The Watch - Why ‘The Outsider’ Works Where Other Stephen King Adaptations Fail. Plus: ‘The New Pope,’ ‘Avenue 5,’ and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ | The Watch

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

In its third episode, ‘The Outsider’ has managed to avoid mistakes made by other Stephen King adaptations (6:39) and also be more than a procedural crime drama (21:15). Plus, we break down ‘The New Pope’ (28:03), ‘Avenue 5’ (38:42), and the Season 10 premiere of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ (50:55). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, the new action adventure game from Re spawn entertainment, taking place between Star Wars Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars, a new hope. Players will wield a lightsaber, hone their force powers, an adventure across the galaxy in hopes of rebuilding the Jedi Order. Become a Jedi in Star Wars. Jedi Fallen Order available now on Xbox 1, PS4, and PC rated T for team.

I need sports to have to clear. 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 endorses both John Malkovich and Jude Law for Pope. It's Andy Greenwald! Happy Federal Holiday, happy MLK Day to everyone.

Profiles and Courage right here from you coming in on a Monday, on a Monday morning. Speaking of profiles and courage, can we just take the press boxes corner for a second and discuss... I was wondering if you wanted to do this. I'm so hot about this. I'm fucking steaming, dude. Chris and I, this is the podcast you guys listen to. We, you know, we're generally tepid on many pop cultural hot button issues. But when the New York Times...

Oh, I thought you were talking about Brad and Jen getting back together. Did they? Oh, come on, I don't care about that at all. You want to talk about the former H.R.H. Harry of Sussex? They did an emergency jam session that you should listen to. I'm sure. That's the beauty of a podcast network. We're all connected.

We're all friends. We all got... We have our corners. We've got little corners. What's our corner? Marlowe Stanfield's corner. Always has been. No, I just...

I don't know, Chris. Did you watch the weekly? We're talking about the New York Times' decision to endorse two people for president. But to do it reality show style on a television show, I didn't watch it. And I was, I couldn't, I thought it was a parody. I thought people on Twitter were joking about the worst possible thing that the gray lady could do. Right. And then the joke kept going up to and including a, what if, what if we had two candidates endorsement?

Which, fun fact, not an endorsement. It just isn't how endorsements work. That's what I fundamentally reject. In fact, most contests involve a winner. Also, don't they? Pick aside, cowards. Now, I know that's rich from someone. who put a tie at number three of his best TV shows of the decade list.

That's probably the inspiration. Those guys with the op-ed board were like, look, Greenwald does really change in the way we're thinking about ordering things? I hear Sam S-Mail hitting the steering wheel of his Tesla as he hears this, but I guess you don't have to touch steering wheels of Tesla's. So maybe not. Do you? Yeah, because the robot driving is, they're still in beta.

My friend Eva said that she had an Uber that was a Tesla, and he just ghost drove the whip the whole way. I think, but you know how like that's also, here's the thing that's funny about a lot of the technological innovations that are happening in our society. So eager to hear this. Is that they are essentially just stuff that happened in the 80s with different names? Isn't robot driving really just cruise control? Everyone cruise control is a big deal. Do you ever use cruise control?

Never. Kai, have you ever in your life to use cruise control? I do use it sometimes when I'm driving down the five, but I don't know what it does. How could you do it on the five? There's like an accident every mile and a half. In Kai's defense, she lives 40 miles away. If she didn't answer, maybe she's the one causing all the accidents. Maybe she's on cruise control and producing this pilot, this podcast right now.

There's a button she presses that she's just like, they're just going to go. Is this going to be Kai's new bit where we like loop her into our disgusting conversations about cruise control traffic accidents, and then she just stops talking? It's a strong bit. It's a strong bit. Kai, the people want to know, what's it like driving cruise control in 2020? Once again, I do not know what it does. I could not tell you.

So do you just press the button because you're bored in traffic? Yeah, I'm just like, maybe this is going to like. Save me on some gas? I don't know. Oh, yeah. It just locks your speed at a certain speed, right? You don't go below 55. I think.

Right. Yeah. Well, this has been... It's the car talk. No, seriously, did you actually... So you didn't watch the FX's week, the weekly. No. To see the endorsement of Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar by the New York Times op-ed.

I just can't even... My dander is so up right now. I can't even find my way through it to express myself. I just think that this is what's wrong with everything. and it's making me feel very concerned about the state of the world, that they can't even, it doesn't matter, just choose something. Well, I think that's the thing is that I don't ordinarily, I'm sure that it has some impact.

I'm sure like our parents might pay attention to like, oh, the New York Times have endorsed so-and-so. But it doesn't, I don't feel like have like a huge impact on the race. No. But to make it seem like it does have a huge impact on the race, they did this pageant. And then at the end of the pageant, they were like, but we can't decide.

Well, this is not how pageants work. That's not how any of it works. Yeah. Like, the only purpose, I think, of endorsements. And similarly, if we want to try to put this back in the world of our podcast of top ten lists, or even on some very broad level criticism in general, is to stake out a vision for the world. Take a stand. Make a case for something.

Sure. Obviously, top ten lists are nonsensical and fraudulent always, not fraudulent, but nonsensical and silly and subjective. But the point, the reason we look at them is to see one person attempt to put order onto chaos and make an argument for something. And then to argue over it. And we all accept and embrace that. And that's fine. So to say, we cannot decide between two women who have not close to diametrically opposed opinions about most things.

One woman whose entire platform is, we can do big things. and here's how we will do them and pay for them. And the other woman's whole platform seems to be tisk, tisk. No, we can't do those things. P.S. Mitch McConnell will be nice to me. What's the vision? The vision is salad, my guy. At least be bold.

Like, remember in 2001 when Spin named Your Hard Drive, the album of the year? Oh, yeah. That had bigger balls in the New York Times editorial board. Did you actually watch, so you didn't watch the weekly. Did you watch other TV last night? Unbelievable. Unbelievable getting this from you. Chris, you know.

I do. I've been watching TV. I'm setting it up. And you begin the podcast by saying, did you watch something else? It's a struggle. Well, I got to say. Trying over here.

After almost nine hours of football yesterday, and now it's time to turn over the page to Avenue 5. Yeah. Curb. Did you watch Curb? Didn't watch Curb. Almost had a derailing argument over Curb last night. Tell me all about it.

In my home. Well, I'm not quite sure how this happened, but I have gotten my wife on The Outsider Train, and we've been enjoying watching it together. Okay. That's the show we've been watching together, and that's been great. And so we had said, she had some work to do,

put the kids to bed, we're going to watch the new episode of The Outsider. And I fire up the HBO Go box. And she sees in the corner of her eye, not that Curb is back so much as the window that's a trailer of Curb season 10 or 11 or whatever it is. and that box showcases the, I would only assume, eventual appearance of Jonathan Hamm.

Yes. We are a pro-ham household, you know? Yeah, kosher but ham. I would say, yes, I would say in the same way that when you co-file taxes, all the money is everybody's, I won't say whose percentage is more pro-ham. Right. Let's just say she's the breadwinner. Let's just say she's making the sandwiches. So when presented with the possibility of watching the third episode of a show we are both enjoying or watching a 40-minute season premiere of an improvised comedy that may or may not include an appearance of John Hamm,

she was pro rolling the dice and hoping for Ham. But I said, I don't think he's even in the first episode. That was a trailer. She looked at me silently for five full seconds and said, why wouldn't he be? in the season premiere. You know what I mean? It's like lead with your best. I mean, maybe they're Malcoviching him, you know?

So he wasn't in the... They're teasing him, but they're not putting him in the first episode. Tell me for real. He wasn't in the premiere. He was not in the first episode. No, it featured... That would have really... Richard Lewis. Yeah.

Ted Danson. The gang. Yeah. Leon. J.B. Smooth. Yes. Yeah. Basically the old standby.

I mean, I'm going to watch this. Susie. But I didn't feel... My name Parham was in it. Let me tell you something. She's great. Yeah, she was great. Can I tell you that when I woke up this morning, full of television I had watched, I did not expect to be blindsided with this outside the box thinking that expected me to spend my Sunday watching the daily in Curb Your Enthusiasm, season 19.

The weekly. Whatever. What do you want to start with? So you're caught up with outsider. We should start with the outsider. Okay, let's start up with that. That seems to be the show we're watching right now. Yeah.

And then we will talk Avenue 5. Well, it's an HBO show. We'll talk Avenue 5 and we will also talk the new Pope. Yeah. And I thought that outsider, I just kind of, I had watched ahead on outsider, so I feel like last week I was a little bit like hedging my bets in terms of how I was talking about it. What time is Jason coming in to talk about the show I've also watched? You didn't watch episode two. Oh, so I'm the bad guy.

You also haven't read Patrick Radden keeps to say nothing, have you? No, but he tweeted at you. I know. I know. We move the needle in the publishing industry. So, outsider, let's talk about that because it was the episode three, Dark Uncle was last night. And this is what it was called? Yeah.

It's called Dark Uncle? Yeah. Holy shit. And it saw the arrival of Cynthia Revo. Yes. And her private investigator character, Holly shows up. Holly Gibney. And first of all, as you mentioned last week, it's just such a delight to see the rose gallery of character actors that they assemble interact with each other.

So even the scene when they all get together at the bar. to talk about this. And Cynthia Rivo is breaking down, like, what baseball game either of these two guys went to, which club's game they went to in, like, 1987. And not even that. That's just with Jeremy Bob. And then with the three of them are together. And she basically does Basil Exposition, but spectrumy.

Yeah. This is the thing about this show that I keep coming back to. I'm watching it, and I'm like, this shouldn't work. This shouldn't work. You see the scenes. I mean, this is literally skeptics, believer. explaining mysterious things through just a data dump of exposition. But it's these three actors.

And it's shot beautifully. And it's the dialogue. It's Price's dialogue with really good performances. And so that even if the story is kind of creaking a little bit, it's just so much, it's so enjoyable to watch. I really, I really like this show in a way that is, I want to try to articulate because every week there's moments where I'm like okay, like there's exposition. Well, that's the thing I really

thought you were going to be like, you know what, dude? It's just too dark. Well, but not just the darkness. There's exposition at a topless club. Like there's just all these, there's, you know, there's tracking shots of prisons with glowering men staring each other. If you were like an actor from the south, do you just see Patty Constantine coming in and playing a strip club owner in Georgia and just like,

what do we have to do? Everyone's foreign. Cynthia Rievo's English. Ben Mendelsohn's from Australia, is he? Yes. So, all these things that are ticking boxes that I usually complain about. But it's just, I'm enjoying it so much because of the quality of the work. And, well, two things. Just that just really smart nexus of genres that we talked about from the beginning,

I'm enjoying watching a Richard Price-Copp procedural with a supernatural lurking at the margins. I don't usually watch shows like this. I don't know how many shows are done this way. and it's very entertaining to watch and exciting. I think that shows Supernatural is done this way. Or the Ghost Whisperer? Yeah. The other thing is...

And... I mean, like, right now, I think this is actually a pretty popular genre. I mean, it's show Evil on CBS. I think that's quite well. Oh, I've heard that's good. I don't know if you can speak to... I think you can probably speak to this about as well as I can, but maybe even a little better.

This feels super Stephen King to me. It feels more Stephen King than Richard Price in a way that I don't mind at all. I mean, I've read maybe three Stephen King. Stephen King books and some short stories of my life. But I've read enough to know the way his books feel, and there's moments when the prose can start to stagnate, you know, where he's going off on this tangent about something. There are always characters named Ralph and Glory.

You know, there's always the similar family dynamics that can start to feel stodgy or stale after a while. Yes. But then he hits you with the solar plexus shot, and you read the next page. You know, there is something that is so compellingly readable always about him. him and the way that he builds a world that is so that is almost, you could call it stale sometimes, you could call it familiar, you could call it placid, but then he's always throwing these boulders

into the middle of it in ways that jolt you. And I don't, you know, there have been successful Stephen King adaptations and unsuccessful ones. Sometimes the successful ones are the ones that he himself hated, right, like The Shining. Sure. This feels really a lot like reading a Stephen King book in the best possible way. Well, you almost wonder whether or not it's the product of, and I I have no idea whether, like, how, I don't really know how much participation King had in this production other than a lot of the HBO promo materials that I saw, like, online where it was just like, you know, coming seeing the outsider and why it's important would be very much about, like, King and about capturing the spirit of his work. Yeah. So I almost wonder whether or not, as we come to the sort of end of whatever this cycle is of like Castle Rock and It and Pet Cemetery reboot and all these other Stephen King adaptations, whether or not, like, King, this is his most recent novel, I believe, Outsider is,

is kind of like, oh, I think I know how to calibrate what I'm doing for adaptation a little bit better. He definitely has said that. Because, like, it's fucking 1,500 pages and it's got child orgies. So it's like, it's unfilmable in some ways, yet it was a huge box office success. I wonder whether or not he's actually writing a little bit more into the spin. I don't know. Because I think that there are ways that the more pliable media landscape is more friendly to him,

such as the stand, you know, which was an ABC miniseries that I loved. I don't know if it stands up, but... Well, you know, they're rebooting it, yeah. I mean, Gary Seneas and Molly Ringwald and Parker Lewis was in it and Jamie Sheridan. I mean, it was Rob Lowe. I loved that miniseries.

And then there was, you know, 20 subsequent years of rumors about it being a movie, but that can't be a movie. It never should have been. And now they're making it as a TV show. Same thing with Dark Tower. Which it ought to be. So there's a way where the more pliable media landscape

is better suited to the type of, of stories he wants to tell. But with something like Castle Rock, that feels like the pliable media landscape saying, we're going to wrap our arms around all of this and bend it into a shape that is exciting for us. This feels weirdly, again, I've not read this book, but just for the way it feels, it feels very respectful of the way King writes and why he writes long novels and why he writes novels that have digressive plots or, you know, really try to build a sense of place, all these things

that he does. and it just feels very loyal to it in a way. And so the feeling I'm getting from the show is that same sort of, I shouldn't be reading this just three more chapters that I get from the books. And I admire that. I think it's a really smart collision of talent.

Yeah, I think that there's also, so Jason and I talked last week a little bit because we were talking about Lush Life and a couple of Price's books and how... Oh, you know, I've read those books too. Well, tell me if you agree with this. Do you think that they kind of tend to dissolve at the end? Like, there's not like a hammer hit

at the end of Price's. books. They tend to actually have the mystery gets solved with about a third of the book or a quarter of the book left and then the rest of it is just kind of characters kind of picking up the pieces. That's how Night Of ended, right? Like, it was an exoneration it wasn't justice, it wasn't

oh yeah, like this is so great. Like this guy got out of it. It was like, this guy gets out of jail, his life is utterly destroyed now he's a drug addict and nobody and everybody's lives. The system rolls on. Yes, exactly. I think there's a moment in many writers' careers, successful writers, writers that I admire and love, where their first few books are often this, like, gushing geyser

of personal experience and ambition and hunger and does so many things to say. And then if they're successful enough to make money at it or make a career out of it, often later books become more about the rhythm and the structure. We were talking about a crime writer we love named Alan First, who's basically been writing the same book for 25, 30 years. All we said in World War II in Europe, his first three books are like, four or five hundred pages each. Yeah.

And they're like the entirety, like from 1939 to 1944 or something. And then now he writes books called like, you know, spies of Warsaw and there are 170 pages and there's a spy in Warsaw. And we still read them and love them. Pelicanos is like that too. You and I love his early Nick Stefano's books, which are very personal and raw. And then when he writes books now and I devour them when they come out, the man who went uptown is a really good book that he put out last year.

It's a slice of a moment. And then, you know, you get a sense there'll be another one. And I feel that very much from Price, whose early books, is a book of his I love called Ladies Man. Yeah. It is nothing at all to do with the kind of crime procedures he became known for.

No, it's just like down and out in New York City. Yeah. It's just a dude. Yeah. Probably a little bit like him at that time. And then, you know, a book like Clockers are certainly Lush Life. Lush Life I really enjoyed for the structure and the world painting.

But I didn't, I don't think I loved it ultimately as much as you did because I felt I wasn't moved by what was going on inside the beautiful box he had built. Yeah, and it was interesting because he wrote this book, The Whites, recently. That was supposed to be his kind of a sellout move. It's pseudonymous. He was going to be under a different name.

He was going to adopt a pen name and write one of these books, like, basically every 18 months or something. And I thought that that was, you know, he basically went back on what he wanted to do, put his name on it, and expanded the novel to make it much more about this sort of like this, this aging cop who's like kind of like hit this point in his life and is trying to solve this case. That being said, all this stuff about Price and the way his books kind of dissolve, I feel like it kind of almost perfectly like winds up matching up with King. And the way that most Stephen King books and most Stephen King movies and TV shows are about the same thing, which is about you have something in the world or in people's lives that is inexplicable.

And he ventures to explain it with something even more. inexplicable, which is just this kind of formless evil that then winds up taking the shape of a clown or a car or a dog. Something familiar, awesome. Yes, exactly. And I think that they've really found an incredible kind of synergy with their sensibilities here where nobody writes about the ideas of crime and punishment the way Price does. But he's using this cool little trick where it's like, well, what if this inexplicable thing that two people, that a person's doppelganger, this double, could have committed a crime and that all the evidence pointed towards this person being guilty?

And they swore up and down, it's not me, it's not me, I wasn't there. There's even video evidence that I wasn't there. There's even eyewitness accounts that I wasn't there. What if that person was right? And how do you go about getting into the mythology and getting into the supernatural elements of this? while still grounding it in a pretty relatable, realistic crime story. Yeah, and, you know, a lot of the pieces at play here are,

there's nothing, nothing is being invented here, you know, whether it's, you know, what you're talking about in the way Stephen King tells stories, or the fact that now three episodes in, we have a unlikely partnership between a skeptic and a believer who have barely shared screen together. but tropes like that work. And there's something particularly gratifying and fun

about the investment of a show like this that allowed the opening chapters to be about one thing. And then now, you know, a movie version of this, for example, or a more traditional TV show version of this, you get Holly and Ralph together within the first 20 minutes because that's the engine that fuels the show. The engine that fuels this show is the mystery of the unexplainable. And the characters and the moments are certain,

uncomfortably around that black hole in a way that is very compelling and allows for some interesting emotional storytelling that I didn't expect. That's the other thing about the show is that it will have moments. And I got to give credit to Andrew Bernstein who directed this episode following Bateman, a veteran TV director, who did a beautiful job. Yeah. Really beautiful job. Like one, that's just great tracking shots and inserts and framing and all the things that I pay attention to now because I realize how much time they shot. Lord. Yeah. And the moment. Like a scene between Ralph's wife, played by Mayor Winningham, and Glory, Terry Maitland's widow, played by Julianne Nicholson.

Thank you, Julianne. Yeah, she's incredible. I love. Yeah. Just one of those actors who is just always great and never used enough. I wish more TV shows did this where they were able to more subtly shift the POV characters like this, where, you know, you start this show. And I think I had in the back of my mind and, like, can they even really be in all

Eight episodes of this. I was very confused. I'm like, we know that this guy is clearly a workaholic who loves doing this and taking advantage of every opportunity he didn't have during his 20-year post-Hogan family hiatus from the A-list. But I was like, how he just does this and Ozark? And it was so right there that this was one of those. Right.

Right. But they did that. It's not sensationalistic the way they do that. I mean, it really does make sense that they're whipping up this frenzy around the Terry Maitland character, that it feels almost unsustainable that they're. can get him through this process. You know what I mean? In some ways, his death winds up being, you know, part of this incredible, like, greater than justice scales thing that's happening.

They need to take him out of this equation so that people are forced to ask more questions in some ways. Yeah, I will say that the only time the show has really truly frustrated to me was like, they didn't communicate that he was dead. You know what I mean? Like there's a show and tell thing that I know is at the heart of any show like this where it's like we don't want to over explain things. We don't want to hold the audience's hand. We are intentionally not going to be like a broadcast network procedural. Right.

But there were a couple moments where it's just like, so he got shot and we think he's the star of the show. And then a lot of other stuff happens. And then you kind of hear, you see it's clearly like an ADR line that they added later of the doctor off camera saying to, to glory, so sorry for your loss. So it wasn't the fun kind of. of, did that just happen? It was like, no, no, wait, pause. Did that just happen? So you actually think you even seen, like, the seams of, like, where they, like,

maybe Terry makes it into episode three? No, not that. So much as that I think that the artistic intention was like, I'm not going to explain to you why this character was shot and what this means for the show. Yeah. I'm not even going to make it clear. Yes. You know, but obviously, by the end of that episode, it was, it was perfectly clear.

What else do you have about outside? But just to say that, like, the scene between the two, it's not just shifting the perspective that I appreciated about that scene between the two. wives. It allowed the space for the show to also be about quote unquote real grief, which is something that is always motivated king. And I think motivates all good storytelling, particularly storytelling that deals with the supernatural or super heroic or whatever, the grounding of things that are real or feel real. And the line, I was really just, you know, there's a moment where we learned that during his period of grief, Ralph would get in fights at bars just to feel something. And I'm like,

okay, that's a choice that many people make on TV. shows. But then there's the other moment when the two wives get together and she says, how do you do it? And Mayor Winningham's character says, it's impossible. And the show cuts on that. And that's a beautiful scene. Yeah. Also, I think that you and I have talked before about the trope of the bad news relay as popularized by Broad Church where there's literally like, you know, people running down a road to tell the family that. You hear the whales emerge from each year. Yeah. The way the outsider is depicting grief and trauma is I think respectfully distant.

It doesn't feel like a chore to watch this show. It doesn't feel like we're like over dwelling on these moments of incredible heartbreak for these characters in a way that I feel like is sustainable. Like you can't do that. You can't put people through this sort of extraordinary, like emotional state just to be like, but it's the devil.

No, there's a perpetual gloom and fog on the show that maybe we can credit to the season when they filmed it, but that's how grief or mystery exists in this world. Yeah. And it's something that everyone is unfortunately attuned to. And then the only other thing to say about the episode is, I love Cynthia Revo. I think she's one of the most exciting actors in the world.

I love her on the show, you know, playing a part that could easily fall into caricature. And not caricature 10 years ago. but caricature more recently where people who are potentially on the spectrum or special or whatever the language of the particular program is they have their quirks but they also

see things more clearly than everyone else. We've seen this. I think it also, it's entirely how you perform the role. Yes. But it's also very important that the characters surrounding Holly do not treat her like an alien. They're like... She's a bit off, but

I think they're like very respectful of the fact that she gets her work done and that she's incredible at what she does. And so far there has not been, at least in three, there has not been like a moment where you're like, the point of this scene is to show how Holly can't interact with other people and how other people find her weird. Yeah, she's tough and out there in the world. Which is a lot of those kinds of shows where it's just like, you know, if you've got these sort of weird detective, that tends to happen.

Two other points to make. for as much as you could feel Bateman and the other people behind the camera holding back on things like telling you what happened sometimes. They didn't hold back on lines that really make it for me. Like when she calls Ralph and says, I just, sometimes I like to talk, hear the voice of someone who's on my side. Yeah. It's a beautiful line. Great line. Wonderful idea. Grounds the audience, grounds the show. And it's really terrific.

Last point, I hate scary things. We'll never watch a scary thing. No, I liked it. Okay. I was going to say that the calibration here is really good. because so far anyway, you know, it's enough cop show, it's enough supernatural, it's that there's enough, I guess, I guess I'm two out of three ain't bad in terms of saying restraint. There's restraint in this as well. So that it leaves me with that kind of like gasping

happy, this is fun to be a little bit juiced, you know what I mean? As opposed to this is relentlessly trying to torment me the feeling I get when I read the Wikipedia pages of Ariester films that I will never see. Okay. Pro, all in on the show. What do you want to do next? You want to do New Pope or Avenue 5? Let's talk briefly about New Pope, because I feel like there's only, we've only seen...

One episode without any sort of, we've barely seen Jude Law, and we have not met John Malkovich's character yet, but we know obviously it's coming. Sylvie Orlando. Yeah. Dining out. This is the Sylvia Orlando. I thought that, I wanted to ask you this, because I know that you were a huge fan of the Young Pope.

I think I liked it quite a bit, but was not maybe. is in love with it as you were. And now we have this new sort of iteration of it. And at one point in the first episode of the new Pope, which is largely about the papal conclave to elect

a successor to Pius who is in a coma. Obviously, spoilers. I mean, if you haven't watched the new Pope, you're probably bored by this anyway. It's about electing a papal successor to Pius. And they're kind of meeting in a

in a bamboo forest because, of course, all the Cardinals, and they're sort of chichatting about who they're going to elect. And Silvio, Silvio Orlando's character, Voiello, gives this speech about how he, it's his turn to be Pope.

He thinks it's his turn. He's the Secretary of State of the Vatican. And he's like, what about me? I would be the normal pope. I would be the Pope of normalcy. I would be an ordinary Pope. It gives this really interesting talk about basically being,

permissive and fair, but more or less like invisible and anonymous and just kind of unintrusive, which I thought it was an interesting line, not to take it back to what we were talking about in the beginning of this podcast, but especially earlier in the presidential campaign season, I feel like there was some desire expressed on the part of some people for just a return to normalcy, you know?

Yes. And so I thought it was an interesting thing to articulate, but you could also read as a kind of a a mission safer for why they make the show the way they do, because it's anything but normal. It's every scene, every choice, every character is extra. Extra. It's got a wrinkle.

It's got a flourish. It's got flair. Do you see where I'm going with this? I do. I just got word that the New York Times has endorsed both Cardinal Voyello and Jude Law's character to be Pope. Oh, good. Because we could be radical or we could be safe. Sure.

NBD. As long as we got a Pope, that's cool. What's the difference? I like your point because it helps frame the conversation that's worth having about the show, which is it's so extra. It's just gushing, juicy, over-the-top aesthetic choices and performances and ideas that you can, but you can also, because of its abundance, you can't, you can pull. you can pull interesting thematic ideas out of it. And one of the ideas that what appears to be this season, maybe the show in general,

which is the status quo isn't working for people anymore. People are bored. People are apathetic. People need extremity in order to feel things, to experience things. And for people who watch the first season, the young pope, I mean, And one of the surprises of it, for people who were only seen the marketing, like, oh, there's a young, sexy Jude Law Pope, was that he was incredibly doctrinaire and wildly reactionary and conservative and wanted to make the church violent isn't the word, but make the church.

He wanted fanatics. They mentioned that in the recap. And I grabbed that obviously from the sort of few seconds that they ran of last season on the young pope. But they talk about, I want fanatics because fanaticism is. is love, you know, and God is love. And he goes through this whole thing. Yes. And that is actually a pretty damning analysis of the world, you know, where we're not going to

view it too far into any kind of politics, but I've heard from friends who work in politics that, you know, time, that he spent time with Trump voters that the only other person they like is Bernie. And the reason being clearly not ideology. It's because they're both angry old men from outside of the system who are yelling about the system and want to change the system. So what people want is extremity. Sure.

Right? That is actually a motivating factor in maybe all of our choices and all of our lives right now. And this guy from within this institution, on the new pope, this guy who's like essentially an avatar of the institution of the Catholic Church is like, I want to put everything back inside of the painted lines. And they have. have this, you know, essentially

what happens is then there's like this conclave. It looks like Voiello's doppelganger is going to win this. By the way, just say that again. Yeah, they wind up throwing all the votes behind a guy Villetti. Viglietti, yeah. Tomaso, who was in the first season. Right, who

is the confessor of the Holy See, right? It was quite meek. And they think, oh, this guy will just be able to control him. And it turns out he has quite I guess radical, but like radical ideas about what the papacy and what the church should be. As soon as he feels the power, there's a moment when a bird steals his speech that Poyello is put in front of him.

And he starts saying, we're going to throw open all the doors and let in all refugees. We're going to liquidate the church's financial holdings and start from the place of where Peter started the church. And it's going to be all about poverty. Defrocking Cardinals. Because he knows all these secrets of sexual abuse and everything else that was happening and financial mismanagement. and the episode ends with him having a heart attack, obviously. It was poised. And we're back sort of where we started,

where it's about, well, who's going to be the next pope. And I realize we're sort of doing this backwards, but if you haven't watched the young pope, please watch the young pope. Yeah. It is a visionary thing that, you know, that is, again, it's what we can see on television these days. But just a sterling example of it.

It's one of the great filmmakers in the world, I think, Pellasor and T. who's filmed the Great Beauty is one of the best of the century, I think. I'm a total maximalist. And someone who, like with David Lynch and other filmmakers who have deigned to set foot in television, don't really care about your conventions. They want to tell their type of story. They're just going to use more space to do it in.

And so the young pope was just thrilling and radical and sexy and weird, so weird. Diane Keaton shooting jumpers while kangaroos left. around the Holy See, there didn't need to be more. I think it's worth saying. Yeah. It ended perfectly and was great. In television's New Age of Abundance, if Sky and HBO and Ray or whatever network conglomerate wanted to throw more money, which, by the way, it has to be a considerable amount

of money for the way this show looks and continues to look. Yeah. Did you ever look into how it's produced? Do they just recreate the Vatican on soundstages? I have no idea. I'm fascinated. I mean, they do. film in Vatican City. They filmed in the basilica of St. Peter. They shoot in Milan. They shoot in Venice. They shoot in Rome, actually in St. Peter's Square. So they are...

Throwing around some Lira. Yeah. They're thrown around Lira, buddy. I mean, there's an opening sequence of the season that made me, like the first season did, made me happier than almost anything else I could have seen on my screen where nuns are dancing to techno music. And they film that in a monastery in Venice. I don't know what the negotiations are like. I don't know what the line producer says in order to gain access, but he gains access. Anyway, my attitude about this so far is there were moments in the season premiere where, again, they're talking about a new pope. They introduce a new pope. It's not John Malkovich. Malcovic shows up at the very last frames of the episode, and clearly it's going to make a big entrance in episode two, tonight's episode. There were moments when I was fighting that maybe it's critic brain, maybe it's too much TV brain. I was like, we didn't need this, but I didn't pay for it. What a gift. You know, I love the faces. I love the way. way it's filmed. I love the possibility that any moment could go from an interesting performed debate about socioeconomics and religion in the 21st century to a dance party. Right. I wish there was more of that DNA and other storytelling. So yeah, obviously I'm all the

way on board here, but there was an elegance to the first season because it was specifically about one thing. There was an urgency to telling the Lenny Bellardo story. And there was a a feeling of like world creation and also like it was an argument. There was an argument being made with that with that season and you know it remains to be seen what they need to add to that.

I find it quite pleasant to watch and also relatively intellectually stimulating. You know like when you're watching it and you're just kind of like oh yeah like it's just so pretty to look at and these Kubrickian steady cam shots of of the conclave meeting. But then like actually like the things that they're talking about are quite interesting, and it's written quite well,

and I'm rather captivated by it. Like you said, like I guess this kind of dovetails quite nicely into Avenue 5, which is, I think, a question that I hate in criticism. Yeah. That I think we are going to be unavoidably asking more and more and more is, did this need to exist? And that's how I kind of feel a little bit about Avenue 5.

I have another question. Okay. How? What do you mean? Just how? How did this happen? Avenue 5. About Avenue 5.

One thing I want to put out there for the new Pope before we move on is I do think there's a piece of this show or this project and appreciation for it that is unreachable to me and to you because, you know, Italy is such a Catholic country. And the Pope is right there. And the church is right there in people's lives and the opulence and the splendor. And this country, this rich country barricaded inside of another country that has its own economic. economic turmoil. It's deeply Italian, or at least deeply Catholic, and I'm neither of those things. And I'm fascinated by what motivated Sorrentino, you know, to make this story. Sure. And to keep poking at it as well as how it is received there. So, I don't know, any watch listeners who, you know, take Holy Sacrament and live in Laguria, you know,

please, please call in on the international line. We'll hit Avenue 5 before we get out of here. Okay. So this, what, like, okay. So, okay. So, It's a real boom time at HBO over here because we've got this sort of prestige crime drama, Supernatural with Stephen King and Richard Price and Jason Beaman, Ben Inelson. Then there's the new Pope, curb, and Avenue 5 also premiered last night. So it's sort of like there's four shows going at once, which is not typical for HBO. This is the new era. Let's take a step back too and say, this is a really strong on paper, certainly, and somewhat in practice,

argument for the way HBO has been run and stability, because this moment of its schedule, you know, they program Sundays and a little bit on Mondays, is in some ways more instructive to the future of the network and then when Game of Thrones is going great guns. This is, as you just said, the kind of argument that I imagine Casey Blois and his team have presented to their new bosses slash colleagues at AT&T, which is we may be still be smaller in volume, and obviously that's ramping up with HBO. Max, but we can still control the narrative of television with our tried and true template of having a very high quality Sunday night show.

Sunday night drama that people want to watch with a mix of, and then in comedy shows that are a mix of old favorites like curb. And then with Avenue 5, something with it just an outrageous pedigree that other services still can't match. Let's talk about the pedigree. So the pedigree is Armando Yanucci, one of the, one of the, you know, one of the the great British screenwriters of our time. With his OG Veep Thickavit team for the most part, right?

Tony Roach, Simon Blackwell, this is the guy who worked on the Thick of it and other great British comedies of the 90s and 2000s, created Veep. Did the first three seasons? Three or four. Peerless seasons, won Emmys. And then also in very British style. They'd won him admiration, if not some, I imagine, frustration. And HBO said, I've said everything I have to say.

And then, as we've talked about on the podcast before, one of the more remarkable mid-season transformation saves by handing it to David Mandel, and they continue to win Emmys, despite being basically a totally different show for the second half of its run. A version of the show that I think people will probably remember as the version of the show, honestly, the second half.

Yeah, I wanted to talk about that because I went back. So keep going. So he, but obviously he walks away with all this goodwill and all this talent and then says, you know, there's something I've got an idea, there's something else I'd like to do. I'd like to make a comedy set in space that I guess has to do with

another ensemble cast, but has to do with class, I guess, and all the other issues that... Come with space travel? I guess, some of the same things that have motivated him in the past.

Hugh Lorry, who is tremendously talented, tremendously successful and tremendously picky, does not have to be on a TV show if he doesn't want to, agrees to take the lead in this. And then, you know,

he can obviously have his pick of other comedic actors and picks great ones like Zach Woods from Silicon Valley. Susie Nakamura, yeah. Jessica St. Clair is on the show. And then someone like Josh Gad, who is incredibly successful in a number of fields, including his brilliant work in the best film of 2019, Frozen 2. I can't believe how it's just like the lamestream Daddington fake news media is just here now. Listen, we'll have a watchables podcast for that movie.

Anyway, this all seems great. And I can't even imagine how quickly they greenlit this. I was very excited for the show. It was weirdly quiet leading up to it? Isn't every show weirdly quiet leading up to it now, the exception of like, unless it's a morning show or something like that? Like, doesn't it feel like that... What's the last show that came out that you were like,

the drums are banging loudly for this shit? Briar Patch on USA, premiering February 6th. You set me up. I'm going to spike the ball. You got it, crotch cry. Well, like, just not much buzz. Not many posters. There's just, it was a weird feeling because you'd think...

So now you are, like, big poster. Now you're, like, noticing posters. Well, as the beneficiary of big poster. A poster. Yeah. I'm like, that's wild. Kai saw a poster? When they choose to flip the switch.

Pat Muldownie saw a poster? I saw a bunch of them. Yeah, but you're driving around Los Angeles with binoculars looking for the posters. That's true. If someone... Kaya's just on cruise control on the five like hoping nothing happens 15 feet in front of her.

Yeah, Kaya, you had more time to take a photo than I did. I'm driving two children not on cruise control. Anyway, this is one of the most confounding pilots I can remember seeing. And I want to like couch this in constructive language because we rarely see things like this. Like here's my first feeling about this. So many talented people, so much good intentions.

Maybe it improves. I'm not sure if I'm going to stick around for it. Really, my feeling when I saw this was, I was surprised they aired it. I was surprised they aired it because not just... Because it didn't feel done. We did not feel done or did it feel like the recipe was wrong? It felt like the recipe was wrong.

The jokes weren't there. I couldn't understand what the show was going to be going forward, but it also had a feeling that it had been worked on extensively to address those things. And, you know, there's a certain amount of surgery where is the patient still worth saving if you have to amputate all the limbs and stick the limbs on in other places. That was my feeling from watching it. So I was wrapped when I was watching it, but I just was really surprised. Yeah.

So, you know, obviously this show concerns a, what is it, like a consumer? space travel. Yeah, like a luxury cruise. It's basically a cruise in space in the whatever distant future or not so distant future. There are allusions to sort of an environmental

disaster on Earth, making it more preferable for people to go on vacation in space. Hugh Lorry plays this captain who has a kind of outsized reputation for saving another ship, yeah, at one point. And it's got all the

makings of a show that you should want to spend a lot of time in the world. It's got great improvisatory actors. It's got incredible creative pedigree. You just feel like this is just like a really fun place to put a show. What a smart idea. And then you get into it. And there were jokes that I laughed at, for sure.

You know, there were moments that I was like, oh, yeah, like, that was like a funny exchange. Like, Zach Woods' scenes, I thought were pretty amusing. Was it the one where they say the person who died was Mo? Because it rhymes with Joe? I was just slack-jawed. Because then he was like, did you mean Joe? It was wild.

That was a joke on a show. You were left at the end just sort of being like, I don't know what this is for. I don't know why they made this show. And so I was curious about this. So I went into Google and I typed Google. Why did you make Avenue 5?

Big Google joke in the show. Yeah. But I went to go look at some Yanucci interviews. Here's something he said to salon.com. How did you get this number? He said, with this Avenue 5, with this I wanted something

that was more to do with people actually having time to examine everything again, every value they have. This is prompted by the sense the madness of crowds and the group think, you know, like when somebody says something inappropriate on Twitter and they're hounded,

that sense that if you do just one thing wrong, thousands of people will be coming for you. I liked that. And there's this air of uncertainty and everyone is shouting at everyone else, and yet there's this great big apocalypse coming that only a little girl of 16 could go, excuse me, but shouldn't you all be looking that way?

I knew that there wasn't one particular existing setting for that, so I thought, well, why don't we construct a setting? And so we set it in the future, we set it in space, and we give ourselves this flying pressure cooker. Well, that all sounds great. That makes sense. Good. But I don't really understand why someone who has made

such scathing, amazing, grounded satirical portrayals of British government, American government, Russian government, the death of Stalin, which was one of my favorite movies of the year came out, needs that. I guess I understand intellectually why he would look for a different kind of challenge

and not say, I'm going to set a show in a media network, or I'm going to set a show in a local government somewhere. I understand that, but at the same time, I felt like this felt like a huge miscalculation. I will give it one more out here, though. I went back and watched the VIP pilot. Yeah.

As you alluded to, much different show than the one it ended up being. Also, not that funny. It was a little stiff at first. Yes. And it was very, very, like, it was closer to the thick of it in that it was, they didn't have a Malcolm character in VEP yet, but all of the characters that we know and love, Mike, Gary, all the characters essentially, even Selena, are turned down so quiet

compared to where they wound up. But I remember when Veep debuted just being like, huh, okay. So I'm hoping that happens with Avenue 5. A huh, okay. But I don't know that there is a ha okay to have because I actually don't really want to watch like a kind of mildly funny Star Trek.

Also, it could well be that the ingredients just don't mesh. Right. You know, I think that there's no question that he's had a lot of experience, putting, mixing some ingredients and then letting them bloom or ferment, or if you want to use a yeast metaphor, rise. Like, the chemistry between those incredible performers on VEP did not happen in the first episode or even necessarily the first season. You know, there is like a, there's a sports analogy to be made about chemistry and about

comfort level, especially with a show that depends on the interactions of an ensemble. They have to learn to play well together. So it's unfair to expect a show like this to do that right out of the gate. What's questionable is the recipe itself, I think, this time. Yes. But I got to say, you know, when I say I was just sort of my jaw dropped about it, I love a world where someone who's really talented can take a big swing and maybe miss. We, because the stakes are so high and the competition is so fierce and the budgets are so ridiculous,

we rarely see things in this state. Sure. You rarely see things that are quite literally half-baked and then have to watch the cook try and salvage it in front of you. Right. That stuff doesn't usually get on the air. It usually doesn't get on the air. That's why I have pilots. Yeah.

But it's kind of exciting and reassuring. I mean, you can't always bat a thousand. Yeah. So will this turn into something worthwhile? I mean, that would be great. But I wonder. And I wonder, this is, I would be more interested in, like, the oral history of this. Yes.

But not in a mean-spirited way. No, I think because it's like when you see, the more television you watch, the more volume that it is, the more interested, I think it's natural to become in process. And natural it is to become more interested in. How did this, how did this get paid to borrow a podcast? And is it something where the process of working with HBO who are famously, you know, very creative-friendly and very, involved. Did the interactions with the network improve it to this point? Did they give smart notes that were ignored? Did they give bad notes that

changed it? Changed it negatively? All of those things. We'll never really find any of that out, probably. But, boy, I mean, this was, of all the things we've talked about, this was the most interesting thing of the week for me, but not necessarily the most entertaining. The Watch podcast endorses We endorse three shows We endorse outsider

We endorse only John Hamm episodes Of Curb Your Enthusiasm There is actually I really need you to watch Curb Because I have a question for you You remember what I think it was last season The Foist Yes yes the Jimmy Kimmel

Foist's assistant Yes I think about that all the time There's another like social observation That happens in the genre of the voice I don't want to spoil it for you Because I know Curb is largely about plot for you It is But I wanted to ask you

if you've ever done something like this, but I want to wait. I got to say, like, I am excited to watch the new curb, and I saw, you know, critics that I love, like Alan Steppenwall saying something. It's not untrue, basically being like it didn't even have its fastball in its last, quote-unquote, season 10 years ago before it came back last year. What do you think is like peak curb? Early. Like first few seasons?

First few seasons was just, like, unquestionably the best comedy on television. But it's still, when it hits, It's still hits. I love watching people say fuck you to him. Oh, it's amazing. But also, like, at the end there, there was Palestinian chicken. There was the Bill Buckner episode, which is legendary. But all that being said, like, I've thought about foist.

Foist. It's a real thing. Yeah. And I think I got foisted on during my Briar Patrick series. So can I tell you what happens in this episode since we're talking about it? You don't ask me. You ask the listeners. Okay.

I'm sure people watch Curb. In this episode of Curb, there's this scene at a party. There's a party at Susie's house. and Larry sees Phil Rosenthal, co-creator of everybody who loves Raymond. And he waves at him, and he just turns to Jeff Garland. He's just like, I, Jesus Christ, I don't want to talk to him. And he's like, I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to do the big goodbye. And the big goodbye is where you avoid someone, the whole party. And then at the very end when you're leaving, you go, oh, I can't believe I didn't get a chance to talk to you. I got to get out of here, but goodbye. And you do the big goodbye where, like, that person feels like they got something from you. but in fact we're completely, you avoided them the whole night.

I think I did that on Saturday. I was with you on Saturday. What are you talking about? Did I say goodbye to you? Yeah, yeah, you did. You said goodbye. Real big. But we spent a lot of time together on Saturday night.

True. I feel seen by this. This is a pro move. Yes. And I respect it. So I was curious whether or not watch listeners have their version of a big goodbye, whether there's like tricks that they pull at parties.

I personally sometimes, I have done, I'm not too big to me, I've done the bathroom exit, which is, you know, you're, maybe you're like kind of pressed up against a wall or whatever, but you're just like kind of caught at a certain kind of situation at a party. And you're just like, I'm going to, I just got to run to the bathroom. And, you know, you can sort of suggest maybe you'll be back. Yeah. But, you know, lots of stuff happens between the bathroom and getting back.

Well, the party is the richest text for Larry David because the unspoken social contract of that moment when you and the person you've been talking to for 10 plus minutes, maybe even 20 minutes, both realize that this has run its course. Yes. But who is going to just be like, I'm going over there now? Sometimes, and I get upset when people are like, I'm just going to go talk to this person. I'm just like, that's not. I've been fucking waiting here for this conversation to end.

You don't get to fucking decide that. It's like the scene at the end of the outsider last night. You don't get to come into my cell. I will choose when I'm exiting my cell slash this realm of living people. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, you kind of have to, if no external circumstance has presented itself, the arrival of someone else, the host being nearby, some sort of minor tremor. The unveiling of a birthday cake.

Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Because then you're so, like, you're like, wow, we really gave it all when singing happy birthday so I can go over here. Or the finishing of a drink. That's, that's, you know. That's how people get drunk. It's just like, oh. Well, I guess, can I get you a refill?

I drained this nagroni. So that is the word. This is why Kerb does so well, because there are these little moments. We all know, and there's no disrespect. Like, if I've spoken to you for 20 minutes at a party, it's probably 20 minutes longer than we would have spoken this month. Yes. And I think we both enjoyed it. Kaya.

Yes. When you are at a party, you're in a conversation. Yeah. Do you wait for the other person to end it, or do you just go for as long as, like, will you spend a party just talking to one person? No, I do the drink move. Okay. I say, oh, I'm going to go get another drink. But when you say I'm going to go get another drink, do you say, do you need something or I'll be right back?

No. I'm going to go get a drink. But these are like swank Redondo Beach parties, so we don't get invited to. It's kind of like, she's on a yacht somewhere. What I picture is the episode of Mad Men. It's Kaya standing on a yacht speculating about Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach. But you're putting on... You're thinking more succession.

Oh, yeah. What were you saying? I was thinking like when Don Draper goes to California and disappears into Palm Springs in the desert. And they're just like all these beautiful people. Kyle's rewatching Mad Men, right? We're wearing like, you know, pastels. And apparently just ghosting each other in mid-conversation without a care of the world. She just is like, it's time for a new drink.

But she doesn't give you the false hope that she's coming back. Kaya, do you do that even if you have a full drink in your hand? Like, do you just stare into someone's eyes and you're like, well, I guess I need another one of these? That's why you got to drink beer because nobody can really tell. No, I wish I was that brave. Okay. Boy. Can you, next time that happens if I'm ever.

to party with Kaya and she's like, well, I got to get another drink and she still has like half a drink. I'm going to. I'm going to be like, sure. Sure, you do, Kaya. How many parties are you guys going to? I don't think I've ever actually bid it. I mean, maybe a Christmas party a year or two ago, but I've never... I mean, I also would like to think I'm a sensitive enough person.

I'm not going to, like, manipulate Kaya's time on night. You know what I mean? Just like, we see each other alive. She has to listen to us talk plenty. Kyle wants to mingle. It's okay. She has to circulate. The one time I saw Kaya at a party, I only saw her at the end when she said goodbye to me. Oh, I have. I've seen you all night.

I gotta go. Yeah, that's it. That was what it was. The big goodbye by Kaya McMullen. Greenwald, so great to talk to you today. What a pleasure. We'll be back on Thursday. Yeah.

Sure. Sure. Thanks for listening to The Watch, and we'll talk to you Thursday. Great job. Happy MLK Day for Anskees. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan, and I am an editor at The Ringer.com. Joining me in the studio, he endorsed both John.

Malcovich and Jude Law for Pope. It's Andy Greenwald. Why make one selection when you can make two? Andy, we're trying something a little bit different today.