The Watch - Our Top TV Presidents. Plus, Netflix Introduces “Moments,” and Will Peacock Ever Be Profitable?

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Chris and Andy talk about a new feature that Netflix is rolling out called “Moments” that allows users to capture and share scenes from their favorite shows in an effort to boost fan-driven marketing (1:00). Then they discuss the news that Peacock lost more than $400 million last quarter despite its popular Olympics coverage and what that means for the streamer and its parent company, Comcast (25:43). Finally, in honor of the upcoming election, they talk about some of their favorite TV presidents, including Jed Bartlet on ‘The West Wing’ and Laura Roslin on ‘Battlestar Galactica’ (41:00).  Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald  Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, he's going to Halloween as a stable adult man. It's Andy Greenwald! I don't have my costume on then. Your culture is my costume. Wow. What are you doing today? Happy Halloween. I don't dress up because it's all inside my noggin.

Oh. All the fear and terror. All the thrills and chills. I live this shit, 364 other days a year. I used to wonder why Halloween was so close to election day, and this year I get it. I get it. There's something weird with 2024. Okay.

Timing-wise. Did you see, like, how close Christmas and Thanksgiving are together and stuff? Like, it just feels like we're tilted on our axis a little bit. Well, I mean, Christmas is relatively stable. Thanksgiving's late this year. Okay. Yeah. And so it's just real, like, they're really, they're squeezing Christmas.

You feel Christmas is squeezed? This is, wow. Your grievance politics are bad. to come back into fashion, buddy. This is, if that's the issue you're leading the podcast. I'm one voter issue. One issue voter. And we got to expand.

Expand Christmas. It's true. Yeah. It's true. Okay. The, well, we're both about to experience a country that really loves Christmas. Yeah. We're going to the UK and let me tell you, I'm, I'm interested.

People are very, very pro-Christmas there. There is no happy holidays. Yes. And I'm excited to be joining you. you over there. So what we're going to do, today we're going to talk a little bit about some stuff happening in the town, actually. Some technological developments, some

carving of the corporate pies that is happening. It's also festive the way you said that. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the executive branch and its role on television. For no reason. For no reason whatsoever. It's not front of mind. Everybody is voting. Did you reflect on our

spirited lionist discussion? at all. I was wondering, do you feel like when you asked me to watch Linus, is it like when I ask you to watch Drops of God? I don't know. I don't feel like I openly mock your tastes the way you do. Excuse me. I am actually physically sore from bending over backwards to be like, I thought that scene was pretty good. No, I mean, I guess what I meant by that was, drops of God is a flawed show. This is a show that was on Apple TV about wine and family. wine tasting. Yeah.

It was a flawed show, but I was like, look, buddy, I like Japan, France, and wine. Yeah. So I'm here. Yeah. And I wonder if there's a similar thing at play with you and Lioness. Like I like Iraq, El Paso, and... And Zoe Sal Danya's screaming at people. You know, it's funny you should bring this up, because it kind of goes into one of my first topics I wanted to talk with you about.

You are smooth like the... God, look at you. Right into it. The night before we potted about Lioness, Van, Lathen. our colleague here at the ringer had hipped me to the fact that this is my fucking office now seen from Lioness

which is now kind of like I guess if you've seen those episodes you know what I'm talking about if you don't don't worry about it it's pretty much part for the course for Lioness is just people screaming at each other about security and...

Hand office space. Van was like I don't know it was context free just sent me a tweet with somebody being like damn Zoe Soldanya slapped snapped and it's her screaming

and Van I was talking about it was talking to Van yesterday, he's like, that has gone viral, by the way. Oh. Especially apparently, according to Van with Black women. So welcome to The Watch. That's a great, that's a great demo for us. And he was talking, we were just talking briefly about, like,

lionist, like, kind of crossing over to other audiences and stuff like that. The reason I bring this up is that, generally speaking, you know, when you're watching these long-form TV shows, I see what you're doing. Deep into season two, you know, like. like these context-free things, explaining why people should watch it is actually a little bit challenging.

Yeah. And for all of my cynicism about their project and perhaps their chokehold over the thing that we talk about most on this podcast, which is television, Netflix has done something kind of interesting this week. I don't know, I checked my phone this morning and it had not, I do not have this feature,

but it's something called moments where you're going to be able to start sharing clips from shows and movies presumably from Netflix. Now, I was surprised to see not only that they're doing this, but also that they are making a huge push behind this, at least in so much as if you drive up sunset, you can see there's like these advertising campaigns for some of their bigger shows like Squid Game and Baby Reindeer.

And it's like, she did what? Question mark. And it's like the woman from Baby Rainier. And it shows the time code and like the episode and everything from where it comes from. Can I just interject to say that if you drive on sunset near where I live, there is the hollowed out husk of a Furiosa-style metro bus. Did a bus get burned last night?

Yeah, dude. Yeah, yeah? The Dodgers fans lit a bus on fire. Was it, like, occupied? Not by the time it exploded. Okay. And the vibe was kind of like, okay, but also, can I just sneak past to get a Cortado at Woodcat? You know what I mean?

I'm just like, I fucking hate this. I'm an LA Times subscriber, but I hate that, like, at this moment. Even after they're a cowardly non-endorsement? Okay. Noted, but please continue. I was just saying I support local newspapers. I hate that, like, when around this time of year and around this time every four years, it's like, I know that Donald Trump couldn't open a door, but I don't know that a bus exploded down the street from my house. You need to support local, local journalism, hyper-local.

That's just Twitter dog. It truly is sadly. So did you hear it go off or what? No. I mean, I heard the celebrations of the Dodgers winning the World Series go off. But no, I kept my family. My close perimeter. You're like Speedman and Teacup.

I would do anything to be like Speedman at any time. Okay, just to circle back to your point. This is really interesting. It's probably smart, you know, as someone who I traffic in GIFs sometimes. Mm-hmm. Memes? Yeah. Not Great Bob from Mad Men?

Very useful. Useful to send to people. If only I could have just clipped it right from the AMC app or whatever. Everybody could have profited. I think it's on Netflix now, isn't it? There you go. Yeah. I do wonder if there are some built-in controls for this or guardrails or if creatives will start to get a little bit touchy.

For example, I do remember, I don't remember anything about it, But I feel like three or four years ago, wasn't there like a Netflix people having sex on a boat movie? It was like number one on their charts worldwide. Everyone's like, why is this movie number one? And it was just because a lot of people were having sex? Is this the Glenn Palis-N-Sweeney movie? No. Do they have sex on a boat?

They have sex in a shower. I think after some boating. I want them at the same time. Okay. I'm sorry. That's just my kink is my karma. That's it. Outer Banks?

I don't know. No, there was like a movie. It was like some Euro-Trash. It was like a Skinimax movie. Okay. And there was some like, wait, what is this? It was number one. Okay.

My point is, if you can do Netflix moments on that, I feel like it might be an abuse of privilege. That's a really good point. Or is that helpful. And that is why, because, look, I guess there's a creative community way of looking at this, and then there is a tech-savvy industry thought leader way of looking at this. And the latter way of thinking about this is literally anything that generates interest is why you do it. Yes.

Right? Like, that's why that movie was put on Netflix in the first place. So why not take it to its logical conclusion and just screencap the bits on the boats? I really hope I'm not making this up, by the way. But I do believe this was accurate. Anyway, I think that's a little bit interesting. And I do wonder if as Netflix is going to continue to be like all of the things that it is. Baby reindeer is shocking.

You have to watch the next episode. You won't believe that this floor is lava. Is that really cake? Squid Game, but also Alfonso Quaron's new Oscar-winning movie. like that's Martin Scorsesey voice Is this cinema? Do you know what I mean?

Like I'm just trying to like puzzle this out. Yeah, I can tell. I think my I was thinking about it more about discoverability because you know I obviously In Elon you trust I get it. I'm subscribed to the substacks

I knew that Lioness was coming back there were billboards. There were subs stacks? They were advertising them. Matthew, Euglasia says. But there is something about fan-created content

for better or for worse that I think is the best kind of ambassador for television. Oh, okay, sure. And they would not have picked the uninterrupted two-minute yelling scene by Zoe Saldania as like... Oh, they meaning like Paramount probably wasn't leading. First of all, I don't think that that like fits with like

how they want to like merchandise their brand. And second of all, like, it is the culmination of the second episode of that show. So there is obviously, she's bloodied. There's something going on. Like, she's angry at this other woman who will become important to the story. Like, to the extent that they want to control how people interpret the narrative of these shows, like, they're not just going to put a two and a half minute scene from the end of the second episode out. I was like, check it out.

Lion is now in theaters and your home. But when that stuff hits. Yeah. And you can see all. the responses are like, what's this? Yeah. I got to watch this. That's different than like a cool trailer of black dubs that they did where I'm just like,

yep, okay, I'm going to watch this. It's interesting. I wonder if this also speaks to a generational shift in, I mean, it's too, it's a little too broad to say like spoiler culture. What I mean is, I'll do the only thing I ever do. Use my children as an example for gain on a podcast. But like my older daughter does something that to me is like, absolutely unthinkable, which is when she reads a new book, which is like multiple times a day,

she reads the end first and then continues reading. She is not bothered by being spoiled. She is also, you know, in the way that we were talking about last week in a different context. She's a post-credits generation. But yes, but not just post that, but like also their cultural existence is just constantly taking dips in the giant ocean of historical content where the idea of a Spoiler is baked in, right? So she's, as I reported breathlessly a week or two ago, she was watching Spider-Man Homecoming, and now she's super into the Tom Holland's and day of Spider-Man movies. And it was like, well, Iron Man's in this one.

And then my younger daughter was like, who's Iron Man? I was like, oh, we've got a lot of podcasts for you. But then my older daughter was like, well, he dies. Oh. But, like, hasn't lessened her interest. All of this is to say, the more, like, gente. the teal world that we remember where it's just like we would write a lot of adjectives about a record that people might be able to purchase in six weeks or going off the blurb off the back of the book

or a well-cut trailer that didn't give too much away. Like we may be dinosaurs in the sense that why not tell people the crazy-ass shit that's happening at the end. Can you imagine the Netflix moments marketing for the crying game if it was released in 2024? That's a very specific example. Well, I know that saying, nothing is coming. So we were thinking about the filmography of Neil Jordan. Yeah, sure. Here's my dark side of this. There's already, I think, I can feel it in myself. So I'll use myself as an example. We were going to talk about presidents on TV today. And I realized when I was going through

West Wing clips on YouTube, of which there are many, so this is not like a new phenomenon. I mean, if you want to, you can watch a lot of TV shows essentially as like an assistant. of clips that are good from all over and you can watch it in a nonlinear way and just right in. I'm just imagining a collision of these cultures where it's like, the smoke monster was a problem. And you just see YouTube clips of all the cool things the smoke monster did before you realize it was just like the disembodied dude.

Nobody talks about how Desmond was a bucket when it came to steer in that yacht. This is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. You fracture the, like, intention of the art with that. Do you know what I mean? Like, the, the way in which it was paced out. This is what I was saying. And there's lots of stuff that I'm, frankly, like, that's how I consume it.

Like, there's plenty of, like, there's an entire genre of podcasting and that I have, like, this weird relationship to where it's like, I don't like the Yankees. Right. But like watching clips of talking Yanks the podcast as those guys. cry about the Yankees? I'm like, that's funny. That's how I engage with the NBA at this point. Yeah, but can you imagine that if we start engaging with prestige television that way or television

in general that way? And it's just like, I didn't see Rebel Ridge, but I saw the three cool scenes in Rebel Ridge. Yeah. I mean, I think that is absolutely a way, that is a path. That is a path that some people are already well down, well, you know, have traveled down and are probably

like this is redundant what these guys are saying. Do you think your kids would be like that? I mean, I know they still like reading and stuff, so it's like maybe they take part in the whole thing. But like, do you think your kids would just be like, I want to see the part where Iron Man dies a clip? Possibly. We're talking about two different things. We're talking about one is like how shows market themselves. Yeah.

So in terms of marketing, if you take the creative part out of it, which I think a lot of these companies have, it is very, very hard to break through. And so any way that you can get something to break through, you've got to pursue. That is a, there is a version of looking at the story where it's like, this is Netflix actually. making a thoughtful, it's a thoughtful response to the way people clearly already engage with their product. It's funny that it's Netflix, which doesn't seem to have any trouble having its content go viral. Yes. But so they're just kind of giving it a nudge. I think the second part of it is, I don't want to say troubling, because there are bigger issues at stake in the world this week and next, but I think it's worth noting. And I'm trying not to be overly judgmental about it because I think

everyone's attention spans are threatened and have shrunk. I also think that you are, you're a college football guy now. So focused on talking yanks. You keep adding hobbies. It's unbelievable. But, no, but like, I think this is something we probably shared even before we knew each other, which was like wanting to be encyclopedic about stuff. Like if you get interested in something, whether it was an author or a director or an actor or whatever,

you'd want to know everything there was to know about it because you were passionate and you had a lot of free time as an only child. But also there was some, I don't know, there was some like empowering element of that. Like I can get my arms all the way around this. And so for me as a kid, it was like, one kid in seventh grade being like,

there's an issue of X-Men where Wolverine dies on the cover. And I was like, holy shit! And then I was like, I better find these old graphic novels or borrow them or whatever so I know about days of future past. my children probably have that same instinct, definitely not about Wolverine, but broadly. Yeah.

And in between watching Spider-Man Homecoming and expressing her interest in watching what, far from home or whatever the European Jake Gyllenhaal one was, my older daughter Googled a lot of shit. Yeah. About the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. For Netflix specifically, I think this is also an interesting gamut

because what's the thing that people say about their shows on Netflix around here, around Los Angeles, is nobody promotes this. you know like this is not the promotion of this show I don't feel like it's special I feel like they threw a trailer up on YouTube in this place like you see billboards for what they're worth but more often than not people will be like I didn't even know this was on Netflix this just showed up on my on my front page in my algorithm or I saw it on the chart and I decided to click on it to find out why everybody else was watching it but there's not this like finally curated like editorial voice coming from Netflix that I think people feel feel like is guiding them towards stuff. But now, if you say, I saw the Rebel Ridge trailer and it looked mid or whatever, but then, and I saw this was happening a lot on Twitter when the movie came out, someone had basically just screen shared or whatever the pace conversation in Rebel Ridge, which is the best scene

in the movie, or one of the best scenes of the movie. It is definitely where the movie turns. So if you haven't seen Rebel Ridge, you might be like, got it. I don't need to see it now. But it is also the best advertisement for the movie. Yeah. This shit is sick, and there's a lot of it in this movie. It is like, I mean, I know we like to make connections between the stuff and our sports engagement,

but this really is like going on YouTube and watching a clip that confirms that Jalen Carter is the greatest defensive force that's ever played football based on four reps. But it's made me a believer. So it's very, very effective. I guess I have similar feelings to Rebel Ridge that I do with Jill and Carter. I was just laughing because, no, go ahead, yeah. But, yeah, this spins off another conversation that maybe we can just continue to have, you know. On a microphone in a podcast. Well, yeah, but it's not specific to this point of Netflix introducing a feature that, you know,

just adds to something that they are already good at. But the idea, Netflix doesn't need to advertise its specific things anymore because it's like, television doesn't advertise, itself, the networks do. Like, Netflix has become the place that people turn on first, and things show up there. And I think that there is a strain of viewer, and I'm concerned that it's mostly an older strain of viewer like us,

that really does like the curation that can come from a guiding aesthetic vision, which at this point literally means FX, where everything that they do from development deals all the way up through the actual marketing campaign, is run through the brain trust of the same people that have been there for over a decade, two decades, in some cases. And you can feel that. And that is a level of bespoke aesthetic care and direction. And it's why the ads look a certain way. And it's why, you know, English teacher is good, full stop. But we were ready to check out English teacher and be excited about it before it debuted because of the track record.

Sure. And there is a, it might not be a straight line, but like English teacher, and Shogun, I'm like, okay, yes, these came from the same hit factory. Whereas with Netflix, when something bubbles up, whether it's beef, and we touched on this a little bit last week, like, or the other day, whether it's beef or it's Ripley, I'm like, oh, look what washed up on the beach today. Yeah, right. I don't feel any connection between them other than the fact that two remarkable things happened, and I don't get the sense.

And again, this is all vibey stuff. I don't know if this genuinely doesn't matter. We're not a data of a podcast. No, but this doesn't matter to the shareholders report or whatever, but I didn't feel any connective creative tissue between Ripley and Beef. They just seemed like they got lucky, you know, and connected. Yeah. Does that matter?

No. And it probably doesn't, and to that point, because there isn't that unified voice, and we should say, like, there are executives at Netflix who are like, I know this is good, but it's a title wave of stuff because we're considering old, new reality, whatever. just to say that it probably then makes sense for Netflix to continue to outsource in a way its marketing to the users because they'll do the work for them and clearly you're doing a very good job of it. Look at the way baby reindeer took off. Look at the way suits just became a thing.

You're absolutely right. And I think that it'll be interesting to see whether or not like this feature basically makes an impact. It's like first of all I don't have it for whatever reason. That's never stopped us from talking about. It'll be interesting to see whether or not we start seeing, like, tons of Detroiters clips. Not necessarily, because Detroiters has been, like, a viral show for a while. Chris? But tons of Detroiters clips from using, like, this. Chris, I'm in on this feature.

All I've wanted to do over the last two weeks is this. You just opened it up for me. Because really, the only thing I'm watching is Detroiters right now. Yeah. And there's some stuff that I just wanted to send you specifically. This is right. Thank you. You put it in terms I can understand. Okay.

There's an episode early in the first season. It might be the second episode or third episode where they let the security guard downstairs pitch some commercials. And that wasn't in the marketing materials for season one of Detroiters and Comedy Central. But I know that when Chris Ryan sees this, he will become a fan. Yeah. I just know it. Okay. And real ones know.

Real ones know what I'm talking about. It would be funny if we could go back through with all the shows that we were like, this is so good. Why are people watching this and like revive them with these tools? Can you imagine how fun I would have been during the Americans run if I'd had these. Look at this smoldering. Exactly. Look how sad Matthew Reese looks in this clip, Chris.

Oh, sorry. I was. Hey, come on. This is like the first time you've ever jumped in. Come on. Well, so on TikTok, it's like a really big thing. There's some accounts that are. just all they do is just post. Yeah, they just show clips. And so people will watch like either

full shows or full movies entirely via like 10 minute clips on TikTok. What's, can you give me an example of something that you've done not to incriminate yourself? Okay, I've never like sat down and watched like a 30 minute show on TikTok entirely through like clips, but like sex in the city. Like they'll post a lot of like scenes from sex and city. But then they take them out of context and they're like, this is an unacceptable, like, this is a trespass by Charlotte. Miranda was a problem. Honestly true. I'm just wondering if this is the reason that Netflix is doing this is in order to like,

to capture this. Interesting. In a way, then, you could see it as the continuation of the password sharing lockdown, where they're like, we have to get the younger cohort, A, paying for the service and then be using it instead of. If they're going to share stuff, they have to share it through our thing so that somehow it counts as engagement for the shareholders. And it's also just like an interesting, because I feel like, I don't know if this was Netflix in particular, but I know a few streaming services for a while. It's like you couldn't even like screenshot a scene.

Like it would just go black. And so I feel like this is interesting. I learned that during the sex boat movies a few years ago. It's a, I think it's DMR or something like, I can't remember what the actual like, but it's basically for a while you could like screenshot Max, or HBO go or whatever. it was. You could be like funny Game of Thrones image. That was me. It's like it's me when I haven't had my coffee in the morning, you know, like, head on a pike. But you basically like, for me, it would, it required a degree of technical savvy that I didn't have if I wanted to make my own stuff. Yeah. And it always seems so like

counterintuitive. Like why would you like stop people from sharing like screenshots of like scenes that they found funny in the hopes it'll go like viral on social media? So it's like. I have an example of why you might not want that. Why? So like one of the more. popular gifts in my personal network right now is the scene for Manchester by the sea where Casey Affleck pulls the cop's gun out of its holster and puts it to his head. I've used it in a group chat with you. But mostly about Jalen Hurts throwing interceptions. And I could, I can imagine.

Kenny Launergan is okay with that. I would imagine Kenneth Launergan is not okay with that. I can imagine that given what I know about him, that he's probably like, that's not the context, I wanted that heartbreaking image of grief to be used. If he, listen, if Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Kenneth Lonergan had spent an hour with me in London's premier Philadelphia sports bar watching Baker Mayfield nuclear bomb my team. COVID-20. COVID-30.

He would have given me special dispensation to use that gift. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors.

Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing? something like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for, that's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas. Terms apply. Do you want to tell me a little bit about our beloved

Comcast Corporation, perhaps chopping it up? Well, there's not much to say because, what did you say? We weren't earlier a data-driven podcast. We are also not a financial-driven podcast and understand little of this. However, there was an interesting report today that on an earnings call earlier this morning, Comcast said that it would consider spinning off its cable networks and also seek a partner for its streaming services. And again, they were just, CEOs don't speak idly.

This wasn't just like, you know, just daydreaming on the phone at 2 in the morning. This was an intention behind this, basically admitting that because of continuing headwinds and like massive losses, including, as you pointed out, a loss on the Olympics, which, you know, this is also kind of a stark reminder of what the business is, which is by all accounts, including the accounts of this data-driven podcast, the Olympics on the NBC suite of networks this summer was a success. People loved it. And there was a great Olympics and people were watching it. And they were like, they finally figured out how to show us this stuff. And they lost half a billion dollars on it. So there is an enormous perhaps ever widening divide. Teacups good, though.

Exactly. So it's all awash. But like a divide between like this is a success in all ways except financial. Yeah. So what was interesting to me about this, there's a version of the story which is like, duh. This is obvious. Like people for years, even before it seemed like an imperative that there would have to be some contraction or combination. in the streaming business, people were like, well, Peacock really can't exist on its own.

It's going to have to find a partner, or it's going to get, maybe they're going to buy Paramount or merge with Paramount or maybe Max needs to, whatever. That's been out there as a possibility, and I'm sure tires have been kicked. The idea that they would somehow do what Fox did when it sold most of its assets to Disney. To Disney, but kept the news and kept the network. Yes. That seems really bizarre. So in this version that was floated, NBC, the Comcast.

would keep NBC, the broadcast network with its news division and everything. It would keep Peacock the streaming service. But get rid of CNBC and MSNBC. And Bravo and sci-fi and USA and all of the networks that provide content for Peacock, which is bizarre,

which obviously wouldn't be a step alone in a vacuum. And as you said, like CNBC and MSNBC are NBC news, right? Like, it's all one thing. They're arms of it. Yeah. But, I mean, yeah, but the office. I think they have different editorial missions, right?

I would love to hear you take five minutes to talk about MSNBC's editorial mission. Or we could just go live to our parents in Philadelphia. Like, my engagement with MSNBC. He can't keep getting away with this. Yeah. Well, if you've seen what this Trump has done now. My parents are so blue-pilled. Like, I deterrent, I call.

Yeah. I'm like, hello parents. You can hear Rachel Maddow, like, reading an affidavit at top volume? It's Lawrence. They love Lawrence. The calming voice America need. Do you know what's really funny is like... It's so loud. How they...

The way MSNBC hands off the ball to the next host. Yeah. Like there's the overlap moment where like Maddow and O'Donnell are on the screen together and they're just like, oh, Lawrence, it's good to see you. You are the watcher on the wall now. We should... We should... We should...

She's moved on to vigor of things. She's involved in the handoffs as well. Anyway. By the way, just so you know, just like words from the trend, of electoral battleground Pennsylvania. My dad thinks that if this stuff about him being a fascist and admiring Hitler gets out, it's a game changer. Yeah?

He's convinced. Enough people don't know about it. He voted, right? So we're... That's my worry. He would vote, but he doesn't want to miss a special Chris Hayes. 11 p.m. Eastern Time the other night and was just like, these damn Yankees.

And I was like, did you vote? I don't care that you've all of a sudden became a baseball fan. Like, it's just like, did you put him? your ballot. It is funny because their understanding the media is such as older people, and I'm not saying this is a bad thing.

We are increasingly older people ourselves, but my mother was genuinely shocked to learn that we do not have the 24-7 diet of political commercials here in totally irrelevant. We do when we're watching, like, like I think sports, like when I watched like a Texas

conference. Yeah, I learned. Does she really want, wow. I didn't know that about her. Okay, wait. So anyway, so I just thought this was an interesting sign of, I don't know, like the... Well, as we humorously talk about the presidency,

the battle for the presidency, and we'll, I guess, chat a little bit more about TV presidents. But I would expect some of this stuff to happen next year once we know who's in the house. Oh, like regulatory stuff. There's regulatory stuff. I think that the fact that this story is coming out, Paramount, obviously, is under new ownership

and has long had these kind of like ghost ship cable network. that they... They totally gutted and abandoned. MTV, Comedy Central. Yeah, I mean, MTV is essentially prank shows all day long now. The same prank show. And Comedy Central has this incredible library, but is a little bit of a walled off system.

And you can watch it on Paramount Plus now and everything, but, like, I don't... And Detroiters is on Netflix. They are selling off their assets and stuff like that. So I think that it would be very interesting to see if they decide, like, what we want to do is keep the flagship. Paramount or is Paramount. Paramount keeps CBS as the channel.

You know, Comcast keeps NBC as the channel, but tries to get rid of a lot of the cable extensions of that. I don't know. I don't really, like we said, we're not data-driven. I don't know. When I'm home watching television with my mom, I'm like, I can't believe how much of this is just, like, pharmaceutical ads, like, all day long.

Like, there's not a single useful product to, like, a non-pharmaceutical-taking person. It's just weirdly, have you dabbled? I mean, you might get curious. I think fundamentally it actually does just, come down to that, you know, sort of tossed off observation I was trying to make about the Olympics, which is they haven't figured out how to make any of this make sense or be profitable. Like the nature of streaming demands enormous investment in content.

It is the nature of it, right? And that was baked in, and that led to the boom times for a few years here, where if you are, if you're expecting people to pay a subscription fee, you need to continue to provide them with fresh content. The problem is there's just an absolute divorce of revenue stream from that investment, and so it was all on credit and stuff. But to use Kaya as an example, if she doesn't mind, like, she is a Peacock day one supporter because Peacock is where all the Bravo stuff goes. So if you like that, that is why you have it. But they haven't figured out a way to make that financially viable. The we need more stuff argument was the optimistic view of why Discovery and Warner Brothers,

should merge because they could make a streaming giant that could compete with Netflix because it would have Magnolia network stuff and also The Sopranos. And that's gone great. By all accounts, just everybody's happy. Investors, everybody getting a nice return. So, yeah, I don't know. But it is interesting that the unspoken, then spoken, then unspoken again thing has always been, something's got to give, something's got to combine.

And I think you're right. It's waiting for next year. And I guess you and I will be watching this from our adopted home country of the UK. Wait, before we do, I did want to touch on the Disney, the Marvel TV stuff. I watched it. I watched that if I'm still behind on Agatha. I intend to finish Agatha, but I'm a little bit behind. You're an ally of the witch community.

Did you finish Agatha? I don't need to answer that. I asked you. I've staked out my position here. Yeah, it's a funny time for us. Like usually we're usually on top of these shows and also like really tracking like, oh,

like the trailer for Daredevil looks really cool. I feel a little bit out of shape with this, you know, and partially, you know, I feel like I'm watching stuff every night from here and there. I've continued, I mean,

I've made this joke three times now, but I have really enjoyed T-Cup this week as like a Halloween watch. It's really nice. It's fun to watch. And the last two episodes of that, I think, go up today.

Yes. But Agatha finale, was last night, so I won't pretend to weigh in on that. But they do run the soon-on Marvel or on Disney Plus Marvel ad with it, the trailer that comes with it. The big notable one for me was Wonder Man. Can I go big picture? They showed a lot of stuff from Daredevil Born Again, which has been anticipated for quite some time. It's like the heavens rate of Disney Plus television shows.

They showed some scenes from Ironheart. They showed some of the animated stuff, Eyes of Wakanda, Marvel Zombies. What's up with Marvel Zombies? What if? I'm going to get to that. I just want to make, let me just say one thing. You know what they also showed a lot of? Deadpool and Wolverine.

Yeah. And I got to just do like a meta, just sort of like industry analyst. You're going to do a meta bit about Deadpool and Wolverine? Can you imagine anything worse? No, just like a little bit of an industry analyst. Okay. You know, like psychoanalyst. Yeah.

Watching this clip reminded me of, I feel like we all know, they're the people who on Instagram are lucky enough they go to Italy for a week in the summer and seem to have a great time and post a lot about it and then at the end of the year and they're like,

woof, 2023, you are one to remember and it's like a carousel of 14 pictures and 12 of them are from that week in Italy and the last one is just like a car accident with a positive COVID test at the end. That was the vibe I got from this.

Andy, where did you see that? I'm online too much. This is what people, that's just a vibe. That's what people are like. Like, what a great year. it was again and it's just like all the same. All of it is like Positano and it's my tombstone. Pauzy.

From Positano to Pauzy, my annual journey on social media. I'm just saying that like there's a lot of Deadpool and Wolverine this Marvel shows on Disney Plus trailer. Okay. They're like this is, you remember this? This worked, right? Yeah. It's probably good marketing when you are clearly, clearly shook and not that confident in the stuff that you have.

And speaking of like waiting for things to sort of blow over and see you. how they land, like Wonder Man, which I actually have kind of good feelings about and am interested in, did you notice when it's debuting? No. December 25. Oh, okay. This was shooting during the strike. So I have time to catch up on Agatha.

You have time to reread all of John Burns' run on West Coast Avengers. It would really let you know about Wonder Man. The Bain ticket, big ticket thing here other than the fact that it. Did you say the Bain ticket? I said the main ticket. Would you vote for Bain? Yes But who would Bain endorse

Well there was a lot of like Is Bain a birdie bro right Wasn't there like that happened around Darknet Rise? I feel like Bain would post something like Schwarzenegger You know where he was just like Listen up I hate all this political bullshit But if you listen to me brother

Coming for someone bored of the darkness I can't go back to it I think that's why I'm with her be posting lioness clips like Zoe Santana, Trini snapped in this moment. I forgot Bain's voice. You do a good Bain's voice. No, it's not actually very accurate.

It reminds me of it. Anyway. The big ticket item in this was the Daredevil show, and I think the other interesting psychoanalysis of this is them kind of realizing maybe perhaps sheepishly behind the scenes that the Marvel Television Initiative on Netflix from almost a decade ago was a success. Right? If only we had moments then to.

share. To share... Well, I think we would have shared a lot. We would have shared two things. We would have shared the Daredevil fight, hallway fight. That did get shared, like, on YouTube, that clips. And we would have shared Iron Fist and then, like, never cancel your Netflix subscription. That's right.

They really did this. No, but, like, it was an interesting... Joanna Robinson has come on and talked to us about this, and her book details this a lot, that there was a big schism in Marvel, and Jeff Loeb was running Marvel TV as a separate unit that was not getting along with a film unit, and they made those, like... grounded shows that culminated in the defenders. But there was a moment when Daredevil was pretty good. Jessica Jones was pretty good.

Luke Cage was pretty good. Your guy, John Bernthal, made The Punisher. Did not engage, but that's John Bernthal in a TV show. You don't seem like much of a Punisher fan to me, honestly. I can't believe you said that. What makes you say that? Are you a Punisher fan? I don't like to be known that well, you know.

I feel like I've been presenting something different these last 12 years in the podcast. don't like extrajudicial vigilanteism, Chris. Sorry to disappoint. But now they've come full circle and just seem they're actively saying, look, we're back. Like we're doing this again. The same, all that's canon, Bernthal's Back baby, Donofrio. You know, yeah. That was successful, weirdly.

And I think Daredevil was a smart, like Daredevil doesn't really work as a movie. Daredevil actually does work as a TV show. These things can be done. and the idea that Kevin Feige came in by saying, like, we're going to use TV as brand extension for the movies. Look, you don't want to say it didn't work, but I'll say it.

I have no problem saying it. I would describe it as thus. There used to be a time, I'm sure that I had different expectations as a viewer and maybe a different relationship to this stuff where a trailer like this would come and it would be like a bullet train in Japan. I'd be like, look at this, the wonders,

what we have done. And a trailer, like, what we see here is a little bit more like at the beginning of a spaghetti Western when like a rickety, like, train full of coal slowly makes its way finally into the station riddled with bullet holes from all the like robberies that sustained. And I'm like, oh, you made it. You got here. I'm willing to say that that was a better metaphor than my person who went to Pasitano got COVID and died. I like them both.

No, yours was better. You wanted to talk about television presidents. Marvel Zombies is a weird thing that happened in the comics where people. People got really into the idea of just telling stories where a zombie apocalypse eats all the Marvel characters. And then there's like a big war of Captain America zombie versus Dr. Doom zombie. And they made a cartoon of it. That's pretty cool. And the animated stuff, like with X-Men 97, seems to be a flourishing unit of the larger corporation.

And they're doing amazing Spider-Man, right? Friendly neighborhood. But like, again, like that, they seem to have done a good job. That's servicing a segment of the fan base the way like the Star Trek stuff services, like the diehards. They want to see this stuff. It's fun. It's a little more bendable. It's not super canonical. It's certainly not as expensive. I think the other Wonder Man looks good and fun, and we'll see in over a year from now. Ironheart, I don't know. I don't know. Like Ironheart does seem, it could be really good, but it also could be like Echo, like the last crumbs of just some

initiatives that didn't really pan out, that they are trying to just sort of sneak into the consciousness. Sure. We'll see. This episode is brought to you by the Active Cash Credit Card Card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets at the game or grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The Active Cash credit card from Wells Fargo, be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. So you're saying with Hilton Honors, I can use points for a free night's day anywhere? Anywhere.

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Book your spring break now. We have an election on Tuesday. Not us, brother. We're in Kier-Starmer's Britain. I'm going for like, bring her work and vacation. You just, oh my God, he admitted it. I like people we're starting to make terribly off-based guesses. Like what?

Oh, I don't, I only look at that one friend who's dead now is Instagram. R-I-P, I don't actually know. You think I'm going to go back on Reddit after the month I have? And I have a mixed feelings about this. I mean, not that anyone gives a shit, but I do like, there's part of me that feels like it's my duty to like watch counties have like their tallies come in and stuff like that.

There's another part of me that's quite looking forward to being aware that it's happening, going to bed in England and waking up and probably finding out that we haven't decided yet. But like, you know. Are you going to, this is an important question that we will be talking about a lot next week. If you, let's say election night or even the next night, this is going to stretch on possibly, probably.

Let's say you wake up in the night, maybe you need to take a bathroom trip. Are you going to just peek at your phone and potentially doom yourself to a night of anxiety? I hope not. I mean, you'll have been there for a few more days than me. I think you'll be a little bit more acclimatized. Do you think you'll stay up all night? Oh, no, no. I will go to bed.

I cannot. But I do have, I have some lived experience. For example, I was in London when the Philadelphia Eagles played the Greenfield. Bay Packers in the season opening game in Brazil? I don't know. It's quite the same stakes. For me? I know.

I'm saying exactly. It's not the same stakes. And I did wake up briefly 2.30 a.m. and I was not strong enough not to look at what was going on and see that I had 62 texts from you and Zach. It was muted, but I saw. And they were the best kind of text to look at it two in the morning, too. It was like, yes.

No. Which is sort of like what America is going to be doing. Okay. But we wanted to do a little bit of a little bit of. of a chat about presidents in television. This is your idea, so I'd love for you to set it up. I know you wanted to just do like a kind of like a top five all-time. I feel like we could have more recurring bits.

I'll just put it up there. And I feel like being like, okay, who are your top five TV presidents would be a fun way to start. Sure. Of course, I don't know if I could actually come up with five, but I had some questions. I have five spaces here. Did you make the story? I didn't do the exercise. I'm actually protesting it with a third-party vote.

No, of course I did. but yeah so how do you want to do you want to go back and forth I feel like you do you enjoy content about the presidency some yeah do you prefer yeah I do shows that mock and or scare you like not mock you but mock the office mock maybe the right sort of hubris of the people in there or have like a you know uplifting kind of like a doctor strange love kind of like oh shit here comes the nukes like I don't like that you know or no no

No, my favorite... Or do you prefer this affirmative romantic idea of, like, Jed Bartlett? Well, I think that's a good question. I think it depends on the medium because I was... When I was thinking about this exercise that I texted you about 24 hours ago, I... My favorite fictional president story is probably the heartwarming 1993 film Dave. I love that movie.

That is a classic who was on cable all the time in the 90s, too, and I just feel like it was a warm blanket. I like the optimism. and sweetness of that movie because it is in a limited dosage. Similarly, like, I really love the American president, the movie that, you know, that Sorkin wrote that then they were like, can you do this on TV, please, and led to the West Wing. I was a bigger fan of that movie than I ever was of the show, the West Wing.

Okay. Because there is something about the, yeah, like the sort of dream-affirming nature of it that I find cloying after a certain amount of time. Okay. And I think that, especially given the way the last few years, has gone, and I wrote a big piece about this at the time, like I found Veep to be, in many ways,

a better and more insightful political show than House of Cards. So I would say those are my taste. But do you have Jed Bartlett on your list? Well, it's, you know, I mentioned watching West Wing clips. Yeah. And I know that rewatching what West Wing is, it's probably one of the most popular,

I think, cumulatively rewatches, at least anecdotally, like over the last, like, five, six, zero seven years. There's obviously like old pot. podcast industry built up around rewatching it. I can't remember how long I was like a weekly viewer of West Wing, but I definitely

like sort of tailed off and stopped around the John Wells takeover era. And so I always just assumed it was a massive step down. Oh my God, buddy. I am, I genuinely this is not a bit. This is not me going for perversity

clout. I watch more of the John Wells than the Sorkin. I'm not arguing that it's better. Basically every episode of West Wing for three seasons, four seasons. This was during his, like, you know, he has talked about it. He was there was some substance abuse. He was burning the midnight oil, basically, and had to step away for a variety of reasons. But wrote basically every episode up until the cliffhanger, I think, when one of Bartlett's daughters is kidnapped.

Isn't Elizabeth Moss? She was one of his daughters, but I don't remember which one was. I have not done a rewatch during COVID. Then eventually, not only does John Wells sort of come in and take over, but West Wing's, does this pretty cool thing, which is that it does an election on the show. I love this. Okay, talk about it. So the, you know, whenever we talk about ongoing shows, one of the conversations we have is about like how does it reinvent itself? How do you maintain the stability of what people like about it, but also changing it? And what was exciting to me, even as like, I wasn't even a TV

critic then at all. But like West Wing was so, and it was beloved for this, but so like familiar in its sort of old-fashioned ways that it was not really about people watching a show about American politics or about the White House in the same way that ER became, or Gray's Anatomy is about a hospital. It was about the presidency of the unflappable Jed Bartlett. Yeah, right. And near the end of its time, they were like, well, what if we, what if we widened the lens here a little bit? And so there was the race to succeed him. Did Bartlett win re-election? He did.

Okay. He did. And there was a whole thing where he had to step down because he was too close to something and John Goodman became president briefly. Oh, really? You missed a lot.

I mean, it did get a lot more soap operatic. I forget the Goodman part, but I have since gone back and watched the Matt Santos. This is what I want to talk about. So I would say the Sorken years were operatic. The Wells years were more soap operatic, but they both had a lot of good things going for them.

It was Alan Alda as moderate, Republican candidate. California Senator, right? I think so. Arnold Vinnick and the great Jimmy Smith's as Texas. He was basically the Obama surrogate. This is all happening like in 2007, I think, in the lead up to what actually happened in the world, Matt Santos. And that became the main story with like Leo working for Santos and becoming his running mate at a certain point. And I think Josh or something becoming a consultant on one of the campaigns. Josh worked for Santos. Yes. And one of the things that they did that season was they did a live debate episode. Yes. You can watch clips of on YouTube, but you can also obviously watch watch it.

It's kind of fascinating. Like, they basically put Smiths and all the, like, on a debate stage, shoot it like a debate. I mean, not like any debate we ever see anymore. But, like, it is, like, you know, very written. Like, there's a big moment where Vinnick talks about aid to Africa, like financial aid to African nations. And then does, like, kind of the problem with Africa isn't the aid. that we give, we have to lower their taxes. Yeah.

Essentially, and like everybody's like, who's like, no, I'll let me explain myself. And it's like this. It was so thoughtful. It was so respectful. Just to be clear, Sorkin left after the fourth season after having written or co-written

85 of the first 88 episodes. That is so crazy. That's like, remember the episode of Family Ties where Michael J-Box takes speed? In the chair. And his dad's like, Alex, did you take those ditches in the backyard?

Yeah, I did, Dad. And then they made, that was, he left after 88 episodes, and they made 154 total. Okay. The show put up numbers. Yeah. It was a problem. It's also funny when you watch those episodes or if you watch scenes from the Jimmy Smith's era, like the people who are like Patricia Heaton's on the show. Oh, yeah.

Like, Ron Silver. The cast was incredible. But I think that people's mileage with this may vary. Like, I love that last season. and it maybe mirrored my own youth in naivete or the country in a sense that I was like, this is the best of us. Like, this is what it's supposed to be. And I, on my list, I know we're sort of doing our usual thing where we just talk about

around the thing. But like, I put Santos. Yeah. On my list. Because I thought that that- Because he offered Vinick's state twice. Exactly. Reached across the aisle.

But look, like you can remember, like, and Sorkin wasn't even involved in that, but that was the Sorkinian ideal in a way, writ large, of like, we have two great choices. and it's really just more of a head versus heart coin flip of like what type of country do we want to be. And in a moment when we were trying to turn the page on a pretty dark era and like Obama represented all these things to many people, the Santos thing was awesome. You can also in that episode that you're talking about see the roots of Sorkin's op-ed where he was like, there's only one man to replace Joe Biden on the ticket, Mitt Romney. And we're like, keep that shit on NBC at 9 p.m., brother. Put that thing into episode 84. But I don't know.

I guess you're catching me at this moment where I'm like, is it so bad that we had something to look at that was aspirational? Sure. That's not usually me, but that is how I feel thinking about it at this moment. Yeah, I think it's more often than not the opposite of that, right?

Like it's either something to laugh at or something to fear. The person who I put up at the top of my list, honestly, as a TV president, And, like, I have to admit that in a future episode of the big picture, I speak at length about the 24 president administrations. Oh, the Palmer's? Yeah, but like all the various brothers who have, like... Interesting.

And so 24 is a movie. And 24 is... No, it's a TV series. Right. And so you talked about it on what? On the picture. Oh. Oh.

Huh. Okay. No, I just... Kai, did you get that? Okay. You can keep talking about how you wish you could vote for Arnold Vinnick. No, no. It's fine.

That's fine. I guess I just, I'm going to surface my Dave thoughts on this podcast. No, I was just saying that I can't remember the actual like succession line of the presidents on 24. So I can't pick by. Dennis Hayesberg. He was the, like David Palmer was the OG president. You know, his wife got involved. His brother got involved. And then there was that Weasley VP. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of. Gregory Ittson played him, right? I've never forgot that name.

But my favorite TV president just as like a kind of curveball is Mayor McDonald from Battlestar Galactica as President Laura Rosalind. Wow. She had an election in space, dog. You're a big Battlestar guy. I love Battlestar guy. Yeah. How, we've been doing this podcast for 12 years. You have never said that on Mike. I believe

I have. Battlestar Galactic is one of the best shows of the century. Maybe on the big picture. This is, I'm literally learning new information about you right now. It's so good. Have you seen Battlestar? Famously no. Infamously no. Okay. But by the way, I can't wait until I get hired to

write the reboot of that in six months. This podcast is going to be flames on YouTube. Go on. She had to deal with things that you can't even imagine. I love this for you. You know? I fucking love this. She has to be like, yo, do we go to New Caprica or not?

And? Don't spoil it. I don't want to spoil it. And then there's an election. Yeah. She runs against Gaias. She runs against the fucking Claude Weelan who runs the first desk in slow horses this past season. Do the aliens vote or do they don't have the franchise?

Well, it's complicated because there's the sylons. There's like a bunch of like red shirt silons that just get blown up. But then there's the 12, you know? Like from X-Men? It's basically like these clones that like show up and can be reborn and stuff like that. And it's like, who are they? That's one of the great fucking like gotcha moments in TV history is when you're like, oh my God. I'm reeling.

Did you watch this in real time? No, this is the true golden age for me of. Yeah. you'd be at a bar and somebody like, no one's real good. Battlestar Galactica. And you'd be like, no what I'm going to do this weekend

with my girlfriend? Watch 18 episodes of Battlestar Galactica in a pure hungover fugue state because we were out until 2.30 on Friday. And then just stay in for two days. That's beautiful because most conversations in bars that area were like, do you know what's really good? Club drugs.

This is a much more wholesome vision of New York City Nightlife than I ever remembered. You didn't hear that stroke song about Battlestar Galactica. his election. There 100% was a strokes B-side called Caprica. Yeah. That absolutely is capable.

Okay, so Laura Roslin's my number one. You're mad. I don't know if you want to rank them, but I had Laura Roslin. I had Santos number one. I've got a curveball for number two. Do you remember a show called Designated Survivor? See, I can't tell. Are you doing shows that you watched?

You watched Designate a Survivor. I had to watch. I didn't finish. Kiefer Sutherland is like the Chamber of Commerce guy. No, he's like Secretary of Education. And he's the one who doesn't go to the state of the union. And they blow that shit up. Yeah, and then he becomes president.

He becomes president. And I watched a bunch of the first season because I think I was still, I think I was still a TV critic? I'd be paid to watch television. I think so. That would be amazing if you were just like a pedestrian. Weirdly, no. It was post-Grantland.

So I guess I was like, I can't quit the game. The game needs me. I think we podcasted about it a little bit. And I watch a bunch of it. I want to be clear here. There are 53 episodes of this show. I did not see those episodes. Okay. And what's fun about this is, in a way, it's an opportunity to talk about, like, the perils of trying to make television in this larger era. This is already almost 10 years ago. But when this was announced, this was a big, big thing for ABC. It was just like broadcast is back. You know, we're going to piggyback on like the House of Cards vibes and people are into streaming. And so we're taking a major star of not just broadcast TV, but of serialized intense TV, Kiefer's first role on TV post 24. And we're going to, we're going to be able to. And we're going to be in the TV. And we're

we're going to jam together all the things that you have liked before. It's a little bit West Wing. It's a little bit House of Cards. It's a little bit 24. And it went so crazy, so fast. Because trying to cram... Because Kiefer just can't leave it alone. So President Tom Kirkland, who was like a meek secretary of education, I just want to...

You know who you were saying? Like, look at all the people that were on the West Wing. We don't really cover a broadcast to this degree, so we rarely have conversations like this. So you go down the cast list and it's like Kiefer and a district. Tasha McElone and Cal Penn and Maggie Q and a lot of TV names, right? Malik Yoba. And then you keep going down and you're like, oh, okay, Ashley Zuckerman was on the show. Remember Ashley from Succession?

He played the liberal aide of... The guy that Shiv has an affair with, yeah. Yeah, and then he was also on a teacher. We talked about him a lot in bands. He's a good actor. So let me just read you his character description from this show. And I feel like I don't know if this makes people want to rewatch or it's just more of like a nostalgic time for what brought.

broadcast could be or couldn't be. Ashley Zuckerman is Peter McLeish, former congressman from Oregon, later vice president of the United States. Peter is initially established as the sole survivor of the Capitol bombing and hailed as a national hero and eventually becomes vice president. But after investigating him for months, Hannah Wells concludes he was involved in the attack. Who's Hannah Wells? Natasha McAllone. I'll circle back. Leading to him being shot and killed by his wife before taking her own life so the FBI could not gather more information in the conspiracy. You scroll down. You scroll down.

Oh, Rob Morrow from Northern Exposure was on the show as like a muckraking journalist. That's cool. Terry Serpico, constant that guy. Yeah. As Patrick Lloyd, former CEO of Browning Reed, like a major multinational. He's the founder and leader, it turns out, well, Wells, I'll tell you who Wells is, uncovers Lloyd is the mastermind behind the capital attack, subsequently leading to former Secretary of Education, now President Kirkman, ordering a drone strike on

Patrick Lloyd's corporate bunker killing him because of the threat of him carrying sarin gas on his person that could kill thousands. Should we turn this podcast into a designated survivor? Michael J. Fox, Angenu Ellis, Anthony Edwards, like, Lauren Holly. Daniel Day

Lewis. Daniel Day fucking Lewis as the sarongas. President Lincoln. Who visits the government. Who Thomas Kirkman talks to. I think I'm not mad at just how off the wall ill the show was. Let's just put together our starting five between the two of us. I think

that this is a good project. So we have Laura Roslyn, played by Mary McDonald and Battlestar Galactica. President-elect Matt Santos. President-elect Matt Santos from West Wing, late period. We have what's President Kirkland? Say his, Kirkland brand president. No, I'm sorry.

It is Thomas Kirkman. Kirkman. If we have a low period, can we just turn this into a designated Survivor pod? If we have a low period. Great call. This show is two seasons on ABC. Can you imagine me fucking having to be like, Andy, did you watch a designated Survivor E2, like S2E14 yet?

It's more, Kaya's just on Fear the Walking Dead. She's fine. This is actually her hell because she doesn't have the internet today because she's her computer's broken so she can't look at other stuff. So sorry. I've never been more engaged with this podcast. No wonder. That's why she was jumping in. No wonder.

I was like, I have something to say. Also, my vote is Selena Meyer. You definitely get a vote. Okay, so the Kaya vote. You know what? Women might swing this election, Kaya. I've actually been reading a lot of compelling arguments that it's actually traitorous for women to vote differently than the men in the room at the same time.

So Selena Meyer, Laura Roslin, President-elect Matt Santos. I actually was going to put Richard Splett as my V-President. Because I've been a Detroiter's mood with Sam Richardson. But Splat never occupied the big desk. I think he becomes president at the event. like in the flash forward. Oh, really?

I think if I remember correctly. Yeah. Oh, my God. And I feel like just no list here. Really. Yeah, he became president in 2041. Works. And this is almost a kind of a good way to end this, is I was going to throw Tony

Goldman on as a fits from scandal. I watched the first season, at least, of scandal. And then... I watched some of the first season, for sure. And it's just so funny because I do think he murders some people. I'm not positive about that, but I'm very... certain that there's like a lot of crimes committed by his office. That's okay.

But now he's so attractive. Do you know what I mean? The people are just like ah, wouldn't it be cool if he was president? Old Hollywood. Didn't he and Gary Washington go on stage of the DNC? Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, he's out there. And people were like, that guy. If only we had this handsome murderer.

We're so cooked. I'd let him say order a drone strike on my corporate poker. If you know what I fucking mean. Can I throw one other thing out there? Did you ever watch Tanner 88? Do you remember this? Yeah, I mean, that's like you're doing the work now.

This is good stuff. It is streaming on Criterion. Is it? It is. I haven't revisited it. I want to now that I realize it. I think it was on Showtime originally. It's Robert Altman.

It's Robert Altman directing a kind of mockumentary political series written by Gary Trudeau, the cartoonist by Dunesbury, about a liberal politician trying to get the Democratic nomination in 88. I think Dukakis shows up in this show. Which in retrospect, you look back on that and you're like, maybe don't go on that show, don't go in the tank. Do you think that's what lost in the election is showing up on Tanner 88? Showtime in 1987. But that's not someone who becomes president, but that's a pretty good political series.

Yes. But I think, interestingly, I think we, if you go by our list, Santos's side, we are sculpting out a robust, I think, kind of aggressive foreign policy mandate. I think that the watch, if not domestic policy. The watch would like to put forward a platform of Kirkman Meyer. Okay. I mean, the truth is, and this is why the American president and the West Wing were really, really, really smart. And VEP, too, in its way, a good president is definitely not making cliffhanger endings every week. If I could just make that point to America.

So having it be about the day-to-day, slightly lower-e. stakes stresses of the support staff, you know, and like all the hubbub around the office, very, very smart. Yes. Very smart. One step down from the big chair is for the best. Otherwise, you find them launching drone strikes on business leaders in their corporate bunker.

It sounds like we didn't watch that episode. It's not just that episode. It's that like they did two seasons on ABC and ABC is like, I think we're done here. But then E1, which like, own the show, was like, oh, no, we're fucking not. So where did they put it? They moved production to Toronto and made a third season for Netflix. And in the Wikipedia, it's like, numerous members of the cast did not return for season three, unlike you fucking think. Because of drone strikes?

No, because of the, I would say the budget cuts they went along with going from one thing to another. Okay. Let's wrap it up there. This seems like, I feel like we're mirroring the national mood in this episode, and I'm thrilled by it. No, you on Monday. No, I'm traveling, baby. I still love you, America, but I need some distance. We will be recording next week.

We'll probably talk about Dave the Jackal, which is coming on Peacock. On Peacock for us recently, but we know we love an international espionage romp. We do. And tons of other stuff coming, say nothing on FX is coming. We're really excited about that.

That's November 14th. Yellowstone's coming back. I think if there's any Taylor Sheridan show, you actually like, it'll be Landman. Oh, yeah, I'm going to check it out for sure. I'm coming soon too. Kai, thank you so much.

Chris, you have, I think, the ability you could probably get a UK passport because of your dad. Like, because of our long professional association, do you think that I could put that on a form? That you are my friend and that you... Well, we have a close... I'm just trying to... You're contributing a lot to the British economy right now.

I think you have a fair shout. I think of... This is from solo dinners at bars. Yeah. That's a growing growth industry. All right. Yeah, try and stay offline. Granskies.

That's my advice. Tallyho. Bye.