The Watch - Is ‘Widow’s Bay’ Too Good? Plus ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’ and ‘Top Chef’

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

(00:00) Chris and Andy talk about the latest media shake ups at 60 Minutes before discussing what movies like ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ might say about TV’s own need for fresh voices (09:33). Then they play a ‘Star City’ inspired game (18:55) about alternate POV spinoffs. Later, they break down the latest episode of ‘Widow’s Bay’ (30:19), check in on ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’ (46:11), and share their thoughts on the penultimate episode of ‘Top Chef’ season 23 (01:07:04). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Stefano Sanchez Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Order and it will come. Like today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I ain't 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, he doesn't want a refund. He just wants the person who did this to find out.

It's Andy Greenwald. That was a joyful opening for what might be a sad show. I wanted to let you know that I have accepted an offer to run 60 minutes. I feel. qualified to do this based on... You have a little bit of a built and vibe to you, you know? Wow. In what sense?

Gadfly. Overconfidence. Spectacled. Yeah. Ready to tear down boomer privilege. Moving from industry to industry, just sort of like a, hey, guys, let's open the box and then throw the box off the table. Jokes aside, I do believe I was a finalist, but his writing credit on the

idol, I think is what pushed him over the top. We can talk about 60 minutes if you want. We can also talk about... Name them. Named the stuff. Widows Bay. Hell yeah. Maximum pleasure guaranteed.

Top chef. I have a prompt for you that's related to Star City but will not involve people having watched Star City and will not be in its native Russian. Yeah, I have a couple of things to say. One, you can email us at The Watch at Spotify.com. You can follow us on Instagram at the Watchpot underscore. That's on Instagram.

And then you can watch us on YouTube at the Ringer-Dash TV channel along with the prestige TV pod. They are going to be rocking Cape Fear on Friday. You and I both grinning our teeth trying to decide are we jumping back in with Max Katie? I don't know. What else? What else? You can also listen to us on Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.

I told you what we're listening to today. And Star City, we'll probably talk about episodes two and three in detail on Monday, so if people are watching. I will repeat to anyone who skipped through our Star City conversation, A, I love it. B, you don't need to have seen for all mankind to appreciate it. Star City got the rare CR Instagram boost Did it? You posted on Instagram that you like it

Because I don't think in the title It talked about how much I liked it And Star City is one of these weird shows That people are like Like I was texting with a friend last night I was like An Apple show that no one's heard of say less Which we will be talking about Apple TV

It's a weird Apple TV moment they've got a ton of stuff on right now. I mean, this moment is an argument for their frankly borderline irresponsible strategy, which is to flood the zone and they have a number, a disproportionate

number of good to very good to, in one case, absolutely great series on the air right now. Yeah. So kudos to Tim Apple. I did have a Star City thing for you. Hey, do you like, actually really like with the 60 minute stuff?

Yeah. I don't, when's the last time you watched 60 minutes? Like, sat down and watched it. And Andy Rooney retired when? I mean, this spirit is with us in the room. Let me just say. Blink twice. Blink twice of Andy Rooney has been doing this podcast with me.

Conservatively, I would say, 1989. Are we really sure Sidney knows what she's doing? Why did I Jimney Glick that? When's last time? You saw 60 minutes. Sam Levinson. There's an opportunity here.

Do you want to commit to this? Yeah, 60 minutes. Have you watched it? No. I watched it some with my mom over the last couple of years. It was obviously a staple. And I think for most people,

it's kind of a tick, tick. It means it's time for school next tomorrow. Yes, it means football's over. I watched a, episode not too long ago because it got recommended to me somehow, I think in YouTube, to watch none other than Scott Pelly piece about ghost truckers, Serbian Ghost Truckers. I spoke about this story on the wait a second podcast,

Jason and Tyler. Didn't you have the singer of Serbian Ghost Truckers on the pod when I was in there? Yeah, I mean, they broke up after that, but that's okay. No, but it was a great piece about trucks on the American Highway. ways that are basically circumventing Department of Transportation rules. I don't know if the Department of Transportation has rules any longer. Yeah.

All those guys are just bronzing statues in D.C. now. Getting ready for 250. Sean Duffy's making his reality show. But it was an incredible piece of journalism that like definitely made me look at trucks. The roads and trucks differently.

So it's disappointing if it winds up going away or turning into something that it is a pale shadow of itself. I mean, I just separate and I'm not going to sit here and pretend. I don't watch, I didn't watch the Stephen Colbert program. I don't watch 60 minutes. I'm not going to engage with the merits of those programs specifically or the

larger conversation about market trends for late night shows and television broadcast news. Yeah. What the joke at the top was more like, I just find this all so borderline despicable. The, the ego and the. incompetence in a perfect encapsulation of what living in America has felt like for the last 10 years where people who have it's not about having reverence for the institution like listen who are bigger hashtag disruptors than the two of us that's true it's about the presumption that you watch watching tv on our phones the presumption that the that the that the the the the bary wises of the world

and the nickbillens of the world know better because they are challenging orthodox group think or whatever that you could be a Vanity Fair editor and a screenwriter, both of which are fine professions, and be like, yeah, I could probably run the most stable and respected news organization in the history of television news internationally, probably as well. The ego of that is fucking lame in why we are where we are. Yeah, I mean, I think that my only take on it really is that

this is an example in the media, like, you know, you could make your arguments about how much it costs or on a late night show versus what it actually brings in in terms of ad revenue versus what it brings in terms of viewership. 60 Minutes is a profitable and popular television show that I think is relatively popular across a political spectrum because it is not the nation. Yeah. It never has been. So it's strange that I think to me what I respond to in the stories that I've read about the upheaval at the show. is just a disgust on the part of the new leadership with the principles and processes

that go into making 60 minutes. Ugh, principles. But it's just the idea that, like, you know, because this may not bend around the shape of a narrative that I want out there or that I want to tell, I want to do away with certain methods of producing good journalism. And it's just like, I think journalism just became too big of a tent.

Sure. Where it's just like, they're just, I just think that like 60 Minutes did a really good job telling stories that people didn't know in a very fastidious way. And now it's like going to be yet another bastion of op-ed. You could just ask Gemini, bro. Look, I just feel like these like these avaricious climbing bootlickers are behaving like nothing's ever going to swing back. And maybe they're right. Yeah.

And jokes on us. But generally, pendulum swing. And then what are we doing? And then what are the ruins that we're left with? So, I don't know. Cool. See you guys next week to talk about the top chef finale. Prompts with you for the top of the show.

I have participated in and listened intently to Sean and Amanda documenting this moment in movies on the big picture. So I went on. How do you document it when you're not on the show? Do you take notes? When they documented, I listened to their documentary. Oh, oh, oh. They've been documented. Yeah, I was on the back.

Rooms episode and the Obsession episode, uh, talking about those two movies individually. And then, since then, Sean and Amanda have talked really, really intelligently about like what it means for movies. Sean wrote a great piece in, uh, on his substack projection about, you know, I don't even know. Is it project? It is projections. I, for a second, I thought it was a singular projection, but that wouldn't really make sense. Not movie he lives his life. No. Uh, on his substack, he wrote a great piece about like what this moment means in movies. And it has been a minute since I have felt that way about TV. I also have a different relationship to television than Sean does to movies where I think Sean very much sees the movies as a kind of like quasi third space religious

kind of pastime for himself and television is cool. This is how I feel about movies in TV too honestly. I don't think he's wrong. No, yeah, but I don't have like that William H. Macy and Sports Night like tearful conversation about television being the American Campfire kind of I have a William H. Macy and Boogie Knight's attitude towards people working between the two mediums. What am I trying to ask about this? We've had conversations before about whether any outsiders could come into television and talked about the hurdles to, like, independent television making. Yes. And how expensive and complicated it is to put together a long-form series.

But it does feel like obsession and backrooms have moved into, like, pole position and moved movies into, like, a real, like center of the culture kind of everybody you know people at the gym people at the coffee shop are like hey have you seen backrooms have you seen this what did you think of it so I would say it's interesting the way you're framing it because I think there's a different way to look at I think there's a way to look at

the rise in an important way certainly for the big picture podcast and the movie industry to look at the success of those movies as fresh blood coming in fresh voices fresh perspective and audiences desire and getting away from IP taken on those trips what I would count

with is the most recent comparison to something like a phenomenon like backrooms would be the pit. And the reason I say the pit is not because these are young people showing use a fresh way in. That is the opposite of what the pit is. It is old hands. What both have done, though, I would say, is remind people why we engage with these mediums in the first place in a collective celebratory way. meaning the pit has both reminded multiple generations and taught a new generation that this little box used to give us a story every week. And it used to give us stories that we were excited about, surprised by, compelled by, and it built over time. And we would talk about it. Like, I think it is safe to say that, like, in terms of water cooler chat, if people even, for those of you who aren't working from home, like, the pit dominates.

People were talking about it in a way that we used to talk about. television shows. So I think that in terms of putting things back in the center of culture in a way that felt both affirming for those of us who work in those spaces, but also giving a sense of optimism that maybe a new generation might begin to speak that language. That would be the comparison. That's an awesome take. Thanks, man. I got to tell you, I don't even have like one that's comparable. I think that, you know, I was listening to the town and Matt and Lucas Shaw were talking about this phenomenon and Craig chimed in, Craig Warlbeck, who was our producer on the rewatchables as well, and was just like, you guys are going back and forth about whether studios are going to

keep making IP. And he's like, the point is, is that, like, younger people don't give a shit about 1980s franchises or 1990s franchises. And we'll see. I mean, there's a world in which you can A, B, test this easily, but, like, there's a world in which Cape Fear is a sensation. there's a world in which not a single person you know watches it. It's an example of something where it was like, who was asking for this? Is this even intellectual property that is worthy

of expansion? They've had two movies. You can say you're going back to the book, but we all know like people are tuning in to watch Bartem do De Niro and do Mitchum. What is kind of like you're taking something that was a polished diamond of a thriller and now expanding it, I believe, to 10 hours.

Well, I think the comparison, though, I think Cape Fear's, the margin for, Cape Fear isn't going to convince anyone. I think when we talked about it before, that at whatever level these conversations exist at Apple, I don't think they are actively saying, or at least they're not even addressing the idea of like reinventing Cape Fear for a new generation. Yes. This is comfort prestige food for a generation that doesn't go to the movies anymore. Right. The comparison, I think that Craig was right to point out would be, there's a fucking He-Man movie opening this weekend. And it's apparently pretty good. But,

but, okay. Stop you dead in your tracks, didn't it? That is not a, that was a take. I was not a he-man man, man. But, so I don't know. Those toys were fine. Those toys were 40 years old. I think that there are guys out there who were waiting to see Skeletor do his work like this for a long time.

Wake me when Tony Gilroy does the orco spin-off. Okay? Just let, let me know when that's on the docket. Okay. You're too afraid. of my dangerous ideas. That's why I'm in here. I recently saw a bunch of

behind the scenes photos of Tony on the set of Michael Clayton wearing a cool parka and going like this. We should just Photoshop it. To be clear, Orco was the floating magician who didn't have a body and was just like a shirt.

That was cool time for us to watch cartoons. My point isn't even that like I don't, the Masters of the Universe thing, even if it's good, There's a cynicism baked in the root of it where I don't think there's even They're not converting a new generation To like follow the story of Eternia

There wasn't even really a story From everything I understand about the movie It's like apologizing for itself as the bit Throughout which is just such loser cul-de-sac culture shit Somewhere at Venice Beach At the outdoor gym at Venice Beach Some guys like there is a story Well that's because guys I've always been an Adam

Not a He-Man like I think there's there's two types of, there are two genders, so I get it. But, but yeah, like, I think we would both want the fresh young voice in television, but television is a such a profoundly different beast, and it's a lot harder. I mean, television is an assembly line, even at its most prestige or autore-driven. You still need to, unless you're being asked to do something that is radically outside the norm of a series order, you have to conform in ways and you have to have to kind of know what you're doing or surround yourself

people who know what they're doing in a way that I think is less I mean that exists in movies obviously but I think it's less interventionist maybe in movies where a kid has a vision for something and then obviously he has line producers and professionals like making it a movie

but that's different than saying we will write this and execute it across 10 hours and deliver it in a traditional television service system. Yeah and I think you know we're going to talk about some series today that I think have grappled with some of the requirements of being what they are, you know, and being told in the format that they're being told. I do feel like, you know, maybe the closest comparison I have, it's not necessarily, they're nowhere near as big as these films have wound up being. But the moment that I'm thinking of for TV is probably that, and my dates could be wrong, but that 17 through 20 era of Atlanta Fleabag. I may destroy you, industry coming on, this feeling that not only was there diversity of

POVs, but there was like a generational shift and that people were speaking to a cohort of the audience that often doesn't feel kind of seen or addressed or vocalized, you know? And I think that that felt like also formally we were getting some different kinds of stuff. I think you're right. I think I'm being too conservative in my vision. in that way. Like there was a moment when it wasn't just that there was a moment when streamers needed to get attention, not just retain subscribers, so they were willing to take bigger risks on things and the hopes of hitting a home run, but that creators like Phoebe Wallerbridge

and Donald Glover and a host of others, Michaela Cole, I would put in there as well, essentially jump the line in what has been often to its detriment, but sometimes, parentheses the pit not to its detriment kind of stodgy and kind of wait your turn Yes And there's like a 10 to 12 year process

of starting at the bottom of a record's room And then getting all the way up to executive producer In example we use a lot is like The Mad Men pilot was the spec that Matthew Weiner wrote when he was working on the Ted Danson sitcom Becker In order to be hired by David Chase To spend however many years Four or five six years

At his knee basically writing that show before he got a chance and the reason he got a chance when he was older than those creators we just mentioned was because AMC was in a position that a few years later

Netflix and Amazon were in slightly where they were like we'll do the thing everyone else won't and we're kind of kind of past that. Yeah. Yeah. We talk about IP and we roll our eyes.

Us? A bit. Sure. Right now I'm going to play a little game with you about a piece of IP because apparently for all mankind is IP.

We talked a little bit on Monday show about Star City, which is the series on Apple that's already aired to tomorrow. It'll be the third episode where it's a sort of retelling of the period of for all mankind from the POV of the Soviet space program. I don't know. I would assume that Apple is going to give this show more than one season just because that's Apple's MO. But I don't know if they're going to time jump at the exact moments that for all mankind has.

So it might be interesting. There may be some, you know, if you were a for all mankind completest, you might be able to watch Star City and be like, oh, so that's what it looked like when this happened that was off screen in between seasons. Anyway, I wanted to play a fun game with you because we'll talk more about episode two and three on Monday, but take a well regarded or not show and then craft an alternative POV of the main narrative. So this is kind of what Star City is doing.

Now, you are not restricted to following a letter of the law way of this prompt. But I thought, what else would use Star City here? Well, I've got five options. Jesus. You know, you walk, can I just tell people, he walked in with none. That's what I'm working with here. He is, when the light goes on, he can compare backrooms to the pit and he can come up with five other star cities. In my offense, I started my day on London time today.

So these are peak hours right now Yeah Well it's transferred out The transfer window is open in England So do you do Could we transfer ourselves You want to go back and forth? Let's go back and forth

Okay And you're doing so well today I want you to go first Okay Which one should I start with Well I'll start with the most obviously Star City which is

If we take the premise Where for all mankind is a respected And Beloved show That has never set the world on fire and you're going to tell the Russian side of events, are we ready for a spin-off of the Americans called the Russians? So wouldn't the Americans actually be the American side of things? It wouldn't be Noah Emmerich's home life?

The season of television would be the KGB trying to ferret out deep cover American agents in Moscow in the 80s. see what I mean? Yeah. Like, Oh, I see. Can we... How small can we make the aperture for something that we would like?

And our Star City using those Lithuania sets all year round, or can we get it? We could do like the pit and the night shift where they just keep rolling. Yes. You use the same cast, honestly. Okay, my first one, the smoking section. Oh, you've named these shows? Yes. Oh, damn.

See, that's what I could have done yesterday. The smoking section. All right. The X-Files, as told from the POV of the cigarette. smoking man. Hell yeah. Now, I'm gonna... It's basically a guy

who loves smoking and has to like fend off these pesky FBI agents from time to time as he tries to bring aliens to it. So it's autobiographical. This is a deeply personal project.

I'm always fending them off. My only... Cash, stop calling me, man. Instant green light. Who are you casting as the younger cigarette smoking man? Because the original actor, sadly, is no longer with us

due to... Not due to the cigarette smoking. Well, he's one of those guys that looks like he was born 64 years old. Great. It's hard to imagine him as Nicholas Gaisalteen or whatever his name. Oh, because no one looks like that. Yeah. So who do you...

Who looks like shit? It's not who looks like shit. It's like he's a guy who is probably pretty attractive. Right. And then smoked three packs a day until he looked like Mike Schmidt's fielding glove, you know? So you want to cast someone almost. almost too beautiful. Yeah.

So maybe you do want Castleton. He's ready to go to TV after this movie. Let's do that. Let's do Nick. Do you like him? I don't know. He's in He-Man.

No, I know. So you think that this is a soft landing spot for him? It's a Zach. Once he's done being swole for He-Man, he can come. You could smoke away the pounds. Okay. I like it. Okay.

Go ahead. Your next one. Okay. My next one is a show called Recreation and Parks. it is a comedy show set in Eagleton, Indiana, starring Parker Posey, and it is just that side of the story of the run of Parks and Recreation, which for people who don't watch the show,

there was a kind of like, echoing the Simpsons, there was a Springfield Shelbyville, like there is the evil other town in the case of Parks and Rec. It was Eagleton where everything was rich and fancy and perfect, and the Parks Department there was run by Parker Posey's character, who was Leslie's friend turned nemesis. and who doesn't want Parker, Sam Elliott was on the show.

Oh yeah, he was in England. He was the hippie Ron. That's right. Or sandals. That's right. There's a lot there. We could do it. Sam Alia would love to be sitting

in more television shows at this point, so yeah. I mean, who can blame him? My next one is Veep. Vice President John Hoynes' POV on the Bartlett administration. Nicholas Gaisalteen. This is so. This is so niche right now.

We are going so small board. Yeah. But what if we brought in some of the cast of Veep to work in his office? Yeah. You know, just have hitmaker, you know, get Tony Hale in. But they're earnest now? Yeah. So the Zag is, Veep was a show that prefaced that, like, foreshadowed the clown car of American politics in the decade to come.

So when you watch Veep now, it feels really prescient. whereas if you watch Parks and Rec now, you're like millennial cringe. Yes, right. So. And if you watch West Wing, you're like, is this the expanse? Truly. What do you be talking about? Oh, this is for all mankind where there's an alternate.

So this would be zagging back to earnestness. I mean, this would be a bad TV show because it would be a guy being like, damn, I'm frustrated. This other guy is really kicking ass. What do you mean? That's a bad TV show. That's breaking bad. But you could have the campaign, you know what I mean? All TV shows are men frustrated that other men are doing better.

No, but those guys are all really good at one thing, right? On those shows. Yeah, like, I'm good in advertising, I'm good at meth. Who played hoins? Tim Matheson. Oh, right. So what was he good at? Fundraising, I think.

I think he was the Texas. I think he was a Texas politician. Let me push you the way a good showrunner might. Like, how do we storeify that? Like, you want to add something that makes him more interesting? Or is he hosting parties in Texas and he becomes privy to something? Well, maybe I start to connect the CRIP. C-R-I-P-C-U.

Wait, say it again. C-R-I-C-U, print it. And we have John Hoyne's working in conjunction with the cigarette-smoking man to bring aliens. This will stop Bartlett. And what's amazing is we never saw.

Bartlett was seeing all kinds of crazy shit with like cornfields and bees and oil. Yes. And still he was just like what heals America is our common threat of decency. Is granting clemency to a turkey? Every, more often than you'd think.

Yeah. You got another one? That's great. I got one more. Yeah, I mean, this is sort of obvious, but industry NYC. Oh, I have an industry one as well. Yeah, which would be the events of industry of the past few seasons, but told through the Pierpoint New York office. The Adler, the Adlerverse. The expanded Adlerverse, where, and here's what, this is

the part that's going to be slightly different. And I want you to stay with me because it's kind of breaks canon a little bit. But the sexy young people who work on Wall Street go out and do drugs all night and fuck each other in sexually curious ways. Oh, I was going to say, that's kind of like, what if all they did was go get machas and work out and walk their dogs? Yes. They just like, they live in Williamsburg and they just go to the equinox that's next to the Chase Bank now. Yeah, storefy that. I think we lived it. My industry spinoff is called Valley Boy. And, it's the previous season of industry told from the perspective of Rob living in California. That's a good show, actually.

And he could just be like... It's not even the perspective of the season. It's just put that character and all of a sudden the audacity is interesting. Yeah. Right? I'm sorry. That was a stray. We haven't watched it, but I think our lack of interest is...

No, I haven't checked it out, so I don't know. But those are my three. Did you have one more you wanted to do? Yes. Well, I have two more. One is called thoroughbreds. Did you just name it in this moment? No.

Okay. Yes. Okay, thoroughbreds? I didn't know we had to come up with cool names. You guys. And what are thoroughbreds, Chris? How do you define a thoroughbred?

What is a thoroughbred? A racehorse? Not just a racehorse. What, using a different adjective? What makes them racehorses? They run fast? Fast horses, baby. Okay.

This is a show. Slow fast horses. This is a show set in the modern English Secret Service with the people who are good at their jobs. Oh, so the, Um, what's,

who's the blonde lady who's, she's the head of the dogs. Yeah. No, but it's not even about the dogs because the good agents don't need the dogs. Oh, it's the Kristen Scott Thomas side of things like when she's not dealing with Gary Oldman. Yeah, like,

it's just the agency in London with Kristen Scott Thomas and they don't fuck up and like pass gas all the time. Yeah, and actually have like big things to do. Like, yeah. What's wrong with that? Some spy died on a bus. Like,

you know what the pit taught us? It's just like show about doctors doing doctor stuff. Good. Yeah. Spy show also. The last one is, you know, I think what was interesting about Star City was that it took, it began in the same place essentially that for all mankind began. For all mankind begins with the Soviet landing on the moon and spins off an alternate history. Star City begins, however many years later, I think it's six or seven years since for all mankind premiered, despite however many seasons they've put out.

same went back to that that initial alternate history hinge point and went off so i'm going back to the pilot episode of a beloved series um all the way back to 2007 when a little show called madmen began with a young woman coming to don draper and saying we would like to hire your firm to do the advertising for our department store and roger sterling said why don't they get a jewish firm reader, I listened. Jewish Mad Men? Mad Mitzvah, baby. It's just the ad game

with guys who... It's a Krumholtz? It's a hundred percent Krumholtz. I shouldn't do all the homework here. But I'm sure we could probably find a couple Jews in Hollywood who are ready to act on a television show. Krumholtz is obviously the heavy.

He's the draper? I don't know if he's... No, he's not the draper. Draper. You need more of like if we're looking for a young half-Jewish stars, at least like you need like a Shalameh energy to be the young person. But Crummelt is like, Crumultz is definitely the Sterling, Roger Sterling. It's his family firm. And, you know, basically everything is the same except you can't mix meat and dairy.

That's it. You can't. No. Keep kosher. You can't. Do you keep kosher? You don't do that, right? No.

Yeah. How long have we know each other? You love having a steak with a glass of milk. I had one right before this podcast. You can tell by my energy. Okay, so that's like, we'll get back into Star City on Monday. You love a game.

I do love a game. I don't know that we didn't really award each other points so who knows who won. But if you guys have your own ideas for Star City shows, hit us up. Also, if you have any ideas over who won, make that very clear in the emails. I won't see them.

Would you like to do maximum pleasure guaranteed first or would you like to do Widows Bay first? You call it, man. We're staying on the, the Apple platform. You know what? Here's the problem with Widows Bay, which is... This will be the first problem.

It is now getting... Is Widows Bay too good? You know, like, I almost... Is that your concern? Well, you know, I hate being like, you texted me this because people are privy to this, but you were like, so it's just showing off now. Yeah. And this episode, Your Baggage, which aired on, I think, Tuesday night.

Sure. This week. Written by Emma Ketcham and directed by Andrew DeYoung. Andrew D. Young did the mushroom trip episode from a couple of weeks ago. He directed the Tim Robinson movie Friendship and their big chair company vibes in this episode. Basically is about every character confronting their past. Patricia with the boogeyman, Evan and Tom trying to come to grips with what happened to Evan's mother and Tom's wife. And Wick kind of going over a childhood trauma that split him up from Jerry who works in the historical society and now has a,

nice enough but annoying husband. And, you know, this was obviously a bit broadcast when the previous episode ended with, we got them. It's all good. And there's a great moment at the beginning of this episode that was kind of reminded me of Pulp Fiction when they're in the diner and they're kind of like, they're wearing the clothes that they had to change in.

And they're like, you know, just kind of at peace before there's an armed robbery. but I almost am like getting to the point with this where I'm like I don't really have any notes man you guys are able to every week do an homage PN to a great America and other subgenre or explicitly a film the monster of the week thing continues to work seamlessly the running time of the episodes makes none of them mature there is legitimate like this would be among the best slasher's I have seen in years if they just made this into a movie. Right. But also is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time is watching Kate O'Flynn run from an incredibly slow but persistent slasher, who is the incarnation of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. Yes.

What did you think of this episode? I want to, I feel like I loved everything about it. I am not historically a fanboy of any kind, but I believe I wrote, hell yeah, Patricia in my notes. like I was fucking on Twitter in 2014 when she had the shotgun because it felt so good and then her holding the shotgun on the hopefully dead

not undead body of the boogeyman throughout his cremation process was incredible. So I am just loving it and I am a fan full stop. But I always want to engage with the show also in the myriad ways in which it just fucking impresses me

and a moment ago I was half kidding but I was talking about like showrunners saying like how do we make it story because you can have all the good ideas in the world and you can have all the speculation and thematic dream making but how do you communicate it practically because that's actually what the job is. And so two examples of this episode are just remarkable to me. And what Katie Dippold, who's the creator and showrunner, is able to accomplish by making these decisions that seem obvious or seem simple once they're done well, but actually many, many shows, good shows struggle to find them. week to week it dazzles me. So one, number one would be, where are we in the real-time story and how can we take advantage of that moment?

So you could look at the fact that they've dispatched the ancient evil supposedly at the end of the last episode and think of it maybe in a way where you're like greedy to get on to the next thing. You're worried about a lull. You want to show the audience. But no one's seen the show yet. So this is entirely in your own head. And the fact that she and her writers were like, no, let's let them sit in a moment of happiness and peace.

And what does that look like? And more importantly, not just what does it look like in terms of the comedy? What does it look like in terms of storytelling opportunity? What can we explore? Second point was the past, your baggage. I think I saw an interview that Katie did this week or one of the writers, I believe was Katie, saying that... Is this the script notes one that she did? It could have been.

I didn't listen to. the whole thing I just saw the, I just saw this as a takeaway, but that initial, the big shift in the episode that made it click for them was that they were going to tell Patricia's story with a boogeyman and flashback. And then they realized not to do that. And that unlocked everything in the episode because it connected it to the forward momentum. It's a smart choice after back-to-back episodes, one of which was a giant flashback and one of which was about an ancient evil. But then, the execution to make Patricia in real time complaining about her takeout order and then running screaming out of her house from a masked killer with a knife make that feel both like tonally

and emotionally and narratively consistent with Tom and Matthew Reese's really affecting performance him weeping over the fate of his deceased wife yeah how do you do that in a way that but they do it does not feel like whiplash to go between those stories There was two really lovely surprising in the hands of another show would not have maybe gone this way moments that I wanted to throw at you. I think it ties to what you're saying here. The Matthew Reese, the Tom and Evan conversation is something that you could draw out for episodes. And for all I know, because of the thunderstorm and the terror of the island, like Matthew Reese is going to go, or Tom's going to go back on his promise to take Evan to Boston. I assume he will. I'm glad it didn't happen in this episode. But Evan basically being like, I get it. Like when his dad explains to him what happened and he's got these letters and he's like, you shouldn't have hid this from me.

And, you know, Tom is like, it would make me sadder than I already am for you to know what happened to your mother. Yep. And Evan kind of forgives him. And also they have like a hug. Like there is like a genuine moment there. and most other shows would be like now these two are angry at each other

so Evan is going to put himself in danger so that Tom asked to save him so that they can realize the true spirit of Christmas so that's one thing the show has the confidence and fearlessness of something like they're not afraid to resolve story yes because there's a belief that they carry rightfully so

that there is more story to mind there's also like the kooky Patricia stuff when she shows up at the book club and Chrissy is that who it is I think who or Chris gives her like the riot act and is like you're just insane and that's why nobody's your friend

and like you're just so fucking weird and bye bye and then Patricia tases her and she's like I'm sorry she's the worst she's just the fucking worst it's just great that you give a character like Patricia like full-bodied POV

to be like I know I'm weird but like she is a bitch you know she sucks yeah sometimes the other lesson I think from successful rooms is sometimes all of the work that you do is in pursuit of the simplest solution.

And you can feel, in the same way you can, top chef judge, can taste when dough has been overworked. You can tell when a show has been big-brained too much. And I'm glad you mentioned the Tom scene. I circled that.

Like the line about the pictures, they make me sadder than I already am is a thunder clap. Like that is such simple writing. But it is, everything. It's all you need to know. As an audience, it's all Evan needs to hear. And I also think when we've been praising, I know we've praised him last week, we've been praising all the great character performers, but Kingston Rumi Southwick, who plays Evan, has such an interesting

affect as a performer where he's very soft spoken and he underplays things in a way that is so refreshing for young actors, A, but B, it allows him to both express the anger and and the resentment and the surprise and joy that was more childlike, but then more than anything else, that allows us, I think, to understand the forgiveness coming off of that line. And all of that story, that resolution for now was started seven weeks ago. Well, and also, when you think about how this show started,

this is another example of what we're talking about in terms of knowing how to pace character development rather than story. Yeah. A lot of other shows would have Tom and Wick at odds for like four episodes, five episodes, six episodes of like Tom is this buttoned up, new money, trying to like modernize the island. Wick is this myth-believing old wacko who thinks that the fog carries a demonic spirit

and he is going to do everything he can, he's going to keep setting off like the storm sirens. And, you know, like that could have been the tension of these episodes for, three hours, four hours, and then you could be like, now Tom believes, and now the second half the season is going. And instead, Tom's pretty much in, like, he's like, I don't really love the way we're going about doing this, but I believe by the end of the second episode, you know? It good character writing is yes anding. Yes. So to your point about Patricia, she is crazy, but also, Chris is the worst. Yeah. Wick is right, but also he's a weird, sad, lonely guy.

Tom is a kind of a prick, but also deeply, deeply hurt and sensitive. And, you know, all of these things can be true. And if you embrace that, again, all this comes from a level of confidence, and I hope we can talk to Katie about it. I'm sure I've never met a showrunner who says, I was quite confident about this. No one ever will.

But it strikes me more than anything else that this show is the product of enormous creative confidence. and on the part of Katie, but also on Hero Mori and Andrew DeYoung and every other director and performer we've called out. Like, whatever the secret sauce is, they all understood the assignment. Do you know, do you understand the macro what is happening here?

Because you were able to kind of be like, oh, yes, there could be another and the lineage of the Warren family might actually extend to Evan or Patricia or whoever it is that might be. I am so dazzled on an episode to episode basis of with the, not only the monster of the week, but the homage of the week and how they are like doing a Jaws episode

or doing a haunted house episode or doing a Halloween episode or doing a Wicker Man episode that I am actually a little bit behind on my, so what is going on here? Like Richard Warren made a deal with Satan, but maybe not to protect. this island and now his lineage is cursed but... And so the curse will continue as long as the lineage lives on the island. And they thought they ended the lineage with Richard Warren, but now it would seem that

did not happen. No, so my assumption is that Evan is the lineage and this creates an issue of Tom wants to take him off the island, which will kill him, but Wick and others may want to kill him. And that would be challenging. So Evan being the part of the lineage would indicate that Tom is not, it's that his mom was? Yes. Okay.

And then... A matriarchal line, if you will. Just in terms of the way that these different spirits get activated, like, so for the boogeyman, that's just like, hey, every day that goes by, something is going to happen until you guys end this. The less I know about the TikTok of that, not the website, the clock, the happier I am. I don't want an answer as to why the boogeyman was activated the day after Richard Warren. You know, I don't, even as we reach the point in the series, which is probably the same time it would happen in a movie, where the metaphor goes away.

You know, like, I think it's a, it's a trope of this sort of storytelling where it's like the boogeyman does represent, you know, adolescents or insecurity or whatever. And no one believes in it, but until it starts slashing everybody. and then it just becomes an action movie. We are at that point, but I don't really want to know, and I'll be very curious to see how the show handles a resolution in the short term while still being invested in this being a boogeyman of the week next week.

Fair enough. I want to ask you, before we move on, what made this in your mind an excellent evocation of the silent, slow, masked knife killer? I think it's the setting. There's something very Haddonfield about the streets of Widows Bay. The way DeYoung kind of shot that scene where it's got evocations of I think definitely the first Halloween and maybe even the second, maybe the second where there's a lot of like screaming and crying and banging their lights out and people like ignoring the hysteria happening outside their house. Kitty Genevievees.

Yeah. And a little bit of that. And I thought that. that the, just when you think he's dead, he's not, he pops back up stuff. The, you know, the scene with the ambulance drivers

was amazing. It's like, hey, welcome back, pal. He's like, slashes at his throat. So there was just a real, the thing that you, there would be the biggest hallmark is the slow methodical pace

of the slasher. Right. That seems to always keep up with the running, screaming victim. Um, and then Patricia turning into the final girl in the,

in the last few minutes and hilariously holding a shotgun on him in the ambulance and then in the... Yeah, it's amazing. Not sure exactly how that cleared all barriers of, like, investigation to the point of cremation that night, but... I'm okay with it. I'm all for an expedited municipal process. Also, Bashir was on painkillers. That's right. You know, the little character moments of him in the convenience store being like, I have to eat this year and my wife doesn't want me to...

Like, there's just a humanity that exists in every frame of the show that's not just serving the, how can we frame this correctly. But because I'm a relative novice, which is to say I'm too scared to watch those movies, I didn't know that it would be possible for no one to be inside of the mask. Oh, yeah. It can be a spirit. Do you know what I mean? Because there's the scene, the WIC scene is interrupted or it ends with him seeing that someone is broken in and stolen the murderer's mask. It's a cool thing to have on display. So my mind was wondering, I thought maybe someone had been, either had always been the boogeyman and re-energized

or someone had been captured by the spirit. So I didn't know if the mask was going to come off and she'd shot Dale. Yeah. You know, or someone from the office. I'm glad it wasn't that. Jeff Hiller or something. That's Dale. That's what I meant. That's what I thought was going to be in there.

Oh, I got confused with Dale Dickey. That's why. Dale Dickey who played, I did the same thing, who plays Rosemary. Yeah. Did you have any comments on? Shell Bashir's late-breaking pregnant wife who is about to give birth

and hopefully not on the island and Patricia's like we gotta get you off the island It's just it's just good thunderstorm coming It's just good plotting Let's talk a little bit about maximum pleasure guaranteed Which Blinking You Miss It is now up to episode four And we missed it. We were behind Yes on Apple TV

This is a new series from David J. Rosen Who's worked on hunters, has worked on hunters, has worked on Citadel, has worked on Sugar. Who wrote the novel, I just want my pants back. I don't know that one. 20 years ago.

What is that? It was like a young adult novel about living in New York and hooking up with chicks and that it was turned into briefly into an MTV series executive produced by Doug Lyman. Oh.

It lasted one season. Okay, cool. Does he get his pants back? I can't tell you that. You might watch it. This one stars Tatiana Maslani as Paula, a magazine fact checker going through

a rough divorce and custody battle, who blows off steam one night having cam sex with a guy named Trevor. Not one night. Seems like it's ongoing. I think that's, I'm saying one night.

Oh, you're setting up the pilot. She happens, yeah. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. You're accurate. I was like, don't put some respect on that relationship. And during this experience that they're having together through their screens,

he gets attacked on screen and Paul sees this. But it becomes apparent that this attack was part of a scam. And then it becomes apparent that this scam, has gone haywire and Trevor has been killed. Paula investigates and pulls at a thread that undoes her life. So you watched two of them? I watched two. I watched, I'll say three.

I started the fourth one. What did you think? I really, really enjoyed what I watched, especially the pilot. David Gordon Green directed it. And I really appreciated, I really appreciated. I really appreciated something that I think is hard to pull off in this contemporary moment of TV, which is that it was highly stylized. It is screen dependent.

I would say that this may be the most successful product integration show that Apple has had in a number of years, and I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment. The show correctly uses the most annoying Apple ringtone to be annoying. The show does depend on FaceTiming on MacBooks. having your phone available at all times in ways that feel relevant. But I think it's a hard needle to thread to have something that is frenetic and highly stylized and about the collision of crime into a normal existence, but also feel like someone is keeping, someone's touching grass in terms of trying to remember at all times who this character

is and who she wants to be and what her relationship is with her ex-husband played by a friend of the pod, Jake Johnson. with her TikTok trend dancing daughter, Hazel, and her co-workers and her life. So I really appreciated the way, the entry point for the story, the style of which it was done, but mostly the fact that I was,

I felt like it was focused on the right half of that equation throughout the first episode. I'll also say that like another very contemporary thing that I see with a lot of these shows is we collectively are getting better and better at premise and asking cool questions. And then when pilots become series, that's when the real work starts.

And so in watching episode two, I was like, okay, now I see the shape of the storytelling taking place. And that was a bumpier transition. But it's harder work, you know, to go from one to the other. I think I see what you're saying. You know, the rest of the episodes

almost feel closer to like whatever the Apple version of the Safty Brothers is. you know, like where I think it's more or less like 80% to 20% unrelenting tension, anxiety, how the hell is she going to get out of this situation? You've got an interesting, so visually and tonally, I feel like it really ramps up in the second, third, fourth episode. They also weirdly, not weirdly, but they are trying to have kind of a couple of different

treatments of the mystery story. For one thing, Murray Bartlett plays quite obviously, I think, the killer, I would assume. I mean, we don't know that. Yeah, we don't know more, but he is introduced one way and then pretty quickly established as the other. Yes. Murray Bartlett from Looking and White Lotus fame.

Great actor. And is great in this. It's cool how they split the mystery, quote, unquote, or the investigation to the extent that there is one. So Paula is trying to get to the bottom of what's just happened with Trevor. But Murray Bartlett's Frank character is trying to, to investigate Paula, you know? And so you've got these sort of two convergent mysteries.

There's two things that I think are not rubbing me the wrong way, but I'll be interested if we continue with this show to kind of check in on. One is there's a little like Apple expansion pack happening as the episodes go on where we keep bringing in supporting characters. Yeah. And now it's like we're up at like eight, you know. Now I would say that the show seems pretty cutthroat so far in terms of endangering people. and having stakes and it's pretty cool. So there's that.

And then there's also just, they're playing around with flashbacks. And you were talking about the Widows Bay thing with the idea of showing Patricia's boogeyman experience as a flashback and instead doing it in the present tense. Always if you can do that. They're doing a lot of like cliffhanger and then flashback to explain the cliffhanger.

Not a lot, but they've done it a couple of times on maximum pleasure. and I don't know if I love it because it turns into a little bit of like we're wrapping the story around the concept of a cliffhanger rather than we're wrapping the story over

how a cop would find out about information or how somebody would be like I'm in a tough situation I need to be transparent about this but obscure that and instead it seems like I'm on a TV show so wouldn't it be cool if at the end of an episode you found out this isn't my first dead body that I've encountered.

Or wouldn't it be cool if we found out you think that this woman is like this, but she's actually like that because we went back. You know, it's just, it is a way of telling a story,

but it isn't quite worth for me on this one. It's funny or it's annoying depending on your perspective to be TV-brained enough as we are, and maybe many of our listeners are, to see things come in and out of fashion

narratively. I think, and how long it takes for the messages to be sent. Like, the tipping point of exciting scene six weeks earlier. The amount of time it took for creators to realize,

A, everyone else was doing it, and B, audiences were rebelling against it. There's a long tail because then it takes years of producing things to move on from that. Similarly, like something like DTF, which we engage with briefly, but like enough to say there's a similar, there's some similar things at play here

in terms of surprising, maybe not a murder in the way you think told through flashback with quirky cops. in that case. It was Richard Jenkins. In this case, it's Dali de Leon, who is in Triangle of Sadness.

There is a, we are in the midst of a golden era of cam content and only fan stuff. I meant we are. Margot, maximum pleasure, and euphoria.

But also what we've been up to. Well, only for the two of us, though. Just straight. Hey, man. Yeah, we don't, exactly. The Watch After Dark is actually just Andy and I camming. Which fun is that there was a period of time when TAMSMail wouldn't text,

he would only communicate over signal because he was worried about being hacked. And so that's why we have stopped texting and calling. We only communicate over camsoda. That's right. Just the two of us. Remember chat roulette? Remember. I'm still holding on to that.

Anyway, yeah. And so I would say that I appreciated the use of screens as mitigating factors and intimacy and the chat stuff on the show because, it is, well, because A, the relationship that, um, that Paula has with her camboy is gentle. And there's other layers to it to be unwrap. But it is like emotional and interesting and surprising. And then there was a great scene where she's talking to her colleagues at work. And it's one of those like hinge moments of like, what do we gain by spilling it? And what do we gain by withholding? And she's like, I was being scammed by a camera that I had

come inappropriately connected to. And they're like, oh, yeah, that's the most interesting thing. thing you've ever said and they hug her. Do you know, one of those, the, the, the, the, the, uh, Julie Dreyfus's son. I didn't know that. You know, I'm on NEPA watch. He's good. I'm just watching. Is he in the campion kind of like, I'll allow it?

He seems like he was raised right. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll, thank you for asking. I'll allow it. But we are monitoring the situation. I saw it in the Times did a piece about, or maybe it was a Wall Street Journal, did a piece about Leon Black's son who's in charge of like a shadowy, but very important, like,

United States government investment fund kind of thing. And I was like, how to get that job? You know, he worked harder than everyone else. Yeah. Yeah, I, I'll swing back to the positive. But the other thing that I was, the only other thing that I was slightly bumping on, and this is not, this is actually not criticism. This is a reflection of getting a show made for Apple TV, which is I struggled with

Tatiana Maslani being a woman who is struggling with all aspects of her life. including her appearance. She is a lovely, charismatic person who reads as young. She's certainly plausible as a 40-year-old woman who with a child. I'm not arguing her acting chops

or whether I could buy it, but in a different world, this is the Melanie Linsky show. And I'm like, it clicks into place a little bit more, but that's not Apple's business model. I have not, you know, she obviously broke onto the scene

with Orphan Black. You haven't really seen her very much, huh? Tat. Should I have? I'm just saying, like there are actors who are big, but if they are big on shows, like I don't think...

I watched her from black for a season or two. I didn't know. I thought maybe you were Orphan Black and Shehulk ignorant. I am Shehulk ignorant. I find that she has like the appropriate kinetic energy

for something that's this show. You know, you need... The rhythm of the show she's got. And she's athletic and there's things that demand her climbing through skylights and jumping off in the first episode, or is it the second episode

where she gets the tin can in her arm is crazy. Cool. It's a cool show. You know, as with everything, there's like, do I urgently feel the need to keep up with this or like is this something? I don't really know what the alchemy is anymore of like what eclipses. That was fine watching it for three or four episodes versus like this is now what I'm watching for 10 weeks. I think this is, this one for me stands out a little bit because of there's a there's surprise. Like I think Jake is, playing slightly against type. Yes. And I think he's doing a great job. I think that one of the hard things to navigate in, you know, the last 30 years of television,

which are essentially shows about people with families being drawn to the dark side is how do you balance the family stuff? I think the stuff with Hazel is the daughter's name in this. I think that's being, it's pitched at the right place for me to believe that so far anyway, through the episodes I've seen, it hasn't tipped fully into genre. it is still attempting to be someone. The most fantastical elements of the show so far aren't the crime and violence. The most fantastical elements of the show so far

are that A, she drives around New York all day and B, she's still employed as a fact checker at a magazine. Do you think they shot this in New York? Yeah. I think so. Not my New York. Why not? Your New York included magazines.

Yeah, no, I don't mean that. It's just like the traffic situation seems pretty relaxed. Is it set in Ridgewood? It's Queens-Z. Yeah. Keep an eye on that. Aren't you happy to see that there's still, the magazines are still employing a vibrant fact-checking department

before Barry Weiss takes over as editor-in-chief? I am. I thought that was cool. I hate to do this. It's a fun show. The only thing I was thinking while I was watching it, because I think there are several shows, I just can't think of one off the top of my head

that take this kind of like unbelievably tense premise. And they're just like, and now let's tell it over the course of 10 episodes. But I was watching this. And, you know, as I think about how Widows is employing Monster of the Week or how the pit is doing a medical procedural, but with durational storytelling over the course of a day so you can have some new school ideas about making TV,

I almost feel like I'd be more curious about the version of this show that is Paula solving this whole thing in an episode. And then the rest of the season is Paula, a private detective helping people have been scammed. Wow. Look at you. Look at you. I wonder if that's a more durable,

repeatable, like, idea. Or is that something that David J. Rosen has considered if he gets to do a season two pitch? And I think because of widows, I have been looking at different TV shows and being like, was this written for TV? Was this written to be something that's exciting to watch every week, other than how is the story going to end?

Well, 100%. I mean, it is Katie DiPold of Widows Bay worked in Parks and Rec, and I think it is one of the enduring legacies of Mike Scher's television shows is that he found a sweet spot. It's different in the 30-minute realm or now the 35-minute realm.

A sweet spot of, you can tune in week to week, but there is a larger spine of a serialized story and I'm not afraid of pushing towards it. But you're not going to be, you're never going to see an episode that's just connected. tissue, whereas at least on one episode, maximum pleasure guaranteed, is more of the new school

approach of we are going to light a match in the first episode and it will burn through 10 episodes. Yes, and dynamite happens in episode 10. But within that framing, the show that made me think of, speaking of another person who could have started in it, is Run, which was the one-season Phoebe Wallerbridge show with Donald Gleason and Merritt Weaver. And that show started with similarly, like, an enormously grabby and exciting premise. But I didn't feel like, and I feel like the marketplace agreed with me, it didn't have the conviction or the gas or the horses to make it a season to earn that beginning. This maximum pleasure guaranteed seems more successful to me for that type of chef.

Let's hit TC real quick, Top Chef before we get out of here. I just want to tell you a personal anecdote since it's culinary corner. It's Culinary Corner before it's Top Chef. Okay. So I've been kind of seduced by these Instagram and YouTube's of, like, clean out your pantry pastas or clean out your pantry. Like, hey, do you have keepers and this? Look what you can do.

So I was like, I have some, like, flyby jing instant noodles. What's in my pantry slash fridge that I can, like, get going into and create, like, I had some artisory chicken. And emulsify with pasta water. Why? We'll get to that. Okay. I mean, I know that that's supposed to happen.

Do you do that with, like, ramen too? I don't make ramen at home. I only go to, like, a true, like, Cote d'Awari shop where, like, each ingredient is made. But this isn't about me. I'm fucking out, dude. This isn't about me. I quit. I don't want to do the show anymore.

Sorry. So I was like, okay, I'm going through it. And I was like, okay, I got the rotisserie chicken. I'm looking for, like, kind of an acid, maybe, like, a pickle kind of thing. Yeah. But I was like, I could use some green in here. and I came across some frozen peas on our freezer.

Okay. My wife historically, I'm not violating HIPAA by saying she has a bum knee and often needs to ice her knee. And these peas are her knee peas. On Reddit, these are...

So I go on Reddit. The expiration date for these peas is November of 2025. Oh, it's not as bad as I thought. And I should note that they have been thought out upwards of 25 times. Okay, here we are. So that's kind of like what is like what is your age versus your real age? Yeah. And so on Reddit, of course, you can be like, these peas are past their expiration date.

Should I eat them? Can't I eat them? And everybody's like, yes, that's just a suggestion. And they, if they've been frozen. And I get like pretty deep into the process. You have your measen plus and your prep and your. And, you know, I've kind of like scraped the freezer burn off the peas. Individually?

No, but like I kind of like washed them a little bit to Dom out a little bit. And I go back to the Reddit thread. I was like, it seemed like that went on for a while. Let me see what they're talking about. And apparently there's a whole thing about boo-boo peas. Peas that people keep just for- Oh, this is a thing. Yeah.

And they're like, don't eat the boo-boo peas. because that's where Listeria can get in when you're thawing out and freezing and thawing out and freezing. So just as a public service announcement, I stopped this. This was an incredibly boring dinner because I did not have a green.

And I didn't really have a pickle or an acid for it. It was just basically chicken with sweet and spicy ramen noodles. I'm not mad at this. But I would say that it was dull. And I almost got Listeria. And my wife was pretty pissed. off that. I used her boobo boots. Yeah, how's her knee? That's a bigger question. She was like, you gotta get, next time you go.

She finished this dinner you cook for her and tried to stand up. Oh, no, she didn't. It hurts. She was out. I was, this was a solo, like, she didn't know. If you ever eat, the frozen peas, you know, they cycle through real, you know, like on the other videos we watch on Instagram where people are seeing how the Guinness is drinking this evening when they're just like, people have been hitting it so it's like, it's fresh, you know, the tape and the lines are clean. Yeah, you want to let 12 guys go first. When that giant dude prime mutton is like, the lads have been drinking it into form?

And I'm like, what is the form? Is it physically your form? Because that is what I'm most worried about, despite my love of a fine stout. Oh, my God. Anyway, that... The lads. The frozen peas in my house are constantly eaten into form

because, and I will... You're going to say this came from me with my Kodawari ramen, but it did not. My children, who have relatively conservative pallets, I would say, i.e. they're just kids. normal kids about this, one of their favorite snacks is frozen peas. Not heated. They like bowls of frozen peas to just pop in.

How's that texture-wise? Is that good? I mean, have you ever had a frozen grape? Yeah, that's not my favorite. No, so I don't share this passion with them, but I'm just letting you know that the peas are eating into form constantly. So if you need a bag for any purposes, or if he needs one. Will they hit some frozen peas, roll it back up and throw it back in the freezer?

No. Or they kill a whole bag on a sitting. First of all, this presupposes that they are helping themselves and doing anything independently, despite their advanced age. I have noticed, you've got some notes for your kids recently. Sure. About their contributions to the house. And let me tell you, they are receptive to those notes. There is nothing they like more.

They when old pops says, maybe you could have picked that up. Do you think when they go out into the world in a couple of years? like the light switch is going to flip and they're going to be like, I know how to do this. This is what we all hope. Yeah. This is what we all pray for.

I don't, I try to think that like, because when you're, like, one thing that young parents come up against a lot is like their kids come up from school and they act insane. And then there's a worry that they're acting this way in school. And then good teachers or lying teachers will say they behave all day.

And then being home is like, then the shackles come off. It's Mardi Gras. They get it all. they get it all out. Yeah. You know, it's Rum Spring

every day at 4 p.m. So my hope is that they would not, let's say, leave Chipwich rappers decorating the windowsill in the homes of their friends

or people of their respect. Right. I don't know. Right. But all the way back to your point about the frozen peas. No, no, I take the bag out.

Frozen. I pour some frozen into a bowl. Back in there. Seal it up. Yeah, yeah. Put it back in. Okay, good to know. Top Chef,

uh, the penultimate episode of season 23, which Andy and I have had a fair amount of notes for. I don't have a ton of like nitpicks about this one. It was my favorite episode of the season, I think. Yeah, fair. I realized that it's sort of like the matrix where you're like, you're using your eyes for the first time.

I felt like the judges were basically like food. Like they were so delighted. They liked everything. That they were like finally real cooking. So we got down to Sherry, Lawrence, Rhoda, Jonathan. Yep. And they were asked to do basically a plating exercise where they could choose

these sort of exotic or funky delivery systems for their... This is after the stupid 20 questions thing. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed it because it just seemed funny that they would be like spinach. And he's like, no. And they were like, I'll put some spinach in. And Jerry's like, I'm paying very close attention. And it was very funny that they all got mad at Jonathan for asking questions that they thought were stupid.

Those questions were dumb as hell. Well, I don't really even know what, like, it didn't seem like a big deal that he asked if it was a side dish, but like, I am often the person who asks a question where somebody's like, why are you fucking asking that? Who does that? In interviews? No, not in interviews. Well, Jesse Armstrong once.

No, I'm just kidding. You've never done that. It just seemed like based on the judge's reactions to the food that this was at a high, high, high level. And they pushed each other. even Jonathan who As soon as he was like I am making bread and butter

I was like thanks for playing Also I want to put a pumpkin on a candlestick Well the only tension for the episode was really like Is Lawrence going to accidentally fuck up his rice Rappings? His sort of The rice rolls The rice rolls

Is the because he's making Carolina And it didn't steam and all that The issue was that he The episode implied Or at least tried to create drama from the implication that there was some fuckery with the oven, not intentional. Jonathan used it first.

And it lingered on Jonathan being like, I set it up for you, bro. And he's like, it's all good. It's going to take a few minutes to cool down to the steaming setting. And then you're good. And then Lawrence walked back over like five minutes later and was like, this thing is not.

And so then he had to kind of like rather brilliantly like ad hoc multiple tray steaming in pods. And it just made it a little bit thicker, I guess. Yeah, that was the drama. I thought that. Each one of those winning dishes or the dishes that passed through to the final three were amazing looking.

Rota's especially on the tree bark. I don't know that I would want to eat off of tree bark, but it looked really cool. Someone hasn't been to Noma. Certainly not. You know what I mean? What an ally. So I stand with my brothers on the line.

What did you think of this episode? I mean, you're right. It's a shame that it took 14 weeks to get to an episode. in which the challenge is creative and is met with an elevation of execution. Like that's what the show is supposed to be. Yeah, it wasn't like, and you have 12 seconds to do it. But also, like, it was challenging and they elevated their game.

They rose to the challenge, which hadn't really happened consistently. And I generally say a version of this every year, which is like, unlike some more drama forward competition shows, excellence begets excellence on Top Chef. Like the best episodes are ones where Tom is happy, where everyone has done a good job. And the conversation is more about like nitpicks rather than like how obvious it was that someone just face planted. That said, it was obvious Jonathan was going home even when it was revealed he did a very good job because the ambition of what he was doing was so much less than what everyone else is doing. And the plating was kind of silly. Do you think Tom's been a little bit cranky this season?

Well, I think he should be. I think there's every reason to be cranky. But the counterpoint is when he's really happy. And Kristen's like, oh, happy Tom is here. And he seems quite engaged. He still can be engaged when it's all going well. I think the criticism remains the criticism, which is there is something that just feels claustrophobic and off about the penultimate episode to send people to the finals. And I'm not even sure if they traveled for the finals.

Usually they're like next week or they tell them like, you're going to Paris or you're going to Grand Teton or Star City if you get a brand activation. Like correct me if I'm wrong, but they didn't say anything about where they were going. And it looked like they didn't do, they used to take a long break, like four to six weeks. Oh, I think they take a break because I think I noticed,

I always enjoy when people come and they have like a slightly different look. Yes. That said, it will be another wind horse fingers like if they just didn't travel and they're just like still in the Carolina somehow about the budget things

because this is the penultimate episode and we're supposed to be this crowning achievement before we get to the, the obviously challenging, but also the known quantity of make the best meal you've ever made. And in the episode to send people to that great opportunity, they played 20 questions in the studio and then picked out plates in the studio

and then filming picked up in a relatively claustrophobic restaurant with the great John Yao of Cato here in L.A. being like, who did a good job? Yeah. It feels so small. And that's a bummer. And maybe that's, as I say every week, like that's the reality of it now.

or maybe you tell me maybe this is just a nitpick when the execution was good enough. I think that when the cooking feels like it's push, like I feel like those three, those four chefs, but specifically the three that advanced were actually pushing each other.

Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. There's this awareness that Rota has momentum and that she's won a bunch of things. There's like, I think Sherry is actually like beyond her cooking like an interesting television. character who clearly has a lot of self-confidence and is a little bit, I don't know, is she prickly?

I don't know. My kids hate her. Sorry, Sherry. But like, I'm watching the season for the first time finally with the key. But I think she's like, I think I can win this. And like I'm going to kind of operate from that assumption. And I just, you know, this season. She's peaking at the right time.

This season has had a lot of like false starts. It's had a lot of like Prap Falls. It's had the weird last chance kitchen situation. So it's nice to see it. ending with like three people whose food I would want to eat and who I think are are pushing each other. We should wrap it up there. Thanks to everyone for listening and we'll be back on Monday with some Star City and maybe like a, you know, a couple of other surprises, but I'm not exactly sure. Well, there's stuff that we haven't, we started Legends, we didn't finish it.

There's a couple other shows that I'd like to check out like Amadeus. So there's things in the ether. Oh, I have a really hot recommendation for you. You've watched something? I did. I don't know if you can handle it. I mean, that's fair. Are you watching Dark Wizard? Oh, I should watch that. Yeah. So, bro.

So first of all, it's seriously scratching my 100-foot wave-itch. Yes. Same filmmakers or just HBO documentary? HBO documentary about a mountain climber, a free solo climber, Dean Potter, and his rivalry with Alex Honnold.

And just in terms of like the aesthetic of Rudy's wearing Patagonia and climbing in Yosemite in the mid-2000s, it's awesome. I will say no more, but it is fucking tense. I can probably handle it. I was knee-jerk avoiding it because... My wife's like palms were sweating, watching it.

You just get a frozen peas on them. Just Dr. House, just whatever you need. I selfishly was like, I feel like I've done enough with potters and dark wizards and HBO recently. But now, but I said that. Ghibly not knowing it was a documentary about mountain climbers at all. Yeah.

So I think that's a good wreck. People have been talking about it. Okay, so we'll see you guys on Monday.