The Watch - Ep. 65: 'Stranger Things' Re-up

Episode Date: August 11, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald recap the latest 'Mr. Robot' and go in-depth on the cultural significance of 'Stranger Things' (19:25). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to the watch ReUp. My name is Chris Ryan, and I'm an editor at the Ringer.com. And joining me on the other line. Yo, that's Alf! It's Andy Greenwald! Yo, can I say something that probably is a little bit damning, but I'm going to say it anyway?

Sure. No Alph slander, though. Don't slander elf. No, no. The opposite. I am a big elf. head from way back. Chris, you know, obviously we're going to talk about

last night's Mr. Robot, which was pretty wild, pretty dope. I caught Paul Fusco's name in the credits, and I was like, oh, Alph's stepping up to the plate? Like, Alf got the call? Wait, you can just spot Fusco like that?

Like, what does he do? Is he Alps' voice? I was looking for Fusco. He's the creator of Alf. Nice. He's a puppeteer. Yeah. he's, he's, yeah, man, that's Alf right there. And I think the fact that I knew that means I probably should be working in and around television, like that, or I should be committed. Yeah.

Like, I think that that's, it's one of the other. Or you can be just like anybody who grew up in the 80s and watched Alf. You don't have to, you don't have to, like give your life over to something. Here's what I thought, though, Chris. And I'm really excited to talk about this episode with you. And then we're going to go all in on Stranger Things because I finished. I cannot wait to talk about the. entirety of the series.

Speaking of the 80s, I thought maybe that, you know, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, basically that Sam Smael was going to give Fusco some of that bono look, you know what I mean? Just like a little, just a little bit of that love. Like, I didn't think it was going to be Alf. I thought maybe he would be puppeteering something else. So you think Sam S. Mel was sitting around one day being like, what about Fusco though? Yeah. Yeah.

I was like, I thought maybe he was going to cast Fusco as just like, you know, like the mom part, you know, like not the exciting part, but like, throw, basically throw him a bone. Like, blown out. But I feel like we got to get into this. We got to get into this robot. Yeah, let's talk about Mr. Robot. I think that that was an uncommon move to have the showrunner, the creator of a show, say on Twitter, make sure you see, you watch the commercials tonight, guys.

Like, that's what Sam Esmel did. On Wednesday afternoon, I think he was like, you know, everybody, if you're going to stream it, like, I really recommend you watching the DVR or the live version of the show because of what we do. We'll see some stuff, and it wound up being that the first half of the show was largely set or was a take on 80 sitcoms and that even the commercials featured vintage USA network ads and even an old Bud Light ad and a couple of sort of faux vintage eCorp ads. I loved it. I loved all of it. I love, first of all, let me jump in by saying, I think in. general, more networks would be down with their showrunners tweeting, hey, guys, please

watch the ads. So I don't think he was way out on a limb with that one. That was definitely not like ghosts in the machine stuff. But this is a, this episode was, I think, an enormous, it was obviously a shot of adrenaline creatively for the season and for the show. But I think it was also, I hope, a shot of reassurance that this is still the show. show that people fell in love with because this was so balls to the wall playful and crazy and inspired and fun and fun top to bottom as you're saying like the opening the you know not just

the way that the that the that the that it was shot so that it had that video grainy look but the the USA promos and the whole spirit of thing the laugh track the outfits I mean every dude our dude um you know the president from house of cards the guy who plays gideon that guy's got to be the best sport in the universe. Yeah. Just to come back for one day to get run over? Yeah. To get run over by Alf.

So I want TV shows and art to do these things. I want that. And what made me particularly, the other thing that I particularly loved about it was that it was a sign once again that Sam S.Male is aware that when he is filming, like the season so far we've talked about how it's been a little bit slow. It's been a little bit involved. It's been very much in Elliott's head, and it's been very dark, very dark in terms of the subject matter and in terms of the framing and even literally dark in terms of the lighting. He knows that these are aesthetic choices. This is not his vision of what things should look like. These are the aesthetic choices he is making for the story he was telling.

And what we saw last night for the first 15 minutes was as much a celebration of the 80s aesthetic as it was as it was a comment on the aesthetic of his show the rest of the time. Do you know what I mean? Okay. I think it was very self-aware and very nice. enjoyable because it was so self-aware. I enjoy the episode and I definitely feel like I agree with you that it was, it had the feel of a train getting back on the tracks, for sure. But just to play devil's advocate, let me throw this out there, okay? Yeah, yeah. What was it about? Because I feel like that is part of what, yeah, no, just, I think what people are saying about the show, no, I think what the, here's

criticism of the show is that I'm starting to lose the true north of what this is. And I think that part of it is because so much of the dialogue takes place, so much of the conversation in the show takes place within one character's brain. And that the dialogue in those scenes between Christian Slater and Romney Malik are so laden with, like, they don't have like a fixed point in a real world. They're like talking about feelings and about your emotional scars that people have.

And I don't feel like I remember what the show is about sometimes when those scenes, like you can get lost, you don't know where the shore is. And then to get to the end of this episode where there's such like a beautifully acted and well-written and incredibly real scene between two characters.

And I actually, to his, to Sam's credit, I was like, I wonder if that's a real memory. You know, I don't know whether that's like the perfect version. The flashback scene? Yeah. Where they, and then the smash cut to black. Like, I thought that was awesome. I was like, this is great.

But sometimes in the murk of like, you know, the truth is too hard. So we have to tell ourselves lies. And this deeper and deeper and deeper into Elliott's mind and the things that he creates. And whether or not that was a gift to him from his father that his father wanted to take him. away from the pain and he has this ability to pull Elliot out of reality and put him into these sort of imagined safe rooms in his mind, these panic rooms almost. But it does get a little murky in terms of the audience's connection to what is centrally happening and why we're watching the show.

I think that's a fair point. And first of all, I should mention, do you know about the original cut of this episode where it didn't end with that smash cut? I don't. where it ended with Christian Slater's character saying, you know, anything you want first thing that pops into your mind, you can name my store. And then Elliot was like, what about Best Buy?

Young Elliot goes, no, young Elliot goes, software, et cetera. And then he goes. CompuCer? Sorry, he just came to my head. He's like, GameStop. And then Christmas Slater's like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea.

Executive producer, it's MSML, exactly. And then it's like, and then Elliot really wakes up and he's the heir to the compuser. fortune. His father's name wasn't Alderson, right? It was a... The show is actually called Mr. Staples. It's an amazing alternate reality.

Yeah. I think you're making a very good point, but I think that it's often worth taking a step back, if possible, when it comes to this show, because in the same way that it's possible to sort of lose yourself, to lose oneself in the trees and not the forest, in this idea that, you remember, we talked about some of the criticism of it, of the show, early in the season and the end of last season of people saying the politics were kind of simplistic, but of course that was never really the point. You know, it really wasn't just about overthrowing or anarchy because it's more about how

impossible that really is. I really appreciated that so much of this season is about illusions of control and the trap of stories. And it's possible to watch that flashback scene with young Elliott and his actually living father and think of it as a very, very sweet thing. But it's also possible to look at it through the prism of his father being a controlling and potentially abusive in some ways, if not physically. We don't really know what happened when he went out the window, but abusive emotionally. Because what he's telling him is, I guess, on some level, intended to comfort Elliot.

But it's not comforting in any way, right? Because he tells him, I'm sick. I lost my job, but that's your secret. It's our secret now. So it's a burden he's giving him first and foremost. And then secondly, he says, I'll always be with you. I'll always be there for you a second after he said, more or less, that he's probably going to die. I don't know if these are kindnesses.

And I like the fact that the scene plays on two levels so that we can sort of feel how Elliot obviously has mental issues that remain. I think this is probably good, not specifically spelled out or diagnosed in the show. But we begin to understand why he would seek solace in fiction. And whether that fiction is an old episode of elf or a ghost image of his father or this illusion of himself as a superhero, we start to sort of, we can see the makings of that in addition to learning something essential about the history of these people. Can I just do some very basic service? Can I rely on you for some very basic service journalism right here? Yeah, that's what I'm here for. Okay.

They do call you Mr. Vox. Just what is? They don't. They do. Go on. Mr. Staples, here's the thing. Let me just, I want to figure out where we are in this show right now, plot-wise, in the most basic terms. Last season, Elliot and his sister perform a hack on a huge corporation that brings the financial markets like to a standstill.

Cripples, like wipes out personal debt. There's obviously a lot that comes out of that. this season Elliot is living in his mother's house meets this guy who basically is on the dark net selling AK-47s and human beings and he's like

can you do a little bit of server maintenance for me but don't look and Elliot looks and he gets his ass kicked and now he's like in a kind of trance state where he needs to be on Alf to escape the pain of his beating they were aided in this first

hack by somebody group called the Dark Army, which is from China, right? Right. Which is led by B.D. Wong? It certainly seems to be that way, although... Bidi Wang is also a minister within the Chinese government. Yes. And it seems like the hack was almost done in...

With the knowledge of the person in charge of E-Corp? Yes. Okay. We're certainly led to believe that the two people who would seem to be... would seem to have a lot to lose because of... of this hack are also directly involved in it. Right. And then Angela, who works at E-Corp now, is helping them perform another hack that will finally change the world forever.

No, Angela's helping them hack the FBI. Hack the FBI. They need to find out how much the FBI knows about them. Gotcha. And how close they are to being arrested or not. Right. Okay. And Angela agreed to do it because she found out that her dopey ex-boyfriend had probably

spoken to the FBI. Right. And then what is the deal with what the dark army is doing now? Like, why are they... I think the thing you need to remember as you try to unpack all this is that Elf eats cats. And he eats cats because he's not from our planet. His planet is called Melmac. That's good.

That's good. You know what? I think that it's really easy in this day and age with, like, Twitter and Snapchat, to forget about Melmack. Yeah, I know. I don't want you to lose sight of the big, big global picture, interstellar picture, really. By the way, interstellar would have been a lot better if Alph was in it. I'm just going to say if it was Alph. If they opened up the bag and instead of Matt Damon, it was Alph.

Yeah. How much better would that movie have been? Think about how many movies you could say that about. Yeah. I mean, this is obviously, this is what the Fuscos have been arguing in Hollywood for the last 30 years. If Benichiel Deltoro finally gets to the hacienda and he gets to the dinner table in Sicario and it's Alf eating dinner. wearing a Hawaiian shirt I'm just saying

this is what the Fuscos have been arguing for 30 years they're like what about Alf though what about those Fuscoes though what is anyway your question is what is the dark army actually yeah I just I think I was like what's up with your boy's Cisco getting the needle in the

finger and what are they trying to do here are they trying to like are the dark army now trying to hack F society I think I think the implication of a lot of this is that we thought that F society were these revolutionary actors, but they may in fact have been pawns in playing a game that they didn't realize they were even even playing. And the idea that they are just still walking around out there suggests,

you know, that they haven't been arrested. You know, they're edgy about that because they don't understand are they being kept out of it? Are they being saved for later? Like, what is actually going on? Okay. So I think that's, I think, if their thing, what's actually going on here, that may be a, maybe the audience is saying that a little bit too. But, you know, I really, I just really liked this episode a lot for the subtle things, too. I mean, I like, I like a good caper. I like the tension in that scene. I thought, I love that they're back to, you know, being on the, on the headphones, like, telephone call while you're talking to somebody else.

And they're hacking the guy while you're talking to them. I was a great callback. I'm really bad at that, by the way. I would be really, really bad. Like if someone, I would forget which one I was talking to out loud. Next time you do, you want, if you're in like a social situation and you have your headphones and you want to call me and I just go, what about blown oh, though? Like the entire time you're talking to somebody. I mutter that to myself in social situations now.

Like Angela mutters, like you will succeed. Like I talk about her. But just one last thing. Yeah. Just on a smaller level, I liked, there was some surprising thematic symmetry in the episode. Because if you go back to the beginning when Ray, and again, Craig Robinson is doing great work this season too for a part that kind of, he's doing a great job with a part that I think is a little bit tough. He says, you know, that speech, the menacing speech he gives about the dog basically realizing that she wasn't independent and basically wanted to die. And I think that's a lot of what the season is about is in that speech.

I was thinking about that scene when we got to the end of the episode and Dom DeParo's return to her favorite bodega for the turkey sandwich and we see the limits of this quote unquote kind relationship. You know, she puts on this happy face and she, we saw, you know, it was in some ways it was a callback to the season premiere where she has this relationship with a guy who runs the bodega that the other people in line don't and she has a about his family. And he's basically like, my life is ruined. I cannot do this anymore. And she's like, gosh, that's really too bad. But can you make me a sandwich? Right. You know,

right? There's these levels of control and performance and stories and interaction that are just there are those are the things that will keep me coming back to the show. Those things and Alf. I'm, I'm coming back to. Well, we'll talk more about Mr. Robot next week on the RIA, but let's, uh, let's wrap up stranger things for folks here. Hey, guys, just want to tell you a little bit about our sponsors. One of them is texture. To pizza, we're all binge eating. Thanks to Netflix, we're all binge watching. But now with texture, you can start binge reading. Trust me, it's about to be a thing. When it comes to magazines, you know what you like. And with texture, you can get all the magazines you want

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the fan excitement around this show grow and grow and uh you know barb become an icon of american popular culture and people were doing uh i saw that the the eagles tweeted at the buccaneers yesterday a picture a gif of 11 um did they really yeah i can't remember what it was about like it was something like just you know team social media beef but um let me let me hear from you about what your sort of takeaways were from the end of the season i think whenever you have like a sci-fi show like this or a sci-fi-based show the landings are always the toughest thing because it's that's when you actually have to be like it's an alien you know and that's when people are like oh is that it So what did you think?

I thought they, it's hard to think of a recent entertainment where they, they threaded that needle more skillfully. And I want to talk about like the ending in terms of what it means for the future of the show in a minute. I want to come back to that. But if we're just going to consider this as a closed story, or at least a closed season, I can't think of a better way that they could have handled it. Because as you rightly said, there always has to be a monster. it always has to be defeated one way or another. But what was so skillful about the finale was really what was true about the season, I thought,

which was that it very, very carefully tracked multiple characters' emotional journeys. And it allowed the finale, the Duffer Brothers constructed the finale in a way that honored all those three different levels of characters, the little, you know, the boys in 11, the teenagers, and the adults. And the thing that I was most excited to talk to you about, having finished the season, after I finished it, I then went and read a bunch of the interviews that they had done and, you know, did the thing that we all deny ourselves because we were afraid of spoilers.

And I was really happy to see that the Duffer brothers actually talked about this as the same point that I wanted to make, which was we should just take a second to acknowledge how rare it is for a show to track multiple groups of characters of different ages. the fact that the show was about the adults and about the teenagers and about the smaller kids this shouldn't be a big deal but it weirdly is if you think back to I guess Friday Night Lights did that well that we all love that didn't do that well

that did that Friday Night Lights did that the O.C. did that to some degree parenthood does that what's that? Parenthood did it parenthood did a little bit yeah so Cadem's likes to do it but in general, in my limited experience being in those rooms back when I was pitching stuff, years before Grantland, the number one, so I had this, I'm sorry to talk about this,

but I had a spec script that was like about, it was about a teenager, it was the main character, but they were also adult characters. Literally, they were like, well, if it's either going to go to MTV or ABC family, because no one else will make a character, a show about young people. Young people have young people shows, old people have old people shows. I assume they were talking about Blue Bloods, but. this is a huge shame, you know, and the Duffer brothers talked about how they got that same reaction in 2016 from a lot of the more traditional outlets where they pitched the show. Netflix either, and you can look at this two ways.

Netflix either is like forward thinking and they don't care or they're putting on 70 original productions at every given moment and they're like, we literally don't have time to care, make the show you want to make. Right. But I love the fact that that finale was constructed so that, you know, the Joyce and Hop were in the upside down tracking it. The teenagers were tracking them and trying to get the monster and the kids were hiding and dealing with Matthew Modin and it all came together and giving each level of the story a moment. I thought that was really satisfying. Yeah, I thought that the last episode suffers from the same thing that almost anything, almost any television show or movie suffers from, which is there's a lot of like, we have to run back to the gym. We have to run back to our house. And like the geography of the town was set up so well in the previous seven.

episodes that it got a little compressed there, you know, and I think that anybody would be pressed to explain the logic of the upside down world, although the Duffers do have, you know, you're talking about those interviews, they do seem to have, like, at least in their minds, like a pretty set idea of the physics of that world and like the actual dimensions of it. I was thinking about how, you know, now that there is probably, I mean, almost definitely going to be a second season and about these characters. I was thinking about how it's almost a shame that when you get to the end of a first anything, whether it's a first in a trilogy of movies or a first season,

loss is pretty unique in this where I actually don't want to know more about the upside down world. I'm much more into Hawkins. And it's kind of like I'm not prematurely throwing cold water on something that I already really, really enjoyed. But it is kind of that thing where you're like, do you really want to know more about the Department of Energy's experiments in the upside down? or do you want to go back to riding bikes and like playing D&D? I completely agree with you. I was going to come out of from a different place,

which is say I don't, I kind of wanted to let some of these people be because what a great story we had with them. And I don't want to go to the next chapter where it might get a little more disappointing or it might get a little more forced or violent or whatever. To your point about them knowing about the logistics of the upside down, One thing to really call out about the show is it got a lot of attention for the nostalgia and the throwback nature of it and, you know, the 80s references.

Another thing that is very nostalgic and throwback about it is that it didn't worry too much about the plausibility or the physics about a lot of stuff. And I really admired that. It was almost as if it was made for a non-Wikipedia universe or a non-reddit universe, you know, to the point where, and I'm so, like, how much worse would the show have? have been if we showed scenes of them talking to the doctors at Hawkins Hospital being like, well, he's been freezing with an alien lizard in his throat in an alternate dimension for a week. You know what I mean? Or if they were like trying to explain literally what happened to some of these people or relate what Matthew Modin was doing to the government in a larger way.

There's nothing good can come from going down that road. So I was glad that they mostly stayed away from it. the only the only disappointment I had about the finale was the fact that it was that they did this and frankly it's a smart thing

that they laid a lot of track for season two that will is cost of stuff and that 11 is obviously still out there somewhere I was sort of hoping that it would be kind of a late anthology series

meaning meaning next season we would pick up with with Hopper somewhere else and maybe 11 somewhere else and maybe we could have one episode back in Hawkins or we could revisit something, but it would really be more about spooky things happening. And I don't know whether he becomes the Fox Mulder of this or the Han Solo of

this or whatever. But, you know, it's really more about different windows into different weird world. So it really is like a Stephen King thing. You know what I mean? Not just about the same town. But obviously, you know, you have cast members that people have fallen in love with. You have a certain thing that people have fallen in love with. And Matthew Modin definitely, he definitely doesn't die and you know they made a big deal of even mentioning that in their interviews that you know we didn't see him get killed so and plus we can't let Steve win like that right no Steve caught a Steve had a big W in the finale double W um I think they're Jonathan Jonathan made another mix tape my other about it the other I see first of all I'm team Steve I dig Jonathan but I feel like

Steve got a bum wrap he was trying to do the right thing you know he didn't ask to be born into wealth. He's got good hair. Does he though? Yeah, yeah, sure. Is that good hair? I mean, he's got one direction here. Yeah.

I do think actually the upside for the second season and for continuing this story is there's a couple of things. One is you've got yourself a really fun collection of young actors. Yeah, we should talk about that. Yeah. Childhood is difficult and puberty is even harder. But it will be fun to see these kids in two years or a year and a half and watch them go into high school and maybe grow apart a little bit and then come back together. Whatever it is they decide to do with this group of people.

And furthermore, like these relationships can change. So who knows, maybe Barb comes back. You know what I mean? Like maybe Barb comes back and claims Steve for her own. Yeah. I mean, let's split that into two points. is, you know, whoever did the casting for this show gets all the made-up awards that we can give them.

Yes. Because, you know, like Freaks and Geeks, it's pretty rare to get any, to get one or two good young actors, to get so many of them, and then to see them blossom and have fun with each other and really, and put them in positions to succeed. You know, Millie Bobby Brown is getting all the credit for being 11, and she deserves it. She's amazing. But the kid who played Mike, who has an awesome name also, by the way, Finn Wolfhard, I feel like Wolfhard was signed to Interscope in like 2006.

Definitely. They were on tour with Jet for a while. But like that kid really stepped up and was terrific. Obviously the kids who played Dustin and Lucas were great too. I think Natalia Dyer, who played Nancy, was really good too because they wrote these parts that are archetypal in two ways, you know, like the good girl and the bad boy, but they're also commenting on those parts. And so to be able to play those, play both sides of that, the sort of the winking at it but also celebrating it, while never really winking, which is something the show didn't do.

I think it's pretty spectacular. So you're right. I mean, you can't get a cast like that and then walk away from it. Yeah, absolutely. But what about Barb, though? I know. I mean, they did barb dirty, right? Like, I got to say that they did.

I was pretty surprised about that. It's funny because, like, they got the Winona Sons right. They bet big on Harbor and won. They got every kid right. they got Steve right they got Steve's car right but when they

they cast Barb and they were like Barb will go out in E4 and it'll be okay or E5 and man the people want Barb back they got murals up for that girl like big puny should yeah I mean the actor was great

the part was fun and good and necessary and familiar and I don't think she deserved to just get you know God, she got like, they killed Kenny. Do you know what I mean? Like, she just kind of got, they just kind of forgot about her.

They were all just high-fiving again and buying each other new pentaxes, and Barb got murked, you know? Like, I also don't really understand, like, Will survive for a really long time by being cold huddled in his upside-down castle. But then he, then the monster caught him, but didn't eat him, like, plugged him into the wall

and put worms in his throat. Yeah. So while they were all just like, you know, doing my favorite, While they were doing the homage to my favorite scene from the Abyss with Ed Harrison, Mary Elizabeth Master Antonio. And then, like, Will comes back to life and they're, like, celebrating. If the camera pan, two ticks to the left, is Barb there, like, choking on another one being like, I'm right here? Barb still, like, banging at the door for the tree stump being like, let me out.

I'm serious about that. But I think the other thing to say about it that makes it that really, I'm just so impressed with the show, partly because it came out of nowhere. was just so entertaining and so pleasurable to have those episodes to watch. But really, these brothers, these Duffer brothers, they showed just an amazing control of their story in terms of what to show, what not to show, how far to go in terms of this nostalgic celebration and when to pull back. And I'm thinking about that in terms of not just the very end of the season where we have that the beautiful, you know, heartwarming Spielbergian moment where the families reunited at the, you know, they're having Christmas dinner together. but also the almost the visceral really upsetting Kronenbergian homage where the kid has to be the grownup and be like, well, I did just vomit up a space worm in the bathroom, but I'm going to give my mother and brother the happy dinner that they want. But also the way that they used harbor, not just through the whole season, but in that finale, the flashbacks to him and his daughter. Now, you knew I was going to get got by those scenes.

Those were really hard to watch. Yeah. But they were delicate with them. you know, that is an extremely underrated thing for storytellers to know how to do, which is we want to show you the emotional wound. We want to show you something painful because we know what we can mine from the audience by doing that. And if that sounds cynical, I don't mean it to. That's really what storytelling is.

But they didn't overdo it. It did not feel gratuitous. No, I agree. As someone who has swung a child around and then, like, been terrified, like, when she starts coughing once. So I was just very impressed with that, with that tonal control, especially, especially, on a service like Netflix, which generally doesn't seem to punish overindulgence. You know, like they said in these interviews,

if they had told Netflix they wanted to do 13 or 15 episodes, Netflix would have probably been like, cool. Yeah, right. Or do four, whatever you want to do. So to call your shot like that when you're given the chance is pretty rare. So I think that's another reason why there's a lot of enthusiasm about this show, probably even in the industry. Because it's like these guys were given a golden ticket and they took advantage of it.

be really curious to see when they bring come back with two like whether they are so anxious to keep the wave going that they they try to get in production soon and do do two really fast so it comes out the same time next year or whether it takes more like 19 months 20 months yeah one thing to say especially the way tv works now um shows get renewed wink wink renewed way before we get the official announcements so when you're reading these interviews um read the duffer brothers interviews and then just put air quotes in your head a lot. Yeah. Because they keep saying,

should we be given the amazing opportunity to do more? I mean, I know nothing about this, but I guarantee you they've been in a room for three months talking. Yeah, also, just the social response, the anecdotal response to the show is stronger than anything they've had since early orange and House of Cards. Yes, exactly. And that is exactly what Netflix wants in the world,

is people talking about their stuff. And to keep their business model afloat and to keep things moving, it is more cost effective for them to keep paying the Duffer brothers and their writers, basically to have them breaking season two and then not make season two. Should this have, you know, if everything had gone sideways and like people had hated the show or it hadn't gotten a reception, it still would have been like fine for their totally made up bottom line to have paid for that work because now they're going to reap the rewards of the fact that they are ahead of the curve. Like it's not like they're like, oh, shit, we have something here. We better we better see if Winona's schedule is free. Like they did that work already, even if they're not admitting. yeah all right man well uh we'll be back on monday we'll talk a little night of and whatever else we

come up with and until then uh nice talking to you buddy should i do on monday should i do my why i'm leaving new york essay should i just deliver it goodbye to all andies yeah should should i should goodbye to all that like i'm not leaving new york new york left me goodbye to all elf should i work on that yeah i'm yeah i feel like elf running over the president from house of cards is a metaphor for my few days in Brooklyn. It's touching. See you later, Mr. Staples. I look forward to that. All right. I'll talk to you Monday, man. Bye.

Great job, Britske. Hey, this is John Favre from Keeping at 1600. This week we talked about Trump's latest insanity, Hillary Clinton, the map. We talked to GOP strategist Mike Murphy. You can subscribe to Keepin' at 1600 on iTunes, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcast.