The Watch - 'Breaking Bad’s' 10-Year Anniversary, Plus New Shows From David Letterman and 'American Crime Story' (Ep. 218)

Episode Date: January 15, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald review David Letterman’s new Netflix show, ‘My Next Guest Needs No Introduction’ (3:00), and go "In or Out" on ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ (15:00). Later they celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the premiere of ‘Breaking Bad’ (25:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am editor at Thebringer.com and joining me in the studio. He still misses stupid pet tricks. It's Andy Greenwald! Who's going to remember that? Who in our audience is like deep 80s letterman head? I feel like we skew old, honestly.

Personally, we definitely do. Yeah. You know what my best demographic has always been? People's moms. Not in that way. People's moms, they like me. They're like, bring your friend around. That's true, man.

Shout out to Andrew Sharp's mom. She always loved your takes. That's what I'm saying. That's true. I definitely don't mean like in a creepy way. I think you're my mom's favorite member of the watch. That's very nice of you. My mom doesn't know I have a podcast.

or what a podcast is. Greenwald, welcome to the watch. It's Monday. Happy Martin Luther King Day. Happy Martin Luther King Day. A great day to celebrate, to reflect, and to record a podcast.

But hopefully you find time to do those other things, too. Today's show, we're going to be talking about a number of different pieces of content. We're super in to pop culture content this year so far. We've really hit the ground running. We have.

We're going to talk a little bit about David Letterman's new Netflix show, the first episode of which went up late last week with his guest, his guest was Barack Obama. I recall him finally. We're going to, you know, before we used to do in or out, and we would say, like, here's a news story.

Are you in or you out on, like, this? And now I'm out on all news stories. So we had to change the bit. You're out on push alerts? Oh, my God, yes. We're going to do, in or out is going to be our way of kind of, you start a show, are you going to keep going with it, right? So the first episode of the assassination of Gianni Versace,

the American Crime Story, the Ryan Murphy Show. By the Coward Robert Ford. No, he's not involved. Unless you never know. Twist. It could be like dark. We're going to talk about that. We're going to say whether we're in or out on that.

And then the second sort of segment of the show, last time in the show, we're going to talk about Breaking Bad. Because January 20th is the 10-year anniversary of the first episode of Breaking Bad, believe it or not. I'm going to go with not. Yeah. So let's get started. Do you have anything you wanted to get off your chest before we get into David Letterman? Should I talk more about people's mom? Say hi to your mom for me?

I thought that was working really well for me coming off the weekend. Netflix just has this guap. They got guap to burn. Yeah. Yeah. So they've just been signing people up to do stuff. And by all accounts, when Netflix gives you a show, especially if you're one of these iconic characters,

be it a Letterman, be it a Chelsea Handler. Chappelle. Be it a Chappelle, be it a Chris Rock. Kathy Bates. They're just like, what do you want to do? What do you want to do? Here's the money. You let us know what you want to do.

Here's more money, less money. I don't know. David Letterman, obviously, one of the most recognizable names and faces in pop culture of the last 40 years. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And they hired him to do this show called My Next Guest Needs No Indirection. I think they hired him to do whatever he wanted. And it turned into a show called My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.

So the first episode, six episodes, he's signed up to do. For this season, yeah. And the first episode is with Barack Obama, our former president. or most recently former president. About a 45-minute episode. A little bit longer, yeah. And I don't even know why I'm like slowly walking up to the plate on this one. This one, this kind of like, I had it out of body of experience watching this.

Not only because I got nothing but respect for my old president, but because I was like, it turns out that David Letterman's, my thing with him was not his interviewing technical. Yes. Well, I think that it, let's, before we talk about the specifics of the episode and the like deep existential sadness that is laced through these 50 minutes that I was not prepared for. The level of emotion in the show for a viewer, but also for the participants in the show. So you felt sad watching it. Yes. But I do want to begin by saying my, my macro reaction was fascination. because we rarely get to see someone who was at the top of one game downshift like this. Are you talking about the president or Letterman? Great call. I'm talking about Letterman. Okay.

Because it is his show going forward, although I would love to see just the two of them. Just keep chatting about the Edmund Pettus Bridge for six, seven seasons. I would be fine with that. Letterman was dinged a lot in the last decade of his show for being. mostly checked out. Right. You know, he had lost his fastball, some would say. The sort of devilishly ironic snark that he invented, basically, that influence an entire

generation of not just late night hosts, but comedians had faded a little bit. And at first, that was because he was just outwardly, I'm not going to say more emotional, because he really wasn't ever emotional, but he became a much more emotionally open person after his open heart surgery at the beginning of the century. and then the birth of his son, Harry, a few years later. So that changed him and mellowed him clearly in some ways. But then also, you know, he just, it actually became a very different show and entertaining for different reasons because he did not care what a Kardashian had done in order to warrant a seat at his couch. Right.

Or, I mean, that's even being generous. I mean, people who other talk shows would have been excited to have, the co-star of a rom-com in February, he does not care. Right. He doesn't care. And so he sat out a lot of plays. And he's so good at being on TV and the pure skill of television, something that we know a little bit about from our experience hosting an after show on HBO now. He made it somehow, he made it work.

He became an institution. Yeah. And I miss him on TV just because at certain moments, the moments that you and I who don't really watch late-night TV shows turn on late-night TV, he was kind of a bedrock. I'd like to see how he did things. Safe to say that if CBS or whoever hadn't sunset Dave Letterman anyway, that the world of viral late night would have.

Yes. And so what I was going to say was, so now he's back in a more comfortable spot for him now. And what he wants to do, he could do anything. What he wants to do was I found it really, really interesting. Because, I mean, yes, the next guest this week is George Clooney, but Letterman doesn't care about contemporary pop culture. You know, he cares much more about the state of the world.

old, he cares about the things that interest him or, you know, distract him. And so to see someone with his mind and his perspective on things, just be the way he wants to be. And obviously, have his facial hair the way he wants it to be, too. It was rare. You know, Carson didn't, I mean, they're very different people, but Carson was Letterman's idol. Carson didn't downshift into a web series. You know, Carson didn't just didn't become a correspondent on 60 minutes, like morally say for chatting with people he found fascinating. Carson just golfed and went to Bel Air. Letterman still wants to do something

and part of the fascination of watching the show was him really figuring out. He didn't know what he was doing in this show to a degree. I don't mean that to ding him. He was like, I don't know what this is, but we're going to talk. And how outwardly emotional he got and just nakedly like, I really only respect you as my president.

Sure. That was, we're not used to seeing that from David Letterman. Yeah, I guess it depends. So the reasons why I like Letterman, from like obviously the earlier stuff that was so... You like his earlier stuff better. Well, it was just so interesting because it was like a war on the actual medium

that he was actively participating in it. And then a lot of other people, whether it's Conan or whoever, like kind of took that and did riffs on that sort of persona. I did not like this show. Okay. I thought that it felt like it was being broadcast from an alternate reality

where... I got harder questions for the president than David Letterman was kind of asking. You want to talk about drone warfare? Well, no, it's not about that. And it's also just like, I just found that there was, I think maybe there was something to the live element of it. So they record this in front of an audience.

There's this bit in the beginning where they pretend like, oh, they pretend, but they were like, do you guys know, nobody in the audience knows who's coming out. And they think maybe it's Clinton for a second and then Obama walks out and they do this long live interview. And there was something about the live element of the interview where I felt like they were kind of, the question and answers seemed to be designed to elicit kind of like rounds of applause

rather than be in actually like a deep diving conversation. And I found most of Letterman's questions to be frankly vetted. You know, like I felt like they were run through some, what are the things that we can talk about? Trump is very clearly not named by name, although several themes that have come out of the Trump administration and the election are kind of run through. But ultimately what I felt like was there was no.

there there. Yes, there were definitely two competing agendas here for sure. I mean, one of them is Obama chose this to be his first sort of major televised interview since leaving office. Clearly, I've been thinking about this just not as a podcaster with an opinion on a Netflix late night show, but just as a person who's in the world and terrified of the world. I think he is, as he has often done in the past, and this has frustrated people,

playing the long game. Now, as we learned from Hawaii over the weekend, we might not have a long game. But I do believe that he is intentionally withholding fire. That's a poor metaphor. But he's not outwardly criticizing the disgrace. He respects the office of the presidency too much to break protocol or break tradition and be openly critical. But more than that, he's saving himself for what comes next when we are going to need people of... Skynet becomes active. That's option one. Option two is we are going to need people with dignity. to get us back to being a country if that's even possible. So I do think that that's part of his calculation,

and I think there was calculation there. The other part of it, though, I think Letterman, you know, he's never really, as you said, interview part was never what interested him. Right. But now he wants to, they made this the centerpiece of the show. Because I think it's, I don't,

I think this one is Occam's razor. I think he just wants to talk to people and figure out something that interests him again. And, you know, there's this whole thing where he's like, I went to Japan and I went to the Faroe Islands or whatever. I think that's what he wants to do. And I think that he is a older guy who is very much involved with his son's life and thinking about this future because of his son.

And his questions are extremely normcore because of it. Yeah. And his interests are extremely norm core. So I agree. I'm talking around whether I think this was a successful project, a successful television show, because I don't know yet. And I don't think anybody knows yet. But I was both deeply moved and upset by, you know, the eloquence and he

humanity of our former president. I am a fanboy. I lap up these stories about taking his daughter to college and fixing the lamp. Like I find this stuff very appealing and human and sweet. But I also think this idea of second acts and what he can do with his role as ambassador or what, not an actual ambassador, although many of those are empty around the globe, I would like to add. But as this person with this cultural cachet, what can he use this platform for? And, you know, he could do what Seinfeld does with comedians and cars. You're talking about Letterman or Obama? Letterman, Letterman.

I do think that he could do what Seinfeld does, comedians and cars getting coffee, which is now on Netflix. And I really enjoy that show. Full disclosure, he could talk to people that he thinks are funny and just have fun. And he has Tina Fey coming on this season, and they've always done good interviews because he's just delighted by her. But he also has Malala coming on.

What's that going to be? Right. I don't know. But this is a weird... There are so many opportunities. With streaming services, there are so many more opportunities for first acts than there used to be. There are also more opportunities for second acts.

There's just an element to this is just like, this was like bad long form to me, bad long form journalism, where you get the feeling like this is supposed to be an antidote to the fact that when you turn on CNN or MSNBC, you see four faces screaming at you and they've got like some fake ultimatum on the banner that's running underneath of them and everything is, it's the end of the world as we know it. And even though that may be the key. case. But this felt like it was overcorrection of we're really just going to get into like two guys talking on stage because that's what people really want. And I felt like ultimately it just didn't

get at the urgency or the seriousness. I mean, it obviously got at the seriousness of the moment. But I felt like Letterman is not my, like you were saying, he's not a 60 Minutes reporter. And he's not asking the kind of questions that I guess I kind of want to. asked any i don't think he i think that it's nice that he has this second act and i i understand the parallels that you're talking about but there was something incredibly unnecessary about this show to me there is i i don't i find it very hard to argue with you yeah i just think that considering who letterman was at the beginning of his career and how we first came to know of him and it's hard to overstate this because in the 80s when i was not staying up till 1230 on weeknights on

the reg to watch him, he was whispered about and talked about with the same reverence as like early REM and like this sort of college rock. And it was, however we were able to access what passed for cool in the 80s when we were like 8, 9, 10, 11 years old, just as we were on the precipice of wanting to know about this stuff, he was the forefront of it. Right. And to see that his second act now is super emo, you know, that the whole part where he walks across the Pettus Bridge in Selma with John Lewis, I don't know. what purpose that served other than to give Sukor to Letterman. You know what I mean? We've seen people walk across this bridge. We saw a movie about it. I know. And I was thinking, how many times do you

think in his 25 plus years, no, 30 years on late night television, did Letterman have John Lewis come sit next to him on the couch? Maybe zero, maybe once or twice, but probably zero. I think he made, whether he did or he didn't, he does a lot of, man, I was just like on a, on a boat. I was on a Party boat. On a party boat when this is happening. So I guess we're kind of saying the same thing. I guess your mileage may vary is whether you find this late period baby boomer transformation noteworthy or not.

But Netflix deems it worthy of, you know, multiple millions of dollars. Yeah. So we'll see what happens. All right. So, Andy, let's do in or out on the assassination of Gianni Bresaki. Bottom line, are you in or are you out? Inner out of what? First, we should say we're previewing the show.

This show premieres Wednesday night on FX. we have both seen the first episode, and we are not going to spoil it, although these shows are kind of spoilproof because they are ripped from the pages of history. Just interesting background here. This is technically the second season of American Crime Story.

It's supposed to be the third, right? It was supposed to be the third. The first was the People v. O.J. Simpson. And when that show was riding high, it was announced that the second season was going to be Katrina. And from the minute they announced that, I was like, this is a terrible idea.

Not that it's not a worthy subject for investigation or for dramatization, but I did not think Ryan Murphy was the guy to do it, and I also just didn't see how one track to the other, how a tabloid show that said something about America, a tabloidy case that really spoke to the nature of America and OJ to a national tragedy and disgrace, how you could sort of go jump from one to the other.

And obviously that kind of panned out because it seemed like it was impossible to get any traction on making a Katrina show. They were casting around for a vision, for a showrunner, for something to adapt. And when they finally realized it was going to be over a year before they returned to this lucrative franchise for the network, lucrative both in terms of viewers and in terms of awards, they were like come up with another one for third season. Sure. And the third season jumped the line here.

Right. And here we are two years after OJ premiered with this new series. Once again, directed by Ryan Murphy from his team, but with a bunch of interesting other people involved. So what do you think? Yeah, I'm in. And I'm surprised because I think I actually was probably on. the I wasn't particularly vocal about it

but I think that as the season went on I became less and less impressed with OJ. Yeah, I was interested in that. I didn't know that. I thought we were both all the way in on that. I don't know whether it was OJ fatigue

or there was something about the handling of it. You know what it was? It might have been the reception of it versus the handling of it. The show itself, I thought had some incredible performances even though there was an element

to it that I felt like I knew the story well enough that there was something weirdly like karaoke about it. Oh, yeah. The same, I don't know, I didn't know anything about the murder of Gianni Versace or Andrew Quannon

or any of these people. And I think that's why I found this so compelling. Now, it's worth noting that the Versace family does not care for this show. No. And that there have been some, they've vocalized that. And that this show is drawn largely from Maureen Orth's book

about the murder and that then they filled in the blanks. And Tom who's a writer I have a lot of time for who wrote a show called London Spy that you and I really liked. And we talked about it. I think last year, two years ago? I think it was last year. Well, 2016, right? Oh, two years ago. Yeah. We had a lot of time for that show and there's a, maybe I don't want to say a level of artistry to it because I don't want to disparage the writers of OJ, but it's a different vibe. It's, it's, it's, there's a lot of, um, references to an opera in the first episode. Yeah. And the episode,

itself kind of unfolds on a more sweeping, melodramatic, bold kind of like out there level that I don't know that OJ ever got to. And, and I think that just because, you know, I just think just a lack of familiarity with the topic. I'm like, I'm pretty, I'm pretty drawn into this. You'll see when you watch it on Wednesday, the storytelling is much more elliptical. It is striving to be something else. And a less charitable way of framing it is there's less they're there. There's less familiarity and potentially less... There's no light bronco. Yes. So, for example, this is called the assassination of Johnny Versace. It begins with the assassination and then works backwards and forwards in time. That's probably smart. But it leaves you wondering,

at least I was wondering, there's nine more episodes of this, or however many there are. I was sort of surprised by that. To the Tom Rob Smith aspect of it, he's a really interesting writer and a crime writer and London spy. It's... It's rare in TV when you can tell someone's style when they're working in very different forms. London Spy was for British television. It was his thing. He wrote it, he created it, and he show ran it.

This is work for hire for Ryan Murphy's empire. And you can still tell Tom Rob Smith wrote it. Because it has a very similar theme, which is obsession in gay love. Yes, but also this sort of haunting, I keep wanting to say elliptical because there's something about the way his character flit around each other like butterflies

that feels very... Well, they all seem to be in some sort of fugue state. Yes, and it's very recognizable as his work, which I appreciate in the scope of things. I am cautiously in, and I think what we decided is we're going to watch another episode next week and then revisit on Thursday. Here's my big picture take of the show

that we'll see if I'm right or not. Watching one hour of the show, which I enjoyed. particularly also for the setting you know I don't like I think neither of us are really big fans of Ryan Murphy shows in general

one of the reasons I liked OJ was because the vibe those like mid-90s double-breasted lapel suits and and like Shapiro's home in Bel Air there was something big mobile phones the gaudiness and superficiality of it was

central to the storytelling and what it was similarly like South Beach and the news cafe and the settings and the opulence, this is his metier. This is a much and more natural fit for what interests him, and it really pops off the screen. And I feel like the 90s references, and partially I think what happened was as OJ became sort of a phenomenon, people focused on the 90s references a little bit, whereas they feel a little bit more intertwined with this show.

And they feel a little bit more intertwined with a moment when gay culture, was sort of moving into more of a mainstream place. And there are some moments in the first episode where there's a police officer who's trying to understand the idea that Versace might have multiple partners, but still have a boyfriend who's played rather well by Ricky Martin, actually.

Or just when the cops show up, they're like, no, no, this is Versacee, oh, the jeans guy. This idea that fashion and fashion, the culture around fashion was not just central to the culture. And around Miami. I mean, that was right when Miami's are dead.

Echo kind of like Miami is this sort of south of South of France in America and it has a kind of... Right before Miami by Will Smith. Which really changed things around for the city. I mean, one of the things about OJ was what race relations were like 25 years ago and then seeing the way they are now and what's changed and what sadly has not changed, which is much of it. The way gay culture has, the way mainstream quote unquote culture and gay culture have changed in relation to one another is significant and worth a tale worth telling. I have to say, one hour of this, though, has made me reconsider a very strongly held opinion that I voiced a moment ago, which is... Darren Chris is a magician. Darren Chris is both...

Is it illusionist? He's a steakhouse chef par excellence. He and his partner, Ruth. No, it's that I kind of think maybe they should do Katrina. Now, I think they are still claiming to do it, but... Jesus, that's a take. Yeah, here's my take. Here's my take, why.

Not because I've changed whether I think Ryan Murphy is up to the task or whatever. the case may be. What I mean is one of the reasons why the OJ show worked was because it is the OJ case itself, as Ezra Edelman's documentary also proved in the same year, is this totality of American culture than and now and completely riveting in ways both gaudy and trashy and deeply searing and emotionally relevant. It's unique. But this does feel slightly lesser in a way, whereas Katrina is once in a again saying to try to tackle Katrina suggest an ambition for the series that I'm not mad at

that maybe the show has something larger to say about America as a whole and might get messy and might mess up along the way but I sort of, this made me admire that aspect of the OJ show in retrospect. So I think people should check the first episode out for Penelope Cruz alone, but I actually against my better, what I thought I was going to say, I'm in.

Phinellope Cruz enters the show at the exact right moment. Yeah. And she's pretty monumental. I mean, one of the nice things about a show like this being made by people who make a lot of TV and know how to do it, whether we like it or not, is they know how to use their instruments. And she has deployed like timpony in an orchestra right when you need her most in the show. So, yeah, she's worth it. So we're both in, but we're going to revisit on a little more of a granular level next week after everyone has watched the first two episodes. Yeah.

So let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and we'll be back to talk about 10 years of Breaking Bad. Hi Bachelor Nation, this is Juliet Litman, host of the Bachelor Party podcast. A new season of The Bachelor is in full swing, and so the podcast is back, but this time I have my own feed. You can find new episodes every Monday night by going to the ringer.com slash podcast or by subscribing to Bachelor Party wherever you get them. Come for the recaps and roses, stay for the drama, and for moments like this. Please tell me you don't already have a little wiener. I do not have this, so yeah, you did good. Awesome.

Don't forget, subscribe to the Bachelor Party podcast today. It's available everywhere, including Apple and Spotify and Google. All right, Andy, we are back. On January 20th, we'll be at 10 years since the Breaking Bad premiere. Breaking Bad is an interesting show within the sort of golden age of TV. I don't know that any one show went through as many changes, not in terms of like the people behind it, which was a relatively steady creative group behind it, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Sam Catlin,

Morrow Wally Beckett, Michelle McLaren directing a lot of episodes. Michael Slovis, I think, shot the entire thing. And obviously the cast, which was largely together until the last season with some... As they started to fall off along the way. A few dropping off along the way. But it was different shows. It was a couple of different shows within its sort of five-ish season run.

I mean, season five is a little bit of an extended run, but it was also broken up by time. It feels like it was on the air for a lot longer. It does. And I rewatched a bunch of it over the weekend, just in bits and pieces, because it's still on Netflix, so you can just kind of flit around

and you can kind of watch your favorite scenes, and then there's a Ted and Skyler scene that you're like, I can't believe this was on this show. I really, Anna Gunn is so good on this show, but a lot of her plot lines, really uninteresting. They did Skyler Dirty Man.

But I was watching how it, I couldn't help but feel like it is at once so incredibly influential. And Alice Herman reminded me that we had said something about how it might be the most influential golden age show. And also how unlike it is from anything that came after it. Yes. You know, this is unfair to Gianni Versace,

the show that we're just talking about. But I was even watching that last night and watching some of the sort of very TV things that they do, or just even just very like screened entertainment things that they do. Like at the end of a conversation, Donatella Versace, stands up and turns around, a balcony to look out at Miami because why they need an exit shot they need to get out of that scene but they want to have finelvie crews looking into a camera so they need her to stand up

even though nobody would ever do that you know and look out over a balcony when she's like my brother has just died just so we know who she is exactly exactly when you watch breaking bad episodes especially when it became you know whether you want to say 2.5 on or if you want to say after jane you know obviously we're going to spoil breaking bad if you haven't watched it That's on you, homie. Sorry, homie. When you watch Peak Breaking Bad, it just feels like every single thing

moves a story forward a little bit. And when you're watching it now, and I'm not a big rewatcher, actually, despite being on a podcast called The Rwatchables. I'm not a big television rewatcher. No, me either. Man, there's a lot to see there. Because what you know now,

before and especially at the end of this series, we were so obsessed with what was going to happen. And that was really one of the first big, trying to unpack and figure out what somebody was going to do, ways of talking about television. We're kind of really obsessed for that now, but taking clues and trying to say,

what's going to happen with Walter, what has to happen with Jesse, whatever. Man, when you watch it now and you know where it's going, it's telling you the whole time. And I found it, I found the writing to be remarkable. I found the direction to be so refreshingly different than sort of the fake Fukuganaga stuff that is generally used in every television show.

Fake Fakanaga. Fekanaga show, stuff that's used in almost every crime television show that it was shot on film. There's a lot of handheld stuff. There's a... The sense of place is completely unique in terms of they chose the New Mexico, the Albuquerque setting.

Which, by the way, they didn't choose. Right. That was a tax thing, right? It was written to be in like an inland empire in Southern California, for tax reasons, shooting in New Mexico made more sense, and they embraced it.

And I think it worked for any number of levels, not just because it was such a blank canvas for us to project things on. Sorry, people of New Mexico, but for many people who had not seen, spent time there were seen shows set there, specifically in embracing it, but also they were removed.

They were a little bit away from the industry and could play with their crew, with their team, a team that they loved working with so much in terms of production that they kept them together for a spinoff. Yeah. And I think that it's a show that very comfortably,

I don't know if you want to say wrote or became, it lived up to the moment that it was in. As people started to really recognize what it was, I think it became bigger. I think it became more significant as the moments went on. And, you know, when you watch those first few episodes, it's still a kind of daffy black comedy. Yeah, and one that was, for as much as we talk about it being a show

that was brilliantly designed, it's also a show that you can point to three major examples where it's steered into the skid of what a TV show has to be. Meaning things going wrong, things not working out, how you plan them, improvising on the fly. One is the location, as we talked about. One is Jesse Pinkman in Aaron Paul's performance. He was not supposed to survive the first season,

but he was so great he did, and that rewrote what the show is going to be. And the actual relationship between Walter and Jesse, it colors almost every story beat of the show. When you go back and watch it, everything that Walter does, almost everything relates back to a child of his, whether it's actually Holly or Walt Jr.

Or it's Jesse, his surrogate son, or it's Todd, who he sort of tries to replace Jesse with, and then that has disastrous results, obviously. The third thing that it's steered into was the writer's strike, which disrupted the first season, cut short the episode order, but gave them time to reconsider what they were doing

and think about their place in the landscape of TV. And again, every lemon that came out the show not only turned into lemonade, but it turned into like a patented best recipe for lemonade ever. Yes. Which is a credit to the model for the show that has been chased at infinite items since, which is here's some people who know how to make TV, but they've always had the leash on.

Let's unshackle them and see what they do. So many small, remarkable moments. I mean, you brought up Aaron Paul. And I watched a kind of run of episodes. And one of the cool things about having this all together on Netflix is that you don't have the breaks in seasons that used to do. So you can kind of almost, you can break down. the season walls in a little bit.

So there's this run of half measures, full measures, box cutter. And half measures and full measures is essentially one big episode that ends season three. And box cutter is the first episode of season four. And I remember when box cutter first came on

in the first episode of the fourth season that I thought that, you know, it had already sort of moved into that kind of pantheon, but I was like, man, this show is taking another leap. And there's a scene at the end. Obviously, the box cutter moment is what people will remember from that episode, but there is the scene at the end when Jesse and Walt go to a Denny's, and they have

to wear Kenny Rogers' t-shirts that they have bought at a gas station because their clothes are covered in blood. And they have this conversation, and Walt's just drinking coffee. And Jesse, who Walt's been really worried about because he's still coming out of the Jane coma, kind of. He's like, how are you? And Jesse, Aaron Paul does this thing where he looks up from his pancakes and just makes, like, what do you want for me, gesture?

with his silverware and I was like I was right back in it I was just like right back in that moment where that show seemed like the entire world and he has this conversation where he's just like I'm Aaron Paul Jesse's was like I'm kind of

you know at least we all understand each other and Walt's just kind of like I don't know what you're talking about and he's just like we know that maybe he can't kill us but we'll wish we were dead and I was just like man the way the whole scene is worked out where Walt's always pushing

and he's constantly pushing to be Heisenberg and to be this mastermind and then Jesse just explained something that was right in front of him. It's just writing on such a high level, man. Writing and production on such a high level. I want to talk about why I think it's the most influential show from that era.

I want to talk about why I think it was uniquely poised to bridge eras in TV. But first, what I want to say more than anything else is, I miss it. And I miss it because I've realized as the years have gone on, since it went off the air,

that when people ask me about writing about TV or recapping TV during that golden age, difficult men era, whatever we decide to call it, when people ask me in some level about even working for Grandland, when I think about the highlight, like the peak, I'm thinking about the end of Breaking Bad. I'm thinking about, you need to take that. When I think about the peak of it,

I'm thinking about covering Breaking Bad. So why specifically? There was a moment, and I don't think We've gotten back to this. A little bit, Game of Thrones has done this. But in the summer of 2013, when the show was ending,

where it felt, you know, obviously, and we're going to get back to this, but it was a unique show because it built. It built on itself, and it was heading towards something the whole time.

So that momentum had reached critical mass. And not only were we reaching the episodes where the things that we had always been excited for slash dreading were happening, it felt as if, everyone in the culture or engaged in the culture was watching together. And to be able to be recapping this show, to be able to be watching it with everyone, because they didn't send screeners after the first episode of that season,

watching it live on Sunday night with the country, and then going right to my laptop and just, you know, taking the box cutter to my brain jugular and spilling it. And then knowing that all the other great critics were doing the same thing, except for the week that when Osamandias aired and Alon Seppinwall was having his appendix removed. and was G-chatting me under and a lot of pain meds from the hospital. Memories.

King of Kings. He got through it, man. It felt like touching the third rail of culture in a way that only TV can do and only that moment could have done. It was exhilarating. And I really do miss that. You touched on something

that is worth mentioning here. TV now is completely different than it was 10 years ago. That's obvious. But one of the major ways that it's different, and this affects the way it's produced, the way we watch it, the way it's created, written, etc.

His TV was never about the ending. Now TV is almost entirely about the ending, or at least it's much about the ending as it is about the beginning. It's more or the other. I mean, you know what I mean? Because it's like there's so many shows now. Beginnings have to be so attention-worthy. Which I'm getting to, for sure, in relation to Breaking Bad.

But Breaking Bad was completely about the ending always. That was an enormous bet on behalf of the creators. and on the audience to go on that journey. You said it. It is a completely different show at the end than it was at the beginning and it only ever moved in one direction and everything built.

That really foreshadowed what TV was going to become in a lot of ways. If you look at it, of the Rushmore shows, the consensus critical Rushmore shows. Obviously there are other shows worthy to be in the conversation,

but we generally, from that era, we talk about the Sopranos, the wire, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men. The three that aren't Breaking Bad feel like kind of from a previous era Breaking Bad bridges the gap. Sopranos certainly does, yeah.

Yes. Breaking Bad began as kind of, you know, it was fast-paced and strange, but it was talky, and there were family dynamics that we were familiar with, and there was a way in. Once we went in, though, like Heisenberg, there were no half measures, and we went down with the show. And they also played that character as a schmo. Yes. And when we came out the other side, we were different, characters were different, but TV itself was different. Because, and this speaks to the influential aspect of it, all of a sudden.

sudden we had these expectations. We had these expectations of ferocity and storytelling. We had these expectations of filmmaking. I mean, Ryan Johnson went from directing two episodes of Breaking Bad to directing Star Wars. He did other stuff too, but there is a connection there. We had this expectation of what you can do with characters, what the audience can expect of you in terms of, and then deliver on it. Well, it starts as a show about three or four people, half of the first few episodes take place in art and RV in the desert, it feels like this very, very, very small character drama.

And then one of the things that I really, really loved about Breaking Bad was I sometimes when, you know, it'll get to season two or three of a show and they've added and added and added characters. And you're just kind of like, are you guys just kind of trying to refresh up the mix a little bit or add different cast? Or is there some sort of like mandate coming from the network

that you need to try to attach new names to it? They're trying to perfect the cook. Right. the fact that you go through this show, and it's like Tuko and Saul and Lydia and Mike and Gus and Victor and Gail and all these names that I'm naming here, and you're like, oh, yeah, those people were fascinating, man. The world got better as it got bigger on this show. And the sense that they were all there all along,

and we were just traveling into a different level of Dante's Inferno and encountering them. I think that in terms of being influential, a lot of the influence is the wrong influence. You know, people look at the last season and the first episode of the last season when all of a sudden it's the time jump and Walter is making the bacon of his birthday and he buys the gun and we're like, what the hell is this?

But we were also like, oh, these guys, these masterminds, these masterminds have got it figured out. Here's the lesson you should remember from this. They didn't know what the gun was for. They trusted each other. And they put the gun in there and they're like, we better figure this out.

And they figured it out. and they made it all fit into place and look brilliant in retrospect, which is how TV always used to work and should work. Yeah. The problem is people are like, oh, those geniuses, they threw something against the wall

and they spent the whole rest of their show trying to, like, build the house around that one thing. Not true. Right. So think about the patience required for Breaking Bad to get to the Breaking Bad part, to get to those last seasons. It took a lot of character work.

It took a lot of time at the car wash and a lot of time with Skyler, chain smoking, looking out the window, and all the other things that maybe got dinged but mattered to the big picture. then you get to Ozark, which I haven't finished, I'm going to finish. And I like it. You know that.

Yeah, of course. But Ozark is the ADD version of Breaking Bad. It starts in season four and a half. Yes. It starts in crawl space, basically. And so, yes. And so what I'm kind of thinking that's unique about it is a lot of people look at 70 cinema. And they're like, oh, what a great era for writers and American movies.

And then Jaws came. And people love Jaws. But Jaws was the moment when all the studios and all the money people said, that much money. You can do this? You were serious about that? And then everyone starts to chase jaws. What's bizarre in the TV business about Breaking Bad is that Breaking Bad was Jaws and it was also Robert Altman's Nashville. It was the paradigm shifter where people were like, oh, you can do that. You can go to this level of storytelling, this intensity, you can write to the ending. You can tell one story all the way through that serialized and get people on board. And not just get people on board.

It's still a miracle because it grew every year thanks to Netflix. It was the first. It was the first real beneficiary of the streaming culture. But it was also brilliant and incredibly well made with real writing and real care and consideration and empathy and performances. So it was the total package. And they were indelible characters. I mean, you're just like, I just don't know that we're going to come across. I don't know whether there was a specificity to the characterization of those people

because of like the lack of noise around it. Like you said, touching the third rail of culture, this idea that, as people caught up with it on Netflix as you got to season through four really but I think through season three and people were like I can't wait for the show to be on on Sunday night but they still stuck to

little beats that became you just knew these people you just knew these people and it was that was what was so refreshing about going back to it was just the level of familiarity that I had with so many different little ticks and insecurities and misplays

that those people made but yeah you're Right. I mean, it really was a comment across the sky when you think about what happened to that show with Netflix because it had no business being as popular. And think about what Netflix was then versus the way it is now. I mean, people, I think they've given up, but they were chasing that thing where if we just give it a few more years, people will catch up. People will catch up. And if you look the reviews when Breaking Bad premier, they are not great. They are very much like people dumping on FX for not picking it up and then also being like they were probably smart because this is definitely going to be an acquired taste. It's strangely paced and confusing and dark, and it's going to be a cult show if it's going to be anything. It was really Cranston winning the Emmys that kept it alive in those first two seasons. But that doesn't happen anymore, this idea of a streaming service allowing you to catch up,

mainly because the streaming services don't care about that. They want you to watch their stuff. You have to begin with the bang now. You can't really do a show this way anymore, both because Netflix isn't there to save you at the end of it, but also because there's too much competition. People are not catching up on stuff. So while it feels, of those four Rushmore shows, it feels the most contemporary,

and it's certainly the most fun to watch, if that's what you're chasing. It is as much an artifact of a different era as they are. So do you have a favorite episode? Do you have a favorite run of episodes that, like a certain, you know, like I mentioned half measures, full measures? The show is so alive in my mind as something, it just, it's alive in my mind in the way someone you knew was alive.

Yeah. The version of them you remember is the totality of them, the accumulation of them, where they were when you last saw them. So do you veer towards five then? But only because of my, how much, how alive that time still feels for me, how visceral it was covering the show and just crackling on a Sunday night until God knows what hour of the morning before publishing. I find two, season two, still a little bit difficult to get through.

Not just because it's so sad and so uncomfortable, and it's so, it's so, it's, just really dark. And they were calibrating. You know, how much can we tip people straight down to the bottom without giving them some oxygen, some lightness, some humor? I, until you just said the half measures, full measures, that was probably the most electric the show was because of where it had been and just how it, and the open road still in front of it. I love that feeling in shows. We were like, oh, now we're just, we've burst through the whatever barrier had been erected and we're just now an open road. But the end. Remember dead freight? Yeah. Look. But the show stuck the landing.

Yeah. You know, that's insane to me. I will always, always adore the fact that not only did it stick to landing, it gave everyone, it was kind and empathetic to its audience, even while it was kind of hard and cold and cruel to its characters. It gave people both endings. Yeah. I love that about it.

Osamandias, one of the greatest episodes of television ever made. And then... Which they kind of knew before the season started because I was watching that trailer where it's just cranced to reading the poem, and I was like, yeah, you guys know you got a burner on you. They knew what they had. Leading into Granite State, which is this strange, elegiac, sad spiral. That's the Robert Forster episode? Yes.

Where he's just alone with a useless barrel of money, paying someone thousands of dollars to keep him company. That's one way the show could have ended. And Emily Nussbaum wrote a whole piece about this at the time of the New Yorker. To her, that's when Breaking Bad ended. That was the correct ending for her. But then it gave us one more hit. And that was the actual finale, which was preposterous in many ways, but also in keeping with the Rube Goldberg science experiment

the creators have been doing the whole time, I really admire the way they pulled off that two-step and gave us those two different, I apologize to Jesse Pinkman, those two highs at the end. Yeah. You know, it's hard to, having survived the run of the show, not many characters did, but having survived watching it, it's hard to remember the beginning.

Yeah. All right, well, let's wrap up there. We'll be back Thursday for, Dark Thursdays will be doing 7, 8, 9, and should we do 10 on Thursday? I think we got a power through. So let's do 7, 8, 9, and 10

on Thursday, so we'll wrap up dark. And we are also set to have some special guests on Thursday that we won't spoil now. We'll announce on Twitter for the first part of the show. I'm excited to have them on. And, uh, yeah, watch Versacee. Yeah, watch Versacee.

And if you watch Breaking Bad, you should watch Breaking Bad. You should watch Breaking Bad, by the way. That was, I can't believe you didn't say this. Middle of the weekend, Chris writes me and says, my observation about Breaking Me Bad is that it's a really, a good show. It's better than anything that came since. Sorry. All right. Take care, Baranskies.