The Watch - Fast and Furious and Young Pope Casting Update. Plus Glow Season 2 review Pt. 1 | The Watch (Ep. 272)

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald react to some recent casting news involving Idris Elba for the new 'Hobbs and Shaw' 'Fast & Furious' spinoff and John Malkovich for ‘The Young Pope.' Later they discuss the first three episodes of 'GLOW' Season 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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When you use the Code Watch. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Sorry to Bother You. The new film critics are calling Get Out on Acid. Don't miss this year's most original comedy in Select Theater's July 6th, everywhere, July 13th. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch.

My name is Chris Ryan. I'm editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio. He is a gorgeous lad of wrestling. It's Andy Greenwald. I want to be clear about something. It's the day after a holiday. I think I definitely on some level thought that we would all just have five-day weekends, but we can't do that.

We all. Like the world, but I can't, we can't do that because we're working people. No, man, we're recording today. It's Thursday. And you know what, Andy, I don't want you to get nervous because today is going to be a slow cook podcast. Oh, really? We're throwing the content in the earth like Francis Malman. Oh.

We're letting the coals, the banana leaves, just season this podcast. These are definitely two distinct kinds of cooking. But go on. No, it is. Is it? Well, I mean, Malman does like the big barbecue fires. Doesn't he throw that shit in the grass and, like, cover it and then come back like two days later? Like cooking.

like a whole animal, like barbacoa? Uh-huh. I don't know what he does, man. Listen, you're misreading me. When do we get Bill to pay for us to go check this out to find out for ourselves? Let us chase our passion. Come on, Bill. For real.

Thursday, happy July 5th. Happy July 5th. I hope everyone had a great Independence Day. The watch is back in effect. I want to be clear with everyone. I'm here today out of my sacred duty to our audience, to my good friend Chris. You're actually obligated to show up. Shush, shush, shh, shh.

I'm here because. I love talking to my friend. But also I was hoping Chris could give me some, like, NBA trade rumors while I was here. We'll do that off my- Great Walt, you have become incredibly invested in the hot stove of the NBA. Isn't that good for business around here? I think you picked the wrong summer, my guy. Well, yeah, but we don't have a GM.

We're not, we missed on LeBron. Uh-huh. Probably not going to get Kawhi. All right. We got Wilson Chandler. But what I'm asking is, do you think the Sixers will tender contracts to any other ringer podcasters other than JJ Redding? Okay.

I see what you're saying. Do you think they need someone to, like, gather the team meals and bury them in the earth? And they'll be like, where did you do with my dinner? And I'll be like, Chris Ryan said, this is how they do it in Argentina. And then I'll be fired. Today we're going to go over a little bit of entertainment news. And then we'll be talking about the first three episodes of Season 2 of Glow. On Monday, Andy and I will be releasing, releasing the Hounds.

Scorpion, Volume 2. We're releasing a mailbag because Greenwald's out of town and I'm out of town. We'll both be in different deserts. Different desert cities. So we will not be available to react to anything that happens on Monday. But we will try to get to things like sharp objects and succession next week. Guess what, though? Yeah.

I got a curveball for you today. Okay. We're going to talk a little succession today. Okay. Just so you know. You're just going to go ahead and talk about succession without me. Uh-huh. Okay.

This is what we're doing now. Please, lay out the ground rules for the rest of today. There is no ground rules. I want to talk about this fucking Hobbs and Shaw movie. This is, you know, I'm at a disadvantage here. I don't really care about the Fast and the Furious franchise, honestly. Just because I work here doesn't mean I have to say it's all about family to my coworkers every day. I've been trying that for six years working with you guys.

But this is quickly, this Hobbs and Shaw movie, which is a spin-off from Fast and Furious starring Jason Statham, who I enjoy his work very much. I do as well. And The Rock, who I respect, but feel like I need him to up the quality control on his team. Right. just because, like, I don't need a rock movie every four months. Do you think there are too many Urkels on his team? Do you want to say it or should I? Is that why his wins are low?

His wins are actually very high. His wins are fire are as tall as a skyscraper, one might say. Well done. Yeah. This Hobbs and Shaw movie has recently cast Idris Elba and Vanessa Kirby, which is giving me real con air vibes. Oh. There was a point of time in the late 90s when, you know,

really the big action movies were coming out of the, you know, Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay, Axis. And if dudes wanted to cash a check, it was right there for them. If Steve Bouchemey wanted to be in Conair or if Ed Harris wanted to give a stirring monologue about the sacrifices of Navy SEALs in the rock, the money was available. It sure was. And I'm really into the Crowns Vanessa Kirby appearing in a fast and furious. Spinoff.

It's great. With big driss. Yeah. Look, I mean, these guys have lifestyles. You know, they have homes that they need to purchase in addition to their current homes. It's fine, right? It's fine. It's one for me, one for them, a couple for me.

Pitch me the version of this movie that makes it appealing to a non-fast and furious guy. Because here's why I'm interested, not just for the cast that you're saying, but because it seems that there's a chance that they won't be driving a lot. Let's take driving in or out of it. I'm going to tell you why. This is interesting. Because I just want to be clear to our audience, something they already clearly know about me,

even if they've never heard me say those words. The driving movies I like are Locke, right? Yeah, and you're like born, which is technically not a driving movie, but there's a lot driving in it. But Locke was the movie where Tom Hardy's just in a car, right? Yeah, and he's like to get the poor right. I got to get the poor right.

So that's my Fast and Furious, right? Otherwise, I'm relatively out. So this movie suggests they might be infantrymen, right? might be on foot. Yeah, I just, I think that the main appeal for me here is that there's no Vin Diesel. And I don't,

I would never fight him. I don't mean to disrespect his work. I thought he was fine. He was quite good in boiler room. I thought he was fine in boiler room. Throw that on the poster of his life. But I, I'd find his presence in the Fast and the Furious movies

to be a little bit of, a little bit of dead weight. Wow. Yeah. Wow. I mean, so I think that you get to get to make. He's the founder.

I'm not saying he, yeah. Look, I'm not the target audience. I'm not the person who's going to determine without these movies. No respect for the old heads in this game anymore. Ready to turn the page. You just said the only car movie you like is Locke.

What are you talking about? I'm just trying to not be the bad guy for once. Yeah, okay. So I'm looking forward to that. That's my piece of entertainment news that I'm into. I know you have a casting. Yeah, and I actually thought you were going to set me up here from the Con Air Expanded Universe.

Oh, yeah. The greatest paycheck, well, potentially the greatest one-two paycheck run in history was John Malkovich being like, okay, to, I mean, Conair being the biggest one, I guess in the line of fire you could say, it was, I mean, first of all, a fantastic movie. But when he was like, oh, you mean, I can just do this thing that I do that has won me plot it on the Chicago stage, but relatively little coin. And I can just do it in these action movies and people will love it. So, Malcovich has clearly embraced the Malcovichness of himself. And it's been announced that he is going to be joining. the God Jude Law in a second season of what I kind of think, Weren't Not for Twin Peaks was the best show of last year, the young pope. Is it still called Young Pope? No.

No, it's called the New Pope. It is Malcovic the new Pope? TBD, my dog. We don't know. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Is he going to be replacing Jude Law, who was the Young Pope? If so, they could have called it the old Pope. I don't know.

But I cannot tell you what joy this brings me that my man Sorrentino is making another lyrical, ecstatic, bizarro miniseries for HBO about the papacy. I love that show so much. Do you remember Diane Keaton shooting hoops? Yeah, it was great. Do you remember the kangaroo in the gardens?

It was great. And then at the end, for people who haven't seen this, please stick with it, it veered into something kind of humanist and wonderful at the end. And yes, we need Malcovich in that. this. This is exactly right. Please keep funding projects like this. It's a cool addition to this. I didn't really know where they were going to go with it. It's also very hard to imagine.

So like the version, the Young Pope show, if I recall correctly, did not have any like bearing on current European or Western politics. Like it wasn't like set in the real world, so to speak. No. But weirdly it was one of those things that came out after the presidential election that felt strangely resonant because of it. Oh, right, because of the cult of personality surrounding a person in power. And a disruption of old offices and old traditions, a certain turn towards radical conservatism

and showmanship. But, yeah, look, I mean, I love the show. My adoration for the show has only grown since... I don't even know if I told you about this, but I went to the Hammer. No, not the Hammer Museum, although that's a nice one, too. the Broad downtown Los Angeles. It's a great art museum. It's a big Jasper John's exhibit that's now

closed. But I went, see it with my family. And who should be one gallery behind me taking in the show? I want to say Jude, but was it John? No, it was the young Pope himself. It was Jude Law with at least one of his children. And he was everything I've ever wanted in someone because he, I mean, you can guess what he was wearing, right? Like on a... Full a leisure. Full athleisure. Yeah. Let me talk about this for a second. It was... There is a level of popularity of wealth and of baseline attractiveness that frees you up to start wearing athlete all the time. At the museum and business meetings, at most dinners. And it's also, it's key to have the ability to, if I were to put a suit on, I would just, the whole room would fall over.

Yeah. But I'm like leveling it out by wearing dry fit. He is so good looking. I'm not there yet. No, but you're exactly right. He's so good looking that it would have been rude for him to be dressed moderately, professionally, in a public setting. Right. We would have been appalled.

But he did. Some guys clean up. Guys like Jude Law have to clean down. He absolutely, I love this phrase. I love this idea. He looked like he was trying out for. He had not yet gained entrance. to a Stone Roses cover band.

Like that was the height of what he was going for. Was he wearing a beanie? There was, well, there was some sort of hat apparatus at some point. Okay. But it was removed out of respect for the great artist Jasper Johns. By the way, speaking of just feeling so comfortable with yourself that you can just let things hang out, I'm having a weird sense of deja vu that we've already told the story and talked about our love of athlete leisure on this podcast.

But I think that even if we did. And Zach isn't sure. But even if we did. He only records like 50% of the podcast. We just woke him up, to be honest. He's eating Chipotle. He's in a total coma. He's having a great Thursday.

My point is, one of the, I think, most appealing... No, definitely one of the top three things that got us into the Guardian list of best podcasts of 2018 is that we let people behind the curtain. If this is a senior moment, then God bless. Just consider this the... Our boy, Zach Barron, just wrote a piece for GQ about the glories of being washed,

which I recommend very highly that people read. But one of the things that was so reassuring in Zach's piece was his admission that his memory is going. Yeah. And that, like, he just needs to write everything down. So I take no responsibility if we've already had this Athlager conversation. And I'm going to make it more, like,

I'm going to update the Convo. Okay? So this is version 2.0. I love it. Where are you on the John Hamm NBA courtside look? So I don't know if you saw Bill's show Courtside at the NBA. finals. It was on HBO. And the sort of

the idea behind the show is that as soon as these games ended, Bill would walk out onto the floor and start talking to people who were also at the game. Right. You know, and by far, my favorite... And he doesn't get tackled by security. He does not. And by far, my favorite interview in the show is Bill goes up to John Hamm.

John Hamm is there for one of those... Look who's in the crowd. It's John Hamm and Jeremy Runner from the new movie tag. Also, I saw a tag. Word? But first, first, John Ham wearing

Dad Button up, not particularly well fitting. Yeah, I'm looking at pictures. A varsity jacket. Yeah. And a fucking Masters hat. Like the Masters, the golf hat.

And he just looks like that's the next level. It's like Athleisure is for guys like Jude Law who, you know, like, are like, I could clean up, but I don't want to. Yeah. John Hamm is like,

I don't care either way. I don't care. Because I'm wearing a golf hat. Yeah. And. On HBO. I'm John Ham. I'm John Ham.

I still have this chin. Your wife would still leave you for me in a heartbeat. I got to say, and I don't mean this in a self-serving humble brag way, although I think it is plausible that it could be construed this way. I've met John Hamm two times in my life. I believe both times he was wearing this shirt. I'm fairly confident he's wearing this blue check shirt. He could be, now look, one of the times I met him.

him was at our buddy Jason Manzukas's birthday thing. And because they're buddies, all the comedy world, they're all very incestuous here. And Jason Manzukas, whom we adore, who's hearing me talk about this right now, probably, he wears the same clothes. He's very upfront about this. He has, like, his uniform that he wears in the world. He's a wardrobe full of white shirts. Yeah.

Yeah. So maybe John Hamm does that as well. But I really think it's next level washed. So washed, he got dirty, then got clean again. What do you think? Because we're also looking at this picture, and Jeremy Runner is standing here wearing a peat coat, and a gray scarf. This is also, yeah, people should download this image

because the most incredible thing about this is the power dynamic because Ham is just dunking on Renner in this photo. It's merciless. Renner was told that he was going to be on camera and Courtside, and he had his hairstyle just so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has some sort of scarf wrapped around his neck? Yeah.

Where was this filmed in San Francisco? In the Bay Area, in Oakland. Look, does he think he's like an Armani barista in this picture? This is absurd. But what he has is a deep desire to have gotten this right. Yeah. And what John Hamm has is a complete lack of caring. And I do think, I know this is counterintuitive for people who have a pop culture podcast,

but to get to the point where you just deeply don't care can be admirable. Do you want to talk about succession now or you want to wait until next week? Both. I think that we should talk about succession in more depth next week after the sixth episode, maybe on Thursday when we're back live. but I also do have some comments about it, not spoilery comments. As it relates to Glow.

But I think we could talk about it in the back half of the show in relation to Glow because it's interesting. This podcast was born out of a lot of television for us to get through. We are finding it slimmer and slimmer pickings to find shows that we both like... And there's a lot of shows out there.

I think it's like finding ones that we agree on, finding ones that we can consistently watch. Yeah. Yeah, so it's almost as if the shows that we are watching, each one is a distinct exemplar of a different style of storytelling and also a different type of relationship with the show. So I think you have some notes for me.

Let's do some other notes. I was just going to make a random recommendation. Do some random records. I know you're going to be traveling. Maybe you're looking for an airplane movie to download or something like that. I know that you like to enjoy the free offerings. I do. Oh, my God, I do.

But I happen to know I'm pretty sure that where you're going, they don't offer anything free in the seat. One million percent. This is a very short flight. So there is a movie that was just released on iTunes called Gemini, which is Moly Kirk and Zoe Cravitz and John Cho star in this very interesting L.A. Nourre. Modern L.A. noir. Love it.

And Zoe Kravitz plays an actress, like a young actress who's kind of a movie star. And Lola Kirk, who you may have seen in Mozart in The Junkle or Mistress America, she plays that character. She plays Zoe Kravitz's personal assistant, but they're like really more like best friends. Is it like set it up? No. And then there is a murder. And it's basically the first,

it's directed by this guy, Aaron Katz, and the way it plays out is very much like somewhere between Robert Altman's Long Goodbye, a mumblecore movie, and a very icy noir movie. This is right down the middle for me.

Like drive or something. So there's elements of each of those things. It has some pretty drastic tonal shifts, but I was watching it and I was thinking of myself A, I'm so glad this isn't a TV show It's like a really, really good two-hour movie And it's got great performances and great writing

The Lola Kirk is really interesting in it And it's just when people say Oh, they don't make these kinds of movies anymore It's not the Los Angeles that you typically see Where it's like east side L.A Everybody's just having a coffee And trying to raise their kids right I feel both seen and targeted

but go on. You know what I'm talking about, though. Uh-huh. Right? It's way more... It's not like, yeah, it's not casual. It's a hallucination of West Hollywood

and the palisades and the beach and, and, uh, K-town. Basically, it's K-Town West. And then it, it's, its vision of L.A. is like, without traffic, which is hilarious to me unintentionally. But like, there's a lot of scenes of driving where I'm like,

this looks like the coolest thing ever. If only that I knew that there wasn't a 16-minute wait to progress one block Santa Monica to make a left on the 101. And so I really highly recommend it. I think it's only like $3.99 on iTunes. And if you're looking for a movie to watch over this weekend and you're not going to go see Ant Man or you're looking for something to watch at home, I highly recommend Gemini.

I think you'll like it specifically a lot. I love that. Thank you for that. Is knowing drive times and traffic maps in L.A., and is that the equivalent of knowing how much apartments rent for in New York? Yeah. Watching a TV show and being taken out of it because there's no way those characters. carries apartment and sex in the city.

Right. And I would have to say, I think we've brought it up a couple of times, but if Bill and I ever do rewatchables for collateral, the entire podcast will be spent talking about Jamie Fox saying that he could get from downtown to the airport in like 20 minutes. I mean, yeah, I've done that. Yeah, at three in the morning. Five in the morning on a Sunday. Yeah. Which I recommend.

By the way, that's my favorite Jason Satham performance is in collateral. Oh, yeah. He's in that. I forgot. He's in it for three and a half minutes and he's brilliant. I've got two recommendations for the listeners, maybe heading into the weekend. One is a band that I've fallen completely in love with called The Beths. They have a song called Happy Unhappy.

Right now, our friend John Dolan wrote it up as the song of the summer on Rolling Stone.com. New Zealand band that has hooks for days. I absolutely love this band. The record's coming out this summer, and the record is great. People should check them out. The other thing is, you know what I did recently that I really, really not just enjoyed personally, but I really recommend to people? It's not an official double-down book club recommendation, although maybe we should at some point do one of this guy's books.

But I slipped back into Elmore Leonard recently. And I don't know how many of our listeners have gone through deep Elmore Leonard phases. Maybe I think a lot of people have a casual relationship to them, whether it's just they watch Justified, they like out of sight, or maybe they read Get Shorty in paperback on the beach one time. But if you are a fan of storytelling and of people talking and of character building and world building, if you have any desire to do those things, pick up a Elmore Leonard book because the way that he writes is like just water dripping off of... What does water drip off of?

Ducks back? See, this is why I'm not as good a writer as he is. It's just delicious to read these books and to remember how effortless it can seem, even though writing is actually a nightmare and is terrible. I'm reading Freaky-Diki right now, which I'd never read. Is that a Detroit book? Yeah, I'm a big fan of the Detroit books.

I love the Miami books. let me rephrase that. I like them both. Yeah. What's your favorite Miami book by Allmore Leonard? Maybe you should see. I really like the Raylan books and the Karen books. So I love Rum Punch and Pronto and writing the rap. Those are just really, really, really, like a zone.

Those are really a big mood. There's Florida books. That's how La Brava might be my favorite Florida book. But there's also the two books, Stick and Swag. Yeah. I mean, see, look, the face Chris is making now. No, I'm not, what are you talking about? No, it's a good face.

Yeah. It's like a, it just gets. gets you going. It makes the people excited. Maybe we should pick one and do one for the book club. So we haven't picked a new book club book. Yeah, we have to pick a new book club book. All right. So we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors,

Gemini, the Beths, and Elmore Leonard, if you're looking for stuff to enjoy in this wild world of ours. And we're going to talk a little bit about the first few episodes of season two of glow after a word from our sponsors. Hey, guys, while I have you here, and before I let you go, I want you to go to the ringer.com slash shop, where you can find the watch t-shirts. It's our first ever official t-shirts.

You may have possibly you made your own at home for that. We thank you. But these are the first official ones. They say, great job, Bransky on the front and the watch on the back. They come in a cool aqua blue. You can cop that. You can cop t-shirts for tons of other Ringer podcasts. Like binge mode has really nice gear.

There's also stickers available. So go to the Ringer.com slash shop to get all your Ringer merch for summer. All right. We are back, Andy, and we're here to talk about the first few episodes, the first three episodes of Netflix's Glow, which is second season debuted last Friday, I believe. Why don't you get us started here? I feel like there might be a slight imbalance

in terms of passion for this show at this table, but we'll get to it. I love the show. I think the first season was one of, it was one of my favorite shows of 2017, but I also thought it was one of the most impressive shows in a sneaky way. It used really, really smart, classic sitcom

world building, not tricks, but tools, to almost immediately introduce us to a huge ensemble, but an ensemble of distinct characters, all of whom immediately became not just familiar but exciting. You'd want to see more of each one of them and spend time with them. And it did that in the larger ecosystem of Jen G. Cohen at Netflix. She's the creator of Orange is the New Black, and the creators of this show, Liz Flaihaven and Carly Mange,

worked with Gen G's executive producer of this show. It's operating in both the Gen G ecosystem, but also Netflix, you know, which is you're competing with everything ever, but also everything that's prestigey. It found an almost, again, I've used this word of bunch today as praise, which I think is probably psychologically revealing

because I'm finding things to be very effortful, but I think that they found a way to make this sort of television look effortless. It's just it's wildly comfortable to be watching a show that's entertaining

and see a show come back with such confidence in season two. But it also contains these performances from Allison Brie and Betty Gilpin that are up there

with anything else on television or streaming. I think what Allison Brie is doing week to week is astonishing. And never loses track of the sitcom aspect of itself

or the deep emotional probing part of itself. which I think is very difficult to do. I think it's a high wire act. The show is basically a relationship dromedy about these two female friends. Oh, and Mark Marin is in it too, and is very good.

And I think that they chose, coming into the second season, and I've only watched three of the ten, I think they chose a very... Everything about the show, I think the decision-making is very smart, but I think they chose a very smart way to ease us back in.

The first season covered relatively little ground in that the gang got together, they learned how to wrestle, and then they put on one wrestling show. The second season pretty much picks up immediately after that, and there hasn't been another, we haven't spent much time in the ring since, where it's just still slowly incrementally building.

I think that's really smart, especially coming from a producer like Genji Cohen who burns through plot at an absurd rate, usually. I think it's also a smart nod to the way people are watching these shows and the way they're digesting them binging them, it's not in a hurry. And this leads into the aspects of succession I actually want to talk about.

But in the case of Glow, I really appreciate that it's not in a hurry. It is a really high-quality hang. Yeah, I think the thing that really jumped out at me watching these first few episodes was how many shows I wish started in season two. Yeah. Especially now because I feel like people are probably so well-versed in the rules and beats that television shows have to go through. And I think that almost had the charm of Gilpin and Bree

was almost like working against this show. There's sometimes where you remember, like, it took a really long time to get, like, used to Matthew Fox, you know, on Lost. You know, it takes a long time sometimes to get used to the kids on Friday Night Lights and get their beats. They were kind of like ready, made, ready to rock

as soon as the camera went on. And it was almost like they were too good. for where the show was in some ways. You wanted to jump ahead to more complexity to let them cook. Yeah, exactly. Like, I was almost just like, you don't have to set the appetizers out.

Like, let's just go straight to the thing. You know? And that's what I've noticed so far is that I almost would say to people if you didn't get a chance to see Glow season one, don't sweat it. See, I get what you mean.

I just think that, again, Glow is the type of show that can benefit from it. I think that you can look at Glow in comparison to other Netflix shows. And, you know, Netflix, I don't know how the notes are given. I don't know if there's ever explicitly a creative mandate that comes down from the top. But if you look at the Marvel shows, for example, many of which we got excited about in the early going.

And then I think which reflects our interest in them, we've just sort of tapered off. Because Marvel basically sold, it's like they're sold ad space almost, you know. And so they had to fill X number of episodes for all of these series. And they had to deliver on them. Oh, I don't mean to say that it felt like it was a waste of time. What I'm saying is a show like Luke Cage that I intend to check out the second season. I'd love to see some more of it. I did like the first season.

But again, there wasn't enough story for that many episodes. A show like that is about forward momentum and plot and plot and plot. And so if there is an episode where it's just dragging, where are you? A show that is constructed, a very different show, but a show like Glow is fine with that. Because there's just all these little corners. And I'm actually happier hanging at the hotel with the ladies as we learn more about them and they interact in different pairings than I would in a different kind of show.

Sure. So it's just a more pleasurable experience that's, I think, better suited to Netflix than some of these other programs are. To your point, it's interesting that you went there because that's sort of what I wanted to say about succession.

I've also had pilot fatigue. I think we're not anecdotally, we're not the only ones. I think maybe even some of our listeners are tired of just getting the whole machinery rolling with a new show. and what that means. The shows that we have really jumped on

like Killing Eve started out like gangbusters. Yeah, and I would say anecdotally around the office at the Ring Road, and people should check out Jam Session if they want like a deeper dive on these two shows. But two of the shows that I've heard the most passionate about in the last couple of months are both type and younger, both of which ones in its second season, Youngers, and it's like fifth season.

And I think that we're kind of like losing track of the gains show. can make over extended periods of time because we're constantly like, let's start the terror, let's start this, let's start that. And like, let's go back to the beginning and learn everything about these people and what their motivations are and what their challenges. I'm not talking about Globe at all now. I'm talking about like just larger television stuff. And we can talk about specifically about the first three episodes if you want. We will, but I don't want to lose your thread there. And I think that Glow has the potential to be something like that. I, you know,

Allison was, and I was talking, Allison came in the door like basically like this is the best on TV. Alison Herman. Yeah. Not Elton Brie. No, Alison Herman. Because if she was here, please invite me to the office

so we can have her on the podcast. She was just like, this is the best show on TV. It's so good because like, and it's so, it was a show. She also was like, this show was ready to be in its second season. It was ready to have a lot of balls in the air.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think that it's taking its time building up to it. I think the rest of the season, from what I understand, having not read anything, but the vibe of the coverage

is that it's going to take a couple big swings going forward. But I think that it's, might be better to distinguish that we're still kind of in an in-betweeny place with TV. Killing Eve grabbed our attention and all the plaudits and it deserved them for the way it just shot out of the canon. Those first three episodes were the best three episodes of the season, but they were also among the best first three episodes of a show I can remember in quite some time. And one of the things that kept us coming back was this feeling like, they're really doing this.

This should end soon. You know, it had the momentum of a limited series. of an event series. It's clearly not that. And that was underlying all of our coverage of it. We have some concern about it going forward. Succession, which we'll talk about it more depth next week. But I wanted to tell you that succession in the fifth episode won me over. And I had been struggling with it.

And I think that I was struggling with it with this sense of fatigue. What is this? What's it going to be? It was the fifth episode that it only could have been the fifth episode. Because what I finally appreciated about the show, came into focus for me in this episode was, I was enjoying some of these people's behavior. There was enough, not just enough time spent with them to kind of get the dynamics, but I think also the creator and the writers and the director and the actors had suddenly

started to have spent enough time with these people to let it go a little bit, let it loosen up a little bit. There are these asides in the fifth episode that, I don't know if we credit Adam Arkin who directed it, or we credit Jesse Armstrong, who's the showrunner. or the actors, but all of a sudden, the characters aren't just saying A to B to C in the scene. They're saying A to B to C, but then they throw in a little X. Yeah. They're throwing a little Z just to get you out of there.

Yeah. And also James Cromwell shows up. Yeah. And all of a sudden, everyone feels like we're having fun a little bit more. And what I wanted to say was you can't do that in a first episode often. But it also seems like because you need that time to build up and you need that time spent with the characters. everyone needs to spend that much time with them. But I think it's also a question of training our brains

in this very confusing era of television as to what type of show we're watching. Is it a long-haul show or is it a sprint show? And I think that because all of our attention spans are getting shorter anyway, we are definitely more drawn to the sprint shows. And I prefer sprint shows that are sprint shows, and I'm concerned actually about the shows

that come off like sprint shows and traffic in that energy, but are actually like, really, we're going to do this for four seasons. Yeah, because that doesn't always work. So to Glow, one of the reasons why I'm thrilled by it, it's not just because it's half hour, not just because it's essentially an ensemble sitcom,

which are always popular for a reason, it's because it's the kind of show you can settle into and just be constantly low-level, pleasantly surprised and impressed by. And I expect there'll be a higher level of that going forward. I just think some of the, to talk specifically about these episodes, it's just good storytelling decisions

to maximize the talent on the floor. Well, I also, since we're talking about Glow in relationship to succession, which is sort of a random pairing, but really more just because we happen to be watching them. What I think about a lot when I'm watching Glow, especially in the first few episodes of this season,

is how difficult it must be with an ensemble that size to pitch everybody's performances at the same way. And I think part of what I'm, I'm so impressed about with the second season is how they've brought the Brie character's energy back down to earth a little bit. Not in like a really obvious like change your performance way. And obviously her character has gone through enough over the course of the first season that she might be like, she's still effervescent. She's still optimistic. She's still trying to make something more idealistic out of what a lot of people who are involved with this organization kind of are

looking at as either this is just a paycheck, this is pathetic, I can't believe this is where my life has led me, and Alison Brie is like, we could make this something beautiful and we could make this something amazing. And in these first few episodes, though, I thought that they, because of the conflict she has with Mark Maren's Sam character, I thought that they brought the performance down to earth just a little bit. And when you notice something like that, she's able to play quieter moments in a way that are a lot more palatable and a lot more believable because she's not always like, it's me, I'm here, you know?

Which is an integral part of the character being an actor. Yeah, absolutely. But it's a, it's a very difficult thing to sustain. Yes, I agree. And I thought it was just, she's giving like a really hell of a performance and, can I just jump in on the performance thing with her? Because I think that she is doing something that is so hard and so special to watch. She reminds me of like Sally Fields' run of performance in the 70s, where you have someone who, Alison Brie,

on community isn't exactly Gidgett, you know, but... But that's her thing. She can do that. She can be cute and delightful and charming and lovable and but also showed very early on in community, in Mad Men, that she is very in on that joke and willing to subvert it

and play it to the advantage of the story or the different characters that she's portraying or playing off of. But there's a kind of weird bravery is a ridiculous word, I think, for actors often. But she's really raw in this performance. You know, in the way that, the way that she allows herself, which actually is the way actors work on set,

to be made up or not made up, depending whether she's in the ring or that she's not, and to let hurt play on her face and linger on her face, and to somehow be playing someone who is not just pretty broken inside, but putting on this happy veneer, but is keenly aware every second that she is doing both, that she is both broken and performing. And to do this, I think you're right,

to do it with the generosity of spirit that she knows there are, what, conservatively 30 other people in the cast, and that everyone gets their shots, but when the camera cuts to her, she is tracking emotionally where she is, and thus we are, too. Yeah, there's a scene in the second episode, towards the end of the second episode,

where she, you know, she and Sam have had this sort of... That's the Mark Merritt character. Yeah, I was a minor falling out, betrayal, whatever, but not, you know, like, I think there's obviously a lot of road left to go with those two characters. And she goes into the control room where he's sitting, and she kind of is like, hey, and he's just like, she's like, what are you doing? And he's just, are you hiding from everybody?

And he's like, only from you. And she's like, oh, we're joking again. And he's just like, I'm not joking. And it's a really great moment because so many, so often comedy or even just dramatic scenes even are written to maximize awkwardness in a way that is completely irrelevant to the characters on screen. It's just to make you do the like Larry David, watching between your eyes thing.

Like, I can't believe how uncomfortable this is. And it completely forgets the actual truth that might transpire between these two people and what's happened before and what could happen after. And her reaction to that is not to, like, get pissed off and not to like, she just kind of like, well, if I just stand here for long enough, maybe he will loosen up.

And that's exactly what kind of happens. I mean, he doesn't really loosen up, but he doesn't kick her out. And it's such a great little moment. And that's the kind of thing that I kind of do really love about these high-volume Netflix shows that I hope you see more of.

Like, I hope we see this in Ozark Season 2. I hope we see this in Dark Season 2. Is you've got a little bit more runway to play with. Yeah, and you should play. And you should play. And not everything needs to be checking plot boxes. Like, you can just mess around in the margins of relationship sometimes.

That's something that I think that those 22-episode network shows used to have that opportunity that we lost when we came, everything needs to be a 10-episode mystery. I completely agree with that. And one other moment I would call attention to in the third episode, the dynamic between Betty Gilpin's character and Alison Bree's character is so distinctive and really either unique or very close to unique on television because it is, as I said, a moment ago,

the defining relationship of the show. And it is a relationship between two women that is presented with, really raw emotions at the fore. It is an unvarnished relationship. And I think that coming off of an era where the ways men, particularly in professional settings, use machismo and masculinity and the way the culture operates or is expected to operate to skull fuck each other, basically, in a variety of ways. Whether it's... The watch in 2015 to 2018. I think 2019 is when it's going to get real, real in here. But, you know, whether it's office politics and madmen,

or, you know, literally hell's angels in sons of anarchy, there have been numerous opportunities for men to be neither good guy nor bad guy, but just antagonists and protagonists at the same time. And the way that these two interact in this scene that unfolds in 103 when Ruth volunteers to help out because she feels so badly still about what she's done, and Betty Gilpin's character, whose name I'm blanking on right now, Now, Debbie, yeah, thank you. The way Debbie takes advantage of that self-loathing for her own ends

and then can't help but twist the knife because she's still angry, even though a moment before we see her vulnerability, even though two moments before we see that she still wants to have friendship too. It can be all of those things. And I think that a lot of credit goes to Liz Flee having Carly Mention, who I hope will come back on the podcast to talk more about this in detail, to being able to track that, to keep their eye on that ball, while they are juggling all these characters

and having a very, very detailed running B-story about constipation. All right. We'll hit the next three episodes of Glow next Thursday, along with Succession. Monday will be a mail-up bagpod. I hope you have a great weekend. Yeah, I hope people think of us, frankly, in the desert.

This is going up Thursday. If you happen to be in Las Vegas on Friday, I think the show might be sold out, the live show, Bill's live show. This is an amazing. But the ringer will be heavy at season. What does that mean? Just like a lot of us are there.

We're doing podcasts. We're making videos. We're doing a live show. I'll be appearing with Bill and Jason C. and Shea. And like, literally every man affiliated with this website. Yeah,

all on Friday night at Cesar's. And then we'll be around. We'll be at games. We'll be at Cesar. Are you going to hit the tables? What are you going to do? I'm going to try and play some low stakes hold them. Okay.

I played Blackjack. I mean, I do play Blackjack. Yeah. That's a tough, tough high to fuck with. We've never, I've never been in Vegas with you. I don't know Vegas,

Vegas, Chris, Vegas CR. Let me tell you this. The nicotine patch might come off. What? I mean, when you have the opportunity, it's not like,

I mean, I feel like I. He's gonna unleash the dragon. But I haven't smoked a cigarette for real. But you mean like, in six years? You mean like you didn't French inhale?

Would, no, like I had a dragon and then I was like, That's really tough. But maybe now time's right. Wow. If you see me in Vegas, give me a camelite. We'll see what happens.

Wow. I really appreciate you putting this on the record as like when the slippery slopes started. Okay. Thanks to Zach back. We'll be back on Monday with the mailbag. Talk to you guys soon. Have a great weekend, Varanskis.