The Watch - Are TV Shows the New Movies? A Podcast Crossover Special, Part 2.

Episode Date: August 28, 2020

In a special mega-pod, Chris and Andy are joined by Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins for a two-part conversation about the way that movies seems to be aping the modes and styles of TV, and vice versa. (For Part 1, check out 'The Big Picture' on The Ringer Podcast Network.) Hosts: Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan Guests: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the NHTSA. Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash. People could get hurt or killed, but that still doesn't stop everyone. You could get arrested. You could incur huge legal expenses, and you could possibly even lose your job. We all know the consequences of driving drunk, but one thing's for sure. You're wrong if you think it's no big deal.

Drive sober or get pulled over. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to the Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And we have a really special one today. I'm joined, as always, by Andy Greenwald.

Andy say hi. I am. I feeling a little undersold here. Well, I have a lot. No appellation for you. There are bigger names to come. That's Sean Fennacy. We're also joined by Amanda Dobbins.

They host a podcast called The Big Picture. This is part two of a conversation that we have begun on the Big Picture Feeds. This is a two-parter. It's a dog days of summer. And we arrive at a bit of a crossroads. A crossroads between mediums. Wow. Where TV and movies seem to be.

be changing lanes. Yeah, and you're Robert Johnson. And not signaling. That's right. I made a deal with the devil and I wound up at Sean Fennessey's backyard having a socially distance podcast, but I got everything I wanted out of life. Is someone here Woody Johnson? Different. Not here, please. No Jets talk. Sorry. No bans. We're doing here as serious. Because we're talking about this crucial moment, this inflection point that's happening in the world of movies and television where they seem to be resembling one another in these weird ways. We started this conversation on the big picture. We talked a lot about some of the movies that are in theaters that you can see this weekend,

to some of the movies that you might want to see that are nowhere near you that are in theaters in other parts of the world, then only Tom Cruise can go see him and Adam Neiman. But we're not talking about Tenet, and we're not talking about New Mutants. We're talking about the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of television that are at your fingertips. And yet sometimes I get the feeling like people are still bored.

Hmm. People or Chris Ryan? Folks, I'm not bored. I've been enjoying television this summer. Many people are saying. Okay. But I'm doing this podcast. Andy's here with me and we talk about TV almost every week. But Amanda and Sean, I think it's fair to say, have sometimes sounded a skeptical note about television.

Whoa. Sure. I think that's fair. Whether it's, whether it's as prestigious as it says it is, whether it's as necessary to their daily happiness or their daily enjoyment of pop culture. I'm not, these are some teams. This became like a character attack. No, no, no, no. I'm trying to set it up. I welcome it. I'm trying to set it up because.

I really, I think you guys offer a very good gut check when it comes to, you know, I feel obligated to watch at least an episode or two of XYZ, ABCD, EFG show, which are dropping every Friday. And then sometimes you guys come through and you're like, we sure it's good? One thing that I love about this, just again, because everyone knows I like to like, you know, go behind the curtain a little bit, a little meta, we've really established in just a few short moments that the big picture is a place for big ideas, respectful conversations, top top of the line guests and this is the morning zoo. This is a shock jock. This is gotcha radio. And you guys are you guys are in Thunderdome now. So get ready. I'm on the balls of my feet and I'm

ready to pounce at all of this this setup here. Is it a personal attack? It's not. It's not. We're talking about it. Let's not say what kind of attack it is. It's an attack. I think it's interesting that you frame this conversation, this part of this conversation this way, because I will say in creating an outline for this conversation, which you pointed out I did on the last episode. Thank you, Sean. I had a much easier time writing down a whole bunch of TV shows that I liked than I did finding movies that I liked. And I actually think this has been a wonderful year for television, and there's more great TV than there's ever been, obviously. For example, Briar Patch.

Congratulations, Andy. Thanks. Now I'm on their side again. That's really all it takes. And now we have the numbers and you're fucked, Chris. But just generally speaking, obviously, there's more to choose from because of the pandemic this and there are more TV shows that got onto the world than movies. So that's a factor. But generally speaking, I think there's like a lot here

that I'm excited to talk about that we don't get a chance to talk about on our show. That is true. It was interesting reading this list, which I'll be honest. And I think, Chris, when you were talking about

how we like besmirch television. No, I think you're just like a little bit sometimes you're like, let's calm down, guys. To the world. I think you're, for me, that's true. For me, that is true.

I love this because what do I do then? The thing with me, honestly, is that I don't watch that much TV. And I honestly, I often feel like a weirdo because I feel like everyone around me all the time is just, you know, watching 10 episodes of stuff. And like, did you see this one? And did you see that one? And I do think the last five years, and maybe this is tapering off a bit. But like, you go out to a bar, you go out to a restaurant. I mean, it's tapering off because we'll never do that again, I guess.

But the conversations you have with people, what are you watching? Like, and what else are you watching? And did you catch up with this? And, you know, I did my best to catch up with things. But number one, I am quite particular. Number two, huge time commitment. And sometimes it's just like, oh, I actually am bad at doing 10 hours of something, which I think is a personal preference. So it's not skepticism of TV. And I think there have been things on TV this year that I'm just really enthusiastic about. I just have not maybe consumed as much of it as other people. And I am sometimes. perplexed by the idea that volume of production and consumption is such an essential part of the TV process.

I also think the wires have gotten crossed in terms of the types of conversation we can and should be having about different mediums because again these are all memories from the old world the time before, but a hollowed rite of passage among people who like to socialize. It sound like I'm in the 40-year-old virgin.

Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie that you'd like to see? My favorite reference. go to a movie and then go out for drinks or dinner afterwards. And you talk about the movie. It was a one-off experience. You could talk about beginning, middle, and end, and you shared that experience together.

TV, we are all, even more so now, of course, walled off on our own couches, watching things at our own speed, at our own level of attention being paid. And then if we do gather, when we're allowed to gather again, the pressure on that conversation to, like, stop doing whatever you're doing and talk richly and fully about episode four of something. Yes. it's not going to measure up.

It does start to feel like a competition or a race. Maybe you could talk about a complete season of something if everyone there has watched it. But the conversation, the ongoing conversation for a week-to-week show or a show that people are watching at different speeds does, I think, work better online when you can tap it and tap out at your appropriate level. I think movies have two different versions of this

that are interesting, and obviously become acutely aware of them as we've been doing the big picture. One is the event movie. It is Avengers Endgame, and we gather on Thursday night after scene, the first screening and we do the podcast and we can tell, I can tell right away that people are like, where's the podcast? Yeah. Where's the podcast about this movie? I want to hear where you think about this movie. Because this is the most important thing in my life. So, when guys come up to you on the

street and they're like, so you've now destroyed two elections for the movie draft, you've, you've, you've, like, ruined democracy and also where's the Avengers pod? That's like the two biggest questions. No one says anything to me about the movie draft except great job. That's what I've learned over time doing these drafts. But no, seriously, like, so there's Avengers End game. And then the other version of it is Parasite, which is people watching. that movie the way that many people watch TV, which is when they can. Parasite doesn't open in 3,000 theaters.

It opens over a rolling period of time from the very first showing it can all the way through when it hits Hulu in March after it wins best picture. And that conversation, which really powered us through three months of the show, was in many ways more interesting to me. But that doesn't, it does feel a lot more like

episode four of Stranger Things Season 3 where you're just kind of kind of having the same conversation over and over again. And I think that's one of the challenges with TV. And even having dinner with your friends and talking about a TV show where you're like, what episode are you up to that part yet? Oh, wait. Oh, you'll have to wait.

Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Which messes with everything. I mean, to me, the thing is, like, the TV shows that I liked the best this year so far are the ones that basically just would have been movies 20 years ago. And they've been expanded and stretched out. See, I didn't think you were going to say that. I thought you were going to say, I guess I didn't think you were,

you were going to say that as a compliment. I thought you were going to say that in it. I would like to have just seen the two-hour and 20-minute version of zero-hundred-zero-zero on a big screen. I mean, I might have. That still may be true, but that doesn't mean I don't like what I got. Like Mrs. America. 90-minute version of 90-day fiancé. I'm not against it. Million-dollar listing LA. I'll watch it. You know, I'm not above that stuff. But Mrs. America in particular, I was like, I actually definitely don't want nine hours of this. Yep. I want two and a half hours. And I would have preferred two and and a half hours, but it's not as if Mrs. America

is bad. It's actually brilliant. It's just, it was too much for me. I agree. And I also, it made me feel this is not what you want coming from a TV show. I should say, preface it by saying my first reaction was, boy, this was impressive. Boy, these are incredible actors just cooking and working together.

And it's fantastic. And it's illuminating aspects of a history that is very relevant that I was sadly not as informed about as I ought to have been. All that being said, I kind of wanted three movies. I kind of wanted the Shirley Chisholm movie. you know, or the Gloria Steinem movie or the Phyllis Laughley movie, the show where it's like, now we're going to give you 60 minutes of one of them and then 60 minutes of another one.

And it's all these puzzle pieces are going to present you a picture. And that picture is going to be kind of choose your own adventure of how you take it. Yeah, and there's going to be an inevitable kind of like start-stoppiness to it. It didn't feel, this is a great one to talk about, I guess, because cumulatively, it did not feel like a season of television. it was a lot of interesting ideas and performances that I slowly accrued because partly maybe because it didn't feel like television. I did not binge that show. It was more anthology than it was narrative series where you're kind of waiting for the next beats in the story. Now, obviously, it is telling the story chronologically of a movement, but there are plenty of episodes where the episode ends and I just took two months off.

I was just like, I don't have to return to this for a long time. It also fell prey, I think, to one of the problems with that type of movie, which is the biopic syndrome. where it's like, we better tell you everything about this person. We're going to tell it to you because there's truth. And if there's truth, we'll tell you all of it as opposed to, you know, this is the highest-minded version of this possible. And I'm only saying because I'm looking at the high-minded Sean Fantasy and I feel like I'll appreciate it.

But I would, I think I would rather watch The Master than a nine-part, you know, miniseries about Elron Hubbard. What were we going to say? I was going to say, and sorry to betray the sisterhood, but I never finished Mrs. America for that same anthology reason of kind of, you know, and Andy, to your point, I knew some of it, but it was also learning a lot. And I think on its face, like, you want to make a show about Flaas Scha and Clarke Steynham and Trillisholm and the ERA. Like a movie, a TV show, yes, sign me up. I would be interested in that. But there was something to, it didn't feel propulsive. Like, it didn't feel like it was moving from episode to episode in a way that I had to keep watching.

And I know I said this on the big picture episode, but that to me is both the distinction, increasingly the only distinction between TV and movies is that forward episodic motion. And if the show doesn't have it, then I opt out. So you didn't see the last episode? No. Feminism wins.

It's incredible. I'm sorry for the spoiler. Wow. Congrats. Thanks, guys. But I think what you're saying is exactly right. And I think that the more traditional TV version of this was the show that was on Amazon called Good Girls Revolt, which did the more traditional TV thing of lightly fictionalized people in a real historical moment, a more madman thing. And that generally, I think engenders a better sense of audience engagement because we're with these characters who happen to be living and reacting to a world as opposed to these totems who are set by their Wikipedia pages projecting and declaiming. That's exactly what I was going to say.

So I've had two experiences with this with TV shows this year. One is Mrs. America, and the other is the Great. And The Great is the loosely adapted story of a historical figure. But there have been times in watching both Mrs. America and The Great when I have wanted to fire up Wikipedia. And I'm afraid to find out what happens. Even though the shit happened, it already happened. And shame on me for not knowing what happened to Catherine the Great.

And shame on me for not knowing what happened with the ERA. Yeah, we don't have it. Just F. Way. I mean, I knew that much. but I was sort of like, are some of these people dead? Are they not dead? You know, your natural curiosity that comes when you're experiencing episodic television about real people is fascinating.

And the idea of like a no-spoiler culture around historical docudrama is perverted. It's just a stupid way to go about thinking things. But I do want to be entertained in addition to that. I wonder whether or not some of the anxiety that we're all expressing here has something to do with television going through a similar moment than the movies are in very different ways. but movies are a medium that has had its venue. Essentially, it's like arena taken away from it, right? So now we're watching a lot of these movies.

We talked a lot about Palm Springs on the big picture on these streaming services. TV, while I think we've all gotten kind of used to the idea of either binge watching or not watching along on the same schedule, for some reason over the last couple of months, I found it more and more difficult than ever to figure out where everybody is in these seasons. And I think part of it, Andy started talking about this towards the end of the big picture episode, but this idea that these shows are all just tiles inside of a streaming service that you call up on your app or on your browser or whatever, that there isn't really any kind of, it's not that there's no merchandising. It's not that they don't try to make these things into special moments. They're like, hey, guess what?

On Thursday at midnight, this is coming out. Like, there is that to it. But a lot of what you were talking about in the beginning, Amanda, about going to meet somebody at a bar and talking about it was tied to the idea of whether or not you watched Lost on Wednesday. or whether or not you watched Mad Men on Sunday, and then you kind of had these markers. I've tried to recreate that over the last couple of months. I watched Perry Mason once a week. I watched, I may destroy you, once a week.

I could have gone forward with those. I had screeners, but I liked the idea of having this sort of extended experience with these pieces of art, these pieces of culture. I don't know how you guys are feeling about that model right now. There have been a few examples that I've done, and they've booked two shows that I really liked a lot. devs, which I know is very divisive in general, but to me is just a movie. I mean, he just, he made an Alex Garland movie, and it's his version of the Decalog.

It just happens to be that long. You know, he just is doing all the things that he likes to do in his films and transporting it into the TV model. And it's frankly not as propulsive as TV wants it to be. And that's part of the reason why people didn't like it. And that's part of the reason why I loved it. I love, I love films like that. I love Tarkovsky movies.

He tried to make a Tarkovsky movie on FX. That was really cool to me. The other was The outsider, which was a week to week, what's going to happen? It's a who done it. It's a supernatural who done it. But to me, that did seem like it could have just been a really good Stephen King movie. And I love really good 80s and 90s Stephen King movies. That's one of my favorite subgenres in the world.

And by the time we got to the end of the outsider, and I feel like you guys talked about this on the show, I was like, okay, like, we get it. Like, do we need to have the big, noisy, explosive denouement? Like, can we just keep going or close it up or, you know, and that's kind of the dead. downside, I think, of having that week-to-week thing, too, is you finally do get to the end, and it doesn't always pay off. I may destroy you paid off, I think, the way that she concluded that show, but it doesn't always, that's not always the case. The only week-to-week show that I've watched in 2020, and I don't even know how this happened, is defending Jacob on Apple TV. I actually do know how that happened, and it's Bill Simmons, who asked me to watch it. But they were doing a week-by-week

really style. Yeah, kind of like the Hulu style, yeah. And, you know, it did work for that because that show, while being a miniseries was really just a procedural, and it was kind of like a procedural inflated to eight weeks, and like, is Chris Evans going to figure it out, or is Chris Evans going to, like, you know, be a bad lawyer and a good dad? Find out next week. Right. But otherwise, I have entirely been watching streaming shows,

or I guess, yes, all streaming shows at my own pace and finishing, like, very few of them, or something like The Great, which I want to talk more about, because I think there is like a very literal movie antecedent to it of in recent memory. Yeah. It's called The Favorite. Sure. And I'm really enjoying The Great, but my husband and I like watched one episode every night for like five days because that's where we are with our TV consumption.

And then we traveled for a few days and completely forgot. And we just like have not gotten back into the rhythm. And there is something about if you don't find that initial rhythm or it's not given to you in the case of like, you know, network or like weekly a lot. You can lose it really quickly. The greatest great example, because I really love the show. I really admire the show. I'm very impressed by the show. I haven't finished the season for exactly the same reason.

Partly because... You should only now just be finishing the season, I think, or like recently. Like, if they had parceled that out. Right. We have to be fair to ourselves. Like, some people stay home all day, Saturday and can crush a season. But like... I agree.

But I do think that in relation to the conversation about movies, it's a very specific hang in a very specific world. I like the hang. I think it's hilarious. I love the ideas behind it. I love the performances. I love the approach to the material and to the medium. But I don't have a ton of confidence

that episode eight is going to be appreciably different than episode three. It's just more of that. And when it's a movie, you do all of that in two hours and you're done. With a TV show, I mean, I guess I'm grateful. This isn't a complaint that I can dip in and dip out when I'm feeling a little bit arch about history.

But I don't feel the propulsion and need to continue it that I have felt with other more traditionally plotted and structured TV shows. Quick question. Do you think that's because you know how history turns out? No, I'm completely ignorant of history. I assume. Guys, no one knows the top line on Catherine the Great here? Do not spoil it.

Okay. Straight up. I assume she was great. But that's fine. Do not, do not spoil it. Okay. I assume she was great. Okay.

Like the show. I mean, I know what happens, but I don't want to know what happens, if that makes sense. That was sort of what I was trying to put my finger on before. Well, I think that that show is probably also like taking its own liberties with how they execute something like that. I do think that there is a mass to certain shows, though. This is what kind of what I wanted to touch on briefly, because I do want to get to a couple of different kind of sub-genres of the kinds of TV that have been on over the last six, seven months. there are certain shows, Mrs. America, I think in its own way,

outsider devs, 00, that feel like this is going to be a journey. You know what I mean? Like, they do feel like that almost like I'm going to be in the movie theater for five hours kind of feeling. And I wonder whether or not

we're just talking about this stuff so much, whether like an average TV watcher is like, oh, this zero zero got served to me on the algorithm. I enjoy Jack Ryan and Narcos. I will enjoy. this movie or this show. I call it a movie because it's shot like one. And I feel the same way about a lot of this stuff. Do you think people are making those distinctions still? Do you think, or do you think that actually rather that the sort of weight of these shows matters to people?

By weight, you mean subject matter or length and size? Subject matter and also the density with which the show is presented. It's not a fleet of foot show. You know what I mean? TV is sometimes at its best when it's most economical. It's moving. It's getting you to the next week and the next episode. One thing that we will never know, that I would love to know, is drop off data. You know, in the old days of the Nielsen ratings, you could see a show that premiered really big, like Twin Peaks did, and then the longer they went without revealing killer, fewer and fewer people watched until, you know, of course, in retrospect, there were still tens of

millions, but you could see the trend line was people were not finishing what they had started. My guess is that the people who, maybe, the show like devs, a show like 0-000, may have started in a similar place in terms of numbers when they premiered on their respective services. But I would bet, based on nothing other than my own intuition on it, that a much higher percentage of people who started zero zero zero finished it

than people who watched devs. Purely for the type of entertainment it is. Yeah. You know, and that, those numbers mean a lot internally. I'm not entirely sure what they mean because is the goal of these services to just hook people to start stuff?

Or do they want you to go to the next one? or they want you to start something and then be recommended something else? Like what is the value add or value lost for FX on Hulu if X number of million people watched devs 101, but only Sean Fennessee watched devs 112 or whatever it was? So there's probably only so much I can say about this because of my day job, but those are two metrics you're talking about. One is time spent and the other is completion rate.

And what is the difference in one is the value? It's different at every company. It's different at every corporation. To be clear, when you say your day job, you mean shipping illegal narcotics on ocean. I mean working as the body double for Darkside and the Justice League expanded. Deep callback to the big picture. That would watch. And who knows?

Who knows what's more important to Amazon Prime? Is it better to have had four episodes of 00-0-0 completed? Or is it better to have had one person watch, you know, nine hours of Jack Ryan over the course of six months, but not finish season two. Like, I, I candidly don't know. I mean, ultimately what they want is subscribers. They want dollars. They want people participating in these services.

And so many of the conversations that Amanda and I have been having on the show and that you guys are having on the show is this moment where, while movies are going through this convulsion, TV is going through this great building period. It's like a new industrial age. It's also very complicated and opaque what value means, right? I think, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, but my sense of the movie industry is it's still, I mean, pre-pandemic anyway, it's pretty cut and dry, right? You spend a certain amount of money, you release it in theaters around the world, and then you hope for the best, and that's your profit, right? Something like devs, which we keep bringing up, but is worth discussing in this context is it almost, you can't judge the success of devs as a project based on how many people watched it or we're talking about it. Because in addition to it being worthwhile, which, I think it was. It was a big signal flare to the industry that FX is no longer bound by the basic cable restrictions that it had been, that it would go all in on something that you could watch without commercials. They could run long. That could be super weird. I know that they've allowed cursing and stuff, but it could just be a much more adult type content that they want to

work with filmmakers and that they want to go for it. And also that FX is now a brand on Hulu. So it's all that kind of intercompany integration, that's informing decisions that get made about what TV shows get greenlit now. And that feels a lot more convoluted and tough, harder to parse than films. You mentioned basically time commitment earlier when you were talking about one of the hurdles that you have when it comes to the overwhelming amount of choices of TV to watch. There have been a few examples this year. I may destroy you. High fidelity. I'm sure I'm just blanking on a couple of the other ones that are just a lot more.

digestible because of their episodic runtime. Do you find yourself more willing to give something a chance, Amanda, if it's 30 minutes? Yes. In this sense of I open up or I click play and you see that 30 minutes. And that really does transform your entire viewing experience and your attitude towards it and like how much you're going to lock in and what you're expecting in terms of pacing and what you're expecting in terms of that propulsiveness and vaulting you towards the next episode. Even for something like normal people. Yeah. So, Yes, I think that that is true, that the bite-sizedness of it almost just seems to me like just a recognition of, okay, this actually, this will be episodic.

Like, this will be broken up and we understand how you're watching it and we understand what this is and go on the journey with us. I find that I kind of get lost in episode four, like the hour-long episode four. Especially when they're like, yes, it's 64 minutes. Yeah, like an eight episode, you know, very dark in the literal sense, like TV show that really honestly could have been a movie, but like no one had, you know, any idea how to edit. And that's when the slog, which you guys talk about all of the time of just like these three episodes were just because people had extra budgets or actually actually had to fill time on streaming. And that's where you get these shows that I think have come and gone, which is sort of, I think part of this is because there's so much. that it's inevitable that there are going to be titles that you're like,

oh, okay, it's coming, it's coming. And it's like, oh, did you know that that aired? Did you know that that's been out for six weeks? Did you know that that they've decided to not bring that back? Or they're going to have a season two, and we didn't even get to see season one, really. There are shows like Tales from the Loop, quiz, dispatches from elsewhere, plot against America, our beloved high fidelity, which has not been renewed for a variety of reasons.

Star Trek, Picard, which Andy, you know, I know you were very excited about, you know, you tried. And Search Party, which I feel like. Like, in some ways, me and my wife might be the only people who avidly watch season three of that show that have come and gone. And I wonder whether or not part of it with these hour-long ones, like, for instance, like dispatches from elsewhere, whether people are like, I just don't know if I want to make the commitment. I think it's partly that. But I did want to jump in to say that this is something I've said on this podcast before. But I think in many ways, the most critical decision being made in Hollywood in any development level is what is the box we're going to put this project into?

And if it goes in the right box, eight episode event series, two-hour movie, 12-part, half-hour series, you can win. I mean, you can determine the project success or failure at that stage. And Star Trek Picard on the strength of the brand, the IP, and Patrick Stewart alone probably deserves another season, which it's gotten and we'll make at some point once production resumes. But to me, that is an example of not really understanding the box. It's separate apart from what I've said before about like how most. big IP is just about itself now, it is eating its own tail. But the feeling of Star Trek Picard was so bizarre because it was Star Trek began as a TV show. John Luke Picard began as a week-to-week television character, graduated to the movies where he fought the Borg and other things,

and then was sort of shoehorned back into the show that felt like a six to eight-hour movie starring a character that we knew from movies. It did not attempt to be the TV show again. It wasn't an adventure of the week. It wasn't a deep character study on an older man. It was, let's put him in an adventure, but make it longer. And it felt really odd for that reason. It didn't fit its box. I wonder, I feel like so much of the conversation that we're having is ultimately about marketing, not even necessarily about the shows themselves or the movies themselves. But I wonder if this is just a question of the hard bubbles that we've created. Yeah. And that we create on these shows when we're talking about them. And because, like, I think about the plot

against America. On paper, that's the show for me. That is a novel that I love. That is David Simon, who I think is just an absolute knockout genius and a great cast. Well-timed when it was put out, I had nothing but time to watch something like that. And I didn't watch it. I don't know why I didn't watch it. I think I was just kind of like, I'll find a moment. This seems important. And then three months later, when it was no longer airing, it wasn't important, quote unquote, to the conversation, to the dialogue, to what people like us tend to drive. when we're like, this matters, look at it now. And then it goes away and it goes away.

And then those shows more closely resemble these movies and that movie experience that you've been talking about, Andy, where it's like you sign up the movies and theaters for six weeks and then it goes away. And if it failed or succeeded, who even cares? We don't think about it anymore unless it gets to be on the rewatchables 10 years later. And that does feel like a way in which TV has become more like movies. Yes.

The plot against America is a really interesting example. I, too, did not finish it. I started it. I admired it. I do wonder, you're talking about, we talked a little bit about this in the big picture episode about context. I've found myself going back to my, I don't even know if I want to call it like a passive habit. The shows that I have enjoyed the most this summer and these last couple of months are the shows that just feel more like old TV, like that give me the pleasure

that old TV used to give me. When I say old TV, I don't necessarily mean like Golden Girls. I just mean like I have enjoyed British mysteries like Marcella. I have enjoyed Yellowstone. I have enjoyed Ozark, which is a thriller that's like super high octane and racing through plot. Like what kind of TV have you enjoyed over the last couple months, Amanda? And is it any different than the kind you were enjoying at this time last year? Yes and no. I mean, I enjoyed normal people is probably my show of year.

And I, you know, I agree with Sean where like that has similarities to a movie and how it's shot and filmed. but I think works well in that short episode format. And it is also a character study between two people over time. It's also an adaptation of a novel. And until Shauna brought up the Plot Against America, which is a show that I watched one episode of and was like, you know, like I respected maybe more than enjoyed it. And then I watched this season on the Plot Against America two minutes.

And I was like, cool, so I've got it. I've got it. The whole thing, which is a different problem of marketing for sure. But that accepted I was going to debut to take that I think novels are much better adapted as TV shows. And I think normal people actually really was able to encompass a lot of what I liked about the Sally Rooney novel. And also, you know, engage with it and maybe offer different perspectives on some aspects of the Sally Rooney novel. But because it did have a little more time. And novels are big.

And they require a bit more time. I 100% agree with that. I think obviously Lonesome Dove being a good example. Chris and I recently discussed, but also there was a thing that for 20 years, mega producer Scott Rudin would announce that he had purchased

the rights to a novel as soon as it became the novel of the season. And then almost inevitably, those novels would not become anything because he would option them and you would attach a high profile screenwriter. And you can't make...

Shout out the corrections. The corrections or freedom or a visit from the Goon Squad into a movie. They're books. And they're much bigger and messier than that. So there's opportunity, I think. to make them as TV shows,

obviously the corrections was attempted and didn't work out. Still would love to see it. If anyone is listening and has a copy of the pilot of Noah Baumbach's corrections, please hit me on CyberDust because I am available to you.

But the thing about plot against America, we're all exactly in the same boat with it. I think we all started it, admired it, felt like it was for us and didn't continue. In some ways, a project like that almost outsmarted itself because it was so pristine

and so of the moment that I actually would like to get out of the moment now, please? Totally. And I don't need to see a not-to-takeover of America at the moment. And, you know, one of the things

that is different, I think I said this on the big picture, but this idea, this compact that I still think matters that if you're sitting on your couch and your home, you deserve some element of entertainment. You expect it from your TV show

and you go in expecting that. Movies, I think, at this point, certainly, are pretty clearly delineated that one can, in the same year, enjoy marriage story in the theater and Avengers Endgame in the theater. You know that they are both movies, but you also have, I believe, you know, you can set your expectations in certain directions and they can both be quote unquote good. Setting aside the fact that the majority of people in

America when they watch TV are still watching like young Sheldon and 90-day fiancé, if you just just take the stuff that we talk about or that the internet talks about, good television, that line isn't as delineated. This is good, fun good. This is good. This is going to be a tough one good. Right. And I think that we are not fully reckoning with that. Certainly the providers, and maybe this speaks to the opaque finances involved, but they're not really reckoning with that either. They're green. You see announcements for things that are like, I don't know who that's for, but it's a very impressive press release. And then you see things, they're like, well, that's a no-brainer. And sorting out who's actually watching it and who will actually commit to watch. watching it is an open question. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Blue Moon. Don't you think once in a blue moon moments should happen more than once in a blue moon? Blue Moon is on a mission to celebrate and inspire more of these moments.

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blue moon. It's a beer you can enjoy every day. You can have Blue Moon delivered by going to get.com and finding delivery options near you. Blue Moon, reach for the moon, celebrate responsibly. Blue Moon brewing Golden Colorado ailing. So what are you watching for pleasure, Sean? Well, I was thinking back on the early days of the pandemic when we were oh so young and when there was no sports. Yeah. And there were no political conventions.

And I was watching what became sports for me, which I've talked about before, which is Top Chef, Survivor, Competition Series. You guys went all in on Top Chef this year. And Chris, you went all in. In myriad ways. You watched several seasons of the show. But that was like very early quarantine where I was like, I literally can't go anywhere.

And this is giving me an hour-to-hour marker of time, practically. But there is no movie comp for those kinds of shows. Like we have a number of different categories here that we can talk about. We can talk about the mega documentary series. Well, there's also documentary films. You know, you can talk about the expanded mini-series, but there's also docudrama movies. There's no movie version of Top Chef.

There's no movie version of Survivor, which just gives me, or the challenge, which gives me a dopamine hit every week. And that to me is one of the great achievements of television, honestly. It's one of the reasons why I stick to it in a way that I think I watch a lot more of it than you do, Amanda, because you don't usually watch shows like that. And those shows fill a lot of time in your weekly schedule.

So in addition to, you know, loving I May Destroy You, like almost anybody I know who's had a chance to see it, I was also just so grateful to have 22 episodes of Survivor this year. Yeah. I don't mean to confuse your competition argument, but I will just say we did a whole episode about Boy State, which is probably as close as you can get to a reality competition movie. And we talked a little bit about kind of like the reality TV edit of that movie and the characters and these poor 17-year-olds who find themselves villains in the in the, in the, uh, political competition. So, but to me, that just says, like, you know, everything continues to be very fungible. And it may not exist now, but we actually can make a movie competition as well. I'm just as likely to get into the true crime documentary series that has done well as anybody else.

And I think that the jinx in Making a Murderer in Wild Wild Country also kind of fucked up the future of movies. I think they kind of, not just documentary, but just movies. I think that they created a level of addiction and entertainment and what happens next that kind of just changed the idea of consumption. I cannot think of anything that I need less than a fictional or like a narrative adaptation of Tiger King. Exactly. Exactly. We're going to have at least two or three.

Right. But that's going to, I guarantee you they will not feel real. They will fall flat. They won't work. And I'm watching The Vow right now on HBO about the Nexium sex cult. And whether you think it's well made or not, like I'm watching the whole thing.

I definitely will finish that in a way that like if I don't finish the great, that will be a tragedy. But I'm going to finish the freaking nine-hour series about Nexium, which I couldn't even get myself to read a 3,500 word feature about Nexium. And now I'm watching a nine more documentary series. What's, in RIP magazines.

What's worth saying again, and it seems to be kind of the undercurrent of this whole conversation is that I think it's despite, you know, the tumult in the industry, it is easier to get your arm around movies and what they are because you go to the movies, go to the movie theater for one reason and that's to see a movie. You stay at home for a lot of reasons. And this year you stay at home for all the reasons. And the same box is giving you a hundred different types of thing.

And we're even in this just casually jumping from one genre to another, from one type of entertainment to another. When you talk about something like the vow consuming your time, that isn't necessarily cannibalizing a documentary you go to see at the arc light. It's cannibalizing the podcast that you might have been listening to that might be compelling, you know, or if we're talking about a book adaptation, maybe it's cannibalizing the potential audience for Sally Rooney's next book. I don't know. I'm just saying it's such a vast, it's more than a medium. It's just a box that opens up into a lot of different places. So it's hard to, it's hard to consolidate the conversation.

It's funny, though, I mean, I'm obviously very influenced by Bill Simmons on this issue because he's worked on a lot of documentaries over the years. So defending Jacob remains your show is a year. Well, just specifically the idea of the extended documentary is a complicated one, because generally speaking, I just talked, we just talked about this in the 40-O Virgin. Like, I just kind of want more. I'd rather just have more than less. Even if a doc is five hours and it's too long, I want more. You want the Snyder cut?

in a way, yeah. And I think Bill has a much more Catholic point of view around that where he's like, this should be a hundred minutes and it should tell the story clearly. He's a big believer like, this is why these things work in the first place. Yes.

And he might be right. But there was never a moment during the last dance where I was like, can we cut this back a little bit? Can we remove 20 minutes from this? Like, how many more times am I going to get a Michael Jordan documentary? Just give me all the time. But also, isn't the argument for the little, I mean, the argument that the last dance is the show of the year,

is a strong and compelling one. And one of the things that's interesting about that to me was the number of people, again, this is anecdotal, but it seems to me the number of people who weren't alive or weren't paying attention to sports then, who might not even be NBA fans who were drawn in by the week-to-week narrative thrust of this show, which really just speaks to how much people love that kind of storytelling, right?

And if it's done expertly, then you will watch it because it hits those familiar beats. And that's the kind of thing that that's when TV works. You know, it doesn't matter what it is. If it's hitting those beats and keeping you glued to the couch and wanting, leaving you wanting more, that's because TV unlike movies tends to deliver more pretty quickly. I just want to say I forgot that I actually did watch. The Last Dance is another thing that I watch on a week-to-week basis. But I, for whatever reason, was not qualifying it as a TV show in my head, even though it was like on TV.

But somehow, to me, it was like a six-part or eight-part or ten-part documentary. It was a 10 part, and to that point, in the same way that I don't want you to spoil the Great, I didn't spoil the Last Dance for you because you didn't know what was going to happen. That is true. Did you know about this? Michael DeGraint. You didn't know that he... I mean, I just, I can't believe we're all giving Sean a pass on not knowing what happens to Russia.

But anyway... He knows now. Russia hasn't been in the news much in the last few years. So, I don't know if you knew about this, but I watched the first episode or the first part of the last dance, which I, like, they were calling them parts. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

And that actually did work on me, marketing-wise, in terms of how I thought about it. And I was like, oh, this is part one of like a larger whole project. And I think I'm probably the only person on Earth who cares about that. That's like my editor brain. But that meant a lot to me. Anyway, watched part one. It flashes and it's like the 97-98 season. Is that the right season?

Sure. Whichever season. And I realized that I actually don't know whether the Bulls win that season. And I was like, cool. I'm not going to look it up. And then I just told everybody in my life by which I mean Chris, Sean. and Bobby. I was like, yo, don't tell me what happens. And then I made it like three weeks and then I spoiled it for myself accidentally by watching desktop. Oh no. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I like somehow I managed to

avoid all Twitter, but like it didn't occur to me that desktop would also refer to them as the six-time champions. And I was like, damn it. I just got a second wave of energy thinking about last dance and thinking about like, it was great. But also the two episodes per, you know, per night airing, the way in which it seemed to create an industry around itself. and that it reached a kind of maximum velocity where it was like 97% approval rating, and then the last 3% were like, I guess I got to go along for the ride. You know, I don't know whether you would have necessarily have dialed that up if it was like straight to Netflix in the middle of normal times.

And it was just like, by the way, there's a 10-hour Michael Jordan documentary on. But that was something that I feel like I just miss so much is that capturing of a moment. Right. And we love monoculture moments. We love event moments. it's one of the reasons that, as you were saying, Chris, like there aren't not having summer movies this year, regardless of their quality,

diminishes at least the fun of being a cultural commentator because it's nice to talk about things and experience things that other people are experiencing. And those moments are increasingly fleeting. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see, this is casting forward a little bit, but the post-game of Thrones generation of we're going to try to make Game of Thrones again shows

are coming, assuming production can resume, next year, right? Lord of the Rings show, Game of Thrones spin-off. I'm sure they're more that I'm blanking on it, whatever the next Star Wars shows are going to be once they announce those. It'll be interesting to see if those even in their marketing, in their scope, let alone in their appeal, if they attempt to mimic that kind of reach? Or are they really like the MCU shows on Disney Plus, which is just, you know, it's hard to call something that they're spending that many hundreds of millions of dollars on casual, but they feel this like kind of nice brand extensions.

You know, the Falcon and Winter Soldier seems like a smart play. I feel like it's going to be fine. And I feel like that's what it's being pitched as. I mean, I think we'll probably... Will we get Falcon and Winter Soldier before we get a Marvel movie? I don't think so. No, because the Marvel movies are in the can. And once... I think Black Widow will come out on November 3rd

and, or November 4th or 6th or whatever. Something else happening that day. I know exactly what I'm doing, November 3rd. See in Black Widow. Okay. Like three times. Yeah. all day. That's tight. Thanks for sharing.

I wanted to ask you guys what you think makes for a successful television show execution in 2020. Execution or successful television show? When we murder it on our podcast because it's so bad?

Like we execute it? No. Not like that. The number one example for me for this is that feels like it is it would be successful in 1990. It would be successful in 2010

and 2020. is better call Saul. That's the one show that I've stuck with for five seasons that I think in many ways has improved. Yeah. That I feel like connected to the characters, obsessed with the story. Now granted it is still IP in its own way. And it was on a cycle of sorts. Yes. Yeah. But still like that's the show that this year I was like, God damn, these people are good. They're really, really good at what they do. Was that

your criteria for shows in 1990 though? I feel like the idea that like this is high quality of the direction is. Yeah, but Twin Peaks was such an outlier. Like, I think... Yeah, but I think the most important, like, quote unquote important, the sane elsewhere's, you know, the NYPD Blues. Okay. It was the same kind of metric. It was like, is season

five of NYPD Blue as good as the first time you saw Caruso show his ass off? And it was, in many ways. For me, it was crushing. For me, the question of 2020 is, is Chris Evans a better lawyer or a better dad? And in terms of, you know, answering that question, which really is unknowable

because he's Chris Evans and he's good at everything. I love Better Call Saul. We'd love to talk about it. It's so much fun to be able to have a show like that in our lives. It still feels a little bit like icing on a cake to me because the cake was, they made the cake. Everyone loved the cake, and now they're just,

they get to make a little more and people are sweet on it. I think I'm in the, and I like Saul better than Breaking Bad Zone. That is very on brand. I believe that. I think I do. I mean, I quit Breaking Bad three times while I was watching it.

So it was the great of the late 2000s. So where's the fly against America? It paid off, and Breaking Bad is brilliant. I'm not trying to cast aspersions. The thing that I'm, as Chris knows, if I watch it, I burn it on the podcast, I was going to save talking about this for next week, and we mostly will. You're going to put it in a minute 42 of this one, your metric. What's that?

No, no, no, I'm not doing that. Oh, okay. No, no. I told Chris I had a take, and I said, I'm saving it for next week. No, it's that the show that I watched recently that felt like a really best case scenario show for this year and next year. And also, for how my experience it is the Amazon show. the boys. I don't know if anybody else has watched this.

I watched season one, not season two. But we're going to talk about it more next week in advance of season two. It's based on a comic book. It's about like, you know, it's a satire of superheroes and capitalism and fascism and religion and et cetera, et cetera, developed as a film, then moved to Cinemax and then ended up on Amazon with Seth Rogen's company producing it, but a guy named Eric Kripke show running it. I think the show is really, really impressive for very basic TV reasons. You know, it is so over the top

and it's violence and cynicism that I almost quit 20 minutes into it, as Chris can attest from his text messages, because I like to give him a minute-by-minute breakdown of my enjoyment of culture. He loves it. His wife loves it. It's like a great thing.

What's Andy want? He's on minute 16 of the first episode of boys. I put timestamps in my text. But ultimately, what won me over and what led me to watch it a year after it debuted, but watch it the whole season, which was a tight eight episodes

in like four days was the sheer professionalism of the product because the guy who made this show has made like 17 seasons of TV. He made 15 seasons of supernatural and then he made a show timeless for NBC. And so it's doing transgressive things sometimes proudly, right? And it's playing with ideas that are in the culture, like plot against America, basically the same thing, Garth Dennis, Philip Roth, two sides of the same coin. it's big budget

it's franchisee but it just hums like a machine because the guy knows how to move scenes and move characters around and keep you wanting to know what happens

next and characters do the things that TV characters do where they go into a room and they have a conversation they don't ask the most important question because you're going to answer that question when you cut to the scene that answers it and you just feel like you're in a car

that has been well built and is driving smoothly and it's only an eight hour drive and so that feels like and it's on a streaming service. That whole package made sense to me, and it's probably why it got renewed for two additional seasons almost immediately.

I was just going to say to you that all these, I wonder if a show could do this, and I wonder if a show could do that. I do then The Crown does that. Like, it gets better. It's been getting better, I think, you know, in terms of, and I think that it shows a,

that kind of underlying professionalism that Andy's talking about on the boys, I think you can see in the crown. Not only just in the production design and in the costume design and in the performances, but just in the way in which they are able to exercise,

execute an incredibly complicated difficult story, and they have a season coming. Yes. The crown is another example of, I put the Great under the What's a Successful TV show, because I wanted to talk about the Great in comparison to the favorite, and the reason I want to do that is because they're kind of the same thing. They're obviously both, like, the favorite was written by Tony McNamara and the Great was created by Tony McNamara, and they are different queens from, like, old-timies, you know, but basically the same thing. And it's the same sense. and really weird shit happens and one's a movie and one's a TV show and they're very identifiable as a movie and a TV show. But the crown is another actually example of there's a

movie version of it. It's called The Queen. Also Peter Morgan did the Queen and now he does the Crown. And I think both are great. I really love The Queen. Like one's a character study and one is a six season like sweeping historical television show that is episodic because it has to be because at some point it just can like there's so much to contain. It's like the best episodic television show going because it's the one where I'm like I remember that episode. Yeah. Do you know what happens at the end? Of the crown. Yeah. Because I don't want to spoil anything for you. Okay. Just my time with British tabloids. I do have a sense of what's going on. But both of their and I know that it's funny that I'm suggesting those because they're both just like things about people wearing crowns. Uh, I like

I like, and that's apparently all I'm interested in. They're both great crowns. Yeah. like that way you get both. But I just, I find them so interesting because I like both those movies, but both TV shows give room to do everything that we're talking about. I mean, they have more room to contain like the plot or the history. And then the great in particular, it really does a TV there, like B plots and you know, so-and-so has to go fight a bear and someone else is like in kind of a love triangle and you don't really know what's going on with them. And it is really, I think it's very hard to switch gears like that. But also to me just reinforces that if you're going to do a TV show and you're going to make

two episodes, you do actually have to use some of the old-timey mechanisms. You shouldn't be an enemy of the things that work. Did you choose the right box? And I think that what you're describing is great because it's best case scenario for this. And in the Big Picture podcast that I'm sure people have already listened to, but Amanda, you made such an amazingly smart point about like The Mandalorian versus a potential Boba-Fet movie and the idea that with TV, if you want to, if you're, if you're reason for it existing is you want to hang out with these people more and just know more about them, TV show. If you've got one killer story, movie, and those are great examples to bring up because we

have, with similar people involved, the writer, we have a movie version and a TV version of both, and both are used appropriately, right? There's the one killer story, you see it the movie, and then if you want more vibe, tone, world, context, nuance, you got the TV show. There's one other example that I think is fascinating and maybe circles the square on a lot of this conversation, which is, I think the best time I had watching a TV show this year was what we do in the shadows. And that started as a movie. And after I watched that movie, I never thought to myself, gosh, I wonder what those scamps are up to going forward. You know, it never occurred to me that there would be a sequel movie, for example, let alone a kind of spin-off TV series.

They're now through, I think, either 20 or 24 episodes of that show, almost all of which I think are great. It's like so clearly defined what it is. And it's gotten better. And now it's to be nominated. And it took the leap this year, right? A lot more people became aware of it. It got a little bit more zeitgeisty. And also, it's, I think somewhat related to the kind of like FX, FX on Hulu thing where like those three organizations coming together suddenly just became arguably the best network. And they have most of the shows we've been talking about here, normal people and the great and a number of other shows. And Palm Springs, Mrs. America, all this stuff. High fidelity. They have like a new core. Now, HBO, I think, at its very best is still the very best. When they make a great show, that is still, that is the show of the moment. But in totality, Hulu and FX and whatever that corporation is now, just they cut, they have their arms around something.

And they manage to make what we do in the fucking shadows, my favorite show. And it's shocking. And it does come from a movie. And I don't know. I don't know. What do you guys think happens in the future? We're all just flowing, man. What happens in the future?

I don't know because we need them to go back into production. And when they go back into production and then, you know, we have this conversation this time next year and Lord of the Rings is out or it's rolling out or there's a Game of Thrones prequel that's about to come out. I think we'll all look back on this conversation and be like, wasn't that quaint when we thought a thousand flowers would bloom and that we were returning to television production know-how and everything was going to be. There's three plots in this 45-minute episode.

Enjoy. See you next week. Also treasure things like I may destroy you because pandemic or no pandemic, the bulk of things being greenlit, the bulk of things that are either in production or going into production or being talked about or being developed are based on movies. I mean, almost everything is based on IP, but we are fully in TV's sort of big budget era. And any, I mean, I speak from personal experience here,

any movie that is controlled by anyone that has a streaming service or a network or a studio is being developed. Things that you wouldn't even believe, that you didn't even understand why there are movies, let alone why they should be a 10-part series. They're all being developed, and they're all coming, and they may rewrite the paradigm for us. But this idea of distinct entities, certainly what will remain distinct, hopefully, is the storytelling possibilities of the mediums and how we use them. That will give us the best adaptations, whether they're what we do in the shadows or Fargo or the Crown. But in terms of just like top line story, it is all one thing. This has been so huge for the 14 episode look at Howard the Duck that I've

been working on for the last 10 years. And I'm just so pleased that FX has decided to put it into production. He'll have that conversation with you. Guys, thank you so much for joining me and Andy today. This has been an epic journey through current media. And through the heat dome. And through the heat dome. You can listen to the first part of this conversation. And I recommend you listen to every episode of the Big Picture, just like I do. On the Big Picture feed, this is part two. Andy and I will be back on Monday, special guest Monday. I think so.

Yeah, it's awesome. Is it me? No, we were saying, we're letting people know we will finally have a special guest. It's Boba Fett. He was like, not going to do that show, but I will come on the watch. All right. Thanks, guys. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by the NHTSA. Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk.

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