The Watch - A Midsummer Mailbag With Andy Greenwald | The Watch

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

We broke open the mailbag to talk about our favorite X-Men comics (1:47), some of our favorite music from 1999 (17:21), who will be the MVP of the next season of 'Succession' (26:12), and our favorite episodes of TV this year (47:10). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. Up on our site, The Ringer is breaking down the 40 best singles and albums from 1999, covering Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys, Maria Carey, and tons more. And to accompany that piece, we filmed our staffers discussing what they agreed and disagreed with from the article and debated what should have won. You can read the piece on The Ringer.com and watch the video at YouTube.com slash The Ringer. Hey, guys, thank you for listening to today's episode of The Watch. Today was a fun mailbag pod that I did with a little bit of Greenwald and some Kaya too in there. We answered all of your questions.

And he was calling in from doing a little bit of editing work on Briar Patch. So we got to chat with him about that and ask him a few culinary themed questions. And then Kaya joined me and we talked about, gosh, a bunch of different shows from Game of Thrones or what the next Game of Thrones might be to some music questions we're in there. Some what are we expecting excited about for the fall? So a lot of good stuff in the mailbag today. Just a little bit of housekeeping. On Monday, Alison Herman's going to be guest hosting The Watch.

She'll probably be talking about the end of the first season of Euphoria. And I would imagine maybe some Orange is the New Black Talk. So she'll be hosting on Monday, thanks to Allison for filling in. I'm out next week. So no show next Thursday. And then when we come back on the following Monday, we will be diving head first into succession with all you, Greg the Egg, the eggs. So we can't wait for that show to be back. I watched the first episode. It's fantastic.

You're not going to be disappointed. So let's get into this episode of The Watch with Andy and Kaya and a mailbag. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor from The Ringer.com and joining me on the other line. He'll fix it in post. It's Andy Greenwald. Oh, boy, this is a throwback, buddy. We're in the same time zone. I'm calling you from the parking lot and anonymous content in Culver City.

Shout out to everyone here. Yeah. I'm out of the desert for a minute. I got a reprieve. I had to fly out to the coast, like John McLean. That's right. Go out to the coast. Get together, have a few laughs.

Oversee the editing of the second episode of Briar Patch for reasons that are very cool that we'll talk about soon, but not on this podcast. Is that because you were inserting a lot of Avatar IP into it, and you guys just had to go down to WETA and New Zealand, WIDA? What I realized was because Cameron has left the marketplace dry for so long, there's a big desire on the part of the American TV and movie watching public for more content about unobtainium.

Yeah, yeah. You know, that is really the driving force behind what Rosario Dawson's characters doing in my TV show, and I think it's really helping to understand it as part of the larger Ave universe. Did you see that he, uh, that he, congratulated Marvel with a phrase from the native Navitong on their box office supremacy over, over Avatar? Do you think that he makes, like when his friends, is paramount stripping in that movie or whatever, like when they come to visit him in his fireproof compound, and I'm not kidding,

please read the New Yorker article about his fireproof content. It's amazing stuff. Yeah. Do you think he makes them address him and Navi? Like, is it just that at this point, they're not actually supporting his making five to seven more Avatar movies, but he's just so far down the Howard Hughes rabbit hole that they're just

indulging him? It's possible, man. So we're... Listen to me. Listen to me for real. Wait, like, listeners of the watch, I love, adore, and trust. If you actually are looking forward to Avatar's two true six, holler at your voice. Like, I really want to know the story of a lonely

avid head who just needs to know what Rabisi's put-put enthusiast in outer space has been up to this last 15 years. It's, it is wild that this is how long it's taken, because he's, like, been waiting for the tech to catch up with his imagination. I should stop podcasting.

Caya, I'm retiring, and in 15 years, I'll come back when pod tech has caught up to my vision. How about that? Sounds great. I have a bunch of questions. questions here. A lot of them are very dialed into your personal

experience right now, but then there are a bunch that are kind of pop culture you know, pop culture savvy. Where would you describe your level of engagement with the culture at right now? What is my level of engagement with the culture?

I've heard there are new films in the Spider-Man and Charles Manson expanded universes. I've seen neither of them. I am aware that there are entire new seasons of Stranger Things and Dark, two shows that have been very good to us content-wise over the year. I watched the first six minutes of Dark realized five and a half of those minutes were a recap of the first season and that's got to go to bed. I watched the first episode of Stranger Things and was like, I'm good.

Okay. I'm good. Okay. I'm good for now, which isn't to say I'm not going to revisit those things. I will say that spending 14 hours like, you know, fully with the pickax, in my hand in the content mind makes me less interested in narrative television than I probably ever have been in my life. The number one comedy of the fall is is when you move back to Los Angeles and you're like, honey, it's time to catch up on

peak TV. Oh my God. I'm so ready to fire up Chernobyl. You know, I mean, if you're living in LA, you know that Craig Mason's glow up from like the hangover sequel to Chernobyl to now trying to take over the WGA. Like, this is an unparalleled flex from my guy, Craig. One of the things that I've quoted many times on this podcast with you, my friend, and

in articles back when I was a TV critic, was something that Mike Scher, creator of a good place, Parks and Rex said to me early on when I came into this business, like a little bit snobby about, like, multi-camp sitcoms and why his shows were better or whatever. And he said,

look, people use TV for different things. And you've got to remember that. And now I am I am Joe Popcorn collapsing on the couch at the end of a day and I'm like, you know what? Just roll up this queer eye content and injected it into my veins.

You texted me the other day. You said, have you seen Queer Eye? And I was like, yeah. No, no, I knew you'd seen it. We've definitely recorded pods about Queer Eye. And you were like, this show is really good. Are you just hashtagging everything,

text is 2015 from me at this point? Queer Eye, just, it makes you feel good, man. It's just like, there's hope. There's hope. So if you want, like, sofa TV, if you want popcorn TV, does that mean you're going to bend Breyer Patch to make it part of the modern family extended universe? No, I'm just saying, like, the number of decisions that I have to make every day that are

specifically tied to making something that is narratively engaging in the year 2019 or 2020, I almost don't even want to be in that universe anymore. Because at the moment, where my head is, if I fire up expertly made, lovingly crafted bespoke prestige television drama, I am going to be in that world being like, yeah, that cereal box they had to design that. Yeah, you had every background actor like a comment about their costumes and their facial hair, you know, like every single detail. And so I just, I want the Fab Five to come in and fix it for me.

I just wanted them to make the decision, you know? that really is where I've been. And then the other night when I finished Queer Eye, and I was like, I guess I'm going to watch comedians and cars getting coffee. And I stopped myself. Like, it almost reached peak, peak laziness on my part. I enjoy comedians and cars getting coffee. I just watched the Rogan one, the Seth Rogen one,

where they take a old cop car to Cantors, which is essentially like what I do twice a week. But even Jerry Seinfeld and Seth Rogen seem to be like, what are we doing here? Like, Jerry Seinfeld tried to start off with a, doesn't it feel like we can't say what we want to say anymore and push the limits? And Seth Rogen's like, yeah, I guess so.

And then they just like sit there and eat fries. And I was like, what the fuck is happening? Like, how is the guy who made Seinfeld and the dude who made fucking long shot sitting at a diner table, drinking coffee and eating fries? And this is a show on Netflix. Listen, you got to understand that the other thing

motivating me, every day, what we're making the show is, we don't need more TV shows. Like, I am well aware of this, you know? So at the series, let's try to have some fun. You know what I mean? Like, let's try to have some fun here because we, I mean, this is actually you saying that you've cracked a camera

in a cop car twice a week. Maybe the oldest thing anyone's ever said on this podcast, but, yeah. I think the oldest thing anyone's ever said on this podcast is definitely, like, have you watched Queer Eye? We have a couple of questions that are dialed in just for you, and then once you jump off, I'll answer a few more. The first one, I noticed this too,

and I was so happy that Christy Joesbury writes in to ask, in Veronica Mars, the new season of Veronica Mars, without giving anything away about what happens in the new season of Veronica Mars. In Veronica Mars, Pat and Oswald says, you're in the Breyer Patch now to Kristen Bell. Wow. Did you feel like he was secretly highlighting the upcoming USA Network show briar patch, and are we all in the briar patch now?

Wow. What a great question. Boy, that's hashtag brand building. I love it. First of all, I want to thank, what was the question they're saying? Christy. I just want to thank Christy for thinking I watched Veronica Mars, because people are being very nice to me at the moment and being very forgiving with my lack of cultural engagement. Do I think it was a shout-out? I do not? I would like to think that we are all living in the Briar Patch now, but those of us who are living in the Briar Patch are mostly just sitting around at Video Village with Rosario Dawson talking about what drinking this amount of chlorophyll

does to our bodily function, because the altitude and dryness over there is real, and she is a strong advocate for drinking multiple bottles of green-tinted liquid every day. And she's got Alan coming on it, talking about it as an Instagram. I do not think we're on the Briar Patch. I hope everyone is in it in January or February only on the USA Network. You got to love the USA Network. I think you should bring, are we all in the Briar Patch now? That should be the new, you're in the great game now,

which went from something that I believe Peter Digglidge said in a very straightforward accent to something you and I took and twisted into something Begby would say in train spotting. I thought it was something that your version of Belfast Bonos said on stage to George H.W. Bush during the TV tour. I joked often in the room that I would put into the script, like an episode, and I'd like to think that even if it's not actually in the script, are those friends. We have two culinary questions. One comes from Michael Rattie, who asks,

Yo, Chris, is your chicken still wet? Any new recipes? This definitely sounds like Michael wants to know if I smoke dust. We can answer that one. And then there is another one that is for you, Andy, from Scott. where is the fabled chicken recipe that Andy promised he would post to the Facebook group?

Wow. How is your chicken cookery these days, buddy? The slow cooker hair is got cobwebs on it. I'm not going to lie. We've been doing Taco Tuesdays. We have some nice things going on in that department going on this summer. My wife makes a lovely Cavatapy.

What department? The Taco department. The Taco department. Okay. All right. So we've been doing some summer cooking, I would say that we are probably, we've been a little bit over-indulgent this summer

and going out or getting takeout. For you, Andy, what's, where are you at? Because do you have a kitchen in your apartment? Yeah, I got a house, man. I got a kitchen. I got a rice cooker in there, which I am being dragged for mercilessly by Eva Anderson, number two writer on Briar Patch.

Sometimes a guy, but I was a kitchen for rice. Because you're not supposed to have a rice cooker or because you just eat too much rice? I eat probably too much rice. Some grain positive, you know? But I do. Okay, what are we really doing this? Like, I, the thing that made me feel better about being there

was that I could throw some chicken in a marinade and just have it. You got to get, are we doing this? Are we doing this? Yeah, man. You got to get your chicken. Get your chicken size. If you're doing it outside on the grill, you want the bone in. And if you put it inside, bone out is okay, right?

And then get a whole bunch of mustard. Like, I like a whole grain mustard. throw in some vinegar, maybe rice wine vinegar, mix in with that, some honey. Recently, I've been using, instead of honey, I've been using maple syrup. Yeah, I love maple syrup. Yeah, it's great.

Then some soy sauce. And then you can get freaky. Sometimes for thickness, I add some miso paste, but you don't want too much soy meat, so you don't want too salty, right? And then you could throw some citrus in if you want, throw in some garlic powder if you feel like it, but otherwise that's going to give you a good base.

You whisk that up. You pour it in a Ziploc bag. over the chicken, you leave it for 24 hours, you're not going to be unhapped. You're going to be fine. And it's not going to be wet. So, it's not going to be wet. That is the thing, is that, like, I tend to work, my main marinade for chicken is water. You know, and it's not a popular marinade.

Uh, I tend to just, I like to baste the chicken. Like, in like a thick water gravy? Yeah, just like, I want to get as aquatic as possible with my chicken. So you can tell that one of us knows what he's doing when it comes chicken the other. Kyle, which one do you think sounds better? El Pollo, what was it? El Pollo Mohado. El Pollo Mahado or Andy's Miso chicken. Definitely Andy's Miso chicken. Don't not get until you dry it. 400 degree oven. Put it in there for like eight minutes and then you might want to crank up the broiler to get some color on it. You're going to be fine, guys. Yeah, and then you're just going to grab a liter of Poland

spring. Yeah. But the thing is, you pour it over yourself. Andy I did have a good cultural question here which is Kyle Glazer wants to know if we could talk about some of our favorite X-Men comics

in light of Jonathan Hickman's new run which Andy brought up a little while ago Oh yeah So did you get House of X number one The Jonathan Hickman book? I haven't yet

I'm very excited to I've heard great things about it I'm going to I'm going to go to a comic book store and get it but I haven't read it yet Get it on that app dog I want a physical copy, man. I'm going to go into it.

I'm going to support my local shop because I do go there often to get like babysitters club comic adaptations for my child. So, and for me, honestly, they're pretty good. So what's my favorite? I mean, I think I said this

and we talked about it the other week. Like I could definitely talk about the classic runs. Like I love Chris Claremont's X-Men. This is the stuff I grew up on. Everybody knows the Dark Phoenix saga, but the story is just after that.

So, like, when Paul Smith was drawing X-Men, it was like 79 to 83, and I believe this is a graphic novel collecting some of those. I forget the name of it. But those were really good stories. That's when Kitty Pride joins the team and some weird stuff happens in the background.

I love those stories. But I got to say that it's Grant Morrison's run, which is now I mentioned it on the pod the other week. We talked about it. This is when he took over new X-Men. It renamed New X-Men in, I think, 2000, and for me, it's the definitive X-Men run, because it takes in everything that had to come before and updates it, comments on it, and takes it to the stratosphere, and then

leaves. And every part of what we love about X-Men hated and feared a school for outcast, the space operas, the interpersonal drama, and then a whole lot of interesting, weird, new future-pushing ideas crammed in on top of it. And the only thing that falters is the art, because it was supposed to draw, you're supposed to do it with Frank Whiteley's genius artist you'd worked with before, who worked with Mark Miller on the authority, but Frank Whiteley's a very slow artist. So there's a lot of, like, replacement level issues in there. But honestly, once I read that full run and you can get it all collected in hardcover or softcover, I think you can take a 20-year hiatus. I'm going to be wrong. I'm sure people will say there

was good stuff. Yeah, because Joss Whedon's run was after that, right? That's true. Yeah, Joss Whedon's astonishing excellent with John Cassidy, beautiful art, good stuff, but it's just not as definitive to me in terms of like what this stuff could be and what I always loved about it. Yeah, okay. Andy, the last thing I was going to ask you, I'm putting you a little bit on the spot, but since it's 1999 Music Week and 1999, among a few years in the late 90s, was another crucial year for you and I to, that was sort of when you first, I think, made your baby steps into professional music writing, and I followed suit shortly after. And I remember distinctly, was 99 the year we interviewed Maguire? Yeah Yeah, February 99 Because come on that young came out that year

Yeah Yeah so we were You and I shared a room with the Chinatown days in I believe Holiday yeah Yes Holiday in Yeah

Then we interviewed Maguire at a studio And then we went to watch a Ranger Celtic match for them or something On the upper west side With Andrew Bojan yeah Correct So I just wanted to ask If you had any favorite albums or songs

from 1999 that you wanted to shout out. Oh, that's so mean. You want me to go first so you can think? I mean, go first. I'm going to have to post this on the Facebook group or something. I'm going to have to, this is going to derail my editing for a day. Okay, so my top five albums from that year in no particular order were Magwai's Come on Die Young, Wilco's Summerteeth, Jimmy World Clarity, JZ Volume 3, and Bill to Spill, Keep It Like a Secret. It's a pretty strong list.

friend. Yeah, and I would say some of the favorite songs from that year would be Blink 182's All the Small Things. Yes. Low Fidelity All-Stars Battle Flag, which is technically late 98, but didn't really start to break until 99. Yep. Fountains of Wayne Denise. Wow. The dismemberment plan, the city. I'm really having some feelings right now. I bet you are. And you will know us by the Trail of Dead mistakes and regrets. I saw low fidelity all-star. at like the Scala in London in 1997. Were you like, this is it? Yeah, I was just like,

hello, mate, anyone got any ecstasy? Hello? Somebody gave you an excetron, and you were like, oh, I'm salted, mate, I'm just buzzing. I was asking for more water than your chicken. I was just like Sonny Purdue. Pour it all over my body.

By the way, not sunny for Frank Purdue. Sunny Purdue is someone else. So if you can't think of yours off the top of your head, You can just post yours to the Facebook group and to Twitter. I'm going to post something. I love the thought of it. That was the year I started at spin. And that was, like, it was just such a different landscape for all of music and media.

And whenever you say, you're in music 99, I think about the December, because the year and music issue is always January. So the 99 issue was a January 2000 issue of spent, but the December 99 issue of spent was back on the cover, I guess, for Midnight Vultures or something like that. and it's still the most amazing story I've ever had in journalism because we were making this issue and it was a pretty jam-packed issue

because there were also a lot of ads in both cigarettes and like Rio M-T3 players. Yeah. And I remember we were closing the issue and all of a sudden someone comes running up the stairs from the advertising department and they all huddle in Alan Light's office,

our editor, jeep, and they come out and it's like they rang the bell like some milestone had been reached and they were like, Advertising just said they sold too many ads, we need more editorial for this issue. We need to crash in more stories. Because there was too many pages. So they added like a 15-page fashion spread and an eight-page story about the art show at the Brooklyn

Museum called Sensation that had a painting done with like elephant dung that Rudy Giuliani was just about. We were adding stories about art exhibits in New York to a national magazine. That might be my most late 90s story that I have. Let me remind you, I attended a low-fidelity all-stars concert in London. Your reference to having advertisements from cigarettes and Rio really makes me remember like 2004, lighten up a camel light and firing up by Zoom with five songs on it and just be like, the future is now, baby.

Nothing I am doing will ever change. Do you remember cosmo.com? Yeah. is the short-lived website. It would just bring you things. Yeah, you could get like Rutan Clan CDs and Budweiser. My guy, I was sitting at Finn on Lexington Avenue when it came online and I was like, okay, I went to cosmo.com.

And I had delivered to my cubicle a candy bar, a Macy Gray CD, and Ghostface Kill a Supreme clientele. Just bring it on by, friend of. I can't believe that wasn't a successful business strategy. I know. We need to, okay, so we officially, I think, when I'm done with this making the show, and I'm back in the mix, like early next year, we need to do an early 2000 spot. You mean the watch?

Yeah, fair. I think we should pivot. I think we should own these gray hairs that they can't see since they took us off YouTube. and just really, really become the best, flash worst version to ourselves. I have one last question for you before you go. This one should be a little bit easier to answer because you're nothing, if not a committed, bibliophile.

Oh, yeah. The streets need a summer book update. Eggboy asks, what is this year's Every Man of Menace? And you and I are just so lost in Texasville right now. We're just so deep in the cut with McMurtry. I don't know if I can really see the flowers for the dog, Hogwoods here, man.

Like, I think there's another question I got, which is basically where do you start with McMurtry? I would say we're probably both in agreement that it's all my friends are going to be strangers, right? I mean, I avoided McMurtry for years because I am not a big Western fan, and so I've never even read his most famous book. I've never read Lenton.

I didn't know that he mostly just wrote about going on long beer-fueled road trips between Texas and Hollywood and what it was like making movies in the late 70s. Once you told me that, I was on board. and I think all my friends are going to be strangers as a master. It's just one of the best books I can remember reading.

All of his books are connected. So if you like the serialization that you've come to like in prestige television, you're going to like a bunch of them. But I think that's the one to start with, and then you can go back, darling. I'm for some reason reading Cadillac Jack right now, but if you're driving a Cadillac named Jack, I mean, this is where I'm at. I would say people are looking for something crimeier.

It's never a bad idea to revisit this French crime writer I love named John Patrick Manchette. I've talked about books by him in the past, but I read one of his other novels from the 70s. It's called Free to Kill. It is just this slim, savage little volume that is both about a dude getting revenge

and also like Every Man of Menace kind of is too. So I highly recommend that, but that's not exactly a hot. And we should say, in case anybody missed the few episodes where we talked about her when we talked to Patrick Hoffman, it's never too late to read Patrick Hoffman's

Every Man of Menace, which is still one of the best crime books that's come out this decade. let's what are our favorite crime books from 1999 no that's for another pod let's save that content i'm gonna let you get back to the editing bay i just want kaya to wake up now and we'll go back i promise okay andy thank you so much for calling in good luck with editing good luck being back in the snake hole hopefully i will come join you down in the abq sometime this august chris is coming spf one million my guy get me the green tinted juice later man yeah well i'll have a big bottle for you my brand piece

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Thank you so much to Andy, as always, for checking in from post-production, current production, pre-production. He's just in every phase right now with Briar Patch. It's always fun to hear from him, obviously. Kaya, producer Kaya, say hi. Hello. She is going to join me for the rest of this mailbag episode.

You guys send in some really good questions. I was very intellectually stimulated by these. So let's just jump in right now with a question from Joreen. Kaya, what is Joreen's question? Doreen wants to know if you have an early MVP prediction for Succession Season 2. Okay, so I was very much smoking pure Kendall with a piece of wolf fart hanging on the wall last season. I'm avowed Kendall fanatic. I think that Jeremy Strong's performance is amazing, and I thought his storyline was incredible.

I am a little bit, I don't want to give anything away. I've watched the first episode of season two. Jason Concepcion and I are going to be doing an after show for Succession on the regularly scheduled platforms, YouTube, Twitter, where we'll be talking about the episodes. I'll go live after the episodes of Succession air on Sundays, and then you can also listen to it within the watch on Mondays, I think is the plan. But without giving anything away, I think anybody who's watched the trailers can tell that we actually have a upright and working Logan,

which we didn't have for the first half, pretty much, of last season because he had suffered a stroke. He's in episode one, but at the end of episode one, he falls ill. So just to have Brian Cox firing on all cylinders right from the jump, I think puts him in position to be the early MVP prediction for Succession Season 2. Thank you so much to Joreen for the question. How many steroids is Logan Roy pumping himself with? That's a great question.

That's a Kyah McMullen follow-up. So far, I have not seen any of the steroids going. No PEDs yet. We'll see. Only time we'll tell. All right. Next question. Kevin wants to know, what show, either now or in the horizon, will be the next, the office or friends.

A comedy show that even decades past its finale is still binge-worthy for multiple generations. This is a great question, Kevin. I've been thinking about this a lot because, You know, as I talk to Allison, Herman, and Lucas Shaw over the last couple weeks in our streaming wars conversations, I think you've seen maybe even an outsized amount of value placed on shows like The Office and Friends. I personally, like, you can't really say because you don't know the actual numbers of what kind of viewership the Office and Friends takes up for Netflix. But I think that you've seen like a tremendous amount of like importance placed on them for these new services like HBO, whatever the Warner's, assuming that Friends goes under the HBO Max flagship or the office going on NBC Universal eventually, that you've seen like, okay, well, we've got that coming, even if it's in

three years, we've got this coming. Will people still be watching on their 50th rewatch of the office in a couple of years? It's hard to say. Or will there be a show that sort of takes the place of these shows? And if I had to vote for one, and I might be biased because I actually already like it and have already watched all the episodes, it would be how I met your mother. So why is that? I think that the reason, one of the reasons why the office and friends are popular, aside from like the low grade comfort level of the sort of action and the performances in general, and just it's sort of like a night light that is just engaging enough but not too demanding, I think that there's an attraction to the sense of place.

for lack of a better term. Now, even though a lot of these shows are shot on soundstage is a really great show, no matter whether it's a sitcom or a prestige drama has a sense of place. And I think that people feel like they are in a friendly, comfortable world when they are watching The Office or Friends. And I think that they would feel the same way, or they did feel the same way, watching How I Met Your Mother. Now, How I Met Your Mother, if you didn't know, is a show that ran from about 10 years from 2005 on and it starred Jason Segal, Allison Hanigan, Kobe Smolders, Josh Radner, and of course, Neil Patrick Harris, and it was phenomenal. I just love that show.

I mean, maybe some of the humor has not aged the best in over the years. And, you know, I think that the later seasons are a little bit hit or miss, but so are the later seasons of friends. It's just that you just kind of like get into the idea that you have these 400 or 500 episodes or however many episodes of friends there are to watch. The thing about how I met your mother, oh, were you going to say something, Kaya? No, go ahead. Sorry.

No, I was going to say the thing about how I met your mother that I think, might bring it back around for new generations of viewers is that we probably will start getting nostalgic for 2005 pretty soon if we're not already. In a few years, that will be almost 10 years ago. There will be certain quirks like, oh, they're looking at a Blackberry, but they're not quite addicted to Twitter and smartphone and Facebook and stuff like that. There are certain elements of it that are recognizable, but there are certain things that almost seem quaint. And I think those are two things that friends in the office have going for them to. Do you like how I met your mother, Kaya? It's okay. I think the main guy in it is kind of smar me.

Which one? Ted? Yeah. Okay. Did you watch? How many would you say you watched? Oh, a decent amount for sure. Okay. Like, at least a couple seasons. And do you think, like, for you, is there, like, a finite amount of times that you can watch Friends or the Office? Yeah, I would say so. I used to be a big office watcher back in the day, as I've mentioned before.

But, like, I've kind of, like, gotten over that. And like, I don't think I've watched an episode in like two, three years. Oh, wow. Okay. You're gone cold. You're really off the sauce. Well, I replaced it with Curbed. And I feel like in this conversation of like what is going to become the comfort watch,

I feel like shows like Seinfeld and Curb get overlooked a lot. Yeah. Well, I think part of it is that, so I think Seinfeld is on Hulu. And for whatever reason, people aren't like talking about, oh, I've been watching this show on Hulu nonstop. I don't know why. It's something about the next thing. Netflix ease of use that people seem to be really attracted to the friends in office and turn the app on or turn it, go to that site and just let it play. But there's tons of library shows

on Hulu that people could be doing the same thing for. Maybe it's the commercials if you don't have Hulu Plus. That's true. That's true. It could be that. So yeah, we have a couple of questions or a good question a little later on in the mailbag about pre-1990 TV. So maybe we can get into a little bit of that there. Let's go to these questions from Ali and Pat, though. Okay. Olly Thomas wants to know. Amazon and Netflix are looking for the next Game of Thrones with their Lord of the Rings and Witcher adaptations. Do you think that they can rival Throne's success? Will we see another show match Game of Thrones level of acclaim? Or with so many streaming services, are the days of water cooler TV shows finished?

Right. So that's Ollie's question. And then Pat wants to know what IP is still out there that could be blown into a mega property all of the MCU, Star Wars, etc. So we are about to get this title wave of world building shows, obviously, from Historic Materials to The Witcher, as mentioned, we have a Game of Thrones prequel coming. There's a Lord of the Rings show coming and tons of other stuff that I can't even think of off the top of my head where people have bought a series of books or a beloved piece of intellectual property, an old sci-fi thing. I think HBO Max is going to be making a Sisters of Dune show about the Benny Jazz. Like there's like so many of these kinds of shows starting to say nothing of, stuff we don't even know about, whether it's like an expansion of what Castle Rock could be and getting more into Stephen King. There's a lot of this stuff coming.

The question is, is any of this stuff going to actually break through the mainstream? So rather than address it as like water cooler, which I think is a conversation that Andy and I have been having for about two years now, so whether or not there's going to be another water cooler show, is the idea of like whether something like Game of Thrones, which was met with outside of the George R. A. Martin fan base, a degree of skepticism, I think. I mean, even for me, for as much as I love that show, I don't think I watched the first season live. I think it was something that, like, around episode six or seven, or maybe even by the end of the first season,

enough people have been like, man, you got to check out Game of Thrones that I did so. And that was because I think I was just like a little bit like, okay, but, you know, do I need another Lord of the Rings style, sword and shield, fantasy epic. And it turns out I did. And it turns out, obviously, that that show meant a lot to people who had otherwise no interest in that kind of storytelling. And appealed to the people who were like the base, the people who obviously were huge fans of the books and wanted to see the execution of these stories that they had been reading about for decades. So that's what makes Game of Thrones a unicorn. It's finding something that appeals outside of the already established fan base that's there.

So for Kaya, I imagine you're not like counting the days until you can find the next game of Thrones, right? No. Yeah. I mean, it's just like I feel like people keep asking that question. How do we emulate this? How do we emulate this? And I mean, is it even necessarily going to have to come

from another fantasy adaptation? Like, what if it's something, what if the next thing that comes along is something like, lost. Yeah, I mean, and that had elements of sci-fi to it, obviously, but felt a lot more like a television drama, even a network television drama in retrospect, and I mean that as a compliment, then it did this sort of like, here's a different, like, we have to go through all these different quests to find out who these different people are and there's going to be this clash of kings. And there's a lot of stuff going on in Game of Thrones that like on the, if you just read it

on the side of the box, you might be like, ah, I don't know if it's for me. But then when you see the show, you're like, holy shit, this is this is incredible. I feel like too is almost like a snowball effect to the point where like I feel like a good amount of people started watching Game of Thrones solely because everybody is saying you gotta watch Game of Thrones.

And that is the thing that is going to be difficult is that as these shows migrate to the far rungs of streaming services that require a fee for entry, even though HBO obviously does as well, I think HBO is something that you can add on to your cable subscription, something

that like if you you can probably get your parents' log in or something like that. People find ways to watch HBO shows. But as shows wind up going to these, okay, I got to spend another 12 bucks for this. I got to spend another $8 bucks for this. I got to spend $1.99 per episode for this. I don't know that we're going to have one that's going to have the word of mouth the way the Game of Thrones did.

Right. Okay, so moving on. Our next question comes from, I'm probably going to pronounce this wrong, Nikila? I think, yeah, Nikila. Nikila. Nikila. So she wants to know more about screener gate. Okay. I was kind of on the fence about whether I was going to talk about this.

It's not really like a thing, right? This is basically, it's a complicated situation. But when Nikola is referring to is something that came up on Twitter the other day when the critic Emily Vanderwerf mentioned that an upcoming show was not going to be sending out screeners for pre-release coverage essentially. So to give you guys an idea in case you don't know, usually what happens is when stranger things is coming out or when, you know, big little lies is coming out. The network sends out a number of episodes, whether it's the whole season or two episodes or three episodes. Sometimes they're in various stages of being totally completed in terms of their visual effects and audio. But for the most part, they're like, here's a couple of episodes to give you either a sense of what it is or the entire picture of what it is or a taste of what it is. and you kind of work from there. And what Emily is referring to, I believe,

I think that it was, I don't know if we ever got to, like, the sort of like official bottom of it was Mine Hunter. And the idea that Netflix was not sending out screeners for this second season of Mind Hunter, which is coming out on August 16th. Now, I will admit that it does seem like there hasn't been a tremendous amount of a push for Mindhunter season two, considering the fact that I think people like that show.

David Fincher directed a bunch of the episodes. He's directing a bunch of the episodes. directing a bunch of the episodes of this season. There's like a kind of feeling of Charles Manson in the air right now. Charles Manson's going to be making an appearance at least on Mind Hunter. We know that from the trailer and from the IMDB credits.

So there's all this stuff to be excited about for the show and there hasn't been like a huge pre-release push for it. Why do you think that is? Well, I think that honestly the problem with it is is that it calls into question the usefulness of pre-release coverage in the first place. And you know, you can get something where

maybe you get all the episodes of Fleabag and you have critics saying this is the best show on television bar and you have to stop everything you're doing and make sure you make time to watch it. But ultimately, I think that the discourse is different than the hype cycle. And it's not even like the hype cycle

like you're going to be a cheerleader for a show as much as if Netflix, for instance, is indifferent to buzz before a show launches on a Friday, then it's really in their best interest to let everybody in the, gate at the same time rather than a few people who then could turn around and say, don't waste your time.

Now, in the movies, if they don't screen something, it means they've got a turkey on their hands, right? So typically that would suggest a poor quality. I am guessing just based on who's involved in Mindhunter, that that can't possibly be the case. But that being said, it is an interesting question. And it goes towards sort of a larger conversation about the role of how do we talk about these TV shows that are being watched in so many different ways.

And this is something that Andy and I have discussed. This is something we discuss a lot among the Ringer editorial staff, especially for Netflix shows that you're basically trying to find a happy medium between diehard fans who are going to probably binge the show as fast as they possibly can. And for lack of a better term, like normal TV watchers who are like, yeah, if I like it, I'll try and watch a few. I might binge it, but I might not binge it for three weeks, you know? and people who are like, oh, watch an episode a night or a week.

And it's really hard. So do you give away things that happen at the end of Stranger Things to those people? Do you give away things that happen at the end of Veronica Mars to those people? Or do you talk about it in this imaginary incremental way? It's a really fascinating conversation. Made all the more kind of complicated if you're not also getting access to those episodes before anyone. Right. I wonder if this is really just like Netflix almost like internally testing how like

how reliable and strong their algorithm is that it will get people to watch and like how like the power and simply just like putting something on someone's like up on the banner of the homepage of Netflix and like seeing someone's willingness to try it out.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, I would just say that that Netflix is not stingy with screeners ordinarily, you know, that they send out stranger things. They send out Narcos. They send out, you know, they send out episodes of shows if you ask for them. Right.

This is just, this just seems to be an exception. And I don't know. That could have something to do with the creators themselves. All right. Doug Stamper wants to know. What's the movie or TV show you guys are looking forward to most this fall? It's Mind Hunter. It's Mind Hunter.

I can only be me. No, I'm very excited to see. I think Mind Hunter had to do a lot of work in the beginning to establish the tone and the interest, the subject matter for what it was going to cover and how it was going to cover it. And now that I think it's like up and running, I cannot wait for the second season. And not only is Fincher directing, but Carl Franklin directed some episodes. He directed one false move and devil in a blue dress and is an amazing filmmaker. And Andrew Dominic, who has kind of just been in and out of the mix for the last 12 years since assassination of Jesse James in 2007 also made some episodes.

So I can't wait for Mindhunter season two. Nice. I tapped out after like the first two episodes, but I think I'm going to give it another time. I think a lot of people did. All right, Chase Gibson. What's got a chance to be a cult movie in 15 years? How do cult movies audiences grow in an era of instant access where we're not forcing VHS bootlegs on each other more easily or not at all?

So Chase is not referring to movies about cults. He's obviously referring to cult movies, basically movies with cult followings. And that was a phenomenon of the pre-streaming era. And more, I think I ascribe it more to the 80s. and early 90s than I do, and obviously the 70s and 60s, but I think by the time the 2000s rolled around, it was more and more rare for it to happen,

but it's essentially often a genre movie that's overlooked, if not released at all sometimes, or barely released upon its completion. And then somehow through word of mouth, past hand-to-hand, VHS copies, DVD copies, they developed this reputation among a fan base that kind of far exceeds what it received when it was first released.

And so, you know, like, my favorite cult movies are Repo Man, or they live or Evil Dead. Who are these, like, these really weird 80s movies that just kind of like came and went, but then lived on in VHS and lived on by like your cool older brother passed it down. He was like, oh, you got to see Repo Man, if you like this. And I think the last time I remember this happening, although I don't even know if it would call it a cult movie, was Mallrats. Did you ever see Mallrats? No.

So it's this Kevin Smith movie that he made after Clerks. that I remember seeing in Western Massachusetts in 1996 or something like that and immediately going back to see it again because I was just like, I love that movie so much. And I think in the canon of Kevin Smith, it's, I think it's appreciated. But, you know, in the wider world, I don't think anybody is like, man, mall rats is amazing.

But that's like the last one I remember being like, this is almost like my special movie and my friend's special movie. How something like that happens today? I don't know. I mean, because you've got movies. So, for instance, there's a movie I love from earlier this year called Standoff at Sparrow Creek, which is kind of this reservoir dogsy movie about a militia that has, they think they have a rat in their ranks, and they're trying to basically ferret that person out. Now, Standoff at Sparrow Creek is essentially using a lot of the same tools to publicize its existence that Hobbs and Shaw is.

Hobbs and Shaw just has more money behind that push. but I guess that's the kind of the movie that could be a cult movie at this point where it doesn't get much of a wide release it goes to iTunes but doesn't maybe necessarily take off there and then you just kind of hope that people catch up with it who like a tense thriller but that's really the limit because like right now

especially with stuff like Netflix if you've got a movie and it winds up on the front page it can be as popular if not more popular than anything in a multiplex Not Jeff Proost Jeff Proops, yeah On a scale of Raptors' Sixers game seven To Godzilla's chances on the debate stage How excited should we be for John Goodman

As a TV angelian televangelist In the Righteous gemstones this August Hashtag Deep Cut So not Jeff Probs trying to really dial up Some Chris-centric references here, I think Godzilla for president was a short-lived campaign I think that like the actual presence of 20 plus Democratic candidates made it sort of impossible for for Godzilla's candidates to get off the ground. Killed the bit.

Yeah, I know. I don't know how to properly like put this within the ranking of what or the rating scale that Jeff suggests or not Jeff. But I would say I've watched a few episodes of Racious Gemstones. And while Goodman is great, Walton Goggins is like on another level. He is Godzilla running for president in this show. Check out the interview with the creator. That's right. We did an interview with Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, and Jody Hill on the watch last week.

So definitely check that out. Nick Wooda Taker wants to know. If you could have any character from another world, travel into the dark universe for season three. Who would you choose? I would definitely choose Roman from Succession. Just because he's already got some priors with blowing up that satellite, I just think that he could do some great things in the dark universe. and make it all look like it wasn't his fault. Absolutely.

Broome Kid wants to know, what are your top eight favorite episodes of TV in 2019? This was very specific number of Broome Kid, but I like thinking about episodes because if you're watching stuff at the clip that we're usually watching stuff on this pod, it sometimes gets hard to remember episodes. So this forced me to do a little bit of self-audit.

Here are my top episodes. I'm not sure if this is eight. Obviously, Barry's Ronnie and Lily episode with the little kid was phenomenal. Fleabag episode six of season two is the best thing I saw on television this year. Dark, episode six, also an endless cycle. I don't want to give anything away from Dark, but I thought that that was the episode. That really brought together the best parts of season one with the best parts of season two. True Detective, Hunters in the Dark, aka the Pink Room episode, at least that last moment,

but I thought that that was sort of the best of season three and really incredible job by Scoot McNary that episode. I really liked 05 Bonnie and Clyde, the Euphoria episode, the one after the Carnival. I don't know if that's considered like the best Euphoria episode. It gets super weird talking about Euphoria. Like everybody's like, yeah, you watch Euphoria? Yeah. Okay, cool.

High Maintenance, MASH, the first episode from this past season. That was fantastic. Fossie Verdon, who's got the pain, the second episode from Fossi Verdon? It was really great. Game of Thrones A Night of the Seven Kingdoms, which is the best episode of the last season of Game of Thrones and has some of the best writing the show ever had, I thought. Andrew Drake, in the aftermath of once upon a time in Hollywood

and the ringer's epic Tarantino week, it was clear early on that Tarantino was a lottery pick level pop culture talent. What current young creatives would you say are worth a top pick in a hypothetical pop culture draft? This is pretty easy. I think that Phoebe Wallerbridge is lock number one. She's uncontested.

Acted and wrote Fleabag. Wrote season one of Killing Yeaven still has a huge part to play in that show and is now doing rewrites on the new James Bond movie. So I think that's a pretty safe pick. I see you also have Greta Gerwig. I do also have Greta Gerwig. I mean, why not? Lady Bird and she's got, I think she's like going to be up for Oscars with little women. So shout out to her.

I'm very excited for that movie. All right. PJ wants to know. Do you have any recommendations for any TV shows made before the 90s that are still relevant or enjoyable? Great question, PJ. We don't really talk about any television before 2012. Not yet at least. Yeah, right.

Well, once we get back into the How I Met Your Mother Renaissance, I'll be right here. But this is great question. Pre-90s TV that might still be relevant or enjoyable. I predictably will say Miami Vice. It's good both as a time capsule and also it's just like the production value is really really high. It's a little different than most TV today, I would say. But you don't

have to watch all of Miami Vice. The first five episodes they did, the pilot, and especially the two-parter Calderone's return, it's like a really nice, almost like a mini-series. And so I would highly recommend anybody if they've never seen it. I think it's on stars. It's

streaming on stars, if you have that. And it's fantastic stuff. And then I would also check out Hill Street Blues, which is a cop show from gosh, I guess like the early, early 80s. And I would recommend you might be a little over your head if you start it at season three, but the first episode of season three

was written by David Milch, who would go on to write Deadwood. We would work on NYPD Blue and do Deadwood and John from Cincinnati and Luckin, obviously, is one of the great TV writers. He wrote an episode in the first season, the first episode of the third season, rather. It's called Trial by Fire, and it's riveting. It's really, really good.

It kind of looks more like 70s movies than it does television. And I would also say, I really like the Golden Girls. That's a show that I don't know if it'll ever have like a friend's office kind of thing, but is just a really good ambient show, a sitcom show, and it's actually quite witty and well-written. I know a few people who like Golden Girls. Do you ever fire that up? Do you have Hulu and fire that up?

I've never watched an episode, but... I think you would enjoy it. Okay. I think it's like sneaky popular, though. All right, we are going to end in honor of the ringers' 1999 music week. We're going to end with a musical question. Matt Lynch wants to know, Chris, what have you been listening to this year? Jeez, Matt, thanks for asking.

So I really don't have like a, oh, Friday, it's the new releases program going anymore. I spent a lot of my life being pretty on top of everything that was coming out in any given week and listen to the radio a lot and trying to be up on music as much as possible and listening to a lot of mixtapes and stuff. I think that my probable over-reliance on Spotify and streaming platforms has made it so that that's just kind of like, even though it was easier than ever to listen to new releases, the constant access to all music ever has kind of made it so that my listening preferences have gotten pretty eclectic. So just like a kind of random assortment of what I've been listening to this year, from this year, definitely the Sharon Van NuLen album is easily the best

thing I've heard this year. But I've also been listening to early PJ Harvey, Rolling Thunder Arrow Bob Dylan, the German dub techno label, Rhythm and Sound. Do you just like dial up a playlist on Spotify of that? It's really good work music. It's really good just to have it on the background, although sometimes it sounds like you're inside of an aquarium. I've been listening a bunch of playlist that are focused on specific years for other work stuff. So like 1980, 1985, and 1990, but that was all related to Stranger Things and True Detective. I have a 300 song playlist made up of songs that Earl sweatshirt played on his

Red Bull radio show, which is the most like 2018-19 thing you can possibly say a bunch of playlist that were made by the record label, the Numero group, and then just like a bunch of Beastie Boys, Jason Isbell, Max Richter, Derek and the Domino's, Cure New Order, Spoon. It goes on and on. Music. I like it.

Music is good. Yeah, it's great. Kai, thank you so much for reading me the questions. Thank you guys so much for sending in the questions. We will definitely hold on to the rest of them and maybe sprinkle them in over the next couple of weeks, just a little bit of house cleaning. So I'm out Thursday on vacation. Then we're back on Monday and we will be diving headfirst into succession. I think what the plan is going to be is this. So like what we're going to try and do is on Mondays, we'll do a little bit of weekend news, whatever kind of is coming up,

whether it's a movie or whether it's just like some movement in the, the pop culture universe. And then we'll do succession on Mondays. That will be maybe some conversation with other people, but mostly my conversation with Jason Concepcion that you can see also that night on Sunday nights after succession. But we'll take the audio from that because it's basically a podcast. We're not going to be doing a lot of the flat circle true detective stuff we did with crime scene exhibits. So we'll do that. We'll do succession on Mondays. And then on Thursdays, what we're going to try and do is make it more of a like clearinghouse for other shows that are on. So if you guys have shows that you're watching that you want us to talk about, please let me know. But you know with gemstones and mine hunter,

and a bunch of other stuff that's coming on, I think we just needed to be like, okay, on Thursday, we're going to run through like two or three shows and just do a check-in. So Monday will be like more news and succession for the next couple weeks, and then Thursday we'll do the terror

or Lodge 49 or anything else that's kind of like on. What about Chernobyl, Chris? Are you ever going to talk about Chernobyl? I'm holding out. Maybe I'll do that for Christmas. I'll do a five-hour Chernobyl pod for Christmas Day. I mean, it is a holiday show. That's right.

Kaya, thank you so much. Thank you guys so much for your questions. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.