The Watch - Netflix’s Plan for ‘3 Body Problem,’ Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums, and ‘Top Chef’

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Chris and Andy talk about ‘3 Body Problem’ creators Benioff and Weiss promising that there will be more seasons of the show, and why Netflix is being so vague about its plans for officially renewing the sci-fi drama (10:31). Then they talk about the news that a live-action ‘X-Men’ movie officially has a screenwriter (18:13), before talking about Apple Music’s 100 best albums list (35:37), and why these last few episodes of ‘Top Chef’ just haven’t had the juice (56:22). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Bill Simmons. I am thrilled to announce our newest YouTube channel. It's called Ringer Movies. If you're a fan of our movie coverage here at The Ringer, then you're in luck. Because every episode of The Rewatchables and the Big Picture, now on YouTube. Like Bill said, Ringer movies will feature full episodes of my show, The Big Picture, the Rewatchables, as well as special live episodes, deep dives into movie history, and a bunch of other fun stuff featuring other movie-loving Ringer personalities.

Search Ringer Movies on YouTube and Experience the Joy, Chris Ryan impersonating Wayne Jenkins on camera. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away. Trimphaya, gusalcumab taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy, and for adults with active psoriotic arthritis.

Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphia, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks.

Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run.

Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. Joining me in the studio, relieved that he finally gets to find out what happens at the end of three body problem. It's Andy Greenwald! That's no longer one of my body problems. Want to talk about your body problems?

No, you're saying that you keep talking about this Ozempic push advertising, and maybe that's the solution to my body problems. Eddie, a little bit of admin before we get into today's show. I just want to say the Ringer is hosting its first ever residency. It's live show residency this summer at my beloved El Ray Theater in Los Angeles. I'm really excited to be co-hosting a Talk the Thrones live with Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson.

We'll be there on June 25th. That's a Tuesday, and tickets are on sale now. All the details are at the ringer.com slash events. And I hope to see you, Andy, there. I'd like to be there. I hope to see Kaya there. No, Kyle shrugged. Guess list?

No, of course. Plus one. I mean, if I get a free ticket. You tossing list spots around? I shouldn't say that. I don't talk about the blog. I talk later. For what it's worth, I think I should also say for full disclosure, I had to recuse myself from that event because I...

You're part Targaryen. No, my beach house was photographed. I was flying a Barathean flag. Dude, you beat me to it. I know. You beat me to it. I was going to say, for everybody who was offended by the fact that I was flying an Eagles flag upside down, that was my wife. She didn't know.

She didn't know what that meant. We got more. We do have more. It's great to see you. Today we're going to do some news, and we're going to do some, a conversation about lists, because the Apple Music service put out a list of the 100 greatest albums of all time.

And it just made me think about lists in general, list making. I had asked you if you wanted to do a sort of mid-year top five. I bet we could collectively put that together pretty easily on the spot and perhaps show a little bit of the, you know, you don't ever want to see the mechanic working on your car. No. But you're glad when it runs, and maybe we can do both today. Also, we want to finally talk about Top Chef.

Was Succession this year? No. I'm just kidding. You've got an abundance of shows. I know. It's been a good year. A true bounty. I was glad that you just put a little audio marker down that we're going to talk Top Chef today.

It's fallen out of the rundown. Because I've done that before, and we haven't. But we are actually, we're raring to go. No, we have to. I have a full, full jug of kerosene that I'm going to throw on this conversation. Let's begin. Okay. Should we begin with small talk or should we begin with just hard news?

Hello, friend. Shall we begin with some of our patented small talk? The banter that everybody comes to us for. Do you have a little How to Make Friends book? And it's like, begin with, yeah. Make eye contact. What do you got? Ask follow up questions.

How's your burgeoning relationship with ice hockey? I think people were pretty excited about that. I have a very succinct answer to that. I have completed the two seasons of Shoresy. Okay. I love that show. Yeah. The third season comes out soon.

can't wait. For anybody who doesn't know what Shorzie has, you can watch it on Hulu. It is basically like if the Cohen Brothers made Slapshot, it is very high praise, but it's very, very good. It's a spinoff kind of of Letterkenny. But it is awesome. I love this show and I can't wait for it to come back. I love that you, you mentioned Shorzie briefly a couple weeks ago and you awakened Jason Manzukas. It did. Like you just lit him up. He was so excited. I just find it to be so reliably and like comforting to watch. And it's just awesome. Because you've been on a journey with,

you've been hold it down solo at home. Yeah, I got back from Europe. My wife stayed in New York to spend some time with her mom. So I have had an extra week. And I see a darkness, to quote my guy, Will Oldham. I think it both peaked and bottomed out with this past Sunday when I watched 12 hours of sports, including at your birthday drinks.

That's true. That's true. I have never seen a bigger Timberwolves fan in my life than you and our buddy Justin in the last five minutes of that game. Yeah, but going Liverpool final round of the PGA to game sevens was was great. I loved it. But it was also like once you get on the other side, I just feel like my eyes are falling out of my head. And this is the embarrassment of choice that all upwardly mobile Americans have where it's just like what to watch when you can watch everything. Do you think your eyes are falling out of your head, though, due to scurvy because of your solo guys' dinner diet? Or do you feel like you're taking care of yourself? No, I think I'm taking care of myself. I had a burger last night. Okay.

And I'd like to just discuss this really quickly before we get into the entertainment news. And forgive me if we just take a personal excursion to food before Top Chef. Sure. And I wanted to say the benefit of you living this sort of intense Dante-esque spiral into. into the depths of the Bachelor's... Into the depths of the Oilers' Post-season. The best thing about it from a friend perspective is 5 p.m., you are ready for a phone call. Yeah.

It's great. Like, I know that people are like... A lot of people are off phone calls and people don't want to pick up the phone and it's like in position. But I ring my guy up at 459 pretty consistently. Yeah. You're... It's a quick hello.

I'm like, go for Chris. Can I also tell you that the other night when I was watching Game 7 Oilers Canucks, and I was like, I don't really have anybody to talk to about this. And I was like, yes, I do. And I texted one person. I was like, are you fucking watching this game? Yeah. And that person texted back, yeah.

Exclamation plate, exclamation, point. And that's, you finally. I'm glad you two crazy kids are making it work. I would like to just address the idea that every bar has a famous burger. Okay. And that they, I think that more bars need to be honest with us about the fact that it is a burger and not the burger. without naming any bars. I also just maybe have gotten to a point where I'm like,

do I like hamburgers that much? Yes. This is Sith Lord Emperor shit. Let's be honest. I think it's cool. I like hot dogs and I like lots of different foods. But sometimes I'm just like, do I ever feel good after eating an entire hamburger?

Okay, well, there's a couple things to parse here. One is, and I'm sorry for our... I know you're going to be like, have you been to burgers to ever show your dogs? No, I can't survive that anymore. I was going to say the opposite. I was going to say, I would like to apologize to our six listeners under the age of 45, but, you know, there is a certain amount of salt. And, like, it is an instant nap at a certain age to eat a big burger unless you've done, like, an enormous amount of, like, physical labor or exercise right before it.

Not me. Fair. I also feel like we should be able to talk about this, that I think that a burger can be a perfect food. Sure. But the ceiling is relatively low. Like, it's never great, is it? I think that there are a lot of great first bites on burgers. So, like, when you get that Pat LaFrieta and it just hits you right in the frontal lobe, that's great stuff.

But, like, it's really like, maybe I should just move into sliders. You know, maybe I want to be, like, one bite. Here's what else. Here's my thing. The Dave Port and away of burgers. The problem with a lot of perfect things is the more you try to, like, complicate them or fancy them up or iterate them, the worst they get. Yeah, I have one last time with Manchigo and Arugula. What? come on. Come on.

All right. Also, now I know where your flag flies. You fly that exactly as it should be flown. I, you know about this place in New York, Hamburger America?

It's George Motsz. He's a burger scholar. And his thing is that the burger is a phenomenal, like regional food and he goes around the country and he's on this tour right now. You just follow this guy on Instagram.

I do follow him on YouTube. I watch a lot of his stuff But 95% of the burgers he loves or makes involve like a pound and a half of onions. But right now he's like he's in Michigan. And there are these places that look like the, they look like photographs from like the, what do you call it? The works administration project. Like from the, like Robert Frank's photographs of the Americans, right? They look like these old, beautiful rundown shacks.

Yeah. And all of them are basically like a six millimeter patty of meat of, Unknown Providence with American cheese on a potato roll. Right. That's good. That's great. If you tell me that's your famous burger and you've been slinging it since 1929. But when it's like ground sirloin.

Relax. Yeah, right. That's just my update. Any updates from you? No, I'm just riveted by this and I wish we could do two hours on it. Well, we could probably get back to it during Top Chef. Kaya, a burger person? Yeah, your name?

Oh, yeah. I love a good burger. Well, she's also young. Kai also needed some burgers on Monday, like just some restorative. No, I needed vegetables. I didn't need it. I think the problem with the bar burger is that every bar needs to differentiate their burger. So they're like, oh, well, like, take father's office, for example.

They're like, no, no, no. We only do blue cheese. We don't do ketchup. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And you're just like, the customer is always right. Whatever happened to that? Wow.

This is the thing about you, Chris. You can't be pinned down politically. You're like, the customer is always right. And this customer wants. ground sirloin and arugula and a little bit of Spanish manchego. So if you ask for changes modifications at father's office. They don't do it. But the thing is, at bars, like, if it's a good bar, how much time are they spending on their food program and, like, changing the oil in the friar and, like, cutting their french fries?

They're not. These are the questions that only one person is brave enough to ask, and it's you. It's me on our podcast about television. Andy, last episode, I believe last episode. We talk... Do you like a patty melt? Sorry, go on. Let's talk about it.

Again, largely driven by caramelized onions. Okay, sorry, go on. Was it last episode that we discussed the problem with three-bri-bri-Problem and the weird Netflix announcement about their... We did. About their... How they were going to bring it to a conclusion, leading to a ton of internet speculation as to like,

is that mean like there's going to be two last episodes or three more seasons or what? obviously a little birdie told Benny Off and Weiss that that was happening online because they went to the Hollywood Reporter and talked to James Hibbert a little bit about like give some clarity to their end game here. They talked to James Heybird? Yeah.

And here is, this is from Hollywood Reporter showrunners, David Benioff, Dan Weiss and Alexander Wu. Assure things are going to be just fine for the show at least, if not for their ensemble drama's characters facing an alien invasion. While the trio didn't reveal the exact number of episodes in their New Deal,

they emphasized it was for, quote, seasons, plural, and that the number of hours aligns with their original plan to adapt the two remaining novels in this Hugo-winning trilogy. Uh-huh. Clean-up on aisle

body problem. Look, I'll say again, this entire kerfuffle could be because of contractual things not being worked out. Yeah. it absolutely could be that they were haggling over the length of seasons three and four. They didn't reach an agreement.

Netflix was like, we're doing these upfronts. They had to scale back the language they were using and then are now cleaning up this, even though the haggling isn't done. Yeah. That's completely, completely possible. It also could be worse than that. Like it actually could be, yes, the haggling is like existential over they're going to do three more episodes or three more seasons. deeper than all of that to me

It's deeper than rap. Is it, though? The deeper problem than that to me is this idea like we're just starting things to be like, okay, well, we'll kind of figure out a way to finish them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. None of this feels great.

Like the excitement that was in the press, but even I think among fans, and I think we were very optimistic about this, even up to watching the show, that Netflix is heavily investing in these creators who have a proven track record for these very expansive books, in this huge world and we're starting something,

within three months of premiere has turned into this very kind of pedantic quibbling over. It's going to end, and it's going to end this way or that way, but it'll be fine. And I don't know what to, where to throw the blame for that, but the tenor of that conversation, frankly, sucks. It sucks for viewers. I think it sucks for the industry. I don't know if that's just emblematic of the fact that, like, all TV shows now have to be complete stories and they all have to begin to end.

Or that they require the amount of investment. where they're actually balancing, like, this is going to cost us a quarter of a billion dollars to finish this, like, do we want to finish it? Yeah, but it's also the Netflix of it all, which is just like Netflix seems desperate to end things even as they're green lighting them, because I think whatever their goals are

for the razor blades in their arsenal, in their service, are pretty opaque, and they make sense to them, but they rarely seem to make sense for the creators. Well, they don't make sense to us. You're right. But I do sometimes, I wonder how much this stuff really matters to other people.

I mean, like, I think that this is a difficult thing. One thing that I would say is difficult is if you are saying like three body problem is a reason to get Netflix. Right. And there is some person out there who didn't have Netflix but loves these novels. And there's enough of the people out there who are like, I'm going to sign back up for Netflix. I haven't had it in a year or two, but I want to watch Three Body Problem. And then you don't have a relationship with a schedule or a sense of certainty around the project. that you invest yourself in. I suppose you could see churn from that, but are you really? I mean, haven't we spent most of this year talking about the fact that Netflix has basically become Kleenex?

And it's like, that's what we call TV now is Netflix. That's like the baseline for like what service you would start with. Even in all of our nitpicking and sort of eye rolling, like if you were like you can have one service, I would probably take Netflix. You know, like just in terms of variety. There used to be, I don't know if it's still valid, but there used to be the thing that was set around town, which was stars don't make TV shows. TV shows make stars. And I think that the equivalent for that now is hits don't make Netflix. Netflix makes hits. Netflix, I think, and this is the version of it that's very sympathetic towards Netflix, the corporation, which does not need our sympathy necessarily. But they don't need to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to bring in pre-existing fans of creators or of genre or of books.

Not anymore. They can spin Baby Rindeer or other networks refuse, whether it's suits. or Girls 5EVA or whatever, like they can spin that into hits. Yeah. And that's clearly how they're operating. I don't know. I still wish that we had more clarity in this,

and I guess we'll get it eventually once the ink is dry in the contracts, about how much of this is genuinely goodwill, creative back and forth about how best to service this story and how much of this is a weird blend of Netflix's like ruthless algorithm meets old Hollywood backscratching.

Because remember, the other piece of reported news from last week was Beniof, Weiss, and Wu's deals were all extended. So that buys a lot of like, we always, all we ever wanted to do was four additional seasons of two episodes. Yeah, we've always dreamed of having Kirk Cousins as our franchise quarterback. Exactly. Honestly, yes.

Yes, so is Michael Pennix the baby reindeer in that analogy? Essentially. Did you see that Netflix just bought the Odriard movie? They did? Yeah. Wow. Did you see the Axel Foley trailer? I did not.

Netflix? Is it look good? Those guys are really old. Yeah. But Eddie looks great. Good. Does it look good? I mean, I guess.

What's your... So you didn't watch this. This is a typical... Now you know how I feel on this podcast most of the time. Do you... When you think of... I know... When you think of Beverly Hills Cop,

both the film and the franchise... Yes. What genre do you consider that movie or that franchise to be in? Action comedy. Okay. Yeah. But, I mean, I pretty much, I think I've seen three is the one at Disneyland, right?

That was the last one. This would be the fourth one. Three is a very, very bad film. Yes. So I think the first two are fucking fantastic. Yes, they are. But I guess in my mind it's still more like comedy, but maybe action was different in the 80s. Well, if you watch Beverly Hills cop, there's like 10-minute car chases, though.

The new trailer is very, very action-heavy. Yes. it is wild that they got. Judge Reinhold is just like... In it. Just Billy is just in it. Bronson Pinchot is just in it. And you know who the only person under the age of 60 is in the movie?

I'm Kevin Bacon's in the movie. Is he? Yeah, he got so excited. Our guy Joe Gordon Levitt is his new partner. Is Axel's new partner? No. Yes. What?

Yes. Who directed this? Matt Malloy? It's a good trailer. Like, this seems... I don't know. That was a weird pivot that you didn't expect. but I'm like, okay, Netflix is hitting some pleasure centers there.

That's fine. I'm going to draw a little bit of a connection between these two pieces of our podcast, which is that the next piece of news that I wanted to bounce off of you was the announcement that Marvel Studios had hired a writer or was working with a writer on an X-Men live action thing. Now, obviously, this was the no-brainer layup of all layups. Like, this is not in any way a shock or a surprise.

This was always going to be, the next kind of big landmark development project for Marvel after they kind of merged with Fox and got the characters back. But I thought it was really interesting to see at least deadline.com's framing of it. And I wonder whether or not this is actually going to be something that a lot of younger people kind of almost maybe not in need, but are like, yes, I agree, which is that they are kind of framing the development of the live action movie as a continuation of, the success of X-Men 97 the animated show. They're like, we've seen that people like

these characters where it's like, yeah, dude, no shit. You know, like, people like X-Men. But, you know, I've watched like three or four of X-Men 97. I really like it as like a background thing. I don't, I know that there is a ton of like real joy and passion about this show. So it's not like a yuck your yum or anything.

It's like, I don't, I just didn't watch the first one really. So it doesn't really like, scratch. Yeah. I mean, just like a lot of like raves. Oh, right. It was 97. Yeah. Oh, we were hanging out.

Yeah. Okay. Like an underworld, baby. Born slippy. Paints his nails once. Sure. What did you think of this? This, I mean, so the, just a.

It's Michael Leslie. Michael Leslie wrote Hunger Games, colon, ballad of songbirds and snakes. And little drummer girl. Good friend. That's my fucking man right there. Yeah. All of a sudden, I was like, okay, he wrote the Hunger Game. He wrote the little drummer girl with Michael Shannon.

And like, that was good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that one of the things we talked about last week was how some companies are good at Spin and others aren't, and Marvel and the larger umbrella corporation of Disney are very good at this. They've been developing an X-Men movie since the Fox acquisition, if not before.

They have been developing X-Men projects since the moment that deal closed. And legitimately, I'm sure they had had loose conversations about what they might do if and when they got the rights to the characters again. And we had the brief appearance of Professor Xavier in Dr. Strange. Dr. Strange. Yeah, played by, I believe, John Malkovich. Was that your reading of it? No, I was just trying to remember.

I literally called it almost like Dr. Doom and the Strange Madness. Yeah, it was Dr. Strange. It didn't actually like it came out 16 and a half years ago? Dr. Strange to Agatha all along featured like an alt-universe, Illuminati. Yeah, that's right. Cresinski. It had Cresinski as your favorite

character, Mr. Fantastic. Mr. Mephisto. It had like Black Bolt from the disavowed inhuman's television show and Patrick Stewart in the in the X-Men 97, I think the yellow chair.

Anyway, they've been talking about this. Was Michael Leslie attached to do it? For a long time? Is that recent? I don't know. Sounds very cool. He's clearly a talented writer who can do both, you know,

As far as we're concerned, high pressure adaptations. I don't think LeCarray and X-Men are the same for the mass-map. For us. For us, they are. And he's done, he's worked in the blockbuster space with this Hunger Games thing. And so, cool. Okay. I think the spin is being like, hey, you like that?

Guess what? We're doing more. They've always been doing more. The question remains, and one that I'm not being cynical about, I'm really interested to see, is what are they going to do with it? Is the plan, which wouldn't be a bad plan, considering the state of the current MCU to do these alt-pocket universes

towards the larger goal of the new Avengers movies doing secret wars in which different universes are crashed into one. In that version of it, the Fantastic Four exist on an alternate earth where they're the only heroes. It's the 1960s. And that gives them a chance

to do something similarly radical. They could do 90s X-Men in meteorized. Like, this has just been happening. Rather than introducing them. Rather than introduce the idea rather than doing something like the first mutant is born

and we now, they exist in the MCU, we just haven't been talking about them, or rather than doing, we just didn't show you that part of the world yet and it's been an ongoing case. So wait, there's a world in which the X-Men are like up and running in the 60s?

No, no, no. Well, so the Fantastic Four movie is going to be set in the 60s. The X-Men, also created by Stanley and Jack Kirby, started in the 60s. Okay. But you could choose to do a world.

It would seem to be narratively cleaner and a way to get it out from under all of the baggage and retconning, which they seem incapable of getting out from under these days, by saying X-Men, first movie, here you go. They don't, we don't have to, we don't have to open the movie. Yeah, I wonder if they'll be able to resist being like bringing the team together and the first meet and stuff. Well, my point is that you don't have to begin the movie with like cable and slylock being interviewed about the Sikovia Accords.

You know what I mean? Like, you just got so excited. That was more excited. Honestly, my heart stopped. for a second. Like you could, but you could also then play with era. You could do, you could do 60s, you know, which they've done in the Fox movies. The first class was set in the 60s.

And then they brought the Fast Bender movies up through the present day and days of future past, et cetera, et cetera. So you could do 90s X-Men if that's what everybody loves. Personally, I would be pretty, I think it would be pretty sick if they took a swing at the most recent iteration of the X-Men that we've talked about briefly when the this is happening. No, no, keep up. The Hickman stuff from the last three years. The Hickman shit is crazy, though.

They're not going to have, like, globehead, like, psychics. Yeah. No, but, like, in that one, there's always been a mutant island since the 70s, Crocoa. And in the Hickman comics, they've just moved out of this era finally. But, like, all the mutants were like, we are our own species. We always have been. Now we have our own home and fuck everybody.

And all the heroes and villains are just living there with their own counsel and own leadership and own like morals and mores and it's cool. Yeah, I know. The Hickman stuff I read was really, where it was really neat. I think, I hope that the conversations they are having, and this is getting pretty high-minded, is like, the X-Men just don't work if it's like, here's six weirdos who also want to save the world. That's just narratively not what they are.

And also, it's redundant when you have, ultimately you're going to crash them into a universe that has the Avengers. So they have to be not oppositional like in terms of hero, villain, but they have to be something slightly different. And I don't know, it's interesting. I think that it is spin to say this is happening because of X-Men 97's success, but it is not spin when people who, when like really attentive tea leave readers, including people like Joanna Robinson, are looking at the cartoon or the other cartoon they do what if

and seeing them as trial balloons. They absolutely are doing that in terms of what works and what doesn't. That's a very smart use of the animated. field, I think. Although I wonder whether or not straight up people are just like, I just prefer the cartoon version of this. Well, it works.

I mean, one of the reasons why it works is the relative freedom of it. I mean, it's like, they're all already together in 97. You're like, oh, this is fun. Like, this is like, we're like in the middle of a story already. Well, that's what Fantastic Four is doing. That's what the Tom Holland Spider-Man movie did so successfully.

Yeah. I feel like what they should do, like what they should be doing at Marvel Studios every morning is instead of like having morning coffee or putting donuts in the table is they should just show the first eight minutes of the marvels on a loop

and be like, everything we do is to never do this again. That's a tough beat. I genuinely implore our listeners, even people who, like, just watch the first eight minutes of that, especially if you are a casual fan or not a fan. Because it's like basically like how much, it's like when like a new GM comes in

and he's like, it's going to take me two years to undo all these contracts. And then you trade your best place. to the Padres for nothing in the middle of May? Are you talking, is this a Marlins analogy? You really have been alone for a while. Geez. No, again, I'm not trying to like take pot shots at a movie that was kicked around or Brie

Larson or anyone else involved in that movie. It's just that like, look what they tried to do. And they tried. They tried, I just can't. I'm haunted by that opening once I realized that my headphones weren't plugged in correctly. I'm haunted by just the amount of water carrying they had to do for something that's supposed to be in entertainment. Yeah. Can we do the other Disney thing, though, since we're just in the Marvel universe?

The Disney thing? The Vision thing. Oh, yeah. I just, just we're flagging and we're always interested in things they might be learning or adapting or doing differently is that they did announce, they haven't announced a TV show in a long time. And I don't think they have anything on the docket, right, other than Agatha. Not on TV. I saw, crazily, I saw a Captain America Brave New World poster on like a Taco Bell the other day. and I was like, we're doing this?

This is going to... I was just driving here and there's an ad for a Coke Zero promotion that had like Avengers Assemble, but the Avengers are Shuri Black Panther and Anthony Mackey Captain America. So I feel like they're sort of like low-key trying to like... They're literally putting it in the Kool-Aid

to get us to see these characters this way. It wasn't a Brave New World like ad, was it? No, but it was a poster for it. When is it coming out? 20-29? No, I don't know. I genuinely have no idea when this movie's coming out because the last thing we heard about, it was, we like the movie we made, we're just going to maybe make another one and see which one, see how they work together.

They did announce they're doing a vision TV show for the police. Is it based on the vision that everybody is like, this is the greatest comic ever? Was it King? The Tom King one? No sense that they are doing that. No. In the release, it's just like, they're like, as everyone remembers. And I was like, I'm going to stop you there, Denise Petsky. I do not remember that Wanda Vision ended with like. He's died a lot. But the charming one, like, melt a lot. But the charming one, like, Meltton. away, but then the one the government made that was all white is... Yeah, exactly. Go ahead.

I don't have nothing to say. Okay. That one is just like, didn't have the memories, but like now we're going to make that one become human again. Okay. Or whatever. It's what they did with Data every three years on Star Trek. Oh, where he was like, I can feel.

And then they were like, wipe the fucking clock on this guy. They're like, they're like, Data, we're so happy to see you. Let's play chess and talk about art. And he's like, what are you, Captain? Every time I think we're kind of cool, like I realize we're not. I've never thought we were kind of cool for a minute. We don't fucking care about this stuff. We're not men trying to decide how to cook.

I thought we were talking about liking Underworld in 1997. We were cool in 1997. Anyway, I don't, okay, I don't care about vision, Chris, okay? But I just want Paul Bettney to get work. What was interesting about it was that they hired a show, runner to make this show. They hired this guy Terry Mattelis who did the Star Trek Picard show.

Which also like, I think that in a low-key way. Not a low-key way. The way that Paramount has handled the Star Trek TV industry is actually how, like, that's what Star Trek fans want. Is like multiple shows delivering on a

procedural week-to-week basis that with like a couple of different like executions. Different vibes. Yeah. And and it's all up and running and I know that they've talked about bringing Simon Kenberg in to do a prequel to the one that is already written that they're trying to get everybody scheduled together. But yes, go ahead.

I'm sorry to interrupt. No, but I think that one of the reasons why Star Trek is successful is because Star Trek just as an idea, or at least within the company of Paramount, like they were like, we cede the mainstream for the most part. We understand our place in this, and we are of most value both to the company but also to our core constituency

by just staying within these margins and making shows that have high floor, but I would also say a relatively lower ceiling. And I think that Marvel, both in terms of its importance financially to Disney, but also in terms of their experience they had over the last 10, 15 years, is like, we are mainstream culture. They don't like it when people like us are like, this is hardcore only for dorks who already care about it. They want to be bigger than that.

But this was an interesting step because up to this point, with their, I think even they are now admitting kind of botched rollout into TV, they were like, we are driving these shows from our collective producorial hive mind. Yes, and then... Rather than... Right.

Rather than a showrunner with an established track record of writing and enacting a vision, no pun intended, or actually a guest pun intended, coming in and saying, I would like to wrap my arms around this story and tell it in this way, and they say, okay, off you go.

And then they're also... Do you think that they're going to lighten up a little bit with the... Here, you make the middle part of this. and then we will connect it to the previous thing and the next thing. Because that's the thing you hear about these shows is that there is this cabal of Marvel, like, you know, not unlike the Luminati in the movie, where it's like, yeah, we're the ones who decide,

like, we need to go back and reshoot something so that it connects to this Marvel. The executives are in the room, and they were like, and they're guarding the toy box. And like, you can have these, but you have to use them this way and you can't use that because we're doing that over here. I'd like to say, and certainly the spin on this announcement, is in line with the thinking that we've learned and we're going to make TV shows now. Sure. I would also say, just from the outside perspective, this is a uniquely, this situation is uniquely set up to allow for that reading of it because as you remembered, I mean, I'm embarrassed that I didn't.

The post-EI vision that debuted at the end of Wanda Vision, all white, was, come on. That was great job. I was watching your face. Where are we going? You were like, Kevin Bacon is still an Axel Foley? He's, he's, they have a empty vessel. And the, the mandate, the homework assignment for Terry Mattelis, I imagine is get this guy green again so he can be an Avengers five. Wasn't he red?

Or green and red. Yeah. Get him. I'm just confused. I'm like, how many visions are there? Yeah, okay. Get him back to. He had a suit?

Well, he's not a naked, right? Okay. I thought he was like a big fucking Ken doll AI. Yeah. Okay, he is. But he's got a cape. People fall in love with him. And they're like, yeah.

And he was basically like Tony Stark's butler. Like the vision thing is really weird to me. Wow. The enduring quality of that character is people. This is all, you're making great points. They're not relevant to my point, but I'd like to revisit them. I was just saying, if the mandate is in 10 episodes, get this character from a zero back to being a hero, that seems pretty manageable. Sure.

And unlikely to have a decision being like, you guys can't use the serpent society because we decided. we're going to put that on the big screen. Like, I don't think that's relevant. I just, I feel like this is like watching Jay Z freestyle without anything written down right now. Like, yeah, this was like a fucking subhead. Yeah. I'm like, oh, yeah, there's going to be a vision show.

Wait till we get to Top Chef. I have the same energy only for these two topics. Do you want to quickly go through this list idea that I had? I want to go through all. I love yourself. I just don't want to be like, and Top Chef will kick that to next week. So we're going to do Top Chef. But if you want to talk about why all these people

keep falling in love with this synthozoid Butler, because you seem hung up on that. I just don't find that character to be, I think that sometimes, if one of my main takeaways from the last five years is the need to take tertiary characters

and be like, what's the real story behind this guy? And it's like, this guy's quality, and I'm sure that there are lots of comics that are really dope about vision. But for me, Paul Bettney's rendering of this character is like weird robot. Yeah. You know, robot with some cool quips. You don't feel.

And it feels like he's had his fucking head torn off like eight times. Yeah, he has. So there's no dramatic stakes. Also, I mean, but also there's a lot of retconning where it's just like America fell in love with the unlikely story between a Secovian exile, witch and this creepy robot. Did they? I was before, well, whatever the TNT game was the other night, they were playing Ragnarok. And there's a scene in Thor Ragnarok

where Hulk's been Hulk for two years. And then he like becomes banner again because he sees a picture of Scarlet Johansson. And he's like, what? Two years, what happened? And he's like, what happened to Socovia? He says that? Yeah.

When you said a picture of Scarlet Johansson jolted him to reality, I thought you were setting up a Sam Altman bit. No, I was trying in my head, but I was just like, we're, you know, we're two over... It's incredible. Like, we should start doing YouTube, because I was, like, watching you, like, Tetris, the pieces, you know? Because you're like, I said AI a moment ago.

And I'm talking about vision, but Scarlet Johansson was in that movie. I could do this. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner.

Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike,

or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for, that's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need, fast and reliably, so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime

to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by the active cash credit card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful. But that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it,

big or small. So whether it's buying tickets at the game or grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The Active Cash credit card from Wells Fargo, be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com

forward slash active cash. Terms apply. I wanted to talk to you about the Apple Music Top 100 albums list. I also was like, do you think it's worth putting together a top five right now. I think we could probably make a bigger deal of it than minute 47 after a 12 minute monologue about fishing. I feel like I let you ask some, you know, some useful questions. I think that this is like a

really interesting, it's a really well put together project. It looks great if you go to Apple's website and stuff. And I think it's very thought provoking as and it's not like super trolly. I think it's trying to throw its arms around, ironically, the Apple and Spotifyification of music, where I think rather than there being any kind of, like, resistance to certain genres, you have most people, at least in my experience now, are like, I just like good music. It's kind of like being back in a freshman dorm. Yeah. And you're just like, hey, man, what kind of music do you like?

And they're like, all kinds. Bob Marley and R.E.M., you know, like. So. That was all music. And this is, I think it's interesting to also note that for me, when I was a kid, like, and I was first getting into music or even movies or sports, like, listmaking was something that you would do kind of to organize your thoughts and your feelings or your taste or whatever. And then as I became a quasi-professional critic, list-making was more of a participation in shaping a present tense canon. So, like, you'd participate in The Village Voice, which is an all weekly in New York. I hope people know who that is what that is.

You would participate in the Pazin Jop poll, which was Robert Criscow ran this poll every year that you would submit, you know, your ballot of singles and albums for the year. And out of that would become like this sort of critical consensus that I often disagreed with, partially because I always felt like people were, rather than voting for what, like, they actually loved, they were like, well, do I think that they. this already obvious top five record is better than this already obvious top five record, like Beck versus Outcast or whatever. And it was like, but surely like you liked something other than Beck, you know, like I always felt like the lists had a tendency to be very kind of preordained.

Well, there was definitely also, and we carried this too because we, this is the sort of the world that we were coming out of, or that was forming us when we were kids, was that it's like a Harold Bloom like deference towards canon. Like, I have my personal taste,

but I am also like, this reminds me the way Peter King would explain his football Hall of Fame votes every year too where it's just like I am but a humble steward

in this larger project so I need to like consider my I need to be skeptical of my own personal biases and pleasure. Well, the Hall of Fame is actually an interesting point because like I think Sean

still votes for the rock and roll hall of fame. Yes. But he has given like a list of eligible things to vote for. Right. When that's different than having like

the entirety of music released in a year and you're like, well, I'm going to organize the things that have already gotten like really good reviews rather than like a knapsack record or whatever that you actually liked the most. I'm speaking about myself here or not. But I also think, well, we both like knapsack first of all. But second, like voting in Passenchop was maybe the highlight of our professional lives for about five or six years. I'm not trying to denigured it. Oh, I don't

think you were. But I definitely think that what we felt this like, this sounds ridiculous now, both, you know, in retrospect, but also considering what's happened with the cultural conversation. but I think we felt some responsibility as arbiters of taste or consensus to weigh in on it. And to try and wedge Jada Kiss into. Always. I mean, I think you used to be able to search like our individual ballots. And I don't think we were doing a lot of water carrying for, you know, for the raucous movement or whatever. Yeah.

Did you and I always have like, somebody started doing like statistical similarities between voters. I think you and I are usually pretty similar. Me and Zach or Zach Barron, always really similar. My whole point is not to go down memory lane about my own participation in this thing. So as the internet exploded over the last 20 years and especially in the advent of like Facebook news and SEO, lists became more than just like, hey, here's my taste for the year. It became like guaranteed engagement with the audience. Totally.

Because as we know, engagement often comes from anger and disgust as much as it does from. Well, you have to, you can't just be chalk. You have to have some edginess to the list where somebody will be surprised by one or surprised by five. And that was the case when we were doing the year-end albums at Spin 20 years ago. Yes. I mean, you definitely wanted to get attention. You wanted to surprise people. Otherwise, why make the list?

You don't make it to affirm people's beliefs. Yes. So I say all of this. Right. To say Apple put out this list, it is very much, like, I think they pulled some, there's a lot of really good critics who work at Apple. They pulled some of the DJs that work at the, radio service that they have, like Zane

Roe, and then they also grabbed a bunch of musicians, so like Maggie Rogers and all these other people are voting. Looks like Nile Rogers was involved. Yeah, so anybody named Rogers is in. Aaron had someone really outside the box choices. Really

outside the box. Yeah, I was surprised how Pye had get Richard die trying. So, I guess I wanted to just chat about, like, the act of list making in this regard. This one seems to be, I think, best summarized in a lot of, like, canonical

albums then have a recent classic right ahead of them almost to mark the passage of time. So, specifically, I can't remember exactly where in the list, but it's in the, like, 80s or 70s. Patty Smith's Horses, which is one of the most kind of revered records of

the post-punk era, if not all of rock and roll history, is right behind 50s get rich or die trying. And right before Doggy Style. Yes. For me, it happened at number 99 where the Eagles Hotel, California is behind Travis Scott's Astro World.

Yeah. That might be fair. But honestly, I don't even know. I mean, maybe. That might be fair. Yeah. There's a lot, like SZA's SOS is right ahead of Steely Dan's Asia. I think I recognize bait when I see it.

I also recognize the fact that it's 2024. And in 1990-something or the early 2000. or whatever, when I, like, got into Steely Dan, like, it was old then. It's really old now. Yeah. You know, and so I think that this is, like, a cool list in so much as it's trying to collide a contemporary aesthetic with a rock canon and a good music canon that has been established for, like, 50, 60 years. Don't do something like this unless you're going to move the conversation forward.

So broadly, that's, this list does that in the sense that it is absolutely littered with records in the last five years. The Bad Bunny, umvranos Sintis, which was from 22, is relatively high on this list. I think that's important to consider, even just to start the conversation between albums, to remind people that these all exist in a continuum of popular music. I think one of my big picture thoughts, though, is, I mean, other people have made this argument. This isn't some original thought I'm having. But like, it does feel, the first thing about this that feels odd to is that Apple and Spotify have essentially destroyed the concept of an album, not intentionally, but this is how we engage with music now, is not like, aha, here's a 12-track long player.

Let me sit back and really consider it in its natural sequence. Some people still do that. Some albums still merit that. Do you do that? Almost never now. It's almost totally broken that for me, both because no one has patience, including myself anymore for things, but also just the way we engage with stuff, the way we have the possibility of, oh, the baseline in this one song that I like by this band reminds me.

something else, off I go. And also just in the idea of, it's not just mourness, like we can listen to everything all at once, even the most popular album artists of today cannot stop adding to their albums because there's no more physical limitations. We talked about this. And it works. My daughters who are obsessed with Taylor Swift, their favorite songs on almost every Taylor Swift are not on the album.

Bonus tracks or whatever. Doesn't matter. Additional releases. No difference. but the amount of time that I've spent in the last two weeks with the Till Dawn edition of Midnights, which does have some bangers on it, is wild. So it is odd and weirdly like flag planting in a backwards way

to say like albums still matter. Yeah. It almost strikes me that this is sort of, it's stuck in between in an uncomfortable place because if you have everyone's attention and you have the back catalog of all of these albums, and you're going to get the clicks and you're going to get the conversation,

I kind of wish they'd pushed it further. Like, I think Pitchfork, for all the criticism that it gets, has done really thoughtful decade lists. Yeah, and they also do a lot of, like, reconsidering stuff that they were either too high

or too low on in the past. What bums me out about this list more than anything else, and I don't mean to monologue again. This is not as interesting to me as Vision coming 2025 to Disney Plus service. So I'm just indulging you here, really. Is a lot of the albums here,

if we're being honest, like I don't think are that good all the way through as albums. I think they are indicative of a moment or a larger movement or a cultural significance. Yeah. Like, I mean, I, of course,

I had a- Come in hot, man. No, I had a bunch of, like, the Marshall Mathers LP is really, really long and really ugly and not that pleasant to listen to all the way through.

I don't really like him. But even if you did, I feel like, but you understand that he was culturally, important during a moment. I remember, yeah. He should have stayed on duct down records.

We used to put him on the cover of spin four times a year. I know. We put D12 on the cover just to put M&M on the cover again and sent someone to Detroit being like, oh, bizarre, what do you think of this? Like, that was a wild time. But do you know what I mean? What's that ahead of? Isn't Marshall Mathers right ahead of something that's like, whoa.

After the gold rush? Oh, yeah. But luckily, it's right behind a Lana Del Rey album. So, okay, sure. But do you know what I mean, though, of like albums that are, even when you get into the top 10, like, Jay-Z should be on this list. We all think Jay-Z, you and I definitely think Jay-Z is one of the most important recording artists of all time, whose catalog is almost unmatched. But if we're talking about the album, the way at least we used to talk about it as like a near-perfect document that you can listen to all the way through, like, I don't really need to listen to Ola Hovito ever again. Right.

Do you what I mean? Like, the blueprint has some clunkers on it. I like Olao Vito. Do you like Renegade featuring your guy Eminem? It's not bad. It's not great. It's one of my preferred M&M tracks. Because he's only on half of it.

I don't mean to pick on the blueprint, which is a classic. I just mean that there are albums that I think are perfect listening experiences. And they're kind of inarguable. And I don't know if all of these meet that criteria. To bring this all the way back around to the primary conversation of this podcast, generally, which is television, I do find it interesting that TV also, especially in this era of like just huge output

and volume of shows, is entering an interesting zone where, and I think you probably felt this a little bit when you were doing Stick the Landing, and you're kind of looking back historically at television shows and thinking about the ending of them and canonizing them in a way,

where, you know, pretty soon we're going to be in our, is Tokyo Vice better than Miami Vice era? Like in terms of ranking this stuff. And I wonder how much longer the big five, you know, shows of like Mad Men and Sopranos and Wire and Breaking Bad or whatever

are going to keep their ironclad grip on this sort of like historical position. Because like you can see in this thing where it's like, you know, Revolver is ranked lower than 1989, which is totally fine.

Fleetwood Mac Rumors is ranked lower than Frank Ocean's blonde. Yes, but like, that's time passing. That's not necessarily... I mean, it's also good list-making, but I guess I'm kind of curious when this starts hitting TV.

As I was trying to put together my top five of this year, I was like, this is pretty chalky if you've listened to the watch this year, you're going to not be surprised that we like Shogun and we like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I liked Tokyo Vice.

I love Ripley. you know, like the top five kind of fills itself out. You can put Malaney in there for fun or whatever. So it's not actually that complicated of a top five, but I do wonder when, like, at what point will time turn a page and we'll start seeing shows like getting into like a kind of like, no, that's actually the best show ever.

Okay, well, okay, so this is, but to me this is two conversations and both of them are interesting. But like, naturally some things need to sort of, you stay in the spotlight for as long as you merit staying in the spotlight. in terms of people are listening to you and engaging with you. And, you know, in a way, this list could be seen as a last gasp of the older, the 20th century culture, right?

Like, the Clash London calling is high on this list as you and I think it probably should be. I do. But if people don't keep listening to the Clash or putting them in that conversation, you know, or Joni Mitchell or whomever, although she did just close the Grammy, so she seems pretty relevant, I think the two conversations are how far backwards, like how big is the spotlight? and as it moves forward, what falls out of it looking backwards? You know, our buddy Chuck Klosterman wrote a really good book that he considered this.

The book, you know, what if we're wrong? Yeah. Which is like you and I, and he grew up in this era being like, ah, rock and roll, open highway of centuries ahead of it. Yeah, actually, maybe not. Yeah. So that's one question. The second question that I think is maybe more interesting and more relevant to the conversation about TV. Is how are we going to get vision back into that original suit?

How are we going to get vision from the 60s, 70s, 90s, 90s, 90s, too. Like, we want this totality of vision. What's Vision's top 100 albums? How are we going to get the Apple Vision Pro version of Vision? Thank you. Good job. No, the question is, how do we engage, like, why did we engage with the past differently than this generation does when, in theory, everything is available to everyone all the time? Meaning, like, when we were kids and we had to learn about the Beatles from our parents maybe or like 70 stones or London Calling I learned about from the Rolling Stone

Best Albums of the 80s issue that they put out in like 1989. I was not, I was not, you know, seeking out Clash records before that. But we learned about those things and we felt that they were important enough to look backwards and then like build the fence accordingly with the, I don't know how to build fences. Sorry, it's a bad analogy, but connected. We need to connect these notes. This generation, our younger generations, could listen to the Clash as soon as, as they get onto a computer or like they can listen to anything or they could watch anything. Well they might not even have to look it.

It might just be served to them on a playlist. They might find it on a soundtrack that they're like, yeah. Why is it when everything is available? Does the past and that our relationship to it feel fuzzier than ever? Chris, you have five seconds to respond. This is a live podcast. I think we've been talking about this a lot.

I think that there was something to the labor involved and there was a little bit more of a sense of I don't want to say humility, but I mean something of like going into something like music or literature or film and be like, man, I know I don't know everything. Yes, I agree with that. And not really having an avenue where if I was 17 and I Twitter, I might have tweeted modest mouth sucks.

Because for five minutes, I thought that or whatever. You know what I mean? Or like, modest mouse isn't as good as built to spill or whatever. and I definitely said that at a bar or something. You know, like, I'm kind of just coming up with something on the top of my head. But, like, I think we reward people being like, here's my, like, impulsive engagement bait take on something rather than, yeah, I should probably go back and listen to early Modest Mouse and then also listen to earlier stuff that might have

influenced Modest Mouse and connect the dots. Before I pop off about it. Yeah, or, but I don't really, like, honestly, who gives you shit, the world's going to hell, like, you guys can do whatever you want. Like, that's the least of our problems. But I do wonder whether or not, like, I felt like it was incumbent upon me to understand the clash and give it, like, more than a fair shake before I even, like,

I wasn't to say Anista, like, a hundred times before I was like. Before you went to the bar that night. You're like, John, Chuck, I've considered your proposal. Yeah. I agree with you about that to a degree. I also just think that we can't really overstate the weirdly smeary forever present that we live in, where everything is always happening right now and the way that it affects us, both in terms of how we understand and appreciate things, and also what this access to everything

has kind of done to our perception of time and our memory. I caught myself yesterday driving and being like, I really want to listen to music, and being like, the same way I feel when I look at Apple TV sometimes. Yeah. I've only been listening to the three playlists that I've made in the last few months over and over when I used to have two giant walls of CDs that I'd be like, aha, I shall listen to this. Like, I just forget. It's not there to think about or remember that I used to have certain levers that I pulled

when I felt a certain way or was looking for a certain thing. And I don't mean to steer this back into one of our evergreen conversations of, ah, it was great when there was a master curator providing content for us. Who happened to look like White Vision? Who absolutely was not. nickname was White Vision.

I think that was Lester Banks' nickname. Yeah. So maybe I've talked myself 180 into this list being like, ah, thank you, you know, for putting, I don't know, I'm looking at it randomly, like for putting public enemy on the same list as Billy Eilish so that there is at least some connective tissue being restored

to our broken, frazzled brains, and not just the brains of the youth. I mean, literally us. Did my top five TV shows of the year so far, that was a real throwaway of that but like did you did you have any disagreements there aside from not seeing Tokyo Vice? I'd never heard of any of them.

I didn't remember any of them. Yeah, no, that was right. Right, Ripley Shogun Mr. Mrs. Smith. Mr. Mrs. Smith. I would put Malaney on my list. Yeah, of course. That was absolutely.

And then would you just say in solidarity with me? You say Tokyo Vice season two? Well, I'm, first of all, I'm always in solidarity with you. Yeah. What's amazing is we are 100% forgetting a show

that we talked about in February and we're like, this was definitely going to be on our top 10. Don't you think? Kai, do you remember any other shows from this year? I mean, in February? I don't remember what I ate for dinner last night. Was it a barburger that you were disappointed in? Oh, Mr. Spade.

Yeah, yeah. Is that the show you were talking about? That's definitely a show. We were like, this is everything. But what was the show that you were talking about? Oh, I still don't remember. Oh, you're saying that we did have a show that we were talking about in February,

that we were like nailed on, this is going in the top 10. I meant it more as an indictment of like connecting it to this conversation of like the perpetual present where like I genuinely don't remember some of the shows that we've been talking about recently. True Detective Night Country.

Yeah, we talked about that a lot. The Curse, Fargo. Yeah, Mr. Spade. January 11th came through that Echo is another Marvel TV miss. Wow. Wow. You're welcome for that one.

I think... Oh, boy. Well, we should do this when we reach the mid-year point, also because the mid-year point is a little bit after the Emmy submission window when the last crush of stuff... Oh, yeah. Good call. Let's wait till the Emmys. Comes out because there's a lot, a lot. I don't feel any pressure to watch all the Tokyo Vice in Outer Range before then.

I want to. Do you know? I mean, can I confess something to you? That I downloaded all of the Tokyo Vice season to watch on our European trip. I downloaded it. Yeah. All right, finally. God, this is a long one. Top Chef, let's do it. I will summarize.

This is spoilers through last night's episode of Top Chef, so the Fish Boil episode. Danny won. Sue went home. And for my last chance kitchen heads out there, there was a Laura, Amanda, Sue,

Battle, and LCK, two-parter, and Lauer came through to go back to the show. I feel like you've had the floor a lot this episode, but I've been loving it. No, no, no. No, no.

Top Chef doesn't want to be great. Well, this is going to be a conversation. Okay. Where do you want to start? Have we talked since restaurant wars? I don't know. We've talked about talking. I think this season is ordering on disastrous.

I don't mean that the show itself, as a franchise. We always distinguish between the cooking and the TV. Well, also, no, I think the TV has been bad, but I think that the franchise could remain strong. I think that coming into this season, there were a couple of question marks, the biggest being Kristen replacing Padma,

and I'm here to say that that's been great. I think that's totally fine. I think it's seamless. I think she's bringing a lot of good energy to the show. I think that Tom and Gail really like and respect her, and she has a good rapport with the contestants. Do you watch what's the dish with Kish? No, I don't.

Do you? No. But I, I like that name. It's a good name. Her name rhymes with dish, which is a food term, so it's perfect. Now I'm sitting here trying to do in my head think about what rhymes with Lakshmi, and I can't.

I can't get there. What rhymes with Greenwald? Nothing. Yeah. Are you saying I should change my name? Eat and pie? Well, we could do A.G. No, I'm trying to do myself.

Yeah. Well, what were you going to do? I'd eat in pie with Ryan or something. No, you'd be, you'd be, you know, you'd be CR, right? So at the bar with CR. Oh, yeah. Or whatever. It's easy.

Which is also, you're like, guys weren't talking about Sandinista? Don't order the burger. End of episode. They have not changed that fire out in a while. I know. I, so, so, yeah, so the, the Kristen thing is fine. I would also say, if you are going into a rebuilding year, maybe you can tweak some stuff and you can experiment with some stuff. On that score, I think it's been really shaky. I think the very, very bizarre mid-season lurch from quickfires don't matter anymore to now quickfires matter more than ever has made no sense and made things needlessly complicated in a system that worked before. And what I say that is that remember the big change early on was that quick fires were no longer going to give immunity for the elimination challenges. Elimination challenges would give immunity.

So instantly it's like, well, quick fires don't really. But quick fires would go towards your final judgment. Not in the first half of the season. No, but last night, for instance, it came into play with Savannah. In the week before. Yeah. So then midway through, all of a sudden, Tom and Gale are there now for every quickfire judging the whole season. So to me that seems...

But still having an extra judge in the judge's table at the end that they're like, oh, by the way, though, Michelle was really good at this or Savannah was really good. And they explain it to Art Smith, which makes no... No, no, Art Smith was there for that. But otherwise, that makes no sense. It also is just a bizarre... It feels like a reaction. lurch that like they made it through five episodes and they were like no no let's now let's make this more important it also might be that maybe there isn't the same nightlife in milwaukee that there

is in some of the other cities so tom and gale are like we can do more well it also felt like a hedge against christin not working out and not having the gravitas by having judge the quickfires tom and gale well i think she's got the gravitas and the palate to judge things i think that you know it's funny one of the things that's become a hallmark of like commentating on culture and sports and a lot of other things is like how we'd fix it. Right. So like, you know, you're immediately like how I would fix the NBA television broadcast or how I would fix this. And I participate this in this willingly. But this is kind of like the casualty of that where it almost feels like midway through the season, they were like,

how do we fix this rather than sticking to an original plan? And I don't know if that's for the greater good of the show itself. I think I've commented a couple of times that Survivor is having also a little bit of a slump just because I think that the contestants that they're bringing in, they're weeding out like traditional survivor characters that are interesting and kind of over-emphasizing people who are like, I almost use advanced analytics for Survivor and like we've kind of tricked this game in a couple of different ways and are overplaying it. And I don't know that the show is caught up with the contestant with Top Chef this season. Survivor's letting in podcasters now.

Did you see that? I saw Love It's on there, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, but for Top Chef, I almost wonder whether it's the reverse and the contestants are a little bit not quite caught up with the show itself. Yeah. Like, after I were doing World All Stars and L.A. And some wonderful seasons previous to that. And it's just honestly a source of great joy to me to have Top Chef in my life.

To have it be like, I just don't really have a passionate feel. I don't really have a feel for any of these people. I like Savannah. I like Danny. I like Sue. I don't really dislike anybody here. But this is a wildly weak talent pool, not just for coming off of an all-star season,

but the last few years of Top Chef, to the point where sometimes it seems like these people have not watched Top Chef and they make very strange decisions or they wilt under pressure or they collapse in ways that great champions haven't. I also am very very, very, very perplexed by some of the decision-making,

because especially as it relates to Last Chance Kitchen, like Last Chance Kitchen has always been a crapshoot. It's Tom's palate. It's Tom's taste. He does what he wants, and that's what happens down there. But Last Chance Kitchen is now overemphasized in the show itself. Yeah. I do not think there should be two runs of it

with people hopping up back up and down. That seems to cheapen, A, cheapen the main competition. But B, it sets up these impossible situations where it's like, look, like, I understand you let the game go where, go where it goes. But from my understanding of the way people like Survivor

and from people who like Survivor and the way you talk about it, Survivor is a sport, right? Like you're watching it like a game. Whereas Top Chef, I think, is at its worst when it's a game. I think it's at its best when it's a celebration

of creativity and talent. And to that end, like Rosica and Sue were the best. They crapped out at inopportune moments. Right. That said, I could watch this episode 3,

times and you could give me the Ridley Scott director's cut version of it. And I don't understand why Sue goes home for making something that's too complicated but ultimately good. Gregory kind of screwed up for him because of the shopping, right? And Mani, who has been screwing up for weeks on the most simple things. He gets the pick

of meat in a meat challenge and he makes a seafood dish with the meat. It was Gregory, right? Agua Chile. It was Gregory who screwed up for Sue's shop. Yeah, that's right. And then in the actual, there are six chefs left final elimination challenge of this episode. Manny makes a plate of boiled fish

guacamole and store-bought chips and stays in the competition and Sue goes home. That is, like, there should be David Stern in the back room freezing the lottery thing for that. They need to consider the show they're making that Manny is in it

for another week before he inevitably loses. Like, that's just bad, bad management of the talent that you're left with that the season. But to your point, and this is the thing I'm going to keep hammering on, and maybe the reason we haven't talked about it every week is because I just think it's self-evident at this point, which is that they kind of,

they were kind of feeling themselves. This is a heat check because they had this incredible run of seasons of, like, overcoming... Well, when you saw those chefs who came back last night, you were like, oh, my God. Look at these guys. Now, part of it is because I watched Sarah Bradley's, like, Instagrams, and it's like, I thought...

But, like, Shoda, Gregory, and these people, you're like, it's hard to imagine, for as much as I like some of these people, like for as much as I'm just like pulling for Savannah and Michelle, it's almost hard for me to imagine them coming back in an all-stars. Whoever wins this. Like, maybe Danny, but like... No, no, I think that's the great point.

And I think that when they had this incredible run, I think that magical elves in their internal meetings were like, we can do this. Like, we can make magic wherever we go. It's like a Belichick thing, right? It's like the players don't matter. Like we create the structure for success and the culture. And that extends to being like, and now we'll do a season in Wisconsin.

Now, part of my family comes from Wisconsin. This is a beautiful state. I do appreciate the regional stuff that they've celebrated within the season. And some episodes have been better than others. Like the native foods episode I thought was really good. And I thought the chefs responded to it. But you can't tell me that there is the infrastructure of both tradition, ingredients and talented outsiders to come in that you have in some of the bigger hubs, culinary

or otherwise, in this country. And I'm sure Wisconsin gave them some great tax breaks. I think it sends a good message that they are not just being a coastal show. But you combine that setting with a really diminished talent pool and you get a very, very diminished season. And I don't know what that means going forward. I kind of thought that coming out of like the absolute shit show that are restaurants in the years post-COVID and it's a ravaged industry. LA Times is running this really good series of like horror stories, of restaurants being like, we can't afford to close. Like, it's so bad right now.

We can't afford to be open. We also can't close because of debts and stuff. I thought that there would be a bigger talent pool, potentially, of really talented people who are either out of work or desperate to try something else. And to judge their business, to show up. And I don't know if I see that. So I don't know if going into next season, like, they got to do a New Orleans season. Like, they have to go to a place where there's, like,

like real, real life. Like, they got to go to a different sort of city. And then, I'm not saying they have to do another all-stars, but do you give people second chances? Do you do a second chance? Yeah, that might be, that might make sense. Like, what can you do to, at least for a next season, guarantee a higher level of quality? Because I'll say it again, like, I can't wait for it to come back again.

I feel really good about it as future, considering, like I said, the chemistry of Kristen and and Tom and Gale, we're good. Yeah. But this is the first season that I remember at least a decade where I'm not looking forward to it. And I feel like I don't, maybe Michelle will get it together, but I don't feel super psyched about the finale. Like who's going to come out of this on top? Yeah, if I had to pick, I mean, it seems like Danny has racked up a lot of recent victories and is clearly cooking at a pretty high level. Dan seems to be in and around the winners, if not winning every time.

Michelle, I think, has had like a confidence knock over the course of the season. Which happens to winners. And maybe to her, I think I find myself drawn to her because of this, but maybe it doesn't work for her. It's like, she's like pretty self-effacing and is like, I don't really know what I was doing going into this. And sometimes that works. And sometimes I think Tom and Gail are like, did you mean to call it this or whatever? But yeah, I think that ultimately it's like the same thing with Survivor where it's like, I just were increasingly coming out. like Survivor is built off of like Rob and Sandra and Tyson and these like iconic characters.

And those people would get eliminated very early now because everybody else who is like basically playing against them recognizes them so fast that they're like we got to get this person out. I recognize those types. Now I don't really, there's obviously not like a circular. There's not a team you don't vote with the chefs aren't voting. But I do feel like I almost. would want to see Buddha on Wisconsin. And would Buddha have like just triumphed again? Yes.

Like I almost wonder, honestly, if Buddha would have been like, I'll just be the defending champ until someone knocks me off. Like I kind of would have been curious to see that. Now that might have been like a weird, really weird thing for the show to do. But it's lacking a golden state warriors. It's lacking like a, ooh, like this is the pace setter here. Yeah. And I don't, again, it's it's your engagement level with the show.

everyone might differ, but I don't particularly get a lot of pleasure out of, you know, it being week 10 and Manny didn't screw up this week. Or Savannah actually isn't deeply mediocre in her cook. Again, these are probably, these are really talented people. Yeah. This is not being a good chef. This is being a good contestant on top chef, which I want to be very clear about that a hundred times out of 100. No, I know. But like, seeing Savannah suddenly step up and do something like world-breaking, like she did with the dessert in the native. foods challenge was really, really compelling. That episode was good. And then it's just like, I mean, did she almost sever her own hand? Yes. So we're going to give this a break. But at the same time,

like the food was so uninspiring. And was this because the chefs just are inconsistent and kind of a mess? Or was it because that was kind of a weird challenge and it was really hot and they were just serving six plates of boiled fish? I don't know. It just felt week to week when they bring the same sense of wonder and like we are going to do this incredibly challenging thing and illuminate this deep part of the American foodways, but it's just like a guy named torch throwing kerosene. Like, I don't know. Something just seems fundamentally off with the resources at hand this year. I feel like, and the last chance kitchen stuff.

Yeah, LCK, which is weirdly like a more pure cooking show in some ways. Like it's definitely like the, it's like all of top chef compressed into like 11 minutes or whatever, and you're like, oh my God, this is like just watching these people cook in like a high pressure situation. This is great. And there's something almost like they are cooking for Tom. So it's like there is like a purity and a clarity of the purpose. Yeah, we'll see where it goes. But like one person should get to go back. And also, and when it works best, like Kalina like showed us nothing goes into Last Chance Kitchen and we're like, oh, this is why she's cast on the show. She's finding her voice. She's finding her rhythm. But then Tom was like, two of you go up.

Then it becomes arbitrary. Yeah, and now two of you go down. But no disrespect against Laura, whose food, in theory, seems really good. When she made that plate of just, like, six mounds of things and then called one of the things, horos it, like, you shouldn't get to come back. You shouldn't get to come back because you can do meison plus quickly or whatever the challenge was. Like, I think that there should be some sense of, like, there should be some consequences. Consequences or standards or rigor here.

There should be, I don't know. It just feels deeply out of whack, and everybody gets an off-season. We'll see how it ends up. Who you got? Danny. Yeah, I think so too. And I think that's, he seems cool. Yeah.

But it's, it's kind of uninspiring to me because I think Danny is at this point with the people who are left, he is consistently executing at a recognizably high level, which was enough to win you like the Nick Elmy season. But after the run they've been on for the last six years, I think it should be. Nick Elmi. He's from Philly. Andy. Yeah. It was really lovely talking to you today. Thank you. Do you think I talked too much today?

No, I thought you were fantastic. Kai, do you think Andy talked too much today? No, no, no. I think you could have gone longer on vision. Do you really feel, Kaya, thank you. For the reason I capped that one is, I saw the guy. Kaya's the wind beneath my wings when it comes to these things. The life leaving Kaya's eyes. I don't think the life was leaving her eyes.

I just think that she was Googling Sokovia Accords. Yeah, that's right. Because she just wanted to get a little more familiar with the stuff. We have no show on Monday. Oh, yeah. Happy Memorial Day. Happy Memorial Day. We'll be back next Thursday. Before we get up, Kai, can I ask you one question too?

Have you guys noticed this that all of a sudden this year, among the 70 promotional emails that I get every day from lists that I've forgotten to unsubscribe from? Almost all of them were like, MDW. And it took me a minute. Oh, that's Memorial Day weekend. Yeah, I didn't know we were doing this. Do you know that we're doing this culturally or at least

advertorial? No, I didn't. Got MDW plans? I don't think that would, like, I don't think MDW would be. bring up Memorial Day in my mind. It doesn't flow. Do you get that email from Big Sam's Flagstore? Any which way you hang them. They're on sale. MDW sounds like a point guard we drafted 12th in 2012. And traded. Great seeing you. Great seeing Kaya. We'll be back next week. Hope everybody has a lovely long

weekend and we will talk to you soon.