The Watch - ‘Furious’ Penultimate Episode and ‘Lanterns’ E2. Plus, ‘Lioness’ S3E4 With Van Lathan.

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Chris and Andy break down the penultimate episode of ‘Furious’ and the question unanswered as we head into the finale (1:16). Then they break down the second episode of ‘Lanterns’ and the ways it improved on the pilot (22:12), before Chris is joined by Van Lathan for ‘Lioness’-watch and to talk about why this is one of the most exciting shows on right now (32:32). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Production: Sarah Reddy, Oscar De La Luz, and Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 am an editor at the ringer.com. Joining me in the studio, he would argue Christ was the first political assassination. It's Vandy Greenwald.

What's up? What's up, everybody, Monday for the Watch, and we are going to be talking about lanterns. We're going to be talking about Furious, but we're also going to be talking about me and Van Gogh. beloved lioness. They call this podcast between third chairs.

Between third chairs. Us in a really intense battle for third chair of the big pick. So what we're going to do is I recorded with Andy a little bit last week so that we could talk about the Sunday shows, but Van is awesome to see you. Yes.

And we're going to be back a little bit later in this podcast to discuss lioness right after this. Andy, we're here to talk about the seventh episode, the penultimate episode of Furious. I want to get your thoughts

on the second episode of Lanterns, although I imagine I'll talk about it a little bit with Van. Sure. Why don't we start at the ending of Furious? So obviously, spoilers for this penultimate episode that aired last night. We've got the finale coming in a week.

And triumph is a weird thing to describe to this series, like feeling triumphant at the end of it. And obviously, like, with another episode to go, I think there are a lot more shoes to drop and probably a lot more tragedies to befall one, if not more of our characters.

But as Catherine approaches Jay Easton's house, as we've found out the Epstein Geylane-Heelaine relationship between Jay and his daughter, and Rihanna's

we found love begins to play again. It's a test to the show that I was like, fuck yeah, let's go. Like that's not an emotion that I expect to experience while watching the series about what this is about.

But I think that there's something very powerful about the recurrent theme of that song and also like this arc for this character, even if it does wind up being tragic. When we talked last week about why the show is spectacular, we were talking about tropes, and I think we were talking about them

in the sense of, well, you know, rip from the headline. murder mystery shows have to hit these certain beats. And I think it almost could take on the power of defensiveness to trying to explain why some things about the show might feel familiar and why that's actually a good thing in this case. I think it's important then when you're talking about an episode, as spectacular as this one,

which continues, in my mind, to elevate the show into the very top echelon of series of the year. It's not just detective tropes that this is playing with. It is playing with, first of all, comedy. it remains incredibly funny and remains capable of dropping jokes like, like Choi's, you know, just face, but also like his one-liners or his incredulity moment to moment inside of what should be an otherwise incredibly tense episode. But playing with the same kind of like adrenaline manipulation that some of our favorite action movies do. And this was based on an 80s movie.

But the sense that like, oh, wait, they're going to team up now. wait, they are going to tear down the patriarchy just the two of them, rip apart a system, use people as Nora teaches her to do in a way that might get the kind of victory that only happens in TV shows and movies. It's incredibly canny.

And when she says, when Nora says that to Alice, it's what we do, we use people. I couldn't help but think that Liz Maryweather and her writers are a little bit thinking about what they do in a writer's room. That's a really good point. They're manipulating us

and they're using our, empathy and our interest and our dopamine to get us to feel certain ways about characters and scenarios that might otherwise appall or surprise us. Yeah. And I love it. Use me. There's a level sophistication to this show that I just think is really, really, really worth pointing out. I'm sure people could point to dozens of other shows and be like, well, they do this and this, but I'm just saying like there are visual motifs. There are lines and and sort of images that the dialogue evokes that don't necessarily correspond to characters knowing that the other is talking about that, but is they're bringing up these ideas throughout the episode or throughout the season.

I was struck by, you know, when Emma, the Hope Davis character, and now we know why Hope Davis took this role. I was going to text you the same thing. Because often in prestige television these days, you'll be like, oh, okay, like, that seems like a kind of tiny part for such an accomplished actor, but I guess everybody in New York's got to work. Everybody wants to work. And then you find out why. When her character and the totality of her character's complicity and her father's perversion and violence is made clear that she is in fact procuring these girls for him at this point. She goes out into her garden when her father

is doing whatever he's doing with a very young woman. And she starts, like, putting her hands in the soil of her garden and, like, squeezing the dirt. And hands, and hands as a kind of first responder or censor to trauma and to the brain not being able to totally process what's going on has been something that Emma has done, something Catherine has done. Catherine can't feel things in her hands. I can't, you know, these aren't even my hands when she's in the shower. with Alice and Alice's trauma response to what Marshall did to her

often manifest itself in her shaking hands when she's trying to get her anxiety under control it's a little thing you know what I mean nine out of ten shows don't bother with a detail like that because

yes maybe one character can exhibit that but like you don't need to do it it's just something that I was like I can't wait to hear Liz Maryweather talk about this. I can't wait to hear about like what it was and how the different actions of the hands between the characters kind of like connect to the character themselves. And the needle drop in that moment is,

I don't know if that's Loretta Lynn or someone similar, but it's a version of In the Pines, the traditional song that Nirvana sang and unplugged that is deeply unsettling. And I'm running out of superlatives to talk about the way that everything is in concert with the show. Why it's not just I'm like loving the scene, loving this performance, loving this episode. Everything is serving the same type of storytelling. Ariel Marks, who we shouted out the first week as the composer of the music. And the music has continually signaled to us to be disarmed, to be surprised. There are moments when the

score seems to settle into something more appropriate to like a tense moment or a family moment. And then it kind of mutates in a jazzy or surprising way and twists itself. This episode, and I believe next week's finale are directed by Corey Finley who directed a movie called Thoroughbredds and as far as I can tell I don't know if this is someone

that Liz knows or has worked with before but to step in to the penultimate episode. I remember correctly Thoroughbreds has a very lose merry weather sensibility when it comes to like

mixing comedy into these things. So it's aesthetically a good hire and clearly simpatico and said the right things but still when you bring in episodic directors for hire for something as crucial as the final block,

you don't know what you're going to get. This episode begins with an absolutely elite framing of ambulances and cop cars swarming at the shelter through the streets of Manhattan. And I was like, God damn, this is an action show too. It's doing all of it. You know, it feels like kind of, I can't tell if it's a sign of like how excellent I think this is

to focus on the blocking, but when both Alice and Marshall are brought to the hospital in the opening moments, and then Danny and Marshall's mother, who's played with outrageous ferocity and also specificity. This is not a character we know or have seen by the veteran stage actress Constance Schulman. That collision is explosive and it's framed, you know, they blocked it so that both, it's like people, each boxer has their cornerman who's in a hospital bed right now.

And they're shooting the show, I think, with anamorphic lenses or like it's widescreen. It's taking advantage of like a probably modern standard that most people are going to have these very wide televisions and that you can play a lot with the frame where TV used to be a much more like kind of vertically framed it, like aspect ratio. Speaking of taking advantage of New York theater royalty,

Conson Schulman married to Reed Bernie, great stage actor who pops up in these shows time to time, and they are the parents of Gus Bernie, who was one of the stars of something very bad is going to happen. I did not know that. Yeah. How about that? I'd like to make the connections for you.

You know, that little moment you mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I think is something that a lot of TV shows can learn from. I, you know, will sometimes find myself being taken out of shows when I feel like it's obvious, like, oh, like, there's supposed to be a riot going on as Homelander walks off out of this courthouse, but like there's 50 people there. Or, you know, maybe they've spent too much money trying to recreate, like, what a traffic, you know, a car chase is going to look like. or, you know, if you were making a future film of this episode, you could have, like, so many different locations within New York City. But all they do to communicate the chaos that is started from this shooting, from Catherine's

shooting, Marshall, is the sirens going by. And in New York City, that is a real feeling of, like, you'll be, like, walking down the street or you'll be about to cross the street. And all of a sudden, five cop cars and an ambulance fly by. And you're like, oh, shit, I wonder where that is, you know? and then you go get your $10 latte. Right, exactly. Or in our day, a $2 rind gold.

Who can say whether we've degraded and fallen as a society? Let's talk a little bit more about the eastern side of this. One of the things that this show is done, and it took me a while to maybe get my footing with it, is it has been very plain about the mystery. Like, it's very, the cards are turned up. To a point. We still don't know who killed,

her friend. No, I know, but like I meant who the bad guys are. We always knew who Catherine was and we always knew more or less who did it to her. Yes. And it's been a matter of not who done it, but will the people who had it done to them get their revenge? And this was a twist. You know, I mean, obviously like we said with the Hope Davis character, you, you see

her casting and you're like, she's going to do three scenes. And, you know, this is. why you hire her is because they're seen in his safe room, basically, where he is still holding on to child pornography even after she has tried to rid the entire house of it as the cops are on their way and the unbeknownst them, Catherine is on her way, is just extraordinary. And I mean, I don't think I've, I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that, like that specific confrontation. Well, also, again, it's a, it's a level of confidence to know the totality of the story you're telling and how you want it to land to, like you said, you cast Hope Davis because

you know the part has more room to run. You cast Peter McRabby, who plays Jay Easton. Who's been in everything, he's been in, Rockback Mountain and, and, you know, he's a working, talented actor. But he's also perfect in the sense that if you cast James Cromwell or something, the audience is going to be like, I know him and I know he can be nefarious. So I know he's he's coming back. The show played a really interesting bait and switch with audience expectations where we are told that this guy is hiding things. But because we're focused elsewhere, the level of malevolence isn't fully present because we haven't spent time with them. So you have to trust that you can make the investment to pay off later. And the scene between the two of them,

and I believe this is the first episode where we've seen the two of them share the screen with no one else. Yeah, in the past, the only other scene that. Like, Kevin Scott. had been there or Alice was interrogating them or Danny was interrogating them and questioning them. So you get a scene with two actors who have never been alone on screen before and he tells her that the code

to his child porn safe is his daughter's birthday. It's her birthday, yeah. And the entirety of the series lands on you in the audience like a fucking emotional anvil. That is not easy to accomplish with our not our

normal avatars. And it's doing something that feels almost obvious in the sense that all of the women in this show carry water, carry trauma, carry sin for the monsters in their proximity. But to do it with a degree of artfulness and subtlety so that it can sneak up on us and then wallop us the way that scene did was masterful. I thought it was incredible. Another scene I wanted to highlight from this episode was Alice's confrontation

with Catherine in the bathroom of the hotel room, motel room. Also, the phone ringing the other room? Awesome. Yes. That's been done before. I don't care. I loved it. That's, to me, was like, that's Emmy Rossum's, like, Emmy Highlight Real right there.

Was like that, like, her just being like, what if I let you go? You know what I mean? Where would you go? Would you go to his house? That was extraordinary. I thought, and, like, she has now, like, fully become, like, I think she has synthesized all lessons of humanity from Danny and manipulation from

Nora and seeing how the game is played and does something that like she's like I'm already persona non grata in the PD and in the FBI I'm going to and I'm going to get this case solved you know and my family and it's personal again I don't mind that

that we talked about what is the what is going on with Danny in the video file and all of that it works for what the show is communicating to us you know I think it is a sign of a failed fiction if it pushes the audience out enough to start nitpicking and questioning why things are connected.

It's like when Tolstoy wrote a novel, he wasn't like, well, Levin and Anna will never meet and have nothing to do with each other. I'm just going to tell you two stories it was because that's more accurate to my experience in 19th century Russia. Anna and Levin. Two stories that don't really interact.

It sounds better when it's written in Cyrillic. I also, by the way, shout out to, obviously, we were wearing the same clothes as last Thursday, but shout out to that podcast. Alice, this episode also fully becomes me watching the Sterling Point pilot and she's like, get these fucking pears out of here.

So she's a good TV critic as well. I thought this episode introduced the concept of Nora Oki in which Nora goes and sings a meatloaf song wearing a Hawaiian shirt. And Quincy Tyler Bernstein continues just like an absolute terror. This is like catnip for I would imagine

for both of us. But in that bar, when drunk Nora explains, really explains what it is that we do. It is, this is their FBI agents, but it is pure CIA. We love and talk constantly about spy shows and spy books and thrillers in which inevitably emits the action and the global intrigue and chaos. One character says some super sick shit to the other one. Like, you know, we are, I wrote down, we use. people, that's what we do. We are inhuman

in defense of humanity. We become evil to fight evil. Reminded me a lot of the Edward Norton speech and born legacy. Yes. Yes. And again, that is the sign to me of a well-constructed fictional vehicle because there's room for Nora to be painful, believable, but also sing in the middle of the penultimate episode and just drop intellectual heat rocks like that too.

it can do all of those things and very few multi-season shows can pull this off let alone eight episodes that we were not checking for and drop in on Hulu it's awesome I'm locked in

I was thinking I was trying to think about like how this one kind of came together I don't think I've ever seen Black Widow have you the film that it's based on I wonder if this is just something that was sitting in

some IP library that got developed that way I did want to ask you about one more specific moment from this episode because I thought the care with which it was handled but also the candor with which it was handled they had to have both and that's the sort of

reveal after the end of last episode that there is this that that there is a child pornographic video with young Alice on it and that Alice has been made aware of this by Danny when she kind of reaches across to be like take me to let's get the fuck out of it

let's blow this town let's go to the beach. Like, I, I think I love you, you know, blah, blah. And he's like, I gotta tell you something.

And he tells her about the videos. And he tells her, you know, and her reaction to it and the way that Rossum hardens, but doesn't like, it's just a very specific,

like, detailed, studied, rooted in the character reaction. And this is a person who I think, even when they are, open or even when they are vulnerable, I think it's in some ways a mask that they are wearing.

I mean, I want to talk to both, all of the creators about it if we get the chance, but just to continue with that theme of what you choose to make up in a fictional story and what you choose to research and be right about. And I think that moment in the previous episode in 106 when Catherine was like, the thing about the shower, you weren't lying about that. Yep. I think that the beauty of the way this show is constructed is that there are things they are, quote, unquote, lying about. I mean, there are, you know, Choi, you know, the way that Ed George smiles and walks through the office.

A lot of the... His concern for people's wellness. Sure. But also just like some fictional filigrees that make it a fun show, like some comedy moments. All the stuff with Danny and Alden, you know. So, yes. So it's lying about that. Or it's lying about maybe the coincidence of all of these cases, stacked up.

on top of each other in a perfect way to enrapture and to trap everyone. But it's not lying about how, to my view as an audience member, I cannot speak to the veracity of people's lived experience, but like the way that Emmy chose to respond and deliver that performance as Alice being exposed in that way by the person she has just become vulnerable to struck me as not lying. And I think that's a delicate balancing act. And also just, you know, we don't know where the last cards will fall and there might be more coming. But when we talked about the first three episodes, I think we were actively wondering how

the show was playing with or not playing with familiar tropes and familiar expectations. And you were like, you know, I think you just casually threw out the idea that Danny at Scoot McNary's character would either, you know, meet a terrible end or prove to be not the good guy that he seems to be. I felt like he had some live forever Evan Peters, Bear of East Town vibes. He still might. But if the only card left to turn between these two characters is that they love. love each other, but the ugliness of history, the world, expectation, and perception will forever keep them apart. It's almost more tragic.

Yes. And a much harder bar to clear. Yeah. I mean, in that same case, you know, plenty of things, stories that we love culminate with somehow every character arriving on the scene at the same time. Yeah. That is literally how LA Confidential ends. Yes.

You know, the way that they are doing. doing it, I can't wait to see how they play that out. I legitimately have no guesses as to what's going to happen, how they want what their final statement about the nature of justice and revenge is going to be, what a conclusion for this Alice character looks like. I don't know, they may very well be making another season of this. I have no idea. But they are doing another trope where it's like the criminal, various factions of copy. and the even bigger criminals are all waiting in a big spooky house. And we're going to have a showdown of guns drawn, but also like we want to build a case and we want to get to the systemic issues here. It's pretty awesome that they're driving right into that.

I just think there's a really ahead of it, and we'll see how it resolves, but I just think there's a really important lesson here for writing in general, which is like you could get together and you could try to galaxy brain a different box for everyone to go into at the end, a different shaped story. Or you could accept that there's one really, really good shape and then try to surprise people

with what they do once they're inside of it. And this is the whole thing with the like detective novels that we've been reading for most of our lives is like there's really just the one story, you know? And even within that story, there's like kind of marks that you have to hit because that's what people buy these mass market paperbacks for. It's how you execute those things and what you want to say in those familiar settings that really matters. I wanted to give you a couple of minutes if you wanted to just sound off on Lantern's episode

two. I just wanted to ask you to begin with, I didn't prep you for this, so I don't think you necessarily have to have an answer, but I couldn't come up with one. I think there are very, very few series in which the second episodes are just incredibly like far superior to the pilot. Second episodes historically are incredibly difficult. Incredibly difficult because you've had, it's like second albums. You've had a lifetime to do the first and then you've got a couple weeks to pull together

the second. And more often than not, second episodes are just retread to the first again, having cleared your throat and maybe with a bigger sense of who's recurring and who's a guest star and where you're going with it. I'm not saying that was what happened behind the scenes with lanterns, but what I loved about this episode. and I, you know, respectfully liked and was intrigued by the first episode. I loved the second episode.

And the reason I loved it is because it relaxed into being what it's going to be in a way that felt really, really good and very, very exciting. Because this was an episode that had time for, like, again, I understand now there's going to be eight episodes of this because they split hell and they split John and they had different storylines and they had different challenges and they had different reactions to those challenges. Help me understand them better as characters and help me understand how we're going to get six more hours of story.

of this. But this was also an episode that had time for the incredibly mundane and incredibly ambitious, meaning you texted me. You're like, oh shit, Kelly McDonald put the reading glasses on. I am who I am. Amazing scene, though. I was also like that, both because I also was a 19-year-old that saw a train spotting in the theater and also because this is a woman who has a job who lives in a place and is choosing to engage with things in a certain way. But The other thing was at the end of the episode, when it's already had one of my favorite scenes of the year, which is the Paul Ben Victor, do you know what a Manhunter is seen, which we should talk about. Hal Jordan puts on his special green suit, flies into space, goes to a space prison, and fucking red skin, moustachioed Sinestro is there. And guess what? He's just a dude, too.

Well, but he's also like the real problem is your boy down in Nebraska. If you went to TV writing school, I feel like this episode, the last five minutes of this episode should be shown in a lecture format delivered by Damon and Chris Mundy and Tom King about like how to best use the week-to-week deployment structure of an HBO show. But again, like... There's a flip side to that, though, too. What's hit me? You're right. They did everything you're supposed to do with the second episode, which is to start to. separate or untangle

and let fly different plot lines. I thought separating Hal and John was so important. Up until now, we've only seen John with his parent, his dad in a flashback. And then the rest of it

has been a enjoyable but somewhat repetitive conversation with Hal of all right, Jr., you're not ready for all that yet. And one dalliance with Zoe in the truck. He keeps saying they slept together. I didn't clock much sleeping. To separate them, I thought pumped air into the entire series because then you get, How is a different guy interacting with different people in different circumstances?

The ranch scene is incredible. The hospital scene, Kelly McDonald, is awesome. The town hall scene is awesome. And then the payoff is John comes back and they're outside the motel and how is drinking beers and when John starts asking about Manhunters you just get that great moment of Hal taking his arm brace off so I

just thought this is where this writing staff kind of is like this is why we're Hall of Famers. It's because those scenes of John at Hal's house or Hal at this town

hall like could be kind of boring or they could be kind of you know like all right just like I know I know what's going on. Like, we're just trying to wait for this guy to get back. He's going to get the lantern. He's going to come back to Nebraska.

You really wind up enjoying the journey this way. And not for nothing. That was a really fucking cool car chase scene where they had two guys fall out of the back of a van and race each other through the middle of highway traffic. I will say the show is very bullish on the human body. Well, although we find out not everyone's human, but their ability to hit pavement jumping out of cars. We're now two for two.

Well, I don't know what's going on with either of those. those people. Well, the aliens know, but I do know that John, I don't know what's up with him either. I know. They both have the sickest jackets in the universe and they never take them off and they never seem to scuff them in any way. But that scene where a bunch of bald aliens tie him up in a office and then, you know, veteran character actor Paul Ben Victor delivers a speech about how there is a creature that is the worst thing that has ever existed in the universe doing mini-holocausts and every planet it comes to and it's living in Nebraska, was so, first of all, it was just beautifully staged,

beautifully delivered, but it did the thing that the genre shows really struggle with, which was I was all the way in, feeling stakes, feeling spooked, feeling disturbed by it. And in that, it was tying into, I think, one of the other important antecedents of the show, which is X-Files, which is this idea that there are so many conspiracies

laid on top of conspiracies, and so many people here who know more than you do, and they aren't talking to each other and there's layers to this. So it's such an expert way of handling IP where they're like, yeah, here's all this DC stuff and you can totally be like, I've been waiting to hear somebody say, man,

I've been a television show for my whole life. Or you can just be like, cool, so we get an Agatha Christie show where they're going to have to find... They've 48 hours to find a killer. Scooby-Doo this guy. And on top of that, like, all of the mechanical stuff that Hal does

with the dead bodies to be like, huh, this metal detector didn't go off when I walked through with a piece of my car. So now I'm going to feel like what is it detecting then? It's doing something that is incredible. Each side of what it's, each side of the divide that it's straddling is hard to do. And they are believable, engaging, emotionally real superhero stuff.

And I'm outside of the Matrix and I'm desperate to know what's going on inside of it, kind of conspiracy thrillers. It reminds me a little bit of, this is a really, really deep reference that I don't think many people will remember at all. But 20 plus years ago, the writer Jeff Jensen, who wrote about Lost FreeW and then worked with Damon later on Watchman, he wrote four issues of a comic for Marvel that they called X Factor, in between X Factor being just an X-Men book. And it was basically about government investigators investigating mutant crimes. And it was, I remember it being decent and admirable and they didn't really stick with it. But I thought of it for the first time in 20 years.

Damans saw them. Watching this episode because it's like, what does it, it's, you know, the James Gunn thing that he introduced

for the DCU is like gods and monsters, right? And it's just like, when you watch Superman movie, there is a delight in living in a world

where these technicolor things and dogs can fly. There's a flip side of it. Is that what Hal flew over? Is that the fortress of solitude part of the, I didn't even notice?

Like the big ice crack in the ice there? I guess so. I was just curious. I was looking up to the stars. Like how? But the flip side of it is you do a show like the boys where you're like,

this is debased and appalling and we have to be on the side of humanity here, you know? This show is doing something where it's like, yeah, okay, so you plug in the ring with a lantern and there's a guy in a space prison. Okay, but at the end of the day,

we're all just dudes here trying to make, trying to figure it out. I also just love the fact that they're taking, like I'm sure this is canonically accurate for the lantern stuff, but one thing that sort of played my, adolescent brain in the last run, I think, of Marvel specifically, is a kind of vagueness of power.

Totally. I just shoot shit. Purple swirls. Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure they all have like their logic to them. But like when watching on big screen, just like you just have power beams that you know, like you just have like an aura or whatever.

And I love the fact that he has to recharge the ring. Yeah. Who among us? walking through a city all day. But you can like hit the trunk and get like a little juice from it. But like he has to return. And it's to say his little poem too. Yeah.

His little credo. Cool. You like lanterns. I really like lanterns. I was trying to think of, um, just to say to your point, like Wanda vision, a show like Wanda vision, even if, you know, ultimately I don't know if I loved it, but like what I admired most about it, especially the early episodes, was it took seriously the idea of having more time to think about something and give it some.

emotional grounding and investigate it and have an opinion about it and a point of view. Specifically, this woman, her power is what she can do with them and what they've done to her and also to the world around her. And then you would see because you would see her in an Avengers movie and it's like, oh, no, Ultron, Wanda, quick. And she's like, red beams or something because it's not what it's about. It's about the fight and it's about whatever else is coming. Lantern seems to understand the assignment that if you have time to think about it,

use the time and think about it and have an opinion about it, not just like, cool, he can counterfeit money and also fly in space. Right, right. Although both of those things are pretty cool. Do you let yourself get carried away into being like, okay, so then who of what, who we've met so far is alien, possibly an alien? No, I just, I just stopped on the threshold of that's so cool,

that someone is bad. I think that's healthy. And there, thank you. Yeah. I'm trying to change. Thanks so much for joining me on the watch. Yeah, the show you and Vandu to talk about... Me and Vandy Greenwald.

I think I like that more than he will like that. I think I'll enjoy it. You think? Yeah, I'm going to try it out on. Thanks for coming on. You know what? You're welcome. I hope you have me back sometime. See you two days.

No problem. Can't wait. All right, brother, what's up? Thanks for joining me. No problem, man. You're the only person I can really talk to about this. Lymus? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, Andy tried twice, and I think we got a little bit derailed. I wish he was here today, though, because there's the first thing I want to talk to you about with this show, which is aired four episodes of its third season, is something that I think he would be adept at discussing, which is like the structure of this season. I think that this in some ways is the most successful season of Linus, because it's the season that has involved the most characters most directly. if there is a flaw to the idea it's that they are running an agent who's doing most of the stuff in some far-flung place in typical past seasons of whyness

now everybody is kind of in play right like and the way that they're dramatizing that is with this two-timeline structure of this season which is honestly fucking bonkers the way they're running this on a basic level how is your tracking of this season going in terms of like

this is happening now, quote unquote, versus this is happening six months prior. So I'm not having any problem with it at all. Me neither. Because I think. But we're close watchers. We're close watchers. But I think the tone of the two different timelines is so distinct. Yeah.

One is obviously Joe in this perilous situation where she's being tortured. And that's her name Joe, right? Joe. Yeah. Where she's being. You looked at. The Ryanness. The lioness.

Yeah. Where she's being tortured and, you know, she's away from her family and everyone's trying to get to her. And there's a tense, tense sort of almost powder keg of a situation that exists of a tone that exists during that time, right? Yeah. Because, like, her being captured by the Russians means everything can fall apart. And they really lay that out in this episode. In this episode for sure.

In the other timeline, she is. free and at the focal point of trying to understand how deep the rabbit hole goes. So when they switch back and forth and they don't really tell you, they go boom, boom, boom. Like at the end of this episode, Nicole Kimman's character goes back to talk to the husband, which is a shout out to that guy. TVFL. Yeah, because shout out to him because he is playing the most sensitive, vulnerable.

Yeah, and he's doing a good job of it. But he looks like he should be one of the Delta Force guys, right, when you look at him. And they don't, the only time I was like, huh, where are we? They don't tell you which timeline they're in there. Yeah, you can only tell because in the six months prior timeline, the past timeline, they're living at like a military base. Right. But the house that they live at at the military base is not altogether different

than the house they look like in the suburbs. I think it's like, you know, Andy talks a lot about Taylor doesn't get any notes and that Taylor in his way is like what happens when nobody is like, that's not clear, hey, this is a little complicated, why don't you just tell this in a linear fashion? I'll be really curious to see once this season concludes whether or not this dual timeline thing makes sense

because you could just as easily at the sixth episode or at the end of the fifth episode be like, we've concluded this first timeline and now Zosaldaño's been kidnapped, you know, like at the end of it. and then the second half of the season is getting her back. My understanding, or at least my guess about this, is that something is going to happen, obviously,

in this earlier timeline, in this past timeline where they're working with this Ukrainian double agent to assess what honey pot traps or whatever they've got going on with senators and professors and all these things, that's going to blow up in their face and that's why she gets taken later. But, you know, I mean, in the meantime,

the only thing that's hard to track is like, at what point wouldn't, like, wouldn't it just this have gotten out? Kind of, like, so I don't know. But I have a bunch of questions about this season for you. So the interesting thing to me is how these two timelines relate to one another. Like, at first I was thinking, did she allow herself to get captured? Was all it is like a ruse so they,

she could get to the inside and learn something about, that seems to not be the case now. Because she seems pretty upset about being there. She seems pretty upset about being here. She's getting Chinese water torture and then the political blowback that could come from this is so severe. Like this geopolitical

destabilization is so severe it doesn't seem like they would play with that. Yeah, it would be involved Iran Israel and Hezbollah and all this stuff according to the geopolitical world of lightness, although I suppose plausible enough. Right. So the thing that I love about

this season more than past seasons is I was actually getting sick of the all right, we're going to take you, we're going to make you align this, and you have to turn your back on everything you love. Can you do it? I was like, I didn't want to go back to that well again, right? And so making this, orienting this around Joe and like how important she is,

it kind of deepens your understanding of the character, how much trade crafts she has in her head, how important she is, just the high stakes nature of what it is that they do, mission to mission, and how her family, even though we always knew that they were on the outside, they had this relationship with her almost like the relationship that I would imagine a wife has with an NBA player. Well, you know what happens on the road, but it's better off that you just don't ask because we need Nike contracts.

And what happens when the girl on Instagram goes, guess what? in Portland after the game. Now that's broken. Now you've got to have the real family talk. And that's what's happening with her. What's happening with her right now is that the girl from Instagram came to the front door. And now the thing that the family always knew,

the fact that she was living this really dangerous sort of soldiers life, they have to contend with it in the front of their minds. And that is also interesting. They do so, or Joe does so, in the six months prior. plot line. Even though they are living on a military base, she gives her surgeon husband, like a Glock. Yeah, he said, go learn how to shoot. And he's like, we both took oaths.

I took the Hippocratic oath. And she was like, your oath is basically useless or nobody else has that oath in the world. And I was like, this is just like, I think the thing that's funny to me about this. That thing is hilarious. Hold on for a second. Don't try to, like, we love, we both love Big T, man. That's a funny scene. There's multiple scenes that are funny

Because the thing that's been happening recently on the show Is that someone will just do Like a prolonged podcast monologue And nobody is like What? What the fuck are you talking about? When Joe's getting tortured and this dude is like We dropped COVID on you

So that you would realize you had no freedom And now you want a fascist dictator And that's what that was the whole plan Yeah And Joe's just like You know But the Joe has one as well. Yes.

So those are getting... Nobody even wants your country. Yeah. Those are getting much more pronounced. Do you remember the Truman show? Yeah, of course. Do you remember the Truman show when Truman's wife does that commercial? Yeah.

And he goes, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah. Like, who are you talking to? Like, at this point, he knows that he's in the television show? They let, like, the Russian ambassador or diplomat that Byron goes and meets within a restaurant at one point in this past. episode where he's just like just runs down the five talking points of Russia about the Ukrainian conflict where it's just like that belongs to us that used to be our bread basket the whole nine and all and just like they're just corrupt like grifters over there and Byron's just like yep

I just keep waiting for somebody to go yo man what are you doing like what are you like what are you like it would be great if we could be on this show as like data entry dudes and like somebody would be like Kyle would be like and that's why I did an extrajudicial killing day and we're like what what did you know what what you got to tell you you got to pay up for face football but did you say you killed a Russian diplomat in front of everybody in a fucking airplane it's like it's like when she was giving him the whole the world has always been like this like I wanted him to be like I wanted him to just straight go bitch you're out on your mind what you do like what are you talking about. I don't give a fuck but I'm a doctor. I don't want to kill. That's actually the

thing is nobody on any of these shows is ever like, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, because... Or even I respectfully, I disagree with some those days. Right. So, and then the thing about it for me is over the course of the season, it

almost feels like, and it's the interesting thing with Lioness. The interesting thing with Lioness is I'm of the LA lefties. Sure. Like the true LA lefties. and they are loving this show. Like, they are loving. The 92% I'm talking about a lot of black ladies that I know

that are going out. We're talking about Kamala Harris, Jasmine Crockett, my sisters in the 92%. They love. You think Kamala and Jasmine liked Linus? I don't think that they do, but I think that a lot of the women that I know love them are loving this show.

Number one, it has a strong black female lead who is in control of a whole whole. who's busting ass. And number two, it doesn't feel like the world is too big for her. It doesn't feel like anything is too big for her. She always seems like she's in control. But it's interesting to me that the show is so heavy-handed with its obvious. And we've talked about this before, ad nauseum,

it's obvious political programming. But it doesn't take away from any of the narrative of the show. You almost feel like this is the way those people would have to think. I think that, you know, it was funny because I was thinking the other day, You read a lot about like what happens after Trump to the right and what happened. And it's like I saw somebody be like, this shit all dies with him. Like there's nobody is like particularly uniquely charismatic as him. And he's like this figurehead of this movement.

And the second he goes away, it goes away. And I was like, I don't agree with that necessarily. But what I really don't agree with is that like this sort of like I know better because I saw something on the internet once. like mentality will not go away. And you could kind of feel like the bones of that sometimes in this show of like people just being like, yeah, this is what COVID was. That's what Hezbollah does.

And I'm like, where'd you read that? Yeah. You know what I mean? Maybe some of the things they say may even have like a gradient of truth or interest, but like I'm like, what are you sourcing this from? Can I ask you a question? Is there a part of us deep down?

Like take James Bond. for example. Like James Bond gets told in the movie your license to kill is revoked and that's like a big deal. Yeah. We're like, oh shit, James Bond just can't kill anybody

who he wants in the swords of it. He's got to get that back. He's got to get his license to kill back. Who is James Bond if he just can't kill somebody when he needs to kill him? Right. Because isn't there a part of us no matter what we think

that believes that certain people like have to be like James Bond and certain people have to be like Joe? They have to be like how? This episode kind of, kind of articulates that. Right. I think so in the world of like espionage fiction and movies and TV shows,

there's like a trope of, and I think it's true for a certain era of Spycraft or whatever, where there were like London rules and Moscow rules and Berlin rules. And they were different. Like you didn't, didn't do certain things in certain cities because the governments of those cities or the governments of those countries would allow it. These were the things.

Like if you go to Moscow, it's going to be like this. If you go to Berlin, it might be like that. But in London, we don't do that. It's all like following each other, but there's no hardcore violence that is beset befalls upon people.

And I think what this show is trying to do is that a lot of other things, that order, those rules have been done away by guys like Kyle, who are operating with a green light from people like Caitlin to get what they need no matter what. And that, you know,

like Kyle, like that scene is pretty electrifying as like a thriller scene, but his justification of it while he hilariously like just downs a bag of almonds is, you know, the entire premise of what I'm talking about, that the idea of like the old rules

are not applying to this. And also though he, in that scene, I think that's a scene that illustrates what's so good about this season of the show. In that scene, he just knows more than they do because this show does something that I don't know that I've seen

another show be able to do, which is separating the spheres of expertise between different levers of like the government, right? So the Delta guys are there. And when you are like taking a guy in Ukraine, nobody beats the Delta guys, right? But then the spy guys know the rules of the spy stuff. And so then the soldiers who are essentially her hammer, those got like Green Beret, Marines, all of us, they're in the dark there.

And then she's in the dark when the upper level government. people are negotiating. Like here's what we are and are not willing to like give up or like. Right. Like like and then the Secretary of State is actually at his wit's in when he says we got to tell the president. Morgan Freeman. We got to tell him.

We're going to pop up every now and again. He pops up a lot. Yeah. They may have block shot him out but like Morgan Freeman's in this show frequently. Yeah. So he's like got to tell a president. I disagree. The guy who's the director or the deputy director of the CIA. Hey, yeah, he, I don't see how you keep up with all of these names. I give you credit this.

I know Byron, I know Caitlin. I don't know Morgan Freeman's name. I know Kyle, Caitlin, Joe. I know. I know Cruz that I watched the show for. And Bobby. Right. So everyone has different jobs and those jobs run afoul of each other, but they're playing together in this like.

Oh, Josie's the other Linus. Oh, yeah, I like that. Okay. Like playing together in this like brutal symphony to where everyone wears kind of each other mistakes and has to also make up for it. Like that scene from the last episode where the two Delta guys go to the lady's house and she's in the Ukraine and they're trying to extract it. Just the show is getting you.

Sorry. Hey, sorry. Hey, we're sorry. If I could compare this show, I realize this. yesterday because like it's such a, it's so easy to watch this show. Like when I do it, I'm just like, I can't believe it's over already. I was bothering you on vacation. Last time I felt that way where I'm like, I can feel my blood quicken as I'm watching a TV

show. I think I haven't felt that from a TV show since 24. Oh yeah. Where you're like, I wish there was another episode right now. I can't wait till next week, et cetera. but even in Lioness, when it's like stupid scenes of people talking with each other, just the crazy shit they say,

I'm like, I'm actually dialed in on this because I want to hear what nut bar thing Michael Kelly is going to say to a Russian diplomat or to whoever. You know, what's Caitlin going to say to Neil when she's like,

fucking man up, your wife's been redacted. You know, like, the 24 comparison is interesting because 24 comes out in, I guess, the afterglow or the remnants of 9-11. The warranted error, yeah.

And so you're wondering what were guys like that, guys that would save? What would Jack Bauer do if you could listen to podcasts? If he can listen to podcasts, right? Like, who are those guys, right? And then this show comes along. It's Kyle. Yeah, it gives you that. And in this situation, there's so much happening.

So when you hear Iran, Hezbollah, Israel, Russia, the United States. At first we were talking about Mexico. Yeah. And Mexico's connections to China and all of this stuff. You believe this. You believe that once again, this is how these people would have to be. The funny thing about it is that there's so many things where it's clear that whether it's,

because Taylor Sheridan wants to say something that he believes about the world or whether there's just, there needs to be verisimilitude. So you mentioned Hezbollah and you mention this and you mention that. But they never mentioned Trump. Like there is a there is a hole in the middle of this that is like who was this, like when it was written, like, when it was written, Biden was president like initially. And it's not that I expect them to acknowledge Trump by name because that would date the show in more significant ways than mentioning the Middle East or mentioning Mexico or mentioning China.

But it is, it is interesting that that is like skipped over. So it's interesting and I think it's intentional. Of course. Because I think that. Trump's brand of politics in a way, even amongst conservatives, is still really singular. And it's transactional. It's transactional and toxic in a way that doesn't lend itself to we are preserving freedom. This is for the greater good of the way of life of America.

Trumpism isn't really that. So if you inject that into this, it becomes about the will of Donald Trump and not about the kind of bird's eye view that the show wants you to operate with. Yeah. So this is really an appeal for old school conservatism. The neocons of like 1987 and in 1990s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The people that said, you know, we just got to go in and do bad shit sometimes. This is like almost from their world. Like even in this show, they almost harken back. In this episode, they harken back to the Cold War. To the Cold War. And when that woman's like,

I don't remember the Cold War and Caitlin's like me neither it's just what I imagine it was like. I would imagine it was like I was in school when I was going I imagine it would be like that but it almost feels like they want that.

Yeah. That's how they feel about it. Because it was like that was one that was a time when it was two ideologies that were very clearly like opposed to one another that were on like it was just like you believe in this and we believe in that

and then like we're going to do all this stuff globally to like have this chess game about it. In any case, I wanted to ask you about a couple of different characters on the show, specifically, the lionesses. They've been, I can't remember a show that's done this before where they'll have somebody be basically the focal point of a season of TV and then become part of the supporting cast. Right. And so Josie, which is last season's lioness and Cruz, who was the first season's lioness, are now. now just like, A, in love.

Yeah. I'm happy for them. I'm just saying. And B, part of the crew that rolls around, even though Josie is just essentially the helicopter pilot. Pilot. Marine Girl. Yeah. And they go to a nightclub as part of an undercover operation. Sensual. Did you think Joe was like, what are they doing? Or was she like, no, great acting. You guys are doing great.

Like, is there a relationship secret? I don't think it's secret. I think that the show. I mean, who would understand a lioness better than. than another lioness. You know what I mean? I think that we see them in their intimate moments. They're sizzling intimate moments. It's fantastic.

And I think when Joe looks at the rest of her team, sometimes she looks at them as kids. Yeah, yeah. And she's like, I'll let them do their thing. Do you think that was an accurate representation of nightclub life? I don't know. I thought that when that scene first started,

I thought that they were in Moscow. That looked like John Wick was about the busing that bitch. I'm like, where is that at? Well, the funny thing about this season is, of all the things that are confusing, about it, the addition of longitude and latitude as if I need the longitude

and latitude of Baltimore. I'm familiar broadly with where Baltimore is. And it's like even when you throw up the longitude and latitude of a Ukrainian battlefield, I'm like, I'm not going to Google Maps and entering that. Like, I believe you.

That's just like for the weird fucking soldiers, bro. And this is the way we talk. But even in that, it's know, the lionesses and like Joe's crew and the things that they do, sometimes it almost feels like it's dragging the show down at this point. The show has such an energy that moves forward based upon. It's just not the same show it was from season one to season two.

I think that's good. That's what TV used to do. Of course. All of the tension was in, will they be found out? Will this op work? Now, all of these things are so much broader and more dramatic. I couldn't swore that the Lioness program was like once you finish your mission, you're retired.

They hasn't happened. Like they have to like, you have to disappear because it's so dangerous. Well, the first thing we see is Joe like blowing up. Yeah. You know what I mean? So like I didn't know, but now they just, they're collecting lionesses. It's an incredible series. It's an incredible show.

It's problematic. It's also like one of the most entertaining things that's been on the last couple years. I just say, you know that like, I don't know. You want me not to say it's problematic? No, no, no, no, no. Is that what you're going to say? You know, I'm just saying, the show does feel like a release in a way for me. It feels like a vacation for me having to be either hypercritical or, for preservation right now, being politically aware, I would not, I'm not discouraging that for anyone.

But it almost feels like back in the- Yeah, it's like back in the day you're watching like my dad used to love Westerns and the politics of a Western aren't very good but they are what they are and the fucking fastest gun wins, the dude

he kills the bad guy then that means he gets the girl right? It's simple in its construction but you just like release into the world and I don't really think about a lot of these things when I'm watching the show I'm educated enough to notice

some of the shit that's being put out there is kind of Taylor Sheridan's bullshit. Like he like I love Taylor Sheridan, but he made himself the most badass Delta guy. He also said to Bill, I fuck with people and I put this stuff in these shows

to drive people crazy. Right. You know, like, I think he has, I think he is just like in a unique situation where his success has given him the artistic freedom to basically make what he wants and what he wants to make is a hyper modern hunt for it

October type. Certainly. Tom Clancy show. I'll say it more concisely, which people always want me to do, but sometimes I struggle to do. I was unaware that I could still be confronted

with politics that I didn't believe in or agree with and not be offended by them. Oh, that's good way to put in. It's just been so long since that was a thing that watching this show almost kind of reminds me of a time when someone would say something

and I would be like, that's bullshit but it wouldn't ruin my whole day knowing that they were around. And so like a lot of the shit that I hear in this show, I'm like, that's probably not the way I look at that. But it doesn't mean I go,

D-platform, turn it off, cancel paramount. You know what I mean? Because it's an interesting because it's a good thriller. It's just it's weird that there's a thriller that has like about nine minutes per episode of just like... They are going...

They did it like four times in this one. Yeah. Joe did it to the guy. Then it happens at the dinner or whatever. Then it happens again. Joe gets one off to the Russian torture guy. And she loves telling her husband that like... You don't know shit, bitch.

And you think that I'm some disdiformity and this like disgusting outgrowth of like a military industrial system. But she's like, what about Jesus? What about how we killed this pharaoh? You know, like... And it's just like, I guess... that sometimes I'm just like, yeah, you're right. I just want to turn my brain off and be like,

damn, they killed a Pharaoh like that too. What about the fact that she knows the complete human history of political assassination? From the beginning, does that ring more true? Or does that seem like some bullshit that would be in a monologue that somebody like that wouldn't know? Because to me, when I looked at that, I'm like, well, if she truly believes this, it almost would make sense.

That she has like justifications in her head. And I think that is what the characters tell each other is that they are like an essential component of a functioning society. Before I let you go, I just wanted to get your lanterns talk.

Your thoughts. Like two episodes have aired Andy and I chatted a little bit about it. I thought this episode was fantastic. And I thought I was curious whether or not you were like surprised at

anything about this show or whether or not there were elements of this show that like you took any issues with or whether you're just like blindly like I'm all in on this? I legitimately, two things about the show. Two characters haven't had a handle on a superhero like this since

Hugh Jackman and Wolverine. Maybe Tony Stark, Iron Man. Like this John Stewart and this Hal Jordan ring so accurate and true to me that the entire world of this show can be propelled by those two performances.

Aaron Pierre is something else, bro. Like he legitimately does like small things in his embodiment of a character that just make you completely believe in the character itself. The difference, he's a very subtle performer. Yeah, he is.

And he's a great action star and he's a great actor. But I was talking to Andy about you know, if they had kept him in Nebraska and the whole show is like this slow progression of him being like whatever you say sir but kind of a little bit you know with an edge I think that would have been fine but the fact that they sent him out on an adventure and he came back changed and the way that he is performing those changes I thought in the at that

motel parking lot scene was so good the exhaustion the he's like I'm over you I'm over your bits you know what I mean I'm over like all of this and whatever he saw that they showed him but The Manhunter did. Like, I just thought it's like, it was really expert writing, but it was even more so like a really wonderful, wonderful piece of acting. I think the decision in this show to ground it then makes the, you know, it makes the storytelling about relationships and expectations. And that is just how you get to know characters, man.

It really doesn't matter how much CGI you have. Whatever story that you have is going to be about relationships and expectations, what the characters expect to get, what they actually get, what they think they know, and then what they find out. And it's difficult to do that with superheroes sometimes because you want to see the Green Lantern make a gigantic fist and then punch somebody in the face with it. But that's not what you want. You want to see the hero's journey of the Green Lantern and understand how that ring, which comes from this extraterrestrial space protecting guild, right, how that changes a person's orientation with the rest of humanity.

And this show is starting there and working to everything else. The decision in this episode to have Hal's Ring lose its charge. Yeah. And so, I mean, that's happened in the comics before it happened in Greenland. Because I go get my battery. Go get my battery. So you got to go get the battery to come and charge my power back up. Like, that's your deal.

How do you keep yours, which is what he does with the bird the entire time? How do you keep your power by going to get something? to charge up my power to exalt me. And then he's still got to be useful in the town without the ring. The ring is not a source of Hal Jordan's power. Yeah. His fearlessness, his guile, his wit and intelligence is. I just think the show is like operating in that way to a degree that I really did not expect it to be able to.

Yeah. And you've got a collection of very experienced, very, very, very good writers. Absolutely. Who were able to make. Hal and Kerry in the hospital room or Zoe and John at the diner or the Garrett Dillahan character making him on the horse and

and Hal at the gates there those scenes sing scene work. Yeah man. It's just scene work doesn't matter how fast you can fly. Seenwork has got to come first. And the fact that this show is actually like penetrating into a different audience. and making people care about the Green Lantern,

it's doing really well right now. Yeah, and I think also, like, for some people, DC stuff generally, but Green Lantern specifically is something I just, I honestly don't know anything about it. Like, I didn't, I don't have any priors. I don't have a Hal Jordan, John Stewart, anything. I don't have a favorite lantern.

And so I'm watching this, and I'm enjoying both sides of it. I'm enjoying the, like, stated, true detective, grounded mystery of it. But I also am finding the, like, extraterrestrial. pretty entertaining. Yeah. So they're doing a great job with it.

Thank you so much for coming by. Higher learning, ringer tailgate, midnight boys, Van Lathen. Thanks for joining me on the watch. We'll be back on Thursday. Thanks to Kai and Kai and Sarah and everybody for producing. Talk to you soon.