The Watch - Rupert Murdoch Steps Down, and the Penultimate Episode of ‘Reservation Dogs.’ Plus: Strike Updates and ‘Telemarketers.’

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Chris and Andy discuss the news that Rupert Murdoch is stepping down from the Fox and News Corporation boards, leaving his son Lachlan in charge (0:40), before they give a few strike updates as the parties enter negotiations today (13:37). Then they talk about the penultimate episode of ‘Reservation Dogs’ (23:21) and Max’s three-part documentary ‘Telemarketers’ (45:16). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me in the studio, he also won't quit this pod until he turns 92. It's Andy Greenwald! And even then I'll become co-host Emeritus.

Yes, I won't be able to just move on. But when you're 92, I'll be 92. So that's going to be tough. Actually, I hate doing this. You'll be 91 for six more months. Andy, we are, of course, referring to... Of course. Some people call him...

A visionary. Yeah. Some people call him a super villain. Right. I call him Rupert. Rupert Murdoch is stepping down from Fox and News Corp, turning over the keys. Never thought this day would come. To his, his literal boy, his literal son.

His literal number one boy. Yeah, Lachlan. And I always believe that you leave a cleaner campsite than the one you found. And I think that we can say for sure that Rupert Murdoch has done that for the Western Hemisphere, you know? And Australia. is Australia is not part of the Western Hemisphere. Well, it's part of the Five Eyes initiative, right, in terms of spy. Where does the Western Hemisphere end?

This is how you're starting the podcast? Because that's something I referred to a lot? Like, I'll be like, possibly the greatest crime show in the Western Hemisphere currently operating. Well, that means that I have no idea what I'm talking about. That means like Gehiji is not part of it, right? Like the Japanese show. But isn't that set in London? Partly.

Do you want to agree with me or not? I do. But I'm asking you if you know where the Western Hemisphere ends. I feel like it's the Americas, north and south. God, I was not ready for this. Europe. And then we get, as we creep eastward, we're in a different hemisphere. Maybe if you spent less time watching Hannity at night, more time really grinding out some atlases, you'd know the answer to this question.

Do you feel like, Chris, you're an avid member of the media, of the media, the elite? Do you feel like this is a seismic shift for Rupert to announce this? Like, do you actually have you been? good question. Because I was interested in it. No, I think, you know, it's funny. We're going to be talking about Reservation Dogs, obviously. We're also going to be talking about a show called telemarketers on HBO Max, which was a three-part documentary about the telemarketing industry in the, you know, from its early beginnings through its sort of heyday as a front company for Fraternal Police

organizations. And one of the themes that comes out of that show of this documentary, is that it's broken and it can't be fixed. And it doesn't really matter whether or not you take out the people who are operating these telemarketing businesses that they have sort of exploited this loophole and there will always be somebody to pick up the mantel. So that's sort of how I feel about the Rupert thing. It's like, did he change everything for sure? Does him stepping down me and Lachlan Murdoch is going to be like, you know what?

I think we really need to take a softer touch. Right. Well, I mean, I thought it was interesting because yesterday I was very, reading in New York Magazine. There's an excerpt from the media journalist Michael Wolf's new book. It's basically about... Good timing for him. Well, yeah, and he seems to have interviewed. There's a very interesting passage in the middle where it direct quotes Rupert Murdoch in the company of a visitor to his ranch saying these things, which makes it seem like Michael Wolf... Is the visitor? Was the visitor? Okay. But it's basically like the last year of the Dominion suit

leading to Tucker Carlson's firing. And Rupert Murdoch's involvement in this being like, just actively hating many of the people that he's created. Sure. Hating Hannity, hating Trump, liking Tucker Carlson personally, thinking he's a good friend, but thinking he's a little out there with some of the things that he says on television, and that basically he was okay with paying less than a billion dollar settlement, as long as it didn't hit the billy number, he was cool with it. And the way they kept it under a billion was they also served up Tucker on a platter.

Right. So he was fired as part of that, even though they couldn't officially. say that was why. But the larger takeaway was that this was a Dr. Moreau whose creatures had gone a little feral. Yeah. And he could not control them anymore.

And he is handing them over to a guy who is half creature himself, his son, who's like, this is cool. Yeah. So that any article that's just like, you know who's really kind of reasonable? Rupert Murdoch was wild. And then today, I obviously

I don't think Rupert was like, well, the lads at Vulture have got me. I'm going to step down today. No, I think it's like... But it is interesting. The landscape, it's less relevant to the landscape that we usually cover because, and I think this actually came up relatively recently

in a different conversation, he got out. He sold all the entertainment assets. And it seems like maybe it was a bit of a poison pill to our boy Bob Iger at the time. Do you think he regrets never making more X-Men movies? Well, what's weird is that he was always always a Radner guy. He was like, if there's one fellow who gets the franchise, do you think he regrets?

Do you think he's like, I wish I had made Gambit? That's just what I was going to say. It's like there's that what, the Channing Tatum Gambit script is still on his, on his desk. I only really brought this up. I mean, you and I usually don't venture into the press box the way Curtis and Shoemaker do so. I don't really have anything like super illuminating to say about this. Honestly, I was just going to say, Lockland is, so Kendall Roy in succession is sort of supposed to be. a combination of Lockland and James, right? Like, James is the one who co-founded Rockus. James is, James fansens himself a bit of a disruptor.

Yeah, and Lockland had his own, like, left Fox to do his own media venture, right? At certain times, yes, and now Lockland was pretty much anointed the successor, and James is Antifa. Yeah. James is like, save the whales. That's not, yeah. Okay, James is like, let's loosen the Senate dress code. Right.

You know what I mean? Yeah, he's like, what's wrong with wearing shorts? She's like I'm wearing... In the people's house. Shorts of the half-zip right now. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's fair. But then it was never a one...

I mean, it was interesting over the last year of succession when some other reporting about the House of Murdoch was coming out, Vanity Fair at the big cover story, how much there was... How much Jesse Armstrong and his writers were drawing from the actual historical record. But then there's other examples that just absolutely don't line up, which is to say, Lachlan succeeded. There was a succession.

today. We'll see how that goes, but at a time when, you know, I was listening to our colleagues over at the town podcast, Matt Bellany and Lucas Shaw were talking about like Disney has a succession problem. Yeah, we were just talking about this the other day of all these older gentlemen who are refusing to let go over the reins and how it's creating a little bit of a little bit of an issue. Yeah, an issue that's going to dominate the next year and a half of our lives. Possibly. I wanted to let you know in case you didn't know all. already. Slow horses is coming back. And I told you, this rarely happens anymore that, you know, you're kind of, you're more plugged in than I am. Yeah. You keep the X app running at all times, I believe. That's

why you get your news before I do and you let me know about things. But I somehow was in front of you seeing that not only a slow horse is coming back, the machine keeps rolling, they just shoot the seasons basically nonstop. They have, they have honest, the reason why I'm bringing this up is just to say that, like, this may be the platonic ideal of television production right now. But in that there's always a new season. You know the floor is very high for quality. And then this season, they added the watch favorite Catherine Waterston. Yes.

And this one is based on McCarron's novel Real Tigers. All these seasons are based on a different Slauhaus book. And there's going to be some action in Istanbul, which I think is wonderful. I can't wait to see Gary Oldman gallivanting around the old city. But I was literally just going to say, like, how cool is it that a show that we like is so efficient at pumping out these six episode seasons? This is now the third season since April of last year. And they'll have, I think four was in or underway when they were shooting three. So, like, they had signed up for three and four.

And honestly, I think there are 11 heroin books. And Oldman has said he'll play this character for as long as they'll have me. So I wouldn't be surprised if we get at least five or six or, maybe eight seasons. There's no trailer yet, but the released press image is Gary Oldman eating a soft serve ice cream cone, which I love. That's what I imagine might be in Istanbul. Are they famous for ice cream there? Well, it's hot. You know, you'd want to get a cone. That's a good point, right? Yeah, I don't really know, especially at this kind of fraught moment, we'll talk about whatever moment we're in in a second in the industry, but this still seems like

a goal to me. You know, I really have been struggling to come up with like a unified theory that I can articulate about why TV, it's not just that the industry is broken, but I feel like there has been some sort of rift in the covenant that the makers of TV used to have with the audience in terms of delivering on things. I think that everyone was very grateful to have the ambition that we've seen over the last decade and the possibility and the stars and the directors and all these different people playing in the sandbox of our, of television. But somewhere along the line, we kind of just broke from any kind of understanding that we would learn, live, and grow with characters that we enjoy over a consistent period of time.

And I think that's really affecting the whole thing. But to your point. Yeah. I do think that there needs to be an adjustment for the contemporary landscape of what people consume on a day-to-day week-to-week basis. And I think that the idea that we would all be like, it's fall, time for season four of my beloved stories and watched 22 weeks of that is obviously like a thing in the past. We've obviously done away with the 22 episode season for the most part. And we've pretty much done away with the idea that fall is the start and spring is the end.

I do think, though, that what Slow Horses is doing, and it comes back on December 1st with a couple of episodes and then we'll air through December is giving you a way to like almost. have this, like, subscription to this really fun, incredible world. But the, you don't have to feel like slow horses dominates your life or that you're, like, way behind on slow horses. I mean, it's like, the characters are consistent throughout these three seasons. It, I would certainly, if somebody was like, do I have to have seen season two to watch season three? Yes and no. Like, I'm sure that, like, they will do some resetting and that you will be able to pick up, like, that's the old grumpy guy. This is the young hot shot pretty quickly. But there are things that you, would want to see. And also, honestly, it's not that much of a commitment. It's six episodes.

Here's the thing that I think I want to try to find a way to express. It's when we talk about what we miss from TV or what TV used to deliver, I don't, I'm not talking about the 90s and earlier. Yeah. I feel like there's a, there was a genre of TV that it wasn't dominant, but was consistent and existed about 10 years ago. So kind of right when Granlan started when I was when I was just starting being a full-time critic. And in this category, I would put Friday Night Lights, which we've been talking about a lot recently.

I would put justified. I would put maybe even the Americans, which is to say they were old TV brains, best practices, and habits being filtered into a more modern box. So Friday Night Lights is the most obvious example because it went from 22 episodes in its first season on NBC to when it moved to direct TV. 13 episodes, bang, bang, bang.

But Justified was a similar thing where it had the same number, I think it had a consistent number of episodes, and it was coming back and it would be, okay, this is the this season. This is the story they're going to tell with the characters we like. The Americans similarly, like every season was crafted, it was thoughtful, it tried something, it was additive, but it wasn't, you know, a wild lurcher swing in a different direction.

It was just a more refined version of the TV we were used to. Yeah. And there are still programs that do that. I think a lot of them have been in the half-hour space. But even those have started to have shorter runtime. We're going to talk about Res Dogs as a perfect example of that, of something that just doesn't or bury. Like these are shows that we're delivering consistently year-to-year.

Obviously, COVID-delayed a bunch of things. Ten episodes. Here's what we're doing. But, you know, with the Autura's sensibilities, with this, whatever the Netflix data that has filtered through the industry that maybe three seasons is enough of stuff. That's changed things. But, yeah, I don't even think we've ever articulated that as a distinct era.

Because usually when we talk about 10 years ago, we're just like, oh, well, Breaking Bad was revolutionizing X, Y, or Z. Man, you know what? But there was a consistency that I miss and a nice hybrid of old and new that was working. You mentioned the three-season thing, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about this, because we're recording. It's Thursday. It's like 9.30 a.m. I think there's supposed to be more talks today from in-person.

some of the heads of the studios like Ted Sarandos and Bob Iger. And that was news when that broke yesterday. Yeah. It had been established that there was going to be a parlay between the AMPTP and the Guild yesterday. But then when news broke that the big four who have involved themselves in this, and that's Bob Iger from Disney, Donald Langley from Universal, Ted Sarandos from Netflix, and David Zazlev from WBD. That was a surprise.

Yeah. So a couple of things. One is I saw some stuff from, I think is David. Faber, who's like the CNBC guy who often gets CEOs. And he was basically, I would say, like, doing laundry for those CEOs by being like, they have... This was incredible. They met in person.

They're going to meet in person today Thursday again. And basically it was like if the deal doesn't get done today, it's going to go through the rest of the year. The strike's going to go through the rest of the year. So just to give some context here, my feeling, you tuned into this podcast, so that's what you're going to get. This is not based on any internal knowledge. or reporting or whatsoever, appetite is very strong for a deal.

Sure. I think that's been the case for a while now. I wouldn't say that I am overly optimistic, but I have a feeling that... Yeah, it was fool me once, right? But that the fact that they talked through yesterday and are talking again today, it was referred to in the follow-up email from the GIL that there was a bargaining session. They're going to bargain more today.

That gives me a sense that there's some seriousness of purpose here, which I'm hopeful about, because this does need to end for everyone's sake. the Guild has been leakproof to my end as far as I can tell. The Guild has not been speaking about to the press, has not been talking about things. There's coordinated communication when it's appropriate. And going into these sessions, there's an agreement on both sides that they won't talk.

And then as soon as these meetings end, news that seems very studio-friendly begins to leak out. The visitor. The David Faber thing, I could be wrong about this, but I believe he is the journalist who was interviewing Bob Eiger on CNBC in Sun Valley, when Iger made the reputation-ding comments that he did.

So again, let me read this quote exactly. It was after face-to-face meeting today, writers and producers near agreement to end W.G.A. Strike. met today and hoped to finalize deal tomorrow, according to people close to the negotiations, who, well optimistic, warn that without deal tomorrow, strike likely continues through year-end. So transparently, not the writers, probably.

No, and also, that's insane. that is a threat played out through the media to accept whatever is on the table today. The truth of the matter is that in a negotiation, if you are close today, you will be closer tomorrow and then you can end things. There is no actual deadline. It's not like Friday would mean there's no point in us doing anything until January. Absolutely not. It's absurd. And frankly, it's counterproductive. But I do think that we are getting closer. And, you know, I certainly hope that's the case.

And for as much as, you know, the cessation, like the strike ending will do a lot to, like, mend things. The more and more I read about, like, some of the issues that are at stake here, the less great I feel about the future. You tell me, what do you mean by that from? Well, so you mentioned the three-season thing and this sort of, like, weird kind of like, we've just decided that TV doesn't need to go that long with few exceptions. and there was a whole thread. One was from a guy who worked, blow the line, it was an IATC guy.

I'm sorry, I can't remember who it was, who was talking about basically working on old versions of the Marvel shows on Netflix, so like the Daredevil, Jessica Jones kind of shows. So these were the shows

that were made by Marvel TV when it was a distinct entity from the Kevin Feigey controlled MCU. Yes, and this was in specific reference to Daredevil because he was talking about basically how these shows would end after two seasons because at three seasons, they need to renegotiate with the crew essentially. Right.

And add like vacation time and their pay changes. And he was noting that Daredevil's revival on Disney Plus as whatever it is Daredevil reborn, colon, Knight in the city. It's Daredevil born again. Yeah. Was kind of bullshit. And Stephen Denight, who I think wrote the original version of Daredevil, right, on Netflix. show ran that.

He was like, it's an old Disney trick to basically high school musical the musical of high school things. This is right. And reset them as new shows

even though they are in, it's only in name only that it's a new show. And stuff like that, I think is going to continue to be an issue and say nothing of the fact as soon as you guys get a deal,

you still got to do the actors. And Iatsy's up like next year, right? Yes. So we're, we're going to be, like, this is going to be something we talk about. This is going to be something that faces the industry for a while. And a lot of the issues, even if the WGA gets their deal, are not going to be solved. And it's just starting to make me nervous.

Well, there's a couple things to play here. One, the Disney thing is absolutely real. There's a lot of people talking about it online over the past few months that basically there's a actor's scale, payment scale shifts after the third season. So for a show called like Live and Maddie, so I'm just pulling this one up, it was called that for however many seasons. And then in the third season,

it became Live and Maddie-Callie-Callie-style. And by changing the name, they claim it's a new show, and thus they don't have to reach the benchmarks to pay people their full amount of dog. But that's the thing. I mean, if you just dink and dunk and do this tickey-tack shit

to a creative class over and over and over, you're going to start to send a message about how much you respect them or how much you value it. I love how the language you're using portrays you as a man who cheers for a team offensive coordinated by Brian Johnson. How dare you?

We had a weekoff. I like him. I like him. I like him. You like Brian Johnson? Yeah. Let's keep going. I'm sorry to interrupt.

Now you're getting me heated. I was going to try to keep this. I'm taking my jacket off. I took the cardigan off. Jeez, Louise. Yes, it's going to send a message. And I think that what you're speaking to you're speaking to about the link, but whether the potential for lingering resentments,

lingering issues, as you said, the actors still have to make deal, Ayatzi's coming up, is there is a pervasive feeling of being disrespected and labor being disrespected and not treated fairly in the country. And what's, you know, when people are like, oh, you know, sentiments are running high because of mean tweets or because of people, the signs people wrote when they walked in front of Disney or whatever, or Fran Drescher's speech, it's like there aren't that many avenues for people to exercise their dissent in this country in such an active way. And not to make this, you know,

when we're swinging from talking about the Murdoch Empire to talking about, you know, one of our favorite topics, the auto industry, the strike that's happening there now is really interesting because, you know, if you take the company side, they're saying, we offered an unprecedented raise in our negotiations.

We offered a raise of 20%, which is not a normal year-to-year raise for anyone who works a job. Right. One of the reasons why the UAW is striking is because the CEOs had helped themselves to a bonus based on a 40% increase. So they were like, fuck you. 40% for you, 40% for us, which is fair.

That's legitimate. Now, but the argument isn't, the thing that becomes challenging is you are making a larger scale, philosophical, existential point about inequality in this country, and you're funneling it all through what could otherwise be seen as a, you know, a relatively wrote labor negotiation. when things are that heated, it's because of the weight that's built up on one side

over a larger period of time. I am really, as someone who is in mid-script on things, like I'm really eager for this to end, desperate for this to end, and desperate to just have crews getting back to work and getting paid and things.

Your Gambit spec is really picking up some dust. You freaked me out about that because I have a Gambit reboot that is pretty wild. Is it it it's Gambit in Philly at the new sort of like, as they have, get into the emerging casino business.

You can't take Gambit out of the bayou, Moncher? Come on. It's classic Gambit. It's just that then to continue to be in business with people who have played a card saying this is what we think of your contributions to this industry is worrisome. Now, people are going to put their heads out and do good work, but for three seasons or less. But yeah, these things will linger in a way that is concerning.

Okay. Well, that's the state of things. By the time you hear this episode, we could have an end to the strike. We could find out that the strike will go on through the end of the year. Can I put down a marker? I don't... You don't think either one. You don't think the strike ends, but you don't think it's like, see you guys in January.

I think, look, I have been fooled many times. I've been Charlie Brown with the football, and it is foolish to have optimism generally in Hollywood. I believe, maybe because I want to believe, that this round of talks will result in a deal that will be brought to the guild. Cool. Whether that will happen today or not, I certainly don't know. In fact, I think today would be real quick. It would suggest they're closer than anything prior to yesterday would have led us to believe.

Yeah. Okay, let's take a quick break. We're going to come back and talk about some shows. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last-minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. getting you exactly what you need

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All right, Andy, let's do ResDogs first, and then we can do telemarketers. Two shows that make me feel two different ways about this country. Types of ways. For this season of Res Dogs, I don't think you, it comes as any shock that like Andy and I probably have both been probably a little more lukewarm on this season

than we had been on the first two seasons, the first two seasons. I think we'd probably consider, especially the second season among the best TV we've seen this decade and perhaps longer than that. And I just felt like for as much as I appreciated and Doug what Sterling Harjo and this team

were doing with this third season, that it felt like a little bit of, not a footnote, but like I think I've said before, a Coda, an epilogue, kind of more of a thematic reverie than it was like a story that urgently needed to be told. And I don't know if one episode

completely changes how you feel about an entire season, but I will say that I felt like this episode of Reservation Dogs, Alora's dad, and we're going to spoil it going forward. So if you haven't gotten a chance to watch it, please watch it. If you've only checked out some of Reservation Dogs this season, I would really encourage you to watch Alora's dad.

And please watch a quote. cold and turn off this podcast for real. Turn it off like right now. I feel bad for Sasha who's producing us today if she watches Reservation Dogs, but hasn't seen this yet. But there's some people, maybe even who watch the show

who've already, like we came into this cold. We didn't know. I did not know. And when I said last week, I'd like to kind of group together a few episodes together rather than do one by one.

It was not because I knew this was coming. So honestly, like really, this episode is why I watch TV. This episode's probably like why we make this podcast at points at this point. we could talk as much about the industry as we want, but the feeling that you get when not only just like

the stunt casting is revealed in this episode, which I had kind of forgotten that Alora's dad, I mean, even knowing that this was the title of an episode, I hadn't really thought about like, oh, I wonder who low cast is that. Obviously, you know, based on the name that we saw in the birth certificate earlier in the season, you'd be able to deduce that it's an actor of white descent.

So, you know, curious or whatever, but like, you know, the casting's only going to go so far. You can bring somebody in do some pinch hitting and it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to hit a home run. I definitely had like a take my breath away moment when Ethan Hawk appears in the beginning of this episode at the hardware store. But it's really what comes afterwards. That is honestly, I just want to give like a standing ovation to Sterling Harjo and to Debra Jacobs who wrote this episode and is the co-star of this episode along with Ethan Hawk. What did you, what did you think? Just big picture of the

episode. I like what you said when you're like, this is probably why we watch TV and why we do the podcast. I mean, I think what we look for across everything, when you separate how dope the sea is and whatever your haunted hayrides are this season or whether Gary Oldman's going to Istanbul or not. It's like we like things that are stories about people. That's why I like Linus. God damn it, let me say,

let me get on my high horse before you shoot me off of it. Anything that can make space in this noisy universe to just tell a story about people, to tell a story about people that is told in good faith that people are not all one thing or not all one other thing and that two people talking can be riveting

is it's just joyful to me it makes me really happy when that's possible. The magic of reservation dogs across all three of its seasons has been its willingness and in fact its desire to wander, to be curious, to leave itself,

as an entity open to the possibility of finding something compelling over here or in this way or perhaps, you know, just from a different perspective. So that it built, it took its time getting here, but took us to a place that felt absolutely true to the series but also was new. It was a different type of episode. It was quieter, you know, not that it's a particularly noisy show, but it was, but once the dogs themselves fade away after the first five minutes in the college visit,

it's essentially a two-hander of an episode. And I think you've said this before during our discussion of the season, which I agree has been, just felt to me like a little bit like some of the mojo was missing. Like the intentions were good, the performances were good, still week to week better than most things

because of its pedigree and because of its spirit. It just, something's felt, it didn't always come together. You know what it is? It kind of, if I can make a bass, basketball analogy, it's like when the warriors tinker too much. You know, it's like Golden State is like when those three guys are on the floor with

Wiggins and Looney or whatever. It's like those are the five best players in the league together, like when they play together. And we sometimes don't need to over like go young or bring in Chris Paul or do whatever it is, right? Is Maximus James Wiseman? No, Maximus would be Chris Paul in this case. Oh, they bring in someone who's too old to be there?

No, not he's too old. But my point is, is like, what they had in those first two seasons, was with these kids together and their collective journey to California is like, that's the championship run. Then when you come back and you're like, well, to make it more interesting, why don't we try and challenge ourselves to tell different kinds of stories that thematically tie to what the dogs are going through? And you're like, I get it and I think it's cool and I think it's beautiful. But I think it's telling that the reason maybe this episode hit so hard, aside from my obvious fandom of Ethan Hawk as an actor and as a person

is that we have been growing up with Allura. We've watched Allura grow up over the course of three seasons. And there's a meta narrative around watching DeVrie Jacobs emerge as like this creative force. She became like more and more integral to like the production and the making of reservation dogs. And I thought it was just really beautiful that Sterling directed this. This has Callie Simmons on Vulture has been kind of talking about this.

but there's an obvious, like, heavy linklater influence on Sterlin and his work. Obviously, he made a dazed and confused homage earlier in the season. Ethan Hawke's character is named Rick. There is elements of boyhood to this episode. Very much so. This episode. And I just thought it had some of the characteristics of Linklater's, like, most beautiful work. In that, it is, like, the enormity of these two very real seeming people trying to find common ground.

but very nervously kind of inching towards it, you know? I also think it's interesting when you have an opportunity. You rarely see this where a long-running show or a serialized show, characters generally communicate to the audience or to each other what their secret desire is or what they're missing. You know, it's just something that is indicated so that then both the writers and the audience can track it over time, or they got close to it.

I understand why that would be disappointing. Because of the ensemble nature of the show and because of it sometimes focus on the emotional needs of the community versus the individual, I don't think I was keyed in specifically to the hole that Allura carried inside of her. Yeah. The Mabel episode from last season, one of the greatest episodes of the show, was about this, but it was somehow larger than her, you know, and maybe that's just because it was a noisier episode that had big eating, you know, meat pies.

Like there were other funny bits in it that kept the angle rather wide. The, just the simplicity of this episode where she's like, I, she doesn't need anything from him. She is fine. She's like, I don't need more than the signature. I'm grown up. Everything I need from you is on that piece of paper. He offers her something sweet on top of the more utilitarian coffee and she says, no. That respects the character, which is, and that's true. You know, one thing that we've learned heading into the very endgame of the series is that these young people have matured in crucial ways over the past two. seasons and they're going to be fine. That doesn't mean their lives are going to be cushy,

but they're fine. That's what a lot of what the check-ins with bear and cheese have been about the season, I think. What this episode did was push a little bit deeper and say, but underneath that fineness, there's still a whole and what was missing from her. And the kind of joy on her face, you know, the openness of having just a simple kind of loving family dinner with that, of someone who wants to give her a hug who welcomes her in but doesn't pull her. It was really beautiful. And it's really subtle.

Even trying to articulate it now, talking about the dynamics at work here, to pull off an episode that isn't cloying, that isn't fake, that doesn't pretend that the Rick character hadn't been a coward. Right? And then still come out of it feeling pretty good about everyone. I think that takes an enormous amount of grace within the characters,

but I think that grace comes from the writers, or in this case the writer, Devery Jacobs, when she takes in the totality of the situation. Yeah, I believe, has Sterling written short stories? Has he done fiction work? I don't, I wouldn't surprise me, but I don't know. But we've talked before about how, like,

the episodes of Reservation Dogs can feel like short stories. And what I always remember from, like, my creative writing classes or from lit classes back in college is this idea of, like, everyday life epiphanies or everyday epiphanies, like, in the dead James Joyce story. You know, it's like these, sort of revelations people have. At Winesburg, Ohio. on my Sherwood.

And this episode is full of those. And I think Sterling directs it to illuminate them. So, like, there are a couple of moments, especially moments of recognition that I thought were just astonishing in this. And, like, the first one is obviously when, like, the Rick character, Ethan Hawke goes up to the car

and he's like, why are you following me? Because the lore has been following him around town, looking, you know, trying to decide whether she's going to, you know, go talk to him. And the second he sees her face, he kind of, it hits him, like, who she is, like, he knows. And it's just, like, watching him sort of process that information and also, like, the discovery with her out her saying, like, I'm your daughter. He's like, you're my daughter, obviously.

And over the course of the episode, like, obviously there's, like, a bit that they do with the getting up to go get the pen at the diner. And each of them sort of in their own way, I don't know, recognizes something in the other, a connection that you have. And all of the little times that Laura says, like, oh, so that's basically where I get wanting to run away from things or whatever. It's like that sort of this is filling in an equation for me in some ways. I just thought it was pretty amazing, man, like the way that they pulled it off.

And it never really calls attention to itself. You mentioned her saying that's where I get that from. But one of the best moments early is when Rick tries to claim ownership of her in some way, when he's like, you get your love of sugar for me. Yeah. And she's like, everybody like sugar. It's great. It was a great two-step. Is Ethan Hawke our best good-looking actor?

In terms of he's a good-looking guy, but he's also a really good actor. There's something about his charisma at this point that I think was earned from being a hot shit young thing. I just have so much admiration for him because I just feel like he does cool shit without the intention of being cool. I don't think he does that. right. He does things and he's just like, this is exactly what I should do next, either if I want to be like an A24 icon or a movie star. He just like, I like reservation dogs, I'll do it. I want to be in Moon Night. I'll do it. And I'll make a movie with my daughter. And they're not all good. You know what I mean? They're not all going to wind up being good.

100% his attitude about his talent and about his platform and about his profession is just unparalleled and amazing. But there's something else about it that's highlighted, really highlighted, really I mean, he's, he's exceptional in this episode from the second he walks on screen. And it's not just because we were like, oh, hey, Ethan Hawk, this wasn't like, you know, the Christmas dinner and the bear were like, oh, cool, look who's here. Yeah. It was, oh, this is going to work. Look who lives.

He lives here. The shirt, the way he, his eyes when he's driving, looking in the rearview mirror, the way he's smoking, like, oh, he's in this world. He gets it. I mean, I feel like he said this to us when he was on the podcast. And I'm sure he says it all the time. He just loves acting. Yeah.

But there's, to try to fit this into a sports analogy, like, you can love baseball if you're a baseball player because you love hitting home runs or you love the spotlight and the big games or you love turning a double play. Ethan Hawke's love of acting is like saying you love baseball and you are just as happy having a catch. Yeah. This is what he does best. There is something that is just preternaturally like calm and present with him and it reminds it's a little bit probably what he would do on the stage and it's a lot of what Link later allows him to do always, which is he does. doesn't have to be anything other than alive.

You know, and I think that that's what's really unique about it. Like when you see him do, we were both fans of Good Lord Bird. I think he's really amazing in that. But he is acting, like the capital acting. He's playing a character. He's trying to inhabit someone. He's changing his voice, his body, his temperament is dynamic. And that's awesome.

And that's pushing himself. And similarly, like, taking him MCU thing is like, let's see what it would feel like to do this and say these words. This is just, he's just living, man. Yeah, this feels like home turf for him. Yeah, I mean, but there's a, but when you say he's comfortable, that's not code for he's phoning it in.

This is when he's at his best. There's like a, this scene when they're walking to pick up his kids at school and he's smoking quite a huge joint. That made me nervous. Yeah. That was the only time I got really edgy during this episode. And he, uh,

she says, um, I'm assuming I wasn't planned. And the face he makes, he's got like the joint in his, in his, between his lips. And he makes this kind of like, yeah, you were not planned.

Like, yeah, I was dating your mother for four months. But the face he makes, I'm like, he's been making like some kind of face like this since before sunrise, you know? And it's kind of strange to almost have that experience of watching him for this three decades or whatever it's been and watch him get older and now watch him play fathers when he used to play sons and all the, you know.

One of our all-time great smoking actors in terms of where he times his words. But that moment, caught me, but the other one that I thought was really crucial, not just for the impeccable performance, but I think it was crucial to the entire episode, was when she says, you know, when he's saying, like, you know, Mabel didn't want me to come when the wreck happened or whatever, and didn't come to the funeral. And she's like, and you were probably relieved. And he says, no. And it's like, beat, beat. Yes. That's, in some ways, like, getting to that turn is the episode. Yeah.

And that's what made, I can only imagine, breaking it and then scripting it really challenging. Because how do you embrace without letting off the hook? How do you push and pull at the same time? And the episode never, you never saw its work. You know, it did not feel labored in any way. And for me, the scene at the pizza place, which I saw a little bit about this afterwards, I mean, you're about to go, you're about to go be a Tulsa King yourself. Oh, yeah.

I'm going to Tulsa on Sunday. But umberto's is a spot. Like they really got after it and filmed some real places, you know. Um, the scene there, pizza, when the, his youngest daughter comes over sort of shyly and is showing her. So they're coloring together.

Yeah. On the placemates, I lost it. That, that made me cry just because the show understood, like, you know, people who have been around kids understand that like for all the,

the torment and the, the loss in your own headness of the, of Rick's part of this. Yeah. Those kids were excited, you know, and, and they took a real, like, champs, where it's just like, you got a new sister. Yeah, I thought that, I mean, like, again, there was some, I had some potential notes about that, you know?

I also really liked the kind of, I don't know if elliptical is the right word. For what it's worth, by the way, when you babies had for my, for my younger one recently, we were like, you have a new uncle. We tried it. I liked also, like the ambiguous ending of, like, is she really? ever going to see these people again. You know, you know what I mean? Like, because like, he's just like, I hope, like, there is obviously this hope that this is now a new family unit or whatever, but like life gets in the way or is going to go to college. Like, maybe this is just a very special day with this

family. And I like that they weren't like, and now you can move in, you know, or whatever it is. Yeah, they don't know each other. She's also like, I'm not, I don't need to be a, I don't need a father. I just need you to write down your information here, you know. The other thing that was significant in that relationship and in the larger project of the show was so much of the first two seasons into the first two episodes of this season were about the res dogs trying to get as far away as they possibly could literally to the end of the continent both as tribute to Daniel but also to get out because they felt trapped or they you know felt like they didn't fit in and then you know so much of the show has been about reminding them and then also reminding the audience through the generational storytelling

that there's a reason why people stay close to one another. There's a purpose to it, and there's real emotion behind it. This offered a third way, which is she is centered in who she is. She's going to stretch past what she thought she could do, but it's not like a rubber band that's going to break. She's not in ochre, and she's going to be in Tulsa. She's away from her chosen family, but then there's another group that might mean something to her.

But in none of those situations, The triumph of the Allura Danan character, right, is that she is contained. She is herself. She can be with her friends. She can be with the elders. She could potentially be with this Rick crew. That's what we used to.

That's like Walking Dead talk. Rick's crew. Is they march on Commonwealth? Yeah. The Walking Dead colon Elora Dannan. I would watch. Right, but that she is still, she's not giving herself away or losing herself as she extends forward.

I mean, the show is dealing. with some pretty complex emotional ideas of becoming a person. Yeah. Coming a grown-up. I think it's, in a way, it does its best work in those sort of challenging emotional, lower-key type. It's interesting to think about it as the penultimate episode of the series. It stands as one of the best that the series is done.

And, you know, it's funny because, like, I think she sees the birth certificate three or four episodes ago, three episodes ago. So I think that's when she finds the birth certificate. there's no reason why the episode couldn't have come after that. It was when she's at the health service office, the episode that was all set there, I believe. But I think that when you look at the totality

of the episodes, especially the one previous about sort of breaking Maximus out of this institution so that he can be reunited and kind of maybe heal a little bit with some of his friends from his earlier life. Or his cousin specifically. You know, I mean, I think that that's kind of what I was alluding to

is like I think it's easier to kind of look at these episodes and talk about the themes that the show is kind of talk done rather than the episode by episode, that was funny, that wasn't as funny, this felt well-paced, this didn't feel well-paced. I don't know if this episode hits as hard if we haven't gone through the entire third season. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think there's also... Sometimes it's good to be made to wait for something, is what I'm saying. I also feel like, and we're speaking about this in advance, we have not seen the series finale. but it strikes me that the most likely outcome of this finale will be

will not be thunderous I mean I remember the first season ended with a big storm and Brownie naked on the roof I don't expect No and the second season ends with Jesus walking around Los Angeles with the kids right?

Well I also end the song from not from St. Elmo's Fire was the song? The guy in the beach I mean Uncle Brownie might be naked in the finale but I don't think we're ending

with a bang I think that what the show is trying to communicate to us is that there's a continuum and that stuff happens and then stuff doesn't happen. And then that's actually what life is. And the gentleness of it is the reason for the journey. I'm really struck by it and I hope we'll get to talk to Sterling about it. But this show has so much affection for people. It just gives everyone a little grace note, you know, time and time again. Like even last week, was it last week?

know, it was the week before episode. The Bear's mom is seeing visions. Yeah. And she goes into the catfish place. And we haven't seen those guys in a minute. And that's Macon Blair, who's a filmmaker in his own right, plays one of the catfish cooks, you know. And we haven't seen him.

And the camera in the show is just like, oh, let's catch up with this guy for a minute. Oh, it's Cleo. Like, and he has a, he wants to ask her out, you know, and there's just these little grace notes for everybody. this is a weird pre-mortem thing to say, but I think that this is a show that's only going to grow in my estimation,

and I think in viewers' estimation as we get further and farther away from it, just from what it chose to do with the time that you had. I think it's going to really, I think it's really going to stand the test of time. I hope it lives on for quite some time. Also, we're really reaching for the sports metaphors today,

but like the Harjo coaching tree is a fascinating one to watch because he has, the project has been behind the campaign cameras as well in terms of like giving native people opportunities to direct and to be department heads and then allowing people like Devery to join the writing staff and direct. There's a lot, I think, that's going to be coming from the larger Oklahoma metro area from this show. Let's do a little bit of a hard left turn here.

Sure. So telemarketers, a three-episode docuseries on Max comes to us courtesy of in some ways, the Saftees and Ruff House, which is David Gordon Green, Jody Hill and Day, McBride's Company. I mentioned that because I think that is very indicative of like

the style of the show. These are characters, Wild West, really the Wild East, because it's the Wild East. The Wild East of the telemarketing boom. They do some historical stuff, but for the purposes of this show really starts in like 05, I think, kind of. Right. And is about a group of guys, specifically two guys, Patrick and Sam,

Patrick J. Pespas. Who worked at a company called CDG that was a telemarketer who would call on behalf of often, you know, for charities, but often for fraternal orders of police, for FOPs they were called. And they would do this thing. I'm sure sometime in your life you've gotten this call where it's like I'm calling on behalf of X charity. Oh, yeah. And can we count on you for your support?

you'd get a decal or a sticker in the mail and it's like $50 for gold and $40 for silver and can we get a sustaining thing and all this stuff and I totally remember a lot of these drives like hitting my house a lot like when landlines were more of a thing when I was growing up

and it's funny one of the lasting images that I'm going to take from this series is the decals in the back window of people's cars because I think that the implication was if you have a, I support the Fraternal Order of Police of Philadelphia or Connecticut or whatever it is, that you would somehow get out of a ticket, worry to get one. That if a cop pulled you over, he would see that and just be like, you know, here's a warning or whatever.

This story is much deeper than that. It essentially paints a picture, and I guess this is spoilers going forward for this series, but Andy and I just want to talk about it because it's kind of a remarkable achievement. It paints a picture of like these FOPs as a kind of much. mafia who are impervious to government oversight because police unions are so strong in this country and the police are such a massive kind of idea and institution in this country that they can't be like regulated at all and discusses the in the first episode we're led to believe or you know i think lots of people thought like phops would sign a contract with these telemarketing

companies they would get money up front the telemarketers would essentially keep whatever money after that that they earned. And they would say, you know, like 10% of your donation goes to the FOP. And then 90% goes back to expenses or overhead and got some very rich assholes out of this, this arrangement. And then it gets more and more pernicious as time goes on. And they start basically calling on behalf of police departments and claiming to be police officers, a lot of fraud involved.

There's attempts at government oversight, but they always fall short of talking about, like, what the real story was. and they kind of like do a lot of fines. They slap some wrists. Yeah, it slaps some wrists, but this stuff always starts again. It reminds me a lot of Wolf of Wall Street and some of the behaviors that get, you know, depicted in this.

And then there's also like this huge other part that I want to talk to you about where it's like this is definitely a product of the era of American life where people just film themselves doing everything all the time. Yeah. And I think that that is amazing. I, you know, as somebody who grew up and kind of like love Jackie, ass and skate videos and stuff like that.

Like, I am familiar with, like, there was just always a guy with a camcorder. And I was just talking about this the other day on a different pod, like, how weird it is to go on YouTube and see live footage of shows that you were at in the late 90s, early 2000s. You're like, that's weird. I don't remember a camcorder there, but I guess. But let's just start, General, what did you think of telemarketers? I think that...

Sorry for rambling. No, I think that's right. I think... You didn't mention bum fights. That is honestly not too far from the tree here. So this guy, Sam Lipman Stern, who made this, what's crazy about it, at least, and maybe, and you know what? Maybe younger listeners of this podcast will be like, well, of course he was filming all the time.

What blows my mind about it is that he, this guy dropped out of school in ninth grade and started working as a telemarketer, basically, and had a little mini DVD cam or whatever it was and was just shooting footage all the time. So the footage that is the backbone of this series ranges from 2006 through 2011, 12, 13. It goes up to about a while ago. Then there's some contemporary interviews with people who were involved in it interspersed throughout.

But he was doing this. People talk about, like, oh, if only I had had a, I wish I had a camera to remember certain things about my workplace. Like, he had it. And that does my head in from the beginning. The reason that I was super dialed into the show when I texted you, and I was like I've seen the first episode, is that is everything that goes around the story.

The second episode, and then I think of the final episode, it gets darker, it gets more procedural and more actually about this pernicious fraud. Yeah, it's almost more... The second episode is like a conspiracy film, and then the third episode is more of an investigative journalism bit. Yeah. At the beginning, and you can see,

exactly like you said, you can see why Saftees and the roughhouse guys were intrigued by it, is that it is just like pure, distilled New Jersey from that era. As Chris was saying, like the thing about these companies that perpetrated the fraud is that they would hire anyone. And so they would hire a 14-year-old dropout like Sam Lipminster. And they would hire someone like his best friend and then eventually co-conspirator in this investigation, Patrick J. Pespas, who seems like an absolutely a Boolean, fun guy, who's an excellent telemarketer, who is also sniffing heroin multiple times. He's on the nods, like,

while he's like, he'll be like nodding out at work and then make, make a call and make a sale. There are people in this office who are from the corners of all aspects of New Jersey life. Just like, like, funny looking guys. People recently released. from prison, just like real characters all in this room misbehaving because it doesn't matter. Because the other thing is they are not even paid by commission. They're just paid by the hour to just call people and say, I'm either calling for or eventually, I am the police. That becomes really ironic in the second episode when people are actually doing drugs and on the

street calling people saying that they are on detail. Yeah, that is actually the most harrowing. It's wild. One of the series to me. There was something about that I, you know, I, there's no, we don't know. need to try to find these like little connections between the shows we talk about on a particular podcast. But the thing I was saying about what we love in TV is like, oh, here are real people talking. This is real. Like these are the types of people and particularly like that deep

strip mall jersey. Yeah. With the snow piled up all the way along so there's no sidewalk anymore that I felt deeply in my bones and I really responded to of just like I, because then these guys, these very unlikely guys, take it upon themselves to micro-examines. more of the shit out of this thing, with varying results. So I just thought, I thought it was an amazing watch, just if only because of what it was showing us. It was amazing, yeah. As I kept watching,

I don't think I've been this depressed watching something in a long time. Yeah. I think that for as much as, the reason why it's almost interesting to pair it with reservation dogs is reservation dogs, like, even in the reconciliation that you see between those two characters, you get this feeling that like really truly anything is possible if we can like take each other's hands at ours

and be like, okay, like we've both made mistakes, what can we do about it? And then you watch this, and it's a completely different mission, it's completely, it's not fiction or whatever. It really made me feel like we are not just doomed, we're dead and we're just like walking around, like this country.

Well, because to use the parlance of the gold, a show that we really like, and I hope listeners are starting to discover on Paramount Plus, there really are villains. Yes. They really are villains. And the greed and the self-justification for that greed that lives in the hearts of men is real.

Yeah. And it is dark and it is pervasive. And it is, it's disturbing. Like the people that CDG preyed on, mostly old widows, the people worked at CDG, were essentially living in indentured servitude to faceless executives who were instituting a policy

where if these guys didn't hit their numbers they would be reported back to their probation officer and usually sent back to prison. And then like the relationship between literally cops who were like signing off on this and making money off of it and then the fear

in the government officials who are tasked with overseeing stuff like this because they're like, well, you can't do anything at cops. You know what I mean? Like can't stop these guys from doing whatever they want. So we have to kind of get the wins where we can, where we unwind one company just for another to pop up. And watching all of this get weaponized by the internet,

and they talk about in the third episode, how these telemarketers are now working for political action committees for politicians and using the divisions in the country to drive more money into their causes. So it's essentially like calling people and being like, you know, in this day and age where everybody's like, you know, ACAB and stuff like that. like Acab like it's like you gotta give money to the cops now and it's like you're just making the world worse on every level and I wonder whether or not like we can turn out of this spin soon well what's kind of incredible to think about and I wonder if there are other viewers who were roped in from like oh they see Danny McBride brought you by Dan McBride yeah it's like this is fucking crazy and cool yeah and Sam and Pat are like these are characters from from the roughhouse collection you know cinematic universe like this is not too far off from

whether it's Eastbound and Down or observe and report or the kind of characters that they've fictionalized before. Yeah, Stevie from Eastbound could be working at C.G. 100%. And there's scenes in the beginning that are really misleading because they're just dumb fun and who's getting hurt here. It's kind of interesting to think that in reality, it's just, it's dark.

That it's, you know, I think that the fiction is often a little bit sunnier. You know, I think that's sort of hard to swallow. And I think it was, it's particularly interesting coming from those guys that they're like, they're interested in what happens to the real Stevie's, you know, in the world. I mean, like, if you watch, like, especially early Safty stuff, like, that's what those shows movies are about, you know? I was more like, this is Roughhouse, not that it's Safty. Yeah. And it starts a roughhouse and it ends up Safty.

Yes. In a way. Yeah. But I thought it was really impressive. And I think that the turns and the twists are particularly, for me, for me, and it's, for me, me, they knock me flat. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think it definitely has that docu-drama, that docu-series thing now where it's kind of, I would call, it's occasionally repetitive 50 minutes and then like a huge twist at minute 51 that is like, you're like, well, I've got to start the next one if I know what happened to this guy. But there's only three. Yeah. There's only three. I was into it. Are we going to become a doc pod?

I don't think so. I think we love storytelling too much, man. We're passionate about storytelling. Yeah. Can I tell you something? I feel like we're winding up here. Can I confess to you something to you and the listeners? Okay.

That this podcast is going to have an asterisk next to my name because I'm reided out right now. What do you mean? I was prescribed a steroid for the cold that everybody heard on Monday. Now, I've been led to believe that this was not the cream or the clear. This is a different type of steroid. This is just something to kind of clear out them with the whole nose box. But I feel like this is disqualifying. This podcast cannot.

Are you ready to do like another? hour right now. I want to do two things right now. One, never stop talking. Two, never eat ever again. Like, do you just want to just power through and talk about other stuff? I actually have like a whole Sixers thing, but I don't even know, like, it's not even appropriate to talk about, but I was just like, I don't think I've ever hated a team more before I've seen them dribble a single basketball than I do the Sixers team. That makes me excited to listen to your NBA podcasting this season of just darkness. Yeah.

Just like one man's journey. I don't want to watch basketball anymore. I think I'm done. I think I'm good, right? Well, you have that luxury. You know? That's true. That luxury of the sweet blanket of freedom that I provide.

That's true. Can I do one other? Like, this is just, now we're just having fun. This is just for funsies. Sure. We rarely do this, but again, since this whole podcast is disqualified due to my performance enhancing medications, you know our buddy Jesse. my buddy from college.

Jesse reached out to me and he said that there was an emergency in his home. He was traveling, he and his wife and his daughter, and a good friend of theirs needed to cat sit at the last minute, suddenly came over, like took care of their beloved cat, Willie. This is all real. This is I'm not making this stuff. Is there something wrong with Willie that they needed to have an emergency cat sitting? No, they were leaving and they were going to be gone for a number of days.

And so this friend was just like, I'll step up, I'll take care of. And he was like, can I pay you? Can I get you a meal or something? Can I do anything? Yeah. Their friend Nate. You're really naming names. I hope Nate came through.

Not only did Nate come through, Nate said the, this, can I read this? I guess so, yeah. I got sent a note from Nate that said, Dear Andy, your podcast has become such a treat for me as I shepherd my three-year-old terror of a child through daily life, seeing a new The Watch episode appear in my feed is one of my main sources of joy. Please up your output to four a week. Can't do that, although if I keep- It's a tough beat for Nate's three-year-olds. If I keep running it, I could do probably like six a week.

Anyway, I just want to say thank you, Nate, for listening. saying it for taking care of the cap because we you know, this is a two-way street. We don't do a lot of fan mail. No. We don't really get a lot of fan mail, to be honest. No, we mostly get a lot of like deep dives into whether we are actually enemies or not. But I just thought that was nice.

That is sweet. Yeah. I don't think I can do four episodes of this a week. No. I mean, I'm just like, I'm a little busy. That's fair. I got all the Sixers tape to crush. Thanks to Sasha for producing us today. Yeah. Thank you, Sasha. A content full episode. We will

We'll be back on Monday where we'll talk about episodes two and three of the gold. I really like the gold. I really like the gold. And that's just, is it a British show on Paramount Plus that many people don't know about? Possibly. But we work with what we've got. It's, and frankly, it's what we've got. But maybe we'll have some strike news.

Frankly, it's what we want. I think it's what we've always wanted. Everybody take care. Have a nice weekend.