The Watch - Ep. 22: 'The Watch' Re-up

Episode Date: February 20, 2016

Chris and Andy give their five fleeting opinions for the weekend, zeroing in on the 'Better Call Saul' season premiere (6:00), 'New Girl' (14:00), reaction to the Grammys (19:30), giving 'Vinyl' another shot (29:50), and more music! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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My name is Chris Ryan and with me on the other line, he just found out he missed a very special episode of Mom. It's Andy Greenwald. Yo, I sometimes think I should be watching mom. Yeah, they got mad special episodes. How's and Janney's killing it? You've been in on Sadie Calvano for a long time. When I move, you know how when you're young and you don't have, you don't have that access to that crate and barrel level of financing?

Not even CB2. Your furniture is largely consisting of the boxes that other furniture came in. You know, so you've got like, Okay, right. Remember because, like, when you're in your 20s, and, like, I remember my idea of wall art was a air hockey table that we were, like, that's ironic that we're not using it on the floor. We're putting it on the wall. But I remember that. I thought that was quite ironic.

So you would just put stuff on top of other stuff and create furniture out of like, oh, I'm just going to put this here. Allison Janie does that was Emmys. She's just got an Ottoman of Emmys. And she puts her feet up. it's like she gets acupressure from the sharp angel wings you know what I mean she just like keep circulation moving right there in the calf muscle it's hard to argue that she doesn't deserve all of them but can I just say as we get into this this is our you know this is our show is usually tightly scripted apparently our Friday show a little baggier

a little bag year um I I know it's earlier where you are on the west coast but I am caffeine deficient enough that I forgot how the story started midway through it when you said air hockey table I like blacked out and I was like I guess we're going to talk about furniture this week and I thought we could just all talk about that one IKEA chair that every single person born between 1975 and 1989 had for a period in their time and I wonder if there was like a limited number of those single frame IKEA chairs that just rotated yeah you had to just return it to the store and then they would give it to another 23 year old with a pavement CD exactly those are the days, man. Andy, this is the watch re-up. This is supposed to be our more compact and quick

reads version of the show. You can subscribe to the watch on the Channel 33 podcast feed, which you will find on iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud. And we are also part of the great umbrella that is the benevolent Bill Simmons Media Group, but we are part of also a new website called The Ringer. Hey, congratulations on that, buddy. Yeah, thank you. We announced this week the name. It was meant with much fanfare. It was really lovely to see everybody happy about

the site. And we're going to be doing some really cool stuff. You can sign up. If you go to the ringer.com, you can sign up for a newsletter which we're going to start hopefully in a few weeks like in March or something like that. And we'll try to hitch up like three times a week with written stuff and some visual aspect.

Probably like short films by Stanley Kubrick that have never been released. So you can look forward to Probably. You, by the way, you, young man, you were, you were tweeting from the ringer. I was with Bill. It's at Ringer, right? You can follow us at Ringer on Twitter, at Ringer on Instagram, Ringer on Facebook. Just get after us, man, on all the platforms.

It was just, it was just nice to have a little bit of the gang back together. First of all, you are the Lord of Peach. I feel like we haven't talked about that on the podcast. You are the self-recllaimed Lord of Peach. Lords never worry. yesterday started getting some tweets from at ringer and i was like boy that's fun it's like how style i recognize some of this humor i wonder who's doing this

and then i saw a revenant gif and i was like i just hollered at you on the cheat chat and i was like i know who's behind this one i've become so predictable a couple things a couple things um i just want to say publicly i'd like to apologize that when i was i was out in the office last week. I saw Team Ringer right before launch. It's a very warm, fuzzy place. It's great. It's great to see everyone. A lot of old, friendly faces and young faces, like young Tate. But, you know, you guys showed me the logo and everything. And Bill showed me the logo for the Ringer. And I was like,

that looks good. I'm so happy you chose Eagles Kelly Green. Yeah. Which I don't know what that says more about my ignorance about the world or about my own vanity. That was like, clearly they chose. A tribute to rich coteite that's what i'm saying it's like boy you know of all the players that i thought would be honored here i i really really didn't think it was randle cunningham but this is this is right this is what this website should be um last thing about the ringer before we move on because i think i hope people subscribe i think it's going to be great you're uh what's your title executive at this new thing yeah that is a dope title my man sure that's so cool yeah don't you think yeah uh it I feel like the role is still being defined, I think.

You know, it's like, I don't know what that means. I think it's like easily, I think probably the biggest, like the greatest analog would be like offensive coordinator, you know? It's like I dial up a few plays, but ultimately it's not my responsibility. So you're the rich cotite of the ringers. That's exactly who I am. Oh, my God. You'll be a valued member of the team, but should you ever get the top chair? Oh, and 16.

One in 15. We usually, for these re-ups... Can I get a title, by the way? Can we start negotiating that? Yeah, sure. What do you actually want to be? I don't know. I mean, I got to look in my dream closet and see what I want to be.

But anyway, but in all seriousness, people have been asking, I am a happy adjacent team member right now. I guess I'm on practice squad, podcast squad. Ringer Adjase, as the guys from Chee Pete would say. It feels good. It feels good even to just be riding those waves, those Wax B waves coming off of that office. All right, let's get into this re-up.

So usually we do a five, this is like a five bullet point podcast. We usually do, we've done recommendations, we've done winners and losers, and today it's going to be five opinions, which are not that much different than anything else. But it's just five opinions from the week, and we're going to start with Better Call Saul. Andy, what is your opinion about the first episode about Call Saul? It was aired on Monday. It went up against the Grammy, so it got kind of lost in the shuffle there. We wanted to make sure we touched on the first episode since we are.

big fans that show. I think it's interesting. That's kind of my opinion. I almost, I mean, we talked about it on Monday. I'd seen the episode in advance. And then I had to double check that it had actually aired. And I'm not saying that's because, like, you know, I always have my hand on the seismograph of culture. And I, and I maybe was worried that I had missed it.

But that it is interesting that the show felt a little bit inessential in its second season. And I think that's a worry for a show that is essentially, I know I'm repeating that word, spackle to something that was essential. So let me rephrase that. Like, the worst case scenario for Better Call Saul in a lot of ways. Well, the worst case scenario is that it's a bad show. It's not.

It's a really, really, really good show. Right. The second worst case scenario is that it becomes kind of an afterthought. It's like, oh, that's a fun little adventure in the desert with Jimmy and the boys. When you're working with people and you're, you know, when you're around people as talented as Vince Gilligan who co-created the show and Peter Gould, who co-created the show and Bob Odenk and that terrific cast and the writer's room,

which is essentially the later season Breaking Bad Writers Room, just reborn, you want them to be going full guns, right? You want the full blast of their talents week to week. And what was interesting to me about this episode, not just in the reception to it, but the episode itself, was that it was really, really fine.

You know, it seemed to walk back a lot of the saw progress that had been gained in the first season. Now, I'd argue that there was probably a good reason for that. These guys know how to do pacing, and they know what they've got. And it's very possible that they went hard last season being like, well, we don't know if this is going to work with the Jimmy stuff. We might need to hit the fast forward button. I think the response to last season may have taught them that they don't need to do that. So this was a step backwards.

What I'm saying is probably the right move, but it definitely felt for a first episode a little bit like a step backwards. Um, there's, the show opens, the season two opens with, uh, Bob Odenkirk talking with Ed Begley Jr. and Rea C. Horn and a couple of other characters play lawyers. And they're talking about, uh, the Sandpiper case. And then, and then they're also talking about this new case that Bob Odenk's, uh, Jimmy is supposed to be working on. And I have to be honest, like, I just had no idea what they were talking about. Um, I think, well, they were talking about the sandpiper case. Yeah. I gotcha. I don't remember what the sandpiper, um, I don't remember what the same. Are you out on Sandpiper?

I just want to be clear. Like, let's... I sold all my Sandpiper stock back in January. What are you talking about? Axe told me to go short on Sandpiper. Oh, you got to listen to Axe. Look, no, my point is that there's not... This is a show that is obviously going to take its time to get wherever it's going.

But interestingly enough, if... I think that Better Call Saul is... And maybe this is because I've been watching a lot of old X-Files, but I can't think of a better show, better suited to do that Monster of the Week mythology or mythology episode and have that push and pull of one week it's just going to be Jimmy working a case, and then the next week it's going to be the Breaking Bad mythology episode. And since Vince Gilligan comes from the X-Files school, I'm sort of, I wonder whether or not that will eventually be the plan,

because obviously they've decided to do the show. AMC is happy with the show. This show does pretty well. and people like it. So they're going to want it to go on for several years. And as they do that accordion of chronology of getting it to or racing towards or pumping the brakes towards Breaking Bad. And maybe even running parallel to Breaking Bad because like you mentioned last week or this earlier this week, you know, it's entirely possible that this show could go forward in time past Breaking Bad. As it began.

I mean, pre-Sanpiper. I know you were pretty fixated on Sandpiper. So that was the thing is that it's sort of this episode felt like a mid-scentiping. season episode to me where I'm supposed to like remember all this stuff it started in Cinebun again so we're headed there eventually we're headed toward the sort of like you know dark black and white vision of scorched

Americana and he is and he writes SG is here he wrote SG is here inside of that dumpster room so obviously at that point he has decided like he is identifying himself as Saul Goodman in that in that time period even then but I just felt like right you know usually with a first episode of a season, you want to do something that grabs somebody. And even though, I guess this was, and in some ways it's a parallel to Breaking Bad because Jimmy has this other life as a con man, and he is slowly deciding to let other people in on that

life, like the Ria Seahorn's character. And he shows her what it's like the thrill of conning an asshole wealth management guy. But I just felt like there was a lot of stuff going on that I was like, oh yeah, do I have to go back and watch the first season or read a bunch of recaps of the first season so I can get my Sam Piper Cliff Notes? I think it's a pretty interesting point you're making. And I agree with you. I think that this show would be suited to that sort of X-Files breakdown of standalones and

overarching mythology. I wonder if that's something they even discussed. My guess is everyone would have come down against doing it primarily because of where we are now in television watching in 2016, which is TV is generally, and it's not just, I I would say a show coming from the makers of Breaking Bad is going to come with some expectation that it's going to move, that it's going to be propulsive. So I think they would definitely worry from getting past that or stepping away from that. But I just think in general, they are making this show for the binge. You know, they're airing it weekly, but they're making it for the binge, and they want to service that type of audience.

And so that's, that answer is two points you made. I think that's why they're not going to do case of the week episodes for the most part. And I think it also answers why this didn't feel particularly momentous. Because when this hits Netflix and season one just hit Netflix, when season two of Better Call Saul hits Netflix and people who haven't watched any of it, they will watch episode eight and then they will just go right into episode nine. And they'll be like, basically they'll be like, I know what Sandpiper is. Right.

I've just spent eight hours dreaming about Sandpiper. So I'm not really that concerned by it. But I think you've hit on something, you know, there's still these sort of janky parts of the machine where the way we're watching watching TV isn't quite suited to the way a lot of people are making it. And the year between seasons of Better Call Salt really felt interminable and caused you to forget, dare I say, the details of the Sandpiper case, which I know last year you were carrying around just binders.

I know. I had like all my Kevin Spacey seven journals on it. Have you spent as much time this year as you did last year on these Sandpiper Reddit threads? Sandpiper Wiki. Well, Sandpiper Reddit, I got kicked off a couple of times. just for foul language and also slander. But Sam Piper Wiki is a good resource, and I encourage people to check out.

They have all the original documents. You are well known as an elder care troll of the highest order. That's what it was about. Okay, Andy, let's... I'm sorry to... Wait, before we move on, can we just say one thing, though? Like, obviously we're fans of the show, and there is no creative team that deserves more confidence in faith

in terms of being able to put together an entertaining series of episodes than this one. but I just think we have to say you know it's February you guys are in new offices which means we have a brand new blank wall for our end of the year pods and I just feel like

Ria Seahorn is creeping up on that wall I just feel like she's so good on this show and you and I are both big fans of her and you know the moments that we're dragging in this season premiere not dragging when she's around she is a delight

and I'm very excited for more out they're not dragging when she's around Classy broad. Good. Okay. Second opinion, here's one. This is going to sound a little bizarre. Lamarne Morris should be the new girl.

Whoa. I mean, I like the way you didn't even set it up. Yeah. You are like better call Saul too mentioning Sandpiper with Ed Begley Jr. No preface. That's an opinion. So New Girl is back. And New Girl is back.

It's been back for a few weeks. But now it is in the second week of they had one or two intervie. media episodes and now we were in the second week or so of Megan Fox sort of replacing Zoe Deschional. I'm talking about this show as if it is London spy. It's not that complicated. You probably, I mean, you may or may not have been sticking with New Girl. I happen to really enjoy the odd sitcom here and there. But here's what's happening. It's very funny right now. And it's very funny because they are kind of giving the keys to Lamour Morris. And this past episode was basically him and Megan Fox for a lot of it, and it was really, really good.

And I kind of was thinking, you know, this is already a show about, it's called the new girl, but Zoe Deschnell's character is not new. She's also not on the show right now. And I was thinking about how more comedies should just completely, they should have incidents that, like, force them to completely rethink the batting order of their show. And it would be great if Lamourne Morris just got the rest of this season. And it was built around him. And then maybe next season is Jake Johnson. And I know that this show is not going to go on forever.

But it would be great if more comedies would show the kind of adaptability that new girl is. Because I actually do feel like I am watching a new show, which is what's always the hard part about sitcoms. It's like everybody falls into their role. And it's like Kramer comes in the door and Phoebe plays a song. And that's kind of the thing. And no matter how inventive comedy gets, I think there are some things that falls back on when it comes to sitcoms. I've been really, really enjoying this season. Let's think about, I mean, it's a great point because the thing about sitcoms is that the name itself, the situation is what starts these shows.

It's what you have to establish. But it is the least important part of any successful sitcom. Now, I'm not, I don't mean to say that the bar and cheers was unimportant. It was a beautiful set, the burnished wood, the back office, the stairs that went nowhere. But the point is, the real show, the real thing that sitcoms showcase, good established longer running. comes is they establish the talents in the writer's room and they showcase the chemistry of the people in front of the

camera. And when you have those things working on such a high level as they are in New Girl's season, what are we, season five? It doesn't matter what they're doing or talking about. That's irrelevant at this point. Okay, so they're all in the loft, fine. That's just the stage set that they're playing in.

And I really like the show this year a lot because it is let go of any vestige of what it originally was. literally in the fact that the star is on maternity leave and that's fine. But they've also mostly just like George Clooney and Gravity, sorry for the spoilers, just let go of planet Earth. You know what I mean?

They're just drifting way past reality here. Classic Greenwald spoiler. It is a goofy, goofy cartoon with some of the best TV comedians. And I don't mean, that sounds pejorative. I mean that very sincerely and very genuinely. We've seen together in a cast in a long time. Like I know you're a big LeMorn guy. I think LeMorn's been amazing when just freed.

But I think our man, good friend of the watch, Jake E.J. He's just murder spree killing it this year. Well, it's interesting. Last season they did a thing where Lamorn's character, Winston, was definitely insane. You know, I felt like they were like, this guy is like a crazy cap person. He's not that much more, like, swagged out this season. But now I feel like they've made the Jake Johnson character a much more like a homeless person. basically, and they're using that for comedic effect.

It's just a sitcom. You can do all sorts of stuff. I'm just saying, like, you guys aren't trying to find out why they're on the island. Just have fun. There was a runner in this week's episode. I think the episode's called Whig, where... A runner? Is that some industry speech?

Oh. It's a little industry talk. It's when we're talking about Clooney and Gravity. Right. Classic sandpiper gag right there. That's a runner in this podcast. You figured it out. Just the thing where Nick Miller, Jake's character, is building a tree house in his room, but they haven't told Schmidt about the treehouse.

And it's like the third joke that's beneath the other two jokes for a five-minute scene that's about something else. And it's so funny. And, you know, seeing the writers that they have on that show and they still have like a murder's row behind the scenes, just going goofballs like that is a lot of fun. And that's how we're simple guys, simple pleasures. You know, lollipops in our mouths. Yeah. New girl on the TV. A special episode of Mom on the DVR.

Andy, what is your opinion that you wanted to share with me about the Grammys? I hate it when you set me up like that. You are the worst beach volleyball partner. I'm the Karch Kariahe podcast, son. You're the, this is us on the beach right now. You're like, looking at the people across from us and you're like, my man here is going to spike this ball. You're not going to be able to get this back.

Are you ready? Boy, we'd be so bad at beach volleyball. No, I was just saying, like, did you watch the Grammys? Did you watch that show? Did. Did you like it? Parts of it. Right.

Like the, the Kendrick and the Hamilton part. That's the part. That was the part where I was watching it. And, like, Kendrick's, Kendrick Lamar's performance on the Grammys was jaw-dropping. It was amazing. It was totally exhilarating. And it's like, oh, that's why you have a word. ceremonies for music. So people who are, you know, supernova talents can have the biggest stage and do that.

Similarly, you know, you and I are big hamheads. The only hamhead involved in this enterprise bigger than us is Juliet Lidman. And I think that she will hold us to the promise of doing a full Tony cast when the Tony's come around this summer. The Skyler Sisters will be united, yeah. Sure to be the highest rated episode of Channel 33 to date. The Hamilton thing also was amazing, where it's this thing that it's, It's just like, oh, these people are the best doing this thing that is so electric and we get to watch it on the biggest stage. But then, to follow it up, we had, what was it, the Hollywood vampires? It was like Johnny Depp and Alice Cooper or something.

And it's just like, it was a, Chris, you and I like rock and roll music. We do. We like talking about it. We've big up to a lot of it. I feel very excited that Ryan Adams has just apparently completed a 65 song album that he's announcing on Instagram. these things matter to me, right? Yeah. But I'm starting to worry that in terms of just touching that third rail of culture,

rock and roll is about as irrelevant as Baroque music. Like, I don't know. It just seems to be using a different vocabulary and language, specifically at this moment. And it is not one that people are that fluent in anymore. It feels like a performed mausoleum. type thing where what Kendrick was doing what the Hamilton show is doing what Kanye's been doing for the last few weeks musically I don't even I don't even mean on Twitter it's just like that's

the lingua franco of the moment in a way that is really thrilling and I was just trying to think like is what would it even sound like for a rock band to tap back into that right and to feel culturally relevant on a grand scale what would that even what would that even mean well so what's it's funny that you're talking about this because I have been thinking about this in relation to vinyl because vinyl is something that espouses the sort of timeless,

according to them in the 70s, the timeless power of a very pure version of rock and roll that's like fast, loose, out of control, young, volumes up. The kind of rock and roll you can cop by the quarter ounce

on Mercer Street and just pour out onto your car's review mirror, if you will. If you wanted to do that. And then, you know, I was wondering, I was wondering the same thing.

And I was wondering, is this, if Richie Finestra had heard the first 30 seconds of Father Stretch My Hands Part 1, is that what he's talking about? Is when they say, if Metro Boomer don't trust you, I'm going to shoot you and the beat drops? Is that basically going to see the New York dolls in 1973 now? I made the same face. So, yeah, I agree with you. Like, I mean, if your avatars for rock and roll are Coldplay, the foo fighters, and the 1975. Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp.

Yeah, I can see why you think it was pretty stale. I think that there's, like, exciting stuff happening on a much lower level. It's just not as part of the popular consciousness now. I just mean, like, could it ever get back on that main stage? There's plenty of rock and roll that I like. I mean, I'm still listening to the Beach Lying album all the time. But the face that Richie Finestra made when an entire building fell on him, I make that face every time I get to the part in Famous when,

when, you know, when Bam Bam starts in with Swiss adlebing in the background. I make that face. I, like, wept on the subway when the chance verse on ultralight beam started yesterday. Maybe that's more, maybe that's more about me being in a shaky place, but that's where I'm at with music. And that's thrilling. And I was thinking, like, who is even the person who can get up on stage and do that? I was thinking about when, like, just in terms of the creativity and the voraciousness of Life of Pablo.

And we, I promise, we're not doing another Kanye pod right now, though we were. will at some point. I was thinking about, like, Radiohead 15 years ago when the chances they were taking felt so daring. But even then, what did it mean to be daring? It meant Tom York was finding different ways to express his extreme antidonia. And he was being like, guess what? I'm not going to listen to, I'm not, my references here aren't Led Zeppelin, they're

Aotecker. That's on a much smaller, more introverted level, if you know what I mean. that's still moving inwards. I think that part of the problem is for rock getting bigger still seems to be the inherited stadium swagger stuff, which is, you know, which is on display at Madam Tussot's Hollywood vampires. Yeah, you're touching it. I think you're touching on the central part in other genres of music in rap, for instance,

the greatest and the most popular rapper can also be the most relevant and the most exciting and the most sonically interesting and the most like artistically, like, satisfying. And in Rock, I think increasingly, it's like when you ask for go bigger, go harder, go better, go wider, you wind up with you two copycats or you two. And that's ultimately going to have diminishing returns for like, you know, someone who's looking for a personal connection with an artist. The radio hit thing is really interesting because I think when I think about what Radiohead did in 99 or whenever OK computer came out and how that was sort of like a spit, that's gone on to be a very. defining kind of move is to get very serious and very dark and very epic. And I know that the strokes and the yeah yeah, yeah, is and the Arctic monkeys and all these bands that have sort of risen up, like gotten up to the kind of almost to the surface of

breaking through to a huge, huge mainstream, the white stripes. Like there have been ecstatic moments of rock music over the last 15 years, but I still think that the ultimate problem is that it's the same problem we were talking about when we were in high school and college, where it's like the bigger you get, the sort of more dulled your music feels in rock, whereas in rap, it feels like the bigger you get, the more exciting it gets. I think that's an interesting point. I think it has to do size. I mean, it's like the bigger you get in rock, you become, you play stadiums and you

become an aircraft carrier, which means that, you know, everyone sees you coming, but you can't turn that quickly. And the thing about hip-hop, particularly right now, it's just more nimble. And we're living in a culture that really privileges that sort of dexterity and speed. I mean, that's how we process everything. That's how quickly it comes at us. That's how hot our takes are. And, you know, the fact that some of the bands you mentioned, like White Stripes or something,

I'm not even going to say anything negative, especially about those early records. But the highlights of those records for me were like a quick burst of how it made you feel. I don't really have anything to say about what Jack White had to say, right? Where if you look at the formation video or you look at what Kendrick was talking about. Or you listen to what Kanye is doing messily and noisily. Like, he has a lot to say, and he has a lot to say about February 2016. And he can do it in a big way.

And I think that we're hitting on is the disconnect between those two elements. Like if I heard a chiming you two-like guitar run, I would get pretty pumped up. But, you know, I've been to the city of blinding lights. You know what I mean? I've been there. I've put on my sunglasses. Andy, before we keep going, I want to tell you a little bit about our presenting sponsor, Uber. We all have those times when we need a little extra money and, well, I've got a

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What Sunday night show, in your opinion, should people really be looking forward to? There's a bunch now. We've got billions walking dead. and vinyl. And then we've also, this weekend, togetherness girls coming back and over the weekend, Judd Apatow and Leslie Afrin or Arfin?

Arfin. Leslie Arfin's love with Julian Jacobs is going to be on Netflix. So what of all those shows are you looking forward to the most? I am a big togetherness guy. I really love the first season. I think the second season,

I mean, I've only just started it. I think it seems pretty strong. so far. I think this all say, I mean, on Monday when we do the watch, we'll talk about the return of girls and togetherness. And I, you know, I hope you check out love. I love Gillian Jacobs. I think, but I have to say that the premise of it, which is just pure apatow, you know, I know it didn't originate with him, but dorky guy with, you know, falls in love with problematic, super hot woman, like that, we have definitely seen those stories before.

So I'm interested to see if they can break away from the paradigm. But if you like, really, really, really good acting, Amanda Pete on togetherness is next level. And her performance this Sunday's episode is so terrific. It is so completely alive that, you know, it's sometimes I feel like

when I talk about acting, it's like being like, oh, that guitar solo really shredded. You know, it seems sort of showy or technical in a way that sometimes seems the opposite of how I like to process or appreciate or even just enjoy filmed entertainment. But sometimes it

can be, as it is with, there's a scene between Amanda Pete and Steve Zissus, who's the other star of togetherness on Sunday's episode near the end, that it just crackles. Like, I can't, it feels so intimate. You're like, I can't believe the cameras were on and I can't believe we're watching this, and it's thrilling. And not intimate, like in a Judd Apatow, like, oh, it's cringy. It's just, these people are really doing the damn thing right now. It's a little bit like dunk contest at the end of a croquet match, and it's pretty exciting. My recommendation for this week is going to be a little bit of surprising. Watch the second episode of Vinyl. It is very, very good.

Everything that we were saying earlier, like, this was too long. There was too much Scorsese. It is all pomp and it's all sizzling no stake. And these insert shots of this and cutaway shots to Bo Didley playing by a pool and wild flashbacks that don't seem to really connect to the present. A lot of that stuff all of a sudden coalesces. And also, there's elements of what Scorsese does, like the quick cutting, the tracking shots,

the sort of dolly shots that come in on a conversation and give everything a bit of a point of emphasis. I read a thing in the Hollywood Reporter about how vinyl was supposed to be a three-hour movie, that that was what Scorsese had been going around to the studios with for 10 years and it had been Disney and Paramount and Paramount finally found a deal with it with HBO. In retrospect, it almost feels like Scorsese made a two-hour movie

and then was like, now you guys take it and see what you want to do with it. And this is, first of all, I know people are going to not believe me, but this episode is really funny. It's got a lot more depth to the secondary characters, and it is,

Bobby Kandavalli's performance is freed from the sort of anxiety of influence of past Scorsese protagonists and actually starts to come into his own. I don't still know whether or not this show is going to ultimately you know be everything that somebody like me wants it to be somebody who

like really like loves the culture and music of the 70s and is interesting in New York at that time period and is interesting in the record business at that time period but it is this one was really good and I thought also you know it's just it moved much faster which I think is something we're going to

hit on next week which is just like these 57 minute shows man when you get up around five of them a week you got to watch or you want to watch it's it's a drag dog I got really excited when I fired up that together in a screener and saw 25 minutes beckoning to me. I got excited when I saw the Better Call Saul was 46 minutes. I watched an hour and a half of Survivor yesterday.

Yeah, I mean, it's like there's only 24 hours in the day. Just to jump on what you were saying, and we should note, two things happened since we recorded. The ratings for vinyl came out, and they were really poor, surprisingly poor. You know, only like 700,000 people checked it out on Sunday night, which is, I think, the lowest premiere. for an HBO premiere in a while, HBO responded to that by announcing they had already renewed it for second season, which is the right call in general. They're not worried about opening night numbers.

They're worried about building a catalog of stuff that's good and give it a chance. But what you're touching on here, I think, is something that is generally overlooked as we continue to sort of glide through this prestige golden era of television, which is, that's great that Martin Scorsese wanted to direct a two-hour pilot episode of vinyl that is essentially like a minor Barton Scorsese movie. The trick in all TV shows, whether they are, you know, ultra-prestige productions on HBO or Netflix, or whether they, or IFC or Sundance, or whether they are on a broadcast network, is that eventually they have to get down to the work of being TV shows.

And that's not always a bad thing. Like, wonderful things can come from that. And, you know, we talk constantly about Mad Men saying that that's what kept it afloat, even when the big picture ideas surrounding an episode or a season got pretty nihilistic or heady, it was still kind of an office comedy with people that you liked and that you knew and you wanted to continue to get to know emotionally and develop with week after week year after year. The trick often for these very high-profile launches is how do you settle back down? And, you know, Scorsese leaves.

I'm sure he looks at the scripts when he has time, but Tim Van Patton, who does a great job directing TV, directs the second episode of it. The writer's room gets to work. years were spent on the pilot, weeks are spent on the second episode. And that in itself can be interesting. The example I always use for the contrary is I think girls struggled. I think when the story of girls the show is written, to my mind, the biggest struggle, the biggest problem with it or mark against it will always be that it never quite figured out how to settle into being a TV show. It had this very autourist sensibility behind it, very specific point of view, very disparate characters and takes on those characters.

But then it's like, okay, it's season three, these four women that we build a show around kind of aren't friends. And one of them is maybe one of their cousins. Why are they spending time together? You know, we fell in love with Adam Driver, but how do we keep him in the show? Like, that's the business of TV. And the very great shows are the ones that can figure out how to do the big picture, big, artistic, almost cinematic statements while maintaining the quotidian day-to-day grind of making it a TV show. And so that I think, I'm just glad you're pointing out the, I'm glad you're pivoting towards vinyl in a more positive way. because this is when it gets interesting

and this is when the work begins. Yeah, man. So before we take off, want to deliver one more opinion, I have one, a music-based one, just a recommendation more honestly. We're just calling it an opinion.

If people get a chance, they should check out this band Pine Grove. They just put out their first, like, kind of long player called Long Player. What is that? Am I, I, I'm Richard Fenestra? They put out their first official album is called Cardinal. They have a compilation that was before that.

I would describe them as a, a combination of like kind of early death cab with Whiskey Town, but that doesn't quite do it justice. There's also elements of like, you know, 90s emo and like Wilco in there and built a spill, a bunch of stuff. I think they're from Jersey, and there's a song called Then Again that's really, really good. They're not necessarily going to be playing the Super Bowl in five years, I can't imagine, but they are really enjoyable. And I found myself listening to that record as as much as anything this week except for Pablo. I like that song a lot too.

And when you said they might be from Jersey, they're from Jersey, even if they're not from Jersey. Even if they're not from Jersey. It's a much broader descriptor. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff out there right now. I'm putting together a playlist for Spotify, but I would just say, I feel like I teased this a few weeks ago, but I forgot to just come out and say how much I love the new primal scream single.

This is a band that meant a lot to us. Even as... It is. Why the snort? I always get the snort. I'm snorting because we were like, I'm snorting because that is a band that meant a lot to us. And you're talking about whether or not bands can matter now or rock music can make that connection with people.

And we're talking about a band that was like a really big deal to us in the early 2000s. It's true. And the Scottish band collaborated with a singer-songwriter who we both really think a lot of Sky Ferreira. And they made this sort of electric murder ballad called Where the Light Gets in. And you can listen to it. I think it's on Spotify. So it's Primal Scream and Sky Ferreira where the light gets in. And I just think sometimes there are these moments, and this is how you can talk about music on more than one level.

Let's step back from the main stage. Let's go to the side stage. Let's go to the basement underneath the collapse Mercer Art Center and be like, sometimes I just feel like my iTunes collection became sentient and just started crossbreeding and created a song that was made just for me between these two artists I really like. And this is it where the light gets in. I love that song. All right, man. Great talking to you. We're going to be back on Monday.

we'll be talking billions vinyl and more. Have a good weekend. You too, man. Great job, Beretsky. Great job, Janie. Thanks again to our presenting sponsor today. Uber. We all have those times when we need a little extra money.

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