The Watch - In or Out on ‘Killing Eve’ and ‘Ocean’s 8’, Plus Andy Discusses His New Pilot, ‘Briarpatch’ | The Watch (Ep. 244)

Episode Date: April 16, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Andy’s upcoming pilot for USA, ‘Briarpatch,’ and how that project came to be (2:00). Then they catch up on ‘Better Call Saul’ (13:00). Later, Chris and Andy discuss whether they are in or out on Phoebe Waller-Bridge's ‘Killing Eve’ (27:00) and the upcoming all-female ‘Ocean’s 8’ heist spinoff (34:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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wearing a phantom of the opera mask and ringing the Liberty Bell. It's Andy Greenwald! We're back? One, two, three, four, five, sixers. Yes. We're back. Yeah, no shit. You have some of that hometown pride in you.

Blood type yingling. Wow. What's going on? Welcome back. I know you tried to replace me. You always do that with like the like basically superstar guest host bit. Because who else could possibly come close to replace him? That's nice.

I was hoping you would say something like that. Our friend Jake Johnson, big fan of you. Is he? I mean, when you're not here. Yeah, exactly. He likes you from a distance. Andy, it is Monday. It is the watch.

We are back and we got to get to the news that everybody's talking about. Yes, sure. As some of you guys may have seen, the USA Network announced some pilots that they are making. That's true. And the one that clearly affects the watch the most is Treadstone. I agree. I agree a thousand percent. I agreed when I learned the news myself.

Your boy Tim Cring is making the Jason-born extended universe show. It's what we've dreamed of. We literally willed this into existence. I know. And let me tell you, the irony of my slightly smaller dream coming true concurrent with the larger... Is that Scott Kingery getting to start at shortstop over J.P. Crawford? That's my number three dream.

Okay. My number two dream was our friend of the pod, Megan Abbott, getting to make Dary for USA. Shout out to Megan Abbott. But above all of that, was the fact that there's going to be a born show. Like, let's really not, that that is the lead. And I should also say another friend of the pod

and my executive producer, Sam Esmail, for my show, also feels this way. You don't give it away. I'm trying to, then I come in and I say, Andy, of course. That's not the only news. The biggest news. It's not bigger than Treadstone. No, I mean, we'll see. We'll see.

Andy has his own pilot on the USA Network. It's called Briar Patch. That's right. Applaud that in the back. crew. Andy's got a pilot Breyer Patch. It's based on a novel

by I think collectively our favorite novelist probably between the two of us. Ross Thomas. You've been digging in the stacks recently you told me. Well, this is what I want to talk to you about is that I'm so excited

for you first of all. Genuinely happy. Thank you. Plotting your downfall. Sure. Definitely like dropping breadcrums to deadline to the reporter wherever I can about

some of your crippling habits. My eccentricities in the workplace. Your inability to get bonded. Yeah. These are all valid concerns. Tell people what it was about Breyer Patch specifically. Tell them a little bit about the thing. But I want to know what it was about.

You're reading this book and you're like, I can do this. Yeah, so we, and I think you want to have a larger conversation about Ross Thomas. Not really. No, I just want to move on. Or his deadline called him Ross Tom. Oh, yeah? Shouts at Deadlines Copy Editing Team. Yeah, so my favorite writer by far and wrote 25 books over his writing career,

which spanned from the 60s to the mid-90s. Briar Patch is kind of an outlier, though, because a lot of the things that I love about his books, it's a lot of things I love about his books, like a globe-trodding plot, like a lot of banter and day-drinking. Day-drinking. Briar-Patch doesn't have all of those things. Briar Patch is in many ways the most straightforward of his books. It's much more hard-boiled. Did that show about it at you at first?

Yeah, and I think the thing about it is that because it was such a standalone, I felt like it was a really great skeleton, basically, to build a story on it to change, which I did as well. So, yeah, it's felt like something that was very, very solid to base something on. It's a story in the book. It's about a guy named Ben Dill who wakes up on the morning of his 38th birthday in Washington, D.C., where he works as an investigator for the Senate to find out that his sister, who's 10 years younger, same birthday, is a police detective in the hometown where they grew up, and she's just been blown up in a car bomb. He goes back to this town to find out what's going on. I've gender-swapped the lead, so it's a woman finding out her sister has been murdered and brought it up into the president.

day and changed a couple other details. So you got text messaging. I got text. There is text messaging in the pilot. Yeah. I mean, why not? There's a lot of Twitch. There's a lot of Overwatch.

Yeah. A lot of memes. Yeah. Because I want to communicate with children. Think about it. Think about it. Think about a meme is big on this show. But yeah, it felt like a, it's just a classic setup.

Someone goes back to a corrupt hometown and sees what's what. So that's why it stood out. It also felt more straightforward and pliable. Tell me a little bit about Jan. because one of the things we always talk about is like this partnership that happens usually between writers and directors obviously Sam's is like kind of an outlier

that he writes and directs pretty much everything he does especially the last season of robot right and the next next season of robot but there's always this partnership are we looking at the next Nick Piz Carrie Fukunaga team here is a spicy question maybe yeah yeah I'm super into this guy

I love 71 was that yeah 71 The director is, it's Yandamange. Sorry. That's okay. But I don't want to get in bad blood with him already. He's a terrific director. He made this film called 71 about The Troubles.

Yeah, with Jack O'Connell. Highly recommend it. He's an incredibly talented director. He also has worked in TV, worked with Charlie Brooker on a show called Dead Set. He also directed a lot of the first season of a show called Top Boy. Yes. It's kind of like a British The Wire. It's on Netflix now.

People are talking about that. Highly recommended. Leticia Wright, who plays Shurie and Black Panther, her first, acting, professional acting job was at that show. Drake is rebooting it for Netflix. So the original is on Netflix and now Drake is rebooting it. He's making a new season of it, yeah. But this one is just about people giving groceries to other people.

Yes. How did you know? He's an incredibly talented director and he was really, he got the script and I'm very excited because he uses words like color palette. Yeah, because that's what I was going to ask. I think that of the, like, you see things from a writing structure how do I take apart the clock and put it back together kind of storyway. And I think that I was curious about what it was like to talk to somebody who probably is thinking about things purely in visual terms, purely in how is this going to work? How am I going to block this? How am I going to stage this? What's going to be the tone?

Yes. And how much, you know, because Ross Thomas, and I want to talk about this more because we're going to talk a little bit about killing Eve a little later in the podcast. And I've been thinking a lot about this. But Ross Thomas is, for all the different things that you can celebrate about him, the exact tone. that he hits, which is somewhere between there are these horrifying things that are sometimes happening in his books, but the characters are all kind of at this slight two martini glaze removed.

That is not unlike Elmore Leonard. I mean, you can see that there is, it's a bit you can do within crime fiction to kind of have your characters always be the smartest people in the room except for when people are doing things to them. And I kind of wondered about how Jan and you were talking about this. Well, that's the key question.

That's the key question for the whole project. Because, and this is, by the way, I'm so happy to be talking about this. You know this has been brewing for a really long time. It's the first I heard of it. He doesn't really respond to texts. The first thing that happened, I mean, when Sam read the script quite some time ago when I wrote it, his response was, this is supposed to be funny, right? And the answer was, sure.

No, it is. It is a tightrope tone that exists in the book. And one of the appealing things about the book is that it's fun, even though it can also be sometimes tense or thrilling or even upsetting, but there is a sense of competence in these characters and just core abilities that makes it really, really entertaining to read along with and to be in their world. It's different on film. And the language that you used to describe what you want has to be different. And one of the things that was interesting in the conversations with Yan, when we were talking to different directors about who is the right person to do the pilot,

was the references he made. And I think this is how directors talk, is, were correct. The reference, one of the first things he mentioned in our conversation, uh, we were Skyping with him and Sam and I were Skyping with him was Blood Simple by the Cohen Brothers. And it is way too premature to suggest that anything we make will be in the league of that film. But that is an example of a movie that is noir that has crime.

So my blog headline is Greenwald claims to dunk all over Blood Simple with unfilmed pilot. Cohen, who, Coen brothers who? Yeah. says minor podcaster and reform television critic. But it's interesting to be around directors now they speak about things and how they're going to be able to manage that tightrope, you know. And I think that that's the collaboration. That's what's going to be interesting about it.

But it does help, of course, to have a director and Sam overseeing the project because he speaks both languages. Let me ask you this. Yeah. You mentioned being a reform television critic. Did the voice ever come up when you're writing? Did the TV, did you find it easy? to go through and just be like, I'm just going to write this, you know, I'm going to adapt this novel

that I love. It's going to be, I think, and it's fair to say that that was sort of an exercise for you, right? It was sort of like you were trying out how to do this, this kind of thing. And I was wondering if at any point in the writing process did the critic part of your brain ever had any influence over what you were writing or even kind of inhibit you at all, or did you ever have to, like, kick that guy out of your brain? When I got to page eight and I wrote a scene where my lead character looked in the mirror and said, you're not a bad woman. You just did a bad thing. You just did a bad thing. I was like, but I went with it. No, I mean, personally, I can't fucking believe that you just wrote a show about robots.

It's weird. It's super weird that I did that. No one saw that coming. But I am thrilled to be part of the DC Comics extended universe because it's a bit of, it's a passion of mine. Yeah. No, you got it right. This was something that I just did on my own. I wanted to, take a shot at this book and I felt very free because no one was expecting anything. It was not an assignment. All that stuff came later. People were, as far as I know, we're not checking for a Briar patch script. And Sam and other people involved were not familiar with the book or anything. They just saw this script. So because of that, I was able to get out of my own head and have a great writing experience. Now that we're having conversations like this, now it's going to be an issue now that I have to

Yeah, I just spooked you. Potentially write nine more of them. But it was, it was freeing to be able to say, you know, look, I think everyone who loves TV, whether they cover it or just watch it, can articulate what they like and what they want to watch. And I was lucky enough to have an experience where I wrote something that I was excited about. How many episodes? Well, so to recap the bigger picture, we're just making the pilot. So we're just making one if they like it. So you won't commit to a second season then? I won't commit to a first season.

I might be busy. It depends. Jake and I have another podcast we're going to start together. it's sort of, it's like Shark Tank, I think you mentioned. It's about really sponsoring young creatives in the business community. Okay. So that might take up more of my time than I'm anticipating. But ideally it would be a 10 episode first season.

Okay. If we get to make nine more of them. And I know that you were thinking about, or at least you guys are in talks, to shoot the pilot in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yeah. And that's why you were watching Better Call Saul? It's not the only reason, but yes. But you were, because I think you were looking,

you were saying to me that you were like, oh, guess what? I just banged through episode season three of Better Call Saul. Well, there was a couple things. And then I was like, allowed me to read you the schedule of the NBA playoffs. Yes. Why that won't be happening for me. Yeah, so if we're segueing to that, that basically I did want to see what, remind myself with the rich possibilities of New Mexico were like,

because we may be spending a bunch of time there this fall. But, yeah, I also, because it hit Netflix. Yeah. I felt people, if I, if I'm cut, do I not bleed? People were heated that we just glossed over the third season of a show that we had covered quite heavily that figured into the... Okay, the first season we covered heavily. We kind of touch and goad the second season. But we just, both of us realized, I think we looked up five weeks into this third season when it was airing last year and realized we hadn't watched it.

Maybe we could just slip through. But I think that was a show that we've hit issues with hourly shows that are released on a weekly basis. And that sometimes you just fall behind on two or three episodes, you're like, man, that's three or four hours. I got to dedicate to this. But also, we had had an issue, and this is relevant to the other conversation, too. I think we had kind of had an issue with the show because it was so granular. It took the same clinical approach to its subject matter that Breaking Bad did, but the subject matter was essentially legal doc review, not drug dealing. Sure.

Which is a little bit less exciting. I mean, your mileage may vary. And also it always felt a little odd That it was a prequel and we kind of knew the fate of some characters It just felt somehow less essential for those reasons What I wanted to tell you was I really enjoyed watching the third season Particularly on Netflix This is a show that I thought did better

Bingeable on demand How come You can see the forest more Because God does this show paint the tree in loving detail but you can sort of push forward and get a bigger sense of what they're doing. But also, so here's my take on the show. I really enjoyed the third season. This show is a craftsperson's dream.

This show is like watching someone paint a Renoir on a grain of rice. It is a masterpiece in miniature. And purely from a technical and craft perspective, and the craft being television, and yes, maybe my head is in a different place lately now when I'm trying to think about this, but the writing is jaw-dropping, the seam construction, the pacing,

the performances by Ray Seahorn especially, but Michael McKean is great this season. Giancarlo Esposito is back on the show. Spoiler. Well, I think people know. Damn. It's right in the... You go to Netflix.

I'm not going to watch now. You're done? You're looking for any reason to be out on it. I still am of mixed opinion whether what this means in the scheme of things. You know, it is... Someone wrote me the other day that it is the best made show on TV

and the least relevant. in some ways. Sure. That all is true. And maybe, but maybe it's time to consider this like a gift of this deluge age of television that we can have these three seasons of intricately plotted television show about the broken relationship between two middle-aged brothers. So, I was wild to me.

I'm curious about something. Is there anything, can you be so specific about what you're, when you're watching, say, Better Call Saul, but you could even apply it to Breaking Bad. You could apply it to killing Eve. you could apply it to anything. Trust. The little things you're noticing now when you're watching

that you didn't notice, say, three, four, or five years ago when you weren't thinking in these terms about scene construction, character development, dialogue, that you're like, oh, now that the shoe is on the other foot, this is...

Well, I think the biggest one is you see the crumb trail being laid. All the work that is done, the consideration, the patience, you know, there's often something that probably was just a spark, like a great idea. Like in the case of Better Call Saul, it's Chuck being having his issue with electricity. It's a great visual, it's a great idea, what are we going to do with it?

And then having the foresight to realize the richness of what you have, how, and then taking the time, excruciating time, sometimes it felt like, to lay the crumbs towards where you're going, towards a rupture in this relationship, towards something unforgivable, towards, when the little, little things suddenly become something big. The other thing, and I did mention this when covering Breaking Bad, that I'm always in awe of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and all of that crew that has remained fairly consistent between the two shows, they make it look like they planned everything. And I know from their interviews, but also just from the way TV works, they didn't. Right.

There are plenty of accidents or fixing things later in hindsight and connecting things that weren't necessarily meant to be connected. But the way they take advantage of that stuff makes it look effortless. And now that I know it is effortful, it's even more impressive and makes me more daunted. Because, God, it's like a masterclass. Plus, that show is directed. Like, they direct the shit out of it. It has a very, like, you know, we were talking about tone.

And I guess I did want to ask you a little bit more about Ross Thomas or just talk about it in general because I happen to pick up to reread one of his, like a shorter books that's called, if you can't be good. That's a good one. But with Better Call Saul, I think sometimes what I, the issue that I have is the lack of a gear change that. Breaking Bad did have is because they had Jesse and then Walt and then in later seasons Jane and then in later seasons obviously Gus and Mike and Saul to some extent that you had these a variety of experiences and a variety of emotional gears and especially I think that's why Jesse became such a huge part of that show is that for as much as Cranston was the epicenter of it it needed that variety of voice and

that variety of tone. And then I hadn't really been feeling that way about Breaking Bad or that the gear... Sorry, about Better Call Saul and that the gear change in Better Call Saul largely was McKin and I was like, you know, like, it's not, it's nothing,

it's a perfect, like, piece of writing. It's just that it wasn't really like that entertaining. No, and it's worth noting, it's so bizarre. It's two shows. The Mike show and the Saul slash Jimmy show rarely cross. Right.

And the mic show for, a lot of this third season is really, it's not fan service, but it's laying the foundation for everything you saw. So I don't think it's a spoiler to say, we meet Gus, or to say that Gus is maybe scoping out a lab that might be super. Sure. Like all the, so that's sort of fun and exciting to see for super fans, but it is less dramatically thrilling. But there are these little pockets and moments, and there's an episode in the middle of the season that I'm a full year in recognizing, but it was one of the best hours of TV of 2017. It's called chicanery. And it's the high point of the season, it's the fifth episode. And I think if people watch their way through that,

you'll feel like it was time well spent. Good. But Ross Thomas, people read Ross Thomas books. If there's nothing else comes to this experience other than the opportunity for Chris to drag me for six months over how much more we would both like to see Treadstone, which is not inaccurate. It better not be zero sum. It better not be you or Treadstone. Don't make me choose. I will bow out. You know me and Tim Cring go back, like fat crayons. Look, man. It is a born TV show If it is just men, character actors in suits, in rooms, yelling at each other,

that's a show we want to watch. Sure. If it's just the first 10 minutes of Bourne Legacy when Norton is jogging in the rain and Stacey Keech calls him on his cell phone and then pours him a thick tumbler of whiskey and basically says to clean it up, I love it.

If nothing else other than that comes of this experience, making more people read Ross Thomas is a good thing. I mean, this guy wrote 25 immaculate thrillers. Yes. Some are Cold War type stories. There's one set in World War II. Most of them are about conspiracies or corruption. He wrote a whole bunch of D.C. politics books.

Breyer Patch, I had in the past told people to start there because it is such a clean noir. It was, it's one of his books. It's the one that won, the Edgar Award for Best Mystery in 1984. My favorite book has a title that did not age well. It's called Chinamen's Chance. it introduces two characters that he wrote three books on Artie Wu and Quincy Durant. It's Malibu. It's 1979. There's folk singers who turn into bomb-throwing radicals.

They're dead pelicans on the beach. It is such a fun and entertaining and imaginative read. Side note for people who don't know this, the reason that book is called Chinamen's Chance, which was not a cool name in 1970s either, is that Ross Thomas, who liked to drink his dinner, let's say, was having a late-night boozer with a bunch of people at a conference in the 70s, like a mystery writer's conference, and an agent bet him,

what are the two words that you could not put in a book title and still make them bestsellers? And they all chatted about it. And those words were the aforementioned word, Chinaman and Dwarf. And the book after Chinaman's chance was the ape's dwarf. I particularly like a lot of his more lean. I mean, I really love The Fools in Towner on our side, which is probably his most. historically sprawling and epic. But I love the money harvest.

I love if you can't be good. I love pork choppers, the Union book. Or Dita Man. Yeah, it's just all these that are just really kind of jabs to the chin are, I mean, you can't go wrong with almost any of his books. So I'm sure we'll be talking more about him in the future and we'll obviously be talking a lot more about

Briar Patcher, or at least I will with my new co-host, Jason Manzukas. I assume you've been building on the side. Did Katie Nolan say no? It just sounds like she's busy, you know? God, we'd be to be. people have lives. You know, stuff happens. She's up for the leading treadstone, maybe.

Wow. Yeah. In. Okay, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, and we'll come back and talk about killing Eve. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the Black Tucks. The Black Tux is the easy way for guys to rent suits and tuxedos online. For more than a year now, Greenwald and I have been wearing the Black Tux to special events

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Oh, let's just let people know what's going on in the next couple of shows. Thursday? It's book club. We didn't say. I know. You're going to say? I was just about to say it. I got excited.

Thursday, we were doing Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. Yes. And we're going to have a special guest with us. To talk about it. James Crumley. No, unfortunately, he has passed on. Yes. Boy, would he have been a good guest, though.

Yeah. Oh, do you want me to say who the guest is? Yeah. Sorry. That's why I threw it to you. I don't know. I just thought you were having a moment. A senior moment.

What do you think I just like? I just saw the veil drop over your eyes. Don't worry. I'll tweet through it. I'm good. Our friend Elwood Reed, who is a TV creator, writer, showrunner, worked on the bridge, worked on the Shai. And a big, big fan of crime fiction and James Crumley.

And in fact, I believe met Big Jim in Montana. Is that his nickname? Yeah. So I think I'll have some stories for us on Thursday while we talk about. talk about the last good kiss. Okay, and then next Monday, we will be talking about the first episode of the second season of Westworld, which airs on Sunday night. Yeah, you know, I tried to avoid this, but this is coming.

Yes. And then next Monday we'll be talking about Westworld. It's back. First episode of the second season, get, you know, get your, get your anti-andy. I'm going to be open-minded, man. Sure. Look, if you're, if you're starting as low as I am. It can only go up.

It could only go up. That's true. We'll also probably be talking about Barry. We might have some special guests joining us. I hope so very much. For Monday about Barry. And yeah, a bunch of other stuff coming up. We should make sure you guys are keeping up with some of the shows that we're watching.

So Handmaid's Tale is coming. On the 25th next week, we will be talking about that. And Infinity War, obviously, we'll be doing some stuff about that. Also, can't forget about the big homies in Italy on trust. We are a little behind because you were traveling. And my wife was traveling. Yeah. I'm an episode behind.

I'm an episode behind. That's why we're not talking about it today. Yeah, but today we are going to talk about killing Eve. Bottom line, are you in or are you out? And they're out of what? Do we preview that a little bit last week, but two episodes of aired? The second one last night, I wanted to talk a little bit about this show in relation to another show that we used to talk about a lot, which was Mind Hunter.

And that was just because, you know, a lot of people had critiques of Mind Hunter because it didn't afford a lot of time to a female perspective when it came to, they were largely victims. There was two major characters, two major women characters in the show. But for the most part, it was a show about murder and the psychology behind killing

told almost entirely from a male perspective. And I don't think I truly appreciated that critique until I saw Killing Eve and watched some of the same themes being discussed by female characters. And I was wondering if you would notice that too. Yeah, I think it's a great observation. And I think that one of the dominant sensations of watching Killing Eve in the characters,

and actually for me is in the audience watching it, it's like wildly suppressed laughter. It's like you try to hold a joke in and you can't and it just explodes everywhere around you, whether it's appropriate or not. And I think that that is in many ways the main thesis of Phoebe Wallerbridge's work. We're not supposed to do this, but I can't help myself. And why am I not supposed to do this? Yeah, the idea of compulsion. But not just compulsion, but what has society said?

okay for me to care about, to be excited about. That was a major idea in Mindhunter is what is deviance and what do we name these things and what happens after we name them? And a, you know, MindHunter is a period piece and societally we were not talking about some of these things or not considering them or taking them seriously. And that was a lot of the work that is being done in Mindhunter. What is it, what does it mean to be deviant? What is it, what is that word, how do you define that word?

What is behavior? What do we do? What do we want? How do we process it? Killing Eve is a very much 2018 show, and what it is primarily interested in is what are women allowed to do and be and care about? And it is exhilarating,

first and foremost because I think Phoebe Wallerbridge is the best writer working in TV, but also because we see these characters, Sandra O. character and the Jody Comer character, exploding and pushing through these things constantly. The opening scene of the second, episode, which is between Sandra O. and Fiona Shaw, where Sandra basically can't contain herself and she can't find her words because she's avoiding the one thing that she wants to say, which is

she's a huge fan. She's just a fan of this woman, partly because she's projecting, partly because she wants to live a more vibrant life. Now, we are in a slightly askew world where vibrancy takes the form of pushing hairpins into the eyeballs of mafiosos. Your mileage on that may vary, and I will say, the few people who have pushed back at me, my parents, who I know are not listening, who I think liked the show in theory, but are troubled by the callousness of murder in it, when I was super exhausted last night and had spent a weekend of child caregiving, murder was not on my mind. I just couldn't get my rhythms attuned to the show. I watched the rest of it this morning, and I love it again.

I was much more stable and ready to be like, okay, I understand this is a cracked mirror, And what we're talking about isn't the death. What we're talking about is the sort of bubbly mania of self-expression. Yeah, you actually, the first scene in the show, the second episode, is actually the Jody Comer character killing Villanelle, killing somebody in Bulgaria. Yes. And the guy, as he's being sort of chased through this office, is like, why are you doing this? And she says, I have no idea. Now, obviously, that will be probably explained in a larger.

way, but what it's getting at is that weird point right in the that weird point where you can't quite articulate something where, and that's what the Sandra O character talks about, what's what Eif talks about in the next scene is I'm just fascinated what would make a woman want to do this. And that's, it's just a great companion piece. I'm not a companion piece as if it's any, like, lesser than

Mindhunter, but it's an incredible look at the, a very similar content idea in this, from a completely different perspective. I love Mine Hunter. It was one of my favorite shows of last year, and I don't want to big up one and potentially make it sound like I'm downgrading the other. But Mind Hunter is an exceptional version

of a bunch of stories that we have seen slightly before. What's so thrilling about watching Killing Eve, and there are other things that I've felt this way about in recent times as well is if you just turn the camera slightly or give someone else the pen or the final draft app or whatever we're talking about, look at the story you can have. Look at the different tones you can play with.

It's exhilarating. That's the word I keep coming back to. There's a moment in the second episode. Definitely not a spoiler moment, but it could be boilerplate, where Fiona Shaw is showing Sandra O., their new headquarters for her secret division that's investigating this international assassin.

Phoebe Wallerbridge gets that we love this stuff. We read genre stuff because we want the secret headquarters. We want the back street. We want to know who has the key that opens this door and what's behind it. So we're getting that. But right as the lock is being tumbled and we're about to enter into the next phase of the show and of Sandro's character, Eve's life, Fiona Shod looks down at the gutter and says, I saw a rat drink a can of Coke right there. Both paws.

And it's so funny. And I just want to live in a world and watch, live in a world where I watch TV and there is room for those lines. Yeah, that kind of, it's that kind of, it's not loose ends, but it's, it's, it. It has like a certain improvisatory feeling. And it's those sort of small dots of color that may seem unrelated that, if I can make a pointillism reference, add up in the long term towards a richer viewing experience. What is it that you think is so special about Phoebe Wallerbridge's writing? I think it's that.

I think that she is excited by taking the wrong road. Seeing the fork in the road, one is traditional storytelling, and instead she veers off. she chases the thing, the shiny object or the bird that's flying in the wrong direction in the forest of her brain, and chases after it with a kind of mischievous glee. That's the feeling that shoots through all of us. No one else could have written this show this way. Many, many, many, many people. Any screenwriter in London or Hollywood could have been given the raw text of these novellas and said,

I get it. It's a two-hander and it's about an assassin. None of them would have produced this. and her willingness to chase down these seemingly unrelated strands to make a show that, again, could be bog standard. You know, it could be assassin, cat and mouse game, and bend it to her interests and her passions naturally to find a show that is about 21st century feminism,

but is also about killing people in Bulgaria. It's exciting. So on the in and out scale, we're obviously all in. Way in. This is my favorite show right now. Speaking of another take on a material that we love, Ocean's 8 is coming out in just a little bit. They really did this movie, right?

Wasn't there part of you that was like, that seems like a good press release, are they really making it? They made it. It's coming out June 8th. Gary Ross directed it and it stars... A big homie sea biscuit. Sandra Bullock, Rihanna, Ann Hathaway.

You say her name. Mindy Kaling. Kate Blanchett. I want to tell you something about Kate Blanchett. Yes. There was a minute there. and I was kind of like looking at my laptop, looking at, I'm on the dark web,

I'm in my, I'm on my cryptocurrency interface. You're all about that blockchain. And I'm thinking about selling some of my Kate Blanchett stock. Not that she's not a great actress. Wow. But I felt like Kate Blanchett was trying too hard to be fun. Wow. Can I just proffer something here?

Did you need to sell that stock to cover your grievous losses in the Ron Eldard Futures Market? Because I didn't let, I never liked Eldard, like that. There's lots of dudes that I did like. There's plenty of people from the cast of Black Hawk down that I would have invested heavily in, but it wasn't Ron Eldard. Oh, no, my God. I'm messing up. It wasn't Ron Eldard. It was another blandly handsome, blonde actor that you went all in on. Boyd Holbrook? No, I'm picking up on the Holbrook vibes. I'm not off on Holbrook.

What's his name? Harvey Dent? Aaron Eckhart? Yeah. My Aaron Eckhart stock is just fine. Thanks very much. That's the one. Harry Eckhart had a killer year a couple years ago. A couple years ago. No, because he had that sully. Listen. And then he was the, he did the hair loss thing and he was Miles Teller's boxing coach.

You know why everyone knows that was a couple years ago? Because that was the last time you rolled up your Merrill Lynch portfolio. I'm doing a live on air Google of what's up with Aaron Eckhart. One second. What's up with Aaron Eckhart? He's in the fucking Romanoffs, man. Now, man, who, here's who's into Aaron Eckhart. Me, Christopher Nolan, Miles Teller, and Matthew Weiner.

Listen, your boy Young Treadstone over here just straight up on a live microphone on a podcast called him Ron Eldard. I look at Twitter. I have an IMDB pro account. Yeah. I still called him Ron Eldard. We got off track here.

I just... I wanted to say that I was worried that Kate Blanchett wasn't fun, okay? That wore that she was a super fun, but that the roles that she was choosing when they were not, you know, Blue Valentine or something when she was just like, yeah, let's loosen up, let's let her hair down.

She wasn't allowed to be fun. She's not fun in Ragnarok. There's lots of things that are cool and fun about. She's super fun in Ragnar. She's trying way too hard. Wow. Trying too hard to have fun. I think that that was a movie where she was like, you know, who's going to get a kick out of this one?

My kids. That's a whole genre of performance. Yeah, I did it for my kids. That is Johnny Depp from 2003 through present. Yeah. So, you know who I think is like one of the great. actors of all time, Kate Blanchett. Okay, she, Carol. This is called a walkback. It's not a walkback. It's just that I was worried. Did you just say Carol? Yeah. Carol, I'm all about that Carol. That was

sad. But here's the thing. Yeah. She looks really fun in this movie. Okay. Yeah. Because she's having a blast. Here's why, and not for her kids, her kids wouldn't like this movie. Might be a little bit over their heads. Not sure. Let me look how old their kids are. Definitely Google the children of famous celebrities. That's a good thing to have in your dark net folder. I didn't know how I felt about this movie. Big picture, I love heists.

There should be more heists in our life all the time. And the Oceans movies are great fun, so we should definitely do more of them. Here was the crucial thing that got me on board. When I found out not only was Kate Blanchett in it that she's playing the Brad Pitt part. That's the most brilliant decision here. Right.

Watching the trailer, there are a lot of, I don't knows here, but there are a lot of I do knows. Among them, Anne Hathaway as the villain, this is a great call. This is a great call by Team Hathaway to get her back in the game. Absolutely. It's a really smart play. Supporting cast, obviously exciting.

Rihanna is in this movie. Mindy Kaling is in this movie. But the crucial thing for me is Sandra Bullock, who doesn't love watching Sandy on the screen? It is so fun watching her and Cape Lanchet just hang out and plan stuff and be pals and not have to be

a Asgardian hell goddess. Sure. Or, you know, the tough talking southern mother of a game. From the blind side? I'm just saying, yeah. That's a movie I saw. I'm just saying. You want to see it for your kids?

I just want to say that like so much of being a A-list or award circuit actress involves taking parts that are about your relationship to family or a, in the case of being in a bigger movie, to a Thunder god or Iron Man or whatever. They're just women talking, planning a heist. And it's kind of freeing and fun to watch in this trailer. I called that movie Blue Valentine. It was actually Blue Jasmine. Blue Valentine was Michelle Williams.

Yeah. So is that your Ron Eldard moment up today? You're seeing your moments? I wanted to make sure that I feel like I needed to cop to that. I think that long-term fans of the podcast dating back to the Gratland days are taking a perverse pride and watching us just to lose a little couple MPAH off our fastballs. It's been. I just, I flew back from the East Coast.

Oh, this is excuse. sour? No, it's just saying. It's like a, it's really heady time for me. You had to fly it on a plane just by yourself, maybe checking in on some moves, reading some docs on the Kindle. That must have been very trying for you. Let me tell you, I have a lot of sympathy for people who fly long flights alone. We're going to wrap it up there. We'll be back on Thursday for Book Club. We'll do a little bit of news at the top of the pod. Until then, Greenwald. Great job, Branskeskes. Great job, Treadstone. Today's episode of the Watch is brought to you by Thomas's English muffins. Here is a breakfast I always get out of bed for. Thomas's

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