The Watch - The Marvel Cinematic Universe Becomes the Marvel TV Universe. Plus: ‘The Outsider’ Episode 5. | The Watch

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

The Super Bowl isn’t just for football; it’s for trailer debuts as well. After watching three new trailers for Marvel TV shows, we try to suss out what a Marvel television universe will look like (3:04). Plus: Quibi’s bet on the way people will be watching TV in the near future (21:50), and ‘The Outsider’ S1E5 (34:01). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, what's up guys, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Up on the site this week, the Ringer staff has ranked every episode of The Good Place in honor of its series finale this week. Writers Alison Herman, Miles Surrey, Andrew Goudadarro, and more take you through all 51 episodes and celebrate what made the show so great. Later in the week, we're also releasing our February streaming guide with tons of TV and movie recommendations to get you through the month. You can check both those things out on The Ringer.com. clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch.

My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the rigger.com and joining me in the studio, the tear drinker. It's Andy Greenwald. Big Monday energy, guys. The grinding cappuccino drinker. That's you. Chris got me a coffee. I did, man.

Greenwald, it's always a tradition unlike any other when we gather on the Monday after the Super Bowl. It just takes stock of the pop culture. that's been shot into our carotid artery. What is the word for when they make foie gras gavage, when they just jam the oats down the gullet of the geese? That's what happens when you watch Mad Procter & Gamble ads. I'm just happy to see the whole Procter & Gamble, PG-Exended Universe together. Look, I love commercials, love capitalism, almost as much as I dislike fascism.

Everybody knows that about me. That's right. Can I just pause before we get into it, and yes, we're going to talk about it. I have a courtesy, it was a free Patagonia jacket that I'm wearing here. No free ads. No, I mean, if Patagonia wants to sponsor me. In fact, there are free ads. It's all an advertisement.

Everything we're doing? Yeah. It's true, man. The product we're selling is us. Guys, I just wanted to take a moment to say how much I enjoyed the Super Bowl last night. Legitimately. I know this isn't... Hello, and welcome to the Ringer NFL show.

I know this isn't... Well, Bob Mays. A sports pod. Yeah. Bobby Mays and his crew of backfield hooligans. They take care of this. They take care of the real business. But let me just give you the...

You know what? You know what I always do on this show? I represent the voice of the common man. It's not that common man who doesn't know where Kansas City is, what state it resides in. I learned that because of the get-up kids years ago. I'll have you know. I'll be honest with you.

Of all the things he's fucked up... Yeah. That was one where I was like I've done that. Okay, fair. You know? Fair. I would say... Not that I, like, identify with Donald Trump. I'm just saying that, like, I've screwed up the Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas thing.

And you know why that didn't matter? Because you're not the president of those states. That's true. Anyway, boy, we are both... We are the press box and the NFL show today. I just want to say it was such a strange feeling because I didn't have any vested interest in either team. Yeah, you did. Well, not particularly.

Yeah, but we had a personal... We were pulling for Andy. This is what I'm saying. I wanted Andy Reid. to win. I like Patrick Mahomes. I like Honey Badger. These are like the level of knowledge I have of these teams. But I also, I got no truck with San Francisco, one of our great cities, great franchises. Fine. I like a handsome QB. San Francisco, Oregon. Beautiful city by the bay. Not sure which bay. And so it was a very strange and enjoyable feeling to watch a football game between two teams I was

medium good with. And it was a good game. Did you watch the whole thing? With the sound on? No. I made it home. I was away, and then I turned it on, and so we had it off. We didn't unmute, like, for some family time and dinner, but yeah, I basically watched the whole game. So let me ask you something about this. Don't take this personally, although it is a personal question. Everything is both political and personal. When you come back for me, albeit brief family vacation, is it still family time? Isn't it daddy time? There has not been daddy time since April 2013, other than the time I went to Albuquerque to make a television show. Yeah. Which is all the daddy time. Yeah, it's all daddy time. So... High altitude daddy time.

Yeah, I go for big, big swings. It's like, you're Kyle Shanahan. You get plays and chunks. And I dress like him, too, actually. You gotta do. I like that. I'm monochromatic today. The flat-bred cap you're wearing.

No, you know, this, I, you know, I used to watch a lot of HGTV, and when people would be like house hunting on the franchise house hunters, they'd always be like, yeah, I need two sinks. I need two sinks in this bathroom, and I need a man cave, and I'd be like, all right basics. All right, norms. You know, I kind of think they had a point. Yeah.

I kind of get it. Sure. I don't have room for my own space, you know, in my home. So that's fine. But I could have used it. But actually, I did manage to get my older daughter interested in the game. That's good. The confusing.

Who was she cheering for? She was down for the cause. She was more Kansas City. But I think the most confusing thing for her was as, you know, a beautiful innocent who hasn't been watching Fox's football robots tackle each other for the better part of 30 years. There were so many different numbers put on the screen that she was really thrown.

So she'd be like, yay, you know, Kansas City has 10 and the other team has three, let's score more points. And then all of a sudden she'd be like, 85. And I was like, no, no, no, that's yards per possession. Like, no, no, that's time of possession. No, that's right. That's yak. Yeah, that's just a lot of numbers.

It's just Travis Kelsey. A lot of numbers out there. Anyway, I just, I don't know where we got, we got down this path. Well, because we're obviously, today we're talking a little bit about some of the trailers that have been released. Now, like, they make it into the Super Bowl of trailers, too. So over the course of the last couple of days before the Super Bowl itself, they start dropping these. Can I just say one last thing since we were talking about it? Can I give the world, share with the world my daughter's TV review,

daughter of a former critic of the Super Bowl, a few minutes into it? So this is just a TV show about people getting hurt. I was like, boy, he's CCR. Goodell at TheLeague.com. Post-war America. I mean, she nailed it. Anyway, yeah, there were a lot of commercials. Yeah, there were a ton.

I mean, like, there were a lot of ads, obviously, for, you know, I was saying to Kai earlier. I had a hearty chuckle at that Alexa ad. Yeah? Yeah. Did you like that one? Which one was it? The Ellen and Portia Dorasi one, where they're like,

What did we do before Alexa? And then there's like... I didn't see that one. Oh, yeah. That must have been during a dinner break. During family time. I hated myself for chuckling during the Boston one. Oh, the Krasinski one?

My old pal. Speaking of Krasinski. Yeah. He has a film coming out this year called Quiet Place 2. Yeah. And that is one of the films that had its trailer debuted. We're not even debuted because they've had a couple of Quiet Place trailers, but they had a big game spot.

That's what they call these things. So Quiet Place 2. No Time to Die. Bond 25. I thought it was a quiet place too, colon, no time to die. That would be pretty good. Yeah, a quieter place. Obviously, Fast 9.

Have you ever seen a fast movie? I've never seen a frame of a movie in that Fast and Furious franchise. I don't understand any of it. I did really... Do you know who Vin Diesel's character is? What's it, what his name is? No. Dom.

Cool. Yeah. I mean, I would have guessed it. Honestly, that would have been in my top 30 guesses. One day I want to do a podcast with you Where it's just like you guessing I am very open We were talking about this last week

Where we were pitching the idea of a watchables podcast Where I make you watch Frozen And we talk about it And then you could do a watchibles For Fast and the Furious with me Yeah I mean it's like I have to admit fast and furious is kind of my pop culture blind spot I'm like I've seen like two or three of them

One on a plane So I kind of only barely remember it. I think that was the one that was in Dubai. And, like, the car jumps between skyscrapers. Like, culturally, aren't they all in Dubai, like, in a way? Yeah. My enjoyment of that franchise is actually kind of the purest, I would say, because my pleasures derive solely from Shea Serrano's tweets.

Yeah, I mean, I... It makes him so happy, and he in general makes me happy, and when he's happy, I'm just blissful. Yeah, right, right. So I loved it. Did you see some of the names that are in this new one? Well, I was excited that there appears to be justice for Tokyo Drift. Yes.

Which I'm into... Even that you haven't seen Tokyo Drift. No, because appending Tokyo Drift to things has been like a go-to bit. Sure. Like, I've dined out on that. Yes. That is our generation's electric bugaloo. Yeah.

So I'm happy that that hasn't been like retconned out of the franchise. I think that character was full on dead too. Sure. Yeah, and I was just back. Dame Helen Mirren is in this movie. Stop. Yeah. Helen Mirren and Shirley's Theron are in this movie.

Fantastic. We're not going to spend too much more time. So we're going to talk a little bit about these trailers, but then Andy and I are going to talk about episode five, The Outsider. I'm excited to do that. And then at the end, I also do want to do a little post-mortem suggest death, but we did our live event last week. Oh, yeah, and you can hear that on Thursday.

I think we'll probably come in on Thursday and do just like a, just a topper. We'll just add a little bit. Sprinkle a little spice on top. Yeah, we'll do, we'll just, like, we'll just marinate it a little bit. Speaking of spice, no dune trailer, right? just a Dune logo? Just the Dune logo. Dund.

What did you think of that? Did you read Dune? No. Okay. No. You can't box me in. You started out with such enthusiasm for the project right there. I'm really excited about the movie because it's our boy.

Do you know what Dune is about? Spice and Worms. Did you see the David Lynch version? Yes. Oh, yeah. I never read the books myself. This is a terrible podcast. MCU.

The Readables Podcasts, who we just list famous. guys jump in any point you want to help us out here the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now becoming the Marvel television universe so that was the big thing we wanted to talk about is the it's coming man

the pluce is getting Marvel probably I would say if I had to guess of the three shows that they advertised last night which were Wanda Vision Falcon and Winter Soldier and Loki I would imagine that Falcon and Winter Soldier comes first if I had to guess I think

100% That's right. Wanda Vision was supposed to be 2021 and then Betney out on some red carpet wearing incredible

glasses was just like not only is it it's like done but we're ready to go we're ready get it to you and it's mind blowing

now bettney it's in his best interest to say that you know I mean because what else is cooking but I wouldn't be surprised Paul Bettney

definitely was in the top like in the 99.9%ile of people in the Marvel Cinematic Universe who were like guys Come on. I have a ruby in my forehead.

It's okay. I got to pay for this brownstone. I mean, my guy is starring in a TV show. Do you know this? Wandavision had a $150 million budget. Wandavision. Well, that is very surprising. Do you know that Catherine Hahn is on it?

Yes, I did know that. It's amazing. Look, here's the thing that was truly, this is, it was a smaller ad. It didn't show too much. It was later in the game. It's their universe is expanding. But it's pretty wild.

And we've tried to, we've sort of talked around this a couple times over the last few weeks, just how precedent changing and precedent setting all of these events are with, especially with Disney Blues and like what they're doing and how they're pivoting almost entirely from, in this case, the most successful film franchise in movie history is now just going to populate television also. Yes. With the same budgets, as I just alluded to, with the same cast, the same characters. And that's what struck me so much about this ad. What they're doing with Wanda Vision seems very interesting,

and we can talk about that in a moment. Because the main takeaway, Wanda Vision being the outlier, is that it's just going to keep going. It looked like the movies. It felt like the movies, and that's because Kevin Feigey is making them with the same cast. And they have the same kind of a little bit blueish, grayish, CGI-I-ish, but we're all having fun in Atlanta look.

Yeah, fake Atlanta feel, yeah. But not Atlanta, the show. Atlanta. But that's what these movies are. That's what people love. And it actually got me. I mean, it was kind of, do you want to compare and contrast

the Scarlet Witch trailer to these MCTV shows because it was like, hey, the gang's back and we're still going to have fun. Black Widow. The Black Widow trailer? I'm sorry, I called Scarlet Witch.

Yes, I meant the Black Widow trailer that was on earlier in the broadcast. It's a hell of a template, man. It's a big tent, and they know exactly what the tent is made of. And like whether the tent can survive, and then they just invite new pals inside the tent, whether it's Catherine Hahn, who I just mentioned, or it's David Harbor who's in the Black Widow trailer. Florence Pugh is in that movie as well. It's just, it's uncanny.

And I guess I'm struggling to describe it because, as everyone here knows, voice the people over here. I'm constantly trying to chafe. What are they saying in Kansas City? That's what I want to know. Which one? I'm kind of chafing against this like corporatists shouts to Marty Scorsese, ad lord amusement park chokeholds this has on us and on our culture. But I love it too.

Yeah. It works. And maybe the way I need to start thinking about it is the way I went from being like, you know, oh, I should only watch Food Network and not eat Doritos and like learn to be a better appreciator of high culture and then be like, Doritos is the most amazing American invention. since jazz. When did you have like an anti-Doritos phase? Well, not honestly, never. But there was a moment when I was like trying to get into cooking and like eating well and whatever. And I was like, oh, I should, you know, only get the like Garden of Eden blue corn chips, which are fine. No free ads.

I enjoy them. But my point is the Doritos, Doritos are miracles. They're incredible. Engineering is amazing. I'm just kind of slack-jawed in appreciation of both of these modern American marvels. I guess. I don't know what they're going to be like TV shows. from watching all these little clips that they showed and also the Black Widow trailer, which looks perfectly enjoyable. Totally enjoyable. Great cast.

This is going to sound fanboyish. I don't mean it as such, but watching how many issues have plagued Star Wars over the last five years in terms of stops and starts and, you know, should we put out a Star Wars movie every 10 months or should we wait three years and then put something out and what's our television plan and what's our plan for anthologies

or rather Star Wars stories where we go back and we explore the history and the far reaches of the galaxy. MCU is like what would have happened if George Lucas had just been in charge the entire time and George Lucas had had a very good mind for the business aspect because what you're seeing is effortlessly

they've wrapped up this entire phase of Marvel with endgame. Some people have left, not forever because a couple more do little I'm sure we're going to get Iron Man back. We got to talk about that Doolittle article. That was wild. And then they're like, yeah, it's all over, whatever.

But it's not. It's like they're going to make a... The Loki show is set after endgame. Like, I think these shows are all set after endgame. I doubt that the stakes will be as high, although I do think that by all accounts, you have to watch Wanda Vision to understand the movies that are coming.

Apparently that is the case, that there are stuff in Wanda Vision that is like, essential step along the way of understanding the next phase of the cinematic To understand Randall Park's prominence as Agent Wu? I'm sure that you can just read a blog or they'll somehow yada yada in the movie

but according to Figey and what he's doing is this is pretty effortlessly keeping characters alive, keeps his storylines alive, keeping these like pockets of the universe alive while also going forward. And you know, I kind of have mixed emotions about the Borg like nature of everything with like Owen Wilson's going to be in Loki.

and all these people who I'm like, I'd love to see just like a regular old Catherine Hahn movie. But, you know, she was in Mrs. Fletcher. Like, we had our opportunity. Like, it's not like these people are going away. But I feel like I think I'm kind of just like in awe of like the execution of the plan. Well, the world has shifted profoundly. And you could see it last night,

not just because superheroes are on our premium TV shows now. But the actors who were in these commercials last night, nobody cares anymore, right? I don't begrudge people chasing a check. Like, the checks have got to be really good, and that's fantastic. Everybody needs to work. Culturally, that was a thing. I don't know if it was still true 10 years ago.

I don't think I was paying as close of attention, but 20 years ago, it was a thing. If you were pursuing a certain kind of career where you want to be taken a certain kind of seriously, you would not be in commercials in this country. You would do a George Clooney and do an espresso ads around the world or, like, you know, as Bill Murray's character. in Lawson Translation before Bill Murray himself started doing commercials last night. And you certainly

wouldn't be in popcorn movies when you certainly wouldn't be on television. The last 10 years has taken that microchip and just ripped it out. It no longer exists.

It doesn't matter. It's a cross culture. And so now, and also the other thing that's changed is it's cross culture, absolutely. Because we, I mean, you and I grew up

at a time when I remember this band Velocity Girl catching crazy amounts of grief because they let their song be used in a Volkswagen ad and it's like

to really like they had to defend themselves yeah yeah and now that is the business plan for every band is like what can we do can we get one of these songs placed somewhere so that we can get health insurance so I don't have to be a barista this one I mean it's absolutely true

I think the other thing that's changed is the way these movies are produced we've talked about you know the sort of the man DeLorean machine that's just humming apparently in Manhattan Beach. But that's modeled, I think, on what Marvel has done in Atlanta. And so it's extremely easy, if not enjoyable, for actors who we think of as having, quote,

better things to do to fly down to Atlanta, stay where they usually stay, see the people they usually see, and catering hair and makeup or whatever, do a couple days on whatever, maybe even bang out two appearances and two different things. Sure. Right? It's actually, I think, been made a lot more manageable for people's lives and schedules because it's all done in one place. You don't have to say, okay.

In a lot of ways, it's like the old Tylerwood Studio system. Yeah, we'll just drive down, take fountain, show up at where we are right now. Yeah. At Paramount, yeah. Sunset Gower or Paramount and do some stuff. I mean, you don't have to commit to going to on location to Thailand or Australia or whatever. For nine months. For nine months, which is really a huge, you know, this is something that, of course,

I think we've realized, too, about our own lives as we've gotten older, that the things that sounded really fun, career-wise, maybe aren't as fun anymore, like you kind of want to be in your life. Yeah, sure. In your home. But that, it is, anyway, all of these factors are at play, but it was still kind of staggering to see it in effect.

And the shows look, we haven't seen very much, but they look good. Sure, they look like Marvel shows. And I think, you know, it's, the tendrils are in everything, whether it's, you know, characters who, like Loki, who died, but we're conveniently set up with a back door so this Loki show is based on the Loki that got away when they were jumping through time in endgame. But you see the tendrils in movie series

I know nothing about Fast and the Furious, which as you said just fully resurrected someone. Why? Because people wanted to see it. This idea that, well, no, no, the rules of this fictional universe must apply and we were bound to this decision we made 15 years ago. Come on. It's comic book logic.

And, you know, comic books realized a long time ago that you could get a lot of people talking if you killed Superman or killed Wolverine and everyone, the first thing every one of those people would say was, well, he's coming back. But let's see how they do it. Let's see how the great Houdini gets out of the chains

one more time. And so that's our culture now. So while we had MCU and the emergence of like the Marvel stuff on Disney Plus that was advertised, we also got our kind of our first look at some Quibi shows. Oh, yeah. And so Quibi, for people who don't, know is Jeffrey Katzenberg's short form content platform, I guess is the easiest way to say

where they are, I think it's fair to say, spending on and developing TV shows as if they were with an eye towards like the same level of like production value and presumably quality that they would if they were going to network or to cable outlets, but they are for phones specifically. not only in there, in fact that I think these episodes of these shows will be like around seven minutes or so. Seven to 11 minutes, I believe. They are also messing around with the way in which people watch stuff on their phone.

So for a lot of these shows that they're doing, they change when they go from portrait to landscape mode. Like when you change your phone, it'll show you different elements of what you're watching on screen. Like it'll show you the rest of the screen? No, I think it has something, I can't remember, but it's like, I read a couple of things about things they're messing around with.

But the two shows that they previewed were the fugitive remake with Boyd Holbrook and the Harrison Ford role and Kiefer Sutherland and the Tommy Lee Jones role. And Breyer Patch is Brian Garrity? Oh, is he? Yeah. Was he in the trailer? The Three Blonde Amigos.

Did he say how his experience was on that show? I think he enjoyed it. Okay. He said it was fast. I think he really enjoyed working with those guys. That's cool. It seems to be set in L.A. There's an explosion.

Rather than a murder at the house of the wife, there's an explosion downtown at a train station in L.A. Boyd Holberg gets pinned on him. Kiefer's other one's chasing him. This specifically, I think, is probably like the perfect story for something like this, for as much as you and I, obviously, I think you were on the rewatchables for the fugitive, weren't you? Oh, I was. That's right.

So, I mean, obviously the fugitive, the Andrew Davis movie is a real favorite of ours. But since it's such like a point A to point B show, I think this will be served well by being on phones to the extent that I need. thing is served well by being on phones. I mean, I think that's the big bet. Is anything served well by being on phones? Right. I mean, it's very hard to parse this. On one hand, it seems smart and forward thinking, because we can bitch and moan all we want about, you know, the cinematic standards or whatever, but, you know, I'm a guy who watched a lot of movies on seatbacks, on airplanes. I mean, people watch stuff on the screens they have. And so you can continue to say, no, no, don't watch Roma on your phone, go to a theater for the experience, and I think it's worth doing, but the majority

of people who have access to it are going to see it, not as the filmmaker intended, but they're going to see it. And so it is, maybe it's quite forward thinking to say, like, we're going to make things specifically for the way people do it. I mean, if this hits, everyone else is going to look foolish for fighting it. And probably only someone with the rolodex of a Jeffrey Katzenberg could pull this off because he, you know, what sounds like, what sounds like, like on the surface kind of a sort of a silly idea suddenly becomes plausible because of the deals he's made behind it, whether it's getting, you know, someone like Kiefer Sutherland or a piece of IP like The Fugitive or getting his buddy Steven Spielberg to commit to making a show for it

and all the other names that have been announced for it. To my mind, it's whether it takes advantage of it. So it makes it feel like essential to watch something a certain way and it will feel like a different way of watching. I don't know. Do you think people have, I'm trying to, I was going to say something, and I'm not sure if I believe it or not. I mean, what has fundamentally changed about the way people watch things now? I mean, is it, is it, what's the biggest change? Is it the binging thing that the idea that people are now expecting to, expect to watch more and more of something all at once? Or is it the portability of the experience? Or is it the, exactly. I think that's probably secretly the latter. I think that binging is still

something that happens, but is more of a personal, your one-to-one relationship with whatever you're watching. So it's like you'll talk to somebody and they'll be like, oh, I watch like three seasons of something over the weekend and it'll be either, whether it's just something

they came across on Netflix or whatever. But especially now while we're waiting for a lot of the libraries to build up in some of these streaming platforms and because I feel like there has been a subtle shift at least in the discourse around television away from, I can't wait to watch 10 episodes of this

in 48 hours and this kind of like, bone-crunching marathon of getting through a season of something, the response that you and I have seen, especially to the last few shows that were on HBO, a couple of the shows that have been, even on Apple TV or Hulu, where people are actually really enjoying the week-to-week experience rather than, hey, Friday night, it came out, did you watch it, did you finish it? Are you done?

Oh, wait until you get to episode seven. Yeah. You know, like that kind of has gone by the wayside. But what I have noticed very much is just even anecdotally is like the experience of people have been like, oh, I watch that on my iPad. I watched that a little bit on my phone when I was like waiting for my doctor. Or I watched that in the back of an airplane seat.

Like the decentralization of it being like you're in your living room with a television, I think it's very, very real. I think the one thing that Netflix has learned, they won't share it with anyone, of course, because they don't share their metrics. But I think they learned that the model that fueled them, this binge model,

is actually much better served by queer eye or nailed it, you know, 90-day fiancé. Circle. or something like Big Mouth. Right. Then it is a heavy... Or frankly, like something like End of the Fucking World. Certainly because of the time.

The time, the length of the episodes, but more so than something like House of Cards, which, you know, as we've said, you know, countless times and don't need to relitigate, was essentially them stealing HBO's lunch because that was set up to be an HBO project and Netflix just wanted to lay down some stakes. But they did realize that there was,

if you do something in the last couple of minutes of those episodes, which, like, it was not new. It was just a cliffhanger. It was like tune in next week. but it was like tune in in the next second. Right. And I think House of Cards would, I think we talked about this a lot back on even Hollywood Perspectus

where House of Cards was the best at 51 minutes of like people kind of mumbling to each other and nice rooms. And then at the very end somebody throws somebody in front of a subway and you're like, oh my God, you know, I got to watch the next one. And I think that that worked in 2012 or 13 or whatever it was because there was just fucking less to watch. And so that felt novel and interesting. And you were like, I do have 10 hours to get to the show.

But now that it's like there are 700 scripted television shows on per year. And at any given point, you could be watching 17 other things to say nothing of sports or reality TV on all the cable networks or whatever. And all the shit that's on your phone anyway, it's a little bit of a harder gambit to be like, check out our 59 minute episode. Totally. If Outsider had gone up full on, the full season at once, I don't think we'd be talking about it as much. If people had been like, I finished outsider over the weekend and you were like, oh, I guess I missed the boat. You know? I agree with that, and we should pivot to outsider momentarily.

But I did want to say in terms of this, making things expressly for the phone, one of the specificities, let's say, I don't even want to call it necessarily a vulnerability of the moment that that puts me in mind of is. And again, this is, obviously this is where my head is right now. Still in post, Breyer Patch, doing color correction. We're doing sound mixing. We'll be for the next few weeks. We're not done. is just how fundamentally still, there's something still a little bit broken

in how we make these things. Because, you know, we're still making it, specifically I'll just use eye statements, right? Like, I am making this show for a cable channel, and we're making it, you know, in a lot of ways, under aspects of the old model. You're writing into commercial breaks, right? Act breaks, budget, the amount of days we have per episode.

So you did not have a $150 million budget. I did not. I can confirm it. And yet, because we are competing in the quote-unquote prestige marketplace, we want to deliver everything to the highest possible standards under the old system, which is, you know, you want, and this is not just unique to Briar Patch. It's like we want, you know, bold aesthetic choices and directors who push the limits, you know, but also directors who come in for two weeks and then piece out and go on to their next project,

which is the TV model. The bigger thing is all this time we're spending and mixing, you know, the minutia that we're doing right now in terms of there's a gasp. I'd like to slide that gas a few frames earlier so that what Jay Ferguson's doing on screen is responding to the gas as opposed to the other way around. The level that the TV is humming in the background or the cicadas are in this moment, I mean, we're spending hours on this stuff. And I love it. It's a level of specificity that I'd never even dreamed of. And, you know, I know Sam Esmill is listening and nodding his head because he is, you know, even more of a curator of this stuff

than I can ever be. Yeah. And then someone's going to watch it on their phone. So I just want them to watch it, you know. But it is incredible that more and the more time that I do think, not just me, I think people making TV shows are spending. I even heard my post producers say the other day that's, you know, if we do another season or pretty soon mixing at Universal,

we'll be able to do a mix for not just for Dolby, but for Dolby Atmos. you know, where they have speakers up and down the ceilings. So it's coming from behind you, like the way they do in the highest, highest movie theaters. Sure. Because home theaters are getting better. Like, people will be able to get those kind of sound systems at home. Yeah, the stuff that you used to have, like, you know, Gerald, speakers and sound will come install this stuff.

Now you can plug that in. You can. Yeah. And so it just, it does feel like we're at this strange moment where we are making things at a multi-tiered level because we're not really sure. sure how people want it. You know what I mean? Like, even with Briar Patch, we're making two versions of every episode,

one with Act Breaks for when it airs on USA, and one that's seamless for when it airs for the rest of its life on demand or wherever it ends up next. Did you ever have a stereo with a graphic equalizer? Like the cool visual thing, the faders that you would, like, adjust.

Dude, no. Did your dad? The A was? Remember those? Yeah. Used to go to, like, Circuit City, and like just stare at them. My dad had one of those,

and it was like, when I was home last time, his stereo system is still just sitting there, and I was looking at it, and I was just like, what? How would you even, like, know if you had the right sound? I want you to come visit a sound mix because we're on the mixed age of Universal,

and there are these brilliant guys, you know, Bill and John, like the best in the business, been doing this forever, they work together. They have a board in front of them that is as impenetrable to me as what Jordy LaForge had on peak Star Trek TNG. It is just full of dials and glowing buttons, and sometimes they lift a glass thing

for a glowing red switch and flick it. That's how you launch nuclear weapons. It is. And they do it like they're just, like their fingers are dancing. Like they're a hacker in the movie Swordfish. Like it has nothing to do with reality. And it's, there's even,

there's a, like a box that shows the sound as it's moving through quadrants. It is so wild to me. And you could. I was joking with you guys last week when I was like, maybe the show's done and they're just indulging me. Yeah. This would be what they're doing. There's like a gnome somewhere, like making it louder.

But like meanwhile, this guy's like, oh, wait, wait, hold on. It's a level of aestheticism and it's incredible. But all the buttons do something. But it's always funny to me, yeah, when like the home version of it, it's like, let's check your levels, boss. Yeah. Come on. I'll let Pappy Sonos handle that for me. We're going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about the outsider. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Peroni. Italians know how to live life. Great food, family, celebrating beauty and style around them. Dolce far niente. The pleasure of doing absolutely nothing. Why don't we take that lesson from Italians, right? Why don't you slow down from your busy life and enjoy a moment of just being and do it with a Peroni?

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But I wanted to talk to you a little bit about five. I know you watched both. And five was the one when I misguidedly watched ahead, which I'm really going to try and not to do. I was kind of wondering, like, back when you were more the screener god, was it hard ever to like feel like I'm not? If you liked something to keep it together and not watch too many, because then you would be so far ahead of the sort of everybody else's experience of it. I guess it's a tricky question when I'm dealing with now, too, because reviews are coming out of my show and we gave them eight.

And people are like, I watch one and here's what I think. I'm like, come on. People are busy. Like, that was the main thing. It was just hard to commit to that much time. If I fell in love with something, I just wanted to watch it. Right. But there is fun to be had, especially if you're going to be, say, podcasting.

Yeah. It's hard to go back three weeks or whatever in your mind and be like, oh, okay, yeah, right. This is what I thought about this when I first saw it and this is how I feel about it. Now, that five, I would say, was the place where I was like, okay, I think that this could have been the penultimate episode of this show or like maybe there's like two more episodes left. It's a little bit different when it is like literally the halfway point. Are there eight or ten? It's ten. There's ten of these?

There's ten episodes. I thought we agreed there were eight. I looked at it and Dennis Lehane wrote like the ninth episode and Richard. Price with the 10th episode. Yeah. They got Lahain on this? Yeah, Lahain's, Lahrain wrote on him.

I'm so impressed by the show. I'm impressed by it too. But when I watched five, I was the one, that was the one where I was like, I feel like I got it. You know, in terms of like what this grief monster,

tear drinker, outsider is doing. And yet, and yet, if you asked me to like explain all the details and vagaries of what the doppelganger, outsider viral thing is and how it works

and whether it kills the person that gets scratched and they disappear or whether, like how it operates, I am almost blissfully ignorant. Totally. To the level of detail that I usually would expect from, frankly, myself, when watching something like this. Like when I'm watching like Night of or when I've watched other, like, Mind Hunter or True Detective,

I feel like I can answer almost every question about that. But with outsider, I'm like, I don't understand, like, is Jack wearing a skin suit of Jack and is the other Jack somewhere? Also, what's the relationship between the person who has the neck issue and the person who gets doubled and murders? Right. Because there seems to be one of each in each of these circumstances. And just in some cases, it seems like with, for instance, Claude at the bar, this seems to be like a late onset kind of thing. He got scratched by Terry Maitland.

Well, it seems to be setting up that he's the next one to get doubled and that Jack is his. sin eater or whatever. Okay. So those are two different things you think? I think potentially, because as we saw in, I want to say, Ohio? Yes. Or was it Chicago? I get confused by the Atlanta Midwestern cities.

Holly started in Chicago and went to Ohio and that's where she met Andy. Heath is in. Heath is in Ohio because that's where he was working at Terry Malin's dad's hospital. Heath and the young man who Holly encountered at the funeral who then committed suicide by top with a bad neck. There were two there, right? Heath was the doubled. Yes.

And other dude was the neck. Right. Look, it's funny to go down this road, and it's funny to be going down this road when we're talking about a show that we admire because of its police procedural bones from Price or Lahain, because those are the details that people like them usually care about. As you correctly said, I don't care. I am so, so impressed by this show. even as it traffics in things that, you know,

in other less skilled examples, maybe I would have rolled my eyes at or checked out on. Like what? Well, I'm trying to think, I can't name another show so much as, you know, I said it already, the strip club sex position, the darkness, you know, certain things that certain tropes that have been playing up here or showing up here. There's a mastery at work here that I am so enthralled by. I want to go back to two things that we said before,

but we're really brought to the four in episodes four and five, which I watch as a deeply spooky and unsettling double feature before going to bed on Saturday night, definitely was affected by it. The one thing is, I don't think this is a new genre, but I just am so impressed by it. This collision of Richard Price-esque crime procedural with the guts of a horror-shed horror thing.

it just seems like a no-brainer and I would love to see more of it I'm enjoying it so much I think that there is a luridness that King adaptations can veer into because sometimes people are so excited about the experience they had reading his work

like the sort of the shock and the oh my God I can't believe he did that the celebration of those moments becomes the adaptation and I think there were moments when Castle Rock did that it was really celebrating the OMG moments

of the Manzoo and creating more of an interconnected King universe rather than, you know, being like, what's this town like? Thank you. Right. I continue to think, and I have no inside knowledge of this at all. I'm not an insider on the outsider. This feels to me, and I'm, again, I haven't even, I promise you I've not seen all of them.

This feels like the best Stephen King adaptation I've ever seen. I think that that's fair. It just seems like the least Stephen King adaptation, which might be what you're responding to. But what I mean is, I mean, you know, I would, of course, put the shining at the top, but King hates that and feels like it has nothing to do with his, his, work. What I guess that I want to say is in the spirit of adaptations being about trying to chase the same flame that drove someone to write the book and then chasing it anew in a different medium with a different person doing the chasing, in this case Richard Price. There's something

here that it just feels like Price and the people who made this show are pursuing the same unsettling emotional ideas that King was pursuing that brought him into it. And then, And he kinged it. He wrote a Stephen, I imagine, I didn't read the book, but I imagine that he wrote a Stephen King book around it. And as we talked about last time we discussed this, there are people named Ralph and Glory, and there's a lot of the stuff that are the hallmarks of his work

that people love to read again and again. But there's something so at its core unsettling about this show. And I think it's because it has never once abandoned this idea of grief. Well, it's also every single performance in this show, they're playing it straight. They're playing it as. Oh, yeah. Even as the explanation for the events in the show are becoming more and more fantastical.

Bill Camp, Ben Mendelsohn, Julianne Nicholson, Cynthia Arrivo. Everybody is just like, I have both hands on the table. Like, you're not, there's no magic going on. I'm not going to do any big hamming it up or scene chewing or anything like that. I am a grieving parent or a confused cop. or a slightly off private investigator, and I am approaching this subject matter with incredible seriousness,

as they should, because we're talking about now almost a dozen deaths. And unbelievable, like, there is a world in which they could have played some of those, like, and then the grandmother drove into a telephone pole, and then this person hung themselves, and this person.

It's outrageous. Oh, I mean, it could have been, like, airplane. It could have been like, no, I'm serious. They could have played it, like, a naked gun. Excuse me, I speak Jive. But it was like, it's weird. They also don't manipulate you with it.

They're like, they're not, they don't broad church it where you're like, oh my God, I can't believe like this is going to happen to this family. Like, in a weird way, there is like a distance from the emotional impact of the events of the show. In a very specific way, I think because if you actually had to go through the trauma that people are experiencing on this show, I don't know if people would be able to watch it. True. I also think that it goes back to a moment that I called out a week ago, a moment that I think we both took note of,

which is the scene between, what's Ralph's wife's name, Merwinningham's part? It doesn't matter. Between her and glory between Julian Nicholson. Oh yeah, right. She's like, I talk to you.

How do you carry on? And she says, it's impossible and the scene ends. And so if you posit a world, which is actually our world, where you cannot solve grief or loss, that all of this actually is impossible and happening at the same time. You allow a world where the next level beneath that is a monstrous, ghostly, faceless sin-eater.

I mean, why not? Because you've already said, we have no answers for this. So, and it's in Ben Mendelsohn's performance, where, okay, maybe my wife was visited by a monster starting to kill me, but I've already been eaten out from the inside. I've already been hollowed out, you know. And in that, the thing that episodes four and five really reminded me of in a way, not in its manner of storytelling, but in the content, is Twin Peaks. Because Twin Peaks also had this pretty radical idea that underneath whatever type of story you're telling

is this screaming impossibility of pain and human emotion and grief and loss. And it was always, the compass was always very true about that, about what happened to Laura Palmer and the effect that it had on people who loved her. And then lots of weird stuff happened on top of it. To the point where, you know, hardcore fans probably know what I'm talking about when I say the word Garmin Bozia,

which is deep Twin Peaks shit, which is takes the form of creamed corn in the movie Twin Peaks Fire Walk with me, but is translated as pain and suffering, which is what this evil spirit from Twin Peaks eats. It's, again, it's the same story. Right. That something must feed on grief

for us, why would it be so contagious and toxic and ever present in our life? And that's what I just find so impressive and moving about the show. I mean, the direction is on another level. I didn't check for Andrew Bernstein's work before this. I don't know him at all, but he's being so creative. He's covering so much. There's so many inserts and details, and he's making quite a beautiful and, you know, striking-looking show.

But they're just... Yeah, Corinne Krasama directs six, and she takes... it's a fucking homer. That's extremely exciting. You know, for all the cooks in this particular kitchen, they really knew it was on the menu, you know, and they stayed very true to it. And so I didn't, when we started talking about it after week one,

I was like, I admire this. This is a good hang. And now I just think it's excellent. Yeah, it's also the perfect time of year for it to be on. It's gray outside, you know what I mean? Like, it just feels weird. It's like only in the 60s in Los Angeles. We're all bundled up.

There's like wind. We'll keep talking about outsider. On Thursday, Andy and I will have our recording of our live show from the special Breyer Patch screening that we did in L.A. Can I just quickly on that? You guys who showed up from the podcast, thank you so much.

We have the best fans. You guys were so kind, so patient with us. One young lady came from Texas to hang out with us. It was so cool that there's a community that's based around this podcast that is just nice and

respectful to each other. A lot of times more inventive than we are. when it comes to how they're talking much more than I am. The Facebook group, yeah. But we're really humbled by that, and that was really cool, and I was so excited that we got to share it with everybody. So we will do a topor so we can talk more about that. Sure.

And we can also... I want to talk a little bit more specifically about the pilot and about some of the story stuff in there. Sure. So the plan going forward with Briar Patch, we're really excited about this. So on Thursdays, obviously, Breyer Patch airs on USA. At 10 p.m.

Right. The plan is to have, for most of the episodes, at least, I think, is the plan. Me and Andy and a guest from Breyer Patch discussing that episode and then the episode of the watch will go up like basically the minute Briar Patch is over.

Thursday nights. Yeah. So if you're watching along and you want to get kind of like an unprecedented look at, well, I guess not unprecedented because like,

you know, you just list, Chernobyl was kind of awesome. But this is like our version of that. I was like, no one has ever talked to a showrunner intimately about his word. No one's ever talked to a showrunner

who's done, been doing a podcast for like eight years. True. And then made a TV show. I'm available to talk about it. Yeah. So Andy will be talking about that every Thursday. But we'll also have other stuff on the Thursday shows, too.

Yeah, we got some other shows that we want to start checking out. Some really cool guests coming up. And so Thursday, Briar Patch, episode one, and that airs Thursday on USA. That is really airing this week. Yeah. Thursday, February 6th, the 10 p.m. I'd like to take a moment to speak directly. To the Grey's Anatomy viewers?

To the Nielsen families. Okay. please turn all your televisions onto USA. That's right. Ratings matter. Yeah. I've bought 10 televisions. That's great. Yeah.

And I just have them all. They're on USA right now. The numbers for SVU have never been higher. Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting time. And then next Monday we'll obviously have a reaction to the Oscars and we'll be talking a lot, I'm sure, about episode six of outside. The Oscars is next week? Yeah. This is a crazy week.

It was Super Bowl, caucuses, state of the union. Briar Patch. Briar Patch. Oskers. So I have, it's on Sunday? The Oscars, yes. I have six days to watch eight more movies. Oh, baby.

Talk to you guys on Thursday. I may have to prioritize. Okay, I got some stuff to watch. Great job, France.