The Watch - The Brilliance of ‘Homecoming’ | The Watch (Ep. 304)

Episode Date: November 6, 2018

Andrew Lincoln will return as Rick Grimes for a series of ‘The Walking Dead’ movies for AMC (4:58), further breaking down the boundaries between television and film (11:54). Plus: a review of the first five episodes of ‘Homecoming’ with Julia Roberts (26:18). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Read Alison Herman’s review of ‘Homecoming’ here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Homecoming, the new Amazon series Homecoming directed by Sam S. Mail, the creator of Mr. Robot. Based on the critically acclaimed podcast by Eli Horowitz and Michael Bloomberg, Homecoming stars Julia Roberts as Heidi Bergman, a caseworker at the Homecoming Transitional Support Center. But four years after starting a new life, Heidi is faced with questions about why she left the facility, and she realizes there's a deeper story beyond the one she's been telling herself. Don't miss Homecoming.

Stream now only on Amazon Prime Video. Hey guys, thanks for listening to today's episode of The Watch. Today, Andy and I talked about all the news coming out of the Walking Dead and the new Walking Dead universe that we're living in. Should be a really interesting couple of years to see where they take that show. So we talked a little bit about last night's episode and what to kind of expect from the expansion of Walking Dead and how other franchises are kind of modeling themselves

around this new long-form storytelling that comes with over-the-top streaming services. we spent the second half of the show talking about Homecoming. You may have noticed that Homecoming is also an advertiser on this episode of the podcast. You can take what we say with a grain of salt if you would like. Andy also obviously works for Sam Esmail, who directed all the episodes of Homecoming on Amazon. So obviously a little bit of a conflict of interest, if you want to put it that way. But we are sincere in our takes on the show. You can take it for what it's worth.

Homecoming is an advertiser on this show today. But it's also a show that we think is super important. and really, really interesting. So we talked about that for the second half of this episode. So let's get into today's episode of The Watch. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at The Ringer.com and joining me on the other line working on his third rewrite of Titanic Rising. It's Andy Greenwald. Happy Monday, buddy. Happy election week.

Big, big week for politics. I know you were out there in America. over the weekend. Shout out to the Antelope Valley, my guy. I love it out there. The high desert. It's terrific. The California 25th. I'm proud of you. The voters are proud of you. I think everyone is excited now that you're woke. It's been a long time coming, for a long time listeners to the podcast. But what I wanted to know, and we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about homecoming, we're going to talk about some news, walking dead stuff. What I want to know is if the facts on the ground that you discovered, you encounter match up with my experience in the world. Because can I talk about

myself for a second year. Are you going to talk about your incredible boozy weekend? No, what I'm going to tell you, and we can get to that, I'd love to do that. But what I want to do is say that I am a single issue voter. And I wonder if other people you encountered in the highways and byways of California were the same. My single issue is fuck daylight savings time. And now people not in California might not realize this, but it is on the ballot here this year. It is. But it's like on the ballot so that we can talk about it some more. Only Congress can do anything about this, I think, right?

Listen. Listen, it is time to make real change in this world. Now, there was an era, and I think you were there for it, when the thought of an extra hour on a Saturday night, who, boy, the East Village wasn't ready for it. You think I was there for it. How exciting you were there. How exciting was that?

Yeah, in a place where you could already stay out until 4 a.m. on a Wednesday, I didn't really, it didn't hurt one way or the other. You know what I mean? Like, I guess daylight savings mattered, but it wasn't like New York was ever, you know, brooming you out of the bar anyway. But look, I don't want to go full hashtag slate podcast here. But like, if you have children, you know what I'm talking about. That's not a gift.

You know what I mean? It's not a gift to have an extra hour. You try telling a 20-month-old that it's actually still nighttime. You try it. You try reasoning. What kind of wake-up call are we talking about? What time? It's just, I'm just up consistently at five every day, man.

And it's just not fun. I got into work this morning. You know, I'm still deep in the edit bay over here. And I was like, thank God. And we owe a cut to the network tonight. So I'm going to be here until like 10 o'clock at night. And I actually thought to myself, oh, good. I can finally relax.

That's what I'm coming from. So please tell me if the people of America back me up. Was that the motivating issue? that you encountered when you were knocking on door six. So yeah, you want to know if the pressing issue in California 25 was whether or not peak TV showrunners get enough sleep. Chris, I just suggested that you spent the weekend knocking on doorsteps, which would have just been bizarre.

Just prostrating yourself all across Palmdale. Knock on the door. Listen, you're going to have to carry me. This is two footsteps in the sand turning into one footsteps today when you carried me. So you tell me what you discovered. What I'm going to do, Andy, is I'm going to tell you a little bit about a television show called The Walking Dead. Now, we've had, I think, I wouldn't say contentious. Walking Dead is more, it was like a summertime fling for us years ago, you know?

And we were engaged in this show. I think we talked about it quite a bit back in the Grantland days when it was in its first couple of seasons. And obviously it's become, since then, it's become like this huge phenomenon and is sponsored. on numerous comic. I mean, obviously it comes from comic books, but a lot of spinoffs with video games, another show, Fear of the Walking Dead, and it's really expanded.

It's got a booming convention business, obviously. But we kind of like took our eye off the ball a little bit. And this is one of those shows where, like, if you do take your eye off the ball, you can still understand the larger notes of it, but there's just like 40 people on the show that I had no idea we're on the show now. Like, you know, just random groups of people

that they're like, and now it's Hilltop, and now it's these people, and now it's that people. So watching a little bit last night was kind of eye-opening because I just realized how much the show has changed

over the years. And I think you and I have, like, dropped in here and there, but that's worth noting. I dropped in last night to watch the show because for months, they have been teasing the fact

that your boy, Rick Grimes, the guy who you've modeled your whole life after as a father and as a man of the law, and as a leader of a dystopian brood

Rick Grimes was about to be out Andrew Lincoln was leaving the show they had talked about like the emotional goodbye and everybody thought like last week

my guy got impaled on a piece of rebar rebar seems really fucking dangerous what is the purpose of rebar other than to impale people in movies

it's like you already had one bar and you had to like do it again that's my understanding what it is It's just stuff that's in stuff. We need to find new male role models.

I know. I know. I need to get off Twitter. No, Twitter's not teaching me what rebar is. Anyway, my guy got stuck on some rebar, and it was like, well, he's going to bleed out. And then in this last episode this week, Rick got off the rebar, still had quite a gaping flesh wound, got on a horse, and sort of riding around having visions, and it was sort of a class reunion, John Bernthal was on the show.

Scott, the late Scott Wilson was on the show. It was his last performance. A bunch of people from past seasons were on the show. Him sort of just kind of like, a lot of resolution, you know, a lot of closure for this character. What a journey we've all been

on together. Yeah. And then when it's like Rick about to die, blows up a bridge, spoiler alert, it doesn't matter. He blows up a bridge. Like, and at the last second, he gets rescued by a helicopter who takes him away and then we're introduced to Judith Grimes, his daughter,

and then there's a time jump like five years. So they've kind of remixed this show this week, but at the same time, what I wanted to talk about was this, this is like, it's not a rope-a-dope, but they basically were like, say goodbye to Rick Grimes, and then today was the full court press of press releases saying they're going to make a series of movies about Rick Grimes

and his further adventures, that the Walking Dead universe is careful, planned out for the next decade and includes digital content, video games, movies, possibly other shows, you'd have to imagine. The main show, the mothership, has now experienced this time jump, so we'll have to see what happens with that. And I guess I just wanted to get your take on all of it. Like, I feel like when I watch it now, it's like a really sweaty, morbid,

Graz Anatomy because there's just new people on it all the time. But we can come at this from a couple different angles. but my main question is, is the Walking Dead like five years too late to start a universe? I have a couple points. One, Gray's Anatomy is super morbid, right? I mean, everybody on that show died horrifically. Yeah, but they play a lot of like, they play chasing cars, you know. Okay, so it's really, it's about the needle drops.

That's the difference between the show. Sure. Okay, that's fine. Two, I feel, I think I want to speak for a segment. to the audience that probably feels cheated because I know there are a large portion of the dwindling but still robust walking dead viewership numbers that have long considered this show part of the love actually expanded universe and that they thought finally finally this dude would get comeuppance for ringing the doorbell with all those like you know bob dillon slash

in excess signs yeah and let's mourn for those people a little bit today because they're not getting the resolution they've created for years I have a question before I move on is Judith, is she now like a precocious five-year-old? No, she's like a teen now. Well, in the jump, she's a teen. I think she was like nine when she shows up at the last second, and now they've jumped ahead. And she's like...

Wasn't she born three years ago? How many time jumps has the show had? It's had a couple. It's had like a two-year time jump, or like a several-month time jump, and now they're doing a big one. We can come at this for a number of ways. I think you were very, very polite and political

in talking about our relationship with the show. I think the paper trail I left at Grantland Proves, I've been telling you the show was bad. But I am interested in its management and curation because the one thing that it always had in its favor was that it could do anything. Because the central reason people watched the show were the flesh-eating zombies. And because of that, you could remix and reshuffle the cast all you wanted. You could go anywhere, do anything as long as you kept that steady baseline. of dead dudes eating people. And really, one of my main criticisms over the years before I gave up completely was that it

essentially just kept circling the drain, right? The show had such a dim view of humanity that it's sort of nihilistic lessons about how our real enemies are ourselves and blah, blah, blah, it just didn't seem to ever add up to anything. And it didn't take chances beyond that that I could see. So the idea of constantly put, of this new idea of just moving forward, time jumping, moving. Good, do that. See what's going on. I think that Angela Kang, who's show running now, now that the previous showrunner, Scott Gimple, has been bumped up to, you know...

Chief Content Officer of the Walking Dead universe. I mean, it's wild, but, you know, obviously I have a soft spot for anyone who ever worked on the show Terriers, but I also think that, you know, she's a really capable writer, so maybe maybe it's the time to try some bigger swings. If I was watching the show and been told the lead character was going to die and then been given a long, long, long, long, long, well like the one you described, I can imagine being a little bit frustrated. But I have to say, the thing that I really respect about this move is that it is just the kind of thing that a network like AMC that we are often flagging as an institution that might be

in trouble in the TV landscape going forward due to its lack of large multimedia conglomerate behind it, right? It is not Disney. It is not Netflix. It cannot play in those waters. So in order to survive, you have to be nilitary. and you have to take big swings and take big chances. And what I really appreciate about this is the admission of something that I think all the

content providers have been flirting with and skirting around for a while now, which is there are no rules anymore and none of this really matters. We were so hidebound in TV for so long that a TV production was 22 episodes of a TV show in a year. And if the ratings went down, they would cancel that TV show. And that would be the end of that TV show. Yeah. That was our experience with it.

That was it. Now we know that miniseries can become ongoing series, that anything that has ever existed in a content library can be rebooted. That seasons can be eight episodes, 13 episodes. You know, the old rules certainly don't apply. So why consider a TV show, let alone a successful one, limited by its preexisting format? So the idea that the Walking Dead is just a business that they can make moves. movies and they can make movies for TV now instead of, you know, we're going to save Rick Rhymes for some big budget movie that has to change what we're doing and we'll have to establish

that we can make a different kind of entertainment and compete in a crowded cinematic marketplace. No, you don't. Netflix is about to put on the new Alfonso Quaron movie on its TV streaming service. I mean, movies can be anywhere. Anything can be anything. So I kind of appreciate AMC almost ripping the Band-Aid off on that point and showing people that they don't have to play by any existing rules. The only rule, much like on the Walking Dead, is to survive.

So I think the thing that's been interesting here is that we talk a lot, we talk a lot about it on this podcast. But I mean, we talk about a lot at the ringer in terms of editorial strategy is this idea of breadth versus depth, you know, and whether you can have both. And we obviously strive to. And I think that as the main show, Walking Dead, shed some, viewers as any show that's on this long. And I, you know, I think that that's something that's worth keeping in mind is that there really isn't any example of a show that's not like cheers or

something that's this long into its run retaining the same strength and the same sort of intensity of attention as it did at its heyday. So it's to be expected that there will be some, uh, some fall off on the numbers. But what they're doing is as, while it still has this name recognition out there. They're trying to build as much other stuff around it because that way it can just, it can live in this new world that we're in where you're expected to basically take some, take a piece of an idea and turn it into a portfolio, right? And I think that you and I are probably a little bit cynical about that as we should be where it's like you see Walking Dead and you're just like, this is a pretty okay television show that had its like high point many years ago

and now is kind of more of almost a lifestyle and is more almost of like it's kind of like more of a Reddit community than it is a TV show maybe but that might be because you and I just aren't speaking the language of the show. I do think it's pretty interesting that they're doing it. I don't have a lot of evidence to suggest

that you're going to get multiple Rick Grimes movies that are successful at the box office. Well, they're not going to be at the box office. You don't think so? No, no, no. It's sad. These are, movies they're making for AMC and AMC properties. These are not cinematic release movies. These are just standalone movies that they're going to put on TV. I thought that they were like, we're taking

this, we're taking our show on like to the big time now. No, I mean, I think that they may have some designs to try that. I'm sure they have a writer's room or they've considered what that would could be or would be because that's what Scott Gimple is doing in his new job. But no, I think they're being quite smart. That's what I meant when I said that to make a movie, they would have to basically learn an entirely different and very challenging skill set in order to make it. Sure, I guess you're right. Instead, they can just call it a movie. And it's just really an exercise episode of Walking Dead that they can get a lot of free publicity for.

And that Andrew Lincoln doesn't have to live in Atlanta for 10 months of the year to do. Exactly. I mean, that's the other thing about it. It is one of the changes off the screen that's happened, I think, in the last 10, 15 years of TV, is that people have a lot more understanding of what it takes to make TV and to work in TV, which isn't to say they have deep sympathy for highly paid actors in starring roles. But look, people understand that this is an incredibly grueling production. They film, you know, way outside of Atlanta.

They are often outside and sweaty and hot and, you know, much like their characters. Andrew Lincoln is British. He has a family that lives in England. And he is apparently in Atlanta, outside of Atlanta, for 90s. months of the year wandering around in a swamp. That's tough. And what I mean by the changes off the camera is that I think people understand that someone that they like might not want to do that for his life forever. And they're okay with that. You know, I think that there's a, that the understanding goes in a number of different directions and that for how TV works. If this works for

his schedule and he wants to do it, sure. You know, there's no reason, there's no reason not to. There's an article today on Vulture that Joe Adelian wrote about just sort of checking in on on the broadcast network reboots, how they're doing. Murphy Brown, Magnum PI, Charmed, The Connors. The main takeaway is they're all doing pretty well to pretty well to more than that. Right. I think that there's a tendency for people like us who don't really engage with those shows to think of that as a face-saving strategy from a very challenged segment of business.

But I think it's worth considering it all as part of the same thing, which is keeping things alive, keeping things moving, being things in front of people is the new normal, whether it looks like bringing Candace Bergen back to TV in 13-half-hour increments playing the same character, or it's taking Rick Grimes off of this mothership show and spinning him into something that we haven't really seen done before, but actually makes perfect sense. Yeah, and I don't think that the Walking Dead, for his, you know, and they do a lot of messaging about, like, The Walking Dead is back. Like, we've, whether it's showrunner changes or, like, adding new characters constantly, always teasing big

twists that are going to happen and impact the world of the show. And also this sort of thread that it has back to the comics, the original comics so that people can feel like they're still seeing an adaptation of what they're, you know, the original thing that they love. I don't know necessarily that the Walking Dead, anybody would say, yeah, we have like, we're undefeated. Like we have this incredible batting average of quality. So the reason why I'm mentioning that is because it's interesting to see, a couple of different properties that do have a very high

approval rating, whether it's the MCU or even Star Wars, although Star Wars has kind of had its road bumps recently with Solo and at least like one section of the fan reaction to Last Jedi.

Both of those properties are like, we got to make more too. Kevin Feige was participated in a Hollywood Reporter roundtable last week and was talking about how he's bringing the long-form storytelling of comics to the Disney streaming service and that they're going to have shows that are pulled from the MCU. And that this is going to be the thing that I think is the biggest hurdle for a lot of these people is as they're trying to

maintain this presence in the box office and is Walking Dead is trying to maintain itself as a Sunday night destination show that people go to talk about it online with their friends. It's one of the few shows that still does that outside of Thrones. What's going to happen is when you start spreading that around a lot more. So it'll be fascinating to watch, even if you're not like a huge Walking Dead fan, like neither Andy or I are. It's kind of interesting to see how they play this game. It's interesting that it comes down to comics, because that's really what is the lifeblood of our popular culture at the moment.

And the reason why the Walking Dead is so brilliant what Robert Kirkman did with the comic book, which is published by Image, is basically just throwing up a shrug emoji at the central problem of long-form comic storytelling, which is people want dramatic storytelling, which involves changes, but they also want nothing ever to change and everything always to be reset so that Thor can have his hammer back or whatever the case may be. Right. Superman can't really die. Yeah.

It's just perpetually circling the drain, but people can die. So in effect, that's very, very radical in comics. In TV, it's, you know, I've been harping on this, but clearly people still watch it and I'm wrong about it. You know, people like seeing this balance of consistency with sudden dramatic death and change, right? it works. You look at Marvel, the reason Kevin Feige has been so successful is that he somehow managed to give people the sense that all of this is connected and quote unquote matters, right? It was all building towards Infinity War.

It was all building towards something. Even the slightly tangential movies that came out along the way, he made you feel like they were essential. There was a little teaser, a little tag, a little connection, which is also how comic books have always worked and made you buy the big crossover event. going into TV is for him is going to be interesting because remember there are plenty of Marvel shows on TV but for a long time Feige himself wasn't in control of Marvel TV so the Netflix deal and those shows just had some upheaval because Luke Cage was canceled and

my fist was canceled those have not in her overlap with the movies at all and they're basically coming from a different arm of the company for this Disney streaming service Feigey is involved in saying that oh there's going to be a series about Loki with with Hiddleston there's going to be a Falcon and Winter Soldier series with Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie. Okay, cool. But look, I just seems to be against the DNA of his success so far. That's what I'm saying. To be very honest and say, this is going to be a stylistically different thing, much like the whole point was with the Star Wars spinoffs, right? I mean, one of my favorite comic books of the last 20 years was Matt for Actions Hawkeye comic. I think you only did 12 issues of it. I urge everyone to go pick it out. It's so fun. It's totally.

totally delightful. You don't need to know anything about anything to read it and enjoy it and enjoy the beautiful art as well. That would make a really cool limited series, but it has nothing to do with the things that people seem to want most out of Marvel Comics. So being able to do that as they spread themselves more and more thin is going to be the test for these massive companies, right? I mean, at least Walking Dead, expanded universe, expand the universe all you want. As long as an undead creature is eating someone else's face, you've got the consistency people need. Yeah. All right. Well, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the first season of Homecoming.

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Go to sonos.com to learn more and order your Sonos beam to start your smart home sound system. That's Sonos, s onos.com. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Microsoft Surface. Let's talk about something super exciting, like the newest member of the Microsoft Surface family, the Surface Pro 6. Now faster and more powerful than ever before so you can get even more done, whether it's from your office at the airport or on your couch. Take the keyboard off and draw on it easily or snap it back on and type on it like a laptop. With up to 13 and a half hours of battery life and the new 8th gen Intel Core processor,

you can work how you want to for as long as you want to wherever work takes you. All right, we are back. We're talking about Homecoming Season 1. I mean, I don't even know if there's going to be a season 2, but Homecoming is the new show on Amazon. It's directed by front of the pod, Sam Esmail. It's based on a podcast from Elihor, Horowitz and Michael Bloomberg. That was on Gimlet a couple years ago. In the podcast, major parts were

played by Catherine Keener, voiced by Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac, and David Schwimmer. In the Amazon television show version of it, we have a show starring Julia Roberts, which I never thought out. If you had told me 10 years ago that Julia Roberts will be on an Amazon show, it just would have really confused 2008 me. Julia Roberts, Bobby Conavale. Hey, Chris. I've got a couple other thought bombs for 2008, Chris. They would really Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I know. Well, we can save that for next episode. I can wait to tell them about podcasts, but go on. Yeah. So we have Homecoming stars, Julia Roberts, Stephen James, Bobby Connavali, and Shea Wiggum, among others.

And it's a 10-episode show. Andy and I talked a little bit about it as a preview last week. So we're just going to talk about the first five episodes today and the second five, the back half of the show on Thursday. So there will be spoilers for those first five episodes. Spoilers for mandatory pineapple, optics, redwood, and helping are the episodes we're talking about. And everyone here are the usual caveats. You should know that I'm recording this from Esmail Corp right now. Yes. Where all the people Chris just mentioned, except for Julia Roberts and Jay Wiggum, are in an office right now having a meeting.

I think about season two. So I am clearly an untrustworthy voice, but I do think it's a noteworthy. television show, and I am eager to talk about it, but understand you take all of the, take the box of kosher salt you have in your kitchen and just pour it all over whatever device you used to listen to this podcast on. Yeah, well, we, so I feel like we just talked a lot about sort of the extracurricular things around a television show with Walking Dead without actually talking about walking dead. So I want to start, rather than talking about the impact this show has had or what it means within the Amazon ecosystem or whatever. Let's just talk about the show itself. How's that?

Great. You you you leave me there. Okay. Again, I'm not trying to blow smoke up Sam's ass, but I am really in awe of what he pulled off here because forget, I actually didn't listen to the podcast, so I can't even speak to what it must be like to adapt what is essentially, you know, this long form audio story for TV. I can, I can evaluate what I think he's done here. And we talked a little bit of bit about the effectiveness of the half hour thriller drama and how that gave us, that kind of like remixed our brainwaves a little bit. It kind of got wires crossed in a way that was really exciting because you're basically, I think when you're watching a television show that takes at least an hour and you know it's a drama, you kind of your mind knows that there are

going to be these peaks and valleys, these lulls, you know how they're setting things up around of a three to five-act structure, you kind of have a feeling for how you're watching these shows. If you're watching Ozark, if you're watching Haunting of Hillhouse, if you're watching sharp objects, no matter how different these shows are, there is a vibe to them, and there is a tempo that comes along with an hour-long show.

By compressing the drama and tension into anywhere from 27 to 31 to 41 minutes, Sam's kind of manipulating your reactions to the story. And the story itself is not, I don't find it to be like that complicated. It's not that Abramsie. It's not that mystery boxy. Obviously, there's a lot of central mysteries. But what I think he's done here is taken 70s paranoia cinema,

which is something that a lot of people like to reference. You know, I think famously Andy and I always joked about how the Russo's talked about the influence of like all the president's men in Parallax View on Winter Soldier. And we, you know, he joked about that. But Sam has actually done something really interesting with influence here, where he's using a certain subgenre that people are very affectionate towards with these movies from the 70s that were kind of about the political climate,

but also the sense of unease that most people were going through their lives with. And he's turned that into a visual language that he's updated for today. It's not simply homage. It's thinking about things strictly in those terms so that you can, basically, basically, say like, this is a mode of existence, being constantly uneasy, wondering about your reliability of your memory and your brain, your reliance on medication, your feeling of being out of place in places you're supposed to know. All these things that were hallmarks of Parallax

view, clued the conversation, these great films from the 70s, Sam has kind of used that as a as a toolkit, and he's updated it for now and into the very near future. And I think that that's the genius here. You know, it's not that it's a story that we've never seen before or some kind of, it doesn't tell us anything really profound about America's overseas military actions.

There's something about creating atmosphere to reflect interiority that I think is absolutely incredible with this show. Are you saying homecoming is a mood? It's a big mood a F, dog? Is that the meme version of that very thoughtful monologue that you just delivered? I think you're wrong to something and I think that you're right. I think maybe this is because I am in beginning week four of editing my pilot,

so I am in a minimalist mood for sure. I think that if you look at the opportunity given to creators in this golden age of television or of Peak TV to take older things, whether it's IP or, as you're saying, types of stories, and reinvent them, reimagine them, reboot them for a new audience and a new generation, and a new moment, and a new business model, where budgets are higher, expectations are higher. The tendency has been to lard these things with extra features and gadgets. An example being Westworld, which is an interesting idea and a cult movie, that, you know, as people know, to my mind,

was just crushed under the weight of this wildly chilly intellectual ambition and everything else that the showrunners of that show put onto this framework that, frankly, to my mind, wasn't able to support it. What we have here is the opposite. I think that you're right. The half-hour format really suits this show. I think it really suits drama in general, and it's exciting to thought that that.

might be returning. There isn't, and I don't even mean this pejoratively, I admire this in the case of homecoming. I don't know if Eli and Micah and Sam have an enormous amount of interest in PTSD or Veterans of Foreign Wars or any of the specific things that are in the sandbox. It's really about the effects of storytelling, of memory, of experience. These are just the tools they've chosen to use to tell that story. And what they've done is exactly what you've said. They've taken a story, a type of story that is pretty great, taken it down from the attic, dusted it off, polished it brightly.

And guess what? It still runs. Yes. And I think that that's one of the most appealing aspects of the show. This thing works. This thing plays. And that seems like a very chilly, almost S-male way of saying something that I've been saying, we've been saying on this podcast, which is like, what, TV has to be entertaining and it has to be

fun. And no one would mistake Homecoming for a laugh riot or a feel-good show, but because of the way it is designed and presented to us, some of those same emotional responses that we get from shows that are more overtly a good time play here. There's this concept I want to introduce you to, which is this idea in soccer, specifically, with Liverpool, which is the team I cheer for him. There's this manager who coaches Liverpool named Juergen Klopp, and he has this style of play. He's kind of backed away from it a little bit this season,

but over the course of his career in England and Germany, he plays this style of play that's called Gagin Pressing, which is a German term for essentially counter-pressing. But what it essentially means is that you're going to create an advantage by playing your hair is on fire. It's essentially like a full-court press, you know? And I feel like Sam is running the full-court press. in here, where he knows he's just going to, he can't sustain the certain level of like stylistic

energy that he's executing over the course of 10 hours, but in five hours, he can. You know, in five hours and in 27 minute bricks, he can do it. He can maintain every single shot is going to have this strangely off angle, or it's going to tell you something about why this office park in the middle of Florida is weird. And he can shoot a seat. where it's just Shriar and Walter talking about pineapple, and it just becomes this incredibly volatile moment because he understands how to express tension through visual language and make the mundane into the off kilter.

Does that make sense? Yeah, like the lights in the DoD Library, clunking on and off one or a time. Yeah, the motion sensor that Shea Wiggum has to swing by, I think that's in optics, you know, and even his imagination, and I think this is a hallmark of the podcast, but the way in which he renders the conversations between Colin and Heidi, the phone conversations are electrifying. I haven't seen something like that before where this idea to give Bobby Connovali full range of motion because he's got these in-ear headphones in to talk,

on the phone. So he can kind of go through his life and you get to see Bobby Connavali in his full bloom because like this is a guy you could put into a blank room and give him the phone book and he could make something of that, right? But wait, I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to jump in on that same point. But you shouldn't do that with Bobby Cannavalli. And I wondered if you had the same reaction, which is that there are certain actors, and I wonder if even the actors themselves would agree with this, who do particularly well shining brightly in contained spaces. Because I think Cannavali is a terrific actor,

terrific presence. I like him almost always. But he was too extra on vinyl. You know, when he was the show, when he was the centerpiece. There are chemical reasons for that. There were problems. For that character.

What I mean is, he is extra, extra and homecoming too, but it's limited. And I appreciate the limited aspect of it. Also, Jeremy Allen White, who's really good on Shameless, a show that we don't really talk about very often, if at all, makes a really strong impression on Homecoming as Trier. His performance is also extra, as it should be, because he is literally, you know, the bug-eyed guy being like, the trees aren't trees. That's the sort of performance that a show like this needs. It's also the sort of performance that would not hang well, I think, over three hours of screen time. But as you said, over 90 minutes, great.

go for it. And I think that that's another underappreciated aspect of it. Yeah, it's hard to talk enough about the performances in this. I mean, Stephen James does so much with having to be he's like the object of so many people's attention and he has to

do that unwittingly almost. Because he's, especially in the opening few episodes, Shriar is much more of the combative Nicholson from Kuckoo's Nest kind of guy. And he, Stephen James is just telling his anecdote and this really calm voice,

you would never know he was even in Iraq if you were just talking to him on the street or something like that. So I think that the way that they calibrate different performances, I thought that that was kind of amazing, is that it feels like everything is of a piece, but everybody is doing their own thing. They have very distinctive parts.

I mean, Shea Wiggum's kind of like, almost on the verge of being like a Cohen brothers bureaucrat who's just stuck behind a desk, but has a little bit more, humanity and and like you empathize with that guy a little bit because you understand what it's like to just be stuck in the

middle and we'll talk more about his character I think in the second half of the season but yeah were there any other performances that you wanted to talk about? I'm kind of curious how people feel about Julia Roberts because well yeah let's talk about that but let's also say one of the other aspects

of our peak TV moment is if you're making a show like this for Amazon and you have Julie Roberts or you have Sam involved, you get Shea Wiggum to play that part. And Jay Wiggum is great at that part. There are many actors who probably could have played that part and would have cost less or been less, you know, I mean, he's not the world's biggest name, but he certainly is a very successful working actor.

Similarly, like, you get Alex Karpovsky from girls in the background there. You have Hong Chow, who I can only imagine is going to have a bigger part to come. You know, it's kind of like the, you know, the Yankees versus the twins in the sense that some teams or some organizations, let's say, have both the payroll and the clout and their destination teams that they can really fill out a roster in a way that other people can't or can't compete with, which is just, you know, it's a tip of the cap, I guess, because that's impressive. And, you know, a deep bench is always good on a TV show like this. The Julia Roberts aspect of it is really interesting because historically when movie stars

would go to TV, it would be because the roles were drying up or the types of roles that they used to play they couldn't play anymore. and now they could get a chance to do it again. A lot of respect to Julie Roberts because the part that she's chosen to play, to go to TV to play, is not a very Julia Roberts part at all. It's a challenging, complicated part

that, you know, if you had described it to me or if I had listened to the podcast and her Catherine Keener, I would not have thought of Julia Roberts for, which is not to say she's not acing the part. I think it's just kind of impressive and interesting that at this level, someone of her ability and her fame is pushing herself. Because I think that this plays against a lot of her natural abilities

that she's been so justly rewarded for. I think it's the most interesting part she's had in quite some time, honestly. I mean, she really, if you look back on her films of the last 10 years, I mean, like, you know, Money Monster was supposed to be kind of a big effort from her, and that fell flat. Secret in their eyes was like this attempt to do sort of the 90s thriller thing that didn't really catch on. August Osage County, I thought she was

like good in, but I think not totally convincing. You know, and then there's other things like she's in Larry Crown, she's in E. Pray, Love. So the last, like, this decade have been kind of like hit or miss for her, and I don't think the hits have been really hard. There's something new here for me with her, because

I think so much of what her career has been based on is her absolutely undeniable charisma. And I find that Heidi is it's not that she's repressing that charisma. It's just like she's actually playing the role. You know what I mean?

Like she's actually playing this woman who's bounced around who's had this relationship. But the shot out Dermit Mulroney, by the way. Talk about guys just like showing up. It's like the Dermit Rooney like just being like, Heidi, what are you talking about? Is it just a great, great term. I get the feeling like she just really inhabited this role

in a way that isn't like, oh, this is Julia Roberts trying to pretend to be kind of kicked down by the world. Nor is she like, you are way too frigging to be someone who is like an office manager and then went to night school and caught on at this like newfangled company, you know? Yeah, I mean, she has to, this sounds so silly,

but this is a character who has been fired from an Applebee's, right? Like that's in the text. Right. And so it's hard to imagine Julia Roberts at full wattage being fired from anything. Yes. So to see, now, again, it's part of the reason why, and again, I'm not saying this just because he's my boss, that Sam is getting a lot of the attention because he's the one at the dimmer controlling the wattage in this,

you know, and I think that it's being used, I think Julie Roberts is being used effectively, but I have to say through five episodes, this is not a star turn. You know what I mean? this is not a show built around one star's performance or charisma or even one character. It is much more of an ensemble piece than I ever would have expected. And I don't know if that will continue as we get into the back half as maybe she does a better job of reclaiming her memory or fighting for it or whatever is, whatever is to come, because I actually have no familiarity with the story where it's going.

But doesn't that strike you? Yeah, I think it's interesting because she's sort of like a dead star out there that you're waiting to sort of reignite when you're watching the show. You're waiting for her to pop. And you're waiting for, like, the Julia version of Heidi to, like, wake up when you're watching this show. Well, we can talk about it, obviously, on Thursday when we get to the second half of the season. I'm glad we're both so into it. I'm glad that we're both such grateful servants to the Smail Corp.

It's exactly. Our check is in the mail. Well, my check is in the mail. We'll see about you. But it's not hard to rev up the engine and get into the show, which I think is, everyone knows, might be. about this stuff. But I do wonder if that will be a major takeaway here, because you could look at this. And it seems like it's a success, obviously, because, you know, it got a lot of coverage, but it's a Julia Roberts TV show. So we don't know Amazon's internal numbers or anything. And it was already

renewed for a second season before this one even was filmed. But I do hope the takeaway, if the show's considered a success internally or in the industry, I hope the takeaway isn't, let's get more stars into podcast adaptations, unless, by the way, the watch IP is finally sold, by the way, still. Avail. Still avail. Still avail. But the lesson instead would be like, much like what Netflix was doing with rom-coms, quite honestly, like, let's find genres that people still like, and let's think about creative

ways to remove some of the barriers to, I kill me for saying this, to onboarding viewers. You know, people want to watch enjoyable stories in genres that they know, and they're, you know, like the great musician Jackson, Maine once said, there are only a certain number notes, right? It's just how you play him. But the streamlined nature of the storytelling, the respect for the genre, which it comes from, and yes, the shorter runtime, those really still are the headlines to me here. Well, we'll have Sam on eventually to talk about homecoming and the year in television. We'll be back on Thursday to talk about the second half of homecoming season and have some other stuff for you on Thursday until then, Andy. Happy daylight savings time.

Chris, I really hope that Sam will be as gentle to me in his notes he's about to give me on the new cut as we just were on his TV show. Otherwise, I may have some revised thoughts on Thursday. Is that fair? Yeah, that's perfect. Okay. Great job for Ansky's get some sleep. Bye. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Up and Vanished. Payne Lindsay's hit true crime podcast Up and Vanished comes to life in a one-night special TV event for oxygen. Two years ago, Payne began exploring the shocking disappearance of a young teacher and former beauty queen named Tara Grinstead who vanished over a decade earlier. Pain is still at work, Searching for the Truth, don't miss up and vanished,

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