The Watch - Ep. 83: 'Atlanta' and 'Luke Cage' Re-up

Episode Date: October 6, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss shifting plot points and character development on 'Atlanta' (6:00), the conservative 'Luke Cage' (16:00), and Netflix's expanded universe (34:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, this is Mallory Rubin, deputy editor of the ringer.com. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast feed, Ringer University, where Benglixman and I will be hosting a Tuesday college football show. And Chris Vernon, the newest member of the Ringer family, will be hosting a Friday gambling preview. We're going to recap the biggest action, preview the most compelling games to come, and talk about all things college football. Make sure to subscribe now to Ringer University on iTunes or wherever else you get podcasts. Thanks for listening. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Rigger.com and joining me in the studio with a lovely sweet re-sling. It's Andy Greenwald. How did you know that that would be the number one thing I want to talk about in this week's Atlanta? Andy, welcome to the Watch Reup, a casual, not quite 90-minute conversation.

We'll see. We'll see. We're talking about Atlanta this week, as usual. We're also going to talk a little bit about Netflix's Luke Cage series. That's Marvel's Luke Cage to you. Well, it's Netflix's Marvel's Luke Cage. A lot of apostrophes. Yeah. But first, let's get into a little bit of Atlanta, just because every week just keeps getting better and better. I want to start actually, I have a lot to say about this episode of Atlanta.

You brought up something that I was going to bring up in a different way, which is... The Reisling? Yes, the Riesling. I would like to offer my services to Hollywood. You know, I'm here. I'm here now. I'm available. As a just sort of a...

Are you going to be the fucking Hollywood Sommelier? I would like to be the freelance food and drink consultant. Just to be the guy on set. So what's your rate? Well, before we get into that, here's let me explain my job to you and what I can offer you. Okay, because it's not in the title. What I want to say, no, it's not clear. What I want to say is I want to be the guy who's just like on set and maybe, you know, first of all, making TV is a tough business.

There's a lot of demand. on the showrunner, a lot of being pulled in a hundred different directions at once. So maybe, and Luke Cage comes into this too. So maybe, you know, you're Cheo Coker who created the Luke Cage series, your show running it, you're writing the episodes, you're managing your room, you're trying to get the tone right, you're doing so many things. And so when you're introducing the character of Misty Knight, key character, terrific actresses.

This happens in the pilot. Good horse player, too. Pretty good outside shot. Yeah. Maybe you just need a guy on set like me who's like, like, I don't think she'd drink Cosmos. Like, I don't think she'd drink cosmos. I don't think that communicates.

What's her drinking choice? What do you think she drinks? I think in that scene where she's flirting, I think she needs to drink something a little classier. Vaca soda splash pineapple? The Juliet? I think she needs to drink like a Gibson. You know what I mean? Like one of the martinis that has like an onion in it or something?

Like something a little bit classy, a little bit old school. Did you like those? What's the one with gin, the aviator cocktail? The old gin and Tom. That's a good one. You ever hear of that one? I'm really good at this job. What's an aviator?

Is that the one with gin and with a little bit more gin, just put around the rim? No, it's a gin-based cocktail. It's good, I'm sure. I don't clearly drink it. That's how the British started the Empire right there. Look, here's what I'm saying. Did I ever tell you, remember that anecdote about one of my favorite writer, Ross Thomas, and, you know, a writer you like as well, when he was.

went on one of his epic, I'm a writer in the 70s, binges. And he, like, apparently he, like, took two people, like, windows on the world in, like, 1979, and he, he sat down and the waiter came by, and he's like, we would, like, we'd each, like, two double martinis with a cocktail

onion. And they were like, okay, like, will sir be eating as well? And he paused, looked at the waiter, and said, I ordered the onions. We need more characters like that in the world. But maybe on this podcast. My point being, this job, I think, is really set up for me just to help. Like, maybe this person's ordering something different.

They communicate something different. This actually worked in this episode of Atlanta to bring it full circle because, first of all, sweet reasling, fucking gross. But second, that's who Jade was. You notice Van is like, I'll just take a shardinette. Yeah, yeah. And I assume she didn't. A buttery. No, not my van.

Listen. Van wanted more of like a shablo. Lee style, Chardonnay, like a steely, you know, maybe a little more mineral.

A little, maybe a little, some tropical fruit in the nose, but a rounder finish. Not the sweet reason. But that's what Jade would want. And Atlanta is the type of show.

I'm going to land this plane. Atlanta's the type of show that does pay attention to these details. Because these details, you stack them together, they add up to real characters even if we never see these characters again.

So it's great because I didn't know what this episode was going to be about, I didn't read anything about it before I watched it. And, you know, you just, you know, immediately, it's a testament to how willing the show is to break the rules, conventional rules of television,

that when you can see it breaking the rules, you're like, oh, you guys are just going to do a van episode. This is incredible. This is great. She had largely been, Alison Davis wrote a cool piece about it for the ringer, but she had largely been, Ern's conscience for the first few days.

She was the character there to be like, what do you do and earn the usual sitcom wife almost, you know, and even if they're not married on the show. And the fact that they were like, mid-season, we're just going to take a break from whatever plot lines we sort of started in the first three, I think they've largely kind of just gone on this sort of walkabout narratively for the last three episodes. But they're just like, this is the, we're way more interested in the world.

We're more interested in this like tapestry of characters. And we're more interested about the propriety of using chopsticks at Thai restaurants. Which, by the way, as you, your food and drink advisor, I can tell you that the tie, Jade was correct, tie people generally with a fork and spoon, but noodle dishes are consumed with chopsticks. So, her pad tie with chopsticks thing. Fan was right again. Yes.

This show continues to delight and surprise. It's absolutely outstanding. And it's just another sign of how canny they were about the world they were building. They didn't, nothing was, there were no half steps. There were no placeholds. in terms of characters or plot points, everything is part of a larger hole, even if we don't know or frankly even care what that hole is. It's a world that's being built around us.

They also know that they have a fantastic actress in Zazy Beats, who also is my favorite name of anyone on television. And she owned the entire episode in a way that was expanding on a person that we'd only slightly met before, but also fully in tune with the person we'd only caught glimpses of.

It just painted in the rest of the picture a little bit. The thing was so great about this, and I think a bunch of other people had discussions online stemming from this episode as well, saying, oh, this got me thinking about other shows that I like and how much I wish they could just spend an episode on a supporting character. And whether the episode or the show could sustain that,

whether the character or the show could sustain that. It is another reminder why the half hour really is a sentence. Yeah. If you think about a show like Breaking Bad, you mentioned the sort of traditional sitcom wife. I mean, I hold up Skylar White as the traditional prestige drama wife at this point. You know, that character and the actress Anna Gun got a ton of criticism, much of which was really unwarranted and frankly bordering on sex as saying, you know. She's the worst. She's the worst, basically.

The show was designed in many ways. I mean, she walked into a trap in many ways because the show was designed to be about Walter White's experience and though he was the villain of his story, there's no way that, I mean, part of the fun of the show and the cruel trick of the show was to have you rooting for the villain until you realize he's a monster and you're already down the rabbit hole with him. Yeah.

She was much more heroic than he was in many ways. But also, you couldn't have done an... Not just because of the nature of Breaking Bad, it wasn't just the nature of breaking bad that meant you couldn't do an episode about Skylar, the nature being just focused almost scientifically on Walter's decline. I don't know if you could do an hour. I don't know if you could have taken the hour to follow her throughout her time.

It would have been an interesting experiment for them to try, and it maybe would have resulted in a really remarkable episode of television. But once again, if you have a half hour, you can do that. I think there's also just that show is called Breaking Bad, and it's about a guy with cancer, and it has to be about that. Once you set those kinds of stakes, you can't really. walk away from them, but Paperboy's rap career doesn't really matter. I mean, it matters, but it's

not, there's not going to be a cliffhanger, really, at the end of this season that, you know, you're like, I have to know whether or not Paperboy, you know. Is he going to sign with Richie Finestra? Did a Zane Lowe interview or something like that. His, and that's the brilliant part about this show is that they've set up over the course of three episodes, kind of why Earn and these people are all brought together. and they just use that as the foundation

and now they're kind of just going in all these different directions. And it could have been an hour. If that was how long the show was, you could have done an hour of van. And I think you would have just been like, okay, sure. I love the little details.

Like, I love that she calls him, Alfred. I love their phone interactions. Brian Tyree Henry is my favorite actor on television at the moment. Everything he does is hilarious to me. How did you feel about the diaper scene? Yeah, you know, that was a tougher watch. Not as tough as.

Because, I mean, there's some things that are, I mean, we're talking about Atlanta, like, it's this magical unicorn, which it is, but there's some things that are still TV. And so when she brought the condom filled with her daughter's urine. Chekhov's condom was going to explode. Yeah, I was like, that was a moment when I had to pull the oil. I'm just going to put this on mute for a second because I know that she's going to get a face full of baby urine soon. And I kind of don't want to see it. I mean, I want to see it, but I want to like, a little stressful, you know. But, you know, they did that pretty well.

They set that up. You know, she looked down at the telltale blue bag. I mean, look, who hasn't been carrying one of them blue bags? Sure. And thought about it at least. Just at least thought about it. I love the show forever because the idea of the creepy kid in white face, that's just an idea, right? Like what if you took a picture of a dog to a shooting range?

When you have like a vibrant writer's room of smart, funny people, those are the idea. that are going to bubble up. Someone might just say that in passing. The smart shows and the, to give them credit, the smart network executives are going to encourage those ideas when they bubble up and not shrug or wonder why. Because it's very easy, I think,

when you're making a show, I was joking before, but I'm serious now, like the pressures of delivering content to allow a pattern to establish itself that will make the job easier. And if the pattern is established early that you should second guess your weirdest ideas, then that's just going to be baked into the making of the show going forward.

And clearly, those weirdest ideas are being allowed to flourish. Right. Let me ask you this. Does it matter to you at all that this show is actually after five episodes or six episodes now? It's storytelling devices. is, his storytelling style is way closer to, I don't know, just shoot me or cheers or something than it is, I guess, breaking bad.

You know, that storylines are not necessarily being carried over from episode to episode. Like, nothing that happened with the white guy at the radio station has really impacted anything now. You mean, well, it's impacted our understanding of the show in the world. Yes. Not the like, and then this happened and then this happened. It doesn't bother me at all. I'm just trying to think of like something relatively like, hmm, about. No, you're the dude who's the Russian and the Pine Barrens?

Exactly. You never enjoyed a moment of soprano's after that. Well, you know what, though? But some people might be like, what was the significance of the kid in white face? It was just funny. And it was creepy. And it was just weird. It was a thing that happened in her life that had been happening in her life.

And now we know her a little bit better. We know her life. One other note about this episode But you don't care. Oh, no, I don't care. I love it. I love it. But one other note about this episode, I was why, I fired it up, I was watching it

the other day, was into the first scene, which was a long scene, by the way, like really, really long two-person scene in the restaurant. And I sent you a message. And the question was, does your wife watch Atlanta with you? Yeah. And you said she does. Mine hasn't had the pleasure yet. And I said, and I said, I think she would like it, but she just hasn't watched it yet.

And I. Has she ever walked in while you were watching it and asked what it is? And I, like, slammed the laptop down. No, like, I've been caught. No. She's relatively uninterested in what I look at on the computer. But I asked if she watched it because. The idea of you been like, check out this cool thing I'm looking at of my computer.

No, she walked in and she's like, is that sweet Riesling? She was offended. And I asked you, she watched it with you because I had a question, which was, do women talk to each other like that? So what did you mean by that? Do you mean, like, the nagging and stuff? It was brutal. Like, I've never, let me, let me, I haven't seen, like, like, like, real housewives program. Yeah.

I haven't seen a Kardashian program. I don't know if this is like. I think it was closer to real life that it was reality TV. I'm just saying the, the Jade Van scene, I mean, it laid out the relationship. communicated who they were. I mean, it was a good scene. To me, the most effective moment of the scene were the subtler burns.

Well, think about it like this. If you and I had never done anything together professionally, right? Or even known each other for all these years. If we were complete strangers. If we stopped, like, being, like, day-to-day friends in college, but we knew each other every once in a while. And then I came in... You dipped into town one day, and you were like,

I'm visiting because I'm on the set of... Tell me what you're doing here. I'm on the set of Batman as the... food and drink consultant. Okay. And I was just like, oh, I'm sorry, you mean the Batman? The Batman. And I was just like, that's cool.

You know, I work at, at Dunkin' Donuts or something like that. And I was just like, or I'm a teacher, you know, molding of minds. We would probably have the same sort of like edgy kind of like. Would we though? Like, would we like, would we be like? Well, you're great because you're a fucking food and drink consultant. That's true. I mean, I'm here like.

I would have been like, you sure you want that snakefish sale? Here's the thing is I actually don't hold that against you because I do think that I have my own second career being mapped out for me, which is basketball consultant. Oh, that's a thing. Where I just walk around the set dressed like Brad Stevens and say, you just got to, you got to help on that. What if you just walked? What if you just paraded around television and film sets with a referee whistle around your neck? No, no. Not even with basketball.

Like I was just on the set of Allied with Marion Cotier and Fred Pitt. Stand it too close. You got to try the zone. Yeah. I just thought that was that was real savage you know

and then they were then they were friends the best but for me the best part of that scene the thing that made that entire scene worth it was the awkward pause

after they had just torn into each other with like like you know shriek like fury of like when birds fight

like with talons and then the silence is broken by her lifting her phone to take an Instagram pick of her food that was kind of adorable

I thought like she was so humble like she was so like I have to do it It was great. It's a great show. Hey, guys. Just want to tell you a little bit about our sponsor today, and it's Joyable. Do you ever avoid parties or not speak up at a meeting and then regret it later? Did you know 30 million Americans will suffer from social anxiety in their lifetime?

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Yeah. Another show with basketball in it. Yes. Got a lot of comments about this. I do feel like that there is an epidemic in television right now with soft interior defense. I don't know that I've spent enough time in pickup games in Los Angeles or New York in the last couple years. But if that's the state of interior defense, if people are just letting other people. Also, to start a series, like celebrating the big men, tough guys of the New York, of Pat Riley's New York Knicks. The goon era of the Knicks.

Yeah, the Goon Squad of the Pat Riley Knicks. And then to represent New York basketball as this, everybody gets a clear runway or the hoop. Yeah. It's just tough. It's tough. And I don't think that Pat Riley would appreciate it. I don't think Bernard King would appreciate it. I don't think Pat Ewing would appreciate it.

John Starks would appreciate it. I just, it's a disgrace. You know, it's interesting to hear you talk about this. As noted TV critic Fat Joe once said, he didn't want to speak about the Rucker. They talk about the Rucker a lot in Luke King. They do talk about the record a lot. Do we need to set Luke Kage up? We do.

What's interesting is like in year five of our podcast, we solely talk about television through the prisms that interest us. Sweet reasoning and basketball? Stop putting basketball in shows and I'll stop talking about. Stop putting sweet wine on shows. Yeah. Come on. You don't need to drink juice.

You're an adult. That's your thing with natural wines too, right? Oh, no, don't get me start on natural wine. Because you think natural wine tastes like adult juice. No, I think it tastes like battered. acid tea. I'm just like, when people are like, oh, these people have been making wines for centuries, but they've been fiddling with the wine.

Right. The preservatives thing. We're just going to let the grapes be what they want to be. I'm like, they want to be like decomposing grapes. You know what I mean? Like, that's cool. But these people who know how to make wine, like, I'm going to trust them on that. We sound like just, we're so ready to talk Luke Cage.

Reup. I like Luke Cage a lot and I will set it up. So Luke Cage is part of the quartet of Marvel shows that are on Netflix. all of which are quote unquote more street-level heroes, not the Avengers, a little more grown up. Set in a slightly fictionalized New York City. I mean, as far as I know, that's reality. I've been away for five weeks.

But it's in New York that it pays some lip service to the idea that there was a huge... Alien. What was it like the alien invasion? What happens? Is that Ultron or is that the first one? Wasn't that the tight end on the Packers during the Farve years? Mark Chomura? But it's like that's one where Iron Man flies up into space.

and then blacks out and then he's got PTSD, right? Yeah. Okay. So that happens, and that sort of happens off screen. But we have Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and now Luke Cage and Iron Fist is the fourth. And then they were going to do a series uniting them all as the defenders at some point. And so Luke Cage, played by Mike Holter, was introduced in Jessica Jones, was a supporting character. Late of the Good Wife, excellent Ron, the Good Wife.

Yeah, you've always been repping him for that. Yeah. And then this is his own series. The character is a really interesting one. The character was created in the 70s. Heroes for Hire were Power Man and Iron Fist, Luke Cage's lame nickname, which is handled really well on the show, was Power Man. Sort of, it was a way for Marvel to capitalize on two trends in 70s filmmaking and storytelling,

black exploitation and Kung Fu. Being Marvel, they couldn't help but turn them into some pretty interesting characters and do some interesting social commentary through the characters. It was actually the introduction of Luke Cage in Jessica Jones was apt because it was the comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis who always loved Luke Cage as a character, and he basically had been on the sidelines of Marvel for two decades. And then when he created Jessica Jones in a series called Alias,

he brought Luke Cage in and then brought him into the mainstream of the Marvel Universe again, where he's a hugely important figure in the Marvel Universe. In the Marvel Universe. Remember of the Avengers and on and off, Does he go back in time and kill young Magneto? If I said, the problem here is, if I said yes, you would start buying comic books again. Because you really are only interested in mutant-based time travel storylines. That has been established.

He's not a mutant? No. Luke? No, just bulletproof. First of all, a little inside baseball fact, Marvel can't use any of its mutant characters because Fox owns the rights to all of them. Does Fox own, so Fox owns the right to that idea of being a mutant? Yeah, which is one reason why Marvel as a complete company, but especially in its publishing arm,

has completely de-emphasized the X-Men and basically spun them off into their own little pocket world, and they've created this idea of Inhumans, which was an idea that's 50 years old, but they made it a thing that can happen to you like mutation, and they're only interested in that. Mucation. It's essentially that.

But it does lead to some funny things where Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were mutants who were members of the Avengers, and then Fox and Marvel both felt that they owned them, so that's why we have two Quicksilvers. That's definitely what people have been dying for. People stay up at night wondering about that. All right. Should I remove the nerd cap, or is it permanently affixed my... It's a free-flowing conversation.

Yes, well... Much like the offense played in the play-round basketball games of New York City. Here's the thing about Luke Hage, and we should have said this right at the top. Like, we're not going to spoil much. We've only watched a couple episodes, and we will revisit it. I think this show is pretty fascinating. I think it's pretty entertaining, but I also think it's pretty fascinating. The guy who adapted, I mentioned him early on,

maligning his choice in adult beverages. Cheo Hedari Coker comes from our world, man. Former music scribe. He wrote about music for Vibe. He went to kind of screenwriting. He's worked on Southland, Ray Donovan. He wrote the screenplay for The Biggie Movie, Notorious. Yes.

Biggie Looms over this show. It's some of the most amazing imagery on the show is the villainous character of Codmouth in his office with that iconic photo of Biggie with the crown askew. Yeah. It's really amazing framing in those shots. You read interviews with him, and there's a great interview with Jelan and Cobb and The New Yorker.com that I recommend people read, and you realize the enormity of the responsibility of this show, or at least that's how Cheo Coker took it, basically saying that as a writer and particularly as a writer of color, the world who had interest in all kinds of pop culture stories, including comic books, the idea of being handed a franchise or being able to have a seat at the table was until very recently almost impossible to imagine.

Right. He talks about how he had asked to be part of, you know, get superhero work and that state of it would be like, you don't really have the background for that. And then he also talks about his own background, basically living in two worlds. He talked about his African-American grandfather, who was a Tuskegee Airman. who is this is a great anecdote in this piece about how his grandfather like drove a Porsche that he like shipped personally from Germany to conduct it. Because he bought it wholesale, yeah. And like was cooking out of the Craig Claiborne cookbooks.

And then he also had family members who were in much more extreme situations of poverty in New Haven. But he grew up in stores for the most part and described himself as the black kid from stranger things. Yeah. Yeah. And so this and then found a different kind of refuge in blackness in music at the time in hip-hop music. And so one thing that you get out of Luke Cage is that this show is extremely. It's a superhero show, but it is extremely considered in terms of being an African-American superhero show. And the type of representation is trying to give to actors of color, darker-skinned actors, lighter-skinned actors,

female actors, male actors, young, old, and not trying to make a hierarchy of black experience, but to represent a panoply of black experience, and have a superhero show in the Marvel Universe. If the show struggles at all, in my mind, it's because, you can feel the weight of that at times as characters are verbally articulating their place in this world and what it means in terms of a larger cultural universe. Yes. There are times when that feels heavy and there are times when it feels kind of revelatory. And I'm finding the experience of watching the show go from one extreme to the other as it finds

itself very entertaining and very, very intriguing. So I am of like many different minds about this show. if you told me that there was a gritty superhero show set in Harlem with episode titles named after gangstar songs. Yes. I definitely need to be down with that. Like, I just,

that's my thing. But I think that this speaks to my larger problem with the Netflix Marvel universe that happens in this sort of, in this sort of semi-fictional New York City, is that I just don't like gritty when it's not gritty enough. Yeah. And I do feel like it's kind of slow-pitched gritty. and I know that that's not necessarily for me

and I know that they can't make Luke Cage feel like Gomorrah and it shouldn't you know it shouldn't that's not really a service to the character and it's really like a weird thing to be like it needs to be more violent and more like more intense and yet I feel like there is a film over all of these shows over Luke Cage and over Jessica Jones and over Daredevil

and I think it stops me from enjoying it The issue, I guess, that a lot of other people are talking about is whether or not Luke Cage is essentially a conservative capital C character. Right. I think the thing to me that's worth remembering throughout is Luke Cage is a superhero. And that is who he is. And Mike Coulter looks like a superhero. I mean, both in his performance, in his physical presence and the way they shoot him in relation to the other characters, he does not look like anyone else physically. Right.

just having a superhero be a six-foot-tall-plus black man is still kind of revelatory in our experience. Also, you know, and other people have commented on this as well, having, in our culture, having a superhero be a six-foot-tall black man who is bulletproof wearing a hoodie is extremely powerful and interesting. So to place him in the continuum of, I also would like a darker, grittier crime show. Right. And there are moments when you feel that, like, the Cheo Coker does, too. You know, there's a great conversation that begins episode two where he just, it's literally,

I don't even know if it's a conversation. He's just literally naming crime writers that he likes and that we like, too. He says, you know, Chester Heimes and George Pelicans. This is a really cool way. This is funny that you bring this up. So the episode two, this isn't spoiling anything in much the same way episode one opens in a barbershop with a bunch of guys talking about their favorite Knicks and who is the right Nick's coach over the past few seasons.

they're talking about crime writers and you know talking about Walter Mosley and Jester Himes and Donald Goins and Coker in that New Yorker interview said I just remember getting into stuff through comic books getting into when they would have a literary illusion in a comic book they were sneaky smart

I would go seek out that book and it just opened up a world to me and I had the same experience I think we've often talked about you'd read it an old issue of spin in the 90s and there would be a reference to another record in a record review and you'd be like, I guess I have to go listen to an arcade. That's really cool.

That's so anachronistic, though. You know what I mean? Like that idea of that the, what I'm saying is that I think part of the issue that some younger people that I know have had with this show is that it feels very backspin radio, like serious backspin radio. And that it is very prescriptive and finger-waving about anybody who's younger than the characters on the show. Now that being said, we've talked a lot about representation on TV recently, and I think

it's cool that middle-aged people are represented. I think it's really cool that people have a completely different experience than millennials and everything, like, have, like, a voice and a viewpoint expressed. And I do think that it's easy to confuse the views, quote-unquote, of characters on a show with the worldview of the people who made the show. And I think that that's irresponsible to be like, well, Chiocom. poker thinks this. Because I think you read that interview in The New Yorker, and he's like, I'm presenting

a couple of different viewpoints. Yeah, I think, and I think that's also why I'm enjoying the show, which it's not that it's at war with itself, but that it's trying to express a lot. Yeah. And it's succeeding in expressing a lot of it. It's a tightro, man. It's the same thing Jessica Jones did with abuse and, you know, a lot of the other things that it's...

These are imperfect vehicles for passionate subjects. Right. And because it's superheroes, it is the vehicle. It's the only car on the lot. And you have to figure out a way to drive it. To fit into it. And, you know, I think that if anything, these Marvel shows on Netflix that they've done well is that they've created the idea of distinct places that matter to the people who live in them. So that when you fold superheroics on top of it, it feels like there are some stakes.

The idea of the streets in Harlem and the neighborhood and the community, people taking things personally, people having a history, that's very different than aliens jumping in from the sky or a fictional. Eastern European country being ripped out of the ground in the second Avengers movie. Yeah, it's interesting to think of it in relationship to that because you wonder if it... How much does this whole thing stand on its own if it's not as a counterbalance to the hysteria of the Avengers stuff?

You mean like why aren't all these people just having PTSD all the time? Well, no, if that stuff didn't exist would these shows sort of stand on this? their own. Oh, I mean, that's certainly their corporate goal. I think that they've carved out enough space to themselves. I mean, they do seem to be insanely popular. Do you like the other ones? Luke Cage crashed Netflix, which is pretty impressive. That's cool. Launch on Friday. Yeah, I like, I mean, I like Daredevil. I have not watched season two of Daredevil. That's my level of engagement with it. I really, really liked Jessica Jones until it sort of petered off in a way

that a lot of people agree. Jessica was like three or four episodes too long, yeah. And I think that people are saying similar things about Luke Cage. I mean, I wish that this works for them. But I wish that these seasons were eight episodes. The fact that they're going to bring these characters together in The Defenders is potentially interesting because they're all good actors. But much like the way that, you know, the Avengers movies are not as good as the more focused individual movies. I definitely don't want 12, 13 episodes of The Defenders. You know what's funny is that...

lot. The thing that the Avengers movies and that those movies have going for them is since they make one every, whatever, 18 to 24 months, whether it's Captain America or Avengers, the plot or the storylines, even though they are often slightly overblown and self-serious, like, you know, this is about like the military industrial complex. It's like, okay, Captain America. They do make sense to some extent. I mean, like, at least... That's a radical take. Well, okay. I would.

say that I understand. Okay, old Tron stuff is like, like, don't worry. Like, not talking about like infinity stones, but I am talking about, um, I think Captain America plots generally like make, are pretty understandable, right? Whereas these TV shows are much closer to the experience of reading comic books week after week.

Whereas like a lot of plot in the first two episodes of Luke Cage. Yeah. Of like with shades and cotton mouth and this and the money that's being taken from a campaign and put into this and you got to get it back. But then this guy. And that's like what it's like to read comic books. And I think it's when you're watching these shows and you're like, man, this is like another episode where this is happening? Like you're like, oh yeah, that's like how comics are.

It also, you can tell that Cheo Coker is a comic book reader because. As he says, every Wednesday comic book reader. Because two things, like the reinvention of decades old supporting characters from what wasn't anyone's idea of the best era of comic books like shades or like Alfred Woodard's character is pretty ingenious. But then additionally, you know, he's playing with continuity in some fun ways. I mean, there's a character named Turk who plays a key role in the second episode of Luke Cage, who is a character from Daredevil. Yeah. And not even an important one.

Right. But it's this little sense of why not use someone that you have on the bench. And that's the kind of world-building thing. If you're going to make the universe, you might as well do it. It's fun. Yeah. I think a couple other things to be said, he, and you can feel, this goes back to your point about it, wanting to skew a little bit darker.

but at the same time, the show is very much in keeping. We mentioned one of our favorite writers, George Pelicanos. One of the Pelicanos sort of quirks or ticks that we sometimes make fun of, just we love reading his books, but he falls back on, you know, is there's often a character whose job it is to deliver the monologue that's just like, he's not a boy, he's a man. A man in this world does these things. And, you know, it's very easy to sort of make fun of that being a very naked statement.

But in the context of the world Pelicanus writes about and in the world that Luke Cage wants to be in, those statements can have a different kind of value. And so Frankie Faison's character on the show, he's just great, by the way. I think you missed the last four years of Frankie Fason wearing a hat on Banshee,

who's very good to see him wearing a hat again, playing a similar role. You know, there is a... What I mean is those sort of speeches and those sort of... Those sort of sentiments have a place in this fiction in the same way that a nightclub does with the villain

looking down from the window or the soul singer. By the way, Raphael Sadiq shows up with the pilot. Music is such a huge part of this show. Music's really good on the show. Marshal Ali is amazing. Al-Frey Woodard is very good in the show. Marcia Ali, fresh off of being very good as the very ridiculous Remy on House of Cards.

This dude was waiting for a part like this. He just... Chews it up. Owns this show, and it's really great to see him have fun like this. And also, you kind of feel the same. same way. I mean, Simone Missick is great as Misty Knight. Alfred Woodard, like, an incredibly acclaimed and distinguished and brilliant actor.

I think she's having fun. Yeah. Why wouldn't you? I think that's kind of a nice thing about it, too. It's a good show. I just think that it's, I just find that these shows are just stuck, right? Right on the edge of being... No, I like them, but it's just like they are stuck

right on the edge of like, you're going to throw a guy off a building, but then like this scene is going to be so vanilla, you know what I mean? Like, or it's like, I can never tell what the rules of the world are. And I do find it nagging at me. But this is like literally my thing with obsession is just like, just do PG or do hard R. But just with this PG-13 soft R shit, it's like.

I think it's hard, but it's also the place where compromises end up. And, you know, one thing we know from the public record, from anecdotal record, we know that Marvel runs a tight ship. Yes. And so anytime anything creative or heartfelt or whatever bubbles up out of it, you know that that had to have been the loudest argument in the room and the one that won. And to win those arguments, you had to pull back on some other ones. And no one, you know, I would love to talk to Cheo Coker about the show.

I don't know if people would know that haven't had many Netflix guests on the old AG podcast or on this one. Well, inside baseball. Haven't, no, I just, they've never really made anyone available ever. But so if anyone knows it, we'd love to talk to. Who's your top three? Let's do it right now. Who, from people from Netflix would like to talk to? Yeah.

Oh, man. Serendos? Let me on the spot. Yeah, I'd love to talk to someone making decisions. I mean... Arnette? Arnette's great. Who else do we like on Netflix television shows?

Oh, Master of None guys. Yeah. I would love to talk to them. Netflix just did something really interesting, by the way. They hired a woman named Bella Bajaria who is... This is super inside baseball, but I think it's worth noting. She was the head of Universal TV. for a long time.

And she has these amazing relationships with people like Mindy Kaling, Amy Poehler, Tina Faye, all of whom do their shows through her. And she did some like crazy, brilliant ninja stuff, you know, getting Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt away from NBC and getting it two seasons plus on Netflix, getting Mindy Project from NBC to Fox to Hulu. And she's incredibly well respected and has great relationship with talent. she was let go under weird circumstances from Universal, and Netflix just hired her to be the, quote,

head of content, which is something they are very invested in. And they're also going to start doing unscripted. And I wonder, well, she wouldn't be doing that as much, but I wonder if this will start to change. Because I think people's relationship, even Town's relationship with Netflix, has generally been, you know... Cut me the check and get out of here.

Well, that's been their attitude all around, which is like they're the ones with the checks and the freedom. But I think, you know, I've talked to people who have shows on Netflix who are like, I don't know if my show's getting renewed. I don't know if anyone watches my show. I'm glad it's being made, but I don't know anything about it. Other than the fact that they make it.

So that would be interesting to watch. And maybe the first sign of thaw, we could get J.O. Coker in here to talk about this stuff. To just do the all. I want to know what Gangstar song titles were in the running that didn't make it. I mean, I want to do the all Gangstar Pelicanos every Wednesday, buying comics and stores Connecticut podcast. Oh, also Vibe Magazine in the 90s. Because, you know, I am the former director of new media for Vibe Magazine. I know.

You really did build hip-hop with your bare hands. I did. Brick by brick. All right, well, that's as good a place as anyway to wrap things up. Andy. Oh, you know what I want to ask you? Oh. Do you think that Westworld is happening on a different planet?

Did Tate try to talk you into this? No, but that is like a thing. Wait, you mean? So I didn't know I hadn't gotten on the forums. You haven't looked at your stories in the forums? Apparently, like, most, there's a lot of theories out there just being like, how does this work if this is in America? You know what I mean? Like, legally?

Like, real estate-wise, like, that's a sizable portion of Arizona. Like, it's shot in Arizona, but if it was in a country, like a state. There's a lot of desert out there, isn't it? Sure. But is it, like, it works like that? So the idea being that it's a false assumption to assume that this is a future resort in our world. Just that that is in play. I think that because it's JJ Abrams, Nolan Brothers joint, anything is in play.

Yeah. And I'm sure they have an answer to that question. And I'm sure they love that people are asking the question. But I don't think that that's one of the top ten questions. That's going to be dope when we find out that this is actually the text-based game that they're playing in Mr. Robot. Season two? Yeah.

I would love that. A unified theory of all fictional pursuits on TV. We probably could figure that out. I think we could figure that pretty easily. We need some more sweet reasoning though. Are we going to go back to West World on Monday? West World Monday, a couple other things. We should check.

We got it. I'm just. Insecure. Oh, divorce? Insecure a divorce on Monday. Yes. HBO Sunday night. Hayden Church.

Are you psyched? Yeah. You psyched for that stash. I love, I love SJP. Because you know that about me? No. Love Sarah Jessica Parker. Always, uniformly?

Absolutely. Did you like her in the movie where she, where she rode on a boat with Bruce Willis. Oh, striking distance? Set in Pittsburgh? I love that movie. See, this is why we would get along, even if we met for the first 720 years.

Even if I was a public school teacher and you were a food and drink consultant? First of all, I thought I was the teacher and you were the food and drink consultant. Oh, you are. Oh, on the Batman? You were like coming into town to visit the set of the Batman

and I am just a teacher. Oh, yeah. Oh, I would freeze you out in a heartbeat. Oh, forget this. I probably wouldn't even text you. All right. I'll talk to you Monday. Good job for Hasky.