The Watch - Ep. 20: 'The Watch'

Episode Date: February 16, 2016

Andy and Chris talk about the first episode of 'Vinyl,' Louis C.K.'s 'Horace and Pete,' the return of 'Better Call Saul,' and the sort-of release of Kanye's 'The Life of Pablo.' Learn more abou...t your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the easiest way to create a beautiful website, blog, or online store for you and your ideas. Squarespace features an elegant interface, beautiful templates, and an incredible 24-7 customer support. Start building your website today at Squarespace.com and enter promo code BSPN at checkout to get 10% off. Squarespace. You should. Channel 33 is also brought to you by Seekkeek, our presenting sponsor, and our favorite way to buy and sell tickets to sporting events, concerts, and whatever else you want to go to. With the Seekek Mobile app, you can quickly and easily buy tickets with just two taps and have your tickets delivered straight to your phone to enter the event. If you can't make the event, Seekek now lets you transfer your tickets to your friends or post tickets for sale, all from your phone. As a special for Channel 33 listeners, Seekek is offering $20 back off your first purchase with the code BSPN.
Starting point is 00:00:47 To get $20 back off your first Seatgeek purchase, download the Seekek app today and enter promo code BSPN. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk. Now, hello, and welcome to The Watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed. My name is Chris Ryan, and on the other line. He's got golden ears, a silver tongue, and brass balls. It's Andy Greenwald! They called at the Olympic podium of cliche days.
Starting point is 00:01:16 That's the triple frontier of record industry, man. What's up, Andy? Chris, listen, I got to start this way. You know, we had a lot of fun out in the last week. We recorded two shows. most of them were about Kanye West, and this one is going to be a little bit about Kanye West, too. We're going to put it at the end,
Starting point is 00:01:35 because thanks to everyone who had been indulging us. We have a lot of TV talk. But I just want to say to you, it was freezing here over the weekend, and we got a little bit of snow, but not as much snow as there was to be found on Martin Scorsese's vinyl. You know, I was a little surprised to find cocaine
Starting point is 00:01:51 in a Martin Scorsese show, but there it was. It was weird. It was weird. You know, and again, I thought the addition of Italian-American gangster and sort of overriding dynamic about how men have trouble negotiating home life with business interests.
Starting point is 00:02:06 This was kind of left field turn for my man, Marty. It was surprised. Real quick, we are going to talk, obviously, about Vinyl, which is HBO's new drama on Sunday nights. We're going to talk a little bit about the return of Better Call Saul to AMC. And we're going to talk a little bit about Louis C.K.'s direct-to-the-people show
Starting point is 00:02:23 Horace and Pete, and we'll wrap it up a little bit of Life of Pablo recapping. finally reading an obituary for Doug from Title who sadly leapt off a cliff in Rhode Island somewhere but Andy let's start with vinyl two hours of pure adrenaline
Starting point is 00:02:42 that's a lot of TV man I got to say like it seems like we're coming up in a negative foot and I don't think that's a way don't mind the snappy pilot I don't mind like you know a crisp 42 minutes, but get in, get out.
Starting point is 00:03:03 This was long, and it was asked, I felt like it was asking a lot of us in a lot of ways. It was not a I actually watched it chopped up into two segments, which may have affected my viewers, but. To two rails, maybe? You chopped it up into two rails.
Starting point is 00:03:17 Two medium-sized lines for myself to get through. Yeah, so I feel like the best way to come into this is to say, it seems like either of us were particularly surprised by the show, because in many ways, we knew what the show was from the minute it was announced, and there wasn't that much in this that was, it came as a surprise, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But were you, I mean, were you sitting on your couch like Nicholas Cage and bringing
Starting point is 00:03:42 you out the dead? Still, I'm sure, your favorite Martin's Cassidy picture. Was that like, were you just, we chasing the dragon on the show? Where were you? Okay, so the subject matter of the show is made for me. I'm fascinated by 70s, New York, and the cultural, explosion that came out of that city at that time. I'm interested, I'm deeply interested in the music industry and the history of the music industry and the mechanations of the music industry.
Starting point is 00:04:09 And that's, I love Martin Scorsese movies. So all the stuff is right there for us to love it. I liked it. I did not love it. And I know that Pete there, it has gotten some heat because I think that vinyl is a show that is put into a war like six years ago if vinyl comes out. I think people are much more excited about it than they are now just the feeling of when he's doing the voiceover in the beginning of the show
Starting point is 00:04:38 and he's sort of really laying out like I am an unreliable narrator and a difficult genius I think that that kind of has just become so wrote for a lot of people and people are so familiar with that voice of a narrator
Starting point is 00:04:54 as a protagonist that it has an uphill battle to fight. Despite the fact that they have such great photography and great sets and great sense of time and place, I feel like the fact that it's a show about another difficult man makes it a little bit, you know, samey to a lot of what we've had on television for the last couple years.
Starting point is 00:05:16 He definitely feels in its reach and its point of view very, very familiar for TV, but it's kind of maybe worth to taking a moment here to say that in a way, Scorsese invented television anti-hero, right? I mean, because all the things that we're talking about is being very rote for television are kind of, and we joke about this on the intro, but this is what Scorsese has always done. And you can draw a pretty clear line from the protese movies that are there. Not just the shows that he directly influenced, right? Yeah, I mean, and this is a man at war with himself out of step at the time.
Starting point is 00:06:03 And Richie is very much like, what if Henry Hill was starring in After Hours? But one of the things was, I wish that it had the drugs are a huge part of this. into a two-day bender. Yeah. Ought to feel creepier than it did, you know, because it honestly, maybe this was the TV of it, or maybe this was our expectations of the rhythm of these types of shows.
Starting point is 00:06:52 ...orienting when he walked in. Ultimately, he was just, you know, repeating the my comedian, you mentioned a pretty interesting actor. Okay, he was the best thing in pilot, too. That is slanderous. What a slanderous take to say that Andrew Dice Clay was better than
Starting point is 00:07:19 Kate Blanchett and Blue Jasmine? Do you actually believe that? Listen, our listeners, I do, and our listeners know, this is what we're known for. The parents, Winter, a lot of talent, and a lot of talent. It's pushing past the frame. Yeah, well, one thing I wanted to talk about a little bit here is just the, and we've brought this up on the show a couple of times over the last 18 months, basically from True Detective Season 1 through the Nick and the idea of directors, you know, more visually accomplished
Starting point is 00:08:37 directors or more visually distinctive directors getting involved in television. and to what extent television remains a writer's medium. And this, I think that one of the tensions you could feel in vinyl was a, you know, the pull of a Martin Scorsese film and the push of this needs to set up all of our characters and all of our conflicts. And so Scorsese, you could tell, had wanted to try and capture what music, or what role music can play in a person's life. So that's why probably the best thing. single moment in the entire pilot, and it's a pretty high moment, is when Bobby Cunavale and Ray
Starting point is 00:09:16 Romano are talking about Blackboard Jungle, and they talk about the snare clap, right? And that's that feeling where you can, Scorsese is so good at identifying how popular culture can give somebody a sense of their own personality or can shape someone's personality. But then at the same time And there are a few Or in life when characters speak the same code You know when they suddenly realize that they I mean these are best friends in the show
Starting point is 00:09:58 When we watch them and we're like Oh they speak the same language They're they're tuned into the same cultural frequency It's kind of exciting in the same way It is when you meet someone who likes the same stuff that you do Yeah exactly and that those guys are Already sort of out of touch with what's going on I mean the artists that they have now
Starting point is 00:10:13 I mean that's sort of the cool thing It's an interesting choice because this isn't a label that's at the cutting edge of music today. This is a label that's largely falling away, right? Like they're making, they haven't found a new artist. They're passing on Abba. You know, I mean, Richie comes in and he hears Abba and he's like, they're going to be selling stadiums in two years, but everybody there is eating deli sandwiches and just being like, look at these Swedish people, like whatever. And it's interesting to find them, you know, what was a really transitional period for music anyway. And it's the end of Ziggy Starta. Slade is really big. There's a lot of pomp,
Starting point is 00:10:48 circumstance to music Zeppelin is obviously the sort of biggest band in the world and then there's this sound coming from the streets that Richie by the end of by the end of the pilot becomes so connected with that he is literally underneath the streets when it's over you know and yeah so it's it's
Starting point is 00:11:10 that there are parts of it that made me really really excited and I do wonder whether or not with something like this if one of its calling cards which as Martin Scorsese presents, is actually it's going to get better once Martin Scorsese is out of the way. The number one, if I could make a critique of the show, which I think I'm going to take that right.
Starting point is 00:11:35 And you know what? It's not even fair to call the critique. It's really more, I'm sort of positive. This is a show about one of the most exciting, strange thing to me is itself makes it an old person's show. And what I mean is so much of TV is laying down the stakes and the fence. And like, okay, you could do anything, but here's what we're going to do.
Starting point is 00:12:19 it's not Matt Weiner. I want to make a show about these people in this live at one. And last year when we were talking about Hald and Catch Fire and IMP, I was saying the mistake between the person, the mistake they made in the first thing, the right world, the way to go. Yeah, right. As opposed to Jamie, who's Juno Temple's character, finding basically the next version of the Stooges at the Coventry Club or the Mercer Arts Center, wherever she first sees them, that's exactly what, you're exactly right.
Starting point is 00:13:11 Like, why go with a person who, who has already had their moment in the sun trying to regain their crown when you could have a younger person who is trying to convince these older people that there's a new sound out there. And it gives you potentially access that generally fuels television drama and certainly fuels Corsese's best work.
Starting point is 00:13:43 Right. So that's a reason to it. Romano. He's good. Everybody does love Raymond now. Yeah. This thing we have Seinfeld money coming off of the sitcom and then was like,
Starting point is 00:14:11 I think I just want to see if I could be an actor now. Right. And he's done parenthood. Good on parenthood. Good on parenthood. really good on the show and has a sort of unique aspect. I really like watching him. But the thing that the show allows,
Starting point is 00:14:23 the thing that they bought themselves motto to be like, to come into the show with a firm point of view as to basically be like, you know, this kind of music, rhythm and views, what I mean? It allows them to come into a binary of music as opposed to a pure excitement of the people like Juno Temple's character who probably haven't quite gotten about who's making the show
Starting point is 00:14:59 and something about who, especially considering there are so many more interesting I mean you can see season four of the show coming with the invention of hip-hop you know what I mean like just the fact that he went he's for hip-hop in the first episode that was the one thing I was super out of there's a scene in this show
Starting point is 00:15:23 the first episode where it's a perfect example of like I think you could call it like Scorsese and the immoral cool you know where basically something deeply immoral is happening and because of the world Way Scorsese films it and presents it, it feels really cool.
Starting point is 00:15:41 And in this one, it's Richie's speech about recoupable costs for artists. When the guys from Polygram are like, you don't make any money. And he's like, technically, you are right. But really, we always make money because we basically bill everything against the artist's earnings. So even if they sell a million records, they don't actually make a million dollars. That million dollars is owed back to the company for everything that we've paid for. And usually what happens is these scenes involve a lot of whip pans and something from Side D of Exile on Main Street playing. And this happens in Wolf of Wall Street.
Starting point is 00:16:12 And this happens of Goodfellas where they're just, nobody can find the cocaine lining of like a really terrible act like Scorsese. And it was interesting though because like as a growing up like those are some of my favorite moments in all of movies. You know what I mean? like watching Henry Hill explain how they would rob people or like run bookies or even how they robbed an idle wild airport or whatever it was before it was LaGuardia or JFK. Those are like these iconic scenes in my mind. And then what was weird watching it last night because I was just like these guys are just talking about absolutely screwing other people out of like their dreams. Maybe it's because like I just we know so many we've seen. so many artists come up and just...
Starting point is 00:17:02 You never worked at it... You never worked at a living... Right, exactly. I mean, we know the, like, the stories of guys who are, like, on their... Like, they owe a record label five more albums, and, like, the label refuses to put anything they do out or whatever. I mean, I do think that, obviously, we're meant to consider Richie not only a unreliable narrator, but also not a particularly good person.
Starting point is 00:17:31 It's not like I'm confused about that. I wonder how much of the show is going to be about his salvation and how much of it will be about his downfall or if it's just going to exist in the middle. I'm, I guess this is a long way of saying that obviously this show touched on so much stuff that I'm interested in that I'm going to continue to watch it. And I do think there's a lot of really cool stuff like Ray Romano. I am interested in Olivia Wilde's Andy Warhol background. I'm interested in the invention of punk, but also going back and finding out what happened to Lester Grimes. it's there's a lot of stuff going on yeah it saw drinking buddies
Starting point is 00:18:10 which is a movie I really loved years ago thanks to the Olivia Wilde is a much more interesting actor than you would have pretty make it bums to me obviously the more whole stuff is you know that's that good thing but make the co-lead the wife who's at home being like don't you dare drink but I thought that was an above like that was a pretty good scene though I thought the way that she talked
Starting point is 00:18:39 to him that was a good scene and similarly Cannavalli he's such an interesting actor that dude like you know people describe some actors as they're like heady actors. This dude is all muscle, like all muscle in you. I don't even mean like his physicality. I just mean everything. He makes a full
Starting point is 00:18:58 line of dialogue. Yeah. And sometimes like on Boardwalk Empire, I thought his meter was turned up too high. He was having fun and the show itself wasn't having fun and so it was kind of disconnect. He felt every part of this. Again, I can't imagine if they had cast that part differently. Like,
Starting point is 00:19:18 would I even been interested in any of it? You know, like, would, yeah, but just as a final note, we possibly high bar. But that Winer wasn't a lot about a world that he never experienced. Nick Jagger or Martin's first baby, not only were they alive and it almost necessarily if you can make great art something. Yeah, it's funny. It's, there's a moment in the show where Jamie Juno Temple's character, I think she says, she's telling Richie about going to see the nasty bits and she was like they were killing it.
Starting point is 00:20:45 and I was like, did people say they were killing it then? Like, I feel like people only started saying that like five years ago. Maybe they did, but it was like a weird moment where I couldn't tell whether that was like a line that was thrown in from the writer's room to kind of keep it, keep it of like give people of like a window into it from a contemporary perspective. But what you're saying about being. I would put Gino Temple, the guy who likes her in the ANR department. Yeah, Clark. I thought the only forced line was when he was like, bro, did you see the picture of pizza rat? I put on Snapchat this morning.
Starting point is 00:21:22 I thought that one was kind of a towel. He's like, dude, did you see what title did with what of Pablo? But your point is, I like your point about whether, you know, these guys are making a show about when they were a time that they lived through. One thing that's really interesting about as they get closer and closer to the invention of punk rock is that that's where you really start to see a schism from interlocutors and people who really live it. you know punk rock was very much an ethos and it was a lifestyle and people were living in these flop houses on st marks and people were living basically hand to mouth and playing shows that were you know attended by guy you know getting bottles thrown at them and i don't mic jagger it wasn't dealing with that because because mc jagger and martin scorzi were not probably really shooting
Starting point is 00:22:10 with people in the gym when they were like doing heroin in on st mark's you know in in tenement building in Alphabet cities. Oh, you mean the next generation? Yeah, or just, I mean, I think that we're in this weird transition in terms of 1973 from like glam and arena rock when it starts to get to a little bit more of a street level kind of sound. I'll be fascinated to see what they decide to do with it. Before we go on, Andy, I want to tell you a little bit about our sponsor today.
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Starting point is 00:23:33 your first purchase and to show your support for Channel 33. We thank Squarespace for the support of Channel 33 Squarespace. You should. One thing that, so we've been talking about this idea of you know, the cinematic influence on this show and obviously, like, having somebody like Scorsese direct it, and it does feel like a Martin Scorsese movie for better and for worse. But the other show we wanted to talk about
Starting point is 00:23:57 this week, Hors and P is a decidedly, decidedly an act of the television arts. But this show is super old, too. Yeah. You know, and I thought, in terms of the sensibility, and frankly, it's interested in engaging with anything even remotely. In that, it actually makes
Starting point is 00:24:22 Proletico combo review with final. Yeah, so we're talking about Horace and Pete, which Louis C.K. sort of surprised everybody with about two weeks ago by putting up on his website for five bucks. You could just download an episode. Each episode will come with a certain price tag. I think one's $3, then another one's like four or five bucks again.
Starting point is 00:24:42 He's put out a couple. I've seen the first one, Andy's seen the first one. We haven't gotten to the future, the ones after that. But, you know, it's a Cheers style multi-camp. sitcom shot on basically one set. And it's sort of a hybrid between like a piece of theater and an old school television, it's almost like a television play, like the kind they used to have at the invention of television, at the outset of television.
Starting point is 00:25:09 What did you think of this, what did you think of this show? I do want to preface it by saying people are, people, I've heard chatter that the third episode features an amazing performance on my opinion, but the thought is possible. Yeah. I found it, you know, let me go macro just to say that, like, one of the reasons why I really, really like and admire, and just even within the world of TV, is that he is chasing his own muse, and sometimes that chase is to the detriment of the audience, and he doesn't care. And then he runs in a different direction and I'm with him. There is no show that is, there aren't as many shows that can be as rewarding, but you sort of have to be willing to take the wheat, the chap with the week, you know. If, you know, if he did an interview and he was like, well, I wanted to do this myself because no one was fun.
Starting point is 00:26:17 it, you kind of want to be like, so shit. Like, there's a pretty strong reason for that. Mark Zuckerberg, fund my multi-camps-it-com about racist-ass, proclanates. You got Zuckerberg on the phone and was like, give you what you want, whatever you want. That's what I'm here for. He's like, it's really what I want most.
Starting point is 00:26:44 Like, Kanye, I am your dude. I have the open checkbook. I have a bitch in my hand. What can I write it out for? What am I funding? He's like, I just have always wanted to see Alan Aldo, say the C words. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:54 And he's like, done. Two words. Racist cheers. I mean, it's kind of amazing watching these, essentially, as he said, it's shot like a sitcom. Yeah. But there's no lap track and there's no music. Right.
Starting point is 00:27:30 I was like, what do you think about the Super Bowl that's coming up? Now, exactly. So, in my mind, it does suddenly become valid because it's like, well, what we're calling it TV, we have all these different delivery streams. If you get the art in front of people, this is what he wants to do with it. Yeah, it's not quite dramatic enough to be moving in that way, and it's certainly not very funny. So I guess it's supposed to be a slice of humanity, but it felt like a stageful of straw men. I mean, every single person was sort of there to be like, here's what somebody who was voting for Trump might say.
Starting point is 00:28:22 And here's what a really nasty drunk woman at the end of the bar might say. But it's like none of the characters actually felt very real to me, with the exception of Horace. Pete? There's nothing inherently in sight. Right. You know, if you just sort of have all these people open themselves up and just reveal who they are. And, you know, don't be upset about it. I had a cousin once. She was a nice fat girl.
Starting point is 00:28:58 And it's like, oh, it's shocking. And they're being mean, but they're kind of being real. And we're dealing with this, except we're not. Everyone's just sort of putting something on the table and looking at it. Right. And it's not. There's no extra layer to it. And, you know, in fact, some of what I'm saying, criticizing, that sensibility has trickled
Starting point is 00:29:13 But what he often brings to Louis is a kind of inventiveness, you know, in where he will play with filmmaking styles and cutting and editing funny. Yeah, right. No. He certainly still does that. He doesn't stand-up show. It's just that this is not nearly as rewarding. Well, on the one hand, you're like, I don't want to be like clown, go ahead and be funny.
Starting point is 00:30:07 And on the other hand, I don't want to just be like, Louis C.K., the all-time genius has done it again by releasing like a not quite funny sitcom that's not a sitcom. And I think that there's a little bit where this is not a dissimilar to what I was thing about vinyl, which is if this had happened a few years ago, I would think, oh, wow, Louis C.K is really upending all of our, the expectations you have about a multi-camera sitcom by taking away the laughter and what's there if you take away the laughter. And there is a little bit of like, what if she was white to it? Like, it was like, what if there was no laughter? You know,
Starting point is 00:30:40 it's like, that's, that's your dude. You're good thing that, dude. But it's, I don't know. I just didn't really connect with me, and I guess it's just sort of difficult. Like you're saying, it's like two hours of vinyl, it's like a lot of hours of Louie there. It's like there's a lot, there's a lot of demands on your eyeballs. Let me make that point, though. We often come at it that way, be like, well, there's just so much TV and there's so much biolistically and in terms of voice. But let's think about it from a different perspective, which is to say, I don't know if you could find
Starting point is 00:31:17 two shows with more extreme, extremely opposite and investment. Vinyl has been in the works for probably close to 10 years from the moment that like the Mick Jagger like, you know, put down there. They're not looking. Do me a show. Yeah, right. Exactly. I was just like, yeah, yeah, let's lock it out.
Starting point is 00:31:48 And when they actually did this, and just, you know, the tens of millions of dollars that HBO spent on getting every detail right and that enormous cast and having everything looks so burnished and good. So when we see Kay, probably like on December 2nd being like, oh, Steve Bessmi's number is burning a hole in my iPhone. Like let's do something with it. Right. So when you think about that, I mean, you can make the case who's making better use of
Starting point is 00:32:12 the pipe for both is as it always ran. Absolutely. That's really hard. You're right. It is really hard to sort of be great at this thing. And one group of people who are going to try and continue to be great is the crowd over a Better Call Saul. They have a new season starting this evening.
Starting point is 00:32:33 It's Monday, so it's coming out Monday night up against the Grammys. So alternative programming there for you. But, Andy, I haven't seen the new season at all yet. Have you checked it out? What can people expect? Yeah, I've watched the first two. I think people who like the first season can expect to keep liking this show. I mean, one of the things that we really love,
Starting point is 00:32:59 dependable Better Call Saul was, even in it. I think we had a lot of, about the validity of the project or how they could keep this thing going or even why they were doing it. But pretty quickly, it proved itself to be one of the more nimble shows on the drama, to comedy. Now, and it was worth noting before we recorded, both of us were like, stick with us. Now, obviously it was a year ago.
Starting point is 00:33:28 I think the first season premiered in January. That's a long gap in the season. But it definitely didn't like, other than the you broke my boy part from the Mike episode, and we spent a lot of nights in September just missing our gang. Underrate that. You know, I don't want to sell that short because the thing about the show is
Starting point is 00:33:51 you turn on an hour of better call Saul and you're like, I'm in good hands. But I like these people and I like where they're taking me. And more importantly, I trust as much as we talk about like demographics or like burnished resumes or strong trust. I mean, it's like TV is becoming door-to-door salesman or something. Like, how do you actually get an adorable?
Starting point is 00:34:11 Brand loyalty. Yeah. Last season ended, people who don't remember. Yeah, right. Because they realize they maybe had like a really good show on their hands, right? And maybe we don't need to just like turn the TV show. When is the soon as possible we can have Aaron Paul join us? Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:02 I think that part of that soft reset happens in the parts of the fans' minds too. I remember when Bitter Caw came on my sort of concern or one of the reasons why I maybe wasn't dying for it to happen was that I couldn't really see where the show would go other than to the beginning of Breaking Bad. Yeah. I didn't know where the, where the end point for that show would be. And if your entire thing is just building up to a thing that people already love, that's a, that's a difficult road to the accordion sort of like
Starting point is 00:35:34 of time of chronology really does affect this show it's like how how much are they going to stretch out or squeeze events to go towards this endpoint or sort of slow like you're saying pump the brakes and weirdly like with the second season I'm already back to like so what was the show about again are we just right this is just going up to the point where like he meets Gus right like and in my I know that as soon as we get to episode three of this show
Starting point is 00:35:59 I'd be like I don't care I really like this world I really like these supporting characters. I love Ria Seahorn. I love all these people who are in the show. But from 30,000 feet up when you're just thinking about it, it does seem sort of like, what is the show doing again? What if I were to tell you that Ed Begley Jr. joins the cast here. Are you more in?
Starting point is 00:36:20 Sure. I love Begley. Yeah, but let's then let's just say this, that, you know, the things that we eat praise on Vince Gilling for and Peter Gould got as well, sort of immaculate planning, or at least the real trick of breaking bad was that we all walked away from it being like it was no, I don't think it was any more
Starting point is 00:36:42 plans than most TV shows. Sure. The planning in this show, in the transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman, it's the way. Right. So you were alluding to, you know, about, okay, do we just have to,
Starting point is 00:37:03 is this not working, do we pump the gas as quickly as we can and get to air and Paul Cammyon get out of here? Or have we built a show that could sustain for a while at Jimmy McGill? first moments of the premiere, they showed, it begins with Saul the post-scrake.
Starting point is 00:37:19 Yeah. It begins post-breaking bad. So the thing that the show can always do if and when it needs to is it can pull the emergency release and become a sequel. I'm sure that that's nothing. AMC can't wait for him to be working in a Cinnabon.
Starting point is 00:37:33 It's just... I would have... First of all, the brand integration is strong with that one. That was, you know. What if I told you I was going to make an Alexander Payne movie set it as Sinabon.
Starting point is 00:37:47 Take it on TV, take an Atlantic premise, and then make them cops. Riddle you one thing. Could he also be with a cop? Could he solve crimes? So what I'm saying is... One other note. What if he were white? And a third note.
Starting point is 00:38:22 What if he worked in a safe way? Like, my point is, take anything that you want that networks already love, that third heat, that special thoughts would be branded to grace. Yeah, right. So seriously, though, like, if you could make someone be the head. of CSI New Orleans night manager they've ever walked through the doors TV. Speaking of which, go to Best Buy for all your needs. We should wrap things up here by talking about the sort of central topic of our lives
Starting point is 00:38:57 for the last couple of weeks, which is the actual sort of release of Life of Pablo, which may or may not be considered officially done now. I came in this morning and we were kind of talking about it. And then our buddy Sean Fantasy was just like, yeah, and they're still working on it. there's still going to be like a different version of it once it gets to whatever the next, you know, non-etherial, like in the ether version of it that's on title that people can't get, but are getting apparently charged for. Yeah, like, my feeling is that the version of the album we have now is the one that's locked in title control room with Doug. Yeah. Like Doug at this point is wearing his tie around his head like a band.
Starting point is 00:39:35 I feel like the beta blockers and the Benzos and the 19 cups of coffee are now. fully at war with each other. I feel like Doug is like Brad Pitt at the beginning of a spy game where he's just like chewing gum and about to do like paddles on himself. I think that's exactly right. I think before the week is over,
Starting point is 00:39:58 Brad Pitt will be like Mrs. Brad Pitt at the end of seven. But I think we're a little bit I think that's getting ahead of ourselves. The last song on Life of Pablo is called What's in the Box. Here's what's the interesting. We're at the moment now
Starting point is 00:40:16 And we've talked about this, I think, in relationship to other records, where the anticipation, maybe not yet, this still isn't a done deal. And maybe it'll never be. Maybe this is... Right. And I can't tell right now. But I have always trusted him in whatever the wildness of his vicious is communicating it.
Starting point is 00:41:19 Okay, well, he's just, I prefer a short album to do. I thought that it was... And so now when we hear this version, radically unified, to go... Yeah. And there's the other stuff. Now, I don't want to live in a world where we don't have 30 hours. Some dude was telling you about a Korean movie. to go into this anecdote a little bit deeper?
Starting point is 00:42:24 Not really. I was waiting inside trying to buy the easy boots. You were running into the Mercer Art Center? I was running out of it. Dog, you've seen this Korean movie. Someone is just like, okay, so here are the tastes of your life. You can review them, but you have to take one moment. I'm probably blushing this, but this is living the second act of vinyl at the moment
Starting point is 00:42:50 at the time you're telling me this. So this is a Korean version of Albert Brooks is defending your life? first of all glad you mentioned that I've always loved that movie I've always wanted to try the sushi in his version of heaven but you pick the moment in your life
Starting point is 00:43:05 that you want to live in forever and not that you live it like a loop but the way you felt at that moment you could just sort of dissipate into the emotional ether of that when the drums come in on 30 hours that's all I'm saying but
Starting point is 00:43:20 I tell I feel when the sister Nancy comes in on famous me too when sister Nancy that is the most glorious musical moment of this year the full stop, maybe since the Charlie Wilson break on down too. The album is full of stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:43:36 And there's even, you know, the little concise statement that he almost in spite of himself managed to make. That's my short thing. So the rapping on Famous kind of reminds me very much of I'm Good Era Kanye of just like the teddy bear Kanye. And it made me sort of start to think
Starting point is 00:44:00 of this record as a new version of his early mixtapes. Like Get Well Soon. And I'm, good. And it also took me back to the time. And I know other people have mentioned this. John Cameronica mentioned this in the Times and Jason mentioned this on Pitchfork, where it's, Kanye is like an amazing producer. And I don't mean producer like he's a great beat maker or, or anything in particular about the production cycle because Hudson Mohawk did work on this record. And, you know, Mike Dean is
Starting point is 00:44:26 playing a lot of instruments on this record. And lots of people have lots of hands on these beats. But Kanye is an incredible producer in the traditional sense of the person who is in charge with the final product and making sure everybody is in their lane and all those lanes go towards the right on ramp to heaven and that's where he takes you and when everything works out and he has chance the rapper the dream kirk franklin and kelly price on his song and you're like how did nobody ever think to do that before that is incredible and the same thing happens with famous where you're like he just took the very the most perfect part of what riana can do and put it on a song and it's gorgeous i can't but it's okay we can just let's just wrap it up
Starting point is 00:45:09 We can't hear her anymore. I thought that the moment of, I mean, Kanye or a level producer, there's no question that he is an egomaniac. There's no question that he might be disturbed or his once and hopefully future friend Rhymefest has been alluding to, like maybe off his, you cannot watch that and not be like, and not just be moved by the joy he takes in collaboration, from building the stage. So from the moment when he just walks away from his own incredible song and performance
Starting point is 00:46:30 and I apologize to you all of the Johnny trombone project. You're like Bobby saxophone, what is this? Look, you're going to be a style. You're just got to get a different name. Reach for the hot cake and you get burned. Okay? Like, that was on me.
Starting point is 00:46:51 I was wrong about that. But you watch that and you just always want pop music to give me that feeling where anything is possible. Where the guy you think is just like one of the dudes who hangs out and reads like ball main catalogs for him. Oh, that's actually a 54-year-old elder bard wearing a white on denim jacket
Starting point is 00:47:11 and singing tooth I guess the adventure is not over Yeah I mean I'm sure that Easy seasons tend to run for a little bit longer than just an album I mean whether or not
Starting point is 00:47:25 he'll take this on tour what that tour will be like given the sort of you know frankly the state that he's in right now he's definitely like we joked it
Starting point is 00:47:36 we didn't mean a joke but I mean we were talking about like Kanye definitely feels a little bit untethered right now and maybe that's all just like hype for the album and he's just like this i'm just going to say whatever comes into my mind to pump things up or maybe there's some other things to play there but
Starting point is 00:47:51 it'll be kind of fascinating to see how how how much longer he can sustain this kind of like always on the three ring circus you know because it's it's draining it's draining for anyone I mean this up there I don't even mean this in the sense which is like of his mental chemistry but there's something very carry-math of him about this yeah yeah yeah yeah um But the thing about him, it was interesting that he was tweeting the thing about being like a $53 million with a bunch of faces up it and then all the strings lead back to Doug from title. Oh, exactly.
Starting point is 00:48:24 Because the strings are wrapped around the bed and his neck in the picture. It was interesting, you know, we were tweeting about John Fennessee last week. We were just talking about the connie stuff and we were talking about questions we may have about them. And one of the questions that came up is like, for real, though, like, how does this guy make money other than being married to a Kardashian? And I actually, you know, don't really care about looking at a tent. I have to remark on the fact that, like, he does put the money where the mouth is.
Starting point is 00:48:53 Like, he made a video game about his mother climbing into heaven, you know? Like, he brought all those people onto the Saturday Night Live space. Yeah. And bought them that thing out there. That's what he feels is worth doing. There is a different world where Kanye, you know, is the executive producer of Empire. It is making crazy money from just making beats of that or collaborating with Katie Perry or whomever. because you can get hundreds of thousand dollars
Starting point is 00:49:19 just for walking into the studio. He's not doing that. He's paying those hundreds of thousands of dollars to like sister Nancy's relative for taking one line from her 30-year-old song and laying it over a Taylor's... And turning it into like a chord progression, yeah. It's just in terms of being a fan of pop culture and pop music,
Starting point is 00:49:39 it is as good as a guess. Well, because this album is never going to be finished, we will never be finished talking about it, but we will probably have a watch re-up later this week to talk about the first episode of Better Call Saul, maybe to recap London Spy and do some recommendations. As always, you can subscribe to the watch on the Channel 33 Podcast 3.
Starting point is 00:49:57 You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud. Andy, good to talk to you as always. I'll talk to you on Thursday, man. Great, Tom Bransky.

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