The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘WeCrashed’ Episodes 1-3

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

Joanna Robinson and Sean Fennessey talk about ‘WeCrashed,’ the latest (and hopefully last?) in a string of “scammer” TV shows. It stars Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto and tells the story of the downfall of the coworking space WeWork. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Sean Fennessey Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Matt Bellany, founding partner of Puck News, and I'm covering the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. With my new show, The Town, I'm going to take you inside Hollywood with exclusive insight on what people in show business are actually talking about. Multiple times a week, I'll talk to some of the smartest people I know, journalists, insiders, all of whom can break down the hottest topics in entertainment to tell you what's really going on. Listen now. And welcome back into the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson joining me today for the last I think of the run of the scammer shows

is Sean Fennessey here to talk about We Crash. Hi Sean. Hi, I'm so happy to be here with the Grand Duchess of the Prestige TV podcast Joe. Very good to see you. Of the grift. Let's scam. Let's scam together. Let's team up.

All right. So listen, here's what's going on on the Prestige TV podcast feed. A lot of things, by the way. If you're here, there were episodes about Marvel's Mrs. Maisel this week, about Bridgeton this week, about the dropout, which I think is the best camera show currently going. And then upcoming next week, we've got coverage of Atlanta and a great new show that's debuting on Apple TV Plus Pachinko. So there's a lot going on the feed. You're going to want to stay tuned. We're trying to cover everything, which is tough. If you listen to the watch, you know that April is going to be bananas for prestige TV. But we are here for it all. This show, we crashed. The first three episodes debut today, we're recording on Friday, March 18th. We're going to talk about those three episodes, which is, this is where it begins,

Masha, Masha, Masha, and Summer Camp. Blanket. Spoiler alert for history of WeWork. Recent history, very attainable history on Wikipedia and various magazine articles in the last five years. Or a great Hulu doc. I watched in 2021. That's right. Yeah.

So, you know, there's a lot already out there about, about Adam Newman and the rise of we work that is easily accessible to you. We are here to talk about this show, which is based on a particular podcast, we crashed, colon, the rise and follow we work. So that is what we're talking about today. If you haven't watched those first three episodes yet, you might want to go do them. I think the beginning of our conversation, though, will be general enough that if you're just wondering, should I watch these first three episodes, we might be able to cover that for

you right here at the beginning. So let's get started. Sean, I'm so delighted that you specifically are doing this with me because I've had a chance to talk to the great Jody Walker about scammer shows, to Chris Ryan about scammer shows. I've heard Bill and Mallory talk about scammer shows. But how are you feeling about this current TV era that we are experiencing? I don't really like it.

I don't, that doesn't mean I don't like all of these shows. shows. I think some of them are better than others. I think you and I are in agreement that the dropout is kind of head and shoulders above the rest of these. And I'm having a lot of fun with Super Pump. And I knew that I was going to have a lot of fun with Super Pump. I listened to your conversation with Chris about that show. And I think I feel very similarly to Chris that I'm just enough on the Copplement and Levine wavelength dialogue and approach-wise that it's just a fun hang for me. But the actual content of these shows as someone who consumes a lot of media, I don't really understand its necessity.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why we need something this elevated, expensive, and put on a pedestal for something that millions of people have already consumed. People have already read dozens of articles about WeWork. They've already listened to podcasts about WeWork. The same is true for the dropout. So you really have to bring something extra special to the telling of these stories. Maybe it's a new lens on the story. Maybe it is a recontextualization. of recent history, or maybe it's just two bad shit going for performances, which is what this

show has, right? Right, right. I think that's right. I mean, yeah, maybe it's just Jared Leto and prosthetics or maybe it's something else. But I think you and I are both come into this, a lot of familiarity with the story already. And I think that's true. That's definitely true for me for Elizabeth Holmes. It's less true for me for Travis and Uber, just the specificity of it.

I think I didn't get into the details of. So there's something for me to learn there. And then inventing Anna, which is slightly outside of this because it's not like a Silicon Valley grift. It's just a classic grift. But big accent work all around. But I just think that I'm trying to understand why this is happening right now is my curiosity. Because obviously we have a great recent history of similar properties. You know, I think you and I both really love the social network.

we feel however we do about the big shorter vice, Wolf of Wall Street, American Crime Story is something, you know, Ryan Murphy did for better, for worse, sometimes better, sometimes worse. And then these various docs, like these documentaries that have been popping up on Netflix or Hulu, either about the Fire Fest or about WeWork, or Tiger King, I think, is also in that mix. And obviously, we've got a lot of competing Tiger King properties coming up. Is it like a, is it a Schadenfreude thing? Is it tabloid, you know, kind of story dressed up in prestige?

Like, what do you think, Sean? At the risk of getting a little bit high-minded and pretentious at the top of this conversation, I just think that I think American audiences love stories about shameless entrepreneurs, people who are desperate to, you know, self-mythologize and pursue greatness. You know, it's kind of embedded in our DNA. And so all of those stories that you just talked about, some of them are scammer stories, but most of them are about people who are going for it, who are trying to make something out of themselves that they didn't come from necessarily. I think that's true, especially of all of these shows. You know, some of these shows are about immigrants, these new TV shows. Some of them are just about people who are ruthless capitalists who come from modest means. But they all have this thing that I think not all people in this country have, but a lot of people have. And that's something you're trained to have. growing up in America, which is like, you can win. You can get everything you ever wanted if you believe enough, if you work hard enough, and if you step on enough people. And for whatever it is,

like, and this goes back to the great films of the 1970s, this goes back to the great fiction of the 40s and 50s in the post-war. There is a kind of like relentless pursuit of what you feel you deserve that we get connected to. And so it's not shocking. I think the thing that differentiates some of the movies and TV shows that you just underline there was either we had a kind of critical distance from something like OJ and American Crime Story. We were like, okay, this is 15, 20 years later. So let's try to understand this in a new way. Or there were stories that were not as exploited. You know, the Big Short, of course, was a great book and a bestseller. But there weren't five versions of the Big Short already existing. There wasn't already

a documentary. There wasn't already a podcast about it. Like we're in this mass media age, like mass media is a phrase that makes more sense now. So when you have so many iterations of the same story, when you finally get to the lightly fictionalized star headlined version, I'm already kind of a state of exhaustion on the story itself. So you really got to do something unique to get us excited about it. Also, just candidly, like the social network, of course, one of my favorite movies at all time.

It's a little bit of a mascot of the ringer. We talk about it all the time here. That's just an example of like people at the height of their powers, at the right time coming to a story. And it's a lot to ask for something like inventing Anna or we crashed to rise to that level. You know, like that's a once in a 10 year movie. And this is a show on Apple TV Plus. And that's okay.

Absolutely. I think we're going to get into this a little bit, but I also think that question of a feature length story versus eight episodes or 10 episodes of a story is worth asking. But I think also what we need to think about is these stories as IP. You and I've talked about this a lot in our various podcasts over the years about Hollywood's increasing insecurity of selling news stories. And so exist an IP, be it a comic book or a bestselling novel or whatever it is, is something that Hollywood feels like it needs. And I think these podcasts, but not necessarily specifically the podcast, but the personalities that the podcasts are about, are functioning as a kind of IP, if that makes sense. because, you know, just watching a great show about an oddball woman played by Amanda Seifred is different from the Elizabeth Holmes show. Do you know what I mean?

I do. Do you think that you and I are adled, right? We watch too much. You especially. I don't know how you do it. You know, you watch every goddamn TV show. And as you pointed out, the watch just outlined how crazy April is. It's been pretty crazy for about two years now.

Yeah. And it's only getting worse. But if you're just a, you know, A regular person with a regular job, not in the media. It's not your responsibility to keep up with everything that's happening in the world. Do you think that people are like, I know what that is. That's about WeWork and it crashed so I want to watch this show. Does just the familiarity of the concept excite people?

Do people say, like, I read the story about the Grifter in New York Magazine? And so what I really want to do is watch eight episodes of a show? Or do you think most people who come to these shows don't know anything about them? And this just happens to be a confluence of events in which various streamers are optioning this material about these scammers. I feel like you just sort of said it both ways. You know, you were just saying like, well, people who come to this already familiar with the story. Or you just saying people like you and I come to it already familiar with the story and that, you know, the masses. I don't know.

I just think any, and I don't blame them given the sheer amount of competition. But I think any streamer, studio, et cetera, is willing to do. do whatever they can to have some sort of hint of familiarity with their shows. There's another show coming up that's not really in this, quite in this vein, but it's sort of in the true crime vein, which is the girl from Plainville starring El Fanning. It's tremendous, but I think it's going to, or I will say, L. Fanning's performance is tremendous, but I think that it has less familiarity than some of these stories about these, you know, gonzo figures. of our recent memory.

But you're right that to see a Chiron at the start of this show that says 2019, I agree with you about that distance factor because I'm just like, ah, we were just here. Like, should we take a beat? And really, in 10 years from now, look at this culture as a whole. There is a reason why all of this sort of existed in a clump. So what was going on with us as a whole. And are we too much still in it to really see what that all was?

So that's a question. The other idea I had, and I don't think it could possibly be true, because you just talked about this as sort of like this lionizing of capitalism. But I'm also am wondering, is there a critique of capitalism in these shows in the way that we venerate these figures and put them up on pedestals? And sometimes there's no there there with some of these figures, like Adam New Minerals with Holmes. I don't know. I think it's possible that it's certainly there. Yeah. But it's borderline subtextual.

Jewel. And part of that is because I think that every single one of these shows right now is making an honest effort to show you what an iconoclastic figure the lead is. The lead is, the sort of psychology of those characters and their desire to succeed is getting, is subsuming all other themes. So it's subsuming the idea of like how has venture capital kind of corrupted the state of capitalistic pursuit in our country where we make a lot of things that don't make any money and there's the expectation of future earnings is baked into this structure that we have and so like maybe this is a house of cards. That's a compelling idea that I think would be fascinating to explore in something like super pumped. I'm not really seeing it. It's not really being explicated. It is of interest

to me just having had a very small amount of experience with that world. And the same is true. I think in this show where like growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, but why is something I've also thought about and that could be sort of at the core of the show. It might be I haven't watched far enough ahead to get a sense of where it is. You know, when we were chatting about watching it, you were sort of like, you know, the dropout is really headed somewhere interesting. I'm not sure if this

is this show is headed somewhere interesting. It's fun enough, but I think there's also like an interesting conversation about the tonality of all of these shows because they're all seem like they were pitched as comedies. And then when you start spending time with them, like none of them are funny. And most of them aren't that fun. And so like, they're all kind of tragic. Yeah, it's a hard sell as a comedy.

I think what maybe these various TV studios mistook as our delighted shot on Friday and a documentary, like Firefest, right? Firefest, we all watched one or both. I watched both documentaries about it. And we just had a couple weeks where we were like, I cannot believe this happened. Oh, my gosh, all the details. But if you were to make an eight episode series about it and force me to confront the deeper backstories of these various people and how they got, where they got and all that sort of stuff, it's hard to maintain that comedic tone. The dropout, I know this isn't an episode about the dropout, but the dropout has like one pure comedy episode, which is episode four. Actually, there's like a bit of a Stephen Frye, you know, emotional performance balancing the comedy in that.

This one, I think, the pilot episode, I think, and actually episode. two, I think you really see that comedic intention. And then with episode three, things get a little bit different. But we should say that the sort of the driving force behind the show are Lee Eisenberg and Drew Crivello, who did bad teacher, good boys, and a number of other things. But if you've seen bad teacher and good boys, you know that these are guys who are comedy guys who like people behaving badly. Those are like, you know, that's the unifying thread so far of their work. And so you could see how they could pitch and Adam Newman as a character

if you've seen the documentary does seem like a comedy character but then they decided to make him both a comedy character and a tragedy character and that's that's a lot to try to undertake he almost seems like an Andy Kaufman character you know he doesn't really seem there's kind of an absence of humanity in him

and it's like a little hard based on having watched the documentary having read a lot about him and also having now watched Jared Littow's portrayal of him, I'm trying to figure out if there's any there there. Yeah. And that's like another thing about any kind of show about a fraudster, right? Yeah.

I mean, I think that's a really good point. And I think that's why the dropout's decision to spend three episodes humanizing Lizzo Thomes before they put her into sort of monster territory was, I think, the move. I totally agree. And I think so this show is telling us about a 12-year span of history. And then it'll dive deeper in the backstories of these various characters later on. But basically 12-year rise of Adam Newman from, what is it, serial entrepreneur, you know, business student grifter, into, you know, the titan of an industry into his ouster from his own company. And we work.

I just want to ask you really quickly, have you ever worked in a we work office? So I was certainly going to bring this to the show, which is that the ringer, when we first, first started in New York, our office space was a we work. And for years, we held it as an office space. And so we benefited from the absurd scam that was this company by when we were a startup ourselves utilizing the space. And it was a really nice space. I obviously live in Los Angeles, don't live in New York, so I wasn't there all the time. But I worked out of there plenty of times over the years. And I would say it was adequate. You can ask some of our New York employees if it was adequate enough. But I certainly got a sense of the culture that they were trying to build in

those spaces. I certainly got a sense of the energy and the vibe and the value proposition that they were trying to create. And I think that there was something intriguingly creative about the core concept. And but I don't know if it's interesting enough to have become the most interesting scam story. I think like it's what what distinguishes this story is like the amount of money that is in the conversation, like the scale of the potential wealth as opposed to like, this actually isn't Facebook

in that it like radically changed the way that we interact with the world. Like that's the other thing that around some of those ideas and shows and films that you were talking about earlier. It's like some of those things were world changers.

We were, wants to be. But did you, have you worked in a Wii work? Like, how can you speak to the experience? I've worked in co-working spaces. I'm not sure any of them where actually technically we work. But I do think that when you listen to,

and maybe this is just the magnanimous of Jared Aletta, which we'll talk about the second, but when you listen to Adam Newman talk, or this character of Adam Newman, talk about the quote-unquote virtue of what he wants to sell here, this idea that he grew up on a kibbutz and wants to give people the community that he enjoyed growing up as a kid.

I think there's something there in terms of our increasing isolation, especially we've all felt it in the pandemic. But pre-pandemic, plenty of people were working at home, working online only. A lot of sources of our communities have been going away. We don't eat out as much anymore. We don't go to public gatherings as much anymore. We don't belong to churches as much anymore, et cetera, et cetera. And so that thirst for community and connection or even that thirst to continue the college experience,

which is something that he's selling here, that is something that I've seen, Something I do have familiaried with is the big tech companies here in Northern California that sell recent college grads on a, you don't really have to leave college feeling of their campuses, right? Like you have a DC, you have a dining commons here, you've got laundry here, you've got everything here, you don't have to go out into the big bad world, you can just come here and stay in that incubation. So I think he is tapping into something true and smart. He just did it in a way where he lost sight of, of, you know, what he was doing or any sort of proportion. Does that make sense?

It does. I just think that the legacy for many people who have spent time in a we work is free coffee and free beer. It's not what the extraordinary sense of community that was baked it. Because working life is so different from college life and dorm life. And like essentially, like, there are people who are workaholics. I am one of them. I am a person who has spent a lot of time staying in the office too late. But our world culture has also changing pretty radically.

And so the idea of like creating a space where people want to spend more time was actually in conflict, I think, where our culture was going fascinatingly. And now having spent two years in a pandemic and most people working from home, we work seems like an even more absurd proposition. So it is, you know, I think his core concept, I think you're right on. It's interesting how he's trying to channel something emotional and experiential. into this new business. But also, he seems like such a joke the whole time that it's a little bit hard to accept that there's any kind of like core emotional psychology

behind his serial entrepreneurship. All right. Let's talk about Adam Newman as played by Jared Leto and his wife, Rebecca, is played by Anne Hathaway. These are two of my... I don't know, Jared Lettow is very complicated, but in terms of like actors who go for it, these are two of my top tier favorites, right?

And always brings that theater kid energy. I think this is a perfect role for that theater kid energy. And I think she's fantastic in this show, whether or not the show always serves her as a question. But like she is bringing, I think, exactly what she needs to bring. Jared is doing a full accent, full prosthetics, full house of Gucci.

Like this is, this is what he's doing here. loads of charm. When you see him, especially in the premiere, sort of doing those small-scale grifts of like a neighbor or whatever the case may be or of Rebecca, like that you get it. But while Anne is all emotion all the time, that's what she always gives us.

Is there any emotional there-there-there with Jared Leto's performance of Adam Newman? I mean, is there any emotional there in any Jared Leto performance? I think it's a question. question worth asking. You know, I think it's a little bit like, um, a really great fireworks show on July 4th, you know, like it'll captivate you. Yeah. There's something beautiful about it. Yeah. You, you really only get it once, once a year. But what does it really mean?

What is it really about? It's just, it's just, it's just distracting us from what's going on in the world. I wouldn't say the same for Anne Hathaway. I am a board certified doctor of loving Anne Hathaway. I always have been, I am aware of all of the criticisms of her, of what could be perceived as her faults. To me, those are not faults. She's trying really hard. I love people who try hard. She prepares. I love people who are prepared. She wants to be great. I love people who want to be great. And she imbues all of her work with like a real sincerity. And sometimes it can seem ridiculous. In this case, I think she's really well cast as a person who takes themselves this seriously and who is questing for meaning really, you know, who's constantly looking for

value in her own life. And I think, you know, I've only seen the three episodes thus far, but I think through that third episode, they have given her a lot more psychology to work with than Adam Newman. You know, she is not an empty suit, you know, in front of this story. I would say that episode four is, dives into some of Adams. you know, his dad's in that episode, some like backstory stuff. But I, I wonder if it's almost too late at that point. Why would we put Rebecca in front of him? The question, you know, our colleague Linda Holmes asked this question on Twitter, and I didn't really agree with the way she phrased it, but she was asking sort of why there was so much Rebecca, why there was so much

Anne Hathaway in this. And I think you and I would both agree. There's probably no such thing as too much Anne Hathaway. But the question of pitching this story, the logline that they use, is a love story worth 47 billion. And I think that's an odd way. I think that feels like they're way into this. They were like, we'll make it a love story. But I don't know that that was the right approach here. And something I will say, an episode four, America Ferreira shows up as another figure.

She injects a lot of energy and sort of outside perspective into this in a way that I think is much needed. In a way that the dropout has been successfully sort of handing off the ball, handing off the ball, handing off the ball, for who has perspective in that story. But I think episode three might be a real roadblock for people because as much as I appreciate giving in Hathaway a lot to play, it feels like a weird stop in the story and an odd proportion of backstory for that character in that moment, especially in an abrupt shift of tone given the comedy bent of the first two episodes. What do you think?

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think on the one hand, it's like an impressive showcase for Anne Hathaway to do what Anne Hathaway does, but it's also a confusing pivot point in the story and sort of like trying to understand what story we're trying to tell. I think Linda's point is a good one, which is why her first instead of Adam, like, why do we go effectively 150 minutes before getting where Adam comes from, really, aside from a few offhanded comments that he makes about how he grew up. I think on the other hand, it's like, if you got Anne Hathaway, and I'm kind of surprised that she did this show honestly. I think there's a good case

that it's a little beneath her, truthfully. But if you got her, you kind of have to use her. You kind of have to exploit her talents in the best way. So it's a tricky one. I mean, honestly, if this isn't a show that I was racing out to watch, it's actually most interesting in the context of the conversation that you've set up here, which is amongst

these other shows how it fits in, in part because this one is so recent. But I'd like for Jared Letto to find a role in which someone says, like, he tapped into something deeper. And maybe by the time we get to the end of this show, we'll be able to say that. Maybe. What do you make of Dallas Byers Club?

Like, where are you with his Oscar winning performance? I don't dislike it. I just thought it was sort of like overpraised because of the, like the milieu and the atmosphere that John Mark Valet created. it made a very showy, very sort of like, you know, makeup enhanced, wardrobe enhanced, kind of like affectation enhanced performance seem, frankly, better than it actually usually is, seemed like more deeper, more sophisticated. I thought Matthew O'Connor was the one doing like the really great work in that movie personally.

And so like he got his Oscar and, you know, we were all able to celebrate, you know, the lengths that he's willing to go for his role. but I never get the sense that there is like something something mysterious about him. You know, like a lot of our great actors who we know have big process. Yeah. There's like, you know, Daniel Day Lewis is the cliche, but like he's authentically on an exploration.

Jared Leto is on an exploration for attention. And this feels like one more piece of that. I think a more recent comparison would be Jeremy Strong, right? Like we can read a New Yorker profile of Jeremy Strong and we can have our opinions about its process, but it's an undeniable performance that goes, down to the bone. Whereas Jared Leto, I'm not sure that that's there. I don't think it's ever been there. I thought when I stopped covering Euphoria, I would stop talking about my so-called life.

But, like, I think you can't really look at Jared Leto, like, his legacy without considering he played Jordan Catalano in my so-called life. And the whole point of that character is that he is, like, the object of a desire, but not really, really profoundly a character himself. And that's sort of what Jared Leto has been ever since. So meanwhile, Anne Hathaway, let's just point out two incredible comedy strains that they gave for this incredible, incredible performer. Number one, the ongoing Gwyneth Paltrow bit, incredible content. Number two, the play that she does and her decision to go big with an accent, and I maybe haven't laughed harder at anything that's happened in a TV show this year. I had, like, tears streaming out my face.

I thought it was an amazing moment. Can you contextualize the Gwendoza? thing for listeners maybe so that they know how they're dunking on her? Yeah, if you haven't watched the show and you're listening to us, talk about it. Rebecca Newman is Gwineth Paltrow's cousin. And sort of runs in a similar vein that she does. She tried acting. She's a serious vegan.

We meet her as a yoga instructor, all this sort of stuff. She's sort of like beta Gwyneth Paltrowing her way through life and something. And trying. And that gives her this motivation to try to carve out her own kingdom. She's running in the shadow of her much more famous cousin, Gwyneth Paltrow. And I think that there's a number of times where people say, is Gwyneth going to be here? Like at her wedding, it's constantly, is Gwyneth going to be here? And Anne Hathaway is sort of the tightness that she gives Rebecca in her face as she's sort of

cheerily, like, no, is speaks volumes. It's incredible. I just love it. And I would say episode three, maybe if it happened elsewhere in the season, is a great indictment of white feminism and specifically like sort of the white feminism that influencers, I mean, she's a great actress and an influencer, Gwantaltrow, espouse. And so I think there is something interesting happening there. I just, again, question its placement in the show. I think there's also like a, ultimately, I feel like a lack of empathy for Rebecca. at the end of episode three, even though they're giving us this context for some of the pain that

she's endured for like this relationship that she has with her father, who is, you know, kind of a crook himself and that maybe has influenced her, her attraction to Adam and, you know, the idea of fortifying this business together. I think the idea of a partnership is actually more interesting than the romance aspect that's being marketed. But sometimes these businesses need two people to sort of forge ahead and push forward. Also, the, the Gweth Pachel thing is funny because it feels almost like self-reflexive commentary on Anne Hathaway. You know, Anne Hathaway is actually kind of in an odd moment in her career. Her last five years are a bit unusual.

You know, she's like, this is what she's done since 2016. She was in Alice Through the Looking Glass. She was in a film called Colossal, which was a small kind of genre movie, which was good. She was in Oceans 8, which was not considered a success. She was in Serenity, which was deeply not considered a success, though I had a great time with it. She was in a failed comedy called The Hustle with Rebel Wilson. Yeah. She had a somewhat unforgiving part in Dark Waters, the Todd Haynes movie.

She was in a mega Netflix bomb called The Last Thing He Wanted. Wow. And then she was in The Witches from Robert Domechus, which went straight to HBO Max. Wow. And then she was in Lockdown, the COVID movie that also went to HBO Max. Not great. Which was not good. Not great.

That's for someone who's like so good, Oscar winning, very famous. That's a pretty bad run. That is a bad run. I mean, Colossal's great and she's great in it. And she's also, I think, the best part about Ocean State. Totally agree. But when you line it all up like that, it doesn't, maybe we come back to the question of like, is this beneath her right now? Maybe it's not.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. She deserves more. And she's fantastic in this. Let me ask you about our incessant need. Okay. The fuzzy line between film and television, right? and how films are getting longer. They're all three hours right.

And this is a small question, Sean. My favorite topic. Films are getting longer. They're all, you know, we're getting these three-hour movies. And then, you know, we're getting these six to eight episode TV shows. My question is, would most of these shows that we're talking about here be better if they were feature length? If we're trying to do a comedy tone sustained, a wolf of Wall Street, you know, isn't this? wacky what this person did and, and, uh, there was, there were some consequences. Um,

would not be, would not that be better sustained over two or maybe even three hours? It's a great. It's a really important question. I think the marketplace doesn't give a shit what you and I think about this. Sure. They're going to do whatever they think is valuable to creating more content on the streamers to drive subscription numbers. What does that ever stop me from having an opinion shot whether or not I can influence anyone? Tush. And I look forward to hearing yours too. I think, I think we're in a bad state with this, honestly. I think we're in a really bad state with that. That doesn't mean that I think we crash should be a movie.

I'm not sure that that makes sense necessarily. I think it's whether or not this story should be told with a big budget and big actors and big filmmakers is worth asking. Which is not to say that there's no value in docu drama. I like docu drama. All the President's Men is one of the greatest movies ever made. I think though, and I've thought about this quite a bit with winning time, which I'm also watching with a somewhat critical eye at the moment because I don't.

really understand a lot of the editorial decisions that the show is making, not just the filmmaking style, but like what stories they're choosing to tell within that world. And I have the same kind of slight confusion around we crashed and the dropout to some extent, which I know for sure I would have preferred the dropout personally as a two and a half hour movie, even though it might not have deepened the Holmes character the way that I think Amanda Seifred and the creators of that show have over this stretch of time. Just for me personally, I love a movie. I love a movie with a big, bold performance at the center of it.

Yeah. And I would have preferred that. I think it's possible to have both. I don't think it's like, I don't want to be, I'm trying to avoid being too doom saying about this stuff right now. And I, like, I understand why the culture has moved to a place where eight-hour shows are at the vanguard of modern entertainment and that consumption hours and time spent are the key metrics in addition to subscriber growth.

And I know why we get all this stuff. the thing is, is like, I think it's harder than ever. Yeah. And I want to know your opinion about this because you're watching more of it than I am. I think it's harder than ever to make an eight-hour show that is legendary, that is like iconic, that people are like, you know, my favorite thing was, was we crashed. Like, is anyone ever going to say that? No. People's intentions are pure and they go to these things sincerely trying to make something good that people like and they want to work, they want to make money, they want to

pay their mortgage, they want to feed their kids. I'm not trying to diminish any of those things. But when you mention the social network on a podcast like this, and I'm like, that actually is the best movie of the 2010s, like legitimately. It has something to say. It's people at the height of their craft, and

it lasts. Can any of these eight-hour docu-drama shows be the best thing you saw all year? And that's ultimately when I talk about when I talk despairingly about TV shows that feel disposable or, you know, the binge model making things feel ephemeral. You know, part of that is the lack of ongoing conversation that cements it. So like if we

if we take 10 weeks, you and I to talk about succession, that does something to cement that season of succession, not just for you and me, but for everyone listening and participating in that conversation. Ditto euphoria. You know, so that like that's the advantage of the monoculture is if enough people are watching one thing at once, we'll all remember it longer. But for a lot of these binge shows, you have to watch a lengthy previously on because you're like, wait, what happened? I like Ozarks Season 2, but I have no idea what happened there. Remind me what happened, you know? And so that lasting, the lack of lasting culture is something that I get stressed about sometimes. And so when I think of, I got in trouble, people got really mad at me what else is new on

Twitter about this, but like I said something about how I felt like every 10 episode show should probably be an eight episode show. And every eight episode show should probably be a six episode show. Like there's always just a little bit of like sag and flab in like the middle of these seasons. You know, a prime example is like basically every single Netflix comic book show has like several episodes. We're like, why? Why is this here? I totally agree. I like some of those shows. But even daredevil. I'm like, we just didn't need this much, shrink this story down. And so for something like this, where I see so much value in the core performances, despite, I mean, I agree with you on the Letto critique and the lack of emotionality,

but like Anne is bringing enough emotion that I'm not that stressed about it. America Ferreira is great when she's added into the mix, as she is always. And then the style of it, like, especially the style, the pilot, you get a bunch of, like, montage stuff with, like, some fun, like, split screen things going on. So I feel like if it were like a tight four, you know, that this could be something that we remember and get excited about. But as it is, people are going to watch it or they're not. And are they going to remember it maybe vaguely? They'll remember Jared Leto's accent, you know?

And that's what's what, I don't know if it stresses me out, but it bums me out because I feel more, even more like a lemming than I already am. Where I get to the conclusion of a show like this and I'm like, what the, why did I do that? Like my life is precious. Like, I got a lot of stuff going on in my life. Why did I spend eight hours with this one? Why did I, what happened? Couldn't I have been watching the bitter tears of Petrovon Kant and better understood the works of Fosbinder in this time?

And forget it. Forget something that ridiculous and pretentious. Like, shouldn't I have just read the New York Times instead of watching this, you know? Shouldn't I have just had another conversation with my wife instead of watching this? And that is what bums me out about some of this stuff. And not these things are not bad. We crashed is not bad.

It's pretty good, actually, relative to most of what's on TV. It's just, is it good enough? It's a question that I feel like this show on an ongoing basis, and you and I both on an ongoing basis in our lives are constantly asking ourselves. Let me just say, if folks have watched the first three and they're not sure if they want to go on, I'm just going to urge you to at least watch episode four because you will get to see Ann Hathaway in a full avatar Navi costume. Like full, like full. Sold.

Like incredible stuff. stay tuned at least at least for that um let me talk really quickly to you about the morality of the show this is something that bill raised when talking about the uh the premier of super pumped this question that like bill was pushing back against of this idea of these shows about grifters um do they need to have a heavy moral lesson do we mean to be learning something very valuable about ourselves about the way that we look at the world etc and um he was saying no it could just be entertaining And I think that's true. I think when you put something on a pedestal as we have social network, I think social network does both, right?

And so in an ideal world, maybe we're doing both. But we can have a good time with a Quentin Tarantina voiceover and super pumped, you know, if we want to. But my question has to do with how this and also how the dropout are framed. They both have slight framing narratives, which bring us to the conclusion of the story. and the downfall of the griff with the dropout. It's a deposition that Elizabeth Holmes is giving you 2017. With this, it's the ouster of Adam Newman in 2019. We start there.

So my question is, do you feel like these TV makers, these storytellers, feel like they need to assure the audiences, audiences that are maybe less familiar with this, of like, we're headed for, if the title we crashed, isn't enough to tell you, we're headed for a downfall. there is a moral consequence coming here. Is that a moral decision or is that just like an ordinary storytelling decision? What do you think?

It's a really good question. I'm not sure yet. I mean, I'm not sure yet with this show. I think I agreed with Bill's point about super pumped, but in a different way, which is to say that I'm not really super interested in most art that is attempting to teach me something.

I think I'm better trying to understand things, but I don't want a lesson per se. And if there is a lesson and we crashed, what is it going to be? Don't be a lying scam artist? I don't need to be told that. Don't promise something you can't deliver. The same is true of Super Pump.

Don't be evil. I mean, it's patently obvious that Travis Kalanick and everything that he is doing to kind of undermine his competitors, to grow his company, the way he treats his employees, his kind of monomania that is so obviously, like, destructive to everyone around him. Like, we don't need, like, the sophistication of the social network to know that that guy sucked, right?

Or that he was just like, he was kind of a virus, even though he created something that a lot of people appreciate and benefited from. So I guess, like, whether or not a show like this can get beyond that is the way that I'm grading it in a lot of ways. And most of these shows can't because we already know. how everything played out. There's no revelation ultimately in a show like this because I think a lot of people start to watch shows like this. I've talked to my wife about this and I know she does it. And she just like pulls up the Wikipedia

page of the person that the show is about and then just reads everything that happened to them before they finish watching it. It's a very common thing. I do it sometimes. Yeah. So like because people have those impulses and they just want to know like did this person fail in the way that I hoped they would fail or did they disappear or did they die

or whatever, whatever expectations you have, like, no matter what, being moralized by a TV show is like kind of a joke. You know, the idea of like Apple TV like paying $50 million to teach you a lesson about how to be a better person is absurd. I agree with you. I don't mean like, I definitely don't mean a finger wagging moral lesson where you walk away and you can summarize the moral lesson of something. But do you not feel that?

And again, it is unfair to compare these shows to one of the greatest films all the time. But do you not feel like you walk out of the social network feeling like you may be understand yourself or the nature of humanity a little differently? Yes, but in part because of the decision that was made to not be faithful to the actual events of the story of Mark Zuckerberg. I think that some of the decisions that were made to create motivations was actually more compelling and speaks more to what I get out of fictional storytelling than stories that are working very hard to unravel the psychology of people who actually exist in the world. You know, Mark Zuckerberg, there was no Rooney Mara character in his life in that

film, like in his real life. There was no like, you know, baby you're rich man. Like that whole thing, that whole like closing like heart crushing moment at the end of that movie, it tells us something about how everybody has their rosebud, but it doesn't tell us about like what was actually said in the deposition when he's being questioned by the Winkle boss's lawyer. Like that isn't what made me feel or understand anything. It was the mechanics of creative storytelling that helped me understand that. Can we crash, rise to that level? Probably not.

No, I mean, certainly not. But to that point, what's interesting about these stories that run in parable, because ultimately, the social network or the story of Mark Zuckerberg is financially a success story, right? And also, Mark Zuckerberg seems happily married. So, like, maybe he's fine. Maybe he's fine. Fine is an interesting word for him, but he is alive. Maybe he's emotionally fulfilled.

I don't know. You don't know. We don't know. That's true. The story of him succeeding against all odds, against naysayers, against people telling him that he's not doing it correctly. That's a story we understand and we're used to. We're used to seeing the person being told, no, they can't do it this way. No, they're doing it the wrong way.

And then we watch them succeed. and that's something that is interesting and emotional and something we're trained to do. What is disorienting about these various shows? I'm leaving super pumped out of it because it's doing something very different. But what's disorienting about the dropout and this show is when we see Adam Newman have in the pilot, have this sort of VC guy dress him down when he's when he's feeling good and he's out to dinner and this guy's like, oh, what are you valued that much? Come on, I eat it for breakfast, whatever.

And we see Adam say, okay, I'm going to expand. You know, that to us, we're used to that. being a hero moment. And it's not a hero moment here. And so that dissonance is, because that's the beginning of kind of the end for Adam. And so it's, that is interesting, you know, to watch a character in the dropout tell Elizabeth Holmes, she as a young woman who wants to do something to change the world medically, can't do it.

We're used to being like, of course she can. You could do it, Elizabeth, you know. And so I think that dissonance between our urge to, you know, encourage people with the story that we're being told is an interesting one at the end of the day. It is, but you just described, like, you just described a well-worn trope of television of the last 15 years, 20 years, which is the anti-hero. And that Elizabeth Holmes is like a really effective anti-hero in her own story. because in the early stages of that show when you see her engaging with Larry Ellison, for example, you're kind of rooting for her.

When she's a counterpoint to Larry Ellison, who seems like such a wealthy blowhard in the portrayal on the show, you're kind of like, get this guy's money. You know, like sell your idea, win. You're a young, industrious woman with an interesting idea. You should try to win.

With Adam Newman, I don't really give a shit if he grows Wii work. You know what I mean? Like I have, I was not like synced in with his gamble. And so because of that,

I have a different relationship to it. He's not Tony Soprano to me. You know, where Tony Soprano, he's doing terrible things all the time, but we're so emotionally connected to Gandalfini as a performer that you can't help but weirdly root for him in the face of these very dangerous moments

and very awful things that he's doing. It's slightly different because, like, I don't think anyone was telling Walter White you can't cook meth or telling Tony Soprano you can't be the head of like a crime family or whatever. And also these are, that anti-hero trend that like Don Draper of an all trend primarily was, you know, cis white male men of a certain age.

You know what I mean? So to watch a young woman do it or to watch an Adam Newman's case like an immigrant to our country do it, that feels more in line with sort of the scrappy American dream narratives. And I just think it's interesting. I mean, Elizabeth Holmes is an anti-hero. That is true. But like, I don't know. I think there could be something really interesting in playing with our expectations and then pulling the rug out.

Maybe it's just that it's Jared Leto. Maybe it's just that it's like a guy who I know has kind of had it on a silver platter since he was 16 years old because he's such a beautiful man. I do think that those other shows, you know, that Don Draper, that Tony Soprano, that Walter White, that those shows took several seasons to unlock the motivations for why they were pursuing the thing. You know, Walter White was the, you know, turned out to be a chemistry teacher when his close friends were hugely successful industrial scientists.

And so that showed you that there was some sort of like, I never got what I felt I deserved aspect to his psychology. That show was on for like five seasons. We crash isn't going to be. So that's actually the opposite of the conversation we were just having where it's like the compression of the story, oddly, is working against it in that way, even though I'm not saying I want to spend five seasons with We Crash. So it's kind of a paradox, you know?

It's a little hard to know how to tell a story like this and give you everything you feel you need to better understand or appreciate the characters. So I will say at the end of the day, for my taste, to put a button on this scammer show era that we're in, we might revisit one or two of them in the prestige feed, but this might be the end of it. And if it is, I would just say, if you're going to pick one, I would recommend the dropout, that I think is the show, the story done the best. If you want pure gonzo, what am I watching entertainment? I think super pumped is giving you that.

And I think inventing Anna, I don't actually even really want to talk about it, but I think We Crash is sitting somewhere in the middle and that, that is an odd place to be. You know what I mean? But if you're an Anne Hathaway completist or God help you if you're a Gerletto completest, you won't have a terrible time watching them do what they do best, you know. So that's my summary. What do you have to say? Same.

I have not watched Inventing Anna, so I won't pretend to have an opinion about it. Aside from that, I have watched everything else thus far. And I'm certainly enjoying the dropout the most. I'm going to keep watching We Crash, but I think I've lowered my expectations of it, haven't gotten through the first three episodes. And I'm kind of hopeful that this era is over. You know, like Pachinko is coming, right? That's a show that I'm looking forward to that's based on a novel.

That's great. I can't wait for that. Slow horses also great. Slow horses also based on books, you know, like fictional books. I think I don't need to be in a world I've already read about. I want to be in a world. I don't know anything about. That's why I'm enjoying like severance.

You know, that's what I want, really, out of my TV shows. See, you tell me I'm watching everything, but you're watching everything and all the movies also. I'm trying. So I don't know how you do it. I'm listening to all the podcasts. All right. So, Sean, if they want to hear more of your thoughts on all things, where can they find you? You'll be with me on the big picture next week.

We're covering the Oscar race. And sometimes I'm on other shows on the Ringer podcast network. And I don't know. Where else can you find me? On Instagram? Hollar me on Instagram. The nicest social media app. Excellent.

Yeah, there's an interesting free speech debate raging through Twitter today. So I would stay off. And if I were you, you can find me on the Ringerverse elsewhere in the Prestige TV podcast feed. And yeah, talking about the Oscars on the big pick. So we will see you somewhere on the Ringer feed. And thanks so much to Kai McMullen for production work on this episode. come back for Atlanta, Bichinko, and everything else that's happening in the speed next week. We'll see you then.

Bye.