The Watch - The Midsummer Mailbag

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Chris and Andy answer mailbag questions regarding the current landscape of TV. They discuss the best streaming platform to have for the remainder of the year (6:52), their summer reads (11:40), and where the TV world is headed regarding ‘Star Wars’ sequels and the success of ‘Suits’ on Netflix (25:12). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphia, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us,

the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, 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 room. 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 in the studio, he's got mail. It's Andy Greenwald! I love this. I feel like we should, just housekeeping, this is a mailback episode, recording in advance. Yeah. You. A full week in advance.

So if any of our jokes are not, ripped from the headlines the way they usually are, we apologize. Speaking of ripped from the headlines, there's real, I'm excited to do this podcast, like I always am. I want to say at the start, there's some real Dominion voting machine vibes going on. Why? Well, only because you control the means of ingress and egress. Like, you have the questions, and I haven't seen them. I know what's best for you. So we're on our third recording of the day.

And we're going to be parceling these out over the next week and a half. And you're asking, you're implying that you have not gotten to see the questions first, right? I'm not implying it. Chris? You're straight up saying it. Look me in the eye. And Andy, you look me in the eye And if I had sent you the questions last night,

would you have looked at them? No. Okay. So what we're going to do is answer some reader questions. We got these on X.com. Oh, I'm not familiar. Is that new? Seems good.

I'm glad that you're still using Elon's service. What's your social media intake right now? So it's just meta and Instagram. I'm on Instagram. Yeah. I enjoy the content. I mostly follow, if you discuss this, like chefs, ramen restaurants and painters.

It's very chill. And then I just look at groups suggested for me on Facebook. Yeah, I do cats and videos of vintage hardcore shows. That's cool. And a lot of secondhand, like, soccer kits. Yeah. That seems very nice. Yeah.

One of the things about my new media diet, which isn't that new, is that I have the opportunity to like, so I learned news usually by a friend texting me about the secondary story of a story. Right. Like someone being like, I can't believe this person had this reaction.

I can't believe like Rudy is conspirator number one. No, that, less that and more like, wow, I can't believe David Hasselhoff was Pee Wee Herman's college roommate now that Peewee Herman has died. And I'm like, excuse me? Oh, so when I was like,

you must be quite broken up about this Lizzo thing. Do you know how I learned about the Lizzo news? I learned about the Lizzo news because Facebook suggests Star Wars fandom groups to me. And there was a picture of Lizzo from the Mandalorian and Jack Black.

Yeah. And it was Star Wars fans being like, Star Wars Star Lizzo has been accused of malfeasance. And frankly, I only want to learn about my news now in relation to the Star Wars expanded universe. Like, I think that would be...

It would be pretty funny. It would be incredible. Like, if Cory Booker makes a really powerful speech, I want it to be Asoka-related. Anyway, we got these messages This whole podcast is anyway, buddy. So don't act like... We got these messages via

via the media platform, formerly known as Twitter. So we didn't get any from Facebook? We didn't put it there. I did a Facebook one recently. So here's our first question. It comes from Josh Stern. Okay.

And we have a couple of strike-related questions. Strike may be over. Who knows? I don't think so. What do you expect the false slate to look like for streamers? Is there enough content, quote, in the can where streamers can put out a full lineup,

or will they choose to slow play their remaining content into Q124. Which is a good question, Josh, because I think that for different streamers, there's a different attitude about the stuff that they have in the library. When the strike first began, I think there was some chess beating about,

we're good, the coffers are full until next year. Now they've kind of, like, I think maybe it's a pose, but maybe it's real that where it's like, well, we can't possibly release this without the promotion force of the actors. In some cases, yeah. So you're seeing some stuff get kicked

later in the year, kicked to next year. I was under the impression that we were going to have, like, for instance, HBO or that Max was like, pretty much they shot out their stuff and, like, it was going to be for the rest of the year, we would be getting a Mac show every Sunday night. But, you know, a murder at the end of the world moving from August to November,

a couple of things moving around. I think that they have enough content, but I don't think that they're crazy about releasing stuff that will have no promotional push. I think that, and I also think there's two stages to this. I think that, and this is not talking about the broadcast season, which has already been totally upended, and the consequences of that may be quite far-reaching.

Like, if they look at how much they were spending on original programming, and they look at how much they spent, CBS, for example, spent by just putting Taylor Sheridan shows on CBS, where maybe they kind of belong, that might be the future, or the end, honestly, in some ways of the broadcast season. What the question is, is more about, the streaming services. And I think it varies from service to service. I think that Netflix has a pretty deep well of content, reality included, and international included, and international production

continues a pace. I think Apple also has a bunch of stuff banked. You mentioned HBO and HBO, like the new true detective with Jody Foster, I believe, is in the can. Yeah, I believe it as well. And so that's something they just have and they can put out when they feel as appropriate. We are starting to see small ripples. You mentioned the, the, the, Britt Marling FX show. What's it called the murder at the end of the world? Just today, we're recording this a week before you guys are listening to it. Issa Ray's show Rapshit was pushed from this month from summer into November. I think there's going to be some movement around the margins like that. Let's push things both kind of secretly in the hopes that someone will be

able to promote it, but also just so we have a little bit more consistency heading into the real unknown territory. What is it true detective, night country? The real night country is 2024. Yeah, but you know, I think that, like, for instance, true detective night country could benefit greatly from Jody Foster being able to explain what's going on. Absolutely. Yes. And that is part of the thinking. But I do think that, like, the midnight country beyond it is when they don't have the shows. And, you know, from what, from what we understand, again, we're recording this before a decision has even been made to resume negotiations with the writers, let alone the actors. All these companies have different responses.

plans. Like they have a plan if this goes reasonably well and we get back to work by the end of the year. And then there's like the, you know, break glass catastrophic box that the UK government was lacking in later episodes of hijack. That's true. And that we don't know what that. They did not have a flow chart for that part. We did not. And we like them do not know what that looks like. Okay. Corey Collins asked a question that I don't really know how to answer. That's basically a sibling question of this, which is what's the must. to have streaming service for the rest of the year. You know, it's a good question.

I don't know. It also depends what you want to use it for, frankly. Yeah, I would say that if you care about replicating the experience of having a television, probably Netflix. If you just want sports documentaries and reality shows and then the library that they have already and whatever new shows that they've been putting out, there's Netflix. I would imagine if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have Max already. I think that Apple has done a nice job over the last 12 months building out shows that are kind of like, especially if you have a partner or if you're watching with more than one person or like fun to watch together.

You know, from Blackbird on, I think there's some pretty enjoyable stuff there. But yeah, like I think probably if you want to just have a ton of stuff to watch, Netflix would probably be the one. Unless, I mean, also if you're a reality fan, I think the Bravo stuff continues apace and you can get that on. Peacock. That's true. If this question is coming from my 10-year-old daughter, the answer is Crunchyroll, the all-anim service that has now been added to my monthly bill. So I think it depends. If the root of the question is like what's going to have, which one of these is going to survive with or thrive with original content through the end of the year, I think the richest ones have the most in the bank already. So that would be Netflix, Apple, and potentially Amazon. The well

is a little bit more shallow at the more traditional media companies, potentially. We don't know how it's going to shake out, but that would be my sense. Okay. Let's shake it up a little bit here. Okay. We're recording the way we're recording because both of us are going away. Guy is going away. We're all going away.

But we come back together, right? Like, as Daniel Tiger's family once said, grown-ups come back. Yes. You should guys, if I could bottle Chris's face when I said the word's Daniel Tiger. What's Daniel Tiger? People who know, no. Is he like Bluey's owner? I mean, that's so offensive, first of all.

Bluey's a dog. In Bluey's universe, there are. are no people. Dogs are people. And do they communicate by woofing or by talking? I'm not even going to I'm not even going to find that with an answer. Do you think that like I'm like this is the best written show in television because of the way they woof in Australian accents? They're people. They're just also dogs.

So you know you can get there if you open your mind. Daniel Tiger, Chris, is a PBS basically like spin off of the Mr. Rogers universe. a spin-off? Well, the Rogers Family Foundation, whatever it's called, is involved in the creation of the show. And if you remember, I know it was a long time ago. Is that part of the Dian Fightstein? It's part of her holdings. It's part of her family holdings. You remember Mr. Rogers had the land of make-believe with the little puppets and they would talk? And one of them was named Daniel Stripe Tiger. And there was like King Friday and all these other puppet characters. So what

this cartoon presupposes is, what if those characters in the land of make-believe had a second generation. So Daniel Stripe Tiger's kid is Daniel Tiger. And he's a lovely, a bullion young tiger who doesn't wear pants, but wears a sweater. And he has friends who are the offspring, like X the Owls, kid is O the owl. Yeah. And if you are a Mommington or a Dattington or a parenting, parent, it's going to stop myself. It's an old bit. Yeah. You know every fucking thing about this when your child is between the ages of, I want to say, two and four. and then you will never think about it again. You think your kids are going to appreciate

how much you invested in this stuff? What's been interesting to watch is that now as tastes change and children mature, the other day during... Like, are you expected to get into anime now? Well, hold on. They spent an entire car ride

on the way home from camp just roasting Daniel Tiger. Uh-huh. Like doing like hideous baby voices about how absurd the show is, you know, and it reminded me of like, you know what the tone was?

like pitchfork record reviews around 2005. Like that was their sneering, like we're so much better than this tone. But then the six-year-old is when the trailer for the new Paul Patrol movie aired in front of Spider-Verse or whatever movie we saw. She stood up in the theater and pumped her fist.

I don't know where she learned this behavior, but she like, imagine like when a trucker like pulls the horn, and she did that gesture. Okay. So that's still in play. And your question about anime, the answer is, Yes. You are expected to be conversant in like...

At least casually conversant. And that's not all the way there. Yeah. No wonder you don't... You don't have a lot of time for prestige television. Look, I like you, but I, you know, like... Here's a fun question for us, though, as we had into vacation. What are we going to read for the watchbook club once the TV pipeline dries up?

What do you read on vacation? So I'm... You know this. I'm finishing off the McMurtry Project. So I'm reading all the Larry McMurtry books that I didn't read when we had our summer of Dove. Two summers ago? It was 2020, it? It was shocking.

So, you know, I had a great time texting you about my thousand-page journey through moving on. Which I read back then, right? You read it pretty quickly. Yeah. That movie, that book left my brain. Well, I do not remember. Other than like the first image of the book, I don't remember anything. That book is 1,08 pages long. It may be the longest book I've ever, novel I've ever read.

read. It is absurd. You know when you're like, ha ha, I loved it because nothing happened. It's like, you think it's about rodeo, but it's actually just about people in graduate school. And then in the last 30 pages, it just becomes like a trailer for a better book by Larry McMurtry that he would write next called All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers. But anyway, I'm reading terms of endearment. There's a little terms of endearment in moving on, right? Yes, they're all related. Okay. Yeah. So I'm doing a lot of McMurtry stuff. And then there's other book that's on our docket. Well, Andy and I were thinking about diving into a book.

I don't know if this is going to become like a double down book club. Like, we'll all read this together thing or if it's just he and I are going to happen to be reading this next. But it was a recommendation from Lawsu, our boy, author of Stay True. And it's called This Is Memorial Device, which is a book by David Keenan. And it is essentially like a fake history of or a history of a fake post-punk band in Scotland in the early 80s, right? Yes.

Incepted in a lab for us, I believe. like lovingly detailed, like boots on the ground, you are living this and feeling this of what it was like to be growing up in the middle of nowhere and loving, not just loving music and art and subculture, but like it's a lifeline. Yeah. It's pretty cool.

Yeah. And this writer seems really up our alley too. David Keene seems amazing. So I'm going to read that. I'm currently reading a book called Hellhound on his trail, which is by Hampton Sides. Juliet Lippen recommended this to me. And it's, I'm not a big nonfiction person,

or history person. Yeah. I usually sort of get the history through YouTube videos. No, through novels. Through social? This is an incredible account of the manhunt for James Earl Ray,

the assassin of Martin Luther King. This is actually a topic that we've, I don't think we've discussed much just in our lives, which is neither of us read a ton of nonfiction. And there are some people who just devour it. Yes, and don't read fiction at all. And I think, you know,

you shouldn't be extreme in either direction, but I feel like whenever I talk to people who read nonfiction voraciously the way we read fiction, there's always a part of me that's like, I bet they're smart. I bet they know a lot. Like maybe about specific things,

but their mind is still working in a kind of a school way that I worry that I have just dulled. And every so often I get it. My biggest, like, if I had like somebody that I wish I read like, it would be Rissila.

Okay. Where Riscilla is just like grinding out history books, like left and right. My, I got this spark came because of Oppenheimer. I was like, maybe I should read American Prometheus or something, you know, maybe I should, I should grab a David McCullough book and read Truman, you know?

See, I bought, why did I pick it up? Or the 50s, is that what he did? Sure, I don't know. Like, that, that, I know nothing. Yeah. I, um, was at an art museum, and, and there was, I saw this book that was, um, basically like a history of Montmartre, like in France and a certain era and, like, Picasso and, like, painters and living in Paris. And I was like, everything about that is fascinating to me. I would love, I want to to live in, I want to sink into the paint smells and the wine and like art happening. And I made it six pages. And I was like, I wonder what's going on at the rodeo. That's the thing is like I was trying to read a book about Carlos the Jackal, you know,

the assassin. I sure do. But it was a history book about him or nonfiction. And it was just like going about talking about what his dad had in his bank account. I was just like, is this germane? Like, what are we doing here? Like, I know you found this out. Yeah. But like, can we fucking get to some, you know, some Bader Minov stuff or what? Well, also, you want, we want a little, we want a judged a little bit. Yeah. We want like, like, Lecary is like, he's read the nonfiction books, then he tells us a cracking a cracking yarn.

Let's go to another question here. All right. So, a man named John Dogg, I don't know if that's his nom de plume. Is it Tom Skaggs? He asks, given the success of justified, are there any authors whose work you think is crying out for a TV adaptation? I can't help wondering off the top of my head. what a Kinky Friedman show might be like

or the Hernandez Love and Rockets series. That's cool. I feel like this is just almost, it's so easy, it's hard because I think you and I love certain writers and they love their style and their world. If justified didn't exist, Elmore Leonard would probably be at the top of both of our list.

It's also tough to talk about some of these because I think I have tried. You're going to try to option them? I have suggested many of these people and developed or tried to develop some of them. I think the world is probably calling out from more Ross Thomas. That was my read on my professional television experience. You've been reading a lot of Len Dighton, who I feel like is underappreciated.

It's underappreciated, but I think it would be incredibly hard to adapt because in some ways not a lot happens in them. There's just like a lot and lot of really dense espionage and conversational stuff, and so much of it is the POV characters. But I just got done reading a book called Mamista, which is about a fictional South American country and turmoil. the 80s or 90s. And I think that could work. I just don't know if the world is crying out for a period piece about the 90s in South America. I guess the thing... Like I am. I think maybe the question is, I mean, there are, there are plenty and we love them. But one of the things that we love about Elmore Leonard is the vibe and the tone, maybe even more than one individual book,

although obviously we love all those individual books. And so one thing that I keep thinking about are these like regional stylists who write about a place in a way that I think there's something there because it could create the type of television show that we always are drawn to, which is just so specific and showing us things we haven't seen before in the way that like a reservation dogs does or, you know, when we were talking about full circle earlier in the week, that that does it as well. One of our favorite writers, guy James Crumley, who wrote like one book that is considered to be a masterpiece of the mystery form we've talked about on the podcast. before called The Last Good Kiss, a perfect book. He wrote six, I think, books alternating

between detective protagonists, and they increasingly become more and more unhinged. And I've read them all like four times and I couldn't tell you the plot. But what he does do is write about a very specific vein that runs in the middle of the country from Texas to Montana and back again, often in all-night drives fueled by cocaine and schnops. But the vibe, the way these books feel, but also the fact that what part of the country was he writing about and from what perspective, it always has kind of blown my mind that these authors aren't turned to, especially in the post-yellowstone, oh, should we make TV shows about places other than the coasts movement that has gone on? It doesn't mean you should adapt these books, but there are so many great writers

that aren't necessarily, the way to adapt them isn't necessarily to do like the Joe Pickett series, which I've not checked out. That's based on CJ Box's books, I think. And it's on like spectrum? Yeah, and it does well. Or it's a free... I don't even... I apologize, I'm not... You know what? It's almost as if...

Do we have any computers that could tell us about this show? So it was a spectrum original that ended up migrating to Paramount Plus. Okay. And fits in with a lot of their Taylor Sheridan and stuff. But anyway, my point is, I bet the show is pretty good.

And I bet we would enjoy it in the same way we've enjoyed Reacher. But I kind of sometimes wish that there wasn't this like almost automatic self-segregation of like, we are making a regional book that is going to be specifically a relatively small story. Dark Winds is another example of this,

which is based on the Tony Hillerman mystery books set in the Southwest. First season's pretty good. Second season is coming on AMC. But I feel like Tony Hillerman Southwest could be a bigger thing than one small show. Or same thing with the CJ Box writes about,

I think he's right, these books are set in Montana. I read one once. He's a game warden. Is he? You know that, Joe Pickett? Yeah. I didn't know that. I feel like he loved this show.

It stars the dude who was a Patriot, I believe. Does it really? No. Hold on. Are you fucking reading the internet or not? It is. Michael Dorman, right? Wasn't he the guy on Patriot?

Okay, cool. Nailed it again. I'm trying to think if I have an out-of-the-box answer for this question where it's like I want to say like somebody should make the collected stories of John Cheever or something. Right. Oh, I feel like Joy Williams. Like there are writers who are just like Deborah Eisenberg short stories. What are we doing with that?

Guys, what are we doing? Is there somebody in the, like, the Sally Rooney adjacent? Like, do you think, like, they should make a show out of the guest, the Emma Klein novel? That would be good. That would be, like, very presentation. Is it cinematic or is it visual at all? It's very visual, lots of water elements, lots of different, like, characters popping in and out. So lots of, like, opportunities for good.

For an ensemble, yeah. Yeah, like, not even, like, an ensemble, but sort of, like, in each... It breaks down in that she's kind of, like, drifting through the Hamptons. Do you know this story? Yes, I'm interested in reading this book, actually. She's meeting, she gets kicked out of her boyfriend's house, and so she's kind of like grifting on to different people,

and so it could be set up in like an episode structure where each episode is like she's meeting someone new, trying to stay in the Hamptons. We shouldn't give this away, Kyle. As we're doing this in real time, I'm kind of in love with the theory, even though I think that in practice this would be almost impossible, which is to say, instead of just adapting a book,

with the limitations that are built into that and also the sort of the ceiling, right? Because you have to please the people who are interested in and you're servicing something else. I kind of wish that someone would creatively take the Castle Rock approach to unexpected authors. And what I mean by that is there was that short-lived show. I was on Hulu, I think, right? Castle Rock, which was the Stephen King shared universe show, drawing from vibes and characters and stories from the Stephen King universe. I mean, they're basically going to try that again with Welcome to Derry, aren't they?

Yes, right. But instead of doing it for an author who's that famous, like a Sally Rooney, universe show. Yeah. Like, of disaffected millennial intellectuals in Ireland.

No, there's only two. So they've already done. But do you know what I mean? Like that milieu, like you would have to have the involvement of the author. Maybe she's not the best example for it. Maybe the better example

are these short stories by authors that we like. Yeah. I think there's something there because adaptations, they're good things about them and there's like guard rails for executives to greenlight

because they kind of understand the shape of it. But drawing inspiration from a voice is much harder to do. but I think success would be amazing. Do you know what my double-down book club

suggestion was going to be a little while ago? What's that? To do sports writer and Independence Day? Yes. Which is Richard Ford's series of novels.

You know there's a new one. Yes. So sports writer... Richard Ford is this great American short story and then novelist writer who sort of rose to most popular acclaim

with these series of novels about a sports writer named Frank Bascom, which is sort of like, yeah. And there are these books about a relatively breezy baby boomer guy sort of walking around America being like, huh. And to me, they are like science fiction. I love that you just like, was it Vanessa Bear in Barry?

It was like, we want Frank McPhaghan to be a little bit more like, hmm. But right now it's like, hmm. It's true. But so sports writer, incredible, followed by Independence Day, right? Which is like a masterpiece. Yeah. And then a couple years later, he did Leah the Land, which was still worthwhile. Yeah.

But not. Then he's straight up named a novel, Let Me Be Frank with you. Which is God tier. Yeah. I think when we think about naming things, I think there's that. And then there's Joe Perry. Oh, no. What's his name?

You know, from the Eagles. Joe Walsh is an album, Gotany Gum. Yeah. Those are the two greatest examples of I don't give a fuck anymore in media history. But he has a new one. Like, he's still Frank Baskoming. Yeah. What's the new one?

one called? Well, while we're Googling a lot. You know, I would feel like, Kai, I think you should keep this because I think process is fascinating to people. Stephen Soderberg agrees. But also, I would have suggested editing it, but I was recently listening to Ryan Rusillo's podcast where he asked Mike Sando. Oh, Mike Sando Googles for like two minutes. Mike Sando's like, huh, I bet if I check this tab here and then it's just quiet clicking. And I was like, this is riveting summer content. This is amazing to me. So the fifth book in the Frank Baskin

trilogy. Yeah. It's called Be Mine and it just came out this year. It would be interesting to read those books again because I think

we read them as young people like in college age and they're about a middle age guy like baby boomer enwee which makes it, I'm interested in reading it now also these books are culturally dead items like Richard Ford

looking at his navel and being like you know we used to sell custard in this country like that is not like hot currency in 2K23. It just isn't.

Maybe I'll come back around. Okay, Dr. Andre Zanescu asks. An esteemed listener. Like I said, these might just be screen names. Over the last few months, you've been talking a fair amount about risk aversion at the studio scale in the context of Mattel, Pixar, and Marvel, among others.

Do you feel like studios deploy risk-averse strategies differently to TV, linear, or otherwise, than they do film? Sure. I mean, I think obviously just budget, budgetarily, we're talking about the ability to make some more gambles because TV typically

doesn't cost as much as movies too. I would also say that in the streaming age, I would imagine that streamers are looking to make lots of things for lots of different demographics. Right. Whereas movies are trying to serve the widest parsible audience

at once, which is why sometimes movies are bad. Because they're like, we can't possibly alienate somebody in the last 30 minutes of this thing so let's like adjust the plot to like reflect to like every single person who could possibly be seeing this. Also, I mean, I think there's been a financial reckoning of late, even though as the Atlantic told me, we've been vibing out of our recession. I do think that there is a reckoning in terms of like money isn't free anymore for people at this level. And so you can't just kind of yada yada your way to profitability.

But that said, for the most part, movies I think are still kind of tied to the physical world and that you put out a movie and then people spend American dollars at the multiplex to say, like, yes, we support this or not. Yeah. Whereas companies can kind of hide the ball or at least obfuscate their goals with a TV show because they're like, this was adding more razor blades to the razor blade store. Now, I think that argument falls apart when you see how much money some of these companies are spending on individual razor blades.

Yeah. It costs Bob JPEC his job. But I think that you could say, well, it was important for our strategic vision of growth to make Secret Invasion. I think that would probably be wrong, but you could say that as opposed to spending twice as much for Secret Invasion to be a summer movie

and an underperforming. That would be a more visual hit. It's funny, like, if you think back about, like, what would have happened TV, not even if they didn't do streaming, I guess it's probably hand in hand. It's like, would streaming have happened

on the level it has, had Disney not owned Marvel and Star Wars, had HBO not happened upon Game of Thrones had Amazon not bought the rights to Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time you know like basically had the streamers not gotten into the franchise blockbuster business

in the way that they had what would like the landscape of television look like? You sound like Thanos. Well and how in what ways would it have been more traditional and what ways would it have been different you know? Because I think we would love to live in a world where it was like were it not for secret invasion we would have two more I May Destroy You's

but it doesn't work that way. It's not And it's funny that like we keep thinking, and this is just also just the way we cover stuff. And I literally mean we, we keep trying to declare bottom or that this is the nadir of something or whatever when in fact we don't actually see where we are in the chart. One of the first things that I wrote, I remember writing for for Grantland over a decade ago was a column sort of reckoning or trying to reckon with the Walking Dead effect. And it's a quote I then used for years afterwards when I spoke. to Sean Ryan, prolific TV creator, who made The Shield, he made Terriers, he has the night agent now on Netflix,

and he was referring to The Walking Dead as TV's Jaws moment, being like, once they, oh, you can do this, we could get these kind of numbers by tapping into this fandom in this type of storytelling. It was a rap. That was when the genie left the bottle,

I guess, and everybody was chasing it from that point forward. 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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The Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo, be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. Squab Vance. I feel like some of these aren't really their names. Isn't there some sort of like blue check legitimacy at this website that you're drawing from? Yes.

Will there be a good Star War other than Andor S2 in the next 10 years? Law of probabilities, I think is it more likely than not that they will come up with something good and do a good execution of it in 10 years? Sure. I think so.

can we Kai can you put in some sounds of me Googling here I think that there must be something coming down the line that makes them feel like that they can keep this thing going all right I just I'm just taking in your thoughts John Sternfeld asked I think you have a lot of confidence it's not even confidence it's just I think that like I think that they're just eventually something good has to come out of it

I think, I mean, how long have those monkeys been in a room with typewriters? Have they written Hamlet yet? Right. And let me, let me just for a moment just say, separate whatever knowledge or experiences I've had with the companies in question and refer back to our Indiana Jones in the Dial of Destiny conversation, which is like, I think people thought that was good and that that was going to be a win, and that doesn't speak well to me. That doesn't give me a lot of confidence, honestly.

That's a good segue into our next question, which comes from John Sturdfeld, who asks, the reboot trend in TV gives me agita. How soon before the TV landscape is just the land of sequels and reboots all of film? Or is there something inherent in TV that will save it? I think this goes back. I would tie this to my answer about why TV can sometimes take more chances than movies. Is because I don't think that TV experience is the same as the movie experience. I don't think that they need to have that baked in familiarity with the IP.

I think it helps. I think they're interested. I think if you can tell a good story, they're always happy to let you play in the toy box, as you say. But I also think that television is essentially the backbone of TV is like, it's a big Grey's Anatomy. Yes. You know, like it'll set people be interested in a hospital. Even in the era of contraction or fewer shows that it is inevitably coming, TV is still in the volume business. There were always fewer movies released during a calendar year than TV shows.

And that's, that Gulf has exponentially grown because they're fewer and fewer movies. movies because there are only, the majority of theatrical movies from the major studios are just summer tent polls that cost $200 million, et cetera, et cetera. There's just always going to be a lot more TV. And I think that there's that steady drumbeat of TV show TV that just exists, right? And the other thing about TV that it still can get you is it can still surprise in ways that, you know, like the way people are talking about the Barbenheimer weekend, there can be moments like that in a calendar year for TV just generally or something just ignites. Yeah, the bear.

Yeah, exactly that. That's a great example. Out of nowhere last year that people were not checking for and instantly made stars, made people interested in something different, rewrote the Emmy landscape. Now, did the bear make a billion dollars for its corporate overlords? No. But it's just a different scaled business. So I am also despairing about the headline of that question, but there's always going

be good stuff. This is an interesting question that kind of goes next to the one we just answered about originality and franchising and using IP and stuff like that on streaming. Ag11, I don't know if this is somebody that means Andy Greenwald, the 11th biggest fan of viewers or what, but... I think it's, that's my AJ Brown-Burner account. Oh, yeah. I'm a fan of him, number 11. What is your take on the successive suits on Netflix? Is it simply hitting a TV sweet spot that has been missing in recent years or a great show that has found a new generation and audience, is it simply the courtroom month effect from the rewatchables?

That's funny, but I do think it speaks to the fact that Lincoln Lawyer is also successful for Netflix. I do think that that is a very reliable genre of television. But I do think it's kind of interesting that a blue sky show from USA that was modestly successful or like... I think it was very successful for USA, but it is not thought of in the pantheon of shows from the last...

...of 2000s television, right? And so it gets put on Netflix and all of a sudden is like number one streaming TV show on Netflix and among the most stream shows they've ever had. I think it's kind of an amazing story. I'm glad we get to talk about it. I think there are two takeaways in my mind. One is ties into what we were just saying.

People fucking love TV shows, and it's not that complicated. And Suits is an extremely well-made, extremely entertaining show that operated... I like the first couple seasons of suits. It's not watching after a while, but yeah. It's good. and it knew what it was doing and it was charming and it provided a certain kind of television watching experience that everybody likes. Many people across generations still think of as a foundational TV

experience, which is that it is reliable, it is entertaining, it is better than maybe it has to be, and I just like it. I like these people, I like these stories, I like this vibe. We are getting this data like across the board. People like their stories still, and there has to be a way to service that. I think the second part of it is maybe more interesting and trickier, which is there is a lot of good TV being made, and there has been a lot of good TV that has been made. But one effect of the stratification of the TV landscape

is getting these popular things to people in the right delivery method. So suits, USA Show, Universal Show, ought to be siloed away on Peacock, where I'm sure it could draw people. but many, many, many, millions more people have Netflix than Peacock. Yeah. And all of those people who have Netflix think about watching Netflix a way that they may, in a way they might not think of watching Peacock.

Like, there is something about the interaction with Netflix that suggests, here we go. We're going on a deep sea dive and we're just going to be hitting it and hitting it and and binging it. So the best delivery system for suits is Netflix. And there are probably dozens, if not more, shows like that. there that could be optimized and revitalized and give a lot of people pleasure if they were in the right if they were given the opportunity to be in the right delivery system which doesn't mean

everything has to be on Netflix the B side to this point is this is the humanitarian read in a way of when you read stories like HBO is going to once again license some of its shows I mean insecure is on there now and that's you know I am not in the business affairs offices of any these places, but just as a consumer, and potentially as a creator, like, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with that? One of the reasons why writers are striking is the lack of residuals because there's no future for their shows because they all dead end in the dungeon of whatever corporate overlord commissioned them in the first place. So there's no resale value of those shows. So this could be possibly the new syndication. It would be fantastic. And I say this as the parent of a

TV child that's languishing in the dungeon of a corporate overlord. Like, there's a lot of TV shows. My show would not be suits, but I just mean, like, give people a chance to watch stuff. And instead of, it's in a way, it's a much bigger question than I was even in the way that I was conceiving it, which is to say, like, it is kind of a comment on, like, what are we doing? Like, are these shows creative enterprises meant to entertain people, or are they widgets in long-term shareholder growth plans? It's funny that suits popped off like this because I was like, should we talk about suits? Should we be like, should we like watch a bunch of suits and talk about it on the watch in 2023? That feels like Juliette court, right? Like, I feel like that's-

Well, she loves suits. Yeah. But there's also this whole thing about like what shows people like versus what shows people want to hear other people talk about. Very true. It's very true. I have this every time I think about talking about SVU to you where I'm just like, this actually makes me sound like a sexual deviant to describe the plot of this television show.

So I'm not going to do it. But I was, you know, even for suits, I was like, is there really anything? Like, how do you get everybody to be like, we're watching the first three episodes of suits? And, like, isn't it so funny when Harvey does this? Like, it's not the same thing as hijack and it came out and like the... Yeah. But, like, so the next question I was going to ask you is, J.R. Davidson says, quote, with tears in my eyes, he says, Sirs, thank you for finally watching Chernobyl.

But seriously, with the strikes pushing release dates, do you feel like you'll cover more legacy shows when things dry up? Or are you confident that even with the slowdown, you'll have new things to discuss? I have a lot of anime to get through. so my involvement in this project is limited. I don't know. I think that even with the strikes and with whatever slowdown is coming, I think for the way that we cover things

and generally I think we've decided that it's probably better to have the few shows that we're watching intently as opposed to just name-checking stuff. And we have done a bunch that. We've started things and not returned to it. But I think that's a better model for us. But that said, the Chernobyl thing,

like we were talking about what book we might want to read. Like, there are other mini-series or things that are beloved that I think that either I missed or we didn't talk about that might be fun to consider. Did you watch Bannon Brothers? We discussed this. No, I know, but did you ever, I can't remember your answer of like whether you watched Banda Brothers ever. I watched like two episodes of Banda Brothers. Yeah. What would support the troops?

You didn't get to D-Day? I support the troops by watching Special Ops Lioness. You don't do that either. That's true. That would be a fun one to watch because that is essentially a black hole for me. Yeah. Maybe we should pick one of these. I mean, I actually don't think we're going to get a slowdown. I don't think that there's going to be any drought of new TV. And I think by the time, that would be a real concern, there's going to be a labor agreement. But it is funny, too, that I think we're learning the longer we do this, that like there are also some things like SVU that it's just like, maybe that's just for us. Yeah. Whereas, like, do you know what I watched the other day that we haven't, we talked about, but then we didn't. I re-watched the first episode of Southside.

Uh-huh. And maybe that's my favorite show of all time. Like, briefly, while watching it. It's on Max, right? I feel that way about the season three Eastbound and Down bloopers now. Yes. With Kenny and DeShenko. There's something, it's mostly comedy related, right?

But, like, I would like to spend more of my life watching Southside and thinking about it, but I don't entirely know how to podcast about it because it's just becomes... Because you just say that was funny. We just did National Ampoons for Watchables, and I was like, Bill and then this other line happens, and I laughed. Let's wrap it up there. I can't wait to hear that podcast. Are you going to get any Kelly Green Eagles gear?

A lot of people asked about this. Okay, I'm really glad we got this question. I wanted to get the Air Force ones. I did not. I am not a big jersey. Like, I don't have a lot of team gear. My mother said that 500 people lined up at like the official Eagle store. And then when you, for people who don't know that for decades,

the Eagles had a very unique color scheme. It was called Kelly Green, a bright green. And then when Jeffrey Lurie bought the team, 25 years ago, immediately made it like cool, edgy 90s, like poochy style, and I made it like midnight green, which also admittedly looks really good. They brought back to Kelly Greenis alternates

and Philadelphia is going insane. People ordered stuff, and it's like shipping next football season. Yeah. It's kind of like furniture. But I... I've decided on this couch and they're like, great! By the way, everyone got the grill. Thanks for your concern over the last week's delivery. Everything worked out.

I would like to get some Kelly Green gear, but also like, what do I go Jalen Hertz? Do I go, honestly, maybe I would want Devante Smith, but Smith is kind of a, Hertz looks cooler on a jersey because it's like... Smith is like, what are you a fucking agent from the Matrix? Yeah, exactly. Or did you just buy the one off the mannequin that was like,

put your name here, Smith, but I love him. What about Lane Johnson? Because Johnson then, I guess that's not much more interesting. And also because football's won in the trenches. That just shows what kind of fan I am, But I like, you know, you know what? I couldn't wear Elaine Johnson jersey without watching Band of Brothers. Those things are late.

When you finish Band of Brothers, I'll buy you Elaine Johnson jersey and Kelly Green. Thank you to Kai McMullen, who's going to have an absolute blast editing this one because there's some cool Googling. Yeah. We hope everybody's having a great summer. We'll be back on our usual time, but we're just recording this a few, about a week and a half out. So I hope everybody's having a great summer. And we'll see you on the next episode.

And while you listen to this, just picture us like Kenny. power is not his jet ski. That's right. That's how we're enjoying August.