The Watch - Catching Up on ‘Maniac,’ ‘Forever,’ and ‘Better Call Saul’ With Andy Greenwald | The Watch (Ep. 294)

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald talk about Andy’s experience filming the pilot for ‘Briarpatch’ (1:44). Then they catch up on all the film and television news Andy missed out on, including ‘Maniac’ (11:48), the Emmys (16:01), and ‘Better Call Saul’ (34:22). Check out The Ringer's guide to streaming in October here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am the editor at the ringer.com. And join me in the studio. It's my number one boy. It's Andy Green Wild.

I'm so happy you're still doing this. I've been doing it the whole time. You haven't been listening. Every time it's Alice and Herman, it's Fantasy. I'm just like, it's Andy Green World. Let me tell them now publicly. I'm so grateful. for their support, their appearances on this podcast.

It was friend of the pod and my executive producer, Sam S. Mayle, who mentioned to me in Albuquerque a week ago, what a good job everyone was doing on the podcast, don't you think? And I said, uh-huh, because I won 100%. Because you only listen to dual threat with Ryan Rusillo. That's kind of my vibe. That's your only podcast. I didn't consume many, you want to be honest?

I did not consume many podcasts. I don't consume any podcasts. That's not exactly true. Right. There was that one day where you were like driving to Santa Fe. You were like, podcasts are incredible. I only listened to the Dave Chang show. That's really true.

That is, it's hard to imagine a podcast more suited to my interest, but the watch seems like a soft landing for me now that I'm back. Jesus Christ, it's good to see you. What's up, man? You're back from New Mexico. Andy, if you've been living under Watch Rock for the last couple of weeks, has been in New Mexico shooting the pilot episode of his show Breyer Patch with Rosario Dawson.

She was there. with the great Dennis Hopper. No. The ghost of Dennis Hopper? No, no. Tell us a little bit about the experience. So I guess I have a ton of questions. I'd love to answer them.

One thing I want to know is, what are you going to miss about the ABQ? You know, you're talking to a guy who just spent 45 nights in the same hotel room. And when I say hotel room, I don't want people to think, like, sweet. This is not Doc Hollywood over here, okay? Yeah. This was... I meant Mr. Hollywood.

Like, I had a big hotel room. Yeah, because Doc Hollywood stayed in a pretty quaint, you know, B&B. B&B, yeah. It wasn't like that either. He was in a very small hotel room with a balcony that I would

liken to a prison cell itself because it was like a balcony, but then there was like some extra stone. Why did they do that? Why do they make six-inch balconies? It was a six-inch balcony with like slatted stone windows so I could just maybe see the sun.

You know, I'm going to be a little. miss the experience. It was, it's really, it was an incredible experience. Yeah. It was a total dream. And what was incredible and also disarming was, you know, the people who do this regularly, the people who work in production, the people who are, who are in the show, crew, it is a carny life, you know, in a way that is very different from the life, the lives that we've lived up to this point. I mean, people, some production people were there for three or four months to work on the show. Some people are still there closing up the office.

And then it's on to the next one. And then it's on to the next one in a different city or maybe even a different country. And the intensity of the work and the relationships and mixed with the brevity of it was really something. And so what I miss was the excitement. I mean, it was really fun. My vision of this is really like the scene in Annie Hall where they're like, we got Al B. Singer over here. Did you have any good teamster interactions? First of all, one of my favorite scenes.

No, I mean, first of all These guys on the Johnny Carson show. Let me say, right now, in a public forum, I love Teamsters. The Teamsters are amazing. Yeah, have you seen Ozark Season 2? I just want to reiterate how great the Teamsters are. No, I mean, it is incredible.

I don't know if you're trying to bait me to saying something bad about the Teamsters. No, not at all. I just was like, I'm very interested in this Carney lifestyle. One of the things that really blew my mind talking to you about all this, this was the sheer quantity of decisions you had to make on a daily basis and having those decisions be of consequence. I make decisions all the time. Nobody cares. You know what I mean?

I care. People care. I make decisions. Today you decided to wear this Heather blue shirt with this greenish-colored t-shirt. It's working for you. I think I'm going to, I'm turning into Manzoukis. I'm just going to wear the same outfit every day. That's a great one. Yeah, I have multiple versions of this shirt, because I wore this Saturday night. I wasn't going to mention it. Were you? Did you actually notice that? I did. Yeah, but it's not the same shirt. Oh. Wow. You're Manzooka sing. Yeah.

Okay, sorry, I interrupted you. About decision made. Yeah, so, like, I make decisions all the day long. They are of varying levels of consequence. But one thing that I really got from our text message conversations, and you'd be like, check this out, check this out, check this out, is like, holy shit, everything that he's deciding, everything that he has to have input on,

is going to eventually accumulate in this piece of television, you know? And I'm really interested to see where the podcast goes from here, because now I would imagine you have, almost a ton of sensitivity about I know what that had to mean. Like I know the decision that David Banioff had to decide about like what the texture of the snow needs to be. Yes.

You know what I mean? And maybe like a hundred other people also make that decision as well. Thankfully. But every single frame of television that you see when you're watching a show, every single acting choice, every single piece of clothing somebody is wearing, every prop you see around the set, somebody decided that.

And in some ways, that's why when we talk to some showrunners, they're so effusive in their praise of everybody that they've worked with to the point where almost like the interview kind of gets gumbed up a little bit. That's how I feel. But that's how you feel. Yeah, I mean, I think that one carryover from Life is a Critic, and this is something that I think you believe as well strongly, is that all good art comes from making decisions and making choices, specific choices, right?

There's nothing worse than something that's wishy-washy. So that comes out in terms of, you know, what is this character wearing? I was in the hair and makeup trailer talking about the great J. Ferguson's beard length. That was a conversation that I was a part of. And I hope people are very satisfied with the result because that's a terrific beard. But what tattoos this character might have,

what they look like, what they say. I wrote the newspaper articles for the fake newspaper that is barely seen on screen because that stuff matters to me. But yeah, there are incredible people working on every production who's in the various departments, whose job it is, right before we roll, a minor character, someone runs up to me and says,

sorry, is she married? What kind of wedding ring would she have? And then you have to have an answer, and you have to decide that in that moment. People asking, what time is it in this scene? Because is the camera going to see the watch? Yeah, right. Probably not, but it might.

And then that informs the decision-making. And so really, I mean, look, the entire experience was a total dream, and I'm happy to talk about any aspect of it. But it was, people, like, it must be so difficult or hard. It's not hard. It's just busy. You just have to be alert all the time. Sure.

You know, and, but my deepest appreciation from this experience, and this is going to derail the conversation, comes from learning in a real-time personally, it's affecting me personally away what a director of photography really does it all day, what a line producer does all day, what a UPM, you know, production manager does all day. And you cannot make something good without those people. and having, and I was lucky to have incredible people from the extended S-Mail Corp universe work on the show. Yeah. You know, it's funny, I was talking with Miles Surrey a couple of days ago on the pot about Better Call Saul.

And we were kind of trying to guess a little bit about how long we thought the show might run. And I was like, you know, I bet that they're going to do it as long as they want to do it. And they're not going to put some artificial like, well, we have to end it at this point either in the real world or like in the Better Call Saul Breaking Bad Albuquerque crime universe. timeline because you can tell those people really like working together and they've decided that that's what they want to do after breaking bad they they could have done lots of different things

and clearly a lot of those people decided what we really like doing is making this show and this place together. Yep. And that kind of sense of community I think is probably underrated by people who just judge the finished product. And it's not really that germane to whether or not you like a show, whether or not the people

who worked on Daredevil Season 3 whether the line producer was good or not but I think it's important to understand the whole thing holistically. I really appreciate you saying that because I definitely, when you are in a, you know, Waldorf, looking at the finished product critical world, there have been times and there have been projects where I have said, it seems like they had a lot of fun making this in a negative way. Yeah. Things get sloppy or there's paling around and you feel like you're intruding on someone else's

fun, but you wish they'd kind of gotten it together. I totally get that. But when you're trying to do this as part of your life and part of your life, and part of your work, the fact that we had on Briar Patch like a really positive atmosphere, everyone really seemed to enjoy each other and get along, and that mattered a lot. To me, it made my experience really good. But yeah, I mean, this is going to be the next year of this, if we're lucky enough to make the rest of the season and people get to see it, was this experience that I had was amazing. And what that translates into, we'll see. But it was a really positive

and collaborative thing. And yeah, every detail. I know it's too early to ask this, and I know that you've probably been changing, it's been changing over the course of this last year or so. But was there anything where, you know, you were making this show, and then at night you would watch something

and you were noticing different things? Did it change your eye at all, I guess? I definitely didn't have time to watch as many things as I thought. Same old Andy. I would. For sure. I definitely went from being like, I'm just going to power through a couple seasons of stuff

because what else am I going to do? Here's the thing, man. I'm going to have so much free time. He's going to be busting shows down. You know who heard that? People at the studio. They had some interesting pushback to all my free time. Comment on the podcast.

Thanks for listening. But I'm like, you know, get the pod rolling again. Yeah. This dude is trying, he's the first of all, he's definitely listening. And it is incredible the way he's having this both ways in terms of wanting the pod to continue to his specifications because he had some notes about your recent

opinions about things. Yeah. And yet he's pulling me away from it. Specifically Better Call Saul was a lot of fun to watch because we had the same locations department. So I could talk to them about the locations they found. I could see things. Those guys are fucking good at their jobs. The locations we have on Briar Patch are amazing. The locations

on Better Call Saul are always immaculate. It was also fun to see that like the place where the Germans are living, that giant room is where we did our camera tests a couple weeks ago. No way, really? Yeah. And that and because that is a former solar factory that's located right next to the studios, Q studios where that show films.

And that's the space. And you can build stuff in it. I think Sicario 2. Soldado. Solado. Day of the Solado. Day night. It was pretty soldado heavy. Also did a lot of work there. Okay. So you've seen things like that, like the hotel where I was for 45 days featured in episode two this season when Mike entered it, the lobby and greeted the artwork there the way I often did. So beginning around week two or three. I think I'd probably be able to answer that question better in terms of specific show or specific show, but I was definitely

looking at things more, I was looking at the lighting now. I was looking at the performances not in terms of how they flow together within the totality of this episode, but imagining the takes, imagining the alts, imagining the other options they had to

construct that performance. Yeah, and even you can probably see, I really want to talk to you about Maniac because I think maniac is emblematic of a lot of the stuff that we're talking about. And especially, you know, I think we were on a text thread with Sam and he was like, do you like it? And, and, uh, or you, he was asking you to ask me. And I, at first I was like, no way. Like, after the first episode. This is how he uses me. And he was like, wow, I think it's, you know, amazing. Not to give anything away, Sam likes him, so likes maniac a lot. And I got

turned around on it. I have no idea why this happened. But I think that I was almost watching it the way I thought you guys would be watching it, which is that you can feel that world of maniac leaping through your television screen or computer screen, however you're watching it. And regardless of issues I may have with how they've chosen to construct it here and there, every single element of that show is bursting with creativity. Yes. And actually, the part that I am least enamored with is maybe the narrative. You know, but everything else about it is absolutely intoxicating. This is a completely self-serving way to look at television shows,

and I wonder if this is how I'm going to consider things going forward because I am a self-serving person. You can think of things as an accumulation of their worst bits or of their worst and best bits, or just as the sum total of all the parts. Or you can look at it from a perspective of there was an enormous flowing river of positivity and creativity, and here are the two or three things that sort of diverted the river,

things that got in the way, that interrupted the flow. Can you still see the flow despite those things? Yeah, I mean, and as hindrances. And a maniac that happens. There's a lot of different choices being made by performers, by everybody. You know, like, and sometimes I feel like there is a version of the show that I want, and then there's a couple of different service roads going on outside of that that I kind of don't want to take. And this is, and, you know, I'm, and we're going to talk about Maniac and more in

I think in the weeks to come. The writer and creator of it is Patrick Somerville, who is a really good friend of mine, so I am completely in the tank for his work and for the show. He's going to come on the podcast, hopefully soon to talk about it. But the most exciting thing for me over the last few weeks, well, there are many exciting moments. But you write a script and it does what it needs to do. You know, this script that I wrote was read and purchased, and then the network came on, and we got an amazing director,

and we got cast to sign on to do it, and we got all these, everyone from props to Todd Campbell, our DP agreed to do it off of the script. Then you get there to the place where you're shooting it, and you have prep, and during that time, that's when you crack the hood and you open it up again. It is no longer a locked document. That script that I wrote is done.

It served its purpose. It has to become something new, and everyone else has to buy in to their version of it and bring their enthusiasm and their talents to bear on it. And what comes out is, hopefully, the greatest hybrid version that is a reflection of everyone's intensity and enthusiasm.

It's not just one person's thing anymore. And, you know, in terms of maniac, that's Patrick writing something with his talented room that he had. But he also had, like I was lucky to have an incredibly visionary director who had his version and what interested him in the story.

And then he also had, he had Emma Stone, he had Jonah Hill, he had all these people bringing their pieces to it. So what you have at the end is something else that's alive and hybridized and hopefully greater than some of its parts. But seeing that process happen and also allowing it to happen because you have to let go, but that's also the lesson of whatever this job of show running or executive producing is, which is letting go at the same time paying complete attention to every single thing

and making decisions about the most minute of the day. Sure. I feel like there's some lessons in transcendental meditation here, which is why I'm very interested in doing it now. But, you know, in terms of letting go and also paying attention, I don't really know how that works. But that is the job in a way that I did not appreciate or understand. Obviously, our timeline has had some volatility recently, just the world in general. What's been your relationship to sort of like the pop culture mill recently?

Did you see that guy who proposed at the Emmys? What a moment. That's right. You missed the Emmys. He proposed from the stage. Did you see, did people talk about that? A little bit. A little bit. What a delightful thing.

I was pro that. Oh, super, were people anti that? There is, I don't think there was anybody who was anti. I think I was pretty pro. I'm pretty pro like Kiss Cam. I'm pretty pro public proposals. Like, I don't mind. Yeah.

Look, what a gift that guy gave us. Yeah. I was, so we really could be going to the Wayback Machine. I was perfectly happy with these Emmys. Maybe this is, this is the privilege of being on not currently podcasting Island. was fine. What's everybody upset about? I wasn't mad at the Emmys. I'm just, I'm a little bit, like, distracted by the categorization methods that they have and...

Or like the gamesmanship of things being... Yeah, and also, just like the calendar that they're on does not feel urgent, you know? It doesn't... The way it's June to June doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I understand why they do it, but I just mean... Well, increasingly it makes less sense. It is, that is definitely... That was the TV season, right? And there is no season anymore.

Right. I mean, I understand that it's, like, a vestige of when it was like, you know, fall to May or whatever. But now it's like, it's like, Are we really playing these games where these shows that were on Ozark 1 gets nominated even though Ozark 2 is up and all this stuff? First of all, very pro-proposal.

Very impressed that the director of the Oscars was able to pull off the best moment at the Emmys. That was very impressive. I assume he's now halfway to his e-got. The Game of Thrones thing, it's like, look, man, that's the most popular TV show in the world. You know, this is another Sam S-Mail point that he roasted us for last year

at our best of the year podcast. Like, in the same way that HBO and FX or, you know, there's gamesmanship as to what's an ongoing series and what's a limited series, Game of Thrones kind of should have its own category anyway. We're now at the end of the Lord of the Rings run. Right. Right. Like, just give these guys the Oscars. Like, you nominated them a lot. Like, yeah.

Was that the best season? No, it was really super problematic season just in terms of storytelling, not in terms of the way we say that word now. But it was still accomplished on an epic scale that we have never seen on television and more people watch. and loved it, and we're still talking about it. That lady wrote a dragon. Do you remember that? She only got two now. I have no problem with that.

Mrs. Maisel is an incredible show that we have not given its due on this pod, and hopefully we will when it comes back. Haven't we? Well, we never like what episode for episode on it. No, I mean, we talked about it from the pilot, and then we talked about it, and I had Rachel Brosnahan on to talk. Yeah, I'm remembering all these things I meant to bring up to you. Bring it to me.

I mean, I just love her. I love that show. I love that show. I mean, that guy really seems like he lives on the margins of New York. I believe he's Canadian. Good work by him. He was really ice grilling the crowd, too, from behind. He looks like he's 6'4.

Yeah. So I don't know if he's like 5'7. But he was like towering over the cast of Maisel, which would not be shocked if the cast of Maisel was relatively short. Rachel Brosnan, tiny miniature person. So maybe he's like 5-11. But he was just like ice grilling the crowd. I was like keep it real.

That's right. I also think, like, look, don't ever let him see you smile. It's not this Instagram shit. You're letting Bruce. Is Atlanta the best show on television? Yes. Did all these geniuses get nominated? Yes.

You can't control what's going to win or what people are actually going to watch, you know? For me, the most shocking thing was that, so FX didn't get Atlanta the trophies that it deserved. But the real winner from that night for me was the FX press and marketing shop. Because of the Americans. Because of the Americans getting, again, like, Should Kerry Russell have won? Should the Americans have won? Probably.

But they got that show, the valedictory awards that they had been campaigning for. There's such a rush to it wasn't enough when the fact that it got any is amazing to me. The Joe and Joel rightfully got recognition for all the work they did on that show. The Matthew Reese, who's been brilliant on it, got the recognition. And by the way, did they ever get Versace over the finish line? Seriously. Again, this is the Sam Esmail pod, but like he loves it. loves that show and constantly as honest for not appreciating it enough.

I didn't like it. I went back to it and tried again. And the fact that the narrative around that show was that this was yet another masterpiece from the FX Ryan Murphy Factory and it deserved, you know, and that won award after award. That was really impressive to me, purely from a like campaign. I noticed a decision. It's a taboo. Yeah, how'd you feel about that?

I just mean, while we're throwing Hosanna's at the FX shop, I mean, maybe check your blind spots there, guys. Maybe reallocate the resources a little bit. Okay, so that happened. I mean, look, man, I've not watched Ozark Season 2. That's okay. How are you feeling about it? You know, this was one of those effects. I'm done.

I watched it in essentially a weekend. I think that the best of it is the best of it. Like the best moments on the show are among the best moments on it. I was a little bit surprised. Do you care if I give away like a little bit of bits about it? I'm not going to say anybody. I was surprised that they did not start with the riverboat is up and running. Okay, yeah.

It's more of a five minutes later, the second season starts thing. And it almost feels like season 1A in terms of it's just an extension of the first season, although a lot of stuff happens and a lot of characters change. But I was kind of like when the first season ends and without giving away how they get there, this family is looking to get into business with the Dixie Mafia's. essentially in an opening, not Dixie Mafia, but the Ozark Mafia, opening a riverboat casino. And I was like, I cannot wait to be on this casino. Like, I cannot wait for this entire world to open up and who's going to come on.

And it seems like such an incredible mechanism through which to transform people. Have we had a riverboat casino in the public sphere since Maverick, the film? No, I mean, David Milch had his riverboat casino show, but the riverboat sank. so they had to cancel the show. We're horses pulling the riverboat casino down the river, and they all got pulled in one by one. That's one for our luckheads. But yeah, it's good.

It's just very much like, y'all liked Ozark, bang. Here's some more Ozark. That sounds Netflix-y to me. That's interesting. You know, Ozark is often compared to Breaking Bad, and it's interesting to me that if that's the case, it may have taken the wrong lesson from Breaking Bad, because what Ozark did so well was hit fast-forward.

Yeah. and wasn't as methodical about showing its work the way Breaking Bad did, and really only Breaking Bad has ever done successfully. It would have been very Ozark to me if they had started in like year two of the casino, right? Like, let's just get to it. Yeah. So two other shows that we should touch on during this big scramble. One of the things that I'd be curious, once you get caught up with stuff,

and I know that really for the next few weeks, your sole focus is to just catch up on post-peak TV. But Allison and I were talking. just as we're doing a little bit of an anthology of Greatest Hits from the last few podcasts. Allison and I were talking a bit about how we are in a very, I don't know, we can call it divisive, but you're getting a lot of divergent opinions about shows.

There's not a ton of consensus about shows, but it's not like this, like everybody is wrong and I'm right as much as it's like, your mileage is really varying on forever or maniac. I think Saul, if anybody is, if you're watching Saul, you're like, the show's really great, although when you ask somebody what happens,

and it's like, well, they got some post-it notes, and they wrote on them for a while, and then these German guys. Well, let's talk about those. Forever is a show that when I was in Albuquerque for a long weekend after some night shoots, I had time to watch, and I watched all of it. Yes, I watched all of it as well.

And I loved it. Yes, I did not love the ending. But I know that this is, what you just said rings very true to me. I loved it for a number of reasons. Everyone here knows if you're doing a drinking game and I hope you're not doing it during your workday, yes, I like the runtime. That was very amenable to the runtime of this show.

But I thought it was very thoughtful, very beautiful, very funny, and it had the high aesthetics of Master of Nunn, which Alan Yang worked on, of course, and executive produced and directed a lot of the episodes of. But for me, this was a much more emotionally rich and interesting canvas. Could that be because I am no longer in my 30s with enormous discretionary income in New York City? And in fact, I have been married for quite some time. I'm going to leave that out there. That's very possibly true.

Sure. But I just thought, and you tell me if this sounds like I'm bringing this new perspective to bear on the show, but I just thought it used the talent and its opportunity so well. I think I've never been a hard-carrying member of the Church of Maya Rudolph. I think she's great because I'm an American who likes good things. But this was to me... Very high approval rating. But this was to me her best performance by a million miles.

Because it was so fully realized and lived in and allowed her to do a lot of things, not just the highest of the highs that she's often called on to do in a sketch comedy. And the flip side of that was it used Fred Armisen very well, too, who I find very funny in limited doses. And this show understood that he was a supporting player on the show and played to everyone's strengths in a way that I just thought was smart. And so I realize I am talking like I'm telestrating the show now. I haven't even talked much about passion why I liked it.

It's really more being impressed by it. Maybe that's where I'm at right now. Yeah, I think that I just dislike the ending quite a bit. And that's a, it's beyond sort of aesthetics and more about, think a failure of imagination and that something is so imaginative as this show, which is imagining a drab suburban afterlife and find out that being with your life partner is actually a kind of death, you know, hell, you know, not that it's hellish, but just that you wanted to imagine a different version of yourself in the afterlife. I thought that the brevity with which they

arrived at the idea that, you know, after one sort of soulful conversation, that they would be like, let's walk on an ocean floor together and be together forever. It just felt very apatatarian. Like, the thing is, we all love each other. And the family is what's important. And it's like, no, man, let her be Catherine Keener and go to Esseland. I think that's a very good point. I think that there is a ease of use that is prevalent in a lot of comedies and on television.

And, you know, Master of None is guilty of this too, where it uses very high production values, enormous talent, great wit, and humor to elucidate points that are maybe not that complicated. You know, like, there's an episode of Master of Nun that was very celebrated, and I watched it, and I was like, so phones are bad? Right. Like, uh-huh. That's pretty deep. But I thought that this show had a little more room and space around it to think about other things. There's the standout episode is the sort of bottle episode.

It's five or six, where it's Jason Mitchell and Hong Chow. And the leads aren't really in it at all. That also is very mastered and unlike, and I love when they do that. I love that they find room within their relatively limited show to tell other stories. I thought both those people were great. You could tell that they both enjoyed an opportunity to do something that they haven't really done before on camera. And I thought that that show, that episode, just by the way the story was told, but also the depth of feeling in each scene, conveyed a deeper. I was just impressed by the depth of emotion in that.

Yeah. I think that's a good point, that it was. was these guys maybe are better short story writers than they are either novel or continuing series of novel writers, right? Because the ending of forever, while I agree was not fully satisfying, it definitely ends being like, well, we could do this again, you know, Bezos? Yeah, right. You let us do it again? Well, this is something I've been thinking about a lot, because as you've gotten this sort

of explosion of these 30-minute, they're basically like high-end, not sitcom, but they're basically situation dramaties. And Allison wrote about Forever very well in this regard in terms of its way in which it's kind of existing in between a drama and a comedy, and it has elements almost of science fiction when you're getting into like the rules and regulations of the afterlife, which are pretty pliable, I bet.

But now that there's this volume of these shows, and now that you basically, you could, if you wanted to catch up, you would have six or seven weeks of shows to catch up on. There is almost like I have like a DNA thing where there's just going to be some TV that I'm like, that's pretty good. No matter how good it is and no matter how creative it is and how much they invest in it, both financially or creatively, it's almost like we're now creating a baseline of where network TV was

of peak TV. Yeah, I think that's a smart observation. Do you know what I mean? So it's like shows like forever, which I think are fine, almost get the scrutiny of something like lost or madman, but are in fact like a note to itself. You know what I mean? It's not a novel. It is a short story. And yet, like, I think that when you get to the end of it and you consume it in the sort of racious way that a lot of people did, I personally was just kind of like, oh, okay.

I don't know if any show is going to take the mantle of being about everyone's experience or, you know, or everyone's cultural, on everyone's cultural radar. I also think it would be really difficult if any of the shows assumed the mantle. They're just more shows, you know. I don't know if you were thinking about this when you were saying what you just said, but, you know, another show that's been on since I've been gone as the deuce. I think I'm three or four episodes into the season. I am eager to catch up and we're going to talk about it.

And I love it. And they announced that the next season will be the final season. Which is what George Pelicanos more or less told us when it came on the podcast last year. This was designed to be a three-season show. And, you know, I think I'm just turned around now

where I'm just feeling like we're lucky to have shows from the Pelican of Simon Universe. I love being in that universe, even when things get rough as they do on those shows. What I've seen in the do so far this year is exceptional. The performances are fantastic.

the sense of weirdly old-fashioned TV aesthetics, right, that I'm just happy to be back with these people again and seeing these performances and living in the city and marveling over the production design, which is the thing I do now, I guess. I don't know, and we'll find it when we zero in on an episode to talk about or maybe when we recap the whole season, what it meant or what it accomplished.

But I just, I mean, I like what you were saying because I am loving watching that show the way I used to love to watch ER NYPD Blue. It's not those shows, and its goals aren't the same. And it's intellectually more demanding a little bit than, say, watching the ER where you can kind of look up and then maybe, I guess back when ER was on, you would look at a box score in the sports section or something. I had an old newspaper.

I don't know what I was doing while ER was on. I had a microfiche machine in my dorm room, and I would just be reviewing. You were so popular in college. It was really popular. But yeah, I loved it. And the better call Sol thing, which has I love that, you know, before

I left we were talking about it, I love that you continue the conversation about it. I am watching it in a way that I said didn't flatter the show. I am watching it week to week now. And half the time I am just enchanted. And, okay, three quarters of the time I enchanted, there is still 25%

of the time where I'm like, I can't believe they are connecting this fucking dot. I can't believe it. Am I angry about it? Do I think that money should, would be better used elsewhere in the world? Not really. Yeah. But I got to tell you, like, I have never spent a moment in my life this last decade wondering how they built the super lab. I never really cared. Have they done the best possible version of telling me that story? Yeah, they probably have, starting with a dude, they did. Starting with the French guy

with the hood over his head, you know what I mean? Like, terrific. But it does boggle the mind. And I do think, and we'll see it when we're done with the season, that the show has suffered slightly by its pivot to becoming the Breaking Bad prequel that we always thought it was. I was not super into Chuck. You've made that point explicitly. But that was a sort of... But that was the show. And now, for me, the only thing that is compelling in and of itself is Kim.

Okay. So I want to talk about Better Call Saul. Let's just take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay. Hey, guys, it's Liz Kelly. here to tell you that we have a brand new podcast called Halloween Unmasked, premiering Monday, October 1st. Here's a sneak peek.

There's trouble in the suburbs. A teenage girl named Lori Strode crosses a quiet street toward an ordinary house to find her friends. But Lori doesn't know that her friends are dead, and she doesn't know that she's walking right toward the masked killer of Michael Myers. The movie is Halloween. And Halloween just, it was like a breath of fresh, putrid air. He's a pure

unknowable evil. I'm film critic Amy Nicholson and this is Halloween on Mast a podcast series from the ringer celebrating the remarkable and terrifying rise of America's most revolutionary horror film. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast to Halloween Unmast and watch her back.

I think the scariest part was that he doesn't die at the end. So when you're 10 it's like, that guy's still out there. We gotta get him. All right, we're back. I wanted to get deeper into Saul with you. And I know that you're not entirely caught up, but... Almost there.

You know, you were talking about the way in which you watch it, which I think we've brought up a few times in the past, and I kind of missed it when you were like, it's on Netflix, we really got to get back into this. I watched the whole season,

it's amazing, and I was like, I'm behind, I'm behind, and behind. And then I caught up, and then this season, I've been basically, in a paranoid way, saving them three at a time. So I'll save three

and then watch them in like a huge chunk. Yes. And I say paranoid, because I'm constantly worried that I'm going to turn the internet on on Tuesday, and it's like, Ayo, Walter White just dunked on a dude! And I'm just going to be like, ah, crap. Now, that may or may not be inevitable.

But I do understand what you're saying, which is sort of like there's times in which you're watching this, and it's like watching Michael Jordan play against, like, the Washington Generals, like the 97 Bulls v. the Generals, where it's like, you've got all this acting talent, all this writing talent, and you're essentially telling a supplementary story. Yes. But, Guillermo del Toro did this whole run recently on Twitter about why he thinks BCS is better than Breaking Bad.

And he started getting into the distinction between plot and story. And he kind of went into a little bit. He was talking a little bit about how, like, plot is rhythm and story is melody. But I've been kind of obsessed recently with just how detailed and boring most of the story of what happens in every episode. episode is solid. Right, if you were to just tell someone what happened that episode. If I was like, so Kim, she's listening to music and she's highlighting. And then Jimmy is throwing a racquetball against a window and then he gets an idea. They brush their teeth sometimes. Yes. And then he does every single thing that would take to execute that. They skip no steps. And you know, you're going

through it. You're going through it. And yes, there is that dread. There is that like what's going to happen to Kim. And there's also the how is this going to connect to the breaking bad world. But you just realize you're watching these people basically their moral decay or their fall in real time more or less and when I say real time every single little decision that gets made

that leads to some future oblivion without knowing what happens to Kim and knowing that Jimmy becomes Saul who becomes Gene who is now a Sinaban manager and Nebraska who's looking over his shoulder I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before where they actually are using that height advantage that they have over all other television shows

because they've got this mythology of the Albuquerque underworld and then they know sort of where they have to end up but everything else is they're making it up. They're freestyling it basically. It feels like you're getting a depth of understanding of a giant story in a way that you wouldn't get ordinarily. Yeah, I think we've never seen anything like this, and I admire it for that alone. There are moments when I feel the constriction of the enterprise.

And, you know, like John Carlo Esposito coming back on the show, what a wonderful character, what a wonderful presence. It's difficult often to feel that he's there for anything other than fan service. a well-deserved check, honestly, except then there are moments like he delivers this long monologue at Hector Salamanca's bedside a few episodes back. And it's an incredibly juicy monologue,

and it's delivered brilliantly, and it adds texture and character and color to a story that, honestly, we pretty much understood. So I don't know, like him nursing him back to a certain level of health, right, fills in... It's kind of like, it's those moments on Wheel of Fortune when the puzzle is solved,

and then you spin the wheel one more time to get a little extra money out of it, even though you know what it actually says. And I get that, and it's fine. The larger thing that's been impressing me is when, and I joked about the Super Lab a moment ago, but I'll revisit it in a positive way, which is this is a show. I mean, Osamandias, right, was the name of the, some people consider it. I think I consider it to be the best episode of the, the series, maybe one of the best episodes of television ever.

Asimandias about all the things that a great king built reduced to sand. That's what the show is about. It's about the tragedy of obsession and work. In the early going of Better Call Saul, we joked about how Walter White cooking meth was more interesting fundamentally than Kim Wexler doing doc review. But all of these people are obsessed and consumed by the minutia of their work. That's where they choose to devote their energy and their time, and that's where they actually find solace when the rest of their lives are breaking down. And so to see every inch of effort

put into these enterprises that are, like most professional enterprises, dust at the end. And what did they really get out of it? That we know Mike is spending all of his days and nights babysitting, Randy, miserable, claustrophobic Germans to build something that is going to be destroyed. All of this to make money that is going to be lost is incredibly human and tragic and intense. And when you think about it that way, I only wish that the show had the real estate or the interest in giving a character like Mike, for example, who is the co-lead of the show, those moments of those rungs on the ladder. Because Mike had that incredible episode early on, that I broke my boy episode, where we really understood who he was. But since then, he's

Mike. And it's super fun to watch Mike just regulate and now speak German apparently and be able to literally accomplish anything in an impressive way without ever walking more than, like, without ever increasing his RPMs as he meanders around this world. But he's, it's not just that we know he's going to survive better call Saul, it's that he's already who he is. And I kind of wish we could see him slipping down the rungs a little bit more as he becomes more and more embroiled in Gus Fring's empire and his devotion to these things. That makes sense. Does that make sense?

Because certainly all that attention is going to Jimmy, and, you know, maybe this is the way I'm watching the show, but it seems like that die has been cast now. Yeah, so the tension of the show obviously surrounds Kim. And luckily they have, I think, someone giving the best performance on television in the role of Kim and Ray Seahorn. Where do we land on her name?

Is it Re or Ray? I think it's Ray based on her responding. to people in Twitter asking, how do you pronounce your name? Wow, so that's the source you're going with? Yes. You don't think that's fake news? Alexa Fogel, our pronunciation ombudsman, I believe, says it's Ray as well. Yeah, I still don't know if I can quite articulate what's really amazing about this performance.

Her and Michael Mando are the two people that I think are really popping. And not surprisingly, there's the two new people on the show. The people whose fates are unknown. And I think it's the amount of... internalization that she has to do because she's not, with the exception of that like explosion against Howard earlier in the season,

she's doing so much basically silent face acting, you know, where she's in a meeting with Mesa Verde, but her mind is wandering towards setting up this elaborate con to get Huel off, you know? And there's something about

how she is processing. Maybe it's because Jimmy was already a con man and knew that this is basically his baseline and personality, and it's really, when he's not being a con man, that's the con. She is ultimately, like, a very good person and a very diligent worker and a good lawyer, and she is actually fighting away a demon.

You know, she has actually got this thing that's, like, telling her, like, you feel alive when you're out working without a safety net on a wire. Yes. And that's watching someone process that, which is a very relatable human thing to be putting yourself basically in danger has been remarkable. She, I mean, she is the Walter White of this show

more than Jimmy McGill is. That's a much more concise way of saying. Yeah, absolutely. In the sense that what she is on so far is kind of an elevator of morality as opposed to a down escalator. And that alone makes it more nuanced and makes it more interesting

because in general, her decisions about her life and her professional career are sound. The Mesa Verde decision that she makes midway through the season and then about becoming a partner. I mean, yeah, that's a much smarter way to live your life. What interests her about the law, that is a much smarter, more fulfilling way to live your life. But she is also

a generous person and a kind person and a loyal person. And as you said, someone who doesn't mind a Moscow mule or whatever that is in the middle of the afternoon. Tequila from the guy that they got on. That blue bottle. I mean, I'm going to catch up and we're going to continue watching the show because it's unique, but it also allows us to have, it's a good test case for this larger conversation we've been having so far in this podcast about the role TV shows play in our lives and what sets them apart. I did realize before we end, I did want to go back to one thing because at the very beginning, maybe this is also a sign of me. me being a self-serving showrunner now.

But at the very beginning, you were asking about Breyer Patch, and you said something about Rosario, and I said she was there. I just want to take a moment to publicly say that she's fucking amazing. She is an incredible person and an incredible actor. Negging of Rosario Dusson. Dude, she is a hero. Big podcast listener? She definitely does not know about the podcast.

Some other members of the cast found out about the podcast, and will no doubt be checking in. She's so incredible as a person and as at top of the call sheet and made everyone so happy. delightful on set, and I think her performance is really special. But I have to say, for as much as I said earlier, and this is true, that I'm now totally in the tank for line producers or good line producers. And Todd Campbell, who does Mr. Robot and did Homecoming and shot our pilot as just a genius. And, you know, I've talked before. I'll talk again about Lilliamer Pore who directed

the show. Dude, the first thing you do when you're a critic for a TV show is you often are like, well, the star is really good. And then you get into it and you're like, I should pay more attention to the writing staff or the whatever. actors are magic. That's my main takeaway, and I just want to piggyback on the way you were describing Ray Seahorn's performance. I do think actors are magic. I think that they somehow take words or the setting

and all the details that we were talking about, and they're the ones who bring it to life. And yes, it's the oldest saw in the world to say that it's not coal mining. But it's pretty amazing to watch people work until five or six in the morning with whatever's going on in their lives, however they're feeling that day,

whatever else is in the air contextually and bring it and be on in a very difficult way and hold the camera and hold the scene and elevate

that's the other thing that I was most impressed with honestly like they to see acting not and I said magic just now so let me walk it back to see it not as a magic trick

like maybe you see it when you're watching on the screen or when you go to the theater but to see it as an applied skill was pretty incredible and because I don't think I have any other outlet for this stuff And you mentioned ER a moment ago.

I did occasionally want to drop a few of other people who were in the cast of the show or recurring guest stars. Did you know that we had Dr. Donald Anspaugh on Breyer Patch? Did he tell you any ER stories? John Elwood. That guy, Hall of Fame, I would say, right? You remember him as like he ran the hospital, right? He did a lot of scenes with, what was Bill Macy's character's name? Morganster something?

Dr. Morgan Stern. Right, and Anspa and Morgan Stern. Yeah, he told me a wild ER story. So here's the thing I didn't know about the great John Elwood that he didn't do any screen acting until ER. He was just a theater guy and a very respected, well-known theater guy. He lives in Seattle, regional theater was in New York, and was in L.A. doing a play in the 90s.

It was being, I think it was a John Patrick Shanley play, and it was at the tape or whatever the main theater is here. And he got a call from his theater agent. And it was like, these people from a show want you to come down and audition for him. And he was like, okay. And they were like, just do they want to see the monologue you're doing every night. And he said, well, that's easy. What's the show?

And they said, it's called ER. And he said, never heard of it. And he went in front of like 30 producers from Amblin and whatever, did this monologue, went back to his hotel where he was staying, the blinking message light. And they were like, you got the gig. He was like, okay. And then launched his second career by being on ER. And I was really, I got to say, I was really hoping for some, like, deep sherry

Stringfield cuts. Where's Stringfield, man? Some like Ben Ruby gossip, D-Z-R-D, L-O-Ls. And he didn't really, this is the most boring story of all, so maybe he'll have to call in, but he did say that it was the most magical and greatest set, and it was, he just talked about how much fun it was. And that's a dude. You see actors not just who are great for certain parts of their career, but this guy,

he's in his 70s, flew to Albuquerque, just showed up. and just brought it. Yeah. It was pretty exciting. That's awesome. It's pretty exciting to watch people be able to do this up close, and I'm going to bore everyone for the next year with stories about something that they can't see yet. Well, we'll keep talking about, obviously.

And I think it's going to inform a lot of our conversations as it did today. Thursday, maybe we'll talk a little bit about this most recent episode of Saul when it comes out on Monday. We probably maybe we can catch up on the deuce on Thursday. Oh, we're going to do this again? I thought this was just like the Welcome Home Show. Well, Manzukas wants to come on soon to talk about Yellowstone and Magnum P.I. That's his wheelhouse right now? I was like hitting him with all these.

I was like, Maniac is good, this is good, this is good. He's like, let's talk about Yellowstone and Magnum B.I. Okay, I like that. So we have a lot of stuff to talk about. I will be back on Thursday. I'm not leaving you again. You held it down. Thanks, man.

Thank you to you, Allison, Sean Miles. Who else, who else pinch hit? Grotto, Zach Barron, Sean Fennacy, yeah. How was it for you, though, really? It was good. I missed you. Yeah. Thanks, buddy.

This is very easy to talk to you. Yeah, it's a pleasure. Should we do it with the mics turned on? Shout out to Kyah. We're back. See you Thursday. Great job, Branskys.