The Watch - Cautiously Optimistic About ‘True Detective,’ Plus: ‘Tidying Up With Marie Kondo’ Sparks a Trend | The Watch (Ep. 321)

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

Discussing ‘The Passage,' which feels like a cable or streaming show trying to fit into a network mold (2:18), casual optimism about the third season of ‘True Detective’ (14:23), and what else you should look out for on television in the coming months (19:44). Plus: The Netflix show ‘Tidying Up With Marie Kondo’ is inspiring people to clean out their homes and offices (27:04). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Alison Herman and Alyssa Bereznak Read Alison Herman on 'The Passage' here. Read Alison Herman on 'Tidying Up with Marie Kondo' here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. The NFL conference championships are here, and on the site, Robert Mays is writing about why this year's chiefs are the team that Andy Reid has been waiting for, and Kevin Clark breaks down the era of the old dominant quarterback. Also, don't forget to check out all of our sports video coverage. We've got Master Sports with Roger Sherman, Slow Newsday with Kevin Clark, and NBA desktop with Jason Concepcion. You can check it all out on YouTube and The Ringer.com. Hey, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Watch. No Greenwell today, but I was joined by Alison Herman to talk to me about the passage and true detective.

And then Alyssa Beresnack joined me to talk about Marie Kondo at the end of the episode and her Raiders of the Lost Ark expedition into the New York Ringer office to bring the Kamri method to the unruly leftovers of our staff there. So it was a really fun talk with her. Before we get started, just two things. One, if you are looking for a true detective after show, I have got one for. you. It's called The Flat Circle, and it's co-hosted by myself and Jason Concepcion. You can watch it on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter at all the usual ringer handles right after HBO airs the show every Sunday. So as soon as it's over, we go up, we break down the case, we talk about the true crimes that it could be influencing the case, we talk about the themes of the episode

and the context around the different timelines that are going on. I've really been inspired by this season of True Detective. It's been really thought-provoking, and it's been a blast to do the show with Jason. So please check out the Flat Circle. You can also listen to that as a podcast on the Recapables Feed. So if you go to the Recapables feed, is it Recapables True Detective? Yes. It's Recapables True Detective, says Kai. So you can check it out there. Also, as I've been deep in the True Detective minds, I haven't had as much time to think or look at award season coverage, but that's okay because I got the big picture. So make sure you're listening to Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins on the Big Picture and also Sean's interviews with some of the

most interesting filmmakers around that podcast continues to just get better and better. And it's so fun to listen to those guys break down such a crazy award season. So without further ado, let's get into today's episode. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am a recovering editor at the ringer.com.

And joining me in the studio, braving my late period cold is Alison Herman. What's up, Allison? Not too much. I've been Marie condoing my whole apartment. Have you? How's that I've been going? I'm going to be talking to Alyssa Bear's neck later on about the show and about her brave condoing of the New York Ringer office. I mean, she's doing a public service.

I'm just procrastinating. But my shirts are very elegantly folded. They're organized by color. I missed a UPS delivery of some container store shipments. Of those condo boxes. Yes. Well, specifically they are shoe boxes with a transparent front. Oh, so you can see them.

Yes. And I can like fill up some dead space. my apartment. It's going great. It's the rainy season in L.A. This is amazing. Everybody's life is being changed for the better by this show. Let's talk about a couple of shows that I don't know if people's lives are being changed for the better for them, but they're being affected. They're being affected. The one I really want to talk to you about is the passage, but I also want to chat a little bit about True Detective. The passage debuted last night. It's a long gestating. Long gestating adaptation of Justin Cronin, the first book of Justin Cronin's

trilogy passage, city of mirrors, I think it was the second one. The 12 in City of Mirrors, I can't remember how, which one order they go in. This was maybe the first book that Andy and I ever talked about

on the old Hollywood Perspectus podcast back at Grayland. Wow, I feel like I'm treading on hallowed ground. Well, it's just been something that like, I feel like I've actually been waiting more or less 10 years to see. And so it's so interesting that it arrives in this most old-fashioned of ways to us last night.

Whereas, like, given all the different avenues and all the different ways in which this story could have been told on quote unquote television, what we know is television now, we get an old school, well, well, well promoted, Fox, like regular Fox, not FX, network drama.

Yeah. And I as much want to talk about that as like a, this show has like a lens to talk about network dramas and the state of kind of, you know, regular network television as I do about the passage yourself. But you wrote a really great piece about the show on the site, generally what were your feelings about it? Well, the fact that it's on Fox is weirdly almost the most interesting thing about it.

Like, it's perfectly fine as a network drama, but it's more, you know, if you're watching it as a reasonably informed viewer in 2019, obviously I'm kind of a special case and that TV is all I think about. But I think even just an average TV consumer or someone who is as ardent a fan of this book as you are, you can't watch anything on Fox without being very aware. that, you know, there's also TV on the internet and there's also TV on cable. And I think that really raises the burden of proof for an adaptation as hotly anticipated and long gestating as this one is. And I, it's very much a Fox drama. Like, it's, that's what you can tell it is from the first moment. And it's weird because that's exactly the kind of show that you have in mind when you read a book like that and think, oh, this can't be adapted for TV. Sure. That's why.

you know, Game of Thrones would never have happened unless it was on a network like HBO because the things that are in Game of Thrones the book are not the kinds of things that you can put on Fox. Yeah, but I would make an argument that there are elements of, I don't think it's a one-to-one, but there are parts of the passage that make me think it could have been maybe not as successful, maybe not the juggernaut the Game of Thrones was, but it has twists, it has sprawl, it has world-building in a way that it's not necessarily a hugely missed opportunity because for all I know, it could become a sensation and way more people

could see it on Fox than whenever have seen it on FX or HBO or whatever. But it does feel like, I kind of can't believe this is where we arrived at with the adaptation. That being said, there are some good things about it. There is some promise to it. Yeah, I mean, it's very much, like you can tell there are elements of it that I think, say, this is a prestige property. Like, you know, the actual book alternates between the quote unquote present or near future. where this sort of vampire plague originates as a government experiment in the far, far future, which I think would require more of an investment than perhaps Fox was willing to make because it's completely like post-humanity.

One of the choices the show makes is to basically turn it into like a Logan-esque, gruff, male authority figure, cute, spunky kid, like almost buddy cop, not buddy cop, but buddy drama. And it's interesting to watch like the adapters and the woman. And who wrote the pilot, I believe her name is Liz Helden, right? Yeah. So she's worked on, like, Friday Night Lights, various other NBC dramas. She's like, she is very adept at working within the parameters of American broadcast television. And you can see, like, the elements that she selected or the elements she added to make it more of a familiar structure for a Fox viewer. I mean, one of the things that I kind of see is on in my review is of the two scientists, you know, one goes on to become patient zero of the outbreak and the other is overseeing the experience. But as like an extra motivation, they give him, you know, a sad-eyed wife who's got early onset Alzheimer's. And Mark Paul Gosselaar's character has who basically decides to take this kid under his wing and try to protect her from the nefarious government forces that are experimenting on her has a dead daughter. Yes. Who this reminds him of, which is just the kind of like insert motivation here 101 that I think most network shows have been trained to put in their pilots so that they get picked up.

that people understand the character motivations from the jump. Yeah, and it's really interesting in the book, and this is another thing that it has in common, it could have had in common with Game of Thrones, was the legion of people out there who would have been like, just wait till this happens, you know, as book readers. But in the book, a lot of the information is broad strokes the same

as it is in the TV show. It's just that it's told in a very creative way. So, for instance, the trip that opens the show where the scientists go down to like the Bolivian Highlands to discover essentially a vampire. You know, they're looking for something a cure. We're very careful not to call them a vampire, but yes. It's a point of contention.

That's told in a series of emails back and forth between Dr. Lear, who's played by Henry and Kusuk in the show and, you know, his bosses back at the college that he's come from. And the way in which that story is told through these emails is like, it's gripping because they're written like emails. You know, they're written as like these travel logs, and then it's like, something weird happened today. And then it's like, oh, shit.

you know, and instead it's pretty much the most like efficient economical and sort of splashiest way they could have done it as they did it on this TV show. It's strange though. Do you think that this thing has any potential to be a sensation? It did decently well in the ratings. I was looking it up on the way over and it's like $5 million. I just don't know what the creative potential is in the long term. Like I felt like I sort of had a sense of what it would be going forward. It also, you know, because they only do one timeline of the many timelines in the book, there's not like a tremendous amount of suspense that they're, you know, this is all going to go great and they're just going to cure the avian flu epidemic that they're doing this experiment for, which is a little bit of a problem, at least in terms of stakes. I don't know. Like, maybe it'll catch on, but I don't know if that'll be because of word of mouth from people who initially love the book, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to look at the way that what networks tend to stick with. They tend to stick with procedurals and that there's a. baseline of interest in whether it's one of the many Chicago shows or one of the many hospital shows that we have or one of the very many legal proceedings or NCIS type shows that we have. But I guess the closest thing I could sort of compare this to would be, what was the FX show that was about? The strain. Which I think was supposed to be FX is not, I mean, answer. They famously did not take Walking Dead, but it was supposed to be their Walking Dead killer. and the passage has, I think, way more epic potential than any of those shows,

but I wonder how closely they'll try to keep it to the near miss of the week in terms of the end of the world, even though that is ultimately part of what the book is about. Yeah, I mean, one of the things I wanted to stipulate, like what I mean by this reads to me like a prestige TV cable streaming thing and not a network thing is not like all good things must be on cable and all bad things are on network and network dramas are just totally unsalvageable. But I just think, like, of the things that network television is best at,

I think that's definitely comedies and sitcoms. I think network sitcoms, particularly family sitcoms that are in great place right now. It's a procedural. We're both ardent fans of the Good Fight. Absolutely. It's just, you know, when I look at a... But the Good Fight could not be on CBS, as it is currently,

but it has the bones. Sure. I think it's very interesting. that like veteran TV network TV writers like the Kings like opted as a very deliberate choice to keep the procedural format. Sure. Even when they went to streaming. But, you know, with a story like this, I would think it demands a cable level of coordination, of investment, of budget. I mean, like, it's such a crass.

And execution of story. You have to be like, this is going to take three or four seasons. Yeah, it's a long game. But, you know, it's such a crass nuts and bolts thing. But like, it just doesn't look that great. Like the stages for the underground laboratory, like definitely look like they took a generic, like, science set from the Fox Live and just, you know, converted it very swiftly, which is, you know, not to slight the production designers and art directors

who worked in this production. But, like, that's part of the reality of the way network television is made is you have less time to do stuff. You have less money per episode because it's spread out over more episodes. It just doesn't seem like that kind of making decisions week by week, month by month sort of structure is best suited to something that looks like, at least to me, like it would require a very deliberate, you know, year by, you're thinking in terms of years and seasons. You're not thinking in terms of episodes and episodes when you want to. And that's the thing I guess I keep coming back to is, you know, I keep mentioning Thrones, but maybe what I'm really sort of longing for is an experience like lost, where it is something

that is on network television that is seen by the maximum amount of people who can just turn a TV on. has that same kind of captivating cult of fandom around it and that same kind of passion around it. And it's interesting because, you know, watching the pilot, I did have the sense that I had already seen it because they had so heavily advertised it

during football over the weekend over the last couple of weeks, really. And you realize that like there really isn't, there's nothing like network TV when it comes to promotion and also like celebration of accomplishment. Because like if this was any kind of hit, they would just be like,

the juggernaut show. that everybody can't stop talking about, find out what your friends are saying, you know, like about the passage. And, you know, that could be something that lifts this show up. I just think, like, the kinds of audiences who latched onto loss so fervently

are now trained to direct that kind of attention to shows on HBO, to lesser extent streaming, because obviously that all hits at once. But I think, like, people still want to engage with art that way. I just think those kinds of fans get, you know, like get excited by and pay attention to developments in certain outlets

because there's so much TV that everyone needs to kind of like narrow their attention span in some kind of way. So I'm a little worried that you know, people will see the Fox label and the Fox aesthetic and they'll just think like,

okay, that's probably for like my aunt Wisconsin. This is 911 but with vampires. Yeah, right. Yes, exactly. Right. So are you going to stick with it for a couple more weeks, you think?

I think like the strength of your and some of our other colleagues like devotion to the original makes me curious. But also this is like the busy time of year for TV. So I have many other things competing for my attention. Well, let's talk about one of those things, which is true detective.

Which I think that you probably were a little bit skeptical going into this season, right, coming out of season two. That's a delicate phrasing, yes. Yeah. And but nothing has given me as much joy as when you dropped by my office earlier in 2019 and we're just like, it's pretty good. It's okay. It's okay. Praise the Lord. Yeah.

Obviously, I'm like completely in the bag. So one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the show was to give me a little bit of balance here in terms of where we're at with the season. So two episodes went up on Sunday, and we obviously did the after show after that. And episode three airs this coming Sunday, and then they'll do, I believe it's an eight-episode season. How are you feeling after two episodes? So I was actually talking about this with our colleague, Micah Peters, with whom I share in office earlier. And I think like the one word I would use to describe my attitude towards the season is just caution. like we have all been burned before.

And I think part of me is definitely intrigued. I definitely do not think it's going to be the boondoggle that season two was. But so much of me I've noticed as I'm watching it is just withholding any final judgment until I see how this pans out, whether that's the structure, whether that's like the literal mystery. The one thing I'm not in doubt about is that Mahershala Ali is excellent. And I can't believe that something as like potentially hokey and gimmicky is having him an old age makeup and or a wig for half the time or two-thirds of the time is actually working incredibly well. He's an amazingly convincing old guy. Yeah, and it's a story like about aging and

being old and regret. And I cannot believe how well both he and the special effects team who apply his prosthetics or are pulling this off. So I think I'm really appreciating the performance. I'm intrigued enough to be like invested in where this is going. But I think, you know, season two aside, the lesson I learned from season one was honestly that I wasn't super sure that Nick Pizzolato understood or like what he found interesting about the story was clearly what the people who latched on to all the Carcosa and Yellow King and H.P. Lovecraft stuff found interesting about the story. And I think that this season, if I can defend my guy Nick Pizzolato here, is that he's serving both masters there. So I think that there's, as we've seen so far,

plenty of breadcrumbs to follow that lead back to a yellow king or lead forward to some new cults and their suggestions, obviously, he's brushed these aside. But with the three teenagers, that there's these allusions to the West Memphis three, and that there's like all this stuff about the moral panic of the 80s that was happening. But at the same time, I found it to be a really, like, thought-provoking television show. And it makes me think about stuff that's not necessarily evident in the text. Now, those are my favorite kinds of pieces of art, the kind of art that makes you think about all sorts of different stuff, whether it was intentional or not. And it may just be that this is particularly dialed into my interests of these Vietnam veterans and the sort of decay of America over the course of the 80s and 90s.

But are you finding yourself intellectually stimulated by it, if not just like, okay, so where are these kids? Well, you and Jason made a very convincing case that this is like literally connected to season one. Yeah. I find it very interesting that there are so many deliberate just aesthetic echoes of season one. There's the interrogation structure, the fact that we're in the South, the creepy dolls. And part of what I kind of find interesting about this is like the name true detective comes from a pulpy kind of factory churned out like pulp fiction magazine. And part of me is kind of intrigued by Pizzolato, like deciding to lean into that a little bit and like we're playing the hits and like not being afraid. of being a little repetitive, just in the sense of having a very identifiable template and repeating

certain aspects of it, which might be like a little bit of a lowering of overall ambition, and I have to see where they go with that. But part of me is kind of like, okay, like, go with what works. Go with this like, wait, what's happening here, which inevitably is what happens when your main detective is being deposed. Sure. So I don't know of intellectually yet, although I've been really enjoying all the close read history explainers from both you guys and others about, you know, where all the satanic panic stuff leads and all the hints. But I am at least like engaged enough by the plot and, and reminded in a good way of season one.

Yeah. So again, I'm totally withholding all judgment. I think the three timeline structure is like incredibly tricky and it's going to be really hard to pull off in a way that's like, because you just have to withhold information. Right. There's so many different, like, you can, the reveals are happening and that each reveal that happens impacts how you view the other two timelines, like completely. Yeah, and especially with the oldest or most recent timeline. Like, you know, you're watching him reflect on his life without, at least

in the early episodes, really having much of a sense of what his life or what those regrets are. Sure. Right. So what transpired in the 15 years since 1990, not that we're even that deep into the 1990 timeline by episode two. Yeah, I'm also pretty sure that like once this is all concluded, you know, unless it, it totally screws the poop. I think this will be a thing where people are going to go back. And now that they know where it's headed, there's going to be a lot to close read beyond just like who the killer is. So we've got your detective.

And you mentioned this being such a busy time of year. So I wanted to get some of the things that you're most excited about that are coming out over the next few weeks. Okay. So something that currently came out that I want to just do a quick plug for is a British show on Netflix called Sex Education. I think all I really need to say is that Gillian Anderson plays a sex therapist in it. So, you know, it's very heartwarming. It's about teens. It's kind of like live action, big mouth meet skins.

Another Netflix show. It's quite a recommendation. Live action, big mouth meet skins. It's good, yeah. You can read about it on the ringer.com, I believe on Wednesday, but, you know, there's a piece of the offing about that. I really, really enjoyed it. Something that's also on Netflix that I was just watching screeners for before I walked over is a show called Russian doll. Yeah, I'm really excited about this.

Yeah, I think this is going to be a thing. I've seen TV critics kind of like running. in their palms together, getting really excited to talk about it with people once they've actually seen it. It stars Natasha Leone. It was co-created with Leslie Headland, who's a writer-director and Amy Poehler, who needs no introduction. It's a kind of Groundhog Day-esque setup, like this woman keeps dying and reliving the

same night, which is also her birthday party over and over and over again. So literally the plot of Happy Death Day. I don't know, Big Blumhouse movie last year. Oh, yeah. I think they're going for something a little more. More Groundhog Day, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, it takes that in really fun and surprising directions.

The writing is really fun. I have not finished it, so I don't know quite where it's heading, but it's got that, like, addictive 824-minute episodes. I think people are just going to, like, rip through it. Yeah. That's how I feel about Dairy Girls, which is also another Netflix. I watched the first episode of that. It was delightful.

It's really delightful. It's about a group of Irish school girls in the mid-90s in Northern Ireland, just being incredibly profane and boycotting their chip shop. and going to Paris on school trips and also with the backdrop of the troubles, but it is hysterical in places. Yeah, it's like what does it like to be just like a normal kid during this incredibly crazy time in geopolitical history, which I'm sure won't be relatable to people who are watching it. But it's just like burning, you can just burn through them because they're like around that 20 minutes.

And it's just like introducing me to a huge swath of profanities that I didn't really know about. Northern Irish profanity is really something I'm going to work on. They're so on sex education too. One of the characters is routinely called a cockbiter, which I'm not aware. It's a regular insult. I didn't know that either. Yeah. Any non-netflix shows that we want to plug here that you're excited about that are coming back or that they're coming.

So something I watched an episode of that I'm definitely really intrigued by is this show called Miracle Workers on TBS, where Steve Bishemi plays God as, like, the dude from the Big Lobowski. And Dana Radcliffe plays a worker in what is essentially heaven. and also Geraldine Viswanathan, who was in Blockers, is also in it. She was awesome in Blockers. Yeah, she's awesome in this. It's really great. It was created by Simon Rich, who did Manzan's Women. It's like one of those things that's so insanely high concept.

It could totally, like, run itself into the ground. But I watched the first couple episodes of that and was kind of like, yeah, this is interesting. Okay. And also, I'll do one last plug for a non-netflix thing. I watched the first three episodes of a show called Black Monday that's going to be on Showtime, starting this Sunday. Yeah. Don Cheadle. Yes. I've seen a lot of people in my Twitter timeline standing real hard for Regina Hall because

she was so great in support the girls. I stand by them. And to those people, I would also say you owe it to yourself to check out the show. Okay. My other, like, note in support of it is that I am literally so unused to seeing, like, jokes on premium cable now. It took me, like, the full pilot to realize that this was a comedy. Oh, really? Yeah. Just because I was like, oh, because it's created by, or co-creating by David Caspi, who did... Happy endings, yeah. Yeah, and Andrew Ronells is in it,

and, you know, it uses a lot of comic actors. Paul Shear's in it, right? Yes, Paul Shearer, Ken Marino. But it's just like a Wolf of Wall Street type, like very overt spoof of 80s Wall Street. Like, you would... When you read the byline, you're like, why is this on the same number as billions?

And then you watch and you're like, oh, it's way more stylized. And like, when Andrew Ronell is, like, sits out at a computer to do his financial wizardry, he literally like matches a keyboard and like numbers show up. It's not interested in the mechanics of it the way billions is. It's just like one liner, one liner, one liner, great performers. I don't know how it's going to pan out over the whole season, but I was just like, oh, it's been so long.

I think like the last proper comedy that was on premium cable or to premiere on premium cable was like insecure. Like it's been so long. Would you call camping a proper comedy? Debatable. Yeah. It's been a serious. Yeah. Allison, thank you.

much for joining us. And we'll check in with you a little bit later to see how you're feeling about a true detective. Excellent. Thanks so much. We'll be right back after we're from our sponsor. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by sci-fi. Survival is extra credit in sci-fi's new series Deadly Class from executive producers

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to discuss Marie Kondo and her Netflix show tidying up. I'm so happy to be here, and I hope this conversation sparks joy. I hope so, too. I hope we don't get thrown into a dustbin pile by anybody with their podcast queue. Now, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because you have this amazing ability to write about online phenomenons and they're interfacing with the real world. And I feel like you were a really interesting test case for this one in particular where the show kind of hits Netflix.

And, you know, it's always hard to tell with Netflix. They're very good at promoting themselves online. And if you talk to five or six people, it can feel like a huge trend. but it did feel like anecdotally, a bunch of people started cleaning their apartments after the show came out. Did you find that to be the case? Oh, for sure.

It was like in the air in Brooklyn that weekend it had come out. Like I think there was a New Yorker story that Beacon's closet was like overrun with hipster moms or something, which is just like amazing. And then there was like this other sort of like sub reaction, which was, oh, we all have to go thrifting now because the thrifting is really good. Oh, my God.

So I watched all of that unfold, and then it seeped into my own life. So you're watching it, and like in the back of your head, you're like, I'm due a kind of like a seasonal clean? Or was there something specific about the way in which condo cleans that was like, okay, I'm going to apply this to my own life. And then also to the ringer office in New York. Yes, more on that later, which I mean, it was a total mess. But I would say that it was more just like the show is not super entertaining. to me. I mean, it's cool to watch people clean, but it's not necessarily like action-packed or super dramatic, and you can kind of look away or cook or do anything while you're watching it.

It's a perfect Netflix show for that, except for like the moments when she's speaking Japanese. I don't speak Japanese. No. But that's when I just like started piles. I was definitely not going to do the whole home Conmarie method. And maybe someday that will happen. It will probably be when I move apartments. Sure. But in this case, it was more just like, yeah, actually, like, I don't need that. And, like, this dumb book has been here for such a long time. I had a fire and fury on, like, my floor.

And I was just like, that book does not spark joy, getting rid of that. Yeah. What about you? Did you get rid of anything when you were watching it? Well, so my wife and I go through pretty common cycles of, like, we need to clean. Seasonal generally. and when we got back from the holidays I think we had sort of in the mind

been like we have to redo the apartment a little bit and she had written a piece about Marie Kondo for New York Magazine where she got to visit the set and so she had a couple of her books and I think she started thinking about it but it really wasn't until we saw the folding method

on the show that I think was the big difference because usually what happens in these cleanings is that it just turns into mutual recriminations about what one person is choosing to keep or get rid of And of course, like, I'll throw out a t-shirt that she bought me or that, like, her mom picked out for me. Or she'll throw away, like, she'll start, you know, getting on me because I'm keeping too many books.

But then we start just like going through each book and being like, why do you still need this like women's studies, you know, textbook from 1999 and all these things. And, you know, we'll just sort of go back and forth. But there was something about the folding that really changed the entire thing and made it much more, like, peaceful. it brought like a real sense of like calm to the house when we were doing it. And so when you say that do you mean the thirds method? Yes. Yeah. And immediately like it just makes every drawer you have feel 10 times bigger when you do this.

For sure. Though my jeans, I don't know, I have like short dresser drawers. And so I was trying to like stand up my jeans the pretty way she does it. And they wouldn't fit anymore. And that made me kind of sad. Some of the boxes she presents are like very conveniently sized for her presentation. Well, I think and then that's like the enticement to get you to buy boxes, which is like I've wound up buying more things. That's her business plan.

Yes. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think that there was something very soothing in the act of folding these things. Now, I will check in with you in like about 10 or 12 days when I get tired of like methodically folding my clothes every single night after I go through like two or three things to wear in the morning. Just like most people probably throw on a bunch of different stuff in the morning before they actually decide how to leave the house. house, but right now it's going great. One thing that I was curious about, so you and Lindsay's a lads, who also works for the ringer, you guys decided to apply this method to our Ringer, New York office.

We did indeed. Okay. And can you give me a little bit of background about what prompted this? So I think it was the Friday. Like it had been a week since this show had been out, and that was when we were discussing Slack about, you know, how it's sweeping Brooklyn and everyone's, it's like a back. to the show that you would think is just like completely not controversial whatsoever. And I think Lindsay just was like, she like put her hands down on the desk and was like,

we need to clean this place up. It was kind of a dramatic moment. And I was like, hey, I agree with you. And like, mind you, Shoemaker, Ben, like, Grudadero are like all in the room and don't say anything. Do not give a shit. And so anyway, that's when. we hatched this plan and I was like, I'm going to order pizza on Monday. And at lunch, we're all going to throw everything away.

And Donnie was like, you could totally expense the pizza, but he was not going to help either. And yeah, ultimately. Is Donnie skeptical about the like the soul cleansing properties of doing this? Or was he just like, I just don't want to put in the labor? I think it was the latter. Okay. Also, Donnie switched desks and left some mess behind. And so Donnie did have a pretty large mess.

I don't mean to call him out. No, it's okay. He did have a lot of belongings. Let me tell you, the stuff that we found in the ringer in New York offices was astounding. I guess give me some highlights, but really low lights. Oh, God. This is the moment where I'm like, should I call people out by name? You could just do the items.

You don't have to be like it belonged to Glicksman. Sure. So one thing that we found, which was really fascinating, was like, just small amounts of ramen buried in a bunch of different separate drawers. Cooked? No, no. It was like ramen in bags, but it was just as if someone had been like methodically preparing for the apocalypse.

You know, I'm not afraid to share this. It was all charities. Okay. This is already going way better than I thought it was. This is great. Then, so we've just ordered like a lot of technical equipment because we have a makeshift podcast studio here, which I'm in right now. but it's definitely not as fancy a setup as in L.A.

And so over the last couple of years, we've just amassed like all these wires. And they're just like so many. Like big ones, small ones, ones with three prongs. Like just where did all these wires come from? So we consolidated, we made a wire drawer because we have like cabinets. What else? Just a lot of, like, Donnie's desk was full of like just printed out stats of soccer players. That's good.

I didn't, like, I didn't really have, and we just had no reason to keep those. The thing is, so I warned everyone in the Slack that they needed to clean out their spaces if they wanted to keep anything. We were just going to do like a full sweep. And I gave them, like, you know, Friday and the whole weekend and Monday. And then we cleaned out Johnny's desk. And like an hour later, he walked into the office and he was like, oh, is that all my stuff in the trash? And we were like, oh, sorry, we warned you. So yeah, there was also, it was like tension, just like in the show.

I don't know. You kind of like sense all these small annoyances in people's relationships. And in this case, it was playing out in real time among ringer colleagues. Okay. So that's one of the more interesting things about the show. It kind of follows the queer eye model where it's ostensibly this very practical advice show, but it also has like there's something restorative and like it's changing people as they go through this process. So queer eye obviously has overt social and political messaging going on that's really quite life-affirming when you watch it.

And Marie Kondo's show is actually getting at how clutter is sort of this extension of people's personalities and sometimes is even it's manifestation of some of our kind of problems that we have in our own minds and in our own personalities. I was wondering though, because what's fascinating about the office dynamic is that like a count. accountability is really hard. Like, you send out that message of, like, there's a yogurt in here from, like, the late Obama administration. And nobody is like, sometimes I think people genuinely forget, like, something belongs to them. But then there's just, like, also, like, if I don't take this step forward, it's going to be really hard to be, like, actually pinged for this. So I'm just going to duck the responsibility of this, of this Obama yogurt. For sure. And we had items like that. So the gross, you know, one thing I'm surprised about with the show, is there was nothing ever super gross happening. It's almost like they didn't. Yeah, it was all like, I have this book that is like only has like a vague sentimental value, but like is not of any real use.

Yeah, it's not like a hoarder situation where it's like five, like a squirrel family is living in this box. But in the case of the ringer, we had some dirty gym clothes at the bottom of a drawer. And no one wanted to touch them. And I don't blame them. I finally took, because I'm the most intense one, I guess, I finally took a plastic bag and used it like kind of like when you pick up dog poop.

Yeah. This sounds like this is your point break. This is like where you get your buzzes from. Let me tell you, if I had my own conmary show, I would show a method of how you pick up gross things with plastic bags. Yeah. So, yeah, that was one thing we disposed of. And, you know, the way we discussed that in the office, no one really wanted to take responsibility for it. They were just going to leave it there.

and I was like, no, that needs to leave the room. And then because we didn't want to blame anyone, we just decided it was like a former ringer staffers clothes. Okay. Yeah, that's easy to do. Yeah. It's the last guy out the door was the person who did it. You can't really do that in the home.

Yeah. I mean, for you, is this something without getting too deeply into personal, you know, your personal life? But like, would you consider yourself like a pretty fanatical cleaner in your own life? Or was this something that brought about like a change in behavior for you? I would say I'm not a clean freak. I'm not someone who needs to do the dishes before I go to bed by any means. And I definitely let clutter happen.

It's more out of just like out of sight, out of mind. I think of all of the people in the series I relate most to that gay couple that they were like, we don't want to be like students anymore. Yeah. It's like I have a very tidy sort of presentation. of things, but when you start opening baskets or boxes, it's just like, oh, there is no rhyme or reason to how you organize this. This is like a drawer full of like scissors and calculators. Yeah, right. Everybody's got a junk drawer, but it's like when the junk drawer starts to spill out

until ever to everything else. I think I definitely identified with that one too of just like moving into adulthood. The thing that I was most surprised about, we can like sort of leave it here, was how addictive it became once you started getting into the, like on the role of being. it doesn't spark joy. Because I bet sparking joy for means different things to so many different people. Once you start getting that line

under what you're going to keep and what you're going to throw away, it's astonishing how much you actually get rid of. Yeah, and that is one thing that I don't fully believe in when it comes to the Conmarie method. She reiterates this over and over again in the series that, you know,

you heighten your ability to sense what sparks joy as you clean. and then there's an aha moment and you just know. And I've just never felt that way. I think I've always sort of wondered, was this the right decision or am I doing this right? But I'm more addicted to just clearing stuff out because I forget about it immediately. So, I mean, maybe the answer to that is like most belongings don't spark joy and that people are just themselves sort of attached to the idea of owning stuff in general. Absolutely.

And then when you start to see all that space created, it becomes its own addiction on. to itself. Yeah. Well, Alyssa, thank you so much for joining me. We'll have to check in and find out how the office is faring in a couple of months and make sure it's still sparking joy. Yeah, and there's no missing tax documents or something. All right.

Thank you so much, Alyssa. Have a good one. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Sci-Fi from executive producers, the Russo Brothers. Survival is extra credit in sci-fi's new series Deadly Class. Set in the unsanitized counterculture of the 1980s, a disillusioned teen is recruited into King's Dominion, a secret academy for the Deadly Arts. There, he finds meaning and family in a group of outcast misfits who are out to change the world. Based on the bestselling graphic

novel by Rick Remender and West Craig, Deadly Class is a coming-of-age journey full of ancient mystery and teen angst. Deadly Class premieres January 16th on sci-fi. You can watch the first episode now at deadlyclass.ciphi.com and tune in on Sci-Fi Wednesday, January 16th. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Smilf, returning to Showtime with all new episodes starting January 20th. Bridget Bird is redefining what it means to be young, single, and a mom. Raw, honest, and relatable. Smilf stars Frankie Shaw, Rosie O'Donnell, and Connie Britton, only on Showtime.