The Watch - Early Reactions to ‘The Morning Show,’ and ‘Watchmen’ Picks Up Speed in the Second Episode | The Watch

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

The AppleTV+ flagship, ‘The Morning Show,’ will premiere on Friday, and early reviews are not looking great (6:37). Meanwhile, ‘Watchmen’ is picking up steam in its second episode (12:07). We break down the episode (20:25) and examine why it’s so hard to create mystery television (27:26). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 a small room that's not technically a studio, he's just cooking some eggs. It's Andy Greivalds.

Chris, I'm so happy to be with you today here at this impromptu back-alley Chinatown poker game. Slash. Did they take your phone before you came in, like Michael Clayton? Michael Clayton's poker scenes are far classier than this closet that we're recording in today. But it doesn't matter because the feelings between us are warm and the takes are hot. But Chris, listen, I just feel like it's hard to record today. Whenever you're at all late, you become so magnanimous and you also just like pedal the bike so well. Chris.

How can we talk about pop culture today on the day civility died in America? Oh no. You want to get into the Morning Joe takes? You want to do it? Oh, is that, no. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Morning Joe's getting ratioed. Wow. It's like, what's next for America? Can we get some press box music playing over this, over these takes, Kaya? No, I don't really. I just want to say, I'm so glad people are finally upset about something politically in this country. But two, obviously you know, and Kaya, who's sitting very close to us, knows as well,

that I wish the Philadelphia Phillies were in the World Series and not the nation's leading purveyors of Natitude. However, it's not just... The Beltway swamp dwellers? It's not just because that's our team, and I wish them well. It's that, oh, I wish the booing happened in Philadelphia on free battery night at the old ball yard. Do you think he would fare about as well as Santa Claus?

I think worse. Imagine Michael Irvin dressed as Santa Claus. by a factor of 100. It's Monday, Andy and I, I guess we're going to talk mostly about Watchman episode two. I'm sure it'll go in all sorts of different directions. Before we get into that, and before we delve more into Donald Trump's curating at Major League Baseball parks. Q and on, you mean? Anything else going on?

It felt like you were like, so you were editing all last week. Thursday we spoke and you were just like, man, I'm trying to fix it in post. Yeah. How is the rest of your week weekend? Well... editing is a thing. Editing's hard. I was doing a lot of that.

I'm trying to think what else happened. Oh, I went to an immersive play. Should we make this the leading podcast for lukewarm political takes and deep dives on Los Angeles alternative theater? Sure. I don't really have a take other than to say

I was very proud of my co-worker Eva Anderson who wrote this immersive theater piece called The Recital. And by immersive, does it mean you're involved in it? Well, yes, so you arrive, and it's like it's called the recital. and it's like they're setting up for recital, and then people in the crowd are wearing name tags

and they're actors, but they want to talk to you. Oh, but not you, though. No, no, no. I'm just allowed to have wine and snacks, which is why I was into this as a theater performance. And then you talk to them, you learn a little bit about the night, and then it starts, and then something goes wrong,

and then characters run into another room, and you follow them, and in each room there's things to interact with, including one room where Nintendo 64 was set up. Oh, no way, did they have golden night? With golden eye. Yes! So you can sit down, and then like a character,

an actor just joined me and was playing head-to-head golden-night. And the actor actually is Al McLeod who played, who was on You're the Worst. Oh, I thought you were to be like, and the actor is Joe Pesci. The actor was Joe Pesci, who is so excited to be out of retirement. He's working. Yeah, so it's just a normal. Joe Pesci is just becoming a Twitch streamer of N64 games. Twitch is the video game one, right?

It's the one where you can just like show yourself playing video games. Show yourself. Ooh, you just got a little air conditioning in here. Great. But I feel like I'm Well I spent my entire week And watching TV But TV that's not on yet

So I basically It's very rare that my wife and I like have The cycles of the moon Lineup so that we want to do the exact same thing Over the exact same spread of time Right of course Because usually it's like one of us wants to go out One of us wants to get stuff done

Right She's really not into my driving recently Have I told you about this? Like we're like about to be on bird scooters separately soon. What's going on? She just, I think because my car is wider than she likes, it's a pretty wide Honda. Right.

She's got a wide-bodied? She gets very disoriented and, like, thinks that we're always about to hit something. But wait, this is when she's driving or you're driving? I'm driving. Yeah, she also thinks that I'm not always paying attention to the road and that I'm too concerned with, like, what I'm listening to. Well, of course, you've got to set the mood. I mean, you've got to do it.

This has been... I had to get it on! This has been ever thus since like the 90s. Yeah. But back then, it was like, I have this tape or this tape. Okay. And then you're your CDs and you could skip tracks or whatever. But now, you know, you got a lot of Spotify playlist.

You can switch around to. Or serious or podcasts. I think she thinks... You got a lot of options. Yeah, so like we'll be driving along and she's just like, watch, watch, watch. And it's like, I honestly can't chew gum and walk at the same time. Like, I got it. I can see it's turning yellow.

Are you chewing gum also? I mean, so we basically, we've had a couple of weeks now where it's like, do we really want to go do this because it involves me driving. Can I just jump in to say, because Kaya is sitting at the table with us, I'm just thinking that she's typing notes like Andy S. Chris, if he can chew gum. This is then being forwarded to mid-roll for like advertiser interests. That's right. This is great stuff. We would get a lot of gum interest. This is Kaya's job right now.

I wouldn't mind being involved. We're going to get to watchmen. but I want my dream sponsor for this podcast. Big League Chew. What was that? Last week, no free ads. This week, you're out here begging. Here's the thing.

And then I promise to do the entire podcast with a wad of Big League Chew in my mouth. Okay. Which would probably, what's the thing with people hate when like your voice triggers something in them? What's the thing that people hate? It's like a, it's an actual phobia.

But it's like, oh, your voice triggers my blank. Yeah. I know that feeling. I'm feeling it right now. Your voice. triggers my claustrophobia. Anyway, so my wife and I, we had a very long, lazy weekend, and

I watched three morning shows. I'm sorry, I just want to connect point A to point F here. You had a long, lazy weekend at home because you both decided you didn't want to drive your wide-assed car? Yes, but I was like, I'm okay with that. Okay. Usually I'm like, let me be free. I want to, like, roam the streets.

I want to cruise, you know? I do. Like, you know, a diner, or American graffiti, rather. Yeah. This time I was fine being home, so I watched three morning shows. Wow. Getting, getting torched this morning by the critics. Two for all mankind's.

Oh, cool. The Watchmen. Yeah. And a show called High Fidelity, which is coming out on Hulu next year. This is so, guys, this is how much the tables have turned here. When this podcast began, I know. It was a partnership between dedicated yeoman television critic and just, you know, sort of fun-loving sports blogger. Yeah, Joe Sports.

It's blogger. Now we're at a point where Saturday night, I fire up looking for Alaska, only two to nine weeks late. Yeah, but this is like a normal person's schedule. Boy, that hurts. That triggers something in me. A normal? Anyway, so watching Looking for Alaska, and I, you know, enjoyed it very much. And I, of course, had to text my main Saturday night man, Chris, just to be like, was that fucking pinback that I heard early in the episode?

And Chris is like, can't talk now watching a. 2020 heat rock. That's not what I said. Insane can't talk now. I just said that high fidelity is going to be a thing. High fidelity writers room across the hall from the Briar Patch Writers.

And it's a, obviously, it's a television reimagining or reboot of the John Cusack movie from the 90s. Yeah. And obviously the Nick Hornby novel from the 80s. 90s? Nick Hornby's novels in the 90s?

I think we're all about a decade off now. I think that was the 90s and the movie came out like in 2000. Okay, so correct my math there. But anyway, this is 2020 we're talking about, and Zoe Kravitz in the role that John Kuzak popularized. Zoe Kravitz, strong presence in the High Fidelity Writers' Room. This is what normal person can give these takes.

You can tell, because she's really, it was something that was really interesting watching Morning Show and High Fidelity. I'm not going to give away anything about either yet. I feel like the cat's out of the bag on one of those. But it was really interesting to watch Star Power and what stars can do with certain levels of material. Yeah.

I'm very curious now. I guess I'm allowed to talk about morning show. The embargo is lifted. I will watch every episode. Okay. I don't know how, I don't think that it is very good. But I will, it is one of the most compelling shows I've come across in a long time. Because of the sheer peak of like it existing?

Yeah. Yeah. Like what a flex? Did they just drop a bill on this? Yeah. Yeah. We're like, I think they bought. an apartment for Jennifer Aniston's character.

I was trying to think... Like, I'm serious. They probably did. In, like, the Time Warner Center. One thing, here's my early... I got three things about Morning Show, which I haven't seen, because as previously mentioned, just a regular guy out here now on these streets. One.

Interesting that all the lead female characters have man's names, traditionally male names. Right. Alex. Alex and Bradley. Just a couple of Alexes and Bradley's doing a podcast. If you were wondering if Reese Witherspoon says her own... name a lot. She does.

Yeah, I love it. She does. She says, I'm Bradley Jackson. Woo. Look at that. I like that. Two, I was trying to think of a... This show has Billy Cruda, who we love.

Yes. Mark Duplas. Friend of the Pod. Yeah. Those guys are at least half of a Mount Rushmore of those guys. Like, who are guys who you're just like, hey, happy to see you. Oh, John Gallagher, Jr. Right?

Possibly. Yeah. I was thinking a little older as thinking like Ron Livingston. Maybe that's the Rushmore right there. Like, hey, look at these guys with chins. Happy to see him. Kyle Chandler?

Well, he's in a different, he's in a league of his own. I'm just talking about guys who... See, we think that. But Kyle Chandler and John Hamm are now like pretty happy to be like the fourth dude who walks into the CIA office and says you don't know anything about Pakistan, you know?

They are. Well, they like the paychecks for that. Yeah. I just mean like guys, but they've also... In their spare time, they're doing Hamlet. They've led their own things, is what I'm saying. John Ham's Hamlet? I was thinking, oh my God, I was thinking a lot about our old friend Sam Donsky's tweet

about how Doolittle, the new Dr. Doolittle film that Robert Down Jr. is doing, is one for him. I just think this dude had a decade, a decade of making Avengers movies. and he's like, finally I'm free. Yeah. Fire up the tuckin' animal machine. The one thing I will say kind of unites all the Apple shows that I've seen so far is a very, very, very palpable sense of sincerity. Well, that's what they wanted, right?

I wouldn't even say self-seriousness, although I think in the case of for all mankind and morning show, they are very, very serious about what those shows are about. People talk about journalism and space travel a lot. Yeah. And they're like, these are important endeavors. Those are your twin passions. It's true. It actually is right.

Yeah, I wish I was an astronaut journalist. I'm neither, though. It's not too far off the mark. Let's get into Watchmen. Okay. So episode two, after a pilot that I think was like pretty much roundly, like, praised as, you know, one of the best pilots people had seen in a really long time, did an incredible job. teasing and also setting things up at a very breakneck pace with an incredible score, moves along.

It was the talk of Twitter last Sunday night. I thought I actually had like a lot of action around it online. It was pretty interesting to see people weighing in. And then interesting phone call from my mother this morning. Oh. What she always does at this time of year where she says, are you on fire? Like has the fire reached you yet? Because she doesn't understand Los Angeles geography.

So she just calls every time she hears. was about a fire in California. That's my in-laws do that as well. And what's going on on the Watchmen? I love it, but I don't understand it. Wow. So... Should she call into the pod?

I think that you and I are actually dealing with this in an interesting way because we're coming from a... We understand a lot of what's going on, right? And when we see, for instance, and this will have spoilers for episode two, when we see you know, Ozi Mandius's play at the end, we know what that play is about. We know that it's about the Dr. Manhattan origin story. Yeah, I wanted to... I wanted to go there as well, which is to say that, you know,

I know some people tune into this podcast for the fire takes on wide-assed hondas. But also for, you know... We've really gone back to 2011 podcasting where posts opened with 20 minutes of absolute bullshit. Before they were like, last night, Manchester United Play Liverpool. Right where you know. What I'm saying is I think some people do, even if they don't admit it, like the insight into the, you know, the fascinating lives of aging white men. And I think that, I know, Kai is riveted.

Guy's loving this. And I think that, you know, when you're younger and your newlyweds, you know, maybe their sparks can come from different directions. Are we talking about my driving again? No, it's coming back to, it's coming back all the way around. You know, maybe when you're younger, you do stunts like dude from walking dead and love actually with the cards. Like you do things to really spark the passions again and the heartstrings.

And I would say that a really cool move, a decade into marriage, is to do. sit on the couch and sweatpants and explain the origin story of Dr. Manhattan to your spouse. Like, after you've seen Jeremy Irons reenacted as a stage play with, I want to say, clones or robots or whatever. Well, I don't know, actually, but I think, I'm pretty sure they're robots. Well, regardless, fellas, take my advice. That just slays in the romance department. How did your wife feel about the second episode of The Watchman? Imagine turning to your wife after that and saying,

well, no, that really happens. Imagine the layers, the layers of lameness that you have to kind of unpack. Yeah. To get to that. Oh, so, well, in terms of Spouse Corner, she said, I wish that had been the pilot. That was great. About the second episode.

The second episode, she wished that had been the first episode. So I cut you off. You were, you were, let's go back to your mom and then we'll talk about my wife. No, no, no. I was just saying that it's hard to view, I think, A lot of people are going to have a lot of different takes on Watchmen, not because they think this makes sense or not because they think certain things totally work or don't work,

but because they're literally dealing with fewer cards if they don't know the story. And I think Damon knows that that's going to happen. I think he said he was pretty explicit about, look, if you didn't read Watchman, will you understand that, like, will you enjoy this? I hope so. Yeah. But I do think that there are a lot of things from the Squids to the play to who Jeremy Irons is playing. Hooded Justice

and the whole, yeah, the show within the show. That makes a lot more sense if you've got some familiarity with the Allen Moore comic. Yeah, absolutely. That said, I think that, you know, sort of as a piece of the conversation we had a few weeks ago before it debuted,

why now is an okay time or even a great time for the show is because I do think audiences are trained to enjoy confusion and wonder and spectacle. The Jeremy Iron scene, is certainly intriguing if you don't have a romantic

protagonist on the couch next to you to explain it in loving terms. I think second episodes are fascinating. Second episodes in general are much like second albums, you know, in the sense that you have so much time to make your opening statement and your opening statement has to

take a lot of different boxes in terms of appealing to as wide an audience as possible but also serving as a mission statement. and also laying track for what you want to be. And in many cases, to convince the network to let you make the show. And to convince the audience to keep watching it, right? And sometimes you also have a much higher budget for a pilot, you know, and many more resources available to you.

You know, Watchman, HBO generally, Damon could have gotten a series order, but I think he's talked pretty publicly about how he prefers the pilot process. For those reasons, in terms of being able to sit back. and tweak and consider it. But I don't know if there was ever any... I mean, he can tell us when he comes on the podcast if there was ever any real question.

Why would he not want to in this room? I mean, this is so awesome. I mean, there's a disused golden tea machine within arm's reach. I cannot paint a more grim picture. Also, there's a phone here, just in case you want to take calls. I don't want to call my mom.

Anyway, but anyway, the second episode in, you know, historically people say, well, it's just a rewrite of the pilot. You know, sort of do the same thing, but do it quieter. Mm-hmm. as you sort of figure out what a show is in series. I would actually say that the second episode of Watchmen,

one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much, is that it, and I think probably my wife did too, is because it was a little bit quieter. Because the pilot, for reasons both commercial and also, you know, in terms of just having, literally starting with a bang, had bigger action sequences. It had noisier moments.

This episode wasn't exactly quiet. I mean, the... There was the white night. We got to see a little bit of the White Night with Angela. And the Hooded Justice thing was quite violent. Yeah. But it did delve a little bit more into the TikTok of the world. For the people who don't know, can you do a quick hood of justice?

Well, just to say that one of the main things that Watchman comic book did and did so well is it was this sort of savage interrogation of the eras of superheroes. Yeah. And there were the sort of the Golden Age heroes, the World War II era heroes of which I believe Hooded Justice was one of them, the original Watchman, and then the creation of Dr. Manhattan, which, you know, come by my house on Sunday nights and you'll get the full download baby. The only truly, quote-unquote, superpowered person in this universe. Everyone else is either the world's smartest man, like Osamandias is Jeremy Irons' character, or sort of, you know, Batman-y types like Roershawk, like people who just really good at fighting or have some tech or whatever. Right. Who put on suits and masks, and why do they do that?

But one of the interesting things about Watchmen is what happens to that work. world, both as history changes and expectations and stakes change, but also as someone who actually is nuclear-powered and doesn't need to be a superhero emerges among them. And so in the early days of the Watchmen, there are these smiling pictures in the book of like the comedian and Worshawk and Dr. Manhattan in better times. And then Dr. Manhattan basically becomes a tool of the U.S. government and ends the Vietnam War and then gets tired of humanity and goes and lives in space. Yes. Well, the sort of inherent, you could say fascism or you could say sociopathism. or whatever of the other characters

comes more and more into focus. Right, like the comedian and stuff like that. Right, exactly. Like who were these people through the different eras, especially as they were heading towards the quote-unquote grim and gritty 80s? So last week when we were talking about Watchman, I was wondering whether Damon was going to be doing

the meta stuff about the medium that the comic book did. Which he seems to be doing with this show. With this TV show within the show. And I know people on Twitter and probably the Facebook group were on me about that. That was there in the pilot, and I wasn't really appreciating it or noticing it in the context of that.

That argument. Right. So. Did people in Facebook really get on you about that? Well, you know how I feel about Facebook in general. But you love to get into the, you love to lurk on the group. I will lurk on that group. Yeah.

I like to go in once a month and say looking for Alaska is good in the 13th comment of a thread and then never, and then that could not come back from that. That was pretty cool. I respected that. Anyway, I'm all over the place. But just to say that I really liked the slightly quieter, more focused tone of the second episode. And, you know, I, again, I just, I really, I'm really admiring the show. Yeah. The thought and care that went into every decision that was laid down in the pilot,

whose children these are. I mean, obviously they are, they are Angela's children. She has adopted these children, but that they were her partner's children, as we learn in the backstory, that just as a judicious use of flashbacks, but also a judicious use of sort of big brain national alternate history. And it all is in the service of these quieter moments where

Lewis Gassad Jr's character who we now learn in New Angeles grandfather And his name Will. And his name who was also an Oklahoma character name just for what it's worth.

And was the boy from the opening of the pilot doesn't seem to be able to walk. Seems implausible that he lifted the 200 pound Dun Johnson high into the air. But quietly in the background is drinking scalding coffee

and reaching into a boiling pot of water to eat an egg. I love those moments. And I love the, I love the collision between the giant, crazy, alt-present ideas and the tiny moment where you see him reach into a pot of water. And it doesn't matter yet, but it probably will. Yeah. I think that in some ways this episode, the second episode, was riskier than the first in some, because it's risky to do the Henry Lewis Gates' DNA analysis scene. Yeah. Because you got to really, like, sell that as a thing. that is pretty standard in that reality, that she would know that's where I take DNA to be checked against the Black Wall Street massacre. That's a information download. It's essentially if you didn't

look up Black Wall Street in between Episode 1 and Episode 2, that's your information about it. What was fascinating is thinking about what would happen if this was a show in streaming, if people were able to start the second episode right away, that would have been made more sense. But I think people did get a chance to sort of read about that tragedy. over the course of the week in between. And then, you know, you get into certain situations where I thought that the, obviously the Greenwood, the sort of the DNA Center. And then there was another one that was I thinking of that was like, oh, this is pretty,

this is pretty complicated for them to be introducing. I think they get more into Redfordations. Yeah. You know, and that idea that there is this reparations that are being paid out and that there's some, there's protests about it and stuff like that. You basically have to pull those off. Those are like, in another context, those would be like one-liners or jokes.

Oh, I remember I was going to say. Is the pretty somber experience of, you know, Barry or taking Don Johnson's character down from the tree. Yeah. But still having Red Scare walking around with his sort of silly mask and his, you know, his Russian accent and being very comic booky. And the collision of all those, like, different sensibilities,

of comic book, of prestige drama, of all these different things, and of also huge information domes. And to be able to pull that off and still make a relatively entertaining, a very entertaining episode is a real type of roadwalk. Yeah, and I think it's another sign that, well, you know, I think Damon will get a lot of credit rightly so for rebooting, updating, taking big ideas and putting them through this filter of preexisting property. There's other stuff that he's taking from the comic book that I feel like was just sitting there for 30 years of post-watchman comic book adaptations to do, but never really did. And one of the most memorable things of the comic book is the character of Worshawk,

who obviously inspired the cavalry on the show, lifting his mask to eat cans of beans constantly. Yeah. And he's kind of gross. Yeah. And now we have looking glass just asking for a snack in Angela's car and lifting his mask

and just pop in cashews while he's talking. That's right. And it's like the, it's the mundanity of it. You're just putting something over your face makes you in this world a super or something, right? Putting a mask on, but you still have to eat. You still have to snack.

Yeah. There's probably a gross mustache or a couple of days worth of beard under there. Yeah, it's like the best part about like Ocean's 11 is the fact that those guys are always eating, that those guys are always like, you know, they're always living life while they're also doing a heist. And that's what's, it's a nice in touch for them to bring that into this show. And for as much as we give credit, and we certainly do on this podcast for the Marvel movies for, you know, allowing the characters to poke fun at the silliness of their situation sometimes, to crack wise, to be self-aware. they still look fucking great all the time in their special suits.

Yes. You know what I mean? There is no, there's never that drop of blood on the comedian smile that marked the comic book or the drop of blood on the sheriff's badge that marked this episode. They don't get weird and they don't get dirty, right? And so that core idea that that is still somehow radical in the world of, superhero stories is such a, it's a small thing to take and to build on,

but it's a crucial one, I think, to understanding both what the project is here with watching, but also why it feels exciting. I want to ask you about this idea of the Breadcrumb Trail. Because obviously with the Ozymandia stuff, and in the first episode, you can see that the butler and the maid, there's something a little bit off with them.

And then obviously we find out that they are copies, robots, clones, whatever. what's how do how can you talk to me a little bit because you're also somebody who's obviously there's a mystery element to your show um so how do you decide and how do you think damon goes about deciding how to pace out those breadcrumbs and the reveals along the way and i'm speaking specifically about the two episode sort of like you thought there was something weird now you can see there is something weird there's something odd this louis gottsa junior junior will character claims to have basically hung a 200 pound sheriff who lived through the white knight. Now we've got him being yanked out of the, off the ground with a magnet. Friends in high places. Exactly. So parceling those things out because I think that when you see, when I saw those clones,

the first thing obviously that jumped into my mind was Westworld. And I started remembering how especially in the first season of Westworld, how laborious the reveal, like the teasing and reveal process was. And how it basically subsumed the entire show. So the whole thing was puzzling out where this was happening, when this was happening, how this was happening, why this was happening. Well, I think it's fair to say, and again, we'll let him speak for himself on this in the next few weeks. But I think it's fair to say that Damon above, you know, more than most writers or TV writer producers, feels this keenly and obsesses over it. You know, obviously the experience with Lost was one where because of the nature of the show, where,

the network wanted more and more and more and more. And the idea then, 10 years ago, of setting an end date, giving them boundaries to tell a story was so foreign for broadcast television that I think he feels very keenly the challenge of stringing people along. You know, it's funny,

and this was my experience too, you don't want to hide the ball. You don't want to trick anyone when you're telling a story like this ever. But by nature, there is an element of games of holding some things back and giving some things away. Audiences don't really want everything. I mean, part of the fun of a serialized storytelling is the speculation, is the mysteries,

the surprise, is having things parceled out to you, right? But it's very, very delicate balance and a delicate relationship to maintain because if you withhold too much, people get very upset about it. If you give too much away, then why would you keep watching? Well, there's also a tension between there being a reason for why you don't know something. Right. So, dramatically,

emotionally. In the case of the Will character and Angela character, we know as much about Will as Angela does. And that really works, right? With the Ozzy Mandia stuff, it's just what they decide to show us because we don't have an avatar character there with us. Now,

I guess theoretically, Jeremy Irons is our POV character, so he's not explaining what's happening with these people. We're just seeing it. But there is no inquisition into what's going on. And I always noted that, with Westworld is that even though the Jimmy the Jimmy Simpson character

was kind of our audience avatar he had so much weird shit in his background of where he was coming from and he was a mystery in a lot of ways that it was really more about this elaborate almost prank that they were playing on us to get to the reveal about him well I also

think and not to beat up unfairly Westworld unfairly I've done that before and not to set up a dynamic between two HBO shows. But for me, the essential problem if you're going to use Jimmy Simpson's character

and Jimmy Simpson's character in the first season of Westworld as an example is that I, normal guy audience member that I am, I don't care about him. There's nothing about him that I find particularly interesting or compelling.

So to travel with him through a mystery feels inert. I don't feel emotionally invested in it because I don't know who he is. I don't know why I should care and I have no sense of the stakes of his journey. Whereas, you know, very skillfully, in two hours of Watchmen, we know a lot about Angela. Oh, you deeply care about her.

And we care about her. We know her emotionally. We know her professionally. We know something about her history. And we can tell where she stands in relation to the larger forces at work. And think about how many different contexts we've seen her, are you? That's right. Intimate with her husband, as a mother, as a sort of teacher in that classroom situation,

as a superhero vigilante and also somewhat as a police officer. The world that we are being asked to understand and invest in and invest in has impacted her in ways that we have seen and we understand whether it is where, you know, as of episode two, where she falls with the Redfordations and the history of this place or squids falling from the sky and how she reacts to that. Because of that, I am invested in her and then the mystery is the path. The mystery is the road that you're going down. And then to the other point of your question,

trying to break and parcel out of mystery over 10 hours of TV is the hardest thing I've ever done. It's just incredibly, incredibly, incredibly hard. Right. For any number of reasons, one of which is it's very hard to remember what you know and what other people don't know yet. It's very hard to remember this piece of information that I've known for whether it's something that I took from the book that I read 15 years ago, or whether it's something that I came up with two years before I got the series order, or whether it's something we came up with in the

room in January, now it's May, this is exciting for an audience. This will be a big reveal, because generally there's so much work to do and so many things moving that you're just trying to keep it moving. So to appreciate not just the mystery as a whole, but each piece of it and how it will land and register with audiences, like, this is a cool moment. Let's carve this out. Let's appreciate this. Let's celebrate it, knowing what we know, which is the beginning and the end of it. I found that to be extremely challenging, too. But I think always, and this is what I think made the last two seasons, the leftovers so incredible

and also a great precursor to Watchman, was the fact that the larger mysteries of the world were enormous and thought-provoking and exciting story-wise, but it was always on a smaller level. The lens was always focused on characters whose emotional reactions to insanity we could track. And that in itself is quite different from The Watchman comic, which had different perspectives. There's a running thing throughout all 12 issues about the little boy at the newsstand with the guy, you know, reading comic books. And he's reading this pirate comic book that's a story within a story. But our POV character for a lot of it is Rorschach. Yeah.

And then Night Owl. And so we're coming in, superheroes aren't gods, but that's something that Alan Moore would probably. want to argue with me about coming in at kind of a godlike level. Right. Whereas this show, the idea of super heroism is on such a granular low-to-the-ground level. I mean, it's cops at this point. It is a significant tweak from the story, but one that is reaping big dividends. And also, honestly, is a lot more TV than movies.

Oh, yeah. I mean, the watch... This feels a lot more like, actually, old-school TV than leftovers did. Like, this has... The pacing feels a lot more like almost lost, done. than it does like leftovers. Any other thoughts on this before we get going? I also wanted to see if you wanted to drop any looking for Alaska takes early on.

Early on in the air of those run. Wait, let's finish watchmen. I want to know what about this world are you excited about visiting? Which areas of the show are you most intrigued by at this moment? I think that she, I think that we're about to get a lot of what happened to this country in between Tulsa, the Tulsa, the Tulsa, the massacre and now, I think we're about to get it filled in a little bit more. And so the first sort of hint towards that is the KKK uniform in Don Johnson's character's

closet. And I think that we're slowly going to find out like what happened in between the Black Wall Street Massacre and today with presumably the Watchman happening, the original comic happening in the middle, right? And I think that that will be fascinating to see how he does that while all. also maintaining the actual story and mystery of this show. But yeah, pretty much anything Angela I'm interested in. That's the thing that's really driving me.

I'm obviously fascinated by the Jeremy Irons thing. I wonder how many episodes he can do where it's just him kind of running through a very, very small action with those people in his mansion. Well, also, the thing about that that is definitely kind of a dog whistle to fans of the comic book is that the comic book, there's a lot going on, but the central, one of the central spines of it is,

and I can say there are multiple spines because it's a squid-based entertainment, is that Ozimandias is plotting something. It's all a plot. Yes. Do you want to explain briefly what he does at the end? I can't do it justice because it's so crazy, but the idea is he...

Opens up a dimension, right? He fakes it. Okay. But drops... There's a giant multidimensional squid. attack on Manhattan that kills three million people that ends the Cold War. Okay. And he's one of those, you know, galaxy brain thinkers who's just like, this cost is worth the other

thing. Right. So I'm going to do this and everyone will thank me. So is this television show, which is much more interested in, you know, the racial history and racial violence of the United States, yeah. United States, also teasing a global comic book movie finale style event. What is going on with this, you know, there's been newspaper clippings in the background and stuff online about how Osamandias is dead in this world, but yet he's doing something with theater.

Aren't we all? In Wales, I think we all are. So I think... Immersive theater, maybe. Whether those things... The last frontier. It's really what I'm going to rededicate this pod to. It's pretty interesting. So, looking for Alaska, just, boy, are they good at this stuff? You know, it's kind of fun to see for all the things that we, all the different ways we discuss what streaming television has done and the opportunities for storytelling. It's also the kind of thing where you can just do something that you're really good at and do it. Just drop the Jose Gonzalez and have two kids see each other for the first time.

And do it well. I mean, and I, you know, I know you had a long. talk with Josh and Stephanie last week, but they just know how to do it, and it's, it's, it's soundtrack, certainly. Casting is almost everything, you know. I thought the show is beautifully directed by Sarah, Dina Smith. And it's just, it's a sign of the ridiculous riches we have right now, that, like, this is, that you can have people working in their particular fields. And there's no, there's nothing, one of the other things about it that's so great in, in keeping with our larger tradition, not our larger tradition.

our larger conversation about why now for these shows is that nobody bothered them. I know. You can tell that they were like. They were allowed to make the show they wanted to. We're going to communicate something to you, studio and streaming service, but also to the audience, that this book matters to a lot of people. We understand why it matters. And we are going to just give you that raw, uncut rush of what's good about it. That raw, uncut green.

Yeah. Yeah. We got to wrap it up. Andy and I will be back on Thursday. Thanks for listening. We'll keep talking about watchmen throughout the season. I am sure. Thanks to Kaya. Thanks to the charm of this little room. Kai sitting at the table. Kaya, a seat at the table. No microphone today, but we'll work on that. Talk to you Thursday. Great job. Bransky's stay.