‘The Pitt’ S2E6. Plus, Apple Takes ‘Severance’ in-House and the ‘Spider-Noir’ Trailer.

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 join me in the studio on a permanent hiatus from competitive hot dog eating. It's Andy Greenwald! How you doing, buddy? The engine needs a little bit of work. We need a little bit of oil. Pour it in there. you yeah what's going on i'm tired man we did about it yeah did the live live show last night for bill uh let's be clear you didn't perform a solo live show for bill where he was like dance monkey do do wayne jenkins it might be honestly it was pretty close to that i did a lot of al pacino last night you were live on stage in front of hundreds of people yes at the wiltern theater we did the bill simmons live show we did um cheat quotes to explain the nba season thus far i mean what else would one do that's great and it was me and rob and van and bill and it was a lot of fun but i am i am feeling it a little bit today because i only have like honey roasted roasted almonds and a banana for dinner what are we doing well i don't like going into any kind of live performance uh with like a belly full of food that's fair what about afterwards you go get some well then it was like 10 30 because we were up there for a long time it's like fish you know it's like anastasio just noodling you know and so i was like i got i gotta go home and then i had to go home and if you really want the god's honest truth andy i'll give it to you right now we do have some news and we're going to talk about the pit and you can hit us up at the watch at spotify.com and you can follow us on instagram at the watch pod underscore and you can watch us on youtube at the ringer dash tv and you should watch us on spotify where you're also listening to us but i got home 10 40 10 50 p.m usually you're way in bed i'm big bed i'm big in bed that's when uh the ryan riley household fired up tell me lies dog tell me lies island of this it's not even an island anymore it's an asylum it's an asylum these people all belong in arkham uh for people who don't know tell me lies is about a bunch of uh young folks at a bard you know is it bard college bard is a bard is a college yes in reality go to baird oh i see on the show there and uh what they do is occasionally they pursue hobbies like photography and uh like kind of new journalism but for the most part they terrorize each other emotionally and sexually and uh last week i'll just say it out loud i watched the main character um listening to a threatening voicemail message from her ex and she just she still has this threatening voicemail message where he's just like nobody likes you you're you're a piece of shit and she masturbated to it wow yeah so i was like already like wow we're already in the red yeah and then this week you know they made the mistake of finding two characters with souls and putting them together briefly yeah and then we watched them get destroyed so can you i'm sorry i'm hung up on something could you do the threatening masturbatory voicemail as al pacino but al pacino like 95 96 yeah right it's a set of women blind masturbating to a voicemail for my ex it's auditory yeah uh so it's just been an amazing experience watching the show and also watching it um to use a greenwaldism break contain because bill simmons making ig reels about it oh um it's just it's just caught on i think it's the number one show on hulu this is its final season and its finale is next week is it the final season in the sense of like summer i turned pretty where they're gonna do a movie to wrap it all it's a really good question i was looking at some stuff about that today they say that this is the end of the story and that they you know could consider future ideas so like the way it's set up is this college stuff is told basically in flashback from a wedding that is taking place in 2000 i want to say 15 but i i might be wrong i could i could be remembering that wrong and so theoretically i could imagine a show called tell me lies about i guess this six or these the wedding night these doomed people no the wedding night is a major story but i'm saying what else happens at the wedding and you go 2025 and they're like here's some stuff you didn't know about the wedding dude what if you just the funniest thing in the world if you became the showrunner of the tell me lies spinoff tell me more lies tell me truths no nope nobody wants that no i know you have no interest in a in a young person's erotic soap, do you? As a hashtag girl dad, I do not. Thank you. Feel good about that for about two more years. When she's firing that up, when she's doing the third spin through Tell Me Lies. Let me enjoy that she is just re-reading the Little House on the Prairie books right now. Let me just have this. In terms of... What if it's the Little House on the Prairie book cover, but on the inside it's the novel Tell Me Lies? I respect it. Do you feel like there are any larger takeaways for those of us who are not going to engage in the show? The depravity of the show, is it saying something about our culture? Because I do think this is unrelated. I do think it's a really good depiction of some of the toxic codependencies that can emerge out of long-term partnerships between people who are creatively handcuffed to one another. and who went to a wedding in 2015. To me, when I watch it, I'm like, this has all the bones of a primetime soap from the aughts, maybe even the 90s, where you've got a group of people who are slowly going through every permutation of coupledom. But it takes advantage of all the guardrails that have been removed because now there are streamers. Now it's on streaming. So it doesn't look that different than an ABC show, but it feels like you're watching a sedated version of euphoria i find it to be actually like incredibly watchable um but one of the problems is is that because i expect everybody in here to have their uh very beings like atomized by each other when they have something in the like the episode recap like before you start the new episode and they're like last week on tell me lies and it's like a random little line from three weeks ago and you're like oh okay so they're gonna make mom an alcoholic again they're gonna be like someone's gonna masturbate what a tell yeah so it's just like i assume the worst and i'm usually rewarded for my assumptions in this show which i don't know is a special kind of pleasure that's the same feeling i had watching my own tell me lies pam bondy's uh appearance before congress yesterday kaya where Where are you with this show? Because I feel like you have been watching. I'm mid-season two. Out of, sorry, which season are we on? Three. Three. So I'm getting there. I'm at a summer I turn pretty pace where I'm not on track to unfortunately catch up before the season finale airs. And Chris is really worried about spoiling me, but I guess that was the only plot detail you were worried about spoiling for me. The masturbating? Yeah. No, I just didn't. The thing about the couple that I like, I just don't want to give it away because they handle it really well. it emerges over the course of season three you're like look at these two kids they just they just want to make it honest you know are there multiple nice couples that emerges only one okay you've essentially spoiled it i would say there's 1.5 what talk me through then before we move on like just psychologically look doing a live show you know your nerves are firing you're fired up adrenaline yeah yeah and then you and also you your body is in full ketosis having not eaten and you choose to fill the gnawing hole in yourself with this program yeah did you enjoy it more did you enjoy it less did you feel sated at the end of watching it because if we were in new york you would have stopped for a slice or something sure i would have had a whole night in front of me you know we would have gone out we would have chased the chased the dawn yeah i feel I felt like I want to still be the guy who stays up until 1215 on a weeknight. Good for you, man. You know? Yeah. I have nobody. Nobody's going to wake me up in the morning and say, dad, where's breakfast? It would be super weird if they did. But I'm just, I was just saying it's okay for me to stay up late on a weeknight, even if I have to get up and come in and talk about Apple buying the IP rights for its own show back from a production company. I thought this was interesting. This is the first headline I want to throw at you now. I like to go to you for this behind-the-scenes business level stuff. Totally. Comrade Tim Cook seizing the means of production for Severance, going in and paying a reported $70 million to buy basically the IP, the rights. He bought Severance from Fifth Season, which was the original production company. We stay on as executive producers. I don't know how ceremonial that is or whether or not they're instrumental going forward. in doing the third season of Severance, the reported fourth season of Severance, the hint that there could be more seasons of Severance, the hint that there could be spinoffs of Severance, and additionally, although I never really would have thought this was an export, an international version of Severance. Different countries, so like the way that the office popped up in a couple of different countries, obviously. Let's start with the business side of things. Look, when you're on a tear like Tim Cook is on, from attending the Melania premiere to this, he's crushing it no so i it's an interesting for folks who don't understand it's not uncommon where a different studio a different production company is selling the show to the streamer that yeah that is distributing it i mean there are some places that generate most of their content in-house there's some places that have their own robust studio business but then also are buyers and Apple, starting from zero, one of the things that the guys in charge of Apple television from the beginning have been very plain about is that they were the heads of Sony. Yeah, which is a buyer. Which is a seller, a complete seller. They don't buy. That they wanted to have an in-house studio and they built that up over time. So I think now roughly half of Apple shows are in-house. And I think they bought Ted Lasso and Silo, if I remember correctly. I-Lo is the example that I know of something that started as an external show and they bought and brought in-house for its second season. So there's precedent for what they're doing with Severance. I thought the article about this was pretty—if you read between the lines, it was pretty— This is in Deadline. In Deadline. It was pretty honest in a way that some of these stories aren't. Obviously, it paid lip service to things that are factually true about the growth potential for the series, is the importance of the series to Apple's overall strategy in terms of awards, in terms of having its own franchises to build larger IP on. I don't quite see the growth in terms of merchandising unless they're looking forward to selling a lunchbox that comes out every three years and opens weird. They could definitely sell a Severance board game or a Severance video game. Sure, or a desk. Sure, they could sell desks. Yeah, they could sell desks is what I'm saying. Hallways. all of that makes sense. But if you read between the lines further, what you get is some of the stuff. Some of the steep rooms I can see. Maybe I should be working. Why don't you go off on this for a minute? No bad ideas in a brainstorm. This is the most animated you've been today. It's the ways in which Apple can get some new revenue going. Well, you've got all this capital, right? You're up till midnight. What are you going to do? Dear Tim, some thoughts after watching Tell Me a Lie. After watching this girl masturbate. Why don't you do it as a voice memo for him? See what he does with it. Gotcha. Yeah, you did. Gotcha. If you read between the lines of the article, there's a lot of the stuff there that is sort of generally understood, but not fully reported or sourced, which is this has been a bear of a show to produce. I think there's a passing reference to season two starting production at the end of 22 and finishing in 24. Right. Strikes, et cetera. Strikes, et cetera, but also I believe it's referred to as Ben Stiller's feature background and exacting vision, ballooning costs, and all the other things that went along with making the show, writer's room, turmoil. There's a sense within the article that the show or the demands of the show or now the expectations of the show have far outstretched fifth season's ability to fund it on its own. They were essentially being asked to float the production for several years in between seasons as things went up and went down. And Apple obviously has the pockets to do so. Apple can pay for this. And Apple clearly is invested in paying for it. And I think it's interesting. It definitely guarantees the stability of the show or the chance for them to see it all the way through, wherever it is that it's going. I find Apple building, regardless of my relationship to any of these shows, some of which I like and some of which I've kind of maybe enjoyed and then moved on from. I find their relationship to their flagship shows very interesting. because one thing that i admire and appreciate about apple is their commitment to multi-season runs and if they feel like something's working they're just going to keep doing it and that's been great for slow horses it's obviously been great for shrinking in terms of that fan base the people who really love shrinking i'm sure very appreciative that it's not like is shrinking coming back every nine months um and it kind of is getting close to replicating what a television network used to feel like where every year my show comes back. I know with interest that shrinking is a Warner Brothers show, I believe it comes through Bill Lawrence's Warner deal. But yeah, like they continue to like amass this sort of war chest of things And it like you know what Honestly in three or four years they could do the morning show without Aniston and Witherspoon They could come up with a different pairing of people who are working in you know morning shows in the 70s You could do the morning show in the 70s, you know, all the president's men style. What else could you do, Chris? What's another list of things that they could do in the morning show? I'm just throwing a free game to Tim Cook. They could make a show about your morning where no one wakes you up. and it's just a very peaceful 15 minutes i wake up every morning and i open up the hollywood reporter at my table and i say what are we going to talk about on the watch and i'm just tired of being mocked for my choices you know i appreciate that kids i run this show honestly it's a division of labor i'm very very comfortable with the the one thing just to note that we were talking about studios sell things sell things to other streamers etc etc i i do find it interesting to note like the way some of these decisions are connected. So Bill Lawrence has had a, I mean, he's, when the books are written, maybe Alan Steppenwolf will write this book someday about like the most successful creators in the history of TV. Bill Lawrence is without question among them, even though he has a lower profile, maybe because he's in comedy, but he's had a hit show in every decade for the last four decades. He has also done something that I thought would never happen, which is merge the kind of sensibilities of multiple eras. Yeah. Often to, and I mean this as a compliment, to his benefit in so much as he is doing a streaming show at the clip that he would do scrubs but with like a lower episode order now he's doing scrubs again yeah but so ted lasso shrinking um bad monkey i think comes from him as well these are all shows that have found varying levels of success propping up apple's brand and he's done all this through his longtime home at warner brothers and the upcoming in the next few weeks steve carell comedy rooster is both a bill lawrence show for hbo but also does to me feel a little bit like some kind of internal wait why are we letting this guy leave the building yes like we need to develop our in-house talent and we need to have one of his shows that are successful elsewhere here yeah and i haven't not watched enough of that show to to to determine like if oh this actually is an hbo version of the bill lawrence show i've watched one and it's enjoyable but it's very bill lawrence enjoyable And it's interesting to see, like, is that just does that brand more more important at this point than HBO's esteemed comedy brand? Not that it's belittling it. No, it's just that it is something that has worked elsewhere brought into. I think they're like a couple of years ago when they were doing like Flight Attendant, which the first season of Flight Attendant, I liked very much. And it was a Max show and Max was going to be this kind of like TNT version of of HBO or something. and now i feel like between heated rivalry maybe the rooster like you're talking about like a couple of other things that are the pit obviously a max show roosters hbo yes you're right i'm saying hbo has loosened up what is hbo a little bit well or they're trying to yes they've done that and they've also tried to redefine what max is did you see that the the trilogy of shows they've the medical show the pit which we're going to talk about in a moment we talked about like what is it like Rhapsodies in Blue starring Milo Ventimiglia as a cop named Milk. And the Greg Berlanti family show, right? Which announced its patriarch in Ray Romano. How about that? Who I think is a really good actor, actually. There you go. I enjoy him as an actor these days. Spider Noir got its first trailer. This is the Amazon series from Lord Miller, broadly speaking, but has obviously a different showrunners. Nick Cage, he plays a guy named Ben Reilly. Do you want me to talk about that? I don't know if you have time. he's a kind of private investigator in new york in the 30s and he is a spider-man yeah go ahead just tell me because i'm just gonna walk into a wall if i try to explain this well for those of us who have watched and loved the spider-verse movies um nick cage voices spider-man noir in those movies and those movies call together bring together like all the alternate spider spider-man that have existed in the comics in various forms and a noir version of spider-man has a comic book relatively recent but comic book history is it good yeah i mean i i like both of those things and they taste real good together um this show comes from a deal that amazon made with lord miller off of the success of um and sony off of the success of spider-verse to bring to the small screen spider alts spider tent spider content the big tent of spider-man politics um and it has been a bumpy development road there i think the first announced one uh was a series based on a korean american spider girl that has gone through multiple showrunners and i don't even know the current status of it this one um i full disclosure met on this one so i like i'm aware of how long of a process this has been this has been multiple years of building up some development and then starting from scratch do you think it's weird and this is also full disclosure that i have not yet heard back about my pitch for spider maga about a guy who refuses to get vaccinated and that gives him spider powers i think because it's a bidding war i think everybody wants that right now and so i think right now they're just quibbling over uh a dollar figure for you um thanks yeah no you're always this is what you do you zag because last week kai cut us up the internet so it looks like we're super you know we're like resistance libs and now i don't really want it you like keep people guessing uh you're like what michael jordan said about sneakers you know yes that's true Everybody buys them. That's sort of what he said. That's sort of what he said. It's tricky to take something that is an idea and works in a cartoon or works in a comic book and make a live action version of it. And when I was when I was aware of the conversations, it was meant to be like an inspiration or origin story or alternate version of the character that Nicolas Cage voiced in the cartoon. I don't know what point long after I was done talking with him, someone was like, you know, Nick could do this. it definitely raises the interest and the surreality of it, I think, to see actually Nick Cage playing a freak. The rest of the cast is rounded out by a fantastic group of performers. Lauren Morris from Fargo and New Girl, Lee Jun Lee, who I thought was so great in Sinners, Karen Rodriguez from Hunting Wives, Abraham Papula from Slow Horses for a couple of seasons there, Jack Houston, and Brendan Gleeson. So that's a dynamite cast for this. and interestingly enough this is um it comes from aura new zeal who did uh lost city and steve lightfoot who does uh the punisher and they are co-showrunners interestingly enough i believe this show will be released in both black and white and color versions um i think i will choose to watch them black and white if i watch it assuming i watch it yeah i think that was they fight people fight behind the scenes to get that happen like i still can't believe that um that that garrett bash and his producing team and um got ripley released in black and white yeah um so i think that's really cool i also think we should mention um harry bradbeer who directed um on fleabag and i think on killing eve as well seems to have brought a really cool visual style to it i don't know it it looks it looks pretty fun honestly like it seems to understand the brief that like what would make it more interesting and more unique at this point in time is less a spider-man or superhero show and more of like a let's really play with noir convention yeah it'll be interesting to kind of see what a year from now assuming spider maga isn't a go project and i'm not um writing and directing every episode um i mean fingers crossed of course uh where amazon is a year from now because as we noted in previous episodes peter freelander who is the uh a long time executive and had in charge of scripted at netflix is now at amazon i saw that they had made some new pickups international titles that they picked up which i always thought netflix had pretty pretty good taste in international yeah tv especially the crime department so for a while there i've been kind of like not dubious but a little just non-plussed about some of the Prime Video stuff where it's like major IP blockbuster attempts at kind of grappling with the Game of Thrones reality of television, whether it's Fallout or the Lord of the Rings show. And a lot of pretty good to unwatchable guy with a gun, whether it's Reacher, Terminalist, Bosh until it was actually then kicked down to Freebie and whatever it is now. so i i mean i'm just to see the direction that that amazon goes obviously this goes back to previous administrations but i'm curious so you're saying previous administrations could have released the files they could yeah who do you think the villains are and by the way everything you just said great i wasn't thinking about who spider maggot's villain is my sense is that it's I think it's measles. Do you know what I mean? He's dominant. Yeah, Dr. Measles. And he's really strong because he only eats meat and ferments. But... Oh, measles! Oh no! The webs do nothing! And then he dies, and then there's six more episodes of just black screen. That's cool! Not black and white, just black screen. It's pretty visionary. I was heavily influenced by David Lynch. heavily yeah i don't think i don't think this is as chaotic i don't i think we actually have enough actual things to talk about today so that we don't i don't need to fill you in on the background of ben riley in the spider-man universe it's your i mean it's your dime and you can tell me whatever you want uh here it's just us it's beautiful it's that bill told you last night doing Pacino for the 19th time um no it's just Peter Parker can't be in these shows because Peter Parker's rights are controlled for what you know by Sony like all the stuff is micro sliced into so many different like um it's kind of like the NFL package yeah who gets to run what when um Ben Reilly is a infamous name among Spider fans because there was a uh pretty controversial plot line i believe it was 90s into the 2000s where uh a guy basically it was suggested that spider-man peter parker was who we've been who readers had enjoyed for 20 years had actually for 20 years been a clone oh and that the real spider-man was a guy named ben riley and uh and then that guy took over the suit and became the scarlet spider everyone was like and i believe i can sort of paraphrase comic book fans whose reaction to this was what the fuck do you um participate in online discourse about comic books or are you just like my real name right but i have a number of spirited spider mega clone accounts where i actually i was wondering whether or not because you know there's something there's some art forms or some you know popular culture things that you're like you and i will both be like what are people saying about this new this record or this new this movie but then there are things where i'm like i actually don't care what people think i like to read spy but novels yeah like i literally don't care what any literary critic would ever say about oliver harris for instance oh sure it's just like that's mine i dig it yeah that guy just wants to stand in a hotel in kazakhstan for 15 books i will read it yeah i feel the same way but do you go like when you're reading comic books are you like i'm curious whether or not this is playing with the crowd well first i brush the dorito dust from my fingers yeah um get dressed um play a couple of voicemails no because my involvement in my my you never know my involvement with comic books at this point in my life it's scarlet spider-man your opinions about me are terrible i am driven by market forces i am not a you know i'd like to think that sometimes like within television or industries that we are more active in we're like aha we have found the diamond in the rough and let us drive culture on this sure with comic books like like you know the other week we were talking about what dc was doing with these absolute versions of their characters i know about that because it percolated long enough to cross over into the mainstream i was not in these comic book streets being like oh this guy's really i'm not in no would you say that the uh arena where you find most of this discourse is facebook no facebook um is just mostly sending me like i clicked on one thanks for the opportunity to update everyone and we didn't want to talk about this with you know not joking but like i did click on a story about james vanderbeek who passed away and then this morning when i when i did run out of things to look at and i looked at facebook it was all uh really really personal memories of people's loved ones dying written by people i don't know so that was really cool that it found my interest in my passion um yeah that was that was great why are you on facebook again is it just an addiction at this point is there something in there that's like oh i gotta i gotta share this with my like high school class or something or oh i don't share okay no no no i just told you just lurk it's purely because i ran out of stuff to look at to avoid starting my day you know what anytime you're like i don't want to go to facebook but i've run out of things to look at on the internet hit me up how are you gonna show me some stuff what do you mean this is text me and i'll send you some links yeah okay on the dark web no just stuff that's out there that i'm reading like for example what would you have sent me I been reading some cool sub stacks There one called The Hunt for Tom clancy that i been really enjoying this seems useful why don you share this stuff i will i will i mean like i i thought the michael pollan interview about existence and perception was interesting but i didn't send it to you because i feel like you're good on perception you don't have kids like i eat when i'm hungry and i go to sleep when i'm tired i don't need to know about how i'm experiencing reality everything's great that's not how it goes man i'm like please please Are there other worlds out there? Not to be too meta about it, but sometimes I feel like the pit is getting short shrift from this podcast, at least in the first five or six episodes. Is that where we're at? This was six. So it's noon, right? It was noon. Yeah. Noon or 1 p.m. actually. I think we started at 7. And this episode is directed by Noah Wiley and we'll get into it. What can't that guy do? I know, man. Young citizen Noah. He's the king of television. And I feel like sometimes I like move it down the rundown a little bit like there are some shows where I'm like immediately let's get into this and let's start breaking down this amazing tv show and it's really no testament has nothing to do with how I feel about the pit or its quality it's really more like I think that a week or two ago I became at peace with the idea that I was like this is the first movement of this season you know like they you're talking about the old lady no oh a different kind You've been really scatological with your humor today. I think because it kind of gets you. I don't like it. I know. And I think part of keeping our partnership spicy is I'm just making you a little uncomfortable. And I think that I just downshifted the amount that we talk about the show just because even to its high standards, which I think is still meeting, there just wasn't a lot to note. You know, we've talked about Al Hashimi, the new character, the new attending physician at the emergency department we've talked about Langdon I can go through the patients that we have there are some that are incredibly affecting, some that are pretty gross some that are seemingly there as springboards to talk about larger social issues which the pit has often dove headfirst into but the way that this episode ends I thought signaled a start your engines moment for the season. Okay. So we get probably the first big wallop emotional beat at the end of this episode with Louis passing at the beginning of the episode and a lot of time spent with Dana as she prepares his body. Yes. And teaches this first day on the job new nurse what that entails. i thought that was quite moving uh quite beautiful katherine lanassa has a lot more to do this season quite obviously and for good reason and i thought she was incredible in this episode and i thought i thought that last scene was great you know they're saying goodbye to louis and and the fact that robbie was the only one who knew a sort of personal biography for this character and why there would be nobody coming to claim his body or spend time with him but it it did it you know what i mean like i think that there have been parts of this first season or this second season where i've been like i don't really know if the chemistry is the same level that it was in the first season or that the internal drama of the department is clicking for me the way it did in the first season but it is now i've never wavered yes uh i well that's not true i was a little like oh we're doing this again in the first few minutes or first three quarters the first episode but since then I've just been so happy to be watching the show. I'm so dialed in to its rhythms, and it's just not unique, but it's almost old-fashioned, just satisfaction ratio. I thought this episode was incredible, and one of the reasons why I liked it so much is it's not just that The Pit is executing classic television at the highest possible level. I do think that they are challenging themselves to honor the traditions of why we've always loved TV within its own challenging framework. Meaning, this is real-time, like 24. We're getting, you know, everything is cumulative, everything is building. And yet somehow within that, they've been able to carve out space for Robbie to be one of the most compelling lead characters, star performances on television. And beyond that, what I thought was really impressive about this episode, and maybe this links to the larger conversation about when it's going to, quote-unquote, get going, is, in a way, this was the Pitts version of a bottle episode. The framing of Louis from his final moments at the beginning to the moments of respect at the end served as a spine for the episode that really was about dignity and the parts of the life experience that we, who are lucky enough to be floating above it for as long as we can, don't think about and don't worry about. and there were moments in it that i found and this is this is really remarkable for a show that let's just say governs and prose to the degree that this show does if not governs fully in like press releases written by the american nurses very declarative yeah um it never misses an opportunity to educate in the issues part of it i think that it's done it's it's doing better in terms of having some ambiguity and some mystery to the characters but but there is still it doesn't miss an opportunity to educate like you know most penicillin allergies aren't real oh okay good to know um but uh even in the even in the midst of that like there were moments that were borderline poetic to me the ritualistic cleaning of the body and while dana's explaining it felt like something totemic like something like it made me think about how and i think they make a reference to this or robbie does at some point that like other cultures throughout history have treated death differently than we do in America. Certainly in terms of honoring or respecting or having ritual that end a life as well as rituals that begin a life. And even just within that context, even the small bits of like factoids of like, well, if no one claims the ashes, it gets thrown into a mass grave. Like that was heavy stuff. And I thought that it was remarkably done for a show that can be heavy handed, even in ways that I think are educational or important. Like I thought that it had a relatively artistic touch for this episode that kept me. I'm always entertained, but I found myself moved. I was moved as well. I also thought that the juxtaposition of Louis with and sometimes at the pit that you're just dealing with like up to 20 characters. So forgive me for not remembering the name of the the prisoner who's in the hospital currently. Is it Gus? It might be. And the debate that's sort of going on between Alashimi and Robbie about whether or not they can really afford to keep him in the hospital simply to feed him better than he is being fed at the prison. and whether or not I think Robbie is taking the long view that like that's just a drop in the ocean like that's a bed that somebody else could be using and we're not really in the business of making sure a guy has enough protein and nutrients we're here to like save lives and it's like this is a triage area not not a rehabilitation area and al-shame is just like I believe that like you just the way you change the world is to do good at every moment you can and you know I don't think that robbie is being um intentionally inhumane about anything but it was really interesting to see the kindness and obviously the like sort of the soul come out of him when it was talking about louis who yeah has also been coming into the hospital basically for maintenance you know what i mean at this point they were they were his emergency contact exactly and that's like sort of his like weird second family um or the extent to the has one and he's asking langdon about his kids and he seems to know everybody and it's like he knows the procedures as well as the attendings do so i just thought it was like a really um thoughtful and uncommented upon within the show like it's not like anybody goes up to robbie after he gives this louis eulogy and says you know you should think about then if if that's how you feel about louis think about all the other people out and it it there's a trickle down effect of the emotion like the fact that a lot of like the the louis passing landed hard on perla who's a character who we don't often linger on yeah was a really beautiful opportunity that the show took to be like, well, she has a history and she has an inner life. The other story that I thought you were going to mention that dovetailed nicely with it is the terminal cancer patient who doesn't want to go home. Yeah. You know, because she doesn't want, she is in a different place with the objective reality of her death as opposed to the subjective emotional experience that her adoring husband is fully engaged in. And again, that's like in the presence of the other, the night charge nurse as the death doula. It was it was it was heavy. I mean, there's a there's a scene in a show that we didn't really cover dying for sex where Paula Pell plays the comedian from SNL and Girls 5 Eva. She plays a death doula similarly. And it's like a long, quite powerful scene where she's like, do you want to know what happens? And it is a relatively uncelebrated opportunity that TV has to educate in that way. Sure. And play it across multiple storylines. I don't know if that's a universal experience for people, but yes, I agree with you. Which? The explanations. No, for sure. But I'm saying there are things that we don't like to think about in our daily life. There are things that we don't like to think about in our entertainment, and there are things that people who make entertainment don't really want to spend time with either. But there are certain shows and certain stories and certain scaffolded story structures that allow for that in ways that I think are pretty fascinating and commendable. I did wonder, to your point about The Prisoner, do you think that Robbie has any kind of metaversal awareness about what happened when David Krumholtz stabbed him and Kelly back in ER and thus he doesn't want potentially violent criminals in the emergency room? Like the show is aware of our preexisting relationship with Dr. Noah Wiley. So I do wonder if that if that ever comes into it. Well, it's a dad that certainly informs the way I watch him interact with Langdon. Because it's like Carter had such a pronounced drug problem in ER. No, he didn't. Did he? Didn't he? Maybe he did. I don't remember. He was addicted to fentanyl. God damn ahead of his time. chronic pain following the death of lucy following her death wow i have blacked that out into season seven i was probably going to parties with my fellow comic book fans they were called conventions honestly but in my mind they were fun as parties so uh it's very rare that i'm like i i got this piece of tv history and you don't i know because you were probably doing travel baseball then and yet no but you just have an er i was partying we've also established that at the end of all when was season seven uh like 2000 oh my god you couldn't keep me off the streets no we tried pre-9-11 but the city was yours it was the hour before the 25th hour yeah for you it was the 24th hour so to speak yeah uh uh but we've already already established in this podcast that there's nothing you like more after a you know a long performative draining experience than to like fire up the idiot box you know it's also funny that you're mentioning the sort of metatextual relationship we have to actors and their other roles because uh the terminal cancer patient's husband i was hoping is played by taylor hanley who plays kyle on mayor of kingstown oh wait but wasn't he also cousin oliver on on the oc oh i don't know in my mind i'm like that guy's really seen some shit you know he was taken prisoner he's oliver from the oc okay this is like two wolves but one is kind of a puppy and the other like it's the oc bitch it's like actually ben riley was the scarlet spider um that's cool let's talk about some other storylines going on in the pit right now i wanted to ask you we were talking about robbie just now so i'll mention this how can his cavalier attitude about helmet safety on a motorcycle really manifest itself yeah so i was one i wanted to talk about this because they've now made this a big thing not only they made it a big thing it now seems six episodes into season two of the pit it appears that all of the characters on the pit are watching season two of the pit they know that we know that robbie is a little cavalier about this thus one third of the patients are motorcycle related this year and everyone keeps looking at him like you moron yeah you absolute fool so i don't know how this shakes out unless they are building i mean there's a number of ways it could shake out one of the ways it could shake out is the season could end and he could ride off and then we linger on the night nurse and it's like guess who's coming back in yeah this time as a patient i mean that's that's on that's in play for them um i guess i appreciate the fact again with the sense of like firm hand on the wheel or on the handlebars in this case that they are running towards it that they're not trying to hide the fact that that's i also think it's pretty it's pretty realistically human to have somebody who's like 98 safe but the two percent are pretty it's pretty bad pretty wild yeah you know because the two percent is just is like if it goes wrong it's over what do you think about one of the other things that i just admire structurally on the show is the way that it takes the quieter moments within each episode if not the quieter moments in the season to just subtly address things that were lingering last week it was what happened to dr collins this week Langdon asked Dana about the guy who punched her Oh yeah If there was any resolution there And he talks about that What is it How many months to be alone 10 months that he was basically on the shelf alone with his thoughts to make us remember the amount of time that has passed for them. And then the other thing that they're doing just expertly, I think, is bringing up the you know, on the on the big mixing board of life, just pushing up slowly on the supporting characters to give them a little bit more. The biggest example of that this week is nurse, no longer nurse, nurse practitioner, Donnie. Yes, who is given a moment to show his extreme level of expertise when it comes to suturing, but is also put in a position where he's like, I think Mohan or somebody comes over. I can't remember who grabs a patient from him. It's like, I got this. And he was just like, I'm an MP now, so I can handle that. yeah um i i also think this is another example of them being smart about the cast that they have so brandon mendez homer is the actor um juilliard fit nice and if you you cast like really talented stage actors they can probably do more than just like you know push crash carts in the background for sure uh hot dog guy was pretty gross didn't need to really see him barf multiple times the deaf lady i'm curious where that's going can i ask a question i think that that is also like being used as an example of like santos is kind of like she's not she's just not not on the ball when it comes to paint patient relations detail oriented yes but she is still a badass in the in the room though and is dating um the surgeon yes they're having early save a situation ship yeah um can i ask maybe a a dumb question there's no dumb questions well i don't want to be insensitive but couldn't the deaf patient write? I had this conversation with my wife while watching this. I do feel like they're making it a little hard. I'm sure it would be painstaking to be like, here, I'm going to write it down. But if she could just write down like, can you tell me how you were feeling in your head, stomach, everywhere? And then the deaf patient wrote it down. Because Princess was like, how are you feeling? And she was like, great, I'll tell you. She's like, I only know. But it speaks to the amount of detail that they need. For sure. And the princess is like, she may have said stomach or she may have said... waiting for five hours give her a whiteboard she could write the great american novel right about how she's feeling right that's just me i i thought that was strange too but i think it's also like the the procedures that they're supposed to go through at the hospital and they had this situation at the beginning of last season with the woman who i can't remember she was maybe from nepal yeah they couldn't figure out the line they couldn't even find out like what kind of interpreter they needed um until they used google so sometimes maybe the most obvious answer is right there um Can I recite a line of dialogue from this episode of television? Mm-hmm. As I mentioned to Dr. Santos, generative AI is not perfect. Speak on it. We got to switch things up with this character. Yes. Dr. Alshimi has been brought in to be a... She is now, right now, just a character foil. And she is a tweet. And I like the performer, and I think that there's potential here for the character. but I don't know what we're doing with this character. We are entering this part of the season. Now, everything can change and, you know, it's the beauty of the show is that people can surprise you as they emerge over time. Like two weeks ago, we were like, what's up with Joy? And then two weeks later, we're like, oh, we understand a little bit more. She doesn't even want to be a pathologist. She's good at figuring out what might be wrong with people. Which is the kind of doctor you've liked since the days of House. Yes. We are at the point where I think it's fair, since we have a twice weekly podcast to say this character is not working yet and we can praise the performer all we want but like it could potentially be a case of a mismatch because i it she's now actively dragging the show down i would say the character it also doesn't reflect great on robbie though because clearly other people are starting to gravitate towards her a little bit santos might be a little bit annoyed that she's like make sure you're up on your charting but for the most part everybody seems to be like, okay, I'll go along with what your ideas are, the generative AI stuff aside. Much like the show itself, I think we need to give her the back nine of the season to see where she's at. Do you relate to, I think you don't because we've already discussed your feelings about scatology, but I thought that was a remarkable rebound for Ogilvy who 90 minutes ago was being sprayed with shit. And then he's like, I was born to do this. yes i thought for a second he might not not have been born to do it i feel like that would have i feel like that would have wavered almost any confident young man you know what i mean like at least giving you like wait till the second day before you decide you were born to do the first thing they tell you at med school it's like you guys signed up for this but just so you know yeah you can get just sprayed down with all sorts of fluids i honestly appreciated the honesty of the show most when the hot dog guy was bazooka barfing because it did you kind of like if you are ill for example um you want the the the professionals around you to be you know to be to be professional at all times like they've seen worse this is part of it they support you i appreciated in terms of like real pull back the curtain honesty that langdon was super grossed out and couldn't hide it you know what i mean like that he wasn't like ah i see i'm sorry this has happened to you sir yeah He was like, that's gnarly. I will never eat that again. Put a pin in it there. I guess I mean, like baby Jane Doe. Yeah, do it. That's become a thing. I haven't really been following the story, but people have been praising as they should the great Catherine Lanassa. Yeah. But then didn't she say that she was like studying mayor of Easttown? But it's like they're in Pittsburgh. I don't know what Dana's was. She made fun of Philadelphia in that. Like, remember last season, wasn't there like a whole like crowd scene? And she's just like, what do you think we're in Philadelphia or something? And she allows the prisoner to stay because he used to work at a bar where she had her first kiss. She is a yinzer, as they say. But you don't think she's doing a Pittsburgh accent? I don't know that she is, but I thought that was a little... Baby Jane Doe sounds super Philly to me. I gotta say, I've never spent any time in Pittsburgh, so I don't know the accent. You haven't spent any time? No. Really great city. Okay. I'm not saying this just to appeal to the crew. I know, but you have more of a wider swath of Pennsylvania under your resume. I don't. I'm just like a Philly guy. You're kind of a coastal guy. Yeah. You've got to get out on the streets and see the real deal of America. Like Western Massachusetts? That's a little far. Yeah, but I did that. What did you think? It was awesome. It's beautiful out there. Did you see any people? I saw some people. Did you? You know I did. The dark hearts? I know, man. When I was in college. But what did you do in Western Massachusetts? You were alluding to. I was dating a girl. in western massachusetts yeah yes is this the after dark segment i don't know let's go into after dark i dated a girl and she went to mount holyoke i don't remember this at all well maybe you and i weren't cool yet maybe this is pre-us well no so i'm glad we're talking about this because was this like circa like 97 96 95 no 95 because this is the thing this is pre-us so it's like it's weird because i was thinking anything right now i was thinking about how in summer of 97 i went i did like though i'm going to go to europe with a url pass and like went to some cities and i was like hey why didn't we why didn't we do that trip that would have been fun because i probably couldn't hang because you're like this no 97 i was still pretty pg-13 but the question is what's shocking considering the the complete like web of interconnected life that we now share yeah i probably didn't call you like i feel like what was our what was our you you didn't figure into that trip in a way that's surprising to boston in 96 yeah so and then 96 and you were driving up to to holyoke no i was driving up to holyoke when i was still living in philadelphia oh well that's a whole but when i moved to boston in 96 i was already we were talking on the phone I'll be talking on the phone but then was I like some news friend I will be leaving the continental United States I don't remember you going anywhere was that in the summer? I was hanging out by then I think that was my first Boston summer how would you define a Boston summer? just smoking cigs and working at the record store and going to see bands you did that in Boston winters too but I didn't have school I didn't have to worry about school were you worried about school a lot? Not much. Not enough. Look at you now. Anything else you wanted to get off your chest? I felt like you had a couple cultural takes you wanted to fire off. I just wanted to say that there's a record coming out in nine hours. Cold to the Touch, the new album by Angel Dust, comes out. Tell me. I saw Angel Dust in Boston last two weekends ago at the Something in the Way Fest. And it's one of the best live shows you can spend money to see. and uh it's kind of a definitely hardcore rooted band because justice the singer for angel dust was also entrapped under ice but i would also say that if you are a fan of like i honestly for me it gives me the same feeling if not sonically the same thing as like the punk garage aggression of hot snakes but it's also very tuneful um and it's got like some like hyper aggressive power pop moves in it too too so it's it's just a great band you want to cut and paste that onto the substack recs you're going to text me yeah sure sure i wouldn't mind that um but that's that's my big rec for friday when it drops that's a good right in a couple hours uh and then that's it that's it yeah reading wise like i think true detective season two i think i told you this is sending me back to elroy and i haven't read james elroy sincerely probably since American tabloid Colt 6000. So I went back and started reading Big Nowhere and it's fucking good. In the LA books, he was really, really in his bag. But I feel like that's a little aggro for you. No, no. You heard me on last week's podcast. I'm much more politicized than I used to be. Not politicized, but did you read LA Confidential and Big Nowhere and White Jazz? No, I think it's good to revisit books if you're not like the worst thing that has it can't happen and it's happened to me is you're like that was one of the most important books i've ever read i love that and then you go back and you're like yeah yeah that's these types of writers have usually it's also a tough feeling is if you pick up an old elmore leonard or james alway book and you're like boy this is like reading it the first time i don't remember any of this and then you get 180 pages in and you're like shit i remember everything that's about to happen like you basically it hits you like your brain unlocks yeah but then isn't it just a glide path all the way to the end then because you're not worried yeah kind of it is plot or story and you can actually be like oh i remember what happens here and i can just give my head five pages if you want to um that's it that's all i got you got anything music uh new rap boys record is really good you like them chicago band i do really i've spent a ton of time on them sing into an empty chair really strong album and then i'm also like i'm really i'm really spending too much time maybe for my uh uh age range in my demo with like fake mink and sd kid and all these british rappers oh wow really yeah a lot a lot i'm really driving around to it you listening to it while you write what are you doing well so as you know the nfl season is over thus i have nothing to listen to anymore also like i guess she'll god bless him is sick so there's no philly special this week this is the best time of the year because everybody's competitive again it's like now you can start talking about clint kubiak and his vision for the raiders yeah but but i'm saying like the podcasts have they're active no but but like yes i know what you mean i know what you mean so i'm listening yeah there's the new fake mink record the boy who cried terrified it's really good there's a burial sample on the last track you might enjoy going back to this sd kid record from last year really enjoy that he played or is playing la this week oh yeah i'm i'm going with the homies i just didn't know if you wanted in on that st kid is a rapper from liverpool who some people thought was timothy chalamet yes and chalamet is in town and chalamet dropped bars on the four raws remix i don't know if you spent time with i didn't it's very enjoyable okay i'll go check this stuff out that's really good you guys but also you know another record i love that my kids really don't love you put me onto this is um uh bass victim oh yeah i love that album yeah and that that record's really good that they're the record's called bass punk 2 and uh i have had that playing more than twice while picking up my children from school turn this off instantly yeah instantly they really like do you think you're the only guy in line to pick up kids at that school listening to bass victim i want to be very clear about something every single electric vehicle in line to pick up children from the progressive los angela school is the fucking sd kid of his own life yeah inside of those that climate controlled dad hat and a guy listening to so everyone's wearing an open button-down shirt yeah and new balance sneakers being like they don't know how cool i am yeah like that one gift the guy at the party and then everyone at the party's like we're actually at a party go back to the comic book store you fucking dork but for those beautiful last few moments of solitude i'm like still got it I could get a URL pass. Yeah. I could go. See ya. You're really too eager for that. Thanks to Kaya. Thanks to Kaya. We'll be back on Monday. President's Day. Salute. We won't be celebrating that this year. But we will be talking about A Night of the Seven Kingdoms and Industry on Monday. And who knows? Maybe there's some other stuff out there in culture that will hit. Luckily, my kids have a four-day weekend. So we can really, really drill down into what's wrong with their music taste. Talk to you guys on Monday. you