The Watch - ‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 4 and ‘Star Wars’ Streaming Numbers. Plus, Pitching Literary Classics as TV Shows.

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Chris and Andy talk about the recent ‘Star Wars’ viewership data on Disney+ and what it says about the state of that IP (7:19). Then they pitch unadapted literary classics as contemporary TV shows, inspired by the release of Netflix’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ (29:25). Later, they discuss ‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 4 (45:31). Finally, they react to the 76ers’ Game 7 win over the Celtics (0:00). Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Email us! [e-mail] Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Order and it will come. Like today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of The Watch is presented to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime Same Day delivery has your back, getting you exactly what you need, fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same Day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast available in select areas, terms apply.

I need supports 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 ringer.com and joining me in the studio his pinky toe is a metaphor. It's Andy Greenwald.

That was a good euphoria reference. Thank you, brother. Today we are going to talk about Euphoria Episode 4. We're going to talk a little bit in a roundabout way. about Netflix's Lord of the Flies. For those not watching, you're doing the wind horse fingers. Those boys are on an island.

Why is that? Oh, wait. What are they eating? We're going to talk a little bit about Netflix's Lord of the Flies, not the actual show, but the text. Elite. And some things around that. I had a fun little project for us to do on a sleepy little manic Monday.

You look great. Wow, thanks. One of my best weekends in a minute. At least one of the best Saturdays in a lot of time. I want to talk to you about this. This is important. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. Every once in a while.

Mm-hmm. You know what? Like, I just stretch the arm out, and I can still hit 90 on the gun, you know? God damn, you're the best. Saturday? Adam Scott in Hocom, the movie? Pretty good. Meaning you saw the movie.

Adam Scott didn't personally... No, Adam Scott did not come to my house and show me Hocom and then talk to me about severance. Approachable guy, though. Yeah, sure. He and I would have plenty to argue about in the R.E.M. Wars I was at. Exactly. And then I went to go see some Sixers on my TV at my home. You're phrasing all this super weird. I know. Hold on.

You sound like Steve Carrell and 40-year-old Virgin talking about having a good time. This is those backs of sand. So you watch the Sixers game. I watched the Sixers beat the Celtics for the first time in a playoff series since 1982. It was surreal. It was surreal. We're going to talk about it. I want to get into like everything about it. And then I went and saw the band basement play in El Serino

in basically a parking lot and it fucking ruled. Now, do you go in the pit still? No. Still? No. I can't. First of all, like, it was really funny. I saw a guy like beforehand, me and my buddy Jeremy were talking as dude and he was

just like, I got two kids and they're in the pit somewhere. He was just like being a dad, you know? And like he was a really nice guy. And like 40 minutes later. I just watched that man get his head knocked off by a guy doing a somersault off the stage. And he took that L and then just started screaming the lyrics back at basement. And I was like, this guy's still got it. I have some semblance of it.

You've got none of it. Zero. Did I ever have it? A question for another pod. What's the most insane you've gone at a show? Oh, one time Bell and Sebastian played a deep cut from Tiger Milk at Town Hall. and I was seated already because we all were, but when the violins hit,

who makes me take a deep breath, just like I did then. Yeah. Have a cup of minty. No, for digestion, yeah. Sure. Sorry, I just got lost in memories. So, yeah, that was what I got down with.

This is why, I mean, there are many reasons why you're undisputed, aka the king, but like we were texting, as we often do generally, but particularly during sporting events, but for such a momentous occasion, you were relatively understated and quiet during game seven. And I wasn't sure if it was nerves or if it was you were busy. And then I didn't hear from you for a minute.

And then I fired up the old Instagram machine. And the stories from CR, it's always an adventure. Actually, no, it's rarely an adventure. Because it's almost invariably it's you being clever and charming on a podcast. Yeah, I usually keep that. Unless you've had the second medello. And then you'll be like, here's a song by the band Karate

that I'm listening to right now. And I'll be like, he's having a good night. Yeah. But you posted a mosh pit in El Sereno. Yeah. I was like, man, that's awesome. It was a good weekend.

Did you feel good Sunday morning still? Yeah. Yeah, brother, yeah. I didn't really get after it on Saturday night. You know, it was clean living. It was victories after victory after victory. I didn't feel the need to cloud it all up with...

A victory is winning. I was like, is victory a new non-alcoholic? beer brand that you were crushed. There's Victoriel, isn't there? Yeah, but I think that's alcoholic. I was thinking of like athletic or whatever that's called. John Mullaney's N.A. What's up with that?

Is there a John Malaney cocktail, like mottale thing? No, no. He is, I don't know if he's co-owner, but he promotes a non-alcoholic beer brand. Good for him. I think so. Yeah. I like a little wheat soda now and again. You know?

I have like a weird way into this project I wanted to do. So today, here's what's on the agenda. Lord of the Flies came out weirdly today. I don't really remember many Netflix shows dropping on Mondays, but here we are. Four episodes written by Jack Thorne, who did Adolescence. So I'm very excited to check it out. Although, I would say, say,

if 100% obviously would be the most excited I could possibly be to watch a show, I'd put this at about 70 just because Lord of the Flies is something I'm very familiar with. Obviously, really. Early years of Grantland. No, but, you know, everybody, most people read Lord of the Flies at some point. You all talk about holding the con. Between sixth and ninth grade. It's an introductory text when people are trying to teach you about characterization, foreshadowing, metaphors, and not to hang out with boys.

And not to hang out with boys on supervised. It got me thinking a little bit about classic literature as intellectual property, as debased as that is. And some of our bigger titles out there, both, you know, the more sensational box. office smashing things like Star Wars, Happy May the Fourth. And literary classics that still hold some sort of market share of imagination for people where when they see Howard's End or this, they'll be like, yeah. Sorry, I just leaned in. I'll check it out.

So most alive I've been in weeks. Something really funny happened as we were about to start recording as Hollywood Reporter published some numbers about Disney Plus streaming in regards to Star Wars. And I just had this conversation with Sean. We did some Star Wars rankings. This is going to come out on the big picture today, I believe. And we had a long conversation about the state of Star Wars. But I wanted to bounce a couple of things off of you because from this data, and you can find it in the Hollywood reporter.

This is before we get into the classic literature. Yeah, I'm going to get there in a second because I think that these things come together, I hope. There's some numbers I wanted to talk to you about with the Star Wars stuff. First of all, the number one, I guess how would you describe? They put out a top 10 most dream Star Wars title as of 2020, 2005. They is Disney. Disney, yeah. Well, Neil, Nielsen.

Oh, okay. And Andor is number one. Wow. Now, that would make sense because Andor is sort of the freshest, newest thing that they put out in some ways. And the only good thing. Sure. It's also the most critically acclaimed thing. So if people are looky-lose with Disney Plus subscriptions for their kids,

they might check out Andor. you can watch Andor and not really know a lot about the sequels or the prequels or a bunch of other Star Wars stuff you can get into it without being a Star Wars completest. You may not know the answer to this,

but do you, because I didn't see this article, like, do you think Nielsen's numbers are skewed in any way in terms of, like, dynamic engagement? Like, because I would have thought, it wouldn't surprise me if Andor is up there just in terms of, like,

recency and watching one probably means you're watching, 16, which may add, which may be a larger engagement number than everyone who has Disney Plus watching Empire Strikes Back once, if that makes sense. I do understand what you mean. And I'm sure

that there are reasons for all of this. There are a couple of interesting factoids that come out of it that Andor remains number one, even if you open it up to the first quarter of 26. Which I suppose is also like maybe end of the year Hosanna's throne at Andor

and maybe people being like, wow, I it's finally time to check out Andor. In fact, Sean did check out the second season of Andor to like complete it and was blown away. And I would say, Does he know that we liked it? He does. He does. The other thing that was shocking about this list was how poorly, not poorly, but there are no sequels in like the top 10 here.

You mean 7,89, not the pre-olds. Yeah, no Force Awakens, no Last Jedi, no Rise of Skywalker. which might have something to do with their recency, so people may feel less compelled to rewatch. We've done a couple of pods on the big picture recently about Star Wars, we did a Star Wars draft and then a Star Wars ranking. So I went back and rewatched some of the sequels,

and I was struck by how their very, very modern storytelling style of constantly running into a room and trying to solve a puzzle that's not quite, yeah. It doesn't really lend itself to rewatching. it's not a great observation not a lot of moments that I feel like they breathe the Ryan Johnson movie obviously has some of that it's a

it's good I really really like the Last Jedi there is a large sequence in it that I find unwatchable which is the like casino racehorse bizarre segment but for the most part like those movies were enjoyable enough to watch

in the theater and I don't really feel super compelled to revisit them I think those numbers kind of, they kind of pan out that way. Like, they support that idea. Generally, if you have children in America, probably including the guy who is concussed with the hardcore show, like you have a Disney plus subscription for the child pacification purposes and or is something that mom and dad might want to dive into as a perk.

Yeah. If they have the service. Here's where I want to go with this, though. Mandelaarine and Grogu is coming out at the end of this month. Starfighter next year. These are like the two major Star Wars things on the books. You know, Kai Clipped you talking about

how you'll probably go see Mando and Grogu and I did look at the first comment on it within like an hour of it posting with someone wrote, CR, please see it on opening day. And I was like, is this Josh DeMiro's burner? I just, it's just an incredible and it's still, I don't know why I'm surprised, but that is a

wild level of specific fandom. Sure. They're like, you person on the internet, you must support this franchise on opening day with your dollars um there's not as much volume obviously like there was a point on this podcast where i felt like we had a star wars new story to talk about every day that was good for our numbers and there was trailers to talk about and there was new shows to talk about and obviously there was a little bit of like fatigue with that aside from asoka season two i don't think i know of any tv series that they're currently working on no no second season of

acolyte no second season of skeleton crew right and or is complete so we're kind of at this weird crossroads with Star Wars where I think they're going to see how viable Mandalorian is as an ongoing project and they have finally the first new piece of like here's some new characters

at knowing Star Wars I'm sure that there will be echoes if not actual straight up cameos from older characters here's what I want to talk to you about you mean in Mando or in Starfighter? Starfighter. Yeah Starfighters that's the hope. That's the new hope.

It is the new hope. How viable is this stuff at this point. Do you think the window is at all closing on let's revive Jedi Knight stuff? Let's bring back the Skywalker name. Or do you think that this is something that's just always going to be

like in the background or foreground of culture and they're always going to be like pumping something out? I think they're in an enormous trouble. And I say that as someone who's worked inside the building. I say that as someone who engages with the content still, both in the podcast and as a fan. And I say that as someone who's the parent of two kids

who have zero interest in anything coming out of a galaxy far, far away. Like, cannot be bothered with any of it, even, like, bespoke pieces of entertainment that might appeal to them or that might be culturally resonant. They have some demographic numbers on Mandalorian, and they said,

Mandalorian, shockingly, like, the two most interested groups were people aged 2 to 10, or people aged, like, 55 to 7? Indeed. It was just like these two like old people who like used to watch gun smoke and babies. Is it like the beginning of international football matches when they walk out holding hands to the children? Just like let's all walk into the movie theater.

Yeah. Or that's actually what the movie's about. Yeah. Although we don't know how old Groko really is. I think he's actually contemporary of us. You think he's in his late 40s? I think so. Yeah.

Can you tell? I mean, I think I have the same joyful attitude. towards the world. It's tough for us to find a unique way to have the broader version of this conversation, which is that we, the things that we love and the things that we obsess over and the mechanisms with which we engage with them are wildly out of step from the same answers to that question for a generation 20 years younger than us. The degree to which something like One Piece, which is a manga and a Netflix show that I know nothing about and probably, we will never know anything about, but the degree to which that is the most popular franchise on

planet Earth and dwarfs anything Star Wars related in terms of active engagement and probably merch and all that at this moment. I don't know of merch because there's the theme parks, and legacy people buying that stuff. But so when we talk about Star Wars becoming relevant again and we talk about it being like, oh, maybe they'll have an amazing TV show or maybe there'll be a trilogy that resonates again. It's actually already, I think, in kind of a boom or bubble of like for whom and how big can it go? The floor, I don't think, is that low because of the millions and tens of millions of people

who will always love this stuff and give it a shot. The floor, and this is actually, I think, more of an indictment, as I say it out loud, is Star Trek in that, like, this is a reliable franchise that you can continue to mine, and there will always be a certain number of people who engage with it. Now, like, I know how dramatic and foolish that sounds,

because even like Mandelorian and Grogu, which is, as we discussed last week, likely not to set the global box office or the imagination of a generation on fire is going to make half a billion dollars globally just by being Star Wars. Like, probably, maybe. Yeah.

300 million, 400 million? Like, it's going to make a lot of money. Like, I think that the big question is, is it going to outperform solo? I don't know. I wonder, though, if the tight, the terror, the white knuckle grip on the franchise that Disney has had,

and that the various stewards of it have had over the last 10 years may have been, not fatal, but may have been, like, ruinously damaging to the franchise because what it may have done, and I'm not saying I would have argued for this, I don't even know how one would have done this, but if they had loosened the grip a little bit, and they met with, when they say they met with everyone

to make Star Wars content, they did. Like, sure. You know, I think it's now officially reported, like Vince Gilligan was in there, like all the great creators of stuff that we like went in there for a meeting. Fincher, all these people have had serious, more than serious conversations about it.

But did they bring in the younger generation of people who didn't grow up on it and give them a pathway towards it? How do you keep it fresh, keep it new, and keep it feeling like something that is vital? I don't know the answer to that,

and I think all these legacy franchises are starting to founder against those rocks. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for,

that's when Prime's same-day delivery has your back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so that you can actually join in on the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same-day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas.

Terms apply. The reason I'm trying to make this connection between classic literature and Star Wars is because I think Star Wars is... Oh, I see what you're doing. Sorry, took me a second. Not quite in danger of, but... It faces the possibility of becoming classic literature when it comes to being.

It's going to be kind of stuck in behind glass in a museum soon if they don't do something drastic. And I think Andor was drastic. Andor was a project that lasted, you know, in terms of like the actual creative act of it. It was like a six-year project or whatever, you know. I think Tonyu says it's almost like a decade of his mind. But I think he puts Rogue One into that. one in there. If you don't really, look,

I understand why they don't, because it's like the bets are too big to not pay off. And you can't make a losing bet that then everybody walks away from the table permanently because of, you can't have them all be so, like I'm so disappointed

with what you've done that I don't want to experience. I'm not going to give you another chance. But the thing about Andor and the thing about the Last Jedi was that it actually tried playing with different storytelling colors and painting with those colors and saying like, can Star Wars make you feel this way? Can Star Wars make you think about this? Is Star Wars just

the frame, but the house can be different every time? What I think they decided was, no, that we don't like that experience. We need to make a replicable. Everybody comes in. We do the same thing. There's a kid. There's a, there's a master. Then there's like a adventure. Familiar story beats. You can go in and you can relax as opposed to you can go to the theater and lean in. And I, you know, I don't even remember what the NDAs were and I don't even think it's my place to say anything. But the project that I was lucky enough to work on with our friend Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt Gibson was about the act of a radical act within the expected hierarchy of a Star Wars universe. It was essentially running at the thing.

both on a meta level, you could see what he was playing with, but also the characters were saying, why does it have to be this way? Sure. And it was super biased. I thought very, very, very exciting. And, you know, in the fullness of time, like, am I extremely disappointed that that didn't happen for personal, professional, and fandom reasons? Hell yes.

But to the point you're saying about, like, being a steward of this and the risks you take, I understand. But that felt like a big moment of a decisive moment. know. I would love to get Bob Iger's version of the Stephen Soderberg pitch for Ben Solo, which in the vacuum of nobody from Disney really commenting on this has kind of taken shape as, what was it, who was the writer on it? Oh, it was, I think it was Jules Asner with Soderberg and like Scott Burns or I can't remember. He was one of his dudes. It was, it was Ed Solomon or Scott Burns. It was one of his. It was an Ed Solomon, so it was probably Scott Burns. And, you know,

this story has taken shape that Soderberg was like, Adam Driver was in. It was, it was, had a really, really good idea that was rounding into form as a script if it never actually became the first draft. And the enthusiasm of Lucasfilm, most importantly. It says along with writer Rebecca Blunt. That's Jules Asner, I believe. That's Jules Asner. And then it got to, because Steven Soderberg uses all these like pseudonyms for different things. I believe Rebecca Blunt is Jules Asner. Is Emily Blunt also Jules? Asner? No. And then it gets up to Iger and Iger is just like, you got to be kidding me. Like Ben Solo is dead. Now, I think what he really meant was there's no way I'm reopening the can of worms

that was the toxic fandom that surrounded all of those characters. And after getting pilloried for bringing Palpatine back, I'm not now bringing Ben Solo back. That's my argument on behalf of Bob Iger. I'm happy to appear in public as his defense attorney. That's what we do on the show. We give voice to the voiceful, the people who have the loudest voices. We have voiced to the guy who runs the Annenberg Center.

But, you know, that is the perfect example of what we're talking about. We're like a really inventive filmmaker, a really interesting actor, a really cool idea, but would obviously be playing with like completely different tonal ideas than most Star Wars stuff right now. And they're like, yeah, we're not making that bet, dude. One thing that we say when we talk about TV is we constantly hold up HBO and FX as being unique unicorns in terms of having an entrenched development power structure that has been working together and developing things for a long time. And one thing that is, I think, under discussed when we talk about the last five years of Star Wars, is the tumult of who's left holding the bag. Because this spans a time, not only of a massive industry upheaval and industry repositioning in terms of where you're pouring the content money, TV streaming. oh no, we got it back to movies, but it's the Iger Chepec Iger era. And the Iger era,

Iger era 2.0 contained within it, one, the constant sense that Kathy Kennedy was going to be retiring at some point and stepping down and what the succession plan within her company was. But then also Iger stepping down, who was taking over his role and what that person would feel about it. So I do think that when you're talking about such a valuable property and the amount of time it takes to develop, produce, and release a film, you need five years of continuity to decide on a plan and then to be able to stick with the plan. The worst case scenario would have been projects that Iger, or God forbid, Chepec had approved or the Kathy had approved. And then the incoming leadership structure is like, actually, we think this is kind of whack. And then pull the plug on.

I think there was a cycle of that happening. I'm not saying I'm more optimistic about the next five years, but theoretically there will be consistency. I just wonder whether or not, say, Mandelorian and Grogrew

does fine, but winds up being maybe slightly better performing than solo, perhaps just because it doesn't have the, like,

cynicism around an Alden-Ehrin-Rike type figure in it and doesn't have the chaos of switching directors mid-shoot. So let's say it does

okay, and then next year, just off of Project Hail Mary vibes alone, Starfighter does pretty well, right? It very well may.

I mean, also, let's throw this out there. What if it's good? Sure. I mean, it's entirely possible. But what I wonder is, like, if you guys, if there isn't, like, a new story to tell on a franchise level, where you're like, it's going to take multiple films to complete the arc of what we're trying to do here and we've introduced these new characters that are going to change over

the course of these movies, like, does Star Wars essentially then become a very expensive, modern version of things like Lord of the Fly? where everybody just broadly, even if you haven't read it, probably knows it's kid smirooned on an island, it's an allegory for society, one of them is named Piggy and he has glasses. Right?

Like, I bet most people could probably dial that up even if they don't remember William Golding's novel, you know, line for line. Right. What stories that we sort of hold as central, like, of course, well, this is canonical. We'll always have Star Wars. You sound like my dad.

are going to in 20 years look like East of Eden or E.M. Forster or what have you. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. I think it's very possible. I think what's interesting, though, is that for the, so you suggest that we do an exercise where we look at the, whose list is it? It's the modern libraries. The MLA list of like 100 greatest novels and then like thought about ones that were ripe for adaptation. But in so doing, I was like, at no point did I look at the potential of adapting these books as an opportunity to, like recreate them in amber as they were. Like what they are, you look at it and it'll be fun to go into the list and think about it. And I was like, which of these is ripe for some relevance? Which of these is ripe for reimagining or some sort of modern take on it? Because otherwise, why would you do it? Right. You know, and so that, I mean, that's ongoing. Like, there's a, there's a, it's

highly controversial in my household because the 2005 version is my daughter's favorite film, but Netflix has a Pride and Prejudice adaptation coming out next year. Jack Loudden, right? Jack Loudon and Emma Corrin and Olivia Coleman and, but like, so my question is why. Sure. But not in a negative way, but show me why. I'm curious why. But when you see especially coming out of England the maintenance, the classics maintenance that they do over there, where they're like, it's been 10 years, it's time for this.

Totally. Now, funnily enough, I went through a bunch of these books in the, it's a lot of, So this is the modern libraries list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. And it's a pretty fairly stodgy list, I would say. Very, very much so. And so we're not in the 21st century. We're not talking about no country for old men and stuff like that. But we're also not looking at the 20th century with a particularly non-herald-bloom 21st century view.

There are a couple wild cards in there. Very few. But very few. And the sheer number of books that are about a guy finding himself in Africa was shocking. like genuinely like I didn't even know I've read a bunch of these books not even as a brag

but I didn't know even Saul Bellow was like what if this middle aged man found himself in darkest Africa and they treated him as a prophet like a lot of that yeah but you know I was looking at this list

and we'll put the list itself in the show notes I can't even tell if I'm connecting the dots between the modern library 20th century novels and Star Wars I think you got big brain from this weekend and I love it Are you, you're on this wave with me, though?

Yeah, this is like doing a podcast with the fourth square and the Vince McMahon meme. You know what? It'll be funny if in 20 years you and I are doing this podcast at age 68 and we're like, What are some Star Wars stories that could use a TV adaptation? Is that how you're going to talk? Yes. Ever since a guy fell on me at a basement show at age 58. Going through this list, some of these titles are so,

I don't know, memorable. They're so present in my mind, even if I haven't even read them. Yeah. That I, in my head, I was like, there has to have been seven or eight Lord of the Flies adaptations. Right.

There's four on screen. Okay. There's a 60s movie. There is a foreign film. There's the 1990 movie, which is sort of in my mind, the Balthazar Getty one, the one that I know of.

And now there is this Jack Thorne adaptation, which by the way, is getting like wonderful reviews and sounds excellent, it's just also sounds like it's very dutifully like captures what's on the page. Not to add too much to what may already be a creaky bit before getting into it, but I think that the more relevant comp in this is something else that I worked on, which is Harry Potter, which is people are like, I'll explain it to you, it's about a wizard. Do you leaning in or out? I'm literally at 50%. I know. What have I told you who was a special little fellow? I'm the undecided.

voter. Janet Mills, Graham Platner. You're the one. Many people, many people, but this is not a strong man argument, are like, why? Because the movies already exist. And I think there are many reasons for it, and hopefully the show will speak for itself. But that is more in the line of the, there isn't going to be a lot of iterating within the world or within the IP or within the space, because the IP is very tightly controlled.

So is it more along the lines of every 20 to 25 years we get a new Howard's End or we get a new sense and sensibility? What if every 15 years we get a new hope? It's beautifully done. But I'm saying like maybe if that's what you guys want. If we all just want Luke and Leah, let's just get two new cool people to play them. Yeah. And use new effects that we have.

Who you got? Well, I'm not going to get into that game right now because I spent way too much time casting Henry James novels. Okay, sure. All right. So Andy and I gave each other this little problem. project to... I didn't do a lot of casting.

I did a lot of show running. But, okay. I did some casting. Hot out of the door. I have my cast. But then... Hot out the door. Classic baker's talk.

Gone. I feel like I'm having a mild stroke because I keep replacing words. I like, in cliches. You're like, healthy living, brother. No, no ill effects from the hardcore show. Okay. I'll go first with an idea.

So, like I said, we are taking from the modern libraries, top 100 books. of the 20th century. And we're thinking about what of these old titles could use a fresh coat of paint. My number one draft pick here is Henry James' The Ambassadors.

Look at you. By the way, we are covering the new episode of Euphoria in this pod and we are leading with Chris's imaginary adaptation of Henry James, the Ambassadors. So this SEO shit,

don't put it on me anymore. Show run by a man who has never run a show named Noah Bomback. Wow. This is a novel about a guy who, a widower, I believe. I can't remember if he's a widower or not Lambert. I read out in college.

Should we step down? No, I don't want to because, yeah, he's a middle-aged widower. And his new fiancee, who's pretty paid, is like, you got to go to Europe and find my near-do-well son. So Lambert, the sort of main character, he's in his late 50s. This ne'er-do-well son is in his late 20s. and she's like, you got to go to Europe. This is like 1903.

Find my son, bring him back. He's got to start working at the family factory to running the family factory or whatever. He's got to inherit his family kind of mantle here. So, you know, this American goes off to Europe and finds this young man and instead of finding a near-do-well finds a guy who's blossoming.

And then this man himself, the widower, Lambert, blossoms himself. and learns a lot about himself as he discovers, you know, new things about the old world. Is this in any way similar to when I started working at Spin in 1999 and you were still in Boston and you called me and you were like, how is it?

And I'm like, it's pretty cool, man. And then you showed up. And you were like, which one of us is the near-do-well younger son in this case? So I have no bomb back making a series about these people and I have it set in contemporary times. Because I think... There's something really interesting to be done with America's perhaps diminished role in the world. Perhaps diminished.

To talk about Americans abroad and what that means in 2020, whatever, whenever you want to set it. This 58-year-old man, I'm mixed on this because I have an easy one, which is Billy Crutt up, who's done Noah Bomback work before, has led or a period. in several big series before. But Billy Cretle, it's like if you're asking somebody to go from being straight-laced to free, Billy Cretop's, we know he can be free.

There's no surprise there. So what about... Okay. If Dr. Robbie's sabbatical just lasts a little longer... See, I was wondering where the juice was coming from. Where's Noah Wiley? Like, let's get Dr. Robbie on the bike to Europe.

This is good. He would drown. And when he goes over there, he finds this young man and the young man should be played by by the way his name's Chad he should be played by Chris Briney from the summer I term pretty

just appeared in hacks recently is obviously trying to like break out of like teen dream stuff so let's put him in a Noah bomb back you had me I'm doing the Jonas era now because here's the thing when you started with this I was leaning out no offense

but I was like trying to get in the mindset of a contemporary buyer in this town? Sure. And I was nod and off. You know, I can't say there's a lot of heat for the Bombach vision right now in terms of well-heeled types. Well, okay, but CAA is not saying, Noah, you've been mismanaged all this time. What you need to do is Henry James.

The Henry James adaptation. I think UTA could have managed that for him just fine. But when you start populating it with contemporary people that have a fan base who are people who are wanting to see their next step. This is why it's going to work. One of the joys of this cast of characters is you've got a guy in late middle age, you've got a young man entering real adulthood that's played by Chris Briney. And then they're both equally sort of smitten with this 30, late 30s French woman, Madame Vianette.

And in this adaptation, she's played by Leia Seidu. Oh, okay. And are you taking that meeting yourself? No. Leia, Bienvenu I'd like to speak to you about some Henry James

I'd like to speak to you about some opportunities So that's my That's my pitch Basement I believe it's the way You say the band's name That's my pitch

For the ambassadors Yeah How many episodes? Who are you trying to sell it to? I mean I'd love it to be six And I do wonder whether or not Apple TV is the only one

Who'd be like Hmm Although they actually Like ongoing series more than limited. It was the second season. They find another younger near-do-well

a little bit further east and they go to like a lot's popping in Belarus and a lot of the shows we've been watching. That's true. You think about that. You give me one.

I don't have a ton. So did you ever read the book Appointment in Samara? I have this down too. Do you? Yeah, but this is like... Let's chop it up. So this is John O'Hara.

John O'Hara, 1934 novel like the... I read it recently. I don't know if you read it back in the day, but like the book that people, the book that everyone thinks Fitzgerald wrote, but actually they're thinking about Fitzgerald's life. This is that book. It's about like one night in a Pennsylvania suburb, among us, where a guy basically wildly circles the drain and drinks himself. Yeah. It's like a

it's a snapshot of a social class and culture and just ruinous mistake making. This is what your friends and neighbors should be. Yeah, this is right. This is right. And and I think that when I, so It's in like Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, which no disrespect to our neighboring towns from where we grew up, I think what would be interesting would be to put it in a place like Beacon, New York, or Maplewood, New Jersey. You can't take John O'Hara out of Pennsylvania? Yes, first of all, I can do what I want. He's dead. Sorry.

But the reason being, the idea of this, like, well-heeled but entrenched demi-mond, like, again, no disrespect to the great work Governor Shapiro's. doing. Like, I don't know how much of that is in Pennsylvania right now, whereas I think it's interesting to explore these towns of people who have left the city and are very pleased with themselves. Listen, I'm among them for like being able to now have a yard and neighbors and like, look, we're performing America, but we're being, we're being cool and maybe polyamorous or whatever. In this house, we believe in Michael Clayton. Oh, a million percent. You said it among those lawns. And then I, but then what was interesting, you actually helped me with.

with this one. I don't know if you had a different setup, but I was trying to think of who are our best interlocutors and examiners of long-term relationships and the cracks that can appear in things. And first, I was like, is this an opportunity to hire one of the savage Brits, like Jesse Armstrong or something? Or like one of the last great shows about marriage was the Americans. So I was like, would Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields come off the bench for this? But you gave me the right answer, which is Francesca Sloan off of Mr. Mrs. Smith. Because I think maybe, and I don't know how you feel about the project writ large, but I was excited about the chance to inject some youth into this fairly stodgy list.

This is Matthew Weiner-coded. You know, like it is very much, I think, Mad Men pulled from O'Hara. Yeah, that's right. And Cheever and a lot of these sort of like poets of middle-aged alcoholism. In the Laze, yeah. That's really cool. Any ideas of, like, who could play the main character? Who's the guy from Christopher Briney?

You want to cast him again? Should we put him in all of these? You know what? My next one was The Magus by John Fowles. It wouldn't be bad if he had an English accent as a grad student teaching English in Greece who comes under the spell of an eccentric rich man and plays a series of games with him

where it makes him question reality and there's a lot of stuff about World War II in there. I need a I need a lynchian showrunner I need not lynchian and that he runs as a show like David Lynch

but someone capable of atmosphere and dream worlds I have a piggyback for that so who I think would be the right showrunners for this okay so I picked Day of the Locust

Nathaniel West book about being down and out in Los Angeles and turns out turns out there's a magnet that attracts all the evil people here as Sam Levinson and put it so poeticly

let me back up a one second appointment in Samara, are you updating that? Are you like, is it contemporary times? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for the Magus, you could get into a lot of things about how the digital world makes us not really understand what's real and what's not. Yeah.

For your Nathaniel West adaptation, would that be current? Yeah, I think I'm not interested in period pieces, brother. Like, I'm a buyer right now. You know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to program for 2028, 29. Can I get Budapest to look like Gibbsville? Can't, I have four. to gas up the Kehoe-Trucks to get them anywhere in 2029. Probably not. So, yeah, Hollywood,

Hollywood is hard, Hollywood is difficult. Hollywood is a nightmare place, et cetera, et cetera. A tale told many times, often well. But the main thing, so my first thought was like, Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg are kind of doing this with the studio. And I'm curious if they have a desire to play with a different gear. And I kind of don't think they do because they have been slightly, like preacher and the boys, other things they've produced, have. flirted with topicality, but they do like heads exploding. The single most David Lynch creator working today is my guy Tim Robinson. Wow.

I think you should leave the chair company. Tim Robinson and Zach Canaan should do Day of the Locust. I think they should do the Magus. I think they should just expand their footprint in this town. I had Amy Sivitz. Okay. Good. Who obviously had a negative experience working on the idol where she was

replaced midstream by Sam Levinson. Lucky. I had a negative experience working on the Idol, too. And I did do the whole thing. You know, it's currently on the Testaments, but it hasn't directed TV. She does lots of TV directing. I mean, she did episodes of Atlanta and stuff like that, but I would love to put her in charge of something like this. And I think that the material would suit her in a lot of ways.

That's good. I have one more throw at you. Hit me. this is a pretty good layup. It's the secret agent by Joseph Conrad. That too. So this is a story about a relatively successful London businessman. Genuinely, tell the story.

This is the most ripe for adaptation and for reinvention and for updating, I would think, of the whole list. And it's about a guy who's a business owner in London who is in fact a spy on behalf of what is supposed to be Russia, essentially, but it's unnamed. Yeah. And it jumps around a lot chronologically in the novel. around a bombing.

And you could do it now. You could do it then, if you wanted to. But one of the great unrealized projects is the prospective third season of the Nick. Well, look what you're doing here. Remember when he was like, it's just going to be the hospital, but it's jumping ahead like 50 years?

And wasn't Perry Jenkins or somebody going to direct it? Yeah, the idea was that the real star of the Nick, kind of like with ER after many years, The real star of the nick was the hospital. Yes. And that while Steven Soderberg, who directed every episode, and Clive Owen, who was the star, may recede from view, someone else could pick up the mantle

and tell the story of the same hospital in a different era of New York. Yeah. And there were versions of it where, oh my God, why am I blanking on my beloved actor's name? Andre Holland? Andre Holland was going to continue playing the part that he played so brilliantly, and there was talk that Barry Jenkins was going to get involved.

We were going to jump forward 20 years. Well, I have the idea of, of reuniting Soderberg and Clyboe went on this. Nice. But I wonder whether or not you do one half of it is the, you know, basically turn of the century tail. And the other is like modern times.

This is good. But it's like maybe two different directors shooting the same actors or it's like Soderberg shooting both, but you're dressing. Because, you know, you could shoot London. There's parts of London that do look exactly like it did in the beginning of the 20th century. And they're at least,

two people in this room who'd be willing to scout it. Yes. No need to name names. Honestly, there's probably five people in this room that would scout. It's quite possible. So you get Soderberg and Owen in the past, and you get Briney and Zach Kreger,

or one of your other kids that you like in the, he's our age, isn't he? In the present day. We are not Chris Brine's age. No, didn't Zach Greger more of our contemporary? Yes, but still younger than us. I mean, so is everyone.

But I just mean like he's... A couple other ideas that I had, like, naked and the dead the Norman Mailer, Mailer World War II novel. I just let's make World War II stuff. And equally a bummer with appointment in Samara would be an American tragedy. The Deodorizer 1925 novel. But yeah, like, it would be pretty bleak

to do American tragedy. It's kind of in the name. Yeah. What if it was Ryan Murphy's American tragedy? Oh, my God. sells itself. Dude. All right.

I'm just going to assign a few more works to showrunners. What do you don't even have to talk about? Okay. Secret Agent I had also want to give a, it to my friend Joe Barton, Black Doves. Your personal friend? Yeah. Okay.

I'm giving it to him because he makes good television, but he's also a lovely guy and look, Spurs are struggling this season. It's all a network. So this is how we're here pitching like more World War II content and they're like, we will not be validating your parking. I'm trying to make this stuff happen. You know what I mean? I got kids to feed.

Walker Percy's the moviegoer. Yep. Sterling Hard Joe. Go take it. Interesting. See what you want to do with it. A nice walk and roll. around ambling kind of vibe.

Edith Wharton's House of Murth. They mirthed up, though, don't they? They're constantly mirthing. However, Phoebe Waller Bridge should be making something like that, not Tomb Raider. You know what? Bring your...

Why can't she do both? That's what I'm saying. You know, who else could do it? Sophie, what's her name, could do it with her? Sophie Turner? Sophie Turner could do it with her. Okay. They could do both shows simultaneously.

It happens all the time. Happens all the time. Quite easy. Everything's being made in London anyway. And then finally, Saul Bello's Adventures of Augie March, I think we just hand it to speaking of, this is all, it's all about who you know. So I think we give that to our friend and listener,

Tracy Letts and the Steppenwolf players, and be like, go make your Chicago show. A contemporary Augie March? Sure. Okay. Everything contemporary. Do you understand? I do not have the budget or the discretion to greenlight something,

for any kind of period cars. Yeah. Every car in it, by the way, is going to be one of those like VINFAST, one of those like, it's an electric car company owned by Saudi Arabia, maybe, that you see on the road now? They're sponsoring it. I can't wait until you get your BYD, the Chinese electric cars. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And everybody's like, when are we going to get those? They're like $20. Listen, I hear gas prices are problematic right now. Couldn't be me. Let's talk about Euphoria. Kitty likes to dance. It's the episode. It's episode four of this third season.

We've seen stuff online now about this not being the last season of Euphoria. I would imagine if in any shape or form this show goes on, it's not going to be with the same actors, or at least not all of them. I think this is going to be the end of this group of characters together. This high school class has moved on. I say that without having watched ahead, I just don't know where you would take them in their 30s or whatever.

How did you feel about this midpoint episode? I thought this is the best episode of the season. I thought it was the most engaging, and I thought it was also, I feel like this is sort of my default role, because again, I can't speak to the arc of the series as a whole, but this felt the most cohesive as a episode of episodic television that was attempting to move multiple balls forward at the same time.

Yes, the cross-cutting was noted. The cross-cutting was notable, and also tonally the stories fit better together. And there were moments, like when Rue visits the Melrose Place-esque apartment building where all the characters are now living, but I was like, oh, this is what characters do on a lot. ensemble television shows. Their storylines intersect with each other.

Inexplicably live together. And they share the screen sometimes or one person's problems. In this case, is Rue's desire to find another person to sell her hard drugs would maybe bring her in contact with characters who are in the midst of their own storylines. Yes. Like Maddie photographing Cassie with a leaf floor. So I do have positive things to say about this episode. I also want to say, and I'm curious if Kaya wants to weigh on in this as well,

this morning when I was driving the girls to school, I mentioned that I be talking about the show today. And my older daughter said, oh, I know everything that's going on on that show. And I said, really, I don't think that's a good idea. And she said, bro, this is what they say. There are so many fan edits right now. Yeah.

And she said, and then I was like, really, you know what's going on this season? And she said, some marriages weren't meant to last. that's one way of looking at it. Less than 12 hours after this episode ends. She also said that he, meaning Nate, treated Maddie unkindly.

It's true. And I was like, you now know more about the canonical arc of this show than I do? She's watching TikTok fan edits of Euphoria. Does it have, like, anything from the silver slipper in it? Like, are they...

Here's how I know the answer is no, because I was saying something about, like... Rated PG. She's like, I heard last night was about dancing. Yes. And how people like doing it. And I was like, that's what it's about. No, I was saying something about how, and I'll say it again on this podcast, how amazing Zendaya is in this show.

And I was something that I was talking about, I don't know, maybe I said something about there's a scene where she's driving or something. She's really, she's just so alive in every moment, even when she's driving or something. And my daughter said, she shouldn't be driving. She's a drug addict. And I said, no, she's not. She is currently a DEA informant trying to snitch on two competing drug gangs who are heading for a massive, violent war. And she said, oh, I didn't see any of that. So thank you, Google's age settings, I guess.

And then she also like, what's the DEA? Great, hold on. I got to make a quick phone call. So that's where we are with the culture. Let's talk about the Roo part first, because, you know, you can, you can, sort of split this show into different buckets because they aren't always coming all together, right? Like, there is like brief moment where Cassie, Lexi, Maddie, and Louroo show the screen.

There isn't a ton of interaction between Zendaya and the other actors like there. It is similar to like industry season four episode two where you might watch that episode and be like, that one guy is not talking to any other characters. Is Rua ghost. We won't spoil it too much, but yeah. She's just extraordinary, man. Like, I'm trying to think of every week coming up with a different description of her, and it's really been, I guess, at the forefront of my mind just because she's so incredible in the drama.

So she's really, I've been watching her on screen pretty much all year now. And the scene with the two DEA agents in the interrogation room is they kind of play her with being like, all we found was like a joint in the car. So good. her resignation both when the dog the drug sniffing dog starts barking

and then when they're like you're fucking going to prison for the rest of your life unless you help us is so I don't know it's just so approachable

like she for somebody who's so famous and so kind of larger than life she is playing this part and it feels like someone I know like it feels like someone

I see at coffee shops It feels like somebody I've been at bars with. And it's a really remarkable availability and like being open and being, yeah, it's vulnerable. Yeah, but it's not like performatively like I'm dirty, you know, or anything like that. It's like really present. And she does movie star shit. Every episode she does like her fucking blood splattered face and her eyes moving from the safe to the guys holding the gun on Big Eddie. It's just like, that's how she's her.

One of the best definitions of good acting is being present and alive in any situation moment to moment. And it is a masterclass in screen acting. Like maybe she's great on stage two. I wouldn't doubt that she can do anything. But the way that she can be so outrageously, exquisitely, intricately alive every second that the camera is on her

where she's showing us something, she's showing us the thought process. She's showing emotion. She's showing history that, as I keep saying, I'm not privileged. I don't know her history, but I can read enough of it emotionally on her face to be engaged by it. It's astonishing. And that scene, I mean, the first 10 minutes of the episode absolutely writ because that's what it's about. And she elevates everything, yes, but I'm not withholding flowers because that scene in the interrogation room,

the way it's lit, the way it's shot, the way those two dudes are those specific two dudes. one who is also meeting her with his presence, and the other one is basically dead-faced, which is a choice, you know, because there's other kinds of good screen acting. Like, I was thinking about why I like Marty Supreme so much, and one of the things that Josh Safdi is good at is non-professional actors

who are not necessarily vibrant and alive and processes. No, they just look at real people. And they behave like real people, minute to minutes. You're like, I'm seeing someone. So it's like we're praising people who I see that they are acting or I see that they are not acting. And when you get the right person,

recipe of those two things together, it's something else. Yeah, that whole exchange in the interrogation room where, you know... It was funny. It was well written. Yeah, like, have you been to Mexico? Is it nice? And he's like, some parts. Nice. Great scene. And all that stuff of like, if I've been to the moon,

if you asked me if I've been to the moon and I was like, hell no. And they were like, I have a picture of you on the moon. It's like, no, you don't. Because I've never been. And that's not how you're answering the Mexico question. I love that sequence. Her... I think after she gets out of the... of that interrogation room.

One thing I noticed that Levinson does a little bit is he's starting to de Michael Beafi Rue's POV of her own life. Yeah, that's right. Because for a couple of weeks there, you know, it's basically been like Hype Williams videos inside of like the,

and I mean that is a giant compliment inside of the silver slipper. And it's starting to get a little bit more daylight and a little bit more overhead fluorescent lighting and a little bit more like this person's waking up, not necessarily like she wasn't aware of what she was doing,

but... There's sexual violence on a C, black and white CCTV screen. But it's the series of events that leads up to that. It's like she knows that she's now got a snitch jacket. She's in this card game and she knows Alamo is looking at her in a different kind of way and she either has to like

pretend to be falling off the wagon or try to obscure the fact that she's like running a game on him. And obviously, um, obviously Bishop is starting to notice that. Darrylburt Gibson is phenomenal in this episode. He's been great the whole season. He's fantastic.

But his nonverbal performance in that scene and across this episode, he's building something, you know, that could be in lesser hands, could just be a cliched or recognizable architect. Yeah, you would have, he's like, oh, I've got, I've seen this guy, like sort of idiosyncratic hitman

is somebody who's been in movies and TV shows for 30 years now since Pulp Fiction. And then you get to that CCTV footage of Kitty. Of Kitty with basically being assaulted. And Kitty is played by an actress who's the sister of the lead of your show. Tell Me Lies. It's not my show. But yes, I've watched it.

It's Grace Van Patton's sister. Yeah. That's not your show? I like it. It's just we're really saying like, it's like I don't take possession of it. You know what I mean? It's a show for everybody. Leah, again, I welcome.

How is the flight from Paris? What is my vision for the ambassadors? I'd like you to watch the show of mine. Tell me lies. And then, yes, by the end, covered in blood, sitting next to Rosalia.

As one is. Yeah. Rosalia, like, this is a much bigger part than I thought it was going to be. It's fantastic. She plays magic, the girl with the neck brace.

But also it's like, I don't know. I mean, again, I don't frequent many silver slippers, silver's slipper. Strip clubs, yeah. I don't know how many Catalan exotic dancers there are in the Southland. Maybe it's a thing.

Maybe it's like, you know, it's like a pipeline. Yeah. The way like beef taught me that you should look for the Filipino nurses. Like maybe you should look for, you know, Spanish separatist strippers. I am fascinated if one day the story is written about like, yeah, we got Rosalia on the show because we were filming the entire silver slipper sequence in seven days. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Because I don't think she was there for like a 10-month block shoot. If you just do magic stuff, I wonder if it's just a couple of days, but you're right. I mean, now she's sort of getting a bigger part because she's a little bit more partnered with Rue against all odds. I'm also so broken-brained about the show that I did start noticing things like Rosalia is in a scene at the Silver Slipper when all she's required to do is have Rue walk past her on the way to the office. And I was like, well, okay, that's not a good wife situation. No.

She was there that day to film that one walk by and she didn't need to be. And then the episode ends, the Rue part of the episode ends with the reveal that the getaway driver, there's a robbery at the Silver Slipper. It's pretty obviously Lorry's guys to viewers, but for the characters, they're not so sure until they see Faye's signature,

very pump lips. You're right. This was the most TV, satisfying TV episode of the season. And I thought it was the one where it was like, now we're, we've left the garage and now like a story is developing. I think generally the reason why I've responded

to the Rue storyline this season isn't just because it's anchored by Zendaya's performance. It's because in those scenes, I can feel a filmmaker having fun with convention and with, for tropes and cliches in a way that feels active and engaged. Like you mentioned Tarantino

and some of it can feel like Tarantino Light, but when it's edited so well like the card game was and everyone's giving it their best and there's these little, just, there's an edge to it. Yeah, but even like the shot of her as she's sort of watching behind the glass as Eddie starts to negotiate with the group of guys, like that they're going to have sex with, with Kitty. It's like, it's starting to look more and more dark and nefarious. This is the thing. I want to, like, I, I think it takes me generally I am I'm more drawn towards things that are you know interior or written in a different way than things that are told predominantly through the cinematography and the camera work

and the direction for lack of a word and so some of the episode and some of the storylines have left me cold because the real passion is in the camera movement and there was a lot of camera movement in this episode and some of it was quite striking and I appreciate the technical difficulty of that. And I also appreciate the fact that there's a filmmaker telling us what he wants to tell us emotionally on screen through what the camera is doing. But then there is the Roo's storyline in which not only is it giving space to have her performance to be able to elevate it, to give space to the writing to be a little bit crackly and fun and surprising. But then, to your point, that's when the direction comes over the top as the third heat to also surprise us

with how we feel about what we are seeing. It's such a smart observation about a show. It's a that I'm often too quick to discredit, that her experience of the strip club is an aesthetic choice that is now changing. Yes, and I think that in the hands of another filmmaker, they might just be like, we've settled on a look for the strip club. Yeah, and it's cool.

We've lit it this way. And now it's like, no, this is a place they'll give you migraines. Everybody hears on ketamine. Sexual assault is pretty common. People are probably being human trafficked. Like, this is hell, you know? And this guy, Alamo, is not a cool, him reading history books,

like he's a menacing, malevolent force. And I think we're starting to like, that stuff is all starting to merge. I actually also thought, call me crazy, that the Cassie Maddie stuff was equally compelling on like a heist level

where they're going into an influencer's home to essentially stage a moment that's going to break Cassie wide in the world of influencers and only fans. Yeah. And the orchestration of that and Maddie being like you have to like get noticed, get into bed with him or get him at the precipice of getting into bed, but do not fuck him. Yeah. And the sort of like comic psych gag of like no do coke out of my belly button, no do coke out of my belly button was like pretty funny.

Could you imagine that same setup in the ambassadors? If we could get there with Henry James. I mean, Europe is a playground, my man. You know? And that was the girl who the girl that she goes upstairs with is the girl that Maddie was originally managing in the beginning of the season. So it's all coming together. Again, that worked less for me because I am less compelled by coming in cold. Maddie and Cassie generally.

And I was confused by Maddie's shifting status in that it seems like she's kind of a hanger on who's struggling. And yet she plays this entire party. like it's Stradivarius and her presence in it is understood, is respected, she's able to maneuver people. Maybe she's a master manipulator. She knows everybody who she needs to know.

And now that's convenient for the story, but that seemed confusing for the version of the person that had been introduced to me two weeks ago. That said, like this sounds crazy, but like what you just sketched out that the way to do a heist

on status and attention would revolve. The payoff is the notifications. Camera phones, notifications, social media, hard drugs, Hollywood Hills parties. That is a war, euphoria was designed to win.

This is the new class battleship that we want unblocking this particular straight. Am I losing the metaphor? No. I just mean that even from a distance, my perception of what the show was doing that separate apart from like the quality of it, that it was effective at was engaging with contemporary culture.

Yeah. And contemporary fame economy or young life. Like, this is, these are the ones we want on this. And, you know, for as much as people have questioned how he is depicting Sidney and to what extent she's in on the joke. Yeah. And what the joke is, necessarily? And what is a joke?

I thought it was pretty funny to have Sydney, sweetie show up at a party and everybody be like, she's the new kid in town at this like influencer party basically and they're like people eyeballing her but she's got to like do the footloose dance to get everybody's attention up on stage. I like the way that they are playing

with her public persona. So I suppose the less successful elements of this episode for me personally were the Jules and Nate stuff. Nate just because I can't help but watch the show somewhat from your POV at this point and wonder whether or not if you understand

like Nate saying at this zoning meeting you know you know I was interested at that point but if Nate not being able to build leads him back to dark Nate it's going to be really funny

and it's quite an interesting commentary on the state of Los Angeles and why we can't build things anymore when he's begging the guy and saying like I'm trying to be good I'm trying to do good trying to do a good thing that is because he has done so many bad things. So I didn't know that, but my daughter did tell me about that this morning.

Did she tell you any of the details of his nefarious deeds? No, apparently he was a bad guy, she said, and maybe an abusive guy. For sure. But that's the extent of it. Yeah. Now, maybe I need to have a more serious talk with her to unpack some of this, but also like so she can help me out with my coverage of the show. Sure.

But yeah, I don't. That is the storyline that is clearly the most beholden to, past baggage and not just a beautiful Barbie Dreamhouse luggage set that Cassie threw from one floor of the house to the other in her grand escape. Yeah. So yeah, I agree with it.

I continue to think that some of the best filmmaking is in the Nate and no longer Cassie stuff, just the colors and the framing and the lighting, but I am uninterested. He is in a similar situation to Rue where he's being put into an impossible position. And it'll be interesting to see how he reacts. I think that Rue is starting to like every time she looks at that safe and like she's looking at that safe.

She's been looking at it. Yeah. And the same thing goes for Lori's basement of illegal pleasures full of drugs and guns and money. But I feel like those two characters are being having the most pressure put on them in a lot of ways and how they react. We'll kind of define the rest of the season. The Jewel's part, I don't really know. to say, because it doesn't really seem like it's in the same show as everybody else. I thought we were going to get a little bit more coherence out of, or cohesiveness out of

the plot lines once they reintroduced Jules and introduced this idea of her being a sugar paper and introduced this plastic surgeon and introduced all this stuff. And now it's like, Jules is kind of hanging out at Lexi's workplace and putting a bunch of dicks on a George Sorat painting and it's not successful. That is a radical reinterpretation of Sunday in the park with George. Yes. Now, they contrast that with Cassie at the party, right? Like, isn't that during that sequence, it's like Jules painting is Cassie?

Painting over it. Yeah, I mean, I think if you squint, there may be some loose commentary there about the old ways to become famous and the new ways to become famous. That's true. And how hidebound the old ways are. and I do think that those scenes with the Sharon Stone scenes with the necessary Dintai Fung takeout containers in her office

are meant to be satire. Yes. They fall flat for me even though I'm enjoying Sharon Stone's performance quite a bit. Also quite funny, I wonder how the homies at HBO felt about

a studio executive being like do you know what your day of missed shooting cost you? Yeah, that's a little bit of like, we're all laughing here, right guys? Right? But the naivete of everyone involved. was discordant to me.

Not just that, like, what a great opportunity to have my friend come do a painting for a television show that has 8 million people watching it every week, which is like, okay, buddy, good luck, I wish. What is this mayor of Kingston? I know. But beyond that, then the reaction to it,

and then the idea that she somehow, her dreams have been crushed because this insane painting that she's hung on the set of a television show about being rejected. Like, I am, I don't understand this character at all, or what her point of view is, or what we're doing with her. I couldn't tell, honestly,

I think the thing that you have to ask yourself is, do you think that what Jules does to the painting is like an artistic breakthrough for her? Because it happens wordlessly in comparison to Cassie painting her masterpiece, you know? I think... And so I'm wondering whether or not, like, through this rejection of her expression of sexuality,

did Roof find a more abstract but more powerful way of expressing her... Sorry, Jules, find a more abstract and powerful way of expressing herself, or which is just like, I'm going to ruin this painting with red paint, and then walk away and we'll pick my story up next week. I think what's frustrating, and I want to be careful when I say this, because I actually... Big picture thought, I do not have a prescription for this show. There is not a version of season three.

The show's not sick. Doesn't need one. Fair enough. But I'm not sitting down here being like, if only here's how you'd fix it. it. Like, this is such a unique convergence of events and celebrity and vibes and aesthetics and all of it, that it is, it just is what it is. So here we are, covering it every week. That said, a minor frustration of Wudakuta is that genuinely an idea of how limiting and how unpleasant and how surprising and occasionally depraved the opportunities are for people five

years out of high school in quote unquote this town or maybe America like that's that's a fairly fertile landscape to explore sure and again if you squint that the former addict is now giving drugs to people and trying to go legit but also is now completely enmeshed in an impossible never-ending drug war yes with pigs and dead birds surrounding her but specifically that idea of people who were special in high school one way or another and then wanting to make it and then what are the options of doing that? Can you marry a conservative businessman? Well, no, because everyone's leveraged

and no one can do anything and everybody's in debt to somebody else. Like, can you become, can you get a job in Hollywood? Well, you can unwrap someone else's dumplings to work on something that is already failing. Well, Lexington away on final draft. Something's coming. Well, X-O-X-X-O.

She had quite a dramatic debut last year, last season with her play. I'll ask my daughter about it. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there's, there, and maybe this is what you find, an element of what keeps you coming back isn't just that it's not boring, but like, you see these things, these potentially amazing things just sort of tossed out and then we move in a different direction. There's a lot, there's no shortage of stuff. Sure. And some of it is working and some of it isn't. But it was, I thought, broadly speaking, a entertaining and surprisingly cohesive episode of TV and suggests an endgame of sorts.

moving to, potentially not a series endgame, but a season end game that will be compelling in a different way, in an old-fashioned way, in a, oh, I'm engaged and curious what's going to happen next way. I'm, I think the thing I'm most fascinated by is, I mean, I remain entertained by it on episode to episode level, is to what extent will the main characters influence the outcome of the other main characters? Or are they all going to have like personal epiphanies, catharsisies, endpoints at the end of the season that don't have a ton to do? What is the history? I will ask you this.

Like, what is the history of the show in terms of its finale have the storylines overlap? Yes. I mean, they were all in high school together. Okay. Yeah. So that was the thing is that, like, now Los Angeles is their high school. So it's to what extent is Rue going to get a drug connect through Maddie?

Is she going to start selling to, like, the guy that Cassie was just seen with this week? I mean, like, they'll have to pull things together into what, extent as Nate put down his shovel and his ideas of building homes for the elderly and get back involved in some dark shit. It's also interesting to watch it with a old-fashioned TV brain. An example of that would be when the superstar

influencer asks if the Coke has been tested. Yeah. And she's like, no, I get it from my usual plug. It's fine. He's like, okay. And then what does Cassidy say? I love Coke. She got me on that one. that in a more conventional television show would be laying a trail towards fentanyl lace cocaine entering this milieu too

and the world's colliding. I think it's possible that it might. I mean, there's... But it's also euphoria. That may never come up again. It's just that we're watching an influencer and that is an accurate reflection of how hard partying people on camera all the time

have to treat drugs in a fentanyl era. I thought it was also an interesting commentary on like, you know, we've moved on from like the safe sex era and into the safe drug era. We? America? Well, again, when Le Hesedu arrives at LAX,

you're going to have to explain all of this to her. You may feel a magnet below the city. Trust me, it's a metaphor. Do you want to talk about the Sixers before we go at all? You're going to swap the lights? What do you want to say? Let's get a little tender here. That is a legitimately beautiful sports moment,

and I'm really, really, really happy for those guys. They don't need me to be happy for them, but I just want to say, like, watching Joel and Bid get his entire body stretched out and just watching him and being like, do you have to stretch snap and dectomy surgery? Like, I don't really know what's happening here. Like, did you rip her stitches?

Like, what happened? And watching him on the ground and, like, everything that he's put his body through. Yeah. It's just the first round. It's, but it is game seven in Boston. And it just, it meant something. That was fucking incredible.

I want to be careful here because I'm worried this is a little bit like when, like Pete Buttigieg goes. on Fox News and they let him cook for like 10 minutes and then the feed gets pulled like how much can we talk about this series? We're free to. We're free to. You're sure? You've been given the green light? Yes, yeah. We can't just be like

mostly my first reaction about the Sixers winning Game 7 over the Celtics was I felt bad for Derek White. He didn't have the series that he wanted you know and so put the camera on him. He's laughing at the bit. That was what Bill saw in game five. That's right.

genuinely, this has been a roller coaster for me because I have not been... You didn't make yourself available emotionally to this. No, but what was terrifying, although not probably surprising to you, was like I felt like the crater opened inside of me as I was sitting down to watch Game 7 of how badly I wanted this. Yeah. And how wonderful it was to finally actually win one of these. I know we've had a lot of citywide success over the last few years, but specifically this team

and specifically against that team. Yeah, you just need to get those guys. Like, I honestly, I obviously hope we beat the Knicks. Yeah. A lot of nice Knicks fans of my life, happy for them. Don't have my hopes up very high for it. Anything is possible. I'm pulling for us, but, like, I just,

beating Boston was in and of itself, like, worth it. And I also want to say, I understand how funny it is when there are people, like, their fan bases and things are, like, want to put up in the rafters that they, like, came in second in the play-in tournament or whatever. it's like, I would legitimately hang a banner that we advanced out of the first round

in a game seven. That's fine. I will always remember where we were. Can I ask you a sports thing about this game, just your general take on this? One thing after this game, which was thrilling and we won, and Tyreys Maxie was the best player on the court, and that was awesome, was as soon as it's over, this is not unique to the series, but everybody is so buddy-buddy.

Like, everyone, immediately, Joel goes over to Jalen Brown and they have some hugs and everybody's dapping up everybody. Does you love that? Don't you love everybody being friends? I like everybody on the same team being friends so I can fall asleep at night.

Typically at the end of series people really dab each other up. I think there's a version of it that's like respect. Yeah. But I feel like it was a little too... Jayden McDaniels essentially was like every nugget is a marshmallow and like every nugget is like

not worthy of being on the floor with me and then at the end of that season and he like, seriously hugged. So it's a switch you can flip. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

That's like you and me. It's all love in here. And then once... And then we get out there, I'm like, you fucking marshmallow. But I'm like, I am a marshmallow. That was cool.

I can't believe we have to play again. I'm... To mate? Yeah, but you can't... I did Google it. You can't have a second appendectomy. That's good. What's cool about it is that like,

every time someone rolls into his knee, I'm like, same fucking knee, man. That's crazy. You can't just tick it off. It's not like the game of operation where it's gone. I did double-check this. You cannot regrow the appendix and it cannot burst again. Okay, good.

So that's in our favor. I didn't think that that was going to happen. I am worried about his hip contusion and his knees and everything else. And Maxie's hand and the Knicks fans and all that stuff, like in the intensity of the garden. But if we punt game one, it's okay. It's a long series. It's a long series. Yeah.

Anything can happen. All right. Thanks to Kai, Kaya, and Sarah. We will be back on Thursday to talk about Widows Bay and Top Chef and some other stuff. We'll put the modern library list of 100 books in the show notes. Hell yeah. I'll say that to Kaya. This is a safe space to do those things.

Well, I don't know if I necessarily landed the plane, but we'll see. I think the Air France plane is on its way.