‘The Pitt’ E12 Reaches New Heights and ‘Adolescence’ Is The Best Show of the Year | The Watch

Summary

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The Watch – ‘The Pitt’ E12 Reaches New Heights and ‘Adolescence’ Is The Best Show of the Year | The Ringer

Date: March 21, 2025
Hosts: Chris Ryan & Andy Greenwald

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OVERVIEW

In this episode, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald take a deep, spoiler-filled dive into the latest episode of The Pit ("Pitfest Mass Casualty Event") and reflect on the entire run of Adolescence, which they agree is a landmark television event. The discussion is wide-ranging, moving from the intensity and craft of both series, to broader meditations on TV as an “empathy box” capable of translating real-world pain and complexity into riveting, essential art. The pair also reflect on the significance of topical news (JFK files), intergenerational changes in culture (like the dominance of Sephora for teens), and the role of art in making sense of a troubled world.

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KEY DISCUSSION POINTS AND INSIGHTS

Housekeeping and Banter (01:12–08:52)

• Shout-outs to The Ringer team, Instagram, and recent projects
• Chris’s obsession with the newly released JFK papers and discussion about personal historical fascinations
• Playful back-and-forth about shopping at Sephora and the strangeness of adult life

Transition: TV’s Current Intensity and Realism (08:52–13:03)

• The hosts note a shift from slow-burn, “prestige” TV to the current landscape of adrenaline-fueled, intensely realistic shows like The Pit and Adolescence.
• Chris: “I fancy myself as something of an adrenaline junkie when it comes to my filmed content.” (08:52)
• Andy reflects on how his TV tastes are shifting, giving in to more “bloodlust” on screen than usual.

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THE PIT: SEASON 1, EPISODE 12 (“Pitfest Mass Casualty Event”)

Discussion: 13:03–37:30

The Lead-Up and Structure (13:03–15:56)

• “Pitfest” has been seeded all season and finally pays off as the ER faces a mass casualty event, forcing all characters—and viewers—to confront the chaotic reality of trauma response at scale.
• Both hosts reflect on the “Cheat Code” of riveting intensity and how it rises above the glut of sometimes ponderous prestige TV.

TV as a Construct and the Craft of Payoff (17:01–19:10)

• Andy points out the “Jenga tower construction” of the season: “There is a level of confidence in building something that can achieve this height… You are laying down a marker for something that’s going to be meaningful.” (17:01)
• The rewarding confidence of familiar faces (like Sean Hatosi’s Dr. Abbott) returning at precisely planned moments.

Heroism, Realism, and Directorial Choices (21:32–25:54)

• Chris observes: “I was watching heroism. These are people fashioning tubes and medical equipment out of leftover pieces of other equipment… running short on blood. Mel donates blood. They’re doing things at a level of self-sacrifice and diligence.” (23:20)
• The show “shows, not tells”—where earlier episodes leaned on informational dialogue, this time, action speaks.

Character Arcs and Crisis (22:18–25:04)

• Langdon’s controversial return to the ER after being fired is justified by the chaos—decisions are made on “calculated risk”.

World-Building and Thematic Concerns (25:13–29:03)

• Intrigue with “Pitfest”—the sense of place, culture, and potential red herrings regarding the shooter’s identity
• Chris and Andy discuss the “too tiny town” aspect, balancing dramatic needs with realism in TV hospital crises.

Effective Stakes and the Power of Pacing (29:03–34:01)

• The show “trained the audience” for an episode of almost pure crisis—"every frame of the 40 minutes is made up of bleeding bodies.”
• The emotional cliffhanger and what’s left for Dr. Collins and the rest of the ER.

Notable Quotes

• Andy: “The amount of thinking and planning… ticking off every question in anticipation of asking it before the deluge hit.” (22:08)
• Chris: “This show is so confrontational about what it is about… I was calm watching the show. I was calm watching them zip around to different hospital beds.” (15:42)
• Andy on construction: “To feel it pay off in real time is wild. It’s also truly insane.” (17:01)

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ADOLESCENCE: BEST SHOW OF THE YEAR

Major Discussion: 40:19–82:59

Reception and Impact (41:08–43:15)

• Adolescence is compared to Baby Reindeer—but the hosts agree it’s even better, sparking widespread conversation: “I think Adolescence is better than Baby Reindeer.” (Chris, 41:08)
• The show reverberates through both the general public and critics, commanding robust viewership (24.5 million views) and deep emotional connections.

Art as Empathy and Engagement (43:15–46:21)

• Andy and Chris discuss the role of art in grappling with society’s ills: “One of the only ways you can hope for a better world is to translate that through art… it’s about the stories you choose to tell.” (Chris, 42:44)
• Andy: “It is a show made by people and performers who are listeners first and foremost, not talkers.” (44:59)

Thematic Depth, Structure, and Specific Brilliance (46:21–52:03)

• The one-shot episode structure immerses viewers in characters’ lived experience, mirroring life’s unbroken flow and unpredictability.
• Chris on Episode 4’s “van ride” as an example of art and realism entwining: “You see him doing what everyone has to do… grab the wheel of yourself and really try and turn it.” (47:57)

Sophisticated Writing and Performance (51:25–56:21)

• Dialogue lines and themes echo across episodes: “All kids really need is one thing that makes them feel good about themselves.” (Misha, Episode 2, quoted around 51:29)
• The tragedy is rooted in the randomness of life, the roulette of needing “one person to recognize your goodness and give you dignity.” (Chris, 52:55)
• Andy: "The show holds space...for lots of possibilities...the nurture part becomes crucial, you were saying that he found maybe the thing that he's good at. I would argue...phones is the illusion of value, it's the illusion of connection, it eats people out from the inside.” (53:24)

Why and How: The Search for Answers (56:21–61:02)

• Each adult character, from parents to detectives to therapists, is fundamentally asking: “Why did this happen?”
• “Every character, with the exception of Jamie and his little shit friends… is essentially asking the same question: why would somebody do this?” (Chris, 56:21)

Episode 3: An Acting and Writing Tour de Force (58:34–66:09)

• The Briony-Jamie interview sequence draws comparisons to Silence of the Lambs for its emotional and psychological complexity.
• The show resists tidy answers about “evil,” instead exploring sadness, loneliness, and the limits of comprehension.

Gender, Generational Breakdowns, and the Internet (61:02–63:48)

• Subtle examinations of gendered expectations, disconnects, and dangers—contrasts between Briony and the security guard, and the implications of online toxicity.
• “It's the illusion of doing things. It's the illusion of value. It's the illusion of connection.” (Andy, 53:24)

The Power and Precision of the Filmmaking (68:13–72:31)

• The deliberate choice of long takes (“oners”), holding to character perspective, and denying viewers the “relief” of omniscient oversight.
• “The camera is playing the long game, like running the same marathon the actors are running… the camera’s on them for so long they can’t hide.” (Andy, 71:58)

Rewatch Value and Empathy (73:00–79:13)

• With knowledge of each episode’s revelations, rewatching unveils further layers of character motivation and writing precision.
• TV described as an “empathy box”—its power rests in showing us not just information, but lived perspectives.

Notable Quotes:

• Andy: “What I find so striking… is that Adolescence is in particular absolutely a work of very high art in terms of its writing, acting, filmmaking, but is entirely unafraid of engaging with the world as it is.” (44:30)
• Chris: “This show does a really good job of being like—life is a roulette wheel, you need one person to recognize your value…” (52:55)
• Andy: “The show holds space for the possibility that something is broken in Jamie, not just broken in society… It doesn’t run away from the ambiguity…” (66:02)
• Chris: “I watched that in complete sympathy with Jamie. Obviously, the police officers seem to have a bit of sympathy for him as well—maybe what this show is going to be is, how could this have gone so wrong?” (73:25)
• Andy: “The beauty of it is that we don’t know… the show gives us that information purely as an emotional chit, not in any way as gamesmanship for the legal drama.” (77:07)

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MEMORABLE MOMENTS & QUOTES WITH TIMESTAMPS

• “Pitfest” as a looming event:
  Chris: “They kept mentioning Pitfest...they don’t throw out details more than once unless it’s going to matter.” (13:49)
• Blood-donating ER heroics:
  Chris: “They are doing things at a level of self-sacrifice and diligence…” (23:20)
• On Adolescence as art and empathy:
  Andy: “It is not afraid of the world. It is not afraid of being about something.” (44:59)
• On Episode 3’s emotional devastation:
  Andy: “The most searing thing anyone can ask anyone…do you like me?” (55:22)
• On Briony’s method as a child therapist:
  Andy: “That is what acting ought to be and what it can be and what we rarely see it be for these sustained bursts of time.” (72:31)
• On the major thematic undercurrent:
  Chris: “Every character, with the exception of Jamie and his little shit friends, is essentially asking the same question: why would somebody do this?” (56:21)
• On the show’s emotional impact:
  Chris: “There was something about the show that stopped me in my tracks…being connected to people.” (82:06)
• On TV's purpose:
  Andy: “TV is an empathy box… it allows us multiple perspectives. It’s very intimate.” (79:13)

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STRUCTURE/TIMESTAMPS FOR KEY SEGMENTS

• Housekeeping, personal updates, JFK files: 01:12–08:52
• Shift to TV discussion, contemporary realism: 08:52–13:03
• The Pit, Ep12 Deep Dive: 13:03–37:30
• General thoughts on covering The Pit, TV flow: 37:30–40:19
• Adolescence—Reception, Art/Ethics: 40:19–46:21
• Adolescence—Thematic and Narrative breakdown: 46:21–79:13
• Filmmaking choices, acting: 68:13–72:31
• Rewatch value, TV as empathy box: 73:00–79:13
• Closing reflections on Adolescence, creativity, art's role: 79:13–82:59

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FINAL THOUGHTS

The Pit and Adolescence exemplify television’s enduring power—not just as a source of entertainment, but as a profound vehicle for empathy, understanding, and real engagement with 21st-century life. Both hosts are unequivocal: Adolescence is the most essential show of the year, and The Pit has raised the bar for what mainstream, “procedural” TV can achieve through craft and heart.

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Transcript

[Chris Ryan]

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[Andy Greenwald]

This episode is brought to you by Diet Coke.

[Chris Ryan]

You know that moment when you just.

[Andy Greenwald]

Need to hit pause and refresh? An ice cold Diet Coke isn't just a break. It's your chance to catch your breath and savor a moment that's all about you. Always refreshing. Still the same great taste. Diet Coke. Make time for you. Time.

[Chris Ryan]

Pain, sports. To have 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, he is Social Realism. It's Andy Greenwald. There's, like, not a single funny thing to say about adolescence or the pit, which is what we're talking about today. Greenwald, it's great to see you.

[Andy Greenwald]

You could have said something about, like, how I used to wear a wig and dance. It's.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah. And dance to Aha. Yeah. It's awesome to be here on a Wednesday recording for a Thursday.

[Andy Greenwald]

We're a little early.

[Chris Ryan]

This episode's gonna go out after the most recent episode of the Pit. I think we're just gonna. We're gonna wait on Severance till next week. We'll do that with White Lotus. I know we promised the the Streets of Philly TV podcast. I think you've watched Deli Boys. I've watched Deli Boys. I checked out Dope Thief. We have plenty of stuff to say about them. We're just gonna save it for a little bit later because honestly, man.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Adolescence demands a deeper dive.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes. And we are recording a day early because of some travel, so we couldn't give severance or Top Chef the proper space.

[Chris Ryan]

I think Top Chef will Be fine. I'll keep an eye on it. You know, I'll keep an eye on it. And it's been a very busy time for me.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh.

[Chris Ryan]

Because first of all, let me do a little bit of housekeeping.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, do it.

[Chris Ryan]

We can watch us on the Ringer Dash YouTube or on Spotify on the Watch feed. You can follow us on Instagram @thewatchpod. Underscore on Instagram a lot of the times. Some of the fun stuff you see on that feed, it's done by Kai McMullen, who I wanted to shout out. Worked on Good hang with Amy Poehler.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm so.

[Chris Ryan]

First two episodes dropped. Martin Short and Tina Fey. They were excellent. Kaya, Juliet Mal. I think a Leia worked on it. Over from the Ringer team. So I just want to shout out everybody from our squad who worked on that with the Amy Poehler crew. And it's a really fun pod. You should subscribe and check it out.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I just want to say shout out to Kai. You can email us at the [e-mail] if you want to ask us about Kaya Gauze and bracelets and stuff and Kaya. I was a little bit busy yesterday. I was watching a lot of stuff.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And then the JFK papers dropped.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh. I was wondering how you felt about this.

[Chris Ryan]

It's a little bit overwhelming because it's like as I was texting with Klosterman and Bill. No big deal.

[Andy Greenwald]

Jesus Christ.

[Chris Ryan]

And it's the conspiracy boys. A lot longer than the Warren Report. I'm reading a pretty cool interview right now between a former. Between like the, you know, the Justice Department or whoever's doing this interview and a former CIA agent. And this is taking place in like the 70s, and he seems to have his fingers in a lot of pots. So enjoying, like, random. Like, I'm going on Reddit. Reddit's like, this. This one's good. This one's good. This one's good. Um, so is your.

[Andy Greenwald]

So I think I just want to make this make sense for people listening who might not.

[Chris Ryan]

So you've released all the JFK papers. That's the headline.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, I know.

[Chris Ryan]

And I'm not like.

[Andy Greenwald]

So you're. You're getting good return on your vote. So congratulations on that.

[Chris Ryan]

If he's going to fucking send us straight into the mountainside, I am getting my JFK papers out of it.

[Andy Greenwald]

I just was curious. I knew what was happening in the news. Not really. But you'd let me know?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

The major just now. Yeah. Oh, fascinating. Um, Is this like. Cause you're like, oh, this is a lot longer than the Warren Report. This is. This reminds me.

[Chris Ryan]

I've read the Warren Report.

[Andy Greenwald]

This rem. You'll read the much longer unredacted files. This reminds me of when you were caping up for the Ridley Scott edit of Kingdom of Heaven.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm not done caping. The cape's still on, right? I'm saying you're like, it's invisible, but.

[Andy Greenwald]

It'S here right now. I could watch this reasonable length edited film, or I could just watch this.

[Chris Ryan]

The director's cut is way better.

[Andy Greenwald]

I know. And so what you're saying in this version, Earl Warren is like the Harvey Scissorhands of truth telling.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. And the Deep state is Ridley Scott.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And they were like, we have so.

[Andy Greenwald]

Much more to share. We have so much more to share.

[Chris Ryan]

It's one of my passions, you know, I'm just really curious about what happened there.

[Andy Greenwald]

Now. I'm trying to figure out a version of this where Earl Warren is asking Julia Stiles to dance on a table to distract people from the CIA implication, but I've gotten a little galaxy brain here.

[Chris Ryan]

But there's a ton of really good TV on right now, a ton of really good facts.

[Andy Greenwald]

So you've got nothing new to share. You've just been going in this.

[Chris Ryan]

It would be speculation at this point.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, well, a podcast is certainly not the right venue for idols. It is.

[Chris Ryan]

There's like. It's. You know, what's cool about it is looking at all the PDFs and seeing all of the different. Like, just sort of tactile, even though you can't touch it on a PDF. Like, the. The very tactile feeling of the written reports of this guy came into a consulate and said that, you know, Lee Harvey Oswald is doing this in a. In, you know, scene or whatever. And it's like all the stuff, the interconnected nature of all these offices and, you know, it being like this note that's on the bottom of a guy's pile that might have changed the world, it's like, that's cool. Yeah. I just like it as like. And also, I mean, just if you're just, like, wanting to read about espionage for better or for worse, and just are curious about that kind of thing, it's in there.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

This is.

[Andy Greenwald]

This might be one of the. You know, we're generally aligned, and I know that we've been told by the higher ups that agreeing on everything is podcast gold.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you disagree that the assassination of Kennedy was Important?

[Andy Greenwald]

No. From everything I've been told by you about the news that it is important, but no, but I do not share your curiosity and passion.

[Chris Ryan]

What are you curious about these days?

[Andy Greenwald]

I mean, I was explaining to Kaya how I'm newly curious about Sephora and navigating its aisles in pursuit of skincare greatness for my, you know, suddenly activated daughter. Yeah, very interested in those things. No, on the topic of I fuck.

[Chris Ryan]

With a Sephora, I go in there, grab a little drunken elephant.

[Andy Greenwald]

Do you?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, gotta. How do you think I looks? Look like I'm 42, don't I?

[Andy Greenwald]

You're so young. You look great. Oh, I was, I was saying to Kaya that, like, and to my daughters that, like, there are two places that affect me the way like a Faraday cage affects our phones. Yeah, those are Sephora and the Container Store. I walk into those places and I cannot.

[Chris Ryan]

Sephora is truly a language of its own. The aisles are narrow. The stuff seems to be laid out completely randomly. And then the line for Sephora, now that it is so big with like, preteens and the TikTok generation, everybody. And we're going to talk about the TikTok generation.

[Andy Greenwald]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

They. I'm just like, where do you guys. How is this now? Like a 60 person line that starts over in the, like the left hand, like, Augustus Bedeure section? Like, I don't listen to you.

[Andy Greenwald]

You just have a secret life. I love it. How do you still have layers to unpeel? Like an onion. All I was going to say about the Kennedy assassination was for me, like, Charles McCary's great novel Tears of Autumn that you introduced me to as well. That's my JFK assassination.

[Chris Ryan]

That's how it went down.

[Andy Greenwald]

No, I actually have no opinion how it went down. I enjoy the feel. Fictional narrative. That seems reasonable.

[Chris Ryan]

That's where this comes from is.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's good enough.

[Chris Ryan]

Libra, American tabloid, Tears of Autumn. Those are the three big ones for me. And then obviously also Oliver Stone's jfk. But then I just really, you know, all the different, like, kind of tentacles that come out of it all. That's like the spider web of like the 1960s and early 70s and the CIA and the government and I don't know.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's your spider verse. That's right.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right.

[Andy Greenwald]

You go to Sephora too. How do you find the time?

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I don't go to Sephora. If we're walking by a Sephora and my wife is like, I need to stop in to Sephora. I'm like, I'll go. I don't care.

[Andy Greenwald]

Do you want to go with my older daughter? Because I think she needs to go.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know if I have the answers for her. So today we're going to talk about the Pit. In adolescence, I was curious on a broad level how it feels for you to be watching shows of this level of intensity. I think I fancy myself as something of an adrenaline junkie when it comes to my filmed content. But I was curious for you, Denzian of the midnight diner that you are, you know, just kind of like, I just like it's low and slow, just people talking. It's okay.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, I like my entertainment.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't need extra gunshot wounds.

[Andy Greenwald]

I like my entertainment the way I like my brisket is what you're saying.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I mean, how are you feeling? And also I think as we've been in severance country for the last two months basically and talked about Daredevil, talked about a bunch of different things. These are very realistic shows. These are very like of the moment shows.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, first of all, let me say that I like any, hopefully like any person in life, apparently I can change. And it's not just because, thanks to my almost 12 year old daughters, a suggestion of some toner and some moisturizer. It's not just because I now smell like Matcha. My upper face area. You forget that. Not like what, not even five weeks ago I was sitting in this chair saying, boy, I really did just watch six hours of American Primeval. Like there is something shifting within me.

[Chris Ryan]

And I got some amazing PDFs for you when you're ready to jump in the deep.

[Andy Greenwald]

I mean, is it nice to never, never settle? You know, like maybe I like something different. I think both of these shows are, are. I think, I think I over indexed in one direction. Okay. Like, I definitely think that on description, both of these shows I expected to have issues with or to struggle with and it's been absolutely the reverse. We can parse the details as to why that might be, but I have found like this experience we're getting to talk about, we're talking about adolescence in its entirety because I watched the whole thing since we last recorded 36 hours ago or whatever that was. And we are talking about tonight and if this goes up, Thursday's episode of the Pit. So we are going to be talking about two of, not just the most intense episodes of the year, but sure. But two of the very best episodes of the year that I imagine we'll be talking about. In December. So it's not just that. It's the adrenaline. It is the absolute craftsmanship. Craftsmanship and the absolute sterling quality of them. Also, let me just say that, you know this like, I had a. I had a really busy. I had a long day yesterday, pulled in a lot of directions, and the last thing on my, on my list to tick off was the Pit. And I had to watch it in a way that I do not recommend watching show, which is after putting one's children to bed when one is already feeling a little bit sleepy. Yeah, this was the antidote to that. Like, to know that what I was going to watch was going to be so viscerally thrilling and engaging that there would be not only no threat of sleep, no threat of second screen, no threat of distraction like to be dialed in. Is that, I mean, in the dumbest possible way, a cheat code for the glut of television opportunities and television choices that we have right now? The cheat code might be make really, really riveting shit and we'll pay attention. Now, that can result in some bad work, but it's not a bad zag considering how ponderous a lot of the other prestige television these days can be.

[Chris Ryan]

I have enjoyed. I mean, relative to the world of the Pit, the mundane episodes of the Pit, the episodes of the Pit that are just kind of like. We're kind of trying to get through this hour. Here's some interpersonal dynamics between the doctors. This was obviously the beginning of an.

[Andy Greenwald]

Can I stop you quickly?

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Andy Greenwald]

Only because. I'm sorry, I was just picturing some of our listeners like that meme where the guy is sweating with his finger hovering over two buttons because we have not officially declared which show we're talking about.

[Chris Ryan]

I think we're going to talk about the Pit first.

[Andy Greenwald]

We're going to talk about the Pit.

[Chris Ryan]

First, and then we'll talk about the entirety of adolescence. So there's spoilers now going forward for the most recent episode of the Pit that's coming out on Thursday night. If you don't, if you haven't watched the Pit yet, or if you haven't watched this episode yet, feel free to skip to our spoilers conversation about adolescence, which we will talk about how it seems like most people have watched because it has become a huge sensation.

[Andy Greenwald]

I also, this is part of my efforts to change, to not only become someone who has more bloodlust in his television viewing, but I also have decided that the lane for me in this podcast going forward, because you're the crowd favorite, is that I can be just the servicey guy, you know what I mean?

[Chris Ryan]

You're just going to set me up?

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm just going to just. Yes, I'm the other guy.

[Chris Ryan]

Bobby Hurley, just bounce pass.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm the other guy on the beach volleyball team.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, you know, honestly, I think we could probably diagram a bunch of sequences or moments in the pit from this episode. As close watchers of the show would know, Pitfest has loomed in the background. It felt like they kept mentioning this, they kept mentioning, oh, Pitfest. Jake's going to Pit Fest. Are you going to Pitfest? Pitfest is today. And look, I mean, if you've been around the block a couple of times with television, they don't throw out details and color and Slice of Life notes more than once unless it's gonna matter. And so I think that there are two major sort of things coming to ahead here. One is they have a mass casualty event. This is a, you know, putting the emergency room to the absolute test. And I think also when you watch this episode, bringing out the absolute best in these people and you kind of see why they are. These people who do this in real life are truly like guardians of a, of a. Of society. And our most like, crippling moments, like these people are here to try and keep us alive. And also, you know, perhaps this show at its best, where all of the, you know, the, the kinetic energy that comes along with being in that emergency room actually has a event that puts that energy to the test. And one of the things that I think is interesting to hear you note, oh, I watched this right before bed, is because this show is so, I don't know, confrontational about what it is about. It is saying like, this is what happens when this person comes in. These are. This is how long these people have to wait in the waiting rooms. This is these doctors learning on the job when something truly adrenalizing comes, comes along like a mass casualty event. I actually felt absolutely riveted. But not, not. I was calm. You know what I mean? I was calm watching the show. I was calm watching them zip around to different hospital beds. And I couldn't quite put my finger on why it went by in a blink of an eye. This is a 40 minute episode. I think the next episode will probably be something of a part B to it.

[Andy Greenwald]

An excruciating cut to black.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

The kind we are not really used to anymore in the streaming era. Yeah, like there was no ending point. The episode just stopped. And there's more to come.

[Chris Ryan]

Very well directed by Amanda Marsalis. I was just going to point out and kind of, if you spent the first, gosh, I guess, what is it to 12 episodes? What are we on episode 13 now about that kind of living in these people's insecurities and anxieties and frustrations, really. Iron sharpens iron in this episode with these characters where Dr. Robbie, the Sean Hadassey character who comes back from the first.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's Dr. Just googled, apparently. It's hatosi.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, hatosi, I'm sorry. Dr. Abbott comes back. We'd seen him in the morning. He's sort of running. He and Dr. Rabi are running the emergency room as casualties come in from this mass shooting event and give me just sort of like the 10,000 foot view of what you thought of the episode.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, I'll start where we left off last week, which is the overall Jenga tower construction of this season is just stunning. And I said this last week, I'll say it again. There is a level of confidence in building something that can achieve this height in the sense that they were building it from scratch. Now, the legal teams of Michael Crichton's estate and Warner Brothers suggested they're building it on some very well established foundations. But regardless, when you put a character like Sean Hatosi's character in the opening moments of the first episode, you are doing what they did in many more subtle ways throughout the course of the season. You are laying down a marker for something that it's going to be meaningful, that it's going to be significant, that we're going to remember this face, that this person is going to matter, that when he shows up, we are going, when he shows up 12 hours later, essentially we are going to feel the same sense of welcome and relief that Robbie does. Robbie feels in that moment. That's very hard to do. That's a confidence game that's betting on yourselves as creators and betting on the machinery that you've built to construct a show like this. And it's betting on the audience's engagement. To feel it pay off in real time is wild. It's also truly insane.

[Chris Ryan]

It's also kind of. It's really good casting. Cause Sean Otosi is the first person we see really in this show, right? One of the first people.

[Andy Greenwald]

And he's a recognizable face.

[Chris Ryan]

And he's a recognizable face. So when he comes back in, you're like, it's him.

[Andy Greenwald]

But what about the fact that this show then brings in a couple other people who are like, oh, from the night shift. Or you're gonna be doing triage and I'm. Yeah. Hi. Hi. I love you. Hi. I'm like, I am like a puppy at an adoption event. As people walk through, I'm just so, so excited for the world to get bigger and to meet new people that I can trust and come to rely on. The other thing is that is so wild about this is, as I was alluding to before the logline, the pitch for this series was it's gonna be intense. Right. And so over the course of the first 10 hours, you mentioned it, there have been quieter moments, softer moments, funny moments, human moments, but it has been a really relentless, high tempo drumbeat of intense.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. There's never a break for them.

[Andy Greenwald]

What is wild is to learn that all of that was essentially batting cages compared to what is possible in terms of an event, in terms of the type of medicine that they can and are sometimes forced to do. This is a very, very, like, probably inappropriate analogy, but there was a feeling, again, not in terms of the humanity of what's on screen, but like, remember all the days and weeks and months we've lost to playing Tetris, like on Nintendo 64, where you're like, this game starts slow, but give me an hour.

[Chris Ryan]

Nintendo 64 must be nice.

[Andy Greenwald]

I want to date it out here. See, no, that does. That's not. How would I do? Do I do that to you? No, I just think it's funny. I think I get it. I think I'm a little more subtle when you're like, I had dinner at 7pm His Majesty dines in darkness. Must be nice. All right. No, we'll find it anyway. And then it gets really, really fast and you're like, somehow I'm still playing the same game, but it's incredibly. It's that much harder. That was the rhythm. That was what? The tempo. That was the tempo shift in this episode. It was. I was so in it that it feels almost like churlish to be like. And then I was trying to watch the way the machinery was working. But you do think about how much this is a teaching hospital, as they often say. Think about how much teaching happened Even within the 40 minutes of this episode to get all of us on board.

[Chris Ryan]

And it's teaching the audience as well.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's what I mean. Like the prep. The like, hey, everyone, this is about to happen. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's what we're going to have to be. And you feel the tension and you see the varying reactions from Dr. King being quite concerned and quite nervous to my guy, Johnny Triage, who's just enjoying his Dunkachino and asking for Thanksgiving off. People process trauma in different ways, but all that is being explained to us and then it is anticipating our audience questions and concerns and confusion in a way that never feels manipulated. Like, wait, this is an emergency room? And we've spent 10 episodes being like, wow, they're understaffed. And what's going on in the waiting room? Not only do we get the administrator, Gloria, suddenly we see a different side of her.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Andy Greenwald]

Which is great for the actor as well, because that was pretty thankless. But we also have the scenes of like, okay, the entire waiting room has to clear out now. And the guy's like, this is an emergency room. Where do we go? There has to be somewhere else for them to go. The amount of thinking and planning and I would imagine the email box that only you have access to is full of other, you know, welcome to medical professionals.

[Chris Ryan]

We do here.

[Andy Greenwald]

Must be nice people saying, again, everybody's.

[Chris Ryan]

Very complimentary towards you in the emails.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Only in the emails. That's my cousin on the boards. He don't like you very much.

[Chris Ryan]

I think you're great.

[Andy Greenwald]

Anyway, it ticked off every question we might have in anticipation of asking it before the deluge hit.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. Everything that happens in this episode is very much like it's the showing, not telling. They've done a lot of telling in this season of television. I think if you were gonna make any critiques of the pit, there will be moments where they're like, well, did you know that violence against medical practitioners is X percentage higher than you know? And you're like, yes, that's an incredibly important thing to know. And it's plain spoken and told directly to me, but it also feels like a pop up video bubble sometimes. This time it's all happening within the action. So, you know, you have. I, I, when I watched this, I was like, I'm watching heroism. I'm watching superheroes. Basically. These are people who are fashioning tubes and medical equipment out of basically like leftover pieces of other medical equipment. They're running short on blood, so Mel donates blood. You know, like they are doing things at a level of, of self sacrifice and diligence.

[Andy Greenwald]

And they are using the same device that I used to play Wordle to discover a bruised liver bleed.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. Yeah. And while all this is happening, there's some TV stuff happening. First of all, as everybody will be excited to see or shocked to see Langdon Comes back just hours after being dismissed by Robbie after being discovered to have been stealing drugs from the pharmacy.

[Andy Greenwald]

Can I make one small note? Yeah. This is a little bit of a petty nitpick, but I know that he did spend those hours frantically calling the desk and calling Robbie directly, I assume, begging to have his job back or explain himself.

[Chris Ryan]

Explain himself.

[Andy Greenwald]

It does appear that he also spent some of that time getting a haircut. Like, I think he was calling Robbie from the barber's chair.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think it was like, when Robbie fires him, he's like, this is actually good for me, because I can get in at 415.

[Andy Greenwald]

And he's like, Claudio said he had a 415, and I can't. He did get a little bit. A little bit higher.

[Chris Ryan]

Fade. His return, I think, is supposed to speak to the absolutely catastrophic nature of what's happening, that they would allow, that Robbie wouldn't be like, I can't even have. I. You know, I can't have you in this emergency room no matter what.

[Andy Greenwald]

But everything that Robbie does speaks to everything, is complementary in terms of what his point of view is in terms of what his needs are and how he is organizing things. Because when he says to Dr. King in a moment like this, we do not have time to do blood screenings and tests for HIV or whatever, like, we need to get blood.

[Chris Ryan]

And the reward, I waste the risk.

[Andy Greenwald]

And so that is. I assume there is some relational.

[Chris Ryan]

It is. I was surprised to see Langdon. I guess it's a very interesting character trait. But, like, you know, at first starts out and he's just like, I'm just here to work bodies. But then starts throwing around the cat. The classic Langdon. Like, what are you doing? Hey. Like.

[Andy Greenwald]

Or he's like, you're. You. You kids are doing great.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Well, after. At first, I think Santos thinks he's gonna come over and throw a fastball. Like, you know, and he's like, no, no, no. You guys are doing great.

[Andy Greenwald]

Do you have any sense? Do we have any sense? Are we meant to have any sense of the lineup for Pitfest 2025? Like, what sort of festival it is? I did Google it. I will show you that. The only Pitfest that I'm aware of happens in the Netherlands and features Cradle of Filth and Tribulation. So I don't think Misery Index played.

[Chris Ryan]

I wasn't getting a Cradle of Filth vibe. Is Jell playing Pitfest.

[Andy Greenwald]

Jell is playing Pitfest.

[Chris Ryan]

But this isn't in Pittsburgh, is it?

[Andy Greenwald]

No, this is in the Netherlands.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying because I like Jell.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, maybe you should go and get back to us. There also is a Ramones tribute band. Anyway, I feel like it was like.

[Chris Ryan]

A Chainsmokers Y kind of like fun dance pop kind of thing.

[Andy Greenwald]

I also had the sense that it was the biggest event in Pittsburgh because it did have a wide swath of attendees, both in terms of age and background.

[Chris Ryan]

So the other TV thing that's happening here, not even TV thing, but it is something that they have seeded throughout this season is this idea that David, the disaffected incel teenager.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Who is had originally been in the hospital with his mother. His mother had forced herself to get sick so that David would come in and perhaps she could get him some psychiatric help or whatever. He has disappeared earlier in the season, ran off. Dr. McKay has long been sort of banging the drum that they should get some cops to pick him up because he has thrown up a list of people that it would appear that he is is looking to kill. They have now indicated that his cell phone had been pinged near the pit fest. There is something about the way this is kind of all culminating. I still wonder whether or not like there's another shoe to drop or something where it's like it's going to zag. But maybe I'm wrong and maybe David is the shooter and this is like a terrible tragedy and it's going to define Robbie going forward on this show. That he was like, I don't want to ruin this kid's life by calling.

[Andy Greenwald]

The police in this show has won my trust so completely that I'm here and I'm waiting to see. If I were to turn off that part of my brain briefly, I would say that I hope that it's not. It does feel a little, you know, the basis for shows like this are that ner and in this case this ER is a window into and a perfect functioning microcosm of society and everyone passes through its doors and everything happens here today, literally on the show on one day that is of significance to the world, to the society, to the city and for the viewing audience. This the sense that Robbie's worst day would spiral to this level, that he can't fix everything. I get that on a character and thematic and a whiteboard in August when you're sitting down to sit out a season goals. That makes sense to me. I think it's almost too tiny town for the purposes of belief. But again, everything else about the show has been, as we've been told, incredibly Accurate. So I'm willing to accept some dramatic swings for the purposes of furthering the story and furthering the development of these characters. It also does. They're so savvy about so many things, just on a. Like, on a meat and potatoes level, that a misdirect feels equally likely. I mean, maybe it's Doug. Maybe. Maybe Doug punched Dana and then got angrier.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know, I mean that it could still be related to the emergency room, but not necessarily the kid. I think it has been established and reinforced this episode that the hospital is also near Pitfest. So pinging near it. Who knows how accurate that might be? But I could be wrong. It could have been. We called it on episode two, and it has not taken away from our enjoyment of the show.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, I would also say that one of the things that was interesting about this episode, where essentially every frame of the 40 minutes is made up of bleeding bodies, is that the rest of the season, the previous 10 episodes, or however many, trained me to be ready for this, because there was. I mean, also, I guess through the speed, the sheer speed through which they're moving through this. But I felt like I was gripped by it. Whereas there have been a couple of procedures this year where I'm like, okay, didn't need to see that. That didn't need to see De. Braiding, Debriding.

[Andy Greenwald]

Keep going.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, well, you're not going to help.

[Andy Greenwald]

As a girl, dad. Braiding is something. That's also what happened.

[Chris Ryan]

There was, like, a skin thing earlier in the year, and I was like.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, the lady on the subway tracks.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right.

[Andy Greenwald]

Um.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, right. That was. She was batter up first. So that was really my takeaways. You know, I did not think the cliffhanger, to the extent that it is one, was manipulative. I'm very excited, obviously, to find out where this is all going.

[Andy Greenwald]

In the fate of Jake.

[Chris Ryan]

I wonder how long Collins is going to operate in a total media blackout at her house.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes. I mean, in my experience. Which is completely different about the Kennedy files.

[Chris Ryan]

That's right.

[Andy Greenwald]

Just in a way, I've just been turning my phone off and taking a bath for months now. No, in my completely different experience, whenever someone has been like, you know what? Take it easy. I have 100% never done that.

[Chris Ryan]

No.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know, so I also.

[Chris Ryan]

That's when you open up your Facebook newsfeed. That's at the bottom of it.

[Andy Greenwald]

Ooh, just hook it up. Just. Just pull out my arm and do the reverse.

[Chris Ryan]

Dr. King, what's going on comicbookmovies.net.

[Andy Greenwald]

They have some pretty wild theories for Avengers Doomsday that I have not really read you in on yet. Yeah, but I'm across them. I'm across these theories. Did you feel in terms of finding a moment to pause and focus on other storylines? I thought that the Chad crutching his way into the ER was actually pretty effective.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Cause it's like, I think that's the first time he's ever really seen his wife do what she does.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And also, she is a boss.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know, again, like, the one tiny nitpick area where the show sometimes has gotten its dials a little bit off has been, I think, like, sometimes patients come in and they have to be at a certain setting to communicate what their function on the show is in the brief amount of time. So Chad was like. Chad's like, I'm a dickhead all the time. That's what I do. You know what I mean? And so when he was crutching his way, though, he's like, no, but, like, you know, but. But. But he kind of was. He kind of was in his.

[Chris Ryan]

And when he was like, I mean, he sounds like he's a good dad.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, I'm trying to help your man Chad, by the way. Justice for Chad. You're like the guy in the hardware store in episode four of Adolescence. Geez, you're on the wrong side of history, pal. Anyway, all I want to say is that scene. Because of how aggro he was in his previous iterations on the show, I did think that the show was going to just divert resources and attention to have him be like, come on, son. Come on, Harrison. Oh.

[Chris Ryan]

And then it's like a panic about, where's Harrison?

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, I'm taking you out of here in the middle of this too much for him to be humbled and stunned and just sit down to watch a movie. Because that's really all he needed to do at that moment.

[Chris Ryan]

He's like, the movie. The kid's been sitting in there for a while.

[Andy Greenwald]

I thought the one line that they. Maybe they left in the cutting room floor was, should we watch a movie? And kid's like, yeah. And Chad would have said something scary. You see what I mean? Because it's like, inside of Harrison, there are two wolves.

[Chris Ryan]

Dr. McKay and Chad.

[Andy Greenwald]

Dr. McKay and this dickhead.

[Chris Ryan]

I would definitely be more like Chad. I would be like, first of all, we're watching Blair Witch, so let's turn the lights out.

[Andy Greenwald]

No, you'd be like, you got contagion on that bad boy. That's fired up. Fired up, ready to go. When you watch movies on the iPad, you do Obama invitations. Did you know that?

[Chris Ryan]

Are you fired up?

[Andy Greenwald]

Barry didn't release those files.

[Chris Ryan]

He didn't. He didn't. You got so sad. But there was also like, I think there was like a time and Trump fucking tried to release him once and he was like, actually, it's all redacted.

[Andy Greenwald]

No, the deep state stopped him.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I think he stopped himself. I think he's an idiot.

[Andy Greenwald]

You think, Whoa, first of all, whoa. How dare you, sir, make this political. You think that his better angels took hold? What are you saying right now?

[Chris Ryan]

That's not what I said. I think he promises stuff and he's like, you're going to see on Friday I do this. And then he's like, no, that was.

[Andy Greenwald]

Like when you said you would watch a Miyazaki movie.

[Chris Ryan]

But I watched Pork Porco Rosso.

[Andy Greenwald]

First of all, you glanced at it over a three year old shoulder.

[Chris Ryan]

Just, yeah, I'm trying to get you.

[Andy Greenwald]

To watch the one that's about dudes who love two things in this broken airplanes and smoking darts.

[Chris Ryan]

But isn't that what Porco Rosso is about?

[Andy Greenwald]

That's what they're all about. But there's one specifically that doesn't have any talk in animals. Wind rises and just about a guy who loves a lady with tuberculosis but also loves smoking.

[Chris Ryan]

Does she like smoking? Because that's bad for tv.

[Andy Greenwald]

It's a tough map, but now you're seeing the. You see the contours of the story.

[Chris Ryan]

All right, I guess I know what I'm watching sometimes.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know what I'm watching? Next week's episode of the Pit on the Warner Brothers screener site. Moving on.

[Chris Ryan]

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[Andy Greenwald]

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[Chris Ryan]

We can move on because obviously like I we have been talking about this show. I I've, I've sometimes wondered whether or not it warrants a week to week kind of convers conversation, but I just keep wanting to tip my cap to it. We've only got I think three episodes left. Four episodes left.

[Andy Greenwald]

I I don't want. I mean, we should tip our caps to it. It has been interesting to cover on a weekly basis because it's longer and because, as we said, some episodes, they're. They're. They're scratching an itch. They haven't necessarily all been bravura. Tours of tours of tours de force. Like, I don't know. I don't know. Attorneys general, doesn't matter. This machine, this podcast machine, really was built to be, like, for the next 10 weeks, we're gonna have 10 distinct interesting things to say about one show. Yeah. I don't know if we do that or not.

[Chris Ryan]

I'll say, though, it's been a pleasure talking with you about this, because it's.

[Andy Greenwald]

Been a pleasure talking to you.

[Chris Ryan]

I feel like it's like, we do a lot of starting. I watch a lot of first episodes now.

[Andy Greenwald]

There's so many.

[Chris Ryan]

It's really nice to be in the flow with a bunch of shows right now.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, I agree. And particularly this kind of show, I just. I just love it. And I think that. I don't think it's just a we do this for a living kind of. Not jadedness, but, like, that affects our. We are enjoying the. The delivery method and the style of the show as much as the show itself. But I do. I don't think that's just a podcaster problem. I do. Just from doing my Thomas Friedman back of the cab reporting with people.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it's the second time you've mentioned Thomas Friedman in at least, like, maybe three.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's why.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Andy Greenwald]

He's the new Doug from Tidal in.

[Chris Ryan]

The sense of, like, Thomas Friedman back of the cab reporting.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay. You.

[Andy Greenwald]

Why would you explain this to you.

[Chris Ryan]

I know that. I know. It's just like he's. That is such a specific.

[Andy Greenwald]

Oh, I'm sorry. Is this no longer a safe space for specific references that only we get? We've been getting paychecks for dropping them for over a decade.

[Chris Ryan]

You get paid for this.

[Andy Greenwald]

That's. How. Do you know how many people in my life have asked me that I.

[Chris Ryan]

Got paid to be on rewatchables? This is.

[Andy Greenwald]

This is Make a Wish foundation shit for me.

[Chris Ryan]

This doesn't even get published.

[Andy Greenwald]

Wouldn't surprise me. Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I'm sorry.

[Andy Greenwald]

For those who don't. For those who haven't been reading the Gray lady for as long as we have. Thomas Friedman would write these columns where he'd be, like, in the back of a taxi in Bangalore. I spoke to my driver about globalization. That's Kind of what I did.

[Chris Ryan]

Diner in Trump country in an Uber. They're having second thoughts, like, on the way, at least they got the JFK files.

[Andy Greenwald]

They're just pouring over them in the diner. They don't even order pancakes anymore. I think that the Pit and the style of show that it is really is resonating. I think it's resonating in the industry, too, in the sense that, like, even talking to people, executives like, well, we're. What the. What are you watching? Or what are you excited about? This is the show that people are talking about.

[Chris Ryan]

The other show that people are talking about is adolescence. So I was listening to Joe and Rob talk about it today on the procedure yesterday on the Prestige TV podcast. I think today. I can't remember when it went up. Joan are doing incredible Herculean work right now because they're doing severance, White Lotus Theories. And then they dropped an adolescence episode. We talked about about it on Monday's pod, and specifically about the first episode. But broadly, I wanted to just throw out that in the beginning of Joe's pod, she was talking. Joan Rob's pod, she was talking about talking to a friend who had referred to this as the. The next baby reindeer in terms of its sensation. And Joe rightly said, like, I think adolescence is better than baby reindeer. And in some ways it's. It's not insulting to baby reindeer. But I. I think I'm inferring that that's what I think.

[Andy Greenwald]

Insulting.

[Chris Ryan]

Insulting to adolescents to be like the new baby reindeer.

[Andy Greenwald]

I agree.

[Chris Ryan]

It did something like 24 and a half million views over its first week of release or first weekend of release. It was just behind the Electric State on Netflix's.

[Andy Greenwald]

You. You put a bullet in that one.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I. It is kind of crazy that that is like, the extremes you can swing on. Netflix is like the $320 million Turkey and this very special piece of television that I'm gonna think about for years to come. Yeah. I have had in recent months, like, kind of this experience where, like, I think because of the volume of stuff that I work on, I'm like, I sometimes just forget, like, character names or I forget, like, oh, and then that happened. And I. I feel like this show is, like, seared into my mind, you know, and it's. It's really cool to see it take off like this because I think I'll just share a conversation I had with Van Lathan yesterday, who called me after he'd finished it and was just kind of shaken up, but also really wanted to talk about it. And he mentioned that one of the only ways, you know, he, he and I agreed that you can kind of hope for a better world. One of the ways you kind of can strive to have a better world or cure some of the things that. That are making us, like, collectively as a society sick is to, like, translate that through art, that art is a great way. And like, I think some people might hear that and think, oh, you mean, like, it's. It's not simply about casting. It's not simply about, like, it's about the stories you choose to tell and the way you choose to tell them and how we're navigating a very, very dark time for everybody through art. And it's been really cool to see people respond to this, to be like, I need to know more about these things that adolescence is about, but also be able to just relate to it as, what an astonishing story told in an astonishing way with so much dignity and so much respect for the material.

[Andy Greenwald]

There is nothing wrong with escapism, particularly in a very, very dark, very uncertain, very scary time. And it is not our place or anyone's place to judge the choices that people make when they actually get time for themselves in a broken world. Writ large, though, I do think it's possible to make the argument that escapism as the goal of mass market entertainment has gone a little far and is over, has overcorrected in that direction. That the. What we look for, or what corporations feel is worthy of $300 million, let's say, are increasingly hermetically sealed escape pods in which to lose yourself for a few hours, or to be pumped full of hopium and, you know, slow core covers of 80s songs, or that following passions, whether they're aesthetic or emotional down personal rabbit holes, is always the most important thing to be doing. What I find so striking and what I find particularly jarring, like shaking in a good way about a moment where we were talking about the pit, and particularly about adolescence, is that adolescence is in particular is absolutely a work of very high art in terms of its writing, in terms of its acting, its filmmaking, its dedication to craft. But it is entirely unafraid of engaging with the world as it is. It is entirely open minded and curious. And it is a show made by people and performers who are listeners first and foremost and not talkers. Um, you can tell. And this we can talk about the whole series. I devoured it after, after, after having watched the first episode. And, you know, I feel, even just two days later, a little bit silly about some of the feelings that I expressed about the first episode, only because I still didn't fully understand the project. I didn't know how much time would pass between episodes or where the camera would choose to spend its hour for the four hours that it had.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, you could watch the first episode and be like, oh, it's gonna be like this. It's gonna be. It's law and Order, the detectives, the lawyers, the kid, the parents. You know, it's gonna maybe even be set at this station.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know, it's so much more empathetic. It's so much more curious. It's so much more ambitious in a lot of ways than I had anticipated. And I do wanna talk specifically about some moments in the episodes. I wanna talk specifically about how the third episode. We should probably do our episode of the year episode now, because I can't imagine anything topping that. But the moment that I do want to hit briefly as to why I think this is just on a different tier than most of the stuff we engage with is what I was joking about at the start, which is there's a van ride in the fourth episode where we've already had some pretty strong emotions. Blood running hot.

[Chris Ryan]

We can do spoilers. So, like, the family, the remaining family of Jaime's family. So his father, his mother and his sister.

[Andy Greenwald]

It's Eddie's 50th birthday and the day has started promisingly and then been radically redirected with some insulting graffiti. What appears to be permanently sprayed in his van. They cannot get rid of the stain. The metaphor is quite strong. And he. Instead of having the. The full English breakfast heart attack that his wife is lovingly preparing for him, he makes everyone get in the van with him to drive essentially to Home Depot to get something to wash the van. And Stephen Graham's performance, Wainwright's. Related to Adam, I imagine, his family business. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Opened a series of hardware stores in Yorkshire.

[Andy Greenwald]

He did. Yadir Molina was like, what are you doing to his battery, mate?

[Chris Ryan]

He's like, no, that is a great cut.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm seeing the vision.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

These people need to get their paints. Anyway, the van ride, because the show is a oner. Like, we go the whole way with them and I. Presumably, he's driving the van. His performance is one for the ages of the.

[Chris Ryan]

That was apparently the hardest one they shot, was the one that would produce the most technical complications because of the driving. Because I think it was like, we can only do this so many times.

[Andy Greenwald]

And, you know, because they had to shut down multiple places to have it anyway. In that van, you see. I mean, God, what a performance. You see him.

[Chris Ryan]

Their life stories are told there, and.

[Andy Greenwald]

You see it, but you also see him doing what everyone has to do at some point in their lives, often a lot, which is grab the wheel of yourself and really try and turn it, you know, against fate and circumstance and emotion, and just try. And he's trying to be present. He's saying, like, let's just do something. Let's climb a hill. Let's go ice skating. Then they go to the pictures, and then all of a sudden they're talking about high school dance and they're laughing and they're in love. And the daughter's performance. I'll call up these people's names so we can call them out. Is so beautiful and present because she's radiating absolute embarrassment, but also love that she's just in the midst of the show, finds time for that. The show considers life. The show, in its four hours, considers life, the totality of life, more than many shows do in multiple seasons. And I found that so moving and so riveting to watch. It was just the absolute best expression, like, on a microscopic level, of the. It's the casual thing, that anecdote that we talk about when we've talked about the Leftovers or I probably wrote about back in the day, or that Damon Lindelof said when he was on the podcast years ago that the difference between season one of the Leftovers and season two is that he remembered people laugh at funerals. And it unlocks. This isn't a show about death. This is a show about life. And life can sometimes be fucking awful in ways that I think many of the viewers aren't even prepared to understand or accept. But the show contains all of it, and I can't get over it.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a moment in that I keep thinking about how they must have made this show. Obviously, a lot of it probably derived from really intense research. I saw an interview with Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, who wrote the series, where they were talking about how Owen Cooper, who plays Jamie, would help them with the dialogue because he would say, that's not exactly how like, a teenager now would say it. And they would be like, tell us, like, you're. You're a teen. You know, if this isn't his first job, it's one of his first jobs. I was astonished to find out that the third episode was the first one that they shot. So that that is essentially like Owen Cooper coming in. And that's his rookie season right there. But the sophistication of the writing is something I wanted to hit on with you a little bit because I think that there are ideas that are echoed throughout the series very subtly and never at the expense of never at the expense of what is actually on screen distracting and being like, okay, we're gonna take a detour so that we can have, if anything, maybe the second episode does a little bit of this, but does a little bit of that. But for the most part, one of the ideas that I really kept coming back to was something that Faye Marseille's detective character Misha says in the second episode where she said. She said all kids really need is one thing that makes them feel good about themselves. And she's talking about a teacher that she had that was really important to her and kind of saved her when she was in a school, much like the one that Jamie was in. And, you know, you think about in the fourth episode, I hope you don't mind if we just jump around. I know we need to do episode by episode breakdowns. But in the fourth episode, when Amanda and Eddie, the parents are kind of reckoning with whether they could have done anything differently and why Jamie turned out the way he did. And they're kind of going through this list of things that Jamie wasn't good at.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yep. The different phases, the different versions of.

[Chris Ryan]

Himself kind of picked up drawing.

[Andy Greenwald]

And he was good at that, and.

[Chris Ryan]

He was good at that. But then the thing that he was good at or the thing where he found himself was what is apparently the worst possible place for a kid that age to be, which is the Internet, you know, and he got a computer and he holed up in there. And the description that she has of walking by his room at 1am and hearing or seeing the computer light still on.

[Andy Greenwald]

Let's say Christine Trimarco and her performance in 4 is. I mean, Aaron Dougherty and Steven Gray, they're gonna get the headlines. But I think her performance in four is really interested.

[Chris Ryan]

Graham and Trimarco have known each other and grew up in Liverpool. Like, there coupled them in. This show kind of mirrors their biography. Although Hannah Walters is actually Steven Graham's partner and she appears briefly in two as the counselor with Jade talking to Jade. And she can also be seen in A Thousand Bl. And she. She was part of the creative team behind A Thousand Blows.

[Andy Greenwald]

So I didn't want to. I didn't want to cut you off. You were talking about that moment when the mother talks about going by the room with the light off.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And just the idea that I think this show does a really good job of being like, you know, life is. Is a kind of a roulette wheel, and that you need to be. You need to have, like, one person recognize your. Your goodness and also your kind of, like, your value and give you dignity and give you a sense of, like, okay, I can do something on this planet.

[Andy Greenwald]

There's so much in that. There is. The show holds space, if you'll excuse the modern parlance, for a lot of possibilities, and the fourth episode really brings a lot of that home. Lisa is the daughter's name, and her name, Amelie Peace is the actress. She's amazing in it. I think, in a very subtle way. There is a strong implication that Lysa is just okay. That she has turned out okay with many of the same circumstances.

[Chris Ryan]

She's in college, she has a boyfriend, I think.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, but that, you know. And there's a very crucial line near the end of the episode where he said, what did we do differently to make that. And we didn't do anything differently. So I do think that what the show does, again, it's holding two things in its mind or in its creative brain at the same time, that nature and nurture are sometimes ineffable and unknowable and untrackable, and you can't overcorrect for anything. That said, the nurture part becomes crucial because you were saying that he found maybe the thing that he was good at. I would argue that the communication there is that he was doing things and then he quit because the computer or social media or phones is the illusion of doing things. It's the illusion of value. It's the illusion of connection. It's the illusion of purpose, and it eats people out from the inside.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, there's. There's so much stuff there to. Even. Even that conversation where he. In the fourth episode where Eddie is talking about. He's like, my father used to beat the shit out of me, and I was never gonna be the better. And I don't think he's like, what I needed to do was be harder and hit Eddie or hit Jamie. But you can see him kind of grappling with the idea that maybe the. Whether it was being permissive or whether it was the fact that they were busy with their own lives and trying to make a living, to try and keep the household running, that they thought he was safe because he was home.

[Andy Greenwald]

That is a bedrock thing here. But there's also a really, and I think this is so hard to do. And not many shows do it. Even shows that have the best intentions or have the creators who have done the most therapy. But all of us are just collections of our past, our traumas, our histories, and our best intentions. And that scene in the bedroom is so crucial and not a moment too long. It's beautifully played. Because the takeaway is he did do his best, considering. Not only considering where he came from, but what he tried to do, what he attempted to connect over. And one of the most searing things that I won't forget from the show is, and this is true, I think, in our lives too, nobody. Every moment is important to everyone. The sense that, oh, I didn't even realize that this person in my life was upset at X moment, or that that would have sent them spiraling. If you're present and you're paying attention, you know. And so when Jamie's meltdown in three, which really just comes down to the most searing thing anyone can ask anyone, let alone a child to an adult, which is like, do you like me? That the moment that he shared, even after saying he didn't wanna talk about his father, was that he'll never forget his father turning his face away.

[Chris Ryan]

His father then tells the same story. He was like, I was ashamed of him. Like, I turned away from him.

[Andy Greenwald]

They both would never forget that moment, but neither would talk about it. And that breakdown of communication is as essential as the breakdown in communication between the genders in a junior high. Do you know what I mean? Like, that was a significant moment. But we men, people, anyone, don't talk about that stuff.

[Chris Ryan]

One of the things I thought was fascinating was every character, with the exception of Jamie is. And his little shit friends. Every character, with the exception of, like, some of those kids, is essentially asking the same question, which is, why would somebody do this? And that was the motivating factor for Stephen Graham to get involved with this project in the first place. He had read about a series of knife crimes in England and was just like, why is this happening? Why? Why are kids this young turning to such extreme violence? And I think Jack Thorne also brought the element of toxic online discourse and the manosphere and Andrew Tate and all that stuff. But all these characters are asking why? And they're asking why in different ways. Ways. And they're asking why for different reasons. So in two, there are detectives who are searching for a reason why we have kind of like they've found themselves looking in a school for a young. For the reasons for a young child murdering another child.

[Andy Greenwald]

And looking for the weapon.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, and looking for the weapon. And. And kind of getting a little bit more versed in what the Internet commentary, the. The social media commentary, what emojis mean. Yeah. And then you get to three, and Aaron Doherty, Doherty's Briony character, is asking why, to some extent, but her responsibility is to ultimately, for the justice system and for the legal. Like, the process, his legal process. And she makes that clear to him multiple times, but especially explicitly and perhaps heartbreakingly in the very end of the episode where she just turns off, you know, she's there, she heard what she heard, and I think it breaks her heart, but she is like, this was our last session. I hope you. I hope you take advantage of the mental health services.

[Andy Greenwald]

Everyone's there, as the detective says, the DI says in the first episode. Everyone's just trying to do their best here.

[Chris Ryan]

And then you get to the fourth episode and it's the parents who are trying to figure out why, you know, what did we do that led to this? I want to talk to you a little bit about Three. You talked about it being likely the best episode, but did you want to.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, I do want to talk about three, and I want to talk about it in terms of just broadly. This is everything that I want in tv. This is, like, built on also such an incredible tradition, I think, especially in the uk, of theater, of kitchen sink drama, of actors being prepared to show up and do the work.

[Chris Ryan]

Also television made with an eye towards being for the public good, that it does a service to tell stories like this and to kind of show real life.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah. That said, there are level. There's levels of specificity and craftsmanship in the theme that I do want to call out before we get into some of the. More the other specifics of episode three. But it was in Three that I really noticed it. And I also want to caveat this by saying it is rich for two men of a certain age talking about a show created by essentially three men of a certain age. But I do want to. From my limited perspective, I was fascinated and really compelled by what the show did subtly about gender and the way that roles are rejected or assumed or played with throughout. I think that for as absolutely devastating as Aaron Doherty's performance is in the way that episode is shaped, I think that the presence of the security guard in that episode is as important as everything else. You know, I texted you the guy's name and I feel bad that I don't have Douglas Roberts. Douglas Roberts, yeah. Plays a guy named Victor who sort of helps her in. And is there, like. I'm watching. I'm always watching. And it could be a nothing part, but there are no nothing parts in theater or in a show like this. And he is sort of an affable Scotsman who is just maybe a little too friendly and maybe just a little. Stands a little too closely and comes up a little too near when she's looking at his screen and shares a little too much.

[Chris Ryan]

There's so much in their brief relationship. I was. I mean, I was thinking about how at some point, while he's kind of talking to her about. In one of her moments outside of the interview room, he's talking to her about, you know, do you. She says, I love my job.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And he's like, I fucking hate mine. And it was the idea that, like, she chose to be a child therapist. This was probably the job he could get.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And he's been stuck in it for.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know, and he's interested, but he's also resentful. And there's some of. There's a little flavor of toxicity to it.

[Chris Ryan]

He's talking about the body language book that he's been reading and he's standing a little too close to her. Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

And, you know, and some of that is echoed when Jamie is like, you're posh. And he talks about her body and she is basically. She is under the barrage of that all the time, we understand, but also, particularly in her workplace, and she has to put on different faces that only crack at the end. There are different. I think that tv, generally, when we talk about what is built episode to episode, or cumulatively, it's often in terms of plot, like, ah, this storyline or this scene was an important piece of plot armor or building block for where the season was going on. A show like this or in theater, nothing is wasted. Right. Everything has to be significant. That's why, I mean, it's a cliche now, but that's why we say, talk about Chekhov's gun. And I think that every moment of the show, every even minor interaction, is significant for understanding the psychological world that the show exists in, which is essentially our world. And so I was thinking about Victor and Briony's presence and their scene when we got a rare moment of only women on the screen in episode four, when Manda, who's Jaime's mother, is with Lysa and she's asking about her boyfriend and she's asking if she's fine, and her mother says, you know, is he taking care of you?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

And she means that from her generation's perspective in a, I think, loving way. And her daughter is like, I don't need to be taken care of. It's the same look on Jamie's face when Briony says, does your dad have any women friends?

[Chris Ryan]

He's like, no. He has mates.

[Andy Greenwald]

No. First she says, no, he loves my mom.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

He's just not. What? And there's a lurking second question that Briony doesn't ask in three that haunts me when he's asking. She's asking him, what would you do if you went on a date? Or what would you.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

And there's suddenly there's this emptiness there where you realize that whether it's his age, whether it's generational, whether it's because of the fucking Internet, the thought that he would take any emotional interest or personal interest or just like, let's have fun and be friends. Interest in a woman or a girl is impossible to conceive of. He was like, this is a means to an end in the end. Then she gets into in very anatomical details of what that end would be, and he lies about it.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

You know, there is the heavy curtain thrown over everything of the gendered relationships. Even in the Cops, when he's like, do you want children? That's not something you ask a co worker.

[Chris Ryan]

I think she says, you've never asked me that before.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, people aren't talking, people aren't asking. People aren't expressing themselves. And we just see the ripples, and they're not all knife attacks. You know, I think the totality of that. I'm still grappling with just how thoughtful every single detail in the show is.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, there's also. I mean, there are shades of a traditional cop show in this. You know, I think maybe even some hesitation you might have had coming out of one was, are we looking at, like, kind of a broad church situation where maybe that's not him on the video? Or, you know, like, this is a miscarriage of justice.

[Andy Greenwald]

Is the lawyer a main character now?

[Chris Ryan]

Is the lawyer a main character now? And I thought that was the most fascinating thing about three two, episode three as well, for me, was this was not. I mean, there's parts of that episode that remind me of Silence of the Lambs. You know, like, there's parts of it that are like Clarice interviewing Hannibal. And I don't mean that to say that, like, a character like Jamie is the same thing as this sort of supernaturally villainous, you know, but uncovering where people's responsibilities start and end. And her sort of being like, well, you know, maybe your father modeled poor life skills. Yeah. Masculinity. You then when she gets him to the point where he obviously is having a complete dissonance between what he actually did and what he thinks he's in trouble for.

[Andy Greenwald]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

Which is essentially like where she turns off the. Turns off the. Like the machine for herself. Because he's saying, I could have done all this other stuff. Yeah, but I only killed her. Killed her. And she's like, do you understand what death is? And I think everybody on the show, all the adults on this series, are horrified by the idea that there may be a generation of people who, because they are interacting with certain levels of information before their brains are fully formed, might not understand certain things. Like, that person's never coming back. You're going to jail for the rest of your life for what you did. You know, and he's in the beginning, he's like, I'm in this madhouse. These kids are screaming during Coronation street, like, you have to get me out of here.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, I don't belong here. Yeah, I don't belong here. Because I know these things, but not these other things.

[Chris Ryan]

But he's essentially having black outrage moments every 10 minutes. In that third episode.

[Andy Greenwald]

When he asks for another hot chocolate, you're like, this is a child. And something again, there's such a tendency in, I mean, especially American things to be honest, but maybe it's just where we are with most art, but to make things feel okay or make things feel a little bit better or to take the sting out of it. I mean, it's not a one to one, but it's the thing. I think you articulated really well on the big picture when you were talking about the Chewbacca problem being serious. It's a slightly different version of that. But the show holds space for the possibility that something is broken in Jamie, not just broken in society, which it definitely suggests. It doesn't run away from the ambiguity of not really ever knowing and that people are just going to be left weeping, unable to get their arms around any sense of truth or understanding. We're talking about it. I'm just. More and more little choices and details are uncovering in the two different teachers we encounter in episode two. There's the guy who's.

[Chris Ryan]

Mr. Malik.

[Andy Greenwald]

Mr. Malik, who's just like, this is. I'm a zookeeper, essentially, and what do you want from me? And then the other guy who's Adam's teacher, who has the demeanor of a drill sergeant, yes, these are extremes, but these are also, in some ways, you know, understandable reactions to impossible situations. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It's also just like, you know, you watch, like, those kids interact and you're just like, please tell me this is an exaggeration. When the kid is, like, throwing Adam up against the wall and is like, give me a pound twenty. And then the teacher's like, leave him alone. And he's like, you give me a £20. Then, like, I'm like, holy shit, what.

[Andy Greenwald]

Can you get with a £20 these days?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know.

[Andy Greenwald]

I mean, in my experience, not very much, but. What does Stephen Graham say? Can't even buy a pint with a fiver anymore.

[Chris Ryan]

That's true.

[Andy Greenwald]

That is true.

[Chris Ryan]

Talk to you a little bit about the. You know, we could go on and on. I wanted to talk to you just briefly about the filmmaking, because I think that some people are like, well, does it need to be this way? You know? And I. I resoundingly answer yes. I think even if I can't always make a case for this is why they needed to do this. I think there are some things that are just really cool, like going through the window, you know, in the chase, or, you know, the drone shot that.

[Andy Greenwald]

Lifts out of school and then lands.

[Chris Ryan]

There's some amazing flexes. I think that my. I just think a lot about where director Philip Barantino wants you to look. And sometimes it's his choice, as in three, where there will be long times.

[Andy Greenwald]

Where he's on Jamie, but he's always pushing. He's always pushing and pulling.

[Chris Ryan]

And then there will be points where Briony's talking, but we're watching Jamie listen, or Jamie's talking and we're watching Briony listen, which is usually the reverse of what you would do in a, you know, coverage. Then there are times, like the fourth episode of what is essentially like a 15 minute scene of them in the front of the van as they drive to the Home Depot, or the Wainwrights, where you're forced to look at all of the people in the scene at once. It's like essentially a master. Not only are you. It's like. It's not a fun driving scene where you're like, oh, I can see all this stuff in the back. You're right on their windshield. And it's like these two people are basically telling their daughter the story of their lives. The daughter is just like, I'm on my phone. I don't want to do this.

[Andy Greenwald]

But also, this is giving me life.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And then they reach this sort of ecstasy of playing aha. Reliving their own teenage years, their love.

[Andy Greenwald]

Thinking about the takeaway. They're not takeaway. They're gonna go to a trainer.

[Chris Ryan]

The second they walk into the store, it crashes. It crashes. But I think following everything gives you this sense of continuity that I think is very important to the show.

[Andy Greenwald]

It speaks to. I agree completely. It speaks to. I hope what I was trying to articulate before about life contains all of it. You cannot.

[Chris Ryan]

It's. Life is boring.

[Andy Greenwald]

Sometimes life is boring. Life is driving between places. Life is putting on a happy face. Life is smiling to your neighbor but actually calling her a cow. Yeah. Like, life is going. As Eddie's birthday goes from like, trying to have a quick one with your wife before your daughter wakes up enjoying breakfast to getting a card from your incarcerated child. Like, it just keeps happening. And the fact that it is an aesthetic and bold directorial choice as well as a deeply, deeply story based, compelling narrative choice is really special. I think it's really unique. I think that when people who work in the industry talk about how it's a miracle anything ever gets made, let alone anything good, it's because, a, they're aware of all the things that can go wrong and all the bumps along the way, but they're also aware of the fact that getting so many people work on a production, getting all of them to more or less row in the same direction from beginning to end is borderline impossible. And sometimes those disconnects happen early when, like, an executive buys something that is just fundamentally different than what the writer wants to write, or it's a casting decision, the actor doesn't agree. This was a uniquely collaborative process because Stephen Graham is the star. He's also the co. Creator. Co writer with Jack Thorne. You were saying, like, the actors were allowed to bring parts of themselves to it. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

There's also obviously like. And Philip worked with Doherty earlier.

[Andy Greenwald]

He's working with Barantini. It is an intimate company that knew each other again, that reminds me of more of a theater troupe than a production. But the fact that every single creative person involved was rowing in the same direction from the beginning and that everything was in service of everything else. So that the camera is. The camera is playing the long game, like running the same marathon that the actors are running. It is not sprinting a lot to show off or to get noticed or to mug for the cameras in the same way that, like, the actors, the camera's on them for so long they can't hide.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Andy Greenwald]

Nothing about them can hide. I mean, I don't think we're. We don't. It's not just that we don't have the time. I don't think we have the qualifications to really sit here and talk about what makes Aaron Dougherty's performance or Stephen Graham's performance as absolutely transcendent as they are, other than the fact that that is. What if you Google acting? Like, being present moment to moment in the given circumstance is what acting ought to be and what it can be and what we rarely see it be for these sustained bursts of time.

[Chris Ryan]

So it's like, think about. I had one last thing I wanted to ask you about, but think about going back through these episodes and watching things happen, knowing what you know. Right. Like, so that first episode, I did not read about this show before I watched it. I just knew that it was, like, really take. Taking on a lot of momentum. So I watched that in complete sympathy with Jamie.

[Andy Greenwald]

I watched it in, like, the indignities.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, my God. Like, this poor child crying in this van. And obviously the police officers seem to have a bit of sympathy for him as well. And, like, everybody's like, I hate adolescent. I hate juvenile cases. And I was like, oh, right. So maybe what this show is gonna be is like, how could this have gone so wrong?

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, and you're anticipating the twist, which is what TV has taught us to do. He's in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the story is much more clear.

[Chris Ryan]

It was Ryan who did it. Yeah, right.

[Andy Greenwald]

Or it was really Eddie who did it, covering for his kid.

[Chris Ryan]

Or that's what Broadchurch is. Right. Like, I mean, like, that's what these other shows have taught us.

[Andy Greenwald]

Presumed Innocent is.

[Chris Ryan]

And then the same thing for the third episode is when you realize what Aaron Doherty's character is essentially there to ascertain or to sort of identify, which is, to what level does this kid understand what he did? And when she finds out in all the wrong ways, he does. And all the, you know, like, you go back and watch her approach and the intensity with which she's going up in the elevator again, really little moment. But the guy in the elevator being like, how do you work here? Like, you know, kind of like always being flirted with. And it's just like, it actually is a durable rewatch in that way. I mean, obviously not a fun one, but it is very durable. I wanted to ask you about one moment that I think I'll remember for a long time, if not the rest of my Life, which is Jamie calling his dad in the car on his birthday and telling him that he's changing his confession to guilty. His plea, his plea. And that there's just that moment again, that goes back to picking his dad as his adult for the interviews. But he's obviously alarmed that his mother and sister were also on the phone call. He finds out that they're all in the car. This is another example of this one. Take not cutting is we never see Jamie's face again after we leave from episode three. I mean, what did you think of that last moment, those last moments?

[Andy Greenwald]

I mean, it's excruciating. It does speak to the point we were discussing before about gendered spaces. He says this to his father. We don't again talk about a rewatch. We don't know verbatim why he's asked a few times why he's chosen his father to be this. Stephen Graham wrestles with why. Eddie wrestles with why he was chosen, whether he's up. But. And it's particularly because it goes from a feeling of my father understands me and doesn't judge me to the revelation that his father. That the searing humiliation of Jamie's life is his father judging and rejecting him. So it does suggest that he is almost daring his father to keep loving him. You know, that there's an element of escalation.

[Chris Ryan]

It seems like he's also sticking to this idea that it wasn't. That he didn't do it in various ways over the course of the 13 months of the. Of the process. Right.

[Andy Greenwald]

And is it because he can't accept it, as you said, cognitively, that what has happened here, or is it that he can't accept that his father knows that he did that? Like, it's layers on layers. Right. But the. I would also say, and this was a question that I had, I didn't Google this. I don't feel like it was baked within. Baked into the show. I didn't understand the consequences for his. The rest of his life if he changed the plan.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't either.

[Andy Greenwald]

He's a. He's a under. He's a juvenile when he's arrested, is he essentially. Is he tried as an adult? Is he.

[Chris Ryan]

The kid in the Wainwright seems to suggest that this case has become like kind of a true crime sensation on the Internet and that, like.

[Andy Greenwald]

And a cause. Celebration for Menswear.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Right. Right.

[Andy Greenwald]

So the sense is that if he fought it, he could, you know, win the headlines.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know.

[Andy Greenwald]

But does this. Does this give him Peace and closure. Does it shorten his sentence? We don't actually know. And so I think that the beauty of it is that we don't know that what the.

[Chris Ryan]

You'd like to think what he was doing is giving peace and closure to his family.

[Andy Greenwald]

And what the show does for us is it gives us that information purely as an emotional chit, not in any way as, like, gamesmanship for the legal drama that it never became. And it is so devastating, right, that Eddie stops speaking and his wife and his. So Jaime's mother and sister fill in the silence, which is the food.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Andy Greenwald]

Upsets Jamie. They can never really talk about the things anymore. And there are moments when losing yourself within this world in terms of the small things, like, he's still a kid. He should get his corn flakes. He should get his hot chocolate. Feels like humane as opposed to. Do you understand what death is? Both exist at the same time. What aspect of that moment haunts you the most? Is it the effect that the words have on Eddie or the effect that the words have on his at that moment? You know, honestly, traumatized mother and sister who have just had this moment, seeing their father have a rage, you know, throw the bicycle, splatter the paint.

[Chris Ryan]

I think I brought it up more as, like, an example of why I think the filmmaking choice is the right for the story and that in each episode, we're very much with the POV of one or two characters. I think in two, it's mostly either Detective Bascom or his son. Adam, I think, gets a few moments of his own, but it's more or less following one of the two of them. In episode three, it's entirely Briony. In episode four, it's entirely Eddie and Amanda. So it's a very limited pov. And I think that that forces you to live in information as it's processed by characters rather than the way it's processed by the audience. And I thought that that was really, really beautiful in some ways, to experience that.

[Andy Greenwald]

There's a sense, right, that, like you said at the beginning of our conversation last week, something that I loved hearing, that I agree with, which is that Jack Thorne, the writer and creator, describes TV as an empathy box. Right. It's just. It allows us multiple perspectives. It's in our home. It's very intimate. The camera is the tool of that box. I'm losing my analogy. But the camera isn't, in my opinion. What's beautiful about it in filmmaking is that it is our window into another world. It is what connects the artists with the audience. And it is a gift to show people what to look at and to help them through a story or a world. There's a flip side of that, and I don't begrudge it because people should be challenged technically or artistically, where the camera is like a performance tool. It's like a, you know, it's like a new pair of hokas or whatever. It's like, I'm going to use this to show the limits or blow past the limits of what you perceive my abilities to be. I am going to bend this story to my camera and show you what I was able to do technically. And I am generally allergic to that because I am always more interested in the characters and the stories than I am in the style. The style or the technical specs. It was for me, thrilling to see again everyone rowing in the same direction here where Philip Barandini's opinion of why it's a oner and what the camera can be used for was in line with aesthetically and emotionally with what you were saying. Stephen Graham, why Stephen Graham wanted to tell this story. I want to know why. Well, okay, so Stephen Graham's how is this happening?

[Chris Ryan]

Why is this happening?

[Andy Greenwald]

And what does it look like? What could it feel like? And Stephen Graham's curiosity led him to both co write this, but also to give all of himself in an absolutely soul searing performance.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, the last shot is.

[Andy Greenwald]

Philip Ferrandini is like, I'm also curious what are my tools to tell this story? And it's awesome. I mean, there are. Everything is a different brush in the.

[Chris Ryan]

Different paint in the palette, maybe different.

[Andy Greenwald]

Arrow in the paintbrush in the quiver.

[Chris Ryan]

Different tool in the toolbox, brother.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, man, it's just awesome. I think also we're recording on Wednesday. There's a piece on Deadline. Jack Thorne gave an interview talking about British television needs to be fun shows like this and make shows like this and making the point that like thank God Netflix picked this up because it wasn't cheap, but that, you know, it's going around all over that there is a turn away from. I mean, this is elite. But an even attempt to do stories like this without Trojan horsing it inside of a larger mystery box or genre or whatever. The fact that the show is as good as it is and as apparently as successful as it is gives me some hope.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I've kind of lost my capacity to be scandalized anymore by the news necessarily. But there was something about the show that stopped me in my tracks. And it's not about any particular one issue or another. It's more broadly like thinking about being connected to people.

[Andy Greenwald]

Well, it's trying. That's also, I mean, this is the most emo part of the show. But we're not saying that four hours on Netflix are combating or taking down the manosphere or the problems in society. But these people involved were curious and they are trying to do something. And in a. Honestly, in a very empty world of signifying and reposting, like, that effort and that integrity of the people making the show, of the people making the show stands out. And it matters. And it should be a call to action, honestly, for a creative community to engage with the world as it is.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm the one reading the papers, man.

[Andy Greenwald]

So you tell me what other shows are referencing the news, because I don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

Greenwald, great to see you. We'll be back on Monday.

[Andy Greenwald]

Yeah, we will. There'll be a severance finale. There'll be a White Lotus episode six.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And I'd like to hit some of these Philly shows.

[Andy Greenwald]

I want to hit the Philly shows too, but thank you.

[Chris Ryan]

Deli Boy is quite funny. Quite, quite engaging. And I actually, I love, I really enjoyed Dope Thief so far. So I'm really, I can't wait to talk about it.

[Andy Greenwald]

Look at the little breadcrumbs you dropped.

[Chris Ryan]

You know what? Dope Thief wasn't what I was expecting, but in a good way.

[Andy Greenwald]

I'm getting on a plane and I'm gonna download Dope Thief.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Andy Greenwald]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

It's kind of on brand to fly to Philly and listen to dope. Watch Dope Thief.

[Andy Greenwald]

I think it's gonna really make me feel at home.

[Chris Ryan]

Thanks to Kaya. Thanks to everybody. We'll be back on Monday. This episode is brought to you by the all new ESPN app. All of ESPN all in one place. Your home for the most live sports and best championship moments. It's the ultimate fan experience. Step up your game and get even more than before with no annual contract required.

[Andy Greenwald]

Level up.

[Chris Ryan]

For more on the ESPN app or at stream espn.com Sign up now.