The Watch - The End of Marvel on Netflix, Plus the Penultimate Episode of ‘True Detective’ | The Watch (Ep. 330)

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

‘Jessica Jones’ and ‘The Punisher’ are leaving Netflix (4:21), completing the Marvel purge as Disney gets ready to launch its own streaming service (16:54). Plus, the penultimate episode of ��True Detective’ leaves us satisfied with where Season 3 has gone (31:19). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Surface Pro 6. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the rigger.com and joining me in the studio

wandering towards the flame of the 90s. It's Andy Greenwald! I was worried you were a little low-energy. No, I got it. No-end. Because we have 1,600 pastries in the studio today. It's President's Day, it's Monday. Greenwald's here in the studio.

I love it. I love it. on the decks. We've already given Kaya, I think, six or seven desserts. We are pre-apologizing. So we have a little bit of sugar rush

going on in here. We're going to be talking about the official cancellation of Netflix on... The official cancellation of Netflix. Netflix has been canceled? Oh, no. The official cancellation

of Daredevil on Netflix. That already happened. Thanks. We're going to be talking... The end of Marvel on Netflix. Yeah. We're going to be talking a little bit about the end

Marvel on Netflix and what Netflix is replacing it with, which is the Umbrella Academy to some extent. And then later we're going to talk about True Detective. Got anything you want to get off your chest? No, look, I just, I'm so happy to be here. I love it when you're coming to the stude. You look great. I said to Andy yesterday, he was like,

we were trying to decide what to talk about. Kai's going to love this. And, you know, he was like, it doesn't matter. We'll be in the stude. And I was like, it's like the All-Star game. Little effort, but lots of highlights. That's right. That's right.

Will you let me know when I successfully bounce past a dunk to you? Yes. Maybe when we're talking about true detective. You know, I'm so happy to be here. I love podcasting. Are you vamping right now? Pastries. Only a little bit to say that I'm very cute.

I almost want to know and I don't want to know what our cue score is when we devote the beginning of our podcast, as we have been doing recently to matters. Of home economics. Not pressing. Not so pressing. You know, I had some thoughts about wedding registries. Chris had some questions about how to remove an onion stench from a cutting board.

It's not like an onion skunk came into my bedroom or anything. It's just that we've been making the stew, hashtag the stew. More than once. A couple of times. We made it once successfully. Let me guess. We tried then to double the point. portion and it didn't go well.

As Alison Herman explained to me, I needed a bigger cooking service. We've got to do it in two separate things or whatever we do. Allison Herman from the ringer or Alison Roman, the recipe author. Allison Herman from the ringer who is somewhat of an Alison Roman expert. Got it. And then we made it again and it was fine. But it's just onion season up in my house because of that. And I had, as I do every morning, thinly sliced whole grain bread.

Oh my God. Are we doing this? Toasted with almond butter and sliced banana. and I chopped up in my banana. I threw it on my toast, and then I was like, this goddamn banana taste of onions. By toast, you mean English muffin, I imagine. Not anymore.

I know I'm so thirsty for that. Not anymore. Don't even know what, I can't even imagine what nook and cranny life is like anymore. It's so sad. I feel like I'm like a, I got out of Shawshank. Now I don't know what it's like on the outside. So before we, so we're going to talk Umbrella Academy, True Detective.

I'm excited to talk about both, but I am curious because I haven't been here. I mean, I've been here, but I haven't been sitting with you, looking you in your baby blues while we talk about this. The other week, in my absence, you did a very cool thing. Oh, yeah, right. The programming grid. Programming grid. You designed your own must-see TV night based on what you've been watching, what you're excited about. Yeah, so we set it from December 1st to, yeah, like last week or whatever.

And it was you build an 8 p.m. through late night programming grid that would imagine, okay, you get home, they have your dinner, plop down on the couch. and you dial yourself in for prime time and late night, the way our parents used to, kind of. And I thought that was a great idea. Thanks, man. I'd love to contribute. Do you have one? No.

Okay. Well, 7 p.m. Top Chef Jr. Uh-huh. 7 p.m. With my older daughter. Okay. And that's about it.

Are you going to be like a weird figure skating coach about making your older daughter become Top Chef? No, she loves it. It's so fun to watch with her. She is saying that she never wants to be on the show. She wants to go to the place where they're having their food truck competition next season and sample their wares. Really? Yes.

But she also said that I should be on the show. You should be on Top Chef Jr.? Or any Top Chef, which is the nicest thing anyone will ever say to me. How would you do a Top Chef? Terribly. Yeah. Terribly. Why?

Because of the pressure? I'm not a fast cook. Nor am I a deeply creative cook. I can do my things. Yeah. But that's about it. But I wanted to ask you, because I don't really have a grid at the moment. But I was curious how, when you were putting that together in the context,

did you feel that there were a lot of things you were super excited about? Like, would it change, if we were doing it in two weeks, or if you were doing it now that Umbrella Academy had premiered, or whatever, would it have shifted, or was this more of a snapshot of the type of TV that you're watching at this moment and what makes you happy on a random Tuesday night? Well, I think that it's just gone from networks used to program for balance, like a thematic balance so you would try to kind of have

sitcoms that went well together you would have a hit drama that could maybe support the lead in or the thing that came after it or you know it was a lot of like dependency on that it was a lot of dependency on popularity of your mean shows

but I do miss the idea of I mean even as recently as like good Sunday night HBO nights of like Thrones Veep and girls or something You know what I mean? And there's like a pallet cleanser. There's some light stuff.

There's some drama. There's some action. And so that was really what I was going for was like kind of like, how do I kind of like start at light and fun at eight, get dark at 10 and then lighten it up again at 11? Yeah, I think that makes sense. And honestly, I mean, I was playing around with it. And maybe I will contribute in a week when another one or two shows that I like. When mom comes back on? Comes back on.

But no, I felt weird. Like you had Russian doll in yours, but I finished that. wouldn't want to... Well, yeah, I mean, that's... It's also imagining a world in which those Netflix shows are not free-based, you know? Like, I think that that's, like, another way to look at it. I don't know what it would be like to watch, like, episode four of Ozark and then wait a week. I...

And that's why I think that... And we should move on after this, but I... But just to say that I think I definitely looked at it as a nostalgia exercise and to some degree as a cry for help. Yeah. Because, for example, the first thing that I thought that I would put in that 10-Bet PM hour was the deuce. Right. A show that I like so much, that I admire so much, that is becoming a running gag because I have

not finished the season of it. Yes. And I think that if it was part of this night that we designed where it's like, okay, great, TV night, I would be part of it. And it is on Sunday nights at HBO, but everything has now feels so deeply decoupled from that way of looking at it. Well, you mentioned the Russian doll thing. I mean, one of the things you could do is you could watch television this way.

You could just sort of like note when something has come out and gotten a good review. and if you have the discipline or the interest in exercising this kind of muscle, you could go through and just watch things not necessarily once a week, but you could watch like a Brooklyn 9-9 and a Black Monday and a Russian doll and a true detective and then a Patriot Act. But I think that the way that television is being made, and this actually, you know, we can get into Umbrella Academy via this if you want. I do think that the way television is being made is, is, is,

different in terms of like the way storytelling works. I'm kind of curious to know even working on Breyer Patch whether or not this kind of stuff is talked about in the writer's room. Like how much you guys are talking about an episode being watched in a suite of three or four episodes that people are catching up on versus we have to make this so significant and interesting that people will wait seven days to come back. Well I, it's a great question. It is something I think about a lot. It was obviously something I was thinking about a lot before I was trying to make something. But I feel incredibly. fortunate that I'm on a network that

broadcasts every week because I still care about that. But I also feel, you know, knowing look, this is a highly serialized murder mystery show. So it would not be a good look to just drop in on episode four. You have to watch all of it. But that said,

I deeply, deeply believe and have since being a critic that episodes should be individualized. They should be so every episode, at least the way we're building it, has a significant setpiece, has a distinct emotional tone and feel, and should stand on its own to some degree. Partly because that's how I like to watch things and I like to consider things, I don't like that chapter in a book thing,

but also because I want people to feel super excited that it's that night of the week again, and now we're going to see something different. But that trying to be the same and different is always been the gift and the curse of making TV. weirdly I think that it's the shows and this is a dwindling number of shows that I watch with my wife that still sort of hue to that more

old-fashioned schedule. And even then it's not a weekly schedule it's really more like that what AMC does with the John La Carre books that we like adaptations that we like in that... You make it into a miniseries. We do it as a miniseries. We did a little drummer girl that way, we did the last top of the lake that way. We're sort of doing that with

brilliant friend, which ended, you know, for most people, two months ago. But, you know, every few days maybe we'll dip back in to old-timey Italy. Right. It's interesting, but let's, I think you're right, we should use this as a chance to pivot to what Netflix has going on. Yeah, so. As opposed to True Detective, which I have been watching week to week. You've gotten into screeners and you've been watching it in more in bulk. Yeah, well, no, actually, we watch it. We have a very, we keep it pretty Catholic in how we watch True Detective for the, on the flat circle. Unlike the Hoyt family.

We won't have the finale, so I don't know what happens. We're going to be watching the finale along with everybody else. But we've been watching on Friday. Okay. And then we record on Tuesday. So we get to have like a couple of multiple viewings,

but we don't, you know, we don't have, we don't cheat and go ahead to six. Oh, that's good. And then talk about that and two, because I think part of the joy or like the excitement around the show is given what we know,

what do we think is happening here? and then the next week we get a little bit more and if you went ahead to 7 on 3 just to see if you were right I think it would just change candidly like the kind of performance you were giving on that show we felt that way when we did Game of Thrones show No for sure yeah

Now of many often ways to care of that for us I mean like you can't have any episodes Right but I was even talking about this a little bit with Jason Gallagher who's one of the producers who work on the show along with Sean You and a bunch of other people Which is like how different it is to talk about something that you don't know the answer to versus reviewing something that you do know the answer to. And I think that that is increasingly, you know, a difficult proposition because even for something

like the Umbrella Academy, which not a lot of people are familiar with the source material, at least not as many as maybe like the X-Men or Watchmen or Avengers or Spider-Man or Batman, everybody's kind of well-versed in the story beats for those things. and that's what I'm kind of is kind of so bizarre about the fact that they keep insisting on like restarting Batman. It's like, we got it. We know. Yeah. Did you hear what happened to his parents?

They killed that guy's dad. It sucks. Yeah. So this is a long way of saying that, you know, I can understand some trepidation for people starting another universe, especially one where they're going to have to kind of adjust to a whole new set of rules. At least with the MCU stuff, you're kind of like, well, it's all. all in the same playground. So I get basically what's happening here. So I kind of, I have to say,

I went into Umbrella Academy a little bit dragging my feet because I was like another thing where it's like 10 characters show up in a pilot and we have to establish all these rules and all these things. And I finished the pilot being somewhat, you know, pretty charmed by it. You know, it's hard to not like this show. Yeah, I, well, you know, I hear what you're saying and I agree with you. But I would also say that the Umbrella Academy, hopefully, is a hard. harbinger of superhero stuff to come in that it assumes we know the X-Men and we know Spider-Man

and we know the Justice League. And so we understand what this show and what the comic book that it's based on was riffing on. You know, it's like you can't, the best possible thing for the genre would be to finally relax and understand that there are some principles that we all are now versed in and we speak this language. So now you speak the language, now you can start introducing slang. Now you can start riffing on it. Yeah, right. Now you can stop writing in heavy prose and write in, I don't know, what Gerard would call it, like scat poetry or something.

Why don't you give the bullet point synopsis for anybody who doesn't know exactly what we're talking about? Because we won't, we only watch the pilot, we won't get too deep into it. Yeah. And I also need to say, going into it, the caveats that Umbrella Academy is produced by UCP, which is the same studio making Breyer Patch. It is created by, it's based on the comic book. It's co-executive produced by, and based on the comic book. written by Gerard Way, who is a very old friend and the singer of My Chemical Romance

and a one-time a guest on this podcast. So take all that salt. We're not in the pocket of big MCR, though. No. We're not in the pocket of big black braid. We actually, we were born in the pocket, like Bain. We were shaped by that pocket. So this was Gerard's first comic book that I think he created it with Gabriel Baugh,

who is a really talented Brazilian artist. and it is very nakedly an homage to something like the X-Men, and something like Doom Patrol, which also debuted this week on the DC Universe, have not watched it. That's also a comic that Gerard went on to write himself. And it's about gifted, talented, misfit children who were raised by an eccentric, rich person and crafted into a super team, you know,

and then this is about them much older, dealing with everything that happened and everything that's about to happen. And I got to say, I mean, look, pilots are hard, but I really appreciated the whimsy. I really appreciated the lightness within this. Now there's violence and there's the threat of the apocalypse and there's all this other stuff. But for me, the central moment of the show and the reason why I encourage people to check it out is the dance sequence set to, I think we're alone now. which, you know, also features a Wes Anderson pullback of an entire mansion cut away like a diorama and nice footage of the CGI talking gym. Right.

But I'm a sucker for dance sequences and I just really appreciated, I really appreciated some acid, some sugar, not to get my semine nose right on here, but some different flavors cutting through the heavy heaviness of what. what we've come to expect from superhero shows on television. Yeah, and also especially how they have to front-load them. You know, one of the things that I saw that, obviously, you know, we've pretty much completed the Marvel Exodus from Netflix, like all of their shows. As of this morning, it's all done. Yeah, Jessica Jones and Punisher have been, quote-unquote, canceled from Netflix,

but essentially are going to be, in all the moving to Disney Plus. Well, weirdly, this morning, the Punisher was officially canceled, but everyone kind of knew that. Jessica Jones was always the most critically acclaimed of these shows. the third season is shot, has yet to air. Netflix's statement was basically like, thanks to everyone for making these shows that will live on forever on Netflix.

So I don't know. I mean, the characters are not done. Sure. But it could well be that these iterations of the characters with this cast are done forever. And this kind of goes back to something that Andy and I were talking about, I guess, a week or so ago, about what kind of stuff is going to be on Disney pluse?

We're still doing it. Well, I think we have to commit to the bit at this point. actually gotten tweets from people who are like, I will know long, I will not be referring to this thing as Disney Plus. It's classier. They're going to, Bob Eiger is going to personally send us a personal thank you note in French. Does it come with a lot of zeros? No.

That's what he refers to us as. The Netflix Marvel shows were gritty. That was their whole kind of, the pitch was like this takes place in a gritty, violent, you know, people curse, people have sex, people drink, you know, when people get shot, it bleeds. Closer to our reality.

Sure. Yeah. And, you know, Not ours. I'm sorry, let me state that. Maybe more like Kaya and other young people's reality. But the Disney Plus idea... The Disney Plus idea was supposed to be a little bit more family-friendly. I think so. I mean, I think that's more in the Disney brand. I think probably the hardest it would get would be a sort of soft PG-13, I bet.

I think, look, it's just an interest... We'll turn back to Umbrella Academy, but it's just to say that, like let's look at the results. Let's go to the tape. And let's look at the superhero movies that have succeeded in the last few years, both critically and commercially, and what they have in common.

And if you pluck out Thor, Ragnarok, Spider-Man movie, Wonder Woman, Deadpool, and Aquaman, there is a willingness, and obviously to different degrees between those projects, to embrace the core absurdity of the project.

Right. To comment, either to comment on it, you know, in sort of a meta-explicit way, like Deadpool, or to run right towards the fact that this is a movie about a talking fish man, which I haven't seen. But from what I gather, when I heard that Julie Andrews was voicing an eternal, like, ocean beast. Maybe whether it meant to be funny, whether it was intended to be funny or not. Yeah, I've certainly... That movie was embraced.

And Wonder Woman embraced the kitsy optimism of it, which, which, Captain America, the First Avenger, did as well as a period piece, and I really appreciate that. And so, despite that there's some residual conservative knee-jerk thinking here that what people, the only way to make America buy comic book properties is if they are grim and gritty, that's just not the case anymore. This is a generation who's grown up on this stuff and understands that a comic book story can be high or low or light or dark, like any story. Yes.

And so I'm pretty into the surrealism of the Umbrella Academy, if anything, I feel like it could go further and maybe it will over the course of the season earlier reviews are kind of mixed which surprised me just from the strength of the pilot but maybe this is also

they had to take a half step before they could run and Gerard's instincts are super out there and Steve Blackman who's a really talented writer and showrunner who took over it

maybe was you know baby stepping because look and then I'm saying he's baby stepping and did I mention the talking monkey? Yeah pretty good special effects on that talking monkey Really good monkey, guys. Nice work.

Do you have origin fatigue? Are you at all fatigued by starting these genre universes? Well, sorry, so I keep avoiding your central question, which is about that. I think this skillfully avoided it. I think the origin is the five minute, if that prologue. Right. And then the nice thing about this story is that it immediately jumps past everything and deals with the aftermath. Now, it can backfill story. Obviously, there are flashback scenes in the pilot. But even that one conceit that the one kid has been lost in time and comes back still as a kid,

sort of helps get us past a lot of that early stuff. You know, I think it's baked in to the conceit. But beyond that, I do think the show, and there must have been a lot of conversation about this in their writer's room, the show was aware, the people making the show were aware of the universe. they were putting the show into. And they don't spend a lot of time explaining a lot. Like how people have superpowers, what it looks like, what it would mean, the gift and the curse of having them.

We get it. We see it. We see it from the different ways that they dance, you know, which I think is a much more artful way to explain it than long, long shots of people in cowls walking down hallways. I think what it is is that I'm still adjusting, or I think it's always an adjustment to get your head around the idea of comic culture being the dominant mainstream culture.

We are having a hard time with it. I don't know if other people are, but I agree with you. Because I think that it kind of changes a little bit of what comics meant to people our age, which was this sort of like side door and this escape and a way in which to view yourself and view the world through like, hey, like

this world that you think is in your imagination could actually reflects way more the real world than you think. And that was sort of always, I think, especially the Promise of X-Men, right? It's like the alienation of the mutants was really the alienation of anyone. Yep, and that you could view your story through that. Now, I also, personally, I think that there's something about the never-ending story element of comics and the constantly pushing forward and pushing in through these other side stories

and weaving things together. And yeah, of course there's time jumps and crossovers and everything else. I think that that is being lost by this, like, by the machine of what's happening out in Hollywood where it's like it's just more effective for them to like reboot Batman every five years or six years than it is for them to be like

we're just going to stick with this and hope that Christian Bale keeps making them or we're going to we can't get like we can't do 10 Batman movies in a series right so we've got to constantly keep recycling it what I would say is try to think is to try to put a music analogy onto it

and with comic book as dominant culture we are not let's compare this might be telling on myself a little bit with this analogy but if you compare

like rock and roll as a cultural force with comic books as our dominant cultural language we are not

that far into this era we are maybe in the beginning of the 70s or something right in terms of where rock and roll was we haven't even gotten to Zeppelin

yet what I'm saying is there is a paradigm of what rock is and should be what it sounds like and if you keep playing in that style

you're going to have a certain baseline level of success. But we are at the point where maybe there's a Velvet Underground that people have been listening to. And there's a couple things on the side. And slowly, the people influenced by those people on the side might start to claw their way into the mainstream a little bit

and get some shine. I still think there is a lot of creative possibility here. And the people that I'm looking to is a different tree of creators. Grant Morrison is a brilliant comic book writer whom I adore, who's really Gerard Way's biggest influence, and they've become friends and collaborators as well. well, but a more surrealist, meta, celebratory, weird approach to the material, you know, where, the thing I, to use the music analogy, keep trying to find a way into this music analogy to have it makes sense. There is an assumption, for example, that people who like comic books are like, let's say like goths. It's all dark. It's all weeping crime.

But what people who don't listen to The Cure might not remember is that The Cure also made Friday I'm in love. They made an album called Wild Mood Swings. They were in on the joke even while they were actually very sad on records like disintegration and pornography or whatever. And putting on the makeup, putting on the wigs, putting on the costumes, and then playing is a central part of being a fan of certain kinds of music. But it's also a central part of certain kind of comic book fandom. and that's the comic book fandom that I'm excited to see celebrated in something like the Umbrella Academy.

The show might not be perfect and it might not be a worthwhile long-term vessel for this type of storytelling but there's a spark there and I found that and I found that pretty exciting. I liked the shorthand of it. I liked how much we got through

in that first hour. I thought it was really brilliantly directed by Peter Horr. I thought it definitely like came out of the it came out of the gate knowing exactly what it was, knowing the tone. It's so stylish.

kind of like dialed into one another, all this stuff that's really hard to get early on. And like, I think in a weird way I have like a, a ton of appreciation for how hard it must be to like launch something and you've got 10 characters and all these different storylines and all these different cross relationships.

It's much, in a way, like my brain is sort of like driving away from that a little bit. Like I find myself like just way more attracted to something like stand- off at Sparrow Creek where it's like this contained story. No, I mean, I think that I'm a little bit more like when I watch television sometimes, I'm like, do we have this many characters, main characters, because you want to have something in season three of Grey's Anatomy where like the fifth doctor can carry an episode so that

Ellen Pompeo doesn't have to do it. And it's like those sort of like almost market forces start to like get into my mind about like what are the creative choices being made to here? Like is it necessary that I have like an emotional relationship with something? seven people when I really just want to do it with two or three. It is, it remains the, maybe the biggest issue affecting our understanding, our appreciation, or our enjoyment of TV. And in some ways, the least talked about, even though we constantly are circling around it.

TV was always, always, always, TV storytelling was always about the journey. It was never about the beginning or the destination. That wasn't it. It was about Grazenat. No, and the funnily enough to show that changed that, arguably, is long as long as well. lost, and the whole point of loss was the, like, Lost's joys were in those mid-season's like, what the fuck is going to happen here? Yeah.

Yeah. That's always what it was. And then we, you know, but we have shows like, you know, I mentioned last week, like Russian Doll, which I don't, I can't think of it like a TV show because I didn't appreciate it or get it until I saw the entirety of it. And my brain was not prepared for that. And this show, we're putting, you know, we're talking about the pilot. Many people have probably already finished the season of Umbrella Academy and have different opinions about it because of it. But we are definitely putting a lot into that first, the beginning of the journey.

It's funny to have this conversation while talking about Jessica Jones or The Punisher, which because their comic book characters could have gone forever. But all of a sudden, because of this corporate breakup, everyone is like, oh, wait, wait, that was it. That was the story. And people seemed dissatisfied maybe because it wasn't built to be contained like that. or they weren't prepared. They thought this was a longer ride than it was going to be. All I can say with my old-fashioned brain

is that Umbrell Academy put me in a world that I was happy to be in. And maybe this is the best segue because you know, I'm just looking to you right now, you know I have had my issues with True Detective.

Readers of Granite certainly know as well. But look, and I've had my issues with this season that we could talk about. But I am enjoying watching the show every week, so we can talk about it, so I can have a reaction to it. And so I can see what's happening. I mean, there's something that is clicking.

Yeah, there's something about it that's drawing you back. With my lizard brain. Yeah. And we can talk about whether it's the specific content of the show, or we've only, guess what, maybe we've only been having one conversation this whole time, and it's about how we watch TV. Yeah, where do you want to hang out?

All right, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor and we'll come back and talk about the penultimate episode of Trudeo Tech in Season 3. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Roman with two-thirds of guys experiencing noticeable hair loss by age 35. Most guys assume losing their hair is inevitable as they age. Some don't care. Some shave their head.

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Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Hulu live. Hulu's paying some of the league's best players, a lot of money to do some pretty crazy stuff. Jowell changed his nickname from the process to Joel. Hulu has live sports and bead. Damian Lillard got a tattoo that says Hulu has live sports. Clearly, they really want you to know that Hulu has live sports. Hulu Plus Live TV offers 60 plus live and on-demand channels,

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Obviously, we do the Flat Circle over here. That's our True Detective After Show. find that on YouTube at the ringer's account. It's actually been quite a fulfilling experience, just in general. Doing a weekly show with someone who's there every week with you? No, actually, it's just been, I think it's just been a really exciting way to watch this show. I wonder what it would be like to go and just watch it as a viewer and whether, and I do think that there was a bit of a lull in around three, four, and five in the post-Solnier episodes.

That then they corrected course pretty hardcore. Now, I've enjoyed every episode for various reasons, but part of it is that literally, I would say, now, they may not all matter, but I think every single shot and every single gesture and every single thing that you've seen in True Detective this season winds up being part of a puzzle. And we've actually, like, figure that out. Like, if you, you can find like little gestures that Margaret, the doll lady does, you know, early in the season that seem like throw away is like, why is this woman just? is always next to Lucy. And it's like, oh, okay, so she's important, you know, as you get closer and closer towards the end. But in the end, I think that,

I think that this show is actually quite, you know, for as much as we've said, oh, it's a return to form for season one, and even is bringing in the crimes of season one. Yeah, that was crazy. It's a different kind of show. It's a different kind of show. It's a lot more claustrophobic, and it's a lot more introverted.

I think it's largely taking place inside one detective's mind, which is not a reliable narrator. And I think as the show is getting closer to the end and they've started expanding it a little bit and going into different rooms, pink or otherwise, it's gotten a lot more exciting. I think that the problem with that middle part of the season is it was just a little constricted by this guy's perspective.

Yes, and also because of the canvas that Nick Pizzolato chose for himself, some portions of it aren't as fulfilling. And I mean I'm trying to be very politic when I say that. There are aspects, obviously there are sections of the show, characters that I feel are ill-served or not up to par. But that's also the nature of doing something this ambitious across timelines where you're going to have to service all of them. And certain things just aren't, they don't, they're not, it's not all equal, I would say. And I would say that's partly because I think I get the feeling that they are not all as interesting to the creator.

Sure. but I appreciate what you're saying about the you could say that it's claustrophobic and we're in one character's mind which is true but I also appreciate in some ways the scope of the season at the beginning I said I don't know if this case is worth eight episodes it doesn't seem as compelling

and I think on some level I might be right the sort of default to well there's just a faceless conspiracy at the root of this that maybe at the end we'll ricochet back to being a personal story that's a well-trod path and I find that less compelling than had it just been, you know, tightly zeroed in on the family, for example. But I kind of, as this has gone on, I kind of appreciate, it's not mundane,

but I kind of appreciate that something that seems so small could unravel multiple lives. Yeah. In terms of obsession, in terms of itches that you can't scratch. For me, as we get close to the end, the thing that I find most, satisfying. And again, this might be the most basic thing about me, but I really appreciate that in the present day timeline, or the most, the 2015 timeline, that these two old bastards care about each other. Yeah, I know. You know, it's, this, again, this might be a little on the nose on a podcast recorded by two old bastards. But one of the things that I always love about

crime fiction and the novels that inspired both of us and clearly inspired Nick Pizzolado and many people who work on the show. It's not just the feeling that, you know, the sensation and the emotion of being in a dark and corrupt world. It's not just the crazy set pieces, which are also super thrilling and fun to read on the page and sometimes I'd see on the screen as well. But at the heart of it, often the humanity is expressed through camaraderie. Not always between male partners. It could be between any main characters in one of these books, but there is this core of something that is valuable. and something that is worth fighting for. And the first season of True Detective,

despite all the attention on those leads, I don't think was really about that. The friendship. They didn't really have one. And as someone who still falls for stuff like Grey's Anatomy that has sort of basic lizard TV DNA built in, I need to like something. I need to believe in something.

I need to see that the world that is so dark and miserable on the edges has something worth fighting for, or else my compass is askew. And I really have appreciated. that this friendship, strange as it is, unlikely as it is, has emerged as something that matters to the show. And that has helped me steer through even the bumpy patches. Yeah, I mean, I think that the three timelines and now four.

Yeah, that was a weird move to have a fourth time line. Well, I think it'll come in. I mean, with no four knowledge, I think it's going to have some huge impact. The 2005 is what we're kind of guessing it is. We'll wind up having a big impact on the show. you're right. Doing three timelines is a very complicated and at times overly elaborate, I think,

conceit. There are things that I kind of wonder whether or not it would have just been better to tell it chronologically. I wonder whether it would have been better to kind of condense it. Sometimes I think relatively simple storytelling is convoluted because,

is this guy able to walk in on his past? Is this what's the ghost doors opening? I like that. But you're right. I think ultimately what the show is done that's kind of not talked about very much is shown the way friendship changes over time. And a lot of stuff can be excused because you were young

and a lot of stuff can be excused because you were old. But at any point in your life, you're young or you're old. You know what I mean? It's a better of perception. And the affection that those two guys weirdly have for each other because of what they've gone through really comes through. It really does.

And I think I really love that about it. You know, this second or last episode of True Detective this season was named the Final Country, which is, I'm sure, a nod to James Crumley's novel, The Final Country. It's a hell of a book about one of his aging detectives, particularly aging, but still having enough gas in his tank to run wild all over Texas and drink a lot and do drugs and get into a lot of trouble, only to discover that the trouble that he was at home all long. Yeah, right. So I wonder whether, you know, it's interesting, it'll be interesting to see you how the season,

the last episode maybe is also about trouble at home. A lot of people are speculating about what Amelia has to do with all of this. Yeah. Well, Amelia, but also I'm sorry, who has the soul of a horror? Lucy Persol. That's right. That's right.

It's hard to remember. Put a face to a name. She's no longer with us on this show. But I feel like she has more there's more gas in her story tank, so to speak. The other thing is that after seven episodes, there's enough strength here for me that I can stop, and I know people get sick of when I do this, and I get sick of it myself to a degree, but wishing for something different at times, you know, and maybe that's the frustrated, like,

attempting to be a creator part of me, but I wish we knew, weirdly, we spent almost every frame with Wayne Hayes, and sometimes I wish we knew him better. Sometimes I wish that we could get past the sort of macho bluster. He is our main character, and yet because of the looser, more rubbery flexibility of a supporting character to bounce off of him. I feel like Roland is better drawn at this point in terms of the distinct personality. Well, he's doing a lot more showing rather than telling. Roland. Yes, he is, right, because we jumped away, we were away from him and we saw how he's living

and we understand that a little bit better. But even in the actions that he's, you know, whether it's taking care of Tom or taking care of the dogs, like I think you're seeing, they fashion a character that's sort of like, and he doesn't have to do as much as Wayne, you know, and his mind isn't falling apart the way Wayne's is. he gets every gesture he makes is sort of towards his character whereas for Wayne I think he has to do a lot of talking and they put him in a lot of situations with Amelia specifically

where he does a lot of talking about who he is and he doesn't get as much showing there's actually only been two really like not even there's only been like two set pieces this year which is uncommon for true detective I think and I don't necessarily know if the show's been helped or hurt by that, I think that the first season especially had a couple of, it had like about four or five.

You mean like action set pieces? Yeah, or at least just like movement. Like we're running to this thing. We have to get here. We have to do this. You know, like this feels a lot more like ambient driving around that leads to another conversation to another conversation and then like a fight or a revelation at the end. And that's, it's interesting to me.

But I think that there was a little bit more dynamism to the first season where they were building up to and coming down from like some explosive moments that made you feel like, yes, this is why you would be engaged with this for so long, because it was defining thing in your life. Yeah, and I think that that was more, look, I think that the, the, the shiniest gloss on that would be that Pizzolato is essentially a novelist or a short story writer. And this is in some ways a more literary way of dealing with action and reaction in one's life. It's increasingly

less cinematic as a show despite the ambition of the three timelines, I think. It really is, especially once Sonia departed this season, and the direction's been fine, for the most part, I think, even better than fine in last night's episode by Daniel Sackheim. But we're just sort of... I thought the pink room reveal from the previous

week was among the best things the shows ever done. But we're sort of just sort of circling the conversations, you know, inside of one person's mind, which is very different than just the full color palette thing. a deli at times of the first season, right, in terms of what Carrie Fuganaga was bringing to it. I really love, I love Stephen Dorf's performance.

It's just really good. I mean, and Mahershala's performance is also, I mean, it's really, the degree of difficulties outrageous. I wouldn't be able to accurately figure this out. It would be really hard, but one of the things I would say is that, you know, this season was, started out, I think Soleno was supposed to direct three. It wound up only directing two, and, you know, Dan Sackheim gave an in, interview with Indie Wire, and he said, you know, he thinks that Sonny did this incredible job,

but most of his job or a lot of his job is getting the production back on schedule because they were falling behind. And I think that you can feel, especially in those middle episodes, but even up to the last couple, it feels like they did less exteriors. It feels like they did less like walking around Fayetteville, which is what I think I were walking around that area. You're totally right about that. And that, you know, in the first episode, you get Tom's house, you get Wayne's house. But you also get the bike ride. You get the bike ride.

You get the kids driving around. You get a sense of this entire sort of town kind of interacting and these different like loops together. And then as season went on, it just feels more and more on rooms that look a little bit like sets. It's a really good call that I don't even think I appreciate it, but that's definitely influenced how I've been watching. Yeah. I lost track of who knew who and how. And maybe the most damning example of that is when Tom, body is revealed, I had forgotten the significance of the place.

The tower. We should know that. That should be baked into our consciousness and the way it would be baked into Wayne's consciousness, despite the memory loss. And I think that because we've been so inside and internal, because of maybe very likely because of budgetary reasons. Well, they could have just been like, we got to get through these pages and if it means not doing them out in a field and dealing with sunlight and doing them inside of an office or inside of a car that is back, With its background, like, I get that, but I think that that is part of why you might, like, look at your phone a couple of times during this, during the show, because you feel as though in season one, and to some extent in season two, you're just like really out there in the world, seeing new places. And in this, it's like, okay, we've established that a lot of the action is actually interior action. It's actually stuff that's happening in people's minds, and it's stuff that people are talking about.

It's hard to remember for me watching it that Wayne still lives in the same place. Right. That the streets he might be walking down. The fact that he walks from his home to the kids, the Purcell house in, I don't remember, that's the end of two or something where he... Shoe Pickway, yeah. That connection, how easy it is to still be in the past when you are still living there. That's missing, and I think that's kind of a necessary thing. But also, you know, it's just this is the season.

And for me, this is the season that True Detective became a TV show. It ceased to be an event. It ceased to be, you know, in the words of some, the thoughts of some, a colossal, hubristic misfire,

as people claim season two was, it's a TV show now, I think, with a certain established point of view, interests, language, and part of it, if you're willing to go on this journey, is to accept that you can have

a performance like Ray Fisher's as Wayne Hayes' son, which I think is really good, really strong in the margins, and then Sarah Gaydon as the documentarian, which is just mind-boggling to me, the character and performance. It's so bizarre and takes me out every single time.

But if this is the world, and the last thing we should talk about, is that this seems to be now, not just the template for the show going forward in some ways, but we are now in a shared universe, which was the big reveal. So I have a suggestion for all of this.

So should we, for people, I mean, this, it was established. Eliza, the character that Sargaden plays, who works for true criminal, is like this investigative reporting television show or documentarian, shows Wayne a website,

a newspaper website where they have an article about Rust and Marty and their investigation from season one, which means... Was it one of my recaps? It's from Gratlin. Yeah. And it just means that this time,

like this season of the show is taking place in the same quote-unquote world is the first, She's on the show and she's making connections between what happened in Louisiana, what's happening in Arkansas, and suggesting other things that have happened in Nebraska. I have a suggestion for the future of True Detective here. So I think part of the problem with season two, among many,

was that they were like, get something going. Like, let's strike while the iron's hot. Oh, for sure. Everyone has said that. You know, there was that. There was also the, they went away from having, you know, the sort of singular vision of Fukenaga to using Justin Lynn and then using a couple of directors during season two.

And that's sort of happened again with season three where they had Solnier, but then they had to move on. Recently, they've talked about Casey Blois and the higher ups that HBO have talked about the need to do an uptick and the amount of stuff they're putting out in programming. So here's what I think true detective should do. I think that odd-numbered seasons

should be this story. Okay. It should be this like James L. Roy kind of like decades spanning conspiracy. About pedophile rings. in the south and the Midwest and you know out and wherever and there should be kind of like a an end point but it's like that it's these collection of cases that are taking place that are all somehow related so that's the odd number seasons and piz should write those and and they can get

whoever to direct them and that's how they should do that and then the even numbered seasons should just be standalone true detective colon in mexico city or true detective colon Washington, D.C. And you allow, like, a crime writer from that area to write a one-season, like, night-of-style case. I love that idea. I think...

And that way you get more seasons, but you kind of are, like, it's, like, basically True Detective mothership, and then, like, you basically, like, subcontract out. Do you have a cool cop show that can fit into the aesthetic of True Detective? Here's why that will never happen. Sure. I love that idea. Yeah, and I think that would be terrific.

But in a previous era of television, well, none of this would have happened at all. Right. But in a previous era of television, it was much more top-down, and the true detective would be the HBO franchise to do these things with. But we are definitely in an era of creator and Autour Empowerment. And it's not just in Nick Pizzolado's interest and his agent's interest to preserve this as his domain. Yes.

But it actually is ultimately because of this is the world. We're in HBO's interest, too, to be seen as the creative-friendly place where you can create a franchise and you have stewardship over the franchise for good or ill. For as much as people may look at the misfire of season two and wonder what's anybody thinking here. I think a lot of people in the creative community

will look at it and say HBO believes in its creators and empowers them and allows them to rebound and learn from their own mistakes. Which in a world where people like Ryan Murphy and Chonda Rhymes and even my boss and our friend, Sam SML, are reaping these mega deals. Creators, at a certain level, who can produce these shows,

are going to get paid and rewarded. And so, even though it may not seem like it in any short-term creative interest or even the ratings interest, it is probably in these corporations' interest to keep their productive creators happy. Sure. Not necessarily the...

I guess... My thought is that if it takes essentially three to four years for them to come up with and execute a true detective season, you could sort of subcontract out the interval. And you could still be pretty awesome, you know? Oh, I mean, that's the unspoken thing in all this too,

which is that despite my issues with the season and often with the show and its tenor and point of view, I love, I love crime shows, I love mysteries. You love Ray Valcoro. Look. We didn't talk about, speaking of Ray Valcora, We didn't talk about the one other piece of news that you brought to me yesterday as potential podcast fodder. We don't do a lot of celebs spotting on the show.

We like to let the celebrities of Los Angeles feel like they're not being watched. By us. By us. And then to. But I saw him on one of the great websites, justjared.com, that Colin Farrell was out and about getting coffee in Los Felis. In your neighborhood. I mean, he also, he looked like a god. He looked like the dawn of all dons.

He was just where, I mean, like, he looks like Colin Farrell, but like, it was, it was pretty, pretty emotional for me. Get you a career like Colin Farrell. Obviously, we love him. You guys in Dumbo? Look, he's in Dumbo. He's in Crimes of Grindenberg or whatever. I forget which Ashkenazi Jewish name was involved in this wizard conspiracy. But he was also in True Detective Season 2. Andy was in, I mean, he's just, it's just a remarkable career. and it just seems to be working for him,

as was the half swashbuckler, half-athleisure look he was rocking. Yeah. I really, we joke about him, and we joke about some of the movies he's been in. Obviously, we're big fans. But the fact that he can just move between these things, I just like, look, I like that he could have given us a performance like Ray Val Coro in a show that was, I don't know why I'm trying to protect it,

like, reviled by many. But it was just another interesting notch. in his career. And now he's taken down some of the east side of Los Angeles great coffee stops. Great, great, great.

I mean, you know, one thing about that stretch on Hillhurst that's possible is you can check in at all time and have just incredible pastry, maybe a sandwich to go, a nice coffee, and then you could just take a quick walk north

and you could just re-up. You can just re-up at Blue Bottle. You know what I mean? Like if you just need one more power surge to get you through the rest of your day, like a double dragon character. I've seen. I once had coffee with someone at all time.

You then saw a blue bottle? No, we did a bang bang. You can't do that, Doug. We did a coffee bang bang, bang. I can't, I took CPR when I was 14. I don't know if I can revive you. I'm going to put, I'm going to put this person on blast

because he listens to the podcast. Okay. This is gentleman, actor, raconteur, and handkerchief designer, Colin Hanks. No shit. Colin Hanks.

And you guys went, you guys went double up. We bang, bangs. But here's the thing. You know me. You see me in all sorts of cardiac distress. Yeah. You're not a well man. No. And usually like it's, you know, deeply emotionally based. I had a lovely cappuccino at all time. And he suggested a bang bang and the conversation was flowing. No shit. It was great. Because you guys were fucking high. Listen. I went to Blue Bottle and Colin, delightful man, ordered a second coffee.

Uh-huh. No visible change in demeanor. I waited until he was, I think he ran into someone. And I was like, please give me sugar water in a cup, like, except no sugar. I need Gatorade and Quiludes right now. I was like, how quickly can you make me the Wolf of Wall Street, but in the quiet scenes? Like, how quickly can you have me be Leo trying to get into a limousine in 1987? And they were like, we can do that for you. And I put it in an opaque vessel. Get you a cafe that can do both. And it was lovely. And in no way did I look one 70, eighth as swab as Colin Farrell, who, as far as we know, is only on stage

bang of the bang bang, bang. I think we both know that he's like on bang, bang, bang. Except, I think he could probably, that's the guy who could probably have a couple cups of coffee. See, this is the thing is that there are people here at the ring or two, younger people generally, who like get like the venty red eyes, you know,

and like are just crushing them and then they're like back for more. And I'm just like, your boy needs tea afternoon because if he drinks a coffee I'm like up doing the crossword puzzle at three in the morning listening to X. You're describing a young person having a red eye makes me feel like roller girl in the second reel of boogie nights. I'm sweating. Are you my mom?

Thinking about it. I don't get you people of America who can drink multiple coffees. I've had a coffee during this podcast. Look. Kyah, how many coffees a day for you? Just one. There you go. Look how much up. How much of this I've had? Perfect, man.

Just one. I can't even finish this. Yeah. Your eyes are bleeding. I feel crazy. Let's wrap it up there. I can stay here all day, but I want to let you go.

It's a pleasure to be in this dude. I got to go, I got to go write a script. I got to go write a couple scripts. No wonder you're procrastinating. Yeah, that's why I'm here. We will be back on Thursday. Thank you so much for listening to The Watch.

And just as a heads up, the flat circle will be going up live. I know it's Oscar night. But that doesn't stop us. Live after the True Detective finale on Sunday. You can find us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and we'll be breaking down whatever happens in episode 8 of True Detective. Until then, I'm Chris Ryan. Stick with DeKaff Pranski's.