The Watch - Is This the Peak TV Tipping Point? Plus: Disney After Iger, and 'Briarpatch' E3 | The Watch

Episode Date: February 27, 2020

Chris and Andy discuss the news that Bob Chapek will replace Bob Iger as CEO of Disney at the end of Iger’s contract in 2021 (1:57). Then they analyze what it’s like to try to keep up with the current deluge of TV content (13:36). Then, 'Briarpatch' co–executive producer Eva Anderson joins the show to discuss the making of Season 1, Episode 3 (34:23). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Eva Anderson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. For the next eight weeks, the rewatchables will be covering eight films that are incredibly rewatchable despite having one major flaw. So far, we've covered the movie Higher Learning, and this Wednesday, Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Ryan Rusillo are talking about the 1985 wrestling classic Vision Quest. So make sure and check out the flawed rewatchables on the rewitchables feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.

I am an editor at The Ringer.com, and joining me in the studio, the head of the El Cucco super pack. It's Andy Greenwald! First things first. No outside money, plenty of outside boils. El Cucco is powered by small donors. How many people get that?

If you listened to minute, let me check, because I got it right here. You timestamp this? of Monday's podcast. This is the funniest thing you've ever heard. Otherwise, you're like, what's going on with these guys? They've lost their fastball. I think that, you know, so this is a Thursday pod.

We have a special Briar Patch themed back half of the podcast for today. But this might be otherwise the podcast where we finally, you know, we finally admit some things, warts and all. You're, Chris is having a little lower back pain today. I tweaked it. I just... It's a lower back impingement.

I just had to... my Australian brother, Ben Simmons. I just had to eat a lunch on the 101 freeway to get here. I feel like we probably should treat ourselves better. Yeah. People depend on us for the lukest of warm takes. But you know what? If you look around this world, there's a lot of stresses.

And for us, it's Bob Eiger stepping down, a CEO of Disney. This is... So Bobby's here. Bobby's going to drop the Geiger counter, the Iger counter music. Not... Maybe one last time. It's good that Bobby is producing. a podcast about Bob giving up his job to another Bob.

Yeah. It's a good look for Bobby. He's sliding in. It's like that's the real like it's not Harvard. It's being named Bob. That's really all it takes. Yeah. People trust a Bob.

Let me tell you something. What's your, what are you going to miss most about Bob Iger? I mean. So just so people know, Bob Iger obviously stepping down his CEO, but is going to, at least for the foreseeable future, remain in charge of content at Disney. No, for the remainder of his contract. Which is when everyone thought he was going to then step down as CEO. Right.

Real-life succession vibes. And Bob Chappek, who is in charge of parks, no wham scams, he's taken over. He's taking over. The Mouse House. And I don't think any other CEO maybe would warrant top billing on our podcast. But we've been talking about him a lot. We like to laugh and joke. He was recently a guest on the Bill Simmons podcast.

And once you've achieved that feather in your cap, I guess you're done. That's it. You think Bill's like the Undertaker? I think Bill was staring at him the whole time whispering. The baby blues, yeah. That's it. I think the reason we're talking about it is that it is...

Well, the reason we're talking about is because we have the cool music. And you asked me what I would miss most about Bob Eager, and I hope everyone listened to the Bill Simmons podcast, because they'll understand what I mean when I say what I will miss most about Bob Eager is the fact that his voice sounds like the inside, of fancy cars feel. Oh, yeah. Like a, like a 1988

Chrysler. Like a rich Corinthian leather. Yeah. And you just kind of want to lose yourself in it. And you also want to either trust him or allow yourself to be purchased by him for, you know, for a billion dollars. He's going out on top. Truly.

Launching the pluse. You know, we're just not going to talk about last Skywalker. Well, I think that's... So the thinking was this. This guy was alleged. here in this town, but also for the way he transitioned a company that he had worked out for 40 years into one of, if not the major media players of the century still to come, through very, very canny and very savvy purchases.

He went big game hunting all the time, whether it was Marvel, whether it was Pixar, Fox, Lucasfilm, and then launching, yeah, launching Disney Blues. I think the assumption was that he would just keep going. He had put off retirement numerous times. Yeah, he was extended his contract a couple of times. And his contract was extended to the end of next year. And so while the initial reports were like, well, now that he successfully launched this streaming platform, while he turned the page on the first generation of Marvel and Avengers films and has ended the chapter of whatever this version of Star Wars is, it kind of makes sense.

Sure. I got to say that this was, seemed totally bizarre. Yeah, you put on a crown of foil. I did. Like, this actually made me kind of get a little conspiracy-e, only because it just seems so odd. It was just a random Tuesday where it was, and it wasn't like officially announces Bob Chepec that is the heir apparent. This wasn't a Logan Roy press conference that he could then walk back. It wasn't, he wasn't elevated to a COO position that previously hadn't existed.

it would have signaled to the street, as they say. No, the street did not like it. The street didn't like this because it was just like, okay, I'm out. Yeah. As of right now. And you read the New York Times story about this. You read the trades. And when they talked to, or New York Magazine, when they reached out to senior talent agents or people who run other studios,

and they were all like, I don't know who this man is. I do not know this man. Yeah. Bob Chape. So immediately I was like, well, what is there some shoe about? about to drop? Is there some story about to drop? Or is he about to cape up and be like move over Mike Bloomberg? There's room for another middle of the road rich guy. Right. The third third way. So apparently none of that is true. Who can ever know the hearts of men, Chris? But it's interesting

and particularly interesting, sorry to pivot it back to what we usually talk about here, which is that Iger, with all the necessary caveats, because this is the man who also, when he was head of ABC, rushed and then canceled Twin Peaks. had talent relationships and understood that side of the business. Well, the one knock on the new guy is he understands, apparently, with devastating intensity and focus,

the consumer fronting experience of this larger company in the parks that he, up until the other day, was in charge of and also like the toys and all that, but he hadn't done the relationships on the other side of the ball. Yeah, it'll be very interesting to see,

I'm not so interested in Disney per se, parks or the overall banner as much as I am the subsidiaries that are obviously the the sort of companies that we tend to talk about more on this pot like go dot com yeah and just like where is that going you know what I mean and where's that been right I'm I'm pretty shaken up by the fact that the Lizzie McGuire reboot's not making it to the pluse so yeah not a great first step no rough seasies sitting out in sincerely like I do feel like at one point on one hand Star Wars with the Mandalorian and Marvel with endgame and getting ready for Phase 4 and Eternals

and all these things that are coming and the fact that the suite of shows are about to start on Disney Plus this year, that that's in a very good place. But on the other hand, you know, I think that there are, I don't know anything about this, but it seems strange that this comes in the aftermath of the Fox purchase. And, you know, I think that we'll probably never really know the full, full story. But he seems like, I mean, again, I read a few extra

from his book, his memoir from last year, and did listen to him on Bill's podcast. And, I mean, he seems like a, he seems like a relatively restless guy for someone who's worked at one company for longer than we've been alive. Sure. So you never know that maybe really is as,

it's as simple, maybe it's as simple as that. The one thing that made me, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know why I'm putting on, like, investor hat. I don't own Disney stock. that's not what I'm about in terms of my opinion on this. But I was going to say the one thing.

You are long on go.com. So, so long. Holden that hope. Jim Kramer just being like bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. It is a great URL. I mean, there's no question about that. I mean, it's one of the easiest URLs out there. And also when you're trying to go to Google, they'll be like, what am I go?

Yeah, exactly. Auto fill. Yeah. We're already done. Yeah. Ask Jeeves about that. Just the one thing in, the one thing in JPEC's CV. that I found particularly noteworthy

is that he is the guy who is credited with the Disney vault system. Now, Chris, as a... You're going to go Dattington on me. As a known childless fellow, you don't know about this. This is when they make Cinderella available for a hot minute.

You know about this, because this is before my Datington times. This was always the illest shit ever to be. This was like, Disney is the original Supreme. Exactly. They would do a drop and they would be like, come get your beauty and the beast. And it was like, those were expensive.

VHS or DVD drops in like big, fancy packaging. What are the VHS is like 50 bucks? Yeah. They were crazy expensive. And then they'd be like, you have to buy it now because it's going back in the vault. Yeah. We control. What a boss move.

The media. Cheapack. I know. And it worked. And it made them so, so much money. And it's funny now that he's inheriting the company now that they're, you know, in line with all media companies saying, here it is. Yeah. Take it.

Yeah. Just pay us a nominal fee. and you can have all of it. Well, so I do... Although, to JPEX credit and legacy, and I know, Chris, you've been monitoring the story closely, Frozen 2 is not yet on Disney Plus, but it is available for like a healthy $20.

And it's like if you call up your Apple TV home screen, it is front-send. Is it? In a way that I'm not going to name names, but let's say someone's children can see it and say, oh, it's on the screen. Does that mean we can watch it? And you're like, no child.

I am like, I am so unborrowed time. You're like in M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. You're like pretending like that doesn't exist. Can you see the beads of sweat popping on my forehead as I explain to my children? It's just advertising that it's coming soon. It's like total recall when that guy has like the one sweat. They are not going to buy this much longer, meaning I'm going to have to buy it. I will say for, I can't do any justice that other people haven't already done to what Iger's legacy is or whatever as the head of Disney.

I will say that when I was like in my teens and 20s, Disney was that's where you can ride Humonga Kalabunga. Like that's where Typhoon Lagoon is. That's where the Walter Cronkite golf ball is like it was to explain to somebody. Do you bring to the big thing at Epcot? What's that? Like the Walter Cronkite narrated ride inside the Epcot ball. Yeah, I can't remember what it's called.

Me either. To explain to someone now what kind of mindshare Disney had in 1994, is impossible. The idea that Disney is now, everyday part of people's lives whether they like it or not, and it owns ABC, and it owns ESPN,

and it owns Disney Plus, and I guess, MLB Advanced Media, you know, all these things that it's... Go.com. And Go.com, one of the great websites

that they own. It's inconceivable to try to explain that to somebody like 1994, where they're like, yeah, sure, parks and kids movies. And to also try to tie it

into the larger cultural conversation, It brilliantly mimicked the shift in culture as a whole, which is to say that there were certain things that felt like the provenance of kids or young people that over the last 20 years have just become culture, whether they are comic books or franchise entertainment or whatever you want to call the world we're living in. That was in one box in the 90s,

much like Disney was. I think you're totally right. It was a kids thing. It was an essential part of childhood. Sure. But then you left it behind. For sure. We do not do that anymore.

It is now all of the things. And it's pretty wild. I mean, what's most noteworthy about it is that this was the oldest of old media companies, you know, and the thought that in this world of whatever of disruption or of these, you know, Netflix and Amazon and these companies who are more part of the modern way of life, but also the modern narrative of whether it's, you know, the one idea, the disruptive idea, blah, blah, blah, blah, that this incredibly not just old school company,

but not just old company, but literally the oldest school company, the company that made movies, you know, people didn't want to bring their projects to the Walt Disney Studio to make films in the 90s because you couldn't swear or you couldn't smoke cigarette. Like, they were just what they were. Yeah. And now they are everything.

It's pretty amazing. It's scary. It is. It is. You know, you mentioned a couple of other streaming networks that we've been talking about for a long time. And Disney Plus we've had a lot of fun with, but we've also talked seriously about The Mandalorian. And that brings me to what I wanted to talk about in the second part of our conversation before we bring Eva on and talk about Briar Patch episode three. So anybody who was listening to this podcast for the last year or so knows that Andy was making a television show and time was tight.

So he could watch something here or something there, but not everything all of the time. and I have strived to do my best to watch as much as possible. It's amazing. And if I, it's funny, like, the one thing I get, if I ever meet somebody out in public and they're, you know, they come up and say they're like, the pot or something, they're like, I just can't, how do you watch everything? I don't think we can step on it,

but Chris and I were guests on another podcast. Oh, yeah. With some friends of this podcast. And I think it's dropping, I think it's dropping tomorrow. Whenever the Joe Rogan pod drops, that's when. But open your fucking mind. These guys who will be not be strangers to, anyone. When the mics were on and I think when the mics were off, they were just like,

how do you live your life, Chris? How do you do this? Well, let me tell you something. I feel like this week, I feel like I had a personal tipping point and I'm going to tell you what I'm talking about. So in the past couple of weeks, Andy and I've been mostly talking about outsider, talked about high fidelity. Better call saw. Here are the things that have happened in the last couple of weeks on quote unquote TV. Mythic Quest Ravens Banquet. Oh, I'd like to watch that. Rob McElhenney show. It is the best show that Apple is released. They put it up all at once. You watched it? Delightful. Yeah. My wife and I watched it. It was awesome. We haven't talked about on this podcast. We haven't talked about it in our lives. High Fidelity and Outsider we talked about.

We talked a little bit about Curb. A curb comes on 45 minutes every week. And I will say, being the clearly the oldest of the two of us in a lot of ways, including my watching, curb has been a delightful free-range graze in my household. The other night, instead of being paralyzed by all the choices. Just watch Kurt. Be like, let's just watch this week. Not this week's, four weeks ago's Curb, because I think we're up to episode three or four.

Yeah. Hey, by the way, just quick side note. Kudos, kudos, kudos. To the people of HBO, to Larry David Industries for putting a still image of John Hamm in the square that's on HBO go. You keep your wife locked in. Every time, like, do you want to watch Curb?

And she goes, eh, then there's a pause, and she says, is John Hamm in this episode? And I say, no way of knowing. And so far through, he hasn't appeared yet, right? No. It's brilliant. It's great. They should do that for all shows.

Just put John Hamm in the thumbnail. Here's my recipe for success on TV. Ready? Ready? Put on the tinfoil hat. Take a little John Hamm. You put him at the beginning of the episode. And what do you do with the episode?

You put it on after pro wrestling. Boom. And maybe you have Baby Yo to make a cameo? Whatever. I've named the two most important things to success, and I am not kidding. Let me get back to my bit. Yeah. Mythic Quest Ravens Banquet, High Fidelity, Outse.

CERB, Avenue 5, if you're sticking with it. Narcos Mexico Season 2, Better Call, saw all of the stuff that we've talked about on the pod, more or less, minus Mythical Quest. Here's stuff that we have not talked about that in any other world we probably would. Hunters on Amazon, Netflix is Gentified, which is getting raves.

Hentified. Zoe's extraordinary playlist, NBC's effort at making a hipster comedy, I guess. The War of the Worlds, that's, I think, the British version of it. And epics, right? Yeah, and on epics. That's what's on now.

and I'm missing half of it. Here's what's coming in the next few weeks. Weeks. Alex Garland's FX show that we cannot wait for. On Hulu. Yes. Zero, zero,

it's an international cocaine epic from Stefano Solimo who directed Sicario David Salado and it's based on a Roberto Saviano book. He did Gomorrah. It stars Andrea Reisbro and Dane Dahan. She's coming out in eight days. You had me at International Cocaine Epic.

It's fucking lit. I have not seen a single mention. of this show. Right. It is so, it's really good. It's very violent. FYI. Yeah. So, 00. Dispatches from elsewhere, Jason Siegel's AMC show. Breeders, a Martin Freeman comedy on FX. Dave, another FX comedy with Little Dickie. Amazing stories on Apple TV Plus. Did you know there's a show called Flack, which is on a network called Pop? And it's about a PR crisis management team and it stars Anna Pacwin, Martha Plimton, and Daniel Day Kim, and it is in its second season. I did know that. I did not know that Black Monday is coming back, Westworld is coming back,

and that is just the two first weeks of March. After that, Plot Against America, David Simon's adaptation of the Philip Roth novel, Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu with Reese Witherspoon and Carrie Washington, and all the usual wave of stand-ups, documentaries, and reality shows that usually fall outside of our purport. What about conversations with, I'm not conversation with friends? What about normal people?

You're talking normie peeps? Listen. I don't even know when normal people is coming on. This podcast. Are we, is this Rooney Hive now? We are committed to the extended Rooneyverse. The Sally Rooneyverse is the only IP I'm interested in going forward. My point is, this would be, if I gave you that list of shows five years ago, six years ago,

and I was like, this is what's coming out for the rest of the year. Yeah. You would be like, that's a healthy lineup. And that is a busy schedule for your boy, young TV critic. And you add in live sports and you add in a life and you add in whatever else you've got going on. Maybe you want to watch a movie on Criterion. Whatever. that's fucking crazy.

Like, I think that, like, as the landscape has been changing over the years, I've been kind of, like, riding the wave a little bit. And I didn't know that I was on a tidal wave. Like, I was kind of like, yeah, sure, it's a lot of TV, but I'm kind of good at pick it and choosing and realizing what I do and don't want to watch. And even still, in the Facebook watch group, the watch Facebook group, and everywhere else, like, you can find people being like, how fuck are you guys not talking about this?

How are you guys not talking about this? And they're right. There was a show called Chernobyl, apparently. You're talking to Nodes? Look, do you feel like, even from your outsider's outsider perspective? You know what I mean? Bear mask and all. Doesn't it feel, this feels wild?

Like, I feel like I'm grabbing my armrests on a plane that's going down. Maybe not going down. Maybe it's going up. Who knows? Who can say? In a zero-g kind of spin, you don't know. But my point is, yeah. My point is, A, I'd be calm.

And B, we haven't even. haven't gotten to HBO Max yet. We haven't gotten to the Peacock. Disney Plus does not have anything currently on that you and I would watch. This is absurd. This is an absurd amount of TV to be watching. And you didn't even mention this Japanese English show, Giri Haji, which I checked out and started watching.

I didn't mention that Ozarks coming back. Yeah. I mean, it's a bloodbath. It is a bloodbath. And I think that, and I say that as a creator and as a critic and just as a guy. with a microphone sitting across from another guy with a microphone. That's right.

We spent a lot of years, probably too many years, reiterating the same argument, basically saying and mourning the loss of what we like to call consensus shows, how much we enjoyed. Water cooler shows. We try giving things the belt. Yeah, and this feeling that was obviously to our advantage as podcasters and then, you know, also the writing that we did, that everyone's watching the same thing, or at least there was that feeling of shared experience and momentum, and we missed that.

But I think the B side to that conversation was often, well, at least everyone has something to watch, that all of these other things that we are not covering with the same ardor or shared sense of community as we had in the past, that all of those things were being watched, maybe just by smaller passionate groups. And I no longer know if that's the case. The idea of launching a show, and I'll speak plainly about my own experience, too, but it is essentially impossible. And I think that we are seeing the real-time collision of two movements that don't necessarily sink up. One, as we've talked about before, is that we are in an arms race for content libraries. That all of these providers need to become unmissable. And one of the ways you become unmissable is having the stuff that people want to watch and being the only place to watch it. And Disney has a huge advantage because it is.

and HBO has an advantage because it has been. Netflix has spent the last few years spending billions of dollars to become that because Disney and other places are pulling their content, right? So the whole goal of a lot of these companies' production schedules

is really not about the immediate hit. They're not about how many people watch it the night it premieres. They're about having it. I would argue. For the longer term. And yet, we live in both, A, a culture that demands and feeds off of the new and wants opening box office, opening night, premiere, blah, blah, blah,

yeah, man, unbox it. But also, you know, as I've learned recently, existing, making a show for a platform agnostic, bingy type of audience, but making it for a place that, for perfectly good reasons, exists in the older economy. It is, you know, there still has to be ratings. There still has to be commercials. One of these things doesn't necessarily sync up with the other. And I feel like this moment that you're describing, this is where we're at.

I think that I would be really curious to know whether or not the people who are working at these streaming services view things the same way you do. Obviously, they do, to some respect, where they're building and accruing a huge library of stuff. The library of stuff to me, the attraction to catching up on Breaking Bad seasons seven years ago or watching Friday night lights in that fashion or catching. watching even three years ago or four years ago or whatever it really was that people really started to watch friends on Netflix. It felt like a different time. It felt like I don't even know how you could make a library play when this much new stuff is coming out on a week's week basis. It seems impossible. Like how do you even say this is what we have in our library?

Aside from algorithmically serving it up to people who are just looking at their home screens at the end of a night or the beginning of a night, I don't know how if you're an engaged consumer of television and you're constantly being told, guys, get ready for devs. Guys, by the way, better call Saul is incredible. Guys, by the way, Westworld's coming back, so you're going to have to spend all this time on Reddit to understand that.

And also, like, if you want to laugh, here are five shows to laugh at. But, you know, you have to watch all five hours of it because I don't want to spoil what happens at episode seven of high fidelity. I mean, like, this kind of, like, high octane spread offense TV that we're seeing does not play well when you're like,

you know, if you happen to have 10 hours, I just think you should catch up on this epic show that you may have missed. I think you're right. I mean, I think that there's that you are absolutely right. And I think contradicting what I'm saying in a very smart way, that basically that flash is a lot, is one of the few things companies have. Yeah. To try to get you and hook you and hold you.

And then maybe the library is what holds you. I was thinking of it from, you know, it's piggybacking on our Disney conversation. I mean, the incredible swagger that Disney, has to enter into this crowded marketplace with Disney Blues at such a low price point is solely based on the fact that they have three legacy things that

for Simpsons now too that people just want access to. People want Marvel movies. They want Star Wars movies and as I've said many times if you have children under a certain age you got to have these movies. You just have to be able to show them to your children certainly on plane rights. So that's a huge

advantage that other companies don't and so they need the newer, the sexy your thing. It's overwhelming. And I think it, even from, you know, just talking to people, talking to executives, talking to actors, certainly, they say two things. One, they are whiplashed how fast this changed, that the world is different than it was two years ago in terms of television and what it means to work in it and be a part of it. The other thing is just more than ever, I'm hearing people repeat something that actors said to me when we were making the pilot a Breyer Patch, you know,

which is this is the only part that matters. This is the only part that you can control. Whether or not you could do good work. Do good work and enjoy this experience because you cannot control who's ever going to watch anything. And that's always been true. That's not groundbreaking, but holding that attitude when you're in the sea suites of these companies, I think, is not necessarily the same thing. Well, I also wonder whether or not, and it's impossible, I mean, I know it's not impossible to study something like this or to quantify something like this,

but I wonder what the wealth of choices does to our perception of the things that we actually do watch. Like whether the actual huge amount of volume of TV to watch changes how you react to watching any given thing because you are also kind of like, I have so much more I have to hit. So I get that feeling all the time when I'm watching something

and I'm like, would my time be better spent watching something else because everything feels like a beat? I also wonder if that narrative as a great, I mean, helps the star-driven content more, which is to say,

lost in that avalanche of shows that you mentioned was Little Fires Everywhere, which is an adaptation of a best-selling book, critically acclaimed book. Starting two huge, recognizable stars. Carrie Washington and Reese Witherspoon. And that means the show is going to be covered.

It doesn't mean it's good. I have no reason to think it's not. It doesn't mean that it will be well, highly viewed. But it does mean that it will be covered. And perception really matters when it comes to streaming content because the numbers aren't released the same way. You know, Hulu can say this is our most, watched thing on Tuesdays and Thursdays since the fifth season of Mindy Project, and that's why

age adjusted this. They can say whatever they want, sure, with their numbers, and they probably view things still a little bit differently, and one of the values for them is having Reese Witherspoon with the little Hulu label under her on posters all over Hollywood. So I wonder if that prejudices executives and streamers and services in the direction that they were already heading in, which is basically TV is becoming movies and that it's like blockbuster star-driven stuff. Even though I don't actually know,

I mean, Stranger Things was not star-driven and Stranger Things is, by any metric, legitimately a hit. Sure, yeah. I mean, in some ways, I, it was also, when I was reading this sort of synopsis, I was telling fantasy yesterday, actually, about zero-zero-zero, zero, and he's like, what a, it's like, that's like the Chris Ryan

fun bag, like, you just like, oh, by the way, Maguire does the score to that show. There it is. See what I'm saying? and I was like, even I am having a hard time like carving out the appropriate reaction to that, to that news that the show is coming. Like I feel like this is something that we would have gotten hyped about and then talked about. And I know that we're going to be scrambling to talk about it. And I feel like sometimes we would be like, oh, you know, the podcast is not real life.

But I feel like it's starting to become, it's starting to feel a little bit more like real life for more people. Yeah. Where it's like the sheer volume of choice, the amount of hours. out there to watch if you do choose to engage with it. It's harder and harder to find... Well, you can pick your spots, but it's just harder and harder to find the communal, like,

relationship that people want from their television shows. The outsider, I think, is deserving of the attention we're giving it. Also, we're having a great time talking about it. But I do think that, strangely, the 10 p.m. slot on HBO on Sundays is still... Sure. That's still the Iron Throne. in terms of they are separated from the scrum of, you know, daily, daily ratings or overnight ratings, all that.

But they are still weekly, it's stately, it's a little classy, it's a little old-fashioned. I think that's still the spot. And obviously, we tend to cover those shows, and do we cover them because of the way they feel and the way they're promoted and the time slot they're in? Sure. Partially. But I also think that that just is, they're managing, that brand pretty well. Yeah, in the same way that I think that a lot of things that show up on the Netflix

homepage, people are like, I'll give it a shot. I mean, the last thing he wanted came out this week, which has not gotten good reviews at all. No, that's the De Rees movie starring Ben Affleck and Anne Hathaway. Based on a Joan Diddy novel, which I like quite a bit. I'm definitely going to check it out because the barrier to entry is literally click play. But I think that you can try out a lot of stuff on Netflix. I think you expect the thing that's on Sunday night and HBO to be good.

Yeah, you come into it with that. That still matters, right? I was like, if you guys put, if you're putting an outsider on at this time, on this night, I think you think it's good. So I want to check it out. Oh, that's interesting. I think that's true.

There is still some role for old-fashioned tastemakers, not just us, but specifically, like, we've trusted people in that role in the past. Of all the stuff that I mentioned, what do you think you're most excited about? Devs? Well, normal people. Normal people.

On Hulu. But, yeah, I think devs. I mean, it's, Alex Garland is great. We've never seen him working. on TV before. The cast is exciting. The artwork is beautiful. It just seems really interesting in a way that could prove to be exciting. It's funny. I mean, that's an FX show and FX we've talked about in the last few weeks, how this Hulu deal is so much bigger than I think we realized at the time because it allows John Landgraf and Nick Rad and Eric Shire and that Gina Bailey and all the

really talented programmers and tastemakers there to break free of the bonds of trying to break through and basic cable. Yeah. Could Atlanta happen today? I mean, I don't know. On one level, I feel like yes, because it's an interesting example, because that show is so unquestionably the best thing on TV in the last few years, it is so grab you by the throat good and exciting and thrilling and, you know, it did the star making.

It did the best thing the TV does, which is not put stars into a small box. It makes stars out of the box. And, you know, couldn't be better timed for the moment and what people are interested in seeing and what people haven't seen. But at the same time, there is something. It's just like, yes, Atlanta's coming and there's cool billboards and good buzz, but it's Tuesdays at 830 or whatever it was. And I wonder. Yeah. That's a really good question. If we have Nick back or if we ever get John on the Pye, we'd have to ask him about that. I would say as we, I feel like this entire segment was just a pre-apology for how I'm going to miss more things. No, you're going to watch devs. I'm going to

watch some stuff. I'm going to make you watch devs. And then when normal people happens, there will be no more awkward podcast than two middle-aged men talking about the sexual awakening of young Irish people. The accents are going to be out of control for me. So just fucking prepare. I'm not apologizing. No. If Sersher Ronan and Bono wind up populating this podcast for a month, deal with it. I've earned it.

I think it's fair. Let's talk to you. Can I say before we get into, you just set this up? Because we had, we are continuing to talk about Breyer Patch episode by episode as we go through the season. as everyone knows, we're no longer a Thursday night show. We're a Monday night show. And let me just take a moment to personally thank. Vince McMahon.

Vince McMahon. Linda McMahon. The entire McMahon family. Mr. Savage. Mr. Randy the macho man, Savage. Right. Mr. Flair. Yeah. Mr. Dog.

Mr. Junkyard Dog. I don't know any other. John Sina was a wrestler. Yes. The Rock was a wrestler. These people are my blood brothers now. Yeah. I love them.

I legitimately love wrestling fans. Thank you for watching Prior Patch at 11 p.m. Because you did, and I'm very happy. Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. It's kind of amazing because I think everyone who's listened to this podcast really knows and feels in their bones my longtime love of the art form and appreciation for it. So it's kismet that we ended up here. I'm truly grateful.

It's actually, it's been a great thing for everyone, and I'm excited for people to see episode 4 Monday night at 11 and then on demand thereafter. But this week's about 103. And the great and brilliant and wonderful Eva Anderson, who's a co-executive producer and my number two in the Writers' Room, wrote this episode. Yeah, it was a cool conversation about how writers' rooms work, basically. Yeah, I mean, hopefully they do. I guess we'll find...

How's that for a cliphanger? We'll be right back with our conversation with Eva Anderson. Thanks for listening. Okay, now we're awkwardly transitioning into my favorite part of the podcast at the moment, which is when we talk about my TV show, Parer Patch. And we are going to talk about episode 103, which aired linearly Monday night. Is that a word? Linearly? Yeah, linear. I mean, linear is the word, my guy. It's the word I live and die by. Episode 103, terrible, shocking things. Used to be called terrible, awful. It was called awful shocking

things. Terrible awful shocking things. We lost one of the words. Who did you lose it to? Well, because apparently, this is one of the things you learn is that there's a character limit on titles. So episode six of the show has always been called. the most sinful motherfucker alive, which is a title that I love. And then, like, two weeks before New Year's, I was told it wasn't the cursing. It was the problem.

It was that it was too many characters to fit on... Yeah, but Friends is already throwing away all those characters with just the one about? Yes, well, they're limited because it has to fit in a certain... So, yeah, so this is how difficult my life is. Anyway, so to talk about this episode, I'm so happy that we are joined by the writer of the episode,

co-executive producer of the show, the person whom I can't live without unless she totally drags me over the next 20 minutes, in which case I will revisit. Podcast superstar Eva Anderson. Hey, guys. How's it going? Thanks so much for joining us.

Oh, my God, so happy to be here. Chris, do you know, before we get started, you know Eva is like a podcast shark. She is like Woody Harrelson and white men can't jump. She shows up on podcasts and dominates them. I'm the first ever doughboys guest. No way. Very famously.

Shout out to Sam or Esmail, who is probably listening. Sam's brother, Sammer, is a devoted fan of Eva Anderson. Okay. And all of her podcasts, he's got the Google Alert. When he found out that she was going to be writing on Briar Patch, that was the most excited I've ever seen. One thing that Andy's talked about for episode three a lot is the, not, I wouldn't say breath of fresh air, but like the way that everything changed when there were writers involved,

where the writers were open and he started to be able to break down the story with other people and talk about the story with other people. Can you just tell us a little bit off the top, like how you got involved? with the show and, you know, and just like the origin story. Oh, yeah, origin story. It's actually kind of pretty funny. I wrote on You're the Worst for four seasons. And then I made the transition to being an hour-long writer.

And so... Which is not done often, by the way. The people are generally categorized as half hour or hour, comedy or drama. Okay. But I wanted to be able to do both. And so I spent a year trying to writing a new thing and moving over. And I worked in a couple shows last year. Yeah, it was last year.

The year before last year was kind of my transition year. But I found out that Andy was trying to meet with me for the show. And I never met Andy before, and I never read any Ross Thomas. But I have a very soft spot in my heart for Andy because the first season of You're the Worst, it kind of landed a little soft. And we were getting kind of weird reviews. And it was a show nobody knew about. And really the one champion was Andy Greenwald, this guy, Andy Greenwald. And so.

Everyone thought I was going to get punished for my reviews. But look, I was rewarded. So I was like, oh, I know who this. man is he saved my job. Like I literally thought about it like him. That's so awesome. So I was like, I'll definitely meet him. I just want to meet him. It was very nice. It was also in keeping with the great demeanor that psychologically works on me very well that Eva has that at the meeting, she did not necessarily say she wanted to work on the show or like the pilot. I think that came out later. She basically said, I took the meeting so I could say thank you for your reviews. So funny. Yeah. So that was cool. And yeah. And you interviewed Stephen Falk, a brilliant writer, awesome dude. And a bunch of stuff. So anyway, that, Yeah, your championing of one of my early jobs was very helpful to me, and I appreciated it. And I, from my perspective, when we were forming the writer's room, the pilot was obviously written and shot and picked up,

and then I had written a draft of the second episode, but last December it was time to put together a writer's room. And I was told for good reason that I would need a – this is such a gross industry term, but a strong number two. And basically, I needed someone who knew how to do this, had done it before. could run the room if I was pulled out of it for any reason, but also someone whose taste I respected and who's writing I liked. So you went straight to Dick Wolf. I went straight to Dick Wolf. And I look, I asked for what, you know, he calls them his puppies.

Yeah. Like anyone who's worked in the wolf first struck out, did get Brian Garrity from the greater wolf first. Oh, for sure. And then Eva's name was on the list as someone who, because it's also someone the studio will accept in that position. Sure. And because of you're the worst.

I was very excited to meet with her. That's awesome. So you sort of spent a year kind of like developing your chops and thinking about things more in terms of an hour and more dramatically. What was it about Breyer Patch and the material that you felt like was a good match for you? Well, Andy knows this.

So I didn't know Ross Thomas, but I'm from like a very noir-y family. My brother is named Dashel after Dashel Hammett. Wow. And we had like eight ferrets all named after all the characters from Maltese Falcon growing up. So I definitely grew up like reading a lot of 40s,

30s and 40s noir. Yeah. But not a ton of like the later stuff. Like Charles Williford is kind of where I end, which he's like 70s. So Ross Thomas was like a blank spot for me, but I definitely recognized the language and the style, and I found it very, like, comforting and nice.

I also grew up in the town where they filmed Twin Peaks. Oh, wow. Those two things together. So hired. Yeah. But also, I really wanted someone who was funny and who could write jokes because that was going to be a very important part of the show.

Yeah. And before even you're the worst, I was right around Comedy Bang Bang. So that was like my first gig was just straight up, like, Jokes. Yeah. So you're coming in and Andy is already, the pilot's done by now. Oh, the pilot's done.

Yeah, I was able to watch the pilot, which was super helpful too, just to gauge, like, tone, to see the actors and to see, like, what is what Andy's vision really was. Because it's so different from what's on the page. You know, you can read a million scripts and not totally get, once I saw it with the music and the actors. Sure. I was like, oh, yes, I get this. And then for you, Andy, like, what was the, like, can you give me an example of something when, like, this stops being like, the thing that's on your computer, and then you shoot the pilot and you're kind of like largely responsible for what happens in the pilot. What happens when you start getting input

from other people? What happens when somebody says, hey, what if this person says this or does this? I just ignore them. And bulldoze my way through. Sure. Classic wolf. Yeah, he's the leader of the pack. Well, that was what I was looking forward to most, you know, honestly, because I wanted to, I mean, I say this a lot, but it's not disingenuous. Like, I, I, I, writing, whether it was writing books or writing, you know, reviews for Granland, it's very lonely, and you're alone with it. And so I really wanted other voices in the room. And I wanted people with different perspectives, and I wanted people who had a different way into the material. And as we put the room together, that was one of the things that was most important, but also most exciting about it.

You know, we had one writer who loves crime procedurals and came at it. Yeah. The great Haley Harris, who came at it, you know, who had worked with Damon, Linduluff, and the leftovers, but purely loved crime procedures and those types of shows, and I wanted to do justice to that part, which I felt would be hard for me. Sure. You know, Waining You, who wrote next week's episode, was really dialed in from the beginning on the emotional storyline. And she has a sister who she shares a birthday with and all these other weird details that

were similar to the show. So looking for that kind of diversity was important also. But then the big thing was, and this is something I asked Eva about when she had a, please don't freak out lunch with me. I was freaking out. She was fine, as is often the case. on the day the show premiered, I did ask her, like, when we met,

we met once at Universal, and then we got coffee a few weeks after that. She knew, in a way that I didn't, the amount of, like, the emotional roller coaster that she would be riding, whether she wanted to or not, because of working with me. Sure.

I mean, and I think charitably, the absolutely crucial to the success of the show, Layla Artuleta is sitting here watching, and she knows as well. You know, it is an emotional roller coaster with me, but I think anyone, anyone, anyone in the position going through it for the first time needs someone who can roll with it. Yeah, I don't think that there's not like a version of showrunner who just doesn't, who's not. No, but there's just going to be a lot of stuff.

And so she did know, like that's something that I didn't know to ask when we first met. But she knew, you knew that stuff was going to, they were going to be ups and downs. Oh, yeah. And you'd have to ride with it. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I mean, making a show is hard.

Making things is hard. Reviewers. Did you know that when you started reviewing things, that making, making. them as very difficult. As it turns out, I can confirm this. It is really hard. But the other thing is that, and Eva can speak to this in terms of the way that we ran the room, like, she's been in more rooms than I've been and had definitely more lived experience with it. But I went in with this idea that we didn't have to have any difficult assholes, that we didn't have to work till midnight, that we could be decent people and get along, have a good time, and still do the work.

And she bought and said that we could. You believe that we could do that for the beginning. And we did. We broke at 5 p.m. We did our work and everybody used to long good terms. And it was a great room of people. Everyone came with a really strong perspective. Everyone was really smart. There were no jerks. Like you picked a really awesome writer's room, just top to bottom.

I think we've discussed this before on the podcast, maybe during production. But like I think you were obviously like in and out on the pod back then. But like for people who maybe have missed that description, can you guys go through like the average day when you were in the writing process? Yeah. Well, it varies by day because you spend a lot of time at the beginning of a season. breaking the season. You have to, you know, and what was awesome about this was that we had a book. So we actually knew what was kind of, we kind of knew the ending. And we also knew some, like, major events that would happen over the course of the season. Andy also came in.

Like in the case of episode three, we knew there was a party at Jake's house. Yeah. Episode three is actually, I'll just side note, was really exciting for me to write because most of it's from the book. And I didn't realize, actually, Andy and I went back through it. And I think except for episode six, every single episode has. something major from the book. At least one thing. Yeah, at least one thing. Episode six is its own beast, and it just came, like, came from the room, came from Andy, and from Raina who wrote it. But otherwise, everything at least has like a major scene or something, but three is like mostly the book and has a couple of my favorite parts of the book in it. Is this spoiler?

This is going to go up after the people have seen it. People have seen it. So yeah. Yeah, the Harold Snow interrogation is my favorite part of the book. Okay. And the other, my other favorite part of the book is, besides the ending. is the Clyde Brattle van scene. Those are just two of the most, like, beautiful, like, evocative, funny parts and, like, weird and violent. Like, the Harold Snow thing is so scary. It's, like, legitimately, he's described, like, a Stephen King character when he's discovered in that closet. And I was always like, that was the point.

I was like, I fucking love this book. So getting to write that scene, especially for, like, Tim Sharp, who's, like, this awesome improviser and comedian. And who added lines like, you're an asshole. Yeah, just went with it. Like his, yeah. And then the Brattle introduction, which is so cool. Getting to work on those scenes was just so fun. And also, yeah, the pool party, which started off as a pool party because it's a pool party in the book, and then became a luau because Richard is such an amazing production designer and came up with we could do a luau.

And with Stephen, too, right? Yeah. Yeah, they all kind of got their heads together. Three is, three really is for me the moment where it became a series. And obviously, we block shot two and three. So we shot them. Actually, the first scene we shot for the series was the Singe legger scene at the diner where they go over Flosity's paperwork. And he says he loves giraffes.

That was day one in June back on series. But two was still, you know, the room went through two with me and made some changes. But two was basically done when we started the room. So three for me is the moment that the show opens up and pivots. And it opens up not just to other writers and other voices and other contributions, but the style of the show. It's less Rosario Dawson talks to weirdos. We have different POV for the first time.

We break her POV. Right. And also, I mean, I learned so much from Eva over the course of the season. but you may notice some of the scenes are shorter. I wrote long, long-ass scenes, and it turns out when you work on TV for a while, there are good reasons why you don't always do that. Sure. And for me, watching it now, especially,

it feels lighter, it feels freer, and it feels a lot with a lot of the comedy, like the kind of show that we were really excited to make. But it also, then also, it, I don't know if it didn't suffer. It went through the permutations of production in a way that I hadn't anticipated in the pool party is the biggest example, It was a pool party, and I wanted Jake Spivey to arrive in the pool party by cannonballing

into the pool and yelling spring break. They scouted Albuquerque. They couldn't find the pool that was right, and they were also like, no extras want to stand around in water, no actors wants to be in bathing suits. Sure. What if it was a garden party? Okay, all right, fine. Did you add, when something small like that comes up, are you like, I can't get it

out of my head that it wanted to be a pool, or are you like, sure, whatever, garden party sounds good. In April May of 2019 or in August? If it was August, I'd be like, fine. Whatever. Let's get it done. April May, I was upset about it. And so I said, okay, but the thing that has to happen is that Jake has to arrive on a long slip-and-slide through the party. Jay Ferguson will dive-bomb shirtless onto a slip-and-slide with a beer in his hand and slide across the lawn in between the guests yelling spring break. Okay.

And this is when Eva's job gets more complicated because she, chief among many people, has to say, oh, what a good idea. Oh, yeah. That was your best idea. This is going to be great. This is totally going to work out. In your mind, are you like, nobody wants to slip and slide? I mean, have you ever been on one? It hurts.

It sucks. Nobody wants to do it. You ever been on a slip and slide? They're a painful thing. No, right? No. Even as children, we hated them and we lied and said we like them because of the commercial. So they gently and Richard Bloom, our brilliant production designer, was chief about this, you know, steered us away from that.

But then there was a day in prep when everyone was like, well, obviously it's a luau. And then I mentioned that to Eva in a typical, like, I don't know. They just say we wanted to be, literally, like, read all texts to Eva from PrEP in the voice of a petulant teenager. They're saying it's going to be a luau. Didn't we already have the baby Elvis on the board at the pool party? Like, that was the thing. We already had that. That was all you.

I mean, the kid Elvis who is not impersonating young Elvis, but is impersonating young, it was young kid impersonating fat old Elvis. Our county's youngest old Elvis. I had just been to Graceland. That was all, Eva. So the pieces were there, and it just wanted to be a luau. And then we end up with the scene where everyone looks amazing and lays around their necks. But I also wanted to say that, like, coming into the season, so in the book, Captain Gene Colder, Brian Garrity's character, refers to a wife. The scene that you saw last week in 102, where he says, I'm married to a bitch, blah, blah, blah.

That's verbatim from the book. Oh, yeah. This is fun. But the wife doesn't exist on the page. She is essentially like Bertha and Jane Eyre. She's just like the crazy person in the attic that fuels the... Never read Janeair. And also...

We're really coming clean in there from me. me then. She's been put in an insane asylum for being crazy, which is a thing that happened also in Fourth Durango with a woman. Yes, that's a classic Ross Thomas thing. Crazy lady. Crazy lady, don't worry about it. That happened a lot more with guys in the 60s and 70s. It was something, it was on the table. Yeah. Well, that's something I like just in general about pulp and noir guys. When they're pumping out a lot of books very quickly, you can just see a map of their brain and the things that they care about. And one of them is like, I got to put this woman somewhere. Or they have like a super cool ex who's just there to do exposition with them. Oh, yeah.

And they're just like, you're great. You know, I've moved on, but not really because you're pretty awesome. I'm just like, why did you tell me all about this case? Yeah. I'll see you. I'll see you later. That's great. So I knew that we wanted Mrs. Culler to be a character.

And I came in being like, her name is going to be Lucretia Coulter and she's going to cause trouble. Because she's not unhinged and off the reservation. We want to make her a real person and give her an arc. Yeah. Because that's one of the things you can do if you're updating the story and taking advantage of the current, whatever. So that's what we wanted to do. And I don't know if it was more than that.

Early on, I think we decided that we wanted her to be kind of a femme fatale. Well, because there isn't one. There's no classic femme fatale in the book, in the show. Right. Jake is kind of the femme fatale and he plays that role.

Yeah. So I think that Haley, we had all the characters who were in the pilot up on the board and then like pick their photos, actual photos. And then Haley, we mentioned earlier, drew caricatures of people who haven't passed yet.

And so the one for Ray, tech before we cast Kim Dickens was just, I believe it was a cowboy hat and two six shooters and boots. And for Lucretia was cat's eye glasses and like a cigarette case. Yeah. But I fully, I mean, Christine Woods, who's a genius and brilliant addition to the show, who has great stuff coming up, is part of it. But I feel like Lucretia is Eva's character.

Oh, thank you. She's one of my two favorite characters, and I can't say who the other one is because it'll be a spoiler. But yes, she's very, very dear to my heart. Grisha Kolder. She's a really fun, fun character. And that is the fun thing about that we were able to crack open with the book is, you know, when you call a woman crazy, she's usually pretty interesting. That's someone I want to know if someone's, everyone's like, oh, she's crazy. She's a crazy bitch. It's like, ooh, what's up with this lady? She must be very smart or

challenging in some way. So that was a fun, if this, then what kind of exercise? Like, why would she be crazy? So I wanted to ask about two different things. One is specifically about writing for characters and versus writing for actors because obviously Alan Cummings' arrival at the end of the episode is one of those temperature changing, you know, the thermostat goes up a little bit. Yeah. How did the writing for that character obviously collides in the book, but change once you get somebody as distinctive as Alan playing the part. Well, um... Started writing speeches that were too long. Andy got really excited writing speeches.

I will say that I pulled most of that scene directly from the book. Okay. Like most of his lines of dialogue, once I really, because I wrote a version of it, and I texted you, I went back to the book and I was like, oh, everything he says in this scene is like much cooler than what I wrote. Yeah. So I started actually lifting dialogue from the book. And Alan wasn't cast until we were writing episode like eight. Yeah, we had a different. He was cast later.

We had a vision of him, but we didn't know who he was. Okay. Definitely, yes, once we had Alan coming and there were some episodes yet to be written. And in some later episodes, you'll definitely see like some. really great Greenwald flourishes that are for the actor for sure. I'm very familiar with Greenwald flourishes. It's been a while. Because Clyde actually, to me, it's been a minute since I read the book. I went through it a little bit before the show started or before right when it got to announce. But for some reason, Clyde always was like an Enron guy to me.

He was like more of a, because that's what's so awesome about Alan playing him is because it just gives you a completely different angle on this like dandy gentleman arms dealer. A Manafort. More about Paul Manafort. Is that a Roger Stone? He's this sort of efficient bad guy, basically, who just floats in and out. And then what we wanted to do was find a way to make him more interesting and not just another person in a suit, although he really has great suits. He does. And where they came from was, you know, when we were delving more into the emotional lives of our leads of Allegra and Jake, a lot of it had to do with parents and parenting and modeling and how they didn't have any.

And Jake wearing the clothes that he does, living in the house that he does, having the giraffes that he has, what is he trying to be? Who is he modeling this all on? So it came pretty clear that if everything he does is sort of tacky and try hard, who's effortless? So steering into that patrician, that kind of like, you know, East Coast Waspie just wears, like, was born wearing khakis kind of thing. Yeah. We wanted to do. So we wrote the character more in that direction to be effortless at all the things that take a great deal of effort for Jake and creating a bad dad scenario. And so then physically it just became so much more interesting once we knew we'd have someone who,

was just as live and unsettling as Alan can be and is dapper up against Jay Ferguson, who's just, you know, great A American steak. Right. Shirt untucked. Eva, I also wanted to ask you a little about Allegra because this is... Oh, please. I thought it was such a cool Allegra episode, partially because in the first two, you could essentially say, like, she's concussed, you know? Yeah.

Literally, like medically concussed from multiple car bombs, but or from that car bomb at the end of the episode, but also is obviously like processing being back what she's going through, what's happened so far. And this is the episode where you actually get to see her doing what she does. Yeah. And being kind of on the job, but also get to see why being on the job is perhaps a coping mechanism for other parts of her. And I was curious about how you guys talked about Allegra and what needed to happen in episode three to show like a different side of her or if you guys talked about that at all. Well, we did talk about it, and I think an active word for Allegra in the third episode is she's pissed. Yeah.

She's angry. She's constantly, ever since she came to town, all of her boundaries have been violated, whether it's by people killing her sister. Choking her out. I think choking her out. And like this is like the second time someone's just appeared in her hotel room after the senator. Like this just keeps happening. Try the double day, maybe. She's got nowhere safe.

So it's, she's got this simmering look. And she knows Jake set her up. And so she's entering with so much, but just rage, that she can't actually, but she's doing her job. So she can't be angry and she can't freak out and she can't, like, she can't yell. So I think over the course of the episode we always talked about is that she starts off, you know, with this furious in the morning because someone broke in again and she hides the key. And that was also your idea, I believe. That was Brian. That was Brian.

The key thing? Yeah, that was 100% Brian Brown flourish. That was great. But thank you for thinking it was me because I like it a lot. And then she confronts Jake at the pool party. And then, you know, she has this really great emotional moment when she finally finds, she kind of angers her way through the tamale shop and into, and I love the way Stephen shot that. I love that too.

Yeah. And by the way, we wrote in the script a secret A-frame apartment above a tamale shop. And Richard, along with our locations team. And we're like, this also has to have a pool. So they said no pool. But they literally found a secret A-frame behind a... Mexican restaurant on a highway in Albuquerque. That was unreal. Man, Albuquerque is awesome looking. It's just so full of cool places. And, oh yeah, so anyway, the idea is that when she finally

gets Harold Snow tied to that chair. That's why she's so terrifying. Right. Because she finally, it's like the fourth violation in a row. He's in the closet. He's in the sister's apartment. There's no, even her, she can't even have her emotionally safe moment. Like seeing her sister's apartment, she was right. And finding this creep, it. behind the clothes. It's so infuriating. And in the book, it's a very scary scene. The interrogation in the book is very scary. It is really like the female cinch character gets scared of Dill. But then she gets turned on and wants to sleep of her. Yeah, but she is scared. She's like, I didn't like, I don't like you there. Which is the first step of being committed. Yes.

That's going to happen next. So that's, I think that it's, it's fun. I mean, Rosario is such an amazing actress and watching her like somewhere under the surface is really fun for me. Yeah. And then also when she leaves, she's like jacked up. And my favorite moment of the whole episode. Well, my second favorite moment. My first my favorite moment is the drones. But the second favorite moment is when he's like, she's like, let's hit the slush pit. And he's like, yeah, you know,

there's a funeral tomorrow. And she's like, oh. In the original draft, I think it was whose funeral? Like she was so jacked up. She was like, who, what are you talking about? What do you talk about? He's like, Felicity's funeral. And they were like, that's a little too. I know. But I feel like it's a great moment. We forgot too. Like, what few?

There's, yeah, you still have to do death stuff even when the world's running down. It's also good for time. Like, you can kind of hear. Like, oh, okay, so it's been a few days or a day or two. Each episode from this point on is basically a day. The pilot's three days and then every other episode is essentially a day. Okay. Yeah.

Going forward. And trying to think what other... Can I ask? Can we do drones? Yeah, talk drones. Oh, yeah. Is that... Did you go full avatar there?

Did you get the LED screens? We finished the VFX shots for that last... No, well, this will be... We're airing this in a week. So, two weeks ago. Okay. Like 10 days before the... Well, about eight days before the episode was available on demand, we finished the last VFX shot.

Okay. Andy had like five moments outside of the book that he wanted in the series that he told me when I met to work on the show. And one of them was the drones in the warehouse. I don't know if you know this. Andy cares very deeply about AI. You mean like Teddy and David? I'm passionate about the rights of the unborn. But in the unborn meaning, like, created like with a circuitry. Are you worried about going that sending the drones to the flesh fair where they'll be tortured by.

Can we talk about the flesh fair? I'm sorry. Is that... This is from the Spielberg AI. I'm doing... Oh, yeah. Never actually saw it. Oh, man.

You miss out. You don't want it to... I don't care about it. Sully, your AI feelings. Side note, and I've said this publicly before, I think Eva's the most interesting person I've ever met. No. And so when she says casually,

Fleshfare, I'm like, she probably went there. She probably took a trip. I would go to a flesh fair and watch robots get tortured. That... Tomorrow. Have you told me it was just like down in, like, downy? And I'd be like, The tickets are only $750 each.

She'd be like, give me four so I can invite friends I haven't made yet. Guys, for a couple on StubHub, yeah. I got us off. I got us off. Just to say, yeah, I wanted, one of the notes that we had early on we were pitching the show was, when is this show? Because we've modernized it, but we're also in a town that is very dependent on a newspaper, and there's a lot of manila folders and old media. And I like that about it. I like that the show said in a fictional imagination place where anything, it's kind of their details from a bunch of,

a bunch of different eras that don't limit us to any. And so I wanted something that if we had started to get lulled into thinking that this was an old-timey story, that it's not. Yeah, I mean, even the references to Syria and stuff like that, I thought were, like, not dependent on current events, but obviously fixed in time. Yeah, in the book, of course, Jake and Brattle out of history in Vietnam. So, yeah, I wanted her to be surprised by and overwhelmed by a couple dozen drones. So when you guys shot that scene, is it like Rosario look up?

There's lights, right? So they shot that scene until 3 in the morning. I was on a plane home to see my family. I was not there because, as Layla can attest, once the clock turned 11, I liked it. Layla was there. She was observing for me. That's like the most incredible location, too. The rail yard in Albuquerque.

And we go back there a lot over the season. Once you see it, it's in everything. Anything shot at Albuquerque has a rail yard in it because it's just such a shocking building. It's so cool. Yeah. Is that like where like, has Jesse Pigman been tortured there? For sure. A million percent.

Yeah. Daybreak on Netflix. They were holding a bunch of kids there in cage. God. But so to your question, though, that was a crazy day. It was Alan's first day shooting, and we shot the scene with him and Rosario in the van, and we did that poor man's process, which Lela would be impressed that I know, means that, guess what, it wasn't driving.

They were just flashing lights and bumping the bumper. I thought that he was able to make those vodka tonics or whatever rather smoothly. He was. It was not a bumpy patch. Also, oh, can I say one more thing? The lavender light inside of that that is always in that, in that, RV and comes back later. It's Zach Galler chose that as Brattle's color. And I just so eerie and cool. And the introduction of Brattle's theme music. Oh yeah. Which is called we're

being hunted by our friend John Carlo, who's a composer, which is introduced her the first time there. Anyway, so we filmed that scene in the van and then Alan cleared out and flew off to London or something because he was flying in and out a lot. And then yeah, literally that was the scene was until three in the morning getting a number of angles. I think we had one drone there or two as reference. If you need more, I got a couple of drones. You got drones? Yeah. I could draw in a lot of them.

So it was a very long and involved the effects process because, you know, and it's kind of amazing. Like my favorite shot in there that Stephen got was, you know, where they are rising and kind of floating and swarming around her head and the cameras turning. She was looking at nothing. Right. And there was no red light dancing on her hair. I mean, that's all.

It just makes you respect Thanos that much more. That's right. You know, those performances. Actually, each drone is played by Alan Cumming wearing a ping pong ball suit. People don't know that about him, but he is willing to go the extra. Padme. Anything else you guys wanted to say about three? I was trying to think if there's anything else.

Cool trivia? Emotional takeaways? A lot of Lalo in there. We get to see the desert in Big Way. Yeah, this is like the first time we used our awesome consultant for Border Patrol. Yeah, Francisco Contu. Yeah. Oh, wow.

writer. You wrote a brilliant book called The Line Becomes a River, which is his memoir of being a graduate student studying the border of the United States of Mexico, being a Mexican-American person, and then joining the Border Patrol himself to find out what it would mean. And it's a brilliant memoir, and it inspired the character of Lalo, who is not in the book, who was in the pilot that begins to play a bigger role here. And so it was great to have Paco as a consultant for that. And he come in and give us, like, very interesting details about just the kind of stuff he would see on the border or what the Border Patrol states. was like. Yeah. Who worked there? Like what kind of, yeah, just really like vivid detail. How it would be appointed? How many people would be there and stuff like that?

Yeah. Just scenes that we unfortunately weren't able to do because of timing, but it seems that were inspired by his experience in book, like in his book, like when he would be filling at paperwork and someone who had been detained, a migrant who had been detained would come up to him and speak in Spanish because he recognized that he would understand him and say, like, I'll sweep up here, can I help? And he couldn't help. And so that kind of frustration is baked into the character, even though we couldn't

always do scenes like that. Yeah, that was really cool to have him in the room. That's awesome. Yeah. I like this. So, I mean, I think that one, the last thing I'll say is just the one of the cool things about the way that you guys have done, I wouldn't say cliffhangers, is more like the cliffhangers is more like, is you going to get out of here in time before the bomb goes off? It's more just like, wait, did the entire world of the show just kind of change a little bit? And how do you, I just wanted to know if you guys could talk for a minute about writing those, that last page.

what's the thing that you leave people with? And how much of a discussion goes into that? I feel like that, yeah, you can say that for the first three for sure. And yeah, and a lot of the episodes have these kind of weird turns at the end where it just opens a new door. Yeah, it's like how can you open a door into the next episode where... I think all of them. Yeah. You know, I think it was really something that we talked a lot about and was really important to me that, again, people's time is pretty sacred.

And so you kind of got to give them a reason to care. And you want to hit it hard in the beginning and do sort of we wanted to do it. interesting, surprising opens before the title card. So like this one, suddenly you're in Lalo's world and we haven't spent time with him before. And we want to end with people

wanting more. But to your point, Chris, like, I don't see much value in a cliffhanger where like, is she going to die? Yeah, if there's always someone walking up behind Allegra, she's in the rest of the...

Schmuck bait. That's a word I learned from Eva as well. What is it? Schmuck bait. You know what else she taught me? And weirdly... What's the... What's the...

You're baiting schmucks. It's like, it's living like, oh, is the Lake we're going to die in the second episode? So every season of 24 after like season three. Unless you're ready to go. For the first two seasons, I was like, is he going to die? Holy shit.

But also. Sean B. going to really die in Game of Thrones? No fucking wet. This is another thing that Eva taught me. And weirdly, she only taught it to me when I was rewriting the finale. But put the important stuff in scenes at the beginning and end of the scene. That's the Motown rule, man.

You got to put your singles up front. Yeah. So, you know, that really came in handy when I was rewriting 10. Thanks a lot, by the way, for the rest of them. I was like, this should be the last line of the show. And you're like, oh, oh, yeah. In the end, I mean, this is, look, you know, I think that you'll be on this podcast again, hopefully even not to talk about the show. But I cannot say how invaluable Eva was about these things throughout the entire process.

Up to, but a great example of it is, Eva, here, look at the last scene I wrote for the most important characters and the most important moment in episode of the show. Is it good? And she'd be like, yes, it's good. But this line hidden in the 20 other lines, that's the best line. Right. So you should really write the scene around that. And I was like, oh, yeah. It's called editing.

Oh, yeah. That's the good line. I'll do that going forward. Well, that's a good place to end the pod. Eva, thank you so much for coming by. Can I make a plug? Absolutely. March 1st, I wrote on dispatches from elsewhere also on AMC.

Segal? Yeah. Jason Segal, Richard E. Grant, Andre 3000. Shot in Philly? Shot in Philly. Did you go to Philly Philly? No, it's concurrent with Briar Patch, but I wrote on that the year before. And so watch that as well while you're watching Byer Patch because Breyer Patch

just keeps getting better and better. Which part of your, again, most interesting, person alive. Which parts of yourself do you think were best applied to dispatches? Like, what did you bring to that? It's about immersive theater. There it is. Get yourself someone who knows immersive theater if you want to be successful in this business. It's also a good show. And all the rest of Briar Patch guys, it's a wild ride. But Dispatches has 100% more members of Outcast than our show. Don't sell yourself short. I mean, we have Mel Rodriguez. Yeah. And Sallyfield. No, we don't have Sally Field.

We have Sally Field. Whose team are you on? Team Sally. Even, thanks so much for joining us on the watch. Thanks, guys. This is a pleasure. Thanks, pal.