The Watch - ‘Extrapolations’ and the Difficulties of Making TV About Climate Change. Plus, ‘Swarm’ and ‘Top Chef: World All-Stars.’

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Chris and Andy talk about the new Apple TV+ show ‘Extrapolations’ and some of the difficulties it faces in trying to dramatize climate change (1:00). Then, they talk about the Amazon Prime show ��Swarm,’ the rabid online fandom (41:17), and the first two episodes of ‘Top Chef: World All-Stars’ (49:46). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. And I am an editor at the Rigger.com and joining me on the other line from his spot in line, waiting for Shazam Fury of the God's first showing. He's going to keep those second weekend numbers up.

It's Andy Greenwald. It's weird that I have to wait to get a ticket for this movie, right? Like it seems strange. Did you go up to people and say, sir, with tears in your eyes? Sir, sir, hold my place? You've never seen gods this furious. Andy, it's great to see your face. Unfortunately, we're on Zoom today. But we have some stuff we want to talk about. We have three shows, believe it or not. Anybody who says that we've lost our fastball hasn't been watching us in spring training because we're out here crushing tape. We're out here getting peak TV. We're just climbing it. Like my man in free solo. I can't remember his whole name, Alex something. By the way, nobody says that about you. They say it about me. And in my defense, I've had some ulnar nerve issues. You know, so I had to shut down my whole throwing program and really not watch anything for. a couple weeks, but I'm back.

That's right. I thought you really represented the country well in the world baseball classic. Greenwald, today on the agenda, we've got extrapolations, the new show on Apple TV, ploose, ploose, about climate change. So that's upbeat and affirming. And then we've also got Swarm, which is from Donald Glover and Janine Neighbors, and that's on Amazon, and that is about toxic fandom. So feeling great about that.

And then a little bit of Top Chef. Why not? Well, we'll catch up on the first two episodes of the season. And so... And do you not want to talk about Shazam? I haven't seen it. I haven't gotten a chance to see it. I was waiting.

I keep waiting for the exact right theater conditions. You know, 3D, IMAX. Were you a Shazam guy? I have no idea. That's a teenager who's a superhero, right? Can I be honest with you about something? So I think people know enough about me biographically on this podcast to know that I was raised by kind of a contrarian fellow. And my father has no time for any comic.

book's superhero nonsense, any of that, except for one superhero that he loved as a boy. No. And that was Billy Batson, who when he said the magic word Shazam, became the superhero Captain Marvel, which is actually his name. Again, my father was furious at this idea that Shazam is the name of the character, because it's not. It is his battle cry. So again, lest anyone thinks the crab apple fell far from the tree, clearly it did not.

Can you give the people just like, ten? Ten seconds of Mr. Greenwald talking about how obscene it is that Shazam is named Shazam. Just a second. I can't because he just... Well, I just think it's ridiculous that we're talking about. Foolish. Incoherent, twaddle for children. The Cardinals look like they have a dynamite in field this year. You know, I recently was bringing back... He is a Cardinal fan. I was recently bringing back the My Father imitation talking about your father,

because I think people don't realize this, but our father's never met. No. But we each met each other's fathers. But your father was a constant presence in my life because Friday mornings, I would come down to the table to see if he was out of his bathrobe yet because I would wish he would be ready to take me to school on time. He would have the Philadelphia Inquirer open and he would say, well, another merchant ivory film has come out.

Let's see what that anglophilic Desmond Ryan has to say about it. He was allowed to be anglophilic. He was English. He was angle. He was English. I only remember seeing. My house. Your dad has a very specific, probably, idea of who I am because it would usually involve me kicking your door off its hinges at 7.45 p.m. on Thanksgiving evening and being like, it's the day of the Solano. I'm here to take your son to any bar that will serve us. Before it was a meme, you literally came into my home saying, get in, losers. We're going drinking. Like, it was, it was fine. Everyone was always happy to see you. You were, you were married. Oh, man. So was there any news we wanted to get to before we got to our shows? I mean, the only thing I saw kind of coming in over the wire was just Victoria Alonzo's departure at Marvel. And for those who don't know, there's basically a sort of triangle of madness over there at Marvel where Kevin Feigey is at the top. But was it Louis Esposito? And Victoria Alonzo have been his creative kind of production lieutenants for a very long time. I think going.

all the way back to the Iron Man days, right? She started early. She was actually the chief, yeah, 2006, before Iron Man even launched. She was the chief of visual effects and post-production. So that's sort of what her background was, was coming from. Back in them Pearl Mudder days.

God, can you imagine just like, just scouring the B-roll from Roger Corman's fantastic form? Do you think Pearl Mudder watches the special effects from Quantum Media and is just like, what are we made of money here? What are you guys doing?

You're killing me! Doesn't have to be a moment. I think that he's been very, very busy, you know, with a sort of election integrity issue. You know what I mean? I feel like, like you, that's sort of a passion project of his. So I think he's busy with that. But it's interesting. Like, we don't know anything. It's very opaque about how the Marvel Studios system works.

But I do think that one of the hallmarks has been its consistency that these three people have been running this company now for almost two decades, right, through this incredible growth and success. My favorite thing is obviously there will be write-throughs on this. There will be more news will come out potentially, or at least more context given to the story. But the trade story that I read about her departure said that this is a sentence. Her exit is quite a shocker given her amiable demeanor and passion for all things Marvel. That's what they're going to say about me when Bill fires me. It's a shocker because of your amiable demeanor and passion for all things heat. When I try to renegotiate my deal with Bill with my agent Lamar Jackson and Bill fires me. That's going to be what

Sean tells Hot Pod. Do you know what your agent? You should. You need to hire Houston Texans player Laramie Tunsell as your agent. Oh yeah. St. Omer. Yeah. Did you see that he just personally renegotiated a deal that's netting him like guaranteed 60 million? Yeah, but he's got like a sort of a representative, which is who is not acknowledged by the NFLPA. This is why people come to the watch. But you got to get deep in these athletic stories, man. You're not even touching the surface. Man, I'm too busy listening to Rusillo talk to Kevin Herger all weekend. So I'm just spending my time poorly.

Rissola loves Andy. He loves a little bit of watch, man. This is a mutual love fest right now. We're really studying each other's work from a distance. Don't you leave me behind for Rissillo? I don't think I could take that. I don't know if, listen, I couldn't. But I hear the life advice that that guy does in his podcast with those two dirtbags,

whom I love. And I worry. I worry. I feel like we need some different voices in that life advice segment. Back to Marvel, speaking of life advice, it's just something to note. We're just noting it, like a stray thought or feeling in a headspace meditation app. We don't know. Hey, I just throw an idea out there. And this is, this is one of those things where it's like, I'm not doing any journalism whatsoever. But obviously, this is, we're not living through peak Marvel, right? Like, the times have been a little bit tough on the, on the, studio, there's been some concern about whether or not it's

prolific nature over the last couple of years has started to dampen the sort of potency of the product. Obviously, quantumanium underperformed. I'm just like throwing it out there that basically there's a lot of like moving things around on the schedule and how much

put stuff are we going to put on Disney Plus and whether or not we're going to move forward with certain projects and should we be introducing 50 characters or sticking to eight and all this stuff. And perhaps they they're making a change, or Victoria Alonzo is like, it's time for me to go. Because of like the kind of headwins that they're facing for the first time. Really since like the turn of the decade, like 2010, 11, 12, something like that, which is

when it had like that pretty much uninterrupted run of success. And pretty much anybody who didn't love those movies at least was forced to be like, but you got to respect them. Well, it's interesting to it. It offers an opportunity to pontificate. based on nothing. We cannot say this enough. We actually don't know what's going on, and it may have nothing to do with what we're talking about. However, I do think it's interesting, this idea that here, I'm going to try to bridge the world's here. But in sports, sometimes you get you, there is an

analogy that's used that you need a different voice in the room. You know what I mean? Like at a certain point, the players tune out a coach, and you bring in someone different, or you change up the system a little bit. And there's examples of that working, and there's examples of it not working. But I think one of the reasons why people think that the MCU has been successful is that it been entirely consistent and almost monolithic, right, that all of the decision making has, I mean, Kevin Feige gets the credit, but you correctly mentioned the two lieutenants who have been there for every step of the way. And by all accounts, they've been in lockstep. There's a reason you haven't heard of Victoria Alonzo. You just see her name in some of the

highest grossing films of all time. I don't mean to resume or suggest, and I actually don't think that this is Kevin Feigy being like, you know what, let's bring in a new voice. But it is interesting that this idea that I think we look to, other avenues of life doesn't really seem to apply to this, which just seems to roll onward. And maybe that's also why they've been able to overcome slings and arrows and dips and criticism is because they're just continuing to enact their philosophy. Do you know anything about Tottenham Hotspur manager, Antonio Conte, and what happened with him this weekend? God, what podcast should I have been listening to? I've wasted my weekend.

So I'm just an example of voices in the room. And maybe I think Antonio Conte is going to be out of work soon so maybe Kevin can look into bringing him on. So this is an Italian football soccer manager who has won the league in Italy a couple of times and once in England with Chelsea and now he's managing Tottenham. He is quite short-tempered and really like quite a disciplinary. Tottenham is long sort of a beloved London football club but doesn't win a lot of trophies and I don't think they've won anything since like a league cup about 10 years ago. But like have always been you know trying to win the league and haven't done it since the 60s. And he was brought in to kind of take them over the hump.

And it didn't happen. And then he had a massive gallbladder emergency and had to have that operated on in the middle of the season and hadn't been able to return. And when he wasn't there, they were playing pretty well, but he's back and they've started shooting the bed again. And so they just drew 3-3 over the weekend

in a game they definitely should have won. And he just came out and he was like, the reason this is happening is because everyone here is a snowflake and they wilt under pressure. And you can keep changing the manager, but it's like, institutionally, this place is damaged. And he was like, maybe they want to change the manager again.

So maybe we bring Conte into Marvel. Yeah. And he just goes, and he goes up to, you know, he goes up to Modoc. And he's like, if you're not going to play. What you're arguing, actually, is that Modoc is right. Like, that's the hashtag. That's your thing. Because I assume most of our listeners have watched Quantumania and those that have it

are like, they said they were going to talk about Top Chef, these motherfuckers. And I promise you we will. But Modoc's like main thing in this movie is, I'm sorry I was a dick. I don't want to be a dick. That's not Antonio Conte's main thing. No. And so I feel like maybe the reverse is true, right? Maybe Feigey needs a little more Modoc in him.

Somewhere out there is a Tottenham fan who just heard this and also cares about Marvel. And then we'll also be listening to the rest of this podcast and they're just going to feel incredibly seen. You guys have heard about microdosing. This is microcasting. We podcast for six people who love the show and everyone else is okay with it.

Mostly. Hey, I want to reach you something from the old New York Times today. Great. The paper record. This is on the front page. No sort of dateline. It wasn't written from anywhere in particular.

So just imagine this, you know, being tapped out on a newspaper, on a typewriter. Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade and nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level, according to a major new report released on Monday. So,

thus laying an incredible groundwork for the fact that this is a show, we're about to talk about extrapolations on Apple TV, that sadly could not come at a better time, that every day there is evidence in the news and out there that this is a show about the long-term effects of climate change and we'll get into how it's formatted. The first three episodes were released on Apple last week. And I was just struck by that because you watched this show, which has, because it's set 10 years in the future and then 10 years, 10 years, subsequently, like, you almost feel like you're watching sci-fi. But the germ of the show, so to speak, is something that we're experiencing right now. And as everybody just look outside

your window, climate change is affecting everyone everywhere. And there are people out there who where it's like hitting incredibly hard. And one thing I will say about extrapolations is that its timing is right. You know, and that so Scott Z. Burns, who is the creator and writer or director for the first two episodes and I believe worked on, you know, every facet of this show. He's the showrunner, yeah. Longtime Steven Soderberg collaborator and really well-regarded Hollywood screenwriter. He is trying to take one of the core foundational, like, issues facing humanity.

and make a prestige show about it, make a show about it. And that is something that he's been able to do in different ways. He wrote Contagent. He wrote The Informant when he's worked with Soderberg in the past, like they have figured out ways to take the thing in the headlines and make it into a thing about characters and people. So, Andy, do you think he was successful with extrapolations? I want to say I'm a little surprised

because I also saw that headline in the New York Times. And when you said, I wanted to read a headline, I figured it was either that about the Earth's warming or Kenji Lopez-Alts spent five months studying Chicago thin crust pizza. Here's what he learned. In a way, I wish it was that because that would be an easier and quicker conversation. This is a tough one to have a conversation about because the merits of making this show. The merits of climate change. Look, I'm doing my own research.

And frankly, after the three months we've had in California, I am now objectively pro-drought. So I am not sure if I'm the best person to talk about this. But seriously, the ambition here to take on something that is untakeable, to wrap your arms and your creative mind around multiple stories that could convey the scope of his passion for this issue and the actual real-life implications for all of us as a species, all the species, for everything living on this planet. It's both admirable and something that I want to celebrate. Anytime anyone engages with the real world, you have my attention and you have my respect. Unfortunately, through at least two episodes of this series, you do not really have my interest.

This is thus far, I would characterize this as a very, very noble failure is too strong of a word, but it's a tough, tough hang. And it's not a tough hang because, you know, I, I, don't believe in science or I don't believe in the validity of trying to tell big hard stories about big true things. It's more that just on a engagement level thus far, and we should get into the specifics of how he tells the story and who's involved and all that because it's worth it's worth mentioning. But if the purpose, I mean, I'm going to get kind of grandiose because the series itself is kind of grandiose and what it attempts to do. But if the purpose of art is to kind of inspire and elevate or engage your emotional and artistic and spirit, like just catch you, grab you, shake you up, it doesn't do that. It intrigues, it hectares, it lectures, it suggests, and it takes swings.

But I found it just utterly uncompelling thus far as a dramatic series to engage with. And that felt disappointing. And I want to couch everything we're saying with the sense that it's a longer series. I've heard that it might improve or certain episodes might be better because it is in some ways. Yeah, for clarity sake, Andy and I watched the first two. But yeah, so far, I'm intrigued by kind of what a bummer I found it to be so far. Well, so how much can you separate the bummer of the world overheating from the bummer of, I don't find this to be compelling drama?

Well, it's interesting because after watching the first two episodes, last night, I had to hop in my car and was driving. It's electric, though. So congrats. Listen, I'm the audience for this. I hopped in my electric car. You're welcome, everybody. And was driving through a Legion Park here in the city of Los Angeles and saw something up ahead. I was like, what's that? What's that brightness? and it was a giant palm tree engulfed in flames. Someone set a palm tree on fire, and I just was the only one driving by it last night,

which was a billion percent the most David Lynch moment of my entire life. But two, pretty incredible, since the majority of characters and extrapolations spend their lives just kind of helicoptering by roaring, raging, earth-destroying fires. So I'm here for the timeliness. of this. But to your point, there's a thing that happens in dramatic storytelling that we've talked about in other examples, whether they be TV shows or movies or whatever, where when you try to tell, nobly tried to tell all the stories, a literally planet-sized story, you lose

me. You lose people. You know, it's the same thing. Shout out to Victoria Alonzo. When you tell the story of Sikovia, I'm not interested. When you tell the story of one brave Sikovian, quicksilver, you have my attention and my heart. I don't mean to be facile about it. But it's simply too big to feel engagement with. That's my takeaway through the first two episodes. The subject matter is amazing. But if it was about a mixed-race Jewish family with ties to Republican politicians

where one of the sun gives up being a lawyer but becomes a rabbi instead as Miami slowly sinks under the ground, this is a real storyline in the show, by the way. I was like, okay, wow, okay, that's interesting. That is a very specific choice and lends through which you. to tell us story. But it's not just that story. That's just one of a much larger, heavy, heavy, heavy, mosaic that he's trying to create here. Yeah, it's a fascinating structure to this show so far. So the first episode is essentially almost narrative overload. We're taking 10 years into the future about, what is it, it's 2037. It's 14, yeah, 237. A tough year for us, by the way.

Yeah. Just age-wise, but we don't feel on that. For sure. For sure. I think they're all tough going forward. But we jump ahead 14 years into the future. And it's a future that is obviously he casts forward with a lot of ideas about, you know, interactive, smart glasses, different ways of communication. There is a

Elon Musk-esque figure at the center of the show who is a character named Nick Bilton, who is also just a tech journalist in real life in current times, which I thought was an interesting nod and maybe an inside joke, I don't know. But that's played by Kit Harrington. And he is sort of at the center of a debate about he's got a desalination

technology that he is not holding for ransom, but has the patents on. I don't know why I'm making excuses for tech baron, Nick Belton. He's a generous guy. He's not holding it for ransom. I mean, he's nice to animals. Right. He has, he's playing a long game though. So he is holding these desalination technology somewhat hostage from drought-stricken. countries that are now sending refugees, climate refugees essentially, streaming into Europe, there is like all this political tension.

All of this stuff is going to sound familiar to anybody who reads the world news sections of any major news source right now, because this is all happening today. A lot of the stuff that's in the first episode is essentially like a slightly futureized version of what we know is happening right now. There's a lot of angling for

land rights to build seemingly pointless casinos and mixed-use real estate, but in fact are also gambits for what's underneath the land, which in this case is a casino that Matthew Reese is trying to build in Greenland, right? Close to the Arctic, yeah. He's trying to build like a North Pole casino, but underneath of that casino is copper, nickel, cobalt,

stuff that Nick Milton wants to mine for batteries because everything is going towards batteries going forward. So you basically are barraged with this. You get Tahr Rahim playing an Algerian representative at a United Nations Council on environmental crisis. He's married to Sienna Miller, who is a scientist who happens to be hiking through the Adirondacks while pregnant with a friend of hers. I don't think she's hiking. I think they're rescuing animals. Oh, that's right.

She's super committed to a nearly extinct species. In any case, the reason why I'm getting confused is that. I'm sorry to stop you, Chris. but last week you introduced a really radical idea in the OBGYN space about scaring women in order to induce birth. And this may be our first real world test case of that. I knew you were talking about The Last of Us. This does happen to Sienna Miller while racing through a death-dealing forest fire.

And, you know, I don't want to spoil the show going forward, but it does have some consequences. So we're still, you know, we're pre-print on your work in this field. But think about how breathless I am just. trying to explain what happens in the first episode. And if that seems unsustainable, I think Scott Z. Burns agrees with you because the second episode is largely about Sienna Miller's character 10 years after the first episode. So I won't get too into spoilers in case people are, you know, watching at their own pace. So we can just kind of leave it at that. But it's basically like

jumping on the break pedal where you start with here's 10 storylines. Maybe we're going to track those over the course of the season. And we may very well do that. and then there's just the one. And look, man, I think I largely agree with you. I was trying to think about this show in very, very basic. And Scott Burns is obviously, like, honestly, like, born ultimatum, contagion, like, no time to die. Like, he knows dramatic storytelling.

He knows how to do this better than most people, certainly better than us. And he's deserving of our respect and our attention to what he's doing here. But you know how it's like drama is a. character has an intent and then there's an obstacle to him execute the character executing that intent or getting what they want, right? It's kind of muddy what the want is here, right? Like, I think that these characters, some of them want to save the world, some of them want to make money.

The obstacle is the crumbling sort of stability of the planet, but it's really hard to take those macro ideas and shrink them into fitting with not only any given one, one person, but like 10 people. And I think also, candidly, I think that we've all become pretty sadly anured to a lot of the language of climate change. I think we all like, especially like I would just say I'll speak in me terms. I am very aware of my own personal behavior in relationship to climate change or I like to think I am. And I would love to do anything I can to stop it from happening. But I also feel very powerless in the face of it. And so I was trying to, I was trying to trying to think through my own kind of grappling with it as I was like, what's the dramatic tension

there? You know? I think it's a great, I think it's a really great point to make. And I do think that one of the notes I would give, it sounds obnoxious. They made this enormous show, you know, with a huge cast at great expense. But it is very top-down view. I mean, not only are we in the private pool room of the world's richest man who is both profiting on and kind of, you know, horse trading the planet's future for his own economic interests, basically saying he will help countries recover from drought with his technology in exchange for keeping, not lowering the global temperature rise too much. And I think that that is an accurate reflection of the corporate double speak and dance that they do about how we're going to actually save this planet. I think

that's interesting. But I'm more interested in the people attending the synagogue in rainboots because they're underwater, their feeder underwater in Miami. Like, I do think the climate refugees themselves are a compelling story. Yeah. And this was a definite choice to make it about the people who are doing the things, like, you know, talking to the whales, which is what Sienna Miller does, or running through forest fires. It is a top-down approach to this, which is a choice, but I find it a little bit of a distancing one, mainly because I think that one of the greatest tricks the devil has ever pulled is making it seem like, oh, if we just separated our plastic better, we could save the planet, as opposed to the rich people and the richest corporations and governments actually

fucking doing something about it. I do think that that is a challenging narrative to explain or articulate or legislate, certainly. I think a moment ago I mentioned The Last of Us in jest, but I actually think there's something relevant here to compare it with. And that's, it seems clear after watching the first episode. And I think I did see this in a subsequent interview with Scott Burns that one of the things that is compelling to him is our obligation to the individual versus the collective or to the community, to the group, and how hard that is to register, to have it play out. And in fact, that's kind of a shadow,

it's kind of an echo of what we're saying about with our engagement of the show, right? One character versus all of the people on Earth. Yeah. I mean, it's also, how do you square that? with capitalist society, basically. But I think that that's something the last of us was trying to do, too, in the last few episodes. And you and I, you know, we went back and forth and we had the things that we liked and that we didn't like about the show. But I did think that was pretty bold. And I think it landed the sense that is Joel in this, and I'm not going to spoil last of us,

for people who only watch extrapolations on Apple TV and not the most popular show of 23 thus far. But only episode one, because we don't want to spoil episode. No, and only people who are fans of English soccer and Italian hot-blooded coaches. But the idea is Joel doing everything that he does to save humanity or to save this girl that he has become the surrogate father for. And in the context of that show, the moral complexities of that and the emotions of that ring louder to me than on this show, which I think is interesting because thus far I've not lived through a zombie apocalypse. And we are living through climate change. So it's just a question of – they're very different stories, but there are choices. made and how you tell those stories and what lands with, you know, vis-a-vis your intentions.

And I, so far with this show, I mean, our guy Matthew Reese, basically the third host of this podcast, he's playing a Trump. Yes. Not named. A younger one. A junior of some kind. making speed with Secretary of State Rubio on speed dial.

And I think President Pompeo is come and gone, am I right? Well, he says Pompeo made the speech in 2019, which suggests that just the speech Pompeo made when he was Secretary of State. Well, I mean, I know that you really follow closely whenever Mike Pompeo gets mentioned on a pod show. You know, surprising resilience in the Iowa straw poll. So I wouldn't count Mike out yet.

He speaks to the heartland. But anyway, and he's tooling around. the Arctic in an open-collared shirt with Heather Graham playing some sort of international pop star. There's some stuff with walruses. It's tough. It's a lot, man. Think about you. You just said five things. International pop star, walruses could be playing a Trump, Mike Pompeo's speech. Like everything you say are just like, and, and, and. You know what this kind of reminded me of the first episode was almost an attempt to dramatize a forward-looking Ken Burns documentary where it's like you have like you're trying to essentially cover something at this major inflection point from all these different angles.

And I think that there's something really bold about it, you know. But at the same time, it might have been so much that it was hard to wrap his arms around. One of the things that I find comes up a lot in this show is it's globetrotting. So it'll go from Tel Aviv to Miami to Columbia, to Columbia to. to New York City. And as you start these scenes, you'll have a drone shot with a title card

that says the name of the place. And then obviously looking down, you're seeing a ton of pollution, be it caused by forest fires, or whatever else. Like, just environmental decay is obvious. But then once you get past that drone shot, it's just rooms, right?

Like, it's not like the left, I wonder whether it's because it almost has a kind of, Poseid an adventure cast of a thousand vibe to it where you're cutting between these people that obviously are very high demand and have very demanding schedules. But Matthew Reese's plotline that you're talking about

is one of the only ones that seems to take place in multiple places. Like he's in St. Petersburg. There's this kind of neat thing with like the digital window that they can have at the hotel that lies to them about what it looks like outside. And then he winds up in the Arctic and he's on a boat, but it's like 65 or 70 degrees out there

so people are able to be walking around in t-shirts. And I kind of like the moving and shaking of that and wish the show itself had a little bit more of that rather than Columbia, but inside it looks like a house, yeah. But also you only have so many resources and so much of the resources of the show went to its scope and to its size and to its reach. And so there probably isn't room,

despite the valiant efforts of, I think, very many talented people to give it a sense of tactile, this is a real place. People live here. Like where Sienna Miller is in Columbus, with her son in episode two talking to a whale that translates into Merrill Streep's voice. It's a lot, guys. It doesn't feel like a place anyone lives.

It kind of just feels like 2031's Fall Pottery Barn catalog, which may have been the note, but there's sort of a lack of, there's nothing to grab onto because everything is smooth in that way. Yeah, and I also... I also... That side of the storytelling. I think the weight of what this show is about is kind of dragging down, honestly, the dialogue, right?

Like, it's tough because... I think that there's so much information and so much exposition that needs to be conveyed, at least in these early episodes, that I don't know if CNN Miller's character digs playing boggle or likes betting on sports. You know what I mean? Like, maybe not. But, like, it's just little things that get sucked out of it because I think the show has to do so much heavy lifting and world building.

Yeah, I agree. And I also think this is one is an interesting test case for us because I think that we're interested in engaging with this show, like, as quote unquote, new critics and being like, It's just the text. You know, and it's, for me, it is, as I said at the top, it's a strong word, but I think it is failing for me as an entertaining TV show or as an engaging. Entertaining is another challenging word that will be relevant in the next show we talk about, too. But, which I think makes them a good pair to discuss together. But, but, but I want ambition.

I want someone to give Scott Burns the money to do something like this. I want to see what it looks like to try to engage with the pressing problems of the world through art and see what works. and see what works and what doesn't work. So I am glad this exists for us to bounce off of it. We're just bouncing off it pretty hard. And I not to kick the hornet's nest. I know hornets are also extinct by 2044, so I should speak gently. Rest in power.

You had a great run. Stinging motherfuckers. Great. Do hornets have any societal value? Like any food chain value? Kaya. I feel like I'm on Rogan. Kaya, our hornet's good.

Kaya, nature expert. Let me Google that and I'll give back to you. Would you Google that? Well, we really appreciate it. Also, Google the Italian guy Chris is talking about. I just want a visual while we. The question I'm going to ask you is not always a popular one, but I sincerely mean this. Who is the show for? And when I ask that, I ask it not because that should be something in the mind of creators when they make art or networks even, you know, hopefully when they're free of advertising

concerns like Apple is. What I mean is, I think I'm open to this show. I've said as much just a moment ago, as you said, I drive an electric car. You are a little snowflake, yeah. I'm a pretty good guy. You know what I mean? And I found the show kind of, you know, not thrilling, not engaging. But it didn't make you want to burn trash. I mean, like, it didn't maybe go in the opposite direction. It didn't red pill me, but it didn't do anything for me. And I don't know, like if you were making a show that is essentially a piece of activism, you know, that is a call to arms. You want people upset. You want people worked up and thinking about it and Googling the reality of what Pompeo did or didn't say or what the actual temperature is in Greenland today. I don't know if this is the show for that.

So it falls into a weird, mushy middle that sometimes well-intentioned liberal art falls into where it's like a bunch of people like us, like say, being like, mm-hmm. Well, I mean, you have to imagine that the material must have spoken to these performers on a level beyond just like, isn't it important to be involved in a project about climate change? Maybe not. But I don't think this is, we are the world. I think it's because they read scripts and they were like, this is really interesting. And if I could make the devil's advocate pitch for it, I would say that this show does

what lots of good sci-fi does, which is dramatized the present by showing a possible future, right? So, like even in the first episode, there's a hologram projection of a teenage, woman who is rallying kind of like the public to the cause of environmentalism and that we are in a crisis moment, not unlike your Greta Thunberg, right, like that we have now, or some of the more popular advocates for stopping climate change and for getting in front of this. But the way that it's presented as this, she's in a room by herself in the show, but her

image is almost this like huge sci-fi like blade runner advertisement. It's honestly, not unlike the end of Andor, where it's become this kind of like huge totem looming over the protests that are taking place. I think that that is like a pretty interesting idea. You know, and I think back, honestly, I was thinking about Blade Runner because if you watch Blade Runner, Blade Runner is a mystery. It's not only a murder mystery, but it's a mystery of self because it's about whether or not you can trust who you think you are and how well you know yourself. And all the stuff about what's happening to the world is in the background.

You know, like Los Angeles is deterioration, the environment, the atmosphere, the mix of cultures that have like kind of come together in cities for a variety of reasons. Like all that stuff is in the background, but you take it as texture. And so in extrapolations, I feel like it's like reversed, right? Like so all of the information about the world that we live in is like, well, I would love to do that, but we have to do this first because of 19, 2019's Mike Pompeo's speech. So maybe it shakes off some of the cobwebs a little bit later in the season. And I'm kind of interested just because I love Scott's work. I don't know why I call him Scott.

It's not my buddy. But Scott Z. Burns's work. And a lot of the performers, like I want to see what Ed Norton does on a TV show. So I'm going to keep watching this. I'm with you on that point. But I think that's just an incredibly good observation. And particularly in the context of, is this sci-fi or not? Because this may surprise you, but I've actually been reading or rereading some old sci-fi things,

including some Ray Bradbury stories. and Blade Runner, you know, was adapted from an old sci-fi story as well. What's his name? Philip K. Dick. Philip K. Dick, right. And the hallmark of those stories was that people were always people. Like if you read the foundation books, it's just people that would be recognizable in the 40s, 50s, and 60s when those stories were written, just fast-forwarded into changing context, but still behaving like people, which is the gift and the curse of humanity throughout the ages. And that's something that I still treasure in genre shows where people are just still going to be people, and that is often the problem.

In a way, I think the show might have been better served if it had been pitched from the beginning as sci-fi, which has come to mean Star Wars. But that's not actually what it is, right, in its traditional sense. If this was pitched as sci-fi, then we could have followed like four scientists or four families or whatever through the changing times. In that way, it would be more like the Russell Davies show that we talked about on HBO called Years and Years, right? Which was emotionally horrifying to watch. It was also about people. Because it was about a family, one family moving through a fictionalized but scarily possible next decade of time on Earth. And that landed more with me.

But again, maybe the way to put a bow on this conversation that was already, much longer than I anticipated, but is, this is a contemporary TV, not problem, but maybe, not bug, but maybe feature in that Apple bankroll this, it exists with highs and lows and maybe something in between, and one could dip back in. This isn't something we're talking about gently because, oh, it might get canceled and we might not get to see the, you know, the extent of Scott Burns's vision. He got to make this. It's going to be on these servers for a while. Yeah. Before we stop talking about extrapolations, I have one question for you. Yeah, yeah.

If you were going to give voice to the last humpback whale in existence, and you were going to do some AI translation software that allowed that humpback whale to communicate in a language you understood, what voice would you give it? Wow. It's a great question, one that I think all of us are thinking about, you know, after the show dropped on Friday. It's tough. Are you saying this is a bad prompt?

No, I'm saying there are a lot of directions to go with this. When you asked me that you asked me this. You think 99% of the people out there are like, man, I really need to, I need to recycle even harder. And like, what can I do to save the world? But only me, I'm the only one who's like, who would I get to be my whale avatar? No, I think I wasn't being facetious. I think everybody's saying. Part of me would want it to be like Liam Gallagher in 1995.

You wouldn't understand what it was saying. Well, arguably, I wouldn't understand what a whale was saying anyway. Right? Like, yeah. Who you got? Bernthal. Oh, wow. Wow, you want to bless us with that?

Like, so, so let's say. No, I'm not even going to do it. I just want people to visualize, like, just imagine. Honestly, I could kind of see like Bernthal's face superimposed on a humpback. That would be sick. But like, I mean, they got to have software for that too if we've already got, we're already able to make the voice come through. So you don't think we have, you don't think.

You don't think you didn't know we had super scientists over here? Yeah, goddamn! God damn! Cianna Miller? Didn't know I was out here with the last scientist! You got to work krill into it somehow. I'll figure it out. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime.

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But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sales signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Andy, let's talk about Swarm. We only watched one episode. The entire season went up.

very much in the vein. I'm not trying to like kind of put in a box, but I think if anybody needs like kind of a short hand for what's going on here. Created by Janine Neighbors and Donald Glover, not unlike something kind of from the Jordan Peel verse of slightly distorted horror with an eye towards like more of the psychological aspects of horror

and also pulling from, I mean, as the show says and it's sort of cryons in the beginning that this is very much pulled from real life. and that all similarities are intentional. Yeah, it stars Dominic Fishback, who is extraordinary in Judas and the Black Messiah. And Donald Glover directs the first episode, and it's essentially about,

I would say, argue, a troubled main character played by Dominic Fishback, Dre, who is working at a mall and is obsessed with a very Beyonce-like pop figure. But that obsession is kind of defining her every waking moment as is equal, obsessive feelings that she's having about her foster sister,

who she also works with and lives with. Are they foster sisters or just best friends who call each other sisters? I think they're family, like, because they say they're in the video towards the end of the first episode where they don't tell our parents. But yeah, I just in stuff, like I believe that they were brought

together. But beyond that, this is a like really disturbing show. Like, I would not call this like feel good TV in any way. Glover has now kind of internalized some of the visual stuff that he was working on, especially towards, I think, the end of Atlanta. There's like a grainy filmic quality to the cinematography in this show that reminds me, and I think it purposely feels very like 70s horror to me. And the show moves

along with a kind of like, Freedkini dread to this person is unraveling. And as like each thing goes wrong in her life, at least across the first episode, I mean, this first episode could have been a feature of sorts or the first two acts of a feature. And, you know, I thought I was gripping. Like, honestly, like, not really like a, like a, there's not like a right time to toss this on and be like, yeah, that was, that was, that was cool. But I thought it was interesting. You know, when I mentioned this show, you were like, this might make sense in relationship to extrapolations. What, what made you say that? Well, I guess the thing I would say, and by the way, you were right, they are foster sisters. And I just didn't pick up on that. Um,

This is also a tough watch, and it is uncomfortably ripped from our own existence at this moment, especially the rise of like parosocial fandom being something that is just dominant, certainly online. And I think, you know, for people who don't, like my understanding of that term is that, you know, the idea that you are personally invested in celebrities' lives, relationships, their comings and goings and opinions and what they do, and that it affects you personally and you are, have a stake in. in that with your actual emotional well-being and life. The reason I said it was interesting pairing is because I did think they were both ripped from the familiar, but that this was more worth the investment. Like I just thought artistically, this show is kind of, it's a hurricane. Like, I just thought it was really brilliantly conceived and really like, I don't know, I almost said bravely.

It's not brave to do something interesting, but I think they made some really bold choices, and you alluded to it. I thought Donald Glover has become an incredibly good director. And I thought the lighting choices and the production design, the use of the sound design of the episode with both music from the real world and then music created for the fictional pop star and also the way he does the hard cuts out of dietic music into the moments or inside of Dre's head were really, really gripping, really, really striking and engaging. I feel like Sam Esmel will like the show for people who use that on the back of their note padage in terms of it. of the filmmaking. And then you have in Dominique Fishback, an actress who is really incredible. And we've been hearing- Super fucking brave, too, because this is not like a flattering light to put yourself in in this show. Like, yeah. And she, I think she debuted. I think our friend and listener and casting director,

genius, Alexa Vogel cast her and show me a hero. And then she stayed in the David Simon family and the Deuce, kind of broke out on a bigger stage with Judas and the Black Messiah. This is a bravora star turn. And it is raw. And it's, you know, it's, I just, I was interested in having this because I didn't want the takeaway from extrapolations to be, well, it's a tough subject matter and it's a big swing, so it's a tough hang and I don't really want to watch it. This is also a tough hang, but I found it more worthwhile in gripping in miniature. Again, we've only watched one. The whole season is up. So I was just, I was just really struck by it. It doesn't look or feel like anything else on TV. And the last piece of that to me is also, I think this is the first. thing to come out of Donald Glover's overall with Amazon. Because he was working on Mr.

and Mrs. Smith, with Phoebe Wallerbridge, which I think he's still making, but without Phoebe Wallerbridge, right? Like with Maya Hurstine? Maya from Penn 15. Yeah. And good for him, by the way. Like, this is just, if you get these really, really rich deals, which are increasingly rare.

And you know what? Good for you, Donald Glover. This is the last humpback whale, John Bernthal. Just saying, like, way to go, man. I feel so lucky. I feel so lucky that we doise it out of you. You're going away a long fucking time, big man. Wait, now you're talking to the whales. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. John Bernthal is the whale talking to Merrill Street as another whale. I guess not the last one. Anyway, just to do this, like to enable your writer, Jenny neighbors, and be like, we're going to make this. And no one else is going to make the show except Amazon, which is like, we're in business with you. And this is what you want to do. And even these deals, I think, are less.

Autori than they used to be because why else would he be making Mr. Mrs. Smith? Why else would Phoebe Waller Bridge, who also has a very rich Amazon show? Like real talk, why else would she be involved in the Tomb Raider TV show? If it wasn't like one for you, one for me. For one thing, it's like the Trojan horse thing of like, whatever I have to do to fit this one. But like, let me tell you something. Like for as much as I was like, this has Jordan Peel overtones, which I think is probably an easy way of saying it.

And for as much as I was like, there's a creeping dread to the filmmaking that reminds me of 70s horror. The other thing that this thing does really, really well is basically recreate the blank from hell genre of the 90s thriller. But instead of having the boyfriend from hell and it's like the audience POV is Julia Roberts

or the audience POV is Bridget Fonda and single white female, there is no fucking audience POV. You're trapped in the psyche of this woman who is unraveling through obvious personal trauma, but also this obsessive relationship with a pop star named Nijaya. And

And like, I just thought that that was like absolutely brilliantly rendered. It's super uncomfortable. And obviously, Andy and I have only seen the first one. We can probably leave it there because I don't want to make any grand proclamations if like it turns out that it turns into or might not comedy on the fourth episode. Also, though, great casting. Dancent Idris is so good in this. Yeah.

Tamson Idris. And there's a Culkin. Culkin alert. Yeah. For as a long time, uh, and in very public, James Hardin supporter. Damson, Indris is, uh, full. Rockets get up was really sick. Also, by the way, this is a small thing, but the show is set in Houston.

I think then it moves to different locations after the first episode. But like, that's good. Let's have more TV shows in other places, please. Like, as if Houston, the third or fourth biggest city in America is some exotic location. But like, let's do that. Like, let's just be in different rooms, the clubs, the apartments, the house that that Khalid lives in that we visit at the end of the first episode. But this is not a fair one-to-one comparison between a totally different show like

extrapolations, but like these felt like places. Yeah, for sure. And did I love what happened in those rooms? I got to be honest with you, I didn't. I didn't. But I was really excited to visit. And I think it's an interesting and impressive and very unique show. Obviously, like a very warm recommendation for Swarm with some caveats about your tolerance

level for certain things. And then extrapolations is more of a wait and see. Top Chef pretty much has season past for us for life. It's you and my favorite shared reality show. And we haven't really talked about it. We've done in seasons past, we've done episodic recaps. We might get there with this season once things start rolling a little bit. But I wanted to do a little bit of a check-in on the first two episodes.

So it's Top Chef's World Champions. World All-Stars. World All-Stars, right? And it's season 20, and it's set filmed in London. I am all in on this season. Yeah. If I had one mild cheek, and I'm not even mild. I think top chefs what it's done since the pandemic is remarkable.

To be able to mount a production the way they did in Portland, to be able to bring this show back at a time when the food industry itself was reeling to celebrate tons of different chefs from tons of different backgrounds, cooking different food, was really, really cool, has been really, really cool. It's just an easy no-brainer Thursday night. I fire it up show for me. That being said, and I think I have this critique about maybe American restaurant experiences in general, is that there seemed to be a little bit of a homogenous kind of food at the other end

of a lot of the cooking. And I do think that, yeah, for sure, like you have some people cooking like Asian food and Asian cuisines at like a high level and Mexican food. And there's all these different cultural influences on it. But for some reason, at the end, when they would explain to Padma and Tom, and Gail what they had made, it all sounded the same. Like, it always was like, and then I did this and then I did this. And it's like, this is the style.

And I don't know if you felt that way at all. It's interesting. I mean, isn't maybe that just the fact that, like, lowers voice as much as possible, there's only so many things you can do. Like, on some degree. For sure. For sure. But I even think that there is, like, when you go into a lot of restaurants today, especially

in Los Angeles, they're just like, let us tell you a little bit about how we do things. And it's like the same way most people do it. You know, like we're going to make. family style small plates here we go I'll course it out blah blah blah we'll really try to cook what's in season there's like a lot of like I think it's not that I want like to be at the restaurant from the menu every night but I think that there was a little bit of like a sameness to the food coming of Top Chef and this season of Top Chef because of the international background of the contestants I think is changing that oh oh I thought you were saying that this season felt the

same oh no I'm like this Polish woman just wants to fucking make tons of parogies and like throwing out. I totally misunderstood you. I thought you were leveling that. No, I was saying that from the last couple of seasons coming towards the season. I was like, it kind of feels like no matter what people are making, they're kind of making it the same way now. I see. Well, right. And so then you watch this season and, you know, I actually was going to take your point to a degree because they were limited to chefs that were at least mostly conversant in English. And also chefs who were in the top chef ecosystem, meaning they had watched seasons, been on season. of the show. And so I think it would have been truly groundbreaking if they had been able to

use Sienna-Millars. I can talk to anyone technology and bring on, you know, like true Japanese Shokunin, like, Kaisiki cooks, who would be like, I'm just going to give you this mountain yam. I'm so sorry. But what would happen when they're like, cool, put it on a Ritzcracker? Well, right. And they're all like, I have always loved Ritz Crackers. It's still top chef. What I mean is like to really like be radical in it. That said, this season, suddenly you have someone like Begonia, who is a Spanish chef from Valencia, who is doing things that no chef has ever done on this show. Whether she's winning or not winning, no one on the history, 20 seasons of this show has picked up the challenge or the ingredients

or gone to Whole Foods and come out the other end with something that looked like that. And that, in and of itself, is totally remarkable. I think the other major change is everyone's really good right away. Yes. That's what we've seen that. Buddha said that in the second. episode. So Buddha, who won the previous season of Top Chef, is back defending essentially a domestic title in an international ring. And Buddha mentioned in the beginning of the second episode, he's just like, this is like Final Four every night. It's really remarkable to see Buddha, who is clearly a brilliant guy and an incredibly highly level, high level skilled chef, but also a very modern construction, which is to say a top level top chef competitor. Like he was, he was

born and raised on the previous seasons and knew how to apply his skills in the modern NBA, I mean top chef, come to this and be like pedestrian. It doesn't mean he doesn't have a chance to win, although I don't think he will. It's more that the things that made him unique are suddenly not unique anymore in a way that I think all elevations to hire leagues ought to do and ought to feel like, right? I think that challenge of this is, especially for like viewers and fans, was seeing someone like Don, whom we love. And by the way, we're going to spoil through episode two. Yeah.

But this would be relevant even if you had only seen the first one. We love Dawn. We root for Don. I want her involved in the show in this franchise forever. She wasn't ready for this league. Well, I'll tell you, I'll put it in Dawn's words. Don had said in the first episode when I think she was bottom three,

I hope the judges know that I sometimes need a few episodes to get my feet, to get my bearings. And in this year, in this season, I don't think she had that time. I think the chefs were too good. There were not enough major mistakes being made.

You know, there's a few things that, cardinal rules that you can't really break in Top Chef, and then there are things that are coming down to these minor grades of differences. and Dawn, I think, went home on her, or congey that she was making, like, basically didn't congeal. It wound up being more like a soup. But it was bottom three for the second straight episode.

And honestly, like, I'm not the body language doctor. And I love Dawn as a character and on these shows. And really think I would love eating her food. And she seems like a gifted chef. But I don't even know if, like, her, she kind of seemed out of it a little bit. She seemed a little bit like, I'm not, I can't really figure out which way is up here. And, yeah, like, I mean, this is just a really. really, really high-level competition right here.

It's also interesting to see what plays on an international stage and what doesn't. And so Sarah, who was the runner-up of season 16th from Kentucky, in the first challenge, I think, the elimination challenge, she did something that was based around pot liquor, which is what's left behind when you cook beans in a southern dish. And they have all these really posh British chefs being like, liquor? Like not understanding the context of it. Now, was she judged harshly for it? Did it taste good?

I don't know. but I think it was sort of interesting to see something that is not just important to American food ways, but also is definitely prioritized in the world of top chef, which has been increasingly about southern cooking and cooking of the African American diaspora, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know if those conversations are as vivid in London, you know, as they are in Houston. So seeing that sort of context, which has been interesting, but more than anything else, It just goes back to like the level of quality where it seems immediately that there is a vast middle class that can hang that would be absolutely if we were doing like contenders. If this was an American season, 10 of the people on this show would be in the conversation for who's probably going to win.

And it's very unclear. It's going to be about consistency and it's going to be about stamina, right? Yeah. Being able to grow and elevate. And to that end, by the way, I was kind of impressed with Amar because I was like coming in. in. Oh, I was going to say that. I was like, Americans can't do this. I was going to say that about Sarah. About Sarah from the Kentucky season because she had had like a kind of up and down Kentucky season. I think she came back into Kentucky from last chance, if I remember correctly. But she's kicking

ass and she's a mother of a newborn and she's sending home milk. Like she's an absolute monster. It's amazing. That was that was absolutely incredible that that's what she's that's that she's competing on this high of a level. I mean, it is truly. attribute to her. And also, like, you know, it was interesting. So this show premiered, and we, you were there too. We were out to dinner with some friends who were also chefs. And Top Chef came up. And the chefs were like, oh, Christ. Like, professional working chefs think it's absolute, like, you know, sanitized, animated bullshit, which I thought was interesting. And maybe there's some other, maybe it's the way we feel about the journalists in the

wire. Because, again, as said at the beginning of the show, we are journalists first and foremost. But we cracked that Victoria Alonzo's story wide open. Wide open. We got to the bottom of it from the top, from the 200,000 foot view. No, just that like we are also fans of this show. And we are fans of the community and the style of the community, the show and genders and the style that the show brings to celebrating individuals, but also cooking and food. I think everybody knows that it's not necessarily a judge of who's going to make you the best meal in a restaurant on a Wednesday.

It's a competition show that plays by certain rules, and to see it blown up on this stage is exciting. And also just like the winners. Like Charbel, his onion, that was pretty cool. That was pretty amazing. Just as a fan of competitive TV shows and as a fan of wanting to try interesting things. I love that.

I love the Middle Eastern representation on the show so far in the way Charbel and Ali, what they're cooking, how they're approaching it. It's just coming at it from a different angle than what we used. I think that gets to the point of what I was saying about, like, a kind of a homogeneity to the cooking in the last couple of seasons in the States. When they walk into Whole Foods or even when they're given a quick fire, like, pick these three ingredients. I have no fucking idea what they're going to make. Now, maybe two of them will make a conji or maybe two of them will make a saviche or something like that.

But, like, there's a couple of people here where I'm like, you're honestly blowing my mind that you took these three things and this assignment and came up with that. And since you can't taste the food, that goes a long way as a viewer. Yeah, I think there have been contestants who did that, like May, who won her season, was the plates that she put out. I don't know. I didn't see those ingredients. She walked away with the ingredients I recognized and came back with a plate I didn't recognize. Or Eric, when he would bring in African ingredients that were new to me, and I think new to a lot of viewers of the show,

that have since become much more established and put forward on plates in American restaurants, which is great. But also, to me, one of the most significant. significant contestants of the last few years was Shota, who was also a finalist in Don's year, right? And he's why I was thinking of like if they could have gotten a Japanese chef from Japan, just because his approach was completely different. He just, he simplified. He didn't, he didn't add.

And that was such a, just like a philosophical contrast that I thought really elevated the season. And I think we have more of that this year. And I hope that that's, we've said this before. But one thing that magical elves and the Top Chef producers seem to do year to year is they do pay attention to what is working in a way that feels in tune with the viewers and they integrate it. So I think that's been an interesting. It'll be interesting to see how they come home again if the season continues at this high of a level. I really felt for you when the Ritz Cracker challenge came up. Because I know that there's nothing that you hate more in the world than when you're watching Top Chef and everybody is making glorious beautiful food.

And then Padma sadly has to be like, but shove it inside. of a Chipotle burrito because Chipotle it's not even that like Ritz crackers are incredible I fucking love Ritz crackers Yeah there's universal approval rating it's just more the and I think Padman knows and we all get it

like we live in a capitalist society Just check out extrapolations to find out with that costs But when she's like All chefs know There's nothing like the homie and buttery flavor You know and Bagonia's like I'm sorry excuse me what is this? Yeah

I know. All right. Well, we'll probably be checking. I mean, like I said, as Top Chef rolls on, we'll check in more and more frequently. This coming Thursday, Andy and I are going to hit Lucky Hank, the new Bob Odenkirk show on AMC. Maybe the last show AMC puts out before we complete our purchase, correct? Yeah, because I think the thing that really brought a lot of the hedgies into our thing was you were like, remember the moment in that meeting with Blackstone when you were like, why does Hank have to be so lucky? and they were like, holy shit.

Yeah, we got a live one here. Greenwald, it was great to see you. Thank you to Kai McMullen, as always, for producing us, and we'll be back on Thursday. And I think we'll get our Hornet research then. Well, she hasn't come back, so I don't know if maybe she was swarmed by Hornets. They didn't want her to... I'm trying to get all sides.

You try to distill it down. No, I get it. All right. Thursday, we expect a full report. I appreciate that. Fair and balanced, as always, Kaya. Thank you.