The Watch - Ep. 11: 'The Watch'

Episode Date: January 9, 2016

On today's episode Andy and Chris celebrate the return of Kanye west, discuss the broadway success of 'Hamilton' (7:00 mark)and break down 'The Knick' (15:00), 'Transparent' (34:00) and 'Homeland' (42:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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audible.com is offering a 3.30-day trial membership. Go to audible.com slash BSPN today to start your free trial. Again, show your support for Channel 33 and get a 3.30-day trial for audible.com at audible.com slash BSPN. Yeah. Hello, and welcome to the watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed. My name is Chris Ryan, and on the other line, My deadbeat cousin, it's Andy Greenwald.

We're doing a two for this week. Feels good. Good Friday edition. Yeah, we got to drop the new music on Fridays. Here we were. No, that was just the joy, man. We just went back to Good Fridays back in the day. You know, we were going to just get right into some transparent in the nick and round up some television. And then Yeezus came back to life.

It's pretty exciting day. It's almost as if he knew we were going to record today and that we were just thirsty. thirsty for beats thirsty for topics so Kanye West uh released a song and a half today um one track called Real Friends which features production by Kanye West and drum programming by uh one of my personal favorite producers Havoc from Mob Deep features a sample by boy Wanda sounds if you need you need this summary it sounds a little bit like take care of Drake I guess but that's not a shot because I like take care of Eric Drake I'm just trying to give you a a word picture a word sound Sound collage. Take, can we get like five seconds of real friends here? Just let people know what it's like out here.

That's it. Oof. That was a boy wonder keys. That harp. Taking you back into that headspace. Yeah. Taking a shot of tequila and thinking about why Rihanna left me. Yeah. All right. That's good. We're letting it ride or can I drop some key rocks over that beat? Here's why here's why I'm pretty excited about this song. Not only because of it's It's terrific. But you mentioned the Drakehead space. Let's go back a little further.

This has a little bit of the raw emotion that we love from like family business. Radical vulnerability. Early dropout era, Kanye just just revealing himself. Like when he's back folding sweaters at the gap. Yeah. I really like that. And I especially like that because, you know, we didn't even talk about facts, which was his, I guess, now annual New Year's Eve release.

And there's a reason why we did talk about facts. because we don't speak ill of the dead. I mean, let's leave that song in 2015. You know what I mean? Like, it was a little worrisome. Like, I wasn't the biggest only one head on going from New Year's last year, right? But that was a song about his mom and about his daughter. And that was some, that was emo Kanye, which obviously I'm predisposed to like.

Starting the year off with, like, shoe salesman Kanye made me a little worried. It made me a little worried. You know, that's not, that's not what people want. And it also touched into the larger concern that we voiced about the Swish album, which is coming at some point, which is this is the first time in Kanye's. And again, maybe we have some new listeners. We are going to say, I speak for both of us when I say near, near flawless career, where it has seemed like he's not quite sure who to come back as or how to come back. And so if he was reading the tea leaves and he's like people like Jumpman, but they would really like Jumpman more if it was a sneaker commercial. That's not really reading...

That's not a sneaker commercial already. Exactly, exactly. So this was nice. Yeah, you know, I think that this is, for as much as this song is great, it's basically about the difficulty of maintaining, like, deep friendships as you grow older and get busier and have a family and all the things that happen as you enter the twilight of your 30s. You know, I think for as much as the song is great,

it portends for great things to come. truly the beginning of a good Fridays. I can't think of anything that would make me love the internet more in 2016. Andy and I have often talked in past podcasts about just how special it was when those tracks like Christian Dior, Denham Flow, and the Joy, which we played at the beginning of the podcast and Runaway and Power Monster, like those songs were coming out every week. And I was trapped in like this, I was in this office in Chinatown in New York City writing ad copy for a soap.

a women's soap. For a moment, when you said that you were trapped when you said you were trapped in Chinatown in New York City, I was picturing you trapped in like one of those like high stakes, off books, you know, cow guy, rooms from the gambler. Endlessly repeating first scene from Michael Clayton. Okay, that's, that helps me.

That just grounds me. But it was just, it was one of those things that did make the internet feel special and not like an albatross on your soul. It was like we were experiencing something communally. Everybody's emailing each other back and forth, you know, the energy around it, the feeling of being witnessed to something beautiful and creative was really fantastic. Also, let's just say, there's a cynical version of, there's a cynical way to look at this

and a more hopeful, optimistic version. And I'm actually totally fine with both. And it's basically that Kanye's creative process is more interesting than most people's. And so if we're going back to a Good Friday model where he's basically clearing the decks, like here are all the different versions of what Switch could have been, all the things he's been working on, let's do that version of the album because all the other way, he tried to do it in more traditional ways. He tried to be like, look, I got giant stars. I'm with Paul McCartney and Rihanna. That version didn't work. He came back with all days like, okay, this is going to be my summer banger. That never really took off. And frankly, the reason it didn't take off is because

the version of it that went out into the world didn't come with the visuals that came from the Britta Awards with a man blasting a flamethrower into the air every five seconds, which if we could do for this podcast, we would. you know and so hopefully this this is this is the lead up to swish and by spring we get ourselves a new Kanye album and I can't wait I also love you were talking about vulnerable Kanye emo Kanye I love shit talking Kanye so if this is if if there's any any of that on it I'm really excited the the snippet when Kanye originally reached LaSalle this morning so it was like real friends and at the end it had was it no no parties in no new parties in LA what was it called no parties no parties no

Parties in L.A. No new friends at parties in L.A. No parties in L.A., which features Kendrick Lamar and production by Madlib. And just the taste of that was enough to make me, you know, walk across America barefoot. Just the taste in your mouth. It's just like a little amuse bouch at the Kanye restaurant, just sparking the taste buds. Greenwald, you know, we were just talking about Good Fridays and how that was a very special moment of feeling like you were a part of something and feeling like you were witnessing someone working at the height of their powers. And those things are few and far between. But you and I recently separately, but we recently got to experience something that I hope

everybody, you know, it's a hot ticket and it's hard to get into, but I hope that everybody gets a chance to do, which is to go to Broadway and see Hamilton. Can I just, Broadway pod? Broadway. You know, Hamilton has been, started at the public last February. So it's rounding into its first year of production. It moved to Broadway in August, I think. It is the latest musical from Lim Manwell Miranda who did in the Heights.

And it is a rap-infused historical musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton and his spoiler alert, doomed relationship with Aaron Burr and his tempestuous relationship with, you know, his tumultuous relationship with the United States Constitution. Constitution, the American Revolution, several women. And, you know, it's, it is, if you've read anything about it, it is everything people say it isn't more. I don't know anybody who is cynical about this. No, I mean, there are things in this world that are justifiably hyped. There are things in this world that are wildly overhyped. It would be almost impossible to imagine something with

more positive, rapturous hype than Hamilton. I walked out of that theater on Wednesday night being like it's not hyped enough like it didn't do it justice I was so blown away steamrolled and moved by this piece of art and one of the reasons why and I'm not even saying this as someone who's just like a great defender of the great white way I have not lost much sleep being like oh the fate of the American musical is really up for grabs that said I sat down in my seat for the show and within 10 minutes of it. and, you know, in the first 10 minutes, you have, like, an exhilarating rap battle. Yeah, the first, the first, uh, the first act is really like, Splash Mountain Flumlog ride of emotion. And I was sitting there and I was like, if Steven Sondheim walked into this theater sat down, he probably has, I could just see him being like, oh, they figured it out. That's how this is going to work for 50 more years.

Because this, this is an argument not. just for the show, but for a complete art form that many people doubted. And, you know, to take something, and I would apply this to almost everything that we talk about, whether it's a TV show, a movie, or another TV show, we generally only talk about a few things. But the thing about Hamilton is that it is wildly smart. It is essentially historically accurate, and based on Ron Chernow's exhaustively researched biography of a founding father that many people kind of overlooked, right? It is wildly inclusive. The cast is predominantly biracial African American. It is extremely feminist

in the point of view and the voice in the narrative that it gives to the female characters in an era where they are not often considered. The songs are dope. It is really hard to write good songs, you know, let alone songs that pull from the scenario remix as an inspiration, songs that pull from like Beyonce's countdown as an inspiration. And my dad you know, my 76 year old dad is bumping these songs on the reg I can't. It's so weird like before this I've been listening

like most of the late winter I was mostly listening to Wire and Proto Martyr and like now since then I just listen to the Hamilton soundtrack I really love what I mean is there's a few songs like even if you don't get a chance to see the show I encourage you to listen to the soundtrack although when you see those songs live there's a certain energy that the soundtrack yeah sort of lacks um you probably can't tell songs. What? If you just listen to the soundtrack, you probably can't appreciate David Diggs's performance as Thomas Jefferson, where he essentially reimagines our nation's third president as a member

of Goody Mob. It is so good. And the show itself is so moving that it's hard not to listen to it without getting really emotional. But when we talk about the show and then we'll move on to TV, because it's really hard to get tickets for this and I don't want to make it seem like it's easier. But I want to introduce a new theory of criticism to you right now, live. direct off the dome on this podcast. Are you going to freestyle? I'd like to call the Dianu theory of criticism. Okay.

Now, my people and half of yours have a phrase, which is Dianu, right? Which is that would have been enough. Like, if only this had happened to us as a people, like, if only the big man upstairs had done this in Egypt, Dainu, that would have been enough. So that was my feeling about Hamilton. Like, if the songs were just great, Dianu, like I would have been on here raving about it. If it had been just emotionally rewarding in that way, if it had been so including, and exuberant and thrilling, Dainu, that would have been enough, you know?

But it's all of those things. It's wild. We rarely get to see something so brilliantly realized in the moment where it almost needed to exist. And that made me really up. It was a great way to start the year because it makes me excited about art and culture. Yeah, that's exactly right, man. It just really does make you feel like what a time to be alive is sort of a silly cliche at this point.

But you walk out of there feeling that way. If people, you know, the tickets are based, to say they are the hottest ticket in New York city is sort of an understatement. It's really difficult to get seats right now. I will recommend to people this, though, if you get a chance, go to YouTube and check out Ham for Ham, H-A-M-N-M-N-4 Ham, and they've got

all these great videos before the show almost every night. I think they're taking a little bit of a break now, but before the show, Liman-Well Miranda and some or all, and guests on the cast, go outside of the Richard Rogers Theater on 46th Street, I think,

and do basically an improv to concert for people who are waiting to see if they've won tickets in the lottery. The first few rows of the theater are usually reserved for people who win lottery tickets and are able to go to the show for not very much money. Those little performances are really great and they also actually give you a really good sense of the ecstatic vibe that is surrounding the show. I remember when the show began and they started with Alexander Hamilton, this girl behind me freaked out like the Beatles just walked on stage and chased.

stadium. I mean, she just started screaming. When the show was over, people almost exploded out of their seats. Not to say nothing of the fact that my roommate, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell seemed very moved by it. And when I texted my co-worker, Sean Fennessey, I was like, Goodell is here. He hit me up with a tweet that was from September of someone else being like, I'm at Hamilton with Roger Goodell. So he has seen this show at least two times. I know that like, you know, this is basically you're going to go, you're rubbing elbows with people, Steven Spielberg, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Beyonce. All these people are going to this show, but it's really the show show for the people if you can get in. I feel like deep Grantland stands will appreciate two things.

One, of all the coworkers, of all the coworkers you could have chosen to text in that moment, I'm interested that you chose Sean over another one. Gosh, I don't know who you're talking about. Two, just speaking of Grantland, like our pal remember. Brown wrote a really, really good interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda that was on Granlan last year. So even if you haven't seen the show, again, it's historical. So please don't avoid spoilers. That would be ridiculous.

I really recommend checking out Rem's talk with Lin-Manuel Miranda because it really connects a lot of dots with musical theater and the point of it and the possibility of it to doing things like listening to Tribe Called Quest Scenario remix, which at least for our target demo or at least our own demo, that's a lot more relatable. Yeah, there's a lot of really good golden age rap. references. There's Biggie, brand newbie, and Mob Deep that I caught. I would want to go see it again just

to listen for the references to other songs. So moving down the Great White Way, I saw the Gloria Estefan musical was playing, so I think we should talk about that next, right? No, man, you know, we came back after the New Year and we caught up with the Force Awakens. We got woke, and

then we sort of, you know, we missed the end of a couple of shows. Yeah. Of seasonal ends of a couple of shows, and there were a of shows that we hadn't gotten a chance to talk about for a while. So we wanted to take this extra episode of the watch this week to talk about transparent and the Nick and Homeland. And then we were going to chat a little bit about shows that are coming up.

So Andy, I wanted to start, let's start a little bit with the Nick. Yes. I went back and reread an excellent piece on Vulture by Matt Zoller sites about the making of the second season of the nick and if you have any interest in stephen soderberg directing television anything please go look this up i'll tweet it out later it's this excellent piece about how soderberg produces directs edits and shoots the nick and how they they shoot at a page per day pace that dwarfs anything else i mean they are burning through uh pages of script there's no director's chairs or actors chairs because people what's up all

Also, remember they do, he films it like a film in the sense that everything shot in the Nick is shot all at once. So the characters, he can only work with a certain kind of actor. Obviously, the actors have to be super good and super control of their character, but they also have to track their character because Clive Owen Stackery goes through various emotional states and chemical states. Well, if we're using the Nick as an example, well, in the hospital. And he has to film those back to back to back and then basically rewind his emotional state

on Tuesday to be in a different place. Yeah, there's an amazing photograph in Matt Zlercites' piece of a costume for thackeray. That's got a posted note that says Thackeray, you know, seen whatever with vomit. Like, it's basically its usual costume

covered in puke. Anyway, you know, so they're in this article, Soderberg talks about you know, the untapped potential of long-form storytelling and television. And all these different things that you can do. And in terms of the visual aspect, from a visual perspective,

I do think that the Nick has discovered new potential and reached that potential and shown what you can do with these conventional two-person conversations or three or four-person conversations or a hospital show. And the way you can tell that story visually. But what I want to put to you is that the problem with the second season, the Nick, is that it's too much like a television show. Right. You've expressed that before,

and I don't think you're necessarily wrong, and I think what you mean is, just to be clear, the fact that instead of focusing the way a film would on the most interesting things, the show felt the need to sort of service secondary, tertiary characters with their own B.C. and D plots, so we would sometimes lose track of the things we cared about most. Right, and the episodes themselves would sort of lack a central,

like a central narrative direction or propulsion because you would get three scenes into a thackeray episode scene or storyline and then it would cut away to cornelia investigating the death of a health inspector or gallinger pursuing eugenics and it would just kind of be spread thin and also and he talks about this at the beginning of the second season most of the main characters have spread apart you know they're in different parts of the the world really um and the first half of the season is them coming back together, and then the second half of the season is pretty much them splitting apart again. And that's a very TV rhythm to follow, and I agree with you on that.

I can see it both ways. I was with you a little bit through the meat of the season until the end when the Cornelia stuff, you know, it turned on a dime, and there was a revelation that we don't even need to get into, but basically all of that stuff that seemed tangential was really much more core to the storyline of the hospital than we had perhaps first realized. I thought that was well done.

The biggest concern I had, for me the biggest flaw of the season, and I want to just say up front that the last episode is astounding, and one of the best hours of TV from the last few years. And the flaw of the season for me was that they kind of lost Andre Holland's character. They lost Elgin' Edwards. And that character is one of the more interesting ones in the TV in the last few years. The performance is astounding. I, you know, since we're, since we're, it's old folks home this week.

Um, the podcast I got to do with Andre Holland back at Grantland is one of the ones I'm most proud of just because of he was such a compelling interview and was so willing to be open with me about all sorts of things, um, particularly related to race and casting in Hollywood. So the fact that his storyline was as raw and, and, um, interesting as it was in the first half of the season, to have him just essentially kind of vanish was disappointing. But, you know, the show, even separate and apart from the through lines, what the show is, what the show is, you know, did in the finale, and you know, I think it's possible to say that it's a finale in all sorts of ways, really was exciting because you rarely get to see a show do that.

And what I mean by that is the show basically ended itself. Yeah. And it ended itself and we didn't see it coming. And what it allowed it to do was give closure and round off stories in a way that didn't feel unnaturally elongated, right? Like,

in some ways there were many more stories to tell with these characters, but another way, as you're saying, we already saw that entropy starting to set in that is endemic to television shows where you start servicing B, C, D, D, F, G, ultimately, Z plots. So the thrill of seeing, oh, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to play by TV's rules. We're just going to kill the main character in the last episode. And do it in the most spectacular, accurate, not accurate, because God knows what that actually

happened, but. Well, apparently it did, but the guy was successful. Okay. Well, so to do it in the most appropriate way, then, for the character they had built is what I guess is what I meant to say was, it was really something. I mean, and let's just say,

one thing that the show maybe got away from in our way of discussing it was that it is insane in terms of what it portrays and how difficult it can be to watch. Yeah. And we came back there in the last episode. Maybe we got a little bit away from it. That, so the sort of series and, well,

I mean, the series might not be over because we'll talk about that a minute. But the way the season ends is with the main character, William Thackeray, performing a self-surgery with only a local anesthetic basically, right? Like a spinal anesthetic. And it gets so grimy about...

He's basically like removing necrotic sections of his bowel by himself. And it gets so... What do you's word? Granular? I don't even know what you would say about this. And you're just watching it. It does do that thing where it goes past grotesque into the beautiful and then even in the

pullback where you're back in the grotesque, there is a weird sense of sad beauty to it. I thought that that was really, you know, the last episode is phenomenal, but... But you think about some of the stuff that, you know, may have distracted us from Thackeray throughout the season, and one of the storylines that was completely off

on its own island was the relationship between, you know, Sister Harry, the former nun, and what's his story? name. Chris Sullivan is the actor. Yeah, Cleary. Yes, the ambulance driver and tough. And, you know, they're sort of burgeoning romance. Now, that is something that was written in it, like a TV show, that was telegraphed from not day one, but early on. We saw that coming the whole season, but it was handled with real deafness and real delicacy. The performances were astounding. And I've used astounding three times,

but that's my word for the show, I guess. The performances were so subtle. You know, they were never, they were never telling us, they were always showing us, and they never kissed. And it didn't matter. Yeah. Because it did some really strong emotional storytelling in a traditional TV lane. So I guess I'm only saying that just to make the point that when it wanted to be a TV show, which it almost never did, the Nick actually was pretty good at it. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. So the question is here.

You know what it is? It's like Cleary and Harry are the two characters who actually actually have an arc where they are much different from where they started, right? I think that one of the issues is that when we get to the end of the second season, Thackeray is still an egotistical, damaged genius. Andre Holland's character is still on the outside looking in at a world. I mean, these are all historical facts. They're not necessarily errors in character development. But I think what you want to feel when you're watching two seasons of a show,

is that there is some sort of arc to the characters. And while I appreciated subtle storytelling things, like I think you could say, as much as it's about medicine, that the Nick is about these unconventional relationships, whether it's algae in Cornelia or Gallinger and his insane wife or Thackeray, and was it Abby, who's the person with syphilis,

the woman with syphilis? You know, these sort of unconventional love stories, almost, in a lot of ways. But I just felt like I think somewhere in the middle of the second season, I felt as if I was watching a remake of the first season and even amazing moments like the riot from season one

was sort of being replicated by the subway explosion in season two of like, okay, here is our electrifying, very kinetic, visceral, there's a disaster episode, you know? As far as sort of work, I think one thing that illustrates what I was talking about earlier where, you know, he was talking, about television being

the brave new world of visual storytelling the one the moment in this penultimate episode and the episode starts and it's just 1894 in Nicaragua and it's like it's basically Thackeray and Robertson's origin story and if you know Soderberg

you know that Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of his favorite movies and this is essentially his Raiders of the Lost Ark from the just the visual standpoint that was so exciting and I was just sitting there for a second. And this is a testament to how exciting the show is, but I was like, oh my God, what if they just flash back to 1894 Nicaragua

and this is the new Nick for a little? And that the rest of the show is going to be Thackeray and Nicaragua 10 years before the Nick started. Let's talk about this, though, in terms of a sea change in television storytelling. And what I mean is the, for however many decades TV has existed, it has been a servicing medium, right? Like, let's find the things that the audience wants and give them more of it and steer the show towards those things.

Part of me says, boy, I wish the Nick could keep running forever like a traditional TV show because this is really rich soil. And the guys he wrote at Begler and Amiel, like, they didn't write this to be Steven Soderberg's Vanity Project. They wrote this script because they thought there was a TV show there that could run for however long it could have run. And they're not wrong. Like the medical science, the world where, you know, technology is still so, in the mirror

it shows, it reflects back to us about how we put our faith in these institutions, but we're basically just chopping at things with, you know, machetes. We don't know what we're doing any more than we ever did. The problems that plague us as humans are still, you know, ongoing. It's still a rich text, but we're moving now into a place where Stephen Soderberg is one of the most restlessly enthusiastic people that exist. He just released his annual list of things that he watched and read and experienced in 2015, and it's fascinating to look at it.

It's really fun to go through, you know, autours that are just like us. But they watch the world figure skating shift. championships and then Zodiac in the same night. Exactly. Well, that's more like you. But the restlessness is what made the show so twitchy and fascinating. And he was as interested in this as he could be, and maybe he's not as interested anymore. So the fact that it leaves us wanting more is a new dynamic for TV. But it would be a lesser show if he slowly started to get interested in something that he couldn't do on this show, be it Nicorago or something else.

Yeah. And, you know, and it kept going. So that said, you were alluding to the end of the show. Cinemax has kept silent about this. I have gotten the vibe and I've heard whispers that there is potential interest in continuing the show, but it really, A, depends on Soderberg's interest. But more likely than not, whatever version of the Nick would continue would not be this Nick. Maybe it would be set in the hospital, you know, 50 years in the future, 100 years in the past.

I don't know, but that this cast is done. obviously Clive Owen is done. I mean, and that is an interesting idea, but it depends on what Soderberg wants to do. Yeah, I mean, if they find a version of it, it's interesting, well, then it's worth doing for everyone, right? Yeah, the interview he gave EW. I think he said, you know, the idea was always

the Clive arc was going to do two seasons, and that at the end of the second season, I would turn the keys over to another filmmaker who wanted to make it in the same way and that this would be a sustainable way of making this show for other filmmakers, and I wasn't sure whether they would be bringing in other writers or not, but basically a hospital show quote unquote

that Nick could be Cinemax's hospital show and it could be set in like you're saying the future or the past how whatever you want to however you want to do it and I know that Soderberg's got another show from the he's producing the girlfriend experience on stars and then I think he is

I mean I read a note that said he had it he was working on a show for HBO with Sharon Stone and I don't know what that's about So we're probably done, at least for now, with the Nick. Stephen Soderberg's the Nick. And it was just so cool to watch. And it's worth noting two things. One, you know, I was reading Mo Ryan wrote a piece for Variety today about things she sort of like,

Resolutions she wants TV for TV in 2016. And she was like, I wish they could make a good medical show. And I agree. Like, medical shows are one of the backbones of TV. And so this idea of Cinemax having this potential franchise of a medical show that could be done in a unique way, is valuable to everyone. I mean, that would be great. Yeah.

Two, it's worth remembering that when I talk about Soderberg's restlessness, the reason why the Nick is on Cinemax, and this is a lot of people have continued to ask this, even though it was, you know, excellent for two years, is because he just couldn't exist within the logjam of HBO's development process. HBO bought this saying, we want to be in the Steven Soderberg business. We want to work with Clive Owen. What a great pitch.

And then they were like, so here's how we do it. We're doing these nine other pilots. Then maybe we'll fit yours. in and then we only broadcast one night a week, so we have to figure out a time when, I guess, in the back then, you know, when Boardwalk Empire is non or Game of Thrones is non or whatever. And he was like, okay, I hear that. I respect that. But I'm going to do the show in 70 days. And I have Clive Owen for 70 days. So we're either doing it on my start date or we're not doing it. And TV doesn't work like that. But luckily, HBO had a sister channel ready to roll. And so it'll be

interesting to see, will the streaming services be more flexible with those sorts of things in the future, for example. Yeah, I had also heard that that HBO offer was there and that one of the other reasons why he didn't do it is because he was like, I just, yeah, I do basically want to shoot this guerrilla punk rock. I'm going to go make this. And then I want to put it up. And I basically don't want the expectations surrounding it that usually come along with, whether it's a big HBO drama or whatever. I basically just want to get this up there and let people find it. And this is something that sort of followed Soderberg over the course of his career, even when he's working with people like George Clinton.

I mean, the Oceans Movies are a little bit. The Aaron Brockovich Oceans and Traffic Period is a little bit different. But for the most part, he's made a lot of very commercially viable films over the last 10 years that he has made for as inexpensively and efficiently as possible so that he could be as idiosyncratic and personal as he wants to be with things like Haywire and contagion and... Yeah, you're right. He's just like, I want to make this movie this way.

And even though it's got an MMA fighter and has a great cast and is about International Assassins with Haywire, I want to make it in this weird, you know, almost tone poem way. And so I don't want to submit it to go through the churn of the Hollywood promotion machine

and then have a $50 million dollar promotion budget attached to when it makes money again. That is such a terrific point. And by the way, everyone goes to see Haywire. I love that movie so much. But this idea that he wants to make things that are commercially viable, like a virus outbreak movie or a fighting movie, an action movie. Yeah, or like the side effects.

It had Channing Tatum and Rooney Mera in a 90s thriller plot. You know, it basically had a 90s psychological thriller plot line. Catherine Zeta Jones, Channing Tatum, and Rooney Mera. You should be able to say that's like a green light-lit Hollywood movie. Right. And so, but I think everyone listening and everyone who pays attention to this stuff is aware of the way Hollywood works in terms of movies now. And so that actually makes sense, even though it's almost counterintuitive. We know that Hollywood is now in the blockbuster business. We know everything has to be squeezed into the same shape hole for it to be released, go through the same marketing, the same smoothing and shining process and worry about the foreign markets. He just doesn't want to play that game. What's interesting about what you're suggesting is that now TV is becoming that as well, so that you almost want to do a runaround and end around from those expectations within TV2 because the prestige Sunday night HBO slot is just too much. It has to be too many things, too many people. So he wanted to avoid that, which is an

interesting harbinger of what's the come if that's the case. Yeah, for sure. You know, we spent this time talking about Soderberg. It really has been quite a fruitful time for these sort of O-Tor director types in television, streaming television. And somebody who's sort of really risen over the last two years is Jill Soloway. Yeah, and in a completely different way, transparent is no less demanding or harrowing than the Nick. Yeah, and if you read Ariel Levy's piece about Transparent and Jill Soloway from December, what's an interesting parallel between Soderberg and Soloway is that these shows are

as much about how they've been made. Soloway is a lot about creating more or less a feminist film set environment. and a feminist creation space. And Soderberg is so fast, cheap and out of control and, like, try to work as efficiently and as quickly and as inexpensively as possible. It's interesting that television has become a place where people can be incredibly progressive,

not only with what they put on the screen, but how they get it there. Yes, and I think, you know, we were going to talk about transparent on its own, but this almost leads directly into what I wanted to say about Homeland, which is the, you know, and we've gone back and forth on the show and back and forth on the season,

and there were parts of the season that I really enjoyed. And there was even a great scene in the finale that I really enjoyed, the scene with the Russian agent and Mandy Patinkin saw. Like, I hope they can figure out a way to keep that Russian guy on the show because that was that scene was a well-written scene. It was a terrifically acted scene. It was taught. It was everything that we like about spy fiction of people,

like two chess masters across the world. It was great. Yeah. Yeah, that was terrific. So even in the midst of what I thought was generally an awful episode, like that was a shining beacon. But what I wanted to say was the frustrations I felt about Homeland, this season, I think, can be chocked up to the way TV is made, more or less.

And we can come back to that. But everything is becoming, you know, it's not just because I'm a critic, I think, that I'm thinking about it. Like, even if you didn't love Transparen's second season, and, you know, there were moments of it that I'm still not sure if they worked for me. Like the flashbacks to World War II era, Germany had a lot of beautiful ideas that Michaela Watkins, whose performances are always beautiful to me. I love her as an actor.

I don't know if it worked. And I'm trying to figure that out. But what I'm saying is you can, you watch that show and you know that it is top down different. That they are chasing emotional ideas and emotional threads or just, why am I, why am I couching it? They're chasing emotions in a way that other shows and rooms are built to chase plot. Yeah. And because of that, there are moments that emerge that like, that just like surface in the watering, you know, in the in the Pfefferman swimming pool of that show. that just leave you breathless.

And one of those in particular in the finale is there's a scene. And I feel like we're all over the place. And if you care about spoilers, I'm sorry, this is not a spoiler because the show isn't really about that sort of thing. You know, you don't find out that. That Aaron Boodlew killed Alexander Hamilton? Right. Judith Light or the Judith Light is the mother of dragons.

Although that casting would be dynamite. There's a scene, you know, the god Richard Mazur is just, just big, Baron his way out of retirement with a ponytail as Judith Light's was that guy ever retired? I feel like he stays working. Okay, he just he just comes back on the A list or he comes back on my personal radar. He has a scene with Jay DePaul's character Josh Fefferman that is so raw and so beautiful and it is basically about mourning, mourning someone who is still alive, mourning a relationship. And this is like deep, deep, like sub-basement therapy talk.

Yeah. So maybe that's why I'm responding to it. But they put that in a TV show. And they let the actors go to that place. And they put that not just in a TV show. That's in the finale of a critically acclaimed TV show. The finale of critically acclaimed television shows are usually when major characters get got. Like that's when people get murked.

Right. Not when they collapse into tears and we just live with that. So that alone puts transparent at the top of every list, I think, both critically, but also in terms of why you should be watching it to think about how TV is made. I've been on a terror. I just wanted to throw one potential criticism of the show at you and I want to know what you think of it.

As much as I loved seeing the show, even as an antidote to a lot of the other shows that were out at the end of last year, just tonally emotionally, I started to think this season that I wish it wasn't bingeable because it is a, it is a heady, deep place to be.

Yeah. And, you know, by episode two, the second Indigo Girls episode, let's put it that way, I was watching them. I was binging them because I love the show. And I was like, whoa, this is a lot. Yeah. This is a lot. This is challenging me. It is making you uncomfortable in ways that I was surprised about.

But I'm still a, you know, I'm still Joe TV watcher sometimes. And I wanted a break. That was interesting to me. I don't know if you felt something similar. Well, you bring up a really good point. I don't think that this show could be an hour long. I'll put that. Oh my God, can you imagine it would be a bearable.

And I watched a bunch of them and was having those kinds of feelings that I think you'd like to think that you're like more intellectually, that you can work past any feelings of I do or don't like these people or I. So this fictional character is doing something that I don't approve of. And the more that I binged it, the more I was kind of feeling a little bit suffocated by the behavior of the Pfeffermans. more just how they treated each other. I mean, I just the way the season opens with people going to, basically Josh announces that he and his wife or his fiancee are pregnant, and it says you can't tell anybody, and Gabby Hoffman's character promptly tells everybody,

and later on Josh's fiance loses the baby. And, you know, I just kind of like felt there are lots of things like that that happen that are never really reckoned with, as they are not reckoned with in real life. and I was just feeling like I watched episode after episode after episode I was sort of starting not to like these people very much and then as soon as there's a sort of four episode run at the end from the music festival on that really grapples with

the historical connections between Weimar and pre-Nazi Germany or Nazi Germany and contemporary contemporary life and also is much more about Gabby Hoffman's character sort of making this decision to become the person that she's going to be. I thought that that, and I watched those episodes

a little bit more spread out, and I thought that that was a much easier way to watch the show. It's interesting, too. Just the way you're talking about it, there's only one episode after the festival. Oh, gosh, you're right. But I feel like the last three or four are of a piece and the first four or five are of a piece. They are. I just think that that's interesting

the way we are processing these shows that we are watching in very different ways. And so you watch, you also, I finished it more recently than you did, I think. And because of that, your brain has sort of done the work of extracting the parts, you know, that maybe mattered more and aligning them into arcs in a way that the show didn't. So that's, that's a whole, that's interesting because that's a whole other aspect of the staggered experience. And by that, I mean, if it's bingeable, we're all watching it at different speeds and a different time. Exactly. That disconnect is something that we haven't really reckoned with.

I do, yeah, I do want to talk about Homeland only because it bummed me out, but it didn't, like, before we, no, like, we've, we've, we've taken our shots of the show in the past and we basically made peace with it this season in a lot of ways. We were like, it's fine. It is what it is. And believe me, it is what it is. Yeah. But I was thinking about it a lot this season, especially the last few episodes, in terms of how TV just gets made. And what it's what really struck me at the end of the season, as it reverted into this very, very. weirdly conservative show. And what I mean by that isn't even political, because you could make a

politically conservative show that would be fascinating and rich and surprising, right? What I mean is that at the end of the season, journalists were dumb-dums who should be in prison. The CIA and the German secret police were heroes who were misunderstood. And it kind of Muslims were terrorists. You know what I mean? Like it reverted into this very simplistic worldview. Right. And I bet if you interviewed everyone who worked on that show from Alex Gansa to Meredith Steam to everyone else on the writing staff, none of them would espouse those views about the world. They would have so much more nuanced than what the show ended up articulated. And what that struck me as a symptom of was a TV writing culture where you break the season in terms of plot points. You say we want to have a terrorist attack and then we want to have it foiled here and then we want to have this happen here.

and you let the action dictate what the characters do. You let action dictate behavior because you're servicing the beats and the points. Because Homeland has established itself at this point as a show that has X number of gotcha moments per year, breathtaking, leave your breathless moments. Yeah. And you think about that in direct opposition to a show like something we loved last year, the Honorable Woman, which was on Sundance, and I still hope people will check out. That was a show that dealt with issues that would be, that I feel like Homeland would look at and be like,

well, we can't touch that. Like that was about Israel and Palestine in a very raw way. But it never got, even if you, if you watched the show, you never felt like you were being clubbed with anything because it started with the characters in their relationships and built from there. You just knew that, you know? Yes. That's what his consideration was.

And so more than anything else, it bummed me out because I would love a show that tackled all of the hot button topics that Homeland did this year. And you and I talked about how, like, there were moments in the middle of the year when they were talking about Syrian refugees where we were like, what, like, how did they do this? Like, how did they, like, law and order themselves? Yeah. You know, we were talking earlier about how now Cynamax has the nick,

and that could just be their hospital show. Yeah. We've alluded to this, we've chatted about this before, but I just really do think that that Homeland and Carrie could have a divorce at this point. And not really trying to disrespect the goddess Claire Danes and her cry face. But this is, what you're saying. They've kind of written her into a corner and she can only ever be this like

outraged insufferable anger bot who's either getting who sees something nobody else can see or just you know, screwing something up royally. It's such a, it's become kind of a one dimensional performance and I'm so much more interested in like Astrid, Saul, the late Peter Quinn, I assume, and all these other characters. I mean, even even the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, stand-in character that they had was... No, she... They can throw her out of window, sorry.

Well, the German Secret Service almost did. That's insane. The way that those characters are kind of living in a real world, even if it's one shot through the homeland prism, is much more interesting to me than what they keep

doing to carry, which is sort of putting her... I mean, she's just always miserable. And I get it. She's had... The sustained existence of Homeland is going to require Kerry to always be Jack Bowering it. Emotionally Jack Bowering it.

And that's like the least interesting part of the show. It's emotionally Jack Bowering it. I mean, I cannot even deal with the fact that this season ended with her being forgiven for everything, begged to come back to the CIA, told she's a genius, and then proposed to by a global billionaire based out of nothing. She's that, she is that amazing. And whatever happened with that guy he was trying to fire her? Make sure we don't bring carry back.

She's... Yeah, let me... Now, the actor, that dude who is also in lives of others, I love him. I hope he's back on the show. But, I mean, the thing is, even Claire Dane's has to be very frustrated by this in the box she's in.

And, you know, she's great on Master of Nuns, let's remember that. Because if you watch Homeland and you put in your head that everything that Carrie says ends with Claire Dames going, you will... If you do the drinking game,

you will be dead. And one of the more interesting things about TV in general, is when there is a clear disconnect and misunderstanding between what a show is and what the creators are doing, right? And one of the more famous examples of that is with the Sopranos, and that created some of the more interesting tension of the show,

which is that David Chase was making a show about like a spiraling drain of humanity and violence, and the vibe he couldn't deal with was that the audience were like, let's whack more people. They wanted the mob show, and he was like, I will not give you that mob show. And then that tension fueled some of the scenes. show's best seasons. The homeland fatal flaw has always been this idea that this is somehow

a romantic hero, and that there's love here, that she's so good at her job, you know, like that was the problem going back to the Brody stuff, which you could maybe forgive a little bit because the Brody stuff worked so well in terms of critical acclaim in Emmys and the audience, right? But the fact that everything on the show is like, Quinn is like, I was always in love with you. It's like, why? Because there's no evidence for that to be the case other than the fact that you created. letter that he writes her, he's like, well, if you're reading this, we didn't work out. It's like, yeah, no shit. You guys were not going to work out.

You were not a viable couple. You are a target for sarongas and she is a bipolar spy. That was never going to happen, guy. And guess what? It's 2016, a show about a target for sarongas and a bipolar spy in. You can make that show. You don't need to make a romance. They don't have to be star-cross lovers.

You know, I, here's my... Here's one, my recommendation or my, my, my how he'd fix it for this is actually to make Carrie Saul. So obviously doing Homeland without Carrie is probably a no, a non-starter. But I hate when these shows get into season six, seven. And it's just like, whoa, Carrie got herself into another pickle again. You know, it's like the world's unluckiest woman. Make her Saul. Make her the person who's mentoring another young agent who's got problems, but is a genius.

Put Saul in the Dar-Dahl position. puts Saul in the joint chiefs of staff and he's working in Washington and have Patan can come in six times a year, do whatever. But the one thing that I think that I have an issue with Showtime shows is that that lack of interest in really shuffling the deck and changing how they deal. Shuffling the deck is such a good point to make because you can do that now. And I feel like that is a huge break from the way TV was made for decades. But you can do that. You can get a really good actor to be the new. carry if you were moving Claire to being solved.

The old way of conceiving a TV show is a hero narrative that takes the character from A to B to Z to like the Sumerian alphabet at the end of season 11, right? Like you're on a straight line, but you just simply don't have to do that anymore. You can just come at it from a different angle and still be the same show. And Showtime does seem very much stuck in the old way of doing things, which is that every show, whether it's called the name of the main character or not, whether it's called Dexter or Ray Donovan, this show essentially, it's not Homeland. It's not really about national security.

Imagine when Macy died like eight times on Shameless. But Shameless is an old-fashioned show, which is why I like it. Shameless, other than the drugs and the sex, it is essentially an NBC show from the 90s, and it's good for that reason. Homeland is essentially could be called Carrie Matheson, and that's the least interesting part of the show at this point. So, which I think the reason we keep harping on it, it doesn't matter. The ratings are fine.

The show is going to run seven seasons and be done. Because we think an international espionage show set in this contemporary of IU would be like really cool. Which is a pretty good segue into our in-and-out segment of shows we're going to be into. So let me just set this up just by saying, some people have asked me this. Even though I am not currently writing TV reviews on a weekly or daily or whatever basis, I'm still getting the stuff. But I've been super busy and, you know, we had the holidays and on vacation and I'm also trying to like,

just trying to relax a little bit. So I haven't actually watched most of these screeners yet. I'm about to get into them. So we've got this pile of shows that are premiering in the next few weeks. And so we're going to play a quick round of in and out with them as whether we're going to watch them. And this might influence what we end up talking about on the show. But I also think it would be fun to do this now because I, when we've done this in the past, I've seen like five episodes and it hasn't aired yet. You haven't seen them.

So this is purely based off of the vibe, the trailer, the whatever, in or out. And so the segue to start with is London Spy. In. London Spy, should we set it up? London Spies premiering on BBC America on Thursday, January 21st. It is a contemporary spy show, right? And the cast is crazy dope. It's Ben Wishaw, who people might know from the James Bond movies.

Yeah, he's been playing M. Yeah. Or Q, right. Sorry. And Jim Broadbent, who I've been rolling with since Topsy Turvy. You're broadbent for days. I am a broadband head from way back. And Charlotte Rambling, by the way, who's just, she's going to be all over the globes this weekend. I thought I saw her at a restaurant in Brooklyn.

If that was you, that was you Charlotte Rambling, what's up? Yeah. What do you, Chris, let's role play a little bit. I'm Charlotte Rambling. I'm having like, you know, I'm having some seared brook trout at a local bistro and Carol Gardens. What does Chris Ryan say to Charlotte Rampling? I don't know. I'm just like, do you like your trout?

Do you like your, but do you say it's super creepy? No, I just feel like Trout's great here, huh? Or are you like Trout? Great order. Yeah, no, solid order. Although, or I would have been like strong, strong move to get Trout on a Sunday. Oh, no, that's been disproved the whole fish on the weekend thing. Oh, really?

Yeah, are you still living in like 2000? No, because Bourdain is in the big short talking about how on Sunday or Monday that all that fish turns into fish stew. Is he still talking about that again in the movie? This was his thing in like Kitchen Confidential in 2000. Like if you're going to a sushi restaurant for them and it's like a good restaurant, they're taking care of their fish. You're okay.

Okay. Meanwhile, meanwhile, smash cut to Charlotte Rambling. crippled with mercury poisoning from the terrible she's just like I got this weird river river wamp rat disease I never never should have eaten the trout that red-haired lunatic insulted me was all wrong all right London spy I don't know what else there's to say like if you told me

there was a show called London spy which audience dear reader I'm telling you there is I'm watching it I watched the first episode last night oh yeah because I the BBC version of it I wonder I'm sure it's the same one the student has become the I know. Wishaw is great. I will say that the first episode is a little slow. It is about a guy who is sort of a party guy in London. Ben Wishaw has a great kind of quasi. I think it's Cockney accent who meets another guy running one day and they start a love affair. And through this love affair, Ben Wishaw gets pulled into the world event, you know, international espionage. That's how it always goes. But it is a little British in terms of its pacing.

Little British. Just like, it's just like that little bit of Monday fish British. You know what I mean? Oh, but like Monday fish at the chippy. But I remain in. Broadbed is great. What's the next show you got? All right.

Next show is, we talked about this a little bit, but FX's upcoming American crime story, The People versus OJ Simpson. Yeah. Yeah. If David Swimmer is my Robert Shapiro, my dude. If David Schwimmer is your North Star. Swimmers is Robert Shapiro, right? Yeah, you got Swimmer in there.

You got, you got, oh, is that Travolta? I don't know, let me check. You got Travolta, you got Swimmer, you got Cuba Gooding Jr. Yeah, I mean, I think we talked about this when we saw the trailer, really into the idea of it, really into the fact that there aren't that many stories that were, and we talked about this before, I think, but that like there were this culturally enormous that actually feel almost forgotten in a lot of ways, the minutia of it. and how obsessed everyone was, and I'll say it, I said it before, I'll say it again. Ryan Murphy's name is the biggest one in it, but it does seem that other than directing it, this is not his thing. Like, it's those dudes who did People versus Larry Flint, which is a really underrated movie, and it seems like it has a different tone.

This is his anthology series. He's done one before? Well, American Horror Story. Well, no, this is, but is he done an American crime story before? No, people are confused because American crime is this completely unrelated anthology series that John Ridley does on ABC. Gotcha. So American Crime Story, he's doing OJ this year. The next one he's doing is about Hurricane Katrina, apparently.

Yeah, and I just want to hit a big global pause on that one. Like, I want to, like, I just want to take a moment on this show and, like, just search all the best gifts and memes of people being like, oh, yeah. Because, like, if you filled, you could, like, you could fill a super dome full of people who could potentially tell a story about Hurricane Katrina with more, I would say, sensitivity and appropriateness than Ryan Murphy. But, you know, if we like this show, then I'm not going to...

I'm excited for this. This looks like a Venn television to me. What's the last show we got? X-Files is back, and we've never talked about whether... Have we? Are you... Are you into that show? Is that your thing?

X-Files falls into a time in American history that I like to call, I was going out at night. So there's like all these shows in the 90s, when you're... Boy was like working at a bar and it was like going to see bands and we come home. When you say work, when you say working, you mean like you were putting in work at the bar? No, I was literally like slain.

And like cutting limes and then and then just given fist bumps to Rye Coalition when they were loading into Middle East upstairs, you know? And it'd be like, guys, guys, I know you're busy playing a show, but try the trout. Yeah. Seriously. The trout is sublime. I know it's Sunday. Believe me. There's a, there's a sort of dead zone for me in, in television where I did not.

like really watch it. I'm going to tell you something an anecdote that actually it seems as if I'm trying to defend myself but it's kind of true and it's kind of relevant. I didn't watch The X-Files either initially, which is weird because I was super into Twin Peaks and I like conspiracy. I liked all that stuff.

And you know, I wasn't cutting that many lines. Let's be honest. Yeah, right, right, right. But I didn't watch it. And then my college girlfriend, was super into the show, super into the show. To the point where when she studied abroad, her junior year, her one wish wasn't like write me every day.

It wasn't like, come visit me in Prague when the flowers bloom. It was, here is a, like, $70 worth of, I was just trying to, maybe, I was just trying to riff and make it poetic because the next part is the opposite of poetry, which is to say, here's $75 worth of maxel, high quality, 120-minute VHS tapes, tape the X-Files for me. So now I'd like to think

that there are probably better ways to have spent part of my senior year of college. But my girlfriend was away, so I was just hit and record, and I was like, oh, this business with a black oil is frankly fascinating. Yeah. Like, oh, word, that's an alien?

Oh, okay. And the show was kind of good then. There was a, that was the season that began with this, I think, pretty pretty well-loved episode where Michael McKean, basically De Coveny like Freaky Fridays into Michael McKean's body.

And this was in the run-up of the mythology stuff, which I actually really liked because I was total dork, non-cutting limes about that, into the movie, the first movie that again, I will ride for was... I really like... I'm aware of what happens in the X-Files. I just, you know, sometimes people are like,

oh, you remember that episode? I was like, nah, dog. But here's the thing I'll say. And I haven't watched the new episodes. I'm looking forward to it. But it's weird. Like I feel like my interest in the show then was, oh, a conspiracy, like a big overarching story that, you know, that Twin Peaks had and that Lost had that I kind of geeked out for. I think I'd like to think that what I would appreciate in retrospect and what I would like to see more of now is kind of what it was initially, which was an anthology show for brilliant writers like Vince Gilligan to just do the creepiest stuff they could pull out of their mental clauses.

Like, let's just make a fun, weird show that could be terrifying one week in Google. the next week, I feel like that would fly better, A, now, and B as a reboot. That is more rebootable than, oh, the cigarette smoking man is still puffing on clothes with his Canadian accent trying to tell you something. Like, I'm not, like, there are stands who are like, oh, Mitch Pellegey is back. And I'm like, I feel like Mitch Pellegey was waiting to be back. You know what I mean? Like, he wasn't, like, worried about his mining interests off of the Chad and was like,

oh, cool, I'm back. Yeah. Like, I guess I'm an actor. I guess I'll leave the mine. Any other shows? I definitely think I emailed you some other ones to talk about, but I definitely don't remember them, which is probably a good sign.

Okay, well, this gives us a good base. We'll be back Monday. We'll talk about Globes, but we'll talk a little bit about David Bowie's new album because there's nothing I like more than electro jazz and 69-year-old men. You know, that record is fire, though. That record is secretly fired.

Andy, good talking to you. Thanks to Tate. Thanks to Kanye West. We'll be back Monday. Great job, Beranski. See?