The Watch - Welcome ‘Ms. Marvel,’ Barry Jenkins and Disney, and an Interview With ‘Ted Lasso’ Executive Producer Bill Lawrence

Episode Date: October 2, 2020

Marvel announced this week that a ‘Ms. Marvel’ series will be coming to Disney+ and that they’re tapping relatively unknown actress Iman Vellani to play the role, and Chris and Andy discuss what this news mean for the Marvel universe (3:11). Plus, they discuss Barry Jenkins directing the ‘Lion King’ sequel (18:45) and the third episode of ‘The Third Day’ (30:20). Lastly, Chris interviews ‘Ted Lasso’ executive producer Bill Lawrence (41:33). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Bill Lawrence Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports 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 on the other line. My wife, it's Andy Greenwald. How long have you had that impression on ice? How psyched are you?

Never not funny. And now it's back. Greenwald, what's up? Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking a little bit about some of this Disney news. We'll talk about the Miss Marvel casting news. We'll talk about the absolutely astonishing Barry Jenkins' Lion King story. We'll get into some third day talk. And the second half of the show, I chatted with Bill Lawrence,

the executive producer of Andy's fave, Ted Lassow. We'll get into the show in just a second. We'll be right back. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like. to be a million miles away.

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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 trim fire. 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. Greenwald, what's up, man? Happy Thursday. What a happy Thursday. You know, honestly, Chris, all days are happy in America in 2020. Did you know you're supposed to say rabbit, rabbit on the first day of a month to give it good luck? No. Which, explain something.

Maybe that's the problem. I just found this out today from my wife. Phoebe was like, You were supposed to say this, apparently. It's supposed to be the first thing you say when you wake up on the first day of a month. You go rabbit. And I don't know if that comes from some sort of pagan ritual. And I'm sorry if I'm getting it. I think it comes from a brotherhood of John Updike fans. Yeah.

Apparently, yeah. That's right. Lonely English teachers in Western Pennsylvania. That's our demo. Come on. I also think that normally I might be skeptical of information like that that I have not heard for the hundreds of months on which I've been on this planet. However, given the current state of things and the direction of all life on the planet,

I am basically willing to become Jack Houston and Fargo season four. Like, if you tell me I need to knock on every door I enter and exit 10 times, okay, sure. I'm already washing my hands 10 times a day. I'll do whatever work is necessary. I mean, the amount of ritual I now have in my life from not leaving the home without a face covering to giving all my liquid income to Senate races in states I've never visited. Sure. Pile it on.

Whatever. Let me just say, big fan of Mississippi and Iowa. I got you. I got you. Andy, so what do you want to start with today? I guess we have a bunch of Disney news to get to you. I want to get to the third day, which concluded, I guess, the first half of its season. The third day.

I want to talk a little bit about this absolutely bonkers Lion King stuff to me. and then the second half of the show. I talked with Bill Lawrence. The Ted Lassau finale is imminent, so the season finale, and if folks have been enjoying that, Bill and I had a really lovely chat about what he and Jason Sudecass

were sort of aiming for when they were making the show and how it kind of evolved from... You were not their target audience, apparently. No, you didn't come up, honestly. We didn't bring up the haters. We just talked about... Wow!

No, I know. Chris, Brandon Flowers and I talked about you. for like 10 minutes. Did you really? I just was testing if you listened to the interview. Let's talk a little bit about this Marvel

because you texted me this news. Let me just give listeners a little bit of a background on this. This Marvel is going to be a Disney Plus show. The star of the show

is going to be someone named Aman Villani who will play Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old Pakistani American girl in Jersey City who will become

Marvel's first Muslim superhero and it will eventually cross over into Captain Marvel's storyline. and they are projecting that it will make the jump from Disney Plus into the MCU, and the show will be run by Bisha K. Ali, who worked on Four Weddings at a funeral,

which I enjoyed very much, as well as it's going to be directed by Adil Arby and Bilal Fala, who helmed Bad Boys for Life, which I seemingly have not seen yet. I can't believe you haven't seen that. Have you seen it? No, I just assume you have. No, I have not seen it yet. Historically, I am a fan of the Bad Boys Expanded Universe, by the way. Me too.

If they want to, I'm just waiting for the Pantiliano standalone. That's what I'm holding up for. Let's talk a little bit about Miss Marvel. You texted me and you were like, this is huge. This is big news. People might not know this character, but this character of Miss Marvel is not just crucial to the success of Marvel,

the comic book company in the last five years. I absolutely believe that she is critical to the success of the MCU in general over the next 10. So they had to get this right. right, they took a chance on hiring, casting an unknown, which I think is probably the right move. I mean, how unknown is she? There seems to be one photo available to the press when they broke the story, and I think the photo was from a pamphlet handed out at TIF, the Toronto Film Festival, where she was involved not in a performing role. So she's under the radar, but I think that's good.

So some background on the character, as Chris learned firsthand when he was working on the intro to this podcast a number of times, Marvel Comics publishes a lot of characters with the word Marvel in it. And basically, in the 70s, there was a... I thought it was called Brad Marvel, but it was apparently I was wrong. Yeah. That's pronounced Marvell. But there was a, in the 70s, there was a space lord named Captain Marvel, who was a Cree warrior, whose name actually was Marvell. I stepped on my own joke with the truth. And Carol Danvers, who's the character that Brie Larson plays in the movies, appeared and there was a connection to that character,

but was basically given the name of Ms. Marvel, even though she was a captain in the military. Anyway, a few years ago, the character of Carol Danvers, who I've said this before in the podcast, it's worth noting again, spent all of the 1980s trapped inside the brain of the X-Men character rogue,

who stole her powers and her identity into her mind. That was not in the movie, right? No, but that's just what the 80s were like. Kids. That's so weird. Anyway, they realized that they had a great character here, and they gave her her rightful name of Captain Marvel. And, you know, that's, it was a subsequent comic book series that was really great by

Kelly Sudakonic. And, um, did you just so on top of your comics? So I love explaining this stuff. So at the same time, Marvel was, to their credit, looking for ways to expand their readership and also expand the representation in the characters in their ranks. as has been established for the last decade, the comic books in a really interesting way have sort of served as a farm system

for the wildest, biggest, boldest ideas and new characters, the very best of which get upstreamed into the MCU. And that seemed to be a pretty successful working relationship. And an editor at Marvel named Sinai Aminat, who basically wanted to create a character that was in some ways spoke, in some ways spoke to her background. She is a Pakistani American.

Muslim woman who grew up in the suburbs reading comic books and, you know, not necessarily seeing herself represented in those comic books. She reached out to a comic book writer and novelist and memoirist named G. Willow Wilson, who herself converted to Islam, and together they came up with this character. 15-year-old girl, Pakistani American, as you said, Kamala Khan, who, it's so crucial to me also. She lives in Jersey City. So she's that close.

She's basically bridge and tunnel to the MCU. Gotcha. All the superheroes are swinging over the streets. to Manhattan, and all the events are going down there, and she's just over the river. And she's a big superhero fan. And at the same time as this, Marvel, because they didn't own the movie rights to X-Men, tried to make their pre-existing idea of the inhumans a thing. You may remember that disastrous TV show.

Basically, they were like, we're going to... That was on ABC, right? Yes. They were like, we're going to bury the X-Men, since none of this IP can go into our movies. Now it's no longer the case. And we're going to suddenly amp up this idea of that... in the same way that mutants can just sort of appear, inhumans can appear too,

even though traditionally it was about a royal family that lived on the moon with a telepathic dog. Don't I make you just want to like crack the spine on some old, old graphic, graphic ends? Anyway, she got powers. And her power is, the word that was coined for the comic are in beginning, like she can stretch her arm and make her fist really big.

And she was given the name Miss Marvel and got a really cool costume, in tribute to her hero, Carol Danvers, and got a cool costume designed by Jamie McKelvey, who also designed the Captain Marvel costume, that is, in the movies. All of this to say, this book, in 2015,

when it launched by, I was G. Willa Wilson and Adrian Alfona, captured the thing that has always made Marvel Comics great. It basically, it didn't just set out to be a new Spider-Man. It was a new Spider-Man, in the sense that the thing that has always made Marvel appealing was the kind of grounds eye view, the outsider's view, right? She was an incredibly compelling person with a life, and she's a teenager, so they're always

the school problems and relationship problems, friend problems, but also had these powers and stumbled into the big time. And there's something about that alchemy that's just magic and really worked. And she became kind of a bridge from the older Marvel universe characters that everybody knows to the new generation that they've been trying to populate. And some of those new generations, some has gone. well, some hasn't gone well, some of the stories have been better than others. There's been a lot of reactionary pushback because a lot of the next generation of characters are more diverse

versions, for lack of a better word, of established characters. So there's a young black woman wearing a Tony Stark armor who's called Iron Heart. There is a cybernetic daughter of Vision, his name is Viv Vision from the Tom King book I was telling you about. And they're in a group, they're in a group book called The Champions, blah, blah, blah. The thing that's so great about this is bringing her into the MCU not only puts us back on that ground level that I think works best for Marvel characters instead of purple space gods

we could be back down in the bodegas of Jersey City wondering what the hell is wondering what the hell that wormhole opening up over Manhattan is it's also a way to bring in new fans and a new generation of younger heroes into this world and it's no accident that this

huge video game that again this is just me talking because I haven't played this but it looks cool that came out this year. It was Marvel's Avengers, and it's like this big, massive, you can play all the Kiro's and play with friends, blah, blah, blah.

The story that it tells is the Avengers Are No More and Kamla Khan has to bring them back together. She is like the skeleton key that brings them back together, which isn't to say that that's where the MCU is going, but it is a window into the corporate thinking. Like they had all just like kind of scattered

to go start their own businesses or anything? Start their own podcasts. Yeah. Which, you know, I normally would support. But so this idea, that, you know, which I like, it goes hand in hand with moving to TV for some of these stories. It's like,

we've gotten real big with this. You know, everything in the Marvel universe for the last few years is either about the multiverse or, you know, time travel, or the fundamental facts of existence. And we've gotten pretty far away from one of the most

appealing things about the Marvel universe, which was the more ground-level humanity that's mixed into superheroics. So much like she is abridged to that type of storytelling, she is a smart choice for the first person to be introduced in a Disney Plus TV series and then graduate into the films, which was something that was verboten from the TV arm for a while when they were feuding, and now they are no longer feuding because now movie characters are coming to TV, and now for the first time, it'll be vice versa. Yeah. So I have very

little to add in terms of, I can't add anything to what you've just said about the character. I'm obviously really unfamiliar with their comic book background, which is, my point basically is like we have now entered a zone where I think casual fans of the Marvel character galaxy are probably pretty unfamiliar with a lot of the people that are going to be coming forward in the next coming decade half decade and I think that's really cool like I think this started mostly with Guardians of the Galaxy where I was just like you guys you got to explain this to me who are these guys there's really a raccoon and I think we were we were properly appropriately skeptical at the time being because I think we were we were

we're sort of saying like, you know, you're not even done really telling the story of the Avengers and Iron Man and Thor and Hulk and Hulk and Hulk and all these things. We haven't even had a Hulk standalone movie. What is this dirty dozen in space? Is Edward Norton or Razier will not stand? We have absolutely had a Hulk stand in the MCU. That's true. But, you know, Ruffalo had not gotten his own one. And I think that this just tells me, A, we're now in a realm that sort of has left behind the old way of doing things in the old school. of Marvel characters, but also, I think it's going to be really exciting for a lot of people who aren't really huge comic fans to be introduced to these people, because those first round of Avengers movies were a lot of fan service.

It was a lot of like, here's, you've been waiting for so long to see Thor and his hammer. And we got the guy who looks like Thor and this is the hammer. It was so, so much of it was about wish fulfillment. And this is actually just pure storytelling. And I'll say another thing, which is I really admire how. the way that they're running Marlowe right now, it kind of reminds me the San Antonio Spurs,

where you have like an institutional kind of culture and knowledge of the kinds of stories you want to tell. You have the veterans who maybe sell the thing on the way going in, so whether it would be like David Robinson or Tim Duncan, Kaua Lairnard briefly, but those veterans are ushering in the next generation. So I thought that that was my favorite part

about the first Spider-Man film was essentially being an Iron Man copro for some of it. And really kind of like, hey, you know, you want to base, you haven't had an Iron Man movie in a little bit, come along for the ride here. And the whole gambit of having Tony Stark appear in a bunch in Civil War and then in the Spider-Man movie was so smart. It was so smart. And it really does seem like if we're lucky enough to be doing this podcast years from now, we'll probably look back at Marvel or we'll look at Marvel and be like, this is the outlier. This is the exception to the rule. You can't really ever get this lucky and this good again.

You don't think when Kevin Feigey hands off to Becky Hammond as head coach, like that the consistency won't be there? Are we sticking with the Spurs metaphor? I can do that. I don't doubt it, actually. I think that they're building up something that's like, even if Feigey were to leave, they've kind of set themselves up for another five to ten years.

I will say that, you know, there's no reason to beat a dead horse. with the Star Wars stuff. We've talked about it endlessly. But wouldn't this have been so much more the way you wish Star Wars had been handled? Like something so gracefully like this, something that had a little bit of 360 vision like this. And that, look, like, you can have as many characters as you want in the Skywalker saga movies. And then you can kind of start to build them out however way works, whether it's on a streaming show or with their standalone movie or in another saga. I don't know.

It never ceases to impress me how they handle their. stuff over there. Yeah, and I think that they've also put themselves into position to be able to tell a story like this with a character that now, you know, G. Willow Wilson wrote 60 issues of it. Saladin Ahmad, who's another great writer's taken over. There's there there. You know, there's enough story. It's a great character. And they can do what TV can do best, which is do the character work over a slow build, have the story that's adjacent to the blockbuster story in a way that I think will attract fans and also work better on the small screen. The only red flag, and I hesitate to even use that word because it's not, it doesn't deserve a dramatic

term like that. And also, I don't know, we haven't seen the show. We don't know what it's going to be. But talking about ground level character-based work, the opportunity for young women, particularly young women of color, to see themselves in a Marvel character. And also the fact that the character as written and as established is a really nice blend of action, but not R-rated action and comedy, the writing half of this show sounds dead on. The directing half does, doesn't give me pause, but it's a question mark. Now, I admire their commitment to making sure this is a Muslim story. You know, there was a great profile on those director guys, I think it was in the Times, basically talking about their outsiderness. They went to film school in Belgium, and their

interests were different than everyone else, and their background was different than everyone else, and that alone makes them interesting. But the idea of the Ms. Marvel story being put through the bad boys filter and aesthetic is curious. But, you know, they're young and they're nimble and they've made that one big movie that was clearly, you know, holding the hand of Michael Bay. So it's not to say that they're just going to bring that aesthetic here. Sure. Sure. Let's keep it on Disney. By far, one of the wildest stories that I've seen this year, and at least within the sort of pop culture deal-making. King context is the announcement that Barry Jenkins is going to be making a live action

prequel, I guess. Prequel sequel. Live action. It's a sequel, right? I think it's a sequel. It's a straight sequel to John Favra's reenactment. So glad you asked. Barry Jenkins is going to be making a Lion King movie.

And this is what is in the deadline report. And I got this from the Department of Director bullshit. So bear with me here. This is a quote from Mike Fleming's deadline report. They are keeping the logline under wraps, but I'm told that the story will further explore the mythology of the characters, including Mephasa's origin story.

Moving the story forward while looking back conjures memories of the godfather part two set on the African plane with a continuation of the tradition of music. That was a key part of the 1994 animated classic, the 2019 film, and the blockbuster, Broadway stage transfer. So,

So why don't you, so I have, I think we are essentially united in our feelings about this, but I have some acrobatic routines that I could do on the floor with ribbons to try and find my way into making this okay. This is not a segment called Andy and Chris get to tell Barry Jenkins what you should be doing with this life. So I'll say, I'll say that at top. That's actually the subtext of the podcast. And I'm not, I'm not mad at Barry Jenkins for doing this. I personally do not have a relationship with the Lion King. So this isn't like exciting for me at all. I love Barry Jenkins' work.

I love Barry Jenkins' movies. There doesn't seem to be any shortage of announcements of Barry Jenkins' work in the future. He just, I think he's completing post or almost wrapping up Underground Railroad, the adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel. They wrap production. They wrap production. And he wrote and directed all the episodes, I believe. So that's incredible.

and there's already been some stills release, the first look of that. It's not like Barry Jenkins has been like, I guess I'll just scrooge McDuck my way over here and just get the bag, the Chepec back. Like, he's also planning an Alvin Alien life story and he's planning possibly to do another season of the Nick with Andre Holland under the executive production of Steven Soderberg.

So Barry Jenkins is not turning his back on cinema here, and I have no doubt that a Barry Jenkins Lion King would be cool. I bring all of this up because we just had this conversation about Oscar Isaac and I feel like I had this conversation with Sean and Amanda on the Big Picture about a couple of different directors and actors and then sort of disappearing into the franchise verse

for the better part of a decade and wondering, are you spending your prime years doing this kind of like mass entertainment stuff that's clearly going to be a kitchen full of cooks, you know, and whether or not

people are necessarily deprived of some other really great work that you could have been doing during those years, albeit at not that same price point and not that same check. That's kind of where my head is. I think when I first heard this news, I was like, God damn it, come on, man. But now I feel like I'm a little, I've softened a little bit. Yeah, I think there are a couple things to add here. One, as Chris said, being the age that we are, we could not give less of a fuck about the Lion King. as a franchise as an idea. I saw the movie in the theater. I'm all about the circle of life.

It's fine. I don't have this intense nostalgia that I think people who are just a generation younger than we do have for it, or honestly for any of those movies of that so-called classic Disney resurgence, the Little Mermaid Aladdin. And less people think that I'm just hating on the past,

like those movies are in rotation in my life now, and I still think they're pretty mediocre. So that's part of it. We just don't connect, but clearly so many people do. Lulu Wang, the great director in her own right, who is Barry Jenkins' partner in life, posted a thing with their dog set to like the music from when they lift Simba. Like this means stuff to people, so respect. And I hope that they enjoy what they get out of this.

I think there are a couple other things to say. One of which is if the Mandalorian and the way the Marvel movies have been produced have taught us anything, it's that I think the time commitment, making anything is super hard, but the time commitment for these projects, particularly those that are almost entirely mocap, which I believe the Lion King movie was, that Favra made,

isn't necessarily going to take away, it's not like he's doing this instead of the Nick or whatever, right? Like I think that he can tell people what he wants, they're going to do the ping pong balls, and then he can be there to craft the movie with the tools they give him. So I don't think it's necessarily, taking him off the board for an extended period of time. I think that's one part of it.

The other part of it that I think we should, that I don't want to underrate is the, is bigger than the movie itself. You know, and it's something that we aren't necessarily the best people to be the spokesman for, but modeling that a black filmmaker can produce content on this billion dollar level,

and it doesn't just have to be John Favro, who is an incredible talent in what he's proven able to, do. But I don't think anyone was looking at, you know, made or Jumanji and being like, this guy is the next great cinematic artist, which people have said, maybe rightfully so about Barry Jenkins after Moonlight and Beale Street. Really underrated, by the way, Beale Street. And so take that with the fact that despite, you know, it's Elton John's songs, you know, isn't Jeremy Irons the voice of Scar? This has been claimed, I think, the Lion King, as.

a black story because it has set in Africa. And when they made the Favreau version, I mean, it has Donald Glover and it has Beyonce. And it was an almost entirely black cast with, once again, with Favro being like, put that ping pong ball a little to the left. So I do think it matters. I think in terms of representation and in terms of who gets to be in charge of these types of projects, it does, it absolutely matters and I respect the hell out of it. But the thing that I want to circle back to that we said when we were texting about it is I was suggesting, you know, in some ways this is like, you know, Ryan Coogler turning Black Panther into not just an exceptional movie, but something that really, really is a significant piece of art and piece of just work in the world in terms of its trickle-down effect and what it showed people. And not to step on your take, but I thought it was a really smart one. It was just purely that Ryan Coogler is a pop filmmaker.

when we say that, right? And we say it with a compliment. Yeah. But that is, his, his metier, if you will, is getting audiences all the way in, right? Yes. The ATV scene in Crete, you know, I mean, he is a pop populist, whatever you want to call it,

filmmaker in the best, best, best way in the tradition of someone like Spielberg, where Jenkins, up to this point, has been more of an artiste. Yes. I mean, it's been more criterion than it has been Disney Plus. So I think that's, I think when you're seeing the reaction out there, it's not, it has nothing to do with whether or not anyone thinks Barry Jenkins can make a good Lion King movie. It's just about whether or not, just, whether or not you just need, do we need more Lion King movies, you know, or are there other stories to tell? Are there other more beautiful, yeah, I don't even know how to phrase this right. Because I really, I really do think like there's all the chance in the world of Barry Jenkins can make an incredible Lion King movie. Maybe unlike any, any Disney film ever made before.

I mean, I think, I like that you were suggesting that there's a time in the future when we're doing this podcast because it suggests that there will be a time in the future, and I'm all in on that. But it might be worth looking back on this era

and the art that it produced and what paths filmmakers took because I think one of the things that people take into consideration when faced with these choices is someone's going to make this movie. The live action or whatever you want to call it,

Lion King movie, a billion dollars, they were going to make a sequel. So who's going to get to do it and what are they going to do with it? And, you know, I think there's three paths. I mean, there's probably more, but for the sake of being reductive on a podcast, I'll just pull that number out of the air and say there are kind of three paths, right, for engaging or not engaging. You can completely engage, and that's the Colin Trevereaux model, right, where you make an indie film and then you immediately grab the bag and start making

Jurassic Parks or Star Wars or whatever on that that giant level because that's what's being made and you have ambition to do that. There is the it's not really a one for them one for me anymore model

but there is the kind of But that that crucially is I think what's fucking me up in my thinking is that I think I still have residual I have a residual kind of reaction to news like this where I'm like is this like how I'm a sellout move And I don't mean that against Barry Jenkins per se.

I mean, like, I still have residual 90sitis about, about deviating from doing it yourself and making something really special and important that only you could make. And I think that's, that's my hangups. Like, those are outmoded, antiquated ideas of thinking about culture. I think that's why I reacted the way I did. It's just because you like Claire DeNeed does not mean you can't make a fucking Lion King movie, obviously. Yeah. But I do think that there are people who choose.

the Claire Deney path and just continue to make their, you know, smaller scale movies that are true to them. And he will probably be able to make way more Claire Deney type movies after Lion King because he made Lion King. I think the thing that this put into my mind, it was also because we were talking about Fargo last week and I was reading another interview, if you look at the last five years of Noah Hawley's career, or his career, actually, his work to date, right, as someone who wrote a bunch of novels, created two TV shows that were not based on IP that came and went one season each. One was my generation and one was the unusuals that we always talk about because it had renter under contract for like a seven-year contract for an ABC cop show when the Hurt Locker came out and ABC canceled it anyway. And then breaks through with Fargo, which is, okay, I will make this puzzle box work because

you have this IP and you want to make it something else. So I will use that as a trampoline to get to where I want to be in my career. and ultimately it worked because you end up making a season four, as we said the other day, that is purely a haulie work, right? It's not really based on anything else. But then his other TV shows or other projects that we know about anyway, one is X-Men related, the one that I worked on, Legion. Yep.

And then we know just from the trades and from things that he's talked about, there was a Dr. Doom movie that he wrote. there was a Star Trek movie that he was going to write and direct that is now dormant. And then this week said that he pitched on an alien show. None of this is a slight against him. And he has a, you know, he also has a tremendous enviable career. But that is the nature of having a career in TV now or pretty much in anything, right? He has an overall deal with Fox.

And Fox is like, you can pursue developing these other things. And, you know, I worked with him on a Kurt Vonnegut adaptation. but it's probably telling that the X-Men-related one went to air before the Vonnegut did, if the Vonnegut one ever does. And that was a really fucking weird X-Men adaptation. Yeah, it was super weird. The fact that it still was able to go up under the cover of being part of the X-Men universe is why, I mean, who knows the Vonnegut thing might have been even more straightforward than Legion?

Mm. No, I would say no. But yeah, like you have to take those meetings and you have to throw those pictures. you know, to keep, both to keep the arm limber and to keep the arm paid. So it's just, it is something that we continue to watch. It's, it's interesting. I think ultimately the boat to put on this particular box is like, we just think Barry Jenkins is awesome.

So we will engage with what he gives us. I love Barry Jenkins movies. I can't wait. And I'll see, I'll see whatever he makes. That's, that's what I would say. Let's talk a little bit about third day before we get to my interview with Bill Lawrence. So third day concluded its first three episodes, which is they were, entitled Summer,

those three episodes. By the way, just like my summer in so many ways. Exactly. I have to say, it was uncanny, ripped from the headlines. This land is the soul of the world and it is sick. So we wrap that up on Monday night.

On Saturday, I don't know about you, Andy. On Saturday, we will get a 12-hour live theater event linking the two halves of the third day. This is a quote from HBO's press release. This press release, put this press release in the Smithsonian. It's one of my favorite press releases I've ever gotten.

It'll be broadcast on HBO's Facebook page. Again, a 12-hour theater event. Tell them what time it starts, Chris. Starting at 4.30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday. 1.30 on the West Coast. While it will bridge the two halves of the season, HBO says it is, basically it's not requisite for enjoying the limited series. Also, note, Jude Law will be wandering in the background at certain points. we don't know which points. Catherine Waterston will be as well. Maybe some of the other

friendly faces from the show. Also, Florence Welch of and the Machines will be there in some capacity, perhaps performing at the annual O.C. Folkfest. It's just tremendous. God bless. So I guess you can watch a, you can watch replays of this play. And maybe, I don't know, maybe they have plans to cut it down from 12 hours. I, as a valid fan of this show, don't know how I'm going to make my way through a 12-hour immersive theater experience, despite the fact that I really would love to check out large swaths of it. You know, I got the impression from Catherine Waterson that this was like the one of the reason she did the show is to try something like this.

Now, I'm pretty sure in its original conception, this was supposed to be, I think, shot on the island. Like they were going to do this as a kind of like, you know, on-set experience. Yeah. I imagine they're doing it in some sort of, um, COVID-friendly, COVID-testing-friendly theater experience. We'll have to see.

First of all, are you going to check this out at all? I mean, look, it ticks all my boxes. 12-hour events, 1.30 a.m., Facebook. Like, these are just all my interests, back to back to back. You're usually already on Facebook Saturdays at 1.30 a.m. Yeah. Those are prime doom-scrolling hours.

So, yeah, I mean, I'm in. interested, but like you said, I don't know what to do with it. Right. And I kind of feel like that's actually a decent statement on how I'm feeling about the show in general. A moment ago, we brought back this idea. You've tempered a little bit. You've regressed to the mean.

A little bit. Because the thing I was saying before about like one for me, one for them. Is that a how you feel about this podcast? Well, not when I get to interview Brandon Flowers. I put this in the mouth of an HBO programming executive. That's what I feel about this. Because when the show started in that premiere episode was so great and so thrilling and such a tonic for people who are bored with things being kind of samey,

I was like, why aren't they promoting this more? Why are they not burying anything? It's HBO. It's there for you. But I didn't see much promotion for it. And then the next two episodes aired, and I was like, oh, I get it. This is one for them. This is what HBO is saying.

of people they want to be in business with and it's something they admire. I think that this show kind of like what you said, Catherine Waterson told you, I'm so thrilled they're doing it. I'm so thrilled they're going for it.

I admire the hell out of it. I think that the tightrope act that it's been performing between compelling, deeply unsettling strangeness and come the fuck on total bullshit tipped. Yeah.

Pretty hard in the third episode. But it doesn't, I really want to be clear that even if I was rolling my eyes, I was not averting them. Like, I am really committed to the experience and in awe of their commitment to creating this experience, Jude Law especially.

The show itself has, whether you want to call Dream Logic or Mushrooms Logic or whatever, it has that kind of logic. Does that logic explain how Jude Law's character will get onto the other side of an or seemingly be in a completely different setting at any given edit. Not necessarily. You know, I can't tell you where the line between its dream logic and this is,

that something happened here in the edit, or like they couldn't quite, you know, bridge this scene with the next scene. It doesn't make sense that this is happening and where did Catherine Waterson's character go for this whole time? And obviously some of the reveals towards the end of the episode and three where essentially everyone is in on this. performance to convince Sam that he is in fact the rightful, the rightful father of Osi is, you know, explain some of it. And I suppose also given the amount that he imbibes over the last

couple of, over the three days that we're supposed to think that, you know, who knows how fucked up he is wandering around that island. It definitely went to more of a kind of, you know, pagan horror zone in the third episode with the Apona reveal, with all of, the stuff with just at the end with like the kind of the ritual that they were doing with the suicide of the father so you know I enjoyed it I can understand why it's not everyone's cup of of mushroom tea I have a working theory that this is basically some kind of king Arthur story because you know like there was a real uh huge theme in Arthurian legend is that like Arthur and the land are one that the sort of health of the the

the English country, or whatever it was back then, was dependent on Arthur and Arthur dependent on it. And all the stuff that they keep saying about the land is sick and this place is sick and Sam is the true father and needs to save it and that Sam himself is sick and that being here will somehow heal him and obviously his son's there. And that, you know, the second half of the show, which I have not watched ahead at all, will be some sort of quest. to figure this out,

whether it's by his wife or whoever. I hope so. I think that the, I did, I rarely do this, but I did watch the, on the next third day. Yeah, right. And it introduces Naomi Harris,

who I love as an actor showing up for what essentially feels like a reset. I don't want to be told more because one of the pleasures of the show is really not knowing what's going on, but it was hard to watch that next on and not feel like, so we're just doing it.

again. I'm sure we're not, but there was an element of that. And I think that ultimately, with programs like this, there is always a dance between style and substance, between director and writer, between spectacle and emotion. And I think that for me, this episode was a little bit uneven in that regard because fundamentally the idea of a show about a guy in a dark place in his life presented with a choice which is go back to your normal life where you are in perpetual morning and there's a piece missing from you or live in hell or some version of hell away from it with the piece that you've been yearning for, that's really compelling, you know, and that drives a legitimate push-pull, right?

But the thing that I felt was lacking just purely from a story perspective in the third episode was we've never seen his wife. We don't understand what he is theoretically going back to or running away from. And that lack of a counterweight kind of kept me. from buying all the way in, even though the very last action that Sam does in this third episode where he just basically willingly walks

towards his son is moving. I mean, Jude Law is selling the hell out of every single step on this journey. But there's so many detours for stylistic flourishes that I admire, like whether it's the eating a beating heart or the crickets, the locusts everywhere, that it's almost a distraction from

that very elemental and emotional yearning that I think otherwise could ground such a high-flying show. Ground in a good way. Yeah, absolutely. I think that I remain really impressed by what Jew Law has done over these three episodes and he praised on him.

I feel like the more that they took him away from talking to other people, the more my eye drifted a little bit. You know, I think that when he was forced to interact with the strangeness of this place by talking to Patty Constantine and Emily Watson, characters or dealing with Kat, you know, getting no Catherine Waterson's character, it felt equally eerie, but just way more compelling.

Whereas when it's just him wandering through forests, having visions, getting chased, chasing, I think after a while, it sort of went from Hitchcockian and Dillincheon into kind of a muddle, but it still has, it still has my affection to my attention. Me too. I think the hardest thing about making TV in this era is getting the ratios right. it is kind of like baking that there's just things that you can do in a 90 to 120 minute movie and people kind of know those rhythms like people whether you're making a bad boy's sequel or you're making you know the other side of hope this incredible finish movie that I want to talk to you about once you've watched on criterion collection like people understand the shape

of it and what's possible there and and that length of time is pretty good for doing style and substance right like you can kind of get the big emotional beat and you can also do it in a stylish way and then you all walk away friends when you spread it out over a number of hours everything gets tricky and i say this because i found it really hard to do and i think everyone finds it hard to do and so that essential idea that works in movies movies that i will never see but i might browse the wikipedia page of of like someone is trapped in a terrifyingly creepy place you could do that in one hour you can do that in two hours you start to tip past that yeah yeah you start to feel the seams and like maybe you put too much egg white in the batter or whatever.

So it's an experience and it's a vibe and I love that it's out there and I love that they're doing it. I haven't loved watching it as much as I initially did. Well, let's see what Naomi Harris brings to the table. Maybe it changes the entire chemistry of the show. I bet she's going to bring some intensity. I think she is. Andy, it was lovely talking to you. We'll wrap it up there and get into my conversation with Bill Lawrence. We talk a lot about Ted Net Lasso, but no spoilers for the season finale. We'll maybe chat about that next week. Greenwald, always a pleasure.

On Monday, tune in for another episode of Andy Explains Comic Books. I think it's one of our best, if not wordiest bits. Enjoy this interview. Enjoy your weekend, Branskys. 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.

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Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. I'm joined now by Bill Lawrence, executive producer of Ted Lasso, among, you know, many legendary sitcoms has worked on Spin City, Scrubs, Cooghound. And Bill, thank you so much for joining us today, man. I'm happy to, man. Excuse to not be working. It's awesome. I went back and I watched, you know,

I went back to the origin story, the original text of Ted Lassow and watched some of the commercials because I hadn't, I don't think I'd seen them since they were on NBC for the Premier League. And I was struck by the adjustments you've made to the Ted Lassow character because he's a little bit more of a prick in the commercials, right? Like he has like a little bit of an edge to him and he's a little bit of, bit more arrogant about not knowing about English culture.

Yeah, he was doubly bombastic and kind of, look, man, those commercials, I'm a comedy writer. We all thought they're hysterical. But Jason, Brendan, and Joe, you know, three of the creators of the show that you kind did those commercials for the Premier League, they were doing sketch comedy, you know, for that, you know. And Jason, when we first started talking about this, was well aware that that guy couldn't, you It's the same way if you love naked gun or airplane, probably couldn't do three seasons of that stuff

because it's the same type of joke over and over. Jason knew right at its inception that for this to be a TV show, we need to give Ted some more depth and kind of tweak him as a character. I was wondering, starting from the starting point of being, you know, this, an advertisement, essentially, I guess the only way to go is deeper, right? Because it's like you have to keep expanding this character. you have to keep kind of giving him some emotional depth,

giving him a backstory, giving him some things for people to latch onto. Was that actually a fun challenge to have rather than whatever, like starting from somebody who you're knitting out a whole cloth? Yeah, look. It was such a challenge even to sell the show because in a good way,

Jason came to me and he's like, man, I get more recognized for Ted Lassow in the UK and Europe than for any movie or SNO or anything. I'd want to do this as a TV show. and he had a bunch of stuff already thought out. And the burden was when you have funny sketches like that and you go try to sell it as a TV show, they're available for all those streaming sites to watch.

And the hardest part for Jason and me was convincing people that it was going to be different than those. I don't even think of them as commercials. To me, they're like promotional videos that those guys, real comedians, it wasn't a marketing ploy, invented a character, and I think those things stand up as funny regardless. So it was, but it was really,

hard to go out and say, I know you guys have seen those, but it's different than that. He's a better guy. He's nicer. It's more optimistic and hopeful. He's not as much yelling because they had stuff to look at. And only Apple, you know, was kind of like, oh, we get it. We see what you're trying to do. So that challenge was a blast. And with those expectations, you know, of what that character was, the most fun thing for me, I'm very grateful for all the positive response. But so much of it starts with the disclaimer of, you know, this show, I couldn't be more surprised or shocked. The show is actually decent.

And I always take the time to say, I'm as surprised as you are. You know what I mean? But that narrative has been really fun for me. That actually leads to a question I wanted to ask you, which was there a scene that you guys wrote? Was there a moment on set? Was there something? What was the first time you thought that?

Were you like, oh, maybe we have something special here? No, you know, what was interesting, man, is I thought that, you know, especially knowing that Jason would be playing the part and getting to hear him, read lines while you were writing them, you know, even before you have a cast together. I thought that the show was going to work creatively in the sense that we were all going to be proud of it and like it. I thought it was really good. The cast is all really good. And I thought

that early on. I was worried about expectations in terms of it's a sweet, hopeful, optimistic you know, show. And I'm a comedy writer. I love snarky, edgy comedy. And I love Deep is one of my favorite shows ever. I've written a ton of it myself, but we don't live in that world. And I thought there's a chance that that combined with what people's expectations were of what this show would be from the previous things could be a real issue. And so far it hasn't been. You know, people have been happily surprised. We're well. How do you do you balance that by basically having Jason be this like Capra-esque guy while VEP is happening around him to some extent?

I think, you know, it was really interesting. Yes, but I wouldn't say it's like beeps happening around him as much as, you know, I remember talking in the writer's room and, you know, the pandemic hadn't started when we were working on this and writing this, but it certainly is a cynical and edgy time in which were somebody like Ted Lassow to present themselves to you. Right now, I'd say most of us, the initial assumption would be, this is all an act. And within a week or so, that person's going to reveal. who they really are and they're going to be a horrible jerk just like everybody else.

And we started talking as a writing staff that when those people actually turn out to be those rare people in your life, teachers, mentors, whatever, sincere and kind, the first thing you do is look at yourself and go, oh, man, who have I become? Anybody that's nice, I automatically assume, he or she is up to something. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so that kind of notion is what is kind of the framework and base of the whole show. You know? And so, yeah, the skeptical people around him, but watching them kind of learn is part of the journey, you know?

I thought that the, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the football, soccer part of it. But as a sports show, I think when people engage with a sports show or sports film, they have a willingness to believe that anything is possible because so many of those, the most successful sports stories are of these underdog stories and are about, you know, David beating Goliath, that those are the ones that we are immediately drawn towards. And I guess that it almost gives you a little bit of a platform to work from. Because the audience is like going to go with you on the journey because they've seen miracle and they've seen Rocky and they've seen things where they're like, yeah, Rudy is, this is a world where Rudy can happen. So why couldn't Ted Lassow happen? It's so astute, Chris, because see what I did that are complimented.

Yeah. Smooth the way in. Because what we talked about is when you're, we think we're, we think we're doing a sports movie. We all love, okay? And the reason we like that for a TV show is sports movies transcend sports. I'm not a huge boxing fan. I saw every rocking movie the night day open. And what was really interesting is when you're doing a sports movie, you have a decision right at the start, which is we're going to do a sports movie, but it's different. And then you're like, really? So you're not going to do the underdog. You're not going to, you know, that's really

hard. You know what I mean? Because there's been so many. Everybody's got a different favorite, Bull Durham. Cutting edge, if you're like, figure skating, you know. Yeah. A Hoosier. Rudy, Major League, name them. And so what we decided to embrace instead is if you're doing a sports movie as a three-season TV show, you get to do the tropes that people expect, let them think they know what's going to happen, and then twist the tropes in a way that seems kind of cool

and surprising that you get to know the character that's better. So I'm well aware, as is Jason, that in the movie Major League, there's so many things that we've taken from the movies we've loved had an owner that was trying to destroy the team. And that's what that character did. They said, I'm trying to destroy the team and they tried to destroy the team. And for us, we go, wow, you know, if Major League was a 30-episode season,

maybe you'd find out why that person felt that way. Yeah. Maybe you'd humanize them. And maybe you'd try to make people sympathize for them how they got there. And maybe, you know, by the course of events, they would find their way out of that hole or maybe not. You know, and that's how we kind of approached it. embrace all the tropes and then do our own spin on them. Yes.

You know, as we kind of examine it. So we have the diva player. We have the aging star. We have, you know, the girlfriend and stuff. But I would argue that not any of them is completely 100% typical

once people let themselves get sucked in. Yeah. What was your relationship to European football going into this show? Big fan or couldn't... Dude. I, we joked in the writer's room that I, other than Brendan,

and Hunt one of the creators who loves a Premier League that I knew the most about soccer slash football because I won a state championship when I was 11 in Connecticut. I was the goalie and I was never quite sure of all the rules. I knew I was always supposed to yell. I mean, we won the States. I got the trophy and I knew I was supposed to yell off-sides

if someone scored on me, but I was never quite sure if it was off-sides or not. And we were sports nerds. We were required for our own sanity, not only Brendan, but to hire, we hired some British writers both for cultural help but intentionally one whose whole family or Tottenham supporters, one whose whole family of Crystal Palace supporters, just so they gave us the cultural background and that kind of psychotic, you know, British fandom and what it means.

And then we equated it to American College football because that's the only place here that you see such, you know, tribalism and regional obsession that kind of the whole culture of life is based around it. Did you, when you were like talking to the British writers or as we were getting a little bit more familiar with the premiere, like did you come across people like Roy Keene, who feels like a real-life version of Roy Kent, or did you come across like a Jamie Vardy or people like that,

that you were like, you've got to be kidding me, this is an amazing character. We should use some of this in the show. We watched the Sunderland documentaries. We've all buried ourselves, and we know about everything from which you speak and are trying our best to be authentic and to have people see things that are real within it.

So, of course, we all buried ourselves. I know more about the Premier League. than I ever wanted to right now. Which is fine. And like right now, we're all falling. Now, what's the chain? All the writers run a text chain today. I think it's about this writer

that's not going to an Italian team because he lied on his test. Oh yeah, Louis Suarez. Because you have to take an Italian language test to be on the Italian team. And I guess he failed to and didn't take it. Yes. Classic, man.

Classic. But the, you know, so we are, begrudgingly learning and but you can't look we I would also use this opportunity to make a plea is we're going to do our best I think we got better and better at shooting the football and we're trying to stay real I tried to prep everybody for you know with the Premier League the fans are so obsessive even now I'll see like oh they're trying to pretend that's Everton and I saw them I'm like no the locker room's not the right color I get it and uh you know and I went through this on scrubs because yeah there would always be a lot of really really

supportive fans that we were grateful for and some people that didn't like it. But then the other pocket was all the people like, that catheter was set to the medical. Yeah, the one surgeon who's on message boards. They would never do this without stereo. The x-rays backwards. I'm like, yeah, I know. The x-rays backwards. It's supposed to be.

They're scrubs. You know, and so it's a hard battle, but I understand it's the same way with my sports, you know. How do you push, what, did you guys have any internal rules for how, not, naive, but like basically how much of a newbie could Ted be in this role while still keeping Richmond even vaguely afloat? Like, you know, because he's learning the game as the season's going on. I know he has help. I know he's got Roy and his assistant coaches, but, you know, you don't show a lot of football. Did you, in your mind, did you have like a line that you couldn't cross in terms of Ted's relationship to the sport itself? All right. So, look, there's a

metaphor for we live in an era, no matter where you fall on it politically. that a reality star is a guy that guested on my sitcom Spin City is the president of the United States. So to me, yeah, a successful coach could get hired is, you know, you know what I mean? To me, as a TV writer, I'm like, oh, so there's no rules anymore. Oh, okay. So the one thing that we wanted to make clear is it's okay for Ted to be slightly ignorant or clueless in this world. It's one of our biggest rules. It's from Jason.

And ignorance with arrogance is no bueno. And that's what the commercials kind of did, which was, I don't know, but I'm going to just get louder and yell, you know. Yeah. But being clueless or ignorant and learning and never going back to that. You know, ignorance with curiosity is like the best version of, you know, an American abroad to us is like, oh, that's how it works. Now I got it.

Cool, I got it. Yeah. And we also decided that we had to make it clear to people that Ted is dumb like a fox and that so look, it's goofy to talk about in terms of a pilot, but getting Scott Van Pelt and Sports Center to make it at least some authenticity that, oh, this guy coached a football team to a national championship, you know, to me, let us go, all right, so he's got something as a coach akin to these motivators and gentlemen that these kids will suddenly kill or die for.

It's special and it kind of validated them for us. So those were our rules, you know, that he's actually a good coach and that he learns as he goes, and that brought us the ability to occasionally be just flat out clueless. I was reading some other interviews you had done around Ted, and you were talking a bit, especially about working on Spin City and sort of finding characters

as you guys were going through this, what was back then a normal season, but now it seemed absurdly long to do 23, 24 episodes, however many episodes of a season of Spin City there were. And, you know, you would just sort of find characters as the show was airing, as you were still continuing to write the season. Is that process very different now?

Do you have to sort of decide this is who Rebecca is and this is going to be her arc for better or for worse? And what's that like? You know, yes, in terms of creating the characters and the types and knowing where we want their emotional journey to go, know in terms of when we got different performers there, it was so exciting to cast people in the UK

that I hadn't regularly worked with before. and that, you know, talent that was new to us, not necessarily new to them. But we, without a doubt, once we cast people, tweaked everything to their strengths and, you know, that gradual handing over of ownership of a character from writers to performer, it worked really well on this show. And, you know, part of the experience was creating that in our own way, so much so that Christopher Hernandez was this kid that read for Jamie Tart,

you know, and sent his audition in. And he didn't get that part. but he was so joyful and an amazing footballer and stuff. I'm like, oh, this guy's going to be someone named Danny Rojas that comes in the middle of, and we just got it from seeing him work and getting a feel for him as an actor, and he was so joyful and kind, you know, and it just bled out.

That's who that guy actually is, former professional player, too. Oh, interesting. Yeah, he played in Guadalajara for years and then went to an acting academy in London. So we were still able to do it. We just had to do it in a different pace than we do it here in the States. Was the process, you know, it was the production process working on a streamer much different?

Or was the notes process different? Did you, were there any surprises or any changes for you? You know, Apple is really supportive, but, you know, I've been doing this for a long time. So I think I'm bought certainly leeway of people trusting me until I screw up. And the biggest thing was not being, A, a prisoner to running time, do you mean? And you can see our episodes range from me in like 27 minutes long. like 35 minutes long. It's just how it kind of worked. The toughest thing in shooting in London is American filming. This is just random from producing side thrives on overtime, okay?

You try to fit it all in your time period. And then when you can't finish an episode, you say to the crew of like, hey, if we go, you know, until midnight, tonight, tomorrow night, we'll finish this episode. Everybody would make a lot more dough and it'll be a hassle. But great. That's how these shows all work was so funny for us. as neophytes getting over there, the craftsmen and the crew are so good. The actors are so good. But they're not down with overtime, man.

They just go home. You're like, hey, if you want, we can spend two more hours and finish this. They're like, no, we're good, but thank you. Good night. They're like, we're going to the pub. See it. Oh, my God.

So just learning how production works there was a battle, A, and B, there's no reason to go over to the UK and shoot this unless you're intending to use the city itself and finding ways to do that, you know, production-wise, and a short time frame was tough, but I think we managed to do it with that park and that neighborhood and stuff of Richmond.

Yeah, I really enjoyed the small, but very lived-in sense of London. And like even just the returning to the pub over and over again, I thought this was like a really nice, like a really nice setting for it. It's hard not to get. By the way, my favorite thing is that our practice field

is from the lowest division professional soccer there were people, I think, probably the lowest division that players don't have necessarily have other jobs. Right. So would it be like League 2? I think it's even, it's Hayes and Yetting, if you look it up. And they actually had a great season

that ruined our production thing because they were a perennial, awful team. And they were suddenly in these big games that went on days we were supposed to shoot on that field. But in a cool thing of trivia, you know, their stands are modest. and they had this giant just empty, almost crawl space, attic of, I guess at one point it was going to be luxury suites or something like that above the small stands that was never completed.

And so when we went over there, I was like, how do you guys feel about us building a set of the owner's office up here? And they're like, yeah, we don't care. And so that window of hers that you look out at in the field, that's actually their field. do you know what I mean and uh um they play their actual games and you know and stuff and we've built sets above their stands in it it's the weirdest thing that I've ever done as a producer but I think I think that type of stuff added to the authenticity too I hope yeah I mean it definitely doesn't look like it was shot in Atlanta it feels very much like it feels very very much where it's set without going into any details because we're going to run this before the season finale so we don't

know how our listeners don't know how it ends but I I was curious whether or not the response to this show, which has obviously been really overwhelmingly positive in a very specific kind of like, I needed this way, impacts the writing of season two. Because I know you guys have been greenlit for a second season and whether or not it's like, oh man, now this really means something to people. We kind of kind of have to deliver on what they like keep delivering on what people are looking for here. I think in a great way, Jason, we were, Jason especially, but we were all very clear on, you know, what our sports movie was. It's, you know, and it wasn't a,

one year and then we'll do a different one the second year. It was a beginning, middle, and end. And the one thing it did was confirm our belief that right or wrong, it's not a bad time to embrace hope and optimism and emotional, you know, kind of undercurrents to shows in a way that people really care about each other. And so, you know, you would be crazy to think that after having our fears allayed that people don't want to watch that in a comedy that we would get away from. So we're embracing it and crossing our fingers that people won't have had their full of it by that. But without a doubt, it just kind of reconfirmed for us what we wanted to do. That's great, man.

Well, I love the show. I know a lot of our listeners did too. So thanks so much for joining me today. Chris, thank you for talking, man. I really appreciate it. And I would tell people, it's dorky things. I don't usually do it, is social media. but whether it's Jason liking your stuff or me and Brendan and the other cast,

we're actually on there because we think part of this whole show and the good spirit of it is communicating with people. So find us out there and we're happy to gab about it. Awesome. Thanks so much, Bill.