The Watch - What ‘Loki’ Could Have Been. Plus, ‘The Gold’ Season Finale.

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Chris and Andy talk about the second episode of ‘Loki’ Season 2 (13:11) and what the show could have looked like had it been more of a ‘Doctor Who’–style series (23:36). Then, they talk about the season finale of ‘The Gold’ (42:34). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen 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. am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, he spent all weekend pruning timelines and boy are his shears tired. It's Andy Greenwald! What about my arms? Uh, but don't shears, or isn't that what they used to like prune stuff? Shears? Yeah, do you, do you knock it out in the yard? And like, I don't really know from people who have been listening to my, um, my ad read singular for these last few months, they know that I'm becoming a little more,

adept with the ways of the physical world. Do you do a little bit of British wild gardening? Is that the term for when you do nothing, but then get really, really annoyed at three things growing onto your stuff? First of all, what's up? Welcome to the Watch. We're going to talk about Loki and the Gold. I follow a lot of English people on Instagram.

Yeah, you do. There's two things I want to tell you about. One is that they have this style of gardening, which is just like let everything grow and then be like, see that behind those shrubs? That's a tomato. And then they like jump behind like five piles of like what in Philadelphia would be called weeds. Yes.

And then grab like one deformed tomato and they're like, oh, I'm going to cook up some nasty pasta tonight. No, this is like me. This is like when people look at my backyard and they're like, this is despicable. I'm like, no, no, clearly you do not read the work of John Ruskin. You're not familiar with the pre-Raphaelite movement, which suggested that, you know, there was natural beauty. within everything, and it is not your job to tame it. It is your job to be present with it. Yeah. And so that is what I am until the mosquitoes devour my children. They're back in L.A. Oh, they're back, baby.

Andy, it's great to see you. Guys, are you aware that when Chris does an accent in the first three minutes, we're going to get a lot more accents? I think I screwed up that British accent. There's two other kinds of British person that I follow. They're all, they're all like somehow like chefy people or chefs. showrunners of industry. Or the showrunners of industry. And related to me. And there's one kind of person that now I feel like I follow who's from multiple countries.

Okay. It's a woman who's like, here's what I make at the end of the day as a personal chef when I just can't be bothered. And it's just like, what? It's just a cheesy bean thing with some crusty bread. And but they all. Like, Kaya just leaned in. Guy was ready to really tune out this whole episode when we said Loki and the Gold, but all of a sudden. But I have so many, I follow, I'm going to say this, I follow so many women who say that exact same thing.

You're an ally. One's in Canada and one's in England. And I know it must be the prompt. Wait, all the way from Canada to England? Wow. Well, they all speak English. Arms around the world. Okay.

Yeah, I'm sorry I'm not following like a group of Catalonian women who are like, you know. Efter noce. I don't know. I just thought I would share that that's happening to me. So that's your, well, this is relevant to our conversation. Don't worry, guys. We're not going to get to the content yet. Because what you're describing really reminds me that there are actually two Englands. Did you know that? I watched a show recently that suggested. I don't want to spoil for people who haven't watched the gold.

Yeah, that's a really funny joke if you've watched six episodes of the gold. It's a really funny joke if you've watched 10 minutes of the gold. And you're like, they're not really really. going to do this the whole time, are they? Oh, they are. And they do. And I loved it. I had one more thing I wanted to ask you. Sure. Well, a couple of things before we get into our shows. Our programs. Our stories. Yesterday, the Eagles lost to the New York Jets. Rip off the Band-A-R-Fed Eagles.

Philadelphia's lost to New York Jets. We're not going to make this about sports. I'm more of a baseball fan. But after the game, Andy texted me and said, the worst part about this is that I have nothing to listen to read for the next two days. I go into a blackout, yeah. And I said, what do you mean? And he was like, well, I don't, and I was like, you don't read or listen to stuff about the Eagles after a loss.

And you're like, oh, no. No, no. That's actually where I, that's where I'm way more interested in reading and listening to stuff about, like, analyzing what went wrong rather than what went right. By the way, this ties back to an earlier bit on the podcast, which isn't a bit, which is why you would be a good leader of people. in a post-zombie apocalypse world. That's the most wrong it can go.

You're open, but you're open to criticism. You're open to learning from losses. Oh, I didn't say it was about, I don't want to hear about me and what I did wrong. I'm just interested in reading and listening to stuff about what the Eagles did wrong. Yeah. Not me.

Well, first of all, we should say that, you know, I think people who are friends and family and fans of the ringers should know that you did something that I was too afraid to do, which was watch this game with Jets fan, Sean Fennacy. There was a lot of mutually assured misery in that ADU of Sean's. I mean, it was, and first of all, it wasn't like, it wasn't like the Jets, you know, went out and like recreated Bill Walsh out there. No, they're also, they're awful.

But I struggled with the invite, but I think I sort of saw it for what it was, which is a really kind invitation from our friend to go into a small ADU with a few other men and just feel bad for three and a half hours. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it on the weekend. Yeah. And history, history bore that out. But you're asking me, like, why can't I handle the truth? No, I was going to ask you whether it's the same for culture.

Oh. I was going to ask you whether or not, when it comes to TV or movies, I guess specifically TV for our purposes, whether or not you are more drawn to stuff that critiques things that you don't like or celebrates things you do like. I see. Are you more interested in reading? Okay, so let's say, like, of all the things we've been saying about Marvel recently,

reading a scathing review of Loki, rather than a Loki review that might try to explain why it's good and explain all the stuff that's in it. That's an interesting question. I think, okay, the first answer to your question is, I do enjoy rubbernecking a catastrophe when it's not my beloved sports teams. Sure. I find that fun and interesting.

But I think the larger question is I would love to have my mind changed about things. I kind of feel, and maybe this is, I don't think this is a controversial take, but the larger state of cultural criticism is not, I think, as robust as it once was in the world. So I kind of miss smart, engaged. And they're out there. I'm not sub-tweeting anyone. But I feel like they're a more spirited debate of people being like, I like this. don't like this, and that's a little idiosyncratic. Right now, we are kind of divided where,

if we're going to talk about something like Loki, which I think had a pretty catastrophic second episode, and we're going to talk about it. I would love to read something that made a compelling case for why it was good, not a compelling case for why Marvel stories are awesome. Shut up, shut up, shut up, which I think is predominantly sort of servicing the fandom in a different way. And there is a lot of, again, this is its own skill, a lot of, like, optimism. I would say and being like, well, maybe this suggests that the coming Kang wars will be more intriguing because of the corporate brand sponsorship of McDonald's. And like, okay, that's less interesting to me than actually Sylvie is the great doomed heroin of our time because,

dot, dot, dot. Was that a convoluted answer? No, I think that that's right. I was thinking about this, actually, we can talk about Loki or the gold. I think we should probably talk about Loki first and then end on a brighter note. But I went back and read some gold reviews from UK press. because I hadn't read that them when they first came out

because I was like, well, this will come out in the States and I don't want to, I guess, spoil it even though I could just look up Brinks Matt on Wikipedia, which I did. And there was some, a lot of the reviews had a lot of the same,

like, really light critiques that we had where it was just like, by the way, sure seems like everybody here has like a full monologue prepared about the English class system. But I just finished the episode,

I opened up this Guardian review and I was just like, yeah, I know, I know. Like I got a little annoyed to see criticism of something that I was like, I liked that. Oh, yeah. And it's basically like, do you

just want confirmation of your opinion is what I'm asking? It's like, when's the last time you got challenged by something? Like, do you read Richard Brody, who's famously sort of, I don't know, what would be the right word for what he does? It's not trolling, but it's like... He's contrarian in his tastes. I mean, he's

incredibly educated and erudite about cinema and his opinions. And him just being like, tar sucked, you know, or whatever I think he had that uptake, but like, His opinions are often surprising, but very grounded in what he's been doing for decades. Yeah. Yeah, I like that moment when there was a more robust, critical community, and you were engaging with someone who you trusted and respected,

even if you didn't always agree with. Yeah. I mean, this is a much bigger conversation than I think than we can even do in just one off-the-cuff podcast because I think that there are things, there's two different kinds of dings that you don't want to, you know, you want to like avert your eyes from. Like sometimes, and I'm trying to think of some examples,

like when we spent a lot of time over the summer talking about hijack, like, we are not blind to the flaws of hijack. What would those be? Great point. It's a perfect show. The only thing that was wrong with hijack is that there was not a person on that plane

who turned to Idrisalba at one point and be like, Do you know what I like to eat at the end of a day as a personal chef and I just can't be bothered? It's been a bit stressful today, hasn't it, love? It's time for a night of pasties at home. Yeah, they did miss that. Beans have been coming in in my wild garden. No, I guess beans don't grow out of gardens, right? I mean, Jack and the Beanstalk, you're like kind of fairy tale English gardens.

Just a juicy tomato in the back of my garden. Do you know what I saw back there was a lot of, large corgette. Oh, yeah. And I thought I would just roast it. That's another problem is that like they have different names for a lot of vegetables. Not that many. Well.

Tomato. I mean, what are eggplants? Orbegin. Yeah. Okay. This is already an all-time whole thing. Okay. Okay, guys.

Relax. How's Brexit going? Wow. Well, what's good is that we can make those jokes because our political system is fine. Oh, yeah. And everything's going real well. Well, no.

So, okay, we're trying to get our arms around a bigger concept. The reason I brought up hijack was just that I thought hijack was successful within its own margins of what I believed it was intending to do, which was not the same. The goals were not the same as a show like The Gold, which is trying to get its fictional allegorical arms around society. Yeah. Those are just different aims and goals. And I feel like that's sometimes people disconnect from criticism when

that doesn't seem aligned when you're taking something to task for not being a completely different was a show with completely different intentions. And so sometimes when we kind of rag on MCU stuff, I think that it can go down the wrong way for some people who are like, well, guys, it's not trying to be succession or you shouldn't hold it up against something like that. I think that, and if we're about to get into it, what's kind of shocking to me about something like Loki is that it is in this second episode, which is what we're going to talk about today. Let's just get into it. Just fails within the Loki project and within what I believe to be the still kind of admirable and, in theory, entertaining MCU project.

It just, and I was pretty stunned by it to see, we talked about this with Joanna last week, and I thought that was a great conversation about like, it's, it's less, and we can talk specifically about the projects and what we're finding wrong with them. But to see something this short-footed just lose its compass, project by project, has been really kind of stunning. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes, swishes, wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant.

18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can

actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas. Terms apply. All right, let's get into it. Maybe we can talk about SAG later in the week or something like that. Yeah, it doesn't seem great.

Maybe we'll have some more updates soon because I'm the guy that said that Actress Strike was going to be over last week, and I was wrong. Second episode of Loki is called Breaking Brad. I would say it's maybe intentionally, maybe not disorienting for the first, like, basically half of the episode, where you're sort of thrown into this cat and mouse game in 1970s, London, I believe? Yeah. Is that the secret timeline? And one of the hunters from Loki, which is, who's played by Raphael Casal, who's somebody who I think I was, like, aware of.

Got to admit I never watched blind spotting the show. saw the movie, thought he was good, I think he's incredible in this. Like, I will say, as a positive note for Loki is, like, this guy is really, really good. One of the things that I think people are going to hear

from our reaction or my reaction to this is, I kind of believed that just the talent involved here could kind of muscle past some stuff. And he's part of it, for sure. There's a scene in this episode of Loki where he and Owen Wilson are just like kind of gabbing with each other over a McDonald's meal

while Loki talks to Sylvie outside and you're just like you guys can do this for 41 minutes if you want that would be fine. That would be cool. The problem with this is that like everything else in this universe those scenes are pretty abrupt because they eventually have to start talking about

how general docs is pruning timelines and wiping out billions of people Mm-hmm Masaku has like a very tough part this season where she basically has to stare at a screen and go, those are people. And I just, I do really question whether or not we just saw an episode on the second episode

that was essentially cobbled together B plots from other episodes to make up for the fact that they are trying not to show Jonathan Majors. We don't know that for facts. I don't know that, but that is... We do know that even from Joanna's book and from covering the stuff and watching the stuff, that it is the mighty Marvel method is to take the stems, let's say, of television shows. Yes.

And then kind of just make them what you want them to be later in post. It has worked for them on many projects, including some of their most celebrated projects. It has not worked for them on other projects. I'd like to still think of myself, I'm losing my fastball a little bit, maybe due to age and disinterest. But, like, I kind of pay attention. I like Loki a lot. I did 100% think that I had had a stroke when I started watching this episode

because how much time has passed? Who's Brad? Why does Sylvie matter? All of that. But you're getting at the single most important, I think, failing here of this episode, which is that suddenly Marvel seems to have forgotten our beloved Sokofi Accords.

And I mean this sincerely. Not the Socovia Accords as written in Avengers Age of Ultron. But what I believe to be, one of the most important kind of course corrections within the larger MCU project, which is why didn't Age of Ultron really work on an emotional level? And it's because it was about a robot lifting up a made-up country and dropping it again. You could show a lot of B-roll of worried pan-ethnic villagers, but I still don't really understand the stakes of this.

the reason the Thanos snap worked is absolutely not because he, with one gesture, eliminated half the living beings in the universe. It's because he eliminated Spider-Man. Yeah. And Spider-Man was like, I don't want to go, sir. That's why people were devastated by it. They did not care about the 17 billion Cree that theoretically also got wiped out, or the Chitari or whatever.

And so for this show to make its whole, like thematic moral engine, some lines on a screen are disappearing and poor Woonmi Masako has to be like, oh no, we are lost. Guys, we're lost. It's also really tough because I don't know how you would

this is where I feel like Marvel is kind of now left casuals in the dust, of which I guess I am now among their number. Because I spent more time Googling than I did watching. I spent more time looking up How many more episodes of this?

No, I was just like, so Sylvie kills Kang, quote unquote, even though she doesn't. One who, he who remains. Who has been trying to protect the world from other Kangs from starting a multiversal war, I guess. Right. The TVA has always been pruning these timelines and making sure, like, things kind of stayed separate, I guess. That was the whole point of the TVA. Right. Now, they did.

that, but now the TVA has found their compass and are like, that's not okay, we need to let multiple timelines lives because those are real people. They've had this moment of revelation about this. I would say they really turned on a dime because when this episode begins,

Loki and Mobius are just working at the TVA again, which made me very confused that the general who's in charge of the TVA is out there doing things? Yes. So why were they doing opposite things? Who's in charge here?

I don't know. Who works for who? And just broadly, how quickly can an entrenched millennia-old bureaucracy just pivot? Well, this only seems like seven people work there for real. But do you think that we're recording this on Monday? Do you think that by Wednesday morning, Jeff Bezos could be like, Amazon is devoted to workers' rights. That's what we do is making sure everyone has bathroom breaks. That is the entire purpose of this organization going forward.

Right. I feel like it would be harder to do that. Sure. I can dream but that was my sense What did you think about What do you think about my idea That my theory that there is like a major shaped hole

Here I think it's plausible I think that I mean I feel a little bit more pessimistic than that honestly because I think that It's almost convenient now to say that this second season of Loki is faltering

because they had to rejigger things to sort of minimize Jonathan Majors, I think the central problems that we're talking about would likely have been there too. Maybe they would have been papered over by the fact that there was a compelling or charismatic villain, like a single point to be racing towards. Because, yeah, to your point,

now we are saving unknown, previously uncared about variants throughout the entire multiverse, now not just one universe, but universes unto themselves. And Loki is desperately chasing after, I guess, the woman he loves, but who is actually just him, which is kind of creepy if you think about it.

It's him from another universe. And the show wants to joke about it, but then also doesn't want to joke about it because they want to have something human present in it. And by the way, also, Loki's still a supervillain sometimes who has magic powers, but not always. Right.

It's tough. I think that you are right in the sense that if the show had a singular purpose, if it was chasing one thing, not trying to undo something and lift up something else and make us believe that this general is, also a villain, but also misunderstood. It's just way too much. It's way too much.

Yeah. We talked a lot with Joanna about her book, MCU, The Random Marvel, and also the article that was in The Hollywood Reporter from Boris Kit about how Marvel was like, oh, it turns out like maybe we should do pilots and show bibles and have showrunners. Have showrunners and have an idea of like where we're starting, where we're going and where we're ending when we do these seasons. of TV and it can't just be like

we're going to take this part but we're going to rewrite the ending or reshoot the ending because it needs to connect to this echo instead of Hawkeye or whatever. For as disorienting as the first 20 minutes of Loki might be if you're just like, wait, what's going on? There was a kernel

of if this was just a TV show, you could do a lot worse than Doctor Who with Loki and Mobius. That would be a great... I thank you for saying that. I totally agree with you. And Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson skip tracing around time and the galaxy to chase down errant, like, threads. With their goofy time squad.

Yeah, with their time squad and their miss minutes and the people back at the TVA. And that's the season is them trying to plug holes in a sinking boat. Chris, are you under an overall anywhere? No, but here's the problem. Yeah. That's TV. That's like those guys are movie stars. all of this stuff costs a ton of money.

It looks incredible. Like, that's not, there's a fake phone box flying across the screen. And then, like, a Muppet jumps out of, like, a column. It's a little disparaging, but... No, I'm not trying to be disparaging, but it's like... I don't think Tom Hillson wants to just play Loki

for five or six years, right? I completely agree with you. I mean, I guess he just did for 15, but still. Yeah, I think he does want to very much. He is on this TV show right now. I also think... I try not to read mine. or do vibe checks or be body language doctor

on film television shows by professionals. But there are moments when I just leave whatever's happening on the screen. And I'm like, what did they have to say to Tom Hiddleston to get him to get his dander up for the scene? But didn't you just say last week? You were like Tom Hiddleston is like running the show, right? I guess.

Yeah, no, he is, right. I mean, apparently he and I forget the guy's name who's the executive are running the show. But, I mean, Owen Wilson, like, what... Often on sets, like, the actors will sidebar with the writers. and be like, can we just go over this? Like, I just not a little clear. When we shot this, where is this going to happen?

What's my motivation? I don't think that they do that on MCU movies. They just show up anymore. I think that there is. Like, sometimes they do stuff in Atlanta. They're like, I don't know what movie that's going to be in. I think the, it's interesting. Like, we can spend a lot of time in our comfortable office chairs being like,

what was the big picture thinking here? What was the planning? What was the phase building conversations during their off-sites and Palm Springs or wherever. That's a nice way to consider how these things get done, but the reality is in Hollywood and certainly illustrated in the MCU book that we're talking about that Joanna wrote, is that it's ultimately always time and money, and there's never enough of either. And that determines everything. And sometimes you get away with one, and sometimes you don't. And you could blame as the current version of Disney and Marvel clearly want to blame Bob Chappek for being like, let's rush everything

into production and flood the zone. I think one thing that Joanna's book really points out is that Bob Iger was the one who turned on the taps and was like, I don't live here anymore. Yeah, right. But I'm the wet bandit from home alone.

But if you were considering, like, this is all easy to do in hindsight. But there's a version of this where TV shows in the MCU or on Disney Plus are not just 24 episodes of Allie McBeal, but it's Daredevil.

There's a version of it where you think bigger, but you also kind of try to limit it. And what I mean by that is, I love the show you just pitched. I love the idea of them being the like the variant squad and like getting involved in different multiversal. Yeah, and I mean, in this version of it, you could have,

Kang could be the Boyd Crowder who is like always in the background of being the bad guy. Yeah. There's another show that's pretty entertaining actually that we, I think covered briefly, which is what if. And there's a great tradition of that, the what if comic books in Marvel,

which is basically like, we all know that Gene Gray died in the Phoenix saga. Sorry, what if she didn't? Well, actually all you had to do was wait 11 years. And they found her in the bottom of Jamaica Bay. And she joined X Factor.

Is that where she was? She was outside of New York. Yeah, Fantastic Four found her. Did you know that? It was like a cocoon. In Jamaica Bay? Wait, oh, wait. Like Jamaica.

No, not the country of Jamaica, like off of Queens. Okay, got you. But maybe not. Maybe it's just more like... I was like, did she sign the island records? Like, that's pretty cool. Chris Blackwell was questioned for his involvement. We found another cocoon off the coast.

Sly and Robbie were related. But in the what if they made it a cartoon because it was cost effective, right? And it was less, you know, they could take bigger swings theoretically. So it's like, what if, what if Peggy Carter became Captain Carter and then Haley Atwell will do the voice for it? or what was the one that Black Panther became it wasn't the silver surfer but basically it became like a space god

it became Star Lord the money you spent on what if the money you spent on Loki the one to 300 million dollars you spent throwing out other TV shows why not combine them and make Loki the star of a what if type

show exploring the different versions that Kang has done leading to the movie and you spend 200 million on that show, and you know what it is, and it's capped at a certain point, and it's fun. Look, if anyone at Marvel is listening to us, they are rolling their eyes now because... They're like, again, guys? No, I mean, exactly, three in a row. But it's also, like, yeah, that would be great to have thought of these good ideas, knowing

other things didn't work. But this is the benefit of the armchairs that we're in. Well, you get into also the interesting conversation about Loki as a character and Hiddleston as an actor and as a star. It's my understanding, at least, that, okay, well, I don't know anything about, like, Loki in the comics, but from what I can understand from the trajectory of Hiddleston's character over the course of Thor, Avengers, and to now, is that he has way outperformed the job requirements.

Yes. That Hidlston himself, as both being game to still be in this stuff and, too, like, like being pretty enigmatic and charming, has kind of given this character legs beyond the story that they were initially telling with him as first Thor's brother, then the antagonist of the Avengers. Which, as we learned from the book,

was not always the plan, even though it was Loki and the Avengers comic book in the 60s. Sure, right. It was more like Tom, Tom Middelson got the calling, like, guess what? The stuff that happened in the first season of Loki, like there are comics about, like, oh, and there's all these different lokies

and all that stuff. It's just, I mean, is he a huge element of bringing on Secret Wars in the comics? I do think... Secret Wars being the eventual, like, no. Sort of culmination of this phase of Marvel or these next few phases of Marvel. No, and I think that what we're seeing is the ability of people to, like,

improvise, like, jazz musicians, but, well, but their actual instruments are $250 million movies and properties. They're working with what they've got and what's working. And, you know, we said this in our conversation last week. there was a moment really not too long ago where they were probably feeling really good because they were like, we have Brie Larson, Tom Holland,

Chadwick Bozeman, and Jonathan Majors, and they are going to carry... Take us into the future. Carry the next decade of this stuff. And all of that is very much in doubt at this moment. But I guess my point was more like, even there's a scene in the second episode where it's essentially like Raphael Casales

is talking to Loki. And he's like, they're going through essentially the various phases of Loki as a character. They're like, you used to be a villain. Now you think you're a hero, but you should go back to being a villain.

That's who you are. And it's like, it's a lot of maintenance for a character who I think was initially conceived as, and there's nothing wrong with this, but was initially conceived as much more of like a supporting kind of player in this whole world.

So I don't know. Well, Loki ends up being, you know, at this exact moment, maybe the most interesting lens to which to look at the entire MCU project because he's emblematic of the most outrageous, inspired success. Really brilliant casting with tons of foresight,

someone growing into a role, a creative storytelling machine that is flexible and limber enough to allow evolution and to steer story towards what you've got. And then now we have this just like deeply broken continuity dump of, I don't know what this is. It's not a TV show really anymore. you can feel it trying to be when they're like rallying the troops to do the next thing.

I mean, every 15 minutes of an episode of Loki, there's this quick and often this falls on those back in the TVA to be like, now we have to find out what happened to the temp pad and Rensler is tracking the temp pads and we have to go do that. It's the JJ Abrams School of McGuffins. There's a huge assemblage of, yeah, Mcuffins of like weird quizzes

and tasks that we don't know actually how to solve where it's like, but blast doors won't close all the way unless you do this and this and this. And then that becomes like a major plot point of this season. Do you know what's funny? Like we're sort of responsible for this or at least we contribute to it

in the way we've talked about TV for the last 11, 12 years on the podcast. But like most TV shows historically were not great. It didn't work. And then we kind of moved on. But the way both the standard were raised over the last decade, and then also the way storytelling changed

in terms of it being purposeful towards something has really colored how we're covering all these things. It's like the expectation now is so high because of both the cost on their end and then the cost of our involvement and our investment of our own eyes. I don't know, it's been interesting, I guess, to be covering... I was thinking about this exact same thing.

Well, just for the last few months, like whether it's winning time or it's Loki. Like we've been devoting a lot of time to, and this is also, by the way, for a couple of years, we were focusing on things that we just loved. And there was a lot of stuff that we loved. And there's been fewer shows that we've loved, but also fewer shows over the last few weeks and months. So we've been having to, we've been more critical than we normally have been. But like, it's been kind of interesting with just the framing of some of these conversations.

It's like we've talked about these things as if they are those giant stone statues of Kang at the beginning of the seasons. And then piece by piece, they are shattered. and they drop and like the arm falls off and what's revealed is this husk. Like it never was anything at all, which is not true. I would completely sympathize with anybody was just like, why don't you guys just stop talking about this?

You obviously don't like it anymore. I don't think that that's entirely true. I think the stuff that hits for me hits pretty hard still. And I think as a project, what they're trying to do both with the MCU and with Star Wars is of great interest to me. You know, trying to come up with different ways

of telling different chapters of a story. I also find it fascinating in the same way that you like reading about what went wrong with the team season as long as it's not your team. I do love that. I find this whole project to be really interesting because they cannot stop the train. Like Star Wars, they're pumping out these feloni things. They have not made a movie in years. Nope. I don't know when they will make another one.

I don't know what it will be about. but they have tried to basically pump out stuff that will satisfy the core Star Wars fan who cares about Anakin, cares about Obi-1, who cares about Yoda.

They allow Tony Gilroy to go do Andor, which obviously has been a huge source of joy for us. But they have essentially stopped the forward momentum of the Star Wars story in this way. Marvel is not doing that. Marvel is not going back and telling, you know, they could have done like a,

a bucky, like, side story. Like, they could go back and tell some of the, like, who are the Avengers who would like, I mean, they could probably break the bank and do a Ruffalo show if they wanted to. You know, like, they've got, they are pushing this forward. Well, apparently they can't because of the, the character sharing with Universal. So there can never be a Hulk thing.

Oh, right. Right. That's why they'll never be a Hulk movie. Okay. Well, in any case, uh, I just think that it's been fascinating. We're fascinating to watch Marvel try to fix this on the fly. Or break it on the fly, as it were. It's very expensive to do this, and I don't know what else they're breaking along the way.

We're not going to dwell on the philoni stuff at the moment, but I thought it was interesting. Speaking of reading post-mortems, I read a bunch of stuff thanks to you, because you shared it with me, like a lot of reviews of the Asoka finale. and it seemed like some of the people who love this stuff did not love the finale. Yes. And that is a very interesting bind to find yourself in.

And I wonder if it's part of the bargain you make when you're just like, our project is trying to appease people. Our project is not trying to innovate or create or delight or surprise. It's to appease people fundamentally. Well, this is the other major thing that changed over the years. You were talking about from when we started and how the relationship people have to television. I think you can even hear it.

Were you somehow able to hear 2013 episodes of us doing Hollywood prospectus? I think we had a much different kind of like, TV is okay when it's good, you know, kind of relationship to it.

Yeah. And I think as television has become more and more a monocultural experience and then faded away from a monocultural experience but still had an incredible amount of just sheer like product

to sort through, there's become not only a little bit of weariness, but over the course of those 10, 12 years that we've been, 10, 11 years that we've been doing this, we have now opened up two-way traffic between the people making this stuff and the people watching this stuff. And when you talk about appeasing people, you're talking about a very, very vocal element of a possible fan base who are like, it needs to be like this. I need to see it happened this way. And that

bleeds all the way into like the discourse surrounding succession to the end of it of like who should take over the company kind of stuff. And that becoming like the primary thing that people were talking about at the end of like incredible searing family portrait, you know?

Yeah. And I think that that affects the way that this stuff gets made. But I also think it's reflective of how we've started to do, not started, but how we do almost everything in this country, which is just like extremely polarized one or the other. And the Star Wars method, not behind the scenes, but just in terms of what's actually been on our screen in the last few years, is either this is content made for you,

person who loves the Clone Wars TV show, or this is made for you, two 40-something podcasters who use a clip from Tony Gilroy's born movie in their opening music, and nothing in between. And I'm trying to be generous when I say this, because I don't mean to say one is necessarily better... Who wants your armchair liberalism affirmed by the Michael Clayton guy? Truly, that's the case. Yeah. But one thing that's insane

is that this is Star Wars. It's just about space nights and furry Muppets. And we've completely lost the ability to just be like, hey, we just made a movie about some swashbuckling people on a spaceship. Yeah. We were just so far past that. And Marvel had the ability to do it briefly.

And then it just sort of vanishes into the margins, And I'm not, either it's, I'm not prepared off the cuff or I'm just not like, I have culturally, I don't have the same, the right cultural perspective to, to diagnose why that is. And whether it's really possible to have something over a long period of time that can just continuing, continually service the robust middle of the country. That's right. Just like a, like a nice, juicy Mitt Romney profile in the Atlantic. You know what I mean? Just like make everybody feel good about themselves. in the American project.

No, but you get what I'm saying here. That's what's so odd is just the like... Yeah, this goes back to what I was saying. It's like, there are versions of a lot of these things that would be really good movies or really good TV shows. And they're kind of... In some... I mean, if you were going to be really...

If you were going to give them the benefit of the doubt, they're trying to create something new. You know, there is like this hybrid storytelling form, that they are trying to create of these six to eight hour long form stories. Right. That sort of shirk off some of the episodic formulaic trappings of TV, but don't quite have the finality or whatever of movies. This is the Marvel shows.

This, yeah, this is like, here's my giving them the benefit of the doubt, why this feels like there's so many growing pains with this stuff, right? Is that, like, they are actually trying to do something new with the form, right? Okay. Yeah, I mean, yes. I know this sounds crazy. No, I don't disagree with you. Kevin Feige is operating like a left bank think tank.

No, but they were. They were basically like, we are going to make four to six, eight-hour TV things every year. And what we want you to know about them is that they absolutely matter, but also you don't need to watch them. And they're not for everyone. But they're essential. But who cares? And that is evident in every frame of the things they've made for the last two years, frankly. But I don't think it would be worth it for them to be like,

we have paid $150 million for the same thing to happen in every episode. For Tom and Owen to go off into space, capture a being, bring them back to the TVA, but then at the very end, finally, Kang has just escaped our grasp again. But you put the numbers on it, I mean, how much did our friends at the Worker Rights Think Tank Amazon pay for Citadel, which ended up being like six episodes of like 39 minutes? and the whole thing costs a quarter of a billion dollars? Like, the money going in is the money going in.

What I'm curious about is like, what is the, why? What's the point of it? And they're in a very weird place. It's in a very, very weird place. And, I mean, two things that came out of our conversation with Joanna that I've been thinking about a lot. One was, there's been so much since Wanda Vision that I have absolutely, and I kind of want to admit this on the record.

undervalued how good those first few episodes were. And her point was they took the mandate. They made something really interesting, really creative. They pushed the formats. They took advantage of the possibility of the Trojan horsey nature of a Marvel show and did something really cool. Yeah. Dude, I remember when those first episodes came out.

I don't know if I properly communicated this when they did because it was also like the beginning of the pandemic. And maybe it's only in retrospect of it. But you're right. I was like, shit, if it's going to be this. compelling, everybody is just going to do these things. Like all interesting, like writers and directors and actors are all going to gravitate towards this sandbox because you get to be seen by as many people as possible.

And you get to comment on it. And then you also get to do weird Trojan horse stuff with it. And if that's the case, then that's going to be like, you know, we're going to have a Steven Soderberg's like bank heist Marvel show. But the problem is, as it was, and this is something Joanna said as well, the endings, where it's like the Russo Brothers can be like, we're making the parallax view, but at the end of their Parallax View,

Captain America movie, Captain America and the good guys win. And the problem with Wanda Vision is, for all the good intentions and creativity that Jack Schaefer and Matt Shackman and the rest of the creative team put into it, they reached the finale, which was a question mark on the whiteboard,

and the question mark was waiting for someone at HQ to be like, actually the Darkhold is going to figure prominently into Dr. Strange, too. So you have to do this and that and that. And so at the time, I think I underrate value the show because I was like,

this show in practice week to week is a violation and a betrayal of like the creativity at the start. But really it was the last best shot. Because now we have things, now we have it across two seasons with Loki where the first season was absolutely a riot. It was great. And it was creative and it was different. It was fun. And then they had to do more of them. And the more of them had to serve a larger purpose beyond its own story.

Yeah, there's no fix. We're just going to keep like the MCA. I'm going to keep watching it. But we're also going to keep circling these same things. Like, it is not, episode five of Loki is not going to be like, aha. You know, finally, the X5 bottle episode is as, you know, powerful as episode three of the last of us, you know, and it can still do it. It's weird. This is just really weird that this is what TV is right now.

This is what we're talking about. TV is also the gold. Should we do that? I think we should talk about the gold. This episode is brought to you by the active cash credit card from Wells Fargo. that's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small.

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No. I'm going to stop you there. Oh my God. What do you mean? Well, there's actually two. And here's the thing. This isn't new. It's been like this for a while. It's been like this. I read my history. You lot... Do you know what's washed up in the mud here, Mr. Cooper?

The gold wrapped up, I guess it's first season. as we get to the end of the first season. Am I clapping in studio? Of course you can. Yeah. And we wrap up this part of the Brinks Matt story. I believe if I had to guess without knowing anything about future plans that the Kenneth Noy era is coming.

If it would have Taylor Swift had an album called the Kenneth Nooy. First of all, she would rock the shit out of those clothes with like the hunting dogs and everything. She just wore double-bring. rested suits. Wasn't that like, I don't pay VAT on me gold. A little bit. Wasn't that her life

with Joe Alwin for the last four years? Was kind of her Kenneth Noyerra, where she's like, you know, you don't, you lot don't like someone like me, the striver. But we do get a hint, and this is obviously

spoiling this episode and season of the golds. If you haven't watched it, please skip ahead. Also spoiling the results of the centuries-long class system in the United Kingdom. Of the United Kingdom, yeah.

I had been, I, I was surprised by how bloodless this episode had been to some extent. We had talked a little bit about why the gold seemed to deal almost exclusively in class consciousness monologues. And you had the really good point that from what you gathered from the real Brinksmat story, it was not necessarily as much blood and thunder as you might want for a television show so that they were essentially filling out blank spaces with these characters talking about English culture, English society at the time, the nature of, you know, cops and robbers and stuff like that.

But I thought that there was a moment at the very end of this episode where the, I think, nameless, or I can't remember what his name was, the cab driver who was supposed to take Kenneth Noyes, no, Mickey McAvoy's girlfriend to the helicopter guy. Right. Get shot outside of like a cafe or something like that. I'm glad you mentioned that because I was excited to tell everyone who that character was because I knew. I 100% knew who that guy was, so I was going to say it if you hadn't. Wait, what do you mean? Oh, you didn't remember that that's the guy who did that? How dare you?

How dare you? That is indicative of the Leila from Goodfellas-esque. It really was. Rapping up of this case. There's actually something called the Curse of Brinks Matt where a lot of people who were involved in in on the criminal side of this were met met untimely endings and i wonder whether or not this show can continue on into the future because of that there is obviously a lot of uh connective tissue going into i think it was still they were still doing finding bodies in the 90s of guys

who had said something to somebody about something you know back in the 80s so like honestly like just like such a delightful season of television even for whatever you would criticize it about like you know, everybody, Brian Boyce by the end of the season is speaking entirely in paragraphs. It's so, it's so, it's so, it's so great. I loved it. I love that character. I love the performance.

Go off, King. Tell me all about it. No, no, I, I, I'm just, I, I, I, I'm just, I, look, like, there are certain things that are made that will just hit my pleasure center. If you're going to have a closing montage of people getting sentenced to jail while Joy Division plays, I'm probably pretty into it. let me also say to link it slightly to the previous conversation is that we are way in front of

our skis here about what we're doing in this great project television. It's really hard to make stuff and I have full sympathy and empathy and support for people who try to be creative at any time. But sometimes it's not really hard to make TV. Sometimes if you have these characters like the ones played by Charlotte Spencer and Emin Elliot who play the cops, the Fly-in Squad cops, Jennings and Brightwell. And you just lace them through. a six-episode show that is, as we've been joking, has higher things on its mind, you're going to be fine because I love them.

I want to spend all my time with them. And I will watch your show and love your show just for the moment when Boyce is like, Jennings, do you have plans tonight? And Brightwell's like, no, she doesn't. Because that's TV. We're hanging out with these characters that we've grown to love.

And that is what you're yearning for when you see Owen Wilson and Raphael Casal doing their McDonald's thing because it's just like, okay, I'm into these guys. This is a workplace thing. Right. Let me do this. And you feel the engine of the larger project in Loki just wrenching us away from that. The gold works, in my opinion, because for as, when we're joking about the like, you know, the bones found in the muck of the Thames, Mr. Cooper aspect of the show, it works because it doesn't forget to pay its VAT. It doesn't forget to fill out its forms and do the work of being a good week-to-week investigative television show.

You earn the right to do all that other stuff. So we could talk about this on a number of levels, but the reason I loved the show is because it was fucking great to watch for six weeks. They really put together, they created a world, they built the characters and they built the affection between them, so that by the end of it, you know, it's also POV, right? We meet Jennings and Brightwell first, and then they meet boys, and they're like, who's this guy?

Yeah. And by the end, they're like, we'd like, We'd like to follow you wherever you go, sir. And we're like, and you know what I was like? Me too. This is a rare example. I feel like we should put an underline under it. There have been a number of programs that we've loved over the last few years

that when they've gotten to the end and they throw in that little, are we done? Sure. It's been annoying. It has been. It's been frustrating. Not this time. Yeah. This show, I actually, I'm not saying I had the same reaction my younger daughter had

when she saw the trailer for the new Paw Patrol movie, which she did the gigantic, almost comical fist pump as if she was asking a truck driver to pull the big horn, which I didn't know where that came from. I didn't do that, but I did sit up on my couch and I was pretty psyched. Now, was it also because a forest by the cure was playing? Yeah.

Yeah, it was. But, man, this is a great, great and entertaining TV show that knew how to do that first before it went off onto its highfalutin ways. There were two scenes that I really wanted to call out. You know, I think, that there is a different version of this show that probably stuck more closely to either

the cops or Palmer and Noy and Cooper and, you know, just kind of maybe hewed a little closer. And then if you did that, you would have more moments. Like Kenneth Noy doesn't do a lot more than try to achieve self-actualization as the greatest gangster in British history. Yeah. Like he doesn't like the one time we see him. kind of do non-gold criminal stuff is our introduction to him where he's poaching. And even that poaching is largely indicative of like his character.

It's allegorical. Yeah, it's allegorical. I thought that there is room even for improvement, which is saying quite a bit for a show that I loved so much. But the two favorite scenes that I had from this episode, one was the opening, which featured somebody who I very well may be the antagonist of the second season, Sam Spurrell, who is. certainly seem like it.

Huge character actor in England. Sexy beast tending it up in Spain. Spain, the only place for any of these guys to go. Pretty great. I am a football fan, so when he starts talking about Millwall Arsenal, F.A. Cup and my lot, Millwall, from the south of London, the establishment club, Arsenal from North London. It was pretty weird the way it was just a sporting match.

And yet somehow it contained this kind of, you know, also allegorical weight. Yes. I couldn't see that. But the best part about it was that like he gets through this long monologue about the fix is in and that's why I'm never going back and that his girlfriend is like gay? I loved it. I was like, this is good. If you're going to do this shit, lampoon yourself a little bit.

I love that scene. I loved that undercutting of it. I did feel a little exposed because his behavior with the radio is not unlike my behavior during the run of Eagles NFC championship losses in the early 2000s, not. my best behavior as a human. Right. My other favorite scene in this episode was, I loved the Jennings Boy's Dinner like you did,

but was Jennings going to see her dad? Great scene. Where we have often talked about the reservoir of character actors who are just like, I am Shakespearean trained. It's unbelievable. But if you need me to play a British,

like an aging British gangster, I can do that too, and I just nail it. And that scene, which is basically the, entire series coming of this woman being reminded that her father was a crook, her reminding people that her father never talked, then boys saying, like, they're going to come at you through your father, they're going to try and pressure you through your father. And just him being like, I just don't

ever want to see you again because I can't live with the worry. Like, and it's better for us not to see one another again. And that way, like, we can just see each other in heaven. Or St. Stephen's Hospital, whatever he was referring to. I was like, this is fucking good. stuff. It's really a sign of the best kind of TV writing where, like, Neil Forsyth, he did the beat-to-beat work. So you're watching a cop show. There's courtroom stuff. And then there are these parts that, I mean, I don't know his process. I don't know if it's not the same as the American writers' room process. I don't know if he does note cards or he does whiteboards. But there were probably these circled blank spots in between the chronology of what actually happened in Brinks, Matt.

And you could look at those as the challenge or you could look at those as a challenge. blank spots as the reason why you're writing the show. And you get the feeling time and time again that that's why he was writing the show. Yeah. That he knew he could find a scene there that would be worthy of stopping the action and in ways, and ultimately in a way, defining the action and really making the show what it is. There's a lot of complicated stuff. So I read a little bit about Brinks Matt after this.

And I think you can see some of the stuff. Obviously, there's characters that were created to purely serve the television show, right? Like, I think that the Cooper character is an amalgamation of some other people who were involved in the money laundering process. There's also a little bit of, I think, kind of a fake out where the last couple of episodes have very heavily focused on the Palmer character and his absconding to Spain, starting this property empire in Spain, you know, getting tan, becoming this like going on the run to Brazil, all of the other. that stuff actually did happen to the Palmer character, but the fact that he's just like,

they got nothing on me and he's right? Yeah. Is kind of weird? Like, yeah. They don't really go very much into depth about what they have on these gangsters when they bring them to court. Yeah. I mean, again, this is the thing that was kind of built in as a potential flaw of the show that I think it kind of papered over really well, which is that like not all this worked. Like they didn't get all of the convictions. They didn't find all of the They didn't stop the problem. They couldn't keep it from entering the body of England, like in different ways and the purchasing of all this.

Ultimately, it feels like it was a investigation just to expose. And as the series went on, it was much more about the rot in all of the institutions as opposed to the one thing. The criminal, like, you know, you never know until it's you. The old bills coming for. But, like, I would say Kenny and John were pretty cool cucumbers. Yes. about their legal issues. I think they were probably helped by the fact

that they are allowed to make unlimited phone calls to each other in jail, which is really nice. Operator, I love an outside line. Could you call the other jail, please? I'd like to call my mate so we could talk about doing crime stuff. Yeah.

That probably helped them. Do you also think like when Palmer goes to visit Kenny in jail that nobody noted, like if we were prosecuting one person for a conspiracy. You don't go to see the fact that two of these guys have now met in prison. Just chatting? Yeah. Just chatting in prison.

I also feel like Kenny really didn't read the room in his second trial. Oh, when he's like, I hope everybody here gets cancer. Well, no, before that, I mean, we were all headed there. Yeah. He's like, you know, so I'll apologize to the Mrs. Queen for not dotting me eyes and crossing me tease a bit. Well, I think that he's trying to, I think he's hoping that the jury themselves are like, yeah, this other, the rich people in England are always taking a piece out of us.

Which worked the first time. Yes. That it didn't work the second time. It's worth noting, I don't think, have you checked it out that there is another TV show? Yes, a comedy. It's a comedy called The Curse. You can watch it on Britbox, aka Chris's home screen, which basically is a more fictionalized version of the Brinks Mac case, but more strictly a comedy, which is pretty interesting,

too, that this is a source for more or for different types of storytelling. We can wrap it up here. Can I do one, I had one little, like, bit of house cleaning. I think three times during our many weeks talking about the gold, I made it sound like Tom Cullen, who played Palmer, was the star of the television show, Vikings. I believe you said Tom Cullen, who is in Vikings, yeah. And then later I was like, it's cool seeing him look like he eats cigarettes for breakfast, because for so many years, we all remember him sacking Norse villages as a Viking.

Because you're like, as I do my third Vikings rewatch. As anyone who's been following my TV coverage for a decade knows, big Viking guy. So it will surprise no one to learn that he was not, in fact, on the television show Vikings. That was just some fanfic that I've been working on in my spare time. Okay. He was on a show called Nightfall, Nightfall with a K. Okay. It's like it was another history channel British dudes hacking at people with sorts of show.

Is he buffing that one? Yeah, he plays a guy named Landry, not from Friday Night Lights, but equally murderous. He's a headstrong knight. Is he Jacked, though? You want me to Google Tom Cullen Jacked again? No, but Knights, like, they didn't have... You think they were hiding underneath their armor a little bit? I just don't know that Knights did, like, did they work on their abs?

Or are they just, like, every day I wake up at 3 in the morning and put on armor? and he looks pretty swole. I mean, I guess the chain mail is kind of forgiving, but you can see the outline. Yeah, he looks good. Hi, you want to weigh in on this? Like, he's easy. He looks great, yeah.

He looks good. He looks different than he looked in Tenerys. That guy is very Mallory core. That's what I'm saying. Let me just say that. Like Mallory Rubin? Yeah, the beard. The Thomas Mallory?

Yeah. Oh. Thomas. Excuse me? I was just sharing. Do you think, since, I just want, we should. So I appreciate your accountability, though. And I think listeners do too. I'm accountable to our listeners.

Not to anyone in this room, but our listeners and God. That's it. This was kind of a, we were kind of using these shows to talk generally about stuff this episode. Since we kind of did this with Loki, do you feel like there is anything to be gleaned here about the larger? Because we spent a lot of time talking about the gold, which is in the larger taxonomy of current television relatively small. It was a successful and big show in the UK.

It's on Paramount Plus. I think people who have watched it on Paramount Plus have really enjoyed it. Yeah. I do think it's, you know. And as we said or alluded to, like it seems like there could be a second season of this, which I'm thrilled about.

It has not been announced in the UK as far as I can tell. Is there anything here to extrapolate? Like, why does this work? Because I, the idea that there's always going to be international, they're always going to be international shows that click or hit or resonate, we're there. Like, that's not news. But is there something that people who are making TV in this country or you could learn from

this that you think? And not just learn, they could easily learn the blueprint to getting weekly coverage on the watch. That's not hard to figure out. That's a good question. I hadn't really considered that. I honestly do consider the English TV industry and the American TV industry to be two completely different animals because I just.

think that in England their model is so different. First of all, there's just far fewer people. There's far fewer platforms. But they're also slightly more modest. I mean, they're just like, you know, the episode orders are shorter. The series aren't on like a maniacal kind of,

it must come out every year kind of schedule. And I think that, from my experience, the British public's relationship to television is a lot more where we were in 2010. You know, they're not like, what I need to do is pump 60 hours of television into my jugular every week.

They're like, oh, this program's really good. I'm going to watch it every Wednesday or Sunday or whatever it is. It's like much more normal. Like, I remember when we were, I was over there at the end of Succession. A couple of people were agitated because Succession was on on Monday nights there. It would come out on Sunday

and then it was on Monday once it got to Sky, Atlanta. or whatever. Instead of covering the finale with us, you just did field studies on how people were going to respond to that. I was doing an anthropological study. It just seems like they've got a pretty good handle on it.

And to your point earlier about Loki and maybe would it be better if they had more modest kind of ambitions for this? I think that that is something that the gold does. I think that the gold knows how to give a sense

of scope while only going to five or six places. It goes to Kent. It has a couple of interiors. It goes to Tenerife. It went to Africa. Yeah. Okay. Spain.

Yeah. This feels to me like a larger idea than to put at the end of a Monday podcast. But it strikes me that what I was trying to articulate before about the problem with Star Wars, it's like it's either for the fans of the cartoon or it's for fans of literally for us and very few other. I don't think it's good art advice to be like, let's steer everything towards the mushy middle. However, we are leaving as the football podcasters

whom I will not listen this week would say, we're leaving a lot of meat on the bone here. We've entered an era where what we make is either a lower hanging fruit or the highest, highest, most expensive, put a napkin over your head, you're eating Ortolan tonight, buddy, type of experience. We are craving this middle thing. But an example of that would be,

Okay, so keeping it in the realm of the gold and talking about like cop shows or even period or not period, but like large scale investigative things, and we compared the show a lot to the wire over the last few weeks, or at least in terms of its ambition, it's really telling about the state of the industry

that it's not just that the wire could never happen again. It's that if David Simon wants to make a show even tonally related to the wire, the entire conception of it has to be different. It has to be a five-episode, I believe, miniseries. We own the city and show me a hero. With a star baked into it, which makes it, gets it more eyes at the front or more coverage, maybe, you know, but also puts an expiration date on it.

And in the end, did a lot of people watch We Own the City? I wish they did. I don't know. I just continue to feel like people love cop shows. They love investigative shows. I think the appetite for things that are a little bit smarter than, or a little bit more, not smarter as an understanding. fair word. More ambitious than like a Dick Wolf procedural. Yeah. Exists. But a lot of the places that might invest in that or that might be willing to, yeah, like the HBOs and FX's of the world, I don't know what their conversations in those rooms are about let's launch this ongoing series now.

Let's launch something that's a little bit less shiny or attention grabby than name your HBO or FX program. Right, then a murder at the end of the world or, you know, Dave or whatever. Last of us. Yeah, of course. It just seems like we're leaving a lot out there. And especially at a moment when, and I joked about this last week, when like the head of Paramount of Nicole Clemens is like, we want to make more populous shows that don't have end dates that keep people engaged week to week,

but also not just people who live in New York and L.A. I'm like, yeah, you're describing television. You're trying to like iterate something that has been working for decades. That's why the gold was good. Yeah. It's just, I think people, when you see a show like this, that it worked, regardless of its ratings on Paramount or whatever, I think there's a tendency to look at the shiny top part of it. Like, oh, well, Sean Harris had a supporting role, and it was quite thoughtful and complicated about the nature of being English. Yeah. You're looking at the wrong thing. Like, that's, that's later. That's the extra. That's the icing. But the cake was really well made. Yeah, and the cake was also made exactly to our taste. And sometimes I do need to be like, yeah, you know,

when she walks out of her dad's a flat and Bronsky beat is playing, you know, I was just like, yeah, I'm pretty into this no matter what. Like she could have a clown face on after that. I would be like, yeah, that was thoughtful. And then it's in the Joker extended universe. Is that what you mean? Exactly. We'll be back on Thursday.

Probably talking. Oh, wait. We're going to do lessons, right? lessons? Lessons. Lessons in chemistry. Lessons in chemistry. We're going to see Captain Marvel. You'll believe Captain Marvel can cook. And then, who knows, maybe some Beckham. Oh, yeah, you want me to watch Beckham.

I want you to watch Kelsey. Okay. We can do both. You can watch, okay, fine. I'll watch this critically acclaimed multi-part investigation into a global superstar. If you watch this absolute, abject fan service 90 minutes about a man that you and I would die for. Who I also watch for four hours every Sunday. But now you get to see him be like...

Kai, did you watch Beckham at all? My legs hurt. No, but it's on my list. I'll watch it for Thursday. Thank you. So I can be up with it. Will you watch Kelsey? That's a bridge too far.

That's fair. You know what I respect about Kai? Among many things, she looked in the eye, which she said no. Thanks for listening to the watch. We'll be back on Thursday.