The Watch - The Difficulties of Making Reactive Television. Plus, Disney+ Remains Dominant While ‘WandaVision’ Finds Its Groove

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

There have already been three different screen adaptions of the GameStop story announced, and will any of them be good (1:00)? Plus, Disney+ makes a deal with Ryan Coogler to develop a Wakanda TV series and more (13:53) and ‘WandaVision’ seems to have finally found its groove (34:04). We also remember ABC executive Jamie Tarses (17:56). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, our first hire from the Sword Summer internship program. It's Andy Greenwald!

Do you think they have a very intense vetting process? I bet the team-building exercises are for those guys. Andy, we're going to be talking about the fourth episode of Wanda Vision, which aired on Friday. We're also going to go over some other pop culture news, including Ryan Coogler's New Deal with Disney Plus, and a bunch of other stuff. It's all coming up on the watch.

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What's up, man? How are you doing? I'm great. I'm trying out. I caught you mid-gulp. I'm trying. It's a nice ice coffee. Definitely have increased the caffeine intake recently, and I'm trying a new thing where people ask me how things are going, and I just say it's great. I think you and I, typically you and I say that to each other. Like, we're usually pretty upbeat, guys. But usually we lie to ourselves first before we lie to everyone else. Now I'm just lying to everyone else. Okay, you're lying to me too. Andy, I wanted to hit a couple of headlines this weekend from coming out of the weekend. Yeah. Number one, it was announced today that there are currently

three different GameStop projects in the works as Hollywood scrambles to be reactive and reflective to our incredible moment. This is, of course, the topic that Andy and I discussed, I believe, on Thursday. And we had Mickey down and Conrad Kay from industry, the creators of industry, join us to talk a little bit

about this wild story, obviously, that continues to evolve. But I thought I would bring it up not only just because MGM bought a book proposal from the social network author Ben Mesrich.

Mark Bowell is working on a Netflix movie. And now there's a TV series called To the Moon, which would be a limited series that's just gone, I guess, to market. So that's three different projects about this. Now, you know, history tells us that

only one or two will make it. I also think it's important before we even get into the merits of these three projects just to once again salute our friends, Mickey and Conrad, because by choosing to be on the podcast with you on Thursday, they missed their window to sell their show based on GameStop, which I imagine may have removed the events to the UK. The show would have been called Game, ST-O-P-P-E. No, I think those guys are saving their bullets for their Nokia show. Oh, okay.

All right, that's fair. That's probably more regionally appropriate. Right. So, I mean, how great. Like, definitely want three TV shows about this. Right? What could be better? What's your read on it?

Well, you know, it was interesting going through the last couple of months. I don't know if you got these. tweets, but I got a lot of listener feedback that we should revisit a recent episode of Homeland for how accurately it had predicted the state of civil unrest essentially that we found ourselves in in December and January in terms of a contested election and armed uprisings and etc. I don't think I actually watched the season of Homeland that this person was referring to,

but it did make me think a little bit about how hard it is. to make instantly reactive TV, to make reflective TV, TV that somehow captures a moment, especially now that moments seem to only last for 24 hours. I think that there's a possibility that this GameStop story

goes on and on and on throughout the winter. I think it's also a possibility that it quietly gets brushed aside for the next controversy or sensation du jour. But, you know, there's also... I think of something that, you know, you shared with, me a tweet from a guy named Gabe Roth who works over at Slate.

Old friend from college. Yeah. And he was talking about how this rush for GameStop content is actually reflective of Hollywood looking for newsworthy, newsworthy stories to make stuff about that isn't immediately identified as Republican or Democrat or right or left leaning. And I thought that that was fascinating because we're obviously in an increasingly and still very polarized moment. So can you make newsy stuff without it being rooted in one side or another?

Let me go through, because you dropped a couple of interesting mind grapes there. Let me pick them up for you one by one. One, I also, like you, did not watch the final season of Homeland. I did, however, listen to Mandy Pitinkin on Mark Maren recently, which I assume is much better even than that probably good final season of Homeland was. One of the best things I've ever listened to, highly recommend. Two, reactive art in general is very challenging, if not downright, problematic. And I do think that, and I think people know this, but I also think there is obviously a rush for timeliness and perhaps a artificially inflated rush to be reactive because so much of our culture is driven by the instantaneously reactive rush of social media.

But I do think that even with the best of intentions, it's very possible with an instant reaction to mistake the appeal of something on a very profound, way, which is to say, I'm not sure the most interesting part of the GameStop story is the game stop story. I'm not sure the most interesting part of it is the remarkable stock shorting acumen of user Thick Boy 69. I think it's actually more about the state of populism and responses to the rigged game and how, no matter how many times people knock on the door of the established hierarchy in this country and knock is a very polite term. pretty quickly, there's a lack of instant response and the decks are shuffled and throats are cleared and the major message is ignored. So I think those are sort of markers to lay down in general.

The reason I sent you Gabe's tweet, which was typically smart and observant from him, is I think that this is actually a worthwhile story for us to be kind of tracking underneath the bigger stories, which is to say, who is actually watching TV? Who is going to be watching the TV that is going to be made over the next few years, especially when the TV that is going to be made over the next few years is going to define the success, failure, or even survival of major media companies who have completely reorganized themselves in the service of these new streamers or new operations? And just pulling threads that we've used on this show before, you know, for a long time, stuff that we, that defined us, defined our relationship to TV,

defined our relationship to podcasting, were the programs that were very high-minded, right? But you think about Mad Men, which existed because a network, which was already getting money from carriage fees, needed to make a splash, and it needed to make a splash with two groups of particular. Critics and rich advertisers, or advertisers that mark advertised particularly for the rich. And that's the Venn diagram of Mad Men, right? It wasn't so much that everyone was watching it. It was that the right 800,000 to 1.4 million were watching it, the ones that Heineken and BMW wanted to reach.

One thing that is radically different with streaming is it's not advertising driven anymore. Now it is user-driven, and you have instant readouts of exactly who is watching what. And let me tell you, I know this from personal experience, from phone calls that I've had for the other part of my life and work as a TV creating person. As a GameStop investor? As a Heineken drinking BMW, well, I park next to a BMW sometimes.

They are rattled by what they're seeing. The development executives, who even when they try to develop things outside of their bubbles, virally speaking or otherwise, they are really shaken up. by what people are actually watching on these services and what's actually driving subscribers. So can you give me an example of what you're talking about without getting specific about who's rattled about what? Like, what's like the kind of development

you're talking about here? Well, I think that there was always this, and maybe this, you know, I'm not going to draw big connections between like the state of the country and this observation. But, you know, while you and I and many others have, swum around in these content waters over the last 10 or 15 years,

you know, celebrating these brilliant shows that, that have moved us and have moved needles or whatever, we've never, we never said the words two and a half men, right? Which is actually popular. Or the Big Bang Theory, which is actually popular or NCIS,

I think I've mentioned Big Bang Theory quite a few times, especially in relation to my, yeah, I have. You have. But, now everything is being crammed under the same services and more directly in competition to each other. Right. So now Big Bang Theory is sitting next to Euphoria. Literally. I mean, that's actually the perfect, perfect analogy. And because that's where we're at. They are absolutely being compared.

Apples and oranges are now for sale at the same market. And it turns out people really like apples. So, you know, and as these services are programming to the things that are working, they want companion shows. They want things that will keep the subscribers who have signed up for a certain type of show to have more of that certain type of show. And so what Gabe was saying, I think, was on to something in the sense that he's saying that the GameStop phenomenon may be a way for shows to reflect a populist sentiment without actually getting too political or trying not to. because they also don't want to alien anyone. We're headed for something interesting here. I mean, I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure if it'll make good art or bad art or what.

But we are going to see these types of movements and conversations reflected in the shows that are being made and the shows that we're going to be covering. Are you suggesting that the angle on those movements will be surprising? You know, like, I think traditionally we expect something like the newsroom, right, where it's going to have a relatively a neoliberal take on either recent history or thinly veiled, you know, current events or whatever. Are you saying that you think that there's a little bit of a reckoning with like, how do you program to an entire country that seems divided? Yes. And I think that best case scenario is going to be things like Yellowstone, right? Which is unambiguously popular, full stop. And also quite popular in the parts of the country that aren't on the coast.

That's a good thing. And by the way, there are plenty of Mad Men fans in Missouri. I'm sure I don't mean to. I'm being as reductive as anyone. I would even throw a show out there like Superstore, which is set, I think, in suburban St. Louis, features this incredibly diverse cast, is essentially a workplace comedy in the vein of the office or parks and wreck. But I think, at least in its trappings, feels a little bit more like something of

authentically from the middle part of the country. But I think the thing specifically about Yellowstone that I'd point to, and I haven't really taken the dive myself, but I know you have to speak to it. I sure have. Yeah. You know, Taylor Sheridan's a really good and interesting writer and filmmaker, and it's dealing with sort of, you know, big themes and drama that always work on TV. It's not so much that it is necessarily a respite from wokeness or whatever,

but it just does what it does in a way that I think is not off-putting and potentially quite appealing to larger swaths of the country. And I think the GameStop thing, one of the reasons why studios are clamoring for it is because exactly as Gabe suggested, it suggests a similar place to be. And, you know, real life isn't Twitter, thank God. But the GameStop story got Ted Cruz

tweeting in support of AOC. Then she buried him out back up the highway, rest stop, which was awesome. But he jumped on that because he wanted any opportunity to say, like, I'm a populist too, right? Both of us can agree on this. And there are very few things that, quote, unquote, you know, both sides or whatever can agree on who the good guys are here. And so any opportunity to do that is going to, is definitely going to get people snapping up IP rights and snapping up article rights or whatever.

That's really interesting. Should we move on to a couple of other headlines that we got here? Yes. The biggest one, obviously, is Ryan Cooleer signing a five-year deal with Disney Plus to develop things, to develop content for his production shingle, which is called Proximity Media. I didn't know that one of the principal members of, like, one of the people kind of in charge at Proximity was Ludwig Grosinson, who's, I think, is the Swedish composer who's stuff we love. So I don't know what he does over there.

But their first project is going to be... Very few people is interesting in the last five years in that guy. Let's get him on the podcast. What a strange, interesting career he's already having? But the first project that has announced was a Wakanda series, which comes as no surprise. I mean, obviously, the Black Panther storyline had kind of come to a little bit of a crossroads with the tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman and the announcement that they were not

going to like recast the role of Tchalla. So they were going to have to take the story elsewhere. Black Panther 2 is still in some sort of stage of pre-production. and I would imagine now Black Panther 2 serves as a bridge to a Wakanda series. You know, not to get too far ahead of ourselves off of a deadline story, but that is literally what we do here. I'm pretty excited by this. I'm pretty excited by the creative thinking,

and we can get into this with Wanda Vision, that you have this world that people really want to check out. Do you have a bunch of characters that people are really interested in? This has been dealt a really tough, tough, tough, blow, but what is a creative end around here? And the way I think you do it is changing the focus from Black Panther, the character, to Wakanda the place and populating that place with a bunch of characters. So I think it's a really cool move. I suppose the devil's advocate thing would be, is there a version of Ryan Coogler that exists outside of Disney that's a little bit more provocative,

a little bit more artistically risky, tell some stories that don't have to live either in the Creed world or the Black Panther world. I'm sure we'll see some version of that under the Disney umbrella, but, you know, if you were going to sound any note of cynicism, it might be like, I wonder what the next five years of Coogler looks like if he's not working for the mouse. I also don't know what the specific exclusivity of this deal is because it's very good for all sides.

It's a five-year exclusive TV deal for Proximately. So it's very good for all sides to announce a five-year deal with Ryan Coole. It's good for Ryan Coogler. It's good for Disney. For many, any number of reasons, both that he's a brilliant established filmmaker and for their, you know, I think good faith attempts to increase the tense and the diversity of the creators that they're in serious business with. Taking, it's, this seems impossible to do.

But for the sake of the argument, setting aside the awful loss of Chadwick Bowman, this is such a contemporary and fascinating media story because start with the movie Black Panther. After Chadwick, the reason why the movie is so exceptionally successful is because of all the time and effort spent in building up Wakanda as a place, both concretely with the spice market, which you know I love, but also in terms of what it means to the world, what it means to the black diaspora in the Marvel universe,

the characters within the world, and all the culture, ideas, tech that go along with it. That's what made the movie much more than just another summer blockbuster. Okay, well, I think it came out in February, but winter, a blockbuster, let's leave it at that. It is absolutely the right thing to do. We talked about this before to continue with the sequel and not recast the part because there's more than enough there to play with, especially if the movie is going to be a lot about dealing with the loss and the whole of the center of it. The next thing to say, though, is absolutely from this point on, it's TV.

And that's no longer a negative. It's so much better, I think, for the franchise creatively to say, now it's, this was the name of a comic book that sprung up in the wake of Tanahasi Coates's run on Black Panther, World of Wakanda. I'm much more interested in exploring it from a multi-headed point of view, maybe multiple perspectives, ways in and ways out. out of it than I am Black Panther 3, the continuing adventures of Shuri and whoever else we've got cooking. You know what I mean? It's just, it is so naturally set up for this that it seems like a win for everybody involved. Yeah. I want to kind of get into a lot of what we're talking about here with our Wanda Vision chat. So I'm going to save some of my Marvel conversation topics for that. Before we get to that, I do want to talk a little bit about someone who sadly passed.

away recently, Jamie Tarsus. Now, I was hoping maybe you could kind of set this up a little bit, because I don't know if it's a name that our watch listeners necessarily know, even though they probably should. Yes. So Jamie Tarsis is a veteran TV executive, development executive, and producer who passed away suddenly and surprisingly in her 50s. I think details are coming out, such as they will come out, but apparently she had some sort of cardiac event. at the end of the year and passed away after not regaining consciousness. The first thing is to say, neither of us knew her personally, never worked with her, never cross paths with her.

Nothing but empathy and thoughts and positivity towards those who did know her and loved her. My only connection, and it's not even a tangible one, is just friends of mine in the industry who had developed with her, worked with her, crossed paths with her, all of whom were deeply shaken up and adored her. All of them that I know had worked with her in the second half for career as an independent producer where she was responsible for shows like happy endings star of which another pal of ours Adam Pally tweeted his love for her and you know and people have been in development on various things and all of them spoke about just how rare she was in this town because she was completely accessible, very creative and very supportive of them and their vision in a very, very singular way. which is to say that even if they were baby writers, she stood up for the version of the show that they wanted to make, which is not common at any level.

So, you know, mostly sympathy and empathy, of course, to those who knew her and affected more directly by this loss. But I think we also wanted to just call attention to her kind of unique role in the industry that was really laid bare when I revisited this 1997 New York Times profile on her by Lynn Hirschberg. Now, when Hershberg writes this piece, Jamie Tarses has just been named the head of ABC.

She had been brought over by Bob Iger, I believe, once Disney had bought ABC. And she had cut her teeth working as a kind of wonderkind in development over at NBC under Warren Littlefield in the 90s where she had developed Matt About You and Friends and Caroline in the City. At least had a hand in developing those kind of iconic NBC comedies. And then she was being brought over to ABC to bring, I think, some of that tastemaking that touch to ABC. It's a typical story in that ABC at that point was in fourth place, I believe, if not the third place.

I think fourth place because Fox was pretty well established. Disney had just bought ABC and Michael Ovitz was still running the show there or running that part of Disney. And so he kind of wanted, they wanted juice. They wanted, you know, pizzazz. They wanted someone who could get the young people who were watching friends to tune into ABC, which at that point had kind of a schizophrenic slate in. that they had these kind of more... It was like NYPD Blue, that it was Roseanne, that it was...

It was Rosanne and YPD Blue. Yeah. What, like, a very, a working class kind of like sit down to the whole family, watch it, sitcom, old-fashioned sitcom, and then a show that had David Cruz's butt. Right. So, you know, you had the whole panoply of 90s entertainment right there. Right. So Tarsus is brought on there in 96.

And I think the hers... Can you say it? 32? 33 years old. 33 years old. The first woman to run a network. ever at age 33. So she's brought on in 96.

In 97, there's this Hershberg feature profile of her in the New York Times magazine. To say they don't write them like this anymore, I don't even know if you were a 25-year-old person who's familiar with reading stuff online and you read this, you would believe that it was real. Like you would think it was a piece of fiction. The descriptions of Tarsus, the intimacy with which Hershberg,

the moments that she's able to capture because that was still a time when reporters were offered that kind of access for better or for worse and there's a lot of parts of this Hirschberg piece that I'm like, I wonder if you'd want that pitch back. But, you know, there's like descriptions of Tarsus

like chain smoking in her range rover as she's contemplating the reality that she will probably lose her job in the near future. You know, and this is the person who runs ABC. like to give you an idea of how that works like Andy and I would have to jump through so many hoops to get 15 or 20 minutes with the person who runs ABC now and we would have to agree to a certain

amount of like kind of question we would have to stay away from certain topics we would not get to ask personal questions we would not get to just observe what was happening in this person's zoom background and then somehow recontextualize it as a metaphor for their lack of control or the way that Hollywood views them like everything is so much more controlled now and so this is a real different era of journalism, but you do get this like incredible portrait

of somebody, whether or not it's accurate, I guess we could discuss, but she was really in like the fire in this one. Like she is in like a wave pool. And what's incredible about it in terms of the access and the coverage is that

we're not just right there in the frying pan with the person being cooked. We are also given completely bizarrely unfettered access to the people work in the burners. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like Bob Eiger's quotes and everyone's bone-deep lack of confidence in a person that they hired is so palpable and stressful.

And beyond everything else, the reason why I think people should read it, because look, you don't need, you don't tune into this podcast to hear two 40-year-old dudes mansplain how hard it is for women in the workplace. Like, that is not what you guys should be listening to us for. we are not here to explain it to anyone. But to read this article now is so horrifying and infuriating, because this was not that long ago. You know, I know that we spend a lot of time joking about how we used to buy a lot of CDs

and I remember seeing them sometimes in the house next to the old gramophone player. But this article was 24 years ago. And this is a woman who absolutely deserved a promotion and an opportunity, right? and whose resume, this stuff happens all the time. I mean, look who the NFL keeps hiring to run. I mean, they're hiring 28-year-olds who, you know, drew up an offense once to be the new head coach. Like, this happens still, where Wanderkins are promoted and maybe they've got the fire and the

spark that'll turn them into the next great visionary leader or whatever. But within two paragraphs of this story, Lynn Herschberg is anonymously quoting an agent who identifies as a good friend and supporter of Jamie Tart. saying, you know, the only problem is that when you talk to her, you're talking to a girl, and girls are emotional, you know, and she's probably going to start crying, and I don't know how to do that, and Les Moonvests doesn't do that. It's like, yeah, well, guys, maybe you should have pitched a follow-up on what Les Moonvis does, you know? Right.

The every single thing, every single misogynistic take on women in business in any business, but particularly in, you know, certainly specific to the TV business and the entertainment business is just baked in as an assumption in this story. And even Jamie Tarsus goes along with it, because that is the world that she was molded in and experienced. And it's slow motion car crash horrifying to read it because the piece is premised on this idea that she knew she was doomed from the minute she took the job. And she was. And the title of it is brilliant. I mean, it says Jamie Tarsus's fall as scheduled. Right. It's really high-opening. Which is also like a double meaning because they're also talking about her planning out the schedule for ABC, which then would have

begun in the fall as like a, as a kind of, as the starting gun of the television season. You know, I think it's, it's interesting. We've talked a couple of times over the course of this podcast about the way, how we choose, how Hollywood is choosing what to make and where those things are existing. And, you know, this weekend I watched Little Things, which is this Denzel Washington thriller on HBO Max, which is essentially a John Lee Hancock script. He directed the movie, and it's been sitting around since the early 90s. We finally got it off the ground. It's Denzel. It's Rami Malik. It's Jared Letto. I'm sure a lot of our listeners watched it. I did not think it was very good at all. It has a lot of problems outside of what I'm about to say. But one of the

things that I thought it suffered from was just some like some constructive criticism about like some of the cutting, some of the scene choices, some of the things. Some of the things. things that I think truly rewarding development process might have helped it with. Now, I'm not saying that that's not existing over at HBO Max. I don't know what maybe this thing was audience tested like a year ago. And I'm not even saying there's wisdom and crowds in that way. But what I am kind of talking about is this idea that is more and more of what we see is made by technology companies. I do wonder whether or not the hidden touch of people who are trained studio development executives, someone like Jamie Tars, whether or not you think Caroline in the

city is like an important cultural artifact or not, they did know what they were doing. And they did know how to identify talent and they did know how to make things that lots of people liked. and I wonder whether or not that's a little bit of a lost art because especially when it comes to some of these movies that wind up on streaming, I do feel like there's like a missing quality control check on some of them.

Even things I like, like Triple Frontier, where I'm like, did anybody watch this before they put this up? You know, and I hope we don't lose that, you know, in television. I think, I'm sure there's,

if any writers or directors are out there listening to us right now, they're like, give me a fucking break. Like, we need more. notes on what we were making. But you've had this experience. I mean, there is a version of this where people who have experience making shows might be able to give you some good feedback and some good help. Oh, just anecdotally, I mean, I had a big notes call last week about a project that I'm spending most of my time working on, and it was terrific. Now, I know how lucky that is,

and that's not always the case, but one of the people involved is someone who ran the drama Department of a major network for a long time and distilled his notes into a single question and blew my mind and made everything better, you know, like that is institutional experience and wisdom and insight that can't be replicated by an algorithm for sure. But I also think it's worth folding this into the conversation about Jamie Tarsus specifically, which is to say, who are we listening to? You know, because one of the takeaways from that Lynn Hirschberg story is that she was particularly good at elevating and championing shows like Friends and third rock from the sun, which was developed for a different network and rejected and then picked up by her and championed

and then turned into a multi-season hit at NBC. And then she gets to ABC theoretically to do the same sort of things that she's been doing. And in this article, it's clear that she's actually just trying to polish everyone else's nonsense, right? That she has to deliver somebody that Michael Ovitz is going to say, this is okay. And so she's trying to please what they, what she knows in her bones they want, as opposed to feeling empowered to do what she felt she should do. And look, this is completely, this is why Netflix and Amazon are technology companies first, and they reject this stuff. This is arbitrary. It's always been arbitrary. William Goldman was writing about this in the 70s. I'm sure Louis B. Mayor was saying this decades before that, right? You're going to get things wrong,

but what you want at the end of the day is to not only have a track record of success, you want to have a track record of good relationships with creative people. You want to have a track record of sticking up for the things that you personally believed in, right? And I thought it was notable that, um, you know, learning this from her, you know, terribly unfortunate obituary, that when she pivoted out of being an executive and became a producer, and especially in the last few years, Jamie Tars is being a champion of YA stuff. And I just watched a show she produced the wilds on which one. Right. Which is a big hit. Yeah. And I, and I, and I, thought was quite good and also showed a touch that suggested TV pros made this.

And made the right notes. And I think that that's really interesting when you see the people who had been marginalized or not listened to following their own compasses and discovering the stuff that everyone's looking for, which is to say, overlook things that people actually like. I mean, that's the biggest value is the person who can go not dumpster diving, but at least, you know, in the recycling bin and find something that other people didn't value. and seeing the value in it. It's interesting. I mean, I didn't, because for me, reading this was just, you know, we were interested in

the business. I remember her name from the 90s and then revisiting that time story and just realizing what a horror show it was then and how many things haven't changed. But I didn't appreciate that connection that you wanted to bring to it, which is, are we losing that kind of institutional voice? For all I know, like, more shows have been ruined by meddling development executives or more shows that should have gotten to air and never got past, you know, a pilot script. I don't have a definitive answer for that, but there is like, I wonder as storytelling becomes

more of an extension of technology rather than an extension of media, and I don't really know, shoot, pick your poison there. What, where does that leave storytelling and who are sort of the people who are like, I have institutional experience of how to make this stuff? Here's the thing. make this conversation three pages, not six pages. Make this happen during the day, not during the night. Make sure there's a transition here so that we know that this person has gone through this. Like little things, I'm sure writers know these things, but to me, I'm just curious whether or not, like, that role is slowly going away.

And I would also say that a lot of the things that we have championed and that we believe in, events or programs or the rise of certain talents of personalities, may have led to that in you know not not wittingly but led to that decline and what I mean by that is um the only reason that I have was able to start having a career in TV is because Noah Hawley was like I like that you don't have TV brain that you haven't been in rooms and been told how to do things because they've always been done this way Sam our good friend and my executive producer sam had never made television, never worked in television, turned a feature script into Mr. Robot, and holy hell it worked, right?

That is a show in a career completely untethered from any institutional mandate about how things should be done. And it worked. And I was the huge beneficiary of that because I don't have any institutional no idea whatsoever. But it's a delicate balance. You know, we talk about, you know, the visionary. disruptive brilliance of Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men, and those three dudes have deep IMDB pages that they're not entirely proud of.

So does David Milch. Yeah, absolutely. Like, they were old studio hints in a lot of ways. For people who were curious, you know, Jamie Tarsus worked on Aaron Sorkin's first TV show Sports Night and helped develop that. And then she is the inspiration for the Amanda P. character on Studio 60 from the Sunset Strip. So if you're curious. David Benioff's wife? The wife of David Benioff, yes.

Why don't we take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk about Wanda Vision episode four. 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,

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Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com and book your next trip today. Got your happy price, price line. Do you think Disney hurt our footsteps? Do you think they were like, damn, these dudes at the watch, they just put us on the timer. We better drop the bag for them. I think Kathy Kennedy is watch aware, for sure. Okay.

For sure, yeah. But that's Star Wars. You don't think, I mean, because obviously last Thursday, Andy and I were doing a little bit of concern trolling about like they may need to move the football. Like they may need to get a chunk play here. If I can use a football terminology that Nick Siriani, I'm sure no doubt will be using the Eagles locker room. I think maybe like moving the ball forward three and a half yards every time and

leaving a bunch of Easter eggs for hardcore Avengers heads who know, oh, that's from this. And I think that means this plot line is in play. They obviously threw open the gates, changed the aspect ratio, brought in the full color, let Tiana Paris cook, brought Randall Park in, brought Kat Dennings in, and really, like, kind of changed the entire dynamic of this show. What did you think of episode for?

It was really interesting. And I am really, if not, on the fence, on that electromagnetic pulse barrier that separates Westview from the rest of scenic suburban New Jersey. Can't decide which side you want to be on, right? Kind of. I'll say this. All of our, all of my criticism on this show and potentially all the MCU shows going forward

has to be taken with a very large grain of cosmic cube sand or sand from, what's the metaphor I want to use here? A dude from sideways with Sandman and the Spider-Man sequel. I can't do it. But the point being, I really like the Marvel movies. You know, I really do. And this episode was very, very, very. smartly skitching on the 10 plus years of history we have with these movies. And not the least of which reason being, I mean, it started by just hooking itself up to the

third rail of emotional power running through the MCU, which is Thanos's snap and the blip or whatever you want to call it. I mean, they're going to keep running back to that well as much as they can because it gives all of it a patina of emotion that otherwise these movies lacked. And immediately we learned that, oh, my God, she was gone for five years, and her mom, who we met in the Captain Marvel movies, is dead, and all this stuff has happened. And so, okay, now we're off and running. And we are very used to this, not just aspect ratio and color palette,

but tone, dynamic, momentum, rhythm. And here's all our wisecracking faves. Randall Park is mixing it up and Cat Dennings. And, okay, here we go again. We're mentioning Tony Stark and Ultron. And look, they're playing my theme music. Like, I love this stuff. And I was on board.

I also really liked Tiona Paris. And it's funny how long I've liked this actress because she was on Mad Men. But as you said, she rarely gets a chance to do that much. And she's a very dynamic, charismatic lead, I guess, for this episode. We could call it that. And yet, none of it is as interesting, aesthetically, creatively, or dramatically, as the first two episodes, which were just so fully committed to the bit.

And furthermore, because this was more like a Marvel movie, it was also the most like a movie, which is to say, what did we accomplish in these 30 minutes? Why are we done now? It just felt like that arbitrary stopping point because there's more to come. We moved all the way into the back

to catch up to where we were in the present. And as much as I liked it, I felt unsatisfied because it wasn't enough for me to be a standalone episode. If you're judging this show on what you learned at the end of each episode, I think you'll be sorely disappointed. Because ultimately, as dazzling as that episode was at points, what did we learn at the end of that episode? That this could be Wanda's fault, right?

Yeah, that it clear that it is, that Vision probably is still dead, that she is this powerful and this controlling and doesn't want to be messed with. Right. I thought that the episode had a really fun X-Files feel. So, you know, if Wanda Vision is continually referencing TV of the past, I know that this wasn't necessarily like a 90s serial drama style episode. But I did feel like Randall Park and Tiana Paris had a little bit of Mulder and Scully going with, going to them. And it even had like, I felt like the vibe, like Kat Dennings was almost like the, who are the guys that, Mulder would often go to. The lone gunman. The lone gunman. Like, she had, like, a little bit of that going. The lone gunman TV show created by one Vince Gilligan.

Oh, yeah, that's right. And so I really enjoyed it. I agree with you. I didn't think, like, we arrived that much further ahead in the plot for as much of the backstory as we got. But I did think that just getting to see, like, the sword office and where, and, like, having Darcy being brought in on a truck and, like, just expanding the world a little bit made the show feel a little bit more alive, which I think it's going to run into

as a go back and forth between this thing that's happening inside of a woman's head versus this huge thing that's happening outside that's grappling with life after everybody has been brought back from the snap. It's such an interesting moment, and it's either a tribute to Kevin Feige's world building and brand building skills or a savage indictment of my own co-option by the entertainment industrial complex and late stage capitalism. Both are in play.

To say that, I'm a fan of the world and the vibe. I'm a fan. And so when I saw I imagine you like Al Pacino's character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, just drinking an old fashion watching Marvel movies in your screening room. I mean, it was a

turmeric ginger tea, but you got me dead to rights. Tiona Paris and Randall Park, those are the best four or five minutes of the episode for me as well, just when they're on the road with the troopers and they're doing the bans that we know from the MCU. And I felt exactly the same way you do. But also, weirdly, my fandom is so differently wired now that my brain went to a place that it shouldn't as a consumer. It went to a place that it should only go to as a marketer or a programming executive. and that place is, oh, we're going to be in good hands

if these two are in the Clark, Greg, Agent Colson role for the next 10 years of this type of stuff. Why am I doing that work for them? Why does my brain go to how good this will be for them? I mean, they got me, I guess. Or we could just stay where you were, which was it reminded me of the X-Files or a new version of it that would be fun to watch.

So both are plausible outcomes, and I guess I agree with both. So what are we talking about here? Is this essentially like a little bit of a magic trick of a show? I mean, is there a really no they're there, but they're doing a lot of incredible close handwork? Close on magic, you know? Shouts to our longtime listener, Derek DelGladyo, for that point.

I think that it's doing a lot. You're absolutely right. And that's kind of that is the, dare I say, Marvel of this whole thing. Right. But like what's it about who's the antagonist here? Because the protagonist and antagonist of the show appears to be Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. The Scarlet Witch, a character who I keep saying,

we don't really know anything about. And no fan. Okay, 97.5% of diehard see-it in the theater Avengers fans have no opinion of her. They know who she is because she exists and she accomplished plot functions in those movies, right? So really, the project of this show, well, there are a lot of them all at once, but it's done in such a shiny, you know, what do you call it?

Aspect ratio shifting way that we're not, we're taking it in as a singular vision, but it's doing all of the stuff at once, including making her an interesting and plausible character going forward, making her but also an interesting threat, the likes of which we have an experience in these movies and maybe we'll have an impact on things going forward. It is also changing the nature of what these stories can and should be with the formal trickery or show offiness of the first few episodes, it's accomplishing a lot. And it's doing it with, you know, you don't see them sweat. You see them smiling and quipping. But what you're speaking to is exactly that infinity stone-shaped hole in vision's head that lurks in the

middle of this entire project, which is for what? For who? Right. But we don't ask that question because they're dancing so hard. I know, but this is where the Mandalorian fucks me up. is that the Mandalorian in the second season was like, actually we're all of Star Wars. This is like, we are, all the chips got put on this number coming up. And there are no more movies in the pipeline that push the story forward beyond the end of, of the sequels, beyond the end of the Ray Skywalker sort of plotline. This is where everything is happening so much so. Luke fucking Skywalker is coming in.

Now, I don't know where there. this goes from, and there's been some leaks about like what's happening on Wanda Vision the next couple of episodes, I'll spare our audience that. I think you could take some educated guesses about why what is happening is happening. And I think that there's also been some rumors about like, is Mephisto a person I need to know about? Mephisto. Do I need to know about this guy? If they really, if this isn't any way based on comic book stories that also led to the creation of Billy and Tommy, their twin sons, then yes, you do. I think, but I don't think they're going to do that

because I just think that above every other skill, Kevin Feigey has an incredible compass that points him just north of the storylines that would lose America. You know what I mean? They would, like, lose the heartland. Like, he understands the layer of comic book bullshit that is acceptable and the stuff that should stay in the funny page. So my guess is no, but it is noteworthy that some of the Mephisto stuff is also related to the

Agatha Harkness stuff, and that's the witch character that some people think is a connection to Catherine Hahn's character. Noteworthy Catherine Hahn's character was not one of the people outed as a real New Jerseyan. That's right. You know, only imagine it's like, and this man, Paul Walnuts. He, Bruce Springsteen. Patty's, yeah. So I wouldn't, well, you know, this actually is what we're talking about,

because I would say as a fan of all of this that you probably don't need to know about Mephisto's role. I don't think he has a big role to play in the Marvel universe. But, you know, it does have a big role to play in the Marvel expanded cinematic universe. People like us speculating and keeping the chatter going and sending people down Easter egg-filled rabbit holes on the internet to learn about everything that it could be, which is part of what fuels fandom and fuels these movies anyway. So that's intentional. And that's part of it. They want us to be doing that. And there are worse things to be doing because those comic books are wild and weird and fun. I think I'll reserve judgment until this is over. I think I would have preferred for this to be

if not a binge drop, at least like a more creative drop of like three episodes than three episodes. I wish we were getting a little bit more per week, and I think that would change how I feel about the show in general. But ultimately, this was the first one where I was engaged, I think, the entire episode and wasn't kind of like looking at my watch a little bit. The past ones where that was happening, I still found it very interesting to read about and think about the episode after it was done. But this one really helped my attention.

I don't know what that says about me or what that says about Wanda Vision. I also want to just keep track of our own coverage of this stuff when, and to be careful not to, or at least be cognizant of the caveats we put on things, or not caveats, but the excuses we're willing to make for things. And by that, I mean, I caught myself thinking, boy, they committed to the bit for two and three quarters episodes. That's really commendable in such a high-stakes intellectual property play on, you know, the nation's most, speculated over streaming service, that sort of sucks, right? It doesn't make it less true. You know that many people along the development path were like, no, no, episode four is episode one. And then they watch it on TV or we sink into it, but we make people feel as safe as

possible from the beginning. And someone, a hero, I guess, was like, no, we will do it this way. And we have the freedom and the flexibility and the goodwill built up and the trust and the smart enough audience or whatever. But still, it was two and a half episodes of a bit before we're back to talking about Ultron and Socovia. That's right. So we should try to contextualize that. When are we not talking about Secovia? Andy, it was so great talking to- Those accords linger over our lives to this day. I know. It was great talking to you. We have a very fun show of playing on Thursday, so I'm looking forward to that. I'll probably, if you're in our Facebook group, look out for a post for me this week. I want to solicit some

feedback from the group on what we're going to do. I think so, yeah. So until then, Andy, thanks so much for talking to me. You love to stir it up on Soch. I'm excited. I look forward to that too. Great job, Branski. It's really a great job today by all of you.