This episode is brought to you by Snapple, wanna know another Snapple fact? The first hot air balloon passengers were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster. [screaming] Ridiculous! Check out Snapple.com to find ridiculously-flavored Snapple near you. This is Pop Culture Confidential, and I'm Christina Yerling Biro. [music playing] Hey everyone, welcome to Pop Culture Confidential. Listeners, you all know those stories, creative kiss met when two young pals meet in pop culture lightning strikes, Lennon McCartney on the streets of Liverpool, Damon and Affleck from childhood friends in Massachusetts to an Oscar for Best Screenplay. The legend is that young Chris Ryan walked into a border where Andy Greenwald was working during his first year of college. They bonded over Ryan's t-shirt, which featured the band pavement, from this moment on, a unique duo in Pop Culture Criticism was born. Ryan and Greenwald are incredibly knowledgeable in music, film, and TV. Side note, Andy Greenwald was making a Twin Peaks fanzine already in middle school. They've worked for publications like Spin Magazine and Grantland, just to name a few. Andy Greenwald is also a screenwriter, he's the showrunner on the TV show Briar Patch, Chris Ryan is the editorial director at The Ringer, and frequents many of the network's podcasts from the big picture to the rewatchables. Together they host The Watch, the best TV podcast out there. Now another legend has it that I met Chris and Andy on a boat on the beautiful fjords of Norway. All of this is mostly true. Now we meet again at their Spotify Studios in Los Angeles, Andy Greenwald, Chris Ryan. Thank you so much for joining me. - Print the legend. - Yeah, I like everything. The pavement shirt? Was it a pavement shirt? It's a little apocryphal. I think we were each wearing air-appropriate band t-shirts and in the manner of dogs sniffing each other, we made comments about each other, like grudgingly approving comments about each other's t-shirts. It's very nice of you, first of all, it's fantastic to be here. Second of all, it's very nice of you to say that this pop culture criticism duo was born, because there was then about 14 years of being in the wilderness. - Well, that's where you were talking. - Yeah, exactly. That's where we were. - We were getting in reps. - Yeah. - Yeah, we were practicing. - But I find this beautiful, the friendship bonding over art. I mean, some of my most important friendships in life is this, talking about music and film and all that. So I want to know just a little bit. So Chris, if Andy's having a really bad day, he has writer's block, blue, he's been canceled, what is it that he would put on as a guilty pleasure? - Oh, like to revive his spirits. - Yes, to get back. - As music or as anything. That's a really good question. - I mean, I've never had a bad day in my life. - Oh, yeah, like teenage dream, Katy Perry? - I'm generally, or teenage fan club. I'm genuinely, yeah, so sunny. - Yeah, something uplifting, something upbeat, something pop. Andy has like a much larger pop appetite than I think I do. I'm a little bit more on the aggressive side of music. - That's true. - So if I'm like down, I like to then go firing into the pits of hell. - And if Chris is like trapped in Fincher's panic room, we managed to get two DVDs with directors with him in there. What would it be? - Oh, oh, so if he had-- - He has to sit there and wait for whatever is happening outside. - It's like Desert Island disc. - Oh, category. - It would just be like various editions of the heat DVD. It would be like, but in all the ratios, so you could just sort of go through them and decide which ones-- - It's true frame-by-frame analysis, yeah. - I mean, there are some things that are just consistent in our friendship and in our public personas. Like one of the earliest stories that Chris told me in the '90s was about the time in Philadelphia when we were all back from college for winter break. I don't think we knew each other yet. And there was a terrible snowstorm. And he told a story about walking from his parents' house by the art museum to the river, where there was a big multiplex and seeing heat multiple times before it was cool to see heat multiple times. - Well, there wasn't that much to do. - That's also part of the story. - I'm going to talk about TV with you, but before that, I want to ask you one thing that I heard. I had the pleasure of coming to your live show this week with a big picture at L. Ray. And it was kind of shocking, because here you said that you never lie on the big picture, but you do on the watch. Now, have you heard this, Andy? - No, because I don't listen to any of the podcasts. So this is really important. - Nor attend my life show. Should we investigate this? - Okay, so what I meant by that was that I think that sometimes I personally, deep down, don't like a show, or maybe I really like a show, but if I don't like a show more often than not, I will still professionally present a curiosity about it that I know deep down inside doesn't exist. - It was so conflicted. - Yeah, it was basically like when I'm watching something and I know it's going to be a going concern for weeks and weeks and weeks. And this is the difference between TV and film criticism, is that TV, you're going to have to sort of adjust your opinions and have you have to have stamina to watch 10 hours? - Except if we're talking horizon, right? - Except if we're talking horizon, then you really need your stamina. But sometimes with TV shows, I'll be like, yeah, that seemed pretty interesting. I like what they were doing, and it's not necessarily, I'm deep down inside. I'm also like, I hate this. - But after the season is over, will you go back and say, no, this was not good. I mean, will you be honest then? - Absolutely, yeah. - But I think it's a worthwhile challenge to maintain your credulousness about something that like, well, maybe this is all intentional or maybe they're going to pull it together. Because it's possible, it has been done. I'm not capable of being that patient often. I am like, I have much more. - Or that quiet. - Or that quiet. Like I can't really lie, even if it was, even if sometimes it would seem smarter. - He's always being honest about his emotional and intellectual reaction to something, whereas I'm like, I've kind of seen enough shows now that I know that even if I don't like it immediately, it might still come together in the third or fifth episode. - Do you have an example? - Severance. - Severance is a good example of something that I think I was just kind of like, this is moving way too slowly. I don't, I got it, but I was kind of like, I'm personally not really feeling the vibe of it. And as it developed, I was like, you know what, honest, obviously this is being made with a high level of care. And it's got a lot to say about being alive right now, but also this fantasy of like, this dystopian fantasy of advanced pharmacology that separates your memories. And I eventually got very into it. But initially with Severance, I was like, yeah, it seems cool. And I was like, I don't really like this. - Yeah, I think for me, it's often, I have very, very strong reactions to things right away. - Yeah. - Often completely ignoring my own off-stated advice about like, understanding who's driving and where we're going before having too strong a reaction, that this is a marathon, not a sprint. But there have been shows like... - The Boys. - The Boys is a great one. Like the opening sequence of the Boys, I was like, this is appalling. Which of course was the point, but I was not calibrated for it. And now I'm more devoted to that show for seasons than Chris is, who generally likes appalling content. - Yeah. - Okay. I want to talk some TV with you. And I have been listening to you guys forever and following you forever. - Thank you. - And it's a weekly thing and I really love it. And of course you guys have taken lots of deep dives into maybe what is Peak TV's most written about character, the male anti-hero. We've all read and written about this. The psychologically complicated male character, be it Tony Soprano or Don Draper or Walter White. But I want to propose this for our discussion. Think about Liz Danvers played by Jody Foster, the true detective. Shiv Royne's succession, Jennifer Jason Lee in Fargo, Jamie Lee Curtis in The Bear. Martha in Baby Rain Deer. Are we in a particularly good moment for complicated, multifaceted, interesting anti-hero women on TV? Or is it just wishful thinking on my part? - Yeah. I mean, maybe it doesn't always have to even have the description anti-hero. It's just, I think that the women characters are being written at a higher level and with more depth and care. And also there's more risks being taken to show women in perhaps complicated lights. You know, you're talking about Liz Danvers and True Detective. I thought that that was an incredibly difficult task for Jody Foster to be the lead cop in a true detective series when you have these sort of performances to live up to, especially with McConaughey in the first season. - And you have Nick Pitts a lot, apparently. - Yeah. - It's denigrating the show as it's being aired. You know, I think that there's, I think that one of the nicest things that's happened over the last five, six years, Andy and I have been doing this for a little bit more than ten now, is people are open to seeing all sorts of characters do all sorts of different things. It's not as prescriptive anymore. - Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that one of the things that made the New Season of True Detective interesting, even if it wasn't always successful, was how directly reactive it was to the sort of the miasma of the Nick Pitts a lot of energy. And Jody Foster was given a chance to basically hit a lot of, play a lot of the same melodies. And then the show could sort of see how we felt about it if it was through her. And also because the creative team was also female, considering, considering what she is, is, or isn't even allowed to do by the society she's in. You know, she was, she's sleeping around, she's abusing power, but she's also playing a maternal role in multiple cases, both her actual children and then also too was the kid's being prior in a way. And I thought that was one of the more interesting aspects of the show, even if I didn't feel it hung together overall. I think one of the changes that you might be paying close attention to is that, like, for a while during the so-called Golden Age, the men were allowed to just do absolutely everything and contain multitudes, like Walter White being an absolute demon villain, but also strangely compelling and sympathetic, if not empathetic. Whereas the female leads were troubled and traumatized. And you think of, like, Carrie Mathison or something on Homeland, which is a show that I love and then sort of fell off with, and Claire Danes' performance was never not, you know, completely on 11 on a spinal test scale. Or really interesting wise, like, Carmella was, of course, a fantastic character, Schuyler, and it was fantastic. But they failed the TV Bechtel test, where they only are on the show because they're married to the central gravitational figure. And so I think it's worthwhile also pointing out things that we love from this year, like, like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, where my Erskine's character is in many ways the more interesting of the two, and the more surprising in her emotional journey. And many theories where the group of women are more interesting, I'm thinking of the women in Shogun, which were incredibly interesting, the women in Hacks, of course, but also I felt that the two most powerful episodes in the new season of The Bear are the ones centered around the women, the one about Tia, and the one about when that gives birth, and Donna is there, and it felt like Carmi was just moping around. We just got done talking about this. We were talking, no, we just got done an episode where we asked our listeners for mailbag questions about The Bear, because we didn't want to just drop it after two podcast episodes, recapping five episodes each, but the binge kind of demanded that. But you come to realize that a lot of the male characters in The Bear are exactly where they were at the beginning of the season. For better or for worse, I think that there's a truth to the fact that people don't always change every week, and that some people get stuck in a rut and get stuck in neutral, but certainly you get the sense that Tina's life is changed more in the reality of The Bear, because her episode is a prequel episode. We don't really see a ton of Tina just at the restaurant in general this season, I don't think. But I agree with you. It's that the men, it's certainly the season on The Bear are actually just petrel and boys. I mean, Richie and Carmi just shouting fuck you to each other. Carmi really needs to snap out. Yeah, I mean, totally stuck. Whereas Tina is in the mix, struggling, trying to keep up in the weeds, cooking all day, and then now we know she also goes home and makes dinner for her family. The growth and change that was possible for Sugar and her mom in the Ice Chips episode is, I mean, we talked about this on our show last week. Like, is it realistic that you can have the breakthrough you've wanted with your parent for your entire life in a very stressful 20 minutes while in labor? Maybe. But it's a counterpoint to how hard it is for someone who just goes home and puts his pair of jeans in the oven to have any emotional growth. So I think it's a well-observed counterpoint. Yeah, you mentioned a few of those things, Andy, but why? Why do you see this? What are the main things? Is it that there's more female showrunners? Is it something else that's happening? There's definitely more female showrunners. I think that's absolutely true. I think that the generation of shows that we talk about when we talk about that first golden age and of this century, the creators of that were products of the previous generation, which is almost inevitably the case, right? And whether it's Matt Weiner doing time on sitcoms before working on "The Sopranos" or "David Chase" working on absolutely everything from stuff he's embarrassed about through more interesting shows like "Picket Fences" and "I'll Fly Away," right, was the other one? Yeah. But he did. And Vince Gilligan on "The X Files," like they were waiting for their shot and they were coming out of a completely different industry that was, of course, also male-dominated. And I think one of the more interesting things in the last 15 years has been the elevation of people who might not have had chances to run their own shows or tell their own stories. And I think genuinely a very good faith effort by the industry to diversify in all senses, certainly within the rooms and making sure that when you're telling a story about, even if it's a man at the top of the call sheet, there are plenty of women in the room fighting for characters that might otherwise be secondary or forgotten. Also, there might be a trickle-down effect from the very sort of where we find ourselves now. You would say that streaming TV has sort of had maybe a negative impact on the creative arts. But because of the demand for content, a lot more shows that maybe would not have gotten in Greenlit in 2012 or 2009 did get Greenlit in 2019 and in 2023. So I think that's why you get, "I may destroy you," because they need more shows to put on Max. And to be clear, like, lest we fall completely into the habit of just mansplaining the rise of feminism in the contemporary TV industry that, like... I asked you so... Who better to explain? It is still predominantly a male-born industry. Yeah, it is. And I mean, we can't forget that there's been, of course, fantastic female characters, all through peak TV. We mentioned a few. So this is just a thought that I think is interesting and that I'm happy about. I mean, I'm thinking of an interesting character like Martha and Baby Reindeer. I mean, do you think that could have been made 15, 20 years ago? I think the show couldn't have been made 15, 20 years ago. You know, for a variety of reasons, but one of those reasons would be the... I mean, not to use a broad brush, but like the unlikeability or the extremity of one of the two central characters, for sure. What about the guys right now? Finally, let's talk about the sellers. There's a few that, for me, quite boring, but I'm thinking... I really like presumed innocent, but he's not very interesting. We just got done talking about this as well. This is good. This is front of mind for us. Oh, good. Because I have not heard that show, Jessica, because I walked in after you were taping. The mics are still hot. Yeah. Eric, you know, they've been a Cumberbatch show. Yeah. Ripley is an interesting character, but I don't... You know, we've sort of seen that before, even though he does it very well. We were just talking about Karmie. There's something so... I don't know. They haven't moved much of these characters. What were you saying on your show? Well, we were kind of more remarking about Jake Gyllenhaal's performance and the characterization that he settled on and the creative team of the show settled on, that this guy is going to be at the center of a murder mystery. And regardless of whether he committed this murder, the audience is kind of like... It seems like he could commit a murder. You know, so there's not a ton of sympathy for this character, whereas I think in the original film, Harrison Ford was like kind of the kind of guy you would see walking through a city hall going into and out of court. I mean, he was Harrison Ford, and he's like one of the most handsome people ever born. But he wasn't jacked up and hugely... You also cast Harrison Ford because the audience is like, "We'll forgive him for his dress passes." He's made a mistake. He slept with Greta Shaki or whatever. That was maybe not great. It's the '90s. The '90s, these things happen. So I think maybe one of the reasons why, there are many reasons why I think "Presumed Innocent" is not working as well as it approaches the end of its season as it was at the beginning. But one of them was the decision to make the main character deeply unsympathetic is interesting, but it's not necessarily as watchable or compelling. It's making a point, but it's not necessarily... Sometimes when you mess with the basic economy of TV, like I want to be invested in my hero's journey or heroine's journey as the case may be. You're scoring intellectual points, but not necessarily winning audience. The thing that... Interesting about your question is I would ask you in return is, "Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Are there any feel-good male characters that you can remember from a show?" I mean, even something like "Succession" we all loved and had fascinating characters. Oh, yeah. We're not good guys. But I'm thinking like someone like Cosmo Jarvis and Shogun. Sure. I mean, isn't he like just the nice hero all the way through? He's sort of an afterthought. Bumbling afterthought, yeah. That's, I think, what TV is trying to do more and more of is take archetypes and then say, "Well, what if this person was a supporting character?" And the same show, Haryukusanata, is amazing. Yeah. I mean, he has a lot of depth. You sort of go back and forth with his character, which you do in the best written succession characters as well. What is he doing now? What is his plan? Is it a good plan or is it not a good plan? And those characters are really interesting and he does it so well. But I think the connective thread between shows like Shogun and Succession ultimately are... It's not rocket science. I think it's that the creators are incredibly thoughtful, talented, inquisitive, creative minds. And so, you know, remember some of the reactions to the beginning of Succession, which is like, "Why would I care about these apples?" Right. They're too mean. Right. And it's like, "Well, Jesse Armstrong never thought of them in such reductive terms. He was fascinated and compelled by their humanity and the audience. And he understood the mechanism of television as we kind of take the side of whoever we're watching. We're sitting on our couches. We're defenseless and we kind of go with it. That's also why Breaking Bad worked." And so, what he made was characters whose flaws made them understandable and likable even at times. Similarly with Shogun, there's a version of it that I think falls really flat, where it's like, "What can we do?" This is a super lazy term, but like, you know, what's a woke corrective to the 1980s version of this? That was a colonizer narrative or whatever it was. That's uninteresting on the merits. It's a thought exercise. What the creators of the FX version did was like, "Let's find things that are here. Let's work within the history, within the culture, within James Cleville's novel and celebrate the things that we find compelling from a modern perspective." And that's, you know, it's not an easy way to get the richness that we love, but it is a consistent way to do it. There's also, I think, the reason why the bear remains so interesting to me is the same reason why succession was all endlessly fascinating. Was the relationship between the storyteller and their story. And I think as succession wound down, it sort of fell into a bit of a game of thrones, like, who's going to win kind of conversation. And the finale of succession totally pulled the pin out of that. It was like, actually, it doesn't matter. It's this side character, and this whole pursuit of this thing literally destroys this family. And the bear, I think, is also doing similarly interesting things about, like, what if Carmi is actually incapable of putting together a menu that anyone would want to actually eat from? Or what if the way Carmi treats other people negates his ability to do a sauce reduction and, you know, elevate this piece of meat to some other realm? I think that you have to have that kind of ambiguity between, what does the filmmaker or the writer want me to think about this versus how do I feel about it? Also, this is a podcast exclusive. Chris has never before been on the record with his thoughts about the succession finale. He tried to zoom in from the streets of Paris. This guy's an international crowd. Tell us more, yeah. Well, I was on vacation when the succession ended, and I thought it would be really cool in 21st century if I phoned into the finale. I phoned into the finale pod with him. So I tried FaceTiming in or zooming in from, like, while walking around Paris. And I was like, this is so awesome because it was also, like, 9pm where I was. So I was probably hanging out in Paris for a little. If you know what I mean. And it just was like, Andy was like, you're cutting out. This isn't going to work. Yeah, no. Like, let's talk about the finale of the most popular show in America. And I was like a view of Chris's chin frozen with, like, a cathedral behind him. So you've got it. You got the exclusive. Okay, that's very happy about that. Do you have a favorite of any of these female characters or shows? Yeah. From Rika from Shogun, definitely. Why is she that character? Because that character has to do so much while the physical movement of the character is so restrained. So obviously she's like the fulcrum where she's the translator and she's able to both move story along as an exposition mechanism. But she's also a central, a central figure in the show itself and her decisions and her actions wind up changing the course of the narrative. But as a performance, it's got a, it's got this heavy robot. She can't move around. She can't run around. She's not going to, she's not going to pull. I mean, she does pull out a sword, but she doesn't often win things over physically. It's her intellect and it's her ability to communicate. I thought that she just did such an incredible job and she's always got to perform within herself. You know, and there's a reality to that show and what they sort of allow characters to do in terms of how expressive they can be that I think she pushed to the absolute limits of what was sort of realistic. And what they did so smartly on that show was not just changing the colonizer narrative is that they brought so much out with understanding of what was going on with the stories of the women, the theater piece, the whole T sequences. These were a group of women where we were seeing how they were reacting to the men in that way, getting the full story, which I think was brilliant. I think about like how complicated the Marie Ho character is. I mean, she's basically found her salvation in a religion that's now dead set on destroying her country or taking over her country. I mean, that's in and of itself is an amazing character moment. And taking a step back from all of it, like one of the things that I just consistently love about TV is that all these creators, networks, executives, everyone, every stakeholder involved can make incredible plans. They can envision the type of show they're going to make and what they're going to accomplish with their combination of ideas and budget and momentum. But they're also just fundamentally making a very risky bet that Anissa Y exists and that she's available because no matter what energy they poured into the hole in their script that was maricode, it doesn't matter if you can't find the person. And it is one of those rare cases where you can't imagine anyone else doing it. For me, it's a little bit same as Ayo adebri. I mean, she's also just absolutely perfect. Yeah, and that's the other thing that it consistently love about TV, which is when it makes you fall in love with people that you've never even seen before, in some cases. The bear understands that in a way that a lot of the recent trends in TV seems to have forgotten, which is that stars don't make TV, TV make stars. I think that in the streaming era, they sell stuff off of the back of Reese Witherspins in this, or whatever, and they miss the charm of no one really knew Jeremy Strong was. Nobody knew who Jon Hamm was, and there's a real excitement to that, and that's certainly what happened with Shogun. And even earlier, Tony Sipar, all of the great shows from this century, maybe in history, the list of people who the networks wanted is just like a fascinating graveyard to walk past of what it would have been and what it would have been. Yeah, Anthony LaPaglia was going to be Tony Soprano in the Fox pilot version of it. I mean, there's just so many what-ifs. It's just a wonder that anything good happens at all. Hey, it's Kaylee Cuoco for Priceline. Ready to go to your happy place for a happy price? Well, why didn't you say so? Just download the Priceline app right now and save up to 60% on hotels. So whether it's Cousin Kevin's Kazoo concert in Kansas City, go Kevin, or Becky's Bachelor at Bash in Bermuda. You never have to miss a trip ever again. So download the Priceline app today. Your savings are waiting. Go to your happy place for a happy price. Go to your happy price, Priceline. Let's move on. I'm here in the middle of summer, and of course, one everyone's talking about is the debate. The election, and I'd love to get your thoughts on how pop culture and TV is covering these in the past few weeks. Be it John Stewart, or maybe I'll start with this. Your thoughts on Clooney yesterday? I have mixed feelings about that. I think that I'm trying to sort through my feelings about this kind of sudden public stand against Biden. It's not that I don't necessarily agree with it, but I find it hard to believe that it's just occurred to people that he's an incredibly old man. With George Clooney specifically, it kind of like if this was a plot point in an Aaron Sorkin show, I would find it hard to believe that the big actor was like, I'll save democracy by writing an op-ed in the New York Times. And he also lives in France and is an incredibly rich white man, and I understand he cares a lot about other people, and he's a huge Democrat fundraiser, but I think I have mixed feelings. This is a rare fisher. I'm pro. I'm pro because I think that I'm very, very sympathetic to the idea that a lot of people who knew stuff were just waiting for the actual people in charge to do something that maybe could have headed off this absolute nightmare catastrophe that we're living through right now. And so him actually saying something that I both agree with, but also feel like is overdue. I wish more people were doing it. I guess I just think that just because he's a great actor, but that doesn't mean he knows everything. And when he's in the second half of that editorial, he's like, here's what we're going to do. And it's going to be so great. It'll be great for energizing the party. What if you don't know how this stuff works? Well, generally, I am pro humility, which no one has anymore, certainly in an online era. Like, I think being like, we don't actually know how any of these things are going to shake out is probably helpful for survival and emotional maintenance. I would say that I am coming out of a bunch of years of deep, deep, deep cynicism about everything, but particularly about the efficacy of charming comedians preaching to choirs that they are already proud members of. Like, I love John Stewart on The Daily Show in the early 2000s. I really, I both like and admire John Oliver. I do not watch that show because I am the target audience and I already feel the way I feel. And I can't spend Sunday nights getting more outraged than I already am without much ability to affect change. That said, what's been interesting about the last few months of John Stewart, since he returned, is his very first show pissed off everybody because his first show back was him being like, are you serious? We're going to do this again. And I will say that I was a very complacent person who was, who was generally pretty politically engaged, but had made the decision that everything was fine as long as you only read the supplied quotes of what Joe Biden said. As long as I never watched him or heard him speak or considered the reality of what was about to happen, I was fine. And it was going to be fine. So I understood the visceral reaction to this guy who's supposed to be quote unquote on our team shaking it up and maybe weakening the side. And so to see him that he came out and did that was interesting. And then when I was watching, I did watch his show from, from just this week, I thought he was performing a pretty interesting service, you know, because I think so much of this, the frustration at the moment that we're all living through is that I think most people understand what is actually like this man probably cannot campaign. Also, I think it's not just baked in. It's just like people are freaking out at the thought of him losing, but he's already losing. And so, but it's, but it's a choice that there's no alternative like things, crazy things can happen. We could try something that we haven't tried before, but there's this paralysis. And in some cases in the government, like kind of cowardice. So I think it's, it's the rare moment where I'm like, Oh, is culture pushing this in some way? I'm curious as you would happen. Yeah, I mean, I, I do a lot of work on the sports side and have over the years and have been very aware of the way over the, especially even the last 10 years, that it seems like the media can sometimes shape the narrative. Literally shape reality, a team can win by six points. And if enough people in media to say that wasn't enough, you know, I actually a really good example of this to use a current example is the England national team in football, who are in the final as we're recording this in the second straight Euro final, clearly are having like a golden moment in garris south gates leadership of the team, who might be a boring guy who doesn't play interesting football. I completely like can see that point. But results wise, it's kind of undeniable what he's gotten out of this team. But if you only went by watching people on YouTube talk about this football, you'd think they'd never want to match in the history of the world. And everybody is just like, this is a disgrace. These people are gutless. He should be fired. He shouldn't be able to get back into the country. And now they're in a final now they may completely get smoked by Spain and this is relevant. But I think my point is more. I personally find it hard to believe that everybody who has such clear and strong opinions about this after the date didn't have it before the debate that there were opportunities over the last six months to say, Hey, maybe, maybe we should come up with a, like a transition plan or a bridge or whatever. And I do find it, honestly, I'm really cynical about people saving this moment for the promotion of their media platforms rather than the savior of democracy. But I, but I'm very sympathetic personally to the head in the sand theory, you know, like nobody wanted this rematch. And we just sort of sleep walked into it. And I just had to think it was probably fine because some, I mean, again and again, I think the egg on the face moment in this country is people thinking that there's someone in control. There's some wise people, you know, when shows like succession and V have proved that that's not the case. So I think that, but I think that the sort of the freak out over the media's role in this I think is a little bit misunderstood and, and overblown because I don't think that the New York Times, for example, is actively rooting for a Trump return for content. I think that they're people who are, have been involved in covering this and feel a lied to and misled. And also, not as they should be as I am horrified and alarmed that we found ourselves in this moment. So I, I don't mind the full court press. I don't mind, I don't mind it either. I disagree with him about it. Chris wants the silence. Yeah, he wants the state. I'm just saying the head in the sand. The flame pie has a lot of slices. But we're talking more about the entertainment talk show. I mean, they were so powerful in John Stewart's heyday. They really seem to move the needle with a lot of young people and so did many of the nightly talk shows. That landscape has disappeared. Sure, John Stewart's back, but not a lot of people. It's still our generation watching it. The young people. But there's no, there's no monoculture anymore. And for the young, for the sort of pop culture interested, who's leading the charge. I'm terrified of Mr. Beast. I don't know. Like that's someone I learned about. That's my son. I don't actually know what he does. But like, I mean, I do think that Taylor Swift weighing in would make impact. I think there's, I think there's two problems. One is just general cynicism because like the Trump years where people, like other people who have New Yorker subscriptions would forward emails of like John Stewart on YouTube and be like, got them. We got them. It's like, no. Stop what you're doing and watch this monologue. Yeah. And it's just trying to, it's, it's, it's, it's that everyone is terrified and like, oh, this feels like it's something to invest my hopes and dreams into. I think people are cynical about that. I also think that part of the, the, the way that media is digested now is you can't even have like a pure experience with someone's thoughts because even if, if they're still choosing to engage and express themselves on Twitter, for example, underneath it is 40 people saying like, this person was on Epstein's plane or like, you know, or, or, or does, you know, great, great thought from a genocidal complicit, whatever. There's no moment where you can take in the merits of it on its own without being bombarded with who knows what kind of faith, kind of the way. I also think because of the way social media works and the prevalence of it in our life, which is even exponentially more powerful and wide than it even was when the, at the end of the Obama administration, or the beginning of the Trump administration is that I think people are considered themselves broadly aware of everything. And yeah, and so it's kind of like, yeah, I, I, I, I get it, Biden had a bad night and I get it there. They may replace him like it's like, but it's not like I want to spend an hour of my evening hearing someone make jokes, but also sincere statements about it. Well, also everyone is way, way, way to pitched up and Pat is also part of the completely hyperactive and insane response to Donald Trump being elected president, which is insane and deserves an insane response. But some of the reaction was that, well, now we need to be more vigilant all the time and that was, you know, social media was available to do that. So there was an assumption that people would be angry and resisting every minute of their day, be deeply, deeply involved in donating money to the Attorney General race in Mississippi, that all politics is nationalized blood sport that should consume you at all times. It makes me think in retrospect that I don't know how effective John Stewart was. I think we enjoyed watching him, but the war in Iraq happened. You know, like I, he didn't stop it. I don't know if he mobilized anything against it. I think generally people are just trying to live their lives and maybe laugh at the end of them and find a way to engage when appropriate on issues that matter and not. But the gong is being, for so many years now, is so loud. And I'm not saying this is taking politics out of it. The things we carry in our pockets is just making us angry and making us engage and making us feel the need to have an opinion all the time. And I think there's some exhaustion from that. And as you were saying, we were the target audience. We had an interesting reaction just as friends, then we talked about it briefly on the podcast last week, and we were both kind of getting into the singer Zach Bryan, who is a huge, huge country singer here. And we're both struck by the fact that like, it's, it's weird. It's like, when I, it's everything is so charged that to say that the music that I heard from him was apolitical makes it sound like I'm making a political comment. It's not. It just felt deeply embedded in certain American cultural traditions and the country and universal themes of heartbreak and longing and frustration and economic issues. And engaging with that felt very nice, honestly, not because he's, again, as I'm saying this, I hear the counter argument. Like, am I suggesting that he's made a safe space? You know, that's like, no, I think he's actually dealing with day to day things, whereas everything is so supercharged and even to circle back to the TV we're talking about. A lot of programming decisions did come out of skimming the top of Twitter, like cream, like, like, ah, these ideas must have been brought to my attention because they are deeply felt, but a cross section of America. That's not actually America. You're just listening to the loudest people and making decisions based on that, and that rarely leads to good art or, or good emotional responses in people. Right. Right. Yeah. It's so interesting. Um, is there, this is a big question because of, of course, everyone knows TV takes a ton of time to make, but is there a showrunner or a show the past, say, ten years of this sort of political time we lived in that you think has really captured our times? Well, it's funny you should mention that because we are literally living through a plot on the West Wing right now. I mean, there's a whole part of the West Wing where the president's wife obscures his medical diagnosis so that he can. I don't remember this. Which season is this? I have to go back. I've seen it. It's like season four, three or four. I mean, the reveal that he's sick and she's known is pretty early in the series. It was in the Sorkin years, which was the first half of its run. That leads me to say like Aaron Sorkin wishes. You know, I think Aaron Sorkin has attempted to make several shows that capture the zeitgeist. I think that now people might look back and cringe at some of that stuff, but it, I always admired him for trying. Um, is there a show or a writer or somebody who you feel like channels is? Well, I think it's the hard truth is that it's just always a lot of things at once. You know, I think that, um, like Parks and Recreation and Veep were both on around the same time and maybe reflect some weather in the case of parks, some like Obama era optimism or in the case of Veep, which straddled Obama into Trump like a sort of like, we can be free to joke about this because it's not, we're actually safe enough to do this now. Um, but I think both instincts are just deeply true of the, even though Veep came from the creator came from the UK of like the American character, right? Like we believe in the decency and goodness of people, maybe to our detriment. Um, and maybe at the top it's just clowns. I'm not sure. I, I think that it, it's such a good question and I think it probably demands deeper thought than like what's on the top of my head right now. I think that, um, I think one thing that is definitely for sure is that the very best of TV in the last few years, whether it's, um, Breaking Bad or Atlanta, I think grapple with the idea of the American character. But it's just too, it's too messy. Yeah, I mean, there's, there shows that explicitly try to address things that are going on in society in the characters or in the writing. And then there are shows that kind of feel like it. You know, um, I often think about Ozark, which is a flawed show, but is about two bad people who, because they don't get punished for the first bad thing they do, just keep digging and digging and digging for themselves. So that they, you know, these people who are money laundering for a cartel, then just say like, well, what if we went to the, the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri and corrupted that area by like, laundering all the cash through there. And there's something about the kind of bottomless evil of reckless capitalism that I think that that show really represented well, even if it was not explicitly a political show. The two others I would throw in there is probably the two shows that topped my best ofs for a couple of years running was reservation dogs, which I think is by its focus on something very small and very specific and very personal, both to Sterling Harjo, the creator and to the characters, did incredibly wide ranging emotional work about like what we actually can do for each other on a granular level that fills me with hope that these things can go on. I mean, that those things can go on in any administration or political moment. But I think succession is relevant here too, because fundamentally with, you know, with great verve and with very British wit, the show is about how hurt people hurt people. And the most powerful titans with the, you know, literally their fingers on the button just want their dads to hug them, and maybe that would help. And it never, ever does. And we just keep repeating the same cycles. And I mean this latest season of Fargo is an obvious example, of course, with the John Hancock character, but a small show like reservation dogs. And if you ask me, I mean, film and TV are definitely doing more interesting work in grappling than SNL or the Kimmels or the Founds, all that at the moment. I think those guys are more interested in being like, how can I ride off of the sort of draft of whatever was funny on Twitter that day, you know, and play games and stuff. I think things got out of whack, right, because I feel like Johnny Carson was popular during all sorts of tumultuous times, because what united was that he was going to be entertaining as people went to bed. And two things changed. One was that people don't watch those shows when they're going to bed anymore. They watch the clips the next day. So you're programming for a completely different vibe and a different kind of attention getting audience. So yeah, the idea that politics was driven in some ways by entertainers, that there was sort of a, that crusading was an important aspect of it. I don't know. I mean, I like the fact that Kimmel, I mean, there's a big billboard like Oliver Town, there's, you know, for your consideration billboards for Emmy nominations and things. That's very normal. It's one of the big industries in Los Angeles. I saw one the other day for Kimmel that had a quote said stupid Jimmy Kimmel, and it says, it's a Trump quote, and it says, please consider me as much as he considers me. I think it's great to have someone like a jester being like pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, but the idea that there is some sort of mandate and importance and needle moving. No, that's true. But I mean, I just sort of miss, you know, Tina and Amy behind the desk. Me too. But I also miss not looking at the news 10 hours a day. That's true. You know, and that I think was also a huge part of what late night served is most people would probably watch a pretty benign local news and then a national news. Maybe look at the paper that morning. And then by 1130 we're like, I could hear some jokes about the OJ trial or whatever it is and not feel like they were inundated already. At the end of the day, I don't know why, I mean, for commentary, I wouldn't watch anything. I'm also by the end of the day and most people don't want any more commentary. Yeah, it also is very quaint for times when every single thing didn't seem existential. Now, I'm of the opinion that things at the moment actually are potentially existential, but when there was a presidential election that felt like a huge, huge deal. And one candidate was a dumb and one candidate was boring. And Will Ferrell and Daryl Hammond were just making jokes. I would do anything to go back to business. That seemed fine. Simple times. So we started the show off by talking about, you know, how long you guys have been at this. How has criticism and TV criticism or music and film changed? What's the biggest changes you've seen throughout the years you guys have been at it? I'll show you the music one first, because we started doing that. And I think the biggest, biggest thing was the availability of music. Like, the music critic criticism that we grew up loving, we loved it because it was so influential in helping ourselves define ourselves and discover things like writers that we love like Charles Aaron or Rob Sheffield writing about something and then saying, this sounds a little bit like this, but in this direction, we would spend harder money to have the chance to hear it for ourselves. And when you spend money on it, you spend a lot more time trying to like it or at least trying to understand it. Once everything was available to everyone all the time, the role of the critic really, really changed and became a lot less like, you know, you didn't need someone to trust as much because you could make up your mind for yourself and that kind of devalued the role. It didn't necessarily change the writing. I think there's a lot of good writing still, but that being able to be like a thought DJ for people was really fun. Yeah, there's something really, Andy touched on this with the availability of music. I think it also had a huge impact on the availability of TV. You're asking about the late night paradigm of watching Kimmel at the end of the evening. When I was a kid, my mom would watch late night because there was nothing else on at that moment. And there's never a moment in human existence now where you can say there's nothing else on because you can watch the Criterion channel, or you can watch old Sopranos episodes, or you can watch old Johnny Carson episodes from the 70s. The same ones your mom was watching. Yeah, it's like there's never a moment where you're like, I guess I'm just stuck watching house hunters. I mean, you can watch house hunters, but there is everything on and the same thing goes for music. I think that something fundamentally shifted when you were like, Hey, I've heard the white stripes and I'm going to tell you about like what I thought of it and it's out in two weeks and people would get excited about it and go buy the white stripes and listen to it nonstop for a couple of weeks thinking about it. Now that's also competing with all of opera and all of jazz and all of pop music all the time. And what a critic does in that moment is really I think probably now getting more into like personal storytelling, because like that's where this sort of like it's the specialization of criticism, but it is the amplification of somebody saying like, Hey, I worked in a restaurant. This is what I think of the bear or somebody saying like, I, you know, I, I think here's what TV, you know, I worked in the media. Here's what succession gets right and wrong about media mergers and acquisitions. And even for people like Andy and I don't really think I think we talk about stuff as critics, but often talk about our personal relationship to a show and even the way the show ping pong's back and forth between us. Yeah, I think from my personal experience being a full time TV critic when Grantland launched. And now in retrospect, this is a very innocent and sweet time, but I found myself getting increasingly frustrated with the conversation, which really, by that I mean Twitter, which is what was dominant at the time. Because I would spend hours, maybe too many hours my editors would say so like trying to craft like very long editors would also say too long essays and every week, you know, big, big features about something that I was motivated by or interested in or the state of something that hopefully was at least I was trying to make it artistic, you know, in my own way. And then it would be a link on Twitter, shoveling the same cultural snow as everyone else who's just like 10 things house, 10 things Game of Thrones is dumb about this week. It's all flattened and equaled in that way. And then, you know, again, I don't begrudge anyone with a collapse of publications and websites that could pay people to write long form things. Everyone is kind of a mercenary Ronin just trying to brand build and get attention for takes and then the group think of Twitter also that all the takes had to be politically aligned in a certain way or you would be singled out or that just had such a dispiriting, I would say. Did you really feel like cancel culture came for you after House of the Dragon season one? Yes, but that was after Twitter. Yes. And I deserved it. Okay. But I had a kind of a flattening effect on something. That said, I still think there's like, there's brilliant criticism, some about music, some about TV, but like my favorite, this is, I don't think I've articulated this or thought about it, but like the criticism that I've gotten really excited recently is like this kid Jackson Arne who writes about art in the New Yorker. He's writing about artists that are, he's writing about things that are 50, 100, 200 years old, and have a weight that have lasted and other people's takes and opinions have dinged off of them. And so he's considering something. And he's not making an argument week to week about whether this should exist, or whether this is, you know, wrong headed or whatever, the way that we seem to have to with all new TV, because we're not just talking about, is this a good show, we're talking about you know, are these good people making it and why are they making it now and what is the streaming service. There's a distance that I think allows for better reactive and respond, let's say not reactive thought that the TV landscape is very important. So I much prefer talking about it with my friend. Then I think I think I'm much happier doing that now than I would be if I was taking time to really write through everything all the time. Well it's so interesting because it's almost schizophrenic because at one point you have all of the new, I mean, letterbox and rotten tomatoes and everyone writing their thoughts, good thoughts, bad thoughts on Twitter and whatever, but at the same time we're in a time when it's so interesting. And you can find someone like that. People can write niche stuff. And if I only want to listen to podcasts about that particular show that week, I'll find them. And I love that. I mean, for me, that works too. So you can really dive into something as opposed to years ago when you're like, someone writing about this show. There's always someone who has an opinion about something. But you can also self-select then out of hearing opinions or learning about shows that you might not. Physician heal myself. You can self-select out here. Yeah, but I don't want to. Hey, hey man, I've switched jobs. Finally, what are you most looking forward to this fall? Well, the election. Well, that's good of you so sick. Are you really? We're still here. I mean, industry is a show that we adore. Yeah, that's coming back in August. And that feels very exciting because almost in a way that harkens back to when we were writing about music and we'd find an indie band that we loved and you'd want to celebrate them and get people, check this out, listen to this. And then when the next album comes out, more people like it. Industry had that kind of feeling because it was kind of a small boar show for HBO here. It was on Monday nights and then it was good and the second season was great. And now it's got a Sunday night slot and it feels like people are getting on board. And that is both fun for us as fans of the show and also as podcasters because that enthusiasm of an audience really, really helps us in a way. It's much more fun to talk about something week to week that we can feel the enthusiasm for. My answer to your question is I don't know. And that's my favorite time of the year. It's actually stressful. The first half of the year in the States is when they basically empty the chambers of everything they've got. That they think could possibly get nominated for an Emmy and so the Emmy nomination window is what made 31st basically. So that's why you have twice as many high quality shows in April May as you do in the subsequent months. Yeah, so we the first half of our year is often just playing catch up and always behind him. Can you believe that there's a net bidding show and peacock that no one I haven't even seen that. I watched it like a couple episodes of it wasn't to my taste but like it is just really, if you told childhood me that a net betting and Sam Neil had a TV show I don't understand. Who are those people? The guy from Jurassic Park and the woman from Bugsy. But my favorite times of the TV years when I don't know what we're going to watch next, it can be a little stressful. But the most fun Andy and I have had over the years is when it's not like we discover as like, you know, we've arrived on the shores of of Libiro and now we love it but I think that there's like, because so much stuff gets made. A lot of stuff was like, Oh, it's right over here and I you know I just watched the show called Shorsey, a couple of weeks ago in its entirety and that was like this miracle to me. It'd been hiding in plain sight for a couple of years I'm sure there's a bunch of other shows out there that are like that where we've kind of ignored it but it's actually like really worth our time. And as far as new shows coming up it's just like I'm really excited to just be in late October and not know what's out and come across something. I agree but I'm also tired of new stuff. Honestly, and like the constant crush of new stuff new stuff is not necessarily better or more exciting. I, not to make this entire podcast about how I like the art critic at the New Yorker. But I really have loved and Chris just referenced it like when we've had an opportunity to slow down when there haven't been new things, whether it's because of the strike or COVID or whatever, or just taking the time. Like when we did fall in love with the French show Le Bureau which was one of our favorite shows I think collectively of all time. It was there for us and we in our joy for it was palpable and when we got to take the time out of the podcast to talk about it or when we talked about lonesome dove one of our favorite books. Or honestly it was a running joke for a while that because of I think I was in production on my show or maybe there were a hundred other things on at the time but we didn't watch Chernobyl, the much lauded HBO miniseries. And then for a while people were just sort of like how do you call yourselves, whatever you call yourselves. That's happening now with the interview with the vampire. People are like I don't understand how you could say you watched TV this year and not have watched the interview with the vampire. But the best that actually worked out perfectly for us because there was enough body of evidence that Chernobyl was amazing. It wasn't just like a spur of the moment thing that people then were like maybe it wasn't as good as we thought. And it lasted everyone was like that was a masterpiece. We then paused our whatever day to day intake we watched it and we're like holy shit. This is amazing and we have confidence and we take confidence in the product and we can take real pleasure in the enjoyment of it which I wish we could do more of but that's not necessarily the nature of politics. Usually Chris texts me and says do you have time to watch this thing that I like and I say no and then we do a mailbag. No, it's a good question. I think that I think some of it's based on what what streamer network it's on. So we tend to give things on FX and HBO especially a really big chance because. Track record because the track record and also because typically HBO shows are released once a week so it really suits our programming schedule to be able to talk about something piecemeal rather than what we just did with the bear where it's like five episodes and then five episodes. I think that lots of times it will be something as simple as a writer who we like or a director who we like has gotten signed up to something. And then on the flip side there's things that we're suspicious of I think collectively I think we get collectively suspicious of Apple stuff I think that we've been fooled one too many times by some Star Wars stuff and like need a little bit of reassurance going into it that this is going to be worth the time. Yeah we all I mean the release schedules have changed audiences have changed the monoculture stuff has has changed we also in the early days of the pod I think we're just you know just popping off more often and we would just have. We would have fun ripping on things and yeah we don't do that as much anymore partly because just not liking something especially in an era with. Just diminished expectations and it just doesn't feel that fine I agree with that. We had that conversation about House of the Dragon this season because I have to I don't have to I love lovingly and willingly I'm working on a recap show of that. So I'm like I talk about this once a week if you don't like it we certainly don't have to talk about it but it's wound up kind of I think slowly inching its way back into your heart. Well I enjoy I mean the other thing I'll say is I have very very visceral reactions to things and have strong opinions and takes but I 100% don't mind being wrong. I mean I love it when things are good first and foremost and Barbie like well that was the trailer I thought was bad but yes but I own it you know I'll have a reaction to the thing and it's great I don't need to. Like by real estate on Bad Take Island like I'll take the help to as where like when we met I'll get on a strange boat. Yes great happily happily take me wherever you're going to go as long as you're serving drinks on the boat I'm fine. Chris did you lie about any. Not today no I've actually I've been it it's been a week of real candor for me including being honest about lying on the line. I'm shocked no I'm not shocked I know the truth. Guys thank you so much this is great thank you for having me here and for being on the show. Thanks so much for having us. Let's meet on a boat again sometime soon. Hopefully with the art critic from the New Yorker. Yes I can't wait to meet him. Really really thoughtful guy. Thank you. Are you looking for a podcast where you can learn about the juiciest historical events and people but it really feels like you're just gossiping with your girlfriends over a glass of wine or two. Well that's why we created right answers mostly for what you didn't learn in history class but you really wanted to. I'm your host Claire Donald and I'm Tess Bellomo. Join us every Monday as we dive into the most iconic people and events and get ready to laugh along the way. We covered all from Titanic to Chris Jenner studio 54 Marie Antoinette even Colton crime such as Charles Manson and Jonestown every Monday wherever you listen to your podcast because history is just gossip. Follow us at right answers mostly for more.
From their studios at The Ringer/Spotify in downtown Los Angeles Christina visits with the brilliant TV critics and co-hosts of 'The Watch' Chris Ryan & Andy Greenwald! They talk, among other things, about their longtime friendship and collaboration. The latest seasons of TV and discuss: are we in a particularly good moment for multifaceted female characters. Talk about shows like The Bear, Shōgun & Presumed Innocent. TV this election cycle & mixed feeling about Clooney's op-ed. How criticism has changed through the decades and so much more
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