‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 5 and the ‘Cape Fear’ Trailer. Plus, Why ‘Legends’ Is Crime Drama Excellence.

This episode of the watch is presented to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same day delivery has your back getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit amazon.com slash prime to find millions of items delivered fast available in select areas terms apply. I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am the concubine of New York Knicks fandom at the ringer and joining me on the other line a longtime fan of 50 foot women. I'm standing green walls. There's a lot to unpack there. I mean, first of all, I appreciate you meeting with your vulnerability. Yeah, you know what? You have to learn to take the L with dignity. And we're going to talk a little bit about the Sixers and my travels back to Philadelphia for game three, which was humiliating. And I basically sat in a cook chair for two and a half hours while New Yorkers screamed at all of the players for the Philadelphia 76ers. We're also going to talk about euphoria and a new series on Netflix. They and Ian are both really excited about called legends. It's great to see you, man. It's important to see a friendly face in these dire times. I have a couple of news items for you, but I just want to check in. You look great. Great flannel. Oh, thanks. Yeah. You know, the weather is quite hot here. You're missing that. Is it really? Yeah, it's getting warm. Getting up to a close to 90 today. Yeah, it's a brisk spring day here in Philadelphia. You're back in your element, I can tell. I sure am. You know, I'm not the person on this podcast who keeps his finger on the pulse of things. In fact, I keep my fingers far away from all pulses whenever possible, including lentils and other legumes. That said, I have been noting with interest with Brian Windhorst's fingers the possibility that CR month is maybe expanding into CR year, metastasizing, if you will. Why? And here are some of the things. There's just been some cultural dominoes falling that are really lining up for you. And I feel like we should be tracking them here on the podcast. One of them is you and the rest of your cohort knocked out Janet Mills and Maine, which I think is great because you hate establishment dems and you're ready for a new voice in Washington. And also, you also have tattoos. Two, the Virginia Supreme Court knocked down the redistrict, which I know you also hate gerrymandering. But you always just want an even playing field. That's something about you. The third thing is, I don't know if you saw this yet because it's not really like our wheelhouse or what we ought to be discussing generationally, but the new Charlie XCX video came out last week. I did see that. And for those who don't know, the video is called Rock Music. She declares the dance floor to be dead and that now it's all about headbanging in moshpits. And in the video, not only does she attend a show with a ferocious pit, she also smokes so many cigarettes that she walks around a, I imagine New York City apartment that has basically like obelisks of cigarette butts raised to the ceiling. And I just feel like you are the vanguard of culture. I feel like I brought hot girl cigarette summer to the forefront. I just feel like it's not a coincidence that two weeks ago you're talking about the Basement show in El Sereno and now Charlie XCX is like on board with you. You are a tone setter. No, I mean, so I saw that she is pivoting to early aughts rock sound, right? Is that the word on this? Unclear, but it is a pivot. It is a pivot. I can't, nor would I want to claim credit for cigarettes coming back. I think we need to blame our leaders for creating an environment where people are turning to cigarettes, you know? Because what's the point? Yeah, okay. I think that's right. All right. Well, I'm just saying I'm watching this stuff. Okay. I'm just monitoring it now. I almost broke the seal on a pack of camels this weekend on Friday night specifically for obvious reasons because of the sixers, but couldn't find, you know, I went to a gas station and she was like, we sell no nicotine products. I think you miss her. I think she said, we sold out. Have you seen what's going on with the sports teams? Have you heard about the CR day? Or that? Yeah, exactly. Andy, I wanted to talk to you about two, two sort of TV news related things. One is just a brief, we can, we can hit it and skip it thing with Apple's Cape Fear adaptation. They released the full trailer, which is kind of a funny thing because you and I and everybody we know we're sitting around, we're like, there was a lot more to Cape Fear, you know, we didn't get to in those multiple film adaptations of the John D. McDonald novel. The biggest, the biggest problem was they started with Cape Fear. Why don't you start with Cape Dread? Cape simmering anxiety. You know what I mean? Like you can really stretch this. Cape, there's just something not right. You know, ultimately Cape existential terror. Why are we out of nicotine? But we'll get there. But, you know, so this, this a new multi-part, I think it's, I think it's eight episodes, but maybe they haven't even announced the amount of episodes, but it seems like it's going to be time consuming. 10, 10 episodes from Nick Antosco, who is a showrunner and a TV creator that I have a lot of time for. Javier Bardem is playing the famous Max Cady role, which was played before by Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro. So a meaty, meaty part there and Bardem is one of our best actors. So I'm sure it's going to be worth watching that. Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson play the blear couple at the center of Cape Fear. But what did you make of the trailer, which, you know, gets, it seems to center Amy Adams's character more than maybe previous adaptations have. Good use of center. I think that's appropriate. Well, a couple of things. I would say that Nick Antosco, who's a really good television creator, his background going back to Channel Zero is in horror stuff. And so I appreciated that that seems to kind of be the tone here, psychological horror, but certainly a monster movie with Javier Bardem playing the monster. That's a smart pivot. I think that probably makes and for it probably makes for an entertaining series. I think that Javier Bardem seems engaged to play a monster again, perhaps for the first time unambiguously since no country for old men. Looks good. Morton Tidal directed it. I have two concerns. And by the way, Kaya, if you'd like to speak, your concern about the over representation of New England on Apple TV, feel free to jump in. I don't want to put you on an island with it. Do you think New England is like the new Eastern Europe in terms of shooting locations? Well, we have Widows Bay and now we have Cape Fear. That seems like a lot of ocean centric New England horror shows to me. Listen, you're not. Chris and I thought we slayed the beast in game seven last week. Like we didn't think we had to go back there for a while. And yet professional obligations demanded. My main issue here is one, if you thought 10 episodes was long, this trailer is too long. Like I don't need two and a half minutes explaining to me that Max Cady is a scary guy who laughs inappropriately that's going to be menacing this family. Like I get it. I think this is actually one of those things where a teaser trailer is enough. And also I'm going to, I'm not going to run from the allegations. My number one issue here is unless they steer into it, the couple at the center of the of the chaos is, as you said, played by Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson, which to me is like enjoying a delicious mayonnaise sandwich on white bread. Like Patrick Wilson fan. I am a Patrick Wilson fan. Are you? You know what? I'm a Patrick Wilson fan. I have a joy is working. What's your name? Your top two Patrick Wilson works. Aquaman and Aquaman two. Uh, not going to take it seriously. And you're not going to take it seriously. We can't rank things. No, come on. Wasn't he in? He's an angels in America, wasn't he? Uh, yeah. And in that episode of guy from the Midwest, right? And the episode of girls. Girls. So there are two smaller parts in long ago HBO series. Little Children. Yeah. I guess in Little Children. Um, Conjuring guys. So me and Pat go way back. Fargo season two. I want to say I just it's just it's a I'm noting the pairing that I feel like either because I find them both. I find him interesting and bland intentionally so. And I think he plays into that role well as like, look, here's like here is the white guy that can be the either the fall guy or the stand in for life's ills or whatever. And then he has a little more something going on behind it. So you steer into it. Uh, I don't find Amy Adams is captivating as you do. I think I wish I could tap Bill Simmons in right now. Is he a big fan? He is the opposite of a fan. He is an Amy Adams hater or at least, uh, does not understand how she has so many Oscar nominations. Um, that's one of his big pet peeves nominating Amy Adams for Oscars gives him the Ick. This feels like after game seven against the Celtics, this feels like coming home. Yeah. This feels like I'm back working at the right place, you know, where I'm understood my takes on this. I'll save obviously I haven't watched the screeners yet. I'm curious to see what they do with it. Um, it's coming in June 5th. The only question I have, and this is actually going to feed into my, my next topic I wanted to bring up with you is the degree to which there is a, um, contemporary perhaps younger generation relationship with the story, the characters of Cape Fear. So for us, right, it's kind of indelible, right? Like it's, it's like, this was Martin Scorsese's big blockbuster effort. Um, I believe there was some script trading with Spielberg going on where this might have even been Schindler's list or something like that. Like I can't remember what it was, but there was, it wasn't, I don't think it was that, but you're onto something. This is absolutely true. The thing where like Spielberg was thinking about doing this and then traded it to Scorsese for a different, something else. I can't remember. I've, I've talked about this on rewatchables. I just don't remember the research. It's Schindler's list, which is insane. So what a, what a sliding door. Um, and I think that I'd be curious to know whether or not there's like a 28 year old person who's just like, this just looks cool. And I, I don't really have any preconceived notions, nor do I have the baggage that tells me what can, what can there, how can there possibly be a 10 hour series about this? When the whole purpose of the, the two adaptations of the book are the, the sort of vice leg grip it puts you in for two hours, but most people getting through Cape Fear would not want that grip to go on that much longer. I mean, the whole point of a thriller is it takes place in this kind of condensed period of time. I think that what, what Nick has said, Nick Entosca is that he found more inspiration from the John D. McDonald book, The Executioners that inspired the original Cape Fear film, and I was in second Cape Fear film. And as someone who has read all 26 Travis McGee novels, I support going back to the original John D. McDonald text. I think that's interesting. But your question, and this is something, I don't think we should spend more time on, on the hand wringing, but I do think it's worth noting that like this is, you said, like what young people may find in this. I think that like Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson and Javier Bardem means that Apple is either comfortable or just rich enough not to worry about attracting much young interest in this. Okay. You know what I mean? Like this seems to be, I don't think, I think you could go broke trying to squint and discover a larger programming strategy from Apple. I think they just fall in love with stuff or fall in like with stuff and put it out and that's the extent of it for the most part. But if you did want to do those shows for four or five seasons or however long. But, but in this case, I think you could make the argument. I'm not, and I'm not sure if they would, how strongly they would endorse it. That things like presumed innocent have proven to them that there is a market for adults. You know what I mean by that? Like, like entertainment that like again, presumed innocent is not like a sexy Scott Taro is not necessarily burning up the YA shelves, but like there is a cohort of people who pay for their streaming services that fondly remember that book and movie. And this may be something that you could put into the same bag. The reason I said we shouldn't do any hand wringing over this, but I remain pretty fascinated by what their strategy is. You just can't resist. I can't help it because there has been some stuff recently. And again, I don't know what am I going to do with my hands. You're not here to hold them. That there's been some data released and I never know how to trust online streaming data, like who's reporting it or not, because these services are generally quite opaque. But there was there were some numbers going around about debut week streaming numbers for Apple series historically. And it was interesting to look at that like shrinking started quite low. But I assume at this point it's one of their most reliable shows in terms of audience. Yeah. To go by this like debut week thing, Pluribus unsurprisingly had quite a big debut number. I think it was like 3.5 million views in the first week. And remember, not many people pay for Apple TV. So it's it's numbers are smaller than like an HBO debut or what have you. And Widow's Bay was at 2.5 million, which they said was fine, but in line with things that hadn't succeeded. Margot's got money troubles, which was a huge promotional expenditure for them in investment was 2.3. So I don't know what they're seeing in terms of both attraction and retention. Yeah. Budget versus return on investment. And meanwhile they have like several blockbuster sci-fi shows that they're deep into production on multiple seasons. And do you think that they have separate buckets for this is a show that will attract more subscribers because it's a proven commodity, or is this the show that we are feeding to our existing customers because we know they like it? So yeah. I think that that's a really good question. I mean, the reason why I, you know, the next thing I wanted to talk to you about was a show coming from NBC Peacock. And, you know, I'll give this to Apple. I don't always like their shows, but they do have an identity and they do have a commitment to seeing stories run and seeing stories out. And, you know, they're on, I think there's I saw a graphic of all the stuff that is currently in production for them. And it was a full, full network's worth of television shows that are some are in season four, five, six, have spin offs, you know, like have been rebooted. You know, two of the Bill Lawrence shows are essentially going into their act to a lot like Shorzy, where it's like, we're just going to give these guys a different thrust now, but it's still all the people you know and love. It's kind of a fascinating gambit that, you know, I think we were always a little skeptical about like, so what are they going to just put phones in all these shows or like what happens when people stop renewing after they're you get a year of Apple TV free with the purchase of a new iPhone stuff happens. But it just really seems like Tim Cook stepping down aside. They've just decided to fill a void where all these traditional networks used to be, which is here is multiple shows per month coming back on relatively regular schedules with all the biggest stars. It's kind of just like they're doing TV. The thing I wanted to ask you about was this Friday, the 13th show called Crystal Lake, which NBC Universal did their up front, I believe, on Friday or recently, at least in announced some release dates for this morning. Oh, is it this morning? OK, so they announced a bunch of release dates for upcoming shows, including Amy Pollard's new show, Dig, which I'm really excited about. And the renewals of a couple of things like the Fallen Rise of Reggie Dinkins. But most interestingly to me was the announcement that Crystal Lake, a long gestating Friday, the 13th prequel will finally be airing October 15th. Now, Andy, I have zero expectation that you will either watch this or be interested in what I'm about to tell you. But I hope to make it at least somewhat relevant to our pod purposes by talking about this show is basically a lens through which to view television history in the 21st century, because for almost 23 years, they've been talking. And when I say they, I mean, various people involved in the rights to Friday, the 13th have been talking about doing a Friday, the 13th TV show. Right. Now, infamously, there was a series like Friday, the 13th, the series was, I can't remember who broadcast it, but it was only it wasn't it wasn't related to the movies at all. It was basically a haunted antique shop, X Files type show, which I only really know about because I know David Cronenberg directed one of the episodes and this is just a curio for me. But in 2003, they were starting to develop this. It got, you know, at various stages of I think they shot a pilot for the CW and the CW turned it down. So like for a while there, it's going, you would hear about some sort of like at the Friday, the 13th rights, the Friday, the 13th development race like happening 22, it kind of like really kind of heats up because it's announced that A24 is going to become a producer on the show. And that Brian Fuller, who at the time was pretty hot shit coming off of Hannibal, was going to show run it, was going to be the TV creator. And he he's pretty vocal on his communications about what he's working on. It was like I have complete creative control. Yes. Listener, he did not. Brian Fuller was not only canned from the gig in 24 around the writer strikes, but also ran into some of his own problems based on some behavioral stuff. Just to jump in, I do think it's accurate that during his time at the controls, he did have complete creative reign. But his reign on the short, his reign on the top was short, like the proverbial for proverbial leprechauns. I could barely get that out, but I'm proud that I did. Honestly, if you did it any better than that, it would probably be weirder. Yeah, you're right. It was pretty weird regardless. So 22, like he comes and goes in 24, it's announced that he's leaving. But around 24, because of the amount of money that's being thrown around in streaming television at the time, it's rumored that Charlize Theron is going to take over the role and that this is always going to be about Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother. And I don't know, I don't want to spoil anything for people, but she's a bad ombre in the first movie. And, you know, the idea of Charlize Theron coming off of like Fury Road and being in this series is pretty hilarious. I mean, I think they had like sets reserved or built and like it was ready to go. And Kevin Williamson was rumored to be involved at this point. So he, I believe, had been working on the Brian Fuller iteration. That's the creator of that. But Nick Nintosco was then brought in for a minute. And I don't believe is involved in the Crystal Lake now. It's being run by Brad Caleb Kane, who's got a litany of credits, but most notably worked on Warrior and something else recently that I thought was pretty decent, but he was an executive producer on something. But in any case, it's just a fascinating. He was on it. Welcome to Dairy. Welcome to Dairy. That's right. He was in the machete verse. And then so like it's just a kind of a fascinating tale of a piece of property that honestly, like even dudes like me probably don't have a lot of hope for. And I don't know for people like Kai and Kaya, they're like, yes, Jason, the hockey mask. But if I remember correctly, one of the issues here is not unlike the Thomas Harris, Silence of the Lambs rights. Right. I don't even know if they're allowed to have a hockey mask in this show because of the difference between the film rights and the TV rights. This show now starts Linda Cardellini. It's coming out two weeks before Halloween on Peacock. And I'm curious, but it is something where I'm like as the movies start to come up with kind of if not necessarily like wholeheartedly original ideas, they are at least unwinding themselves a little bit from the comic book dependency. Right. And from some of the IP dependency. I say that knowing that Devil Wars Prada 2 is dominating gang gangbusters in the box office, but it practically feels fresh. The idea of hanging on to what if we did a prestige version of Friday the 13th for 20 some years arriving at a Peacock show coming in October, which I am still kind of interested in seeing is kind of wild. And it also dovetails nicely with Cape Fear, which is Friday the 13th is a slasher classic is about kids at camp getting chased by a guy with a hockey mask. Yes. So underlying reasons for all of that. Nobody cares. We did not spend a playground time in the 80s wondering why Jason was broken and who hurt him. Do you think Jason's mom had a bad marriage? Like what's what happened there? Let me tell you something. I was a child for every one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movie releases and never once was I like, what happened to Freddie? What's his trauma? You know, I that was never a question or a concern. I will give the neighbors of Elm Street had it in for him and that they burned him or something. They did. That's why he looks the way he looks. So he has a legitimate bone to pick. Yeah. And he picks a lot of bones out of people still breathing ribcages when he puts his hand through them. Well, so maybe it's a hero story. I I were actually not that far away from that considering like there are prominent people in this country who are like, the Empire was right. No, I don't like it's not that far away. I do give credit to this to this production. He was a sovereign citizen of the dreamscape world that when they shot this last year in New Jersey, did you see that they shot it under the working title Mama's Boy? I respect that. That's pretty good. To your point, this could be good. And it would be delightful for everyone who cares about these things. And hopefully I would imagine people who don't know they care going in that this is pretty good. It does as someone who doesn't engage with any horror content, remind me a lot of Bates Motel, which is which was the psycho prequel series that focused on the attack. Mother. Yeah. So it is not unexplored territory to do this. And I guess it was relatively successful. That was your your beloved Vera Farmiga was on that show, if I remember correctly. My favorite therapist. Oh, it's the departed. Is one of your reasons why you've never fully committed to therapy is because that you have an ideal in mind. Yes, Vera Farmiga and the departed straight up. Why don't you give me a bottle of scotch and a revolver? I wonder if you do you think therapists are googleable by their feelings on the departed, like whether they think there is some like ethical violations in there or not? I mean, it's just she is honestly, can I just be be real with you on the 23, the hottest woman I have ever seen in that movie. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. I think people need to understand if this is going to be CRE or truly. Yeah, I think we need to be transparent with each other. And I think again, now we will see if fashion moves in your direction. And therapists start being incredibly inappropriate. If therapy moves in the direction as well. I think you are right to frame this in terms of the last 10 to 20 years of just IP strip mining. This may end up in with a good show, which is great for everyone. It is hard to poison the groundwater in the process. No, not even that so much as like it's very hard to make anything full stop. And it's very hard to make something good. So if they were able to do it, ultimately, we don't need to do a postmortem on how they got there. But there is an element of this where you, you know, the tech overlords who have come in to streamline everything and and uberify everything in this industry as well are unquestionably the villains and just fundamentally anti art. But every so often you get a case where it's just like we've been trying to develop a story no one particularly is asking for for 22 years. And we have spent untold tens of millions of dollars to get there. And now we've also now we've leveraged or a 24 has leveraged us or we've leveraged a 24 in their quest to expand their purview, like all to get here. Maybe, you know, at this point, maybe Doug from from it could have been like, guys, what if we don't do it? You know what I mean? Like, like that there is that element to that with these kinds of that said, I don't I truly don't know, like, will these things continue to just pop up? Like zombies, like the few that actually survive their long gestation or how we really turn the corner from this. And this is the last shining echo of light from a distant star. I don't know. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something like last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for? That's when prime same day delivery has your back getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so that you can actually join in on the moment. Instead of watching from the sidelines, same day delivery. It's on prime. Visit Amazon.com slash prime to find millions of items delivered fast available in select areas terms apply. Let's get into a full throated endorsement of a new TV show. So out of out of all the concern trolling we just did for two non existent shows or shows that haven't aired yet, I wanted to get our full shoulder behind legends on Netflix. We got a few emails to the watch email box. You can always hit us up at the watch. It's Spotify.com. We always love your emails. We'll do a mail bag soon and I'll try to interpolate some when we discuss legends in more depth, perhaps next week. So the six episodes, obviously Netflix, sorry. Yeah, Andy and I both watch too. This one stars one of our favorite actors, Tom Burke, who people may remember from Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag from last year. It starts Steve Kuyen in a unusually straightforward role, although I am really enjoying the master Michael Cain impersonator slowly becoming Michael Cain. That's the best insight I could possibly give. Yeah, he's just doing a really good Michael Cain role where he's like on the call, who tells you what to do. Haley Squires, who folks will probably seen on their screens before. What was like the Haley Squires is biggest thing? I this is going to be insufferable, but I'm going to say it anyway. But I am British theater. You're going to say you saw her at Don Marr Warehouse or something? No, I saw her at All My Sons with Brian Cranston and Papa Essidue earlier this year and she was awesome. I know it's ridiculous and rarefied air, but you've experienced this too. That is I saw Tom Burke last year with Cape Lancer on stage. Like I saw Kuyen do Dr. Strangelove. Like it's really cool that all these really good actors work on challenging things and then they get a call to like play a copper for a couple of weeks. And they're like, sure. Awesome. I know I'm projecting, but I feel that enthusiasm on the screen. I think I saw the kid who plays young Jason Voorhees outside of the Xfinity mobile arena on Friday night, urinating on a beach jersey. So on TikTok. Different cultures, you know, but but people are working. That's what matters. This show is set in 1990 in England, gloriously. And I say that as somebody who is currently staring at the soundtrack, which features features happy Mondays and Depeche Mode and Stone Roses and a bunch of like Manchester classics and British club and alternative rock hits from that era. Great soundtrack. And it comes to us via the showrunner creator, writer Neil Forsythe, who people who listen to this podcast may remember as the writer, creator of the gold. The gold was one of me and Andy's like out of nowhere faves from a couple of years ago and then he did a second season, which I criminally admit I have not watched nor do I even know where to watch it because I think it was on PBS briefly and maybe on like a PBS streaming service, but I haven't checked it out. In any case, Andy, when we were chatting about this off the pod, I want to steal something you said and throw it back at you as a prompt. And this is, oh, I should say a crime drama about an influx of heroin hitting England in 1990 and the customs house department of the home office or the customs, basically the customs department of the English government sending in a bunch of undercover agents to try and stem the tide of heroin flooding into the country in 1990. And Steve Coogan plays the sort of ex undercover agent slash police officer. We haven't really gotten so far into his backstory who leads these several of these cops and they're all played by Squires and Tom Burke and Amal Amin, who's also quite good as a cop named Bailey or a customs agent named Bailey. When I was talking to you a little bit off pod, you were you said something really insightful, which is is this guy now his own genre is Neil Forsythe now his own genre. What would you describe as Neil Forsythe as a genre? It's really so specific. So if you would watch the gold, which we encourage you to do, you will feel instantly at home with the show and also instantly relieved in a way that Netflix also understood his unique talents and gave him the platform because the gold would have crushed on Netflix for the same reasons that legends is already climbing the global top 10. Neil Forsythe is uniquely talented at making incredibly complicated, historical moments shine dramatically and emotionally with an almost like brutalist shorthand. What I mean by that is like the gold, which is about a very infamous, I think more infamous if you lived in the UK than than fewer us, but infamous robbery and the after effects of that robbery. Legends is about customs officers infiltrating, as you said, like the heroin distribution networks of the UK in 1990. Its heroes are people who usually check suitcases at the airport. Yes. And it is absolutely suffused with British specificity in terms of Margaret Thatcher's political interests, in terms of Turkish immigration, in terms of council estates and the politics and being from a place like Liverpool versus not being from a place like Liverpool. And yet it feels galactic in terms of like, oh, I understand everything about this. I understand the safe house where they're meeting and how people have, you know, plausible deniability and people are getting in over their heads. And there's a shorthand, you said, we don't know that much about Steve Kogan's Don character. We know exactly as much as we need to know when these characters sit down in a room, they are all primed to say not just the most expositionally efficient thing they could say, they say it with a flair and panache that is a hallmark of good writing. So when we covered the first season of Narcos, I think we both enjoyed it a lot. But we joked even then about the Boyd Holbrook voiceover and how really the show was like an elevated Wikipedia of the series where historical events were being dramatized for our for our eyes in a way that was perfect. That's old Pablo right there. Pablo Escobar was his name and drugs were his game. Joel M. B. came back from an app and decked to me a little early for my tastes. See, now you're kind of. Seemed to work for the New York Knicks. You're performing your trauma in a way that Freddie Krueger also did. But I'm a little. Let's what we're going to get to that at the end. I just want to say that in lesser hands, this show would be basic AF or confusing. And when I watch it, I thrill to the dramatics of it and this, you know, in the specificity of it, but I also marvel at it's just just brutal efficiency. Honestly, to get us to this place, if you watch this pilot, the characters go from unknowns to deep undercover within 55 minutes. And there's not a wasted second. And some of it and all the things that take them from A to B or actually A to G, basically, all the middle letters are so deeply pleasurable, including a recruitment drive. Yeah. Calling of recruits, a montage of training. Different recruits being good at different elements of the job, like some are good at paperwork and some are good at picking locks. And all of the period details are so perfect, whether it's the car models or the references to European Cup finals that they're making. And then the music is just like it's not hitting you over the head like, oh, here's a needle drop just out of nowhere. It's like walking into like college parties or estate council parties or pubs and stumps something on the radio. But it's it's very scene setting without spending a billion dollars to recreate Trafalgar Square in 1990. Maybe when we do another mailbag at some point, we could come up with like a working list of the six things that you watch television for in heaven and just as a way to sort of point to them that like, you don't not every show has to do all of them. And you don't and actually shows get worse when they try to do too many of these things. So one thing that you've been talking about in regards to our coverage of euphoria is that you're not bored and that you're often surprised. And there's a visual dynamism and we'll get into that when we talk about that show. That is not what you come to legends for. But you come to legends for you learn something, you travel somewhere and you also get that deeply pleasurable hit of watching a creator, filmmaker, showrunner who loves things, certain things as much as you do in the audience and knows that sometimes like a perfect pop song only uses the same three chords. So a recruitment scene, you know, a character having a surprising core competence. The small details of characters getting to know each other in a rough and tumble way and realizing they're going to be friends for life. Like there are these crime novel, crime television show, crime film beats that he runs right at and does his version of within this world. And then on top of that, you have Tom Burke, who I can who is in like year 10 of being the next that guy, I think. Yeah, all the way back to like Furiosa. Yeah. And he's he's the lead of like the of J.K. Rowling's other adaptation that's been on was on Cinemex, the C.B. Strike series. Oh, I didn't know that. He's a star of that. He's he's done romantic dramas in the UK. He's he's always hotly tipped to be hotly tipped and he's a star. And at some points you squint and you're like, he's also well new as 40s. And I think he's supposed to be passing as someone with a young family, but also who cares? This is TV, man. He's really good at it. There is something kind of fun about the fact that this is this kind of it goes hand in hand with Widow's Bay to me, where it's just a complete clarity of intention and tone. There is a menace of violence. There's a threat of violence. But so far it's not like it's a little bloody, I guess, but not after a couple of episodes. But they just hand everything is handled in like the exact way that I think that the showrunner wants it to be perceived. And that is that is deeply pleasurable. We can hit it more in depth like next week when I'm back or no, maybe when because we're going to be apart from each other a couple of episodes. But I hope to finish this one off with you at some point. It's it's how jarring is it to see because we're about to see Steve Coogan in the White Lotus and Steve Coogan's career over the last 10 years plus like Filomena and stuff like he is. He has been in a period of like, let me try things. Let me see where the floor is and where the ceiling is. I'm still doing Alan Partridge, though. As an actor. He still does any of his doing the trips like up until recently. But like, is it jarring to see him in this role? Because I think you nailed it when you said he's doing Michael Cain, but really doing Michael Cain and now I'm all the way in. I didn't think I don't think he's bad at all. He's honestly, I didn't know this about the show. I didn't know his Neil Forsythe. I turned on Netflix on Friday after getting back from dinner and there's Steve Coogan in a TV show. And I said, sure. But did did you bump it all? Not bump, but were you surprised? He's got something, man. I mean, he's got screen presence where there's a sequence in the second episode where he has to answer like two different phones, both calling with emergencies and he's also calling his boss. And it's just a lot of landline drama and some characters have cell phones, though, but not the government. Yeah, but like, he's able to basically like command the screen and be the load bearing wall of this show. It's really, it's a really great turn from him. It's also, I would imagine a little bit subversive and fun because famously he has had his own struggles with illicit substances in the past. And here he is playing like an absolute. I said, we got to get this heroin out of this country. I mean, I think he probably agrees with that sentiment now without question. Do you think that, and we'll talk about this again when we get circled back to it, but one thing that I really appreciate about Neil Forsythe also is that he is, he's Scottish himself. He's from Dundee and then Scotland exists in a like a vortex on the show that's like a little bit where Sauron from, you know, those references. Yeah. And it's also like, like when somebody has to take heroin to Scotland, they're like, oh, no, that's exactly it. Like, yeah, that's where he's from. You're a Kurdish heroin dealer and you're worried about Scotland. This is amazing. Let's wrap up the pod today or wrap up the TV part of the pod today with a trip through LA Nights euphoria episode five. Kitty Kinn or no, the little pig, this little piggy, right? This little piggy, you know, you are watching this series. Yes. As as a pilgrim, new to the lands of euphoria and watching each episode is then there's only the fifth episode of euphoria that you've ever watched. And by the way, I appreciate you using religious language to describe this because, as you know, I recently finished Jonathan Franzen's excellent novel Crossroads, which is a lot about religion and I'm learning a lot about religion and its ecstasy and also its privileging of abasement and how one must sometimes suffer. And in that suffering, there is a freedom. Are our characters on euphoria not suffering? Well, that's how I connect to them because I too am suffering. But please continue your setup. Your knowledge of euphoria, Laura, is limited. But your heart is open to the possible pleasures of the show. I was curious, though, as this episode starts with a, someone would say hysterical, some would say thrilling, some would say cringe, 10 minute sequence of Cindy Sweeney's Cassie character becoming the 50 foot woman, the famous sci-fi B movie about a 50 foot woman who catches her boyfriend cheating on her and we get gigantic replicas of Cindy Sweeney's breasts smashing into skyscraper windows. We get lots of lurid sexual behavior from her, all in a kind of crazed montage explaining her, you, your only fans fame that is taking off. Do you have a, quote unquote, relationship to the Cindy Sweeney stardom discourse and also like her rumored political leanings, etc. Yeah. That you feel like the jokes hit necessarily in this, in this sequence. I want to thank you for your attention to my interest and curiosity in the Sydney Sweeney project. I also want to gently deflect and reflect the question back to you. Yeah. Let me look, let me be honest with our listeners. I've long wanted to jump in feet first into the Sydney Sweeney discourse and I'm grateful to you and the good folks at the ringer for giving me an opportunity. It's this kind of fucking centrism that's dead, dude. This is not going to win an election anymore. It's totally right. Say it with your whole 50 foot woman chest. That the DNC provided me on the subject of Cassie Howard and Euphoria. Yeah. That, you know, America is a great country and there's room for all sorts of fan, genuinely, genuinely. I was so perplexed by all of it because I absolutely couldn't tell what I was watching. I, if it is a satire of Sydney Sweeney's public persona over the last few months and years, I get it. I was aware of the jeans commercial and all of that. So I understand like in the political stuff and it doesn't matter as long as people are talking. Like I, I, I guess I appreciated it as a very robust, some might say, buxom engagement with the larger cultural talking points. As television on a show that I was trying to find a way into, I found it off-putting and bizarre. Okay. And I need to know genuinely as a long time fan of right leaning celebrities, what you thought of this and how it spoke to you. Hold on. I have to close out of the window of Caitlin Clark walking out to Morgan Wallin at his concert in Indianapolis. No, I, I think you need, I mean, for the, for the purposes of like accuracy, like I like this show. I really don't give a shit what like Sydney, No, I know. So my genuine question is you have said over the course of this conversation, the case for the 10 minutes, because wait, I wanted to preface this by saying you have repeatedly said that you enjoy, I'm not trying to put you on the spot like a gotcha. I mean, you have said on this podcast that you have liked her performance and this character's arc on the show when it was a completely different show. So I actually need you to tell me funny comic actress. And I also think that I've seen her in there's a specific performance that she gave in reality, which was the movie made about reality when there's arrest that I thought was really good. That's that's the bits aside. Like, you know, I think she she's capable of really good work. This 10 minute sequence, if you want to make the case for it, is about how the feedback loop of the modern digital ecosystem and internet ecosystem will explode someone will make people like turn into monsters or transmogrifier, become like it's all of that. I think the most central image of those first 10 minutes is definitely Sweeney is Cassie looking at the comments about her only fans, videos and like that seeming to get set off some sort of chain reaction inside of her brain. Yeah. It's also like kind of funny and grotesque and also really interesting that Sweeney is is going along with this portrayal of her, I guess. Like I felt that the best way to put it. But like she's she's a willing partner, I assume, in like how this is happening. And then when it comes to the line that I think is going to get clipped a lot, which is her appearing in 2024, you for the timeline on, I guess, Manisphere or like digital media podcast. And when they ask like, you sound like a Democrat and she says, I'm not retarded, like that's going to get clipped to hell. And they knew that making the show. And this sequence is also about how there's no such thing as bad press. And here we are talking about a show that you've never watched before because it's interesting. Now, I don't know whether you are regretting that decision, but it is kind of this fascinating thing of like engagement with the engagement with the engagement. I agree. I just think there's no bottom that that so far, aside from a few moments, all tied to Zendaya's performance, this season is is meta to the point of abstraction that I just find like again and again, the show's worldview just fundamentally, I think, mistakes, cynicism for insight, that there is something powerful being stated, observed, uncovered, revealed by pointing a camera at and being like, isn't that evil? Isn't that awful? Aren't people really, really at their heart kind of thirsty, hungry, desperate, bad? OK, great. Then why? But I don't find I just I found last night incredibly frustrating because without something grounding it, it was. The the the Tarantino karaoke just overwhelmed everything to me, like characters, you know, like like Alamo's pants being too small and then turning it into Samuel Jackson at the beginning of Pulp Fiction, overreacting about the burgers, you know, it's like that's by the way, that's my that's how I remember Pulp Fiction. You remember the entire movie is about one. It's about one man overreacting. I think he went in there with the intention of killing those guys and happened to have a burger and he he said it's a tasty burger. It is a tasty burger. You're right. So let me rephrase that. He finds happiness in the burger. But otherwise, like, I guess I made it five episodes before ending up in this kind of frustrated place where I feel like I also am buried up to the head and someone's about to club me in club me in the forehead about it. Like I I think I just desperately lack and I walked into this. I get this. I walked into this willingly. But I I'm starting to wonder more and more what I feel differently or what I feel worse if I had an emotional attachment to anyone on the screen. I need you to do anything at all. I think that I still have hope that there's something going on with the ruin Nate characters and I Nate has been completely abandoned as somebody with any kind of connective tissue to the past iterations of the character. But there you kind of jokingly mentioned the suffering leading to salvation thing earlier. It's it's kind of obvious that's what it's happening. Like they're literally cutting pieces of Jacob Laudioff. They are burying Zendaya in the desert. And this will now be the second near death experience she has. She is not in the trailer for next week, but I am assuming that she was not decapitated in the desert by Alamo. And now we're going to have five episodes of four more episodes of you. Four. I respect it. I respect I think that the project here is about whether or not you can have a soul and live in the greater Los Angeles area. Like I think that's the idea behind the show. I don't know whether or not these characters are the right vessel to get at that. There are certain combinations of characters that I really like. Honestly, thought the Alamo and Maddie conversation Bob's big boy was pretty electric. I really agree with you because there's two things happening here that I want to three things that I want to give credit to. Sam Levinson fucking loves movies, you can tell. And the stylistic decision making in turn, not just like now we're going to do Attack of the 50 foot woman, but we're also going to really pay attention to dressing Maude Apatow's character like she's in a Howard Hawks screwball comedy who's wandered into the wrong movie like all the way down to well, what does Tarantino do really well? He does people talking at diners really well. So let's do a diner scene, maybe either maybe worthy of the imitation in the flattery. The other thing is I don't have in front of me. I'll call it up in a moment, but like the cinematography and the lighting is beautiful. But what's our man? I haven't been saying his name. Our guy triple A who's playing Alamo is giving a really, really good performance on this show. It's also a pretty significant part of the show. So it's like it's interesting that they have in a lot of ways like Laurie and Alamo have taken up so much real estate in the series compared to say Lexi or Jules or I don't want to be glib. I was calling him triple A, but it's out of Wally Akinoy, Agbache. And yeah, he's he's great on this. The only other thing I would say is just that like his instincts for depicting addict psychology, I think are pretty. Pretty sure handed and Rue repeatedly finding herself in a situation where she can't be fully honest with anybody in her life is. A hallmark, I think, of somebody who's dealing with addiction is struggling with addiction, even struggling with being sober. Is is like how honest can you be with any one person at any given time? She can't be honest with Jules about what they're doing. She can't be honest with Alamo about what she's doing. She's not honest with Laurie about what she's doing. She's not honest with Maddie really about what's going on when when Alamo walks into Bob's big boy and, you know, what they're putting that character through, I think we're only going to really be able to understand it. Same thing with me at the end of the series or at the end of the season. But I do find it this wasn't my favorite episode. I also watched it after like an evening out watching the San Antonio Spurs. So it was like a long basketball game and then I came back and I was like, cave, Cindy Sweeney's giant chest is destroying downtown Los Angeles. It's kind of like what Wemba and Yama did last night as well. I know. I know. That was she got whistled for a flagrant. Flagrant, too. So yeah, could have been the name of the episode. Try to see if I have any other notes here. I do have a pet theory that we're going to find out that this season of euphoria is in fact a storyline on L.A. Knights. It's interesting that like L.A. Knight seems to be the vortex that's drawing all these characters in. Jules is painted for it. Lexi works on it. Now Cassie is on it. And it would be kind of fun if it just turned into like a this is a very special episode of L.A. Knights. I like I know this runs counter to things I said at the beginning of the season, but I actually I'm finding L.A. Knights to be kind of grounding, partly because I think Sharon Stone and Colleen Camp are funny and I like their presence on the show. And, you know, but that said, look, I think the most interesting thing about last night's episode to me was that I don't know of many other shows that have run right at a fundamental truth of our culture and of our certainly of the entertainment industry, which is that old world stuff, the stuff that we cover, the stuff that motivates us, that inspires us is dying, is Jurassic. And what the way most people engage with things is not this. It's vertical video. It's straight to consumer. It's only fans in name or an other or a Patreon, which is just like what Substack is just intellectual nerd only fans, right? Like it's that's that's what the industry is. And so the moment when Maddie like upsells Alamo on the potential of his business is interesting. The moment and you counter that with Cassie being so blinkered to think, or at least so old world in her mentality, that she's willing to give up what is clearly a multimillion dollar opportunity to audition for a role of what was it like job applicant to audition for someone auditioning on a television show that completely rewires her brain. And she's like, now I will be famous. But what she really means is now I will be legitimate or now my mother will know where to watch me on TV. That's a fascinating place for any kind of conversation these days, maybe not a fascinating place for our podcast, but like it's interesting to see it play out on the screen in a way and uniting all of these world that only fans kind of legitimizes things that have been marginalized. That's all really interesting. That has been a weird theme of this this season, where it's like the Maddie's boss makes her get rid of Katelyn as a client earlier in the season. And then it's like and now like is like kind of interested. But at the same time, Cassie desperately wants to be on like traditional forms of media because that somehow ratifies or validates her celebrity. And then there's like, you know, Nate asking Cassie to get into a faux relationship with the guy with the TikTok house. I don't know. I don't really know what they're doing. Nate, I don't know what he's been doing with the $30,000 cash injections that Cassie's been giving him. Maybe he's like on Cal-Chi, but I'm not sure. I mean, I thought that entire scene was despicable. Like I just getting his finger cut off. Yeah, I just you don't think he dances to vinyl that character? What was he dancing to? Mel Torme? Yeah. Sure. Sure, man. Like everything. Let's just let's just find it in the moment. You know what I mean? Let's just like feels good. Let's let's fix it on set. Let's do it. There are a lot of ideas on the screen. Yeah. OK. That's what I'm in. And I'm trying. I'm white knuckling it, man, in pursuit of my faith and in my belief in you. There were a couple of weeks when I didn't like it in quotes, but like you, I was like, I'm not bored and I appreciate the aesthetics or I appreciate. You were bored last night. The effort I found last night mostly excruciating to watch. Yeah. Because it's also it's like it's 50 58 minutes, 60. One hour and one minute. OK, it's that's too many minutes, man. It's just too many minutes. No one who needs to hear me talk about this. I want to hear you talk about it more because you have as a fan of serialized television, I think you have some relationship with characters journeys. And so when I'm watching this last night's episode, I'm like, Rue suddenly seems just a lot more credulous, passive and passive and kind of clueless about stuff. I don't find passivity to be like that to me is like someone being in control of their own destiny is kind of like like ability. I'm like, I don't know. These are like weird rules that we make for TV characters that I don't really give a shit about. Like some people get pushed around in their life and wind up like, yeah, no, I'm not that's not what I'm arguing. I'm saying is the Rue that you watch over multiple seasons, the same person who is driven to the desert by March on Lynch and told to dig a hole until it comes up to her chin is like, oh, I guess this is my job now. I suppose she's like aware on a deeper level of how fucked she is. Like she's basically at the center of like a pain triangle among drug dealers in the DEA. So like there's really not a lot of outs for her. And I think that's an experience probably where it's like it's all fun and games until it's really not when you, when it comes to like buying drugs and being a drug addict and stuff. And I don't necessarily, I mean, it's obviously like a fantastical and like deeply like spaghetti Western fate to be digging your own grave. But I like spaghetti Westerns. I just found that like the Rue and the Nate culminations of those two arcs, this episode hit different because we had literally seen them go through those experiences before. So I wasn't like, oh, no, Nate now loses his finger. I wonder if he'll really change this time. It's like, obviously Nate is going through some reverse Frankenstein's monster thing and Rue is going through some quasi religious passion of the Christ thing to kind of find the truth of what the Bible is supposed to be telling her because she has this block when it comes to a higher power. There is just something, maybe it is something like a born again thing that I just am observing. And I don't say this like with judgment. I think that Sam Levinson believes that it's all kind of bullshit and he's seen it and he's been through it. And one of the things I think he feels there's an element of like a provocateur in a grand artistic sense that I think he seems to subscribe to, which is just like you think you're above it on your living room couch, but you fucking look at these websites too. And you know that I'm casting porn stars because you're looking at porn stars. Now you're watching them too. And now you're complicit in this too. And my actors are complicit in it. And you think the second person is quite pointed here. Well, not like you think that he can act. Well, now she's coming in. I'm going to have her do a long monologue from Shakespeare and have people watching her do it and then have people watching people watching her do it. Because that's what all of this is about, man. We're all just watching and we're all finding a way through it. Or even similarly, like for me as a new is a newb, like the totally confounding character of Jules and that performance and their role on the show, which is like, I'm going to objectify the person you guys are already objectifying. But within the show, she is objectified as well. And how does that make you feel? It's a lot. And, you know, it's not a usual relationship between artists and audience that we find on television. And I think it's important to note that, like that is a little bit more cinematic, I think, or it's like, I don't know if you've been following. I assume you've been following. You've been busy with the Sixers, but the Venice Biennale opened last week. So I'm not sure how across it you've been, but this Austrian artist, Florentina Holsinger, are you aware of what she's been doing in the Austrian pavilion? You're the fucking best. Her thing. No, it's been on like people have seen this because it's been on Instagram and stuff. But like her thing is that, you know, she is the art. And so at the Austrian pavilion, she has a water tank set up and she is jet skiing and circles nude. And like that's what she's doing. But she also opened the pavilion by they hung a giant bell and then she hung herself nude as the thing, the hammer inside the bell that rings. And I feel like Marina Bromovich did this shit like a couple of years ago, though, right? Yeah. Well, Quentin Tarantino did this shit years ago, too. I'm just saying, like I am not saying this to mock. I have plenty of other opportunities on this podcast to mock or sneer or, you know, ring my hair with moral piety. But I am saying that there is an element of provocation inherent in this season that I respect and that I'm trying to identify as its own thread in the larger cultural quilt that is not very common. Because in some and honestly, I think this is sometimes I haven't asked him about what he thinks about this season. But I do think that that's partly what our buddy Sam Esmail always responded to on the show or on the idol or something. Because I think he fundamentally disdains accommodation. Like he does not want the audience to be comfortable. He he gets mad not just if you're folding laundry, but if TV shows do the things that I was just praising the foresight for doing, you know, like, oh, here's something that we've seen shows do before. And isn't it fun to see them do it? But in Scotland, like anti that. So Bravo question mark. But also I wanted to just go take a long walk around my neighborhood and think about the choices I made after that night scene. But maybe that's the point. Let's talk about choices briefly. Watch after dark remote. So I don't know if we can really get the lighting change that we're accustomed to. Do you have shades on those windows? Should I turn off my mother's kitchen light here? So I came across the country for family reasons, but also because I was like, this is the rare opportunity to go see the Philadelphia 76ers play a home basketball game, home playoff game, which I had not seen since 2012. We have not gotten past the second round, which is where 25 years, I believe. Yeah. The 2012 team, which was the last team before the process is sort of, you know, famously derided for like being second round and out guys. But here we are in 2026. And, you know, perhaps perhaps I was flying too high off that Boston, that Boston pack. But I flew out here myself and Nick from Bad Brother went to the game on Friday. We had a fantastic Philadelphia evening where we started. We got a Guinness and then we went to old original Nick's roast beef. It's original. I had a roast pork sandwich with some horseradish on it in the Yngling. And I was like, God damn, dude, it's best city in the world. And we pull up on Xfinity mobile arena. I was curious, what's your favorite iteration of that arena? What was the what was your bank sponsorship? Did you prefer it's the Wachovia Center for me? I we were talking core states. We were like, did the core states have like a real core state? Yeah, that was better because the thing about, first of all, I love banks. I love them. Yeah. And I love when they change hands. They provide so many basic services and some of them even have cafes now. So thank you, banks. But I do appreciate like citizens bank park, at least has the word citizens in it. So you can squint and be like, that's for all of us. Core states has a similar like, oh, it's essential. Pennsylvania is a course. It was one of the original 13. Yeah. Once we got into these, yeah, Xfinity mobile. Come on. So we were walking up to this to Xfinity mobile off the subway and it was kind of like took the subway by a very nice experience. It's a great experience to get to the sports complex. And we were talking about like, what do you think the ratio of Nix fans to Sixers fans is going to be? And I probably comes before the fall. And I was like, I think like 70, 30, fully, right? Like first, second round game in a minute. Like they made it. They made a concerted effort, at least I so I thought to limit sales to like a certain zip code or whatever. I don't even know if they actually did that. But the problem was, you don't take Josh Harris that is word. OK, let's we'll get back to that. When we were on the train. Yeah. I noticed a lot of people wearing Phillies regalia. Good. And I was like, oh. They can't possibly be playing at the same time. They were sure the Phillies were playing the Colorado Rockies. The mildly hot Phillies were playing the Colorado Rockies. And I was like, that's the C.R.R. year. Things are trending in your direction and baseball too. Oh, because I like Don. You like Don Mattingly, but also you're like, talk to me after game 60. That's what I said. I said, I know maybe. I'm saying you said that. So anyway, we're walking up and it becomes apparent that we're closer to like 50 50 as the amount of Nix jerseys we're seeing. And I did see several Nix fans doing an interview with a citizen journalist who had a Cal-Shi microphone. I don't know what futures predictions they were making, but it did not involve my future. And or if it did, it was like, this guy's going to be really miserable. We get in there and you're like, OK, like this is it, man. I I'm just a grown man at an NBA playoff game. Like what could be better than this? And we sit down and they got the white t-shirts out and we're like, fuck yeah, like Josh Harris bears no expense. The white t-shirts of surrender. Yeah. I we sit down and we're next to like five lovely people from New Jersey and Nix jerseys. And then to our left are more fans wearing Nix regalia. And then in front of us, a lovely couple comes in and they are obviously Nix fans. And increasingly in our section, and I think it was the same, it was more like 80 20 Nix to Sixers fans. And what happened then was a brief moment in the first quarter where Tyrese Maxey threw back to back alley of Stade VJ edge comb. And I almost leapt over three rows to high five. The only other Sixers fan in our section. Then we got fucking boat raced. And that's when it really got dark, because the people around us were relatively pleasant, except for the guy up in the upper deck who shouted, let's go Nix during the moment of silence for Sixers coach, Nick Nurse's brother, who recently passed away. That guy's a fucking scumbag. And if Buddy Ryan was still alive, he never would have gotten out of Philadelphia. And sometimes I wonder whether we need to go back to the old us. Yes. You know what I mean? Like this, I don't like the reputation that Philadelphians are like alcoholic hooligans. But when you let something like that happen, it's pretty embarrassing. The most the most terrible thing that happened was the Nix then go on, like, you know, just this epic run that basically went on for seven quarters. You know, they destroyed us, then kicked the shit out of us yesterday in game four. But during we get to halftime, and me and my me and Nick are like, I kind of want to leave. Like this is not actually fun. But then in my mind, I was like, you know what? Not everything in life is supposed to be fun. Like we kind of have consumerified everything. Like fuck me, fuck me for coming here. You know, you're like you're like Nate on euphoria. You're just doing something through. Yeah, cut it off. I didn't need it anyway. Just cut it off. And I think the the bottom hitting bottom is being in a men's room. But getting to that inner men's room line where you're still waiting for the urinal. But now you're in a bathroom. Full of Nix fans on IG live, filming other men urinate, going Nix in for fuck and bead. I may be on. So I might be on some guys Instagram. Having a halftime piss and thinking about what led me to this place in my life. Forty eight years old, honestly, like just being humiliated in it in public on the internet. First of all, I have no idea what happened to that footage. I hearted it. I did see it. Out of respect, I did not repost it. But you come off well, you know, I should clip that clip me in the bathroom. But just running underneath this month takes a new turn. I so I have I have a couple of things to respond to here. I did. I wanted to say in my own defense that last week when I was watching the Sixers be buddy, buddy with with the Celtics at the end of the series, I was saying that maybe maybe we need to bugs bunny meme sports again. And like Lord, forgive us guys to be pissed at each other. Yeah. And you were like, oh, no, come on. We're all in the league together. This is a fraught one because genuinely, I'm on the record of saying this and I'm OK with it. I think that the Nix should be good because for 20 years, they were dog shit. And that's dumb because Madison Square Garden is the coolest place to see basketball. And it's a storied franchise and it's more fun when they were good the last week, except it. Also, we both have many Nix fans in our life. Oh, I should say, like, congratulations to them. Sure. Yeah, that sounds very genuine. And also first, let me talk about pissing. And now we talk about one of the other. Yeah. Indignities that we suffered was that was the first time I've knowingly been in the same building as Timothy Shalame. No, that's a lie. I went to a complete unknown screening that he know he wasn't at that. So like that was the first time I've ever been in the building with Timothy Shalame and it was him dicking all over the the the Xfinity mobile arena. But you have court side. You have sold him that ticket. We need to name names. I want to just just let me know who sold him that ticket. Name time to name names. Was it a nice Shyamalan? You were just saying that the new James Elroy book actually suggests that the people who name names during the communists, which try which hunts of the fifties were the heroes. So maybe we need to bring back that aesthetic. Yeah. Spike was there. Ben Stiller was there. It was Tracy Morgan was there for the not the fifth or sixth time you were in the same room with Fat Joe. So that's always you guys. You'll settle that offline, but you know, we understand that that's been simmering since the Rucker. I. It's hard because we have friends from there. We chose to live in New York City, not Philadelphia for the best years of our life. So I get it, but I am my sports fandom is forever chilled by the fact that one of the most fun things about our shared like teens and 20s was them when we would come home from college or just come home from living in New York. We would always go to a six years game at Thanksgiving. And I remember that we went to a game. It was maybe I'd in my mind, it's the first Iverson game we ever went to. And it was the beginning or maybe it was even before Iverson. It was Jerry Stackhouse was going to be the answer. And I just remember going to the arena and it was and we were playing the next and the team was garbage and they were doing fan cam. And you know, it's like, well, it'd be you fan of the game, fan of the game. And it settles on this lovely woman. And they came to her and they were like, you, ma'am, you're the Sixers fan of the game. What do you have to say? And they handed her the microphone and she said, I just want to say go next. And like, I hear her voice sometimes when I'm trying to like talk myself to sleep by thinking about like Sixers two way players who might make it. So this really burnt. This was it's egregious. And I don't understand why it happens because the Mets who, I mean, a bad NL East teams, I mean, I think we all there is a clear winner and a clear loser. And it's not, you know, it's reverse. The like, is it a numbers thing? Is it a ticket scarcity thing? Apparently there's a couple of different things. For one thing, just anecdotally from Uber drivers in Philadelphia, they're like, this team is not that good. And if you can make a thousand dollars selling your tickets, I don't, I don't blame anybody. I don't know. That's anecdotal based on like two Uber drivers. I think one of the major problems is that MSG is so expensive. Yes, that's right. Games are so expensive. And the Nix fandom is something of a diaspora where there's like a lot of New Jersey Nix fans. There's a lot of people who can't maybe get into MSG for any games. Philly is like a very easy commute to get down and I guess relatively cheaper. You know, great restaurants, you know, nightlife. It was tough, man. It was just like if I had known what I still have done it, yes, I would have, you know. It's good. It's good to go out and meet your voters. You know what I mean? Like really understand the electorate. I, I genuinely think this is a franchise problem. I think that if it was a well run franchise by someone who, I don't know, I'm just spitballing here, didn't also not on the Washington football team. And it's also in the Epstein files. Like maybe the curse would be lifted and maybe things would work out a little better. And also that maybe people would genuinely believe because it was really cool to beat the Celtics. I genuinely love with my whole heart, Tyrese Maxie and VJ Edgecomb. And I will always love Joel Embiid and I'm happy for him, both that he beat the Celtics. And as he said last night, though I haven't ever accomplished anything, I can be a good man and a good father. And I'm like, you know, I might print out that quote hanging on my wall. It's the drill wisdom in the post game interviews. Yeah. But beyond that, like why would anyone believe? Like especially with all of this just like fucking tiki-tak, like load management, contract juggling. Like, but if we're all healthy at the same moment, somehow we might things might break. Right. So we could get swept by Oklahoma Celtics. We beat Boston. Yeah. So I'll always have that. I was not kidding when I said raise the banner. Like that, like there should be a banner that says that to encapsulate this era. There should be two banners from this era. One is eating the Celtics in the first round of the 2026 NBA playoffs. And the other one was Zaire Smith surviving the peanut allergy. That's right. Like the sesame seeds or the he went into anaphylactic shock and they should just raise the EpiPen to the rafters. And every time Cal bridges dunks on us, he should point to that. That's what I feel. Well, that was my week and I drank a lot. Oh, you look great. You wear it well. Now we can focus on you're going to focus on baseball now. Are we just focusing on the June 1st? Hey, Jay Brown trade. We're I don't know what I'm going to do now. I thought maybe I would start reading more. Sounds like I might I recommend Crossroads. Quite good. You I mean, you're you're such a book fluencer, man. I know that you're just upset because Phoebe and I have been texting about it. Like, then you're cut out of it. That's all. It's all right. I get it. I like you guys having an independent relationship for me. Because I send her the videos when they come up on the Internet. I'm like, your husband's pissing online again. And she's like, oh, I thought he didn't go on Twitter anymore. I'm like, no, no. Literally. And then we try to we try to clean it up. We have Spotify's best black bag out. Kaya and Kai for indulging in that that episode of the watch after dark. I am not going to be on Thursday show. Oh, yeah, I got to get I got to figure out a show. And then you are not on next week's shows. No, because we are doing some traveling. She's passing. But I hope when we reconvene, you're all caught up to date on euphoria that you continue to watch euphoria diligently and that you don't turn into guys like now I have to watch three episodes of euphoria the night before I'm checking in with Chris. Don't do that. I dude. Dude, glimpse behind the curtain. Like nobody cares what we have access to or like how we watch things. But it's been a is a tough sled that like they have denied screener access to you. Four years, three. It's just it's just so tinkering. Sure. No, I don't want to interrupt his process. It's just that it dials. It's just that like I do wonder and I'm trying to be better than this, but I wonder if I would enjoy it more if I could control my experience rather than being like, ah, now to end my restful weekend with the sound of Jacob already screaming is a man who uses a fucking garden shears to take off a finger. Do you know what I mean? Like is there a little anger in my voice when I say that? Maybe. Thanks to everybody for helping produce the show today. I we will be back with you guys on Thursday, just minus me, Greenwald, solo show, who can say I can't wait to find out next week. I'm going to do a public Tory style investigation of Josh Harris's myriad web of business interests. Do you think that would do numbers? Yes, especially if I didn't research it. Yes. And then you got sued. We have to get some indemnification for the company first, but then feel free. Okay, I'll see what I could do. The views expressed in this podcast exclusively at Greenwald's. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you guys soon.