Final Thoughts and Upcoming Schedule

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See terms at Fanduel.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash term s. I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the silver slipper Good. Because he loves dance. Yeah. It's Andy Greenwald. And I like free nachos. Do you think they have those? Uh I don't remember because I was on Ketamin at the time, but I it's possible. I loved how you pronounce ketamine as like a Jewish dentist from Philadelphia. First of all, I am much closer to a Jewish dentist from Philadelphia than I am to a habitue of the silver slipper . The the the truth is you caught me. I started to back out of the comment two thirds of the way through, but I was pot committed. And frankly that's how I live my life. That's why I love you man, because you fucking when you're in you're in and we're in on euphoria season three, which we will be talking about the second episode today, as well as the first three episodes of the new Apple TV series of Margot's Got Money Troubles. Mm-hmm. Problems or troubles? Uh she's Margot's Got Money pro well I think it's troubles . Again, no way of no way. It's troubles. It's troubles. Did I say troubles? Yeah. But you were thinking of Northern Ireland. That's the problem. It's like I you know, Margot and the Dairy Girls is a much different thing. Uh it's really good to see you. What a weekend for us. Um Oh, was it? Yeah, no, I mean I just mean what a weekend for United States of America, the NBA playoffs, the NHL playoffs. Yeah, I was uh sports-wise, you're right to switch I'm fine with the Phillies. I have the Phillies hat at home. There's no there's no deviation from the plan. I know. I told you on Thursday, wait for game sixty. I'm getting miserable texts from you. But I'm getting actually honestly a whole variety of awesome texts. Yeah. I sent some pretty funny texts this weekend, if I do say so myself. Um, how are you doing? I have one news story for you today before we get into our TV talk, but I just want to do a temperature check. Great. Temperature feels good. The studio is nice. Yeah. No, I mean like emotionally and and spiritually and also just like artistically, where's your soul at when you're you did you search around this weekend and and watch anything that was not necessarily an assignment, but just a pleasure. No, this weekend there was quite a lot on the TV docket. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So uh no, I was focused. I was just working for you all weekends. Yeah, I was actually gonna say it might be good after we do beef on Thursday. So we're gonna I don't know that we're gonna cover all of beef, but you have beef with beef. I know I watched the first two episodes. Okay. And I would definitely say that it's better than I thought it was gonna be. Well, you had you were very down. All I all I did was say, this is what people are saying about it. And if it's true, watching eight hours of this is not necessarily what I want to do this week. Straw men everywhere coming up to me on the street, tears in their little straw eyes, saying, Sir, sir, beef season two is underwhelming. Uh as you know, speaking of film production, uh today I went to go get my custom not custom like they make it special for me, but like an um uh my coffee at my coffee shop and Cigar blend. They were shooting somebody they were shooting something there. Um probably fucking nobody wants this or something. And Tim's working. Be nice. I was just like, you guys gotta be kidding me. Of all of all the gin joints that you couldn't find in London or Budapest Vancouver. Wait, you decided to take my coffee shop. Are you zagging on LA film production? I'm all I'm very happy for them. But like this is wait, hold on. You are being a nim by about Hollywood film production within Los Angeles? I think this is a wild new character. It's just like I have a few things that need to go right for me during any given day. All right, let's go through them. Finding my getting my coffee. Uh-huh. Having the right kind of knickerette. What like as opposed to off-brand? Like what? Well, off-brand or like the new flavors that the Nicarette company like introduced. We talked about this. Like it's just like I have to have like everything kind of line up in the stimulation category. And then we can get we can get into our day. But if I I show up and Sydney Lumet's like, no, now here's what you're gonna do. And it's like, no, man, I need an Americano . And I also, you know what I really don't understand? Snort the Keteman. Why the Sydney Lumet. Why do you guys have to shut shit down? Why to shoot? Yeah. Be like a little gorilla filmmaking style. You know, Gadard, you know, get in there while I'm ordering. Sean Baker, tangerine style, iPhone horizontal. Pull me in a Nora. I'll just be getting my coffee, you know? I think that not as many people like passers by are historically not as open-minded and artistic as you. Yeah. They do not want to. That's probably because if if the camera was on me, I'd just turn to it and go. Yeah, you really like the mock thing. Why don't you get your book out? No. I want you to. You want to save it for the library after dark? Watch watch in the books in the stacks. No, but what if you start, you know, maybe you have an anecdote to camera about a film you saw. I'll just get a little reading in. Okay. I did see a film this weekend and I wanted to recommend it to our viewers. It's The Christopher's. All right. Uh the new film from Steven Soderbergh. In the news recently for uh saying that he was gonna use AI to visualize some of John Lennon's dreams in an upcoming documentary he has about John Lennon and Yoko Ono. That's what he said. Yes. He was gonna use AI to do some visual effects or some like imaginative visualizations of like John Lennon's dream life. Oh. Uh and he was like, and I never would have been able to do this or this would have been in like a visual production house effects house that cost me an arm and a leg and now it's easy. Or not easy. But I think basically is is this now under the rubric of like he can now do it himself like he does everything else? Yeah, I mean I think he's always been like, how can I what's what's the not market inefficiency because I don't even think it's economic. I think he's just a tools guy. He's interested in tools. What if Mike had real magic and the magic was AI? Is that what he's doing? You know what? Honestly, I think that you know how they name all these goddamn AIs like just you know Claude you know? What if the AI was named Magic Mike? I would use it. Yeah. Me too. If I was like, can you make me some furniture, man? Yes. Yes. Can you can you still hang out with Olivia Munn? What's that like? Um I did have one piece of actual Hollywood news for you. Christopher's is fantastic. Ian McKellen, Michaela Cole. It's essentially a two-hander chamber piece. It's about um a I don't know if it would be like a Damian Hurst Julian Schnabel era, like I can't tell exactly. He seemed like an Enfant Terrible British painter now in his twilight, living in Bloomsbury, it looks like. That's hit close to home. Now I'm listening. And lovely, lovely three-story, four-story house in Bloomsbury. Michaela Cole is an art restorer/slash painter who takes a job with Ian McKellen's aging artist to catalog some of his work. In his home? In his home. So easy access to Essex Market and Farringdon. All that. Great lunches. But she is I mean, Deco, I'm surprised Cafe Deco didn't up. Deco's at the south end of it, but I would imagine that you would probably get the lunch deal of quality wines. It's not a deal, dude. You wind up walking out smelling of liver when you when you go to quality wines. That's not their lunch special. Oh okay. What's the lunch special? We don't need to get into it. I'm just saying it's She takes it surreptitiously though because she's in fact working for Julian's children who want her to finish a series of unfinished portraits called the Christophers of his lover uh that he did in the nineties. And they would fetch quite a bit of cash, but he has thus so far refused to finish them. Are you one of the Christophers? No, uh sadly not. Uh, but it's uh I thought it was wonderful. And it was just like a great type movie. It's gonna come up later when we talk about Margot Scott Money Troubles, uh, problems. No, it's troubles. God damn it. I really gotta get that right. You know what Again, in Belfast, they do. Um I wanted to let you know that Joe Russo, one of your favorite filmmakers. Yes, yes, yes, he 's the visionary. He appeared via Zoom at the St. Andrews Film Festival, which is in Scotland. Um, and this is a film festival I believe I've I've read about the Russas being patrons of before. What do you think that is? I don't know. I really don't. I've I w I any other podcaster would probably be like, well you have to understand I was waiting for that. But uh honestly, I feel like I'd sometimes it's okay to be like, I have no idea. But I've read like them I've read bits and pieces of them appearing at this festival. I mean he did this via Zoom to talk about Doom Z day. Uh just doing a little bit. I'm trying to do a cool like entr intro to this. It's essentially that, you know, they're making Doomsday, and now they're gonna re-release Endgame in uh September, I think. W ith either rec ontextualize old footage, I imagine, or perhaps new footage from doomsday that they're putting into Endgame. Right. But to put Endgame now on the doomsday narrative rails. Yeah. And I thought this was really interesting because first of all, it is kind of a tacit admission that the last six years of seven years of Marvel has kind of not worked. Yep. Um, between the multiversal shenanigans and Kang and Jonathan Majors and some of the other things that they've tried that haven't worked and the fact that Fantastic Four I mean, Fantastic Four is obviously gonna be a major part about this, but was not maybe living up to people's expectations. Right. What do you think about the idea of a filmmaker going back and tweaking something in mid-air to connect it to another part of the franchise? Rito shot first. But they never actually made that canonical, did they? Well who's they in this case? Disney. George Lucas? Yeah. If he made it, I mean he touched it. It's like a Star Wars story. Yes. I I don't know. I mean like wha has this been done before? I think the I think what you're asking is interesting because in in terms of like tweaking a prior movie to retcon it into alignment with a sequel, I'd I'd be hard pressed to think of an example of that. Um I mean, I think Disney, especially like it like the animated movies . Like Frozen 2, a movie I know that's near and dear to your own. Honestly, this is where you're extracting. I talked about this a lot because one of the things that I find really interesting about that movie from like a process standpoint was the entire movie is created out of whole cloth of a larger overarching plot that 100% didn't exist at any point during the decade plus development of Frozen. Okay. Where they like retcon that the parents, like in the opening of the first movie, the parents went off on a on a boat adventure and sadly, spoiler for the first thirty seconds of Frozen, did not survive. The second movie suggests that they were actually going on a quest to discover the origin of their daughter's powers when they were uh Is it suggested that they told the daughter it was a boat like a cruise that lied or No, we know kings and queens are always going on boat trips, probably. But uh but no, but the but to to answer your question, Frozen was not re-released with swashbuckling footage of the dead bearish attempting to be. I don't know the extent to which they are gonna tweak Endgame. I think it's a pretty savvy idea, although I'm surprised we're finding out about it via Zoom in Scotland instead of like a big Cinemacon announcement or like a big maybe even a trailer for the re-release of Endgame to prep you for Doomsday. There's Doomsday footage has been screened. Yes. They they played it at Cinemacon. It has not released yet, but every single detail of it has been leaked. And I think it was intentionally designed to push back on your uh I think quite accurate observation that the last six plus years have been a complete wash. The footage features many characters from this uh cursed phase engaging with each other. Like it's Shang Chi fighting Florence Pew. No, playing G fighting Gambit. I read I read the same recap, bro. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bummer. Yeah. I I I I pushed the Atlantic magazine out of the way and I said, Let me read this blog post describing the doomsday. That was a text I sent you. I said attention. A little worried about things at at FBI HQ. Thoughts? Question mark? You didn't respond. And then I wrote back flyers. So I I I I I don't know, but they are also I found it interesting that they are doing a really interesting thing where they are trying to convey complete confidence that they have this thing in the bag. And so there's there is a beginning drumbeat of this tested better than anything since Endgame. They're dropping all these things like we had 40 actors on set standing in a blank room, you know, where they drew in the backgrounds later. Um they're they are re-releasing one of the was Endgame like top three most successful movies of all time. They're re-releasing that to prime the pump to remind people of how great this was with new footage to get people in the theaters. They are claiming that they don't need the IMAX screens that Dune 3. Oh, because they're making a proprietary technology of like so that it always shows in the way it's supposed to be. InfinityVision. Yeah. Can you just make a proprietary format? I hope it makes Euphoria season four in Infinity Vision. Because so it'll go on forever. The episodes I think are made in Infinity Vision. Honestly, they breeze right by me. Incredible. Yeah. Um so yeah, I d I don't know. I mean where what's your what's your doomsday temperature change? I was the m immediately started thinking about other franchises that have perhaps um made some wrong turns and filmmakers going back and tweaking them. You know, so the first first franchise that comes to mind is Star Wars, and you know, they've had this largely uh stalled out movie production development process where they've given out all these like deals to people to make trilogies and to make one-off movies that haven't really come to light or haven't come to fruition. They've continued to kind of mine these in-between years between the trilogies and to some success. But I think that the thing that's missing is the feeling of forward momentum and the feeling of the unknown, because like any kind of well-versed Star Wars fan can watch one of these shows and just be like, yes, and then this has to happen because this happened. Star Wars legend arily does not mess with canon. Yes. Marvel is a little bit more like, guess what? Everybody was dreaming that day. You know, like or it was a different universe. Yeah. And that's they've been playing with that for a few years. But if if you were doing Star Wars and if you were like, hey, why don't we just go back to right before Force Awakens, or why don't we go back to right after The Last Jedi and just do this and basically I mean it sounds like Steven Soderbergh's the hunt for Ben Solo movie was in its own way uh like, well, what if he wasn't dead? And that was that was a bridge too far for Bob Iger, but it is kind of interesting that like the same company is like, yeah, we'll tweak a little bit of n endgame and probably like yada yada some of the stuff that's happened in between. I think that the main difference here is that in the case of Marvel, they are going back to their last greatest success and just basically moving the off ramp in a different direction. I suppose Steven Soderberg wanted to revisit the rise the last Skywalker. Well yeah, because those Star Wars, right? I think in retrospect those movies are not thought of fondly. Yeah. But particularly they are not just thought of fondly. They are like um ground zero for a lot of the toxicity of fandom and fan fandom's relationship to the projects that they love or they they love to hate. And so it it would just be a minefield to go back because it wouldn't just be like, let me pick up on the really cool adventures of Admiral Holdo or whatever Laura Dern's name was. It was like let us pretend none of that woke shit that Ryan Johnson did ever happened. Please attribute that quote to Chris. Because he needs a couple dings in his Mando armor online. Come on. I'm just saying . This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last-minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for? That's when Prime's same day delivery as you're back, getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas, terms apply . Was your reading of the doomsday trailer? Uh were you excited? The scrolls. Um not the scrolls, the scrolls. Um I'm I'm I'm choosing to be very excited about this movie. Why not? Great. You know? That's fantastic. I I wanna know how you're feeling about the uh the X-Men casting rumors. I know I know Van doesn't like it when we talk about that. Your girl Odessa is being circled for uh rogue. I didn't know that. And our guy, Sir Dunk, Peter Claffy, is rumored to be beast. But they they haven't gotten Cyclops . No. They haven't gotten the new Wolverine. Wake me with that. Is there gonna be a new Wolverine? So old ass Hugh Jackman is gonna be hanging out with Peter Claffey and Odessa O'Zion? First of all, we are now on the other end of these cross-generational. Odessa Ozion like shoes . Also in the troubles . I think that they are going to slow walk Wolverines. I think they were going to go back to some of the original X-Men before he joined. Okay. Cool. Keep me up to date on that. I will. Hold on. Breaking news. No, let's talk about Euphoria. Euphoria. Uh episode two America, my dream. Uh the title of the episode is um spoken by Cassie, played by Sydney Sweeney's housekeeper at one point when she's taking some content shots. Say her name, Juana. Juana. Well, it comes up a lot because there's a lot of jokes made at her expense. Sure are. This one is a tale of two or three different TV shows, I think. Yeah. I mean, I think this is a really useful conversation that I think also bleeds into Margot. Okay. So let's let's Because it's about like tone and it's about making a couple of different things at once. But I think for Euphoria, personally for me it works. Well let's also preface this by saying for people who are just this is their first ever episode of the watch. Yes. This is my second ever episode of Euphoria. And I I gotta admit to you something. I'm about seventy percent in on this bit, but the number this the the the interest level I have in this bit shot up last night when you sent me one text message. I had a question. I've tried to avoid asking. And I was just like, tomorrow, okay, what are we going to talk about? And Andy sends a text message that just goes, is Rue canonically gay . I didn't know. And I I thought I should, you know, be prepared with that information. Drew canonically is what got me. I because first of all, I need to know who she's romantic ally interested in before she returns in doomsday. Yes. Yes. Uh yes, Rue is canonically gay. Thank you. Um was that was that so hard? But it is an interesting situation for you because I have a a question. Now we're going to talk a lot about the roost stuff because that remains the thing that I think I'm most attached to about this show. Aaron Powell Do you think I should keep a list of questions I almost ask you and deliver them live on the podcast? Absolutely. Yeah. I am also not necessarily the keeper of Euphoria lore, nor do I think l Euphoria is being overly um sort of sanctimonious about like everything that's happened in these characters' lives adding up to something. Which I appreciate it. That being said , I wanted to start in a stranger place than I maybe you thought I would for this episode, which is Nate, the Jacob Alordi character, who uh is so far been portrayed as a sort of flustered uh I'm in over my head, but I'm ultimately seemingly a good guy who likes to get his work done. And I just don't have the money right now for fifty thousand dollars worth of flowers from my wedding, but I've got an alcoholic dad who's also quite a sex pest. I have uh my fiance Cassie who you know is making certain demands of me and making certain content. And making content. And also he's in hock to a a seemingly like a underworld figure for about half a mil. Trevor Burrus figure in the sense that he services bodies to the underworld, literally. He does seem to be like a funeral. Well you think he has some untoward Yeah. I think the interest rate is maybe above Wells Fargo's, for instance. I think Sam Levinson is blowing the lid off this whole coffin thing. But guess what, man? Yeah, yeah. Nate's kind of a piece of shit. Oh. And I didn't know if you knew that. Uh Nate. No. He seemed like a good guy. No, not really. He's pretty pretty dark dark prince. One thing about me, I'm very credulous of people. I take him as a I was wondering what you thought. I w I was wondering, like, there's a line in this in this episode when Juana, the aforementioned Juana, the housekeeper, is going through every single thing from their barbecue. Yes. Uh, and is like, would you like to keep this? Would you like to save this ? Would you like to save that? And it one point he goes, Juana, I'm going to kill you. He did say that. Now he says it very dryly. It's a it's a laugh line in the episode, I think. But that's Nate's vibe. Like n season one, two, Nate can get pr pretty fucked up. It's very uh we mentioned this last week, but it there's a Brady Sinelis aspect to it that he is a little American psycho. Like he is the the perfect scion of a West Coast dynasty and you know has the right jawline to either run for office or to uh go to jail forever for murder. Yes. And so I was curious whether or not you picked up on that as this being your only your second episode of of Euphoria. I I didn't because this episode well I'll say two things. One part of his storyline I is probably at the bottom of my power rankings because this is we're now two for two in him voicing something that I have to believe is near and dear to creator Sam Levinson Sam Levinson's heart, which is that all Californians of good standing should care about P and Z laws and how difficult it is to build here. Why can't you separate art from artists? Literally the guy's like all California it's like the pit. He like turns to camera and is like, do you know planning and zoning regulations? Yes, this is how we win at podcasting. Aaron Powell Actually, women are allowed to make content about whatever they want. You know, I mean, like, that is sort of what this show is doing. Yeah. I I don't know if I agree that all Californians should be worried that it's challenging to build here. Aaron Powell How do you feel about the zoning laws of this of this great state? Aaron Powell It's not my top twenty of current concerns about living in this great state. No. It's really not. Okay. But then again, I'm not really, you know, part of a real estate empire. Aaron Ross Powell The ironic thing is I do I don't think it's lost that Nate is complaining about starting a a like a somewhat nefariously funded you know he's like an honest businessman. It's like Nate's fur the furthest from, you know. I I he's like have these guys move sand around when the developer when the investors come. The the reason I've liked my experience watching the show cold is because it is never boring. And I actually feel like, and this is obviously self-fulfilling, but that my experiment is supporting itself, that like there's very little that I need to be standing on to just be present with these characters as they are going about whatever it is they are building towards in this undoubtedly final season of the show. That said, um your question brings up one thing that I that I was picking up on, which is as certain um threads. Threads, currents bubble up, some of them are tonal, but some of them feel canonical or biographical in ways that I'm at sea with. And I and it's hard to The Maddie uh So exactly Love Triangle. Yeah. Absolutely no idea what any of that was about. Sure. Um nor did I honestly have any idea what Maddie was, who she was, and what she was doing. I found that less compelling. Did you look it up on Wikipedia? I didn't. I didn't. Um you know, I was reading the new Jonathan Franzen novel at the time. So does that do you have it with you by any chance? I do, but we're I'm pretty locked in right now. Okay. And I'll let you know, if that changes. And people watching at home will see as my interest level dips in the show as I retreat to the warm embrace of literature, my true home. But uh yeah, so so the the backstory of that was a little bit confounding. And I I I guess I'll say that the Cassie Nate relationship , as far as I can tell, I don't actually care what they were like in high school. Them as star ter pack He used to he used to date Maddie in high school. Sure. But them now as a starter pack upwardly mobile, you know, would-be nouveau riesh couple living in this hellscape. Like works for me. It's fine. I think that the the show it's interesting to hear you say that. I think that the show is very much depicting them as like frozen in amber out in Calabasas somewhere. Um and not truly part of like the kind of zeitgeist and maybe even tapped into the the m money stream that runs through Los Angeles. Right, Cassie is very excited to be on the roof of the peninsula. Yes. And where's like what was that? Magenta, fuchsia? What was what was her top? What color was that? I I w I was not staring at her top in that scene. I I have to say I was not focused on that. Because what were you looking at? The Hildebrandt family in nineteen seventy one Chicago, they're the protagonists of Crossroads were um it was pretty interesting. Did you like this episode of TV? I I actually I really did enjoy it. But I I really enjoy it because the first of all, I do like the chaos theory approach. Sorry. Does that make me the bad guy . There are other things on the screen. I am enjoying full stop, like we said last week. I'm enjoying Zendaya. I don't know what's going on with this character or where she's headed, but I just think it's pretty funny I. And also really like that I have no sense of how much time is passing at any moment in an episode of the show. Um so the fact that she like goes to this silver slipper club, I have no idea where this is either. It looks like it's Antelope Valley, Palmdale, Lancaster . I don't maybe maybe Nevada. I don't I don't know. Unclear, but the she immediately just starts running shit there and it's just like hanging with everyone. I found that to be kind of fun. Yeah. And um uh I also have to say that I'm interested in the way Okay, so wait, one step back. During the long gestation period for this season, we had heard all these stories about the type of show that it would Euphoria, if it were to return how, it would return. And the one that obviously we fixated on was, oh, it's going to be a private detective show. Watching this episode particularly, there were moments when Sam Levinson moves the camera or sets up scenes in ways that suggest the things that interest him may have outstripped the bounds of the show that he's making. Yes. So when Maddie arrives at the peninsula and it does this like wide shot of her crossing the boulevard and it's like classic Hollywood noir. And I'm interested in that. And I kind of like the idea of him casting his Hollywood fantasia uh whatever this is, spectacular, with the not just the actors from his previous high school piece, but the characters of his high school piece who are now playing very different roles in the movie he wishes he was making. When the show so far, has elevated to me this season , that's what he's been doing, and that's when what's on screen and what clearly is in his head seem to align. The moments that I'm less interested in are uh on the margins and lead to me almost sending you texts like I almost did in the first 10 minutes of this episode asking if this blonde woman coming to LA during COVID was the Cassie Origin story. Didn't she go to high school with them? Because again, maybe it's I wasn't at the right part of her. I didn't I thought that was Sydney Sweeney. No, it was not. Um you were just staring at her eyes. I mean I just locked it up. Uh so it's interesting to hear you say that. I probably um give this show credit because it's doing something that I rather enjoy when TV shows at least effort to become, which is the uh the bucket show that allows a showrunner or creator to basically be like on the side of the bucket it says euphoria or on the side of the bucket it says leftovers or the Americans or whatever. Industry. Industry. But we're gonna make it a receptacle for everything that we're interested in. And for Sam Levinson, obviously, he is interested in the American dream, the American debt, uh, the absolute uh attraction-repulsion nature of California to the point where he talks about its geological evil magnet that's underneath. The big magnet under the soil attracting evil. It's spoken by a character named Angel. I like that. Yeah. And I think he's obviously playing with a bunch of different styles of of filmmaking within this. And for him, you know, if Zendaya, Jacob Alordi, and Sydney Sweeney are in something, 20 million people about are gonna watch it every week. So it's gonna be this big, this big thing. And he could kind of then get away with making a spaghetti western mystery movie if he wants to, or a uh like pop art almost commentary on exploitation slash also a piece of exploitation itself. I think that's fascinating. And I think also like this show is not boring. And I've been struggling for the last couple of months with the shows that aren't ones that you can tell that Andy and I have really positively responded to that it's hard for me to get by on like a 65 or a 70 with a show where like it's like it's pretty good. It's like this show like is exciting to watch. I don't know what's gonna happen next . Yes, there are things that perhaps like offend people, and there are things that I feel like I've watched that big conversation like the one that Alamo and Marshawn Lynch have in any number of Tarantino and Tarantino ripo-off movies. Like there's definitely like homage that borders on this was Kirkland Tarantino. Sure. But I th I I just give it a ton of credit for holding my interest and for being I know I I I don't want I'd like to be clipped but connected to something we were talking about about two, three minutes earlier. I'll I'll come into the the the studio with you guys later. It's it's uh it the show is stimulating. I uh I never thought I would say this. Um but I understand Sam S. Mail better. Um no when our friend Sam would come on the podcast and do his top ten list, often what he would rail against would be, you know, what he was joking about as laundry folding shows . And uh he would praise things that were aesthetically bold and directorially driven, even past the point of what I I and maybe sometimes we felt were reasonable or like entertaining or even generous in terms of the effort they were making to include an audience. Now, Sam, despite being very successful and very good at making television, historically doesn't love or watch a lot of television. So he's less interested in the things that we praise for hitting familiar, comforting, technically excellent beats, like the pit, for example, or the story connecting the the the bits on Mad Men where despite pushing things forward visually and thematically, they are just a family in the workplace at the end of the day. All of that being said, the moment we're in with television where everything is received is received through this lens and viewed through this lens that everything is excellent and everything is prestige, whether it's because of the money Apple or whomever has spent on it, or the actors who are in it, were used to seeing them in films. When in fact a lot of the meat of television shows from minute 14 to minute 48 were laundry folding. You know, uh this will come up with Margot as well, I think. Um it can be elite laundry folding, but it's laundry folding. And the best thing that I want to say at the end of this long um digression is there's no laundry in the show. And if I had been watching it um with any laundry in mind over the past few years, I think that I would be having a lot harder time just breezing along. But because I have no stakes here, um, I like the fact that I don't have any idea where it's going. Um and that every everything on the screen, somebody had an idea. Yeah. Sometimes too many ideas, maybe. And too many ideas piled on top of each other, but they had some ideas. Yeah. And I also, I mean, frankly, find the photography of Southern California and the desert that he's doing to be as like exciting as anything that happens inside of the silver slipper. Like I think that he's doing really, really beautiful work in being evocative of the entirety of the Southern California region. It's Southern California, not LA, in a way. It's relationship to Los Angeles and this idea of suburbs and city, it's almost antiquated, or at least because I moved here so late in life, it never really resonated with me as like you know, you growing up in the valley, but going into the city for fun. Like that doesn't scan for me. Yes. But it is obviously something as a as an LA kid that he is thinking about. Yeah. Maybe as an LA kid he's thinking about that, but also maybe as an LA rich person, he's thinking about it the same way, like you know, the the the great Kanye song No More Parties in LA, which is basically about how annoying it is to drive from Calabasas to a party. Super relatable. But like this is a show built by people who exist only in siloed spaces and only ever traverse through the middle of the city, either ironically or being driven in an air conditioned SUV. Like uh and I'm not saying that that Rue's perspective is a of a rich person, but I think the vision of it, which is not to invalidate the vision. It is incredibly haunting and it feels very of the moment and it's claustrophobic and also agoraphobic in equal measure, but everything about it is siloed. And I think intentionally, and I feel like that aesthetically is kind of interesting to me, that Cassie goes from her, you know, g golden prison somewhere out in the hills. And where she goes, that's exciting to her is the roof of a building. We never see her actually touch the ground and suddenly she's around people again. Or at the very end, when Rue goes to visit Jules, who's a characterized Jules is a major, major, major character on the show. Once again, like absolute siloed somewhere at the penthouse of a building where no one else is there. And and Rue, this is Jules has historically been the sort of I I would say the love of Rue's life, but in some ways you you wonder whether it's she is just an object of her kind of fascination and a affection more than it is like a life partner kind of thing, just because of the way they are talking at the at the end of that episode. A lot of their uh romance tends to happen in an almost fantasy world, uh, at least to my eye visually. And you could see in the flashback of uh Jules' time at art school when Rue goes to visit her, it's taking place in a loft that looks like a soundstage basically and that uh it's like a Hollywood romance. And her s high rise apartment, luxury apartment that she's living in that that Jules is living in at the end has like the fakest of fake sort of nightscapes outside of the window. So I think from scene to scene and from storyline to storyline and from um coupling to coupling throughout the show, it almost has a completely different visual language. It's a to a credit, to the show's credit that you can have something like Cindy Sweeney's bubblegum, like f far out, like pop, pop, pop LA , the sort of glam luxury, n night moire of Jules' LA , Ruse uh Desert Scape, and that you can go from like Cindy Sweeney's pretty comic arc so far this season to roux in a bathroom with another woman telling her that her best friend just died of a fentanyl overdose and that it's being kept from her. Yep. And then that woman spiraling out on drugs. Who's the character who I met last night who I'm forgetting who,'s working as a management manager, uh Nate's ex. Maddie. Um and Maddie's storyline, which is more or less the Rachel Senate storyline from I Love LA. Yeah. You know? W whi w w which is just like the the day to day nuts and bolts of managing this crazy town, you know. Um and I I but I say that not I say that to support your point that there's all these different visions of it. Ultimately in, terms of vision , why I am like good faith enjoying this exercise is because the shot of Rue begging her mother to come home while a gas station light the gas station goes out behind her. Is it's an astonishing image. It's a beautiful image. Yes. She's acting the hell out of it. And every so often, every time the show starts to trip into something where I want to take out my like stern little red pen and mark it up , it does something that is genuinely moving and quite eye-catching and breathtaking and beautiful. And that's enough to keep me going. I would say largely, and we don't need to segue now, although we could, and you don't need to have watched both episodes for this point to be relevant and not spoilery. Euphoria and Margot have um both staked out some terrain on OnlyFans Island and What a moment for OnlyFans. Great. I'm just glad the little guys are succeeding. Um Well the guy who made OleFans is dead. Oh no. Did he set everything up so are his children gonna benefit? Look, pro probate probate court is a mess, you know. I think it was the OnlyFans guy. Yeah. Yeah, it was. But we don't know about whose I don't know who 's taking whose heirs are. Yeah. I mean, in some ways we all are. We're all sharing in the the wealth because OnlyFans redistributes, you know, it goes back to the content creators. We could get into Morgo if you'd like. Trevor Burrus But we don't segue necessarily. I just wanted to make the point that the euphoria vision of this is in keeping with there is a devil magnet underneath the San Andreas fault, and everything is absolutely cynical and evil, and this is just a turbocharged vacuum uh attached to what was already a soul-sucking enterprise of celebrity and fame and devaluation of human spirit. And then you have the Margot vision of it, which is isn't that neat? We can all take advantage of this and become better people and pay for diapers. Sure. And I would like to posit, I know this is a little radical, that somewhere in the middle of these two aesthetic viewpoints there might be some nuance and a even more interesting story wish you luck with your third way. My third way. I'm gonna do the Andrew Yang storyline of OnlyFans. Clip that, I dare you. Um Trying to think if I had anything else really to say about euphoria. I do think that this season seems to be building towards this wedding. I I've not we we we have not watched ahead. I but obviously the wedding is an opportunity to bring together the entire cast in a way that I don't know necessarily we will have otherwise. Right. And I would imagine, given everybody's, you know, release schedules in the major , you know, movie theaters, that he shot Zendaya stuff and sometimes Alexis Demi would be on set for that. And then he shot Sidney Sweeney stuff with Jacob Alordi. And you know, like I I think he kind of had to work around a lot of schedules to do this. And so maybe some of the separation is a is representative of that. But then again, you know, you're not necessarily always around people you went to high school with, even if you live in the same city. So I think it is a legitimate depiction of their lives, even if it doesn't necessarily feel like they're all on the same TV show all the time. I have not seen what people have many people have many people celebrated Eric Dane's performance on the show, that it was very different to what he'd done before. And but even without that knowledge, I thought this was pretty great. I have to say that the him being vulnerable enough about his illness and but that took his I believe it was MS, correct? Um no, he had Luke Eric's ALS. Sorry, ALS . To take that and be like, what I'll do is have we can have Cal basically be always four beers deep. You know, and seated and they and they treated it seemingly treated him with dignity and gave him the opportunity to deliver a very good performance that was not in any way like a it i it wasn't just like a a Yeah, here you go, big guy. Thanks, man. Yeah. It was it was really cool. Honestly, like just the the Zendaya note that I will hit every week, which is that she's compulsively watchable. Uh she communicates so much of uh the necess ary ambiguity that come should come with a show like this because it would be easy to take everything at face value, but like obviously her trepidation so as you obviously probably have deduced, uh Ru the Rue character has been through several um like rehab and and uh intervention situations, including just absolutely astonishing intervention in second season. Her dropping Angel off at this sort of looked like K-town sort of uh like flyby night rehab facility that didn't quite scream on the levels. It seemed like where you you stash people that you don't want out in the world for whatever reason. Potentially never want them to appear again. Yes. And the lighting of that whole scene and and her promising her that she was gonna come pick her up in a couple of weeks. I thought it was great. And that they never come out and have Rue say, like, this place doesn't seem like a reputable facility, but I'm gonna look into it. It's just everything is looks, everything is the texture of the plexiglass between the person who's just playing video games behind the counter. It's just really good. The one counter to your beautiful bucket analogy that I generally agree with in terms of ongoing television shows, because n honestly, nothing is worse than a show in which the creative team behind it has lost interest in what they are doing and going through the motions. I'll say that the even as, you know potentially overheated and pulp fiction coded as the whole Alamo um silver slipper storyline is, I would be really interested in the this is the first season Yeah, Zendaya's strip club Michael Clayton. Yeah. I mean when you put it like that. But yeah, like that that pops. Yeah. And the rest of the stuff is interesting, but it is not that. I'm just gonna throw up a quick note here, which is I was trying to do a power pull of shows that are on right now. This is like a post pit rooster DTF . So stuff gets we we were very busy watching all three of those shows. I think I gave DTF a college try. I I have not received there has never been a show I have received more contentious emails about in in spicy in People want Joe Russo to go back and change the ending to that podcast. Like they're changing endgame. Yeah. So that you become a big DTF fan. So Bill often does, Bill Simmons often does like power pulls in the midst of an NBA season where he's just like, I'm just gonna kind of go from bottom to top here or from top to bottom and rank these shows. We have not watched maybe enough of this to do a hearty power poll. For instance, I have not watched any of The Miniature Wife with Elizabeth Banks and Matthew McFadden. Neither have I. But Margot's Got Money T m Money Troubles, Your Friends and Neighbors, Euphoria Beef , um, Big Mistakes, which is the new series from Dan Levy on Netflix, which honestly wasn't that bad. I watched two episodes of that. Look at you doing the work. Honestly, it's like an end of the evening kind of like before we fall asleep thing. And I was like this this is is pretty pretty good. Yeah. Um bandy, which we talked about last week, Rashant's uh new um Martinique based on the What were the numbers on our bandy convo? I don't it's still in the top ten in Netflix. Nice. You know what I'm saying? Like sometimes you gotta look beyond your your echo chamber. You know? Thank you. Appreciate that. Hacks, which I have not discussed. Have you discussed it when I when I wasn't looking? No. Okay. Uh Abbott Elementary, which I still I still watch and still love. Huge in my house, but we're behind. Okay. Kids the kids are watching it on Hulua season. We're behind. And then two AMC shows, one which I have often said to my own detriment, I have not watched Dark Winds, but I want to and half I was half thinking about playing a Greenwald and just jumping in on season four and then if if it works going back. Uh and the Audacity, which is uh a new series with Billy Magnuson and Zach Galafanakis. I feel like we owe we owe that a watch. Because we run AMC as a network. Well no we're gonna be inheriting it and we're gonna have to make the decision about green lighting season two. Well Well it's heavy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to accrue powers of attorney as much as possible across any field in relation to my parents. Trevor Burrus To be to have your power of attorney? Yeah, you just be letting all my doctors know DNR. Listen . He's here for a good time, not a long time. Don't take any extraordinary measures to keep this guy on the table. By all means compliment him on what it's done to his physique . No, I don't want that smoke. Uh in your estimation, I mean obviously I think against all odds, euphoria seem would seemingly be your number one right now. Yeah, although I, you know, I'm approaching beef with excitement. With open optimism and optimism. With an with an open and an empty stomach. Empty stomach. Big appetite. Yeah, so this is an interesting moment. I th there's no clear alpha is what you're saying. Yeah, and I and I think also with something like your friends and neighbors, which has already been renewed for season three. Oh yeah. And I could see being a four, five, six for as long as Ham wants to do this kind of th ing. You kind of get to a point where there's some of these shows and you're like, this is gonna be what it is. And I will, if I like it, I'll keep watching it. Before we even answer the question you're smartly asking, I will say that this is an interesting snapshot of kind of what TV is now in a way that it hasn't been. This is what I wanted to get into. This is the stop. A number of the shows you're mentioning, um , especially shows like Your Friends and Neighbors and Rooster , those are ongoing shows. They're designed to be ongoing shows. They're going to be greenlit before the first seasons or some current seasons have uh have ended. Um and similarly, the other types of shows that we're talking about on the margins, Margot and stuff, like there's a if Apple had its way, there is always going to be a Margot like show on the air. And we will discuss and debate the merits of the show in particular, which I think is worthy of our conversation, but a what's interesting about all the shows we're talking about is that they are starry at a certain level and they are safe at a certain level, and I don't mean that judgmentally when we talk about them individually, I'm happy to be judgmental about their attitude towards risk and storytelling. But they are dependable. And even like your friends and neighbors in the season three announcement, and this wasn't surprise that it was getting renewed again even before the second season premiered, much like last year they said it's coming back, and James Marsden will be one of the Friends and Neighbors this year. Michelle Monahan is joining the Friends and Neighbors. And who better to represent that certain type of um affable cont,emporary television plus celebrity than those two. Very, very high approval ratings. Absolutely. Good in basically everything, dependable, and feel like the people who have always been on these shows, even if they haven't been before and even if they're only doing an arc. This this is a relatively healthy snapshot of a moment that even if we're not engaging with a lot of it, or are we necessarily fired up about it? And I think some of it is is uh firing these shows all off around one another to get in under the wire for Emmy consideration. , yeah. So the next couple of weeks we'll also be busy. I'll be curious to revisit this list after we've gotten This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list, not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com, enter your license plate or VIN, and get a real offer down to the penny. No back and forth, no surprises, just an experience you can trust. Like your offer, accept it, schedule pickup, and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Carvana! Pickup fees may apply. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zetbound Terzepitide may be able to help. Zetbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. 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Do you know Roofie Thorpe at all? Yeah, I read I read this book. There you go. This is actually useful. And Kaya, if you feel like it, please jump in. I don't have a specific I feel mid about it. That's how I feel about this show. But here's what I want to ask you. You know, ever since The Wire, we've talked about T V as the great opportunity to novelize story, to tell a long form story. And I think now we've kind of bled into especially uh since Apple has thrown its weight around in the uh adaptation space and Amazon as well. And a bunch of these places are now like just buying up novels that seem to have a viable screen story for TV . If you gave me L fanning Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman. And if you even gave me uh a Fullerton English student unexpectedly gets pregnant by her creative writing teacher or what her writing teacher and decides to keep the baby. I don't know if in like a hundred years I would have come up with this specific mixture of character and tone that this show did. And I wonder whether or not it's just because it's like we're adapting this book and that's what the book is like. Yes. But I'm starting to wonder whether or not like TV is the right place to adapt novels. Because this to me is like a perfect ly fine example of like an in the nine in 1996, this would have been an adaptation of a Mona Simpson novel that lots of people liked. Can you imagine Curtis Hansen's M Margot's Got Money Troubles? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Would have been very enjoyable. And w you know what it would have been? Um better than anyone expected and really satisfying. Yes. And uh I there's something about this. You were talking about um the safety of it. I think we were talking about the element of surprise that euphoria packs in to each scene, to each shot. Yeah There's part of it is because I know what is gonna happen on this show 'cause you watched a trailer for it, so you know that Margot gets into OnlyFans and you know that her father was a ex professional wrestler who's gotten out of rehab to come back to her and Yeah, I mean the log line of the book was like it it it almost felt like a like a chat GPT stunt to get optioned. Yes. Um which is again, people really like the book. Kayad, not so much, but like it was a it was a hit yes. that's gonna get it. I've been having the sensation when I'm watching shows now. Kate Heron directed the third episode, like it looks cool. Like it Elfanning is wonderful. Like I Deer Ba Walsh who did Bad Sisters, really talented Irish director. I hate when scenes start and I know exactly how they're gonna end. Oh, I I I am if you think I'm insufferable, imagine me watching the show saying what was gonna happen in this yes. And it's not like, oh, I get let me guess she's actually gonna do OnlyFans, but I mean like let me guess she's gonna get insulted by this HR work person. Or let me guess, like Michelle Pfeiffer's not gonna be able to take care of the baby tonight, so she's gonna ruin her restaurant job. Or let me guess. And I the yes, like TV , there's a huge swath of television where I'm like, I want a reliable, repeatable emotional experience. Yes. Along with a couple of laughs or a couple of thrills every week for 42 minutes or 59 minutes or an hour and five minutes or whatever it is. But more and more, I think TV like the pit and industry and you know euphoria kind of makes it hard for me to watch stuff where I'm like, no shit. Well that that happens. If you're committing to eight, ten hours of something, you don't necessarily want extremity, which I think is what was a misunderstanding of a lot of the last ten years in terms of pushing genre things or violence or shock to the forefront to get people to keep watching. You don't need to be surprised. I think you ought to be delighted. And when you get the feeling that things are moving along a predictable track, that for me saps my enthusiasm of spending this much time watching something. Now, if I had a lot of laundry to fold, I get it. Um, I will also say that like uh this is from the book. I am this might be considered a zag , considering I am the Daddington of this particular island, but I do find the unexpected pregnancy story arc to be diminishing returns. I've I dare someone to show me a version of this story that follows a different path other, than throwing up in public and finding out the hard way and taking multiple tests and saying, no, no, no. And then the chat like it's hard. And this is a legitimate part of the human experience. But dramatically, it's increasingly kind of inert because it follows a very similar pattern. Before we get specifically even more into the the weeds of the show, I wanted to say some positives. Um I think that um I think that the uh first of all the production design I'm biased. This is Richard Bloom who worked on my show, but I think he did a beautiful job showing a part of attention Sam Levinson, a part of Southern California that is very specific and not the version you often see. This is like on the outskirts of Pomona-ish . And one of the things that I noticed that I really appreciated is like in Margot's apartment, Margot's the main character played by El Fanning, um it doesn't look like poverty porn. No. And it doesn't look like there's a bowl of plums on the table for no reason. Right. Which is often the case. It's right in the middle. It's right in the middle. It's like, oh, some people live here and sometimes they eat cereal. And I noticed that in location to location to location. And when the show does like put a little curly cue on it, like the scene in Bloomingdales when Margot has sort of a panic at tack and falls on the ground, Michelle Pfeiffer is yelling at her to get up, um, you can see that he hung these like furry, Cassia Nate esque lil ac lamps over her, which I don't believe are a feature of Bloomingdales, but accentuated the shot. I was just in Bloomingdale's last weekend and I think shopping for strollers. No. As a gift. We were looking for home goods and we went to a Bloomingdale's that didn't them. Okay, well, you should go to the one near Pomona. It's classier. Um and you know, the music, original music is by Nathan McKay, who we love from industry and um executive producer, and I think essentially day-to-day showrunners Eva Anderson, who's an incredibly talented writer who I worked with, who I love to see her succeed in something like this. Um I will also credit one other huge thing here that maybe goes against our the our initial take. The episodes are like thirty-six to forty-two minutes. Bravo. Huge. Let's once you get through the your friends and neighbors trailer, thirty-eight minutes. Although this started with a trailer for its elf. Yes. Which I was like, relax, Apple. You have a winner, I'm here. Um I really appreciated that. Like there's nothing few things worse, few things worse than you fire it up and it's like 64 I I'd say you're right. You know what else is worse than that? A thirty-six-minute half hour comedy. But if you tell me it's an hour-long drama and you hit that 40-minute sweet spot, I'm paying attention. I sincerely would probably be I would be I would watch every episode of Fallout if they were 42 minutes. It makes a huge difference. Huge difference. So there's that. I think the other thing um I will say that's really positive is I think Nick Offerman is amazing so far in this show. Three episodes in he',s playing a an uh just out of rehab uh former wrestling great Jinx. Named Jinx. Um he this feels a little like you know, y you you talking about the tops on euphoria to say this, but like the the version of the show that's focusing on the man is pretty interesting. He's really good. Well this is this is kind of the thing, is like But it's a different show. Yeah, and I was most delighted by um the opening episode, the first episode, specific ally El Fanning in college and like maybe being in Fullerton and having a gift that should be bigger than Fullerton the great Michael Angorano, who I love. Yeah, but like like um suburban, exbourbon California higher education living in an apartment with a bunch of roommates who all seem like they could have their quirks and would be pretty interesting to get to know. And El Fanning kind of working at a Benegens or a Chili's or whatever and and having dreams beyond Fullerton but not really sure how to get to them. In a in a different world, that's enough. That's a good show. That's a good show, man. Like I I would watch Elle Fanning doing Frances Ha, you know? Like I would watch her kind of just be like, yeah, like I wish I wish there was something bigger out there for me. But I think part of it might be because when you get big, big, big stars, like Michelle Pfeiffer, who is married to David Kelly and I think has made a a a turn to television in these last few months with the Madison in this, her storyline with Greg Kaneer is kind of bigger than I thought it would be, or maybe bigger than it needs to be. Um and then Offerman could just be a dad that comes back into the picture, but you add on this whole element of wrestling at but I would also and the and the baby becoming the fulcrum to reunite this kooky family and make things work out. I mean look at us. We're just a couple of kids who started a T V podcast and now we're talking about Michelle Pfeiffer projects twice a month. So really the culture moved to us. So thank you. Yeah. Gratitude. Practice gratitude. I found the the the tone and this consistency of the characters to be all over the place and I wondered if it was the creeping reach of celebrity. And what I mean by that is when we first meet Michelle Pfeiffer's Cheyenne character, she is and it was interesting. She is made up heavily and is seemingly trying to embody this lower class ex-hooters waitress piecing it together, now trying to pretend to be a different person to marry a preacher who apparently only dines at chain restaurants, played by Greg Kinneer. The next time we see her, she looks completely different and a little bit more like she does on the Madison, which is Michelle Pfeiffer looks incredible all the time at any age of her life and in any setting. And she seemed a lot softer and more likable and nicer. And so then when the turn is that she won't hold the baby, her grandchild, or you know, or or or take care of him or help or talk to her daughter, it felt like suddenly we've twisted it again. The the the the the drift towards likability and wanting to be a hero in a story that almost inevitably will turn to some kind of mush started really, really early. Maybe it's the familiarity with these characters , maybe it's a little bit of the ego of who they want to play and how they want to be seen that creeping in. But what I didn't understand really was the troubles that anybody was in. Up until a certain point , everything seems to be working out fine. You know, that she's spending hundreds of dollars and diapers and things up until one of the roommate moves out, and then suddenly the crisis is writ large for us. Yes. Suddenly she says, I could have moved in back with you you, but your dresses filled in the other rooms. And I don't really understand the peril. Everything is a little bit agreeable, everything is a little bit nice until it's not for the purposes of the plot. So a character who is kind in one scene comes over to pick another fight with someone else because we're in episode three and we need more conflict. Yeah, and we introduce I think it's in is it two or three that we introduce Marsha Gay Harden who plays uh Michael Orango's um mother. Michael Angarano's character is a professor, the father of the baby. Marsha Gay Harden shows up, really shows up and turnt up um as a character who immediately announces that sh her hair looks like a skunk and she has some of the sorry a raccoon. Are you sure it was a raccoon? I think it was skunk. Raccoon 'cause she's like and I fight like one two. That's generally again, you know, uh I've been paying a lot of attention to inheritance and family matters and legal stuff. That's generally how people behave in legal mediation type of circumstances. You show up and you say, I'm a villain. Now please speak to my attorney. It's all over the place. Of what Apple likes to do, intends to do on things either executive produced by Nicole Kidman or spiritually executive produced by Nicole Kidman. It's not di dissimilar to how I feel about the episodes of shrinking that I've watched, which is this is about taking these incredibly vulnerable , destabilizing moments in characters' lives, but creating the feeling that everything is fine and safe and good. And cushioning. I don't mind going either way. You know what I mean? Like I don't necessarily need everything to be last exit to Brooklyn, but if somebody loses their wife in a car accident or someone has an unexpected pregnancy and finds themselves in dire straits economically . I find it difficult to sometimes like square the circle of, but actually but in terms of the televisual experience that you're gonna have, it's fine. You know? It's like it's safe and it's cool and it's nice and like you're gonna get to l know and love these characters. And honestly, let's just try to keep these characters in play for two, three seasons, but keep them more or less in the same mayu. Like so we're gonna want them all existing in this same world and in these same circumstances forever. Yes. And in some ways that's how I feel about your friends and neighbors, which is like a cool concept that I would have liked to have watched a 90 minute to one hundred and twenty-minute movie about a guy who's fallen out from an investment bank and starts robbing houses in his rich neighborhood. But when you're like, here's episode eleven of him doing this same thing But also the central problem with your friends and neighbors, and maybe this is the s maybe this is just the note that they don't give at Apple, or maybe this is just Apple where everything is smooth and contoured and worked with the same. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. John Hamm's character in your friends and neighbors turns to a life of crime for reasons that are kind of shrug emoji. Like he loses his job that pays him seven figures, so he starts stealing paintings, but don't worry, his daughter still gets into Princeton. Like the the stakes are never really that bad for them. Even when they try to create the sense that they are, he the biggest risk he has is of maybe not being able to pay for the tennis club membership anymore or hang out in the sauna with his equally rich friends. Yeah. This is not really a problem. It is a conceit for a television show. Fine. But we are living in this moment where where it does feel like some of these uh streamers, studios, um creators are trying to cherry pick the trappings of a grungier, more intense kind of drama that we have history and success with on television, but really just standing off the edges and making it TVs. Maybe you can't get in the door unless you're like, here's the sticky hooky part of this. If you pitch John Hamm loses his job at a big time investment fund or private you know whatever badge fund and uh in the midst of a divorce needs to recalibrate how he fits in to this Tony Long Island community , that's just like John Hamdo and John Cheever. And I'd probably be really into it. And I wouldn't have any expectations about yes, how he does and doesn't change. But to get it sticky, you have to be like, and then he turns to a life of crime. But don't worry, it's not like breaking bad where like It's not like breaking bad. I mean this this is the this is the example. It is not something we generally do, which is hold up one of the uh you know generally acknowledged greatest shows every Rushmore shows ever and say, well, you're not doing that. Nobody needs to do that. Very few people could do that. Um and if they did it again, we'd be like, You're just doing that. I I I hear all of that. But early on in that show, Walter White reaches the first of what ends up being, you know, dozens upon dozens of absolutely existentially catastrophic decision points. And he does the thing that you can't believe that he's going to do. It begins with the first, you know, the guy who's in the basement who they then have to like they melt his body in the bathtub. You can't really walk back from that. What a lot of these other shows do is they create a clever opportunity and circumstance parachute to get away from you go near the body in the bathtub, but then you're not really responsible for it, and he was just sleeping anyway. And you're off to to to flirt with danger again the second that you know the next week. Yeah. That's kind of a bummer. And I I can understand why you might do it in an ongoing show, but But it's like the something about the mechanics of the storytelling sticks out to me too. If you were gonna pitch justified as a movie, you would pitch it as uh Olafon versus Goggins and the end of the movie would be their showdown. Yes. If you pitch it as a TV show, you're like, this is a show, a week-to-week show about a really cool Marshall who moved who returns home to Kentucky after he gets in trouble in Florida and has to deal with all of the like rural crime outside of of of Lexington in the hills outside, you know. And that's awesome. And then it emerges over the course of the season that there's going to be this big bad. But they are like from any given week, you're not going to know what the story is going to be. And it's all these different cool little procedural martial stories. It I don't think that they are using the same logic of like what makes an entertaining television show week to week anymore, understandably, because a lot of people are waiting for all the episodes of your friends and neighbors to go up so that they then just watch them over a weekend or whatever. And I I don't know. With Margo, it's the same thing. It's like how how much how many how long can you do a show about someone who didn't expect to be a mother and now is well Well, I think it's probably but we should sell we could separate the the conversation because Kayev, well, how would you characterize the book? Like is the book surprisingly dark at times, or is it essentially like a fun read that touches on contemporary society. Yeah, I would say the latter. I think my issues with the book are also like my s I watched the first episode of this and my I think the tone of the book was a little bit off-putting to me, similarly in the way that the tone of this show is a little bit off-putting where it just feels like overly twe Yeah. I think like I I I don't think it it's not necessarily fair to combine that into this conversation. Um, because if this is true to the spirit of the book, like one thing that David Kelly is just expert at, especially in this later part of his career, is he's really good at finding the thing that made the thing successful. And he just expands on that and celebrates it. So turning this into a glossy but affirming sort of Twi magical creative family story, that's fine. There's plenty of space for that on TV. There are a lot of talented people working to make that happen, and maybe it'll have a couple twists and turns along the way. And also with a show like this, it's like, oh, that's Carrie Kenny Silver in one scene being funny. That's Laura San Giocomo as a minor character. We haven't seen her in a minute. That's great to see. Like it's attracting Marcia Gay Harden. Like it's a of a very, very um very high level. But the the bummer is when that sensibility, that kind of apple just contoured smo othing everything out sensibility becomes the lingua franca of the medium or becomes the expected thing. Now, to bring it all the way back to the first point we were making when you were talking about what's out there right now, historically TV, is pretty laundryfolding and affirming and magical and fill space and fill time. And it's okay to bring some of that back into our lives. The pit proves that you can be pretty boundary pushing and thrilling within some using some of that old language. Um, I think the problem becomes when all of the resources at the shrinking number of streaming services pour all of those resources into that. Now we're not at that point. There's still 300 new shows and Apple UK especially is putting out a lot of really good. And this also might speak to the difference between watching TV as a professional pursuit versus watching TV as like a way to let off steam at the end of a long day.. Yeah So I I I acknowledge that and I you know I there but there is something f fuzzy going on with me and with with these shows where I'm just like I I'm not connecting with as many as I usually do. Well I think I think that goes back to the