The Watch - Damon Lindelof Discusses ‘The Leftovers’ (144)

Episode Date: April 24, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald are joined by the cocreator and showrunner of HBO’s 'The Leftovers' to discuss the ongoing shift in criticism of the show (2:05), the world-building from season to season (9:00), the Wu-Tang trampoline, and the first two episodes of Season 3 (35:20). Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, Andy. Hey, Chris. Hey, man. This is a very special episode of the watch because we were joined for the entirety of the episode by a special guest. Damon Lindeloff, the showrunner, the creator of The Leftovers, a major creative force behind Lost. He's screenwritten, he's got screenwriting credits on Prometheus, on World War Z, Star Trek.

Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland. And, you know, so obviously, like a huge figure in our world, and he was nice enough to stop by and hang out for an hour. And just a little, we're going to get right into it, but a little backstory before we do. Chris and I, Chris liked the first season of the leftovers more than I did. I very much didn't. And in my capacity, as TV critic at Grantland, I was very vocal about that. When the second season came back, I was, in all honesty, dreading covering it.

And I remember watching the season premiere and thinking the show had a, improved in a lot of tangible ways, but remember it opened with this totally insane, almost digression, basically, of a cavewoman and a snake, and it just drove me insane. And then a few days later, you and I read on vulture.com an interview with Damon, where he was asked about that scene, and he said that he and the other writers wrote that scene specifically to piss us off. We were very honored. That was very crazy. Very reckless, I feel like. And it worked. I feel like they wrote that scene and the collateral and like I have to be honest with you

I've talked to Damon about this he was nice enough to hash things out with me for the first time we met on the Ringer podcast that I did with him a year ago and he was very maybe this wasn't this way in the room but the story has become no they were like let's piss off Greenwald and Ryan okay I'm honored I guess

anyway I've never done a 180 on a show more and not because he tried to piss me off but because the show really just, I think, blossomed into this incredible, amazing thing. I think the third season is in some ways flying even higher. We didn't really get into it so much in this interview, but Damon did say that he wanted to piss us off again,

but unfortunately, I don't think it worked. I think we like the third season. It's not working. The first two episodes are fantastic. You're listening to this. We do talk a lot about the second episodes, so if you're not quite caught up with the show, and if you don't care about spoilers, feel free.

But if you want to kind of be on the same wavelength, length here. I would listen to the second episode. Yeah, we were really excited for Damon to come by, so let's just get to the interview. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor

at the ringer.com, and joining me in the studio, we all got matching Wu-Tang tattoos. It's Andy Greenwald and David Lindelho! You got the extended vowel. This is, it's so exciting to see you do this. I actually do throw a lot of physicality into it. I've always wondered like how genuine the enthusiasm actually is.

And the answer is like a nine. Yeah. Well, because you're here. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm lucky if I get a 6.5. We're so, we're so excited to welcome Damon. Damon, obviously is the writer and showrunner and creator of leftovers, one of our favorite shows. And we're- Believe it or not.

Believe it or not, we've got it. How did we get here? We've gone a long way together. And we're going to talk about it. Oh, good. We're recording this in earlier April, but we're going to be airing this after the second episode of the third season has aired.

Fantastic. So we can talk full spoilers about that. Great. Hence the Wu-Tang reference. Wonderful. We're going to go further back, though. That would make even less sense if people haven't seen the show. But first and foremost, thank you for joining us.

I know that you and I, Damon, we squashed our beef a year ago. But you and Chris, you know, there's still a little bit of tension. This is the first time you've met in person. I feel like this is like, this is like, assassinated. of my character because I feel like I was very fair was it today not like the first season on the pod no I I feel you are always open-minded and Ben and your approach was sort of benefit of the doubt and you didn't use words like hate I like if you use the word hate like once then you go like okay like you know maybe a limited vocabulary here like I was just struggling for it

but once you use it by my count 18 times first of all I think that's defamation. I think I'll save that word for truly universally derided HBO shows like Big Little Lies. I would never use it about the left-office. You are developing a reputation as someone who gets it wrong. So thank God you're not a critic anymore. You need a second act. Look at the Miacolpa.

Look at this now. No, and what I appreciate, here's the thing is, when you're making a television show, you have to be in love with it. So, you know, that I, but when you look down at it from 30,000 feet, and you can see its flaws. And as you guys know, I'm really interested in what the critical community is saying

because I look at what you and your peers do as a free resource, where it's basically like, oh my God, like I just handed it in my paper and now like 50, you know, Harvard educated professors are giving it back with notes on it and they're not even charging me. So I may take issue with what you say,

but I do listen to it. And I stand by the first season and I'm really glad that it exists, but I've been very candid about the first. fact that we were figuring, we were fixing a lot of things as we went. We had to shut down for a couple of weeks. Mimi Leader came in and helped us kind of find the show, you know, there were a lot of conversations going on. And although you weren't in the room and your peers weren't in the room, I heard what everybody was saying. So I can't now say, like, you were wrong about the show.

And in fact, I respect the fact that when the second season came along, and I basically stated that I think that our love story began with me openly stating that I wanted you to hate you. the second season of the show, particularly the first five minutes of the second season of the show. You said, I did indeed hate the first five minutes of the second season of show, but then I started embracing the show. And I'm not reversing my opinion of the first season of the show. I stand by my judgment, and I can say that I didn't, if you were like in hindsight, I think the first season was actually quite amazing, I would lose all respect for you. It's good to know where the line is, so I won't dance over it. But I think the thing is,

and I've said this to you and I've said it before, that what was compelling about the first in which I did not like, was that it got me upset. I used strong words like hate because it was touching some emotional places. I was responding to it. A good man that I like to speak to, who I called my therapist, said that, you know, anger is very— Is that just an app on your phone or is that— It's an app.

He's a sponsor the pot. Anger is very connected to love in terms of drawing you into something. And how is Sam S ma'am? He's well, thank you. Fantastic. It's great that he has time to do that for you. We have a 415. Fantastic.

But the WGA insurance no longer accepts this. He only does 50-minute sessions. he starts looking at his watch at like 42. This is a little biz talk. But my point being, it was upsetting me, which is a thing, and then something changed. And I am curious now that the show, you finish the show, obviously, the show is locked and done. And we talked about this a little bit a year ago, but as we'd get into a conversation

about the third season, what are your, what's your perspective now on the way you were able to just twist the dial a few clicks and basically let the light in and change, it's the same show. but I feel like you let in the heart in a different way, you let in the humor and you let in the strangeness that I felt was knocking on the door and not quite penetrating in season one. Well, I mean, I get to sit here in this chair

and basically represent the show right now and I know that it is, you know, it's sort of, it feels a little, you know, bullshit and, oh, this is something that people say, it's a team effort, but I do really have to stress that I think that many of the changes that you're talking about are, I would attribute to others.

Mimi Leader, who I mentioned earlier, who came in mid-season 1 and just took the reins directorially on a production level and creatively. But then we made a couple of key hires between seasons one and seasons two. We brought on another executive producer, Tom Speezy Alley, who was the one who is like,

you should watch Hanging Rock and Last Wave because I feel like there's another tonal bandwidth that the show can be spinning on. Parada, who had been back and forth over the course of season one, I went and re-read his book. Tom Prada who wrote the novel. And I was like,

there's a lot of humor in this book. Oh my God, like this idea that I had that humor or absurdist humor can't exist in this world was actually in the DNA all along. And I was just not listening to the idea that this is just all about grief and pain. And, you know, people can't be laughing. And I went to a couple funerals, unfortunately. But people were like laughing at the funerals.

And I was like, oh, that exists. too. And then, you know, we promoted the writers, this is from season one, this guy, Nick Hughes. We brought on Patrick Somerville into season two, and there were just influential voices in the writer's room, and I stopped trying to demand the show to be this thing that I needed it to be, and I started listening to what other people wanted it to be, and then certainly by time season three rolled along and then we made some other brought in some new writers because one of the downsides of doing eight episodes of television or ten episodes is you you and especially with layoffs between seasons is you lose talent so um we had a great writer named jacky hoyt who was on seasons one

and two you know she left and so we made some key hires into season three carly ray and lila biok promoted another writer's assistant haley harris this woman tamra carter who will be talking about later, I'm sure if you're interested at all and how the Wu-Tang found its way into the show. We're very interested. And of course, Spisialli-A-Pirada, Nick and Patrick, and I just feel like that room, you know, started humming along, and that was a big part of it.

You talked a little bit about listening to the tracks to some extent, whether it was the critical community or fan reaction to the first season, how it affected the second season a little bit. Obviously, the new writer's room and some of the new blood and some of the old blood coming back from, like, with pirata, changes the way the show is made. But did you find that, you know, second season was received pretty well.

Did you find that you were listening again in between two and three? Or did that, was this more of like a kind of private journey? This was your show. You guys are ending it on your terms. How much, like, was it two-way traffic going into the creative part of this third season? It is, you know, it's easier to make changes and adjust and be contemplative, contemplative? Yeah.

Contemplative. Yeah. I've been saying debacle for years, it turns out. And finally, someone was like, you know, it's debacle. Everyone has the one word that they've been saying wrong. So of us have dozens of those words. I'm not naming, I'm not saying anything. My father got an advanced degree in English and thought the word, I thought there was a word

called misled. He thought that people were misled on the path to greatness. And I think my mother was like, it's misled. Oh my God. Yeah. That's amazing. So it happens to all of us. Go on. All right. Anywho. So when something's not working, I think listening to what the critical community has to say about why it's not working is definitely more impactful than when it is working because then the critical community is saying like, oh, we like this now.

And I think that then you could basically say, like, let's do more of the same. But I think that the one thing that really resonated out of the second season and Andy and I actually sat down after the second season, had aired right around the time that we found out that there was going to be a third. And the thing that was rattling around in our collective writing consciousness was that many people in the critical community said, we really love season two, end it. Stop now. Right. You know, it was like, we're good with it ending here. You're not basically going to be outdo this, outdo this ending. And that certainly gave us pause to some degree, but it was like, and so we tried to unpack that. What's the source of that? And I basically came to the conclusion,

whether it correct or not is that it wasn't because they felt that the story was over. It was that they felt like it would be a risk to invest further given my internal reputation for ending things. And they didn't trust me to end it better than it ended at the end of episode two. To which I basically said, you know, fuck that. Here we go. Double down. Double down, double down, double down. and I'm really glad that the third season exists,

but I will guarantee you that there will be members of the critical community who look at the finale of the series and say, there are moments in season three that I loved, but I wish that the show had ended at the end of season two. You can write this podcast office therapy too, I think we're headed towards there. Good God.

Yeah, so when we did sit down, it was right around the week where I think you had the conversation with HBO and said, okay, I'd like to do one more, but it's going to be it, and everyone agreed on that, and it had just become public. I believe when we talked, you said that you had, you know, you had been unsure yourself,

and then you had a thought, you had had a vision, not a vision, an image, something it occurred to you that made you feel like there was more story. Now that the season has begun, the third season has begun, can you talk about it? Have we seen the thing

that set you off on the path towards the- You have, and I think, you know, we did talk about it a little bit, which is there was this kind of life of Brian idea that was scratching at us. Because what happened was that, I think as we were writing the second season of the show, as we were writing at Game of Thrones last season was airing.

And the whole sort of question in the zeitgeist was, John Snow is coming back to life, right? Like, he's not really dead. We kind of know that he is. How are they going to do it? And what episode's going to... And we all watch Game of Thrones and obsess over Game of Thrones, love Game of Thrones.

And then John Snow came back to life. And it was just sort of like, and now we're on with Game of Thrones. And so we were like, as we were writing season two, we knew that we were going to do the same thing with Kevin, and we said, because Game of Thrones now exists and the audience has seen it, we can't end an episode with Kevin drinking poison

and falling out of his chair and telling the audience, he's dead. You have to show him getting dragged out of the room by Michael Murphy to say, no, no, no, we're going to be bringing him back to life, and this is episode six, it's not the finale. So we knew that, obviously, I think for every, my internal math is that for every one viewer, of the leftovers, there are 900 million viewers of Game of Thrones. That's just, that's just a rough map. But for the, in the overlap of the Venn diagram, we had to be aware of it. And I was basically like,

if we bring Kevin back to life, not just once, but twice, there has to be a consequence. This has to be something that the show is talking about. Like, because when people come back to life, that's a big, that's a big deal. And what would be interesting is if Kevin's attitude is, I don't want to talk about it. It's not a big deal. So what? You bury, me in the ground. I came out of the ground. A couple hours later, got shot point Mike in the chest. I guess it didn't hit any major arteries. I just want to get on with my life. But what if like the people around him were like, oh, no, no, no, we want to talk about this. And so this idea kind of coupled with some of the things that we've been talking about with Reza Aslan, who is our religious consultant

and actually can levitate if you've seen the believer poster. He'll do it for you. That's amazing. He, way back at the beginning of season two, he wrote this book, called zealot that was about, you know, the historical Jesus Christ. And at the time, there were like 10,000 Jesus is on the planet who were saying, I'm the son of God, I'm talking to God, but Jesus is the one who's stuck. And I was like, oh, let's just take that idea and say, there's 10,000 people on the planet right now who actually claim to be divine. And Kevin is one of them, but he's one of them that is, doesn't want to be. And it's the people around him who are basically trying to recruit him into some form of higher purpose. And that idea felt like it had some kind of weird,

quirky comedic energy to it, even though the show took it seriously, but the idea felt silly. Yeah. And we started just getting really excited about a show where when you, when you look at the TV guide description of an episode of the leftovers, that it sounds really silly. But then when you sit down and you watch it, you go like, oh, that isn't as silly as I thought it was going to be. One of the things that I loved about, and we can talk specifically about the second episode here, I like where you're going with this. Is, we'll get to the thing that I hate, is that it was such a startling reminder that though this awful thing has happened in the world of the leftovers with the departure, the world is still exists, and particularly it still exists outside of Jarden, Texas. And we've been in there so long, and we've been with these characters and seeing them operate in a world where miracles happen, where strange things are possible, where people can tell the future.

And then when Nora leaves and just goes to the Midwest, and we're like, oh, America's still there. Sure. The world is still there. Of course. It's this thrilling and sort of surprising reminder that you're creating a world where the extremity is possible, but it's not the only thing. You know, and coming from, as a TV viewer, we're almost trained to just go all in on the tiny subsection that we're paying attention to. Of course. There were plenty.

I don't want to, I don't know, there was another show a couple years ago called Lost. I don't know if you're familiar with it. And crazy things... I've been meaning to watch it. It's great all the way through to the ending. I promise. Can I skip season one? I'll make you a diagram.

I'll like to watch. Thank you. There are crazy things happen on the island all the time, but they're on the island. Right. Here, oh, we're just in a tiny part of Texas, and who knows what else is going on. And I appreciated that you brought us back into the larger world in this season. Can I ask it? I have a, I wrote like a question.

That wasn't a question. That was just a compliment. Go, good. She's, Nor is driving in season. I guess she's going to Kentucky in an episode. two. And in the background, I thought I saw a, like, a Chinese shipping container in the middle of a field. Are you asking me? Did you see it? Yeah. Like, like, basically, like, what I'm, the reason I'm asking is because, like, in your mind, do you know how the world has changed,

like, in very, like, all these detailed ways throughout, inside that, the universe of the leftovers? Yeah. What I can say is there was no intentional, uh, uh, placement of the, of the Chinese shipping container. But I will say that there's a tremendous amount of thought put into world building. And lots and lots of conversations about, you know, we always wanted this to not feel like it was an alt history show, you know, where it's sort of like dealing with the issue of like who's the president in this world is not something that comes up. In the pilot of the show, they're on the TV and the bar.

You're seeing people who have departed. So there's Busey and Anthony Bourdain and Shaquille O'Neill and Hillary Clinton pops up there. And she's talking and you're like, does that mean she disappeared or like what's going on? But we never wanted it to feel like, okay, let's do the big alt history unpack. But more importantly, we talked about things like the loved ones or like what are the coping mechanisms that people are using? How can we make the departure, which is an invisible thing? You know, there's not zombies trying to kill you or mushroom clouds or, you know, like it's, that would have been season four.

But like how do you make the invisible visible? And so, you know, sometimes, you know, you do like billboards or, but we try to really relate it to the characters. I didn't want the leftovers to be an Easter egg show. Yeah. I didn't think it was, it was, it could have just been something that was in the background, but for some reason it leapt out of me because as you kind of get into Nor. Like Nora often can be the portal. to this wider world because she's working to the government.

And I was just like, oh, I wonder, I wonder who is president. And in a way, like what you're saying is really interesting because one thing that's happened, I think for a lot of us over the last few months is like you start to look for ways to explain the unexplainable, you know, in our lives. You know what I mean? And you're trying to, whether that's like mega threads on Twitter or whether that's like, you know, trying to track different things. And I was always trying to figure out like what would these people like the Mark Lynn Baker

radiation conversation is not that far off from like the way some people are on Twitter right now. For sure. You know, it's just fascinating to think about like what that would do to serve to people's brains. I think, you know, not to get all meta about the show because this was not our intention because we wrote the show basically between January and August of last year. But I think that the, you know, one of the big themes we were chasing over the course of the series but really tried to dial in for the final season is this idea of what we're now calling fake news, which are like, how can you build like a viable narrative that seems completely

and totally ridiculous that has just a couple of facts that you connect, you know, and suddenly, you know, there's a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. that is, you know, that, that is human trafficking and like, you know, like a hub of pedophilia, and you can get intelligent people to believe that. And I think that every character on the show is struggling to basically find some kind of belief system that reconciles the departure. And then these crazy stories, you know, Marklin Baker basically, you know, in a hotel room basically saying there's this gizmo that exists that will blast you with radiation. It will send you to your children.

Sounds completely and totally absurd. And we're like, this sounds too absurd for Nora to buy when we came up with the idea and we're like, oh, how are we going to present that idea? It should come from someone incredibly absurd. You know, what if we pay off the Markland Baker gag that we're, we've basically been setting up for now two seasons, but he performs it in the most grounded, incredible way.

And so this has that silliness factor, which is if you say to someone, hey, last night on the leftovers, Mark Lynn Baker, as himself, from Perfect Strangers, sat in a hotel room with Nora Durst and told her that there is a gizmo that will basically blast her with radiation

and transport her into another dimension. They would say, that is the stupidest thing. The leftovers must have jumped the shark, and hopefully you go, well, it did and I liked it, or it didn't feel like we were jumping the shark. But this is also a sign of this bizarre, I don't know, whether it's happenstance or luck or devious, brilliant planning on your part. But when you made a sort of throwaway gag about the 80 sitcom Perfect Strangers, you isolated

an actor who is a Yale-trained stage actor. That's right. Who happened to, you know, cake up on Perfect Strangers and then has been on stage in New York and he's an actor. Funny story about that. So he was probably ready to do this. Which is, you know, we obviously did the deep dive on Marklin Baker as a human. and otherwise known as just visiting his Wikipedia page.

But we learned that he was Yale educated. So when we wrote the script, or our altar Wu-Tang egos wrote the script, that's a whole other thing. There's a line where he basically is explaining to Nora, just so you know, I'm not some gullible idiot. I went to Yale. And Marklin Baker had one note on the entire scene,

which was, hey, just in case you want to throw it in there, I have two degrees from Yale. And I was like, oh, you are so sane. I have two degrees from Yale. Like, it's doubly impressive. But my favorite part about that episode is, so the first episode felt very different to all the rest of the series to me. Because if there was something very lived in,

and I think maybe it's just a product of how many episodes it had been and that we'd been in, we're in Jordan again. But it felt very human and it felt very kind of like, this is a day in the life, like, swatch of what these people are going through. And I loved that Kevin and Nora were almost posited as like the last two rational people in the world. And then the fact that you're basically asking these two people, Nora to go through unspeakable repeated tragedy, which we kind of enumerate in episode two, right? We go through like everything that's happened to her, her parents, her kids, you know, and then Lily being taken from her

and giving up on that. And then with Kevin who kind of is like the guy with the white hat, like kind of keeping the peace, but he needs to go home and asphyxiate himself to feel something every day. Right. I don't know. There was something about that, like, behind closed doors when she's inside of a rental car, that the world does get to these people, that you can't maintain rational, level-headedness all the time.

That's, you know, I mean, season one for all of its failures and all of its successes, the thing that I think worked was that we were trying to discover new coping mechanisms. that looked unique because we know what the coping mechanisms of grief are. We've all seen the movie where a husband and wife loses a child or, you know, like, and so, and so we know what that looks like. The Sean Penn Mystic River is.

Right, exactly. Yes, Mystic River, that's exactly. I almost did it, and then I decided. But in a world where you've lost someone, but they're not dead, and you can't go through that, those rituals that have existed for millennia in terms of, and eventually arrive at a point of I'm never going to see that person again,

If that gets taken away from you and there's the possibility that you might, what coping mechanisms start to exist? And the beginning of that was like, what if Nora puts on a bulletproof vest and hires prostitutes to shoot her? And that was like, oh, that sounds about right. And so the idea that the only real way to function in this world is to find this kind of aberrant coping mechanism. So the first episode of the show was sort of designed to feel like it's an episode of

parenthood, you know, for the first half hour. And then Simon Garfunkel starts up and hopefully your heart starts to raise. because you go like, oh, something bad is about to happen because how can it not? Yeah. And then we slowly but surely, when there are just these lingering shots that Mimi God of Nora's cast.

And it was sort of like, there's something to this cast on her arm. Like, did the actress just like sprain her wrist and they were going to write it into the show or is there something here? So every single character on the show is dealing, like, is doing something in secret that is allowing them to kind of co-es.

in this environment. You're also talking about something about television in a meta way that I appreciate, which speaks to your observation about why people maybe were content with you ending the show after two seasons, which is when we watch TV, we want the best for the people we fall in love with, these families we fall in love with. And season two, characters are covered in blood and some things have happened, but they're together. And there's this brief moment of potential peace and happiness.

And as soon as you decide to continue the show, they're in jeopardy again. Correct. And you gave us a taste of, oh, they're even more complicated family now. and look at these different ways that they've crossed and they've stayed together, and then you put the danger back into it. And I think one of the sneaky best things about the show is what you said about people's need for ritual,

need for structure, and what happens when that's taken away. And you've continued to present us with characters who desperately need to believe something, but in a world of constantly shifting reality and possibility, they're making it up on the fly. And all that leads to the question that I think a lot of people will come away from episode two wondering

is did Nora decide to go to Australia the moment she saw Kevin with his head in a bag? Was she feeling otherwise? And then when she's like, okay, well, this cement floor is actually quicksand again. I need to keep moving. What's really interesting about Nora is there's the Nora that we write and then there's the Nora that carry plays. And I think that potentially you might get two different answers to that question because it doesn't say in the script and in this moment. So, and I'll just, you know, for those of you who are really interested in it, I would revisit this very question that you're asking once the series is completely and totally over, which was what was our intention as writers and what was Carrie's intention as an actor or Mimi's intention as a director because it doesn't say in this, we're just like, this is what Nora says. This is what Nora does. But as to what Nora feels, we kind of let Carrie Kuhn figure that out. Is that what you thought? That was my, when I was.

When I was watching it, I didn't know how I thought. And then when I was thinking about it today, I thought she was thinking, that's what I was thinking. I read that as she walks in on him and she's like, you're the only real person. Like, that is the only real thing to do in this world. And so I'm going to do my duct tape and plastic thing too. That's why she's like, come with, sure, come with me. I mean, my read on it, which is different than my intention because now that I've seen it, you know, it's left the writer's room in terms of what we wanted it to be. And now it is this other thing because it exists on screen, which is the most exciting part of this job.

for me is how other people interpret it. And then the audience gets to interpret it. But what I would say is that our intention was, Nora's entire struggle this season is she's an atheist slash agnostic in a world that is basically defying agnosticism. And so she's like, these things aren't real, these things aren't true. There are no such thing as holy men giving hugs. And I tried that and that didn't work.

But at the same time, her family basically vanished right out of her kitchen. So she's trying to reconcile, you know, what are the ridiculous notion? and how can I sign up for them. But more importantly, I think that the reason that she even goes to St. Louis in the first place is not because Marklin Baker says, do you want to see your kids again? It's like, she's like, that's like a 10-hour drive from Kentucky. I actually do want to see one of my kids again.

And she uses that. But once she's actually heard what he has to say and she watches that the videos on that flash drive, it starts to infect her. And I don't think she's made up her mind as to whether or not she's going to Australia until the phone actually rings. but she basically gets into that room and there's Kevin and what a healthy couple would do at that point is basically say like, good God, what is that?

There's a bag over your head and he'd say, well, you told me you used to put a bulletproof vest on and have prostitute chew you and like, who are you to judge me? And they'd have a huge fight, which would be very healthy for those of us who are in loving relationships. You have to have huge fights.

And the couples who don't have huge fights, they have one huge fight and then it's over. But you have to, but instead, You know, he basically try, she says, don't explain what he should. And then he says, do you want to have a baby with me? Very reasonable thing to say in that moment. She laughs in his face. And then she asks him, you know, are you happy?

And he says, yes. And she says, I'm happy too. And we know that both of them are lying to one another. And then the phone rings. And she just wants to get the fuck out of Dodge. Yeah. You know, it's basically like, I'm going to, you know, I just need to get out of this room right now to avoid those conversations.

that would have been painful. And then when Kevin says, can I come with you, she doesn't have the heart to say no. And so like that's, and we've already, you know, I'm not spoiling anything about the season, but, you know,

we made a very calculated effort at the end of the very first episode to tell the audience, this is not going to end well between Kevin and Nora. You know, at the end of the first episode, we see Nora at some sort of future point being asked,

does the name Kevin mean anything to you? And she gives us a hard no. So we're now watching the trajectory of that play out. It's a doomed love story. So basically, I'm just pissing over everything that Andy just said about wanting our characters to be better off. That's fine. That's what this is the safe space for that. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Movement Watches, started by two broke college kids that wanted to wear stylish watches but couldn't afford them.

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Shipping is free both ways. How easy is that? To get $20 off your purchase, visit the blacktucks.com slash BSPN. That's the blacktucks.com slash BSPN for $20 off your purchase. We have to talk about the, what to my mind was the most exciting moment in the episode. And I emailed you this, but I want to repeat it into a microphone. I feel like I now have three major benchmarks when people ask me what I want out of my art. And they are Oscar Isaac Dancing and Ex Machina, the spaceship in Fargo Season 2, and Wutang

Trampoline. Wutang trampoline is what I want in most things, which is it is a moment of just ecstatic absurdity that is both emotionally gripping and ridiculous and somehow makes sense. And those moments are not easy to do. They involve taking a big risk and then also seeing it through and with a seriousness of purpose that doesn't drown it. How did you get to Wutang Trampoline? First off, thanks a lot for saying that and I appreciate it. And I'm, you know, I will say that there are, you know, probably six or seven moments over the course of these eight episodes that I feel real anxiety about in terms of the way that the audience is going to either embrace them or reject them. We as a writer's room, you know, unanimously embrace them.

And the actors are usually very always game and say like, okay, this is what they want us to do. This is what we're going to do. But the first one was the, as you call it, the wood, well, I mean, I guess Marklin Baker chronologically, just that idea. of him calling Nora and then being in the episode and then the and then the Wutang trampoline and so basically what happened was um the cast was the first idea and the idea is like Nora has a cast she's covering up something what is she covering up and the idea was she she went to go get a tattoo with her children's names on it because norah's a character who when we first meet her is pushing coffee cups over in cafe so people will recognize her and basically

they'll look at her and they will acknowledge her loss But now we're seven years later and she's in a place separate, far from her home. And people don't know what she's lost anymore. So she's like, how can I broadcast this fact that I, you know, that I'm basically a 9-11 widow, you know, that I need people to know. But in the process of getting her children's names tattooed on her, she totally becomes self-aware and says, that's pathetic. I'm pathetic. I have to stop this. I need to cover up this tattoo.

And she points to another tattoo on the wall to cover up her children. names, what should that be? And one of the things that I started doing this year is I'd send the writers home and say, that's your homework. What's the tattoo that cover-ups are children's name? And we would literally go around the table and, you know, someone would pitch, it should just say, like, mother, it should be a big heart or whatever. And Tamara Carter, a story editor on the show came on season three.

She said, it should be the Wu-Tang insignia. And here's what it looks like. And for me, you know, I wish I was cool enough to say I am, I can name like. three members of the Wu-Tang clan. I know I know I'm familiar with their music, but I'm not like, I can't count myself as like, you know, Martin Screlli or whatever it is, you know. And so, and that felt good because I was like,

oh, this should be an appropriation thing. Nora has unconsciously appropriated the Wu-Tang culture. I also knew that Donald Glover used the Wu-Tang generator, name generator to become childish Gambino because I heard it on this amazing podcast for Plyall and they did this whole thing. So I was like, oh my God, can we, that's amazing. Can we get, can we license the Wu-Tang insignia?

And thus began this epic sort of legal battle between, not battle, but inquiry between Warner Brothers, business affairs. Please say rap battle. Yeah, rap battle. And who, was it Wutang investments? Was it Wuttech financial services? Who did they bring to their side?

And then simultaneously, I then also emailed Liza Richardson, who is our brilliant music supervisor, and I said, I'm under the impression that Wu-Tang is incredibly difficult to license because they sample so much. So, you know, and she was basically like, pick a song and I'll do everything that I can to get it. But I have, it's going to be a toss-up.

And I was like, we're going full Wu-Tang, we're doing it. Warner Brothers came back, said, you've got the tattoo, you know, et cetera, et-seter. and so we proceeded. And then we essentially said there's going to be a scene now between, we have Regina King for one scene in, really, in season three, unfortunately, because she was doing American crime and then she was going off to direct a number of television episodes. So it's like, we want to use maximum Erica Murphy.

This should be, Nora should tell Erica, they've now become friends. Nora should tell Erica about this tattoo. and then Erica should help Nora. She should give her some piece of healing, but it has to be a non-traditional coping mechanism. And it has to feel the opposite of putting out a bulletproof vest or bag over your head. It has to feel like it's healing. Because Erica is basically like, oh, the show is actually over for me.

You go on, but I'm actually good now. So what is it she does? What is Erica's coping mechanism that she shares with, Nora? Everybody went home, did their homework. Again, same thing. Tamra Carter comes. in and says, I think she said, I have an aunt who has a trampoline in her backyard, and she just jumps on it. And I was like, Nora and, you know, Regina King, Carrie Coon, jumping on trampoline

with the, you know, we'll find the right Wu-Tang track. Hopefully we'll clear it. That just sounds amazing to me. It sounds, it also sounds really dangerous. The writer's room got super excited about it, and that's kind of, that's how we arrived there. I think I have the most pressing follow-up to that. is, are any members of the Wu-Tang departed? And are we missing method man? You know what I mean? I think probably ghost-faced killer would be the most obvious.

He's the first one. Oh, no, you got it. Yeah, you got's the first one through the collider. Some might argue Capadonna disappeared years ago. That's true. Arguable. I just love that scene because I feel like we're in an age, and you know, you're at the forefront of this of possibility of television

and of attention paid to television and of talent and money and it's this nexus of things, why not play with it? You know, there's this impulse. You have two of the best actors alive, I think, certainly on the small screen. You have them for one day, every one scene of them together. Why not make them jump on a trampoline? Don't do a few good men. Like, everyone's going to make actors chew the scenery.

Give them something else to do. Let play. And that feeling becomes infectious. And I think it affects audiences in a different way, too, because we're so used to a certain kind of dramatic weight. especially at this point, where we are with television. And I would add to that and basically say that all the writers and storytellers that are involved with the leftovers are watching a lot of television right now.

And when you see, it's, I'm not going to compare us to the Beach Boys or the Beatles, but what was happening between them, you know, Sergeant Pepper's Pet Sounds, essentially you go like, oh, you can do that. And so you see Al Funn Mr. Robot and you suddenly go like, oh, you can, and people liked that. I liked that and everybody else liked that. You can't be absurd for absurdest sake. You have to kind of earn it. So if a UFO is basically going to show up in the middle of this massive shootout,

there has to be a scene in the pilot where, you know, Kieran Culkin basically, like, where you set it up. You have to earn it. You have to talk about it. And hopefully there's some sort of emotional component buried in it. Like everything that we just talked about in terms of the Wu Tang tattoo and jumping on trampolines is rooted in this idea of people are suffering. How do they escape suffering?

someone is feeling shame, they're trying to cover something up, et cetera. So that, you know, you have to unpack it emotionally in order to have it make sense or else I think people just watch and go, they're just doing this, you know, to, to arouse us, but they haven't earned it. And I think that the hard, the fun idea is great when it comes, but the earning it's, we now have what's on the right side of the equal sign. Now we have to do the proof. And I was never really good at Matt. I do want to talk about something a little bit behind the scenes, and you've been very generous with sharing the praise and credit and potentially blame for the three seasons of The Leftovers with your collaborators. I know from talking to you that you are, if there's a writer's room,

you're in it. That's how you like to operate now. That's how you operated with the leftovers. In this autort-driven era of television, that's certainly not always the case. And, you know, there are people who are able to somehow, and I don't understand how they do it, run more than one show. multiple projects going at the same time. You've made the choice to be in the room. You're still out there. Your name is still on it. You're out there doing the interviews. Why did you make that decision? How did you get there from your previous experiences? And then the bigger question is just your attitude about that kind of collaboration, because the leftovers to me succeeds, especially now, because every episode is overflowing

with little ideas that add up to a big idea. I was just trying to look at the, the architecture of an episode and there's so many little scenes that can't have just been the work of someone who dive bombed in with your here are my three talking points bullet points for the episode fill in the blanks yeah small things that you know who knows what we'll ever go back to like john being the palm reader now and it being fraud um we go back to it oh good uh so i got you to yeah you spoil something oh it feels like a little bit of an explanation is necessary but even if it wasn't you gave us another little glimpse so somewhere in there is my bigger question about your decision to always be in the room and to be in the writer's room and consider that the main part of

your job and then how you let in the other voices. Well, I mean, I think if you really listen to the people who do this job, you know, the auteur's, whether that's, you know, Matt Weiner or Vince Gilligan or Shonda Rhymes or even Jill Soloway, like they all say that they have these incredible writer's rooms that are like basically staffed with amazing voices who, you know, have wildly different backgrounds and look at story in an entirely different way. And then, you know, this will be the most pretentious thing that I say amongst many pretentious things, but we're more curators, you know, than, then auters, which is like, you hear a good idea and you just curate it.

So I'm just trying to, I'm trying to, you know, build the show based on what everyone else says. I'm also self-aware enough to know that my ego has a really hard time. when I hear a great idea, the first thing that my brain does is hate that person because I didn't come up with it myself. And sometimes I'll reject the idea

until we talk for two hours and then I repitch it myself. And then everyone goes, that's cool. And I'm now like, I was a part of this idea, which existed in its most purest form and had nothing to do with me. That part of it actually,

if that happens when you're not even in the room, the blow to my ego of this show can be great without me, like what do I even need to write it for in the first place? So that's a big part of it, which is, you know, I want to be a part of the creative process. And then the simple emotional answer to your question is my favorite part of this job is being in the writer's room.

Like I like, you know, hanging out with the actors. I love toning the scripts with the directors. You know, I don't like being on the set. So I'll go to the set for maybe like, you know, one or two days of each episode. Is that because it's like too much downtime or is it because it's just too nerve-ranging? I don't have a job on the set. My job's already done.

So, you know, the way that I do it, the way that I like to do it is we completely and totally empower the directors who are directing the episodes. We talk a lot about the script before it's time for them to start shooting it. And then I don't watch dailies. I don't want to know what they did. So when I sit in the editing room and I watch the cut for the first time, I've been, I've, I've separated myself from it because I think a lot of writers have this experience of it didn't turn out the way that I wanted it to.

And if you just say, I'm going to set up the system so that it definitely doesn't turn out the way that I wanted it to, and then it will be less excruciating for me when I realize it's become this whole other thing because all these other people have interpreted along the way, that's the way that I have grown to love doing this job. And I just think that that's the way that we kind of did it on Lost. I mean, you know, Carlton was certainly in and out of the writer's room a lot,

but he was much more effect. He was actually kind of, you know, what I would say, the de facto showrunner in terms of managing the budget. And when he went to Hawaii a lot more often than I did and toned the scripts and figured out all that stuff. And he was in the room, but I was basically like, I just want to be here. I want to be in the room and then I want to go home at night and I want to write scripts. And like if I never went to Hawaii again, I'd be fine with that.

And so that's that's the way that it worked on the leftovers and the way that I hope to do it into the future. I wanted to make sure I asked you about this before you. go because you know you have like these you get to have this playground with the leftovers you get to work with these people and you got these ideas like wutang trampoline and uh you know gary bucey head and and all these things and then there's another part of your career where you work on things like prometheus or world war z or tomorrow land and these are uh fascinating projects especially for me prometheus which is a movie i probably think about like once a week still um but don't have as much room for those kinds of weird thought experiments,

or if they are, they have to be baked into something that's a much larger piece of like architecture. Can you talk a little bit about how your brain switches when you do that, or is there a switch at all? Not effectively is the short answer. I do, you know, I think between loss and the leftovers, I did those movie projects, and I feel like I have so much fun talking about the world building, building the world,

that I just feel like, you know, painting on a much larger canvas. you know, is more exciting to me. And then, so we have all these great ideas. And then you have to cram them into a two-hour movie. And as much as I love movies, I grew up on movies and, you know, felt like I wanted to make movies. I'm not entirely sure that that's like my best me. Right. Because, you know, movies have to basically conform to these certain levels of expectations.

And so, so particularly in the area of, you know, big Hollywood movies, which are the three movies that you mentioned is sort of like, oh, I just want to do a cool Disney movie like Close Encounters, where it's basically about the discovery of this world that exists. But then as you start to develop it, you're like, and the world may be ending, you know, and they have to stop the world from ending. And that's the ending of Prometheus too, right? Which is like, it's not just about going to, it's not, alien is not about the world ending. Even aliens is not about the world ending. I mean, it would be bad if the alien got back to Earth. But like, that those aren't,

aren't the stakes. The whole problem is that they're so far from Earth. But Prometheus, you're still talking about a third act where it's like, oh, now the ship is taking off and it's heading for Earth and we have to ram the ship and Idriselba is like, and you're just like, oh, God, like, when I see other movies, I hate this stuff and now I'm actually looking down in my own fingers and I'm doing it. Yeah. And I'm powerless. I'm powerless to stop myself because I don't know any other way to do it. And in television, I just think, like, there's, you know, there's myriad solutions, multiple ways that you can go in terms of resolving things. And I haven't figured out how to wait a way to do it. I would say that I have an interest in kind of working on a movie that feels more like ex machina, you know, that is smaller and more intimate and sort of like an indie space.

And, you know, what's upsetting about our industry is a guy like Colin Trevereaux makes safety not guaranteed. then you're like, this is really cool. And then he's off to Jurassic Park and Star Wars, which, which are great. Like, that's great. And I'm not, but, but our, our business is always basically pushing people who have some level of success and what I would say, like, unconventional sort of, you know, niche storytelling, you know, more, more like cultish fair. And it's basically like, how can we get Alex Garland now to basically direct the new, the trans, the bumblebee spin off, you know, right? And it's like, what? Keep talking. Keep talking. That sounds pretty good. No, I wouldn't mind seeing that.

I did want, I'm glad we went that direction because I wanted to ask about the difference between movies and TV because it's back in the conversation. Vulture ran a couple pieces about this, and it's something I feel passionate about, this idea that the 10 episode movie, and I wanted to get your thoughts on that because one of the, again, one of the reasons why I have done a 180 on the leftovers is because you champion the episode. These are distinct, distinct pieces of art in a large, season that tell a larger story.

We're two episodes into season three, and they are very, very different from each other. In tone and focus, we're telling different sides of a story, different perspectives. You take advantage of that. Wu-Tang Trampoline would not have fit in 301. It might not have fit in 303. Right. And yet there is this larger, at least in terms of the industry, seems to be conversation about how that's all we're doing anyway is we're making these 10-hour movies.

I mean, I understand and agree with a lot of the writing that's being done on on this right now. But I also feel like there has to be a space to say like some albums are albums and other albums have 10 great singles on them and those and some are both. The reality is is our brains, I really think I'm not a neuroscientist, but our brains are basically changing in terms of the way that we absorb these things because something is definitely happening in my brain. If I watch episode one of Stranger Things and I'm 40 minutes in and, and, you're 40 minutes in,

And I'm basically like, this is so good. I love this world. I just want to draw it out. And then it ends in a little box pops up in the lower right hand corner of my screen and says, the next episode will start in eight seconds. And something happens in my brain that's like, I'm going to watch one more. And so the fact that that exists now, that that is there, that that model exists for us, it's almost impossible to resist if you love something.

It's why, you know, if you are hungry and you're at the in-and-out drive-through, you're like, I'm going to get two double-doubles, like, and I'm going to eat them. Even though as you're nearing the end of the first double-double, you're already going like, I'm not as hungry as it was before, but it smells so good. No, you're not, the terrible mistake doesn't even happen

until you've eaten the second one. So I think that this idea of restraint, but I will say like, you know, a show like Young Pope, which I loved as much as you, the anticipation between the following Sunday and then having, and then like, oh, I just have to wait another day

for another episode on Monday, but now I have to, I could have called HBO at any point and said, give me young pope, give it all to me right now. Like, I know people over there. But that's what, you know, to me, outside of the storytelling mechanism

of is it a 10 hour, 20 hour movie, or is it, you know, does it have episodic, you know, separation where we're telling like 10 different stories. But the shows that that do episodes, it's very clear. Like transparent, for example, those are episodes. You know, and so like after, you know, no spoilers, but after the turtle one, my wife and I just sat there with our mouths hanging open.

We're like, we can't watch any more transparent tonight. We're taking like three days to just be in the beauty of what just happened. And, you know, we have to self-regulate to some degree. But I do, I don't take issue with Jonah and Lisa saying, that Westworld is going to be a 70-hour movie or a 10-hour movie or whatever, because if I didn't have to wait until the following Sunday, just think about all, the majority of the dings on Westworld

in its first couple episodes never would have happened if it was released on Netflix and you could just watch all 10. First off, all the theorizing about, you know, Jimmy Simpson, man, that all would have gone out the door. You just would have watched one after the other, after the other, after the other, and it would have played as a 10-hour movie. I think that it would have gotten, had a much worse reception then, because I think that what kept that show afloat in people's minds and in the conversation

and at the forefront of what they wanted to be thinking about was the delay, was the anticipation, is this going to be paid off or not? Because I think that if, and this is my own criticism of the show, which I was not a fan of the show, I think that if you took out the Easter egging, I don't know if there was much there or there. So I think it actually benefited from the week to week in a way that I'm not even saying as positive. Right.

I think that helped it. I think it's also interesting to think about, you know, especially... I respectfully disagree, by the way, about Westworld. Yeah, you're on the record. Yeah. No, go ahead. No, no. Retweets are not endorsements on this podcast.

Like, look, you know, all I'll say about it is we're not going to, you know, we're not going to get into a big West World debate, although maybe we could. Next season. But the way that I view the first season of any television show pretty much since I've been a professional TV writer is, I just, there's just a, like, the show has to teach the right. how to write it. And it has to teach the audience how to watch it. I agree with that.

And there are shows. When you watch the Breaking Bad pilot and you go like, what? There it is. The whole thing. It's all there. It's all there already. Like, you know, I mean, it's, it's going to explore other tonal bandwidth, but it's already there.

Or Mad Men. That's another one. But Matt Weiner had been thinking about Mad Men since he was writing on fucking Becker, you know? So, like, you know, it's just fully baked. And I understand that in this age of Peak TV and especially with so much excellent TV that you're just like, this show needs to know what it is right out of the gate.

But, you know, I'm basically like, I will watch like the first four or five. The last time I made that mistake was on The Wire. I watched three episodes of The Wire. I said the words, the wire is boring. Wow. I said it. You just said them again.

No. But how dare I? Yeah. You know, like, what, that's the most, I should have been struck by lightning. You still might. Or at the very, very least. What's the most recent show you were wrong about in that way?

that you then found out. Can I answer? It's the leftovers. That I, like something you started and you were like, ah, do I have the time to do this? And then it got itself together.

And then a big little lies is certainly one of those shows. I mean, but again, when I watch the first or second episode, the bar is very low. You know, I just start from a position of give me a couple things

to love about this show. Right. Like if you can get through the first couple episodes and I have some sense of theme, you know, or I'm like really engaged or interested in the, you know, in the performances, that's all I need to basically keep going.

And after four or five episodes, if it, if it isn't quote unquote improving by whatever my, it isn't finding itself or I'm not learning how to watch it, like, then I will actually give up on it. But I, I, I, there's just a grace period where it's sort of like, I don't, you know, I don't even, why watch the first half of a basketball, a college basketball game? Like, there's a good basketball being played, but why watch it? Sure. You know.

Yeah, I realize that by advocating my new policy of there's so much and I can, I'm going to, I'm going to take advantage of my delete button. Like, I don't have to watch this anymore. I'm actually playing into some of the forces that I'm against, like blockbusterization of TV, this idea that it has to hook me with a poster. It has to hook me in the first five minutes or else the whole point of TV should be that sort of weird figuring it out phase. Yeah, I mean, that can be a positive.

Let me just say, like, is it? You know, doesn't it make just complete an utter logical sense that a show is just going to get better as it goes, unless the people who are making that show are just completely and totally deaf to their own show. But like, everybody who's making it wants to make it better, but very rarely does the show get worse unless there's a key personnel change.

Well, the most interesting thing about TV is when something registers, and I'm not saying this is a former critic, it doesn't have to be a critical response. It could be something internally. It could be watching a performance. It could be a guest star. I mean, look at Joliel White.

I mean, that changed Family Matters for the better. Absolutely. Who knows what that show was. You talk about, I know we have to wrap up, but I mean, you talk about brain chemistry changing, and I do wonder whether it's, there's, you're seeing like a difference in, whether it's movies or television. I read an interview with you, I can't remember when you did it, but you were talking about being in film school and going to see Barton Fink and then just waiting for it to start

again. Yes. And just watching it again. And that's a behavior that I think I have, like, I think I do that maybe once every year or two, like I watch Sicario, like right after I saw it, you know, and And it just, and, but it's so rare because of how much you feel like is out there right now, between, between movies and television, that I wonder how it's changing the way people, whether people just feel like they have time to give something a chance.

And whether that's going to start changing, are we going to see a first season of the leftovers again where somebody gets a chance to tweak things and move locations and change performance, like calibrate performances and writing tone? Because people are like, I got to get to like my, main point right away as fast as possible. You know, the metric for a show making it beyond its first season used to just be really one thing with shadings of another. And that one thing was how many people were watching it.

And the shadings of another is if it's a critical darling, then we, then, you know, parks and wreck, you know, will let, and then the expect, or 30 Rock, the expectation for ratings starts to go away because it becomes a critical darling. So it has to be one or the other. And leftovers was neither. and Michael Lombardo was generous enough to say, I see the potential and the promise in the show. And HBO is traditionally great about saying,

like, even if the first season was highly flawed, we believe in you and we're going to give it a second season. Especially with after shows, I think. Yes, especially with after shows and vinyl. And your new after show, after vinyl. That was our first mistake. I'm still, I have to be honest with you, it's very hard for me to speak right now

because all my brain is doing is like, Andy just made like a very high-brow, Jaliel White comment. Like, you just said, like, I would put it out to the listeners of the pod to say, like, what is Urkling the Jernd for? Like, how can we say, you know, are you trying to say that season one of the leftovers,

Urquelt? Like, who, what is the Urkling? Season two Urkled. Yeah, it did. Yeah. Right. There was an irkling. It should be like an awakening.

Yeah. It was an irkling. It's not about just the character. And Erkling occurred in the off season. You didn't necessarily, you added wonderful actors, but really the whole thing was irkled. Right.

It was the process. Okay. It's a biz term. I think it's going to catch on. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing is, you know, we, for those of us who live on the coast and are, and are absorbed with, like, pop culture and this sort of idea of, like, I heard Allison talking about Big Little Lies when she was on the pod with a couple, you know, a month ago

now from where we're sitting, but 20 minutes ago from me. But essentially, you know, this idea of, um, there's, There's so much television out there. And she said I just got these like seven episodes of Big Little Lies and I just watched one after the other. And that's what you want to do because the cultural conversation, you know, the water cooler is no longer this actual physical thing that dispenses water in our office. It's the internet. And so you cannot go on the internet and not feel like you are missing out. And that feeling of, oh, God, like, you know, I guess I have to watch Big Little Lies.

And she, or one of you guys, I can't remember, basically made the comment of, like, it broke through Peak TV. And so I think one of the things that we were thinking, as we were talking about, season three is how many episodes should we send out in advance of the season? And I just, as a television viewer, am so overwhelmed by the idea of April and May. I'm just basically like American Gods is starting and Fargo is coming back. Twin Peaks is coming back and Americans is still on for another half season and there's like probably three things that I'm not even thinking about and the leftovers is basically entering that environment we like let's a month before we air send out as much everything except for the finale uh to everybody who can watch it so that they can they can view it at their own leisure and their own pace i hope that

there are some critics who uh members of the critical community who decided not to watch all seven You're sitting with you right now Who are basically like Oh, maybe I'll watch a couple But then I want to experience three and four As the audience experiences them But choose your own adventure And that's what I say is like

It's not my place to tell anybody How to watch my show There's a recommended dosage You know, I want to say like I at least want to say like I don't think the ideal ideal way to watch the leftovers Is in a seven out in one sitting

You know like I would prefer You didn't do it that way But if that's, the way you like to watch TV now. That's it. I did it. You know, I mean, you know, I do it. My wife and I watched, you know, a season of catastrophe in one sitting and it was marvelous.

And each episode of catastrophe has its own identity. Yeah, you're right. That's not a, you know, that's not a three-hour movie. Like, each one has its own thing. And we sort of understood where the episodic breaks were. And that, you know, I don't, if, if Rob or Sharon is mad at us for watching it that way, I'd be like,

fuck you. Like, I love your show so much, I couldn't stop. Yeah. Well, let's, we have to let you go in a moment, but we would be remiss as of the moment contemporary television podcasters, not to just ask you. Two episodes of season three have aired. There are six more to go. Included in those six is a finale.

You famously, we've had some issues with finale. They've caused a little agita. How are you feeling right now? It's in the can. It's done, although you have not shared it with the larger world yet. How are you feeling about, what can you tell people about the journey they're going to go on? Uh-huh. And how are you feeling?

I'm feeling anxious. You know, I mean, and anxiety is not necessarily like a bad thing, you know, but I'm not, and the anxiety isn't based on the material that exists because on that front, I'm uncharacteristically confident. Again, I place a tremendous amount of trust in the collaboration. And this finale, in particular, the final scene of the series is something where we began in season three. So it was like, we all got together and said, how is it going to end?

What's the last scene? Not just in terms of like on a meta level. Like literally, who's in the scene? What are they saying to one another? Like, what's the last shot of the series? We started there. We arrived at something that we all felt was right. And then the entire season was just basically plotting out the, you know, the triptych

to get to that place. So we've been, I do feel confident still that that was the right thing. And then when it, Parada and I were both in Australia, when we shot that final scene and Mimi directed the finale, and I don't want to talk about the actors who are in it or aren't in it, but as I was on the set watching it be performed,

I was like, this is beyond my wildest expectations. They've elevated something that I already felt confident about it. And then when I watched it in the editing room, I had yet another feeling, which is like now I'm actually seen in the, I was emotionally overwhelmed by it. Maybe because it was the last scene of the series and, you know, it was just like a personal

thing that was happening. But then all the writers, I did my cut and then all the writers came back into the editing room, writers and producers. And, you know, obviously Mimi was there because she directed it. And we all watched the whole episode again. We gave notes. You know, there were some things that I missed, some things that I went by too fast and some things that were too slow.

So we adjusted the pacing. looked at some performance changes, et cetera. So the show ended with the same level of collaboration that got us there in the first place. And this is not me saying I'm deflecting blame, but it feels so ours that my own anxiety about all the baggage that's coming from lost, I understand my anxiety is mostly based on the fact that,

A, what is the audience's expectation? Coming into season two, I felt like we were sitting pretty to some degree because I was like, like, oh, I feel really good about what we did. And the bar, what people think the leftovers is, we're going to get over that bar. Where is the bar going to be at the end of episode seven in terms of expectation for how great the finale needs to be? Where, you know, like, can we, you know, can we clear that bar?

So that, so my hope is that expectations are high because I really like the seven episodes that lead up to the finale. Can you speak to the role that Andy the horse plays in the finale? In the finale? I assume it's a crucial role and I don't want to spoil things for fans, but I just feel like when you introduce a character that vital just to the world and one that immediately became a fan favorite. Of sure.

Speaking now in the near future. And there's lots of Andy Shippers out there right now. Obviously. What does an Andy Nora relationship look like? What does an Andy Matt Jameson relationship look like? My thought is that HBO doesn't want to know what that looks like because they couldn't air it on maybe Cinemax could air it. I mean, I'm assuming, again, it's so hard because the second half,

episode hasn't aired yet. Like, but let's just assume that everybody in America is talking about Andy. And they often are. And some people in America will say, who's Andy? What are they even talking about? Yeah. Is that the horse that Kevin rides? And he just may say passing reference to the fact that the horse's name is Andy.

And Nora makes some comment later in the bedroom about you just like to ride that horse and what's really going on there. Yeah. And did Damon name all of the horse, Andy, or just the rear quarters of the horse? Exactly. That's TBD. And will Andy turn to the camera in the last scene of the leftovers and say, great job, Baranski's.

Yeah, exactly. It's possible, right? I don't want to rule it out. You're not saying no. That's all we can ask. I'm not saying no. Okay, I'm satisfied. So, will Andy be in the finale?

I don't know. There's anxiety about that too. But, you know, so expectation is a big part of it. And then the other thing is, I have to be clear-eyed about the idea that the leftover's finale, it won't just exist in the vacuum of, was this a good finale for the leftovers? It's going to be compared to the loss finale. And that drives me nuts. It's fair because I'm involved in both shows, but part of me feels like it's kind of insulting to all the other people who made the leftovers because they had nothing to do with lost. And so, like, this, you know,

is Linda, I kind of feel like there's two stories that will be written. One is Lindelof has redeemed himself. That is a false story because, you know, did I? Like, no. Like, again, as I've spoken about ad nauseum, but I can't say it enough times, the show is built by a collective to its improvement, not, that doesn't water it down. And then the second story is Lindelof has done it again. Also untrue. Like, and so I, I just wanted to be assessed on its own merits. And then there's this idea of like, should I just ghost, you know, after the financial should, do I have to get out there and basically explain myself? Do you have to come back on this podcast?

And my feeling is, right now I'm inclined to be out there, you know, and the reason, not to explain what our intention was in the finale, but to basically say, I have nothing to ghost from. Yeah. And, you know, I'm proud of this. I stand by it. If you didn't like it, you can tell me to my face, but I'm not going to over, I can manage the over-explanning part, but I, I'm feeling right now.

like that Monday I'm out there, you know, saying like, okay, give me all you got. Maybe that, because ghosting, I think, will only magnify the arrogance of, the arrogance of, look, the losing coach, the losing coach has to show up at the press comments. Yes, through the interviews. Can't be like, you know what? You know, the Falcons just blew the Super Bowl and I'd rather go home. No, you have to sit there and answer questions. Well, we're going to save the seat for you should you need it.

You're very kind. We would love to have you back, of course, anytime. I know that at some point we'd like to have you back just to talk about other people's shows. Yeah, I just have about 705 Prometheus questions to ask next time. And I want someone to talk. I will forward them to Ridley. And I want someone to talk about the Americans with me because I've got to be honest with you. I don't have anyone on this stage.

There's no one else who will talk to. You don't? That hasn't come through on the podcast? That hasn't ever, like, yeah, that's a running gag. No. Now I'm just committed to the bit. No. You don't watch it at all?

No. I've watched a few episodes. Oh, man. I have a general sense of where it's going. I do listen to the pod, but I do listen to the pod, but I just figured it was like, you know, too precious. I mean, it wasn't, it's not a bit like the taboo bit.

Like where, Tavoon wasn't the bit. Right. No, but it's like, when you say it's a bit, the Americans is a bit. It's just like, you must have, like, I feel like if I all of a sudden

became an Americans fan, it would just be weird. Yeah, now he's just doing it for pride. Let me just say, though, again, now two episodes will have aired that you and not, that at least I haven't seen between, but the one that was just on this week

at the time that we're sitting here now felt like, okay, now we're talking. Like something amazing happened. See what you're missing? I did get fairly. Catch me in Monterey, just looking out at the ocean. I pulled the rug right out from under it. It was amazing.

Well, hopefully the rest of the leftovers will give us the same feeling. Let's hope. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, man. Thank you so much for coming by. Thanks guys. I'm excited for the season.

It's very exciting for me. Thanks, guys. Thanks again to HBO Silicon Valley for sponsoring today's pod. Lauded is one of the top comedy series on television. The Emmy-nominated comedy series Silicon Valley is back for its fourth season, Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO. And this season changes in the air as the Pipe Piper guys pursue their video chat at Piper Chat. Join them as they fumble along their road to success in an attempt to leave their mark,

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