The Watch - Why ‘The Outsider’ Is TV’s Best Mystery. Plus: More ‘Cheer’ and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ | The Watch

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

By dabbling in the supernatural, ‘The Outsider’ is quickly becoming the best mystery on TV right now (1:23). It’s hard to imagine a fictional version of the docuseries ‘Cheer,’ and that’s what makes it so good (23:55). Plus: living voyeuristically through Larry in ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ (32:40) and wondering what exactly is going on with the Obi-Wan Kenobi series (39:01). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Jason Concepcion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Picard. Now streaming only on CBS All Access, a legend returns. Sir Patrick Stewart reprises his iconic role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the original series Star Trek Picard. Follow this hero on an unexpected mission into the far reaches of the galaxy. Sign up today for CBS All Access by visiting cbs.com slash The Watch. Get your first week of CBS All Access for free and stream Star Trek Picard now. I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, He Made Matt. It's Jason Concepcion! Bring me the grief eater. All right, so Jason and I are here today. Happy Thursday.

Thank you for listening. Greenwald is in parts unknown. He'll be back on Monday. We'll discuss probably the usual Sunday night's latest stuff, get his takes on the trench battle between the Niners and the Chiefs. Just, oh, that's Chris Long. I'm just kidding. No, we're going to get Greenwald to back in here on Monday,

and we'll do most of the Sunday night shows. But Jason and I, I wanted to talk to him about outsider. I wanted to talk to him about cheer. Oh, my God. Maybe a little Star Wars stuff. Let's do it. Okay, so let's start with outsider. We'll be spoiling up through episode four.

So if you're behind, don't listen. If you're behind, just save this for later. The Further Adventures of Holly Gibney in the Doppelgangerverse. Oh, man, she's going at it. Not the official title. Let me start here. What do you think or how are you feeling about, like, there's now essentially been three protagonists of this show. So you had, like, Terry Maitland and wrongly accused and you've Bateman's character in the first episode, first two episodes, I guess.

Very limited run. And then Mendelssohn kind of, like, holds it down, but we get introduced to Holly. And then four, K. V.N. El Coco is definitely Holly's episode. episode. She's out there. How do you feeling about like each episode it kind of like shifts to a new POV character? It's been, it has been a little bewildering, but once Holly gets into gear, the show really picks up. Like we're at the stage now where it's like, okay, the mythology is essentially set in place. We kind of know what we're facing. It's just the how. And that kind of like supernatural procedural

is honestly really fun you're extremely our shit it's very very much my shit and like trying to like seeing these reasonable rational people try and grapple with something that is

outside of their experience is really where a lot of the energy of the show comes from for me I was thinking about this because we spent a lot of a big chunk of 2019 talking about True Detective season three. And I think in all of our discussions about True Detective, we had

a longing for it to be about something more than just another fucked up child murdering ring or whatever. Like whether it was that we wanted it to like kind of connect to a cult worship or whether we actually wanted there to be such a thing as like a yellow king out there. Probably just

because we're like, I want to see them thread that needle. Like I want to see, I want to see Pizzolado do that. That's, Essentially, the outsider in the first episode is like, yes, there is something out there under the bed. Yeah, and it's like a really fascinating grand metaphor about trying to find meaning in loss and grief, which, you know, is like a thing, just as a fan of fantasy stories, of sci-fi stories, is a subject that I find really appealing and fraught with like a lot of emotional weight about like what it means to. like be a human being. Yeah. And try and figure like try and square awful tragedies with the rest of life's normalcy.

Trying to figure out how why a terrible thing happens. In this case, the terrible thing happens because there is a grief eater demon. Yeah, a viral monster. Right. That, that. And I don't mean viral like it's getting, getting artis. Right. That can impersonate you.

really well and then we'll absolutely frame you up for various crimes let's talk a little bit about what you just mentioned there with like you know as a fan of sci-fi and as a fan of fantasy I think at the end of this episode

when Holly is talking to the woman that sort of overhears her talking to Monica and Rikers they start talking about Coco right these different like every culture kind of has this boogeyman and that you know when she used to hear about it

El Coco was used as like a deterrent from misbehavior. It's like we used to tell kids, don't be bad because the boogeyman will come get you. And then she's like, but in reality, it doesn't matter because he'll take what he wants or it takes what it wants. And then Holly kind of goes off on this run, does some bathtub reading. Yeah. Gets into, you know, looking at like, I think it's Goya, whatever the painting is she's looking at. Oh, yeah, yeah, the eating his own son. Saturn eating his son.

Yeah. And his reading. about like indigenous like Native American myths and and stuff like that and you realize like you know one of the most interesting things that we discussed when we were in true detective and some of the stuff we were reading about there is that we're just not that far removed from when this stuff was like widely believed oh yeah it's really that long ago that kind of thing is really fascinating to me which is like this idea that like some sort of wisdom has been lost you know some sort of understanding that the natural world has been trod over or paved over or dishealing And I think like this kind of This kind of subject matter really taps into that idea of You know the kind of like general feeling that The ship is is moving along but there's something wrong Yeah, yeah

That just kind of like vague feeling that you know everything seems normal I look outside everything's fine It's bad news all over the over social media and the news that that happens too But there's a general feeling that maybe something is more more wrong than it can... Right. And that the explanation for these bad feelings that we have

is actually inexplicable. Right. Or the explanation would not track with like everything we know about reality. You can't square it with your, with modern experience. Right. I was curious,

when you were growing up, we're about the same age, did you ever have anything like this? Like, was there ever like any kind of like... Yeah, there was like a, the, you know, my like relatives from the Philippines would talk about like duendays,

which was like these little like dwarven, I guess like house spirits is like how you refer to them. They were like these little dwarven people that lived in like a crack like in the molding at the bottom of the wall where it met the floor. Oh shit. And you would leave them like little offerings like little bits of food and stuff. So and then they would bring good luck to your house.

Yeah. That was like one of those things. And they absolutely 100% like you'd, You know, my relatives are, they're reasonable people for the most part. But like 100%, they'll be like, oh, yeah, it's real. You got to have seen it. You got to leave tribute. You got to leave it.

I've seen them. I'm like, okay. Sure. I like, but that's it. And there's another one too that now I forget the name of it, but it was like a woman without legs. And she would fly around in the night and like, you know, like attach herself to the roof. And somehow she would smell like the blood of like a person and then she would like creak down and like suck their blood

and then fly away in the night when they were sleeping. Jesus Christ. What about you? I'm sure, like, you know what? It was more English-Irish folklore. I was like full of stuff. My parents were pretty candidly atheist. So I and I didn't grow up in a particularly, I would say, like,

folkloric household. There were plenty, though. And we talked about this when we did True D season three together on Flat Circle. plenty of urban legends. And it was a time when those urban legends were not easily disprovable by going online.

So they would permeate and they would mutate and they would kind of get to you in different ways. Some of it is as basic as like there is a phantom gang in this park which like in retrospect was literally like the backyard of a condo development. At the time I was like the fucking like the outside

are hanging out there and they're like whipping bike chains around and stuff but they were like don't go into Taney Park right the Taney Park gang will get you and it was like actually a pretty nice park and in retrospect probably would have had a lot of fun if I had just gone to Taney Park more. I'm trying to think of like what else

there was a lot of like criminal stuff where it was like it was like just a real game of telephone where like something that was often a pretty heinous crime but would like kind of mutate to something like almost incomprehensible but that was more what it was like for me there wasn't a lot of like mythology stuff going on.

Holly in this show, and I want to talk a little bit about Cynthia Revo and also like the characterization of Holly, which I think is like, as soon as we meet her in three, I was like, all right, like, do we really need another Carrie Mathes in? Right, it's a little tropey,

the kind of on the spectrum-ish person who just is a repository for all information, data. And she can look at a skyscraper and tell you how tall it is. She can tell you who was pitching for the Cubs in 1987. Tell you what every day that May 20th falls on for the next 200 years. Right. But typically with that kind of character in stories, you see that person just incredibly alienated.

Like, they just can't really. And if they have a relationship, it's incredibly self-destructive. I'm thinking, like, the first person I'm thinking of was Carrie Matheson. But, like, typically, like, I think that those kind of characters are really isolated. And there are a lot of plot armor comes out of, like, their inability. to like basically have like sincere human interactions or feel things. I think what they're doing with what they did with Holly in a very short period of time is wonderful. There's certain times where you're like, she's misreading cues here and that's kind of leading to a confrontation.

But her relationship with the mall security guy. Yes. And even like the way she talks to Ralph and the way she kind of goes about her business being like, I only deal in perceivable facts, the empirical evidence. And yet she's being confronted with this completely. unbelievable story. I think, you know, there's a small moment that I think was, is a really

wonderful bit of character development. She's, like, shows up, she's doing her investigation. She's asking about, like, old footage, and I think it's the mall security guys, like, tells her a joke. Played by the chief of staff guy from House of Cards. Yeah, and she's like, why do people tell jokes? Yeah.

And it's a small thing, but it shows that, like, unlike, say, Carrie Matheson, who reacts to, like, her estrangement from reality or her well her her own hyper reality and that hyper reality is estrangement from kind of like normal

human interaction she reacts to that with kind of like rage and befuddleman Holly is genuinely curious about why people do the things they do even though she has no natural feeling for it right so

you know the rest of the world kind of filters through this lens of like research almost and curiosity about why things are the way they are rather than this kind of like rejection or complete misunderstanding of cues. So she may miss cues, but she is genuinely curious

about the way people interact. Yeah, and I think that it allows Price to really throw a change up in terms of like how he's writing characters and how these characters are reacting to the story. I think if it had been simply Ralph, the Ben Mendelsohn character,

going through this mystery and constantly just, kind of being confronted with probably his own culpability and getting Terry killed by like pressing so hard on the, you know, I mean, that's where you get into this whole idea of like if this being or this entity is involved, like how much control do these people have all their lives anyway? But if you just continued on with Ralph being like, I don't understand, I've got this guy looking at me in the face in this video and then he's in looking at me in the face in this video

and they're taking at the same time essentially. bringing Holly in as like a kind of almost objective outsider even if it is seem like so you guys have now like five investigators working on this somehow it's just like a really great stroke by price and it also they need someone to get out on the trail and follow this absolutely because you know

Detective Anderson is just to weighed down by his own personal demons the investigation itself within the town is just is befuddling, bewildering, and spinning its wheels against, one, the death of the prime suspect, and two, the fact that, like, the evidence they have is super weird. You know, it's like their fingerprints are old, but then some of them are new, but then the DNA evidence that they thought they had is a weird substance.

Like, there's just, like, a lot of strange things happening. So, to your point, Holly is out there, like, at the forefront of this case, just assembling data. And I'm eager for them to get to the stage of trying to actually make sense of all this stuff. Yeah, and that's going to be the challenge

for this show. I think it's the challenge for every Stephen King's story. And even, we talked about this on the first episode, every, or the first time we talked about this, every word of your price story.

Because price tends to be like, you guys wanted to know who done it, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. What matters is why is everything else around this happening so that creates a situation where something like this happens.

King, I think, sometimes eventually downshifts into it's fucking evil. Right, right. Hey, I told you. The lamp is possessed by the devil. I knew it. But this seems to be like a larger, a story that has like a little bit more grounding in this idea of people trying to understand the un-understandable. And like the people are trying to explain away things in life that don't make any sense. And it's almost like, it's actually quite a metaphorical show in that way.

Oh, it's extremely metaphorical. I think you mentioned something that Price does really well, which is tell a story from different points of view, this almost like rashamanic kind of approach to the truth. And it's really exciting because the truth has never been this weird in anything he's ever done. Yeah. So what is that? How does that relationship to the truth emerge through the perspectives of three, I mean, you could argue four main characters. characters at a given time. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about or just talk about a couple of things from

episode four. One is, you know, the way that they are illustrating these grief clusters and this sort of like evil virus that gets passed through scratches in a very like body snatchers kind of way, the way they've chosen to sort of tell that story allows us to be like a couple of blocks ahead of the investigators. So, like, just watching outsider, you know that there is this guy in a hooded sweatshirt that shows up at these crime scenes that seems to be, like, in the background of a lot of the more grief-stricken moments.

Once they start, like, kind of cluing you in to the, and I think when they show you, like, here's this chain reaction. Like, Monica Canalis kills this boy. The boy's grandfather goes and kills Monica Canales' uncle and father at a bar. Like all this stuff just kind of ripples out, mushrooms out. But we're a little bit ahead of Holly here. Typically when you and I are watching a mystery show with the, you know, I guess Mind Hunter, you know, we see BTK in the background. Yeah.

But we don't, we're usually like right with the Jonathan Groff and Cole McElney character. And True Detective, when we're watching, we're right with the Mahershala Ali character, even if he's like jumping back and forth. Like we don't know more than the protagonist. usually. How do you feel about watching a show where you're like, I'm a little bit ahead of Holly here? I think that it is kind of necessary for a show that is so lore heavy. You know, in a true detective, we're not really confronted with questions of like what happens if. What was it that drew this grief monster to these victims?

Is it getting stronger? Is it getting weaker? Is there a way to banish it? These are not, these kind of like existential world building questions aren't really involved in the stories we talked about. Kind of, you know, True Detective season one was kind of different where there was, it felt like there was this kind of like gossamer framework. And searching that out was really part of the thrill of the show. Here, that's a concrete thing. Yeah, it's like if in the first episode of True Detective at the end of it and it pulls back from that like sort of birth.

sort of burned out church. And then in like the far right-hand corner, like the spaghetti monster was just like, yo. Hey, hey. What's up? And then the whole time, we were like, when is Russ going to find this,

this kind of supernatural being? But instead, it's like, you go along on the ride in True Detective Season 1, especially, and you're just like, well, is this like his drugged up perception? Is this actually like a blending of myth and reality or what?

And in this, you're like, no, there, there is a monster out there. And because it is that, I think that you have to do it this way. You have to let people know, like, yep, we're going there. It's supernatural. It 100% is. And to this point, I think they've calibrated that well.

We're not that far. We don't know where it's striking next. We don't know what's happening. We think we understand a little bit about the transmission and what happens to a person as they're coming under the influence of this grief virus. But we don't know that much more. But I think it's a useful and a necessary way to tell a story like this that just has a lot of mythology around it. Yeah, and then they balance that mythology with like Price's eye for investigative detail,

where it's just like, yeah, yeah, like you just know. Only Richard Price would be like, it's important to show the bus ride to Rikers. Right. It's like, only Richard Price would be like, let's spend 10 minutes with this guy breaking down CCTV footage. Yeah, let's spend how would you? you get that like let's spend time in a jail cell with a person trying to figure out like how they would sharpen a knife yeah you know like all these kind of things um all these little uh formulaic for lack of a better word but like procedural ticks yeah that's like pure price it's

interesting i wonder how they'll address the idea of like in this story and i haven't read the novel we're led to believe that at least these crimes that we're seeing are the extension of this like evil entity but like to what extent does that extend to like all crimes or like you know are there like are there some murders that are murders of circumstance and murders because people of like you know are like crime of passion crime of economic destitution whatever it is and then there are some where it's just like you got scratched by the boogeyman yeah that's it's a fascinating question and i think one of the things you know one of the things that comes up in King's books that is never really pursued is like, okay, well, what now?

You figured out that a certain number of horrific crimes in the world are committed by a supernatural grief demon. Let's say you stop it this once. Do you go to the authority? Like, what do you do now? Do you go to the FBI? Right. You go to the press? Right.

how does that thing get defeated? Yeah, how did you, or do you just let it go and go, I guess the world is super weird, that conflict is going to be really interesting to watch play out, because like, what do you, what do you do? If you come into a possession of this information, I mean, you should share it.

But if you share it, people will be like, you're crazy, get out of here. Right. Maybe Rogan and have you. I know. All right, man. Let's talk it out. Let's hear about it.

What do you got? Glory. Glory Naitland would just be like, what do you want? A V-logger? A vlogger? Like running through all this stuff? A podcaster? That was a great.

That was a cool. That was cool how the woman was like on the tutor and she's like, do this math problem. She was just like, ah. I've been really enjoying Mendelssohn's work in this show. I really, really enjoyed the brief conversation between Ben Mendelsohn and Patty Constine about like American football.

Two guys, just you can tell. Super conversant. Obviously just immersed in the NFL. You really love to hit guys. Yeah, that was really good. I'm trying to think of what else I wanted to go over here. I think that the big question I have, and this is sort of inevitable with these shows,

because you just start to, as soon as you get to like the halfway point, you start to ask questions about where it's going to lead and where it's going to end. And if you've read King before, seen adaptations of his stuff before, it's not uncommon to have like the Danuma or the climax of the book or movie to be we all just kind of got together and psychically put this thing back in its place there's going to be some like yeah will there be some sort of but i can't imagine richard price being like yeah they they Ralph and holly hold hands right and send the boogeyman back to another dimension over the over the 500 year old uh native american spear that's right that's right and you will take that and drive it into the pumpkin and that that's right and that's right and that's right and you will take that and drive it into the pumpkin and that will be like yeah and the goya painting goes up in flames honestly like that is part of part of the thrill of watching this is understanding that these pieces are fitting now in a really interesting way

but that they don't naturally fit so what's going to happen what are we going to watch here yeah I am fascinated to find out are you surprised it's this it's pretty successful like no I'm not surprised at all I mean this is a fucking great mystery I'm not surprised at yeah like we love mysteries Do we not love mysteries? And it's also just like, I feel like this is now the second time where they, HBO's just been like, let's put up a January who done it.

And people are like, I'm in. I'm 100% in it. I love, listen, I'm a person that every day goes on the unsolved mysteries Reddit and just reads about cases. Well, that was the thing with, when Holly is just doing like hard Google searches. Yeah.

I'm like, girl, go on Reddit. That's where it all is, girl. They'll just be like doppel, R slash doppelganger. And then you will find. people who have already been doing the work. Yeah, right. All right, let's talk about some other stuff that's on TV now. And then we can wrap up.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Kenobi. But Kaya introduced me to cheer a couple weeks ago. Kyya gave a tour-to-force performance on this podcast. Many people are still saying among the best watch performances of all time. Thank you. Unsurprisingly. There is. No one is surprised by this.

I went home immediately and I was like, To my wife, I said, wife, we should watch the Netflix reality show cheer. Kaiab recommends it. We watched one gripped. Amazing. And she straight up just, like, watched the rest of it behind my back. And it was just like a savage move on her part, and I'm calling her out. I won't use her name, but she knows who she is.

She's my wife. She's my wife. And she watched the rest of cheer without me. So I've been incrementally making my way through it. Just before I came over, I watched two and a little bit of three. Who does she want to get on the mat? Who does my wife want? I mean, she obviously just, like, loves Jerry.

Like, she's just, like, I just love Jerry. You know, there's something about this show. I think a lot of it I'm reacting to is both, it's obviously, like, every one of these kids is just, like, straight up, like, my mom left me. And then cheer saved my life. It's like the Florida project, but cheer. But, like, I think it's Greg Whiteley is the person who shot Disney.

He did a lot of Last Chance You, or he worked on Last Chance You. It looks fucking. It looks amazing. Absolutely. It looks incredible. It looks like fucking better than Friday night lights. And I mean that. Yeah.

Like it looks better than that. And just like the editing rhythm that they have where like even in when they're doing kind of like out of the gym. You know, this is this person's biography. They'll just like instinctually cut back to like a pyramid falling over and over again. Like of like these kids just not quite getting it. And they also just like really capture like just the physical brutality. It is. Absolutely.

brutal. I mean, some of the falls and the throws that they have, someone spinning 30 feet up in the air, comes down, heel kicks someone in the face, and then everyone goes to the ground. And then, you know, it'll be like, okay, let's take five, let's try and slow that down. It's like, what? Like, how many people have a concussion right now?

There was, like, in the first episode, there was, like, that point where the three girls in a row get the concussion and they're just like, touch your nose, and they're like, that's the whole pyramid is out. It's insanely brutal to watch. The thing that I was really remembering when I was watching it, I know this is like when people are doing NBA pods and they're like, well, you know, they can pick up.

There's this kind of guy. But like I do remember, you know, now in my life, like so many of my, even like my interactions with like my very close friends are still governed by like polite society and circumstances and stuff like that. I forgot what it's like to have a coach just be like, nope. Yeah, no. That's not good. And it's just, and like every time just being like,

it's not quite what I want. And I think about like, I don't ever say that to people. And people don't say that to me, really, like, where they just, like, walk up to you after you do a task and they're just like, not perfect. Yeah, I tell you, it's the thing that I realized that it really scratched the itch that you only get through college sports and all the complications that come with that of the kind of driven genius who is sculpting young people into this thing. it is 100% their show. It's like all these people, you're replaceable. Lexi, you're replaceable. Like, we can get somebody else on the mat.

Yeah. Like, if you don't come through right now, you're not going to make the mat. And I'm sorry about that. Right. And that is just absolutely compelling. And it's not, you know, we watch a lot of sports. It's not really something that you get from sports anymore.

No, because I think that there's like always that filter through which, like, Essentially, our access to sports are always going to be through. It's televised. Yeah. Like, this is what the league or whatever wants us to see. So even if we do see some, like, heartwarming shit, like a speech at halftime. Yeah. We don't see Nick Sabin just being like, these five punters are fucking out.

Fuck you. Yeah. You piece of shit. Hit the fucking punt or you're out. Yeah. We're just like, oh, hey, that guy, another great Alabama punter. And you're not talking about the other walk-on who just got like emulsified by Nick Sabin somewhere. Yeah, there's something really sad.

satisfying about like, and I think is something that like we require as human beings is this idea of like the elder person who is just no bullshit going to help you learn about life. Yeah. Through this other thing that seemingly is unconnected to the things you're going to do with your life. Yeah. And like I keep thinking about there's no after this. You're at a junior college. Right. It's like your best shot is being a choreography.

That's it. And it's like seven minutes and then you're done. Your career is over. You've taken like 12 concussions. You weigh 115 pounds and all you do is train and then like in a month you're done. This is why I quit swimming. I used to be a competitive swimmer. I was in my early teens.

I was like pretty good at sprinting. Like a lot of sports like when it got too hard, I was like, this might not be fair. But like when it was like 25 yards, I was like, this sick. I just fucking swim as hard as I can. and I like beat a lot of kids. But basically like when I was doing like more like, you know, training you around and you would join a different team for different seasons and stuff like that, I remember a coach who was,

I was swimming in like University City and the coach was just like, yeah, you know, you have a lot of potential, but here's the deal. It's like basically from like 530 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. you swim. And then from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. you swim. And you're not going to have much of a social life. And the goal in life is basically like this one pinnacle, which would be the Olympics. And like even as I like I think I was probably watching the Olympics.

And I was like, so my entire life. Not that I would ever get to the Olympics. Right. But if I did, my entire life would be summed up in this like 40 second thing, which I might fuck up. Right, right. And then it's over. And even though, yeah, like I'd be ripped.

Like other than that, what else do I have to show for it? And maybe I could have gone to like Stanford or something. But other than that, the idea that these kids are just like in Corsicana. Right. And to do this. Yeah. Yeah. I also, the one thing I don't quite understand is the free agency market for Navarro. Like it's just like, is Gabby?

I don't understand that either. Do you understand that, Kaya? Well, Gabby's a cheer influencer. And so her, you'll find out later on in the season, but her parents have this whole side hustle going for her where she goes and she teaches cheer camps. And then also. That's not an NCAA violation? No, well, they're not in the NCAA. Yeah, they're not junior college. Your juco.

And then also these kids have the option to go and compete on club teams outside of Navarro. Okay, but those club teams, like, do we get the feeling like that those club teams are like you can have that as your central job? No, not at all. This is just like I want to compete more. I want to do more cheer. And so if you're at the club level, are there club tournaments? Yes, there's club competitions as well. And it's regional or it's national?

I'm not sure. Man, it just seems like not a lot. Yeah. There's not. Yeah. Especially for what you put your body through. It's crazy what you put your body through. I think it's just like a fascinating example of the, of, you know, just people strive for recognition and greatness what they'll do to do that.

Yeah. And I also think that it's like, it's a really interesting. There are a few times where I'm not like a huge reality television person. I think you could, I would probably put this more in the category of documentary. series, although it's cut to drive interest and make it be almost bingeable because you're like, I need to know what happens to these people.

But it's impossible to imagine this show as a fictional show with like actors playing these roles. A, because like the plot lines would be sensationalistic and kind of like silly and like overly sewn together. And B, I don't know

how could you ever cast a better character than Monica? Like, How could you use, like, Naomi Watts standing in ankle boots being like... It's a good point. I will say, Dairme on USA is pretty good. Yeah, it's good. It's pretty good. It's for sure good.

It's, and that, but I think that that is actually, like, everything that's like... And this is a show by Megan Abbott, who is a crime writer that we all like a lot, and, like, she worked on the deuce and has been on the pod. She's awesome. But, and Derry... I'm not even comparing Dairme to cheer, but Derryme kind of has that thing where it's, like, it's outside. Like, it's kind of hard to... watch Deremy's cheer sequences after watching Cheap. Oh yeah, that's a, I mean, it's a different

It's kind of like not what the show is about. Sure, yeah. Like, cheer is just, their sequences are insane. Have you seen Deremi, Kaya? No, I haven't. Okay. What do you want to talk about? You want to talk curb? Let's talk curbed. I like, let me just say the the Weinstein bit. I haven't laughed at a thing on a half-hour TV show

like that in a while. That was so fucking funny. And one of those things where you're like only you know the best comedy that's like on the line where you're like I couldn't have imagined laughing at this. And it's just like you know that they were just like looking at Garland and just being like you look like him. And even the way they made him like scruffier

and in the black suits. And it's like that crushed me. You go through your daily life and you're just like, oh, I should write that down. That's really funny that what just happened to me. Yeah. Like, even something like in the second episode

where he's just like, I need the validation for my parking ticket. And even though they have that like exchange like, oh, I didn't think you would need the validation. And he's just like, uh. And then he looks at it and he's like,

that's just for an hour. I always heard for like an hour 10. And I think about that all the time where it's just like, how do, like, why the fuck am I being like hemmed in by like these like arbitrary validation rules at parking lots? Like, it's a great point.

I am that way. as well. Like, I am just a meek. I'm just like a meek person in most social. Oh, I can't be confrontational in those situations. I'm just like, oh, you just fuck me over? That's fine. I'll just walk away.

I don't really have it in me right now. Like, to get crazy about my parking validation. Right. So it is vicariously thrilling and also absolutely cringe-inducing to watch Larry David go through his fucking daily life as the biggest misanthrope that's like ever walk the earth. Yes. And him just being like the table wobbles, so I'm going to open up a rival coffee shop and bolt my tables to the concrete ground. And unbelievable flex.

And then like also continuing to find these like things within social interactions, like the big goodbye is just a move that now I feel has been burned in real life. Like now you can't do it. Oh, no. No, I was thinking about that myself where I was just like, because we were talking on the pod about how. my move would be the I'm just gonna run to the bathroom and then never come back. Not Irish goodbye like full on the party

but just be like I got caught on the other side of the party and I apologize to anybody that I've ever pulled that on I didn't mean to do it to you. But at like parties like when you do that and now I feel like that's burned. That's burned. Big goodbye is burned. Kaya's, I'm just going to get myself a drink is burned. Oh is that what you do?

Yeah. But Kaya you were like I don't offer to get the other person a drink, right? No, I just say I'm going to go get another drink. Yeah, that's the problem is if you're like can I get you something while I'm over there. I know. Like, yeah, I'll take a gin and tonic. You're like, fuck, now I'm a waiter.

You know? I've been really trying to say actual goodbyes to people, but I have been for a long time, like a hard, hard Irish goodbye person. Yeah. Just not even saying anything. Just leave. Well, I struggle with the goodbyes and it's like, I don't want to interrupt conversations. And then it's also, you know, it's like, I'll see each other again.

I think we should make a rule. Okay. I think Irish goodbyes among people that you have every intention of seeing again within the month are acceptable. I like this. Wow. This is actually great. Because like Irish goodbyes are only weird if it's like, and now I'm just never going to see this person again.

And they bounced. Right. Now, it's strange because then you wind up having to be a lot more like almost deferential to people that it's just having like a casual acquaintance kind of like, oh, okay, so we're at like a cocktail party. Yeah. And like I just, I'm going to go up and say goodbye of this person because I don't know what I'm going to see them again. But feel free to Irish goodbye me. Like I'm going to

see you again on Monday. You know what I mean? I mean, it's a great point. Last night, I was at, you know, I was at karaoke for a friend's birthday. And I, he was in a middle of a conversation and I actually goodbyed him. His own birthday. Did he say where the fuck did you go? No, he's fine. He was, he was, inundi-rigated.

Right. And then there's also the thing where I sometimes feel like at parties, like, when you start doing goodbyes, then the spotlight's on you. Right. You got to go because you've made, like, I hate when I do that, like, I'll be like, hey, to my wife, like, you want to get out of here or whatever, and then we start. And I start doing the, like, go and do the rounds. And then she's just like, no, I got into another 15-minute conversation with this person.

And I'm either standing by the door or I hate that. Or I've gotten to the end of my last person I'm saying goodbye to, they're like, okay, see ya. And then I linger. I hate it. I hate that. That's why I just leave. Yeah. That's why usually I'm just like, I'm out.

I'll just, you know, pretend I'm going to hit my vape pen on the porch and then I'll just, I'm gone. Yeah. It's always you always do the call. I got to get a call. The thing also about what the karaoke party you're describing is that if you do that, and it's like karaoke parties are usually set up so that everybody's sort of pointed in the same direction, kind of like, then you have to do the fucking like NBA legend checking out of their final game thing, where you like kind of go down the bench and give like high-fives to everybody if you skip somebody.

Are you to see, no, but it's an interesting situation, right? Because like I think the unspoken thing is you are in a position now where people want to say goodbye to you. Me? They want to greet you personally. You're Christopher Ryan. No, that's not. Come on. I think, I'm like pretty good.

But like if it happens naturally, I will often, okay. Right. You say goodbye to the central figure of the evening. If it's somebody's birthday. You have to do that. And I understand. And I failed that. But it was a karaoke.

I think there's a karaoke provision. Right. I think when there is another activity happening, if somebody was playing paintball, if he's rock climbing, if he is in the dunk tank, if he's playing street fighter, you don't go up and be like, I'm out of baby, but I'll see you soon. But if it's just a party, I think you should say goodbye. I try to be like, you know, I try to spread the wealth.

But it's often very like, you know, at the end of evenings, it's like by nature chaotic. Yeah. I don't know. But this is what Kirby's enthusiasm makes a thing about. That's what I love about the show. Let's wrap up. I've been talking. I feel like I've actually put way more oxygen into this story than I thought I would.

But like, I remain fascinated by the Canobi stuff. Yeah, I wonder. I think that I don't obviously know what happened. but it seems like they probably are just unhappy with whatever the story they have at the moment is. We've had like a series of like, first it was like this weird rumor like three weeks ago where like it was one of those really annoying Twitter situations

where like it's trending and you're like, why is this trending? And then everybody in Twitter is like, why is this trending? So you're just like I don't can't find the original source code here. It was like a real interesting like moment in like TV. That was like with Whitlock last way. I'm like why is Whitlock? But it was a weird.

moment in TV Twitter where it was like all these writers had inside information. Yeah. I'm really hoping what I'm hearing isn't true. And then just like, what? What? What happened? Did Baby Yoda break bad? Like what happened?

Clearly like got it from a source that they didn't want to burn. But then like. But they were like, I don't want to be the only person who's not like sort of signaling that I know this. It was just a weird four hours on Twitter for TV Twitter. And so first it was, there was like this weird story a couple weeks ago that was then like somewhat refuted. Right.

Two weeks later, it's like, Kenobi has been put on hold. And then shortly after that, it was like the issue isn't with Deborah Chow or with Yuma Greger. It's in fact these scripts that the guy who wrote Drove, Hosseun Amini wrote, and then there was a story in a variety

or Hollywood reporter that was like, they too closely resemble the storyline of Mandalorian. Right. That it would involve basically Obi-Wan overseeing a young Luke and Leah. Right. and that that was like

close to the Mandalorian and baby Yoda for them. And then after that, like about a couple days later, they sort of doubled down on like, it's just the scripts aren't in place. Although there was also weirdly like they brought up a, like I think a Kathleen Kennedy quote, she was like, scripts are locked,

we're ready to go with this. And then Ewan McGregor came out on a red carpet for somewhere and was just like, no, don't worry about it. We're still going to do it. I think we're going to still hit our release date. It's being blown out of proportion. And it sounds like they're going to bring

Faloni and to write it. Do you care that will probably go through 2020 without a new Star Wars thing that'll just be Mandalorian? I don't necessarily care, but I do kind of see the issue. So the Obi-Wan's history with the Clone Wars kind of like pre-Luke stuff is pretty fleshed out via the Clone Wars animated series. After that, he maroons himself on Tatooine. and looks over Luke in secret.

That's just kind of the only chunk of story that's like untold. So figuring out an original approach that is different enough from the setup of the Mandalorian, which is like the elder, the warrior looking over the younger, force-sensitive child

and keeping them out of danger, that's going to be tricky, although you could, there's a way to do it, I think, where you make it an exploration of like how weird tattooing is in general. Yeah. And these kind of like, it's different from the Mandalorian in the sense that, you know, Mando and Baby Yoder are together.

It would be an interesting setup for Obi-Wan to be like doing all these things, fighting off Darth Mall in the desert, fighting off like all these other threats. Without Luke ever figuring out that there, he has this like grizzled old guardian angel that lives in this hut out in the desert. I mean, presumably there would be an Uncle Owen out there. I guess, is that Edgerton? It is Edgerton in the prequels.

And he doesn't, and then by the time... If Pluice dropped the bag, I'm sure Edgerton would be like happy to come back. Listen, Disney's throwing the bag around. And then by the time you get to a new hope, like, it's clear that Uncle Owen knows about Obi-Wan, like, oh, well, Ben, like, they know about him. So, you know, that's the needle to thread. Like, you can have Luke in it, but he just can't ever figure out that he has this hero that's lurking in the house. Because the whole point of New Hope is he's just this bratty kid who's pretty good at flying. Right.

He can't be like, weird, I can move a fucking rock with my mind. I wonder what that's about. Like, it's got to be, they've got to protect the integrity of, like, when this kid goes to Dagova for the first time, when this kid first hears. the power that's inside of his head. So that is, that, you know, that's like a, it's a, it's definitely threading the needle. That said, Flonie has done it in the past. Clone Wars fills in all the gaps of the prequel movies. Well, specifically the movies, specifically between attack of the clones and Revenge of the Sith.

But it's really the best way to engage with the prequels. And then Rebels tells the story of how the nascent rebellion, came together, tying in all the strands from Rogue One, leading up to a new hope. So he's first- Does Rebels have stuff? Is Cassian in Rebels? Cassian's not, but Saw Guerrera is in it. And Saw Guerrera, like, after Rogue One came out.

So it's Forrest Whitaker actually voicing the character. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it's cool. That's cool. Yeah, I don't really, you know, I think that, like, that idea of a show being about Obi-Wan's time and Tatooine is pretty cool. I think if anything is sort of... I mean, there's lots of things that bug me

over the here's about Star Wars. But part of it is like it's itchy trigger finger to always get away from the setting that it's in. And I think Mandalorian did a pretty good job of having a very consistent look and feel despite the fact that he went to like 10 planets. Yeah.

But in Rogue One even, which is probably like my second or third favorite Star Wars movie, the first hour of that movie, they go to like 15 planets to like find this and get that and do this and meet this person. It would be kind of interesting to have like a... standard. This is where, this is like a samurai movie. This is the town. This is the samurai.

Yeah, I totally agree. And, you know, the other thing is, like, you and McGregor, it's like only, it's not that long. It's like, what? I don't know. I'm getting fuck this up, but it's like 15 years or something. Like, he's been on that planet for not that long. Right. And then by the time you get to a new hope. He's Alec Guinness. He's Alec Guinness. What the fuck happened, man? This dude saw some shit. He's under there, under the twin sons, just aging. That's right. Maybe there's like a night at Moss Isley where it's just like he walks out and he looks like Alex What happened? Yeah. So in that sense, like bad, he obviously has seen some shit and it would be great to find

on what that is. All right. So that looks like it's not going to come until 2021. It doesn't sound like the Cassian show is going to come to 2021. So we'll get Mandalorian. That's okay. That's fine. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me. Binge mode. How many more episodes do you guys have to say? One more. One more. Darth Vader character study. And where's that drop? Have you ever heard of them? Next one. Awesome. All right. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thank you for having.