The Watch - The Best TV Shows of 2021

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Chris and Andy are joined by Sam Esmail to talk about their favorite TV shows of 2021, including 'It's A Sin,' 'The North Water,' 'Reservation Dogs,' 'Succession,' 'Dave,' and 'The White Lotus.' Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Sam Esmail Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Head into the Ringerverse to stay up to date with all things superheroes and nerd culture entertainment. Hosted by a rotating lineup of superfans at The Ringer, including Mallory Rubin and Van Lathen, shows will provide instant reactions to blockbuster releases, insightful backstories on canon, and mind-bending theories, as well as fresh takes on the latest news and rumors. Check out The Ringerverse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis? which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you?

Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away. Trimphaya, gusalcumab, taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaques psoriasis, who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy, and for adults with active psoriotic arthritis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before a treatment, your doctor should check you for infection. infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine.

Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphia. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us. The intersection of interests that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com.

I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to a special episode of The Watch podcast. My name is Chris Ryan shortly. I will be joined by my co-host Andy Greenwald, and this episode is one of our favorites to do every year. We'll be joined by the creator of Mr. Robot. Sam S-Mail to do his annual 10 best TV shows of the year. Andy and I will also be sharing our lists.

We'll get a paper copy or a digital copy of that up so everybody can kind of peruse those lists as soon as possible on our social media accounts. I hope everybody is having a healthy and happy holiday season. And Andy and I will be back on Thursday to talk about episodes four and five of Station 11 and to chat a little bit about the rest of what's going on in pop culture. Without further ado, let's get into our chat with Sam and the best TV. of the year. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

It's the watch podcast. It's the end of the year podcast. It's the best in TV podcast. It's Andy Greenwald and our godfather, Sam S-Mail. Sam, what's up? Hello, guys. How are you? This is my favorite annual pod, Sam.

It's where you come tell us that we're wrong about television. You laugh at our lists. And we share our top tens. How have you been? I've been doing well. I've been doing well. I'm, I actually think we have a good. year this year. You remember

a couple years ago when I couldn't even find 10? Now I feel like I have 10 and then I have like 10 honorable mentions that could have easily been in the top 10. And I'm like literally, and I think Andy you said this earlier before we started recording

that a couple were struggling like I've been changing up until this very second since we've been recording. I think this has been a fucking fantastic year for TV. Great year for TV. I mean we're recording before Book of Boba Fed even drops. So clearly all of our lists are fluid.

We don't even know if Hawkeye's going to land it. So it's hard to really know what my top 10 looks like. Yeah, I easily had a top 20 and it was difficult to make the decisions of what goes into the top 10. On one hand, you're trying to make something that you're like, this is definitively how I feel like these shows are ranked or if I feel like something is, you know, the exceptional clubhouse leader just has to be distinguished as the top show of the year. Then there are somewhere just like, I want to make sure that I repeat my admiration for this thing, so I want to have it in this first batch of shows. Andy, I know that you were even as of 958 Pacific Standard Time still grappling with 12 shows on your top 10 list. Well, the beauty of that was I thought we were in real trouble. And I, you know, I don't like to signal panic to Sam in any aspect of our relationship

when I was running a show for him or when doing a podcast. Like, I just want him to think that there's a steady hand on the rudder, even if it's not the case. Luckily, minutes before we recorded, I noticed that I had the White Lotus on my list twice. So that took us down to 11. And then I had to make a tough call that I might regret, you know, 10 minutes after we're finished recording. But Chris, I think, was saying to me earlier, too, that it's important that we keep it to 10. It's part of the challenge. It's part of the, you know, it shows decisiveness.

And I believe, you know, as Chris has said before, offline, top 20 lists are for cowards, man. Yeah, for cowards. And I got a little surprise for you guys. Emmy, my wife, has given her top 10. Oh, wow. Now, she had the same problem you did, Andy. She had 11. And I was like, no, it's got to be 10.

She tried to do the tie thing. I was like, no, not allowing that. Although you guys have done that. We do that on movie drafts. We always are like, actually, I'm also going to draft like three alien movies at once, you know, yeah. Is Emmy going to grab the mic? Like, like, Kanye? VMA style?

No, she said, you guys can talk about it, but here are my talking. Because, in all honestly, going back to what I initially said, fucking good year for TV. I think it's got to be one of the best years. And Emmy was in total agreement with me. Now, we just had a baby about six months ago. Congratulations. Maybe, thank you. Now, that was maybe part of the reason why she watched a lot more TV this year than other years.

So I was going to ask you, Sam, did your TV watching habits change decidedly? this year, either because of parenthood or COVID or anything in particular. No, in fact, as Andy probably knows, you can't really watch TV with your child. I mean, I know Sean Fennessee doesn't really give a shit about that, but we're trying to do the, and he said this on his podcast. I'm here for this. But we're trying to do the no-screen time thing. So it actually probably...

I think, to be fair to Sean, the kid is facing the other direction, though. I don't think that... Is he? Yeah, but the next, the next develop quickly, Chris. She can turn. Baby Fantasy can turn. She could take it all in. But at least he's watching good, good films, horror films, but good films.

The one thing I will say, because unlike Andy, although maybe your hatred for horror, was it before you had kids? Because I know a lot of fathers, you know, or mothers, I think they don't like the violent stuff as much post-parenthood. And I think horror was great, I mean, saw a lot of great horror films. I have a great horror television show. I mean, that didn't change at all. I still love it. I'm proud to say to both of you that I've been a coward all my life. And so that hasn't changed.

There is definitely a recalibration. And I imagine longtime listeners of the podcast could probably note it when it started happening for me in 2013 when a certain type of children or young people in peril. emotional storytelling becomes extremely challenging to sit through and it become even more exacting about that. But that, you know, it's not like I was... Yeah, I didn't change for me either. I'll, yeah.

I rewatched mother, which I won't spoil mother, but there's like a pretty graphic moment in mother. Yeah. Where if you are a parent, it would be, it would probably be very unsettling for you. But it was not unsettling for me. I feel like non-parents need to get the monopoly on some kind of, of emotional trauma too.

Like I got to, what can I be? I mean, I guess I can have like shows where people die alone. That could be my thing. Yeah, but I also think that I also think that you should just be like, you know, the trauma you feel when you've had just too much fun. There you mean. Like you and your wife like went out for dinner and then we're like, should we get a drink after dinner?

And you were like, fuck, yeah, let's do it. Yeah. Because we can. And that's when that couple gets kidnapped. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Like that's, that's your suffering.

I think it's unique. And that's fine. It's beautiful thing. Now, wait, listen, I just want to say there is going to be a little bit of an unfair thing going on in this list because you guys have seen shows that I haven't. Yes. Because you guys are critics and I'm just a lowly viewer here. So I will say that because the show in question, which I'm sure will be on your list, is a show I'm dying to see. I could have been on my list, but I haven't seen it.

Just for the watch Superfans and the Sam Superfans, Sam, can you just, before we get into it, just give people an update on why you are, where you are, what you're up to? Because there's TV, the TV from you is coming, but not this year. Not this year. Well, so I've got three shows that we are,

that are going to air in 2022 that I'm producing, but I'm not show running, which is, God, I just finished watching the season finale of our show Gaslit, starring Julia Robert, Sean Penn, Dan Stevens, Betty Gilpin. It's fucking great. It's based on the Slow Burn podcast about, really, it's centering about Martha Mitchell and the Watergate scandal. So that's going to come out in the spring.

And then my wife's show, which I'm also producing, is called Angeline, which is based on a famous LA icon. And that's also coming out. Like, I think that's going to come out in May on Peacock. Gaslight will be on Starlight. and then we're having a show going into production in January, which will hopefully come out towards the end of the year called The Resort by Andy Sierra, who wrote Palm Springs, and that'll come out late in the year.

Yeah. So, and then as far as what I'm doing, just to quickly update, I am in London right now shooting something that I can't really, I don't want to get into it. I can't talk about, but it's really fucking cool. And hopefully that will come out. you're after. Sorry, Chris, go ahead. No, I was just

going to ask if all of this prolific streak from you is a direct reaction to Taylor Sheridan. 100%. I mean, if you're not chasing Taylor Sheridan, then you're not really show running. The problem is, he's on horseback, Sam, and it's hard to chase it. He also has a ranch. I know. Wait, but can I just say something? And this is

nothing to do with his show. I have not seen a frame of any, and he's so prolific, but I haven't, for whatever reason, I haven't ended up watching any of it. Have you guys, I don't remember, I don't recall you talking about it on the show. I am sort of the comptroller of Sheridan Town. So, yeah, I've seen all of Yellowstone, and I've watched all of Mayor of Kingstown, which I increasingly adore. And I haven't watched the 1883.

I think that comes out in a week or so. And then, of course, he did a movie with Angelina Jolie this year, too. He did those who wish we did, which I thought was awesome. I have not seen it. And I got to say, Yellowstone, that's like the biggest thing ever on, like bigger than, I don't know, Monday night football or something, right? It's huge, right? Am I wrong about that? Yeah, it's the biggest show on cable right now.

Sam, do you remember when we had those ratings calls for Briar Patch and they were like, this number is pretty good for basic cable in 2020? And I was like, great, great. Yellowstone exponential factor of 10. Really messing up the storyline I wrote for myself. So what's so strange, and I'm sure you guys talked about this already, I don't know anyone who watches the show. Do you? You got to get in touch with America, man. You know what you know this guy right here.

Yeah, I'm in a bubble, I guess. I know no one that watches the show. So before we get into our list, and I know there's always a lot of before and preluding and hemming and hawing, Sam, other than your own personal circumstances changing this year with baby at home, do you think there's any reason why things were good this year? I mean, is it so much that there were a lot of. A lot of planes on the runway the previous year that all took off at the same time because of COVID restrictions and we got better stuff or something in the air or water. Well, we can talk about the way White Lowe this was made, which is obviously totally motivated by the restrictions of COVID and sort of this like first, almost first draft, you know, creative outpouring from Mike White. But I honestly, I don't know the answer because whenever that was, I think it was 2019. where I was sort of bemoaning the landscape of TV,

I felt it was sort of regressing back to the way TV usually was, which is this more procedural, repetitive, formulaic kind of, let's hang out with characters every week but not really care about the serialized storyline. That's still going on, right? Yeah, it's called our podcast. I wasn't going to say anything, but yeah, there you go. I do think that like that's still maybe the more pop.

I mean, even Yellowstone, again, I haven't seen Yellowstone. You have to let me know, Chris, if it sort of feels like it harkens back to older shows. But I certainly think that there are a lot of popular. I mean, even like when I look at the Emmy nominees for Best Drama or Comedy, they feel like they still harken back to old school TV. But my list, there are a lot of just, I think, you know what it is? I think there are a lot of new streamers that are just trying to take chances that are just like swinging for the fences

because a lot of my list is coming from some of those newer streamers. So as we get into the list, I have to just confess one thing to you guys, which is I initially had a number one so shocking that I think it would have gotten howls from both of you,

potentially for different reasons. It was deemed ineligible not because I changed my mind, despite saying I have been a coward my whole life moments ago, on a technicality. I realized that the season that I was going to put at number one was technically a 2020 show, and so my last year's list is ridiculous.

But this would have been my number one, and it would have been the boldest thing anyone's done on these podcasts. I thought it was because it was Rachel Maddow on the night of January 6th in her broadcast. You know, I often go back to the Smithsonian to watch MSNBC's coverage of that entire day, just because I like to be in situ. You know, I like to live in that moment again. Plus, you love museums. And I love museums, especially now.

This isn't my number one show of this year because it technically didn't release new episodes this year. But I deeply believe this is the best thing I've watched on TV in the last two years. Chris is never going to believe me, Sam, within... two years you're going to believe me. And the show is called Bluey. Oh. It is an Australian cartoon. This is about a family of dogs.

Way too early in this pod for Daddington. Yes. Because we're starting and we're getting off of it. But you guys need to know, and our listeners need to know, that if you think about anything that we want from television, including absolutely God-level, creativity, emotional stakes, beauty, truth, humor, heart. There is no better show. It is a groundbreaking revolutionary broadcast for children's

television and maybe all TV. You can watch two seasons streaming on Disney Plus. I even said the name right because I'm so serious about this show. Each season has 51 episodes. They are seven minutes long each. One guy writes all of them, the creator Joe Brum. And I have never been more affected by a TV show, maybe since Twin Peaks 30 years ago. And I watch it with my entire family. And haven't you also probably seen each of the episodes like 403 times? I wish. No, there's so many. We've sort of parceled them out and doled them out.

And the journey that it takes you on, Sam, you are going to come back on the show. And you are going to agree with me. I believe it. I'm not like, I'm in. Cocoa Mellon. I got it. What's incredible right now, by the way, is the face Chris is making, is the face Jeremy Renner makes on the mayor of Kingston poster?

People won't be able to see the video. But I just want people to know. I don't even know about this. this show, Mayor of King. Mayor of Kingstown is the other Taylor Sheridan show that's on right now where Jeremy Renner plays like a Michael Clayton, but for jails. That sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Is it on your list? It's on, it's not, it didn't make my list, but it would be in my top 20 and it's on Paramount Plus if you're looking for something to watch. Okay, got it. All right. So the boats have left Dattnington Island. It's time for for grown up night at the marina.

Let's get into this. How do you want to do it? You want to go 10-1? is basically, we'll go in order and we'll go, Sam, Andy, Chris. You say, you know, you're going to go, we're not going to go through your whole top 10. We'll do, say, number 10. If everybody else has it on their list, we'll mention where it is.

We'll try about the show. We'll move on. So Sam, you go first and you have number 10 here. And I got to say, this show, in the beginning of the year, was probably number one. And I thought it was, I honestly thought it was going to hold

for the rest of the year. But again, this year's been so fucking great. that it felt, it almost, again, it almost went off the list, but it's the show, my number 10 is, it's a sin. So that's both on both me and Andy's listed. For me, it's number five. For me, it's number three. Yeah. So. It's so fucking good. For me, it was number one up until like, yeah, a few months ago. And it could easily still be my number one. It's just such an excellent show. I mean,

to do a mini series about the AIDS epidemic, but to have it be that, that full of life and humor and style. The filmmaking is amazing. The writing is great to perform. It's just, it's a killer show on every level. So this show, we talked about it a lot on the pod. We had the creator, Russell Davies, who many people know from Doctor Who and as many, many other series that he's created and run in the UK, we had him on the pod.

You can go back and listen to those episodes. I think the thing to say about it that you didn't just say perfectly, Sam, which is that it is a show about an epidemic of suffering and loss that is completely alive in every frame. I guess the question for you, Sam, is what struck us was just how the appetite for that show was so big. Like, in an American version of it would have been five seasons. And Russell Davis was so ravenous. He told the whole story in five hours, you know, and there was a kind of breathlessness and a boldness and audacity to that storytelling that was really surprising and refreshing. And I feel like as someone who is generally contemptuous of TV traditions, I wonder how you, if that

struck you as well well listen we grew up with a lot of it did it did and i'll say it this way because i think we grew up with a lot of like important mini series that will explain to you the horrors of the AIDS epidemic and of course i'm not trying to uh uh make light of what of what happened but there is something about showing the lives behind the epidemic not really just fixating on it but showing the lives behind it. And then, yes, doing this more abbreviated version, it makes it feel very weightless. And I've been using that word a lot. And initially, I remember, I don't know, I remember reading reviews using that word. I never quite understood it. I always thought some pretentious thing that just went over my head. But then I realized, and I think it was this show

that I had that feeling where I was like, wow, I'm feeling great watching the show. It has that rewatchability factor because of like the needle drops and the performances and sort of the verb of the filmmaking. But at the same time, it's heavy. It gets in you, man. It really hits you emotionally. To do that is, and that's why I think that word is perfect for this, that's where the weightlessness comes in. Because even though it's heavy, you don't feel it in the same way that you do when you watch a drama with a capital D. You know what I mean? There's just a lightness to it that makes you just want to... I mean, I devoured all the ups.

I watched them. I didn't watch them. Did they come out once or were they... I think they did, yeah. Yeah, I think it was a lot. When we found the show was all out. Yeah. So it's on HBO Max now. Yeah.

It's highly recommended. Excellent. It kind of, you know, I don't... Sam, I don't know if you had a chance to see Lerkerish Pizza yet, but that's enough. I am not. A lot of that movie is about, like, running and momentum and young people, like, running head on into a kind of... oblivion slash sunrise where they're just like maybe this maybe tonight is going to be the best night of my life or the worst night of my life and I thought strangely it's a sin had that too.

It had like a lot of propulsion. It had a lot of like energy that is then it's all the more tragic when that energy gets like sucked out of these people's lives and their lives come to such a halt. But in a lot of ways it never really does. I mean those they live through the entire thing. Andy, what's your number 10? Guys, I'm a human like all of us. When I'm cut, I bleed. And sometimes at night, when I turn on the television set, I just want to be entertained by a interconnected cinematic and now television universe. And I had to include Loki on my list.

It was touch and go. God bless hacks, genius, God-level show that I'm probably going to regret not having on my list. But I really did feel it was important to speak up for the little guy, in this case, the Bob's. Higar, Chepec, their whole operation, their rag-tag operation down in Manhattan Beach where they made this show Loki. Jokes aside, I thought the degree of difficulty, I know no one's like feeling sorry for how challenging it is to make these incredibly successful shows, but to take these, to take this really challenging mandate of like, we want you to service our larger plot and move the ball forward a little, but also keep everything the same. And it also matters, but it doesn't. It's almost impossible from a, I feel like,

from a creative perspective to hit that sweet spot. And Michael Waldron and his collaborators on Loki got it. I feel like the show had inimitable style. It had a point of view. It had a lot of fun to it with Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson. And I just felt like they pulled it off to a degree that almost felt like they themselves were surprised by. Like, I think that of all the MCU stuff, recently, this one succeeded on its own merits. I enjoyed it as a TV show without having watched 19 films and three other prior series.

I also thought Kate Heron directed the hell out of that show. She's an excellent filmmaker who I never heard of until I saw the show. So many movie pieces, but the filmmaking is great. The production design was great. Production design is great. Their resources that they have available to them are what they are, but it's still a question of how you use it. And he still took time Michael Waldron to make an animated clock be a major character. And we need more thinking like that.

I was really impressed by the show. and I'm happy to stand for it. Sam, did you do a lot of MCU stuff? Did you watch much of it? I think, you know, you guys know my complicate. I'm not a superhero guy. So I don't, I mean, what was it? Wanda Vision, Loki, Falcon, and now Hawkeye.

I think I did not watch Hawkeye. I did watch Loki because, again, I was more taken by the filmmaking than anything else. And then what was the other ones? Falcon and Winter Shelter. Yeah. One Vision feels like it would be up your alley a little bit. I liked it up to a point,

but then when it got to the superhero stuff, I was like, not as interesting. My number 10. Wait, was Loki on your list? Loki is not on my list. But if I probably, if I was going to put an MCU thing on, I think it would probably be Loki. It would be in my top 20.

But my number 10 is a show I talked about, little bit last week. It's a show, a British comedy called Motherland, which is now available, I believe, on Sundance TV, and you can get it on like AMC Plus. It's from the Sharon Horgan umbrella of shows. She's, she's one of the co-creators. It was initially something that she was doing for US TV, I think for ABC back in 2011, and it didn't work out. And she took the pilot and retooled it. It's about a few working mothers, or rather a few mothers in a, a, London neighborhood who some some of them work, some of them don't, and one father. And it's essentially this incredibly profane, funny, candid comedy about what happens basically between when

they drop their kids off at school and have to go pick them up. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but as essentially the premise, most of the episodes start with them dropping their kids off at school and then going off. And one of the things I love the most about it, I just want to shout her up because she's probably my favorite performer of this year is Anna Maxwell Martin, who's the star of the show. And a lot of the times on sitcoms, especially ones with sort of more barbed ones, over time they soften the protagonist because they realize to have, you know, to get people to keep going with the show. And this show is on its third series and plus a Christmas special shout out to British TV. You have to soften the main character, at least in the U.S.

because after a while Michael Scott or, you know, Amy Polar on Parks, you want to feel like this person's a little bit more of an audience avatar. And they have not done that with the main character of Motherland, who remains just like basically always ready to down a white wine at lunch and is trying to figure out her life. And it's just a fantastic show. And it's really digestible if people are looking for a binge over the holidays. I highly recommend it.

So that's my number 10. Where's the show for people who drop their kids off at school and then come podcast. Where's that show? Let me speak my truth. Now, do you want me to... Also, is this the place in our list where I try to cheat and say my number 12 was feel good, the great May Martin comedy that's on Netflix because Chris mentioned a comedy

set in London and I wish I'd include it out of my list. Okay, Sam, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say that is on the Emmy's list, but we're not, you know... Feel good. Which one, feel good? Feel good, yes. Yes, but it's not number 10. It's not number 10.

We'll get there. Number 10 on her list is we are late. parts, which was one of my Honorable Mention. Yeah. It's fucking great. One of my homer mentions as well. Awesome show. Yeah. It's so good and close to my top 10, but didn't make it. But an excellent show.

Sam, keep the mic. Why don't you tell us? I'm so curious how you guys are going to feel. By the way, if Kaya wants to I know she doesn't have a top 10 this year, but definitely if she has opinions, love to hear them. But I'm so curious what you guys are going to think about this because

I don't know, I haven't really seen it lot of top tens. I think it's superbly directed, perform, production. I mean, literally, everything we just said about it's a sin. I feel like physical is my number nine.

Physical on Apple TV with Rose Byrne, which I think her performance in that show is probably one of the best performances on TV I've seen. I don't, I think it might be my favorite performance of the year. Have you guys watched the show?

Yes, and I, well, this is, I think we're probably, yeah, I agree with you about the performance. And I agree with you about the boldness of the show. I was completely in for most of the first season. I did finish the first season. But I did find, it's one of those things where I admire and respect the show on a number of levels. I know that often sounds like I'm sort of cutting it down while I'm praising it. But the whole mission of the show is to push everything, you know, to push our comfort level, our tolerance, our understanding, our perception of this character in the world that she's in. And it was diminishing returns for me by episode eight or nine.

I finished the season. It would have made my top 20 for sure. But I didn't ultimately buy into the collective vision of the first season to the degree that I had hoped. I thought it was great. I thought it was so much fun. It was one of those shows because they did do it weekly on it. I just kept refreshing the page because I wanted the next episode so bad. So I was watching it weekly.

And I mean, Lou Taylor Pucci is a fucking hilarious. He's great. There's so many little, it's even the guy who plays the campaign manager is fucking great. I don't know his name. Like there's just little pockets here and there where the show just continually surprised me. And yeah, I mean, I didn't mind them pushing it. I thought that was sort of her. the kind of window into her ED and her kind of aggressive voiceover in contrast with the way she asked.

I don't know. I thought that aggression was part of the tone of the show. It is. But it was it, but you're saying it was grading to you after a while or it didn't come together for you? Because that to me was like a feature, not a bug. I think it absolutely is a feature. And I think that, you know, and I respect everyone involved with the show for sticking to it. And Apple for greenlighting it and not.

softening in any way because it is not, you know, it's, at times it's not an easy watch. And even when it's funny in things, it is, it is, it's at 11. And I think that it's just, I found the intensity level and the lack of variance in it diminishing in terms of my overall appreciation of the show over the course of the first season. But it's one of those ones where, yeah, would have made my long list. And I'm very interested to see what else they want to do with this character in this world and where they're going to, how they're going to push it forward. Sam, I don't want to get lost in what would obviously be. like a 90-minute conversation

about the difference between movies and TV. But when you were watching physical, where you were like, this should be a feature and this is the kind of feature that doesn't get made anymore really. And it would have been

like a very cool, like, character study about a kind of somewhat small-town crime, great setting, great time period, great lead performance, great ensemble around it. Does that stuff ever pop up for you when you're watching TV now? Well, I think,

I was going to talk about this with my next pick, but I'll kind of preview it a little bit. One of the things that I loved about a lot of the TV, especially the TV that's on my list, but a lot of the TV in general that came out this year, was the fact that it did not feel so old-fashioned TV, that it did feel this quasi-middle ground between short-term or movies, short-term,

what's it called? short form storytelling versus short form storytelling versus long form. There is this weird middle ground where people are, filmmakers are really experimenting. And no, I'd have to say, look, could physical be a movie? I don't know. I mean, I'd have to see the whole, you know, I have to see the whole story.

But for me, it was this sort of weird in-between thing that it was trying to do. Because even though it had the serialized storyline, which is not like breaking any sort of groundbreaking territory, right now, but it does have this tone. I hate saying it this way, because this always sounds pretentious, too. It does have this, like, sort of cinematic tone that felt like you were going to watch one story. But I like that.

I like that about it. And again, when we get to my other picks, that feeling of, like, oh, I think they have an ending in mind. That doesn't scare, I lean in more. because the one thing I do hate, and we've talked about this with other shows, is when I know they don't fucking have an ending in mind. And the point of the show is to spin the wheels

and just like have you hang out. Like to me, that feels like a wasted time. For me, I love that there's a momentum to the story and that it feels purposeful. It feels like there's an ending that they're driving towards. So again, I don't think you should be helped. You're right, Chris, that this could have been a movie, but I liked it because of that.

Go ahead, sorry, Andy. I was just going to say, Sam, you shouldn't hold yourself to any, like, round-robin tournament format. Use your number eight if it's part of the same argument. Yeah. Okay, so I don't even know if you guys have seen this show, maybe not even heard of this show,

because no one I know knows about it, but Mr. Corman on Apple TV. Oh, the Joseph Gordon-11 show. Yeah. We didn't. I watched the first episode. I didn't. It's fucking great.

It is fucking great. And the way he experiments with form every episode. It's unlike any show you'll ever see. I mean, or that you have seen. I've certainly not seen anything resembling anything like it. The way he is playing with storytelling and the way he's playing with style and sort of, like, like the premise of the show is it's about a, I think, a middle school teacher. But that has nothing to do with the.

sort of draw of what that show is really about, which I think he's doing a lot of things. He's like, there's a lot of stylistic choices that make you feel like, okay, well, maybe I'm watching a filmmaking, a filmmaker just experiment from time to time. But then there are experiments where it's just two characters talking and it's very human and very grounded in. There's zero style. I mean, it just shows the elasticity of TV storytelling and the future of TV story talking. This show, like, unlike any other show to me, showed me like, oh, there is, there's like a whole new version of TV that we have not yet seen yet. And this show, I think, like, is like kind of raising a flag to that. Go ahead. And I think that what we've just, no,

no, I just think that it's, it's really worthwhile to jump on that and say that, like, a content that we've seen from you, Sam and talking to you about this over the years is that what motivates you and what gets you excited is when there is a creator or a series of creators or filmmakers who have a very specific idea or story that has a full shape to it. And then they look at the options available to them and say, this is the right vessel to put it in, right? Whether it's a feature film or I could have 10 episodes, I'm going to break these episodes up in this way, not being beholden to any kind of convention, but this makes sense to have it be 10 half hours or four hours total or whatever. And then they get the full expression of that idea. What you don't have time for is,

is, you know, first of all, an old-fashioned model of like, I've got a hospital. And we'll just see how many years this can go. Obviously, that's not, that type of show doesn't really make it make any of our lists. But to your point, like, that's why, and, you know, we're breaking the convention a little bit of the podcast here. But like, Underground Railroad, Barry Jenkins show is on my list at number six. It's almost, you know, as Chris and I struggled, you know, talking about it when it debuted. And then even, you know, we expressed this in our interview with

Barry, when he was kind enough to come on the podcast, is basically like, this show could be my number one. It could not be on the list. It's so sui generis. It's so totally unique. But what you can say about it, what you can say a lot about it, and we ought to, is that Barry Jenkins was deeply moved and inspired by Colson Whitehead's book. And he thought about the ways what he wanted to bring to the story, what he felt was worth saying within the story and adding to the story of the book. And what made sense for him was this shape, which was 10 episodes, one, you know, some episodes or over an hour. One episode is like 20 minutes.

And it is unlike anything else you're going to see on any screen this year. It is completely transporting. It's moving. It's challenging in a lot of ways. But our TV screens were the right vessel for it. And we got to see unadulterated, one of our best filmmakers, pouring himself into something. And not comparing Joseph Gordon Levin and Barry Jenkins as artists or filmmakers, but that is a common thread, I think, in the two shows or in many of the shows that you're interested in talking about.

Absolutely. And, and, you know, for me, Underground Railroad, like, to me, that's, you know, Barry Jenkins. I mean, he's the goat, right? Like, there's not a, there's not like a, in terms of just craft, there's not a miss beat. There's, there's just, I mean, the guy just, he just hits every mark out of 10 every single time. And that show should not have been as, as easy for me to watch as it was. I know there were. there was like this kind of thing going around on social media where people didn't want to binge it and shouldn't have been a weekly thing. I mean, for me, it's difficult as the story was and watching the characters go through what they were going through. The filmmaking just elevated it to this. You're almost watching that like you're just watching a master painting on the canvas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I like what you said. So, you know, that one, episode that was 20 minutes and you know and doesn't even consist of any of the main characters so that's what Mr. Corman does literally every episode and and

I mean you know with varying degrees and it's an ongoing series that's one thing I want to point out because I do see a lot of experimentation going on in the limited series right I mean we saw that especially like I mean dude it was stacked this year I mean I remember when the Emmys came around I mean honestly a lot of them were just like

you know, just masterpieces on their own. It was hard to, it was hard to compare. My number one show last year was in that category. I may destroy it. So the fact that Mr.

Corman is an ongoing series, or I mean, it got canceled, which is sad, but was planned to be an ongoing series and was as experimental as it was. I just, I don't know. I'd say tell your viewers,

or I guess I'm telling your viewers, give it a shot. Yeah, you're telling our listeners. Yeah. Or you're listeners. You're listening. So you guys are all talking about pushing the boundaries. And I, obviously, adore Underground Railroad. If I had a top 11, it would be right there. And if you ask me on Tuesday, I might have it as high as either of you. But a next couple of my picks are shows that I feel like are doing really interesting work somewhat more within the framework, not of like, quote unquote, traditional TV, because I can't imagine either of these shows ever having been on at any other time. but my number nine pick is for all mankind, and my number eight pick is yellow jackets. And those are two shows that I think have DNA with other TV shows that you would have seen before, whether it's lost or whether it's Battlestar Galactica, because obviously they're on more connection. But for all mankind has had its leap season, at least in my opinion, on Apple,

and did that thing that I think we love so much in TV, which is just that kind of, of go for broke feeling of when the writers and the creative people behind a television show are just like, we're emptying the fucking notebook right now and like we'll worry about season three when we make it. And yet there is also kind of an architecture to the show where when you get to the end of season two and I don't want to give anything away

for people who haven't gotten a chance to see it and you kind of feel, you understand where the show is going. You're like, oh, you guys knew all along what you were going to do with this. And just in terms of scope and scale and feel like is a pretty tremendous achievement of sci-fi filmmaking, I think, like on a week-to-week basis and has some of the old-school right stuff vibes of like, this is the tactile, mechanical way that you build these things. And then there is also just the like, what if you could dream it, it can happen element to it. Some great performances. And I just really adore for all mankind. I don't, didn't, nobody else had that.

Sam's not on your list? It's on my list, but it was earlier in the year, and it dropped down to honorable mention, sadly. But I totally agree with you. I only, this is all due to Alan Seppin-law. I had not watched the first season. He started raving about the second season. So I went back and re-watched the first season

and was like, oh, it was pretty good. And then the second season, you're absolutely right. It just kicks it up to another level. I mean, that show does feel a little like old-school TV in the way it's a way it's a little. assembled, yeah, especially the ensemble nature. ABC plot, yeah. ABC storyline, yeah, absolutely.

But Ron Moore, he just executes it on such a high level. And I mean, he always has that it's, it feels new and it feels very, like what you said. And I think maybe ultimately that's why I appreciate the show. Like, oh, they know where they're going. You can't do that ending in season two without making sure everything is dialed in so perfectly that it hits in the right way. It's pretty great. You guys should do Yellow Jackets because you brought it up.

I think that two of the three of us have it. Well, I have a question to you about Yellow Jackets. Have you seen more than me? I've seen a little bit more than you. I haven't seen the end, but I think that my overall feeling for the show stands. Okay. So this show, when I've watched it, I started watching it whenever it came out on Showtime, it was at number nine, then watched another episode, then went up to number seven.

at this point, it's number three. Whoa. Yes. Wow. Because it's fucking great. Yes. And I honestly thought, man, if I see the whole season, it could be number one. I mean, it's that good. It's that fucking good. And we'll get to Andy's like, you know, weird criticism about the show. But I think the show, I mean, it does something that I haven't really seen in movies or TV.

it shifts tone and genre so deftly. It's like one time it's, you know, one second, it's a survival story, one second, it's like a gruesome, violent horror. A horror movie, yeah. Yeah. And then it's a coming of age story that's sweet and tender. And then it's desperate housewives.

And then it's desperate house. It's so, it's fucking phenomenal in the way that it shifts gears. And again, the filmmaking, I think Karen Kassama directed the, the first couple of episodes, top, top notch, the needle drops. I mean, I'm getting, I mean, you guys grew up in the 90s along with me. Like, you know, when you start seeing that stuff, it, you know, when they start doing the needle drops and they pick all the top 40 songs from the 90s, it starts to get a little

annoying. I think they did a pretty good job of picking, you know, top hits, but then some obscure shit and mixed in there. and it's just, there's something about it that feels extremely authentic, but extremely stylized at the same time. And to pull that combination off, I don't know. By the way, and it's got this weird sci-fi element. Yeah, it's essentially like an insanely dense plot, plot, plot genre show that also has this like extra layer of meta-commentary on like 90s alternative culture getting old. And,

it feels very much drawn from the aesthetic of listening to Hull and listening to the breeders and listening to those bands. And yeah, I mean, it's just been such an awesome watch on a week-to-week basis. It's probably the most excited I've been. Like, after one, I think it's one of the best pilots I've ever seen. Well, not ever, but for a while. I've not seen a great pilot like that, where I just felt energized and excited. And then the fact that the second episode,

did not let me down. In fact, it just, again, like I said, it kept jumping up in my top 10. I just can't wait to see the rest of the show. And I honestly don't know if I've, because the other thing about this show is that there is a mystery box element to it. It really is a grab bag of every, like, sort of popular TV genre and they somehow mix it together in this really elegant way. Anyway, Andy, go ahead. Let's see. In my defense. I'm not even going to name. say, in my defense, I'll say that at this moment in culture, this year, the reasons for not having something on a list or not watching something are very complicated and more diverse than they've ever been, you know, especially... But you don't like this show. It's not that it's not on your list.

Well, here's what I want to say. So I didn't, as a critic, I had to watch things, all the things, and then continue to watch them, except in like particularly egregious cases, past the pilot. And there were things that I then learned to like. You know, there were, there are shows that find their footing. There are shows that find you at the wrong time when you first engage with them. There's shows that don't fit into the fabric of your life. And I think that that is especially true at the moment when everything is available to you by choice. And it's not just, am I going to watch this new show or this new show? It's, am I going to watch the Fox noir films, the Criterion Channel just threw up this weekend when you have the small choice to do it. So in the case of the two shows you're mentioning,

I am not here to say that they are bad. There are shows. that it may be on your list, Sam, that I will put my, you know, I'll stamp on the record as disliking. For all mankind, I am pretty convinced I would love the second season of, and I am excited to engage with it. That was the pilot hurdle. I watched the pilot, and it felt fine, totally competent, but not especially exhilarating, to use the words, you know, the feeling you're talking about, Sam, that we're all chasing now with pilots and pursuit of something new. I wasn't motivated to continue, especially knowing I had to get there. And I've heard that from people, you know, from listeners of the podcast about a number of things

and ranging everything from succession to halt and catch fire, the leftovers, people who say, like, this is my favorite show. But man, it took me a while to get there. So I'm probably wrong about that. Yellowjackets, pilot turned me off. Just turn me off. But the way you speak about it. Why?

The way two people that speak about it means that it probably caught me on the wrong Tuesday, you know, and I need to re-engenget. with it and give it a shot on its own terms because it's not it's not qualitatively bad it might even be great and i wasn't feeling it i wasn't feeling it and it might be as simple as the particular ingredients in its story smoothie just didn't taste good together for me when i was watching i was put off by it but you don't like violent stuff right like you don't like a lot of violence i don't like violent stuff that feels you know and again chris knows better than anyone, maybe other than our listeners, that I have a hair trigger these days with new stuff

and accepting things on their own terms. So I'm not saying that this is what Yellow Jackets does, but in my viewing of it, it was the type of hyperviolence that felt untethered to emotion or context or character or humanity that leaves me feeling kind of dead. Oh, wow. Well, that to me is the shocker, because I think there's a lot of humanity in the show. But if you continue on, I mean, but I felt it in the first episode. I don't know, Chris, didn't you? Yeah, but I also, I don't mind violence untethered to humanity. Well, yeah, I mean, but I don't think, but I don't think it is untethered.

Yeah, I agree with you, but I don't think it is. Either way, I'm fine. Speaking of hyperviolence, I feel like now is as good a time as any to talk about the taste sensation of 2021 Squid Game, which is on my list. It's on my list. It's on my list. Number nine. Sam, is that on your list? Of course it is.

Number six, it's number five. Yeah. Okay, so we've, this is one of those ones. And I think Chris and I talked about it a lot on the show already. I think we're mostly interested in Sam, your perspective on it. But the excitement, you know, that this show brought just on its own merits on TV is one thing, but also just like the conversation about TV and the way people felt about it. And the way it did feel like a global phenomenon was truly thrilling.

And the only other thing that I'll say about it. about it at this moment is, okay, jokes about me being a cowardice side or reality about it being aside. Did you actually watch this show? You watched it from a good game. I loved it. You didn't close your eyes. Did you close your eyes? No. I loved it. Wow. And Sam, you can speak to this directly. It's not necessarily something as premeditated as as cowardice, but when people get the opportunity to tell a story that is going to cost a company money or a lot of eyeballs are on it or There's a lot of expectations. Conservative mission creep can start, you know.

And I say this on the podcast all the time. I probably don't say it enough to you, but I cite the time when you and I sat down for the first time with our friends from UCP, the studio, and you wanted to make Breyer Patch, which was awesome. And I came in there, armed with all my ideas for season two and three about what else is going to happen to Allegra. And you were like, why would you make it boring? Like, why would you make it conventional?

Tell the whole story. And it was a really chastening moment for me because I had spent all these years as a critic being like, do the bold thing, everyone. And as soon as I had my chance at the ring, I was like, let's slow down the merry-go-round. I bring this up in context of Squid Game is because it's not that it was particularly new,

although it was definitely pushed certain things in a lot of directions. It was just so totally and wholly fearless and committed to its own bit that it was absolutely electric. And that as much as anything else is why I love the show. I couldn't have said it better

and I want to add to the conversation because let's not forget that there were three big budgeted really big budget shows that came out this year Foundation based on a huge Asmoff property

the wheel of time and invasion I mean we're talking a lot of money on these shows but the cultural conversation was around you know, a Korean show that was a fraction of that budget that was incredibly violent.

And like you said, took a bunch of risks. And I think the opposite is happening when you have to put down a lot of money. Although, you know, I will say this. Like, I think one of the reasons why Game of Thrones was such a huge success is because a lot of money was thrown down and they took a lot of risks. You know what I mean? Yeah. One doesn't mean the opposite.

Exactly. Exactly. And I feel like that's the, to me, that's, I, look, I don't understand the phenomenon of Skid game. That should have been a show that I discovered on Netflix and loved it and told a few friends. I don't understand how, weren't people in like the Midwest watching it too. Like, it was literally. Number one around planet Earth.

Yeah. It was insane. And it had no right to be. But it was exactly what you said, Andy. its commitment and fearlessness was, I think it was just contagious. It was infectious. And it was new. I mean, look, sure, you know, the idea of rich people being mean to poor people

or playing games with poor people, you know, that concept. But the way this was executed and in the style that it was executed. And honestly, I think culturally, the fact that we're looking at it through the lens of a Korean filmmaker, or Korean showrunner. It felt completely fresh. It was completely fresh. So, yeah, 100% like, to me, that Squid Game is,

you know, was a showrunner, also the filmmaker? Yeah. Yes. I think, to me, that's probably one of the things that I admire most about that show, is that it was, it was, you could tell

that there was a vision from beginning to end that was never compromised, that someone told them you have a show and left them alone, or left him alone. Isn't that also the difference between what you're talking about in the beginning without getting into specifics

or even disparaging any of those shows like Foundation or Wheel of Time or Invasion where it's like, that's like making a show to answer a question, you know what I mean? Or making a show to sort of fill out the other end of an equation.

And Squid Game feels literally like it was just like parachuted down from somewhere where from Art Mountain where they were like, hey, we made, we told this story exactly the way we wanted to tell it. He had been working on that show for about a decade. You know, I mean, like that, that was something that was so fully realized.

And you're right, Sam, felt so unfucked with. Well, because I think, you know that dumb question that always gets asked, who's the audience for this? The minute you start asking, the minute the creator or the filmmakers or anybody in the writing team starts asking that question, that's when you get really safe shit that nobody cares about. Or maybe it'll have viewership, but it won't be part of the conversation

because it won't have that kind of sort of relevance that I think you have when you're like, I'm making this shit for me. I mean, I think that's what the Squid Game filmmaker did, the creator did. He knew what he liked. He knew what excited him as a storyteller. And he went out and executed that. And honestly, that to me, look, that can, And that's not to say that that's like a recipe for, you know, you're not going to get like A plus

material every time that a person goes out and does that. But at the same time, it's to me the best path of finding something this. I guess the way you described it, Chris, parachuted out, like this original. I mean, again, I'm not saying that the concept is that original, but the way he blended all those elements together really, to me, just, yeah, it just felt like of its own. And, you know, again, to keep harping back on this point, this is where TV gets super exciting, because I don't think you would have seen that 20 years ago. Not a foreign language, you know, show where you have to read subtitle. Well, hopefully, if you have the settings, right, on Netflix, you read the subtitles.

Being this much of a phenomenon, no, that doesn't happen. Let me just in the spirit of moving things along, let me give you my number eight, which you probably could have seen on television at other points in history, which is Emily Mortimer's adaptation of The Pursuit of Love on Amazon Prime. I adored the show. It's a British costume drama, but it is absolutely not old-fashioned. They're punk needle drops. There's brilliant performances from Lily James and Andrew Scott, the hot priest from Fleabag, as well as Dominic West, who people know from The Wire and the affair, but actually, having the time of his life as a kind of insane dog hunting obsessed, a fox hunting obsessed.

He has a lot of dogs. English Lord, it is powerful, it is concise, it is three hours of your viewing time, and it's just expertly and beautifully made. I loved it. And, you know, sometimes these top 10 lists are just about shining that light on things that may have slipped through the cracks. I have never even heard of it. So now that I have, I will check it out.

So, Andy, that was your number seven? I think that was my number eight. We're sort of sliding around. Okay. Well, I want to throw out. I mean, is number seven because it's also on my honorable mention. I think you two like it. I've heard you talk about it, which is Love Life.

It did not make my top 10. Sadly, it was close. It didn't make either one of you. It's on my honorable mentions. It's our long list. It's so good this year. I mean, I really like the first season. Andy, I know you had problems with the first season, which you're wrong about.

But the second season just is so fucking great. And William Jackson Harper, I mean, that guy's a star. He's our best TV star. I don't even mean that to make him smaller than a movie star. I just think he's magic. He's totally charismatic and phenomenal and sells any material he's in, including Underground Railroad. I could watch him and Jessica Williams together all day long.

It's one of the best romantic comedies I've seen in a while. Okay, I'm done sliding around. Chris, do you want to? No, well, I was just going to say, Andy and I can actually, we'll table this one because I was going to say Succession is my number seven. Holy shit. wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what happened here? What do you mean? Because it's too low?

This is you, yes. Both you and Andy, love you dedicate half your podcast to this show. It's not a, it's everything that is above succession here, I think was extraordinary. I thought suggestion was extraordinary this season. I just think that I have a tendency to over probably emphasize newer stuff or things that came to a conclusion in this season or in this year. So that usually winds up pushing. This isn't the first time succession has wound up gotten pushed down a little bit.

I also think that in past years, we've probably said it at the time, there was definitely a year recently where I had a top five and then there was other stuff I liked. You know, this year, the quality was so high. I don't even know if we officially are on the record agreeing with what you were saying at the top Sam because I think we both agree top seven, eight on my list. I just, I can't tear it past that. Like I love all this stuff.

That said, that's crazy low, Chris. You're insane. Where did you have success? Number two. Number two. Okay. We've talked a lot about succession. So we don't have to belabor it anymore.

Yes. Sam, why don't you go next? So my number seven, I know is a show that Andy has not seen. I think you've seen it, Chris. I don't know if it's on your list. Midnight Mass. Of course, man. It's not on my list, but I did see it.

Yeah. And I thought you would like it. Oh, it's not on your list. Yeah. I mean, it would be on the 20, but it's not. I think it's the best thing he's ever done. I think it's really challenging. I thought it...

What would you put up with it? Like, I thought it was better to hunting of Hill House. Oh, do you mean just the shows or his movies, too? His movies, too. I mean, yeah, I think it's better... I think Hill House, I still have that over this.

Wow. Yeah. I think this is one of those shows where I... First of all, the endings of every... I couldn't stop watching it. You know, there were... parts of the show because it is like a really meditative, you know, very slowly-paced show.

And it's really talking about large themes about life and faith. And so, you know, I'm watching the episode going, okay, this will be good. And I'll turn in after this episode. And this motherfucker at the end of every episode hits you with like the craziest cliffhanger that grabs you by the throat and just drags you into the next episode. I could not stop watching it. it's pretty fucking excellent, especially the filmmaking. He monologues a lot, and I know that I've heard criticism about it.

I fucking love all his monot. I just thought this is his best writing, best filmmaking. I love this show. Yeah, Hamish Linklet are one of the performances of the year. Hamish, oh my God. Who's also an Angeline, by the way. Let me. Oh, so Sam, do you have another one?

I'm just going to throw out. Keep motoring through. Emmys, well, I guess this is number of six. Call my agent. Was that on either one of your list? Do you know about this show? I love that show and got in a lot. I feel like I bored everyone talking about it,

but I think that the fourth season fell off so dramatically that I may never recover. Wow. Yeah. Wow. I could, I barely could finish it. I, after adoring the first three seasons. I don't watch it, so I'll report back to Emmy. Okay.

You can bring her in at any time. She can crash into this podcast like the Kool-Aid man at any moment. Well, Andy, what about? you, what's your number of seven? Are we at number seven? Well, yeah, we're at seven for me is something that we're going to talk about later, so we can table it, but it's the White Lotus for me.

That's seven. And we can, well, I know that's coming up higher on other lists, so we can move past it, and then six is Underground Railroad, then we're into my top five, so where should we go next? The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the

finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff wishes, swishes, 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. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for, that's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back.

Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas.

Terms apply. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the eight. atmosphere and a crowd. But too often, life gets busy. Or the price holds you back. Priceline is here to help you make it happy.

With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Price Line. Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. Well, Sam, what about you? What's your next one? Okay, so my next one, Dave.

Are we at Dave yet? Oh, wow. Do any of you have Dave? Talk about it. Tell us about it. You guys don't love Dave. I don't think I've laughed harder at a show than Dave this year. I think it's by far the best comedy.

Just in terms of pure laughs. But then on top of that, I think there's something about what he's exploring in terms of narcissism in the context of what. like, you know, modern culture, tech and social media. There's just something about the way he's like sort of self-deprecating, which in and of itself is narcissism, while at the same time sort of actually digging, digging around. I don't know, there's something about the way he kind of scratched that topic

that felt very unique. Because generally speaking, I don't love a lot of shows that try and be didactic about, well, here's the problem, Twitter and Texas. and we're not all alone. Like, I mean, I get, like, but Dave finds a kind of very human, human way to tackle that

that doesn't feel condescending or overly simplified, but at the same time, it's just really fucking funny. And I got, I got also, just to say it too, the filmmaking is pretty extraordinary. I think the performances are great.

Even, you know, again, the little side characters, like, they're all just doing really unique, funny stuff. Yeah. And I think it got better, you know, from, I love the first season. And then I think they talked to the second season. So yeah, Dave. Which, by the way, I believe is also on Emmy's list.

On Emmy's list. I'm realizing it's not really reflective of what I'm looking for here in TV, but very low on comedy because feel good and hacks probably stupidly. And Girls 5Eva and these shows that I really did enjoy didn't crack the top 10. But the next one that I want to bring up. Yeah. What we do in the shadows? which I thought was kind of had an off year, but it's still always good.

But staying in the realm of FX, which I think has the best comedy development there is, is a show that is my number five, but could be any could be four, three, two, or one. It was reservation dogs. Is that on your list, Sam? Did you check it out? It's honorable mention. I just, you know, we talked about it a lot in the show and we had Sterling Harjo on to talk about it. But I just, the feeling that I want to go back to is what you were saying, Sam, about the exact.

You feel when you when a show locks in, you know, and it could go in any direction and you're there for it. And there's something almost more exciting about where Reservation Dogs is right now than almost any other show on the list because you could feel it finding its legs that this can be a hilarious, goofy stoner comedy, or it can be a heist movie, or it can be incredibly compelling emotional storytelling about generational trauma. It can do all of those things. It can do all of them at once, and it doesn't really see the distinction between them. And I love that. I mean, like Atlanta before it, it's an unfair comparison because Atlanta is continually our shared number one, I think, whatever year that it's on. It has that thing where it could be anything.

And it's just, it's really exciting to know where it's, to not know where it's going to go next. Well, look, I think I agree with everything you said. I think the show is excellent. By the way, that is old school TV too. It's characters. It's a setting. It's a world. It's a vibe.

It's something they haven't seen. come out and you hang. And you're right. It does do the, it does take that experimental form of expanding its tone and really zinging when it's zagging. I mean, there are moments in that show where I'm laughing, I'm laughing and then it hits me with this like heartfelt thing where I'm like, well, holy shit, okay. I didn't know you could do that. And with characters or with actors, I didn't know we're strong enough to do that until that moment happens. And I'm like, oh, you're really good. And, you know, it's a lot. also the writing and the filmmaking.

There's also, you know, to me, you know, FX has like a, you know, sometimes the comedies can be mean. I mean, I know Dave has a lot of like, you know, everyone's cutting each other down. Reservation Dogs has that to some extent, but it's like, I think it's misleading. It's really more about people that care about each other. Oh, yeah. So much. Versus people trying to tear each other down for the humor.

And I think that feels really special. It's a kind show ultimately. It is. It is. Yeah. The run of episodes that I think really lit me and Andy up. That three episode run towards the second half of the season, I think it's, what is? It's five, six, seven, Andy or something like that. It would basically showcase episodes for each character and you get this on. Right. When they were switching.

You know, with a lady with the hooves and, I mean, and the Bill Burr episode. It's really a knockout. And I'm excited for more people to discover it during its hiatus. Yeah. So that's, that was actually my number three shows. the year. I'll go number five or number four here, which is the Northwater, which is Andrew Hayes miniseries starring Jack O'Connell and Colin Farrell set on a whaling ship in the 19th century. It's essentially like a very, you know, classical story about man versus nature, man versus man. Are you man versus the devil? Yeah, the focus here guys is man.

But in terms of transporting you to another place, in terms of truly elite, kind of as good as it can get filmmaking told over the course of several hours, in terms of like that sense of, I mean, for this show specifically, we were talking about Squid Game, but this is another one that I felt like

it just tumbled out of Andrew Hay as a complete statement artistically. It's just the show that probably has stuck with me the most in a lot of ways. I found it like haunting. I thought it was strong the entire run through. It's a couple of different shows within it. I think it kind of changes over the course of the run.

It's definitely not for the week of heart, but it is a really rewarding watch, I think, if people can catch up with it. And it's really like, the one that I think I will keep thinking about years to come. It's on my list, Chris. I've heard you rave about it. I haven't gotten to.

I think you will really, really, really like it. Yeah, it's really good. It's really worthwhile. I'm glad we're showcasing it. Sam, you're next. Okay, so my number four, which, again, this is a show I don't hear anyone talking about. People did talk about it a lot. And I think this is probably its best season, is Master of None.

Did you guys check out the new season? I did. I watched it. And your thoughts? I thought it was really interesting. Like, I thought it was... Wow. Yeah, but I didn't look.

love it. I thought it was brilliant. I honestly, I thought it was a masterpiece. When Emmy and I finished it, by the way, it's on, it's her number one. Oh, wow. I thought it was, it was, it reminded me more of Bergman than scenes from a marriage did. Let me put it that way. The filmmaking was so controlled and so precise. The performances by Lena Waite and Naomi Aki, you can't do better than what they're doing from episode to episode. It's funny, but not in that kind of, I don't want to say broad, because the show is never broad, but not in that sort of one-liner kind of way that the show was more used to. It's just very, it's just a great observation on human behavior in this really authentic way. And again,

with a world that isn't shown a lot on TV or movies. And I just thought it was the most, I guess the word precise keeps coming up, but it was kind of perfect to me from beginning to end. There was never a dull moment. There was never a, like a weird tonal thing or anything. And where the camera was and these long takes, where he just, what he does with blocking,

which is incredibly hard talking about Aziz. who I think directed all the episodes. It's a brilliant piece of filmmaking. Brilliant show. Did you watch it, Andy? I started it. I find it aesthetically, incredibly compelling. I absolutely am connecting with what you're saying about the consideration of the framing of the filmmaking,

all the care and thought put into every detail of it. There was something that ultimately left me cold about it. Like there was a, there was just like one, one track missing from it to make it bloom and come alive. But I have nothing but praise for, you know, of the objective talent and skill and care on display. It's tough. I remember, by the way, I finally caught up on Better Call Saul. So I'm going to like hang with you guys next season because I think it's coming out next year. I still stand.

I think I basically feel. the way about Barracol Sol with what you just said about master of them, the craftsmanship off the charts. The world, I don't know. I don't know if I'm getting that engaged. This, I think just that world. You never wanted to hang in Albuquerque that much. I think we can all agree. Byer Pat's ruined that for me.

No, no, no. No, thank you. But anyway, I think it's great. And by the way, I don't know how many people have seen it. Again, this is another show where I think most of my friends have not seen the new show. By the way, can we talk about that? I don't know. We're probably way over. But I do want to ask this question, though.

When a show is so hot like Master of None was, and then it just, I feel like the conversation just gets sapped. And not really because of the drop of quality or anything like that. What do you think that is? Because it happens

from time to time. I mean, and it happens in reverse, too. Of the last few. I mean, obviously Master of None is different because this is sort of a discreet. like separate show. I think even they said it was Masters of Nunn, colon moments and love or moments of love. It was a master of none presents or something. Yeah, it's supposed to be viewed differently. But Sam, there's not a lot of

second or third seasons on our list. And if, and I think even my ranking succession may have suffered for just the simple fact of its existence for a couple of years. Part of a consequence of like the just sheer amount of stuff is that you tend to overweight new stuff, I think. Or I do. Well, TV is in that sense, it has become movies and that it is event, you know, it is what's new, what's next. And a lot of the shows, and we're starting to see maybe a slight return, you know, re, well, I would say a return, basically. But there was an overweighing of limited an event series. I mean, that's just kind of where TV was for a minute until some things started to break through and remind people that, oh, no, there's still a huge swath of the country that wants their stories to go on week to week, you know, or year to year. I think it's also, we have to mention also without getting into any details, but Aziz's own personal journey over the last few years in the tabloids and also just in terms of how all of that played into the reception of the show without question in terms of whether people were willing to meet it on its own terms or talk about it or consider it at all separate and apart from his own life off of the screen.

Fairly or unfairly. Andy, what do you have next here? So we're getting into the top two or three for this group. We're into my top four. We've already talked about it to Sin. So my number four, and again, it's pick-em. These could have gone in any slot. It's time for Chris and I to go back to Delco and talk about Mayor of Easttown.

We certainly covered this show robustly at the top of the year. Not much more to say about it unless we want to break out our Delco accents. This is my number two. Yeah. We, I loved everything about this show. And we were already in the tank for it because of the Philly location and because it's a murder mystery with a phenomenal Kate Winslow performance. But I think the thing that really sold it for us, as we said back at the top of the year, was kind of what you were saying, Sam, about reservation dogs is that this show ultimately had a very kind heart. And I think a very almost sweet optimism about humanity underneath the layers of literally the layers, because it's fucking cold.

in Philly, but also of tater tots and all the other affectations. And I found that really moving, especially in the finale. Again, no spoilers. But there's a scene of emotional catharsis with Kate Winslet and Julian Nicholson that I'll be thinking about for a long time. Let me ask you guys this question, because, you know, I grew up in South Jersey, been to Philly a handful of time. I've also been out in the PA.

Yeah. Woods of PA. I have never heard that fucking accent that strong. Never in my fucking life. Are you telling me that that's real? You got to get off the blue root pal. Oh, yeah. I have never, never.

No. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Sam, what are you talking about? I'm not saying it's not there, but as thick as they made it out to be in this show, I never heard. I never heard that. Maybe I haven't gone as far west of P.

Like the bar, like big nosos in Ridley, Ridley Township. We'll walk in there. We'll be warmly received, no doubt, as long as we're dressed in full Eagles regalia, or maybe we're just dressed as gritty. Like, you'll, it is the music of our youth, Sam. I know what you're saying, though, Sam, because sometimes you watch The Departed and you're just like,

wait a second. Did I, like, in my whole time of Boston, did anybody actually talk like this? But, but, yeah, I think that the, yeah, the accents are pretty accurate. I agree with Andy. I also thought that Mayor of East Town was really fascinating to watch like the show kind of satisfied the two camps of of TV, which is the sort of stable recurring character study. I want to be with these people part and also the mystery at the heart.

And we're all going to be citizens, citizen detectives trying to figure out who solved. Yeah. Who committed this crime before the end of the series. Sam, did you get a chance to watch mayor? I did watch it. It did not make my list. You know, I think, I agree. Kate Winslet performance is, I mean, there's a moment, I think, in like the second or third episode, when one of the people she's interrogating just dresses her down.

And I think a lesser actor was just broken down and cried, but she just holds it all in. And you can see it, even though she, a tear is not, there's not one. tear shed. You could you could just see it in her eyes that she is just heartbroken. To me, that show is her, is Kate Winslet. It's, and Evan Peters. I mean, those two are, oh my God, are done my God. And wait, can I just jump in and say maybe the best performer of the year was Gene Smart

between Hacks and Marevistown? And I'm also saying it because the longer this podcast goes on, the more I want to go back to 10 and change it to Hax. I feel foolish. But she is just a national treasure. By the way, Hax is not on anyone's look Because it almost was on mine It's on Emmys at number five But it's not on another list

Kaya Thank you Kaya His comedy corner Reserrected It's been on my list Depiction of comedy I really love that show Yeah

Hacks is amazing And Can we talk about a little bit There's going to be more That's also what's exciting about it You know It's not one and done It's just getting going

It's great It's a great show Okay, we're up in the rarefied air now, guys. I think that should we just get succession off the board? We've been talking about it nonstop. We just, Sam, we're recording this on a Monday. We just talked to Jesse Armstrong about it. You know, people don't need to hear more about why we love it.

But it's my number two. And, you know, I just think in terms of, yeah, I love shows that a lot of people love because it's fun to be a part of the conversation. But I just think it's the most exquisitely insightful, emotional storytelling on TV and the best writing consistently and probably pound for pound the best cast and performances. But it's off the board.

Sam, we know you didn't watch the season, which is absolutely your prerogative in choice. What else you got up top? What else is up floating at the top for you? Maybe it's time to do the big one for you. Well, yeah, it is because we've done yellow jackets, which was my number three. Underground Railroad is my number two.

So number one, which is this your number one too, Chris? No. It's not on my list. Oh, the shit. It's not on your list. We're getting to it. White Lotus? I thought it was on all of our list.

Kaya, would it be on your list? Did you watch White Lotus, Kaya? Of course it's on Kaya's list. It's probably number one. It was my number one show of the year. There we go. Okay, Sam, talk about it. She's doing.

I mean, for a show to actually send up white privilege without indulging it, that's just what Mike White does with that first of all okay let me back up

here's a show that's like you know got the mystery box right you get the little the murder mystery and teased in the

first episode it's set in a resort and it's kind of all played for laughs you start introducing and meeting these characters

and in this Mike White kind of way you get this sort of offbeat quirky tone to everything. And then it does this sly thing as you start going through

the season where it's actually interrogating what white privilege really looks like. But not in this like didactic way and not in this condescending way, in this really kind of I don't want to say the word sincere, but this honest

sort of because I don't think Mike White hates any of his characters, but he hates what they do. and the way he balances that, the way he sort of includes their pathology while also showing them do these horrific things. I mean, I don't want to spoil the ending,

but what he does with Jennifer Coolidge, who you do love for the most part of the season and then sort of rips the rug right from underneath you. I think what you said is really... It's just... Yeah, go ahead. I think what we said is really important, especially for people who may have been on the fence,

about Mike White in the past, which is that it's a crucial distinction. He does not have hatred in his heart for these characters. He actually has an incredibly open and enlightened to reference a past Mike White show view of the essential humanity in all of them. What he hates, and we all, I think, hate is the structures of the world that we all bend ourselves into and that results in, you know, behavior. He does not ever absolve them of their responses. for their complicity into the larger picture of the world, but he also looks at them and gives them

enough runway and space to be more than that, or at least have the potential being more than that, which makes the end of the series even more heartbreaking. And I think it's also worth saying there's a reason in addition to the high quality of performances and everything that, and production that White Lotus really resonates for a lot of creative people, I think, in the town, which is that it's the dream that not everyone can pull off. You mentioned at the beginning, Sam, that, like, this show only exists because Casey Blois, the head of HBO was like, Mike, you write fast. Is there something you could get up on its feet under COVID restrictions?

And he was like, yes, I could. And he wrote this entire thing himself. And he wrote it to be set in the hotel that was shut down for most of the shoot and got the actors and got it going and had it in the can, I think, within, I mean, definitely less than six months of the first email. And it was a sensation later. And that kind of immediacy, that kind of clarity from like pure idea into finished product, that never happens. I mean, it certainly never happens in movies. and it almost never happens in TV and never at this speed. And the fact that it was done and connected is must be,

it's really thrilling, I think, for people who love the show, but it must be especially thrilling for people who work in the show or dream of working on shows like that. Yeah, this isn't on my list, but it should be. And I actually had to rewatch some of it recently because I hosted a sag panel with the cast. And it really, really holds up, which is, you know, a lot of TV doesn't.

When you go back and rewatch it and you're like, now that I know what happens, It's just kind of like a lot of the, a lot of the sort of entertainment value has sort of been sucked out of it. You can rewatch White Lotus and realize that the genius of the setting is that you have these people in this pressure cooker where each interaction that they have has a cause and effect relationship with everything that happens with them after. I mean, you can watch how the Sydney Sweeney and Brittany O'Grady character's judgment of Alexander Didario's character. makes it so that she goes spinning out on this questioning of her career and her life choices because she views herself through their eyes. And the same thing goes for the Armand character and the backpack full of drugs and them sort of pressuring him or the Jake Lacey character

pressuring the Murray Bartlett character spins him out. And just the way in which those characters just collide with one another and send each other's lives on these different courses. It's just brilliant writing. It's just, it's, it's, did you guys watch the Beatles doc series? Yeah. Yeah. Much of, much of it.

I mean, so watching, obviously those guys are, are masters, watching them just riff and create fucking amazing songs that, you know, that, um, we all listen to nowadays. That, that, that was the feeling I, I felt watching the show is, you know, I didn't know about the COVID restriction.

I didn't know about all that, you know, He just got called up and said, hey, do you have anything? But it felt like he was improvising all of this. But at the same time, you know he couldn't because of everything Chris just said. Things were too complex and interlocking for him not to have fought all of this through. It wasn't just like he was fucking around and experimenting. He really had like a strong mapping of how this show is going to be constructed. yet it felt so spontaneous.

It's just a magic trip. I think there's more than, we were saying before, Sam, about the things that you like seeing, and I think we all like seeing, is when artists select the right vessel for the work that they want to, that they want to make, and it fits.

What's also worth saying is that sometimes certain artists themselves succeed best in certain vessels or with restrictions or with a lack of restrictions. And sometimes there are writers and directors and performers that I'm sure we all love, maybe have never had it all come together exactly in a thing that people celebrate the way that White Lotus was celebrated. And I think that's been true for Mike White, who has, you know,

diehard fans and adherents who follow him no matter what he does and for his particular view of the world. But this landed, like on a large cultural level. And part of that might be because his particular genius or his particular work ethic or his particular style really thrived in specifically this moment. I'm going to give you this box. And this box is going to be a hotel. you're going to fill it with your characters and you're going to have a limited amount of time and you've got to get it done and we're not going to fuck with you. That worked. You know, like all of a sudden you walk away and the recipe, you didn't have a recipe, but whatever you cooked made sense. And now you have something going forward that's just thrilling for him in the audiences.

He's going to keep doing this. But he can do it in different places with different characters or partially different characters and who knows where it'll end up. And that's pretty exciting. So Sam, that was your number one, White Lotus, right? Yes. So Andy and I are going to do something. thing that you're going to get mad about here, but we're going to do it anyway because we can't help it. Andy and I share a number one show. You have not seen it yet, I imagine, because it doesn't

air until next Thursday. I can't believe it either. If you had asked me 11 days ago, I wouldn't really have a take on this show at all because I haven't read the book and I was going into it excited, but it didn't know what I was going to be getting. For me, the number one show of the year is Station 11. Yeah. I don't know how often we are always on the I don't know how often we pick the same number one but we're united in this Let me just say this like my assistant Katie French I'm going to shout her out because she was on that show and I think she got promoted this staff writer Will a writer that is doing a podcast for us is on that show

I've been dying our director on Angeline worked on the show I've been dying ever since I've heard about I've been dying to fucking see this show So yes, I am fucking pissed if you guys got to see it before me and that it could easily have been my number one. But please talk about it. I'd love to hear it because I'm very excited to check it out. Andy and I have spent a lot of this year talking about

what our relationship is to... Let me rephrase that. We've spent a lot of this year talking about whether or not we want to see the real world on TV anymore or to what extent we do or how we want the real world sort of rendered on TV. And I think some of it has been, you know, like as simple as saying, I just don't want, I don't want to watch shows with face masks

or I don't want to watch shows that are about COVID. And, you know, it's funny if you watch like Sex in the City, like the first, and just like that, like the first scene is like, COVID's over. You know, like they address it, but they're like, we don't want to have to deal with it. So it's, Mr. Mayor did that too in a very funny. Yeah. And I go back and forth. I think it's always to do with how well it's told or how well it's talked about. But the show really kind of got at me in that regard because I think it tapped into not only some of the fears

that went along with the last couple of years, unintentionally, because it was made before the pandemic happened. I think they at least stopped shooting before the pandemic began. But also because it made me think about the state the world is in regardless,

you know, and that feeling that there's you know, that we're at the end of something, but perhaps we're at the beginning of something that, uh, we're all we have, you know, that we, like, really, like, people are the only thing that is, like, going to be the salvation of the world. And it's hard to talk about, you know, it's hard to talk about without sounding, like, almost like a religious convert, you know, because I do think that there's a deep spirituality to the show and there's a really deep humanity to the show that I almost feel weird because I often don't like sounding corny or, or sentimental. But, Andy, like, fish me out of the water here. Like, I feel like this show has kind of rocked me in a way that it hasn't happened. in a really long time with TV.

This show really fucked me up. I think there's no question that the two, even if they're not, and I'm glad that there are collective number ones, even if they fell at different places on our list or, you know, Sam, you haven't seen this one yet. But the most 2021 shows, I think, like the most shows that the shows that most feel associated

with what this year was, what it felt like are White Lotus and Station 11. For a little more context, this podcast with you, Sam, will probably come up after Chris and I rave about the show on a regular episode of The Watch. but Patrick Somerville, a friend of the pod, worked on The Leftovers, worked on Maniac. Maniac, which was great.

With Carrie Fukenaga is adapting the Emily St. John Mandel novel that a lot of people, again, totally bizarrely to me, reached for when the pandemic happened in our world. And this is a novel from, I think, 2014, that's about a pandemic that is much more virulent and wipes out much of the world's population. I think the thing to say, just to start with, is it's not just that I don't want to see face masks on TV shows. It's that I generally have a massive case of dystopia fatigue. And it came up most recently on our podcast when we were talking about the Why the Last Man season premiere, which was the almost by the numbers depiction of a mass casualty event that wrecks the world. It felt like something they had to get through to tell the story they wanted to tell. And I hate that feeling.

It's the same reason why the Zach Snyder movies always bother me because just cities get wiped out, but it's about Cal L's quest to become Superman, so forget about that. Maybe I'm in a tender place. Maybe we are all in a tender place. So I was very hesitant, even though my friend made it to get into this show for those reasons. And the first episode fucks me up. I think it'll really upset a lot of people because we are all blindly tramping forward in our existences, not really making space for how traumatic. in, you know, for some people in major ways and for other people, and, you know, maybe more subtle and persistent ways,

the last two years have been. And the analogy I've been using is I don't remember the last time I took a drive through a dystopia with a kind-hearted person at the wheel, you know, and I'm not just saying this because I know Patrick and I think he's a great guy, but there is a tenderness baked into the show. There is a love of people and of humanity and of focusing on small stories, but not at the expense of the cost of the larger story. And then the first episode is the first episode.

From that on, you go on just the most thrilling context jumping, time jumping, almost show jumping journey through 20 years of this fictional American or global history that keeps poised. How many episodes have you seen? There's 10. But there's this, there's a character you meet at the beginning who ends up part of a traveling Shakespeare company. And to Chris's point, it's hard not to sound a little corny to be like, this is a show that. that will convince you that performing Shakespeare after an apocalypse will heal our hearts. But the show does that in a way that is not mokish and not heavy-handed, and the performances are beautiful and inspiring, and it feels fully alive.

And it came down to the wire for me because, as everyone who knows, like, we love succession. I love it. It operates on a higher level than just about any show on TV. But the heart piece of it, the sort of magical, this is, This is lifting me up. This is putting wind in my sails. Shout out to the Northwater. This show transported, you know, and also the fact that it just feels so relevant to watching it right now.

Like maybe it, this is, this is heavy words to hang on any TV show. No, I know. It feels like it can help a little bit. It helps. We talked a couple of times about various shows that feel like they arrive fully formed. And I think that you could say that about Station 11. I also think that it's a very 2021 show because it, really understands what TV viewers can handle in terms of what they need plotting to be,

what they need motivation to be, how they can follow multiple timelines at once. I mean, Sam, obviously, if we're watching Yellow Jackets, we're like, we're juggling a lot of chronology anyway. And what the characters have to do in terms of like on-screen action that is, that feels worth our time. Like, I think that when you watch enough action movies, when you watch enough blockbusters, when you watch enough blockbuster television, it can feel like everything is this side quests. It's always just like, well, we have to go over here to get this thing to be able to come back over here to do this thing, to eventually be able to do this thing.

And all of that stuff, that kind of video game logic seems to be removed from Station 11. Like, it actually does it feel, I just don't feel like I've ever seen these people on television before, even though there are some archetypes. You know what I mean? Even though there are some hero myths and stuff like that being played out, I don't feel like this is, this is at once incredibly familiar, but it's completely foreign. Also, hero myths. There's also hero Marai. Yeah, that's right. One of our great directors, setting a tone that is beautiful and evocative and humanist. Yeah. So Sam, I'm sorry to leave you

out of this because I would love to hear your thoughts on it, but we, Andy and I couldn't think of another show to put here. I mean, it's just maybe it's recency bias, but it's just blown us away. All good. I'm excited to check it out. So we end, we end the show. in the spirit of the holidays with extreme jealousy because Sam hasn't seen. You've gotten to see it. Sam, did you want to run through any more of Emmy's choices? I think we did all of Emmys, right?

Number one, there's Master of Nun. Oh, she did throw in scenes for a marriage, which I did really like, but she has that at number three. Did you guys watch that? I couldn't hang. I can't hang with that. Should we, Sam, this is an open invitation.

Are we going to expand by a square next year? Is Emmy going to come in and crash the boards and F us all up? You know what? Let's see. what happens. I think, I think, I think she's pretty good. I mean, here's the thing. Emmy does actually does not love to watch a lot of TV. She doesn't love to watch a lot of anything. She loves to, you know, go out. Live life. Live life to the fullest. But I, but I'll say this, Sam, I think that longtime listeners know that your generous devotion to appearing on our podcast,

not to get two scenes from a marriage, really stems from the fact that it's always going to be a thorn in your side that Emmy was on the watch before you were. Back before. was the watch. And so I feel like, but that bill has now been paid. You've made numerous appearances over the years. Is that true? I don't remember that. Are you guys interviewed Emmy before? Emmy came on with me for shameless. For shameless. Yeah, years and years and years ago. Oh, motherfucker. I didn't know this. So I, but I, she says he doesn't know, but I feel like it's always been blaring. But now, now that you've, you've made your point and now she can come back. Okay. Okay. Well, let's see. Wait, I do want to do some shoutouts. Is that okay?

Let's do shouts. Shout. You guys like only murders in the building? Yes. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. So charming. Steve Martin, Martin Short. I mean, excellent. And Selena Gomez.

She's great. I loved it. This is a little more controversial because I have like one criticism of it, but it got a lot. Did you guys watch them? I mean, Andy you didn't watch them. I didn't see it. I didn't see it. You didn't.

No, I missed it. Yeah. I think it's a great piece of horror filmmaking. I don't want to get into the criticism because I don't spoil anything since you guys haven't seen it. But just watch it's on Amazon. I think you guys did not like this show. And it's, I don't think it, shrink next door. Did you guys, you guys watch it?

Oh, I liked it. I liked it. I really like it. Well, I did like it, Annie? Yeah. Okay. Oh, I did like it. But that was one of the ones that I was sort of, like, confused about,

or maybe it was the weird context, because everyone else feels cringed. And I am the king of cringing on stuff, and it didn't bother me at all. I found it kind of really interesting. And I really liked, especially Paul Rudd and Catherine Hahn's performances. Like, I was, I'm going to finish it. I was really enjoying that show.

I keep being taken by it, surprising. Like, I keep like, okay, I don't know what's going on. Like, it does confuse me a little bit at the tone. But I'm like, okay, let me just keep. And I just keep getting drawn in more and more. And I love what Paul Rudden and Will Ferrell are doing. Anyway, sex lies of college girls. Have you guys checked that out?

Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. Really funny. Really fun. Yeah. Really funny. It's just another great light comedy where I just really laugh a lot. And speaking of laughing a lot, I got to shut out this season, Curb. I think, you've been watching it.

Yes. It's amazing. It's so fucking funny. You know what's crazy? Maybe this speaks to Chris, your point about recency bias or also just what TV means now in terms of how we cover and talk about it and all the new things on it. I almost don't consider Curb your enthusiasm to be a show that aired in Fiscal 21. It's just like a pillar of my life and existence.

and I'm so happy it's there. And this is insane. Sam, until you said, I never once considered it for this list, even though it's giving me more pleasure than most things out there. It was on, it was on,

that was the Emmy's 11, and I was like, oh, shit, that's right. And I, so that's when I had to throw it at least on my honorable mention, but you're right.

It's this weird show where I'm like, Larry, he, I don't think, see, the thing about him, this is,

and this, this is something like ties to our conversation about Squid Gay. He doesn't give a fuck. He's just, going to do the show that he wants to do, that he finds funny. Like, I know that there's, like, that storyline in this season where he's, like, selling a show to Hula or whatever, and he's like, I'm not taking notes.

And then they laugh, and he's like, no, I'm serious. I'm not taking notes. And I guarantee you that's his deal with HBO, right? That's his meeting, yeah. I'm just doing this. And you guys put it on, or if you don't want to put it on, that's fine, too. I won't do it. Like, I think he really has that attitude.

But the fact that he has that money, too. He can do that. And he has that money. Like, the fact that this is not like a passion. project necessarily, but just more of like a hobby or a side thing. It's how he wants to spend his time. It's fucking, it's just, it's, it's impressive. Chris, did you like it or you don't?

I love curve. Yeah. I mean, the same thing where it's like, it's now just part of my Sunday night ritual. So it's, exactly. That's a, it's a really good way of putting in. And speaking of things that are passion projects that you don't need to do, but we're so grateful that you do. Sam, thanks for coming on the watch again this year.

By the way, this is our, this is number five, right? That's right. This is our fifth anniversary. Wow. Pretty soon we could do a top 10 of your appearances on this podcast. And it'll be, let's block out six hours for it. Kaya order lunch in. It's going to be.

Can we include big picture? Or is that still a sensitive topic? We'll talk to you about that after. Yeah, it's not sensitive. It's just that when we were messaging the other day and you're like, as a long time, as a regular listener of the watch, and I was like, I think you misspelled the big pick. Sam, thanks so much for doing this, man. Thank you guys.

Happy holidays to you and your family, Sam. Thank you to Kayah for producing.