The Watch - The Movies, Music, and TV That Helped Us Through 2020, With Jason Mantzoukas

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Chris and Andy are joined by Jason Mantzoukas to talk about some of the pop culture that helped them through 2020 (1:51), how COVID might impact future art (17:19), and a range of other thoughts on this year in pop culture (42:17). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Jason Mantzoukas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports 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 TheRigger.com and joining me on the other line. As always, it's Andy Greenwald and we have a special guest today. It's a tradition that we treasure here at the Watch. It's Jason Mansuchess.

Bando! Coming in hot. Oh my gosh. We're going to talk about the entire year in popular. It's coming up right. Next on the watch. Did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away.

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Ask your doctor about Trimphaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, 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. What's up, Jason? How are you, man? It's great to see you. Guys, thrilled to be here. from my closet, kaboom,

can you believe it? We're living the dream. What a year. How much time do you think you've put in in that spot? If I knew

that I would spend this much time in this closet over the course of this year and probably a good portion of next year, I would have set it up way different.

My life is, like, I am nine plus months into complete isolation. I don't really leave, my house. I'm here alone. And all I do is, you know, voiceover for animation and stuff like that and podcasts. So, and I'm very lucky to be able to have work still going during this horrible time. And I'm very grateful for it. But it means that I spend hours of my week just like trapped in my

closet, R. Kelly style talking into this microphone. So quick question then. So obviously when this started, no one thought this was going to go on this long. And so you were like, this will work. This is acoustically a strong place for me and my distance career that I can do. Yes. And then at a certain point, there must have been a moment in the summer when you were like, should this remain a closet? Like how committed am I to this being a closet? Maybe this is actually my workplace and should be treated as such. And then now it's December. And there's still a stack of flannel shirts very visible over your shoulder. Don't tell the people about my shirts, Andy. I don't want listeners knowing what's up. I'm trying to this is a

secret. Everything that's in here. Let me run that back. Jason is shirtless, as he always is when he records with us. Whenever I do the watch, guys, it's a, it's tops off. I really, at a certain point, the reason that the room sounds good is because it's full of clothes. Yeah. And so I have to continue to maintain it as a closet for sound dampening reasons. Now, I could, I did get some like sound baffling for the ceiling and I got a little area rug to put on the floor just to again dead in as much sound as I can. But that's all I really have done. Otherwise, it is, it is and remains my closet. But the reality is, and I don't know, I won't speak for you guys, how much you are altering what you're wearing. I'm somebody that, as you know, where's the same thing every day.

But all I do now is where I'm living that aphleisure life. Yeah. You know, like, I might as well be sponsored by Patagonia at this point. Like, all I do, I wear the same. I'm right behind you, brother. Yeah, I wear like the same six things. Every day. And all I do is wear them, wash them, repeat. Like, I barely engage with my poor sweaters and jackets and buttoned up shirts.

This is heartbreaking for them. The button up shirt has to be in a non-serious way, the biggest casualty of 2020. I mean, do we, are we going to have a generation of people who don't know how to button things? It's entirely possible. Is that bad? Because I tried to put one on the other day because I was like, I want to be a big boy today

and see what it feels like to be a professional person in the world. As you always refer to yourself to me on text as a big boy. I do that on Signal. Let's not make ourselves targets. And it felt absurd. It felt absolutely ridiculous not to be wearing something

with as much a give as humanly possible. Oh, yeah. I go the other way. Like now when I go pick up food, and if it gets anywhere close to 50 degrees in Los Angeles. I wear so much fleece. Like, you'd think I was doing 127 hours. I FaceTime with my parents the other day. We were all looked like we were in the middle of winter. I looked at my weather app. It was like 67 degrees in Los Angeles. And it was like 21 where they

live in Massachusetts. I was like, why are we dressed the same? This is terrible. Now, Jason, obviously a lot of your day-to-day life in the, before, four times involved going to shows, performing improv comedy, doing live podcasts with the likes of us, which we're so grateful for. And obviously going to do your recording sessions for Big Mouth and other things you're involved with and also even performing in front of the camera. But what we don't know is, like, were you also someone who went out a lot anyway? Like, how much has this year changed for you?

Is it just a loss of work or were you? No, no. You know, I'm a very, I'm a very social person in the sense that like I do two to four live shows a week between UCB improv shows that I do. I do a weekly Wednesday night show. I do a weekly Friday night show. I do monthly Thursday show, a monthly Sunday show. We do our podcast, how did this get made?

We do it live at Largo. We spent much of last year touring it live all over the country. So, you know, and not to mention just in general, like I'm somebody who, you know, because a lot of my days are spent, if I'm not on a job, job job. A lot of my days are spent alone. So I'm somebody that then has nights as my social time where I will have dinners with people, where I will hang out with people. I've run into you guys at dinners. I'm talking all time. I'm talking like Silver Lake Los Felas restaurants. So for me, the social hit has been a real struggle. And psychologically speaking, I will say for me,

one of the biggest problems has been completely removing performing from. who I am as a person. You know, being able to do, get on stage and do shows as much as I have, you know, weekly, multiple shows a week for over 25 years. To go from that to zero shows is really unsettling. And it feels like a portion of who I am is in active hibernation. Yeah. And it's weird.

I feel, no, yeah. It's not just social. It's professional and it's creative. And it's an outlet that's like factored into your daily life. I can't imagine what that's like to suddenly drop off. Oh, it really, well, you know what? It feels like if you were like a very conditioned runner or something, and then you just cold turkey stopped.

You know, it's like it's as if I've stopped exercising a muscle completely cold turkey, and that's very weird. I appreciate you putting in terms I can understand because Chris loves to hear about the fact that, you know, I am an extremely, extremely accomplished runner. Like chariots a fire, a Jewish hero who. You guys are like, you know, sports heroes. I feel like you could have, you could have been a, you could have been one of our great track and field stars.

Chris Ryan, like, missed an opportunity to be one of the greats in baseball, I feel like. I know. I know. It was really, it's a tragedy. I think that baseball itself is kind of like fallen away from the monoculture because of that. I was curious whether or not you feel like your personal, like, taste has changed over the course of the year in terms of what you find funny. Or no, or at all. That's so much. That's so much of what I wanted to talk.

about today because I, you know, I'm coming to you guys not to give you my best of the year, you know, like that's, that's, that's like you guys and Sam's show, which I loved and had a lot of all the same stuff on my list as well. But what I want to talk to you guys about are the things that got me through this year. Because a lot of them are, I'm not going to say a typical for me, but are, I have found this year to be fascinating in terms of what I gravitate to listen to, read, and watch, and how much that differs from, like, you like, the most clearest cut example is Spotify's wrap-up of the year, whatever that's called, you know, they send you a thing, and it's like, here's what you listen to this year, here's what you listen to the most,

here's your top albums, blah, blah, blah. This year is, it might as well have. been from a different person. You know what I mean? Like it's as if they sent me someone else's thing compared to everything else. And that is true for what I, what I've watched. Everything has been very different. And in ways that have been and led me to kind of wonderful discoveries and wonderful

like worlds that I might not have, or I certainly wouldn't have explored as thoroughly and deeply as I have, which has been kind of the weird, I don't know if you guys feel this way, but the weird part, one of the weirdest elements of this year for me has been, and I guess this is, I'm, again, I'm lucky in the sense that I, because I am able to stay in my house and still work and not have to go out in the world, I do have a lot of downtime. I'm consuming an incredible amount of content in these 10 months, 9 and a half months,

consuming an insane amount of content. And that, as I was kind of looking through my lists, because I've written down everything I've watched, everything I've listened to, and everything I've read. Like Steven Soderberg over here. Great. Exactly.

Exactly. Well, that inspired me. You know, when he started doing those media diets, I started doing little versions of them. And then during this time, like a slightly beefier version, because I got the time, baby. And it has been fascinating. So I'm excited to talk to you guys about the stuff that I feel like has gotten me through this year. And it's not that it's not necessarily from 2020 a lot of this stuff. Yes. And that's what that's what this is an open space for that kind of talk on this podcast. Specifically since you started there, I think it would be great to start with your Spotify rap. This is not intentionally an ad for our corporate overlords. I am always hampered. I cannot share my lists in good faith because we are a one account household. And I promise you, I did not listen to that many high school musical.

tracks or Disney original movies. My number one artist for the third straight year is Lynn Manuel Miranda between Hamilton and the Moana soundtrack. So it is not reflective of my own personal journey, but I'm curious, what was the tell for you? Like, what leached in there that made you think? So the predominance of my listening in normal times trends towards melancholy. You know, like we talked on this show before about Phoebe Bridgers

Yeah. Who released an incredible album called Punisher this year and has done an incredible amount of very compelling live streams, live shows, live press, you know, like in an effort to promote it. Cover in Goo Goo Dolls, she's just like staying so busy, yeah. She did a video directed by Phoebe Waller Bridge that's terrific. She's just done also an amazing amount of unique stuff to promote the record,

which I am very appreciative of. Adrian Lanker put out two incredible records this year. She's the singer-songwriter from Big Thief. Big Thief themselves put out two incredible records from last year. But then she put out two records this year. These are all artists that I would typically consume an incredible amount of. And I did listen to those records a lot this year, but not nearly as much as I would have because all of the top spots on my Spotify list

belong to the record label Numero Group, which is a reissue label that has under its umbrella a number of different series. But I spent almost all of the year listening to old soul funk and R&B. Like I found that that stuff was the sweet spot for me because it would not send me into melancholy thoughts. Right. I would not descend into, oh no, what am I doing? As long as I was listening to like really and and also discovering because like discovery is such a big part of it for me, not just like listening but being like, oh, what is this? What is the Chris label? What is what are all these unique cool labels that they are? Because Numero group will go and they'll find, you know, small independent, like here's a record label out of Indianapolis and they only put out these records, but we're going to reissue all these records from these Indianapolis based soul bands and stuff like.

that. So I just have done a huge deep dive into stuff that I did not know about. That was a huge part of it for me. Yeah, if you go to the Numero Group's actual profile page on Spotify, their playlists are amazing.

They have all these playlists like Cosmic Americana, Northern Soul, and like all this different stuff. It's so good. It's kind of interesting. I don't want to do the psychological deep dive that this would require. But I kind of agree with you in that, like, the musical exploration I did this year, probably the emphasis was on exploration. Like, instead of listening to old favorites that were probably fixed in a certain moment in my mind or certain, you know, ability to, like, leave one's house, that there

was an element of, it's so hard to get what you need in this moment of our life anyway, sending out the sonar ping to be like, maybe this is worthy of exploration. Then you get it back. You know, that's the one good thing about this instant culture that we have right now. And so, Yeah, to your point, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, but, like, I weirdly became a jazz guy, which I did not expect. But, like, and I think I turned Chris a little bit, too, and I got, I saw Fantasy repping it as well. But, like, I got super into the pianist Bill Evans and, like,

the lovely, like, Hammond, you know, records from the 70s. And I put them on, and they make me feel better. I could talk about Bill Evans. I could talk about Bill Evans for the next five hours. Did you read the Believer article about the song Nardis? No. I'm going to send you an article, and every, I encourage everybody to,

Track down, it's, I can't remember what the name of the article is, but it's the Believer magazine put out an article about the Bill Evans song Nardis and his relationship to it and how it's a song that throughout Bill Evans' career, he continues to work and rework, record and re-record because it's a song that has so much, that's so rich and so emblematic of somebody trying to conquer and figure out a song for himself. That song, I now have a playlist on Spotify that is just all the iterations of Nardis. Wow. Bill Evans, there's a mediocre documentary on Amazon.

I've also consumed hundreds of hours of music documentaries, of documentaries, a lot of the music documentaries. There's a mediocre one on Bill Evans on Prime that is okay, but what it really has is really good footage of Bill Evans actually playing the piano, which there's not a lot of. So that's very compelling. I also will recommend, have you seen, there's a documentary also on Prime called The Jazz Loft.

I don't see that. Is that where you're recording from right now? Is that what you call? Yes. The Unrecorded guys. Welcome to the Jazz Loft. It's about this guy who is a, one of the most, you know,

well-known photojournalists of his time. You know, we're talking like 30s, 40s, New York, moves into a loft in the flower district. and rents the above floor, where he does all his photo stuff, rents the above floor to a jazz musician who starts holding like late night jam sessions there. And it's like all of the scene of that time, including monk, including like Mingus, including all these interesting people who are around.

And the photographer wires the whole place for sound and just starts recording everything. And so the documentary is this kind of simultaneously beautiful, it is an exploration of both his art as seen through his photographs of New York City of that era, but also all of this audio footage that he has of these incredible musicians. They have monk rehearsing for the famous monk at town hall concerts that become a very seminal of thornyous monk record. They rehearsed all of that in the jazz loft. So it's this incredible audio-visual, sumptuous documentary.

That's great one too. Far be it for me to put lipstick on the pig of this year. But like it's kind of maybe a quasi-positive that this awful circumstance in many ways caused us, this is the best case scenario, I guess, to kind of question who we are, you know, in the sense that suddenly, okay, maybe I'm a jazz guy. Or as we alluded to at the beginning, maybe I'm a short guy now. You know, that was really big for me. You know, these knees, they didn't see the cover of darkness for like six months this year.

And yeah, maybe that's who I am now. That's interesting about that, though. And I don't mean to be dark. And I hope this doesn't come off as too abstract. But so much of the stuff that I've loved over the course of my life, whether it's chicken or egg it, like, it is intrinsically wrapped up in my social experiences. So whether it was like punk rock and I was finding a community when I moved to Boston of people who were having like basement shows. and that's how I got into the music that I got into in the 90s or, you know, meeting people.

You were just going to Mighty Mighty Boston show. Yeah, exactly. It was just like skanking across Massachusetts Avenue for life. Or meeting people who were really into the same kinds of movies as I was and experiencing. You're like, we got, we got to go see morphine at the Middle East. Scott documentaries at the Brattle. Oh, my God.

Forget it. I was at the braddle watching the decalogue. Yeah. And comedian Stephen Wright was there. Was he? I was like, this is everything. Yes. That's the singularity.

No, I guess it's interesting what happens when you strip that away. So if you are really only purely... Here's what I'm going to say to that, to exactly your point, Chris Ryan. And I'm curious to hear what you guys think. And Chris, based on what you just said, you might feel a little differently about this. I have felt very acutely that this period of time for me has felt like a second childhood. Like this to me has felt like the echo of a period in my life when I felt trapped in my house where I felt like I didn't have friends and I couldn't leave. I couldn't do anything and I couldn't

affect change as an individual to alter my life. And so my. My. And so my. childhood really was spent in solo exploration up until a certain age, you know. And so for me, this time spent, locked at home, reading comic books, listening to music, discovering new artists. My Spotify list said I'd discovered 730 new artists this year. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy.

Has felt to me, and watching movies, you know, has felt to me very much like that that period of my childhood where I was exploring and finding new things and being obsessed with things. And I've also been like, not for nothing, a huge portion of my list is also, I've spent a lot of this year watching a lot of the film and TV of my childhood of that era. You know, I've watched, I've watched probably four complete seasons of Magnum P.I. Wow. That's a lot of seasons.

These are long seasons too. These are 24 episode seasons. And they're like 45 minutes each, right? Oh, yeah. And they're slow as fuck. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. Because I've also watched like a whole shitload of weird 80s stuff,

which I keep thinking about in terms of how we deal and how we are going to deal with the future of what we consume after we kind of pull ourselves out of the situation we're in. Magnum PI, a TV show set in the 80s, along with almost all of the TV shows set in the 80s, feature men primarily who are still working out the issues of the Vietnam War. Like, he is a hunky, handsome PI. It's a case of the week show, not on like a Mandalorian or something like that. But he is, like he and his friends are consumed by and haunts.

by and haunted by the Vietnam War and what they did there and what happened there and the events there and and I and it's it's throughout like lethal weapon yeah Vietnam War both both Riggs and Mertog Vietnam War vets everybody every everybody in the 80s is still working out the events of that war and what it it's it's long tail in their lives you know like he's he's Griggs is crazy because of what he saw and then what happened to his wife, right? Will we see a period of pop culture that openly exists to examine what our post this life looks like, but assuming that all of this chaos has in fact happened to all of us, that these hundreds of thousands of people are dead, you know,

and that how much that is impactful on the world that we will all emerge into. This has come up a bunch of times because I just was reading about the next season of succession. And I guess Sarah Snoke, who came on the show, mentioned that she didn't think that they would be, that COVID would not be in succession, that there would not be, that it would not be dealing with a world that was like post-COVID. Now, if you look at the analogs between the type of family that the Roy's are and the, type of media that we've had to endure over the course of this year, you would see an obvious lane there for them to be like, how can we profit off of this? Oh, yeah. But I think that we've

kind of encountered both in conversations between the two of us about what we want from different shows and also from talking to people on promo tours for their shows themselves where they're like, yeah, I think we might just skip it. I think we might just like, and that's, that would be like inconcealed. So what we're doing is we're creating like parallel. universes where where we represent in our in our pop culture a world in which like all of this didn't happen. It would be as if you made a New York set show and CGI'd the Twin Towers into the show to act as if that tragedy didn't happen. You know what I'm saying? I see your point. I think this is really interesting. I think it's there's two things to say.

One is I feel like there probably isn't a great appetite this year, next year, or even the next year to see a bunch of characters wearing masks. You know, as long as we are still kind of living in this reality with the uncertainty hanging over everything, TV has become very much an escape for a lot of people. So I can understand the reticence to deal with it specifically and directly and immediately. But the interesting thing hanging over all of this that you brought up, Jason, is the shadow of the Vietnam War was over all culture in the 70s and 80s, because it was a war that directly affected everyone in the country. Now, this generation, this century, we had a much longer war in engagement, ones that are

aren't even over, but because of who served, the majority of the media, and obviously there are huge exceptions to this. And I don't want to make the biggest blanket statement ever, was not directly affected by it. You know, the people who served didn't necessarily then go onto the track to be making the decisions in Hollywood or the people who work in Hollywood or were entrenched. Their children weren't necessarily going to fight. And so kind of like the way, and this is something Chris and I, it's almost a joke, we bring this up, because this is not super relevant to everyone's lives, but like the way modern fiction kind of went to like MFA programs in Iowa City, which aren't really about people's real lives. They're kind of about the intellect

of the mind and then, you know, how people actually live was pushed off into crime fiction. I feel like that's kind of similar where all these heavy, prestigey shows of the last decade either dealt with the societal clouds of a different era like Mad Men, but more broadly, all of them were kind of about what does it mean to be a man? more often than not, in this world where being a man is untethered from the daily struggle of our parents or our grandparents, even though for many millions of people, daily struggles are quite real. So all of this roller coaster of a monologue is just to say, this has affected everyone. Obviously, we are coming undone.

Yes, and it's affected people in, you know, in, we're, three of us are extremely fortunate in our respective metaphorical sock closets. But everybody has touched, mentally, emotionally, physically, some, worse than others. And so I think that there's going to be a hangover period and then a reckoning. It's going to impact our art in a way that is undeniable and it's going to be fascinating. There's also something to the language around this year and the pandemic and this idea that it's like, just hang on, just like we'll go back to normal. And that is obviously a fallacy. Like that's not going to happen even when, you know, people are vaccinated.

and people are back in indoor nightclubs like, you know, seeing comedy shows and bands and going to movie theaters on Friday nights. Like, they're never going to forget what happened and the economic, you know, the hangover of what has just taken place is going to probably take like the better part of the rest of our lives to get out from under.

But there is something interesting about, like, this has asked us to essentially like stay behind closed doors where something like the Vietnam War was confronted with a lot of protesting on the street. Now, we've seen protests this year. There were about lots of stuff. But, like, I think that there's something a little bit more, I don't know if I want to say, like, there's a passivity to the way that I think we've been asked to respond to COVID that is different than certain other issues that have, like, happened that have affected art. If that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, well, it's, it's interesting because COVID, the response to

COVID is something you can provoke a response against, right? The response to COVID was catastrophic in this country. COVID itself, the virus, a virus is like an HP lovecraftian villain. You know, it is an unfeeling, unthinking, just cold. It's not personal. It's not, you can't look at it and be like it's trying to get us. It is, it doesn't have an agenda. It is just a cold virus that wants hosts so it can thrive and kill you. That's it. That's what the virus wants. And it's so hard to kind of rally people against just a thing, you know, rather than a bad

agent, you know, like if if 3,000 Americans were being killed every day by Looney Tunes style anvils falling out of the sky, like you can bet we'd be at war with Wiley Coyote and the Acme Company, you know, but like this idea of just a. virus or whatever. I feel like it's so hard for people to wrap their heads around, they almost like short circuit as a result. That's why I think that the art that hopefully will see that's reactive to it will probably do its best work in kind of metaphor, you know, and in an emotional way, because it's not really, it's really hard to come up with an affected metaphor for something that is just blank and relentless. You know what I mean? It's sort of hard to twist into a narrative. And I wonder

to some degree if that's why, I know there were people, especially at the beginning, who sought refuge in like running right towards it. You know what I mean? Like watching Contagion immediately or reading. Totally. Which I didn't understand at all. Me either. Or reading Station 11 or being like, you know, I need to confront this in fiction to make it

either feel real or to feel manageable or whatever it is. And I don't want to question people's own personal engagement with art. But like for me, what surprised me was the things that I found most helpful and kind of uplifted, not uplifting necessarily always in a happy way, but other. get me outside of myself, was kind of engaging in things that taught me more about length of time. You know what I mean? Like, to Chris's point, if the real enemy of this year in the microsense was just like, tomorrow is going to be like today and the next day is going to be like today and we have to live

with that uncertainty and we still do. That was when I almost felt like a parody, but I talked about it on the pod. Like that's why I picked up the Magic Mountain. You know, I was like, I'm going to read a 900 page book. And then that led to the summer of Dove with Lonesome Dove collectively like, 2,000 pages of fiction or even starting to go running more or watching longer movies instead of watching two episodes of a TV show. Yeah.

Something about rewiring the brain, right? Yeah, I've watched more movies this year than I've watched in a couple of years, certainly. Just because, again, like, I was like, yeah, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to watch all the Paul Verhoven movies. Yeah. I'm going to watch all the Tony Scott movies. Speaking of uplifting. Yeah.

Yeah. By the way, like, Verhoven gets it. You know what I mean? Like, he in, like, no more prescient and relevant movies about the world we find ourselves currently than like robocop and starship troops. Yeah. Totally. You know, it's, it is wild.

Those could be made right now. Actually, those wouldn't be made right now because people would be like, no, you can't refer to Americans so overtly as Nazis. Right. You know, like, this is, it's too much. It's too on the nose. But he's, but Verhoven in the, in the 80s, they're like, do it. And he's like, oh, stupid Americans.

We're going to, I'll show you this bullshit. It's like amazing. So when you're going through and you're looking, you're like, I'm watching all the Verhoeven movies. I'm watching all the Tony Scott movies. On the flip side of that, I found myself a lot of the times when it was watching stuff for pleasure in conjunction with my wife, looking for a vibe to satisfy it.

Like in the coldest way, you could say I was almost thinking algorithmically. Like I was like, I want a movie that's scary that is set up. on the ocean. You know, and then I would like literally watch three or four of those. I watched a bunch of, I watched, I think with a couple of exceptions, all the submarine movies. Yes. So did that start because of Crimson Tide? Yep. Yeah. Because I also watched all the Jack Ryan movies. I watched every, I watched, I just went through and watched all that stuff. Who's your favorite Jack Ryan? Who's the definitive on-screen Jack Ryan? You know, for me, it's Harrison Ford. Right. It's Harrison Ford. I love, I love Baldwin. It's great. but hey it's it's harrison ford for me i thought pine had potential it's too bad you know what i mean

like i think did you watch also the amazon show i didn't no no i've saw that i should amend that i've never seen any of the krasinski okay because for you jack ryan belongs on the big screen and to put him on a small screen you don't put baby in a box like that i don't know i don't understand jack ryan on my tv no no no no but i liked what you guys were saying with sam last week about like, what are we even talking about anymore? Episodic, anything, TV or movies or what it would like, to even have these monikers is, is itself preposterous. Yeah, you know, I was reading,

Limburg, Ben Lindbergh, who writes about a lot of the Star Wars stuff for our site, has had this line he's used a couple of times since the finale, where he just flatly says the Mandalorian season two was the best Star Wars of my lifetime. And I... I don't disagree. agree. And I like the way that he's just sort of like, whatever it is. You know what I mean? Like, and whether that's like... I have become consumed, starting with, um, uh, Mal and Jason's, uh, binge mode Star Wars season.

I was so out on Star Wars. I have not, with the exception of Ryan Johnson's movie, I've not loved the recent movies. I like, I really liked Rogue One. I should amend that. I really liked Rogue one, but in terms of like the trilogy movies, I only really liked Ryan's movie. But... Not Jack Ryan. Not Jack Ryan. Jack Ryan in Star Wars. I would watch that.

Yeah. Not mad at that. Should we erase this pod and pitch that to Kathleen Kennedy? Fucking Jeff Ryan's Star Wars, let's go. But listening to Mal and Jason talk about Star Wars was so infectious that it got me into, like, two of the things that were a huge component of my year. were the Clone Wars animated show and arguably what is my favorite Star Wars by far, Rebels. Rebels to me is the promise realized of a new hope and empire.

What a New Hope and Empire felt like they were setting in motion, Rebels actually executes. It's like it's analogs for pretty much all the same characters, young Jedi, older Jedi teacher, a ship, droids. Like it's very analogous, but it is incredible mythology, incredible world building. And so to watch and then Clone Wars Season 7, which came out this year was absolutely phenomenal, to go from those into this season of Mandalorian and to have what I think is unparalleled TV making, like event TV viewing have as this upper layer. to have it be successful as a show that you guys, listening to you guys talk about it, you guys are so on board and you guys are so smart and you have such a connection to it,

but you're not even participating in a level of it. And it doesn't harm the show at all that you don't know who Thron is. It doesn't upset your enjoyment of the show to not know really who Asokitano is, right? But it's still impressive television. But the minute, the minute Bo Catan said, there you will find Assocataano, I gasped and started sobbing. Like, I hope I'm not telling tales out of school, but I am on a text chain with Mal and Jason, and all we talk about is how much we cried in the episodes, how much we cried and where we

cried. That's so beautiful. That's it. And I cried constantly in this season of Mandalorian. And that is to me a real triumph because this is not only this incredible Star Wars story, this incredible expansion of this world building that they're participating in, incredible action sequences delivering on so many of the things they've promised, but at the heart of it, which is wild to consider, again, so emotional throughout the whole season,

at the heart of it is a relationship between a masked man and a nonverbal baby. That's the heart of the show. And that's crazy. I also would add, I think I cried a lot during this season of Earth. And so I feel like if you want to couch it in that the Mandalorian was on too, then sure. Sure. That made all of us. So you're saying COVID helped make Mandalorian season two good because it made us all more emotionally available?

I'm not not saying it. I'm not not saying it. I'm trying to think of what made me the most emotional this year. I think it was probably normal people. I think that probably was. Very good. Loved it. Very good.

I'm trying to think what. Yeah. There's certain parts of The Lonesome Dove. Yeah. I rewatched with a group of friends Deadwood, which is to me just the greatest TV writing of ever. Yeah. Period.

Bar none. It's just exceptional television writing, unbelievably done. And that has heartbreaking elements in it. There are devastating plot lines. Not for nothing. the smallpox outbreak in Deadwood. To have three full episodes be dedicated to a quarantine and a virus in camp, I was like freaking out.

It seemed excessive at the time, but now, three episodes? Great. I have a question for you, Jason, touching on what you were saying about our conversation with Sam the other week about, like, it doesn't matter what box media box you put it in, right? Like, we're all just kind of consuming at the same time. Has it always kind of been that way,

for you not as a fan and consumer, but as a performer. Because, you know, there are days when you are doing a voice over for Big Mouth. There's a day when you're on the set of the good place, and there's a day when you're making a movie like you made with our recent guest, Hannah Fidel, the Long Dumb Road. I have to shout that out. Absolutely. As a working... Shouts to a teacher on FX on Hulu. Absolutely. And as a working actor, I mean, you're just, you're showing up and you're doing your work, and then it's not really up to you what box it gets put in. So I wonder if people on that side of the ball are less precious about these distinctions than maybe the pearl clutches in the podcast world and the media world are.

It really is, I will say, I suspect, for, I'm trying to think, where the generational cutoff is, I had a meeting with Michael Keaton years ago. This is before my acting career was working, but when my writing career was more successful. And I was told he's interested in doing TV. And I was like, great, yes. I'm obsessed with him because he is such a good. good comedic voice, but is an incredibly good actor. You know, like, I want to do, he would be somebody incredible to build a show around. And so I went and I had a bunch of ideas and I started pitching him ideas. And one of the ideas I pitched him, I was like, I think this is before VEP, to be clear.

I was like, what about a show that feels like a funny West Wing show, like a show that is set inside of politics, but has a much more comedic point of view than where. West Wing did. And he was like, I love that. Can it be a movie? And there is this generational cutoff of movie people think being in movies is the thing. Matthew Weiner had a great quote. I can't remember what show he was on where he said, you know, movie stars are still a thing. Even though there's fewer of them, movie stars are still a thing. If you want to see Brad Pitt, you have to, you are only going to get a chance maybe once a year. If you're lucky twice, year, you're going to have to get dressed, drive to the movie theater, buy a ticket, sit down,

and watch him. It's going to be a whole event. Unless you're watching coffee commercials in Japan, in which case you can see. Yes, exactly. He was like, but if you want to see John Hamm, you can sit in your underwear on your couch and he'll be in your house for 12 hours a year. And I was like, oh, wow, that is true. But there is something about that. But these are all now completely cratering. Everything is everything. He's on a show next year. He's on a show about the opioid epidemic. But it's also funny to use Keaton as an example because probably a lot of people know this anecdote. Not everyone maybe, but Keaton was the original choice to play Jack on Lost because the character was going to die mid-episode.

And now that's become a trope. That's something we've come to expect. But that would have been a shock at the time. And then he was hesitant about it, about doing TV at all. And then they decided they wanted to have the Jack character. It's almost like when they were making Lost, they weren't sure exactly what they were. than to do with any of the components. You said that, not me. But the point being, that gig would be

the dream gig for Michael Keaton or any actor in his stature now because especially if he died, that would be the best thing. Nobody would blink at that. Everybody would love it, you know? And yet, I guess now that's 15 plus years ago, like, that was, that was rebodent.

That was a very, it would have been a very strange career thing. Even to make all of this stuff looks different now. You know what I mean? Like even like a show like the Mandalorian is just a box in Manhattan Beach. They're making all like, you know, you look at how they made Star Wars

and they're out in the desert in Tunisia. You know, like there's so much stuff. But now they're making TV or they're making content that has that scope and scale, but all in the volume. You know, like listen, get me to the volume. I want to be there. But like to me, making stuff now, to your point, Andy, what you were asking before, to make something now seems like any set I step on, it doesn't to me feel markedly different TV to film to anything else.

They all, everything starts to feel similar unless it is, you know, like I did a sci-fi movie last year that'll come out next year, I guess now. but that was huge, like a big Antoine Fukuwa kind of huge sci-fi blockbuster type movie. And that just felt different because it was like we were flying helicopters around like English manners. I was like, what is this? Were you actually in Tenet? Did you just didn't know? I'm in Tenet, guys. Guys, look close.

I'm in Tenet. I feel like flying helicopters around English manners is what Chris most wants to be doing now. Oh, my God. I get it. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch.

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So you're saying with Hilton Honors, I can use points for a free night's day anywhere? Anywhere. What about fancy places like the canopy in Paris? Yeah, Hilton Honors, baby. Or relaxing sanctuaries, like the Conrad in Toulomb? Hilton Honors, baby. What about the five-star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you going to do this for all 9,000 properties?

When you want points that can take you anywhere, any time, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Book your spring break now. I often wonder how I would feel about a bunch of TV if Andy and I didn't have the spot. Like if we didn't have a podcast where I think we were evaluating television in a certain, not quite consumerist way, but just in a real like, is this worth your time? Is this worth our time? Does it really excite us, which I think is a bar that is relatively recent for TV to clear?

Like TV used to just be, hey, it's pretty good on Wednesday at 9. Yeah, it's on. now I think in the sort of time since, you know, probably 2010, 11, whenever you want to peg, you know, I mean, West Wing and all these other shows, of course, were great, but I'm just saying, like, it's only been sort of recently that we're like, no, it wasn't mind blowing. So I'm out. You know what I mean? And I was watching YouTube the other day. And I got served a video of like, some random scene from a boardwalk empire. And I was like, oh shit, TV used to be like this. TV used to be 10 to 12 hours a year

and it was really just people talking for nine and a half of those hours and then a guy would get shot in the back of the head in the last episode and we would be like you did it! You did it, I feel like, you know what? I feel like has, you know,

led to the speeding up of things is your favorite Ozark. Yeah. Ozark is like a season every three episodes. Yeah, it's true. They're just foot on the gas. And I will say, say during this time, some of my greatest joys in discovery have been shows that to me

slid through the cracks. And I was like, I don't understand why Steve Conrad's Patriot on Amazon Prime was not an enormous show. I watched that show, and it's incredible. I don't understand why Jim Gavin's Lodge 49 on AMC isn't to show that everybody is talking about. Yeah, that was a good one. It's an incredible show, an incredible ensemble. It is, to go back to Lost, it's the opposite of Lost. It is, it is a shaggy, mystery hangout show with all of these mystery boxes that they have a plan for and solve for.

It's incredible storytelling. It's really fun. So where are we headed here? Because basically it is harder than ever to break through. There is too much. Again, it's not a consumer problem, unless you're counting the bills you're paying to all the various streaming services. But having a lot of choice is ostensibly the goal here.

But it is incredibly difficult to break through. And increasingly, as the things that are breaking through are going to be the noisiest. They're going to be the Disney shows, the Marvel shows, Star Wars, Game of Thrones spinoffs that are upcoming. Do you think this year will have any kind of calming effect on people's TV diet? And the reason I ask is because obviously, this is something we've been able to say for many years, any new show is competing with the new shows of the year and also every show in history.

Like that's been the case. Sure. For as much as we may, you know, go crazy over industry, a much larger number of people are still watching just Friends reruns. Like, that's what they want TV for. I was going to say, like, yes, so many, so many. many, like fewer people are watching those shows that you guys highlighted in your end of year. Yes. You know, industry, um, zero zero, zero, all these great shows.

So few people are watching those compared to the number of people who consumed all of Avatar the last air bend. Yeah. Well, that happened in my house too. So I, get, get you a family. They can do both. I watched all of Avatar and all of Cora and was obsessed with it. It's really good.

But there's, that's what people are streaming. But I wonder, and I couldn't agree with you more. And I think that that's increased this. year. I think there was, I mean, obviously, the content pipeline never really stopped, as we maybe were concerned that it might. But I think that people's extra time, extra time at home, people sat back a little bit, I think, and seemed to seek pleasure or exploration in other places, to catch up on the thing that they hadn't ever seen, to maybe spend time watching movies that they'd always heard about, to re-watch programs. And I wonder if that will carry over,

you know, if we're lucky enough to come into not a normal year next year, but to come out of our bubbles and everyone's going great guns and all the planes on the content runways take off, are we still going to be rushing towards the new thing always? Somebody I was talking to pointed this out to me, which was very interesting, which I can't help but feel like, oh, will this be similar? They were like, after the Spanish flu and that quarantine and all those deaths, what happens next is the jazz age and the rise of Hollywood. Like those are the things that happen immediately after this, this pandemic, this disastrous pandemic quarantine scenario is this incredibly freeing, incredibly prolifically creative period of time, right?

And so I wonder, similarly, will we come out of this feeling like, will there be an inspired amount of creativity? Will we have a period of, I don't know, I don't know if excess is the right word, but we certainly now have, we have so many avenues to put stuff in. Will we now have just an overwhelming amount of stuff? Yeah. People spending this year being inspired, being, or the opposite, being so afraid and anxious that the release is a relief that inspires them. Are we going to come out of quarantine with,

with, you know, well, I mean, we are going to come out of quarantine, but are we going to come out of quarantine with thousands of great spec scripts? You know, people coming out with stuff they've written just because, ah, I was home, so I fucking wrote this. And that that stuff will be interesting.

To go back to Soderberg, which is, I think, maybe even the original germ of this pod. All roads back, all roads lead back to Soderberg for Chris Ryan. I knocked out like two scripts, re-edited Kafka and remastered a box set of my seven films that the rights have reverted back to me. I was just like... Oh, and here's my cut of Mank

because I still have Finters. Here's Raiders with the social network score over it. I don't know. Man, you know what the thing is, is that for as much as like, I wonder what the reaction will be to this period of time where a lot of people

have had their lives usually affected or stayed inside or, etc. There's just been this incredible movement of consolidation in the entertainment industry where just over the last three weeks we're talking about, you know, upwards of 35 shows

coming from Marvel and Star Wars and so many people who are really talented on after one movie making a season of Star Wars or a season of a Marvel show. I'm kind of curious to know whether we'll ever get

like a really thriving independent cinema back or a thriving in like quasi-independent television. So much of independent cinema migrated to TV. Yeah. You know, you saw like the people of this, this generation of independent cinema, the Duplas, Amy Simets, like all these, Hannah Fidel, all these people who are such at the forefront

of independent, what is independent cinema now, moving to TV because it gives them a greater ability to tell their stories in an environment that is supportive. And independent film is a much harder thing to kind of feel. figure out. It's, you know, having been in a bunch of them, having watched it, and, and being a child of, like, the Sundance generation that felt to me. Yeah. Lauder Jarmeish. Yeah. Sotomberg, Jim Jarmish, Nicole Hollif Center, Tom DeChillo, like all of that, you know, when, you know, that generation of independent film felt significant and important in a way that it doesn't necessarily anymore, because all those movies just disappearing to the box that is streaming stuff.

Yeah. My favorite movie of the year was free on Amazon Prime. What movie? Fast of Night. I don't even know it. See, something new. I haven't watched it either. I don't even know it.

Send it to me. But that's a perfect example. So I am so curious. Now, and like you guys said recently, I want to see all these shows. I want to see Loki. I want to see What If? I want to see The Acolyte.

Leslie Heldon, you know, a friend of the pod and an incredible writer and filmmaker. I'm excited for all of that. Again, I can't tell you, I've spent so many hours inside of Star Wars this year. I haven't even talked about the audiobooks that I've listened to. But I will say, you know, not for nothing, like stuff that really made an impression on not just me, but like the social consciousness of people is. Shits Creek. Like, one of the biggest shows of the year is Shits Creek, a show that is, like, ported in from Canada, we let it cross our borders. I don't like it. That was before we got tough.

Build that wall. We need these Canadian TV shows out of our country. No, um, Shits Creek, which I watched all of this year, uh, and thought was phenomenal. And listen, it's not like independent, it's not like independent television or something like that. But for everybody to get on board for a show that is five seasons into, or whatever it was, four seasons into its run before this year or five seasons, is, you know, a show that's been on pop TV for years and nobody's, you know, it's been doing fine, exploded this year, which I was like very heartened.

Good stuff can still connect. I mean, we, yeah, there's no reason for us to talk about it for the 100th time, but, like Queen's Gambit is no one's idea of a slam dunk, but like Schitt's Creek, it is on Netflix, and it is very good, and it has a very strong point of view, very well made and it connected. And did it connect because it's good?

Yes. And did it connect because Netflix is in most people's homes? Yes. So if you line those two things up, it's still possible. Well, what we're doing is we're coming to more and more, we're fewer and fewer portals are controlling all of our eyeballs, right? So now, if I go to HBO Max, I'm not just processing, you know, succession or I'm just trying to think of the other shows.

I may destroy you. This year's, like, high prestige shows. That's also where I go to watch all of Stathlet's Flats. Yep. The Jamie Demetriu British show that is maybe the funniest show I've seen since Toast of London. You know, like two, like, like a titanically funny show, Stathlet's Flats. And HBO Max has all of this. Dave all the Alan Partridge shows.

I watched all of knowing me, knowing you. Alan Partridge stuff. They've got a ton of British comedy on there that is fantastic, you know. They've got all of Studio Ghibli, which has been so wonderful to dig in on. There's a way in which, even though it is so uncomfortable

and unsettling the consolidation of power that these companies are kind of, that's happening with all these companies, they are at least giving us a swath of stuff that previously has been hard to track down. you know, in some instances. All right. Well, we will give you time, Jason, to talk more about the specific list, but I did want to ask

you in the spirit of this conversation about maybe what's next. Yeah. We obviously love you as a podcaster and as a person, but we were also very big fans of you as a performer. And I do feel like you and your many talented friends, like when you get on stage and you create comedy the way you do, it's really exciting and it's really inspiring. And it's a tragedy that you haven't been able to do it this year. I'm wondering what the conversations are like about what you will do next.

Like, are you tigers being fed, like not being fed steak ready to get out and attack a sizzler? Like what do you feel optimistic or hopeful or excited or what does the future look like for you just as a creative performer? I feel very, you know, I feel like I'm on a lot of Zoom's with my peers in which we are really talking about the actual logistics of, not just, you know, trying to parse the reality of this vaccine rolling out, blah, blah, blah, all of this stuff. But like, when are, let's say, for example, you know, my regular Friday night show at UCB, when is it going to feel safe to have 200 people in a small theater and have them feel comfortable enough and at ease and carefree enough that they'll laugh? You know, like, you don't want an audience full of people who are uptime.

height that they're shoulder to shoulder with strangers and everybody's laughing and expelling droplets. Now we're so conditioned now to be paying attention to all of these elements. How long, not just, there's going to be a long tail to this thing. It's not just how long until it's safe again, but how long until people have psychologically let themselves feel safe again. You know, never mind like a, how did this get made show, you know, at the Chicago theater for 3,400 people. How long until those people feel safe enough to come to that show and not just come, but be calm enough to laugh. You know, it's going to be, I think, very sadly, it's going to take a while. You know, there's going to be a really slow creep back into, you know, I don't know if

you guys feel the same, but, you know, I go to a lot of concerts, you know, during the year. I don't know when the next time I'm going to feel comfortable going and standing in the middle of of a crowd at, you know, the will turn. Yeah. I feel that way about Lakers and Clippers games. I feel that way, you know, like about like a lot of things, yeah. Even when I might know, oh, we're now kind of through the, we're through the eye of the storm, we're on the other side of it, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's still going to be a thing where if I'm, if I'm at the arc light, if I'm at a movie

theater and I hear somebody coughing, am I going to be like, fuck it, we're out of here. Let's go. Back up. We're leaving. Like, what's the, or am I going to start being somebody who wears a mask to the movies? Or who wears a mask to a concert? Am I just for my own peace of mind, you know, or something like that? I don't know. Surgical mask or bane mask?

Bain mask, great. But that's just sexy. Two more songs. Two more songs. Oh, got this entire diet cook, I can't possibly drink it for me. Wait, that's grief cargo wearing a Bain mask. Wait a second.

Mando! Mando! Two more song. Mando, you love the aisle seats, do you not? I saved us both. I am indifferent. You can have the aisle and I can have the seat in from the aisle. There's definitely got to be a metal band called Besscar.

Oh, yeah. Totally. That's a... Norwegian black metal, yeah, right. Oh, fuck. Guys, put that. together. That's for the guys in deaf heaven. Please let that be your offshoot band. Do you want to give us a couple more like things that got you through this year?

Yes, I do, Chris Ryan. Yes, I do. One of my favorite shows last year was Tim Robinson's sketch show. I think you should leave. Oh yeah. And this year I watched the two seasons that he and Sam Richardson put out on Comedy Central of a show called Detroiters. That is fucking hilarious. Worth every second of watching it. I mentioned Stathlet's Flats, what we do in the shadows. Derry Girls? Amazing.

Incredible television. It is about four Irish teenagers in 1980s, Ireland. You know, it is, they are a foul-mouth kind of fuck-ups who are hilarious in and of themselves.

But then the whole show is set against the backdrop for Irish independence, and it is incredible, beautiful, and also just filthy and hilarious sitcom. Incredible. I think there's three seasons of it up right now. Yeah, and there's like, it's one of those rare shows where like everybody one to 12 in an ensemble is hilarious.

Yes. Oh, the parents are, even though it's ostensibly about these girls, the parents are great, the grandparents are great, the nun that runs the school is incredible, the hunky priest, it's really very funny. They just did Great British Bake Off and it was really disconcerting to watch them. Chris Ryan, don't worry, I fucking watched it. I fucking watched every minute, every goddamn minute of bake off this season, including the holiday episodes. Protect Prue. She got her vaccine. I'm very excited.

Alone season 7. Unreal television. To watch a TV show. I've watched every season of Alone since it started, one of my favorite shows. It's a reality show competition series where they take 10 people. all of whom are either ex-special forces, people who live off the grid, primitive skills, people, and they strand them individually in the Arctic. So they are their own camera crew.

They are alone. They're not near each other. And it's whoever is the last person standing wins a million dollars. Chris could do that. I could see, I could read his mind. Chris is like when you were listing the types of people. It is like filling out my application. Exactly.

But didn't you say primitive skills holders? Yes. I have none of those. I don't have a single primitive skill. So to watch people, because the show works like this, the first batch of episodes are the beginning, because they tell people prepared to be out there for at least a year. What? What?

So you're first watching people be like, I have to figure out a sustainable way to get water, build a shelter that can get me through the Arctic winter, I have to figure out food and how I'm going to keep that safe, like real, like the basics. once you, and that weeds out a bunch of people, once you get through that part of the show, that part of the game,

you're just watching people psychologically come undone because they're alone. You're just watching people slowly lose their minds. And this season airing during this pandemic, for me, living alone, was incredible. It was, and it also was the best season of the show because the people they got to compete were just each and every one of them, a person incredibly capable. Alone, season seven, wild stuff.

But was this a barometer for your own sanity? Were you like, at least I'm not, whatever they happened to be doing? It made me feel like, it made, well, did, it made me feel like, yeah, at least I don't have to, you know, at least my health insecurity isn't predicated on setting snares to catch, you know, snow rabbits. You're not having puffing sashimi again.

No, no. There isn't, there isn't a pack of wolves that regular, regularly circles my tent as a threat. Not literally. Metaphorically, we could make an argument. Yes. Yes, there is a pack of wolves roaming these, they're 20-somethings roaming the hills without masks on.

Exactly. Natalie Palmedis' special Nate, her comedy special Nate on Netflix, next level. Okay. Like, incredible. You got to watch it. Season two of the boys, amazing. Loved it. Absolutely loved it.

Wait, this is for you, Andy. your kids, have you watched Hilda on Netflix? Okay, great question. We have some of the books. These are, where is Hilda Hale from? It's somewhere in Scandinavia, right? Luke Pearson wrote these books in English. Wait, he's going to be corosan.

Did you just mispronounced Coruscant on Star Wars and Jace podcast? Wow. Corrason. Do you want to take it back? No, I want to drop it in. No, I want to own it. Wow. Right.

So we've read some of the books. We watched the first one. I think we watched a two. early in the, I don't know why I was about to say the life cycle of my children. They are not praying mantises, but we should revisit, right? Because it's kind of a beautiful show. It's terrific.

And the actor who voices Hilda Leanna Mormont of Bear Island. Wow. Wow. That is a deep cut. Kid, child, beast of Bear Island, just a monster

in Game of Thrones. She is the voice of Hilda in the TV show Hilda, which is an incredibly sweet. I've watched, if you were to look at my list, you would be like, oh, do you have kids? Because you've watched everything you've watched so much, like a third of my list is like Avichar The Last Airbender, Cora, Legend of Cora, Hilda, Kippo in the age of Wonderbeasts, watched it all. Why? It's good, but I mean, I didn't need to watch all of it, but I fucking watch.

every goddamn episode of it. You can't skimp on Wonderbees. I mean, that's just been a, that's been a benchmark of this podcast. Especially now that you're, now that we know, this is the age of them. That's right.

I'm sorry, Chris, I know you hate animation. No, it's okay. This is, this is the part, I'm sure you're gonna have kind of cut out. I'm waiting for you to say, and of course,

Yellowstone. Oh my God. So this is a great example. This year, there are shows that are like my shows that I have not watched. I did not watch this season of Yellowstone.

I must be, but there's something about it that I have just not, I don't know why. I'm like, I have not started this season of Yellowstone, but I've watched like so much other stuff. I watched all of the great pretender, like a Netflix anime con man show, that if you want to watch a TV show that's like animated Oceans 11, that's what this is. Oh, wow. I think that actually might get me to do that. You should check it out. You might. It's very fun heist con man stories told episodically.

It's usually like three to four episodes per con, two to three cons per season. I'm kind of interested. I'm going to pitch this up the old ringer Spotify ladder, but I think we should do a parenting entertainment podcast, but just us. It's just like one Daddington, non-Daddington. Oh my God. You know what I mean?

And like we can just kind of hash it out and then figure stuff out. because you are watching more widely with more curiosity, I think, than the Disney pluse planted children in my home. Listen, guys, the pluse is loose. You know, I'm here to say. I'm here to say the ploose is loose, and I'm like, I'm thrilled for it. I'm here for it.

Oh, yeah. Well, dude, man, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, how dare you wrap up? How dare you wrap up? You motherfucker, how dare you wrap up? We can do this again. We literally have nothing else. There's no reason why this has to be a once a year activity.

Listen, I don't, I'm just, I just, I'm here refreshing my email every hour to see when am I going to get invited? When are these boys going to invite me on to talk about the stuff that I like? Anytime. It is literally anytime. We are so happy to see you and hear all of these recommendations. One more thing off of my list that I want to say, and it is podcasts, and this is one of them. I love this show.

I love you both. this show gets me through, listening to shows gets me through. Like, you know, in this time of feeling very lonely and apart from people, especially people I know, I'm very grateful for the fact that so many of my favorite podcasters not only have continued to do great content, but have really gone above and beyond to do great content or doing extra stuff. Like the fact that you guys did Lonesome Dove made me watch Lonesome Dove. Oh, man.

Got me to get my friends to do. to watch Lonesome Dove. You know, like there is something really wonderful that has been a part of this year, which is spending time with my podcast friends. In this case, you guys are my actual friends. Or Mal and Jason doing binge mode Marvel right now, or my friends John Gabris, Ben Rogers, and Ryan Stanger, who do Action Boys, a podcast about action movies.

I've listened to hundreds of hours of. Like, all of this stuff, the Doe Boys, these are people that I just, I'm so grateful to be able to be a part of and listen to you guys. And your episodes through the year have gotten me through. So thank you guys. Dude, thank you so much. And thank you so much for coming on. We're grateful to you.

It's a love fest. Happy holidays. Happy New Year. Yeah. Let's all come out of the closet in 2021. We'll see you soon. We'll see you soon. Absolutely.