The Watch - Remembering Aretha Franklin, Looking to the Good TV to Come, and Reviewing ‘Insecure’ and ‘Lodge 49’ | The Watch (Ep. 282)

Episode Date: August 16, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald catch up on Andy’s experience in New Mexico so far, discuss Aretha Franklin's legacy (3:00) and look ahead to the TV shows they’re looking forward to in the coming months (9:00). Later they discuss and review AMC’s new show ‘Lodge 49’ (23:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the Ringer.com and joining me on the other line. Better call Saul. It's Andy Greenwald. Here I am live from the land of enchantment.

Is that what they call Albuquerque? It is. Well, it's New Mexico. New Mexico in general is the land of enchantment. How much turquoise are you wearing right now? Can I be really, really real with you? and our listeners. Sure.

Lily and I, the director of the project, plan on traveling to Santa Fe this weekend to attend the world's largest turquoise festival or turquoise market, as I'm led to believe. We will be trading in turquoise stones soon enough. That's the extent of social life down there, huh? So basically, yeah, so I'm here. I'm in an office during the week.

I have not been outside since 9 a.m., and yet this weekend I will go shopping for precious gentlemen. And then I will come back inside to this office. It's a nice little life I've built for myself here. How's the hotel treating you? Hotel life is, you know, take some getting used to. Do you have like, I've heard tell about people who, when they live in hotels, like bring little accent lamps or scarves to throw over the lamps.

Yeah, well, it's not the lighting that bothers me. It's really the parameters of the room and the sameness of it. So basically, I get to a hotel. I'm like, this is the only place I want to. live. Like even if it's just like a, like your carbon copy Marriott. And I always am like, I'm going to have the best night of sleep of my life because, you know, it's a hotel bed or whatever. Then what inevitably happens, you have a couple of bad nights of sleep. But then you maybe like get into a groove with the hotel. And then no matter what, whether you're staying there like two days, three days, eight days,

45 days, you're going to hit a point where you lose your mind and you go full Bart and Fink. And that's where I want to be there for you. Okay. I want you to feel free to call me, do whatever you need to do, facetime me because I don't want you peeling wallpaper off the walls and walking back and forth across your room counting the paces like Joaquin Phoenix and the master well first of all I appreciate that offer second of all this hotel has no wallpaper so I think that we're going to be we're going to be okay I appreciate the subtle illusion to reality which is that when I did check in they said looks like we have you here for 45 days and I don't know what what do you call a spit take when you haven't recently taken a drink of anything or because

you're in the desert, you can't actually conjure any spit. So you're so thirsty. But, you know, I'll say, you know, you've read the script that the briar patch is a, the lead character checks into a hotel and lives in a hotel during the duration of the first season. So it is a little bit of life-imitating art. And I assume there will be equally violent hijinks occurring to me sooner rather than later. Andy, on today's show, we're going to talk a little bit about Lodge 49, which is a show that just recently came out about two weeks ago on AMC starring Wyatt Russell. We're going to talk a little bit about

the third season of Insecure, which just started on Sunday. Was there any stuff that you wanted to talk about before we got there? Well, I think that we would be remiss recording a podcast on Thursday without paying tribute to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, who passed away.

As is always the case when great, if not, you know, I would put her with the very greatest Americans ever pass away, There is a lot of content for you to remember her by and enjoy. There are pieces on the ringer. I know I loved some pieces that have been on The New Yorker today.

I don't really have anything to add other than it just seems, you know, one of the greatest Americans of our lives and maybe in history is gone. And it just feels momentous and worthy of note, right? I don't think I have any particular Aretha stories other than just being dazzled and constantly and assuming that she would just always be there like like redwood tree, you know? Like it's that that's really my only reaction. Yeah, she's definitely a pillar of that century of pop music in the same way that Bowie and Prince were. I think that the one thing that I always think about when someone like this passes away,

I thought about this with Bowie. And it's just that when an artist can transcend industrialization, when you can be so deeply, deeply familiar with the. sort of upper echelon most popular hits of an artist. So if you've basically, you've probably unintentionally heard think a thousand times in your life, if not more, right?

But that you can still hear that song or other songs by Aretha Franklin and be completely transported and blowed away and by her voice and by her command of pop songs. It's just, it really is a testament to the sort of undescribable indescribable power of music, isn't it?

Yeah, and I don't want to uplift someone's ability by downplaying other peoples, but I do think it's important to note that the difference between Aretha Franklin and someone like David Bowie, this is getting into some squelchy territory, because I don't think artistic talent

is necessarily quantifiable, and I'm not the kind of person who thinks like Steve Vai is a better guitarist than Bob Dylan because he can do those crazy runs or whatever, but Aretha Franklin just had this instrument that was her voice that was one of the greatest ever produced and certainly one of the greatest ever recorded. It wasn't necessarily. So when we're talking about her and we're just all in awe and slack jawed by the greatness and we're trying to wrap our arms around it and put it into words, it's not ineffable. You know what I mean?

Like describing David Bowie's importance is both his songwriting talent and singing and et cetera. But it was also like an Andy Warhol like mastery of cool and of style and all the other things that made him great. Aretha is just, it's like a force of nature what she was able to do, you know, and, and I think maybe that's, certainly I'm faltering in finding words and adjectives to describe it, but I think that that's why this feels more almost elemental, you know, there is no case to be made. There's really just, you know, the late 60s, early 70s Atlantic stuff is about as good as, like, American music can get, you know? I mean, it, not even, like, doesn't mean, matter what you're saying American music or not. Like, it's as good as pop music could get. It's, like, as good as soul music

again. It's, those records like this girl's in love with you are just, you can't, there's not a,

there's not a bad note on the whole thing. But do you remember, I mean, this is, people are talking about this again today, but do you remember the night that she came

onto the Grammys and, and replaced Pavarotti and saying, Ariya from Puccini? Yeah. It was just like, okay.

Can you imagine? I don't even know what is a analogy for someone doing that? Like, stepping in at the last, minute and doing something that you don't normally do that is considered to be the hardest thing that you could do in your field.

It would be like Michael Phelps diving, I guess. You know, it would be like Michael Phelps winning a gold medal and diving with no notice, you know? It would be like Michael Phelps stepping in for Rodney Dangerfield in the last scene of Back to School and pulling off the, what is it? What's the name of that? The triple quadruple lutz? Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I am also, by the way, for all the adulation that is correctly being, given to her classic work. I'm even seeing some love for who's Zoom and who. Obviously, Blues Brothers is important. I was really thrilled to see an old colleague of ours, Craig Mark's long-time music journalist and editor, really standing hard for her late disco era tracks, which I was not familiar with. But apparently there was a whole bunch of records that she made with Luther Vandross producing

that Craig referred to as roller skating jams. And I got to say, pretty good stuff. Yeah, I'm just looking over the track listings for some of those late 60s records. And there's so many deep cuts as well as the ones since you've been gone and Chain of Fools. And I would really highly recommend anybody who has like a Spotify or an Apple subscription and just has easy access to her catalog, is just start at the beginning and just sort of let it go for about 400 songs. You won't have a bad weekend, I promise you. By the way, it was the Chris, it was the Triple Lindy was the name of the dive performed by Rodney Dangerfield.

And I want you to know that one of the first things to come up in my Google search, someone asked on a message board, did Rodney Dangerfield do his own dive and back to school? Now, I am no expert. I am not Greg Laganis, but I think it's pretty fair to assume that no, he did not. Yes. Now, Andy, before we get into Lodge 49, for listeners, so we're going to be doing this remotely, probably for the next, like, month or two, right? I don't think we're going to be in the same city once. I think there's a chance around Labor Day. Maybe we're on Labor Day, right.

So we'll try to be a little bit more communicative about the shows that we're going to watch because we'll have to plan that a little bit more, which will be nice. Well, I'm sure we're going to hit Better Call Saul in the coming weeks. There's a couple of other things a little bit later in August that I know that you and I are pretty excited about.

Yes. So before we get to Lodge 49, I did want to ask you this. Though I have removed from the epicenter of entertainment, and culture that is Los Angeles. I still receive missives, you know, like letters put in bottles and thrown off the boat in the olden days. And I received an email saying that Netflix had recently thrown an event to celebrate something.

And the evening was, I believe, it called. Now, you know, I apologize for doing this live on there, but I am going to check again. Yes, I received an email from the press department that said, Ozark Tastemaker event. and I clicked on the photos, assuming, assuming I would see. They were just pictures of me. I assumed it was just Chris Ryan with his arms thrown around the necks of like Reed Hastings and Cindy Holland from Netflix because no one made my taste for Ozark like my good friend Chris Ryan.

And yet it was just Jason Bateman at a pleasant cocktail party. So my questions are here for you. One, how sore are you that you were not included this event? and two, how excited are you two weeks out from the return of one of your favorite shows? Yeah, I don't want to get too close to, you know, the inside baseball of Ozark because I like to suspend disbelief. I like to believe that Marty Bird is really out there somewhere. So I can only hang out with Jason Bateman like once a year because of that. Because otherwise it would just be like, oh, yeah, classic Bateman here.

No, I know it's going to. Chris, that was so, that was such an effortless humble brag. Thanks. Because now we all understand you have hung out with Jason Day. Hang out with Jason Beatman. I hosted a Netflix panel about Ozark. And it was wonderful. It was also about Black Mirror and I got to meet.

That was when I met Jody Foster. But... Wait, wait, wait, wait. Chris, that was not when you met Jody Foster. That's true. We met Jody Foster once before. This is actually a weird... Why are we just doing this weird, like, name dropping, though?

Only because, I don't know if we ever told the story that we went to see a screening of the post written by the watch superfan Liz Hanna and then later became a guest on our show, which we were so grateful for. And we were introduced to Liz, and we were so excited to meet Liz. We brushed off our brief handshake and introduction with the small, older woman whose foot was in some sort of a cast, right? And then 10 minutes later, we realized that that had been Jody Foster. Well, she was awesome at that.

She was awesome at the event that I was at. I just want everyone to know that there is not a single Oscar winner that we will not accidentally snub if given the chance. Okay, but Ozark. So give me the lay of the land two weeks out. So I think that a lot of these, there's been a lot of shows that we've been excited about, I think killing even succession most of all, where I have been grappling with the idea of where they go from their excellent first seasons. Because so much of television now is written into these limited runs and they're very high

concept shows. So, you know, you wonder whether or not. there's anywhere else to go towards the after the end of the first season. And Ozark certainly set up a second season, but so much of what Ozark did well was push, almost in the way that you think that that's like, it's what they teach people in improv, is to just keep pushing scenarios further and further and further.

Ozark does that in the first episode. And we've talked about this a bunch of times. So it's just like there's more in Ozark's first episode than happens in like the first season and a half of Breaking Bad. in terms of plot. Yep. And so I think that there's a little bit of nerves, but then when I saw the trailer,

I was just like, yeah, man, I just really want to go back. I just need to get back into this whole world. Yeah, I think a lot about, there's an analogy that I've heard about what, you know, show running and writing first season of serialized dramatic television is,

and an analogy you could make is, you know, you go, you wander into the forest, but you leave a trailer crumbs behind you, right? Because you want to plant things, you want to leave things behind that the audience is going to pick up on

and pick up on and pick up on until it leads them to where you want them to go. To watch that first season of Ozark is to see someone laying down the crumbs and then to just have like a giant bear running afterwards, eating all the crumbs immediately as soon as they're dropped. There is very little left on the table,

very little left on the big board in the writer's room after the first season, which I admire the hell out of. I mean, honestly, and people heard me talk about it when I finally caught up and watched the show and we broke it down. I admired that almost as much as the show itself. You know, because even aspects of it that I thought dragged or moments I didn't love,

it taught me to watch it as good dramas do. And what it taught me was that don't get too comfortable with any of this. So that alone makes me excited, you know, and I think that the chat, obviously the challenge is hard. The challenge is, it's a big challenge to have established exactly that precedent that we're going to keep things moving. We're going to keep you on your toes. don't get too comfortable with anything. And then to keep that up, I mean, that's a dangerous pace. I would not be surprised if we saw some elements

or aspects of slowing down a little bit. Yeah, but at the same time, you know, I think that there is a, there's a part in which after the show has been put out into the world, and this is sort of the funny thing with Netflix, where these things kind of get created all at once and then dropped all at once, and there's not a lot of that feedback loop

that some TV shows actually thrive off of whether it's lost or what have you. I think actually after seeing Ozark go out into the world and process it and knowing how to do what they're doing, I'd be curious to know whether or not there are some elements of the show that get optimized and that they do better. You know what you mean?

So I'm really excited for it. There's that. There's Jack. Before you move on, I have one more at Ozark question. Do you have a dark horse MVP candidate for season two? Is there a member of the cast that you particularly enjoyed in season one that maybe was in the margin than you think is ready to step up.

That's a great question, Andy. I love when you. Look, I have a lot more time now that I am temporarily without a family and living in. By the way, I was corrected. I have to stop calling it the desert. This is the high desert. Oh, interesting. The elevation, it's not because of the meth.

I'm going to stop making those jokes now that I live here. It is because of the elevation, which rivals Denver. And when someone told me that, I immediately told them to never tell me that because I'm not the kind of person who needs. facts to be convinced that he's having some sort of like oxygen related deprivation event. Like I don't want, I don't need. I already have like an oxygen mask just in my cart on Amazon. So we're cool.

I hope I bought you enough time to answer that question. No, if I have to pick somebody from the second season, it's Janet McTeer, who is routinely just like an incredible fifth hitter, like in the lineup on any British crime show. you've ever seen and just like routinely is just an it's just like an incredible actress but does a ton of TV and it's just really exciting she's going to be a Chicago attorney that shows up on the second season of Ozark so I'm really really excited to see her on it I'm excited so do you have some other things

that well we've got Jack Ryan which I think we're both very curious to see and then there's another one that I you know the trailer just dropped for it and I know that we're going to be talking about it but I haven't taken your temperature about in a while, and that's the Romanoffs. And that's coming out October 12th. I, where is my temperature on this? So for people who don't know about this, this is Matthew Weiner's return to television after the masterpiece that was Mad Men.

It is a, how many episodes is it, eight or ten? Something like that. Basically loosely, loosely serialized if that anthology show, it's basically a collection of short stories where the only through line that we can ascertain, right, is that a character in each episode believes that believes him or herself to be an heir to the throne of Russia. Is that basically, am I getting this right? Yes. And the cast is, and first of all, he is getting the Mad Men gang back together where

it matters. Oh, that's like saying, I don't know, that's like saying the Golden State Warriors just to have the Splash Brothers. Like, let's go through who Matthew Weiner's assembled here. You got to start at the top with Bluono.

What about Buono, though? Because she's in this show. Kara Blono, Cleo Duval, Griffin Dunn, Jack Houston, Diane Lane, the Queen Amanda Pete, Carrie Bish, Aaron Eckhart,

Corey stole, Christina Hendrix, Catherine Hahn, John Slattery, Paul Reiser, Nicole Ari Parker, Ron Livingston, Andrew Randall's, Mary Kay Place. I mean, I could just literally read through every single person. J.R. Ferguson. Did you know, and first of all, did you say, first of all,

Cary Bichet, please, guess of the watch need to have their names protected at all costs. Did you, in the dazzling Christmas lights of names that you just strung past me, did you mention the star of the first episode? did you mention Aaron Eckhart? Yeah. You said Aaron Eckhart. I did. What about Noah Wiley, though? What about Roda Mitchell, though?

I just feel like this is some stock manipulation that you're big-uping the show considering you have these distressed Eckhart assets in your portfolio, and you really feel like this is time for a comeback, right? No, no, no, no, no. Berkshire Hathaway does not have distressed stocks by my guy. We just nurture things. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's

what I have no distressed assets. What I would say is this. I am incredibly excited about this show because I love the way Matthew Weiner writes television. Obviously, this is a dazzling cast. Um, but I, but the thing that I, that I was also highlighting wasn't just the, the, the, in front of the camera talent. It's worth noting that this is a reunion behind the scenes, um, because semi-chellis is

there, the Jack Matons, the couple who wrote with, uh, with Weiner on most of the seasons of Mad Men, Chris, Manley is doing cinematography. Janie Bryant, genius who did the costumes on Mad Men. So in that sense, it's a reunion. It's exciting. It's also a little bit crazy because this is a $70 million plus show about people thinking stuff and talking. And in a way, you know, and this is actually not the worst segue into our conversation about Lodge 49 because obviously the person who made Mad Men is going to get another shot.

But to have a shot on his own terms at this price point almost seems like a lot. a throwback because this is not Lord of the Rings. This does seem like a deal struck by the previous Amazon administration, and I'm just happy we get it. Yeah, me too. It is, it's bizarre that's something that a few years ago when the deal was struck that felt almost like an inevitability, of course these deep-pocketed companies would bankroll these creators, even though, you know, I don't know if Mad Men's viewership totals or whatever can be translated by number crunchers into this much money. That felt like where TV was going. That's not necessarily the case. anymore. And that is a pretty good transition, I think, to Lodge 49, which I'm guessing we haven't

really checked in with each other about it. I feel like a lot of our enthusiasm for the show will likely come from the fact the meta-conversation around the show, which is, I cannot believe this exists in 2018, and I want to protect it. Yeah. So let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, and we'll be back to talk about Lodge 49 and a little bit about insecure. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by ZipRecruiter hiring. Every business needs great people and a better way to find them. Something better than posting your job online and just praying that the right people see it. ZipRecruiter knew there was a smart way, so they built a platform that finds the right job candidates for you.

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Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Gillette. You know, if anybody had listened to Monday's podcast, they would have heard a deeply personal anecdote about how I was trying to grow a beard. And it was an 11-day process. It was a journey for me, for my wife, for everybody who loves me. But it didn't work out. It was just too itchy. It's a little too hot in Los Angeles to be experimenting with facial hair.

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That's high performance at a low price. Get Gillette performance delivered to your door and find Gillette 5 at Gilletteondemand.com. Subscribe today. Andy, we are back. Let's set the scene a little bit. So I don't know, I just took a snap poll in the office

and only the truest TV heads like Alison Herman and a couple other folks knew about this show. But so maybe our listeners don't know. It's a show on AMC called Lodge 49. The title is a kind of winking reference to Thomas Pinchins, The Crying of Lot 49. And I would say that the show sees itself, I think, as being a creative or cultural descendant of Thomas Pinchin's works.

It's full of symbolism and allegory and also, strange humor and strange set pieces and strange reference points. And it's a collection of people kind of at loose ends, but maybe not in knots quite. And I think, you know, obviously there's a tension that sort of is in any drama. There's tension that develops over the course of a few acts. But for the most part, this show is coasting down the Pacific Coast Highway with, you know, with its foot kind of off the gas, just like.

letting the breeze blow you down there. And it's set in Long Beach and stars Wyatt Russell, who you may have seen and everybody wants some and is in the upcoming Bad Robot movie Overlord and was in the great playtest episode of Black Mirror. He plays this kind of

surfer bro named Dud who lives in Long Beach and is kind of licking his wounds after a couple of really tough breaks in his life losing his father, having an injure while on a surfing trip in Nicaragua. And he lives with his twin sister, Liz, and they're just trying to kind of make ends meet.

And Doug finds a ring on the beach. And the ring is, uh, it belongs to a sort of fraternal order, a lodge, uh, called the Lynx. And he tracks this place down. And he kind of gets involved with this cast of characters of people who are, are members of this order. And I don't know.

So why don't, why don't you give me your first impression then we can just kind of go back and forth. My first impressions are, again, I cannot believe this exists. This is sort of like what we all thought in a very modest way, or at least a non, without much foresight, maybe where TV was heading from the earlier era of AMC, basically when AMC positioned itself as this exciting adult alternative to a lot of what was happening on TV at the time

by basically investing in incredibly talented writers and encouraging them to not use their best work as a sample to get hired on existing shows, but to actually make that work. And that's what happened with Breaking Bad, and that's what happened with Mad Men. In this case, this is a talented writer named Jim Gavin, who's written short stories and basically a fiction writer.

And they gave him a chance to make this strange, baggy, low-stakes, chill comedy drama, all those words I just said would not get you, you basically wouldn't be able to open the mini bottle of water if you were pitching that, I think, in most studios and most networks in 2018. It just doesn't translate. This is not based on any existing IP. It does not have a giant question that needs to be answered that you can put on the poster. It does not have an event that is so shocking.

It spins your head around in the first episode. It does not even have big stars. And what it does have, though, is a very, very, very specific point of view, a deep sense of what it wants to do and how it wants to do it. And this is my favorite part, of course, what appears to be a very sincere and not judgmental interest in characters from a segment of society that TV has generally kind of lost interest in, which is people who work jobs and have other issues, but don't kill people or fight zombies or turn into vampires or. or they're not looking for the one ring, even though there is a one ring that starts this thing. So obviously, I feel like anyone who's heard this long preamble would assume correctly that I was kind of into the show from Jump.

Now, is it a, for me, was it like a mad rush into love? No, because the show, because of all the things I just said, that first episode, it's a little prickly. You know, Wyatt Russell is a star and is just so this guy that you immediately want to follow him anywhere, even if it's to a donut shop or even if it's just to a night of drinking bourbon poured into a big gulp mug.

But otherwise the show doesn't really want to hold your hand. It just sort of wants you to find these people and sort of figure out their relationships and then want to keep stumbling along with them to the next episode, which I have to tell you, I do. Yeah. You know, you mentioned this idea of it kind of being, it almost taking you back in a couple of years to when there was this promise that, like you said,

that a writer's writer sample, writing sample, could be the actual show they made and not then saying, okay, you're great, why don't you go work on, on this network show or whatever? And so, yeah, it does have some of that magic that I think we were feeling five or six years ago with TV. It also has a very, very classical TV

storytelling voice in the sense that several of the characters will have these pretty well-developed plot lines throughout episodes but those plot lines are just kind of they're almost refreshingly realistic or relatable and not they're not mystery box plot lines

for the most part. There is a sort of larger mystery box in the center of the show but Brent Jennings who's an actor you've probably seen if you like any either 80s action movies movies. He was in, uh, he was in, gosh, what was he, another 48 hours. He's been on tons of TV shows like Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. And more recently, you may have seen him as Ron Washington in Moneyball. Brent Jennings is the second star, the third star of the show. And he's just a guy who's

like trying to get a commission on some pipe fittings and plumbing supplies that he's sold. And that is literally the plot of a show, of his whole plot so far, along with like a general sense of, like, a general sense of, like, I've arrived at this point in my life and life hasn't turned out the way I wanted it to. Same thing goes for a lot of these people. Wyatt Russell's sister is just working in a TGI Friday's type bar

and ducking debt collectors. That's her plot. It's wild. And what the show has done so far in the first two episodes is really articulate and visualize people's frustrations with just the crushing weight of modern life without

making it a polemic. it's just sort of like, yeah, sometimes you're so beat up and kicked by the world and your bad job that your wages are getting garnished at, that when you are cleaning out your fridge, you decide to climb inside of it and close the door, as one of the characters does. And let me say also, I think there is more to be gleaned about the nature of human behavior and human life and a reason for being through a bunch of normcore people gathering to drink beers and talk. than there is in a futuristic theme part of sex robots. I mean, obviously that's on brand for my core beliefs, but I think this show is an example of that. This show is just as interested in answering, or tackling anyway, not answering,

but tackling the big questions as something like Westworld, but I think it does it in a more subtle way with a lot more honesty about what actually makes people tick. Now, the other way of talking about the show, which I think is worth doing, I mentioned at the beginning how this feels like it's from a different era. In a way, it is. The development of the show, the fact that it's on the air is a small miracle,

not just because, wow, I'm enjoying it so much. It's that the scripts for this show, meaning the pilot was probably already written before this, but AMC announced that it was going to form and fund a writer's room for Lodge 49 in May of 2015. Yeah. That's over three years ago when Jim Gavin, who had probably written the script previously, was given the green light to, in very AMC fashion, write more scripts,

and then they would, if they liked the scripts, they would greenlight the whole season. Which they did in 2016. 2016. I do know that I think at some point then some of the scripts were tossed, that they had a new room. A lot of time and money

went into the creation of this show. It's interesting to think of that, also knowing that AMC budgets shows differently than other networks. And that requires some smoke and mirrors and sometimes some suspension of disbelief by the audience. This show is so deeply about being kind of a burnout,

a surfer burnout in a surf town like Long Beach. Lodge 49 is filmed in Atlanta, where the tax breaks are more prevalent than surf breaks. For the most part, I buy it. There's a bunch of CGI palm trees, the production designer and the location scouts did a great job. And honestly, if Wyatt Russell walked into like, whatever the name of that international base on Antarctica is.

Yeah, and he just has that kind of like sunbleached pocket tea. You're just like, yeah, I got as a surfer. But it was, you know, I'm going to say this. I don't even have judgment about this, but I will say it's a different experience for our current age of television to throw on a show like this and not really recognize anyone except to say, oh, that guy. Like you said with Brent Jennings,

who's a terrific actor and really seems to be relishing, you know, a role this large. But the rest of the cast is filled with people that you may have seen before. You may have even liked before. David Pescu, who plays a member of the lodge. Yeah. Is a legendary improv guy from Chicago and plays a great recurring part on VIP as Selena's ex-husband.

But that's the level of celebrity we're dealing with. What's your... Where do you stand on that? Because I think we've been a little spoiled now where we see shows and, you know, even... You even supposedly second-tier shows on streaming services, stocked with people who we either know from movies or from other recent Gilded Age shows. My take is that this will be a show. I hope it doesn't go down like Terriers, where it's a show that people adore,

but just ultimately doesn't have the wattage to keep it afloat. And I don't even know if this is a show that that AMC ever planned on making more than one episode of. I think I'll flip what your question is and my answer will be the reverse which is Wyatt Russell is just kind of like a star and it is rare now because usually what happens is you have like a Reese Witherspoon

or somebody obviously she's one of those famous people in the world but somebody like within the same area code as we're Reese Witherspoon and they're brought into a TV show and you're just kind of like well man Woody Harrelson is on this show or something it's rare that you see somebody who you catch on the way up

I guess is what I'm saying you know maybe not even since I haven't really had that feeling since Friday Night Lights where you saw some of like we saw like Taylor Kitch on Friday Lights really this guy's gonna be famous you know White Russell is arguably

somewhat famous right now and Lodge 49 won't make him very famous but when you watch him and you watch what he does with this part and he has to do a lot He has to basically be the dude, but he also has to be Tom Cruise at some points. He has to turn to a room full of people and make a really sincere statement to move the show along.

And he has to say, like, I feel like an outsider out in the real world, but when I'm inside this place, I feel like I'm a part of something and I understand things. That's a hard thing to pull off and not make it seem stupid. but I just think that he has a certain quality and a certain likeability and a certain under he's just very very very magnetic in his his loping around do you know what I mean? Oh totally

I mean for people who don't know this guy is the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn and he seems to have somehow inherited the best characteristics of each of them there's something like very earnestly early McConaughey about him in a

appealing way. He's just, he is. He's just a star and he lights it up. And he's, the show is worth watching for him alone, even though everyone else is quite good. The last thing I want to say about it, because I just, I think this show is fascinating, but both for what's on the screen and what's happening and what happened off the screen, just purely from a user perspective, it's noteworthy that AMC, AMC has a over-the-top service and they made the entire season available to subscribers of it, which I think was a good play. You could look at that and say, well, that's just the sign that they're burning it off, like, you know, like when networks used to put stuff on in the summer. Sure, on some level, but I think they're also recognizing that a show like

this you need to watch a lot of to become a proportionately large-sized fan of it. And though I am often against binge watching, I prefer the slower build, much like with the other AMC show that it airs with Better Call Salt. This just might be one of the ones that benefits from having more around. Because once you sink into this world, once you sink your toes into the sand of it, you kind of want to hang there for a while. And that said, I wonder if with, you know, with the commercials that you get if you watch it streaming or on demand, or with just a week-long break between Mondays, if this spell is broken, will it stay broken? Yeah. And so I think that there's actually some connective tissue between Lodge 49 and Insecure.

Ooh, I'd love to see this. Well, only. so much and I'm I think that there's something about making I think that we're entering a time period where more and more people are more and more aware of just how touch and go it is out there when you're like living not necessarily paycheck to paycheck but I think

more and more people are more acutely aware of fiscal inequality and haves and have-nots and how much corporations may or may not control what we see and do and how much money we can make and what we spend it on. And I think that there's something nice about having a couple of shows on the air that explore how fucking hard it is to be alive in America right now in different ways. I think that's a great point. Should we transition?

Yeah, go for it. Should we segue over? Yeah. That's definitely the case with Insecure, which returned for its third season. It finds the star, Issa, moonlighting as a lift driver and learning how to or or maybe how not to remove vomit from the backseat of a car. Right. And, you know, I love the attack you're taking with the type of where she is in the world

and how she's trying to make it in the world and how it doesn't sugarcoat that. Or, you know, there hasn't been, this is the third season. She's not on, you know, year three of some perfectly scripted upswing. It's really just she's still kind of just figuring it out. That differs, though, and I apologize for breaking up your beautiful segue, that differs from the show itself. This is a show that when it premiered, Issa Rae was not super famous. And, you know, I think the show seemed like a great investment by HBO and young talent, but it wasn't quite clear what it would become. It's always fun to watch a show come back to a level of energy and a claim that maybe even the people making it didn't realize they had achieved.

it's one of the great pleasures of serialized television, but also television over multiple seasons and television that comes out week to week. Because when Insecure came back this year, suddenly they're after shows. And I think you guys are doing it as the recapables, right? And people who appear in tiny parts, like in this season premiere,

the guy who got in the fight in the back of the lift, I was getting emails and texts about him just as an actor being like, who's that guy? That guy's great. This show is a launching pad now for people who were launched by it. And that's kind of fun. It's a really fun show to have back in our lives. Yeah, absolutely.

I think that even watching it this week, it was sort of that continuation of the feeling that we were sort of talking about with Succession, where you kind of feel like there is this communal experience of watching it too, which is another nice thing that you have with Insecure, where it's just a real public experience rather than just like, I'm just going to privately, like, binge this and kind of think about

the thing about Ozark. There is a certain almost like celebratory quality to watching it. Oh, absolutely. And because, I mean, you know, because at heart, and this was the brilliant decision that Issa Ray and Prentice Penny is the showrunner and also Larry Wilmore, who helped develop it, came up with, which is that, you know, yes, this is a show about economic struggle, and it's a show about dating and it's a show about Los Angeles, but it's really a show about female friendship,

and particularly the friendship between Issa and Molly. And so much like they are excited to see each other, like it is exciting to see them together on screen. And obviously we have to give a shout out to good friend of the pod, Yvonne Orgy, who was very nice to indulge us with some talk to throne stuff last year.

But here's the other thing about the show. Chris, you know, I don't know if you know maybe people are tuning in late. I'm in New Mexico right now, the land of enchantment, trying to make a TV show. I like that you're treating it as if it's a radio show and that people can't start from the beginning, but go ahead.

I don't know. I'm sitting alone in an office right now talking to you on the phone. I don't know what's going on. We were having a conversation about like casting extras and casting people in small roles and like, do you want people with TV faces or do you want people who look a certain way or look regional, interesting, whatever? The thing about it's a cure is that people look so fucking beautiful on the show and that's one of the hallmarks of the show, but it's just staggering. I know a lot of the template was set by Molina Matsukas who directed the pilot and has come back to direct multiple episodes.

She's an executive producer. But just like rando lift dude is probably like one of the ten most handsome guys in Los Angeles. Like I don't know the talent pool that they're pulling from. But like I, you know, I would like to, here's what I'm trying to say to you, Chris. I would like to go crash on Daniel's couch. Sure. I would. I mean, I don't know what else is to say.

There is there is great joy to be found, I think, a TV show that knows exactly what it is, what it's doing, and gives and steers into it. You know what I mean? Like, the show has great humor. It has great heart. It's very smart and incisive about a lot of things. But it is also just serving up beautiful people going on dates, which great. Great. There's room for that, you know? All right. So we'll probably talk boy more about insecure as we go along and we're going to try and keep our eye on Lodge 49. Do you want to try and do Saul next Monday? I would love to get to get going on season four, A Better Call, Saul.

Honestly, we're pausing a little bit because of, because of you, my friend. Yeah, I know. Are you ready to go? I'm ready to grok. Come on. Also, Chris, I want you to know that though I am sitting in an otherwise empty office with just like a picture frame,

some headphones, some goldfish crackers, and some sunglasses on. One other item on my desk that I think is relevant to you and our listeners. What's that? It is a brand. and new, sharp-edged, crisp-edged copy of Robert Stone's novel Dog Soldiers. Right.

Is that the new Double Down? I mean, I haven't started it yet. It came today, but I feel like we're edging towards it. We also should say, by the way, that I think we determined off-air that it was our friend Elwood Reed who mentioned it in our previous Double-Down Book Club podcast, and we were talking about James Crumley and The Last Good Kiss. But is this the one? By the way, did you know that Robert Stone's first collection of short stories was

called Bear and his daughter. Yes, I did. I sure did. That's pretty wild. All right, man. I'm going to let you go. You stay high up in the desert and we'll talk to you on Monday. Great job, Brancy. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Gillette. Gillette has been my razor of choice for God, going on almost 15, 20 years now.

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