The Watch - 'Big Little Lies' Finale and a Conversation With TV Writer Mike Levin (Ep. 138)

Episode Date: April 3, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan, Andy Greenwald, and Alison Herman discuss the finale of ‘Big Little Lies’ (0:45) and what its run means for the future of television (16:10). Then they are joined by Mike Levin of NBC’s ‘Trial & Error’ to discuss his experience writing for TV in Hollywood and what shows he’s watching (27:55). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 joining me in the studio is my favorite Elvis impersonator. It's Andy Greenwald. Is that a Big Little Lies rep? It's a deep Big Little Lies rep to the finale. And since Andy is not, shall we say, a viewer of Big Little Lies, you can put it that way. But we couldn't not talk about it. Nor did I want to not talk about it.

Queen Reese demands it. We brought in our buddy Alison Herman. Hi, Allison. Hey, I'm so honored. I was here for the intro. I got to hear the yell. That's right. How are you feeling?

I'm feeling great. I'm feeling like I'm witnessing history. That's right. Can I say, let's just guys jump in here and say one quick thing. Let's put the disclaimer up front. I'm sorry. I guess I'm,

I guess I botched it. No. No, no, no. This is an experiment. Let me have this. And how do we, cover TV now? Chris?

Is TV necessary to cover TV? I pushed the limits of that already. Let me just say, you know, I watch, with the rest of America, I watched the first episode of Big Little Lies. Unlike apparently large swats of America, I tapped out, said, nope, not for me. I guess I was wrong.

I can admit that. People seem delighted by the show. They seem to love it. Guys, the think piece furnace is just burning on this one. I've seen really interesting takes that I could not possibly have seen the bones of in the show that I saw. But that's interesting.

And I am thrilled that we're going to cover it. And I'm just here to learn. I'm just here to observe. You can spoil the show for me. Okay, so we can't spoil the show for you. That would be a really awkward way to discuss the finale. You guys, just tell me.

Andy, butt. Tell me all the lies. It sings in the finale. Tell me all, all the lies. Adam Scott chaves his beard. That was shocking. That was the biggest twist of the finale. That was the biggest little lies.

Did he really? Are you kidding? I called the murder like six weeks ago. That was like out of nowhere. He literally steps out of a limo. He's in a Hawaiian shirt because it's an Elvis and Audrey Hepburn themed fundraiser, which really doesn't make any sense, but let's just roll with it. It just occurs to me that when you talk about, like, if you watch one episode of a television show

and then you don't watch the rest of them. And then write an article about it for Grandland. And then you listen to two other people discussing the like vagaries of that show. It must sound completely insane. It sounds like you're talking about a dream. Like the entire, you know that the end of the end of. The end of this show is basically, it's based on an Elvis impersonator talent show where the women dress like Audrey Hepburn and the men dress a gel is. Yeah, our colleague, Sean Fennessee, was trying to sort of fact check the theme and was like, it's called Trivia Night, but there was no trivia.

And I was like, someone literally gets murdered in an Elvis costume. I don't think we need to fact check the theme. Do we get, here are my questions before we get into it. Oh, sure, yeah. Let's make this about somebody who hasn't watched the show. This is podcast gold. do we get closure on Alexander Sarsgaard's urethra? In a way, yeah.

Do we? He won't be using it anymore. Do you just spoil the show? Is he the dead one? Yeah. Oh, I predicted that. You predicted that? Well, it seemed like it was headed that way in the one hour of the show I watched.

I'd have been more surprised if it was someone else. It's funny because at the end of, say, like, around week four is when you started to get the who is the victim and who is the murderer and big little lies, you know, investigate. online, which you get with pretty much any show that has a murder in it, whether it's Night of or Riverdale or whatever, and you start to get these like online sleuthing things. But that was actually like almost the least interesting part about this show is the sort of like the show thought it was the least interesting thing about this show. I mean, that was what I was kind of impressed about the finale was as the show went on, the Greek chorus framing device kind of gets tired because you don't really need these people's pithy one-liners

to make Nicole Kidman's therapy scenes interesting. And in fact, they could almost be, like, jarring once the show started to take on real emotional heft. And then you got Sarah Baker. Shout out to Dr. Amanda Reisman. That's Nicole Kidman's therapist. Robin Wigert of Deadwood Fame. Oh, wow.

You guys don't need to sell me. I was wrong. I'm fine. I'm admitting it. Allison, so you wrote about the finale, and you obviously, you were like, this finale did what it said on the package. It, like, for all of them, to use the parlance of our team.

TV watching time, it stuck the landing. Did you have any issues with the finale, or were you pretty much, like, completely satisfied with it? I didn't really have any issues with the finale. I think my main issue was that kind of cognitive dissonance that lasted for the middle stretch of the show, where suddenly, like, you would remember, oh, right, I guess there's a dead body waiting at the end of this rainbow. Like, I don't really want to think, or I'm not thinking about that because the show is not

really prompting me to, because you're much more invested in these. not life or death stakes. Like, you know they take that on, but you don't need that extra enhancement of someone's gonna die. Yeah. I was much more interested in Madeline's love life and interior life than I was.

And the Reese Witherspoon characters like Love Life, like in her psychological state that I was in like, who killed who and what happens at the end. It's funny. You know, watching this and then watching girls right after last night, you know, we know that Big Little Lies

is a limited series that was like the last episode ever, at least in this iteration. I can see them going back to Leanne Moriarty well at some point. And then also watching Girls, you kind of get this feeling sometimes as these shows wind down where you're like all of a sudden you're like every moment counts and you get very second-guessy about what they're choosing to spend among their last 80 minutes of screen time on. And there have been a lot of questions about girls.

Yeah. And then girls stuff I was just like, is this really what we're doing? Like this Ray love story? And then on Big Little Lies, my only goal. played about the finale, although it did serve a purpose to, like, build some tension, was the 15 minutes that they dedicated to performances of Elvis Presley classics. And the world's least convincing dub? Yeah, which John Mark Valle was just like, oh, Adam Scott just can't, like, in the next

day interview on Vultry, he's just like, oh, that guy can't sing. Like, it's not even, right? Like, I saw that on the internet. He may have tried to do it. So, Zoe Kravitz sings, and it's actually Zoe Kravitz because obviously she has inherited musical ability. And then Adam Scott pulls up, and he opens his. mouth and the voice that comes out is just so patently not Adam's guy.

Yeah, it's like in Ferris Bueller when Matthew Broderick does twist and shout and they're just like, yeah, Ferris, like you're killing it. That's just definitely how parades work and have always works. Even as an eight-year-old or nine-year-old, I bumped on that. Oh, I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever seen when I saw that. But I was like, I don't think you could do that. For some reason, everything else in the movie, I was like, this is gospel. Like, absolutely, this could all happen in one day.

Right. The timeline checks out, but could you really wear a vest on a parade float like that? I think so. But they did, they spun their wheels in this finale more than I thought they were. Not in a way that was, like, did anything to take away from my estimation of the show. But I just was like, man, like, you guys are like, it was not a supersized episode. It was just 60 minutes. And they were still like, yeah, there's going to be a lot of shots of people gossiping at a dinner party.

I actually did think of the one main issue I have with the finale, which is it almost had to be too neat in that. So Shailene Woodley's child is the. product of a rape and she's made some efforts towards finding her rapist, but I kind of thought this was going to be more of a trauma recovery narrative and they just had to make the person who was also abusing Nicole Kidman also be her rapist, which was just a little, which is a bad look for Tarzan. Oh, yeah. Wow.

I mean, he, I'm terrified of Alexander Scarscarred now, but he really did that. Who exed him out. Bonnie, Zoe Cravitz. Wow. Yeah. I would never guess that. But it was a group effort. Like he was attacking Nicole Kidman.

They're all fighting back against him because they were all standing in a group when this happens. It's like the end of an X-Men movie. Yeah, exactly. It is like the end of an X-Men movie. Here's my question. And specifically it's for Allison. In your role as TV critic, we all know what Chris's role is. And it's not relevant to this conversation whatsoever.

Is this an example of like just the amount of choice that I have is almost too much right now, and for all of us as TV viewers, but particularly, and maybe I'm abusing it because now I don't have to watch everything anymore, and I'm really pushing the limits of that. But what I'm saying is this, there are things that you're describing in this show. This is a fair question to ask her. No, no, but I'm asking,

what I'm asking is this. Why don't I watch this? No, no, that's not the question. That's not the question. Still has to watch all the TV, yeah. I want to know your thoughts on this, because there are things that I've heard about Big Little Lies that I find appealing. I think Reese Witherspoon is a goddess. You fucking love wine. I love wine. I love wine.

I love the California coast. Yeah. I like Adam Scott. I like pretty much a lot of the things here. But when I saw the first episode, I was like, nah, I can't, the ratio is not working for me of this recipe. Meaning all the things that I don't like are canceling out the potential things that I do like here. And it wasn't enough to get me on board. What is your personal calculus in terms of, okay, 30% don't like, 70% like?

Were you bringing that sort of ratio to a show like this? Or am I just spoiled, am I spoiled baby? It was like, I don't like it. And I walked away. I mean, I bring that ratio to shows. This one was more like 80% of what I like and then 20% David Kelly's dialogue. Yeah. So, which I can admit, I mean, I think there was also the scene in the finale.

There's a scene in the finale where Reese Witherspoon has a confrontation with the guy she used to have an affair with. And you can really tell that like one of the people delivering dialogue in this scene is not Reese Witherspoon and therefore cannot spin this into gold. Like, it really shows. But, I mean, this show in particular, I got six episodes. I just raced through all of them. And also, it's anecdotally, like, one of the only shows I can think of in 2017 that actually broke through the peak TV. Like, everyone I know was watching this. This is why I feel like I – that's really what I mean when I say I blew it, because it seemed like a lot of fun that you don't know when the ride's leaving the station if it's going to be fun or not.

I'm still looking at it like, it's just another thing to be a part. It's also, like, the way that it was a lot of – you know, I have to say, watching it with my wife was actually really cool because she reacted to it to it in a way that was so enthusiastic that it was very contagious. Like, we'll often have things where I'm like, we have to watch this like dark, like the rage.

Like Norwegian noir show. And she'll just be like, this dead child. And I'm like, yeah. And it's weird. But this was one where I was like, you know, if I had no professional obligation and no like familial obligation to watch it, I may have stopped watching it at some point, but I really got caught up in it, partially because I think there was such an intoxicating mixture of really good soapy melodrama with a kind of prestige TV execution, along with, like, incredibly high-level movie star acting.

Yeah. Yeah, and 90% of the time when I try to tell people about a TV show, the reaction I get is like, okay, I'll add it to the list. Right. Like, it's just this look of resignation washes over people's faces. And this is the only show in the last, like, six months that I can remember, people were coming to me and being like, oh, my God, big little lot. Like, did you see what happened this week? Did you, like, what character are you? And just to see other people get so engaged in this conversation that I am stranded in most of the time was really, like, a fun experience.

How much of that do you think can be chalked up to, like, Starwattage? I'd say most of it, except it's so interesting that we've kind of agreed that at the movies, the movie star is dead. There's no such thing as a lock for anyone. Many of these women on their own probably couldn't have like the number one. I mean, Reese is probably the closest you have there, but even Reese wouldn't be a guarantee this is the number one movie in America if you put her in something. Yeah, and I guess it's sort of changing the channel as a much lower burden than shelling out

and leaving your house. But it was interesting to see that, you know, these people, may not be box office guarantees in the way a brand name like Fast and the Furious is, but it got people there, and then I think the writing and directing helped in the acting as a package helped keep them there. I think I'd like to hear your thoughts on this because my feeling is, as someone, just to be clear, was not watch the television show. What it means for the industry going forward, I think is pretty interesting.

I think... Andy's going to start a podcast called Big Little Lies and Game of Thrones books. I, if we could just make a career out of doing stuff that I don't have to watch, I think that's a win for me. I don't know if it's a win for anyone else. But this does seem to be like a platonic ideal for what HBO can do and maybe should do because they can attract the biggest names. They can package the hell out of these things and, you know, find the material that is engaging on a week-to-week level. And obviously the old conversations about, well, you know, why invest all this if there's not going to be season two can fall by the wayside if you have the ability. if you have the ability to get another gripping piece of IP, as they say, and just cast it up like this.

I mean, just today they announced the series order on the Jillian Flynn, Amy Adams, Sharp Objects, which has been unofficially in, like, locked up for a while. Is Valley directing that too? I think so, yeah. So one of the things I think was actually, like, secretly incredibly useful for this show is, you know, you watch Laura Dern, you watch Nicole Kidman, you watch Reese Spinn, you have this cultural memory. of what else they've done in the past. But I don't think I've actually seen, with the exception of Wilde, which Valet also directed. One of the things I really enjoyed about Big Little Wise is that apparently he shoots with multiple cameras, with available light, and that it's pretty much shot, not even as a play, but almost as a documentary. Like when they're doing these scenes, they basically go from front to back through the scene.

They don't stop. It's Friday Night Light style, too. Yeah, Friday Night Light style. We rotate around the action. And it was incredibly, it was intoxicating. almost, to see somebody who you're used to with Reese Witherspoon who has this incredibly, you know, first, I adore her, but a very manicured and managed image to be in the wild, for lack of a better term, and to watch her kind of like...

Not to be in wild, because she was in that too. But to see her walk in and out of rooms, or to see her, like, at a coffee shop and, like, going and ordering something and then coming back to the table and then, like, getting flustered about something else. In, like, real locations. And almost in real time, like, to watch her, like, go through a process rather than just be like, this is like this very tight scenario that Reese Witherspoon gets her close up

and then she's going to say this and then Owen Wilson will say this back to her on the shoulder shot. It felt very different than say, even like coming off of the last big HBO show Westworld, which is very static and very pristine and very placid on its face, you know? It's been very bad.

Well, but that's my point is that I was actually very excited to have like this visually different. It was like it was different. It was like a splash of like soda water to face or something. Yeah, and it's funny. Like when we think of a tour, director atours on TV, we think of Soderberg or Carrie Fukunaga. And this is absolutely distinct, but so different from what we associate a pretty TV show with being at this point.

Or even like Fincher, like we associate it with this kind of pulpy, crimey. One of the things that fascinates me about this series is that it kind of takes the same blueprint as the rest of Preciseachia TV, which is let's just take this very very. narrow genre that's usually considered unsurious and just totally plummet for whatever we can find because we're interested in it. But it applies, it takes that and does it with chicklet, basically. Like, it just takes the same approach to something that we had not previously considered as part of the same category, mostly through our own blind spots. Which I think, which I will cop to, I think that one of the tricks of a series, particularly in this era where people are saying, and this has been a debate online recently and when I have a very strong opinion on, this debate of like, well, it's not a TV show. It's a eight-hour movie.

Oh, yeah. In that, when you're delivering material week by week, which I'm a fan of, and I'm a fan of the episode as an individual thing, it sometimes takes a minute to understand the intention of the filmmakers. And that's fine. That happens in movies, too. You don't know whether they are doing the thing, commenting on the thing, or having a smart take on the thing.

And I think a lot of my resistance, the first episode of Big Little Lies, is it ticked a lot of the boxes that I'm still tender in from the slap. You know, I'm like, I have triggers. Like private school, I guess it was a public school thing, but like rich people with their kids and treating the kids badly. And that's sort of like cabal, social cabal thing, like based around a school or a murder. Like I'm usually out on that. And it sounds like what they were doing, I think, what you were just describing Alice, and sounds very interesting and very compelling and very smart on a number of levels. and I was not ready to trust the people involved to take me to it.

You know, I was like, this is just going to be the flat thing. I didn't understand that maybe they were going to push it in a more interesting direction. I think the thing that makes it that you kind of needed to hold out a little longer to see the full extent of is the Nicole Kidman subplot about physical abuse, because they treat that totally with the drama and understanding and empathy it deserves. They do the same thing sort of with Reese Witherspoon while also being totally conscious of the comedy of that kid. character. So it preserves just enough of like the frivolity and the fun of a soap opera that you enjoy watching it.

And then it just slowly expands it into a really interesting, really textured thing to watch. And the thing that, you know, it's funny that you should mention the movies, this is an eight-hour movie or is this an episodic television show? I think it has it both ways. But I do think that one of the things that it does that that was so successful is that its storyline is not altogether that different than Bloodline. You know, it's like, it's essentially like a nice location with a family of people, like a group of people who are going through this like reckoning with a crime that either has or is about to be committed.

But where Bloodline was so miserable. Like I loved Bloodline, but like it was so like Norbert Leo Butts doing Coke in a garage and listening to, you know, Jackson Brown or whatever. Go on. Yeah. This was like, oh yeah. Also, we have completely like electromagnetic. magnetic forces in the stars that we have. And at times, they were like, you know what, it's enough?

It's enough to have Reese Brothers drinking a Chardonnay on her deck. Just go ice it. Exactly. And you could just be like, that is for people on a Sunday night watching that, like, a serotonin hit. I also got a cop to my own biases here, because what you're talking about, like, with chick lit, like, I gave True Detective Season 2 so much rope because Colin Farrell doing Coke and listening to Jackson Brown as a cop of the mustache.

I'm like, okay, because I like this. Like, this is, this mimics entertainment that I generally will give a pass to and enjoy. And then that show did absolutely nothing with it. You know, it had a genre that I love and it flattened it into literally nothing. Whereas this sounds a lot more interesting to me because it took something that I would not necessarily choose to engage in and then turned into something compelling. And I do, I was kidding at the beginning, but I do think that's on me for just overlooking it. Yeah, and I'm sort of totally, like, I have never read any Leanne Moriarty novels. I was kind of, I brought my own body.

to it as someone who grew up in a California rich community and was, I have my own set of triggers that I was bringing to the table here. Sipping Chardonnay alone, one of them? Yeah. Because you flinch when Chris said that, I could tell. But to your earlier point about the Star Power, I mean, what I couldn't believe was they could have Reese projectile vomit and you're still like, your heartbreaks for this character. That's really not a bad thing. If it's a light body red, like maybe a slightly chilled gamet. I think it was a pretty like, it was pretty gummy.

Like a chewy tannic kind of red. She also mixed it. Some oysters and some parenting issues. It just was not a great combo. That's a toxic. So for you, who will you, when somebody is like in a couple weeks and somebody's like, oh, how's big little lies? Like, why should I watch it?

What would you tell them? It's going to be me, by the way. I'm going to ask you that. It is addictive and fun in a way that a lot of top-billed television forgets to be right now. Yeah. Most importantly, it is over in seven hours. and John Mark Villet. You sound so belagered.

No, but that complaint is not just a professional complaint. Like I think that when Allison, you're talking about people saying, oh, it's another thing to add to the list, people want to know the commitment. They want to know. If I get into this, how many seasons do I have to watch to catch up? How much time am I committing in the future? I mean, people... How long do I have to watch before a quote-unquote gets good?

This is the thing that I'm sure you experienced, too. When I was a critic, I would say that I felt more like a wealth management consultant where people were like, I have 60 hours, how do I invest it? And they did not want to be steered wrong. And they're very serious about that. So being told that it's, these are buzzwords that I hope people are paying attention to. Or it's being told like, yeah, just wait until this happens. Do I have to watch the first season?

Do I have to? Right. But instead, you're like seven hours and it's fun? Yeah. Okay. Easy. It was interesting because then the inside the episode that comes on after the episode is like, David E. Kelly kind of is like, well,

Well, it's got resolution, but you know, that last shot, because the last shot is sort of the detective who initially had sort of happened upon the crime, watching all of them sort of gallivanting together on the beach, you know, and like happiness. But there's like that one little thread of possible like, this story's not over. But then in every interview Jean-Marcville has been like, fuck no, I'm done. Mostly because the last episode is all at night and it's all set at this party. And he's like, we shot for 10 days from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. That was shot at the park at the end of my block.

It was so weird being like, that's actually the entrance to an art gallery. Is that Barnes-Doll? What is it? Yeah, that was Barnes-Dolar Park. It's at the top of a hill in Los Angeles. Movie magic, man. I'm telling you, this is the land of dreams. Okay, Allison, big little eyes is over.

What should our listeners just be psyched about right now? What either has just begun that they can catch up with? I think we probably the three of us know the answer to this, but I'm just curious what you're... Well, my weekend was taken up. by a very particular kind of television event, which is a lot of great shows took a hiatus in 2016. Leftovers, obviously, Master of Number waiting for to come back. But there is an animated show on Adult Swim by Dan Harmon called Rick and Morty

that has a very small or very passionate, relatively small fan base. And as an anti-April Fool's joke, they just Beyonce dropped it on Saturday, where like the official account and a few writers and creators just tweeted like, hey, this is playing on adult swim until midnight go. And then you could tune into the online stream, which is what I did. And it was just playing at a constant loop. And Dan Harmon, I think, is one of the smartest and best screenwriters just obviously on a joke for joke level, but also on a structural level.

And one of the nice parts of having a loop like that was like, I watched it the first time through. I watched it a second time. And then I would just kind of like come back and watch like two or three minutes. So like how many episodes were there? So there was just one and they've teased that the rest are coming back, which is almost good because it means that you now have until an unspecified date later in the summer to catch up on the first two seasons, which I think total up to maybe 18 episodes.

And they're like 20 minutes each. It is so smart. If you're missing Bojack Horseman, which I think also comes back later in the summer, that's the very obvious analog to it. But it's, we just spent so much time talking about how fun big little eyes is compared to most, quote-unquote, smart TV. And that is exactly the itch the show scratches to me, even though they could not be more different. I like Rick and Morty. Yeah, I guess that's going to say.

Rick and Morty is really good. Rick and Morty also does not have the BoJack Horseman problem, which is people telling you, oh, it gets really good after the fourth or fifth episode. Yeah, right away. A cartoon shouldn't do that. Cartoon, get it together. I would say, for folks listening, if you have, um, been dragging your feet on watching leftover season two and feel like you need to do that. Get it done.

Yes. Because leftover season three is coming and just based on what we've seen is incredible. It's so good. Yeah, I ignored the very obvious answer there to do my gratuitous plug. No, it's good. It's good to have variety. I'm extremely excited for the leftovers. You don't have to watch the first season.

You could. You might like it. I am among the few, the proud, the leftover season one stands. I advocate that it is worth your time. But if you do the Andy and watch one episode and decide it's not your thing, go to season two. Just go to season two, man. Just relax and just do it. You'll get the gist.

And it's, I think, and we'll be talking about this a bunch, including with a special guest in the next month. But, like, that is a show where they just turn the lights on. Like, all of a sudden, they just calibrated it by like 10 degrees and they figured it out. And season three is what we've seen of it so far is stunning. All right. Allison, thank you so much for joining us. We'll be back in just a sec with Mike Levin from trial and error. Thank you so much for having me.

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We're back and we are joined Andy by, man, Philly is in the house today. Finally. One of my favorite podcasts is The Rights to Ricky Sanchez, hosted by Spike Eskin, and our guest, Mike Levin. Mike is a television writer. He has worked on how I met your mother, The Grindr, and now NBC's Trial and Error. His episode of Trial and Error is airing on Tuesday night. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Synchronicity. That's right. It's almost like you're doing promo. And we're so happy to have Mike here today. What's up, Mike? What's up, guys? To say that, like, Wrights to Ricky Sanchez is like a Philadelphia sports staple is sort of like saying dionetics is important to

Scientology. Wow. Yeah. But so it's really very... Is it also Hocum? Or is it... No.

Because that could go too ways. I don't know. It does suggest a cultish nature to it. And both are dramatic. Yes. And we could get to some Roshan Holmes talk a little bit later. And maybe even some Philly's talk.

But first we wanted to talk a little bit about TV writing. Because Mike has been working on shows for a while. And for people who don't know, can you talk a little bit about what trial and error is about? Yeah. So it's like a...

send up of those true crime shows, like I'm making a murderer and the jinx, serial, all those things that have been very self-serious and dramatic over the past few years. And so Jeff Astroff, who created the show with Matt Miller, they were like, this is funny. This is like the documented the staircase is really what, like, spawned initially. That's what the first season is kind of based on a little bit. So if you tweak it like 10%, it's just a straight up comment. comedy. And so that's what we did that. So it's about this guy who played by Nick Dugusto, who's the lawyer, comes down from New York to... That's Masters of Sexes, Nick Guster. That's right, Masters of Sex, and Heroes, original heroes. Was he? Yeah, he played

a guy named West. Wow. Was he a hero? He was, like, a second season hero, like when it started getting a little too heroie. Yeah, when there were too many heroes. That's pretty nice CV. Yeah, he's got a good one. Yeah. He's a really sweet guy. So he comes down from New York, almost like a My Cousin viny-esque, come down to New York to the South, culture Shock to defend John Lethko's character named Larry Henderson, who was accused of murdering his wife. A lot of laughs. I was wondering about when you guys are trying to like, when you're doing something

that's like a parody slash send up of something, have you ever worked on something? Like I know that Grindr had law TV troops, but this is obviously a very specific targeted thing. Do you guys have like a set of rules that you have to abide by in the writer's room when you're doing that? Like, are there tropes from those kinds of staircase-type shows that you're like, we want to make sure, like, we're honoring this and hitting that or whatever. Definitely. We had a, like, a list. So there's whiteboards. You're familiar with, like, the idea of a writer's room. I know. I let him know. You know, the wordboards? You know, the wordboards?

It's good for you let him inside. I don't actually have a WGA card, but I like to go to the museum and just check out some of the memorabilia. Yeah. I'm just going to pull it out so you can see that I have one right in my lot, just here. And I'll leave that there. Do you want to do a little strike talk? Yeah, can we talk some strike talk? I was at the captain's meeting the other day. Were you really? That's right. Not looking good, right? Greenwater, are you going to break the picket?

I'm going to scab it up. No, here was my message. Writing scandal. Here was my message to guild leadership. Don't you know I just got here? Yeah. Come on. Come on.

Paying thousands of dollars of membership. Now we're going to go to test bike? No, it's good. We're out here. Whole family's on the health care. We're getting very underpaid. You guys are the face of labor. We are.

We are going to convince them. We are. Collectively, we're a normal rate. You were saying no about whiteboards. So, like, yeah, the first day it was, let's all. all the TV tropes or all the documentary tropes of those kinds of podcasts, how can we like make fun of them, basically? And so we did that.

And like on Grindr, it was, and I was only an assistant on the Grindr. But I got, I had an episode, but I was primarily an assistant. It was like, what are TV drama tropes that we can make fun of? Originally, and this didn't, I don't know if this is public or not, but originally, every name of the Grindr episode, each episode was going to be named after a television drama. So, like, episode two, I think it was like, Heroes reborn. It's like every episode is going to be called some other drama that we like make fun of. That's not a gambit that would have worked 15 years ago when there were 800% fewer shows. Yeah, right.

Yes. Well, the reason we can't do it is I think you'll appreciate this was because legal was like people are going to get confused on their DVR. Oh, and it shows. So if they DVR like a Heroes Reborn as many people do. Yeah. I just have a standing order for Heroes Reuters. That's right. Thanks to the resurgent career of Nick Dugusto.

Yes. They wanted him back. He was going to come back. He was not reborn now. No, he didn't really. He was still dead. I want to, I do have some grinder questions. Okay.

I was a grinder fan. But we can, should we focus on the new show primarily? Whatever, let's run. Designed to be a, and first of all, I think this is very smart for comedy, right? So it's not, you could do a different case every season. Every year, yeah. So it's like The Good Place, another NBC show, I think it's a really smart response to the increased serialization of TV and the way people engage with TV where it could be like an anthology series for comedy, right?

So you wrote the whole season and then went into production. How did it work for you guys? It was very standard. I've only worked in, really only worked in network television. So it really is like in tandem. Right. It's not the writing staff starts and like you have two months of prep or so. And then production starts as you're like breaking the rest of the season.

And it's sort of like all the departments are rolling at once. Did that give you a chance to be involved in production a different way? Like you have your episode coming up this week where you on set for it. What was that like? Yeah, yeah. All the writers would be on set for their own episode. Did they shoot it out here? Yeah.

Everything shot out here. We shoot at Warner Brothers. Great. So there was, Jeff actually wrote it for like the Warner Brothers lot. Oh, that's cool. Chris, this is the dream factory out here.

That's right. I saw the dream factory is Vancouver. Soundstagers can be anything. Yeah. I thought you had to go to Vancouver to shoot anything. Or Atlanta. Yeah. So what was your,

what was your experience like making this episode? Tell us about this episode. It was cool. Well, so, so it's weird because we're the second episode up tonight or tomorrow night, or tomorrow night, whenever this is coming out. Right.

They're doing two at two. So it. time. The idea is like it's like a bingeable thing. NBC, which I think is cool of them to be like, people watch TV differently. Overnight ratings don't matter anymore, except when they do. So this is like, let's just throw them out there, have people catch up, DVR, NBC.com, Hulu, whatever. All the episodes are up right now.

And so it's like, let's just do it all together. So I don't want to like spoil what happens in episode seven when episode eight is right here. But I can talk generally. I wrote it with the two other staff writers. One is my writing partner, Patrick Kang, and the other is another staff writer named Cassia Miller. And so we just, it was sort of like a just, it's a very collaborative process, you know. I mean, everybody does. Chris doesn't know, though.

Chris doesn't know. Let me look at Chris. I'm more like a novelist. Isolate yourself in a big believer in a tour theory. Yeah. And it's what it's like in the trenches with us union men. That's right. I is the lowest level staff writer feel like an autore.

No, it's a joke. It, so yeah, so we sort of broke it and then took it to the room and they were like, let's make it better and change it up. And so we wrote a first draft and then we wrote it in the room and changed it up. It's all the whole process, you guys. You know, because we often will assign credit or blame to the success or failure of a television show to showrunners or directors or actors or whatever. Like, I don't do that. And it's an incredibly collaborative process, right? You've mentioned just like, you know, I'm in a certain level on the totem pole and the writer's room.

Barely even on the total pole. Yeah, you're like holding the total pole. He doesn't have the wings. No, no, no, no. He doesn't have the eagle wings. But like, can you tell us a little bit about, like, how does a network comedy writers room? Like, what is like the mechanics of that? Like, is there a head writer and you guys are like, what if they did this?

What if he said this? Yeah. This would be, we should do a bit like this. And this guy's kind of like collating all that and then shapes it. Or how does it work to just make a 22-minute episode of television? So I've worked on a few different. shows and so sometimes the showrunner comes in and says like I have a total vision for what's going to happen for this season or for this episode or for whatever it is.

That's what Chris is like on the pocket. Yeah, I feel that. I sense it. All these things that I'm saying that you wrote down for me. And other times it's like, hey, or they have something and it's like another idea comes out and it's okay, well, that's better. Let's shoot for that instead. So I think there's an idea.

There's a general thought. Like I worked on last few seasons of How I Made Your Mother and it was very like here's, we know that the last few episodes are going to be. that they had to let people could have. Right, right. We had like things that we had to tie up and stuff. So. Like the mother.

It's right there in the title. Mike, was that your suggestion? Yeah, I was like, she should meet. They should meet. I feel like I've been sold a bill of goods here otherwise. If this whole time, it'd be cool to see them meet, right? And we should show how. How it happened?

Chin stroke. But yeah, so sometimes it's like that. Sometimes it's, you know, different ideas that say, we don't know what this, you know, the beginning and the end, what's the middle, where are some arcs and stuff. And so the way trial and error worked was, we tried to arrange it based on like what was the drop at the end of each episode to like push us into the next episode

and that was like a cool way of thinking about like how this season is going to happen. Kind of like the way like a crime podcast that works were. Like an ass town. Yeah, like an ass town. Yeah, like an assing. Question about the show.

John Lithgow is your star. Yeah. Was he in character as Winston Churchill when not on camera? Like how much was he just big-timing everyone and just like talking about how he dunked on British people? Not at all. Well, you're spoiling a little bit

in terms of dunked on because there is, John Lithgow does play basketball in tomorrow's episode of trial and error. Wow. It's a, you didn't even know that you're promoting it. I had no idea, but I trusted your process.

This is like your, thank you for like you're, like you're like for like the great burglars of the world, like they leave a little signature behind like the night fox in the ocean 12. This is you. Like you're going to put basketball in all of your great episodes. It so wasn't my call. This is absolutely deaf.

And it was one of those things where like he said and we'll do this basketball scene or whatever, and I just, like, everyone kind of looked at, or like, at least the people that know that I have a basketball podcast and a basketball blog were like, oh, fuck, this guy. So I felt like, so I get to be on set. Like, we're like, okay, so the thing I'm most proud of is you see these TV shows, the Fresh Prince is the one that comes to mind the most that has, like, basketball in the show, specifically comedy. There's been a couple ones, like high school basketball, whatever, and it always looks like

total trash. Even Atlanta, which is a great show, had some awful basketball at it. You may not know this, but Chris is personally the ombudsman of fictional basketball. Primarily a Mr. Robot critic, but I have dabbled in Atlanta as well. Anytime there's pickup basketball in the game, Chris, don't they know the game has changed? I feel like the whole twist of Mr. Robot Season 2 is predicated on the idea that was like, we have to save this basketball scene. Why aren't you playing four out one end? I think that was the giveaway.

Yeah. I feel like Chris was onto it for anyone else in Mr. Robot's season two. There's no way. Because you're just like, that's just not how the game is played. Yeah. That's just not how it works. So we got to do, well, we got to, so we got to make the shot in the back of this building. There was like a parking lot.

And so they built a basketball court. And it looks great. And it's cool. And it's all for this one episode. It's all this one episode. Just efficient use. Off the best of a basketball. It was really, it was really, just to see let go out dunk on people.

That's right. So the whole, the whole, like, crew is setting up for the shot and like getting ready for everything. And me and my running partner, Pat, were just playing ball. So you said, do you have, does he have hops? How is he? Is he? He's, what is his, what is, who would you compare him to in the modern day?

He's still recovering from a Jones fracture though. I think he's, he's a big, like a screen setter. I think like a Jason Collins maybe. Like the lower body, like he uses it effective. Yeah, he really is. His pivot foot on the roll is really tight. Okay. I would say.

But yeah, he got to, he was like an exciting, he had to make a shot. So it was an exciting like everyone's watching him make a shot and all these extras are there. And so he was excited about it. It was like, where's a really? now, bitch. That's right. One of the things I've found ever since I moved out here is when I meet other TV Raiders is that they...

Like me? Yeah. Like you. Nice to meet you. You're going to see why. Is that they... They watch TV differently than like, say, the TV fan industrial complex, TV critic fan.

Like, whereas, like, there's this attitude where, like, I think people are very voracious television watchers and that they're all checking off these boxes that they feel like they need to hit of, like, these key shows. But the TV writers will be a little bit more mercurial about what they're watching or like they'll have stuff. They're like, well, it's my job. So I don't really want to watch TV. But you're a pretty big fan of stuff. Inside the writer's room, are you guys referencing other shows that you like?

Constantly. Constantly. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I wouldn't say not as much comedy because comedy does feel like feels more like the work that you're doing. So like, you know, you see the act break coming or you see the joke that they're like winding up to do. So drama for us was good. Like the night of when it came out was very like we had to watch that and then talk about it the next day.

Because that was, you know, we were sort of riffing on that genre also. I mean, everybody watched Game of Thrones, obviously. Do you guys watch Game of Thrones? Sometimes. Not anymore. Okay. I only read the books now. Oh, wow.

It's a new me in 2017. That's good. No, it's a, so I think it's a lot of reality, like a Bachelor for sure. Comedy does, you know, not speaking for all comedy writers and everybody. but it to me at least feels like it's a lot of work rather than where I can just tune out and actually like enjoy an arc. I love an arc.

Yeah. I would also say that just even in my limited experience, like it's the shared language. So when you're trying to build a story, it can be very abstract if you want to talk about like what someone's intention is or whatever because you're not writing a script yet. If you're not at that stage,

you're just trying to build, use the building blocks of story. The shared language is movies and TV that you've seen. Yeah, I think I'm really basing this on like a sample size of one conversation I had with another TV writer where I was like, I can't believe you're cheating on me. Oh, yeah.

Like, you must like stranger things, right? And this was like when Stranger Things was just running the block. And they were just like, what is stranger things? Let me be clear, though. I have found no more device. For me, it's like the pH balance test of whether people work in television,

particularly on a higher level, like as a showrunner level or a fan is Stranger Things. Because people in TV don't like it. People in TV that I've spoken to, I'm not naming names, hate it. Hate it. And I think a lot of that is because they're like, well, this was my childhood, too.

I should have done that. I do think that's a large part of it. But it's also because the reasons we were championing Tranger Things on the podcast, why I still ride for it is because it's really entertaining. It was purely entertaining. And I was able to just shut off all the other parts and be like, I'm enjoying this. What a pleasure it is to watch the show. Yeah.

We didn't get into it. And like, did that make sense? Did that was that earn? No, it was a purely pleasurable experience. And I think for the people in the minds, they don't want that. I think the, I like saying, our room, I think pretty much universally like Stranger Things. And I think it's a comedy drama thing because comedy just generally, you can get away with like, yeah, that works drama. It needs to be thought of more because there's not jokes to buoy it as like an entertaining thing.

Although there should be. There should be. There should be better. I think so. I like, like dramas that have jokes are great. Fargo is great. Better call Saul. The best dramas in history are often the funniest.

Mad Men, funnier than most comedies. Friday Night Lights even. Like some funny shows that are dramas. I'm trying to think of one and I can't. Deadwood's pretty funny. Deadwood's hilarious. Even the wirehead. Yeah, the wire is funny.

Absolutely. Yeah. Sopranos was hilarious. Yeah. And parts. Right? Yeah. So strange things for me was there were, you know, a couple things that, you know,

but the tone really was what like drew me in and people that are like upset that, hey, watch other 80s movies. So you don't. It's like, come on. You've been in writers. I'm starting with how I met your mother where you were working as an assistant. and you kind of, did you move into like sort of the more regular staff of that show towards the end of it, or is it you were working as an assistant the entire time?

Yeah, so I started Halloween Mother's season 8, which was the second to last season as a PA. Okay. So like driving around scripts to like Josh Radner's house, leaving it at his door. How's he living? Pretty well, right? He's good, yeah. There's like, there's a few, too many spiders like around his house.

So I like, through the script. He lived in a spiders den? A spider's done, yeah. How could you, you could tell that just by dropping his stuff? We are breaking Hollywood gossip. I for sure could. It was more like He needs his personality.

Like in Lord of the Rings when the spider wraps the dude out. You know, I'm picturing, weirdly, Charlotte's Webb. I'm picturing him in a cartoon from our childhood just curled up delivering advice and wisdom to a pig. I think people think of Josh Radner is a soft person so he's like, I'm going to have spiders outside my house so people think I'm like harder and tougher.

Well, it's changed my... I've done a 180 on him. There you go. But you've been working on network sitcoms for five or six, five years now? Yeah. And, you know, that time has a scene, you've actually been on the front lines

or like witnessed, like, this huge explosion and the amount of shows that are getting made and the different places that they're getting made. Have you noticed a change in attitude? Because it seems like you've worked on some pretty formally inventive shows, either by choice or by happenstance. Like, Grindr did a lot of, like,

winking stuff towards, like, blowing up, like, what it was that they were like kind of like lampooning and the same goes for trial and error and how I met your mother had like in a lot of ways like a lost like plot to it. It was like very like complicated narrative gymnastics. But is it, do you feel like that there's actually

it's like a misnomer and that network shows are just as formally inventive as anything that's like say on FX or you know on straight straight to Netflix or anything like that? Or is it something where you feel like the networks are sort of trying to adapt to different changing viewing tastes. I think it's a little both. I think they're definitely trying to adapt. I know that they're always looking for like a framing device of like, okay, so here's the show. We have to give it to people

in like a palatable way, but also like, what's the hook? And so how many mother was always and every like network executives are talking. It's like, what's the hook that's going to like grab them? If it's like the mother, I'm telling the story. So that kind of thing. It's like friends with a mystery. It has like that thing on top of it. Yeah. But they still, they're still very traditional shows on network that like, I think they just like a mix of stuff. For you, is it more fun? I mean, like, because I don't want to incriminate you by, but like, would you be able to, like, just, like, write on a, that's my wife kind of show? Or do you kind of need, like, that extra level of stimulation of, like, there's something, like, more creative happening on it?

I need, I need, like, a job. Yeah. Primarily. But it is cool to be on, like, trial and I was really cool to be pitching jokes for it because it's such a different show. Yeah. It's such a, you know, it's a big swing for a network comedy. if like we thought we were worried we would get a lot of, you know, accusals of is, is spousal abuse funny? And like we clearly don't think it's funny.

Right. But it's, you know, it's a send-up of those kinds of shows that take themselves seriously more like that. But that's this. But it was cool to work on this because you're pitching jokes like, you know, what about the town? Parks and Reckish in terms of what the town is like and Larry jokes about, you know, saying the wrong thing by accident, like those kinds of things. It's fun rather than not to say anything bad about family shows, but there's stakes to it. There's like stakes built in.

Whereas on family shows, it's like they're going to be a family at the end of the day. That's like the whole point is that you can just spend like 10 years with this family as I grew up. Yeah. I didn't want to talk about The Grindr briefly because that was a very good show. Very entertaining show. A lot of fun. And caught better as it went along. Like all comedies primed to succeed do.

Pilot was very promising one of the best of the year. But then by the end of the season, it was really hitting its stride into what it was and what it could be. We also did that serialized, like the back nine was like a serialized sort of thing. And it got canceled. Now, this was very surprising for a lot of people, and I want to ask about how surprising it was to you. I know that Natalie Morales, who was on the show, friend of the pod likes to talk about the Americans with me when Chris isn't around. I love the Americans. Great show.

Seemed truly shocked, even though all of her shows get canceled, and she even snuck on it a lot in a very funny series of videos about it. One of the hallmarks of this age of television is that things do. don't really seem to get canceled. And yet this did. Were you surprised? Was the writing staff surprised? And what was that like on the inside? The ratings were bad for as much as...

Listen, you yourself just said those words. They don't matter unless they do. Right. So they'll say like, no, we don't care. We don't care. We don't care. And then they take it to their investors or whoever and say like, well, those ratings are bad.

They didn't... It was on Fox. Did Fox own the show? Yeah, it was 20th for Fox. Yeah. Then what are they doing? Why they... Because I guess it was expensive.

You have a big star. Yeah, and there were a bunch of EPs, sure. Okay. My salary was eating that up too. Yeah. Clearly. Yeah. All the spider-proofing.

That's right. The Rocky Max extension. Yeah, it's huge. I was due for it. So it sounds like, and from the look on your face, some of the writing may have been on the wall. It was not a total surprise. It was not a total surprise.

No, I think, because we were getting like 0.6s by the end of it. The showrunner... That's in the share, I believe. Yeah, the showrunner... I'm just explaining to Chris. Making history is a writing. It was a writer on Griner. It's got Goldie,

and we got like a point seven for, I co-wrote one of the episodes in the back nine, so it was a point seven, so I became known as Point Sev Lev, by the end of it, which is nice. But yeah, it was just one of those,

like, not enough people are watching it. And then people think it's cool on Twitter, but, like, that's just not a representative sample of... Are you saying Twitter doesn't represent real life?

I think I'm ready to say that. I've been weighing back and forth, and I think that's... But you could probably feel like you're in, like, a little bit of, like, an echo chamber where, like, if people are like,

this is a really good show. And I think generally, like, Griner got like really good. And like cool folks like it. Yeah, right. But that's the world we're in now where it does, it is a shock because it does seem like that is enough. Because there are plenty of examples of shows that you just don't understand who's watching it when they're watching it or why. But

it's a network situation, a studio situation, a money situation where that doesn't matter. You know, where having the right people watch it is more important than having people watch it. Right. But network is, broadcast networks don't really exist in that world yet. Yeah, I think if it was on a different network, I think it probably, they'd probably give another year.

I don't know. There's been, you know. You've resurrected Kevin Arnold, man. You brought him back. Back in front of the camera. It was really great. Fred Saver's just like a really good TV director, too. Yeah, he's directing a pilot of my friends too.

He didn't have to be in front of the camera, but he did. Yeah. Ryder's good show. Before we let you go, I wanted to just check in on what you're watching right now. Okay. Well, girls coming down to the end? Did you watch the last night's girls? I did watch the last night's girls.

I don't want to spoil it for any. I watched half of it before I had to drive home and back again for this podcast. How did you, we could say, this is, this isn't. Does she get more popsicles in the second half of the episode? Yeah, like that's the, she decides to quit writing and become a popsicle, a bodega worker who sells popsicles. She tries to eat them all at once. They telegraph that. How did you feel about the way that the show is wrapping up and the fact that they brought Adam back so heavy in there, even if it was kind of a fake out?

He just spoiled the fake out for him. It's such like an impactful show. You take off like your cynical hat for a second and it's a nice hat. Thanks. He didn't take it up. This is an audio media. He's still wearing it. I think it's a show that's meant a lot to a lot of people that maybe weren't, didn't have a show like for them before.

And so I thought I was watched like the girls is an interesting show for me because I I like it when I watch it. And then, but I'm like, I have a couple issues here and there. I don't know if people would talk like that or this, whatever. And then I watch the after the show. After the Girls. Yeah. We were up for that, by the way.

You were up for after the girls? Yeah, we read for it. Post girls? We were up for post girls. There were some problems with our interpretation material. I feel that. And then I like it more. Yeah.

I like it more after a discussion and after it be like, oh, this is what they were going for. this really, that's a really smart way to do it. Right. And so most shows it's the opposite, where I'll be, I'll like it as it's happening and think about it, like, oh, refrigerator logic, that doesn't really make any sense. But I think, like, they're always, you know, in terms of, like, wrapping something up, having worked on a show that went for nine years and how am I your mother and people wanting,

like, characters to come back and resolution for things. Want different pairings and stuff like that. Exactly. The people belong together. Right, right, right. You know, the show just ran off for nine years. So, like, the Robin and Ted and then the Robin and Barney. So it was like how people were, people are going to be disappointed no matter what.

That's the thing is that, like, I think in a, people look at the internet and Twitter as like a big monolith. And, you know, it's not. Yeah. People want, so there's going to be half people that are mad about this or half people mad about something else. So you kind of just got to be like, look, we're going to do our own thing. I'm going to make myself happy and go for this. Yeah, I think the thing, I mean, one of the reasons why people love TV in general is because while it's ongoing, when it's open-ended, it can be anything.

And you can be invested in your own version of the show and the relationships you want to see and the things that you think the show is about, and then a final season is about the showrunner or the people in charge putting down their cards. I mean, like, no, this is what the show is about. This is what I want it to be, and that breaks people's hearts.

It gets them pissed off no matter what, no matter what. It's almost like, and if we could make this about the NBA for a second, which I can't really have been waiting for that. It's almost like, hey, a draft, the number three draft pick is always really great. Like, we have the third pick. That's awesome. I love it.

I can't wait. When that pick is Jolio Lokofor, that starts... Not familiar with this work. Finally, yeah, your cards finally get set down. It's like, oh, that's what it is? Yeah. I don't like this whole year waiting for this thing.

The promise. The promise is always better. The promise is always better. Hope of like, it's all working out. You could say that, I think, maybe with even the Republican Party right now. Wow. I'm taking it everywhere, guys.

For me, it's like, it's the excitement of going 101 over the Ben Franklin Bridge, but the disappointment of getting pulled over. That's right. There's a moment where you're like, I'm going to get away. with this. I'm just going to I'm going to fly. Last time I was

going over to Ben Franklin there was like a weird thing where I was driving and then like the lane I was in there was all of a sudden like concrete blocks where they were just like this lane doesn't exist anymore. So I don't think I would have been successful going one-on-one. Can we briefly segue? Because obviously we would like to do a Philly sports conversation. I feel like the listeners

of the watch might not be as investing as we are. Happy opening day by the way guys. Let's hope that Cincinnati's weather holds. I do wonder because for people who don't know this, being a fan of the Philadelphia 76ers for the last few years has resembled being a fan of a scrappy

situational comedy in many ways. The fans have had to come up with their own theories, invest their own narratives, raise up supporting characters and superstars. And there's a lot of fiction involved in it and a lot of magical thinking. You and Spike have been at the forefront of that,

for which we thank you. I guess how much, It's not even a question because what I'm trying to get at is, I feel like you have been able to use the creative parts of your brain in a pursuit that might otherwise just be pure fandom. Well, it's almost like, yes, sports fandom, especially for teams that are bad,

you guys, one of the things you guys did on the pod is create an entire subculture around a team that was, like, dead on its feet in a lot of ways. You gave a lot of people a reason to care about it. Yeah, but it was so fun to be a Sixers fan, thanks to the work you guys did, because you gave me things to think about and care about and to laugh about, and you also freed me from actually watching the terrible.

I never had to. So thank you for that. My wife thanks you for that. And yet I feel very invested in the team. It's, I think the most interesting story in sports the past, like, decade of, obviously a flashier story as Durant going to the Warriors. But it's such a weird situation where people are, people that even weren't basketball fans

that are just like numbers guys or like socialists are like jumping on. Did you see that there's like a deadspin article about social? It's like it's a weird not, it's thinking about sports in a way that's like not sports so much. Like I, you can be a huge fan of the Sixers, you can know so much about them and like have never watched a minute of the last five years

of basketball because it's worthless. It's just you're building with the blocks that you have and the games have been totally immaterial to what's actually happening. Right. Can I use this moment on our podcast to share a Sixers story that Spike wanted me to share with you guys, and I kind of just want to spite him and tell it here.

Also prove that he's going to listen and hear this. That last summer, right before I moved out here, I went to a Phillies game with my older daughter and my father in Philadelphia. And I had heard that maybe some Sixers players lived in my parents' building downtown. But I had not seen them. My parents had just spoke of very tall. men in yellow hair. And they're not tall people, so it really couldn't even anyway. It could have been like me. It's very possible. We returned from the game. All tall men are basketball players.

I imagine so. They're better than I am. We return from Citizens Bank Park on via septa. Septa plug. And why not? And came back to the building. My father went up to the apartment. We were leaving. My daughter had fallen asleep on the train. I'm holding her my arms. Completely spread across me. She was three years old, not a small child. And from a distance, as I'm waiting there, I see a mountain approaching, dare I say a man mountain approaching, and he's with a much smaller man, so this disparity is very extreme.

And I'm like, that's Joe Heleneb. There he is. Walking. He lives. First of all, walking. Second, living in my parents' building. As he approaches, I'm just in awe, like, what am I going to do here? I see him... Do you watch Game of Thrones?

You might recognize me from... How'd you feel about what happened to Sansa? I feel like it was a little gratuitous. I see him hug the smaller man. The smaller man says, say hi to your family for me, love you, talk to you soon. That man gets into an escalate. That man is Sam Hinky.

They've just shared a private friendship, a lunch. Amazing. And then Joel Embed turns his attention to the building. And to me, he does not turn his attention to me, but I'm in his line of sight. And all I want to do is say something to him, but I have a child across me. So the only thing I can do, I free one hand,

and slowly I raise a thumb. Just a thumbs up. Just an American thumbs up. And he looks at me like I'm a lunatic and whose child my holding. And then I somehow managed to say, how are you feeling? I don't know who I am anymore. I'm like Bob Buker. I'm like, hey, hey, Jojo, how you feeling?

And he said, good. And I was like, great, good. You know, we're all, and I say, we're all counting on you. Like, I am a newsie at this point. And you know what he said? I know. And that was it. Well, he vanished.

Pressure wall. And it was a very special moment for me. That's a very special story. And Spike wanted me to share it immediately. immediately with him and social media. And I said, no, let Jojo and Sam have their moment. But now it belongs to the people. That's a beautiful story.

It's very sweet, isn't it? I love that they have a friendship and a relationship. They're very close. What network should Sam Hinky take over? Oh, that'd be fun. Kevin Riley did that a little bit. Kevin Riley's got some Hinky in him, I think. He's a little hated by the establishment.

But there's a little, like, why do we need pilot season? Let's experiment with stuff. And now he's having a good run with TBS. Search party's very good. Search party's very good. He might have to. You can listen to Rites for Ricky Sanchez. He's subscribed to that podcast. You can watch Mike's episode of trial and error on Tuesday at 930, but you should watch all trial and error to lead up to that. They are all available on Hulu right now. Hulu, NBC.com. You also worked on a NBC.com.

Like a short, like a kind of supplementary show about trial and error that's like on NBC.com. Yeah, like a daylight-esque kind of spoof. A daily-letyl. Check that out at NBC.com. Follow Mike on Twitter. Listen to his podcast. Thank you so much for coming by. This is great. Hey, thanks again to Fusion TV's The AV Club

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