The Watch - Streaming Wars: Hulu Brings Back ‘ER’ and Amazon Dumps Its Quirky Comedies | The Watch (Ep. 220)

Episode Date: January 22, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Amazon’s recent decision to cancel a string of quirky comedies as a pivot to bigger budget tentpole content (03:12). Later they go ‘In or Out�� on new Starz show ‘Counterpart’ (19:55) before welcoming in fellow Ringer colleague Juliet Litman to discuss ER’s arrival to Hulu (33:46). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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or wherever you get your podcast. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk. Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm at Thebringer.com and joining me from the top of a Crisco greased light pole. It's Andy Greenwald!

People are going to hear the real us today. Now that I'm thinking about it, that sounded a little bit weirder than I meant it to. That's cool. That's because you and I are both from Philadelphia and to prevent people from celebrating too much by climbing light poles yesterday. The city of Philadelphia had officially greased with. Chris go, a bunch of light poles. Didn't seem like it worked. Didn't work. Philly got after it. A TV's going up to art museum steps. Have to call my mom. Hope she's okay. Because she was driving that ATV all night. She had been sculpting her meekmill

playlist to drive down the parkway. Look, Chris, we've been doing the show for six years now. And every so often, the mask slips. People start to maybe get a little bit of the real us. Because, you know, this whole thing, we're talking about culture and we'd rather be hosting GM Street. I'm just saying coming off a win like that yesterday which I was very happy to have experienced in your presence with you you came close to tackling me

to a degree that you have not done since the World Series. The Phillies won the World Series and since the end of season one of After the Thrones. That's right. The two great championships of our life. All of a sudden we're about to record you're making big predictions, your book and travel plans.

Me and the Sports Hub, we're just throwing around crazy predictions. You're playing old Morrissey records from the day. We're going to talk about a bunch of TV today, but... We haven't just like... The spirit is inside of us today, man. There's a lot of energy in the room. So let's talk about streaming television.

Let's bring it down a notch. Today on the watch, we are talking about some news with Amazon and a couple of other streaming services going on this week. We'll also be doing in or out on the new Stars Show counterpart starring J.K. Simmons. And then later on, Juliet Littman is going to join us to talk a little bit about ER, which is now on Hulu

which is streaming now. And is still good. Yeah, that's it. Still a dope show. Are you giving away your take? That's my take. Is that ER is good? Make them wait for it. Andy, first, before we get to Hulu, let's talk a little bit about Amazon because last week, some news came out that Amazon had

sort of shed themselves of a couple of shows one Mississippi, I Love Dick, Jean-Claude Van Johnson. This comes on the heels of Netflix, also getting rid of Lady Dynamite, Hulu getting rid of difficult people is sort of a purge of quirky comedies, right? Yeah. Twitter took this hard.

Twitter did this take this hard. So Joseph Adelian wrote a piece in Vulture kind of breaking down what seems to be going on, especially with Amazon who, by all accounts, Bezos is like, I want the hits. Yeah. You know, if I'm going to pay money, I'm paying for something that can be a trend-setting global phenomenon. We've talked before about how he wants to do this game of threat. like he wants his own Game of Thrones. He got Lord of the Rings.

He paid a quarter bill for Lord of the Rings rights. And I'm just kind of curious about this because I was watching E.R. this weekend. So to do so, I sign up for my commercial free Hulu account, which I did not have. I had like an older one than there's a bunch of different. They don't sponsor us. No. But it's a good buy. Let's just be real here.

It's 12 bucks a month for commercial free Hulu, which is kind of like it's impossible. I find watching Hulu with commercials to be maddening. Yes. So it's $12 a month for that. It's, what is it, $11.99 for Netflix per month, I think? It depends which it's going up again. I think it's $10.99. If you do the ultra 4K, which I don't understand,

it makes everyone look like cutscenes from Final Fantasy. It's $13.99. Okay. And then you've got your Amazon Prime, which I don't know if you can... Yeah, which is also going up. And, you know, if you want to get in... If you want to have the three major streaming services, all of which have their benefits and their negative.

So Netflix, obviously, is producing original content on an unprecedented level. It is. They pretty much have something to watch every week. Kind of new to watch in addition to everything else. Yeah, but I mean, like, on a base level, you can start a new show every week and be like, this is actually not bad. You know, Hulu has become streaming TV in the most literal sense in that it is the library of television. For the most part, you can find a lot of what has been on networks over the last 20 or 30 years.

years is streaming on Hulu. Seinfeld, Cheers, I think, is on Hulu. But it's also just an optimal way to watch current broadcast television if you are so inclined. Like if you want to keep up with, like the ABC comedies, for example. Like Blackish, Modern Family, Goldbergs, these shows are very entertaining in an old fashion. Actually, not even old fashion.

When I say old fashion, I don't mean pejorative because Blackish has a lot of Norman Lear in it. I can't bring myself to have the DVR set for Wednesday night or whatever and then fast fast forward the commercials because that's just who I am now. just rather wait until it goes up on Hulu and watch it that way. But at midnight that night or the next night you can watch it or you can watch the whole season without commercials if you pay. It's worth it.

Now, and then Amazon was strange because Amazon was like this, not a vanity project, but it was this sort of weird artistic shingle. It was run by Roy Price who has since left the company under rather controversial circumstances pertaining to sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct. And, you know, they had kind of worked with otors. They had spent a lot of money to get people like David O'S. Russell and Matthew

Weiner to come in and make their shows and hands off and you guys do this and when they came to the movies they were making Manchester by the sea and there were a couple of

plays for more mass audiences but more often than not they would make things like they would make things like one Mississippi you know and now it seems like there's a pivot from them

I have a couple of different questions here okay one is what is Amazon what are we what is the what is the play here and also if you're making an argument to me aside from the fact that I get two-day shipping on paper towels.

Yeah. What's the argument for Amazon as a broadcaster? Well, let's go historical and say that that question was never appropriately answered. If you ask what Amazon is as a store, and one of the things that Jeff Bezos has done brilliantly is communicate that to everyone in the country is that it is the most convenient place to get everything you need. That's what you do. You can get pretty much everything you need there.

When he launched Amazon Studios, it was a smart play betting on where the future was going and what you would want from your content. sort of the idea of big tent for everything. They also had the money to compete. What they did, though, was it's a very different culture. I'm not the only person to say this in the sort of dot-com startup culture that Amazon is a part of and created in Seattle. And then the hundreds of miles south in Los Angeles. When they set up Amazon Studios separately, there was a very distinct difference in culture.

And not even commenting on how Roy Price ran his business, but they were not coming from the same point of view as to what the purpose of the service was. So we entered in this place. And let's keep Amazon Studios aside because Amazon Studios is one of the few people keeping independent cinema. Making the big sick. Making, yeah, right. A float. It's really remarkable. And they hired Ted Hope and these other veterans of the indie cinema boom of the late 90s to shepherd it.

What Amazon was doing felt kind of, frivolous is a pejorative word. It felt like a loss leader. It felt like a billionaire. It felt not to, as somebody who was very appreciative of the Washington Post being in my life. Yeah. It felt like he went around and picked up a couple of assets like the Washington Post, like independent film, and was sort of funding it as it's important for these things to continue. Look, I love catastrophe and fleabag. I like the shows they're making.

But if you look at this from a business perspective or look at terms of a consistency perspective, the company that they were running, the company that they were running, or the arm of the company that they were running made no sense. Right. Absolutely no sense for a company that has limitless capital and global ambitions. Yes. So that's the argument that you could make. You could make the argument that what they were doing was, you said lost leaders, lost leaders into an industry where prestige, critical acclaim, and awards do have some currency

in a way that they may not have 10 years ago because there's simply so much competition. So a week or two ago, we were talking about Amazon surprisingly outsized presence at the Golden Globe. Mazele won this year, but in the past, why am I blanking on Gail Garcia-Bernal? He conducts the orchestra, Mozart in the Jungle. A show that it is jaw-dropping to me that is entering into its fourth season, but that won awards, and that helped them, and that it drew attention, and it got, you know, whiner in business with them, and that show is being made. It got David O. Russell in business, and that show is not being made.

But it doesn't make sense. And so what's interesting to me about this and totally upfront, you know, we love transparent and we hope that it continues. I Love Dick was interesting and worthwhile. Probably bound to be a shorter run anyway. Didn't feel like that, but that's...

Based on the source of material. I think our attitude is generally the same. I didn't really watch one Mississippi, but look, if Tignitar is getting paid to make TV that she wants to make and Jill Soloway gets to make explore these things, terrific. However, it is weird for a company,

as large as Amazon with the ambitions that Amazon have to essentially be functioning as a, I don't even know how to phrase it, but basically they were making dreams come true for people who wanted a very specific kind of thing. They're in the TV business. They're in a cutthroat entertainment business. And so this sense that we have that not only everyone deserves a show, but these shows deserve to and will be able to be on the air forever, we are shaking out of that phase. The early years of streaming were definitely gave a lot of wish fulfillment for people because streaming services rescued shows that were canceled from other networks and it just seemed like they were just pumping money into them to create momentum.

One of the things that day is now over for good or for ill. One of the things that Joseph talks about in his vulture piece is this idea that these are digital native companies, you know, and so they have pretty sophisticated data in terms of what we're watching. Just think about what Amazon knows about what you're buying. They don't share it. But as you see these shows get cut, trusted is probably, it has everything to do with that data. Yes, and think about specifically what Amazon is good at, which is selling you things.

And rewind a few years, the last time new players were emerging in TV. And we'll talk about AMC, for example. No one knew what AMC was. It was a place to probably watch The Godfather 2 at any time during the day. The very smart thing that the people in charge of AMC at the time did was when they got into scripted, which was a play to basically survive into this cut the court era that they saw coming, we will come up with television shows that loosely fit into genres that correspond with movies that we own.

So, you know, there was a show some people remember called Rubicon that I wrote about that I think was a failure as a show, but they had, but at the time, AMC is like, we have some 70s conspiracy thrillers. Let's get a show that vibes with that. We do well when we show horror movies around Halloween, so let's get the Walking Dead. they found a way to sort of line that up, Mad Men with classic films from that era. That made sense for them.

So for Amazon, which really sells things, think of it this way, Lord of the Rings, who knows what that's going to be? And that's obviously half of that is a splashy bet for headlines. But the other part of it is, you can then buy the books from Amazon. You can buy the adaptations of the books from Amazon.

Sure. You can stream, you can buy the movies based on the same material and stream it on your Amazon Prime account. It is vertically integrated for what they do. There's a throwaway line in just, piece about this will probably be the only season of the Romanoffs, the new Matthew Weiner show.

Very expensive. Very expensive. Very niche in terms of its appeal, I would imagine. Although Mad Men, I think eventually wound up being culturally very sort of well-known. But as we said many times, and no one's seen the show, but as we said many times, Mad Men was also a workplace comedy. Yeah. And you could watch it for different things.

The Romanovs, I'm sure it will be funny. I'm sure it will be emotional and sweeping and dramatic. But the log line is that it is a. loosely connected anthology series in which one character in each episode claims relation to the Romanoff dynasty. The deposed Tsar, Tsarist dynasty of Russia? It's a harder sell. Do you think that in three years shows like 911, the resident, those shows will be on

Amazon? That's the most interesting question. Because Netflix has made a play for Shonda. Yeah. The question is, does Shonda bring a slightly more... you know, standards, without having to worry about standards and practices on a network level, like the same kind of entertainment that she produces for ABC, does she bring it to Netflix? That's right.

The question then is, because it comes, is Jeff Bezos like, I want to make a show like, unlike anybody's ever seen before and do Lord of the Rings in a completely different way? Or is he like that? That works. People watch Lord of the Rings every day on TNT three times a day. I want that. I want people to say, if you want to watch Lord of the Rings, you have to get a prime account. I think that going forward, if I could predict, which I don't know, claim any authority to do so,

but I would predict Netflix streaming more streaming, trending more mainstream, more broadcast and its sensibilities, and Amazon going the opposite way going full blockbuster. Okay. Just if you were going to see what was different about them. And what is Hulu do? So what is Hulu? Well, Hulu is trying to sort of split the difference a little bit. You know, Hulu was sort of an afterthought, but Hulu has TV.

It feels like TV to me. It feels more like this is the kind of place a Mindy project would be. This is the kind of place. And even handmade feels like something that would be on Thursdays at 10. Even though it was, you know, obviously the material was a little bit more racy than I think you'd find on network television these days. It had certain hallmarks of network television. Hulu has some limitations in terms of its finances, which Amazon and Netflix don't. I think that can be a good thing creatively.

I think that they are going to try to do, they're trying. going to be a great, a best version of TV. You have all these old shows, you have all these current shows, and then they will cherry pick things that make sense for them in a way that, you know, in a way that makes sense going forward. What you said about Shonda makes a lot of sense. I think people saw this from her perspective, what they intuited to be her perspective, which is, oh, she's free. She's finally free of the restrictions of standards and practices and run times and she can make what she wants. She is a brilliant woman and a brilliant creator and a brilliant businesswoman. She knows what she's good at. Netflix hired her to keep doing it,

just doing it for them, because that kind of popularity, the kind of social media intensity that she can generate with her shows, that's what they want. Yeah. And they want more of that. So, yeah, so I think that that's the way to look at it going forward. Now, will Amazon continue to throw bones to things that we love, like catastrophe? Yeah, things that work for them are working. But Adelian said that he would not expect a fifth season of it. That it might also be because they're done. They're done, right? But I mean, they renewed the tick.

But the tick has like a weird nerd, like support system. I guess? Apparently. Does it? I mean, the thing that we've danced around talking about is the unfortunate, first of all, not just losing these voices on television or on streaming television that we're losing with shows like I Love Dick and one Mississippi, but the optics of it for a particular moment in Hollywood and a particularly a moment for Amazon,

it's not good. But I think that one of the ones. thing people have to understand is regardless of what went down over the last six months in terms of sexual misconduct in the industry, in terms of the literal leadership of Amazon, these changes were coming. I'm really interested to see, I would be curious to hear from listeners as well on this one, their feedback on without getting into the financial details of their life, like what they're willing, how far they're willing to go while also keeping a cable package?

How many of these services can they maintain? and do they feel like they're losing out if they only have one? Because for a long time, I was like, I think I'm okay without Hulu. I think it's just like I've seen a lot of the shows that people would binge. I don't often go back and rewatch classic shows. I'm okay. And, you know, a couple of things have come up, whether it's something like Looming Tower coming up in February or handmade or whatever.

And also the addition of stuff like ER that we're going to talk about with Juliet, where I'm like, that's really cool. Like I would like to just be able to throw that on. You know, the other sneaky thing that makes Hulu very attractive is they have their skinny bundle. You can, we're talking about just the version of Hulu Prime or whatever they call it, where you get it without commercials. But you can also do a version of Hulu where you get television. Yeah. Where you get the broadcast channels and you get a skinny bundle of cable channels that is considerably cheaper than having all of it.

And I find that very attractive as a consumer. And I think that also makes sense to distinguish them in the marketplace. And in the meantime, cable, monthly cable costs are not coming down. So we're going to reach a breaking point, I think, for a lot of consumers, where they're just like, I can't afford the four. I can't do Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and a cable package. So I'm going to have to start picking, choosing here.

And I'm just curious about what happens when that happens. But let's also, when you have that conversation, pay attention to the other things that are crumbling. You remember in Inception when they looks up off the beach? Yeah, that's what's happening at Fox right now. That's what's happening with this. this Fox Disney merger where because there are rules in place that major corporations can't own more than one broadcast channel, Rupert Murdoch couldn't sell Fox to Disney because Disney owns ABC.

So Fox is just going to become this ghost entity. And they are spinning and spinning and spinning, but it is. It can't exist. This system where studios supply the material to the networks that they own by the same company and somehow they make it work and then they sell it to a streamer and then this very complicated platforming strategy that maybe if you squint makes financial sense is starting to crumble. So what a time to be alive. What a time to be alive.

All right. Let's, uh, we still have shows to talk about. And we got a new one we wanted to do an in or out on. So interout is the way that Andy and I evaluate a new show that we've come across and whether or not we're going to continue on with it. We did VersaSashi last week, I believe. And we were, I was a little bit more in than Andy. But we were both tentative in.

We're going to talk about it again this week. This week on in or out, we are doing counterpart. a new show on Stars starring J.K. Simmons. It was created by Justin Marks, and the first episode was directed by Morton Tilden, who did the... Passengers, and the imitation game. And the imitation game.

He doesn't want his... He wants it in the other order on his... Really interesting show. Yeah, I think so. First of all, highly entertaining. J.K. Simmons, the character's actor, character's actor, like, more than able to not only be in every frame,

but at times be in every frame twice, I will explain. This is a show that is set in a slightly altered reality, I guess, would be a way to describe it. It is like our world, but in very key ways not. J.K. Simmons plays a guy named Howard Stillman. Howard Silk. You give him his cool name. Oh, my bad.

You give him his proper. J.K. Simmons plays a man named Howard Silk, who works as kind of like a faceless office, you know, paper pusher at this weird kind of. of facade of an office building in Berlin. It's unclear what time, what time period it is. It might be a little bit in the future. He basically goes about his day, every day, doing these sort of menial tasks. He wants to move up in the world. He doesn't quite sure what the company does that he works for. He's been there for 30 years. And in the pilot episode, he comes to find out that there is basically an alternate reality, another dimension of reality, that open up 30 years ago when he first joined this company that connected East and West Berlin and

had basically two timelines going. So in a lot of ways it plays with some of the Lecarre idea of the Berlin Wall dividing these two worlds of Germany and all the action that would be taking place going over and across the wall. But it takes that and puts a sort of sci-fi supernatural spin on it with this idea of an alternate reality taking place in the same world, with the same characters, but just having different trajectories on their life. This is John LaCarray's fringe, which is pretty good for me. You know, it is one of those big, big, big ideas,

big concepts that people want in TV. Everyone wants things like this. And it's done with a level of intelligence and class that makes me okay with the fact that this is a pilot episode. It has a lot of the machinery of a pilot episode in 2018. And it writes a lot of checks that we, that are TBD, whether they can be cash. Yes.

And the reason why I am very much in on the show is not the concept. It's not the direction and production design, which are really top-notch. It's J.K. Simmons. When making the show, the single best decision that they made was making the protagonist an older regret-filled cog. Yeah. you don't usually see the older person get to be the star of the flashy thing. And one of the things that that costs you is a performer like J.K. Simmons, a face like J.K. Simmons, a vibe and attitude.

He is so exceptional on the show. You just cannot take your eyes off him. The fact that he gets to play, I don't want to spoil more than we already have, but the fact that he gets to play a lot of different notes on his little personal acting synthesizer is. stunning and riveting and gives the show a feeling of energy and fun that as the hours have passed since I watched it, I noticed were otherwise absent.

This is the kind of thing where it's a pilot. I'm curious of other people experience this too. I had such a great time watching this show. There aren't really any jokes. There is no character that I think things like this need. There's no Han Solo type character yet who's like, this is all

nuts. Let's have a drink. Right. The closest thing they have is sort of your man Vassiris who's in the show of Harry Lloyd. Yo, crown me in gold. Who looks like Matthew Good. Vesaris Targary. So it's Matthew Bad. Back. Yeah, he's sort of stressed out.

I was just going to say... He's the one who's sort of like narrating it as like, isn't this all crazy? He does the info dog. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I you can predict... I predicted every beat of this pilot

as I was watching it. I don't know whether that's because I just spent a lot of time watching and thinking about TV now, every beat up to the very last reveal I could be telegraphed for yes um but it doesn't bother me because the the dressing and the performances are so are so fun there's potential for this to be it's okay it's a great idea it looks good but there's potential for something great here that felt very exciting yeah i usually don't go for the adjustment bureauee it's a faceless company or a faceless government yeah and just like a like isn't life just about being like a cookie-cutter existence.

I prefer really diving into the detail and the feeling a sense of place. This is like high noir. Like everything is in the dark. They have this altered version of Berlin that they're shooting in. It feels slightly futuristic but not overly so. People's phones are different. You know, there's a couple of different. On one side. Yeah.

Right. And I think that I think it's really, really fascinating so far. Also, I just felt a degree of, there was an undercurrent of entertainment to it that was moving the scenes along at a certain clip that I think that, I think you're finding, I know that I am, people responding to more,

is a feeling like you're taking me through it. There's momentum to this show. Yeah, because you've been anti-pilot recently. Well, I've been more anti, like, I can't keep starting over and having the same sense of, we're going to take our time with this, thanks. You know, it's like, I get it.

But there's just too much. That's why you're an Ozark fan. Yeah, right. I want to just quickly say the one thing about J.K. Simmons. And again, Andy and I are going to spoil anything here beyond what you can see in the trailer for the show. But he does things that are really subtle in this episode. Like there would be the Clark Kent Superman version of this where one guy is like his dork glasses and spills mustard on his shirt and everything. And the other guy is basically jacked.

He does little things with posture with the way he walks, with the way different Howard's, the two different Howard's walk. What he can do physically is a marvel. And that's because he's Diesel Jim Gordon in Batman versus Superman. So you know he gets swole. You know he knows how to do Arm Day. And he gets after it in the gym. No spotters. He also, I keep thinking about this.

There are moments in this pilot. Like if you just take them out of context that are, like I am, I break out in hives thinking about them in pilots. Like there's the scene where he's playing. What is he playing? I used to, that was Othello when we were kids, but it's probably like backgamers. He's playing some game with black and white and just like lock on the beach, you know, and it's just like,

and then he has conversations about the nature of fate and humanity. And I'm like, miss me with this forever. I do, though, enjoy the Matrix-style shootout in a hospital that they do. I do like that. But I'm saying, miss me with this sort of like game playing about fate, except he has a hint of a smile on his face. He knows what the material is and he elevates it. And one thing that is interesting, just as a fan of TV,

to look for in a show like this, is remember that they wrote the pilot, what's the guy's name? Justin Marks. Justin Marks wrote this pilot. Maybe he had J.K. Simmons in mind. Maybe he didn't. But he didn't have anyone cast.

He wrote this material to sell the show and make a show. When he writes the second episode, he and his writers write the season, they're writing for J.K. Simmons. So the melding of character and actor will only grow from here. So this is one worth seeking out, and we should tell people,

it's on Stars. The first episode is available for free. If you go to the Stars app or streaming on Star's app, or streaming on stars, you can just, you can catch up with us and then make your decision whether you want to move forward and add another 899 or whatever it is to your monthly bill. That's on you, American Gods fan. But I'm psyched about this show.

It's ambitious and classy in a way that I appreciate. It's both louder and quieter at the same time than I expected it to be. And that means I'm in. I'm in, you're in. We'll come back to this show in a couple of weeks, but you guys should check it out. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And then we'll be back with Juliet Lippman to talk about ER. Today's episode of The Watch is also brought to you by Movement.

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I'm really just like being able to watch it. ER, one of the most popular shows of the last 30 years, an iconic network hospital drama starring at various points. Anthony Edwards, George Clooney, Julian Marley's. Eric LaSalle.

Sherry Springfield. Abraham Ben Ruby. It was never on these streaming services. And then last week, Kulu announced. all 10 seasons? 15. Well, that's Julia Libman. I was going to call you the Captain Ahab of this particular white whale.

She's been looking for it. Because you got it. Nice one. We are so happy to be joined by your favorite podcaster's favorite podcaster, the Barry Hanna. The resident of the microphone set. Hey, guys. It's pleasure to be here. Jam session co-host, food news on House of Carbs.

Bachelor party, please subscribe. That's the party. Please subscribe. Julia, when's the last time you were on the watch? I don't think I've ever been on it before. Not true. You are on Hollywood prospectus? Yeah, sorry.

I might have been a Hollywood perspective has definitely never been on the watch You've definitely been on the watch No I haven't no definitely not Well let's ask super fans Joreen would know okay Let's let's get back check this Okay

At us Pleasure to be here Thanks I'm so excited to talk to you About this show Because Juliet nice share in office Yes And you share other podcasts

We're very aware of each other's Pop culture tastes Current interests What have you I would say that Juliet's top three The things that she is most interested in in the time that I've known her.

Hamilton. Yeah. Campus comedy novels. Strong, yes. And ER. And easily ER. Yeah, I love ER. It's so good.

Okay. Is there a separate category for a British campus? No, it's like the David Lodge campus. Oh, so you're thinking British. I mean, like, obviously Kingsley Amos is the godfather, but David Lodge is like is the master. This podcast is killing it so far. We've got more authors named than members of ER. Juliet.

Yes. Why is ER such a great and also timeless show? It really is so timeless. What a great show. It is great for so many reasons. First of all, the cast is incredible. You've got Julianna Margulies, Anthony Edwards, George Clooney. Gloria Rubin's really undervalued.

She came in strong. Eric LaSalle, you probably would think Eric LaSalle was a joke, weren't not for ER. He'd just be the guy from coming to America, who's like fifth most important person. He could retire off that, by the way. Sure, but still the fifth most important guy with like greasy hair. He's basically then like coming to America, ER and Logan.

I just, I haven't seen. him in anything else besides that. What a trio. Yeah. Incredible. He's great. He's fine. So you got all these actors just pitching at their peak. These storylines they tackled, they are

weighty in a time when like the regular ensemble drama was not really doing that. Like what other show in 1994 wanted to talk to you about AIDS? Yeah. What other show like wanted to talk to you in 1996 or about like cochlear implants? Like those are just like questions that they like easily tackled and those two plots I just mentioned were not even the A plots like ever.

So I was coasting through the first season on Hulu the other night to prepare for this podcast. And there are a few things that just really jumped out of me. One is I don't even know if the human brain could process information this way anymore. It was so it's such a chaotic show in terms of what's being thrown at you. The charactering of that show is really impressive. Yeah. It's amazing. And also it's super.

It's like really bloody and it's really dark. Like patients routinely die all the time. The thing that I wanted to talk about specifically with Juliette is evolutionarily and generationally with the show. Because we have a couple years on you. We're old and washed. I think I'm also, I'm Benjamin Buttoning. I think I'm aging backwards. Fascinating.

Oh, this will come into it. So I wanted to set the scene, I remember watching the ER premiere. Yeah, 94. Fall of 94. Up against the Monday at football. People thought Chicago Hope was going to be a bigger show. Just so you know, I watched that too. Okay, okay, so this is a way of to talk about.

Pete Berg, what's up? Patinkin. Two Chicago dramas premiered, one on CBS, Chicago Medical Drama's, one on CBS, one on NBC. Chicago Hope had the god Patinkin up in there. Everyone's like, that show's going to succeed. E.R. was from a, at that point, 15, maybe even 20-year-old script written by Michael Craigon that was resurrected, dusted off, and cast. Had Spielberg attached to produce.

Yeah, so it had a big... Revive the courier font. To revive the courier font, that was my takeaway. You are Benjamin Button. How old were you in 1994 to talk font game? It was totally revolutionary to watch that premiere episode. It was faster than anything we'd ever seen. It was grizzlier than anything we'd ever seen.

Medical dramas were always so polite. They were about people fixing other people's problems, and you never saw blood or gore or disgust. I didn't, look, an entire generation now knows what it is to be intubated. We did not know that unless you were unfortunate enough to go to the hospital. hospital and literally have someone jam a tube down your throat. I mean, it was wild to watch it, and it felt like TV advancing in real time. It also, to that point, it also totally changed course, like, from the first episode, basically.

Like, they had all these ideas of what the show was going to be, like with Carol almost overdosing or whatever. Yeah, and she was supposed to die. She was to die. Yeah. And wasn't also Jack Sheppard supposed to die in the pilot of lost? That's true. So it's sort of like before all of the shows. It's also, I think, like, an important to put a big testament to how great Juliana Marguerese is. Obviously, yeah.

Can't kill her off in episode one. No. But anyway, like they changed course based on, you know, I think on the moment. Like you said, it was like a 20-year-old script and everything. And it really, like, adapted. I mean, that's part of something you could do with a 25 episode run, right? Like, in the middle of the season, you can change course. But, yeah, I mean, that pilot also just is really, doesn't glamorize anything.

Like I think the first scene with Mark just trying to sleep in the on like a secret room or whatever That kind of changed the way people think about like hospital life right at first that first that first scene We were thinking doctors were just people who made a lot of money and drove nice cars yeah did you guys Yeah a little bit that's my dad's favorite show because this is like more like in the same same elsewhere Lineage that it was what like NBC folks were a little bit like uh we're gonna go with this show it's billberg's attached to it but we feel like it's a little close to sane elsewhere I don't know if it's gonna take off But then they advanced screened it. And this is written about Warren Littlefield, who's head of NBC at the time,

writes about this in his memoir, Top of the Rock. When they did an advanced screening, it was the highest testing. They knew they had a jugger. Yeah. They knew before anyone in the industry did. And that's why they immediately moved it to Thursdays and took off. I mean, people talk about Cheers and Seinfeld,

obviously fueling NBC's dominance, but ER was probably more valuable. I mean, like, what is even the equivalent of having peak, Anthony Edwards, George Clooney, Julianna Margulies, Eric LaSalle, and Noah Wiley, like on a show together. Like, is there any, like... I mean, in terms of what they wound up doing or just their level of charm at that point? Their level of charm at that point.

I mean, he was still on the ascent during the R. He was just like, this is how you drive to get to the chow. Let's talk about Clooney for a second because, again, from a, that's one or further. That's top five interests. It's part of ER. I was, I got to say, I was a big Clooney fan from Roseanne, from Facts of life. He was always around. You just set me up for my fourth most hottest topic. Okay. He was always around, always charming, always good. And then

they just found this part. It just clicked. No, he was on sisters. Yes, sir. Wow. The Saturday night drama. One of my favorite shows of all time. The Queen Seal Award. He was killed. He was dating Sheila Ward. He was Detective James Falconer. And spoiler alert, he was killed off to go be on ER. There was a, there was a car bomb and he died in that because he had to leave sisters. There's a lot of Carbombies in 90s. Do you have a sliding doors theory of like what if Clooney had stayed on sisters?

I mean, Sisters is so underappreciated. Ashley Judd and Paul Rudd were married on that show for like its entire run. Steel Award, Smoosy Kirkz? Yes! His name was Kirby Reed.

What? How old were you when this was happening? Was you pretty young? Yeah, but I loved it. I just loved it and committed every episode to memory. Okay, I wanted to ask you a little bit. Stephen Collins is also on that show. Since, and, you know, the shows since ER, you were also a fan of.

So, like, you love Grays, right? One of the things that really jumped out watching a couple, I watched The Blizzard and I watched Motherhood last night, two episodes from the first season. The Blizzard's great. Motherhood's the one that Tarantino directed. But the Blizzard is the one where a Blizzard shuts down Chicago, basically, and they can't, like, they only have the doctors who are there, and it's like, they're very limited supplies. Tarantino, coming off of Pulp Fiction, they said, what do you want to do?

You can do anything. And he said, I want to direct an episode of VR. Yeah. I think the direction of VR is kind of underappreciated because the cast was so good. Because they also did that live episode, which they did twice. And Mimi Letter did it too, right? Yeah, Mimi Letter did Love Labor's Loss, which is one of the two best episodes of the show. I agree.

And then... That's the one where Mark loses the baby? Yes. To preeclampsia, which I like I know, like, know all about... It's seared into my mind now for that episode. Yeah, everyone knows about preeclampsia thanks to ER. Yeah, but like Mimi Letter. And then I think season three or four is when they did the live episodes.

And that was just like, can you imagine a show attempting that? now. There's like no upside. They just sort of did it to like try it out. Because clearly thought live TV was cool. And he was just like if you want to keep me interested, we have to do things like this. But one of the things that jumps out at you is that, you know, Benton is a dick. Carter is like this newbie. There's the Doug Carroll like flirtation turns into romance. There's a little bit of stuff between Mark and Sherry Stringfield. Right. Yeah. And those things are there. Like the drama is there. But it is super if you're talking about hospital drama, it's 85% hospital. It's. It's 85% hospital and 15% drama, whereas like the Gray's balance is closer 75-25 drama hospital.

Totally. I mean, the procedural aspect of ER is so central. Like the, that's one of the reasons I think it could go on for so long, unlike Gray's anatomy, is because what happens in the hospital is so much more important than most of the other activities. That's 100% why the show could go on and why it was such a moneymaker and driver for NBC. And why if the rights weren't so complicated and who owns it, why they should easily bring it back. It's right there in the title. The star of the show was the emergency room. Absolutely. Kind of general. And then like there were certain

motifs that they just passed along for the entire time. Like in the first episode, Marcus told you lead the way. And then like in his last episode, he tells Carter, like, you leave the way now, Carter. And like, it is a lot about like passing of a torch, like keeping the hospital going. There's so much stuff about like who's going to be chief surgery. That's also in grace. But there's all this stuff with the residents. There's all this stuff.

And fellowship. Bill Macy. Yeah. Great, great performance. What about Rock at Romano. I love. I love. I love... Oh, yeah. Helicopter. Paul O'Crane. So I wanted to ask you,

aside from obviously the Hall of Fame 27 Yankees first cast, what is your favorite iteration of ER that happened? Let's just say after Clooney leaves? Who do you support from the later cast? Clooney leaves in the middle of season five.

Anthony Edwards is like probably the true star of that show. When they all came on streaming, I was like just, I really wanted to know if they maintained the use of somewhere over the rain. And so I just went straight to the episode when she died. And man, did I cry alone on my couch on a Saturday afternoon. But really good episode.

Were you pro Alex Kingston? She is so mean. That character, Elizabeth Corday. First of all, I see her like walking on Hollywood. And she looks great still. Good for her. Elizabeth Corday was not pro. Me either.

But she was really mean. But that was like realistic. Like a stepmother, like being mad at her stepdaughter. Like I thought that was like a, that was well done. Stringfield comes back when? She comes back Like season six or seven It's short-lived

Doesn't really work out It was short-lived The true second star The second wave It's really a third wave Is more tyranny Waiting for that Yeah

She's I mean she's excellent Yeah And then Sally Field Plays her mom Oh yeah Which is like Also doesn't she start as a nurse Then become a doctor?

Yes She kind of does So she replaces Juliana Margulies And Carol very famously Took the MCAT And decided she didn't want to be She wanted to stay as a nurse

And so she sort of is like So Abby goes to school while she's also being... Abby is the OB nurse for Carol when she's pregnant with the twins. Oh. And so that's another kind of like passing of the torch that was just really successful.

Interesting. The way you're talking about it, I'd forgotten how much... The feeling that is missing a little bit from TV, maybe it still exists in a show like Grays, but it's essential to the broadcast experience was that there's like a covenant with the show in the audience and it's like a family.

Yeah. And the creators of the show are very gentle about transitions. And you could think about that in a sort of a cynical soap opera way or even a Today Show, Good Morning America Way where we have to mix and match and pretend to be family

and put people next to each other and ease of transitions or you could think about it in terms of good storytelling. Yeah, absolutely. They lay the groundwork for it to make sense. And give you permission

to go on the journey without them. You're 100% behind bring the show back. Oh, completely. Yeah. Like literally no reason to not. But you would want them to adhere to the sort of chemistry

or the original and have it be largely procedural rather than because I watched the resident last night, the new Fox Hospital drama with Matt Zuckery. And it, at least in the pilot episode, is so over the top with the personalities and the drama going on outside, even though it opens up with Bruce Greenwood accidentally killing a guy while doing an appendectomy.

Damn. I think the thing about that is ensemble casting is obviously really hard. And when you get it right, it's just like a symphony. Yeah, sure. Graze is another testament to that. I've recently been rewatching some clips of Ali McBeal and I was like, damn, what a cast. Yeah. I think with ER, you'd have to really ground it in that same sort of verite,

which I don't know if that would play well on NBC anymore. Like, can you imagine like the NBC voiceovers of like this next week on ER, Dr. Carter, encounters, like, blah, blah. But that kind of like started with heroes, I think, and then it just sort of never moved away from it. That's where this is us is every episode is a very special episode. I think it would be great to do it because we've gone so far down the line with serialization and expecting a certain level of serialized storytelling. That to pull back and understand that, look what E are accomplished, it was deeply serialized.

I mean, so operatically so. But the dynamic and the percentages of what was, the ratio was always very pure. So you could just tune in, but also you could watch how the medicine advanced or the procedures and who was attending. Like there were other aspects of serialization than do you remember the stepson that he gave up for adoption? Well, he's back now and he's addicted to drugs. And like, you don't need to only do that part of it. I mean, there's a real commitment to world building, which you got at already. But like the last shot of ER is the camera panning back and you see the L going by and it's snowing.

And the hospital is just like going on and on. The external shots. Those guys playing basketball outside and stuff. And then when they'd be waiting for the L in the snow for like the four days they would fly to Chicago to make it look. Yeah, totally. And so I think that like if you were going to reboot the show, there's such an obvious like first shot of like the reverse of that of like panning in on like just sort of picking up. But the St. Elspur comparison.

Hope you're listening Hollywood. The St. elsewhere comparisons really germane because at the end of that show, that kid picks up the globe. And so when they had that scene, it was like, oh, maybe this is supposed to be very similar to like Tommy West Falls universe. Like, this is like the kind of general universe. But that just makes it so much easier to pick up again. What do you think, you mentioned Grace Anatomy, if we're looking at contemporary television and ER crashing the party, E.R's back, like everything now, in competition for eyeballs with everything that's on.

at this moment, from the most cutting edge to the most banal. Where is the influence most keenly felt? What do you think ER influenced most directly? I think a show like Breaking Bad has like the freedom to do what it does and because of a show like ER, which obviously is far tamer and like the villains are not so bad.

But yeah, it's so dark. I also think that's sort of like the sort of the way it was filmed and kind of graininess is not so dissimilar. I also feel like I would be like I would love it. Vince Gilligan to like take an episode of ER. That'd be great. But think about that though. I think that's a really great point because one of the, we talked about Breaking Bad a week ago in the anniversary of that. Some of the things that we love most about Breaking Bad come directly from that broadcast network DNA that James Gilligan has. You mentioned Romano, this thing with a helicopter.

It's very black humor. Sure. You know, and it's strange to think of a show being able to contain all of that, both the heartbreaking, you know, episode about a new mother potentially losing a baby and an asshole doctor who's being menaced by. a helicopter. I mean, like, similarly. But it can, and it's better for it. Laura Annis' character never addressed her, um, her physical handicapped. Great character.

Right. Ever. Dr. Carrie Weaver, who was an all-time great character. I mean, she was disliked. She was a woman who was disliked. C.C.H. Pounder's character is really good in that show too. Yeah.

The women of ER are really impressive. They're all like complex. They're not like straight up likable. Even Carol, like, who's like the most beloved, you just get frustrated with. And like, so Laura Ennis's character, Carrie Weaver never addresses the fact that that she has a, like a literal crutch. she's disliked for being in power she doesn't she's a lesbian

which they don't get into until very much later like she's just really unique and I just think the physical handicap they don't address that on on breaking bad either it's like those kinds of like small ticks that make characters or sorry not ticks but like small details that make characters fuller and then not having to address it as something that ER did really well

there's an argument to be made that one of the things that we've lost in the stratification of television is this the juicy middle where procedurals that exist this now are just Chicago Fire, Chicago Law, Chicago PD, Chicago DMV, which just to my mind are just the most bare bones. And again, coming from Dick Wolf, who that's what he does, barebones version of it. It's really just plug and play procedural. And then on the other side of it, we have these much more, you know, engaging, gripping things. I think that there was a lot

to be said for... But ER is the best aspects of both. It could be both high and low. It's weird to me that on broadcast in 2018, we don't, we have these big swings like Empire or 911, but we don't just have the cop show, the medical show that can be all of those things. Sure. Why not? Sure. I mean, also, the other thing about ER is that the cameos are incredible, like, just unbelievable. Almost everyone went through those doors, right?

It was Law & Order before Law & Order, yeah. Dunst. Big look for her and George Clooney. Big look for Dunst. I'm always checking for Kiki. You know that. I think it was right after interviews of Vampire. So ER is now streaming on Hulu.

You guys can check that out. Thank you to Juliet. Apparently her first time on the watch will be her last. We'll be our last. Wait, for people who have never seen E.R. crazy. Sure. Give them a quick...

Do they start with a pilot? Yeah, I think you could start with the pilot. Is there stuff that they would miss if they, like, jump to Blizzard? It's 25 episodes that first season. It's a lot, guys. It's a heavy lift. So much happens, but like everything unfolds slowly

because there's so many characters. I don't know. The George Clooney experience is just incredible. You can really watch any episode. It's like if you care about Carter's trajectory, I guess I would start from the beginning. If you care about like Carter and Benton's relationship, or, you know, like the relationships between the doctors

are it's essential to sort of watch the early episodes. But it gets really, really, really good towards the middle of the first season. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think my favorite season is probably three, maybe four. Season two, I think, is when we get Shep, Carol's paramedic boyfriend. Yeah. Ron Eldard.

Ron Eldard. That was a really, wow. I mean, that's the other thing about the show, the paramedics, like they're not, they're never official cast member. but they're a really big part of it. Yeah, but also the nurses. Yeah, the nurses. I mentioned Abram Ben Ruby.

He was there the whole time. He was awesome. It's just a great show. I would say that every time they do a Halloween episode, that's really good. There's like a lot of like weird stuff that happens in the hospital on Halloween. They do really well with storms and holidays. And it's just the best show. I've never forgiven Doug and Carol for not attending Mark's funeral though.

So just let it be known. At least George and Giuliana came back in the final season. There's actually like another great part of their world building. and this will be my final note is that they go, they move to Seattle, very famously. Yeah. And then Carter needs a, spoiler alert, major spoiler alert.

Carter needs a kidney transplant. Because he's been addicted to pills, right? Yes. And the woman from, oh no, this is much later, this isn't the final season. But it's like, it's not completely unrelated. But the woman from Bennett, like Beckham, what's her name?

Oh, yes, she was on the show. Parminder. Yes, she's in the show. Parminder Nagra. She is the woman. She doesn't know Doug and Carol, but like this is part of the world building. She is assigned to go from County General

to go pick up the organs in Seattle. And she's like waiting in the waiting rooms, like waiting for it. And I believe she interacts with Carol but not Doug. And they don't know, she can't say, but they don't know who it's going to, but she's there to pick up the kidney and return it to Carter.

And it comes from a body that Doug and Carol were like able to save. And it's like really amazing. And it's just, it's so great. I just love this show. The emotion in this room is palpable. All right. We'll be back on third.

Thursday, we will be talking about the Oscar nominations. We're going to talk about end of the effing world on Netflix, and we're going to talk about the second episode of American Crime Story Versace. So a full episode on Thursday. We are back talking about TV, Versace. You hear that Sam SML, we watch TV. Later, guys. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Hotel Tonight.

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