The Watch - What FX Will Look Like in 2020. Plus, a Conversation With Rob Corddry and Krister Johnson of ‘Medical Police’ | The Watch

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

The FX network gave its presentation at the TCAs today and told us when to expect the next season of ‘Atlanta’ (1:00) and gave premiere dates for a slate of other shows (11:34). Then, Chris sits down with the creators of ‘Medical Police,’ Rob Corddry and Krister Johnson, to talk about the process of creating the show (32:12) and why they looked to ‘Jack Ryan’ for inspiration while writing it (44:39). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Rob Corddry and Krister Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 today on the watch, it's just me and my buddy, Kaya. What's up, Kaya? What's up?

How's it going? I mean, I feel like you're the fastest riser in the Democratic primary right now. After that, your turn on the best of the day. Decade Pod with Sam S-Mail. All of the feedback I've gone has been so nice. How are you feeling about your new reputation as a television tastemaker? I'd prefer people to not comment on it.

I'm not looking for suggestions, basically, is what I'd like to say. Well, but you've taken some, right? You said you started watching some stuff based off of that Best of the Decade Pod, didn't you? Yes, I take suggestions from one person, and that person is Chris Ryan. Holy shit. That's, what an honor. Well, Kai is here with me today. Today on the show, we're going to talk a little bit about John Landgraf,

the head of FX's usual state of the TV union speech that he gives once a year at the TCA's, and he gave his today. So we'll go through some of the stuff that he talked about there, although usually we feast on Landgraf's observations about the explosion of scripted content that we've had and the way that's impacting what networks are doing. He's sort of a seer of the streaming wars, if you will, even though we're not supposed to use streaming wars as a term. But what I really want to talk about today

is what FX's slate looks like coming up in the next couple of weeks and months because there's a lot of really exciting stuff there. I thought I'd also maybe mention a few things about Dracula on Netflix, although I don't really know how much I have to add to the Dracula myth, but it didn't stop Stephen Moffat and Mark Gaddis

who created Dracula. Those are the guys behind Sherlock, obviously, and they brought their particular perspective. to like the very often told Dracula myth. So we'll talk a little bit about that. And then I have an interview with Rob Cordry and Krista Johnson, two of the guys behind medical police, which is a spinoff of Children's Hospital,

which is a beloved adult swim show for many years from like 2010, I think to 2016. And this show is a spinoff of Children's Hospital, Medical Police, and it stars Rob Hewbel and Aaron Hayes. And it's very, very funny. And we'll talk to them about what it's like to go from making a kind of satire or parody of a hospital drama to this

kind of globe-trotting police thriller, medical police thriller, to not put final point on it. And it was a really cool interview. It's a different kind of show than what we usually talk about on the watch, but they basically are going

like a joke a second. It's like a very, very high volume hilarious take on like the 24 style thriller. And Rob Hewell and Aaron Haynes are really, really funny in it. So my conversation with Krister Johnson and Rob Cordry comes at the second half of this podcast. But today, Kaya, I thought we could maybe talk a little bit about what Landgraf had to say at the TCA's.

Let's do it. Okay, so for everybody who doesn't know, it's the Television Critic Association. It's basically a conference where a lot of critics come out to Los Angeles, and the networks come and present their wares. They come and say, this is what we've got coming. This is what we're excited about. There's lots of panel talks. often a lot of headlines coming out of this conference. And basically what happens is you either have somebody shaping a narrative or stepping in shit.

We've had a couple of times where there's like I think Aaron Sorkin kind of got in a little bit of hot water here. Basically it's a chance for showrunners, writers, directors, actors, actresses to face the music a little bit. But often, more often than not, it's really just like a merchandising opportunity for networks to come around and say, hey, this is what we're doing this year. One of the more interesting networks every year to talk is FX, because John Langerap comes out and gives this huge speech about what's going on in television right now. He's been one of the people who's been most vocal about the ups and downsides and downsides of streaming television and of all this stuff being out there. Hundreds and hundreds of shows streaming.

I think if I remember what Lagerav said, there was like a 7% jump from 2018 to 2019 in scripted television, something like 490 shows were on the air. And with the coming of HBO Max and the peacock, we can expect probably, I don't know, like maybe another 8 or 9% if not 10%,

depending on how much stuff winds up getting on the air. Now, FX has always been something of a quality over quantity play, right? So they have always kind of really had this very curated, very worked on programming sleep where you get stuff like better things and you get stuff like Atlanta and you get stuff very carefully worked on.

And one thing that you always notice that they talk about when they're talking about, hey, we're going to renew this. Langrafs often said, I will make this show for as long as so-and-so wants to do it. He used to say that about Louis. He says that now about Atlanta with Donald Glover. And that was probably the biggest news coming out

of Langraf's speech today is that Atlanta, which we knew it had been renewed, quote unquote, for season three and four, is underway. It sounds like they have written a 10 episode season three, which is different Kaya than usual, because Atlanta typically is about, I think, eight episodes. And now it's going to be a 10 episode third season that Langraf suggested would shoot somewhat outside of the United States, that some of the material would be shot outside of the U.S. Now, that's a pretty cool development, this idea of Atlanta kind of getting out of Atlanta. But is it a continuation of where we left off in the finale?

I would imagine, yeah. So the finale was, is that at the airport? Yeah. Well, they're basically there. The final shot is them on the plane. Right. And the gun and he traps that guy with the gun. Yeah.

So I don't know whether or not it's going to pick up immediately or how much they'll spend overseas. But yeah, the 10 episodes season three and then another eight episode season four, they have done this writing and they are going to try and shoot them in order. the problem is is that it sounds like the season three will not air until 2021

that they're still in the pre-production processing due to Donald Glover's schedule I wouldn't expect to see Atlanta or I can tell you that this is what John Landcraft said we will not be seeing Atlanta in 2020 which is a little bit disappointing.

Bummer. Yeah, but that's not to say that there's not a ton of really interesting stuff coming on FX this year. The thing that I think the watch fans are most excited for that I'm most excited for is the show Dev.

So it's, Alex Garland's show. It stars Sinoya, Mizuno, and Nick Offerman. It's coming out in March. And it is part of, there's these two batches of shows, basically, that FX is releasing in the spring or in the coming months. There's going to be a few that are going straight to the FX on Hulu tab, which is essentially since Disney bought Fox FX became part of the Disney company, the Disney umbrella of companies, I guess. And in much the same way that Disney Plus has these sort of tabbed experiences where you can. You can watch Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars.

Hulu is going to start to have that kind of experience as well. And FX will have its own sort of bucket on Hulu where you can go watch their stuff. So FX on Hulu will see devs. It will see Mrs. America, which is the story of the Women's Liberation Movement, starring Kate Blanchette and Rose Byrne. Did you see the trailer for that? Yeah, I have. It looks good, I think.

I hear trepidation in your voice. I don't know. I'm just like, I'm tired of a second wave of feminism getting portrayed in popular culture. Yeah, it just, I don't think it's been done correctly yet in a way that's not like poppy and like, woo, go women, like, blah, blah, look how strong we are. Does the fact that it seems like this has got more about the internecine fighting on the side of like the glorious dinemes and like the arguments that were happening on the women's lives side as much as like just girl power? Yeah, I think that could be interesting, too. I don't think intersectionality is something that we've seen, like, an issue addressed on TV before. But that's also a really tricky subject to get into.

And it's also like when those subjects come up, it's like ultimately are they good drama too, right? Right, yeah. It's kind of like how exciting is it to watch infighting of like an organization. But we'll see. Right. Yeah. I mean, like, I think that one of the things that's so attractive or one of the things that you can get so excited by like documenting history with these shows now, especially since

there's so many and we can sort of be like, oh, what about this interesting time in 1974 or this interesting time in 1981? But you've really got to look for the story in there. What's the actual story aside from something that's essentially like trying to evoke period details and articulate two sides of an issue, right? Right. I will say that Roseburn looks great as Gloria Steinem. Yeah, she's really, the glasses look is just fantastic. But yeah, Missing. is America, that comes out, I believe, in April. Before that, March 5th, we'll get devs. So, what is devs? Well, I think that it's a what is show. There are shows like Westworld and, to some extent, Watchman, something of a mystery box show. It's really hitting the, what the hell is

going on here. Nail really hard on the head. But you have to factor in the fact that Alex Garland is probably the best science fiction filmmaker working today, with the exception maybe of Denis Villeneuve, if you consider him a sci-fi filmmaker. That's debatable. But Alex Garland is, it sounds like it's about a software engineer, some kind of software engineer played by Nick Offerman, who also has a cult of personality around him. But there seems to be a lot of conversation in there about free will, about the participation that we have in our own narratives and whether or not life is a simulation.

So we have Offerman and Mizuno, and Mizuno, and Mizuno seems to be she's like investigating something that's happening at a complex that looks suspiciously like Oscar Isaac's house from ex Machina and yeah there's some religious elements to it there's the new religion of science the new religion of computer technology and it looks unbelievable

did you get a chance to see this trailer Kyah yeah I did it's really really like stylized and it definitely did remind me a lot of like Westworld and then I could like the glass box in the middle of nowhere where you're not really sure what they're doing inside. Yeah.

Remind me a lot of ex machina. Yes, yes. And this idea of a sort of central genius in the middle that everybody is kind of both praying towards and terrified of. You have to understand that with Garland, you're dealing with like a realotaur. So everything that we see is going to be under his control. It's just such a like a really cool moment where you can get a limited series from somebody like that.

And this looks like a really transporting experience. I've heard it's really, really, really good. The first two episodes of that will go up in early March on FX on Hulu. So it'll be like, it'll be streaming only and it'll be the first two episodes will go up on March 5th and then I think they're going to do

an episode a week, which I think now, honestly, Kaya, is... I'm into it. That should be industry standard. I think it's cool to put up two episodes at once the first time and say, okay, here's like, here's a taste that goes beyond just the

pilot, and then once a week after that. It just makes a show so much more memorable when you're watching it week to week, as opposed to when you binge something. For something like Mandalorian, I don't think it would have garnered the same sort of buzz if it was released all at once. Also, I mean, just imagine how the way that we talked about Mandalorian, where it was like the sort of revelation at the end of the first episode, and then everybody kind of getting into this new character that was being introduced over the next few weeks.

and just the arc of people's excitement and interest in that show would have been so different if people had watched it literally in one night because you know Star Wars fans, we can't control ourselves, so we're just going to go watch the like eight hours of Mandalorian in like 12 hours if we can. Yeah, exactly, especially for a show that was as short as that was, episode lengthwise and as like digestible as that was. People would have blew through that in a night.

And then you wouldn't have been able to talk about it with anyone because you'd be like, well, have you seen this episode? Yeah, right, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So I'm excited for the way that they're releasing devs. I think it'll, like, drive maximum amounts of interest and also, like, allow us to all kind of go on this journey together with it. I'm interested to see Nick Offerman in that role. I don't think he's played sort of a role like this before. No, no. It's a really curious decision. He's got, like, this sort of long flowing blonde hair and a kind of almost religious beard in this show. So I'm really curious to know what more about it, and I hope that lives up to what it is in my head. I mean, like, we're talking,

I'm kind of like comparing it to Blade Runner in 2001 in my head, so it's going to be hard for it to do that. So then Mrs. America comes the following month, and then what they're going to do on FX is it sounds like they're going to put out stuff in clusters. This is a really interesting programming decision by FX, where you're essentially, I think Landgraf in his discussion today and his talk at TCA's,

said that this was about, quote, bring a tonnage of quality. So a tonnage? Yeah. Well, typically in the past, you've thought about, like, HBO has a Sunday night lineup. And those shows sort of, they don't necessarily go together as much as you might have, like, a really dark drama, that then you have a palette cleanser of a veep and another comedy afterwards. Or maybe you have a kind of more of a relationship dramedy and then maybe something darker afterwards. they usually would program out a Sunday night.

FX typically, I think, would have one or two things a night here and there during a year, but was definitely never a every night from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. We have original programming going on. They're not going to do that now, but what it does seem like they're going to try and do is put out three or four shows in a group once a month. And so in the coming months, we're going to get Breeders, which is a show starring Martin Freeman, which seems to be, I think it's a parenting show and a show called Dave,

which is the rapper Lil Dickies show. And what we do in the shadows is coming back, better things will come back, cake is coming back, and we'll get another season of Fargo, which I miraculously forgot to talk about on the anticipated shows list that we did a couple of weeks ago,

but that stars Chris Rock and Timothy Oliphant, so I'm losing my mind for that one too. Hmm, exciting. Yeah. So this idea is basically that at any given point, there will be a cluster, FX shows that people are talking about. Some of which will be airing

one night on, you know, it'll be like on FX on linear cable for a night and then the next day they'll be available on Hulu. Some like Mrs. America and devs are going to be available only on FX through Hulu. How do you think they made the decision between what goes on what? Yeah, well, based on

from what I can discern, just like looking at the lists of the shows that are doing those separate paths, I think the older shows, like the renewed shows, had previously existing deal that require them to be on linear cable. So better things in Fargo and what we do in the shadows,

I think, are all doing the first night. It's on FX. The second night it shows up on Hulu thing. But these newer shows that are part of like maybe strictly the Fox, since the Fox purchase, are going straight to Hulu. I personally, I do not have a dog in this fight.

I probably would not actively be home to watch these things on linear cable anyway. but it goes towards Landgraf's major point that he made, which was that FX had kind of hit a ceiling as a linear cable company, as a company that was mostly putting its shows out on air. And they have the goods to make this move into streaming. Now, whether they can do it in scale, like that's the question that almost every media company in the world is asking themselves,

is maybe we like what we've got in our hand, but can we come up with 10 hands? Yeah, I mean, FX is interesting, or FXX? Well, FXX is their sort of their sister network that is like largely comedy. And I think that's where they were putting like Archer and it's always sunny in Philadelphia. I see. But FX itself is interesting because I feel like while I put out like critical darlings of shows, it never put out a show that was like the monoculture show.

No, you know, they never, they've never had their walking dead. They've never had their show that, I mean, they've had plenty of shows like Atlanta that I think almost everybody who sees Atlanta is like, that's among my favorite things I've ever. ever seen on television, but they've never had a show that, I think, 15, 16 million people are watching and it has like a convention business around it and video games around it. And merch. Yeah, exactly.

Like, they've had shows like justified and sons of anarchy that I think are obviously really popular, but I don't think they've ever crossed over into that world. I think they had hoped that bastard executioner was going to be that, but... I've never heard of that show. Yeah, it never really popped off like that. So, yeah, that's what FX is kind of bringing in the next couple of months. Obviously, devs is going to be of the utmost importance to us going forward in terms of what we're talking about. I'm sure we'll also talk about Mrs. America.

But it'll be interesting to see if this works out for them. It'll be interesting. And I know, you know, I'm curious, Kay, so you've got a Disney Plus subscription, correct? Yes, but I canceled it. Okay. Oh. After Mandalorian. So you're not just sitting around watching Moana every day, like Greenwald?

No, I'm like not a big, like, nostalgia person. I don't really want to, like, watch, like, old cartoon movies. because I liked them when I was a kid. Right. And there's not, besides Mandalorian, there's not really much on there for me. What if there was a cartoon about second wave feminism? Then I'd be interested.

So aside from Kaya who canceled the second that she found out. I don't think I'm the only person who canceled Disney Plus. Yeah, but I can't tell if that kind of, because remember the whole thing was like everybody's going to cancel their Netflix subscriptions now that Disney Plus is out? Like, I just, it takes like an extra step of caring to go around canceling stuff all the time. I understand, but my budget or my resolution in 2020 is to be good with my budget. What are the resolutions do you have? That's the only one. That's it. Be better with budget.

It's good. Buy less sweet green. Oh, God. I mean, I don't want to like sap our possibility of ever having a massive sweet green sponsorship so that we don't have to pay for salads. That'd be sweet. But you and I, man, we need to find some lunch options. It just, there has to be another way. I can't be paying $15 for a salad. I just can't. Do you know what the other thing is now that we're really talking, just the two of us? Let's get into it. Is it possible to develop a sweet green addiction? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Tell me, what are you working with?

I basically am in a spot now where that's the only satisfying salad that I can find around our office. Have you been in a tender greens? Yeah, it's fine. I prefer the sweet green delivery system a little bit better. It's a little bit more chopped out. Yeah, I agree. Sweet green mixes their salads much better. And now I'm at the point, though, where I've had sweet green so much that if I have a sandwich or like a rice bowl or something, I need a nap. Yeah. So I've now created a dependency on sweet green to get through my workday, even though I feel like a giant 42-year-old rabbit eating kale every day like an idiot. You've got to get on that meal prep, you know?

I know. She said the other day I walked into Phenise's office and he was just like unwrapping a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from a piece of tinfoil that he had made at his house. And I was just like, that's a genius idea. Who? Oh my God, you made yourself a P.B. and J at home and brought it in. I mean, you can get a little bit more elaborate than a P.B. and J. But that's a place to start.

Do you ever bring your lunch to work? I bring my lunch all the time, but I'm big on the leftover game. See, I always, because like for the first year, I feel like you were doing the watch, I feel like I would always walk in and I'd be like, what's up, Kaya? And you'd be eating like a giant bag of tortilla chips solo. And I was like, man, Kai really just like eats a. like she's at a Dodgers game no matter what. No, that's not true.

She's eating soft serve out of a little plastic helmet. Sometimes you don't want a full meal, but you do want a snack, so you pop over to the right end across the street and you get yourself a nice big bag of like wheat thins or goldfish or kettle chips and it's just a little salt. My New Year's resolution is to try to be a little better organized. Okay. I think it's like almost harder with all the ways you can organize your life. I've been obviously very like intimidated slash in awe of Stephen Soderberg's media diary that he put out as I am every year.

Not only because it seems like he spent like 40 days of last year watching below deck, but just this sort of obvious dedication to kind of tracking what he's doing and kind of having you see these themes come out as you kind of go through his days and seeing like, you know, he watches social network a couple times every year. He checks out. He obviously watches a lot of stand-up. I've tried, I've started doing that now. I have a media diary. Wow. Well, I've done it. How's it going? Here's the thing. I saw, oh, the watch Facebook group caught that you started a letterbox account. Did they? Yes, they did. Well, I just did it because Fentany did it. I'm such a joiner. I have, so I have this Google Sheets that has, I think I'd go back to 2017 of me, of my media diary. And here's the pathetic thing. Every single year. so robust in January, just so careful.

Then maybe I miss a week. And then maybe I can miss a month. And then I just missed the rest of the years. So the 2017 one, I stop in May 21st. Let's see where 2018 fell off. I was pretty good in 2018. May 21st is good. I got to, well, according to this,

I got to December 19th on 2018. But I think I stopped writing things down. So you stopped. were writing some things down, but not all of them? Yeah. Like, I, like, I, like, 2018, September 2018, I'm like, I went and saw The Predator, mid-90s, a simple favor, watched a few episodes of Forever, and read a book. All in one day? No, in September. Oh, yeah, that doesn't sound right. But I feel like I also watched more than one episode of, like, I watched more than just four episodes of Forever in September. That's the thing. It's like, I think I could

probably track movies. I could probably track books, but I don't think I can track TV. It's too much. Like, their episodes are too short. Yeah, and also, I think that TV is such like a casual experience sometimes. Like, what are you supposed to do? Write down, like, every time you watch Friends. Yeah, exactly. Then you just seem like a maniac. Then you just seem like last night watched seven episodes of Friends while I was in a complete stupor.

And also, like, yeah. So I'm doing this this year. I kind of want to have a little bit more of a diary about it. I'm just curious. I actually even started putting down the games that I watch. Oh, nice. Just because, like, I'm like, why do I watch all those sports and I never remember it? I mean, I do remember it.

But anyway, being more organized is part of it. But I sometimes feel like having all the digital tools to be organized makes me less organized. Yeah, because there's so many options that you're overwhelmed by your options. And then you're just like, you start doing it one way. And then you're like, but there's this other way I could do. And it could be better. Yeah, should I do the Getting Things Done app? Should I do this?

I never even heard of that. There's like 15 different like reminders apps on iPhone. Getting things done is just a lot of crossing out. You could go analog. You could start keeping like a written planner. That's what Lipman and Sean both recommend that. And I don't know. I don't even know what my handwriting looks like anymore.

Do you? No, I was gifted like two nice pens for Christmas and I was like, I don't know how to hold a pen. Who gave you the pens? My mom. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, it was really nice, but I didn't know how to tell her that I haven't written anything down in a month. Shout out to Mrs. McMullen. Where the hell were we?

What were you talking about? Oh, kind of like New Year's resolutions in Sweet Green. Steven Soderberg. And his diary, which I love. And then moving backwards to that from that. Did this have anything to do with FX? We were wrapping up FX and you're going to move on to talk about Dracula.

That's right. Dracula is pretty good. So I am an unabashed Sherlock fan. I love what Gattison Moffitt do. I think they have a really zippy, like light style. And I am not like a Dracula. Guy. I wouldn't say that I am somebody. I've never read

the novels. I've seen the Coppola movie obviously and I've kind of I'm very aware of it. But I wouldn't say that it's something that I've invested a lot of time or thought into, but just the fact that Moffat and Gattis were doing this, I was kind of curious about what they were going to do after Sherlock. And

this is a pretty entertaining little run they want on here. It's three episodes. There are 90 minutes each. I've watched the first one. So forgive me if there are twists coming that I don't acknowledge. I'll keep it really general just to say that the guy that they have playing Dracula is an absolute delight. This guy named Clayus Bang, I believe you pronounce his name that way. And the character of Van Helsing is played by a woman. It's Agatha Van Helsing, and she's

the vampire hunter who is also a nun. And it's just, it moves pretty well. It's surprising when you see something like this, Kaya, where you're like, oh man, I really do, just by osmosis, know many, so many beats of this story. You know what? It's, it would be kind of like, I bet if you watch this, even if you didn't know a ton about Dracula, you'd be like, right, he goes to the, it's a real estate, like a tax attorney, and he goes to the castle, and he meets this old man, and the old man gets progressively younger, and then this whole thing comes up with the tax attorney's wife back in England that Dracula seems to want to get with, and that's the sort of driving focus of the story.

But I was surprised by how many little notes in Dracula that I knew. It's a pretty funny show. I wouldn't say it's like laugh out loud funny, but there are some really good, like, witty lines. It's pretty sexually charged. Okay. Like there's some homerodicism. There's a lot of like...

This Dracula fucks? This Dracula fucks. All Dracula's fuck, though. I think that that is kind of one of his hallmarks. Gary Oldman, Dracula, definitely love to get it on. So yeah, I really recommend it. It's interesting to also. get something that's sort of similar to Sherlock

in its episodic delivery system where it's these longer almost feature length episodes and there's just three in a series so I don't know what the twists are coming in the next two I've seen some pieces where the headline is Dracula kind of falls apart at the end

but I mean the story not the actual vampire who I hope has fallen apart by this point but yeah I mean like it's just a really kind of enjoyable fun binge I bet you could get done in a weekend if you were just kind of sitting around. Okay. I have been looking for something new to watch right now. I'm really scrambling.

I have just, there's, I don't know. There's nothing out there for me right now. Well, this weekend's an interesting weekend because you got, you got this Dracula. Mm-hmm. Where are you at with the Pope? So I haven't seen season one of the Pope. Okay. The Young Pope is excellent.

I would be curious to know, because you went to Catholic school, right? Catholic College. Catholic, we used to Jesuit College, right? But you grew up like in a relatively religious household. household? No. Not at all. Okay. Not religious at all. Okay. Well, I did not at all. Like my, my parents, like sort of elapsed Catholic and elapsed whatever she was, my mom. And so I, the religious aspects of the young pope were kind of lost on me, but it was just a great piece of writing and directing. So I really enjoyed it. The second season is much different.

It stars Jude Law still, but John Malkovich plays the new pope. And there is a tension and obviously about their sort of competing viewpoints on what Catholicism means in the modern world. And it still has the same languid, luxurious feel. But it's a different story for sure. And actually, like, it'll be interesting to see how people feel about Jude Law, at least not being the most central part of the show for the initial episodes that I've seen. So that comes back, I believe, weirdly enough, tomorrow on HBO. Oh, interesting. And then Sunday Night is The Outsider, which is a show I will be talking.

talking about most likely with Jason Concepcion on Monday, if everything lines up right. Greenwall will be on on Monday, but on the off chance that he does not get to see the outsider or rejects it because of its terrifying nature. I will be talking about it with Jason. So the outsider is based on a novel by Stephen King. It is written largely by Richard Price, who's one of my favorite authors. He's the writer of such books as Clockers and Samaritan and Freedom Land. And of course, one of my favorite novels, Lush Life. If you guys are looking for a great New York novel or a great kind of delayed coming-of-age novel

or leaving young adulthood and going into a sort of true maturity, Lush Life is an amazing, amazing book. It's sort of half of a murder mystery, half of a just sort of coming-age story set in the Lower East Side of New York. Richard Price wrote most of the scripts for The Outsider, Dennis Lehane contributed to it as well. And it is basically a supernatural,

prestige crime show. It starts Ben Mendelssohn as a detective investigating the murder of a child that it seems all signs point towards the character played by Jason Bateman to have committed this murder, but something's up. And as you will see as you watch the show,

that something becomes more and more supernatural as things go along. I don't want to give away anything. It's pretty dark, I would say. It's got like kind of, imagine if Knight of had a more sort of satanic element to it or a supernatural element to it. And that's sort of where we are with the outsider, but I highly recommend it.

Cool. I'll check that out. Yeah. Do you think that's going to be sounds too disturbing for you? I mean, I guess we'll just have to see, you know. You never know. I mean, you're saving all this time by not going to Sweet Grins. Maybe you can give the outsider some time. So we'll be back after a quick break. We'll talk to Rob, Cordray, and Krista Johnson about their show Medical Police.

two of the minds behind that. And, you know, medical police is a spin-off of Children's Hospital. It's also a throwback to the kind of gag-a-minute, gag-a-second comedy of stuff like airplane and police squad and naked gun. But it was really cool to talk to Robin Krister about how seriously they take their comedy and how important it was for them that the narrative and the plot mechanics of medical police actually worked as a thriller if you took all the jokes out. And it was awesome. They talked about how they actually consulted with Craig Mason, who did Chernobyl, I guess drop the Chernobyl music, Kaya, to

help them put together the sort of interlocking narrative of medical police. So, you know, you never know these collaborations, you never know who you're going to be working with. So Rob and Krista are coming up right after this. I'm so happy to be joined by Krista Johnson and Rob Cordry. The Minds behind

medical police, a new show on Netflix, spin off of Children's Hospital. Two of the four minds. Two of the four minds. There are other minds. Yeah, but like you guys showed up. And but we're the only ones that Showed up. David Wayne and John Stern. They said, we're not doing that thing.

The watch. How did you guys... My main first question, actually, is how did you guys come up with the logo for medical police? Because for people who haven't seen the show, it's obviously... Wasn't that you? Yeah. That was Krister.

Did you get it tattooed on your sternum yet? Not yet. I got big plans for it. It's really good. It's really good. It reminds me of this... There was a rap group in the early 2000s called The Diplomats that used to have a really awesome eagle logo.

And, like, I love the, is it a cadetius? Is that what it's called? Yeah, or a caduceus. I don't even know how to pronounce it. Yeah, with 9mm guns. Yeah, you see that red. Yeah. You never actually have to speak it out loud.

It's the first time I've heard it out. I thought, but I thought that the logo very much was the vibe of the show. It's like, hell yeah. Jamming together two genres for no particular reason. How long, though, did we talk about guns and whether that was appropriate. Well, it was funny. Yeah, I remember with our designer, we were on like a Skype and I pitched this idea. and I assumed we could, I assumed there was some copyright over that.

And it turns out it's a really old symbol. Fair use, man. And fair use, man. And very used to disgrace with automatic weapons, too. Yeah, so I think it's the only place that are really appropriate. These days are on comedy logos. Yes. But yeah, no, then it was an endless discussion with the logo of how big the gun should be.

Should they start as multiple guns and fan into one gun? Yeah. So it's time well spent. Tell me about the sort of the germ of the show. Like, how did you guys come across? How? Well, it started at the end of children's. Exactly, yeah.

It was a long time coming. Like, as all spinoffs, they sort of, if I remember correctly, like started as a joke almost. Like, we always wanted to spin. We had a couple of other spinoffs before that started more as a joke. Like, newsreaders was always sort of a joke to us, a fun one. Yeah. But this was like, this got very serious, very fast, and that we wanted to make a show. that was, if you took all the comedy out of it,

it was still going to be, there was still going to be a viable, interesting, compelling story. Yeah. That was like the seed, I believe, if I'm remembering this, right, that was like the seed of it. I think the main difference was,

I mean, I came on late in the Children's Hospital run. I worked on season seven. No, you're on six, right? No, no. I always think, yeah, you do. I think, Krista was there since two. I've reconed myself deep into the mythology.

Would you guys do seasons together on Children's Hospital Or was it always like break and then come back and break and come back? Oh, no, we'd always break. Like an internably long break. Okay. Yeah. Where were you like, are we still doing this show? Oh, yeah.

Okay, I guess we're doing it. Yeah, but I guess there had been some question about whether or not there was going to be a season eight. And you guys, I remember they were wrapping up season seven. And Rob wrote the two-part finale and felt like it was a series ender, frankly. Yeah. That it really kind of nailed the world. But there was still this interest in doing something more. And Krister had moved to L.A.

Oh, and I moved to L. for season eight. And our kids go to the same elementary school. So that would be like, what? Yeah. What's going? Yeah. But yeah, the challenge was take the sort of unique world of children's and take away the

chance to undo anything after 15 minutes. Like in the show, you know, it's a quarter hour. Somebody could fall off a building. Everyone talks about how dead they are and then they're back the next episode. With this, this is one serialized season of TV. And so actions have to have. consequences, which was something as story tellers we had to address sort of for the first time with children's.

And, you know, as Rob said, I never, when we went into this, I was never concerned about whether or not we could make it funny. I knew that there were funny people involved and that the actors were incredible. I wanted to make something that ideally, as Rob said, truly worked as a compelling story and as a season-long thriller and action. as well as comedy. And I wasn't as worried about the comedy. I just had never written anything like this.

And very much leaned on Krister, who is, I think, the more, if I may, accomplished writer out of the four of us. Well, I'm, if only because that's, well, actually, I guess I act now, too. The architect of all the people are now. I'm an actor now too in the show. But, well, it was funny.

The best thing we did was realized very early on that there were things we didn't know how to do and to seek help. And so before we even open the writer's room, you know, we spent a day with Craig Mason, actually. We brought him in just to talk about how you structure a story and how you match the story points with the emotional and relationship points. And yeah, it was amazing. It's incredibly valuable. And we had, we with him, we mapped out the whole season.

We were so happy with him. You're kidding. Really? And at the end of the day, Craig Mason was like, now, of course. And he points to the like the huge board full of words. And he goes, now, of course this is all going to go away. And you'll have something totally different. And I was in a panic. Like, I don't want any of that to go away.

Let's write it in stone right now. And of course, it all went away. Well, we had, before he showed up, we were like, this is the season. We got it in. And then he came in. He was like, no, you don't. Oh, no. In the middle of the day.

Did you guys have like a whole plot around a nuclear plant that melts down? And he's like, this is a really good idea. This is familiar. He just pulled off until season two. Yeah. But by the end of the day with him, we're like, okay, now we really get it. But then, of course, you know, you bring in writers and suddenly the middle changes entirely. Sure.

And one of their very smart writers goes, hey, this whole thing doesn't work here. And we're like, uh, right. So that's the thing I was curious about. I was like, how does something not work on a show where you can kind of bend reality to your will? Well, that's the thing. I mean, we didn't want to do that. We didn't want to do it. We could.

Yeah. But I just never wanted the show to be, and this is our quote unquote, dramatic moment. Or this is where we're just going to kind of make. fun of the fact that this is completely illogical and move on. You know, we really wanted it all to sync up. That's right. So that was what brought the terror for me. I mean, I remember you took a picture of me at one point late in the writing season where I'm just like, I look like my dog died.

He looks like he's mid-stroke. Because I was just like, oh, it all fails, you know. But then you get, but then you figure out what's wrong and you tear it apart and fix it. And it ends up being really satisfying and really fun to do that. And, like, I think we did it, too. Like, we watched the whole show over again recently, like the cuts and was like, oh, my God, this is really, really good. Like, we really did what we set out to do. So did you guys, I mean, it sounds like a silly question, but did you guys, like, watch other shows?

Were your foundational texts for this? Yeah, we referred to a lot of stuff as we were writing, like Night Manager was a big go-to. That was an original one, just as sort of a serialized thriller with complicated relationships. We were watching a lot of... I mean, we also deal in tropes, obviously. So we watched a lot of Jack Ryan. Because that was coming out right there. Yeah.

Which is fun and also ridiculous, but really kind of brought into Stark Relief some of the kind of themes and motifs and story points that a action in bold show would traffic in, which was great. I mean, it's weird. I feel like with children's, you guys, especially in the later seasons,

worked through almost every genre. So there is a certain amount of adeptness at figuring out what the story beats are of an action story pretty quickly. Yeah, we sort of thought ourselves, the children's was, the job of children's was to do like, not necessarily parodies of different genres, but sort of homages. And we love tropes. And we had done things like medical police before, but only in 11 minutes and 15 seconds. Yeah. So we were really into, we're really into the genre.

aspect of it. And this was a challenge in that it was just one genre, you know, for 10 episodes, half an hour, half an hour episodes too, which is the difference. But what I wanted to do was also have, I mean, there's tons of comedy, there's some really good action that I think will surprise people. And we have good twists and turns. But I just wanted the moments, moments that were dramatic to play dramatic. And they're not a ton of them because we are a comedy, but there are moments when Aaron Hayes' character has a real fucking moment, and she is a great actress, and she plays it, and for that moment, you're in that moment, you know, and you believe it. And so finding ways to navigate those moments and not sell them short, while all

have it feel in the end of a piece, and sort of totally consistent. This is not a knock on another Netflix thing, but this show makes more sense than Six Underground. Oh, that piece of shit? That movie, that movie, it's the new Michael Bay movie. But it's, it's incredible. Like, the movie itself is incredible. But it is literally like there are things in it that are just like medical police where it's like Sudan, psych Zagreb. And it's just like, you know, like, and they'll just be jumping around the globe like that.

And they're like, wait a second. Wow, why? How did they get to this fake Middle Eastern country? Yeah. From Berlin. and it's still daytime. And that was a trope definitely that we just enjoyed about it.

It's so funny in the show. It's very much Mission Impossible. Like each episode there's a set piece in a new city because the plot obviously took them to that city and they've changed into appropriate clothes for this gun battle. And if that flies in an actual drama, right?

It flies in our show. Yeah, sure. That's whatever. We'll lean on or, you know, if they can cheat at certain things then we're only happy to. I imagine the, the actors involved both Aaron and Rob as the leads,

but just like bringing in Schwartzman to be the Goldfinch, who is a, like, is he a Mossad fixer guy? Yeah, his nationality is undetermined. Sure. Yeah,

some sort of multinational espionage fixer. Yeah. I mean, he's amazing in it. And it's so funny because he was very resistant initially to do it because he was like, I just don't know. Like,

I want to get the voice right. I don't really know who this guy is. And he was legitimately, he wasn't playing, like, like a major motion picture. And he wasn't being coy. He was seriously like, I really don't know if I can do this.

And we were like, we promise you, you can do this. Would you please come do our show? And he showed up, and the first day, he changed his accent about 30 times in the makeup trainer. Oh, my God. And then he just walked on set and just did what he does, which is just really steal scenes. But in the same way that it asked for you guys to use different muscles in the writing of it, do you feel like it did that Rob and Aaron had to do different things on this show?

then, I mean, obviously, it's much more physical, physical acting, but different things, like, emotionally on the show. They're both, that's what they do. Like, I always called Aaron on children's, she was my Swiss Army knife. Like, she could do anything, absolutely anything. And I can call on her to be a corkscrew or this stupid little toothpick on the top of the Swiss Army knife, you know. And so I had no doubts about either of them. They're both very versatile. And also, like, love playing the tropes.

Yeah. I mean, Rob Heubel is amazing, competition. comedically, obviously. And he's a great, he's doing like an HBO mini-series now. He's, he's doing really serious roles. And Aaron, like, I had known her really just from Children's. And when I worked with her, I was just absolutely blown away. There's an episode called Children's Lawsbiltz that Jason Manzucas actually wrote from season six, five or six. That is just like the most amazing comedic performance packed into 10 minutes that she does. So I was thrilled to work with her. But what blew me away on this was, how? how good an actor she really is. And she has to carry kind of a heavier load in some ways because her character takes on a lot of the story. And so she kind of has to be the hero in some ways, as well as being a charismatic sidekick to Rob.

And her ability to jump between those moments, those serious moments that I talked about, and also just having to carry a scene and move a story forward and also finding time to steal the spotlight. It was just really incredible. Did you guys do much, like, non-trope research into, like, bioterrorism? Like, was there actually like... Oh, yeah.

Oh, we talked a lot about it. Is that why you're not feeling well today? I was a never felt well since that time. We had a practical phase. Yeah. Actually, now that I think it was just like, they're talking about it enough makes you very sick. Yeah. The actual mechanism of the bioterror incident in our story was something that Rob had read in an article

or you knew someone who worked on that. this stuff and the interplay of technology and 3D technology and nanotechnology and biotechnology was something that sounds sort of high concept and a little crazy, I think, in the show, but is actually almost real? Yeah, it's all real. Like, we were having trouble breaking some of that, some of the very technical stuff to get us one place to another place. And I happened to at the time have been doing this corporate gig for Autodesk.

You know, Autodesk is that huge company in San Francisco. They make AutoCAD. They're most known for, like, design programs. Okay. But they also have, like, people in space. They have a relationship with NASA. They're building germs. They're, you know, germs that are supposed to go in and kill cancer.

Okay. They're doing that kind of thing. Good germs. Good germs, yeah. And they're building them. They're printing them. They're constructing them in their labs, you know. And they're the guys that when up in the space station, they lose a wrench because

it happens all the time. because things just float up there. They'll just print them a wrench. Oh, my God. And it was fascinating, and it unlocked a lot of potential plot points for me. And then I went back to these guys, and I was like,

here's stuff that people actually do. And we were all like, oh, thank God. That's always the weirdest thing is when you find out, like, the thing, when you read, like, a news article and you're like, if this was a movie, it just wouldn't even play, but, like, it's just so surreal. It's great how the truth is, you know,

such a good resource. Because we know nothing about what people could actually. do. But what was so funny is that we agonized over the logic of the science behind it and making sure it felt plausible and making sure that it really felt like it made sense. Logically is a story. And then in the end, when I look back at the season, it has its role. It moves the story forward, but it's far less important to the world than I realized at the time. Which is good. Which is, that's the goal. Which is great. If that had been the most important thing, we would have made a really shitty show. This would be a different podcast.

But in the end, you know, it's about their relationship and their story and about redemption and all those greater themes. And dick jokes. Yes. Well, yeah. Tons of dick jokes. With David and I guess with Bill. John. No, I was just going to ask about the with the look for the look of the show and the director of the show.

Like, obviously. Yeah. Did those guys were those guys like having to teach themselves like kind of different cinematic languages? Like were they like, okay. So like nobody. Because, you know, like, these shows are these movies, like, no one is ever not running into a room. You know, it's like always like, I'm arriving! Exactly.

You know, and it's like, there's a lot of really funny things in medical police where, like, so much exposition is being delivered as they're running. You know, which I think it's probably pretty challenging because you're like, the marks must be different and stuff. But were those guys, like, excited to take on, so, like, these set pieces and stuff? Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And because David had been involved, obviously, since development, he had been working in his head on how it would

look and how he would want to do it. And then when Bill Benz came on, I mean, I don't know. They worked together a lot when I wasn't there, but they were very much insane. They were mostly in the Sudan. Yeah, you know. Yeah, exactly. They're out there checking the sand grain. Yeah, exactly.

Too fine. They, you know, they each directed five episodes, but they also took over a scene here or there or covered for the other in a bunch of ways. So it really became kind of a tag team. Yeah. And also when Bill came on, if you remember. remember, like, Bill was, because he's a really good director and writer and very, very funny guy. He, we had a meeting with him, like, you know, early on in the process, after he came on board.

And he was sitting down, he goes, okay, so, and he had all the scripts in his hand. And he was like, now I'm just going to go through all these and tell you where you failed. And we just sat there for hours while he went. Like, just doesn't make any sense? Yes, exactly. And it was great having, like, another, like, a, a collection. We considered him as an equal, you know, a collaborator with as much input as the rest of us. And he did that with the basic understanding that he loved the show. He was thrilled to do it.

But he did what he should do. He went in and he dug in and he's like, what if we did it this way? This is how I'm imagining this sequence playing out. And I'm not a director. I was like, go for it. I trust you. Yeah, no, there's moments. I've watched like basically the first half of the season, and there are moments, especially in the Sudan, where I'm like, this is actually like a pretty, like, this is like a really cool sequence. Like, I don't want to give anything away.

No, that's one of my favorite sequences, for sure, yeah. So now that you guys, when you guys get done something like this, I'm always curious when you go through something that's obviously as time-consuming, but also like intellectually and emotionally consuming as what? What's your palate cleanser? Cocaine. Yeah, cocaine.

Right? Is that cleanser palette? No. Well, you meant like, oh, well, no. Oh, not a little cocaine. And then gin, gin and rum. And then play gin rumy? Yeah.

And then play gin rum. I've always tended toward, even when I'm in the middle of a comedy thing, stuff that's not comedy-based. Like, but is it drama? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Me too. I don't watch a lot of drama.

And a lot of weird documentaries. So, like, anything in particular? I'm trying to think of what I, I mean, it's kind of the stuff that everyone who listens to the watch watches. Like Chernobyl was my favorite. that I saw this year. Right. And I didn't discover that until after we'd work with Craig.

But yeah. Yeah, just I love story. When Craig came in, you're like, who's this guy? Yeah, I was like, come on. What is this guy's done? When does it come out? For me, it was the OA. Uh-huh.

I got deep into that. Yeah. Because that is the complete opposite of everything we were doing. It was just a bonker show. Did you go pretty far down the rabbit hole with that show in terms of like theories and stuff like that? I was going to learn the movements to do it for my wife on her birthday. Because she wanted to learn the movements together.

And I was like, come on. That's ridiculous. Right. I've been cleansing my palant with you, which just got on Netflix. Yeah. I didn't know a thing about it. I didn't know it had previously been on another network. I thought it was a Netflix original.

And it's actually kind of amazing. I feel like I'm learning more about, it's another one of those shows where it's like you can really see the storytelling seems, which is good because it helps me learn how to write a show. And like the subtext is really close to the actual text. You can sort of see how they're tying things together. but also just a lot of ridiculous scenarios, one after another. As an audience member, I'm like, oh, okay. Like, I spent a lot of time angstridden over whether or not people were going to buy our world. Yeah, yeah.

And you realize just how much you can get away with. If, you know, the characters are winning and it's fun and the story's moving. For sure. So I guess the last question, the one that I'm most curious about is, is there a spinoff within medical police? Oh, that's a great idea. Wow. Yes. I mean, yeah.

Yes. Do you have any pitches? No, but I just think. It's like, it's, I want to come back and you guys visit me in like seven years and they're on like the seventh. We're on our fourth, the seventh level of like spin off. Yeah. I think that there's also. And it winds up back at children's hospital.

Back at children's hospital. It's all than a dream. You know, without giving anything away, this season ends set up for multiple seasons. We've got our heroes. They could go on these journeys. But the trope allows for us to also completely blow that up. Yeah. I mean, we might find Aaron in a heroin haze, you know, in a Thai prison.

The goldfinch. Yeah. Well, the goldfish should be an animated show. The goldfish is like legit, like make the goldfinch spy show. Yeah. Rob and Christopher, thank you so much for coming on the watch. Thank you. I can't wait for people to see this show.

Me too.