The Watch - Sports Goes Back to Bundles, Apple TV's Upcoming Slate, and 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' Episodes 3-6

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Chris and Andy talk about the news that Fox, Warner Bros., and ESPN will launch a joint sports streaming platform this year (1:00) and what ripple effects this could have in the scripted TV world (28:48). Then they talk about Apple TV's upcoming slate of shows, including the Colin Farrell show 'Sugar' (38:46) and Episodes 3 through 6 of 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith,' a show where the lack of backstory for the main characters works to its advantage (54:27). 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, traded for a player to be named later. It's Andy Greenwald! Okay, first off, that's cruel. Second, we're doing this old school with you at Company HQ and me remote.

Yes. Not because I've moved back to New York and it's 2014, but because, let me just lay this out for you. last week, if I were to tell you listeners, Parks and Rec is on the air and everybody is like, shit is cool, right guy? Let me get on Twitter and talk to my best friends about it with my share my good faith opinions. What if I were to lay out the case that one of the hosts of the watch spent last week gallivanting around East Coast cities in the dead of winter playing theaters, going to bars and grills until all hours of the night? Many bars and grills.

The other one did nothing for six days other than take his daughters to ramen. Which one of these hosts is sick today at home? Which one? What can I tell you, man? It's my Irish Constitution. It's unbelievable. I am living so wrong that I don't even have anything to add to it. I wish you were here today.

We have so much to talk about a little bit. So today we're going to do some news and notes from the industry at the top of the show. And then we're going to talk actually a little bit more about Mr. and Mrs. Smith for the literal dozens of you out there waiting with baited breath for our Mr. Spade coverage. I think we're going to wait until after five

to do some talk about that. And further admin, just a couple of notes. You don't think there's like a silent majority of Spade fans? That's right. The people who are going to push Biden over the top

are also watching Monsieur Spade. And they're like, this is a present day show, right? Also, is that my father? Were you imitating my father? No, but Kai and I were just talking about Biden thinking that Mitterrand is still running France and how cool that was. Oh, okay. So, right, so maybe he's the fan.

Anyway, some more admin. So Friday night is when True Detective goes up. Andy and I have made the decision to just do our Monday show. So there will not be any instant recap of True Detective on Friday night. We'll come back on Monday. We'll talk about True Detective. We'll talk Super Bowl advertising, the sort of a tradition that we have. here and we'll just chat about

you know living in Kelsey and Swift's world and not having a choice about it. I like you're acting like talking about the commercials the day after the Super Bowl is some quaint hobby like stamp collecting. It has no value to the pie but we do it like almost every year. You're like why don't we just

chat about the commercials? Well it's not the commercials I thought because you know we're going to see foot it brother we're going to see Deadpool 3 footage. I mean if that doesn't float your boat, come on. You're not excited? Just some other admin Andy has a new episode of Stick the Landing up on the Prestige TV podcast feed this week. So he did Girls with Amanda Dobbins.

It was an awesome episode. I really enjoyed that, Andy. Do you want to tease next week's? Actually, I want to return the favor and say, Chris is too humble to mention that he is on the long-form podcast this week. I was not too humble, but thank you very much. Let me set it up because I loved it. It is a great, great listen. I really, first of all, you were great on the pod.

But it was really nice to hear you just, you know, speaking from the dome. You're not doing, no one's making you do imitations. No one's making you do bits. No one's forcing you into banter awkwardly. I thought you were fantastic on this pot. Thanks so much. Thank you to Aaron for having me on. That was a very cool experience.

That's on the long-form podcast. If you want to hear me talk about my career, as it were. And you want me to set up stick the landing next week? Yeah. I mean, like, why not? This is, as Bill would call it, it's the Larry David rule. You're allowed to start teasing the show. Has he changed?

Has he softened because of Larry David? but that was also because that had already happened and was documented. So he was like, we're going to put up the fugitive. But I don't know if he'll continue to do that. I'm very excited to tease Dick the Landing. I don't remember which episode it is. Wait, Kaya, is it Freaks and Geeks? It is Freaks and Geeks with Joanna Robinson.

Chris, have you met Kaya? She's the producer, both of these shows. And the real brains behind the operation. Yeah, we're doing Freaks and Geeks. This was really fun. I love podcasting with Joanna. and it was good to do a show that didn't get the ending that it wanted, which used to be what all TV endings were.

Yeah, it was like the premature ending, right? Like, it was like, oh, God, we have to wrap this up. Grumald, how are you outside and filling under the weather? I mean, I think I am nothing. This is all I am. This is who I am. One of the things that was just incredible yesterday, Kaya, was that Andy, you know, wild horses can't be broken.

You know, we know that. But Andy was tamed yesterday, and what he did was extraordinary. All day long I get updates about the amount of tape he's crushing. He's like, checking out brother's son, checking out this. Like every hour, he's like, let me know when you watch this. I'm like, let me know when you watch what? What are you? You're just laughing me and watching shows?

Chris, illness is an opportunity. Do you know what I mean? I think Franklin Roosevelt said that. Tomorrow is not promised. So, yeah, so I just. I just went through it. You know what I mean? Like I didn't get a job

this coaching cycle, but I figure I can stay on top of things, maybe start a Twitter feed about just diagramming diagramming plots. I was actually working from home for most of the day yesterday and I thought I was going to get

a lot done in terms of watching stuff and I wound up getting, I had like maximum my brain is melting brain. Like I was like watching at one point a YouTube video of an ex-Green Bay Packers quarterback, like a backup quarterback, playing Madden using an authentic Green Bay Packers call sheet. So he was like using Matt. Was it Doug Peterson?

No, but it was a great video, but I was like, I can't believe I just spent 21 minutes doing this. See, I feel like you are becoming younger while I'm getting older because with your time off, you are now just losing yourself to reels. Yeah. I can see no downside to this. Whereas I finally hit the end of like our homework in terms of like watching True Detective and Monsieur Spade and checking out Brother's Son

and all this other stuff. And so I was like, you know what? I got a little more screen time in me. I'm going to do something for me. I'm just going to watch season two of 30 Rock. There's nothing wrong with that. Not only is there nothing wrong with it. Not only is that show still just phenomenal batting average.

It is so funny. Especially season two is really incredible. Chris, I didn't realize that 2007 was 600 years ago, though. I know. Because do you know, and we're not going to get into this now, maybe this will be a future stick to landing or we'll actually make a pointed effort to discuss this. But do you know what like the A plot of the first three episodes of the second season of 30 Rock is? Is that when Will Arnette shows up?

Yes, he does, but that's not the A plot. Is it something about Tracy? I mean, it always is, but the A plot... Is it Jack Can't Eat Steak? Chris, this is all accurate. You have watched the show recently. I'm very impressed. You could name a few other characters if you,

like, or I could tell you, the A plot of the second season of 30 Rock is that Jenna is fat now. Oh, that's right. That she's eating paper. It's the Japanese porn star diet. She can only eat paper, but she can eat as much as she wants. Yeah, I remember that. God damn, we used to make stuff in this country. It is really a trip.

I recommend it. You know, a lot of the jokes, especially in that season of 30 Rock, are about the consolidation of television under corporate ownership, under like a multinational corporation ownership. Speaking of, I know you're doing a beautiful segue, but maybe the hardest I laughed was when Jerry Seinfeld guest stars in the season two premiere and he threatens to buy NBC to get rid of Jack.

And Jack says, oh, like you have $4 million lying around. Which is really funny. Okay, go on. So, as was sort of foretold in 30 Rock, we've arrived at this very interesting point. the TV industry. And, you know, Andy and I usually don't do a lot of sports commentary outside of the agony of being a Philadelphia sports fan from time to time.

That was a fun Sixers season while those four months lasted. But I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the announcement this week that there is a sort of Voltron of sorts coming, of streaming sports services coming together to create a mega platform from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery. and whether or not it comes off or whether or not it crosses the finish line, just as an idea, I think this is a fascinating conversation to have because not only is it interesting to talk about as TV fans and as sports fans, but I think it has a lot to do with maybe where things could go

in the streaming TV and the TV world in general. So I thought we could talk about that to start with. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm very curious to see if they'll do scripted programming next, where you can get all the channels and all the shows in one place and pay one bill every month. Like if they could only figure out a way to do that, I feel like they'd be on to something.

So from the New York Times, I'll just give people a little bit of context. This was a day or two ago, depending on when you're listening to this. Fox, Warner Brothers Discovery, and ESPN announced that they'll come together and offer a streaming sports service that, according to the Times,

will quote, offer streaming subscribers all of the channels owned by those companies that show sports like ESPN, TNT, Fox Sports One, and also ABC and Fox. So those would be probably NFL and NBA games there. In addition to sports content subscribers will be able to watch non-sports shows like The Simpsons and The Bachelor

that are available on the channels. Subscribers will have access to 14 channels in total as well as ESPN's existing streaming service, ESPN Plus, which is very interesting because ESPN Plus for several years there was the direction everybody at ESPN was supposed to be rowing with like we're going to put this on plus, We're going to get this.

We're going to migrate a lot of this stuff over to Plus. They were going around the world, buying up rights. You can watch La Liga and Bundesliga soccer on ESPN Plus. So, like, it was the fact that this is going to continue to exist, but probably change a little bit, I think is an interesting footnote. To continue with the Times is reporting, in addition to National Football League and National Basketball Association games, the service will offer action from Major League Baseball, the NHL, PGA Tour, Grand Slam tennis, professional soccer, major college conferences, and UFC.

While the service goes a long way towards allowing sports fans to watch a significant amount of games in a single app, it does not bundle all sports together. NBC, CBS, and Amazon in particular have major rights like NFL and the Olympics that will not be part of the service. Regional sports networks where most fans still watch their local baseball, basketball, and hockey teams are also not included. So, Andy, this news breaks, and just give me like your 10,000-foot view of what? what your reaction is to it. Is ESPN Plus the place where people can watch the YouTube clips of me interviewing the guy who played Big Bird on Sesame Street? Yeah, that's featured there. It's like there's actually a green walled vertical there, just tiles of some of your best work.

For my podcast that we used to tape, that's where they are? Okay, I was wondering. Well, I can give you, this is the opposite of a 10,000 foot view. I can give you the one foot view, which is to say, this sounded great to me. because speaking of how much, how you're getting, you're Benjamin buttoning and I'm just getting old, like watching the stuff that I want to watch, particularly sports,

has been outrageously hard. Yeah. In terms of like the other week, I tried to watch a game, a basketball contest on ESPN, only to find out I no longer have ESPN. Because I was trying to adjust my, I know,

I still have Direc TV for like one more week. Thanks everybody. for your notes and condolences. But somehow I had lowered my monthly by removing my access to the sports channel that I thought was the bedrock of all cable concerns. So the idea of the two parts that are good to me is obviously the combining across platforms, which makes it a lot simpler. But the potential ability to bundle, because I think that people have been saying that bundling is where we are going again. And by that, I mean not the full cable bill, but basically finding a way to, to say, if you want to subscribe to seven services, a few of them will have relationships that

you can pay a reduced fee to get all three. So the ID, this is not, for example, like this is not a very appealing option. If you have to subscribe to this and then subscribe to Hulu and then subscribe to ESPN Plus and then subscribe to Disney Plus. But if you can subscribe to all of them at a tiered price point, that seems more appealing, but also just more reasonable, right? I think at some point we did begin to forget that the goal was to provide services to the consumer in a reasonable and rational way. Yes. So I find it appealing, just purely on a consumer level. The larger ripple effects of the industry I'm a little bit unclear on because I've seen this entire announcement framed as like an aggressive death blow to cable. That by doing this, that for a long time, the companies were like, yes, we're putting a lot of scripted content on streaming, but live sports, which are now.

essential reason why people pay for anything, presumably these days, is still going to be on broadcast and on cable. And what do you think of that? What do you think of the idea that this is like a shot across the bow or a, it's like the last three people in the lifeboat building a new lifeboat? Well, again, like I, I don't, I mean, which do we, do we respect these companies more for finally delivering the death blow for the unnecessary murder that they did? You know what I mean? Like, I think picking a strategy and sticking with it for more than six months is probably a win for any of these companies. And there's almost a way here to segue into how Bob Eiger's press conference yesterday suddenly became like a salutary victory lap. And suddenly the stocks rebounding just because he was like, yeah, we're going to put sequels in theaters.

And we're into sequels now. Why is this news? And why was Moana, too, going to streaming ever a good idea? But yeah, it's hard for me. And again, I don't think I'm not an expert on any. particular piece of this in terms of the business side of it. But like, it's hard for me to get excited when all these were unforced errors to begin with. So I guess I appreciate if they are finally going to make a decision and start to clean this up. But my takeaway from the larger

industry, tremors of this are unformed. Yeah, I see, weirdly wonder whether or not I'm the best person to speak to this or we are the best people to speak to this because we have very specific experiences with modern television and modern sports television. Namely, like, I think we're probably over leveraged with streaming services and with our interest in teams that are not local, so they're not necessarily always on cable. Andy and I probably both have, like, the single game, Philly's MLB package and NBA League Pass and the NFL Sunday ticket. So those are things that, like, I'm not sure how many people, I'm sure there's millions of us,

but there's not, I don't think it's like the cable audience is doing what we're doing, which is psychotically following very specific sports teams. And then for my purposes, just for work and stuff like that, like I will watch Barcelona versus Valencia. You know what I mean? Like I will go and find a Spanish league match to watch like in soccer, like on the weekend. So I'm pretty savvy with using like a lot of these services and it is maddening. The idea of putting all this stuff in one place and maybe re-requent.

creating some sort of like user experience that resembles channel surfing, which is really like how I think it's underrated, but it's like how people are kind of like supposed to watch sports, which is you turn your TV on and you say, are there like two or three games on? Which one's close? I'll watch that one. I appreciate that point because, you know, I have actively had conversations with people, not recently, where I've said things like, gosh, I feel bad. from my parents because they don't know how to watch movies anymore because they stop running showtimes in the Philadelphia

Inquirer. And they're like, how do you find that out? How do you find out where movies are? And I was like, the internet. And my mother was like, do you just put it in there and it tells you? I was like, kind of. You actually do. You write Silence of the Lambs and then it's like, it's streaming here or it's for rent here, you know?

But she means in theaters now. So what I did was, I bought her an Applevision Pro because I figured that would help her. You bought her a cyberchurcher. truck. I did. I bought both because you can, seeing your bundles, that is a great deal. It's called the giant prick package. And you can, anyway, so I can, I can, like a jerk, I'm like, ha ha, olds can't figure out movies. But every time there is a game I want to watch, I turn on and log into six different apps on my Apple TV trying to find it. Yeah. Like, I, so the idea that there

could be a place, it would be like, if there's a sports game on, chances are it's here would be a godsend, not just because, to your point, not just because I want to see the Sixers, which I don't actually want to do again for six months, but instead to be like, oh, look what's on. I'd like to watch sports and here's a good game. Yeah, the bedrock of, it's a no-brainer. It's not that much difference from, like, essentially the foundation of the rewatchables, which is that when you go and you look at your HBO and Showtime in Cinemax, channels that you get with your cable package or whatever, you might see at any given point

tin cup or like, you know, Backdraft or Silence of the Lambs or the Fugitive playing. And it's 20 minutes in and you're like, I'm going to watch the next 40 minutes until Richard Kimball does this or Clary Starling does that. And it's this really fun experience of watching television that has pretty much been lost to time. The crazy thing was was that I think what you see here with the partners is an essential takeaway. Fox Warner Brothers Discovery and ESPN are the non-tech companies involved, but three of the major non-tech companies that are still involved in making what we know as television. And this to me is a real like, a couple of guys looking at each other on the front lines

before they go over a trench and they're like, why do we do this together? And at the other end of the battlefield is Netflix and Amazon and Apple and they have more money than God. and some of these rights are coming up soon, and you're staring down the possibility that one of those major tech companies could buy NBA rights with a tax write-off or with their dividend from iPhones or something, and I think that they feel like they needed to change

the way they do things and the competitive nature or the competitive stance they may have with one another to assure their survival, essentially. I guess I don't know. I guess I'm curious, and I'm sure some people have already begun reporting on this, why NBC Universal is not involved in this. Yeah, I don't know why.

I don't know what. And CBS. I also wonder whether that has something to do with Peacock spent the GDP of a mid-sized country on the Olympics rights. And I don't know whether or not they're like, we built Peacock off of the Olympics being on Peacock. The Olympics are coming to Los Angeles soon. They'll be in American time zones.

Like, they may be building towards something like, you know, we're not trying to share this. And similarly, it's possible, I mean, please do not, I hope this is not sway the stock market. Like, I don't think this is, I don't know if this is real, but like, there's so many rumors about who's going to purchase Paramount. Yeah. That maybe they can't start giving things away before someone else makes those decisions. And Paramount still has football rights and NFL rights and it still has international soccer rights. So they show Champions League on Paramount.

They show Italian soccer, yeah. I think the interesting thing baked into this. And again, I don't know if we're particularly prepared to have this deeper conversation about this. But the way that Bob Eiger sees ESPN is coming more into focus. And the main part of it is it is not a TV channel anymore. Yeah. Which is fair. But that, you know, leveraging it here while also making partnerships with gambling companies.

And then apparently, I mean, this was reported in the New York Times piece, also continuing to take meetings with the major sports leagues about whether they just want to buy it. a piece of it to become the official hub of it or whatever, whether that's the NFL and then ESPN takes over NFL network or who knows. But that's something to keep an eye on to. Yeah, there's still great journalism done at ESPN, but I do think that you would have to be naive not to see a more, a more friendly posture, you know, has been taken over the last, especially 10 years by ESPN. by other places like TNT or CBS or NBC towards the league that they cover. They're not the subject of journalism.

They're partners in corporations. So I think that this is the logical endpoint is that the NBA buys a piece of its own, like rather than starting its own platform and it has NBA TV and it has League Pass. You've already got the infrastructure there. You've got the back end. I think ESPN bought MLBE a while back. Disney did. that is the back end for a lot of their digital stuff.

So I think that this makes a lot of sense in that regard. I do think that there's going to be a really interesting point whenever this thing launches in a year or two or whatever it takes, where 85% of stuff is kind of taken care of by this package, and then the extra 15 to 20% is sort of like, what are you going to do about this? Because Roger Goodell has been very clear. He just, 56 million people watch the NFC division playoffs game.

You know what I mean? Like he's not going to get rid of that kind of exposure for the league, like the network programming. And he's never going to, he said not in his lifetime, is he going to put the Super Bowl on streaming, right? So you've still got this situation where people are going to need some sort of, quote unquote, TV access, I think if they want to watch NFL, I'm sure that there are some other examples that I'm not thinking of.

But, like, you know, what do you do with the point that comes inevitably where people are being asked to still have some sort of cable package? Have this, I would imagine, like, not cheap sports streaming service and anything else that they may have, including, like, you know, so do I have to pay, technically do I have to pay Warner Brothers like twice a month if I get Max and this? Like, where does the bundle happen? I think in theory, that's when... Right, but right. So my understanding was that there might be more opportunities to bundle across companies. You know, I feel like we're already starting to see that.

And this might be the first... This might be the tip of that spear that, like, if these three companies are working together on this, the smart play, and obviously the hard one to actually implement, would be... There should be a thing to click to get all six services or whatever for how... ever much a month. I think it's noteworthy. Again, this is more for Matt Bellany and Lucas Shaw and people like them on the town to really get into.

But the thing I was referring to before was Bob Eiger talked about a bunch of stuff yesterday and this was announced recently. And Disney's back, baby, it rebounded on Wall Street because of what he said. And part of what they're responding to is leadership style, right? Like I think people, the street likes Eiger and he looks the part and they trust him. no matter what, you know, even if he's just being predictive about it. Iger's like, my good friend, Francois Mitterrand, said, bring back Moana. Moana, duh.

We're going to put that straight into the cinema. But I think that what people also might be responding to is that he is showing flexibility. You know, which I think is probably important. His predecessor, Bob Chappek, was like, everything is going to be Disney Plus and streaming. So we're just putting everything there. and the job was just to punch the content button and it would flow. Obviously, it's a very different situation that Iger walked into and just stopping that flow was maybe the easiest thing of the many things he's had to do since.

But basically, amping up some things, reducing others, and being more flexible about what even some of these properties are seems to be the only way to survive. And it does seem to be working, right? that he can elevate and he could increase some things, decrease others, and still seem like he's just responding to the situation at hand. Do you think that this is kind of the death knell for a certain mode of experience of television, which is essentially like for me, and I think for you too and for a lot of people, the reason to, the only reason, really, to turn on television at a desired specific time

was because of games, right? Like the only time that you would be like, at one o'clock, I need to be home to watch this. At three o'clock, I need to watch this, would be sports, live sports. Almost everything else with the exception of like... Award shows. Or a Sunday night HBO show that's just like,

we've got to do it. And even that, you can just get on max the second. It goes up anyway. But like, let's say that's what you wanted. I think that in five years, people in high school now will have no idea what we're talking about

when we talk about channel surfing. Oh. To say, I mean, I don't even know sure. Really like,

I mean, Kaya, do you feel like you had the experience of like scrolling through a cable guide to like choose the shows you want? Yeah, probably, right?

Yeah. But don't you think like, people who are like, I don't know. I mean, in five years, people who are 15 will not know a world

that that exists with like, oh, it's time for me to watch house hunters on this show. That's my life now. Yeah. I mean, when I, you know, you remember when like the joke was that, you know, your parents would be like, I walked to school uphill both ways in the snow and be like, oh, wow, things were tougher

for you, Gramps. Like, I scare my children by telling them about what TV was like. Yeah. They constantly asked me, like, well, what did you watch? And I was like, I watched what was on television and there were four channels. And they just stare at me. They want to hear more like I'm telling them an old horror story. It is completely, completely foreign.

I do think that I'm going to miss certain things. Like, I am going to miss, and I don't mean to sound like romantic about it. It's just companies selling you things. But like, I will miss watching a game and it goes to commercial and flipping over to the Bruce Willis movie on HBO. You know what I mean for like five minutes? Like there's certain ways of like experiencing stuff that I think is going to be, I will actually weirdly be nostalgic for it.

I was going to say, don't worry, Chris, there will be commercials during the end. I thought for a second you were living in some sort of utopian. This is going to be an ad-supported streaming service, yes. I mean, it sure is. Which one isn't? We're about to talk about a show that begins with commercials now, and it's on Amazon Prime.

Before we do, I do want to ask you a little bit about what the knock-on effects could be for the sort of more scripted content that we talk about. The idea of network expanding together, creating a platform where there are sports rights can go. I think the logical next step would be, well, what about a place where I could watch my favorite HBO shows, my favorite Hulu, Fox shows, Disney shows, and my favorite, you know, my favorite, yeah, I mean, that's it. Fox, Disney and Warner Brothers shows. What if we had a

platform where we could watch all of our favorite streaming things? I would argue that Netflix has kind of become this, especially in a time when Morner Brothers is selling off licenses of some of their Crown Jewel shows to Netflix, I think that in some ways that exists as like

the depot for all content, even if it doesn't have all content. But do you see any ripple effects in the world of scripted television? Not yet, but I think it's an interesting thing to consider. I mean, sports have a very long tale in the sense that a lot of people watch sports and then a lot of people keep the TVs on.

I say this as someone whose show got a giant ratings boost when it went on after wrestling. Yeah. Because a lot of wrestling fans were so excited by wrestling, I think they fell asleep and kept the TV on to watch my show. Like, I think, which works, that's ratings. I don't know what it means long term because, again, I don't have access to the internal thinking of any of companies in terms of what they perceive of as value or value ad or how they track it or how they justify spending X amount of dollars for a series that will only bring in Y number of subscribers. I don't understand it. I think the interesting thing to watch is what you said,

which is Netflix is thriving even more so now because the rest of the companies are like, look, this is a, we're not living on credit anymore. We actually need to show profits. And so we're going to try to maximize profits and we can sell razor blades again, not just keep them for our own housemaid 1599 a month razor. And so you see, you know, insecure and ballers and sex in the city showing up. And that's win-win for everyone. I think there was this thought that if you siloed everything and then put a gate up that it would somehow make it more exclusive. But for beloved, older, longer-running shows, I feel like what we're describing, like stumbling upon, and I can't even believe I'm using the same phrase, but stumbling upon a tile that says sex in the city

the complete series on Netflix might be this generation's version of flipping to HBO 9 at 5 in the afternoon and seeing Sex in the City playing. You're not expecting to see it there. You're delighted. You watch it.

Somehow it feels different than if you had subscribed to Max and scrolled through beloved favorites and watched it there. So I think the idea that things are not being gated away again could create different ecosystems for them to live.

But in terms of what that means for new programming, I have no idea. I do worry about the appetite for people to discuss, stuff, I think that the curation that channels did, for better or for worse, at least created some kind of relationship between viewer and platform where they were like, well, if it's on Sunday and it's on HBO, it must be pretty good, I'll check it out. And I think that there is

still something to that. Like, I do think that regardless of whether you're watching it on max when you know a new episode goes up, but, you know, the relationship between using one show to expose another, for instance. Like the idea of a show coming on at 9, and then the show that comes on at 10 gets a bump because it's coming on after Game of Thrones. I don't know if that's going to have the same effect on

future of generations of viewers, because for the most part, rather than living in a curated experience where they get their shows dictated to them, when time it's on, what time a year it's on, how many episodes are up, they're going to be more in an on-demand situation. And your kids are a really good

example where it's like, I don't know how they find out about shows, you know? Like, I don't know how your kids are like, I'd like to see Goonies one day, you know what I mean? Or I'd like to see Home Alone or whatever. Like, it's not from scrolling through Disney Plus. No, it's from scrolling through the dark web. You know, I feel like I worry sometimes about what else they're learning about. Your kids are on the Silk Road, being like, who's got that real anime? I mean, it's not unlikely. But it's also, I mean, it's, it's, it, the kid thing is like, it's just, there's very, there are a lot of different ways, ways in terrifyingly.

But also there's just players that we're not talking about. I referenced it the other week, like my daughters look at Crunchyroll, which is the anime app. And they look for shows on that as much they look on, as much as they look for anything else. But I think what you were speaking to in terms of like the, the proximity of like, if this is an HBO show on Sunday, night, the same way that we would watch, there are many examples of this, but like Game of Thrones into Veep, those shows have nothing in common with each other other other than they are

high quality and on HBO at the same night and thus elevated each other and then also won Emmys. I think that that conversation is the one that still, it's why identity, for as elusive as that term

might be, still matters in a streaming world. It's why, even though they pretend that they aren't, Apple and Amazon and Netflix are lurching towards some sort of brand identity. Netflix's identity is the most complicated in that it's a warehouse where they have everything, but they also have their own programming,

which feels a certain way. And I was referencing to watching Brother's Son, which I've not watched enough of to weigh in on other than to say, I thought it was sharply made. I can see why it's doing well, and it feels like a Netflix show. Like whether that's a credit to their development process, or now they just know what to get, it makes sense.

Similarly, I feel the same way about Resilda. Yeah, like it's where it's like, I actually, I enjoy it and it's definitely something I'll finish, but it's one of those things where you're like, yeah, this feels like a Netflix show for sure. And I wonder, you know, sorry to keep teasing what we're not ready to talk about yet, but like Mr. and Mrs. Smith is not going to get casual Reacher fans.

And I think that's a good thing, but I also wonder if that's dooms it in terms of more seasons on Amazon, because Amazon has something somehow that's working for them. Yeah. So, but anyway, that's only to say that, like, these places that curate, I think, will still have some advantage.

I think FX still has an advantage in that, you know, FX on Hulu doesn't mean anything other than these people whose taste you trust are giving it to you. Yeah. I don't think that's necessarily. You know, any FX show could come with a title card that said from the studio that brought you blank. blank,

blank, like, you know what I mean? And if it was a comedy, you could be like, from the network that brought you, it's always sunny in Philadelphia and the league and whatever else. And then if it was a drama,

it could be from the network that brought you Fargo. And I think that they could really rest on their reputation that way. Yes. And then, but then the other thing is, it might not matter

unless it eventually gets on Netflix. Yeah. I mean, I guess the only other thing I would say, and I want to talk about Apple in a second, is just like, There is a way in which network viewing felt a little bit more collective. Like, if Game of Thrones did very well, it allowed HBO to take chances on the little things,

like the I-May Destroy user or the whatever's of the world. I know they're not necessarily perfectly lined up. But like this idea may be that like all of the wares were on the same table at the market. And obviously everybody was going to go to look at this shiny thing, but they might get interested in this thing to the left. there seems to be like a little bit more Darwinism on streaming where it's like Mr. Mrs. Smith and Reacher have nothing to do with each other. In fact, I would love to experiment with like a blind,

how hard is it to find Mr. and Mrs. Smith on any given Reacher fans' algorithm? Maybe it's really easy. I have no idea. But we've joked before about my passion for the Amazon U.X. But I don't know. There was something about this story that was like, I think we're going to look back on this in five or six years and be like that was a major turning point in the way people consume on-screen culture in this country, in the world. I agree. And I also, you know, this won't be news to people who've listened to this podcast for

over a decade. But like, when we talk about our fondness or nostalgia for this time, it is not just because it was more fun or easier to have a monocultural show to talk about. It's that I think the idea of collective experience and shows bleeding into one another or informing each other, even if not textually, is part of TV. I think that it is by nature a more communal exercise where one studio or one network or one service is cultivating something. And if an executive team stays in place for a long time, you can look at it like a coaching tree or you can look at it like a period of sustained success. And I find that, I find that interesting. And I also find it, but it's not just interesting because I do this podcast with you. I think it's interesting

because as a consumer, I am interested in having someone else show me their taste. You know what I mean? And curate something for me, not just on a – yeah, I mean, there's a version of that where I'm saying I miss channel flipping, and there's a version of it where I'm like, boy, HBO is really good for 10 years for the certainty. Yeah. I mean, it could be – we could very easily, you know, we're talking about channel surfing. That's like, remember when we used to have to water our horse to get into town and it

would take four hours? And now it's like, yeah, it takes five seconds and you just take your electric car in there. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors.

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So whether it's buying tickets to the game or grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me, the Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo, be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active Cash, terms apply. Let's talk a little bit about Apple, because in some ways, the move that they pulled over the last week or so, I think it was like last week at some point, they released a coming soon on Apple

video that was very reminiscent of coming soon on HBO videos of the past. It's defined by a single piece of music playing over previews for six or eight shows that don't have anything to do with each other, but that that music and the presentation kind of suggest an overall aesthetic, right? So even though I think lots of different things are happening and lots of different shows that Apple is promoting as coming up soon and they all are coming up in the next three to six months, it's interesting to try and define what Apple's taste is because on one hand, I think that they're working with some of the most interesting people in the creative arts, like in Hollywood. And on one hand, I think that they obviously spare no expense when it

comes to the production of these shows and have shown that they're like they're they're interested in paying for the work and I think that's cool. On the other hand, there is something just off about a lot of the programming and, you know, I think we've responded to that before. There's also something kind of vanilla about a lot of it to me. And I've felt this about Masters of the Air where it's really interesting to watch it in comparison to Band of Brothers in the Pacific. It's a much different story in some ways, but, you know, like, it just has, it has a little bit of, like, people playing dress-up doing Band of Brothers rather than doing Band of Brothers, and maybe that's an unfair comparison. But last week, Apple released this promotional trailer for a lot of their shows, and they

include, among other things, I put at the number one draft pick top slot sugar, which is a Los Angeles set, noir detective story starring Colin Farrell. Thank you to Television for continuing to make shows that seem ripped from me and Andy's, like, psychology. It's really easy to find stuff to watch. Did you hear that in this show, which I've not checked out yet, although I do think you and I have screeners, it's not out until April,

the main character, Mr. Sugar, Detective Sugar, has recently returned to LA from Japan? Yes. Like, does everyone's version of Sugar have him traveling to Japan? And he's like, should I be getting paid for this? I'm just saying, like, what if the algorithm is so advanced now that like your version has him returning from a holiday on the Croatian coast where he like watched football a lot. Exactly.

There's also a couple more shows that they advertised. Franklin, which is Michael Douglas starring as Ben Franklin. This to me feels very John Adams, very HBO regal prestige miniseries. Starring as Ben Franklin living in Paris trying to get the French essentially to economically participate in the American experiment. Did they do it? Midron came through, wrote that check. CTC, Francois. Okay, other shows, Manhunt, which is Tobias Menzies chasing John Wilkes booth.

Did you watch the trailer for this? I did. I did. It's a little bit of assassination of Jesse James meets 24. I'm not mad at it. Yeah, and a great TV writer Monica Boletsky made it wrote or co-wrote every episode. You know, I've said this before. I'm a Menzies man.

Yeah. You know, I think he's great. I also am very, very here for the realization that many, many contemporary comedians are actually just time displaced, like, great actors, because this features Padden Oswald and Matt Walsh, you know, with like full mutton jobs being who they were always meant to be. Question for you, Chris. Is presidential assassination having a moment? Because there's that other Benny Off and Weiss show coming.

It's the assassination of James Garfield. Like, was this the market inefficiency that people just want a lot of high-level? I think historical fiction is definitely like, they know that this is what drives dads. This is why dads get up in the morning is to, and there's a little dad in all of us, but they know that this is like a huge, huge interest point for culture right now. I think that this show looks good and it looks interesting and it seems like a smart play. I also wish that it...

There's sometimes when you see a trailer and you're like, I kind of wish they didn't have this much money because there's some CG shots in the trailer where they should just be chasing, hunting the man. They just hunt the man. Yeah, you don't have to show me the capital being built or whatever. But otherwise that one looks good. I don't want to step on you before.

No, it's okay. Other shows, Palm Royal, which is Kristen Vig. I don't know why it was vague like she was Vim Vendors. Kristen Wig, Alison Janney, Laura Dern, etc., etc. Ricky Martin is in this. And this seems like a kind of daffy comedy drama about class and money in West Palm Beach, Florida in the 60s. And I wonder whether it will have like some Mar-a-Lago takes or whatever, but like I don't really know what's going on here. This trailer is, it looks beautiful.

no expense spared. It might be very good. I like a lot of the people involved. It does seem to me like an elaborate answer to a question that literally no one asked. Yes. It blew my mind. I watched this trailer and the trailer is nearly three minutes long and I left it being like, is this, how is this a television show? Right. It feels like a movie that also nobody was really clamoring for so now it's, it seems perplexing, but it looks very nice. Yeah, I just can't get a sense. This is where the Apple piece comes in. I've said peace so much as a joke, but now it's becoming like an actual crutch for me. Let's trade deadline day. This is perfect time to break it out. I can't tell if this is a black comedy or like an inspiring story about a woman who believes in herself. Well, this is

and that's because of the Apple piece. The Apple music playing and like Vision Pro vibe of it is like, what am I supposed to be taking for this? Well, this is when you get the three minute trailer and then at the one minute 50 second mark, I'm just pulling that out of my ass, like the music switches, and it's just like, you're not like any of the other women here, Gladys. You're an individual. What Apple wants to be is like Playtone HBO, but it's like a version of HBO 15 years ago that instead of ordering vinyl orders that thing you do to series. Do you know what I mean? And it's telling your customer you're just special enough to buy Apple stuff.

Well, and to get these actors there and all of these shows will look beautiful on the screens. And by the way, Apple makes shows that we like. Like, we are painting with a very large corporate brush year. I mean, they make slow horses hijack season two coming. Apple just announced that they are underwriting Spike Lee remaking high and low with Denzel Washington, so they can do whatever the fuck they want as far as I'm saying. It's really true. It's really true.

But look, there are things in here that are interesting. There are things in here that are less interesting. but the press release, we didn't talk about this, I don't think, because this was announced last week. But did you see the announcement of a show called Margot's Got Money Troubles? No. That went to Apple? So this is like, I almost couldn't believe. Oh, did a Cole Kim in thing?

Yes. This is, this to me, and I mean no disrespect to the people involved who are very talented. This could be a good show. We are responding purely to the press releases and stories in the trades. But this feels like, hey, chat GPT, what kind of show will Apple spend $100 million? on. And it came up with this. This is a, it is based on a book that is not published yet. It's published in June. Is it a Hello Sunshine book? David and Kelly. That's a great question. I think it's. No, it's A24, which is insane. Okay. But remember, A24 has hedge fund masters to please

now. It's David E. Kelly is writing and show running this. He's having quite a third act. Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman. Ready for the description. Chat, GPT, go. The book focuses on Margo, who will be played by Fanning, the daughter of a hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler. Now an unemployed single mother in her early 20s, Margot is struggling to make ends meet,

leading her to launch an only-fans account. When her father reenters her life, she starts incorporating his lessons from the pro-wrestling world into her only-fans work, leading to unexpected success. Straight to series order. That kind of sounds like,

I remember every time I would get to the point where I was going to read a John Irving novel, and then I would look at the back, and it would be like, An orphan travels the countryside with a circus where he meets Franklin Roosevelt and, you know, like, and I always be like, nah, man. With only the companion of a charming circus monkey. But I can't get mad at this. But aren't you and I essentially saying chatchy GPT, please have Colin Farrell play a private detective in L.A.

who has just returned from Japan? Yes. So my point is not that this will be most likely considering the pedigree of everyone involved, the elite version of this. elite version of this type of show. And when I say this type of show, I am not being dismissive. This type of show is popular. I think that if we actually saw internal metrics, I think lessons in chemistry was probably popular. We had a lot of fun about it because there was a talking dog that killed a guy. But there were really strong actors in it. It looks beautiful. Speaking of chat, GP2 prompts. Great call. So, yeah, but maybe this conversation is actually

the earlier conversation, which is that if we live in a world where everything is self-cureated and self-determined and there's no flipping, you are not going to be exposed to something you don't want to watch. So likely, I mean, maybe because we have a podcast, we will watch the show, but I have already self-selected out of this program. Do you know what I mean? Out of this, the Margo program. Not the watch. That's coming later in the month. Thank you. That's actually how you stick the landing is quitting the watch. And then you, Kaya and Joanna could talk about if I did it correctly or not. I'd appreciate that.

Yeah, like, again, I don't mean to like harken back to some golden age where, you know, Chris Albrecht was sitting in a room being like, with this idea for a show about a guy who has a lot of sex and thinks about his life through old reruns that was Dream on and not just making it up, will bring the country together because everyone has a way in. That is not the way programming ever happened. This idea about a guy who has a lot of sex, if you would stop there, could be like 60% of HBO shows. No, they're like, huh? Totally.

This guy has a lot of sex, but he's old. This guy has a lot of sex, but he's... Yeah, it's... This is where we're at, and it just feels like you can't blame a company for being like, this is the exact specific thing that our algorithms suggest people want. It's just a little bit of... I want to watch Sugar. I want to watch Manhublish.

Hunt, I want to watch Presumed Innocent, the David E. Kelly, speaking of which, reboot or reimagining of Scott Turrow's novel that was a famous 90s thriller. This one is with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Negga. I want to check out Dark Matter, which is based on the Blake Crouch novel and his show run by Blake Crouch and stars Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Conley and has a little Philip K. Dick to it about a guy who lives in Chicago and slips into an alternate reality of his own life and then becomes trapped in it. So very, very interested in a bunch of these shows. I'm not cynical or I'm not trying to sound cynical about these things because,

just because they're being made by like the biggest company in the world, you know, or the richest company in the world. I actually like, I'll take them at face value and just read the text. I just think it's a very interesting effort to take about a dozen disparate pieces of content and try to give it like a unifying, generally, affirmative feeling, regardless of what is going on? That is the network brand. And some things slip outside of that. I mean, this is the same channel, a channel service, whatever you want to call it, that gave us physical, they gave us

Dickinson. I mean, some things slipped through, but they are broadly unifying the product line, which in the history of Apple has been a successful decision to make. It's hard to fault them for that. But it is, look, I'm not saying this from any personal experience. I've done no business with Apple. I don't think, I think there are a lot of creative people there. I don't think there is a hard and firm mandate to avoid things that are challenging or spiky. But I do think it's worrisome if the biggest elephant in the room who can take on the projects, like the spike leafing, you're mentioning that the other places won't, has an issue of what's appropriate for them or not. Like it would be great if they were.

we're just chasing. I know this sounds high in the sky as I'm saying. I'm like, why don't big companies take riskier chances? Well, I mean, I think this has been kind of a common recurring theme. And it sometimes I have to be honest with myself. And I'm like, well, what am I, what am I talking about? Like, do I really want or do I really think in any world that they're going to make zero, zero zero again? No. You know what I mean? Like, the reason that show was kind of a miracle was because it was what it was, but it was probably pitched as or thought of as Amazon's answer to Narcos. You know, and it obviously wasn't. Right. But also it was an international copro, and I also wonder, and Joanne and I alluded to this a little bit the other week when you were away,

like from what we understand, the decision-making at Amazon has been fractious and who green-lights things and where things come in and who oversees them. And it's possible that that has become more unified. But it is fascinating and curious to think about a company this big that has also made 0-0-0 the English Swarm Flea-Bag. And if the success, because all those things where, you know, you think about the period of these streamers when they're just getting off the ground and they're taking big swings is often the most fertile in terms of creativity or risk-taking. They have found an identity now. And we keep referring to Reacher. We generally like Reacher. but Reacher, Jack Ryan,

Terminalist, like, that stuff works for them on a completely different way. That's for me, too. Than everything. I know. You are the ideal Amazon customer. That works for them in a way that,

is there still room for this other stuff to get in the site? Well, let's talk about some of the other stuff. Let's talk about Mr. Mrs. Smith. Okay. So Andy and I talked about the first two episodes on Monday. We're going to do sort of the middle part of the season now, and then we can talk about the end next week at some point. You know, this is,

I think when we got to the end of the early discussion that we had, and I was talking about maybe the first few episodes, I was like, the cool thing is, is that this show takes what was a movie, that action movie that had a Trojan Horse story about modern marriage. Now, this show takes a reboot of that action movie, and Trojan Horse is in a story about work. And I thought that was really cool.

I think as the show goes on, and Roxanna Haddadi at Vulture wrote about this in a really cool way, I think it becomes a little bit more about a conventional kind of, albeit Noah Bombachian version of it, like of a marriage story, you know, like a little bit more about the dynamics of a romantic relationship today. What did you think about this middle run of episodes? Let me just clear a little space to say one thing. I fucking love this show. There you go.

I love this show. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is my favorite show. of the year so far. It's up there with new shows in the last few years. I'm thrilled about it. I can't wait to watch the last two episodes. I feel like it's important to say that first and foremost. To your point, yes, I mean, as you go through the season and also if you know, if you look at the episode titles, it is structured over the, over what I think something I'd say are extremely familiar arcs of a relationship from the meat cute to like the honeymoon phase to, you know, in terms of modern marriages, to the conversations about kids, to potentially couples therapy

and whatever comes next. So I think they never hid the ball about that. I think that if anything, if I had one, I don't even want to start with, I didn't start. I started by saying I loved it. I didn't want to immediately then go to my one criticism, but I think it's related to what you were saying, which is they had such a vision for this show as the arc of a marriage or of a young relationship, that they yada yadded so much. Now, I think that probably makes sense. And the reason I say that is for all of the missions that we don't see, for all of the continuing to love each other

and working together in fun and cute ways that we don't see, I kind of love that. I love, you know, in theory and conceptually, I love the way that it just refers to things that must have happened, that it moves the ball along with a confidence and no handholding. That said, I do consider the show to be. a triumph of what we can do on TV right now. And so the fact that this eight episode season could have been an 18 episode season is striking.

Yeah. But that said, you are not guaranteed anything in contemporary TV. And I do think that ultimately to have played out only the first half of the relationship arc, assuming that Amazon would give them eight more or 10 more or 16 more is foolhardy, not just because of the high wattage of the talent involved in this, but because of just the landscape that it's being dropped into. So that, that's where I've, that's where I've ended up six episodes in, which is like, which is rare for me saying, I could have had even more of it, even though I love how much of it that I have. I love it too. And I will say one of the reasons why I love it is

that it's making me think about the fallacy of character as an idea. You know, so these two people are obviously, like, they're given these sort of anonymous monikers, John and Jane Smith. They're in this program where they work for a chatbot named High High, uh, who gives you. gives them missions to do as spies. These missions get increasingly lavish and, like, picturesque, like, where they go to the Swiss the Alps. They go to Lake Como. Every outfit that they wear is perfectly manicured.

Everything that they do just seems so effortlessly cool. It's just an incredible hang of a show. But it's also really thought-provoking because I've been grappling with this a lot with True Detective, where I'm like, why is X person doing? this, what in their character would make them do X or Y or Z. And like this sort of idea that you can know a fictional character that you're watching

on a television program for an hour a week or an hour at a time. And I love how Mr. and Mrs. Smith kind of turns that around its head where we're never going to know these people, I don't think. I mean, not really. Like maybe at the end of this series, they're like, my name is Brad and I went to Georgetown

and this is where I grew up. And, you know, we get little breadcrumbs of Jane's relationship with her father and John's relationship with his mother and stuff like that. But there's nothing in there that's like biography equals action or that you are the sum of your past experiences. And I kind of love it. I really do because I think I found myself as a viewer for shows in the maybe the last couple of years getting increasingly kind of, waylaid by trying to understand character based on the known biography of that character or the previous actions of that character.

I feel like I did this a lot with succession. It was a common, almost like virus where people were like, Kendall wouldn't do that or, you know what I mean? Like this, you know, we were talking about these characters as if it wasn't a creation of a writer's room deciding what would make the most dramatically interesting television. And I think that Mr.

and Mrs. Smith kind of confronts that head on, to me, at least, where they're like, these two people are whoever you want them to be, even if they're very specific to us. Yeah, I love that, and I think that's very well observed. I mean, we've for years talked about how the most successful genre shows can serve as Trojan horses for emotional storytelling or for different types of ideas that might otherwise not be palatable to people who aren't going to go to the local indie house to watch a $2 million dollar micro-budgeted movie about people crying all the time. Yeah.

Which, by the way, I am first in line for. This is a show that takes that to such an extreme that it's almost brilliant, which is to say Mr. and Mrs. Smith themselves or the other Misters and Mrs. Smiths that exist in the show or referred to in the show. They are Trojan horses. They're not even characters. They're archetypes. But this is a show about horse racing in that analogy.

Because I feel like John and Jane Smith, through six episodes, are more sharply and brightly drawn than characters on, then named characters with huge traumatic backstories on shows that have run for three times as many episodes. The way that they speak to each other, the way they roll their eyes, the way they sit in the therapist's office in that brilliant sixth episode gives me a sense of character that is so specific, but also so brilliantly broad in general that I am, I can't look away because I recognize things and also I can fill in gaps in things. It's a really wonderful dance, and I keep coming back to this framing of my love of the show, which is that it's just an ideal version of so many things that we see a lot of people trying to

do right now. Yeah, I mean, I think you obviously noted the sixth episode is something of a highlight. It has a pretty extraordinary fight during a camping trip. It's unbelievable. That's the biggest battle scene of the year. Yeah. I don't know what CGI shows are coming, but that scene is... Well, in the same episode, they have like a really good set piece inside of a... an apartment building where Meyer Erskine basically has to go one-on-one with some nameless evil villain.

That actually leads me to the question. Do you care about being six episodes in and having pretty much all of the action, all of the sort of world building that we're used to be entirely poured into the interior design of Sarah Paulson's apartment or house and not like

the construction of this nameless faceless corporation that's telling them to go conduct missions. This show might be my favorite use of suspension of disbelief in quite some time, which is to say that it, you remember, I'm sure people know this, but like when people would write scripts for Gray's Anatomy, the people writing the scripts are not medical doctors. So they would find it, you know, if he's sad and wants to change and be happy, maybe he needs a heart transplant.

So they would write the scene and they would write the emotional part and then they would write medicine, medicine, medicine, and someone would come in, like hopefully a medical doctor and say, oh, what you mean is, and fortune and blah, blah, blah, and then fill it out and everyone be like, wow, the show is so wise. This show is so wonderfully casual about the things that I think don't matter. Now, your mileage may vary on that as a viewer, but I think over six episodes, its consistency and commitment to that is only helping it. Because at a certain point, if three episodes in, you were suddenly given an Easter egg as

to who's paying for this and what the stakes actually are and who's doing the cleanup of leaving all these bodies scattered around outside of Lake Como, it's not important for the show. It's not interesting to the show. What's interesting is the vibrancy of the set pieces, but more importantly, how the characters are highlighted within them. Although I will say it would all fall apart if this show wasn't somehow filmmaking of the highest order. Like that Lake Como set piece where they're hustling Ron Pearlman with a lot of gunmen

and motorcycles and all this business is beautifully shot and outrageously shot and brilliantly edited. And I don't know how they did this. I don't know what budget they had. I don't know who they got to crew on that. I don't know what kind of production manager they had to just like, or line producer to enable them to do that. I googled the budget of the Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie movie, which I know is like 20 years old, but that was $110 million. And I feel like, I feel like the Glovers had more than that to make the series, which is noteworthy. But it is a ratio thing, you know. And I apologize in advance for referring to a show. that we're not actually talking about.

But something like the brother's son, the kung fu, for lack of a better term, is integral to the story in a way that what John and Jane are capable of is not integral to understanding them. And I would prefer that ratio. I think what they are doing is classy and it's engaging and it's exciting. But it is all in the service of the character work that happens at an equally high volume or equally high level in the therapist office. Yeah, and that scene is definitely, that episode, I'm looking forward to the last two episodes a lot, not only because I can't wait to finish the show, but also because I wonder whether or not it will continue to be revealing in interesting ways, not necessarily about like she got her graduate studies in foreign languages or anything like that. Like, I don't care about that stuff, but what else it chooses to reveal about the characters in the story?

I'm trying to think of other examples. I mean, we joke last week about, or it was Monday, you know, there's no shortage of more. of more of these types of shows coming, meaning companies mining the IP that they control to see if anybody wants to take a flyer on it. You were just saying that there's a presumed innocent television show coming. Sexy Beast was on.

There are many, many more over the last few years. But what I love about the show is inside. The shows couldn't be more different. But what I love about Mr. Mrs. Smith is the same thing that I loved about Watchman, which was a creator with a very specific point of view that they were clearly excited by saying, thank you for giving me

the keys, I'm going to drive it where I want to drive it now. And you're going to come along with me. And this show is so charming and it's so good. And I have no, I wish someone could tell me. And maybe we'll have a chance to do it an interview. Who knows? But like, does Amazon know what they have here? What do you do with it?

I mean, like, that's the thing is like, I think that actually the show benefits from the distance it has. It doesn't necessarily feel. deal like, are you supposed to make Mr. and Mrs. Smith fans? Like, I don't, I don't even know it's not, it doesn't have like an extension of,

it's just a story. It's an interesting story. Really, mostly it's an interesting formal experiment of how to tell this story. And that's what I like the most about it. And my guess is that they're going to leave us, I know some people have watched the finale already, they're going to leave us in a place that will be satisfying for this season,

but we'll leave something open for potentially more seasons. And that's where you end up in this modern moment of TV, where I'm watching this and I'm like, let's go. Yeah. You know, I would love more of this. I know some people have been making comparisons to another married spy show, The Americans. And it's very hard to compare them. I mean, one of the things about this show that is so exciting is that it is contemporary.

And I don't mean contemporary because they're bugging each other's iPhones. But I mean, the language of relationships that John and Jane use with each other and they're moving through very expensive worlds, obviously, but just their perspectives on things as modern, while the Americans was very much a period piece. But the Americans also is operating in a completely different TV ecosystem where when they made the first season, they didn't know how it was going to end.

They didn't even know who was going to be in the cast in the third season. It was just like, well, we've started this thing and then let's see. Hopefully we can keep going. Yeah. Which is something that I miss. And I kind of, this is a chicken and egg thing, right? Like, there's no way of knowing what Mr. Mrs. Smith looks like if it is launched with that same sort of let's go for any number of reasons, not just the budget, but also, like, Donald Glover likes to do a lot of different things. But this show has just got me so jazzed about the potential of working within the streaming economy and, like, what budgets can do and what talent can do. And also just, like, for him as a creator, frankly, like, not that my affection dimmed because, you know, I love the very end of Atlanta a lot.

It's just that it's such a cany understanding of his own celebrity, of his own charm, and of what he and his brother can do best within the framework of something. And one of those things is delegating. Yeah. Bringing in a lot of talented people, whether it's Meyerskine or Francesca Sloan, who ran the show or the directors. I mean, the therapy episode we're talking about. I'm psyched. I just love it.

Why don't we wrap it up there? So we're going to come back on Monday and do True Detective. We'll do some Super Bowl stuff. We'll talk about maybe some Mr. Spade on Monday. and then Thursday, well, we'll see. Who knows? The world is our oyster. Kai, thanks so much for producing. Andy, I hope you feel better, brother, and we'll see you next week.

I'm already feeling better. I'm going to go watch the seventh episode of Mr. Mrs. Smith.