The Watch - Is TV Marketing Broken? Plus, ‘The Agency’ Ep. 6 and ‘Landman’ Ep. 8.

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Chris and Andy discuss Apple making its streaming service free for a weekend ahead of the premiere of ‘Severance’ Season 2 and the best ways to market a TV show in a disjointed streaming age (1:00). Then they talk about the latest episode of ‘The Agency’ and how the plot has snapped into gear with the Novikov story line (25:44). Then they discuss the latest episode of ‘Landman,’ a show that has officially gone off the rails (41:59). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Ask your doctor about Trimfaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going.

Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk. Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line.

New Year old him. It's Andy Greenwald. I owe everyone who listened to this podcast an apology. I left my voice box in 2024. So it's going to be rough. You went too hard on New Year's Eve. I went way too hard. Actually, the problem is, Chris, have you heard about old school zins?

They're actually, there are these small rolled tobacco tubes that you just sort of stick in your mouth and you light them on fire. Yeah. And this is the result. This is what happens. This is your brain on cigarettes. I had a cigarette over the Christmas holiday. And it was delightful. I think in moderation, you know, every once in a while, I'd like to go back and kiss the mistress.

Do you know what I'm saying? You respect the classics. That's the thing about you. Whether it's Homer's the Odyssey or whether it's Marlborough's Red. It's Joe Camel's Camel lights. Joseph Camel, please. It's great to see you. I wish we were in person.

I'm sorry you're not feeling well today, but I think I know it's going to make you feel better, and that's an ornately detailed discussion of the most recent episode of Landman, which we will do. We're also going to talk a little bit about the agency. We do have new shows coming, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that

because it's a new year, the slate's turning over, and January is an insanely busy month for TV, even though there are going to be a lot. lot of like, I think, because of the globes, you'll get a little bit of like, oh, and all these shows, you know, like older shows from last year are kind of still in the zeitgeist, if there is one. But a couple of new series coming up, in some returning ones, I wanted to ask you about, first of all, any general observations about the state of the world, Justin Baldoni's

countersuit, do you want to jump in? I thought, you want to just do a reading of it? No, I mean, first of all, I just want to commend you for your bravery for being so pro-Beldoni. The Baldoni bronies, you know, need a celebrity media figurehead like yourself, I think, at this time. So kudos for bucking the trends. So there actually is not like a ton of entertainment news right now other than that. And apparently Viola Davis is going to play the president in a TV series or a movie on Amazon. But I didn't really see a ton of other interesting stuff. also a lot of it that I did see

I don't even I feel like I've been burned by the internet rumor mill a couple of times aka I thought Christopher Nolan was remaking blue thunder so I am going to treat the rumor that Leonardo DiCaprio

is in Squid Game season 3 with a little bit of Is that a rumor right now? I saw that they confirmed season 3 is coming and I saw that Netflix has proudly announced that season 2 is the biggest show in the world right now which is definitely what they expected when they bankrolled it

So is Leo playing the younger version of one of the giant VIPs from season one? It actually turns out that all of Squid Game is just a dream he's having on Shutter Island. Oh, sick. From the Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island. Have you ever weighed in on your personal opinions of Leo's life strategy? And not his dating strategy. We'll leave that to ring or dish. I just mean that my understanding of his life is that for like four months of the year,

he devotes himself to his craft, generally with Martin Scorsese, or making some sort of, you know, intense film that requires him to eat bison liver in Alaska or whatever the case may be. And the rest of the time, he's just letting it go. He's just playing beach volleyball, you know, maybe packing a little bit of a gut. Like, I just feel like,

I don't know if that's good for the body long term to make those swings, but I feel like he's got it figured out. Am I wrong here? Do you have an opinion about this? I think his on-off switch is aspirational to me. I wish that you and I just, recorded for a little bit of the year.

Yes. But when we were doing it, I had like a full head of hair and was jacked and looked beautiful. And then as soon as we wrapped on the watch season 11, I was like, now it's time to put on 25 pounds and start vaping on a yacht. In a yacht, out docked outside of Portland? Like what is your- Outside of Portland in January? Yeah, I'm like, what is CR's vacation strategy? just vaping on a yacht, staring at Scoot Anderson's house. Someone still believes in you, Scoot.

Andy, so Monday, this coming Monday, I wanted to do our most anticipated shows of 2025 episode, which Kaya reminded me that one of the highlights of last year's most anticipated list was disclaimer, which we've passionately discussed and then abandoned. Am I wrong? Am I off by a year or two? Was it two years ago that Kaya's all-time favorite episode of the Watch ran, where you alone in a room just ran down the list of upcoming TV shows being like, that sounds cool.

And I was also like, I have been podcasting for three and a half hours and it was in fact like 19 minutes. I don't want to like say that, you know, the fate is written in the stars, but I believe the timing checks out that you were doing that podcast at the same time Jeremy Renner was being run over by a snowplow. Oh my God, you're probably right. I mean, I'm not saying coincidence isn't a thing, but carnically that's why Jeremy Renner got distracted with the snowplow as he was waiting for the watch to refresh.

He was listening. And he's like, oh, that does sound cool. It's not funny, too. I mean, it's not not funny. He seems to have made a full recovery thanks to the beautiful team of medical professionals. Yeah, because he has a cybernetic frame now. That's why he does not seem like he is back to normal. Okay, fair, but what was normal for that guy?

I don't know. That's true. But should we, Kaiya, should we memorialize? You're going to make Kaya comment on this. Not on Jeremy Renner, just on like, should we memorialize the CR solo pod in any way? Like, do you think that if we do the most anticipated show from Monday, should Chris and I record solo versions of it? And we could run one and then the other? Like, how should we do this?

Because I do think you set a precedent. Yeah. Yeah. And you both must be recording from a room in your childhood home. Yeah, drinking three blood lights. And also after three blood lights. It has to be like 6 p.m. I forgot.

All those details. But what a beautiful story that was. Oh, my God. That was also the year that my, I've told the story of the big picture before, but I had to do a podcast. I didn't have to. I,

I passionately wanted to do a podcast with Sean about the Paul Verhoeven movie Benedetta, which is about lesbian nuns. And my mom was like, what are you watching? Anyway. By the way, that's nice, though.

I mean, it had probably been like three decades since you had one of those, hey, what are you watchings? Yeah, seriously. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about some of the January shows just because I'm trying to articulate this, but I was coming back into the mix here,

and I was getting ready for work. And I was like, oh, let me just look at the schedule for what Andy and I are going to be talking about. And some of the shows, some of the highlights over the next couple weeks, obviously the return of severance towards the end of the month, Peter Berg's American Prime Evil with Taylor Kitchen, Betty Gilpin. You may have seen Smads for that.

The Pit, which is, I think, going to be an object of fascination for us. This is the not an ER reboot or sequel show from John Wells and Noah Wiley about an emergency room. And then personal project, The Return of Rogue Heroes, which is on MGM Plus.

So I'm going to have to do some work figuring out whether people can watch that. But I'm very excited about that. There's a couple of other things I want to talk to you about, but of those shows, do you do you as a person who professionally talks about television who makes television and who talks to other people who do those things right were you like i know what day severance is coming out great question 100% no i know january broadly

yeah i know that they release the first few minutes of the season which i've not checked out yet because you know i'm a purist all or nothing um i don't order by the glass when it comes to television But I, and I also saw that Apple is making its plus service free this weekend for everyone. I believe it was last weekend, but yeah. Oh, right. Sorry. So for a weekend, which, so that in some ways was the first Apple TV marketing that I even was aware of. Generally, I thought that was smart.

I always remember when the paid networks used to do that, like Showtime would be free for a weekend or HBO, and it seemed like a very effective marketing tool. But to answer your question, no. I actually don't know the date. So, and by that same token, American Primeval, I assume you don't know when that's coming. The pit broadly, because I just told you it was coming in January. But I was basically, like, I was wondering whether or not TV has kind of got a marketing problem right now. I'm finding that more and more, when I chat with people, they are now, now the behavior of watching things on your own time, on your own schedule.

And perhaps this is like anecdotal because I know lots of new parents. I know lots of people who are very busy with sports seasons that they're covering so they're not necessarily like, oh, is it Thursday? Is this up yet? You know? But I am finding that first of all, like

the marketing push is entirely leading up to the release date. So I have not heard a peep for instance about skeleton crew since we talked about it. I know that the ringerverse pods have been talking about it, but I haven't seen anything that's like skeleton crew.

Skeleton crew online on Disney Plus, when I go, it just kind of like is a tile, but it's not featured. I wonder whether or not, like, part of the reason why this all feels so diffuse or fractured or,

or like there is no kind of like monocultural experience of watching television anymore is because the networks, the channels, whatever you want to call them, have kind of completely bent the need of the streamers.

And the streamers are like, we have our own ways of making people watch. We don't need. to tell them about things in the traditional way. I think it's a smart observation. And as you're saying this, I'm realizing that this is, this whole area is pretty uncovered and unexplored.

And I think it might be interesting at some point to have, maybe we do it anonymously, but to have a TVPR person come talk to us about the challenges. The one piece that I think was missing from your astute analysis is just the cost. It is extremely expensive to market anything these days. It is extremely expensive to hard launch something from zero to 60, basically, to flood the airwaves, to flood the internet, to flood billboards, buses in New York City with images of something that is new in order to do something that, as you just suggested, is just incredibly hard generally these days, which is to sort of puncture people's awareness bubbles. A million years ago, shockingly, actually five years ago, when my show was being promoted by USA, people were telling me that it was in the way that the way that the way that the way that they were,

they were looking at the changing world then, it was more cost effective to launch a new show than to bring back a show because you got more return on your investment, even though the investment in the marketing was higher. To convince people to get excited again to watch the sinner or whatever, I'm just picking a USA show from that time, again, started to feel like internally like diminishing returns. You know, they couldn't budget as much because it was returning. And then to puncture the bubble again or to get it. get people to start watching now with the perceived implied labor of having to catch up. Now, okay, I'm realizing the Cinder was a bad example because that was a new case every season

type show. Sure. But even so, these were all attempts to try to address that, that yawning problem. And then in the case of the streaming era, you said it. Every one of these services has their own logic to it. I feel like you and I have seen like sort of post-mortems about Disney shows where they've said, well, they expected the first episode to have a certain amount of viewers, but what they were really watching was retention. And could they bottom out at a certain number? Remember, they're all these sort of like after the Star Wars show's numbers saying like Asoka premiered at the levels of Mandalorian, but did not maintain those levels or whatever.

And then you get into the actual like underneath the hood stuff, which we were referring to with the interesting Disney honcho interview that Joe Adelian did on Vulture in December where it was just like these numbers were fine, but they were not. you know, $5 million, $10 million an episode fine. All this is to say, I don't know. What is the consumer experience of this? And I couldn't tell you. Yeah, it's not necessarily that I think these streamers or networks should be spending exorbitant amounts of money to advertise, say, during a college football game. So last couple days, I've obviously watched a lot of college, not obviously, but I watched a lot of college football over the last couple days. And one was a very captive audience member on a flight back from Philly. So I watched all of that Boise State game,

and 90% of the advertising was for like a Viagra-type pill. You know, like, so it was like... How many did you buy it? Well, you know, it's funny you should say that. I thought it might be... I thought they might come on board for us as a sponsor and I could get some free product down the line. But, you know, I wanted to, Penny.

saved. But my point was more the one show that they kept advertising on this game was an upcoming Fox series called Doc. Have you seen anything about this? I've seen nothing but things about this. So this is a show starring Molly Parker. It essentially seems like

a riff on regarding Henry where a hard charging surgeon who might be maybe personally a little bit complicated, a little bit abrasive. Brasive, yeah. she gets into a car accident and hits her head. And based on what I'm understanding from the show,

remembers how to be an internal medicine surgeon, but doesn't remember that she was mean and is kind of like going through life being like, now I am like, now I'm nice, but like I got a divorce and I have to like go repair all that and stuff like that. And I was thinking about, I want to develop this idea with you,

which is it's called, and it's about your time as a TV critic. You get into a car accident and hit your head against a windshield. You remember everything about TV and about what you do, but you forget you didn't like True Detective season one. Did you cause this car accident? Did you... Did you cut the brake lines?

Because you seem to be the winner in this situation, but please... Yeah, and you're just like, let's do it, True D, Season 1, rewatch pod. See, I was all in on this, and I thought you were going to be like, and the twist is you just are delighted by television. You just think everything is really good. But specifically, you just want me to hit my head so hard. I think Taylor Sheridan is good. You do think Taylor Sheridan is good. We'll see about that.

But first of all, I want to have a, we were talking about PR. I want to talk about like the marketing and branding meetings at Fox where they were like, this, we have the show. It's called, you know, Dr. Frowns or something or like, will she heal again? And they were like, no, no, no, no. Who's the guy who's the guy who's just like, what's the simplest version of this? We could call it Doctor, like, too wordy for America. Yeah. Doc.

It's an incredible title. Yeah, I mean, these, well, there's two things to say. One is like these giant games, which are broadcast, which often are broadcast on broadcast networks, this is an opportunity to audition their content. Yeah. And they can just spam viewers with it until it sticks. And it worked on me. And I didn't watch any college football.

My awareness of the show is very high as my interest is very low. But I would also say that, you know, when you run the numbers, Doc, when it premieres, it may have already premiered, will have more viewers than a lot of the other shows that we're going to talk about this month, right? So it's hard to talk about in the abstract because so much of this is apples and oranges and dependent on how much the show costs. who's making it and what their goals are. But I do continue to just sort of be mystified by, like, American Prime Evil, which is a show that, as you said, it's coming out, strongcast, Peterberg, Explosions in the Sky, soundtrack. Like, this is something that we are interested in. Yeah, the American West.

The people who are involved in it have been devoting their professional lives to for quite some time. And what does that mean to Netflix? What is Netflix's goals for this? Yeah, I mean, I think that if we talk to somebody from Netflix, they'd be like, we get far more traction with the TV series because of notifications on people's phones and just promoting things within their for you tile, then we do from buying time on college football games. Right. Now, I think I did see an American primeval ad during some college football, which makes sense because it's like, hey, do you like other shows that are about stuff like this? this one's really good too, check it out. But I just think that there's like,

there's no way that I would ever compare, like, the way rogue heroes or the pit is being promoted to Superman. But I do note with interest that Superman has like 50 million views on YouTube. Everybody is acutely aware that it's coming out next summer and we'll probably zero in on like, yes, of course, it's coming out July 20th or whatever it is. And, like, the familiarity people have with, I guess, I mean, obviously Superman is like this iconic character

that's been made 10 times and most people who are alive know that there is a character named Superman. But the movies are able to point you towards a day and date. They are trying to get you into the theater for that first weekend

and everything builds up towards that. Whereas for TV I think it's kind of like people almost like throw their hands. It feels like Hollywood has thrown its hands up at the idea of creating traction or interest or buzz around a show and they leave it to critics or they leave it to the algorithm.

Which is... And I don't even know if critics can make a show anymore. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know if like... No. If you freak out about a show, like, I guess, you know, an example, a good example of that would be the bear, which I think was critically acclaimed before it became commercially, like, lauded, you know?

Well, I think that things would be different in the world of crit, the television show that you just sold straight to series to Fox, where I emerged from the flaming wreckage of my electric vehicle to preach the gospel of high quality broadcast television. But, I mean, I think it's important to note, like, what's, let's put things, like, rank things in terms of the importance of having a known date. And by that, I mean, the pit feels like the kind of thing that is much more important to Max and its strategy and its survival and its intention than even severance does to Apple.

because PIT is one of the first things that we've seen, like, really come to screen that is absolutely a byproduct of the post-COVID pre and kind of during secretly strike conversation about like we need to bring 1997 back. Yeah. We need to do this. Not like, we'll see if we could just get Kelsey Grammer to do some more Frazier's, but like we need to create the kind of adrenalineized, you know, attention demanding appointment viewing that is also procedural. familiar that ER gave us. So we're basically going to make ER again. So for people to sign up from Max, like because the pit is there and the churn of like, let's dive in, let's go episode to episode, that seems existentially important to the Max

project. Because despite our love for HBO shows and, et cetera, you know, and I know you love the Magnolia network and you're excited, the Shining Vale is getting to run back on the main screen, Max's future is not guaranteed, right, in the same way that Apple's TV experiment is fine, as long as they want to do it and it doesn't really matter. The severance piece of it, I mean, you and I think Severance is a good show. We think it's an interesting show and we're both very, very curious about whether it can level up in its second season. Severance is a high-quality play by Apple.

It's a class, like, look how classy we can be play. It's an artistic play. It's an awards play. But in terms of the existential survival of Apple TV, TV, which is a foolish question since it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. To Apple. The free weekend of like, hey, look, we have movie stars.

We have Jake Gyllenhaal and Brie Larson and, you know, named seven other people I'm forgetting right now. Harrison Ford. Yeah. That's who's on our service. You might want to hang out here. They're proud of severance as they should be. But it feels like the exception to them.

You know, do you know what I mean? Yeah. So it strikes me that like having severance also be there and it's been a minute is important, It feels to me like Severance is a show, along with Ted Lasso, that really broke contain on Apple and, like, was something that people were like, I guess I got to figure out a way to watch this show Severance because everybody at work is talking about it. I don't know. It's interesting. I'll be curious to see what of the shows, aside from Severance, that are coming out in the next couple of months. Chris, don't you think, though, this conversation, and we can move on after this, but like, don't you think this conversation is just sort of adjacent to a conversation we've been having for a long time, which is, um, Shows aren't on any schedule anymore. Yeah. And there used to be, you know, a marketing department, a network, whomever, could count on the fact that at a certain time of year, viewers would be primed for blank. Hell, a certain day of the week.

Well, yes, but even past that, I mean, well, it's the only example we ever use, so I apologize. But, like, if it's summer, it's the bear, right? Like, we've, that has worked and that has worked for them. And that, I mean, that's a value ad. It's a money save that people are primed to expect it. It's one of the reasons why FX has been super adamant about Chris Storr keeping his schedule and making it the same way that he has been making it. The severance thing, like, who knows what their money spend on that is,

but it was a huge, you know, exponential ad, I would imagine, because it wasn't just like, hey, remember this cool, quirky show that everybody liked last year. It's remember this cool, quirky show from three calendar years ago. Yeah. Trust us. it's worth coming back to. That's a whole different calculus. And for the life of me,

I don't understand how people do it because it's not a simple... I mean, nothing in this industry is simple anymore, but the PR job and the marketing jobs... Well, there's a distinction between PR would be like, you know, I think it's marketing is what we're talking about. PR is more like letting people who are in the press know about, like a show is coming up.

I feel very well informed by PR. I don't... I just don't necessarily feel like TV shows feel like they are being marketed to me when I am just an audience member. And there are certain things where I think you can look at success stories from last year. Shogun's a good example where I feel like

Disney was kind of like, we have this marketing muscle and we're going to get behind this show because it seems like it's an awards contender. We're really proud of it. It cements this FX relationship, etc. So I'm curious to see whether or not any shows from like

the first quarter of this year feel like they get a push that way. I guess that's where we can leave it. Well, I'll say that not to continually gas them up for this, but FX is the best at this. FX makes things that we've never heard of feel important and puts them on our radar in the right way, not as quasi-industry professionals, but just as fans,

whether it's Shogun or English teacher, they got appropriate pushes that communicated the content really, really, really well. And I think that, for what it's worth, I think HBO does it when it's playing a home game. So when White Lotus hits, which is coming up pretty soon this year, I think it's going to hit. I mean, obviously it's going to hit, but I mean it's going to, the marketing is going to hit and deliver and people will be like, oh, yeah, time to go back. I don't think that's going to be an issue at all, whereas they may have struggled more with

some of their newly onboarded IP content. Sure. I mean, I think everybody paying attention to there was a Dune show, but what was the marketing for that other than the fact that you guys like Dune? Yeah. You guys want to see how this kid. he got born? 10,000 years before he got born?

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predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant, 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. All right. Dealer's choice, you want to do landman or agency first?

I think we should do agency first because it's always good, you know, while they're listening, while they're leaning in, we could hit them with a little to seriousness, and then we can talk legal strategy. You don't think that there's seriousness in layman? I have way more landman notes than I do agency notes. I'd love to hear your notes. I alluded to this when we recorded on Monday. I just think this show is snapped into gear and it's working. And it snapped into Richard gear and it's working. This has now become something.

And yes, I am. It is like watching really good cover songs of one of my favorite albums. But this has become appointment viewing for me in a way that a lot of shows, even shows that we really generally like and keep up with, have not. Like I am actively excited for new episodes to drop. and I'm thrilled to watch them. And I know that sounds like a very low bar, but I feel like people who listen to this podcast understand that,

that there are shows that you enjoy different degrees, some for you, some for the conversation, some to keep up with, some that you're, you know, have a more challenging relationship with. And I'm just super into the show now. I'm really doing it. I think you're right about the snapping into gear. There is a moment in a spy for sale,

which I think is the sixth or seventh episode, which is the most recent one. I know that one that goes up, I think there's an agency tonight. I think it goes up on Thursday. days now. So I'm not sure what the, yeah, I think this is the sixth episode that we were talking about, a spy for sale. That's correct. And this one felt like it kind of, you know, there are still beats from the bureau that are very familiar. There are, is this weird phantom limb experience I have

while watching the agency where I'm like, I think I know what's going to happen in this scene already, but I can't quite remember. And also they've shuffled the deck a little bit. But you've got a different level of technology being used by the agency in this series. I think they are trying to articulate a global political moment in a very interesting way, which is briefly said by Richard Gear at the end of this episode. He's like, this is the only department of the government that thinks in terms of decades and eras. And you just put us five minutes, you just gave us like five minutes. He's saying this to the Martian character to Michael Fastbender. It's a very cool moment because Fastbender's character is essentially having a panic attack

in a conference room. And the shot is from outside of the conference room as the meeting that they're in is dispersing when they've decided that they're going to try and rescue coyote, I assume. And Gear is yelling at him. And it's Richard Geer and Jeffrey Wright giving him the business. So you'd think, oh, we're going to get close-ups of these guys. They're going to let these guys cook. But instead, it's almost.

muted a little bit and it's outside of the office and you can see that this guy is like becoming more and more isolated. It's a great little piece of filmmaking. But that whole idea is very cool to me. Like the idea that this is a organization that is thinking in terms of political eras rather than political moments is just a cool thing to dramatize. I thought that the show, to your point though, snapped into place and snapped to attention with the, the, the Novakoff plotline in this most recent episode. So this is a ex-KGB, aging ex-KGB officer who has basically placed himself

in a sort of a middleman information sales position with the sort of the location of Coyote, who's an CIA agent working in Belarus. And a lot of this is tied to the Ukraine conflict. Remind me when this is set. Is it three years ago? I believe it's three years ago. Okay.

Because there are references to... No, I think it's 2023. I'm sorry. Okay. There are references to things that are like, is he talking about Biden? Is he talking about... They don't say Putin and they don't say Biden, but like there are illusions to the White House and to Russia that are very clear.

In any case, Ukraine is becoming a bigger and bigger part of this series. But it's just a very good lecarre... Care-esque, you know, the bones of all the spies in Europe, like, moment that I felt like gave this series a little bit of clarity and distinction from Libreau. And this is, well, this is a moment that I love particularly in LaBiro, too, with it, where it's just like, it's not about money. It's not about real politic or global influence. It's about personal anguish and the personal toll of this.

In my memory, this plot line with bidding on the bike was longer and more drawn out. And I can't tell you because I haven't rewatched in a while whether it was more or less effective by making it, you know, reducing it to what it was in this episode. But it absolutely landed for me for all the reasons you're saying. Like fundamentally, what you and I love about these stories, all of it is in this episode, this most recent episode from the cleverness of the online bidding. You know, they're not sure who they're actually in business with. The leaked, not the leaked, the bugged phone call to the doctor's office. that's a coded message, the box of phones and the phones ringing and the beautiful mix of like hard power and soft power and old school spycraft and new school technology is just

delightful and clever and considered. And every beat, for a show that doesn't do a lot of handholding, it does walk us through the TikTok, the old way of saying it, not the website that you don't want to see banned version of it. The website. I don't know. The RSS feed. I don't know what it is.

People at this point, they know what they're listening to. Did you have a car accident just now you know what TikTok is? It's an app? Yeah. Okay. Come on. Don't be like that. I don't, look, I don't do the dances like you do.

So I'm not as familiar. But I did love all of that. I'm interested that you're bringing up the politics of it because 1,000% this was a lot conversation was about this topic, whether it was between the Butterworths, Butterworths and Joe Wright, when George Clooney and Grant Heslov were developing it, when Showtime was trying to adapt it. One of the biggest pieces had to have been the elephant in the room, which is it is a fundamentally different project to make a show about the secret spy service of France or the United States. And one of the things that I'm very curious about around the corner is that the

United States plays a role in the first season of the Bureau. And I will not spoil that. But the idea of all of this hardship and all of this sort of like underdog subterfuge being undertaken by the biggest power in the world, the show has done a very smart job of muting it. It makes it a personal story. It makes it about people doing their best. You know, this isn't set at Langley. This is set in London. So everybody's a little bit out of their comfort zone. But. when you say that, are you talking about all the British actors doing American accents? I'm talking about myself as someone who has spent a lot of time being out of his comfort zone in London recently. But so how it's going to navigate the real politic of that is interesting to me.

Because I think that there was an element of the Bureau that you felt like the humanity of Malitru and of the characters we saw was kind of their diminishing importance, which is not, I do not mean to make us. a pejorative or subjective commentary about the role of the French in the world. I still love shredded carrot salads for lunch as often as I can. But it's sort of, that's the tension that I'm interested in going forward. And in a way, it's kind of an analog to the other tension of the show that just fundamentally does not work, but it doesn't bother me, which is that Michael Fastbender is playing Jason Bourne. And the fact that any of these people, even for half of an episode, were like, oh, this failed

book author certainly is ripped. Like, he has... He has... Incredible 40 times so he can outrun the Chinese Secret Service. Just like look at this bookish cuck running through Battersea Power Station. Bravo. No, I generally, I find it interesting that he has chosen to play this part without the slightest bit of vulnerability. And so far it hasn't taken me out because everything else is so engaging.

But I do find that kind of interesting. I just want to get your take on that, if you have a take on that, on the way the show has done a remarkable balancing act of focusing on what it's focusing on, well, talking about the larger global goings on, but not pot committing too far one way or another about what role it's playing in that conversation. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a magic trick to reference a still evolving situation in Ukraine. to talk about things that are still kind of like bubbling up. I mean, even referencing the executive branch of the American government that is in flux,

you know what I mean? Because we're obviously about to have this, a new president who has pretty clearly stated opinions about where the Ukraine conflict is going to go. It doesn't have anything to do with how people are going to appreciate the agency, but it's like almost a recent period piece in some ways to watch it. in no way really impacts the way I watch the series, but it is like, it's trying to thread the needle where every single one of these people

has like something personal going on, and this is what was so great about Libero, was there were so many personal stories that the political and the espionage stories kind of intertwined with them, and that they were reflections of their interiority. You know, like the way that Malatrude did espionage work was in fact an extension.

of his permanently broken heart. You know, the way that he was sort of managed by his boss was in a reflection of his boss's insecurity about, you know, his own place in the world. So I think they're doing a good job of that. I wish we had more John McGarrow and more Catherine Waterston, but I think that we will get some. Fastbender as the central character

or the central actor of the piece is kind of like exactly what you said. I like it and I don't think it works. you know? It's like he's just too beautiful and cool and fast and smart and everything and never seems to like get freaked out or overwhelmed or overstuffed. And this was the first moment they kind of put him in that position. But he was still able to run in and negotiate the information purchase from Novokov. So it's cool to see him try to do that.

That point about like being able to be good at everything, I think you and I are not experts, but we do read a lot of spy fiction. I feel like the greatest invention of the Bureau was the idea, not just that someone would be embedded in the field for six years, which I think is not normally the case in any major spy department in any government in the world, but that then he would immediately put on a suit and be one of the most important management people. You know, I mean, look, Chris, there are very few people who are built like you, you know, who can be talent and management. And this show sort of perpetuates that fiction.

And the idea that Kassavits is sort of bookish and weirdly able to do both worked a little better for me than Fastbender. Like when he's in the office, I'm just like, well, this guy is just an alpha and he's just letting him do whatever he wants. But clearly they respect his management acumen, even though he's clearly compromised in a little bit, has lost a little bit in the field. Yeah. Do your point about like the reflecting, changing temperature of governments and things? I mean, in a way, this show, I mean, it doesn't glamorize the spy services necessarily, but it is a love letter to the deep state in the idea that, I mean, and I do, I know that sounds silly. We're in a true celebration of the deep state moment on television right now.

But the idea that no matter who is driving the car, the car still functions, the car is on a longer journey. even though the drivers may swap out, it's largely following a considered and responsible route. Like that is what shows like this offer us. That is what that line that's at the end of that episode suggests, right? That like, though governments may change and, you know, the culture wars may, the flames may be fanned or whatever, we are doing something here that far, far, far outstrips the importance of the day-to-day scrum. And that's clearly very very very. very appealing.

That's also like, I think it's interesting to take a step even further back from that and wondering if that's something that they're lying to themselves about. You know, like, great question. The idea that whether or not, like, Gear's character, Bosco thinks that he is in this nervous system where they are determining the future of democracy for an era. And in fact, what they're mostly doing is fixing their own mistakes and hoping Malitru's love life and parenting doesn't get them in a ton of trouble. Exactly. And it is interesting to consider this, not just in the moment that we're living in, but like, seeing strands of this in a lot of popular work at the moment.

Like, we don't need to get into it, but I watched Conclave finally last night. And it's a very similar thing, right, where people who have had to either take a giant leap of faith or lie to themselves that the choices that they've made independently as individuals in the world matter, right? Both to an institution and to the larger more. weight of the universe in the case of conclave. And in the end, it's all kind of just about personal foibles and politics. Is that your entree to Andy's movie minute? Do you want to talk about Conclave for a second? No, not really, because I don't want to zag, but it didn't really work for me. Really? Well, I actually kind of wanted to talk to you about it maybe in a future conversation because I thought it was absolutely beautiful. I thought it was super entertaining and it had some of the best actors just showing out. So I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I, I enjoyed it. I, and not like immune to it.

But I think ultimately what I was struck by, and I wonder if this was because I watched it on TV, I watched it on Peacock, not in the theater, that it kind of felt Netflix-y to me, in that it was the most gourmet version of junk food imaginable, because it is both kind of preposterous, particularly at the end that just kind of lost me,

but also that it really is Agatha Christie-like, where it's like, here are the four people, one by one, they will fall. And it was just so boring. spoiler played in that, but surrounded by absolutely gorgeous, like jaw-dropping shots by Edward Berger, the director, and you have Ray Fein's just at the peak of his powers. So I was all in, despite those sort of hammy flaws up until the very end where I was like, come on, come on now. Okay, well, maybe we could say if we go do a movie catch up as we get closer to Oscars,

if you have some more. Sure, but do you get, but you, I would love to. Thank you for the invitation. But do you know what I mean in terms of the like, it's interesting to think about all of these current entertainments as like the lies we tell ourselves, right? In particular, to bring it back to the agency, in most shows, having a, giving a character who is in the midst of the most stressful moment of their lives or else they wouldn't be making a TV show about it,

a child is an unforced error. Yeah. In the context of Martian's journey and what you were just saying, it makes it even more interesting. because ultimately, would the world be a better place if he had just raised his child? You know what I mean? Like, honestly? Or would he be in a better place?

I like that the show is not, it's not running towards those questions, but it's not skirting them either. Yeah. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by the active cash credit card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets at the game or grabbing a car.

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But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sales signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Let's wrap up by talking about landman. Speaking about raising your child correctly. What's this episode called Clumsy, this life?

Yeah, it is. It's clumsy, comma, this life. Do you know what the next episode is called? Wolf Camp. That's the camp. I thought about sending my younger daughter there, actually. Bro, I feel like I'm in pretty good health, and I definitely wondered if I had a stroke while I was watching this episode. And there's a couple reasons for that. Number one, this episode looked like the Saftees directing an AI Netflix Christmas movie.

Hell yeah. For some reason, I don't know if this is just me, but like, was there a ton of really jittery, close-up handheld camera work in this episode? Well, particularly, this was the finest use of the ethnically coded camera lens since the OC would go to Chino and suddenly everything would be like all sepia and dark. Like the scenes when the drug smugglers were like, Andale, like, let's get the cocaine. And so it's a completely different show.

Yeah. That was on the lioness set, I bet. Well, I mean, they're like, I know we just strafed these guys briefly with a helicopter. Can we come back and do it again for layman? You have to accept, there's a moral quandary involved in watching these shows, Chris, where you just see the hand of like Taylor Sheridan cutting deals with

the U.S. military to use Tomahawk whatever's, and then them being like, we'd like to use it on this show too. And he's like, great. Yeah. Great. How much time do you want to be on camera, sir? This fucking episode was true pandemonium.

In terms of like, the episode starts, and I have to say, like, regardless of what Taylor Sheridan's viewpoints on female lawyers are, this, Rebecca is like a different person in this episode. right?

I mean, I want to be charitable here. Rebecca's top five worst characters on television this century. It's very, very, very hard to imagine

a worse character. In conception, sorry, a little bit in performance. Like, she sucks at her job. She's awful. She's leading with her heart.

Consistently. Is that your performance review? Well, okay, so basically the premise of this episode, is it starts, it's basically right from when the last episode ends, which is that Cooper is at Pauli Chavez's house, and Rebecca and Nate have come over to give her a settlement check.

But then Rebecca's like, I've been looking for you to Cooper, which I feel like I am watching Landman pretty closely and don't remember her mentioning. like I'd love to chat with your son if you get a chance to. To be fair. The parenting style that Tommy shows to Cooper, which is, I believe, exchanging two sentences with him over seven episodes of television and not looking him in the eye when he's sharing a meal with him

for the first time in what may be months, does not suggest a close bond that even a competent lawyer could exploit. But it doesn't feel like Rebecca's been pounding the pavement of the Permian Basin looking for him. She's scared to snakes. That's been established. So she finds Tommy and the episode opens with this super intense close-up handheld conversation where she's like, I'm going to fucking end your life.

And Cooper is just like, I'll fucking end yours. And they're all to, like, I wonder whether this was like a feeling that there needed to be more of an adversary or an antagonist in this show because all of a sudden, her being like my entire identity and life is about protecting the corporate liability of M-Tex. And I will stop at nothing to make sure that we save $500,000 or whatever. After she's already had these experiences

literally with the Norris family of like, okay, like I'm softening it up and I'm just trying to protect the company. She's like now like the villain of the show, I guess. You know, a lot of, a lot of people have talked about the unreality of shows like Law and Order in which crimes are committed and people are sent to jail all within 42 minutes of screen time. But those shows are like the Harvard Law Library of Jurisprudence compared to the way law is depicted on this program.

One of my favorite small details is when John Hamm was like, you did a great job in that deposition. If ever the deposition where she just delivered a monologue? She was just like, you fucking cuck don't speak again. And in this one, an entire liability claim is resolved before breakfast. Like they came and ate in the morning. Implication is that Cooper killed

three other men or four other men. That's later. But like that seems to be what's turning in her mind when she's talking to Cooper is that you intentionally murdered these men to get with their widow? All their wives. Listen, I feel like you and I are approaching this from a different place.

When we reach that scene, when Tommy is so incensed, not only does he kick over her stool, he bricks a Mikhailob Ultra for the first time on this show. He's never done that before. I was surprised he didn't take it to go. My response was, oh, thank God, Taylor Sheridan has stumbled into some stakes here. Like actually someone might be in peril or be antagonistic to someone other than a straw man cut out that has a speech shouted in his or her face before, you know, learning the error of their environmentalist ways. So I actually thought for as preposterous as that was as a turn, that was they stumbled into some story there. That didn't bother me as much as the just absolute catastrophe of him just getting her a million dollars and quitting his job because he's learned all he needs to learn.

and he's going to own an oil company someday. I'm waiting for you to do that with podcasting. And I'm getting there. I've learned all I can learn about this potting. I'm quitting and I'm going to own Bill one day. In the third decade of doing this show, I promise that I will. That's a good second season arc for crit. I say all that and I criticize the Rebecca character.

I criticize those opening moments. I talk about the weird change in visual language. of the show. But I'll tell you why I keep coming back up to the bar and ordering another Niccolo Bultra. And it's this. It's fucking John Hamm impersonating Rob Riggle from stepbrothers having a heart attack. First of all, I got to ask, man, this guy runs an oil company.

I'm sure he has a really good cardiologist. Do guys have heart attacks and just take pills now? Like, do you know how that's like an 80s movie trope? It's like, where are my pills? Yeah. Oh, God damn it. Angina pills. Yeah, yeah.

But Ham, there's a moment in this show where I'm like, oh, this was stitched together. Like, I don't, Ham calls Tommy. And it was like, hey, by the way, like we have a lot of cartel activity in our oil fields. So I've, I've leased the National Guard to come start dropping bombs next to our wells.

And Tommy's like, you got it, bud. Then Ham has a heart attack. Yeah. And calls Tommy again and is like, By the way, fuck your son. Why didn't he say fuck your son the first time? He already knew. And I think this is a problem with all of John Hamm's scenes are him getting off a plane and talking on the phone.

So they are, I don't think that they are shot with any sort of like sense of story chronology or linear kind of. So do you think that when he shot that first phone scene, no one had given him the note chronologically? They were blocked shooting that he was also experienced. a cardiac event. That is what I think. But that is the fucking juice of this show. Is this guy having a heart attack? And Demi Moore being like... This is what I want to talk about. Chris, you and I used to live in a society. And in that society, Demi Moore was paid $20 million to lead the movie's strip teas. And in the year of Our Lord 2025, DeMe Moore's job is to take a cell phone from a not at all dying man and say, call another time, dip shit. Like,

Well, I wonder whether, what is it, like, President A. Priore? Like, if, like, there's, like, if the speaker of the House has to become, I wonder if Jimmy Moore is going to become, like, the de facto head of M-Tex while he's recovering from his ninth heart attack. You mean designated survivor? Because why else would Demi Moore be doing this, right? Well, as I've said multiple times, I think maybe she was just swimming. And Taylor Sheridan showed up with a camera crew.

It was like, I can use this. What if this was, what if we discovered this was all found footage? You know what I mean? Like none of the people involved knew that they were in TV show. John Hamm just loves flying private. He just loves flying private. The military is just actively just shooting stuff. He's got the camera rigs out.

You say that John Hamm is only doing these scenes, but you are overlooking the opening when he solves the border crisis with a Hollandeau-sauce-obsessed governor. Like, I will say this again. The Taylor-Sharradais is real, And I cannot believe that any actors actually enjoy doing scene work where they monologue for six minutes and then get monologued back.

What are you talking about? It's probably the... Your entire... All you have is highlights when you're on a Taylor Sheridan show. But you also have to do, unless you're like kind of an asshole, you have to do coverage where you just sit there for half a day. Well, John Hamm's like, let me tell you how the border works. Yeah.

And he solves it. Well, let me tell you something about how this TV show work. John Ham shot all of his scenes getting off a plane, getting into a Ford Explorer, or in that restaurant, which is the same restaurant that has been in every scene of this show.

And there's one moment where he's walking out from the governor, and I swear to God, seven different women are taking a sip of a mimosa at the same time. And I was like, I'm on drugs. I'm having a fucking psychotic episode right now. That's the feeling I had when

the Belar beloved grandma Saracen from Friday Night Lights says the word, I just wish I could have a dick in my face one more time. I got to stop you. Like, it's not good, right? Like, can we, can you just like New Year, new year, new you? Can you let us in on the bit? It has gotten worse. It has gotten worse. It was, I think it was really good when it started. And now it is, I am watching and I am like, I feel like crazy while I watch this. Because again, it's like, it's cool that Taylor Sheridan has some, some, you know, some counterfactuals to make about environmentalism and lithium batteries and gas. But we heard that already.

You know what I mean? And so now when the quarterback is like, and also vaccines are for cucks and pandemics are planned. And she's like, I'm going to marry you if you're nice to the old's. Like, that's a little bit suss. And then similarly, like when Billy Bob shows up to dinner and I was like, come on, they're not going to do the spicy food bit again. You're not going to pull that chestnut off of the tree. You're not going to do it again. They fucking did it.

And then she delivers a four-minute monologue. And he's like, God damn it, you're the only woman with stones in this town and leaves without speaking to his son. It's just, I'm not saying he needs a writer's room. You also are skipping. You're skipping the sex scene where a t-shirted Billy Bob Thornton, Jack rabbits into Alley Larder. And then she's mad at him. And she's like, you're fucking me like it's sad. Saturday night, but in fact, it is Saturday morning and you need to make sweet love to me.

What are we doing with our lives? Well, then their 30-year-old daughter, just the joke is that she's not listening to it because she has her headphones in. Yeah. But then a few minutes later, in case we're worried that she's been protected from this completely inappropriate public performance, her mom's like, got to go on the elliptical today, honey, because your father just treated me like John Hamm treats the Permian Basin. like I don't know man

you're saying there's a lot of TV coming up in January and I feel like I've been a good friend You fucking have to finish this with me You can't you can't abandon me now Honestly you can't It's a lot It's a lot buddy But also like 30 more right

Because Well I will find another landman for you But like I mean you got to finish the first season It ends this episode ends with The Texas National Guard an area of a Texas oil field where there was cartel activity and the pilot is like,

we got bogeys in the target zone. I think I hit something. It's like, this seems like it's going to get like a little bit out of control on this series now. Generally, though, that was a better act out than the previous act's ending, which was Billy Bob Thornton

getting heated from his lawyer conversation, and then just a long tracking shot of him leaving the bar, getting into his car, lighting his 39th cigarette, getting an angry face time from his wife than hanging up on her. Like, oh shit.

It's so good, dude. It's just characters acting like they always act. What'll happen next? My favorite other filmmaking moment of the episode was after... Filmming moments. Ethel or whoever says, I just want a dick in my face one more time.

And Alley Lard is like, we can do that. Oh, yeah, she says we can do that. It's a hard cut to a drone shot over the, over the land while, like, Zach Bryan plays. But it's like, I feel so, I'm like a Pavlov's dog where it's like, as soon as the like country music plays and there's drone shots of the, of the area of Odessa, I'm just like, oh, I'm back in. Like it takes one thing for me to be like, oh, this is, this is incredible. I want to tell you something from my heart and seriously. You know, I mentioned during our book recommendation podcast on

Monday that I love Samantha Harvey's orbital, which makes reference to something that I'd forgotten about, which is that, like, one of the satellites sent, just like on a, just get out there mission in the 70s and the hopes that maybe some century, some species might find it, carried a, like, a golden disc engraved with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on it so that some multi-tentacled space creature might be like, oh, sick. I love it. Better go find these guys. Yeah. I think we need to send another satellite out with the first season of Landman on it, to be honest. Yeah, but we need to be honest with the universe. But with my brain, like three body problem like style

where it's just like my brain and like robot arms holding a laser disc of Landman going out into space to be like so I can explain it to them or or an EKG of your brain while watching Landman set to brutalist core music by Julius Eastman right

of just like this is when we peaked as a species like we were we were a rough people we were a brutish, a brutalist, if you will, people. But we could experience joy sometimes on the patch. I hope Taylor can land the plane here, man. Oh, shit, fucking, it could land it like that plane this weekend, man. Greenwald, it was great to see you. I hope you feel better.

I'll see you on Monday. We're going to talk about our most anticipated shows of the year. And honestly, probably landman. So get ready. Thank you for listening to what Landman has done to my voice. I promise to be a better spirit on Monday.