The Watch - Our Mid-2019 TV Superlatives, Plus: ‘Dark’ Season 2 | The Watch

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

Andy stops by to announce some casting news for ‘Briarpatch’ (0:28). Then, our mid-2019 TV superlatives, including favorite sit-com, best pair of performances, and our favorite thing on TV so far this year (5:26). Plus, breaking down the first two episodes of ‘Dark’ Season 2 (27:03). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Andy Greenwald, Alison Herman, and Jason Gallagher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the new movie Yesterday. Imagine a world where no one remembers the Beatles, except you. From the director of Slumdog Millionaire and the writer of love actually comes a rock and roll comedy about music, dreams, friendship, and the long winding road that leads to the love of your life. Yesterday, in theaters, this Friday. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. Chris Ryan. I am an editor at therigger.com and joining me breaking some sort of silence vow on the set

of Breyer Patch. It's Andy Greenwald. I'm standing in a field. I had to walk so far away because I got that call from Kaya than I hear. We're rolling. We're rolling. I was like, you know, I'm going to choose my first show before this show. They got fields in New Mexico? There's a small patch of grass. This is a rare day. I don't know if you can hear a bird singing because there's one bird here. We've spent most of the first week just in dusty parking lots for the temperature of 94 degrees. Which as you would anyway, even if you weren't making a television show. Oh, sure. With met files as well. But no, we are under trees today. That's a blessing. That's good. So how's things going today? Well, first of all, Chris, I think we should be honest with our listeners.

I saw you yesterday. You did. So you could do a report. And let me tell you to say this guy, he wears so many hats now. Showrunner, writer, you know, and I'm wearing a hat. He's wearing a hat now. Literally. Don't ever let anybody tell you that you've lost your touch on the grill. Is this guy marinated lovely chicken thighs,

which have they officially replaced chicken breasts as the as the go-to chicken of choice? Well, come on. If you want a juicier chicken, you got to go dark meat. But I think everybody knows that. Yes. And was that marinade just like a kind of whatever you had in the cupboard kind of thing? That's kind of my go-to.

Are we doing it? Were you doing some pollo talk? Did you want to talk television? I think you know more about poeo at this point. I've definitely spent more time marinating chicken thighs than I have sent watching television, which I know will make, well, I know it'll make the Facebook group go nuts. But that was very nice. Chris and his wife came over yesterday.

I flew back to L.A. for 24 lovely family hours. And now I'm back here. I'm back on set. And it's a big day. We had some big news. Can I go sarcastic news today? Go for it. We had announced two fucking legends of joining the cast.

We have eight-time Emmy Award winner, Ed Asner, in the cast. And we have, I believe he also won an Emmy and a Tony. It is well on his way to some kind of cross-cultural e-gut. Alan Cumming is up in here. Alan Cumming is a big get, dog. You may remember Alan coming from such shows as Christine Bransties's The Good Wife. Yes. Have you started talking to him about that?

I have not. Alan hasn't started working yet. We traded a very lovely email in which you refer to his character as a delicious monster, which is far better than I could do. But today is Ed's first day to have you. Thank you so much for joining us. And he sort of said, oh, thank you. And I said, are there any questions I can answer for you?

And he said, tell me how you like the way I say the lines after I say them. I was like, well, done and done. Yeah. If it all could be so simple. So do you guys have any night shoots this week? We do. We're going to have a long night on. Friday. So I'm going to be miserable. But otherwise, things are bright and sunny starting the day off well to a combination bowling and laser tag spot. Was that to celebrate her appearance on the watch? She's still reeling from that. You know, that instant podcast. I promised you some people today, but we're shooting background right now. I think everybody's chilling in their trailer. That's fine. So, no, vibes are good. Vives are good. I heard Dark came out.

Dark. I had Gallagher came on today to talk about the first two episodes of Dark. Can I tell you something? time travel is incredibly complicated my guy I'm so glad I'm not doing it on the show mysteries are hard enough me and my wife are watching with a note put pat out like taking notes on the show trying to figure out what's going on I do want to assure people I am very excited to watch dark season two and if we don't have night shoes until the end of the week

there's a chance I could watch a little bit of dark nice okay so we'll be looking forward for that Andy will go to the Facebook group share his marinade for chicken thighs that can be his contribution to culture for the week. Chris, I go mustard heavy. That's the thing you might not know about me. I do some mustard, maple syrup. See, yeah, you're the Miso kid.

That's what they say about you around the kitchen. Yes, young me, though. Okay. Andy, hopefully we'll be back on shortly. Alan Cumming at Asner, have joined the cast of Briar Patch. It's exciting stuff, exciting times. Dude, don't step on anything sharp

while you're walking around in the one field in Albuquerque. And good luck this week. This is quite lovely. Thank you. It was great seeing you yesterday. It's great to talk to everybody. I will sort of improvisational and make them appear on the watch. Whether they like or not, I promise.

Okay. Call me again. Call me again. We'll do. All right. Now I'll be joined by Allison Herman, and we're going to talk about our TV superlatives for the 2019 years so far. So now I'm joined by Allison Herman.

Allison, what's up? Not too much. Not since I last saw you on Thursday. Yeah, exactly. We haven't. I've watched like four more boat up. Appetit videos in the meantime, but other than that. Allison and I here, so this week on The Ringer, we're doing the best of 2019 so far.

We did all the moments today. I think we've got TV going up tomorrow. It's the best TV moments of the year. Allison and I are here to talk about basically our TV superlatives for the year so far. So we could come up with a list, but the list would probably be, I think, pretty close to one another. If we did a list of best shows, I mean, there would be some divergence. I mean, like, you would probably have too old to die young higher than me. I know. It's hard to find anyone who's as devoted to three-minute close-ups of Miles Teller's face than me.

But what we're going to do today instead is superlative. So basically it's kind of like awards, but we each did five. We didn't tell each other what they were first. And this is just a way, a different way to talk about, like kind of like the same shows that we've been talking about for the last few months. So we do five superlatives east for TV 2019 so far. Allison, why don't you get us started? I'm just going to start with my first show of the year that really stood out to me as something special and interesting and exciting. And this was great because it happened in January. So I feel like there was early evidence that 2019 would maybe be a stronger year than 2018, which as we've talked about was like a little bit of an ebb in the ebb and flow of Pete TV. And it also coincides with a lot of people tend to ask me. You know, there's so much on TV, but like I just want something that's comforting and funny and compact.

And, you know, you've talked about bless this mess in terms of the sitcom gap. My vote for Best sitcom of the Year so far is the other two, which is a show on Comedy Central. So it's not quite the like 22 episodes of The Office, but it is a really great, really sharp, really specific story about a brother and a sister played by Drew Tarver and Helen York, whose much younger brother becomes a Justin Bieber-style YouTube breakout. And it's a comedy about this very 2019 experience of feeling ancient when you're 28 and totally out of touch with popular culture because popular culture is now made for 11 year old, for and by 11 year olds on the internet. It's also just about New York City and being a gay man or a straight woman and that specific culture. There is an entire episode of this show dedicated to the concept of instigays, which you either know what that concept is or you can learn a lot about it. I actually don't, yeah. Well, you can...

There's an explainer waiting for you. Fantastic. But literally, I was talking with a friend who's about to go on a trip to Palm Springs with a bunch of other gay men, and he referenced the episode to be like, I will be taking lots of photos, I will not be in many photos,

because that is literally the subplot of this episode. Is this guy who's an aspiring actor who's like trying and failing to get in this photo with these gay men who are just like constantly shirtless and taking, like, hiking pictures of running in or whatever. It's so, exactly. It's so well observed. It is so specific. But in that way that, like, you will get the joke because it's so clearly made by people who like and understand each other and speak the same language. It's created by Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, who are former co-head writers of S&L. It has that sensibility of, like, these people just know what they are doing. While they were at S&L, they also did a lot of the parody music videos, like back home ballers and do it in my twin bed, which means that they really know how to do. like a parody of a pop star.

And that's very much in their wheelhouse, but they also get the space to like tell a bigger story. It's a 10 episode first season. Periodically, Comedy Central will make it available for free to people to binge. I think they just took it offline. But, you know, you can find it all the usual places. It's unfortunately not on like a streaming site because Comedy Central remains committed to getting people to pay for this.

But strong recommend and like the first show of the year that really made my ears perk up. Nice. Okay. So mine first superlative is kind of goes, nicely with that. It's the best thing that came, actually came out in 2018, but it was really a 2019 show. So sometimes stuff drops in like December of a year. And essentially a lot of, you know, media sites have sort of ramped down for the rest of the year. We're doing a lot of best of the year coverage already. So it kind of, whatever kind of slips in in late December there gets lost.

Or people need to go home and be on their couches to consume it and then start talking about it. Exactly. But then it kind of like maybe it gets chatted about a little bit more in January of the next year. That happened with Dark the first time around. This time I felt like it happened with Dairy Girls. Dairy Girls was out in the UK, I think, early in 2018. It finally hit Netflix kind of in late 2018 in December. And people really started to pick up on it in 2019 in January. If you haven't seen it already, the first season is, I think, like six episodes long. It's on Netflix. Oh, like all UK comedies, because they have everything figured out before us. It is six episodes, which is so great. It was written and creative by this woman, Lisa McGee.

It's set in the 1980s in Northern Ireland. It is about a group of Catholic school girls coming of age during the troubles, but it is essentially like a really foul-mouthed, hilarious teenage comedy. And it has one of my favorite performances I've seen in an early long time on TV by Sorsham Monica Jackson, who plays sort of the main character who's trying to imagine herself as this really cosmopolitan, cool, intellectual. And it's just, it's so funny. The performances are so amazing

And it's like a really great foul-mouth teenage comedy There's a supporting actress on that show Who I literally only know is the girl with the face Because she just has the most elastic Amazing facial expressions And is such a great discovery But keeping in the comedy wheelhouse

My next pick I just called it Best Star Vehicle Because I feel like it's very common in TV Going back to You know the first stand-up boom of the 80s and 90s But you know we know It's very familiar by now to hear that like someone has gotten their own semi-autobiographical half hour and feel like you kind of, you know what you're getting.

It's going to be like maybe a little surreal and kind of artsy but mostly funny and mostly pulled from this person's own life. And one of the things I really loved about Russian doll was it felt like it was the result of that same approach of like let's give a show to Natasha Leone and let her be Natasha Leone in front of a camera. and that character is not a particularly like modulated version of her real-life persona. But then she and Leslie Headland and Amy Poehler decided to go in this incredibly high concept, Baroque sci-fi genre direction with the Groundhog Day structure. And I thought it was such a like above and beyond extra credit on the assignment. They easily could have just done Natasha Leone and Greta Lee hanging out in the East Village with no real plot for 10 episodes. and I'm sure I would have loved that.

But the fact that they, like, didn't rest on their laurels and tried to do something even more ambitious is part of what I loved and respected about that show so much, which was obviously one of the ringers' favorites. So the best use of, like, giving someone a show to make out of their life, basically. Yeah, like the best use of the Louis Seinfeld Atlanta, Rami also falls into this category, but I thought Russian doll went the extra mile.

My second one is the best use of IP, which is obviously a big watch thing, but other, you know, you'd expect me to say something probably a little bit more superheroy, but I'm going to go with what we do in the shadows, which Allison and I have actually talked about a fair amount, so I won't believe we're the point

just to say that this is an idea that did not need to be extrapolated from a movie. You know, like, they didn't need to make a TV show out of the movie what we do in the shadows, but they somehow landed on maybe like my favorite comedy I've seen this year by just really, really, really boring deep into the jokes that they have at their disposal of a bunch of vampires trapped in Staten Island.

And it's just an incredible show. Word on the street is that they are just assembling the season two writers' room. Nice. Keep an eye off for that. A little breaking gossip there. What's your third one? We'll intel. My third one is Best Game of Thrones sub-tweet, which is just a cheeky way of saying it's

stuck the landing. There are just a lot of really beloved shows that came to an end this year. And I thought it did so quite well. I really love the Broad City finale. That was very emotional. the Veep finale we've talked about was like really sharp and bilious and vicious and the way that Deep really could be at its best. But my favorite show that wound down in a impressive way to me was catastrophe. Oh yeah. Which the first season of the show is obviously getting the couple together

and setting up the whole premise of them being a family. The second and third season see Rob and Sharon undergo real stresses to their marriage, which makes sense because conflict is what TV is about. And the fourth season, I really loved because like the first three and like, It's just six episodes. It's very compact. But it's, it finds the couple in a relatively happy and stable place. Like there's not quite as all consuming a sword hanging over it as like Sharon's kind of sort of infidelity. And yet it is so pleasurable and interesting and rich to watch even though like there's basically nothing more to the premise anymore except these people existing as a family. And it does that thing that you find in like Richard Linklater,

movies that's so hard to do, which is you really get the feeling that these are just people hanging out with each other and being entertaining. That's a really good comparison, yeah. Yeah, and like obviously no one, including Rob Delaney and Sharon Hogan, is naturally that funny and interesting all the time in real life, but you feel like you are eavesdropping on an actual marriage. And I wrote about this in the piece I wrote, but like, even though I knew it was ending, this season felt like the ultimate, I could literally just watch this fictional couple. Yeah, in a different world back in like if this was a 1980 show, you'd be happy to have this be on for nine seasons. Exactly. And, you know, they seemed to end it at the correct point and they ended it so well. But I just thought it was an incredibly impressive final season.

Also, had a great Game of Thrones joke in the- Oh, yes. That was, honestly, it's not even a joke. It's just the way Sharon Hogan pronounces the word pervert in an Irish accent. At one point, Sharon Hogan is like, do you expect me to watch Game of Thrones by myself like a pervert? or something like that. I'm going to go for TV is the fucking best. This is my award for TV as the fucking best goes to Ronnie Lilly, the episode of Barry, which was just sort of like, that one of those moments when you're watching TV

and they come fewer and farther in between now, I think that the last episode of Fleabag this year was like this. I think there were moments of Game of Thrones that were like this, but basically where you feel like as a viewer like you're levitating and you can't quite believe that they've gotten what you're watching on television. And sometimes it's for, for, it's sometimes it can be like, you're watching Too Old to Die Young and you can be like, I can't believe this is on television.

But with Ronnie Willie- Yeah, there are different gradations of the tone that you can give to that statement. With the episode of Barry, I just thought it took that show, not even like narrative-wise, because it was somewhat in the realm of the kind of stuff that happens on it. But the way they told the story felt so unlike anything else. and the way in which it was like anything could happen in this weird part of the valley and that even there's something supernatural going on, but it feels right within the world of Barry was just like an awesome, awesome, awesome episode of television.

I agree. And full disclosure, I had Barry on my runner's up lists and then it was like, I shouldn't put it on my main list because Chris definitely will. So we know each other's taste. Yes. What's your next one? My next one is one I am 100% certain is not on your list, which is Best Bojack Horseman Plessibo, which there is a show on Netflix called Tuka and Birdie.

It is created by Lisa Hannawalt, who is the art director of Bojack Horsman. And that's obviously like a fun hook to give, but I think one of the most rewarding and gratifying parts of the show is Lisa's been an independent comics artist for years and years and years. She has her own body of work and her own sensibility. And Bojack Horseman, she definitely creates the visual world, but it's in partnership with her friend Raphael Bob Waxburg, who very much supplies like the writing and the literary sensibility of that show. And Tuka and Birdie is this great opportunity for just the unfiltered Lisa Hanowald experience with the help of Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong as the titular bird friends who hang out. And, you know, for someone who's familiar with Lisa Hanowalt's work, it's very fun to see like her universe of sexy peasantal. plants and boob and fart jokes. And, you know, it's a lot more like scatological and raw than Bojack Horseman, but then also it achieves a similar effect where the first few episodes,

I was like, oh, it's lighter than Bojack. It's a little more sitcom-y and that there's a plot of the week, even though it's about very like 30-something problems, like dating while sober and moving in with your partner. Right. And then at the end of, by the end of the season, you're like, oh, holy shit, I was not quite prepared for it to go to this very, not necessarily dark, but like deep and serious place about, I won't spoil the specifics, but one of the main characters has a trauma in their past, and it just really nails that balance of totally off-the-wall surreal jokes where you're like, I'm so glad I'm getting to watch someone just dump their brain out in front of me

because what is in there is so interesting. But then also by the end, you really feel like you've been taken on a journey. And also there's just lots of great pastry jokes, which, as you know, is very much in my wheelhouse. It's up your alley, yeah. My next one, so I think we're on four now? Yeah, I've done four. Okay, so my next one would be the best pair of performances in a non-Feeby-Wallorbridge Andrew Scott category. And that goes to Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams for Fossy Verdon.

I think we don't really get a chance to talk too much about like the second half of this season on the watch. But suffice to say the performances, I think, are always interesting. And I think that there is, your knowledge may vary on whether or not you think like Michelle Williams was pitch perfect. as Gwen Verdon, and there are some people who are like, well, I'm judging it against this dancing or this performance or like Bob Fossey was or wasn't like this. But as performances almost separated from the biographical material that they were based on, I just thought they were incredibly nuanced and very adult, you know, and it's like, that's still something that I think TV has become the kind of place where adults can go watch their own stories sometimes and as the movie theater becomes

increasingly more genre-fied. But I just found that their portrayal of a really, really, really fucked up relationship was always rewarding week to week, even if there were times when maybe the story or the way the show was made didn't quite live up to like my expectations of it. Yeah, no, I totally agree. As someone who was a little bit ambivalent

about the show as a whole, the unambiguously great parts of it were I thought particularly Michelle Williams because I thought Rockwell had a little bit of a harder lift and that he has to go up against both the real Bob Fossey and Roy Scheider's iconic portrayal of effectively Bob Fosse.

And so I think that performance, I had a little more, like, probably unfair, just baggage going into it. And I thought Michelle Williams, just because her job is to represent someone who has not been fairly or completely represented in the past, got a real chance to shine. Yeah. So what's your fifth? I mean, you can probably guess it was in the lead up to your previous category. You know, I don't know how much new there is to say about it.

it, but, you know, we've done best Bojack Horseman placebo, best Game of Thrones, Subtweet, best star vehicle. I just went best best best. It's Fleabag. Yeah. We talked about it on Thursday. Like, it's kind of I still see now it coming up. I can't remember. Oh, Maggie Gillenhall. I read an interview with

Maggie Gillenhall and Vulture and she was just sort of like, I don't really watch TV. And she's like, but Fleabag. Like, it's now permeated to the point where I think it's now just like every single person, it's like a right of passage. You just kind of go watch Fleabag and you come out the other side and you're like, yeah, that's the best thing I saw. Yeah, this is maybe a sideways plug for something else, but John Early and Kate Burland just put out another great short.

They've done so much great work together. But it's a short about like a weird person played by Cape Burland who just like invades John Early's home and invites herself over. And in this really great interview on Vulture, someone was like, oh, who would you like do this to in real life? And Cape Relam was immediately like, well, obviously Phoebe Wallerbridge. I'm just obsessed with her. Yeah. And I literally wrote a blurb this morning for our upcoming Best TV moments of the year that was about the priest. love is awful speech. And even, you know, we've said so much, we've written thousands of words.

And even that I was like, I'm still so excited to just talk about this show. It just makes me so happy. That is like when Thrones was at its peak. I think that's what it was giving people. Is that like, it's like such motivation to really explore, you know? Yeah. And the same like iceberg quality of richness. Yes. Absolutely. You know, and in Game of Thrones, it's a very literal, there's just like thousands of pages of lore for every minute of screen time. And this was almost like, there's thousands of words of like, a logical subtext to every little gesture. Yeah. I wanted, this is sort of an odd one to end on.

I had a couple of others scattered around, like, you know, scariest moment was the pink room scene in True Detective or something like that. But I did want to say, because I recently caught up on a lot of it, and it is probably the strangest use of talented resources towards like a very good thing that no one actually is going to, like, recall, which is Catch 22 on Hulu. And it's quite good. And it's got George Clooney in it.

And came and went. And he directed it, you know, or he's behind a lot of it. And, you know, he and Grant Helsoff worked on it. It stars Christopher Abbott, who you might remember from girls. Hugh Lorry is in it. Kyle Chandler is in it. George Clooney is in it. And it kind of just went unremarked upon.

Now, part of that might be just how much stuff is out there. And when it came out, which was like an early spring thing. And it was going up against a lot of Blockbuster stuff in TV. And it is obviously. somewhat dated material, but I think part of the reason why Catch-22 has been such a staple of people's lives over the years is the fact that it has a certain timeless quality. But it was really interesting to see someone do a very good version of this that obviously pays homage to the Mike Nichols version, and Mike Nichols is obviously a huge influence on George Clooney, but had some new things to say,

and yet I was just kind of like, oh, like they made Catch-22. That's pretty cool. I don't. don't really know what it was about 2019 that they thought they needed to do it. I think it was also, it was certainly a little bit stylized, but it was a fairly loyal adaptation. And I feel like for an adaptation to really stand out, it has to be something like what Alex Garland did with annihilation, where it's just like this is a completely different thing that uses the original as like a prompt, but it does something to change it. So it's not just like, yeah, it's a good version of Catch 22. But like, you know Catch 22.

Right. And if you don't, I don't know what it. The idea of war being madness is not really news to a lot of people. Yeah, or like almost something like Chernobyl kind of got at a similar, like, we're going to talk about an old, awful bureaucracy that allowed senseless slaughter to happen. But because it hadn't really been dramatized in that specific way with those specific people before, I think that got a lot more people's attention than like this literal story, you know, that already has an adaptation. Absolutely.

Okay. So thank you to Allison. for coming on and talking TV superlatives. I've got Jason Gallagher coming on next to talk about the first two episodes of Season 3 of Dark. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by City on a Hill, the action-packed new drama from Showtime, the same network that brought you billions, Homeland, and Ray Donovan. Set in a volatile early 90s era Boston when police corruption ran rampant through a system plagued by racism. City on a Hill stars award-winning actors Kevin Bacon and Aldous Hodge. The new series follows in

Upstanding District Attorney, played by Hodge, who teams up with a corrupt FBI agent, played by Bacon, to form an unlikely alliance to take down a local crime family and clean up the city. Executive produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Tom Fontana to stream the first episode for free. Go to show, S-H-O.com slash city. City on a Hill airs Sundays at 9 p.m. only on Showtime. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Just Crack and Egg. Are you wanting to put the heat back into your relationship with breakfast? A hot breakfast can seem like too much work, but not when you head over to the egg aisle and pick up Just Crack an Egg.

Just Crack an Egg is a hot fluffy breakfast scramble that I'll have you falling in love with hot breakfast all over you. Simply crack a fresh egg over their hearty breakfast fixings, then stir microwave and reignite your love of breakfast in less than two minutes. Something else you'll love about Just Crack an Egg? It has no artificial flavors, dyes, or preservatives. Plus, it comes in seven different varieties, including veggie, Denver, Southwest-style, protein. packed and All-American. You may not know me from my looks, but I like to get after it in the gym. And when I do, nothing refuels me like a protein-packed, just crack an egg.

Seriously, don't wait for the weekend to add a hot, little hearty breakfast to your a.m. It's time to run with your arms wide open to the egg aisle and take breakfast back with just crack an egg. All right, now I'm joined by my buddy Jason Gallagher. Say what's up. Hi. Hello. Gallagher works here at the ringer. He makes incredible videos. He works on NBA desktop.

He's the mind behind Take Hunter. Is that right? I feel like you're the mind behind Take Hunter. I think it was an original idea by Chris Ryan. Yeah. And then you and Tyler really made it fly. I specifically remember getting the text from you. That's why I like to kind of like put myself in this like David O'S Selznick, Jerry

Bruchheimer kind of, I come up with the ideas. You're the Adam and I'm the Noah. There we go. There we go. Okay. So let's start talking about dark. Sure. Here's the deal with dark.

It's a watchpod fave. Yes. If you've never heard of it, this is going to mean absolutely nothing to you as a podcast segment. So fair warning there. Dark is a show on Netflix. It came out at the end of 2017? I don't know. I found, I discovered this show through the watch podcast.

Okay. So I think it was like a late period. It was either at the end of 17 or the beginning of 18, I can't really remember. I remember watching it over the holidays. Yes. So it probably was the end of 17. Mm-hmm. And it's a German show.

Yeah. It is, best way to describe it is a combination of lost stranger things. Is there a third thing, do you think? Prisoners? Maybe the book of Genesis. Yeah. It is essentially a time traveling show. Mystery.

It's like a crime procedural meets a time travel show that is got its own, entirely its own mythology. It's set in a small German town called. Winden. And it takes place in multiple timelines in the 1950s and the 1980s. And in our sort of present day. Yeah, it's like 2020, 2019. And then at the end of the first season, spoiler, we find out that we also are going to 2050.

Yes. So we go into a dystopian future where something terrible has happened to society. And there are basically like roving bands of people like driving around attacking one another, we don't really know why. 2017 is a long time ago. Yeah. And so it was with great excitement that I welcomed Dark back into my life in June of 2019.

But a show this complicated, Jason. Yeah. It's like having that long of a break from it, you really needed to do your workout plan to get ready for this show. Yeah, I felt like, as a person who makes memes, I started to look up like what meme equivalent is this? And it's really like putting together IKEA furniture where it's just like you're just sitting there

with a map and you're like, I don't know if this piece goes with this piece. And they all look kind of similar. And it's just, I underestimated how much I needed to prepare for this show. When I watched the, hey, you know, recap. Yeah, recap of season one on dark. I like, I thought it was like a bit. I was like, all this did was confused me.

And then I opened up several tabs and then began my watch. but almost immediately paused to be like, okay. So this is a show that it has a, you need to have a character list and essentially a timeline chart to watch the show. And even on purpose sometimes it obscures whether a character from 2019 is actually in 2019-3 via time travel. And it's unclear whether or not,

like what you can do to affect the timelines basically. Yes. Because right now, as we get into the second season, and Jason and I are going to talk about the first two episodes. Yes. There's a lot of people in different timelines, stuck in different timelines, and yet we're not getting the Back to the Future effect

where everything is different. It's closer more to basically like X-Men, where as soon as you go back, that's reality. It's not, you're not like wiping your own existence out, although I could be wrong. Yeah, I mean, there's a decent chance at any, like, as I was taking notes, I would have to go, like, I was taking notes for this podcast, and then I just found it actually pretty helpful to take notes as I was watching.

But I would have to go back and be like, that rule doesn't apply. Yeah. Like, it was like really crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, doing a great job selling this show. Part of the reason why I loved Dark in the first season was that it starts out as a missing kid criminal procedural. Right.

And a really nice cross-section of this small German town that has a nuclear facility there, but is essentially like this idyllic German town. Yes. And of course, like all idyllic German towns, there's a ton of strange disappearances, adultery, regret, heartbreak, and secrets that are like right under the surface. And this show kind of tracks it

as all of those secrets come spilling out into the light. And the triggering event to bring those secrets out is the disappearance of a kid who basically walks into a cave near the nuclear power plant never comes out. Right. that was something that was revealed over the course of the first few episodes of the season.

Like it starts out, it's pretty much like, oh, it's like Broadchurch or something. Like, this is a really sad, like, kid goes missing thing. And then it just keeps ramping up the, like, levels of sci-fi and time travel and mind-bending astrophysics and stuff like that. And it's really, really, really awesome.

It's one of my favorite shows in 2017. I still really like it. Yeah, no, it's like my favorite thing. But that whole thing about like we're dipping slowly into the pool is gone. Right, no. I mean, my journey was similar to yours. I was like, it's the Stranger Things meets Broad Church.

And then it was like, oh, wait, okay, so there's a time travel element. Yeah. Oh, my God. And now I'm at the point of like, good versus evil and creation and, you know, like, dipping into like my old, like, religious ways. And like, it's like really, I cannot believe that this show is, is making me do this because if you would tell, if you would describe to me, what dark is now, I would be so probably out on it because I would be like, you know, a show that exists just to twist is not compelling to me anymore.

I don't even know if it's twisting, but it's like a show that needs its own weird spiral batch notebook filled with notes about what's happening at any of the moment is really like it's a big demand. Right. And but because of the story that they've created, you literally can't tell it without these, these, I remember Andy talking about it last year, about how like, it seems like it's telling a story and these twists are falling naturally into place. As opposed to, like, let's say, like, Westworld or something that would, it seemed like it only exists to surprise you. Yeah, it's like, oh my God.

But this one, it was like, with all these characters not knowing where they are, who they are, when they are, it naturally just like constantly surprised you. There was a really close relationship between the reveals that we were getting, about the time travel in the first season and what those reveals wound up meeting to certain characters. Right. So, let's say a kid like Jonas who was like, obviously just felt like something

was wrong in his life and had been dealing with tragedy, the time travel storyline that he encounters and the sort of greater sense of purpose that he finds, winds up like dovetailing perfectly with how screwed up his home wife is. Right.

And so early on in the second season, and that part of the show is kind of gone. What's there is these people have just figured out a completely out of whole cloth world to make this show in. In a time when it's basically everything has to be part of an extended universe IP that people are already familiar with.

They've done a really good job of being like this is a battle of good and evil that takes place across time. And it's kind of awesome. Yeah, I don't think I was ever as capital. captivated by like a single season of show as I was, or I hadn't been in a long, long time by dark. And so that's, I was a little, you know, when they, when they opened up the future thing, I was like, oh my God. But then going to the next season, this season two, I was a little, a little like, could they keep it good?

And like, they're just, they're continuing to reveal these, these threads that, that just affect everything you saw in the previous season. It is such a mind-blowing show. But it's also like, I don't know if I'm particularly captivated because it's in German and it's so complicated. And literally I cannot like read a text without having to stop and rewind it because like you can't miss a single moment. And especially in the beginning of the second season rather than it being like a lot of scene setting. And one of the cool things about season one and Jason and I really enjoyed this was that it didn't even just have all this mythology and this really dense plot. and these really interesting characters. But it had like a really well-defined aesthetic.

Yes. So if you can watch season one of dark and not immediately want to like liquidate your bank account to get a really cool Audi station wagon, I defy you to do that. And also just like go long on Patagonia rainwear. Yeah. Because the vibe is incredibly overcast.

It definitely... It's real drizzly. I don't know if it's like cool or not that it affected uranized wardrobe. I don't think it's cool. We live in Los Angeles. We have no need. for this much rain here.

Chris and I started showing up in oversized raincoats, and we were just like, we had, it was such a mood. It was like June, and I was like, I really want to wear red wings. Yeah. And a Patagonia and drive around

in a tinted window, Audi station wagon looking for like, time travel portals. Should I just wet my hair and then show up to work? Like, let it fall down. So what were your big questions coming out of these first two episodes? So now we're going to get into, obviously,

spoilery of the first two episodes, but this is just a discussion where we immediately get into it, and we've got the 2053 plotline jamming, where it's Jonas in the future. Right. We've got the stranger version of Jonas, which is the old Jonas, who's come back to present day to see his own mom.

Yeah. Yeah, that's heavy. My biggest question probably revolves around the Adam. character in his relationship with Noah with a show that has opened up a world of possibilities for characters and who they are and what they are. I'm like

I wonder who Adam is. Like Adam could literally be anything or anyone. He could be Adam. Yeah, I mean he could be a guy named Adam but he could also... No, but he could be like Adam of Adam and Eve. I have no idea. I mean there's like actually like a decent chance that that's it. Okay. So do you

look something up to tell you that or No, no, I just, as a full disclosure, you know, I grew up going to church and everything like that. And this whole story with Noah, and I mean, like, it's the exact story of Noah's Ark, basically, which is, you know, that God is displeased with humanity and wants to restart the world, basically. And he entrusts Noah to carry out that act. I mean, it's the exact same thing. And so every single character on this show, I have looked up to see if there's, there's like a biblical version of this character.

I mean, so that's where I'm at. Where people were just like, why is this character named Ruth? Yes. Let's go read any biblical reference to Ruth. Let's go figure out what this possibly could mean. The big question, I think, in the back of my mind, as we get into this season.

And you basically, on one side, at least on the surface, on one side, there's Adam and Noah who have been orchestrating the kidnappings and experimentation on these kids over decades. Yeah. And in this small German town and wherever else they've been going to do that. And then on the other side,

fighting for the future, by all accounts, is Claudia, who we meet in 1986, right? That's when we're first introduced her. As the head of the nuclear power plant. She's just taken out Tiedemann. And then in the future,

she is basically like the old version of Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies. and she's now come back to 86 to see her own past self. Right. But one idea that got brought up in the first season is that it's really a matter of perception. Of who's right and wrong. Right. Which goes back to sort of the, as the season has gone on, I've sort of been like,

I wonder if Noah's right. I don't know. Like, I have no idea. I mean, think about if you lived in that time. Which time? The time of Noah's Ark. Oh, yeah. Okay.

And you're like, I'm there. You know, like in 2019, we're, you know, we're teaching Bible studies about it. It's a good, happy story that children are learning about. But if you live in that time, you think that the devil is coming for you. You know what I mean? So, like, who is good and who is evil and, like, all this stuff is, it really deeply, like, this is all I think about when I go to sleep at night.

It's so crazy. Yeah, and basically the extent to which people will go. Right. To do what they think is right. Right. And to do what they think maybe God is telling them to do. do what they need to do to save everyone, even if it means sacrificing a few.

So that is the kind of stuff that this show is about. The fits are still good. Yeah, I mean, if we show up, if we show up like Jonas now, it would be a tough look for us. Yeah, I think so Jonas essentially addresses like Mel Gibson in the beginning of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Right. They have like a quick 1886 like digression in this one,

in the season so far where Mickle is wearing like, you know, like a comic book t-shirt with shorts and wearing sandals. Have you ever had a Hawaiian toast? That comes up in the second one. No.

I guess that's just pineapples on toast. That doesn't sound great. Yeah, hard pass. But yeah, what German people, I think have like exotic ideas about dessert. I like Hawaiian pizza, so I could, I'm probably fine with Hawaii.

You like Hawaiian pizza? Love it. Oh. See? Do you? I've only actually had it once What's happening? I don't know

I mean it's just like I come from the East Coast I've only had one yingling so that's Did you like it? Yeah I loved it Yeah, it's great Yeah It was like a best version of a bad thing I don't know if ying in Hawaiian pizza

I mean you can't get a yingling at Dominoes What else do we want to talk about with this? Like what we're Do you have any other critiques Or do any other like celebratory like raves about this The second season so far? So far I mean like

So I've watched three just full disclosure. And I really, the Ulra character is like super interesting. Yeah. He's still and his relationship. And too, we see that he is in a mental institution.

Right. In the 50s. Yeah. Yeah. He's got, he's kind of has like a tough look going for him right now. And his relationship with Agon,

um, episode three really touched on that. Okay. Quite a bit. But I'm really curious about the future still. Like that, that's, that's pretty much unexplained.

Yeah. Obviously, there's a subsect of people that have survived, whatever this apocalypse is. They're setting up this big apocalyptic moment that's going to take place, you know, at the beginning of all the episodes in season two, the episode opens with how, you know, five days until the apocalypse or whatever.

And that's in 2019, right? Right. And so I'm 20. Right. So there's clearly a group of people that have survived it. I'm just so I'm curious about the future. Like the whole, the scene where Jonas is in the nuclear power plant trying to, to restart the god particle and then you know starts playing suspicious games and and like it was it was

such a while like i would love to spend a little more time in the in the 2050 timeline in the early i'm sure people will already know this if they've watched ahead but am i right in saying that there are multiple factions in the future where it's like it seems to be the people that jonas is with but is also like broken the rules of and then there's like more of a paramilitary group yeah it seems like somebody's got helicopters that are flying over the forest. Right. Right.

Okay, so there may still be, and they seem to all be waiting for some deliverance to Paradise, that they think that they can get to if they stay out of the dead zone, which Jonas is trying to dissuade them of that idea. Right, and I think that Paradise was, I mean, it's discussed by Noah, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, so is that a group that follows Adam somehow? Or is it, you know, I think that what this show

kind of gets that is because people are able to go back and forth across time and basically offer moments of comfort to grieving parents and grieving children and fix the wrongs of the past

I wonder if Paradise is really just that ability to constantly be there for people but I don't know I mean this show you could it could go back to the biblical times in episode five and I wouldn't be surprised that's the biggest effect of season two to me is that

you know in season one it's so crazy how much this show has expanded upon itself like it's so crazy to think about episode one and what my perception of this show was and how it was like again it was German stranger things I was like it's dope they're just you know doing drugs

sick rain jacket yeah and like that you know but now it's like this are we gonna are we witnessing like a story of the creation of earth yeah exactly like that's that's what I'm so like It definitely feels like late period Battlestar Galactica in that way. Okay. I think what we'll probably do is we've done these first two episodes.

I think maybe next Monday, Jason, we'll come back and we'll talk about kind of the middle section of episodes for dark. Because I know that you guys really enjoyed it. It's a really complicated show the season. One thing I think is worth talking about is this idea that, you know, whether or not we as viewers are, like, built for this anymore. like to take this long of a time off in between shows that are this complicated. I'm trying to imagine what would happen because it was only really like 15 months, I think,

in between seasons, but it feels like it's been three years. I was just talking to a coworker Corey about... He loved season one and is like, I have to be in a very specific place to be able to watch season two because of how much I need to catch up. Yeah.

Because he's like, I can't even begin to remember. instinctive choice that these guys are making. Because I remember my wife and I said this about Ozark season two, where we were like, we just need peace and quiet for Ozark. We just need to focus. And we were like in the Orcus Islands off of Seattle, like last summer or whatever. And I was just like, it's time. Now is the time.

And it turns out Ozark pretty easy to digest. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's pretty easy to follow Ozark. I was supposed to say, like, this is the antithesis of it. Now I feel like I need to go back to the Orcus Islands and just fully digest dark. Let me just say, this is actually true. If my wife and child had not gone out of town this weekend,

so I was completely alone, didn't know what to do with myself, it was the perfect circumstance for me to watch dark. And in fact, I like shut off all the light. I watched it during the day and shut off all the lights. And I was just like in the zone. But it took me, to watch one episode, it probably took me like an hour and a half just because of how much I had to pause or, you know, Like I said.

And I, yeah, you got to rewind a couple of times to be like, wait, what did that just? Yeah. And what was she looking at? Like, it's like if certain things happen where they'll be cross-cutting between something that's happening in the 1986 and something that's happening in 253, but there are characters from both time periods in each thing. Yeah. And you're like, wait a second.

What was she looking at? Was that in 1986? Because I think that happens when Claudia goes back in time to give herself the time machine. Yeah. But she's burying the time machine in 1953 for 1980. Claudia to find it, and she comes back from 2053. Yes.

That's really complicated. At one point, the old Claudia, in 1953, looks up and sees a sign for coming soon, the town of Winden. Right. We're going to build it around this nuclear power plant. Yes. That's nuts. I know.

And there's some information that, like, it's presented to you with a line of, a subtitle line. And that's it. And if you missed that one subtitle line, you have missed... You're screwed. You're screwed. It's so crazy.

You can't miss anything. There's stuff that happens in episode three that it's just like, if you miss that, you're done. You're toast. All right, so Jason will come back. We're going to talk about the middle couple of episodes in about a week. So you guys have some time to catch up and to watch all the YouTube explainers on what happens in the first season.

Yeah, we got to get like, the thing that I'm most happy about is in the future that those flashlights really just like... The orbs. The orbs are fine. They're really widely to... Every day. Otherwise, he has to build a top. time machine out of old walkman parts.

Everyone looks like hell. He's walking around with like a disc man. And he's just got this like awesome orb in his hand. I don't understand why they're like, yeah, you have the power to illuminate a forest, but you can't start up this like small generator. Preserve the orbs. Yeah, that's right. All right.

Thanks for stopping by Jayes. Thanks, man. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by City on a Hill. The new drama series from Showtime starring Kevin Bacon and Aldous Hodge. City on a Hill air Sundays at 9 p.m. only on Showtime.