‘Wonder Man’ Is the Rare Marvel TV Show That Works. Plus, Does ‘The Pitt’ Need More Conflict?

I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk. Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio, fresh off a day player part in American Horror Story, it's Andy Greenwald! Nice! Wonderman! Wonderman. Is that how you pronounce it? Well, originally, yes, the Wundermans, like the Effingers, hailed from Germany during a time of transition. Okay, Franzen. Andy, great to see you. It's Chaos Menu Thursday. Actually, not very chaotic. No, we're pretty pointed in focus today. Two TV shows. I got to get on a plane and go to Boston. The forecast for Saturday is high of 14, low of 0. It sounds like you lost a bet on the AFC Championship game. I can't wait. This is good. I can't wait. This is pressure breaks pipes or pressure makes diamonds, right? What does it do to pipes? Well, I don't know what it does to podcasters. Yossi and I are going to be in Boston this weekend. We have a live show at the Sinclair on Friday, and we're showing Repo Man at the Coolidge on Saturday. I think there might be some Coolidge tickets still available. But if you're in Boston and you get out of the carcass of your tauntaun that you were living in and you want to come see me, those are the two places i'll be are you prepared to give like are you going to be giving like cold weather advice to yassi are you going to like talk her through you know she's only i i honestly have been it's been hard because i want to say like damn it's gonna be really cold yeah i hope we can take off on sunday if it snows again yeah and she's like you have to talk me down should i be bringing like a personal radiator to come with me and i'm like no no no no no so oh so you're gonna have to act tough even though you're you are la soft no i'm not i'm not la soft i just spent like three weeks on the east coast it was like 20 degrees every day i was getting tired of it right but i can handle it i went to college in boston look we all went to college in boston i'm just saying i've never been colder in my life than i am during in la winter are you serious yeah because this is one of my greatest takes you're like a little chilly in your house when it's 52 degrees well my house is shaded you know it doesn't get a lot of direct sunlight no because i'm not asking for sympathy from the nation that is digging out of a historic snowstorm i'm just saying that on the east coast and in our other favorite place of london the buildings are made of like pieces that they didn't use for stonehenge yes and so it is warm and all the clothing and all the life is built to behave appropriately warm your body without straight alcohol yes yes and everything here is made out of paper mache and and the heat doesn't work so good yes that's all i'm just saying it is a it is a weirder persistent the heat does not work as well here it's true and uh it's um it's probably the number one thing going wrong with this country is la interior heating i was a little chilly so think about me and today we're going to talk about the pit uh and we're going to talk about wonder man yeah a new show on marvel uh on marvel on disney plus from marvel studios what is what does tim robinson say in friendship there's a new marvel out it's supposed to be sick no it's supposed to be nuts he says it's supposed to be nuts and honestly um and we're fans of both shows so i'm excited to talk to you about them uh rip off the band-aid tell people that we love things it's good yeah we loved we loved wonder man uh we're going to be talking about that and um i can't think there was not a lot of news we've got sundance we got peacock uh losing some money but gaining some subs it's funny how that works can we cut to the harper stern meme just like it's an opportunity it is sharks that's a different show no a full shorting of a streamer what would you which one would you pick uh i know that you're in business with several of them, so you shouldn't really say the answer. Well, in a way, as a subscriber, you also are in business with them. I'm a shareholder. An intellectual shareholder. You're paying some of my salary, so thank you. It's really nice of you. I appreciate that. It would be a fun thing that they would never do and should never do, but when we have Mickey and Conrad from Industry back on the show, we should just ask them to short major media brands. They have to have a career, so they shouldn't do that yes um you don't did you have this to fall back on i just have this exactly this is my little safety blanket it's a cold l.a winter um i'm so chilly uh well didn't you see that like sundance i mean i don't want to kick it when it's down i mean they're leaving park city but like there is the sundance uh channel and they are rebranding but their rebrand was that they're algorithm free which does that mean i don't know the channel on cable it's like a streaming service yes yes oh they're gonna start an app and it's algorithm free so it's just an alphabetical list of what they have is it like you just go to a restaurant and they just bring you what's in the kitchen um which by the way many restaurants are charging 250 a person right now I was going to dinner this, uh, I went to dinner this past weekend, um, with our buddy Zach and, uh, he was sending me like, what do you think about this? And what do you think about that? And he sent me one place that had, it was like focaccia pork and apples dessert. And I was like, that needs to be one of the great pork and apples that anyone's ever tasted because you've just really, you're, you're fucking pot committed to that pork and apples. I want to say, and I love Zach, and I rely on his relative level-headedness in our sports chats. And his ball knowledge. Yes. But I do think that one of the great things that has separated him from us, generationally and age-wise, is that I think he still believes in the possibility of new restaurants. Yes. Like, deeply. He has a little list. He's like, I'll check it out. I will find out what's good and what's bad. And I just sit in my unheeded, shady home. your igloo looking at people looking at looking at at renee from noma being like who should i bless with my with my uh presence here in los angeles ah a bagel store that already has three hour waits uh um you did you did you cop a 25 dollar noma courage bagel no i've got it all on my my clarna for my noma with la pop-up you have it all in your clarna i'm paying it $1 a year for the next 1500 years. I think it'll work out for you. Okay, let's talk about The Pit first. How about that? Do you want to do that first? No, I'll do Wonder Man first. Okay, let's do Wonder Man first. What a delight, first of all. This is a show created by Destin Daniel Cretton. And Andrew Guest. I wasn't going to negate that. No Andrew Guest erasure here. Andrew Guest is kind of a big deal. He's written some of my favorite episodes of Community. He's a very, very talented writer. and destin daniel cretin who is somebody that we were both huge fans of when he kind of broke out with short term 12 all those years ago with one of the like kind of zazziest you know ensembles of young actors that have since gone on to do a bunch of great things um had like a very interesting career where it was like this indie breakout to almost throwback hollywood uh dramas in um glass castle uh it's a brie larson movie and then just mercy which is the michael b jordan um courtroom drama and then has kind of since moved into marvel in-house and now among the like most trusted pair of hands in marvel he did this he did the the shang chi movie which was pretty good and i think then was under some sort of creative overall with disney i only like the ending of shang chi i thought that was when it really came together i'm trying to which ending after the credits or no the all the stuff at the end like the big the big battle in the dragon battle yeah cartoon place very memorable um and like but but was as you said like trusted enough to be brought in to be a creative consultant and creator on in all of their various spaces which included making tv shows like this one and then briefly he was going to be making an avengers movie before the great the great kang crack up and then the russo return and then he was demoted to making spider-man movie which will probably also be the biggest movie of the year so yeah he he's doing great the the genesis of this show is interesting because it is kind of a we've used this metaphor before but like the way the light we see in the sky from stars is actually from quite some time ago in a way you ever think about that um the this is a similar echo because and i echo the no although yeah that's good um this show was fully being filmed and in production during up to not during the strike they were not breaking the strike but leading up to the strike in 2023 when in the pilot of the series they are filming on figaro and highland park i'm like oh this is before jenny's ice cream opened like this is a number of years ago but i thought that there was i think the mendocino farms is open across the street or is it just the building i think it's just the building okay this is now we're really getting into the la stuff although there's a great mendocino farms joke in wonder man um when we had i don't remember if it was for her book or not but there was a time when our friend joanna robinson was on this podcast and we were talking to her about the state of marvel and she was even suggesting and she doesn't just throw stuff out there that this show was so much so not troubled in terms of its production but so no longer the direction that the company was facing in that it may be just discovered completely. This is clearly not the case, although you wouldn't necessarily know the quality of the show from the promotion that it's gotten. Disney has dumped all eight episodes in January with some promotion, but I would say minimal promotion. This is a shame, because this is too... I've seen half the season. I've seen four of the eight episodes. it is too faint praise to say that this is one of the best things marvel television has done because the competition for that is wandavision and loki basically yeah i i think it's this it's also worth noting that it's part of the marvel spotlight sub-genre or brand that they have which they've used on werewolf by night and echo uh and echo yeah but it's supposed to be there like is this the one that they're like you don't have to have watched other marvel stuff to understand that or i think that was the idea or is it this is our like our sort of like paramount vantage the fact that we don't know kind of highlights why this is sort of silly well it was created in an era where i think they thought they were going to have a lot more volume yes and so they were going to be like this is the way to distinguish some of these shows is that some of them you're going to need to know understand like canonical connections and some of them might just be uh like artistic flourishes or fun one-offs this is a wonderful low-key universally enjoyable television show full stop it's great i really love the show and not with the caveat of for a marvel thing i agree with you it is made with such thoughtfulness such care it is incredibly clever it is heartwarming and appealing in ways that are not unlike why i'm gonna potentially overpraise this just episode of the pit that's just a normal episode of the pit in the sense that i was like i love i call me old fashioned but when i'm shivering at night in my little house in los angeles i love turning on the space heater and watching my stories yeah where there are characters with relationships that surprise a little bit but comfort and entertain two things people always say about you yeah go ahead go tell me i can face my critics a strong backbone when it comes to the natural elements yes and you're always down to watch more television i'm telling on myself here but i gotta be me yeah um put it on your myspace profile i update it frequently um so the conceit here and we can put on or off or maybe i live with it my nerd hat to say that wonder man is a canonical marvel superhero a member of the avengers the west coast avengers yeah time but honestly i'm kind of this this this woke something up in me where I'm like, hope this guy shows up in some other stuff. Wait so I want to circle back to that But just for the people to know in the the comics he an actor stuntman who gets superpowers There some overlap with vision character and relationship with Scarlet Witch but generally doesn really distinguish himself much As my younger daughter said, oh, so they're just taking Wonder Woman and putting man on it now. I was like, that's some cutting commentary. Yeah, you should have a podcast. um the one of the very clever reinventions here is the way that uh destin daniel cretin and andrew guest have thought about what might make this character interesting and run straight towards it so in this um yaya abdul mateen second from watchman and other things plays simon williams who is a two in his head serious aspiring actor in los angeles who over the course of time we will realize has some sort of powers but that's not the focus what we focus on is that he basically can't get an audition or can't get out of his own way and is fired in the first episode from uh his guest appearance on american horror story in a in a fantastic um behind the scenes hollywood moment and also an example of vertical integration because now that everything is disney you know yes american horror story and fx show is being used as a backdrop for a marvel show but it's an absolutely fabulous uh introductory scene of this guy going in to do a day player spot where he's just going to have one line um and then he's supposed to be out and he basically brings the production to its knees with questions add-ons background information about his character that's not on the page and all this stuff playing against i think that's ashley green who is on twilight it is in terms of like industry satire it is not as manic and frantic as the studio but it's not far off in terms of the realities of life here for working actors strata of Hollywood correct the other brilliant decision that they made here is bringing back Ben Kingsley who I mean I think we are fans of Iron Man 3 I'm a huge fan of Iron Man 3 For those who haven't really caught up on the Iron Man trilogy, non-related to the larger multiverse saga, Kaya, looking at you, Ben Kingsley was cast as the infamous Iron Man villain, the Mandarin. Yeah. But the movie reveals that the Mandarin is just an actor named Trevor hired to play this part by the real villains. And so then this character kicked around to your favorite Shang-Chi and then shows up here. Mm-hmm. Guys, Ben Kingsley is on a 30-minute Disney Plus show. Ben Kingsley is one of the best actors of his generation. He's 82 years young, and he's crushing it on this show. I would say it's closer tonally to a Sterling Harjo show than it is to a Marvel show. So when you say 30 minutes, it's not like Ben Kingsley is summing it. It's some of the best work he's done in years, or at least one of the best parts he's had in years. a party's played before but now is like basically like these are two people on either end of their careers kicking around hollywood going to auditions going to matinees of classic films doing self-tapes you know and dealing with the economic and personal struggles that come with being an artist you know in 2025 or whatever it is i uh really love this show um before we get too deep into like the mechanics of each episode or whatever, which are all up on Disney plus. I thought I would just mention that this is just one of the strangest stories, uh, behind the scenes stuff that I've seen in a long time. Obviously Disney plus slash Marvel has undergone several, both from the chapec to Iger to leader to come sense, like a bunch of leadership changes. They've also gone through a lot of philosophical changes in terms of how much stuff they're putting on Disney plus, what they're putting on disney plus what people want you know this is definitely a product that seems like it got caught between a couple of different administrations or um or strategies but from everything i've heard from the like not reporting but like just chatter is that this was always beloved inside the building that's good to hear and that everybody was like this is so good and that this was held until January for a variety of reasons. And I think actually the binge is probably good for it if it's going to be the way it is. I think if people... I thought the pilot was flawless. But I could also see a lot of Marvel heads being like, what's this show? Why am I watching two men watch Midnight Cowboy? Yes. the the aperture for its success was rather small then sure if you had been like next week on wonder man these guys go to takes restaurant i mean it's possible but they do and it's just kind of you know so you you have to give people a little bit of runway and frankly this is one of the first shows in a while that i've been like beyond my professional obligation freely hit next episode yes to watch the next one so i think the binge probably works for it as broadly but i don't know if it does much for its um week-to-week marketing and build-up but let's get and i i we probably should have said this at the top but like we haven't spoiled anything particularly yet we could get into some more details momentarily but i do think it's worth noting that i'm so given the pedigree i'm not surprised that the show is good but i am surprised how good it is And the fact that we've spent the last year correctly praising and or and more recently praising Night of the Seven Kingdoms for kind of providing not similar blueprints, but successful blueprints for how to exist within a larger franchise and how to stand out and how to differentiate yourself and how to tell a different sort of story underneath a much larger corporate genre IP umbrella. And I think Wonder Man deserves to be talked about in the same way. I'm not saying Wonder Man is a creative achievement on par with Andor. I'm not comparing one to the other. Sure. But I'm saying that what Andrew and Destin Daniel Cretton have done here is carved out a little room to play that feels tonally consistent. Like there are references to Captain America or Steve Rogers. There's a damage control. is in there's references to the larger marvel universe should you care to engage with it but what's lovely about the show is that there's just room for this to exist within itself it's not constantly referencing other things and one of the things that this made me feel in a surprising way was and i think this is antithetical to what the initial marvel tv plan was but maybe should have been all along which is the old version is we're going to tell stories that deserve to be upstream And that's why Thunderbolts is a movie harvested from, you know, semi-successful plantings on the television farm. I don't, what's wonderful about Wonder Man is that Ben Kingsley is playing this character who he's played quite broadly and comedically in movies as a person. I mean, still, you know, there's some flourishes, but as a more complicated person with an inner life. The character of Simon Williams, there's no room for that character to exist in a movie like Doomsday necessarily, nor should there be. Now, you know, jokes on me when he shows up and he, you know, punches Professor X out of his chair or whatever. But like, this seems like this all backs up maybe what you were saying, which is it seems like the powers that be understood that they had something good and they left it alone. yeah it feels very unfucked with um because at least through the three that i've watched the tone is so remarkably consistent and and well identified where you're you're right the references to the larger superhero world uh i counted two of them three of them and one is a Rogers the Musical billboard in the back of the Disney Fox lot that they're on and one happens in a basically a little kernel of conversation between Simon and Trevor in a car about whether or not superheroes are allowed to audition for television shows and you haven't made it to episode 4 yet but episode 4 is a basically contained black and white episode explaining the journey of a character named um damar doorman davis yeah he's referenced in three by byron bowers is a very funny comedian um with a with a really i would say um paradigm shifting guest performance by josh gad himself um it is the kind of like little filigreed flourish that i can tell you from experience is pitched in every writer's room for every show ever. Which is, we'll just do a little, we'll take a pause here, and we'll do a little fun detour and tell a different story that people are going to be like, oh, I'm in. And it rarely makes it onto the screen. And if it does, it's rarely as successful. This episode, in and of itself, is delightful. Yeah. And works. The premise of the show is essentially spelled out, not even the premise of the show, but the intent of the show is spelled out when a celebrated European filmmaker is hired to remake Wonder Man, which was a Star Trek-y 1960s Buck Rogers-ish sci-fi show, right? Or movie, hard to tell what they're saying. Movie, yeah. And he's going to remake it. And it's, you know, this guy, I think it's the guy who played, who is he in Superman? He is the president of the evil nation who is infringing on... people's rights. It's Laco Burich. He plays a Werner Herzog, Lars von Trier-ish kind of filmmaker who's like, superhero movies, these superheroes are here, and these stories count. There's even conversations about Trojan horsing things in. So you're having characters in a Trojan horse TV show talking about Trojan horsing things. But I didn't even really sweat that stuff, honestly. Because I thought that the character of simon was three-dimensional enough and their relationship felt real enough and each has ulterior motives we find out a little bit about ben kingsley's mission uh to why he's sort of cozying up to simon um and a lot of that has to do with a uh sort of government agency represented by r.m moyed from from succession who is fantastic in this as well everything about this has been perfect so far. It's a great scene between them at Clark Street Diner. Yes. There's a, of all the things on my bingo card for 2026, I did not expect a reference to Russell Hoban's Turtle Diary or the film version of it in a Marvel television show, but here we are. I do want to just circle back to the Ben Kingsley of it all because it's not bizarre because, as you said, they're treating him with a lot of respect and giving him a lot of opportunities to do what he can do, which is slip into just jaw-dropping, charismatic, Shakespearean pomp and circumstance, but then also play light comedy, which he seems to be enjoying. He's so good on this show, and it's such an unexpected buddy comedy. And yes, there are moments like in the third episode when Simon brings his new friend Trevor home to his mother's birthday party in Pacoima, and she's like, I'm so glad you brought a friend. And it's this diminutive 82-year-old Englishman. I can't contact with anyone because he's actually running a surveillance operation. It is a little sus. Yeah. But at the same time, he seems to be having fun. And it's just a wonderful showcase. And then I think there's the question of the details. Now, I'm not necessarily the right person to judge this, but there's just a tension in these episodes that I've seen that I feel is not just rare in TV, but certainly rare in superhero TV. And it's not just the little jokes about about deadline.com or Mendocino farms because we get those and I'm not sure if the larger world cares that much. But like when Simon goes home and brings Trevor home in the third episode to his mother birthday party it made very clear his mother is of Haitian descent or from Haiti and the food that they serve Yeah And the community that they capture Someone thought about it That takes decision making It takes empowered creatives, even just to get the like establishing shots of actually Pacoima and like the streets of a place that is L.A. but isn't really L.A. in the way that people imagine it to be. That stuff matters. It adds to a more cohesive and I think fulfilling viewing experience. Yeah, and I also really like the fact that I was watching something from Marvel and something in this genre that wasn't full of exposition. Where the exposition was more about character rather than tesseracts or an object that needed to be found. I mean, Ben Kingsley's mission through these few episodes so far is kind of vague. It's to get information on Simon to potentially arrest him. Because Arya Molyad's character is under pressure to fill this new prison for superheroes. Because now this is the part, this is the only part that kind of I bumped on a little bit. The government has overfunded a rogue sort of police like arm and wants to arrest tons of people to make a big show. Huh. So that was like, whoa, whoa. And they're like empowering, you know, extra legal tactics and general goonery. That was weird. That was strange. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there was anything else I wanted to mention about it. James Poncel directs the second two episodes after Cretan does the first two. It's just, it's just, I really recommend it. I don't want to get too deep into like appearances and cameos and developments. Cause maybe we can hit it next week, next Thursday or something to talk about the last couple episodes. Is there a part of you in watching these episodes where you were like, I kind of wish he didn't have powers. Yeah. But I, I mean, here's the thing is that I was thinking about this. It's funny you bring up and, because I think that we say that word a tremendous amount on this podcast. And it's so amusing that Andor has now become not only a touchstone of like, this is everything that we ever wanted from a franchise, but also, did you know that this cost $700 million? You know, which is, I don't know the exact figure, but like the reporting about what Andor wound up costing over the course of its two-season run is whether it's true or not i don't care it's every penny was worth it you can see it on screen yep but it is an intimidation tactic to be like we just don't we can't make this stuff for less than three million dollars so it's got to be really popular and it's got to appeal to the most people possible and it's got to upstream the cinematic universes off of the small screen because we can't just throw this money away and let you guys make ratso rizzo walking around with the with with the with john voight you know like which is essentially what this show has been so far it shot in la it looks more expensive than it probably is but this is such a great use of their money and their time and their server space to put up a small fun character study that i think people will go back to over and over again and in terms of i I completely agree with everything you just said. And I think in terms of the relationship to superpowers, this takes a page from, you know, currently unused on the big screen or small screen page from the X-Men playbook in which it presents a character who doesn't want any of that. What he wants is something else. And the more traditional, like Campbellian, like call to power of the young, like we've seen every version of that where Peter Parker accepts the mantle of his great power and responsibility. This guy just wants to be in movies. This guy just loves movies. this guy just wants to be third chair in big picture if nothing else works out you know like so the fact that the powers that he has are clamped down tamped down repressed unwanted and unpredictable and really so far through four episodes have only shown up in terms of his emotional landscape um that really works for me and it's such a that's not a new conceit for characters or even for comic books but it's been a while yeah and it's really welcome uh okay we'll leave it there highest recommendation we could possibly give it let's go to the pit okay uh obviously you were very enthusiastic about this episode i mean i i was i was i was doing some self-reflection i was cold so trying to keep the mind sharp and i was like has this show entered i don't know what the zone is but like um it's just in a place where i'm so happy to watch it yes i feel so eager to turn on the new episode. I'm always surprised when it's over and I want more. And so I don't know if my normal critical faculties are even functioning at this point because I'm enjoying it so much. Well, my extremities are not functioning. My faculties possibly. So it's so expertly done that within every episode, I just find a lot to enjoy, which is a kind of maybe a normie take, but that's where I'm at with it. But I feel like you this might make for some good crossfire style old school uh confrontational podcasting i feel like you're itching for a big swing you're okay so i've done my own version of self-reflection my note here under uh the episode is i guess i missed dr collins and let me explain why so dr collins gets mentioned this is tracy's for his character from the first season who disappears about three quarters into the season to go home after a personal medical emergency and um is not present for the mass shooting casualty event um that the the er is dealing with that the pit is dealing with and then is uh explained now in the uh what was this the fourth episode yeah the fourth episode um that she has moved to portland to uh couldn't be you adopt a kid and be closer to her parents her family yeah she's from there um and um it sounds like she's still in touch with some people from the hospital but maybe not dr robbie and the mention of her made me think about whether or not she had a kind of the character and the performer had a certain quality that i did not appreciate at the time which was an authentic tension within the er which i think generally speaking the first season had so i went back to the first season i kind of mapped it the first few four episodes of the first season versus the first four episodes of the second did you make like a kirk goldsbury i did not do a shot chart anything but i did note that i was looking through like all the people who are in the hospital right now and all the doctors and you've got dr al shimi who has been banging the drum of ai but for the most part seems like a very competent if direct manager and a bit i think this is intentionally so duplicative she's basically just parroting what robbie says most of the time sure and then you've got ogilvy who is a student doctor who's annoying and joy who is another student doctor who seems to not want to be a student doctor not with ogilvy yeah or just in general is like oh great i'm glad i paid two hundred thousand dollars to learn how to do this or something and then all of the patients especially in this episode like are pretty straightforward like i yeah fix them not not to do whatever be like don't fix this person it's not exactly dr house mysteries no it's not even the mystery aspect as much as like i was looking back at the first season you weren't moved by whitaker being like what if heart attack not in front I just think I have a little bit of agreement fatigue. This is a great take. The characters are walking down the hall saying things, and I'm like, I agree. The people who are like, I need help. I'm like, you need help. And we can all see what's wrong with you, pretty much. And when that narratively runs into, not against, but runs concurrently with the show's, I think, quite earnest, quite, I mean, I agree with them, larger liberal political worldview. yeah it's like when they're like we need health care and we don't have them which is really important for a tv show to say but when that's running in concert with everyone else agreeing you're starting to feel a little it's a little soft so i think what i realized when i was watching this is that what what i was wondering going into this season is how are they going to recreate the stakes of the first season without it being without it turning into an episode of 9-1-1 where it's just like you guys will never believe but aliens are here you know and that actually shouldn't have been what i was worried about what i should have been worried about was how will they recreate the interpersonal tensions among the doctors if they have theoretically been working together for another nine months or whatever it is and now it's like santos she calls him fuckleberry at the end of the episode but it's pretty much 80 nicer than she was yeah and they live together And the scene is pitched on his perspective watching her leave, being like, my friend, my colleague is having some personal trauma and is in crisis. Yes. And Langdon, who had a kind of cocky swagger, which was obviously deflated in the first season, is now like, I'm just working the program and I'm being a good guy. Let's drill down on the Langdon thing. Because first of all, you're the best at what you do. You have really identified something that I think, despite my absolute simping for the show. I'm simping too. I agree with you. And I think this is a really smart point to make. when when we talk about how our scott gemmel and noah wiley and john wells and the team behind the show are the cream of the crop in terms of just professionalism and expertise and doing things the old school way we are talking about something that came up in our industry conversation last week something that mickey and conrad and the people who make that show in their more new school way do not subscribe to which is that over time everyone becomes friends not just interpersonally but like the television show friends in the sense that we just can't wait to see the people we like bounce off each other in ways that they historically do and conflict goes down and we are rewarded our pleasure centers are rewarded but sometimes the drama can suffer as a result um we are seeing that already not just because you could excuse the fact that they work together and they're used to and they have their rhythm as evidenced by the scene in the ambulance bay when they're talking shit about dr al-hashimi and it's like you shouldn't be doing this in front of an attending And Robbie's like, well, you can say anything with me because we know each other. I totally agree. The one point that I was eager to come in and make is a version of this in regards to Langdon. Because Langdon is the opportunity. And there's plenty of season to go. He's been back at work for three hours now, four hours now. there is a softness and uh restorative nature to his off-camera arc that feels potentially like a missed opportunity or perhaps we're just jumping the gun and there's a lot more to come you know we still have not gotten the land and robbie clear the air thing but one of the things that i've always found a little bit not confounding but intriguing i guess about the character in the casting is that patrick ball is clearly a very good actor and he was doing hamlet here in la like he he he's pedigreed and talented he is also kind of on tv anyway like softly handsome in a way that he looks like a tv actor in this context sure might be different in other roles other contexts and i felt and i was pleased in the first season when after a few episodes of kind of blandness from the character of being like Robbie's friend, who's also good. There was some darkness and a little bit of a, you know, there was some, there was some road for him to travel down. Maybe it's a factor of the show's unique conceit, which is that they jump to a different day that they could yada yada the harder part and we get him back. The show works better if something is cutting against the grain. I think that's a really good point. And now what's clearly coming to will cut against the grain is the day is going to go haywire in some way. but interpersonally it would be good to see that happen as well and I think that they might because the other thing I was going to say is the real estate that they carved out in this episode and maybe the previous episode for character stuff they do have to be artful in it because they have to front load it because once the ambo bay starts filling up there isn't a lot of space for Robbie to sit with his pal the hospital psychiatrist or Dr. McKay to be like I'd love to go on a date to an art gallery with this guy you know exactly so we kind of have to front load that which which in the week-to-week experience might feel a little bit off and they do a good job of hiding hiding the the ball no patrick but um i think it i think it an interesting point yeah and is it a casting question is it a who you adding to the ensemble question no i think it's just sheer numbers so now it's less time joy and ogilvy uh probably take three percent or five percent of the time we would have spent with mel santos and whitaker and there's the new nurse too there's the new nurse there's and there feels like there are more patients with like a but there hasn't been quite the same by this point last season i think there was the xanax fentanyl overdose there was the robbie and collins debate about whether to perform an abortion right there were a couple of things happening that were like oh and the uh the brother sister trying to decide whether or not to that was big uh enforce the dnr on their father now counterpoint so far this season we've had michael nori's exposed asshole yes and also like the the family with no insurance that the girl is i'll just go through the patients right now so like the insurance family dab with diabetes prideful mom doesn't want daughter to find out about the lack of insurance daughter overhears docs talking about lack of insurance starts go fund me eyelash lady who is apparently also patrick ball's partner in real life that's nice shout out uh and we learn about dr j dr javadi's social media like alter ego would you follow her uh i try not to get my medical advice from social media i think that's probably wise i think that's probably wise i say that my general practitioner is probably like it's me dr o but wouldn't he just from what you said about him he would just start like a soccer blog we talk a lot about world football about the beautiful game yes and then we talk a little bit about my body you know it's never been better eyelash lady parkour influencers yeah um when you say it like that it sounds silly that was my that was my shit this week when when that guy was like i'll just pull this out it's like that's a fucking big l to take dog just be like let me help me pull this giant shard of glass out of dude's back yeah the woman suffering from bulimia and louis that with the tooth and the stomach and the yard advice yes the student who had an episode seems like it's got legs as a storyline because there's also the what did the security guard do to him what's going on with him they're about to do the spinal tap uh and then the woman who comes back possibly with mercer that's bad oof they were they were in the beginning of the season i don't remember i was gonna ask you i i didn't remember it so it's possible that that's because langdon's patients have been in triage yeah for the most uh and then we have i'm i'm like i really like joy yeah uh not as not not the emotion but the um character on the show and she's got blood exposure uh from from puncturing her glove in the glass uh and and they have to give her a bunch of tests and i'm very much hoping she doesn't get like hepatitis or something i i think that's a good wish yeah i i i think to your other point about like lower stakes conflict this season like the am i missing anybody no i mean the simmering tension there's a one or two but i think the the simmering tension that is fueling santos's return to you know the bugs bunny meme of like forgive me back to go back to the old me is because dr halashimi is is stressing the importance of documentation and paperwork sure which feels relatively i mean i look these guys are medical professionals behind the show involved in the show if they say it's important i believe them i believe it's important yeah but it it is uh i was having a hard time understanding her turn was that surely because alishimi had threatened her status and when we met when we rejoined santos this season she's like i'm gonna do a major basically right can i you know one of my favorite parts of the episode was with when the glass extraction happens and the surgeon is there and then they bring out this big syringe and ogilvy is super fucked up already once he's not fucked up but he has fucked up says um what's that and the way robbie says and i'm gonna try to get the quote right it's a syringe full of hemostatic fast expanding sponges that's the moment when i wanted the thick of it writers to join the writers room be like a fast expanding sponges you absolute twat you mentally impaired donut like i just wanted some extra yeah you know I enjoyed that flex. But the jokes in general are better. When he's like, motorcycle trips are Zoom therapy. Yes. Come on. You thought that was a joke? Yeah, it's alright. I think that actually is a good segue to Robbie, which was a very obviously physician heal thyself storyline from the first season of him coming in, dealing with the PTSD of COVID, dealing with the loss of his mentor during that time period. feeling very underwater with hospital executives and Gloria and like all that stuff about their patient scores and their efficiency and I I think his sabbatical and his helmet thing is worth worth watching worth worth keeping an eye on as like oh how could this kind of develop over the course of the season but for the most part he seems he's it was like i think i missed him being in a really bad place you know and i i don't know i i don't want that for a character but i but again i think it's interesting television when they're like that but these guys have made lots of seasons of television and and when you introduce stakes like they did in the first season to get attention to make you feel how visceral and um minute to minute this circumstance this workplace can be you open the show with robbie talking his colleague down from the roof a little bit and then you put him in like the worst day of his life redux um and then you have to have it then you have to have that same character anchor this show for five six i won't say it because my kid i can hear my kid saying it five six or eight years right you have to be six seven yeah you have dead we're a little over it you gotta toggle like you everyone like me on earth like when i got back from from from potter my kids are like do they say six seven in england i'm like oh yes you've ruined the world we no longer are in quarantine they sure do you have to be careful with the with the character extremity dial yeah because a in a movie a character like dr robbie ends the movie by like i need to fix myself and drives off on a motorcycle or i have recommitted to this as my course of action as a professional yeah but the show is now stuck in a place of credible emotional um emotionally honest and relatable people who every day do an impossible thing which exists in the world that is 100 realistic but it is nowhere did i say this show is no longer realistic no no but all i'm saying is like but they're navigating something that is not realistic which is serialized drama yes and that is an interesting thing to pay attention to you know the hospital show that shall not be named that this show is not based on uh yeah is it would be an interesting experiment to go back and map that show against this show because i think that this show is trying to do much different things with character yes and much different things with time and can i can i say zag and say a different opinion that i feel like hasn't been said enough which is thank god this isn't a reboot of the show the champion yeah chicago hope yeah first of all mandy patinkin is too busy um but second uh the character that noah wiley played before when he was wearing a medical doctor's coat uh was a child of privilege and had a very specific background and arc that is completely different from the way he is able to play robbie with the freedom of creating an entirely new person without the years of you know baggage good and bad from what he had been and i think i think it's really important that the show is trying to do something and i think now we can give it the credit for being something different um last note this may be commonly held knowledge i'll just say just really quickly like my my whole critique comes of the caveat of this is still among the best things on television yeah but i think it's the show gives us such a unique opportunity to to question and critique in real time because proof of concept this thing works yeah this show works yes what's interesting and i think why your your your point is well taken is because what they are doing is so specific and so unique that we have a different way into observing their creative process because they are solving for things in real time that other shows don't have to yeah such as where we put character beats because we are never leaving this hospital yes for example yes um and so sometimes they get away with it when they hide the nutrition like seinfeld's wife put spinach and brownies like you know about that this is all parent stuff no i didn't know about jessica seinfeld wrote a cookbook where she was like your kids need vegetables but they don't have to like them so make brownies with spinach in them and now just their kid yeah is barry weiss's like lieutenant yeah it's it's great it's you never baby stick together you know i'm sure that the group chats you guys are on are pretty rich with observations about how to nobody knows our struggle communicate with audiences you know in the digital era i have to work that much harder to have movie reviews that people take seriously you do and you really you've done it by the way you know yeah for sure I mean, I think it's telling that you haven't done rewatchables remains of the day because then it would be a little bit too close to like your father's. I wouldn't hold my breath for that one. I've been waiting by the phone. This may be common knowledge, but I only recently learned this because I did feel bad that I didn't know the name of Nurse Jesse, who is stepping a little bit more into the camera, into the spotlight this season. and I was I'll be honest like I was thinking of that character this weekend because it felt Alex pretty like like that this is just a guy who works hours in you know a thankless job and so I was googling him lately and this is the most shout out to Simon Williams and Wonder Man the most like LA is a real place sort of story I can imagine this guy Ned Brower who plays Nurse Jessie moves here to be an actor, gets a little bit work as an actor, gets work as a model, plays music with his friends, is the drummer for Rooney, the pop rock band led by Jason Schwartzman's younger brother, Robert. But was Jason Schwartzman ever in that band? He was in Phantom Planet. That's right. Okay. Drums for a while, acts for a while, sees the writing on the wall. It's not really, maybe this isn't the career. Goes to school and becomes a nurse. And he is actually a nurse. Yes. And then when the show is being put together, someone because it's, you know, it's a relatively small community or he sees the audition for it. Was he like a medical advisor on the show at all? No, but I think that the spirit of the show has been to bring in to sprinkle in real people. And, you know, I think people who are paying more attention to the show than even we watch it. But I think the super fans have probably maintained lists of like these people are actually nurses. These people are doctors. and yeah he's married to Sarah Jane Morris who was on Brothers and Sisters who made an appearance on the show as well okay past season I just like I like the artful way the show is doing this where it's bringing people who are competent in multiple fields yes but I thought it was cool this guy's actually contributed to the world of nursing and medicine and you can I don't think it's an accident that like I just when he's in the background of scenes I was like that guy seems like he knows what he's doing i didn't learn his name which was on me no he definitely seems like he's been in those rooms nurse jesse um all right well we'll be back on monday to talk about a night of the seven kingdoms and industry will you give me some temperature updates of your core your extremities yeah man i'll try to struggle throughout here yeah i'm really looking forward to seeing my boston people yeah the boston winter is something that i mean we we went for rewatchables the last time it was like cold, but like we were walking around. It was like 30s, 40s. And now it's aughts. Yeah. So we'll see. Thank you to Kaya and Kai. I got to catch a plane. We'll talk to you guys on Monday. Safe travels. Hopefully.