The Watch - The Mid-Summer Mailbag

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

Chris and Andy open up the mailbag to take stock of our TV landscape as we reach the midpoint of summer. They talk about the ‘House of the Dragon’ trailer (1:00), some of their favorite performances of the year (23:54), and whether we’re trending back to a more traditional delineation between TV and movies (30:36). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Are you tuning in to the Challenge USA on CBS? Well, tune in to me, Tyson Apostle, as I break down each and every episode with my co-host, Amelia Weddemeier. I'm also a contestant on the show, which gives you all the insider scoop. Amelia, how stoked are you to do this? Tyson, I'm freaking excited. I cannot wait to sit my butt down every single week to watch the show, then come here and recap it with you on The Ringer Reality TV podcast. Did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling?

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the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com.

And joining me on the other line, he's got mail. It's Andy Greenwald. Was the ringer.com? I think Juliette actually has a lot of different URLs. Yes. I feel like we should be the ringer. TV. She's got a lot of go daddy action going.

You know, like she has a lot of like the ringer. Like, well, because you remember that we did the whole thing with like, what should we name the company? I think she like got URLs for a lot of that stuff. Yeah. Now she has a small business where she flips. Angelina Jolie.net, you know, to she holds it hostage. I'm just getting to just do that. Hi, Andy. What's up? Hey, buddy. And welcome back. Kaya's back. I was going to say that. You know, I was going to say that people, many people have been saying that we've been missing something over the last couple of weeks.

Like, that there's just something off with our energy. You can tell that CR and AG maybe they're not clicking the way they used to. And it's really because we lost the production magic of Kaya McMullen, but she is back from her vacation. So we welcome her. We thank her. We thank her. for coming back. It's the third heat. Remember the 30 Rock pilot? That's the third heat. That's what we need for the microwave.

Grimwell, today we're going to do a summer mailbag because, you know, we just kind of arrived at this point. We're in between Saul episodes, obviously. We'll be back on Monday night with our Saul recap. I hope everybody enjoyed our Peter Gould interview.

That was a real thrill for us to talk to him. And if you haven't had a chance to check that out, I highly recommend any Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul fans, as long as you're caught up with Better Call Saul and, you know, Breaking Bad as well. Check it out. So we're really excited to see we're breaking a break in bad. We're better call Saul goes from here. A bunch of new shows coming up in the

next couple weeks. We got industry coming back. I wanted to start the mailbag with a message from Chris from Philadelphia. Oh, yeah. Hey. Hey, long time listener. Andy, this fucking house of the dragon trailer looks sick. Why or N? Oh, big Y. Yeah. Big Y. And no question why. Right. first of all, whoever the person is at HBO, at the trailer house, who works on House of the Dragon, who is like, you know it would be dope as if we've repurposed the Velvet Underground's Venus and Furs as a dirge for succession in Westrose, that person needs a raise. Well, isn't it the same person that's just, like, came up with Westworld's whole shit, which is just like, what if radio head but slower?

Yeah, but I thought it was. was like really cool how they even did the, the percussion for the three chest thumps when everybody's bowing to my guy Damon, played by Matt Smith. So, well, this brings up two things. So I guess my question for you, Chris, you know, as a long time, long time, Westerozy, are you just back? Like, are you just like, did it prickle all the old nerve endings? Or is there something unique about this new show at this particular moment that is sparking you? Well, I thought it looked great, first of all. Like, you know, I think that you and I have chatted a couple of times over the Thor,

Love and Thunder conversation. We kind of concerned trolled the Lord of the Rings trailer previous to the most recent one. I think when we'd seen like kind of like some of the postcard, like some of the posters for the show, we had been like, ah, this just looks like Game of Thrones. And it's the Sepachanik factor, right? It's the fact that they got Miguel Sampachnik to direct at least the pilot, I'm sure, multiple episodes, but also to oversee the visual kind of. of tone of the show.

And I, it's something that I didn't know I was missing so much. And I think that there's like a feeling to that trailer where you're just like, it's not even about going back to the world or going back to the, you know, to the scenario of dragons being real and, and struggling for what looks to be a very uncomfortable chair. It's really the storytelling style. And is that the most mid-40s take ever to be. like the Iron Throne lacks lumbar support? I mean, it's not just lax lumbar support.

It sticks things into your skin. That's true. That's also a problem. I just, I'm really, I'm really thrilled for this. I'm really thrilled for like a bracingly adult, like cut throat probably literally show like this. And I, I can't wait. I think that like they waited a long time to do this.

I was reading James Hibbard's very long, very interesting behind the scenes, uh, making of and, and sort of chronicle of the last couple of years. of the franchise and how they had gone through Blood Moon and they had been talking to this person and talking to that person about doing different takes on the show. And that this is the one they arrived on. They went to series with it. And it just, I feel like I trust them, trust these people. I trust HBO and George R. Martin and Condal and Ms. Pachnik to have like this is the one that we want to make. Yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it, the perspective of the HBO factor,

which is to say that I think it's not, this isn't a hot take, but, But just if you look at the history of, certainly the modern history of television, HBO has pretty inarguably the most successful development process. And of course, every development process is filled with the graveyard of good ideas like RIP Noah Bombach's The Corrections show. Like not everything works out. And there are plenty of people who've gone through that process and been frustrated that it was a tight pipeline and et cetera, et cetera. But they pride themselves on the fact that, like, you come in here, we will, the end result will be an HBO show. Yeah, we give you notes.

And we build things a certain way. And that has proved maybe to be the secret sauce in an old-fashioned way of the streaming wars. Not just, I mean, I saw New York Magazine and Vulture declared HBO Max the essential streaming service. I think that's a very strong, there's a strong case to be made that that's true. But that's also the kind of thing that when you look back on other attempts to franchise build, whether they've been long-term successful, short-term successful, or not at all successful, that system has been lacking. right? And we're starting to see the fraying in the MCU because of that. You know, the DC story is well

covered. And the jury is obviously out on Lord of the Rings, the other big show of the end of the summer, because that's a new experience for everyone involved, resurrecting something, but connecting it to movies, Amazon doing it, blah, blah, blah. Like the fact that HBO, here's the thing that gives me confidence. It's not just the Sepotchanic factor. It's not just the cast because Matt Smith is just on like a decade-long hearing. right now and I'm really excited that he's on the show. Our boy, Patty Cotsidine, last scene is the Guardian journalist in the Born movie. I mean, I was going to make the same joke.

He's been a lot of stuff. Seen, but always seen, like, in a very deep, like, end of a rom-com, I-see-you way. Like, I will always see him there. More that, like, they focused on this one. You know, like, that that was the decision and that they admitted where they made a few missteps before. like that gives me a lot of confidence that this isn't look the the the john snow prequel sorry john snow sequel series being announced still strikes me is very weird i still think that was not intentional because

it it diluted this message that i'm now carrying water for which is like they picked and chose the one well it's funny that you should mention that so i'll get into some of the questions we got from listeners these went out over facebook and twitter and thank you so much to everybody who sent the questions that we always get way more than we could possibly handle maybe maybe we should start doing these more regularly or maybe once a month or something like that. But Ernest Calderon asked, what TV show would you like to see get the salt treatment? A direct continuation expansion of the world with the cast and crew returning. I think that latter part is the most important part, the crew. Does the John Snow spinoff have potential to fit the bill? So I saw a fan poster of the snow.

I think it was a fan-made poster of the Snow series. And it does seem like at least, according to Amelia Clark. This is actually like at least in development. The crew thing is really important. I think talking to Peter Gould, and we'd always kind of speculate and talked about this, but, you know, when you watch the Better Call Sall credits, so many of those names are people who have been working in Albuquerque for the better part of 10, 15 years, right? Like on these shows. And the institutional knowledge, but also the coherent aesthetic, while still on. allowing for permutations and iterations on that aesthetic is pretty striking. I honestly go as far as to say almost maybe a singular achievement in television is to have somebody, like a new,

a show on top of what was already considered a classic, taking some of the visual elements, taking some of the stylistic storytelling elements, and then going in all these different directions, whether it's broader comedy or absolutely haunting criminal underworld tales. It's just, I don't know how often you can do that. If the price of admission for people's level of excitement about John Snow is betting off and Weiss, I wouldn't hold your breath. You know, I really don't think that those guys are going to be coming back to this anytime soon. But what do you think?

I think that you're right to identify the crew continuity as everything. We will never as lay people or as fans be able to appreciate what the below the line people did to keep the, Albuquerque verse aloft for these 10, 15 years. I mean, that is essential. And it also is essential to the investment of those involved, right? Like, even in our Peter Gould interview,

he talked about something that we latched onto from the New York Times profile of Odencirk, which is just that after years of coming to this place and knowing what it means to live in this city and your relationship, your distance from your family, and what it means to be at work and blah, blah, blah. Odin Kirk was like to Ray Seahorn and Patrick Fabian, like, let's get a place together.

And here's the neighborhood it should be in, and we'll just have a lot of what Peter Gould was like, there's a lot of ice cream in their freezer. You know what I mean? Like that culture, look, Chris, you're an NBA guy. Culture matters. Yeah. Right?

It kind of does. It's kept the spurs really steady over the last couple of years as culture. Very steady. We got great culture, though. There are limits. No, I don't you mean. I was thinking more heed culture, perhaps. Yeah, right.

But, you know, our favorite team, we just love those guys. Just always big supporters of South Beach. Titans. But that said, as fans, we can't really let that get in the way of what we want. And so when I heard the question, like, they're, you know, look, I always want more Twin Peaks. That's probably not happening. Twelve years later, I'm still like, boy, I really like Terriers. All of that is still true.

I'm still that person. But when I heard the question, immediately, I was like, I miss Mad Men. Yeah. I miss Madman. I don't think there's more story in those characters that office that decade, but I wasn't the only one to be like, can we do the Sally Draper in the 80s spin-off? You know, like, is there something else to be done? And I, it's funny.

That's my answer, just because I missed that show and having something so thoughtful and heady and insular and focused and creative and artistic. But what is the special sauce that I miss? Because it wasn't necessarily the Roman. You know what I mean? No disrespect to everyone involved in that. Like that was pure whiner. And I was like not, it had some major flaws. So what is it that I'm talking about that I miss? And maybe this is just a way to circle back to the culture and crew question. Is it replaceable? And now that we know so much about how TV is made and what how ephemeral a lot of this stuff is, is the question dead because we can't get it back. Is it just purely an nostalgia exercise? I don't know. Like, you know, I'll be very interested to see. It also depends on like how you define these things, right? Like they're, has been, I think it's pretty easy to kind of make the connections between we own this city and the wire and call that like almost an appendix or an update or like of news from the front of the drug war. And obviously used a lot of the same crew, but crucially, I think, had a singular

director working on those scripts with Rinaldo Marcus Green directing the Pelicanos and Simon and team scripts. I'll be very interested to see this justified, like update that they're doing. So a lot of the same people who worked on the original justified or working on city primeval, or at least that's the, I don't know if it's justified city primeval, but it's based on the Elmore Leonard book, High Noon and Detroit City Primeval. And from all accounts, it's going to be most of what you love about justified, but also reckoning with how the world has changed since justified when on the air. How our relationship with gun violence, how our relationship with policing and all these things have changed.

I don't necessarily think it's going to be like, about that, but I think that they couldn't do the show without kind of acknowledging that. So I'll be really fascinated to see what they do with that character. And I think that not to put too final point on it, it's almost like what Linklater does with the before movies where I would be kind of interested if they just did like a Raylan show every five or seven years. And just sort of like, here's a case and here's a new Elmore Leonard adaptation, but also like what's going on in the country.

But also that was what like Prime Suspect did. That's what Luther did. Like there's a model for Sherlock. It's a British model, but I don't see why that couldn't be adopted. Absolutely. I'll ask another question, which is kind of Saul-related,

but what would be the premise for another spinoff of Breaking Bad Saul that you think could sustain five seasons and live up to the other two series? This is a really good, really good question. I don't want to say leave well enough alone. I don't want to say you guys did it. I don't want to say you guys landed the plane twice.

Don't take off again because I would have said that when they started better call Saul. Yeah. I'll throw out some ideas. But the problem is, is that we have gotten to the end of the road. I think just like father time-wise with Jonathan Banks, right? Like, I don't think you can de-age Jonathan Banks, and we know what happens to him on Breaking Bad. Honestly, the most potential out there is either Walt Jr.

Wow. Jesse, I guess. What's he doing? you know, after the end of El Camino? I mean, what else would there be? I mean, because we kind of got a lot of this in El Camino. I have a couple. And I should say, I don't think any of these are viable.

Because if you think from a traditional TV point of view, like, what is the workplace or the setting for a spinoff? And there's only two that come to mind right off the bat. One is the courthouse. We've already, we've met a couple people. Roy Wood works there apparently. as a prosecutor. There are some fun characters in a memorable, terrible,

a memorably terrible coffee machine and a whole parade of interesting and not as interesting cases and people coming through it told through the, you know, the Gilligan-Gould axes inimitable style and sense of humor and point of view.

Like, that would be a decent procedural. But it's essentially the same thing, right? It's like the nexus of the mundane and the almost operatically criminal. And like that, we've done that. I don't think there's really more to do there. The second nexus of the mundane and operatically criminal is the veterinarian who's also the mob doctor,

which is just a great trope. Like my ears, this isn't a spoiler for Better Call Saul, but the other week when a character had a gunshot wound and they're like, the doctor is on his way across the border from Mexico, I'm like, give me eight episodes on that guy. Here's the problem, Andy. Yeah. I will not stand for this erasure of the show.

mob doctor. Oh my God, you're right. Don't you remember that? Jordana Spiro. Mob Doctor. We talked about that a lot. Great show. No, it wasn't.

Great premise. I love that idea. It's still a good, I don't think it's viable anymore thanks to the work of the very specifically titled show. It's very specifically titled Mob Doctor. What kind of doctor is this guy?

I do like that. But I feel like, so anyway, it's all redundant. There's not, there aren't any characters with more tail to tell. both, I meant it figuratively, but maybe literally as well. There's one avenue. There's one.

Baby Holly. Baby Holly grows up. Baby Holly's legacy of ashes. So baby Holly, well off, right? Well, you think, but so... Very liquid. Baby Holly, Haley Steinfeld, goes to college. mom, Skyler can pay for college.

There's an issue at the Bursar's office. The check didn't clear. Wait, what's the story? Why does my family have money? I have to unravel this. She ends up going on a desperado quest south of the border to find out the origins of the blood money that put her in a position to become, what is she going to be?

She's a scientist, right? She's going to do something good for the world. Are we pitching this? I kind of like mob student. I want to keep her in college. I want it to be like a campus comedy. Oh, okay. All right.

Okay. All right. Well, we'll work up this. What better place to sell meth than school, you know? The other. Well, that's great during finals week. I do think that it's interesting. Like, Breaking Bad came.

Vince Gilligan had worked on the X-Files, right? In the same way that, like, a lot of the great shows of that era came from people who had worked in the trenches of the previous era of TV and were chafing against the limitations of it. Weiner had that experience. David Chase is the definition of that. And so what's interesting and maybe key to these shows, successes is that within the breaking bad better call structure is a CBS procedural.

I mean, Jonathan Banks as the equalizer, right? Like that would be the best show if he just wasn't necessarily tied to Gus and was just this methodical older guy with a past who got shit done. Yeah. And we would all watch that show. But what they did so brilliantly is they folded a less interesting CBS procedural into the larger tapestry of this more engaging and gripping show. So it's hard to take the threads out.

I mean, obviously, it enormously helped Saul to have this connective tissue to Breaking Bad. And now as we get closer and closer, I don't even know what might happen in the last few episodes of Better Call Saul that might suggest that there's more story to tell. You know, we don't really know. But the thing that I admired the most about Saul is the fact that Breaking Bad was this, I mean, obviously it was a family drama, but it was also about the drug world. there is elements of that in Better Call Saul, but it is essentially a legal drama, as well as a relationship and character study. I wouldn't put it past the Gould Gilligan access

to think of another type of genre of show that they wanted to set in that world and figure out some way to connect it. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night

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fuel efficiency and legendary symmetrical all-wheel drive standard the Subaru Forrester hybrid visit suboru dot com slash hybrid to learn more maximum range based on EPA estimated combined fuel economy and a full tank of fuel actual mileage and range may vary so uh while we're talking about sequels and prequels and spinoffs i just want to say thank you to everybody who asked me or at specifically me about heat two obviously we are monitoring the situation uh so Dan Devine, our buddy from the ringer, asked how much of the New York Times Michael Mann profile will you be getting tattooed on your flesh?

And will it be a cohesive unified design or more of a scattered memento situation? Dan, that's a great question. And I have already contacted somebody about getting, find me a psychotic kitchen chair, which is something that Michael Mann said on the set of Manhunter to his set designer. I'll be getting that across my throat.

Can I say, you know, we are having a, Look, it's the age of man. It's a mannissance, yeah. Yeah, finally man's back. It's been a rough few years for man, but I think we're making a comeback. For sure. You have been in the room with the guy. I've been on a virtual room with him.

Right. You've spoken to him. I have been an admirer from a distance. And to be clear, for people who aren't following it, there is a new novel being published, Heat 2, right, that picks up the story. Co-written by Man and Meg Gardner, yeah. Right. And so he's doing some press stuff for it.

events of heat. So it's apparently like a 500-page book that goes into Neil and Vince and Chris's backgrounds, childhoods, young lives. So I learned something this week that is pretty basic, which is, I listen to, you love it when I talk about other podcasts, but I did listen to Michael Mann on Marin this week. And I haven't really, I've been a fan of Michael Mann. I think I've seen all of his movies or close to all of his movies. I haven't seen what's Black Hat. Is that the one? Black Hat's the Hacker one, yeah. I gave that one a miss. But, for some reason I never made the obvious connection that he, of course, despite being like the tough

guy, swaggering Chicago guy and like known for these very like hyper, in some ways masculine films is just a theater kid at heart, even though he would never admit it. And like his, the way, the loving way he talked about doing the months of research for Last of the Mohicans, you know, or the insane level of back. He was just like, Marron was like, so, you know, these characters from heat, they must have lived with you for 35 years. And he's just like, they've lived with me my whole life, basically. Like, I know everything about Neil McCauley. Like, I know what he has for breakfast.

And like, he does. Of course he is. That's what makes the movie's good. It's not because he's some sort of, like, virtuoso in the edit bay or whatever. Or he, like, challenges Pacino to, like, go to Zag when he wants to Zig. It's that he's an artist. Like, and that seems like such a soft, soft response to man. but I found that very endearing

and of course it made sense. In the piece that Jonah wrote in The Times one of the secondaries is Daniel Day Lewis talks about like how close he's their close friends and he talks about the the trapper school that they went to in Alabama and it's just like yeah you're right

that's where he builds these movies that seems so stylish and they are so stylish and they're so well realized but the reason why they're well realized is the foundation of you know, resumilitude and like the research that he puts into it so that he knows why somebody has,

I mean, find me a psychotic kitchen chair line is because he knows what furniture he wants to be in each person's room because he's like, this person shows that furniture, in a sense, furniture is character. Everything is character.

Everything is about whatever, you know, what everything else is about. Let's talk a little bit about, gosh, we want to go here. So we got some really good ones. We had some responses to our top 10 lists.

Uniformly positive. No disagreements with either of our lists. Everybody's saying that we got all the good shows in there and none of the bad shows. Yeah, that's the vibe I got. Yeah. All right. Mary Page Bailey asks, what's the best single performance from a 22 show that didn't make your first half top 10?

The best performance? Yeah. A standout performance that didn't make her. for me it's it because I'm still living in the horror place I was at the end of our top 10 conversation. Oh, and I was like remember winning time? Yeah, Quincy Isaiah as Magic Johnson on winning time. I mean, and you could go down the list of that show. I mean, I loved, I loved the show mainly because of the performances, but I just feel like a relative unknown being asked to play one of the most famous people in the world who's famous, not just for his demeanor, but for his

athletic skills. And then just within 10 minutes, I'm like, yeah, that's Magic Johnson. That's a really special performance. Yeah. I'll, I'll shout out Andrew Garfield from Under the Banner Heaven, which I know we talked about the first couple of episodes of. And I felt like just really didn't, um, didn't really do it for me on the back half of its season. I thought that it was a really, really, really strong first episode, a fairly good second one. And I just felt like I didn't really, I didn't really know what it was trying to do with the last few episodes. I think playing with the multiple timelines is tough for that show. But I really, really, uh, thought he was extraordinary across the board. What's another one that I've really liked. I actually thought Michael Sarah was awesome on Life and Beth, the Amy Schumer show that came out on Hulu earlier in the year. He plays basically the romantic lead of the show. A very

complicated character, but it's he doesn't do a ton Michael Sarah. And I kind of, I know that his brain is not unlike Bill Hader. He's like a huge cinema fan. It's like interesting to watch him interact with like the contemporary TV landscape or movie landscape when he shows up.

But I just thought he was, he was quite good on this. I have to do a very me thing and shout out the German actor Lars Edinger, who is absolutely unreal on Irma V. How is that very you? Well, it's a hermavap. It's Irma Vap. And for people who are listening to this podcast who are curious about more VEP coverage, I spoke to Olivier Asayas, the filmmaker, a hero of mine. That'll air next week. So you'll get your VEP coverage. Don't worry. Relax everyone. All the VEP heads. hitting me up all hours of the day. But, you know, to have it, again, he's a, I'm sure a well-regarded and well-known German

actor I'd never encountered him before and have a say I ask be like, come on my TV show and I want your character to be the embodiment of Raineer, of, what's his name? A fast bender. Oh, okay, yeah. Not Michael, you know, the German. Rader Werner. Rainer, yeah, the genius of New German cinema, whatever. But like, so he's a pansexual crackhead who just like brings joy and chaos wherever he goes.

And it's a really great performance in a show that isn't for everyone, but you know it was for me. Should we do some more broad kind of state of the industry questions? Because we got a couple of those ones from F. Clint DeNisco. And he said, are we starting to actually see the different models of TV and cinema flip back to normal? With big movie successes as of recent, I guess he's referring to Top Gun and Thor and a couple of of other things. Obviously, Black Phone did really well as a horror. And TV shows like Abbott Elementary winning, being nominated for Emmys, I think he means. Is the theory of movies are just television now and TV is where real cinema happens over? I think it's a great question. There's definitely a move

towards more traditional things in both spaces in that big movies are now being once again released in theaters and reaping the benefits of that. Longer running series, we talked about this when we were reviewing the Emmy nominations are being rewarded. And I think that being celebrated and appreciated. I think there's maybe a more pessimistic economics at work behind this because one of the reasons why things may be settling down is because fewer things are being greenlit and fewer chances are being taken. There's absolutely, we are in a, in two senses, one good, one bad, we are in a bear market

right now in television. One, the bear. Everybody loves it. Two, there are giant projects going out that are striking out. When I say going out, I mean like big stars, big directors, big swings, being shopped to networks and streamers and just go for it. Like zero. Nobody will make them. Nobody wants them.

And, you know, there's obviously some fun industry. Shadden Freud about that. Like, oh, Netflix can't afford to make X anymore or JJ Abrams belly flopped with Demi Mond and it's not going forward. But we don't know the things that we're being robbed of. And they may be things that could have rewritten the paradigm or our understanding of what each. field can do. So I think it's a worthwhile observation to track, but I'm not really sure what it means yet, because I think that there's a lot of ripples still to be felt. I was reading an interview with Ethan Hawke, who was doing it, I think it was Indie Wire, and he was talking about his Paul

Newman documentary, Paul Newman and Joe and Woodward Art documentary that he has coming on on HBO. And they were asking him about Moon Knight, and he, I think, thought very classily sort of phrased this as, I find Marvel to be very actor-friendly, maybe not. director-friendly. And I think that what we're probably seeing is, and this will get to a question from a mail-back question in a second, is a lot of things that might have been originally conceived or best-conceived of as features that are being pushed, pulled, stretched into series. And that is where we're kind of coming up a little short. The filmmaking aspect of it, I kind of feel like there has been a, which isn't to say that there isn't great filmmaking happening.

in television. But the dream of True Detective Season 1 and David Fincher directing Mind Hunter and Stephen Soderberg directing the Nick, I think we're going to get things like Barry Jenkins Underground Railroad. We're going to get great filmmaking.

Irma Vett. Yeah. It depends on what you're looking for. It depends on whether you feel like as an otourist that one director needs to basically oversee or direct all of the episodes or not. But my

concern rather than the direction or the filmmaking side of television is the there used to be ideas about what would be a good 90 to 120 page screenplay and what would be a good 20, you know, five episode run of a show. And I think that's still a little out of whack. And that goes to our next question, which is from Ronald Anthony Burgess, he says, are there any 2022 TV shows that you think would work better as a movie and any recent movies that you think would work better as a TV show. I have not seen a movie in years that I was like, I wish that was a TV show. Now, that possibly is because I watch so much TV that I'm not like, oh, could, I wish Top Gun Maverick had been 10 hours long. Like, I really treasure my experiences at the movies. I treasure the limited

story. I love going in and coming out. I think that, I don't think we have enough time to through the amount of TV shows that I think would have worked better as a movie. Yeah, and I think particularly to focus on, look, I mean, I thought we would make it a whole podcast without mentioning the bear, but the bear was, Christopher Storer had it as a movie for many years. That's what he imagined it to be. And then through FX development, through his own thinking, through his collaborator, Joanna Callow, it became a TV show. And it's so much better for it, I think.

Although it would have been a pretty cool movie. I mean, that's fine. But I think there was a richness there that it ended up in the right box. For me, the answer really focuses on the IP factories. And, you know, Obi-Wan was going to be a movie. And then they were like, no, no, this is better here. Was it better here? I mean, that's its own category almost because I still don't think they ever cracked

why there was more story to tell or what they wanted to do with it. So I don't know if it would have been a more successful movie because I still think it, I'm not sure what the goals were. But, you know, like Moon Knight, for example. a show that I'll be honest with you guys. I didn't finish. I mean, I think that's crazy that there was an Oscar Isaac Ethan Hawk TV show

about a character that I have a fondness for that I just haven't found the three hours to finish. I would have loved to see it be its fullest expression as something weird and comic and intense and over, you know, as opposed to following the same six-hour beats that these shows now seem to need to do. So I think it's an interesting question, one that probably deserves more thought

before a full answer, but the most natural place for me to focus on an answer is on these projects that really were pickums. That, you know, we're all, there probably is a moon night feature script in Feigey's office. You know what I mean? And they're like, yeah, this goes better here. I think that that's kind of in my reaction to the second half of the old man was that I wonder whether or not this would have worked better as a two-hour movie. Obviously, there were a lot of mitigating circumstances with the old man, but to me, it's like a pretty decisive quality difference between the first few episodes and the second few episodes?

It's dramatic. And it's so dramatic that I think we're both refraining from talking about it too much until maybe we finish it and see what the setup is for a second season. But I was shocked, honestly, by the, I don't know if it was the fourth or fifth episode where it literally just became

absolutely stone-faced recitations of monologues in two different time periods. Right. And I was like, what happened to old man with secrets on the run? Like, that was compelling. But one character on the run, I mean, look, people love the TV show The Fugitive. But you know what they really loved?

The movie. Like, there are some things that can work in two boxes, but really flower in a certain one. Aaron asks, what is your most anticipated release movie or television for the remainder of 2022? I'll probably go TV. I'm going to say industry, which is coming very soon. So it almost feels like it's cheating to say for TV. And then for movies, it's, I'm not a complicated. guy, it's Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. I can't wait to see it. I really,

I'm just ready for another Marty movie. God, Chris, I don't know if I have an answer. I haven't been pouring over the release schedules. I feel like you've named two things I'm psyched about. Can I answer for you? Yeah, what's the movie I'm most excited about? Asteroid City? What? Noah Bomback's Netflix cratering white noise? Dude, thank you. Thank you for this gift. Yes. I mean, we will put a pin in that. We will circle back to how and whether this is true or not, one of our favorite filmmakers, Noah Bombach, has somehow taken one of our favorite novels, the kind of

unfilmable Don DeLillo classic White Noise, and apparently spent over $150 million adapting it in Ohio for the last 14 months. I have no idea. I don't know what's true in the story. I don't know what matters, but this is one to watch. And to pay attention to. Eric Luce asked, do you and Andy have any favorite albums released this year? Oh. I mean, yes. We had so much fun making our mixtape for the Fourth of July. It's been really fun to share. And I'm about to post another mix I made.

I'm making mixes again, guys. I'm back. DJ Andes. Give me the album of the year, though. But the album of the year? So this is the crazy thing about it. I don't know. Like the album of the year is for me, like, it's either the Puscher record or an artist I love called The Range, made a record called Mercury.

I also love the super chunk album. but I have to be honest with you, Chris. Like, I have been thinking about this as I've been working my magic on the Spotify machine. My consumption of music, I've now caught up with, like, older millennials, younger millennials?

Like, I don't really listen to albums anymore. I try, you know, but I just really don't. I love so many songs. So do you skip through songs on albums, identify the ones you like, put them on like a master playlist? I'm curious about the process. Well, yeah, like there's a, there's a singer-songwriter named Carson McCone, who I just, I really like, she has an album out on Merge that I think is wonderful. And I like the whole album. It's really good. But do I listen to the whole album the way I used to when I had it on, like when I would walk around college campus with a disc man? No, I listen to the three songs that I love or I put them on a playlist that I love. There's a, there's a Canadian band called Kiwi Jr. that's on subpop that has a new record coming out that I have the advance of that I absolutely love. But even that, that's,

There's a song called Come Back Baby that you can listen to now. It'll be on the mix I'm going to post. I just kind of focus on that. And I really like the way it sounds with the Brax and Falcon track. And Grace Ives, another amazing new album, that I just, what's happened? Like it's a patience thing, right? Like the Grace Ives album, Janky Star is a good example. I listen to it and I'm like, this is awesome.

I like every song here. But I could just listen to On the Ground 10 times today. And that's what I do. And that's just changed my relationship. My favorite two albums of the year are spiritualized, 2022 album. Everything was beautiful. And drug church hygiene.

So it's really good. And I do listen to those as albums, not because I'm special, but just, I just think that the spiritualized records, specifically everything was beautiful. Like actually, like most spiritualized records, like, feels like of a piece.

And so once you put it on, sometimes we'll be listening to it in the house, making dinner. And my wife will be like, this is great. I love this. And then we get to like the five minute free jazz freak out at the end of one of the songs.

She's like, oh, yeah, this is why I don't like spiritualized. And that is tough cooking music. I have one last one here before I let you go, Andy. Is that okay? Yeah, please. Jay Barba asks, back around 2016 or 17 at Wilde, a pizza place in Park Slough, my wife and I had an altercation with a guy named Chris who looked a lot like you, was it?

Wow. Who looked like you, Chris or looked like me? Apparently, it was like looked a lot like you, Chris, and his name was Chris. And it was this, I've never been to Wild. This wasn't me. I apologize. And also, Jay, I don't get into altercations, really. No.

You're a man of peace. Yeah, I'm a really, really easygoing, dude. It's pretty hard to get my temper up. It's really true. I'm trying to think what would possibly... I can get into bad moods, but it's hard, it would be really difficult to, like, get me to, like, fight. What, now I feel challenged.

I mean, like a close call at the plate when you were a catcher, right? Like, that could get you going to go. Yeah, those were my younger days. You're scrappy. Yeah. I was a little... I'm from Philadelphia. Call me out, and I don't think I'm out.

I'm going to say something about it. I... We should end on the... I thought you were going to bring it up. When you said there was a question from Chris, I thought you, Chris, I thought you were going to be like, just broadly speaking,

what, 40% of the questions are, why aren't you guys talking about X? Oh, yeah. Like, I mean, we can address this on another mailbag. We have so many questions. We should save this for a part two. Yeah, we'll do a sequel. But yeah, like, I think that I really, like,

obviously, Sometimes people are like, oh, how come you guys aren't talking about this or why haven't you spoken about this? There's a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's that it's not really doing it for one or both of us. Sometimes simply just kind of have fallen off of finishing or watching a show, usually because it's not really doing it for us. But there's like, it's hard to stay current with all the TV that's out there. And yeah, it's honestly, it's not really the like kind of mission of the show that we do to kind of be completest. It's more to be enthusiastic supporters of the shows that we really like,

followers of the industry that creates the shows and kind of comment on that. And then every once in a while, like, try to do our best to give something a fair shot and then maybe talk about it. But, you know, it's not, I wouldn't say that's like always 100% why things are happening. But if we're not talking about a show, it's just usually because, like, it either didn't click for us or we're just too far behind to really, like, offer substantive commentary on it. Or a third one, which is like what we do in the shadows is back. Yeah, I know. We've talked about that before where it's like comedies are tough to talk about. I don't know what to say about it.

Or like the AMC thriller Dark Wins. Like I checked out two episodes. I like Zan McLarenden. I'm happy it exists and it's going to get renewed. I feel like people love the Tony Hillerman books and it seems to be doing a really good job adapting them. But like I didn't stick with it. And so I don't have an opinion other than I was pleased that it existed. And that's not good podcasting.

You know what I mean? Like I don't have any negative thoughts. I just had some like. I'm happy for you, bro. Yeah. Slowly formative. Yeah. High five, bro.

So that's, I think you summed it up well. Like the mandate of the podcast, maybe at the beginning was we would try to watch everything. We just simply can't now. Well, there were six shows on back then. So we could watch it all the episodes of Homeland. Those were the days. Those were the days. Greenwald, I'm going to let you go.

I know you got to run. We'll be back Monday night with Better Call Saul. Thank you to Kai for producing. And we'll get to more of your questions later in the summer. We're not going to throw these away. We promise. Happy, have a great weekend, Branskies.