The Prestige TV Podcast - Why 'The Wilds' Should Be Your Next Binge

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

Chris Ryan and Juliet Litman tell you why 'The Wilds,' basically 'Lost' but with teenage girls, should be your next TV binge. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Juliet Litman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I don't mean to say that what happened wasn't traumatic. To end up where we did, in the middle of nowhere, completely cut off from the lives we left behind. That brings us to the real question, doesn't it? What was so great about the lives we left behind? It feels like everywhere I go, somebody's asking me to meet some kind of expectation. We are stuck here. It's a 21st century. Okay, they will find us.

There was trauma. But being a teenage girl, that was. was the real living help. Diersge, I'm Juliette-Littman. I'm joined by my TV enthusiast friend, Chris Ryan. Hi, Chris. Aloha. Aloha.

Thank you so much. We have gathered here today to discuss the Wilds, which has a distinctly Hawaiian vibe to it, which is why I think you've said Aloha to me. That's right. Chris, please give me the pithy pitch on the Wilds, which you can find on Amazon Prime video. Y.A. Lost.

That was very pithy indeed. It's super pithy. Well, this is why I think this is one of those shows where you imagine that the elevator pitch doesn't even last the length of the elevator ride. It just gets bought right off the back of like, hey, guess what? What if we did Lost with Teenage Girls? Yeah, totally. So the Wild Stars Rachel Griffith and like a host of really talented young actresses,

none of whom I'd seen before. Chris, did you know any of these girls? No, I believe Leah has been in some stuff before, but I was not familiar. with any of these folks. Nor I. And so the conceit of the show The Wilds, and this is not spoiler at all. One of the great things about the show is you learn a lot in episode one on the pilot.

A group of girls, including Leah, who's kind of like the main character, but honestly, it's an ensemble show. Board a plane that's like, seems too good to be true. They believe they're headed to a teen retreat in Hawaii,

and their plane crashes, and they are washed ashore, a deserted island, and they have to fend from them, and you very quickly find out that though they think they're alone on this island a la lost, also similarly to lost, they're actually being watched and they are part of some kind of arrangement or experiment. You don't know, led by brothers and sisters own, six feet under zone, your favorite, my favorite, Rachel Griffiths. Is she anyone favorite, Chris?

Back on the small screen. Yeah, I mean, I think during, I think during six feet under, she had a pretty iconic role on that show, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, of course. I mean, Brenda, yeah. Six feet under, not discussed enough, but there's a lot of diehards out there. Anyway, Rachel Griffiths is some kind of,

what would you describe her job as from what we know? Some kind of, like a psychologist who's running basically a, like, program, I guess is the best way to say it. And, you know, like, oh, go ahead. No, as you said, it's like, Y-A lost with some elements of the Truman Show and some kind of like classic Gilligan's Island, washed ashore vibes.

And it's really good. Yeah. So like Lost, each episode tends to focus on the backstory of one of the characters. There are a couple of different framing devices that they use. I don't want to spoil anything for folks

who haven't seen it. But basically, if you liked Lost, I think you will enjoy this. I don't know that it has the philosophical and sort of mythological bent that Lost. does, but I haven't finished the season yet, so who knows? And I would recommend it because

the thing I wanted to ask you about was I feel like this goes very much hand in hand with flight attendant in a weird way. And not just because of the importance of planes in both shows. But both were the, both I think had pilot episodes directed by a woman named Susanna Fogel. And so they have that connection. And I also think that each of those shows in another era would just be perfect network shows. But this is almost like. like the prestigeification or the streamification of old network ideas. Like, this is a pretty easy sell. And it's like a really cool idea that they imbue with some edginess, like some everybody's got their trauma. People curse a bit. But like the actual story itself is pretty like mainstream

mass market. Like it would be easy to sell this. I think this would have been a really good like FX Phase 1 show. This is like a basic cable show to me. Like right up against Niptuk, huh? Yeah, I was thinking of the riches, which is, you know, is one of my all-time faves. But, like, just kind of like, um, an easy sell with an edge, basically is, is sort of what the show is not quite blue skies TV. It's a little, it's definitely darker than that. But you, it's easy to tell your mother, your grandmother, your father, your grandfather about. And like, you can recommend it to them.

And I, I think that's a really interesting point where it's like, this is the streamification of, of kind of like very straightforward conceits because it's, it's a highly bingeable show because there's a mystery involved. But it's definitely more fun to watch it spaced out, in my opinion, like one episode of a time. Oh, yeah, I've been really taking my time with this show.

Like, we watch it like once every couple of nights we'll throw one on on. I don't feel like there's a critical conversation around this, though, the way that there was with the flight attendant, which bubbled over a few weeks. Do you think that's because they dropped every episode at once? I think there's that. And I also think that the flight attendant had a couple of, like,

pop culture things happening for it, like Kaylee Cuoco's hair that seems to like kind of move into the mainstream or like at least like there was stuff to talk about with flight attendant that I think was just like straight up fun. This is a little bit more difficult to talk about. Even you and I are like kind of hedging around certain things because I think there are spoilers and there are twists that go along with it. Yeah. But one thing you said that there's, unlike Lost, it doesn't have like kind of the mythological piece to it. I think that's one of the reasons why it's good because I'm just like that was a really tripped Lost up. If Lost was just like

a mystery thriller, I think time would have remembered it better. And also, people, I mean, it's just such a complicated yarn. We don't fully need to unravel. Julia, you know who you're talking to. I love Lost. There's no Lost apologizing necessary here. I'm not fantasy. I'm not here to like hold their feet to the fire.

Loss is like, loss is really fun. We didn't know what we have with Lost. And I think it's gotten like this bad rap because of the ending and it's, the ending is actually not that bad. What I would give for some Jack and Kate and Sawyer like right now, if I could get some new episodes of Lost, I would 100% want to watch, which is why.

I really liked the show. I was just like, this is fun. Like, there's a reason why the Stranded on a Desert Island conceit has been revisited so many times. It is so classic. And it's because it works. Like, it's, it allows you to explore human nature. It allows you to explore survivalism.

It has people on the beach. Like, there's just so many elements of it that are absolutely timeless. Yeah, absolutely. And I also think that there is something about these YA shows that have been coming out that I find to be pretty digestible for some reason. Yeah. A lot of them follow the same roadmap, which is ultimately like these kids going through these incredibly traumatic growing pains.

But it's a couple years ago, I know that we were, everybody was like, oh, the rom-com is back. I really feel like these YA shows are now starting to become like the coin of the realm. Oh, interesting. What are some other ones? Well, Netflix has a lot of them. Yeah, like trinkets. I liked that one a lot.

Yeah. I mean, I even think that Outer Banks was sort of one, you know, in some ways. I mean, Dark wasn't a Y-A show, but Dark was about a lot of, like, young kids involved in this big sci-fi thing. Never watched it. So I think it had, like, anytime you can get a bunch of teenagers kind of wrapped up in a plot like this,

I think it just gets really kind of, it's pretty addictive. Do you think there's going to be a breakout star from this show that we should be aware of? There's a lot of options. The girl plays fatten is pretty good. Yeah, she's awesome. So one thing about the show,

which, again, is like a classic trope, just done really well, is it like young women from all across the spectrum. There is one young lesbian woman who is indigenous and then she is there with, I think, her foster sister or is it her? I think it's just her friend. Oh, I thought of there are sisters for some reason. Anyway, who's another indigenous woman.

And then there are two black sisters, one who is like a really good, almost Olympic level diver. And her sister is very bookish. And then there is a southern young white woman who is a beauty pageant queen. Then there's Leah who's, who's, kind of like this bookish, um, disgruntled neurotic teen. She's sort of like suburban teen. And there's Fatten who, I think you, this is not really a spoiler.

She's like an expert cellist. She's a cello prodigy and she's from the Bay Area. She, I believe, is Persian, correct? Mm-hmm. And it's like, it's like a whole spectrum of girls. It's pretty cool. The casting, I think, is really fantastic. And I don't even know how they found all these actions, but like, I hope that they

have like a breakout. Oh, then there's D. who I forgot to mention, who's sort of like the heart of the show and she is just like, I hope that she goes on to have a long career. But I don't know. I just like really like all of these girls. They're great actresses. I'm like, how do they find all of them? This is impressive. It's just really enjoyable show. I think that if you're looking for something to crush over whether you want to watch it over the course of three weeks or course of three days, like you'll really enjoy it. I think the stakes are just right for the delivery. And there are times when I

think it wanders astray a little bit or like, they'll do a flashback that I think takes up like too much of the episode. But for the most part, I really, really like, I just thought it was really well done. It really is. For people who didn't like lost, what's your sell on this show? Well, I think that I can't, I defy you to find me someone who doesn't like Desert Island content. You know, like getting stranded is just like one of, it's Treasure Island, man. It's, it's Robinson Crusoe. It's what we do. But if you just, you don't, have to worry about whether or not you understand the biblical allegory happening with Ruth on Lost. You know, it's just, these are just a bunch of people who are trying to figure out who they are

on an island. It's true. Coming of age meets Desert Island is basically as iconic as in storytelling as it gets. It's sort of funny. Another connection to the flight attendant, though, is I think this also feels very novelistic. Like, it also feels, you know, it's very neat chapters. Each episode could be its own chapter in the book and like interlocking stories. Like this almost reminds me of like something Jennifer Egan could have written essentially of like in like the mode of Goon Squad or what or whatnot. Why is it Goon Squad an Amazon show? That seems like prime Amazon fair. If you ask me, no pun intended. That was that did get option. That was like one of those I think goes into the Scott Ruden zone where it's like he just buys up all the great books and then like, you know,

I mean, we in a weird way, there are a lot of. failures, institutional failures in this country over the last, you know, eight to 10 years. But I think our inability to produce good versions of literary fiction bestsellers has been like a real, I think we're going to look back on with a lot of regret. Where's the corrections? Yeah, seriously. Leachville, they try it on that one. Yeah, but like, but release the bomb back cut, you know, like, give me, give me the corrections. How did you guys fuck the goldfinch up? You know, like, what are you doing out there? Seriously, so bad. It's funny because like, now's the time to do your interlocking stories novel on Amazon.

It's like what it's there. It's what it's made for. Yeah. And then also you can just like click right out and buy the book. Yeah, exactly. One thing I really like about the show, by the way, the fact that it's on Amazon and all these unknown actresses, you pause it and just tells you who everyone is. Julia, it would not be a TV concierge if you didn't somewhat stand for a streaming platform

and just like weirdly talk about like the user experience. You have been sponsored by so many different platforms. You're in the pocket of Big Hulu. Now you're in the pocket of Big Bezos. I love the mechanism of which is delivered to me. But seriously, with all unknown actresses and actors, it is really helpful. It's like having Wikipedia on the screen, yes. It's pretty.

And if you watch it on your iPad, which is how I watched almost all of this show, you just tap on it. You don't even need to pause. It tells you what it is. A little shout out for Apple there, too. Way to go. The moral of the story is, like, can be bought. But no, but seriously, I feel like the Wilds is going to be one of these shows. It's got renewed for season two and it ends on a big cliffhanger, which I shan't reveal.

I think by the time that season two comes around, there's going to be like a big swell around it. And who knows when that's going to be because of the pandemic. But like, this is a show that I'd watch now because everyone's going to be catching up in like, you know, nine to 19 months, whatever it is. and like get it on the ground floor and like have good pride. I wouldn't say there's a ton on right now too. So you could check this out. I mean like other than Wanda Vision, there's not like a ton of shows like distracting people right now. Yeah, seriously. It's like, stay hang home. Just, you know, fire up that prime video app on your streaming device of choice. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. Check out The Wild. I am Juliet Littman. This is Chris Ryan. More TV

comes here next week.