.

And Scott Thompson was somebody that everybody really liked. He was on New Kids in the Hall. He was on Kids in the Hall, or Kids in the Hall. And he was on Conan a bunch at that point. Yeah, and he would come on talk shows, do really well. Everybody kind of knew who he was. But then on this show, I don't know how many gay characters were even on television at the time. No.

And they would, the first show, Hank Hires him, doesn't realize he's gay and kind of wants to. to get out of it and decides not to. It's a wild episode. Yeah, but then he becomes like Hank's confidant. So anyway, he was important. By the way, apparently Gary Shanling called Scott Thompson and was like, I'd like you to come on the show, and this is how we want the character to go. And it's important that he's gay and we're going to present it in this way.

And Scott Thompson's like, okay, I'll do that. That's obviously relevant to my life, but he has to be Canadian too. That's what I ask in exchange. And Chandling's like, I just don't know if the character's plausible, having a Canadian on American television. But he let him do it. he was great Garofalo was great

and and Piven was great when he was on anyway, Hank, Hank's horniness is my favorite kind of subplot of the show because that leads to Hank's sex tape

that leads to when he got divorced and he's just hookers are coming into a hotel room him hitting on Drew Barrymore him having a huge hog which leads to the Norm McDonald Henry Winkler moment. To hear about Hank?

He's got a huge cock in front of the Fons. In front of the Fons. But anyway, they don't tap into that in the last episode. Let's talk a little bit about the real Gary versus real Larry stuff because Clint Black is singing this beautiful song and they just let it play. I mean, it is like a real show. They would do that the last couple episodes.

They would play entire songs. It's like the fake show was eating the real show. It's like that Chandling was realizing that he had been like cute and meta and like I'm not going to do a talk show. I'm going to do a show about a talk show. he wanted to do a talk show. Yeah. And he did it.

And you could sort of feel that tension. He's really crying. I mean, I don't think he was, he would have said that he was a great actor. I don't think he was faking any of that. I agree. Yeah, he's like playing house with a talk show that he kind of secretly had always wanted to have

and had a sliding door's element. And it's like he almost realized he had been too cute about it and too ambivalent about it at the end. So what is, from your understanding, was there really going to be a seventh season? I think the seventh season was supposed to be the John Stewart season. And I don't think Shanley could handle it.

So he was going to step back. He was going to step back, still produce the show, still have the same infrastructure, still keep some of the people. And that was always the plan with Stewart. I think they, I don't want to say too much, but I think he kind of fucks Stewart over a little bit on it. I think Stewart felt like that was where that was headed. And then you can even see in that season six, Stuart kind of disappears from the season as it goes. Yeah.

So the real life, him being threatened by John Stewart and the TV life kind of merged. It's so psychologically rich that like that season premiere, he's flirting with Winona Ryder. And then that's the act out on the episode is he walks in to flirt more with her in her dressing room and she's making out with John Stewart. Right. Which is just let me just say as a Jew that is peak 90s Judaism. Like I wish they had children. That is a beautiful sight to see. Is that the most Jewish makeout that's ever been captured with two Jewish celebrities?

Yentel was hot, but this was hotter. Yeah. I feel like this is good. as a guest. But yeah, you're right. He becomes a ghost in the show, and he's relegated in this finale. I don't think that was the original plan. In the finale, he's doing a scene with Odin Kirk on a recycled set that's supposed

to be the Ivy. Yeah. They're just huddled next to each other in front of some lattice work, and you never see him again. That song was really good, the Clint Black song. It's beautiful. Yeah. There's a couple times when the song, when you're watching the show and you're like, man, this is kind of a moment. Because I remember Chris Isaac did graduation

day, and it was great. John Colvin had a really good one. But I think this was way... Klim Black sang on the show a couple seasons earlier and was really good too. Your smash mouth erasure is notable. Like, walking on the sun has never sounded better. They were who we thought they were.

So the final thing is, like many of these talk show hosts before, he's on a stool, he thanks Hank, he thanks Artie, thanks the crew, and he says, God bless, and he gets a little choked up. It's emotional. It's an emotional thing. He's actually saying goodbye. You may now flip. You may now flip, giving the episode its title.

And then he's also having like an existential panic attack. Can't get up the stool. He can't leave the stool. He can't get up. Artie has to carry him off the stage. And then we get this coda. And the coda is Artie's in the crowd. He's in the audience.

They're taking down everything. He's drinking probably Glenn Livitt from a mug. And he says what I guess is he speaks in this moment for like everyone who's ever worked a job in Hollywood or a thankless job in Hollywood, he says, he goes, he says, I'm going to miss you and he goes through all the,

he lists his grievances, calling back to that episode, first or second season, when Artie's so mad and he gets drunk and he stays in the studio all night. And, you know, he leaves a long voicemail telling Larry to fuck off

and he draws a dick on his door. But the next morning, he's buttoned up. Well, and then the Ginny Grafell episode when she gets promoted a producer and Artie's threatened and he leaves and comes back.

He's so hurt. but he won't leave. And he says, anytime I came down here for this show, I always forgot all that referring to all the bullshit because you made me laugh. And that's what I'm going to miss.

Oh, how you made me laugh. And he's like, I guess that was worth it. The thing is, the key to this show over anything else is the relationship between those two guys. Yep. And the loyalty. Like, really, that's Larry's only successful relationship

as Artie. It is. And probably the same for Artie with Larry, because they both get divorced during the show. Oh, yeah. And then there's the Angie Dickinson episode when he's just like, you got to keep me away from where I can't handle it. Next thing you know, they're just in Italy, just banging. But they really kind of under, Hank and, I mean, Ardy and Larry really understood each other.

They understood each other, but there's also such a unflinching look at the power dynamic. Like, do you remember the episode where Larry forgets Artie's birthday and Artie goes, no, you didn't? We're having dinner tonight at 5.30 and you got me a cake. Right. And then Larry gives him a present and he doesn't know what the present is. and the present is a nice wallet. And Larry's like, I love that wallet. And Artie goes, you like it?

It's yours. Well, then the pen, too, where he gives him the pan and he loses it and it's not as expensive as Artie thought it was. His own shit. Can I give you my manic pixie girl theory? Yeah. Artie doesn't exist in real life. You think Artie is a, like in real life, like an Artie type?

Or do you think that Larry is hallucinating Arty? The Artie type doesn't exist in real life. Okay. There's no EP. I thought you were pitching a six sense. version of the show. This is the idealized version of what an awesome EP would be. It was based on Fred de Cordova, who was Carson's long term.

But in real life, really hard to find somebody who's like, I am here to protect my host. I have all the right instincts. Yes. I have good relationships. I have an incredible shit detector. I can handle and corral all of these crazy people. And I've seen it all. The person does not exist.

Not anymore. No. You're not fine. in that person. The Artie Larry relationship, the best successor to that, I think, is the Liz Lemon Jack Donaghyi relationship, but it's different. It's both gendered

differently, but also like the power dynamic, because Jack is not a creative, he's the suit, and he's trying to protect her from her artistic impulses. Yeah. It's completely flipped, but that's a similar kind of relationship, but this one is unique, but speaking of Jack Donagy, you can't end the show

without the third heat. So those two are having their beautiful moment, and then Hank comes roaring in. Yeah, Hank, they're like the married couple, basically, the platonic married couple. And Hank is the fucking dog. He's like Murph. He's just coming in. But he comes in so hot.

He might shit on the, shit on the floor. But you love him because he's your dog. That's Hank. But if you want to contradict the thing I said a moment ago that this show didn't have like one thing that you were waiting for or one thing that question had to answer, I might be wrong because you waited six seasons and 90 episodes for Hank. to unload. To snap it already,

because he doesn't need him anymore. And Larry, and he unloads of both of them. He's like, I spent the last 10 years being the butt of your jokes, the little fucking dog at the end of the couch.

And he did it because there was lots of money and lots of pussy. And Larry says, more money than pussy. And he just, he's, fuck you,

fuck you. And he screams at them both. And he storms off and they're just loving it. And then they get, because they know he's going to come back. They wait. They wait.

There's a little runner. There's a little thing about like, he's like, you're retiring. He's like, yes, sir. And he goes, but you're also consulting for Roseanne. He's like, oh, the money's good, but I'm still retired. Yeah. And then Hank comes back and he's just crying.

I'm sorry. And his car was in reverse and he drove into a dumpster and they say you can have the couch. And it's so show busy at the end. He says, let's go to the smokehouse and talk this over. It's those three guys. It's my single favorite thing that's happened in a series finale, other than when Sam Malone had just coaches picture. on his way out of the bar,

which I thought was like, fucking you got me. But that's the best. But this show, okay, so Seinfeld ends a few weeks before this one ends. Seinfeld's on this finale. The thing about Seinfeld, right, the Larry David Maxim was like,

no hugging, no learning. The show ends with a hug. Would that feel right to you? This show ends with a hug. Absolutely. Because these guys, they'd been through all this crazy shit for 10 years. Their personal lives were in shambles.

the characters, yes. And honestly, Larry liked Hank and needed Hank a little more than maybe he let on. Oh, he absolutely needed him. He was his crutch. Because there was a couple, like, they have the episode when Hank fucks Larry's ex-wife. Yes. And it just sends Larry no complete tizzy.

And normally you would think, like, well, that's it. He's going to fire him. But it never, ever got to the point. He was always like Hank was, they had like something weirdly special. Well, he can't exist without these people who prop them up. He needed a punch down. He needed someone to hit in those moments.

Is it the first episode where they ask him to do the weed whacker with a garden weasel? And he's bad at it, but Hank can do it. You know, someone has to be the shit eater. Yeah, and the Hank sex tape episode, which is just a fucking tour to force, but they're supposed to do the network promos together. And then the sex tape happens and he cuts him out and he's doing it. And Hank comes in and he gets mad. he's like, what the fuck is this? And Larry's like, you embarrass the show.

You embarrass the show. He says that in front of anybody. And Hank's like, oh, my God, I might actually get fired. But for the most part, it was those three. Everyone else comes and goes. But then when you think about like the greatest shows, it's between two and four people, right? So like Sopranos ultimately, it was Tony and Carmelo.

Yeah. It's the relationship, central relationship. Everyone else came and go, but those were really the two that mattered. The Seinfeld it was the four. Everyone else was peripheral. And in this show, it was the three. Yeah, because they were all disasters, except in that tightly linked thruple.

Yeah, the chaos and the weirdness and the neuroses of being on a show like this was the bun. It's interesting that the wire is the one show that you can't say that about. About a central relationship. Yeah, because the Wire was like, McDulty would be the star of one season, and then there was season four, he basically gets shoved to the side. Well, the main character of the Wire is Baltimore. Right.

But in that sense, it's kind of old-fashioned because the main character of ER is the hospital. The main character, Gray's Anatomy is the hospital, because you can cycle people in and out. So that's kind of old-fashioned. Sex and the City had the four. Curb, ultimately, it's Larry and it's Jeff and it's Susie. And that's really it. Everyone else comes and goes. They replaced Funkhauser with Mincevon.

His ex-wife is kind of off on the side now, but it's really the three of them. Yeah, and I think that's... I guess J.B. Smooth, too, but he came in halfway through. But I think that's the thing that makes the show... I mean, it's very specific. This is not like a universal show, but this idea that these three adult men

who act like children most of the time are absolutely useless without each other. Yeah. It's not they finish each other sentences, but their broken pieces fit. So you didn't like the hug? It's not that I didn't like it because I love it. Not only do I love the characters,

but like those performers, especially thinking about it, watching it now, and only one of them is still alive and he's canceled and not really working anymore. It's like it got me on that level. I think that I didn't, sometimes I think that like the really good shows, the ones that, again, like I think I get them wrong

on my first past because I'm emotionally like trying to figure it out. in the moment and living in it. And I think the thing that I appreciated more when I considered it more deeply is that it's not just the thing. It's like a painter being like, it's everything I put on the canvas, but it's also where you hang it in the museum and all the space around it. And the hug works because what you're thinking about is after the hug, it's nothingness.

And it was no more for they never made more. They never did anything else. And when you think about the hug in relation to that, it's not like lessons learned back, Patty. It's sad. That was it. There's one other piece to this, and it's one of the reasons

we started this podcast. Because randomly, I was watching Mary Tyler Moore's final episode one night. It was on Hulu. And we should get to that one, yeah. And I remember always hearing about it, and I just saw the icon. I think it was like 4.30 in the morning.

I couldn't sleep. Ended up watching it, and it was so genuine at the end with the actors. Yes. And I was like, oh, this is why this is a famous show. I was getting choked up watching it. This is when they keep running back

and hugging each other. They have this big group hug, but it's clearly, they're not the characters anymore. They're the actual actors on the show saying goodbye to each other. And that's how I always interpreted the end with Shandling and Rip Torn and Tambor. The characters are, the hug isn't just for the characters. No, that's right. It's for those three guys. They, I think, had a complicated relationship behind the scenes.

Yes. Because Rip Torn's a maniac. Yes. And Shandling's super neurotic. And we've heard since the tambour can be very intense. Might have been working a little edgy sometimes. But I think those three guys really liked each other. Yeah.

And to the point you made that like there was this sense, it's really weird how it was meta, not just in terms of like he was pulling things from his present, but like really great art in any way. Like he was pulling stuff that he didn't even understand from his future because so much that last season is like, well, what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

You never answered the question. Is he going to make sitcoms? Is he going to, for the character. When Jim Carrey is like, when Jim Carrey turns out. after his incredible performance, he's like, what are you going to make movies? Now, I'm going to crush you.

Right. And so when you see Larry Sanders, in quotes, leaving the studio, looking back one last time, at least you can carry the thought that, well, Gary Shanling will be in a TV studio again. Gary Shanling's going to make another TV show, and he didn't. He made that Mike Nichols movie,

that Apatow's been really good kind of explaining how damaging that was to him. Yeah. And it kind of like ruined his will to be an entertainer in the same way. Meanwhile, he spawned the same. entire generation of creatives that felt super indebted to him in all these different ways. And the DNA from the show ended up sprinkling into all these different shows over the next

20 plus years. And yet he as a person seems like just sort of drifted, drifted further away into sort of just thinking about stuff and being in his head. And I think it was on the Marin, I think it was on an episode of Marin where someone was talking about like going to see a Gary Shandling set within the last few years of his life where he just was experimenting with not telling jokes or being funny. that he was standing up and just like trying to see what was the truth in that?

Almost like that funny people scene with Sandler's character when he's just talking about having cancer. Yeah, this final episode for me, when I think about all the great final episodes, I think it checks the most boxes for me of all my favorite shows. Because I really, you call it Stick the Landing.

Like, I really feel like it stuck the landing in all these different ways. It was everything I wanted from my final episode. Yeah, we would have cut like two, three scenes. But for the most part, it did everything I wanted to do. And it also woven the fake show in a really smart, kind of deep, profound way. And it just felt different than every other show.

It was also twice as long as every other show. But I find that interesting that, like, as I do more of these podcasts, that secondary, like meta story becomes more important and understanding things. Like your point about Mary Tyler Moore. If you were, we weren't old enough to be doing this, but if we were, like, watching it live, that wouldn't have crossed your mind. and whether you liked it or not, you would have been thinking about it only as a show,

but then you think about all the things that went into it and getting to that point and what it meant to the people who are making it, somehow when you look back on it, that takes on a much larger role. Things that I didn't appreciate at the time, I don't know what it is. You run hot when you watch things like,

I do, when I watch things live, and if it doesn't, you go in with expectations, even if you don't expect to. And that happened to me with like Mad Men and then on this show revisiting it. And I was like, oh, no, I see what I didn't like, but I was wrong. Like, it softens over time.

And this one... I think the Last Sopranos episode is like that. Yeah. Now that we know our cable didn't go out, that's the biggest example of it. It's a really good episode. It took people out in a way that was not ideal. I think it's pretty perfect.

The ending kind of fucked up people's memories of it. And that happens. I think the wire has suffered from the same fate because that last season, everybody just got temple to character, but watched that last episode. The last episode's amazing. Really, really, really, really, really good.

And the montage. And the Marlowe at the end and all that stuff. The montage, I felt super satisfied at the end of it. So I think when you watch these things, it's like, how'd you feel in the moment? Were you satisfied as somebody who loved the show? Did it check the boxes for you? But then also, like, does it have legs? I think that was some people's issue with the Seinfeld finale was it didn't have the legs in the right way.

And in some ways, like the Kirby enthusiasm season of Seinfeld, became the spiritual actual ending for Seinfeld. Which is amazing. Which turned out to be amazing. It was perfect. He got to have it both ways. I guess the best way to end this one is to realize something that a lot of the ones we've done so far, they've been kind of like, it's a little bit, there's a little bit of sadness in talking

about some of these great shows because what you feel is, because, you know, when we first talked about doing the podcast, I was like, I'd love to talk about what these finalities have to say about the TV we're seeing right now. And if they're in conversation or if they're echo. And for a lot of them, even the recent shows, whether it's like Mad Men or Friday Night Lights, I just felt kind of sad because I felt like we're never seeing those again. That there is no, maybe there's a longer tale that I'm not seeing yet. With this show, I feel like we lived its tale for the last 25 years. Like it feels hugely influential. It feels hugely important. It feels like its DNA did spread like dandelion seeds or whatever over all the comedy we saw for the next however many years. and it feels like it doesn't exist in the same way anymore. Like we talk about the seeds. I think the seeds go all the way through maybe VEP.

Yep. Yeah. I don't... Eonucci has talked about the influence when he was doing thick of it, which was a show before Veepe. I just don't think people... You know, it's funny, I was just talking to Larry David a few days ago about this

because I was telling him how we were doing this Larry Sanders pod. Yeah. And I hope I'm not talking out of school saying something he said, but he was talking about like the goal of a show, like Sanders in the 90s was just different than some of the shows now. Now people think about like a half hour. They don't, it's a half hour. It's not necessarily a comedy.

That's not like, oh, we got to get jokes. We have the premise. Oh, what's our funniest thing that's going to be in the thing? I don't know if those shows are happening in the same way anymore. And the people that are coming up trying to write new shows or like, what's their dream show? What do they want to emulate? They're emulating stuff like Barry and the Bear.

And those aren't necessarily comedies. half hours, but they're not comedies. Well, there's some, like, Abbott Elementary is fantastic and doing well, and Quint is like, I just love the office. Right. So she's looking. And homage. But she's doing it in that style.

Those network comedies that were from the last 20 years. I think FX still finds some space. Like, they have a show coming up with a guy who's, I don't have it in front of me, but I think a show called the English teacher where there's a funny guy who's done like TikTok stuff and he's done a lot of online stuff. And he wanted to make a comedy. So it's going to be a comedy. But you're right that it'll probably feel,

have elements that are more like Dave or Atlanta, like we're just reservation dogs. It's not as like... Go back further because there's a show that changed this. Yeah. Louis. Oh, totally. Right.

Look what I can do. I think Shanling, the DNA of Shanling goes all the way through to Louis. And Louis took it and was like, watch this. And I'm going to do an entire show where there's only like three laughs. Yeah.

I'm going to break it slowly on purpose. I'm going to do my version of what Shandling would have done on Sanders with Dan Cook, where people aren't going to know what's real and not real, but I'm going to a whole other level. And once Louis hit like that, I feel like that led to the next level of DNA. But also it's like the DNA strands got split in the way that everything is micro-targeted now

and everything is just specific for one person. Because Louis didn't just do Louis. Before that, he did Lucky Louie, which he was like, I'm going to do an old-fashioned... It was a zag. I'm going to do a laugh-track sitcom. Yeah. So for him, but the thing about Sanders is that it was both all the time.

Like, you watch Larry Sanders, and there's this like intense meta-narrative, and it's dirty and weird and adult and grown up, and there's pathos, but it always ended with a hard joke, like a hard cut of like Larry turning into the shit-eating grin and saying something, like at the roast. He's like, thank you so much for this honor. Bam, executive produced by it, just like every show we watched until the 90s. But Louis split those two things apart, made one of each style show, and then now we're kind of living in this.

mushy or middle. Our favorite in the 90s was the roast, like from a rewatch standpoint, all the Sanders episodes. And I think as the years have passed, I think, I don't think that's in my top three or four anymore. Some of it hasn't aged great. Yeah, but it was also, that was the point of the roast. It's like, that's what happens at these roast. They just go and they tell gay jokes about each other. Hank's sex tape, the Colin Quinn one, the Dana Carvey one. There's just some the second to last one. There's just some classic beginning, middle, end comedy stuff that I just wish would come back

and I don't know if it's going to. It does have a lot of influence, but the Apatau stuff is crucial, like that he was involved in that and he like, I think that if you were to ask him, you probably have asked him, that like the Gary sensibility influences everything that he does. He became like a little bit of a rabbi for Gary.

Yes. Creatively, but also I think Gary was a handful of those last two seasons. Yes, and he was whispering and like, there was someone gave an interview. I don't know if it was Phil Sims or not Phil Sims, Paul Sims. Paul Sims, yeah. Not Phil Sims was not involved in. Giant quarterback Phil Sims gave an interview.

Incredible cameo. Paul Sims was like, someone warned him, I think. I may be misattributing this that like it's okay with Gary until you become the number two. And then he was promoted to number two and they had such a falling out that they never spoke again. But that like Apatau is always managing those things and trying to. And then even after Gary's passing, like pay it forward and the work that he does. Well, one of the things with Apatow that I think really probably helped him was he came to the show, loving the show, and really idolizing Gary. Oh, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, which is kind of what we know about Gary, probably helpful. But also that he was a connector in that same way between we were talking about the roast. Like, it's Dana Carvey's on that one too, and they're talking about Seinfeld, but Carl Reiner's on it. Yeah. And there's this idea of like, I'm going to be the connector between the old, old, old. comedy and then whatever is coming next. And he takes that seriously.

The Arty's bridge to that old era was one of my favorite things. Even in the roast, when he's like, I remember Todi Fields, we heard every one-legged joke in the book. And he said to Carl Reiner, the 2000-year-old man was his idea. Right.

And he's like, his buddies were Ryan O'Neill and Jimmy Khan and just this Playboy Mansion era that Artie was in. He dated Angie Dickinson. They did a great job at that. It's gone. That's a different era. It's a different era.

Well, I really hope, you know, I'm sure when people, I'll be interested to know who listens to this pod, whether it's people who just want to hear perspectives on a show, they either did or didn't watch, or whether it's only people who love the show? Are its connections already made? Meaning, if Larry Sanders was, you don't have the office without Larry Sanders show

and you don't have Abbott Elementary without the office. But is there someone who wants to make something now that is going to plug in to Larry Sanders? as opposed to the children of Larry Sanders. I'm not positive you have curb without Larry Sanders. Well, you don't, I mean, HBO executives were like, we weren't in the, this sounds gross, we weren't in the half hour space before Larry Sanders. None of it would exist.

So, yo, I agree. And also just the idea of like Ted Danson being on Curbier enthusiasm playing not Ted Danty. A dick, a dick version of Ted Dancing. That's Sanders. You don't do that without that. I do think the player gets a little credit for some of this stuff, because some of the stuff that happened in that movie is, is in the, the Sanders. Sanders was already going at that point.

And then Letterman used to do stuff in the 80s when he would do like, you know, comedy bits and stuff where he would play like these asshole versions of himself. So it's not like Sanders invented this stuff, but I think they did the best version of it. Yeah. And then also like collated it into a prestige package and it was in the flow of the culture and that HBO was ascendant and it was the cool show and it all kind of came together with that. Yeah, because the HBO I grew up with was the hitchhiker. It was terrible Dream On and first in 10.

Shelly Duvall's Children's Tales. That was my age group. Oh, yeah. Dream on. A lot of boxing. A lot of boxing. And Wimbledon. Wimbledon.

Did you say Wimbledon? Wimbledon. And I would say Wimbledon, even though it's Wimbledon. And movies. And it was like, holy shit. Rambo 2 is on this month. That's amazing. Here's the final crucial question for you that I was thinking of.

Is Larry Sand, I think we've clear, I mean, not the crucial question, it sucked to landing. I think we agree. I think everyone has, I didn't invent this. I saw someone do this online, that like everyone has their Pavlovian theme song that starts after the HBO static. Is it for you? Is it Larry Sanders? For me, anytime I see that HBO thing, the curb music plays. That for me is the.

Yeah, it's like recency bias, right? I would say curb. Because it's been doing it for 20 plus year, 25 years. It's a tough one. It's not already, it's not, uh, Hank saying, uh, sometimes Sanders would start without the theme music. Yeah, it starts with, uh, it starts with, a lot of them are Hank doing like, uh, it does applesau. Or sometimes it would just start. Just start. Yeah, all right.

Sopranos, I think, was the most reliable. Mm-hmm. Whatever the name of that song was. woke up this morning. I woke up this morning over the year and Tony driving. Got yourself again, yeah. Oh, Sex in the City was a good one too. Okay.

This one, I agree, but this one was diminished because it was, didn't always start. with music. It's not your go-to. Yeah, it would not be my go-to because of the openings. I'd probably say Sopranos for that. Do you feel like we stuck the landing of this podcast? We stuck the landing on the podcast, and I think this show, it's

too bad you didn't come up with a scale. I'd give this like a 9.9. Oh, so like even the Russian judges gave it a 10th. I'm going full 24 slam dunk judges like overboard. We should do that because it would also help the fact that I think many

people, including me for a while, thought that Stick the Landing was about airplanes, but it's like gymnasts. Well, I mean, the best part of this pot and why I can keep going for a while is like every show, there's some real life shit. Yeah. And just the actual quality of the episode shit, the combo of it. Yep. And the seesaw of that. Lost it, like, I don't know when we're going to do lost. It might even be like season four. That's the last one we do. But lost, that goes in all. a whole meta discussion of how the writers were affected by the internet and things like that. Friday Night Lights was the perfect one to start with because that was the show we all loved. It fell apart.

They pieced it back together. Direct TV somehow fucking saved it like you talked about. And it got to end as the best version of itself. Yeah, and it got to end. It had the right funeral. The White Shadow, which we'll probably never do unless it's like season nine. But that was like my favorite show of all time. Two great seasons.

season three is a disaster and then they try to save it with the last episode which is like everybody comes back for like a reunion. That's when I go on. We did not stick the later. When I go on vacation and you John Stewart this podcast, you can do White Shadow.

I don't know who would listen to me. I don't even know who I would get as a almost be me soloing like when I did cast away during COVID. Just be doing White Shadow by myself. And he's up vacation. Here by White Shadow thoughts, everybody. I mean, there have been worse podcasts.

That'll be like season 11. That's good. That's good. Unless we do a tight four seasons and call our shot. When Joe House wants to be involved for the last Oz episode, I've got to be honest, there's some final episodes that I don't even remember the final episode, because some shows you just jump off of, right? Like, I didn't even finish Oz. I jumped off Oz. Don't they burn down the prison and build a new prison on top of it? Sounds great. Or they like build a prison with someone trapped inside? I don't know. It got weird. Chris is an Oz completist. Chris finished Oz? Oh, yeah.

When Chris goes to prison, he stays in prison. There's a major Oz hive. We've talked to Casey Boyes about this, about bringing back Oz. And he's just like, not even, not us doing it, but just him doing it. Like, hey, this reboot thing, sex in the city work. Now it's time for Oz. And he's just like, no, I'm not bringing back Oz. It's never happening.

His voice goes to that register. Yeah, absolutely not. No one would believe it if we talked about what happened on that show. I think that has been memory hold. that is the most wild show that has ever been on TV. What's even more wild is how much me in a small circle, my friends, completely loved it and discussed it like it was like a sporting event.

That was Chris. We talked about how in the 90s or even in the early 2000s, like we weren't watching TV the way we do now. We would go out or we'd catch it later, but he always knew the latest words from the penitentiary. And he would tell us these things at bars, like recap the episodes, and we wouldn't believe it.

I loved Oz so much that when Edie Falco was Carmelo Soprano. Yes, you were like, that's the... No, I was furious. You've crossed the beams here. I can't... Don't... Because she stayed in Oz. Oh, she did both.

Yeah. She was on both shows. I'm like, what are we doing? Like, why are we messing with Oz guys? And then Sopranos ended up being one of the most important shows of all time. Yeah, you got to protect Oz. I think we do it. Well, thanks for having it.

Thank you for your time on this show. And thank you for the show. It was a good idea. This episode of Stick the Landing was produced by Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady, and our theme music was composed by my good friend Giancarlo Volcano.