The Watch - 'Westworld' Season Finale, and the Search for the Next ‘Game of Thrones’ | The Watch (Ep.269)

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the 'Westworld’ Season 2 finale and what is and is not working in that show (9:00). Later they discuss television's ongoing search for the next ���Game of Thrones’ and the various approaches the different networks and shows are taking to get there (25:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and get 15% off your purchase of any Ores and Alps products, including their natural deodorant, which is making Greenwald, smell like the Pacific Northwest Forest that he is. just use promo code watch. Hey guys, thanks for listening to today's episode of the watch. Andy and I talked a little bit about the Westworld finale. I think a little bit is actually underselling. We talked about it for like 25 minutes.

And then we talked about the new Game of Thrones power rankings. This is what everybody in TV is looking for. They're trying to find their own Game of Thrones. So we took all the shows that are in that zone, whether it's stuff that's on the air or stuff that's in development that's clearly being earmarked to be, this is the next thing you can build the theme park off of. This is the next thing you'll have conventions off of.

This is the next thing. There will be novels and there will be, you know, this whole world built around this television show. What are the shows that are on that do that? What are the shows that are in development that do that? Annie and I kind of put them in order of preference. We definitely picked our number ones.

I just want to tell you before we get into the episode that we have merch. Finally, you can copy yourself a watch t-shirt. Just go to the ringer.com. Yes. slash shop, and you can get a beautiful aqua blue, great job, Baranski t-shirt. Sizes go from small to Greenwald's preferred double XL. Andy loves wearing t-shirts like he's 2006 Cameron.

Did you know that? I do know that. It's true. You can also get a watch sticker in the Ringer Podcast Network sticker 10-pack for 1999, and you get a Bill Simmons sticker against all odds. Larry Wilmore, JJ Reddick, House of Carbs, binge mode, one-shining podcast, the rewatchables, and the watchables in this. pack. Can I tell you why I'm excited for people to be wearing watch merch? Because right now,

on the streets of Los Angeles or sometimes on the streets of New York, people shout things at me. And it often is related to the work of Christine Beranski. And I feel I'm all alone. I'm vulnerable. I love the feedback, but I'm surprised. If you're in the wild wearing one of these watch t-shirts, I'm going to yell at you. Lots of people like to drive by me in L.A. They roll up slow. They roll down their window and they're like, you like to get wet, man. Yeah, well, that happened. And I'm like, thanks for listening to the rewatchables. You should put a sticker on your bumper. Or no thank you. I just say no to drugs.

Anyway, go to the ringer.com slash shop, cop all that stuff. It's money well spent. Let's get into the show. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.

I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me in a new podcast studio, meet me in the forge. It's going down. It's Andy Greenwald. How you feel about the acoustics in here? A little airy. I feel like we're recording pet sounds or something.

There's some natural wood. Kaya's on the decks today. We were in a new spot in the Ringer HQ. We're testing out some new rooms. We're the canary in the coal mine. Do you think, like, is this a room that Steve Albini would prefer? I don't know. Did you see he just won the World Series of poker?

It's an amazing career pivot. And we're not paying enough attention to it. It's really amazing. Pretty Walt's Happy Monday. Yeah. Summer rolls on. We're here the day after West World Season 2. is concluded.

And we're going to talk a little bit about that finale. And then we are going to talk mostly about the, quote, new Game of Thrones, close quote, power rankings. Because this has been the buzzword of television development, I think, for the last two years or so, where everybody is like, find me my Game of Thrones. That was Jeff Bezos to the Amazon team. I want a Game of Thrones.

Let's go big. You have so much development, so much snatching up of intellectual property going on, that everybody is in the market for this. And it's not unlike when, you know, eight years ago or five or six years ago when we started recording podcasts together, there was a wave of homeland copycats that came out after. Obviously, the stakes are much bigger. But we wanted to kind of check in on a bunch of the projects that are earmarked to be the next Game of Thrones, both happening currently on the air and in development. Yeah, and I think this is a good time for it because as Westworld season two comes to a close, though I think the one thing that even the fans and non-fans alike would agree on is that Westworld,

is not the next Game of Thrones in terms of fan base, in terms of the size of its audience. And I don't mean that pejoratively. I will be pejorative momentarily. I mean that solely in terms of its intent and how it's being received. Also worth having the conversation now because we are hopefully at the midpoint

of waiting for this final season of Game of Thrones. Yeah, April. So we're less than a year out. Is it April now? I think it was supposed, at least it was supposed to be April. It's early 2019, probably April. It has been... That's going to be a lovely NBA of playoffs for me.

It's been, man, you're done. It's been a year, which is sort of hard to believe. Yeah. And so we are here basically planning for the next stages of a fandom that still has one season to go. And also, we have to at this moment before we delve into anything else, just give our most sincere congrats and shout out to John Snow and he agreed. Oh, man, that looks great. Tied the knot over the weekend. It turns out that Kit Harrington looks just as rugged and handsome with fluttering snow around him or fluttering.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. They got married in an ancestral castle. Yeah. I don't know who's ancestry. Was it Heron Hall? Was it the one that the dragon melted? You're not in mid-season form. Chris just looked at me like I just started speaking Welsh.

That was incredible. Well, that's because I'm so immersed in Westworld, man. Can I stay off of Westworld for one more minute? Sure. Just to keep the good vibes rolling. Did you see the outfits that Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams wore to this wedding? No, what? Oh my God.

Queens. Fashion icons. Can we pause recording? just so Chris can see these and then we can get his reaction live. Sure. While we're talking about fashion, actually, I'll vamp.

The watch has T-shirts. Did you know that? I wanted to show you that Sophie Turner wore an official watch t-shirt. It was really surprising. Yeah, she loves Christine Bransky. Yeah, she's always been a big fan.

Actually, Rose Leslie is on the good fight. I know that. Did you know that? I've watched a lot of good fight in your absence. Sorry, go on. Vamp, talk about our T-shirts. The watch has T-shirts. You can go to the ringer-doc.

com slash shop and we've got a bunch of new t-shirts in the shop right now we have a lovely kind of aqua blue t-shirt that says great job bransky on the front and then it says the watch on the back it's really really cool um it's according to the merch store high key the official uniform of the double down book club wow really good good good copy there um it's also true that most book clubs have uniforms for men and women uh sizes run from small to double x do we get t-shirt We'll see. I would like to wear one. I think this is very exciting.

I've always wanted merch, but I've never before been affiliated with anything, I think, that actually required. I don't want to get too far off topic here. Okay, sorry. Here's the real topic. We're coming back to Westworld guys.

No, I was going to go farther off topic. Let me see these guys. Look at these iconic queens. Her glasses are great. Can I tell you something? Yeah. Is that the actual wedding outfit? Yeah, these are the outfits.

So just for people who can see it and call this up. Kai. Is this appropriate for a wedding? Sophie Turner? outfit. Sophie Turner is wearing kind of a blood red power blazer. She looks like she's wearing like an 80s men's blazer as a dress. If Peter Max drew a Duran Duran cover in 1984 and that cover became sentient, that's what she's wearing. You know, I saw those over the weekend and I had the same thought. I was like, are those wedding appropriate? Like, but I'm just, I'm going to go with it.

I think it's showing the appropriate level of respect for a union between two celebrities who met at work. You know what I mean? I just think it's just like it's a beautiful spectacle and you should dress accordingly, but they're not in this for the long term. The major rule of weddings is you can't wear white. That's that there are other rules. That's the only rule that was observed at my wedding. Correct. Yes. That was why it was so wild when I showed up in a resplendent white tucks at your wedding. Chris actually thought my wedding was Puffy's annual Memorial Day, Hampton's white party. We're getting, we're getting way far away. Guess who doesn't want to talk about Westworld's finale in this room? name him. I don't know why you would be nervous

about this because the arc of pop culture is bending towards Greenwald. You don't talk about that. The responses today, I'm looking at second wall on Rolling Stone. And you know, I know that Alan probably doesn't write his own decks and it's not, no, there's no shots at

this, but it's like this season West World went off the tracks. It's like there's only one other season. It's not like it had four or five seasons of running smoothly and then it got derailed. Look, you know, This is a divisive show. I do not think we on the watch have ever been,

have ever been like full-throated and support of it. I probably enjoyed it a lot more than Andy has, but that would be like saying, I enjoy car crashes more than Andy does. I mean, I don't know. It's more that, you know, Shoemaker and the gang did a great job explaining everything about it on Westworld

Recapables and they did a live show last night, which you can still check out our Twitter and YouTube pages. It has its supporters. It has its fans. I think that there is a good show inside this show. Watching this show, though, it started to make me physically uncomfortable because of the things that I don't like about it are the things that drive me nuts.

So when people, like the dialogue is so bad on this show that it actually makes it difficult to watch people talk. But then I find the non-dialogue scenes to be so perfunctory that I'm dying for people to talk. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like, I can't, I can't win here. There were some episodes this, and people have pointed out, there are three really good episodes this season.

Yeah. And I particularly liked Riddle the Sphinx, which was the Peter Mullen, Jimmy Simpson kind of bottle episode. I thought it was really well done. And I thought it was a lot of people were saying this, a direction for this show to go, which is to focus. Focus on one or two characters per episode. You've got our attention.

We're all interested in this concept. I don't think anybody was in a rush to, get out of the Westworld Park the way that the creators seemed to be. And they could have delved into each character, lost style, and given us a real sense of who these people were, or not,

you know, because identity is such a construct on this show, that I think it would have been a really interesting second season. And instead, I think it's just entirely about the creators of this show's sort of ideas about like free will

and AI, in the future and whether any of us truly are any one thing. And it just became so confusing and so tripped up by its own ropes that I think it kind of just fell flat on its face. And I don't really know where you go from here. Yeah, I don't think. And again, I say this with respect. I think that over time, a longer running show will make it clear what the creators, the people driving the train, what they're interested in. And I think that you can make the case that Nolan and Joy just don't appear to be interested in corraling this large cast that they've assembled into anything that is anything that resembles traditional narrative entertainment.

I just don't think that interested in that. And I think that. I think they might actually even have some hostility for that. Yes. And I think that's a good point. But not in like a Jean-Luc Goddard way. Like in a you dim-dums are like watching this show and you. think this person's a hero, but what's a hero?

But what's a hero? Right. And I think you can't, much like if you look at like a Picasso painting and you're like, oh, how interesting the way he deconstructed a still life, you have to know that he also knew how to paint a still life. You know what I mean? He didn't go jump right to commenting on it and undoing it. There's a line from the finale where Dolores says, I don't want to play cowboys and Indians anymore.

And it's like, we got that loud and clear. We know that. And yet, for whatever reason, whether it was because of the power of IP or whatever else the case may be, they chose a theme park that is dedicated to playing Cowboys and Indians, which is itself a reductive binary, and we knew that going in. So to be continually be bucking against that in a way that at times, I think, strives for the profound, but doesn't actually deliver is frustrating. I think that's...

It's not even a war on genre. It's not even like, well, it's this hybrid Western sci-fi thing, but we're actually upending those. It's just a war on the things that we have as a society have greed on that you kind of need for storytelling, which is at some point there needs to be a reliable narrator. At some point, there need to be some, there at least needs to be a set of rules and consequences that you abide by.

And this isn't actually psychedelic, this isn't really postmodern stuff. This is just like a straightforward quasi-prestaged television show that just never wants to commit to anything. So you can just shoot somebody in the head, but their brains and their consciousness have been uploaded and downloaded into a completely different character. And no one is actually ever dead. Everyone might be a robot because this show is taking place in four different time periods. And nothing really matters. So if everything is just a construct, which you could say is in fact the sort of grand... you know, mirage of storytelling anyway. Sure. But like, it's too dull to also be this

progressive in its storytelling. It's remarkable that a show that wants to spend so much of its real estate musing on the value and nature of human life actually has no sense of proportion as to its value or there are no stakes, as you said. I mean, people come and go and or people get mowed down and there's just constant death and yet none of it actually stings with any real emotion, right? With the exception, I guess, of that one episode that everyone holds up as the best of the season about the guy in the ghost nation. I forget the name of the episode. I think Alan Seppenwall's Peace in Rolling Stone does a lot of the work that we're doing, and at least as far as my own opinions are concerned, expresses it in a much more fair-minded way, although ends up in, I think, in the same place where I am, which is definitely out of the park. The thing that I wanted to say about, and I think this leads into our conversation about what we're looking for as the next Game of Thrones, what the contenders.

are was the fact that we're also kind of at a epistemological dead end here with the show because people either dislike it like me or, and you said, there's a large group of people who watch it regularly. They enjoy the conversation. They enjoy the mystery. But find themselves saying, just don't take it too seriously. And the one thing you could never accuse West's role of doing is not taking itself seriously. Well, there's another, there's a third route. And I think that there's a it could combine, it's a combination

of two and then its own thing which is, um, you're not supposed to watch Game Thrones. You're not supposed to watch Westworld. You're supposed to play it. Okay.

And that there's an article on Vox about this. People have talked about the video game mechanics of this show on. Um, that essentially it is more a puzzle for the viewer to solve than it is a, you know, any kind of reflection of life or supposed to be some sort of like essay on, on existence and identity and fate and destiny and any of that stuff. It's not. It's a puzzle that you're supposed to solve week by week and you notice the aspect ratio of the show change so that

means you're in this time period. Or you noticed that someone's gestures are slightly off or that a scene is mirroring another scene from five episodes ago. So that means X, Y, and Z. And you're constantly sort of solving these algebraic narrative equations. And I think that that is a valid and viable way to make TV. I don't particularly like the performances or the writing or really anything about this show anymore. Except for when it calmed down enough to stay in one place for more than 20 minutes,

which is ironic since the last night's episode was 90 minutes. These episodes routinely feel longer than their very long run times. And it's surprising that I'm like, no, I want to have just do Juliet or just do Jim Delos, like, or do Logan's story. Tell me Logan's story and how this guy wound up becoming Jarvis for the entire park. But instead, it's constantly zigzagging and changing in tone and insisting on probably, I'll be kind of honest, like probably for contractual reasons, and having this wide-ranging, massive cast of people who all need to have their moments all the time.

And it's kind of boring. They called some of them last night. Right, we don't know. I don't know. I mean, I think to your point about the validity of it, I do think that what Nolan and Joy are attempting to do here, and this is not the kind of criticism that we'll give to shows that are not considered, because they have considered a lot. They have very ambitious thoughts about what they want to do, how they want to do it.

So we're seeing something that they're, you know, this is what they want to put out into the world. Sure. I think there is absolute validity to the idea that in today's hyper, uh, hyper, you know, distracted media landscape, one way to stand out is to flood the zone and demand people's attention on a microscopic level, as you're discussing, like looking at aspect ratio, you know, watching, not just watching for echoes of previous episodes, almost forcing you to go back and watch. Finding things deep within promotional websites that somehow give you an idea of what's going on.

That's one way to keep you paying attention. But I think, if I may, I know it's the NBA offseason and I know that you may be tired of metaphors like this. But ultimately the thing about the show that I find difficult is that I think it plays tight. You know, it plays all the things that they have to think about to make these timelines work and to prove these surprises and pay off all this mystery. You can feel the effort. It feels effortful, which again, I admire on a purely creative and intellectual level. This is hard. You know, I'm trying to plot a show that does not have multiple timelines, and it's hard to get a hundred things in your head at one time if you are not a robot. And that's impressive, but you can feel how hard it is.

For a show that seems to have more moments per episode that would be in any other series, series defining things, you know, you'd say, well, everything's changed now. Well, now we found out this and nothing is ever going to be the same. That happens routinely like three or four times per episode in Westworld to the point where it just doesn't matter. I mean, anything, because what you know is that in the next episode, something could happen that completely negates what you thought was a, game changer in this episode. For a show that seems to have so

many important moments, it's incredibly wasteful. There's a lot of like, what's what? You just have a helicopter shot of a of like Death Valley. It's very expensive. It's okay. I'm sure it is.

But it's like one thing that we talk a lot about direction, we talk a lot about why we like certain directors, why we like certain creators and filmmakers working on different whether it's television or movies. We were always really enamored with the Nick. It never felt like a single shot of the nick was wasted. Even if it was for play, even if it was just like, let me see what

might happen here if I did this. There was a purpose. There was a reason why I'm going away from this completely boilerplate conversation that's just moving the story along to look at light bulbs down a hallway because I'm taking the opportunity to show you a different part of this world while something else is happening. I'm juggling. I'm walking and chewing gum at the same time. The show is incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. I don't even know if it would no gum if you threw a whole pack at it. And that's sort of the problem here, is that it can feel both overwhelming in terms of like how complicated it is and then also like really remedial. So obviously there are people listening, if they're still listening, who are fans of the show

and are looking forward to season three. Do you feel that there is an inflection point here? Because I think the critical consensus has shifted. There was a lot of goodwill towards the show in the first season. I think that if you squint, there is still a conversation. around the show, certainly. I mean, the fact that there's a recapable's podcast he did a live show, people are still talking about it in a way that is compelling

and that is engaged. Because I think that people, I mean, I don't think that you and I are necessarily the convention. We are not in the majority right now. But that conversation has huge value to HBO,

you know, in terms of keeping the show going. I do wonder if we're at a critical inflection point where it will not be, because remember, the thing that was surprising to me is someone who was out on the first season was that it was,

rewarded with nominations, you know, at both the Golden Globes and at the Emmys. Will those happen again? And if they don't, does HBO revisit? I mean, obviously, I think it's entirely possible that we look back on this Westworld season. Like, we look back on Friday Night's Season 2, which was like a necessary evil and that there will now be a course correction. And there could be a course correction that's completely different. Like, we may never go back to this park. We may never see another horse on this show. And that, I think, would be the saving grace for it. Let me just say again,

look, I stopped pretending, clearly, I am not in on this show, but the idea that a show could be so defined by, as Dolores put to the Cowboys and Indians, and then never have another cowboy hat on it, I got a little charge. That's exciting. And maybe that's where we're going.

I mean, I think that, Godspeed, those who go along on a journey, but it is still, it is a very, very forward-looking show in its conception, and its execution. If it were to do a pivot like that, it is certainly worthy of continued conversation.

Continue to your screen. Okay. We're going to take a break here from our sponsors. And then when we come back, Andy and I are going to talk about the next Game of Thrones power rankings. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Seatgeek. Buying tickets can be complicated and confusing, but there is a simpler way to buy with Seekek.

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fault of the creators and, you know, positioned as HBO's next big franchise to take over this Sunday night, week-long, months-long conversation topic show to make it so that, you know, everybody, you had to have HBO, you had to talk about what was on HBO. If you watched it, five minutes too late, you'd have something ruined, and that it would basically be this world-building experience in the same way that Game of Thrones has spawned. Tons of different media. covering it. It's had some very good after shows. It's got, I mean, incredible stuff.

Just like really, really, like, handsome and compelling people talking about. Last year, I think he was speaking in some sort of conference, Richard Plepler, who's the chairman of HBO, said, anyone who tells you that we knew that Thrones was going to be Thrones is completely full of shit. You don't know that. You never know where the next great thing is. So the key is to make a lot of bets with a wide range of talent,

and it's likely that some of them will pay off. It's worth keeping in mind. We are, it's a copycat business. We are probably doing this in, this will be for nothing because something else will come along in a couple of years. And we'll be like, whoever could have thought that...

The Great British Baking Show. Right. In space. But that there would be something where people got tired of swords and shields and outer space and we went back and some show that reminded us of the Sopranos or something came and captivated a nation.

Or let's look at the fact that, while all of the prestige cablers and streamers have been chasing Game of Thrones as very long dragon tale, NBC had a moment of clarity and was like, let's just do NBC and made this is us. Right. Which is now everyone's chasing that, including HBO

with that Alan Ball show, here now, that has come and gone. Right. But I, it's always hard, it's hard to remember things that, other things that people like when everyone seems temporarily excited about. Yeah, and HBO is well positioned to do something like this because

they work with a lot of interesting people, and I think that while everybody is going scale and volume, they are still sticking to their, this is the suite of products we put out. Sometimes they hit, sometimes they miss, but we believe in what we do. By the way, tying this into the conversation we had a week or two ago, that quote from Plipler is so good and so indicative of necessities of a creative-minded approach to the business. Coming from a time warner, like a magazine world, like, there's a consistency and we'll just throw stuff out there and we're going to find the right thing because we trust our people. I don't know if that's the same culture of a phone company.

Sure. I'm just going to put that out there. We don't know. Because when you basically go to your new bosses in Texas who make data plans and you're like, we're going to spend this much money. Or is it the culture of the place where you buy Swifers and Allen First novels?

Or is it the culture of the place that sells you $2,000 laptops that break in 18 months? So interesting that we almost just had last week's conversation again, but we're not doing that. Because what we're talking about are shows that are either currently on or are in development. Yeah. Okay.

And whether or not they could be classified as the next game of threats. We'll do pros and cons. I think what we could probably do, and we're just sort of doing this a little bit on the fly, but what we could probably do

is weight these accurately for our own personal anticipation and or appreciation of them versus what we think the people who are making them are hoping to accomplish. Okay. So what we'll do is we'll just run through them.

Okay. And then at the end, maybe we can rank them better. Pros and cons for each one. So let's start with something that's already on. Westworld. Yep. Is it the blockbuster that HBO is paying for?

No. I think that's clear that it's not. I think that... Do you know how it's doing, like, quote-unquote, ratings-wise, to the extent that that can be quantified anymore? I have not paid attention to it. And I'll say that's both a ding on me and my awareness of ratings. But, you know, an interesting thing about HBO is

HBO used to be like Netflix. They used to never, ever share their ratings. They didn't have to. Except they suddenly got crazy good ratings with the Sopranos, and they couldn't help themselves, and they bragged about it. And once they bragged about it, then they had to keep telling people what was going on. The fact that they haven't bragged about it, I haven't gotten press releases in my email, suggests that they're not breaking records here.

But for whatever metrics they're looking at, I think, as we just said, the conversation, the chatter is enough that I think they're fine with it. I think they maybe are also realizing now or have already realized that this is not going to be the level of success they hoped, but they're finding a way to make it work. I'll just reiterate what I said before about this, which is that it took a little while for Game of Thrones to get the ball rolling. You know what I mean? Game of Thrones was largely, you know,

it was people talking in rooms, which is still the thing that we like the most about the show. But the set pieces started popping up a little bit later. The big set piece, quote unquote, from the first season is the death that we all know about. Blackwater wasn't until season two. Yeah. So technically, Westworld could still have some runway to go here and could get to this kind of,

monocultural monolith status that we're talking about but so far there's a couple of challenges for that. I also think fundamentally and this happens often

with genre shows Game of Thrones is such a unicorn for any number of reasons but one of the reasons is that it appeals to die hard genre people I mean we have binge mode

devoted to it but it also has leached into the public conversation in such a profound way and everyone is watching it. You read wedding this person you know what I mean? Like a lot of stuff

from this show has become part of like the people who don't even know they're referring to Game of Thrones or referring. Westworld, I think, is servicing its diehards in a way, which has value. But I think that limits its chance for expansion. Okay. That's Westworld. What about Stranger Things? Stranger Things is a fascinating case for me because it does tick a lot of the boxes that you just suggested for Game of Thrones in that it started kind of slow. I mean, even in, uh, I don't know if you've heard David Harbour, who's obviously the star of the show, one of the stars of the show, was on Mark Merrin the other week. And it's a great, great, great interview and a great conversation.

He's a very fascinating guy. He basically says, like, Netflix buried it. Like he said that Harbor says that he was on Broadway or off Broadway doing a play with a veteran actor when the show was about to premiere. And he said, oh, it's interesting. I guess they're doing kind of a viral thing. Like, I'm not really seeing any advertisements on buses or subways. And his co-star was like, that's called burying it, David. Yeah.

Like the show's dead. Yeah. And of course, now Netflix is like, oh, we just had confidence that would be word of mouth. They had no confidence. Yeah. Whether or not you look at it as confidence or not, you could also say that the people who were making the show probably didn't expect it to be as big as it was. It's a love letter to 80s amblin pop culture.

It did not have, I don't know if this is true or not, but I think you could watch that first season and be like, they don't really know what like the upside out is. It's just like a kind of catch-all. This is the dark place. this is where this is hell, but not really. It's like another dimension, but there are demons there. But like, hey, well, which probably not going to matter anyway, right? Which, by the way, contra the last 20 years of investigative redditing of culture,

I kind of I find that charming. I enjoyed the first season because it seemed so zeroed in on a small scale level with these characters, with their emotions, that it didn't need to explain what the consequences were to the larger world beyond these characters. And now, and then we saw in season, season two, I would say a kind of bumpy attempt to scale up. I mean, whatever problems people had with season two, positives or negatives, I don't really hear anyone clamoring for more of the other numbered kids. You know, there was that whole set piece with a bottle up. Yeah,

not a bottle episode, but a standalone episode. The other gang, you know, that didn't work, frankly. And I assume that people making the show understand why that didn't work and they're adjusting. But that did seem like an attempt to say, well, maybe there's more here. Maybe we can squeeze this toothpaste tube a little bit more and have a much larger universe. I think the thing standing in the way of Stranger Things becoming the cultural phenomenon is the thing that I admire most about it, which is its closer, tighter focus on the lives of children and our memories. It's domestic. It's lived in. It's pretty much entirely wrapped up in these kids and their charm. This is not a Rob Stark and Ned Stark and Tyrion Lannister. Who's the father? Look at us, Tywin. We really take the off-season

This is not a Rob Stark, a Ned Stark, or a Thailand Lanister situation where you're going to be able to like rotate through an entire cast. Like, it's these kids. This show's going to go four or five seasons. Maybe they'll do a spinoff or whatever. I'm sure that they would want to stay in the 80s vibe. They could keep doing that.

But I think that this is entirely based on these kids and they're like probably going through high school. That said, in season three I think just started filming. But that said, what is your interest level? I'm making this up right now. in a prequel series focused on like the MK Ultra experiments with like a young... Well, they're doing a novelization of that right now. Are they really?

That makes sense. But what about like a 70s show that's pulpier and like post-Hippies, like post-altamont, like experimentation on kids led by a young Matthew Modin? I'm glad you brought that up because there's a couple of these things that I want to talk about. You didn't say you're interested or not. You're thinking about it. So I'm going to bump up from here. Okay.

Your question. I'm going to bump up the Star Wars live action show. Okay. Okay. So this is John Favreau's live action Star Wars show that it's being slated to run on the eventual Disney over the top app, right? Right. Disney's attempted Netflix killer that's going to have an original Star Wars show

and it's going to be the place where instead of having to buy them all on iTunes, you can watch all the Disney cartoons, all the Star Wars movies, all the Marvel movies. Yes. And I have a feeling like chronology is going to start to break a little bit. under the stress of these franchises because we've already seen it with Solo. You've got a lot of shows. This show is supposed to take place

between seven years after the end of Return of the Jedi. So seven years after the Battle of Endor before Force Awakens. This is when it's rumored to take place. That's still, man. Like, I know that some stuff happened in between, although JJ definitely yada yada.

And it's like, the empire's back. Who could have guessed that? They're going to death start. They're making another base. But this is the same. thing that we're talking about with Solo. This is the same thing that we'll talk about with the Lord of the Rings show next. We know the end point. Yeah. We know where it's going. And so much of these stories are still going to be beholden to, you guys know where this is going. So here's a little

bit of a breadcrumb trail so that we can get to the Millennium Falcon so that we can get to the Kesselrown so that we can get to whatever the Lord of the Rings thing that happened 5,000 years before Lord of the Rings. Same thing for the Game of Thrones prequel. But for this Star Wars thing, I'm like, really, what are we talking about? here, like 25 years that we already know what the ending is of, I don't understand. I don't think, I think people are choosing like, what if we said it right there? So like, what if we said it in the 70s, right before Stranger Things? So what? So that we could get to the show that I actually like? Exactly. And you know, it just immediately curtails your drama because you know the endpoints

of a lot of people. If they introduce characters you already know, you know what happens to them. If you introduce new characters, then you have to, it's almost harder because you have to care about them twice as much to reinvest in them. And I think the point you're making, we can circle back to our larger thesis here, it speaks to the miraculous nature of Game of Thrones because in a way, kind of an unexpected sideways way, it hurtled this challenge. Yes. Because for the people who read the books, which, you know, went up to a season and a

half ago, basically, more or less, obviously some things were spread out differently and when they made the show, watching Game of Thrones the TV show was like watching a prequel to their own interest. they knew where things were going, and they still watched because it was very satisfying to them to finally see what these things looked like that they had heard about it.

And at any of the point, Benioff and Wies could have changed their minds and done something differently, maybe. But my point is, Game of Thrones did give you, gave you a show that gave you both. Yes.

It gave you that feeling for people who had read the books of a prequel, and then all of a sudden, they hit open water. And so then everyone is excited and on board. It managed to be both shows at the same time.

And also, the problem is is that a lot of these stories the stakes of the stories are the fate of the world itself. But if you know that the fate of the world is ultimately going to be, at least if not fine, still in play 30 years later, then the consequences are the stakes of we've got to do X, Y, and Z, or planets will fall, or something will explode or we'll all die, it's not going to work.

It's not, it doesn't work. And I feel that way. So we have this Star Wars live action show, which is currently in development. There's a Lord of the Rings Amazon show, which Jennifer Salk is very bullish about, which Jeff Beez is very bullish about. I mean, he spent a quarter of a billion dollars.

Part of her getting the job, which she took over in April as the head of programming for Amazon. She had to be bullish about it. I mean, they spent a quarter of a billion dollars on it. Yeah, this is going to be coming in 2020 or 2021, and we'll focus on the young version of Aragorn, who was played by Vigo Mortensen in the movies. They expect to make five seasons.

There's rumors that Peter Jackson could be involved, but we know what happens. I know it kills me. It's really a great point. So what's our ceiling here? And I think that they've kind of dropped, not to make an Amazon pun, but they've dropped a box over themselves here

and they've put themselves in it. What are they harvesting here? And what are they after? They are harvesting the diehard fan. Yes. There are people who are deeply passionate about the works of Tolkien. They love Lord of the Rings.

They are obviously going to watch anything that's set in this world. They're also betting on the fact Amazon is betting on the fact, you know, it's a vertical thing for Amazon. They can sell you the books. You can rent the movies. And now you can watch the show. They're betting on the fact that there's a whole new generation who grew up on their parents' DVDs or Blu-rays of the Peter Jackson movies who will be excited to watch new adventures in this world. But what's the ceiling? It is a lower ceiling, I think, because we already know the fate of the world. And we are going to talk a little bit more in detail. I think we should leave it for the end about the Game of Thrones pre-Port. Sure. Let's do that. But it's very, very tough. for storytellers, let alone corporations, to be like, we just finished selling you slash telling you the most important story in the history of this fictional world.

Now, let's just watch a lesser one. Yeah, exactly. That's a difficult conversation. The idea that I think was driving a lot of this stuff, especially the Star Wars anthology movies, was people fucking love this story. They love this. They just want to hang out in this world.

They want like singers. But that is in theory. In practice, I think people still want to be challenged and they want to be taken on that journey. And when they go on that journey, they want to feel like there is at least the possibility of stakes. And I think that that was always the exciting thing

about watching the first three Star Wars movies. And frankly, it was really an exciting part about Last Jedi. There was any number of ways that could have gone. That it could have gone. And they made real decisions. And in retrospect, people have argued about it and they even have a hilariously on Twitter tried to like remake The Last Jedi,

which is thank you because like basically only like two or three things that are funny a year actually happen on Twitter and that was one of them. But this is like, that's the one thing you can really unequivocally say about those movies is that they have pushed forward for as much as they're beholden structurally to the original films. They are actually like and you know, and then what could happen? Well, I don't know. Let's try this. Well, particularly and that's and I think that you're bringing it up as an example of positive.

of things, but it's also an example of why they're making Aragorn series, which is Ryan Johnson did some things that were potentially radical. He basically said, ignore everything that happened before. What if the force was this? What if the story we're trying to tell you now means this? And it made the people... And what if your hero was not, in fact, of Royal Jedi Bloodline, but it was just this person? What if it was different now? And people reacted very, very, very strongly to that. And, you know, when you have spent half a billion dollars in your investment, you want people reacting strongly in the other direction. Let's burn through a couple more.

Let's do the other one that's still on the air, which is you put the walking dead on this list. Yeah, the reason I put it on there, people have been watching over, like the show has been on life support critically. Commercially, it's been on a slow but kind of manageable decline in terms of its ratings. The interesting thing here is it's going into season nine, Ano Days Off at AMC, and the star of the show has announced that he is leaving at the end of this coming season and that another one of the fan favorites, Maggie, played by Lauren Cohen, is also leaving after a few episodes into this season. And Norman Redis, who is sort of the real Walking Dead fan's

favorite character, I guess, is sort of taking over the above the line marquee star role. That kind of thing usually doesn't happen in television shows. Jack didn't leave lost, you know, Although this show is uniquely suited for this sort of transition. Yeah. It would be very interesting. I think that they are almost in a way in a sort of Star Wars zone where they have to keep making a show that satisfies the 10 to 13 million people who are like, I'm going to watch this every Sunday.

And they can't, the problem is that they're starting to turn those people off even while they think they're making that same show. So here's a radical suggestion that I'm sure people have made both on fan forums and that I don't look at and probably internally and creatively. What if they did pull a loss? Now, you mentioned Jack didn't leave on loss, but loss was telling at least they had always hoped to tell a complete story. Walking Dead, one of the things that's actually kind of brilliant about Walking Dead in terms of its longevity is it's essentially a procedural, right?

They have no desire, or at least have evince no desire to solve this, to make people not be zombies anymore and build a new world. They have to, you know, there's a body in every episode of Law and Order. there's multiple people being eaten in every episode of Walking Dead, and that's the bang for the people's buck. But what if they were looking at the ratings, they see the slide, they realize the landscape they're up against, what if they announced there are going to be three more seasons of the Walking Dead? We're just telling you that right now.

And in those last three seasons, hard pivot, and they either solve it or they don't. You know what I mean? Like, we end this world and see what could happen. Suddenly people are paying attention again. Suddenly it feels like appointment viewing again. And you can milk that for three more seasons. frankly, I would argue that three more seasons of a narrative recharge with new excitement around it.

It might actually bring people in like, hey, I'll check it out. That's of more value, I think, than five more seasons of declining esteem and ratings. But, you know, it's not up to me. Okay. So Walking Dead, it's still in the mix, even though it seems to be kind of dropping off a little bit. What else here should we talk about? Let's talk about some of the things that are in development. Yes.

So I just wanted to mention because Apple has been relatively, I wouldn't say conservative in the shows that they're developing so far. Nor in their spending. They have not been conservative in their spending

but it shows like Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, dromedy set at a morning show there is what was the the Camel Nunjani show that they were talking about

making. Inthology series, they're doing, they're rebooting amazing stories, the Steven Spielberg anthology show from the 80s. They have it.

written their big check yet. Well, they've written a lot of big checks. They've written a lot of big checks, but they haven't been like, here's a billion dollars. We want the new Star Wars or Game of Friends. No, what they've been doing, and I've said this before and I'll keep saying it is they appear to be in the press release business until they make a TV show and even tell us how we're going to watch the TV show, by the way. We all, you know, Chris and I are doing this podcast looking at our Apple laptops. So presumably we will have access to these shows, but they haven't even explained how it's going to be distributed. So they're in the press release business. They are disrupting the field. they're spending Netflix money and getting headlines and getting attention and they've hired the heads of the Sony studio, but they haven't actually made anything yet.

And so I think that your point is well taken. Right now, they're winning over the industry, honestly. And then maybe once they have a foothold or show us they can make something, then they might make their play for the layman. I also think that part of what you have to keep in mind here is more and more people who are associated with film work like Reese Wetherspoon get involved in television. no matter what the line is about like, well, this is where the great stories are, so I'm coming to TV. I don't think those people still want to be tied down to doing something for six or seven years. No. And that's important to keep in mind when you see, you know, oh, so-and-so is making the jump to TV? It's like, well, they are, but they're making the jump to an eight-episode run here or an 11-episode run there.

But not, I'm going to do this. And I'm going to look at the faces that people make Game of Thrones. They're ready for it to be over. Yeah. Yeah. Look at their gray hair. Look at their families who they haven't seen. I mean, it's actually become an interesting right of passage that people don't, I don't know if we've been talking about it as much, but it used to be, and this does happen too, that when you win an Oscar, you get, you know, you make a movie that gets that kind of attention, then you can write your ticket for your next film. And that's certainly still the case. But the first thing you do before you even announce your next film is you go make cash. Yeah. Geremo Del Toro producing, Damien Chazel producing stuff. Barry Jenkins making Underground Railroad. Underground Railroad. Yeah. You know, worthwhile projects all, but not ever.

that they are going to become Stephen Botchko. They're cashing it. So the one thing that Apple has that could be in this mix, in the zone of what we're talking about, is this untitled Ronald Moore space race show. Ronald Moore, the guy behind Battlestar Galactica and later Outlander, one of the great kind of TV thinkers when it comes to sci-fi. And this is supposed to be, what if the space race never ended?

What if we just kept going and kept fighting to, I would assume, colonized, but it's supposed to basically be an alternative history from the future of the space race continuing. We don't know much about it, but it is the one kind of genre-e widescreen thing that they have going so far. So it would be curious to see,

because Battlestar, I kind of wonder if Battlestar started today if it would have been like a complete blockbuster, although people would say that's the expanse. No, yes, but I do think if Battlestar was now and it was still semi-valuble IP, it probably would have flashier budget, It would have bigger stars.

It may be on a different network. And I actually am excited about this show because it's a great concept. And it has the kind of open-ended world-building concept that makes it, of all the shows we've talked about, we don't know anything about it, but it's forward-looking. Sure. And that alone makes me excited about what it could be. And, you know, it's not on your list, but I was going to come back to it for the same reason. Star Trek is back on TV.

big way. Sure. We haven't talked about discovery. And one of the reasons it's not even in this conversation, although I've heard good things pro and con, is that I do know that the way the first season ended suggested an Aragorn problem in terms of it's or a Star Wars problem, whatever we want to call it. Yeah, right. In terms of what it wants to do.

They just signed Alex Kurtzman, who wrote some of the recent rebooted movies to be the, basically be the rabbi of this entire TV operation that they're not going to expand. And then there was immediately talk that Patrick Stewart was talking about doing something with them. And I have to say, I'm generally not into, you know, fan service or reboots and stuff. You'd be down with Picard. If they were like eight episode show, which is like Picard's Logan, by the way, Picard was in Logan.

But like old man Picard and you make like something like Lonesome Dove in space? That would be your Game of Thrones? That would be your Lonesome Dove? How good would that be, though? We should do Lonesome Dove Power Rankings. So you've got Star Trek. We've talked about, talked a little bit about the Ronald More Apple Show. We're going to immediately just say the passage.

could have been this, but we already feel comfortable saying it's not... Yeah, go back and listen to our review of the passage trailer, although, you know, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt just because I'm interested in the content. Why the Last Man and Damon Linlof's Watchman? That's where I want to end, and then we can talk a little bit about the Thrones prequel. I am extremely excited about Damon's watchman. We talked about it briefly.

I think that the fact that he is using, as he himself said in his letter to fans, using the original text as the Old Testament, and attempting to do a New Testament. Like this is the most exciting, forward-looking, I think adult way to approach beloved IP. Sure. I think he's doing something really, I think he's trying really hard in a good way to innovate.

And there are a few people who are doing that. I wonder if that desire to innovate and do justice to the past limits the scale of this. You know, this is such a fascinating choice for him. And he makes, you know, he's very thoughtful about the choices he makes in terms of his career. This seems like the play, right? He did loss and everyone was like,

here, do franchises, do sci-fi, do the big show. And he chose to adapt existing IP, but it was a respected Tom Perada novel. Yeah. Watchman turned into one of the best shows of recent times, but intentionally smaller in scale. Yeah. And limited in its audience.

His version of Watchman is the big play to be both. Sure. Can he take the, the, the, the, the, the, naughtiness, the intensity, the emotional weight of what he was doing with the leftovers and throw it onto this great big widescreen canvas with superheroes. Nothing could be better in my mind. But I guess I think if it's going to, if there's going to be faults here, I think there are going to be faults in the direction that I care more about.

I think it may not become the big show in the world. Yeah. It's like for you. Yeah. It's too naughty and mature and adult and interesting to achieve. Which, by the way, Game of Thrones is naughty and mature and adult and interesting. and they're fucking dragons. What do you think about why the last man?

That's the one I'm most, I think that that's the one. So that would be your number one? I'm in a circle why the last man here because, first of all, it's based on a Brian Vaughn and Pia Gehrer comic book that ran for, I think of 70 plus issues. I'm a big fan of it. You should check it out. They're all in nice editions. The conceit here is that there's a guy named York and he's the last man on Earth.

All the men die. And why did it happen and what happens in the world? It's been in development for a long time as a feature film, as a TV show. it's one of those things. This does happen. Just when everyone gives up hope that it's ever going to be made into anything, not only does it suddenly bubble back to the surface,

but the time is suddenly right for it. I think you can't discount the larger world and larger context that shows are being told in. And the idea of pivoting big budget, big genre, comic book stuff, telling a story about the world or the end of the world or the beginning of a new world, and making a show that by its nature is explicitly,

Feminist and is explicitly dealing with what ifs that these other shows have not had any interest in considering. This is the time to make the show. Now, we don't know what it's going to be. It's going to be on FX. We know Michael Green, who actually wrote Logan, right? And has a

long list of TV credits, is making the show he had written the pilot, and he's partnered with a woman who worked on Luke Cage to run it. Jody Foster is rumored to be joining the cast. Your good friend, Jody Foster, I believe. You've done a number of events with it recently. this is the one that I think has the potential. To be a game changer.

To be a big show in an exciting way, because I think regardless of what they do, it's going to have a conversation around it. If they do it well, it could be a really good and long-lasting conversation. And its FX is making a big genre play. They've been very modest in that, while understanding that, yeah,

they've missed out by not having walking down. So if this is the one that they identify, if they underline it, circle it, put all of their creative resources, which are considerable towards it, we might have something unique and special here. We can just talk briefly about the Game of Thrones prequel, which we've gone into.

It's Jane Goldman. She wrote The Kingsman. She's an accomplished screenwriter. She's been working with George R. Martin on this show. It's set 10,000 years before Game of Thrones, and it could cover, we have no knowledge of this. It could cover some stuff like the construction of the wall or the origin of the Knights Watch.

I think that this is going to be incredibly dependent on how the last season of Game of Thrones is received. Great point. on one hand, if Martin is heavily involved in this and is infusing this with the undergirding of Game of Thrones history that I think a lot of people, it attracted a lot of people to the show in the first place. It's like, man, there's a lot going on here.

Some of our coworkers. That's one thing. If it feels like Game of Thrones ends in a way that is rapy-uppy-upy, like, yeah, like... That's the world. We did it. We did it. The dragon did this and she's with him and that's it.

Then I don't know. I'll be very curious to see basically the relationship between these two things. And also, whether or not just in general, people's attention span will last for 10 years like this. Yeah. They'll be willing to do this for this long. There's a difference between telling a story we want to hear and showing us something we're interested in seeing. And I think that it does seem like a smart play that a prequel, is going to have just this it's going to be a little bit less interesting to people it's not going to be

as successful it's sealing as i've said before in this podcast is lower but people may be neat to see them build a wall we need to see a world of heroes in this world or the long night the opposite of the age of heroes whatever they decide to do but once you see it how much longer do you care about it and i and i you know they've said HBO has said that that this might not be the only one they green light sure i would say just from my position on the sidelines I think that what would be great for HBO would be to continue to think of themselves in the handling of this franchise as jewelers.

They have the nicest ones in the shop. They don't need to have, I mean, maybe they do now for the bottom line, but in a world where they don't need to have Game of Thrones on every year, they didn't have it in 2018. I would be more interested in a collection of Game of Thrones stories than I am another show ready to jump on.

People have said there's like the Dunkin Egg stories, which is something, you know, a buddy thing that, that exists in the George R. Martin world, I would love them to do an eight-episode thing with that. Take us back there. Okay, and now let's press pause. Let's think of another story we want to tell.

Yeah. Because if the premise, you know, because I think ultimately, the Game of Thrones spinoff fails our next Game of Thrones test because we are talking about a show that not only united the TV watching world. But completely define the level of stakes that we're talking about. It was about a world and the end of that world. Anything could happen. and if it did, it would matter a lot.

Yeah, and so neither of us are willing to give up on the idea of a show grabbing everyone's attention like this, not only because we'll be looking for a new show to have an after show for in 2019, but because, you know, as we always say, we love water cooler TV, we love consensus television. You're circling why the last man. I'm actually going to put a pin in the Ronald Moore Space Race Show because of what I said.

I think if Battlestar came on today, we're talking about a much different audience for it. And I'm very curious to see what he does a little of that Tim Cookwap. Let's keep this conversation going. You can add us on Twitter at the watchpod. Get in the Facebook group. Get in the Facebook group. Tell us not only what your pick is for the next Game of Thrones, but what you want in another Game of Thrones.

And we will take those concerns and we will deliver them to the doorstep of Hollywood. Yes. Because that's what we do. Chris, tell the people, this is the week of the Day of the Soldado. It's day of the Week of the Soldado Day. We're going to be talking about the first Sicario a bit on Thursday and talking a little bit about the new one. We'll actually do our kind of episode about it next Monday.

You might have a special guest for Thursday. And we might have a special guest for Monday. We'll see until Thursday. Great job, Branskys. Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Watch. Why don't you get decked out in the latest fit from the ringer.com's merch store. Striped up. The ringer.com slash shop.

Cop a watch t-shirt. Aqua Blue brings out the blue in my eyes. 2499. It says, great job, Baransky. It says the watch on the back. Wear it with pride. People will be dapping you up. Smurf blue for the summertime.

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