The Watch - Setting Expectations for Jay-Z’s '4:44,' ABC’s 'Inhumans,' and the Second Season of 'Preacher' (Ep. 163)

Episode Date: June 29, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the silliness of ABC’s upcoming ‘Inhumans’ (1:00) and unpack their expectations for Jay-Z’s new album 4:44 (17:00) while also analyzing the second season of AMC’s 'Preacher' (27:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Carvana. Do you dread spending your Saturday haggling with a car salesperson? I know I do. I know Ringer staff members do for a fact because we just had this conversation today. With Carvana, you can skip the dealership altogether and buy your next car online. Choose as soon as next day delivery or pick up from the world's first coin-operated car vending machine. And enjoy the peace of mind of a seven-day return policy. Plus, save some serious money compared to dealerships.

Carvana is the new way to buy a car. Check out Carvana.com, C-A-R-V-A-N-A-com slash watch to learn more. Today's episode of The Watch is also brought to you by Red Box. School is out for Summer, and Red Box has the video games to keep you entertained. With other 40,000 nationwide locations

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Offer is valid through July 13th, 2017, subject to additional terms, charges apply for additional nights, and payment card is required. Getting into video games has never been so easy. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.

I am a writer at the wringer.com. I'm also an editor. You know, I was about to say, I was about to tell the people what was amazing about you. Are we doing this in the podcast, is it? You are a red light player. You could always turn it on. Because a minute ago, you were just in quiet reflection. And then you just went to 11, but I think I got in your head.

Chris Ryan, Andy Greenwald. That's it? Yeah. Andy, what's the watch? We finished strong? It's Thursday. No, let's just keep going. I like this.

No, I mean, at the end of the podcast, you give me some of the last good. Oh, yeah. I'll just be screaming at the end of the podcast. Yeah. Today, episode of the watch, we're going to talk a little bit about these James Bond rumors that I came across on the internet's definitely accurate it sounds plausible Jay Z's new album

which we haven't heard yet but we're going to talk about our how excited we are for it we're not excited we're going to talk preacher that's going to be the meat of the show the meat yeah I would say that's the shoulder cut AMC's preacher yeah sure I don't know I'm just trying to get you excited you wanted to start out because Andy you saw this

in humans trailer I feel like we just want to knock this out I want to talk about this Andy was like do you want to talk about this in humans trailer and I was like I don't know what those guys are. I know it's a show, but I don't know how they're related to the MCU. Let's talk about it.

Yeah. Let's chop it up. The trailer for this ABC straight to series show in humans dropped. Another ABC classic. Today. Yeah. And it looks about as good as something this ill-advised could look. Why is it ill-advised?

So here's the story. Paint me a word picture. The Inhumans are a interesting side character group. I think created by Jack Kirby and Stanley in the page of the Fantastic Four like 40, 50 years ago. And they are a race of superpowered people.

Are you with me so far? I know it sounds far-fetched. They live on the moon. Okay? And they are a royal family. Okay. And the king, whose superhero name is Blackbolt, played in the trailer by Your Man,

Anson Mound. I don't know who that is. I just love calling him your man. I think he was he was his John. his voice can like bring down buildings fun fact Black Bolt's real name is Blackagar Boltagon That's for real

Did they really That's for real my man I'm not making this up And his wife Medusa That's like the Chris Christopherson of comic book names His wife Medusa That's the Anthony Tony Yeah

His wife Medusa has hair That is strong and can lift things But that's not what Medusa could do in like mythology. That's the thing. The actual Medusa had snakes on her head and could turn dudes into stone. That's cooler than a weave

that can wrinkle you. So my point is they were kind of a side show attraction. And then when Marvel started picking up steam and doing, you know, going great guns in terms of owning Hollywood, the person in charge of Marvel

publishing, like Pearl Mudder, good friend of our president, big supporter. Yes. He just thought people might want to know that as they make their informed choices in the marketplace. He, this is not the wrong move, was basically like, why are we publishing comic books about X-Men when we can't make movies out of X-Men when movies are the things that make us money? Because Fox owns the rights to X-Men. And they wanted to get those rights back or, like, you know, cross the streams. So basically, in the publishing world, they canceled out X-Men.

They made them marginalized. They put them basically just stopped focusing on. Did they still make X-Men comics? Of course, yeah, because they're still popular, but they went all in on Avengers stuff and made them the flagship of the line. Because for a long time, when I was, when you and I were, well, mostly me, were like comic books, like in the 80s and 90s. It was all X-Men.

Yeah. So then they were like, well, what can we do? How can we make something as popular as X-Men but own it? And so they decided that Inhumans was going to be a thing. Oh, so they like it or not. That's like. So they did this thing where the mist that made the Inhumans powerful on the moon, was let loose on Earth and a whole new generation of super-powered people that would have been

mutants 10 years ago are now called in humans. And they live on the moon? No, now they live on Earth. Okay. The Royal Family lives on the moon. It doesn't matter. They have a teleporting dog. The point is, when they announced their big movie slate that included Black Panther, which

looks super dope, which Captain Marvel, which is extremely exciting, they also, in that same press conference in that big stage, and they announced Civil War there too. They announced the furthest away movie, like 2019, was Inhumans. were like, okay, I guess they can literally do anything, including make a movie out of a guy who can talk words and kill people. I mean, it made a blockbuster out of a raccoon, so yeah. Right. So you were thinking, but what this, that announcement actually revealed was this big schism between Marvel publishing and Marvel movies and Marvel TV. Interesting.

Kevin Feige, who runs the studios and has pretty much had a Midas touch, saw this and wanted no part of it. Even though it was at his own press conference? Yes. What happened was behind the scene. either it wasn't prioritized or it was just basically slow tracked until it became quite clear that they were not going to make that movie at all There has been a divide of power in Marvel. They don't all longer have to speak the two arms and so in the in humans instead So under Ike ProMutter's purview have been put into the shield TV show yeah and now they're making this as a TV show and

That was always an interesting It almost it was like take the relationship that used to happen in the early 2000s between magazines and their websites You're speaking to the choir here. But where they would be like, yeah, you know, like we really want to work together and have a lot of crossover and then it just wouldn't really happen. That was the same sort of thing that happened with Shield and Avengers, right? They were like, Avengers will be the movies and then like all this cool stuff will happen in Shield that will inform the Avengers. We'll be the spackle between the big movies. And that did not happen.

No, nobody wants. There are already too many cooks in the kitchen, let alone managing the continuity of a TV show. So all the stakes of the Shield show have been very much contained to the Shield show and stuff. Can you imagine if you went to an Avengers movie and like once every three years or four years and then it was just like previously on agents of shield? I would just, I would give myself. I would speak the fatal words that Blackagar-Boltagon could only say.

So anyway, so they made the show and ABC was very excited straight to series and IMAX premiere. Andy Green, Waldiwold. You know, it looks real stupid. Yeah. Like it looks cheap and silly. Yeah. And they got,

they got our man Ramsey. Bolton playing Maximus the Mad, which, by the way, is the only interesting character in the Inhumans, because he's the only one that has a personality, and that personality is, I'm crazy. Maximus the Mad. Yeah. He's Blackegar's brother who got a cooler name. It sucks. Yeah.

So, are the comics good? I don't know. I mean, the comics did this thing where they basically made the inhuman, they forced the inhumans into every story and made them a force to be reckoned with and made a whole new generation of characters. Like, there's a very cool character that took the name Ms. Marvel, who is a Pakistani American teenager in Newark, one of the best things they've done in many years. She is, her powers are because she's an inhuman.

So they basically lumped everyone in to make cooler characters in humans. Okay. They tried to do a thing where like they tried to make people who we thought were mutants in humans. They weren't mutants anymore. Like, because they didn't want that to be their thing. Look, the bigger picture is this was a power play and it very much seems to have backfired because this looks silly. It does not seem like a juicy dromity about super power.

Royals, nor does it seem to be like an action extravaganza. It's your man, Anson, Mount, and Ken Lung from Lost, doing like, C-grade special effects on the streets of, is it Vancouver? It looks like Atlanta or Vancouver. There are only two places you can shoot something now. I just think that this is, this is obviously a conversation we return to again and again, but there are diminishing returns here, universe. You know, I don't, I mean, Iron Fist exists, but I don't know anyone who was like, I'm

checking for that. The Defenders is coming with good performers we like in it, but I don't know if anyone needs it. It was just announced, so it's happening. And when content, and I'm using that terrible word, you know, intentionally, just exists because it had already been announced on a shareholders report, then you get into

real trouble. I don't know if an ABC show is necessarily subject to the same rules of cinema that like we expect from a blockbuster entertainment, but something was, you had us kind of like, you were pretty down on Michael Bay a couple of days ago on the podcast. That hurt you a little bit.

Someone tweeted at me and was just like, you know what you should check out? You should check out this book about the films of Michael Bay called Every Shot a Painting. It's funny you should say that. Written by Michael Agon Beagon. I was reading this blog post today. First of all, great lead.

About Michael Bay's director's commentaries on the DVDs of his films. Oh my God. Probably getting it fired because that was not really part of like the 100 most important things I needed to do today. and he has this quote one in the first Transformers. He says this. My theory on effects is that it all comes down to lighting. I feel everyone in their brain has something we don't really know it's there,

but we can tell when something is not lit right. And that's the first thing I thought when I watched that in humans trailer was like, this looks like an IKEA showroom outside of in suburban Atlanta. And it's starting to really bug me how this stuff looks. We're going to talk more about Baby Driver next week, And I really, really, really enjoyed Baby Driver. I went saw it last night. But the fact that a lot of this stuff is being shot in the same two places,

either in Vancouver, Atlanta, and the stuff, the fact that I don't know what it is about why everything looks the same, which is basically like bright but overcast industrial park Atlanta. My guess, honestly, and I would love for someone to chime in on this, it has something to do with laying the CGI over it. I'm sure you're right. Or converting it later to 3D or all the things that you have to consider now when you're just filming film.

Right. So this thing is supposed to, and humans is supposedly shot with IMAX cameras is going to be shown in IMAX theaters, but it's premiering on ABC. It's like, I don't really understand the logic there. They are, and I wonder if this is because they are all one corporate entity, but look, like there's a character in it named Crystal, and her hair has like a one of M. Night Shyamalan signs carved in the back of it in black. That looks really cool when Jack Kirby draws that in 1968. It looks extremely foolish when everything is lit in that banal, what city is this light. You don't need to do that. And so my argument in this isn't that there shouldn't be an inhuman TV show, which sidebar

there should not be an inhuman's TV show. But if you're making one and you're making it for ABC, well then make it a Sunday night ABC show about a bickering royal family who also happen to have a teleporting dog. Right. You know what I mean? Like make it a TV show. Don't make it this thing that was transferred from one thing to another with tracing paper and wasted millions.

And other why did you do that news? Yeah. Jeff Snyder, who does the tracking board site, he says something on Twitter the other day about the idea that the broccoli family, the people in charge of the Bond franchise. Still one of the coolest names ever, by the way, low-key cool name. They've caught Franchise, they've caught Expanded Universe Fever. The broccoli's got to keep it moving. You got to get like a little bit of garlic and you want a little olive oil on your broccoli. Let me try that again.

Do you know what the broccoli's really love? Cheddar. That's a classic comment. For the natural flavor of broccoli to speak for itself. You don't like my broccoli cheddar. That's a soup people like. I like broccoli cheddar soup. It gets very stringy.

I don't like the soup. I don't really like soup that much. I want to prove. First of all, what? I like fah. I want approval from you from my joke. I like Robin. Your joke was great.

Thanks, man. Go on. Tell me about franchise fever. Can you have an expanded universe for something that's so closely identified with one character? I asked the biggest Bond fan I know on staff is just a in charity and he was like they they kind of need to based on how convoluted and confusing the specter stuff has been over the last couple of movies but and I actually really like this there was a fan theory a while ago it was like the commander bond theory that was basically

like the actors who have played uh James Bond over the years are actually separate characters and that they are just James Bond is a code word you know what you don't seem to be or or it's a popular character because he bangs chicks wears tuxedos, drinks, and shoots people and every year they need a younger actor every so often they need a younger actor to play the part like calm the fuck down, broccoli's

everybody. Things can just be things. You know what I mean? Okay. But, but I want to be... But you're making yourself available for the Moneypenny Chronicles. Here's what I'm saying. I want to be cognizant of the world we live in and not just be a cynical crank which is,

you know, comes very easily to me. And this actually will lead in to some degree to our conversation about preacher. And I'll say this. You have to Trojan horse stuff now in Hollywood. If this was coming from a place of, how cool would it be to make a series of films or a TV show about Her Majesty's Secret Service? Mike Lee's Q&M, just two guys sitting at a pub talking about inventions. Now you got me. No, but if there was something about just Her Majesty's Secret Service and it was set in a classic era,

Why not make that? And then what you would do is if you come to that with real integrity and ambition and creativity, and then you have to, in order to get it made, grab the umbrella or pay for the umbrella from the broccolies to say this is the James Bond universe or whatever. That's foolish to me, but it's increasingly necessary. What I have no interest in, the Spectre stuff, they've been doing that. That is the franchising of it and the expanded universeing of it. And it's dumb and makes no sense. Just as dumb would be the Money Penny Chronicles where you find out, oh, she's his sister.

Because, like, nobody cares. Let me be honest with you. I hope it's not his sister. Has anyone, I mean, that's, I feel like. Thomas Winterberg's Specter. The dogma version. The dogma version of Specter. What I'm saying to you is this.

It's just Mads-Mickleson crying in an empty room. That's Hannibal Season 5. Ask, Justin. Ask, I'm asking this to the other James Bond fans out there. Just on Thursday. Do you can't. care about James Bond's parents. Like, not everything.

I was kind of into that. That's, you know, in Skyfall, they kind of touch on that. The reason why it worked in Skyfall, I think, is because it was about James Bond. And we saw more about him. But in terms of, oh, well, the secret of his origins, I mean, this was like. No, I'll keep it, let's keep it 3,000. Let's remember what. Andre 3,000 is that Javier Bergdam is in Skyfall.

But let's also remember what, why we like this character, you know. there was a similar thing, and this is the podcast where I'm just going, I'm just doing this. But like, everyone knows Spider-Man's origin story because it's a really good origin story and it works. And then there was a whole thing. I don't, they may have done this in the second Andrew Garfield movie, the movies, which I did not see. But they definitely did this in the comic books where they were like, well, how can we futz this up? Like, what more can we add to this? And they added a whole thing where his parents were secretly researchers and they were killed.

and Nick Fury was involved and Shield and it's like why it doesn't have to be that way the reason things are good sometimes is that they're simple the reason Jay-Z was good this is going to be Hercules if you could pull this off is

was it simple? Jay-Z was like very much at the cutting edge of like what rap music was supposed to sound like he and this is the same thing that happens to bands all the time to musicians all the time where there's like there's Joshua Tree you two

there's pop and Octong Baby U2 and then there is I don't know how to dismantle an atomic bomb you too right like they you can't help it growing old

you can't help it losing your relevance that being said even though it is coming out over what appears to be a hybrid of a music streaming service and a tax shelter

an attack shelter and a mobile device company and a mobile carrier I'm kind of excited for this J record tonight do you Do you think Doug is ready for it? I don't know if Doug's ready.

That's the issue. Is like, does Doug, what do you think Doug from Title's day is like today? Here's the thing you have to remember about Doug. Doug's had a quiet couple months. And it's a holiday weekend. And you know Doug just wants to get out of there, crack some Bud Rita, lime drinks, and just enjoy himself. And instead, he's just going to be on call when all the just casual title users who high key dropped the service the second Life of Pablo game available

on other platforms sneak back just for 24 hours. So have you seen the track listing? I have not. Would you like me to give you a little teaser here? This is coming tomorrow. 444. It's coming tonight. It's coming tonight. It's called 444. Midnight, you know, or whatever. Yeah. 444. Some tracks here, Till featuring KDOT and Mr. West.

Okay. Kevlar Tucks featuring Andre 3000. Say the name again because it sounds so good. Kevlar Tucks featuring Andre 3,000. Do you hear me? Hold the cream featuring Swiss beats and future. This definitely could be made up.

Like, an incredible project would have been just fantasizing and making the fake track listing for this record. Yeah. Hold the cream. Chance the rapper is on here. There's a song called Stones, which I think is about how the stones

are better than the Beatles. Wow, that's a hot take. That would be my JZ song. Are you excited for this? One out of ten. Now I'm much more excited than I was. What were you? Wait, before I told you, the track.

listing. Six. And now you are 12. Great. No. Nine. Look, it's exciting. I hope these songs are good. But to me, what's interesting about this is the larger conversation about music and stars getting old in the system. I mean, it is hard to think of a better champion hero avatar of the last years of the monoculture, which at the time we didn't even think of as a monoculture. We thought there were many different things happening, but they were nothing like what we have to deal with now.

Because what Jay-Z did was he was the most charismatic. He was the biggest star. He had the most authority and presence and gravitas and pull and Rolodex, right? And what he would do is every time he would suit up, you know, not to continue with the Marvel metaphors, but he would Tony Stark it up with whatever was bubbling. Yes. So he was like, I love you. Was that more clear than volume three?

Right. That's what I was going to mention. make this foray into other regional sounds that I think people were aware of that were starting to bubble up into the mainstream. Bringing UGK. Yeah, having UGK. using Timbaland, using Dr. Dre, and ways that were like, it was like a very tribal time at that time where it was like you had your East Coast sound, your Texas sound,

your Houston sound, your Atlanta sound, your California sound, your L.A. sound. And like, he really did bring a lot of those disparate things together. And that was, it was exciting to see what he would do with it. He would make the blockbuster version of the art house stuff that you were digging, if that makes sense. And it's such a different era in terms of everything in his place in it. But if his style is to just sit back and continue, he's always had, not the best, but certainly one of the best ears, he's got very good taste. And so if his move is to just be like, I am going to take my time and I'm going to get in the studio with the very best people

and with the best beats that only I can afford, then it's classic time again. And also I would just say that when this tour inevitably gets announced because I do think that for the most part he's putting out records to come up with a reason. Because he is a classic rock act. He's so good live. Like it's so great to see him live and it still feels like those songs, it still feels like 99 problems came out yesterday.

Which is why. I mean, we were having a conversation, you and I 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago, 15 years ago, about how he was sort of aging. Yeah, right. But always managed to be smarter than everyone else and be two steps ahead of everyone else. And it's interesting that some of the things he might get dinged for in terms of relevance, actually are evidence of how smart he is, particularly what you're saying, which is the only people in music who make money are legacy touring acts.

And he smartly spent the last 10 plus 10, 5, 10 years transitioning into being a, legacy hits touring act, right? Yeah. Killer band, he can play Glassonbury. No matter what No. Gallagher says, he can play Radio City, he can play anywhere.

And he's got 20 years of music to draw from. That people love. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Then we'll be back to talk about Preacher. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Audible. Audible content includes an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows,

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So get in on these killer last minute deals and download the Hotel Tonight app now. We're back. We're about to talk about Preacher, Andy. Let's do a little house cleaning. Yeah. July 11th, we're at Largo. You bet to say we're playing Largo. We're playing Largo.

We're going to play all the hits with Mallory and Jason from binge mode, from the ringer, from our lives. and we're talking Game of Thrones, obviously. We'll have some special guests, and hopefully we'll be able to announce those next week, I hope. I'm excited about that. You obviously have probably heard by now, but we'll be doing Talk to Thrones live on Twitter after every episode of Game of Thrones season seven.

And a lot of people are still asking this. Yes, you can watch it not live. Yeah, it'll be live to Twitter, but when you're airing of the show ends, whether it's Sunday or... The conversation never stops. Sunday or Wednesday or whatever, you will be able to find this feed of us talking.

Yeah, and I wanted to mention a couple of things for the show. Monday, obviously, long weekend. We will have a special show up where Andy and I talk about a barbecue playlist we made for you guys. I think we're going to put the playlist up before Monday, though, just so people can dig it. We'll do the director's commentary. The Michael Bay, it's all about light commentary. Attached to that episode will also be a conversation that I had with one of our favorite authors, Don Winslow, who has a new novel out called The Force, which is a... How was the conversation?

It was really good. He's great. He's really, really, really. good. Don's got a lot of stuff happening right now. Did he, and I don't want to put you on the spot here, but didn't he, like, last time he came on the show and invite you to go spearfishing with him off the coast of Rhode Island? Yeah, he was like, he's just, he's an awesome dude. He's such an interesting guy. And now he did the cartel. The cartel is going into production, I think, with Ridley Scott.

Amazing. There was news that came out a couple weeks ago that his new novel, The Force, is going to be adapted by David Mamet for James Mangold. Yeah, that was one of those things that was just incepted from your brain. Yeah, I hate when that happens when you're just like, this isn't really happening. You know, these are just like four of my favorite people. So that's for Monday. Then next Thursday, I think we're going to talk about Baby Driver.

I'm going to see a movie. I promise you that. We also have some. We were supposed to have a guest today. Yeah, we should have him on. We have a guest today who had to go do Seth Myers show. So whatever. We forgive him.

But he'll be back hopefully next week. And then that's it. Then we're done. Yeah. That's the end of the podcast. How can we top our conversation about... Because Andy is going to write a spin-off where Miss Money Penny is in the Inhumans. We really can't get any better than our conversation of Edgar Wright's baby driver.

Like, why not quit on a high note? Let's try by talking about Preacher. I'm excited to talk about Preacher. A lot of similarities. A lot of irreverence. A lot of same touchstones. A lot of really kinetic, frantic camera work and editing going on in both of these works. I don't want to spoil Alice.

and Herman's take on Preacher. One thing that she and I have been talking about... Has she written the take yet? It's going up tomorrow, so Friday will be up. One thing that she and I... No, actually, I think it might be going up next week. Is she pro or anti? Allison's pro.

And one of the things she's pro about is the leap it's made in the season two or season one. I want to talk about that. So let's talk a little bit about that, but let's talk a little... I know that you have some mixed feelings about this television show. It's not mixed. I just think I have contradictory feelings. They're both strong feelings. Oh, good.

Those are great. I think it's important to start by saying, I think Allison's 100% right. And this is echoed by a few other critics as well. The show is better. And I really, I mean, just to recap, like, we think we both enjoyed a lot of the first season. I really liked the first season. It was in my top 10. It was a lot of fun.

And it had some of my favorite episodes of television that came out last year. But I thought, and I've seen two episodes in the second season. I think that there's both aired. It was Sunday and Monday. now it's moving to Monday nights going forward for the rest of the season. You can get them on title. I think it's... You just made Doug's night so much worse.

Shit! Was I supposed to put Preacher? We do TV now? It's better. And I think it's better for a simple reason, which was the reason this show is... And we'll get into whether it's good, but the reason it transcends is these are three of the... This is one of the best ensembles on TV, the three leads of the show. Dominic Cooper, Ruth Nega, and Joseph Gilgun are unreal.

Yes. They are so good. They are the best special effect a show can buy. They pop off the screen. And in the first two episodes, they do something that not enough shows do, and as shows go on longer, they have to adhere to different people's schedules, and they have to serve different masters. They share a lot of screen time together. And that's the difference. And it's like, it is a big three.

Like, usually you'll get like, oh, Jack from Lost, but he's out here with like these other. Guys. Or you'll mix and match it for a while or everyone can carry their own plotline. And we've talked before about how that's cool. And often a necessity, not just for actors who might not like each other, IRL. Although aren't Cooper and Nega dating in real life? I don't know. I can't confirm.

Not at this time. Let's ping Juliet. I bet she could. But just to keep the writers sane, basically, because you have to keep multiple balls in the air and you want to expand the show, blah, blah, blah. But the first season... Or cut balls off as it were in pretty sure. But look, this show for its second season was like, we obviously have source. material and they are and we'll get into this sometimes I think still too indebted to it and

enamored of it but they're also like this they only okay but they're also saying look enough of this keeping them stuck in one place enough of this sharing screen time let's literally blow up the town from the first season and put these three not just in a car together but in one scene sharing a pullout couch and that makes an enormous difference it makes the show feel as exciting and as you said kinetic as the violence and special effects sometimes clearly want the show to be. It's just seeing them together does that. I don't know that

I am personally that interested in the quest of this show which is supposed to be read as... I don't know if the people who make it are either and that's my point. It's supposed to be read as a huge compliment to this show that I'm so into it. But this whole like we're searching so the broadest strokes is Dominic Cooper plays Jesse Custer, who's a preacher, a whiskey preacher who has this thing inside of him a gift, a curse, whatever you want to call it, Genesis, which is a power to basically control people's minds with his voice. I think he'd say he has the voice of God, but I know that people will say, well, point of order. He is joined on the road with his girlfriend Tulip, who he used to do crimes with, and they've had some ups and downs.

You want to do a crime. And then they have their vampire buddy. Yeah. Who's this Irish guy who really likes to get after it. He likes to get wet from a variety of substances. And the first season obviously takes place in this town, Anvil, I think it's called. Which is a great metaphor for what it was around the neck of the show. And there's this whole thing with like his congregation and whether or not he can get people to believe in God again and what kind of preacher he has to be.

And there are some angels. and then there are all these like weird flashback slash side stories about a cowboy who is rampaging across the frontier to avenge his off the terribly murdered family and how those things are going to connect. And like Andy said, they basically hit a soft reset, hard reset button by blowing that town up and putting them on the road, essentially starting from where I think the graphic novels begin, correct? And I should be clear about this. I read every single issue of this comic in the 90s when it was coming out. I don't remember that much about it. Structure. I remember it as a road story.

I think I remember it starting in a diner. Yeah, I think they're on the road. Yeah, looking for God. Yeah. And God has left heaven and is somewhere in America. Listening to jazz. And they're driving around looking for him. And they're being chased by this cowboy who's now shown up in the present day.

And he is the saint of killers. And he can't be killed. working for these angels. This all sounds crazy. This is just crazy. All of this stuff, right? Yeah. You're just like, okay.

And there's a lot of conversations about it, and you're just like, whatever, man. The thing is, is that they combine this trashy grindhouse meets Sam Ramey, meets just grotesque horror, meets slapstick comedy, meets ratat-tat dialogue. It's Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Sam Katlin, who I think worked on Breaking Bad. Who are doing it, that Seth and Evan directed the first.

two episodes. I think Sam is the showrunner. That's right. And it has so much energy and I think so much charm that it makes up for what is essentially I don't know, kind of like nine McGuffins tied together into being like oh, it's about faith. I struggled

with the show in two places and this is why this is why I'm sort of neither here nor there on it. I thought I had a hard time with the season premiere even though it had all the positive things that we're talking about. Pretty gory. And I yeah and I thought the second episode was just terrific.

I really, really liked it. Mumbai Sky Castle is that one. Sky Tower. Sky Tower, my bad. So there are two things here. I was trying to be, there's so much excitement and fun and passion being put into the show that I didn't want to dismiss it when it got so aggressively gory and gnarly in the first episode. Like, to an almost absurd, I'm not going to say almost, to an absurd degree.

To be fair, that is on the stick. or when you buy it. Yes, but my issue with that was, you know, I have a hard time with people who don't flinch when they murder. You know what I mean? Like that opening scene where they're in a car and everyone around them dies and people are shooting at them and it's a crazy, as you said, grindhouse thing and they're wisecracking and making jokes and they're not bothered at all.

To me, that was the kind of, that was sort of the worst reflection of like what people disparagingly call a comic book aesthetic where I was like, well, nothing matters. If nothing matters to them and there are no stakes, then what matters? If they're laughing through this carnage, I found that very off-putting. Even if you're like Cassidy is a vampire, like they're driving around with a vampire? Yeah, but I was like, it's just not worth it unless they actually feel something in the midst of this at some point. If they're just completely unflappable, then what's the point? Can I make a counter? Can I just ask you a question? Don't you also hate it when people are like, we're good people, but we did a bad thing? Yes, here's what I'm saying. I didn't stop

watching. I did not dismiss it out of hand. What I was trying to think of was a ratio that I like, you know, and I was trying to think of this as an inverse, because you could say, Mad Men, also on AMC, literally the only connection you can make. So go with me, is an incredibly thinky, talky show about people's feel, all the stuff I love, and then every so often, a lawnmower would run over a British guy's foot. And people would be like, look, it could be crazy and funny, too. That is a ratio. This show is the inverse of them. where the whole show is a lawnmower running over your foot and then they also have on the margins something charactery and that's fine what what worries me long term because as soon as it goes

back to the characters just in these actors I'm in the second episode which featured an angel from the first season reinventing himself as a basically as an immortal side show act at a casino who goes on a eight ball bender with Cassie I mean it's so good and the performance are so funny. It's filmed in such a bright way. When you say to somebody, yeah, there's a scene where a vampire and an angel do speedballs together. Yeah, and eat ice cream. And make a blanket fort. That sounds like you're playing, you know, refrigerator magnet poetry with, you know, any number of 40 years of cult movies.

And you're just like, oh, what if this? Yeah. But actually, the scene is super charming and pretty emotionally, like, touching. And they built. Two incredibly lonely immortal people who are like, we are doing this because it's so hard being us. And that's the episode worked because of it. It built an emotional arc within the craziness that made sense to me. And here's my concern about the show going forward.

And I mean this not like, this is good, this comes from a place of good intentions. It's the same concern I actually had for the comic book. And I wonder if this is why I never went back to it, which is the nagging feeling that it's basically, just punk rocking it. Basically being like, it doesn't have to be anything. It just has to be like a middle finger to God and propriety and whatever.

And the comic book by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Garthennis is an Irish writer who clearly has strong opinions about religion and America and violence and wrote something, I don't know how much time he spent in the South, but basically wrote his version of depravity and fun and pulp

set in that world. Yeah. This show seems to be, he's saying in a very, it's not possible for it not to be deep, even if a character just siphon gas with a human intestine, because the question is, where is God and why has he left us? What I'm saying to you is, I don't know if the people making the show care, if they really have an answer to that. That doesn't diminish my enjoyment of it in the short term, but it does make me question my investment in it long term. We've unintentionally brought up a couple of times these modern iterations

of things that were essentially nerd culture from our teenage years and what felt like these really transgressive edgy things when we were younger because there wasn't something like Preacher on fucking cable, you know, or in humans or whatever

on ABC. Those things got a lot of mileage out of their uniqueness at the time. And there's something about watching Preacher where you're like, yeah, I know, guys. Well, like, even the violence, the ultra violence. I'm like, well, I bet they borrowed some of the tricks from Walking Dead.

Like they know how to make a skull pop like a melon now. Yeah. You know, Sopranos didn't show us when that happened in the second last episode, but now technology is advanced that we can see it. Right. Cool. But we've seen it. I enjoyed it.

I mean, I really have a good time watching this. Do you have any thoughts about that, though, and how it would affect your enjoyment of it if the show is basically asking questions that it ultimately isn't interested in answering in a meaningful way? I don't know if the leftovers were interested in answering the same questions. Well, that's... I don't mean... I make it sound like that's like a checkers move.

I'm saying like I think we've been confronted with several shows over the last few years that raise questions in the trailer that it has no interest in answering. I shouldn't have used question and answer because that's a fraught set up. What I mean is the leftovers to me was a very powerful and profound, you know, especially in the end. About all the stuff that you say... Good faith examination of what's the point. Yeah, no pun intended. What's the point of any of this?

Preacher is a hell of a lot of fun, which, by the way, Dainu, that's probably enough with these amazing performances. But at its heart, what is motivating them? The questions they are asking, you need to have some ballast there, and I don't know if they even care. And I don't even mean that dismissively,

but at a certain point, the bells and whistles and the WTFs, like the other preacher who has a girl in a cage, and they're all laughing about it a little bit. It's like, come on guys. Like, you don't need to, at a certain point, the bells and whistles have to quiet down. You have to have something there. Right.

I think I like it more than you. I think obviously bothers me less than you. But I think that we're both saying the same thing, which is that the replacement level of the character. Like, if you put actors who were replacement level good in those roles. Yeah. I don't know if the show gets on the air. And listen. Like, we're going to look back at Ruth Naga being on this show like George Clutie on E.

We're going to be like, I can't believe that was like George Clooney was on television every Thursday. I know. It's going to be the same thing when she's like a big, big star in three years. It's going to be really cool that she was also on three or four seasons of Preacher. I loved watching the second episode. It was really fun. You know, I just enjoyed it because it was having fun. So I realize if it sounds as ingenuous that I'm saying, thank you for being fun and not being too heavy, but also why aren't you being heavier?

I just. I'm saying, I think you're saying that like they go, there's a couple of times where they're like no one will tell us what to do, so we're going to do it. I also feel like I have very high standards now, I guess, now that I'm no longer a critic. Like, I love that they're getting away with this. I love that they seem to be able to get away with anything. I love that they have this cast. I think that Rogan and Goldberg are really, really smart guys who know what people like and know what they like

and have proven themselves to be surprisingly good directors. I'm actually super excited because also if I had to guess if you had asked me 10 years ago, what would a Seth Rogan directed work look like? I wouldn't have guessed it had this kind of nerve. You just think it would be Martin Star with Pink Eye. Yeah, or just like a very flat, like improv comedy. This is very written. It's very timed.

The rhythms of the show are very defined. Do we ever talk about this as the end on this podcast? That movie was really good. That movie was incredible. That movie was... But that movie is literally, let's throw a party and tape a bunch of it and see what the best parts are. But was better...

Didn't get enough credit for doing something that all the Apatow movies, whether they are good or bad, get credit for, which is, in spite of the giant demon dung, this movie actually has something to say about friendship. Yes. Yes. Ultimately, the same message that a lot of those movies have, which is that it's time to grow up. Yeah, time to grow up and don't let his ease, unsary, fall into a hellmouth.

That's right. That's just life advice. Okay, we're going to be back on Monday with a special episode. Have you finished Master of None yet? Yeah. Did you? Damn. Oh, do you want to just do a little master right now?

No, I haven't finished it. I was hoping you'd say no, and I'd be like, cool. Maybe we should talk about how we haven't finished it. I'm ready. I haven't finished it. I'm ready when you are. Thanks, man. I bet our listeners are too. A lot of ambiguity.

Is there? We will talk on Monday. We're going to do a barbecue playlist that will go up pretty shortly after this Thursday episode. Search my name on Spotify. We'll tweet it out. Maybe we can get Zach Mack to tweet it out from his podcast, from his Twitter account. From Zach Mack's personal podcast? Maybe Zach Matt can do a personal podcast when he does all his podcasts.

What would your podcast be called? Mack Attack. Come on. That's you're the branding guru. That's not as good as MacA-Tac. That's very college radio. Yeah. We're going to workshop that.

Okay. All right. I want everyone out there to have a great holiday weekend. You guys, happy birthday, America. Keep it together. Keep it together from America. Go on great, by the way. There's a special episode of the watch on Monday, the playlist, the Donwin's Low episode.

We'll be back Thursday with a special guest and hopefully talking some baby driver. And 444. Light them firecrackers, Baranski. Before then, don't let your baby. baby's drive. Today's episode of the watch was brought to you by Redbox. School is out for summer. Redbox has the video games to keep you entertained since your education has come to a

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