The Watch - Confusion About What ‘The Morning Show’ and Apple TV+ Are Trying to Be, Plus: ‘Watchmen’ S1E3 | The Watch

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

‘The Morning Show,’ the flagship series for Apple TV+, debuted on Friday. Despite star power from Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carrell, the first episode fell flat (1:38). The show, and subsequently Apple TV+, seem confused about what it’s trying to be (20:08). Plus, we break down the third episode of ‘Watchmen’ (38:10) and bid farewell to ‘The Deuce’ (49:25). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, the new action-adventure game from Re spawn entertainment coming November 15th, taking place between Star Wars Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars A New Hope. Players will wield a lightsaber hone their force powers, and adventure across the galaxy in hopes of rebuilding the Jedi Order. Become a Jedi on November 15th in Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, available on Xbox 1, PS4, and PC rated T-14. I need sports to have to clear the room.

Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, it's the FERC and Cork mods of the Watch. Andy Greenwald! Do you think that people who listen to this podcast are noticing that your intros are becoming more explicitly tailored to...

It's pretty myopic. To the things that we want to talk about, like most. Yeah. But that aren't necessarily within the purview of this podcast. What's up, big dog? You're here. You got yourself a cappuccino. Chris got me a coffee today, guys.

We got off on the wrong foot because Andy greeted me this morning and said, you look like Mark Dupluss. Which is not a bad thing per se. I think Mark Duplas is a handsome guy. But I think he's referring to Mark Duplas' character's wardrobe on the morning show, which I would count as, who would you describe that as? I think it's kind of like something It's like substitute English teacher

Which does not quite right for a morning show Executive producer I call it something went wrong on the way to the F train That's right You know he spilled a coffee on his original shirt Can't pick up a sweater on the way A lot of collared shirts underneath sweatshirts on that show No he goes collared shirt sweater blazer on that show

That's what Charlie Chip Black does He goes three layers because you never know, dog. You never know in an ecosystem like that. Can I give you, we're going to talk about... The morning show? The morning show. We're going to talk about Watchmen,

and we're going to talk about the deuce. So basically how the week is going to work, because I'm away for the rest of the week. We're going to do some morning show today. I really want to get your thoughts. Yeah, you do. And then I'm going to save most of my thoughts. I think I am a little bit higher on it.

You're going to save your thoughts? I'm just going to do a show with Amanda where it's just the three episodes for Thursday. What? I'm not saving... Look, you're going to get the best of me. Wow. Amanda gets the second best of me.

Wow. This is a big moment for me. Should I accept this? You took the coffee I bought you? Or should I walk away? I didn't realize, much like a character in a David Simon show, that I was implicit in larger systems here,

and that the corruption is unavoidable. That's right. What do you want to start with? Well, there's a lot to talk about. I guess I want to start with a morning show of which I've watched one episode. I think one is free for everyone. Three are available.

It's very benevolent of them. Yes, just like that U2 album they gave us. I have two comments about it. I think I'd like to begin with... You have only two comments. That I'd like to begin with before opening it up to whatever part of you you've reserved for me. I know the rest is being held in escrow.

I'm like Bradley Jackson. I have to keep myself pure. Oh, you're like Bradley Jackson and that you see both sides and you're on the team of people. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted! Here's my suggestion for a pull quote offered from the couch of my home last night when Mark Duplas appeared on the screen. And this is my wife's comment about the show.

Oh, he's on the show. She delivered it in a straight mouth emoji voice. And I still am thinking about it. The thing is that people need to know about Andy's wife. Yeah. Is that it's not like she ever does the victory dance. Like she doesn't do end zone celebrations when she. So like even if John Hamm was on the show.

Right. Someone she... She's a fan of. She's a fan of John Hamm. Yeah. I'm a fan of him. I think she would have been like, oh, John Ham's on the show, right? She probably would have watched more of it.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, here's where I want to begin with The Morning Show. And I, you know, generally, as a fan of fiction, imagined universes, I'm not Mr. Plausible. Like, I'm not like, this has to mirror reality. Nobody needs us to set this up, right? Like, what the morning show is. It's Apple TV's flagship show.

It's Jennifer Aniston and Reese Wethers. Spoon, they released the first three episodes last week with the launch of Apple TV. Nice. Thanks. I mean, I do have more to say it. I do want to fold in the origins of the show into the conversation. You love origin stories. That I and, you know, two to three-eighths of you are going to be having today about it.

I knew you were going to do this. I don't know why I even said this. This is so Mitch and Alex right now. Here's what I want to say about the show. And like with everything on The Watch podcast, it really comes back to. to us, to relationships. I want you to know something, which is that, Chris, you're my dear friend

and we're colleague, and I love you very much, and we've known each other and been good friends for 23 years now. Yeah. We've been doing this podcast for almost eight years together. That's like one third. That said, if,

at this morning, this morning, when right before my children woke me up at 5 a.m., if my phone had buzzed, my Apple iPhone. Lex Levy time. If my Apple iPhone had buzzed and it was Kaya calling, or perhaps even Bill Simmons himself, calling to let me know that you had been fired because some,

you know, online postings had revealed that you actually didn't like a Star is Born very much. I would have been shocked. I would have been disappointed. Yeah. I maybe would have been a little angry because I think, certainly the first half of a Star is born is unimpeachable. But what I would not have done at any point,

today, tomorrow, or this week would be to sneak into your C-suite office here at the Ringer HQ and roll around in your topo design button downs even the one that I love and wept. I wouldn't do it, you know? I wouldn't do it.

And I feel like those dummies have only known each other 15 years. In this world, if I'm, what you're applying here is I'm Mitch Kessler, so I'm going to walk this tightrope. Okay. Am I home with my team destroying a sonos as I listen to you, record the watch.

First of all, Sonos, very, very, very dependable products. It would take a while. Yeah. Who's on that team? Who's in that, who's in your living room with you? Like, who's the ride or die? Like, my PR, my agents. Yeah.

God, it's a huge question for Kaya to answer. I hope it's Amanda Dobbins. It's probably Dobbins, Kaya. My wife briefly before she leaves me. Yeah. No, that part rang true. I have to say. And then, Kaya probably cuts beat when you sign up a bright young thing to help you talk about three-eighths of the morning show.

Right. Great. Okay. So, but you get my larger point here, which is, I hope you don't see that as a stinging indictment or rebuke of our professional relationship. No. Everybody handles grief their own way. Grief. I mean, like, I think that this might be the fundamental disconnect for me with the show.

And I have only seen one episode, and I am really actually. pleased to see many people whom I like, respect, and admire online and also you have much more positive reactions to the show early on than I did. Yes. Mainly because it can be fun to watch talented people do things. You know, talented, famous big stars go for it. Yeah. And one thing that you can tell, and again, this is a comment that I mean completely, I don't

want this to be a pejorative comment at all, because the morning show had, I think, an admittedly bumpy road to our iPads or whatever else we're supposed to watch it on. To our devices. Yeah, welcome to 2019. You can tell that the people involved, particularly the big three, this is Aniston, Witherspoon, and Corell were granted a lot of creative input, I think,

in terms of what they wanted to be doing. Because remember, this is one of those projects that came together really quickly, where a talented and experienced producer Michael Ellenberg, optioned a book by Brian Stelter called Top of the Morning, a book I really enjoyed a lot about the politics of morning shows

and morning news, got Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston involved and got this gaudy two-season commitment with huge paydays from Apple before they even had a take it. It's season two where Yanco Flores is really going to take Center Station.

I'm glad you brought up Yanco. I'm Team Yanko. We should power rank our favorite correspondence. Well, it's, Morning Show has been a fixture in our lives and in the spirit of America's life for so many years. It's hard to... But my point being that it is the kind of thing where you say,

okay, where there's so many big, big pieces of play here. And then I don't know at what point the addition of a Matt Lauer-esque figure played into the narrative. Right, because obviously that Stelter's book predates those revelations. Absolutely. And I think the momentum for the show predates the Me Too movement, if you will. And so Corell's announcement was obviously another big coup, another. a huge, huge, huge star returning to TV to take a role in this with a huge payday. And so I have to say, as a fan of these actors, which I am, the scenes in which they are

just, they get to take the, what are the weights that you put on the bat in the, the donuts? You take the donuts off the bat and they just get to swing, of which there are many. Yeah. That's pleasurable. That would be, for example, Reese Spoon at a West Virginia coal mine. Oh, dear God. So I'm trying to find my way into this because...

Do you want me to kind of... Should I set you up a little bit here? Oh, could you spare the thoughts? Could you spare the takes? I thought that sounded like a Thursday thing for me, but okay. I would say that this show reminds me a little bit of Studio 60 on the Sunset Trail. A lot.

In that it takes itself incredibly seriously while also trying to do other things like be funny or be moving or be romantic or be, you know, dangerous or, I mean, I think like... Or drag Gilmore girls. Or drag Gilmore, weird paladino shots? What? How dare you, sirs? And I think that my reaction to the show ultimately is that we tend to be at least on this TV,

on this pod, a little bit hegemonic about like, there's good TV and bad TV. We tend to be like, and good TV usually fits into a certain box for us. Okay. And we have disagreements about what those shows are from time to time, but for the most part, I think we see shows that aim high and we're like, you did it, that that show aimed high and it reached its high, it's sort of higher reaches. This is a show that definitely is aiming high, misses low, and I still enjoy it, if that makes sense.

Like, I find it to be essentially a pretty, like, engaging, entertaining adult soap opera. That is absolutely ridiculous. And also, a second part of my brain enjoys it just to be like, what the fuck happened here. Yeah. This is so interesting. Like, when did they shoot this scene compared to the rest of the pilot or the rest of the second episode?

And that keeps going on for the first three episodes. And I think that there's, so there's two kinds of fascination. There's, like, the way I used to watch Gray's Anatomy, like, when it was first on where I'm just kind of like, I'm into this. I don't know. I just want to find out what happens with Alex. And then there's, what's going on here? And did this episode cost a billion dollars to make?

Well, this is, this is, you know, I think that I'm going to try to articulate this in real time as opposed to taking a moment. But like, and I think we've sort of danced around this or even tried to say this in different ways before. As TV has become so many things all the time in so many places, the real gauge isn't, is this good or bad? Is this well-made? I mean, these are all very, these are very fluid terms, you know, and obviously this

all is and should be subjective. TV can be many things to many people and ought to be. One of the metrics I try to think about, though, is what box are. they aiming to put themselves in? Yeah. And are they achieving that? Yeah, like what show do you think they wanted to make?

Well, or what show does the project seem to want to be, you know, at this moment? Which is, again, and I'll say this with all the experience that I've accrued this year, these are very easy comments to make in hindsight. These are very hard things to do in the moment, particularly with so many major players involved, not just the actors, but Apple itself. You mentioned Gray's Anatomy, which is a show. I also very, very, very, very much enjoyed for the first few seasons. And it may well still be good.

I haven't watched it in 10 years. It's still on. And people love it. Yeah. And that model, you know, which was sort of drew from the soap operatic tradition, which I admire the hell out of. That's not a ding in any way. And was very much about impassioned, beautiful, smart, sexy people as a community involved

in stakesy situations in the workplace. That's a very good comparison point to what the morning show seems to want to be. Well, I think that's what the morning show ought to be. Yes. Right? Because workplace anythings are the best.

I mean, there's a reason why, if you think of the greatest shows of all time, no matter what era you're looking at, whether it's The Mary Tyler Moore Show or whether it's Cheers or whether it's Mad Men, these are workplace dromedies. NYPD Blue, who could forget, Sipowitz. A great, great colleague who passed every HR test the 90s through at him.

And this show, you know, a morning show or a news show is a great place to set something. Like, I mean, that's what the Mary Tyler Moore show was, right? But the show is being dragged in a lot of different directions due to expectations of both the moment and in terms of television's moment and the context. Yeah, this gets back to what you were saying originally. And so, instead, what we have is a work. a workplace dromedy being pulled in one direction into a star vehicle, movie star vehicle, and being pulled in another direction into a prestige television ripped from the headlines, stakesy has to be about something and has to be relevant drama.

And at least, you know, and that's way too much for any pilot to accomplish. So, again, I'm not judging. I will watch more episodes because nobody could pull off that juggling act in one episode, let alone an episode that moved from one showrunner and Jake Carson to another and Carrie Aaron's while being developed. So it's a lot, but the show that this feels like it wants to be in a show that I definitely I think I would have potentially more time for is it's not that, at least not yet. Yeah, I think that there is a version of this show that's like an all about Eve Love Triangle

with Aniston, Corell, and Witherspoon. that's a little bit more of a traditional workplace dromedy. And I actually, for some reason, without any indication one way or the other, was like, I bet this will be a pretty affirmative, pretty, like, crack. I guess because of the people involved, I thought it was going to be funnier. And it is a pretty self-serious show. It's a pretty somber show, obviously because of what's going on with the Corel character who stands in as this kind of Lauer-esque figure,

but also about journalism, which is not something I personally associate with morning shows, but I have to admit, like, I don't really, I've never really watched a morning show in my life, so I don't know if that's more of a table setting for other people in the world. It's one of the things that is most interesting about the Stelter book,

which is the reach of these shows and the importance to the network's mission, but also the fact that there is this, again, when you read in a book, it's one thing, and when you see it dramatized for you, another, but a solemn responsibility that the journalists and executives and people involved in these shows do feel to set the table for America in that news bubbles up from all sorts of sources these days. And so they're saying, here are the things for you to be...

The five things before you go to work that you have to know. Yeah. Or to begin to think about, you know, and to feel and to normalize them, to mainstream them, basically, from wherever other sources they came from, whether it was, you know, Twitter or whatever, here's the news of the day to drink with your coffee, to take with your coffee. And so that's legitimate. Right. But those words solemn responsibility immediately grab the wheel of something that I think wants to be fun and steers it straight to the heart of Sorkenville.

And Sorkinville is a hard place to live even if you're Aaron Sorkin. Yeah, and Sorkin's not there anymore. So it is actually pretty fascinating to watch a show try to do Sorkin with obviously the person who is able to elevate that stuff to the, level that it is, is Sorkin. And it's not an easily imitable thing that he does. He gets made fun of somewhat for repeating certain bits or for, like, the way in which, like, characters will do data dumps that are obviously, like, his own research or

whatever. Insisting that we don't appreciate Gilbert and Sullivan enough. They're insane. Although I won't say, yeah, insisting that we don't appreciate Gilbert and Sullivan enough, but it's very hard to imitate. It's very hard to imitate. And I think that they really want, like, the Billy Cruttup character. for instance, is like dying for a Sorkin monologue and even tries to do one.

Yes, he does. But it's just slightly off by half. Well, there was the walk-and-talk with him lurking behind. And it wants to achieve this kind of west-wingy walk-and-talk. And then DePasquez, oh, hi, it's over. Look, a lot of respect to the people making it because they steered the ship into very bumpy water. So maybe it was always there. But it does feel, at least in this, the earliest going, it's tricky.

You know, again, this was straight to series. So they didn't have the luxury of making a pilot and thinking about it more. They made it. They just kept plunging forward. And so you mention the Steve Carell character and some of the, you know, the darker themes that the show is interested in addressing. That was one of the areas that I was most confused about because it wants to draw on our now shared knowledge and real-life history of what Matt Lauer was doing, what he, the type

of person he apparently was, the monstrous things he was apparently capable of, and the dissonance between that and the role he played in American society for two decades. But this show also goes out of its way to cast Steve Carell, who is a very, very likable comic actor, and really insists that he's not that bad. In fact, saying, I'm not Weinstein. I didn't rape anyone. You know, like really trying to stake out a very difficult, narrow place. And unless the show goes darker than I expect based on one episode, it seems slightly untenable for him to be kind of bad but not that bad so that we can still like him or potentially

even love him, but also understand why he had to go. That was confusing to me because I think the bolder choice, of course, is to be. just go for it. Yeah. Make him, make a fictional character as dark as the real-life monsters that have emerged. I mean, you see a certain kind of evolution of that character over the next couple of episodes. I think that one thing that's inevitable is that this show is going to not only have to be itself, but it's going to have to be Apple TV.

It's going to have to be the thing that most people watch first. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that and a little bit about what that means and what this show is trying to do and what the service is trying to do. Because to me, when I was watching Morning Show, I was like, this is a blockbuster version of the good wife. Like, this is a blockbuster version of an adult drama.

They actually have quite a few curse words considering the fact that I thought the whole Apple thing was like, we're going to try and tone it down a little bit and make this like a soft PG-13 watch pretty much. And this is definitely like, they're not quadroning this. Like, this is four

adults. Like, there's a lot of stuff about sexual harassment. There's a lot of stuff about... They talk about S&Ds. Yeah. They do. They really do. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what you think of it as a flagship show.

Well... Which there's not a lot... I don't even know if in the course of time of us doing this, even when the Netflix shows were starting and like House of Cards was starting, I don't think we looked at those as like this is what Netflix is shipping out. Because back then, Netflix is a library service. Well, we did say, I mean, it reminds me of... I'm glad you brought...

it up. It reminds me of the Netflix launch of original content in a way because the lesson from that, just like the lesson from any number of channel reboots and rebrands over the last decade, is you cannot pick your flagship. You simply can't. You have to try to make good stuff, and then whichever one clicks and connects, that's your flagship. That's your brand. And you shift accordingly. You know, USA, a network that I'm in business with, was characters welcome in blue skies, and then Mr. Robot hit. Yeah. And then they wanted that to be their brand

because Mr. Robot was a breakthrough. What's the tagline for the brand now that it's Mr. Robot? We the Bold. Is it? Yes, it is. You thought I was making that out. You are the Bold, though.

I'm trying. You found the right home. Then, or AMC, being a place that had reruns of movies until it hit on Mad Men and Breaking Bad. And then Walking Dead, which changed it again. With Netflix, I think I probably like dressed rehearsal

this, it's a press release, not a TV show's idea, with House of Cards. Because House of Cards was this enormous splashy. In fact, they set the template for what Apple did. House of Cards was probably going to go to HBO, and then Netflix steps up to the bargaining table. Two full seasons off the bat.

Two guaranteed seasons. And we'll pay for it. And that was a, you know, it was a total game changer, and they had to overpay to get the attention and to get people like Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright and all the bigger names, people who were bigger names at the time associated with it, to reestablish or to establish their brand.

I've been watching a lot of Corey Stoll in the two, season two, three, my friend. But I also wrote a piece that summer, the year that House of Cards premiered, that all the attention and marketing budget went to House of Cards, but Orange is the New Black was the show. Was the better show. And in a way, potentially more emblematic of the type of show that Netflix could thrive with because it was surprising, unwieldy, huge ensemble, benefited from binge-watching and felt risky.

Like, you could see House of Cards on an existing network or service at the time, but Orange and the New Black didn't really make sense like that in a way that felt exciting. And so the similarities here are clear. Like, The morning show remains a press release of a TV show in that it's bright and shiny and full of stars and full of sort of, what is Logan Roy called things that he's interested in? Chewy, crunchy. What does he say?

When he's asking about the deals? He's like, it's chewy, yeah. So it's that, right? Because, oh, it's Me Too, and it's ripped from the headlines, and there are a lot of pieces that you can build, think pieces about in it. Yeah. But as a brand build, I'm not entirely sure other than we will spend a lot of money and we'll get a lot of stars here.

It totally reminds me of House of Cards, too. Well, and also, we're going for an adult audience. We're going for awards. We're also going for a sort of relatively upper middle class to upper class viewing audience. But the other aspect of this that's worth talking about, and we had a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the industry and all these services on Thursday. Thursday I like to call the parking lot show.

Or I can really just be myself. We were talking about how the HBO Max really felt like it was trying to be TV. Yeah, right. the Apple play is still kind of head-scratching in that they're charging for five shows, and then maybe one day it'll be eight shows and a movie and then 10 shows. And they don't seem to be interested in building up a content library at all. So it's very, very, very, very niche, you know, in a way that is different. And I think the answer to that comes from, and there's a piece on Vulture about this.

Well, I would highly recommend people check out Lucas Shaw's stuff over the last couple of weeks about this. And he's been tweeting a lot about it over the last few days is the idea that you have to look at Apple TV as part of the suite of services, quote unquote, that Apple provides now. So it's the credit card. It's the where you get all of your content. It's this idea that rather than it being a network, it's a service. It's a service from which you're supposed to turn on your Apple TV box or whatever, go into on your laptop. And that's where you find all TV. So they're making deals the way Amazon did with so that they can have channels so that you can get HBO or you can get other premium cable channels through your Apple TV service or through

whatever TV is on your Apple TV box. And also, I think you shouldn't underrate the fact that this is essentially, nobody's going to make the distinction between the Apple TV originals and iTunes. So they'll be able to go if they still want to buy the season pass to Real Housewives. They can do that on Apple TV. And it's all going to be there. And that is their play. Their play is like, these are a nice forward-facing window display for this grand department store of content that we have. Exactly. And our service is that it looks nice, that there's this nice little ergonomic black box that you put on the top of your... And it's easy. Yeah, and it's easy. I think that is an underrated aspect of it. I mean, Apple's... We've got to get a better remote. Brand was always ease of use. Yeah. And I think that's important for them. And so now when you go into the Apple store, though, it's not just pictures of iPods dancing on the walls. There's pictures of Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell. And when you open up,

the new MacBook Air that you're considering buying, there's an auto-playing, and you want to test the screen resolution, it's Jason Momoa not seeing stuff or whatever that shows about in an exciting way. He can't see. He can't see, but we can see him. Can you imagine if they made a show that we couldn't see? I mean,

Hollywood makes those all the time. I've pitched a couple of them. So it is deeply, deeply in a different business. And to your point, yeah, like I use Apple TV when I press the button that's just a picture of a TV, the thing about it that potentially is useful is I press that button and it suggests that there's a new episode of Watchmen for me to watch.

I just watch the dues because it's, you know, it knows that I've been on my HBO Go app on the Apple TV watching those things. Also, you know, it suggests I continue watching my little pony equestria girls, which someone in my house has been watching, but I won't out that individual. The plumber. We've had a lot of plumbing work. But yeah, and then also, theoretically, there's a big banner with... This became clear for me over the... On Sunday, I woke up, I watched The Eagles on NFL Sunday ticket on my Apple TV. I watched the beginning of the Rockets Heat game before it got completely out of control on NBA League Pass.

I watched a couple of minutes of a movie that I had been watching the night before on movies. Chris, you got to get some sunlight. I got to go for a walk, buddy. I know. Well, L.A. was like on fire, so I was kind of just like, I'm just going to stay inside this week. Can I just share with our listeners the nicest thing? And I mean this genuinely, the kindest thing that Chris does for me, this, you know, 23 years in and a couple days away from getting you a coffee? Well, you did get me coffee today. No, but every weekend with just like kindness and a complete lack of guile, Chris says, what are you getting into this Sunday? I'm like, well, I've been up since 5 a.m. and I'm taking two children to get flu shots.

But thank you, because when you ask me, it's just like, will you go to the regatta today? Perhaps a bit of day drinking. Smorgasburg is as a new vendor. It's just, it makes me feel like the world is full of possibilities. I mean, you could have a, you get great burgers with your kids on the weekends? Sure. You watch My Little Pony Equestrian events? It's Equestrian Girls.

Okay. And that is a show in which the My Little Pony ponies have become people. Oh, it's so fucked. Like, what do you mean? Like, they're like walking upright? They somehow can, every so often go to a different dimension where they just become teenage humans, cartoon still, with the same coloring, like, you know, Rainbow Dash, of course, remains blue-skinned with rainbow hair. I looked at Kyya, like she's going to be the only other person in the room who knows what I'm talking about. And then they're just humans.

And all I can think about while I'm watching this, and my daughters love this, but I'm like, what kind of psychological head fuckery would it do to these ponies where they're like, we're already magic fucking ponies. Yeah, because you're imagining more of like a Greek mythological transformation going on here. Imagine every so often having the gift of hands, an upright movement. You could do so many things. You know what also else if you were that kid?

If you went from horse to kid, if you broke your leg, you wouldn't be put down. Exactly. And then at the end of it, and then all you do as a human is you just go to high school. Yeah, right. And then at the end of your day, at Equestria High or whatever, which is weirdly horse-themed, because I think everybody knows, wink, wink.

They're not fooling anyone. You used to be ponies. You must again assume the pony form. Lose your articulated digits. Yeah. No more Xbox. Back to hooves. No more piano playing.

The real show would be the follow-up where it's like, My Little Pony's again return to Equestrian or whatever. Yeah, like my body dysmorphia. And it's just these color. Colorful talking ponies staring at their flat, use-wise. I used to have opposable thumbs! Weeping.

Yeah. Apple TV, we're just giving these ideas out for free. Make that show, you cowards. I want to ask something about the stars in this show. Are you entirely here for it because of the stars, or do you think it would be a better show if it didn't have these two? Personally? Yeah.

I think it would be better without them because I think it unbalances. Like if it's Julianna Margulies and Gina Rodriguez or something, like if it's something that's not where it's like the entire reason you buy the ticket is like I got to see Anastano Reese. But again, this is a, your mileage may vary situation.

Obviously my perspective, both as when I was a critic and now is I'm interested in the story and the story engine and the writing and the behind-the-scenes stuff that fuels it and that's why I'm tuning in week to week. and... There's another reason, though.

But there are people who want to watch big stars have big scenes. Yeah. And there's no reason that that's better or worse. That's just a different way into the show. Yeah. Then there's also the Judaism. Oh, my God.

Thank you for bringing this up. Guys, I almost... First, I wrote and deleted so many tweets last night. There was a robust text message thread where I was just... Chris, our chat was my drafts folder last night. I just want to share some stuff here. I'm not going to...

actually quote you. You can't. I just wanted to say I almost tweeted one perfect shot the morning show 2019 and it was just the frame where Aniston's daughter is opening the fridge and in a 15 million dollar penthouse apartment without a single... That's like conservative. 20 million dollar apartment without a single like distinguishing trait or personality on any wall. There is an artfully askew Zabar's takeout catalog, not even a menu, on the fridge. And that is essentially a modern-day Mazza. That was letting me know that Alex.

Alex Levy. Alex Levy is one of mine. Well, so is Rachel on Friends. Yes, and yes, true. True. So she has been known to dabble in the Ashkenazi traditions. I think that you were more thrown off by Gugu and Batha Raw's character named Han.

a show and film. That's you. You, you, that was how you tried to one up me. And then Steve Korell as Mitch Kessler. That's TBD. That's on the line. That could go either way. It's a great moment for you guys. This is what a, what a glow up for my people. Years of wandering in the media desert and finally with representation. Thank you Tim Apple for finally showing Jewish people in the media. I just want like I just, I want an oral history of that Zabar's catalog. I just want to know everything about it. I want to know where they filmed it. I want to know who put that on the set. I want to know who tilted it after the

first take when it was a little too. I just want to know everything about it. And honestly, you guys know this about me. I want to know what's Alex's go-to order there. What would you think it is? You don't think it's just bagel locks capers? But this is the thing. Are we talking about, is she going to the Zavar's cafe on the corner?

Or is she just shopping at the market? And if she's shopping at the market, oh, there's cheeses from around the world. There's pickles. Is she getting a sliced marble rye? I think she sends her British husband Jason, her estranged British husband Jason to go get it. To do the Zabar's run? Yeah. Bottle episode. And everybody's just like, are you Steve Coogan? And he's like, no, no,

I get that all the time. Now I'm afraid he passed on the pot. I am 1,000% here for Aniston. Okay, talk about it. I think that there was an expectation because of Reese coming off of Big Little Eyes, Big Little Eyes 2, and

just her moment in television where she's producing a lot of different stuff and she seems to have kind of been ahead of the curve and realizing this is where everything is going. And I'm not only going to just appear in this stuff, but I'm going to produce it. I'm going to shepherd in different work. She's got, God, I can't remember the name of the adaptation that she's doing with Carrie Washington.

Yeah, little fires everywhere. Little fires everywhere. Thank you, Kaya, on Hulu. And so she's like kind of a kingmaker or queen maker or whatever the hell you want to call it, like in this new world of streaming television. And I think that that was like, it was like her and Aniston, a lot of the attention was towards reasons. I gotta say, like, I think, again, mileage may vary.

I love what Anderson is doing here. I love how, like, unlikeable she's possibly making this character in some ways. I feel like it's, like, pretty vulnerable. She's never really done, she hasn't done such a big, high-profile dramatic turn. She's done dramatic work in the past. And in movies, for sure. Yeah, but I don't think that she's ever been like, I'm going to mix the glamour of what people think about me with that.

and I kind of just like can't stop watching her hard nod for you How do you feel about it? I'm interested in it I didn't see enough in the first episode Okay And I would like to know Do you want to talk about Crutup?

He's the legend Yeah, he's the king It was actually a fun double watch Last night to watch I think Crutup should be the new glow up I Can you can you Is when you just

When you get yourself a black suit And play a guy named Corey You've made it in this business? Isn't it a little bit more fun, and we will talk about Watchman episode three in a minute, to imagine that Lori Blake on Watchman is calling Dr. Manhattan on Mars. And it's pulling Crut up, but he's in Studio 60? Yeah. Dr. Manhattan from the 2009, Zach Snyder film, finally got bored of his time on Mars and was like, what I really want to do is run a network. Yeah. And that's him. Yeah. That's his choice. He could do anything. You know what I'd have

totally forgotten about? Yeah. The Crut-up, Mary Louise Parker, Claire Dane's triangle. Oh, did you Google that? That's a fun. read. Did you know about this guy? That Billy Cruttup had been with Mary Louise Parker for a really long time and left her while she was eight months pregnant for Claire Daines. Yeah, that's tea time. And then Claire Daines left Billy Crut up for Hugh Dancy.

The thing about Billy, it's just, he's a fascinating character. I would love to have him on the show to talk to. Not after he renears me recap his personal life. He's not going to come on the Thursday show. Oh, the Andy Greenwald show? He's not going to come on the Dobbins show where all the good stuff gets talked about. Do you feel like I'm not giving you my best?

I feel like you're holding back. I'm not. I'm not holding back because you haven't seen two and three and I don't want to ruin them for you. Don't please don't. This guy, he's such an interesting actor because there was a moment when he was the guy. Yeah, all the series.

I saw him. And Jesus's son. I saw him on Broadway. When I was in high school, in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, and I was like, that's the best actor I've ever. ever seen in my life. Was that Ethan Hawk?

Was he in that too? No. Wasn't like a nine-hour play? No. Coast of Utopia was a later Tom Stoppard play that I also saw with a lot of great actors in. And Josh Hamilton, it was like nine hours about Russians. It was great. Oh, to be young again.

But then, yeah, he had this moment, right, where he was going to be the guy and he got a lot of chances and he sort of made some odd choices. And it was Jesus' son and almost famous, obviously, was a big one. And it kind of never came together for him as the leading man. because there's something, maybe something Mary Louise Parker can attest to, but something sort of something that projects is a little bit dark and shifty.

And he's done this before in other roles, but the full heel turn and the relish in which he's doing it on this project. Yeah. He is playing this part like he is the Fox in the Henhouse, not of the morning show's little Duplosian ecosystem. No, but of the entire Apple TV ecosystem. I can't believe like they're just going to let me do this.

And I am digging it. I am here for that. We could put a pin in the morning show there. Okay. Let's talk in limited time we have left, because I can only give so much of myself now. Watchman episode three? Yeah. It was great.

Brilliant. It's just really brilliant. I mean, I had to watch a bunch of Martin Scorsese movies last week because Sean and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and me and I kept thinking of Scorsese while watching this episode. Because when you watch a Martin Scorsese movie, the thing is that you notice is like the relentless formal innovation on a shot to shot, scene to scene, movie to movie basis,

where he will take the most generic, most, you know, tissue connective tissue part of a story and just go into it with the same energy other directors would say for a huge battle sequence. Is the Copacabana seen the the exemplar of that where a guy entering a place. A guy goes into a bar with his on a first date and they turn it into the entire universe of like 90 second tracking shot and you actually feel like what it feels to fall in love.

You know, while you watch that shot. That might seem like a strange comparison, but the amount of storytelling pizzazz that they are putting on this show, which honestly, I feel like you and I are watching in a room, not unlike the room we're recording in right. now. And other people who haven't read the Watchman comic or maybe aren't looking at PDPDia, the HBO.com explainer site that also has all these like original documents you can read from the new Frontiersman. Which I never looked at it. Yeah, it's really cool. If you're not like, I am going to study this thing. I don't know how you feel about this show. I watch it every week with my wife. She doesn't know anything about it. She's like, that was fucking awesome. So I'm taking her word for it. But it seems like it would be like,

incredibly complicated to understand if you didn't have at least some background in the world of Watchmen. That being said, it's one of the most thrilling shows I've seen in years. I just can't believe how absolutely creative it is in every single department of storytelling. It's very, it's fascinating to watch as a fan of Damans and a fan of the now three shows that he's primarily made from lost. Leftovers, those. you can see the things that are him totally. And particularly what I see, and again, this might just be,

I can't separate what I know about the process of the show and about Damon himself from my experience watching it because what I see and what I appreciate so much is time. Damon is completely dedicated to the writer's room as an idea from everything I know from him and from people who have worked in his rooms. There is no writer's room if he's not in it. You know, he doesn't live on set. He lives in that room.

and what I felt in this third episode was the luxury of time and I'm sure when we get to talk to him about it he'll say there was never enough time to do all the things he wanted to do or to pull it off to the degree that he hoped he would but even just the conceit of Lori Blake at this point in her life calling Mars to tell jokes on a weird pay phone that is just in a public square in Tulsa these are big ideas and also big storytelling blueprints and designs.

And to pull them off, you have to think about them on both the macro level. Like, oh, that's cool. My mind is blown. Yeah. But also on the absolutely micro of how are we going to do this? How are we going to pull this off? It's panache. Well, yes, but it's also structure and form and rigor.

Yeah. Beyond Chekhov's gun. Beyond like, oh, if this showed, if he mentioned something in this first scene, it's going to be important in the last scene. I mean, the idea of like they're basically doing these doubles of like the joke that Warre is telling is mirrored in the episode itself. And the misdirect of the episode. And that the first joke, she tells it wrong, but there wasn't a joke.

It was a surprise, and it was a misdirect. And then there's also a giant blue dildo. I mean, it's, that's the sort of fatalism and humor that the Venn diagram of those two ideas, when they hit, it is pure Damon. Yeah. And it is pure the best part of the leftovers, and it's the best part of the show as well. and it's very fun to see it being exercised in the service of something that feels so

titanic in terms of the type of story, the stakes of the story, and of the world, but also of the IP that he is gleefully doing donuts on. Yeah, but to me it doesn't even feel like IP anymore. No. Like I think in the beginning, I was like, you know, is this going to be, and there's a scene where Lori and Pete,

the other agent that she's traveling with, pull into the motel, and it's called the Black Frater, P.D. So, yeah, and it's called the Black Frater, which is obviously a reference to the Black Frater sub-story in Watchmen, and then, you know, there's pirate flag.

You tell your wife about that? Obviously, this is a reference. I mentioned it, and she still is, like, was that a Watchman, you know? But I don't think that he's doing it where it's like, oh, I'm just pulling strains from this. It's like, no, he's assumed this text set up a world.

Yeah. And then I imagined what the world would be like since that text. And then that is the gospel. Like I am operating with a new reality of all this stuff that I created. And now I am telling a story within that is really fucking hard to do. It's also, and I think this is crucial to adaptations going forward, maybe always. It's not just I'm going to make a fictional story set in a fictional world where this previous story existed. He's making a show for a real world where this,

fictional story has existed for 30 years. Yes. Both the audience's expectations for it, knowledge of it, interest in it, and also subsequently our interest in different types of storytelling and what we're capable of processing and receiving. And I think that his experience, and I know he's going to argue with us about this, but I think his experience with the questions and are we going to answer questions binary argument of lost has given him a healthier balance of what.

what is what. So for example, when the camera lingers on Lori Blake's apartment number, when Senator Bob Benson shows up to talk to her, my main thought is, oh, that's interesting. I bet some thought went into that number. Which number it is. But I'm not going to, where I am in my life right now, I'm not Googling it. You could. I bet there's a Reddit about it or whatever. But I love knowing that there was thought into it, but I also love not needing to know. Yeah. And there's a very, that's a very difficult line to exist on. You can see that that is going to be a tension going through the season. I haven't watched ahead, so I don't know,

but you can tell that the amount of hints versus the amount of resolution is always going to be a major factor in a Damon Lindelof show, and that that's always going to be the thing that, like you say, like he's probably tortured by, that people are a little bit critical of him of. How much little flashes of light am I going to get? When are you going to actually throw the spotlight on

and explain to me what's happening here. And I think that he's more interested in ways of telling the story than he is necessarily in giving us big answers. That said, this episode was really interesting narratively because by bringing in Lori from the outside into this very tightly wound circle of Tulsa where we have existed exclusively, it allowed for bigger informational and contextual dumps

than we had previously. Absolutely. It gave us a different way to look at Looking Glass and his silly mask and his interrogation room. or to talk to Angela or this whole idea of cops wearing masks and really helped us understand the historical moment

and the senators roll in it and everything else. Yeah. But we still, I mean, we're still trying to figure out what's going on with Ossimandias and then it's like, who's the game warden?

What's the deal there? You know, like... I would also say, in the spirit of the earlier conversation we were having, you know, you're a sports blogger, Chris. I was, yeah. There's something called plus minus.

There are advantages and disadvantages, or not a disadvantage, advantages and challenges to casting and casting big stars. When you cast someone like Rees Witherspoon, you know not only what you can get

from someone that enormously talented, but you also know what people expect from her, what they like to see her do, and that can either, that's either an opportunity or you can be hamstrung by that. The flip side of that is when you can cast an actor like Gene Smart

who has been incredible for decades. Yeah. And certainly isn't unknown, but still exists in a place where audiences I think who know her maybe they saw her in Fargo maybe they watch designing women there are many opportunities

or Legion yeah or Legion know that she's good they like to see her but they haven't seen her do this and so when you see her swagger through this episode like a fucking femme fatale

slash gumshoes slash noir yeah like Sam Spade or something yeah but with but extra. I just want to keep saying extra because she was relishing it

and loving it and can deliver so well on every aspect of it, on the sexiness, on the snark, on the action, and ultimately on the emotion of that phone call

alone in a booth on a soundstage somewhere in Atlanta. That's thrilling. I think part of it also is the thing that happens behind the camera, which is all the work

like you alluded to that goes into thinking about what that phone booth looks like. because you could just have it be a phone booth. You could just have it be any, you could just have a phone in a room somewhere. It doesn't have to be as creative as it is and as thoughtful as it is

and as detailed as it is. And all of it is right now, you can kind of still see all the web bringing it together. Something we don't talk about a lot, and not just us, but generally when people are having internet conversations about TV,

we don't talk about resources. Obviously, that's something that I've been thinking a lot about for the last year. it's not necessarily a question of comparing shows with zero budget to shows with unlimited budgets. I mean, people can like Penn 15 and Westworld. They're trying to do different things, and that's totally fine. I think that a useful marker might be what you're doing with those resources.

And often when you have enormous unlimited resources, the stakes are so high, and the responsibilities are so big, you things can lose you can lose the specificity of thought or intention and Alex Levy's apartment is an example of that there's the Zabar's thing which thank God without it you know there's so many big stars and egos and talents and ideas

to wrestle in the morning show that that's challenging yeah taking advantage of the resources to say like well we're going to use these actors and we're going to use up every single drop of their talent and ability to and let them showcase that is different. Now, Watchman is also,

was not hamstrung by a low budget. No, of course. But we've, you know, okay, so let's wrap up here, because I know you've got to go, but we talked about a brand new gleaming streaming service flagship show. We've talked about a piece of pretty breathtaking,

reimagining of a preexisting intellectual property, which is what we talk about all the time on this show. And then I know that you wanted to talk a little bit about the end of the deuce, which in some ways is a artifact from a different time of television, even though it's only a couple of years ago. I finished the third season, third and final season of the deuce over the weekend. I really liked and admired the show.

It was such a... First of all, it actually... It's another one of those ones that kind of broke my rule. Second and third season, I really enjoyed more once I let them pile up, and I could just go to get through them. Because whether it's my own engagement with the media, my own patience, all the things we have out there to watch, or this idea of anachronism that you're talking about.

There was something about the David Simon School of Television Storytelling, that felt almost head spinning. Both, you know, it just felt so foreign at this point. And what I mean by that is an episode of the deuce is like 59 to 63 minutes long, and it's composed of 40 scenes, none of which are longer than three minutes, with characters who maybe you haven't seen in two weeks or maybe you don't remember exactly what they're doing, and they're generally sitting down on a diner and saying,

you want the pastrami, yeah, give me the pastrami. And you're like, what the fuck is this? It's not just that they're eating pastrami, and we don't even know these guys. It's the fact that we haven't been to that pastrami restaurant before and we'll never go there again. And so just the sheer audacity of the world building and of the scale and of the production,

it's so easy to lose sight of the forest with the trees. It's the inverse of the Watchman one, where it's like everything in Watchman is to borrow something from the wire, all the pieces matter. But in the Watchman, it's like every single part of the frame when you see the name, the word above... You see that John Grisham is off the Supreme Court. The senator, yeah, exactly.

Then you're like, oh, my God, I got to process all this. But in the deuce, it's way more like, let it wash over me. But the pieces, I was going to say that as well, because the thing about the dues, like a good David Simon show, all the pieces do matter. And the cumulative wallop of them was really something in terms of the, especially in terms of some of the performances across the board. Emily Meade's performance was stunning. Mustafa Shakir, Chris Coy, like actors who are just working, especially HBO actors. You see them a lot.

doing beautiful work. Shout out, Alexa Fogel. Absolutely, watch Van Alexa Fogel. I got to say, I was really moved. There were moments during the Duce where I was frustrated. I was like, I wish the show

was somehow more. And I feel like a lot of people thought this, you know, the subject matter, Times Square, the evolution of New York, some of the stars involved in it, that this was going to be a flashier show, but it was still a journalistic

David Simon show in a lot of ways and that it was showing how systems work and how systems collapse, and how everyone is complicit and everyone is rotten. It was never going to be easy watch. Do you think that some of the disconnect from it is because of the, it was made in a time,

it was probably conceived of and thought of pre-Trump and then released post-Trump in a way that it's like, well, like we've gotten way more grotesque in this country and again. You know what I mean? Possibly. You're not like revealing the seedy underbelly of capitalism. Like we're fully aware of it now. Possibly. I also think that there is attention there and I'd love to have him back on the show to

talk him about it between Simon, who executive produced and co-create. to the show and his co-creator George Pelicanos, who has been on our show before, whom we adore as a writer, and who has a journalistic, you know, absolute devotion to the quotidian elements of what makes a city and what makes a decent working life,

also likes a little flair sometimes. Also enjoys Hollywood a little bit more in terms of, you know, classic movies. He loves cars and westerns and brings a little more cinema. And there are moments when you felt those two... There's a few more set pieces in Pelicanos novels than you would find it in David Simon's show.

And you can feel that collision a little bit, but particularly the end of the third season gets very pelicanosey, and not just because there's a great character who talks about how much he loves cars. But in terms of there is a little bit more almost operatic arc to characters and to their downfall, he delivers another just crushing penultimate episode this season. But the thing that I really appreciated about the show in a way that I think made it harder to enjoy week to week was that ultimately it's about time. It's about time passing and about moments feeling important, but then just, sort of falling away, and the show does something pretty radical at the very end. If you don't want to hear me say what it is, feel free to...

Great job, Bransky's. That's the end of our show. Chris will be back with a better morning show discussion on Thursday. But I will spoil the ending, which is at the very end of the show, just when you think you're about to go into a musical montage of where everyone is, it jumps to the present day. And Franco's an old man makeup, and he's at a glossy, glassy, Times Square hotel. And he walks through Times Square, and they film in Times Square. for the first time. And you see that, you know,

the hideous anodyne neon glare that you and I live through and walked through and you worked there for a while and you're there. And as he walks, he sees the ghosts of the people as he knew them

and he passes them. And I read something online that I couldn't have disagreed with more. There was a review that said, oh, this was an unbecoming, like, nostalgic end to a very hard-nosed series.

Right, like a kind of, like, soft-focused way of doing it. And it wasn't. I found it devastating. Really? Because what it was about was, what was it all for?

What did it matter? Who remembers these people's stories and the ground they walked on is unrecognizable, you know? And the show was built around a very difficult protagonist, well, two protagonists, these twin characters that James Franco played. And the hardest thing about Vincent, his main character, I guess, as a protagonist was that what did he want? You know, we talked about that at the bartender?

Yeah, you talk about stakes or whatever in terms of characters, like, killing, don't kill the cat or whatever you're supposed to be doing in a storyline. What did this guy who advanced 15 years in three seasons and managed some bars and nightclubs and checked up with someone and kind of had an open relationship and did some Coke sometimes and mob stuff other times, but generally just pined for a house in the country? What did he want? And what was amazing about it at the end was, he didn't really know. He kind of wanted a quieter life and he didn't get one. And sometimes that happens. Yeah.

You know, it happens more often than not. Yeah. And it really, maybe this is old guy hour in the podcast, but I was really moved by how the show was more. more than anything else, about the arbitrary, cruel, and relentless passage of time. Let's think about how many shows are just about, like, even, and I don't even mean ambition in this, like, for money or for power, but, like, most shows are about ambitious people. Yes, and the beauty of a closed frame of something that ends that's not constantly rebooted, right, is that they are frozen forever in that last moment, and we think about that moment.

So whether it's Don Draper's last moment of quasi-enlightment or the screen cutting to black with Tony Suprano, What we don't know is as important as what we know. Sure. And there's a version of the deuce where, and this last season handled the ravages of AIDS really tenderly and beautifully and devastatingly. The city is in this transitional moment, but you could kind of squint and, well, that guy's still alive and maybe things will turn for him or maybe he'll get another lucky break. Right. And then by bringing it into the present, into our present, undeniably, this wasn't a period exercise. This wasn't warm and fuzzy and fun.

Stuff just happened. And things didn't really work out. And I think that that kind of sentiment is a really hard one to express, especially in television when now, when everything is about the poster. Can Jason Momoa see? Or can we get three million stars? The show that I think about the most when you talk about the deuce is better call Saul, because it's very similar to the way you watched it. We both were like kind of having a hard time getting into Saul. And then we kind of accumulated a bunch, watched it, then turned it into a weekly watch.

but what Saul has that the deuce doesn't is a slight nagging urgency to it because you're like, how is this going to connect? When is this going to come full circle? And they know that. Otherwise, they would not put the black and white scenes about future Saul in the show. And the deuce did not have that.

And I'm not saying that the deuce needed to connect to the larger Serpico universe or something like that. But I think that people always were like kind of like, okay, this is what it is. It's not actually something that's going to be any more urgent than it is right. And I wonder if the Deuce's reputation will grow now that it's finished and you can separate it from the scrum of what's important, what TV matters, what it goes into this library of really fascinating, noble, and I mean that word.

No, I felt the same way about Show Me a Hero, which I was like so excited for when it was coming out. And then I was like, dude, this is, this is fucking, this is a tough watch. You know what I mean? Like, this is really about what it said it was about. Yeah. Housing. Yeah. And this is really about what happened to New York and what happens with.

with money and who gets pushed out. And it's very unflinching in its portrayal of sex trade. And, you know, Roth's doing, I mean, Simon is doing a Philip Roth adaptation next, but tellingly, it's pretty high concept. Yeah. You know, so it's not like he's doing another, hey, we're just going to watch American Life evolve. I guess to finish, I mean, I'd love to get George back on the show to talk about it and his view about storytelling in general.

Just to say that people who've listened to our podcast, who maybe checked it out, who fell off the wagon, so to speak, who didn't continue with it, but have a soft spot for the wire and that type of storytelling, hey man, you got it on your HBO Max. It's there. Yeah. And I think there's a lot there that is frustrating, that isn't quite, doesn't quite land, but there's enough there that is really admirable and impressive that I think it's worth of watch.

We'll wrap up there. Thanks to Andy. We'll be back on Thursday. Not me. Not Andy. Guys, God bless with that conversation. I'll be tuning in for sure. Thanks, Sky. We'll talk to you guys soon.