The Watch - Ep. 101: 'Nocturnal Animals,' 'Search Party,' and What's Next for 'Westworld'?

Episode Date: November 28, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Tom Ford's 'Nocturnal Animals' (4:00), Alia Shawkat's 'Search Party' (9:00), and the way 'Westworld' will handle the illuminating twist in Episode 9, 'The Well-Tempered Clavier' (23:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, American Express card members, you do not want to miss this. Now through December 31st, there is a big reason for you to shop small at local stores in your neighborhood. Learn more and enroll your eligible card today at Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. That's Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. 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. Joining me in the studio, my old partner, Reborn! It's Andy Greenwald! Woo! Good to be back! Oh, we're back in the throne studio, the booming acoustics. It feels good, a little chilly. Steve Albini would be proud of our audio fidelity.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, man. You know, I appreciate that. We're going to talk about Westworld. We're going to put it at the end a little bit, so you don't have to hear me mope and grumble, what you really want to. But I appreciate the intro you gave me

because you did sample other hosts for a minute. Right before the holiday. Yeah. And you came back to the sweet source. Well, it's cool because I built in some code in your back door to make sure that I should do that so that you're like, Westworld is wonderful. I'm like, the problem with what? Freeze all motor function. Analysis.

Analysis. Why do you really dislike this show? See, so we will talk about West World in a little bit, but we wanted to get to a couple of the other things that we culturally imbibed upon in? In. Just swim in the feck and rivers. Embibed of over the weekend. And the first one was this show that kind of came out of no... Oh, I just wanted to do a quick theater, Bob.

Because I know you love when we do theater. And I feel like the people who don't want Westworld first are the people who want theater first. So we're doing the reverse newspaper pyramid style in terms of importance today. I just want to do a quick little thing. You know, Chris, I was back on the least coast, back in the source. And I took in a Broadway entertainment. I did. And it was weird because one of the stars of the show addressed me from the stage and told me he's a little unsure.

about living in my America. But, you know, that was all right. That was all right. I took it because theater is a safe space for all of us. No, that same night that that was going on over at Hamilton, I saw the Oh, Hello show. Oh, the Malini thing thing. Well, right.

This is the two-man show starring John Mullaney and Nick Kroll, two comedians best known for their independent appearances on the Andy Greenwald podcast. And they... Is that on the poster? That is on the poster. Is that in a playbill? It's just... Appeared on Law and Order of the Andy Greenwald podcast.

What's the difference, really? No, they play these Upper West Side Bachelors, and here's the thing. The characters are very funny. I just want to give a shout up because it was great. It was a really, really like the kind of laughing where your tum-tum hurts a little bit. Yeah. And I was very impressed because people have seen these characters maybe on Kroll Show or whatever, but I didn't understand how they would do a whole theatrical extravaganza with it.

And they did. And then Martin Short came out. They do a little cameo every night. Oh, wow, Martin Short every night. No, no, no. Someone different every night. Oh, okay. Like Ben Stiller was the other night.

They had the God Alan Alda one night, you know? Ald is always on 40-second Street. Ald is ready to just play. Yeah. But I just want to give a shout-up because this show, Oh, Hello, is in limited release through January 15th. And it's a tonic. Yeah.

It's good to laugh. You know? It's so good to laugh. I really, really enjoyed it. My big thing from the weekend that didn't include something that you did as well was I was going to try and talk a little bit about this later, but Nocturnal Animals,

the New Tom Ford movie. Oh, you check that out. That movie is a movie and a half. Wait, is it out, out, or is it just like limited release type thing? I mean, it's about as available as seeing, oh, hello, I think. No, I think it's, I think it's like,

you can see it in major metropolitan areas, and why would you live anywhere else, right? This is a Blue State Center podcast. No, it was a new Tom Ford movie. It stars Amy Adams, Jake Gillen Hall, Michael Shannon, and, oh, crazy good performance from Aaron Taylor Johnson, who you may remember

being a Ken doll in Godzilla and a kickass. Is that dude Quicksilver? Am I mixing up my dudes? Yeah, yeah, I know. There's Evan Peters is in one of them, and then Evan Taylor, Aaron Taylor Johnson is Quicksilver in another. In Ultron, he was good. Yeah. He is

excellent. It's a the less you know about it, I would say, the better, but it is like a really, really, really great noir movie. Why is Tom Ford good at this? Because Tom Ford is a menswear designer. He's big into the fragrance market.

Yes. Which you and I know. So now he has his own label fade to black. Did you know that? His own fragrance label? Well, no, because he left Gucci, M.SL, started his own thing. Oh. Yeah.

Is this going to be a fashion pod now? I'm just saying I read a little about Tom Ford this week. So tell me, though, quickly, without, you said it's a noir, so I'm in, despite the presence of my number one favorite actress, Amy Adams. What makes it not just surfacy? Because I'm being prejudicial against fashion designers. It is. Because I think we all remember Tommy Hill Figures back to college comedies. I definitely know how I'm going to sell this to you.

It is basically a acidic take on upper class L.A. life. And inside of it is a James Crumley novel. Wow. So the premise is basically that Amy Adams is this incredibly rich gallery owner who's married to Arnie Hammer in... By the way, those things are redundant. You say one of the other, and I understand everything. And she receives in the mail one day a manuscript written by her first husband, or hammers or second.

Does she know she has the first husband? Yes. Okay. And the book is called Nocturnal Animals. Yeah. And it is about something that is, it's a story set in West Texas, a very dark one. And so does that story become the plot of the movie? Yes.

So we see a movie within the movie? Yes. I love this stuff. But I really, because, like, I only had read, like, that amount of description, and you go to it, you go into it. And if you, if you allow yourself that, it has the kind of feeling you have when you're watching, like, Twin Peaks where you're like, what is happening? You sold me. Can I do one more recommendation before we get into it? I read a book over this trip.

I read a book by the author Dana Spiata. Oh, yeah, you were, yeah. I was texting your wife. We can say it. I think you might like it, too. But I did. That's not the 1,000 Saints person, right? No, first of all, I absolutely gendered my text because I wrote to you and said,

yo, I'm sitting here reading Updike, and then I wrote to your wife saying I was reading Dana Spiata. I apologize for that. She is a novelist. She teaches it's Syracuse. She's like a disciple of Don DeLillo. She had a fairly big book a couple years ago. Aren't we all? I mean, we all in many ways are called Stone Arabia that I'm going to read next and hopefully we'll talk about it.

But this book is called Innocence and Others. It is New Adam Paperback, and it is about two women who are best friends in high school in L.A. in 1985 and they both become filmmakers. One becomes like a very strict documentarian and one becomes more of a commercial success. It is not told in a straightforward way at all. But the reason I recommending this is not just because we have some cinephiles listening to this podcast.

I've got one sitting next to me right now. But she is one of the most remarkable writers I've ever read in terms of her ability to describe what it is like to engage with media. The way she writes about how we hear sound and what dial tones mean to us, why we become obsessed with images and movies and filmmakers. It is a very visceral but ultimately kind of uplifting book.

I recommend it. Okay, awesome. Okay. Now let's do our podcast, podcast. Well, so we also want to recommend Search Party, I think. It's fun to find a new show. Well, this was one of those funny things where Allison Herman mentioned this in the Thanksgiving binge watch guide that we did, where I read about Quarry, actually. And I think I had seen also on Vulture Lake Zolar sites, it was like, this is one of the best shows of the year.

And I was like, what is it? What are you talking about? Because I think generally you're kind of, it's so hard to get surprised by like the arrival of a show anymore. I mean, there's just so much marketing. There's so much stuff out there where you're like, oh, okay, I'm fully aware that this thing is coming on and it's going to be now. It's on TBS who have been trying a bunch of different things over the last few years.

We talked about the, what was the Natalie Z show that we were talking about? Oh, the detour. Yeah, the detour. Obviously, Sam B is on. It's interesting because the goodwill towards TBS. seems apparent. Like people, you know, Kevin Riley, who used to run FX and then, and then ran Fox, took over TBS and T&T and was pushing hard into diversifying what they did and making more creative and more interesting. So I think there was a lot of goodwill there. There was

certainly money behind it, but it sort of catches, catch can in terms of what was actually popping. Yes. And the detour, I thought was great. We both really enjoyed it this year, but it sort of seemed to exist in kind of a bubble. Yeah, they have Sam B, they have Conan. But there is this world of like comedies that exist, but it's hard to sort of notice. Well, and it's funny because like, you know, a lot of these shows you could imagine on other networks, uh, whether they would be a cleaned up version, like, and I mean like not as dirty, um, language or content wise on ABC. Or you could imagine them, uh, on HBO or FX. Is FX still have FXX? Oh yeah, you're the worst. So you could imagine them on other networks, but such is the demand for

original content now that you're starting to see these other, these things where it's like, if if all of the good comedies were just on FXX, they would have a 90s NBC kind of lineup, you know? With one-fourth, one-eighteenth of the viewership. Sure, yeah. I would say, just building on where you're going with this, I would say search party, which, by the way, all 10 episodes are available to watch online.

Yeah, they dropped them immediately, they dropped them all last week, so you can watch them all on iTunes. Or TBS.com. Or TBS.com. But I would say that this show is the first one that I would say, this is a TBS show, this is one you can build on. Because it is not, it has elements that you could maybe see on Comedy Central, but it's a little more scripted with a little more narrative.

A little more atmospheric. Heft to it, a little more atmosphere to it. It also has, it has, well, let's just put it this way. It has a very, very specific aesthetic and style that is the sort of thing a network could build around for comedy brand. Yes. It is a... Let's get in, so why don't you tell people what it's about? Sure.

So it's created by this filmmaking partnership, Sarah Violet Bliss, which is one of the coolest names I can remember, especially if you accidentally throw an N in there. It becomes a Violent Bliss. And Charles Rogers, they made... That's actually the name of a host in last night's... Dude, it's a name of all. It depends which timeline. She and Charles Rogers made a film. They're younger than us.

I think they're only like 30. They made a movie. Congrats. Should we mention that we're doing this podcast super early? so the coffee is just kicking in. These guys made a film a couple years ago that went on the film festival circuit called Fort Tilden. Did you see this?

I did, yeah. It's enjoyable. Yeah. It was very clever. It's a little bit arch. It's very New York. It's very specific in its references. What I was impressed with with this,

and they collaborated with Michael Showalter from the state and went out of American Summer to make this show, is that the thing about Fort Tilden is that it was very much a movie in that everyone was pitched a little bit extreme, and the whole aesthetic was pitched a little bit extreme. They seem to understand immediately that to make a show, you have to be a little bit more universal.

So that's part about this show. You have to have a POV character who is amidst the weirdness. Yeah. And because we all have, you know, look, I'm sitting right next to it. We all have weirdness in our lives. And I kind of almost wonder whether the pilot, well, so the tagline, like the elevator pitch for the show is basically 20-something hipsters who are, like, living their relatively superficial or aimless lives in Brooklyn. and the main character played by Alia Shawcat from Arrest of Development, you may remember her,

and she is kind of like not really sure what she's going to do with her life, and one day she comes across a flyer that says that this girl that she used to go to college with is now missing, right? And she sort of takes on the, much like someone who was very excited about serial or making a murderer and started investigating it

for themselves on Reddit, she takes on the actual investigation herself and starts poking into it, going to the vigil, etc. And, you know, it's partially about her trying to find some purpose in her life, and then it's also actually like a mystery because there's a lot more to be revealed. The coolest thing about this show by far

is the fact that, unlike Fortilden, which I think is like a character study that goes from A to B very cleanly, this is like, characters really change over the course of this series. Now, I think it's pretty obvious to me that the pilot, like they shot and they were like everybody was in full

them mode. Yeah, everybody was turned up. And over the course of the like five or six episodes that I've watched, people really change and there's like different layers to the characters and characters who are like simps are also kind of like really cool and warm and kind.

There are superficial characters that have unseen depth. It's just like a really nice piece of writing. Yeah, I'm so impressed by the show because it is very funny, first of all. I mean, I believe that's the tagline for the TBS network. It is, yeah. Nailed it on the first try. But yet, as you alluded to, it also found a plot that is certainly of the moment

in the sense that people do get very, very involved in these sort of serial cases. And, you know, there was a great scene. You mentioned you're the worst, or we mentioned FXX. In this third season, there was a great moment where the main character, Jimmy, sort of appeals to Gretchen by creating a murder for her because she's a murder girl basically she's obsessed with true crime stuff in a way that is a little bit ukey

but then the third thing about it that gives it depth and again comedies don't need depth but it's kind of fun when you find it is this idea which I think is very relevant and very very hard to dramatize which is this world that we're living in where outward tragedy has to be reflected

inward where if someone famous dies we all have to perform our mourning in public, make it about us. And how the thing is, we always make everything about us. That is not a new idea. That is actually how we process emotions. No, I mean, even, but one of the major tropes of, of fictional police work that the wire tried to do away with, and even, I would say the wire was still guilty of this,

was the myth of the personally obsessed police officer and, like, the cop who was consumed by the case. and that was a big thing like David Simon was like the idea that you know a cop would stand over a body and like get down on one knee and be like no it's a job yeah it's a job and so but you're right like this idea that not only are do our that our personal obsessions just across the board have to be somehow merchandised is really like it is definitely at the heart of the show also also because and I'm sorry to mention again the relative age of the the showrunners here it

feels very authentic to a contemporary New York. In the places they go, the way they interact with each other, these characters are very fashion forward. The music on the show is excellent and atmospheric and really draws you in, and it's considered. You know, it never, it has a control, and you've watched more episodes than I have than I have, and we will definitely revisit it when we've given people time to catch up. But it doesn't get too broad despite the fact that some of the characters are very broadly drawn. I mean, this guy John Early, who you definitely recognized from memorable guest turns,

I mean, he was on 30 Rock and a couple other things, is very funny. Yes. And just, he was very hungry. And then the show was a salad bar or some sort of like, a sizzler table for him to feast on. But these other performances, too, because Alia Shokad is really good and very well cast as the sort of the grounding POV character. The guy John Reynolds, who plays her boyfriend Drew. Yeah, he's the one that I kind of really was like, oh, this guy's going to be kind of like the. sweat blanket the entire show and it's not really like that.

I don't often say this, but he's one of those people who I would love to see in real life or to see an interview with because I think that his performance is sneakily maybe the most 100 because he is completely committed to this guy that actually, like many of these people, are trying to do well. They're just not mature enough to do it yet. And this show is very, very, very detailed for something that is largely like plot driven because it's so much about this mystery. but then all the character details are really excellent. But I do think it's like at once a loving portrait

and a very acidic satire of the characters. And that's really, really, really hard to do. It's really hard to do that. It's so much more familiar. I mean, when you watch this, maybe in the first few minutes, before you see the scope of it, you might think that it's airing too far on one side because, as you said, the characters are really on one

in the first time we meet them in terms of their superficiality and their self-centeredness. but it's not just making fun of them. Absolutely not. It is definitely, the camera's eye is on their side with some empathy, which I think is really important. How much of our enjoyment of this? First of all, full stop, great to discover something new. How much of our excitement is because we're surprised, do you think?

Well, I think that this is actually a nice on-ramp to Westworld, frankly, because I think that this is, like, one of the things that's sort of clouded, or not even clouded our discussion of Westworld. world, but has had an impact on our discussion in Westworld, is the, like, acknowledgement or engagement with the extracurricular activities around the show. So when you watch something like this, and I sort of felt this way a little bit about the night of earlier in the year, where midway through the run, it had kind of become a real, like, what's your theory? Like, what's your theory about what's happening on this show? Which is, like, you have to take responsibility for being susceptible to other people's, you know, ways of enjoying things. So if you find yourself annoyed by that, there's really, I mean, like, I have to

take responsibility for that, right? But that being said, it was nice to watch a mystery and not have to, like, be, like, inundated with, like, here's my theory on what happened to Chantal. Yeah. You know, and I, for as much as I love that stuff, like, in Westworld, it was kind of cool to just, like, you and I love mystery stories. We read a lot of crime fiction. We watch a lot of mystery and crime shows and movies. It's nice to kind of, like, experience the uncut flake that's, like, The stepped on stuff, you know? But the flip side of that is something that is key that search party seems to understand, and I think the night I've understood, and I don't know if Westworld understands in the same

conceptual way, which is, who done it doesn't matter. Yes. In any of the mysteries that we love, ultimately, the question that people, I mean, that's a question that has become shorthand for the genre, who done it. Little insider knowledge for you, insider tip, who done it doesn't matter. You have to care about who's looking into it, who's around it. Why are they affected by it? Because you're ultimately going to be disappointed if you build everything up on the strength on the back of one question.

So search party is already compelling to me. And again, you've watched more episodes so you know more about how the mystery unfolds. I don't actually care that much about where Chantal is or what happened to her. I'm just so drawn in by the people who are affected by it. Similarly, I think the Nite of, and we'll probably keep coming back to this, because Nitev was not perfect. But one thing that it did so artfully that I just want to remember and keep in my pocket is that it deflected the weight of that question.

By the time we got to the finale and whatever happened to Nas happened to Nas, honestly, I don't even remember how he, whether, I sort of remember what happened, I won't spoil it for people who haven't watched it, but the logistics, but the logistics of whether he was guilty or not or who did the crime if he didn't.

He opened up a boutique and Red Hook. I assumed that he did it. He wrote a bike to Fort Dilden. None of that actually matters that much because it's about the larger world. Now part of that, Part of the reason why a search party can get away with that is that it has comic sensibilities. And I think that the more serious or the more, look, like, if you are going to make your entire thing about the, like, the mystery, then people don't have a lot to hang their hat on.

And that is sort of what happened with True Detective as well, right? Like, it was, it started out and it was really, like, this atmospheric, weird, almost like David Lynchie and kind of, like, look. at like Louisiana and stuff like that and then it became more and more the yellow king, the yellow king and who's like who is the yellow king and where's Carcosa. And that's fine. Like I remember that time very fondly, but I, you know, I remember it less fondly. I know, but like I think that there is a lot to be gained from shows that are laden with references and clues and Easter eggs and like need their own footnotes.

But there's also something to be said for a show that just very cleanly tell. its own story. We also have to be on the same page and not to re-litigate true detective, but I think the further we get from it, the more clear it is that Nick Pizzolato, who wrote it

and Carrie Fukunaga, who directed it, were making very different shows. And we're not necessarily interested in the show the other person was making. Sometimes the best art comes from that, right? That's a very good point. You know? Sometimes, yeah, that's very true.

And, yeah, in this case, the center didn't, in my opinion, the center didn't hold in that case. Yes, but I mean, like, the whole, like... The push pole of it? Exxonle of Main Street is because one guy was in France and the other guy was in England and they were recording things

onto answering machines and then not paying their taxes. I mean, it was like, the tension between the two people is what, like, often will drive a piece of art. To stay in the 70s, remember Robert Altman's classic film MASH in which Ringlearner Jr.

wrote an Academy Award-winning script that on day one, Altman threw in the garbage. I'm sure he did. It literally didn't use the script, but the script won an Oscar that no one ever read it. That stuff can be kind of fun to.

You're right. But I feel like we're tap dancing because we got to talk about this. Well, let's take a quick break in here from our sponsors and then we'll get into Westworld. Can we get a sound cue going forward for Penultimate, whenever we say it, like a big gone? Like, you've just watched the penultimate episode. All right back. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Sonos.

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So I was curious, why don't you, you want to go first, you go first. Because I feel like I don't really have like a cool way of asking you how much you disliked it. So I was going to ask you, do you think that you would have liked it if you didn't, if you were almost going into it, like all I do is watch Westworld. I don't read about Westworld. I don't take in. No, but here's why. I don't read that much extra stuff about Westworld. I try not to.

You really do seem like the kind of guy who does. I do seem like it right now. Right now I feel like that guy late at night, just deep redditing. No, I don't. But I didn't need, for some of the things, I've definitely needed some extracurricular help from you or from the Joanna Robinson of Vanity Fair has been great writing about it or Jason Concepcion who we talk to about it and we'll have next week. I hope to talk about the finale. The fact that Arnold was someone we already knew was obvious and inevitable. The fact that it was going to be Bernard was also.

pretty clear. The thing is it's a lot of this stuff comes down to execution and a lot of it is a difficult balance. And I commend Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan for creating something wildly ambitious, wildly complicated, but also being committed to pulling back the curtain a little bit within the first season, that some of the mysteries that they very, very heavily foregrounded were going to be revealed one way or another this season. So this idea of who Arnold was, the worst thing they have done was just draw it out. Similarly, I think we're going to get some sort of answers about what Wyatt is, because Wyatt can't be the guy that disappeared from Teddy's memory when Teddy realized it was him. Like, Wyatt has to be someone we already know. These names are just masks. These names are

characters, and people have to play them. That's sort of what's in the show. But what was interesting about this was how much a dramatic, emotional, important, consequential, existential, existential reveal can be sapped of its import when it's not a surprise. This episode, to me, felt like, you know, it was reaching for something pretty grand. It really wanted to have some emotional weight and heft to it. On paper, the idea of allowing this man, who's not really a man, to access his memories and to deconstruct them and to dissect them is rich. I love Jeffrey Wright, you know.

I think people got to know him best from his appearance on the Andy Greenwald podcast, and Ever since then, his star has only grown. Yeah. But one of the bests... Good for him. But one of the best... It wasn't Baskillat. It was definitely this. Wasn't Angels in America on stage.

No, it really was a podcast. Were you an Angels in America, bro? You know, we covered a lot of that on the podcast. You know, um... No, but I mean, one of the best actors working and to see him have this stuff to work with was exciting. Yeah. But all of it felt inert to me because I knew.

And maybe I'm privileged my own experience having figured it out already, but I knew. And the show is essentially, like all shows, teaching us how to watch it, and the way it's teaching us

how to watch it is a little bit clumsy. For example, and then I'll cede the floor. This episode essentially confirmed that William... I'm reaching across the aisle here, man. We're not doing senatorial policy. You don't have to cede the floor

to the gentleman from Philadelphia. Can you be Lee Pace and I'll be Abraham Lincoln? No. Okay, well, vice versa. Baxies. This episode, and I want to hear your thoughts on this, essentially confirmed that William is the man in black

because it told us he was. And I think he's also, I mean, there's some debate about this, but it also seemed to suggest that Charlotte is his daughter, and I wouldn't be surprised if... Oh, really? My theory, you think? I think so. I can't believe they shouted you out on Reddit.

They love me on Reddit. I'm big on Reddit. the, you know, because he, because right before he entered the church, Dolores said, William, and there he was, not as he expected. I mean, the show foreground stuff, it tells us what's going on. Right. Similarly, before. Jimmy Simpson killed an entire camp full of hosts and, like, now figured out the game.

I mean, if these two aren't the same person. That seemed like a cool way to pass the night, by the way. Not just kill him, like, real, kill the shit out of him. You know what I mean? How did he sleep through that? Who was buddy? Yeah. He got him drunk.

Okay. Also, Logan, first of all, great point because Logan just seems like a really well-drawn-out human character. The way Logan behaves top to bottom. I love you, man. You're my brother. I'm just a plot device. The scene when Bernard brings Ford down into the subseller, the first thing he says to him is they're not dead, they're just resting. which means, or whatever they are, they're in some sort of suspended, whatever,

which of course, for all you Jeffrey Wrightheads out there, you know, all you podcast fans, clearly he's not gone because we were just told that these characters who die on that level are coming back. We've also just gone through where we've seen Maeve come back repeatedly, you know, and Felix fixes her, and Maeve is now leading this army of hosts, and who's to say that Charlotte or Ford

or any number of people won't bring Bernard back? I just don't think he's off the table. The last thing I'll say is, you know, when we had Sam Esmail on the stage to talk about Mr. Robot's season two, and one of the things that he was voicing and has throughout the history of that show is that he doesn't mind when the audience is ahead of the reveal. He insists that he doesn't mind that people figured out the big twist of season one when they figured it out because he was doing some misdirect. He sort of was leading them along. That was fine for them to figure it out because he wanted the story to be able to withstand the reveal while still having the Darlene reveal as the one that you might not. be expecting.

Sure. That seems to be logical thinking and plotting and planning for TV in 2016 or beyond because this show feels like it was not considering that. To me, the show feels like it really wanted to dazzle us. Well, I don't think that the show probably, so Jason conception actually said something last night that I thought was, he was like a lot of this felt like we only get one season. That there was, right. I'm sure that given the financial investment. Did he call you? No, no, no, there was a... You were chatting?

Yeah. Oh, where's my invite? No, he was chatting on like a online, on the computer box. Oh, really? I could have seen it? No. I just feel lonely, you guys chatting without me? We'll put you in Slack if you want.

Mallory and I were going to start chatting. He was like, this felt like it was like a one season. This was like, what if we only get one season? So a lot of stuff they, they burn. And, you know, we've talked before about this idea of like, never wait, never sit on your best stuff. That's right. You want to use it all. And then it forces you to think of more good stuff.

That's why I led with my Broadway story. But I actually, for the first time, my enjoyment of this show on this episode actually flipped. I really enjoyed a lot of the performances. I agree with that. I was pretty compelled by like the cross-cutting and all this, like the dramatic. I mean, Michelle McLaren directed it, so it's like, duh, it's good. Some of the under the sort of scaffolding around it actually really annoyed me this time. The idea that there is just like a convenient elevator anywhere in the park that people can come up to is just like, that's lazy.

Yeah. Like that's not how sure, like that's great if that is how it is. But then like it just like that that really, that was annoying to me. And the idea that, you know, these two guys who we never actually see doing any work are constantly building backdoor code into robots. Right. Is like, so then what's basically I'm like there's no consequences then because like, If everybody can die and then come back, and if you can program somebody to do one thing, but then that other person can program to do another,

but any asshole with a tablet can up someone's ratings game sliders so that they can do whatever they want, then it just starts to like, there's no rules to the actual story, right? And I actually thought like Hopkins was very, like, it was an incredible performance last night. Hopkins was like what the money is for, right? Hopkins was really sold some questionable stuff last night. Yeah. And it was like the melancholy way he walks away. way at the end where it's like this is actually like he worked very hard to bring his friend back

but a better version of him and like ultimately if you put our cornerstone memories inside of us they always lead us back to the same place and you know whether or not those things are constructs and whether or not the like our pain is what drives us like I like all that stuff it was actually the uh who like what is how ghost nation now doesn't respond to commands I mean it just seems like this park would be complete anarchy and like it kind of made me think of some of the stuff that Jason had saying me earlier in the year where he was like, people

wouldn't do this stuff here because there's just no way that this wouldn't get back. And even I mean, Man in Black said that before where he's like yeah, my daughter basically was like the person you are in the park is the real you, you're disgusting. Also, he fully almost died and they were pretty cool guys don't look at explosions about it.

Which one? Like when Had Harris almost literally comes So within a millisecond of being hanged. And then Tesla Thompson's like, hey. So here's my thing. Isn't that like playing like double dragon and not getting the quite the right button combination? I don't know that.

Like if you hadn't, the horse wouldn't have moved to do it? We don't know. Right? Like we don't know the level. Because again, what can be done to these people, to humans in the park changes at will, apparently. We don't know the level of danger people are in at any given point because it seems to depend on what era you're in, what part of the park you're in.

The Hopkins stuff is worth thinking about because what you're saying, I think, is an echo of something that I was trying to articulate the other week, which is what does he want? The idea of these two men, these two geniuses who become rivals or who have different views on what this all means, the idea of Hopkins winning

because of his more extreme pessimism in humanity and in himself is a fascinating idea. And especially if you kind of draw it out And it's like, so Arnold gave these robots a degree of consciousness. They turned not only on Robert, but one of the, Dolores kills Arnold, according. Apparently. Yeah, apparently. Whether or not she does that as the Wyatt character, which some people think, I don't know.

And it leads to these great, you know, trailer lines. I'm saying that only because, you know, the Nolan family make movies mostly, or Christopher Nolan makes movies, Jonah Nolan made personal interest. The scenes from next week are generally pretty cool. But the trailer line, like, when Hopkins is like, you know, I am only human, I'm human, will only disappoint you, basically. That's one of those self-high-five lines that when, like, you put it in final draft,

you're like, nailed it. And Hopkins sells it. The problem is all of this is under the surface. We don't know what he wants now other than to be able to do everything and protect everything, and he seems omnipotent. So that robs him of a role in the drama. It's really just people scrabbling to figure out something. that he apparently knows.

So the big thing that it's not a reveal in terms of mystery, the thing that they have left to sort of, and this is obviously going to be season two, is what is this place? Right. Why is it so valuable if it's basically the playground of a mad scientist? What is it? Like, I wonder whether or not the only way this show can go forward

is if it pulls back. Because the assumption here is that we are going to see all the relevant moments of the last 30 years inside the park by next episode. That we'll find out why, what happens to Dolores that makes her kill Arnold. We'll find out probably about Jimmy Simpson and Ed Harris being the same character. And then maybe no more Jimmy Simpson flashbacks in season two. And I hope that we get a robot version of Logan so that he can live on. Oh my God.

But really the question then is, is like, what is Tessa Thompson doing? Well, why is she here? She just feels like that's like she must be very important in the second season. There must be something that, like, what is she doing there? Well, what is the company doing? That's the bigger question. And all of that, despite my negativity about this episode, I continue to feel that the opportunity for a second season is much greater.

Yes. This season feels like not just throat clearing and backstory, but trickery. Like they were tricking us in a lot of ways from the very beginning. And I think they fell too in love with that idea of what you can. can do with, is it a human, is it a robot, what time period we're in, all the different levels of narrative trickery that you can employ in prestige television landscape while neglecting all the things that keep us watching beyond the first season. That said, if they have internalized some of, not my criticism, but I think general criticism about the show, even from people who have

enjoyed the puzzles. Sure. It's an enormous world, and I mean that on multiple levels. Yeah. Who is Ford talking about when he was like our neighbors, our neighbors complaining again? And if you turn around, basically, if you stop obsessing over the past and finding cute ways to deliver us what is essentially an info dump, what is essentially its position, and you start actually telling us a story moving forward, okay, that's promising, especially with this cast. And I didn't even realize, like, we haven't even given credit to this, but like the writing staff alone, like Ed Brubaker, who's a brilliant comic book writer contributed to this season, Charles Yu, who wrote that book, How to Live Safely in a science fiction universe, which haven't read, but would love to. I've heard very good things about. They've got great minds there. They've got the resources of this network. So for as negative as I've been, I remain cautiously optimistic.

But in terms of next week, unless they do save time. What I mean by that is I will be very disappointed in the finale if the last 15, 16 minutes are the slow, gradual. Oh, my effing God reveal that William is the man in black. and that's the season. You're right. That is interesting. We are like the collectively people are so far ahead of this show that it could be an hour. There was a degree to which I was just, you know, I've talked with other people around the office about this where I was like, I kind of wish I hadn't known all this stuff because the Bernard Arnold stuff would have been so.

I think you would have figured it out. Probably it would have. You know, and I know, I am still really looking forward to a version of this show that has its principles and is. working in one timeline. The big question for me going into this finale next week is when does the second season start? If the second season starts with 20 minutes left to go in this final episode, now they didn't know they had a second season, but I mean if they pull back the curtain. You always say it's like these are not the kind of like that that's high like you were saying when stranger things. It's like they weren't like

maybe we'll bring stranger things back. No, although season, although season two begins of the last few minutes. They gave, they gave them stranger things. They gave themselves some openings for what could happen next. I don't mean just that. I just mean like pull back the curtain. Give us, you know, really surprise us. Don't think you're surprising us. But again, they don't know. This all happened already. The episode's done and locked. But I would be, I really am curious to see how much of a sense of the world and what could happen is given to us in this finale next week. Okay. All right. Well, we'll be back on Thursday to do the re-up. Yeah, we're going to be back this week. We've got to talk about the new weekend album, which I'm into. Talk about Starboy. We got to talk about Starboy.

That guy's got a dream mind. Do you think? I'm going to leave you with one question about that. Yeah. You know, there are two deaf punk songs on this record? I do know. And they're really good. They're quite good.

At what point in recording with Abel with the weekend, were they like, I wish we could go back in time, like cosmonauts in the show Timeless, which is a time travel show on NBC, and lose Farrell's phone number. I think, I want to know what point those dudes ran his lyrics through Google Translating. And they're like,

who, oh, it reads much better in the original French. Staboy. I just mean like, so naughty. Me, we, stop boy.

I'm just saying, how much better would get lucky be with weekend singing it? That's not kind of sacrilegious, but sure. It'd be better. I'm sorry to be Mr.

timeline jumping right now, but the weekend is the man in black. We'll be back for the re-up on Thursday. Thanks for listening, guys. Happy Thanksgiving. Great job, O'Renski. Thanks again to American Express.

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