The Watch - The Unceremonious End of ‘Winning Time’ and What It Means for HBO’s Sunday Night. Plus, ‘The Gold.’

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Chris and Andy talk about what was unexpectedly the series finale for ‘Winning Time’ last night and why a show with so much promise ultimately didn’t work (1:00). Then they talk about how the cancellation of ‘Winning Time’ and ‘True Detective’ being pushed back to 2024 has left HBO with a lack of Sunday night programming (41:42), before talking about the first episode of the new British procedural ‘The Gold’ (49:18). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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, he too was prematurely canceled after losing to Boston. It's Andy Greenwood. Who among us? Andy, what was going to be just a simple recap day for us here on a Monday on the Watch, a pod that discusses television, film, literature, music, politics, philosophy, infrared cameras. pointed at crowds during Beetlejuice productions

the mental acuity of octogenarian politicians so many things we talk about beer airline miles but today it's about Holly Weird and the industry the business of show

because not only we're going to talk about winning time at second season its second season finale it turned into its series finale a thing I saw coming yeah you were not to be all parts about this.

Nostradamus. It is Nostradamus, but I always call it Nostradamus because of Nass's album. Isn't that funny? Did you know the reference when he named the album that? Are you like, that's cool? He has a longer name now. I knew what he was talking about, but I now forget that there was another guy, and I just think it's Nostradamus.

Who's more important for a daily life? Anyway, I saw this coming. I think there was some hints that they were maybe speeding up the clock on winning time a little bit. And this is a really interesting conversation to have because not only do we have the context of the strike happening while this second season was airing and how the cast of winning time was not able to promote it,

we've also got kind of a like, what's up with HBO Sunday nights conversation to have and we can just talk about what happened in this second season. We're also going to discuss the first episode of the Paramount Plus slash BBC show The Gold. First two episodes are up on Paramount Plus. We'll just talk about the first one just to give you guys a little bit of a taste.

And many people probably are like, sir, sir. What about episode two of Daryl Dixon? They probably are. And what do you have to say to them? You could just tell them that I was excited to watch it, but when it comes to reanimated corpses, I spent a lot of time prepping for our conversation about the Frazier reboot. So you can have one or you can have the other.

Sure. Can't do both. How are you? People might be wondering why I sound like I work at a travel agency in 1980. chain smoking. Greenwald travel. Got a little cold. Yeah.

But I'm here with you. You guys are here. Kaya's saying her immune system is like a steel plate. Yes. After, can we say the joke you said? When Kaya came back with a little sniffles? I said, well, Kaya was in Spain. Yeah.

And she said, you know, guys, I don't know if I should come in. I have something of a little bit of a cold here. And I was like, are you sure it's not Toppest 19? You fired it off so quick. I'm still laughing about that. So I just want to say... Guy makes the note. Cut that, cut that.

Start the podcast five minutes in. I just want to say, one of the animating frictions of this podcast, and there are many, you know, between the two of us, is sometimes I want to steer the ferry boat over to Dattington Island, and you're like, absolutely not. No, I don't say that. Let me just create this straw man argument.

And, you know, generally, you know, I think pretty generally I'm pro having children. I love my children. I would say the one compelling reason to go the other way is what you hear in my voice right now. Because some ardent listeners will know that, you know, I was saying, you know, end of summer child care is an issue. Some parents may be quote unquote on strike and thus available for all ferrying and caregiving purposes for a while. So school coming back was really a boon. I would like to give the honorary 1984 NBA finals medal to my older daughter who made it 36 hours before coming home sick. And the problem with it was that she came back was just a cold. It's not anything 19. Nothing serious.

Nothing Dr. House needs to look into? No cold towels on the neck. It's not lupus. Everybody's fine. She's fine in 48 hours. But the problem is that when it's introduced to a home, one then watches it. just like one of the horror movies I'm too scared to watch just like make its way through then the younger daughter went down and then here's the thing you know how like you hear stories about people are like well I'm still I'm back

I'm back in person but maybe I'll wear a mask sometimes and like everyone else is like what the fuck's wrong with you you know what I mean because it would be funny if you were well go ahead imagine that time like you may think that like red state voters will give you the stink guy for wearing a mask in public

one's own children will have None of it. None of it. In fact, they will become more affectionate. But I was like, I was taking the wellness formula. You know, I'm taking the vitamin C. I'm feeling good. But Chris, I know this is going to come as a surprise to you, but your boy is mortal. Got a little head cold going myself. Yeah. And the irony is this morning, I'm like a little bit dead-eyed, a little bit glassy, driving the kids to school. And like anyone, reach for a tissue to expel the contents of my nasal cavities, just a run-of-the-mill blow. think this is maybe the last podcast. This is definitely the last podcast. And from the backseat, my younger daughter, whose fingerprints are all over. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I hear her go, gross. I was like, how dare you? Did you say, don't make me ask this car to pull over on its iPad? Were I physically driving this car, young lady, I would stop it. Yeah. You can't do that. You got to take ownership.

Why are you telling me this? Tell your daughter. Have her call in. She won't let me be as in person with her as you guys are right now. Yeah. So that's where I'm coming with. That's my energy today. I'm okay with you being here.

Thank you. Yeah. Kai is obviously okay with you being here. I think you're sicker than I thought you were going to be, but I just won't touch you and we'll just let it rock like that. That's fine. I'm also trying to talk. My talk angle is like 45 degrees away from your face.

I also feel like in L.A., frankly. more people than not are basically walking around like Jude Law at the end of Contagion with like the bubble thing on their head not in like a this isn't like mass commentary I just think everybody's very sensitive about getting sick because

you know in New York you would just be sick from now until June yes here it's more like much more wellness focused culture that's right are you focused on wellness generally speaking I try to be but you know God they

what's that what's that Bugs Bunny meme you sent me once where Bugs Bunny has tattoos using the guns. He's like, Lord, forgive me. I'm about to go back to the old me. And it's Bugs Bunny told him to her revolvers. That's me with the wellness formula and the green juice, but like hearing the siren call of a little bit of sign of something. Where do you want to start today? I mean, like, the winning time thing is fascinating. So obviously, did you have anything else you wanted to get off your, your heavily congested chest before we? No, the Mucinex is starting to work.

Okay, good. I can tell. Yeah. Let the takes flow. Winning time canceled after two seasons. The final episode aired last night. It covers the Lakers loss. So the Boston Celtics in seven games in the NBA finals in 1984. And, you know, this episode's wrapping up. You get to the shower scene, magic, kind of like at this turning point, very Empire Strikes Back, Godfather, Part 2.

Maybe it's not going to work out. And you're like, okay, next season on the shower scene. On winning time. history of violence shower scene? And then you get this sort of upbeat last scene feeling a little stapled on there between Jeannie and Jerry Bus. A little staple centered on there.

And they're like, you know what would be cool one day is when you take all this over, Jeannie? And she's like, oh, Dad, that won't happen for a long time. End of series. And then we get a series of title cards. And I was like, interesting. And the title cards are like, this is what happened to magic.

This would happen to Pat Riley. So it happened to Jerry Bus. This would happen to Jeannie Bus. This is something to Jerry West. And I was like, well, that would be seasons three through eight of winning time. And so then not surprisingly shortly afterwards, it was announced that HBO would not be, or Max would not be bringing back winning time for season three. And I think this was something that while sad and very upsetting for the creators,

they seemed to know was probably a likelihood or a possibility, I had mentioned that throughout the season Jeff Pearlman, the author of the book that Winning Time is based on, had been tweeting because he was pretty much the only one allowed to kind of actively tweet throughout this season, that they needed help, that they needed viewers, that they

needed audience support. And then more or less exactly when this news dropped, Vulture ran, or published an essay, sorry, an interview with Kevin Messick by Joe Dalyan. My essay was forthcoming. And Kevin Messick is the producer, one of the producers of

of winning time. And also has worked on a bunch of HBO stuff. And actually gave like a pretty... He works with Adam McKay. Yeah, a fascinating interview about like kind of what they knew when they knew in terms of production and their relationship to HBO

and sort of some of the complications and challenges that they had in this second season when it came to promotion and everything like that. So Andy, I guess let's start talking about this first... Well, I suppose the two are intertwined, but do you want to talk about this from a sort of artistic standpoint from a business standpoint first.

Well, I think they're intertwined, right? Like, I think that, first of all, the article you're referencing the Joe Dealing interview is really illuminating because I think it speaks to the type of back-and-forth relationship that talent, that creative side can have with creatively-minded executives and this sort of things, the sort of conversations and collaborations that are rarely covered,

but also particularly hard to parse at this moment of extreme strikeage in Hollywood. But basically, the implication, is that the show was renewed almost as an act of faith because the ratings weren't where anybody wanted them to be in the first season, but they believed in the creatives and they believed in the story. They believed in it because it was literally fact, by the way.

They knew pretty much what was going to happen. But that when they were rapping production in January and even into this first season, there was a lot of transparency, which is something you don't hear a lot about when you read these interviews with creators saying, like, well, we delivered the final cuts to Netflix 18 months ago, and now it's on, but we don't know anything about

who's watching it or when or how or why. And in this interview, a friend of the pod, Caseyploys, was like, you know, it's still not quite where we want it to be. So they adjusted. And they made this tag on ending. I guess they had made two cuts.

Yeah, I think the first thing was, I think actually the episode that maybe had originally been sent to the press a little while ago. Ended with magic being like, ah, shit, you know, in this shower. I'd be like, we lost Larry Bird,

some of it's on me, blah, blah. Then there was this addition. footage that was shot with John C. Riley and Hadley Robinson. Where they kind of put a little bit of a friendlier stamp on the end of it. Go ahead. But this is, and this is going to loop us back to the creative conversation, but this is the risk you take when you make a show that is so powerfully wedded to actual historical recorded fact, which is even if you give them a heads up,

they cannot write an ending to the show that they thought they were making. The show that they thought they were making was going to end at least, as we've said many times. They didn't great, great success. It could have gone into a different dynasty to Kobe and Shaq. But look, they put down a marker in the first moments of the pilot that when they showed actual footage of magic retiring effective immediately because of his HIV diagnosis. That was the story they were intending to tell with the show. You can't suddenly get there. you can't suddenly say, you can't change history to make all of this happen in 1984.

So the best they could do was this sort of very awkward, like, wink at the future where it's like, guess what? This show about winning, in which we've pretty much just won and we're already rich, it's going to keep happening, Gene Bean. It's going to keep happening. Everything's going to be great, which, and we can loop it back this way, speaks to what I think was the essential creative misfire of the show and essentially in the second season, which was I didn't, we all knew this was a basketball.

As of three weeks ago, you were like, I like all the episodes of winning time, and I would keep watching winning time for as long as it was going, right? And I would. Yeah, and I think I was a little bit colder on it than you. Also, three weeks ago was the Pat Riley showcase episode. Yes.

Also three weeks ago was before Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had his soul saved by a wide-eyed eight-year-old boy with a Herbie Hancock LP saying, sir, sir, please take jazz from me. and Kareem being like, we should play harder for a little Timmy, the Herbie Hancock fan. I'm never recovering from that scene.

I mean, we've said Jump the Shark for many decades now. I think that there, I mean, here's the thing about this show, is that a lot of the stuff that, it's sort of why it's illustrative of how hard it is to make shows where the thing that you are making a show about is so well documented. So every time I would come across something in winning time that I would be like, is that how that happened? Or was that creative for the show?

Or is this, what it would? Like the Ari Greiner, John C. Riley relationship, the Honey and Jerry's relationship, where kind of suddenly out of nowhere, because they've kind of gone forward, they leap forward in time, she's like furious at him and is like, I'm leaving you,

you lied to me about this other wife. Now that is a lawsuit that had been brought against Jerry Buss that happened in 83. Right. And that was settled for an undisclosed amount of money. And it was with this woman named puppy

or nicknamed puppy. I don't really remember what a real name is. Right. It was LA Times article I was reading. And then I think that the lawyer featured in this case, who seems they kind of make a point of being like, it's Marvin Mitchelson.

Yeah. He also, I think, Sue's bus again. Or maybe they conflate the two or they compress the two suits. but bus was getting sued a lot. Bus was getting in trouble for fraud or charged with fraud, not by the government,

but different people were kind of like trying to get a piece of the pie and I think he had some dealings that were wild. And I think in the case, if you had made this show and it was the bus family, you could kind of spend more time with that and explain it, maybe get into the pathology of this guy

who was sort of playing fast and loose with accounting, maybe, to keep up with the explosion of the modern NBA. which she was sort of responsible for lighting the fuse of. Or you could tell any number of stories. To try and tell all the stories at once was so ambitious. Yes. So ambitious and it was so difficult.

And I think they did the best they could, but I think that was where it's sort of that original sin of not having, okay, who's our Queen Elizabeth here? Who's the person that gets everything is sort of shot through this character's POV? This is the protagonist of this show. Who is the protagonist of this show? Is it magic? Is it Jerry? Is it a genie? It's winning.

I mean, to your point, there are a hundred other shows that maybe would have been a little more traditional in some ways, but a lot more successful, I think, long term. A David Stern show, you know, not that he's the most charismatic or compelling guy. A Jerry Bus show, a Jerry West show, a Pat Riley show, even a magic show from a different angle, sure. But I think what you're speaking to is my overall complaint here, which is, let me take one more step back. This show was dedicated to being entertaining and to being relatively light and engaging and fun in a way that I wish more shows were.

I think my enjoyment of it, I shouldn't push aside in the purpose of some larger point about what narrative structure ought to be moving into this decade of television making. It was fun. It was a lot of fun, and it featured a lot of good actors doing a lot of really good work. That's not nothing.

But I think that the original sin, or at least the original sin that was baked into the show, but they managed to avoid for the first season's worth, was that this ultimately was just a basketball show. And it was never more so than it was in this now unintentional series finale, which was just watching fake Celtics and fake Lakers play basketball with some incredibly well-timed conversations and speeches in between them. That was never the show's strength, I don't think. And it also does not make sense as an HBO long-running series. Again, you watch that pilot and you're like,

oh, this is going to be about the birth of a culture, of a massive entity in our lives where sports and culture, maybe not always in a website, but just largely are one thing. The way we talk about them, where we cover them, the way we reward people for participating in them. and it's going to look at something that was very famous and look at it a little bit crossways. Like, well, maybe he wasn't always a hero,

or maybe things were a little bit more down and dirty than the official record or the Sports Illustrated stories at the Times would have had us believe. Or maybe there's something we can learn about our current moment by watching Magic's journey. And by the end, they're just playing basketball. And it's about, like, hey, you're not playing with joy. And Larry Bird's mother's like,

I like watching people who play with joy and Larry Bird is a serial killer, apparently. Right. Like, that was a very odd. That is true. I agree. Not literally, but like there aren't a lot of the... And then Larry Bird came and really picked me up in a moment when I was down.

That's true. Yeah, so I think that that was a very strange thing. And then you end up painting yourself into this corner where you are doing your best to make a compelling season of television that because of the decisions you made ends in defeat. And to be able to write the larger story. that you want to write, you have to have to have another season. Because I think that that, you know, there's nothing here. And obviously, like, you empty the notebook, empty the whiteboard, put everything into it.

But everything is still like, okay, but wait, it's going to get good again. But wait, it's going to turn towards us again. There are a couple more nuggets like the Pat Riley introductory press conference that you're not going to believe and we're going to hang the whole house of the next season on that. Yeah. And it doesn't really work that way. Certainly not in this particular moment in the industry. There's another point I wanted to make about this show that I think I'm kind of like, I think I 80% believe, maybe 70% believe, but I still feel like that's enough to say it.

Right. So you mentioned that the first season, like the first episode and the first scene is Magic's retirement announcement. Yep. And there is a sense because of that announcement and then what you see in the first few episodes especially, which is like incredibly Bocat. Anali in like 80s, drugs, sex, partying, monies flowing from everywhere kind of like feel, that those, that moment is going to be the bookend to this kind of crazy period of people's live and then the bill comes due. And, you know, without talking, I'm not talking about it kind of personally for magic. I'm talking about it more as like a kind of thematically for the 80s and for this

group of people. And one of the things that I think drew criticism in the first season that I was actually like, hell yeah, guys, like this is kind of interesting is its willingness to lampoon, caricaturize, or maybe even show people who are very public figures still to this day in unflattering lights. And obviously the Jerry West character played by Jason Clark is one of the most notable ones because that had the most sort of public backlash where people, are like, that is not Jerry West. Even Jerry West saying that's not me.

That's not what I was like. That was kind of to me, like a little bit of a braver show that first season and especially those early episodes where you just kind of felt like you were watching a little bit more of a Bright Lights Big City version of winning time. Now, I will note that in the interview that Kevin Messick did with Joe Adelian, he mentions sort of like in this second season that, Jeannie Buss was kind of became more fond of the show. And this was reflected in interviews she'd been doing as well.

Yes. And that she is kind of since, you know, she's, whereas first, I think the NBA and the Lakers organization and Magic Johnson and a bunch of people were like kind of turn their back on the show, if not publicly, like, criticized it. Jeannie started talking about it affectionately as a time capsule of her relationship with her father and the way it kind of showed the Lakers and how they built what they built. And she did, like, the official podcast, and she's done more, I think, promotional work over the last couple of weeks about the show than she ever had in the past or ever, you know, it was even suggesting. Now, it's kind of funny.

When I was at, I was at a Lakers game last year and John C. Riley was, like, at the game and, like, kind of sitting courtside. And I was sort of like, this is interesting. I wonder if this is almost, like, publicly we're saying we don't like this. But, like, privately, it's kind of cool that there's an HBO show about our franchise. and life imitates art. John C. Riley is getting really good seats at Lakers games and like a big game and he's featured and everything. Anyway, it isn't a conspiracy theory,

but I do think that it's tough to make a show in the town about the people that you're making a show about and eventually like you kind of become a little bit closer to the subject matter. And I wouldn't say that this season pulled any punches, but I think it certainly softened the focus a little bit about like Jerry Buss is not presented as, like world's greatest dad in the first season, you know?

Well, two things. I'll be conspiracy bill for a second if you want. Yeah. Did you notice who played Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's agent in the Herbie Hancock episode? Yeah. Comedian Jay Moore, comedian J. Moore, who is the paramour of... Gene Ebus. Okay.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I'm just saying, like, sometimes coincidences happen. Sometimes you hire the best person available for the job. And sometimes you hire Nathaniel Hackett to be your offensive coordinator. Just because you love the way he's... schemes it up. And like, wait, then Aaron Rogers signs, is traded to your team? I mean,

that's just a happy. That's just great for everyone, right? Right. It just works out that way. What you're speaking to, look, whether they pull punches and soften things for political reasons or access reasons, who knows. And it ultimately doesn't matter. The show is, the show is now done. But the result on the screen, I think, is what Robb winning time of its, almost its purpose in the second season, which is to say the show just profoundly had a hero problem. Now, I've said many times in the podcast, many people who talk about TV talk about this, over time serialized TV has a flattening effect on friction.

Your characters on the screen become your pals in the story, and you root for them and you want them to succeed, no matter what, and the writers become fond of them to and writing towards things. That's inevitable. But to end up in a place, not just at the end of the second season, but pretty much from the beginning of the second season,

where our orientation points are, why can't magic just be great? Why can't they just let him be great? And boy, Dr. Jerry Buss just really wants to win in an unconventional style, and he sure hope he gets one over on that mean Red Auerbach. Or the Jeannie Buss is just a feminist icon waiting to be recognized and noticed. It's soft. It's just soft.

And again, I feel for the creators who are hamstrung by the facts. And so when you're hamstrung by the public record, you can't take big swings in every scene you come into. I understand why the walls close in so that the scenes become these kind of pep talks constantly. It's just like, I see your greatness, be greater. Or you're doing it this way, but I believe in you to do it the other way. Or everyone yells at Jerry, and we linger on Jerry's hang dog expression.

And we are, I guess, the camera's suggesting that we should be feeling for him. when he did fully marry someone when he was married to someone else. I mean, Gabby Hoffman in that scene is not wrong. Yeah. But because of the orientation of the camera, because of the sort of general softness of its view towards these people, kind of hoping it all works out. And as it became more of a basketball show,

it became more of a sports movie. And in a sports movie, you're rooting for one team over the other. You are rarely seeing the grace and grit of both sides. Yeah. So. But there's a reason why sports movie. Sports movies, well, first of all, it's a reason why there's not a lot of sports shows, right? Yes.

There's a reason why we tell stories that are either fictional or that are very unknown. So Friday Night Lights is a good example of a show where you're basically, like, you have a blank canvas because even though you have this Buzz Bissinger book and you have the movie and you have like maybe a little bit of a visual tone and a sonic kind of identity with the explosions in the sky music and stuff, like that. You don't necessarily you can fill in Riggins, you can fill in Saracen, you can fill in Stry. And a lot of what Friday Nightlights does is

it's about taking archetypes and inverting them. It's about making the nerd into the quarterback and the quarterback into the outcast and all these things that are really neat. And that also was conceived as we are going to fill out this

world so much because we were making 20 episode seasons. Right? Yeah. And they can go up to the state championship. or can do whatever, yeah, until I went to direct TV. And I think winning time probably, maybe winning time would have been better if it was like that. Maybe if winning time would have been better if it was like we have, it's like 42 minute episodes every week and it's 20 episodes of season.

Like maybe there's a world in which there's like the winning time that they showed in season two, I think they probably could have gotten away with putting on network television at some point, you know? Yeah. I mean, I mean, yeah, like there are scenes that are probably like, wouldn't have made it. My point being, like, that's what I was running through my mind. Maybe it was, like, essentially, like, it needed to be much longer form storytelling than it was rather than compression. But ultimately, you're right. Like, we never decided, is this a show about Jerry West and the front office construction of a team? Is it a show about Jerry Buss and his family and the Wild West days of

the NBA franchise ownership and the birth of modern sports with television? And it would have been, like, David Stern and all these people who are like, it's basically, the backroom dealings that create what we see on the court, but the stuff that happens on the court is secondary. And it's like, or is it a show about magic, bird and Kareem and the sort of transition from an older way of playing basketball to a newer one? Or is it about Pat Riley and coaching and tried to do all of them?

I want to go back to, I agree with you. And I want to go back to something you said a moment ago about the way that fictional sports stories work on TV and movies, you're exactly right, is that you take archetypes because it is, and this is actually true of any, genre storytelling, where it's the old wizard or it's the spy master or whatever. The best iterations of these stories. Those are two of my favorite genres. Wizards who are also spies undercover as a wizard. Oh my God. Dude, when's the strike in me over? That is everything. I honestly, if I just walked

into a pitch meeting and I was like spy wizards, they would hand you the bag. And the bag would be empty and they'd say, what would you like in the bag? Because we'll fill it. With sparkling or flat? Exactly. And parking validation, please. On your way. Yeah. So you subvert the archetypes because the archetypes allow you to orient the audience in shorthand. Yeah. There is a version of winning time that functions that way. And it's in the first season where you have Magic, the young charismatic hothead, and you have Kareem who is prickly, who is the greatest ever at that point and arguably maybe even beyond that point, but is introverted and intellectual and doesn't smile for the cameras, doesn't perform for the cameras, but it's his team and he's the captain. So whose team is it?

And some of the best friction in the first season came from that power dynamic between the two of them. I feel like we would be remiss to talk about the show without saying like Solomon Hughes and Quincy Isaiah, who played Kareem and Magic respectively, were giving it their all. And I think what their all was was humanizing people who are humanizing celebrity, humanizing stars. The challenge in the second season, and I think why some of the performances started to feel a little bit repetitive. is because with the real estate allotted to them, both by the very busy show, but also by just history, they were stuck playing the archetypes again.

They were just playing superstars because there wasn't a narrative that suited that idea, meaning no matter what you tried to spin, no matter what friction may have existed that got reported in the book or didn't, for 80 games a year in 81, 82, 83, and 84 and beyond, they play basketball together.

Yeah, you know, it's repetitive as sports. You just do it again the next night. Yeah. And that doesn't really lend itself to that kind of storytelling. So again, I think we're being... Sometimes I feel like when we talk about the show, we're being dismissive on both sides, where I'm like, it's light and entertaining,

but I'm also like it wasn't good enough. That seems unfair to the people who work very, very hard on it. I think that what was hard about it is not unique in all of TV, but very rare in that they were trying to find nuggets of poetry in a lot of historical prose. And sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they didn't and they always did it with a smile on their face.

But I think that the bet that they took at the beginning didn't pan out. I mean, in the interview you were talking about on Vulture, Kevin Messick refers to, I guess the question that Joe Adelaean asked is was the goal to end with the retirement conference, right? And I thought the language that Kevin Messick uses is interesting because he doesn't like try to,

it's not like he's fobbing off blame, but he's like, that was a very eye-catching choice in Max's, or Max and Jim, I forget who got credited for the first Jim Hecton, Max Borenstein are credited as the creators of the show. I don't want to misattribute anything, but in the page of the shooting script or the page of the script that sold, begins with that. And as Kevin Bessick says, and that Adam, Adam McKay, who directed the pilot, really liked that and wanted to, you know, use real footage and not real footage. Unsaid in that response is, I kind of wish we hadn't done it because the thing about pilot script, is they are trying to get attention. Pilot scripts are sales documents. Pilot scripts are, the function of them

is to get executives to read them and get you in the room to get your parking validated to tell you why they should give you more money and more sparkling water to make more of these things. And increasingly, as it's harder and harder to get on the air and you have to be flashier and flashier, pilot scripts, and I'm guilty of this as well, are writing checks that you can't actually cash in series.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that the... exterior night. No one told you. We cannot afford that. It's exactly right. But this is a particularly cruel example of that.

Where not only can you not cash it, you're basically saying, give us eight seasons to do it. Yeah, I thought it was super ambitious. And I really respect several iterations of the show that the show showed us. You know, like there's parts of me

that are like some of the basketball footage and the way that they were flying around on roller blades or whatever they were doing to get some of that electricity of transition basketball, a fast break basketball is awesome. Like, you don't really get to see that. A lot of the basketball is a very hard thing to shoot. It's only been done well a half a dozen times, in my opinion.

Like, you know, there's a lot of historically very bad basketball on camera. Mr. Robot Season 2? No, I thought, like, look, like that is a specific style of basketball. But, you know, like, white made can't. he had jump and he got game like above the rim. There's only a few really great basketball, basketball movies, Hoosiers. You know, and I think that they were trying to thread the needle where I always always like, this show, when this show first came on, I was like, this could be as big as Game of Thrones.

Because I think there are more Lakers fans than there are Game of Thrones fans. I think I might have been wrong about that. But like, I was like, if I'm a Lakers fan, I've been waiting for this my whole life. You know, like, and just I think you and I would be just as guilty of it if they were like, we're going to do Buddy Ryan era Eagles or we're going to do Mike Schmidt, Pete Rose Phillies, or we're going to do Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins Phillies or something like that. Like, I think you would have been pretty into it. We'll see how our listeners respond when we take all of October to just break down each frame of Kelsey on Amazon Prime. But I think it wound up being too many things to too many people are trying to be too many things to too many. many people. And I do wonder whether

in the second season it started to try and be too much to some of the people that were actually in the show. I agree. I think it's worth just on the creative side. I don't know if there's anything else to say about the HBO piece of it, but there is, yeah. John C. Riley and Adrian Brody, incredible. Incredible. Like, John C. Riley is somehow, I think, still underrated

because he's also very choosy about what he does. he's one of the best actors working and took a part that as we've just said moments ago was kind of the hero of the show but he kind of just disappeared into it and gave it his all in a way that really anchored it. I thought Adrian Brody was incredible in the show throughout. As hard as it is to capture actual sports on camera,

I think it's even harder for actors to actually have the kind of impassioned gravitas in the moment of lunatic sports coaches. You know, like, Pacino, I guess, Hackman. These guys, I mean, there's a long history of it. But something about the way Brody, even just in this finale, plays the anger of that scene

and then is trashing his office, and none of it is mannered somehow. Somehow he's actually in that room. I don't know what imagine what it was like. I don't know if it was Methody or weird, but like he's fully on one. And I love that performance. Pat character is he actually got a transformation.

He had an arc, yeah. That's true. You know, he's brought in as a guy who's like barely hanging on to the game. Like it's like, you know, doing color with Chikern and is kind of kind of just by his fingernails still in basketball, living out by the beach with Chris. And it's just kind of like hanging on. And then over time becomes an assistant, becomes a trusted assistant, becomes an assistant, becomes an assistant that Paul West. it's wary of winds up almost accidentally getting the job because Jerry Bus tries to give it to Jerry West and Pat Riley at the same time.

And then they kind of skip ahead past I'm slicking my hair back and wearing Armani. It was in a montage. Yeah. So despite that, I still think that the Riley character got a transformation. And it's one that I think was probably like forced sometimes when you, you know, you joked about like Kareem gets the records and decides that like he loves L.A.

and he wants to be more outgoing and play for the right reasons or whatever. Like, I'm sure there's some truth to that, and I also think that it would have been nice. If you'd made a Kareem show, you might have gotten a little bit more of an arc there. I think going to the HBO part of it, like the bigger caveat here is there's so much uncertainty,

even beyond the labor issues that are still currently at play, that it's very hard to take any of the networks of streamers and say, like, what's going on here? or what's their plan, or what is service X anymore in this year of our Lord, whatever. I think that from our perspective, on this podcast, we were in agreement about the growth potential for this, which is to say, like, if Netflix, if everyone's making cheeseburgers and Netflix is making gourmet cheeseburgers, then can HBO win by making, do you remember the Danielle Ballude Burger in New York where he was just like, I will serve a burger, but it is made of like unicorn meat.

And on the inside, it's dripping with liquid foie gras. Yeah. And it's like, it's a 36thal. Was it, what's the place, what's the La Pat LaFrieta burger that's like dry aged? At the Manetta Tavern. Is it at Manetta? People love that. I mean, Pat LaFreta makes the, he's a beef supplier.

Yeah. He's not in the back, like cooking up the medicine. You know what I mean? My main thing about the, the, I didn't know why I was sitting here with the David Halberstrom of fucking hamburgers. I'm so excited. talking about this because I got nothing else today. My favorite thing about my memory of this

very expensive hamburger, I remember reading in the... Oh, right, it was like $29 for a hamburger. Yeah. I'm like, great, sign me up. Like, that's how much it costs for a smash burger in Silver Lake. I know. Like, look how far we done fell. Anyway, what was I looking at the other day?

Oh, I came across a $27 salmon bowl this weekend. Yeah. And it was just a bowl to put the grains in, you mean? Salmon reads to you. No, it's just like, I was just like, oh, a salmon boy. And then I panned right. It said 27. Did you just chuckle?

I chuckled softly to myself and said, too bad, I've driven all the way over here. And I have to go to lunch. I'm just so hungry. Yeah, it's broken out here. But I think that the HBO gamble with shows like with this, to a degree, the last of us, which I know we'll get some pushback. I don't mean this in a quality through a quality lens.

Even the Gilded Age, right? To felt to me like these are proven, either proven creators or proven genres or we see a very mass market lane for these things to exist in, and we are going to HBO the shit out of them. We are going to

throw money and production values and below the line talent and especially in front of the camera talent, and it's going to elevate them even beyond. And you will, that's what you've come to expect from HBO. And I wonder if internally, either these conversations are happening or the data is burying this out, which is that the marketplace might be saying, actually what we think of as HBO is something other than this. What we think of as HBO is we trust you to surprise us, maybe more than you're even getting

a different marketplace now. I think there are many marketplaces. And I will say again, that week after week, when I tuned in to watch Winning Time tuned in, that's a different era, when I fired up the Macs app. Yep. Absolutely every time there was a housing renovation show in the main window. And two, winning time

through last night, RIP, never once appeared in the continue watching box for me. Week after week, I would have to search for it by typing in W-I-N, which feels like a loss because I was,

but I was proving that I... I'm glad that you didn't spell it wrong. You kept track of how many letters you had to take. I did. Yeah. Because you ever, you know, if you get the first letter wrong,

and you're like, how much am I going to gamble on this iterative AI that it knows that a lot of people have gotten this wrong? I like to do that sometimes when I'm like typing in bed on my phone and I'm trying to look something up on Google and I'm like, that is not what I need. This is nowhere close to how you're supposed to spell this. But let's just see where Google comes up. That is just letting it fly. But so anyway, you get my point that I don't know. I mean, Last of Us is a huge hit. It has Emmy nominations.

That show's fine. But I still think, I don't know ratings-wise, but I still think that it's the place for succession, the next succession. 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.

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and I thought, you know, his takeaway from the cancellation of winning time was essentially like, huh, these guys have any Sunday shows left? Right. And part of this is the strike. So I think loosely, True Detective would have been airing in a couple of weeks, right? I think it probably would have been October-ish. I think our original sense of the new season of True Detective that we're both excited at checkout, that it was slated to premiere this year, October.

It's now been pushed into January. It's hard not to think that that's strike-related, spread out the content. And then after that, you know, so typically what happens is HBO has a show. It goes on Sundays. Sometimes they have two or they're on Sundays. Even if it's like people watch it whenever they do, I think even Kevin Messick mentions in the Joe Adelian interview, he's like, Sunday nights were like the smallest percentage of our actual watch time, you know, like that.

We've heard that elsewhere as well. And I think that that's probably indicative of changing behaviors. It's also football is on now. So it's like I think people spend a lot of time watching NFL like on Sundays and maybe watch the shows that they might watch on a Sunday. They might watch on a Monday. But this is among the first times that I can remember where I literally can't answer the question, what's going to be the next big HBO show that's a Sunday night show.

Now, we should be careful because they, the best shows still, not just from HBO, but from anywhere tend to surprise us. Yeah, of course. And I'm sure that there's HBO stuff coming that I don't have at the fingertips. I like Gilded Age. I watch it. You know, like, I'm excited for that to come back.

That's coming back soon. But I think that when you, there was like an HBO like coming soon ad a couple months ago. I think we even talked about it on the pod and it was like the Palace, which is the Kate Winslet show, the sympathizer, the Robert Downey Jr. show,

true detective night country. I kind of thought that that was going to be the next four months. There's another show you're forgetting about. Like many NBA fans wondering who the next, like MJ or magic would be, you forgot to look across the ocean. Here comes industry. Oh, yeah.

Well, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I just didn't know if you were going to continue. But I always assumed an industry was going to be in 24. I didn't know if you were going to continue a tradition like none other where you're like the most anticipated shows of the year and we forget our favorite. I don't want that to happen again to our boys.

Well, I'm just, but that's not 23. Might be. Might be. You think Conrad Mickey, you're like, what? No, I think genuinely, I'm not breaking news. I've not talked to Conrad or Mickey about this, but I think any show that is stayed in production during this time because they are not Writers Guild or SAG-related international show has a very good chance of premiering early.

And a very good chance of having a shockingly reduced post time that they expected. Right. I don't know if that's happening in the industry. But I would not be surprised. I can't wait to get some messages from them being like, mate question mark. But yeah, I think it's possible.

Okay. But yeah. I'm not doing the is HBO in trouble thing. I'm not either. I'm just doing the like, this is a very complicated time. I think they had like an obvious Casey talked when he came on the show about the plans.

Plan A, Plan B, plan. And he's got his sort of vision for how the next 18 months works or the next two years works, the next four years work. And I'm just saying like this is now the strike, different shows ending Barry and succession ending, you know, we just got through a righteous gemstone season, like that won't

be back for another year or whatever. Like, it's starting to be like, okay, I'm not quite sure how the end of the year works out here. And here's what I'll say. People can rightly or wrongly think that we're more, you know, more biased towards HBO or towards certain other networks. I think that one of the reasons why that you and I as fans and also as a podcasters and observer of the industry feel like extremely invested in the success of HBO and to a degree FX is because I think that those are places that have managed to keep

and this is something that Red Auerbach says in the winning time finale have kept a culture. Yes. Beyond the coosies and the Havlicex and beyond Byrd there will be a Celtics thing. They are okay letting succession end retire early because there's someone after Larry Bird because of their culture.

And in these two cases particularly they are creative cultures that have had the same people involved for a good number of years. It's not just Casey and Franie Orsie on the drama side at HBO. There are other people who have been there through various regimes and iterations. And similarly, FX's brain trust is remarkably stable of John Landgraf and Nick Grad and Gina Ballion. They are now trying to do the same thing within much larger corporate machines, Zazlav and Warner Brothers Discovery for HBO, Disney for Fox, and at a time when there's very different expectations of

profits and delivery and consistency. This is the same industry that is much happier with a DCU release schedule across a decade with no actual movies in it, just like we know we're going to have something there. So in that culture, or in that culture, in that moment, how do you also discover, develop, and protect the bear? How do you do that? And I think that's one of the hedges that you may take against that. And again, I'm not saying there's no quality involved in these decision-makings,

nor am I saying that there aren't committed creative executives at Amazon and Peacock and all of the other places we're not talking about. But how do you maintain that very idiosyncratic, individualistic, the best shows really come out of nowhere, while also giving cover for yourself by having a Walking Dead or a Last of Us or a Game of Thrones, having a big budget hit to sort of paper over the potentially unpredictable inconsistencies of a more creative project. Yeah. I mean, I think that it's not like I have any corporate allegiance to any of these places, but just like people listening to this podcast, I need curatorial help. Like, I don't want to watch every single thing that gets put on the air to see if it's okay. I would like groups of smart people to be like,

We really worked on these scripts. We think that if you liked these previous three shows, you'll like this next one. And that's hard work. And it takes money and it takes time and you might have misses and you might have misfires and you might have rocky starts and tough landings. But I think that's the reason why you and I often go back to the same networks because we trust their taste. Side note plug for networks whose taste I trust.

I did check out telemarketers on HBO. Not going to talk about it today, but if you haven't checked this out yet, everybody, this is a documentary on HBO, three episodes all streaming on Macs, produced by Roughhouse, Danny McBride's company, and the Safdi Brothers. It's really good.

Chris, you're going to like this. Cool. You know how you're always looking for just like East Coast early aughts culture to be just like really captured? You're just like, I want to feel the way I felt when I went to a Wawa and Jersey Turnpike Rest Up.

Yeah. Like, I want to know what, I just want to feel like I'm with those guys again. Buckle up. It's really good. I'm looking forward to it. Let's talk about the gold.

How about that? So this is a show that's on Paramount Plus where it's originally on BBC. It stars Jack Loudon, who folks made up from Slow Horses, as well as Dunkirk

and Hugh Bonneville from a Downton Abbey, Dominic Cooper. from preacher and tons of other stuff and it's written and created by a guy named Neil Forsyth who I only really other than some stage and some others TV work in England had done a show called Gilt which I had never heard of but that was like his other big credit it's about a 1983

robbery that takes place out at Heathrow where these guys are going to rob like they think they're going to steal like a thousand pounds and currency. This is a warehouse near Heathrow where things that are in transit are stored before they're put on planes. Yes, and instead they come across

tens of millions of bars of gold bullion that was on its way to the Gulf. And I'm very into this show. I would be given just the setup anyway, but the execution is pretty relentlessly paced. Incredibly, I would kind of throw it in the Sorkin-Gilroy department of very self-aware characters who are incredibly articulate about what's going on and who

they are and how they fit into everything, which I think could rub some people the wrong way. There's a lot of various characters being like, do you know what it means to be English? And do you know what this gold means, you know? But I like that. Especially when it's about this, because I think I'm interested in crime and I'm interested in class and I'm interested in England that I'm interested in good actors delivering crackling dialogue. I could see some people being like this is a little bit like over-explained at certain points. But I also find that the thing that I'm responding to the most in this show, Andy,

is the pace, is the way in which it's like running around London, running around, you know, this sort of shadow industry and this idea that the very upper crust of English society needs to be funded by the underground and the underworld of English society and these are characters that are sort of a stride both sides and really into it. This is through one episode,

this is a great show. It just has all the ingredients for... I mean, we love this stuff, first of all. Yes. It is crackling. It's got Jack Loudon listening to New Order and fencing gold. With his hands covered in blood

from rabbits that he poached off of a neighboring state. So it gets these little period details and just little, yeah, it's really expertly captured, but it has an incredible pace and it has this ability to, let me take a step back and ask you a question. One of the things that I really like about the show is what you were alluding to, which is that in every other scene, one character says to another, basically, boy, that lot's getting rich off my back, in it. Those villains. Those villains.

I'll show you real villain. Like, that's what they say to each other. Do you think that if the show was set in, like, Pasadena and a bunch of people were like, there's inequality in this country, and I'm going to redistribute it fairly this time. But with me on top, we would be, like, bumping against it? Sure.

Is it the... And I'm fine with this, but sometimes I do wonder if it's, you know, we use this example constantly, but like once the wire, when the wire was talking about drug dealers, we were like, nothing's ever been more accurate. It got to,

like the school system were like, wow, teachers are heroes. Then it got to journalists, and we were like, really, are you sure? Is there that element of it? Because I don't mind,

but that was the only bump potentially in the series, which is like, I believe, and again, I could be wrong, but in my memory of watching the first episode,

this is not a spoiler, it does end with like Jack Loudon on a wireless phone being like, oh, I'm fit to be king mate in like stairs at him from him. he gets a call from the guy, so here's, we'll lightly spoil the first episode,

which I don't think is near spoiling the series. Again, it's about, unlike winning time, it is about history, but it's a history we don't really know. And it is fictionalizing it and conflating things and absolutely taking liberties to tell this story dramatically the way it wants to. Right. So it starts with this robbery at Heathrow and the character Mickey McAvoy, played by Adam Negatus. It's quite good, actually.

though distractingly looks a lot like Jack Loudon. When you're watching it, you're like, is Jack Loudon playing twins and it's not? It's another guy. But he essentially is put in jail quickly. He was one of our firefighter buddies in Chernobyl. Did you know that? That's where I recognized him from.

Oh, man. The British. Also good at being Russian, you know? Incredible. So he gets nicked at the end by Hibonaville, who's sort of this master police officer. and he makes a phone call to Jack Loudon's character, his character Kenny, who's like the fence.

He's the guy who's going to take all this gold and redistribute it into the market to clean it, to launder the money. And immediately, the thing that Andy is referring to is they have this sort of impromptu phone call and Kenny is ready with a long anecdote about English history and about what happens when guys like him become king

and how they get scared off by their own power. Here's the thing, though, what are we watching TV for, really? Right. Like, there is a type of knee-jerk criticism, and when it's done badly, it's really bad. But, like, there's a type of writing that privileges, not reality, but economy,

where someone asks a question and another character answers the question, and then we move on to the next scene. And then there's another type of writing for the screen where a character asks a question, and the character listens to the question, takes a long pause, takes an elaborate drag off of a fake cigarette,

stubs it out, looks off into the... out through like a grimy window into the gray English morning and gives a long monologue about how they grew up and the way dogs were treated there. Okay, I like the second version more. Yeah. Like that's that, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with the heightened theatricality.

Similarly, this has the, what I was trying to say at the beginning was that it does have this kind of special sauce of, it's a bang, bang procedural where we meet the cops, we meet the robbers, we get the lay of the land, we get the stakes. That's fine. But there's enough extra mustard slathered on everything to elevate it, not just because they have found that Daniel Forsyth, like, chose a historical thing that does have larger significance.

As one of the characters says, this is not cops and robbers and fly-in squad, which is a dope name for a division of the police force, and I can't believe it's not like a splinter rap group from New York, so in 2000s. It is about how the economy works. And when you starve something from the economy, now you flood it back in and who controls the flow of all that.

So that all works. I mean, they talk about the gold as if it's like, the smoke monster or something or like a natural element where it's like it's not even like it's so cool that at the end of this episode the gold is gone. Yeah. Because it's now it's evaporated.

And now what it is is they're moving this basically nefarious money around in this market. And you know, there's a scene in a men's club, like a social club, not like a strip club, where it's Jack Loudon, Sean Harris, and Dominic Cooper. And I was like, season tickets, baby. Like, let's

Sean Harris's performance is wild. What is Sean Harris' performance? It's not wild. But in this one, I was like, I didn't recognize him at first. And I was like, did they cast a real criminal? Yeah. Like, was there a quota in British TV where they were like, as part of your work release, you can be this sketchy guy? Yeah, I mean, this is a show about the redistribution of wealth in a literal and figurative way, which is incredibly cool.

But the other thing I wanted to call out in terms of how it's being presented to us is the direction. at least for the first few episodes is by a Neil Correa, who was, I think, I don't know if he won the Academy Award. He did. He won an Academy Award with the Riz Ahmed for a short in 2021. He directs this, like, as if someone said, like, you're never going to be allowed to direct anything again. He directs the shit out of every frame of this show.

And there are moments when it is elevated and beautiful and gorgeous and these framing shots of these, like, very working class flats or row houses. And then there are scenes, like there's a scene between, Sean Harris and Dominic Cooper where they're standing and the Thames, yeah. And his decision was

instead of doing a two shot or cutting between them, he's going to dolly the camera from one to the other and I thought I was going to have some kind of a stroke. In a cool way or in a way where you were like,

you're over directing this? I guess I would find out after you revived me from the stroke. You know, there's cool ways. No, it was too much. Yeah. But it's okay to take swings sometimes

when you're working with something as otherwise ground as this is. Last thing we should say about the show, which I'm, I'm, people may think that we only talk about the first episodes of things. I'm going to watch the series. I really, really liked it. Yeah. The second one's already, I think it's six episodes. Six, we can do this. I do want to call out. Who's, who's we dog? Me, left sinus and right sinus. And the, and the mouse you have in your pocket. Oh, we're back to that. Um, Hugh Bonneville. Like, there's something that's just so wild about English actors

because Hugh Bonneville had a long career, probably a distinguished career on the stage before we became more aware of him in Downton Abbey. Could have just continued to, like, you know, three-layer caked it off of that forever. Now, Chris, you don't know this, but those of us in the Dattington community recognize Hugh Bonneville

and salute him for his performances in the Paddington films. Very good. How do you feel about that Paddington filmmaker? He's now moving into Wonka territory. We're going to come, okay, I'll clear out some space for me about that. that. I just want to say that, like, I don't know many American actors who could just be, like,

super family friendly in all senses and then be like, oh, okay, now I'm going to be the Prince of the City. Well, Brian Cranston could. Brian Cranston could. That's a great example. That's a great example. The voice character that he's playing, again, like, you can see when actors, when they, like, smell blood, they're like, oh, they're about to serve me a juicy steak and I can make a meal of this. So there's a scene in the first episode where they get a pretty lower rung criminal who is part of the robbery and they get him in the interrogation room. And Charlotte Spencer and Emin Elliott. She's fucking good man. Yeah. Emin Elliott, who's the Scottish actor who plays the other cop, who again, it's as if he has, he's had like a cigarette

transplant. So there's one just like tied to his lip. And then he has to run at one point. But speaking of your directions point, there's a shot where it's basically like Charlotte Spencer and Eminely are like kind of at the opposite ends of this table. And then in between, you can see Hugh Bonneville in the back of the room. And it's in focus. And Bonneville gives this speech about, like, how many times he's had to be in rooms like this with guys like this. And he's just like, I'm like, it basically, like, has destroyed my faith in humanity

to have to do this a hundred times in my life. And it's a really good speech. Is it, is it like, what if this guy gave the speech? For sure. But he fucking crushes it. And like you said, what are we doing this for? No? There are times when we praise the formulaic nature of TV in...

There are different ways we praise it. And one of them is like, well, yeah, if you have three characters, put friction between two of them. And, like, it's pretty basic to get people feeling things about the characters on TV. It's not actually that hard, and there is a formula to it that can be used successfully. Another formula is we're going to introduce a lot of characters, some of whom you might need subtitles to follow if you're not watching it in your native BBC. let's give him a couple

everyone gets a bite at the apple Yeah But every, you know, it's much like how If he didn't get any touches in week one You stripped some passes to Dallas Goddard At the beginning of week two I have one more question for you Very specifically oriented towards you

About the way we use tight ends How did you feel about the scene Where Dominic Cooper is dining with his in-laws Yes And his father-in-law takes a shot at him For liking Ghosh New World wines As a California wine connoisseur He says bring something French.

Yeah. Right? How do you feel? Is a guy who's just like I love an oaky, buttery shard? I am not, not that guy. I love what Northern California, what Gavin Newsom hath brought. You can't talk like this. First of all, not a fan of Plumpjack.

His winery. Second. Does he have a winery? Yeah, Plum Jack. Should he be president? What do you think? What do I think right now? Yeah, come on.

What do you think? Fine. Okay. Yeah? Sure. You think he'd make it? Like, do you think that he would get through the French laundry part? And he dated Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Like, would he get the French Laundry vote? No. I mean, do you think that people would be like, French Laundry? No thanks. Do you know who's running for president? This is a weirdly high-minded... I like a candidate who is untouched by scandal.

I'm sorry, let me... I only have a few minutes because the performance of Beetlejuice is wrapping up. I got to get back in there. I can't believe you're turning this wine question to me when everyone listening knows that now you have... have some of that dog in you, and that dog is D.0.g. Drops of God. Oh, yeah, sure.

So, I will say that as a, I am a passionate fan of all good wine, like Alexander Liget, the deceased expert in drops of God, the Apple TV Plus series that I'm going to put another plug in for now. I see the value in making wines the right way anywhere in the world.

Great wine can come from anywhere. but as I have gotten older, I'm a little less Dominic Cooper and more his father-in-law. You know? Like, that's fun. In lots of ways. In so many ways.

In the sense that they're like, that's fun that they're doing it this way and like skin contact and maybe it's not refined and that's very bold. But also, like, how many bottles of wine do I have left? Like, French know how to do it? What do you mean?

How many bottles do you, like, in your life? Yeah. Like, I'm also, and this is, You're not going to go California sober on me, are you? Oh, God. No, no. I can't live like that. I'm just saying, especially in this $39 smashburger economy.

Yeah, I know. I'm like, oh, okay, so this is a picture of the guy and his wife who made this one. You don't have those Drew Barrymore checks come in anymore. They made it with their feet, you know, in Santa Clara, which is traditionally not where you grow the Trousseau grape. But, like, they're passionate about it. And like, this is a picture of their kids. I'm like, good for you. Like, we're all trying to make it.

Yeah. But also, this motherfucker's family's been doing this for 400 years, and that's a, I can count on it. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Maybe when they say people become more conservative in their old age, they just mean in terms of wine.

So you are committing now. Okay. As we sit here to watch the rest of the gold, and we'll talk about it. I hope people enjoy it. I hope people check it out because we're going to talk about it. Yeah. And we can toast the finale over just a really angular

and compelling bottle. of New World Wine. Oh, Greenwald, Thursday on our show. We'll talk about reservation dogs. We'll talk about telemarketers. We might even hit, maybe we'll go back to France for Daryl Dixon. Who knows? Who can say, right?

I'd be excited to. I'm a little disappointed because I thought we were doing a full Jennifer Hudson show season preview on Thursday, but unfortunately now we won't be able to do that. And Bill Moore. Awesome. Pausing. Yeah, what a snowflake, right?

Because he said he said he has hopes that the strike is in its final days, or at least that there's talks, right? I did get, as we were recording, now you guys know that unlike Chris, I rarely look at email while recording. I don't look at my email while we record. I look at Twitter. It's much up here. I got an update this morning, Monday morning, from the WGA saying there's now a confirmed meat on Wednesday. What if they were like, don't go buy in any $27 Ambers many times. Stay hungry, my friend. Andy, do you know who produced this episode of The Watch?

I sure do. I sure do. Immune system of Steel. Kyle McCormack. Kyle McMullen produced our episode today as she does. I would say 99.5% of our episodes when she's not in Spain. Right. I mean, figuratively or later. We'll be back on Thursday.

Who knows what will happen between now and then. Thanks for putting up with this voice today. I don't mind. I can't stand. You know, I'm an audio file. I'm still an East Coast guy at heart. This makes that, like, that I sound like literally the Gortons fisherman,

making you feel at home. Talk to you soon.