How the Warner Bros. Sale Changes Television. Plus, ‘DTF St. Louis’ and ‘Rooster’ Strike Out.

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Watch – "How the Warner Bros. Sale Changes Television. Plus, ‘DTF St. Louis’ and ‘Rooster’ Strike Out."

Date: March 9, 2026
Host(s): Chris Ryan & Andy Greenwald (The Ringer)
Episode Theme:
A deep dive into the seismic changes in the television industry following the Warner Bros.-Paramount-Skydance acquisition, alongside thoughtful (and spicy) reviews of new HBO shows DTF St. Louis and Rooster, and some love for Top Chef’s return.

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Episode Overview

This episode mixes incisive media analysis with signature Chris & Andy banter. The duo zero in on the big Warner Bros. sale, pondering what a consolidated media landscape means for the future of TV, content creators, and viewers. They discuss industry reverberations—less competition, looming layoffs, questions about creative independence for storied brands like HBO—and riff on the philosophical and practical implications. Later, they turn their attention to HBO’s bold new series DTF St. Louis and Rooster, sharing candid reactions to the highs and (plentiful) lows, before delighting in the return of Top Chef and exploring the changing tone and feel of reality competitions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Warner Bros.-Paramount-Skydance Deal: TV’s Shaky Future

[08:00–33:45]

• The Industry Context:
  • Widespread media consolidation, with Skydance acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery and folding in Paramount.
  • Regulatory and political entanglements—"noises coming from various state attorneys general" ([08:37], Chris).
  • Questions swirling about everything from job cuts to sovereign wealth involvement.
• What Does ‘One Less Buyer’ Really Mean?
  • Fewer buyers means less competition for writers and creators.
  • "One less buyer means less competition, which means less opportunity for writers, which means fewer shows, and on and on and on." ([13:38], Andy)
  • Even if the new conglomerate swears they’ll keep icons like HBO independent, history and market logic cast doubt.
• Comparing Hypotheticals:
  • Netflix acquiring Warner Bros. would make more sense: they lack a movie studio and prestige drama arm (Andy, [09:49–10:43]).
  • With Paramount, overlap is huge—two studios, two streaming platforms, “potentially catastrophic and ruinous for real life in the town” ([11:22], Andy).
• The App & User Experience Quagmire:
  • Both hosts bemoan current streaming UIs, wonder if “the stack” revolution really will fix anything ([13:38–15:30]).
  • “Netflix wants to be the app you open and stay in for…everything that you do. That seems like a very smart strategy to be comprehensive. We have not just recent evidence, but recent evidence involving one of the companies involved in this transaction that becoming an everything app is a lot harder than it looks.” ([15:43], Andy)
  • Recall the failed Max/HBO Max integration: the “peanut butter and jelly mixing” flopped ([16:53], Andy).
• What Kind of TV Gets Made Now?
  • Hosts doubt a large, vertically stacked conglomerate can maintain the creative identity that made brands like HBO and HBO Max so distinct ([19:16], Chris).
  • Will the future hold more “unified” house-style shows, or just a big pot of creative confusion?
  • Andy: "That is the fallacy of consolidation and that's the looming problem here." ([20:09])

2. The Intellectual Property (IP) Jigsaw & Looming Overlap

[23:57–33:50]

• Supercharging Franchises:
  • Paramount will now control DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Mortal Kombat, and more.
  • Andy: “There’s no question that all of the dials on all of these properties is gonna get cranked up. I don’t know what that means.” ([33:14])
• Prospects of Crossovers and the Escalation of IP:
  • The podcast jokes about wild crossovers, like “Westeros Sicario” ([27:02], Chris), but worries that creative distinctiveness and patience could get bulldozed by the race to monetize.
  • “If suddenly it's $80 billion of debt and we have to please as many people as possible all the time or it's confusing who you're pleasing… that's a harder sell in the even larger ecosystem.” ([35:52], Andy)
• Practical Dilemmas:
  • Will careful stewardship (of, say, Game of Thrones or Harry Potter) survive with the new debt and pressures?
  • “Two shows every year and a half is not enough and… they may hit the supercharge button.” ([32:13], Andy)
  • Chris: "Be careful what you wish for. There's only—so we can only make this stuff so fast given the effects and given the sort of scale of it." ([32:50])

3. The Lanterns Trailer and Lessons from Prestige TV

[27:25–35:50]

• Praise for 'Lanterns':
  • Both excited for the show: "It just looks cool to me." ([28:11], Chris)
  • Highlights the prestige creative team (Damon Lindelof, Tom King, Chris Mundy, Justin Britt Gibson).
  • Cautiously optimistic if DC can keep the HBO-level of quality in a universe now run by Skydance/Paramount.
  • Worries articulated: "If Lanterns works in a narrow lane that connects to the larger DC universe, but only has to satisfy the HBO audience... that is a hard—I would imagine that's a harder sell in the even larger ecosystem." ([35:52], Andy)

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Show Reviews

DTF St. Louis (HBO)

[41:30–63:44]

Premise & Key Players

• Created, written, and directed by Steve Conrad (Patriot, Perpetual Grace Ltd., Ultra City Smiths).
• Jason Bateman stars as a local weatherman, David Harbour as his ASL interpreter, Linda Cardellini as Harbour’s wife.
• Noir-flavored, idiosyncratic; jumps between timelines, true-crime framing.

Chris & Andy's Take

• Initial Reaction:
  • Both want to support unique voices, but: “After watching two episodes, it's hard to remember a series that I have ultimately disliked as much as this one and that have rubbed me as much the wrong way.” ([49:41], Andy)
  • Chris: "I think I might be dyslexic for this writer." ([49:57])
• Issues with Tone & Style:
  • Hyper-stylized, almost mockingly bleak depiction of middle America.
  • “There is a little bit of contempt and mockery at work here and it's a fine line.” ([54:03], Andy)
  • Both found themselves out of sync with the show’s rhythm, especially regarding its treatment of ordinary people and the effectiveness of its darkly comic undertones.
• Structure Fatigue:
  • Both hosts are tired of the “present/future flash-forward whodunit” framing in contemporary TV: “That is anti-story to me at this point.” ([55:37], Andy)
• Praise Where Due:
  • Admire Conrad’s creative uniqueness; delighted by supporting turns from Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday.
  • “I would rather a hundred DTF St. Louis flowers bloom… The fact that this exists is rare. And the fact that it doesn't work shouldn't be a obituary for Steven Conrad's auteurish career or this type of show working on hbo.” ([57:11], Andy)

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Rooster (HBO)

[63:44–71:57]

Synopsis & Creative Team

• Campus comedy/dramedy from Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso, Scrubs, Shrinking), starring Steve Carell (as a Hiassen-esque crime writer), Danielle Deadwyler (as a colleague), and an ensemble of quirky academics.

Critical Drubbing

• Andy: "I have no malice in my heart when I say I hated it. This show: fatality." ([66:53])
• Chris: “I wasn't sure how you felt… the one liners trump any stakes of any scene…” ([66:31])
• Repeating Critique:

  • Too many quips, not enough substance; lacks commitment to any emotional or comedic through-line.

  • Carell’s recent career choices are pondered—he seems to be avoiding another long sitcom run, but keeps audiences at arm’s length with short-lived or not fully satisfying projects.

  • Danielle Deadwyler stands out as a “rare seasoning,” but the show doesn’t let her shine as the main dish ([70:08], Andy, referencing Daniel Fienberg’s review).

On HBO’s Brand

• Rooster feels distinctly non-HBO in DNA; the hosts muse that its presence on HBO is a byproduct of overall deals and intra-studio politics, not creative boldness.

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Top Chef: The Carolinas (Peacock/Bravo)

[71:57–end]

Return to Form

• Both hosts absolutely delighted by the season premiere, noting its warmth, intensity and the emergence of more competitive contestant energy.
• Chris: “Within about 10 minutes. I was like, it's Top Chef's fucking back… that level of intensity. And also a couple of dicks in the cast, like, people who are like, I really am here to bust some heads is kind of a new thing for this show.” ([73:21])
• Andy extols new host Kristen Kish’s natural empathy and skill: “This is fully Kristen's show now in a way that is remarkable. The promise of hiring her was always—so you had someone in that chair who could relate. And they ran towards this moment in the premiere in a way that was really moving.” ([76:43])
• Loving the shift away from product placement; notice cost-cutting but embrace it as part of the show’s charm.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Consolidation:
  Andy: “That is the fallacy of consolidation and that's the looming problem here.” ([20:09])
• On the user experience arms race:
  Andy: “The idea, and this is the idea that Netflix is actively working towards from a position of like…lead…from a great lead in doing so. Netflix wants to be the app you open and stay in for your reality TV, for your sports, for your prestige dramas, for your reruns, for your podcasts, for everything that you do. And that seems like a very smart strategy to be comprehensive.” ([15:43])
• On HBO’s identity crisis post merger:
  Andy: “If you just put HBO next to everything that you just said, yeah, I don't understand what it means now.” ([21:50])
• On DTF St. Louis’s effect:
  Chris: “But what it makes me feel is a deep sense of nausea about living in America. And it's like watching people walk around this cemetery of cities or suburbia…” ([51:19])
• On Top Chef’s new era:
  Andy (on Kristen Kish’s crucial intervention): “She calmed Nana down, told her to take a beat, have her come back out. And then I thought, crucially, what happened was…She was kind of like, I definitely feel for her as a person, but let's be real. There was a cooking mold in a dish.” ([78:42])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:08] – Table of topics: Warner Bros. sale, new shows, Top Chef
• [08:07–13:38] – Deep dive on industry impacts of Warner Bros. sale
• [15:30–16:59] – Frustration with streaming apps and digital experience
• [19:16–23:57] – What kind of TV will get made post-merger; HBO’s uniqueness in peril
• [23:57–33:14] – IP escalation and the risk of creative overreach
• [33:50–35:52] – Lanterns trailer optimism – can prestige survive in a new structure?
• [41:30–63:44] – Full review: DTF St. Louis (premise, tone, dislikes)
• [63:44–71:57] – Full review: Rooster (premise, why it falls flat)
• [71:57–end] – Top Chef is back! (enthusiasm, Kristen’s hosting, “the new warmth”)

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Closing Thoughts

Chris & Andy bring passionate insight and unvarnished honesty to their breakdown of both industry tectonics and individual series. They caution against assuming the best for landmark brands under corporate ownership, but also root for genuine creative risk on TV—even when it doesn’t work for them personally. Their delight in Top Chef’s rejuvenation cuts through any cynicism, restoring hope that, however topsy-turvy the TV world gets, “flowers can still bloom.”

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For more:

• Follow @thewatchpod on Instagram or catch Chris & Andy’s industry mailbag episodes wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

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[Chris Ryan]

I need support staff to clear the room.

[Andy Greenwald]

Stand up and walk now.

[Chris Ryan]

Hello and welcome to the Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an [e-mail] and joining me in the studio after a long hiatus, it's Andy Greenwald.

[Andy Greenwald]

First of all, let's pull back the card real quick.

[Chris Ryan]

Welcome back, man. Thanks for coming back on the Watch. You know, it's great to have you.

[Andy Greenwald]

Whenever my schedule allows it, I'll be here. You know this better than anyone.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

Podcasting, it's a muscle, you know what I mean? And you have to keep it in like you do with weightlifting. You have to keep it in elite shape on a schedule. So I'm a little worried today. I'm coming in.

[Chris Ryan]

You're more like a Jayson Tatum. Like, what's going to happen? He still got it.

[Andy Greenwald]

But I came back fast. Yeah. So I was worried about my legacy. Yeah. Second, what people don't know is that you just gave me a brush back pitch for the ages right before we started recording.

[Chris Ryan]

No, no, no, we don't have to. I just. I just.

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[Chris Ryan]

Just noticed that you are wearing clothing from a boutique that I happen to love here in Los Angeles called Brother. Brother. Yes. And I want it to be a big tent.

[Andy Greenwald]

The name is Brother. Brother.

[Chris Ryan]

Only child. Only child.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's true. It's tough. It's tough. But what I was trying to explain to you is, is no one is questioning that you Columbus.

[Chris Ryan]

I didn't Columbus store. They were blowing up without me. This is really bad podcast news.

[Andy Greenwald]

No, we're gonna talk about news about this. I. First of all, I think they do. And what I was saying is that, like, what I have realized over time, due to your popularity, there's a whole month named after you. Yeah, which. This is my first podcast, International Women's Month. Since there's no coincidence that International Women's Day falls during CR Month, I think everybody noticed that you are an ally. This is my first podcast of CR Month. I was on the shelf for the first week. Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Well. So you busy last week?

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah. And all I'm saying is I just introduced myself as the person who can help facilitate access to you. I'm Alex Guerrero.

[Chris Ryan]

You can reach [e-mail] if you want to weigh in on this interpersonal battle, you can follow us at thewatchpod on Instagram DM us. Give us hot news about the Paramount, Warner Brothers, Netflix triangle if you want, or just make comments about the way we look. Also, you can watch us on YouTube, Ringer Dash TV. You can watch us on Spotify, where I bet you're listening to us.

[Andy Greenwald]

Look at you. Just getting things back in order.

[Chris Ryan]

And I have a big show for you today.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, yeah, that's why you're a full man.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I want to talk to you because somehow we kind of missed the final Paramount, Warner Brothers stuff then. Cause we did. Industry last week went up on Sunday as the Warner Brothers stuff kind of came out over the course of the weekend.

[Andy Greenwald]

Luckily, the facts on the ground did not stop me from blowing my top about it in advance, which created a lovely clip.

[Chris Ryan]

That's true. And then I also want to talk to you about the lanterns trailer.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, yeah, I want to talk about that.

[Chris Ryan]

I want to talk to you about DTF St. Louis, which is our two episodes so far, Rooster, which debuted on HBO last night. And a little bit about a little show, a cooking competition show.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It's Top Chef that they count it out. Don't count it out, baby. Top Chef is back. It's on Peacock airing the first episode. So we won't get too deep into it, but we'll just sing its praises a little bit.

[Andy Greenwald]

You're saying that because you don't want our official commentary to surface until the show airs on Bravo.

[Chris Ryan]

I gotta be completely honest. I don't think a lot of people know that Top Chef is currently available on Peacock because Kaya, who is a, I would say moderate to passionate Top Chef fan.

[Andy Greenwald]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

Was like, I had no idea.

[Andy Greenwald]

Now, in her defense, and this is

[Chris Ryan]

something that I would like to address with the entertainment industry across the board, which is.

[Andy Greenwald]

You want to talk directly to camera.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I'm just saying, like, we're losing it. We're losing the ability to like, let people know stuff is on. Did you know case that Scarpetta is coming out like this week?

[Andy Greenwald]

No.

[Chris Ryan]

There's a Nicole Kidman Amazon show about a medical examiner that has been much ballyhooed and it is coming out Wednesday, I think.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, this was the case with Reggie Dinkins where we were very excited.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, that's because they put one up and then we're like, you guys think about that for three months and then brought it back.

[Andy Greenwald]

I did think about it for three months.

[Chris Ryan]

I know it worked.

[Andy Greenwald]

I also think, Kai, I hope you don't mind me saying so, Kaia was on a lovely vacation, so she doesn't need to know that Top Chef was available on Peacock. It was waiting for her when she got back at 5:30 this morning before driving to work to produce the watch.

[Chris Ryan]

You've already come and gone.

[Andy Greenwald]

What do you mean? What do you mean?

[Chris Ryan]

I thought you were going like, I don't see how tan she is. No, it's really dark in this.

[Andy Greenwald]

Fresh off the beach.

[Chris Ryan]

Damn dog.

[Andy Greenwald]

I know.

[Chris Ryan]

That's animal style. Way to go.

[Andy Greenwald]

See again. I don't recommend it. I talk to our colleagues here. You just swan in.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, let's talk about the only story that really is happening in Hollywood right now. Well, other than the Oscars and everything else. But there's a bunch of really good writing and especially podcasting that we've done over here at the Ringer from the Town and the Big Picture about the Warner Brothers Discovery, slash Skydance Paramount acquisition or Skydance's acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery. I kind of want to take this to like the next questions and, and shape them a little bit more around the kind of stuff that we tend to talk about. So there are many, many backroom and financial angles to this story. You've got the impact that the war in Iran will have on the sovereign wealth behind this deal.

[Andy Greenwald]

And I've not been tracking that. That.

[Chris Ryan]

And he talked to Jerry Cardinal, who is the head of Redbird Capital or a member of Redbird Capital and not sure which. And he swears up and down that that's not, that's not going to be a factor. You also have the controversies surrounding Jeff Shell and his involvement with a Las Vegas gambler, which is different from his previous involvements, that is also looming over this. And then there are noises coming from various states. Attorney. Is it attorneys general?

[Andy Greenwald]

Thank you for asking.

[Chris Ryan]

Attorney generals.

[Andy Greenwald]

It's attorneys general.

[Chris Ryan]

Attorneys general. That's what I thought. Who are talking about interrogating this sale a little bit more deeply than the Justice Department has. But I want to talk about what it's going to mean for tv.

[Andy Greenwald]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Which we obviously can't say with any certainty, but there are some things that we should probably like just talk out because I think it would be of interest to our listeners. So the number one thing is, and one that I was kind of curious to hear your perspective as somebody who in his majority of his life is like writing and working on and trying to sell ideas for TV shows is what is the one less buyer thing mean here and how is it different that if Warner Brothers and Paramount become one, how would that be different necessarily than if Warner Brothers and Netflix became one Now I know that there was a lot of talk from the Ted Sarando side about how HBO is going to maintain its independence. And we were buying them for them to be them and you know, like how much they respect that team. David Ellison is, to I guess his credit, said similar things, but not as explicit.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

About HBO's kind of special status. Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

We don't. The answer to all this is, of course, we don't know anyone can say anything when it's all speculative about what it might mean and how these things might play out. I think the biggest red flag to me in the deal in Paramount winning the deal over Netflix is that you don't even have to squint too much to understand why Netflix was making the deal. Because in purchasing Warner Brothers Discovery, Netflix was getting access to a lot of things that it doesn't necessarily have. A movie studio with a very, very entrenched, well, at least prior to the Bride's release, very entrenched success rate at movie theater releases and actually getting people out to the theaters theatrical. You have the HBO tile, which is at least in, you know, an institutionalist like Ted Sarandos mind, still elite and worthy of preserving and not necessarily duplicative of what they do. Although it is worth that they. In the past year, Bella, who's head of content for Netflix, hired Nora Skinner from hbo. Oh, okay. And her purview is a lot of HBO ish type of content. You know, what we used to call prestige stuff.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Andy Greenwald]

And I think the biggest one, of course, being the enormous ip. Netflix has for years been very desirous of having live events. That's why they're pumping out as much stranger things content as they can, including the live show. Like having DC having Harry Potter would be very valuable to them and their attempt to diversify what they offer. So you could see it. I'm not saying it would be good for people, but I'm saying you could see it. And because it was not one to one duplicative, there was a hope that it wouldn't cost a lot of jobs. You cannot say that about Paramount taking over.

[Chris Ryan]

That was part of their pitch, is that this will cost a lot of jobs.

[Andy Greenwald]

This will cost a lot of jobs and we can, yes, reduce overhead. They have two studio lots, they have two streaming services, they have two theatrical release movie studios. They have a lot of people doing similar jobs at two different parts of Los Angeles. That's potentially catastrophic and ruinous for real life in the town. But to finally end up answering your question, this was a seller's market during the boom times of John Landgraf's trademark prestige tv, when there was just too much tv. If you took a project to market at a certain level, you could pretty you could feel confident you would get not just one nibble of interest, but another one which would create obviously competition and maybe get you a better deal and grease the skids towards actually getting something made. Yes, that has really fallen off a cliff in the last few years. And it's not just because of some companies like going out of business or streamers closing. It's just the reality of the financial commitment to make a lot of these shows these days. AMC is not competing for the same shows that Apple is anymore, whereas a few years ago maybe everyone was in competition for the same stuff. So the idea of a buyer going off the board was a fear, no matter what happened. But with all of the talk and again, all of the potential roadmap to HBO remaining separate from Netflix, you could still imagine that they might compete with each other. I don't know if in the most robust way, but in a way. I mean, remember, we're not too far away from a time when HBO Max was competing with HBO in a real, honestly, not that thoughtful way. And that's how you ended up with things like Station 11, which was like DNA and HBO show being a Max show. They've sorted that out in recent years. There's just David Ellison has said he wants to keep the HBO brain trust separate, but he's also said inevitably we merge the streaming services. So what does that mean? And one less buyer means less competition, which means less opportunity for writers, which means fewer shows, and on and on and on.

[Chris Ryan]

He's been going around since way before the actual acquisition, talking about the stack and how he's going to revolutionize Paramount's digital backend. And I would not say, I wish we had a lighting queue for UX Corner. We have a lighting queue now for Watch After Dark. But I would not say that I'm a huge fan of either Paramount plus or HBO's like, user experience. You know, I don't think anybody is really on Netflix's level algorithmically in terms of helping you discover stuff, putting things in front of your eyeballs, remembering you

[Andy Greenwald]

just watched something and might want to

[Chris Ryan]

keep watching, might want to keep watching it. I think Paramount, at least in my experience, is the worst of it, where you're just like, I, I do watch Survivor. Why do I, do I have to search for it every time, even though I've saved it to, like My.

[Andy Greenwald]

My stuff Peacock is like that as

[Chris Ryan]

well, and Peacock is like that as well. But I would say that I would expect a tear down of both and a new thing. The funny thing about that is that, like, whenever that kind of stuff happens, I feel like by the time it goes live, like, we've moved into another era of what this stuff is supposed to look and feel like. I often remember when we were working at websites more actively, one of the big meetings that we would always get stuck in is, should we build our own video player?

[Andy Greenwald]

Mm.

[Chris Ryan]

And you know, the answer was probably, like, just use YouTube. But it would always be like, but if we built our own player, what could we. And it was like, you guys took two years to do this, spent a ton of money, and now like, people still use YouTube. I don't know what that means. I'm not making a one to one comparison. But it is. When you're talking about, like, let's build this, like, state of the art streaming experience for people. I do wonder, like, what happens in like three years if, like, our. Our parameters have changed for that.

[Andy Greenwald]

I think there's also a fundamental misunderstanding of what users want out of their experience these days. I think we could all agree we can reach across the aisle and say, it sure would be nice to have to click fewer things to see the things I want to see.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

So the idea, and this is the idea that Netflix is actively working towards from a position of like, from a great lead in doing so. Netflix wants to be the app you open and stay in for your reality tv, for your sports, for your prestige dramas, for your reruns, for your podcasts, for everything that you do. And that seems like a very smart strategy to be comprehensive. We have not just recent evidence, but recent evidence involving one of the companies involved in this transaction that becoming an everything app is a lot harder than it looks or than it looks in an initial transaction spreadsheet. HBO Max, formerly Max, doesn't work because nobody wanted Dr. Pimple Popper with their HBO. Users weren't using it that way. Like, they. The thought behind it was, look how much we can give you. And you, I. E. Us looked at it and said, no, thank you. They were still seeking out the HBO shows they wanted to watch. And the people who watched the other stuff watched the other stuff, but there wasn't a lot. And I think this has been confirmed on the record by people involved in it, which led to the HBO Max re. Rebranding.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

That there wasn't a lot of peanut butter and jelly mixing up in the mouths of the consumer.

[Chris Ryan]

The other thing is just, like, how? My next question is, like, what kind of TV shows are going to get made? And I think we'll probably feel this closer to 28, 29 is when we'll feel the, like, unified aesthetic of the new Paramount start to come to the fore.

[Andy Greenwald]

Assuming this happens.

[Chris Ryan]

Assuming this happens. And like, I don't know what happens to like, the fourth season of House of the Dragon, like, where that really exists. Like, at what point do they close down HBO as a streaming service and ask everybody to be on Paramount? Plus, how long are we going to have to go through the annoying, like, espn, Hulu, Disney plus bundle?

[Andy Greenwald]

I think I pay all three of them independently.

[Chris Ryan]

I pay like, multiple, multiple accounts of like, I. And I have no idea.

[Andy Greenwald]

How do you know how I know that? I do. I took my kids to Disney and I was greeted by name saying, thank you. You personally funded this win.

[Chris Ryan]

One of the three account guys. Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

Will you fund Tomorrowland because, like, every

[Chris Ryan]

15 months ESPN will be like, you don't, you don't have a membership here. I'm like, oh, I guess you got to give you $90.

[Andy Greenwald]

I called them and they were like, yes, of course. I see this is not duplicative. It's triplicative or whatever. And then I was like, great, so we can bring it all online. And there was a, oh, well, sir, your Hulu account actually runs until November.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I was like, great, call you then.

[Andy Greenwald]

But then my ESPN account will be running to June. I need Howie Roseman to do a cap management of my streaming service package.

[Chris Ryan]

So, like, the reason I'm asking about, like, what will TV feel like and what kind of shows are going to get made is that even your H max comparison is a really good one that was bringing in some of the aesthetic house style of maybe like a TBS and TNT style show that you might, you might get on linear cable and finding a place under the HBO umbrella to put those things, but still have a little bit of the sensibility of the brain trust of HBO consulting on Flight Attendant or what have you. That was the name of that show, right? The Kaylee show? Yeah. I don't see how that happens realistically with the current iteration of Paramount. Plus whatever you consider the remnants of Showtime.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yep.

[Chris Ryan]

CBS and whatever. Like, you know, why Marshalls and tracker stuff that they're still putting up and hbo, you know, and I, and I, I see the vision long term where they're like, this is great. We have all this ip. Yeah. And it's all going to be like vertically integrated and we can start, we can take one of these studio lots and build Paramount Mountain and have dragons flying around. But these are very different experiences for me. Like when I'm, when I'm looking for stuff to watch. Lioness is not the same thing as DTF St. Louis.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'd like to think that we're a pretty good podcast. The Ringer Fantasy football show is a good podcast.

[Chris Ryan]

It is.

[Andy Greenwald]

I, I don't think anyone would argue it would be a better podcast if all five of us were seated at the table at the same time.

[Chris Ryan]

Talking at the same time.

[Andy Greenwald]

Talking at the same time.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

That is the fallacy of consolidation and that's the looming problem here. I think one of the under reported things about this, the relative success of HBO Max. Now again, let's say that Warner Brothers Discovery continues to hemorrhage money and is in massive debt. That is not necessarily HBO's fault. That is the fault of oh Captain, my captain, David Zaslav, who purchased the entire thing on debt and then tried to.

[Chris Ryan]

And now this has been purchased with

[Andy Greenwald]

quite a bit of money and is now going to enrich himself enormously while everyone he leaves behind will lose their job. So that's awesome. Capitalism's working great. Let's hear the fantasy football guys say that. But an underreported thing of our pal Casey Bloys, friend of the watch who we don't need to blow any smoke his direction whatsoever. But the consolidation, I use the word again, of the HBO and HBO Max brand has worked so absolutely dynamically and beyond the expectations of a lot of people because they allowed it to fall under the same office. The hbo, HBO Max thing that was challenging for a while was they had two separate programming teams. And then when Casey and his group took over HBO Max, they were able to say, this is an HBO show. This is an HBO Max show. And not in a dismissive way saying, like, we're just going to put the chaff over here. Sure, this is how we get the pit. So the idea isn't that things that don't necessarily sync up don't work under the same tile. It's that you need to have a unified vision, a broader, unified vision of what you're putting up. And if you just put HBO next to everything that you just said, yeah, I don't understand what it means now. I guess the counter argument is you couldn't explain the cable bundle either. But I just think we're so far past that in terms of a reference Point. The other thing to add to this is I'm not entirely sure. I'm certain the viewers don't understand, but I'm not entirely sure that, quote unquote, the town understands what a Paramount show is.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't think they do either because I think they're making assumptions based on, oh, it's kind of like red state curious.

[Andy Greenwald]

But if it was red state curious, which it has been, but even if

[Chris Ryan]

it has been largely through Sheridan's stuff. Yes, that was not Ellison.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes. And one of the first things Ellison did was let Taylor Sheridan walk and bring in Cindy Holland, who is the architect of some of the most thoughtful programming chronologically.

[Chris Ryan]

But yes, he brought in Cindy Holland and Cindy Holland was like, we're good,

[Andy Greenwald]

but these were two big power moves in the TV space. So Cindy Holland's Paramount does not exist yet in terms of what the viewers are engaging with. That's a. There are, there are a lot of similar shifts because other than HBO and fx and I guess Peacock has had a pretty consistent leadership team as well. But like no one, you could say the same thing about Amazon, which is like, oh, well, they're also going after that kind of Tom Clancy terminal list real estate. But behind the scenes, Peter Friedlander came over from Netflix and is now putting his mark on their programming and it's not likely to be the same thing. So we can't assume we know what it's going to be. But the thing lurking behind that statement is Cindy Holland made her name in Netflix making the kind of thoughtful, Emmy provoking HBO competing stuff that put Netflix on the map.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

Are she and Casey hunting after the same projects from their separate corners and they're now going to be doing it from the same structure.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Andy Greenwald]

And who benefits from that? It just kind of doesn't make sense. Now, we can leap to assumptions or we could choose not to. We don't actually know how it's going to shake out. And from the people that I know involved and from the good reporting that you were mentioning before, like, no one actually knows how it's going to go yet, but it is concerning. From a fan of quality stuff perspective.

[Chris Ryan]

The IP Jigsaw puzzle was the last thing I wanted to talk about because I think it's actually segues into talking about lanterns pretty easily. Paramount now controls the following Warner Brothers pet properties, assuming this deal goes through dc, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings movies, of which they are currently about to start shooting one in May, apparently, and much, much more. Mortal Kombat, you Know some of the greats.

[Andy Greenwald]

Are you a big Mortal Kombat guy?

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

Look at the space zoom in. Who's your guy? Now I'm talking. That's my Marin imitation. Who are your guys?

[Chris Ryan]

Sub Zero.

[Andy Greenwald]

You were Sub Zero, guys.

[Chris Ryan]

I like Sub Zero.

[Andy Greenwald]

Everybody liked Sub Zero. I just didn't know you were so devoted to it.

[Chris Ryan]

Sub Zero is my grand platner.

[Andy Greenwald]

No matter what was revealed underneath whatever

[Chris Ryan]

tattoos he had, it's like, finish him.

[Andy Greenwald]

Ride with him. No, you were like, he can win. Yeah. That was your attitude.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I was a big Mortal Kombat guy. Although, you know, fair's fair. I gotta. I gotta be candid with you. I don't think being an only child shapes you for competition with other human beings in video games.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm closing my computer. This is the conversation I've been waiting to have.

[Chris Ryan]

Because, look, when it's just you and the four walls and the roof, you can just hit reset. When you're not liking the way things are, the way the wind is blowing, you're just like, oh, I'm losing in this Techno bowl game or this Madden game. Just going to kick the plug out.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know what else? What? You can think you're really good.

[Chris Ryan]

You can think you're fucking Last Starfighter. You think you're goaded.

[Andy Greenwald]

You can think your.

[Chris Ryan]

One guy comes over.

[Andy Greenwald]

I was basically with my Sega Genesis, I was playing Ender's game. Do you know what I mean? Like, I was the one who was going to end the galactic conflict and maybe already had.

[Chris Ryan]

And then one dude comes over.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And fucking ends my game. Yeah. Throws 84 ninja stars at your head. And you're like, God damn it, this controller's broken.

[Andy Greenwald]

There was. This is also. This is actually dating us more than saying Sega Genesis. But at the. Sounds like, I grew up in fucking Riverdale with Jughead and Betty and Veronica. But there was a pharmacy in the neighborhood that not only had a soda shop. Soda County Soda Fountain.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

They had a Double Dragon arcade.

[Chris Ryan]

Could you play DD by yourself?

[Andy Greenwald]

I would ride my bike there during, like off hours or weekends and be like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[Chris Ryan]

Stranger Things playing. Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

And then a Stranger Things dude would come up, be like, put a quarter on. And I'd be like, oh, sir, shall we play cooperative mode? Which didn't exist, you know, like, you have to understand that there wasn't Double Dragon was just two guys walking around going like this. Yeah, I remember there was not a mortality mode like there would be in Mortal Kombat. And yet Somehow this guy would find a button combination to finish me.

[Chris Ryan]

Right. To break your. Like, your pelvis.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, no, we're trying to rescue the same lady.

[Chris Ryan]

So anyway, yeah. Mortal Kombat also goes to Paramount. You know, this is. This is a really interesting wrinkle to this because there is the just for laughs idea of. Of Westeros Sicario. Like, I've brought up multiple times.

[Andy Greenwald]

Westeros Sicario. Yeah, good.

[Chris Ryan]

No, but just like, having. Having, you know, overlapping. And if you don't think that they've, like, talked about that, about, like, could we get a hobbit in Game of the Game of Thrones or something like that.

[Andy Greenwald]

Is that the Dorne border crossing? Just. Just, like, talk me through it.

[Chris Ryan]

You're in the land of wolves. But when this Lanterns trailer dropped.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I was. I was like, this is how long it takes, man. Like, when you have talented people working kind of in conjunction. And I know Lanterns kind of predates James Gunn, and there's been some rumored James Gunn input or, like, kind of conversations.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah. The charitable version is, how do we bring this into the larger fold?

[Chris Ryan]

That's the thing that I'm trying to weave to. My last I checked, he has been relatively quiet about all of.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes, I was. I was wondering that myself.

[Chris Ryan]

He may have tweeted about it. I didn't see. But I. I usually. This stuff comes up in feeds. If he is. If he's like, I'm so excited to be part of the Skydance family. I haven't seen it, but Lanterns is one of those things where you're like, you know what, man? You guys just did it.

[Andy Greenwald]

Right?

[Chris Ryan]

I've not seen it. We obviously have a lot of affection for Damon and the people who made this show, and I'm a huge fan of Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, so I'm excited to watch it. It just looks cool to me. I know there's some Lanterns heads out there who are like, not my lantern. But I worry, I guess, that we're going to have to start from zero with this stuff in a year and a half. And they're going to be like, yeah, we have some different ideas about what we want Superman to represent. You know?

[Andy Greenwald]

Do you see a lot of cars in LA with the blue lantern flag in the back?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Yeah. Or the upside down lantern. Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, I think two things are true. Like, your guy. The guy's name is Jerry Cardinali. That's incredible. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

He owns, like, pieces of a lot of European football teams, too. Red Birds got their hands on a

[Andy Greenwald]

lot of pots because the cardinals, the red. The red bird, you know. Oh, yeah, See that?

[Chris Ryan]

I didn't really think about it that way. That's cool.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's why I'm on the pot. No, if you had done this last week, that would have been crickets on that point. Okay, really big into naming one step back. HBO has been making exceptional content and Warner Brothers Films has been making. Has been on like a historic heater up until this weekend. From a position of deficit, literal deficit, like they. David Zaslav is like, I've created this new company. We are $30 billion in debt. What can we do? So despite those circumstances, they are still producing at a high level and making shows that I would imagine and movies that have been profitable. David Ellison is coming in and now the new company will be saddled with what, $80 billion in debt before it starts. So that's basically asking them to do three times as much profit generating for one third of what they've been spending. I mean, I don't actually know how the numbers shake out. But the point is the fastest path, there is no path to profitability. I mean, it's just nonsense. To me the way that anyone would take this as a credible. Like we see a path here, but the fastest path towards shareholder engagements or at least shareholder fantasy story spinning is we're going to do what the previous owners of this content have not done, which is absolutely supercharge ip.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. But I wonder whether more of their gains will come from doing the Disney flywheel thing of creating whether it's a park or consolidating whatever, you know, parks that they have already sort of started talking about and making it into an actual destination and figuring out merchandising and selling all sorts of digital subscriptions for different things. Because I just don't really know like what. I don't really know what the margins are on like a show like Night of the Seven Kingdoms.

[Andy Greenwald]

Is this you asking me directly whether I will also be a consulting producer on Harry Potter land in Abu Dhabi? I cannot confirm or deny that, but thank you. That is a real thing. They are building that.

[Chris Ryan]

Are they really in Abu Dhabi?

[Andy Greenwald]

I mean, prior to the events of the last 10 days, that was their plan. Yeah. They will say that they have a path towards maximizing all of this. There will also be a strong counterpoint to be made. Again, these things will happen slowly in terms of how it trickles down to the consumer. You mentioned House of the Dragon. House of the Dragon will complete its four season run without any issue. The Harry Potter series is that Hogwarts Express has left the station. You know what I mean? And that is a big deal for all these stakeholders involved, the sellers, the buyers, everybody. It's happening. I think one of the reasons why James Gunn probably hasn't said anything is because he needs to do and his team needs to continue to prove that they are the right stewards for this.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Andy Greenwald]

That said, when you look at the deficits on the balance sheets, I think it would be a pretty quick. Pretty quick decision that HBO's careful long term stewardship of Game of Thrones which is been successful. I mean, one week on, two weeks on from Night of the Seven Kingdoms. I'm actually still processing how successful that show was and how excited I am to see more of it. That two shows every year and a half is not enough and that they may hit the supercharge button maybe and again and then that would take.

[Chris Ryan]

But if I was running four or five years, I would just point them in the direction of Marvel Television and Star Wars Television and be like, be careful what you wish for. There's only. So we can only make this stuff so fast given the effects and given the sort of scale of it.

[Andy Greenwald]

And then they would point to the screen again where the $80 billion in deficit is looming and say, well, we gotta spend something to make something. I mean I.

[Chris Ryan]

But then make Top Gun, Flight Academy. I mean there's all sorts of stuff they can kind of mess around with.

[Andy Greenwald]

I think there's options. And I think that you're right. Like just from a. What have we learned? I just feel like a lot of the roadmap of recent capitalism doesn't have a lot of. Well, we've all learned something here.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know what I mean? I think that's a very beautiful.

[Chris Ryan]

Guys, we're never gonna do 2008 again.

[Andy Greenwald]

Exactly. Let's not get too in front of our skis here. Instead it's like, what if there were no mountains? So there's no question that all of the dials on all of these properties is gonna get cranked up. I don't know what that means. And it's as good a segue as any to say that we the andor loving podcasters. Look at the lanterns trailer couldn't be us. And we're like, this is exciting to us.

[Chris Ryan]

Close your eyes and think of two

[Andy Greenwald]

guys who love andor I'm picturing men in glasses. The we don't. Again, we don't know. And the more. What I mean when I say we don't Know what I mean? Is successfully executing Lanterns, which, from the people involved, and it's incredible Murderer's Row of talent. There's the brilliant comic book writer Tom King. There's Chris Mundy, who had worked on Ozark, and he's a great TV producer. Our friend Damon Lindelof, who everyone knows his cv. My friend Justin Britt Gibson is a writer on the show as well. And the pitch was basically True Detective with Power Rings. And it seems like they have executed this in making an HBO quality show.

[Chris Ryan]

Did they shoot this in Oklahoma?

[Andy Greenwald]

I don't know where they shot.

[Chris Ryan]

It looks vaguely like where they shot Watchmen. That's what I was asking.

[Andy Greenwald]

But it does not look or feel, at least in the trailers and in what they intended to make, like Supergirl, which is a movie I have high hopes for. But they were able to say, like, this is gonna work for this part of the company, and you are serving fewer cooks in that template. Like, again, the hbo, Max, Warner Brothers Discovery tent is probably too big. It's been proven that was just too big of a thing to be successful. But it is so much smaller than what the Paramount, Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery thing will be that you could say James Gunn can look at his docket and say, well, I'm going to make this well for these people. I'm going to make this well for these guys and the different margins for what is successful for Warner Brothers films and hbo. I'm going to make everybody happy. And we're going to probably maximize our chance to return on our investment.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Andy Greenwald]

If suddenly it's $80 billion of debt and we have to please as many people as possible all the time or it's confusing who you're pleasing. I guess what I'm trying to articulate is if Lanterns works in a narrow lane that connects to the larger DC universe, but only has to satisfy the HBO audience and the 6 million to

[Chris Ryan]

10 million people who might tune in for it.

[Andy Greenwald]

That is a hard. I would imagine that's a harder sell in the even larger ecosystem.

[Chris Ryan]

I just think on a practical level, there's. There's very few scenarios in which I can imagine there being a pool of money to be shared across multiple brands, verticals, what have you, that have their own leadership structures and their own development processes. And if I'm running the remnants of the Sheridan universe or if I'm running, I. I don't even know, like, if I'm running whatever Cindy Holland's kind of version of this is. Her. Her. Her dramas and comedies that she's developing. And then you've got Casey and his team doing old HBO stuff and the IP stuff that they were working on. But it's all coming from the same bank. Yeah, it's just, it starts to. You can see where that starts to really get complicated because people are just like, why am I competing against him when we both are on the same, you know, aramount.com email server let's look

[Andy Greenwald]

at this in the ways we were just saying that venture capitalists don't. Which is like, let's look at where we're at now. And it's been incredibly hard for these companies to integrate themselves and keep up with the shifting demands on them. So if you look at Marvel, which, you know, recent box office success aside, like, no one will question Kevin Feige's bonafides and like the track record of this company within a company. But the, the CEO dynamic change at Disney had a ruinous effect on the Marvel brand. Because the first thing Chapek did was say, we got to pump up these numbers for the streaming service. We are serving that now. We are no longer serving the. I mean, I don't want to be so grandiose as to think that Marvel Studios started to purely serve the consumer, but like, in terms of storytelling. But as soon as they, their mandate shifted and their modes of production shifted and their output shifted, quality suffered. And it took us this long since the five or six years since Jason Kullar tried to blow up Warner Brothers the first time and say we're put everything straight online Operation Popcorn or whatever

[Chris Ryan]

the fuck that was called.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah. Like, only now, in the midst of all these mergers and turnover has it seemed like Warner and DC have figured out their relationship to each other. That we are going to make. They are going to make X number of movies a year. They're going to make X numbers of TV shows a year. And those TV shows are going to fall into these categories and they're going to play nice with HBO's expectations and demands on quality and they're going to play nice with Max. That took a long time to get there. And I'm not saying it's like a winning, always successful strategy, but you do get the feeling that it's calmed down and everybody knows what they're doing. And every time one of these mergers happens, you blow up the expectations and you blow up the chains of command and you blow up the whole system and then it takes years to settle down again and at that point someone else is buying you. Yeah, it's not a recipe for Good shit.

[Chris Ryan]

Let's talk a little bit about contemporary HBO stuff because there's two new shows on.

[Andy Greenwald]

Did you want to say anything else about Lantern Street?

[Chris Ryan]

I kind of. I mean, they. They are playing into the core strengths of their two leads. So Kyle Chandler, a slightly, maybe more cynical and tongue in cheek version of the same Coach Taylor.

[Andy Greenwald]

Like, this is Coach Taylor. Post nil.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, this is Coach Taylor, like, when he's like working at Oklahoma State for a while, you know, and he's seen some things. And then Aaron Pierre, who was in, had an extraordinary coming out party as an action star in Rebel Ridge, and I think has got some of that same quality in this show. So I'll be really curious to see how those two work together. And then Kelly McDonald, who's undefeated for 31 years now.

[Andy Greenwald]

So it's a great trailer.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

And Chandler looks. Looks amazing. Like, there's just something. We used to talk about how one of the few safe spots for creators of big genre movies would be like, yeah, he's got to talk about the fate of Romulus vis a vis Klingon. But if we get a royal Shakespeare actor to do it, maybe he'll sell it. And they tended to sell it.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Andy Greenwald]

There's something about Coach Taylor being like, I'm a lantern. I'm like, sure you are, buddy. Literally. I trust you. Yeah, whatever you need. Mold my children to be lanterns if

[Chris Ryan]

need be in this show.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah. Fillion will appear in the show.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Andy Greenwald]

And for what it's worth, from the. From the nerd corner, like, Green Lantern is a mythology that allows multiple. It's not like the spider verse. Like, they are a core of many people who have rings. You want to talk spider verse?

[Chris Ryan]

What do you have to do to get a ring?

[Andy Greenwald]

Still no.

[Chris Ryan]

What do you have to be?

[Andy Greenwald]

What do I have to.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, like, would you have to have a college degree? Like, what's their sort of requirements to get ring?

[Andy Greenwald]

No. Remember when Obama was like, trade schools are good too. There was a policy like that for lanterns in the dcu because you don't want to be a lantern with tons of lantern debt.

[Chris Ryan]

No, that's true.

[Andy Greenwald]

You want to be able to start your career.

[Chris Ryan]

That's true. It's Philadelphia Community Lantern College. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. It can be hard to do your own thing when everyone else is following everyone else. But that's what some of the best films are about. An outcast striving to make their own way in the world. And this is your sign to be that outcast from us, from vw, from the other outcasts out there. Take a chance, make the most of every day and don't be afraid to veer off course every now and then. Because if you don't do it now, then when. Learn [e-mail] let's talk a little bit about these two shows on HBO right now.

[Andy Greenwald]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

And I rub my eye, both because it itches, but also because I'm not looking forward to this.

[Andy Greenwald]

How are you doing with these allergies with these Santa ans not Quinn.

[Chris Ryan]

You can hear it in the voice, man. That's my voice or just the allergies.

[Andy Greenwald]

Your voice has a nice Chandler esque growl today. I'm actually enjoying it. It's just like a little bit in the pocket, you know what I mean?

[Chris Ryan]

DTF St. Louis, which is aired two episodes and it's a cliffhangery mystery in one hand and also a acidic black comedy on the other hand. So look, if you haven't watched this, I'll set it up a little bit by saying it's created and entirely written and directed by Steve Conrad, who

[Andy Greenwald]

I

[Chris Ryan]

would describe as one of the few existing cult creators in television.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

He has made a show called Patriot, which is beloved. A show called Perpetual Grace Ltd, which I actually quite liked. And. And maybe prefer to Patriot, a what do they call that puppet show.

[Andy Greenwald]

He made like a cop puppet show,

[Chris Ryan]

Ultra City Smiths and has done some feature work but is here with.

[Andy Greenwald]

He started doing feature work like he's been around.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, he wrote the Weatherman. Right.

[Andy Greenwald]

He wrote Wrestling. Ernest Hemingway was his first movie and

[Chris Ryan]

the Walter Mitty Pursuit of Happiness still are made. So he's been around. But like his shows are not big. But when I talk to people as recently as Mansukas on Thursday and you hear this from a lot of folks, people are obsessed with this guy and are like he's one of the true unique voices in television.

[Andy Greenwald]

You have banged this drum for a while. How they're really. It's not possible due to the budgets involved to have like an indie television scene. And anytime any Duplass brother makes something self funded, we are basically like dumpster diving for Drag City Records just to try to celebrate it.

[Chris Ryan]

Like examples of it are like, it's like Cooper Rafe made a show that he wound up getting on Mubi with Lili Reinhart. Yeah. The Duplass brothers have experimented with. We're gonna make six episodes of something and then take it to Netflix or take it to whoever. But there's. We are no Longer in the Joey Soloway era. Like, we're not getting a lot of different kinds of, like, radical takes on tv.

[Andy Greenwald]

Certainly not from the auteur perspective. And I was gonna say Steven Conrad in that sense is like the Jan Deck of television, but actually he's more like the Nick Cave of television in that he's been around for so long and suddenly arenas are booking him. Yes, although. But Nick Cave is filling those arenas and I'm not sure about this.

[Chris Ryan]

Almost made Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. He was the original showrunner on that. He has now done DTF St. Louis, which is based loosely on a New Yorker article, but is like. I think since pitch become a completely different animal.

[Andy Greenwald]

It is. So I want to be careful when we talk about this because as you said, we are in a moment in television, if not all media, where truly idiosyncratic creators are not being platforms like. And certainly not to the degree that HBO has given him with this. Because you can also see the development process and you can assume something about it, which is that someone had the rights to this story and wanted to develop it. Likely he was offered the chance to develop it or there was some sort of Bake off or whatever, and he got the opportunity to do it. And then he, Steve Conraded it and he did his own thing to such a degree that it is no longer even credited as being based on this article. That is a level of flex that you don't often see very much anymore. So when I watched the first episode of it.

[Chris Ryan]

Should we set it up a little bit? Just like.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, right, so DCF St. Louis is like an Ashley Madison esque website for the St. Louis area. Speaking of Redbirds.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right.

[Andy Greenwald]

And the setup is relatively straightforward. That first Stephen Conrad show, which is that Jason Bateman plays a local celebrity weatherman who befriends his ASL signer, played by David Harbour, who is married to Linda Cardellini, who works for Purina.

[Chris Ryan]

She does.

[Andy Greenwald]

And moonlights as a Little League umpire. And there's some discussion about extramarital opportunities. And then within the pilot, not a spoiler, we flash forward some amount of time and David Harbour is no longer among the living. And there's an investigation.

[Chris Ryan]

Believe that's also in the commercials. That's not really spoiling anything. And I would say that this show does the contemporary malady of, like, we're gonna do two weeks ago, but now at the end it's gonna be a flash forward. But that's present tense. So there's a little bit of, like, not necessarily. Like, we're jumping around the timeline a little bit here.

[Andy Greenwald]

I want to stay true to our timeline and just say something positive first, which is when I watched the first episode, I was truly unsure of how I felt about it.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

Which is not a bad thing.

[Chris Ryan]

I often find these sort of pointless. But, like, I will say that when you were texting me.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Incessantly about this show a couple of weeks ago. Well, compared to, like, frequently you text about Jalen Carter incessantly.

[Andy Greenwald]

That is true.

[Chris Ryan]

You frequently texted about DTF St. Louis. Even though I was like.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, because I was intrigued.

[Chris Ryan]

And you were like, have you watched this yet?

[Andy Greenwald]

I was really intrigued because. For a number of reasons. One, because I was curious about Steven Conrad, who is, as we have said, a really interesting creator.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you see any Patriot or.

[Andy Greenwald]

Patriot is the number one show that I am told that I would love. And I watched two or three episodes of it and I enjoyed them. And I didn't go back. And this is probably on me. This is something that Mantzoukas has correctly vilified me for. So I'm not gonna make sweeping generalizations about anything.

[Chris Ryan]

Jason's hard. Cause Jason is just, like, who I wanna be. Like, when he was just like, dark Winds is awesome. I was like, I know. And I'm a bad guy for just not sitting down and watching three seasons of Darkwinds.

[Andy Greenwald]

And he's who I wanna be because he sat across this table from you and said the word frieren Journey's End.

[Chris Ryan]

He's done that multiple times. I know.

[Andy Greenwald]

And I'm like, I can say that at home with my daughters, but I can't say that in front of you. I mean, I want you to think I'm cool so I can keep going to the clothing stores you frequent. It's a tough balancing act, believe me. Yeah. But I was writing it for a number of reasons. One, because there was a not unheard of embargo on reviews. So I was watching it a little bit in advance and was really curious in a way that felt almost desperate for, like, a main line of understanding of how it was being received. Because it is so not so. But it was, you know, it's an odd show. Also, I really wanted to talk to someone about it, which now I can't.

[Chris Ryan]

It should be a big deal. HBO's riding a high coming off of Night of the Seven Kingdoms and industry being very successful in their own ways. The Pit is rolling. This should be a prime platform for a show starring Jason Bateman, who may be One of the signature sort of adult television. I don't mean that in the Cinemax after Darkwave, but he has kind of carved out this role where it's like people go to these shows to watch Bateman because they think he has good taste, whether it's Black Rabbit or Ozark or what have you. Harbour is coming off of Stranger Things, which is one of the biggest shows in the world. Linda Cardellini is a very well loved and respected performer in her own right. So I think that there's a lot of pedigree going into this. And you were just saying I was

[Andy Greenwald]

not unhappy being kind of discomfited by the first hour. I was like, oh, where are we going with this? Because this is funny and this is a good performance and it's a little bit arch and it's a little surprising. But there were also aspects to it that were rubbing me the wrong way. And that's okay. That's. You know, Art should. What is it afflict the unafflict.

[Chris Ryan]

Art should freeze a guy and then shatter him like Sub Zero in Mortal Kombat.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's our formative art. I don't remember any other quotes as that other than finishing. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Fatality is also a big quote from.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's right. On the screen a lot. Maybe Kai can put that Fatality on

[Chris Ryan]

the screen whenever Andy kills his show. Kai shish Fatality.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, get the button ready because I watched two episodes of this show and there are things that I will continue to bring up and be positive about during our conversation of the only two episodes of the show that I plan to watch. I think David Harbour is really good in it. I think Linda Cardellini deserves more opportunities. Richard Jenkins, one of my favorite actors. But after watching two episodes, it's hard to remember a series that I have ultimately disliked as much as this one and that have rubbed me as much the wrong way as this one has. And we can go through the reasons.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. I have two reactions to this show pretty much the same as you. I don't. I'm not actively looking to watch a third episode. I might just to see how right or wrong I am about it for myself.

[Andy Greenwald]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

There's two problems. One is I think I might be dyslexic for this. This writer. Like I see the words and I see the performances and I see why people like it. And it is not hitting for me. There are moments where it hits. There are lines that I actually sincerely. Lol. That But I don't know that I. I think it's okay. Sometimes within criticism and within just talking about popular culture or art in general, just be like, it's not my tempo.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And I think that we get a little bit into like there is a objective truth to whether like sinners are one battle of an or after another or a better. Which one's a better film?

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

It's like. Yeah, like I think that they're. They do different things. And I really respect this guy because he has such a unique cadence worldview. This sense of humor is drawing from a kind of absurdist, droll Coen brothers sensibility that I like a lot in other stuff. But for some reason here it's missing. I was watching the second episode, which is. Is this one called Jamba Juice the second one? Or like Meet me at Jamba Juice or something like that?

[Andy Greenwald]

There's a lot of Jamba in it. Shout out, Tyler Childs.

[Chris Ryan]

This is shot in Atlanta and set in suburban Missouri, St. Louis area.

[Andy Greenwald]

Second episode is called Snag It.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I guess I was wrong. It's set in the Jamba Juice.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Largely.

[Chris Ryan]

It's shot Atlanta standing in for suburban St. Louis. The sky is almost white, slate gray. Everything is beige. It's shot beige and blue in a kind of shallow focus where it's just kind of these people wandering through their lives in this very almost dreamlike way. But what it makes me feel is a deep sense of nausea about living in America. And it's like working watching people walk around this cemetery of cities or suburbia or wherever they're going and there's nothing there. And it doesn't seem like there are any other people and they're going to Jamba Juices and sitting there and like, looking at their phones. And I actually think it just might be a world I don't want to spend any fucking time in. Now, I, like you thought there were elements of the first episode that I kind of dug and you know, when it jumped up for me, when it. When I kind of started to feel it, it's when Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday showed up. Because I don't know why, but I feel like their way of being antennas for Conrad's stuff and broadcasting it to me made more sense than Bateman, Cardellini and Harbor.

[Andy Greenwald]

I think that what you're. I think one of the things that might be worth exploring is the disconnect between the script between Steven Conrad the writer and Steven Conrad the director. And he is the auteur of this entire series. There is a level of hyper stylization here that sends me To Mars. I'm completely kicked out of it. And it is. Maybe this is also subjective, but I like Richard Jenkins in anything. Richard Jenkins is in his 80s and is an active detective in the show. I'm like, okay, well, I guess they have a different attitude towards retirement ages in this world, but as does America. We'll elect anybody, so that's fine. The St. Louis Municipal Police Station looks like where they store crossbones in the Captain America movies. It is a cement brick tower with screens everywhere. And all interviews are done on cement boxes very far away from each other in the lobby. And no one ever calls a lawyer. So it's layers of unreality that are being imposed on us that run in conjunction with a show that I think my sense is the people behind the show want you to feel a little bit of toxic nausea about the dead end ness of their lives. For me, it veers too far into outright scorn and mockery. I think there's an element of we're celebrating ordinary working folks who might need a go getter smoothie in the middle of the day. And then there's the way the camera lingers on these sort of debased, hungry, lonely people suckling at the teat of their 67 Big Gulp ounces of pure sherbet. That feels a little judgy. Maybe I'm the one judging, but I don't think so. There is a little bit of contempt and mockery at work here and it's a fine line, like the character of Floyd, the David Harbour's character and his performance, it's broad. And when you introduce him asl signing next abatement in a very dangerous tornado. I laughed when he is dancing in a hip hop intermediate children's dance class so that he can. When he is signing the side of the stage of a hip hop and R and B festival so that he can bring some. Some rhythmic feelings to the signing. I laugh because it's a great physical performance. And then when he's on stage doing it and Linda Cardellini is weeping because she's so moved at how sensitive he is and how much he wants to be great, I'm out.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

So it is a specific cocktail to mix the hyper stylized with the mocking tone. It can be done and it can be done within this. But then when you add the third rail, which I think you were alluding to earlier, which is what I think is just a loser of a design at this point, which is a show that begins with characters at the start of their journey, then fast Forwards to the end of the journey and then says, guess how we're going to connect the two. That is anti story to me at this point.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm not interested in showing.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know if that's a novelty, guy. And that they had this weird show on their hands and they were like, we need to have a murder mystery.

[Andy Greenwald]

I think you wanted to.

[Chris Ryan]

I.

[Andy Greenwald]

We don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

I. I think you might be right. There's a. There's a bit of like, how can we White Lotus this to this show and make it a little bit more. And there are elements, quite obviously of. It's a noir setup. It's the lovable oaf, his possibly emergent femme fatale partner, and the guy who gets in the middle and the normie. Yeah. And the guy who breaks that up and, you know, everybody's got a secret. The secrets kind of like are slowly parceled out. I think there is a real unique individuality to this show that I don't want to tamper down. You know what I mean by, with my criticism. But I think this is kind of like when I'm like at a stoplight and I look over and I see three, four LEASE signs on storefronts and then a Smash Burger and I'm like, you know what, man? Fuck this place. There are certain elements of like, being in the muck that I like, you know, like to live and die in LA and stuff.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't really know if I like the muck as a. Like, isn't life just absolutely fucking pointless?

[Andy Greenwald]

But also, exactly like, what are we learning from that? I know people are sad and lonely and circling the drain. Yeah, dude.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, hello, it fucking peaked when I beat Mortal Kombat on my own and no one was there to see it.

[Andy Greenwald]

You're not wrong. I think that. I think that the hesitation that you, anyone is hearing in our voice is that I would rather a hundred DTF St. Louis flowers bloom.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

They're not always going to hit. I mean, it's a similar thing that we said about the Sympathizer, which ultimately did not work as a television show. But, man, that was cool that they tried it and invested a lot of interesting capital and creativity into it. We're living in a world of like, the characters of DTF St. Louis. We're living in a world of shrinking margins and expectations. And so the fact that this exists is rare. And the fact that it doesn't work shouldn't be a obituary for Steven Conrad's auteurish career or this type of show working on hbo. There are a couple decisions here that I think probably sunk the whole thing. But there's also like, I understand in watching it, it doesn't seem like. Like an aberration. Like, I understand why everyone involved here got involved.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

And for Bateman, for example, who's very, very smart about the creative management of his own career.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

That the. When last time we saw him was with his beautiful shaggy mane being the bad boy.

[Chris Ryan]

He was basically doing the Tom Pelfrey role of Ozark, but on Black Rabbit.

[Andy Greenwald]

Cause also he lily pads studios, projects, networks. Because he's building. He's the rare actor who's like has the foresight. I think he's building his career reel in a way that other people don't either have the foresight or the ability to do. He's. I'm going to play a. Did you see the play?

[Chris Ryan]

A normal guy came up in the news where it's. His production company is making a show for Netflix with Jacob Tierney who made Heated Rivalry.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

About a teenage Alexander the Great and his being a student of Aristotle.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

That's fucking crazy. Like that. Like that's.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's how Jenga towering.

[Chris Ryan]

Build it all up.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah. And honestly, you know what? You know, it'll be the lead thing in. He's going to live a long and healthy life. But like his number one career credit globally will be the voice of the sardonic fox in the Zootopia movies.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't think that'll be the lead of his obit.

[Andy Greenwald]

First of all, he's going to live it long enough that the generation of young people who are like absolutely in love with this sardonic fox, and I'm speaking from household experience, they will be the ones writing this obituary and they will be like, nick the fox has left us. I promise you that. That is like the most successful movie in the history of China. Zootopia. Take a long drink of water before you have to think about watching that. Anyway, so I see why he did it. He's building something here. He gets to play a normal guy in a different way than he has been. And David Harbour is a freak of an actor and it's been really interesting to watch his career develop because you and I remember like the first 10 years of it where he was just like. He was the not leading man, but he was kind of like the straight news anchor guy who had a secret or like walk among the tombstones.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. He was a great.

[Andy Greenwald]

There's a dark shadow to it, but it was playing off of the fact that he looked like the most normal guy ever. And now there's a mania to the way that he rips into some of these parts that's really compelling on screen and sympathetic. Like I think he's making someone who's a real person and not a cartoon. But man, the unreality of it and the relentless unreality of it just, just, just broke me. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And I also, you know, I think coming off of the. If we're talking about it from an HBO perspective, coming off the adrenaline shot of industry.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And the economy of a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I was not ready for a kind of dull 57 minute show. And I definitely felt it. And that's a me problem more than anything else. But it's interesting when your habits go in different directions because of what's being programmed to you. And I found myself really being like, is there another fucking scene in this? Like, what is happening?

[Andy Greenwald]

We don't need to tell these guys how to do their job. They're the best at what they do. But. And it's not easy to find things that fit this template. But I would say that just from a value sensibility, but also ultimately a quality sensibility, it would behoove them so much more to have three to four baby industries in the hopper. Maybe they do more than three or four splashy one and dones, you know, like. And again, you can't talk about the success of industry, which we talk about frequently without talking about the relative uniqueness of its development process. That show exists because they were exploring low cost co pros, especially in the, in the thick of the pandemic. And no one who signed that deal, including Mickey and Conrad at the start of it, would have thought that they would be heading into their fifth and final season as a flagship anchor show of HBO Sunday night lineup.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Andy Greenwald]

The ceiling of this, of a DTF St. Louis, I guess is you capture the zeitgeist and the imagination and the conversation for a few weeks like a white lotus and you get a lot of love for an Emmy time. But I don't know if that juice is worth the squeeze I'll be.

[Chris Ryan]

If I stick with the show. It's gonna be to see to what extent what we're watching in these early episodes is changed with any kind of suggestion that there are unreliable narrators in this now the POV of it. I mean, I feel like in the course of the second episode, like, you know, like there's mystery developments that suggest we'll get different looks at different characters over the course of the next five weeks. If you wanted to keep watching through episode seven. But tonally, I think I have a high hurdle to clear to do it.

[Andy Greenwald]

For me, the last straw was, to your point, like, yes, the possibility of a structure like this is unreliability. Seeing truth play out in. In opposition to a cover story or a narrative. This episode showed us in flashback, the more aggressive behavior of Linda Cardellini's character in ensnaring Jason Bateman's character. The episode ends with Richard Jenkins being like, he seduced her. And then the other cop saying, no, he didn't. She seduced him. Because I went to Jamba Juice. Yeah, we saw that. That wasn't an episode ending revelation. It was just not interesting to me on a dramatic level. For that reason.

[Chris Ryan]

This actually works as a footnote to the conversation we just had, I think. So Bill Lawrence does not need our thumbs up because Bill Lawrence has multiple incredibly popular series on television right now. He is obviously one of the minds behind Ted Lasso. He does Shrinking also for Apple tv. He does Bad Monkey for Apple tv. He has now got the show Rooster

[Andy Greenwald]

on HBO Scrubs reboot. He's got the Scrubs, which he's. I guess because he's at Warner Brothers, he's not involved in Day to Day. But that was his show back.

[Chris Ryan]

He's. He is a. He's minted. Like, he doesn't need. No, Nobody, nobody cares really what we think. And we have obviously never really commented on shrinking. I. I would say drinking is just not my. Not for me. It's a little too saccharine for me. I think that I enjoy utopian found family. Like everybody basically gets along stuff in a 22 minute sitcom. I don't really love it as a dramedy. And I find his shows to be also existing in a realm that I am not familiar with. I guess is Pasadena. Yeah, sure. Or, you know, like, I think even as Ted Lasso went on, I was just like, this is just kind of silly. Rooster is a campus comedy, campus dramedy, I guess, set in a New England liberal arts college. Steve Carell is a famous. I guess, like, would you say he's like a mystery author or like a kind of hammer?

[Andy Greenwald]

You know, he's kind of inspired by Carl Hiason.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Andy Greenwald]

Who wrote Bad Monkey in the sense that he's like a nice regular guy who writes sort of crime novels.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. And he's got a daughter who is in a relationship. She's a teacher at that college and she's in a relationship with another professor. That relationship has just come to an end. Corel shows up kind of to help her out, but also to do a reading at the school where he meets a huge as Bill Lawrence's want. Like, usually you just get like an immediate kind of 10 person bench immediately circuit circulating through the show. It's a lot of banter, it's a lot of quips. It's ultimately got a very warm heart for the most part. And I was, I was curious about, like, there are elements of this show that I'm curious about and I, I could see myself like sticking around for a couple of weeks, but the, the central kind of like, I don't really see people. I see like a bunch of like, really like kind of fun one liners to, to one another. And the one liners trump any stakes of any scene, kind of. So even if the daughter character has burned down someone's house, or the president or the dean of the college likes to walk around naked and stuff like that, like, it all is like, wouldn't that be funny? But it has no, like, consequences. So I don't know. I didn't really love this, but I wasn't sure how you felt.

[Andy Greenwald]

I have no malice in my heart when I say I hated it. This show fatality. But. But it's okay, everybody. It's okay. There are actual problems in the world.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

This is not one of them. No. You know that. I don't know if you ever watch this. This is, I think it's available streaming on hbo. Max. But there's the show Chopped where they get the mystery basket of ingredients.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. I never liked Chopped.

[Andy Greenwald]

Okay, well, bear with me for a second.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay. No, but I'm, I'm just imagine I was thinking about this the other day with Top Chef, and I never like Chopped.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, we haven't even talked about Top Chef yet. I'll just say if you gave me a basket with all of the ingredients of this show, including many of the actors, I would be delighted and think that I was in line for a really nice plate of food. And then I just hated the dish.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Andy Greenwald]

I found it just completely cloying and uninterested in committing to any genuine moment of hardship or emotion or frankly comedy. I've seen other reviews of it and I just, I mean, I don't want to piggyback, but I agree with them where they're like, it kind of is a campus comedy, but not really. It kind of is a father and son, father and daughter. Girl, dad, coming of age kind of thing, but it kind of runs away from that too. It seems like maybe Steve Carell was pitched an opportunity to shade his familiar sitcom presence a little bit with some more dramatic notes, which he is good at playing, but at least in the early going, kind of leans away from those as well.

[Chris Ryan]

His Post Office career is so fascinating.

[Andy Greenwald]

Do you feel like it's been. I mean, because I think broadly speaking, he is beloved and also talented enough to diversify. Like he's taken on many different types of roles.

[Chris Ryan]

I can't help but feel like he probably doesn't ever want to do six to seven years of Michael Scott again. You know what I mean? Not Michael Scott, literally. But I think that he has tried a bunch of different things that almost seemed engineered not to last forever, but like Space Force was something I did not care for then. He's done a couple of dramatic turns and things like the Morning Show. I guess you could call his performance in Mountainhead comedic, but not entirely.

[Andy Greenwald]

He was also good in the Four Seasons.

[Chris Ryan]

The Four Seasons, yep. What was the show with Donald Gleason?

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, the Patient.

[Chris Ryan]

The Patient. That was interesting. Just a really interesting, wide ranging kind of wandering bit of Post Office stuff. I will still say that the funniest he has ever been is standing in the background of the scene in 40 Year Old Virgin where Kevin Hart and Romany Malko get into a fight at Smart Tech.

[Andy Greenwald]

I hear that, but I would say when's the last.

[Chris Ryan]

Is this your boy? You just got fucked up with him.

[Andy Greenwald]

When's the last time you watched his Between Two Ferns?

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, I don't. I can't. Not a long time.

[Andy Greenwald]

Should we watch Kris watch that? No, but. But that is maybe. Maybe we peaked as a society. Then the other thing, Shout out. I think it was in the Hollywood Reporter. This might have been a Daniel Feinberg thing where he was basically like Danielle Deadweiler, who we love in Station 11, is on this show as someone who is desperate to sleep with Steve Carell and then is hurt when he rejects her. I believe his point in the review was that she is not a seasoning, she is the dish. And it's good to see that she has been cast as the lead in Ryan Coogler's reboot of the X Files.

[Chris Ryan]

It's her. Is.

[Andy Greenwald]

She's fucking awesome when she's on the screen. It's like, oh, that's a. I'd like to watch this show.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, she's one of my favorite actors, probably.

[Andy Greenwald]

I don't want to be cynical about it. But maybe the way to bring things full circle is that. And maybe this speaks to the future. Maybe we'll be wrong about the viability of HBO and its unique and established programming culture under the Paramount umbrella because they have been survivors. Because you could look at this show quite cynically and say Bill Lawrence has been under a very rich overall deal at Warner Brothers for a very long time and has had this career resurgence selling Warner Brothers shows to other streamers. And it would have been malpractice if someone within the company didn't say, why can't we buy one of these shows and do a shrinking for us?

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Andy Greenwald]

And you get Steve Carell involved and you get all. And suddenly it's an HBO show. There is nothing about this show that has the DNA of what an HBO comedy has been under this regime and Amy Gravett and Casey and anything that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. Hbo. I would say the same thing about the Penguin or Dune prophecy or whatever it's called. And those are doing fine. It is good business to make, to bring this prophecy back. Yes. Prophecy wasn't done.

[Chris Ryan]

No. We still don't know.

[Andy Greenwald]

We don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

We just can't be sure. Is it really Paul?

[Andy Greenwald]

I think we're pretty sure. Well, I don't know. Apparently it's gonna be Michael B. Jordan, not Paul, at the Oscars next week anyway. I don't think the reason to review or to like or dislike Rooster is to judge their programming decisions, but I understand why it's on their air and it's fine. And if you like those other shows, which we are allergic to, there's probably something to be charmed by here briefly.

[Chris Ryan]

Let's just hit Top Chef.

[Andy Greenwald]

I don't want to do it briefly, but I know we're out of time.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, it's not even out of time. As much as my worry that people were not aware that Top Chef is the first episode is currently sitting there on Peacock for you to watch. A lot of ink spilled about Survivor these last couple of weeks because Survivor 50 is back and it's pretty fucking good. I got to. It's definitely relit my Survivor candle.

[Andy Greenwald]

Is it good? I mean, your Survivor.

[Chris Ryan]

High level of gameplay.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's right. Torches right there for you. You said candle.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah, I guess I did.

[Andy Greenwald]

You want to run that back?

[Chris Ryan]

No, let's just. Let's live with works and all. Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

Has it been good?

[Chris Ryan]

High level of gameplay. Just like everybody knows exactly how to play survival.

[Andy Greenwald]

Is it an All Star season?

[Chris Ryan]

It is but it's from across all 50 seasons. So there's people there from the first. There's the. The woman who won last season is on a couple episodes of that have gone on. It's got a lot of. Of press. Obviously, I did not like. I think I was a little bit mixed on. Mixed is a kind thing to say. I was not super into where Top Chef was going. I personally felt like I felt a budget crunch on that show where it was like a lot of shooting stuff on sound stages. I felt like there was a lot of inane cross promotional Quick Fire challenges. You know, we've laughed when it was the Minions. It just feels like we're getting Minions. Doubt this new season is in the Carolinas. Yep, it's Kristen's, what, like third. Third season hosting. Within about 10 minutes. I was like, it's Top Chef's fucking back. And it was. I realized that because my wife and I were yelling at the screen as if it was the finale. We were like, oh, my God. And, oh, she's. She's not going to make it. And like, that level of intensity. And also a couple of dicks in the cast, like, people who are like, I really am here to bust some heads is kind of a new thing for this show after a few years of just being like, hey, everybody's really trying to help each other out. And I just. I'm so psyched to see this thing return to form.

[Andy Greenwald]

It is so back. This was an excellent premiere. I think it's interesting, though, what you said about feeling a budget crunch, because I would say I continue to feel it. I don't know. I mean, like, one of the reasons

[Chris Ryan]

why Quick Fire was pretty impressive.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, there's no. There's no shame in the fact that Top Chef is. Its locations are about chasing tax breaks and, like, which areas and which states will allow them to film there and give them the promotional opportunities to do things like at motor speedways.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you have a Whole Foods? Seems to be a top requirement.

[Andy Greenwald]

But I would also note that there is some other. There's some changes behind the scenes. Like San Pellegrino is no longer sponsoring them. Graza Olive Oil, which, by the way, thank you, everyone in the east side of Los Angeles for giving this stupid squirt bottle oil company enough money to sponsor our favorite cooking show. You've done a service. You've done a service. You watch, you fucking Instagram lemmings. You bought us another season of version. No, it's fine.

[Chris Ryan]

But, like, is it more expensive than,

[Andy Greenwald]

like, yes, because it's in a. Because they were like, put it in a squirt bottle. And everyone's like, oh, shit.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't find olive oil that affordable.

[Andy Greenwald]

It's not affordable.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

Especially now they have to sponsor Top Chef. It's great.

[Chris Ryan]

I may need it to fuel my car.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's a great point.

[Chris Ryan]

Squirt the grots in the Audi.

[Andy Greenwald]

Come on, baby. I also noted that it appears that BMW is no longer ferrying them around, so they no longer get into their cars and go, BMW, drive me to Whole Foods. Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I didn't notice that.

[Andy Greenwald]

It doesn't matter. We're not here to, like, check, you know, to see if they're still financially solvent, whatever the case may be. There seemed to be an embrace of what they have as opposed to what they don't have. And the biggest change. We're one episode in. We're gonna watch the season. Hopefully we'll talk to Gael at the end of it. The biggest change, I think, is in a subtle shift in the editorial POV of the show. It used to be that the judges were, you know, the hammers. They stepped in at the end, and there was a strong pipeline, as I'm sure there will continue to be, of esteemed guests and chefs and legendary people that made everyone feel nervous. I don't know whether it's the changing times. I don't know whether it's the changing nature of the hosts, but this is fully Kristen's show now in a way that is remarkable. And it also reminds me now not of other cooking competitions that we've talked about before, but it feels a little. Great British Baking Show. Great British Baking show has a more mellow, familial. The judges aren't our friends, but they're kind of like our extended family. And the way Tom and Gale and Kristen acted throughout this episode, being there from the quick fire, being there at the end, the way Tom was like, actually, I still think this was the best expression of the sweet potato.

[Chris Ryan]

I thought that was bullshit.

[Andy Greenwald]

Even though it might have been. Even though she didn't get, you know, left a ring mold on it, that all felt a little warmer and friendlier and more nurturing in a way that was interesting. And. And the secret sauce of Kristen, who is an absolutely unique talent, like an absolute unicorn in that she won the show, is clearly an elite cook, but is also an exceptional TV person who is just effortless at being what appears to be her real self. The promise of hiring her was always. So you had someone in that chair who could relate. And they ran towards this moment in the premiere in a way that was really moving.

[Chris Ryan]

If you haven't watched it, stop. Kaya and Kaya leave the room. Feel free to.

[Andy Greenwald]

Kaya's honestly dozing right now. She smells of coconut oil and is just kind of.

[Chris Ryan]

There's a moment in the first episode where. And this. I thought this was a fantastic challenge because it immediately tied the show to the region where they're given all these different. This is the sweet potato challenge. And so they're given all these different kinds of sweet potatoes. They get assigned different ones. Different people have like. They're like, fuck, this is like, a really starchy, bland sweet potato. The other one, some people are like, you barely have to do anything to this sweet potato at the end. Nana, who's one of the chefs, basically has, like, a. A time crunch. Like, she tried to do too many things. She is the aforementioned person who left a ring mold in one of her bowls. And if plating mattered, it would be, like, a disqualifying thing. And plating sometimes does matter. You know, her. The end of her service or the end of her cook is just chaotic. I think some. Some dishes are unfinished or whatever, but certainly, like, just a mess. There is also a chef named Nana

[Andy Greenwald]

has, like, a panic attack.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And she also has a panic attack while she's about to serve, which.

[Andy Greenwald]

Which the judges who are awaiting her dish notice. And Kristen, in her empathy, gets up and goes to her.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. And I thought that was, without putting too fine a point on it, a defining moment for Kristen's hosting of the show where I've, you know, in the past, like, you know, you can see her tearing up as she has to, like, let people go and, you know, obviously has, like, a real emotional connection to what these people are experiencing. But she calmed Nana down, told her to take a beat, have her come back out. And then I thought, crucially, what happened was they serve this. These. They're going in sets of three. And then the judges, along with Sean Brock and some other guest judges, are ranking live who they want, who wins versus 1, 2, 3. Tom puts Nana first, and Kristen is like, really? And I thought that was awesome, because it was. She was kind of like, I definitely feel for her as a person, but let's be real. There was a. A cooking mold in my. In a dish.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And I was. When I was watching it, I was like, that should. That should be disqualifying. Right? Like, you leave a piece of metal in somebody's dish, that should probably be disqualified. Instead, it's this woman day who made, like an undercooked fish and.

[Andy Greenwald]

But she made it. It tasted like. Like a soap bar and put a

[Chris Ryan]

bunch of Herb d' Promats on it. So I thought it was just a great, great, great start to the season.

[Andy Greenwald]

And to your point, maybe this is a little bit more. They have steered away from intramural shenanigans, you know, in terms of the shiftestants competing against each other, disliking each other, having any tension. And this season, they not only have identical twin brothers competing, they have a husband and wife. Or they're not actually, but they're lifelong partners, business and personal romantic partners.

[Chris Ryan]

I hope they're still romantic partners after going on reality television together.

[Andy Greenwald]

Exactly. So there's a little bit more opportunity for some shenanigans. But I don't know, there have been good seasons, but they, like, hit it really hard in a way that was exciting if you had won the quickfire.

[Chris Ryan]

Is this Watch After Dark?

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, sure. I know they want to. They want.

[Chris Ryan]

I want to see the.

[Andy Greenwald]

Thanks for listening. Yeah, you're glowing.

[Chris Ryan]

That's the thing.

[Andy Greenwald]

Skincare. Drop the regime. No.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, I went on jam session once and talked about my. My skincare routine.

[Andy Greenwald]

I have a hard time listening to you on other podcasts. Do you not? Cause I don't enjoy you, but I feel left out. And I talk back. Sicario podcast was elite. I did listen to you.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you talk back to it? You were like, go on, King.

[Andy Greenwald]

Shut up, Sean. Cr Month. Jeez. I wanted to ask you this for After Dark, had you won. This is Top Chef related, but I don't think it's spoiling anything. The opening Quick fire is at the Motor Speedway nascar. The winning chefs, their prize, I think they get some cash, but they also get a lap in the front seat

[Chris Ryan]

of the car, get up to 170.

[Andy Greenwald]

Would you have eagerly accepted that? Yes.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I have gotten up to 100 in a car. I think around 100. What's the fastest you've ever driven?

[Andy Greenwald]

Probably with you on the New Jersey Turnpike Once in 2003, I think I

[Chris Ryan]

was once in high school and I was on the blue route and I got up to 100 to see if it would happen.

[Andy Greenwald]

Was it before the blue route was officially open?

[Chris Ryan]

It kind of was that vibe, you know, it was like the Autobahn,

[Andy Greenwald]

except Pennsylvania Dutch, not actually German.

[Chris Ryan]

I haven't really pushed it like that. Every once in a while on the two, we see. We see what we can get up to when it's real open.

[Andy Greenwald]

I want to begin by saying, unsurprisingly, I would have said thank you. No, thank you to that opportunity to be in the car. I don't think.

[Chris Ryan]

Still haven't answered. What's the fastest you've ever driven?

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, I mean, 65, I think 66 once. A couple comments here. One, I think the only. I want to be. I want to be straight with you. Like, if I were a for hire political consultant, I would bring you the oppo research on you, which would be limited because you are beloved for good reason.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, but I have some skeletons.

[Andy Greenwald]

It's not the skeletons in your closet. It's the one. I think your one vulnerability from the left and the right is your casual abuse of automotive laws. I don't think they come up sometimes on this podcast.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm not entirely sure. When's the last time you've seen anybody get pulled over on a highway?

[Andy Greenwald]

Like, seen in front of me for speeding or whatever happens. Very rarely.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. So why have speed limits if we're not going to enforce them?

[Andy Greenwald]

Whoa.

[Chris Ryan]

Everybody's like running me off the road anyway. So, like, why are we even pretending like there's a speed limit? Either go full surveillance Minority Report and start like ticketing everybody for with a camera in the sky or just fucking give it up, man, and let us rock.

[Andy Greenwald]

This is, this is an incredible.

[Chris Ryan]

And then let's get super Road Warrior with it. Let's soup up our cars and take the safety plates like the restrictors off.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know, I don't think this is Nithya's platform to improve.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, could I get to the Central Valley in 30 minutes if I got my car just up enough?

[Andy Greenwald]

Now, as a point of comparison, what I do is I just nobly, some have said just set a model for the other people how to behave by

[Chris Ryan]

getting into the fast lane, driving the exact speed limit.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, I don't go in the fast lane. The fast lane, yes, I do. But one change for me is with the way cars are. My children, especially my younger daughter in the backseat. It's like looking at the Google Maps display and will comment if the number ever goes red. Because, you know, it's like it says you're driving 66 or 67 or 68 in a 65 mile zone. They love.

[Chris Ryan]

They like to be like, you're going too fast.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Real quick.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Imagine these lights have a green tint. Now. You think Jalen Carter will be on the Eagles when we do the Pit and the Industry mailbag on Thursday? Okay, that's all.

[Andy Greenwald]

Do you think A.J. brown will be on the Eagles when we do our podcast on Thursday?

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. No, I don't.

[Andy Greenwald]

You don't?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't. I don't. I think Alec Pierce resigning with the

[Andy Greenwald]

Colts clears the path to the Patriots making the trade.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, we haven't looked at espn. We could. Could have already happened.

[Andy Greenwald]

I don't think anything's happened.

[Chris Ryan]

This is the kind of reporting that the world needs.

[Andy Greenwald]

Falcon sign Johan Dotson.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, and Tua. Yeah, thanks to everybody for listening. I think this has been. I thought we started out really strong.

[Andy Greenwald]

Is gone. Not so great.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it's. You gave me pause. I don't want to make it sound like I'm an unsafe driver.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm dinging you up in the primary ahead of the general.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right. Iron sharpens iron.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know what I mean? Yeah. You will be a far better candidate.

[Chris Ryan]

And Graham just going at it so that he emerges.

[Andy Greenwald]

Who's am I fucking Janet Mills? You're older. I was hand selected and put on this podcast. Yeah. But to be the institutionalist. And yet, thanks to Kai.

[Chris Ryan]

Thanks to Kai, we will be back on Thursday. As I said, the Pit. We didn't really talk about the last episode and we'll have a new one to talk about. And we have your wonderful questions about the television show industry and your questions

[Andy Greenwald]

about the tattoos Chris is hiding under that shirt.

[Chris Ryan]

Goodbye. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you

[Andy Greenwald]

to Mint Mobile today.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail]

[Andy Greenwald]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate, first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full [e-mail].