The Watch - Kanye West’s New Album and Pusha-T’s 'Daytona' and Drake Diss. Plus, 'The Americans Finale | The Watch (Ep. 262)

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Pusha-T’s new album, 'Daytona'; his beef with Drake; and the anticipation of Kanye’s new album (2:00). Later, they discuss the series finale of ‘The Americans’ and what shows about bad people doing bad things owe us in the end (18:00). Lastly, they preview the new HBO series ‘Succession’ (36:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Microsoft Teams in Office 365. visit office.com slash teams to learn more. Hey guys, welcome to today's episode of The Watch. Andy and I talked about the Pusha Tea Drake Beef. We talked about the series finale of the Americans, and we previewed the first episode of Succession on HBO this weekend. While I have you here, let me encourage you to listen to On Shuffle with Micah Peters, our music podcast, and also check out all the stuff we wrote this week about the world of

rap music, like Micah's piece on Drake, charity wrote about Pusha. A lot of great stuff on the site this week. Allison wrote about the return of arrested development, which obviously has a lot attached to it. So make sure you listen to that and read that, and we will get into The Watch right now. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm Nettaire at the Rigger.com, and joining me in the studio. He is hiding a child. It's Andy Greenwald! Listen, I'm hiding two children, and all our listeners are glad that this does not go full Daddington, right?

Yeah, man. It's weird how the pusha Drake beef went Daddington on us. Yeah, well, everything gets Daddington eventually. Andy Greenwald is in the building. My name is Chris Ryan. It's Thursday. We're a little punchy after a long week at the ringer. Yeah.

Big week at the ringer. Big week at the ringer. But we're rounding home, and we wanted to talk about the finale. the series finale of a special, special show to me, the Americans. Are you just going to clear out of the lane, right? And just let me dunk for a while? I mean, would you rather I just pretended like I watched the episode? What I think you should do is let me monologue for 10 minutes about the stand scene in the parking garage and then say, sorry, who's Stan?

Is that the one with you two in it? Yeah. I read the internet. We're also going to talk about HBO's new show succession, which comes on this weekend. Preview. Preview the first episode, but first. as we alluded to in our introduction, let's talk a little bit about Puscha and Drake.

Two people very close to us. Yeah. Emotionally. We've met neither. Actually, that's not true. I've spent rather a lot of time with Puscha. You did. Relative to every other rapper in the world, I think so.

That's right. Yeah. It would go, I think it goes Puscia. Jim Jones, maybe. Then Cormega? Cormega, probably then Pusha and then Jim Jones from Dipset. Yeah. I think.

I think that's probably fair. Because Jim Jones would go to all the listening sessions for other dipset records in the mid-2000s. Oh, sure. So if you went to a Joel Santano or a Cam listening session, Jimmy was there. I think I was just bonding with Sean Fennessey over the fact that though we hadn't met yet, we were both at the listening session for Commons album B, in which Common just sat in the middle of a circle of journalists wrapping each line along with himself staring at us. Yeah.

I remember going to Virginia. to hear Hell Half No Fury. Like the first of 19 versions. Yeah, I wrote about this for the fader. There was like this whole thing I got down there and it was Malice from Clips was standing outside of the studio and we were waiting for

Chad Hugo to show up to open the studio so that we could hear Hell Half No Fury. The other half of the Neptunes. The other half of the Neptunes, yeah. And then Push came and he took his babes off because he didn't want to scuff them and then wrapped the entire album at me

while we were listening to it. That's a better memory. All of this is to say we have some history, particularly with this one dude. And I want to set the scene just for us personally before we talk about this, because it's fascinating. This actually seems to. I mean, Twitter is not necessarily a barometer of anything except maybe the decline of humanity. But it is definitely a place where this beef, this rap beef, suddenly does seem like front page news. Elevating Pusha, who has otherwise been, as Donnie put it in his piece for the ringer, your favorite rap fan's favorite rapper.

Sure. Or maybe sometimes your favorite rapper's favorite rapper as well. This guy is the same age as us, which is important, I think. Yeah, I think it's true. And definitely someone who I just love completely and totally. I love all of his music, and I'm so excited for it. I'm very into his aesthetic. And his complete aesthetic.

But what I wanted to communicate before we even talked about anything else, I tweeted this last week. Like Daytona, his seven-track album, which is, fucking awesome that came out last week, produced by Kanye all the way through, is so far my favorite crime novel of the year. And I think that what I wanted to express, when people are like, well, what is there to like about this guy who wraps with this kind of dead-eyed inflection about selling cocaine and basically many, many, many metaphors often involving aspirin about the breakdown of cocaine, the purchase of cocaine, the stepping on cocaine, distribution. such a profound and impressive focus.

Why do you keep finding such richness in there? And honestly, there is a razor focus and specificity and just poetry to the way that he talks about his beloved subject matter. Much like when we would read older Pelicanos novels and he would just talk about the way things worked in D.C. And it was a window into a world that was not my world, but is a world that exists with both a... sense of, you know, this sort of journalistic realism, but also flare and style and cinematic

Elon, right? He's the best at that, and listening to his music makes me feel elated. He's a formalist, you know, and he's been doing the same song his whole career. I think you can make the argument that some of the stuff on Lord Willem was a little bit more generally aimed towards, you know, are you in a club? Would you like to listen to this? He got a lot more focused after the Re-Up game. But there's stuff on there, like, Comedy Central, which like is basically should not be played for anybody below the age of 15 because it'll just change your life irreparably. And then I think what he does is he just finds new and different ways to approach the same subject matter, like you're saying. That's what formalists do. They put themselves within the confines

of a genre and then they've realized ways to be the Kool-Aid man on those confines. And as he says, if you know, you know. And like, much like, okay, there's a French novelist who won the Nobel named Patrick Modiano who has been writing the same novel for almost 50 years. novel or like he's been doing variations on it. He's been trying to find his way towards basically the same story through different variations. It's always kind of a strange nether time on a Sunday afternoon and you're in France. They're sometimes crime novels, but basically they're just like internal monologues. And I love them. Really? I love Patrick Modiano books. I would start with young ones, but that's not the point. The point being, that is just a rhythm that I like to vibe to.

And similarly, push a record. Yeah, sure. So his precision Yeah. His attention to detail. Yeah. You describe, I think we've described it as dead-eyed before. He brings that sensibility

to this conflict with Drake. This is amazing. And not to get too watch about it because I think you and I always maybe like have a tendency to like pat our discussions with conversations about larger industry forces. Yeah.

But one thing that really struck me about this as it should with pretty much any beef that pops up for you is you should look at release dates and you should look at headlines. So this is a good thing, it was a good thing net for both artists involved. Right. Up until Push's most recent response. The story of Adidon. Yes. And I think that you know, Pusha has Daytona out. Drake's got Scorpion, Scorpio coming out soon. Scorpion. Scorpion coming out soon.

Scorpio is my personal Drake album that's going to be coming out in November. And I think it's just worth noting that this works for both of them. It keeps them very much at forefront. of the conversation. That being said, I have not heard something this fucking gully since super ugly. And I think Donnie talked about that

on On Shuffle, which you should be listening to, subscribe to that's Michael Peters, and it's our music podcast. But that feeling of, oh, did he say that like out loud? Look, to people.

And that is the feeling that I got when Jay-Z, you know, it's funny now to think about Jay-Z as like this TED Talk icon and remember when he's said some things about people who Noss was close to. You remember when he stabbed a dude?

I mean, that guy's gone on a journey. Yeah. But yes, I think the thing to think about with this track is it's not just the Pusher brought. Okay, so let's just say he baited Drake into a knife fight, and then Drake went into like an open field, took out his knife, and then noticed a red dot blinking on his forehead. And Pusha didn't just bring the sniper rifle to the knife fight. He also put a remote, like a walkie-talkie in the meadow that would then broadcast his thoughts

so that Drake knows what has been done to him. Yes. It is so methodical and wild. And frankly, probably borderline inappropriate, but what's so incredible about this track is, in Tom Bryant's piece on stereo gum, he talked about just the push-it doesn't get angry. Bushet doesn't raise his voice.

Bushet sounds completely in control and barely curses, which means this will get played on the radio. And what's so wild about this is that Drake, who has been a total master and a chameleon and like an eel of slipping his way out of almost every circumstance. And I say this as someone who is a fan. Yeah.

You know, the whole ghostwriting thing with Quentin Miller a few years ago and basically people were like, we don't care because rap has changed and he makes hit songs and that's a totally different metric. Drake, to me, he's going to be fine. Drake, at the end of this, however this ends,

will settle for continuing being the most popular recording artist in America by a factor of 10. Yeah. But what's so fascinating about this collision to me is that Pusha is both, Drake's in a position where he's punching down in terms of popularity. Yeah.

But he's punching up in terms of seniority. Sure. Neither one is a good look for him. Yeah. I think he's in rare air right now. He's kind of him in. And I'll be curious to see how he responds. I'll be curious to see whether or not, I mean, one of the things that's cool about

cool or just noteworthy about these things is not unlike, say, NBA Twitter. The conversation around these things and the sort of the memeification of these things and the dialogue about these things is sometimes as interesting as the songs themselves. And it's weird to be, at this point, say, I guess it would be like 19, 18 years after Jay-Z put Prodigy, they have late Prodigy.

Up on that summer jam screen. On the summer damn screen wearing a ballet outfit, you know, and like that was sort of like the invention of Twitter. You know, like that was in a lot of ways that kind of show the receipts stuff was using a, real live event to have a timeline is pretty, pretty wild to think now where these songs come out and flex drop bombs on it and then it became sort of public property. I think because here are my two takes that are exactly push a T years old.

One is it's just, and I imagine you feel the same way, it's hugely exciting and kind of gratifying to see these two be having a battle and be in the front of the headlines because they are not Xanax rappers because this kind of lyricism and stuff, I mean, not to sound one billion years old, is what we like and is exciting and fun again, even though Drake did invent that entire genre, basically.

The other thing, though, is that at exactly Pusha T years old, which I am, I'm not really taking sides. I mean, I like Pusha more, and I'm thrilled for him that people are seeing what he's capable of and just how confident he is

in his abilities and what he's become in his place in the marketplace, but I'm not looking for anybody's career to end over this, you know? I feel like that part of rap battles, like I lost that thirst. Back when I, you know, like 20 years ago when I was like, I can't like Pearl Jam because I like Nirvana. Is it worth saying it, talking at all about the Kanye record that may or may be out by the time people hear this podcast?

Let's just do a temperature check because this is just fluctuating so wildly. Seven-track record from Pusha last week, all produced by Kanye, vintage peak Kanye beats. Just absolutely terrific. Air quotes produced by Kanye. Well, whatever that means this year. Yeah. They're great.

Yeah. And they're certainly produced by people who have produced other tracks by him. I mean, would you like a battle? Is there a battle rap coming out of you right now? No, I don't know. I don't know why I just got all, like, otorist about it. Who else in Wyoming do you think touched these tracks? Sam Elliott.

That's right. The ghost of James Crumley. That's right. The ghost of Sam Shepard. But I don't know how much goodwill that bought. Like, we were just joking about this, that there are journalists, I guess, who were flown to Wyoming today, Thursday,

to get the jump on a record that may or may not be released in a few hours. Seven more tracks. I mean, I can't tell, because my own feelings have muddled the water so much, I can't tell if this album means a lot and matters a lot and a lot is writing on it or not at all because of the complete squandering of,

as I was saying, of goodwill over the last few weeks. weeks and months and year. Yeah, I feel like it, that whole thing both feels 10 years ago, but also feels just part of like the same chaotic up and down that life on the internet kind of produces anyway. Which I find exhausting. Which also weirdly flattened everything. So I would say this is my least anticipated Kanye record. Definitely. Ever. But also I don't necessarily chalk, I mean, it certainly has a lot to do with some of his public behavior recently, but some of it is just like its participation in the, uh,

in the crazy cycle that we live in back and forth all the time now. But I also will say that I love, this is not surprising to anyone who's heard me talk about the length of television episodes, but I love the seven-album, seven-song album. I love it. And it makes everything feel lighter. It's more digestible.

Every album is eventually a seven-song album once you start skipping. That's exactly it. And if you can actually pick your seven best songs and you're good at curating, which Kanye used to be before he got his Twitter passwords back again, Right. It also lightens it to the sense that it's just seven songs. This is not this constantly evolving would-be

or at least desired to be a masterpiece like Pablo that was 10 songs, then 15, then 19, but then back to 16. You know what I mean? Like, let's just make a small... It's succinct. So we're going to see, we're going to have a lot of thoughts about it. No doubt. But Daytona's great, man.

All right, we're going to be right back to talk about the finale of the Americans in the beginning of succession after a word from our sponsor. Well, well, well, old friend. Ha! It's good to see you, sir. Are you baiting me into a bedney impression? I was thinking we could do this, Thomas's read as bettney.

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Start scoring amazing deals in incredible hotels and download the Hotel Tonight app now. All right, guys, we're back. And now it's time from one of my favorite pastimes, which is essentially just to let Andy talk about the Americans, which happens like once every 18 months. Can you hold my hand across the table? not happening again after this. Do they hold hands in the end of the episode?

No, I just look into my friend. Oh, just generally. I'm just like, really, like I need you here. Don't, don't zero out on me, man. I'm not, man. I'm right here with you. I'll participate. The show ended last night, Chris.

Were you aware of that? I was aware of that, yes. It's a rap. And it turns out we were the Americans the whole time. I, this is such a heavy thing to talk about because, as you know, as readers of Grandland know, I loved the show. I champion the show For many years

I think it was the best drama on television And kind of pointed a way forward For emotional dramatic storytelling on television In the wake of the true like Rushmore shows Like the Breaking Bads and the Sopranos and the Wire, etc. I think that Let me give you my Summing Up stuff about series finale's in general

Which is And I think I've used this metaphor before but it really, really came back when I was watching the Americans finale, which is to go on a long, multi-season journey with a show, you really have to trust the driver. You eventually have to be like,

this guy or this woman, but let's be honest, more often than not in this industry, this guy knows where he's going, or I trust his or her judgment to get us there. You get in the car and you go for the ride. Sometimes the ride gets bumpy, sometimes you go past some exciting things.

Sometimes you point out the window desperately, you wish you could go to that attraction, but you don't. They sail right past, it. But basically, you are settled in. Once that car door is closed, you're on the, you're on, you're there until the ride is over. The thing about that metaphor that is appropriate for long-running television shows is you actually don't know your destination. You know what I mean? You may have dropped a pin at the Arby's down the block because you were hungry. The Arby's down the R-Block

is a little rough. The Arby's down the block was having an event for buckets the buckets the other day when I drove by. Do you know that? Like that for your consideration, Netflix rented out the Arby's. Buckets or baskets? I'm not Netflix. Sorry, baskets. Buckets is a show that I made. You know, I'm still,

guys, it's still available if you want a piece of it. FX's show baskets rented out Arbys. Digression. Anyway, you may have wanted to go get some food, but maybe the showrunner just wanted to go look at the ocean for a while

and stops the car, puts it in park, and you're done. There is no bigger reckoning for one's relationship with a show than the way it ends because that's the moment when you realize what show you've actually been watching

and what the intention for it was. For me, there was a slow decoupling of what I wanted from the Americans with what the show was over the last two seasons. What did you want from the Americans? I think that what I was more interested in throughout was the way the show was deeply interrogating the idea of family and of marriage

and what it meant to be married and how the idea of marriage is fundamentally a contract. There are no rules. You don't have to follow any one way of being married as you and I both know. Sorry, I'm just working because I just keep thinking of you are hiding a child. That's another way of doing it.

By the way, the Americans, they were hiding a child for Philip. That child was, screen time was given to the child as he made his way to America to find the father that didn't know he existed. He made it to America and then he was told, go home and he went home, and that was the end of it. And as I talked about with Alison Herman at the beginning of the season, a lot of the things that I praised for many years as features maybe started to feel more like bugs, which is the show's intense commitment, a commitment I deeply respect, actually. to not going along with television stereotypes or storytelling rules. Basically, cutting off our anticipation before it began,

not giving us the moments we felt we were owed, long-running plot lines, side plot lines like what I'm describing with the sun, just saying, nope, and then it went away. I think in season five, I wasn't the only one to feel like that commitment to not escalating the tension or drama and not having things to add up

felt kind of like a cheat after a while. the season ultimately didn't feel like it went anywhere. Do you think that was a function of the strange kind of arc that this show had as a, whether it was going to be renewed or canceled? Yes. And whether or not, you know, I feel like that comes up a bit, you know, with the exception of, say, Friday Night Lights, which I think was a real, it was a real on the wall between getting canceled or renewed all the time.

And then eventually kind of had its proper ending. And the wire to some extent had that. But for the most part, I feel like that debate, if it's had, happening internally is more often than not bad for a show? Well, I think it can be good. I mean, like, let's say you have a 10-day contract in the NBA and you're playing for your life, you're bawling out of your mind. There's often, I mean, I don't know often because I don't actually cover the NBA like you

do. But I imagine that there are examples of people who have lived paycheck to paycheck, contract to contract, getting finally that windfall and then maybe playing, not playing up to their level for a few weeks or months when they settle or relax, right? There can be something, there's something to be said about shows that are living. by the seat of their pants. But I don't actually think the Americans was really as ever close to being canceled

as it may have appeared due to its ratings. I think that the network, from what I know, the network was always very excited and very behind it. And it was essentially cost effective and they owned it, and it was fine. But it sounded like a lot of people were sort of, they had problems

with the last season. The second to last season, because I think maybe the way they planned and plotted two seasons at a time caused them to be imbalance. Sure. Okay. I think the other thing that became clear

was the show had this laser-like focus on, it wasn't not a procedural, but on process. We would follow Philip and Elizabeth from their wigs to their infiltration of sources and marks to the way that they used sex or violence to get what they needed. And then those people would disappear and they ultimately wouldn't matter. And the information would go up the chain and maybe help Russia or maybe not. But who knows? Right. We actually don't know. And that was part of what the show was trying to say is that maybe it was futile. By stripping away all that external stuff, all those secondary plots, in this last season, what became clear was the show really only had one story to tell. When is Stan going to find out who these people are and what's going to happen?

When you're reduced to the one story, and the show did a great job of juggling the ball, of not showing us other things and distracting us, and the Martha storyline, which you probably don't even know what I'm talking about. I don't remember Martha. Emotionally, probably the highlight of the show, and it never quite recovered when that storyline ended. All of a sudden, we were just waiting for, how's it going to happen? How's it going to find out? How's it going to go?

And, well, it kind of went. You can tell me, by that. Yeah, no, I'm going to talk about it. I think that the show went out, it died the way it lived. And again, I got to say, I really respect that, you know. I love any time people who created a show and ran out the whole time end something the way that they wanted to end it. What happened last night was more or less consistent with a lot of the things I'm talking about.

This intense commitment to just stuff just happening, people just vanishing, you know, life moving on, history rolling over people without much of a taps played on a celestial trumpet. It just moves on. But I think at the end, I realized that I wanted more. And I wanted more in big ways and I wanted more in little ways. Noah Emmerich gave a great performance across all these seasons as Stan as the FBI agent. And again, I think Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields did a pretty good job of hiding the fact that really Stan's probably the dumbest FBI agent of all time or the worst FBI agent of all time.

Right, because he didn't recognize who these people were. Across the street and then became best friends with them. Right. I think that the way the news reached him and then the way it played was deeply disappointing for that character unless the whole point was this guy was a schnuck

and life has treated him accordingly. I think that the show had potentially a lot of fascinating things to say about the role of a wife, the role of a mother, the role of honestly like work-life balance in a very intense way in relation to Elizabeth Jennings' character,

the character of Elizabeth Jennings. This season really put it up to 11, because Elizabeth basically was a mass murderer this season, just slaughtering people in every episode, sometimes in the most grotesque ways possible. I'm not saying there needed to be a reckoning, but I did find it deeply disappointing that when we finally got to the high point

of last night's episode of the finale, which is a parking lot confrontation between the Jennings and Stan, Elizabeth is mute for the entire scene. Ultimately, what the show told us it was about in that scene, to me, this is my interpretation of it, was that the show was kind of a... bromance between Philip and Stan, and they let each other down because they loved each other. And then Stan lets them go. And that's the other thing we have to talk about. They all kind of get

away with it. Sure. I was shocked by this. I was shocked by my own desire to maybe for there to be blood, for someone not to get away with it, for someone to pay for it. And that's a question I want to put back to you when I'm done with this monologue. I guess that was, again, consistent with a lot of where the show had been going, but I miss things on the edges to make it land. One of the things I loved about the show throughout was that Philip Jennings was much more American than Elizabeth Jennings. He liked country and western music. He went line dancing sometimes. And those scenes meant a lot to me because those were the few scenes of humanity and was otherwise a very, very dark slog.

And I say that as someone who loves dark slogs. I do. You know me. I'm always going out to the Daugobah system to just trudge through stuff, metaphorically speaking. There wasn't, last night, there was not really any sense of he wanted to stay. he wanted to be there. He was more American now. A lot of those threads had just seemingly fallen away. I think a lot was made about the character of Paige

and what she would do and what she wouldn't do. And then probably the biggest emotional turn is the revelation that she gets off the train to Canada and she does not go with her parents and the family is torn asunder. The problem was I didn't really buy Page's Becoming a Spy this season in the first place. So this betrayal didn't feel like one to me.

There was just some emotional, there were some emotional steps that I didn't go along with. Yeah. And I clearly, by the way, I'm in the minority here. People, other critics, fans who love the show were just, I'm reading their responses. And what I'm feeling is not that they're wrong. What I'm feeling is jealous.

Because I feel like I was along, I was in the car with everyone for a while. And at a certain point, like Page on the Train, I must have gotten off. Sure. And that's a very unique feeling to long-term television watching. And I feel a little sad about it. As I'm sad as I am to see a show this well-acted, this well-written, this well-conceived, go away. the question I wanted to ask you that comes out of all of this is what do you think shows about bad people doing bad things

which is the majority of shows that we've been watching and talking about for this generation what do you think they owe themselves or the audience in terms of morality what I mean is the genius of the shows I mentioned of the Sopranos of I think the Wire certainly Breaking Bad they didn't judge their characters no but I think that they had a sense of justice they carry right somewhere inside of the show or the creative muse, there was some deep sense of justice

and morality that played itself out in a engaging, entertaining, and dramatic fashion. I don't think the show, I don't think Breaking Bad as an institution judged Walter White, but we watched what happened because of an accumulation of choices he made. And I think in some level I feel dissatisfied with the Americans

is because it didn't give me that, which made me think it wasn't considering those larger issues as it went long. So, just a question. I don't, I think especially with shows that involve or take place in a world of violence, we expect violence to end the show in some way or another. But I think more often than not, with very few exceptions, series fineries and the ends

of shows in general are not about story. They're about the television shows relationship to its fans and to its creators. Yeah, I think that's well-exerved. And it's very hard to kill your darlings. and it's very hard to say goodbye to something. And I think that something like, say, Breaking Bad is a very good example of a show where it felt like in every single step

up into the finale of that show, they knew exactly what they were doing. And at the very end of that show, the people who deserved, people got everything that they deserved. And it was a show about how you could try and twist that in life you could try to twist that. Because in the beginning of the show,

I think Walter White is living a life where he's like, I'm playing by the rules, and I'm getting screwed by everybody. And at the end, he loses for trying to reverse that. But Jesse gets away, but Skylar gets her money. You know, they move on from that. And I think that you respect. And also Breaking Bad, sorry to interrupt, but Breaking Bad, brilliantly gave us three different endings.

Sure. The last three episodes, each of which could have been a series finale, depending how you would like to see each character end up. You could have seen, you know, Jesse's still in prison. at the end of the second and last episode, and Walt is, like Philip and Elizabeth and the Americans, basically trapped in a self-made prison. Yes.

And then we also got the popcorn finale after that. Yeah, and I think that, so for the most part, I think that that is just a product of violent television shows. And we're conditioned to think that finality and catharsis comes from death or at least a hail of bullets. I wonder whether or not if this show had ended three years ago, the Americans had ended three years ago in a different world

if you would have felt differently about the end not only because of the amount of time invested but also because of I think that there is a feeling now of injustice in the world and I think there is a feeling of of like people aren't going to face the music for what they have done across the board in the world

or we're constantly trying to negotiate and try those cases publicly socially culturally yeah and I want to wonder whether or not watching three characters that you spend a tremendous amount of time with kind of part ways and not feel like any of it mattered, quote unquote, speaks more to like 2018 versus 2015 than it does to a failure on the part of Fields. Well, I think that's a spectacular point. And I'm going to go home and think about that. And not for nothing,

specifically what the Americans is about. Yeah, I think that that's really, really insightful. We We aren't going to talk about this because we just didn't feel like we had much to add, but it was worth noting that when we finished recording the other day and the Roseanne stuff broke, and I was legitimately shocked that the show was canceled. I just didn't think a corporation would do that. I thought about how we had covered the first episode of the reboot. And I realized, you know, I really wanted to think of that, just like as we always joke about a new critic. I just wanted to look at the text.

In a vacuum. In a vacuum. And I love a well-written multi-cam sitcom. come. I love John Goodman and Laurie McHaff and I like the rhythms and I was like, this can work. And it did, ratings-wise. I did not want to, in that moment, use this show as the boxing as the courtroom to adjudicate the worthiness of a racist trash bag who was at the center of the show. It was before the show was reported. It was before the show came back. I couldn't, ultimately, none of us could do that. Nothing is immune to this. Nothing can be separated out from our

culture right now. That was one lesson of that sad, sorry affair. So I think that that's probably worth interrogating. I also think for a show that was as just really cleanly and clinically diagramed and written and Joe and Joel have been so kind and gracious to me over the years, I had lunch in their production office a couple times and visited them and talked to them about process, both for podcasts and for stories and just because they were also shooting in Park Slope, basically shouts to turning smiling pizza into Roy Rogers the other week, by the way. That was a nice thing. Double dose of nostalgia.

I know that they think about these things, and they think about them a lot, and they think about them carefully with real intention. And I think that if you put it up on the big board and say there isn't going to be violence, because there has been a lot of violence up to now, and life doesn't work like that. There is not an automatic balancing of this cosmic. scales here. This is not the type of show we're trying to write. It doesn't need to end with violence. I think that the thought behind that is pure and true and smart. And I think that it went forward for me without the requisite amount of attendant emotion. Just little things. Like another great character on the show, Oleg Burrov,

came back this season, partly because Costa Ronan is just a great actor and a great addition to the show. One of the key things about that character when he was introduced as a member of the KGB residents who a few seasons ago, was that he was sort of flashy, his father was connected to the party, but he was also super into new wave music. He loved this posting because he really liked aspects of American culture. And when he came back this season to America to do this sort of off-the-book's mission for the KGB that was doomed,

basically to save Gorbachev from the bad elements within, the Putin-esque elements within the organization, there was not enough room because there was just so much plot, and now we're going to introduce this character and this character and double-crossing and triple-crossing. There just seemed to be not enough room for him to have one moment of like wistfully walking past Tower Records or the Black Cat or some

moment where he's like, when I was young, I used to think I could have both, but now I can't. And it's the tiniest note in the world, but those are the kinds of things along the journey that I appreciate and miss. Now, there was room for Philip to go line dancing one more time. So I'll always be grateful for that. But

I've been thinking about it since I watched. I've been haunted by it for reasons that are both like industry and because I care about TV, but also because I truly love the show. And I really miss Matthew Reese and Kerry Russell's performances especially. And I'll be very curious to see what the second life of it is as it moves on to streaming platforms and the long tail of it maybe finally wraps itself around people who steadfastly

refuse to watch the show. Like my co-host, Katie Nolan. I'm so sorry, Chris Ryan. Let's very quickly hit Succession before we go. Yeah, preview for a big show. Last week or two weeks ago when this first came up, there's a new show on HBO starring Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Karen Colkin, Sarah Snook. it is about a media conglomerate,

a family that runs a Fox-like media conglomerate. You know, we had talked a little bit about some of the stuff surrounding it, which I had mentioned before, that there was a David Milch script floating around called Money, which was about something similar, but this is a different vibe to it, I think, would be fair to say. It comes from Adam McKay, who directed the Big Short, you know, a long-time collaborative.

And stepbrothers. Yeah, and Step Brothers. And Jesse Armstrong, who worked with the wrong. Romando I Anucci on Veep, and I think did some stuff on Thick of it, if I remember correctly. Anyway, we've watched the first episode. It premieres this weekend on HBO. No spoilers, no spoilers. The thing that you said two weeks ago that I thought stuck with me was sort of whether or not this show is essential or not,

or whether or not this was like the time, and it kind of ties into what we're talking about with the Americans and the way you feel about it at the end. But whether or not you felt like this was the time for this show to be out, and whether you had any interest in watching rich people cut each other's throats. verbally over the course of an hour. I was thinking about that recently, and I think that my response to that ultimately is it's exactly why I like the show,

which is that television can kind of still serve as a, would I want to spend time with these people in real life? No. Would I want to watch a show about these people? Yeah, I do. And I think that this is a very piloty episode. They do a lot of, like, I am establishing that this is my role in this family. There is one scene where a character

stands up at a long lunch table and it's just like, you, sir, were born in this country, once you? Yeah. There's a lot of that. Yeah. And so it has a couple of really crackerjack, big short type negotiation scenes. I think it might be a little surplus to your requirements if you're also watching billions. You know what I mean?

Like there's a lot of rich guy TV on right now. But I think it does something different. And I think it gets, it's very much about family and about giving up and, seating your role as the star of someone's life. If there's a movie about these people, Brian Cox is just saying, I am still the name above the title. And that's what's sort of,

everybody is playing off of that. And I think it's just very well done. And I'm excited to see where it goes, but I'm curious to see what you thought. I think that we are both giving this a stamp of approval going forward. I think we're in, I think for a couple weeks anyway.

It's definitely worth watching. I think some of the performances are really interesting, and I mean that as a positive. Like, I think Jeremy Strong is a fascinating actor. There are moments in this, and I had never been checking for him until a big short. He's fantastic in that, and he's very different in this. There are moments when, and I have to think this was intentional, where the way they shoot him, he's very Donald Trump Jr.

Just the way that he carries himself and his body language. And then there are also moments when he's Michael Corleone and moments when he's Frato all at once. And that alone is fascinating. I think Kieran Culkin is really underrated and is great in this. I love Brian Cox as an actor always, and I think what he brings in this show is really, it's a unique choice because you watch this and he can't help but think of, well, you and I can't help but think of money, the milch script,

because that was supposed to be Ian McShane in, we don't know, but probably in some broad strokes a similar role. Brian Cox is gentle on every line reading. He soft plays it, which almost makes his savagery worse and tougher to watch. What surprised me about the show, although it probably shouldn't be surprising with Adam McKay directing it. And I think when you hear me say this, this may make you want to watch it or may make you choose not to watch it, is that most shows about rich people on television are really just about celebrating how cool it is to be rich, whether they are reality shows, quote-unquote, or they are fictional shows like dirty, sexy money or whatever.

This is a show made by the director of The Big Short, and this is a show that basically treats rich, super, rich media people like a crime family. Like, it basically looks at them with some level of disgust. Now, it also is a well-made, balanced TV show. So Jeremy Strong's character has some humanity. Big, big, big, big strong buy on Alan Ruck. Your boy, Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off as someone who, I'm not even going to spoil the joke, but that was one of my favorite scenes in it involving him. So these guys are basically often monsters. And so navigating that, humanity versus monster thing. I don't know if that's a journey I'm ready to set sail on. Partly, you know, it almost makes me think I would like to go back to billions of which I've

heard nothing but great things since it sort of figured out what it was midway through season one, right? That's generally the consensus. Because the thing that people say about billions that I am envious of and makes me curious about is that it's just crackerjack and it's fun. Yeah, they took the safety off entirely. And this show is measured and is trying to do a lot of things at once. But its pedigree is strong and it's much more interesting. than I gave it credit for one episode. So this is an official watch buy. Yeah, we're in.

In or out, we're in. And we're going to revisit it after another week or two. Yeah, I made chat about it on Monday. You're going to be gone. Yes, I'm out of town. You're out both days next week. Might be able to call in. We might, or we might post something that's already in the vault, guys. Don't get too excited. So here's some Andy next week. I'll probably wind up talking Westworld

next week. You know, I'm going to give you the okay, the high sign. That's fine. And then I'll start binge mode first reformed. I haven't seen it yet Until is it is it really that good? I haven't seen it I just assumed no I'm just assuming Wow yeah all right until next week Take care guys

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