The Watch - On the Brink of the Final Season of ‘Game of Thrones’ | The Watch

Episode Date: April 12, 2019

Ahead of the season premiere of ‘Game of Thrones’ on Sunday, we recap our favorite moments from Season 7 (1:24) and talk about the Night King as a villain for Season 8 (24:17). Also, our thoughts on ‘Killing Eve’ (16:45), ‘Fosse/Verdon’ (18:28), and ‘Survivor’ (31:31). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Riley McAtee Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Season 8 of Game of Thrones begins this Sunday, which means binge mode Game of Thrones makes its long-awaited return, with your resident experts Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion guiding you through each episode. And to get your fix every Sunday night, Chris Ryan joins Mallory and Jason on Talk the Thrones, a Twitter after show recapping each episode throughout the season. So make sure you check out the binge mode podcast on Apple or Spotify, talk the Thrones on Twitter, and for even more Thrones coverage, you can head to the ringer.com. I need sports to have to clear the room.

Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, now his watch has begun. It's Andy Greenwald. Chris, I'm going to watch Game of Thrones. It's a show on HBO, by the way.

I'm going to watch it. as a civilian this year for the first time ever. Unbelievably. Ever. On Mondays, you'll weigh in as your critical self, though, right? I mean, not as an official capacity, but you'll have your takes. What if I don't? What if I'm just like, I like TV shows?

What if this is the beginning of a new me? That doesn't honor well for our podcast, though. You need to have takes. True, true. So maybe I should have let you know more gently. But I think I'm just, you know, I'm a fan of entertainment. No, what I mean is beginning with the first episode, I think which premiered just after or around the same time Granlin did,

I've had to either write about it or write about it and talk about it or write about it and talk about it or fly to L.A. to talk to you about it on camera. And I'm just, I'm just a fan this year, you know? Yes, of course we're going to talk about it on the podcast. I should not have implied otherwise. But what I mean is the last three seasons, right, or at least the last two seasons, I watched with Jason Concepcion in the HBO office tower in Midtown Manhattan before flying out to talk to you about it. And then last season, we all watched together at the studio. That's right.

Which is a very different experience. And sometimes Heli Joel Osmond was there. And sometimes T. Payne was there or Natalie Morales. Yeah. I mean, actually, that was pretty fun. Yeah. But I'm very curious. what it will feel like to just be on my couch.

You know, to quote the great Sharon Hogan on the very good season four of catastrophe, this season I am watching Game of Thrones all alone like a pervert. Yeah, I mean, I think that I am really looking forward to it. So we've been rewatching. Obviously, we're doing Talk to Thrones this year on Twitter with Jason and Mallory and myself.

I heard you got a table, by the way. I heard that on Bill's pot. It's a real like Winterfellian table. It's from the Winterfellian section of West Elm. You can find it there. Damn, they should have fucking pay me for that. That would have been good. Do you have a

Pelt? Furniture for West Elm? Do you have a pelt? I'm very concerned. We do have a pelt. So we have a nice big wooden table and a pelt and some candles. And we're going to be talking about Game of Thrones every Sunday, but we've been re-watching a couple of episodes here and there.

And obviously I re-watch 7 to kind of get my fastball back. And I got to tell you, man, pretty good show. In its absence, I think I was maybe in the aftermath of 7, I think we all did a little bit of like Monday morning quarterbacking about whether or not like you can get from Eastwatch to

to Dragonstone in that amount of time or whatever and people have been like you know critical of some of the deviations from the book and even if just in spirit and I rewatch 7 and man it's still pretty good show pretty good stuff, really good dialogue really good acting and I'm really excited for it to come back on Sunday

what were just because I need the catch up and maybe some of our listeners do as well. For you, especially the second time, what were the one or two standout moments from season seven? And yes, I'm hoping for a chance to hear the words, loot train, attack. That rules. Whatever it was. That really does rule. We rewatched seven, episode seven the other day, which is the finale. And I really, really, really love Dinklage, Heady and Costa Wildall together. Like the, the Lannister kids and they're just super screwed up interpersonal relationships,

especially in seven when they kind of get them back together and the conversation between Tyrion and Circe and he gives her the glass of wine and she doesn't drink it and he's like, you're pregnant. Like that, all that stuff was so good. Man, like I'm really excited for them to be back. And,

you know, I had kind of almost like drifted away from me about where we were in the story that Jamie has left Kings Landing and turned us back on Circe. because she's going to double cross John and Danny and that everybody is going back to Winterfeld to meet this threat and that it ends with the Night King coming through the wall. And I'll talk to Riley McAtee a little bit later

in the show about some of the stuff to look for in this season. But yeah, I'm really excited. You're super jacked. I am better than Super Jack. I am calm, rested, and ready. Yeah. I am like Nixon in 68, you know? Like just ready for the opportunity that circumstance has given me.

I feel really good. And I actually, what I feel, and again, listen, I am not even going to pretend for half a second to be the voice of the Game of Thrones fan. But I'll say that I feel in this moment, unlike previous seasons, because of the circumstance in which I'm going to be watching it, very, very, very ready for and attuned to what I believe the specifics of the season will be, which is a lot of very big, very broad, very entertaining spectacle. I think that when watching it to discuss immediately afterwards, as I've done,

as you guys will be doing an amazing job doing, what you're looking for are little friction points, you know, little surprises, little moments that maybe didn't hit exactly the way you wanted or, you know, things that you can be mined for conversation. And being able to not focus on that and try to take in the biggest picture possible is something I'm really looking forward to. Yeah, absolutely. You know, might, and might actually be a counterpoint to the experience you have watching it because you are going to be, you're going to be in it, man. You're going to be deep in it. I'm Jim Nance. All I have to do is say, hello, friends, and then they take the rest. It's like, they get to be the experts, and I'm really excited to hear what they think of this last season.

Are they going to Tony Romo it? Are they going to call when people die? That's what they did last time. That's what they did last season. You know, I wanted to get your thoughts on a couple of things if you wanted to jump in and talk some Killing Eve or if you wanted to talk anything else. But, you know, there's a little bit of news I wanted to get to.

So we're recording this during the Disney presentation that Bob Iger is giving, where he's unveiling Disney Plus. And maybe we can dive a little bit more into that on Monday after our Game of Thrones thoughts. there's also some interesting stuff going on with some of the streaming services like YouTube and Hulu incrementally raising their prices, which I thought was pretty interesting

because I think we're going to increasingly get to that creep where some of these, any accumulation of these streaming services starts to approach cable in terms of its price hit, but we can talk about that on Monday. The thing I wanted to talk to you about is whether or not we're using our influence wisely. Oh, ours?

Yeah, it's a pretty heavy responsibility. and something came up yesterday that makes me think we're just really wasting our opportunity here. Is this a stealth ad for English muffins? No, it's not even that. Although I miss my nooks and crannies. Me too. And I think that America's ad buying,

like collectively the ad buyers of America needs to think twice about where they're putting their dollars because obviously we launched Thomas's English muffins into such a place that they no longer need to advertise with us. But what I really

wanted to talk to you about is the fact that if Disney Plus or Pluse, as it's known around these parts, is going to be bankrolling a show

starring Jeremy Renner about the character Hawkeye based off the comics by Matt Fraction and Alex Aja. Yes. Then don't you think you and I could get

the Green New Deal passed if we talked about it enough? I think, first of all, I am so gratified by all the words you just said together. Yeah, I mean, this is,

this was a pretty spicy bit of news, wasn't it? Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's, so they have four, there are four Marvel shows that are rumored to be, they will, by the time you hear this podcast, will probably be announced, a Loki show,

a Vision and Scarlet Witch show together, a Falcon Winter Soldier show, and now a Jeremy Renner, Hawkeye show, in which he passes the mantle of Hawkeye onto his protege, Kate Bishop. Now, for what it's worth, we've talked about these things before in some degree, and it is a not at all secret in the town, as you and I should never call it, that all of these projects had been in the works for quite some time.

They are well on their way towards production, despite only being officially announced today. We talked at the time about how they seemed like really, really smart uses of the MCU, especially indicative of the fact that Kevin Feige is now in charge of it as well, as opposed to there being a split, or at least he's responsible for these shows, certainly, because they're his movie characters. It's sort of misleading to call them new series. They're really what we would call in the old days of TV or in any days of comic books.

They're miniseries, right? Probably about five or six episodes, I would bet. Yeah, the time commitment for the stars is comparable to a movie or a big book. movie, certainly. And what we were hoping when we heard this, and in fact, when we first talked about this, was that it might be an opportunity to tell different types of stories with these characters, much like if you hand the reins of a comic book character to a different creator of the different aesthetic, you get a different sort of story. The one that made me the most excited then is this Hawkeye News, not just because we are dyed in the wool renterheads,

no matter what kind of faux hawk he has on that head, but that the Matt Fraction David Azjok, like mini series. I mean, it was essentially a miniseries. It was about 12 issues they did together, collected in a beautiful hardcover that is also not sponsoring the show, but should. One of my favorite comic books of the last 10 years. Just exceptional. Just makes the character the most fun, the coolest, the most stylish. And what's interesting to me about it, yes, it is about his relationship with another character named Hawkeye in the Marvel universe. It's a young woman who is created by, actually by my friend Alan Heinberg back when he'd created Young Avengers a bunch years ago from Marvel. But what's interesting to me potentially is that it does come,

it does suggest a very different version of Hawkeye than the Iowa family man. We were, I don't know if anybody wanted to be introduced to, but we were introduced to in Ultron, right? Yeah. So that may be, in the comic book anyway, he's just running a, he's the landlord of a building he bought in, I basically think it's Bushwick. I don't know if this speaks. And he's like dealing with the Russian mob, right? Yes. Is Cardalini? Uh, not coming back from the snap? Is that the biggest question facing us in endgame? Well, I think the most hilarious thing about this news to me

is that it's like this idea that this will allow Hawkeye to pass the mantle onto a young protege as if Jeremy Renner has like racked up so many miles on the odometer playing a Hawkeye when he's a zombie in the first one. I guess he has something of a role in Ultron is barely in Infinity War and is now...

He's not in Infinite. He's not in it, right, and now he's got a Mohawk and end game, and now they're like, it's time for Jeremy Renner to pass along the heavy albatross that's been Hawkeye. For what it's worth, in the comics, there are two Hawkeyes, which is deeply confusing, but it is possible. By the way, follow-up, since we talked about the end-game trailer the first time, and we just were dazzled by Renner's hair,

do you notice that he also appears to have... He continued the trend of having fake arms that he started in tag because he has full, full sleeves of tattoos now? Does he? If I was an archer. In real life?

No, in the Hawkeye, the character. And if I was a archer, I'm not. And if I was an Avenger and like aliens could appear out of the ether at any moment and attack me, I don't think I would want to like

take my skill set off the table for the time it takes for full arm sleeve tattoos to heal. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Like, just get a, just get a, an Affleck back tat. You're fine. You just need to be able to arch. I just wonder if you're, if you're a person and you've got a

house in Westlake Village or Sherman Oaks that you're thinking about getting off your hands, and Jeremy Runner shows up at your house with two full arm sleeves of tats. And it's like, now that I've passed on the mantle of being Hawkeye, I'd love to gut your house and flip it. Yeah. If there was a new character in the MCU called the Flipper. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, now, if this happens, then we know we're powerful. On Monday, we'll probably hit a little bit more of this. Did you want to take us out with some killing Eve thoughts or anything? Just a couple of TV thoughts because, you know, I'm trying to watch TV. And by the way, I'm thrilled to hear that Bob Eager is on stage right now. I am also talking to you from my office where I'm attempting to do my job. And it's just yet another thing that Bob and I have in common that we're just working through a Thursday.

And I know from the excellent John Skipper podcast that he did with Bill, that Bob Iger apparently wakes up every morning at 4 a.m. Now, I also woke up at 4 a.m. today, mainly because my children just returned from the East Coast and they thought it was 7 a.m. So I just want to say that when you're looking for leadership qualities, I share at least one of them accidentally today. So this is Bill's big thing, is that, like, that CEO behavior is that they get up. Simmons is always like, you know, like CEOs are always like I get up at 3.30 in the morning and answer Hong Kong emails and stuff. I could never do it. I could never be a CEO if that's the case.

That's just terrible. That's terrible. You know what I mean? Like, just don't send emails to Hong Kong. Just send telegrams that take weeks. Answer them at your leisure. So a couple TV things. I thought the second episode of Barry was outstanding.

Me too. And addressed a lot of my concerns that I sort of, I don't even know if they were really concerns. I semi-trolled with them, I guess, the other week when we talked about the show. I just thought it felt really confident and really fun and really thoughtful about the characters in a way that made me super optimistic about the rest of the season and also just continued to look great. I wanted just two little things. Killing Eve is back and you guys, you talked about it a little bit and I'm afraid I've not listened to your thoughts there from the show the other day. That's hard.

But, you know, we had concerns about the show heading from the end of last season, even though we both adored it because it felt so. deeply like a short-term thing. So much of it was tied up in the cat and mouse. Yeah, right. And the secondary concern was a show that was so, so, so much the voice of its creator, at least for the first three episodes, Phoebe Waller Bridge, and that creator is extremely busy. And so it's hard to mimic someone else's voice.

And the episode, the season premiere anyway, had so much. many of the things that I love and I think you loved about the show. Those terrific lead performances, like great visual wit and style and, you know, the surprising kind of curly cue arc of tone that goes throughout. But it felt a little meamy to me. And what I mean is it kind of felt like a performed version of killing Eve, but it didn't seem to have the same. I want to be careful here because it was one episode, and I love the show. But you can let it rock. This is pretty much what I said.

I was just like, I was like, I still really liked the show a lot. But it's going to be a fascinating experiment to see if you can maintain some of the things that made it special over the course of multiple seasons like this. Yeah. And so I wasn't sure, and I guess only time will tell. Was this the beginning of the deceleration of the show, a show that was so thrilling in its sort of heedless disregard of. pacing and plot, like it just went for it every time. Yeah, right, because it just burned off. Yeah. Is this, is this, is this the beginning of what is probably, certainly a smart financial decision

to sort of slow it down and, you know, make it a three, four, five, it's already been renewed for three. So four or five, six seasons show somehow, which is the sort of thing that artistically, I think, might be tougher to swallow, but I would certainly get it. And it could still be good, if not, you know, earth shattering and transcendent. Or are we seeing something that speaks to the difficulty of very, very talented writers and producers writing to the voice of someone who was instrumental in the beginning of a show and isn't there anymore. And now, I don't know if everyone agrees with me. Like, the West Wing, for example, is a show that I loved when John Wells took it over, too. VEP is a show I love when David Mandel took it over. So this has

been done before. Yeah. But Fuling he did, does have a new showrunner for this current season and just announced another new showrunner for the third season. That doesn't necessarily mean anything good or bad. It's just interesting to watch. So it's one of those things where I think I'm going to continue watching it because I love the show, sure, but also I am interested in the story behind the show as much as the show itself. Yeah, I'll be curious to talk about it with you on Monday after episode two. I think two or three episodes will be a nice little sample size to talk about. I did just also want to say that I love Fossie Verdon. And I bet people watch the first episode. I hope people watch the first episode. I'm here to tell you that the second episode, at least in my

book is even better. It was the second episode where I was just truly and totally and fully on board. I just think Michelle Williams' performance is so wild and crazy good. Just astounding. And it's just so great to see her play one part for longer because my experience with her in movies recently, I mean, I think about the Manchester by the sea scene all the time, but it's such a, you know, that's just one scene. Yeah. To be able to see her settle in is really magical. And, I got to say, I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself, how much did you talk about the coverage of the show when you talked about it? A bit.

All I'll say is it's just, it's surprising to me to see that the, many of the reviews of the show seem to be reviewing Bob Fossi, as opposed to the television show Fossi Verdon. Yeah. It seems like an odd choice, and there's so much more to be gotten out of the show, a show that I think is pretty smart and clever about what it's doing and who it's talking about. and, you know, it's also just really unique in that it's so deeply theater. I mean, if you don't like theater, you probably won't like the show regardless of your opinions of Bob Fuzzy's behavior on the set of sweet charity.

You know what I mean? Like, that might be your biggest obstacle to admission. Sure. But I like its style, you know? I like it's jazz, man. That's the thing I think I responded to the most was what Tommy Kale was doing visually with the show and how much energy seems to be bursting. from every part of it. So I'm excited to keep talking about that as well going forward.

I also think that for whatever it's worth, I know some people feel like we've seen too many toxic male stories and there are hallmarks of stories like that that are similar across genres and across eras, and that's true. But again, the theater part of it makes it interesting to me because as we learn in the second episode, and I'm not going to spoil anything that Wikipedia hasn't spoiled, there is a, and maybe there shouldn't be, maybe there shouldn't have been, who knows, but theater people, and this is true in drama class in college, and I think it's probably true on the great white way as well, seem to operate under kind of a different, often to operate under a different morality.

And things seem to be, sex seems to be more fluid, and romances are more fluid and professional and personal are all tangled up in uncomfortable ways. And obviously that can lead to terrible mistakes, if not crimes or abhorrent behavior. And that's been in the news and certainly in some of these, the subtext or text of the reviews, of the show, but examining the world in which these things occurred on Gwen Verdon's side as well, not saying that they did the same things, not saying one is good and one is bad, because that would make for bad commentary and bad drama. But the nature of who they are and who they were as they come together, particularly over the course of the second episode, is surprising and thought

provoking and really more than anything else entertaining television. Absolutely. Well put. Do you say well put? Yeah, why not? Well put. Look at us. I just like to clear out, let you go. I guess we'll wrap it up there, and then you'll be in on Monday, and we can talk about Game of Thrones the day after. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Can I sit at the table?

I mean, not with cameras on, but can I just sit there and get my Leanna-Mormont on a little bit? You'll always be there in spirit, whether you come through for the four or five hours that we have to be there or not. Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm good. I got a nice little Sunday planned. Good luck, guys. Break legs.

Everybody watch their show. I'll talk to you on Monday. Great job, Bye. Bye, bye. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Philo. Say goodbye to expensive TV bills

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Fire TV, Android TV, and Apple TV. To start your free trial, visit philo.tv. slash the Watch. That's P-H-I-O-T-V-V-E-V-T-V-T-W-T-V-T. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Dogman. Cinema Made in Italy and Magnolia Pictures presents Dog Man the new feature from the award-winning director of Gomorrah. Winner of the Best Actor Award of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and the European Film Awards, Dogman tells the story of vengeance, or only the strong will survive. Marcello is a slight, mild-mannered man who divides his days between working at a modest dog grooming salon and being coerced into the petty criminal schemes by the local bully Simoncino,

an ex-boxer who terrorizes the neighborhood. When Simonchino's abuse finally brings Marcello to a breaking point, he decides to stand up for his own dignity through an act of vengeance with unintended consequences. An official selection of the Khan Telleride and Toronto Film Festivals and the winner of nine David Donatello Awards, the Italian Oscars, including Best Picture Director's screenplay and actor, holy cow. The Guardian calls Dogman a movie with incomparable bite and strength. Dogman opens April 12th in New York and Los Angeles. Now I'm joined by Riley McAtee, who I've been working with for years at Grantland and the Ringer.

Years. And this is Riley's first, I think, first appearance on the watch or Hollywood prospectus. Yeah. Welcome. Riley's been doing the Lord's work covering Game of Thrones with everybody else on this site like Jason and Mal obviously, have been doing these incredible videos and they have binge mode. and they've been overseeing these loose ends pieces that I've been essential to understanding

where we are in the story and Riley's written a bunch of them and Riley's also on a podcast is it called the precapables? Yeah, we're calling it the precapables. So Riley and Zach Cram will come to you every Friday which is essentially just like a preview episode

for Game of Thrones. So you basically have the preview, you have Talk to Thrones doing the review. You'll have me and Andy on Monday doing the watch and we'll have Jason and Mal doing binge mode and Ask the Maister over the course of the week. So that's going to be

full suite of coverage. But Riley, there was one thing that Zach wrote today about the Knight King that I wanted to talk to you about. Okay. Which was essentially, a lot of it is like,

what does the Knight King want? How much humanity, for lack of a better term, does he have? Obviously, there's a story that we were told in season six about his origins, right? Right.

Children of the Forest. But just in a show way, how compelled are you, how interested are you in the Knight King as a villain? Not, not, not super compelled when you compare him to the other villains, people like Taiwan and Joffrey. I just recently completed my rewatch and I'm just like obsessed with Joffrey every time he's on

screen. It's so interesting and magnetic. Whereas the Night King is, you know, a lot more flat. He's like more of a kind of typical villain and he's just like death personified coming at you. You know, you bring up in season six, we found out his origin. And I always find this so interesting that oftentimes people will say, you know, oh, the big, you know, the big, you know, the big, villain on Thrones is the dead. John will be like, oh, I've seen the dead marching. But the Night King and the White Walkers by extension are not actually dead, right? We saw that it was a living human who had a piece of dragonglass stuck in his chest in season six. We saw that the Knight King took Craster's baby while it was still alive and put his finger to his face and

turned it into a White Walker. Right. So there's evidence that the White Walkers and the Knight King are living, sentient beings that aren't just like zombies, really. They're different. Sure. They're not just like empty killing machines, although they do operate like that for the most part. Yeah, they might be empty killing machines in terms of how they're written on the show, but their origin isn't like, you know, they're the undead walking and all they want to do is make everyone dead like them. They're literally not dead. Yeah. So I think the thing I'm kind of curious about and how it plays out is this is a show that's done so well about with looking at, at enemies within, looking at how families can fight with one another, how families can

betray one another, how truces can fall apart, and alliances can fall apart. And they're giving themselves a big bad in a way, and cram wrote about this today, that they haven't had before, which is an unambiguously evil marching thing, rather than somebody like Joffrey, who in some ways was something of a magic trick because he was a kid, you know, or somebody like Tywin, who while doing evil things was obviously charming. Had like certain motivations and stuff. Even Ramsey, who's the closest to just like pure black evil they've had before, had like his,

he was a bastard who wanted to be raised to be a true Bolton that kind of parallels him with John. And obviously, you know, John and him have the Battle of Bastards. There's just nothing like that for the Night King. Right. He's and Cram was sort of talking about him as a Soron figure and how it's sort of like, like, like, Legler of the Rings. But that it's kind of interesting because Martin, George R. Martin, typically has rejected or subverted those kinds of tropes in the past where it's just like there's a good and an evil. Yeah, I think that my suspicion is that in the books we'll get a different Knight King.

One of the things about the books is that, first off, there is no real Knight King character yet that exists in like the current state of the books. Okay. And we also get fewer glimpses of them. Like the Hard Home Massacre happens in the books, but John's not there. And so there's no character there that we can see what happens. Like there's no POV character at Hard Home in the books? So is it like Ed or who's there? No, you, the wildlings are there and they find out after through like letters that are coming into Castle Black. Oh, wow. And so you know that something happened. But I tend to think that it's intentional from George R. Martin to not have anyone too close to the White Walkers ever because I think he would kind of give the game away a little bit.

Right. Okay. So if you had to guess, it's not even a prediction that I would hold you to as much as maybe, like, what would you find particularly satisfying? Would you find it satisfying for this season to essentially be split into two where there's the first half of the season

is the fight against the White Walkers and then the second half of the season is the fight between the north and the south to decide who sits on the throne? Or do you think that it kind of is going to be more mixed up together a little bit? I think it'll kind of have to go together, right? Because if they, so we know that episode three is going to be the Battle of Winterfell.

I don't think that they can beat the Knight King and the White Walkers after seven seasons of buildup in the third episode. But I do think that Circe, now that she's made it through season seven, I kind of thought she was going to die in season seven going into the season. I think she's now kind of an end game. I think she'll make it all the way to the finale. So I kind of think that maybe both of those get resolved kind of at the same time, maybe in like parallel fashion. in some way. So you think that, because one of the things that's really interesting in a storytelling

perspective is you re-watch the show is how increasingly all the characters are starting to show up in the same place. Yeah. So especially at the end of seven, you've literally got all the characters except for Aria and Sonsa

in the same place on Yara, a couple other people. There's Winterfell and there's Kings Landing and by that point, both of these sort of factions have come together. And then at the end of seven, even Jamie is going off to join the folks up north to fight the

White Walkers. And the show's usually done that in a really cool way where it's just been hopping around the globe basically tracking different characters in different places. But I think obviously we're going to get a lot more concentration of characters in the same place. So I wonder how the

storytelling itself will change. Like how much they'll keep doing it's like one seven minute scene in a room, another seven minute scene in a room, another one and then a fight. It'll just be different rooms in winter I guess so, going door to door, like knock, knock, here's your seven minutes. But they don't do a lot of stuff like that. You know, they typically pick one place, do a scene. Yes.

And then either hop to another part of the map or have some sort of action that breaks it up a little bit. Right. It'd be kind of weird if they just like hopped back and forth between Winterfell and Kings Landing every seven minutes for an entire episode. So that's actually, I haven't thought about that. They'll have to find a different way to sort of like pace the episode. Sure. Just because of how condensed it is geographically. Yeah. So it'll be kind of fascinating to see how. they worked that out. All right. The other reason why I brought Riley on is that he is one of the big Survivor fans at the Rear. And last night's Survivor episode, um, I know this is pretty niche for

people who listen to the podcast, but I did want to talk about it because it was a particularly, like, amazing episode. Um, it was wild. Yeah, it's, this season is edge of extinction. Edge of extinction. Edge of extinction. Exit of extinction. So essentially the concede is that when someone gets voted out in this game, they go to a little like, they walk off stage, quote unquote, or out of tribal council and they go down a path and there's a sign and there's a sign that says if you go to the left, you can stay in the game, you go to Extinction Island. Is that what it is? Yeah, I think edge of extinction island or extinction island, something like that. I still think of it as exile. Go to a worse camp on a beach where there's like nothing there in terms of amenities or

supplies. There's just a white flag calling out to you and if you raise it, you get to go home and eat cheeseburgers. Or you can go home and eat cheeseburgers immediately. And so far I don't like anybody has chosen cheeseburgers? A couple have left the game full on. After the first challenge to get back in when they lost, it was like Wendy and somebody else. Oh, but they chose to leave from Extinction Island, not from the, when they were walking out of tribal. I think so.

Oh, they did? I'm not sure. Well, in any case, most people have chosen to go to the edge of extinction, to go to this. Yeah, they've all gone there for at least like some period of time. And so that has created an interesting tension because usually what happens with survivors, there's this, winnowing out of the characters and the people who are watching it

start to have favorites. You start to get more and more into different people or start pulling for different people. But essentially, the cast of Survivor has stayed around the same size for like six weeks now. Yeah. And that's a really difficult thing to understand because it's just less time spent with

any one person. Even though there are people who are getting a lot of screen time like David and Wardog and these other people are there. But last night, they had this really cool thing. happened. So basically, there's a bunch of like smaller tribes within tribes. There are a bunch of smaller alliances within our alliances. It's pretty typical for survivor. But because of how leveled out it feels at tribal, they wound up essentially having a live tribal where they didn't do, they didn't do much talking at the beach, but when they went to tribal, did live people walking to

and from different groups saying like, you have my vote? No, you have my vote. Yeah, it was. kind of funny because they had that scene at the beach where they were all sitting around the campfire and no one would look in anyone. And I think it was Victoria who's just like scraping the rice out of the bowl. They did a really good job and Wentworth is sitting there. And she's like, I'm getting really nervous because nobody will talk to me. And Victoria's just scraping the cast iron pot. And then what happened was essentially there was this like chaotic negotiation live on screen. Julia kind of gave the game away, I think. Because she like looked at Wentworth and was like, hey the plan's still on and Devin's sitting directly behind her who's not in on the plan went oh wait a second

that means there's something happening here and so he just tried to like blow it up and to his credit he did yes and meanwhile there is another character named julie who they kind of like broke over the course of the episode who like initially in the episode was just like I'm so hungry I'm so tired I miss my family but basically cried every time she started talking yeah and then at tribal was like just flipping out and being like, I don't want to be on the bottom, so I'm going to flip. And then would like in the middle, like walk over to the other group and be like, I don't want to be with them. I want to be with you. But she miraculously makes it through this tribal. All the people who were trying to get her to work with them in this episode had left her out on the previous one.

Yeah. And they were like, oh no, you know, comma strong. We're still together. And it's like, I can be comma strong. You literally just blindsided her two days ago. Right. So the thing that I thought was really cool that I wanted to talk to you about briefly was that I pretty much watch survival for tribals anyway. Like I like the challenges, but when the challenges are on, I tend to like look at my phone or, you know, get up a glass of water. Like, I've seen them all by this point. Like, nothing can happen really in a challenge. I know like how injured somebody can get or, you know, and then you've got like also people like Joe are so good at challenges, but usually don't make it that far in the game. So I'm kind of checked out on challenges, but this was really interesting

because they do an immunity challenge and it happens really early in the episode and then they go to tribal at like the 25, 28 minute mark. Yeah, it was really weird. I remember watching it and being like, wait, this isn't a reward challenge? Are they doing two tribals today or what?

Yes. And it turns out they need all this time to show the tribal and it made me feel like this could be a really cool wrinkle for the game going forward from time to time is essentially what would happen if after an immunity challenge, they then sequestered the players

so that they couldn't negotiate until they got to tribal. Do you think that would be interesting TV? I think that I love a good live tribal, but I kind of feel like it's like chocolate cake or something. You can have it every once in a while, but you can't have it every night for dinner. Yeah, it would be pretty nuts to see it every night, every time. I think that you need, for a live tribal to work too,

you have to know the different characters, the different people who are on it. And so if they're only scrambling every episode, I don't know how much you would actually get to know the different dynamics that are at play in each episode. You kind of need the confessionals, and you need like the camp life, and you need other things that are going on. I feel like you get one or two of these really good live travels this season, but if it happens every time, then it just becomes so much chaos that you can't follow it. Yeah, I mean, that's true.

I also think that it would take away from some of the beach side stuff that's pretty interesting in terms of trying to like get squirrel away. The thing I thought was really interesting last night, it was Devers. Is that the guy? Devons. Devons. Devons basically pulled off what in and of itself, I think, is an underrated survivor skill. which is coming up with a plausible pitch to the group for like another path on the spot. Yeah.

And basically like managing a tribal outburst without getting himself voted off the game. Yeah, it's really interesting because you kind of see like Wentworth and David who have played the game before. Kind of knew when to like shut up. And they had that great moment where David was sort of like, what was the plan tonight? And Wentworth was like, well, we were going to vote you out. But I don't know what's happening now. Right, but they actually seem like they've been able to, the hardest part of this game would probably be to, like,

not get too emotional about ever being in danger. Well, and you had the, you had the confessionals that they had going into tribal where both of them were like, something is wrong. I feel like I'm in danger. And they were both basically right. Because David wanted the idol and Wentworth like sussed out. Like, no one will talk to me. There's something weird going on.

Yes. And it really shows like how having experience coming into the game gives you like such a huge. edge. But I felt like Devin's basically got it over on Julia when she was just like, you're just a passenger and he's like, I have the GPS. Because if you guys want to do this, like we can change this game right now. And instead of, a lot

of the times when people start to talk extemporaneously at tribal, they start to freak out a little bit. Or they get like upset or they get defensive. And Devin's just like kind of laid it out in a real, I don't think he's going to win, but that was like a very impressive move. He's been a really impressive character. You know, he's

the one who earned his way back in after being on exile and or on Extinction Island, whatever they're going. But yeah, I mean, you saw it because there were a few other people who like, like, I think Victoria, who kind of just like kept their head down during all of this madness and sort of new, like everyone else is digging their graves. Maybe if I just like be quiet, yeah, we'll be fine. And I think there's like a really delicate line between basically being Devin's and being able to cause all the chaos and take advantage of it and being Julia who came into the tribal not in danger and then ended up kind of.

talking herself into the getting voted out. Yeah, yeah. It was fascinating. So we'll have to check that out. I'll have Raleigh on again, maybe towards the end of the season. Thank you so much for coming on. Good luck with the precapables. We'll be listening. Thanks for having me. All right. We'll talk to you guys on Monday. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Philo. Philo has over 50 of your favorite channels like Discovery, Science Channel, Hallmark, the Food Network, AMC, VH1, MTV, A&E, and more.

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