The Watch - Paramount Settles States’ Antitrust Lawsuit. Plus, ‘Lanterns’ Episode 6.

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Chris and Andy talk about Paramount reaching a settlement with state attorneys general over an antitrust lawsuit, bringing the David Ellison-owned studio one step closer to the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (1:59). Then they react to HBO winning a bidding war for a new drama series starring Javier Bardem (19:36). Later, they discuss ‘Lanterns’ Episode 6 (29:49). Finally, The Watch: After Dark (56:26). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Follow us on IG and TikTok! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Studio Production: Jason Arreola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to by Uber Eats. You can get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Sorry, you can't get a beach deliver, but you can get a peach. A canoe, no. Shampoo, yes. A rocket? No way. Chocolate, yes way. It's everything you need, including $10 off your first grocery order with code,

anything 30, 30. Get almost, almost anything with Uber Eats. Order now. Order a minimum of $30 required, valid on grocery, convenience, retail, specialty foods, or flower delivery orders only, Terms and conditions apply. Mr. President, my company formed the explosion on our rig.

On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap to blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

What would happen if I stop doing? You starve. You freeze to death. That's what? With great power. Comes great deniability. I'm not the first nanny. Digger. See the trailer online.

Only here's October. We're sick. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Ringer.com and joining me in the studio, first in line for one of John Stewart's panic rooms.

It's Andy Greenwald. I thought we were calling them not, what is it, not necessarily panic room? Whatever it is, that's where you watch the Eagles. I'll tell you something. Every room I walk into is a panic room. You seem stable. You seem great. You seem even keel.

It was a beautiful weekend here in Los Angeles. The weather was nice. The weather was nice. It's a Monday here. We're going to talk about lanterns. We're going to talk about the settlement between Paramount and the state's attorney generals who had sued them. Is it too late to get like barrister wigs as a prop for when we do legal talk? Is that something we have issued?

It would probably be the most expertise we brought to. the proceedings. That's what I'm saying. We need to distinguish somehow that we are not qualified. We got some other news and notes at the top. The watch at Spotify.com, the watchpot underscore at Instagram. You can watch us on YouTube at Ringer-Dash TV with the Ringer Prestige TV podcast. They're covering slow horses these days.

Yeah, you can listen to us on Spotify where you can watch us. You can listen to us on all sorts of podcast platforms. National Public Radio. Can you listen to us there? No. But I always have a dream of just. doing away with this whole persona that I've built up and just being like, I'm with Andy Greenwald. We're going to talk about episode six of lanterns.

Have you ever listened to my solo podcast? No, honestly. No, but that's kind of my brand. No, I've listened to your work. I think it's wonderful. You're familiar. Yeah. Which part do you like best?

How are you doing, bud? Donny Candles, the Eagles, victorious? Where do you want to start with real life? No, no. I think we should do that after dark. Okay, after dark. I think we should do it. Let's talk about the biggest news in Hollywood, which is,

I had a whole A block dedicated to the various leaks that have been coming out over the last four days. David Ellison taken out to tape measure and sizing up some office space in Tennessee. The subsequent hysteria that came out after it was announced that Paramount was starting to look at moving to Nashville in earnest. Then there were discussions over the weekend, leaks over the weekend about how negotiations were ongoing between a group of states. Attorney General is led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta with Paramount over the merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers. There is discussions about penalties that would be incurred if they didn't release 30 movies a year.

All sorts of business was getting out into the streets. As we were driving in today, it was announced that a settlement is nigh, if not already official or I think it will be made official today. So we'll operate as if it's going to happen and hopefully Yeah, I just want to say how heroic you are. This is not unlike Jeff Daniels in season one of the newsroom when he had an A-block planned and then we got Osama bin Laden and he just bravely crossed out everything.

In this case, it would be if Jeff Daniels who played Will McAvoy. God damn, wow. What a poll. And I'm sure he and Don were kind of in a corner being like, how should we approach this A-block? And I bet that A-block would have been, when are we going to get Osama bin Laden? And then it was, we got him.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. My A block was just, what's up with this merger? No, I think honestly then, it's like, when are we going to get Osama bin Laden? And then the A block becomes U.S. bin Laden reach super cool truce. Yeah. I want to ask you about this on a couple of different levels. Sure. Let's start in a place of personal professional interest in the matter.

Thank you so much. You know, you really can't think global until you act local. Well, I wanted to ask you more than like as an industry watcher or, a podcast or about television, but as somebody who works within it and kind of has one foot in and one foot out, you know? Which foot? What does this mean?

And what does this mean to you as a creative person working in Hollywood that this has happened? I mean, I think that it is important to note that all of the industry unions were very, very vociferously against this. Mike Scher, creator of Parks and Rec in the Good Place, penned a pretty strongly worded op-ed in Hollywood Reporter about why the creative community is against this.

I mean, I think there are so many ways to consider this entire deal, and obviously the most important one is the great unknown of what is to come. But I think generally, when you have contraction in an industry, it is not good for workers. It is not good for people

whose job it is to try to have a robust open market in which to sell their goods. There are increasingly limited options for creatives, both whether it's someone trying to sell a show or someone who is just a working gaffer trying to make a living in this town to ply their trade. And not only are there now fewer options and fewer potential buyers, but there is more likely to be a continuation of what has already been the case within the industry, which is a sort of low-key suppression.

where the bigger players will say, like, this is the money we're paying for this. And now, look, you could be on the other side of it. And you could say that, and this is absolutely what the more technocratic, or just fully tech bros who have taken over the industry say, which is you kind of can't have a healthy business run on handshakes, backslaps, and we'll get you on the back end kind of deals. I mean, so much of the success and largesse of Hollywood has been based

on that, on personal relationships, on, you know, this is the, this is the union scale for the job you're doing, but we're going to sign you to an overall deal that reflects everything that you're doing for the company and to reward you for success and blah, blah, blah. It is not unreasonable from a purely capitalist point of view to say that that is unsustainable and potentially inequitable. But the flip side of it, which is there are now going to be five buyers, whereas a few years ago there were eight or nine is just that's just bad news and that is before you even get into the the very complicated specifics of what the ellisans what paramount uh represent what they have done in the past with their increased power and where they may go in the future with what is now just

becoming an almost comically insane amount of debt it is a comically insane amount of debt that's going to result in inevitable job losses especially because of the redundancy yeah you know Of the redundancy, but also as soon as you come into a situation, as David Zazlov proved when he bought Warner Brothers or merged Warner Brothers with discovery in the first place, is that when you bring it, when you're buying something mostly with debt, and even though there is a lot of liquidity around this deal, it does seem like there is also a lot of financing going into this deal, from what I can understand. It's just going to be a lot of, like, changes made to the landscape of television and for the people who work in it. And I think there will be less jobs, and that sucks. You know, I've been trying to imagine what I would think about the situation if the players were different. And if maybe just some of the names were different, if Paramount was trying to buy Peacock, or if Peacock was trying to buy HBO, or if Netflix had won the bidding and bought Warner Brothers and now Batman in the DC universe and Harry Potter and Game of Thrones and all these things were under the...

the control of a Netflix regime that I think we've had some questions about like the quality control over the last couple of years or at least I have in terms of like, you know, this kind of cheeseburger style television and I don't know. I mean, I think ultimately what stunned me about the announcement, not stunned me, but what I kind of came away from with the announcement is how hard it is to to kind of shake these people down when it's all lawsuits and there's no actual government oversight

of these things. Maybe nudging things towards what might be the better outcome or more equitable outcome or this idea that everyone wins when there is more competition. And if you have a federal trade commission that's probably going to be doing whatever it is that the president

wants you to be doing and then the president is going to be looking out for the people who have been there. for him financially and support-wise over the years, then it's easy to just kind of throw your arms up. I guess I'll reserve judgment and see how these things shake out in terms of what we get to watch and how they get made and what quality they are. I mean, it's not as simple or reductive of binary as we might like it to be.

Like I don't know the man, but when David Ellison says that he venerates and adores Hollywood, that he wants to have 30 movies and theaters a year, that he believes that his, he alone can fix it, which, by the way, is not always a winning strategy historically, but that his main goal here is to preserve the legacy of film studios

making movies and releasing them in theaters and working in Los Angeles, except if he doesn't get what he wants and then he's going to move everyone to Nashville, which, by the way, is some real shitty gangster stuff. If we take him at his word, then maybe we do need the billionaire to save us. But, you know, as a former Washington Post subscriber, I once said the same thing out loud.

Like, it's, it's, you're missing some incredible op-eds, man. You know? Really? It's really opening my mind. That's fantastic. One of my favorite op-eds recently was in New York Times over the weekend said, Trump has finally lost the plot. And I was like, the plot to Jeffrey Eugenity's marriage plot? Like, what do we, how we, how thin are we slicing this garlic, Paul Servino? Anyway, it's not necessarily that the shows that we watch in the short-term are going to be ruined. Like, I apologize for this that usually there's a bad pattern I have

when I'm reading a book that's quite long, I will bring it up on successive podcasts until I'm done. So I'm bringing up the fact that I am reading this HBO book for Tinderbox. And one of the things that it really reminded me... It's an oral history written by Jim Miller.

But, like, how the Time Warner merger in the 90s was catastrophic. And everyone was like, HBO is doomed, but HBO was so uniquely successful and culturally whole that it survived. Then there was the AOL merger, which was even more catastrophic, and HBO plugged on. HBO has continued to thrive and succeed in this Zazlov era. I think Casey has been pretty public being like plusa shawls.

Like, this is always been... Yes, this is what we do. Yeah. And so the worry that you're hearing is definitely downstream from this moment. It is not that HBO is now in existential peril. or that the, you know, that the wire's going to be remade with, you know, with the good guys and bad guys swapped or something. Like, that's not, that's not where we're headed.

Only this strong-willed politician, Clay Davis. Yeah, exactly. With the will of the people. So I just think it is a, it's concerning and it's distressing. And your point about, like, you know, who's in. charge of it. Look, I mean, I try to be as transparent as I can about these things, but like, I am working for HBO. I work for Netflix. I'm working for Amazon. I've done work for Paramount. Like, I, the personal relationships and the...

It's just fingerprints all over you, man. I am, I am not the, I am an imperfect vessel for outsider rallying cries of change, but as someone who is, you know, in trying to navigate all this, I just think it's a larger bummer for the industry. And I think I would feel that way, no matter what, no matter who is buying who and what was potentially being contracted. I'm trying to think of if there's anything else about this that we could even begin to speak to. I think your point that you made earlier too about it being ultimately the states, I think, had the, they had momentum in the sense that like, is anyone rooting for this merger other than the Ellison's and the White House? Like, is anyone like, this is awesome? I can't wait for this merger.

No, they had the wind at their backs in that sense. And I think the delay of discovery into a trial in March was costing paramount dearly, as you saw from some of their behavior. But there was a note in one of the articles that gone up, I believe it was in Bloomberg, that the several states were basically like, we don't have the money to fight this. This. And this is where you get into like, if you don't have a mechanism in place that's dependable that adjudicates these kinds of situations. then you wind up getting into a pissing contest with the richest man in the world. You know? Well, the other one is also on that side.

Right. So, like, if we really want to live in this world where it is a race to the bottom of just oligarchs controlling every single aspect of everything we do, which, for the moment, we're just greasing it and that's what we're doing. Well, I've got good news for you today. But, again, we are now talking about things much larger than the usual remit of this podcast. Okay. Let's talk about what we usually talk about on this podcast, which is actual TV. Now, I'll just do a bit of housekeeping and say that we'll split Thursday show. Andy and I will talk about Slow Horses episode two a bit and some other stuff. And then I think Van and I are going to talk about the entirety of really one of the crowding achievements of David Ellison's young career, which is Lioness. And it's the conclusion of season three. You know, I don't want to spoil anything for our listeners who maybe haven't cut up at the end of Lioness. It was a busy Sunday. Yeah, that would include me.

Where would you say on your to-do list it ranked yesterday of watching maybe like 22 episodes of the show to catch up for the finale? Yeah, I mean, it was on my, I make a little cheat sheet for the day, you know? Do you? Yeah, to sort of like optimize my... Do you a GTD kind of system for your life or do you... Well, you know, I... That sounds for getting things done. Not to... I had no idea because I never do.

Not to offer too much of a peek behind the curtain here, but I think... I think a week or two ago, we talked about, like, how I make my show notes in the same notes app dock that is interspersed with, like, a grocery list. Yeah, for sure. So currently, just so you have some insight into this, I have this week's notes on lanterns. Then I have like six things I have to do before my plane tomorrow. And then I have last week's lanterns somehow, because I kind of jumped backwards. So to your point is, even if I wrote down, watch 23 hours of extractions on Paramount.

I don't think I would have noticed my note in time to do it. I'll tell you one thing that happened is a surprise extraction happened. You could tell me anything, and I believe you. At the end of this line of season, which is Joe was extracted from her family. What? That's a beautiful family. Dave Annabelle wait no longer. He was just like, just one too many trucks to get Mo.

And I'm no longer going to be home brewing up a hot pot of coffee or uncorking and letting breathe a beautiful Merlot. and watching the news, which is really all I do is a surgeon. It's devastating. And getting, like, seriously red pill over the course of a year. When you said that he was...

I know the family unit was the most important part of Lioness for you. Do you think it's going to be spun off? Oh, just the Lioness family? The Hogan family style, where it's like the star is now busy. They could do, like, a Dave Annabelle Surgeon show.

Yes. And then he's a put-upon single dad. Yeah. You know, I hadn't remembered this. And then he keeps meeting women who might be like his, his girlfriend, and then they mysteriously disappear. They get redacted.

They keep getting black-bagged. Kyle is just like, you have no rights. I mean, I think that's, right? And so he's just like, why am I striking out on every dating app? Yeah. I recently found out or was reminded from our friends in the world of social media that Dave Annabelle and Matthew Reese are like blood brothers. They're like best friends from their time on that show, brothers and sisters.

So could we have Reese come in to that show? I don't see why not? I mean, since we're making. the rules and, you know. Wouldn't Matthew Reese's American's character be like the greatest white whale on lioness? Like go back and get the original sin. God.

Yeah, they were definitely operating at different velocities in terms of like what the stakes were. I feel like the stakes on the Americans were. Moscow rules are a little different now. Exactly that. I had a line. Okay, I want to know about the extraction. I did get, I got a reader message about lioness because I think casuals and I don't

mean that disparagingly. And where can people reach you if they have questions for you? I'd rather not comment this time. Okay. But I think in the comments for the New York Times television list, who's the best place to just put me on blast. A friend of mine, Brian McDuckston, who... We should say that there is a New York Times best of the century so far TV shows list.

Both of us voted in it. Andy was beautifully featured in it. I think you're featured, too. I voted after the Thrones ten times. But we both voted on these shows, and we'll discuss the list when the entirety of it is revealed. So here's a lioness question that was sent to me. by Brian McDuckston, great guy, lives in Tokyo, does ramen reviews, ramen adventures.

Check it out. Does tourists, too, if you happen to be there. So this is a message. He said, you're the only one I can come to with this question. Sadly, I don't think that's true, but thank you, Brian. Why is coffee in every scene of lioness? Every time there's a meeting, they go out of their way to bring up the coffee they're drinking.

Looking back, beverages as a whole should be given credit in the series, but the coffee bit that stands out. Is that true? Is it Taylor Sheridan branded beans? One of my favorite aspects of the second half of the third season is that the QRF, Joe's Strike Force,

do amphetamines. They stay. If you aren't watching on YouTube, watch Chris's face. Just watch him try to hold back the joy. Well, it's just a... They basically take what sounds like experimental amphetamine.

Like it's called Provasic or something. I know that's the fugitive blood thinner drug, but this is, they're just like, should we all take two? And then they stay up for like four days and get in multiple gun fights in the Dallas Fort Worth area. You have never wanted anything more than a prescription for Provasic 2.0. So you could do. Maybe I'll take it and then do Thursday's pod having been up for three days with Vance.

How many pods could you do if you had actually? I will be like, for sure, that was recording. Yeah, you're all good. Just quietly back out of the room. It was a great time was had by all. So anything else you'd like to add? I mean, she's now a solo line, it's without her pride. Well, she has her QRF.

She's got her homies. They got her out. Are you saying that's her found family? It's the friends we make along the way. And her adversary for what would seem to be an inevitable season for, is a familiar face. I'll just put it that way. I wanted to talk to you about a little bit of TV news

before we get into lanterns. All right, all right. And the number one story here was one that will go far down the list of the sort of biggest HBO things that happened this weekend since we now have to kind of consider the future of the network and how it fits into the Paramount portfolio in earnest.

HBO went and bought themselves a Javier Bardem show. They did. I saw this. And they won a bidding war. And these are always interesting, somewhat, I'm sure, shaped by agencies involved with the show where it's just like, oh, you guys have no idea the bidding war that just happened. You know, like, I feel like it's pretty common to read that like Amazon, Netflix,

and Apple were all bidding on this. And somebody came through with a straight to series, you know, no notes offer. Well, also, I think HBO just, the marketplace has changed and all these identities have changed. But historically, HBO has been like, well, if anyone else wants it, we don't. Yeah. I mean, would you say that HBO has a process that developed shows internally in some ways? I mean, even if they buy the idea, it's like a long process of like kind of like... Infamously long and tortured development pipeline.

Well, this was bought basically like straight to series and it's called the spread. Stars barred am and according to deadline, quote, set in Miami, which is turning into a paradise of power. Wall Street South, some would say. A subtropical collision of industry titans, elite hedge funds, staggering wealth, ruthless competition, sex, nightlife and fun on an industrial scale. And into this sun-soaked arena comes a visionary billionaire played by Bardem, who collects the brilliant,

the hungry, and the dangerous, then turns their ambitions loose on the markets that power America. He chases something bigger, the power shift of economic gravity to Miami.

Sorry, it just... You just look like Mitch McConnell. I just felt like Mitch McConnell. But more in the sense that like maybe... They're no disrespect, by the way. No, I'm just saying that maybe... It's powerful statesman. A great lion, but

Perhaps it's past this time. You know what I mean? That's how I feel when you tell me about stuff like that. So this is HBO deepening its relationship with the Ozark Coaching Tree because currently Chris Mundy is show running lanterns. And this series comes to us from Bill DeBuke,

who kind of had the original germ of the idea and worked on Ozark. Officially co-creator of Ozark. And there was a bidding war between Netflix, Amazon, and HBO, the latter one with a rare for them straight to series offer. Apparently, Netflix,

Amazon Paramount Apple, right? All of them. All of them. All the riches. My subhead here is billionaire bloys club. Mm-hmm.

Now, I'm gonna get a laugh for that. It's good. HBO has made something of a... I'm sorry, hold on. Say it again. Billionaire Blois Club. Oh! Actually, I didn't hear you say it. I thought you said boys the first time.

Noted that HBO has made something of a late period business documenting the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Not to say that, you know, like over the course of the network's lifespan, they've dabbled. But White Lotus Succession, Big Little Eyes,

the upcoming Mac show How to Survive Without Me seems like it's about relatively well-off people. I ask you, Andy, whither the working women of sex in the city and girls, you know, like... This show, the spread. People just trying to make it... This show, this might be a good show.

Javier Bardem is involved. Like, you and I both enjoy content set in South Florida. Yes. literary, television, movies, whatever. So good bones,

promising, absolutely not passing any judgment on a show that we have no idea about. It sounds like industry in Florida. It is a,

and it's very clear also why it was a hot package, and so we're not, we're not commenting on that. But if you take a step back, I, this is part optimism,

and also I do think there's some evidence to considering things this way, that, you know, the deal, the development happens in one era of history and in the world. The deal making happens in another.

And then the shows are released in a different one. And I have to say, if there are two words that make me less interested in something in art, work, or life, it's visionary billionaire. Because fucking show me one. Well, you know what? It depends on the treatment of that visionary billionaire. Well, I'm going to go. The excesses of succession and the excesses of industry feel different. then say the excesses of billions, you know?

Absolutely great point. But I don't think that the log line for succession would have been the three visionary junior billionaires of the Logan Roy family struggle to communicate their vision in the teeming power, sexy power structure of Manhattan. It was about fail sons and a failed daughter. That's not how they pitched it. They were like, it's the Murdox.

Well, you have insight into them, but it is a soap opera with, and also when you hire Jesse Armstrong, you understand that there's going to be a political and comedic point of view brought to it. I think that having this much of our entertainment valorizing the 1%

and that idea of there being some sort of interesting aspect to how deeply fucked we are. Maybe this is the through line through this episode. I think it's a misread of the populist. I'm not being I'm not trying to just be a bomb thrower here. I think that there

is always going to be a place for escapism in our entertainment, and that is a key plank of what a lot of these richer streamers offer. I mean, in their way, like Margo's got money troubles on Apple, for example, is ostensibly about a young woman who is in such dire financial straits that she turns to Onlyfans to do it. But there's also a version of telling the story of that show in which it is an incredibly rich package with famous people, you know, angling for Emmys to play people who are a little bit downtrodden. Like it is, again, a kind of a top-down way of telling a story. And this is not me trying to, like, you know, do a drive-by on David E. Kelly,

who's one of the greatest writers of the medium's history. I'm just saying that, like, to your point, this is not the wire. This is not bottom-up storytelling in that way. And I think that it has been a successful plank of Casey's stewardship of HBO to make sure that the people who watch Real House. Housewives will have an HBO show that has some of the same temperament, which is the White Lotus. I would like to see more pit and less of whatever's happening in Elysium. I think you can have both.

I think somebody somewhere, I think Mayor of East Town and Tass. I think, you know, the pit, obviously. Like, you can tell stories that are about the 99% of people out there. I just really think the, the, I'd love to understand. what it is psychologically about having shows about those filthy rich that feels good for people

you know like because I think there's some things that are about it that are like it's just really convenient that the Roy's in succession can always fly private because it allows them to globe trial in a way that's you know

televigually incredibly enticing and also it's like yeah you know Jeremy Strong is not we don't have to shoot him in a public airport or whatever. You know, like there's a certain kind of like mechanics that gets baked into the storytelling itself. So I think my point of even to bring that up

is just like every one of these shows can be good or bad based on its own merits. But your overall idea that based on the development cycle and the amount of time it takes to get things from, we've bought an idea to it's on the air, we could be living in a completely different world by then. I think we might not have any diesel left. Right. I'm saying like, do you, are you particularly interested in...

That's why I'd like to pitch my show called Diesel, about Franklin Diesel, the guy who invented Diesel. Played by Vin Diesel. I think that that might be in, like, if we are rationing gas in a year and, you know, so then to have Javier Bar Dem be like, hmm, I'm a visionary. I'll fly two planes today. Like that is kind of discordant. But my point is, the reason we communicate or connect with anything, thing is the opportunity to see threads of common humanity. And the thing about succession wasn't just that they didn't have to film in Burbank on a Friday afternoon, which is the Burbank Airport, which is pretty rough. It was also because... They're refurbishing, by the way.

I've heard. But that also looked like AI. And I was like, where is this new terminal? And how do I get there? I didn't see that. It was like a news report in there. Like, this beautiful new terminal has arrived at Burbank. Did Claude draw this for you?

Are you in the Mandalorian? It was very confusing. But it was to see in succession that like it wasn't all comedy. It was like, oh my God, the ones who are making all these decisions that affect us on election night are even more flawed than we are. Right? And that was both chilling and funny and normalizing and equalizing and a peek behind the curtain. And there is another strain of television which has plenty of value, which is just like, isn't it cool that they have nice watches? and that's sort of the problem I have with like your friends and neighbors, which I think, you know, just requires...

What flirts with the idea of like... This incredibly rich guy is stealing from the other incredibly rich guys in order... So he can stay incredibly rich. And that's where the commentary ends. Right. It is a shared understanding, compact with the audience, that being a master of the universe with really, really nice golf clubs in Westchester, I mean, that's a must. So you have to have that. And if you assume that that's the floor, anything else on top of it is fun.

And I don't find that compelling on a dramatic or human level. Look, maybe I'm wrong. You know, maybe President Vance will make this feel good for everybody. But I'm just saying. He has a human touch that's just like he can just kind of communicate matters of the heart to the masses. Make us understand what matters most. Yeah. Speaking of HBO.

Yep. And this is like an example of, I suppose, HBO. making a show that covers the spectrum of human and superhuman experience. Let's talk about lanterns. Let's talk about the sixth episode. Yep. Bad optics. Bad optics is the name of it.

It was written by Justin Brick Gibson and Dame Lindelof. So of special interest to us, given you have personal relationships with Justin and we both know Damon. Yes, friends with both. And these were the brain trust behind the Star Wars movie project that I was lucky enough to work on briefly in 2020. Yeah. Well, I mean, Obi-1, you know, it was... Obi-1 came back.

Let's talk about this from a picking-up the pieces perspective, because in some ways, I think episode five acted as a kind of finale. So episode six is in... Is a first episode of the last two... I mean, I know a first episode of the last three episodes, but a first episode in and of itself. You know what I mean? Like a soft relaunch even.

Sure. What did you think of Detective John Stewart in our contemporary time trying to figure out what happened to his buddy hell? Can I just start with one kind of Mitch McConnell thing, which is a little bit, like, you know what, let's not say Mitch McConnell. Let's say like a Ryan Kirkering. Let's make it really like universal, like a Phillies thing.

Let's just talk about a worrying loss and velocity and command that I would like to cop to, which is I cannot believe that I didn't, maybe neither of us or maybe you said it on Midnight Boys, didn't understand that the alt hal that lives inside the ring was the way to have Kyle Chandler on the show going forward. Oh, we discussed it, yeah. I mean, I actually thought that the hal in the box was the century, but I was aware that the century was going to be in the mix.

I'm worried, frankly, that that didn't even, like, come across my radar as like, oh, I see what the fix is going to be? You kind of are getting at something that I think is part of the charm of lanterns for me, which is the multiple experiences you can have. of it. And they are, the three leads to me, Aaron Pierre, Kyle Chandler, and Kelly McDonald are so engaging and charming to me that sometimes I miss little blips of lore, of connective tissue of storytelling building blocks that are important to keep in mind. So yeah, I did not think that Kyle Chandler was no longer going to be on the show or would only be a corpse.

Yes. You know, this episode does something kind of fascinating. It continues to have references to things that have happened off screen. For instance, Hal's jail sentence, which may or may not have been terrestrial and his return to Rushville, his amends process that he's making a men's process with the people there, although that didn't work. And then his romance with Sheriff Kerry. It also has, I guess, a decade of John Stewart's life that goes. by where he becomes an architect

reconnects with one of his brothers and bankroll's another bankrolls another and becomes incredibly alienated from his parents who in turn his mother becomes close to Hal Jordan in a friendship way one would assume

and it's just a tremendous amount of work going off off screen and it's Jasmine Seifos Jones right who plays so have there been any Hamilton say no to this, Hal Jordan kind of mashups? Would you like to make one? I mean, I think we have different algorithms,

but I have not seen that yet. Okay, all right. I assume that exists. Talk to me about the difficulties of having this much action happening off-screen. Well, I want to start with a positive, which is Aaron Paul is playing a different character at a different point in his life, and I thought that was really impressive.

He is just, he's physically changed, his demeanor has changed, his access to his humor and his emotions have changed. His facial hair has changed. His facial hair has definitely changed and that he has some now. And he is just, that's hard to do. I mean, I know it's on the one level it's acting, but it's also impressive because what he was doing in the first block was very, very aggressively a choice.

And it was very similar to his Rebel Ridge character, which is sort of ex-military and buttoned up and very intense. And so it was nice to see him let the air out a little bit. And that in and of itself was a reminder of one of the things that I find both compelling on a structural level, but also slightly frustrating on a week-to-week level of this series, which is it is clearly made to be accomplishing a lot more in every episode to be accomplishing a lot more than what you see in that episode. There are a lot of things that I would imagine would reward or flatter a rewatch. There are a lot of things that are connected inevitably

to larger James Gunn storytelling, but also future seasons of lantern storytelling. even the things that I didn't enjoy in the moment in previous week's episode, you know, I definitely have the feeling that they will make more sense in the fullness of time in terms of, you know, characters getting short shrift in the big explosions and stuff. So 100% just might be a subjective, like, I want more now without having to bank on later thing, or maybe I'm just impatient. Sure. I guess I was happier with this episode in some ways than previous.

episode because it just lived where it was. It was picking up these pieces. And I didn't necessarily miss seeing Oa, or I didn't necessarily miss seeing Hal's prison sentence. That said, and I'm curious where you netted out on this, I, maybe I'm not being an attentive viewer here, because I came out of that last episode being like the one prior to this. The prior, the giant explosions episode, the Rushville de Nouveau. I was like, this is a catastrophic outcome.

You know, they are definitely showing the destruction. But I did not think that this was going to be, you know, the last hurrah of Hal Jordan, that this was the end of his career as a lantern that he would be going to prison for what he did there. Did you have a similar discordant reaction? Or have we just, have I just been Secovia-pilled? And it's nice to see consequences for mass destruction in a comic book show. And we hadn't seen. Yeah, I think it's also cool the way that they're doing the timeline.

You put it up here. but I thought it was cool to see like a kind of same jacket but sad guy at the diner working on some pancakes and kind of looking like

the kind of dude who's just been nailed to a barstool for 10 years but obviously it's just been run through the ringer you know there are some elements of this episode that I found at least initially like

either distracting or convenient whether it's the diner waitress who once reparations for what happened to her family and is trying to blackmail John, although it's unclear who she would be blackmailing him to. I guess Sheriff Kerry. I guess. Like, would she tell Guy Gardner? Like, I don't know who would. Well, I don't, right. Like, I don't know how to be a regular cop or a space cop, but it seems to me that it's fairly plausible

that he would punch him and not shoot him. Well, it's, whatever, whatever Hal knew about what was going on in Rushville and what was going to happen to him, he was like, you can't tell anybody that you were here. That's right. Whether that means protect your mother or protect your parents or something, like, I don't know. I would imagine, though,

this show makes it look real easy to get in and out of rural Nebraska. You know what I mean? That was a good question I had. So are we supposed to imagine that in this fake or DC version of the United States, I was under the impression that Midway, which is where he is, the beginning of the episode of Chicago.

I think that's a fair assumption. Like Coast City is kind of Seattle, I think. And like Metropolis is New York. What is that? Like a 10-hour drive to somewhere in Nebraska, from Chicago? It's Gotham Philly? I thought Gotham was New York. Well, Gotham is New York, but Metropolis is New York.

So we have two New Yorks. We have like a shiny one and a dark one. So it's Philly. Jets Giants, you know? Sure. So it's New Jersey. Yeah, regardless of whether it's like a fast drive or not, I guess. didn't bother me, but yes.

Yeah. I just meant that like surely in 2026, even in the DCU, there are flock cameras where it's like you could tell who came to the diner. I'm just saying like that was his no one can know I was here driving and having a punching someone in a public space in a tiny town. I feel like that's a little. Well, he punched them. I think he punches him and then is told no one can know you were here.

Yeah. I'm just saying it, they're fighting hard for a secret that I think it was relatively hard to keep. Did you feel like the century version of how Chewbacca'd that character at all in terms of the Rise of Skywalker? Was it Rise of Skywalker or is it Force Awakens when Chewbacca gets into? No, no, it's the third one. It's the third one when for two minutes, you're like, did they just kill Chewbacca? Well, it was the only moment in that trash fire of a movie where they were like, we will actively engage with your 40-year investment with this in ways that might surprise.

hurt or alarm you and they were like just kidding we got to sell toys did you know that I I've started to see the the faintest signs no of a ROS revival the pendulum swinging back just being like JJ was cooking right here what I was wondering if we maybe for our last episode ever we should we should do a like a rewatch of ROS somehow glup shito has returned oh my God Come on, keep the mood up. Just because Rise of Skywalker happened and I heard Bar Dem is... I heard Rise of Skywalker is Rob Bontas' favorite

Star Wars film. He thinks there's a lot of promise there. Yeah, what are we saying? Did the kind of like psych he's alive, but just slightly nicer? No, I mean, I think I was grateful to have that not at all hidden puzzle piece revealed to me. Like, again, maybe that's an example of the show is working...

The show is obviously working in multiple. But the effort of the writer's room to be writing every scene mindful of multiple timelines and multiple timelines of audience experience is remarkable in that like they soft prepped us for that in one of the very first scenes of the show. Yeah. That that would exist. And if you had been a more thoughtful or attentive viewer, that would have taken some of the sting out of the end of 101 to begin with. I think it was a success that it didn't. And yet my feeling coming out of it was, oh, that's actually a relief because I don't. think I was done with this character and it doesn't seem like Kyle Chandler is done with this

character. Did you know who Carol Ferris was, the woman who was at the funeral? The nerdiest part of my ears, which I guess is where the sort of the Vulcan tips would be, perked up. But I don't actually know, I'm not really about that OAA life, you know, not to that degree. I knew it must be something notable because nobody is like, Carol Ferris, you know, like you would just be like, oh, I believe you're Carol, right? Like, no, but John was like, Carol Ferris, surprised to see you here. So I immediately, like, just Wikipedia at her. And you saw that Blake lively brought her to life in the Green Lantern film.

I've never seen the Green Lantern film. Why are you saying that it's like some lacunae in your cultural fucking library of Alexandria? What? I just haven't. Neither have I. Okay. I mean, I don't know if, like, maybe back then, like, you were... I got down like that?

Come on. What else from this episode stood after you? Do you want to talk about the diner waitress, the blackmail, the sort of... overtones of that scene? Like, what do you want to get? Well, did you think, I want to go back to my Senator, I want to go back to my question. Who won the 2020 presidential election? Who did you think, was your takeaway from all the Zoe nightmare death from above episode, was that Hal was going to go to jail? Did that surprise you or did that feel commensurate with what you saw on screen and your understanding of who was responsible for what? My guess is that that probably is,

deeply tied to the transference of the ring from one lantern to another. And obviously they get it off of his finger. He brings it to the Guardians, but then says pass on the job offer. Yeah, and they go hang in Cooperstown. So I think that whether he did time like in a federal penitentiary or a celestial one. I think it was federal.

They said that. Then, yeah, like I think he would be kind of, I thought that was cool. I thought it was interesting. Also an interesting way to run that character. You had to give that character some reason to be back there. And imprisonment and letter writing and like the little things that came out of that

made a lot of sense and also humbled him a little bit. And being in love with Carrie was nice. It was telling the story of this man's superhero's downfall through a personal story. I really liked it. I thought Kelly McDonald was outstanding in this episode. You hire her to do the other parts for episodes like this. and I thought she was spectacular. I think that, again, in terms of like, yeah?

I think I know what you're reacting to here. Tell me. I think that this, we've spoken about this with a couple of different shows. In fact, we were just talking about this with Slow Horses. I bet you would like this show more if it was a binge. Now, I don't know how fast you would watch it, but I think that you seem to be holding or reserving judgment on a lot of it because you're like, how is it going to fit together?

You're right, but I'm coming out of from the other end, which is I don't, I'm not with, I don't like that it seems so intently built that way. Like it's not, they knew it wasn't a binge. This is a DC show. It's going to be on HBO. So I think then it's incumbent on them to make everything stand on its own. And I think I feel them laboring towards that. And sometimes I feel the labor and sometimes I let it go.

Another example of like the labor here, which is not inconsiderate, is like they were making the show into a world in which James Gunn, who took over the universe at some point. in the development of the show, he has already given it, bequeathed a green lantern onto it. And it's the funny one, the jerk one from the 80s in comic book timeline. And is that canonically,

as far as you know, not how the Green Lantern succession plan worked? I have no idea how it works. I think it's probably all in that 2014 movie that we should probably revisit the pod.

But more so that in the... It would be funny if like Rogan, it was like Joe Rogan style and we could just be like, Kaiah, pull up the green lantern succession line. Pull up the way that they captured Kiloag in this scene when he's going up against Mark Strong Sinestro.

Regardless, they could have decided that anybody can have a ring. But for the story that they wanted to tell with Hal Jordan and John Stewart, there was only one and only had ever been one from Earth, which meant that they had to paint themselves out of that corner creatively to say that when the guardians were thwarted by John, they gave it to this dickhead gym teacher. Yeah. Which is tough.

And it's the kind of alignment that comic books have to do all the time or even movies where John Bernthal's Punisher jumps from what he does in that one shot and then what he does in Spider-Man. And Spider-Man. So I thought that the integration of James Gunn's funny Guy Gardner character into the tone of this universe was impressive.

And I enjoyed those scenes. And I liked the implication of some shared history and some, you owe me everything you've ever gotten and that the characters were pliable and could bend. in that way. But, you know, it's not, it was a lot of work that they then steered towards a story they wanted to tell, which was, inevitably, we're going to have to address that there's already a green lantern in the gunverse. What can we do with it? And it seems like the best idea

in the writer's room, which was a clever idea, was we're going to use a small sense of humanity and guilt for him to go to Oa, which I love that they're not showing, to get the ring and bring it back so we can move on with the story. I thought to your point about how Pierre's character, how his John Stewart has changed over 10 years. That was a very good scene to show that. He's wearing a different kind of jacket now. It's not even the superficial, like, it's not even the wardrobe or the facial hair changes. That's a guy who earlier in the season is everything is yes sir or no sir.

He's still active or was recently active military and is coming from a military background and treats his apprenticeship as if it's, that's my commanding officer. And 10 years later, we find him in. Everything that's happened to him has put him in a position where he's cursing a lot more. He's blackmailing people or he's putting the, you know, he's gilting them. He's eating meat. And he's like having a Henry Hill driver around Rushville where he's got phone calls coming in from the nursing home with his dad, from his brother who's like, I'm not going to go pick him up. You should go pick him up.

But he's like, I'm funding your album and all this stuff. Funding your album. People are calling him chosen in a kind of talking. tongue-in-cheek derogatory way I just really liked the scope of this performance and the scope of I thought the writing was like very subtly deepened by showing what's happened

to this guy since the 10 years since he shot Zoe from across town and put down the Manhunter you know I would probably venture to guess that most people watching this are wonder if the Manhunters are truly extinct Yes. And I think the clubhouse candidate is the all-state quarterback Noah,

who seems incredibly well-adjusted for a guy whose parents are divorced, whose town has been decimated by robot aliens, satellite technology. And, you know, it's trying to decide whether to stay home, play Huskers football, or take his talents elsewhere, probably for a huge NIL deal. meanwhile is kind of just like popping around town and and keeping it all together in a way that makes me feel like he might be happy Manhunter. I think that's a good read on the situation. Is that a satisfying story for you? Who is he seduce then?

Because they were talking about how like Manhunters tend to have these sort of heterosexual conquests. I don't think they're necessarily heterosexual. Not necessarily. No, I mean, Anton was like, oh, you're the one. They just go to the alpha, right? So I don't know. I'm sitting here trying to formulate a question of like, is that a satisfying third act for the season?

And I guess we don't actually know what it's going to look like. And I guess it is because it has to be in this place and the mystery of what's happening there has to be the central question. John has a ring now, which is, you know, surf Dracula got his bored earlier than we thought, which is good.

I like the way that it is, there's more of a there there in terms of understanding where John has been, where he's going, and what the stakes are for him now. I like the relationship with Carrie because it's got some years on it and some shared experience and some trust, so it's not introducing everything all at once, which again is a challenge of the show. So I actually feel, I don't know, I don't mean this to be as zag. I liked this episode more than the previous episode, which I think was kind of one of the,

quote unquote, big ones. I think that the show still does certain things that I'm like, like, I think the dependence on jackets to communicate character is frustrating. I think the over-dependence on swearing is just, like, bizarre. I feel like me. I don't think this is just me as a parent now, but like every character has to say, like, even the kid is just like, God damn it, mom, this is good meatloaf. I'm like, do your kid's cursing you?

Relax. Not at you, but do they curse around you? There's been some light experimentation. Do you think that they're actually cursing? You just don't know the new curse? First words. Oh, no, they use the old ones. Yeah.

No, the old ones are, the degree to which my older daughter, the speed with which my older daughter went from wanting to, like, me to turn the volume down on the three times they swear in Hamilton, to basically talking like John Stewart when he's on an op, is remarkable. Talking about Tommy from Goodfellas. Truly, though. We also call out one other thing, which is, we always try to, walk this line and be careful about it.

You know, the way TV works is the credited writer for an episode is invaluable to that episode, but the degree to which those words are the exact ones that writer wrote and there's, you know, there's shared credit and there's rewrites and roomwritten stuff. So we try to always like lift up the writer and but not overly indicate who's responsible. I think we spent a lot of time earlier in this season talking about this show as if it was Damon Lindelof's O'Te project and I think that we probably did a disservice to the other people and then this episode happens. when a character says spasgaban.

And I will bet my life and my professional reputation on Damon contributing that as a placeholder in the room and then everybody's saying it enough that it just became what they said in the show. There are many spy shows and stuff that we like where someone calls someone to see if it's okay and they say, yeah, I just put Rufus to bed

and just like, good, I'm glad you did. Click. There is no one name Rufus. They've been compromised. we must go. Right. This was a call from inside of the machine

of proof of life of Damon. Right. This is the most Damon line that is ever Damon. Do you want to explain the joke for people who don't know

what you're talking about? Well, Chris, as you know, the Harry Potter universe is quite popular around the world. So the reference to Azcaban, which is the wizarding prison

introduced in book three, the prisoner of Ascaband is relatively well known. But the idea of a space Azcaband, now we're cooking with gas. So in this world where Chicago,

is next door to Nebraska, Harry Potter also exists. I would say that it's a safe bet that anything in the larger Warner Brothers Paramount Collective Universe probably exists. So what would be my wish for like franchise crossover? I'll give you a second to think about it

to say that my daughters and I rewatched the classic film The Lego movie last night, which is really fucking that movie's really funny. You were busy yesterday. Like two and a half hours of evils. I'm busy all the time You know? Yeah

What do you We just did another podcast where you're like You know I've been slow rewatching Miami Vice In my spare time And I'm like motherfucker I made dinner at 730 Anyway my point is about the Lego movie Was

In it One of the charms of it Is that oh Batman's in it And Dumbledore is in it And Gandalf is in it And you know Other You know

If they made the movie today I bet Dr. Robbie would be in it. Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah. Maybe he could have been like first on the scene at Zoe's slaughter of the innocence in Rushville. Oh my God. The crossover potential here. I want to ask you something that is I guess Damon adjacent, Damon Lindeloff adjacent, but I think it's something I've been thinking about, especially over the last couple of episodes,

is this show is going to be inevitably looked at through the lens of watchmen, I think, by a lot of people or by some people. and one of the things that Watchmen did so brilliantly is not only use the source materials, mythology, and storytelling bones, but also built its own, but also had something to say about the real world, right? Like through obviously the Tulsa episode,

but just generally speaking, I thought, spoke very beautifully about being a black woman, the black experience in America, using superheroes as metaphors in a lot of ways. This shows a little bit more like you see the duck both above and below the surface of the water. Like you can kind of see all the work they're doing

to kind of set, get Guy Gardner in here, let's set this up who has the ring. We got Sinestro. Somehow Sinestro's escaped space prison. That's cool. All these things that are happening in the DC part of it. Do you think that the show is also successfully telling, saying something about real life or doing that kind of like, because I think it's doing a very good job.

I think Watchmen might be one of the great achievements of television. So like it's hard to. No. But it's also, it's trying to, it's just a very, very different assignment. Yeah. I think that one of the things that has been nice to see, and I think this was at its strongest in episode three, was that there is a very, very different assignment. at its strongest in episode three, was that there is a very, very sincere attempt

to bring in some non, and I say this non-traditional perspective, outsider perspective to the show. And I mean that through the careful consideration of the Stewart family dynamics. And, you know, there's been references to not just them, their blackness, but skin tone in relation to each other. When Zoe is redoing his body.

Yes, exactly. And he and his brothers, the way they talk about things. even last night, you know, there's this idea that what's the waitress say? Like, we're not racist here. We're just, we just don't like green lanterns or whatever. Like, and then the camera is smart enough. And Stephen Williams is a smart enough director. He directed this episode and the third episode.

You know, he lingers on Aaron Pierre's face and reaction to that. So I don't want to compare them one to one. I think Watchman was singularly, its purpose was a story that Damon felt the urgency to tell with the collaborators he chose and he found a vessel for it in Watchman, whereas they were going to make a Green Lantern show no matter what. And this might be the best. And I mean this non-perjoratively. Like this is a good faith attempt to make a thoughtful, inclusive questioning show

that is also going to explain to you how we can have Guy Gardner and John Stewart. So under that rubric, it's getting an A plus for me. But if you go under the hood a little bit more, like, do I think that it's viewpoint on class, race, in the world, or is equal to these other shows? Absolutely not. But you're getting a little extra for your buck when you tune in to watch a show about space cops. That's very smart. Should we do a little watch after dark?

I mean, do you want to go from green to green? I got a few minutes. I got a sick kid at home, but I always put football first. I want you to call the Philly Special. Very briefly, how are you? Because I watched the game on mute yesterday. I had something else going on. So I had like the game in the background.

I could tell where it was going. I could tell how it was going. Yes. but, you know, I was engaged, but I would not say living and dying with every snap. And then when the final drive came, because I don't think I had truly experienced the grind of it, you asked the group of us that we all chat about the Eagles during Sundays,

what's our confidence level on this final drive? And I was like six. This is your brand. You are a very generally positive person with sports. You are able to, I think, compartmentalize. And I admire that. about you. I envy that about you and sometimes I just lean on it a little much. You know the phrase like, you know, if you're looking for the asshole, sometimes you're the asshole, you know? Like, you know,

like, so if you're or if you're always like, I'm beginning to worry about my role in the group chat because I think that my, sometimes the level of venting and the frequency of my venting in it, I'm like, don't be self-conscious. No one else has its valence. I worry that this isn't fun for you. It's never, it's never. It's never. It's never. been fun for me. I really was thinking about how important sports are in my life in terms of, like, a thing to think about when falling asleep. I think to, you know, I listen to the podcast all the time. I'm reading the articles. Like, it sustains me and I like to think about like offseason stuff. But I think off, I think I don't like the games. I think that, you know, in many ways I'm like

Brad Pitt and Moneyball, but like the number one way is that I think that. If you just lifted during Eagles games, think about where we would have, we would have you. I would be, that would be my peak achievement. because when I was watching the game, it wasn't that I was not demonstrative, I was not scaring anyone, I was not, noises were not coming out of me, but there was like a sad, there was just a sadness.

Yeah. Because the particular way that it was going was one that was familiar. Yes. What was unfamiliar was that they fucking won. Yeah. Because Jalen bawled out, and that was cool as hell.

And so I think ultimately you are right about many things, but your prediction that we may just have to remember what it's like to root for a normal, football team in that, you know, it's hard to win every week. Win some and lose some kind of thing. You don't just win them and your offensive line just isn't elite always. But it's, it's, the best part has been the most unexpected Zag is that actually the one

thing the season is proving is that our quarterback is not the 17th best. I think he might even be better than Justin Herbert at this point. Say it with your full chest. I've said it with my full chest the whole time. All right. It's like, what are we evaluating? The guy's been to two Super Bowls. And was the best player in both of them?

I think it's going to be, it feels like an Andy Reedy season. Yeah. Oh, see, that's what it reminded me of. Yeah. There was a feeling of creeping, crepuscular darkness that we used to experience when we would arrive at the bar

in a weekend autumn daylight and be like, ah, this first beer will boy our spirits and restore the demons from last night. And then just the clock management would just grind out every, part of our hope to dust and we would wander out and suddenly it would be 40 degrees in night. Yes.

That is our, that is a core memory for us. We did that together for years. Yeah. It was probably not good for our mental health, but look, it got us here. Thanks for spending time with me after dark. Do you think those were our reps? You know what I mean? Like the 10,000 hours.

Everything about like those first 10 years got us ready for this, the real arena of our friendship. Of ideas. God bless. Thanks to Kaya and Kai. We'll be back on Thursday. I'll have a special guest. No Andy on Thursday.

but we'll... I will be traveling. Yeah. We'll put something together in your honor. Is it going to be like the beacon guy Gardner left in Rushville? Are you flying into Newark? Like, I'm not sure like how certain we are you're landing. It's fair.

I guess we'll find out. Talk to you guys soon.