For decades, the Vietnam War has been a Hollywood obsession. Apocalypse Now, platoon, Full Metal Jacket, First Blood, these were blockbuster films, embraced by audiences and critics alike. And for decades, they've helped us understand a painful war, and understand each other. From Spotify and the Ringard Podcast Network, I'm Brian Rafter, and this is the Week at the Wind This Time, how Hollywood made the Vietnam War.
Listen, on the big picture feed. I need support staff to be the room. Stand up and walk, now! Hello, and welcome to The Watch!
My name is Chris Ryan, I am an editor at theringard.com, and joining me in the studio, he's got mail. It's Andy Green World! I love this, I feel like we should just housekeeping this is a mailbag episode, recording in advance. You, a full weekend advance, so if any of our jokes are not ripped from the headlines the way they usually are, we apologize.
Speaking of ripped from the headlines, there's a real, I'm excited to do this podcast, like I always am. I want to say at the start, there's some real dominion voting machine vibes going on. Why? Well, only because you control the means of ingress and egress, like you have the questions, and I haven't seen them.
I know it's best for you. So we're on our third recording of the day, and we're gonna be parsing these out over the next week, and we're gonna have. And you're asking, you're implying that you have not gotten to see the questions first, right? I'm not implying it.
Chris? You're straight up saying it. Look me in the eye. And Andy, you look me in the eye.
And if I had sent you the questions last night, would you have looked at them? No. Okay. So what we're gonna do is answer some reader questions.
We got these on x.com. Oh, I'm not familiar. Is that new? Seems good.
I'm glad that you're still using Elon Service. What's your social media intake right now? It's just meta and Instagram. I'm on Instagram.
Yeah. I enjoy the content. I mostly follow, if you discuss this, like, ROM and restaurants and painters. Ah.
Very chill. And then I just look at groups suggested for me on Facebook. Yeah. I do cats and videos of vintage hardcore shows.
That's cool. And a lot of secondhand, like, soccer kits. Like, so. Yeah.
That seems very nice. Yeah. One of the things about my new media diet, which isn't that new, is that I have the opportunity to, like, so I learned news usually by a friend texting me about the secondary story of a story. Right.
Like, someone being like, I can't believe this person had this reaction. I can't believe Rudy is a conspirator number one. No, no, that. Less that and more like, wow, I can't believe, you know, David Hasselhoff was Pee Wee Herman's college roommate.
Now the Pee Wee Herman has died. Oh, right. Excuse me? I must be quite broken up about this lizzo thing.
Do you know how I learned about the lizzo news? I learned about the lizzo news because Facebook suggests Star Wars fandom groups to me. And there was a picture of Lizzo. From the man to learn.
And Jack Black. And it was Star Wars fans being like, Star Wars Star Lizzo has been accused of malfeasance. And frankly, I only want to learn about my news now in relation to the Star Wars expanded universe. Like, I think that would be.
It would be pretty funny. It would be incredible. Like, if Cory Booker makes a really powerful speech, I want it to be a so good related. Anyway, we got these messages.
Just pull podcasts anyway, buddy. Don't have to. Just via Twitter via the media platform, formerly known as. We didn't get any from Facebook.
We didn't put it there. I did a Facebook one recently. So here's our first question. It comes from Josh Stern.
OK. And we have a couple of strike-related questions. The strike may be over. Who knows?
I don't think so. What do you expect the false late to look like for streamers? Is there enough content, quote, in the can, where streamers can put out a full lineup? Or will they choose to slow play their remaining content into Q1, 2, 4?
Which is a good question, Josh, because I think that for different streamers, there's a different attitude about the stuff that they have in the library. When the strike first began, I think there was some chess beating about. We're good. The coffers are full until next year.
Now they've kind of, I think maybe it's opposed, but maybe it's real that where it's like, well, we can't possibly release this without the promotion force of the actors. In some cases, yeah. So you're seeing some stuff get kicked later in the year, kicked next year. I was under the impression that we were going to have, that there were, for instance, HBO or the Macs, was pretty much they shot out their stuff and it was going to be for the rest of the year.
We would be getting a Mac show every Sunday night. But a murder at the end of the world moving from August to November, a couple things moving around. I think that they have enough content, but I don't think that they're crazy about releasing stuff that will have no promotional push. I think that, and I also think there's two stages to this.
I think that, and this is not talking about the broadcast season, which has already been totally upended. And the consequences of that may be quite far reaching. Like if they look at how much they were spending on original programming and they look at how much they spent, CBS, for example, spent by just putting Taylor Sheridan's shows on CBS where maybe they kind of belong, that might be the future or the end, honestly, in some ways of the broadcast season. What the question is is more about the streaming services.
And I think it varies from service to service. I think that Netflix has a pretty deep well of content, reality included and international included and international production continues to pace. I think Apple also has a bunch of stuff. And HBO, like the new True Detective with Jodi Foster, I believe, is in the camp.
Yeah, I believe so. And so that's something they just have, and they can put out when they feel as appropriate. We are starting to see small ripples. You mentioned the Brit Marling effect show what's called the murder at the end of the world.
Just today, we're recording this a week before you guys are listening to it. Issa Rae's show, Rap Shit, was pushed from this month from summer into November. I think there's going to be some movement around the margins like that. Let's push things both secretly in the hopes that someone will be able to promote it, but also just so we have a little bit more consistency heading into the real unknown territory.
Was it True Detective Night Country? The real night country is 2024. Yeah, but I think that for instance, True Detective Night Country could benefit greatly from Jodi Foster being able to explain what's going on. Absolutely.
Yes, and that is part of the thinking. But I do think that the midnight country beyond it is when they don't have the shows. And from what we understand, again, we're recording this before a decision has even been made to resume negotiations with the writers, let alone the actors. All these companies have different response plans.
Like they have a plan, if this goes reasonably well and we get back to work by the end of the year, and then there's the break glass catastrophic box that the UK government was lacking in later episodes. Hi, Jats. And that we don't like that. They did not have a flow chart for that part.
And we like them, do not know what that looks like. OK, Corey Collins asked the question that I don't really know how to answer. That's basically a sibling question of this, which is what's the less tap strings for the rest of the year? You know, it's a good question.
I don't know. It also depends what you want to use it for, frankly. Yeah, I would say that if you care about replicating the experience of having a television, probably Netflix. If you just want sports documentaries and reality shows, and then the library that they have already and whatever new shows that they've been putting out, there's Netflix.
I would imagine if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have Max already. I think that Apple has done a nice job over the last 12 months, building out shows that are kind of like, especially if you have a partner or if you're watching with more than one person or like fun to watch together, you know, from Blackbird on, I think. There's some pretty enjoyable stuff there. But yeah, I think probably if you want to just have a ton of stuff to watch, Netflix would probably be the one.
Unless, I mean, also if you're a reality fan, I think the Bravo stuff continues to pace and you can get that on Peacock. If this question is coming from my 10 year old daughter, the answer is crunchy role, the all anime service that has now been added to my monthly bill. So I think it depends. If the root of the question is like, what's going to have, which one of these is going to survive with or thrive with original content through the end of the year, I think the richest ones have the most in the bank already.
So that would be Netflix, Apple and potentially Amazon. The well is a little bit more shallow at the more traditional media companies. Potentially, we don't know how it's going to shake out, but that would be my sense. Okay, let's shake it up a little bit here.
Okay, we're recording the way we're recording because both of us are going away. High is going away, we're all going away. But we come back together, right? Like as Daniel Tiger's family once said, grownups come back.
Yes. If I could bottle Chris's face. No idea what Daniel Tiger. It's Daniel Tiger.
People who know, no. Is he like Bluey's owner? I mean, that's so offensive, first of all. Bluey's dog.
In Bluey's universe, there are no people. Dogs are people. Do they communicate by wolfing or by talking? I'm not even going to do that with an answer.
Do you think that like, I'm like, this is the best written show on television because of the way they wolf Australian accents? They're people. They're just also dogs. So you can get there if you open your mind.
Daniel Tiger, Chris, is a PBS basically like spin off of Mr. Rogers universe. Is it a spin off? Well, it's related to Rogers Family Foundation, whatever it's called is involved in the creation of the show.
And if you remember, I know it was a long time ago, is that part of the dying fights time? She's part of her holding, it's part of her family holding. You remember Mr. Rogers had the land of make believe with a little puppets and they would talk and one of them was named Daniel Strype Tiger and there was like King Friday and all these other puppete characters?
So with this cartoon presupposes is, what if those characters in the land of make believe had a second generation? So Daniel Strype Tiger's kid is Daniel Tiger and he's a lovely, ebullient young tiger who doesn't wear pants, but wears a sweater. And he has friends who are the offspring like X the owl's kid is Othe owl. Yeah.
If you are a mommington or a dadington or a parenthood, parent-ending, parent-parent, it's gonna stop myself. It's a little bit. Yeah. You know every fucking thing about this when your child is between the ages of, I wanna say two and four and then you will never think about it again.
You think your kids are gonna appreciate how much you invested in this stuff? What's been interesting to watch is that now as tastes change and children mature, the other day, drink it. Like are you expected to get into anime now? Well, hold on.
They spent an entire car ride on the way home from camp, just roasting Daniel Tiger. Like doing like hideous baby voices about how absurd the show is. You know what the tone was? Like Pitchfork record reviews around 2005.
Like that was there sneering, like we're so much better than this tone. But then the six year old is when the trailer for the new Paw Patrol movie aired in front of Spider-Verse or whatever movie he saw, she stood up in the theater and pumped her fit. I don't know where she learned this behavior, but she like, like imagine like, you know what a trucker like pulls the horn where she did that gesture. Okay.
So that's still in play. And your question by anime, the answer is yes. You are expected to be conversant in like, at least casually conversant. And that's not all the way there.
Yeah, like no wonder you don't, I have a lot of time for prestige still. Look, I like you, but I, you know, here's a fun question for us though, as we had a dedication, what are we going to read for the watch book club once the TV pipeline dries up? What do you read on vacation? So I'm, you know this, I'm finishing off the McMurtory project.
So I'm reading all the Larry McMurtory books that I didn't read when we had our summer of dove. Two summers ago? It was 2020, it was shocking. So, you know, I had a great time texting you about my thousand page journey through moving on.
Which I read back then, right? You read it quickly. Yeah, that movie, that book left my brain. Well, I mean, I do not remember, other than like the first image of the book, I don't remember anything.
That book is one thousand and eight pages long. It may be the longest book I've ever, not all I've ever read. It is absurd. Like, you know, when you're like, ah, I love it because nothing happened.
It's like, you think it's about rodeo, but it's actually just about people in graduate school. And then in the last 30 pages, it just becomes like a trailer for a better book by Larry McMurtory. But he would write next called, All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers. But anyway, I'm reading terms of endearment.
There's a little terms of endearment in moving on, right? Yes, that they're all related. Okay. So I'm doing a lot of the Murtory stuff and then there's another book that's on our doc if you want to write.
Andy and I were thinking about diving into a book. I don't know if this is going to become like a double-down book club. Like we'll already this together thing, or if it's just he and I are going to happen to be reading this next, but it was a recommendation from Walsu, our boy, author of Stay True. And it's called This Is Memorial Device, which is a book by David Keenan.
And it is essentially like a fake history of, or a history of a fake post-punk band in Scotland in the early 80s, right? Yes. Incepted in a lab for us. Yeah.
I believe like lovingly detailed, like boots on the ground, you are living this and feeling this of what it was like to be growing up in the middle of nowhere and loving, not just loving music and art and subculture, but like it's a lifeline. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah.
This writer seems really up our alley. It's amazing. So I'm going to read that. I'm currently reading a book called Hellhound on His Trail, which is by Hampton Sides.
Juliet Living recommended this to me. And it's not a big nonfiction person or history person. Yeah. I usually sort of get the history through YouTube videos.
No, through novels. For social. This is an incredible account of the manhunt for James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King. This is actually a topic that we've, I don't think we've discussed much just in our lives, which is neither of us read a ton of nonfiction.
And there's some people who just devour. Yes. And I think- Don't read fiction at all. And I think you know, you shouldn't be extreme in either direction, but I feel like whenever I talk to people who read nonfiction voraciously the way we read fiction, there's always a part of me that's like, I bet they know it.
Yeah. Like maybe about specific things, but their mind is still working in a kind of a school way that I worry that I have just dulled. And every so often I get it. My biggest, like if I had like somebody that I wish I read, like it would be resolove.
Okay. Where resolove is just like grinding out history books, like left and right. My- I got this spark came because of Oppenheimer. I was like, maybe I should read American Prometheus or something.
You know, maybe I should grab a David McCollibook and read Truman, you know. See, I bought 50s. Is that what he did? Sure.
I don't know. I know nothing. Yeah. I was in Art Museum and I saw this book that was basically like a history of Montmartre, like in France and Sir Aaron, Picasso and like painters and living in Paris.
And I was like, everything about that is fascinating to me. I would live in, I would sink into the paint smells and the wine and like art happening. And I made it six pages. And I was like, I wonder what's going on with the rodeo.
That's the thing is like, I was trying to read a book about Carlos the Jackal, the assassin. It was a history book about him and the nonfiction. And it was just like going about like talking about what his dad had in his bank account. And I was just like, is this your main?
Like what are we doing here? Like I know you found this out. Yeah, but like, can we fucking get to some, you know, some beta mine off stuff or what? Well, also you want, we want a little, we want to judge a little bit.
We want like, like, like, like, like, LaCarae is like, he's read the nonfiction books and then he tells us about it. A cracking yarn. Let's go to another question here. All right.
So a man named John Dogg, I don't know if that's his nom de plume. Is it Tom Skaggs? He asks, given the success of Justified, are there any authors whose work you think is crying out for a TV adaptation? I can't help wondering off the top of my head, what it can keep for even show might be like or their Hernandez Love and Rockets series?
That's cool. I feel like this is just almost, it's so easy. It's hard because I think you and I love certain writers and love their style and their world. If Justified didn't exist, Elmore Leonard would probably get the top of both of our lists.
Sure. It's also tough to talk about some of these because I think I've tried. I'm going to try and option them. I have suggested many of these people and developed or tried to develop some of them.
You know, I think the world is probably calling out from a Ross Thomas. That was my read on my professional television experience. You've been reading a lot of Lendite and what I feel like is under appreciated and- It's under appreciated but I think it would be incredibly hard to adapt because in some ways, not a lot happens to them. There's just a lot and lot of really dense espionage and conversational stuff and so much of it is the POV characters.
But I just got read down reading a book called Mombista which is about a fictional South American country in turmoil in the 80s or 90s. And I think that could work. I just don't know if the world is crying out for a period piece about the 90s in South America. I guess the- I am.
I think maybe the question is, I mean, there aren't, there are plenty and we love them. But one of the things that we love about Elmore Leonard is the vibe and the tone, maybe even more than one individual book, although obviously we love all those individual books. And so one thing that I keep thinking about are these regional stylists who write about a place in a way that I think there's something there because it could create the type of television show that we always are drawn to, which is just so specific. And showing us things we haven't seen before in the way that a reservation dog does or, you know, when we were talking about Full Circle earlier in the week, that does it as well.
One of our favorite writers, Guy James Crumley, who wrote, like one book that is considered to be a masterpiece of the mystery form we've talked about on the Pod Before called The Last Good Kiss, a perfect book. He wrote six, I think books, alternating between detective protagonists, but then they increasingly become more and more unhinged and you don't even, I've read them all like four times and I couldn't tell you the plot. But what he does do is write about a very specific vein that runs in the middle of the country from Texas to Montana and back again, often in all night drives filled by cocaine and schnapps, but the vibe, the way these books feel, but also the fact that what part of the country was he writing about and from what perspective, it always has kind of blown my mind that these authors aren't turned to, especially in the post-Yellowstone. Oh, should we make TV shows about places other than the coasts?
Movement that has gone on? It doesn't mean you should adapt to these books, but there are so many great writers that aren't necessarily, the way to adapt them isn't necessarily to do like the Joe Pickett series, which I've not checked out. That's based on CJ Box's books. And it's on like Spectrum?
Yeah, and it does well. Right. I apologize, I'm not. It's almost as if I do have any teachers that could tell us about the show.
So it was a Spectrum original that ended up migrating to Paramount plus and fits in with a lot of their Taylor Sherrod and stuff. But anyway, my point is I bet the show is pretty good. And I bet we would enjoy it the same way we've enjoyed Reacher, but I kind of sometimes wish that there wasn't this like, almost automatic self-segregation of like, we are making a regional book that is going to be specifically a relatively small story. Dark Winds is another example of this, which is based on the Tony Hillerman mystery books set in the Southwest.
First season's pretty good. Second season's coming on AMC. But I feel like Tony Hillerman Southwest could be a bigger thing than one small show or same thing with those CJ Box writes about. I think he's right.
This book's are set in Montana. I read one once. He's a game warden. Is he?
Yeah, that Joe Pickett. Yeah. I didn't know that. I feel like I love this show.
It starts the dude who was a patriot, I believe. Does it really? No. Hold on.
Are you like reading the theater? It is. Michael Dorman, right? Wasn't he the guy?
Yeah, it's true. Okay, cool. Nailed it again. I'm trying to think if I have like an out of the box answer for this question, where it's like, I want to say, like, we're somebody should make the collected stories of John Cheever or something.
Right. Oh, I feel like Joy Williams. Like they're writers. I feel like they should make a show out of the guest, the Emma Klein novel.
That would be good. That would be like very prestigious. Is it cinematic or is it visual at all? It's very visual.
Lots of water elements, lots of different like characters popping in and out. So lots of like opportunities for some good. For an ensemble. Yeah.
Yeah. Like not even like an ensemble, but sort of like an each. It breaks down in that she's kind of drifting through the Hamptons. You know the story.
Yes, I'm interested in reading this book actually. Yeah. She's meeting. She gets kicked out of her boyfriend's house and so she's kind of like drifting on to different people.
And so it's could be set up in like an episode structure for each episode is like, she's meeting someone new trying to stand the Hamptons. We shouldn't give this away. As we're doing this in real time, I'm kind of in love with the theory, even though I think that in practice, this would be almost impossible, which is to say, instead of just adapting a book with the limitations of that, that are built into that and also the sort of the ceiling, right? Because you have to please the people who are interested in it and you're servicing something else.
I kind of wish that someone would creatively take the Castle Rock approach to unexpected authors. And what I mean by that is there was that short live show, I was on Hulu, I think, right? Castle Rock, which was the Stephen King shared universe show drawing from vibes and characters and stories. I mean, they're basically going to try that again with Welcome to Derek, aren't they?
Yes. Right. And then the Dolly Rooney verse show of disaffected millennial intellectuals in Ireland. No, there's only two.
David, David, David. Do you know what I mean? Like that, Miliyoh, you would have to have the involvement of the author. Maybe she's not the best example for it.
Maybe the better example are these short stories by authors that we like. I think there's something there because adaptations, they're good things about them and there's like guardrails for executives to green light because they kind of understand the shape of it. But drawing inspiration from a voice is much harder to do, but I think the success would be amazing. Do you know what my double down book club suggestion was going to be a little while ago?
To do Sports Writer and Independence Day? Yes. Richard Ford's series of novels. You know there's a new one.
Yes. So, the Sports Writer. Richard Ford is this great American short story and a novelist writer who sort of rose to most popular acclaim with these series of novels about a sports writer named Frank Baskham, which is sort of like, you know. And there are these books about a relatively breezy baby boomer guy sort of walking around America being like, huh.
And to me, they are like science fiction. I love that you just like, it's a Vanessa Bear in Barry. We want Frank Baskham to be a little bit more like, right now it's like, it's true. But so the Sports Writer, incredible, followed by Independence Day, right?
Which is like a masterpiece. Yeah. And then a couple years later, he did Lay of the Land, which was still worthwhile. Yeah.
And, but not. Then he's straight up named a novel, Let Me Be Frank with you, which is God tier. Yeah. I think when you think about naming things, I think there's that and then there's Joe Perry.
Oh, no. What's his name? You know, from the Eagles. Joe Walsh is a little not any gum.
Yeah. There's the two of us. I don't give a fuck anymore in media history, but he has a new one. Like he's still Frank Baskham.
Yeah. What's a new one called? Well, I don't think I'm playing a lot. You know, I would feel like, I think you should keep this because I think process is fascinating to people.
But also I would have suggested editing it, but I was recently listening to Ryan Rissella's podcast where he asked Mike Sandow. Oh, Mike Sandow, Google's for like two minutes. Mike Sandow's like, huh, I bet if I check this tab here and then it's just quiet clicking and I was like, this is riveting summer content. This is amazing to me.
So the fifth book in the. Frank Baskham trilogy. Yeah. It's called Be Mine and it just came out.
Okay. This year. It's interesting to read those books again because I think we read them as young people like in college age and they're about a middle age guy, like baby boomer on we, which makes it, I'm interested in reading it now. Also, these books are culturally dead items.
Like Richard Ford, like looking at his navel and being like, you know, we used to sell custard in this country. Like that is not like hot currency in two K two, three, you know, but maybe I'll come back around. Okay. Dr.
Andres Nescu asked in esteemed. This might just be like I said, this might be my just be screen names over the last few months you've been talking about risk aversion at the studio scale in the context of hotel Pixar and Marvel among others. Do you feel like studios to play risk of her strategies differently to TV linear or otherwise than they do film? Sure.
I mean, I think obviously just budget budgetarily we're talking about the ability to make some more gambles because TV typically doesn't cost as much as movies do. I would also say that in the streaming age, I would imagine that streamers are looking to make lots of things for lots of different demographics, whereas movies are trying to serve the widest possible audience at once, which is why sometimes movies are bad because they are like, we can't possibly alienate somebody in the last 30 minutes of this thing. So let's like adjust the plot to like reflect like every single person who possibly seen this. Also, I mean, I think there's been a financial reckoning of late, even though as the Atlanta told me we've been vibing out of a recession.
I do think that there is a reckoning in terms of like money isn't free anymore. Yeah. People at this level. And so you can't just kind of yada yada your way to profitability.
But that said, for the most part, movies I think are still kind of tied to the physical world and that you put out a movie and then people spend American dollars at the multiplex to say like, yes, we support this or not. Whereas companies can kind of hide the ball or at least obfuscate their goals with a TV show because they're like, this was adding more razor blades to the razor blade store. Now, I think that argument falls apart when you see how much money some of these companies are spending on individual razor blades. Yeah.
It costs Bob J. Beck his job. But I think that you could say, well, it was important for our strategic vision of growth to make secret invasion. I think that would probably be wrong.
But you could say that as opposed to release spending twice as much for secret invasion to be a summer movie and underperforming. That would be more visual hit. It's funny. Like, if you think back about like what would have happened TV, not even if they didn't do streaming, I guess it's probably hand in hand.
It's like what streaming have happened on the level it has had Disney not owned Marvel and Star Wars had HBO not happened upon Game of Thrones, had Amazon not bought the rights to Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time. You know, like basically have the streamers not gotten into the franchise blockbuster business in the way that they had, what would like the landscape of television look like? You sound like Thanos. Well, and what ways would it have been more traditional and what ways would it have been different?
You know, because I think we would love to live in a world where it was like, we're not for secret invasion. We would have two more I made a story use, but it's not doesn't work that way. It's not. And it's funny that like we keep thinking, and this is just also just the way we cover stuff and I mean, we keep trying to declare bottom or this is an idea of something or whatever.
When in fact, we don't actually see where we are in the chart. One of the first things that I wrote, I remember writing for Grantland over a decade ago was a column sort of reckoning or trying to reckon with the Walking Dead effect. And it's a quote I then used for years afterwards. And I spoke to Sean Ryan, prolific TV creator, the shield, he made terriers, he has the night agent now on Netflix.
And he was referring to the Walking Dead as TV's Jaws moment being like, once they, oh, you can do this, we could get these kind of numbers by tapping into this fandom in this type of storytelling. It was a wrap. That was when the genie left the bottle, I guess, and everybody was chasing it from that point forward. Squab, Vanthe.
I feel like some of these aren't really their names. I think there's some sort of like blue check legitimacy at this website here. Drawing comment. Yes.
Can there be a good Star War other than Andor S2 in the next 10 years? Well, all probabilities, I think, is it more likely than not that they will come up with something good and do a good execution of it in 10 years? Sure. I think so.
Can we, Kai, can you put in some sounds of me googling here? I think that there must be something coming down the line that makes them feel like that they could keep this thing going. All right. I just, I'm just taking in your thoughts.
John Stern felt asked. I think you have a lot of confidence. It's not even confidence. It's just, I think that they're just like, I think that they're just eventually something good has to come out of it.
I think, I mean, how long have those monkeys been in a room with typewriters? Have they written Hamlet yet? Right. And let me, let me just for a moment just say separate whatever knowledge or experience I've had with the companies in question in refer back to our Indiana Jones and the Dialogestity Conversation, which is like, I think people thought that was good and that that was going to be a win.
And that doesn't speak well to me. That doesn't give me a lot of confidence, honestly. That's a good segue into our next question, which comes from John Stern, who asks, the reboot trend in TV gives me Agita. How soon before the TV landscape is just a land of sequels and reboots all of film?
Or is there something inherent in TV that will save it? I think this goes back. I would tie this to my answer about why TV can sometimes take more chances than movies is because I don't think that TV experience is the same as the movie experience. I don't think that they need to have that baked in familiarity with the IP.
I think it helps. I think they're interested. I think if you can tell a good story, they're always happy to let you play in the toy box, as you say. But I also think that television is essentially like the backbone of TV is like, it's a great anatomy.
Yes. You know, like let's have people be interested in the hospital. Even in the era of contraction or fewer shows that it is inevitably coming, TV is still in the volume business. There are always fewer movies released during a calendar year than TV shows.
And that's that Gulf has exponentially grown because they're fewer and fewer movies because they're only the majority theatrical movies from the major studios are just summer ten polls that cost $200 million, et cetera, et cetera. There's just always going to be a lot more TV. And I think that there's that steady drum beat of TV show TV that just exists, right? And the other thing about TV that it still can get you is it can still surprise in ways that, you know, like the way people are talking about the Barb and Himer weekend, there can be moments like that in a calendar year for TV just generally or something just ignites the bear.
Yeah. And I think that's the first example out of nowhere last year that people were not checking for and instantly like made stars, made people interested in something different, rewrote the Emmy landscape. Now, did they make the bear make a billion dollars for its corporate overlords? No.
Yeah. But it's just a different scaled business. So I am also despairing about the headline of that question, but there's always going to be good stuff. This is an interesting question that kind of goes next to the one we just answered about originality and franchising and using IP and stuff like that on streaming.
A.G. 11. I don't know if this is somebody that means Andy Greenwald, the 11th biggest fan of yours or what, but I think it's if that's my A.J. Brown burner account.
Oh, yeah. I'm a fan of him and number 11. What's your take on the success of suits on Netflix? Is it simply hitting a TV sweet spot that has been missing in recent years or a great show that has found a new generation audience?
Is it simply the courtroom month effects from the rewatchables? That's funny, but I do think it speaks to the fact that Lincoln lawyers also successful for Netflix. I do think that that is a very reliable genre of television, but I do think it's kind of interesting that a blue sky show from USA that was modestly successful or like very successful for USA, but it is not thought of in the pan. It's not a show.
It's a thousand television, right? And so it gets put on Netflix and all of a sudden is like number one streaming TV show on Netflix and among the most stream shows they've ever had. I think it's kind of an amazing story. I'm glad we get to talk about it.
I think there are two takeaways in my mind. One is ties into what we were just saying. People fucking love TV shows and it's not that complicated. And suits is a extremely well made, extremely entertaining show that operated.
I like the first couple of season of the suits. It's not watching after a while. It's good and it knew what it was doing and it was charming and it provided a certain kind of experience that everybody likes. Many people across generations still think of it as a foundational TV experience, which is that it is reliable and is entertaining, is better than maybe it has to be.
And I just like, I like these people. I like these stories. I like this vibe. It's data across the board.
People like their stories still and there has to be a way to service that. I think the second part of it is maybe more interesting and trickier, which is there is a lot of good TV being made and there has been a lot of good TV that has been made. But one effect of the stratification of the TV landscape is getting these popular things to people in the right delivery method. So suits, USA show, Universal Show ought to be siloed away on Peacock where I'm sure it could draw people.
But many, many, many millions more people have Netflix than Peacock. And all of those people who have Netflix think about watching Netflix a way that they may not think of watching Peacock. Like there is something about the interaction with Netflix that suggests, here we go, we're going on a deep sea dive and we're just going to be hitting it and hitting it and binging it. So the best delivery system for suits is Netflix.
And there are probably dozens, if not more, shows like that out there that could be optimized and revitalized and give a lot of people pleasure if they were given the opportunity to be in the right delivery system, which doesn't mean everything has to be on Netflix. The B side to this point is, this is the humanitarian read in a way of when you read stories like HBO is going to once again license some of its shows. And it secures on there now. And that's, you know, I am not in the business affairs offices of any of these places, but just as a consumer, it potentially is a creator.
Like, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with that? One of the reasons why writers are striking is the lack of residuals because there's no future for their shows because they all dead end in the dungeon of whatever corporate overlord commissioned them in the first place. So there's no resale value of their shows.
So this could be possibly the new syndication. It would be fantastic. And I say this as the parent of a TV child that's languishing in the dungeon of a corporate overlord. Like there's a lot of TV shows.
My show would not be suits. But I just mean like, give people a chance to watch stuff. And instead of, it's in a way it's a much bigger question than I was even in the way that I was conceiving it, which is to say that like, it is kind of a comment on like, what are we doing? Like, are these shows creative enterprises meant to entertain people or are they widgets in long term shareholder growth plans?
It's funny that suits popped off like this because I was like, should we talk about suits? Should we be like, should we like watch a bunch of suits and talk about it on the watch in 2023? That feels like Julia Court, right? Like I feel like that.
Well, she loves suits. But there's also this whole thing about like what shows people like versus what shows people want to hear other people talk about it. Very true. And it's very true.
I have this every time I think about talking about SVUD where I'm just like, this actually makes it so I'm not going to do it. But I was, you know, even for suits, I was like, is there really anything, like how do you get everybody to be like, we're watching the first three episodes of suits? And like, isn't it so funny when Harvey does this? Like, it's not the same thing as hijack and it came out and like the, yeah.
But like, so the next question I was going to ask you is, JR Davidson says quote with tears in my eyes, he says, sirs, thank you for finally watching Chernobyl. But seriously, with the strikes pushing release dates, do you feel like you'll cover more legacy shows when things dry up? Or are you confident that even with the slowdown, you'll have new things to discuss? I have a lot of anime to get through.
So, you know, my involvement in this project is limited. I don't know. Even with the strikes and with whatever slowdown is coming, I think for the way that we cover things and generally, I think we decided that it's probably better to have the few shows that we're watching intently as opposed to just name checking stuff. And we have done a bunch that we've started things and not returned to it.
But I think that's a better model for us. But that said, the Chernobyl thing, like we were talking about what we might want to read, like there are other mini series or things that are beloved that I think that either I missed or we didn't talk about that might be fun to consider. Did you watch Band of Brothers? We discussed this.
No, I know. But did you ever ever be around serve like whether you watched Band of Brothers? Are you watching two episodes of Band of Brothers? Yeah.
So it's true. So that fucking didn't get to today. I support the troops by watching Special Ops Linus. You don't do that either.
That's true. That would be a fun one to watch because that is essentially a black hole for me. Yeah. We maybe should pick one of these.
I mean, I actually don't think we're going to get a slowdown. I don't think that there's going to be any drought of new TV. And I think by the time that would be a real concern, they're going to be there's going to be a labor agreement. But it is funny too, though.
I think we're learning the longer we do this that like there are also some things like SVU that is just like maybe that's just for us. Whereas, you know what I watch the other day that we haven't we talked about, but then we I re-watch the first episode of Southside. Uh huh. And maybe that's my favorite show of all time.
Like briefly. Yeah. Well, watching. It's on Max.
I feel that way about the season three is about and down bloopers now with Kenny and to Shanko. There's something it's mostly comedy related, right? But I would like to spend more of my life watching Southside and thinking about it, but I don't entirely know how to podcast about it because it's just becomes. Because you say it's that was funny.
We just did National Lampoon's Rewatchable. And I was like, Bill and then this other line happens and I left. Let's wrap it up there. I can't wait to get any Kelly Green evils here.
A lot of people asked about this. Okay, I'm really glad we got this going. I wanted to get the Air Force ones. I did not.
I am not a big Jersey. Like I don't have a lot of team game. My mother said that 500 people lined up at like the official Eagles store. And then when you for people who don't know that for decades, the Eagles had a very unique color scheme was called Kelly Green, a bright green.
And then when Jeffrey Larry bought the team 25 years ago, immediately kind of made it like cool edgy 90s like Poochy style. Yeah. Midnight green, which also admittedly looks really good. They brought back the Kelly Green as alternates and Philadelphia is going insane.
People ordered stuff and it's like shipping next football season. Yeah. It's kind of like furniture. But I decided on this couch and they're like great.
By the way, everyone got the grill. You guys for your concern over less weeks delivery may everything worked out. I would like to get some Kelly Green gear, but also like what do I go jailing hurts? Do I go honestly, maybe my favorite.
I would want to Vontay Smith that Smith is kind of a hurts. Looks cooler on Jersey. He's like, Smith is like, what do you fucking agent from the Matrix? Yeah.
Did you just buy the one off the mannequin that like what your name here? Smith. But I love that about Lane Johnson because it was Johnson. And I guess that's not much more than just one in the trenches.
That just shows what kind of fan I am. But I like, you know what, you know what? I couldn't wear a Lane Johnson Jersey without watching Banda Brothers. Those things are when you finished Banda Brothers.
I'll buy you a Lane Johnson Jersey and Kelly Green. Kelly Green. Thank you to Kai McMullen who's going to have an absolute blast editing this one because there's some cool googling. Yeah, we hope everybody's having a great summer.
We'll be back on our usual time but we're just recording this a few about a week and a half out. So I hope everybody's having a great summer and we'll see you on the next episode. While you listen to this just picture us like Kenny Power's on this jet ski. That's right.
That's how we're enjoying August.