The Watch - A Big-Picture Look at HBO, Plus ‘Crashing’ and ‘Pen15’ | The Watch

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

What does the future of HBO look like after the merger between AT&T and Time Warner (6:47)? Plus a midseason review of ‘Crashing’ (35:40) and the teen television renaissance that continues with ��Pen15’ (42:30). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Bud Light. Did you know not all alcohol products are required to list their ingredients? That was news to me. Bud Light is changing the game. They believe that we deserve to know our beer's ingredients. So they put an ingredients label right on their packaging. Bud Light, brewed with hops, barley, water, and rice. No corn syrup, no preservatives, and no artificial flavors.

Find out what ingredients are in your beer. Bud Light. Enjoy responsibly. I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com and joining me in the studio for the next 13 years for $330 million.

Number three, Andy Greenwald. What's the percentage of watch listeners who get that? I'd say pretty effing high. Do you think? Because we keep it. We keep it pretty. Did you get that? Yeah, see?

She works for the Ringer. Yeah. We keep it pretty church. My wife was like, who's Bryce Harper? and I was like just a really important character who's just emerged in your story, Phoebe, for the next 15 years? My wife...

Because it'll take two more years to get over it afterwards. That's exactly right. My wife said over the weekend, oh, a colleague at work texted me last week and wanted to know what you thought of the trade. So that's the level of discourse. That wasn't like a Tobias Harris, like a six-week late Tobias Harris thing.

No, no, it was just a, that's the level of interest in Bryce Harper. we got cooking in my house. God, it's great to see your face. This is nice to be together. Do you want to talk Phillies? I can talk baseball. I've been sending you action news van related gifts all weekend.

Yeah, it's a pretty vibrant Philadelphia sports text message thread. We've got Andy, today is Monday. And we're going to kind of take a big picture look at HBO today for the most part. We're also going to talk a little bit about... Can I ask a question before we get into it? Is it Penn 15? Well, that's what I'm going to continue to call it. Rather than what it might mean if you were to look at it.

say like graffiti, right? Penis. Yes. That's right. That's how that said, right? That's right. Before we get into this, do you want to have our snow day conversation really quick?

I mean, I'm ready to have this conversation. I don't think you have a very good sense of humor about this, although I wasn't trolling you. So yesterday on Twitter, I was looking at it at the Twitter. You were looking at Twitter. Good. And I noticed that like a bunch of people from the New York Times

seemed to be getting really agitated about snow days, like Haberman and Sam Sifton. Our buddies. fuck. They didn't literally say that, but they seemed been out of shape about the fact that Haberbaum. De Blasio, Mayor Bill de Blasio, my former neighbor, had preemptively closed schools.

Yeah. And they were like, God damn it, Bill. Yeah. And I was like, I love Snow Days. Yeah, this is my favorite take. I shared this with my wife. We had a good, long, long laugh about this. Did you laugh?

Or were you just like, maybe it's time to move on from Chris? Like, maybe it's time to let the old ways die. I am still talking about this situation from, you know, the kid inside. That's the thing. Chris, he hears snow days. And he's like, what could possibly be wrong with that? Grease up the sled, boys. Swiss at mine in an hour.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It was a time to create hoff-like tunnels outside of the house. Weirdly, in Philadelphia, in the 80s, you could actually find Tonton carcasses. That's true. They were not Scattered around Veteran Stadium

Yeah So explain to me why This is because of Childcare Because work doesn't get snow days Yeah but like when we had snow days Back when we were children Yeah

Do you remember our parents being like Heated up about this? Yeah it sucks Yeah I feel like my parents are like that's on you Well I mean My mom like your mom was a teacher Uh huh

So odds are that she might have gotten the day off too So we could just Swiss miss it up together. My memories of my childhood are becoming increasingly rustic. There is nothing as a... Like, I just feel like I was just like sent out. Let me take the people who are listening, who weren't turned off by the Bryce Harper conversation,

and further eliminate 50% of them. By, with this opening to a sentence, as a parent, comma, there is nothing worse than no school or no child care. Right. Because Chris got serious. No, I'm here. I want to be.

a sensitive partner in this relationship. I don't want to be like, whatever. You are a third partner in our family. That's why. And then, also, because this morning our guy, Jonah Serra, not currently of the times, but formerly of the times. And Jonah Serra is a watch favorite

because of his all-time Cooperstown-level author photo. Ironic. It was just kind of like lightly just biting on the end of that glasses. Because he's thinking so hard. I saw some live dash cam footage of Manhattan. at 7 a.m.

You know? And just a little dandruff on the ground. That's all it looked like. It looked like Rita's water ice, excuse me, Rita's water ice, had just like given out free coconut samples. And that was it. That's it.

That's always what happens, except for the times when it's a blizzard. Right. So what we're saying to Mayor Bill, who I think I can call on that because he was never once polite to me at the coffee shop that we would see each other at every morning. Were you polite to him?

Yeah, especially I had a kid. And I'd be like, look, the cute kid, Retail politics, my guy. Like, how are you doing, Mr. Mayor? You'd be like kiss the baby? To Bill de Blasio? Bill de Blasio, as comes back. Why are we talking about this?

Well, now I'm really interested. Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York, was my neighbor in Park Slope, Brooklyn. And then he moved to Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side. And every morning, he wakes up in Gracie Mansion, probably stretches. He's a very tall man. Got to get those tendons limber. Likes to go to the Y. The Y in Park Slope.

Yeah. He then takes an armored motor. Caircade to Park Slope. What is this, Sicario? To work out next to me, often at that Y, where I was. And then he retires to a wonderful place, Colson Petisserie. It's where I used to go for coffee every morning. Okay.

And he sits there and talks to his wife, surrounded by a security detail. And then often they would leave separately in separate security details back to the Upper East Side. And my point is, if you are such a man of the people that you love the old neighborhood, you can't miss it. Stickball in the corner every night. Just live in Parks Loeb. Why not talk to the people who are your neighbors? Not a friendly guy. Okay.

And this was my issue with it. And in fact, it was such an issue, I moved to California. And finally, my story is told. This is my truth. I want to stay in the realm of New York. Okay, nice. And power. Good.

And talk a little bit about HBO. So last week, and let me start at the beginning by saying that HBO was an investor in the ringer. that our boss, Bill Simmons, was on HBO with a show called Any Given Wednesday, that Andy and I... We are former on-camera talent for HBO. You could say that among, you know, like, we are HBO alumnus.

I think it's like... It's us and Brian Ben Ben and Sarah Jessica Parker. Jennifer Garner recently. Also a one and done, like us. When you make your point so well, you don't really have to stick around. Now, Andy and I, obviously, like, the first year we were doing the Thrones After show,

It was in a fashion on HBO. And we had a lovely experience there. But obviously HBO's in the news. So the AT&T Time Warner merger went through. Much to the chagrin of the White House. Apparently, much to the chagrin of the White House. What that essentially does is merge a telecom company, AT&T, which is based in Dallas,

with an enormous other media company For one thing, Time Warner, you've got TNT, you've got... CNN. All the networks under the TNT umbrella, which is TBS and True. You've got CNN, and then you've got HBO. Cartoon Network, too, I believe. Yeah. And then you got HBO, which is basically one of the last vestiges, along with, say, Condé Nast,

which is a magazine publisher. But one of the last vestiges of, like, this kind of New York media that we grew up with, understanding that there was this place in a couple hours north of Philadelphia, And they would go to Sipriani, you know, and they would have really long lunches. Well, that's because there was a snow day every day. That's right. They would just spit at blizzards. No, but like it's a really interesting merge of cultures that I think talks a little bit about this inflection point.

We are at media in general. And I wanted to just chat a little bit about what's happening right now. So Richard Plipler, who's essentially been the president of HBO for more than 20 years. seven years. Yeah, is stepping down from his position. Abruptly. Yeah, and it is rumored that Bob Greenblatt, who used to... Official. What? Official as of today. Officially now. So Bob Greenblatt is taking over...

Former boss of NBC. Yeah. And he's essentially going to be this sort of buffer between AT&T and their new media properties, I think, is a way to put it. What's interesting about it is not just the hire and the upheaval. It's that he is the chairman of all of the network properties now, which means that A. HBO is now very directly yoked into the same broadcasting family as Turner as Cartoon Network and these other places. Bob Greenblatt's in charge of all of them. HBO is no longer a beautiful fiefdom left to its own devices.

Yes. Or at least that's one. In terms of the corporate structure. Right. Now, what is HBO, right? Like, HBO is this, well, no, I mean, what, what, what's our concept of HBO versus what? I wish he was here. to talk about it.

HBO is considered the curator, right? Like, it's the curatorial experience that you have. You subscribe to it, and everything they give you has gone through some sort of pipeline so that you're getting the best of the best. That's the pitch, right? You agree with that?

Yeah. And now, I think what not necessarily the worry is, but what the read on this situation is, is that HBO will be becoming part of a fully integrated media and digital technology company.

It's part of the it's like the lever and the whatever it is. I don't even know what the like the proper like symbol I'm trying to think of here. Cotton gin? No, it's not that.

I'm trying to think of like basically. What kind of machine are you describing? No, it's like I'm thinking about that like that sports night speech that William Macy gives about tubes. Remember that? Like it's like I make the best tubes

but you've got to have something that goes on and now they've got the tubes and they've got what's, They've got this tubes that make television, and they've got what you put on television. Right. A series of tubes. Yeah. I guess I'm just kind of wandering here. No, I like it. The thing is, it's hard to parse exactly. First of all, we don't know what's going to happen.

We don't know how it's going to shake out. We do know that from a purely short-term, let's look at the lay of the land, not short-term, like one to three years, let's look at the lay of the land, business point of view. What you described would make people in C-suite offices very happy. in fully integrated technology company. And it's not like a new phenomenon. The Razors and the Razor blades. Go watch Network.

You know, the idea is that HBO and then I guess all of Turner, or Warner Media, as it's now called, will be able to compete somehow or needs to be able to compete, let's say, with these rapacious growth monsters. Apple, Netflix, Amazon,

and certainly Disney, which is now positioned to be in many ways the biggest of the big. So I guess that, makes sense. And I think we all knew change was coming because they had announced that they were going to radically increase their famously stingy production. But the question is in terms of we can't, we can and we will speculate on what it means for the company culture and everything in what's lost and in the same way that we can, you know, rend our garments over the passing, not passing, but the passing of the torch at Vanity Fair. Are you talking about legacy media? There's something

about that, we will cop to. We are always going to be a little bit romantic about or interested in, and it means something when things are no longer the way they were, right? But I want to start here for HBO, which is HBO doesn't always have the best shows. We've talked about, though, on this podcast, how what HBO has that is kind of invaluable is the prestige, and it has the reputation and it has the brand. It's a brand that can disappear failures. to a degree that we don't really talk about that Tim Robbins Holly Hunter show that apparent Ellen Ball show

that existed last year, here and now. It's like it never happened. It's like it's been just ripped from history. I wonder whether that has as much to do with the fact of just like the sheer volume of TV. Possibly, but I think that there weren't think pieces being like, what's up with HBO drama and Game of Thrones is ending soon?

What are they going to do? Because Netflix can disappear a show like that without you even knowing it happened. You know what I mean? Because they have... True. If you don't watch it, it's not going to take up six.

Sundays of real estate. But the conversation about Netflix is, well, it's just an ocean and there's no one captaining the ship anymore, right? So it's almost expected that things aren't going to be great, whereas HBO still has the expectation that things are going to be great. And I'm, you know, news has urged us to, has pushed us to talking about it now, but I actually wanted to bring it up a week or two ago. I don't, I think it was the, so it's maybe a week and a half ago, because the true detective finale was preceded by a classic 90-second. This coming this year. on HBO. Here we go. HBO Sizzle Real. Yeah.

And it was fire. It was so exciting and it made it seem like HBO is the single best place to engage with not just scripted television, but the culture. Sure. And what that made me think was

this is valuable. This ability to understand what you are and marketed and communicated has to still be valuable. You know, it's not as monetizable. or it's not as like instantly recognizable on a financial outlook sheet or whatever. But knowing what you are,

knowing what you're selling, and knowing how to sell it to people matters. And I think that has always been what has separated HBO. Now, there's no reason to think that's going away because one guy has left his job or whatever. Everyone has said the right things.

Certainly from on the AT&T side, with our man Rich Stanky, greatest named man in media. People that I've spoken to and the industry out here who have had dealings with sort of the new AT&T Warner, HBO, have said that the people they've met with have all seemed very smart and creative and engaged and have said the right things about it. But it is also not a question that they are doubling their production. Yeah. They're going to be making a lot more shows. So, and they're going to

start broadcasting on Monday nights again. So things are changing and can both be true at the same time? Can you compete with the big boys and still have that tight jewel-like focus on what makes you special? Yeah, I think that the thing that people, and if you get a chance to subscribe to Ben Thompson, this newsletter, which is really good stratagory, he talked about this a little bit, both through aggregating previous interviews with Plupler and also just a series of sort of observations about him. And Plutflor kind of saw himself as a gallerist, right? Like he, I thought of himself as the kind of person who would develop these relationships with people like David Simon, David Milch, you know. David Chase? David Chase.

Men named David, basically, you were named David. You were in really good standing. And he would take a show like Tremay, which even you and I, who are avowed David Simon fans, probably did not see every episode of, of Tremay.

And he was just like, I do Tremay because it's good for the brand. I do Tremay because it's dignified and it's a rich experience. And even if not a lot of people see it. And no one else will make it. It's good for us. It's good for us.

us. And that kind of thinking is different than the algorithmic thinking of, I think, what, even though Netflix does a lot of stuff that we like and does a lot of stuff just full stop, and it's kind of cool to have so much stuff because if you don't like one thing or something else, whereas there's definitely been months of HBO or I'm like, nothing's on here

for me, man. Well, devil's advocate, we have moved on from an era that we would joke about a few years ago where it's like, you know, what was, there was a joke on, I think it was a cartoon made this joke where the Netflix receptionist saying, hello Netflix, you're picked up. Yes. Those days are over.

Sure. But I guess Devil's advocate would be, if you are doubling your production, that means that there's more likelihood, not less, that you're going to broadcast the deuce. Or now he's doing, now David Simon's doing the plot against America, the Philip Roth novel.

Yes. I do think that the types of legacy relationships with men named David are on the wayne. Sure. You know, I don't know who the next version of that is. HBO has also made very splashy, noisy deals with JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon. So maybe having a J in your first name is now crucial. Jordan.

Jordan Peel. And Jordan. Lovecraft Country is coming on HBO as well. But for me, the interesting thing is you said knowing your brand, knowing what your value is, and that's something that Plypola guided very, very keenly during his tenure. I think a lot about a show called Counterpart, which is on Stars. I liked it. Not enough to stick with it, which may be why it was just ended after cancel, after two seasons.

I have no knowledge of anything going on behind the scenes at Stars or Chris Albrecht, who used to be the programmer at HBO, who's been running Stars for a number of years now. But here's my 10,000-foot take on it, is that counterpart seemed like an odd fit for Stars, but a smart play. And it was a classy, interesting show. It also had a genre piece to it, which was important. and it had an Oscar winner in the lead in J.K. Simmons. They shot mostly on location in Berlin, so it can have been cheap. And it was a classy play. It was a play for Stars to be a place where you check out material like that. Now, there's a big gulf, obviously, in intent and execution between Tramay and Counterpar.

I don't mean to compare it. No, no, no, I understand. But what I mean is I don't know, let me stop there, I don't know anything. But I don't think that counterpart would have been canceled if J.K. Simmons had been, nominated for an Emmy. Oh, okay. I think that, you know, I think John Landgraf at FX, who was part of this conversation, too, in a way, had said, has said on the record, and he said it to me off the record, that I think that there's a certain, there's like a Venn diagram of things that keep shows on the air for him. Ratings matter, of course, but so does critical opinion,

and so do awards consideration. Yeah. All of that matters. And if you can get two out of the three, you're probably going to get ready. Yeah, that's why things that are only critically above often don't stay on the air. That's right. But if you get the award, awards nominate, you know, and I think that's what that helped Americans. That helped the Americans. So I feel like stars looked at its play and was just like, well, this is classy. We have an Oscar winner on our air. And everyone likes it. Critically, it was well regarded. But Survivor's remorse, which I've also heard is good, by the way. I've not watched it. Gets 10 times as many viewers. So let's steer towards what we're good at doing and let's not take that flyer.

And I think that the concern for me about HBO will be if they start thinking that way more evidently. Yeah, I mean, I think that for as much as HBO says it's not TV, it's HBO, it is TV. And it may have been one of the last traditional TV experiences we had left in this world that at least you and I in this room had. Yeah. Where it's like, we're going to tune in on Sunday night to watch this thing. And this is going to be a... It happened again last night where people were tuning in to see the Neverland documentary. Right. And it was, and that's a really good example of, of HBO sort of owning a conversation.

and that they were one of these last sort of vestiges of being able to create an experience and a conversation out of a night of programming, which is something that we talked about recently when we were like, okay, let's build a programming grid out of all the streaming stuff. I think that one thing that we will probably see within the next decade is the collapse of,

if not entirely, what we understand cable television to be. As people get older and start cutting the cord more, and as these services start to take the place of you subscribe to Spectrum or you subscribe to Cox or cable vision and you get 200 channels and then you can pay extra for movies. What you'll get is a service that, you know, you can opt in to certain live channels or whatever, whether that's through Hulu or whether that's through YouTube or whatever. But you have like this movie library and an original programming library and people will have to

make decisions whether or not it matters more to them to have friends. Not actual friends, but the show friends. Although that becomes relevant rather quickly. The show friends, or if it matters more to have all the Disney movies, or if it matters more to have all of Stranger Things and whatever else on Netflix, or if you can afford to have all three or four. And I think now this is the clear sign that AT&T and will use HBO in that fashion. Now, will HBO continue to always be the seal of approval,

the highest of the high, the best of the best, even if that's not always the case of the shows they put on? I don't know. I don't know if you can do both. I think the thing that I notice, again, I haven't spoken to anyone at the company, so I don't know if this has rattled people as much as it probably has. I don't know if there was a shift in the culture already that people were noticing. But HBO has always considered itself a New York company.

Yeah. I've told this anecdote on the podcast before, probably, but it's been a few years, so maybe we have new listeners. But I remember very... After that snow day conversation. Oh, they're loving it. But I remember very keenly going in the earlier you, of Grantland being invited by HBO publicity to a boardwalk empire premier party.

Yeah. And HBO throws the biggest parties. They always do. And, you know, I don't know exactly where this one was. They would have them often at the Museum of Natural History or the, you know, like by the planetarium, or they'd have them at Gipriani, actually, like you mentioned, all these places. And it was this wild swanky affair for Boardwalk Empire and a lot of New York types were there. In addition to all of the Gumbas from the Sopranos just loading up at the shrimp bar.

But it was a family too because I remember seeing Larry Gileer who played DeAngelo on The Wire was there and who's now, of course, really good on The Deuce. And what was funny was this was their big party. Game of Thrones, I think, was just starting

at second season. And they probably had a premiere party, but I don't, it was not on the same scale. And I remember thinking that the takeaway from this was that HBO, at this moment, 2011 or 12 or whatever it was, feels very strongly that Bordwalk Empire is their signature show. Sure.

That's the type of show they make. Yeah. And then there was a giant shift when Game of Thrones became the most important and biggest show in all of television all over the world. And then they started getting the Natural History Museum parties. And, you know, that was a major shift within the company. And obviously a windfall for them. But it's funny that we're having this conversation now because for years you and I have been doing this podcast and saying that Game of Thrones is the last consensus show. And we're one month out now from the final season of it.

and it's ending right when the company that curated it is also fundamentally changing. Now, there will be spinoffs, which maybe speaks to the new corporate culture as well. But running it all the way back, however many years ago now, 10 years ago, HBO, regardless of what they thought about, regardless of how much they overrated Boardwalk Empire, they believed in Game of Thrones enough to entrust it to these two guys who had never written for television before. We've done the 25th hour. But we're passionate about this subject matter. To not only give it a shot, but to take their shot, see the results of the pilot,

scrap it and do it again and get it right. I mean, that is remarkable confidence. The streets of New York and Hollywood are littered with like... Snow? With a light dusting of Reuters Water Race and HBO pilots that never aired. Yeah. Oh, my God. And some of them are like, you guys.

didn't put that on television. You had Noah Bombach make the corrections with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ewan McGregor and Chris Cooper and Diane Weist and couldn't find a way. We've talked about this before, but Milch's script money was essentially succession, like five years before succession happened. And yet for whatever reason, they had the patience and the foresight to say this is worth pursuing. And doing that, you know, now hearing companies throw a lot of money at a genre play, they're doing it all. but they're all doing it. They're doing it to chase what HBO did in a, in retrospect,

what now looks like a kind of methodical, thoughtful, curatorial, very HBO way. So it's interesting. I'm not even necessarily that sentimental about like the quote-unquote traditional HBO experience. I think what I'm sentimental about or what I'm sort of, if I can concern troll a little bit, is this idea that we're going to get away from the possibility of something being special because everything is just going to be a wave of concurrent program. Everything is everything. Yeah.

So if you are essentially saying that TNT, HBO, all these things, they're all part of like this package that you get from AT&T, and that rather than making you wait, you know, nine months to see sharp objects, if the new season's done, they're going to put it up, you know? And it loses that. I actually like stuck with sharp objects almost because it was an experience that I was having on a week. basis in that fashion.

Do you know what I mean? Yes. There is a relationship I have to HBO shows that I think is different than one I would have to Netflix show and different than one I would have to an Amazon show where I can kind of check in and check out as I want. Well, here's something to think about when you keep that in mind, which is that the three men running Warner Media are arguably, hugely arguably, but for the sake of this argument, I will argue it.

the last three guys, programmers, to really either understand or celebrate or at least engage with the possibility of week-to-week broadcast network television. So those people are Jeff Zucker, who run CNN. Who run CNN, and I have opinions about. But regardless...

Did you also go to coffee shops with him? He was said, no. He was the guy who was supersizing everything when he was running NBC. And now, yeah. And, you know, regardless of what you think about his politics or his instincts, or his instincts, he maximizes. He supersizes everything he touches. Right.

And sees where the trend lines are going and pushes everything as hard as he can towards it. Bob Greenblatt, who I excoriated for years because he didn't, in my mind, appreciate Parks and Recreation enough. But left, look, not all takes are winners. But in terms of the business is considered... It seems like Parks and Rec came out the other side. It was fine, yeah. But in this, but in the business, it's considered to be a very smart and savvy programmer and took what was when NBC was at its lowest, which was post-sucker, honestly, and took it

from a laughing stock to reliably the number one network. And that was by, you know, doing things like the voice and the blacklist and really punching up what were very broadcast-y kind of possibilities. The third is Kevin Riley, who was the original head of FX before seating to John Landgraf when he took the Fox job. And Kevin Riley, who has been on this podcast many years ago, is reliably one of the smarter and more creative executives. Yeah, pretty progressive.

Because he was one of the first people to start dabbling with getting rid of pilot season. He tried to get rid of pilot season. He put a lone star on the air famously. New Girl, Mindy Project, right? Yeah, exactly. And then also since he's been... 24, I think, great.

Turner has done a lot of things like search party. Alienist. I am the night. Yeah. But the reason I bring up something like, like search party or claws is because I think he's correctly identified what's going to pop and non-traditional ways to get it to people

who aren't watching traditionally anymore. So it's an interesting team that HBO has built, and I think I've brought it up specifically because you were talking about the value of week-to-week, and NBC airing shows week-to-week feels old-fashioned, but in some ways increasingly HBO airing shows week-to-week does as well.

The last piece of this that I think we should talk about is, I mentioned a moment ago, John Landgraf at FX. FX has modeled its identity in some ways on HBO in that they also, Landgraf is the mayor of television, is a curatorial eye. They don't put up a ton of stuff, but what they put up is always noteworthy or interesting.

It'll be, in some ways, there's a head start going on there because of the Disney-fox merger. Can a company like Disney accept this little precious cell of John Langraph and watch fan Nick Grad? and all the other executives who've been there forever into their larger entity and still, and can they still continue to thrive? Yeah, and also, I mean,

are these companies going to kind of look at this, their portfolio and recognize value in diversity of brands, or are they looking to have a certain uniformity? You know what I mean? I would even be, you know, you could go through all of Netflix's library and sort of assign different things to different subcategories, not even algorithms.

I don't mean like, you know, I don't even mean like you could just say like, oh, these are about like women in distress who also rob banks and have to wear blindfolds. I'm interested. But you could take like, okay, there's Netflix comedy, there's Netflix drama, there's Netflix reality, there's, you know, will AT&T look over their sort of their landscape

and say it's important for us to have HBO be an ambassador for this corporation and be this thing out there that's sort of a city on them? Hill. And will Disney do the same for FX? Will Iger say, like, you know what, I can't make Fossi Verdon at Disney, but I really like having it under the Disney umbrella? But I think they're not ultimately comparable because this is, again, Blue Sky's best case scenario, what's going to drive Disney's business is what's continuing to drive Disney's business, which is Marvel movies, Pixar, big, big Star Wars, giant franchises. That allows something like FX to exist in a different way to pursue those high

income highly engaged with the media viewers who are super jazzed, pun intended for Fossi Verton. Game of Thrones, you. Game of Thrones is the jaws for HBO in that HBO is the driver, you know, the commercial driver potentially for this company as well.

I don't think new episodes of Search Party are going to sell a lot of cell phones or internet packages or bundles or whatever, I do think Game of Thrones spinoffs will. So it does seem like there's a, it seems to shake out for me that HBO is the blockbuster in this deal in a way that might imperil projects like David Simon's thoughtful Philip Roth adaptations.

Now, obviously he'll be fine, but the next generation of thoughtful Philip Roth adaptations. Right. No, that's, it's going to be one of the most interesting questions I think we'll see an answer to over the next few years and you're going to be sort of going through it yourself is as this explosion... Oh, I'm a Comcast man, so I'm fine.

As this explosion of production goes forward, what happens to what we produce? You know, as this sort of like wave after wave after wave, and we went up 385% from 2014 to 2018 in terms of original scripted stuff, what happens when that gets up to 500 to 600% because you've got these services that need to develop libraries

because they have to sell those libraries to people by saying it's going to be worth $15 a month or $9 a month or whatever it is. And I think, you know, you're talking about Disney, one of the most interesting test cases is going to be,

do they de-eventize Marvel? Do they make Marvel something that you can find everywhere and that you can watch in 15-minute chunks? Well, they're doing that for Disney Plus. I mean, that's what I'm saying, but when they do that, are they going to break away from,

hey, once every, six months, there's going to be a huge event that we're going to build up to and come down from and it's going to push the story forward? Or is it going to be like, there's a Danny Garay show on Disney Plus? You know what I mean? And like Black Panther is always happening. It's really interesting to think about. And that might be what's on the other end of this last Avengers movie. Most recent Kevin Feigy quotes suggested that that was a, I don't think he was like, yeah, we're going to break away from MCU as a movie. franchise and is an event movie franchise.

But I do think it's a lot different than it was when it was like agents of Shield. And there was a sort of initial promise of like, we're going to push the Marvel story along in these network television shows. But in fact, they kind of like, no, it's too important. We got to keep it. But also they were run by separate entities. Sure, of course. And now Feigey is running the TV.

I mean, he's not running Marvel TV. That's Jeff Loeb and other people who've worked with them for many years. But when they are using movie MCU characters and actors on this new subscription service, that's under his purview. There was a, since a lot of this is about nostalgia in snow days, I'll say that I spent a lot of snow days in the late 80s reading comic books.

And comic books in the late 80s and 90s, there was less, there was less stuff. And so events of which there were like every year or so, like fall of the mutants or inferno or all this stuff that crossed over across comic books felt like really big. Or Secret Wars was another one. Huge. It felt like a giant deal.

Eventually, there were just, the marketplace was so flooded and there were events so often that while there was good work, it felt ultimately the highs weren't as high and it felt a little bit less special. Is that where we're headed with the movies as well? Where the question isn't, can Kevin Fagy and Marvel and Disney keep this going? It's more, how did they do that to begin with? How do they even do it once to make this many movies over 10 years and have them be linked? It seems like they might have got in at the last, right before last call. Because now it's not just an attempt to sort of re-rebole. boot the Avengers or whatever it's going to be. And he has a lot of talented people, obviously.

I'm sure they'll bring in many more. But he's also, to some degree, overseeing this TV expansion. He has the X-Men now as well. He has fantastic foreback. Those are a lot of, I mean, the X-Men is not a medium project. It's enormous. But it's not the same thing as saying Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Avengers. And maybe our culture, I'm trying to segue here, isn't about saying that anymore either. Yeah. I think that's what we've been talking about. talking about on this podcast since the ringer started pretty much. I don't listen to the podcast.

I should be clear about that. To wrap up, why don't we talk about... Two TV shows. Yeah, let's talk about some TV shows. One of them's on HBO, but that's just a... Let's get back to the land. Let's talk about crashing. Okay.

Briefly, because I watched a bunch of this new season. Pete Holmes's show on HBO that... I guess isn't it... In some ways, one of the most traditional things you can do, which is an extension of a guy's stand-up. You know, it's like his... It's how you take, and it's a very much... meta thing because it's obviously about

a character played by Pete Holmes who is trying to make it in the New York comedy scene and in the first episode of the third season basically lays out exactly what the dream has been since Seinfeld or since even before that which is like you go to New York

you break in you start to do spots you start to get regular spots you start to get a reputation then you go out on the road then you start to get nibbles at a half an hour or maybe an hour and then hopefully you sell something as a television show and that's where you get in, you get going. And it's all, this show is essentially about all these people who are in various stages of that trajectory

and whether or not that trajectory even still exists. And I know, I find it, you know, it's a very charming show. It's definitely one of those things where it's like, how about that? Third season on HBO, what a world. It is a admittedly medium show. It is not changing the world. It is not only based on Pete Holmes' stand-up, but it's based on aspects of his real life, but aspects that happened 15 years ago or more when he was,

a younger guy. So there's always going to be this strange discordance of the show because Pete Holmes is almost 40 and he's sort of approaching the world with the wide-eyed naivete of someone much, much younger. Any show executive produced by Jud Apatow is going to have the comedy part pretty well figured out. There's a lot of talent. There's a lot of guest stars. There's a great rolodex that they can pull from. There are a lot of young comedians who get showcases and even get to do some of their act on the show. So that was never going to be a concern. But the reason I wanted to talk about it was because the third season, which we're almost done with or over halfway through. Yeah, like I think it's like on episode six or something like that.

Has really surprised me, again, in kind of a modest way. Because everything I just said kind of means that it doesn't have to be great. Like, it's fine. There's comedy. It's pleasant. Good performances from a bunch of surprising comedy people. But it's not just settling. So two things this season that have really impressed me

And if you haven't been watching it You don't need to watch the first two seasons You might just want to dabble It's a very pleasant experience I recommend it so many ads I'm just that you could And Andy Greenwald Do I need to watch the first two seasons of crashing

To understand that I'll say this The season premiere of season three of crashing Had a previously on crashing That was longer than the seventh season of Game of Thrones We got so much detail about house homes And how it was faring In flea bottom

A.k.k.a. Lower Manhattan Okay, two things that it did this year that I think are noteworthy. One, it cast Madeline Wise, who is a New York theater actress who I'd never heard of or seen before, who is astonishingly good in this show. She is phenomenal. And she's phenomenal in a role that is still, unfortunately, a little bit not seen too often, which is she's the female co-lead, basically, of the season. They're having a love affair.

And her emotion and her inner emotional life of characters, and this is also a credit to the actress, but I think the writers get credit as well, is so big it can't be contained by any cliche or stereotype or expectation we have. We are on her side often, but sometimes, whoa, it's really big. Or whoa, it's small.

Whoa, that's a surprise. And I really appreciate that though he is in season three of his HBO show, and though he has a successful podcast and stand-up career, Pete Holmes is still using his platform to say, okay, sex stuff makes me feel weird even though I'm 39. Let's talk about it.

You know what I mean? Like, let me take the things that actually make me feel insecure or weird and try to interrogate them on TV thanks to my scene work with this amazing actress. Sure. I was super impressed by that. Yeah, and I think that you can, I mean,

the concern about something like crashing is that it's too inside baseball, that you have to have a really deep affection and passion for the inner workings, the not funny parts of comedy. But I thought that the way and way which crashing kind of captures a certain kind of interaction that I think you find a lot, you know, now where it's like you can't really tell if you're in a, you're doing a bit,

you know, like, are we doing like a thing or is this like a genuine interaction that we're having? This is like a sincere connection we're making. And it gets at that in a really entertaining fashion because Holmes makes himself so vulnerable and is so self-effacing and allows himself to look so ridiculous at times. and petty and jealous and hurt. And he's got this kind of really interesting cast of characters revolving around him and he's not afraid to, like you're saying, point the camera at those people and find them equally,

if not more interesting than himself. And look, comedy is in a weird place, just like all culture is in a weird place. And again, you could get by making a show about just the specific emotional or professional weirdnesses of being in this world at any time. But there was an episode this season, and if you only watch one, I would recommend watch this one.

called MC Middle Headliner. And they concede is that Pete, his ex-girlfriend, Allie, who's played by Jamie Lee, who's terrific in the show. And this guy, Jason, who's kind of played by Dove Davidoff, who represents this very, very familiar kind of New York comedian guy. I think we've all met guys like this, and they go and they get their 15 minutes at the seller in the show, the Boston or whatever, but they mostly work the door, and they're still doing it, they're still doing it.

The three of them go to New Jersey for a weekend of shows. They're all there for different reasons. They are all in different roles. and it's a really enjoyable and very sly examination of how comedy has changed, beginning from a character plays, because it talks about the corporatization of the clubs, but then also just what's PC and what's not. Yeah. What's funny now, what used to be funny, why people would get into this world and why they wouldn't. And again, I just sort of admired how deftly it did something that could feel like a very special episode of crashing.

Sure, right. And instead made something entertaining and thoughtful. and then you're on to the next one. It's modest, but it was a real pleasure. Let's talk a little bit about Penn 15. I believe it's pronounced Penis. Yes. It comes to us from Maya Erskine and Anna Conkel,

and they basically are, they have this really lovely spin on a very nostalgic topic and one that's close to our hearts, which is sort of life in the late 90s and early 2000s in America as like as like teenagers and stuff although I guess we were probably nice try how do you do fellow kids we like those kinds of stories even if we were already

working for spin magazine smoking cigarettes on St. Marks jaded A.F but please by all means no it's about growing up online in America and going to middle school in the early 2000s and the twist that Anna and Maya put on this is that they play teenage versions of themselves as they're at their current age.

We're surrounded by actual children. Yeah. And it's funny. It's, what's that? It's really funny. Yeah, it's a funny, it's a really funny show. It's very sweet. And it has, it's always fascinating when a really high concept show like that is,

manages to pull it off. Because you think like, oh, all of this is going to be is me telling you about it. And you're like, oh, I got it. And also how, how, how not, it's not easy, but nostalgia is, a relatively safe space to mine for laughs. And we're kind of in a teen renaissance right now with Big Mouth too. And there was another show that we talked about

sex education. There's sex education. And there was another show that was briefly on Netflix a year ago that we reviewed right around the same time of End of the Fucking World. It was another high school type show. I know.

It was like a 90s thing and it's like in Portland or something like that. Yeah. But the details here, Maya and Anna are so phenomenal on this show because they commit so one billion percent to the bits.

Like Anna has this routine in the pilot where she gears up to receive a pitch in kickball that it just like gave me like weird rosebud like PTSD like Citizen Kane stuff. But the details are what makes something like this. It's not just the song

choices which of course are going to feel really good. But the casting of the actual kids interacting with them. Yeah. This is astonishingly good. And I got to say, the editing and the direction is phenomenal. It's phenomenal.

It could go so wrong. It could go so wrong. But it's always great to see, this is what got me in because I, Chris wanted us to take a look at this this week. And I was a little dubious because I just, I'm like, I don't know if I want to go back to middle school stuff. I'm a little bit tired of this as a seat. I'm like, what's talking about now, man?

Let's get into it. Did you see that new Jane Mayer article? Green New Deal, bro. Let's mix it up. But to see such a specific vision brought to life and every aspect of production, you don't get that that often. Yeah. And it's really, it's really, really nicely done.

Yeah, so we recommend both of those shows. I guess we do. Yeah. I guess we do. You know, they fit. Who says you can't come to the watch for television recommendations? You just have to wait 45 minutes. Everyone who tuned off after five.

Look, man. Are we going to watch Captain Marvel? Uh-huh. Well, I'm going to be in Texas. Okay. I'm going to South by Southwest. We're doing a live Talk to Thrones. Wow.

On Saturday. And then we're going to do a live rewatchables on Sunday. Me, Sean, and Shea, and Jason Concepcion are doing the rewatchables. And I'm going to go see some movies. I'm going to eat some tacos. I'm going to drink some beers. That's great. That's sort of what you imagined an adult snow day to be, I imagine.

You're like, what's the problem? Captain Marvel comes out over the weekend. Yeah. Maybe we'll add a show. Maybe we'll do like a Tuesday show. Or it'll be a little late with it. but we're going to watch it. Oh, yeah.

For the record, I have no idea how I'm going to go see it, but I'm going to go see it. Yeah. You can get just a little snow day. Yeah. Okay, thanks for listening to The Watch. Great job. Media Barons over here.

We got this whole thing figured out.