The Watch - ‘Skeleton Crew’ Leans on a Favorite ‘Star Wars’ Trope. Plus, ‘Black Doves.’

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Chris and Andy get into the songs and artists that ended up on their Spotify Wrapped and their feelings about the past year in music (1:00). Then they discuss ‘Black Doves,’ the new spy thriller series on Netflix, and how the show balances sentiment with exciting action pieces (12:24). Finally, they talk about the first episode of ‘Skeleton Crew’ and how the show leans on a story trope that seems to be a favorite of the ‘Star Wars’ series of late: lone wolf and cub (29:49). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Stand up and walk. Now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, his long national nightmare waiting for new Sky Ferreira music is over. It's Andy Greenwald.

I haven't listened yet. God, you know me so well. God, she's so back. We're so back. You're still in England. I'm in Los Angeles. We're recording this today. It's Thursday.

We're going to talk about black doves. a new series on Netflix that I think we disagree on. What? No, we don't. What do you disagree? Oh, okay, because the vibes from you have been a little bit quiet about this. Okay, and we're also going to talk about Skeleton Crew, the new one from the Star Wars universe on Disney Plus.

Greenwald, it's extraordinary to see your face. Let me just set the scene here. I know that you often romanticize Los Angeles weather and use the warming rays of the sun to restore your body when you have been on international travel. We currently live in John Carpenter's The Fog, and I had to use high beams to get to work today. So, stop. Can't wait until you're back. I'm going to love it.

And I'm not going to complain about it. That's one thing about me, you know, is I'm just kind of a take-it-as-it-as-it-cumns guy. No, you're a man for all seasons, for sure. I'm in one season here. It rained all night. It was crunching through wet leaves this morning. It's a very different vibe. Can I tell you the biggest indicator of how different my experience culturally here is from

from at home. There are bookstores. People read books on the tube. Last night I was walking back from work, and I stopped for a little, a light bite. And then I was walking back to my place here, and I was like, you know, maybe I'll have a little a little beer to end the night. And I went into the news agents, and I bought some of my favorite local gummy candies, the TangFastics, if you're wondering, from the Harrow family.

And I bought a little bottle of logger. I brought up to the counter. And the guy looked at it. And then he looked at me, and he looked at the bottle. and I was worried. Like maybe I had made some sort of, you know, insensitive traveler faux pa, or maybe he was going to card me,

which would have been a very nice compliment. And the silence lingered, and then he went, only one. And I was like, yeah, you know, it's a work night. And he went, yes, Wednesday, maybe one is good. And I think that I'm the first person in the history of Zone 1 London ever to buy one year.

Just to get one. Well, this is the Liam Gallagher thing. What do you mean we're going out for one? I was both embarrassed and a little proud. Where are you at now with the balance of between experiencing all of London's culinary delights versus just getting Nandoz and going home? I think that one of the biggest challenges, and let me just put the caveat here, that there are no challenges that I am living a phenomenal life with one of the best jobs

I've ever had internationally. But it is an interesting lesson for one to learn and one's body to learn that one cannot be on vacation and at work at the same time. Yeah. And so the degree to which at work this morning when everyone was like, how would you get up to last night? Anything fun?

The degree to which I said, no. With such joy in my voice. This has been, in many ways, the best week I've ever spent here, and I've done nothing. Yeah, that's good. Nothing. It's great.

I wish I had some more cultural headlines for you today. There hasn't been a ton of stuff in your absence over the last couple of days. Did you see anything happen? on GMT maybe on your phone that you wanted to talk about? I did wonder about one thing about your perspective on it, and I didn't prep you for this. We don't need to dwell on it, but this is the week when a lot of top ten lists and 50, whatever's dropped.

Oh, I do want to talk about Rapt we too. Do we get extra attention from the boss if we talk about that? If we just like naturally pivot to our personal raps? By the way, another thing, why didn't we do a thank you to our listeners the way Bill I did. You just didn't see it. It's on camera on Spotify. For the watch? Yes. Your podcast, you did it for you.

You're away. I don't know what to tell you. Just when you come back and it says the Chris Ryan show, just don't be alarmed. I've never been alarmed. And it's me and we're just talking about. Talking about his trip to Spain? Yeah, George Washington, yeah. So I wondered how you felt

about this year's slew of best album lists and best singles lists. Because, you know, I do continue to believe that every year we do get a little older as we unwrap ourselves just physically and emotionally. And I think people are less and less interested in what exactly we listen to, although I did make my own festive 50 like I do every year and I'm going to post it, I guess, on Instagram because that's the only social media I currently subscribe to. But how did you feel about these lists this year?

Did you feel any flicker of recognition, any FOMO? What was your reaction to that? Yeah, I think that I think music is the play. I sometimes get asked by friends and bystanders alike. How do you kind of stay on top of what you have to stay on top of in terms of TV, movies, and sports? And the answer is a little bit, like, I just don't pay attention to, like, contemporary music that much. I am obviously broadly aware and live, listen to the Kendrick record, the Father John Misty record. Like, I try to stay up on that stuff.

I have a very specific kind of music that I have just become very, very comfortable listening to, which is like hardcore, hardcore adjacent stuff, some indie rock. I'm pretty up on what's coming and what's been happening there, but like when it comes to looking at the stereo gummer pitchfork lists, I'm just kind of like, wow, I didn't not know that that is a person, much less that they put out music this year. So I'm a little bit behind when it comes to that.

And then as far as like my rapt goes, the funny thing about rapt was for years my wife and I shared a Spotify account. So my algorithm made no sense to my, my rapt had no reference. reflection on what I actually listen to. And then this year I had, we split, like last two years or something. And my rapt this year is almost entirely... You split your Spotify.

By Spotify. You two are still happily married. It'd be a wild way to break news, but go on. Yeah, it would be awesome if I broke up with her afternoose for a tune. Why don't you love me like it? But this chick loves Orlock. I now, my rap is. is almost entirely stuff I fall asleep to.

So there's like a... Oh, interesting. Like a kind of Mexican ambient guitar duo called Hermannos Gutierrez that I always fall asleep to. But they are dominant in my rapt, even though I only listen to them between the hours of 11, 15, and 4 a.m.

But they get so much run because they just play, they just keep playing their records like throughout the night sometimes. But I enjoy going to bed, thinking of this mystical place, you know, like, what about you? Do you feel like, I know you said you have your festive 50. Do you feel like you're like still, do you identify like your, do you, do you see yourself in contemporary music? No, because I think, and again, this is a boring take,

so I don't even think we need to spend time on it. But like, I do believe that it's not just us saying, you know, God damn it, the good old days were better. But I just feel like there is a profound lack of monocultural musical experiences outside of maybe Taylor and Kendrick at this point. So I look at these lists and I'm like, this is an interesting and in some ways exciting collage of 18 people's individual tastes. Other than maybe Brat, I don't really feel anything that most of the people voting on these lists agree about, which is kind of a bummer from a, I would like to be moved by something with other people sense, but also interesting. I feel like personally, I feel like this is one of the best years of individual tracks and like discovering new bands have had in a long time. I love the playlist that I made that I kind of would like to.

But you know what I mean? I mean that sincerely. Like I feel like that's almost, that's not the greatest advertisement for the year in music. I kind of would like to be shaken up a little bit outside of that. Yeah.

Beyond that, my rap was so, so basic man in his 40s with children who sometimes needs instrumental music to work. So it's just like MJ Lenderman. No, it was worse. My top five.

were like Taylor Swift number one because I drive my daughters to school and pick them up every day. And so that was easy. Charlie XEX because as Spotify told me, based on my June listening, I am a pink power pop princess,

which is my daughters are now calling me, which is fine. And then it goes like Bill Evans, like Stan gets, Vampire Weekend. I'm like, God damn it. I used to feel interesting. Well, I think that that is, I mean, those lists are always sort of, that in some ways,

that is the most reflective list, right? Because it's so behavioral. Yes. Because that's where you really run up the numbers. My favorite thing about the rap this year was your favorite podcast genre was sports. Your favorite podcast genre was Sheel? Literally, just Sheel talking to me. Just running back to the one thing that I do still have a couple of questions about.

When you thanked our listeners for listening, did you voice my thanks as well? Or was it more like thanks for listening to the last year of the watch. Going forward, I'm going to have a lot of really kind of dangerous content for you. I'm going to be talking a lot about UFC and personal wellness. And FBI director Cash Patel will be a guest starting in January for a weekly wrap-up session. For Lioness Recaps. Guess the Lioness lines with Cash Patel. Guess the lioness with Cash Patel.

Guess the lioness with Cash Patel, honestly, crazy numbers. You should... That would do numbers. Yeah, I really would. I was going to ask, actually, because, you know, I've been putting together my top 10 for TV. I'm recording top five movies with Sean and Adam Neiman today for Big Picture. I was curious how your TV list was coming along.

A lot of late breakers. A lot of late breakers. When we talked about this with our... I want to say once in future, but I guess just once... Guests, not once, many times guests, Sam Esmail the other week. And we talked about, yeah, like socially. Yeah. Offline, yes. I did not feel too solid outside of like a top five.

And then suddenly I now feel very confident that I all have 10 shows I'm excited about. And now I'm just in the business of like, oh, I have to finish. I haven't finished saying nothing. I have, and then a couple other things that just occurred to me that I didn't kind of like seal the deal on, make up my mind about. But no, I'm feeling much better about it. it suddenly looks like a... Remember the beginning of the year?

There was like a run through April where I was like, this is an unprecedentedly good year. Yeah, then there was a drought. And then it did stall out. And now we've had a little bit of a thaw at the end of the season. You said this.

I think you mentioned it in a recent podcast, but I definitely, or you've said it offline. Does seem like there's not... Oh, yeah, because I was saying that you're the N. Seltzer of TV polling. But like, it's kind of fun that there's some variance.

I was looking at Robert Lloyd, a critic I really like in the L.A. Times's list and just some shows that I completely either had forgotten about or just hadn't considered, and he made really compelling cases for it. Oh, yeah, that's right. I said that the Times did not mention my top two shows, which is, I guess, it wouldn't be that hard to figure out what they are.

Number one, Lioness, number two, Linus rerun. Number two, Landman. Greenwald, should we talk about what you're talking about late breakers? I think this, for me, it could be. Yeah, this is. So let's run pack. Why do you think we disagree? because one thing that I like to do

is save it for the pod. We talked on the phone a bunch this week. I'm not, I wasn't like trying to be cool with you. I think Black Doves fucking rules. Okay, I was worried that you, while you love Miami rapper gunplay, that you might have a hard time with the gunplay in the show.

It's a great conversation to have. So obviously we're going to start talking about this Netflix show that premiered, I think, today, although I don't remember what day it is currently. It's Thursday. It's up now. Yeah. And it's six episodes, obviously Netflix, full binge.

Comes to us via Joe Barton, who did Gary Haji a couple years ago for Netflix, also did the Lazarus Project, which was a TNT series, has done a bunch of other TV writing and was up for or made a pitch in the great True Detective Season 4 Bakeoff that I would love to get to the bottom of everybody who pitched a different series and what their ideas were, which is such a fascinating experiment. Oh, man, yeah. But Joe Barton wrote and created this. series, a couple different directors. It stars Kira Knightley and Ben Wishaw, and then a lot of

names and faces that you would recognize if you are a British TV addict. And the most succinct way I can put it is this is slow horses by way of Chad Stoleski and David Leach, who are the John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Gun Fu guys and action directors, du jour. But yet, I would say there's something else to it. So I think I'm interested in what you feared and now I understand why. And I think that the thing that needs to be said, there's a third rail to the type of show that it is. It is, because it is, and it's a wildly challenging tone that at least through, I think you've watched the whole series, I've only watched two. So far, it is one of the most remarkable tone balancing acts I've seen in recent memory. Because, yes, to your point,

it is a, it's a Christmas spy show about sentimental killers, basically. and every so often a skull explodes and people are just, you know, Jackson Pollocked in arterial blood while they talk about how they feel about things. That suggests, just from my description, the exact kind of glibness that usually turns me all the way off. And yet, there is something about this show that is so, I guess, A, confident in its tone and storytelling choices,

and B, genuinely committed, at least I believe to be the case through two in the emotional lives of its characters. And then three, you have Ben Wishaw, who I think is just, you know, one of the greatest actors alive in a particularly gifted emotional weather vein so that I just deeply believe every choice he makes, you know, when it's when a former lover is threatened, a character whom we have not met on the show. And the camera just very smartly holds on Ben Wishaw's eyes, which fill with tears that he then shakes off.

I'm there first and then all the stuff about shooting each other and how much fun it's going to be to do it is secondary. It gets the ratio right. And so then I'm able to enjoy the kind of the dancing and the balletic gunplay and stuff. We won't spoil anything but there's a moment in the second episode

where a character is dispatched in a way that is, you know, what's the word? Violence. Before that character meets his or her maker, the character looks up at the moon for a few seconds. And that gives me what I need to them allow.

It's the little things. I know, I realize I'm sounding pedantic, but there's thought in it, you know, and it makes all the difference to me, and I'm completely on board for this ride. So there are some shows that I think are objectively, I won't really hear much criticism of them. I'm just like, you can watch this,

and if you don't think it's good, I don't think we think the same things are good. then there are shows that are a little bit more of an act of threading the needle of tone, like the way you're suggesting. And I completely understand if people watch this show and are like, it's way too convoluted. As the series goes on, they go back and forth over the toast with just like more and more butter to get like the plot like sort of machinations are very, very, they're familiar if you read pulpy novels.

Yeah. But they are maybe unfamiliar if you're like, wait, this is a little. supposed to make sense. Why would he go back? Because it's both convoluted and convenient in the way a lot of things are right. Of course, yeah. And that like the four different stories are actually one story. That's the most important story in the world. And again, Barton owns that. You know, it is not, it's not that it's not serious, but it is just removed enough from reality. These people are not supposed to be MI5. This is not necessarily real politic that I didn't bump on that. I know exactly that I know exactly what we were talking about. They get into a little bit of like,

the British and the Americans and the Chinese and a possible nuclear war and there's like stuff that comes up that feels bondy or feels you have to have the fate of the world to kind of be what's at stake. But for me, the entire thing rests on the performances

and the characterizations. Ben Wishaw as a droll, gay, haunted trigger man named Sam and Kieran Knightley as an uptight Tory spy named Helen is magic. It is just magic. And I watched this entire thing over the course of like,

three or four days, my wife and I both got obsessed with it. Literally underneath a Christmas tree, like the tree was up, all the lights were out in the house, and we just had the Christmas lights on while we were watching the show. That is essentially lit by Christmas lights. And it's just a vibe. I haven't seen something like this happen where I feel so at home with something that's come on at a particular time of year, with the exception of maybe Stranger Things at like a Halloween or a July 4th moment. But like, usually shows just kind of come on when they come on and you're like,

oh, is this really, I guess this is counter-programming? And it'll be nice in February when White Lotus comes back and, you know, it's Thailand and we're all cold or whatever. But like, for the most part, like TV kind of is a little bit agnostic about the time of the year it comes out. This is perfect. And also, there's a cartoonishness to the violence, but also a realism to it that kind of gives it, I don't know. Would you call it like kind of Frank Miller stylized extremity? I don't even know what, like, example to give here. It is.

It's just, it's a balancing act. It is absolutely stylized, but the style doesn't take over everything else. Yeah. You can enjoy it, and then you don't feel beaten up by it, you know, which is the way I often feel by stylized punch-em-ups. I also have to say that maybe I'm feeling even better about it because, like Ben Weschaw's character, I also went to the department store Liberty yesterday and looked at the Christmas stuff. Did you have someone pulled fingerprints off of a bullet casing? I mean, I can't confirm or deny most of what I'm doing here in London, honestly.

So I probably shouldn't speak on it. Like Kear Knightley, I also went to the winter market, holiday market on South Bank yesterday. But again, no bullet casings were involved. So it is kind of funny to be here at this time of year watching a show about this time of year. But before we get into some of the specifics and some of the actors, I just want to say again that, like, I found the show both exciting and kind of inspiring, because there's a version of a new Netflix show where you can feel the fingerprints of Bella Bajaria, the head of contents, mandate, you know, not to belabor the gourmet cheeseburger thing again,

but you can get the sense of Netflix is only interested in making shows that pop in a certain way and don't bore you in a certain way and go big in many ways. and what it feels like in this show, and we don't know anything about the development process, I hope we'll talk to Joe Barton on the pod at some point, is you can feel someone enjoying the opportunity of those mandates as opposed to chafing under them. It feels fun.

It feels unfettered. You know what I mean? Like the idea of making a spy show where people say clever things to each other, that shouldn't be punishment. No. That should be an incredible opportunity. and he did find a way, and again, I think it's tethering it to Christmas

and the emotions of the characters and the sort of the sad hang dog way that Helen and Sam regard each other, he found a way to keep at least one foot on the ground. And it's so Netflix. You know, I remember when I was, you know, trying to, you guys always hear me talk about, like, I'm not sure what the show is doing yet,

and I get a little itchy during pilots or first episodes. I could sort of feel, I was watching the pilot, and I was like, there won't be another action sequence, will there? And yes, there will. But it didn't feel cheap. You know what I mean? It didn't feel like that was a note saying,

we need another one of these and another gunshot here. It was as if there was intention behind it, not reaction. Yeah, there's no Trojan horse here. Like, I think Joe Barton wanted to make a Shane Black show. Like, that maybe is the most concise way of putting it. It's a great reference. And Shane Black is the writer of lethal weapon.

And it is like, also writes a lot of stuff that is set during Christmas and happens to have a very good handle on black comedy, pathos, and action at the same time, you know, so that somebody can be both incredibly witty about the dire circumstances they're in,

also invoke your emotional attachment to the character, and then also have something blow up. And he's just got that plus that British sense of irony, that British charm, that British self-effacement, that just really works within this show. We should maybe highlight a couple of the other people. And obviously, we've talked to what with Shaw.

I don't really know how many different ways we can put it. I think he might be, like you said, one of the best actors alive. He was extraordinary and this is going to hurt. He's amazing in London spy. And he's incredible in this in a role that, like, is closer to, like, Martin Riggs and lethal weapon than anything like you would ever guess that he would play. He's so charismatic and so soulful,

but also allowed to do. be some of the things that some of his other roles don't allow him to be because I heard someone refer to him as like like wishy wishy-washy-wishaw. Like people think that he's a little bit soft often and maybe that's just because they're hearing the voice of Paddington every time that he speaks. That's what I mean because he is hot in the show. He is charismatic in this show. He is the heavy in this show. He's allowed to be kind of a little bit irreverent and fun, but also he's playing so many different colors. It's the kind of thing where you're like I mean, I saw him on stage last month, and he's amazing,

and he missed the premiere the other night here in London because he was, you know, he's on stage. That's what he does a lot of the time. He hasn't said this, but I could almost imagine hearing a Gary Oldman-like quote from him about like he just wants to play this part. Yeah. Just because he gets to be so many different things that he doesn't usually get to do, which I think is the inverse of the way people of his caliber often feel about screen roles.

Well, he's fucking awesome. I'll put it without getting into the plot points, I think we'll maybe next week get a little bit into the specifics of later episodes. The structure and the way that they pace out this season is both breakneck, but also very wisely as like they could have their own slow horses here if they want. Yes. If Kieran Ely and Ben Wishaw enjoy this, the way that they are sort of setting it up and the fact that it's just a six-episode season that very much suggests.

It's already been renewed. Yeah, and it's already been renewed. So one other person that we have not mentioned yet, and criminally don't mention enough on this. this show on this pod is Sarah Lancashire, who is obviously the star of Happy Valley, which is a series I'd love to like revisit at some point. And she plays the M slash Jackson Lamb slash kind of, you know, master of puppets person who runs this organization, the Black Doves and is Kieran Knightley's rabbi, confessor,

and tormentor. And she's incredible. like it has this icy woman who lives in like a condo above the Thames and just directs all London, the London Underground like crime world and espionage world. It's just such an ingenious like playing against part like for her and a great piece of casting. I also really love Kira Knightley in this. This might be like the best she's ever been to be. No, this is what I wanted to say to you. I feel like future economic scholars might look at the Kura Knightley bubble of, 10, 15 years ago and just, you know, maybe they could explain it to me, like tulip fever.

Clearly beautiful, clearly talented. But other than a few, and those few were pretty good, like whether it was Pride and Prejudice or Bennett like Beckham and the first Pirates the Caribbean movie, I think she struggled to find a role that made sense, both for her particular set of skills and also how she looked as a young woman and how she was perceived. And I don't know whether it's a combination of her desire to do something different or just who she is now and what she wants to be doing. But this is an excellent part.

I mean, it's an excellent performance. Maybe because it's the right mix of arch and wry and emotional but also physical. I read somewhere that this basically came about because she and her agents were like, we'd like to get into the prestige TV business, as many actors have over the last 10 years. remarkable to find an opportunity, though, that actually accentuates and moves forward someone's career as opposed to just, like, rehashing past hit. So I guess, I can't believe I'm saying this.

Good agenting. Good job. Because she, you know what I mean, though? Like, it is really smart. It's incredibly wise. Yeah. I've actually seen her play roles like this without the gunplay. like these sort of like oppressed,

um, sublimated emotionally wife of a powerful man or someone who is, you know, living an illicit experience like Anna Karenina or something like where she's like, you know, living on the edge, but there isn't that release the way there is in this show because she gets to laugh and shoot and be a psychopath as well as be a doting mother and husband and also

have her secret like affair that's going on. So it's an incredible part to play. Do you want to get into any of the plot details of the first two? I just wanted to mention that this show for me jumps up a little bit of a notch when Ben Wichaw, or Kiranightly goes back to her lover's apartment to find a recording device. It's a pretty standard spy show thing. That kind of also mirrors my experience in London the last few days in order to do this podcast. I know.

So it's uncanny. So she's gone back to an apartment of her of her ex-lover to find a recording device and when she gets there two police officers, two women show up and they're looking for him and looking for any woman that he might be with. A shootout ensues and turns out that these two cops are in fact hit women, hit men.

And one of them is played by an actress named Ella Lily Highland, who I had never heard of before. And she is so fucking good. And winds up being... I'm so glad you had her name. Wines up being a huge part of the show for the rest of the series and is the kind of like

one of the comic reliefs, but also it's just like, the idea of like a hackney, hipster hitman is so fucking funny in this series and it's just a ingenious piece to it. I'm glad you brought her up

because she's excellent and she comes out of nowhere and that's another great example of why I think the show succeeds. He wrote the way, you know, if you're sitting alone with a blank document and you're writing forward,

you're writing forward, often you find yourself writing yourself, you find yourself writing yourself, boy, that sounds stupid, into a corner. And then how can you bust out of that corner by writing the thing that you most want to see that you haven't seen before? And there's that feeling in watching the show. And again, I have no knowledge of how he actually built his scripts or maybe he built it from that character forward and everything else Cape Philip around it. Who fucking knows? Just the point being, there is a delicious excitement

when that character hits the screen. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, she's in more scenes. And you're like, yeah, yeah, let's go. It is just a great way to engage with TV. And honestly, it's best case scenario Netflix to me. Yeah. It is everything that people say about Netflix sometimes in a negative way about like, you know, it's, you just want to snack on it. You just want to devour it. Everything is, everything is juiced up with, you know, with the TV equivalence of MSG and whatever else to make you want to keep craving more. When it's this, I can't complain about it. Like, I, it makes you very, very happy. Oh, this is one of the true like next episode. Yes. Like, hit me again. It's, It's really great.

I think it might be in my top 10, but we'll have to see. I think there's a good chance. Yeah. 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.

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I'm sorry. I think it's time. Okay. I want to be fair towards this. I think it's skeleton crew comes from John Watts. It's a new series on Disney Plus Star Wars series. They have not been hitting for me for a while now. So for the last couple, I would say,

legacy shows that they've done. I haven't really enjoyed late period Mandalorian, Obi-Wan. I was not a Asoka fan. I was not, I was mixed on Ackleite, but it was better than I kind of like, than some of the other stuff. I thought I had ideas at least. I think John Watts is a really good director.

Copcar, I thought it was an awesome early indie of his. And he's obviously gone on to do incredible work with the Spider-Man franchise and kind of revive that character, bring it back into the wider MCU. He was originally slated to do Fantastic Four and I think dropped out. Part maybe to do this, I don't know, maybe because he was done working on, just done working in MCU. He went and did Wolves, which is a movie that came. out earlier this year on Apple

and has since kind of publicly been like, I'm not going to do another one of those because Apple, I didn't trust them as creative partners because I thought this was going to get a theatrical release and it was just put to straight streaming. This streaming series from Disney, I believe, is eight episodes. First few episodes are around 40 minutes each.

And it quote unquote stars Jude Law, who is getting now what is becoming a trend of the sickest paycheck in Hollywood is to be a Star Wars character who wears a helmet. because I think you get paid for the episodes even when you're doing V-O. Not just helmets. He doesn't show up until the end of the second episode.

Yeah, I want to give the show a chance because I want to see Jude Law Cook. I just watched a movie he's starring in called The Order that he's just incredible in. You know, he's really, like, rounded into, like, fine, fine form as a late middle-aged actor, as a middle-aged actor. And I think there's definitely something thing in here that would be fun for him to play. I think that everybody has been right on the money

as they talk about the amblin, the pure amblin vibes of this show. It is about the wonder of experiencing Star Wars. It's about a group of kids, you know, opposites who wind up in a situation together, but learn to discover the magic and danger of this galaxy far, far away. and I think that I am just maybe, that's not an emotion that I'm accessing right now with Star Wars, is like childlike wonder. And I maintain that my childlike wonder for this franchise in the beginning of my life was not about celebrating the things

that I saw around me emotionally. It was about wanting to be older and wanting to be important. And so it's weird that I kind of keep feeling, like every Star Wars thing is about kids now. But, you know, I think obviously it's a recipe that is working. It seems to be basically a mandate from some, whether it's a creative or corporate mandate, that we're going to have a child be guarded by a scraggly older character

is the way that we're going to tell these stories now. I'm kind of just, that's a wrap for me. Like, I don't care about that anymore. and I was curious about how you were feeling about it as a father of daughters. Is it working? I think that's an interesting throwaway. I don't know if it's working. They've certainly, they're working it. Yeah. They're working it into dust. I mean, I think that that's the thing I don't understand is the lone wolf and cub or just child and distressed thing is the story they're telling. So I think two things can be true at the same time. And this isn't

just trying to caveat things or put bubble wrap around an opinion because I have an opinion and it is forthcoming. But I think it is worth saying nothing about the first two episodes is objectively bad. Nothing is poorly done. In some ways, it's among the most narratively sound content that Lucasfilm has produced outside of Andor in the Disney era. The kids are well cast, which is hard to do. The visual decision making is clear and concise. and, you know, it's relatively crisp. The pilot is probably a little too long to establish, but then away we go.

And to your point, yes, it is Goonies, it is explorers, it is space camp, almost literally in terms of like, whoops, kids are in space now. It is Super 8, which was, you know, amblin cosplay pornography, basically, by JJ Abrams. That's fine. What I want to, the way I want to start talking about this show in earnest is by talking about a much better show

with a much better television character. That character is Tony Soprano, who once said famously, remember when is the lowest form of conversation. And I find it deeply despicable and culturally ruinous that a franchise that is so deeply incapable of generating positive new memories,

positive new experiences, positive new experiences of richness, excitement, and pre-nistalgia in a contemporary audience, continues to try to almost malignantly strip mine a 47-year-old experience and split it into parts and sell it. You made a very crucial point here, which is that the first Star Wars movies were good was because it was about people who joined the world and were older, right, than potentially the children who were watching the show and the movies kind of got older with them.

There were children in those movies. Luke was a teenager, and that was about as close as it got. This is a television show about adults remembering what it was like to be children and liking something. That is so far removed from an adult experience of the world or the kind of pure childlike joy that those adults felt with Star Wars

or the pure childlike joy that you can still experience in other entertainment made for children like the movies of Miyazaki that you've never seen. So maybe, and again, I always want to be charitable because I'm using strong words like malignant,

but there is no malignancy on the Disney lot. Like people are doing their best always. And maybe there's a whiteboard in there somewhere, or at this point a photograph of a whiteboard that is no longer in service because all the projects on it have been canceled by Kathy Kennedy, where the idea of like with the resources and with the renewed energy and with the push into streaming, we are going to contact the best and the brightest of a television and movie making community. And we are going to flood the zone with a wide diaspora of styles and content. And in that universe,

where we are enjoying the fruits of those many years of development. And there is a multi-track system where Faloni is doing his cartoon action figure shit. And also there was a new movie or a new trilogy that hit or worked or made sense or moved the ball forward. And there is Andor for the grown-ups. A kids show that is basically a theme park ride from the 80s would be more innocuous, especially one that is done as competently as this. but for a brand that is so, so profoundly distressed at this moment in December in 2024, to be only offering this and the promise, or is it threat of a baby Yoda movie in a year?

Because there's nothing else other than, as you talked about in a pod that I missed, Simon Kinberg, you're next up in the barrel to say you're just going to find a new thing to do with Ray and a new trilogy and we're going to try to run it back, thus moving the horizon point of like when any of this actually has to be put in front of viewers and anybody has to be judged for their years of wasteful nonsense, pushing it, kicking the can further in the future. It's just a fucking bummer, man.

So maybe I'm wrong. Like maybe there are people who are watching this show with their kids and their kids are like, neat, a space adventure. And you're like, this is just, this is just recycled air man. I can hear Jason Gallagher, a former colleague, my buddy, Jason Gallagher, I can hear the eye message tapping out. Isaac, like, his son really likes it. You know what I mean?

And it's great to watch it with him. And I, that's why I'm like, look, this series is directed by Watts, David Lowry, who did The Green Knight, and he just done some beautiful films, the Daniels, who just won Oscars for everything, everywhere all at once. Jake Shrier, who is a director of Beef and has been on this pod and is like very cool filmmaker, Bryce Dallas Howard, and then Lee Isaac Chung. who directed Minarean Twisters, who's probably still running scared from you

about this kiss situation, and then John Watts. So that's an incredible lineup of directorial talent. And it very well may be that, like, in this third episode, it's like mostly about Jude Law Space Pirate, and I'm like, damn, that's pretty good. And there was nothing wrong with the child-like, the child plot to me.

Like, a kid growing up in the suburbs of Star Wars and being bored by safety, is not in and of itself a bad idea. And the idea that this kid has a Star Wars iPad that he watches like lightsaber fights on, but is kind of ridiculed for his interest in this stuff is a bit odd, but, you know, like, I'm going with it. I just think that, like, there's just...

Kids and creatures are not the top... in my big board of things that I'm interested in watching shows about. And I got to just put my hand up, And when that happens, like, maybe I'm not the right person for it. It's just weird when it's happening in a thing that historically, I'm like, I feel like I have some, like, fan equity in this to some extent. I'm obviously disgruntled, but when it hits like Andor, I'm a fucking freak about it. And we're going to be a freak again for Andor soon.

And I can't fucking wait. But it is possible, I think, to have the two-track conversation, which is like, this is a fine thing in a vacuum, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. And it seems like a gigantic. problem and warning Claxton from the Disney lot that this is what they've come up with after all these years and all this investment.

I will say like you did, I am 100% the villain for some of this stuff because I'm still the guy who, on a drive, on the long drive the other day with my kids, and we were listening to Tortured Poets Department because I've got to get those tailored numbers up from my unwrapped. I was listening to this one song,

as guilty as sin, where she references is a song by the 80s Scottish band The Blue Nile, which whom I love. And I think apparently this was like one of the things Maddie Healy gave her and these like, we can ask Amanda and Juliet about all this. Or Kaya can chime in at any point.

Anyway, I'm the guy that's just like, yeah, this song's pretty good. And as soon as it's over, I'm like, do you guys want to listen to Hats, the 1989 album by the Blue Nile? And weirdly, I think because they were a little bit like maybe still like, Logie and exhausted from Thanksgiving,

they didn't put up any fight. And I put on the song The Downtown Lights, which is eight minutes of sins, and this Scottish guy going, take me out the lights. And I fucking love it. But you know that thing where it's like telling someone your dream when you play a song that you love

and you hear other people hearing it and you're mortified? My point is kids do not care about influences. And that's fine. I don't think we did either. Like I'm sure that there are people in our lives or adjacent to our lives in the 90s, when we were like, no one has ever sounded like pavement before. And the guy wearing a fall shirt was like, fuck off. Yeah. That literally happened to me.

Okay, exactly. So that's very valid. And so for me to get on my high horse and say, like, watch the originals. I understand that. But I do think that the more times you Xerox something, particularly in emotion, it cheapens it or dilutes it. And when you're making a thing about loving and loving the thing that you're making the thing about, what are you even doing? And that bums me out. It bums me out on a cultural level. It

mildly disinterest me on a week-to-week level, which is how I felt after watching this show. Yeah, and I think that for as wonky as parts of Ackleite felt to me, I thought Ackleite at least put forward

some ideas that I hadn't seen in Star Wars before. I didn't necessarily like the musical delivery of those notes, but I thought the notes were an interesting combination. What if Jedi were not always just pure, chaste good was an interesting idea. The analogy I would use is it seemed like someone wanted to run a race in a direction no one's run a race before, but then had to run it with their legs tied together and also blindfolded,

and maybe backwards, and also with a lead actor who didn't speak English and had to say the line's phonetic. So, you know, your mileage may vary. But I do hold out some John Watts Hope and some Jude Law Hope. So I'll check out three. The John Watts Hope is interesting. I've talked recently on this pod about how I'd rewatched the Spider-Man movies, and I liked Cop Car a lot.

I have not watched Wolves yet. Do you still hold your John Watts stock? Sure. I mean, there's just not a lot of, like, filmmakers who can reliably work with either major, major franchise IP. He had a lot to do, I think, with developing Holland as like a kind of leading man a little bit.

I think, and I think he's got a real, like, nice sensibility with, like, how to move through a movie in a, in a, like, stylish, but also, like, incredibly entertaining way. He is a really good example of, like, a modern filmmaker who is

more or less forced to choose between, you know, by movie that was supposed to come out theaters with two of the biggest movie stars the last 50 years just went to streaming quietly. Or I can make Spider-Man or Fantastic Four dioramas or I can make Star Wars dioramas. You know, like, his ability, I don't know if he can make like the fun, the fun adult drama or the fun teenage drama that he might want to make or whatever. So I'm sure he can do whatever he wants and this is what he chooses to do.

I just, I hold out hope. And also, I think that, I think that like, what I was asking myself, and I guess you don't really like either of these things, so you probably really can't answer this question. But why do I like stranger things if I don't like this? And maybe there's something about the corporate overlord that you're talking about. Maybe it's something about like, this is all in service of perpetuating a franchise that has maybe not so much new to say

about the story and is too petrified to like make a mistake after Last Jedi that they're never going to move the ball forward again. Well, that's also the reason why, I mean, for whatever criticism, Stranger Things might get, or, you know, especially it's just a, you know, again, it's like a paper-mishet assemblage of influence. Yeah, and I think it's had diminishing returns of the years, but I really enjoyed the first two seasons.

Me too, and regardless of what else you say about it, it is the only story in its universe until the play that's playing a mile from where I'm sitting becomes canon and they start building spinoffs and stuff. there certainly are diminishing returns in IP worlds where you're telling adjacent stories or supplementary stories. Because the big die has been cast and then everything else has to support that. That's the House of the Dragon issue. That's the boys' spinoffs, like everything.

But when you are the big, when you're the mothership and you can just make the rules, that it gives a different kind of feeling, both for the audience and I think the creator. I want to, maybe this, we should table this for a future pod or for a pod with Sean or for just me listening to you and Sean, because you guys would have some say about this. I do wonder, because almost all filmmakers under the age of 40, or even at this point under the age of 45, have to exist in this pretty fucked up corporate ecosystem where those, as you laid out, those are the choices, like which toy do you want to pick up

or which ball do you want to dribble for a while for someone else. It does, though, create a little bit of a sympathy structure where we are kind of like any one of these guys could have been Francis Ford Coppola if they had been allowed to be or if they had existed in the 70s. And I kind of wonder if we just, maybe the true geniuses are still rare and what we're missing is like the Howard Deutsches. Like maybe all these guys are Howard Deutsch. You know what I mean?

Like a guy who did Pretty and Pink, some kind of wonderful grumbier old men. Like there's no shame in that. Like some of those are incredible movies. And they were directed not just serviceably. They were directed well. But they don't necessarily have a particular aesthetic vision, you know, that is. is autourish. Yeah.

It's just that to be a working decent to very good director in Hollywood now, your choices are extremely limited. Yeah, I think also, I mean, TV's just hoovered up the great middle of movies. You know, like the, I watched juror number two the other night, which is now on Max. And I do not understand why it wasn't released more widely in theaters, nor do I really think it's like a shining example of like, God Clint late period

I think it's like a perfectly fine courtroom drama but like it would have just gotten turned into the Lincoln lawyer if you would you know if if Clint Eastwood wasn't attached to it

there's no way anybody gets made this gets made at all yeah yeah it is definitely I mean I like all the actors in it but that is not a major motion picture release cast I don't think right

I mean I Nichols Holtz is pretty famous at this point but like I think Nicholas Holden, Tony Colette, can get a movie made, or at least like an independent film made. Yeah, they got about a boy made. That's right. But like it is definitely like just a sad statement on the fact that like, yes, like maybe these old lions of filmmaking can still do stuff like this. But like we're, otherwise these stories and these, these genres are being subsumed by television. And I don't think always for for good. But that really doesn't, that's not germane, just skeleton crew that much. No, but look, I guess there's the two things to say to end on. One is one of the reasons why I think we're having trouble, well, not we're having trouble, but like I think that we are trying to not attack skill and crew directly is it's doing what it meant to do. Yeah. Like it is worth judging things on what the clear intentions were. And one million percent John Watts was like, I want to make an amblin movie about kids who love Jedi also but live in this universe. And they did it. So that in of itself is a small triumph. but to me it's much more worth celebrating something like Black Doves,

which the thing is objectively pretty excellent. Well, it's objectively good, but also subjectively fucking awesome show that succeeds within the Netflix mandates of 2024 and not in spite of them. And I think that's a good thing. And I'm very curious, unhopeful, that in 2025 we'll see a few more examples

of creator, actor, genre, tone and streaming service in terms of what their mandates are in harmony. Because when it works, it's everyone's happy. And that's not a bad Christmas message, is it? No, that's not at all. I can't wait to see you next week. We'll be celebrating the holidays together. Well, I mean, on this podcast to some extent. Thank you so much for joining. Can I come over and see the tree at least? Come on. Yeah. It's actually, we got one right after Thanksgiving or right before Thanksgiving, honestly, because we're going to be going away later in the month. And it's, it's on its way out. There's a kind of like a somewhat of a sour smell coming out.

I think Black Doves killed it. Andy, it was great talking to you. Kaya, thank you so much for producing us today. We'll be back on Monday. Probably talking to little Doves, little Landman. You know, who knows what's on the agenda? I got an 11.5 hour flight, buddy. I'm going to be so prepared.

You're ready for Lioness? I can't wait. I'm going to download all of them. Talk to you soon.