The Watch - Reviewing the First Three Episodes of ‘Stranger Things’ Season 2 and Wrapping Up ‘The Deuce’ With Megan Abbott (Ep. 199)

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

The Ringer’s Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan review the first three episodes of ‘Stranger Things' Season 2 and consider whether it is living up to the hype and how it holds up under the microscope (4:00). Later they discuss ‘The Deuce’ and its finale (27:00) before chatting with Megan Abbott about her experience writing on the show (37:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Stand up and walk now. Now. Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, my Papadopoulos, it's Andy Greenwald. Big things today. Yeah, man. An all indictment special. Is that right? Did I get the email?

Yeah. Did you get the email? Because you want to check where I came from. Andy, it's Monday. It's Stranger Things Monday. It's Deuce Monday. It's Megan Abbott Monday. Big show.

It's indictment Monday. I'm psyched. I'm dressed like Marty McFly. And it's not for Halloween. Look. I just want to let people know just to paint the picture. Today's the first day in Los Angeles where it's not 107 degrees. There's a slight fog, right?

Yeah. And people are acting like they live inside Stephen King of the mist. When did you get so cynical? Second of all, I've lived here for way too long. You've been way too hot for so many years that if it goes beneath 70, you're damn right. Out comes the fleece. Out comes the fleece. Look, Zach Mack is wearing a full body parker right now.

Everybody, everybody's just wearing them. scarves they got all summer. Yeah. Come on, relax. Andy, we're going to talk about Stranger Things season two the first three episodes. First three, only first three. Yes, so we're going to do first three, second three on Thursday.

That's a big ask. Okay. Do you want to get through the season or would you like to just say your thoughts? I like it when you give me assignments live on the mic that I can't refuse. Second three on Thursday, final three on Monday. Wow. Yeah, I know. And we're also going to be talking about Thor next Monday.

So it's a big week for you. Yeah, big week for me. A lot of watching stuff. We'll be joined later in this episode. Let's hope the World Series end soon because that's really effing with our... That really jammed my night up a little bit. The five and a half hour multi-home run juiced balls world series. We have Megan Abbott, one of the writers of the Deuce joining us later in the episode.

She's also the excellent novelist. And we'll have some book club news at the end of the show with her. But let's start talking about ST. Mm-hmm. All right? You just snuggled back into the show like a warm blanket on an 80-degree day in Los Angeles. Andy. So the synths start

You're back in Hawkins Yeah Kids are dressed up like Ghostbusters It's Halloween man How were you excited? Are you thrilled to be back? How much How did the first images of the show

Like how did you greet them? Were you just like, oh this is great I'm so glad to be back? Not as much as I thought Now I don't want to be this guy But it kind of fits It fits me as well as that vest fits here It's good radio so go ahead

I love the score of the show. I love the look of the show. I love a lot of the performances on this show. But what I realized as I was watching the first episode and then the second and third was that I don't really care so much about this show. And what struck me as kind of interesting was the first season worked for me because it was so committed to creating this world, to creating these characters, to creating this, you know,

this batchit commitment to a very specific kind of John Carpenter-y, quasi, like a little bit darker Spielberg vibe, right? Everything was consistent with that. There was horror at the margins, right? And actually, and I had forgotten this, and I went back and reminded myself, there was, it was darker at the beginning. I mean, the whole scene in the beginning when 11 escapes and she goes to the diner and all those people just get killed.

Yeah. The idea of a boy being taken away from his family into this demon place. Like, it was jolting and jarring. This reminded me of a sequel so far anyway in the early. early going. It reminded me very much of an 80 sequel, which is to say it wasn't about showing us something we hadn't seen before, which is already kind of a suspect comment when talking about Stranger Things. It was about celebrating what we liked the first time. And there was so much, it's not exposition if we already know the characters, but there was so much like,

okay, here's where we left the chess pieces. And by the way, the chess pieces are dressed as Ghostbusters this year and aren't they cute, that I found it a little tiring. Because here's the thing. Those kids are great, but I like those kids doing something in the service of something, riding their bikes, trying to save their friend. I am less enamored of them just being those kids, to be honest. I didn't even remember their names. I just remembered that this was the kid who wore the hat, and this was the kid who loved 11. It was more paper thin to me, and this was just like, okay, well, everybody is, here's everybody back again. Now, did some things transcend that? My pretty road criticism? Yes. 11 is the star of the show.

Millie Bobby Brown is fantastic. Her scenes with David Harbor are the best parts of the show. And that, to me, is the best, that's the best part of the show. Okay. Everything else I found, I found tiring. I mean, it's hitting the pleasure centers. It is, the Duffer brothers are nothing else, if not wild, shameless about just, they just steer right into it. Like some of the lines, they say, the Hopper's big entrance where the cigarette is taken out of his mouth and an apple is put in.

I mean, let's go for it, you know? I admire their commitment. I actually, so I disagree on a lot of different points here. Hit me, hit me, because I did not find, we talked last week about how pleasurable this was going to be. I didn't feel that great to be back in Hawkins. Yeah, okay. So one of the things I think I missed this season was that feeling of ramping up to something. So I feel like pretty immediately in this season, we get back into the plot plot part of it,

where it's like what's up with the upside down and what's going, like, it's very much. extension of the first season in that there isn't, I didn't feel that reset. There's some stuff in the arcade, they're hanging out, they've all gone through slight changes or whatever, but I didn't feel like there was enough of a, let's bring it back down to 10 so that we can get, we can slowly ramp it up to 100. I thought it was back down around 35, if that makes any sense. Do you know what in terms of like the tension? And I guess that would make sense. If you had gone through something as traumatic as what these kids go through in the first season, you wouldn't necessarily be able to go back to normal. They very quickly get back into,

these kids versus the upside down, these kids versus this alternate dimension, which is encroaching on theirs. And I actually did find it a little bit tough to hang with Millie Bobby Brown alone in a cabin with David Harbor while these kids are off having their adventure. Like I think that I enjoy this show the most when there is the most ensemble moments going on.

When these kids are interacting in mixed up groups. And later in the season, and like you get lots of different pairings and you get lots of different combinations, which are very pleasant. But just to defend my point, which I agree. I want to say that I agree with you on something. I think those two are the best actors in the series. The devotion to them together, well, as long as they're on screen, I'm happier.

But the show's commitment to showing how they met up and started living together in this cabin, I don't care about that. See, I actually thought that that was the most kicking the can moment, is that you could have easily shown how these two sort of got together to live. in this cabin in like 10 seconds. That's what I'm saying. I don't care about that. And they stretch it out over a...

It's not... So I think that there's like a couple of times in these first few episodes and I think throughout the second season that feel very much like we could handle this very quickly but we've got a lot more yarn to unspool like a lot more time to cover.

So we're going to kind of take our time with these beats and I think that that is... That's not even a criticism of the show because I think that it's just the reality of you made one thing, it became a phenomenon. and now you know you're going to have to make a couple more of these. So you can't burn everything in that one in the second season.

I would say it's also a factor of the way the Duffer Brothers approach to this material is that these are 80s movies that they are making, right? I mean, this is Stranger Things too. And because of that, the expository part of the movie isn't the first 25 minutes. It's the first three hours. And I would just say that there is a trend in genre. genre television right now to show your work and show all your work. What would another example of that be?

Last week's Mr. Robot. Okay. I think that episode three of season three has some of the most, you know, virtuastic shots that the series has done. I think that the direction the season is off the chain. Obviously, Sam's our friend, and will hear me say this, and I would say it to his face. But that episode was devoted entirely to, and this is not a spoiler if you're not watching the season, really.

It's what happened to Tyrell. It's filling in all the backstory. It was more backstory than I needed. your mileage may vary on that. But I wonder if this is a factor of, is this, and so in Stranger Things, showing every step of the way in which Eleven and Hopper reconnected, down to, like, her throwing a dead squirrel at a hunter's face to steal his coat.

Yeah. Are we showing that because we have nine hours and we got to fill with something? And as you say, we don't want to give too much away yet because we're going to be making Stranger Things 3 inevitably. Or are we showing that because today's TV culture is so hyperspeed. like Westworldy in that we have to prove we have to show our work as creators we have thought about this we cannot leave any I don't think that they have this problem I don't think that Stranger Things has this problem I don't think that the upside down or the

demigorgan or any of this stuff like holds up to like the least bit of screwing and I and I hope that it doesn't and I and I don't think that they ever make I don't think that they really there's a difference between them not thinking that which is good and them thinking that but not doing a good enough job improving it, which is bad. I think if they're just like, look, the upside down is the darkness that's underneath your bed. It's whatever it is. It's the thing that goes bump in the night. What's important is these kids who start out very innocent go through these incredibly traumatic things

during an incredibly traumatic time, puberty in their lives and how their relationships change and grow. And honestly, like, I think that they do a really good job of capturing this idea that, like, the first season of these kids is going to be like, this golden moment for these kids, you know, and both, it's kind of like as actors, too. You know what I mean? Like, that kid will never be as cute

as when he didn't have his front teeth. You know what I mean? And this, I, that's like a shot. I'm not even trying to take a shot at a little kid. I'm just saying, like, there is like actually an acknowledgement of like, it's, it's tough growing older. It's tough, like, being best friends, but also getting into girls and also being like, you abandoned me or you betrayed me or we have these rules,

but you're not following them anymore. A lot of that stuff, I thought it was much, much more interesting than whether, or not this is a government conspiracy or a supernatural, whatever. I agree. And people should understand that your point there is being made not just as a fan of the show and as a critic, but as a veteran casting agent for children in Hollywood. I mean, you know this better than most, how hard it is to cast these kids and put them in the situations to succeed.

We talked a lot about... I agree with that. I think that my issue with this season so far is that it's a little bit... And again, this is so far. This is three episodes in. It's a little bit stuck in the middle for me. it is neither going great gonzo in terms of just a genre, sci-fi, like, yeah.

But also like PG-13 scare, you know, it's not going all the way in that direction. But neither is it going in the direction you're saying, where this, I think it sort of is ventriloquizing these ideas of like adolescence and difficulty, but I'm not really seeing them, you know. It's not going, it's not hitting me viscerally yet, and it's not hitting me emotionally yet. So it's just sort of sitting there and is...

Or intellectually. Or intellectually. Or intellectually. It is hitting neither of none of those three points. I couldn't help but keep, I kept thinking, wow, I just pulled a Carrie Bradshaw. I couldn't help to think of, you know. Well, you have your laptop.

Why don't you write this as a column? Was I the Stranger Thing? I couldn't help but think about some of the stuff that people claim me to, the Stranger Things heavily draws from. Yeah. And looking back on those movies

and wondering, well, what did those movies do? Like, I actually don't remember. remember the emotional like resonance of ET, I think a lot of it is is in that visceral thing that you're talking about, the combination of John Williams music with soaring cameras and the idea of like capturing the fact that when you're a kid, everything is happening to you for the first time. So these emotions feel huge, even though you're essentially riding your bike and chasing a strange. Also the juxtaposition. And as someone who saw that movie in the theater as a kid, you probably did too. Six years old saw E.E.

the scene in the cornfield where they see, they screams, that was the scariest moment of my life up to that point. Yeah. I, if you're talking about visceral reactions, that terrified me to my core. And yet it happened in the same movie where there was Reese's pieces, which I knew I liked, and also bicycle riding, which I aspired to do one day. I mean, putting all those things together, that is probably what those movies did best, which was not treat childhood or adolescence with kid gloves, but suggest that it was a swampy mess of all these feelings and it's hard to separate. them. And Stranger Things at its best echoes that. Yeah. But as it's pushing forward, I mean, I don't, I am not, I am not shipping Mike an 11, but that relationship has some resonance. It has, it has weight behind it. It existed last year. And it is potentially going in a different

direction. And the way they played it, which I really appreciate in the early going, it's not even romantic because these are kids and she is a science experiment. But what it is is, the more like CW stuff is like is Nancy and which we should get to but it's really just like you need someone yeah you need you need your person and I appreciate that part of the show a lot so by way of getting into that stuff let me ask you a question and this happens a lot especially with shows that I think develop incredibly passionate followings in their first season and then they have to kind of live up to these expectations and I think it's an you could call it an artistic decision but I think you could almost call it an editorial decision I think I know it's something that we talk about at the ringer which is basically do you want to go wider or do you want to go deeper? Do you want to cover more and more stuff or do you want to go really deep with the things that you're already talking about? And I think that you can apply this to the way

that they expanded the cast of characters because you've talked to more showrunners than I have. You've talked to more TV writers than I have. You've been in writing rooms. Why is there an impulse to say, okay, I know it's like we have to freshen up the mix a little bit, but do you think that it sometimes takes away

from like pretty valuable screen time of other characters when you're like, let's throw three more or four more people in here. Because now you're getting up around 12 people who are like, okay, I gotta keep this person straight, this person straight. But also like these characters

are already starting out as archetypes because they're being drawn from a pop culture universe from 30 years ago or whatever. It's difficult to, it's an interesting decision on their part to be like what this show needed was four or five new people, not let's do just maybe a standalone episode with Just Dustin or like, let's hang out with Nancy

or, you know, let's hang out with Nancy's parents for a while. I agree with you. And I actually think that spreading the storylines and spreading the characters too thin is a flaw early going here. I mean, I think it's not an unfamiliar tendency. I mean, that is what sequels, before sequels became just, you know, every movie would get one or even, you know, they were greenlit before the first one even was released. that was always the impulse.

Well, we'll just do the same thing, but bigger or louder or more. We'll always add another element to it. I mean, look at the lethal weapon movies and how many characters were on each poster successively. Because we got to keep it fresh. We've got to introduce a new element to it. I agree with you that I think it was probably unnecessary in this season. I mean, first of all, just shouts to the god Modine,

who probably thought he was coming back. Because he had an off-camera kind of death or whatever it was. And all of a sudden, you know, Paul Reiser's agent gets the call. I'm happy with his edition. I think he's been great. Really reviving the Carter Burke from Alien's vibe. It's kind of nice. He hasn't gone back to that in a minute.

But your other point, yes, because, look, like the, it's weird that the character with the most development, if you want to call it that, from one season to another, is the Andrew McCarthy dude with the hair. What's his name? Steve. Steve. Yeah. That guy, I mean, I don't know whether that's, that was a good choice in season one to sort of not go in the direction we expected with him and have him not just be a jerk. But, or it's just that the actor is winning and they like him and he's more charming than people. thought going in, or his hair became a meme, he's had the biggest development arc.

I am, by the way, I am Team Steve. I don't know if that's like a... First of all, if you're not Team Steve, you're getting indicted. I didn't know that was a thing. I thought everyone was Team Jonathan. Who's Team Jonathan? I just think that was scripted for us to become Team Jonathan.

Nah, dog. Let me tell you something. The DA agents at LAX are not Team Jonathan. So that's a rough look. from my man. Although shout to that actor, because his name definitely sounds like a guy who has a production credit on Life of Pablo. Charlie Heaton.

Charlie Heaton. Charlie Heaton is coming in with the track. But, okay, I'm all over the place. But I don't know if we needed this other, like, what are we even calling him? The dude in the Camaro, who is may or may not be Max's brother. Oh, yeah. I don't need that guy. Billy, right?

I don't need this guy in my life right now. Like there's, there are too many things to be juggling. And so if one of the things we are supposed to be caring about is this Nancy triangle, by the way, what, tell me, let's talk about Nancy. Sure. Tell me something about Nancy. Tell me one thing about Nancy. She was a pretty good student. I got that vibe.

She likes wearing loafers. Maybe doesn't quite watch over her friend's backs the way she should. Her investment in her friend's life seems a little bit like a retcon to me. You know what I mean? Well, I thought, Allison made a really good point about that. the Barb storyline, which was that it actually, they use it as a, that's a great, you could have just as easily been like nothing in the first season matters to these people anymore and just like had them hard reset. Everybody's back to playing D&D. And they are. They're like playing

arcade games. I thought that was like a nice like, the tech is getting updated. The idea of technology is kind of like becoming a bigger part of these kids' lives. But the idea that they would still like have these vestiges of emotional sort of scar tissue from the season before. Yeah. I think that that actually works as a, we're not ready to let this go. And if we need sort of an avatar for that, it's Nancy being bummed out about Barb and possibly being bummed out about Barb because she's like, it was my, you know, it was my negligence that sort of led to her death.

But it's also not just negligence. This is that, that speaks to the area of teenage life or young life that the show wants to get credit for and wants to dance around. doesn't deal with. That was more than anything else in the first season, an example of the thread that ran through all the horror movies of the 80s, which is teenage sexuality equals death. Right? As soon as you go off to hook up with someone, you will die, your friends will die. Like, that is the scary thing in the closet lurking for everybody. That's kind of what that scene was, right? I mean, that was the party, and she chose to go

with the cool guy, and Barb God got. Yeah. So I just have, I have one, I only have one, no. I actually, so I obviously, I think I'm enjoying this a lot more than you are. Well, do you want to go bigger picture with a kind of a question for you? Like, do you think, I'm saying these things, I'm not liking it as much. I don't, you know, I don't think it's as good. I think it's sort of blah, blah, blah, whatever criticisms I have of it, it strikes me as just a complete success story for Netflix. Because these guys, for whatever reason, whatever is in their DNA or their artistic sensibility, Netflix was like, yeah, we want that. People like that.

We want more of that. They were like, done. Here is more of it. And sometimes there's just too much of it or whatever. it is, there is, I don't want to be misquoted here. Like, they, they took their mission. They accepted their mission and they delivered on their mission. Also, like, I really, really, really like hanging out in this world.

I find it an incredibly comfortable watch. I'm finding it, yeah, I thought I was. I mean, that was what I was expecting to go back to. But then I found myself with the polywogs and the, like, let's sell out our friends for our weird little slimy monsters. So I do, I do want to bring that up. That is actually something that haunts Spielberg movie. movies is just like an overabundance of weird dumb creatures. Yeah.

And a lot of 80s movies are just like, and now this little like, you know, and you're just like, oh, come on dog. Can I introduce you in an Ewalk? I have to say, man, I have a note for these kids. Yeah. If you went through what you went through in the first season, and then you discover a species of unknown origin that in any way resembles a demigorgon, it's a demigorgia.

Yeah. And like, you don't need to be James. Goodall to know that's a bad look, homie. Light it on fire immediately. Right now. Also, all this talk about their group being a democracy, then all of a sudden, doesn't just go in rogue. I know.

I mean, come on, man. Also, it's gross. Don't put it on your head. What is the upside here? Literally, this kid just had his developed his first crush on the person who usurped him at DigDug. Ten minutes later, he's like, nah, I'm good on girls for a minute. Yeah, because I've got like, definitely.

Definitely like a demon. I've got a screeching snot rocket that I have evicted my turtle for. Yurtle, man. Let Yurtle keep his home. Also, last point. I forgot about this because there's a lot of characters. Can we talk about the real glaring absence at the heart of Stranger Things too? Sure.

What about Bono, though? Yeah, man. What about Bono though? Wait, wait, wait. Wait, what did you say? What about? Did you say what about? I'm just saying, Carabono showed up to do two things.

things. Get her hair feathered and act a shit out of a thankless roll. What about fucking Holly's out here just like gorging herself on ham? She can't get one line. She didn't learn how to speak in a year since. There is a brave tradition of letting baby Holly's not act on television shows. But she's got to eat ham the entire show. What would you rather be doing on set? Eating ham? You get salted out. If you were just like sitting there eating the bwono ham every night. Do you think she's like retaining water due to sodium intake? No, I just mean like, I think that you could have just been like, here's like a Kit Kat or something like that just to mix it up. Maybe something with Newgate in it.

I want to talk about Buono, though. You do want to talk about Buono. I just want to say, like, she's dope. You need to get her some minutes. Yeah, just pass her the ball. She's Nerlins. You need to find her rim running and let her cook. I know.

I mean, you've watched forward. Is there more blono for me? I apparently, the rumor has it. There is more blono, but actually I am up to this. I'm up to the last episode. Yeah. And there has been next. to know Buono.

Wow. That is a tough one. Because you want me to keep watching this because more blono is always Boino. Like that's what we want. All right, man. Let's take a quick break here from our sponsors. We're going to talk about episodes four through seven, I guess, right?

Four or five, six. Three at a time. So we'll talk about those on Thursday. And let's take a quick break here from our sponsors. We'll come back, talk about the season finale of the Deuce. And Andy has a great conversation coming with Megan Abbott. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Stitcher. Game of Thrones fans. Check out Stitcher Premium for over 30 hours of exclusive Game of Thrones content, including

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month. That's Stitcher.com slash premium. Andy, we are back. We are heard to talk about the season one finale of the Deuce, and we're going to be joining in a few minutes by Deuce Staff writer and accomplished novelist. One of our, like, really, we're really excited to talk to her. You're going to be talking to her. Megan Abbott.

Yeah. I read Matt Zolarsites, wrote like sort of a year-end review of the deuce that went up last night. And I thought... This is over at Vulture. Yeah, I thought it might be a good place to start our quick conversation. Maybe we can re-hit the episode a little bit later. But it was basically like the deuce was really good, but I can't blame you if you had a hard time watching.

Yeah, I've heard that from a lot of people. And I do think that anecdotally, the show did not like grip the next. nation. You know what I mean? And I was sort of, I have been sort of negotiating with myself. I mean, like, I think I really like hanging out at the high out. I talk to you about that. But I have definitely found, like, a little bit of like internal resistance when I guess a Sunday night. I've been like, I want to dial this up. Yeah. How did you feel about the finale? Yeah. My wife pulled the rip court after episode two. So I've been solo, solo flying this ship.

I love the show. I love this season. I thought the finale was really artfully done. but my criticism of the show, if you squint, is actually kind of a compliment, which is it wasn't long enough. And if you read David Simon and George Pelicanos did interviews with Alan Seppin-walliver, hit-fixed, looking back on the season. And you can read between the lines and Simon actually doesn't really ever beat around the bush. He's basically like we were given eight episodes and we could do 10, we could do 12. He basically said I feel like 12 is an optimal storytelling. That's an optimal amount. Yeah, model for an optimal storytelling.

Considering how intricate these guys are with their storytelling, how important it is for, as they said in the wire, for all the pieces to matter, I'm really impressed that they were able to give us as much as they did. But, you know, when we think back with great fondness as we do on the wire, the things that we remember aren't necessarily the key development in the wiretapping case, you know, or the moment that, that one of the runners or whatever screwed up,

thus allowing them to whatever. We remember Omar with Honeynut Cheerios. You know, we remember the character beats, the humanity. The Irish wake, whatever. The Irish wake. On a show about nightlife, and I say that value neutral,

in New York City at that era, obviously the deuce is ripe for those moments. And it gave us some wonderful ones. And you and I, every time we talk about the show, we talk about the high hat and how tremendous that vibe was and the idea of everyone drinks here tonight. And even in the finale, there's this scene where a band based on a real-life guy is performing 96 tears, and it's just like, oh, punk is going to happen. All the ingredients are here, and it's just starting to boil.

This show had those things. Yeah. But frankly, it didn't have enough time to optimally do both, I think. And, you know, you could flip this and say, it's kind of a gift in this age of too much TV to say, they gave me eight hours and I wanted more. Right. But they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. But frankly, like the turns some characters make, I wanted more build up to those turns. And in these interviews, they've talked about how they wish they'd been able to go deeper with Paul going downtown.

You know, they wish that they had been able to foreground Vinnie more. I'm not Vinnie, Frankie Moore, so that we would understand that him as less than just comic relief as more than just comic relief. And then there's these other characters that in typical Simon and Pelicanos fashion, they introduce. And I'm like, oh, yeah, more of that. like Big Mike or Black Frankie or the other pimps that we didn't get to spend nearly as much time with

as we maybe would have thought Cici, for example, from his prominence in the first two episodes to his return prominence at the end. It was all there. And so I wanted more. And it's especially because the finale was,

didn't wrap up as much as I thought it was going to wrap up considering we're doing a time jump, considering the next season is going to pick up in 77 or 78, and some of these characters won't be along for the ride or some of them won't be recognizable when we see them again.

Do you think that the model, we're talking about the amount of episodes, but they do a very specific thing, which is, and Dickens gets referenced many times throughout the season, and there's always the Dickensian element joke of the wire, but the tapestry of characters

and the threads that are all generally pointed in the same direction, it may have a couple of overlapping points, geographically in the show it's the bar. But that is actually an atypical way of telling a television story these days where you're just like, we have like 12 storylines going right now. And it's up to you to sort of be patient, allow these things to develop in the time. That actually was like relatively, you know, it was pretty breathtaking when they did it

in the wire. And I feel like a lot of people respected it a lot. But television itself, I think, has gone away from that. I think they try to tell an A, B, B, B, B, and a half plot, you know, in an episode, but so much of what our television watching habits are based around central mysteries or unlocking something or answering some question. The deuce is not really asking a ton of questions. It's more showing what happened. We all have the same Mount Rushmore of TV dramas, basically. But the most influential show by a wide margin is Breaking Bad.

the footprint of or the shadow of Sopranos is receding every day of Mad Men is not nearly what you and I would like it to be. And also, I mean, not for nothing, possibly because every show that tried to rip off Mad Men for the most part has failed. Well, that's because they all tried to recreate the sizzle, not the stake. They didn't understand what was good about the show. Breaking Bad was revolutionary because it asked, as you said, it asked one question and then tracked it beginning to end. That sells. I mean, it didn't, obviously the show wasn't a hit from the beginning. And you always used to use the metaphor or the image of a clock and like the idea of this precision engineering of the story.

And this kind of like I think that there is an almost organic, fuck it, let's do it live feeling to the deuce. No matter how meticulously it's obviously been drawn out. Like I think they allow it to feel very human. And that can sometimes feel ugly and uncomfortable. I mean, this is a show about what happened in New York City. It's a show about the degradation of humans, of people, of sexuality, of women. in particular. It's a show about people in transition and a city in transition. And it, I mean, what's the question it's asking? Well, it doesn't have a happy ending. Exactly. I mean, we,

we know that going in. So for me, it's, I think that this show is unquestionably a success, but it's kind of a tweener in that it could be more. Yeah. It probably could be less too, but I wouldn't like that version of it. And I'm incredibly excited for them to come back and do more. I'm excited to talk to Megan about her experience doing it. You know, I think that people should check out, listen to this interview with Megan, check out interviews with Simon and Pelicanos, and hopefully we'll have a chance to talk to George again and maybe even the big guy himself. Because the one thing that is worth noting about this show, to go back to Matt Sites' thing,

I don't know who's going to fire the season up again because it doesn't feel that good often to watch it. But if you consider it or reconsider it, there was so much thought and intention and humanity gifted to every scene and every character. That's a hallmark of what they do. And so there was a, you know, there's a surprise death in the finale. Ruby slash Thunder Thighs is killed. And it's jarring because, you know, the show can lull you into a feeling of, I like hanging out of these people. We talked about that a week and a half ago. Yeah.

And but if you think about it, does it seem out of the blue? Yes. But that's the point. That's 100% the point of it, because that's what life could be like for people who live on the margins. Yeah. And I think that it captures an experience that's very specific to New York City, pretty specific to East Coast cities where you're living and you're confronted with really like human tragedies on a minute to minute hour to hour day to day basis that you get splashed across

tabloid pages that get turned into puns you know that get turned headless body and topless bar anecdotes things you tell people at the bar that night did you hear about this guy jumped in front of a subway you know like all this stuff yeah and the way the show handles violence and the way the show handles those moments is it's almost it almost it's not quite an indictment on the viewer but it did make me confront the participation in that in that world you know and I think we talk obviously a lot about like most of the double down book club selections we have are crime books yeah yeah yeah very deeply investigate like the human element of crime but it was very strange to consider the Ruby death because it was handled in such a way where I was like, I feel

awful about this. Yeah. And then the characters, even characters we love, are like, we got to get a new awning. Yeah. And Vinny's like, look, I liked her, but he doesn't even use her name. And I think the show pushes back on that because there's the moment where he says, he says, I don't want to see that. And, you know, and then the response is, you mean you don't want to see her? You know, she has a name. Like, these people have names. And that's kind of what the show's about. And we're not even getting to the fact. And that, you know, for the majority of people, I don't mean this as an indictment. It's a weird choice of words today of viewers, but they never explicitly come out and say in a very David Simon fashion, okay, so what happened with prostitution was precisely because John Lindsay was

running for president. And he didn't want to run for president where people would look in his backyard and say, you have open prostitution in your city. That is only, that's why this happened. But, you know, but what interests them more isn't the big picture politician who's never shown what has always interested these people, Simon and Pelkanos and, you know, Richard Price and all the great crime writers, is, okay, so someone pushed the first domino. Then what happens? The littler domino. And what's it like to feel like you're the fourth domino?

Okay. Andy's going to talk to Deuce writer Megan Abbott now. We'll be back on Thursday to discuss more stranger things. And I'm sure a couple of other things. Until then, enjoy your interview with Megan Abbott. I'm taking over. So excited to have on the phone right now from New York. I think, I didn't even ask, is the deuce writer and author of Dere Me, The Fever.

You Will Know Me, Many Other Books. Megan, thank you for joining us on the watch today. Hey, so happy to be here. I'm in Queens, New York, overlooking the Long Island Railroad. Oh, that's good. You've painted a picture. It's very scenic. I'm so excited to talk to you because, obviously, we've talked about this on the show before.

Chris and I are big fans of your work, and we were so excited when we saw that you had joined this murderer's row of novelists and writers. on the staff of the deuce. I want to talk about how you joined up with that gang, but first and foremost, I wanted to speak to you about the finale, last night's finale, which when we emailed last week, you said you were excited to see because you hadn't actually seen it, and I assume you have now remedied that.

Yes, I did watch it. And I didn't want to say why when we, because you hadn't seen it yet when we were emailing, but I was really not either with a particular scene that I was not looking forward to watching, which is the loss of one of our characters. Yeah, that's, you know, Chris and I were just talking about that. Maybe we should start there, because one of the things that was so jarring about it, and I guess it's twofold. One is that the brilliance of the deuce is that it can lull the viewer into feeling, you know,

a sense of pleasure and excitement about being in this often unseemly world, and this jolted us right out of it. The other thing is that this was, you know, an actual. of horrific violence, but it was so sudden. You know, it came out of nowhere, which I believe was the point, but it still was, it threw us, I imagine it through a lot of people. So can you tell me about the conversations in the room, what led to Ruby being the one who passed away on the show and all the debate that went around it? Yeah, it was the plan from the start, which I guess gave me sort of some time to adjust to

But at the same time, because we knew this was how it was going to end, this was a story that George and David knew a real-life story that they wanted to work into it. So we knew that we were leading there. Because of that, we really wanted to make Rudy a significant enough character that you care. Obviously, or else it is meaningless. But the whole point was that it would be so jarring because anybody, it's a high-risk world, and to sort of forget the casualties that are involved in that, and whatever form they take would have been, I guess, irresponsible on our part,

but it doesn't make it any easier, you know. It was a little easier killing a Pins, honestly, than to lose Ruby, who we cared about a lot. Lisa Lett, the other woman in the room, she, she, She wrote episode four that has a great scene between Ruby and Candy, and one of the reasons for that scene is because she knew what was coming. Yeah, and that it would be sudden, and that it wouldn't be, they really wanted it to feel as brisk, and as sudden as violence is in real life, you know,

and that was the goal, and I think it certainly felt that way watching it. And one of the hallmarks of a David Simon show was present in the next scene, the follow-up scenes as well, which is that there's no sentimentality about even the quote-unquote good guys, where we cut to, we get Vinny's reaction to it, and he's someone who, through the charm of Franco's performance and also just our way into the world, we see him as a pretty decent guy,

and he probably is a pretty decent guy, but even he is just inert to it. This is just he doesn't want to see that. They need a new awning, which was probably shocking and very much intentional in and of itself. Right, and I think it is sort of a turn for Vincent, you know, this hardening that we've seen, in him. Even as he's still resisting his role, he continues to be willing to make, to compromise

himself. And, you know, we certainly see it in the pilot that he's not going to intervene. He's not an intervener. You know, there's been in the pilot with Cecee assaulting Ashley. And it was really, that was important, too. But I think where we end up, and given how much everyone really likes Ruby on the show, I think it is a sign that he's, You know, he is getting ignored to this in ways that are troubling. And it's a nice note for Abby in that scene that she's obviously so affected by it. And that is a difference between the two of them. I think I read in one of the post-mortem interviews today that David and George were saying that the character of thunderthies was thunderthies in the script until Lisa, who you mentioned as another writer, came in and said, no, she needs a name.

That's very important. I think that just speaks to the importance of having female voices in the room. Can you talk about how you hooked up with David and George? Because for as much as the wire is, you know, recognized by many as one of if not the best shows of all time, it was kind of a sausage party. Indeed. I don't know if that's a technical term. What one doesn't want to be invited to one of those?

No, it was, you know, it was kind of a long dance because this has been in, this was, you know, George and David had their mind on this for a long time, but it was actually several years ago. I wouldn't say maybe three years ago or maybe even four. I had met David a few times, and I knew George from the crime fiction community, which is actually pretty tight. And David called me, and I really only met him a few times. We had talked about movies. His wife is the great crime writer Laura Lipman, so that's how I had met him. And he told me about the project, and George similarly approached Lisa and told her about it.

And they just asked us that they said they were up front that they wanted women in the room, and they wanted crime novelists. And so they asked if we'd be interested. And it was like, you know, hmm, David Simon, George Pelicanos, Richard Price, you know, it was like the holy trinity among crime writers, you know. So it was sort of terrifying, but it was still really in development then. So I sort of put aside my terror and thought, oh, it would probably never happen. And then it did.

And then Lisa and I had to walk into that room with those guys. It was very intimidating at first, I have to say. We were pretty scared. Either of us had ever staffed on a show even. So not only it was our first time, but we were with these guys. Yeah, we had to really. I took his annex that morning. I'm not ashamed to say it.

What was overall, what was that experience like for you? Not just working with those guys in particular, but coming from the life of a novelist, which is generally fairly solitary, to the often fiery, collaborative nature of a writer's room. Trial by fire, you know, it was not, it's not my rhythm, as I say. I'm used to being by myself all the time.

I'm also used to making all the decisions, at least in the early stages, there's a few drafts of a novel. Like, no one's telling me what to do at all. No one's giving their thoughts. I'm not getting notes. There's nothing. I get to decide what happens to everybody.

And this, of course, is the opposite of that. It made easier in some way that really David and George already had a vision. They really had a story they wanted to tell. And so it was really building out that world, and in particular building out all the women and, you know, really coming at it. And they really wanted us to, at first I thought I would hang back. you know, at least the first few days, you know, and just observe and see what this dynamic is like. But there was no holding back because they didn't want us to do that.

They wanted us to talk. And inevitably, with this subject matter when you're dealing with sex work and porn, as a woman writer, I just could not shut up. So I just started talking. And I was just, you know, I was in it. And it was a lively room, you know, really right out of the gate, you know. And we, you know, had lots of debates and discussions. And I felt we fought all the time. I think David and George would say we never had a fight in that room

because they don't consider it fighting. But for me, it is. Well, can you speak to some specific examples of that? Because I know, I mean, the beauty and the frustration of a TV writer's room is that everything ultimately does kind of smear and become collaborative, and it's hard to pick one thing out as one person's work because it's all connected. But with that being said, can you talk about things in particular that you felt you championed or were able to bring to the show that wouldn't have been there had you either not been there

or had you continued taking Xanax every day? Right. Yes, yes. Well, I think, I mean, I'm sure this would have happened anyway, but this is definitely what Lisa and I focused on, which it was really low. That is these women could not just be victims and they couldn't all be the same. and they couldn't all be dealing with their commodification in the same way. And one of the things that we thought early on, and we had read a lot,

and we had come in with our research and, you know, but you know, but you also know this from life, that no one responds to difficult situations in the same way, and that some people are just more built for that. And that is something that I had read a lot about, and with some of the consultants, the sex workers, that some women can handle that job, and it doesn't hit them or affect them in the same way. They just have this real resilience to it,

and others cannot and do not. And, you know, we wanted to have that range. And we wanted to avoid certain stereotypes that everyone wanted to avoid, you know, the hooker with the heart of gold, you know. So we just wanted, we wanted all these women to have separate personalities and to be different. And we also really wanted them to drive the story. And so we really came in pitching ideas for Darlene, you know, and for candy and for Ashley, for getting them in there.

So they're not just not the men driving the action, I think, is so much the default. It's not even seen as the default. It's how story is defined in television. It's totally true. And I also think a default setting for stories written by men or from a male perspective often consider sexuality as an on-off switch, like in the scenes where it matters, where if it's a sex scene or a negotiation, then it's on and everything else it's off. And I think one of the hallmarks of your fiction in really insightful and sometimes insidious ways is that sexuality is alive in almost every interaction at even at surprising times.

And I wonder if that was part of the conversation as well in the room. We talked really a lot about power and loss of power and what it means to be complicit and culpable. And, you know, that's something I've always been interested in gender dynamics. and it's, you know, my gosh, the last month it's been in the news almost constantly. This is weird sort of parallel to this show, but how involved can you be in someone else's humiliation or commodification or sort of being at the hands of abuse? And how close can you be to that and not be complicit in it? And that was just, that's something that just fascinate to me.

And that was something that David George and Richard were all. interested in from the start and they were interested in it from the point of view, you know, particularly of Vincent, but, you know, also, and I was more interested in the point of view from some of the women, you know, what does, what does it mean for Darlene to go and bring her cousin up and put her out on the street? And what does it mean for candy to be getting behind the camera? And that just, I mean, you know, and how much is that her empowering himself and how much is that it the sort of to the detriment of other women? And when does that point turn? When's the pivot? Yeah. And it's right there in that scene in the finale where Candy drives by Ruby. And she's

on her way to something else and she's gone. And what allowed her to be there, what made her different, why was Ruby, I mean, you addressed it directly, why was she back on the street and the other women weren't? She says, you know, she's not chosen in those rooms. People are left behind, which is a hallmark, of course, of all of David Simon shows, but it plays out in a very insidious way on the deuce. Yes. I mean, everyone is so compromised by the ending, even, you know, I mean, just sort of Ashley's sort of exit in the last episode was really the closest we got

to that. And this one, everyone's in it, and there's that line that I'm going to misquote now. But Vincent said, you know, you know, it's like it's Chinatown line. It's the deuce, you know, and women are going to go out of windows and there's going to be casualties here. And, you know, that's just, that's where they live. That's the world they live in. In watching the show, it's hard to believe,

considering some of the grim subject matter that it tackles, but there are moments of levity and pleasure. That's what makes the show so good. And there are characters that, you know, you want to spend time with. And my only complaint about the season that I talked about before you joined us was, it just wasn't long enough. I wish there was more, which is, you know, better than the alternative, which we get too often these days with TV.

But, you know, there are characters like Big Mike or Black Frankie, Like people, I want more of them. Can we follow them a little bit? I wondered if in the room were there particular characters that you found, or a bunch of you were lobbying for more screen time for it, that just didn't make sense in the season and in the limits that you had. Yeah, because we really, I mean, it was never intended to be eight episodes. That was sort of a negotiation among people more powerful than myself.

But we did feel really hard because we had this great, great cast. And then once they started to, you know, once they started to go into production, you were seeing these actors, then you had characters that you hadn't even anticipated like Harvey, you know, David Krumholtz, who's so great. And then all of a sudden, all we wanted to do was write scenes for Harvey, you know. And so it just becomes this sort of wealth of possibility. And you just, and you want to service them on. And I think Flanagan, who's so good, is Alston's partner. I think he was originally intended to be a much smaller character, but he was so good.

And then, you know, he sort of emerged largely. So it was very frustrating from a practical standpoint. Like who, you know, I had to remember ultimately who the core was and whose stories that we had to service. And so in the room, if you wanted to get, if you wanted to get like, I want to get more of Ashley and then you had to, you know, somehow attached to one of these other bigger dynamics, you know. So that was the sort of behind the scene strategizer that I would do like, you know. So that's how we get Ashley and Frankie together because. So that's why we get more because we get more Ashley because Frankie's involved in that storyline. Exactly.

And then it served this weird, great purpose of making Frankie a little richer and not, you know, he's so funny, but, you know, he's not just funny. There are other nuances to him. We got a little bit of that there. And I think that, you know, I think that that's good, too. So it was like finding all these ways to give grace notes to everybody and to show the actors that are really funny, which is virtually all, to keep them to show that a little,

and to show them having fun in the moments that you can. Yeah, it's not just slightly frustrating that the season itself was short. It's that now we know, because people are speaking about it publicly, that the show is now going to jump forward in time, and the second season is likely to come in at 77 or 78 or wherever you guys determine is the right inflection point.

But watching that finale, not that I expect things to be wrapped up with a nice bow, but it felt like, oh, no, let's come back tomorrow. Why are we going to skip six years because there's more here? So I don't want to get you in trouble with anyone involved with the production, but how much can you talk about the thinking, pitching the show forward and then forward another however many years for the potential third season should we get there? It's been a real brain scramble for us in the room, you know,

because we have that, you know, that is the vision, and I think it's really great. Like it's a story that they bet David and George wanted to tell at that time. Square really necessitates us doing that. And it is interesting to drop in. And, I mean, there are challenges to it that are exciting. Like, where is candy going to be, you know, at this stage? You know, thinking about what's going on in porn by the late 70s, which is sort of really at its heyday, it's peak. But it is a, you know, I mean, when we sort of began to convene for season two already, and when we did, David was really firm that you need to make the case for that we, the character

you want to pitch a story for is still here, you know, six, seven years later. Why would they still be here? Because the story we're telling is of this place, of this world. That's our commitment. So that is, you know, and this life is hard. And, you know, people, there's not a lot of people that make it that long in that world, you know. So you really, you know, it's made us do a lot of head scratching and a lot of, you know,

sort of, you know, maneuvering to try to make a case. for it, you know, and I think we're getting there, but, you know, inevitably, you know, we feel like it's a bloodbath in the room sometimes like, who are we going to lose? We're trying to keep everybody we can. And I'm sure the actors are lobbying, too, as hard as they can, that they still want to be there. Yeah. Yes, and they all deserve it. Can you just give me your, this is the pure, well, no, then we see the second season how you,

how you fared in your battles in the room, but who is number one on Megan's call sheet? Like, who are you making the case for that might not make any sense to the casual fan of the show? What some of my, like, some of my favorites are for the obvious favorites. Like, I'll always pitch Darlene stories because I love just so much from the pilot. But I think she's very much a favorite. I have to have been, I have a real soft spot for Bobby, who's played by Chris Bauer, who was so, all of us who watched The Wire have such fondness for. And on the page, I was not that interested in Bobby when I first read the pilot.

No, he's not even in the pilot, so I guess it was episode two. But once Chris Bauer started to play him, I just loved his deadpan, his whole delivery. The way he responds to his new role as his madam of that parlor, all of that. So I'm, you know, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what Bobby might be up to. Here's the key to keeping him around for the second season six years later. Don't let him climb any stairs. Just... My takeaway from season one is stairs are the secret killer of the 70s.

It happened constantly. It's a bad sign. It is. It really is. If you see a guy wheezing on a walk-up, you know he's marked for death. I think about that when I go up to the room, the right room. Right. Maybe they're commenting on that.

Maybe someone is saying, get an elevator. That's right. The sign. Well, I hope we'll get to talk to you about season two in the future. But I did want to pivot. I mentioned this to you in the email. We do Book Club, a double-down book. Book Club is part of the podcast. And we would love to have everyone read one of your books next.

So we're excited to share your books with people. I think there are many great choices. I even emailed you, which was sort of cheating to see what you prefer. No, that's okay. Very diplomatic about it. I think that after discussion, we decided to go with Queenpin because a lot of the books that we were reading are kind of celebrations of genre and the possibilities of genre. And if, I mean, you can correct me if you don't feel this way, but I feel like in many ways that's the purest genre in your catalog, and it might be a fun jumping off point.

So can you talk about that book a little bit, the people who are now hopefully going to rush to their stores and pick it out? Yes, rush out. Yeah, no, I'm glad you picked that. Because it does happen. It just seems to be the one that people find of my books. It seems to be the gateway for people who have read some of my books. Because I think it is really, you know,

I'm such a lover of the real hard-boiled classics, you know, and Hammett and Chandler and David Goodest and all those. guys, I really, you know, it's one of my first conversations with George Pelicanos about that world and our favorite books from it. So I just really wanted to do, but those books do not have a lot of women in it. Let's just be honest. They don't have a lot of women in them. And when they do, they tend to be the femme fatal or occasionally the wife or the waitress at the diner. You know, they just don't have very prominent roles in classic hardball. So I wanted to do, to take a real classic story structure from that era, inspired a lot by the grifters

and things like it, where it's the criminal, the aging criminal who is the mentor to the young, it's usually the young guy, and he's going to show him the tricks of the trade, and then something happens. And so I wanted to do a female version of that. So this is the story of a woman who's sort of, you know, a money launderer and sort of a attaché for the mob, and she is sort of mentoring a younger woman to learn the tricks of that trade. And in my head, I picture Angelica Houston from the grifter as the older woman come. And, you know, you can fill in the blank for the younger one.

But that was the inspiration. Well, I think people are going to love it. And I hope that after people read it, you can join us again to talk about it, because it's both terrific as a book in and of itself. but it opens up a really interesting conversation about the malleability of the form and the value of the enduring value of the form and what you can do with these sort of existing tropes

and how you can push against them, which I think is the place where a lot of the best work today is being made by taking things a little bit familiar and then sort of blowing out the walls and windows and giving it a different point of view. Yeah, right, and I think ultimately some of the things you realize that what's more interesting is not what changes by changing the gender, but what stays the same.

And then that, you know, that's, I guess, like a TBT to be continued discussion. But I was surprised by that when I finished it. Exactly. Well, thank you so much, Megan, for joining us. Congratulations on the first season of the Deuce. We're excited to read Queen Pin, and please take the elevator so that you and the rest of the writers. I've learned the lesson. I will heed your tale.

We just want you guys there for all three seasons, and hopefully maybe there'll be more. But we'll see. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Okay, I want to thank Megan Abbott again for joining us to talk about the first season of the deuce. We broke news, Queenpin by Megan Abbott. That is the next selection in the Double Down Book Club. We are going to be reading it for the next month or so.

Maybe we'll come back in after Thanksgiving to talk about it. It's not a very long book. It is a fun read. I think people are going to enjoy it. Go out and get it at your local independent booksellers or the big ones that you can access on your cell phone. Queen Pin by Megan Abbott. We will be back Thursday. Chris already said it, but he's not here right now.

So I can say it, and I can say to myself, that I did a great job today. Christine Bransky, I did.