The Watch - The Outsider’ E9. Plus: What Does the Netflix Top 10 Teach Us? | The Watch

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

Chris and Andy review the penultimate episode of ‘The Outsider’ (SPOILERS) (0:55), before trying to glean meaning from a new feature on Netflix—its top-10 most popular list (29:10). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, this is Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Recently, on the Winging It podcast, Vince Carter and Annie Finberg sat down with NBA All-Star Kyle Lowry and recording artist for Timmy. This week, 2017, first overall pick Markell Fultz joins the show to talk about living up to expectations and working his way back from injury in the NBA. Make sure to check out Winging It on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 the ringer.com. Thank you for listening to America's number one cave podcast. It's Andy Greenwald! Finally, my pastime of choice. Caving. My subculture, my tribe, is having its moment in prestige television. You know we are talking about the outsider because we stay spulunking on this show. What's up?

Are we going to talk about it? I still lack might. It's Monday. So you know we're talking about the outsider on the watch podcast. A lot of stuff to get to you today. Yeah. We're a little warm already

because we already did a little advanced potty. Yeah, we did the Briar Patch Potty. Already. Andy's got a cappuccino. There's a new episode on tonight that I'm going to tell you why you should watch before this podcast is over. The episode of Briar Patch today?

You could start on. Why don't you bat lead off, Ricky Henderson? You want me to? Tell us all about it. I'm going to drag bunt my way. We got Bobby on the boards. That's a baseball guy, right? We can talk baseball.

Indeed. I'm ready to go. This is practically a fucking wah-wah in here. You know that? You got so much big Philly energy. Mix a little regular and a little hazeln-knit. Just a bunch of guys drinking French vanilla coffee and talking about the Phillies. Eating combos.

How about this Alec Bohm? Am I right? Do they say, am I right in Philly? How long has it been since you've been there? Where do they say that? I don't know. The Internet? It's more of the Internet thing.

Tell me about Briar Patch. Tonight? A fantastic television show. Episode 4, 11 p.m. Eastern, 10 p.m. Central. After a cracking episode of Raw. Actually, also after Better Call Saul. Episode 3 is on tonight. So this is a blammo night of television.

Episode 4, Breadknife Weather. Very proud of this episode. That is the name of the episode. That is not your Griselda mixtape that you're recording. Bread Knife Weather! This is really proud of this episode. Totally a little bit different. This is the funeral episode for Fallen Officer Felicity Dill.

Definitely the episode where the temperature on screen matched what it was like off screen. We were in a cemetery filming for a lot of hot, sweaty days. Rosario was brilliant, beautiful performance and just a lot of really great ensemble work and a lot of surprises about what happens there. I think if I remember correctly, this is when we either talked on the phone, owner, you were texting me and you were like, P.S., don't let me write eight-page scenes that during the day in a cemetery in the American Southwest. I've been writing you that for weeks, for years even. This is the time when it finally came true. No, I'm just really excited about the momentum we're building on the season. I'm really excited about our new time slot.

And I think people are going to dig this episode a lot. So, and we'll talk about it with special guest, our director of photography, Zach Geller, will be here on Thursday to talk about this episode. And the order of cinematography. In general. Yeah. But so I, I really feel like this is a curveball. episode, kind of a bottle episode in a way, certainly tequila bottles, written by Wayning You, directed by Desire Acovan, and I'm excited for people to watch it and get the reaction to it. But there is a dearth of scenes set in deeply claustrophobic, structurally unsound caves. Yeah. How fucking dangerous does a cave have to be to be, like, not in the cave map? Okay, so we're going to talk about...

Do you want to talk about Netflix first, or you want to talk about Outsider first? I got a head full of steam about the outsider. All right, let's do Outsider first. So last night was the penultimate episode, Tigers and Bears, I believe it was called. Sounds like Briar Patch. I got a couple thoughts.

Like, really, I want to start on a meta level about this episode. Because, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Blah, blah, blah. What was most interesting to me was I feel like this episode was a sly and devastating critique of late stage capital

Because let's really unpack the fact that this lady in 1940s... 1947. 1947, Tennessee. The suburbs are being built. Was like, so I found two holes in the ground leading to a bear cave. One hole, yay big, a man can walk down it. Another hole. So I'm going to build a gift shop over it.

Boy-sized. Yeah, boy-sized. I'm going to ignore the boy-sized hole. build a Richard's scary storybook like business atop it out of what appears to be Lincoln logs and charge admission to the hole. Now, let's take that one step further. The economics of this hole,

questionable, or maybe beautifully straightforward, you give the lady a quarter, you may enter the hole to your heart's content. Or death. There appears to be no rule past that. This is reminding me in a lot of ways, like my horseback riding experience in Mexico. You paid to be on the horse. We have fulfilled our contractual bargain.

Anything now, post-bridle, is on you. I'm surprised that there wasn't just dozens and dozens of skeletons in that cave. There were no maps. There were no cautionary words spoken. You know what there were? Yeah. Sabretooth tiger claw-tri-tri-tri-tri-tri-tri-tri-tri-tri-tri-trilewclothed. You know what else?

There seemed to be no ledger or log of who has entered or who has exited. Yeah, sure. Leave your email. No tips. Uh-huh. No security measures.

She had flashlights. She did have a large number of flashlights. Presumably, because the people who brought the flashlights expired and the flashlights made their way back up eventually. So, again, I know you've read Thomas Pickettie's book. capital. So I know you want to bring your time spent with this book to bear here. Yeah. Isn't there just something just, it's beyond ironic. It's just, it's kind of devastating that for all of this woman's effort to build her business on charging people admission to a hole

in the ground, there's always a smaller hole. You know what I mean? That's the Foxcon. Here's what it is. Here's why we don't make things in this country anymore because of the Foxcon hole located just outside of our Apple factory hole. Okay, you see in the big picture? I got a couple of things for you here. All right. What's the market cap on that business? Great call.

Like $3.75 a year. Like, how many paying cave customers are you getting in 1947? So when my guy... These guys just got back from the war. Yeah. You know, like maybe they're a little bit fucked up. No, no offense. The greatest generation.

They've been in some holes. See, like, I fucking repelled Hitler. You know? I went to the South Pacific, and I came back. Guess what I'm not doing, going in a cave? No, I feel like they should know about. I don't think that she's even taking advantage of the Truman Boom here. You know what I mean?

The Eisenhower era. What I think would have been worthwhile, and again, we've commented that maybe the outsider should have been eight episodes, it's 10. Had they maxi-seriesed it. Oh, 22? And gone to 12, 1522. There could have been an episode set in this past timeline where a local hedge fund guy arrived. And now remember, in 1947

in rural Tennessee, a hedge fund guy is a guy who manages the hedge. He charges a nickel to go in the hedges. Give me the fun for it. He comes by and he just is talking to her about growth. You mentioned you want to talk about Netflix. It's the same thing, man.

Yeah. Where's the growth potential for the people walking into a fatal whole business? Well, I mean, obviously someone came along and was like, what you guys got to do here is have a festival of caves. Just because one cave visit is not enough to draw anyone's attention. That guy is the fucking Bob Eiger of mid-century Americana.

Because that guy invented a cave business after the previous cave killed 40 people. He was like, I know you're hurting. I know this is a tough time for the caving community. But what if this but bigger? And they were like, well, what could go worse? I'm going to zag a little bit here, though. I'm going to go Belichick on you. Okay.

What about the accountability? Mm-hmm. What about those kids? Maybe they shouldn't be, like, sneaking in the back of caves. Oh, my God. And, you know, I mean, like, yes, there could be a sign that said no trespassing or something like that. Nothing was stopping these kids. But, like, I don't even feel like those kids had, what was the reason they went in the cave?

Boyhood, man. Yeah. This is, listen, when we've, we've known each other a long time. And we've traded stories of our tender years. No, this is a Richard Linklater movie. You and me. The YouTube cameras come on every seven years. Capture us in our element.

We look better every time. You told a story early on that I've talked about on this podcast, and you've talked about on multiple podcasts, and it is one of the defining boyish adventures of your life when you left the house under poor conditions and trudged through foot high snow to see the film heat every day for a month. No, not every day. Had these boys access to a...

A cinema tech. Yeah. Yeah. To a 23-screen theater. Maybe things would have worked out differently. Yeah. They could have seen Maltese Falcon or something. The larger family.

But they had two options. Option one. Stay in the barn under the watchful eye of their father. Uh-huh. Or jump into a cave. And reader, I took the road less travel. I jumped in a cave. And I never came back from it.

Let's be really real. There are three people in this room. How many of us, when given the choice between staying at home or jumping feet first into a mystery cave would choose mystery cave? What are my other options? No, none. Apparently, narratively, none. Yeah. I think everyone listening to this podcast knows I am team no cave.

Like if you're living in rural Tennessee in 1947, the chances are that you're not going to pick up like the Cardinals game on a radio. You know what I mean? Like you literally got nothing going on. Are you trying to make a case for the cave right now? Yeah.

I'm trying to say like what else is going on in rural Tennessee in 1947? I'm struggling. Like the mom looked pretty fucked up before they got lost in the cave. Mom seemed troubled. Yeah. Like Doc Holiday or something.

Or mom is, the fucking smartest one there. Because when dad was like, honey, those boys are as good as home already. Now, me and my 30 friends are going to have a live forever party 20 feet under the earth's surface. Yes. So I also have another question.

I'm sorry. I feel like we're really misleading people because I really love the outsider, but we're really on this cave party. Also, I salute them for caring. Yeah. Did you need 30 guys? This cave is enormous. Yeah, but that's like you could field a Division I football team with what they brought down there.

You need one guy to mark the cave. You need one guy to hold the flashlight. You need one guy to yell to one of the boys. You need one guy to yell to the other boy. You need one guy to synthesize the yelling into a larger collective yelp. Side note, shouldn't a show that has detoured into being primarily about caving change its name to the insider? because the outsider is what I would be in a caving community. Yeah.

They'd be like, I don't trust this guy. Why? Because his face is melting off and he's wearing a bear skin? No, because he won't go inside caves. Everybody was up. By the way, everybody, the end of this episode, and we'll talk about the beginning, I promise. The end of the episode, everyone is just like, oh no, we should warn them because the bone-crunching monster inside the cave is now aware of them. were none of them like

we're going into a fucking cave? No, because that's the... So we get into a somewhat murky territory here where this was an episode with a lot of plans. You know? Yeah, we've talked about this.

And, you know, shout out to Alexa Fogel. Everybody in this show is so fucking good. So good. That you're just like, I'll watch you eat chicken, Neil Camp. Go for it.

I love that scene. Smoke weed and eat chicken. I loved that scene. But the, sort of seventh inning reveal that El Cucco is telepathic was a twist for me. You know what I mean? I didn't

know that. I also, I think it's interesting that El Cucco, which seemed to be a virus, now that's not a keyword that I'm just throwing around lately anymore. Okay. Is in fact, a Tennessee local seems to really

enjoy the southeast, you know, he's SEC country. And he kind of travels from Vanderbilt to the smoke. Rocky Mountains. Uh-huh. Down to get, gets a little, you know, Ole Miss, maybe.

Okay. But I thought that El Cucco was like an international phenomenon, but it seems like he's been haunting the SEC since the 1940s. No, I don't, no, no, no, that was, there was no El Cucco in El Cavo. Oh. You know what I'm saying, Michael Blumbito? What I'm saying is, El Cucco, a little scratch. It's a little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little,

scratch of Claude, and then knows everything Claude knows. Right. And thus is holing up in the bear caves. Where his most, all of his trauma is. His familial trauma. Yeah, exactly. The larger, right. Okay.

So he and his brother know about that. I guess I misspoke then. El Cucco is international still. Now, he's an LLC. I think that El Cucco does subscribe to the SEC network when possible. You know, I think that was. If it's part of its, if it's part of its larger package. Carrier carries it, yeah.

It's complicated, but I think he, in his Disney Plus subscription, added ESPN just for Game Day. You know what I mean? He would, when not caving, he would hold up a sign behind Chris Fowler and the other guys. You know, we make that joke, but I would bet probably low triple digits that someone will hold up an El Cucco drawing at Game Day this year. They would not shock me at all. But the question is, where will they do it? And will they know that they're doing it? Or will it just be like, this is my uncle?

Just lightly touching his neck. One of the things that is amazing about, from the beginning, one of the reasons we loved the show was that that sort of spicy combination of Richard Price is just like, you know, procedural in the best way. Yeah, Ben Mendelsohn being like, can we talk to your wits? To your wits. That's what I was about to say. But now Ben Mendelsohn also has to say, this cocoa. You know what I mean? Like everyone now, even Glory shows up to be like, when that lady showed up,

and started recapping the plot of Pixar's Coco, I was mad at you. You know what I mean? But she has to say it. Yeah. And I love it. Everybody's got to believe. Look, this show is dope.

It's very much in the last three innings are all Stephen King here. Like, all the language is price, but the story logic has now been turned over to Stephen King, whereas the first few episodes are obviously about what if the most impossible, unbelievable ideas that you have about a criminal case are actually true. I mean, it feels like we had Jason Bateman on this show like two years ago. That feels so long ago. Yeah. And now it's been become fully about this idea of confronting an unspeakable mythological evil as a group rather than calling and say, you know, C-156.

And again, I say this, I love this about the show. And one of the reasons why it's been so fun for us to cover week-to-week and to be so invested in. I'm trying to think of another- We've discovered we care a lot about caves. So much more. than I ever realized. I'm trying to think of another show that has detoured so wildly from what I thought it was in a positive way.

I like this show too. This is not the show that was episodes one and two and three, but I really like that it ended up here and it's kind of gone bananas in a really fun and engaging way. It doesn't feel out of control. It started as the night of,

then it had a middle act that was largely about Holly. and this sort of Sherlock Holmesing of El Cucco. And now the last three have basically been it with a bunch of cops. And I think it's incredible. It's just really, it's disarming almost when you're like, this room has Cynthia Revo, Patty Conceding, Bill Camp, Ben Mendlson standing around.

And none of them are allowed to speak in their native accents. I would pay any amount of money, honestly. To hear the off-mite, like the off-camera vibes. When Bill Camp and Ben Mendelsohn are staring. American daggers into each other's eyes and then immediately break and just start talking about the all-black's rugby team, which I know is New Zealand, but in that

moment I had to grab something from the antipities and it was the best I could do. Here is a question that I do not necessarily believe in. Okay. Oh. Are there too many people on this show? Well, that problem is being resolved as we speak.

Let me tell you something, my friend. The network gave that note. and Jack Deliver Jack did deliver I was very proud of Again this is a non-traditional Sunday night show

For the Greenwald household Yet we're sticking to it Yeah How's the wife feeling about it? My wife and I did have a little review Of everyone on the McBain meter Before the show started I think Andy broke the fucking meter

Well that was the thing And that should have been a tell That he was going to survive the episode My sweet boy, Andy. So she was like, obviously him, and I was like, no, no, no. Absolutely not, because it's too, he's too obvious now. And so the misdirect has to be from the guy that we kind of like, who hasn't done a lot, other than say he felt the taste of copper in his mouth from fear.

RIP, sweet stash. Next time your taste buds tell you something, listen. Yeah. Next time someone offers you a meal of terror, have that instead of taking small bites, don't take any bites. Well, there was just like a lot. So between him and Andy, it was really a, it was the coin toss. Because Alec was like taking little bites, copper in my mouth.

And then Andy was just being so nice to Holly on the drive up where he's just like, hey, you know, like, here's this movie quote. What a fun game to play as we go confront. No, that wasn't. Remember the conversation where he's like, you know what my favorite couples are? The ones who love each other so much and for so long. Whose souls are connected. They expire together at the end of long married lives. Like, Holly should run.

Yeah. Yeah. The reason I ask is because when you are watching such an incredible group of actors, this was one of the first episodes where I was kind of like, oh, I wish that there was a little bit more time spent on fewer people rather than spreading the sort of wealth around to everybody. even though there are just so many remarkable moments

from all these different performers I loved that chicken scene I loved the scene of them going driving off to go by to get the best chicken in 200 miles We are such easy marks for any show set in the American South that deigns to show

in eating establishment. Remember true detective and the bond me? That's all I was thinking of we dined out on that scene for years. Yes, yeah. And still, I loved I mean, Bill Camp is such a It's just such a great performer and presence.

And the role that he's playing, specifically within the drama, is just terrific. Yeah, is the one guy babysitting the brothers, stepping out of the room just long enough to blow the little thing. I mean, that's, you know, that stuff like that has to happen to keep the plot moving. Well, their obsec is a little flawed. They're like having an open conversation about it

while Claude is quote unquote napping. You know, I mean, so it's just, yeah, try to. You cover that over. with a ripping toke on a jazz cigarette, and then the natural desire for more fried chicken. Yeah. Did I have a question about the logistics of the fried chicken order? They drove two hours to get it.

Weren't going to have any there. Rookie mistake. Then Camp digs in. Camp digs in on site. They bring back what appears to be two small bags for, I want to say, 11 people, all of which remains in their fridge. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe you're not supposed to eat before caving. Yeah. I don't know. Also, do you know that Claude's brother, Seal, also English? Oh. So funny. It's like we don't make things in this country anymore. Unbelievable.

Except we make caves. And we made Alec. Jeremy Bob is American. That's true. So. How do you feel about the way that these last three episodes or those last two episodes that we've seen so nine and eight specifically since they've been at the house. And then it essentially takes them an hour to be like,

okay, let's get in the car and go to the caves. Yep. And now we're going to get 10. Do you feel like this is they have earned their episode order? Or do you think you're like, are you like, this could all have been done in six or seven hours? It could have. But there's also something that I think I was alluding to before too,

which is there is something to be said for not just competence, but skill. You know, and part of the skill of television historically, and I think still, although we frame it differently, because we talk about, you know, aesthetic opportunities and you can craft episode orders to, often you can craft them to the way you want to tell the story. Part of this has always been about hiding the ball and making it feel natural even when you suddenly have, you've lost an episode for budget reasons, or you've gained it or whatever, the things outside your control. And, you know, that's why you bring in the people who are working on the show. That's why you have Richard Price doing it. he'll fill the space. He has been not just a good novelist, but he's been a screenwriter for a long time.

And this episode was written by another favorite of ours, Dennis Lahane. It's just nuts. It's just murderers row of prime writers. And so these guys, we love them for their personality and their style and flair, but we also love them

because they keep it fucking moving. You know, like a Dennis Lahain novel, whether it's his best novels or his, and he doesn't write bad ones, but his more procedural ones. Less great novels. They're great reads. Uh-huh.

You know, and, No, I mean, same thing for, I mean, even something as atmospheric as lush life has like a... Yeah, there's a pace and a rhythm to it. And so what this does, if you pull back 100 feet, like, yeah, this probably should have been eight episodes. But it's not. And so you look at what he did do in the way he moved the pieces around and ended it where he ended it and set us up for where he set it up. It works for me. I mean, there wasn't a moment when last night's episode was dragging.

I think the hardest part for me was probably for many people. Again, there have been some tonal and storytelling shifts. And so suddenly we're with these boys clearly in the past, but we're not quite sure. Sure. Are they clawed and seal? Is that who this is? That's what my wife was asking. I'm like, I think that they would be, that would mean clawed and seal are 70 years.

Yeah, that was the giveaway. So there are a couple things that were a little unclear, but it's not unpleasant. You know, it's not taking you out of it. It's just, oh, here's a different type of storytelling for this episode, really for the purpose of filling the space. Yeah. But there are worse ways to pass the time. I think that the interesting thing is the show has done such a

honestly it's been subtle the shift to the point where now we're just talking about it in a completely different way than we talked about it eight weeks ago has done such a good job of shifting what it is existentially what kind of a show it is what kind of an ending are we

prepared for because I do think that after the last few episodes a finale that you know is the end of it basically or is the Stephen King ending where they confront this evil and there's some casualties and then the survivors move on has been earned

and would be entertaining and narratively satisfying. But I'm very curious about what what parts of the first half of the show are going to come back in terms of the emotional storytelling about loss as the impossible demon. And that also I think came back up with the reintroduction of the district attorney character. Yes, which was a surprise.

And it was a little bit of a wrinkle because I think are we supposed to understand understand that the people at the cave do not know that this has happened. That there's been another... I guess. And is this something... Is this something that happened when they were on route to the Tennessee cave in community?

I mean, that was a little bit strange. I couldn't tell whether he was like this means El-Cucco is not just in one place or whether it means I am now being confronted with the reality that Terry Maitland definitely didn't do this. I think that was part of it. Yeah, obviously. But whether or not there will be a cover-up to that extent. Because you bring up a good point, it said season.

finale in the coming next week on the outsider. So while I have a hard time believing they're going to bring back this group of people to talk about this specific experience, I would imagine that given the response to this show, we will see more outsider at some point. I hope so. I think that would be great. But whether that would be the continuing adventures of El Cucco as he continues his quixotic outsider quest for the Democratic nomination.

For Kuko, it's about the superdelegates. Does P. Dropping help El Kuko? Well, I think it helps consolidate the anti-Kuko vote. Yeah. You know what I mean? Right. So in that sense. Right.

I just think, do you think Warren thinks she can knock Kuko off at the convention, even if she doesn't win a stage? She's got a plan for it. Yeah. Just like these guys going into a cave. Season 2 outsider. Yeah. What, like, American pastime lost to history would you like to see El Kuko

haunt this time? Water parks? I want him to focus on things that I just don't want to do. You know what I mean? So bungee jumping, zip lining would be a good one. Action sports. Generally, yeah, like low-grade action sports. I did think, to your point, bring you back Jason Bateman and Terry Maitland, like,

boy, if they had been onto this case one scratch earlier. Yeah. And they would have just been following. Keith Hofstudder. Like that had been the inciting incident. and they were just, because I do, from what I personally on my own whiteboard and piece together about Terry Maitland's final days of just affably coaching Little League and supporting his family and making them breakfast presents an easier hang than Claude's time

in the caves of rural Tennessee. That's right. You know, it's the luck of the draw with things like this. And I think, you know, Holly, thankfully, can roll with it either way. Yeah. But that would have been, that would have been definitely a dramatically lower stakes, scenario. All right, so obviously we'll be back on next Monday to talk about the finale of outsider. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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this Netflix top 10 with you. There were two things I want to discuss with you. is this Netflix top 10. Two was the fantastic news that one of our favorite shows, Terriers, is going to be streaming on the FX on Hulu channel, which is awesome. But I kind of wanted to talk about the idea

of lost shows and shows being revived for, not remade, but just being rediscovered on these streaming services. But first, really quickly, this Netflix top 10. Obviously, you've been thinking a lot about ratings recently. So I wanted to ask you about this. So this is last week, Netflix announced that they were going to add a top 10 most popular things, both shows, movies, or overall on the service to the homepage, and that those shows would have a special top 10 badge

when you saw them on the front page. Yeah. And Cameron Johnson, who is the director of product innovation, said that shows and films make these lists. It will also have a special top 10 badge. Wherever they appear on Netflix, that way you can easily see what's in the zeitgeist, whether you're browsing by genre or through your personal list or when searching for specific shows and films.

Currently, on my Netflix.com website, I see The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez as number one on Netflix in the U.S. today. Okay. Number two is Love is Blind, the finale. I don't understand what that is, but people love it. They do. Angry Birds 2, the movies.

Is it a show that, like, sets up blind people? No. They sit in rooms, and there's like a, like a, like a, LED screen. I'm going to stop you there. Who's they? Like contestants on this game show who are like,

yeah, and you go into a pod and you start talking to a person on the other side of the wall but you can't see them. And then you're like, we're engaged. Wow. Yeah.

It's kind of like 90-day fiance. Never seen that. And it's kind of like Black Bear. Trying to remember. I have seen that. Okay. Number three is Angry Birds 2. Yeah, okay.

I'm looking at this too. Number four, I am not okay with this, which I've watched a few episodes of and I think you would like. It's very much like end of the fucking world. Altered Carbon's back. That's number five. By the way, altered carbon is back.

Did not make our list of content. Oh, yeah. And this may be putting to a lie like what we conceive of. I never even said that was complete. I said we were going to miss like 50% of the stuff. Right. But I'm saying one of the things we missed is apparently the number five show in America on the service that many people have. We also missed Mew2 strikes back.

I didn't miss it. Did you watch that? No. Oh. All the bright things, but all the bright places. Our friend Liz Hannes is moving. Oh, yeah. And Lock and Key, Narcos, Mexico, and Pete Davidson. I did watch Pete Davidson.

And I've watched Narcos Mexico. So I'm there. I'm there at the bottom end of the lineup. My question is this. Does it matter that Netflix is doing a top 10 when they still don't tell us what that means? Well, I think that's the biggest question. I mean, what this seems to me, people loveless. and people will pay attention to this

more than they would pay attention to whatever category it replaced, trending now, recommended for you, popular on Netflix, whatever. What is the methodology here? And what is the math? I mean, it seems like putting altered carbon in there or in lock and key,

that's what I'm... I'm curious about those two shows because those are very expensive original programming plays by Netflix. Neither has broken through in terms of, not just coverage by our podcast, but I feel like neither broke through mainstream coverage, whatever that means anymore,

whether it's big write-ups in magazines or feature profiles or reviews by the reviewers that we like to read, or certainly then the next part, which again is not. any indicator of anything really, but it's something that we go by, like the Twitter conversation. So there are a lot of possibilities here is one that they are creating their own stats, which they can do, and promoting their shows surreptitiously this way by claiming they're already

popular. They can do that. They don't share their information, and even if they, in the pieces they share are hard to verify or even sometimes understand. Or is it that Netflix's algorithms are so powerful that when a show like Lock and Key appears on the service, it is micro-targeted to people who probably might like it, and all of those people give it a chance. And on a weekend, they see something new for you. Netflix hasn't seen me wrong before, I try it. So is this reflecting that millions of Netflix subscribers press play on the first episode? Did they then press stop? Did they then continue the series? That's the other thing we don't know about this. How much time did they spanked in each episode? Did they watch the first five minutes and then

Exactly. Something like The Love is Blind, which I am fully aware is popular because I've heard about it nonstop, despite not understanding it. Pete Davidson special, that's an easy watch. That's a one one off thing. And also, I mean, in a weird way, a lot of their stand. And the kid stuff is also, I get it. Yeah, a lot of their stand-up specials, first of all, it's just like, it's so easy to watch them. Second of all, I think with the Pete Davidson thing, that was like almost more traditionally rolled out than a lot of stuff where it felt like a bunch of the bits from that. special were either clipped out or written about because they were about Ariana Grande or whatever or, you know, his father. But it's, it is the shows like Altered Carbon that I'm most curious about. Because I'm just like, oh, okay, so in my personal experience, not a lot of people chat to me about altered carbon. But also what it says about the future of Netflix's programming strategies, because obviously they believe, and, you know, we were joking before about growth strategies,

but that is their model, is to just show growth constantly in all areas to a lot of people. Obviously, there's value in having all types of shows for all types of viewers at all times. And they've been spending billions, literally, dollars

to build up their own libraries in every area. That said, a cartoon, a reality show, a cooking competition, a stand-up special are demonstrably and reliably popular

drivers of viewership and also conversation for them. And they are, wildly cheaper than a second season of altered carbon, or, as we just saw, multiple seasons going forward of the Crown, which is not a show we talk about really on this podcast. Well, we did. I mean, I did with the end of it. Yeah, right. Yeah. But, so, you know, canonical watch podcasts. That's right. The novelizations and stuff don't count. But that's where you find out that I'm a clone, though. I should really read those. regardless of the spin coming from Peter Morgan or coming from Netflix, they were very, very upfront when they announced that show

that it was like an eight-year passion project that everyone was fully committed to making. And so ending it after five years, maybe that'll end up being narratively satisfying. The right creative choice. Right creative choice. It very well could be, but that wasn't the plan. But, I mean, I can't imagine that Netflix would be like we want less crown.

I think so. I mean, Netflix is pretty upfront that original shows ought to run. run three years, and then they cancel them. And every so often... But that's a flagship show for them. Yes, but I think that they're looking at their numbers and their outlay and the money and the return. And remember, the other thing about the crown is, and Netflix's model, is they don't have

any less of the crown that they already have. You know what I mean? It's really about the future investment to bring in new people, whereas they have five seasons that will live forever on Netflix, and people who will like things like that will always be encouraged to watch it by the algorithm. I didn't really, I really really thought about it like that. They're very, very, very much tightening their belts when it comes to original programming and trying to bring things to an end sooner because they feel like three seasons worth

is enough to get people hooked and watching. And they don't need anything past that is kind of redundant. They did that with Bloodline. Yes. Three seasons of Bloodline. That was the model. And that's a show that demanded many, many more seasons. I know.

I needed to know if they still did bad things. Continued. Well, they're not bad. Maybe at a certain point, the twist would have been they are bad people. Yeah. Do you think in the next five years, we will ever see any kind of metric

that pits different streaming service shows against one other, where we will have a streaming meals and a streaming building chart? I'm sure that there are already companies who are, offering to do that by tracking social media chatter and I don't know whatever other metrics might exist. There almost would have to be. I guess at a certain point what we're going to be seeing is just straight up arguments over subs. You know, it is going to be, it's just subscription base at a certain point. Yeah. I'm sure we'll see that in August once Peacock and HBO Max. Yeah, once they're in there. And then that's, that's, that's,

what it's about. And in that case, it really becomes less about the ratings than it is about what you're paying for. You know, a hit show or a sexy, splashy show might drive you to subscribe to HBO Max for the first time. But ultimately, what they're measuring is if you stay paying the however many dollars a month to them past that show. So you're not crediting it to the show. So, yeah, I mean, that's that's the change. I feel like that you could compare altered Carvins quote unquote ratings to the outsider's ratings to Chicago Fire's ratings. But it's not even apples to oranges anymore. Chicago Fire dwarfs those shows, but is available to anybody who can plug their television into a wall.

But at this point we're comparing, you know, cantalopes to chicken pop pies. Like it's just, it's not even the same. Right. And their goals aren't even the same. Right. So yeah, that's going to be the crazy thing. Because Netflix is in trouble if people start canceling it. Or equally in trouble if their growth rate slows globally.

And one of the reasons their growth rate may slow globally isn't because X number of people aren't watching lock and key. It's because they're choosing to spend their money on other subscription services. Sure. Or, I mean, I had this conversation with Lucas Shaw, I think, a few months ago, where we were talking about whether or not there was a limit to the amount of subscriptions people would be willing to carry. There has to be. Well, one of the reasons why he said that that would be

be a concern as if there was any kind of economic downturn, which we may have. Exactly. Considering when I looked at Twitter this morning, different financial guys were like, I'm on fire. It's not funny. The tweet was funny. It was funny. That's all very true. Like the companies, the mega, mega global companies that are behind these services are acting

like they are in a full-on. arms race and who actually watches what or what happens to what it feels this this seems like a very rich thing to say i mean that figuratively to be like it feels like the companies don't care about their product obviously the executives and creative people do care but they are building up these vast libraries to do battle on a global scale um and spending holy fortunes and it really is going to come down to who can compete on that level um yeah And if people suddenly aren't able to... Basically, people are acting like they're going to take...

Cut the cord from their $200 a month cable bill. To build up a $200 a month subscription fee. Yeah. Bob, would you... Where would you kind of like... Just even... Not even financially, but like mentally. Like, where would you kind of draw the line

in the amount of like subscription... TV subscription services that you would pay for? I'd like to be under $100. Yeah. So that would be three to four depending on whether or not you're using Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. But also, I...

I share all of mine with other people. So it's like I pay for two, they pay for two. My mom pays for four. Wow. Socialism is already here. Your mom pays for four. I don't know. My mom's out here just throwing dollars around.

She's just crushing Pete TV. Yeah, she is. Actually, not. They just discovered Netflix in the last six months. Are they into it? For the Irishman. It's because of altered carbon. It's all about the Irishman.

Irishman. They watched it in six settings, like Chris Ryan. That's right. That's like me. I watched it in two sittings. I feel like I've been getting lambasted for that. I've watched it in two sittings. I just haven't finished yet.

I want to talk to you briefly about this FX on Hulu and that they're bringing Terriers back because... Well, not back. It'll be available. It'll be available, which it had not been. And I was just thinking the other day,

you know, it was like, oh, you know, I wonder what will happen to... The generation basically of shows that don't find streaming service homes after their run. Or even more so, ones that are like on streaming services that are so niche or so attached to the channel that they were on

that just people don't even know that they're there. The one that I was thinking about that I feel like could really have a great second life, even though I think it had a pretty good first life, was Battlestar, Galactica, which was on the sci-fi channel. And none other than Sam M. Mel is working on a reboot of that show. For Peacock. For Peacock.

I don't know if Peacock will pick up the original and stream Probably. Yeah, I would imagine. But that's one show where I was like thinking, I was thinking about all the shows that have been kind of popular of the last few years, especially Westworld and how much of that is like in Battlestar and how like the soap opera, the timelines, the uncanny valley stuff, it's all in there.

And I thought that that would be a show that I could see having a real boom in streaming. Did you have one aside from Terriers? Well, let me say, I'm just thrilled Terriers is going to be available. It was on my top 10 of the decade, just a show that I love and think about a lot and just captured so beautifully a tone that inspired me as a fan and then as a creator. So I just think that's fantastic. A show that, it's funny, a show that the built into the narrative was that a few years later it would have survived. Because its ratings wouldn't have, because the plus three stuff would have mattered more, growth would have mattered more, critical response would have mattered more than it's. it was sort of the last show of a very live ratings dependent era when it premiered 10 years ago.

We've come full circle. Now I don't know if it would survive again because of its relatively niche spirit and vibe and ambitions. So I don't know if this answers your question, and it does speak to something that'll probably also end up on Peacock. But I was thinking a lot over the weekend about a little show called ER, which one of the great... Is on Hulu, I think. Is available on Hulu, yeah. One of the great shows of our lifetime, if not TV history, one of the most seismic events in TV history.

I mean, it was just... There was even for... We were 18 when that show premiered, or 70... We were seniors in high school, I believe. It premiered when your friends premiered 94-95. I mean, even for people who weren't paying attention to the industry. I mean, it was a seismic thing. It was a hit, like, it's almost impossible to describe how big a hit it was immediately right out of the gate, which was bad for us who had bet big on Chicago Hope futures, just being the medical show that was going to pop that year. I was so long on Chicago Hope. Lottie, Patinkin. You were years ahead on Pete Berg actor. Patinkin. Yeah. So, anyway, just to say that this is a, it was a huge monumental show. And I was thinking a lot about it, like, the role that it played in my life for years. I was,

watching it still in college. And the way that it did something so, it was both aesthetically kind of new and shocking and jarring, right? Because it was, because of the way it was directed in the intensity and the oneers and the way it made medicine seem like not like the friendly neighborhood doctor. It was pretty gnarly. Yeah. But it was also procedural and that there were new patients in every week and you could

just drop in and out over the course of the season. But it was deeply serialized in our relationships with these characters. Doug and Carol, man. Doug and Carol, but what about Mark and Susan? Yeah. It was really formative as well. And what's interesting to me, and this was the question I wanted to ask you, as shows like that have second, third, fourth lives or whatever,

I guess it was noteworthy in a way that I hadn't talked about or thought about that the next subsequent generations after ours have not only discovered and embraced the comedies of those eras, specifically friends, but then, you know, a couple years after that, well, 10 years after that, the office, whatever, if they've embraced them totally. Yeah. And embrace them with a brain that didn't, a type of media brain that didn't exist when we first watched them, which is to say with a streaming and binging brain.

Yeah. Like we have to watch all 200 episodes of friends to see the whole story. Sure. Which is not how they were intended. I don't think these generations have glommed on to the dramas of that era in the same I do think that there is a pretty healthy law and order. But there's no serialization there. Like that is...

No, I guess not. That is, I mean, I'm still pouring one out for George DeZunza's character, RIP. He made it one season before Pauli Sorvino jumped in. Yeah. But what I'm saying is you would think a lesson from the last 20 years of TV would be serialization is what hooks people and they love them and people love to binge, which is the premier way to watch serialized storytelling. But the dramas of that era haven't seemed to have adjusted. And I wonder if it's because they seem slow or the commitment seems too great in a phone and iPad culture. I don't know.

And so when you mentioned Battlestar Galactica, which is a hugely influential show to a lot of creators and is going to be brought back and is in that sweet spot, that kind of lost Friday Night Lights sweet spot of the, again, the premiered 2004, which suddenly is a long time ago. Will people discover it in the same way? or have people soured on that type of storytelling, if it's not Game of Thrones loud and in your face and of the moment, are people just going to keep snacking, so to speak? Well, I think that there's something to be said for the fact that the explosions of interest in friends in the office, while in terms of the way they were kind of blogged about and talked about made it sound as if people were as invested in Michael Scott or Ross Geller

as they were in Jack and Desmond on Lost or Tony Soprano. Is that who you were shipping on Lost? Moss, Jack and Desmond? Together, yeah. I was like, these two crazy kids, can't they make it work? We kind of missed the,

you guys remember that, like, what people were doing with friends and the office is what Andy and I were doing in 1991 when we would come home and put cheers on.

Yes. And we had no idea where in the run, sometimes Kirstie Ali was on, sometimes Diane Long was on. Shelly Long. Shelly Long. Diane was the person

that she played. Sometimes Shelley Long was, was on. It didn't really matter where in the arc of cheers it was. Sometimes coach was there, sometimes not. But it was essentially the same show every time. And that is the same thing for at least friends and to some extent the office. And I think that people kind of were like, oh, this nostalgic, you know, people are just watching the office because they're just getting back into that Obama era content and like that feeling of watching the office. I think it had way more to do with like, it was a very amusing show that you could have on like a nightlight.

And the same way when you would come home and you would be like waiting for your parents to come home from work and you would just turn the TV on and watch 80 minutes of sitcoms. We've spent 20 years hyping great works of art on television with good reason. And there's been incredible strides and incredible works of art and entertainment. Love is blind. But apparently. Yeah. But we also spent a lot of that time willfully blind to the fact that generally, millions and millions of people use TV the way they've always used it,

which is as a comfort and as a friend to hang out with people in situations that aren't too challenging. Yeah. And are entertaining and heartwarming, as you said. And there's nothing wrong with that. And, you know, we certainly have seen streaming services and Netflix like jump back in to multicam comedies. And there's a reason why, I mean, Peacock, which details aren't, you know, flowing out yet about it. But the spine of that is going to be comics.

The spine of that is the office and law and order. Right. Or other comedies. Yeah, yeah. Because that's what people want to watch on TV. And that hasn't changed. So I am curious, I guess, to see so much of, some, the previous 10, 20 years, so much of it was about TV clearing its throat and laying down a marker and saying this is the type of

stories we can tell in this medium and attracting all this attention and absorbing all of the energy from the middle grade movie that ceased to exist and getting movie stars and actors. And there's no question. that people loved Breaking Bad and the Sopranos, but how many people love those versus how many people continue to love the office. Smarter people than us are crunching these numbers and saying what drives ardor, what drives engagement and retention. You know, I think just anecdotally and vaguely, it seems like you need a combination of all

of it for a service to survive. Like something splashy and flashy, like a little fires everywhere, can drive media attention and drive people and drive eyeballs. that's for us. Yeah. For dedicated fans of the Rooneyverse, could drive people to a service like Hulu. Yeah.

But what's going to still keep them there week after week is you can watch your reruns of single parents the day after it airs, right? I mean, that you need a little bit of both. You can watch Grays on Friday. Yeah, that's what people, a lot of people use it for that. As far as your original question about whether or not

the dramas of our youth will see the revival that the comedies of our youth did, I don't know. I think that there was like an interesting sort of, revival of 24 when it returned a few years back, and I went back to it and watched a little bit of it, and while some episodes, some large swaths of it from the first few seasons are quite watchable.

It's a lot of episodes. Yeah, I think that's, that is definitely the barrier for entry and with good reason, which is where something, it was a different time where you could look at something like Twin Peaks now, especially the first eight or nine episodes, and it's still groundbreaking and totally unique. But the other shows that were being hailed at that period, for different reasons.

Like even Homicide Life on the Street. Homicide or taking it back a little bit earlier, Hill Street Blues or St. Elsewhere, which were... Miami Vice. Absolutely great shows in their era. They were also very much of their era. They were by nature diluted.

Yeah. They made too many of them. Like, Allie McBeal was fucking daffy, the stuff they had to come up with to make all those episodes. And they were... They were the best that anyone expected, honestly, at the time,

which sounds really snide. But it's also the tools the creators were... given, the expectations they were working under. That's what was created. So that age is less well than the theatrical, like, simplicity of a three-camera set up with some jokes. All of this is to say, of all the scenarios I gamed out for myself in my life, being the age that I am in the now the third decade of the new century that my daughter would be quoting Jody Sweeten from the first full house because she and her friends have discovered this show.

and love it. Is it on Netflix? Yeah. Did not see that coming. Wow. But I thought she would be quoting... Anthony Mackey from Altered Carbon. Or Buns, you know, from Hill Street Blues

and his friend's character. And then you had a short-lived spin-off. Remember Beverly Hills Buns? It's a shock that the stuff didn't take off. But ER being kind of on the cusp made me wonder because it is so comforting and familiar in its way and it's soap operatic. But it doesn't seem to be the same desire for that.

that because maybe we, maybe those itches are scratched in other ways by the 600 choices. Well, maybe once it's more in like, it's like, I think it'll be interesting to see what happens if the, if Peacock winds up really front and center at, like, promoting it as if it's almost like one of the flagship shows. Yeah, because it seems like a smart play to me. I mean, one of the things about Peacock that they've already announced is they're going to be showing Fallon and Myers early, so you can watch those in prime time. But you sandwich those with like five hours of office law and order and then maybe you run

ER at 7 p.m. or you run it at 10 p.m. where it used to be every night. you're almost going to get eyeballs by accident. Like, it's a very compelling and enjoyable show to watch. Yeah. I do not have any stock in ER, I should say. All my stock was in Chicago. It crashed.

It was like we had all the money tied up in caves in Chicago Hope. And that's why we pod twice a week now. Well, our cave stock is looking good. Our cave stock is coming back. Greenwald, you're the best. What a pleasure. What a journey. Bobby, thank you.

We've gone, it's almost as if we, the two of us, went into a dark sub-training space together. Did we go into the gift shop cave? The boy cave? I think we should stop podcasting now. Be sure to pay at the gift shop for instance.