The Watch - You Don’t Need to Worry About Netflix, They’re Doing Just Fine. Plus: The ‘Devs’ Season Finale. | The Watch

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

Netflix added 15.8 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, showing in no small way that it is still the dominant streaming service (2:07). We wonder whether services like HBO Max and NBC's Peacock even stand a chance of catching up (20:09). Plus, we break down the ‘Devs’ season finale and reflect on the season as a whole (37:35). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line. It's not TV. It's Andy Greenwald. Buddy, this is a new frontier for us. We've been doing podcasts since before they were a thing, really. I mean, it's like, it's been eight years. And I think this is the first time I've ever done a podcast, Al Fresco. Well, you've done a lot of podcasts from parking lots. As anybody who joined us throughout the Breyer Pratch production production. process knows, you're no stranger to outdoor podcasting. Rarely have you ever done backyard podcasting. Whether or not it's going to be like backyard wrestling, I'm very interested to find out. I would like to preface it by saying I feel like one of the great privileged people in the world who even have a backyard to be podcasting from. I'm just saying my primary concern at this moment ranges, well, my concerns at the moment range from getting not Zoom bombed, IRL bombed by children.

and or finding out that my neighbor just behind me has not finished devs and thus ruining the experience. We'll let your neighbor catch up a little bit because what we're going to do, we will talk about the devs finale and we'll talk about the season of devs in a bit. But we have so much news. And it's often been said about this podcast. Some people come for our friendship, but most people come for the news, you know?

At this point, that's what I come for too. I'm coming straight Mickey Barbes with you, right? We're just getting right. We're getting to the story behind the story. So there's a couple of different TV news headlines I want to hit with you today. Okay. It's been a busy week in the industry. Why don't we start with Netflix, which among, maybe standing alone in the American economy

as one of the only companies is doing quite well in this first quarter, aside from Amazon. Netflix released some of their Q1 numbers this week. I highly recommend you check out. Lucas Shaw is reporting on this all. In Bloomberg, Lucas has been on the podcast a couple of times, and he's always been a great buddy for the pod. He reported on it, and basically Netflix added 15 million subscribers in Q1, which smashed Wall Street projections for what they were going to do. They added it. A couple million, several million in the United States and North America and Canada, etc., and a lot internationally. And obviously, you know, it was to be expected that with people having

so much more time on their hands and being stuck home and not being able to go to movie theaters or sporting events or concerts or, you know, the mall or anything else that there would be an uptick in usage. I don't know that we necessarily understood just the uptick in new users that we would see for Netflix. And the good news sort of for Netflix, at least, and thank God somebody's got good news. The good news didn't stop there because they also announced, I thought somewhat coyly, but they were just like, you need not worry about the pipeline. for Netflix, that we work out very far in advance that we have stuff in the cupboard already and that we do not foresee a disruption to our pipeline, at least for this year and going into

2021. Now, the reason why I said Coily is that there are some shows that were in production currently that were projected to air this year. Netflix always kind of, there's an understanding of when a show will come out, but they don't really announce hard release dates until they really feel like it. So something like Stranger Things, which was shooting, in Albuquerque, among other places, I think had a pause in their production. So they are not shooting it. I would have to imagine

that Stranger Things season four will have a hard time meeting. It's unofficial release date of, I think it was Christmas this year. Other than that, the crown is in the bag. They got that. They seem like they have a very healthy lineup of shows coming out,

both in the near term and the long term. I guess I don't really have a question per se, Andy, as much as, are you surprised by how well they're doing right now? Are you surprised that they borrowed another billion for more production? And are you surprised that they have coffers that deep that they can just ride this out? Well, I think there's two ways to look at it. And one of the ways is how nimble Netflix can be as a company.

And the other way is to look at how deeply embedded and established they've become as a brand. To speak to the former, I think it's worth noting that unlike even relatively forward things, entities like HBO, which is now transitioning to HBO Max, when you've broken the wheel, you aren't beholden to any aspect of the spokes. I don't know if I buy that analogy I just made, but I'm going to try and sell it. And what I mean is Netflix can just give us things when they feel like it and they set the parameters for the delivery system. And what I mean is for a season of television, we still have certain expectations.

And so the thing that's going to happen to Billions, for example, which is on track to premiere its new season, seven episodes ago up, yeah. Will be jarring in that. You'll make it seven weeks, and then there'll be some words on the screen saying, hey guys,

Jim and Bob Billions, I think those are the characters' names, we'll be back to finish up their adventures, TBD, right? that doesn't fully compute with viewers or with the people who are invested in Showtime, TBS, which owns Showtime as a company, right? That's sort of disruptive and strange. For Netflix to say, we're going to do half seasons. Here's three episodes. Yep. And then we'll put the other three up later. For whatever reason, it doesn't feel as

existentially odd, right? It's just sort of they've always given us things in surprising ways and have kind of kept people on their toes about when seasons drop, what seasons mean when, you know, when, when they were doing talk shows, this idea of a talk show appearing at a certain time on your servers or a week's worth of shows. So I think in that sense, Netflix is just already built into people's brains as a pipeline and stuff just appears there. And so I think that helps it. The other thing in terms of being nimble is that Netflix is very, very much an international company and an international brand. And should the, you know, should, I mean, I can't speak to global trends in virology at the moment. I wish that I could. But if, for example, places like Iceland and

South Korea, potentially even New Zealand, remain well ahead of the curve, let alone having flattened the curve, and they're able to open up their film production there, right. Those are places where Netflix is in business. And of course, many other companies are as well. But that's, that's a place where they have a track record of making things. So does that mean they're going to suddenly... An unexpected pivot to Germany for Stranger Things Season 4. Exactly. So that's the next thing.

Is something like that going to happen? Well, we're not there yet. But the other thing that Netflix can do and has had a lot of success doing is saying, well, you've enjoyed X, Y, and Z movies, American movies. Let's look at your suggested for you. Oh, there's money heist. That's not American, but it fits into the sensibilities you've established yourself as having. And so we're going to sort of feed this to you.

And they can continue to upstream international content that way in a way that I think users will be surprisingly comfortable with. So in that way, being nimble has really helped them. I think the flip side of that, and this is something I think you and I discounted when we've been talking. And we're not, we weren't alone in this. I think this is an industry-wide conversation, one that shouldn't be ignored completely, but I think one that needs to be looked at in a slightly different light, which is the Netflix's and trouble narrative. and the Netflix's in trouble narrative

was predicated on all of the new big Thor's Hammer swinging competitors entering the marketplace for streaming services Disney,

Apple, Warner, Universal, etc. But they were also based on this idea that Netflix as a company had some

curious accounting. I don't mean like their books are cooked. I mean, they're doing what Amazon did for years. They're operating on a lot of debt.

Yeah. They're operating on an enormous amount of debt. and continuing to have value by showing growth to shareholders. And I remember, you know, in one of my previous discussions with Lucas, we actually talked about, you know, the American consumer specifically, their ability to keep up with the expanded amount of choice,

the dent in their wallet that all these streaming services were going to cause. At what point, it was like as expensive to be subscribed to five or six different streaming services as it would be to just have a cable account. And he was like, I can't really see a problem unless, there is a economic recession. And it seems like Netflix, it seems like Netflix might be a little bit recession proof. Yes. And I think one of the reasons why is,

you know a company I don't, you know a brand I don't worry about, Kleenex. You know a brand I don't worry about Q-tips. I don't worry about products whose brand name has become the default word for an entire line of things. Yes. No one says, can I have that Scott branded tissue paper? You say, can I have a Kleenex? In the same way in the South, I think people generally ask for Coke, even if it's Pepsi or whatever, right? So Netflix's Head Start has really, really cemented itself as what streaming entertainment means for a generation, if not more than one generation, in both directions, younger people than what I might be thinking of and older people as well. So, you kind of maybe, maybe you can't put a price tag on that.

Because they have an ability to set the conversation and set the narrative that is unparalleled, whether it's Ozark coming back or Tiger King taking over the internet, if not the world. Drop in comedy specials. Look at their top ten. They have reality shows like too hot to handle in there. They've got Tiger King and Ozark, quote unquote, originals like you said. And by some accounts, Ozark is as popular as Tiger King in some metrics. In the Ryan household.

The Ryan household. They're also still doing that Netflix thing, which is reviving shows or amplifying shows that had a recent shelf life. They did it with you, where they actually just straight up now make you. But now if you look at the top 10, Waco is in there. The Taylor Kitch, starring as David Koresh in that mini-series. Is that going to get renewed?

It's not going to get renewed. I mean, unless they want to just see what's up with Janet Reno. but that show was like fine. That was an okay miniseries that came out a year or so ago. And now is in the top 10 of Netflix somehow. The ease of use, the user interface, the ubiquity, the volume of the library, the depth of the library, and the fact that you can easily turn on that homepage

and have that be your interface with TV, full stop. Reality, movies, comedy, drama, whatever you want from television. You can find there easily at a touchscreen. And while we've watched Apple and while we've watched, we'll soon see HBO Max, while we've seen Quibi, all these places try to launch their initiatives. Netflix's head start seems more impressive now than ever. Yeah, I agree. And I would even take it further and say it's not necessarily a gateway to television.

It's a gateway to culture at this point. And I know this is one of the most inebriating squares on your The Watch. drinking game board that you guys have at home. But Chris and I love the monoculture when we talked about certain TV shows. And maybe we've been looking at it wrong. Maybe instead of looking for the next Game of Thrones, really what has become the TV monoculture is Netflix itself. Yeah. In that generally a large swath of people you know, whether they are friends or family or co-workers or your friendly neighborhood podcast hosts, the shows that they are talking about on a given week tend to be Netflix shows. People just interact with it the way they used to interact with

TV and just flip around. And so the same way it's been behavior towards their own patterns. Like I do think we, you know, a couple of months ago, we were deep in conversations about how refreshing it was to have a couple of shows on Sundays like outsider that we were like, oh, it's so dope. And we get to come in. Maybe it is, is it's just easier to do this fucking podcast when that's happening. Yes. Oh, that's absolutely the case. You know what I mean? And I'm not, One of the things that always comes up when we do these streaming worst conversations is that you kind of get in and outside of the bubble. And we can be very, very inside our baseball about both our viewing habits and also the industry itself. But I think that for most of the people

in this country, they're very happy to have the full season of Ozark and not have to wait two and a half months for it to be over. And that's just, that's kind of, you kind of have to kiss the ring at a certain point. The hardest thing that I experienced as a TV creator is, is how do you get your thing seen? Just how do you get it seen? Yeah. Because, you know, if people actually watch it, they can make a determination

and you either have a fan or you don't, and that's fair play. Netflix does not seem to have that problem. I'm not saying everything that's on Netflix is a hit, far from it. But the sampling alone on Netflix, the comfort people feel to just let it auto play or just play for five minutes,

10 minutes, is unparalleled. And I don't have access to the data. In fact, very few people do, if anyone. I don't know if that's the same on competitors like Hulu or Amazon Prime. It could be, as you were saying, the interface has a lot to do with it. But, you know, when they announce things that 84 million households worldwide have, quote, sampled the Spencer movie with Mark Wahlberg, I absolutely believe it. That doesn't mean 84 million people liked it.

It doesn't mean 84 million people watched it. I would love to know. Actually, in a different way, I want to know using you as a sample size, how many people checked out on Orthodox? Because that's a show that if it was on a terrestrial or linear, you know, like a cable network, I think it would have been interesting to know just whether or not more people gave unorthodox a chance because it was quote unquote buried on Netflix versus it was being pushed forward by a smaller network. A million percent, I think that's accurate because the thing that unorthodox reveals, and I'll just play. plug it again here. I loved it. I think people should check it out. I've been recommending it left and right both because it's excellent. It's surprising.

It's also four parts, which makes it very digestible. But the swath of people in my life who know about it and have seen it or were intrigued by it or have thought about watching it is very high. And it cuts across

all age groups, people in their 20s that I know and people in their 60s and 70s who I've spoken to. And that speaks to Netflix's market penetration and dominance, right? So it's pretty interesting to think about that that is potentially insurmountable. The other piece of it, and this helps us open up the conversation to bring in HBO Max, which some more details about it have come out this week and a launch date of May 27th was announced. Today, we're recording this on Thursday, I think, some of the ads

It is definitely Thursday. Yeah. I mean, sure. and the ad, which is actually quite clever, and I think the people who thought of it probably took themselves out back when you could take yourselves out for things and had a cocktail and deserved it. But it was like, it's like from Bada to Bing to Bang, right? And there's a picture of Tony Soprano, of Chandler from Friends and of a nerd man from Big Bang.

Jim Parsons. Yeah, Sheldon. And old Sheldon. You're such a fucking elite, man. Old Sheldon. I watch Young Sheldon. That's great. You're a young Sheldon. You're trying to go in order. That is 100% of Brian Brown.

You're going better call Saul to Breaking Bad there. Brian Brown from the Breyer Patchroom, that is 100% his joke. All credit to him. People are losing their mind about this. I mean, in as much as people have headspace to lose their mind about something so trivial. But I think what people are reacting to is something that we talked about initially, which is the most valuable thing about HBO. is the sanctity of its brand, right? It is a imprimatur of quality. Even if you don't like a show on HBO, you give it some respect,

you give it more time than maybe it deserves, as was the case with me in Westworld. You pay attention to it. It influences and is in the conversation. As soon as you open the gates and start mixing things up, it is potentially diluted. And I think people are saying,

Tony, like, I like friends. I like Sopranos, but I don't want friends in my Sopranos. Those are completely different parts of my brain, and they don't make sense together. And that, honestly, I think, is a roadblock to people understanding HBO Max, let alone signing up for it. And Netflix, again, to its credit, and it could just be because it was a new entity, it could just be its relentlessness, or it just had the jump. people are very comfortable understanding that episodes of Barbie's Dreamhouse, a cartoon that it gets a lot of burn in my house, is on Netflix.

And so is the Vietnam War. And so is right. And given the background of what we're seeing from you here today in your video, I think you need to watch the Vietnam War. Yeah, because I'm watching Barbie's Dreamhouse. But also nailed it and ugly delicious and also Russian doll. or whatever. You know, in Russian doll being the example, and we could pull out others, of a show that, like, or Ozark, it could theoretically be on an HBO. So we're comfortable getting all of our TV from Netflix. They had a jump on that, too. The thing about HBO Max is it's great to have all this stuff, but what is the singular drive or passion to get you there other than, oh, where's my, where are my friends reruns slash station 11 sounds like it could be cool when they finish production on it. So the one thing that I noticed in that trailer that they released this week,

that I think is unremarked upon so far. And it's kind of interesting because you'd think with the amount of nostalgia and going back and watching old movies, and especially when we do rewatchable, it's like, I'm always like, okay, I've got to go find Ferris Bueller. I'm not really sure where that. The HBO Max movie vault is going to be pretty fucking good. Now, a lot of people might already have a copy of The Matrix,

or they might already have a copy of Wonder Woman or what have you. but let's not underestimate that. That's a nice little sweetener because that's something that Netflix I don't think has anymore. A lot of those movies have come off that service, which is to say nothing of some of the staple sort of syndication shows

that they would run like the office and things like that. But HBO Max actually, the person who jumped out at me at that trailer, it wasn't Anna Kendrick and the new show that they were offering and it wasn't Issa Ray and insecure, or the dragon, Game of Thrones. It was Neo from the Matrix. And it was Tim Robbins and Shawshank Redemption, and it was Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper and Starsborn because I was like, oh yeah, you know what?

There might be enough movies on this thing to make the price of it worth it. What's interesting about that, and I don't disagree with you, is the curation and the presentation. Because there's always been two kinds of TV watching. I'm sure there are many more. But passive and active. And for us, in our graying generation, passive would be. flipping the channels and Ferris Bueller's Day off is on. Stop it or stopping, yeah, on Seinfeld or whatever. And you park, you park it.

Similarly, passive is, for us in the old days, it would be like turning on the Fox affiliate and there's the hour block of Seinfeld or going back further cheers or whatever or even the way people watch Jeopardy and still do. That kind of watching still exists. There's also the much more active one where you are deep diving and searching.

And, you know, even as a, side note to this conversation, one of the nice things, you know, there's really been only two nice things about this awful time in American history. Obviously, Netflix's earnings call. What a Bafo experience for all of us. Two, my wife and I are finally taking advantage of our Criterion Collection subscription and enjoying watching some classic movies. I can tell by your shirt.

We've been expanding. That's just for you. I don't even know if anyone else is ever going to see it. That's just for the fans. But like last night, we watched in the heat of the night, which is just one of those classic films that had fallen through... It's a fun date-night movie. It's a masterpiece, of course.

But I had never seen it. And, you know, I just sort of thought that I had and I hadn't, and then you watch it. But we did the thing that we used to make fun of not having time to do, which is we took 15 minutes and scrolled through a bunch of stuff and our own list and blah, blah, blah, right? And so what's interesting about these new services is whether they will... find a way to, I don't know the business speak for this, incentivize, monetize, prioritize, that type of viewing. Because Netflix is, and it's worked for them, is all in on the frothiest, busiest top, right? Like, that's where the action is on Netflix. And obviously you can sink down

further and find gems and whatever, but especially with their top 10 and with their enormous expenditure on new stuff, that's kind of what their brand is mutating. into. This is where it's happening right now. Peacock, which is the NBC Universal Comcast streamer, which sort of soft launched for people who have

like really high level Comcast accounts, yeah. Yes. From what I understand, has a quote unquote channel on it that's showing stuff like TV used to do. Right. And I kind of wonder if that is a

smart play for these more legacy services. Will HBO Max have a way not just to say, here's all the stuff we have, which is and always has been Amazon's approach to curating its entire business. You want ink jets for your printer? We got that, but we also have the third season of Mrs. Maisel.

Like, whatever, it's cool. We got all of it. But for HBO Max, I think, obviously, a lot of its money is going to be made from, here's all your HBO stuff, here's friends. Like, that's a nice backbone. But knowing how and when to surface, like, remember the Matrix? Here you go.

Right. Classic, you guys do classic movie night? Do you do... Putting it in front of you... Is there like a tab in the front page that you're just like all of the jams? Like, will they bring in the TCM, the Turner Classic Movies library in some capacity, which they had talked about? What is the least offensive version of nudging you into autoplay that they can do? Because I do think that people generally don't sit down.

to watch the types of movies that we're talking lovingly about. What they do is, oh, well, that'll be nice. Or, oh, I forgot that. You know what I mean? And I know you and I talk about missing that kind of TV interaction. No, you know, it's funny that we're even having this conversation, though, because one of the things that's obviously been happening on the flip side of this economic story is that there's just been a huge hit to the media.

And there's been a huge hit to people who write about movies and people who, you know, film comment stopping its print edition, from film comment stopping its print edition to tons of movie theaters, small rep houses, art houses, independent theaters that were showing stuff going under. And it's always a dangerous business to rely on business to do your editorial curation. I mean, like, it gets murky, is all I'm saying. And, you know, I think you can rely, you can want that to happen, but I don't know that we'll, I wonder whether or not future generations that are primarily experiencing these movies through services like this will have the same experience maybe that even we did with magazines or books or movie theaters or video stores that were

kind of independent of converting subscriptions saying to you, hey, like, you might want to check this movie out if you liked this movie. I didn't expect to go down this road, but I think it's one worth going down, especially at this moment in history, where we have seen people take to Zoom or social media and say, like, let's do a live watch of this thing that I made a long time ago, or let's revisit this. or let's experience this together. Because that editorial, curatorial thing,

I mean, first and foremost, you and I believe that newspapers and magazines and independent media voices should be supported. They should be saved. People should pay money to them. Like, that is paramount. But it's an interesting thing to see, like, how these larger companies,

because if you put, if HBO Max or Warner, like, starts an editorial department and says, like, we're going to hire your favorite film writers to gush about stuff we have on our site, that doesn't seem like, other than the people who will get checks for a while, that doesn't seem like a winning strategy. What are the other potential versions of that? Is it sort of as

soft, as you were saying, here's the date night collection that they do themselves? Is it, and Criterion is also, is a special kind of brand and a special thing and really worth the yearly subscription, I got to say again. Well, just even the act of being in the Criterion collection is itself a piece of curation. Being in the HBO Max collection is not necessarily that. But something that, true, but something the Criterion does really, well and it's it's small but you know to they have a bunch of people including two friends of the pod me who created derrami and his wonderful novelist alan coming who was on prior patch and i guess a couple other things like spy kids or whatever but they have their own you know my me at the movies

kind of thing right where they they got interviewed and they suggest things and then there are the five or six movies that they were talking about and you can kind of enjoy that experience and they also just do wonderful you know noir from the 40s musicals from the 70s or whatever where they group things in a different way and for these library heavy entities of which Netflix is not anymore, as you said, like they're losing a lot of it.

That is a smart play, although I don't know if that is the Joe Popcorn on Main Street play or is that just the sort of like, there are people like perhaps like Lucas Shaw who could speak to this more eloquently, but for us, for me it's just, it's interesting. I don't have any answers. Yeah, I guess what I'm really trying to get at

And this goes, you know, all of the caveats about who owns the ringer now aside. Like, I think about this a lot when I'm engaging with Spotify as like a music service because it's a lot of what I do is search based. A lot of what I do is typing in the name of a band that I want to listen to rather than the band being in front of me. Now, that's just my personal experience. I know that I know of other people who are like, I go to the new release page and I'd give everything a listen or I, you know, I go to these different playlists like rap caviar or indigo and I check stuff out. And I do that too. But I go to the new release page. But I go to the new release page. And I'd give a lot of what I do is

I am the pursuant of whatever the art is I want to ingest. And I think that that is basically what's going to happen with a lot of these services. When you go to Netflix, you have the homepage, but you can type in like a movie and see what the recommended if you liked this movie comes up is, but

for the most part, Netflix is Netflix. You're not like going there to really watch Michael Clayton and then 10 movies like Michael Clayton. So I'll be very curious to know what happens to the art of discovery and the art of, I don't know the art of discovery, but what happens to discovery

and what happens to how you form your taste if this is the way that you find the pop culture you're ingesting. Yeah, and also then to bring it full circle, which of these services rises to the top, which make themselves essential? And if this kind of curatorial engagement becomes an important lever in their pathway to success. Because I think that the thesis of what this conversation has been is

don't look past Netflix. I think that especially, and this is something I don't think we've quite said explicitly in this conversation, we'd said it a few weeks ago. As people's, this was always going to reach a tipping point in terms of the finances of it for the consumer, but as we enter a very painful time globally economically, I think it becomes a lot more cutthroat what is worth spending money on in this moment for your family

when you don't have as much money as you did a month before or six months before. Yeah, and can you even be one of these services? I'm talking about Quibi in particular in this case without spending a ton of money. I mean, a shit ton of money and racking up like a, huge bill for that, just that launch, you know, and Kobe didn't have a library so they had a bunch of shows and albeit they're shorter, but you've already seen some executives leaving and revamping their marketing strategy and changing it from being mobile only. Now you can watch it on

other devices or your TV. I don't know. It's such a hard thing to do. I think the thing that is in HBO Max's favor, all respect to the Queen Anna Kendrick and the other original programming they're doing, the thing that's in HBO Max's favor is that HBO is a brand that has 30, 40 years now evidence to operate from that it is a brand people will pay money for it. Yeah, they make conversation pieces. But people have paid for it. You know, even as it, and they've continued to pay for it, even during cord cutting era, I don't know the numbers. Like, who's HBO now versus who's still getting it through their Xfinity or whatever else they have. But people have paid for it. And as long as they keep a relatively high level of quality, people will continue to pay for it.

And the fact that they get everything else now for the same price might keep them paying for it. I think that's not wrong. And what that means for something like Peacock, you know, and again, I didn't caveat it. But like, obviously, I am in business with the Comcast, NBC, Shine Heartbreak. The big bird, man. You love it. Family. Beautiful plumage on the peacock.

It'll be really interesting to see. I think a soft launch is really good for them, especially now in a time of uncertainty. It was launching primarily to have the Olympics as part of it. That's not happening. So as awful and potentially devastating as that is, that gives them an even longer on-ramp to say, okay, now we're really here. Because right now they're kind of sneaking in the back door for cable subscribers, and then what will it be?

We will see. But Netflix is... Netflix is King Kong right now. One thing we haven't talked about in a while is the pluse, because the pluce doesn't really have a lot of jams for the older than 13 crowd after you get through Mandalorian. And that seems to be by intention. Like everything that was developed for it, but trended older, like high fidelity got out of there. Yeah. Except now they got our girl Leslie Headland making a Star Wars show. That's cool. I mean, it's exciting. I love Leslie. This was announced this week.

Yeah, Leslie Headlin, who did Russian doll with Natasha Leon and was obviously a show that Andy and I adored and she also did Bachelorette and directed episodes of Terriers and, you know, as she was on the writing staff. On the writing staff. That was her first job, baby writer on Terriers. Well, she's going to Star Wars. She has apparently inked a deal with Lucasfilm to make plot points are under wraps, but what is rumored to be a female centric Star Wars story, obviously that would be for

Disney Plus. We haven't talked about Star Wars in a while, but obviously like the Cassie and Andor show, is still being developed. Diego Luna has spoken very highly of that experience about going back to that character. And there have been comparisons made between

the Cassie and Andor show and Better Call Saul in terms of like we know where that character is going so the joy is and how they're going to tell this story and I'm personally very interested in watching that. I was also very interested in watching the Obi-Wan Kenobi show,

but that had some hurdles and some speed bumps as a lot of Star Wars stuff does. I guess my question to you is can someone as iconoclastic as Leslie exist inside of the Lucas film Star Wars universe? We're going to find out. I can't speak in too many particulars about this, but I do know that things that you and I have talked about on this podcast, as, you know, can, now that the Skywalker saga is over,

can Star Wars become not a genre, but an entire, literally a universe, meaning can you tell all different kinds of stories within this very popular IP? Can the idea of Star Wars function as a cross-genre Trojan horse to tell detective stories, romantic stories, procedural stories even?

Can it, especially as a TV franchise, bend itself to suit the more idiosyncratic visions of story, can the story bend itself to suit the idiosyncratic visions of storytellers? And that was obviously the big collision in the film franchise between, you know, past and present and future and between sort of, you know, able stewards like JJ Abrams and people who were being a little more radical and they're thinking like Ryan Johnson. Blah, blah, blah. These are conversations we've had a lot and we'll continue to have.

I can tell you that those are the same conversations. that are happening inside of Lucasfilm. And that those are the conversations that are happening internally within the people who work there from Kathy Kennedy on down, but also with the people that they bring in to talk about what would you do with Star Wars?

And the people that are working there are very, very, very, appear, at least in my interactions and experiences with people I know who have been there, quite self-reflective. Yeah. And looking towards those conversations. Like this is a chance to turn the page.

this is it. This is our chance to do it. And we better take some big swing. So they're taking big meetings. They're talking big stuff. It's cool that the canary in this coal mine for them might be Leslie. She's ready for it. She's tough as hell. She's smarter than hell. And she's a really good writer and director and just filmmaker. And so she can take it. I think she can take the pressure. I think she can take the hits and she can take the skepticism. Someone was going to have to be. the first one. This doesn't mean the show's even going to be made. We don't know what the show's going to be. We don't know when shows will get made again. But absolutely, whether there's a pandemic or not, there had to have been an internal conversation of all the people we've met with and maybe we've gotten close to the finish line with or maybe we've even signed deals with and we don't know about it yet. Who's getting announced first? You know? Right. There was, there's politics to that. And I think they made a good choice, both in working with Leslie, because I'd love to see what she comes up with, whether they're spaceships in it or not. But also, there's politics to do that. But also, there's politics.

also in that she is, I think, pretty uniquely equipped to handle the slings and arrows of the internet and everything else that goes along with it. Yeah, I do too. I think she'll have a lot of goodwill going towards this project in general. Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the season that we just saw of devs. Hey, what's up, everybody? I'm Jamel Hill. And I'm Van Late. We're proud to introduce our new podcast, The Wire way down in a hole. We're going to recap, break down, and analyze every episode of the iconic HBO hit series, The Wire, starting for, from the beginning with season one, first episodes hit you on April 15th.

Now, every podcast episode will include recap, signature moments, foreshadowing, key character deep dives, little known facts, and also awards such as we love this show, but the Stringer Bell Fuck Boy Award, my personal favorite, who won the episode and more. So subscribe to The Wire,

way down in a hole on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, and we'll see you in West Baltimore on April 15th. All right, we're back. We missed talking about devs on Monday because we were too busy losing our minds about Better Call Saul.

And I wanted to just, you know, like we've had like some, I think mixed feelings about devs is an accurate way to put it. I think we're very, very high on it in the beginning. Alternated here and there. I think our opinions differed on certain episodes.

Came back around a little bit later in the season. I thought seven was especially strong. if I'm remembering it correctly. But, you know, I wanted to get your feelings about where you felt like the thing ended. I kind of feel like it ended where a lot of sci-fi does, where the explanations and the answers are a lot more pedestrian than maybe the questions.

But I also thought that this episode featured some of the most exquisite filmmaking you will see on any screen this year. And for that, I think it needs to be saluted for all the issues that I'm, I've had with the show in various ways. My admiration for its, the way it looked and sounded and felt never wavered. Yeah, that's where I wanted to start too. I just all told. And yeah, we dipped a little bit in the middle as I think the show did. But I think all told, just as a luxurious

filmmaking experience and something kind of fun and surprising and disturbing to lose yourself in and to talk about this was really up there. And I think that this was without question of success, just as project as something for FX to take a swing on. I continue to think about it. I really, really enjoyed it. And I realize I'm hearing myself like that there's a butt coming. I'm not sure that there is other than to say, I mean, look, Alex Garland did a great long interview with Alan Seppenwall afterwards and I think people should read it. And he's basically like, this is the best thing I've ever done. And I'm more proud of this than anything else I've ever done. And I love that. I love the confidence. I love the swagger. And I love knowing that because this was a TV show where he was

completely empowered, which wasn't necessarily the case. We don't know what went down behind the scenes on annihilation, but it seems like there was some bumps along the way, that this probably was the purest experience for him in terms of getting what he wanted in his head onto the page and then onto the screen. NFX has a long history of being very filmmaker-friendly, if not even sometimes to a fault. So that in and of itself is cool. This is that pure, raw, undiluted British flake or whatever that Alex Garland fans have been have been waiting for. So I do think then, though, it's worth kind of unpacking on a more granular and plot level what it was that we got, you know, and how we felt about it.

Because let's start, let's go to a specific place. And I just want to ask you about it. Because it's been a week, I'm sort of jogging my memory as we as we discuss it. But the episode, I got a lot of quickfire challenges kind of banging around in my mind right now so I may not remember every detail. Well, oh, I thought you meant you were going to make me answer to them, but you were speaking literally about quickfire challenges from multiple seasons and multiple timelines of Top Chef

you are holding inside of your brain box. Forest and Amaya of Top Chef right now. I can't wait to talk about that. I guess what I mean is the episode takes us on this track of Lily fighting and then giving into Forrest's understanding and, well, beyond understanding, bedrock belief in determinism, right? That there is no free will.

And she seems to finally buckle under that. And from the, you know, of a matter of the time that she sees the film of her doing the thing that she does DeForest to doing it or almost doing it, minutes pass, right? And then suddenly she's a believer. Then she shows free will. And this is the moment that broke the machine, right? And broke the gun. Yeah. And broke the computer and broke force ideas of certainty about what was possible. And then it all kind of happens anyway. And I don't know, and I'm asking you both as you and also as the deep, deep Jacques Cousteau of Reddit that you've become, what are we to make of this? I don't have a glib answer or a hot take as to what the show

was saying about free will or inevitability of fate in that moment. It seemed cool, and then it kind of like the show wanted to say what it wanted to say anyway. There's been a conversation that you and I have had over the course of this year, especially as it relates to outsider. And I think we've brought in a couple of other crime shows in the proceedings about where you put the audience in terms of what they know versus what the characters on the show know. And I think Fennessee and a couple of other people in our Slack and our TV Slack were talking about this a couple

weeks ago and I thought it was really insightful about the whole Lilly problem. And having Lily, we get to go on Lily's journey but also see Katie and Forrest and know already what it is Lily is trying to discover. Even if the Katie Forest plan starts out as breadcrumbs and you only get it from conversations that they're having with one another and with Kenton,

we know that there is this larger conspiracy and even beyond that conspiracy, a larger idea at play about how Lily is being used as a pawn in this giant game and that the end of that game is trying to get Forrest back to his daughter. His daughter.

Just quick sidebar. He never wants to see the wife. The wife, that's, That's an interesting one. Do we ever talk about this? He's like, I got to recreate digital heaven so I can hang out in a field with my daughter. The wife, you know, she doesn't make the upload. It's okay.

Can you imagine if he ever came clean to her? And he's like, you won't believe the length that I went to be here with you. And she's like, what do you mean? And he's like, I, you know, I lived the miserable life of a monk for decades, building the most complicated computer of all time. And then I sacrificed myself. and I experienced the horror of death multiple times and walked into it willingly all so I could see our beloved daughter Amaya again.

And she's like, cool. It's like, well, you're a bonus. So did you buy three seats for that plane? Or kind of like, do I get a window here or what? Or even if she was like, during that time when you were living the life of a, you know, a self-punishing, self-denying monk, you didn't even seek the company of anyone else?

It's like, there's this girl, Katie. You know, things are. how weird. We met at the cafeteria. I mean, look. I guess my thing was just basically like this had a profound impact on the way I think I processed and then understood the finale, which was that the finale should have been the deep download. The finale should have been like you've been searching this entire time. You've been feeling around in the dark for the light switch.

Here we go. The light is on. This is what devs is. Now, I think it would have made a much more frustrating experience. If the entire show up until that point had been literally saying, what is devs? What did Sergei see on that screen that broke him? I was happy to have more of an ensemble story with Stewart and everybody else.

But I think in terms of the tension, it really had a negative impact on it. I agree. And I think what I was going to interject to say was just one of the downsides of a complete autort vision of something is that you're only going to be shown what interests the author. And everything else just simply isn't interesting. And if you are ever interested in the other stuff, you're kind of shit out of luck. And so that's what we got. And we sort of have to deal with that as it is, not as it as it might have been. But I think what you're speaking to is absolutely right, because I think it's, you know, it's fundamental. It's like drama 101 or even more remedial than that, which is

that what do your characters want? And we had two protagonists on the show, essentially. It was more or less a two-hander, although it shifted and wax and waned at times. But if it's the Forrest and Lilly show, what Forrest wants is absolutely crystal clear to us early on, and then he gets it. And that's his arc.

And I guess we learn the cost of it to some degree to him, but he's never really, except for the one moment, when he watches Lily throw the gun, his absolute certainty is never once shaken and he is ultimately rewarded for it. The enduring criticism that I feel about the show or just questioning is whatever Lily wanted and who Lily was.

I mean, the show did just essentially to me have a Lilly problem or 50% of its story. What did she want? I guess she wanted to know what Sergey wanted. I guess she wanted justice for Jamie but beyond that, the show made very, very little effort to do anything more for her other than to have characters talk about how amazing and inspiring she was. There was a moment, I think, in episode one, where we saw her at work and we learned that

maybe she was good at work too or had a point of view at work. But beyond that, she was to me... She never really brings her work into play. She's a blank slate. She's a cipher. What is her worldview? What has shaped her worldview? What makes her passionate about it?

How does she feel about corporate culture? culture or Silicon Valley culture or her life or that her mother lives in China. We saw that she was a little bit unreliable, I guess, or maybe made bad choices in her personal and romantic life. That's all backfilled, right? Because up to the moment when she finds that he's a spy, Sergey seems like a great choice for her. And she left Jamie because she's an autonomous human being who should be in love with who she wants

to be in love with. And then when she revisits them in the Sim, Sergey's kind of a jerk. when he's pushed on the secret Russian malware in his computer. And St. Jamie has a backpack full of lemons and is just ready to take her back in his arms. He's just ready to garnish it up. He's ready to muddle. So that felt a little bit...

Are we being plot dorks? Ready to muddle. Are we being plot dorks? Like, wouldn't Sam S-Mail say, you guys are getting lost in the wrong sauce? This is a show to be hit over the head with. This is a show to turn off the lights, put it on the biggest screen you can find,

put the wireless headphones on, and get your brain blown out by it. Yes, and nothing will make Sam happier than you representing his world view, except I think he stopped listening to us around the time he went on to Big Picture for the first time. But we're not salty about that.

But yes, but yes and no. I mean, I think that, I agree with you. I think that ultimately, I think that's what I was trying to say and maybe in an overly wordy way, which is I was down with it. I was down with the devs experience. I'm glad I took the ride.

But when you get down into the weeds where maybe you should never go with a show like this, those parts of it just, I couldn't quite let them go. Because I guess being greedy, I wanted it to be a colossal head trip, but I also wanted it to linger in the heart a little bit more than it did.

Yeah. So the plot dork in me is left wondering why Stewart did what he did, how he felt about it, how much he had watched ahead and what it meant, what Katie was going to do with this thing. And then ultimately, ultimately, like, what kind of, if devs is the most powerful computer ever designed, what does the backup disc for devs look like? Because if you're going to build something like this, building it on a fault line in northern California. Yeah. And making it susceptible to earthquakes and fires and all the other... You're floating elevator falls and the whole thing is just fucking kapit. All the other natural wonders that we were blessed with out here.

It's super dope. Yeah. That felt pretty wild. But then I guess, you know, this is when it gets you. Like, I guess if someone ever unplugged devs... Who would know? They wouldn't know. Yeah, right.

The other thing, now that I'm remembering that I was really intrigued by at the end of the episode was when Lily goes to Forest and they connect and they talk about their wild thing that happened when they both died, he's like the multiverse is real. Shout out to Dr. Strange. And we're the lucky ones because we're here in heaven. And that creates in the viewer's mind that thing that always makes people interested in the multiverse,

which is at the moment of her death and the moment of the reboot, if there's machines inside of machines, how many alternate lilies woke up into some version of hell? And what would that look like? And what would that mean? And what is their obligation to any of that? I don't know. And that's definitely not eight episodes of TV.

You can't fit that kind of question into eight episodes of a TV show. Yeah, I think the point is to make you ask. Do you have any thoughts on the relationship between this show and Ex Machina once we found out that it was actually called Deus? By the way, just so you know, when Forrest was like, no, it's Roman, I was like, the show is called D-E-5S? Me too. Is it Delaware 5th? I thought that too.

I thought that too. I was like, what? We had Super Bowl brain in that moment. You and me are fucking idiots, man. Like, I don't think we're not like smart enough for this stuff. I thought that was a cool connection. I love it when work talks to each other, like works within an artist. portfolio speaks to one another.

I didn't really, I had not prepared for that, though. I'm not for this podcast, but I mean, in my life, I wasn't like, oh, wait, what was Oscar Isaac trying to do? Can I just say, in the pantheon of know you're pronouncing it wrong, head exploding emoji moments, this is up there. I bet there are others that people can suggest to us on Twitter,

but the place that I went to, and I know you're going to leave me alone on Nerd Island here, because those days of thumbing through Chris Claremont graphic, you know, Chris Claremont X-Men collections in Vermont are long ago and in your rearview mirror. But did you ever read the comic book series Weapon X? The great artist Barry Windsor Smith did. It was like the long hoped for Wolverine origin story.

No, I don't think I did. It was basically like Wolverine the most popular character in comics in the 80s and 90s, but no one knew like, why did he get his metal claws and blah, blah, blah, and how old is he? And so Marvel was like, oh, it's always a mystery. And then eventually they, of course, filled in all the origin of it. But the idea is that he was experimented on, you know, in a lab. And some of that was in the X-Men 2.

And he, in his name as the experiment was Weapon X, right? And then when Grant Morrison did his absolutely mind-bending and to my mind, like, absolutely, like, that was just it, essential X-Men run at the turn of the century. Sounds crazy to say that. He was like, no, no, it was Weapon 10. Oh, what is smart ass. There were nine weapons before him. And so it backfilled all this stuff and blew your mind because it was just one of those things.

And it's one of my favorite things in storytelling. And actually, Jonathan Hickman is doing that now in X-Men where it's just like, oh, that's, that was, you left all this fruit on the tree and you didn't realize it. I'm down to talking about the Hickman X-Men. I can do the Hickman X-Men with you at some point. We've got to get Concepcion on. Then we got to do it. Okay. We can wrap it up there.

We'll come back on Monday. Maybe we'll talk some top chefs and Mrs. America. We'll have plenty of stuff, I'm sure. Greenwald will let you go back inside now. I love the bird sounds on the podcast today. It's transporting. I got to say, if you have Ferris Bueller in my mind, but I just want to say, if you have the opportunity to live in California, it's choice.

It's so choice. At least we have this. I highly recommend it. Good seeing you, buddy. Great seeing you, man. Love to pod. Talk to you guys soon. See you Monday.

Bye, Bransky. Stay safe.