Andy Greenwald (2:33)

the 14 Year History of this podcast,

Chris Ryan (2:36)

do we basically say, hey, this show in the middle or end of its run that one of us hasn't watched ever before. We're Just gonna jump right in. And I think it'll give us a unique, if possibly not particularly functional take on this show. First episode of Euphoria, the third season, much delayed in between. Sam Levinson did the Idol. Zendaya made one of the best movies of the year. The drama. She's in Dune. There's obviously like a roster of actors on this show that have pretty much exploded. Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi, etc. I have been watching the show more or less since the beginning. I think I caught up on season one a little late. I was a real fan of. Of some specials that they did, some, like, one offs that they did, and really loved season two. I'm. I am. I'm seated. I'm seated. Not only for this show, but I am seated for your.

Andy Greenwald (3:32)

Seated?

Chris Ryan (3:32)

Yeah. Like, you know, like, I have my popcorn and my. And my soda. I just can't wait to hear what you have to say about this, because I don't know what the experience is watching this without the lore, without the context, without anything.

Andy Greenwald (3:45)

And I want to be clear, I didn't Google anything. There were multiple times during my viewing of episode 301 where I briefly wondered, perhaps the path, the history.

Chris Ryan (3:58)

How does Maddie know her?

Andy Greenwald (3:59)

Yeah, I don't know. Who's Maddie?

Chris Ryan (4:01)

Alexis Demme's character.

Andy Greenwald (4:03)

Who's Alexa Demme?

Chris Ryan (4:04)

She is the manager of Dylan, the little actor guy. She's.

Andy Greenwald (4:08)

Oh, right.

Chris Ryan (4:09)

Okay. You did watch this episode. Okay.

Andy Greenwald (4:11)

But I didn't know who was a character or not. Like, I didn't. Is that actor guy important? Has he been on the show before?

Chris Ryan (4:15)

He hasn't been on the show before.

Andy Greenwald (4:16)

Okay, see, this is what I'm saying. Nor did I do my other tried and true method of watching television, which is continually text you during the experience. Now, some might say that I didn't do that because you were on stage in San Francisco talking about Basic Instincts with Mallory Rubin. But others might say because I was showing great restraint.

Chris Ryan (4:35)

Sure.

Andy Greenwald (4:35)

And I think. I think this is the purity of the experiment.

Chris Ryan (4:37)

Maybe next episode you'll want to look up some stuff.

Andy Greenwald (4:40)

Nope. Okay, here's why this was exhilarating. I loved this experience. It felt freeing and just. I feel uncaged. And as someone whose opinions are famously caged. Get ready. Genuinely, what I mean is what I love most about television, ongoing television, why I talk about it, why I work in it, why I watch it, is that experience of cumulative narrative storytelling and the investments that we make in a show and we make in the emotional lives of fictional people. And in the creators, to continue to deliver what we grow, to expect from these characters, or to surprise us in ways that delight us and enrapture us even further. That commitment, that relationship, Chris, can also be a yoke. It can drag things down. And at its worst, it's what we see with the kind of toxic fandom that exists online or even inside of our own bitter hearts, where shows cease to be what we want them to be or more charitably, cease to match the highs with which they announce themselves, and the experience of watching it becomes one of diminishing returns into resentment and disappointment. I have been guilty of this in my personal life and I've been guilty of this on this podcast as well, when shows that I have loved missed the mark, or missed the mark perhaps arbitrarily, that I have set for it. And it is very, very hard to engage beyond that point. So to turn on a show with no prior knowledge other than the fact that, I mean, I will cop to the fact that I am aware that this is the chaos menu of seasons, that this was many years in the making, that the wrangling of talent was quite difficult, that there were aborted other versions of the show in which maybe they were still in high school. If the timing worked out differently, I think there were different pitches the detective show we had heard about, which sound interesting to me. I am also aware that the filmmaker, creator, auteur behind the show, Sam Levinson, made the Idol. I will not be referring to that show again during this podcast today, during the next five minutes.

Chris Ryan (6:56)

Okay?

Andy Greenwald (6:56)

No. So to turn on this episode and be greeted with a riot of color and outrageous situations was fun, thrilling, exciting. I didn't have any baggage. I was not laden. I was not weighed down by anything, and certainly not by dozens of tightly packed balls of fentanyl.

Chris Ryan (7:21)

That's right.

Andy Greenwald (7:22)

Um, that's right. Although stay tuned for the after show in which so it was a. You could hear me be get excited about this project over the last few weeks and it actually is super fun and you can tell me your feelings coming at it from a different place. But I did. I do have a sense that entering into this season, this premiere with this attitude is actually helpful because if I had investment in these characters as young people over time, and not just the normal time between seasons, quite a long period of time now since the show debuted, I would probably feel a type of way about where Sam Levinson has chosen to pick up their stories again as just I'm entering a new world where these are the Stakes. And this is the aesthetic and this is the tone. Okay, let's see.

Chris Ryan (8:10)

Yeah, I think that there's been some well reasoned criticism of this season so far. I've only watched the first one. Critics were given the first three to check out. There's six this, this season to sort of saying, like, what is the reason for euphoria beyond being euphoria, like beyond making more of an incredibly successful series that HBO has a financial and vested interest in having stay on the air. It's got three of the biggest stars of their generation on it. You really like, you know, like, you can't let that opportunity get away from you. And cracking the story, like you mentioned has been something that has gone through several iterations, reported iterations. There's Kim Masters piece and the Hollywood Reporter that came out after the Idol. That went through some of the, you know, at least behind the scenes stuff that was being anonymously for the most part talked about. But like that. You, like mentioned Rue becoming a private detective, Rue becoming a surrogate mother. What are we going to do? Is it going to be like shortly after high school? Is it going to be a massive time jump? You have to accommodate, you know, these people's schedules, but also them aging, but also their different artistic interests as the years go on. I was kind of curious for you. You know, obviously there's like the. No, it is not jumping into the two towers without ever having heard anything about hobbits and just being like, I guess now I'm just watching this. Although I do wonder if somebody could do that because there's just like this big fight. I like it with this, like, did you find yourself being emotionally caught up in it at all or was it simply, wow, what a, what a boisterous, riotous, like daring piece of filmmaking this was.

Andy Greenwald (9:53)

It's the right question to ask. I think Zendaya is such a. This is not a hot take, this is a freezing cold take. I think she's an incredibly unique and charismatic star when she is on screen. Like all great movie stars, I'm invested in her predicament. And one of the things that this season, in this episode does very well is drop us right into a circumstance that is outrageous and thus complete. It's like jumping. It literally is cannonballing into a pool. She is, I'm meeting her and she is a drug runner trying to cross the border from Chihuahua into Texas.

Chris Ryan (10:38)

Yes.

Andy Greenwald (10:39)

In a manner that is

Chris Ryan (10:43)

quite repeat, it's purely cinematic. It's like the idea she drives her car up to this sort of up this ramp, up to the top of the border wall. She can't get the car to get down to the ramp going down. So she is symbolically stuck between stations on the top of the wall. And the car will neither tip backwards nor forwards. And she has to do this incredible balletic move out of the car and down the ramp so that the car doesn't fall on her at any given point. And there's a bird. And it's like a really good silent movie sequence.

Andy Greenwald (11:14)

Chris. Cinema. It speaks to a point that you made that I was, some might say gently resistant to, others would say outwardly hostile to in our discussion of a show. I said I wouldn't mention again the idol that you were making. The case that Sam Levinson on his own, is a filmmaker to watch, is an interesting director and creator and visual storyteller. Separate and apart from the drama and soap opera of that show, this opening sequence makes the case for itself on its own terms. And frankly, that was kind of my feeling about the entire episode. Am I particularly invested in the things that seem to motivate him? I would say through one episode, fairly strong trending. No, fairly strong. But the way in which he is telling the stories, particularly the Rue story, which maybe this is intentional and maybe this is a good thing, is just so much more compelling than any of the other stories that are a part of the show. And maybe that's an argument for why continuing season three makes less sense than let's just tell a new story with Zendaya. Whatever the case may be, I thought that there was such a dynamism and such a flair and, you know, it's the kind of thing that our old friend Sam Esmail would often say in the podcast, which is when he approaches things, if the visual storytelling is not just worthy, is noteworthy, is eye catching, is dramatic, is invested, is full of specificity, he's in. And generally that's not how I approach television, because maybe it's a conservative mind, or maybe it's just the more writer driven mind, or maybe I'm just nervous about people who are gonna have to do it 24 to 48 more. I want to see if the thing has legs. I don't really care so far with this. The audacity of the opening was enough for me.

Chris Ryan (13:10)

Yeah, this is a show that does not have, or at least to my knowledge, does not have a blueprint. It is not a show about X and Y needs to happen for X to be a complete statement. I mean, I'm sure that this will probably be the last season of Euphoria, just because of the complications behind the scenes in terms of mounting it. But it can do whatever it wants. I think the heart of the show is Rue's addiction story, and it's been the most gripping parts of it for me. I know people who are like, I liked Euphoria, the fucked up version of 90210 that it was in the first season, you know, and the kind of post Tumblr kind of take on teenage dreams that it was in the first season. But it to me left the atmosphere when it became a far more cinematic, rather than tell a visual storytelling mechanism of. If I want Rue to run across the city all day for an entire episode, like, we can do that. We can make an episode about that. There are obviously all these other plot lines, but to me, she's the heart and the head of the show and the stuff that's happening around it. It's interesting to try and make the two meet. And if I had, like, any problem with this episode, it's like seeing how they're gonna get those two sort of roads to converge eventually. With only six episodes, I'm sure they'll figure something out. But I really, really, really, really am invested in the Ru character. Her performance is remarkable. And then, you know, as far as what you're talking about with the visual aspect of it, not only do I think he's a talented. I just really like the way he shoots Southern California.

Andy Greenwald (14:59)

Yeah. The light, the yellows. It's really, really.

Chris Ryan (15:02)

And even the Gari. The more garish stuff like the, you know, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi's house and. Yeah, and like the idea of like bulldozers moving sand back and forth and,

Andy Greenwald (15:13)

you know, this was relevant to a conversation we were having in our previous episode about, you know, a completely incomparable show like your friends and neighbors that I'm going to comp anyway, which is like, when characters are having hyperreal, let's say, charitably, conversations that I don't recognize as conversations that human beings have with each other. If you put them in like a garish 80s cocaine Narnia, I'm paying a different sort of attention because the hyper reality extends past the dialogue. It becomes the whole point of the scene. So the way that they're living in this place that is like a combination of the house from Wild at Heart and also an old age home imbues the entire thing with a sense of cinema, but also of a comprehensive storytelling. You might not like the story, but someone's telling you something.

Chris Ryan (16:03)

Yeah. And he's able to push the limits of what's in a frame. So when Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi are having their big dinner where she's explaining to him that she is gonna join OnlyFans to pay for her flower budget at her wedding.

Andy Greenwald (16:19)

What was the candle budget in that scene?

Chris Ryan (16:21)

That was. What I was going to say is that you could do that and say like there's low lighting or there's five candles and they have like 80 candles going. And that might be why these shows take so long and cost so much and you know, the amount of times they may have to go in and whether those are fake candles but like I. It's just pushing it to the limit of what people can accept, you know, and then seeing like the results of that on screen is pretty impressive.

Andy Greenwald (16:48)

If you have. This is a tough argument to make, but I'm going to try to make it the best version. I would think of an opportunity to have a budget an HBO Sunday night show, ascendant stars like Elordi and Sweeney. The best version would be to have something incredibly compelling because you have all of these, you have the best ingredients at your disposal. The worst outcome would be timidity. We have the best ingredients. But I'm just going to, to make the food analogy. I'm just going to make a. I'm trying to make a lobster Mac and cheese. I'll put some truffle oil on it. You know what I mean? The second best option is I'm going to, you know, paint their faces like I'm a fucking Dutch master and I'm going to have them gulping down giant 80s martinis and eating and shoveling spaghetti into their mouths while they talk about online pornography. Yeah, it is a choice.

Chris Ryan (17:49)

A widely held misconception that OnlyFans is only.

Andy Greenwald (17:52)

I've heard this a few times in this episode.

Chris Ryan (17:55)

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Andy Greenwald (18:28)

I have another cultural comp, but I do think in the service of if we are even servicing it, like can I Can I talk about the storylines and you can tell me or not tell me?

Chris Ryan (18:36)

Yeah, I mean, I have not rewatched 2, so I will do my best, but I am not the.

Andy Greenwald (18:40)

I'm not going to fact check you, brother. I don't even want to know the Lord. But from my understanding, here's where we're at. I knew ambiently that Zendaya's character was named Rue and had addiction issues. If I were watching this cold I am, I would not be aware of her addiction issues. I would be aware of the fact that mistakes made in her past have made it impossible for her to have a future. And that's where she is. So she finds herself outrageously running drugs and being a courier for drugs, along with a friend.

Chris Ryan (19:12)

For

Andy Greenwald (19:14)

a mild mannered woman who seems to also have a lot of.

Chris Ryan (19:17)

Jacob Lori, played by Martha Kelly, who

Andy Greenwald (19:18)

has a lot of redneck farmer associates where they cook or make pills at the same time. Although we don't yet see the overlap. Jacob Elordi is living with his fiance, played by Sydney Sweeney Cassie. And they are living in, as we can't keep describing this mansion, this funhouse mansion anymore. And she is trying to make content so that she can have income as well, both to pay for their wedding and to find value in this world. And he is sort of a harried.

Chris Ryan (19:46)

He's taken over for his father's construction company and is trying to become a developer building retirement and old age homes in Southern California.

Andy Greenwald (19:55)

He's sort of like a would be Rick Caruso type trying to build here.

Chris Ryan (20:00)

That's interesting way of putting it.

Andy Greenwald (20:02)

Yeah. We also are seeing Maude Apatow's character working for a television executive played by

Chris Ryan (20:11)

Sharon Stone, making on like a CW type nighttime soap.

Andy Greenwald (20:15)

Nighttime soap. Something that definitely doesn't exist anymore, but sure, in this world it does. And that's. And then someone else is managing an actor and that crosses that storyline.

Chris Ryan (20:25)

Matty is managing one of the actors on LA Knights. Maddy and Lexi are still friends. And I will say one of the hardest times I laughed was when Maddie accompanies her client to a premiere and it looks like an Amazon straight to streaming movie called. If I may, if I might.

Andy Greenwald (20:43)

Yes, I believe it's all HBO and HBO Max and everything's on the Warner Brothers lot. Look, I think.

Chris Ryan (20:53)

And that's really, I mean, like you've got like, on the surface level, you've got it. So Ru has become basically indentured to Laurie over the course of the end of the season. It really turns into the uncut gems, second half of Goodfellas sort of vibe of the show really comes out, and Ru gets in deep with this character, Laurie. There's some stuff that I think will be explained later that happened perhaps in between the two seasons. And some of that is gonna be related to the character played by Angus Cloud, who tragically passed away in between season two and three. The actor himself. You don't know about Jules. I won't spoil anything about Hunter Schaefer's character. The only thing I would just really say is that the Colman Domingo diner scene is sort of a.

Andy Greenwald (21:40)

It's a callback to the other scene.

Chris Ryan (21:41)

It's a callback. It's like a continuing a variation on the theme of what their. What their special was. I mean, there was two sort of standalones. One was Ruze kind of trying to accept a power greater than her part of the 12 steps. And the other is about Hunter Schaefer's Jewels character and this conversation that they're having in the diner about Rue kind of needing to get her head around the idea of a God, and God being in control and not her is obviously fundamental to her saying, I thought maybe God might be this other drug dealer, or rather a pimp who will pull me into this other world and away from Lori.

Andy Greenwald (22:22)

And that's our guy, Mr. Echo.

Chris Ryan (22:23)

That's our guy named Mr. Echo, who

Andy Greenwald (22:25)

shows up where she delivers drugs and uses the bathroom and then becomes friends.

Chris Ryan (22:30)

Well, I think she gets. First, she's nearly killed because it turns out that the drugs that Laurie gave her to give to this new guy was fentanyl and laced with Touched with. A young woman dies of an overdose.

Andy Greenwald (22:43)

And everything in the scene is beyond over the top. And again, because of the absolute dgaf. DGA meets dgaf, which is how I would describe Sam Levinson's aesthetic. I'm. I'm weirdly okay. Like, I. Even the candle scene, I'm looking at my notes that you're referring to. I wrote, ah, this is. Everything looks good is stupid.

Chris Ryan (23:06)

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald (23:07)

But okay, fine. Like, I was enjoying it. And again, when you have.

Chris Ryan (23:10)

I still. I still laughed. Like, the thing that he does, as much as he gets great images, he knows exactly what people are good at or he sees people in a way that I think is very specific. So the Zendaya performance we can talk about. I'm pretty mesmerized by her at this point, I think, just coming out of the drama, one of the things I love so much about her is her lack of vanity. Totally as far as, like, Ru, who's, like, run ragged throughout the series, but also in the drama. Her interest in taking on difficult roles, but more like roles that fuck with her public Persona a little bit.

Andy Greenwald (23:50)

There's a scene in this episode where, I mean, she is famously one of the most beautiful stars in the world and also one of the most fashionable and always people are checking and charming and. But my kids are like, love her. But also look for her red carpet looks like they want to know. That is part of her mythos. And so then for her in this show to be a dirtbag, but also a dirtbag who is placed next to all of the young women at. What's the guy's name, Alamo's party, and her just be like, wow, you look great. That's cool. Look how you look like that is such. It's an intentional turning everything on its head. That works.

Chris Ryan (24:27)

So he sees Zendaya in a certain way or their collaboration.

Andy Greenwald (24:30)

Sam Levins.

Chris Ryan (24:31)

Yeah, Sam Levinson does. And they've, you know, they. They did a film together. Like, they've done a lot of work together. And I. I think he sees, like, the comedienne in Sydney Sweeney, and I think

Andy Greenwald (24:49)

that that got the biggest laugh of our marathon recording today.

Chris Ryan (24:53)

Silentest little snort. I think he sees the humor in her Persona. And I think she is in on the joke, but, like, 80% in on the joke.

Andy Greenwald (25:06)

I think White Lotus was that, too.

Chris Ryan (25:08)

This is funnier to me. Like, her Cassie is funnier to me than the White Lotus thing.

Andy Greenwald (25:15)

I think those are the only two things I've ever seen her in.

Chris Ryan (25:17)

I have some other films I can recommend if you'd like to check them out.

Andy Greenwald (25:20)

Yeah, please give me a list. Maybe it's movie night with the girls on Friday. Let me know which one I should fire up.

Chris Ryan (25:25)

Anyone but you. Double feature. Yeah, can't wait.

Andy Greenwald (25:30)

In terms of the setup for Alamo, you know, wearing tighty whities and a bathrobe in true, like, last act of Boogie Nights fashion. Deciding to do William Tell to her, to William Tell him if she's a rat or not or worth keeping around is such a provocation and such an absurdity. And it is entirely, in my opinion, earned by the noise she makes when she survives because she is so terrible. To your point, he knows how she's going to react and that you get the sense that she. Maybe that's how she laughs when she's surprised by something or delighted by something or the real her, quote, unquote, that. That people who work with her may know and what comes out of her is so natural and riveting that. That. That those moments make me excited to keep watching the show. I think. I think that there's big picture. What seems to motivate our friend. Sam is, on some level, deeply uninteresting to me. The show, the voice of the show. And he writes the show alone and directs it comes alive on two moments to me. One is how stupid writers rooms and groupthink are inside Hollywood when everyone's doing like little snaps up about how we need to do representation right in the show. And he's just like. He's like, my parents watching msnbc. He's like, got him. The other moment is when Jacob Elordi says, it's hard to build in Southern California. This is a motivating issue, you know, among a certain class of people here I think that I find less compelling. But within that, the comparison that I would make.

Chris Ryan (27:19)

You're not a big disowning guy. It's just. Okay. It's okay.

Andy Greenwald (27:22)

That's okay. Look, look. I've read some compelling arguments in the abundance. You know, the abundance sector. The comparison I would make is Brett Easton Ellis, who is a writer who I, despite everything, still have a lot of time for. But the reason I bring it up, and then I'm sorry, I'll let you go, is that the early books that he wrote when he was very, very young and basically the same age as the characters he was writing about, so Lesson Zero and Rules of Attraction, I loved so, so much because. And maybe this was just me also being young when I was reading them, I felt that they were, like, absolutely intentionally provocative and over the top, but there was this beating heart of universal youth in them or yearning or something, or telling the world that it's phony from the inside of that world that I found really, really riveting and magnetic. And I've continued to be interested in him and try to read him even as the books have become paler and paler imitations of that same thing and even sometimes commenting on them or revisiting them. The reason I do it is because his angle and his point of view about this place that we now live in remains so sui generis. And it's just him. He is his own genre. And I kind of felt the same way here, where obviously I didn't watch the high school seasons, but clearly we have moved past high school. And so I finding what motivates him to be just spinning out from it feels like the stuff that really motivates Someone about the world who has Rarely left the 323 area code be like, don't go south of the border. It's drug runners and fundamentalist religious people and all of that. And it felt kind of pat and very, you know, not particularly stakesy or gripping, but the point of view on it is kind of compelling and funny and clearly deeply felt. And that.

Chris Ryan (29:19)

That seems to be every moment that you're like. I think you're referring to the moment where Zendaya is first confronted with the idea that she needs to swallow, like 20 balloons worth of drugs. Her acting in that scene and her facial reaction to the, like, what she has to do, which is pour KY jelly over balloons and choke them down. So she goes and gets her friend Faye to help her.

Andy Greenwald (29:43)

Big week for ky. It's on your friends and neighbors, too.

Chris Ryan (29:45)

Oh, good for those guys. I'm glad they're reaching out beyond the.

Andy Greenwald (29:49)

They're finally getting their name out there. It's going to be a big. Guys. I'm not. I'm not a financial advisor, but buy

Chris Ryan (29:56)

lube stocks because at the hotel I was at and it was just like a really normal hotel.

Andy Greenwald (30:01)

I.

Chris Ryan (30:01)

Have you ever gone into, like, the hotel general store and the KY jelly is like lower right hand corner. They're just like. Just in case.

Andy Greenwald (30:08)

Just in case this weekend goes a certain direction. Yeah. That's what makes hotels great.

Chris Ryan (30:12)

And I like. But it's just like you and a woman who's like selling like, you know, tourist trap, like accoutrement memorabilia and also toothbrushes.

Andy Greenwald (30:21)

You go in there for a magnet. Yeah. Toothbrush, Pringles, Snickers. That's fine.

Chris Ryan (30:27)

Anyways, India's performance during that whole scene makes it because, yeah, it's completely like a cliched, like, south of the border, everything goes upside down. She doesn't have a simple task. Her task is to save herself. She gets in her own way. The second she arrives at this place, the one thing she is told by Daryl Brick Gibson is don't do any. Don't touch anything you're not supposed to.

Andy Greenwald (30:49)

He's. He's given a performance due.

Chris Ryan (30:51)

I love that second. She is taking off her shirt, dancing with all the girls, hanging out, drinking, smoking weed, even though she's supposed to be sober. California sober, I guess. So she is a participant in her own downfall. She always has been in the show. She. She wants to feel something maybe more than she wants to feel clean. Yeah.

Andy Greenwald (31:13)

Question about that. I know I said I wouldn't ask too many questions about it. But, like, is it was your takeaway from this episode that she is clean and sober from the addictions that she. Like, she was on pills and things in the past. Is the California sober, like, actually how you view her after this episode?

Chris Ryan (31:30)

Or was that she was, like, breaking her edge, really? I think that she's just in a ton of trouble.

Andy Greenwald (31:36)

There is a thing, you know, I was. It is funny how we consider this stuff, because I was reading this will surprise no one. I was recently reading a Scottish crime novel from the 80s. And in it, like, the tough but tender Police inspector Laidlaw is, like, trying to talk frankly to a woman who's had a tough time. And she's trying to get off the heroin and trying to leave the country and start over. Cause she's, you know, the Glasgow criminals are circling around her, and he's just like, you look a bit peaked. I'm sorry I put you through this. Let me get you a gin and tonic. And she's like, thank you immediately. And, you know, maybe this is just my modern brain, where I'm like, she shouldn't be doing that.

Chris Ryan (32:16)

Right.

Andy Greenwald (32:17)

When, in fact, I think for generations and including on this show, I don't

Chris Ryan (32:21)

know necessarily, that they make an explicit statement when she's talking to Colman Domingo about the degree of her sobriety and whether or not it's just, like, off the hard stuff, but still every once in a while. But when she was smoking a blunt and drinking whiskey with Amos, I was like, well, we're going into some dark, dark waters.

Andy Greenwald (32:43)

I'm curious about the reaction, too, to us talking about it this way, because I would imagine that people who are Euphoria fans are going to have much stronger feelings about this season because it does seem like such a dramatic break from the show that they fell in love with. That said, what I'm enjoying about it is not the visual pyrotechnics of it. It's something that you've been alluding to constantly through this conversation, which is that, I mean, there are two kinds of visually expressive directors. One type is just so in love with the images that they make that I find it a little bit airless. And it chokes the life out of the thing to make the perfect picture. And then there's the type of director who just. I just fucking love actors, man. And knows actors, and, as you said, can bring out aspects of actors that they see. Not that necessarily they alone see, but that they have some unique perspective on. And that was what I was picking up on in this episode. It's just like, I'm gonna put these people on the screen and I'm gonna let. I'm gonna enjoy giving them a chance to enjoy it. And if I had invested multiple years of emotional and intellectual sweat equity in Rue's sobriety journey only for it to be this, I might be a little bit ticked or I might be a little bit impatient with it, but I didn't. So I'm having a good time.

Chris Ryan (34:02)

Yeah. And I also think that it's become a little bit less grounded in TV reality and is now going into almost like a kind of California dreamscape reality. I think I always appreciate directors who understand a region so natively that, like, the. They can do a crane shot of a backlot, even though the backlot they're shooting, like, you know. Yeah, they're shooting like, just like a nighttime soap or whatever. But he can make that feel like La La land. And then he can also shoot the desert and he can shoot Calabasas, and he can shoot a rundown apartment building. But, like, he loves it. Like, I can see in his, through his eye the everyday things that he has always kind of been like, no, it's like these courtyard apartment buildings are beautiful and the washing machine that's in the separate laundry room is beautiful.

Andy Greenwald (34:58)

It's a good point because I think that among the many, many, many criticisms that I had about the Idol, one of the loudest was I felt deeply that the show just absolutely couldn't decide if it was satire or celebration, if it was like, scabrous and judgmental or it was somehow credulous of, like stardom and the power of superstardom in artistry. And at least through this episode, through my completely pure eyes here, this felt affectionate. So maybe that's why there's a little bit of. I would weirdly harmony between a filmmaker making his show passionately about things that I don't know if I even care about that much, which is backlot shenanigans and expensive real estate opportunities, but doing it in a way that is pretty, pretty inspired.

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Chris Ryan (37:57)

This show is. I wonder if it's the last of its kind.

Andy Greenwald (38:00)

How would you categorize?

Chris Ryan (38:01)

Well, to me what it's become is it backdoored its way from going from like what if teens but really fucked up, you know, to the last vestige of the like. We'll give Nicholas wending refn a 10 episode show.

Andy Greenwald (38:20)

Good. Yeah.

Chris Ryan (38:21)

David lynch. You want to make the return cool Like Cary Fukunaga. You want to shoot all of true

Andy Greenwald (38:26)

detective cool director Park Chan Wook go off king.

Chris Ryan (38:30)

Well even he not, not on Little Drummer Girl but on the Sympathizer it seemed like that got like a little bit taken away from him midway through or there. Like it did not feel like totally a vision. All his TV is coming home. TV is coming back to being tv. Like every once in a while you'll have somebody who's like I directed all of this or whatever but like the idea of television as this grand playground for directors specifically to flaunt in. And I'll say this too, I have been generally pretty underwhelmed by what people who I thought were movie stars have decided to come back to television for or dip down into television for to do. I would like to believe that the opportunities to do long form storytelling and to play challenging roles and as the middle class or the sort of mid tier genre movie disappears, you get to go do Mare of Eastown on hbo. I think that's what you should do. When I see people who are like, so you just wanted to be on a TV show? Like, you were beautiful, man. Like, what are you doing? Like you're Harrison Ford. Like, what are you doing? Like that stuff. Like kind of. I understand it's like maybe the hours and the location are better, but it's, it's uninspiring to me.

Andy Greenwald (39:52)

Yeah.

Chris Ryan (39:52)

To see Zendaya and Sweeney and Elordi feel like we're kind of like at the top of our game right now in terms of like what we can get made and what we, you know, Wuthering Heights and Housemaid and Drama all like recent obvious successes. Whether they are contractually obligated or psychologically terrorized into returning to the show, I have no idea. But they seem to be like invested in doing it. A. Lordy, I can't quite tell yet. Well, and I, I respect the fact that they're like now this is good, this is different and we're going to leave our mark on this. And I don't really know how many more of these we're going to get.

Andy Greenwald (40:31)

What was the.

Chris Ryan (40:31)

I'm going to enjoy it.

Andy Greenwald (40:32)

What's the Elordi quote from that's going around about the season where he's just like, maybe we did something good. Maybe, I don't know, like some, some version of that.

Chris Ryan (40:39)

Yes. I mean he is not the most like chatty. Yeah. I, I think he is a pretty stoic like interview subject. I mean I seems like a charming guy but like, I don't know necessarily that he gives great quote.

Andy Greenwald (40:50)

Yeah.

Chris Ryan (40:51)

But I also wonder whether he's just like. I feel like this character really had a conclusion in season two and so now he's just kind of like a ghost living out there.

Andy Greenwald (40:59)

But also to your point, one of the things that marks a successful movie career these days in the eyes of people like us, not necessarily the people who actually hire anyone because to them it's like, how many animated video game characters can you voice this year? But in terms of the, let's say the people that Sean would be tracking and put on this list of big stars under 35 stars, it does seem to be Actors who are constantly challenging themselves by working with idiosyncratic directors and the willingness to play in other people's worlds and the best of the best, and this is sort of the DiCaprio method, you know, are following that. Chalamet and Zendaya probably chief among them. And so if in that regard, and I'm not pulling a full 180 here, I'm not putting Sam Levinson, who did make the Idol, in the same category as any of the great ascendant filmmakers of our time yet, necessarily. But I do think that this felt less like George Clooney having to go back for season six of ER because he was under contract, and more like, I'm gonna go do what? Where? For how long? Okay, we'll see. I am going to approach this with the same playful spirit that I brought to what was. I mean, there was the drama he did last year about the north. The great. We talked about it the other day.

Chris Ryan (42:24)

Oh, the Jacob the Great walk North.

Andy Greenwald (42:27)

God, we're terrible about this. But that, you know, to that or to Wuthering Heights or to Frankenstein.

Chris Ryan (42:33)

The narrow road to the deep North.

Andy Greenwald (42:35)

The narrow road. So we had a couple or Priscilla

Chris Ryan (42:37)

of words in there.

Andy Greenwald (42:38)

Yeah, you can squint and make that make sense. This is not having to go back and pretend to be in high school, even though you've aged out and careered out of the role that you. That broke you in the first place.

Chris Ryan (42:47)

Buckle up for Jules. I assume we're going to get her next. Next episode.

Andy Greenwald (42:51)

So Jules is the last remaining major character who from the the show who is who we have yet to see this season.

Chris Ryan (43:00)

Yeah. So far this season it's Hunter Schaefer playing and she's a sugar baby in New York.

Andy Greenwald (43:05)

Is that a spoiler or. That was referenced, wasn't it?

Chris Ryan (43:07)

It's referenced.

Andy Greenwald (43:07)

Yeah.

Chris Ryan (43:08)

That's in the trailer.

Andy Greenwald (43:09)

Oh, can I mention the one. My favorite scene of the entire episode, Please. I really, really liked Rue as an Uber driver and I really liked the Batman scene. I thought that was a moment when I could see the purity of the vision of like, we're making fun of la, but we love la, but we're also not being too heavy handed about, like rebuilding the Palisades in the right way. La, like Batman being like the city. Someone in the backseat doing a Batman voice being like the city has changed and then going out to like fist bump Wonder Woman.

Chris Ryan (43:38)

I also liked your listening to the audiobook of the Bible.

Andy Greenwald (43:42)

That was sick. Yeah, I think I've been in that group Actually, and it really changed my mind about some stuff.

Chris Ryan (43:47)

Okay. So a shorter Monday episode for us because we just wanted to do a euphoria one.

Andy Greenwald (43:53)

And you're going to be on the road again.

Chris Ryan (43:55)

And I am on the road again.

Andy Greenwald (43:56)

Actually. This has already happened at this point, right?

Chris Ryan (43:58)

No, I will be on en route to Denver. When you hear this episode, probably. So shout me out if you see me.

Andy Greenwald (44:05)

Do you think. When is the show in Denver?

Chris Ryan (44:09)

Monday night.

Andy Greenwald (44:10)

Okay. So people could still potentially, if it's not sold out yet, people could maybe show up for the Zach Lowe show.

Chris Ryan (44:15)

Myself and Zach Lowe and Tim Hardaway

Andy Greenwald (44:16)

Jr. That's my dream. Blunt Rotation, Adam Morris.

Chris Ryan (44:19)

Yeah.

Andy Greenwald (44:20)

Can I ask you. A lot of athletes, Chris, make excuses when they play in altitude and they say that.

Chris Ryan (44:27)

I've been thinking about this constantly.

Andy Greenwald (44:28)

Okay. So do you think you will be affected? Do you think your performance should be judged differently with an asterisk?

Chris Ryan (44:34)

I don't like altitude. When I visited New Mexico, I took note of its effect on me.

Andy Greenwald (44:41)

I would say, as someone who worked in altitude in New Mexico, it's no joke.

Chris Ryan (44:48)

Does it take a while for the altitude to kick in? Like, if I'm only there for 36 hours, is it gonna matter?

Andy Greenwald (44:53)

I think the main thing, you just need to hydrate more than you think you do. And that if you like, let's say you'll have a good show and you'll be like, ah, fellows, well met. Let's have a chorus. Yeah, the, you know, the mead of the Rocky Mountains. You will have one and you will touch God. Like, you will be super fucked up from, like, one late beer. And that is a really weird feeling.

Chris Ryan (45:18)

I would see the Gur in Denver right now just being like, what is this guy talking about?

Andy Greenwald (45:22)

I think that every podcast we do, I actually have just, like, a model listener in an REI coat, drinking a Coors and, like, shoveling snow, being like this fucking Nancy.

Chris Ryan (45:33)

Thanks for going on this Euphoria journey with me. I think it's going to be exciting. Six weeks for us.

Andy Greenwald (45:37)

I think it's going to be fun. This is. We should do this more because it is very freeing to just engage with television this way.

Chris Ryan (45:45)

Thanks to Kai, Kai and Sarah, we will be back on Thursday with a mega show. It's the finale of the Pit. We'll have some Top Chef, we'll have some other TV kicking around. Beef is coming up, so a lot of stuff. Take care.