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Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Rye and I am an editor at theringer.com and joining me in the studio, the Girl Boss of Arkham Asylum. It's Andy Greenwall! Doesn't seem like the best gig.
We're here again. On Thursday, we're going to be talking a little bit about the Penguin, a little bit about English teacher, a little bit about some spy shows that are coming out. Maybe this fall. I don't know.
We don't know which fall. It's pending which fall. A lot of stuff on our plate today. Andy, we had initially tried to come up with a new format where we kind of just go, your turn my turn asking each other probing questions.
And I have a few here for you. Well, you were like, first of all, you continue to... Hey, it's great to see you, man. It's good.
Anytime we get to spend together is good time. You continue to innovate in the podcasting space. I appreciate that. I do think we need more reliable bits than, hey, Chris, can you go and Facebook and make people ask us questions?
I think we need a couple more things in the chamber. What's stopping you? Well, what was interesting is you were like, let's ask each other questions and I was like, I've been waiting for this moment for 30 years. Yeah.
Well, we started with less than 20 questions. I broke out my old dream journal and I was like, here are the things I've always wondered about what makes Chris tick. Yeah. And I think your questions are more like, why does Superman have a dog?
They are actually literally that. I have one to start with here. Okay. I do have a question for you, but it's really more about how you've been living your life in these horror seasons.
I'm still really interested. Let's save that for a little bit later. Okay. Let's give the people what they don't want, which is us weighing in on the Penguin again.
You want to do that first before you ask me some questions? Yeah. Well, this is a question. I'm going to show you.
Do prestige TV shows and franchise shows need more entry points? Entry points. Yeah. I was thinking about this with the Penguin because we talked a little bit about the first episode and we politely, I think, acknowledge that there were some things that it was doing well, but that it was probably not going to be for us for individual reasons.
I think that I was confronted with an idea that perhaps the Trojan horse is me and I'm Trojan horse myself out of these things where I think the idea of getting a really cool genre show on screen via some preexisting IP or some kind of franchise reason. So in this case, it would be using the world of Batman to put on a pretty straightforward mafia show and crime underworld crime show. It's usually something that I think I would respond to pretty passionately. Yeah.
For some reason in the fall of 2024, I did not respond to it passionately. But I didn't want to write it off completely. No. And this most recent episode, the fourth episode of the season had a lot of chatter about it.
There was a lot of like, oh shit, it took the leap. Oh shit. Like this is a real like, Kristi Milotti, Emmy real, like this is really, really good. This got great.
So I definitely was interested, but you know, I have guilt. I've guilt about not watching every frame of shows. That was one of my questions about you. Do you experience guilt?
I'm glad we're sort of like, sane washing it into this conversation about HBO shows, but that's fine. And maybe start thinking about like this sort of compulsion that people, I think, feel, which is if you haven't watched all of it, you've watched none of it. And that TV shows are somehow these kind of like Borges ex, like, like library of Babel, like you can't possibly understand the penguin if you didn't watch episode three or whatever. We're so cooked.
I just want to run that back. You just went from borehaste to the penguin in like 40 words. I think that we should create more on ramps for shows. I think that there is this feeling now that like, oh, I haven't watched all 40 episodes of For All Mankind.
So I can't possibly watch episode 41. I haven't watched the first 10 episodes of shrinking. So I can't watch the 11th. Of course you're not going to understand everything that's going on.
I'm here to tell you, as somebody just jumped back in on the penguin, the episode four, I got it. I was able to pick up the four edits. I went with you. I watched it too.
Did you see what the hype was about? I guess so. I mean, it's an episode called Centiana. It's basically about Sophia Falcone's time at Arkham Asylum, which tends to the joke in the beginning of the episode.
I want to create a structure here to talk about shows like this that might be a little bit different. And one of the things is, especially with this idea of like Trojan horseing things, I think we have to be honest about our own subjective limitations about some things because, for example, Andor is the gold standard for a Trojan horse show, right, where Tony Gilroy made a show about a revolution of rebellion, if you will, baked into Star Wars IP that is really not, it has nothing to do with any of the other Star Wars projects of the last 20. I mean, I mean, anything to do with it, historically on the golden timeline of Star Wars, it does. I mean, tonally, thematically, aesthetically, it's completely its own thing.
I believe in my heart that Andor is objectively of a higher quality than the penguin. I'm not saying this to DaVinci. I understand. I am also willing to believe, especially after watching this fourth episode, which is unambiguously of high quality.
Like it is well done. I don't have a tiki tack annoying knits to pick about it. I think it's possible that there are people who just either love the Batman universe more than I do or love crime stories, mob stories, mafia stuff that I do. I don't think that I am to the extent.
I mean, I am in the sense that I love the godfather and Speranos. I don't love this. And I don't know whether that is a limit of my objective taste or my subjective taste in that it just doesn't move me as much as, you know, if there's any show that's about getting a gang to get, like getting a crew together to do something, I will watch that. Like I just love that.
And the same way we love spy shows or you love, you know, British people doing special forces in the 40s, like we all have our little kinks. So I kind of wanted to create that point because I do think that there are some objective things good, bad, but also this just might scratch people's itches in a way that it does not for me. And I didn't want to begin without saying like, it's Chris and Molly's awesome. Yeah, I see it.
I think that everyone who's making the show is on the same page, which is again, that sounds like thing praise, but it's not, especially when you're pulling off something that is, that's not high stakes in terms of the plot because I mean, it's high stakes in the terms of like, it's taking place after the Batman and is actually doing the thing that they've long talked about with these shows and with these kind of like, how do we build out this world, which is it can serve as a connective point between the two films that second Batman film. Now, I don't know whether Matt Reeves is going to reference it. I don't know if Christine will know he's going to be in the second Batman movie. I don't know all these things, but this is doing the thing that we've asked these things to do, which is push the ball forward a little bit.
I think that, and then I want to go back to your point about on ramps and I just want to your thoughts on the episode because I don't, I didn't come here to bury this. I thought it was interesting, but there is something, but my ultimate reaction to the show was the same as it was to the, to this episode was the same as it was to the pilot, which is it just feels like prestige 21st century Bugsy Malone to me in Bugsy Malone to 70s movie where kids play gangsters. Yeah. This is incredibly, there's a little bit of a bit of a to it to it.
Yeah, there's, I think it's the dress up stuff. It's just incredibly talented people playing the hits, you know, there was, there was an article in, in the Times this week where one of the interim restaurant critics went around the country dining at Carbone, all the car bones. No, this is a little bit of a tangent of the car bones like Italian American restaurant in Manhattan that has become like a celebrity spot. It's become like a shorthand for a certain type of extravagant.
It's hard to get in and you go and you have a great big Vodka sauce pasta and the big Parmesan slabs of meat and they, it's over the top. It's what you imagine Italian American find dining or should be in New York City. Now they've exported this brand. So the critic went to the car bone in Miami, Dallas, New York and in Vegas.
Yeah. But takeaway was like, sometimes the food's good, sometimes it's not good. You're consistently paying a lot of money and you're hearing the same soundtrack like Inktelic, Inktelic, and the head. And there are some people who are like, this is really fun.
Yeah. I love this shit. This is the food I like to eat, this is the way I like to be treated. I know what I'm getting and more or less.
And that's kind of the penguin. Like, it's not a small thing for it to be reliable and entertaining, delivering, and consistent. I just don't like that food. Yeah.
And is it, do you don't like the Gotham food? Do you don't like the DC food? Do you don't like the Batman food? Or you just like your time at Arkham was triggering, you know, I was like, I.
Was that doctor named Julian? He was a rosy scariner. Dr. Julian?
Yeah, do you think he's you'd be an interesting challenge for you? We need to play him? No, to work with him. To work with him.
I like to have like long runway relationships with medical professionals. I think that my, so you were asking what I thought. So for instance, I think one of my big hurdles with the show was getting my mind around them having like a very cute comic book drug instead of like a drug drug, right? And they had a second cute comic book drug.
Bliss. Bliss is different than drops, right? Oh, I thought Bliss was like the street name for drops. Oh, like we're coming up with a new, this is the next thing, the next iteration.
I'm not a pharmacologist. But there's also like, in Arkham, they're also using it. It's obviously like they're using it to mind control. I mean, we just watching this teacher.
Why couldn't it just be poppers? It's true. I hope everyone's watching this teacher. That's true.
Let's talk a little bit about this idea of on ramps because I think it's more interesting than being like, I understand why people like it. It's not for me. Do we have too many modes and not enough draw bridges around contemporary television shows? Do you guys do that right?
Yes. And I think for what it's worth, I do think that's intentional to a certain degree. I was wondering about that. Yeah.
I mean, I think let's separate for a minute the extremely big prestigious things like Penguin that we're talking about the moment. But like, I always go back to what Paramount is doing or has done with Star Trek, which was basically decide that they were going to flood the zone with different types of Star Trek content to please the different types of Star Trek fans. Animated, like comedic, whatever. Like a scene with a whole fashion adventure, next generation fans.
There is like a kind of comedy, right? Like isn't below deck? Yeah, exactly. And I think those shows are varying quality.
I don't think from my limited experience checking, I think most of them out, none of them are bad, which is again, that's not a small thing. But there's certainly, it's part of a strategy to bulk up streaming services numbers by having reliable fans that you can count on. Like, if you are a Star Trek fan of which there are certain, you know, not, I don't mean to say finite number, like it's impossible to grow that group, but there's a certain number of million people who are like, I like Star Trek and I watch Star Trek. It's a huge thing for a company like Paramount launching service to be like, we have this number taken care of.
Yeah. We will have these viewers. So I think that was an intentional strategy. I think weirdly Disney maybe backed into that strategy with Star Wars and there's a lot of like, you know, teeth, gnashing and garment rending about now having kind of reversed into that strategy like a corner.
Like I think that all of the Star Wars stuff of the last few years, all of it has been on the small screen, which is not was not intentional. But here we are. And basically it's preaching to the choir. I think it's much more to like a, like a Brockford style offense with Star Wars.
So let's keep it between the hash marks. Let's get seven, eight yards. Let's just keep the ball moving. Let's not offend anyone.
Let's not push too far. Exactly. And let's keep our core however many million people who love the cartoons and love the movies and want to see their stories done in the way that they feel respectful to them. I guess in this metaphor, Tony would be Joe Flacco because he's like, this is, I'm just taking deep shots.
Totally true. He just comes in and just like this is cute. Your offense. I'm just going to chuck it deep.
Yeah. I love this metaphor. Yeah. So again, there is a corporate case to be made for that kind of gated stewardship of something.
I think the quality has varied with Star Wars and I think the fans would agree with that. So it's not necessarily one to one thing. What is interesting is the HBO e-ness of this as HBO has entered this chat and specifically when the full trench of IP shows that were announced as Max originals and came from, I'm sure on some level of place of deep creative curiosity and excitement, but actually I can speak. I can say that for a fact, but also our smart brand management, corporate governance, when you have the rights of things that people like when those were onboarded onto HBO, I think it's kind of put a spotlight on this question.
And by the way, it seems like anecdotally after one month that the Penguin might be succeeding in this because it seems to have converted the casual Sunday night fan who likes a certain type of show. And I don't think I don't think it's a gated community in the sense that I don't think everyone watching these four episodes or raving about this fourth episode. I don't think they were like, I can't wait to get back to Matt Reeves' Gotham. I think that this is pretty interesting conversation to me because it's worth talking about the fact that there was a time before this time where television was a little bit more of a present tense experience.
Now you could DVR stuff, you could do stuff, you could get the DVDs after and watch 24 and 24 hours if you wanted to. And that was fun. That was when those behaviors started emerging. It was like, I made a much more intensive relationship with television.
We were catching up on Lost After Not Seeing, maybe all or most of the first season. I remember just being like, this is such a fun way to spend a hungover weekend in an apartment. But that was the exception of the rule. The rule was more like, what's on TV right now?
Oh, I like this show, I'm watching a little bit of it. And that's why I think shows like, I don't know, like Sex and the City were really pleasant because I don't think you needed full blown, I am completely aware of all of the interpersonal relationships. So you would never say that. Exactly.
But you could do it that way. I would be a little bit more like a great New York novel of understanding rather than like a sitcom that was on on Sunday nights every week. Now that really changed, I think for me with Thrones because even with the great shows that were on around the time of Thrones, I don't know that I always felt like I needed to be going over every episode with a magnifying glass. And now I feel like there is like a kind of learned behavior in the TV audience if I'm just speaking anecdotally of like every episode of every TV show is like an objective, incredible scrutiny.
And we do it too, we do it with everything. But like, it's funny even to watch the English teacher and be like, I cannot miss any of these 21 minutes. And it's like, this is a show being written for largely jokes, you know. But what is one's relationship status?
Yeah, exactly. It's an interesting point. I guess I'm pulled in two directions to respond. One is absolutely part of this isn't just technological changes but also generational changes.
We've talked about this anecdotally but like I'm seeing it in real time, like my daughters and I are watching Parks and Recreation for them since the entire series exists for us on the Peacock streaming service. It is a deeply serialized show. And at the time when I was covering it, there was one of things I was most impressed by was it like, I put this in writing. I was like, this sounds insane but he clearly loves the wire because every season he's like, let's change everything.
Let's rip it up and see what happens next. And that's something that we generally admire in TV shows. We've been praising industry for that throughout this third season heading into its upcoming fourth season. But for my kids, like the watching, like the tracking of like the Chris and Ann Perkins relationship culminating in them realizing that they were being written off the show, although they didn't use those words.
They were like, are they really going to move? When are they moving? And do they come back? And what will happen to the opening credits?
You know, like that is not how we experienced a Thursday nights of common real time. No, not at all. The other thing is the, we talk about gatekeeping but the gates have moved considerably. An example of something, I think it's slightly unfair for us to talk about the show because I have profoundly ignored it.
But I do think the ignoring is slightly interesting, which is to me anyway, which is the rings of power show. I promise you, I have done my homework in that I watched the Peter Jackson movies. Like I saw the thing that Amazon was like, we got to capture all those people who love that shit. That's kind of like saying, like I saw fireworks on July 4th.
I know. But I think that one of the reasons why Amazon went for that was we don't have any legacy IP or genre stuff. Like let's buy the biggest things that we can get. That was the thinking.
I have no interest in this show because I don't have a, because I was a casual. I don't really want to know what happened before there were hobbits or before when Sauron was hot. Like I'm just not interested in that. And so then the show runners who buy all accounts are doing a good, too great job.
People seem to like it, right? Except that people hate it because they hate everything, whatever. It seems to be a successful enterprise. I know Mal and Joe, I just go by the run times and they're really devoting a lot of time to that show.
Yeah. They are actually, that's how I process that show is listening to Mal and Joe. Okay. Well, so they, so, but the, the choice that the people who make the show seem to have made is like we will just continue to dig deeper, not cast a wider net, right?
Do you think that's fair to say? This is the difference between the Penguin and rings of power to me. And I did watch the first season of rings of power in the first episode, the second season. And then I don't know what happened.
Because football started, bro. Sorry. Not sorry. Sorry.
I was at the bar. Yeah. Then the difference between rings of power and the Penguin to me is the Penguin is very consciously trying to appeal to non-comic book fans. I think it's trying to be like, wouldn't it be cool if a crime show happened in the Gotham universe in the Batman universe?
Yeah. And there's no superheroes. And there's been tried before. They made a series called Gotham.
Like that we've, and it's not like when you watch the Batman, you're like, I wonder what the role of law and order is in this. It's like, the Batman is about a banker. You know what I mean? Let's not say who's the district attorney?
Oh, it's already actually, we actually do know that. So the Penguin is trying to like kind of say, hey, over here, like if you are, you think you know everything about the Batman, but like check this out. Rings of power is like only built for my, my Tolkien links, you know, like it's, it's only, it's really for like the people who have read the books who are like, what's Galadriel's deal? Like where she, who's she dating?
She was in Arkham for tenure. I'm mixing it up. What's the dealers from a flying? You wouldn't live a day in the asylum that raised me?
Yeah. You wouldn't survive a day. Yeah. Has anybody done that meme with, with Sophia Falcone?
We got to do that. Tor with Galadriel. It's really good. Someone will do it now.
You guys hit me up. Be careful. Yeah. Please.
Where do we go from here? From this conversation? Oh, so yeah, I just mean it's an interesting, it's, I've actually found that many of these shows have, have done that inward look, the inward look towards the source material, the trying to give something really meaty to like the person who's already like deeply familiar with the material rather than like, you know, I, I never really gave a shit about the fantasy universe, but here I am watching like Game of Thrones and then also listening to Mal and Jason talk about it. Here's the thing.
There is a high, when you, when you choose to, to, to do the Trojan horse model or to, or to expand the IP or to bring the TV, you raise the floor of the potential audience, which is the ratings, the cultural stickiness, which is why every, every corporation is doing this. I think it's fair to say that you can also, in certain cases, you can exceed, you can, you can blow past the ceiling. I don't want to say that you also lower the ceiling because if in certain cases you can, you can, and or another example would be Hannibal, the Brian Fuller show on NBC a decade ago. I, I really, I bring it up because I was trying to, I was racking my brain thinking that I just, I have a hesitation when, when it is an expansion of something generally and in silence, the lambs is something that I love and have seen watch and dare I say rewatch.
Did you ever read the Thomas Harris books? I didn't. They go in some interesting direction. They sure do from what I got.
That was one of the books that was like in explicably in my high school library and a lot of people just stand by the spinner ref flippin. You know, there are a couple of those cycles. Yeah. You're like, check out page 491.
Yeah. This one's really like doggy or just a weirdly used book. I am also maybe a deep normy or basic and that like I didn't really care about the other movies. I don't, I'm not like obsessed with the character.
I didn't read the books. I didn't necessarily know I needed more. I just really like that movie. Yeah.
I was very skeptical of the TV show, but that TV show was so bizarre and compelling and aesthetically beautiful and made a case for itself and the IP in a way that was really kind of radical. Yeah. I think that might be my thing with the penguin is it's just a little too straightforward for me. It's straightforward.
And it's right down the middle. There's nothing wrong with that. What Tony does with Andor is that he makes old dummies like us feel have our fandom make it makes our fandom feel seat because when we watch Andor, it's actually how we kind of wish we remembered our interaction with those movies. Dude, absolutely.
You know what I mean? Absolutely. He is somehow incepting the feelings for Star Wars that grew older with us but are somehow not really reflected in Star Wars. He somehow incepted those, planted them outside of our bodies and blossomed into that show.
For all the little boys who grabbed all their little Star Wars figures when they were six years old and staged in Attica rebellion. And then grabbed a copy of our Karl Marx. It's just like, if only these things could play together. My main question for years on is who are the workers who built this Death Star?
And were they properly compensated? All right. It's a tricky one. I mean, I guess what I was trying to say was I understand why, I understand why people make this up on both ends of it from the corporate point of view and from the artistic point of view.
It is possible to do something wild and do something exciting. I think that all of this talk and like some of the, again, I don't want to be talking sideways about penguin because I think it's fine. I think being fine to good is weirdly exceptional. Is it as exceptional as, oh, I wish there was an original prime drama in this a lot of HBO?
Sure. Yeah. But a lot of original stuff is like crazy bad too. I mean, I don't mean to say it's easy to go in the other direction.
I think my tendencies would be to prefer one over the other. But to your point of entry points, it'll continue to be interesting. I think it's a question that goes beyond the genre or the IP stuff. I think, no, I mean, this applies like Bill Lawrence shows.
Yes, this is the question. And I'll just continue to say that like behind the scenes, what everybody says they want continues to be contemporary versions of procedurals and that evergreen, what's our take on a family drama? Everybody wants what's our take on the family drama, which is basically a way of them saying can you give us us they want this is us or they want succession. They want a certain type of show, which generally warrants a certain type of engagement with a show from fans.
Now that this is us fandom and the succession fandom, we're kind of different, but I feel like that type of ongoing thing is what people want. We're going to do. We're going to pitch this is us, but it's you walks. Yeah.
It's just a bunch of you walks being like, Dan, we're had time passed so fast. So it's like baby walks and then old gray as well. Yeah, and like instead of Vietnam, that's what's in this is us. We have the battle for indoor.
Yeah. And it's like we meet one beautiful sweet you walk who just gets lit up. Just gets incinerated. Remember, isn't there a shot when one of you walks falls and he walks like?
Yeah, it's just like, it's nothing like violent happens to it. It just like falls off of a speed or something like that. That's not violence. Well, it was violent at the time, but I've seen Terrifier three in the theater.
So I think my parameters changed. I thought Jared McCain in the pre game. preseason game was my work. Did you see this is a six or seven graphic for everybody?
No, Jeremy Kane is no relation to the late Senator from Arizona. Jared McCain is the sixers rookie sensation who fell on his chest, bruised his lungs. And it was like the lung, like what happened to him is like what happens when you get in a car accident. Pulmonary bruising.
Yeah. I thought you were going somewhere. I thought you were going somewhere. I'm just reading the news.
He's pulmonary bruising while you switched his ins. Is that you were just trying to keep it a little less? I can tell you're a little, you're getting more and more curious about Zen. That's just I'm not getting more curious.
I just saw that Eagles tackle Lane Johnson just had like a big old big old case of him. Yeah, it's three's good or what? Three's are what people should be taking. I think sixes are a little intense.
And I think guys who are on sixes are like kind of on cocaine. Well, can you just have threes? But let me tell you something. You just take two, you're on sixes.
Yeah, that's true. You could do it. You could do it that way. Right.
To me, no one's in is the same as the next, you know, like there's always a different sensation. So sometimes I like the consistency of we don't have to talk about this. See, I'm gonna keep asking you my question. So any of it, the next thing I want to talk about was English teacher which wrapped up its first season on Monday, I believe, or was it last Monday?
No, no, it was week. I think it was a wonderful episode of Evan's birthday party at Austin, Texas, gay bar. If people have been listening to the podcast for the last couple of weeks, you know how much we love this show. We have Bryan Dorn Alvarez on a couple of episodes ago to talk about it.
I thought this season finished strong. This is definitely gonna be my top 10. Perhaps my top five. Yes, yes.
I just really, really love it. Wow. So I have some other than others, I guess. I mean, I don't know whether or not you charted any ups and downs with the season, but man, I admire how how much this show stayed within itself in some ways where, of course, there's a lot of like invention in it, like even the way that this episode begins is how a very special episode of TV would have started in the 90s.
And a young student goes up to Evan and is like, I realized I'm gay. I need to come out and I need you to help me figure out how to talk to people about it. And it's just like, no, it's 2020. It's 2020.
Just go out there and tell all of the other gay students that you're gay and I'll help you. And then it goes on into being more of like a kind of Evan's turning 35 and he's going out for this great night of fun, but winds up being kind of like the parental teacher figure to all his co-workers who surprised him at this game. It's very funny. There was no cliffhanger.
There was no, where's this going next season? There's a couple of like romantic things tied up or whatever. But for the most part, what did you think? I absolutely love this show.
I'm so happy that you were also, I was driving here and I was like, it's a tough, like I just sound for kind of love the show. You don't know until you start counting the votes. Well, honestly, for people listening, this show is getting renewed. It has not officially been renewed, but there's no question about it.
There's just green on the track. It's just green on the track. You can feel it. And which is a great thing.
And I think you tend to devour more comedy content and more sitcom content. I do. But what I loved, loved. I like to see the competition.
Who else is funny? What I love about it is that it takes, I mean, we talked to Brian about this. There's such beautifully traditional sitcom bones here where I know I know Marky and I love Marky and I love the thought of putting Marky into different situations and I love Miretti and I can't wait to see him in different situations. And what the show does is just simply drop them into incredibly contemporary, incredibly mature audiences only situations and then lets the comedy play in the same way that, you know, when I'm watching Parks and Rec with my daughters, I'm like, oh, look, now they're in Indianapolis.
What's going to happen to them? Now they're in this episode. They're being themselves in a new situation, like it's a different pinball game. And then here we go.
And in that spirit, I guess it kind of is similar to a show that I have not engaged with a ton, but like it's always sunny, right? Where it's like, this is a this is a common album. It's always sunny is a lot more absurd than. But yes, but I think in this terms of like the old the old bones and new situations kind of thing, yes, but that's a good point.
That is more absurd. This is pretty much this is still emotionally, it's not grounded, but like. Well, I mean, a lot of the times what happens in sitcoms, I think, is that they have very stable characters at the center of chaos and then always sunny. It's the inversion where it's like chaos is the central characters who are actually the diverse people in the world, but it's being shot and presented as if it's like a neighborhood bar kind of thing.
That's a better point. So that's not the best example. But I guess the reason I was searching for a comparison, and I'm sure there are many that are not coming to my right now. I think Dave, like I mean, there's like early Atlanta, Dave, like there's some.
The Atlanta one is the one that sent me this direction because I think that what we were valorizing and celebrating and excited about, and I still am excited about when done right, is that, oh, the half hour is now malleable. The half hour can essentially be anything. It can be a vant garde surrealism like Atlanta. It can be the best drama on television like the bear and I'm intentionally choosing FX examples.
Or it can be more traditional like what we do in the shadows. English teacher for me feels like a really wonderful combination of those two. Combining two things that work isn't necessarily novel, but it's just so it's done so confidently and so well. And it's I know we harp on the run time, but like even some another half hour success like Ted Lasso, which was a certain type of show, and then in success became quite bloated and devoted to its vision of itself as a certain type of show.
These teachers just hang it out, man. And I love these characters and I love the way they interact with each other. And my total devotion to the show doesn't necessarily come from the jokes, although I find myself doing the thing that I used to do with NBC comedy sometimes just being like remember when they stole the shrimp letter. It's like last week, like funny that they did that.
Or the one thing that Rick is just like super into poppers. It's not that. It's I paused. I legitimately did this while watching the show with such joy that when in this finale, when Evan walks into the bar and it's a surprise party with birthday, I paused it because I wanted to see everyone's face because everyone knows their character so well, you know, and we could call Tony's just like being a little bit like Rizzo a little bit.
Okay, here I am in the strange place and Marcus is just like happy to be wherever it's a giant golden retriever. And Stephanie Koenig is so consistently low-key funny with her reactions. She's so... Her karaoke moment was fucking incredible and stuff.
This is her Emmy reel. She's so funny. She's so fucking fucking fucking... But fucking for real.
She's so funny. It's not just that when she's going big with the karaoke and it's screaming hag. It's that she was so excited to say surprise and then she alone, while the camera hasn't even cut back to Evan yet, is intuiting what a bad idea this was and her face turns into the emoji. I fucking love the show.
I love it. It fills me with joy. I have a bunch of other stuff I want to talk to you about. I love it.
I'm just going to go first out here. Are we recording? I just feel like this is kind of a little bit more related to my on-ramp thing. Okay.
I mean, it's bad podcasting but it's normal conversations and it's actually pretty accurate to how I talk. I finished this season of Tell Me Lies. You don't know anything about this show. What is this show?
It's on Hulu. It's an adaptation of a novel. I don't know if it's why or not but it's basically this really fucked up pulpy erotic thriller. But I don't know if it's a thriller.
It's an erotic drama. It has some thriller aspects or certain aspects and this is one of my wife's favorite shows. She watched this whole first season and went into a cable with it. So wait, tell me why she likes it?
Because it is a truly toxic soap opera with a lot of fucking. Oh, okay. And that's not necessarily what she looks for. No, I've known her for 20 years.
I know what she likes. But she's not into that. Shout out to my wife. And she was just like, this is my jam.
This is my jam. And you know, we have shows that we watch separately. I can't say that she's spent more than seven minutes watching Taylor Sheridan shows. Not even Linus.
It's very famous. No, she didn't watch Linus. She watched a couple episodes of Yellowstone but was very upset about a character dying in the first episode because of her affection for that actor. And then did she ever watch anything else?
I don't think so. So, in any case, Tell Me Lies. My wife loved it for a season. And she watched it.
And I was like, well, I didn't watch the first season and honestly I don't have time to watch eight hours of TV about Baird College and Lucy and Pippa and Diana and Bree. You're just showing off now. And all these people and they're overlapping sexual proclivities. But then I just started watching the second season and I was like, oh yeah, I think I got it.
This guy's Steven's a bad dude. And I was like, we need to normalize this. We need to normalize people being like, TV doesn't, it's not fucking always got to be Brother Scaramazov. You can't just jump in.
You can't jump in on page 250 of Brother Scaramazov because you missed the first 200 pages of the day. And I was like, I have a story to tell. But first, let me tell 14 other stories which will automatically be illustrative for one of two of these. Because I get paid by the word by this Russian tooth figure.
Is that a shot at Dostoevs? No, I'm trying to read Devil's right now. Oh, yeah. Well, I was worried about my brain sliding out of my ear.
Yeah. Like I was just like, I'm just getting stupid. This is happening. So you're reaching for a big Russian novel?
Yeah. So it's like no phone time, you know, like phones in the other room and it's me and it's me and Fedor. Are you a big Russian literature guy? Do you feel like you've had another thing never done it before?
Yeah. I'm not discouraging you. I am saying that there are a lot of great Russian novels that are shorter that you can kind of like get your reps in. Yeah, but like if I'm going to do it, I got to fucking do it.
I got to jump out of the plane. I don't know if I'm a trigger. No, Father's a character in this book though of like a stand in for him. I just a character in this book.
Those books are awesome. And then they got to get the taste for it and you're like, okay, yeah, I think I could do this. I get what you said. You don't have any of the doorstopper Russian books.
Oh, yeah. And it ran into my shit. Yeah. Come on.
Okay. And so why are you starting me with water wings then? Like on page 120 and we're like, this guy showed up at another woman's apartment and then went home and that's like, I'm just waiting for the. By the way, that sounds like prestige television.
Like within the last 10 years. That sounds like an AMC show that I reviewed. That's fine. Yeah.
I'm also picturing you with those big like Bolonski and Pivir translation. No, this is a Michael Katz. This is a little bit more like, like, let's speak to Kings here. But are you sitting on the couch?
Like just rereading and rereading page 16? Well, over the top of your book, just hot college students are fucking and you're like, you know what, Theodore? Anyway, I really like this show. And it just, it just concluded with honestly the most fucked up season finale I can remember.
It's kind of like, honestly, it's like, just, it's just breaking bad with no meth. The way people portray one another. That's cool. The way people have like long term plots.
So I was just, I just wanted to say I watched TV and that was a good TV show. But like, why, but we say, I just feel like, again, everything is so subjective and so straight out like, is it good, good? Or is it good for what it's doing? And that's enough, which, and I like shows of both strikes.
It doesn't look like it's like Robert Elswitt shot it. You know what I mean? As you know, like, is the below the line talent up to now? I just mean like, you know, there are there are exactly what it is.
Doing like it treats its material seriously, but like, aware of the fact that there are some pretty ridiculous things happening. You know, I don't bag a lot of like plot questions, but like, I think that it kind of plays into the soap operatic elements, the melodrama of it. So I enjoy it. I think sometimes it's just like, this is just a really fun show to watch with someone and be like, oh my God, I can't believe this guy.
Is it Russian theater just yet? Or you're right. When's the last time either of you guys watched Raised Anatomy, which is like 10 years ago, which is now only what 10 seasons ago, about 21? 21 seasons.
I, I'm thinking of this because. Because Sophia Bush has joined the cast. She does a recurring character. That's right.
Well, also it was in the news because the woman who was the writer on the show, who was kind of a very intense fabulous. There's a show, a documentary about her. Do you remember this from a few years ago? And she's in some of her storylines were in the show.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I'm asking because theoretically there are, there are people who are, what I'm glad we'll call the people with cigarettes, chippers, right? People who can like have one cigarette and not get addicted.
My least favorite kind of people. There are people like that. I imagine with Raised Anatomy who could dip in and out, right? Yeah.
Or is after 21 seasons the collected weight of the serialization such that it's basically like in a different area, it wouldn't be 20 seasons, but the margins for success. This is something that you are going to need to understand some core, some core tenets of the show. And it won't make any sense if you're like, why is this guy upset or why is this guy doing this? You have to go back and be like, well, she fucked this guy.
But then this guy did this to her and blah blah blah. Grays Anatomy. I think like you maybe don't understand. I think I checked out on Greece when Sarah Ramirez's character, Kallie Torres, was dating Jessica Capshaw, Browna Wong.
I remember being in literary theory with her being like one day after on television. What time for me in the 90s? No, I do remember seeing that beautiful lesbian romance. It's just that kind of thing.
And you're like, wow, okay, a temple of doom is real. It leaves me so innocent. There was no internet, no tablets. I was like, wow, these people really have kids and now I'm in class with them.
And I definitely don't understand this literary. Really? I feel like you've retained more of that than I did. Maybe a little bit, but I didn't think even that it was weird that there was a class about how to read books where we didn't read books.
That's the way still men. It's true. Okay. Okay, so you were out when Kallie Torres was out.
When Kallie and Arizona broke up, I was like, that's the last straw for me. She's dead. Yeah. Got it.
Yeah. Okay. It's interesting. We can move on to different topics, but it is interesting because not to bring things full circle to IP, but also to comic books, but like this always was the problem with comic book fandom and why the average comic book fan in, not just 2024, but in 2004 did not look like the comic book fan in 1964 because comic books were A for kids, but B there was no barrier for entry in the sense that like, well, you needed to know everything and then that had happened before and that's why there used to be a key label asterisks and Stanley would be like, Yeah.
Loyal leaders. This happened in the end. I was like, I'm so enormous that it was just like adults being like this. I remember when this happened when I was 26 and now I'm 56 and I must be reading all this is to say all things have become serialized in that way now.
And I keep saying there should be an editor and there are things that are ended notes, whether it's, you know, like comedy or whether it's why I love Rebel Ridge because I was just like, yeah, I get it. He's riding a bike and these people are assholes. They're gonna take about. Let's go.
And I when it was finished, it was finished and why the industry is always looking for things, but we do like we do love our stories. Yeah. You mentioned comics. This brings up another thing I went to bounce off of you.
All right. What's up with Superman's dog. I'm going to go to the text exchange I've had with you in a really long time. The first image from James Gums.
What I say, James Gums. Can we just pause now? If James Gums was handed the reins of the DC universe, I'm going to keep talking to let you develop an instant take on this. I feel like there's something there for you.
What is the first of all, Mothman would be? Is there a Mothman? It would be now. Yeah.
It would be all. It's close. I do think that Warner Brothers Discovery has had some bumps in their corporate road sort of like figuring things out. So it's possible that Zazlev came in and he was just like, I want.
Maybe he's muffled, maybe he's on speakerphone and someone on the other hand heard him say, James Gums. He's in charge of this universe. James Gums. Superman.
The first image was released and it's a behind picture of Superman sitting somewhere far away. Possibly on an asteroid or something on the earth. With a dog. I didn't know dogs could go to space.
Super dogs can? Tell me about Super Dog because you were like, this is more confirmation that James Gums is adapting the best Superman story. Yeah. I have been saying this for a while, that it seems like you being pro-gun lobby is crazy.
This is awesome. I think this movie is going to be really good. And the reason why is not even so much my belief in his ability to do this, although he makes good entertaining things, he has a knack for understanding comic book tone. It is not always the tone that people think of as comic book tone, meaning it's not the like the Zack Snyder or even the Christopher Nolan heaviness that there are antidotes to that within comic books and sometimes they can be fucking bonkers and funny like Guardians of the Galaxy was, which really without that movie, I don't think the MCU is the MCU.
It injected something into the veins of that larger corporate thing that kept it going, that sustained it for the next 10 years of global dominance. I think that what he's doing here is not just choosing to do Superman because Superman hasn't been done well since 1980, but because Superman at its best, at his best, is a beacon of light and brightness and hope. And that is not what a lot of these movies have been giving us recently. All this is to say, I continue to believe that one of the biggest influences on what he's making is Grant Morrison and Frank Whiteley's absolutely legendary run of a series called All Star Superman.
It was like 12, 12 issues. It was like, what Grant Morrison does best. I'm going to take every piece of this wide-ranging, absolutely messy canonical history and honor all of it, not just the parts that I like. So when he does Batman, he will take the people honor the tone of the 60s TV show sometimes.
He'll take his weird, funny, bizarre off the cuff things like Batman and be like, oh no, that's canon too and here's how it works. Batman. Yeah. So in this case with Superman, the first issue of all Superman drawn by my favorite comic artist Frank Whiteley is Superman sitting on a cloud looking at the super retro-futurist metropolis and sort of the small grin on his face.
And I feel like that same framing is important. All this is said, crypto is ridiculous. Superpets, all this shit. His name is crypto.
Yeah. So you're into it. You're buying early. I see no problems for you.
Anyway, that that's the spirit of it. Where he's like, all this is goofy, but goofy isn't necessarily bad. That's my take. I'm excited for your excitement.
And I actually am really looking forward to the Superman movie. I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be pretty big and I think it's going to be pretty cool. And it's Superman's from Philly. So this is amazing.
Superman is a Jew from Philly. I have to keep up for this movie. This is very exciting. Here's my one thing that I, here's a question for you.
This movie is coming out next year, right? Yep. I think that the movie is, I don't think he said this, but the vibe that I get is that he's intentionally turning the page and making something candy colored and bright. And it'll have stakes.
It'll be emotional, blah, blah, blah, but it is intentionally that. Do you feel like the country is going to be ready for that? Like, is he really, he's kind of speaking of crypto. I do feel like he's taking a long position on things going great and people being really ready for new bright stuff.
I think that's a really good question. And I don't want to like jinx anything. And, but I just wonder whether or not, like, can we really look to comic book movies as a reflection of like the current national psyche anymore? Well, yeah, Winter Soldier told me a lot about the Deep State.
No, I agree with you about comic book movies. I think this is sort of a dead end conversation, but like, I'm always here for. I think Joe Biden was still running for president when they wrapped this movie. So I don't think he's like, hmm, in the edit room, I really need to like reflect what a possible second Trump administration would do to this dog.
It's fair. I guess I'm interested in the fact that retroactively when we talk about cultural histories of things or when Mark Harris writes an amazing book about something, he's using the movies that were released to investigate the culture. And I don't even need to draw Mark into it. I'm not saying that like he wasn't.
Yes, like when you do these things retroactively, you can't. Yeah, it would be interesting to map the history of superhero movies against the current political climate, but I wonder whether or not you would actually find there is no. There is no connection anymore. I think that's probably fair.
I think purely then from a cultural perspective, brightening the corners as it were is nice. The movie might not be good, but like almost all of my good will towards the fact that that seems to be what he's doing. Speaking of things that we're excited about, want to talk a little bit about these two spy shows that we got? Yes, especially the big question that we need to investigate.
I have an email out to Paramount asking for confirmation. I did not get. You're real summer Gleason over here. At first time we did.
I published that. We did not get a response. So as you guys know, Andy and I, one of our favorite shows of all time is the Bureau, the French Show, the Bureau. It's being adapted to an English speaking, slash American audience as the agency.
It's gone through a couple of different iterations. It was supposed to be called the department. It was going to start George Clooney, I think at one point. His smokehouse pictures, Clooney and his love, they had they had optioned it or a paramedant option for them to make.
Yes. And now it stars Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere, Jeffrey Wright, being directed at least in part. I don't know if entirely. I think it's entirely.
By Joe Wright and it's being written by Jez and John Butterworth, I believe. At least one of the Butterworths wrote it. Okay. And I was like, oh, this will come out next year.
Whatever. The reason why I'm even bringing this up is because there was a rather extensive entertainment weekly article about this show with the first images from the set and interviews with Fassbender and gear. And then it was like coming this coming in fall from Paramount plus. Yes, it's at late fall, late fall, which is like two months, like I just shocked if that's the case.