The Watch - The Top 10 TV Shows of 2025

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Chris and Andy talk about the tragic passing of legendary filmmaker Rob Reiner and his indelible impact on Hollywood over the years (3:30). Then they look back at this year in TV (14:14), run through a handful of honorable mentions (28:49), and reveal their top 10 shows of 2025 (55:41). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Production Supervision: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away. Trimfaya, gusalcumab, taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaques psoriasis, who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy, and for adults with active psoriotic arthritis. serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur.

Before a treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimfaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world.

The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now.

Hello, and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, the best of the year every year. It's Andy Green World! Do you want to do a top... I did a little Liam Gallagher there. Did you? You know, just like a little, like, oh, backed away from the microphone.

But were you leaning in, looking slightly constipated and then leaning back? Yeah. I'm going to go out on this year the way I came into it. Provoking Oasis fans. I saw what might have been a fake Liam Gallagher tweet where he said, I'm doing Pilates drinking sparkling water and got addicted to reading. I think that was my tweet. What are you talking about?

Fake Liam Gallagher tweet. That's my 2025. It's good to see you. Do you want to do like at the end of this pod or maybe Kaya could do it? Like top 10 performances of me on a top 10 pod on this pod? Like what year was my best? Oh, like across. I mean, I have some thoughts on that.

Do you answer that too quickly? Yeah, I've got Goldsberg. making your shot chart right now. Andy, today is our annual Best TV of the year episode. We're going to do it a little bit differently this year, so we're excited to talk to you about that. Before we get started, housekeeping,

inbox, Instagram, YouTube. It's the watch at Spotify.com. We're doing a mailbag to end the year, so please set us up. We've got some great questions so far, but we can always use some more. Instagram, the WatchPod underscore, if you want to follow us there.

YouTube, you can watch us on Ringer-Dash TV. You can also watch us on Spotify, where I hope you're listening to us. Here's our schedule, right? now. So today, obviously, we're doing best of the year. Thursday, I think we'll be a normal podcast if it's not our mailbag, but you'll have an episode on Thursday. I believe you will also have episodes Monday and Thursday next week. Wow. We shall see. And then we're going to be off for the last week of December or early January. We'll be back on the 5th, I believe it is.

What else do I have to tell you? I definitely wanted to say that I appreciate how, you know, Kaya did her best to make our Instagram real stuff very sticky, you know, like very controversial. And I feel like last week, Kai kind of did some really nice reputation shaping to make me more like the older, mailer, less informed Kyla Scanlon because it was like real businessy.

Let me explain how money works. Yeah, which I don't understand at all or no, nor am I qualified to opine on. But I really appreciated that guy. I guess I'm curious, like, why this seems to be the central preoccupation of your life is what our watch to social media strategy is. Yeah, because it feels very invasive. Like I, you know, for years.

It's invasive. You're a podcaster. Well, okay, but that used to mean that we would go into a dark room and talk. I could be like missing a tooth. And that was fine. Now, like on a weekend, I just happened to open up my old Apple phone. And the first thing I see is this stupid face being like I, mad because I'm not. what you can do.

Mute yourself. Mute the watch. Unfollow us. Why would I mute the watch? It's like collaborate with us on this reel. Like everything is promotion, man. You know? Yeah.

I have an uncomplicated relationship with it, you know? With fame? Yeah. That's why you can find me at the Red Sea Film Festival. What better place for creativity and expression of the arts? I'm stalling because I don't want to do this at the top. We should probably acknowledge the really, I mean, just absolute fucking trash weekends. This is a dog shit weekend. But, you know, Sunday news broke that Rob Reiner

and his wife, Michelle, were murdered at their home in Los Angeles. And this story is, it's obviously tragic and heartbreaking and also kind of pushes beyond belief, as many headlines do over the last few years. And there's really, like, I mean, I can talk a little bit. We can talk a little bit about Reiner who I think his affability and his gregarious public persona almost betrayed the enormous importance and influence and, you know, a body of work that he has contributed to entertainment over the last half century longer, both as a filmmaker and as an actor. I was going through his filmography yesterday and I'd kind of even just forgotten that he was recently on the bear. And when you go from all in the family to the bear,

with Stand By Me, a few good men, and when Harry met Sally and Princess Bride in between. I mean, an unbelievable life and career. And to place him in just an unbelievably and unbroken chain of American entertainment from his father, Carl, and thinking about Rob Reiner growing up in Los Angeles, best friends with Albert Brooks, whose father was also like coming out of that post-Vodville performance.

lane and the way they took that baton and made what had started as sort of niche kind of very Jewish comedy and then like became like the language of comedy and the language of togetherness and button pushing socially aware entertainment for decades. Yeah. Um, is really moving and honestly makes this kind of blow like really, really hard to swallow both on a personal level for someone who we didn't know. Although I did, I did have, I did spend time with it once, which I don't know if we've ever talked about. But, but also just, just, it's part of our shared cultural memory.

Yeah. And just a horrific tragedy. And an absolutely garish end to a life. Like, you know what I mean? It's appalling. Yeah, it's really, really, really sad. This is meaningless, but I, I just had this like this, I got shuttered thinking about, like, I don't want Mel Brooks to know about this.

Right. I don't, I don't want this. Yeah. This is so awful. A couple years ago, I was, I was, I don't know how this happened, but I became like the de facto moderator for this producer, Dan Lynn. He's now head of film for Netflix. When he was an independent producer, he, very community-oriented kind of guy, and he would have these like salons with filmmakers or cultural people and for an invited guest list. And I, I

moderated a few of them, and that's how I got the chance to be on, like on a dais with Richard Donner before he died, which is really cool. And one, we did was the anniversary of Castle Rock Entertainment. So it was all the founders of Castle Rock, including Rob Reiner, and it was just like these old, extremely successful men. And it was really moving to see the way that they talked about working with each other and how they picked the Seinfeld Chronicles script off the slush pile or whatever. But it was also incredibly fortunate and memorable to be in the same room with a guy who was so completely comfortable being himself. Everyone gravitated,

toward him. Everybody wanted stories with him. Everybody wanted to share their stories about his entertainment that they loved. Very familiar with this, very used to it, very comfortable being professionally Rob Reiner. But the gravity and the presence of a person like that who has lived such a deep life that went, that burrowed and furrowed and burrowed into every aspect of our cultural memory since we were alive is just. Yeah, I mean, in some ways, like, you know, obviously he's thought of as a different kind of filmmaker, but like he and Spielberg, honestly have as much to do with like the way that like shaped my ideas about like what happened on big screens when I was a kid and really like I think I can look at like several of his

film sure thing stand by me and then a few good men as and to some extent Princess Bright as like these little like markers in my life you know what I mean like of like yeah high school or you know maybe a somewhat more self-aware, late teenager, thinking about, like, my life. It's just an incredible contribution. We didn't even talk about when Harry met Sally, or we didn't talk about spinal cap. Or American president, yeah.

It also speaks to a kind of whenever we, in our aging cusp gen X or whatever we are way, mourn the death of a monoculture, I think at its best, sometimes what we're thinking, about is a Rob Reiner movie, which sort of moved, it's like an Overton window of like what was the most mainstream entertainment possible. Yeah.

And they could be gentle like Stand By Me was, or they could be as he matured as a filmmaker, like a few good men is a big, meaty prime rib of American entertainment of the type that isn't really made anymore. It was made for everyone to be like, oh, that's a compelling adult movie with movie stars in it. It's not like a small fiddly thing on the margins, which is the sort of thing that gets nominated for

Oscars these days, nor is it Avengers 4. Right. It doesn't exist anymore, but he was the bedrock of that kind of entertainment for our life. Yeah, he'll be missed and just an absolutely terrible loss. Why don't we take a quick break, and then we'll come back and we'll do our 10 best of the year. Okay, man, here we are. It's the 10 best of the year time.

Now, here's a little bit behind the scene stuff. Yeah, this is good. Processes everything. Process over results. Well, okay. So this episode is historically one of my favorite ones to produce over, you know, to do with you over the years. I thought you meant like in the Lindsay Buckingham way like you also produced it. Yeah.

But I, like Guy is like you're meeting over her on the board. Andy, he's just got to take Andy down. Take Andy way down. This is where I talk about lioness. So what happened is I was about midway through this year, I started to get a sneaking suspicion that you and I were going to have very similar lists. So similar in fact that it would be a little bit of a boring podcast. Alarmingly, I went back through the last four, five, six years of our show, and I looked at these lists, and in the, especially post-Sam S-mail era, and Sam, obviously, is a beloved part of this pod. I have a statement from Sam.

Do you really? For today's pod, yeah. Did you do some reporting? I did. I did. Boots on the ground reporting. Like Nuzzie style or? Well, how it started.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how it's going to end. But yes, in the sense that I fired off a text to him as I was getting in the car this morning to come. And he responded. He did. That's nice of him. Do I want to know what it is before I say this or after? No, let's finish our...

Sam was an invaluable part of these episodes because he broke up our group think. Now, Annie and I cannot apologize because we've just known each other for a really long time. And we have very similar tastes. It's probably why we're friends. And you can kind of hear that over the course of the year on the pod. Now, often what will happen is there's like six, five or six shared shows. four or five, you know, personal choices. And placement can vary.

I kind of had a feeling, even up until the last couple of weeks, that we were going to have, like, pretty much locked in lists. I thought maybe it would be more interesting this year is to present a top 10 that is the Watch's top 10. Yeah. And we also, I did, we did ask Kyya if she wanted to contribute

and she will be correcting the record at certain points, but for the most part, did not want to do her own top 10. I didn't ask her for what it's worth. Well, I asked her before we started the show. I did not have enough time to watch a good amount of time. Did you notice that I didn't ask you for yours? I apologize.

Honestly, it's like you can either be nominated for a Golden Globe or you can watch fucking television. You can't do both. What's beautiful about this is like originally, I think Sam dipped out of participating in this because he was like making a movie. Yes, he was watching too. He wasn't watching enough television.

He was making a feature film. And Kaya had to dip out because she is nominated for one of Hollywood's major awards. awards. And yet you and I, the work goes on. You know what I mean? Like, we don't begrudge anyone their success. Year in, year out, here we are. So what we're going to do is Andy and I have chosen five call them honorable mentions, call them 10 to 15, call them also our most loved television of the year. There will be no repeats on that. Yeah, we each picked five wild cards, so to speak. I think that if we, and maybe it would be useful to share at some point, like I think

each of us had, did generate an individual top 10. Some of the five on our wildcards were on our top tens. Yes. But we decided to make a Borg style. In the spirit of consensus. In the spirit of Fulibus. In this beautiful. Yeah.

We love these shows. This was inspired by being, by Senator Cory Booker posting a video of the five living presidents in 2009 in the Oval Office being like, we wish each other well. You really, your algorithm is incredible. Do you know what my algorithm is? It's just you and Dem senators? No, it's actually all soup content. It is all soup.

Some of it is an Italian, but it is all people making variations of the same chicken soup, and I watch all of it. It is just slop, just pour it into my mouth. It's slop, it's soup slop. It is wild. Okay, so this is Sam S. Mail weighed in.

And he said this was okay for public consumption and attribution? You know, I assume when you text a reporter... You text a public figure. Exactly. You know what I mean? mean. Exactly. As Mark Sanford learned, you know, it's all a fair game. He said, this message is more to you and Chris. That's me and you. Not to, and this is what he said, my dwindling, non-existent watch fan base, which is far too self-deprecating. I'm glad he's

keeping up on the... It may be dwindling, but it is vocal. Yes. It is a strong, strong vocal minority. My hope is your number one is Andor. My fantasy wants it to be the chair company, but the correct answer is obviously the rehearsal. Good job by you. Yes. Good job by you. Which was the last time he did this, I think it was 23. Right.

That was also the year that he spent an hour boring a hole into us. Yeah. The rehearsal was his number one, so I'm not surprised. Yep. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the year in television. Yeah, I'd like to. I have a couple of different places we can start. So we're going to do our, we're going to talk about.

the year we're going to do our fives, our spicy fives, and then we're going to unveil the top 10. That's right. Great. I thought that this was an excellent year in television and that the best shows of the year and the best TV of the year I would put up against any TV from this decade. I have had years where there are 25 to 35 shows that are in the conversation. Yep. I found very little room in the top 10 this year.

I felt the same way. I felt like the shows that I loved, the shows that I had at a tremendous amount of respect for, kind of just staked their claim. And there was no moving them off the block, not unlike Andre Drummond. So resurgent this year. Yes. Great. So, I mean, how did you feel in terms of the dispersion and in terms of like how many shows were competing,

how many shows you considered for this? I was grateful when we shifted to, like Wheel of Fortune, to the, let's, just give him R-S-T-L-N-E method of doing this list because I was struggling. And last year, notably, I just had a shrug emoji on my list. I put three-body problem on my list just for the lulls because I liked the idea of what that show was. I enjoyed watching it. Some of it was excellent and some of it was awful.

And I found that engaging. And that is, that's fun. That's a fun zag. I think people loved it. Yeah, people were just like, this guy, Andy, got to have him at a dinner party. He's electric. You never know what he's going to do. next. But it was also, you know, in the fullness of time, I think it was an admission of kind of a

relatively weak year that I could indulge something like that. Sure. That was not the case this year where if we hadn't, if we hadn't broken it up, I was really struggling with what I was going to put on and what I was going to leave off. Yes. I think that the highs, and I think you and I will quibble about some numbers, but, you know, between four and six were just, not just locks for this year, but would compete in most years, and we can make a case for greatness. I would say four, I would think, would be on every critics list. Should be, honestly. Two of them, I think, are no, duh.

We were always going to love this. And then there are a few that we just obviously were very passionate about. I am a little bit self-conscious about the fact that it's becoming a bit of rhetorical crutch for me to be like, this is already on my top 10, 25 times over the course of a year. but I am sitting with the goat who declared presumed it isn't the show of the year it's solved television last year

yeah he's a great pilot you know I say that about the consensus and I say that about oh these four shows should be on every critic's top ten kind of a fascinating critically at the end of the year I found it just a fascinating variance between critic to critic

you know I think that our list will have a lot of similarity would say Allison Herman at Variety used to work at the Ringer. I thought there are some others that I was just like, damn, I don't even know

if I watched that, you know? I tried my best to check in on some stuff. I will admit that I did some cramming in the last couple of weeks. But for instance, Daniel Feinberg had Mussolini

Son of Century, which is a movie series directed by Joe Wright about Mussolini and his rise to power and eventual fall. Oh, spoiler. Yeah, sorry.

That was his number one show, Hollywood Reporter. Damn. Like, there is a lot of, like, this is what I like this year going on. And I think that that probably speaks to a, you know, the strength of the year, if people can feel passionate about it much different stuff. And also, I think maybe the lack of, I mean, maybe it's just the lack of critical consensus that we're experiencing. And that's the same thing for film right now as we see an LMAK critical revival four days

after it's been released. Well, I mean, I think, first of all, I'm here for that. I'm ready to have a conversation about that. I would go out of my way to see that movie. Yes. You know that about me. I think that there's two, not to critique the critics, but I do think there's different spirits with which people can do these lists.

And for example, Robert Lloyd, who's the television critic at the LA Times, I think year to year has a list that everyone should check out because it's not just that he is contrarian, because I don't think he is at all. I think that he's celebratory often of things that, I mean, I learned about the existence, like you were just saying about the Mussolini show, like on Robert Lloyd's list at the LA Times. I learned about some animated shows that I'd never heard of, a show called Damascus, a black science fiction show on Tubi.

Oh, right. Well, you had mentioned this to me, but I didn't even realize this. The Cooper Rafe show, Halen Harper, which is very good. Which I have not checked out, but I wish that I had. I think that it's, broadly speaking, it's good for the medium when some of these lists look like top 10 record lists from 20 years ago where it's just like, I am making a strong case

not for this indie record, not because I don't like Beyonce, but because this moved me in a way that I'd like to communicate to you. So that's very cool to see. I think that at the top, what we are seeing coming out of the five-year death spiral

of COVID and the strikes, we are seeing TV get some of its swagger back in a new era in terms of like we can make things that work for right now that harken back to classic, relationships with television shows, but feel of the moment, feel, there's a reason to be getting behind these things. And I'm not only talking about the pit, which obviously is on our main top 10 list. There's also, this is also the year when I think I'm starting to feel not just my age,

but the age of the medium and the age with which we talk about it. Because I look at the way that my kids engage with culture. And it's not that my older daughter doesn't want to, TV. She was very adamant that I mentioned that Wednesday season two was her number one show of the year. Yes. Even higher than Summer I turned pretty season three. But that for her, new TV shows are kind of, it's like everything has slipped or wrong. New TV shows are events the way movies have become events. Yes. But they otherwise don't really compete with the endless churn of vertical videos, which is how people watch and engage with the world now. Yeah, I think it's like, what we're going to see is that, you know, you have people who don't know life without the internet.

And then you have people who don't know life without smartphones. And soon we'll have people who don't know life without binge watching and without that kind of personalized, curated algorithmic relationship to what is quote unquote on TV. The idea, I don't even know if your daughters could operate a cable guide button. would they even know what like would they just be like what do you mean i have to wait a half an hour to watch this movie what do you mean i have to press down down down down down to get to the next screen yes i know that's asking a lot that'll be if we're doing this pod 10 years from now i mean if we are i can't wait i can't wait guy has eight golden globes it's not just kai it's like she's beaming in from kawai you know but kai is going to have a pool of surprise like everyone who touches

goes on to greatness. The coaching tree of this pod is amazing, but we don't do it for the glory. That's right. We're just waiting for Lizza to drop part 98 of Telos. Liza or Lizzo? Lizza. Okay. I just, I misheard you. I thought we were joking about those wacky kids. I don't joke

about the Fourth Estate. I take it very seriously. One other thing I would note that is for as much as you and I loved a lot of the same stuff, I think it's worth interrogating whether or not not liking things is contagious. So there were a few shows this year

that, and this is actually born out of a chat I was having with Joanna Robinson about end of the year lists. And she pointed out quite rightly and not at all pointedly. Like she was just like, I think I was a little bit higher on some of the big tent stuff than you guys were. And that would obviously be, say, like, Severance, you know, or Last of Us. And she didn't specifically name these, but White Lotus, Alien Earth.

I think that we're always open to loving any of that stuff you know what I mean and there's various reasons for why we didn't for each one of those shows but those are all pretty successful shows that we like liked or disliked varying degrees that probably won't wind up

on our top tens maybe in our honorable mentions um trying to think of what else was really interesting about it you mentioned actually something oh and you know I would actually throw um the bear in there as a show that I think is a little bit stuck between stations right now of what it used to be and what it might surprisingly become with a fifth season. I was pretty, I think I was like a little bit of an outlier on, not an outlier.

I was a little bit on an island with the fourth season, third season. And then the fourth season, I think, I found a bit challenging in places, but ended, I thought, on a quite searing note. you mentioned Halen Harper and some of the disparate far-flung places you can find

television. I'd say the same thing goes for the international pipeline, which is always really interesting. We have some stuff

on our top 10, but there continues to be discoveries, especially on Netflix, all the time, you know, where you can just find out that Stefano Saluma

made a mafia show set in Florence and I was like, I didn't even get a note like, You know, like, it's like these things don't get publicized as much, but they are out there. They are in the, they are in the stacks. You just got to look for them.

Also, there's things like a channel four sitcom called Big Boys that is beloved by people that I've become friendly with in the UK, and I've checked it out. It's really, really good. I think it appeared on, maybe it was on the New Yorker Top Ten list. It's interesting to me that, like, you would think with so many streaming services desperate for anything that it would have found a more consistent home to get some promotion, but it hasn't. Like, there are just shows

that still don't get here somehow. And the state of the medium worldwide is fairly strong. Yeah, and the Hallen Harper thing is really interesting. I mean, we talked a while ago about whether it was possible to have an independent television scene.

Yeah. And I think Hallen Harper was pitched all over town. I mean, Lily Reinhart, who's the co-star of the show, has talked about this, about just being mystified as to why, like, nobody seemed interested in

a show that dealt with this. It was just like, it's not like reinventing the wheel. It's a very straightforward, like, family drama show. Mark Ruffalo's on it. And Mark Ruffalo's on it. And it's very good. But I can't remember exactly how it wound up on Mooby or how they went about shooting that. But Rief is like an accomplished independent filmmaker who knows how to make things cheaply. But, you know, I don't know necessarily whether like we're going to be here in three years from now.

And then the consolidation is either wiped out the nascent idea of like, hey, maybe we can fund this cheaply and then sell it. Yeah. Or whether or not there will actually be a little bit of a thriving independent television scene because of that consolidation because people are going to choose to like, hey, if I can get $3 million to do it like this, maybe I can then sell it upstream somewhere. I genuinely don't know.

And this is probably a better conversation to punt into the new year just in terms of like industry stuff. But like I don't have an answer for you in terms of scripted television because it is so expensive to make, and the margins are so specifically what they are. But I have just been trying to pay more attention to the ways that vertical video churn has changed expectations for comedy, and specifically because of the natures of my algorithm for, like, food television, which I'm passionate about. Right. And, you know, as someone who got really into the food network in, like, the late 90s, and then it's been watching, like, Iron Chef and all this stuff. That was pretty cool. You were at bars.

but I was like oh damn Mario really cooks that live I'm sure he's great in his personal life as well the the spotted pig I wish I could go upstairs yeah the

just how just without almost effortlessly people have made cooking look completely different and super appealing in 90 seconds with like a GoPro attached to their forehead versus all of the bells and whistles

that are required on television or even just like on a more specific level like the way like the top jaw content which is very on brand for me it's very British and restaurant based but I love watching that stuff I think the guy Jesse is incredibly charming Have you watched his Apple show?

And I watch some of the Apple show which he is a very charming host it's very well made I like food content but it does feel you want him standing on the street being like yeah the framing of that show is that Michelin Stars

are the most important thing in the world for diners or restauranteurs or whatever and they do matter for a certain 1% of the 1% class of both diners and people putting up money for restaurants but it just feels so completely detached

from most people's lives or interactions with food such as the kind that we see on Topjaw but also just detached from what the the relatability and the pleasure of the food content of just like, here's someone making a soup as opposed to manufactured drama of like,

I need to like... Will he or won't he get this star, right? Yeah, we need to tweezer this more quickly so an anonymous person can say, oh, I noticed that that was a sore relief and thus... Has TopShall come here? To L.A.? Yeah.

Why would they come here? I don't know. You'd go to Houston's in Pasadena. Interview me about my favorite slop bowls. Genuinely, yes. Your CR outside of Goop Kitchen. Glob, glob, glob. That was $70.

That's the thing. Don't come here. Like, there isn't anything good here. This place is a wasteland. Anything else? Top notes about the year? No, I think we should get into it. I feel like we can have,

I think we can express ourselves through the beauty of shows. Five to one on our honorable mention list. And I'm going to start a little spicy. Okay. A little controversially. Sure. English teacher on FX, English teacher season two.

Do you want to speak to the controversy and spiciness? I do. Okay. So English Teacher Season 1, one of the best new shows of 2024, one of the best new comedies to emerge in a long time. And season 2, a very, very confusing narrative and experience. I'll say that on screen, just in terms of the television show, I continue to love this show.

I think it is pound for pound, one of the funniest things on TV. I think that, like, the performances from Stephanie Canig and Carmen Christopher and Enrico Colatoni, the entire ensemble, Jordan Furstman this year, especially in a bigger role. Just the kind of ensemble you dream about getting in a comedy with a very, very specific and unique to itself rhythm of jokes and like the season premiere especially where the kids don't want to do Angels in America because they don't get it, but they want to do a COVID musical.

It's so, so funny and just like the sweet spot of what this show is. I think the season petered out a little bit, although it rebounded in the finale. what I genuinely want to present is I loved the show, and I do not understand what happened. So big picture of what we can speak to is that last year when the season one was airing, New York Magazine ran an expose on reported bad behavior of Brian Jordan Alvarez while working sort of before his glow up into mainstream entertainment when he was making web series and YouTube. It was a very deeply reported and passionately reported piece that was essentially could be boiled down to a he said he said. about whether some bad behavior on set was consensual or was it ever okay? Unclear, right? Actually, I don't want to say unclear because the behavior does not seem great.

Sure. There was a comment from Pride and Jordan Alvarez in response to it, and then the show, I believe, had already been renewed, or then was officially renewed, went into production on the second season. The second season was dropped into an absolute black hole press silence vacuum. Yeah, there was no press for it. There was no press for it. I wasn't able to ascertain exactly why I did not catch up on the show because I was traveling most of the fall and I only just finished it in the last few weeks.

I feel like this show deserved better. I can't say because I don't know what happened, but I do feel like it is a great injustice that the show is gone, that no one spoke to why it is gone, no one spoke to what actually happened. It seems like an enormous disservice to, like I was saying, like Sean Patton, Stephanie Kane, the great cast of this show, that all of their work seems to have been washed away. Is it because Brian didn't want to do press for it? Is it because FX didn't want him doing press for it? Is it because they couldn't agree on a press strategy for it? And they just wanted all to go away.

Was there ever a fair shot for this show in the second season? Should it have gotten one? I don't know. I'm not here to adjudicate the moral behavior of the people who make the art that we like. I just feel like this is a great, it's just greatly unfair that we don't have a full understanding of what happened here. And beyond that, it's a bummer. Because the show is fucking funny, and I liked having it in my life.

I thought the second season had, maybe not the highs of the first season, but it had a consistency for me, like, and also maybe settled into what it could have been for years to come. It kind of was like, okay, we don't need to have a, like, crisis or will the school close kind of thing.

In fact, the second season often made fun of the sort of, like, big swing, sometimes shows make where everybody thinks like the principal is going to be retiring. Yes. Or even like... In 15 years. What's the name of the kid who's like a YouTube kid who's in the class who's one of the funniest, you know, background players and there's a sense in the finale

of like, you're graduating and he's like, actually I failed so I'll be here next year. Right, right. So I, it's a shame because it's like obviously got legs. I really, honestly, I got to admit, like, I don't even understand. I don't even want to get into like what that article was about and like what he did or didn't do. The thing that I think that I struggle with, And there are things that are more important

than us liking comedies that have on our TV. I'm not trying, I don't want to get aggregated for coming down too hard on one side of what could be sexual malfeasance on the set of something. Sure. My understanding of it though, and again, no one's talking.

So let me know if I'm wrong here. But my understanding is nothing was, nothing, no bad behavior was related to this production with all of these people working on it and giving it their best. And it's a bummer. It's just a bummer. I'll miss the show.

I will go for my number five now. And this is a show that we briefly talked about, that you tapped out on, but that I found myself pretty gripped by. And we'll say, was for me, the class of a pretty popular genre right now, which is Trash Prestige. And that is The Beast of Me.

Oh, that made your list. Yeah, I would not call it trash. I mean, I thought it was quite well done. Yeah. And features two, like, really towering performances, although Claire Daines's lip quiver has now become full memed, fully memed, and so like,

women on their Peloton are being like doing the Claredanes lip quiver. This is just a really well done gripping like New York thriller. You know, and I thought that Antonio Campos offered like a really cool visual sensibility to this show. As a director, I like a lot.

And it had for as much as it was like it just took me back to some of the like heyday of the prestige thriller. Yeah. Prestige who'd done it. Stuff that we were kind of really enjoying up through presumed innocent last year. All her fall obviously is like a huge hit this year. There's been a bunch of shows this year. Some having to do with the Murdole murders and some having to do with like plastic surgeons run amok.

But this was mine. This is one that I really found like at the end of every episode. but I was like, I kind of want to start the next episode, and had the mechanics of pulp, but the prestige of two of the best actors you will see on any kind of screen in Clareda and Matthew Reese. And our shared fantasy that New Yorker writers are celebrities.

And have sick houses and, yeah, and oyster. It's really nice for us for that. Maybe they do. I don't begrudge this choice at all. I think that even in my limited sampling of it, like this is an example of something elevated. Yeah. It didn't need to be this stylish.

It didn't need to have these performances going off like this. And anecdotally, in conversations with civilians who watch television the way normals do, probably no one listening to this podcast, people loved the show. Yeah. Like this was something that people were excited about. Even at a little Hanukkah get together last night, a cousin was like, this was the perfect show for me to watch with my mom. And that is not a small phrase.

Yeah, I think this was, this was. a show my wife and I loved watching together and had and and and would like parcel it out so that it was like okay we're gonna watch one then we're gonna watch it like we're gonna watch we're gonna like make this last two weeks but we you know we we could have finished it in one night well speaking of love my number four is a show that I cannot really sit here and make a strident argument for on just like the aesthetic merits but uh I love platonic on Apple TV you do not have to argue with me. I think that there is probably a part of me that would like to give a long and winding impassioned speech about how it is in the public interests, the public trust of these giant corporations to like give Cooper Ray for whomever the opportunity to make shows and make art within, you know, to be the new de medicis. That said, if they just want to like set it, if Apple just wants to set aside a couple hundred million every year for Seth Rogan to make two television shows forever and this is one of them. Great. Yeah. Great. This was my comfort food show this year.

I didn't binge through it. I just had it when I wanted to. And I love Rogan in this period of his life and his career. We're going to get to him, I think, on our shared list. I love Rose Byrne as a comedian and this show made me very, very happy, even though it is the least honest about Los Angeles or Southern California driving entertainment products since collateral. Well, it doesn't the towards the end of the season, like LA traffic really hinders people getting to and from certain places, right? It hinders people when necessary. But there are moments in the show that would make anyone who has spent any time here gasp. Like when Seth Rogen says, I guess you're right, I guess I have to go confront my ex-fiancee in San Diego.

Do you want to come with me? And Rose Burns, like, I have a large event tonight. My career is dependent on it here in the city that I live in Los Angeles. Right. But sure, let's hop on the five. Do you know what I mean? Like, that is, so this show is a comedy

slash fantasy, but I just... I really love Platonic as well. It's really fun of it. And I'm glad that they're going to continue to make that. Yeah, please keep making it.

I would like to be able to acknowledge that there's been a costume change in this last cut and I am wearing a hat that says, ask me about my Lord and Savior Conrad Fisher. I'm not going to get too deep

into the summer I turn pretty, which is an honorable, honorable mention. So I will have six on my honorable mentions, but I did want a mention. Oh, we're just changing the rules now. Oh, okay. That's fun. But I just want to just briefly mention that of all the shows that were kind of like water cooler shows or sensations this year,

the one I got the biggest kick out of was the summer I turned pretty, which wound up coming out. I think it was over from like July to September, mid-September or something like that. And really did become kind of like hysterical kind of thing to wrap the week around and be like excited about like, is she going to choose this guy or is she going to choose that guy? those crazy kids and cousins and Paris, and I just really enjoyed it. So I wanted to say, also because I have the hat. But you didn't enjoy it enough to put it on your actual list.

No, I just wanted to say that the hat is, you know, I'm not faking it. I did watch the summer I term pretty. This is how you stay popular. You know what I mean? You just, you are attending to every single demographic group. My real number four, and I guess on me. I started this podcast by being like,

I'm here to defend an potentially indefensible show. And you're like, who got, Who here likes candy? I sure do. God damn, that Conrad, man. God, I just do all of this wrong. Like, I really need to rebrand for 26. My number four this year was Slow Horses.

I'm a little bit boxed in because I kept saying Slow Horses was going to be on my top 10. But I stand by this. It would probably be pretty high in an individual list. I don't know if it would get top six or seven, but it would be on my top 10. Okay. I thought this season was awesome. and I've talked before about how I maybe made the mistake of watching this together bunched up as a binge on its screeners rather than the week-to-week release schedule that it was parceled out at. But that is, I only did that because I found it so damn addictive and so exciting to watch.

This is a much more London-based group hang up season after a somewhat more far-flung one or a separated one from this previous season. I thought Oldman's best moments in this season were among the best of the series in its entirety and I don't want to take

its consistency and high level of quality for granted and so I have this season which was season five I believe of Slow Horses as my number four pick of the year not on any part of my list

but I agree with you that I'm grateful for the show and Oldman's speech was a top 10 TV moment of the year Okay. Speaking of taking things for granted, I have to put White Lotus on my list. Yeah, for sure.

Shout out to your favorite podcaster, Ezra Klein. Like, this is abundance. It is an abundance, it is a sign of abundance. Did you just come up for that? Yes. If we get White Lotus on our TV and everyone's just like, oh, it's not good enough. Or nitpicking it, it's not what, you know, it didn't land every single part of its storyline. The fact that this show not only exists, but is now one of the more beloved and

probably profitable franchises in modern TV is shocking to me. It's stunning to me. And I, we could do a whole podcast and we did multiple podcasts of all the Nits one could pick with season three. And we could, if we did a ranking of the seasons, I don't know if this would be higher than three. But the highs were remarkable, whether it's Parker Posey, Jason Isaac's performance, the Walden Gaghan's Renaissance that we saw, the Sam Rockwell speech, the Carrie Coon speech. But like, I think it is no small thing to have an All-Star game basically every year of some of the best actors of our time exploring the stuff that one interesting, creative filmmaker wants to explore. And I found it, I enjoy this job of covering TV more when the

White Lotus is on. I thought it was a really exciting season. It's, it is definitely, regardless of whether I felt like this was a weaker season than the first two or not, um, it still has so much to think about and so much to talk about on every episode. Every, every episode of the show has got something to, to really like consider. And if anything, I'm judging Mike White harshly because I'm like, I didn't necessarily know if the three separate plot lines ever like kind of tied into a knot. I think it had interesting ideas in each one. Yeah.

But they totally felt like a little bit disparate for me in terms of like previous seasons. Yeah, I agree. And I'm very curious to see that he's returning to more comfortable ground, literally. Like I think they're filming in the French, I don't know, south of France, but they're filming in France in a beautiful location. And there may, I think, because I think a lot of people bumped on the kind of exoticism 101 of like what it would mean to be in Thailand, which I, I enjoyed because it was a show about people who don't leave a resort in Thailand and get some spa treatments.

So it'll be interesting if this upcoming season is considered a return to form or just kind of a retreat. But either way, the rumors that Helena Bonham Carter is the first person. The rumors that she's the first person cast in it, and it's just like he doesn't miss. Like if there was, if he just has like a little like, you know, money ball scout sheet of like the people who should be on the show. And like, what if I could recreate Jennifer Coolidge and actually? that video of the guy who's trying to recreate the Boyd Holbrook. He's like, we could sign this guy for $10 million

and we could use Boyd Holbrook and recreate it in the aggregate, yeah. That's it. That's what I'm saying. All right. Okay, so number three for you is White Lotus. Number three for me is a show that we did not really talk about this year, which is Blue Lights, a BBC show that you can watch on Brit Box, and I just thought I would shout out as probably

the best cop show going right now. The most long running or running cop show going. Not about cops who run, but just it's not a limited series. How does it feel about athletic cops? You know what? In Belfast, sometimes you got to run. Sometimes you do.

This is a show about three probationary officers navigating the current day, the present day of Belfast and the drugs, the organized crime, the secretarianism that is still present in that day.

I think it pairs very interestingly with say nothing as a series to watch together. But this is from Declan Law and Adam Patterson. Each season, it's on its third season this year, is six episodes, and it is incredibly digestible, thrilling. I'd say it has like a little bit of homicide life in the streets character study observational qualities and a little bit of the more taught thriller British procedural like line of duty.

And so it's really great. You can watch it on Brit Box. I highly recommend it. I think the third season is probably my favorite, and I really wanted to highlight it in this list. Okay, my next one would absolutely, these top two on my list would be on my top 10. Without doubt, I have to shout out the chair company.

Tim Robinson and Zach Canaan's absolutely unhinged. It's not even a comedy anymore. It's just a portal into a completely different upside-down universe of in which the most banal midwestern mall developer played by Tim Robinson can just slide into a shadow world that is David Lynchian in the best possible way. No one else is making art or entertainment

like Tim Robinson is right now. We spoke about it just a few weeks ago, so I don't want to repeat myself, but it's so much more than let's just do another comedy series. It is absolutely a very, very odd dramatic conspiracy thriller that is also minute to minute

one of the most surreal and funny things that's been on TV in a long time and it makes me really happy that the show's been renewed and it makes me really happy that from everything I've gathered that the HBO team, whether it's Amy Gravid, who's head of comedy or Casey who's head of the network, understand that this isn't just like

let's take a flyer on a guy who's buzzing, right now because we also like the 11-minute friendship outtakes with Tim and Connor. This is them doing what HBO does best, which is we are going to invest in a very, very unique voice who is ready to level up. Do you think that your affection for this show makes you reconsider your version to Nathan Fielder, or do you consider them completely different flavors? I genuinely think that my, I think I need to get over. allergy to Nathan Fielder mostly because I just can't stand the fact that people have approached me in front of my children and asked her pictures with me. That does leave a mark. But that doesn't

mean that I can't take responsibility for falling down on the job and not engaging with what Sam Smael says is the best show of the year. I have that problem, but it's Nate from Landman. They're like, you seem like a great lawyer on Landman. You seem like a great housebound lawyer. My number two, is that where we're up to? My number two is Death by Lightning. I show that we touched on earlier in the year is historical television done at the highest, highest level and two central performances from Michael Shannon

and Matthew McFadden that I thought were among the best of the year. This is another Netflix series. This one comes from Mike McCowski and is executive produced by Benny Offen Weiss. The series is directed by Matt Ross. I thought that, you know, while some of the, you know, there are moments where I'm like, I know that this isn't like shot in Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia or whatever, you know what I mean? Like there are some parts of it that feel.

Shot in Budapest or something, wasn't it? There's an Eastern European air to some of it. Like me. But the performances and some of the ideas that they kick around and the idea of obsession and the idea of political ambition and the idea of using politics as this kind of stepping stone to fame. I think there's a bunch of shows this year

that dealt with politics and tried to make commentary on our contemporary moment by using either genre or history. But I thought this one was probably the one that worked best for me. I think I would recommend it to anyone who's even passingly curious

about like Dad TV just because it's not that big of a commitment, just a few episodes. Four episodes. and an excellent, excellent active adaptation. Apparently too much for some dads because I loved the show, I still haven't finished it. Yeah.

Which is probably the only reason it's not on my list. Also, I think we were trying not to step on each other's toes here, but I completely agree with you, and I think it is a remarkable blueprint for how to make period pieces feel electric. Yeah, and I also, getting through the fourth episode, I was just like, I don't know how many shows need to be longer than this. it's a lesson isn't it

well because when I'm watching blue lights I'm like this is perfect these six episodes are perfect you know like I don't really have I wasn't sitting there being like really really what could have been eight you know I mean it would be if it would be great

to see a move towards broadly speaking in television an understanding by the various streamers and by the creators who for many reasons often want more episodes to get paid more. It's just such a...

I get it. The industry is much more difficult to navigate on a professional level now, so that does make sense. But it would be great if we could fix this up in the new year and let shows be what they need to be. Yeah, it's interesting because coming out of the merger talks

and acquisition talks in the last couple weeks, there's been a lot of emphasis on what the customer wants. Yeah. And I do sometimes think that that is not exactly right. You know? I think what it is is like you want more minutes spent on the platform. Right. And so you know, you might take a six episode show and be like, let's make it nine, let's make it 11, whatever. And we'll get to it. Nobody is like the pit is too long.

No. The pit was a perfect length. And that's 15 episodes. Yes, we'll get to that. Your number one honorable mention. So my number one honorable mention a few weeks ago, I mentioned revisiting something that we had touched on briefly and really, really getting drawn into it. That show is families like ours, which is Thomas Winterberg, the Dogma Filmmakers television show, is on Neff a very big international co-production that filmed all over Europe. This would have probably crashed my top five. Yeah. Or is in my personal top five.

I found it so haunting, so compelling. I thought about it nonstop for people who don't know what it's about. Or remember, yeah. Or remember, it is a Danish-language original television series about a moment when Denmark has looked at the data, looked at the rising sea level and it's like living in this peninsula nation is no longer sustainable. Thus, we

will be shutting down the country and everything that comes afterwards. And it is the most human dystopia I've seen in a long time. It is a horror show in which there is almost nothing surreal. I say almost because

God damn it, Thomas Vinterberg. I know you're an autour and I know you're a European autour, but you got so close to making something without a magic boy who could see sadness in the future. Like, you got so close, but he couldn't resist. It was right there for him. Basically, unsupernatural series about something that felt so plausible that it is deeply, deeply uncomfortable to watch at times. And I think that you watch the first two episodes when you see this, like, perfect Scandinavian life. And the only hint that things are going wrong is the camera

lingers on bodies of water sometimes. It never showcases. There is no, like, 2012, like, tsunami crashing. It's just that inevitably this is going to happen and they're trying to be responsive to it. It's engaging because, you know, even today, we're like, well, the Scandinavians have it figured out. They're very reasonable. This is a problem that is not going to be reasonable. And I think the other thing,

and making it a very, very human-based family drama, which it is, it basically follows the extended members of one family as they try to make sense of this and then rebuild their lives in a diaspora of Danes. It is not an environmental catastrophe show. It is an immigration catastrophe show. And those two issues are very connected. But the idea of being stateless, of being paperless,

of trying to be with the people that you love, or even what it would mean to be from a place, is extremely relevant to everyone. And the show can be clumsy at times, but I just really, really admired the swing and found it really, really engaging in a way, to our actual lives in a way that a lot of what we watch to escape into does not manage to,

to measure up to. I thought it was a wonderful series. Again, we decided no, no same picks, but it probably would have been on mine. My number one is Shorzi. For season of Jared Kiso's honestly hysterical hockey comedy. I've talked about it in the past, Mansoukas has come on to talk about it. This is about the titular character, Shorzi, try to figure out his life off the ice. It's the first three seasons of this series, captured the kind of fall and rise of a small, a semi-professional Sudbury Canada hockey team and follows a sports movie script pretty well

and would be an excellent long sports film. This has all of the deadpan comedy that Letterkenny had, but it is much more of a journey than Letterkenny sometimes seemed frozen in time. And I went and saw the cast of Shorzie play hockey against a bunch of retired LA Kings for charity yesterday at the crypto arena. That's wild to me.

And there were 7,500 people there on a Sunday afternoon. You were all wearing vests. Most of us were wearing, well, most people were wearing Shorzie jerseys. Okay. Or Shorzy sweatshirts. But I was really, really struck by,

like, I don't think I've ever done anything like that outside of, like, a Comic Con where I've, like, gone to an event where just, like, fans are there. and there is also this weird on Kenny Valley where like the cast is playing they're just playing hockey like pretty well I mean I'll take your word for it but it was I was just like you get you start to lose like I know it's a TV show but it almost seemed like this team from Canada was like barnstorming kind of and uh they did a couple of bits but it was

just really a really fun event and I don't think I've ever seen anything like that and I've never really quite seen anything like every time I say Shorzie on the podcast. People like DM me set the tone. This is so sweet. Yeah. This is the closest I've ever seen you to being a Disney adult for something. Yeah. You keep it pretty 100. Like you never get too high or too low, but like you're pretty into this.

The playoffs are here and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas.

Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by the active cash credit card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets at the game or grabbing a coffee, It earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The active cash credit card from Wells Fargo,

be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul predicts.

Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandul predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual prediction markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all

investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. So that's our fives, right? Okay. Let's start with 10 here and we'll try and move briefly through some of these because we've talked about these a lot. We've talked about these a lot. But at number 10, I had us with Department Q. Yep. This is Scott Frank's detective series that debuted on Netflix. I don't know whether it's going to have a second season. It is having a second season. Weirdly, and I'm sure Scott is nothing of not forthcoming with us. He can explain why it took so long.

But yes, it was officially renewed. Okay, so Department Q is the detective show set in Scotland, starring Matthew Good as an English detective living in Scotland, who gets his own department in a Scottish police department to do cold cases. It is what Scott does best, which is take tropes and cliches and stories and push on through to the other side with them. So you have your complicated detective who must heal thyself.

He in and of itself has got like, he's Sherlock, he has his Watson, he has his group of people working with him. There is, you know, a missing woman who would normally be just off-screen in most detective shows that she is given almost to a sort of maybe too much

painful amount she's given a lot of screen time what did you think of Department Q in retrospect I mean I think it's a fantastic watch I think it is exceptional and like a hallmark of this era where we can have

a certain type of entertainment which is a Scandine noir of which there are dozens both in their native languages this is based on a very popular Danish book series but also like Britbox an acorn like that's what they do Yeah.

But then to have one of our great screenwriters and filmmakers, like, you know, who we obviously stand for these guys. These are our guys, but this generation, and they're all friends, I believe, of like Scott Frank, Tony Gilroy, who we'll talk about in a second, Steve Zalian, who came up as the preeminent screenwriters of their day. And then, yes, and the direct line and then have started directing.

And of all of them, I mean, I think you can make the case that Scott has become one of the better directors as well. Sure. And seeing him take a turn, on something that is established and being like, I love this, I'm not going to mess it up. I'm going to do my version of it. It's thrilling.

I think the case against Department Q, which makes it fun to talk about, is what we were just saying a moment ago about, let things be the right size, let them be the best version of themselves in this bifurcated, stratified, challenging streaming economy. Department Q should be already, we should already have a trailer for season two.

Sure. The best version of Department Q is a detective series version of the pit that's on Netflix, and Netflix is grinding them, and we're thrilled because there's tons of books, but it is also an autourish-type show from the last 10 years. And it takes time for him to get it right, and he figures it out on set, as he told us in interviews on the pod. He likes to figure it out in the edit. It's not wired that way. So I totally get it if there are people who are like, that didn't click for me because reasons, because it was too heady, it was too cerebral. It went too far into literally into the chamber of secrets, if you

will. Or because I want more of it. But it's a really interesting case study in what TV was for the last 10 years and what it might be again. And ultimately, it's successful because of Matthew Good's performance and Kelly McDonald's performance. And especially shout out Alexei Manvlov, who plays Akram, who's one of the, if we were doing like a new character draft, he would be in the running.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's go up to our number nine, the studio. So this is our second Seth Rogen shout out. he has got a case to be for being one of the most important producers of television of this decade, I think. You're still caping up for preacher. But you know, between the boys

and the several Apple shows that he's made, but man, the studio winds up being a fantasy and a cringe comedy and a seat of your pants drama. And I think you know, there are different fans of different parts

of this show, but as the series went on and we got into the last four episodes, I think it really kind of, I personally really loved the pilot in the second episode, but I don't know if that would have been sustainable if the Matt character who Seth Rogen plays was just constantly on the verge of absolutely like destroying his production. And you know, you can make the argument that he was still like that. But I thought is that kind of opened the aperture, spent more time with the ensemble, some very obviously delightful cameos, and just an amazing snapshot of this city and this industry,

even if it was satirized and even if it was like, well, we're going to turn this up to 11. Shout out to Rob Reiner and Spinal Tap, to kind of make the joke work a little bit better. So what do you want to say to up to do? Yeah, I just think I love the show for all the reasons you said, for its criticism, but melancholic love of an industry that is in transition for the,

deep rolodecks of celebrities willing to have fun with themselves and play, you know, amplified versions of themselves like Zoe Kravitz or Dave Franco or Brian Cranston. Second number two in the new character draft, Matt Bellany, playing Matt Bellany. This show is on my list no matter what because of just the sheer joy of its creation from the fact that Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg created it with a bunch of people, all of whom got created by credit, all of whom shared in the success of the show at the Emmys in a really lovely way, but also the fact that, like, aesthetically, they directed every episode. They just went for it. They wanted to make a noir. They wanted to make an entire episode that was a oneer.

The score, the style, the pleaded pants, like the editing by Eric Icac. It's, it was a joyful act of creation that translated to the audience. Yeah. Our number eight is the Eternaut. Hell yeah, dog. You cook on this one. This is Bruno Stagnaro's adaptation of the acclaimed Argentinian graphic novel. Yeah, like, sometimes things just fall from the sky and sometimes it's poison snow that wipes out most of the globe. Other times it is a six-episode adaptation of a beloved Argentine graphic novel

that you and I had absolutely no fucking prior knowledge of. And the show was just sick. It was it hit at the right time for us when there was like a little bit of a soft period in the schedule. And it just was incredibly compelling, incredibly entertaining, very, very surprising. I would say the weakest moment of an incredibly strong first season

was the moment that it tipped the most into sci-fi genre and had to put alien bugs on screen. Okay, so that was like sort of more midway through the season, not the end of the season? No, no, no. By the end, I was like,

this show just knows what it is and it has such an incredible performance, starring performance by Ricardo Doreen. We love shit like this. We love to be surprised. We love to be entertained, and we love when planet Earth reflects something back to us.

We have our own stories here, and Netflix, again, to its credit, was like we will empower Argentine filmmakers and actors to tell this story. Yeah. Great show. And second season coming. And felt so lived in.

And it's, you know, one of the great things about the last 10 years of television for me and just over the course of doing this podcast, the emergence of international TV and our accessibility to it is its cheap travel. You know, it is basically... I've never been to Buenos Aires, but I've a tremendous amount of fascination. Bring an umbrella in a gas mask.

Well, I have a tremendous amount of fascination for the culture there, especially because of my interest in football. And, like, I think just getting those first opening episodes and especially that first episode of the Night of the Blackout and those guys sitting around playing cards and the stores and the bicycles and just the way the city is sort of laid out, you really just do get a sense of place in this show that is unrivaled in a lot of ways. and you never would have gotten this

in the early 2000s, you know? Like, you never would have been able to see something like this. I love that you turn on. And they did it at a price point, like, by necessity, but it was a reminder that, like, if you want to try to get lost vibes,

you don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars like three-body problem ended up doing. I mean, obviously, it's apples to oranges, but it is Netflix. And I really like when they turn up gems like this. Me too. number seven is another international show

and I on a personalist might have been pretty high for me this is Eastern Gate which is my thriller of the year my thriller of the year and I

HBO Max Yeah HBO Max is a Polish spy show about a spy played by Eva played by an actress named Lena Gora who like it was one of my favorite performances of the year

somewhere between God, I mean, like, who are her, like, I'm trying to think of, like, who her. I mean, it's like half Jason Bourne and then half. Carrie Matheson? Carrie Matheson. This is about a Polish spy working in the Poland's embassy in Belarus, trying to root out a mole working in this embassy. And set hyper specifically at a moment when all the chatter and also international

performance basically in the geopolitical theater is suggesting that Russia is going to make a move on something. It's going to make a statement by reclaiming something that it feels belongs to Russia. And in the moment of the show, it could be Ukraine or it could be a disputed portion of Poland called the Suehlaki Gap, I believe. Yes, Suwok Gap.

And it's an incredible solve for making a show of the moment but not wanting headlines to eclipse the show by the time it gets out. So you basically do recent history. I thought that the thing I love about this, and one of the reasons why I'm so fascinated by spies is because it's fictional spies is because you watch people have to put on these masks. And this character literally does not like a mask,

like Jim Carrey mask, but changes her eyes, changes her hair, changes the way she dresses, and changes the way she behaves in acts, depending on who she's pretending to be and who she's with, whether it's her lover, whether she's working in the embassy, pretending to be a consulate, whether she's pretending to be somebody's consort, whether she's hanging out with her sister.

She's a completely different person. Minigur gives an astonishing performance. I thought this was the most gripping, tense piece of TV I saw this year in some ways and has a phenomenal conclusion. I don't know if they're going to do another season. They are. I think they are. But Eastern Gate was awesome.

We love spies always. It's one of our favorite genres of storytelling. telling. And we continue to reference La Cary all the time in the classic kind of Cold War Spycraft or shows that are like, ah, in this fallen world post-Lacare Cold War Spycraft, of which LaCarré wrote quite brilliantly. Yeah. Eastern Gate, coupled with an author you put me on to Oliver Harris, who's written three absolutely, eye-meltingly good contemporary spy books. Did you read the third one yet? I'm halfway through it. Point towards what this genre can be in the world we have now. It is, so contemporary and so bracing and exciting and horrifying in a way that you know to be our

age and fall in love with like the spy who came in from the cold is a little bit of it's a period I mean it's literally a period piece but also one's emotions are measured by the fact that it is of a different world yeah Eastern gate and I don't need to pair them but I do want to shout out those books again the shadow and shadow intelligence is the first of those yep and no gatekeeping you put me on to those. I think Zach, our buddy, Zach Barron, read them first. Zach gets the credit. Ascension, the second one is mind-blowing. Like, these are not bloodless espionage entertainments. They are terrifying, but incredibly entertaining as well. Yes, we'll have a lot of book recommendations

for folks in our mailback at the end of the year. For number six, I have the lowdown. Okay. I think you had the lowdown a little bit higher. Yeah, but I'll allow it. But we can debate it a little bit as we go further. This is Sterling Harger's love letter to Tulsa. and Robert Altman's adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. And it's a shaggy mystery that kind of feels like it's like written left-handed by a right-hander. You know what I mean? Like it has like a kind of looseness and curiosity that shows don't often have. And it's about vaping and coffee shops and Junior Kimbrough Records.

And being a girl dad. and use bookstores and being a girl dad and femme fatals and you know it is and ultimately what we owe each other yeah and what we've inherited and what we need to reject yeah it is look all capital letters this is extremely our shit um i feel really lucky that we got this season i think you and i were both because of the age that we are in the world that we live in we were like dainu a little bit like i can't believe he got to make this. I feel pretty confident that there's going to be more

which is really exciting. That's really cool. Unless Ethan Hugg gets elected president because the run he's on right now. Did you listen to him on fresh air? I was like, he's got my vote. Did you see him on Rogan? No, he went on Rogan?

He had Rogan kind of like eating out of the palm of his hand. It was pretty amazing. In terms of Spotify podcast, he did us first. Sure. So that's good to know. Yeah. For my next renegoti.

But this show is a celebration. of filmmaking in the classic sense of Sterlin being a great, not just a great writer and great director, but being a great reader and a great watcher and a great fan of, you know, Jim Thompson books and, as you said, Altman movies and,

you know, shaggy dog stuff from the 70s, like the great Gene Hackman film Night Moves, but also of actors. One of the all-time great castes and just giving these beautiful opportunities, not just to Ethan Hawk, but to Keith David and Kyle McLaughlin and our buddy Tracy Letts, Killer Mike, Josh Fatham, like these people who are his friends in real life who show up and

populate this world, a Macon Blair who's phenomenal in these small little moments of the show. I don't want to overstate it because it's, you know, I think it's correctly ranked in terms of our big picture top 10, but this is why we get up in the morning. Sure. It's to have stuff like this. Extraordinary stuff. Extraordinary effects. Good job. Okay, so you would have had the lowdown a little higher, I think, in your personal preference.

Would you agree? So that was six. Do you have task at five? In my personal preference, yes, but I had something that you have higher or lower. Oh, interesting. It doesn't really matter. We love all these shows. I have task at five. We have task at five. We talked extensively about task this year. I think this was probably the show that hit me the hardest this year when I think about it. on a personal level, but that I completely, I'm candid,

I'm upfront about the fact that it, that has a lot to do with geography. Sure. But it also was the most sincere and vulnerable show that I think got made in America this year. Yep. In some ways. And I say that specifically

because I think they're international shows that might pop up later, but this is Brad Engelsby's follow up to mayor of East Town, starring Tom Palfrey and Mark Ruffalo, and an incredible ensemble working around them, made in and around Philadelphia and Delaware County about essentially like a heat-style cop versus robber on a collision course,

but then it kind of becomes about a lot of other things, about forgiveness and about God and about fatherhood again, and just an incredibly deep and meaningful show to me. I think that there's an argument to be made that this is the best show of the year. I think we're at the point of our list where on a catch us on a certain day or a couple of yinglings deep

or catch us after a certain episode or catch us after a 31 nothing overdue get right game against the Raiders like we might swing this higher this is the most Philly show and Brad Inglesby is the most Philly creator

not because of his deep knowledge of the blue route and you know all the roads around Broomall but because of the way the show effortlessly communicates the lingua franca of where we're from Not in terms of accents and the performances of the accents,

Amelia Jones especially, unfucking real. But this very, I think, regionally unique mix of just heart on your sleeve, emotion, deep, deep, bruising. Yeah. Culturally, economically, socially, psychologically. And then just a savage wit. Like, the show is really funny. And it doesn't work if it's not funny,

just like it doesn't work if it's not pulling your heartstrings. the performances in it are God tier, and I'm excited and curious. To see where it goes. To see where it goes. Yeah. For sure. At number four. Yeah, for you.

No, go on. I have pluribus. See, I had pluribus like at seven on my list. Interesting. But I support you in your journey here. Well, okay, so you had, well, we can talk about it once we get done. I had task low down and families like ours higher on my personal list, but I do not. We are the collective here.

Yes. We are all Zosha, and we agree with this. I have noted with interest that there seems to be a more vocal contingent of pluribus deniers. Yes, I've noticed that, too. I think that there's an interesting... And frankly, they're starting to get to me. Their campaign. Well, it's interesting conversation to be had about pacing and tempo in television shows

and whether or not, you know, what entertainment looks like to any given person. And I think that there is, I kind of fully support people being like, I'm bored by this because I don't think that there's any sort of privilege to like, just because we have microphones, we don't know more about TV than anybody else. If you don't like the show, you don't like the show. I think it is a miracle. I think that what it's doing in terms of asking a pretty adult society that probably watches a lot of TV with their phones in their hands or doing other things to watch someone

do very simple things in a very complicated environment is one of the best tests I've had to take in a long time and I have fully come under its spell you know I was watching the most recent episode and thinking to myself how much actual

how many pages was this yeah because you could write the script to an episode of pluribus in probably 30 pages but the episodes themselves are 55 minutes or something like that. So how does it, I hope we get to talk to Vince again about how that translates from the page to the visual execution and the performances. And you can only do that in an operation

that has been so successful for so long, an operation that is seamless in terms of like the writer's room and the realities of production, whether they are in the Canary Islands where they film some of it or they're in their beloved Albuquerque, you can't start a show and pitch it and sell it and get into production. and say, yeah, I know this is a pretty terse script,

but don't worry, I'm going to deliver on a very gripping 55 minutes of television. You can't do it. Yes. Only they can do this. And it's kind of the reverse of another show that I think both of us were very affectionate about, like Paradise. Yeah. Where Paradise is also about an apocalyptic level event that happens

or a kind of world-changing event that happens. And what Paradise chooses to do is burn a season of story in every episode. you know, and it's like going seven seconds or less the entire time. I don't think Pluribus is slow to watch, but I think it's taking its time getting where it's going, and it's very intuitive. And I think what it likes is revealing layers of this character, Carol, and now I think this character, Minusos,

over the course of this season about how they are feeling and thinking about what's going on through what they are doing about. I find it incredibly pleasurable to watch. And if there have been moments that have dragged or have been slow or I've doubted, like, I'm not doubting this creative team. Sure. There were seasons of Better Call Saul where I was like, yeah, I don't know. Me too.

And I was wrong. Me too. Because cumulatively, when you look back at what has been built and what you're, the edifice that you're standing on and what you're on the precipice of is masterful. And I love that experience and I love the performances. I do think that it might be worth noting that I think some of the results. to the show is the discomforting experience of watching something that exists separate and apart from the economy that we are all living in. And I don't mean that somehow this production for Apple TV is like anti-capitalist. That is not what I mean.

I just mean that yesterday I went down to scenic downtown Los Angeles, a great place to hang out, great families. And you were at a hockey match. I was just on the streets. It's for you. I was on the street spending $19 for a coffee. And there was like a pop-up bizarre of like shops and people with like vintage racks and stuff. And at the end of it, there was a store that was just like the apotheosis of everything. It was a storefront with beautiful blonde wood. Inside of it was a vintage red BMW convertible taking up 80% of the store.

And then there was a rack with five sweatshirts. BNMBBBBBBBBW sweatshirts or? No. Shorzy sweatshirts? Nope. And I was like, oh, this is the store where people who have rich. ads work. But beyond that, I was like, I don't even know how to engage with this storefront because I don't know what they're doing. They are not bound to the exigencies of like making a living or communicating

a product or making rent. Like it's beyond that. And thus I am confused and a little bit resentful by it. I don't feel that way about Pluribus because it's a beautiful show. But I do think that it's very challenging to rank Pluribus with other television shows that have come out of a more traditional 2020's development process and creative process because Vince Gilligan makes TV shows in a completely unique way that seems like a beautifully

successful kind humming machine. But you can't knock it for that. I'm not knocking it. I was suggesting that there may be some resistance to it because you're watching it and you're like, well, how are they getting away with this? Yeah. Well, I think that the guy on Twitter with an anime avatar who's like, this shit is boring, is probably

not knocking it because of like the seamless development process and blank checking. God. Well, let's ask him, because I think that he'll be very vocal in my mainchees. Guys got him come right outside. Number three, I have the pit as our number three show. Okay. You agree with that? I do. Okay. Old school pleasures, new school package. Nice. And a show that is using the hook of a medical procedure and the tension of real time and also packing in two seasons worth of disasters and crises into one day of these people's, these characters, these medical professionals, their lives, and makes it into an extraordinary portrait of an

industry under immense pressure in a post-COVID nation. Central performance by Noah Wiley is phenomenal, but obviously an incredible ensemble and also one of the great pleasures of TV is getting attached to a half a dozen characters and a half a dozen actors that you had no familiarity with before and it, you know, it does everything that, uh, that other show did. The other John Wells Hospital show did, um, while also just feeling very, for legal reasons you're not going to name it. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, I just, I just think, and the fact that it's three weeks away from coming out again is goes to your, to your point about like, we got to get back on the tracks here. Yeah, it's important. I mean, it is an important show for its content, for the way that it's delivering the

content for what it's doing for jobs in Los Angeles, for the industry, for reminding viewers what television can and should be. I just think at this moment, we are lucky with like an abundance of riches of like reasons to tune into television. We can be we can be challenged, we can be provoked, we can be just kind of zero out with something. But really one of the greatest things TV's ever been able to provide is love. Yeah. To love people, to root for people, to feel connected to human struggle in ways that are shut up, pluribus, like communal.

Yeah. And uplifting and joining and like gluing us together. And man, the pit just understands that in its bones. It was so, it's so great to have a show like this. I still want the pit PM shift, the night shift. The night shift of the pit. The Hadassie Pit. After Pit.

at p.m. I mean, look, it seems like it gets pretty weird at that hospital, no matter what time of day it is. Fair. Number two, we arrived at this juncture,

and I think that there is actually like an interesting disagreement. So, you know, we've talked about both of these shows so much. Yeah. Let's talk about them together. Okay. I have my personal preference is number two is adolescence,

number one is Andor. Okay. I think you have the reverse. I do have the reverse, but only in the spirit of, I don't know. Maybe I'm putting too much nobility into like the structure of these lists. For me, and or season two is essentially flawless and one of the more incredible accomplishments and entertainment of our time. I think one of the reasons why it is so outstanding

and feel so accomplished and feel so monumental and significant is because of of it because of the nature of it as a two-season statement, proof of what we can do with this medium if we rewire our brains and we're not trying to just put Star Wars on TV. Not just trying to put a BMW in a storefront. Not just trying to put a BMW in a storefront, but like what can we do that's different? What can we, and how can we accomplish it?

And adolescence is, I mean, look, it's one and one A regardless. Yeah. For me, adolescence is a singular statement of such incredible technical achievement, but also such emotionally, emotional devastation and power. Because this one season is what we're getting and because it stands alone, to me, that's the number one, because that is the most definitive statement of incredibly talented people, you know, on both sides of the camera coming together to say, look what's possible. Yeah. Look what's possible in an absolutely painfully relevant only right now type of way. Yeah, it's also, it's challenging in the most, it's challenging in a way that I love. You know, it challenges you to have empathy for the villain of the show.

And it challenges you to have empathy and love for the man who raised that villain. and it has, you know, you cannot watch Owen Cooper and not be like, I don't want this to be true. You know, and you watch Aaron Doherty act with him and you're like, I want her to fix him. You know, I want her to let him out of jail. I want her to see that he's okay. And I remember, I have recall for adolescence

in a way that I don't usually for TV shows. Like, I have a little bit of a like, onto the next one. And then if you're like, what happened in the third episode of White Lotus this year? I'd be like, no idea. Bill Belichick of binge. This is where it gets like when you throw a random game at LeBron and he's like, oh yeah, of course.

We were down 88, 94, and there was a timeout, and then we ran horns and I got fouled, and then we went on a 16-0 run. Like, I kind of feel that way about adolescence. It's like seared in my memory, and that has to stand for something. For me, and or is a little bit of a recency pick because I re-watched the second half of the season pretty casually,

and I was like, there's nothing better than this. Yeah, I think that's probably true. know what to say beyond that. I was rewatching things like Luthen and Lonnie on the bench or Krenick and Partagaz's last interaction or Krenick and

Dedra. Yeah. And or when Cassian first appears in the second season and he's like taking, he's going to take the shuttle from the Imperial base. He talks to that. Yeah, he's like, you're coming home to yourself. We talked to

Tony a couple of times for this. that was definitely a very rewarding and enlightening experience. But look, like, this allows me to be in touch with my six-year-old self and also my guy went to college once, self. And that's really, like, a pretty special combination of things. I don't, it's not even an argument. It's like if you take the third episode of adolescence and you take Welcome to the Rebellion, you know, late in the season of Andor,

and you think about Genevieve O'Reilly's performance, and you think about Stalin's Carly. Guards performance and we are lucky to have these two hours and we are lucky that both of them are engaging with our most creative selves whether it's you know the the way that that adolescence episode is shot or the fact that and or is you know in the galactic senate in a moment that like the real dorks and I say that with love and with looking in a mirror like that's a moment that people have probably thought about or understood yeah it must have happened and if you've watch the cartoons, it does happen in a different way or you catch the flip side of it as they're

escaping. But both of them are also deeply political and deeply moving to have experienced this year when you can hit that sweet spot of entertainment, relevance, and emotion you are playing in rarefied air. And at this point of the list, I like all of these shows. Yeah. It's not an argument I want to make. I think that one, two, is in a really interesting argument. I think it's interesting that you probably had low down higher and pluribus lower. But again, at that point, it's just a question of like head versus heart. Right. And also, I'm ranking pluribus where it is.

I have not finished the season. That's right. Which will finish this year. So it's relevant. It could move around a little bit. Wait, do you see who Carol's lawyer is? Is it Leah? Who's actually Leia?

I'll recap here what we had. So for the watch is top 10 of the year. Andor, number one. adolescence number two, the pit number three, pluribus number four, but not for both of us. I'm not going to have yuck your yum here. Task number five, the lowdown number six. Eastern Gate, number seven, the Eternot, number eight.

The studio number nine, department queue, number ten. Andy, what were your five honorable mentions? One through five, families like ours on Netflix, chair company on HBO, White Lotus on HBO, Platonic on Apple, English teacher on FX. I had Shorzie, number one. It's on Hulu, Death by Lightning, number two, on Netflix, Blue Lights, which is on BritBox, number three, slow horses on Apple TV, number four, and The Beast in Me, which is on Netflix, is number five. Kaya.

Are there any shows that we didn't talk about that you would like to just say a shout out to? I've been really enjoying, I love L.A. Yeah. I think it's really fun. And in the slew of TV shows that came out this year about people in their early to mid-20s, I think that one is the best. best and I love to pit. There you go. I love L.A. in the pit. You can't pin her down.

You can't pin her down. Kai, will you hang with the cast of the pit at the Golden Globes? I really hope so. I think just you and Dr. Robbie. I love you, Noah Wiley. Let's end on that. I love you, Noah Wiley. I love you, Andy Greenwald.

Thank you so much for doing the pod with me for another year. We have a couple more episodes in 25, pluribus finale, et cetera. Thank you to Kai and Kaya and John. We will be back on Thursday. When Mother's Day means celebrating your mom, your wife, maybe even your daughter as a new mom, trust 1,800 Flowers to help you celebrate every important woman in your life. With double blooms from 1,800 flowers, order one dozen roses and get another dozen for free. It's a simple way to give beautifully, with colorful blooms that make Mother's Day feel meaningful.

For every mom you're celebrating, order with confidence, and get double blooms at 1,800flowers.com slash Spotify. That's 1,800flowers.com. Relax and let Ralph's Delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items, then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes, so you can feel confident it's what you ordered.

Fresh groceries, your way, with Ralph's delivery and pickup. Get free delivery during online deal days, plus $30 off your first online order. Ralph's, fresh for everyone.