The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Heels' Season 1 Finale

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Bill Simmons and David Shoemaker talk about their love for the first season of the Starz wrestling show 'Heelz.' Hosts: Bill Simmons and David Shoemaker Producer: Kaya McMullen  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Exclusion supplies to you, Home Depot.com slash price match for details. All right, the prestige TV podcast. I'm Bill Simmons. I'm with David Shoemaker. We just watch Heels, the final episode, the season finale. They only did eight.

I feel like they created the show just for us, David Shoemaker. It's about storytelling. It's really funny. Wrestling and storytelling. Your two favorite things. Well, that's it, right? I mean, Mike Waldron, who created this show, at full disclosure, I know Mike a little bit. I read the script of the first episode way, way, way back. But he's a big wrestling fan. Like, he's a diehard wrestling fan. But as you watch the show, what you realize is there's so much of him coming through,

but less as a wrestling fan and more as a writer, right? I mean, it's, it's, it sounds so silly to say. But this is like one of the, you can take it or leave it as a wrestling show. I think it's fantastic. But it's one of the best shows about like the creative process that has come along in a long time. Yeah, it really leans into it in a way that I guess could have gone terrible if it wasn't in the right hands. But that somebody who clearly loves the business, who clearly reads everything, who clearly thought about narratives and how the best wrestling storylines they really kind of marinated and thought through and took care of and took their time with versus, you know, and we always complain about WWW.E with some of the best wrestling storylines, they really kind of marinated and thought through and took care of. this stuff when they race through things or they, you know, they'll be telling a story, then they'll abandon it, somebody will win a title, they'll lose it a week later. Yeah, the phrase that keeps coming up is they punish you for paying attention, right? And this is a show that's very much

about the slow burn. And it, and it's actually not just the story that it told. I mean, the season itself was a slow burn. And I think, you know, very deliberately so. I like stuff about brothers and rivalries and sisters, too. But like siblings is always, you know, I always feel like that's an untapped thing. So that's the heart of the show, obviously. It's these two brothers. I thought the pilot was great, the twist and the pilot that basically sets up the entire season and this kind of rivalry, weird relationship that Ace and his brother have, where it's

just, you're like, are these guys on the same side or not? Is this going to unravel or not? And in real way, their relationship was almost like wrestling. It's like what we grew up with, with Hulk Hogan. And is Orndorf going to turn on Hulk Hogan today? is Savage going to turn on Hogan? And it's the same thing with this show where I'm like, is Ace going to turn?

He's going to turn on his brother and you're just waiting for it, waiting for it. Yeah, I mean, the first episode, the pilot, they did, in wrestling terms, they did sort of shotgun that angle, right? And they put them opposed, they put the two brothers opposite each other in the ring in a very real and literal way

that it leaves you a little bit wondering, is that what would really happen? Would he really do that to his brother, whatever? but that story they're able to sort of fill in the blanks as the season goes on, right? And then the sort of bigger story about, well, listen, I mean, so much of the story on the screen is about turning somebody into a baby face or a heel, right? The biggest good guy on the show wants to stay a good guy, but it makes business sense to turn them into a bad guy so they can turn them into a good guy again in the future.

I mean, the show is really about that in a larger sense, too, right? it's about people that you can't tell if they're good guys or bad guys and they're all trying to be a thing that they're not, right? They're all trying to, they keep making mistakes. They keep like, you know, not living up to what's expected of them, but it's about getting to that place in the end. Yeah, and also who gets pushed, who doesn't get pushed. Yeah.

You have Rooster who's clearly talented, the black wrestler in the show, who the shorter one, not James Harrison, who probably should be getting a push. Jack's not seeing it for whatever reason. And he's really focused on Jack and Ace and how that storyline's going. Roost ends up leaving, which is also a thing that happens all the time in wrestling, right? And then you have the rival promoter. It taps into the independent stuff, too, that we've, you know, is part of wrestling. It's like, you want to have a star in your local territory, but you don't want the star to get too big because then he's going to leave.

How do you take advantage of the up and coming star without actually losing? the upcoming star, which is the spot that Jack was in with Ace. I don't want to get too meta, meta here, but Roosters played by Alan Maldonado, who does deserve the biggest push of all in real life. He's been absolutely insanely good on The Last OG and Blackish. And, I mean, everything he's in. He just, like, it's just amazing.

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's a, it really does. Like, it speaks to so many different aspects of the pro wrestling world. It gets, it sort of winks at things that are going on. in real life and real time throughout the show. It's so interesting. You know, every, the best, a great show always makes you kind of want to be there, right? I mean, like, you want, in Mad Men, you want to, like, put on your suit and get out some

scotch or whatever and, like, everything like that. Have a cigarette. Yeah, well, yeah. But this show, I mean, this is maybe just too insidery. But by the end, I so desperately wanted to live in Duffy, Georgia, where you can go see, like, or drive down to Florida and just see two, like, insanely excited, small venue. wrestling matches, right? I mean, it's just like people, the crowd's just like packed in

and at first you're like, yeah, that's a little bit big, it's a little bit Hollywood, but by the end you're just like oh, I want to be there so badly. This seems like just like this, like everything is at stake in the ring and it is. I mean, it's really fantastic. Do these Duffy type venues exist

as perfect in real life as they do in this show? No, I mean, the place that this place, I mean, the Duffy, the Dome, you know, it's a home of Duffy wrestling, you know, reminds me more than anything else of the Dallas Sportatorium where WorldCCW, World Class was based out of. And I got to go there in the, you know, late 90s, right?

You know, in its dying days. As far as, I mean, as far as the- ECW in the mid-90s was a little piece of that too, right? It was, it was. It was the venue wasn't just wrestling, I guess, but it was, but in the ECW days, it fully embodied that venue. I mean, that was the, NXT, the NXT venue is a little like this, too. It's not, I don't think it's as cool as,

this little duffy dome that they built. Same kind of premise. And then the Florida, I mean, the FWD, Florida wrestling dystopia, like the rival federation, when they put on their big show

towards the end, it reminded me a lot of kind of Lucha Underground. We're like, we're having this, we're like, we've turned this soundstage into Thunderdome,

sort of, you know, and it definitely, so there's, there's definitely those places around, but the idea that they, that these places are running

in small town. I mean, that was, it's mostly a relic of the past, because there's so much, you know, especially now, wrestling on,

TV and stuff. It's harder to turn out giant crowds like that, you know? Was it just me or were you watching this show and thinking of the subtle AEW parallels with it of Cody Rhodes basically starting that thing? Yeah. You know, obviously more money, bigger platform. He was able to get a Turner relationship right away. So it's not, he was national. This is local. But same kind of thing where they were trying to zag against the WWE and really care about how do we build her. six to eight guys.

How does storytelling really matter? How does the actual wrestling really matter? And maybe that's the way we can beat WW. I kept thinking about it as I watched this season. Well, listen, I don't think it was, there were a lot of winks at the show. I don't think there was any coincidence that they needed to sell 10,000 tickets

for their big, you know, state fair show because that was like, that's the exact number that AEW or that Cody Rhodes was trying to sell in his first, you know, pre, like, you know, proto AEW venture. And there's some Cody Rhodes, Jack. There's a couple parallels there.

There's a lot going on there. It's funny because the show was conceived before AEW was a thing. But it's sort of the existence of AEW sort of gives the show a different sort of relevance, right? Like if you're talking, it's like a small town Georgia production and they're saying, oh, we want to be the next W. We want to be the competition. You're sort of like, really? I mean, that's, you know, there's not a lot of room for that. But it does make it seem more vital and more interesting.

And when you see them put on a good show, you're like, yeah. There's a lot, there's a lot of potential there. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's made it, it made it, those parallels made it definitely cool. They lucked out with the two brothers, both of whom were really, really good and really, really believable as rest of them. Stephen Amel, no, no surprise. He's, was a staple at the, uh, W.W.E shows.

Sure. He was in Arrow, great athlete. And when I even heard they were doing this show, I was not surprised. prize he was the lead. I think he really gets it. He cares about this stuff. But was also really believable. And it's not just about nailing the wrestling stuff. You nailing the promos, nailing the way you come into the ring, nailing the way you talk to the crowd and how you raise and lower your voice. Like that's not hard. The other guy, Alexander, I can't remember his last name who played Ace, also really good. Those two guys, like, I don't have a lot of

criticism for either of them, do you? No, not at all. I mean, it's Alexander Ludwig is the guy's name. He's absolutely fantastic. And I think if I remember correctly, they didn't, I mean, they couldn't make the show at first when they wanted to because they couldn't cast those roles and both of those guys

kind of got out of like both of their initial engagements ended and they made the, they got to make the show based around them, right? Right. So it was a, I mean, it was just so fortuitous. Like, I mean, it's so hard to cast believable wrestlers in fiction roles, right?

I mean, it's like, I always think of whatever they would do, like, football movies, and it would just be, like, the same six fat guys who were just, like, who would be the linemen just, like hanging around the back, you're like, that's not what, like, a football player does, like, all football players don't actually look like war and sap. They look like, like, like scary monsters, right? Yeah. And, and, and, and, but it always just seems so silly.

Wrestling's even harder than that, because it's not just, it's not just being ripped, right? It's having a certain sort of like, I'm strong, but also like I've fallen down 9,000 times body, right? There's a continuity to how they move that they've just been doing it for a long time. And you can just tell it's in their DNA. And I think that's so hard to translate. It really is. It really is. I mean, I think it was episode, was it three or four when they, oh, yeah, it's episode three,

when Jack comes to the ring and cuts the heel promo on the crowd, that was, maybe. until the very last episode, that was the most sort of pitch-perfect moment of the show because it was so spot on, like you mentioned. I mean, it takes a wrestling fan, you see when like when celebrities show up in WW or whatever, you can tell who's a real lifelong wrestling fan who's not because it's a different kind of acting and it takes a certain sort of lifelong addiction to it to really know what to do, to really be able to embody the role. And you saw that in Jack. You saw that in a lot of the creation of the whole show. It really felt spot-on. on. And then, so, I mean, like, that heel promo with the jack cut. And then C.M. Punk comes out as

Ricky Rabies. Seampunk was, I was scared to death when I saw, like, the teaser of him. He was so good. And it was like, it was like, it was shocking. It was really fun. And then they were like, I mean, the storytelling in that sequence was just unbelievable. There was like in the ring and then they had the, like, the friends of the wife, like the girls who were coming to the show for the first time. and they were the sort of the avatar for your wife who's watching next to you as you're watching this show. But somehow you're like, then you realize you're cheering along with them and reacting the same way and then Ace turns heel. The whole, I mean, that was just an incredible sequence.

And there's a number of them in the season where you're just like so wrapped up in just the sort of the narrative of pro wrestling in a very sort of authentic way. I think that the CM Punk episode, that was probably my favorite 15 minute sequence in any of the shows, just because they create this character who you're watching it, and you're going, you know, this guy could actually work as a real, the WWE could just have Ricky Rapies and that would be all in. Like, this guy could have a six-month run doing something and the way he was using his valet and the whole thing.

And by the way, I just want to say as the Southerner, the resident Southerner in this conversation, I don't have quite the aversion to put on Southern accents that I know you do for Boston accents. the accents in the show were a little bit all over the place. I've grown accustomed to that throughout my life. But I just want to say for the record, I let CM Punk's really put on generic Southern accent.

I'm more fine with that than somebody who's trying really hard and only getting 85% of the way there. Like, he was like, he was just being a guy, being a character. And that's what wrestling is, and that was fine for the show. Yeah, I thought Stephen Amel, the first episode, I didn't feel like he totally had the accent down yet. No, it was like, oh, boy. But like the third one, he had it.

So it's just, it's like reps. He's doing it for a year. You're going to get better at it. With the southern accent, it's more reps than probably any other accent. Because here's the thing. In the South, not everybody talks like Gomer Pyle, right? Everybody has different variations of accent and not. So all you have to do is just have like 1% of a Southern accent.

And then the rest is just you being comfortable in the character, right? And just comfortable with the voice. So I thought, as the season went on, that just got, it smoothed out pretty quickly. Well, the other thing, they nailed. almost every character on the show. The Chris Bauer character, who is my favorite character, unbelievable, culminates in him

shitting in his pants, but one of my favorite that guy actors, I've been with him since 8mm. He was in 61. He was in the wire. He played Sabaka. He's just one of those guys. He was in the David Simon porn show. He's one of those guys where you see him and you're like, oh, I love this guy.

I thought he was, I actually think he might get nominated for an Emmy for the show. I thought he was that good. How about his promo in the last episode? It was like watching fucking Rick Flair. Well, watching him and Mary McCormick, when they were going back and forth, like, you know, in, you know, in very personal ways. Yeah. That was, that was just as good as the promo work. And setting those two things side by side in the show really made it, I mean, really, I think, did a lot of justice to him as a performer. The Rick Flair airplane thing, another really just bizarrely coincidental bit of timing because like vice vice's show dark side of the ring ran that

thing about Rick Flair and the plane ride from hell it relative right around the same time but that you know so there was that but Chris Bauer was I mean you called Chris Bauer that guy I mean and he's Chris Bauer now I think he was that guy for a while now he's then he became Sabaka and now he's Chris Bauer but Michael Malley your friend who produced the show is a legendary that guy I mean He was obviously was a huge star of his own sitcom for a little bit, but like has evolved into it with that guy. But I think Chris Bowler. He's like he's turned into that guy late in his career,

though he's Michael Maui. He kind of disappears into these different roles. And this show is so full of that guys that I think there must have been a little bit like a deliberate decision there. I thought that Chris Bauer, because he's a main character, had to like relinquish the that guy championship belt. And this might be controversial,

but I think Joel Murray, who was Eddie Earl, like the used car dealer, like grab the that guy championship belt during this show because he was the that guy of this show. But there was so, I mentioned Alan Maldonado earlier. I mean, Mary McCormick is a giant star to some people, but is sort of like that woman to probably to a lot of people out there. A lot of people know her as private parts. She was Howard Stern's wife from private parts. But I thought she was, that's a part that just could have sucked.

And she was really good. She had real nuance. Dude, I was out on her for like an episode and a half, not because. because of her performance, which was amazing, but because I was so sure that that part was not going to work. Like anybody else, it would have flopped, and so I was like, oh, this is going to be a flop. But she was so good.

And by the second half of the season, she just takes your breath away every time she's on screen. I mean, and by the way, her role in this show is one of those. I mean, you know, you kind of give yourself over to the show. The staff of the Duffy Wrestling League is a little bit bigger, I think, than most than most. Yeah, what are they doing on the? the spare time. But she, but her place there felt so organic and believable that even though she's

like the executive producer and you're like, would they, would that really happen? You just believe every second she's on the screen. She's just such a powerful actor. Yeah, what's her career path? Is, is she making enough money? What, like, there's a, that was the only one where I had some unanswered questions. Did anyone try to poach her? Did she work for a bigger company at some point? She was great, though. And then the other guy I love, the guy who got his knee ripped up. who, they really set up. Bobby Pinn. Bobby PIN.

Bobby PIN is the cousin Greg of this show, right? Yes. But he's like, maybe just because of the necessity of the narrative or whatever, he's sort of like fast forwards past cousin Greg, right? He like goes through this giant blossoming arc throughout the course of the show, and you love him and you're attracted to him exactly the same way. But he's such a dope, but he's like you really want to cheer for him. him. And on a show that's all about, you know, baby faces and heels, obviously it's the title.

Like, he's the guy that you don't usually watch prestige television shows and find yourself rooting for the actual good guy, right? The good guy is like the loser. And he's a good guy that you actually end up rooting for by the end. By the way, low-key best scene of Bobby Penn was when he's on crutches at the cookout and Aces is like filling his plate for him and put, and he has to put on ranch dressing literally over everything. That, might be the most authentically southern moment in the entire season. I can't tell you how real that is every time you're in a group of people eating, there will be a number of people, but certainly a handful who are just dousing everything, dipping things in ranch dressing. Like,

everything is ranch dressing. And it's, it's beautiful. When Bobby got his knee shredded by Ace, I was devastated. Because I was really invested in the Bobby arc. And I actually think they well, I'm sure they'll have a payoff in season two, but I actually think they made a mistake injuring him that badly. I just, I thought the show missed him the last couple episodes. He would become one of my favorite guys. I don't think they could have known how electric he was going to be on the screen when they're just writing the character, right?

And it is something that's waiting for a future payoff. I mean, he's sort of an archetype. He's this sort of like wide-eyed, corn-fed, you know, just good guy. But he's, but he does look like a rest of, You know, it looks, he looks like a guy that could be your top baby face. And I think they will pay it off. That, when he messed up, when he broke his leg, I was so shocked at how in they went. And that moment, it wasn't just like, oh, they twisted his ankle.

He shouldn't have done that. We like straight up broke the dude. Like, it was a compound fracture in the middle of the ring and they tried to cave it off. Like, oh, that's just part of the show. But like, that was intense. And I was like, yeah. I said, I said knee. It was, I blocked that out of my mind.

It was this, they basically Gordon Haywarded him. It was wild. It was brutal. They'll probably pay it off next year and there would be a good feud with Ace. Then they nailed the Ace's girlfriend in the first part of the show who eventually wins the title. I thought that actress was fantastic. Yeah. I thought that that's another one where she's pretty tiny in a way that kind of stretches the believability of could she actually be in the rain.

But then when you watched her, like she was really well trained. Anytime she had to do anything wrestling, you kind of talked yourself into it. But she had, there was like a little bit of damage with her, but like a little bit of hopefulness too. And it was like exactly the kind of person who maybe gets left behind by Ace when he goes. And then all of a sudden, five years later, she's got two kids and she's working at the local store and wondering what happened. They nailed that character. She was great. She was fantastic.

I mean, one thing that we haven't mentioned yet on the show that we have to mention is the very deliberate. homage to Friday Night Lights that starts the second the theme song kicks in and the pilot. I mean, this is, this show is trying to make, is trying to evoke Friday Night Lights at every turn. And it makes sense. Like, this must have been the pitch meeting. This is like, hey, this is the wrestler meets Friday Night Lights, right? I mean, it's like, it's very, like, that's what they're trying to do. And I could have done without some of the music cues that, like, that were just trying to make you think of that.

But as a comparison, it's a good one. And it's a strong, and it's meaningful. And I think like Friday Night Lights, this is a testosterone-driven world, but you find that the women are the real strength of the show, right? And we talked about Mary McCormick, and her name is Kelly Bergland, who played Crystal Tyler. And I say her full name because they say her full name throughout the entire show, even after she's been there, like, every second.

They're like, Crystal Tyler tried out to be a wrestler today, which was just kind of awesome because she's not family. They always look at her sort of differently. But yeah, I thought that was great. And you're right, she's small. But one thing this show did shockingly well is they leaned into the people's real sizes and shapes in a way that a lot of shows try to do, and a lot of professional wrestling tries to sort of sidestep, right? Like I always say it's okay to be a short professional wrestler because there's all these people with issues about size.

It's okay to be short. But I want the announcers to acknowledge that this dude's short and not pretend like he's six five when he's five, right? And they did that. They talked about how small she was. They talked about the improbability of it all. and then at the end, when she somehow becomes the champion, you buy it.

And it's like, it was just so, I mean, it was so fulfilling. That ending, it was, I actually, I didn't see that one coming.

I didn't know what was going to happen. I thought O'Malley, who we should, he's my friend, so I'm biased, but he was, I thought awesome with the big beard. It just seemed like a different person.

I thought he was going to come in the ring and grab the belt at the end. And that was going to be the cliffhanger of, Oh, my God, O'Malley has their belt. This is, now that's going to be. But no, all of a sudden, Crystal's climbing the ladder. And we have Chris Bauer was shit in his pants. We had the two brothers who just shoot-fighted each other,

beat the shit out of each other. And then we have her at the top of the ladder. It was an awesome. And then Ace kind of half-storming out, not knowing what's going to happen on him because he finds out about the Kleenex stuff. Really good ending. I think that some people watching this

who aren't wrestling fans are going to, of everything going to call into question the pants shitting part of the last one. But I, so we should point out for the record that many wrestlers, including C.M. Punk, have shit themselves in the ring. And that is affected, you know, that becomes a part of their legacy. Yeah, that's wrestling lore. There's a lot. There's, you could do a whole who shit in their pants website and probably have multiple chapters.

But Wild Bill, Chris Bauer, like, that was such a believable, like, character moment for him. He was like, I'm not getting up because I've shit myself. And then when he does get up, You're just like, oh my God, my heart's breaking. I'm so, my heart is warmed by this moment, you know? And it was great. It was great. You're right about Mike O'Malley.

He was such a delicious heel that, like, in some ways, like, only the producer of the show would be able to go in. I mean, to be able to, like, just go, jump in feet first the way that he did. And only in a show about wrestling, can you have a character like that where you're not, where it's like, he's such a bad guy, so transparently a bad guy. And yet, like, such a. sort of believable character. We mentioned the characters that worked.

We mentioned the Friday night lights tie in, which is my wife's biggest takeaway of the show. She was like, why didn't they just use the explosions of the sky, whatever that band was, that Friday night night? Like, just go the whole way. We all would have been fine with it, right? It would have been good to hear that again. But they definitely tried to do that. The one character that didn't work was Jack's wife.

I think they were struggling to figure out what's her role in this. So basically by the end after eight episodes, she's trying to say like, I married a baby face, but he's playing a heel and she's having issues with it. But it's kind of like, all right, you married this guy who's running his dad's, you know, wrestling thing. And this is who he is. He's in the Duffy Dome. He's a wrestler and this is what he cares about.

And in the first couple episodes, it seems like she's totally cool with it and she gets it. And then it kind of starts shifting over the eight episodes that I'm not. not sure why. It almost seems like it shifted just because they couldn't figure out anything for her to do. Yeah. I mean, there was, I mean, there's a lot of, I'm sure, noble lawnmower salesman out there in the world. But Jack, I mean, is a lawnmower salesman when he's not being a wrestler. The wrestling thing is not paying the bills, right? So it's not like, I think most people would be excited if their lawnmower salesman husband had a passion in life beyond lawnmower sales, right? So that part is a little bit weird. I sort of just not because of Stacey, the character or the actress, Alison Love,

she was an amazing performer. But every time someone plays guitar and sings with just with nothing else going on on a show, I get a little bit uncomfortable as just an anxiety-ridden person. It was like they were giving her a couple shots in the basketball game. There was a lot of that. I think that most of the problem for me was that a lot of her role was, was like duplicative, right? I mean, like, when she would talk to him

about the storytelling process, like that ends up being a role that Ace takes towards the end, right? And at the end, Stacey sings the National Anthem, that's her big triumph. And it, but really, it's overshadowed by Crystal's triumph in, you know, becoming a wrestler and winning the match.

So there's just sort of, it did seem like they were kind of wondering what to do with her. Now, she did manage to humanize Jack who was without her, Well, in the beginning, Jack seems like, I mean, as she said, in the beginning, Jack is the baby face because he's the main character of the show and he sort of turns heel and she's able to give some sort of narration of that process and some depth to it. I just think that at the end of the day, her being, her being so put off by the fact that he wanted to turn his brother heel with, you know, wanted to want to to pull the marionette strings or whatever. That just seems like something that you probably just laugh about.

You know, it's like it's not, it's not the end of the world. Although, I guess you kind of have to just, you know, just separate yourself a little bit and just give yourself over to the show. The drama between Jack and Ace was about him turning heel was, you know, it's melodramatic. But that's, yeah, it's, that's, I think there was a better way to, there was a better way to create tension with them. Like maybe Jack cheated on her on one, one thing three years ago and she was having trouble getting past it.

Maybe he was covering up something for somebody else that she felt morally, you know, A lot of the show, and I think the funniest thing of the show unintentionally for me was just Jack working on the scripts of the show. Like he's, I don't know. Yeah. Like he's actually writing a television show. It's like it's a wrestling match. These guys go out there. They just call moves.

Yeah. It's not something. It's like, hey, what are you doing this weekend? I'm planning out our house show two Fridays from now. I don't know how long that would take. If my wife was like, hey, we got to go. My friend's having a picnic for his kid's birthday, we got to go. You know, it's going to be a few.

And I was just like, no, I got to stay home and write out the script for the wrestling show I'm putting on next weekend. She might say okay, but she would not believe that I was writing a script for a wrestling show for those five hours. You know better than anybody. Like, how long would it take to actually script out five matches on a card? I think it stretches. It's stretch, it beggars belief that anyone would be okay with their significant other just sitting in front of a computer for that long to do something like that. But even if you factor in writer's block, I don't think most, I don't think most married couples with kids have room for writers block in their life. It's like if you, if your wife walked in and you were staring at a blank computer screen and then like three hours later it was the same thing, I think she'd be like, why don't you just lean into the podcasting, Bill?

Yeah. I know. I mean, it would... He's like, he was like Aaron Sorkin. He thought he's writing season two of the West Wing. It's like, settle down. You've just guys closoling each other. And then somebody, the ref, the ref gets hit. Squash match done.

Next one. Yeah. It's a good hour. I wondered throughout the show if it would have been better off if they had been divorced when the show started and let, you know, just sort of like put that relationship a little bit in the background. But it's... Yeah, they didn't plan enough seeds.

I don't feel like with that relationship. and that I was so comparing it to Succession, which is coming back next week. I think one of the great things about Succession and why I think it's one of the best shows of the last 15 years, every character is a home run. All the eight, nine characters that we care about, I'm completely invested in them. And the character that should go wrong and doesn't is Connor. Connor should be the one that he should be like the one that's like, oh man, now they got to have the Connor scene. I don't really care.

But every time they go to any other character, I'm in. And the wife in this show was the weakling. Now, we saw this happen in Billions, too, where Axe's wife in the first two seasons, they were really trying to get going in all these different ways. And ultimately, it's just like, I don't know why she's here other than to just kind of get mad at Axe because he's a hedge fund billionaire, which is the guy. Like, this is who he is. This is who he married.

There's nowhere to go. And they kind of had to shove her out of the show. Well, I mean, part of what makes Succession so great is that on the production side, they're as ruthless as the characters on the show, right? Because, like, we had, there was, like, a lengthy conversation in ring or slack the other day about the fact that Roman had kids in the first episode, and they were never, and potentially a significant other that was never mentioned again. Is that true?

Yeah, it might have been his, like, his, like, girlfriend's kid. Like, there's a lot of dispute over what was going on. But the fact of the matter is, whatever that was was never mentioned again. And that's the sort of thing where, like, most shows would not have the confidence to introduce something and they just be like, no, we're going to concentrate on everything else right now, you know? Yeah. And yeah, I mean, every show could probably benefit from that. And I think that's a definitely a reasonable take about this one.

One thing that they did really well was the flashbacks to the relationship with the brother, with their father who killed himself, which that's another thing that in the wrong hands could just completely derail the show and you could get completely wrong. And you're like, why are we here? Why do we do this? But I thought all that worked too. before we go, where do you see? I'll tell you the thing I'm worried about was season two.

This guy, Mike Waldron, who created this show, who's like a passion project for him, took years to make the whole thing. Yeah. Well, now he's like a famous dude. He's Loki and he's going to have all these opportunities to do all this stuff. He's doing the Doctor Strange movie, yeah. Yeah, and I just, I hope, I don't know, I have no inside information,

but if this comes back for season two and it's not in his voice or he's like overseeing it, but somebody else is actually writing it that makes me nervous. Yeah. It's funny because you mentioned their dad, Tom Spade, played amazingly by David James Elliott, who again... Jack! Yeah. Maybe he's that guy now, too. No, he's Jag.

He's Jag for life. I mean, I think one really fun thing, I don't think they'll do it because obviously they're leaning into the characters that they have and the Friday Night Lightsness of the whole thing. But I think it'd be super fun if season two was just like Duffy Wrestling League 1995. Let's just spend half the season. Let's just spend half the season. Like in lost? We just go backwards.

Yeah. Just have Chris Bauer and David James Elliott playing young and get some other dudes around them and just like let's just drink beer and now, you know, let's just have a good time. You know, the best thing that this show has is you can just have people coming in and out. Yeah. They could introduce three new people in season two. They could make Ricky Rapies a full-time character. There's, you know, you can dump a character that's not working and you can just have.

have this constant evolving door because that's what it's like when you have a small wrestling thing like this. People are coming and going constantly. No, they, yeah, I mean, they could definitely do that. I think that what, I think they did a really good job of handling the number of characters that they had, especially in the locker room where that can get real messy and confusing and everything else. I mean, they did a good job of the different characters had sort of archetypes so you can easily delineate them in your mind. James Harrison. Yeah, he's like the big. James Harrison was his name, his wrestling name was Apocalypse, which is just perfect.

Yeah, I mean, they could They could definitely do that But I think, I mean, I think that if you want to try to imagine where it's going to go, I think that we have most of the information right in front of us. I mean, we talked about, I mean, I think that frankly they'll probably lean in to Stacey to figure out really the significance of that,

you know, the main relationship in the show. And then, you know, the main role is, you know, Crystal is going to be a huge player. She's the dude champion. They got to figure out how to validate that post facto, you know? and are they going to do a bunch of like intergender matches? They're going to like, reintroduce more women onto the show because they could do that too, you know?

I mean, and frankly, I mean, Jack and Ace, I mean, they're going to be half of the show no matter what happens, right? I mean, they're just those two brothers trying to figure it out. Well, unless, unless this is my prediction. Oh, I got an idea here. Okay, go. I think Ace goes and goes to Florida and works for O'Malley. Oh.

And I think we move toward a possible merger of the two territories. I'm glad that you said that. And that becomes the season two crux of Ace becomes the biggest star in the Florida territory and feuds with rooster. Jack figures out he's got Wild Bill, figures out some young person. Crystal becomes a big star. Somebody might poach her. And now it's like his side is falling apart.

The merger would be the only thing that saves him. Now he needs his brother. Now his brother has to pull him. in. Now the power relationship is flipped. He needs, yeah, he, he needs, he needs the merger. I actually like that a lot. I think that's a really good idea. I could see that one going. Then we get more O'Malley, we get Ace, we get, we get a little more rooster. Charlie Gully, by the way, is Michael O'Malley's character's name, which is just an all-time great character name. There's a lot of good names in the show.

I think that, I, I think I would love to see that. Maybe Bobby becomes the big, the big face in season two, because we all love Bobby, more Bobby. Yeah. So maybe Bobby versus Jack is like the big rivalry in the, but it's not enough. They need to merge. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, one of the things as just a wrestling geek that I kept thinking throughout the show is that, well, one, I wanted to see more just wrestling because they were doing such a good job of it.

But two, that I specifically wanted to see the rival wrestling company that I wanted to see, you know, FWD or whatever. Like, I wanted to just like engage in full matches over there and see who their big characters were and like see what the appeal is of this show. obviously they talked about it being bloodier and whatever else and more excessive and they showed us, you know, some. But when you start talking about a merger, it makes me think like, oh, man, I would just love to be, I would love to be rooting for the merger.

And in order to really root for the merger, you've got to be thinking, oh, man, I want to see Jack take on the top guy over there in Florida, you know, because that's what you would always, if you lived in Georgia in the 80s and you miraculously, or if you lived in the panhandle of Florida, and you had access to Florida and Georgia wrestling. These are the things that we were thinking all the time, right? I want to see, like, Dusty Rhodes come and take on the Anderson's. Like, I want to see these two worlds collide. But it's because you get to see him and you get to enjoy them and you don't care as much about the rivalry.

I mean, it's like a college football rivalry. It's like you're animated by it, but you don't really want to get into, like, you don't really want to punch the other guys in the face. Or maybe you do. I don't know, who knows. But I think I would love to see to get more into Florida and more into Mike O'Malley and all that stuff. And I think a merger would actually be superfied. Well, they also have, they have another card where they can have the big wrestling federation, which we haven't, we don't really have a feel for, but they could basically parody Vince McMahon

and have the aging, bombastic promoter come in and try to like poach crystal, basically. Okay. So, I mean, I know we have to put a pin in this soon, but there is a, there's a scene where we mentioned it before, where Chris Bauer's Wild Bill, he gets drunk on a flight, comes out naked. Actually, shockingly really, I mean, there was a scene. was a lot of, there was some legit male nudity going on in the scene, which is fantastic. And then he gets, of course, like, fired by the company up north, which is like WWE. I mean, that's obviously, that's up.

But then when he, he comes out, does a press conference to sort of publicly apologize and kind of goes off script, he cuts what, he basically cuts a promo, like a wrestler promo, but it's the, but the content of it is the sort of like Roddy Piper, like the post, like the post-wrestling complaint. Like, anytime there's a big feature on HBO or whatever about what happens to, you know, what happens to these wrestlers after their careers, he puts it into poetry. And it's weirdly like the most, one of the most compelling cases against the wrestling industry that, like, that you can see in a concise scene.

Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's really sort of just heartrending. But it's packaged in this love letter to pro wrestling, which I think makes it in some ways even more powerful. Last question. Who should have been more hurt and offended that they had Mick Foley play the podcaster? Who goes in interviews, Jack? You or me?

I mean, ultimately, whose feelings were more deep down, singly hurt? Well, I mean, if it had been you, I would have been... Would you have wanted to play yourself, or would you have wanted to play, like, like, Derek Foo-Maker? They twist your name. My fake name is Davis. Davis Shoemaker. I would have been Simon Williams. I could have been the Simon Williams report.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, the guy was playing, Mick Foley played the role, was playing an ex- Wrestler who, this is a podcast I would one million percent listen to. Yeah, can we have this? An ex- Wrestler, like, digging into the details about pro wrestling

from, like, rural Georgia, who really cares about this local promotion and, but, like, keeps it real. I mean, I don't know that that person exists in real life. So I don't know who to compare. I don't know who should have been playing that role. But I would listen to that podcast if it was out there. Another possibility for season two.

All right, we have to go. Kyle McMillan produced this podcast. Myself and David Shoemaker, Ron. We have a lot of good stuff on Prestige TV podcast this week. We have scenes from a marriage and we have a ton of succession stuff coming. So there you go. Be ready for it. Thanks, Shoemaker.

It was good to see you. Oh, it was great to see you too. And thanks to heels for existing. It was really fun. Yeah. Thanks. Bring back season. too.