The Watch - 'Game of Thrones' Prequel News and the State of TV IP, Plus 'Dark' S3

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

Andy shares a bit of news about ‘Briarpatch’ (7:27). Then, the guys talk about the ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel news and the never-ending search for hit TV IP (18:58). Plus, ‘Perry Mason’ is actually good (36:29) and breaking down episodes 3 to 5 of ‘Dark’ Season 3 (43:17). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald 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 and joining me on the other line. As always, it's Eddie Greenwald. Happy Monday. I don't want people to think that the lack of a specialized introduction for Andy

at all demonstrates any lack of commitment on my part to this podcast. I just find that I don't really have a lot of personal experiences anymore where I can like draw from. Do you know what I mean? Do you want to just stop there? So I guess I could shout in German. That would be a dark reference or we could just talk about I can make obscure lonesome dove jokes. But that's about all we got.

But today, Andy, I'm really excited because this is going to be a little bit of a grab bag pot. We thought we were having a guest today, but we're not. And those are always, it's like when you let the John Coltrane quartet cook and just improv, that's where we're at today. That's right. Is it turned? I'm shocked. I thought that Jeremy Reiner.

house flipping business was slow this time of year due to COVID. But apparently, something came up. He had a beautiful, beautiful craftsman property in Hancock Park that he had to attend to. So it's just us today. I actually have a house question for you just to start things off. So today I just recorded with Bill and Sean the rewatchables podcast. We talked about the movie The Conjuring. Where is your head out?

I don't even know what that is. You guys, you don't know what the conjuring is? No. But you're like Moana part two, the further adventures of like the guy. But you don't know what the country. Name a character from Moana, you coward. Moana. That's one.

You did it. You nailed it. But. Wait, what's the Conjuring? Is that a horror movie? Yeah, it's a horror franchise. It spawned like eight movies. You don't know about this?

That's why I don't know about it. No. Yeah, it's a horror movie franchise. And I was wondering, do you believe in haunted houses? Um, no. I'm going to say no. When did you stop believing, or did you ever believe? You know, no one has ever asked me that question before. So I've never been on the record.

I've never had to confirm or deny. I had a very utilitarian... I feel like Chris Wallace right now. Very utilitarian, elastic answer. Uh-huh. The kind of answer that could, because I hadn't been, you know, forced to commit, if I was staying, there was one time we were in kind of a weird B&B in Connecticut, and it was a little creaky.

And so if that night had gone sideways, I could have been like, I knew it. I always knew it. And there would have been no audio record to suggest that I was contradicting myself. But now, hold on, hold on. Yeah, Kaylee, Kaylee, do we have the document that says what I feel about haunted houses? No. So I got nothing. What do you, why? Where are you going with this? Well, I mean, I just, there's a lot of red flags in the conjuring where, like when you, like, so these people, they buy a house in Rhode Island. And it turns out that the former owner was a witch. named Bathsheba, who killed her own child, cursed the land for eternity, and then hung herself by a tree. Was that in the redfin listing? We made tons of redfin jokes. But I mean, I was just, I've watched all those movies this weekend again.

I'd seen conjuring one and two and one or two of the Annabels. There's a bunch. There's two conjurings. A third one's now coming next year. There's two, at least, Annabelle. and there's the nun and the curse of Lai, Lirona. Lerona. Eurona.

You would know how to pronounce that because it is the name of a song in the Pixar film, Coco. Bring it back to the Moana conversation. Please go on. But yeah, so I'm familiar with the conjuring expanded universe, but I never really settled on whether or not I actually believe the houses could be haunted.

I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that. But I just wanted to open it up with some general interest talk like that. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple ways to answer this. Like I could be convinced. I think I'm very credulous. I also think that, well, it's not necessarily haunted by ghosts. There is an element of living in Los Angeles or maybe just living outside of New York that I'm still adjusting to, which is the fact that while there are no longer the comforting sounds of late night revelers vomiting on the sidewalk outside of my bedroom window at four

in the morning, there is an entire animal kingdom, shouts to TNT, shouts to Ellen Barkin, but that's not I'm talking about that exists out here. And I think that anyone, this is not just a coastal elite conversation, but I think that maybe this is something that Americans are more used to than I am. So, for example, the other night, we were, now, this is an L.A. thing, we have a backyard now. I never had a backyard in my life, not growing up, not in New York, but we have one out here. And we were having a socially distanced hang with another couple. We were six feet away. and we thought we were the only family's present. But as it turned out,

there was an entire family of raccoons that just, like, made a very aggressive parade across the yard. Like there was a Papa raccoon, a mama, and then, like, three little raccoon babies, just walking. And there's nothing to be done about that. The reason I bring this up, though... How many people at this gathering then pointed at the raccoons and made the nature's healing joke?

Unfortunately, none. But I did tell my children about this, and they were very interested, very interested in, especially in the baby raccoons that were living in our yard. And the next night, I was out in the backyard with my older daughter because we had heard that there was a comet. Again, these are, I don't know about this. I don't know from celestial bodies. What do you mean you heard? Comedy Twitter? My wife said there was like something to look at in the skies.

I don't know, it's part of being a parent. You got to pretend you care about this stuff. So I went out and my older daughter was pointing out something to me. And then I was like, oh, I think I see something. And then there was like a rustling in the underbush. And I don't want to put her on the spot, but my daughter force majeured me. What I want to communicate to you, Chris, is that within a second of a rustle, a rustling, it was like a squirrel or maybe one of the raccoon children.

I could feel the wind of her sprinting back into the house and then she closed the door on me. Did she lock it? I think that it was a height issue. I don't think she can reach it. Oh, so we won't know. But I got force majeered. Like, in a foxhole, I cannot depend on my child.

What were you really looking for your kid to do? Well, that's, I've done some thinking since. In retrospect, the real issue is if I do it to her. yes, that is the real issue. That's the deal breaker. Yeah. So, unless,

unless this, like the real world is dark, the show. Uh-huh. And you are merely, like, if she is trying to basically stop you from doing something

in the future that we'll bring about the apocalypse. Well, if this was dark, the show, she is my daughter, but also my mother. So,

then it's not cool that she force majored me. So I feel like it's relevant to your haunted house question. We are going to talk a little bit about the middle episodes of Dark Season 3. I also wanted to talk a little bit about a show that I've rediscovered

in what is just an incredible comeback for casual watching. I wanted to hit you to a thing that we dismissed easily and now that I have kind of back all in on. But first, I think we wanted to do a little bit of personal housekeeping, right? Yeah. Absolutely. And all I can say is this, cancel culture has finally gone too far.

You know, I think it's, I think people tune into this podcast. I wanted to make that joke for the intro and you wouldn't let me. Of course not. No, I felt like, you know, tried to be an open book, tried to be slightly transparent, tried to give people front receipts to the sausage factory. Nope, don't like that one. But, um, Briar Patch got canceled. at USA. The news broke last week. I knew this since April and can talk a little bit more about it. Basically, I tweeted because I heard that the trade publications were going to report on it, and I would much rather control the narrative and tell people myself. I didn't up to that point because I didn't really want to talk about it too much. But basically, you may have noticed that the USA cable network, to whom I'm extremely indebted and grateful,

for the experience, not really bringing back a lot of shows. I think that I was lucky enough to kind of skate in under the last, the gate was coming down on basic cable and I got to skate in under there. And, you know, we, I'm extremely happy, extremely proud. I cannot believe that I got to do it. I mean, first of all, I think everybody knew that about this whole experience. Like, it was a dream come true. and crazily the best kind of dream come true

where you actually get what you want and it turns out you love it and it's what you want to do and keep doing. And so luckily, incredibly luckily, I'm going to get a chance to keep doing it because I am,

I resigned my deal with the studio at UCP so I'm developing a whole bunch of other stuff that I want to talk to people about and when I'm able to. But yeah, I mean, it's a bummer, but the thing that I wanted to be clear, because there's a little bit of miscommunication out there from people who don't,

who weren't paying attention, which are, you know, many people who don't watch WWE Raw on Monday nights. Because a lot of the headlines, such as they were, like Rosario Dawson's show canceled. Rosario Dawson is an incredible person, a brilliant actor who I hope gets nominated for an Emmy for her role. She was the star and producer of season one.

She and most of the cast would not have been returning for season two. We got to tell the whole story for her and her character. So again, like this is, I'm honored because some of the best shows ever were one season wonders, like Terriers and Quarry. but I feel again really fortunate because we told our whole story. There was nothing left over for that season. So it's not totally accurate. The other inaccuracy was that like I'm glad I kind of tweeted it myself because Hollywood

reporter said something like about how the network, if they had been interested, would have heard a pitch for season two. All contrary, Hollywood Reporter. There was a pitch in December. People seem pretty enthusiastic about it. I definitely was. The show was, as I think people know, and I thought. so we were going to tell a different story, but a similar type of story with a whole new cast,

but with some surprises and some overlaps that we would have revealed over time. And with that it would have felt interconnected within the Ross Thomas verse, or that was something separate? Yes and no. Okay. Yes and no. There were elements that we were drawing from from another Ross Thomas book, but the goal was to build something inspired.

by him and his tone and the type of stories he wanted to tell, but it was predominantly an original idea. Anyway, the last piece of this is, it always could happen again. I mean, that's the other thing. When you say you're canceling an anthology show, it's like, well, we didn't have anyone under contract for season two anyway. Yeah, and it's also not like you guys were like all wrapped up in,

you know, a bunch of teenage actors who were going to be like 24, you know, you know what I mean? Like you didn't, it wasn't like stranger things or something where you got to like get this thing done while these people still look like children. Yeah, there was no Mickle-Nielsen situation. Which I thought was like, you know, when I first pitched Briar Patch But Kids, you seemed rightly skeptical and this is why. Briar Patch Babies?

Well, purely from a production standpoint, we would have been limited. But, you know, now after the spring, and I guess this fall, I could have served as onset tutor as well. That's true. So, because really I got into this to be a teacher. Yeah. So anyway, which is to say that, like, I'm still, you know, you. you know, in business with the company, and there's a streaming service now called Peacock.

So basically, if people keep watching the show on USA On Demand or buying it on Apple or Amazon, hopefully it'll get onto a streaming service at some point and people keep watching it, and we can run it back. Yeah. Or we can be like, I used to joke on set, maybe even when you were there. I was like, let's just do this weird thing and go out like legends. And, you know, we're going out. I don't know if we're legends yet, but I regret nothing.

It was the greatest experience in my life. And it's out there. That's the thing. Like, it's not really about how the thing is received. It's about the opportunity to have made it. And then it exists. And I can't believe that, especially considering the world that we're in now where things aren't even getting made.

I wanted to ask you one follow-up question. And you don't have to do this if you don't want to. But part of the interesting thing about talking to you about this entire process over the last 18 months or so or almost two years now has been how many pinch yourself moments you've had to have where it's been, I can't believe this, you know, I can't believe I can't believe I finished this script, much less this script has generated interest and I can't believe these actors are going to be saying these words and I can't believe I'm going to New Mexico for an extended period of time to bring this world to life. Was there an element of it in the cancellation too? Is there an element of like,

oh, this is how, like I'm getting the phone call kind of thing? Yeah, I mean, you don't want to. No, of course. But yeah, I mean, there is a lot of that sort of stepping outside of oneself while this is happening. And this was an incredible ride. And I probably have told the story on the podcast before, but there was a moment when we were shooting the pilot. So this is September 2018. We were in the hotel hallway that we later rebuilt as a set.

And Brian Garrity, one of the great actors, pulled me aside and was like, Rosario, well, he has a Philly accent. So he said, Rosario and I were just talking. And we wanted you to know it's not always like this in the sense that everyone was getting along and everyone seemed like aligned creatively. And I, you know, am old enough and have talked about the business and have known people in the business long enough to know that it is rarely like that. And I got it to be like that for two plus years with people. getting along and, you know, being able to like work with great, smart, brilliant, kind people and have all my crazy ideas and song choices and stuff, get into the show and have a studio network that were aligned with it. So I wasn't naive enough to think that like there wasn't ever going to be, I wasn't fully Wiley Coyote running out over the cliff. Like I know that this isn't just, this isn't Make a Wish Foundation. So I knew that there was a business side to it. Yeah. And there was a rough side to it. You don't want to get that phone call, but everyone was very, nice, you know, and the thing for me, I just want to keep doing it. And so my main sadness and

disappointment came from the fact that, like, you know, I have this great team of, you know, our costumer and our DP and, you know, even the medic from set was writing me. And, and I feel like I let them down to a degree. But I don't feel like anybody has any reason to hang their head. And we, you know, just keep running at it and try it and try it again. Lisa, and also, I mean, like, I think that the thing that, that you've always said, and I think anybody who spent any time with the show can see is that you guys made the show that you wanted to make, and it was,

it was very unique, and it was very offbeat, and it was of the shows that I think you grew up and learned to love over the course of your life. And those shows aren't always going to be, like, mass hysteria, blockbuster successes. And it also, and you're not going to say this, but I'll say from an outsider looking at it, it felt like you guys were the last, one of the last shows that was presented

in the way it was presented on a channel. You know, like on a cable channel as this is a USA or a TBS or a TNT show. And while there still are things like that, we are obviously witnessing and commenting on a huge changing of the guard in how entertainment is delivered to us. and I'm not saying that that had anything to do with it

because I don't actually have any inside information but I always thought that that was, you guys were fighting, running a little bit upstream because of that. Yeah, and the head of USA, Chris McCumber called, this is again all back in April and was incredibly gracious and had been a supporter of the show and continues to be and basically said,

you know, we're sorry, which is a nice thing to say, but I, and I would imagine, this isn't just about me. I imagine he made, he was forced to make similar calls to Megan and Gina,

dare me. who are doing something awesome and different for the network as well. And, you know, the people who were making Treadstone, which is a totally different type of show. But it doesn't work. The old system doesn't really work. But this is not making excuses because your point was right. Like, if you list all the shows that I love and I listed them,

I used to make lists about them for a website, I can't say. Sometimes like 10, 10 of them? Yeah, maybe 10 in a row. Those shows didn't set the world on fire. And that's okay. You don't make it to do that. I fucking love the show.

And that is rare, too, for people who are in this, lucky enough to be in this position. So I feel great. My only goal is to get these brilliant, talented people back to work or getting to work with me before someone else steals them. Because the bigger issue, and this is something we talked about last week, is just crews are in a tough spot right now. There aren't any good choices.

There aren't that many bright spots on the horizon. So, you know, that's what getting this back, not just me, but getting the industry back in the feed is, is, is, is, is, is four. Yeah. I mean, we saw today the news that, uh, tenant has been, um, taken off of this schedule for movie releases. We saw, I mean, apropos of what we were talking about earlier, Conjuring three has been moved from, I believe, this fall to next summer. There's a three? So you have so much time to get caught up on, uh, on the nun. But yeah, like, I think that I was commenting to you earlier because you said to me, you were like, oh, did you see this Game of Thrones news?

So Entertainment Weekly has a newser up today. That is, if I had to read the tea leaves, feels like the first drop in a, what will be a steady sort of, a steady news drop of information about Dance of Dragons or this Game of Thrones prequel that HBO is working on. And this is probably happening because, I mean, this is Comic-Con. week, right? So this is the week that a lot of the news is going to start to drop in. They're doing a lot of virtual stuff like that. So while they don't have any actual casting news, they do have a bunch of the characters that will need

to be filled if everything that they're hearing goes, it is Dance of Dragons, correct? Is that what it's going to be called? No. So that, I don't know, I think it's House of the Dragon might be the show. Oh, my bad, yeah. Dance of Dragons is an event. Oh my God. I can just, you know, I can feel Mallory

hearing this podcast in the future. Part of me wants to go back and retake this, but part of me is just going to, I'm going to die on this, on this hill. Okay, House of the Dragon. Like many of the participants in the Dance of Dragons, you will die uncomfortably. I think we were having like a good nature

back and forth about like getting our heads back into Westrose. And like, are you ready to get back in the realm? And you were like, I'm kind of like, I think maybe I've aged out of this or lost my fastball with this. And I was like, I hear you, but at the same time, like as somebody who's staring at like the schedule, the release schedule for the next couple of months,

like I'd bite your hand off for Game of Thrones right now. Now everybody would. But I just mean in terms of the stuff that has been moved around on the schedule to accommodate either taking advantage of everybody being home during the beginning of the quarantine and of the pandemic, and we had, I think, a lot of stuff moving up and a lot of stuff moving back. But when I look at the schedule, at least,

there's not a ton that's making me really excited and I'm also seeing a ton of animated stuff and a ton of stuff that's just not like usually the kind of things that we talk about. So it is really fascinating. I wonder whether or not like the television industry can get by on news about the television industry before it gets back to producing actual stuff.

I mean, it's interesting to ask that. I mean, there is value, obviously, and we're starting to see it more and more and companies are pivoting to showcasing it more and more in the libraries. You know, I think that the, I'm sure that marketers have a term for this, and I don't know it, but I feel like to use my favorite analogy in almost any context, which is an iceberg analogy, the new stuff, the shiny stuff is the tip of it that attracts you.

And I feel like gets a lot of the attention for the streaming services, but they also, of course, want to have a big content library to keep you there. That may be inverted now because there's, there's fewer and fewer shows in production. I mean, there's, there's exceptions to this rule, obviously. Obviously, I mean, like Netflix has said repeatedly that they feel like they have enough stuff to get them through into next year. And there are shows like away and stuff coming that like soon that like I think are pretty big ticket items. Do you feel sorry to jump on this because I'm still thinking about this, this Game of Thrones thing? Yeah, sure.

We've talked about it before, but obviously this is a different moment. So I'm wondering if your take on this has changed at all because they're, just to recap briefly, there was a Game of Thrones prequel announced, Greenlit to pilot. Naomi Watts was going to star in it. Jane Goldman, I believe, was writing the script. Yeah, I had actually gotten a chance to read that pilot. Right. And it felt, in some ways, radical's not a word, but it definitely was a, from what everyone understands about it, a pretty different take on what a Game of Thrones show could or should be. We never actually saw the finished product, so we don't actually know what the pilot was that made them pivot really hard away from it. And we speculated, of course, at the time, this show, this House

the Dragon, this Targaryen, straight up, like, prequel show felt like a pivot, like an AT&T corporate pivot to known product and known safety, which, by the way, can't blame them when the known product is that, is Game of Thrones. But other than Better Call Saul and God, I'm hoping Comanchee Moon, I don't know of that many prequels that to beloved properties that were as dramatically satisfying as, you know, either a sequel or a new take on something could be or have been in the past. And so my exhaustion in that Entertainment Weekly thing was really more about like, it could dazzle us. It could totally surprise us. But yes, I'm star for new content, but I also just feel like we are in, and maybe

this is me, we have to feel this way in order to survive every day. But I kind of feel like we are in the birthing pains of something new. Well, that's a really interesting point. And so. And so to have a show that is basically like, so this obscure event that would require a lot of CGI dragons that informed our show. You're referring to the Dance of Dragons. The Dance of Dragons. Right. That informed our previous show. Well, guess what?

You're going to get to see it. Right. That doesn't feel as crucial to me. But again, I'm not the target audience for this. That's fine. All the caveats. But I guess I'm wondering, is the decision, look, we can do this. Sports have been doing, their sports radio has existed every month.

minute since March, right, even though there have been no sports. Are you going to do, are we sure he's good? Kind of. I guess what I want to say is, is the decision to put the kibosh on the more radical Game of Thrones continuation in favor of something that felt a little bit more known quantity and safe? Is that now an outdated decision? Is that a 2019 mindset? So just the fact that we're having this conversation means Game of Thrones is in the Star Wars zone. Just the fact that we are Monday morning quarterbacking, what are probably like some things written on a highly encrypted whiteboard, you know, or the property of like the secret drawer

in Casey Blois's desk where like he makes these decisions with in the consult with people. I think we've now moved into when we had Game of Thrones. Yes, it was essentially following a text. It was fulfilling what had been laid out in a book and then went past that book. That book has still not been completed or those novels, that series of novels still has not been completed. But that was, we all knew the playbook it was running from. Now that we have kind of opened it up to interpretation, we're getting more and more people who are like, my idea, not people who are actually making the show, but just the fans in general who are like, you know what you guys should do is this. or don't do Blood Moon because that's way too ancient and it doesn't have any connective tissue really to the Game of Thrones

that people know and love. And Game of Thrones is a show is going to go on forever as people discover it and rediscover it in the same way the binge mode guys did and talked about it in that way. Because of like it's value beyond super fans. I mean, the people who are like absolutely obsessed with Game of Thrones obviously get a lot out of that show

But the reason it was what it was was because of the people who were like, oh, man, did you see this red wedding? You got to check the show out. And I don't know necessarily that that casual fan cares very much about whether or not they do an American horror story style anthology series, which is something that gets kicked around in this EW piece, or if they do dance of the dragons, or if they do something that's the origins of the house of Lannister or whatever. Because I think it's like at this point now, it's become the property of the fandom itself in the same way that Star Wars, you can have solo or you can have Rogue One, which in retrospect, I think we were very hard on solo when it came out, but now in retrospect, it's like among some of the, one of the better Star Wars movies or Rogue One, which is one that we liked quite a bit, but was like, oh man, here's what Rogue One has to do if it's set in this timeline.

I agree. And I also think that, you know, it is very easy for us to backseat drive on these decisions. And I don't have a better solution. Because we're also talking about what's really underlying and informing a lot of these decisions. Yes, they're people, they're really smart, talented executives and creatives who are trying to make the best artistic choice always behind these properties. But you're also fundamentally competing on the level of an image to put on the home screen of your avatar or app on Apple TV or Roku or whatever. And Disney Blues has a Star Wars channel on it, you know, and they launch with the Mandalorian. with reason, you know, and they were planning to continue their subscriber base by having

Falcon and Winter Soldier and have more Marvel stuff. That seems like a juggernaut strategy that is hard to knock. HBO Max wants more dragons, and to compete, they probably should have more dragons. Like that is a smart creative play, and that's also why Peacock had a 30 Rock infomercial. I mean, but it's also why people are less or more bearish. on Peacock because what is their version of that, right? Sure. So that's the level of artistic decisions in commerce and whatever that we're making

or that are being made or that we're talking about. It's just, okay, I'm going to do a strange pivot that you might not join me on. But so much of these, you can't really, you can't really backseat drive decisions when you're on this level of like shareholder interest and sheer amount of money. And they're also pot committed. Like these streaming services have launched. These are the media futures of these massive companies. So all those decisions are made in that context.

But I had a, I did a Zoom. People do Zooms. I did a Zoom with some students at my old high school, which was fantastic and great. And everybody, I always walk away from conversations with young people feeling a lot better about the world than when I talk to olds like me or you. but I was asking them, they were asking about TV I was watching and I asked them about what TV they were watching. And many of them,

and this is like 12 juniors and seniors, it was a, it seemed like really smart and sharp, media savvy people, also a very diverse group of students, which I was happy to see. A plurality of them named the show that they watch the most, reruns of Avatar, the last Airbender, on Netflix. Kids love that.

So I didn't know anything about this. This is a Dattington detour that I was going to do anyway, but I feel like it's relevant to this conversation. Completely, completely immune or inoculated from this entire phenomenon. Because this is a Nickelodeon cartoon that spawned graphic novels and then also apparently one of the worst movies ever made by M. Night Shyamalan in 2010. Three seasons, I think, three or four seasons ran from the mid-2000s, like 2005, 2008, It was in there. I had heard those words, but I assumed, and I'd seen the comics, and I'd assumed it was some, like, overly complicated adaptation of, like, a Japanese

manga or an anime or something. It had some, because it had a torture name. Yeah, like, when you were, like, stoned at 1 a.m. watching MTV, and Aeon Flux came on, and you would just be like, what the fuck is happening? Yes, and where did it begin happening? Yes, yeah. It was always seemingly on episode 60. Yes.

So it's been started in my home by my older daughter. And first of all, it's great. It really is great. And it's great for the reasons that I, it's great because it is a unique, it was an original property. I didn't know this. These two dudes were like, let's create a show that's about warring factions and Kung Fu and also genocide and totalitarianism and also kids surfing on penguins.

Like it's very good natured and very much for kids in a way that like my daughter is loving. And these kids were learning, these older kids in high school were like, this was our basis for serialized storytelling. Was this.

And just, I bring this up just to say that the audience that these corporations are chasing, they're always chasing the wrong one. They're always chasing

the previous generation's audience and trying to just service them and maintain them. And they're never willing to take a rarely, increasingly rarely, willing to take the larger, the riskier play to grab a hold of a new generation.

I think that's such a great, that's a great way of looking at it. And I think that you and I have been both like guilty and innocent of this, because I think for years, not that anybody gives a shit what we think, but as fans of this stuff, you and I have been like,

what they need to do is make cheers in Moss, Moss Isley or whatever, or they need to make the Star Wars workplace thing or the hard-bodied Star Wars Born Identity movie or whatever, which I think that that could be the, what's the Diego Luna character in Rogue One's name again? Oh, the Cashion and Android show. Yeah, that could be that.

You know what I mean? But, you know, we have often been like, there are so many corners of this universe to explore, why don't they go back and do this? Why don't they go back and do this? It just has never really worked. You know, Mandalorian is pretty much the exception that proves the rule that,

and that took the full weight of the Walt Disney Corporation launching a streaming service and being like, you can have this because this streaming service is so valuable that we will let you have this playground and we're going to give it to the safest pair of hands that we have, which is John Favreau and Dave Filoni and, you know, Debra Child looking through these lenses and seeing like, this is what people want from Star Wars specifically. And they didn't get in their own way on that one. And it was perfect in its own way. But you're right. Like, I think that we've spent the last year or so,

and we'll probably spend the next year or so being like, where's the Lord of the Rings show? Where's the Game of Thrones prequel? Where's the Battlestar Galax? Oractic a reboot. Where's the this, the this, this? And meanwhile, under the hood somewhere is something like, like last airbender where it's like, that's what kids are actually watching because it's their story. And it informed their way they want to watch stories. And the tone feels really exciting. This is already 15 years old, but it feels exciting and pleasant. And it feels attuned to what people actually want to watch. And it hits notes that these other properties are either too afraid to reach for or they don't remember how to do. it. And what this comes down to and not to turn this into a podcast we've done seven times since 2012 or a William Goldman essay from 1979. But these are financial decisions. These are not, ultimately, it is a, these are decisions that are being made in the register of a financial manager or financial planner as opposed to a creative. It really is true. Like, there are

projects that you named and that we've referred to coming up that I think are all going to be pretty medium good. Like I think Cashin andor is going to be pretty good. Yeah. I think the Falcon and Winter Soldier, Wanda Vision, like, I'm going to watch those shows, and I think I'm going to enjoy them, and I think they're all going to be pretty medium good. And I don't think it's a disservice to the very talented people working on them

to suggest that their ceiling to break ground or to inspire is low. You know, I don't think anyone is going to become a new fan of anything from their experience watching. Yeah, like you were on the fence about Marvel until you saw Falcon and Winter Soldier. Right. It's just going to be like,

here's the thing you like in a different size box and enjoy it. I'll say thank you. I will enjoy it. But, but all of these properties, the arc of them, as we've said many times, is to become ultimately about themselves. And so it was my review of Star Trek Picard, which instead of being like a new vision of what Star Trek means is about Data's daughter and John LeCucard capting a ship again. And then what else is coming from CBS All Access? Below deck, like a, you know, a kind of works blue comedy about the people who are below the decks on these ships, which is, again, a show made about Star Trek for fans of

pre-existing Star Trek. Sure. So. I should say that we might have, we might have slight quarantine brain when we're talking about all this because in a different world, Falcon and Winter Soldier would have been out by now, probably. You know, like, we would have been, or it would have been coming out. Yes.

It's out in August. I guess it's just that when I learned that I'm sorry younger listeners who think, you know, this is this is grandpa island over here but like when i learned that avatar the last air bender was an original property created by people and that it spawned these beloved seasons and the storytelling was so good and interesting and that made me excited but it also made me feel like it was like a like a daguerre type photo from the 19th century and it was only 15 years ago um i i can tell you even from my own, you know, obviously circumscribed experiences in the entertainment industry, I bet there has never been a moment when the appetite for original ideas, non-affiliated IP has been lower,

ever. And I, because that was the thing with movies when everyone rushed to TV and all those top drawer scripts over the last 20 years have been made. Things are going to slip through. There's always something new that's going to surprise us. But from even just talking to people, it is, the appetite has never been lower to take a risk. That segues very nicely into my own personal news that I want to give you. I'm excited to share with you. Andy's gone, has had some revelations.

Andy's had some news of his own. For me, you know, it's tough to admit because I think when you start from a position of negativity, it's always difficult to change. But I'm a Freemason now. Wow. This was your big surprise? I'm Perry Posse. I'm Mace Mob.

Perry Mason is good. what? So here's the thing about TV is that sometimes I just want a mystery. Like sometimes on a basic level, I would just like to have a crime show with a mystery at the center. And I think when we went into Perry Mason,

the first episode, I'm reeling over here. We had a really good conversation about like all the things that this show wanted to be and all the things that it was sort of like bending over backwards to be and why that was sort of stopping it in its tracks that the sort of PTSD

Pizzolato anti-hero that they were making Perry Mason into and having him sort of wistfully stare at the California countryside and remember World War I and his dad and have really pretty graphic sex with a woman who owns an airplane. All that stuff was kind of like...

By the way, you're making it sound better and better all the time, but go on. I just needed an off-brand James Alroy's story, and that's what they turned this into. So one thing that we didn't really talk about in that first episode is the X-Factor of Tadiana Mislani, who shows up

in the second episode, and has like Jesse Pinkman-Omar energy in terms of what she brings to this show. It completely shatters the like tonal language of the show and she shows up and just absolutely throws the afterburners on. And

when this show just gets out of its own way and is a more or less like beat-by-beat procedural with some character work. And Juliet Rylance is really good in this show, and it's become more about John Lithgow's character too. And it just becomes a corrupt Los Angeles district attorney's office versus three people

trying to prove the innocence of a person accused of murder. It just like actually is like a pretty effective TV show. And I have also, I've just, I've watched it. I didn't watch last nights, but I am up to date other than that. and have thoroughly enjoyed myself. I am only upset because now I have some catching up to do. But it's interesting to hear you say this because, and I will, but we generally don't

articulate the differences in the conversations we're having because we, as long-time listeners know, we don't have a schedule or a plan when we do podcasts. Sorry, Kaya. but it's, I hope that it's possible to have sort of two levels of conversations because I still think opinions about the pilot of Perry Mason aside, putting it in the context of a larger structural conversation about what gets made and why it gets made. Right. And what does it matter if HBO's drama for summer 2020 feels like an HBO Max title and what does that even mean? I still think there's a validity to that conversation. but then I also do think that both in terms of what interests us and what motivates us

and what makes this podcast servicey at times is, is this good? And I don't want to get away from that because I enjoy watching things that are enjoyable to watch. I think also just like as to go back to what I was saying about like the sort of coffers running a little dry, I was like, I just kind of want to be taken away for an hour. You know, I want a show that is essentially. doing that. It's essentially creating like a 1930s film noir backdrop for a

mystery that I have yet to fully figure out, which is nice, because I think as we talked about with outsider and a couple of other crime shows recently, there was that weird thing where the audience was way ahead of the characters, and we were just sort of waiting. That is not the case for Perry Mason, even though we are very aware of who the villains are.

And to a person, I just think it has pretty uniformly, like great performances. But more than anything else, it's just fascinating to watch them once they get out from under needing to be like a hard-bitten new take on Perry Mason and they just do a crime show and they just do a mystery, it's actually quite good. It's just once they had to get the cloak of IP off in the first episode. Yeah, and that's very interesting. But also what about the part about it being prestige or whatever?

Because I think that... I think you thought once you get out of that first round of conversation about it, that comment like that that that matters less i think i think so too and i think that that weirdly is better uh timed for this moment um the chatter if there has been some about peacock and we suggested we we touched on this a little bit last week but just you know for whatever small sample size twitter is um when people are talking about peacock if they are they are talking about its price point which is free which is what tv used to be and they are talking about talking about the channels where it's showing TV.

Yeah. That's what people are talking about. And I don't want to extrapolate too much about what that means over the next few months because obviously we don't know because things can't get made. But once things can get made again, we keep beating this drum. But like, I think, I know people were confused and people in TV got real dazzled by stars and reviews and awards and stuff, but like, people want their stories, man. People just want their stories. Like, whether it's us pining for succession to come back, because we miss that, or, you know, an entire new streaming service that maybe will succeed because it has a billion hours of law and order in parks and recreation. People want that. And I think that they don't want. And again,

I'm saying this as a placeholder. I actually haven't even watched the show. I don't know if they want a prestigey adaptation of Brave New World. You know what I mean? Like, Maybe they do and maybe it's good. There was a good review of it in Vulture today. But I'm, what does it mean during this moment for the, what does it mean at this moment when everyone's sitting at home and the only people who are quote unquote working in this business are writers like me? Like, what does it mean to finally come to terms of the fact that we wanted to do a lot

of this stuff? But maybe the audience doesn't, maybe we got a little too out in front of our skis. You also get into the question. of whether or not Brave New World would be better as dystopian future show X. That has nothing to do with being an adaptation of a beloved novel. Let's talk about one of our favorite stories going right now,

and that is dark. We are kind of breaking down this third final season in three chunks. We did the first few episodes last Thursday, and we were going to tackle four episodes now, three, four, five, and six, I believe. Yeah. As always, I would like you to kind of get us started because I don't want to reveal anything that happens in episode seven or eight.

Do you remember when a great person, a great American, a great first lady, said when people show you who they are, believe them, I think I should have remembered that when considering the name of the television show. Did you think it was going to be light? I guess that I For as much as we've talked about it I've never given the title much thought I guess it seemed like a cool enough title that could be you know I think it's a word in English

that works in a lot of languages and translates and it goes with a visual palette and you know probably and beats the other alternate titles for the show like Holin which is how you say cave in German or aunt fucker which I think is just you know what everyone is on the show

Or that's so winden. That's so winden is good. I like that. It's all this okay. The answer is nine. This, I guess they felt like there was a bar they had to reach to earn the title here in season three. Because this has never been a laugh riot. In fact, I've never left once watching the show.

But this one, this last round of episodes may have pushed me because, you know, we love talking about the show. we love covering it. And I had suggested when we got into season three that maybe we would come up with some fun little bits to do. And you asked me if I had any bits. And so the only one I could come up with. The best time a parent accidentally kills their kid. No, best time or best time a parent

just straight up murders their kid. And so for me, I have Katerina's mom clubbing her adult daughter to death with a rock slightly ahead of Yonis opening up a time wormhole over his pregnant, forever girlfriend who is bearing his, I believe, hair-lipped future time killer baby. Yeah, he is the antichrist.

Anyway, so, yeah, that's my personal power rankings. But I guess what I want to say is I'm not done. I'm not off of this. But it's an interesting combination when you feel at the end of a series, especially one built on plot like this, there's always that moment where like, oh, we've detached from the booster rockets now,

and all that's left to do is finish this, right? And there's very little room left to be like, well, maybe this will happen, or I'm holding out hope, paired with such a relentlessly bleak vision of human nature that these two episodes were not as fun for me to watch. Like, I was just like, oh, boy, I guess I knew they were doing it,

but I didn't really believe it. I think that stuff in this genre, whether you want to call it time travel or sci-fi or whatever, the storytelling is like a boomerang. And eventually you expect the boomerang to come back. And even though there are a lot of things about this show that are foreign, both in language, but even in the sort of complexity of the plot and the storytelling,

I think that I have trained myself over the years to just expect a return to what are the core, tenets of this story. Like, what is this story about? But Dark is almost unique in stuff that I have seen in that the boomerang is not coming back. The story is about

time travel and how these people who have accidentally in some cases and on purpose and others found themselves in the slipstream of time and space are in this forever war and how it could possibly end.

It's not about the domestic cares of the first season, which is why I think I fell in love with the show. Absolutely. I found myself during this batch of episodes probably the farthest from the doc that I have ever felt with this show, where I was just like, but wait a second,

like I actually really like Katarina. Like I thought she was a really interesting character, and I thought that the whole dynamic that was set up with her and Hana in the first season and then explored even more in the second season as we like, I think investigated, a little bit more about their childhoods, although I could also have been the first season.

I can't remember at this point. Like that character, not that they deserved more, quote-unquote, from their mother, but I thought the show kind of owed them a little bit more. And more often than not, I feel like the show is kind of disposing of storylines, but also like some of the investments it's made in people, to focus purely on this Claudia, Jonas, and Martha triangle of worlds and worlds and world leaders. I think when I've been trying to,

I've been trying to get more people to watch the show because we've been enjoying it a lot up until maybe up until last night. And one of the things that I've been finding myself saying about it is this show, to its great credit, takes all the big, heady ideas and also what seemingly impossible storytelling painted in corners of time travel

and pushes in all the chips and goes all the way. There is no hedging. There is no, well, we change time this time or, you know, servicing emotion or sentimentality over the laws that they've established. And I think there's something to be commended about that. I mean, that is no small feat. But there's also, for me, a little bit of be careful what you wish for. Because it is so unrelendingly brutal.

And it's gotten so far away from a place where you could even say, like many other sci-fi greats, that the time travel is is the device to tell the other story, the other themes. In the first season, as you pointed out, you could say, like, well, really what it's about is the impossible, how impossible it is to escape our family's histories or the weight of trauma or history repeating itself or being, you know, the claustrophobia of a small town or a small family. It's like a German Bruce Springsteen song. Yeah.

And so that, in fact, I think what Dark is doing is it's the reverse. I mean, that was the Trojan Ors to just kind of grind it out. You know what I mean? And just like, just be the dude from a beautiful mind writing the equations on the windows and being like, look at what I did with my equations and also look what I did to my window. And where we are now in season three, it is cool and I am admiring the shit out of it, that it is essentially now a show with multiple protagonists and multiple antagonists, all of whom are the same person.

but there's also two versions of each of them. I mean, there's multiple versions of each of them. In Martha's case, yeah, seemingly countless, yeah. But call me old-fashioned. Call me guy who just discovered Avatar of the last Airbender over the weekend. I got very little to root for here. I don't know what my stakes are anymore.

Yeah, right. Because you're invested in Jonas, say, especially coming out of some of the stuff that happens in season two, and everybody in the show other than Jonas is telling you that this guy is evil, actually. which I think is cool, but you do get to the point exactly what you're saying. Like, I blame myself.

When I've seen Interstellar or Ad Astra or Sunshine and I'm like, God damn it, this thing was so amazing. And then we find out that it's basically like you go all the way into outer space to confront your inner trauma, to get back at your dad to make sure that your family loves you or whatever. And I was like, be in space, you know, confront the absolutely existential questions that you would have to be considering if you were out there. And they did that. They are, they're like, time travel. And it's not about does your dad love you enough? It's actually about time travel.

And that's why the true time travel, the true time lords who are on Reddit and are like, here I have just diagramed this like the most complicated spread offense ever, that's who this show is for. And I thought I was a time lord. And I think I'm actually just like a sentimental like old shit. So sorry. So in mid thought. about Dark, I wish I could time travel to a place where I brought extra batteries here, because my audio just went out, but Kai's got me. Anyway, just to say, we always talk about our favorite books, books by people like James Crumley, which are big sprawling American mysteries,

but if you actually asked me what happened in them, I don't know. I just love them. And I have been so free and easy with Dark. Like, I've never once looked at a Reddit thread. I've just enjoyed it. These last few episodes of Season 3, I was like, I actually don't know what's going on anymore. And I'm not, and I've lost my footing beyond that.

You know, I don't know what Claudia is doing. I don't know how many more times I can have Jonas or Marta say, don't trust blank. And then they trust them and they don't. They keep walking into the rake and getting hit in the head. I don't know what the goal is here other than to untie the knot, which I guess means don't let Charlotte be her own mother's daughter. Yeah, I can't answer that question

because I think I would be giving away what episode. I think 7 and 8 do a lot to clear up some of the stuff and also push it out even further. But on Thursday, I think we can have a more like complete conversation about it. Just final thoughts about it. I do think there are still, there are a lot of things to like, one of which is the cast is so big

with so many actors playing the same parts that it's easy to forget what a good job so many of them. them are doing. And so like when suddenly we see old Egon Tiedaman again in episode 306, it's like, that guy's good. Like I like watching him on TV. I'm glad he's here. These people are making such meals out of the tiny scraps they're given to perform and I'm sure they don't even understand what the hell they're doing. So I really do enjoy that. Like I've enjoyed. They speak German and they don't even understand it. That's fair. Lisa Vicari's transformation into, you know, multiple time lords. this season is very cool.

Did you just shout out the actress who plays Claudia? No, she plays Marta. Marta, okay. I think she's great, but I got to say... Don't get German IMDB on me now, because that's not fair. There are moments this season when I start to think that maybe they were doing... Do you remember there was a book by a French writer named Georges Perrette called A Void? No, I don't remember that French book by George Perrette.

But here's why. Here's why. There are no ease in the book. It was his challenge. He wrote an entire book without the letter E. And I was reminded of that when I felt like could they reduce this hyper, hyper, hyper, complicated show to just maybe 10 repeated lines of dialogue. Because if I hear one more motherfucker saying, and mine a welt, and en duveld.

Like, I get it. Your world and my world, I get it, man. Yeah, the end is the beginning, the beginning is the end. That's why I was like when I was watching it. I was just kind of like, man, I don't even need to know German. We can wrap it up there. We'll save our final thoughts on Dark for Thursday. We'll also probably talk about I Made a Story.

And I do think we will have our guest who was supposed to be here today for our Thursday show. So a packed Thursday show. Grimwald, thank you for this winding but rewarding conversation. Always, always a pleasure. Great job, Grants. We did it. We're going to get through another week. Talk to you Thursday.