The Watch - The Return of Dave Chappelle (Ep. 135)

Episode Date: March 23, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Cinemax’s breaking news about ‘The Knick’ (0:44), Netflix’s power plays in the stand-up comedy world (11:15)—including Dave Chappelle’s new two-part special (14:30)—and their feelings about the final season of 'Girls' (28:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get started, just want to say there's a podcast on Ringer University called Tied Up. And I've been listening to it religiously over the course of the NCAA tournament. If you want to get smart about college basketball, listen to Tate Frazier and Mark Titus, that's Tied Up, part of the Ringer University podcast network. 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 TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio.

He's a psychopath, not a sociopath. It's Andy Greenwald! Which one's worse? I'm not sure. In the case of Jessa and Hannah, who can say? It's really, it's an open question. But I'm glad that Girls is finally tackling the big issues in his final season. Yeah, Andy, we're going to get to Girls.

We're going to get to Dave Chappelle's two specials that he dropped on Monday night on Netflix. But first, we're going to talk a little bit of TV news. Breaking news. Yeah, I got my, like, my Hearst hat on. Yeah. It looks really good. This is a weird thing that came across the wire. today, which is that the Nick has been canceled after two seasons.

This actually may come as a surprise to most people who watch the Nick, because they probably assumed that it was canceled shortly after the second season. Yeah, we don't want to spoil it because you should really watch the Nick if you haven't watched the Nick, but it ended on a pretty definitive note. Yes. Some backstory to this, it was, I think, an open secret that it was not canceled, though, in terms of in the TV community and inside the business because they wanted to keep it going to some degree.

And I had heard stories that the main character of the show was actually going to be the hospital and they were going to jump time periods. I saw, you remember Chris Ryan, my podcast friend and partner. When we were at that Emmy party, we saw the god, we saw the god Andre Holland there. We did.

And I had to ask him. And he gave me, I said, are you coming back? Are you going to do something else with the Nick? And he, I don't want to burn him. He did not say yes or no. We don't burn sources in this country. We do not burn sources on this. No, that's one thing.

This country never does. Certainly not in front of microphones. But he raised a finger to his lips and gave a sly smile. Did you go full Devin Nunes when he told you this? You straight to this head of Cinemax? Do you know what Andre Holland just told me? I ran immediately to Carrie Antollas. And I was like, you got to get rid of the leaks.

Speaking of them. So I thought this was going to happen. I was really excited. I heard that they were reaching out to other directors maybe to do like Polis Soderberg, and it was very exciting. And even Soderberg himself, I think, had said in the past that part of what he wanted to do with Nick and, to some extent, the girlfriend experience, which was Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Simons directing and writing a series based on his film that he had made about 10 years ago or something,

was that they could basically act as like incubators for talented directors. I think you could take these ideas, and he could set up maybe a infrastructure for how to make them. And the Nick famously, it was pretty much a one-man shot, sort of directed and shot them and shot them in such a way that even the actors were sort of like, we're just like burning through pages. And he edited it himself, like often in the back of a car that was taking him back home so he could delve into the other culture that he was getting engaged in that night. Does he still do that? Does he still publish that at the end of the year? Like everything he's watching and read. His last media diary is awesome. I mean, every year he does a media diary of everything he's written,

watched, or everything he's read and watched. So anyway, all this is to say it's a huge bummer. for two reasons. One, because the Nick is one of our favorite shows the last few years. And I think really has fallen out of the conversation. I mean, it's fallen off the air. But it is an astonishing two seasons of television and absolutely gripping and on the highest possible level of direction, conception, production. And if you can handle the syringe in eyeball moments, it's just really, really entertaining TV.

The other reason why it's a bummer is that I don't know what this says about Cinemax. A year ago, I would have said Cinemax had three of the best slash most promising shows on TV. Banshee was coming to an end. The Nick was in, you know, in purgatory, but potentially coming back. And Corey was about to debut. And you and I loved Corey. Now I don't think it has any of those shows. And Outcast, too.

It seems to be in some sort of limbo. Outcast was the Kirkman show. Yeah. And a few, I think if not all of the episodes are directed by Adam Wingard, who was a director. I like quite a bit. He did Your Next. the guest and the Blair Witch reboot and has Death Note

coming on Netflix. Yeah, so it's and so in the statement today about the next cancellation, Carrie and Thalas said... I can read the statement. Let's just like Carrie talk for... Wow. Yeah. After a critically acclaimed two season run, the Nick of the Nick on Cinemax, we will not be going forward with additional episodes of the series, despite

our pride and affection for the series, as well as our respect and gratitude towards Steven Sauerberg and his team. We've decided to return Cinemax to its original primetime series fair of high-act-in action dramas, many of which will be internationally co-produced. So this is aside from Andy and I just sort of eulogizing the Nick, which we pretty much did when it went off when the season ended.

This is the first story that I remember coming out of a network basically being like the water's a little too deep. That's exactly right. That's very, very well-set. So every other place is just like content, content, content, I buy, bye, bye, bye. And now you're Cinemax saying, like, you know what, this is tough. It's tough to get Clive Owen. It's tough to get Steven Soderberg.

It's tough to pay for production. And even though, I mean, there's an interesting quote at the bottom. Your critics love the show, and I can't tell you how many studio executives around town have told me it's their favorite show on television. But it did not find an audience at the level that Banshee did, even though in terms of an HBO show, the Nick is a modestly priced show in terms of a cinematic show, it started to throw our budget out of whack. So that is, in a nutshell, that's not, you don't hear that from Netflix. You don't hear that from a lot of places. That's really interesting. Two reasons.

One, because we live in a world where halt and catch fire, which is watched by the two of us and maybe six other people, gets four seasons. The financial mumbo-jumbo at this point has become so obscure, but also so expected that we don't really think things are going to get canceled. It's all about putting content in the library, future, blah, blah, blah, yeah. The thing that may have thrown things off here, and I have heard this from Cinemax executives before,

is that the Nick really did speed things up to a degree that they may not have been comfortable with. And what I mean is the nick was developed for HBO. And you look at that, obviously, Stephen Soderberg, it's Clive Owen. HBO has a notoriously slow, some could say, considered development process. They only program on Sunday nights. So there's only so many slots for shows to be on. HBO wanted to make the Nick with Soderberg, but they were like, look, it's going to take a minute.

And Soderberg was like, that's not how I work. That's not how I work. This needs to get on the air. And so they did some things, and they got it on Cinemax, which is why everyone was sort of surprised that it was on there. But that may have sped up their timetable for becoming a player in a way that they weren't comfortable. Now, I know that they have other cool things in development. I know Jonathan Trapar, who did Banshee, has a couple projects coming. I don't know.

I think one of them has been announced. But it's a very interesting thing, just as fans of TV and watches the industry, to put a marker on. Because you said it exactly right. This is the first time a major player. And Cinemax is the little kid's sister of HBO. But a major player has said, Uncle. Like we kind of can't play in those waters anymore. Yeah, or even I think that, well, another thing that they're saying here,

the other part of the statement that's interesting is getting back to what our roots are, quote, unquote. And I do think that they... Which is me watching at 11 p.m. on a Friday night in middle school? Yeah, right. Because if you just switch back and forth on the channel a hundred times... It'll unscramble. No, it's this idea of going back to, like, genre fair, and that they can get a baseline audience for stuff like Strike Back.

that maybe doesn't require Clive Owen or to require, you know. Right. I mean, that is a smart marketing spin. And if you look at it, like these networks that are part of packages with bigger networks. Yeah, Sky Atlantic or wherever else, yeah. Well, or specifically, let's take an example of AMC is the Big Fish and Sundance Channel is the Little Fish. Rectify was developed for AMC, but it is a much, much smaller and slower show. It goes to Sundance.

So now AMC has Walking Dead. Preacher has these noisier things and Sundance has the smaller shows. If Preacher was on Sundance, it would sort of throw everyone's expectations out of whack. So I guess it makes sense in terms of brand identity, but we mourn the Nick. And I also, I don't want to prematurely mourn it, but I am concerned about the fate of Cinemax as, I want them to do genre. I just want them to do big genre like Corey. Can I ask you a question?

Because you remember how like when it was, and it's long been rumored and I think every six months or so, there's like a spike in activity about this story. This idea that they're going to do a Deadwood movie to like wrap up Deadwood. And one of the reasons why it was like you knew Deadwood was truly dead because they raised the set that they had built whatever it wasn't outside of in British Columbia or something. And, you know, the Nick, obviously they shot two seasons. They had the same backdrop in turn of the century New York. If they were considering let's move it to the 70s, let's do it to the 80s, let's move it to the 50s, whatever it was.

Is this question going to be about how would they do it with me, not in New York anymore? Because I've thought about that. I mean, how would they, was it probably maybe a more expensive proposition for them to say, we need to build all new sets, you know, get? Well, period shows are really expensive. Yeah. That's another good point. And especially if you shift period.

Well, right. I mean, I think that everything they had done, I mean, if you remember at the end of the second season, like basically they were moving the hospital and the new hospital burned down, so they could have created a new space. Yeah, I guess so. But yeah, whether it was going to be the 20s, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, who knows. But it would have been costly to do, no question. But it's a bummer.

But it's also interesting to see what it foretells about where we're headed. Yeah, we'll see where we are a year from now. Talk to you then. Yeah, okay. Bye, everybody. No, it's talk to take a break from our sponsor, and we will be back to talk about Shepel. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Sonos. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is turn on music, and it completely

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more and more as this stuff happens, as these stories come out about Netflix, is kind of check to this person and that person and this is going to Netflix. I'm just like, this is just really smart because people just keep talking about Netflix. Like the more and more, like their ability to transition

from a distribution platform to a content library or to a content maker, whether you think it's good or bad for the business, it's actually very impressive. Well, it's also taking a very big page out of the Amazon playbook, which is, you know, in many points over the last 20-plus years, Amazon could have been like, well, books really aren't selling the way they were last year,

and maybe we should reconsider, or we could start selling like aerial drones and wet wipes and literally everything. The more we grow, the more our investors are happy at the potential profits from that growth, and we can just keep going, going, going, going, and there's never any bottom. I mean, Amazon is famously never really turned to profit. It's just this incredible magical unicorn pony that keeps. jumping into different fields and making money off of them. Sure.

That is kind of what Netflix is doing. And I think you're right. I mean, you cannot, everyone wins, I think, when you cannot actually accurately quantify what you get in terms of PR for a $40 million investment in Chris Rock or Jerry Seinfeld or Chappelle or however. Or in this case, Dave Chappelle, right. Now, one of the things that, so they've already decided they've made inroads into television. They've made what we consider television.

and in some ways have changed the paradigm of how we process it because they've introduced this all at once binge streaming model. They've started to get into film financing and distribution. Netflix original is there's a War Machine, this Brad Pitt movie coming out soon that's sort of loosely based on Stanley McChrystal, I think. And now they've got this incredible toehold in the stand-up comedy game in a place where Comedy Central and HBO traditionally have been the powers in that field. Now Netflix is trying to debut.

one comedy special per week for the rest of 2017. It's so crazy. And I have to say, I'm very into stand-up comedy when it is put in front of me, but is not something I seek out and is not something I tend to think a lot about. Obviously, it has had, with everything from split-sider to some of the documentaries, like the aristocrats and stuff like that, that has sort of gotten into the inside baseball of comedy. It's become its own industry.

Podcasts. All of them. Yeah, right. And crashing, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. But just through Netflix, I have found that. Like, there's this time during the day on Saturday in between whatever I did during the day and before I go out at night because I go out every Saturday, brother. Your life sounds fire right now. And I'm like, well, should I watch something?

And I'm like, eh, I'll just watch Barbiglia. Oh, my God. I missed your life. So that's all the way of saying that this. Anyway, that's all I'm saying, you don't have kids yet. Anyway, yeah. And I'm Barron. That's always saying that that was the way that I had been processing Netflix stand-up specials up into now.

Is this sort of like ambient? Oh, that's cool. I'll watch a few minutes of that. Right. It's there for you. Check out Jen Kirkman for a few minutes. Why not? Chappelle's different.

Chappelle is its appointment viewing. Chappelle is, it's 9 o'clock on Monday. These things went up. Let's start watching them because he hasn't put out a stand-up special in 10 years. Yeah, he hasn't done anything in 10 years. Yeah. Chappelle hasn't done anything official. He doesn't have anything on his discography since 06, basically.

And then at SNL last fall. And his SNL last fall, it's announced that he's got these two specials coming. It's sort of, it's about as big of an event as you can have in stand-up comedy. So what did you think of he's got two specials, the Art of Spin, which was recorded in L.A. And then what was the Texas one called? Deep in the Heart of Texas. Deep in the Hard of Texas that he recorded in Austin prior to the L.A. one. Yeah, the Texas one is 15, 2015 about.

You can tell because of the Ebola jokes and the Ray Rice comments. The other one is 16 because he's talking about the O.J. show being. on the air. I watched them both. I found this fascinating, entertaining, funny, perplexing. Here's what it made me think about. You ready for this?

One word. Jandek. Like the obscure folk troubadour. Jandek, yes. Now, I was going to say some people may know. Most people might not know. That since 1975, records under the name Jandek

have been appearing at random intervals in like indie record stores across the nation for 40 years. No one knew who it was, why it was, what it was, they would just show up. Yeah. And someone was just carrying on a conversation with himself and with music and with the greater world, and the music was just appearing.

And it often was not in step with anything else. It would be like a blurry photograph on the cover of a dude. And dudes at Kim's at Kim's record store would be like, this is the truth. And here's what I'm, in the way I'm relating this to Chappelle is, since Chappelle went off the grid, he hasn't really been off the grid. He has been mostly touring and doing walk-ons at Carolines or the Improv, just showing up, dropping in, doing sets that from what we've heard, anecdotally, could go on

for hours where he's just smoking cigarettes and sitting on the stage and talking to people. He has the music in him, right? He has the freak folk in him. He is the prince who was promised of stand-up comedy. I mean, he started doing this in D.C. when he was 16. He is the natural.

Yeah, the first O.J. story that he tells, of which are basically the framework of the L.A. special. Yes. Is I'm 18 in Santa Monica. And it hasn't happened yet. And he meets Nicole. So what I'm saying is he, this is a compulsion for him.

This is what he was born to do. And clearly, judging from these specials, he was prepared to bring to come back. He was documenting these things. Who knows how many of them were taped? Who knows how many were considered to be released? Who knows what kind of an archive he has? What was interesting to me about this is neither felt particularly ready for prime time. Neither felt polished.

Neither felt like a statement. They did not feel like to continue to continue. the metaphor. They didn't feel like albums. They felt like just dispatches, just showing up from a post office box, in this case in Ohio. And through that lens,

I thought they were great because they are this insight into this totally unique, totally compelling comedic mind. If it sounds like I'm couching a criticism in there, I am to some degree because I wish there were statements. But I feel like at this point,

again with the Jandek thing, he's not that dude. Yeah. The parts in both specials that I found, kind of cringy, really stemmed from when he was dancing around things that are a little hot button, and then he was stopped dancing and he would just cannonball into them, and then he would duck away and laugh at himself and do that move that he does where he just sort of drops his mic.

He's like, I can't believe I did that. I'm just playing. And he mentions Chris Rock, who he's very close with in, I think, both specials. Chris Rock hones the knife blade. You know, Chris Rock doesn't take four or five years off, and then he tours. and when he does a special, which he's doing for Netflix, he's on tour now, it is a sniper bullet. And if he wants to say something about what Chappelle wanted to talk about, which was who gets rights first, who earns your pain? Like, who suffers more?

Oppression Olympics. Oppression Olympics, which would have been an amazing sketch on Chappelle show season 10. The Chris Rock bit would have slayed with a through line, right? It would have just landed. Chappelle is just, he's just working the speed bag, and sometimes he misses it. And that is part of the process. So I found that fascinating in the way that I find artistic fumbles and stumbles and success is fascinating. I did find myself missing that hammer.

But he walked away. He didn't want to be the statement artist anymore. That's why he walked away. I mean, I can't pretend to guess his psychology, but I think that he would rather see his art played out in a continuum rather than in these, in a vacuum bursts. The thing that you're talking about, there's a lot of, you know, and this has been in a lot of the reviews positive and negative of the shows.

It's just highlighting the fact that Chappelle's attitudes, whether or not they're the persona of him as a comedian or him personally, his attitudes towards the LGBT community is a suss. You know, it's a little suspect. It's a little behind the times in terms of like where a lot of people are at. And it's also, if you're a homosexual person, if you're a trans person, you might find it quite offensive. The stuff on his show,

And when it was Chappelle's show, was delivered, I think that there were all these veils of irony. And there are these characters and there were story. And there was, obviously, it was working even if it was so rule breaking for sketch comedy, but it was still happening within a Comedy Central televised half hour. And that's not there with this. This is direct from the source. You know, this is direct from Chappelle. And I think he is well aware of what people's reaction might be to what he's saying.

and I think that that actually fuels like his interest in provoking and confronting people with their biases and what they're sensitive about. Aside from all that, you know, that to me is not a disqualifier from finding him funny, frankly. I agree. And, you know, maybe I have the luxury of saying that because I'm a straight white man. But I will say this. He is as acerbic about himself as he is about anybody else and is kind of find out. is mirth in his own failures as much as anything else. And just as somebody, like, if anybody who's ever spoken in public for more than 30 seconds,

just the mechanics of what he does is, it's like watching an amazing musician or athlete. It is incredible to watch him tell a story. I mean, the way that he tells stories, the way he does dialogue between characters, this timing, his physicality. When to hit like a, hey! Right. It's, his rhythm is really unparalleled. And I wonder, and next time we have someone who is a stand-up comedian come join us in here,

I'd love to talk to this person about it. Because one of the things that I was feeling about watching these specials is you may not like these shows. First of all, if you're offended by these shows, I can see plenty of reason why someone might be. But the second comment would be if you don't like these shows, just because you didn't, or for whatever reason, it might be because you're a fan of things that are funny and you're a fan of jokes and you're a fan of laughing, but you might not be a hardcore fan of stand-up comedy as an art form. Because I feel like what he is doing is something pure and closer to the bone,

you know, in the way that he stepped away from all those other things because this is what he wanted to do. What he wanted was to go on stage and be challenged and challenge back and to say the things that he cannot say. And be fucked up if he's on stage. Yeah. Or be completely on if he's on stage.

Yeah. He is one of the comedians who, all comedians embellish, all comedians make up stories. But for some reason, when he's telling these stories about the lesbian parents at his kids' private school or the one really weird whiff misfire of both specials, the gay Hollywood producer backstage at the Oscars, when Chappelle's telling us these stories, I don't believe them for a second. I just don't. I don't believe these people exist in this way. Usually when you hear people talk about, like when Chris Rock was talking about his wife or apparently in the special he's recording now when he talks about his divorce, like you know it's embellished. but he's talking about his life and people.

I think Chappelle is creating things out of whole cloth to try them out and to say the things that he can't say. I mean, he lives on a farm in Ohio with his three kids and his wife of 16 years. He doesn't go out, right? He doesn't do those things. He's testing it out and playing it. And I, as someone who, I mean, I find this whole thing,

I do find it fascinating, the mechanics of stand-up. And I think that watching him do this is its own kind of entertainment. It's just not always the same bang for the buck as a tightly sculpted hour as Louis's New Hour or Seinfeld's New Hour or Malaney's New Hour. Right. I mean, I think what you're seeing is the explosion of interest in stand-up

and the interest in the mechanics of stand-up and the industry behind stand-up is going to just draw way more eyeballs and it's got a lot of people interested in it that weren't interested in it before. And those people are like, hey, man, what you just said is fucked up. That's not cool.

Like what you just said offends me or offense my, you know, and stand-ups are like, that's the point. you know, the point is that, like, that's, and a lot of people don't go to stand-up to be, like, confronted or offended. They are like, I'm going to laugh. Two drinks. You make me buy two drinks, and you make me laugh. It's transactional. It's transactional.

And this is, but when you get outside of that and stand-ups are like, no, I'm the mirror of society. Or, like, I have to have complete unchecked freedom on stage to say whatever is going through me and to challenge people's notions about what is and isn't funny and what is. isn't tragic or anything like that. That's where you're going to get this dialogue happening. That's why we're talking about this instead of like the mechanic. I mean, nobody wants to hear us to be like my favorite joke is this. But that's why we're talking about that instead of, oh, we're so happy Chappelle's back. These are my five favorite jokes.

I mean, I have to say my favorite parts weren't necessarily jokes. My favorite parts in them were the ones that felt the most revealing or most bare. And I would say when he talks about the person who threw a banana peel at him, when he talks about taking his son to see Kevin Hart in this extended bit, that really there's no punchline. It's just his own humiliation and his own feeling of his own competitiveness in the sphere. Yeah, he brings it off about Key and Peel too. And about Key and Peel. And but for me, the most interesting part by far, you know, going into it, I didn't try not to read reviews, but I did know that the LA one was quote unquote the tighter one. but I wasn't really sure what that meant.

In the second one, in the Texas one, midway through, he gets a little rattle or someone yells back at him when he's talking about the word pussy. And then he just sits down and he asks for a smoke and everyone throws cigarettes at him. And then he just goes on this

goes on a journey that involves Lil Wayne in a CSI episode. And no, I'm not going to repeat any of that on this podcast. And that's the weirdest. That's the bonus episode. That's the weirdest part, right? Yeah.

Like when he's just, okay, let's do this, you know. Well, that gets back to Jandak. That gets back to Jandak, which is really what I wanted to talk about. That gets back to this idea of is he, he's somebody, but Jandak never was called the comic genius of his generation. You know, Janek never had a show that changed how people thought about comedy. Well, Janek didn't have a pop, like he didn't have the, right, he didn't revolutionize music and then disappear. It's almost like if Dylan just never came back from the underground after he got in a motorcycle accident. Basically.

or if Dylan just released Jandek records every once in a while but didn't come out and do the damn thing. We didn't officially do it, so I apologize, I caught you off here because I did watch a little bit of, we were maybe going to talk about the Gerard Carmichael special that's on HBO called 8. I checked out a little bit of it. I'm a big fan of Gerard as a person, as a comedian,

his sitcom as well, and it was interesting to watch it because his thing is to kind of be that guy. as well. He revels in being the comedic, the young comedian equivalent of Slate.com, basically. Like, he begins the special

by being like, I don't care about global warming. I take long showers because I think we're going to be fine. And come on, it's exhausting to care about anything. That's his thing. And he stands there,

and he's incredibly charming, and he has, you know, his effect that he does on stage. And it's challenging, you know, and that's sort of the word word that is used to describe him, but he's also somehow more cuddly, you know. But the other thing you take away from it, and I mean this has no slate at all to Gerard,

who I think is tremendous, tremendous talent is at the beginning of his career is just how much more experienced being on stage Chappelle is. And it's unfair to compare any comedian to Chappelle. I wouldn't do that to anyone. But, you know, just the things you're talking about, just that just the sheer ability to make funny out of nothing, to physically create comedy. That's the more amazing thing to me about it. But to bring it full circle, I do think it's kind of an outlier in potentially Netflix's strategy

because these are glimpses of a superhero but from a year and two years ago. And the real benefit to me of doing a show every week would be the potential topicality of it. I mean, you could, if you really have this bang, bang, bang system of recording them, you could be getting people joking about, you know, this healthcare Hindenburg like next month. Yeah. And that would be a plus. So instead of having Paula Dean jokes in 2017. Exactly.

Like, here's the thing. Like, life comes at you fast, man. But when he's just joking about Ebola, I was like, oh, yeah, we were really worried about them. That really did happen. And now that seems almost quaint. Yeah, I know. Let's talk about, I wanted to touch briefly on girls because we haven't really touched on it since. You had a conversation with Lena a couple weeks ago after the American Bitch episode.

And then there's been a couple weeks since then. And I can't remember a show that has divided opinion among people I know like this in a long time. Sketch out. Tell me the battle. Tell me the sides. I think there's three. It's really good. Like as good as it was in the first season.

It's really good, but it doesn't make any sense anymore. And then there's, it's bad. Wow. And. Which camp are you in? I think I am in between the first and the second. I always find girls an enjoyable watch. So it's always like the aftermath that is like when it starts to unpack.

I did think that it is pretty much abandoned its relationship to its characters more or less in a lot of ways. And part of that I know is that and if you listen to Jam Session a couple weeks ago, they had Sarah Hayward who wrote, who's a writer for girls and she was talking a little bit about the switching of the episode order that they did. Oh, I didn't. And how they moved the finding out about the pregnancy was supposed to happen before American Bitch, but they flipped the episodes. And I thought that would have made American Bitch make a lot more sense. I know you loved that. But I thought it would have explained a little bit about why Hannah was the way she was in that episode, which was very sober and very...

Interesting. Yes. But I think that they made the right choice in terms of not just taking away from the impact of this basically standalone episode because it would have interrupted a cliffhanger more or less. I can see both sides. But that's very interesting. So, yeah, I think I am. I always enjoy girls pretty much at a steady hum. I think that it is strange to be spending this much time.

Like, this is a strange plot line to take up the last few hours that it's going to be on the air. But I don't know. I mean, I guess I kind of, I can't, I have to reserve judgment on it until we figure out what's going to happen. Last seasons are hard. Last seasons are especially hard for shows that thrive on being about potential. Right? I mean, this is, it's not a sitcom, but it is a half hour, it's a half hour, whatever that means these days. And it's got jokes.

It's got jokes. But it's essentially about characters who are a mess and trying to figure it out, which means the stories could have been about anything as it developed. And, you know, we've talked many times about how that was one of the appeals and ultimately frustrations about the show because, you know, we don't even know how these people knew each other at a certain point or why they knew each other. As shows gone for longer and longer, they all of them start to bend around the show. the framework of TV to some degree. We've praised girls for that with the Jess and Adam relationship. But it does still feel a little odd that suddenly everyone is cresting on this wave of personhood or adulthood, right? Everyone is having these crises at the exact same moment.

And fair enough, they're 27, which that happens to us. I think that's fair. It does happen to a lot of people. But the degree that it's happening to everyone except Shoshana, who I don't really know. I think he's only been in like two scenes. She hasn't really been on the show very much yet. That's been a little heart. So, like, I think one of the first times that I've ever been, like, really to the show

was when Hermie died the other week after the other character died. I was just like, you didn't need that double beat of the death. And then the guy dies so conveniently if you're giving the speech. But even then they do that. Yeah, yes, I agree with you. That was just nudging it a little too far. And I would imagine that Lena or Jenny Connor would agree, you know, but they wanted to set people in motion in a certain way. And that was the way to do it because that's a TV thing.

That's the way things happen on TV. I, the pregnancy, I don't know. I wasn't sure what they were going to do with it, and we still aren't sure. It led to one of my favorite line readings and biggest laughs of the year, which was when stoned Becky Ann Baker was like whispers, leans across the dumplings. And the whispers, every time I look at your child, I will imagine my own death. which was maybe line of the year. And it also has, it is the ultimate vehicle for other people to project on, which I kind of like that the show has done this.

I haven't seen that in many other media. When, you know, when someone says that they're having a baby, it immediately, most people, especially when it's a younger person, everyone you tell that to makes it about themselves. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm a little bit disappointed. That was entertaining. It's not that I'm disappointed.

It's just that I acknowledge that the show is, steering into some sincere old school tropes of OTPs and pregnancy, which is like those are two of the most well-worn late period sitcom tropes. Well, the OTP, one true pairing, you mean. This is what I wanted to say. I will draw, this is my line in the sand here. Please, please, please, please don't put Hannah and Adam back together. I know that's where we're headed with these longing looks and these terrible movies

that he somehow made in a week. I Adam and Jesso was like a really cool thing to have happened for this show and it made sense

as much as I mean I know look at it I mean we're talking about fictional characters but in terms of but for all the permutations

and and you know hot yoga backflips they had to do to even have a reason for these people to be in the same room after four or five seasons

that one made sense and it felt like a breath of fresh air on the show for all the things the show has tried to be about one of the

first and foremost of them is, you know, people make choices and their consequences and they keep moving. To go back into that relationship, which kind of never really made sense as a relationship anyway, would be a bummer. Because it's the same bummer that many of these shows make. And then it would be a little bit disappointing. I'll end by saying this. It would be a little bit disappointing that a show that began with unfair comparisons to sex in the city ends with another direct comparison to sex in the city. That's well put. Okay.

We're going to be back Monday. We're going to do a special episode. about the music of 1997. We did an episode last year about the music of 1996.

But we're in a very specific 10-year anniversary period right now for 1997 music where a bunch of albums that Andy and I love were released

in this sort of March of 2007. Yeah, so maybe we'll have, on Twitter, we'll put up like a listening list or something ahead of Monday.

And we didn't talk crashing. So next week, we got to do crashing. Yeah, we got to crash. I think maybe Thursday for the next for the next re-up, we'll catch up

on Legion a little bit. We'll do crashing. A little bit. You're done after next week. I'm expecting the full red carpet treatment in this room. We'll find out who my father is. Anyway, until then,

great job. Great job to you, Baranski. Great job. Thanks to Sonos for sponsoring today's show. Sonos is a wireless home sound system that fills your home with pulse pounding sound. From streaming services to your downloads, including audiobooks, and what do you know, podcasts, Sonus lets you play it all.

And with the Sonos app, you can play a different song in every room, adjust the volume, and manage other settings straight from your phone. So you can enjoy all the sounds you love anywhere in your home. Just go to s-o-n-os.com to learn more.