The Watch - Ep. 113: The Television Critics Association Press Tour, Awarding the Television Championship Belt, ‘Sneaky Pete,’ and The XX’s New Album

Episode Date: January 16, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald sort through the big news from the Television Critics Association press tour (0:30) about ‘Atlanta’ (2:05), ‘American Crime Story’ (6:15), and ‘Better Call Saul’ (10:38). Then they award the Television Championship Belt (18:50) and wrap up with a conversation about the return of Amazon’s ‘Sneaky Pete’ (31:08) and The XX’s new album (42:22). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan and I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me in the studio, he just crawled out from under a mountain of babies. It's Angie Greenwood! Get me a cherry Coke zero and a smile. What's up, man?

Happy Martin Luther King Day to you. Thank you. You too. Thank you for coming in early on a federal holiday to work with me. I love working on Martin Luther King Day. I feel like it's not necessarily appropriate to be recording a pop culture podcast today. But as we continue this slow train ride into oblivion that is our lives now, I'm happy to be spending one blessed day. I treasure these moments with you. Andy, today we have a packed pod, though.

We do. We got to get to it. While America sleeps, we work. We've got some news out of the TCA's that we wanted to go over. TV news. I'm excited. We want to give away the belt. Yeah, the TV championship belt.

We're going to give it away. Yeah, and then we're also going to talk about Sneaky Pete, Amazon's new series, but kind of like a new old series. And then we're also going to talk about the new album from the XX. So let's get started with this TCA news. And by far the most important, I guess the most newsworthy stuff. Should we say, remember, just for people who don't know. Yeah. For America. For people who aren't in the biz. Yeah, I know from here, from our perspective, it's hard to imagine anyone who's not up on this.

But TCA is the Television Critics Association. Yeah. They meet twice a year out here. into a hotel conference room and network heads and showrunners, et cetera, get in front of them and say, like, I'm so excited about what we got coming. Now, interestingly enough, one of the bigger stories coming out of this TCA's was the absence of several network

television heads who were just basically like, I don't have to talk to you. Yeah, it gave some critics. They're real like, all the president's men moment. Yeah. They were like, how dare you, cowards. Some critics. You face us. How far you've come.

Look, I'm out, man. I'm management. What happens like in two? years. I made the room just like, you know, criticism. No, let me just say, I was never a member of the TCA. Okay. So anyway, the TCA's were happening.

And by far the biggest news to come out of that, after a week in which it received very many deserved Hosandas from the Golden Globes, Louisiana will not be airing. Season two of Atlanta will not be airing in 2017. Yeah, this was interesting. Like, so basically, John Landgraf, the president of FX, got up there and said, and obviously a lot of the questions were about him. his two most recent hits, critical and commercial hits.

Baskets. Baskets and taboo! Which I'm only going to say like that from now on. Atlanta, which just won the Golden Globe, deservedly so, for Best Comedy Series, and American Crime Story, which also won the Golden Globe for Best... And all the Emmys. ...minis series, and it won all the Emmys. Now, in a shocking break from all of television history, neither show will return this year in 2018.

In terms of Atlanta, that's because, obviously, Donald Glover has a lot of other things to do, like star in, or co-star in the new Star Wars movie as Young Landau Calrissian. And Landgraf was pretty funny about that. He was basically like, I'm not going to tell someone that he can't be in Star Wars. The show will come back when it comes back. An American Crime Story. I was like, you can't tell us he can't be in Star Wars, too. Yeah, but very classy and very on-brain-movie.

Big Bob Liger is like, FX. How should we work this out? Either we have our... How about we make an Americans ride? You know, it would be one of the slowest rides in amusement park history, but one of the most emotionally rewarding if you only got on board. And for American Crime Story, it's a little more interesting because after the successful OJ season, they made the announcement pretty crazy announcement, I would say,

that the second season was not going to be about a tawdry tabloid case, but about Katrina. And the hurricane. They're going... And so one of the reasons why that's being held up is just because there's only apparently so many months of the year that you can really film in New Orleans. That's what they said. I feel like there's more doing another series about the Gianni Versace murder. Yeah, I don't know any, I have no inside dirt on any of this.

But my assumption was that at some point someone was like, letting Ryan Murphy make a show about Katrina might not make a lot of sense. And maybe the plotting or writing wasn't going so well. and they quickly greenlit a show that made more sense to follow OJ. Now the latest is they are going to do Katrina. They're going to shoot it after they shoot the Versace season, but air it first. So we're going to get two American crime stories in 18. And they're going to come out six months apart.

It's pretty wild, but it's an interesting move because in talking to, sorry, inside the biz talk, in talking to creators of television shows in 2016 and 2017, they've shaken off almost every shackle imaginable in terms of what kind of stories you can tell on TV and how you can tell it. The one thing that people were still fighting against was, do we have to hit the same window every year? Like the last vestige of the network mentality that we did something amazing and then we have to do it again in a compressed amount of time. FX has led the way and saying, no, you don't have to. Let me just look at Louie. Fargo. And Fargo, we know which isn't coming back until the end of this year after a very long break.

I mean, the last season ended at the end of 15. But it's pretty wild and a sign of how far things have shifted and how good Atlanta is that. Donald Glover basically got the Louis C.K. Larry David treatment for his second season. On a personal note, this sucks. Yeah, it's too bad. I mean, I want the show to be at its best, but I want that show back. I would love it if, um, I sometimes as a, as a fan, I kind of feel like shows that don't involve huge set pieces, that don't involve needing snow to be on the ground in Belfast or whatever, you know, it would be cool if they... You can call it Benny off that. It would be cool if they pulled like a minute men and just were like, we're back. You know, like, six weeks after the last, you know, the surprise album drop of the shows? Yeah, I mean, not even like the surprise album drop as much as just like furiously got back at it.

But I understand that these things take time to plot out and to make sure you get it right. And especially when you have something that resonated so much with people like Atlanta did, you're going to want to find not only a way to like do justice to what you just did, but also to obviously want to push things forward a little bit in terms of thematically or creatively. Also, when you're talking about shows like Fargo or American Crime Story, they are essentially new shows every year. Right, right. And so you can't rely on the actor's contracts just rolling over or whatever else you're counting on.

So it is a very, it's the biggest sign of new TV, basically, that we're going to see, or that we've seen in a minute, that this is now the new normal. Yeah. Speaking of new normal is AMC's in the John LaCari business. How psyched are you about this? I am pretty psyched. So AMC is going to be making, after coming off the success of the night manager, which won a bunch of gold globes for performances from Olivia Coleman, Hugh Lorry, and Tom Hidleston. And won the coveted Banana Republice Award for most blousey linen shirts. For breathable fabrics.

AMC's Making the Spy who came in from the Cold, which is one of a La Carrey's early novels and was made into a famous film adaptation with Richard Burton. Amazing film. This is not my favorite La Cary, but only because I rate the other ones so highly. Well, the other ones are much denser. I mean, when you think of a La Cary novel, you think of the later stuff when you became much more psychologically and emotionally dense. And the prose was denser, too.

Spy who came in from the cold is, it's not hashtag basic, but it's early. Yeah. And I think that one thing that has been interesting about this rash of adaptions of his stuff is while I enjoy them, I do think that they are not quite even scratching the service of the psychological depth that is in the novels. So it's a weird, it's kind of bittersweet. Like, I'm really excited that, you know, since Tinker Taylor, we've had a bunch of adaptions from Nightman. manager, most wanted man, our kind of traitor, I think the Ewan McGregor movie that came out last year. So I'm excited that these things are getting made, but when you watch them, you're kind of like, this is sort of like... Hansen Gardner, too. Yeah, this is sort of batting. Consent

Gardner was a while ago, though. And that was excellent. And the more recent ones are kind of like at batting practice speed to me. The rights to all of his work is now being aggressively shopped by, I think one of his children. But also like they basically repackaged it and resold it with the goal of strip mining it for parts. The interesting thing to say about this is it's from the business perspective and from a consumer perspective, it's a very smart play because even if you strip out

some of the complexity, these are still cracking good yarns. These are good stories. These are the types of stories people want to see internationally on television. But it strikes me as being almost a little bit anachronistic because this is the era where you could make a psychologically dense adaptation of a John LaCari novel.

You have the resources, you have the interest, you have the money for it. So it's almost weirdly like 80s or 90s where people were like, yeah, we'll take this, you know, we'll take this 500 page novel and we'll make a 90 minute thriller out of it. Yeah. A little strange. Yeah. And it's like part of the reason why I like what carry novels is like, pasty vanilla sexually repressed very cerebral spies. And then you're like, you and McGregor. Do you want to use eye statements? No. And then when you see the films, they're just like, everybody's tan and they're and they're working it out, you know, like. Yeah, everyone's Tom Hiddleston, and they're sharing their gift with charity workers in the Sudan.

Before we move on, obviously his most iconic character, George Smiley, do you have a pick? I'm putting you on the spot here, because I don't, but do you have a pick for who is 2017 Smiley? Well, I mean, Gary Oldman just did it. Right, but if they were doing this flashier, TV-eer. Gary Olden. How about, do you don't think there's a younger, like someone in the Game of Thrones cast? He's pretty old. Do you have somebody in mind from the Game of Thrones cast?

I do. The girl who played Little Mormont, I feel like she would be a nice... Her just interrogating Carla. Frankly, yes. That would be amazing. Yeah, I just, I don't see any reason to not have Gary Oldman just keep doing smiley things, but I thought that the Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy was incredibly stylish and they tried to condense one of the most complicated books I've ever read into a 90-minute movie. It was a very entertaining movie. It looked very good and Olden was amazing.

I think, I mean, because I guess what I'm saying is we need to live in a world. world where NBC is doing a taken TV show, which is the origin story of the Liam Neeson character. It seems inevitable that some network is going to bite on like Young Smiley. Yes, absolutely. I'm surprised the BBC hasn't made it yet. Yes, so, I mean, in essence,

nine out of ten shows BBC has made in the last 15 years, qualify as Young Smiley. All right, we'll come back to it. Okay, last two bits of news. One is that Gus Fring is coming back to the Breaking Bad Universe. He'll be joining Better Call Saul in season three. Yeah. I always feel a little bit

it's Better Call Saul is this show where they'll do stuff like bring Gus Springback and I'll be like, eh, and then I'm like, damn, this is really good. Yeah, Better Call Saul is the, I'm looking forward to coming back this year, mainly because we can have more time to talk about this, but what a strange case this show is? Because it is produced,

there are a few shows on television that are as high quality in terms of the production, the performances, everything about it is just expert. It's so easy to forget about an overlook. I mean, obviously you and I were much higher on the first season. I think the second season really started to spin its wheels with just sort of an assumption that legal doc review is as interesting as cooking meth, which is spoiler alert. It's not.

And it's also just, if this show wasn't in the Breaking Bad universe, would you watch a show about a guy who is trying to decide between real legal work or taking the easy way out and being a ambulance? Moving to Santa Fe or staying in Albuquerque with his brother. It is mind-boggling that they're able to do this. But at the same time, it's an interesting exercise and, like, oh, I can watch this purely for the quality of everything as a part of it. Now, adding Gus Fring is, you know, kind of pushing the pedal down a little bit more. People are excited about that.

It's bringing us back to Breaking Bad. But it's a little bittersweet and just in terms of your excitement because, you know, we've seen Breaking Bad. And I was thinking about this news in relation to last week I saw. television's John Hamm co-host a reading for TV The Book with Alan Seppenwald, the great TV critic and wonderful guy. And it was a great evening at Skylight Books

in Los Angeles. And one of the questions from the audience at the end was, you know, in however many years, when 10 years or whatever, if and when someone, Lionsgate, is just like, okay, let's pull the trigger on Don Draper in the 80s. Like, let's do more Mad Men. Would you do it?

And it was the fastest no I'd ever heard. Now, obviously, money is money and opportunity is opportunity. And if Matt Weiner was doing it in the same way that Vince Gilligan is doing Better Call Saul, he might say something different. But I kind of appreciated the finality with which he was just like, things should have endings. And he said that Winer believes that as well. Now, Better Call Saul is a quote unquote a beginning. But come on.

Yeah. And I think that the one thing that Better Call Saul has going for, not, I mean, it has lots of things going for. It's like racing horn. But it can go past Breaking Bad as well. Which I think is seen. secretly always been the plan. Yeah, and we've seen in the opening scenes of the actual series, is like, we see. We see Sinabon.

Yeah, we see Sinabon. So I think that there's still, I'm still interested. I don't even, I don't know why I'm so on the fence about Better Calls Law. I love the way you low-key corrected me on my pronunciation of Sinabon. Did I? Because you are a New Jersey rest stop king. And I, there's nothing more tempting and more disappointing than a Sinabon. I have been there on those car rides.

Yeah. On the New Jersey Turnpike, when I saw your. phase lit up like a thousand suns with excitement. The two things in the world that look and smell so incredible, but taste pretty disappointing are Cinnabon and roasted nuts. Oh, like roasted like New York Street nuts. Yeah, like when you're walking by and it's just like the smell of 1920s. Yes. And you want that little, that little hot bag, a hot bag of nuts and you just want to pop them in. I know. Did you ever fall prey to those or did you give up? Yeah, often. I would buy like, ooh, cashews. And I'd just be like, who the hell eats cashews?

Like it's zero degrees out. Who would just eat cashews in the sleet? Street cash. Yeah, sleet cashews. The streets are hungry. Last thing really quickly, Andy, you're excited. Twin Peaks bag. Oh my God, guys. Only 18 hours. I can't believe this is real. I feel like

You just said like endings are good. I know. So exactly. I am a hypocrite like anyone else. In my defense, my adoration and obsession with Twin Peaks is one of the youngest things about me at this point. This was my first favorite show, my first total obsession in

So you didn't have like a favorite show like Hill Street Blues or Nightcourt? I was 12. Who are you? I don't know. I really like Nightcourt. Yeah, I really liked family ties, my dude. You know, I was like, that was my jam.

You know, I really like the episode when you had a whole court at the, at the dinner table and just like Marky Post has been amazing this season. Can I be real talk? Nightcourt was a little too late night and racy for me. Really? Nightcourt was a 930 show, if I remember correctly. You were in bed by this? I was out. Oh, my God.

At nine. I had 10. I had 10 and then I would still. creep to the landing and people little LA law, people little Miami Vice. You could hear Harry Hamlin's voice. You'd be like, oh, adulthood is dope. Burnson!

Classic! Look, no, Twin Peaks was, Twin Peaks came out when I was, like, 12, 13, 14, and like, that was my, it basically made me obsessed with weirdness and filmmaking and serialized storytelling. Logs? It's different to me also because I love logs, my man,

because this is, first of all, it ended on one of the most excruciating cliffhangers of all time. Second, it's been, 25 years. But then they secure that cliffhanger though,

right? No, they never did. And Firewalk with me, they didn't? No, they never addressed it. Never addressed it.

The Agent Cooper Clifhanger, no, no. Oh, that one. Yeah, right. So this is just also

so bizarre because so much time has passed. And this is David Lynch, this is, who was barely, he was basically not involved

in the second season of Twin Feaks, which I ride for, by the way. And he was like, yeah, I'll come back, maybe,

and he quit, and he came back, and it was supposed to be eight or nine hours. And then how many hours did he make? 18. It's too good. And so that that weird clip of Kyle McLaughlin, like back as Dale Cooper, I just think people are not ready for this. This is not Don Draper in the 80s. No one has any idea what this is. And my guess is no one will have any idea what this is six hours into it. Right. I feel like showtime is like what did we do.

I'm sure they're just like they're psyched. They're just disappointed. They can't get nine seasons out of it. I don't know what they are because here's the other thing. They made 18 hours of it. They can dine out off of, like, two weeks of this beloved cultural institution is back. But, like, in week 11, when it's back to being about a giant waving in front of a microphone and, like, in chess moves with, like, little space dwarves, like, they're just going to be like, I guess we just got to let this ride. You know what I mean? They're going to start stacking three episodes a night and then rerunning homeland around it. I have no idea how it's going to play out. Let's take a break, and then we will come back and talk about the championship belt.

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Fridays at 10 p.m. only on HBO. Also, every week the conversation continues on real time, overtime on YouTube. Okay, we're back. We're going to give out the belt. We haven't done this since Atlanta. Atlanta just sort of like cradled that John from until the end of 2016. It was hard to think of anything better than that.

Yeah. Was there nothing at Christmas that was really popping off like that? I think that we considered briefly giving the last... Why am I talking like I'm 20, all of a sudden, I'm like jawing and popping off. I love it. I don't think you're really awake yet. It's very, very early here. I think that there was some spirited conversation

about giving the belt to the last five minutes of the first episode of the OA. Yeah, sure. But the looming threat. They get the intercontinental title. The looming threat of what happens in episode five that has kept me from continuing to watch the series because I'm so shook means that no one's had the belt. I like that it could just be anything

and you would probably believe me at this point. You could tell me anything. There's a giant waving at a microphone. You could tell me it turns into a lost episode of I hate my teenage daughter, and I'd be like, oh, really? That was an interesting show on Fox. But we want to give it to the young pope, but, and I'm just going to throw the caveat in, that it's a very active time in the television landscape. So expect some handing over soon. Don't get comfortable in the Popemobile, Palis Sorrentino.

Is it vestments? Vestments. Yeah. The papal grasp on this is light at the moment. it is very active time but yo young pope though we should institute in the pod a button we can push and then Zach comes in and gets

and escorts you out I think that's like whatever and whenever one of us doesn't like the take just hit the button and Zach just like tells me that there's an emergency let's talk a little bit about the first episode which finally aired on Sunday I just think

it's like a really interesting show what's the chatter on sosh my man I haven't really been checking because last I checked, NATO was falling, so I was like, I'm going to take a quick by myself beating. Let's keep talking about like papal fantagious. Yeah. But I just thought that it was such a unique vision.

And it's such a strong first episode in terms of just setting the table for what it sort of stands for as a show. I mean, this show gives so few fucks. It starts with two dream sequences. Two dream sequences back to back. The inside the Russian nesting doll. Inside, well, actually, we're all living inside the Russian nesting doll now. Thank you for that.

I thought people listen to spot to get away. And then his speech where he's just like, let's get, let's get abortions and get gay married. And the people are like, oh? And the dudes are just falling down. The other cardinals are fainting. Chris, I think the word I want to use in talking about the young pope is delighted. This show delighted me. That's what I was going to ask you.

I was thinking today as I was drinking my second cup of coffee. How much time did you have to think? think. It's real early. I got it pretty early just to do knuckle push-ups and I was kind of like I don't really know what this show is about. So it's not in a frustrating way, but it does derail the ability to talk about it. Because like, I think that's part of

the reason why there's such a meme industry around it aside from the fact that it's a Pope who is young who smokes. But it's also just because like do you talk about things in terms of religion? Are there, is it, is it about power? Is it about greed? Is it just a complete comedy and we're just taking it too seriously.

You get very distracted by a lot of the imagery that's being floated across. Every shot is so incredibly well composed that it's difficult sometimes to read in to like. Just think about that. Just think about those opening, like the shots of him walking through the Holy See and the way people are, I mean, just to drop some theater on you, just think about the blocking. Like where he puts these people and what they look like. Yeah. It's so considered. I think that Sorrentino, the filmmaker, has said that he wanted to make a movie, make a show about,

power and isolation and loneliness in a certain way. The lonely Pope. That doesn't sell. The young Pope sells. What a title. I think one of the things that's interesting as a clearly not beating around the bush fan of the first two episodes is in the same way this is true of any new show that you're excited about. It could be anything still. Sure.

And one of the exciting things about it is that feeling of like, well, something new is happening both in front of our eyes and in terms of the world of the show. and what's it going to be. The opening speech turns, is a little bit of a misdirect because I don't think this is a spoiler to say that our man, Pius of 13, is kind of old school when it comes to his actual religious

and political beliefs and may not be, he's not a chill pope. No. That would be a different show. I think... And so the feeling of like excitement turning into kind of looming horror

is particularly relevant right now? It's really important that he's not the chill pope because I can't think of a more boring concept than a chill, like a chill pope. Like a pope who already doesn't have a lot of hangs. Yeah. And then is also really chill when he does hang. Right.

Oh, totally. Right. So he's just like, he just sits there quietly. Like, Pope, what do you want to do? He's just like, ah, I'm good. Whatever. He's like just drinking decaf soda. How's the radio?

Works fine. The radio's great. I just mean like little things like that radio. That weird little Bluetooth radio. That was a decision made by a person, you know? And I feel like we, for all the gifts that we have at television at the moment, in terms of creative and artistic intent and artistic vision, to see it done in such a surprising way is still bracing and thrilling. Because we often talk about how Matt Weiner on Mad Men, one of the reasons Mad Men was so good. It wasn't just that his writing.

It's that he was so crazy exactly and controlling that he would not film a scene if an ashtray was wrong. Both in terms of being where it was placed on the table and the style of ashtray. No, I feel like I read that in John Ham's frightened eyes. Winer is not a chill pope. But, you know, he remains a devout Catholic. Yeah, that's the way these things work. In this case, that exactitude was in the service of a period piece. This is in a whatever the hell it wants to be peace.

So you can put Cherry Coke Zero into this world and you're like, okay, there is just a lack of piety. I don't know, in terms of the artistic vision that is thrilling. It's bracing because the show itself is very like sort of fawns over and savers all the ritual of the Catholic Church, but doesn't actually go too deeply inside of what sort of the psychology or the inner journey that people must have when they're engaged in something at that level, when they're engaged in a relationship with God at that level. And it was actually kind of interesting to juxtapose that I watched silence this weekend. Wow, you had a fun weekend. Well, it was actually quite useful because it's basically the inverse.

It's incredibly serious about its subject matter, and it's incredibly interested in not necessarily all the ritual around the Catholic Church, but actually what the relationship a man can have to Jesus and God is. And, you know, they're completely different pieces of art. But it's interesting if you guys, if you're so interested to check out a three-hour movie about apostatizing in Japan. Wait, quick question. Is there missionary torture? Because that's what I like. Yeah, there is a lot of missionary torture. Dope.

Dope. Does Andrew Garf get tortured? Because Emma Stone would be in a way. Yeah. Oh, in a way. Yeah. Can I, I don't, I don't mean to jump on your explanation of silence here, but, but spoiler alert, you and I did socialize briefly this weekend. Yes. And you gave me a preview of your silence takes. Can you just describe? Because my, assumption of this movie is that Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, are just browing it up the whole movie. No, see, so the movie starts, and I was actually a little bit cynical about it when it first started because, you know, I feel like in 2017, we've gotten to a place where there's really not a lot of excuse for bad accent work. That doesn't stop anybody. It's certainly not on this podcast. But the first minute when Garfield and Driver are like, we're going to do sort of English, but with a, We're going to do our own accents, but then just put like a sort of, I can't believe it's not butter layer of Portuguese on top of this.

Yes. And then, you know, they're just like, like, I can't even do it. But it's just like, it's just such a gracing thing when you see it. You're like, wait, what? Like every so often it sounds like they're trying to speak Spanish with a sinus infection? Yes. Yeah, basically. Sorry to all my bruselinos in the audience.

They like watched one Porto game on television. We're like, oh, that's my pronunciation. Got it. But, and then you keep going and going, and as it goes on, you just, there's something about the approach. It's not like any Scorsese movie in recent history where it's like very still, very concentrated on one subject. And even though the plot in the first two-thirds of it is pretty much like he goes to this

village and then he leaves and he goes to another village and then he leaves. It's just that as it goes on and on and becomes clear what this movie is really about, you wind up engaging with the thematic nature of the film rather than anything else around it. I think that that's actually a product of the lack of style, so to speak. Whereas Young Pope is all style. And I think actually probably... Hmm. I don't know about that. Kind of maybe a little absent.

Not an absent of substance, but I think it's substance is the nature of, like what you're saying, the loneliness of power. Can I ask you a quick silence question? Yeah, sure. How is the scene when Liam Neeson takes too many Kualudes? Is it as good as I've heard? When Liam Beeson gets in a Ferrari in 1633 Japan, it's so funny. I would love that.

Yeah, second half of Laila's playing. Is that what happens in episode five of the OA? Yeah, I just, just to wrap up on this, we're going to revisit Young Pope after people watch a few more episodes. I hope my ardor remains as true. I really just think it, you know, we talked about Homeland's return, Homeland Return. We already returned last night. We're happy it's back. It's fun.

But Young Pope was just, it is a bracing slap-of-the-face breath of fresh air to television, at least in the early going. I mean, I actually thought it was like six or eight episodes. It's 10. That might be an extra long hang. I'm not sure how that's going to go. But I'm down for it. It's not the chillest of hangs. It's just truly exciting.

And just one more inside the biz note. Before working on the upcoming FX series Legion, I don't know if you've heard about this. Noah Hawley's homework for me and the other writers was to work. watch Paula Sorrentino's The Great Beauty as a reference point. So it's interesting to see Sorrentino on TV after having already, like the idea of trying to bring that vision to TV was already, even if it would be possible was something that others had been thinking about. I think that my biggest takeaway is that as more and more filmmakers make a move to television,

they're, especially filmmakers with a distinctive vision as distinctive storytelling techniques as Sorrentino. And we saw this with Soderberg when he came. Nick. That actually, the Nick feels very traditional in comparison to this. Like, he was doing things with scene blocking where, you know, the camera would go off into another part of the room while two people were talking. And normally you just have those two people in a master or in one and two.

But now you have with Sorrentino, somebody who is going to spend the first 15 minutes of the pilot episode of his show in dream sequences within dream sequences. And they are going to do entire setups that are just obviously. based around wanting to imbue a feel visually. Also, Sorrentino is a, not that Soderberg's not one of our greatest filmmakers, but Sorrentino is a writer as well as a director, and this is entirely his vision. And one of the things that's most interesting and I think most effective about the Nick is that Soderberg took what could have been a fairly straightforward medical procedural

and then just did donuts on the front lawn of it. The equivalent would be Paola Sorrentino directing an episode of the Good Way. Right. And, you know, working within something that we are familiar with. Which I would love to see. Oh my God. Can you imagine the scene when Christine Varnski plays soccer with the other other partners? Speaking of sort of taking material and shifting it slightly in terms of the way we interpret it, we wanted to talk a little bit about this Amazon show, Sneaky Pete, which just started on Friday, I think.

Yeah. But that's not quite the story, right? Yes. This is a fascinating case. Right. So Sneaky Pete is an idea. It comes from an idea Brian Cranston had with David Shore, who originally was one of the creators of House, right? Yeah, and can I just say, this is part and parcel with my Tom Hardy conversation last week, where sometimes you should tell actors to chill, because I think a pretty decent show has come out of this,

but the log line of this is like, Brian Cranston wanted to do a show about con men and sneaky Pete was his own childhood nickname. Right. Cool story, bro. There is a whole conversation to be had about, like, Brian Hans, Cranston's post Breaking Bad Heat Check. Yeah. But this winds up being, so they made a pilot for CBS.

Yes, this was ordered by CBS, and it was essentially going to be a procedural about a con man. Right. And it stars Giovanni Ribisi, and this was sort of, you can almost look at it as the sister show to Battle Creek, which was the Vince Gilligan, that also was on CBS. And that was one that a lot of people were like, is CBS going to break the mold? And they were like going to Vince Gilligan. But that turned out to be a script that Vince Gilligan and had worked on prior to break. bad. Am I right? Yes. Although he did have, I believe he had intention of continuing to work on it, but then basically was like, I could do better call Saul and have more fun. And I don't know if David Shore

has like an overall deal at CBS that he had these two shows go. I think Battle Creek is now no longer with us. Yeah, I hope he got paid for both these things. Yeah, and so they do an episode of, this was shot for CBS, CBS passed. It goes to Amazon. Amazon, not only, they buy the show,

they replaced David Shore with Graham Yost used to run and created justified. And wrote speed. And Always worth noting. Yeah, definitely worth noting. And the first episode is very much like something you would see on CBS with like one F-bomb, I think. But it's got a caper of the week thing where Giovanni Rabizi plays a recently released conman who has assumed the identity of his prison roommate and is now like pretending to be his prison cellmate. By the way, the prison cellmate is played by Can't Hardly Wait to Ethan Embry, who I believe has been doing hard time.

because that was a real jaw dropper. That's what my man looks like now. He goes to, I think, is it Long Island or is it? One of the problems with the pilot is you cannot fucking tell where they are. Because I thought he was up to sleep. I'm going to Albany. I'm doing a Montreal accent. He keeps dropping into the city like real easy.

I'm like, that's like a really hard drive. It's like, he's just getting into the city is tough. Do you take the tap and Z? The GW is always blocked up. And then in the second episode he's in Connecticut. So let's just say he's Amtrak Regional. Yeah, right. So he is living with,

this kid, this guy, his cellmate's name is Pete. And he is living with Pete's grandparents. His name is Marius. And his name is Marius. We'll get to that. Which was not Brian Cranston's name. And he has assumed this guy's identity. He's like, hey, I'm back after 20 years.

Which I still think is a little bit of like, just on a very basic level. I feel like grandparents would be like, yeah, you don't look like him. You are literally a different person. Now they try to like sketch around because he goes in with his guest grandparents. And even when they're in prison together, Embry's got like six inches on Rubizi. I'm just wouldn't like very basic. things like that be like a red flag. How about the fact that they're,

they welcome back their quote unquote 30 year old grandson who is 42. Yeah. Who is fully 42. And Margo Martindale and Peter Garrity are his parents age. Yeah. Realist of talk. So anyway, all that aside,

this first episode, tonally, it really does feel like a CBS show where it's like and I don't necessarily, that's a value judgment thing. It's just that it has, the consequences are pretty low. It's very, you can follow it very easily. And it has that same thing

that Scorpion and all these other shows have where Rebisi has an almost like Rain Man ability to like read the room and immediately start conning people and it's like almost like Sherlock or whatever. And it's it's fine. It's fine. It's breathlessly expository. Right. Like just to get into this absurd

situation, you have to go through so many hoops. And then just these little details that will take you right on out of it. Yeah. Like Marin Ireland, who's a really good actress who you may know, may remember from Homeland. Great performance on Homeland. I know Chris remembers her from her time

on the Kelsey Grammer show Boss. Oh, she on that? That was your jam. Yeah. But like when she comes in and she plays, it's inevitably going to be a love interest, but she's the real Pete's cousin. When she enters the frame as a single mother of two kids,

she's wearing enough makeup to be going to a ball. And then later in the episode, when a gun is pointed at her, she sort of laughs it off as if this is a normal occurrence. It Okay, so it's basically, it's fascinating because the CBS pilot more or less was just put on Amazon last year

as part of their pilot program. A lot of people have seen this episode already so I feel comfortable talking about it. It is now the first step, with some reshoots, is now part of this first season. But yo, we are not fully recommending this show

on its own merits, although we've watched about two or three episodes, it's entertaining, it's fine. This isn't one of those chances again. So crazy when you see this. It's go to TV school. Yeah. Last week we talked about

one day at a time and how it's really worth checking out even if you were put off initially by the multi-campus.com live audience can see. It is a very rare and kind of dope opportunity here to see the same show filtered through a completely different lens.

When you switch from episode one to episode two, it is like jumping through a dimensional wormhole because all of a sudden it is now a relatively again kind of not, it's not unconventional, but all of a sudden you were in a prestige cable drama. I was thinking about there's recently there was an interview with Ben Mendelsohn about

Rogue One and he said that he would do on on Rogue One he did tons of different takes because they weren't sure what the tone of the movie was going to be yeah so he would do a big hammy read and then he would do like a very gritty under understated read that was like and you know just like this idea that basically like anything there was a basic story and then there was the material but within the material you could do all these different readings now we usually think about that in terms of direction. And there is, it feels differently. It's just a darker show.

Michael Dinner, who I think has done a bunch of Homeland episodes, actually directed this, the second episode of Sneaky Pete. Bram Yost wrote it. It features like half of the casts of Justified and Americans in it. And it's also.

And it's just really interesting because it is not a different show, except it's a completely different show. The story is basically the same. The stakes are largely similar, although a little bit more violent, a little bit more consequential. It's just grimeier. Everyone is pitched darker.

Everyone looks like the cousin who's a cop, like his fohawk is now tamed. Yeah. Because that's preposterous, but it works on a CBS show. And in general, it's really interesting to watch, especially the first half of the second episode, where Pete, the Giovanni Ribisi Pete, just goes a wandering in one night from New York,

from Manhattan to white plains and back to wherever they live. and in that night he meets like 20 supporting characters that clearly were not part of the show's original conception. They immediately go into like full, they're to F plot now. Yeah, there's a whole world of con people out there. There's flashbacks, there's all this stuff. Yeah, and also on a regular CBS procedural,

there might be some kind of like detailed lingo and sort of, they might say like, oh, we have like a tough case this week or whatever. It might be a little bit knowing. This is like full con speak. Like they are not even stopping. There's all like all the cards and all the card playing and all the cons that they do. They say like, you know, who's the mark, nice lift.

Yeah, all that stuff. Right. Yeah, exactly. Which to us, because we've watched a lot of con men movies, we kind of know. I've actually been con quite a bit. That's why I know. Look where you are. It's working.

It's just a fascinating thing to look at the two side by side. You look, we were watching the first episode. I couldn't quite get why I would want to keep watching this. And then I was wondering also why Dominic Lombardazzi, who played Herc on the Wire, and had a long career on TV and in movies as well, why he is in the pilot in this sort of thankless role. And then afterwards, when I learned the full story of it

or was reminded of it, I was like, oh, because, you know, it's really good money to be a guest star on a network show, and especially if it's just one episode. And then he comes back in the second episode. And I'm like, oh, he's back because it's pretty good to have a recurring role on a prestige, show affiliated with Brian Cranston and Graham Yosen on Amazon. So it's the shifting economy of what is of value to an actor who obviously wants to work.

The other thing we should note is I don't know how it was pitched initially. Cranston obviously co-created, co-wrote the pilot as producing the show. Directed an episode this season. I don't know how involved he was planning to be or not. He's in the pilot in a very predictable way. And then he's in the second episode. And from what I've read now, he's in every episode. And it's basically, he's the heavy.

villain of the season. He looks great in cufflinks. And I guess he's having fun. I mean, it's a very interesting thing. This is not going to break any top 10 lists. It's an entertaining watch. It's a smart play for Amazon. It goes with Goliath in the sense of, it's a little bit better, I think, but in the sense of having 10 hours of something that's entertaining. Yeah. Has stars in it, keeps it moving. Shouts to Michael Dreher, late of Mr. Robot Season 2, he played Cisco, is essentially playing the same part on the show. I mean, there's so many... And he keeps getting paid.

Jacob Pitts, who played Tim Unjustified, who is my, like, my favorite character on Justified. Who's the person... Allison Wright, who plays Martha and the Americans. Rocking a more native accent, although I can't quite tell which accent is using... It's Welsh? It's not American anymore, which is what she does on the Americans. So that's a thing for her. It's a cool show.

Margo Martindale harvesting eggs. I mean, you know, not human eggs. If you go through... That would be a good show. If you go through some of the first episode, you know, like, you can pick up what it's about by halfway through. And then just go to the second episode to check it out. It's just like a fascinating thing.

And this is definitely a lane for Amazon or for some people to exploit where it's like, yeah, we're going to take these addictive, well-constructed conceits from networks. And then we're going to just put a little bit of the, hey, you guys have creative freedom. We're going to scuff it up a little bit, like when you would get like sneakers or a hat before the first day of school and you didn't want it to look like you bought new things for schools. You just you rub a little Did you rub a little dirt in them? Whoever does that? I've seen that happen in movies.

I never wore shoes or hats. Because in school it was like you had to have new shit. Oh. No wonder I was unpopular. Because you were rolling around in dirt. I was rolling around in filth every day. Yeah, it's not unlike what I mean, USA had a smart play for a while where they were basically like NBC doesn't want to be NBC anymore.

Sure, we'll do it. We'll do it. We'll make these blue skies shows. This is the next generation of it. And then San Jose was like, what if he barfs up Ritalin? And then eats it. It's like, now back up the money truck. Terrific.

Okay, Andy, let's wrap up today by talking a little bit about this new X, X record. I see you. Is that what it's called? I see you. That's what they would say to me when I walked into school with covered in loamy soil. What was the, like, the slip and slide through, like, mud? Yeah. And you just, like, showed up at Calc.

Like, it's me. I looked like I just got out of a dumpster. Is it my hat worn in? Your old pal. This, okay, so here's the thing. XX, a trio from the UK. Yeah, Jamie XX.

Is from that group. I wanted to talk about this record because, before I heard it, I was psyched to put this on our talk schedule because the first single from it on hold, I think, is just an amazing song. One of the best they've ever done. Flips a great Hall Note sample.

And all the buzz around this record, their third record was like, they're getting louder. You know, this is their coming out party. They're not going to be this sort of, they're not exactly tweet, but certainly bedroom, trip hop, dubstep kind of intimacy.

They were going to go broader, a wider canvas. Having listened to the record, which is a fine record, that's essentially like saying they're going to become the tallest dwarf. Right. You know, this is not a club record by any stretch, and it does fall prey to something that I still bugs me,

which is they released the, best song in the record as a single. You don't like that. I love it when you get the song where you're like, this is pretty good. They release the grower, you know, and then the hits come later because you know you're, you know the deck is stacked. Right. It is a, it's an interesting, it's an interesting case of a record because Jamie XX, who is the third member of the group and the producer, made one of the best records. Yeah, and I think that that solo record, Jamie's solo record has, I, I feel like that had a huge amount to do with the way that I see you sounds. Yes. Right. So, it was like Jamie had experimented with using different vocalists on his solo record and a lot,

he does a lot of really great work sampling vocals in his production. And this seems like he was almost playing Romy. You know what you mean? And I think that she does like, she had some of her best vocal performances on this. Not only, first of all, she, uh, she, her voice is just wonderful. I mean, but she's from a, like a long, she reminds me of Tracy Thorne, like a long line of soulful British, everything but the girl vibe to this record. Female singers, which is, which is, is a great thing. I got to say the other dude, Oliver is his name. He got swollen in the off season. He did. That dude was kind of the drag on the other records. He came in here. He like switched his shirt size from S to XS, you know, and he's just like busting out of it. His vocals are good,

and I really like the fact that the two of them seem to be co-writing more as they trade vocals. Say Something Loving is a really good song. The first song Dangerous is really good. But it is an interesting case where on the Jamie XX record, he made them, both of them, sound like, you know, like Ibiza Heroes. He hears something in their voices and puts them in the best position to succeed. But all of that is to say, I wonder, I don't know if you would agree with this, I wonder if I am a bad XX fan. Do you remember Emily Nussbaum and the New Yorker had this theory of like the bad TV fan

because she wants the wrong thing to happen? Sure. People who watch, what was the big example? Like watch The Spranos from mob violence, basically, which is like not what David I feel like I'm a bad XX fan because I think that what the reason why they are popular and they are crazy popular. They were on SNL last month.

People like the quietest moments. That's what they want from this group because I guess the assumption is you can hear Jamie XX records. You can hear that other vibe elsewhere. I think that's I, I start to tune out a little bit when you know, it's a tender piano ball with a little bit of a beat about making your father proud. No, no shots.

Wait, so you prefer. the crystal guitar part and single voice with the atmospherics around it or you like the new... I like it when they go to Abitha. The new like regret era new order sauce. Yeah, that's what I want.

See, I think that they're all part of a piece. Like the one thing that I kind of love a lot about British pop music of this kind that kind of comes out of club culture is the acknowledgement of the going up and the coming down. Okay. And the after hours and the late night, you know, sessions of like we've all come back from going out

and now we're going to play like chill stuff. And that's kind of how Tripop in a lot of ways was viewed at that time where it was like Portishead and Massive Attack were still extensions of rave culture. It was just that that was like a different lane of rave culture. It's true. For like the darker drugs

and the come down drugs. And so I like the fact that the early XX stuff reminded me of low. You know what I mean? It was beautiful. Oh, the band from Minnesota. Yeah. And it was like this glacial crystal clear like guitar parts. And I always really appreciated that, but I never really

disassociated it from the club culture it was clearly rooted in. And just knowing what Jamie listens to, there's a really awesome Spotify playlist. If you go to the XX's page on Spotify and scroll all the way to the bottom, there are a couple of artists playlists. And they have one of what they were listening to in the studio. And it's a really instructive listen because it's everything from James Blake to Kendrick to, I mean, there's just like a ton of different stuff and you can see what kind of informed this album a lot. Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that the idea of like being the flip side of the coin to a culture that they are part of. Yeah, so rather than like, we're going pop.

No, I don't want them to go pop so much. I realize I'm arguing a very thin patch of land here, much like the patch of land now owned by James Keziah Delaney in your favorite television show, Taboo. Why do you call it? I just want to have, I want to put a little spin on it. I want to, I feel like it's good for the brand.

The, I think in many ways the most successful song in the record is the song of Violent Noise in the middle because it's basically exactly what you're describing because Oliver's vocals are basically like now when I go out every beat in the club is a violent noise and the music drops out and they're basically playing both sides of it, which I appreciate. I guess there's the thing. At this point in my life, you know, sliding down the back hill of existence here, I guess maybe I'm just impatient because I know they can

do this other thing. I know they can reach these crazy, still still a little bit tweeze, so a little bit come down, but they can reach ecstatic highs while coming down. Sure. Like, Seesaw on the Jamie XX record or on hold. And so I selfishly want more of it. Well, it's an on-demand economy. But I'm becoming the enemy here. I'm becoming the enemy.

Like, will you tweet out that playlist? Yeah, I will. I wonder, do you think there, obviously everything but the girl is an important group to cite when talking about XX? Yeah, and I also feel like the group that I love. The collected works of Drake and Rihanna are very important. They recently covered, what's the Vue's song that's so beautiful? They did too good.

Yeah, on BBC. It's interesting. This is definitely a walking wounded vibe by everything about the girl, but also temperamental, underrated last record. You're the only person in America who has this reference. About temperamental? Well, no, I mean, like, they can easily reach to Todd Terry everything but the girl. I love everything but the girl, you guys.

I can't help it. All right. I think that the time is, we're approaching the time when we should do a trip hop show. We should talk about that stuff. Are you ready to admit some of the records we spent money on in the 90s? The European only CD singles put quite a dent in my late teenage wallet. Like $40 on B-sides by the group Lamb? This is my life.

Atica Blues remix. Yes, Moe Wax forever. We're done. We're going to go and we will be back on Thursday for the re-up until then, Andy. It's just been a great job, Beranski. A great job. Talk to you soon. Everybody's talking politics.

He's talking common sense. Bill Maher and his rotating panel of guests are back for more in season 15 of HBO's award-winning series Real Time with Bill Marr. Join Bill and his guests live as they dissect the new and not-so-new people in happenings on Wall Street, Hollywood, and around the world, especially in Washington. Watch Real-Time with Bill Mar live Fridays at 10 p.m. Only on HBO. Also every week, the conversation continues on Real-Time Over-Time on YouTube.