The Watch - 'Atomic Blonde,' Kathryn Bigelow, 'Ozark,' 'True Detective' Season 3, and Netflix’s Unfair Advantage With Millennials (Ep. 171)

Episode Date: July 27, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan is joined by K. Austin Collins to discuss Charlize Theron’s new action film 'Atomic Blonde' (3:00), the expanding world of IP, and the career arc of filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow (17:00). Later, TV critic Alison Herman stops by to discuss the new Netflix series ‘Ozark’ (33:30), the ways that we watch TV shows these days (40:00), and 'True Detective' Season 3 before tossing out a few new show recommendations (55:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Rick and Morty's Season 3. If you enjoy animated interdimensional murder, alien drug use, and testicle monsters in space, then let's do this, bro. Rick and Morty on Adult Swim, the critically acclaimed animated comedy series follows a sociopathic genius scientist Rick and his less intelligent grandson Morty, who split their time between domestic family life and dangerous interdimensional adventures. Only a show this mark could be this stupid, Rick and Morty. All new episodes begin this Sunday at 1130, only on Adult Swim.

Catch up now at Adult Swim.com. Catch up now at Adultswim.com. Today's episode of The Watch is also brought to you by Red Box. School is out for summer, and Red Box has the video games to keep you entertained. With over 40,000 locations nationwide, you can rent and return from anywhere. And better yet, you'll get a free one-night game rental from Red Box when you use the promo code watch six. That's watch and the number six one word. Swing by a box in your neighborhood or if you want to make sure the game you want is there when you arrive, reserve it online at redbox.com

slash games. Offer is valid through August 10th, 2017, subject to additional terms. Charges apply for additional nights. A payment card is required. Getting into video games has never been so easy. I need sports to have to clear the run. 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 in the studio is nobody. Well, that's not true. I will be joined by Cam Collins and I will be joined by Allison Herman later on. We're talking Atomic Blonde today. We're talking Catherine Bigelow movies. We are talking Ozark. We are talking the unfair advantage Netflix has and their influence over millennials. Breaking news.

We also talk True Detective Season 3 and Rick and Morty. First, before we get into those, let me just remind everybody that we have a Game of Thrones talk show, Game of Thrones after show on Twitter. Talk the Thrones. It's me, Andy, Jason Concepcion, Mallory Rubin, the gods of binge mode. We are all part of the Ringer Podcast Network. So you should check out as many Ringer podcasts as your brain can handle, even if that means you have to listen to it at 1.5 speed. Although I talk pretty fast.

So, Zach, would you recommend people listen to me on 1.5? That would be like getting sucked out in airlock in space. But check out as many Ringer podcasts as you possibly can. There was a really great jam session this week that I was a very big fan of. yeah, every Sunday, after the East Coast airing of Game of Thrones, after the scenes from next week, you can just go to Twitter.com slash ringer. We tweet out the links constantly. You can watch me, Mal, Jason, Andy, sometimes special guests talking about that episode of Game of Thrones on your computer screen immediately. It's a lot of fun. We've been having a lot of fun doing it,

and we've been really enjoying interacting with people, so you can always tweet us questions at hashtag Talk to Thrones. Andy will be back on Monday. Until then, let's talk. to Cam about Atomic Blonde and Catherine Bigelow and Allison about Ozark and True D. Okay, I am joined now by my buddy, Cam Collins from The Ringer. And Cam and I are going to talk a little bit about Atomic Blonde in Detroit, which are the two big movies coming out this weekend. Now, we neither of us have seen Detroit. Both of us have seen Atomic Blonde, but we'll try to keep any, we won't get any spoilers. You can always come back to and listen to this after you've seen Atomic Blonde, which I hope you do. Or do I hope they do. Where's your head at with Atomic Blonde? I feel like I saw this in South by Southwest in a very packed Paramount Theater that was way closer to like a rock concert than it was a movie screening. And I definitely think that had a lot to do with my enjoyment of the movie.

Although I still really liked it. But the fact that people were like cheering and shouting at the screen and stuff was definitely made it like more of a party than a somber screening. Did you see it like by yourself? I thought it. I wouldn't, it wasn't like a funeral. It was definitely not as, this is not as exciting as yours. But I think people were responsive.

It wasn't, it wasn't wild. But I think I, you know, I think I got out of it what one would probably get out of it if they were seeing it in regular theater. You got the gist. And so how did you feel about it? What did you think of the movie? Well, you know, I have to say, I still don't entirely know what happened. I have had like a pow-out with their friend where we swapped notes and what we thought. the actual plot was and I think we figured it out but I think the consensus at least

among people I've spoken to has been don't try to understand it don't try to follow it just sort of go with it yes I think that that works I think that the fights are are worth seeing particularly the long one toward the end that I think people are going to be talking about I think that's worth the price of admission absolutely I think that part of so there's a couple of different things going on here one is that this definitely feels like a movie that got made to some degree a little bit in post-production. Like there's like a whole plot line with like Charlie's Theron's like, Shirley's Theron's like boyfriend, but like they don't really ever, they mentioned like once that she was like intimate with this guy,

but then like never touch on it again. There's all sorts of double crossing going on, which we won't spoil. But I couldn't spoil it. I couldn't spoil it. We couldn't even spoil it if we wanted to. But the thing that I came away from this movie, and strangely was sort of delighted by it, was that it seemed like the kind of movie that should be made in like 2035. That's about 1980s culture, where it's like this like mishmash of like chronologically not quite accurate musical cues. And sometimes people are sort of like speaking as if like the Berlin Wall hasn't fallen.

and then they're acting like it has. And there's just like a lot of like, but it, something about the movie kind of, uh, kind of breezes past it. There's an inherent charm to it. I do think that part of that is because McAvoy and Charlize have such chemistry. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think, I think the thing that carried me through the movie was that like that one of the first things you see is, you know, Charlize like, beaten, like someone,

clearly like someone's beating the shit out of Charlie's Darren. Yeah. You can tell that she's like, she's on the winning side of that fight, but the movie opens with her, you know, like, slipping into an ice bath with bruises all over her body and, like, just disgustingly broken up. Yeah, drinking vodka. Yeah.

Yeah. So, like, opens with the promise of, okay, at the very least, this movie is going to explain to me how and why you did this is Charlize Daron. And when you get to that part of the movie, it's like, okay, well, you know, the rest, it doesn't really need to add up. It's fine. Because we understand that this is just movie about Charlize Starrant. Aaron beating ass.

Yeah. You know, and it, and it, I watched the videos, unlike everyone else, I watch the videos on YouTube where Charlize talks about, like, all the fight training she did and how she was beating these dudes up. Like, I like that kind of stuff. Yeah. And that's as fun as the movie for me. Like, the script is clearly not the star of the movie.

The star of the movie is Charlize Theron doing her own stunts and obliterating people. Yeah, it's, it does not have, I think the people have been comparing it a little bit to John Wick. and I think that the glory, the real genius of John Wick was the simplicity of the, like, the motivation of the character, which is they killed his dog, and then he just goes apeshit on them. Like, there is no such simplicity in this movie, and they try to make it into a kind of Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy, you know, hunt the double agent and John Goodman and Toby Jones get involved, and they're like CIA and MI6, and it's, there's a lot of fun with that. But, you know, we've been living in this superhero industrial complex for longer than I can even remember when we weren't. But this has actually reminded me, this movie reminded me a lot of what it's like to kind of read a comic book where the plot is often very hard to piece together from issue to issue to issue because there's so much, they're making so many corrections and adjusting narratives to like fit to when they're going to do a crossover run or whatever. But visually, you're just completely captivated.

And David Leach, who did, who directed or half-directed John Wick. I don't know if he got credit for it, but he was the part of the partnership who did it, is very good at making scenes that are born to be on film tumblers, you know, just like stills of her pulling her turtle neck up. If you've seen the trailers, you know it. But, like, yeah, I mean, he has like a certain visual flare, which I think is quite delightful. And just a really good sense of, I mean, the reason I keep bringing up a last fight is because it stands out among, I mean, if we're talking about the superhero industrial complex, it's just refreshing to see someone fighting for a long time and getting worn down. Like this is a fight in which it gets like chaplain-esque in a weird way. It's like, this is a fight that's about how you can't fight forever. It's a fight about how you're not a machine. And so at some point when someone keeps breaking chairs over your back, it's going to take a little bit longer to get back. up, but if you really need the person to be dead, you know, there are people who get stabbed

in this movie who, like, still reemerge. And not in a, I mean, not in a realistic way, but not, it's not like surreal. It's just sort of like, these are people who are fighting to the death. Yeah, there was a degree which, like, there was, I had a little bit of the 80s action movie feel of, there was always a bad guy in Commando or diehard or lethal weapon who couldn't be killed. And it was just always, like, Mad Max or Road Warrior had that where it was just like, they'd run a guy over and then he'd be on the hood.

And this is really not that far short of that. No, I'd say that that's the spirit that this movie was definitely made. And I do recommend it. It is just like the music's fun. She's great. James McVoy's great. It doesn't make any sense. And I think if you're already on the side of like a movie like John Wick, I think if you,

you kind of know if it's like from the guy who did or co-directed John Wick plus Charlie Starran, Charlie Starran in the middle of her kind of action heroine, ice queen phase. Yeah. Like I think you kind of know what you're going to get, but I think some of the fighting is still by those standards is still really impressive. It's quite good. I was impressed. I was kind of wanted to bounce this off of you.

This is something that Greenwald and I have talked about a little bit in the last couple of weeks where, you know, he came out of Baby Driver and I think he was a little bit like more, I mean, he was obviously just like I wasn't, he wasn't that blown away by it. But I think that he was affected. And we talked about this, this idea that movies like Baby Driver, and I would say even to some extent Atomic Blonde, it seemed to have be weighed down a little bit by this responsibility to be an antidote to the other stuff that's in theaters at the same time. And, you know, you see a ton of movies.

You also see a ton of smaller films that, like, maybe some of our listeners don't get a chance to see or won't get a chance to see in the theaters initially. But do you ever get that feeling like there's this, like, extra responsibility placed on films like Atomic Blonde and Baby Driver that aren't Logan, that aren't Wonder Woman, that aren't setting up. 13 sequels, although I could totally see them making more atomic blonde of this. I mean, there's got to be a sequel to Tomlin, right? Right. But that idea that it's like, I know it's adapted from a comic book, but it's not superhero mythology. We have to set up the James McAvoy spin-off thing.

What do you think of that? No, you know, I think that's right. And I think it even affects, I mean, and the ones since someone like Christopher Nolan is sort of above this because he's someone who's making his own movies at a high, with huge budgets and doing kind of what he wants to do with a level of control that the vast majority of directors right now don't have and won't have. But even in the way that we talk about Dunkirk as being the movie that you need to go to the theaters to see because it's not a superhero movie, it's a really good war drama

for adults that's really expensive, that looks as great if not. Actually, it looks much better than most superhero movies. But somehow still these other things get carried into the conversation. It seems like you can't make a major Hollywood movie right now unless it's a comedy without people thinking about what it isn't. And what it isn't is it's not a superhero movie. Even if I do think 007, for example, is increasingly superheroic and John Wick and Atomic Blonde or movies in which, you know, there's a scene early in Atomic Blonde where someone gets hit by a car and the way that they get hit by the car does not really, to my mind, reflect the way that one. would get hit by a car, you know? Like, it does not honor the laws of gravity or physiology to my knowledge.

Yeah, yeah. It feels like a little bit, I don't want to say superhero movie, but it does feel like it does belong in a different kind of movie world. I think these things are sort of suffusing everything. So I do think we sort of go out of our way to not just we, but like publicists and filmmakers go out of their way to point out of their way to point out of, it's not that kind of movie. I think we do, we do overemphasize that.

But also, I mean, you know, it's like it's what's dominant right now. So that makes sense. If people are sick of what's dominant or they want to pretend that they're sick of what's dominant, then yeah, this is how you get their asses in the seats. Yeah, I was talking with Amanda about this the other day because she, I can't remember what movie we were talking about, but she was just like, I think I might have been talking about Dunkirk. And we were just talking about like the sort of satisfaction of like a beginning,

middle and end movie that just is like a two-hour experience that you can take and then digest and think about. just have as the only thing, but then the dominant mode of storytelling in Hollywood right now is this constant sense of feeling like they're trying to extend it and that they're constantly trying to think of different ways that they can grow out. And it's like, I thought John Wick too was also fun. But the idea that there's a John Wick cinematic universe in the offing and the idea that, like you said, I mean, they've talked about, you know, they just announced that Daniel Craig was going to sign up for one more, at least one more Bond movie, but that the the producers, Wilson and Broccoli,

are interested in creating a 007 cinematic universe. Now, as somebody who likes 007 movies, I kind of would be into a Blowfeld movie or a Felix movie or a Money Penny movie. All those ideas. I would love a Many Penny Movie. I love a Money Penny movie, but they're not going to make a Money Penny movie

where it's just like a secretary going about her life in London. They're going to make it so that she has her own adventure. And I don't know. I just think that it's not necessarily a rejection. of superhero culture as much as it is an exhaustion with the constant connective tissue that these movies are spreading out to another movie, another possible new movie, another possible movie. You know, it's funny you say that because, you know, one of the really important differences

for me between John Wick and John Wick, too, is that John Wick too, very much went out of its way to put John Wick in this, to show us this larger world of criminals and this service industry that goes along with this larger world of criminals that, like, was implied in the, you know, the first movie or more than implied, right? You have the people who come by and take care of the bodies in his house, but it's different when you realize, like, no, this is, this is international, this has its own currency. You could make movies about a lot of different people. I'm not cynically saying that that's what John Wick 2 is going out of its way to do to set up other movies, but it's like this extended universe that this movie goes out of its way to give us. That's a little

different than like the sort of lone, you know, the lone criminal sad guy. whose dog died, who's just him against the world. It's like when you put him in an actual world to love a bunch of people like him, you throw common in there. You know, it's just like it's a little different. And I feel like that is partially in response to feeling like these things need to exist

in worlds much greater than the ones that we're seeing. Yeah, I mean, we talk often on the show about like the creeping, like the filmmaking otorism of television. And I think that that's sort of dissipated a little bit. But I also think that televised. television is having a huge impact on films because they're realizing like, oh, you know, we could just like keep teasing this out and keep teasing this out. We talk about movies like Baby Driver, John Wick, these kind of really visceral, smart, fun action movies.

And I kind of segues nicely into talking about Catherine Bigelow. Because before she was the high priestess of counterterrorism, and before she was this sort of. of Costa Gravis, like, hardcore street poet, she was one of the best action directors alive. And she made a series of movies throughout the 90s, like late 80s and 90s, like point break and near dark and strange days, which is like one I wanted to talk to you about because it's just such a weird movie. Blue Steel. And in a lot of ways, she hasn't changed that much stuff.

stylistically, I don't think. There's lots of stuff that happens in Zero Dark 30 or Hurt Locker that you can see in Point Break. Absolutely. I don't know where you want to start with her. Do you want to start talking about her older films or her more recent work? Because I find her career to be so fascinating and in some ways wonderful and in some ways kind of sad. You know, can I just say up front that I, as much respect as I have for the filmmaking in the Hurt Locker and Zero Dark 30, and I would imagine Detroit, which I'm seeing soon.

I miss old weird Bigelow. Yeah. You know, like, I miss the weirdness of strange days. Like a movie whose premise is partially, there's like five premises in that movie. But one of the premises is that Angela Bassett and Ray Fines would be best friends in a movie. Yes. Which is why it's a sci-fi movie. I don't care why, like, whatever, you know, yes, it was like written by damned camera or whatever.

But, like, it's a sci-fi movie because what? But, like, it's a kind of movie that, like, I would love to see from her again. Not that being the High Priestess of Counterterrorism isn't, I mean, she's, that's her laying. Yeah, right. No one's making that kind of movie right now, particularly not with the skill that she's, you know, she's like high end. I just watched Shortlocker this morning and was, again, very taken with just how incredibly well made and just beautifully precise that movie is.

But I miss like when Jamie Lee Curtis is playing a lady cop in blue steel and is like being hunted by this like weird psychosexual like predator dude. Yeah. Like I don't know. Like I miss I miss movies like point break in part because like just she just does that so much better than, you know, in terms of like mainstream filmmakers. I just I miss a filmmaker who's just so skilled at at precise thrilling genre. Yeah. I don't know whether to necessarily tie that. I mean, I think she was somebody who was able to take really essentially pulpy material,

whether it was surfer FBI agents or vampires roaming the sort of bad lands like in Near Dark. Or really Texas. I can't remember where Near Dark takes place. But then she gets sort of tied up with making these movies Mark Bull. And I am going to, I still, as a film, You know, the policies of it are very debatable. Things Zero Dark 30 is incredible. And Hurt Locker is one of the most exhausting physical experiences you can have.

Just the tension it winds up creating. And also it's just like such a perfect, like, subtly small movie because there's really only like four characters in Hurt Locker. Which of those films from the later period, Hurt Locker, Zero Dark, which one's really striking to you? You said you just rewatched Hurtlock. Have you rewatched Zero Dark 30 recently? I rewatched Zero Dark Day maybe like half a year ago.

I think, so I'm pro between these two Hurt Locker because Zero Dark 30, what I can't quite get past is Jessica Chassian's character has never really added up to me. And I think that's partially because her character is an assemblage of multiple people. When I figure that out, that sort of made sense. Like the character is sort of a cipher. Also, I, like, morally cannot get with any movie in which, spoiler alert, Jennifer Ely dies. I think there should be a rule.

That's great. I'm so glad that that's morally what you have a problem with zero-dard clarity is that Jennifer Ely fights it. I feel like the other conversations have already exhausted themselves. But can we talk about, like, the fact that that should not be okay? There should be a law against, like, blowing Jennifer Ely up. I don't care if in real life her character did. Like, if that happened, I don't know if it's accurate or what.

I just know that that was not okay with me. Yeah. And that was the first thing that I thought when I left that theater was like, how could you do that? How could you do that to me? I always, that was sort of like the underrated part about Zero Dark is just how many random people just show up for two or three minutes. Like Mark Duplas as like the computer expert or something or whatever he is, Edgar Ramirez is in it for like 10 minutes. But even Hurt Locker, I've forgotten that Guy Pearce is in it. I'd forgotten that Ray Fiennes is in it.

Ray Fines is really good in Hurt Locker. He's really good in Hurt Locker. who's the character actor who plays the like the general that Jeremy Renner meets and he's like you're a cowboy Oh, I know exactly who you mean, whose name I forgot Yeah and he's just in a hundred thousand different shows I can't remember But yeah it's like it's like it she has a great eye for casting and it's always amazing when these people turn up in them Yeah, I don't know so

I the reason I said her career has been a little bit sad is just because You know we've been fetting Nolan on the site we did like Nolan week we talked about Dunkirk. We've talked about Dunkirk for like three straight podcasts here. And it's like, I think that she should be considered among the group of PTA and Quentin and no one of these people who get automatic green lights

shoot it in 70 millimeter, put it out on a road show, do whatever you need to do. And she's actually just had a lot of, I mean, seemingly had a lot of trouble getting stuff going. She was associated with this movie Triple Frontier for a long time, which has now become like an all-timer

boondoggle, which is, it's now with Netflix. It's gone through her, J.C. Shandor, Antoine Fuku. It was initially supposed to star like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, and then it was going to be Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy, and now everybody who's ever been on it

has dropped out. It's just, and Netflix is trying to save it, but I just have no idea who's even going to make it, but she was associated with that movie for a long time after Zero Dark 30, and now she's made Detroit, and Detroit strangely got bumped up a week. I don't know if it's how strange that is. Is it very

odd that it got bumped up a week? It was odd for me. Yeah, I was surprised. It's, well, particularly with something like Detroit because you're like, all right, I got like two weeks before I got to get my head in the space to see Detroit. Yeah. You know, which I take, I expect from her at a very intense, visceral movie about racial violence and police and all these things. And, you know, I could have used those two weeks. Yeah. You got to train for these things. You really do. And then, so this is coming out in Los Angeles and New York on Friday. And And then it goes wide the following week. And how do you feel just, just, I'm curious, how do you feel about, because I think, I think an

important, an important thing in her career, the important turn to Hurt Locker Zero Dark 30 and Detroit is like this collaboration with Mark Bull, who was a journalist, but who, you know, I think since 2007, I think his first film script was in the Valley of Ella, maybe. And I think, I think her late career is very much tied to. you know, the projects they're doing together. Yeah, it's almost like pseudo-journalism. Yeah.

I don't mean pseudo-in-that as derogatory as it sounds, but this idea that it's like from long form to the screen, like it's like these unbelievable true stories that can only be told in this gritty handheld style. And I gotta be honest, and like no shade to Mark Bowell, but I...

Feel free. I mean, I don't know him, but you give me... I don't know him either. No, sorry. Sorry, Mark. But I, watching Hurt Locker, one of the, rewatching it this morning, one of the lessons that I, that I remember learning when I watched it the last time. But I'm remembering now is just, I think that it's a good lesson in how much better of a director she is than he is as a writer, to be honest. Like, there are many very silly things in that movie that I'm not going to attribute to it not aging well, because I think that they were silly in 09.

Right. And I think something about his scripts is like too neat for me. It's like you can feel when the first act becomes the second act becomes the third act in the writing. But with her filmmaking, it's just so much more nuanced and visceral and electrifying than the things that are coming out of people's mouths, the things that they're doing. Like something about her filmmaking is just far surpasses what's on the page for me. Like when the dues are like all amped up and they're like punching each other and they're like punching each other. gut. Yeah.

I'm like, you know, I could, where are the bombs at? Yeah, right. Right. I don't, I don't want to do, I don't want to do like the characterizing masculinity and the screenplay 101 type way. Well, it's funny you should say that because like, I think that you touched on it before when you were like, the chastain character in Zero Dark 30 never quite does it for you because she doesn't, she feels like a cipher and she was an amalgam. And I wonder whether Mark Bowell is a better journalist than he is a screenwriter.

I mean, to be, and I, I think, I just think that those are actually. quite different disciplines. And we draw, people draw films from all sorts of different sources, you know, and I, you know, you and I were talking a couple weeks ago. We've been buzzing about this idea that Scorsese and Leonard DiCaprio are going to make the David Grand book. Yes. Can't wait.

Yeah, I can't wait. But nonfiction, and especially like long-form nonfiction that will go off in these different directions and go very deep into certain details and stuff like that, like screenwriting is its own discipline. And to have it just be like, I felt like Hurt Locker when I rewatched it, felt like a bunch of war stories dumped together, then given like three kind of like the young guy, the crazy guy. And like. Right, like the naive one. And it's like there's really no reason for them to bump into Ray Fines other than that was a cool story that Mark Boll probably had.

Like Ray Fines is not as important to the movie. They could have stopped in that desert for any reason, but to have it. be like a British private contractor soldier and this this idea that there's like this whole other war going on while cool is really like has nothing to do with the movie yeah absolutely like the emotional pivot points just don't just aren't as interesting to me as the way that bigelow shoots these scenes like that's what I kept thinking it's like you know what's going on right now it's just not that exciting for me but for the fact that she is she just makes that entire movie about looking and watching and looking out for danger and being watched and just like the paranoia of the experience

far exceeds uh you know the the stuff like the the plot really yeah it just it's just it's just it's a good lesson um you know it confirms for me that like yeah she is great even even when i don't love her movies it's it's not always because of her yeah and you can take point break as this incredibly like pulpy ridiculous mystery science theater like you can sit there and make fun of all the lines and I am an FBI agent and whatever. But when she decides to run behind dudes as they jump over fences and get hit by cars and that's like she's of real one.

Like she is. We were talking and we shared it with each other. There's this video of Keanu talking about making point break and you can just hear the awe in his voice about how she was like faster, faster, faster. Like we're going to do this at pace. We're not going to pretend we're running fast. She was running behind these guys with kids.

She was throwing them out of planes. She was throwing them in the ocean. And you can feel it in every frame of that movie. I mean, among contemporary American directors, I think Bigelow and Michael Mann are the two most interesting. And maybe Soderberg, people who make movies about professionals, about people who are extraordinary at what they do. I mean, in Bigelow's case, it's like, I was driven a little bit crazy by this thing that

I'm so good at. Yeah. But it, and I'm worn down by, I'm exhausted by it. But it's like, she, man in Soderberg are really just so good at making you interested in people doing things extremely well and the emotional and psychological tolls and the ways that they perform those things and the context in which those things happen. Yeah. The process is everything for them. Yeah. The process is just watching Jeremy Renner.

I mean, there's that moment where he pulls off the wires and he's surrounded by bombs and just watching him frustratingly think his way through how to how to diffuse these bombs. It's just like, this is fantastic. This is fascinating. Yeah. She's great. Okay, I'll let you go in a second, but just for our listeners, is there a movie that you've kind of like that's gone under the radar or that's like on streaming or is on iTunes that has come out in the last couple of weeks that we haven't been talking about

that you want to recommend to people? Well, I would say, first of all, I would say if you really are in the mood for dirty humor, please go see a girl's trip because that made me almost pissed my pants with just shock and laughter. frankly. And also a movie that very much like your experience of Atomic One, a movie that very much benefits. Like it's already very funny, but benefits a lot from being in an audience where just everyone is just, you know, off their chair. And it also is like probably like we'll look back in 10 years and be like, oh yeah, Tiffany had it. She was like a superstar. Yeah, like the absolute joy of seeing a star be born is just there's just nothing really like that. You know, the last time I felt that way, the star that I thought that I saw was getting. born in Hale Caesar, Alden-Earon Reich, is getting played. He's getting dogged out, man.

He's getting a dogged. I'm on Alden Island, but it's hard. There's a lot of weather out here today. I feel you. Because they're like, he needs an acting coach, and he's doing weird accents, and he looks like he's pretending like he's Ace Ventura. Played my dude. And so, like, I just, Tiffany, like, you know, I have all faith in you.

Please do not. I guess just don't be in a Star Wars movie. I don't know what else to say. You know, just avoid it. But yeah, I think she's great. And I think the movie's really fun. Okay, great. All right, Cam, thank you so much for joining us.

As always. We'll talk to you again soon. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Cam. We will take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And then when we're back, we'll talk to Alison Herman about Ozark and True Detective Season 3. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by HBO's Room 104 from

Creators and executive producers Mark N. J. Duplas comes a new anthology series called Room 104, premiering July 28th at 1130 p.m. on HBO. Set in a single room of an average American motel, each of the 12 episodes in this season of Room 104 tells the story of the different assorted characters who pass through it, all of them being everyday people striving for connection and meaning. With performances by James Vanderbeek, Jay Duplas, and Orlando Jones, each episode plays like a mini-movie ranging from comedy to drama and a horror, and offers a new discovery from one week to the next, Hence the tone, the characters, the era, it all changes. One room, infinite possibilities.

See what's going on in Mark and Jay Duplass's upcoming anthology series Room 104, premiering July 28th at 1130 p.m. on HBO. You do not want to miss it. Today's episode of The Watch is also brought to you by The Homies at Hotel Tonight. If you are like me and you are not so great at planning ahead, I've got good news through you. There's this awesome app called Hotel Tonight that helps you find amazing hotel deals at the last minute. It sounds counterintuitive, but unlike flights, hotel rates usually get cheaper at the last minute. And Hotel Tonight helps hotels sell their unsold rooms, allowing them to pass those deals

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Yeah, the state of TV. Specifically, I wanted to talk a little bit about Ozark. It's this Jason Bateman show that came out last Friday on Netflix. And I enjoy it. I really, like, I find it to be like a very, like, familiar and fun experience for myself, even though the whole thing about it is that it's this dark brooding show. I mean, I think the keyword here is familiar. I think that's both the reason why some people enjoy it

and the reason why a lot of people might not be super. interested in it or might dislike it. I mean, I think dislike is a little bit of a strong term, but I think especially for a TV critics such as myself, but really all TV viewers, there's kind of the sense of we've seen a lot of things before, more than ever, now that we're in peak TV. And specifically, there's a particular kind of cliche that I think has emerged over the last few years, which is the anti-hero show, but stripped of kind of the novelty and deeper meaning is going to sound mean.

The difficult man show is worn, like, its novelty is worn off. I totally understand that. But like the difficult man show as like going through the motions and not, like, what the original difficult man show does is it takes this archetype that we've been trained to idolize, whether it's the glamorous mobster or the big businessman, yeah, yeah. Or the slick 1950s guy. And it just methodically destroys it. And then I think it's imitators use a similar setup.

And then often, I think one of the problems with Ozark is that it really does think Jason Bateman is the sexiest badass in the West or whatever. Right. You know. Well, let's tell people a little bit about the show in case they don't know about it. So do you have like your elevator pitch on what the show is about? Sure. So Jason Bateman plays a man named Marty Bird, who is a money launderer for a Mexican cartel who is based in Chicago. Everything falls to shit.

And so he, in a last-inch attempt to save him in his family's life, is like, cartel, you should trust me with $8 million. And I will take it to... I love doubling down with the cartel. Already in. Always works. Also, you know, the cartel literally goes from like, I am about to shoot you in the head and kill all your family to like, yeah, take all my money and go to this place that I've

never heard of that you clearly made up by grabbing a brochure that was on the ground as I was about to murder you. But anyway, it's basically a giant rigmarole, reverse engineered plot device. to get them to the Lake of the Ozarks, which is in rural Missouri. There's a lot of sort of southern crime, justified-ish intrigue going on. I kind of compared it in my review to like the true detective season one sense of we're going to go to this part of rural America and ogle it a little bit. Yeah, right. So there are a lot of colorful side characters.

I would actually say the best among them and maybe the best part of the show is this woman Julia Garner, who plays a 19-year-old criminal who's kind of trying to break the cycle of poverty. And first she tries to steal from Marty, and then Marty kind of conscript her as a deputy. But, you know, I've seen about half the season. I know you've seen a little bit. Like one or two. I've seen, yeah.

Yeah, it doesn't take a lot to get the setup. I would just say I did not feel especially tempted to watch more, in part because, you know, you can kind of point to the parts of the show. Like, Laura Linney plays Jason Bateman's wife, and she plays the stereotypical, complicit. I think a neat twist is that she actually does know what's going on. She's in on it from the beginning. But that part of the show is also kind of a double-edged sword because, you know, you watch it and you're like, I kind of want to know how these people got into this business.

Like, I want to know what the conversation was like when she learned that this is what her husband does for a living. But instead of just fast forward straight past that. So, you know, you can look at, you know, the medicine cartel enforcer and the difficult man and the moody teenager, like the Dana from Homeland part is. Everything is shot with like a blue tint so that it kind of has like a. I think I told you this in the office, but my conspiracy theory is that some of these scenes were actually shot on sunny days and they were just aggressively color corrected. So everything just looks overcast all the time, which is this necessary component of all these shows that kind of makes it, you know, visually. I think part of the thesis of my review is that on a certain level, this is comforting. And there is a certain level of like, I like crime and I don't necessarily want to have like my entire vision of masculinity relentlessly challenge.

But to get that kind of comforting repetition, you need something like a procedural rhythm where, you know, something happens within a 50-minute period that leaves you satisfied. And I think another thing, a problem that Ozark has that a lot of Netflix shows have right now is that it's very wonkily paced. See, I actually disagree with you about that. Okay. Okay. So this is where I'll jump in just to say that I have been going through a thing recently where I feel like, I've been giving a lot of other shows a shot and I think because of that

I have a little bit of first few episode fatigue where you know like when you're like you'll watch something for a little while and you finish house of cards or you don't finish house of cards you do whatever and you're like okay else or something else and I for some reason it started either if even a brand new show or a new season of a new show or a new season of a show and I get to like the first episode

and I'd be like god damn it like I just even if it's the characters are completely different and the tone's completely different the story is completely different. There are certain beats that I feel like I'm just like slogging through and that a lot of people are like, you know, you're as a viewer handling so much television right now. And then the showrunners, though, they're like, this is my shot. And this is my chance to be arty and to like disrupt how we tell stories or whatever

or maybe there's going to be time shifting or maybe there's just going to be really slow. So the thing is, I actually just, the reason why I'm so into Ozark is I felt like, like it was like, we know how to make television. So the argument is that it's radically uninterested in hooking you. Is that? I thought it would. I was hooked. And I actually felt like the very reason why you're saying about like, oh, we skip over

the part where Laura Linney has to have her come to Jesus moment. I was like, great. Let's just get right into like on the run. You know, like. Well, I think, you know, it's cool to be like we're not going to do the come to Jesus moment. But there needs to be something to replace it. And I have very little sense of who Laura Linney's character is, except that she likes to swear a lot.

Yes, into it. There's a lot of posturing to make her seem badass. She says the phrase fucking pistachio ice cream like multiple times. It doesn't quite get better with repetition. But you know, you've seen a couple episodes, but they don't introduce a major antagonist in the season until like the end of the variant of the first episode. They really rely on the fish out of water trope for a long time of like these people going into a different environment and be getting used to it.

I think you could make the argument that it took a little bit. while for, I guess Tuko shows up pretty early at Breaking Bad, but it took a while for Breaking Bad, like, it wasn't always like Godfather Part 2, you know what I mean? There was a lot of like, how do I make this stuff and like, like, really like sort of like stumbling around in the

early seasons. Totally, but Ozark does bypass that too in the sense that by the time you meet Marty, he's already money laundering, he's already created this. There's also this like weird attempt to make like Excel manipulation sound incredibly badass. Like I think the metaphor of the cartel

enforcer uses as like he can make money disappear like spit in a hot skillet. Yes. Yes. They do say that. And I think it's also worth noting that this was co-created by a guy named Bill DeBuque who was both mostly a feature writer, which I read a lot of reviews that kind of hypothesized that this was a feature

script that got distended, which explains the pacing. But specifically is the screenwriter of one, the accountant. So I'm noticing a pattern here. He loves numbers and what numbers can do for crime. Or just like is really bad at numbers and is just in awe of people who can manipulate them.

I really want to know this Jude's psychology, but clearly there's something there. So we're a little bit at odds on OZARC itself, but I would say that if you're looking for a cool crime show, it's worth a shot. The reason why I wanted to even, I mean, I wanted to talk about O'SARC anyway, but this is part of a larger conversation that you and I have been sort of having, and I've really been fascinated by this take that you've had, which is that I think you seem to think that shows that are on Netflix, new shows specifically, right, are getting a little bit more of a shot from,

whether it's critics who are like, I have to review it, it's the new, or is it viewers themselves? I would actually say it's viewers, mostly because as a critic, I'm both obligated to see a lot of stuff, and mostly I just have access to it. I get screeners.

It's around me. I'm up on release schedules. Right. So the reason why this came up is our colleague, Sean, you, went to the TV Slack and was like, I've seen a lot of people on Reddit say that this show is really good. Should I check it out? Like, he heard from other people.

And this is actually the second show in a row from Netflix that I've given a less than favorable review to, the first being friends from college. And in both cases. Which I also watched without second. But enjoyed, but I'm also that age. So, like, it wasn't like that complicated for me to be like, even with my problems with the show, I just can't stop watching it. But, again, it was like, there it is on Netflix. Yes, you watch it because it's there. And so what I would notice in the comments or responses to both those reviews is like, oh, you know, I know this show is bad or I notice the show is bad, but not until I watch like five episodes on my couch just because it's there.

And I would especially notice that among like my age groups. So I'm in my 20s and you guys have noted this before, but people my age generally don't invest in cable. It's just not something. I love the fact that you're even saying invest. It would. Trust me, it never pays off. So, don't invest. Yeah.

Yeah, just to note to all watch. Yeah. Well, I'll watch listeners. But yeah, so most people my age don't have cable. And so, but what they do have is their parents, cousins, in-laws, whatever's Netflix password. And so what I will get when. Made a America Week. Yeah.

So what I'll get when I'm recommending a show that's on like AMC or FX or even a network, it'll be like, okay, but isn't on Hulu or Netflix. Like, how can I watch it? And I actually have. a really good friend who was really excited for Atlanta and was fully aware, like, likes Donald Glover, was fully aware of all the critical reception. But she didn't watch it until showed up on Hulu because she doesn't have cable. Okay. And so what I think that, you know, there's one side of that, which means like shows that are not on streaming,

have a hard time, like, finding their way to a millennial audience. And then the other side of that is when you're on streaming, it's just there. Yeah. So you're going to press play. So as a TV critic who spends a lot of my time. screaming into the void that like the leftovers is the greatest show of the last five years or whatever there is a little bit of I have my personal axe to grind I would love it if people would watch halt and catch fire yeah which actually is on Netflix you should watch it yeah

you know it's it's more something this is like fascinating to me on a couple of different levels okay first of all the fact that I don't know like the idea that um network television and and terrestrial cable premium cable television is somehow at a disadvantage with an entire generation of people who are just like, yeah, like the conversation is the conversation, but I'm just going to participate in it at a later date. But that that is actually a huge market and efficiency for Netflix by doing what they're doing because it is allowing them to have your take and the, you know, the critical conventional take about something coincide with when everybody else is going to watch it, right? So that's a huge sea change. I guess like I haven't even thought

about until you kind of brought this up. But on the other hand, I also do hear you that, like, it does seem like people would sooner watch the seventh show on Netflix that's, like, on their front panel or, like, their intro screen, their intro page to Netflix, their homepage to Netflix, whatever, I don't know why I can't say that, then dig at, didn't be like, okay, I'm going to go, like, call up stars on demand and get American gods, or do it, like, whatever the non-netflix Oh, yeah. That was also, that's actually a really great example, was American Gods, my review. Like, every single comment was, oh, I guess I have to get stars now. Oh, or like, oh, no, I don't have stars. What do I do? And so I think there's like a really interesting accessibility issue that I can't tell if it's purely anecdotal, but I don't see this problem going away because we're going to get old. You know, my generation is going to get older.

Well, I do think that there's something to have to, there's something about subscription based models where it's like if you are paying 15 bucks a month for Netflix and $9 a month for Hulu, You're not also going to want to spend $2 per episode on American Gods on iTunes if it's available there. And if you don't already have stars, then it's just like that's S.O.L. for that. So it's like a very specific, I mean, my mom watches everything on demand. Like she doesn't even know how to operate any of these streaming services. So she's at the other end of the spectrum. And I'm sure most people exist in the middle where they have some kind of basic cable package, but then watch Netflix in some capacity.

Although my parents did become cord cutters several years ago. Congratulations to the Herman family. Yeah, I mean, I then had to be like, but you know, like, my cord cutting only worked because I stole all of your password. So now I do have cable. I'm a law-abiding citizen. Good, good. But, I mean, it's. I don't know I'm so good.

Like, I'm standing up for Time Warner Spectrum here. I should also note that I don't want to say all shows on Netflix get an unfair amount of attention. Netflix makes a lot of great shows that I happily use my platform to boost. But it is just an interesting shift. And I also do think, like, part of it is like, a monotone. thing. I don't think people realize that if they don't watch anything, if they don't pay for anything except for Netflix, then Stars is not going to be able to make American gods.

Absolutely not. If it's subscriber face. Yeah. I mean, and I think that we're actually, you could make a connection all to be unsubstantiated one, that that pivot away from prestige drama that Cinemax pretty much explicitly made after the Knick was shut down when they were just like, we're not going to make these small dramas anymore. we're going to stick to the genre stuff that we know puts butts in seats on a weekly basis.

That's like a direct correlation. Like if you're not making the time to go find the nick, then you're just going to, they're just going to stop making shows like that. And they'll keep making tons of shows to fill up the hours. But it's really funny. I mean, like, you know what the – we were watching Thrones for Talk to the Thrones on Sunday. There was an ad before it where it was like movies live here on HBO. And I was like, oh, yeah. Right.

That's like one of the biggest reasons why people have HBO is to watch Jurassic World when it comes out. I mean, I will also say, like, some of our colleagues talk a lot about, you know, oh, I'll watch it because it's on cable. Yeah, we talk about the rewatchability of movies that are cable movies. Yes. And I am totally one of those people where it's like the idea of watching something just by coincidence just does not make sense to me. I do everything by appointment viewing, which I know is very generational thing. You know what? The thing is that I've actually been having, so when my wife goes away on vacation, I, like, put away all these, like, things where I'm like, but she's not going to watch, I want to watch early 70s French crime movies. So I'm going to like, but it's like, when you start to add up, if you really want to start, like, I'm not saying disposable income, but disposing of your income, like, on a bunch of streams.

So you can have shutter. You can, like, watch horror movies. You can have Filmstruck and watch all the criterion stuff. Criterion stuff's also on Hulu. That has a big movie library. Not anymore, right? Oh, no, right, because it's on film struck. Netflix still has a big movie library.

obviously, although it's getting more and more, I would say, almost like B movie-ish in some ways, like, where like there's just like a lot of like, what is this like the snake in the lake kind of thing? You can really like, it's hard to be like random. Like I still like channel surfing to some extent, but more often than not we'll wind up just watching Property Brothers if that happens. But if you're going to watch something, watch something, it's rarely like, oh, preacher's on. Like I can't remember the last time I've randomly watched a television. show. Yeah. Or, I mean, to bring it full circle, it's almost like streaming is kind of replacing it in the sense that like Hulu actually just announced today that they are adding a bunch of like really vintage sitcoms like Full House, which is actually sort of interesting. I guess Netflix, even though they have the full house sequel, will not have Full House. But, you know, in the similar like, I'm browsing and I just see something and I'm like, oh, I'll happen to watch that is kind of the millennial equivalent of watching something because it's on cable. But in terms of like New York. series, which is what we were talking about to begin with.

I do think there's like a really interesting, you know, you just have a leg up if you have, which is, our colleague, Victor Luckerson did a great piece on stand-up comedy on Netflix. Yeah, absolutely. I've watched way more stand-up comedy in the last year and a half than I have probably in the last 10 years. Yeah, and they were saying, you know,

it pays off because the viewership is so great. It's built in marketing. Yeah. You just... And the overhead's low. I mean, typically, I mean, when you're paying Chris Rock what you're paying him, it's not low. But I can't imagine that, like,

Eliza Schlesinger's comedy special costs a ton of money, right? Yeah, this is really interesting. So let me ask you this. Do the shows that become sensations on Netflix, like 13 Reasons Why? What do you think happens if 13 reasons why is just on Showtime? Showtime specifically. I mean, it's a teen show, so I'm not.

I guess like if they were on freeform maybe, but. Because I think the 13 reasons why was something that actually didn't have a ton of response in its first week. It was, Stranger Things had like a pretty decent, like, oh, this looks really cool. I'm going to check it out. And then two weeks later, it was like the only thing anybody talked about. And 13 reasons why seemed like it had an initial wave of like everybody was kind of like,

oh, okay, it's a Netflix show, I'll check it out. And then like two weeks later, like the teens fully found it. Is that fair? Yeah, I think that's fair. And it's also, you know, there was that like weird second wave of like the backlash to almost amplified because all these parents got these letters that were like, by the way, there's this show that your kids probably. probably watching. My parents got one from my little brother's school.

Do you think, I'm not even saying like a different, a network with different standards in terms of like what they can and can't show, but a network that's just not necessarily something that people get whenever they open their laptop. Yeah, no, totally. And I think it would have been more of a niche. Like, this is a thing the teens are into. Although it's sort of interesting to like consider the reverse, like big little lies was a bidding war between HBO and Netflix. Yeah. And I kept trying to think like what would happen if this just was dumped on Netflix. And I don't think it would have worked out the same way. This gets back to like a larger conversation about whether it's good for television or not.

Right. So I have found that when I do this kind of like trying to organize my viewing thing, what happens is if I miss a couple of weeks of preacher or if I miss a couple of weeks of anything, I just get like very overwhelmed by like, wow, it's not just like an episode of Preacher. I don't even think about it as episodes. I'm like, when am I going to have five hours to watch Preacher? and that's like it's like the same thing you feel like when you get midway through a book but then like work comes up so you put it down and then you pick it back up again and you don't have like the same momentum and you're like can I just start a new book like maybe pretend like I read this book but I have that feeling now with a lot of television shows precisely

because the delivery system of them largely is like in these huge chunks like if you are not watching Thrones once a week and then like processing it that way or big little lies where it becomes like this kind of collaborative group experience to watch these shows. And if it's your personal journey with Preacher, it's sometimes hard to motivate yourself to always be on top of it. And then if you fall behind, it can be almost existential to catch up. Oh, totally. And it's definitely the same for me as a critic, you know, hour long, like true hour long shows like Ozark where every episode is 57 minutes.

I will give Ozark credit and that is 10 episodes for the whole season as opposed to 13, which is Godspeed. more shows should do that. But it is kind of a like... I got to like episode 10 of House of Cards. I was like, wow, this is really good. Like I'm... They're really wrapping it up.

And then I was like, wait, what? There's three more episodes. Oh, yeah, three hours. And so, you know, it is harder to kind of get me to like go all in on that. Because it's like, you know, there's a big mountain ahead of me. Whereas, you know, I also think part of the reason why friends from college, like, got so many tries is because they were... 30 hours. Yeah.

Andy talks about this all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, Ozark, we might be divided on. Give me another show that you're really excited about right now. So this is a piece that will be going up on the ringer.com a website you should check out this weekend. But I actually believe I hyped this like one of the previous. I think it was one of your recommends. Yeah. Yes. So Rick and Morty, a show created by, co-created by Dan Harmon, who is famously the creator of the NBC sitcom community and Justin Royland is coming back to adults from this weekend. It has been a 22 month almost. hiatus since the last batch of new episodes. They did a really cool like April Fool's almost anti-prank where they kind of threw fans of bone by marathoning the first episode. But this Sunday, it's going to be a premiere event. They're showing the first two episodes. I've seen them both.

Everyone's seen the first one. But I've seen the second one as well. It's really great to see a show that is this smartly done. You know, you feel like it was completely worth the way because they clearly just put a lot of thought and it's so funny and so insane and so really unlike anything else on TV, which is a bigger, you know, a higher bar than ever these days. And, you know, I'm sure people have heard their share of plugs Rick and Morty, but I really, it's worth your while also 20 minute episodes while we're on the subject. Yeah. But yeah. I have something to plug that is non-existent. Okay. And is not 20 minutes long. and is not animated.

Although, who knows? Sign me up. True Detective Season 3. Rehershola is in the building. They're coming back. At least this is the word is that Mahershal Ali has been signed up for True Detective Season 3.

Casey Blois has seen five scripts from the Nick Pizzolato, David Milch Factory. Yeah, the Super Team. Yeah. I think I'm learning like how deeply burned I was by season 2. Like, you did not mean super team there.

I mean, okay. More like a superhero and the person he is rescuing. Yes, right. Yeah, I think I'm learning like just how deeply I was burned by a true detective season two because I love David Milch. The news also part of the HBO TCA panel was that the script for the Deadwood movie is in and it looks terrific. They've been saying that for quite a while. You know, I believe it every time. Okay.

And so they've hyped the Deadwood movie. I love Mahershala Lee. I will watch whatever he does. I will obviously watch this when it comes out. But I'm still, like my reaction to that news was like, okay. Here's my thing. They're just one for two. It's not like they had 10 bad seasons after one good one.

It's just one bad season. And I actually think that there's still good stuff in the second season. It was one bad season and a lot of really embarrassing profiles. Okay. Yeah. I think that for some reason, the true detective idea and this idea that you can make these incredibly stylish deep dives into these cops or whatever the however you want to interpret the idea of true detective and this idea of like someone who has damaged themselves looking into a crime.

But I don't even know if that's the thing that has to apply to every one of these. You know, it just seems like a wide open concept to me. And I love the idea like, like move it around, man. Do it in New York. Do it wherever you want to do it. Chicago. Like do it in another rural setting. Oh yeah.

I love the seasonal. And you're totally right that the advantages they are starting from scratch. They don't have to, you know, haul any dead weight around this time. I think it would, I, um, they still haven't like officially put in the series order, right? Because they need to find a director. But he sounded a lot more fired up about it. And I tend to, and people, I mean, HBO has gotten to the point where, like, they have shot pilots, if not more of shows that they then don't go forward with. But this was, like, still a very popular thing for them.

And it does seem like, I have a feeling it would come back. The thing I like the, I hope that they do what he had sort of teased two was going to be about the relationship between the occult and the American transportation system. Yeah, that did not pan out. But I don't think that's what two became. No. No. So I would just love it if Marhershala was like something about the occult and the New York City subway system. I mean, I also, I have to be completely honest.

I just have no idea what Mahershusha Ali delivering David Milch dialogue. looks or sounds like, I cannot wait. I'm super curious. I mean, okay, I'm definitely curious. Like I said, I will watch this. I think I'm just learning like how deep the pit is that, like, you know, it just has to go very high for this to be on like even ground for me. But, you know, I wish them the best. It sounds, you know, it's a worthwhile project. I honestly do think it's probably a good thing that they decided to like give this another shot instead of killing it. Let's spend the money, guys. And I, you know, I support you and your enthusiasm.

It makes me happy to see you happy. That's that. What a perfect note to end up. Thanks to Cam and Allison. Andy will be back on Monday with me to talk Thrones. We'll have a special guest. Please subscribe and listen to The Watch every week. Please check us out on Sundays after the East Coast airing of Game of Thrones on Talk

the Thrones on Twitter.com slash Ringer. Thank you to you guys for listening. We are part of the Ringer podcast network. Peace out, Branskies. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Redbox. School is out for summer. and Redbox has the video games to keep you entertained. With over 40,000 locations nationwide,

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subject to additional terms, charges apply for additional nights, and a payment card is required. getting in on video games has never been so easy. Today's episode of The Watch was also brought to you by HBO's Room 104 from the creators and executive producers Mark and Jay Duplass comes a new anthology series called Room 104, premiering July 28th at 1130 p.m. on HBO, set in a single room in an average American hotel. Each episode of Room 104 tells the story of different assorted characters who pass through this room. With performances by James Vanderby, Jay Duplass, and Orlando Jones, each episode plays like a mini-movie.

ranging from comedy to drama to drama, horror. The tone, the characters, the era, it all changes from week to week. One Room Infinite Possibilities. Room 104 premieres July 28th at 1130 p.m. on HBO.