The Watch - Ep. 81: 'Queen Sugar,' 'Westworld,' and Auteurism in 'Atlanta' Re-up

Episode Date: September 29, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Justin Lin's 'Hot Wheels' (6:00), the auteurism of 'Atlanta' (14:00), the soap opera styling of 'Queen Sugar' (39:00), and HBO's new show, 'Westworld' (49:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Jaguar, the art of performance. To learn more about the all-new Jaguar XE, visit jaguar USA.com. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, it's the Black Justin Bieber. It's Andy Greenwald.

Wow. Yeah, a little bit of a mix. A little mixed it up. Remixed it for the re-up. I appreciate that. You know, here's the thing. I love Atlanta, the show, so much I'm willing to give up my title. My honorific.

You know, and many people in Brownstone, Brooklyn know that I have called myself the Black Justin Bieber for many years. Many, many years. You often have, it's on party flyers. Is it? Tonight hosted by the Black Justin Bieber. Well, that's because to differentiate those parties from the other work events that I was Yeah, right.

Like my LinkedIn profile is very complicated. Andy, what's up? It's the re-up. It's Thursday. It's looser because it's a re-up. It's loose. Sure, sure. We're going to talk a little bit about last night,

or Tuesday night's Atlanta episode, which a lot of people really enjoyed. We'll also talk a little bit about Westworld, which is coming this Sunday on the HBO network. And to be clear, do not start pausing. We are not going to spoil anything. I haven't even seen it yet. And so we're just going to talk about,

we're going to set it up, and we're going to go deep on it on Monday. We're going to talk about AI. Whether or not robots are inherently good or bad, what the future really holds for us as a society if we go past into the Uncanny Valley. We're going to keep it loose. And then we're going to talk a little bit about Gamora and Queen Sugar. Yeah. Some TV dramas.

Do you want to start talking about Hot Wheels first, though? This got you go. This got your fired up. I mean. So let's set up. The True Detective Season 2 and Fast and The Furious and Community Director. Justin Lynn, who I quite enjoy his films. Sure.

And his work. Has signed up to do... Look, you're setting me up to be the bad guy. I'm not saying, who's setting you up? You're sending me up to be the... All right, go on. It's signed up to do a major movie adaption. Just to make it clear, I paused because I was thinking of a villain from the Fast and the Furious franchise to say I was.

Then I remembered I have never seen those movies. Not a minute? Don't care. No, maybe our listeners might want to know that. He also directed Star Trek Beyond. Yeah, what an honor. Justin Lynn is directing a movie adaptation of the toy Hot Wheels. Look.

You know, I retweet this stuff just because it's just, it's so far beyond parody now that it's not even possible to comprehend it. Like, Hot Wheels are little plastic toy cars. I played with them. You probably did too. Sure. They're fucking boring. They're just little toy cars. Yeah.

They just go, they don't even. turn. You can just, you push them and they sometimes veer. But look, it's no secret that there is no, there are no, there's no investment in original ideas, there's no secret that anything that exists as IP is getting like harvested, like, you know, Keanu Reeves brainwaves in the Matrix. But the thing that I, the thing that I find most disturbing about this is that they didn't do matchbox cars, which were a superior brand. No, the thing that, I'm sure someone's doing that too. Here's the thing that I feel like the context we can give this story.

Wait, what is the difference? I don't even remember. How wheels was a brand. Like, someone, you know, it was little cars. And was Matchbox a type of toy and Hot Wheels was the brand? No, I think they were separate. This is why they should be calling this movie this. Just be like fast cars directed by Justin Lynn.

And as many people are going to go see it. Yeah, literally. Why are we arguing about this? It makes me so angry. Why are we even talking about the difference between matchbox? I haven't thought about matchbox on how we listen to 20 years. 20 years. 30.

Yeah. 30. 30 years. 30 plus years. Thanks. Look, I'm a little older than you, but not that much. College was weird in the 90s. We talked about lots of stuff.

We probably did talk about that in the 90s. Two things about this I find extremely cynical. One, people should know this isn't like this isn't like some deep. data trove mining where someone was like, what's the last toy that we haven't gotten to yet? Yes.

Hot Wheels, someone just told me this yesterday when I was tweeting about it. Hot Wheels has been in active development since like 99,000. This was a property that for 17 fucking years. I want to read an easy rider's raging bulls about this.

That's exactly what I'm saying. I was just like Bob Town being like, I took two passes that the Hot Wheels script couldn't crack it. This is what I'm saying. There was a ton of. when like, you know, Terence Malick was like, I want to make a movie about life, but I can't, they can't make CGI dinosaurs yet, so I won't do it, right? Or like, Richard Linklater was like, I'm just going to

go to Austin every year for 15 years and let time happen while I work on this masterpiece. James Cameron is like, I can't make Avatar parts four through 27 until I learn how to build gills on my neck. Which, by the way, congratulations, Jim. He just did. He is now the first living gill neck in America. You joke, but that New Yorker profile made it sound like that dude could single-handedly stop a fire. One thing that the watch unequivocally supports is all innovation brought forward by James Cameron. A, true. B, the New Yorker profile of James Cameron, where he literally stands astride a personally built firewall.

And not like in an internet sense. It's foam. He comes up with a foam to spray all over his house. And isn't there like a disagreement in Malibu about whether or not this foam should be distributed to other homes? A foam disagreement in Malibu. Yeah, yeah, foam home. Rehups are definitely looser than our record. But instead, someone's life, life's work, really, out here has been to bring the non-existent story of plastic cars to the big screen.

Like, that's a bummer. Like when our friend Brian, the same guy who messed up the Property Brothers Wikipedia page, like, he's a screenwriter. And like one of the first days I met him, he was like, yep, just so you know, like this IP thing is out of control. Like my writing partner and I were asked to pitch on the shared Nicktoons universe movie. Yeah.

And I was like, that's a joke. It was announced two weeks later that that's really a thing. There's a Max Landis video on his YouTube page on, well, come from a while back. I can't remember what prompted me to look at his YouTube page in the first place. Probably him ranting about Batman or Superman or something. And he was talking at a,

he was giving a talk about the state of the spec script. And he was like, there is no spec script market now. It's, you take the story. script idea that you had and you have to apply it to like this inanimate object that they are trying to make a movie out of. So if you had an Indiana Jones style adventure movie, it would go, it would become

the Jack Daniels story. And they would make up a character for the whiskey who like is like an adventurer who likes whiskey. You know, I may have just done a 180 here because that sounds like a great. That sounds fucking great. Does it? Well, I like adventurers who drink whiskey.

Seriously, do you? Did you see Sahara? Like, are you, do you really into it? Adventurers? Did I see Sahara? It's a complicated question. It was the 90s. It was the 90s. I don't know who wasn't.

I don't know. Here's the other thing about it before we move on from Hot Wheels. Because we've already given this more time than it deserves. Justin Lynn is a talented director. Probably a nice guy. People really like his first movie a lot. It was better luck tomorrow.

His career is super. were weird. His IMDP page is weird. And so a couple years ago, I think like the first summer of Grantland, like in 2011, I wrote about The Rock. And I wrote about how his career was really unique because all he did was jump from sequels to sequels or IP to IP, basically. And he was, and it was working for him. Like he came in and saved franchises or reinvigorated them and only he stayed, he stayed winning by doing that. He didn't build anything. He didn't build that. No, I mean, And it seemed sort of cynical but also seems smart. Yes.

And if you look at what Justin Lynn has been doing, it's weird. Like to be the dude is just like, yeah, I'll go in and do True Detective season two. You know what? I'll do Star Trek the reboot three. Like that movie, you cannot prove to me that movie exists. There's no reason why that movie existed. I mean, I think that there are some differences between Star Trek and Hot Wheels in terms of the mythology behind the two properties. But in terms of the just entropy that mean that why it exists?

I think that that's what the gig is now. It is. It is. And maybe he takes pleasure at it. Justin Lin has chops. And there's no real reason. Say the same thing about, you know, you could say the same thing about Antoine Fuku. Jason Concepcion made his point in his massive theory of a unified Fukuverse article that we ran last week on the ringer.

Where it was like, Fuku is just John McTiernan. I mean, like, it's just that he's forced to re-react. reboot Magnificent Seven, remake Scarface. He's not forced to. Okay, but then I think that these guys want to play with the big toys. And that's what the studios are offering. But why did he choose these tiny plastic toys for his next toy? So what do you?

It's not even a metaphor anymore. Okay. That's all I'm saying. Okay. It's interesting. I'm not, I don't, as much as it sounds like I am almost the definition of hating on him, I'm not. I would like to have him come in and talk about it, just because he probably has reasonings for why he's, doing what he's doing and what inspires him and what's interesting to him about it it just it doesn't

sound interesting is all i'm saying sure it does not sound interesting to jump but i do i do think that wait then we can go into television from here that like when you look at the narrative filmed narrative entertainment landscape all the stuff that's kind of what an antwan fuqua or justin lynn could do is on tv yeah and there are no movies that are like ice which is the the show that Antoine Fuga has coming out on the audience network, which is part of the AT&T studios. Direct TV. But it's like produced by AT&T.

Yeah. Is this the show about Jeremy Sisto playing a diamond thief? Does he drink whiskey? Because if so, it's right up my alley. It's, it's... So where is the mid-tier cool action thriller that these guys could be directing? You're right, it doesn't exist. I guess when I tweeted the thing about Hot Wheel,

someone was like, well, that was stupid to make a Lego movie too, but I'm like, you're right. Like, the Lego movie was terrific, and it was really creative and really fun. I would argue that the difference here is they went to Lord and Miller to make that, and Lord and Miller are writers first and foremost, whose unbelievable talent is so perfectly attuned to these times, which is to find the clever way in to something that shouldn't be able to be done. I mean, to make 21 Jump Street and the sequel as good as they did, you know, there's a way, linking metanist to what they do, but it's very clever and it's very funny. They were the perfect people to do that.

Justin Lynn is a director, and yet the Hot Wheels project currently script assignment open. You know what I mean? Is that true? It said like he was going to work on the script. Can you imagine like draft 16 of the Hot Wheels? But here's the thing, is if they're like, as long as it says Hot Wheels on it, you can make the French connection, that would be pretty cool. That's definitely what someone is saying.

Well, because so we're getting a little far field here, but that's what, Blumhouse does sometimes, right? Like they do, they'll have like a property like Ouija, which I think obviously like at first past people would be like, this is ridiculous. But Ouija too,

which is coming out in October, I believe, is actually like a very strange Polanski-style thriller. Right. Starring Elizabeth Reiser. Like if you could work the deal, right,

you could basically like, be like, we're going to use the cover of this property as like a reason to get the movie made and then do funky stuff within it. Well, one of the tests. It just seems weird that this shouldn't be that hard.

Why not just make a cool thriller? But one of the questions is who has the moment and the timing and the juice and the just don't give a fuckness to pull it off within these corporate boxes that exists? And I heard the other night I heard this guy, Fede Alvarez, who made Don't Breathe a movie I definitely did not see and never will see. Yeah. Talking about his career in Hollywood. And he was pretty inspiring about what inspires him and what. inspires him and why he likes making the things that he likes to make. And he talked about how he had a meeting at Marvel,

and Marvel was very into him as a filmmaker. And it was one of those meetings from the way he talked about it, where it was basically like, which one of our toys do you want to play with? Like here's what we have in development. Here's we have going, which one do you want? And he may have liked one or another, but the longer he talked to them, the more he realized that they know what they want. And they have it all planned out,

and they have all the boxes fitting where they want to fit. And there is no wiggle room to be a director or be a creator within that. There's room to be an administrator. Yeah. But I think that the Marvel origin story, at least this, the last 15 years of it, starts with an accident. Like Iron Man's not supposed to be a billion dollar franchise, right? Well, I mean, to go back to what, I mean, it was their only, it was the card they chose to play. I think it was a surprise.

Downey was a big, was a gamble. Fabro hadn't really done an action. Well, it was all a gamble. So remember what they did was they went, they basically, they basically, they, They'd given away, quote-unquote, their best characters. They'd given away the X-Men to Fox, and they'd given away Spider-Man to Sony, Fantastic Four. What a great film franchise that turned out to be, was also with Fox. And then they were like, well, we still have these few characters.

We have the Avengers characters, basically. And so they decided to get money from banks to fund their own studio, so they could do it without anyone else's involvement and basically try to do it themselves. And then I think early on Paramount was a producing partner for those movies. But you're right. If you were doing that from scratch, the decision to start with Iron Man was an interesting one. The decision to hand it to John Favreau, not keeping it 1600, John Favreau, but the star of a chef. After this election, Favs would get a Marvel movie.

I feel like that's possibly true. And then to give it to Downey, that was risk after risk after risk. But to go full circle, the really interesting case for me will be, can Ryan Cougler make Black Panther into a interesting movie because he certainly had the momentum he had the juice he has the talent he certainly has the chops yes the actors and he has the actors and the cast and is this one of those moments where everything is aligned to give him the leverage to do that because it's better for the bigger corporation and what that means going forward and we're going to talk about and maybe we we could get right into it but like we

Eva de Verne was going to directs Black Panther yep and she walked away probably for the same reasons that Fede Alvarez did was just like this is not a place for me. Right. And it's interesting to see what she's doing. I mean, she's doing another kind of franchise. She's doing wrinkle in time. Right.

But she also made a TV show Queen Sugar that we're going to talk about. Let's talk a little bit about Atlanta because I do think it actually fits because this is a model that FX is sort of really excelled at recently in the last few years, which is take talented people, work within a certain margin, but basically let them make the execute their own vision. Trust their ability to do it. even though they don't, maybe have never done it before. And these shows are increasingly starting to feel, I mean, in a weird way, Americans is almost a throwback in comparison to Louis and Atlanta and even Fargo in terms of like there are altruist tendencies. Or American horror story or American crime story,

which are franchise anthology things with a certain expectation of cast and everything attached. The Americans is in, I can't believe you gave me an opening to talk about, Americans in this podcast. Anytime you want, man. Really? Yeah, you're the 50% shareholder of this company. That's so nice. You know, actually 45, I still let Dennis keep 5%.

The Americans is very, very, very much old-fashioned, even though it's only, you know, going to its fifth season. It was, Graham Yost had been, you know, was running justified, and so he was a producer on this project, and so it sort of came up through the people. It's a very old-fashioned thing. Like, there's a project that we're interested in. We're going to pair it with. a producer that we trust and have a relationship with.

We're going to keep him in the FX family. We're going to, you know, and sort of build it from scratch, a big idea, build it an hour-long drama, build it from the ground up. And it certainly worked creatively, but it, you know, I think many people would make the argument it hasn't worked commercially to the degree they wanted it to. I mean, but I think that it's a throwback to like Sons of Anarchy and justify in those multi-season shows that build up audience over time, possibly. Let's hope.

But certainly the enthusiasm and excitement, even within that network, You know, when I've talked to, and you've talked to as well, people who, in the executive side who work there, they're just really fired up about Atlanta. Yeah. They're shocked that they won all these Emmys for Horror Story and, you know, they're incredibly excited about Fargo season three. But they're like, they're just geeked on it. Because this is, I don't know, I don't even know. This is the kind of show where you might even say, like, I don't even care what the numbers are. Because you can just feel anecdotally and just by turning on the internet the impact it's making.

Here's an anecdote that I'll share with you. This is, Andy's Hollywood anecdotes are getting. Is Andy Greenwald to Hollywood Insider? They're getting good now. They're getting anecdotes. I can already tell this is a juicy one. It's a story of betrayal. Not naming names.

Okay. But it's based on a small plastic toy. No, not naming names, but in an unofficial small sample-sized survey of people who create and write for TV shows that I've spoken to since being here. there are two opinions that are uniform. One is that all people want to talk about is Atlanta. It is completely fired up the creative class, so to speak, because they are in awe of it.

Probably for the same reasons that you were starting to allude to. Like, this is a show made with the excitement and freshness of people who maybe have never done it before and are just finding their way and they're succeeding. Like people who should have been learning to walk and they're flying, basically. these same people do not like stranger things and one self-aware writer-producer said to me possibly that's because that was all of our childhoods too and we can't believe we didn't think of that first that always that happened uh that happened with girls too I think that's right but I think because that was like girls is my childhood god damn it you know like I that was my idea too

that was sitting there I think a story about young people like an updated version of Sex in the City that was about, but like changed the dynamics of the economics and the sort of social strategy of who those people were. But young people in New York City was dying to be continued. I think that's right. Yeah. I think for Stranger Things, when people ask me, people who work for TV, ask me why I like it, and I say, don't you listen to the Watch podcast? And then I say, because it was pleasurable. It was just purely pleasurable.

It was really entertaining and it was such a joy to watch this show. It was really fun. And those are things that they hear, but they're like, they want more. You know, they want it something deeper or rougher. Can I ask a question? Yeah. How many of those people who are making the people you're talking about are writing for shows that come out week after week? You mean that they're not writing for streaming services?

50-50. Okay. Interesting. I mean, I would venture to guess that none of them are working on a show that became the sensation that Stranger Things did, which is always going to be the, is it that good? Oh, I think that's fair. I don't even think that's limited to the sample size you're talking about. I think everybody has probably done a gut check where they're like, Stranger Things really that good. I also think it's worth noting that I talked to an executive who saw the script and passed on it in saying that, you know, I thought this is someone, it's. Interestingly, executives love Stranger Things, partly probably because it was success. Yes. But the interesting thing that this guy said to me was, you know, I enjoyed the script, the pilot script, and I could see that it was touching something that people would really relate to and there's a nostalgia factor.

But there was no way to get from that script that the Duffer Brothers could enact their vision. Well, that's where you get into the Netflix stuff of Stranger Things is an end product. I can understand all along the way where you're like, well, it's going to start six kids. Well, what if the kids aren't good? What if the kids are annoyed? What if nobody understands what's happening and nobody likes the 80s anymore?

And Winona Ryder, are you sure? And all these parts along the way. Also, who are you guys? Yeah. You know, like, can you guys do this? Which one is Ted Duffer and which one is Billy Duffer? Yeah, and you know, all these points along the map and it's really the finished product

and the fact that people inhaled that finished product like so much Peruvian flake on vinyl. That's the second Peruvian flake mention of this week, I think. Like so much, you know, vinyl cocaine over a weekend, and we're just like, it's the complete thing. I'm like done. I like that you're talking about Netflix, but you still made the cocaine reference in HBO shit due to our former employers. Former? Well, we were employed by the Amazon area.

I'm doing post-divorce. Have you gotten that email yet? You're doing reconcilable differences? Me in Hayden Church every week. Do you know I went out for that? But I screen tested against his mustache, and I did not. My point is, it's just like I can understand why people are both grousing about it, but I can also say that, like, yeah, but like the end product of that show,

it's kind of self-evident why it was such a sensation. Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's true. Let's get back to Atlanta, though. But I think that, right, I think the thing to consider is that in both of these cases, it took executives. And, you know, let's be fair here. I think generally when we talk about the various networks, the impression, and this is not purely anecdotal,

but the impression is that Netflix is in just the production business now. It's purely a business. It's growing. It's just content, content, content. Yeah, there's not like a brand as much as it is. And one doesn't get the sense that there's a lot of, like, notes calls and, like, deep personal development, although there might be. They said, I saw it. An interview with your boy, Ted Sarandos.

Sarandos? My man. What's the last name? I've never actually said it out. out. Okay. You can die on that hill alone. He was like, you know, we are, uh, um, we're basically like patrons, but we're willing collaborators if we're invited into the process.

Oh, that's gentlemanly. Yeah. Like, I think it's like if, if need be, we can come in and help a little bit, but. I'm just picturing Ted, like with a, with duffel bags full of money showing up at Fidelio, like the, like the eyes white chut party. And like everyone in the party is like making TV wearing giant bird masks. And he's like, should I stay? and someone with a candle beckons to him.

Sidney Pollack is there. No, but I do want to give them credit here because the narrative that we were probably about to steer into with Atlanta, and, you know, again, we know from talking to people who were involved in it, like, it was a labor of love for everyone, you know, for Donald Glover, for his brother

and his other producers and writers and Hero Moray who directed it. But similarly, like, the people at FX were also as engaged, ground up, working on it, making sure that they had all the resources they needed. And so we should probably give Netflix an enormous amount of credit for as much as the Duffer Brothers clearly pulled this off.

And maybe they did it completely on their own in a vacuum. But they had the resources. They had it. They nurtured this unlikely vision to fruition. Right. They both did. But the narratives around the shows might be different. But, okay, so Atlanta is the best show on TV.

Yes. Jesse David Fox wrote a piece on Voltre that was kind of, it was interesting the way he posited it, where because this is the first Atlanta episode that you can so easily be like, I'm talking about this episode, I'm talking about the Black Beaver episode that it's going to be its flagship episode for a while. Yeah. Like the same way the monorail is the Simpsons episode that you can just so easily

reference and people know what you're talking about. I think we should probably address the elephant in the room and when I say elephant, I mean the elephant size basketball. I'm really glad. I was worried. I did a lot of dancing around the ring

and I know that I know that people want to hear what I have to say about this. People want the TV basketball critic to weigh in. So Sam Esmail tweeted at me. Yesterday I got a couple tweets about, you know, the basketball in this episode of Atlanta is so much worse than the basketball in Mr. Robot. Did he say that? No.

And then Sam was like, he added me and was like, these are some pretty serious allegations. What say you? I was talking a little bit with Trayvon for you from Bill. show and I was like yeah you know like this and he's just like Steve Urkel is like in this game yeah he was there you know and it's like Justin Bieber is black in this game this game is not happening in reality it's it's a it's a tough question because here's the thing is it Sam came out and said I trusted my ADs I thought his show wasn't set in reality either exactly but he didn't play that up no he did he was just like he threw everyone under the bus like it was out of my hands it's it looked good

to me, whatever. Wow. But, but, you know, if, if Huram or I comes out and it's just like, yeah, it's taking place in this, like, third reality of, like, racial ambiguity. Yeah. Then nobody's going to be, like, Paperboy. Now, look, they did, they did fuck up the layup, okay? There is a layup where clearly Paperboy, like, throws the ball through the ceiling

and it, like, lightly backs off the backboard or whatever. But what did you think of it? Of the basketball? Yeah. Even to my layman's eyes, I could tell it was rough. It was rough. What I want to say is Brian Tyree Henry is quick, might be my favorite performer on TV right now. Right.

Not your favorite basketball player. He doesn't come to it naturally. His physicality did not appear to be gliding towards the hook. I thought it worked within the realm of the episode because he's also trying to like, be a celebrity at that day where he's going up to the reporter and saying like you should interview me I'm famous like you should interview me and so he's also talking about like back in the day he used to be such a great basketball player and it's like you're trying on these roles that you're supposed to be I'm reading a lot into it it could just be that they were like holy shit this guy can't ball

yeah we got to cut around it yeah um that said the when he blocks Black Justin Bieber was the hardest I've LOLLed at a TV show maybe this year. It is so funny. The episode is so... I mean, the thing about the show

is that it's just joyful to watch the show. Even when the subject matter isn't, even when it veers towards the surreal or the serious or the dramatic or the emotional, the exuberance with which they make the show is evident in every frame.

And so in the beginning of this episode, You see Paperboy and Earn arriving at this event or they're at the event and they're looking around. And instantly, I'm just hype. I'm so hyped to be there with them. I'm so excited to see what happens next. And I'm just like, you know what's going to happen next? Hyjinks are coming. They're coming.

And, you know, I think for a while the shorthand for, you know what, let's just be creative. Let's do the thing we're not supposed to do. Let's just throw something at the wall. Let's just give in to the unconscious here and let it happen. default example on TV was the spaceship in Fargo. Like that's the shining example of a like, we're just going to go for it and you're either on board or you're not, but this is what we're making here.

Black Justin Bieber might have replaced that in the lexicon. Yes. Because they wanted to do something with Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber was probably not available or they didn't even try, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And once you start saying things like that creatively, you're so much freer than you would have been

10 minutes before you decided that, you know? Right. And so it works because it's surreal. It works because it's funny. And it works because it's very, very sly in matters of celebrity and race in the way the show already is. Yeah, this is an episode about perception

the same way that Leakey Stanfield's character, Darius is like shooting at a dog. And they're like, you can't shoot a dog. And he's like, but you're shooting at a person. Yeah. And then it's like, the guy's like revolution the streets will rub with blood. He's like, this is that what I meant to have happened.

She did not say that. But it's like everything about this episode was about perception. It was these people perceiving Donald Glover's character to be someone. He actually literally wasn't. There was people perceiving Justin Bieber to be. You know, my favorite thing about this right now, and you've touched on it a little bit, is just this idea that I at once feeling completely safe hands,

and those hands are throwing me out the window. I never know from a week to week what this show is going to be in the most enjoyable fun way. an anticipatory way, not even fun. I'm like, I can't wait to be engaged by these characters in this world. There's a tool that all TV shows use to varying effect, which is basically playing with your anticipation. And sometimes that turns into fear,

sometimes that turns into surprise. Sometimes they subvert those expectations in a way that's very creative or not. And when we get to Queen Sugar in a minute, there's a feeling of dread in that show, emotional dread, that something just awful is going to happen. I think bad's going to happen just because there hasn't been, when the show begins in the pilot, there hasn't been really an inciting incident yet. So, you know, something's coming.

One of the things about Atlanta that's worth noting is that anything can be an inciting incident because we don't know where we're going. And so when Earn first gets there and there's an attractive volunteer at the event who asked them to stand here or, you know, she just basically has one line. And the way that it's shot and the way Donald Glover plays it, my first thought is, oh, is he going to go flirt with this woman? Yeah, right.

Is this going to be, is he going to be, is this what the episode is about? Is he going to be sort of piggybacking on fame and cheating on van or something happening here? And it wasn't. Right. But it could have been. And that's the sign of a fully realized world. And whether that's because Hero Morai, like, you know, let Donald Glover hang a beat

watching that woman leave, maybe she was just an extra and Donald Glover thought she was cute, whatever, they're open to the possibilities of finding the show as they make it. The last bit I wanted to say about it was just that. that a lot of the times what happens the shows will get like a fast start there will be like a mid-season hiccup or like it'll just be the show it is for a couple of episodes and then

it'll sort of pick up pace at the end and end and you'll be anticipating the next season. There's something like almost Seinfeldian about the last two episodes where you're just like this season could be like 500 episodes long and I really wouldn't care. No, it would be great.

The way and the way that they are able to mix like observational humor, humanity, and also like these very, like very good TV moments, like we're friends now. Yeah. Is really pretty special. Like, and you just feel like,

oh, like this is actually just increasingly getting better every week, even if it doesn't have the same. I love that they've, they established the stakes and then they're like, we're going to put the stakes over here for a while. Paperboy Deadpan is my favorite thing on TV. He is just an amazing actor.

Yeah. And by the way, we didn't plan to say this. Because one of the reasons we went through a bunch of comedies that our friend Max Silvestri pointed out on Twitter aren't really comedies. They're like, quote-unquote, comedies. We did that on Monday, and the reason why we were going to run through Gamora and Queen Sugar today

is because we felt like we should catch up on a bunch of stuff in anticipation of giving out the belt. There's no giving. There's no giving. Yeah, he's got it. Atlanta's got the fall 2016 belt. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back and talk about Gamora and Queen Sugar.

And Westworld. And Westworld. We know it's a little rude to interrupt, but while we have your ear, let's have a brief conversation about manners. As the British like to say, manners maketh the man. So it's no wonder that Jaguars' first ever compact sports sedan, the Jaguar XE, and their first ever performance SUV, the Jaguar F pace, are well mannered. They both put you at ease the moment you enter, remain composed in almost any situation, and no one to make themselves heard. For the full Jaguar Guide to Manners, please visit Jaguar USA.com. Thank you. Jaguar.

the art of performance. Hey guys. Also want to tell you a little bit about ZipRecruiter. Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Posting your job in one place is not enough. You're not going to find the quality you're looking for. If you want to find the perfect hire, you have to post your job on all the top job sites,

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And right now, our listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com slash watch. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash watch. And it's free. Remember that. ZipRecruiter.com slash watch. Okay, we're back. Let's talk a little bit about these two dramas.

A couple, you know, we've been getting asked a lot to talk about Gamora, and we hadn't gotten a chance to chat about it yet. Do you mean you've been asking me a lot? Yes, I've been starting tons of Twitter accounts to ask you. You've got mad eggs. Yeah. Literally. Gimora eggs.

This is a show adapted from the Roberto Saviano book from several years ago, and the movie that was made from that book about the, the Naples mob, right? The crime underworld of Naples, which I think most Americans probably think of in its godfather sort of terms as an extension or the origin of the American mafia and that it's very like, ah, godfather,

and it's very, you know, don this and don that and ordered. Old world. You find out that all the worlds are colliding in Naples and that Naples is just this, like, at least as depicted in the show, an incredibly corrupt hellhole. frankly.

And this television show, which is on Sundance, which also brought us Honorable Woman, several other rectify, some of the great work, is probably the darkest thing I've seen on TV that I can remember. There's not a lot of brightness in it. Yeah. You're nodding. There's not.

I mean, in this show, an Italian-language show, it was a sensation in 2014. Yes. First season, there's a second season coming, I think. It's already aired in Europe. I think it aired in Europe and they're airing, yeah. I, it's interesting. My first thought was, you know, I love, I read two, I read this one author who writes a lot about the Italian crime world.

Massimo Carlotto, I really recommend people check out his books. He has two series. One is the character is called The Alligator and the other one. There's two books in the other series, and the main character is just like an absolute psychopathic monster. who's involved with... We're in Italy or they set? They're set in northern Italy, near Venice, like Padua.

But it's much like the world of Naples in this show, all of Europe, it's like a gateway for... For drugs, prostitution, criminality, from things coming from South America, coming from the Baltics,

like, it's just... It's rough. Yeah, and so this show opens with... It's basically about a mob that are running everything from cocaine to construction in Naples but are fending off, like, challenges from other smaller gangs. Yeah, and I didn't mean to, like, divert completely to books,

but I think the reason why, so I like the show. Darkness aside, I liked the show, I enjoyed the show. I didn't love it as much as I wanted to, and I didn't love it as much as the books. And we've gone through this before, like reading super dark stuff in books is different than watching it on the screen for some reason. I have more of a stomach for that in a book.

But also, there was a little bit more of, there's some layers and levels to the books where that alligator character I mentioned was in prison for a while but wasn't a member of the mob and now he sort of floats around it and he and his buddies who are retired criminals strike back at them and strike back at the whole world like an injustice so there's sort of a

it's not white hats and black hats it's more gray hats people have compared this show to the wire in a lot of ways but it really is only interested in one level of the playing field right right like there isn't the cops there's thank goodness there's not the journalist there's not the school so my take

The takeaway was maybe it's because you had hyped it so much and you can talk me back up, but the performances are great. The look is fantastic. I mean, I was in on the show from the opening scene when these two criminals, one older, one younger, or just filling up a gas tank. We don't know why. They're talking about pop songs. There's a buzzing sound of like mopeds on a, like some autostrata. Yeah, you can practically spell the petrol. And like, we are in a place.

We are in Italy. This is a place that I would love to visit, although not their version of it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, maybe it shouldn't be that radical, but to see a city that, you know, is in a lovingly painted backdrop in every pizza parlor in New York and see it as this, like, gray, slate, gray construction site just sprawl. Yeah.

Is really fascinating. But, you know, I didn't, I felt it was really good at doing the thing that it did. And I sort of was waiting for the moment where it elevated into being something more than just this one thing. Sure. I totally understand that. I think that one way to sort of illustrate what Andy's talking about. And also, I'm not like, I think it's tough when there's this much television to watch to watch a show that you don't enjoy watching at all. Well, you shouldn't do that.

Yeah. And that, no, and I enjoy watching Gomorra, but I don't really feel good about that. You know, and that's tough. So here's a way of looking at it. There is a shootout in the, I believe in the first episode in a cafe. which that also involves an explosion. And, you know, if you're a kind of person you'd like watch the raid or you watch diehard or you even watch shows like True Detective or whatever, like last, even Last Panthers,

like something as gritty as Last Panthers. And you're like, in the back of your head, maybe you do it and vocalize this. Like that was a pretty cool shootout. You know what you mean? Like you still have like an appreciation for set pieces and action and how it, you know, how it makes you viscerally feel to see something like that. this makes me feel gross like it's loud

people die there is like collateral damage glass explode they don't just die when people get shot they are in an enormous amount of pain yeah I mean there's nothing about this that's like they don't gildolily at all

it's very like when I say it's gritty I mean like you're going to get some cuts on your hands you know what I mean like so that's why I am enthusiastic about it but my enthusiasm doesn't come with like a lot of like passion you know what I mean

I think I just wanted it to elevate a little bit because we're certainly in a moment and I don't a few weeks ago we talked about Quarry on CineMax which I love I love that show I watch it and it's just like I just enjoy the experience of watching this television show Corey is a very good example of a show that aestheticizes and fetishizes violence in a way that you just kind of have to

Racking with yourself. What I want to say is when we, even as we were talking about it, I hoped that people would gather from the way we talked about it that if you, if your receptors went off on certain words that we said or certain references that we made, this is the show for you. Quarry or Gomorrah? Quarry. But similarly, Gomorrah is probably that too. These are, you know, is it the wrong argument to have because neither Quarry nor Gomorra wants to be everybody's favorite show. Neither Corey nor Gomorrah wants to be the show that blows everyone's minds or unites people or surprises people in in terms of their creativity or their storytelling or their groundbreaking.

They want to do the thing that they're committed to doing very well. Yes. And please the audience that they're likely to get. There is no crime in that, although there's plenty of crime in both shows. But it is an interesting conversation to have coming off of the conversation we just had about Atlanta and what Atlanta is doing with TV. how different that is. And I wonder if both play into the longer conversation that we've been having all year, which is that our long dramas seem to be settling into this role where they're like,

we're going to satisfy this group, we're going to satisfy this audience. Outside of a few exceptions that we've mentioned, you know, Fargo's Mr. Robots, you know, I would even say at this point I feel about the leftovers coming back next year. I feel the same way about it where like, I don't even know what. it is or what it's going to be and that's exciting. But outside of a couple shows, you know, pick and choose the hours because, you know, the ones that we get,

you can find the ones that you like, but I don't know if they're moving the needle. So the inverse of that is, I would say that never has it been more stark how television is doing something that the movies used to do and don't do anymore, which is basically be this transported of experience. You can see more of the world

and more different people doing different things on TV now than maybe you ever were able to and see in the movies. And when we long for this portraits of real life, take us to different places, show us different faces, that's actually like slowly incrementally starting to happen on TV. You can go to Naples. You can go to Atlanta. You can go to Minnesota.

You can go to Louisiana and Queen Sugar. And you can see these different stories. And maybe it's not for you. Maybe the tone isn't for you. Maybe it's too over the top. Maybe it's too gritty. Whatever. But it's, it all kind of builds up to this very exciting time to turn on your television or turn on your computer and watch.

Watch what these networks are making. I think that's a very positive way to frame it. And I agree with you. I wish. So Queen Sugar is Ava DuVernay, the filmmaker behind Selma. And we mentioned her upcoming Rinkle in Time, TV show that she created for the own network, it's Oprah's Network. Premiered a couple weeks ago, people, you know, got good ready.

means, good feedback. I felt we should check it out. The best parts of this show, bar none, are when Ava Deverna directs scenes in Louisiana. Yeah, and so she directed the pilot, and then a series of other female directors of sorts since taken over, like the... There are moments in the pilot of this show that are just staggeringly beautiful. Yeah. And use the camera in a way that is radical, not just for TV, but for movies. Like, there are some shots, like, where you just...

the way that her camera looks at bodies. Like, this is a black woman made this show. Yeah. And she talked about, there's a really, really good interview with her and Matt Zolarsight. I was going to say that. On Vulture,

that's just like, it gets really into the bells and whistles and like that, how do you do this and how do you do that of the filmmaking? And it's just, it's a great, great,

great interview. I really recommend people check it out. One thing, I wish we had Sam SML back in the third chair because one thing I heard him say, not on our show, unfortunately, but when he was talking about,

directing for TV, you know, he talked about being a filmmaker. And so what a filmmaker's job is is to compose shots. You, you know, you build the image you want to see, and then you try and capture it like a photographer, like an artist, and how that is antithetical to the majority of television directing throughout history, which is service the words on the page, get the performers to say the words and get out of there. You know, do the two-shot or whatever. it's amazing to see

she got snubbed for an Oscar but a should be Oscar nominated filmmaker composing shots for a TV show The downside of that and I found with a show is that it was so much for a TV show I think my takeaway from Queen Sugar which is about a family in Louisiana

the patriarch passes away in the spoiler alert but they're on like episode 5 in the pilot and then his three children have to come together and deal with... Work on your... Figure out what to do with the sugar cane.

And one daughter is a very, very famous, high-profile wife of a basketball star in Los Angeles, very wealthy. One daughter, plays by Ritina Wesley, was on True Blood, and she's great on the show. And apparently was added to the show. This is based on a book, and this character wasn't in it. Oh, really? But Ava D'Vernay wanted also to make the show about mass incarceration. So she created a character that was invested... Right, she's an investigative journalist.

And yeah. And you can kind of feel that where it's just like, I want to do this now. She also types like job title investigative journalists like at one point. There's a lot of that. She's, but so, and then the, and then there's the son who is a ex-felon who is trying to raise his son as a single father. Performances across the board are great. The show is pretty soapy.

It's a soap opera. And it doesn't rise to the level. I mean, you need TV still a writer's medium. And I think that was the thing that I took away from this. Like you can compose these shots and have this, this wonderful intention. and beautiful vistas and images and ideas, you got it, you got to, you got to, you got to give me something more than that.

Yeah, I, it's, this is exactly what you were saying with Gamora, where it's just like, there, there's, there's just, it's your choice. Like, there's just so many different looks to see on, on TV right now. And this is, like, a particular, like, it's a little soapy, it's a little melodramatic. I think that the writing and the acting is, the acting is excellent. But I think that it's definitely, like, not my speed. Yeah. But it's just, like, I.

I do have like a ton of appreciation for the compositional stuff that you were talking about. It was in there. So when I watched it, it was interesting because I watched things, especially as a TV critic or retired TV critic or whatever, still thinking about this as a writer's medium. My interest is still in the storytelling and the writing first and foremost. And mainly because, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't really trained in filmmaking. I'm learning as I go as it's become a more director skewed medium. But I found moments of Queen Sugar emotionally. devastating and very powerful, but from the images.

Right. There's some stuff with children and parents and images of faces and, you know, and it, and those got me. And it was interesting to be affected like that, you know, because usually it is this artfully constructed stories or scripts that do that. But, you know, they don't quite, it didn't quite, it didn't quite sink up. And I didn't feel like, maybe we'll check out some more in the future. Maybe people can let us know if the show has improved or changed.

in any way. But it is interesting to see that a great director can only do so much. Whereas there are shows that we've said are among the best shows ever made that have little to no directorial flourish. Yeah, right. Let's talk a little bit about Westworld because we're running a little long. So like Restful's coming on HBO this weekend. Why don't you talk a little bit about the process to get this show on the air? I think this is really fascinating and I cannot wait to see how the show is received.

Westworld is an enormous bet by HBO because as everybody knows they make the best after shows out there just terrific, terrific high quality no they have the biggest, some would say best show on television certainly the Emmys have said so for two years in Game of Thrones but their drama cupboard is a little bit

thin behind it. Right, great comedies and great comedies but the development pipeline is thin and vinyl is off the board now Leftovers is ending after next season Night Love is a limited series. True Detective is TBD when it ever comes back. Exactly. So what comes next? And Westworld was a really big bet.

It comes from JJ Abrams and Christopher Nolan's companies. It is a serious and thoughtful reimagining of what was essentially a very campy 70s film. Yeah, based off a Michael Crichton novel. Is it based on his novel or was he just write the screenplay? He just wrote the screenplay. About a theme park, basically, you can visit an Old West theme park with robots. Great Stephen Malcolm is. song about it on his first solar record. And so Christopher Nolan's brother, Jonah Nolan and his wife,

Lisa Joy, took over the day to day of the show. It was supposed to premiere last year, but at some point in the production, they made the pilot, and then they shut down production. This is never a good sign. And when vinyl was also played with a lot of bad news, like the word on the street, if the street is Hollywood Boulevard, was that this was an epic disaster. This was like an all-time sinkhole. And even when they, you know, started production back up again, that something was up, that like, they weren't, they just didn't want to admit failure in the same way that HBO renewed vinyl and then canceled it.

Like, you don't want to, you don't want to, you don't want to, you don't want to, you don't want to admit that it's a mistake. It is, I've seen to, it is not a disaster by any stretch. So people should check it out. But I'm curious about, and we'll talk about this more in depth on Monday. Do, A, have they done a good job communicating what this show is to people? because they need people to start checking it out. And two, even if they have, is that thing interesting?

Is this the multimillion dollar idea, sight unseen, that the network hopes that it is? Right. I mean, I haven't seen it yet, so I think it'll be cool to see people's response to it next week. It's not really going to matter what critics say, because ultimately, I don't, I mean, it will matter to some extent, but it's just going to need,

I was thinking about this a lot, And I just, I don't want to talk, I don't really want to, even if I did know I wouldn't want to spoil it. But what is it about Game of Thrones, aside from the obvious big budget, yes of it, which obviously Westworld also has? Is it the twists? Is it the mysteries? I'm shaking my head. Right. I know what it is.

Okay. It's the after show. It's the world. They've built a completely, I mean, they built it. Sure. I mean, haven't we just spent like 45 minutes talking about all these other shows that have worlds? I mean, a completely realized down to, as Jason and Mallory can tell us, down to every tiny detail, literally crumb of bread that they bake in the ovens of whatever. Sorry, we're off season.

I don't need to know this stuff yet. But every detail is accounted for in a completely richly imagined way. And it's giving people what they truly love on a mass level in entertainment. You know, like in the same way people love the Harry Potter books and they love the Harry Potter books and they love the Harry. Potter movies, you know, people love to, and obviously this is a lot darker than that, but people love to be swept up in an epic, in a transporting epic. And Westworld is essentially, it's about an idea about what it means to be human, right? It is not, it's not really a place, I don't, either the human world, I mean, I won't get

too far into it, but what we said about a robot amusement park isn't too far off the mark. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I don't, it is not the same type of show. And so even if people love it and it goes on to get great ratings, I don't think it'll ever get the same kind of love or ratings because it's essentially an idea show and not a world show. Interesting. Okay. Well, I think probably that's about where we can take it without everybody else seeing it.

So we won't spoil it. I really hope people watch it, check it out. I want to know what people think about it. We'll talk about it on Monday. And then we're going to be joined by a special guest from the world of music to talk about the world of music. Isn't that sound good? Do we not want to tease it? Oh, Will Chef from O'Kerville River.

Oh, I thought it was Noel Gallagher. Noel Gallagher. Dude, we would have Oasis week. Our buddy Will is going to be here to talk about his new album, Away, which might be the best thing he's ever done. And mostly, we're going to talk to him about composing the theme music for an HBO show that isn't Westworld. It's called Any Given Wednesday.

It's my favorite song right now. The theme song for Any Given Wednesday? Yeah. You want to sing a little bit? Yeah. No, no, no. I want Will to do it live. Just with his, but with his voice behind.

Yeah, just Acapella. Dude, Monday's going to be fire. Okay, until then, talk to you soon. Great job, Ranski.