The Watch - ‘Andor’ Episode 6, ‘The Midnight Club,’ and ‘High School’

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

Chris and Andy talk about how this latest episode of ‘Andor’ might have been the best hour of 'Star Wars' in years (1:00). Then they hit on all of the ’90s needle drops in the newest Mike Flanagan show ‘The Midnight Club’ (32:28) and the teen drama show from Tegan and Sara, ‘High School’ (41:01). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Yossi Salick, and I'm the host of Bansplain, a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies. We're back with a brand new season at our brand new home, the Ringer podcast network, tackling a whole new batch of artists, from grunge gods to power pop pioneers to new metal legends and many, many more. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, only on Spotify. Did you know about one in three people with Plexeryasus may also develop source. psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away. Trimphaya, guselcomab, taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate

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Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphia, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interests that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports 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 at the ringer.com and joining me on the

other line. His final podcast before joining the Aldani Tourism Board. It's Andy Greenwald. Do you understand how hip Aldani would be in 2022? Are you kidding? It would have been like 2012 Reykjavik. It would have been like 2021 Portugal. Like I'm sorry to all of my friends just soaking up the sun and green wine in Lisbon, but like it is all about that Aldani mutton, just grilled over an open flame. There's no green wine in Lisbon, is there? Yeah. Vino Verde? Is that what we're talking about? Yeah. But is it green?

No. I mean, just, look, we're not doing the wine podcast. They don't even know what we're talking about here. We're talking about Andor. Everybody knows what we're talking about. This is where you come for Andor takes. Us and Midnight Boys. Can I just say that I've really been enjoying Midnight Boys and their instant reactions to Andor. So if you need more Andor content, Charles and Van and Steve and Jomey are doing a great job with it. I love talking about this show with my guy, Andy Greenwald. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk a little midnight club and a little bit about a show that's coming out tomorrow called High School on FreeVee, which is the Amazon Free Tier. Hey, Andy Greenwald. All listeners know that

as the streaming home of the USA series Briar Patch, right? Is that where Breyer Patch wound up on freebie? It wound up on Freevy, baby. Do you have a botnet that just like fires up Breyer Patch views like over and over again? That's what I do for the watch. No, no. The thing about freevy is people mistakenly think that it's you don't have to pay a subscription fee. but it's actually what the creators get in terms of royalties when their shows end up there. So please, feel free to V.

That's free. Hey, I was going to ask you, so we're going to be talking about a Netflix show for the first time in quite a while, I think. I don't think we've talked about a Netflix show in a minute. I stay watching Netflix shows. You know what? I've also fired up recently is

the reboot of The Mole starring our buddy Alex Wagner as the host. Wait, Alex is hosting a show called The Mole? Yeah, well, Anderson Cooper used to host it. a game show where you have to figure out who the mole is. I thought Alex took over from Rachel Maddow. She's got time. She's also on the circus. No, she's not on the circus anymore, I think.

Oh, she's not? Alex Wagner, come on the watch. Let's chop it out. Alex Wagner, come on the watch and feel free to share your G-Cal just so we can figure this all out for you. And we can talk about freshman year acting class. But I really enjoy the mole. But I was going to ask, as a guy

who finds himself probably less frequently enjoying Netflix content, Right. Do you think that you would sign up for the cheaper ad-supported tier of Netflix, which is debuting in November? Great question. I think that as someone who has gotten very used to what television is now, and other than sports, and that's ad-free, and also as an avowed enemy of capitalism, I can't imagine doing it. No, I can't imagine signing up for the ad-supported version. I'd be very curious, and this is the one company for sure where you know they will have these metrics almost instantly. I'm very curious what sort of Netflix user won't mind the changed experience in exchange for the few, you know, paying a little bit less.

And I wonder, you know, our conversations about Netflix when we had them over the last year were really about Netflix becoming kind of default TV in a way that just sort of scrolling used to be, right? Like maybe I think a lot of people still, and this is to their advantage, to the company's advantage, just throw it on, see what's new, maybe watch some old stuff, maybe watch some competition reality. stuff. And that vibe makes a little bit more sense with the ad-supported tier than say Squid Game when that comes back. I think that makes sense. I will say, Chris, you're right that I don't watch a lot of Netflix, but Netflix

does get a lot of burn on Datington Island. I imagine. I imagine. I would say that my children's favorite show on Netflix right now is something related to the Garamel del Toro trolls slash space people cartoon universe. I'm either watching

the show, I don't know what it is, and then I check in on what it is by, like, seeing what last watched, and it's like Guillermo del Toro presents. So good looking out for William the Bull, like he's getting money from that. Their second favorite show in Netflix is just watch trailers on Netflix, auto play trailers until I catch them and say, you're done watching TV. Because they're just watching the Mind Hunter trailer over and over again. Over and over. Just they love it when Jonathan Groff presses record. Yes. Do you know who's not ad for you right now? Tell me. Me.

Because I'm in Philadelphia at my mom's house and the TV's on a lot here. Yeah. Did you know that they're, like, we don't even have to like delve into like the merits of this, this seditorial race, the Senate race in Pennsylvania? Did you know now that they just run the Federman and then the Oz ad back to back? Like I don't know if this is like a new rule that you have to have like basically like as soon as one ad runs, the next ad runs right? it so it'll be like, John Federman wants to give heroin to children. And then the next ad is like Mehmet Oz kills dogs and it runs. I swear to God, dude, every five minutes. I mean, only one of those claims is true, but go on. I know. But it's like, it is honestly like a wonder that we are still

like upright, like sentient human beings. Like it is burrowing into my brain in a way that is really uncomfortable where I'm just like, I hate this. Has it moved your internal needle at all? Like, are you considering... Well, I'm an Oz guy going back because I love supplements. So, you know what I mean? I've always really believed that any problem I have can be fixed with, like, Elderberry. And he's the one who taught me that.

That's why I'm in such a good shape. Also, I think that your love of House of the Dragon has made you really, really keen on, like, external takeovers of sovereign places. You know what I mean? Sure. Sure. So considering Oz has a beautiful beachfront home in Driftmark, I think his attempts to say that he can also be Senator of Kings Landing tracks.

Kings Landing is in Northeast Philly, right? Kings Landing is the best strip club in Northeast Philly. They have a lovely breakfast buffet. Should we endorse a candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate race? Yeah, but do you want to wait? Should we wait to announce right closer to election day? I think we should, we want to make this. impactful. Speaking of political races, I am, you know, I'm trying to keep it, yeah, try to try to keep

working, do my job, do my podcast, parent, my children, you know, so I'm not the news junkie that I once was. That's why I probably why I didn't know what Alex was up to. That's why I didn't know the state of play with the commercials. But that, but because of that, like my, the way that it touches me is a little bit odd. So this morning, when I was driving into the office, I got a text from an unknown number. And I was like, oh, I wonder, wonder what this is. And it said, Andrew, this is Martin Sheen. And my first thought was like...

Was he texting for Beto? All Beto numbers for you, though, that you know those numbers. The Beto numbers are in my favorites. Yeah. Andy, it's Carrie again. Time is tight. Those are your favorite texts. The fundraising things at this time of year are my least favorite things.

Do you think I should write back to Martin Sheen? Do you think he's texting me? What if he's just like, I heard you're on freebie. Let's get this, let's get a prodge going, man. Let's do it general. All right. Oh, that's it. That's the end of the conversation.

No, I would love to keep talking about the USA slash Amazon FreeV program prior patch, which is ad supported. So I think that that's a great thing. Or we could talk. We could talk. You want to talk midterms 2020? too. I just I don't really. I don't really.

I do want to talk about the rebellion in space that's happening though. Yes, that's all I wanted to do. Let's talk about what might be the most thrilling hour of Star Wars since Empire, which is the I, the episode, the sixth episode of Andor, written by Dan Gilroy and directed by Susanna White, overseen, obviously, by Tony Gilroy, who came on the show a couple of weeks ago. And we were gobsmacked. We were Gaga over the first few episodes. And he was, was just like, oh, cool. I think the other ones are really good.

You know, like he was like, I'm glad you guys like those little joints that we did in the beginning. And, you know, as the show has sort of progressed, I was like, this is honestly my favorite, my favorite Star Wars thing, maybe ever, honestly. And I'm totally happy with what I'm getting. But I was kind of like, I really, I'm really excited to see what Tony Gilroy thought was bananas. You know, like what Tony Gilroy was. like, I'm really so proud that we were able to pull this off.

And I don't even know if he was referring to this three-episode arc set on Aldani about a small nascent rebel squad pulling off a heist of a garrison to steal the payroll of a quadrant of the empire. But if it's better than that, then we need to have a conversation about whether or not I'm converting to the force or not. Quick side note, do you think the empire should have gone paperless sooner. I like the fact that it's a very tactile universe, but there does seem to be a real dearth of P2P payment systems. I totally agree.

I mean, maybe it's just a question of like getting the different networks to agree with each other. You know what I mean? Like the different, so across the galaxy. I, look, this was wild. And to your point about what Tony thinks is incredible, one thing that I really enjoyed, I mean, we've reflected on this since he was our show and we were both struck by just how happy he was with everything and the ability to tell stories on this scale. One thing that he elaborated on that a little bit when he was on

the podcast I like more than ours, Mark Maren's podcast, and he was saying like, he's basically like the thing that kept me from doing TV was this when they first offered it to me or when they first talked to me about an and or show a few years prior to agreeing to do it was scale, right? And the thing he kept repeating was just like they're now willing to spend $200 million on a TV show. They were allowing him to do and he kept saying like 200 speaking parts or whatever. And basically that he was doing the wins of war. You know, and this was the episode where you saw it because scale is thrown around a lot when we talk about this era of widescreen television.

Usually I think it means, oh, there was a dragon this week. You know, and I'm not dragging the Game of Thrones shows for that. I'll do that on Monday, I believe. I think that we're going to start calling the Monday episode of the Watch dragging dragons, though. That's good. House of the Dragon. Boy, I really am slow today.

You know why you're good at that? Because your mind has been sharpened by attack ads. That's right. That's amazing. But this was scale in a very, very different way. And we can sort of go through it. Like, part of the payoff was the two episodes of patient construction that got us here. You know, of introducing the squad, the rag tag squad, of understanding the training,

of understanding that the, not just the physical landscape that is Aldani, but the garrison, the power dynamics within the garrison, the cultural relevance of certain parts of the place. And then having an episode where I was like, this would be fine if it was just them you know, pretending to be soldiers and robbing the place. But then you remember that it's also Star Wars. So guess what else you can do? You can mobilize Thai fighters to come swooping across the sky that is already screaming with a rainbow flurry of comets.

And you're like, yeah, this is the best of this. This is what we want. Yeah, that kind of, that's the scene reminded me of why I thought this shit was cool in the first place, you know, because it's, I think the VFX departments for, or VFX houses have been getting a lot of heat over the last year or so for maybe the level of finishedness of the product that they're turning in. And it's really no fault of their own. I think that the streaming TV schedule demands are pretty, pretty ridiculous, obviously. And by all accounts, they're working around the clock to finish, you know, these effects that they essentially are like always redoing at the last second because people, have changed their mind about things. This sequence with the eye, which is essentially this northern

lights spectacle on the planet of Aldani, looks like it took them three years to do. Not only did you get like this color scheme that was this sort of like jumping to light speed, but also this like kaleidoscopic, psychedelic explosion of light, but you also got a feeling of the texture that it was these crystals flying across the sky and that it was these projectiles that he could bounce the tie fighters off of and to do his getaway. You talked a little bit about scale. The other thing that I thought was really cool

about this episode was, you know, oftentimes in big IP storytelling, it's got to always be like, we're going to save the world by doing something huge, like throw a city or like stop the, you know, stop Thanos, but there's going to be a thousand robots running at us

while we're doing that. There's 60 Aldonnis, there's, what, five or six rebels, and there's about 40 people in the garrison. And what happens is when you shrink that down, and you have real storytelling motivations to have

every one of those things be the case, when they have the shootout, I was definitely like, I don't know if they can get out of this, but it wasn't because five people versus 500, you wouldn't believe it. It's, you know, like the The odds aren't so great, but somehow the odds not being great made it seem more dangerous.

We are extremely present in every moment of the world of this show, and I can't stress enough how radical that feels at this point and how important it is. Present in a physical sense, like when Val and Sinta, I believe her name is, are doing the aquatic part of it. Like, first of all, again, all this has been thought of, like what sort of device is going to propel them across the water. but when they get to the bridge and they're touching it, it seems like a thing that is there and has been there. And their physical relationship to these places and to the ground that they're walking on really has centered us in a place, right?

Like that's hugely important. We're also present within the machinations of these people emotionally and then culturally and then just in this conflicted moment. When we meet the commandant, we see him trying to get his belt across his body and he can't anymore. And there's that nice little half joke with his wife that tells you everything about him, about her,

about their family dynamic, about what they feel about this place, and thus by extension what the empire feels about this place. And the point that I keep coming back to when I'm thinking about why this show is triumphant is that it just walks the walk, man. It doesn't talk the talk. Every other major show right now,

ones that we like, ones that we are mixed on, ones that we don't like is playing a very contemporary game within the media, which I don't disparage because it's hard to get anything noticed, where there's the show that we watch, but also there is the interviews and the discourse around the show about what the intention was and what it's doing, not just for things that I value very highly, like representation or telling different types of stories, right, but also about rewarding audiences with Easter eggs or answers to questions that they'd had before.

So that, you know, I've checked out on She-Hulk and people seem to enjoy it and maybe it'd be worth revisiting. But from my peripheral media view of it, the only coverage I see about it is what Daredevil means now for the Marvel universe. Prior to these last three weeks of television,

I'd never heard of Aldani. I didn't know about their cultural traditions regarding mutton or lamb skins. I didn't know that the empire used, we were joking about it, I didn't know they used hard currency as payroll or that could be manipulated. I hadn't met any of these people.

people. And it's so rewarding to be in their story and have the show deliver on that story without anything moving up or down the chain. So that when Evan Moss-Backrake's like, oh, yeah, that's Grito's Blaster, it's like, oh, have fun. But it's not three episodes about how Grito got his fucking blaster. Right. You know what I mean? It's about this. And that shouldn't be so unique at this moment, but it is. I wanted to ask you as somebody who, you know, I was busting your chops earlier, but like as somebody who has written dramatic. Oh, you can bust them. No.

We were talking about lamb. One of the things that I thought was really cool, but I wonder whether or not would be somewhat challenging, honestly, for modern audiences is not a full-scale abandonment of Chekhov because I think that there are some, he adheres obvious, I mean, Tony Gilroy is a master storyteller who probably knows way more about dramatic storytelling rules than I've ever, he's forgotten more than I know.

But one of the things that I thought was really cool about this episode, but the show itself, is how many things are left in for color, but are not the gun in the first act that needs to go off in the second act. So the fact that Jayhold, which is a great name for a commanding officer, right? Oh, that was his...

Okay, yeah, they were saying it, and I didn't quite, okay. The fact that that guy's kid is consumptive, and they have that brief exchange where he's like, she's like, he's not feeling well or he's feeling ill, and he's like, he's always feeling ill. doesn't matter. It doesn't come up again. It sort of suggests a complicated relationship to his family. And maybe it gives a little bit of inner life to his decision making as he's going through with the heist with these people. And like whether or not he wants any, me, obviously doesn't want harm to come to his family. But he has a strange, you know, he's got his career in his mind as much as he's got his family in his mind. But that kid doesn't have an asthma attack that then comes. back to haunt the rebels or something. It's just, this is a scene. We're going to find out a little bit

about this guy and then we're going to keep it moving. And he does that. Gilward does this multiple times. I mean, even Sinta and Vell's handhold. I don't know if that was romantic. I don't know what kind of relationship. I think it was. I think when we met the characters, Clem slash Cashin is told that she shares a bet already. Like that's very understated, but yeah. Yeah, but like that's the same kind of like throwaway line of like I guess Nemick said last week he said well then the surprise will come from below and that was in reference to them

doing their little submarine part of the mission and I didn't even remember that until I read about it and Ben Lindberg's recap on the ringer but I guess you know I saw some people saying like well I kept waiting for the Aldani festival to matter

and it's like well it doesn't matter in the sense that they rise up and help the rebels but it matters in the sense of like, these people are essentially going to be swept aside by this conflict eventually. And it's all color, but the world is better when you have color. I don't think every show can do this, but it's amazing to watch something like this just kind of like tell a story in this way. I couldn't agree more.

I think two things. One, the presence of the Aldani having their festival and singing in a language that may never be heard in a Star Wars property again, honestly to me is like a meta spike in the entire intellectual property. You know, it is so, it's a corrective. And it's being injected back into this in a way that is making me feel so excited, honestly, about a fictional universe to entertain us for the next, however, many decades. Because it is not just about a magical family or one set of Mandalorian armor that stays on one desert planet. It's about a galaxy with culture and with points of view.

and lives, ordinary lives and emotions that intersect. And so much thought was given to them and their outfits and what they would sound like and how they would be. It's so respectful. And it's also, it's expansive. I think that's what's hugely important. And I really hope that it's kind of like it's been entered into the bloodstream now in a way that these sorts of stories are possible for this world. I can't overstate enough how I can't overstate how important that is. To the other point, when Tony's been doing his media rounds with us as well, you know, he's talked about how, and I say Tony, you said he's the showrunner, his brother Dan wrote this episode.

I'm sure Dan would say the same thing as a screenwriter of, you know, of some renown. The stuff that they like best as writers gets cut out of movies. And that was true even before the, you know, the superhero revolution. Like movies have to be short and scenes have to be there for a purpose. And any little bit of color or texture you get in there, people will remember it and make. the movie better, but that's always the first thing cut. So I kind of love seeing these guys who are just seen as like the top of their trade mercenaries almost in terms of like precision and jargon and delivering on action. Getting to just, you know, adjust their sashes a little bit.

Shout out to what's at Jayhold? Like they get to relax. They get a little flab in there. That's where the fun is. You know, the scenes we're talking about the what's his name? I can't remember the names on this show. People get on me for not knowing the Game of Thrones characters. I'm much worse with Star Wars things.

But like, you know, the bad guy who wasn't in this episode, who eats cereal, like his first scene with his... Oh, Karn, I think his name is... Kyle, Kirol. His first scene with his uniform. Yeah, Cyril Karn. Yeah, Cyril. That's something that would get cut. And thank God it didn't, you know.

I love that there's room for it. These are the things that this is what we need for. for this to be a rich text for lots of stories for, and I think this part is crucial, lots of people, not just the same people again and again and again. You mentioned the royal family of space wizards, which is essentially been the guiding principle for this world for 40 years. It really struck me that at the end of the episode,

after Skeen has betrayed the group, Cassian kills Skeen, then he goes into Vell and he's just like, I'm getting out of here. First of all, the forearm doctor? Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. Would you be comforted? He looked a little bit like Trump's doctor. Hold on.

That guy actually has like a funny name. Give me one second to find that. Do you know what I mean? Remember like Dr. Bornstein who's like this specimen of humanity is the most fit and strong human ever to see Kai your office? And Kai, feel free to leave in by Googling. That dude's name is Dr. Quadpaugh. I mean, that's got to be a nickname. I don't know. I think, but if you were like Dr. Quad Paul podiatrist, you'd be the podiatrist of the stars.

Yeah, I'd go. Like, so I was, before we started recording, actually, before Chris joined us, you know, listeners should know, Chris was a little late joining the Zoom today. You know, I, I, there's just a certain type of professionalism that I expect timeliness, you know, like always, always showing up. watching the January 6th series. So, Kaya and I had a chance to catch up a little bit, and I wondered if Kaya was the person who had posted on our Facebook group,

like that the only problem with Andor is there aren't enough aliens in it. And she said that she kind of feels that way until the emergence of Dr. Kodpaw. Like, it was such... It was just really dope that Dr. Kodpaw couldn't fix never broken spine.

Because in Star Wars, like, often you and I sat in this room, Philadelphia, three Christmases ago, and screamed at you for an hour about Star Wars. Remember when the last movie came out? We did that podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do. Yeah.

And I was like, oh, they're just going to have like a Bacta tank that they can throw this dude in and like they will repair his spine or whatever. But no, Dr. Quadpaugh. I mean, do you think that was because Dr. Quadpa is more like Dr. Quackpaw? Like, do you think he really should have been able to do it if he had access to a tank? But also, by the way, let's just say that. This is what Andor is. Not everyone has access to back to tanks, unlike the worlds that we've seen, right? Sometimes the back gets smashed a little too much.

But that was, I really, I mean, there's a lot of jokes to be made here, but at the same time, that was also a really noteworthy and instructive moment. Because when Nemek is injured, I was like, you know, in the moment, enjoying it. But then there was a recoil. where I was like, I don't know the stakes here. I don't know. I know what type of show it is because it's in the tradition of Rogue One, and I know that people can die,

and we've already lost two members of this little rebellion group. And Nemek was, you know, anytime you write a manifesto, I'm like, oh, okay, that's a little bit McBain. But I didn't know the rules in that, can everyone just get fixed from stuff? Is this that universe? Is this Star Trek where you just get a little, like, you know, tongue depressor pushed against your neck and then you're fine. It was instructive that it wasn't, that there are stakes that people can die,

and that was played really well. And the Alex Lothar scene, too, like... Dude, don't... I mean, that makes like my fucking top five Star Wars character to me. The fact that this episode ends with Cassian giving Veld that Khyber Crystal, which I think people were definitely like, dude, is he going to fashion a lightsaber on us? And instead he's just like, here,

take this fucking necklace. And she's like, here, take this manifesto. And so you get this replacement of the typical spiritual, magical part of Star Wars with, no, like, here's the man. Here's the tract. Here's, here's Das Capital. Let's get run it. Like, let's also just think about all the things that were introduced. There was a lot of talk last week, you know, people are like, oh, I guess tattoos or in the first week.

Oh, there's sex in the Star Wars universe now. Oh, there's tattoos in the Star Wars universe now. You know what there is in Star Wars universe now? fear, anxiety, ideas, imagination. Trepidation. None of those people wanted to do that mission. They were all like, oh, God, this is going to suck.

Intellectualism, like that there's a reason to care about the plight of man and also quad-paws. Those weren't there before. And I'm not saying they weren't there before because of a failing on any creative actor or creative person behind the, the scenes. It's that when you're telling

the official mythology of Royal Space Wizards, if someone is like I'm afraid, then Yoda pops up and it's like, oh, fear leads to suffering. Like, you know, here's the fucking here's the fortune cookie. Was that Yoda or Bain? I would be so

into it if it was Bain. Can you do this mashup live? Can you be the freelance hellraiser? I think what you just hit on is it's the same voice and a lot of the same messaging. It is the same messaging. Who's born in the swamp? Would you consider coming back to TV criticism or just cultural criticism and just writing a

6,000-word essay about Bain and Yoda being the same character? And then like dropping? Yeah. Just just watching. Delete all socials. I would, and I say this with love, like, what you're describing is our good friend and one of the few true geniuses we know, Wesley Morris, who is the best cultural critic. There is. And today he wrote a piece about seeing the 1986 Barbara Streisand movie

Nuts. Like this is in The Grey Lady, right? And it's this brilliant piece that I think maybe we should even talk about next week. So it talks about like American culture and quote unquote trash culture. And he makes a great argument for what is what there used to be in our movies and what's missing from it. And name checks Pauline Kale. And I mean, it's a great piece. But it starts with him watching the 1986 movie Barbara Streisand movie nuts. That would be the equivalent if I was just like, here's what you guys have missed about Yoda and Bain. A couple more quick hitters from the show. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you think that those particular Thai fighter pilots were like the, were those guys like the MLS players, like the AA players of the world of Thai fighter pilots? Because they really did get distracted by some flashing lights and they could not catch up with an unarmed freighter that they weren't even sure was going to take off in the first place. Yeah, but dude, like not everybody is in San Diego at Top Gun School.

I don't think Goose and Mav would be in Aldani. They would be like flying around the new Death Star, right? They'd be in Miramar. Like they or they would be deployed. Exactly. Exactly. This wasn't, if this had been any other Star Wars entertainment from the last 40 years, Darth Vader would have been fucking visiting El Dani.

Yeah. You know what I mean? He would just been like, just being like, oh. Kurt you guys are having the fest. I thought I dropped by. Yeah. I just want to press the flesh at the local festival, the local street fair,

maybe have a skewer. You guys go in Federman or Oz? Right? But he just brought his crew. Fetterman. That's my, Darth Vader. Another question was how silly did you feel

or how silly did you feel for me that I was like Julia Butters to Evan Moss Backrack when he came on the pod last week? And I was like, that was some of the best acting I ever seen with his story about his dead brother and then this week he was like,

I don't have a brother. Well, I love that. I did wonder, was he serious? Oh, like, whether Skeen is serious when he's telling Cassian, like, I don't have a brother? And I say this because I was in your camp too, and I thought that was such a great reading and great performance.

When I first heard it in the scene in this week's episode, I was like, is he saying he doesn't have a brother anymore? he's not motivated by that. Oh, I thought he was just like, that was just some shit I made up. That also could be true. Yeah. To make it seem like I belonged to her.

Yeah. But, you know, that's a testament to either his performance, the writing, or my lack of attentiveness that I could see it go either way. I don't think anybody could question your level of attentiveness. Thank you. You're one of our great close readers. I don't want to keep you too long today. It's Thursday.

I know you got a lot of stuff going on. Do you want to talk a little bit about? I've got this freebie shareholders report that I got to, I just got to jump on the Zoom. I've got some questions. You and Jed Bartlett. Me? Got to connect. Me, Martin Sheen and my reps at PurePoint Bank.

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Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com and book your next trip today. I have a larger thing I'd like to discuss with you about the 1990s revival, and so much is how it relates to Midnight Club, which is a new show from Mike Flanagan, a director that I have a lot of time for. I've talked a lot of time for.

about Bly Manor and Hillhouse and, you know, some of his previous work on Netflix. He's certainly... Midnight Mass, right? Midnight Mass. Certainly one of the most unique kind of filmmaker. His project that he has at Netflix, which is like, I will direct every episode of these

incredibly long, very personally-paced and uniquely, like, told stories that exist in the horror genre, but really push as far outside of the horror genre. or genre as you can while still having like one or two jump scares every eight hours. So Midnight Club is, I believe, like, it's number two on two show on Netflix now. If it's not number one, I think Dommer's still number one. And it's based on a novel by Christopher Pike, who's a very beloved, I guess why I'd author, my wife.

And Christopher Pike. The first captain of the Enterprise. That's right. And thank you to him for his service. And, you know, this book, it was written. in 1994. The show is set in 1994. It's about a group of terminally ill teenagers living in a hospice in a very beautiful piece of Northern California real estate to, I think it's Northern California. And to entertain one another and to keep their minds off of what's happening to them.

They gather at night, midnight, if you will, and tell each other's scary stories. And there's obviously some haunting going on at this hospice. There's obviously more than meets the eye when it comes to the person running the hospice. Matt Sarison is in the building as a nurse's aide. Can't imagine that he's on the up and up. I've only watched the one episode. I'm sort of parceling it out. Spooky season after all,

you've got to have spooky stuff every night. But one of the things that jumped out at me was the soundtrack. So it is wall-to-wall 90s, alt-rock and alt-rock radio hits, very similar to Yellow Jackets, which also employed this music supervision strategy to great effect. And another show that we're going to talk about

briefly right now called High School, which is coming out on FreeVee, and is essentially a dramatized telling of the early years of Tegan and Sarah and their life in high school in Canada in the 90s. So, a bit of a 90s revival. I feel a little bit the way I felt

when I started going to restaurants in Los Angeles around 2013 and everybody just played Illmatic all the time. And I'm like, I guess this is just music for restaurants now. I guess Hull is now just like the anthem of prestige TV. That's one way of looking at it. I'd also be curious to hear about some of your thoughts about Midnight Club. I do want to talk about the 90s thing.

I think the Midnight Club thing for me was interesting because as you and our listeners know, I don't really do horror. So I haven't engaged with this stuff so much before. I have to say, great premise. Shout out to Christopher Pike. And shout out to Mike Flanagan too for recognizing. that this is, I mean, this is a show with a log line of like, and shout out to Christopher Pike for all he did in Starfleet, you know?

Absolutely. No, I mean, you never want to be the guy before the guy, because Kirk gets all the attention. But Pike really lay down some fundamentals, some groundwork. That's what we call the Joe Girardi. Yeah, I'm sorry, so Rob Thompson is James Tiberius Kirk in this analogy. This is good stuff. But really, if you just look at the log line, as you described, like a group of terminally ill kids, teenagers,

investigate the occult. I'm like, that is a number one show on Netflix. That is just what they want. That is just what audiences want, and it delivers. I would say the easier way of describing it as 90s stranger things. Yeah, but with more of a horror, I mean, right, a little more overtly horror rhythms and tropes and things like that. It does the pilot, early on the pilot,

does have one of my favorite lines of dialogue that I've heard in the last 10 years, which is, you want to remove my thyroid, I'm going to Stanford, which I kind of want that on a t-shirt. I mean, look, it is extremely expositional in the beginning. And it's not entirely my thing, but I think it's well done. And I think it's really, this is an example of Netflix's strategy of how they want to do original programming done right. You know, they are no longer doing the stuff that was just like, this could have been on HBO. and we want to be at the Emmys for it. That's not what they're doing anymore.

They are servicing the creators that they've wisely invested in who produce recognizable and popular content at quality and at volume. And that's, Flanagan is in that group. You know, that is otherwise Ryan Murphy and Chandra Rhymes, and you could maybe argue they're getting more return on their investment from this, you know, the less famous Mike Flanagan at this point. The 90s thing is really interesting to me

because I would describe the music, the needle drop strategy of the Midnight Club pilot as carpet bombing. Right. Like, there are three distinct 90s hits before people start talking in real time, not voiceover. So I'm just going through this soundtrack playlist that they've got up. And it opens with connected by stereo MCs,

if I remember correctly. Yes, that's right. Flagpole sito by Harvey Danger, glycerine by Bush, no rain by blind melon, Joey by concrete blonde, bound for the floor by Local H, take a picture by filter.

I mean, these are not insignificant. Yeah. I mean, I listen to WDRE all the time and it shot out one at 3.9. Like that tracks. That is not that outrageous. The issue here, and this is where I kind of want to like pivot to high school, is what do you want to do? Do you want to signify and signal an era that your show is set in?

Or do you want to put people in an era? And I don't say this pejoratively. there's reasons to be doing each kind of show. Midnight Club is not necessarily a show about the 90s, so it's signaling to us when it is set, right? Whereas high school, which we'll get to in a second, puts people inside of an experience that is, in some ways, timeless, and then the era is secondary.

My only 90s note about the Midnight Club pilot is, I don't remember anyone drinking bottled water in the 90s. I don't remember anyone drinking water. When they were doing that, I thought they were drinking, like, acid water. I was like, oh, is she drinking out as like spiked water or something? Or I didn't get invited to your high school parties then.

Or I was going to say Zima, maybe. Yes. Like they were just like, oh, here, let's have some bottles of water that are also available at this party. I say this to my kids all the time, who are the most hydrated people I've ever met. And I was like, I cannot explain this to you better than to say that I didn't drink water until I was 30. Like, there was never a moment when I was a child, when my parents were like, you should

be hydrating more. It's summertime. I know. My mom gets so annoyed with me when I come home because I'm just like draining like giant gallon bottles of Deer Park and she's just like that was supposed to be for like the season. Yeah, for like if there was an emergency. Yeah. Or like the zombies game.

You don't understand. I'm in California. Like I'm on constant renal failure alert. What I was a child, the only thing my parents were monitoring is if I was quote unquote cranky, in which case the solution was give me a Coke. Like that was their level of hydration. So I just reject this. There was no moment in the 90s where it was like, cool, let's crack a couple H2Os, bro.

Like maybe a Fruitopia, you know, if you were doing a non-alc. Anyway, yeah, I do want to shout out high school. Because this airs tomorrow Friday. It premieres tomorrow on Freevi. It is based on Canadian sisters and songwriters and performers, Tegan and Sarah, who are, I've known for a long time, and who I love and who will be on our podcast next week to talk about this show as well as their new album Cry Baby, which comes out next week. They wrote a memoir about growing up in rural Canada and coming out slowly in different times.

The book was called High School. And so their friend Cleo Duval, who people may know from her performances on shows like Veep. She also directed that Netflix. And the faculty? Oh, in the faculty, yeah. And also that Netflix holiday film that people really liked. happier together. Yeah, thank you.

It was happiest season. Happy as season. She redirected that. That is like a holiday classic. Chris is smiling for the first time on this podcast. He loves that. I remember you love that movie. I'm not even,

anyway, she adapted this, and it's really a striking show. And I think it's a really striking contrast because it's so not handholdy, handholdy, and it's just like you're in Calgary in the 90s, and it's kind of cold, and it's kind of plain, and there's nothing fancy or special about it. It's just kids, right?

Going to a new school and trying to figure stuff out. It's so not handholdy that I actually checked. There's one of those ones I was watching the pilot, and I was like, wait, did I watch? Did I start the right one? Yeah, right. Kobe Smolders, who is also a Chris Ryan favorite, I know, plays the twins' mom, and she's awesome in it.

The show punches way above its weight. It's like really dialed in emotionally into just being a certain age. And I found it really, that was really cool. I mean, it could have gone so many different directions. The leading direction would have been like all 90s and be like, you know, brightly lit and just communicating an era more than it was communicating the character.

And it is the opposite of that. I mean, isn't like the most significant needle drop on the show Bedhead. Like, it's really... I lost my mind when that happened. I know. Like, it is really dialed in, maybe to more to our 90s. That's like a song that I figure like a number of people in the triple digits would know that song. But it's an amazing song.

But that's important because it's not telling you anything other than what the emotional valence of the song is meant to be communicating. And I think the show also does something really interesting with perspective in that Teagan and Sarah are identical twins. Brilliantly take a moment from their real life where one of the twins punches the other. So one has a black eye through the whole first episode so you can tell them apart. And it switches perspectives. It's not exactly. anything that switches perspectives is referred to as Roshaman-esque, I would not say.

It's not Roshaman-esque, but yes. This charming coming-of-age free-sitcom is not Roshaman-esque, but I do appreciate that it toggles. Yeah, and I think it obviously owes a lot to like that my so-called lives of the world, but I found this show charming. Like, I really, really loved it and I watched a bunch of it on the screeners, so I'm just like fully in.

And I just thought, like, its sense of place and its sense of humor and its sense of music and its sense of kids' relationship to music. like the weirdness of making friends was pretty universal and was pretty awesome. So I'm really excited to hear your interview with Tegan and Sarah about it. I'm glad you mentioned the My So-Called Life thing because that is still a touchstone

for people, not just our age, I think. And again, this show isn't that, but it's definitely a recommended if you like. And I think it might otherwise kind of get overlooked. But, you know, glad to have the company on freebie. I think it's, I believe in the service. This is absolutely spawncon.

but I feel like a place you can watch a lot of good shows. I feel like we covered a lot today. I think we, I mean, we ended up in the same place, which is in the trenches of the Pennsylvania Senate race, but. Kai's silence has been deafening on this issue. I know. I know. I mean, you know, I just think people understand that like one of us is like.

Kaya is a big supplements person as well, though. So what can you say, you know? But one of the two, we have two co-hosts on this podcast. One is real salt to the earth kind of guy can walk in any town, become friends with anyone and really relate, and the other is me. And so I think we know who's who. Andy, it was great talking to you. I'll talk to you on Monday.

Are we doing Dragon? Am I off time out? It's not time out. Andy, it's a free country. You could say whatever you want about House of the Dragon. I will not be silenced. Yeah. Not like Fasaris.

Or my guy, Vamond. Big fan. Vamond really. Vamond, kind of the downside of free speech, right? Can I just say, just here's the leading question for Monday. How much time would you need to spend sharpening your sword to do what Damon did? Dude, it's, it's Dark Sister, it's Valerian. That shit is stay sharp.

So once again, your answer is because Mallory told you the name of something. Okay. Let's say this for Monday. Clearly, we got a good one. We got a spicy one on the books. We were produced by Kaii McMullen. Her endorsement for political races is still up for grabs. Who can say?

Kai is knocking on doors in PA. That's why she's not chiming in. And we will be back on Monday. Thanks for listening. Take care. Her platform is not enough aliens on Andor. She's a single issue voter. Dr. Quadpaugh.

Dr. Quadpaul lives. No, it's not enough. But you had that. You had lots of Pew Pew, this episode. I do more. Now I'm going to get two more episodes of no coupon. Dr. Quadpaal lives in New Jersey, so it's not even legitimate.

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