The Watch - Ep. 134: Drake’s ‘More Life’, Amazon Pilot Season, and Other Upcoming TV and Film Projects

Episode Date: March 20, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss whether they're in or out on a rumored 'Matrix' reboot (11:30), the Rock’s new film about skyscrapers (16:00), and a possible 'Cloverfield' sequel. Then they discuss Drake’s new project, ‘More Life,’ (21:20) and rank all of his records, mixtapes, albums, and playlists from best to worst (32:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is actually brought to you by another Ringer podcast. It's the Ringer University podcast. That's where you can find Tied Up hosts Mark Titus and Tate Frazier, breaking down every game during March Madness. Subscribe to the Ringer University right now and let our college basketball experts be your buddies for the whole tournament. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch.

My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com. and joining me on the other line starting out doing college shows Calipari Flow! It's Andy Greenwell! Whoa, I don't think I deserve that intro today. I'm not even there with you.

I know, but it's so nice to be back, to be reunited. It's nice to be back. Thank you for holding it down when I was on leave. So many incredible guest hosts. Shout out to Sean Fennessee, Allison Herman, Jason Concepcion. Thank you for the state of Texas for taking you in, offering you sanctity.

sanctuary and Sukor while you were talking about what were you talking about cinema trends in the movie industry boy I'm glad I missed that one that really worked out that's terrific I think we did great yeah well we're back some bonus pods too yeah yeah Andy is back we also you know that's a good point Andy you know feel free to dig into our archives because we have some really good pods in the last couple weeks leading to Dunham gareth David book club zoo station so you know if you guys are looking for stuff to listen to on the long drive home or on the long subway ride to nowhere. Just dial up some watch episodes.

But I'm back, except I'm not back, because I got kind of sick last night, so I'm just keeping the germs contained here in my home base. Word. I feel like this is kind of. I feel like this is, have you seen my abs recently? Chris, I feel like this is, this is bittersweet because we were actually going to do what I hoped would be the first of many just like home front pods, right? Because you and I

shared some off-mic time yesterday. Yeah. And we almost wrote a really kick-ass last chapter to our own personal book club when we drove down a very, very high Echo Park Hill with an unrestrained open gas canister in the trunk. You make it sound like it's Fury Road. We were just doing like an errand. You have to understand that the level of excitement in my life right now, that was Fury Road. That was the black

white deluxe edition Fury Road. Yeah, that would have been a sad end to the podcast is then, and then they blew up. But wouldn't that

like low key be the greatest end to a podcast ever? Because for his, look, podcasts are great. Our producer Zach Mack loves podcasts. And you know he also loves,

Zach Mack loves personal anecdotes to open up a podcast. He does. And he also wants us to watch The Expans. Love you, Zach.

But my point being, podcasts are an emergent art form, Chris. And, but at the moment, And they're kind of, they're as long as a Drake album. You know what I mean? Like, they just go on and on.

So, like, if we just pieced out by exploding in a Subaru, that would be kind of memorable. It's true. You have a nice Subaru, though. Andy, today we're going to be talking a little bit about Drake's new album More Life, which came out Saturday Night because who cares about bloggers and their lives. And then we're also going to talk about Amazon's pilot season. You know, every year they put up a few pilots and they ask for people to vote on. although it's not a very scientific electoral process,

vote on whether or not they want those shows, any of those shows to go to full series orders. And we're going to talk about one specific one, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? Maisel. Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which we both liked quite a bit. But first, let's do a little bit of In-N-N-Out

because we haven't done the news in a while. Bottom line, are you in or are you out? And they're out of what? When you open up the Washington Post to Greenwald, you know what they say I do know but I want you to say it in like in extremely extremely Christian bail Batman voice

Penelope Cruz is gonna be Donatella Versace I thought you were gonna talk about democracy dying same thing Are you in or out of Penelope Cruz playing Donatella Versacee for Ryan Murphy

I am so in that I basically live I am basically a Cubano sandwich right now I am so into that I love it I am deep deep Miami Beach in this one. My bigger takeaway here is this. FX is not fucking around. No, we're going to get to that in a second.

You can put all the asterisk you want on that, right? Because, like, obviously, I took a small paycheck from that network when I worked on Legion. But those paychecks ended. And I still got to say, like, I thought that American crime was screwing up because they had that great first season with OJ and then they announced two subsequent seasons and they're sort of doing them at the same time. One is Katrina, which still seems like the worst idea in the world to me. But then they get Annette Benning for that.

And then they're doing Versace and they get Penelope Cruz for that. Here's my thing about Ryan Murphy. Here's my thing about Ryan Murphy. Okay. I don't particularly care for his work. No, me either. But he is a master at feeding the streets with casting news. And it's almost like you don't have to make the shows anymore.

Like, why make the show? Why not just announce it? you know, I really support, you put me back on my heels a little bit, but I support this. Because it saves all of us time. There's too much TV anyway. So why not just have the fantasy football casting thing

where you're like, who should play, you know, Hillary Clinton or Brownie during Hurricane Katrina? And it's like, Matthew Broderick, damn, don't even make that show. Only, the show could only get worse once you make it. Here's the thing. Like, one of the most entertaining aspects

of internet, not even two-pointed, like maybe one version 1.8, like the Windows 95 of the internet, like in 2001 or two, right? Yeah. The most interesting thing about that, one of the more interesting things about that was like the rise of fan culture sites, like Ain't It Cool News and places like that. And what those sites did, just full-time, full stop, was just fantasy cast, comic books, and other pieces of pop culture ephemera. Right. And the underlying assumption under those exercises was that no one was ever going to make any of these movies. You know, these things were never going to happen. Like, this is still, maybe the X-Men movie would come out, maybe Spider-Man, but still,

nobody was going to be making Inhumans TV show, which, by the way, they probably shouldn't. But anyway. But doing those fun castings, that was fun, and you're right. Like, then just walk away because you're excited. You can create it in your head, and then it's not going to be terrible, right? This is, I mean, like, look, I just think we've seen Black Mirror. We know that, like, soon we will just have, like, our...

synaptic impressions of things beamed into our brain. Like we won't even have to do the thing. We won't have to experience anything. So why not just cast these things? Give us the serotonin hit of imagining Annette Benning or Penelope Cruz in these shows and then skip the show.

Yeah. I mean, look, if you told me that Penelope Cruz was playing Donatella Versace and Pedro Almodovar was directing, then I would think this is like the greatest thing in the world. But I do have some doubts. But look, he pulled off OJ, right? like that. We really like that show.

Okay. So we're both in on this, but we're out on actually having to watch it. In or out, Andy. Danny Boyle is coming to television. He made, what was that cop show he made for the BBC? Babylon. Yeah, you like that. Starring your girl, Britt, Britt Marling. That's your girl. You love Britt Marling. He is going to be making a show, a 10-episode show called Trust for FX, which is about the kidnapping of the Getty Oil Air, John Paul Getty, the Third.

And this is, you know, it's set in 1973. This guy gets kidnapped when he's in Rome by the mafia, and they're looking for this ransom. And then there's, you know, all sorts of stuff ensues. This is Boyle. He's just did Trane Spotting 2, which we're going to try and get to this week. But I'm not sure if we're going to have time. Boyle, and it's written by interesting. So Boyle has worked with a couple of screenwriters multiple times over the course of his career.

He did a couple of things with Alex Garland, I believe. And he's done a couple of things with John Hodge, who did a lot of. And Andrew McDonald, who did train spotting and shallow grave. Right. Isn't he the president? The producer? No, I'm sorry to tell you this. Donald Trump is the president.

It's, it's, it's, look, I'm still as surprised as you are, but try to hold it together. No, but John Hodge has written, I think, shallow grave, train spotting, a couple of other things. You're right. Andrew McDonald was the producer. This is with Simon Beaufort, who wrote, I would say, not my favorite Danny Boyle movies. He wrote Slumdog Millionaire and he wrote 127 hours. but I'm very excited about a 1973 kidnapping story, and I'm excited to see Danny Boyle working in television.

Yeah, I mean, I'm in on this too. I mean, a couple probably a year and a half ago when OJ was on, we were talking about how the thing that really separates John Landgraf, who's the head of FX from a lot of the other network presidents, is that he senses the trends early and invests, right? And one of the things I remember he told me on the podcast I did with him, which is now years ago, four years ago, plus years ago, was that he thought miniseries were sort of a great market and efficiency.

And he started to steer into miniseries. And obviously Fargo and then some of the shows we're talking about were the result of that. The thing that he seems to have identified also early was the idea of real life being the next great IP possibility. That people want to see things that they are familiar with. They want to see books, comic books, what have you adapted. But no one owns the rights to the world, my man. Right? So getting these filmmakers, these interesting filmmakers, and even though I'm not a fan of Ryan Murphy, I would call him an interesting filmmaker. And basically giving them the keys to these real life souped up sports cars is a pretty cool idea. I think it's going to start to pay fewer dividends. You know, the more we do this, especially because the types of stories that are being chosen are kind of similar. I mean, there's a reason why they're choosing the raciest.

the racies Yeah, the most ripped from the headlines even if the headlines are 20, 30 years old, yeah. But it's interesting, and once again, the first thing that I said holds true, which is it's a miniseries. So you don't really feel that stressed out about it. You know, like it's going to be a glimpse of something and it could be fun, it could be cool,

and then you're kind of out. So there isn't that, the pressure that you were alluding to when you were saying, I just want to read the casting announcement, it is lessened when you know it's a miniseries. And I don't know if our listeners feel the same way. You and I've been talking during our break about how we are feeling a little overwhelmed just by the volume of shows. And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't even have to watch it all as a critic anymore, right? So the trend towards the limited series definitely

makes us feel more positively going into it. I don't know if that's something that people share. Yeah, I think also just like the amount of television that's on right now, there is a little bit of a bias towards the new because especially even like Sean and I talked about this in Texas, but like the way that coverage works now is a lot of pre-hype. Like, you know, there's the hype cycle, but there's not as much like billions, episode four, season two, like my essay. It's like nobody's really rocking that. I have two more bits of in or out news.

So we're in on Danny Boyle. It's exciting to see him doing this limited series. I have one that's just a simple yes or no. It's a simple inner out, Andy. Okay. Yeah, totally. Matrix reboot. Out!

So far out. You have to understand how far out I am. There is a future rave happening around me with people with in-out ports jutting out of their necks and they're all wearing like brown caftan future clothes. And they are all dropping space ecstasy. And I am dropping to the floor and ducking out of there looking for the wall that flips like in Atlanta. The only reason I would want a Matrix reboot is if it's just a Vox explainer of the architect's speech. Seriously. How about that? Here's the thing, guys, about the Matrix. In many ways, the Matrix presages everything, everything that we talk about when we talk about culture these days. And I don't even mean the content. What I mean is, the first Matrix movie, I cannot overstate how fucking amazing that movie was to see in the theater and not be spoiled because there wasn't a culture really of hype around it yet. I almost jumped off a bridge after that movie because I was like, I bet I could live.

And then, after I saw the next two movies, I did jump off a bridge. And luckily, my girl, Britt Marling, taught me how to fall safely. Yeah. Because those movies were so awful. And they were awful in a way that many sequels of, you know, of bloated genre IP are bad, right? I mean, just every wrong decision. But seeing that movie, I remember The Matrix came out, and then I think it had been out for a week. And a friend of mine at college was just like, have you heard about this?

And I had not heard about it. And he told me to see it, and it totally blew my mind. And let it be, man. I was actually watching some clips of the first one recently. That's great. It's great. And in a way, all contemporary movies, especially movies and TV shows that try to deal with the nature of our reality or whatever you want to call it, they're all remakes of the Matrix. They're all indebted to the Matrix.

Everyone's still trying to find a clever spin on what they did. Dude, just leave it alone, man. Do a speed racer reboot. It would be a lot more relevant. I have one last in or out, and it's the extent to which you and I are going to, be in on this is almost like doesn't even require a response, but I'm going to allow you to have one anyway. This is according to the Hollywood reporter, Wyatt Russell from Everybody Wants Some and one of our

favorite Black Mirror episodes playtest, and Yovonne Adepo from Fences. He plays Denzel Washington Sun and Fences. You may remember Jovan from the Leftovers season two as well. Oh, that's right. They have both signed on to co-headline a Supernatural World War II thriller from Bad Robot. They will star as American paratroopers dropped into enemy. territory and as they approach their target, a Nazi occupied village with a German radio tower, they realize they are part of something bigger than a simple military operation. Now, the reason why

this is noteworthy is because there is some speculation that this is yet another Cloverfield movie. I think it's noteworthy because Julius Avery, who directed a very underrated U.N. McGregor thriller called Son of a Gun a couple years ago, is directing this. And it's from a script from Billy Ray who wrote Captain Phillips and Mark Smith, who did The Revenant. I am so hype for this. This is so awesome. I love a supernatural World War II movie. Did you, were you big fan of that video game, Wolfenstein? Yeah! Yes! Were you really?

Yeah! Yes! I love that I can still learn things about you. I'm totally in on this. And the reason I'm in on it, and I worry that I'm now treading onto territory that you and Sean marked out with police tape in Texas. This is, this is venturing into future of movies stuff. Uh-huh. But let's do this, right? Like, let's make a thriving, essentially, be movie culture where we take the best ideas and good people and, you know, make something for that first weekend, bang, right? Sure. Basically construct something to shock and charm and amuse people. And you could even say Get Out was like that, too, right?

Absolutely. And let's do it. Let's do that. Like, let's reclaim that territory in a fun and exciting way. Because, you know, it's a premise, and you get great people doing the premise. And it's not that far-fet. I mean, in a way, you hear that and you see that cast, it sounds like TV, right? It sounds something that would have a smaller budget or, you know, more micro-targeted, but that's actually backward thinking.

You know, people want the same experience from both mediums now. They want to be shocked and surprised and entertained, and they want to see, they want to get peanut butter in their jelly. They want to get the World War II in their whatever. In their Cloverfield. Yeah. And their Cloverfields. I think it's great. And I think it's not only is it great, I think it's better.

I think it's an antidote to the other direction movies are going in to chase that first weekend, which is not, you know, making a GoBots movie, which, by the way they are. It's something that you were telling me about over the weekend, which is the Rocks movie about the skyscraper, right? Yes. Like, I don't even, I think there has to be a name for this, but I'm sure there is internally. But like, you know, a couple months ago, there was a movie called fistfight. Or a couple months before that, office Christmas party, right? The movies that are pure premise that you understand from the title,

It used to be you'd have to convey the movie in a poster. Now it's just the title. And it doesn't even matter what it is. And do you explain this rock movie to me again? Yeah. So the rock broke this news on Instagram, right? And he, this is, this is his Instagram post. Grateful to share this big news, Universal Studios, and Legendary Pictures have declared July 13th, 2018 to be skyscraper weekend.

Massive scale of a movie we've been developing for almost two years. And we start shooting August in China. Our script, written and directed. I love how it's like an O-Tor movie by Ross and Thurber focuses on the world's largest skyscraper M-Dash, that's on fire. Yeah, there it is. There it is.

My character is a disabled U.S. war vet and former FBI hostage rescue team leader. Oh my God, what's his name? Does it say his name? I bet he has the fucking ballerous name ever. Seriously, I bet this dude's name is Rick Beefsteak.

Like, I just, I want it to be like the most out there A plus plus American grade Chuck name. Research for this film has been a real education for me from meeting with the world's top skyscraper architects to spending amazing time with our U.S. combat and disabled vets. Good thing I'm not afraid of heights, but at 4,000 feet, it's a different story.

Let's get to work. Hashtag China! Hashtack 7 bucks prods. Hashtag Flynn Picturescoe. I hope that's not Michael Flynn. Hashtag skyscraper! Look, he wins. Nobody knows how to work the culture in its present form like The Rock.

I remember five years ago, for Granlan, I wrote a piece about how the Rock's entire cinematic strategy was just basically just jumping on to preexisting franchises in the sequels. And I wrote about this a little tongue in cheek, but like that's really what he did for three years. And it made him the biggest star in the world. That's really smart. You know, you could, Chris, if you were a particularly rapacious culture vulture, you could draw a line from what the Rock is doing with cinema and financial trends across the globe to what Drake does on More Life. What a great segue to go into More Life, but first let's take a break for our sponsors. Just want to say thanks to Blue Apron.

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That's blue apron.com slash the watch. Blue Apron, a better way to cook. Thanks to another one of our sponsors today, Fusion's The AV Club. Listen to this. Have you ever been on a website and thought, this seems good? But what if it were a TV show instead? Well, you're in luck. Since 1993, the AV Club has produced some of the best pop culture writing on the web. And now, after 20 years of talking about TV, things are coming full circle for the folks at the

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Still hit me back right away. Better not never hesitate. All right, now we're back talking a little bit about Drake with my Weston Road flows. Andy, more life drop Saturday night. And, you know, for most of the time nowadays, I think this has always been a relationship to, like, to albums. But I usually start from a place of not liking something and then slowly get into it over the course of however many weeks or months as I listen to it. That's basically the story of our relationship right there. Yeah, right. But more life was strangely different.

I just like love this from Jump. I love how like expansive it is. I love how, you know, they're calling it a playlist, which is just like, sure, whatever you guys want. They're calling it a playlist. I guess that's to talk about how like some of it is just like, they're just sample records and skeptic records on this album. And also just like, I think it sort of is supposed to speak to,

you know, it just goes on and on. It doesn't necessarily have like an up and down album feel to it. I just like everything about this I like the super corny like soft songs I like the like fake hard can't have everything songs I'm so into this

I love Portland I love the fake South London Patois he's going with on a couple of these tracks it feels like a guy who's just had his ears open for a while I know that we can get into like discussions of cultural appropriation

on part of Drake but this is just like a really fun record in me What do you think? Let me say this. Two things can be true at the same time, my friend. I know that's radical in the age of Twitter. But Drake has confirmed himself to be an unimaginable colossus of a cornball and a complete genius. He's a complete genius.

And I was half kidding when I was talking about The Rock, but not really. Because no one understands how the music industry works and how music listening works and how music fandom is engaged with better than Drake. If you look at his discography, which I think we're going to get into, he is always jumping from one thing to another, and he almost never makes the wrong jump. And he is at his best when he is at his most loose, when he is moving the most quickly.

If you give him too much time, and this is true of a lot of artists, actually, a musical artist. If you give him enough time to make a quote-unquote masterpiece, it will be heavier than a lead balloon, which is what Vue's was. It is a completely hermetically sealed bathosphere, basically. And you can pull singles out of it, and you should, because there are great, great songs on there, too good, controller, even one dance.

But the record itself is a complete and total drag to listen to. This is the opposite. And it's not just because he's embracing my favorite genre of music, which is Mario Kart Beach Level core. but he is also just ravenous and curious. And yes, you could say that he is just gobbling up people and sounds and ideas and cultures, but he's listening. Yeah.

You know, and that is just exhilarating, especially in a time when we can just not have something and then all of a sudden on a Saturday night have something. You know, the other record I was listening to a lot last week was the new Rick Ross record. And love Rick Ross. It's a very smart play for him for someone who used to be, who briefly had the crown is the best rapper alive or the most interesting rapper alive. And it's a very like buttoned up back to basics. He's just, you know, just booming over well-chosen, well-curated beats.

But it's already backwards looking. You know, he's basically saying, like, I'll go back to Teflon Don a little bit. I don't know if anyone else. And that's basically been my feeling about hip-hop, you know, in the last year or two years. And I know I'm no longer the most qualified person to make these comments. But every time I hear of an artist, like, I see Shea tweeting about Cousin Stiz. I'm like, okay, I'm going to listen to Cousin' Stiz. And I'm like, that's fine.

It's fine. I'm not even saying it's bad, but it feels provincial, basically, as opposed to something like this, which is just completely eyes and ears open with its arms around the entire world. And is it throttling the things it finds in the world? Maybe. But at least he's going for it. I happen to really enjoy, like, I think that there was some, like, at views, there was, like, basically, like, the, like, turtleneck Drake alone.

the club or home from the club kind of got calcified like he got frozen in carbonite yeah and this just feels like a real melting of that whole persona and even though like there's still like a ton of corny shit on this there's like fun stuff even if it's unintentional fun stuff like the line about like

my side girl has an iPhone 5S with a crack screen he's so good at details like that even if they're ridiculous and I don't know I just really like enjoy I think Drake is a very good collaborator even if he's a vampiric one and I just really enjoy listening to him experiment with all this stuff and it is actually

like you know as you are somebody who who's who's held it down at no one in America more than you has held it down for UK garage you know you what were some of those double CDs used to spend like $49 on god I have I think I have all five volumes of the double disc collection pure garage like I I loved candy-ass UK R&B from the early 2000s. I love it. I love it. And apparently Drake does too, and I do feel justified. Thank you for pointing that out.

I do feel justified. Yeah, and so it's just like, I mean, obviously, this is more grime-influenced than UK garage, but it's part of a continuum. And I enjoy, I like the fact that he's such an open listener. You know, Robert Viller wrote this piece about Spoon last week, and in something, I was trying, I've been thinking a lot about some of the indie rock bands that he mentioned in there, and I was thinking a lot about even the Father John Misty record and some of his interviews, which are very funny. But at the same time, I feel like there's this weird need to talk about, like, the narrative of indie rock,

you know, because, like, there isn't one anymore. So you try to kind of manufacture, not Rob wasn't doing this, but like you try to manufacture. That's what they're trying to do with Father John Misty, where they're just like, now you're a controversial take artist because we don't really want to reckon with. your music at all. And really they shouldn't because Father John Missy, while his album is awesome, pretty much sounds like a Randy Newman record produced by Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev. Producers, you know, like it's like a really nice sound bath of like soft rock with like very, very

acerbic lyrics. I love it, but I understand why it's not, doesn't always feel like essential, you know. This Drake record and the way Drake kind of just dabbles, man, he he manages, you think how long he's managed to make himself relevant. Yeah, it's pretty shocking, but it's also really, I mean, just to go back to like the ears open, and you're talking about indie rock, I'm thinking about like, what do people actually want? You know, I do feel like, and maybe we're partly a blame for this too, where the cultural

conversation has outstripped any actual engagement with the music, certainly on a critical level. And we were talking about this, and I thought Rob's piece was the best by far. about it, about the new Spoon record, Hot Thoughts, which is a really, really good, really worthwhile record that I'm spending a lot of time with and going to keep spending time with. None of the pieces about it gave more than like three sentences to the music. It was all about the new narrative, which is the correct one, which is that Spoon is, you know, the most consistent band of the last 15, 20 years, maybe the best rock band of the last 15, 20 years. And they don't make

bad records and they don't have a story, quote unquote, beyond that. Yeah, here's Rob's line that he has is, how do you withstand the heat rays of ephemeral internet hype and survive when they're longer warming you? How do you stay cool in all senses when your style of music is deemed no longer cool in any sense? You know, I really liked our old Grantland colleague Stephen Hayden's piece, too, that he wrote for Up Rocks, where he's basically like, actually quantify this. Like, how many bands have made seven or eight consecutive great records, and it's shocking how few there are. But let's also talk about what's valuable about music in an exciting, exhilarating, soul-expanding way, separate and apart from a narrative. And one thing that I kept

thinking about was Vampire Weekend, a band that I love and admire a lot. And if you think about just the blizzard of hot takes, which I realize is a little oxymoronic, but maybe because they were, you know, at least the spin cover story, I did proclaim them like the first internet band to break through. So maybe they really bore the run of it for the first time. But all that stuff about them, like, appropriating African music or playing in sandboxes they weren't allowed to play in. But it's like, you know, at least they were listening. You know, there was a, there's a vibrancy. And, and an appetite on those records that really isn't matched by a lot of their peers. And because of that, I think those records continue to exist.

And the thing that's most impressive about the musician as omnivore are the musicians who can skate across all kinds of barriers and still be true to themselves on some level. You know, I think Paul Simon, I think we talked about Chance the Rapper being like that. And I think certainly on this, Drake is like that. Because it's still a Drake record. You know, he's still complaining. about a lot of the same things. He's still drunk texting J-Lo, but he has found this background that

makes his thoughts feel less like proclamations in stone tablets and more like 3 a.m. text, which is, I think, what they're supposed to be. You know, there's that moment in passion fruit, which is maybe the softest song of all time, and God, do I love it, that the first minute and a half, then a selector guy comes on and basically is like, fuck this, I got to rewind the record. Yeah. It feels alive. It feels manipulated. You're a part of it. You know, there are these interludes. There are people sliding in and out of an overall experience, and you're just on this journey that is very, very, it's an entertaining journey to be on. It never goes too far in any one direction. And the other thing, to your point about, like, hating things at first and then loving them,

think about how much we're going to love Blem in a month. I love Blem right now. No, I know, but like, that's going to be on the radio man for a very, very, very long time. And I don't think it's going to get old for a while. Yeah. You talked a little bit... We have to say, don't we have to do? Because... Yeah, I was going to say you were talking about Drake's, like, long-standing relevance. I think we need to rank the Drake records so quick.

I thought we should also, because we didn't talk about the expanse, I thought Zach really wants us to say that Kanye sounds played out on Glow. I just want to say regarding Kanye on Glow, it's too soon. I can't. It's like an X showing up in your Facebook feed or something. Like, I just, I can't hear him right now. It's still too raw. Sorry, Zach.

Okay, really quick, Eddie, Drake Rankings. All right, so you're ranking all his ascents. We're going to call him Solar Records, even some are called mixtapes, right? But we're going to... To be fair, if we were doing the covers that I like the most, more life would be number one. Okay. I love the cover so much.

I look at it a lot. The number one Drake record is Take Care. Probably the worst cover, but the best Drake record. I agree with that. Go back... I mean, when's the last time you listened to that record? Is that a record you go back to a lot? I don't really turn it on very often

but like it doesn't really have any bad songs and it has underground kings and it has it has take care of so and it has the Kendrick track the buried a live interlude that I listen to all the time I mean that record it's also the most successful Drake record

because I think what he and his dude 40 try to do every time you know is to create like I said before this like sealed perfect sonic box and that one they succeed it. The songs are all over the place, but it is completely consistent, even when you have like Jane Sibari Light on the first track. It all makes sense. What's your next one?

Nothing was the same. I think nothing was the same. I definitely underrated when it first came out, but it's a very good record. It has Paris Morton Music 2 on it. It has, it has Wu-Tang Forever. It has language. Yeah. Yeah, it is a very, it is a very vibey record again it starts its weakest moments it trends towards the sort of like self-pity that became the hallmark of later period Drake but I still think it it

in a weird way it feels concise compared to some of the other stuff on this I mean if we're doing this as like a consensus which it sounds like we are but I just want to make a really strong case for if you're reading this as number three I know that I mean frankly like you know thank me later needs to have

it's like kind of its own little position there but in terms of like relistenability, I've definitely like relistened if you're reading this a lot. I think if you're reading this is great. It's my number five, but my number three,

I don't even know if you have on your list. I have what a time to be alive. Are you counting that? Of course, yeah, yeah. I have what a time to be alive just because it's so exhilarating and punchy and again, kind of concise and just it's pretty wild

to be able to do that in the same years if you're reading this and just be like, I'm going to take the other hottest artist and basically just bend what he does into making it sound like something that I do. Okay. It's pretty amazing. Do you have, how far up is,

what do you have then is? So that's three or four? That's three. I have more life at four, but with a bullet. I feel like it's going to grow on me because it's worst moments still tickle the pleasure center.

Do you consider so far gone in the, in this list? I do. I have it near the bottom though. Yeah. I wasn't a big fan at first. Really? I really I really care very much for I'm going in Houston, Atlanta, Vegas, best I ever had, Uptown. Like, those are really good songs.

I think I'm going in as one of the best songs the last 10 years. I do not want to be accused of otherwise, but I guess, yeah, I think it's reflected, it's lower on my list because I was a major skeptic when it came out. Okay. But I have more life at four with a bullet, and I have, if you're reading this at five, and then I've thanked me later, which kind of doesn't work in the way a lot of overhyped debuts don't work. I mean, a lot of it is a little tinny sounding and like a little overly, overly self-important.

But the thing to remember that I have a hard time remembering sometimes is that this record has up all night and miss me. Yes. And so basically fuck most other records because of that. I have views towards the bottom, but I'm very interested in Sean Fennessey's view. is good take, which is, it's been percolating, and I don't know if we're quite debuting that take here on the podcast or breaking that story, but, like, there is some views revisionism out there.

Look, I am sympathetic to that. No one loves to champion the underdog more than me except Slate.com, and, like, you're talking to someone, you know my favorite record of all time is Tusk. And when Tusk came out and people were banging rumors still, they must have just been like, what the fuck? Like, and I understand that. because my appreciation of Tusk came with the benefit of, you know, 25 years later, and so I could just sort of take my time with it and find the good things,

and it's separate apart from the mad rush to find another don't stop on it. But we're still too close to views. It's just, it was, what was it just last year, right? And it's turgid, man. And I think that also people are negative about it because it seemed to suggest an artist completely falling off into a self-important swole dude dancing in a

eternal neck. I just thought that he wasn't coming back from that and he made some pretty smart moves because what he generally does is make smart moves. Yeah. Okay, so I think that's it. Let's talk a little bit about this Amazon pilot season. It's actually for them, it was pretty much

really one show to check for. I mean, they had Oasis, which is a sci-fi show with your boy Richard Madman. Your man, Rob Stark. Yeah, and a show called Budding Prospects, which is about marijuana farming in 1983 in San Francisco, which I didn't get a chance to check out. But the one that you were drawn to and that you told me to watch, and I always follow your directions, is the marvelous Mrs. Maisel from Amy Shervin-Paladino of Gilmore Girls in Bunhead's fame. Listen, Chris. I feel like I got to clear out for you, man.

This is like Iverson waving off George Lynch here. Chris, obviously from my love of Drake, you know how I feel about Jewish supernovas. And this show is great. It's great. And I want to talk about it on two levels. I want to talk about it just as the show. And I think we should also have a conversation about Amazon's pilot season and what it means for the shows that they put on there and the shows they're championing and blah, blah, blah. But just first and foremost, as a show, let me just say that it is absolutely great.

It is a total pleasure. It is so crisp and tight with the writing and the production design and the plotting. I actually watch it twice, and I barely watch anything once. Were you a Gilmore Girls fan or a Bunhead's fan? I'm coming to that. Not really. My wife wanted to watch it, and so I watched it again. And I was even more impressed by it the second time, just purely on a script level,

in a technical level. For people who don't know, so this show is basically, it's set in 1958, and the lead character, Midge Misesle, played by Rachel Brosnahan, who deep, deep, Doug Stamperheads know as Rachel the Hooker that he's stashed in Virginia somewhere. To all my cards heads, yeah. But she, and she plays a young Jewish housewife in 1958 who basically over the course of the pilot

becomes a stand-up comedian. And it's lightly inspired by Joan Rivers and her real-life experiences. And it's made by, as you said, the Gilmore Girls team. And I was not a fan. I admired the cleverness of what they did, but I often found it cloying. Like, you know, the ratatat dialogue, how everything was clever, it just sort of turned me off. It works in this context.

And I don't know whether it's a one-off because it was just an hour-long pilot or whether the setting is better suited to it. I'm not really sure. Or the fact that the lead character is a comedian. So her reaction to things, much like if you watch Pete Holmes on crashing, like the first emotional response to things is always going to be a deflection through comedy. so maybe it works. But I found this show dazzling. It's really fun. It's really entertaining.

It is not like anything else out there currently. I mean, you could sort of squint and say it's set in a madman era, and it's as obsessive about comedy as crashing and as Showtime's upcoming, I'm dying up here. But it's its own thing, especially in terms of the type of woman story that it's telling. And I'm going to wind up this sales pitch to you, because I don't even know what you thought. I'm a little nervous to say that. One of the great joys of television, especially watching a pilot that you had no expectations for, is when you do get to see a new star being born. And you think about John Hamm in the Mad Men pilot.

Think about Rami Malik in Mr. Robot. These are people who had been seen in things before, but you had no idea they could do that. And now you can't imagine them doing anything else. That's how I feel about Rachel Brosnahan had on this show. The show doesn't work without her. And I just think she's spectacular. I was really A lot of Amy Sherman Pallel

You know stuff feels very stagey In a in a charming Way but it's like they're very Like you know if you watch the Gilmore Girls Reboot or you know the more recent Gilmore Girls episodes or even to some extent Bunheads which had these very like elaborate dance sequences But like in terms of the domestic

Staging was just like very much like Two, three characters in a flat You know almost soundstage background the show looks like it costs like $75 million. Like it's so, it's like really, really rich in its production detail. And that was what kind of jumped out at me. I mean, obviously there's like the pitter-patter dialogue and there's the Jewish family life stuff that's very fascinating. But like, I was just like, damn, you guys like rebuilt Gaslight.

You guys rebuilt like a 1950s office. You rebuilt like a 1950s apartment building where you're a. couple is living two floors below their parents. It's amazing. I couldn't believe how much, I mean, Bezos has that coin, man. These guys got the dude who played the serious lawyer on rectify to be Lenny Bruce. Yeah. They got Alex Borstein from Mad TV and from getting on as a, I don't know how to describe her part. She's basically going to be Midge's manager. She's terrific. I was thinking about that, too, in terms of what Amazon did and does, right? Because they have a strange business model in that they're in competition with everyone for the projects

and the scripts that are out there. They want the biggest talent. They landed Matthew Weiner for his next project after Mad Men. The Romanauts, yeah. The Romanobs, which is a very cool idea. It's an anthology series where the stories are unrelated, except the protagonists in each episode believe themselves to be the descendants of the Russian royal family. Very, very Weiner, very highbrow. But they also seem to understand that, you know, and they're killing it on the comedy side because catastrophe and flea bag are there. But they also seem to understand that the best way maybe for them to cut through the clutter is to tell, is to take very, very specific stories that might not otherwise be told on networks and then give them the corporate card, right? I mean, transparent in terms of its casting and its production values, it has never looked anything short of amazing.

And part of that is, of course, because the woman who makes it is a filmmaker. So she knows what she's doing, and she knew how to maximize everything, and she knows the world. But Amy Sherman Palladino directed this pilot, and it looks amazing. And I was really, really excited by it in a way I haven't been in a while, mainly because it doesn't do the things that so many other pilots have to do. I mean, obviously, this is not designated survivor, but there's nothing in this pitch that is just like mind-blowing. It doesn't even make hay in its press materials about the Joan Rivers connection. It's not like they optioned her life story or anything. If you read the few pieces that have been out about the show, Amy Sherman Palladino was just in the Amazon office.

I mean, she's working on more Gilmore Girls for Netflix. She was in the Amazon office, and I think she probably threw this out as something that had interested her, maybe. And they were like, yeah, do that one. So it's a passion project. But sometimes we reap the results when other people get to do their passion projects. It's a, I can't imagine it not going into series. And if you guys have a chance, it's always a little frustrating with these Amazon pilots. I know that, like, when transparent, it was like the first episode and it had tons of people really like,

like fall like fall so hard in love with it and then it was like a nine month wait or whatever it was for the for the series to come but I would definitely check this out if you guys have have a chance and to their credit like I think this is this may be apocryphal at this point but I remember this to some degree being true that that you know it's their pilot season you know they're going to let the people vote on what they're they're going to make I think transparent had some of the lower ratings of audience reaction of that pilot crop but they knew I mean I don't know how much they really listen to people on this I think it's more of a stunt and they know.

And I think that they know how good this thing is. So I would be shocked if they're not already writing the season. But, wait before we go, one other thing I wanted to ask you about it. Shit.

One brain idea. Amazon, this. Fuck. Was there anything else? I don't think so. Did you want to talk about, I mean, we didn't watch the pilot, so. No, I think I just had a question about,

it was definitely Zach Yeah I guess Okay I'll just wrap up by saying this Yeah I hope people check it out I hope they like it I realize it's specific

Because your mileage may vary As to how much you appreciate Deli jokes in the middle of emotional breakdowns My tolerance for that is extremely high I just am thrilled to talk about this Because we watch a lot of TV We watch a lot of TV

Because we like it We watch a lot of TV because we're interested in it We watch a lot of TV because we feel like we should and we have to cover it. It was really nice to watch something that surprised me. I had no idea what I was about to see. And it was purely pleasurable. So I love that being a trend more than ripping the headlines and casting Oscar winners. Absolutely.

We'll be back on Thursday. We'll throw up a watch list to let you guys know what we're going to be talking about. It's great to have Andy back. And we'll talk to you soon. Good job, Bredski. Thanks again to Fusion TVs, the AV Club for sponsoring today's watch episode. Pop Culture is Everywhere. according to non-existent studies, it's 83% of the things you consume even more than oxygen.

At the acclaimed pop culture website, The AV Club, it's all they ever want to talk about, and now they are coming to television. The AV Club, hosted by John Teddy, is a weekly deep dive that illuminates all the fun, strange corners of pop culture. The AV Club airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. Eastern on FusionTV. Visit fusion.net slash where to watch for details.