The Watch - Get Ready for the Fantasy TV Bubble | The Watch (Ep. 295)

Episode Date: October 4, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald talk about the news that Chris Evans may be out as Captain America (3:47) and the recent influx of fantasy television (9:17). Then they recap the latest episode of ‘Better Call Saul’ (38:42), and Chris helps Andy decide if he should go see ‘A Star Is Born’ or ‘Venom’ this weekend (46:45). Read David Shoemaker on ‘Venom’ here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Lupe Fiasco's Drogus Wave. Drogas Wave, the second independent release and seventh studio album from the 12-time Grammy Award nominee, Lupe Fiasco, is available everywhere now. Drogas Wave is an imaginative conceptual album, the follow-up to Lupa's 2017 Drogas Light. This 24-track double album is one of his most philosophically artistic projects to date, laced with intricate production, assists from a range of artists including Simon Says and Nikki Jean, and classic Lupe wordplay. Drogas Wave is available everywhere now. Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly,

here to tell you that we have a brand new podcast called Halloween Unmasked, premiering Monday, October 1st. Here's a sneak peek. There's trouble in the suburbs. A teenage girl named Lori Strode crosses a quiet street toward an ordinary house to find her friends. But Lori doesn't know that her friends are dead, and she doesn't know that she's walking right toward the masked killer of Michael Myers.

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I think the scariest part was that he doesn't die at the end. So in you're 10, it's like, that guy's still out there. We got to get him. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the wringer.com.

And joining me in the studio, his dark materials is this podcast. It's Andy Green World. Should we do some personal business at the top of this pod? Because right before we sat down, right before we sat down, you were like, I'm not used to your presence. Well, no, I just felt like actually Did you miss my musk? And this is not a This is not a knock on the commercial viability

of this podcast, but we didn't have any advertisements last time. Right. But it didn't even, I didn't even feel the need to break. You know? It was just so nice to be around you and just to kind of vibe with you that I didn't feel the need to like stop everything

and be like Hotel Tonight. Did we not have any ads last week because I am known in the podcast community as a friend to Madison Avenue? Is that the case? Like, is that why? Do people advertise because Because of me?

Or not because of you, because you're your first show back. There was no podcast. There was no advertising. So you came back and they were like, fucking Chomsky's here. It could swing either way, is what you're saying. Yeah, that's right. Greenwald, it is Thursday. Today we are going to talk a little bit about this fantasy TV bubble that I'm kind of

wondering if we're about to enter. Yeah. Because we've had some news over the last like 10 days or so. There's some release dates firmed up. There are some teases coming about. several rather expensive, rather epic fantasy television shows, or television shows based on like acclaimed fantasy novels. And I kind of wanted to talk about this shift because it's obviously,

I think a while ago we talked about Jeff Bezos' desire to find his own Game of Thrones for Amazon. And that was a directive that he was giving Amazon television. And it looks like they are really trying in earnest to satisfy his desires. That $15 an hour really comes in handy when it comes to reading, reading sci-fi novels. Okay, Chomsky. Okay, so we're going to talk about that. Yeah, and we can talk about Saul.

We both watched this most recent episode. Yep. You want to talk about Chris Evans? I feel like we should begin with some somber news. Yeah. Guys, right as we were sitting down to record. Yeah, breaking news. I saw a prominent Hollywood trade publication tweet that it seems like,

now, I'm sorry, I hope you're sitting down. I am. And if you are driving, please pull safely to the side of the road. I hope you're sitting down if you're driving as well. And put your car in neutral. Apparently, Avengers 4 might be Chris Evans' swan song as Captain America. Now, they've been keeping this pretty close to the vest. You know?

If there's one thing Chris Evans has not been doing for the last two to four years is saying publicly every opportunity he had. I'm really tired of doing this. But he could not wait to fucking put down the shield. Yeah. I mean... And then his performance in the most recent Avengers movie that was in Infinity War is like a precursor to Jackson, Maine, and a star is born.

He's basically this like, he looks like Father John, Steve. What's his face? Yeah. What's his name? Father John Misty. No, what's Steve's name? What's his last name? Which Steve, Chris?

Is it Steve Connors? No, I just want you to flail on this island here. Keep going. What's Captain America's real name? Captain America's real name is Captain Steve Rogers. Right. from New York City, New York. Okay.

Okay. All right. Yeah, he's been feeling a little rusty for a while, and then today he tweeted, officially wrapped on Avengers 4. It was an emotional day to say the least. Playing this role over the last eight years has been an honor to everyone in front of the camera,

behind the camera, and in the audience, thank you for the memories. Actually, that's got an exclamation point, so I didn't do a good read of that. So I think the only safe conclusion here is that for Avengers, five, he will be taking on the mantle of

Nomad, the character name that Steve Rogers took on when he gave up the shield. Captain Steve Connors, formerly the drummer of Fleet Foxes. Do you think he's just going to show up with a beer? He'd be like, uh, hey, guys. Hey. Steve Conner's here. I just want to throw out there.

That, there is already Deep Web is saying this is a Marvel marketing gimmick. Guys, I say this to the Deep Web, just as I say it, to the casual fan. Let's not do this. We don't have to do this. There's going to be an Avengers movie in seven months.

Next spring, yeah. Guess what? I'm probably going to like it. We're going to talk about it on the podcast. He's definitely not going to be Captain America anymore after that movie. Okay. I think we're, let's just not do this whole thing. There's a distinction between whether or not he's like,

you have seven months to prepare for Captain America to die. Or like, I'm not going to keep doing this role. I think that I don't know who disappears and who doesn't disappear and whether Dr. Strange gets them all back or whatever. But, you know, look. There's a difference between dying and like just I'm not going to continue this role someone else well. Yeah, also, yo, money is a real son of a bitch, man. Like, he will come back at some point.

Even if it's just to put in a couple drum fills as drummer Steve Connors or whatever on the bootleg. It's just I just, I, maybe this is a sign of my real. recent, um, abstemious culture diet. Yes. But I don't want to do this. No, I, you were, you, one of the pods you missed, I was talking with, um, I think it was with fantasy a little, no, it was Concepciona. We were talking about DC movies that are coming out soon.

Yeah. And we were talking about how, like, there's been already, like, footage from the set of the Joker and lots of pictures from the Joker. And they're, like, really being kind of like, I don't know if I'd say inclusive and transparent, but like they're trying to share with the world, the world of this movie. Great. And that is counter to what Marvel usually does. which is keep everything in a locked box

and try to misdirect people and say, you know, it's like, develop enough anticipation around the actual first weekend so that people go into it being like, I don't know what's going to happen. Here's, I have two things to say about that. One, by the way, Warner Brothers, D.C., your policy of doing the opposite of everything Marvel does,

like Marvel makes fun popular movies and you make turgid, miserable, unpopular films? Like, this is a great strategy. Always do the opposite. Bravo. Two, bring me the Joker films. Drown me in an ocean of Jokers. Are you serious? No.

Three, this actually is a good segue into, I don't know if you talked about this, because as previously noted, I don't listen to the podcast, but by the way, thanks for the great work while I was gone. Sure. Two, are you aware that there is a streaming surface called DC Universe? Do you know this? Yeah.

And they have a TV show based on the Teen Titans. It's called Titans. They're grown up. They're all grown up now. Like a big boy Titans. And it just debuted and they just did Comic-Con. They said they're going to make more of them. And it could be good.

I have not seen the show. And they're making a friend of ours, Justin Halpern, is making a Harley Quinn cartoon for them. I think it's going to be really good with a lot of people involved, really talented people. But what worries me about this whole thing, and this is actually direct.

connected to our conversation that we're going to have about Amazon is have we completely, it's a two-part thing, have we completely given up on making television for a broad audience? Yeah, right. Yeah. Television that maybe could appeal to someone other than the people who have been clamoring for specifically this show on Reddit message boards or whatever for years. Have we completely given up on that idea? And two, does that idea of, of casting a wide net even matter anymore because increasingly a lot of these projects, we always have tried to talk about television shows

in the whole scheme of things. So we always try to bring in business considerations when necessary or appropriate to understanding why things got made. We talk about economics, we talk about why shows get renewed even though they are low-rated because they are important to the company

or they are owned by the company. Or whatever. We talk about that stuff whenever possible. But increasingly it does seem these decisions seem to be entirely business driven. Jeff Bezos saying, I want a Game of Thrones killer, so I'm just going to gobble up all of existing fantasy IP, full bubble behavior, basically,

being like, I'm just going to grab all this stuff to dominate that market. Similarly, the DC Universe could create good shows, and we will pay attention to see if they do. But it's hard to even consider any of these shows as Creative Enterprises first. What we're thinking when the first thought about them, honestly, is, okay, Warner Brothers is attempt

in OTT service to keep all their stuff in-house and compete in this future battlefield that is increasingly the present battlefield. Yes. So I realize I've come at this from a potentially cynical place, and maybe you wanted to start from a different place, but it's just wild to me that these are the conversations we're having first and foremost, and that we can even, honestly, that we can have these conversations without having seen any, I mean, first of all, having conversations about shows we haven't seen is the brand for this podcast.

But it's easy to have those conversations in these topics. thing on a couple of different levels. For one thing, I think it's hard to underrate the impact the Game of Thrones and Walking Dead have had on the way people think about what television could be. Or should be. Or should be. So we've had CSI as a franchise, NTIS as a franchise.

Chicago is a franchise. Longed Order as a franchise. There are franchise shows out there. There have been franchises throughout television history. There's been spinoffs. But I don't know that they've ever captured the 360-degree way in which a show can have an impact on a consumer base, the way that Thrones and Walking Dead have merch,

tie-ins, conventions, all this stuff around it. That these shows prop up, but that essentially creates, it's almost like a portal. It's almost like the way we used to think of, well, Yahoo and AOL is where the internet starts. These shows are where an entire world of pop culture

starts for some people. And I think that that is ultimately what they're searching for with these, whether it's D.C., whether it's Lord of the Rings, whether it's, and we'll get into some of the other shows that are being developed right now. The reason why Amazon picks up the expanse is because they

see that the people who like the expanse fucking love the expanse. And they will tell their friends about that they love the expanse. And they will go to conventions for the expanse. And they will buy coffee mugs for the expanse. And maybe they can do it all on Amazon. And they will completely internalize and naturalize the process of seeking out television shows on Amazon.

Yes. Which is still crucial for some of these services that don't have the assumed ease of use as turning on my television and going to Channel 41 or whatever the case may be. That's specifically for, in the case of Amazon, but to your larger point about a portal, similarly for HBO, bringing in the Game of Thrones fandom to the family of HBO viewers, showing them that this is, and then showing the ads for their other shows and potentially keeping some of them. That's vitally important. I am completely checked out of the Walking Dead world and universe if I was ever fully checked in.

But maybe we should say, but maybe we should say thank you to them because Lodge 49 just got a second season renewal somehow on AMC. And that's maybe how the economics work. I described that entirely to the Rock tweeting about it. The Rock tweeted about Lodge 49. My man, Paul Giobadi's show. And then he's like, here's my favorite line. and then he had like a little video of it.

Really? Wait, the guy who's on Ballers? Dwayne Johnson, yeah. Dwayne Johnson from Ballers. From Ballers, yeah. From Hobbs and Shaw. Let's talk about some of these shows that are in development. Wheel of Time was just announced recently. It's Robert Jordan's series that he was not able to finish in his lifetime.

And that's going to Amazon. And it's being developed by a guy named Rief Judkins, who wrote on Agents of Shield and Chuck and went to Brown University. Oh, probably a great guy. Yeah. and it's part of Amazon's big push to find their own Game of Thrones. They are also on record,

and it's been reported that they are developing, obviously Lord of the Rings, they're developing Larry Nivens' Ringworld, Neil Stevens' Snowcrash, and Greg Rucka's Lazarus. So they've got a lot of these kinds of things, and they bought The Expans, which is sort of in midstream.

Robert Jordan's book, I don't know, I even read it. I was going to say, have you read any of these? No, have you? No. What's your connection to this sort of? Like, Zach Barron telling me I should read these.

Is he like this? And Mallory and Jason liking them? I mean, like, I don't, I've never been like a big fantasy person. I mean, here's the thing, right? Like, this might be completely old world, old media thinking. But HBO doing a genre show like Game of Thrones was not a slam dunk at the time. People were very confused by it. It seemed de class A.

It seemed below HBO, right? HBO is a place where they did Sopranos and the wire. Why would they do genre? Well, the argument was this is exceptional in a number of ways. One of the ways being it's adult, which was translation for people get fucking killed and they have a lot of sex. Yeah, right. The show is obviously more than that and more complicated than that. But David Bennoff and D.B. Weiss did a great job along with all the, you know, Carolyn, like I'm blanking on her name, the woman who was in charge of HBO, who is the executive producer of the show.

Strauss? at Carolyn Strauss, thank you. In getting it to where it needed to be. Shout to Steve Connors. But convincing, Captain Steve Conner's to you, Flyboy, convincing everyone that this was HBO worthy. Yeah. Their bet was right.

It wasn't just HBO worthy. It was Gen Pop worthy. Yeah, but if you go back and watch the first season of Game of Thrones, it feels a lot closer to Deadwood than it does to Lord of the Rings. Yes, and I'm saying what they were banking on wasn't that they could use HBO's budget or whatever. It's that they could bring HBO's audience to this world. Yeah. and they certainly did in a way that is truly exciting.

There is a channel devoted to genre storytelling called sci-fi. Sci-fi is doing a big push and getting bigger and broader. They just lost the expanse to Amazon. But they have a bunch of shows that are interesting and deadly classes coming out that looks pretty good. Happy is good. And even so, they are struggling trying to convince people to watch that network that aren't already predisposed to watch it. this feels like retrenchment to me, honestly, to say, like, well, we're just going to,

you like this sort of storytelling? We're going to buy all the storytelling. Sure. And we're going to do it to a degree that will satisfy you, person who's already read the books. That feels to me where the ceiling for this. Now, obviously we haven't seen it, and we could be wrong,

but all of it feels a little bit like a bummer and a little bit cynical to me. So there's a couple of things happening, too. I think that they have the budgets to make these shows now. So I don't know that. Well, 10 years ago, television networks were like, we'll go in for a $150 million, $250 million season of television. Yeah, we're not spending summer tent pole film money on a season of television. Right.

I mean, even, and you hear these stories of the, you know, from Mad Men, from Walking Dead of kind of when we consider to be like the peaked TV era of stories of like these showrunners budding heads with networks about like squeezing out dimes here and there to make their shows. and also really struggling with the perception of, yeah, like all the critics may love this show, but we're really hoping we can get another season out of this. The wire was like that, you know. Every year. So that's going to kind of go by the wayside, because once you start investing this much money,

you can't really have, it's not sunk cost if you put in almost a billion dollars into Lord of the Rings development. You know what I mean? You have to make that show, and it has to be good. I think that what happens, too, is that if you remember, like, season two or three or whatever we were on Thean Thrones.

I'm sorry to interrupt you. I don't know if it has to be good. I think it has to be fine. I think it's of value to them if they make something with this big name that convinces all the people who like that name to watch it. That's what I was going to see. It never has to be better than that.

Obviously, the people involved are talented and will strive to make it better than that and to try to get as many people as possible to watch it. I'm not so cynical as to think that the people involved aren't giving their hard and soul to it and are hoping for the best and we will give it a fair shake. Of course. But I'm saying from a corporate perspective,

what Amazon is about is, growing its audience and growing its library. And it doesn't have to be great. So do you think that what they have here is, like, the baseline of interest in this show will be X? Yes. If we get just an incremental amount of more people interested in it, it's literally worth it for us.

Yes. I mean, Amazon's business has been one where profit doesn't matter. It's about growth and convincing shareholders that the company's growing. Rapacious, constant, wild growth. And, you know, every so often then they would hit on things that actually brought in profit. Like, I think up until recently, the only part of Amazon is a company that was legitimately like old world profitable was their cloud storage business storage company. Right. Right. That was actually what was paying the bills. We are, we talk, when we talk about these services that have gotten into the content business, we talk about it like it's funny money, but it is funny money.

I mean, these are publicly traded companies, or in the case of the Apple, Apple, a publicly traded company that just has a trillion dollars in cash or whatever they have, you know, to spend. We'll get the first sense of what maybe a fantasy show on Amazon looks like when Good Omen's comes out later this year, which is Neil Gaiman's, you know, it's his show about basically the birth of Satan's son and the end of the world. Yeah, I read that book. Terry Pratchett, right?

And Neil Gaiman just signed an overall with Amazon. And you signed an overall with Amazon. Now, they've, let me present a world to you, a TV world to you. Is it a fantasy world? It is because it's a time in our lives where these shows are all on. I guess Good Omen's probably only going to be like a season, but I have no idea. Wheel of Time. The Omen said he's only going to do a season of it.

Right. That that was like his, he made a deal, not a deal. He promised Terry Pratchett before he passed away that he was going to make this show. Wheel of Time. Good Omen's, this year, whatever. His dark material is on BBC, which I can't remember who's airing that here, but it's going to be a big deal. James McAvoy is in it's Philip Pullman series. Lord of the Rings, eventually, probably by 2020, I would imagine.

Netflix just bought all seven Chronicles of Narnia books, the CS-Livus books. Yeah. Game of Thrones spinoffs, which you would have to imagine, I don't know anything, I swear, and you don't either, but would have to, I would imagine that we will see a teaser of it at the end of the Game of Thrones run. It would be malpractice if they didn't. Right. And King Killer Chronicles, which is the Patrick Rothfuss, series that

Manuel Miranda is working on and is going to start in. So that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight fantasy shows. Major fantasy shows that could span seasons and that's another thing that that there's attractive about this is like it's the same thing with Game of Thrones where you were like,

oh, there's a roadmap. There's like all these characters are here, all these plot points are here, like all we have to do, not all we have to do, but we are moving the pieces on the chessboard. We're not like, shit, how does he get from Westeros to the north? You know, and I guess he flies a dragon, you know? I don't know, man. That's a lot.

I had this moment a couple of days ago where I was going to start, I was in the middle of two or three shows right now. I'm watching two or three non-commodies, so they require a little bit more like, you know, intellectual investment to track everything that's going on. And I was going to start a fourth. My wife and I were like, oh, should we give this a shot? And I was like, I don't even know if I can handle one right now. I don't know if I can keep all the plot points straight.

Now, I'm 40, and I'm on the back nine of my life here, right? Whoa. No. But I was watching Maniac and I was like, I forget something. I was like forgetting things that were happening earlier in the season of Maniac. Do you know what I mean? Like, so this is, I'm just saying density-wise in terms of like the amount of stuff people are going to be processing, the amount of starts and middles people are going to be going through here with these shows.

That's a lot. It's a very distinctive, like, experience to watch a show like Game of Thrones. Here's why they've broken the system. And here's why they've broken the system that supports us doing a podcast. If we had Amazon executives here talking to us about their decision to buy these shows or develop these projects, I think they would probably be very candid about the fact that they don't care if we watch them week to week over seven seasons over the next 10 years. They don't care. Right.

They care that they exist. in their library so that someone can watch them obsessively next year and in 20 years. I don't, again, I don't know the numbers, but just anecdotally, I would, from my own life having children, I would have to imagine that a large, reliable, beautiful, healthy chunk of change in Disney's tax sheets, if they do them, is everyone like me buying Star Wars for $20 to show their kids, buying Beauty and the Beast. quotes their kids. To show their kids.

Yeah. And themselves. Yeah. Because now it's time to watch those things. Yeah. You know, the lesson of the binge culture and television really isn't about people who watch all of Ozark season two and one weekend, Chris. It's about people who maybe are between jobs or on summer vacation.

But don't you think... And someone recommends that to them and they watch it then. And it doesn't... And it's unstuck in time. But don't you think that these specific titles elicit a different kind of... of fandom. I think possibly, but I also think it is a... Like an obsessive investment in the shows that's going to be like, I can't possibly wait more than five seconds to watch this. But it's such a closed circuit fandom that worries me. The other thing that we don't talk about as much

with Game of Thrones that made it such an appealing property when it began to develop it is that it was unfinished. Now, I know it's still unfinished in terms of the books, but it felt current in that the excitement from people who had read the books and who hadn't was in some way shared for books that, you know, like the Narnia books, books that are settled canon, these books exist. It is just putting on a show. You know, it's just throwing more money at them to create a beautiful version of them.

It's hard for me to imagine it being anything else, and it's hard for me to imagine that fandom growing past it. The other thing is just this cannibalization of the audience, right? Because you have to imagine there is some overlap between the people that all these services are assuming will watch these deep fantasy shows who will also watch all of the Star Trek shows on CBS All Access

and also the Mandalorian Favreau's Star Wars live action show over the top. Which is rumored to star or a feature Werner Herzog. Really? Yeah. Okay, I'm getting more interested. It's a lot. It's a big ask. But that's also why I bring up this idea

of breaking the system because we are not capable of processing all of this and we're not designed to going week to week talking about this. We've always talked about this. But I don't think they're making TV for that anymore. They're making content to exist. Yeah. That's an interesting point. And I don't know, you know, I've watched a few, like, I've had this conversation a few times

with, like, watching some Netflix films that have come out recently, or have been released recently, and just feeling like, what's missing here? Like, there's like a note, it's like a note process. There's like a checks and balances here. But there's also, I think that this kind of, like, it's not a letdown, but it is just a huge adjustment we have to make. to the way in which where we started this podcast and how we were talking about culture then versus where it is now,

which is just this wave after wave after wave of anticipation and release but not, it's very difficult to have any post-release like appreciation for what you're getting. Settling in here, reckoning. It's just more and more is coming.

And I think you see that in the arc of how these things are covered. Typically, something like Ozark, we've said this before, would have been on websites for two months after its release because people would be like, oh, my God, episode six, oh, my God, episode nine, what do you think is going to happen at the end of Ozark, et cetera? Now it's just like interviews and previews

of people like, well, I've seen four, that's what they made available, here's what I think, have at it. And then there are diehards who watch all of it, and then there are people who do it in piecemeal. And then there are people like, Juliet came up to me yesterday, and was like, I just started Ozark. It's never going to be we're all on the same page again. I think that one of the things that is not the only thing,

but one of the things that's cool about some of these projects is that if they are so huge and so interesting and so deep, maybe they will garner that kind of monocultural response that Game of Thrones did. I guess what I want to know, and I mean this very genuinely from people who are fans of, obviously bigger fans of the genre than we are, but particularly fans of some of these properties. pitch me the version of it where this is mind-expanding and exciting for a non-devotee of the genre. Because obviously you and I consider ourselves to be genre fans.

We appreciate the application of genre in different ways. And, you know, our preferred genre, you know, we love crime fiction, for example. And the thing that I always say about crime fiction, I read a lot of books that are essentially the same story that aren't truly exceptional. But they all give me something. that's a little flare, a little flavor, or just a little fun and escapism. But with crime fiction, I still firmly believe, and this is also, you know, the thing that I felt about making a TV show in that genre, too, is that it is still a reliable and incredible way to show real people leading real lives and real places. You can learn about cities. You can learn about people and cultures

that aren't necessarily your own because the role of the detective, you know, in the broadest possible sense, can cross different stratas of society, right? For sure. Fantasy, now I will say, I got some paperbacks in my back pages. I, as a kid, I mean, I don't know if you went down this road, but I read some Dragonlance books, my dude, for real. Sure. Like, Margar Weiss and Tracy Hickman, those are names that I can say out loud. I read their books, and I loved them.

I totally were mind-expanding and exciting and got me reading much more than I already was. But I'm trying to square what I got out of those books versus what I get out of, like, Pelicanos' books. both books written by adults that I purchased in mass market paperback. And for me, the fantasy books were sort of mind-expanding and exciting in a juvenile to teenage way. And I'm not trying to shit on- I understand because it's escapism. But in terms of like becoming someone in the world,

in terms of, you know, coming to grips with violence or classism or racism or sex, like those fantasy books dealt with some of that. But in ways that to my mind and my memory were very, I don't want to say basic, but they were gentle. Sure. And then I didn't want to continue reading books in those genre because I didn't see what they were showing me. So Game of Thrones being, you know,

I think the strongest and loudest and best counter to that argument because those books and the TV show are about people in the same way that those crime books, I think, are about people and their nature. And I appreciate that. So it's a big question to ask, tell me, and I know they exist, but what are the fantasy books giving us and what are the ones that do it for us as run us? It depends on what you want to compare it to.

I was as moved by winds of winter as I was by almost any episode of any other TV show ever made. And there's an element to Lost that I think is a fantasy. Do you know what I mean? Like there's parts of a lot of the shows that we like that are like this. I think I understand what you're saying, which is that Game of Thrones actually functioned in a lot of different ways outside of being like service to the text. Yes. And service to the genre just for the sake of. This has to have dragons and swords, so here are dragons and swords.

Right. And it could be horror. It could be chamber drama. It could be a political drama. It could be a family drama. It could be all these different things. The genre is the vehicle to get to the place you want to go. And that's what the best part about crime fiction is, is that it does the same thing.

It's just formalism. It's just giving you basic parameters from which to work in. Yeah, you're right. Like, I think that there's going to be, like, I always go back to, people have asked us a lot of times to talk about the expanse. And there's a lot to admire there. But one of the things that has always been really. difficult for me to get into the expanse is just the density of information that you have to process about this imagined world. And I know that that sounds stupid because I could say the same

thing about, you could say the same thing about Sicario. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not saying that one, one is better than the other. But I've always just had a hard time, like, wrapping my head around, like, okay, there's like a bunch of different factions and some of them are living on the the moon. And then that, when I was reading summaries of some of these books that we were talking I was like, shit, this is pretty complicated. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Although I think sci-fi has been, as a genre, has been a little bit more

reliable or at least understandable as for what it can tell us and what it can teach us and what it can be used for. The biggest possible strokes, before we move on to our next topics, there's just this, there's a retrenchment and a stratification happening very clearly.

And, you know, every one of the shows I'm going to mention is the product of, yes, corporate, thinking and investment, but also passionate creators and writers who believe in the story they're telling, and I don't want to discount that. So I'm going, not 10,000 feet, I'm going 100,000 feet here. But to say that I don't like the trend towards their Star Wars show and a Wins of Rings of Winter and Time show. Wills of Time, Narnia. On one hand, the Tolkien shows, this giant, you know, quarter billion dollar investments.

And on the other side of it, we have shows. I'm going to name three shows that I admire, one of which I worked on. Legion, Maniac, Homecoming, which are smaller shows made by very creative people about what's going on in the mind. Like, so internal.

You know what I mean? So we have the biggest possible shows on one hand, and on some level, going internal is not always going to be a small story. I'm really setting myself up in a trap here to even say this. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is about one guy's mind. We find out prior patch is just a dream.

Look, I'm setting myself up for 100 things every time I criticize anything anymore. And I'm not criticizing it. And I'm not criticizing those shows. I just, where is that middle, man? Where is the middle between those things? I don't know. I don't know what's driving that. I don't know because I don't want to make sweeping generalizations about the way in which we...

You leave that to me. No, but I think that there's an argument to be made that we relate to one another increasingly through barriers. Like, I think that there's a lot more. interfacing with screens, interfacing with basically projections of ourselves rather than ourselves.

Tribes. And I think that there's a lot of involvement in media. I don't even think when TV was at its best TV played this outsized of a role in the public consciousness. And at the same time,

that perception is actually informed entirely by my narrative, by where I live, by who I talk to, by what I read on the internet. There's lots of people out there don't give a shit about Netflix and what their plan is, and whether or not they've spent a billion dollars on CS Lewis or $5

in C.S. Lewis. But for me, when you mention that and you talk about this journey inward that seems to be happening, I think it's something that reflects maybe a tendency in people today, where it's like I am more introverted. I am having a little bit of a harder time interfacing with, like, the world outside of my computer screen, and a lot of the things that happen on your computer screen are fantasy. Yeah, I think that's a great, way to look at. I think that's a really smart reading of things because those shows that I mentioned

are all smart and inspired and creative attempts to grapple with what I believe to be contemporary problems and issues. Even Lodge 49 is kind of like that too. Another example of a show that we have to revisit, but is a small show, proudly so. Sure. In an internal show, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's odd, it's just such an odd landscape and it's such an unbalanced landscape. And you know, we see these bottomless pits jumping in, and I think that we were very spoiled by the last 10 years about what we've gotten. And we're still very spoiled, obviously, by the amount of entertainment that we have and the luxury we have just to even criticize it on the level that we do. But the battlefield is changing. And for every show like Glow or Mrs. Maisel, which are smaller shows that are proudly,

being bankrolled because they're good, yes, but also they get nominated for awards, which still matters on some level. Everything else has shifted. And we have not talked about Netflix's Tony Dan's a show or their various baking shows or whatever. Absolutely. But that's their priority. Yeah. We did just talk about Amazon's new priorities. And we also haven't talked about that while I was gone, word started to leak out that Apple kind of just wants to be NBC in the 80s. Did you see all that? Yeah. I think that there had been talk about. for a little bit about what's going to happen when there's a collision between AT&T's values and Time Warner's values when that merger went through.

HBO's values more particularly. Because HBO is obviously, as any teenager who grew up in the 80s and 90s knows, was a bastion of adult themed entertainment. And even... I didn't watch Dream On because I was a big Brian Ben Ben fan. And into the prestige era still had, I would say, gratuitous nudity and violence. in most of their shows. And whether or not that would mesh with AT&T's corporate values.

So it was kind of surprising, because I think everybody was like, well, we're going to get like a neutered version of the Game of Throne spin-off because they don't want to put them on AT&T phones or something like that. And I don't think that that's necessary. By all accounts, that's not going to be the case. But it was very surprising to hear this report that Apple was looking for like PG-13 and below in terms of their content. It's actually, it was surprising at first because I think we all,

because I'm sitting here looking at your MacBook on the table, and I have an iPhone, and we all use these products. Did you pronounce it? My iPhone? In a phone? I never said it out loud before. It's quite a good product. We think of it as a cool company because it's so dominant in our lives.

Companies aren't cool, and particularly companies that have that much money and that much at stake. So when you get into the creative realm, it's kind of from a business perspective, it's foolish, because you're just going to piss someone off unless you make something that everybody loves, which we've just spent 20 minutes saying is impossible. So it kind of makes sense

that it's going to be an awkward fit for a company that has never been out in these waters before. But it's a bummer when, and we haven't seen it again, because so far Apple has really just done press releases, but if they're going to spend a billion dollars and they're going to spend a billion dollars to make family-friendly fare, that seems unfortunate. And that also will shift the dynamics in the industry again

as to what's getting made and what's getting championed. Yeah, the collision between art and commerce is always going to be a fascinating conversation, but it's always going to be a one-side-of-fight. Not when your boy, Young Chomsky's on this podcast. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and talk about Thericallsall. A break for ads?

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All right, we want to talk about two more things. Better Call Saul Monday. This shouldn't take too long because while it was an emotionally trenchant episode, I think it was very much a little bit of a stall.

Did anything happen? Well, why are you being... I'm just kidding. That's the thing about this show. I mean, he didn't get... He didn't pass his bar. You know, he didn't get brought back into being a lawyer. That's true.

And I'm sure that story will end there. That's it. This was a good episode. Yeah. Right? I mean, they're all good episodes. Breaking Bad writer Jennifer Hutchinson wrote it. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan directed it.

It looked great. It felt great. And I think the only thing was that you were just waiting for something much more significant to happen in this episode, especially with regards to the German engineers. I'm all in on Kai, by the way. Well, let's talk about this. Let's talk about the way the show... I already made the joke that the show is kind of predictable or whatever.

It's not. And the way it's not is always fascinating, purely from a story perspective. We met Werner and his boys. We met Werner first. Love the character. Beautifully cast. They've done a wonderful job.

Episode by episode, making us care about this guy, making us understand this guy, making us look forward to seeing him... Break Crumps. Interact. Just him at the bar. kind of being wistful,

the foreshadowing of Mike getting him out of the bar by being like your wife is calling and his reaction to that. How about his, just from the very first time we met him, how uncomfortable physically he was on this long journey. Sure. The relationship with Mike,

meanwhile, we are being set up from jump to think that Kai is going to be trouble. Kai is going to be the problem. Kai's going to, whatever he's going to do. It was Werner. The whole time. It's not complicated the way they set it up, but it is elegant.

And painstaking. And painstaking. And leading us to something that, you know, impatient me that I asked for on Monday, which is let's see some bumps on the road, the downhill road for Mike, as he basically continues his successful career as someone who can accomplish anything. Right. This guy usually doesn't fail. Or when he fails, there's no EKG spike. No, exactly.

what he's probably going to have to do to his buddy Werner on Monday might be a significant spike or bump along the road. He might contract that to some of Gus's guys, though. I don't know, man. He takes it kind of personally. He's learned a little bit of German. What do you think about, well, obviously we're going to talk Kim Jimmy's stuff. Very hard to do a portmanteau when you ship that couple,

because is it just Kimmy? Or Jim? It's not. No wonder the internet's not going nuts over this. McExler? Oh, that's good. That's good. That's better.

I just wanted to also say that I love Lalo. Tony Dalton. He's good, man. He's great. Yeah. He's great. The thing about the show that I want to really focus on in this little bit that we're talking about it today before we talk about the finale next week is it doesn't waste at bats.

that's something that you have to do when you're operating on a high level but also when you're making a show It doesn't waste at bats but it takes a lot of balls It takes a lot of pitches Dude the Sabre metric crowd loves this show Yes yes Huge on base percentage

It's a really good way of looking at it It is a advanced analytic show Yeah it doesn't really hit a lot of home runs But it gets on base a lot constantly And it takes it sees a lot of pitches And it doesn't waste at bats And when you have the opportunity Because I'm sure everyone listening

knows this or remembers this, but when the character of Saul Goodman was introduced and the Better Calls, I mean, the Breaking Bad episode called Better Call Saul, he's taken out to the desert and thinks he thinks he's going to be killed by Walter and Jesse. And he says something like, did Ignacio send you, Lalo did it, or the reverse of that, but he names these names. And so Ignacio is Nacho, and we've known him since season one. So we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. Who's this other guy? They wait because they have this luxury of time. until season four. They cast it beautifully.

And he's a charming motherfucker. He's a different speed that we've seen on this show. And I love his Spanish as much as I love his English. I'm excited by his presence in a way that he's given a jolt to all the things I was, again, poor, impatient me complaining about on Monday, saying, well, Gus Fring is Gus Fring, but what are we going to do with him? Suddenly, he's getting the high heat. Yeah.

And it's more interesting. my tone on the show remains one of just admiration. Less than passion, which is different than passion. And I just love every week they have something where I'm just like, oh, goddammit, you guys really pulled that scene off, whether it's the blueprint switching with Jimmy coming in wearing a Jimmy Buffett t-shirt and spilling breast milk on the plans. Who among us?

And it's just like every week there's something where I'm like, how they're going to get out of this scene? I don't know how she's going to flip, how is she going to switch the plans? And it's not even just like, hey, look over there and they switch them. It's like, man, this is just like so precisely plotted out. It's a lot. Yeah. It's almost like the people who are writing this show get such like a contact hive

from like playing with these cons or playing with these process scenes, whether it's Mike investigating the warehouse, whether it's Kim and Jimmy switching the blueprints, whatever it is. And the other thing that I can't help but think, not just as a fan of the show, but of a fan of how TV is made and now someone who's done it a little bit, like, what better use of a writer's room than getting together a bunch of smart people who know what they're doing and say, well, she wants to switch the plans.

Let's go. Pitch me. Pitch me all the versions of it. Best Idea wins. And you know it came out of something like that and you can feel the excitement of that as it's happening. What do you think of this delay? I mean, I think it's going to be resolved one way or another in this finale and my gut feeling is that he's going to somehow get his license back by burning Kim's or something.

What do you think of that delay of him getting it back, of the Chuck shadow over it? What do you expect to see? What would you like to see? Would you like another season of him not being a lawyer? I wonder whether or not we're coming up on a time jump. Another one, because they already did one to get through this year. Yeah. An eight-month jump or nine-month, whatever they did.

Was it? Because she gets her cast off. She gets her cast off, and it's been, you know, I think he's basically he's done the first few months of his check-in. It's gone through a full year. It was about an eight or nine month jump. Okay. I don't know. I can't imagine really...

I mean, leave it to those writers to figure it out. I don't know whether or not I want to see him doing small jobs. And then... I suppose he could become a consultant. You know, he could basically be like, I can give you all the information you need to give to your public defender or something like that. I think it's time to see him doing what he's doing.

I mean, he said in that diner, he's like, they all know me as Saul Goodman. Yeah, we're getting there. And she's like, it's details. I mean, it's happening. Shout out to Kim Bigsby, who played the person in the committee. who asked him what the law meant to him,

the woman who gave Kendall, Roy, his drink in episode seven, six or seven. And breaking you, she will be the new Captain America. She will be the new Captain America, Captain Stephanie Connors. And she was in Briar Patch, I have to say, and she's a wonderful actor. Where are you with Kim?

Because the one thing that I realize, I think everyone is conditioned, despite the show, constantly telling us that it's taking its time with everything and that the more surprising outcome is probably more satisfying than the shocking and violent one. Everyone's like, oh, Kim's doomed. Kim's doomed. It's the one thing that we're watching

that we're waiting on. It's unknown on this show. Kim may be doomed in some ways. I don't think Kim is doomed on Monday. Because if you take her out of this show, I don't think you have... No, I don't think this is the last. We'll see you of Kim on Monday. No. No, not at all. I think she's around for a while.

She has to be. Yeah. Okay. Okay. What are you going to go see this weekend? Because we've got a Star is Born in Venom, and we've got to choose one for the pod. I think I'm going to definitely see Stars Born. I want to be very honest with you because I think I owe that to you and to our listeners. If you're like, I don't care about a star is born, I'm over it. I don't, I won't see any movies this weekend.

Okay. But what I will do is drop my older child off at school and go see a movie and quickly and come podcast with you about it. You don't want me to say I kind of don't care about a star is born. I mean, you can. This has clearly, talk, pitch me on these, okay? Because the office is really, really, really in on this. People are fired up about a Star is born. I think a Star is going to get nominated for Best Picture.

I think it's just like it's everything that we're supposed to think that the movies can do. It's this transporting, huge romantic look at like the culture industry writ large. It's myth-making. It's got performance aspects in terms of like the live music scenes. And I think it's like a big love story, which I don't think we've had in a drama. in a really long time. It's been mostly relegated to rom-coms. Venom very well, I mean, it's projected to make more money than a Star is born,

which would be kind of funny in terms of like what people value versus what actually winds up, you know, succeeding. But I'm really excited to see a Star is born. The first hour is supposed to be fucking incredible by all accounts. Even Anthony Lane liked it, a New Yorker. Okay, let's take away the suspense. I'm going to go see a Starzborn. But I can't, can I just take a moment to say,

I can't fucking believe there's a Venom movie. Yeah. Venom is real dumb, everybody. And our colleague and friend David Shrewmaker wrote a good piece today. Uh-huh. On the ringer. Yeah. And I have to say, I really enjoyed the piece.

And there are a couple pull quotes that I would take out to really like explain. But I do think that he pulled his punch at the end by saying like, you know, the thing about this character is that he's stupid and pointless and that's what's great about him. Yo, it's not great. Doesn't that tie into what we're talking about? Yes. Is that if it's all related to this, if there's just like a capital city of Spider-Man,

if we can just get an ex-verb movie going about that, then let's go for it. The crazy thing is that Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams are in. And Rizama! Yeah. And Reed Scott. I guess that's not as crazy. And can I spoil who's in the post-credit sequence?

I guess I shouldn't. But a major actor that we like a lot is in the post-credit sequence. to play an even dumber character in the sequel. I mean, it's just to recap, everybody, in a Marvel promotional event in the 80s that was designed to sell toys called Secret Wars, Spider-Man got a sentient alien costume that was black, which was also to sell more toys

because you could sell a different costume. In the Shoemaker article, he revealed something that I didn't even know, which was the idea of Spider-Man getting a cool, different-colored alien costume, was sent in by a Spider-Man fan in Illinois named Randy, who suggested it in a letter, and Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter,

if you want to know more about him, read our friend Sean Howe's book, Marvel Comics, The Untold Story, wrote a letter back saying, Randy, I want to buy this idea. Here's $220. Was Randy just like, holy shit? Can you imagine?

Imagine, like, stranger things, but the first 20 minutes of risky business, that's Randy. Anyway, it's an alien, costume that has a tongue and teeth. That's it, man. So either I think you've got to go full Deadpool and be like, this is about a costume. Isn't he like Glenn Greenwald in this movie?

Like he's like this investigative reporter? I'm a reporter here. Tom Hardy being that reporter in San Francisco. It's just I don't understand. This does seem to be because of like the high class imprimatur of the actors they got involved in it. By doing so, the denial of what it is, this does seem to be the empty, slobbering alien costume of movies.

Yes. It does not make any sense. They asked Tom Hardy what his favorite part of Venom was. This is incredible, too. What a legend. It is among the 30 to 40 minutes that they cut out of it, including some hardcore puppetry. There was rumors that this was supposed to be like a hard R movie.

The executive producer is now saying, like, there's not like an R-rated version of this lying around. Like, this is the movie that we shot. Like, it was always supposed to push the limits of PG-13, basically. Whatever. You know, I mean, just make the fucking Deadpool movie if you want to make it. Like, I don't understand. And I don't, how are we in 2018 and we still get up to the editing process and you guys are like, oh, actually it needs to be PG-13?

Like, do you think anybody is just like my 13-year-old can't go to our-old? My 12-5-year-old. Yeah. Are you kidding me? Who's like, where is this? It's not Tipper Gore's America. Nobody's stopping their kid from seeing Deadpool. Kids see Deadpool.

Do you think we are approaching, do you think Tom Hardy is in any sort of professional jeopardy here? Because we don't know him. We never met him. We are huge fans of his work. Yes. But. This is a dude who goes full fucking method, right? Like, he does the voice all the time.

It's not like he's like, I'm going to be venom. He's like, I've decided that this is an Italian-American San Francisco journalist who becomes a Spider-Man off-shoot. And then when he's done, we'll be like, I'm sorry, which microphone is on? Which camera am I looking at? This movie sucks. You know what I mean? Like, people are watching that.

Like, that stuff matters. I feel like, but then again, Tom Hardy, one of the great cinematic artists of our time, was like tenting his fingers like fucking Jonas'era in the classic NY Times opinion page days. That's right. It was just like, what's Tom Hardy's franchise going to be? Hmm, the slobbering space costumes, the one for me, mate. Shout out to Randy. So the decision making here is suspect up and down the board.

But I just feel like if you start with something stupid, I don't know how you end up with something better than stupid. I get you. That's kind of, I'm just looking at the supply chain here. I think that anything can be made into a good thing. I think that you don't need to handicap yourself by starting with a bad thing. What I would like to know, Kevin Feigey, who gets a lot of credit from everyone, so I don't feel like we need to jump on the train here.

Are you coming for a Feige now? No, I'm actually going to say, oh, I'm going to bring it all back, baby. I just put my arms around the whole conversation. Are you ready for this? Here comes the context lasso. Randy! It's that if we're saying the thing about Game of Thrones that made it special is that it was able to convey what its core concept was outside of its intended or inevitable audience.

The thing that Feigey's done so well is he could reduce every major Marvel character to the log line that appeals to the general population. And Spider-Man, obviously, he was eager to get Spider-Man away from Sony or to borrow back from Sony because he's the simplest one of all. With great power comes great responsibility. he's a high school kid who has equal troubles in both worlds. Like, we get that, right? If he was in charge of more than the Spider-Man part of Sony's little thiefdom within Marvel,

would he have greenlit a Venom movie? Because Venom doesn't have any reason to exist, especially outside of Spider-Man. Do you get what I'm saying? I totally get what you're saying. I think the decisions he's made has been very... We will look back on the 2008 to like 2012-13 era where some really bad Marvel movies got made or some pretty, like, fine movie. Like Thor the Dark World?

Yeah, and we're going to look back and we're going to be like, that guy got to, like, mess around and fail a couple of times, which is now because there's so much scrutiny on, like, did you set up properly the next cinematic movie universe? Yeah. It's like, no, you can't fail.

So if they make a bad venom movie, like, the whole thing falls apart. But look, this also isn't rocket science. If you look at the Marvel movies that didn't work, they failed the simplest question of all, which is, why do you exist? Now, the second Thor movie existed because they had made a framework of momentum to get to the Avengers. And they were like, well, make another one.

The Avengers movie, the first one, didn't work. And the reason why, why do you exist? Because it would be cool to have everybody together. There's no reason behind that. But they got through those movies. You're right because of where they were on the development curve and on everyone paying attention. Why did they exist now? Well, now we care about these people individually.

And they are making them like TV shows. This Avengers Infinity War plus next year's movie It's just the next season of the show Of these actors that we like to hang out with Right? And then the only one that kind of You wonder if who would still pass the test Are those Ant Man movies And the answer is

Well, they're fun. Sure. They're fun Sure. In quotes sometimes, but they're fun. And all the DC movies and all the Joker movies and all that They fail that test. There's no reason for them to exist Other than Kevin Sujihara's giant world domination plan Reannounced release dates through 2025. That's right. except for Aquaman.

I know why that exists. And I'll tell you next week. He talks to fish. Until Monday. Are we ending on this weird low note? Yeah, I have nothing else. What are we talking about next week, buddy? Fucking stars born, dog.

Yes. Yeah. We're coming out of the shallows? Yeah, and then we'll talk next Thursday. Better Call Saw finale. We have some guests coming through in the next couple of days. Yeah, Finnish maniac for next week, everybody, for next Thursday. There's something that you could do for reasons that we'll discuss next week.

Okay. his name's Jackson Main that's his name it's supposed to be based vaguely on Caleb Falwell from Kings of Leon sure terrific did he come up with that name himself or do you think he paid a bunch of people

to like workshop the name because it's a great name is the mic still going do you want to know if there's a writer's room coming up with Bradley Cooper character names yes and I'd like to apply okay have a good weekend for these

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