The Watch - Ep. 96: Post-Election Re-up

Episode Date: November 10, 2016

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald do a post-election comedown episode, talking about the role of pop culture in the world and the benefits and problems with using television as a palliative. Then they discuss a random assortment of TV shows, movies, and albums, including 'The Good Place' (5:38), 'Arrival' (26:45), and The xx (41:01). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey American Express card members. You don't want to miss this. Now through December 31st, there's a big reason for you to shop small at local stores in your neighborhood. Learn more and enroll your eligible card today at Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. That's Americanexpress.com slash shop small offer. Terms apply. Today's episode of The Watch is also brought to you by 57th and 9th. Sting's first rock pop album in over a decade. Stop! I'm back in! The album features the new single. I can't stop thinking about you, which Rolling Stone describes as a pummel of raw electric guitars,

rapid fire snare rolls, and simple vocal hooks. 57th and 9th is available November 11th. Visit Amazon.com to pre-order your copy now. I need supports to have to clear the room. Walk. Now! Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at Theringer.com and joining me in the studio, my friend, Andy Greenwald. It's low-key today. Yeah, I took a little off that pitch.

That's okay. It's okay. You know, I feel like you guys, it was hard. We're both kind of in a shaken up place. I would imagine that a lot of our listeners might be in a little bit of a shaken up place. This is not the political podcast. We have one of those. It's a good one.

I don't know if I can bring myself to listen to it for a while, but I love those guys. I just feel like, and Chris, you can tell me if you disagree, but we're friends. That's why we do a podcast. We haven't sat down in a room with each other since Monday. You're talking about Kevin Clark and Robert Mase's NFL show, right? That's the political one. We haven't sat down in a room together since Monday. The world was different.

And my feeling is just not doing a podcast if you don't feel up to it is not a good idea. We really appreciate having you guys, your listeners, our friends, our listeners, our almost our family at this point. Yeah, for sure. And if you're in a different headspace, we understand it, but we're kind of in a funny headspace. and we're just going to wrap about it. Yeah, I wouldn't mean, funny, not ha ha, funny. I mean, I think it's funny. It's like we are compelled to, I mean, I think we wanted to do this,

and we wanted to talk about how we're feeling and how we're kind of grappling with this new reality that we're faced with. It shouldn't come as any surprise to anybody who's listened to the podcast that we're not, we're disappointed about Tuesday night. And there's a lot of questions right now about, I think, I mean, Alison Herman wrote a piece, this morning on the ringer.com about the good place,

but it was also about kind of like things that might make you feel just nominally better. And then I think that there's a really natural thing to say back to that statement. You know, it's like, I don't want to feel better. You know, I, I, and that the palliative sort of opiate effects that sometimes popular culture can have on people, sometimes it's good to feel raw. And sometimes it's good to just hurt and not want a comedy or not want anything. I can meet you halfway on that. So I'm on internet timeout.

Well, I don't even know where I feel like that. Oh, I know. We're going to talk about it. So I'll use eye statements as I was taught in my liberal arts college. I'm on internet timeout. I'm off Twitter for two days. I'm off Facebook. You look great.

Thanks. I feel a little bit healthier because of it. And the reason for that is a couple things. You know, I don't begrudge anyone's personal reaction to anything in their lives, personal, political, whatever. In general, posting stuff on Twitter on a good day is, you know, it's to shout into the void. It's basically to be heard, right?

It's to not feel alone. It's to share something. It's to be part of a community. And it's ideal way I think it's to feel connected to people. It's to feel connected. Or it's to promote your podcast, which I also use it for, although I'm taking a break. At this moment, I don't begrudge anyone's right to be angry, to vent. Certainly, I feel those things to, or to have.

have the counter pot take, you know, to belittle, to make jokes. I just can't feel that right now. And I can't hear it. So I've stepped back. I feel like it's very important. Is this getting new agey? I feel like self-care is kind of important. And to one thing that we've learned this week that I think is going to affect us as critics,

as thinkers, as consumers of it, of popular whatever we're doing, nobody knows anything. Nobody's ever known anything. And the reason why we do all this stuff, whether it's like obsessive. progressively refresh, you know, talking points memo, if that's your poison or whatever, or listen to other people's podcasts or watch TV, is to hope that someone knows something, is to gain some knowledge, some way of putting off the uncertainty. And here's the big secret for our self-help podcast. The uncertainty's always there, man.

That's what we're always afraid of. And so that's kind of my headspace right now. So while I am, to bring it back to what you were saying, while I am definitely pulling back. I don't want to be diverted. I don't want to be, I don't want someone to make sense of something from me.

I'm not even looking at the news, but on Tuesday night, I did you know Donald Trump got elected president? I thought we were going to say it. I still don't, actually, on some deep human level. I don't know that, and I don't know what to do with that.

But I did fire up, because I was not sleeping, and I did fire up the Xanax prescription. No, I did fire up the Oh, yes, but I did fire up the most recent episode of The Good Place. It's interesting that Allison wrote that. We were going to talk about that show anyway, I think, because we both were watching it.

We were in a post-Atlanta limbo anyway before we were going to record this. Yeah, and I mean, I want to talk about the show macro and micro. Which would you prefer? I have a bigger idea that I'd like to bring up with you about it in the context that we're talking about before we even get into what we like or dislike about the show. I guess, you know, I, yeah, go macro. I think, so if you guys aren't watching it, let's do a quick back. We talked about it once when it started a couple months ago.

So the good place is the new NBC sitcom from Mike Scher, who created, co-created parks and recreation. And it's pretty high concept. It's basically about the afterlife. It's about Kristen Bell's character who enters, it's not called heaven, it's called the Good Place, she enters there because they made a mistake. And can she become a better person when she's surrounded by a sense of leave better people? It's about ethics. It's about how to behave as a human.

It's about how to improve. It's heavily serialized. Mike Scher has talked about how he's met with Damon Lindelof before making the show, basically to say, how can I take some of these big picture ideas that you were doing on Lost and make a comedy out of them if I can. It's very ambitious. And it's nice to say also it's been rewarded. The ratings have been pretty good for a network sitcom.

because America loves Ted Danson and frozen yogurt, I think, which is a recurring theme in the show. I really like the show. It's really grown on me in a lot of ways, and it was palliative care on Tuesday night, I would say. But one thing that's interesting about it is I was thinking about its relationship to parks and recreation, which I love. Did you stick with that show? Were you? I didn't know if you were. I watched a lot of it.

I don't think I've finished it. I loved it always and forever. What's interesting about it is it already seems very dated. It already seems... Parks and Recreation automatically almost seemed... All of a sudden it seems like an Obama-era show. I think it was actually specifically a first-term Obama-era show. It is a show.

It is relentlessly positive and very uplifting. It was not so much a comedy. It was a fantasy, but in a very, very affirming way about the possibility of doing good local work. literally organizing your community to make the world a better place and the limitless possibilities that come from that. And what I wanted to say about it in relationship to the good place is it strikes me that a show like that, like Parks and Recreation, that idea of like enacting change despite tough odds, all of a sudden I want that show desperately.

I want to mainline that show, whereas the good place almost seems like all of a sudden, a third term Obama show. Yeah. Because it has become so abstract in its concept of good and evil. that it has removed itself from Earth entirely. And I wonder, and then I'm going to secede the floor here, because I believe in good government. I do.

I believe you have a right to be heard, too. Thanks. I hope I get a chance to talk to Mike about this at some point, whether he suddenly, because he's been very vocal, the one thing that I have seen post-election is his thoughts, which I agree with, and I think then he said he was taking a Twitter timeout too. Does he almost want to do over and try something? different for the new world that we're suddenly waking up in?

It's interesting to hear you thinking about it in those terms. I think that I completely agree with you that it is pop cultural ibuprofen. It's just like I can feel the headache getting just slightly better. I'm absolutely certain like a statement of privilege for me to be even like in a place where an NBC sitcom could make me feel better for 22 minutes. the thing I keep thinking about before the election and after the election

obviously in a much different ways we were talking about I was seeing a lot of stuff about like what can shampoo teach us about our time today shampoos is this Hal Ashby movie written by Robert Town and Warren Beatty that came out and it was set on the election eve of 1968.

It's a great movie. Yeah, it's a great movie. I mean, what can the candidate tell us? Like all these movies, Sean wrote a really great thing on Monday about, on the ringer about network and Trump and how network sort of tells us a lot about Trump's celebrity. And I think a lot of those pieces and a lot of the ways we were thinking about those things

were from a place of safety. We're from a place of feeling like we kind of had a grip on what was coming. And it turns out we have no grip on what not only what was coming Tuesday, but what might be happening to us for the next four to eight to the rest of our lives. You know, 48 years of the rest of our lives. And since the election, I've seen a lot of stuff about, Oh, it's going to be like time of the late 60s? Is music going to step up?

Was music going to be good now? Voice of the... That's always the most... Yeah, and I think that... We'll see, you know? But what I'm kind of interested in and what an election like this says to me is that I wonder how many new things are going to rise out.

I don't mean like new art forms, but the concept of this cyclical, like, now we'll go back to the late 60s. Now we'll go back to like, bridge against the machine. Now we'll go back to Bush era, Azure prop like kind of you know the refused will come back somehow and make us like feel like we need to

I don't really know I think that this is really complicated and I'm not sure especially with the television like the cycles of the way people make television and make movies and frankly you know sometimes make music everything is moving so fast right now and things changed so drastically

so quickly between in 25 minutes from a tweet about like the peso is falling to she lost Florida. Like the world changed. And so when you're talking about like, oh, this show seems post-Obama, but like in a post-Ovama like best case scenario, I agree with you. I agree with you. But I almost, I'm just talking this out. I'm just, I'm just.

That's all we're all going to do. Yeah. What's your question? I don't know. I think that to engage with art. at any time is a privilege. Yeah. And I think that we, in addition to enormous amounts of privilege in general,

we get to talk to each other and talk about art and television as part of our job. I think that in limited conversations with people in this town where we live now, people who work in entertainment, I think people have had their heads spun around in a number of ways. You know, I think there really is a thought of we were making what I was writing. what we were producing was made for a different world. You know, it was made, and in the sense, I think everything is always that way, because in order to embark on any creative enterprise, you have to feel the ground is solid beneath you.

We live in a world in a country in which transparent can be a critically adored and beloved show, and Donald Trump can be president. I feel, you know. Those are like different, that speaks a lot to the plurality of this country, you know. Yeah, and that is also what. why I do feel underneath all of the layers of upset and fear, I just feel afraid about a lot of things, I do still have optimism. You know, I do still believe in the moral arc of the universe. I mean, not to get too heavy, I do.

I think that we all, you know, someone slipped under my windshield this morning and note that's saying we're going to get through this together. I think that small acts of empathy are surprises and kindness matter and will get us through whatever is ailing us. I also, though, wonder, well, one thing I'd like, this may be opportunistic to even say it, because I would have argued for this on Monday, too. Maybe I wouldn't have been felt as strongly about it or been able to articulate it as specifically. But these small acts of empathy that I've gotten me through the last two days is what I like in art also. And so to the degree that watching a comedy show can make you feel better because it's distracting, that has real value in a time when we all deserve to be entertained and we all should be able to feel that way for 22 minutes.

but I think to see acts of kindness has value beyond entertainment. And I'm only mentioning Westworld not even in a critical way. I can't wait. Seriously, I cannot wait to watch this week's episode and talk to you about it because, again, that's a privilege. Yeah, right. But I'm going to put this out there using Westworld as an example because we've been talking about it. It does feel a little bit chin-scratchy and privileged to make a show wondering about the potential empathy of robots.

I'm wondering to pivot back to robots. No, no, but I'm asking you this. Yeah, of course. Of course it does. It all seems stupid. Oh, yeah, okay. But wait, I'm trying to find the sweet spot between

it all feels stupid and it does. Can I help you get there? What I want to say is, what about a show that was radical about exposing empathy? Sure. I'm going to help you get there. Help me because.

It's not just that. So you watch the good place. We both watch the good place at various points for the last two days, just to kind of like have something on other than, you know, the void, you know? And I made an interesting personal choice and watched Don't Breathe last night. What? I just thought maybe a horror movie would be cool.

Like, I don't know what was going on in my head. It was a real, like... I've never felt less sure of who you are. The daylight saving shift and the fact that I've kind of been awake for two days, it kind of screwed up. So, like, 6.30, I get a pizza. and I fire up, don't breathe. And so that was a bad choice. That was like a really bad choice.

Do you know what this movie is about? Yeah, I do. And it's about turkey basters, right? Yeah, it's, I didn't know that. I like to kind of keep my information, like how much I know about a horror movie at a pretty limited. You don't listen to podcasts.

Yeah, I have like a rotten tomato Mendoza line that needs to go over, and it's a pretty low Mendoza line. And then once it's over that, it gets a shot pretty much. And so I didn't. didn't know what this was about. And it's basically like a very much in the style of it follows. It's a pretty good movie. I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more six weeks ago,

which says way too much about me than it needs to. But Jane Levy, who was on, what was that show? She was a suburgatory. Suburgatory stars as a group of three house burglars. She's not all three. No. She is a part of a trio of house burglars who are working dilapidated houses or suburban houses in a variety of houses in Detroit. It kind of looks a lot like it follows in terms of like the photography and stuff. And they basically like get hired to get hit a house in like a nowhere neighborhood that's basically been completely abandoned. And apparently it's like an Iraq war veteran who has $3 million or half a million dollars in his house. And they have to go steal the money and they get in there and they find out that he's blind.

But it also like everything goes wrong and it turns into basically this like gut-wrenching somewhat torture porn person trapped in a baseball. guy Stephen Lang. Right. Anyway, bad choice by me. Avatar Stephen Lang, right? Yes. Bad choice by me. Poor choice. Also was like, I was like, I don't have anything for this movie.

I don't have the capacity to watch people like artfully be tortured. You know what I mean? Like I don't have that. And that was the first moment last night. And obviously a lot of other factors go into it. That was the first moment last night where I was like, I wonder how people's responses to certain kinds of pop culture are going to change. One thing that is not often discussed by us or by anyone is that we enter into every entertainment experience,

every viewing experience, with our own little e-meter set differently. Right? We sometimes need one thing or sometimes we need another thing. And a good example of that is when I made you, but then also like the necessities of our podcasting career made you watch. a naughty episode of Mr. Robot after I had been responsible for getting you in Beyonce traffic for an hour,

you are not in a space to appreciate a naughty head fuck, right? Yes. We've all been in those places. Some things work sometimes, some things work other times, but the personal relationship, the personal relationship with art,

with television, which is what brings us back to it and what sustains us, changes, and it's not universal, and so people's reactions are going to be different. I think, I may have even said this on the show before, but, like, I will never see that movie. Yeah. I will never see that movie.

You know that. Regardless, you know, President Dalai Lama could have been elected and I would not be seeing this movie. Maybe an odd choice of that was what your reaction to President Dalai Lama was. It would have been weird. But I attended this event a couple months ago here that was like, it was a panel talk basically, even creative people. It's panel talk season. It's hotbed. You know how I feel about panels. And the guy who wrote and directed that movie, His name is, I'm forgetting. Fife Alvarez or something?

Yes. Was one of the people speaking on it. And I found him to be very inspiring. I found him to be very engaging, very smart, and the way he talked about making movies, creating things. He's great filmmaker. I mean, like, that's the thing is that I ordinarily would have been like, oh, these Hitchcockian scenes of complete visual storytelling

and the way he ratchets tension out of these different camera moves, and I just did not have that in my locker. No, and so it was interesting. to me, though, to see that disparity. Like, I'm never going to see his movie, but boy, did I respect the way he spoke about making it. Yeah. Which is kind of an interesting thing to think about. And, you know, we're saying all this.

And as much as I don't want a lot of things that I'm getting at the moment in the world, I don't want a fully, like, reactionary, not in a political sense, but literally instantly reacting culture. Like, I don't want a new Green Day album next week that's protest songs. You know what I mean? I don't want things to breathe for a second. I want people's natural. I want to hear people's natural experiences. I want to hear people's natural responses.

I can understand why for some people, if they've gone out into the world over the last few days, seeing groups of friends together laughing or seeing something relatively benign. Like I got a press release today about something. My highlight of Tuesday night, there were no highlights, but the highlight of Tuesday night. Let me finish that story.

Just to say that, like, to see people laughing has actually made me feel better, as opposed to make me feel trite, that the world is trite. Can I share with you the one thing that I really enjoyed about Tuesday? Is this person who sent you this press release going to know that? I think it's okay, honestly. I'm going to pull this up in my email, but in the middle of feeling like the world was crumbling, this was 7.18 p.m. out in the West on November 8th, I got an email, and the subject of the email is, Rick Ross releases official statement, quote, I am fully aware of my current dealings with the IRS. Oh, well, that's good.

First of all, genius strategy. If you have something, like, if this email had said, I am fully aware of my current dealings with murdering transients in parks across America, it would have gotten the same response. Right. Like, that was amazing to me. But a good reminder, and I'm going to do a big acrobatic flip right now. I'm watching you, man.

A good reminder that when the, we have no control over the big. we only have control over the small. Rick Ross is in trouble with the IRS, man. That sucks for the boss. That was true Monday. That's true today. Similarly, similarly,

when we last talked in front of these microphones. You're in the night kitchen right now. You're mixing up the dough. Isn't the night kitchen the one about like the milks and the batter? Yeah, go ahead. That book is weird and dark. When we last talked in front of these microphones, we were talking about that episode of Bordain Parts Unknown.

Yeah, it's not lost on me. And one of the things I was thinking about, though, is those kids went to school again. They went to high school. Like the kids we saw meeting with their principal and with Bordane, they went to school yesterday. They went to school today. They probably are afraid too or confused. And I hope that it seems like they have a community that will help them with those feelings. But that still exists.

On a granular level, the things that matter to us still exist. how to balance engagement with those things with the big and unknowable is really tricky. But one thing that I do think might help, I don't know how long I'm going to be able to hold out. But for me, so much of Twitter right now is just people trying to patch people trying to patch sucking chest wounds with Band-Aids.

And that doesn't even mean the election necessarily, but people are just trying to make sense of things that are not sensible. Yeah. And it's a cheap high for me. And I understand why people, are doing it. I think also there's just like a general like whatever you have a situation like this where you feel like you put a lot of faith in institutions that ultimately didn't lead you astray. I mean,

it's not it's not people's jobs to tell you like the certainties of the world. But I think that for people who work do what we do and for people, a lot of people out there, there's just like a lot of distraction. And there's a lot of feeling of, of like I am informed, I am engaged. And I don't even mean like in the political process. I mean, you're talking about like helping people on a granular level, showing and doing these acts and giving these acts of empathy. And I know where my time goes.

And it's not that, you know? And it needs to be. It really does. I know that about myself. And I know my time goes to curating Spotify playlist and to watching. There's some value in that. And watching horror movies.

And I don't know. I mean, you know, everybody's got to do what's right for themselves and that this is not a prescriptive podcast at all. I think we're trying to grapple with the idea of what does

come, how does stuff, I'm interested in this idea of like what does stuff that's coming out that was made in a different time and what is the stuff that is on the horizon that is being produced now that is being produced in a kind of a different, obviously a different environment.

Does that reflect it at all? Is there a way to reflect it, to accurately reflect it because I think a lot of people are, there's not a universal, like everybody's afraid or a lot of people are afraid and there are a lot of people

who are feeling pretty triumphant. People don't, here's an easy statement. People don't do well with lack of resolution in life or in art. You know, things that end in the sort of middle place

are very tough to pull off and very tough to sell. I think about the ending of the graduate all the time. Like that's one. I mean, and Michael Clayton basically did the graduate ending also. Those are both movies I really like, only one of which involves auto explosions for front of livestock. But you can't. That was an incredible Hoffman moment when the horse explodes.

Catherine Ross's face. Wait, that's luck. I'm sorry. Good point. So there is a unified theory of pop culture after all. But, you know, I think that grappling with that can create better conversation. It can create better art. But it's tough.

It's a tougher place to just rest in. And nobody wants to rest there. I think about how I spent – I don't like to think about it. But I think about how I spent the last six months basically just constantly drugging myself with blog posts and tweets and podcasts. all of which were... So what would the alternative? Well, what I'm saying is all of that I could have written off at the time saying,

I'm engaged. I'm a civically engaged person. I'm anxious. I want to know. But really what they were was I wanted someone to tell me I'm okay. Like I wanted to be reassured. I wanted to have a grip on the world.

None of those people were able to do that. And that, honestly, even if things had broken the way we wanted to, that still kind of would have been true, but you kind of maybe wouldn't have had your nose rubbed in it as much. People don't really know. We're all just trying. But prescriptive, I mean, I don't know what we do with that.

I guess what I'm saying is I do want to try to jump from us venting to finding a way to integrate this into our conversation. I think about the conversation we had on Monday about the desire some people have, and this is a legit desire. I don't mean to belittle it, but to watch television to solve puzzles. That in and of itself suggests that there is something to be solved. Which I think we're learning is... Well, I think it's also just that when you're making mass-produced entertainment, and if we had had a different... If this week had gone differently,

I would have liked to have spent some of this time talking a little bit about a movie that's opening tomorrow. It's a rival, you know. Oh, yeah, you saw that. I did. And it's a really beautiful, beautiful movie. It's a really, like, affirmative... It's a really, like, great film about communication.

and contact, and it's also a great example of why they should keep making movies. Just keep doing it. Keep doing what you're doing. Wait, say, give people the contact. It's Deni Valley News. It's his first film since Sicario. He's a director of Prisoners in Sicario. Sicario is a movie we liked a lot.

And it stars Amy Adams as a linguist who is asked by the U.S. military to help with the communication aspects of dealing with several. egg-shaped pods that have arrived on Earth. Podcasts or? Yeah. So it's Marin. Yeah. No, like basically spaceships arrive on Earth and they can get into them and they can, I don't

want to give it too much away, but basically Amy Adams is tasked with making first contact. Jeremy Runner is also in it. And ordinarily, we would just be going insane about Renner right now. Would you hypothetical, quick, as aside, if you were in charge of this mission, if you were, you know, in the government, would those be your time? top two people? Renner and Ernie Adams? Would you put Adams and Renner on the front lines of interstellar communication?

I would probably task... I would task Adam Scott character from Eastbound and Down. Or the PG version of it from The Good Place? Yeah. Just to see what would happen. No. It's a great movie. But it feels like way more of...

Okay, it's about aliens. Keep going. But it feels like even more of a fantasy now than it did last a couple weeks ago. Not the fantasy part about the aliens. That's already happened, man. The some of the underlying themes are a little bit harder to... Doing a podcast with Tom DeLong is the best decision I've ever made. Some of the underlying themes of the film are a little bit harder to identify with now.

Now maybe some people will see it and say like, now more than ever, these ideas are important. But yeah, it's tough. I don't know what the role of culture is going to be in this. It's a question of, it's one that we don't like to pay attention to when we don't have to because it's really fun to joke about Jeremy Renner or, you know, see comedies or do the stuff that we normally talk about. But like, what do we look to this stuff for? And by stuff, in this case, honestly, I mean, this is facile to sort of equate. them. But if we've got a gap, whether it's like some, whether it's neediness or boredom or whatever,

when we look to fill it and whether we look to fill it with binge watching something on Netflix or binge watching political news or whatever we fill the whole with, like what are we looking to get out of those things? And is it more than just passing the time? I think it feels different for me now than it probably would feel for me in 25. Yeah. I think that's true. But explicate why that would be? I think that I think when you're older, when you get a little older, like I think that you probably

do look for some sort of balm and when you're younger you do look for some sort of, I also think it's like I'm a white man. Like it sucks I mean like I just don't think that I can fully appreciate what this means for a lot of people

you know and I'm trying and that's going to be like my project. I, like, that's definitely like a top priority in concern is to understand that this is in a lot of ways not happening to me in the way it's happening to everybody else or a lot of other people. But when it comes to how I relate to the, to the television and films and music I listen to, I think that I look, I'm, I'm almost looking for something that's like right in the middle. Not too sunny and not too stormy. Like I was listening a lot to the kill. yesterday and I was like this is just enough edge to make to match my mood but not to confrontational and demanding that like I am thinking about Rudy Giuliani all day

long one thing I thanks a lot by the way I think you just triggered me as a New Yorker one thing that's different I think between experiencing this now and experiencing a similar dejection although honestly very different 12 years ago is, I hope that being a little bit older allows us to take the longer view and that things are cyclical and that to feel secure that you are being represented or your values are in some way being represented

on a higher level, that is a gift and a privilege and not always guaranteed, you know, and that you can hopefully see to the next time when that might be the case. But I also think that, and I know the irony, it's a rich irony, to be making this point on a responsive podcast, basically. But I do wonder about our ability to take the long view of things in the culture at the present.

Not to be the guy who used to walk uphill in the snow to school uphill both ways. But, you know, at 2 a.m. in the East Coast, the last wave of hot lava takes I saw flowing towards me before I ex-twetering bird off of my phone was what this means, what this means now, what this is going to mean. Heads up, we don't know. We don't know. I mean, we can assume some things, but we don't know.

And I hope that we can carry that, being okay with that, because we're going to have to, but being okay with that uncertainty maybe into the way we cover stuff, you know, it's sort of, we're baked into a different cake at the moment where I'll turn it back to Westworld in a positive way. And I'm only using it not to rile people up, but because that's the hour-long show

we've been talking about, we have been discussing the chapter is not the book. An analogy, I usually have trouble, I push back against the TV. But, you know, it is the nature of what we do to react quickly to a piece of something without being able to see the whole. I hope that we can, I mean, I always sort of wanted to hope this, but I hope that we can try to be culturally a little bit more patient. Yeah. Obviously, we're going to have to be.

and again I realize like I think you've made the point well we have the privilege of just talking this out with each other in front of microphones this is this is a much bigger yeah this is I mean we're aware that this is an incredibly self-adulgent act it's just we didn't really know what else to talk about today let's just take a quick break and hear from our sponsors hey guys just want to tell you a little bit about sonos sonos is the smart speaker system that streams all your favorite music

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for 25% off your very own blurb photo book. That's blurb.com slash watch code watch at checkout for 25% off. It's the ultimate gift. It's one that keeps on giving blurb. Make a book. Leave your mark. I'm interested in the terrible culture choice

you made last night. I'm wondering how you think. Like, trying to... Because it's like, horror movies produce a visceral reaction and they're very transportative. So if you are able to kind of give yourself over to the fun part of them,

they're like a roller coaster. They're like a lot of things where you are basically... It's like play test. It's like you're just electrifying your nerve ending, it's almost by engaging with a part of them. Frankly, like, the more and more I get older and the more and more I had time

I spend on a computer or looking at my phone, And like, the less I feel like scared ever. I mean, you know, or thrilled or or like I'm being dropped off a building or like my heart's racing. It's harder to get the highs. I completely. Yeah. You know, and it's telling that I would look to culture for that. And that's just like where I'm at my life.

I'm not like much of a thrill seeker anymore. But I think that it was it wasn't the actual like I don't like being scared right now that was throwing me off. it was the voyeurism and safe experience of violence of terror, you know, like of assaults. These are real things. Yeah. You could just fire it up on Wednesday.

It's fucked up because like that stuff was happening two weeks ago. You know what I mean? Like I'm and that's that's that's my bullshit to work out that I thought that you know, it's safe, you know, three weeks. ago and it's bad now is a complete fallacy. It's it's and that's something that I think that we'll all start to sort of see. I mean we've gone through 10, 15 years of the anti-hero being the primary delivery system of like televised narratives in a lot of ways and I don't know how much longer people

are going to be like yeah, this guy's an asshole. This is great. Maybe people are going to want to have people who are a little bit more real, you know what I mean? I think that we have confused anti-hero with like a real man or a real a real a real protagonist. And I wonder whether or not that is something that going forward we're going to be like, no, we have plenty of real life examples of people who

are anti-heroes. You know, show me somebody who... Are you saying show me a hero? Oh, that's true. I am saying that. Well, I like that many series too. But I agree with you. I think that if you have... Do you think that Simon's like, God damn it? David Simon? Yeah, because he's making a movie about the 70s

and like it's, we're thinking a show about the 70s and, you know, that's a guy who I think would obviously, talking about wanting to fast respond to something. Well, the last time I was online, he was tweet baiting anti-Semites and KKK members. So I feel like I hope he took a Twitter vacation too, because I just can't imagine welcoming that into your life, let alone it existing. But no, I think you're making a great point because I want, I do want, not David Simon

the polemicist, but David Simon the artist. I kind of want him on the front lines of stuff, you know. The wire. But this is what I'm talking about. that kind of like, all the traditional modes of communication, the traditional institutions of mass media, even all the voices that we already have were all screaming the same thing. And it didn't work.

Yes. Right? It didn't make a difference. All the gatekeepers were irrelevant. All the emperors have no clothes. I think that's a good point. But I was only going to finish by saying, I wonder if there is frustration in going back to work on,

a deeply reported, deeply realized examination of Times Square in the 70s with James Franco as twins. Like, I'm into it. I'm psyched for the deuce. Maybe we're going back to the 70s Times Square. I don't know. That's an interesting point. I do think it would be an interesting playtest, if you will.

If you have the luxury of seeking whatever you're seeking this week in the arts, what clicks and what doesn't. Like on the way here, I was just, there's new songs by artists that I like, just randomly this week, you know, and the new Los Campesinos song. You remember that band? Oh, man. Los Campesinos, great, great, great, Welsh band. And

they rhyme something with Ferranti, the novelist in the song. I enjoyed it, but it didn't click. I thought I was going to, I thought that's what I wanted. I thought I wanted to hear some shoddy, emotional Britpop essentially. But it kind of didn't. It's kind of discordant. Good song. Yeah, I've just been listening to this, there's a, this is just

I should really just put myself in a locker after this. But there is a Noel Gallagher curated playlist on Apple Music that is mostly, it's called the Noel Gallagher Indian Summer, like playlist. And it's when you go to an off license and lie down in a park and hit shuffle, it's like his description of it. But it has... When's the last time you think he did that? I don't know.

In 1991, I don't know. And it's got a lot of like... African psych rock and weird, like, beat-driven psych rock from, like, England and Africa that I just was like, like, yeah, melt it all the way. Like, let's do it. I put on the new song by The XX this morning. Yeah. And I was really...

They have an incredible Spotify playlist that's, like, what they've been listening to in the studio. I was listening to that all day of Monday. I was really moved by this new song because, you know, I don't know if, if you guys listen to the XX, beautiful, minimalist kind of post-trip hop? I don't even know what you call it. It's not really dubstep. It's very, very intimate, like, bedroom tunes, as they might say. But in the space between their second album, which I didn't love, and this new album,

the producer, Jamie XX, made that beautiful album in color that we talked about in the podcast last year. And there's this moment in the song where it starts like an XX song, and then there's something in the background that's bubbling and bubbling and it's this beautiful. Is Noel Gallagher opening a can of Foster's? his third can of Fosters. It has the same effect, because it's this chopped up sample. Have you ever had of Fosters? In that big can?

Yeah. Yeah, it's a tough hang. Because it gets kind of warm, right? Unless you really go for it. It's the kind of thing where, like, you get halfway through it, and then you Joe Bluth it, and you've made a terrible mistake. We used to because when we first started out in high school, it was 40s, and then one of my friends in high school went temporary blind from drinking Zahides.

At least he claimed to. and then we moved to Fosters for a while and I was never a big fan. Well, you have bad memories associated with it. I was just going to say that when this sample comes up in this XX song, it's just like it was surprising and it was beautiful and I was like, okay, all right, it's this small things.

We're going to build this back piece by piece. And there was a moment today when I heard something that surprised me and it was beautiful. And there's a point to that, man. There's a point to that. I don't know if that's pedantic. I don't know if other people need to hear that or be reminded of it today.

maybe you're seeking solace a different way. Maybe you're not seeking solace at all, which is fair enough. You definitely don't have to. But if you feel that you are and Foster's isn't doing it for you, I thought that song was pretty good. I'm curious what people like is generally, and we can start to wind things down, but you wrote me the other night,

and I hope you don't mind me putting this out there because I was going to say the same thing. We probably all have these routines. We all have the movies that we go back to in different times of our life. We all have the songs. We all have the TV shows that comfort us or whatever. I remember being told before I had a kid that, like, the one benefit of being up all hours in the first few weeks is, man, you can really binge a lot of TV shows. And I was like, great.

I love watching TV shows. It's definitely what I want to do in my free time. But I was telling myself, there was a part of me that was like, this could be productive time. Like, I could get through some of these series that are on my, in my to-do list. Let me tell you something. In that headspace, 1,000% no. What I did was I rewatch Parks and Recreation

and I rewatch 30 Rock because you just want... Yeah. You just want mac and cheese, man. You just want sometimes. That's all you want. But I was going to say that it would be interesting to hear back and I would almost say tweet this to us

but I'm not looking at Twitter, but maybe you will. Like, you can handle it. But what's your go-to? Because maybe some people want to, the emotion that they're chasing, not in the sense, musically anyway, or maybe in terms of TV too,

Like, maybe it is surprising. Maybe it is not the Smiths. Maybe there's something between the Smiths and the turkey baster movie you watched, but I don't know what that is. But I would be curious. I just think that in good times and bad times, I do appreciate, not just that we can do this, but that there are these touchstones, whether they're TV shows, movies, or songs, that do make us excited to come together and talk about stuff. That doesn't change politically, whatever. We would have said this on Monday.

We did kind of say it on Monday. because we were very moved by a crawfish boil involving saracha and beer. But I think we particularly are grateful for it. Yeah, I'm grateful to be here with you, man. So I think we should end it there. How psyched are you to see what Mave does with her extended intelligence over the weekend? Like, let's just be really, really real. I mean, they've got a lot of amnesiac and Hailed of the Thief to work through on that piano.

So I'm really looking forward to see the gloaming take by the Ghost Tavern piano. What if we just came, it's like mixomatosis, man. It's like finally stripped down the way it always should have been. What if we just hit reset and we just came in? I wish that writer would turn around and be like, is that fucking radio hit again? Pass me Fosters!

But what if he was like Mill Gallagher and he's like, write a proper tune, you wankers! University Toffs! What if we just hit a hard reset and we just came in... What if it's two timelines? By the way, full disclosure, into the idea of divergent timelines all of a sudden, super into it. What if this is the brighter one? Well, thanks a lot.

That's lurking underneath every episode of Community. What if we just hit a full, hard reset and we came in just like 1,000% in on Hugh Laurie's Hulu show Chance? Chance? Hugh Lorry, God, why are we talking about this? Hugh Lorry did not seem totally psyched to be back on television? And to be fair, he's not. He's on Hulu. Hugh Lorry has just one thing.

To get Hugh Lurie attached your project, does it help if the character is American? Sure. Does it help that he's professional and misunderstood? Yes. But the key is, his name has to be the name of the show. Oh, yeah. He's not the night manager, though.

Dr. House. Good point, but that was only a limited series. He's committed to more seasons of this. I believe his show Chance, his name is Hugo Chance. But isn't the dude who wrote this like your boy, Kem Nun? There are many talented people involved in this. this, but I just want to call, like, time out on naming shows after you, yeah. It doesn't have to be, unless the one carve-out I'm going to make for that

is next week when it's revealed that Dr. Arnold Westworld named the park after himself. That's what it's about. It didn't have to be a cowboy world. It just happened to be his name. All right. We're going to wrap it up there. Andy and I will be back on Monday talking about Westworld. We're going to just watch some TV, man.

We'll keep doing podcasts. but I really, seriously... Keep doing podcasts. We love doing a podcast. I said, we're going to keep doing it. I really thank you to our listeners. We don't say that often, but it's awesome to have you guys to talk to. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

And stay saying out there. Like, try to, like, just rely on each other and... We got you, Branskees. We got you, Baranis. Thanks again to Sonos today for sponsoring us. Sonos is the smart speaker system that streams all your favorite music to any room or every room. You control your music with one simple app, and you can fill your home with pure.

pure immersive sound. One simple app brings together all your favorite music services and lets you control everything from songs to volume to rooms. It's amazing. Play a different song in a living room, bedroom, even a bathroom, or the same track in every room if you're having a party. Add your existing music services or discover something new. Check out Sonos.

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