The Prestige TV Podcast - Recapping the Finale of ‘We Own This City’

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Bill Simmons, Wosny Lambre, and Sean Fennessey recap Episode 6 of HBO’s ‘We Own This City’, discussing the “bleak and hopeless” ending to the miniseries (:42), Jon Bernthal’s performance as Wayne Jenkins compared to iconic dirty cops in film (10:16), and the benefit of a show going against the Netflix model (27:29). Plus, what’s next for creator David Simon (43:18)? Hosts: Bill Simmons, Wosny Lambry, Sean Fennessey Producer: Donnie Beacham Jr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Not all probiotics are created equal. New Ollie precise probiotics are expertly made with clinically studied strains for targeted benefits beyond digestion. Like skin health, metabolism, or even stress response. Find your precise probiotic at a Walmart near you. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. It's the Prestige TV podcast. My name is Bill Simmons, joined by Bigwas.

Sean Fantasy, we're going to talk about the final episode of We Own the City, a show that I already miss. It's done. It's a wrap, six episodes and gone. The perfect example of how a limited series should work. Sean has not been with us during these We Own the City recaps. Chris Ryan, if you want to listen to The Watch, he interviewed George Pelcanoes on the watch on Monday night. Talked about the show a ton there.

So if you want CR's takes, go there. Fantasy, you haven't been on. son of a cop. What did you think of the show? Complicated, right? I mean, obviously, incredible portrayal of the outrage and confusion of living in a city in 2022. I thought it was amazing. I mean, obviously, I'm a huge fan of The Wire, just like you guys. It's been fun listening to you talk about it week to week. But this was, even by the standards of David, Simon, George Pelicano stories, pretty bleak and pretty hopeless at the end in a lot of ways. As fun as it was to watch this show, it's a real wake-up call to the fact that we got no

answers for everything that's fucked up in our country right now. Was, you cheated. You did research before you finished the show. I stayed true to trying to learn as it went along. Was this bleaker? Did this end bleaker than you even expected, even though you knew it was going to happen? Yeah, I think so, because obviously the show starts with these guys getting arrested. So we know they're going down, right? Like, we know what the outcome is. So it's not, it's sort of anticlimactic in that way. But there was some pretty pretty bleak moments and I think the most

bleak moment, even more so than Sean Suter killing himself, was Wayne Jenkins in court making sure to pin that bad arrest on him because the guy had killed himself so he knew he couldn't

you know come out and defend himself and the guy only killed himself because he had worked with Wayne Jenkins. It was just like like the circular nature of it It's like this guy works with Wayne, sees crimes happening, can't snitch on him because he can no longer be a cop if he snitches on a cop. Those guys get caught. So now he's a party to a crime.

And now it's over. So he ends up killing himself because he can't do anything for the rest of his life. And the last nail in the coffin is this guy fucking pinning that bad arrest on him. I was like, whoa. Wow. That is some dark, dark, dark. shit right there. Well, then you had that last 15 minutes basically when they start throwing up the graphics for here's what happened to this person. And every one of them is bad. None of them is

like, this person would not become the senator of Maryland. Like, nope. This person went to jail. That person went to jail. This person had to resign. And it's just corruption left and right. Sean, how did you feel about how they handled the Sean Souter thing? Because it's still a little ambiguous. I think if you actually really deep dive it, I mean, was, you seem like you definitively think he killed himself. It seems all the evidence is headed that way. There's still like that slate door, ajar that maybe, you know, maybe he got killed because he was testified in the next day. But the way they handled it, I thought, was really smart, where it seemed like you could see

him kind of melting down. We didn't actually see him do it, so they left it a little open. But what did you think? Well, you know, in, in real life, and especially in the slow hustle, which is the doc that Sonia Sohn, who played Kima and the wire directed, it's a little bit more ambiguous in terms of how they characterize what happened with Souter. And so that, you know, Pelicanos and Simon made a choice here to just say, he killed himself. You know, we're basically using this independent review to confirm that he took his own life and that he did so for the reasons it was just outlined. I thought it was a pretty amazing bit of filmmaking, you know, really anxious making and really kind of confusing

in the good way. You know, I was trying to kind of figure out what actually was happening. You could see he was kind of racked by the kind of guilt and frustration and concern that he had over this whole situation. But awesome performance by Jamie Hector, basically with no words. You know, like basically five to ten minutes of the show just devoted to him kind of spinning out and creating this story to take his own life and seem as if he had done so in the line of duty, I thought it was really well done. As for what's real and what's not real, I mean, this is a dramatized series of events that really happened. You know, it's a docu-drama, and so they made a choice, and obviously there's a lot of evidence supporting the fact that he did take his own life, but it's just like a really

tragic and again, like pretty bleak portrayal of what happened there. I mean, it's really tough to imagine a police officer having to do that because of the circumstances that he came up in in in Baltimore at that time. I also like the casting of the cop who was there where he was like just just kind of iffy enough that you're like he's like he he got shot out of that and it was just like wait a second am I what is who's what's this guy what's his agenda but you know I think he was a rookie I doubt really sincerely doubt he's involved. But Bill I think that's the point basically of the show. It's like the reason that there's a cloud of suspicion is because these dudes are so. fucking dirty, right? Like, that's why it's very insidious. It's like everything breaks down if the police are considered to be untrustworthy. And we see it at the courthouse where they thrown out all the Wayne's cases. You see it here where people are like, did he get killed

by the cops? I mean, these are the same guys stealing 80 bucks off of citizens, planting guns and drugs on people. Did he get killed by them? Who knows, right? Like, I think, that's kind of the point of the show. It's like, bro, like everything breaks down. You can't do anything if you remove the trust factor from the police. And obviously, I think Pelicanos and David Simon did an incredible job of illustrating that. Well, and then at the tail end, they talk about like by 2020, the murders are the worst they've ever been. And there's just been. Now, that's not only the case for Baltimore, I think there's a couple of cities that you. you could say have the stats have gone up. But I think it makes a lot more sense when you see laid out. And that's the genius of these guys. This is what they did with the wire too.

They do the painstakingly put this jigsaw puzzle together so you understand this one big picture outcome of it. Like in the wire, it was how does the city, why can't this city stay out of its own way? And it starts at the basic premise of they can't even get the schools right. And these people grow up and they can't stay in. and then this happens, and then they just lay it out. And I thought they did that in this, too. It was only six episodes, but by the end of it, I just felt like the puzzle made sense. And I thought it was the right amount of episodes too, Sean. We talk about this a lot on the rewatchable. Should something be a movie? Should something be a TV show? How long should

something be? This was the right amount. Yeah, we're in this moment now where there's so many mini series like this, like expanded series, and almost all them are eight to ten episodes, and they all feel too long. And this one, I don't know if it left you wanting more because of how intense this world is that they created, but they did some smart stuff. Like one of the things I feel like is most underrated about the wire because we, you know, we love, you know, Stringer and Avon and we love McNulty and bunk. But I always thought it was a really interesting portrayal of how city government works. And even though Carcetti could be like a cartoonish character at times, it was really good about how you basically make deals to survive in politics. And this only had a couple of scenes like that,

but there was that key scene in this last episode where you watched the mayor and the government negotiating with the police commissioner about, you know, pay and overtime and how we're going to balance the budget. And that's real. I mean, that's like the most important part of this story is that people are trying to protect power. They're trying to protect money. And that's how decisions get made. And that's why this shit gets so fucked up. The same thing that motivates Wayne Jenkins. When Wayne Jenkins can't get the crabs that he wants in the first episode, that's the whole skeleton key. That's the, you know, the Chekhov's gun of this whole show is people don't feel like they're getting what they deserve. And so they have to fight and break the law to get it. And it

happens all the way at the highest echelon of power. That's incredible. I don't know as much about Baltimore City politics, but everything that happened with the subsequent police commissioner and then the mayor in the immediate aftermath of this scandal too is wild. I mean, these people are so corrupt. It's crazy. Yeah, Sean, I was telling Bill and Chris about, you know, growing up under the NYPD where like it's different from Baltimore. Like in New York, this 32,000 cops in New York, right? Like, this is an army. And as bad as I think the general citizen looks at the NYPD as like this gang and overwhelming force. Like, they definitely wasn't taking the 15 bucks out of your pocket, right? They were just intimidating as all fuck, you know.

But like watching, watching Wayne get up there. And he's so deep in his corruption that he doesn't even know when he's incriminating himself and the cops. Like, he happily gives them the testimony that allows the judge to throw the case out. It's like, yo, this dude is just straight up not a cop anymore. Like, he doesn't know how to do real policing. Like, he straight up was like happy. He was like, yeah, we surrounded the car. Fuck you mean.

It's a, it's a, we're stopping the guy. Anything can go wrong then. And the lawyer looks at the judge, like, and it's just so crazy, like, how. this thing has devolved so terribly where the most decorated cop in the department doesn't even know when he's doing stupid shit anymore that scene just blew me away because he was so happy with himself

and he got the case thrown out well we've talked a lot about Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins over the course of these episodes and this was another just killer episode for him I think it's one of the best performances I've seen on a TV show in a while. And I know he won't win an Emmy and you might not even get nominated because of, you know, that's just how it goes with the Simon Pelcano shows. But he's on my podcast today.

We taped it a couple weeks ago. But just talking about how he created the character and things like that, I thought he really put it together in this last episode where he's playing a whole bunch of different pieces of this guy, right? He's trying to pretend he's not scared near the beginning, but he clearly is because he knows the jig is up. He's, then all of a sudden, we get the flashback scenes where when they find yet another thing in the closet, it's very similar to the end of motherfuck of brick, but it's more like he's, he's been through the situation so many times now. He's just like, oh yeah. Like he just, no, it's like, it's like turnkey for him at this point and he's got his new partner who's just just as corrupt as he is and they're just a

perfect match and then all the stuff he does in the prison near the end when he's realizing like this is my life now and I have to have eyes in the back of my head now and I have a half hour daylight and I'm out and I just and they do that camera thing at the end where he's just surveying the scene in a 360 I just thought it was exceptional filmmaking and really great acting Sean we We never talked to you about Wayne Jenkins on this pod. Where does he rank for you? Because to me, that's like as good of any movie character that we've had with a dirty cop, right?

Yeah, you've certainly talked to me about Wayne Jenkins off the pod. He's been a subject of much discussion in the last six weeks in our life. I think it's up there, right? Because he's kind of a classic anti-hero. You know, there's something that you like naturally about Bernthal. And Bernthal, this is going to sound like a dig, but it's kind of the opposite. it. Bernthall is an incredible TV actor. There's a certain kind of acting that you do that is not movie acting. He's not movie star acting. He's talking a lot. He's moving around a lot. He's not

holding your gaze with like a movie star pose. He is all over the place. The same way that like, you know, Brian Cranston would be all over the place and breaking bat. The same way that some of the characters from the wire that we love would be all over the place. He kind of knows he has to hold your attention in a pretty intense way. And I'm, I knew it was coming, but I'm relieved that it had this kind of reflective final act because we were kind of verging on, like celebrating one of the dirtiest cops we've ever seen a little bit because he was so magnetic and so funny. You know,

Bernthal is just a hilarious actor, just like he was hilarious in King Richard, you know, he has his natural charisma. But I thought it was like pretty toward force. That scene that you talked about in the prison, which is kind of flashing back on what feels like an imagined rallying speech that he's giving to all of the cops in the room at the end was,

like you said, just incredible filmmaking and an incredible juxtaposition of the two the two wains you know the forceful dramatic exuberant law breaking lane and then the guy who's like a little bit insecure and a little bit feels victimized by things and

going back to that scene in the strip the strip club that was was alluding to where he's like I'm not a dirty cop where you're like what the hell are you talking about dude you're like the dirtiest cop has ever lived um yeah put some respect of my name it's like really He's still from anybody.

The thing with him, you still need the charisma, which means that we have to like you and we have to be conflicted about this. And I thought that was the final piece of whatever puzzle they were putting together with this show is I still had to be almost seduced by Bernthal's charisma because I had to understand how he was able to pull all of these other guys in his side.

And that speech, you're right, I don't know if that speech was real or not. It seems improbable to me that all of these cops were so happy and gave him a standing O. That speech was awesome. And it spoke to kind of how he saw himself in Baltimore versus how we saw him, which was he was just a straight-up criminal and an absolute terrible thing and a pox in the community. But he didn't see it that way. He saw himself as he was a movie character. What else did you see with Berndtall was? I mean, man, you mentioned liking the guy.

I think more important than me personally liking the dude is that you understand why his colleagues revered him. Like it's made plain to you. Like he's putting money in people's pockets straight up. There's no, like, and there's no nicer thing to do to somebody than to put money in their pocket, right? And so you understand why people want to follow him. And I think that last scene illustrates something that's important is that all of that, stuff is true. And all of that stuff is what the cops celebrate. In our industry, there's no like, this is a great podcast and this is how you know it, right? But with the cops, it's like

when you retrieve a bunch of guns and drugs, they literally call reporters, bring cameras and microphones, literally get a table and put the stuff on there to display it. Like, we did it, Right? Yeah. It's their Academy Awards. Exactly. And Wayne was great at doing that specific thing. Like when the cops want to celebrate themselves, that's what they do.

And he was always delivering those outcomes. And that's why I think all of those damn cops are like, yeah, that's what we're in it for. And the show basically shows you this is how you achieve that stuff. And it's rotten, you know. And I just think, and there were parts of the show where, you know, the David Simon sort of lecturing happens, right, via the characters doing all of these info dumps where, you know, David Simons clearly has it stuck in his car that the drug war is like horrible and all of that stuff. And they do all of that. But I think the show was subtle enough about this is what

makes you a great cop. This is how you achieve those ends. And it's obvious that it's fucked up. I don't even think it's hard to come to that conclusion. You know, Sean, Bernthal, Ray Leota dies a few days ago. And I was thinking during this episode how Bernthal was kind of the 2020s version of Ray Leota and actually is on his way to having the career that I kind of wish Ray Leota had had because like we're doing Copeland for the rewatchables this week and on our brain. You look at the IMDB and it's like it didn't get to where the promise of Henry Hill and Goodfellas is. And he had some good stuff, but I think the thing that made him special as an actor was he was so charismatic and likable, but could also, he could be frantic, he could be menacing, he could be all these different things. And you never truly knew. And that's why Copeland is such an important piece to the Ray Leota thing. And I think Berndtall has a lot of those same qualities. I just didn't make that connection until this last episode. What do you think of that, Sean?

Is I reaching because Ray died or do you see it? No, I think you're right. Well, I mean, obviously Copeland is about corrupt cops and this is a show about corrupt cops. But you're right. There was something kind of sinister and dangerous, but also like I said, a little bit insecure about Ray Leota too, you know, always a little bit like having to over-explain himself in movies and kind of like flying off the handle to justify his actions in the same way that Wayne has to.

And, you know, I think Leota had a great career, but by the standards of just like any actor alive, but maybe not by his, the people that he was always in films with. I mean, he was in multiple movies with Robert De Niro, so you can't stack up to a career like that. Um, yeah, Bernthal, where he goes is really interesting because like I said, I think he could become, you know, a kind of like a more handsome John C. Riley if he wanted to, you know, he could just be like the number two guy in great films for the next 30 years. But, but honestly, the best stuff that he's done to me is this and, and the Walking Dead. You know, like, I thought on the Walking Dead, where we all, you know, kind of recognized his talent.

that's where he was at his best. Like, we want to be with him, like, almost on a week to week basis. He's just such a captivating dude. Yeah, he could have been in something wild, like those kind of roles. I'll be interested to see how it plays out because there's a world in which one of these great directors just is like, that's my guy. Like, he feels very Tarantino-y to me. I can see Tarantino being like, I'm just working burnt.

Tarantino's probably not directing anymore, but, or somebody like PTA or whoever where somebody, Adam McKay, being like, you know what, that guy should be in, stepbrothers with Will Ferrell. Like, I do feel like there's going to be some variety coming up. What were you going to say, Wes? No, I feel like if we're talking about dirty cops, like we got to mention Denzel in Training Day because that's obvious to like, you know, that's the apex of dirty cop and the duality of it, right?

Like these guys are oftentimes combating legitimate bad dudes, bad. actors in the community while also themselves performing bad acts against citizens. And of course, you know, Denzel in Training Day is just, and I think he's channeling a lot of that stuff, right? Like, you know, you want to go home or you want to go to jail? You know, like, I think Bernthal is channeling a lot of that stuff, right? But I do, I find myself thinking about Denzel a lot watching this show because just, you know, some of the stuff that he's doing with the cigarettes and like he's just so good at being this character

burnt all to me was was definitely embodying a lot of that denzel and training day stuff and a little richard gear in internal affairs too and then Sean we didn't talk to you about the tree because we me and CR and Wiles covered this last time but the treat Williams just casting decision of this says I know uh I know you like that movie what what uh how'd you feel about seeing treat again? I mean, it's not surprising that Pelicanos and Simon love Prince of the City. Prince of the City, if people haven't seen it, like you said last week, Bill, you should definitely check it out. Fascinating story. I mean, obviously, you know, Lumet also made Serpico. There's a little bit of Serpico in this story as well about, you know, what does it mean to be a good cop versus a bad cop?

Treat's a great actor. Treat is very similar to where Bernthal could go. You know, treat never quite got there. He was tab to be a true blue A-list star, and he did a lot of good work over the years we've never quite got there. It's interesting that they made him the avatar of that that thing that was is describing that simon likes to do you know that like speechifying about the moral quagmire of our existence because of these bad decisions made at the highest echelons of power you know like i i feel like the show in some ways kind of did one me mosaku's character like a little dirty because you know she starts out as a person who is like really not necessarily hopeful but trying very hard to rectify the situation.

within the parameters of her job. And by the end of the show, she's completely disillusioned. And one of the ways she becomes disillusioned is by having these conversations with Treat Williams' character who's like, here's what's really going on. I was somebody who fought this war

and I was actually good at it, but it meant nothing. I thought about this with my own dad. My dad was a drug cop for years and years and years. He was a sergeant. He ran an undercover team. He did plenty of bust and wiretaps over the years. I have a lot of awareness

of what goes into this kind of work. And it can be disillusioning. Because you do work very hard, and you do, it's a very meticulous and boring kind of work that sometimes isn't just about kicking doors in. It's about just sitting in a car for days. And whether or not the work that he was doing is justified by the decisions that are made by political parties in the 1980s, we can debate that all we want. I felt like the Nicole Steele character kind of got screwed because it didn't, and she's the

only character here who's not real. She's the only composite. And they used her as this like bullhorn for like the, kind of falsity, like the naivety that we have in our culture about some of this stuff. Like the drug war is horrible. It's been horrible for 40 years. Like the three of us know it. Like if you, if you studied it for more than an hour, you know it. So I, that was the only thing that kind of, and it had nothing to do with Masaku's performance. I thought she was awesome. I really like her a lot. But it was, I thought that was an odd choice by

her to basically be like a victim of the Trump administration by the end of the show. So, Bill, like you talk about some of the research that I've been doing. I actually got a DM from somebody, a friend of mine. And he's like, I used to do criminal justice, non-for-profit, consultant working. We've dealt with a lot of problematic police departments. And he was like, they would never send a black woman from the DOJ to go do that job. It just that like, because the deep, the problem with how our system works is like the DOJ relies on cops. Right. Like, so you can't come in there and start bashing. skulls. It doesn't work that way. And that's why the character, Sean, is so, you know what I mean?

Up in the air and it's kind of ridiculous at certain points. It's because it's a composite that's not based in anything reality-based. They would never send some angry black woman in there. And I don't mean angry in like a bad way, stereotypical way. I mean like pissed off and want to get something done, some justice for people in there to do this. That's not how the relationship works between the lawyers who prosecute the offenders and the police who investigate crime. You know what I mean? It doesn't work like that. You know, I'm glad you brought this up because I remember after we did the first podcast

about this and I thought that character I really enjoyed the performance and I, the Jamie Hector character was the one that wasn't working for me because I had so much Marlow baggage. I couldn't separate the character he was playing from Marlowe. I just couldn't see it. And it's funny, by the last episode, it flipped. And I thought her character actually, I thought, was kind of the weakest. It had the worst resolution. Maybe that's how they wanted it to turn out.

But I just, I didn't really understand the arc totally with her. Whereas I thought Jamie Hector, especially in this last episode, I thought he was fantastic. And that character was completely different than Marlowe. It's so hard because he's got such a distinct face and you got the scar. and it's just, it's just hard to separate it from Marlowe, but he's doing totally different things, even though he's, you know, obviously not a man of words. He's doing a lot of stuff with his eyes and looking around

and just kind of surveying the situation. So they were a little similar as they were with Marlowe and Sean Souter, but, man, I thought this was completely different. And he's a really good actor. He's doing anti-Burnthol. Yeah. Yeah, he scaled it back. Did you think he had that in him, Sean?

I don't know. People pointed out that he's been on Bosch. I've never seen Bosch. Maybe Ozzy pointed that out. My dad's favorite show. I was forced to watch a few episodes of that back in the days. I thought it was a really interesting character. Not exactly we own the city, I was saying.

Yeah, yeah. No shots to Ty's Wellover. I don't know what I thought he was capable of. I thought that character was an amazing exam. of kind of the skating on the knife's edge of nihilism that the show is really ultimately about. Because put yourself in suitors' shoes. You're, he's a good cop. But you find yourself in a situation, you know, and a motherfucking brick scene, which of course is like now iconic, that's something that really happens. You've got a guy who sees himself as a good cop, who thinks he's upright

and moral and who wants to do his job well, who's basically to aspire to become murder police, right, to become a homicide detective, which is something that a lot of cops aspire to because It confers like respectability. Yes. And he finds himself with this guy, this force of nature who's like, I'm doing whatever the fuck I want. I'm running this city the way that I want to run this city. And what do you do if you're in that situation?

Do you tell him, no, we can't do this? The guy who's your boss who coordinated the operation, who is a hero to his colleagues, you would tell him in that scenario, I won't let you take this $50,000 and put it in your vest. That's a hard situation. And so putting that character in that position and then having that moral gray that he has to go through for the rest of the show really powerful. And Hector is just a really good actor, like you said, Bill, without having to talk. You know, the same way Marlowe standing on the corner darting his eyes back and forth as cars drove by,

told you everything you needed to know about his intelligence. So I don't know. I mean, really well cast show. This whole little ecosystem that they have of actors and creative people behind the scenes on these Baltimore shows is fucking awesome. It's really, really special. I wish they would keep it going. You know, I was thinking about the Netflix thing, because that's been in the news for a while, right? The stock went way down, and people have all these different theories for it.

And then one of the theories that I don't even think is a theory. I think it's a fact. It's just the algorithm basically took control of that entire app, right? All the choices, all the shows they make. are like those shows like the movie my wife watched a couple days ago where somebody goes to Australia and she loves wine and and she meets this guy who works for a winery in Australia. Well, guess what?

He turns out he owns the winery and she's in love with them. And it's just, it's like they know stuff my wife would like. And it's like Australia, wine, romance, handsome guy. But the quality of the shows have gone really down. And, you know, the movies, it just feels like it's just, is so algorithm-ridden, I don't think they could make a show like this. And I don't think they would want to. So you have that. But then you also have the week-to-week thing that this show has. If you just threw these six on there and we had the chance, right? We had screeners and I wanted

to watch it. And I asked, Waz, I don't know if you obeyed, but I asked you to try to watch it once a week. So we could- Always watch the next episode basically the day we did this podcast. Right, right. Yeah. And then hold. But I still feel like there's real value in that. And the one lesson of this show and I think some other ones this year is that, and I think Stranger Things fell into this too. It's good to have dialogue for six weeks about a show, not just four days. You know, I think if they had just, HBO Max just dropped six episodes and like, here,

I think it would have been overwhelming. I think it would have been daunting. And I don't think it has the same impact as you're going through a journey with some of these characters. So it was just one thing I thought of. I think they really need to figure that out, the binge model. Like I can see dropping two of these and then going once a week or even three, but not six. Can we talk about the TV problem right now that is like, it's obvious what the problem is,

is that Netflix is this huge dragon and just sprayed us with content. And everybody was like, well, they're the number one. so we should try to replicate that. But nobody can watch all of this shit. So they're wasting a lot of money. Like, it's so obvious. And even HBO, I remember when the Max thing happened, and I would see the rate.

Because obviously, you know, we've all been obsessed with HBO for decades now. And we know the rate that they push out content. And then Max comes along, and they're pumping it out way more frequently than, you know, regular HBO used to. But at the same time, like, their batting average as compared to a Netflix, it's not even close. You know, like, it's just like the quality on average of the HBO show, even when they're

doing a ramped up version of it, it's not even close. And, you know, I hate to be that. It's a trust thing, though, right? Exactly. I'm more willing to give an HBO show a chance than I am for Netflix. Netflix, it's like they almost have to prove to me. Like, Lincoln Lawyer, I don't know if that's a good show or not. I don't know if that's just another algorithm show or that's a show I should actually watch.

I watched it because I like the Matthew McConaughey movie. And yeah, nah, I think you did Matthew McConaughey for that show. But it's, I do think Netflix like four or five years ago, I had way more trust in the, especially from a drama standpoint because they had, they were doing more interesting stuff. doing stuff like Ozark. Sean, where do you stand on this? Well,

let's use a very obvious NBA metaphor here. It's all about the question of expansion. If you expand the NBA into two more teams, you put a team in Seattle, you put a team in Seattle, you put it in a more talent spread in a more diffuse way across the league.

And then the quality of play is probably going to lessen. And TV, they didn't add two teams. They added 20 teams. And so now what you have is, you know, the arts are like any other business. There's only so many people that are good at this. There's only so many people that really know how to make compelling work. Now, on the upside, and this is real, a lot of people are getting to make shows that didn't used to get to make shows.

And there are a lot of reasons for that culturally. A lot of people getting to tell stories that didn't get to tell before. That's been a boom. Simultaneously to that, there's a lot of people who suck at telling stories that are given 12 episodes of one hour and four minute shows. And they're not good. And what Simon and Pelicanos did here that is super smart is they do what really good organizations do, which is they expand their pool of talent. Sure, they bring Jamie Hector back. Sure, they bring back a couple of actors they've worked with before. But they also empower Rinaldo Marcus Green to shoot this whole show. So good. And he is a dynamite filmmaker, as we know from King Richard, really exciting dude. The way he shot this show is part of what made,

frankly, a lot of the Wayne Jenkins stuff so exciting is because he has this like right on your shoulder intensity as they're kind of kicking doors in. And, or actually the Freddie Gray episode in particular, I was like, this is probably the best evocation I've seen of this issue that's been happening in the country. Like, this is actually what it feels like to be on the front lines of this. And so they're just expanding their talent pool by plugging someone gifted into their system, which is really how you get quality work over the years. It's like you have to learn how to get better at the work.

You can't just say, here's $50 million. you've never run a show before. Good luck. We're going to put it on Netflix and everything's going to drop on June 1st. Like that's not a way to create quality work. This is a system that really works well. And HBO, you know, we're obviously biased bill, but they, their track record is 25, 30 years long at this point. Like, it's, it's, it's, there's really no comparison in my mind. Well, and they care about the quality. I'm glad you brought up Ray Green because that's another thing that I think made this show special. they just catch a director at a point where two years from now he's not directing the show. He's a big dollar.

He's headed for greener pastures and he's just not going to be like, cool, I'm going to spend it. Yeah, no, yeah. That's, or he's doing Top Gun 2 or whatever. Like, that's just how this works. But I think with the Netflix thing, I don't know the answer because I feel like this is where we're going with television, right? I think the offer, which was on Paramount, is a really good example of this.

That was a 10 episode show that I think if it was six would have been awesome. Completely agree. And 10, it's just too fat and bloated. I couldn't keep up with it. But here's the thing, too. I think the problem is a problem of democracy. And by which I mean the masses like bad stuff. And so Netflix, that thing you've said about your wife and the algorithm and like

that being the opposite of what we own this city. is like this is what the masses want like Sean I watch Spider-Man the third one uh no way home or whatever on um on a flight back uh here from New York and I was like the first two movies is just way better than this shit but guess what when it came out I remember you on your shows it's like people came out to see this COVID be damned the people love it this is what the people want yeah this is what they want I don't know what to say the masses have horrible tastes and so we're We're just at the mercy of this. But that's how democracy works, you know?

Yeah, I think Apple's suffered from this too. Apple's shot the T-shirt canon with some shows. And it's a little Netflix-esque where there's, it's very algorithm-y. It feels, even though they don't have the same algorithm advantage Netflix does. But you can just see that all of their choices are these big, broad, we're trying to appeal to either, like, this will appeal to our Asian market or this will appeal to our, like, this will appeal to our, like, this will appeal to our, like, like rom-com market and they just go huge, but they haven't made a lot of good stuff, you know, and the biggest success they've had was just a movie they bought. You know, the offer bill is such an interesting portal into some of this, this kind of frustration that you're talking about,

because the whole point of that show is showing us the ways, like how hard it was for creative people to be trusted by the powers that be. You know, like the studio is owned by an oil company in the 1970s. They have all. this money and they're trying to fix Paramount. Robert Evans is trying to get hits and they're turning to Francis Ford Coppola, a true artiste. You know, somebody who is like, I need to do all the things that feel true to my vision in order to execute on this story.

And it's a war. It's so much of a war to get this stuff done that they made a 10 episode TV show about it. And the same is true today, except there's a lot of scientific reasoning going behind the way decisions are made as opposed to entrusting. talented people. Now, trusting talented people, as we all know, is complicated. Talented people are complicated. You know, they can be unpredictable. Yeah, fucking wise is so complicated. Can't believe we're still with them.

I was just about to make an ESPN joke. You beat me too much. Fair. But so anyway, like, if you don't trust the talented people to do their work and you push them and say, we need a show for women 18 to 34, you know, unmarried who have a cat, you're going to get a certain kind of show. You know, like, that's like, that's, and it's not going to feel creative. It's not going to feel original, you know, we own the city is not an invented world. It's based on a true story. It just so happens to be made by deeply creative people. So, I don't know. That's, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's worse than that. I think, especially like

a place like Netflix, I think they think their audience, like they're going for the biggest collective number they can get. And their assumption is that that audience is not that smart. Yeah. And they have to dumb things down. Yeah. And you think like there's a strategy with their shows where every show has to have a little cliffhanger.

So it'll make you want to watch the next show. And it has to be easily explainable. And it has to have that trailer that the moment you click on the show and you say, what's this? They're explaining the show to you. They're putting like when those little kids, when they're in the mall, the kids that can't sit still and their mom has to have the kid on a leash. Sean, don't ever put your kid on a leash. I'm all-time anti-leash for humans. Too late. They have to put their kid on the leash because the kids, and it's like Netflix puts the leash on their viewers. And they're like, here, we don't trust you to walk around the mall.

We're going to have to pull you. And this is what this movie's about and you're stupid. And I just, I don't think that's going to win. I really don't. And I really think that's part of the reason their stock price is down. Yeah, I'm a little bit more cynical because, you know, when the Queen's Gambit thing came out and it became this runaway hit and the creator was like, these motherfuckers didn't want to do this. They just didn't want to do this. Like, everybody thought this was a waste of time and it failed. But like the reality is like for every Queen's Gambit, there's like seven Bridgetons.

So like, it was like 70 Bridgerdins. You know what I mean? Like, just so the audience knows if you haven't seen that show, it's fucking bad. Okay? It's bad. It's just bad, objectively. But guess what? It's a major success, major hit.

And, you know, at the end of the day, if you're Netflix and, you know, you're held accountable by stockholders, et cetera, et cetera, you're going to put your energies into that, man. That's just, no, you want outer banks. You want outer banks. on Bridgeron. Exactly. Even like Stranger Things, I don't know if,

I don't know if stranger things happens with the way Netflix is now. I think both things can be true. I think it can be a place where the Queen's Gambit and Squid Game happen and because of the, just the force of production that they have there, they're just making so much

that they are going to land on some truly original or interesting stories. To me, the more worrying aspect of the Netflix story is just the incredible reliance on reality programming and the dominance. of reality programming because that to me feels very much. Remember that moment? I want to say it was like the early 2000s when Fear Factor took off and NBC and the

apprentice was taking off and NBC just threw itself headlong into the reality race. And then all of a sudden just felt like every network had seven to 10 reality or game shows that were dominating their content. And then it like it basically hollowed out a generation of creative voices. And that led to the rise of HBO and show. Showtime and all that stuff. But if Netflix, which is supposed to be a bastion for creators, that is a place that is already taking that lesson less than 20 years later, that this is what people really

want, like Was is saying, and you're right, Was, it's a little, it's a little demoralizing, honestly, is somebody who spends a lot of time talking about what's on TV. Especially as a snob like me who even ended up watching the ultimatum and liking it. Right. Yeah, I like some of those shows. That's the problem. Some of them are entertaining. Well, there's another piece of this.

Like if Lord of the Rings works for Amazon with the amount of money they're spending on that, Stranger Things clearly worked for Netflix. And I think that, what was it, like 30 million in episodes, something like that? They were treating it like it was a Marvel movie. And will these big streamers, they'll both be cutting back on the amount of content they're making,

but then gravitating toward the super expensive, always trying to get the James Hardin's Supermax contract type of shows versus like trying to develop smaller hits, trying to work with filmmakers on their way up and stuff like that. So I have no idea how the next four years will play out content-wise. The Queens Gambit thing will never happen again

because I feel like the pandemic was a huge piece of that. There was, it came along at the perfect time in a whole bunch of ways. There weren't, that all the production had stalled on shows and it was one of the few shows left that was in the can. It was really good. It opened on a week where there was nothing going on. I specifically remember I was home with my wife that week, that weekend, that Friday, and we were just, we're trapped in the

house. It was a pandemic. What are we going to do? What's Queens Gambit? That looks interesting. Now it's like there's so much noise and so much content. I don't think that happens again. Netflix also fired the executive who developed that show like shortly after it launched. So that tells you all you need to know. Yeah, that's not, that's not great either. I still have faith. I think HBO as long as... I think of faith in HBO. Yeah.

I still have faith in HBO. Yeah. Some of the stuff that they've done, like White Lotus is a good example. Now, should they have done White Lotus season two? We'll find out. Like that they might have gone back to the well. Who knows?

But, you know, it's the same thing. That was a one creator, one person writing room show, which I think if I was running a network, I would be looking more at that kind of model versus like trying to put together. I just trust one voice. I don't even care about a writer's room.

And I think that you're going to get more interesting content. In this case, they trusted two people, plus a director who was, you know, a really incredible get for the point he's at at his career. But yeah, I hope we have more of these shows. I guess the last question we should ask is if, like, if David Simon was on this Zoom with us, what would we tell him? Because I don't feel like his work should be done here. I feel like he is telling the most important stories of just about anybody we have now.

And I just hope he keeps pushing. But do you or do you feel like, was, this is it. Like he, the wire, this was the spiritual son of the wire. And now we're done. I mean, I enjoyed stuff like the deuce. I enjoyed the joint that he did with Oscar Isaac. But that just didn't feel. as lived in as this and the wire because, you know,

he literally lived in Baltimore, right? Like he eight, breathed, slept this stuff. And I think there's a material difference to those works and these works. So I don't know, like, how often can you go back to that same well? I mean, I know personally me, now, like, if David, if David Simon is doing anything having to do with the city of Baltimore, I'm completely locked in. But, you know, as a creative person, people don't want to keep doing the same stuff over and over again, right?

So I don't know how you square that circle, honestly. I have an idea. I'm going to pitch it to Sean. Sean, you're the head of HBO Max. Casey Boyes has resigned. Okay. That seems like a reasonable jump in my career. Simon, he hits newspapers in Season 5 of the Wire, which became a controversial season that is now, like, severely underrated.

Season 5's excellent. People are, ah, season five wheels came up. It's like, yeah, there's one, you're right. There's, there's one mistake. Yeah,

the docks are tough. I think season five is better than season two. I know it's good to say the docs, well, they actually showed you how square people are men. No, docs is whack. Stop.

So he hits newspapers, but if he dove into newspapers in 2022 in this decade and just what their relationship, is to the community, how they've been able to figure out a little bit, how to stay profitable, which was, you know, seemed impossible 10 years ago. And it seemed like even recently five years ago, we had the guys who created the athletic basically saying, we're here to kill newspapers. And now newspapers seem to have survived that. And they have a lot of complicated stuff in a

whole bunch of ways. There's union stuff with newspapers that versus management. There's how to keep talent. There's podcasting. all these different things, but also you're supposed to be covering your area. And sometimes there's not money in that. Sometimes there's more area to cover everything. Like the New York Times isn't a New York newspaper anymore. It's a national newspaper. I would love to see him dive into the world of newspapers. I know he won't, but that would be, if he came to me and was like, hey, what show should I do next? I'm really interested in, I just don't feel like anybody's nailed newspapers way back when late 70s or early 80s they spun Lou Grant off Mary Tyler

Moore and they did the Lou Grant show, which was kind of the prestige show of its time. It won multiple Emmys and it's an amazing Ed Asner thing where he's just this funny guy on Mary Tyler Moore and now he's running a newspaper and they go a whole different direction and it's an early prestige show. And really since then nobody's gone in newspapers at all, which I don't really fully understand. Anyway, that's my pitch. it's interesting. I'll say that the stuff in season five, as I get older, that bothers me more is the serial killer stuff that I felt like was a little bit ham-fisted with McNulty. Yeah, it definitely was. There's no question. You know, when season five was airing, I was basically like a young reporter.

I was a young writer and journalist. And I thought it was a little bit over the top, the way that they characterize some of that stuff. But I know how angry David Simon is about the way that newspapers work and the way that they devolved in that era. In fairness to him, we own the city is based on Justin Fenton's book. We own this city, which he's a Baltimore son crime reporter. I mean,

he's basically a young pup, David Simon. And so he obviously still has a lot of respect for that world and especially for the people who do that work, which kind of like cops is slow and boring and hard and requires conversations and actions that you don't necessarily want to be pursuing all the time. So would it be interesting for him?

I mean, personally, His anger and his frustration at broken systems, I think it'd be fascinating to plug him into the New York Times. Like everything has happened in the New York Times in the last five years in the way that national discourse has kind of poisoned the purpose of civic institutions. Because that's really what he is about. He's a civic artist. He's somebody who goes into a city, whether it be in Jersey and show me a hero, whether it be in New York City in the 70s and the deuce, or whether it be in Baltimore in these stories that he's been telling. And he shows us

what's underneath everyone's fingernails. You know, he shows us the grime, and the frustration and the anger and the rage and the insecurity that animates some of the most complicated parts of living in a city at that time. So as long as he's able to go to a place like that and explore a story about the good and bad decisions that people make, like, I'm in. I will watch anything he's done. There's nothing I wouldn't do, but I've been with you guys through this whole season in that when he's in Baltimore, like what I said, he feels lived in. It feels like a place where he really understands how the people move. I would be in for Baltimore Sun or New York Times if they decided to tackle that.

But yeah, it just hasn't happened that many times where we've dove into where newspapers are as we head into like the full-fledged subscription era, which I think is now successful. And I think 10 years ago you would have said it wasn't going to be successful. Now it is. What does that mean going forward? What does that mean when you're being incentivized by profit? and by eyeballs and by making waves versus like just doing good reporting. And how do you balance the nuances of your reporters or also on podcasts? And then also like the discourse of if you're not on this side,

you're on this side and there's no nuance with that either. Yeah, what does it mean to break me over the coals for New York Times cooking? It doesn't even come with your New York Times subscription. Jesus Christ, these people aren't making enough money? All right. We'll end out that. We own this city. Hold on no, we can't end on that, Bill.

The Mets are in first place right now. Hell yeah. In the NLE East, that's what we got to end on. Unbelievable. And the Rangers are in the final four. The Yankees are good again. We're living in New York City right now. And the Knicks are hopeless as usual.

The New York Sports is back. Mid-90s are back. All right, Big Waz. Good to see you. Sean Fentasy. Good to see you as well. Thanks to Donnie for producing this one. And that's it for Prestige.

How many Barry episodes do you have left, Sean? Just two. Two more. Haven't seen him yet. Waiting to see Seven and eight. Well, Six, you covered it with Hader. Six was a banger. Did you see Six was?

No, I have not checked that out yet, but I will pretty soon here. Six was a movie. It was. Six was, and indescribable. Great job. All right. We'll see you next time in the Prestige.