‘The American Revolution,’ ‘Industry’ S4 Trailer, ‘Pluribus’ E4, and ‘Landman’ S2E2

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Watch — “The American Revolution,” “Industry” S4 Trailer, “Pluribus” E4, and “Landman” S2E2

Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald (aka Sandy)
Date: November 24, 2025
Main Topics: Ken Burns’s American Revolution, the Industry S4 trailer, Pluribus Ep4, and Landman S2E2

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Episode Overview

This pre-Thanksgiving episode feels like “a feast” according to the hosts, as Chris and Andy navigate a packed docket: pop culture banter, current TV obsessions, and signature, digressive humor. The episode bounces from existential analysis of Eagles football fandom to deep explorations of Ken Burns’s lasting influence, thoughtful breakdowns of Pluribus and Landman, and speculation about new TV trailers. The chemistry between hosts, affectionately needling each other as longtime friends, creates a warm and lively backdrop.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Football Fandom, Life, and Vibes (01:40–09:00)

• Eagles Football & Emotional Calibration:
  • Andy and Chris briefly bemoan the “obviously fake 8–2" Eagles season and the emotional distortions of sustained team success.
  • Andy: “Most football seasons, for most teams, involve just kind of losing to the Saints sometimes...We have this very bizarre run where we are 10 and 1 essentially every year, and then either completely collapse or make it to the Super Bowl.” (06:02)
• Thanksgiving Scheduling and TV Habits:
  • With the show off Thursday, future episodes will pivot to end-of-year content, with anticipation for Fallout and Stranger Things S5.

2. Stranger Things, Beatles Anthology, & Event TV (09:00–10:32)

• Stranger Things’ Cultural Gravity:
  • Despite Andy’s kids bypassing the show, Chris notes its omnipresence with store activations and international branding.
• Beatles Anthology:
  • Chris admits he’s “up to my brim in Beatles at this point,” skipping the new anthology, hinting at pop culture saturation.

3. Ken Burns’ The American Revolution: Personal and Cultural Reverberations (10:32–22:14)

• Nostalgia and Gravitas:

  • Chris describes watching four hours of the new Burns doc, experiencing sensory time-travel:

    “As soon as Peter Coyote’s voice comes on and he says name of year...I felt it wasn’t even goosebumps. It was like I was transported back…” (11:29)

• Voice Cast Revelations:

  • Chris details an all-star cast: Josh Brolin as George Washington, Paul Giamatti as John Adams, Claire Danes, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Leslie Odom Jr. (“back playing all British people”) and even Joe Keery as a fifer.
  • Andy (deadpan): “Is Joe Keery playing Johnny Greenwood on fife better or worse than Johnny Greenwood opening with Planet Telex at the O2 arena this weekend?” (13:43)

• Burns’s Thematic Depth:

  • The hosts praise how the show handles the contradictions of the founding fathers:

    “They go to great lengths to explain mostly how...what a bunch of crazy hypocrites...” (14:37)

  • Peter Coyote’s narration is lauded—“Peter Coyote, 84 years young, just still grinding out 12 hours of DOC vio.” (15:01)

• Power Ranking the Ken Burns Docs:

  • Andy: “All the big three: Civil War, baseball and jazz. My three passions to this day.” (15:34)
  • Recent favorites have shifted: “Jazz has overtaken baseball.” (16:05)

• Ken Burns Dream Projects:

  • Andy pitches a doc on “female painters in the post-WWII era” and 1950s American culture; Chris wants the Roaring Twenties explored documentary-style.
  • Chris:

    “When you watch American Revolution ...he is able to build up to Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence as if it was the cliffhanger of a great epic…” (20:02)

• Meta Sequel Jokes:

  • Joking about a “Meet Me in the Bathroom”–style doc on early 2000s NYC music, with Chris narrating as the new Peter Coyote.

4. Trailer Talk: Industry Season 4 & Yellowstone Spinoff (22:14–29:30)

• Industry S4 Teaser:
  • Chris and Andy are thrilled by the “beautiful” and “rich” visuals, the teased focus on Harper and Yasmin, and the showrunners’ creative growth.
  • Andy:

    “They are taking the show into a different visual landscape. It’s more baroque...there are scenes that look straight out of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette...” (24:08)

  • Andy appreciates “shows that find their purpose as they go.”
• Why Marshals (Yellowstone Spinoff):
  • Chris discusses the procedural vibe for the CBS spinoff and the challenges of “good guys who do bad things” (28:17); both hosts lightly mock the ever-present Sheridan helicopters.

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5. Pluribus Episode 4 Review (31:41–43:41)

• Narrative Strength & Logical Progression:
  • Chris highlights Alison Tallock’s writing, with a plot focusing on Carol’s drive to construct her own narrative amidst chaos.
  • Andy:

    “I thought this was the strongest episode since the pilot...” (32:52) “The logic that is the hallmark of all Vince Gilligan shows: if not this, then that...” (32:53)

• Meta Underpinnings & Writerly Self-Reflection:
  • Carol is used to explore writer anxiety; Andy draws connections to creator Vince Gilligan’s own career arc:

    “Famously, the ‘that’s what the money is for’ speech was Matt Weiner’s...relationship with [David Chase]” (37:01) “Vince Gilligan...making his main character a writer...a writer who is churning out the same thing over and over again...” (37:30)

• Tone Shifts and Stakes:
  • The episode deftly merges humor (“Hi, Carol!”) with real menace as the hive mind exerts force.
  • Chris: “It’s really funny...every time anyone says ‘Hi Carol’, I laugh.” (35:22)
• AI Anxiety:
  • The doominess of collective intelligence and losing individual agency returns; the show plays with wish fulfillment and horror.
  • Andy: “One of the show’s strongest episodes in terms of ‘boy, AI is a nightmare.’”
• Crafty Story Choices:
  • The foregrounding of Carol’s “writer” identity, her questions, and her flawed attempts with truth serum add character depth and propel the plot.
  • Noted cameos: Albuquerque mayor Tim Keller and actor Jeff Heller.

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6. Landman Season 2, Episode 2 Breakdown (43:41–60:09)

• Character Arcs & Relationships:
  • Chris praises the generational drama and the emotional nuances, especially the Tommy/Cooper/TJ storyline:

    “The Cooper, Tommy, TJ stuff...was a very good corrective...I thought Sam Elliott, Jacob Laughlin, and Billy Bob were...pretty close to awesome in this episode.” (45:09)

  • Andy: “There was a beautiful moment in front of a sunset when I was just looking at the screen and I was like, this is working for me. There’s three generations of men, two of whom are in the same generation, but it is no less effective.” (45:54)
• Plot Course Corrections and Pacing:
  • The hosts laugh at how Landman pivots storylines abruptly, often embracing soap-operatic or outlandish beats: cartel complications, abrupt heel turns.
  • Andy: “[The show can] twice in an episode just steer out of a ditch of its own making.” (46:38)
• Dialogue and Masculinity Satire:
  • A standout moment is Tommy’s fatherly advice:

    “Do you want me to tell you how to deal with a woman?” (50:03)
    The hosts expected something “from the Andrew Tate playbook”, but instead: “She just said, you got to listen to her. I did not have that on my list of potential responses.” (51:06)

• Legal and Power Play Satire:
  • Rebecca Falcone’s power walks and bag placement become a recurring in-joke.
  • Andy: “...none of that matters because what they’ve done is they’ve cast an actor to play Rebecca, who I don’t think has ever held a bag before.” (52:36)
  • Chris: “Has she ever walked into a negotiation...and been like, hey guys, nice to see you. Let's get to the first agenda item...She always walks in and is just like you mewling little babies.” (52:58)
• Meta-casting Easter Egg:
  • Christopher Stanley plays a lawyer—a wink, as he played Henry Francis, Betty Draper’s second husband on Mad Men.
• Sheridan’s Writing Style:
  • The hosts skewer Taylor Sheridan’s refusal to heed logic or TV conventions, particularly with the outlandish nursing home storyline.
  • Andy: “[Taylor Sheridan] just doesn't accept any kind of rational...he creates this scene...but logic and the way planet Earth operates does not give me the opportunity...The play demands it.” (59:55)
• Appetite for More:
  • Chris: “I almost want to watch Landman with you more than I want to watch the Eagles with you.”

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Ken Burns Docs:

  “These documentaries...have served as this drum beat in the background of my mind throughout my entire life.” —Chris (11:29)

• On Industry S4’s Look:

  “They are taking the show into a different visual landscape. It's more baroque...There are scenes that look straight out of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette.” —Andy (24:08)

• On Pluribus’s Tone:

  “One of the best things about the show is every time anyone says, ‘Hi, Carol,’ I laugh.” —Andy (35:22)

• On Taylor Sheridan TV:

  “Taylor Sheridan just doesn't accept any kind of rational...The play demands it.” —Andy (59:55)

• On Tommy’s Parenting (Landman):

  “Do you want me to tell you how to deal with a woman?...[He says] you got to listen to her. I did not have that on my list of potential responses.” —Andy (50:03, 51:06)

• Meta TV Satire:

  “Has she ever walked into a negotiation...and been like, hey guys, nice to see you. Let's get to the first agenda item...She always walks in and is just like you mewling little babies.” —Chris (52:58)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:40 – Podcast opens, banter, Eagles talk, sports fandom
• 09:00 – Thanksgiving TV, Stranger Things, Beatles Anthology
• 10:32 – Ken Burns’s American Revolution: nostalgia, cast, legacy
• 17:23 – Dream Ken Burns documentaries
• 22:14 – Industry S4 teaser breakdown
• 25:55 – Why Marshals spinoff, Taylor Sheridan TV universe jokes
• 31:41 – Pluribus Episode 4 deep dive
• 43:41 – Landman S2E2 analysis and character dynamics
• 51:44 – Rebecca Falcone’s lawyering style and meta-casting
• 59:55 – Taylor Sheridan’s writing style and TV antics
• 60:09 – Sign-off, next week’s teasers

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Tone & Closing Remarks

The episode exudes signature Watch qualities: intellectual but irreverent, pop culture–savvy, and dense with offbeat asides and inside jokes—particularly aimed at TV tropes, creative personalities, and their own Philadelphia roots. Andy and Chris continue to blend serious cultural criticism with affectionate roasting of the media they love (or hate-watch).

Next week: more on Stranger Things, Landman, and likely further riffs on Ken Burns’s American canon.

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Summary by The Watch (listener’s edition)—perfect for catching up, skipping the ads, and staying in on all the inside jokes and in-depth critiques.

Transcript

[Chris Ryan]

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[Sandy 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 a big studio studio up 21 nothing. How dare you, Sandy Greenwald.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Why do you sound like Cousin Sal when you do that intro? What are you doing? We're on the same team. We've been friends for almost 30 years. What are you doing?

[Chris Ryan]

I just wanted to see your reaction.

[Sandy Greenwald]

First of all, can you see it? We're in a very big space today.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I can see you, man.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Optimized for video. I don't know what to do with my body in the studio. You look great.

[Chris Ryan]

You look like you're like kids. Let's Tear the first page out of that book.

[Sandy Greenwald]

My kids are here.

[Chris Ryan]

Let's have class outside.

[Sandy Greenwald]

They might see it. Is this the vibe with like the Dax Shepard podcast where he's just like in a chair and he's leans in, he's like, that mirrors my addiction journey, brother.

[Chris Ryan]

He's vaping and he's just like, I hear you, man. No, that's a good pod. Sure.

[Sandy Greenwald]

No, I'm just want to know like, is that why it's successful? It's because he has a different away from his guests?

[Chris Ryan]

That's a good question. Maybe we should see how far we can get away from each other. I guess you're going to England, so that will probably be easy. Andy on the watch today we have practically a Thanksgiving feast because this is our only show this week. You can hit us [e-mail] you can follow us on Instagram at thewatchpod underscore. You can watch us on YouTube at the Ringer Dash TV channel. You can also watch us where you're listening to us on Spotify, hopefully. We have Pluribus episode four. We have Landman episode two.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

And I have a bunch of other stuff for you today. So I'm excited to get into a frank exchange of ideas about popular culture and American life.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Of the two trips I had to take to Texas yesterday, back to back, I really, really didn't expect my time.

[Chris Ryan]

I out on Fridays specifically for this reason.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I really didn't expect my trip to Midland to be preferable. Yes. To be more enjoyable. Yeah, I really, really didn't. Can I ask your psychology about something before we get into our day?

[Chris Ryan]

Of course you can. Just because we're further away doesn't mean I'm any less close to you.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's beautiful. You at the time, I was a little dismayed. But you did duck out of an in person viewing. I did. Of yesterday's catastrophe.

[Chris Ryan]

I had to prepare for the watch.

[Sandy Greenwald]

How's that going? I don't think you're ready for what you're getting on the watch today. How do you feel about your choice? Because I think that, you know, I think you are a steady guy and you realized in real time that what you were missing was an opportunity to have the real feast or famine ag experience.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I think I've gotten my healthy fair dose of that throughout my life. I didn't pick that. That was not my choice because I wanted to avoid you or anything like that. I gotta say. I mean, do you want to actually talk about the Eagles right Now, what.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Do you want to talk about? We've been doing this podcast for so many years. We could set the agenda.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think they have it? Because I don't think they have it.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I don't think the offense has it.

[Chris Ryan]

So if you don't think they have it, what are you watching? Right. Like you want to. I'm watching for week to week enjoyment and to talk with my friends about it. I love this team, but, like, when I watch it, I don't see it.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I think they have it. If they could get a competent offensive.

[Chris Ryan]

Coordinator, I guess so.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I think they have. They have. They got the horses, they got the players, but they do not have the mentality to execute. Because I've watched that first half. Yeah. And I was like, most teams in the league are bad. We are not bad. Yeah. If we could just stop tripping over ourselves, we would be dominant. And I still think they can win.

[Chris Ryan]

I think maybe. You know what? I could be wrong also. There's like those weird seasons, too, where you get like a weird Raven season often, like, where they just like rattle off a bunch of wins on the back of they're doing it right now, and then they come storming in the playoffs and you're like, God damn, the Ravens. But so, like, I just feel like I almost would have preferred us being. Our record being a little bit worse and then us, like, rising towards the second half of the season than this, like, obviously fake 8 and 2 team that's enjoying each other's company.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I just think. And the defense is good. My thing is we are so skewed. And I realize this. Let me just preface this by saying, despite being the equivalent emotionally of a four year old when it comes to sports fandom, I own this. I know how good we have it, and I feel fantastic about whatever happens this year because we won the super bowl with my favorite guys. It's fine. Sure, it's fine, sure.

[Chris Ryan]

But.

[Sandy Greenwald]

But these last few years, really chill. I am vibrating at a frequency that you can't see from the distance you're at right now. I just forget because we're so skewed these last few years that most football seasons, for most teams involve just kind of losing to the Saints sometimes. And then you're like seven and five and then you make the playoffs, and then stuff happens. We have this very bizarre run where we are 10 and one essentially every year, and then either completely collapse or make it to the Super Bowl.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

And I know no one's complaining.

[Chris Ryan]

No, there's no. Nobody is Listening to this pod right now and just saying, these guys, I really feel for them.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I just want to say that I had a wonderful. This is true. I did have a wonderful day, regardless. It was tonally different, though, I think, because you are, as I said, a steadying force. You know, you don't get too high, you don't get too low. When I turned to our mutual friend Tyler, who is nice enough to host, and said, they're going to lose this game, that was, I believe, the top of the second half, and it was 21 nothing. Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Sentiment.

[Sandy Greenwald]

But you would have been a corrective what Tyler did, and God bless him, and he'll love to be shouted out like this is that. What he then spent the second half doing was giving Sora AI a series of prompts to create videos of him in a fur coat interacting with Eagles fans on the streets of Philadelphia, which. Including singing in a church choir with them, which did keep the mood different. You like that? See, you think. You think this is. You think this is a wedge issue. Now you're seeing my interest in his really, really crazy videos as a sign that I'm willing to bend the knee to Sam Altman.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm just saying another version of you would have left the second that. That, you know, that video that Sora got broken out. You would have been like, I can't be in the same house as this.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Let me. Let me complicate your moral stance. Prior to the Sora being broken out, the Jones on third takeout was broken out, and I was like, I gotta finish this turkey club. This is abhorrent to me morally. It would have been autistically if you.

[Chris Ryan]

Had stormed out when the AI got broken out, but then you had been like, hold on. Put your sandwich in your bag and left. Andy, it is Thanksgiving week. Yeah, it's Thursday. I've been reliably told Thanksgiving is on Thursday.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I mean, today is not Thursday. No, I know.

[Chris Ryan]

And so we're not gonna have a show on Thursday. I wanted to ask you whether or not, you know, over the last. I gu. Guess it used to be the. The providence. It was just like, this is the land of parades. Maybe a couple specials, but not a lot of TV going on. There's usually a Survivor finale around Thanksgiving, but in terms of, like, Thanksgiving watching, and I got to say, not a ton left in the TV watching schedule for us. So we're going to be pivoting probably the next two weeks to end of the year content for us end of the year programming, because there's Like Fallout and a couple of other shows. Obviously the big one is this staggered rollout of Stranger Things that they're adopting for this final season. So the first four episodes, I believe are coming out on Wednesday night. Your children are here. What's up? What's up to them? Do you think that this is going to be a big event for you guys?

[Sandy Greenwald]

They've never watched Stranger Things, so.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I think I asked you that and you told me that that's my bad.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah, 100%. No, I did say. And they'll love that. I'm talking about this. We were doing some mall shopping this weekend and I was. I noted with interest that every single store that is full Stranger Things, everyone has a Stranger Things collaborate activation.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. It's international.

[Sandy Greenwald]

It's big.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

So that's my. This is. Only on this podcast can you get this kind of cutting edge content. Haven't seen the show, don't plan to, but saw some sweatshirts.

[Chris Ryan]

The counter programming to Stranger Things this week would be probably Disney airing the Beatles Anthology with some additional Beatles Anthology footage of the Beatles surviving Beatles listening to and putting together the Anthology.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I was so excited for the punctuation to fall differently. I thought you said some alternate footage of the Beatles surviving. Don't do that. Of John Lennon. John Lennon doing what Ali Larder did on landman 2 and just disarming the dude. Yeah. And then Yoko trips him and then what happens for the next 40 years?

[Chris Ryan]

So those are the two big shows this week. I don't think I'm going to check out the Beatles Anthology. I feel like I'm Beatles. I'm. I'm up to my brim and Beatles at this point.

[Sandy Greenwald]

And also you got to save a little bit of juice for the four movies that are forthcoming. Right.

[Chris Ryan]

20. I think those are 27. Or is that when they're going to drop?

[Sandy Greenwald]

It would have to be. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. So what are we watching instead? Well, this is what I'm doing. This is what I did this weekend. I watched four hours of the American Revolution.

[Sandy Greenwald]

This is great for you.

[Chris Ryan]

Ken Burns new documentary that's on PBS. It's a six part 12 hour piece about the American Revolution. Obviously, a lot of the episodes focus on areas that we grew up mere miles away from. Sure.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Should I say the name? Should I say Valley Forge?

[Chris Ryan]

Just go ahead, son.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's it.

[Chris Ryan]

No. What about Independence Mall and everything?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Oh, like in Philadelphia? Sure.

[Chris Ryan]

Of course.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

This is.

[Chris Ryan]

I had this really amazing experience as I turned this on. Obviously this has been lauded. People are talking about This a lot. We've been asked to discuss this. I don't really know if I'm going to get into, like, any minute detail about the episodes that I spoil.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You're not going to spoil the American Revolution.

[Chris Ryan]

I will say that as soon as Peter Kaido's voice comes on and he says name of year and then he starts talking about what's happening, I felt it wasn't even goosebumps. It was like I was transported back and I realized that these documentaries, Civil War, baseball, jazz, jazz country, The World War II doc, the. The. The. The west, and even Vietnam recently, like, have kind of served as this drum beat in the background of my mind throughout my entire life. And especially, like, this was like a huge. The Civil War was such a big deal. It came out.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Did you watch it with your parents?

[Chris Ryan]

I did. And that was kind of like, I almost felt like, you know, we turned the lights off in the living room, we fired it up, and I was like, I'm back in, like, my parents living room listening to this voice and listening to this, you know, the beautiful scores that he always puts together. And then the voice cast for this, the American Revolution. I don't know if you've read anything about it.

[Sandy Greenwald]

No.

[Chris Ryan]

So Brolin is George Washington.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Oh, damn. Oh, they cast it like that.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, they got Giamatti back for John Adams again and again, the iconic performance. Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Claire Danes. Is Abigail Adams.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Is Leslie Odom Jr. Still playing Aaron Burr?

[Chris Ryan]

I've gotten to Burr yet I heard he's back playing all British people. Is Kenneth Branagh like, he's playing all the British. It's like Kenneth Branagh, Tobias Menzies, Donald Gleason. Wait, is it Donal or Domhnall? Gleason? Yeah. Is there somebody else? Alan Cumming, I think is in it.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's my guy.

[Chris Ryan]

And then, yeah, like the. The one that jumped out at me weirdly. Because you know how, like, in the Civil War they'll have, like, they'll find characters who have somehow, like, woven through the entire history of the war. And like, they've, like, they were at Shiloh and then they were people.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Oh. Like, they'll find the individual.

[Chris Ryan]

And they're always writing letters back.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Writing a lot of letters.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, then. Then that shokin farewell drops and you're like, somehow crying about a guy who died in 1862. Joe Keery from Stranger Things plays a fifer, I guess, like a. Like a military fife player.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Flautist, if you will.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know if It's a flute.

[Sandy Greenwald]

No, it's different.

[Chris Ryan]

It's a fife, you know, and he plays this guy, Johnny Greenwood.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Come on.

[Chris Ryan]

I know.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Stop.

[Chris Ryan]

And it's. He's very good. It's like, it's very effective.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Is it? As is Joe Keery playing Johnny Greenwood on fife. Better or worse than Johnny Greenwood opening with Planet telex at the O2 arena this weekend in London. Which pick your Johnny Greenwood. Because I have more FOMO about one than the other. I'm going to be honest with you.

[Chris Ryan]

I know. But I highly, highly recommend the American Revolution to anybody with even a passing interest in like, you know, what, what being an American means. And I think when you look at the total, like, contribution of what Ken Burns has done over the last 40 years, 30 years, it's going to be one of the most significant sort of bodies of work in, honestly in American popular culture.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Can I ask you like a. Just like a real personal question though, about this? That's for both of us, given our recent global meanderings, like, did you feel like a little torn as to which side you were on?

[Chris Ryan]

Well, they go to great lengths to explain mostly how, like, what a bunch of crazy hypocrites founding about this.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Oh, our dudes.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, they don't cancel them, but they're just like, this guy was a slave owner. Just FYI.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You know, they say it like that. You know, many people are saying, that's Peter Coyote.

[Chris Ryan]

That's my Peter Coyote voice.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's really good.

[Chris Ryan]

Peter Coyote, 84 years young, just still grinding out 12 hours of DOC Vio.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Just roll him in the booth.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

One of my favorite memories of working with the elderly was wheeling 80 plus year old Ed Asner into the ADR booth to do ADR for the USA television show Briar Patch. And he just put him in. They run the scene. He commented on the women's rear ends on the scene, deliver the lines like a pro and wheeled out.

[Chris Ryan]

Rest in power.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Seriously though, that's a pros pro.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you have a favorite, Burns? Do you have you, have you watched these, like, over the course of your.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Life at all the big three, Civil War, baseball and jazz.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sandy Greenwald]

My three passions to this day, Power rank.

[Chris Ryan]

Wait, let's seriously power rank those, like.

[Sandy Greenwald]

In terms of how much they mean to me now.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. How important they are to you, huh?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Well, I, in terms of Doc, Civil War was awesome. I would say in terms of how I've lived my life, I think it's probably in the three hole, you know.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, sure.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah. I would Say that baseball was leading for a long time. I was like number one, thinking about.

[Chris Ryan]

It all the time.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Just kind of want to re litigate it. Yeah, baseball was really, really in the leadoff spot for a long time. But recently as I've been trying to wind down from work and cook dinner, Jazz. Jazz has overtaken baseball. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I really. I think I liked country, not country more than jazz. I think I've seen country more recently than jazz. Baseball was in the throes of my.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Are we talking about the doc or the thing?

[Chris Ryan]

No, but we're kind of going back and forth. But when baseball came out was when I was like so blindly out of my mind about baseball.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

But too much so that when it started I was like, when are they going to get to Marquise Grissom?

[Sandy Greenwald]

You know?

[Chris Ryan]

Like, did they. No, I don't think so.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Terry Pendleton at the hot corner, bringing us to the President.

[Chris Ryan]

I want to read about these guys. Like playing three fingered baseball outside of Gettysburg in 1860.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You want to see Vince Coleman put in context properly. The Speedster. Yeah. Okay. That's exciting. What do you think this is? This is difficult to ask just off the top of the dome, but. Okay, if you could right now put on your. Okay, let's say we. Let's say we win the bidding war for HBO Max, which I haven't talked to our money guys in a while, but doesn't seem likely.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sandy Greenwald]

But I appreciate that we put our foot in the. In the. In the ring. You don't put feet in the ring. Hat in the ring.

[Chris Ryan]

Throw your hat in the ring.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Sure. Our baseball hats. What would you. If you could commission a documentary from Ken Burns about American history and it doesn't have to be as sweeping, you know, it doesn't have to be as, as iconic.

[Chris Ryan]

No. Yeah, right. Because like, I mean, National Parks is one of my favorites of his. And it's like a. Not. It's obviously one of the great sort of achievements of American governance or whatever.

[Sandy Greenwald]

But like off the dome. Do you know the relationship between the Battling Burns brothers? Because there's a Rick Burns who makes documentaries too.

[Chris Ryan]

What's he make them about? Like.

[Sandy Greenwald]

No, like he made Empire State Building. Like he makes documentaries. And I don't think it's uncivil. I just think it's interesting that two brothers just have a passion for.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And I should say Ken Bur. Burns has several partners that he works with. Sarah Botzian and David Schmidt on this one.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Can I give you my pitch for it? Yeah. I read a really interesting nonfiction book about two years ago called Ninth Street Women, which is about female painters in the post World War II era. So like Joan Mitchell and Elaine de Kooning. And it sort of tells the story of American art from an previously under explored perspective. But what I found really, really compelling about it was that it was. It goes from the end of World War II and the atom bomb, so the late 40s through the 50s into the period that we think of as like a enormous creative and cultural flowering in America in the 60s. But really talking about what the 50s were like.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

From a perspective of the people who would define the 60s. So it gets into counterculture and creativity and art before it was mainstream. Sure, in a way. And not, you know, that's a faster way to put it, but I feel.

[Chris Ryan]

Like that era, 1950s American popular culture.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Kind of boring on the surface, or we think we know it like in the way that Mad Men kind of.

[Chris Ryan]

Is that kind of like when Rauschenberg starts, or is that. Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

All these artists who are deeply, deeply impacted by the war, but then also the country's like, wild swing towards. We must do TV dinners and be normal, because now we have the power to burn suns.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, is that what happened?

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's just my. This is a podcast. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I think that would be interesting.

[Chris Ryan]

What would I want. Maybe. I would be very curious. I mean, he did a. I think he did a Dust bowl doc. I would be curious about the. The Roaring twenties.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Hmm. Maybe there were in twenties, because we're doing it again without the phone.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I would just be. I mean, like, that would be. I. I find that his. I. I gravitate a little bit more towards the stuff that he does where the Ken Burns effect on still photography or on paintings and maps hits me harder than, say, Vietnam and to some extent World War II, which are beautiful, beautiful pieces of work, but have so much footage and in some ways, like the Vietnam stuff, even though there's things in Vietnam that I never knew about, you know, it was an absolutely astonishing documentary because, like, the music and the footage is so, like, ingrained in my mind through, like, Apocalypse now and Platoon and Deer Hunter, it was almost like I felt like it was a little bit. I trod that ground before. Whereas when you watch. When you watch American Revolution and he is able to build up to Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence as if it was the cliffhanger of, like, a great epic, you know, series, and, you know, it's coming and you know, who writes it and, you know you know what you know about it. But it's just. That's the end of the second episode is they get to the Declaration of Independence and you're just like, holy.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You know, he did that.

[Chris Ryan]

He did that.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I think just from. If I could answer for you and I will check this out.

[Chris Ryan]

I say the Roaring twenties, but go ahead, answer for me.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I'd like to answer for you. I think that you would be compelled by cigarette An American Story that tells the story of smoking in the tobacco leaf throughout the centuries.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Also, do you think that at some point as like a desperate cash grab, Ken Burns will do meet me in the bathroom the early 2000s.

[Chris Ryan]

I think he could dream a little.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Bit bigger and then you could. It's like you writing an email from your Hotmail account to me.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I would be the new Peter Coyote.

[Sandy Greenwald]

No, but you would be one of the characters because you were everywhere.

[Chris Ryan]

2002. Julian Casablanca was that Tim Goldsworthy was.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Producing for Trip Hop Axe when he received a call from James Gray.

[Chris Ryan]

That was the year James Gray released A Million Little Pieces.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You know James Frey.

[Chris Ryan]

Right, Frey. Sorry, James.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I thought you were going like. That was the year James Gray directed Little Odessa. See, this is gold. First of all, I'm before Kevin Burns.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Kya. The headline for this podcast being Andy.

[Chris Ryan]

And Chris suggest Ken Burns documentary ideas. What about this? What about this? Eagle season. But he has to do it the way so it's just like.

[Sandy Greenwald]

It's just letters from Nakobe Dean.

[Chris Ryan]

In 2025, Nick Sirianni lost his mind.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

He thought if he ran Quan Barkley into the backs of 6 foot 4 men 100 times one day, non stop.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

A couple trailers before we get going into the in depth and sober conversations about Landman that we are known for. Industry Season 4, the teaser dropped. Yeah, it's the only thing I'm gonna watch. I don't wanna watch a trailer for this now. A perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect amuse bouche for this series. I cannot wait. January 11th, I believe it comes back. Yeah, we get a couple of glimpses of Max Manhella and Minghella and Kieran Shipka and Kal Penn.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

As the additions. There is some speculation online that David Johnson is in this teaser. I did not catch that.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I didn't see that. But Charlie Heaton, I believe that guy's name.

[Chris Ryan]

That is right. He's at the nightclub.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yes. Just. I'd love to bring it back to Stranger Things whenever possible. Yeah, he's in this.

[Chris Ryan]

And obviously Kit Harington back. And so this looked borderline like. Like a psychosexual thriller.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And we are obviously now contemplating this series without Purepoint. But what did you. What were your takes on the series on the teaser?

[Sandy Greenwald]

It's a beautiful teaser. I agree with you. I'm good. I would say two things. One, beautiful. I will say beautiful again. It looks gorgeous. The imagery is rich and iconic is the wrong word. But they're playing with a much, much, much more expensive visual palette, which doesn't mean they got their budget increased. I just mean that one of the things that we were fascinated by in the third season, I think, was Mickey down and Conrad K. Are friends of the pod, took a bigger step forward, not just in terms of their creative storytelling, but creatively, full stop. They directed the last episodes of that season. They are directing on this season as well. And they are taking the show into a different visual landscape. It's more baroque. There are scenes that look straight out of, like, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette or further back to Barry Lyndon almost. And we commented on that in the last season. I think that's fascinating. And I think that without getting into the content of it, which we haven't engaged with, I think it's exciting to see shows take. Continue to take massive steps up in terms of ambition, certainly. And the other thing that I really enjoyed about the trailer was that it seemed to communicate a very tight focus on the relationship between Harper and Yasmine, which has always been there and has in many ways been the heartbeat of the series. But I am also a fan of shows that find their purpose in the show itself. Like, I don't know. Actually, I feel confident saying this without having them here to back me up or contradict me, that if you had pulled those guys aside four or five or six years ago.

[Chris Ryan]

So is this show about these two.

[Sandy Greenwald]

People and about how they do or do not look after each other and how they cannot quit each other? I don't think that would have been the answer. And I think that in tv, that's great. In movies, that's a problem. But in tv, if you are given the Runway to grow and if you have the chops and the ambition to deliver on that, it's okay to find your story as you go, because we certainly haven't suffered in terms of plot up to this point. So I find that really interesting.

[Chris Ryan]

The only other trailer worth noting, I think that came out this weekend or today is the Y. Marshalls. Y Marshalls, which is the Casey spinoff of Riella Stone's. Starring Luke Grimes. I only mention this. I promise not to belabor the Taylor Sheridan stuff but that's my favorite character from Yellowstone. Now Casey is an ex military guy who comes back and is like living adjacent to Yellowstone. In Yellowstone the series he's living adjacent to Dutton Ranch and he has like a real push pull relationship with his dad and his family and his legs. His dad, John Dutton, the Kevin Costner character. And he likes to. Likes to kill guys in his. In his role as a I believe Bureau of Land Management. But I can't quite maybe Ranchers association.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You're just making up.

[Chris Ryan]

There's a lot of like weird like is this actually a governmental agency or just a kill squad stuff going on.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Like the people who investigate old age homes on land. Sort of extra legal. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

But in this he obviously joins the United States Marshals a group led by another actor I like quite a bit, Logan Marshall Green. So the thing I wanted to mention is just that this is apparently going to be on CBS as opposed to Paramount plus which most of Taylor Sheridan stuff is. It also says executive produced by Taylor Sheridan. So I wonder whether or not I think I mentioned when we were going through his. His sort of work that he owes quote unquote Paramount before moving to Peacock. I think he's executive producing this. I don't know if he's writing it. I didn't, I didn't catch who was. But CBS and a different writer. It'll probably be a different kind of show. I think maybe a little bit more procedural.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I would like it if I could downgrade my own life from prestige streaming to basic broadcast network. I just feel like that would lower the temperature and the stakes to a degree that I think would be nice. Don't you think we should be able to do that?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I mean it would be cool just to be like there's no profanity, there's no gaping wounds. And we'll be back next week.

[Sandy Greenwald]

And who's the director of the FBI for us? Whoever is the director of the FBI on a Dick Wolf show who's just like let's get the bad guys, not let's get my girlfriend.

[Chris Ryan]

You know what I mean?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Like just get the priorities right. I would like that. I watched the trailer and I had two main takeaways. One, gorgeous.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Gorgeous scenery. Yeah. Two, I'm really glad we're finally.

[Chris Ryan]

It's featured in Ken Burns documentary the West.

[Sandy Greenwald]

See, it's all connected. It's all one series. I thought it looked beautiful.

[Chris Ryan]

Charlie Heaton also walking across the briefly.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You didn't notice him in either. That's one takeaway. Second takeaway is I'm very grateful that there will finally be an hour long show that will once and for all answer the question. Can you be a good person if you do bad things?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't think we're gonna get to.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

The bottom of it.

[Chris Ryan]

And why Marshall's season one. You think we're gonna maybe he's season two. Three. We get more of a clear answer.

[Sandy Greenwald]

It's funny. It does. You could watch it on mute and you would know whose show it is. Not because of the Yellowstone ish settings, but because there's warbird helicopters just looming out of not just like the budget documentary Warbird helicopter style. No, I don'. You know what? It's a point of pride for me that I cannot distinguish.

[Chris Ryan]

I know. Two Apache.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

And Blackhawk.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Okay, that's great. How many do you think there are total?

[Chris Ryan]

Like dozens, I'm sure.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Or there are four. What would be more surprising to you over under it would be surprising to.

[Chris Ryan]

Me if the military industrial complex was like, we're good at four.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's right, brother. You're starting to see the big picture.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, Thomas Jefferson opened my eyes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's right.

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[Chris Ryan]

Last week when we talked about Landman.

[Sandy Greenwald]

And we're talking about Pluribus too, right?

[Chris Ryan]

I was going to say, why don't we start with Pluribus to not give a short shrift at the end of a dizzying Landman discussion.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I feel like once people heard we were doing PBS docs, they locked in, but okay, sure.

[Chris Ryan]

Episode four for Pluribus, written by Alison Tallock, who worked on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and is a Vince Gilligan Coaching Tree member. And this one is, you know, picks up largely right after episode three, where there's been this grenade explosion and Zosia has been injured. But Carol is undeterred in her quest for basically applying a narrative and getting a sense of the story that she is now occupying. Which I thought was kind of the. The sort of underlying theme of this episode was this. What would happen if a writer was put into this position and started to try and put together a story and put together rules of a universe? We also have a really interesting cold open that will probably impact later with the other resistant survivor of this situation. What did you think of the episode?

[Sandy Greenwald]

I loved this episode. I thought this was the strongest episode since the pilot. And I've liked all of them. But I thought this episode had such propulsion, the logic that is the hallmark of all Vince Gilligan shows, if not this, then that, you know, you see that. And even in the opening with the Guy Manuzos in Paraguay, like, you see his thought process, you understand his circumstance.

[Chris Ryan]

All a little bit on Paraguay there.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Just a little bit.

[Chris Ryan]

I caught it. I just wanted to make sure Our listeners did.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You were using your authority on war helicopters. And I was doing my part to just make sure the show has a little. This show, the watch has a little cultural sensitivity in these broken times, that the intelligence on a character and emotional level, which would be Carol starting to work through something. Right. Starting to begin to put together a plan, begin to put together a goal, and begin to see how she can use the situation to her advantage. One of the things that I don't think it's really a nitpick, but you did, because you got a sense from some of the other survivors, like, how they were using this new reality.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, they were like, I hit the lottery.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Selfish ways. There. There is the kind of, like, fan fiction redditor version of watching the show where you're like, well, why isn't she just asking about all the secrets in the world? Like, about whether.

[Chris Ryan]

Who killed jfk?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Exactly. Like, what was Ken Burns going to make his next documentary on before he was unfortunately joined to the great collective in the sense of, well, she would.

[Chris Ryan]

Be able to get visited by Ken Burns, theoretically.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's right. And Ken could be like, that's what Rick was gonna do next. God damn it. But that she used it to ask about the most important question to her, which is not necessarily about secrets of planet Earth, but about what her wife truly thought about her work. So I just thought that there was like, a really, really smart and elegant aligning of the larger plot propulsion with her own internal needs. I thought that was so well done. I also really appreciated the return of menace because in the first episode, you have that great George Romero Night of the Living Dead kind of horrific sequence. And then since then, it has been played mostly for laughs in a way that makes me laugh every time. One of the best things about the show is every time anyone says, hi, Carol, I laugh.

[Chris Ryan]

It's really funny.

[Sandy Greenwald]

It's funny no matter what. It's such a recurring, such a reliable bit. But the way this episode ended with the intensity of the hive mind and the group first of all just physically appearing and then weeping and then speaking in one, asking to save a life, please move aside. And you understood again, the stakes that she was existing in, in terms of every life on Earth. It was super creepy. And. And we can. I'll. I'll seed the floor. But like, I thought that this was also one of the show's thus far strongest, strongest episodes in terms of Boy AI is a nightmare. Like. So we'll circle back to that.

[Chris Ryan]

What did you think about the foregrounding of her identity as a writer. Because I thought aside from. Obviously there is. We get a glimpse of her whiteboard. We actually got a cool email about somebody from a listener named Lauren emailed us about just being blown away by this hidden kind of mid century modern writers enclave that she has with the whiteboard. Trying to come up with new ideas for her Romantasy the Waikaro books series. And then she starts to apply that kind of kind of architecture to her current situation.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So writing down the things that she knows about the others. And furthermore, like you just alluded to, you know, it's almost like if you could do. If you could have any wish, if you could ask any question. And hers is like, but did you really like my writing?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah. That is the most. Right? Yeah. I mean all one of the fun. Okay. I'll say this. It's fun for us. I don't actually think it would be interesting to the majority of people who have fallen in love with these shows, but every successful television show of this maybe of history, but certainly of this prestige era, they are all about writers and about writers own experiences and their frustrations being in writers rooms. Famously, the that's what the money is for speech was Matt Weiner's relationship with his mentor David Chase on the Sopranos. Vince Gilligan like making his main character a writer, like kind of hiding it for a little while. But a writer who is feeling like she's churning out the same thing over and over again.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

And wants to coming off of Vince.

[Chris Ryan]

Gilligan making 10 years or whatever, breaking.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Almost 20 years of his life. Yeah, definitely 20 years, considering when he probably wrote the pilot. And is anyone gonna like me for the other work that I do or do they just want me to play the hits? Is profound. And just the whiteboard being a symbol of the way TV is done by. Okay, do we like that idea? Let's put it up on the board and see what it looks like. It's very on the nose. But he continues to find a way to make it much more interesting than actually what goes on in these rooms.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you have in the back of your mind anywhere watching this like an itch where you're like, and what is this about? Like, what's gonna happen? Where are we going?

[Sandy Greenwald]

No, it's certainly cause this episode asked the big question and didn't shy away from it? Can I stop this? Can I undo this? And in one fraught silence, Carol gets her answer and we get our answer. And it's beautifully played because it's all we need for Right now is the implication that you could undo it and everyone but these 13 people on earth would die? Could it be reversed? Could it be stopped or could it be reversed? Those are different questions. Suddenly, now there's a roadmap. And not just a roadmap for Carol, but we understand that this show, as nice as the collective is being towards her, there is a race on who's gonna beat the other one first.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That is a pretty successful cadence for a television series.

[Chris Ryan]

Does Carol have to essentially indulge in her. I don't wanna say nefarious, but perhaps underhanded methods of getting to that finish line where these people can't hurt her, can't lie, will do anything for her to make her happy. Carol is drugging them, tricking them, manipulating them, setting off explosives near them, and it could get much worse. It could get a lot darker. It's really interesting you brought up. You brought up the Paraguayan character and the cold open to some extent. And I saw noted in a couple of different recaps of the show that it was. His response to the others is way more like an alien invasion movie. He has isolated himself in a storage facility. He's refusing their.

[Sandy Greenwald]

They're giving him catered meals.

[Chris Ryan]

Catered meals. And he just tips them over.

[Sandy Greenwald]

No room service for him.

[Chris Ryan]

And he's basically licking the tins of. Of. Of canned food that he's finding in.

[Sandy Greenwald]

People'S down sugar packets and eating dog food.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Couldn't be me.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. So that call happens while Carol's in the plane.

[Sandy Greenwald]

He's like, by the way, that. And it's not just because of the South American setting, but it did give me eternaut vibes because he's not even leaving a locked facility.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. They're. They're obviously like their union. They seem of like minds about the situation. So I'm very excited for their union and I'm excited to see whether or not Carol needs to bring a translator with her and what happens.

[Sandy Greenwald]

She made herself understood, I would say, with her.

[Chris Ryan]

No, but, like, if they need to sort of hash out how they're going to do something, obviously, like, everybody in the world outside of her knows Spanish, so she could bring somebody, but they're gonna then be privy to what they're discussing.

[Sandy Greenwald]

What. How did you. What was your take? Well, let me just say one other thing before we get into the actual, like, mechanics of what she was doing and what she was injecting. And when the two great cameos this week. Jeff Heller, Mayor Tim Keller.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Whose Smiling visage greeted me.

[Chris Ryan]

And he's actually the mayor of Albuquerque?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yes. His smiling visage greeted me every time I got off a plane in Albuquerque. He's been in office quite some time. He's our contemporary, same age as us.

[Chris Ryan]

How long has he been in office?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Clearly accomplished a lot more.

[Chris Ryan]

Is there term limits in Albuquerque mayoral elections?

[Sandy Greenwald]

I should have Googled that. Haven't. Don't know. But he was definitely the mayor in 2018 and 2019. Oh, maybe he had to step down for a few years. Maybe there was an interregnum. Should we spread a little dirt?

[Chris Ryan]

Or maybe Putin did, where, like, he's now he became the vice mayor for a couple years.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Oh, damn. Albuquerque is pretty interesting place. I thought that was great. And then Jeff Heller, recently off his Emmy win from somebody somewhere. One of the fun things about the premise is anybody could be on the show either potentially as themselves, as we saw in the mayor, or any actor could show up at some point also as themselves or as a character. And because it's Vince Gilligan just flexing on the show, he's like, I like that guy. I want him to be the one to deliver some of this news.

[Chris Ryan]

Would you have been excited if Jesse Pinkman sold her some heroin?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Oh, well, he didn't dabble in that. He kept it pretty clean. He just stayed with the blue. Yeah, I did like that scene when.

[Chris Ryan]

The pharmacist is like, wait, didn't Jesse's girlfriend.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yes. Yeah. But he didn't.

[Chris Ryan]

He didn't like. Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

And also after that happened, which chronologically would be before the events of tornado. Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

So he probably would have been like, carol, let me tell you, this is a dark road you're going down.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I think 100%. And her dad, the air traffic controller, maybe, you know, he had some things to say.

[Chris Ryan]

Jesus, forgot about him. Fun show.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Fun show. So, yeah. So what did you think of the.

[Chris Ryan]

Whole truth serum ingenious concept.

[Sandy Greenwald]

We don't get enough truth serum in shows anymore.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I also liked the fact that she screwed it up.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, when she gave it to Zoja, like, in that it's not. It wasn't just like, oh, yeah, of course there's just truth serum. It's really easy to give to somebody who's also been through a traumatic medical experience. Do you think I didn't watch if there were scenes from next week, I didn't watch them. Zosia, like, now two. That's two straight cliffhangers for her.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah, that's a tough beat for her.

[Chris Ryan]

What do you think she show up at episode five?

[Sandy Greenwald]

I think so. I think so. Maybe. Little extra ration of strawberry milk.

[Chris Ryan]

They gonna keep her apart from Carol, who seems dead set on trying to kill her.

[Sandy Greenwald]

She does like her, though. She likes her, likes her. She admitted it. Yeah, under oath. That's what I call sodium Pentagon.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think we should do a truth serum episode of this podcast?

[Sandy Greenwald]

Brother? Every episode is a truth serum episode. Never lied once. Neither is Taylor Sheridan, to my detriment.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Let's get into Landman episode two, which I think I texted you after I watched.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You did.

[Chris Ryan]

And I said that was legit good. And then I went back and watched it again.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Did you change your thought?

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I wanted to, basically, because last time, I think we were sort of stunned into awe, but also into incredulity that Angela's white truffle meltdown. And we've gotten several emails about central Market, how it would not be in Midland. Angela would have purchased those truffles in Fort Worth and then brought them.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Well, distance does not seem to be an issue for people with trucks.

[Chris Ryan]

Or private planes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Or private planes. They do seem to cover a lot of road miles.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. As does Tommy in this episode, who seems to crisscross Texas three times.

[Sandy Greenwald]

He just turns right. I mean, first of all, we'll get to his parenting style, which I really, really came around to this episod episode, but he just pulled a ui, so.

[Chris Ryan]

We have returned to the nursing home, which is honestly, like, giving me a tumor.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Did you watch that on your bingo card? No.

[Chris Ryan]

I knew that it was. I. I honestly am pretty upset about it. Are you just kind of like, let.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Me hold space for that. Talk to me.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay. No, I. Because I don't want to lead with it.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Okay. What do you want to lead with?

[Chris Ryan]

I want to lead with the fact that this was the Cooper, Tommy, TJ stuff. The Cooper's Too Good to Be True Oil wells was a very good corrective.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And that I thought Sam Elliott, Jacob Laughlin, and Billy Bob were, like, pretty. Pretty close to awesome in this episode.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And that there was some stuff that hit right on the head. Like Tommy talking about how, you know, like, if you have a son, you're basically like, whatever you do to that kid, he's gonna do to his kid and all that stuff. And I thought when him. When. When Cooper's like, I love you, and Tommy's like, it's hot today.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah. I feel the studio right now.

[Chris Ryan]

This is good stuff. I was like, this is what it's all about.

[Sandy Greenwald]

There was a beautiful moment in front of a sunset when I was just looking at the screen and I was like, this is working for me. There's three generations of men, two of whom are in the same generation, but it is no less effective.

[Chris Ryan]

Ken Burns is the same generation.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Ken Burns, what do you call it when you have an 80 year old, a 70 year old and a 29 year old and they're just like, ah, we three are the same. We share experience to each other in an absolutely even fashion. Yeah. It's like that, remember, like that old image. Ken Burns knows what I'm talking about. Of like the arc of man. It's just like as a baby, as a toddler and it's just like. And then at the end it's like that picture, but two on one side of the hill and one guy on the other side of the hill looking. The other guys being like, careful. It's great.

[Chris Ryan]

You were saying though, watching the sunset, did you have like, what was your feeling about their, their acting and their, the writing of those scenes?

[Sandy Greenwald]

I was, oh, I'll start with the positives. I was truly, truly shocked at the show's ability to twice in an episode just steer out of a ditch of its own making.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

The first one you alluded to, which is, oh, Cooper's too good to be true situation is too good to be true. Yes. Now the scold's view of this might be if you lace a storyline with equal amounts of hope and doubt, you have a richer experience. Taylor Sheridan says, hold my beers. What if I told you an absolute, just zipless success story until it ends in a brick wall when dad comes and explains it to him.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I maybe wasn't watching the first season as closely.

[Chris Ryan]

They never showed Cooper going to. I don't believe that they ever showed him going to get financing from a shady cartel linked business. So him, it was like him going to other guys.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah. And being like, I can help you with what you already have.

[Chris Ryan]

These oil companies don't.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Don't like take care of you. I'm interested in like you and this well and we're going to make money. And I thought. And then they've kind of changed it to Cooper on the arm. Got like $30 million to start digging.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Six wells which are now.

[Chris Ryan]

And hire all these guys and they've all hit. But I would imagine the fine print of that contract which Cooper like up until now I would have been like, seems like kind of guy who would have read a contract or got somebody to read it.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Super Buttoned up.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

In the first season, taking care of everything. Then he becomes essentially a half billionaire overnight. Cries about it. His. His girlfriend is just like, I don't like this. Yeah, you made too much money too quickly.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes, please leave my phone. And also, you can never not answer your phone. Which. Understandable.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah, I related to that. Yeah. And then turns to his father, who is just like, ah, you have made a generational mistake here, my son. I'm glad you're bringing this to me.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Look, I don't care how the show stumbles into stakes. I'm glad they found it. And I. And the fact. Did anyone watching Landman think that, first of all, I have a lot of things to say, actually. How much time do we have here? Nate or Neil, whatever, they've only been sharing a house for a year and a half. But don't get. Don't let. Don't let facts get in the way of a bit. I like that his legal prowess is proved, is borne out by the fact that he, in the midst of all of his other busy work, waiting for dinner, Google's Sonrisa, and is like, oh, there's a picture of the owner on the Internet investebon. Yeah. And it's the cartel leader from the end of last season played by Andy Garcia. So great. But again, however you get there, you got there. However many U turns on a Texas highway, it takes good stuff. Similarly, the Cooper storyline is. And since season one has been really the only thing that has anything.

[Chris Ryan]

It's like Matt Saracen. It's the thing that you're like, oh, yes, okay, I'm connected to this land.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Boy trying to become a Landman. Right. Is interesting.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Sandy Greenwald]

And again, stumbling into it, finally finding a circumstance in which Tommy cannot lecture his way out of.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, he gives it a couple shots.

[Sandy Greenwald]

He does give it a couple shots. Then the motion gets the better of him. I don't care what it took to get there for him to actually have to shut up. But he got there. Yes. Now, on the journey to getting there, did he have to mansplain our current government's policy towards open drilling to radio DJs? Yeah, we had that scene. We had. We 100% had that scene. Yeah, but we got there. So the moment when. Let me just say it this way, we've watched a lot of compelling television this year. There has been the. The. The anxiety and stress of watching the mass shooting event on the pit. There has been the absolute white knuckle emotional rollercoaster. Of the four, one shot only episodes of adolescence.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

But nothing this year on television has had me on the edge of my seat. Like the moment when Tommy turns to his son and says, do you want me to tell you how to deal with a woman? I was like, this is. But to be fair, in so many directions.

[Chris Ryan]

She just said, you got to listen to her.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I did not have that on my list of potential responses. Okay, if you had just blind called me and given me the setup, I would have given you six responses that would have all been more like from the Andrew Tate playbook.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes, of course.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Or the Andrew Huberman playbook than the Andrew Greenwald playbook.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay, there's only three Andrews, the three.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Andrews you meet in heaven. But two are on one side of the hill and one's on the other, if you know what I mean. So kudos. Kudos, Taylor. Kudos. Tommy. A nice scene and fairly good advice.

[Chris Ryan]

And kudos to Rebecca Falcone in her new role as legal counsel for emtech's Oil. And she gets to negotiate. And let me tell you something, the only thing that she likes negotiate more than negotiating is putting her purse right in the crook of her arm when she walks into a negotiation room.

[Sandy Greenwald]

This is what I wanted to talk about. I. I wonder if it's a little bit of intentional misdirection, like, let's screw up in one way to cover the other way. Because I continue to believe that no one involved with this show has ever even liaised with anyone in the legal profession. Like, not even like a cursory, like, well, we ticked that box. You know what I mean? Maybe not even in the contracts. But none of that matters because what they've done is they've cast an actor to play Rebecca, who I don't think has ever held a bag before. Like, I think she may be a talented actor.

[Chris Ryan]

If, you know, this might just be Fort Worth bag style. We don't know.

[Sandy Greenwald]

It could be. The way she holds bags reminds me of the way Steve Carell talks about women's breasts of 40 year old virgin.

[Chris Ryan]

I do.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Certainly a handbag is to be held only in the crook of one's like velociraptor arm and carried in the room to distract. And then she just goes in and wrecks shop.

[Chris Ryan]

Has she ever walked into a negotiation or a meeting of other lawyers and been like, hey guys, nice to see you. Let's get to the first agenda item.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Should we order some Jones on third?

[Chris Ryan]

She always walks in is just like you mewling little babies. Yes, can I. Mother is here.

[Sandy Greenwald]

She was serving yeah. And once again, she told a room full of six people how it was going to go. And they were like, well, respectfully. Respectfully. You're right.

[Chris Ryan]

You're right.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You've done it. I love freeze framing the legal scenes. Like, because there's always the principal dude who's about to get cucked. Right. There's the secondary dude who's just like, I didn't get cucked with the same ferocity. Thus, I want to hire the cucker.

[Chris Ryan]

But I'm gonna get a drive by cucking on the way out. Sure.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Just a little taste of it. And then there's the extras, one of whom invariably will just be typing, being like. And then she said, I am a worthless beta. Am I wrong? Because I think this is the most clever thing about the episode. The guy who got the drive by.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Am I right? That. That is the actor Christopher Stanley, who played Henry Francis, Eddie Draper's second husband.

[Chris Ryan]

And I was wondering where I had seen him before.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Because if so, that is a clever bit of meta casting.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure. Because things have changed in this.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Don Draper left his wife. In this show, he left the earthly plane. And then look who swoops in to make life challenging for him. It's Henry Francis.

[Chris Ryan]

You mentioned Monty, the late, great Monty. He apparently has stolen $400 million.

[Sandy Greenwald]

It happens.

[Chris Ryan]

And that. That is going to be one of the. I mean, so funny. I want to say, obviously a season long question is going to be, we don't know. It's like, I think Cammy's going to figure this out after spending 10 minutes completely untouched office.

[Sandy Greenwald]

The Kami office montage was elite. I dare our viewers to set that to any music available to them to find the best one. Like one thing that shows up on my feedback.

[Chris Ryan]

Any song from Brat will work.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Sure. Yeah. One thing that shows up on my feed constantly is Cholo Dance Daily where a dude is just doing like big dance, like while the cars are bouncing. And you put it to music that it shouldn't fit with. So it does do that for the Tammy scene, please.

[Chris Ryan]

Tammy.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Okay, fine. Honestly, with the show, it could be Tammy by next week, but her with her, like thinking glasses and her Googling. Yeah, I loved it.

[Chris Ryan]

So there we go. And then we'll probably get some Andy Garcia next week, I would hope.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Do you feel. How did you feel about Adriana's heel turn? Like, did you do you.

[Chris Ryan]

I think.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Were you heartbroken?

[Chris Ryan]

I know you. I know that there are no notes for this show clearly, but that felt like a note. Not a note. Like in terms of. It felt alien. It was just like they all of a sudden thought of, like, consequences and obstacles for multiple characters in this episode where there had been none.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, if you're like, I was legit, like, what's gonna happen? Is Cooper gonna become an evil oil baron? Like. Cause he's just made half a billion dollars.

[Sandy Greenwald]

He's got the law of his life.

[Chris Ryan]

And it's about, like, how oil corrupts the innocent.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

And no, I mean, we're gonna get. Tommy's gonna have to get involved, get his. Get his hands dirty in this, like, situation. I also just really still, like, I almost wa. Landman with you more than I want to watch the Eagles with you because I want to know how you're feeling when we have a five minute scene of guys making venison burritos.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And you're just like, why are we doing this? So that's kind of like Taylor Sheridan, though.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Like, that's.

[Chris Ryan]

He loves a crew making a meal before they go do something.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Meat. Yeah. It's a. It's organic. So in your mind, to me, the crew making breakfast burritos is like playing. Doing 12 personnel, even though we don't have a backup tight end you can block. Yes. Like, why. Why do we keep. Why are we bunching personnel at the.

[Chris Ryan]

Line, asking Kalcaterra to run block.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Yeah, yeah. Or like scheming something up for a back shoulder throw to Kylan Granson on third and long. Like, what are we doing? And yet there are people like you who watch that and you're like, didn't expect that. That is a surprise. This really is the two types of people. Because you could look at Landman and be like, Cooper's attempt to make a name for himself, scratching and clawing in the already depleted Permian basin to win respect of his father and money and status in the world. That is a series long arc. Taylor Sheridan was like, I'm going to knock that out in the opening eight. And then the real problem is that the cartel owns part of his multi million dollar business.

[Chris Ryan]

We're all, yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

And you're like, I'm interested.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

That's interesting.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I think you watch a lot of television, the Royal U. And what they do is they'll come up with half a dozen characters and then they're like, well, we have to come up with 18 different things to happen to just these six people over the course of. Let's elastic, like, elastic. Pull it out so that we get to eight hours, we get to 10 hours. And what Taylor Sheridan does is he fills time by like the most random crap where it'll be like the nursing home scene and I loathe the nursing home stuff and. Or like, what is Angela making for dinner tonight? Or what are these guys eating for breakfast before their pre dawn oil drilling, like, drive, you know, so it's just a few more slices of life, you know?

[Sandy Greenwald]

By the way, I realized that in.

[Chris Ryan]

My notes and I ate the whole pie.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I'm calling. I wrote Cammie as Tammy and I also wrote Angela's name as Tammy. So clearly I am not the watcher on the wall that you guys are promised. It's just, what if there's Tammy?

[Chris Ryan]

A Landman spinoff called the Two Tammies and it's about Cammie and Angela.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Neither of them are tammies.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I guess the thing that I do respect, even in a. Even though it does get my hackles up slightly, is that like, Taylor Sheridan just doesn't accept. It's not just that he doesn't accept notes, he just doesn't accept any kind of rational. No. Like, he creates this scene where they go back to the old age home and get everyone drunk and an old guy playing pocket pool tossing dollar bills while granny makes a clap. Sure. So far I have no notes.

[Chris Ryan]

And then the department, the Department of.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Old Age Safety alert come in. And as soon as they walk in, I'm like, those guys are trouble. Those guys don't like to have a good time. You could tell. And then he's like, what I want to happen is I want Angela to end the scene in handcuffs. But logic and the way planet Earth operates does not give me the opportunity because no one who works for the essentially, I imagine, unaccredited state agency to make sure old people aren't getting drunk in the day department. None of them are going to respond to a woman saying, I poured those drinks for them myself by physically assaulting her. And he's just like, the play demands it.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

In that he is like William Shakespeare.

[Chris Ryan]

He really is.

[Sandy Greenwald]

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, I'm sorry, the Globe theater crowd is raucous and they demand a circus.

[Chris Ryan]

Instead. It's Jerry World. It's at and T Stadium.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Well, they demand a nightmare.

[Chris Ryan]

We can wrap it up there.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

It's been great talking to you today. I feel like we covered a lot of ground.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Well, we had a lot of ground.

[Chris Ryan]

Between us and thanks to Kai and Kaia, I hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving. We'll be back remotely. Unfortunately for you, you'll be believing me. But we'll be back next Monday. We'll probably talk. Probably talk a little bit of Stranger Things. Even if you don't watch it, I'll probably give, like, my report card on those first few episodes.

[Sandy Greenwald]

I'm always ready to learn.

[Chris Ryan]

And I'll let you know how the American Revolution works out.

[Sandy Greenwald]

Which one? The one in Ken Burns or the one that may or may not happen in the next eight days?

[Chris Ryan]

Thanks, guys. Have a great Thanksgiving.