‘Industry’s’ Book of Revelations. Plus, ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ E5 and a New Chapter in the Warner Bros. Bidding War.

Moment, I check this cut.

Oh, Ha! Homo-Vis-Givind! Bring 250 € more, Mia! Yeah, right, but why do you know what? Why? Why do you need live performance? That's just the story about all the fans. Yeah, I'm asking, but it would be great.

Twenty-four-seven and unobamten German, that's just the one who understands us. Steuernly, let's say, with this story. Now, let's try it out. I ain't supposed to have to play the room. Stand up and walk. Now, hello, and welcome to the watch.

My name is Chris Frage, and I am an editor at theriger.com.

And joining me on the other line, nobody expects the FSB. It's Andy Grewell! My brother, are you well? You're far away from me today. I'm doing okay, man. I just didn't want to wet cough on you. I have a little bit of a cold over the weekend.

My Valentine's Day just got a little wild, me and my wife watched eyes wide shut. Yeah, which is a Christmas movie, by the way.

“So it is a Christmas movie, but it's also about marriage, you know what I mean?”

It's about love. Yeah. It's about honesty, it's about reviewing ourselves, it's about masks, it's about comoles, it's very relevant. We have a great show for you tonight today, because we had a great TV night last night, kind of quintessential, you know, throw back HBO night of two huge episodes of

the television show, an industry at night of the seven kingdoms we'll be talking about. Both of those shows, you can reach us at [email protected], you can follow us on Instagram at the Watch Potterscore. You can watch us on YouTube at the ranger-tv and you can watch us on Spotify where I hope you're listening to us.

Greenwald, how are you doing, man? It's raining in Los Angeles. You seem grumpy. I'm not grumpy, we just had a fire alarm here. There's like, a lot of people that listen, I respect it, Spotify clearly does not recognize President's Day and really why would any of us?

“I mean, I honestly, we were free to take today off, but I just thought you'd want to get”

these takes off because of the show's last night. I found it, well, we'll talk, we'll get into the specifics, but that was a tough, it's a tough viewing block. Interesting turn taken in Hollywood today was the announcement, it's in Bloomberg, you can re-look, show us piece about it.

He obviously understands this stuff way better than you and I do, but since we are about to wait into the vigorous of the financial world, we might as well start here with Paramount Warner Bros. in Netflix, there seems to be another chapter to this story. Netflix and Warner Bros. had agreed essentially to their deal at something like a $27 per share price, and now it seems like there are elements of the Warner Bros. board asking

for negotiations to be reopened because of Paramount's improved bid. They had a $30 per share bid, and we can get into like backstopping and who wants what and why this is happening, but what's your initial reaction when you hear that news? It's worrisome.

“I think that anyone who's been watching the story and who has better financial awareness”

than we do probably noted with interest that Paramount doesn't really, isn't really

in the business of listening to a no, that David Ellison is basically having a borderline

polite tantrum about this because he thinks that it should be his, and the ever since a few months ago when Warner Bros. accepted the Netflix bid, he has been out there stamping his foot writing open letters to European regulators, agitating, improving the offer, basically saying we're offering you more money. We're offering you all cash, and I think that the pushback has been consistent from X-11 Warner Bros. saying this is a more sensible deal for us for

X-Y and Z reasons. One of the reasons being our businesses are more complementary to each other that in terms of the employees of WBD, there are many of those similar, at Paramount because they also are a legacy studio with a footprint in Hollywood and buildings and a lot. But this is the way that business tends to work both maybe on industry and in our actual real life industry. These days is the loudest, angriest voice wins, and it's, I don't

know. I mean, I'm not, I try not to be in the business of cheerleading for business. I don't know if any of this is good, but I do think that the behavior of Paramount, both prior to this deal and during this deal does not necessarily suggest a harmonious marriage and any kind of like consistency and fidelity to what Warner Bros. has been doing right up to this point. I do wonder what my reaction to this whole situation would be if David

Ellison had hired John Fravero to run CBS news. Do you know what I mean? Like, I have

Fravero. Okay. I mean, like, crooked media. I mean, I wonder whether or not, like, there

would be so much hand-wringing, if essentially there wasn't this kind of like Trump appeasing

“bent to Paramount these days. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, I think the, the conglomerate”

conglomerization of media into regime-friendly apparatuses is terrifying and you know, it's not like, it's not like there are many companies that haven't bent knees or, you know, other other parts of their bodies over the last three years. But there has been the sense that Netflix, you know, is, it's funny. We've talked about this. Netflix has been a villain in this town in a lot of ways over the last few years. But in terms of not being the

elections and not, and they come out as heroes. And additionally, saying that like, you know, we value, at least lip service is being paid to we value what the film half of Warner Bros. has done over the last year and a half. We value it case you poisonous team in HBO has done. So I don't know. This is all C-suite way above our heads, but it is a little concerning.

“Which one of our Sunday night television shows do you want to start with? Because I think”

we'll have like quite a bit to say about it. I think we should start with night of the seven kingdoms. But I do have a lot to say about both of you. Right. So this is an interesting episode. The penultimate episode of the season, you know, and a little bit off book, both in terms of the momentum that the show had been building up and also going away from, I think literally the source material. There are suggestions within the novellas, apparently, according

to Malin Jones, just my discussions with them, that, you know, outline broadly, and obviously spoilers going forward, honestly, for night of the same kind of kingdoms and industry. In case we would make any jokes, there are allusions in the text about rave about his life and flea bottom where he came from, how he hooked up with Sir Arlin, etc. But to explicitly draw this connection between dunks childhood or dunks, you know, young years. And how it

shaped him and shaped maybe the way he felt about heroism, the way he felt about shivalry, the way he felt about what a night is supposed to do. I thought, you know, was it was okay, it was not my favorite part of the series so far. And this is a show that I feel like is made very few missteps. And even within this episode, it's a testament to the kind of cooking oil this thing has that they were able to still make two thirds of an amazing episode, while also

having a huge flashback second act that goes back to flea bottom and goes back to dunks origins.

Tell me how you felt about the flashback specifically. The most important thing we need to

“for me to say first is Chris, you can't use cooking oil. That will kill him. You have to use wine.”

So in terms of your metaphors as well, be very, very careful. That's something all the maesters know. Although I have to say, like just the sort of man on the street medical response, did remind me of when I would be hung over in the early 2000s and you would offer some suggestions. And it's just like, well, the cheermail seems to have stopped it. We'll just throw some hot Western on it. And you just, you know, probably will be okay. I thought this was a fascinating

episode of television for what it was and for what it wasn't. Like when the flashbacks started, I immediately started to get a feeling that it caused me to text you, which I try not to do in the middle of television shows, but I knew you'd already watched it. Do you ask? Do you try? Yeah, I didn't say it succeed. I just, I try. It's just a policy. You know what I mean? It's a suggestion, a guideline. Which was, is this invented? Because it felt, um, and, you know,

very often one's spider sense about that sort of thing can be wrong, but it did feel so totally different from what the show had been up to this point. Uh, and you told me that it, that it was, which, which, which did make sense. Everything that was in the flashback was, it was very, very well done and executed. You know, I, I have long wanted a flea bottom that, you know,

where the, the smell and stench of everyone lept off the screen and I finally got that felt very

rewarded for that for my long time commitment, you know, to the, to the, to the, the working classes of Kings Landing. Uh, I thought that the storytelling made sense. The, I don't know how they found a little dunk like that. I have to say that the show made a bet on itself and the early going that it was going to be so different from the game of thrones that we've come to to know to respect and to occasionally be horrified by that I was a little disappointed in the episode

Armardon's fictional universe. Uh, it is resonant and relevant to dunk's journey as a hero that he would come from nothing and have a innate sense of unfairness and, and how the world is built. I get all of that. I have nothing structural to the actual story that gets told in flea

bottom that he is with this girl. It's his first love and she's killed in front of him and that

sets him on this path towards a kind of wandering. No, you know, like Samurai or is it that we get,

“because my, my objection was like, I just didn't think the show needed it. I think the show had”

done this remarkable magic trick of economy where it's going for 30 minutes an episode and I'm learning more and feeling more than I have in years watching game of thrones. Again, like the end of this mothership series and all of house of the dragon and my private viewing of the Naomi Watts blood moon episode just in my personal archives, just just getting nobody, nobody seen that. And I was just, I just didn't think he needed it. I don't think that I hate the pennantimate

episode flashback. Almost as much as I hate the flash forward and the first episode of shows.

Yeah. And I think that it didn't trust us to just be like, this is obviously who this guy is, regardless of how he wound up here. And it's almost more magical and romantic to think about like somebody just being a nearly good rather than being like, I'm a nearly good because I saw something really bad when I was a kid. You said it a hundred times better than I could. My first past was like, I was just sort of bummed that it went back into the more familiar nihilistic

savagery, but I think your point is the stronger one. And I think I just, I think I was also processing that, which is origin stories are kind of boring. Origin stories are kind of redundant.

“And I think that's what I meant when I said that the show had made such a good bet on itself early on.”

Now, if you are going too pad of the material, if you want to fill out a full six episodes, this is a fine place for it. And I thought that the aesthetic choices of having him pass out and then have this flashback and then being brought back, brought back into the action was expertly done. I don't have it. I didn't find fault with any of that. But yeah, I agree with it. And then there's just kind of a, does everything in the end come to to guys clobbering each other?

I mean, long-term listeners of the podcast hope so, but beyond that, like, it's, so you didn't actually even the bailer fight you were kind of bummed out about it. Well, I want to talk about that more specifically, because like, okay, so like big picture for this episode, I said this to you when we were talking offline, I think that the direction on this series through five episodes is equal to or greater than any direction of a Game of Thrones series thus far. And I don't say that

I don't like to do a drive by. I don't say that lately, because it's a Potionic and all those guys. Exactly. Mark my lead to the Potionic, other people who, I, names I don't have in front of me, like, have did exemplary work in the original Game of Thrones, particularly on these big showcase battles, which is a different kind of filmmaking. That said, the way Ashford feels in the opening moments of this episode from the mud and the fog. And more specifically,

the colors, the muted color schemes and the extravagant armor of like the Baratheon horns and the gold, I don't even know what they are on the dudes or the moustaches. It's really, really evocative

“and it's really transporting and it is fantasy in a way that I think Game of Thrones intentionally”

leaned away from and it's early going when the whole point was not that this is a fantasy show on HBO that this is an HBO show in a fantasy world. I loved those details. So again, that set up made me a little disappointed that not that dunk wasn't the best fighter. I thought that was well done and I liked the disorientation and being inside of the helmet and everything like that.

But ultimately, they're just pounding on people and he's just getting stuck like this.

I mean, I think it's a different, it's not going to be little finger or Tyrion outsmarting people or some great game of chess that they're playing. It's about my, I've been really thinking about this element of the show that I don't know how explicit it is. I think it is relatively explicit in the text, but if you're just watching it episode, it may have passed you by, which is that this is like a kind of backwater tournament. This is not the final four that they're in. The Targaryens are

kind of pressed to be there. They're not really happy about being in Ashford to the Targaryen kids have gone awal. You can see Maycar in the beginning of this series is just kind of like this is bullshit. Aryan is obviously sadists. So he's looking for any opportunity to torture people and

about the mud and the muck that they were fighting in that really felt second city or like a

way game. And I really liked that. And you know, they've been building up to some sort of tournament battle the entire time. So I don't really know what other culmination this could come to other than like these guys are fighting. I do love the fact that it's essentially like you have a few extra hours in the city and you go by the rucker and LeBron calls out KD and they're finally going to shuttle it there. And cameras haven't been invented yet. One of the other things the show is

done so well is punched above its weight in terms of budget and production. Like when KC gave the most recent interview that he gave about the state of HBO to Nelly at Deadline, KC Bloys,

he he he always does he he consistently talks about night of the seven kingdoms as a creative

“success for them. But I think he is motivated and has good reason to be proud of the fact that they”

also quote unquote made it at a cost. To prove that not everything in their most valuable IP needs to cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Not that they cheaped out on it, but it's a different structure. The opening of the battle brought that home. I was like this is just incredibly beautiful. I I mentioned that good direction I should have said, oh and Harris directed this episode. He directed the first two as well and Sarah Adina Smith did the other episodes and

I thought they were exceptional walk. No step off at all. She's also done the finale that's coming up this week. When we got to the battle, of course, it should be from Dunk's perspective. But

did you feel cheated at all? A that we never saw our favorite horny berethian do his thing. And

not only that, like when they mentioned at the end, yes, two people died. I swear to you, I know this is my job to do this podcast with you. I don't know who they meant. I have no idea who actually died in the battle. Maybe there's a point to that, or maybe it only matters if you were like deep,

“deep bookdiver. Yeah, what is it like hearting and beesberry died? I think that I'm gonna be”

casual over that. Yeah, hearting and beesberry died. I'm gonna be rural follower when it comes to POV. Like I it's this is one of the things that really drives me crazy. And I think it's just a product of having watched too much television over the last 10 years. But I start to give myself like different neurosisies. And one of them is if this is a show that's a story that's largely being told from whether it's Marty on Ozark or whatever's POV, there are certain things that

they would be pregnant to. There are certain things that they would not be privy to. And one of the things that drives me crazy, especially saying mystery shows, is when for the purposes of like expediency or economy, they start telling you things that characters don't wouldn't know. You know, and I sure would love to have seen three more minutes of this fight with people saying, it's Lionel Baratheon and his horns and he was coming struck me with a mace. Wait, wait, I'm

sorry. I have to stop you. You don't like breaks in POV, but in terms of like narration and fourth

“wall. That's what you're really saying, right? Is that like I got a 15-minute fight. It appears”

about midway through. He's like, oh yeah, he's really fighting air in. If you rewatch it, you can hear make RSA, my son, my son, and that Baylor and Lionel hold him back. It's at the very end when make RSA is like breaking free from that hole that he hits his brother and the back in the head with a mace or whatever. And it's tragic. It's tragic that it happened at all. I mean, like it's tragic that it's, it's also one of my favorite things I was saying to Joe and Mal about Game of Thrones

is that there are elements of it that are prophesied. They're prophesied, whether it's, you know, the Prince who was promised in this idea that somebody is going to come back and save everything. And then 95% of the show, though, or 95% of the story is this guy had the fortune remiss fortune of standing here when this happened. And there's a lot of luck that plays into it. And I think that this story is a great combination of both where you have fortune tellers and dreamers talking about

where things are going to go. But ultimately, this is a guy who asked me to walk into a puppeting tent the wrong time and got mad because a Prince was torturing. And the entire scope of fictional history was changed by that action. It was changed by egg shaving his head and running away. Like everything, it adds to the majesty and grandeur of the show that everything is a butterfly flapping its wings. And it gives something that might otherwise just be a fairy tale novella

that feeling of importance and stakes. And, you know, to the show's credit, to the universe's credit,

it rejects, not just rejects the idea in most fantasy or sci-fi entertainment that there is

“a Prince who is promised that there is some sort of fate controlling things even though it may”

seem bleak or dire at different moments. But it does so in a way that is in tune with our own reality. You know, yeah, I know you're going to laugh and I'm intentionally, I'm not intentionally bringing up my recent reading of the novel fenders, I promise. So the reason I bring it up only is because in what that book taught me about like German history that I didn't know, for example, you probably knew you're more of a history buff than I did than I am. But like the Kaiser son who was

married to Victoria's daughter and was going to like liberalize Germany and give everyone rights and then he gets cancer and gets to rule the country for 90 days. Yeah, he gets cancer. Okay, there. Yeah, it was before the FSB and tender gotten involved. But it's exactly cozy bearing

up. But the larger point being that history doesn't move always the way it's supposed to.

And there are a lot of these what ifs and it always does seem to be the relatively decent would be leader who gets amazed to the back of that. Yeah, it's like, it's like we'll go back and we'll look at 50 years of something and be like, well, clearly like the trends were moving in this direction and like, yeah, but the trends were moving in that direction because somebody got in a car accident. You know, like there's there's this incredible alchemy that

happens when lock in happens dance hit feet and Martin's a master of that. I was curious whether or not when Baylor walks back into the tent and they're counting up casualties and Baylor, you know, he looks okay at the beginning and you know, the NFL did not have an independent neurologist hand. Do you think we saw the Baylor if they leave the helmet on? Like, what do you think? What do you think of the medical procedures? So you think like you could just be bail or the

guy who has to wear helmet all the time. So it's kind of like Tony Stark's little core thing like if you move it one degree, there's no more hand to the king. Like, oh my god, that's my favorite character

in a long time and Baylor is incredible. He's too good for this world when he comes out and he's

just like you are a good man, son. Like, okay, all right, I've seen this episode of McBane.

“Yeah, I think you make a good point about the medical and support stuff. There is no blue tent.”

There is there isn't any tour at all that we know of. He does instruct them to take his helmet off and it's it is the kind of thing that you don't take, you know, the NFL has a lot of issues. But but when Brian Deble tries to go into the blue tent to say Jackson, darn, doesn't really have a concussion. There are protocols that stop him from doing that. Whereas if Sean Deble was, for example, aired of the throne, he could probably tell the doctors

to fucking put that kid back in the game immediately. So we can run him directly into the defensive one, six more times. You know what I mean? Yeah. So he is a little bit different. It's a beautifully executed show and it proved that it could operate in different registers with this episode. I think there's just a part of me and maybe it's just like a stubborn part of me. But like, I kind of wish it didn't, I didn't need to. It just, I don't know if it needed to do that.

But maybe I mean, I don't know the other alternative being like a 25-minute fight. I especially if they had told it from entirely dunks perspective and we wouldn't have really understood who was doing what it would give in moment. I mean, I understand the practical reasons for breaking away from that. That would have been-- Yes, I agree with that. Dreaming. You know, and it doesn't have the same dramatic arc. It doesn't have the same kind of like, and then this is going to happen.

And then this is going to happen the way hard home does. You know, we're like, when you're like,

first they've gotten to this point and then the dead rise and then they chase them and then they

get to the water. It's like, these guys are all standing and feel wailing on each other until people drop. So it's a little, it's visually less dynamic than some of the other big set pieces we've seen in provinces. Do you have any notes for rave? I feel like I feel like she fucked around and found out. You know what I mean? Like, keeps dealing. I thought that the most interesting thing about the rave

“in dunks part was dunks being like, what if there's nothing better than this? Why are we leaving?”

This is all I've ever known. And that was probably the most telling the most interesting element of when you think about everything he has done since then and especially the choice he makes after early days and he's just like, I'm going to decide to become something that I was. Yeah. It's the first time he's done that. So I thought that was just, there's just really good writing throughout this season. I just think that the flashback did take me out of it a little bit.

I think if you watch it and you, especially if you watch it in totality, if you were to say like thumb up to a side three, four hours and watch this entire series, I still think that that flashback would jump out as like, I knew everything about this guy. I knew everything that I needed to know about this guy. When you said, put it that way about I think that's a good thing to to latch onto

good old days of driving on 95 with you where like every so often I might get a little like,

what if we took this exit and you'd be like, this is fine. There's a synobun 65 miles from here.

“Let's just stay the course. You know, you want someone like that by your side?”

I can't wait anymore. I want to talk about industry. This is episode six. Dear Henry directed by Newt's Luke Snell in a written by Mickey Down and Conrad Kay. I wrote out a list of the industry's book of revelations from this episode. So I thought maybe we could go through these revelations one by one as a way of talking about the episode. Did you have any throat clearing? I want to make my opening statement to the jury about this particular episode.

Do you want to do it sectionally with me? I think we can do it sectionally. I think that I would preface this because this will come out clearly when we talk about some of the specifics that I found this to be the most challenging episode, maybe of the series. And it has inspired a lot of consideration thinking about what aspects of this episode in particular in relation to the challenges of this fourth season and then the overall successes of

the series what might be contributing to that reaction, but it might be better to go granularly

and then go wide screen. Okay, so I'm just basically going through the book of revelations

by revelations while watching this episode and also the revelations internally with you. One of them that you can be homo at school. Is that a revelation or was that just like you've been to England, been to England? Honestly, I've read enough spy fiction to know that that is that's a trueism. Number one, Winnie and Ferdinand are in bed with the FSB, perhaps someone unwittingly on Whitney's part, though he is packing a Lithuanian passport and as I this did not

occurred to me while watching, but when he's singing Whitney Houston to Harper at one point in the episode, several people noted like that could be where he chose the name Whitney if he is in fact a long-term sleep region on the part of the FSB to infiltrate the Western financial markets and system term fan of past gone too soon R&B queens. Yes, yes, it could be that he was just happened to be singing Whitney Houston, but is really more into the health advice from stand-up

“comedian Whitney Cummings. Oh, that's really, that's what that's where it why he chose the name.”

This is a huge twist revelation added element. It explodes with the genre of the show to introduce the idea that this is actually an international criminal syndicate and international and a nation states intelligent service working behind the scenes to do whatever they're doing when we're going to talk a little bit more in depth about about what tender is up to and the idea that essentially that they're they're mining for data and that they're looking for opportunities to blackmail

leverage and expose client the client base and I thought this was this was such a huge huge band gambit. It's like a real like, are you either fucking with us or you're against us right now on part of the show because man, they could have just done six seven seasons of these crazy

“kids doing he and making trades and I think I'd be fine with that, but this is a huge swing.”

I think that as challenging as that particular pivot within the episode may have been granularly on a story level. I do love this shows and by when I say the show we're talking about Mickey and Conreds, creative and artistic willingness to engage in as big of a picture as possible

because if the show, you know, up to this point is so deeply concerned with the essential

nihilism of which is like the fourth time of use that word in this podcast already, but it's 1226 of late period capitalism. Push it further. Yeah, meaning it is interesting and gross when enormous profits are being made due to lack of oversight or due to an over indexing of narrative over substance or any of the other things that you could accuse tender of or many other companies that still exist in our real world. But the next question behind that and it's the

same sort of question and that one could bring and that some some people in Congress are bringing to the Epstein stuff is it's not just who profits literally in terms of money but who is also

of that and very often the answers are extremely bad actors and I don't mean bad actors in the

cast of industry. I mean like the Russian secret service or a cabal of sex criminals in the case of what's going on in America right now. There's there's someone profiting behind the people

“who are more likely to take the fall for profiting and I think the expansion of the aperture in”

that way is you're right. It's a bold gambit in the show but maybe this is also where a lot of our conversation about the episode is going to fall which is I completely see this vision and I'm excited about the expansion of the terrain. When we start talking about how it unfolds within episode six of season four then I had more issues with it and how it is delivered but I think it's an exciting place for the show to go and in many ways and not in an inevitable place but a

consistent place for it to end up considering where it started and the trajectory it's been traveling up. I thought that that scene where Ferdinand comes out to Whitney and he's having a cigarette and it's talking about how easily it is to to rationalize becoming part of the Russian intelligence services because it cleared the path for him to become CFO of the Austrian bank that he had been working at that tender acquired. It was a wonderful wonderful scene and it's like just explicit enough.

“I think that I'll hear people out if they're like I need to know explicitly like is Whitney a”

Lithuanian citizen who moved to America with these orders or you know how much of his character is fashioned out of thin air you can get but we'll talk about the the night out that he has with Henry in the morning after revelations for discussions that those guys have but you know they

ride the the third rail of like how much do we need to show how much do we need to tell for people

to feel and to think you know like they don't often will have they will take here's any other show would do these four scenes and industry doesn't do you know and those two might be seen one and seen four and you're missing the middle and you get to the part where it's like exciting at the beginning and terrible at the ending but you don't understand how you got there I get that I get how they do it and I like it a lot but I can understand why people might bump on it think the reason

why I like it so much leads me to a second revelation which is that Whitney has become my favorite

“character on this show what a turn by you I don't know what happened but here's the thing I you know”

the the obvious hybrid of and there's something kind of wonderful about McSpinkella playing a Tom Ripley S character with his father directed one of the great adaptations of Ripley but I love the fact that this guy is not going full Henry Hill and staring out the windows and helicopters and that he is like he is a so like I don't even know what the diagnosis of it would be but even when everybody confronts him every time he gets quote caught every time

you think he's there is no he's back not to the wall because there's no wall there he's like I'll just turn around to be something else I'll just turn around to be something else

he'd never seem stressed and there's something remarkably gentle and also honest about the way

that Mingle was playing this guy and I just find it absolutely fascinating maybe not easily trackable maybe I couldn't draw your character's arc over the course of the series so far but he has become he and Harrington are are the two most explosive things in the series this this year did you how did you feel about the moment on the PJ when he looks at the emergency exit briefly loved it loved it but like he said to Henry but by the by the by the the canalors just

like I'm not interested I don't believe it I don't believe it and then he lies about the history of suicide in his family just like he's lied about every aspect of his family so right but that's the thing is that you're if you're just constantly fashioning an identity you know I think I almost think he was looking at it as like a similar like he was looking at the exit doors like more symbolic than he was like what if I opened this private jet door and just

follow my death yeah I mean one of the things that that helps I think our enjoyment of the series and particularly our discussion of the series is the the raw fissile material that these guys are playing with is extremely potent and the idea of fake it to you make it being a life strategy and a winning life strategy particularly if on some metrics you have already unshakably made it and that's the case with like someone who's landed gentry like Henry you know the episode ends

with the implication that Henry is now on the hook for one of for now two of the greatest financial

like they're still running tours through it if if it falls from this from this height because he's not

falling that far I think the the there's opportunity though and I think this is one of the other things that I'm bumping up against and maybe it'll be resolved in the last two episodes because some of the other storylines have been have been a fallen aside or been pushed out of the frame and we'll talk about those specifically Eric but the the the the twinning of harper and Whitney as American fabulous um is interesting to me and I think clearly interesting to the show

but like with many things that I've been interested in in this season the real estate simply hasn't been there to pursue it and maybe this is all part of an endgame to bring them together because

“that's what I don't mean bring them together romantically or even psychosectually as they've already”

been I just mean to bring those storylines into harmony with each other in a different way

so I'm going to move up one of my revelations I had the next one I was going to talk to you by Eric's blackmail but let's I'm going to take the last one and put it here because you just sort of mentioned something fascinating so uh much like uh Rishi several weeks ago where we're like I guess that's it I guess that's it for Eric and then Ken looked it Ken lung did a interview with Fulcher uh the the night of light on Sunday night it was released fairly soon after

the episode came out and was pretty explicit about the fact that he shot quite a bit of material that is not in the show now I cannot wait to talk to Mickey and Conrad about this I hope that they feel comfortable talking about it because I don't know if Ken was supposed to mention this but he definitely seemed to elude to several scenes with uh the escort dolly with his daughter with his ex wife with Harper um perhaps an entire kind of arc for his character that was a little bit more

discernible um instead it feels like a guy who gets taken into the it's basically like Tommy from

goodfills to keep the goodfills stuff going and he just is walking into his party and it goes oh no you know like right as he gets the recognition from his daughter the love that he craves the love that he wants he looks down at his phone and what we are to presume is Whitney is blackmailing him not only with video of his sexual encounter with this escort but also proof that she's 1415 it's it's dark she's born in 2011 so depending on when this is literally set yeah

and and this is also speaking of this isn't even bigger McBane scene then poor poor that is my best favorite my best different direct quote he's just had the quote one miraculous run that makes you live again harpoon you just gave me my favorite every day in finance well we should we should be clear about this there's no part of this interview where can lungs is like if I can laugh mad that disgust yes I'm mad about what left in the cutting room floor he's very

matter of fact about how he considers and we've talked to him like he is a very very uh thoughtful intellectual actor who really intense heads about his process and what he needs to get to where he needs to go and so he's sort of helpfully explaining to the the questioner about like his journey with an eric the season may have been different from the audiences because a we've had his process and his internal thought and decision making but also because you know he's like well

I did these different things that that were steps A, B, C and D to get to what you saw yes this is not in indictment every show cutscenes whole cloth and part of the artistry of making television and and film certainly is remaking the show I mean they say you make the show three times in the script on stages or on set and in the edit room and each time you start from

“scratch almost and you rebuild it that's how all great works are are made so it's not a problem”

that these things were cut but it is another piece of evidence I think to my larger sensibility about the season which is it's too much story this is a there's nothing wrong with the story it's an exciting story and it's an incredibly ambitious thing and it has felt appropriate to be watching the season of industry against the backdrop of the Olympics where they're like well this guy is going to spin six times and then if he doesn't you're not like this guy sucks you're like

holy shit imagine spinning six times I cannot help but shake the feeling that this is a 12 episode season of television that has been reduced to eight and I don't want to be clear what I say this I don't mean that they were given 12 episodes I mean they were given the same eight episodes they've been given every time I think of anything I would imagine that they would laugh at the idea

“that they would want 12 episodes for a season I think that they shot stuff and yes there's”

they feeling like we missed something there maybe but I don't think that it's because like they

and we've praised them for this before is get to the good stuff you know don't Boris get to the chorus but a TV show like there's power in that and there's still even this old prestige medium they're still surprising that when this episode begins with Harper going straight to Yasmin to say

here's what I'm doing you're sitting on a mountain of lies it's like oh you know that he

she could have bought her dinner first but no the show is going right into this but there are

“other things that I think that our suffer that have suffered the season because of the frenetic”

pace and the lack of real estate for example early in this episode we're told that tender is quickly become the Gen Z choice for banking and like I thought they've only been a bank for 10 days right that seems very very abrupt that's a good point I thought about there's other things that are that you can see in terms of character arcs like we praised and I will continue to praise Ty Heaven this shows like it bravery in being like we have reached logical conclusions

for Rishi and for Eric with the conclusion of season three in the wrapping up of peer point

but we want to work with these people more we want our show to have them so we will just figure it out and we will bring them back and we will try to be honest and be true to what happened to these characters in the past but there wasn't enough room for it so I'm going to push back a little bit on those two characters because I think that there's something really interesting about the fact that they brought back two of the most beloved people on this show beyond maybe what the actual

story structure supported and they're almost like this is what you get this is what you get when you want these like guys to come back because you think Eric has bad ass lines or you think Rishi is a legend or whatever and that's saying that they're critiquing the viewer or that there is some sort of like meta conversation about like why you know that that often happened with succession where it's like just so you know these are bad people that you're cheering for quote unquote I don't

“think that's what's happening here but I think that this is a world and a job and a set of”

consequences that choose people up and spits them out fast and when you lose a couple of miles per hour if you're fast ball like Eric did Eric is a mess this season yeah he's fucking empty

he's an empty husk of a guy we find him he's basically spending his days playing golf he's left his

family they bring him back he doesn't seem to have the same fire he doesn't seem to have the same acumen he's basically propping this fund up with his own money but all they can do is get meetings with these like kind of lesser known family desks of investments you know whatever and then every time Eric is kind of needed or counted on he's also in the corner looking at his phone watching sweet peas only fans video or dialing up a teenage escort it turns out and he is being

seduced into a world that he really no longer is built for and you can make the same argument somewhat for what happens to Rishi and it's like watching these guys who we kind of looked at as like bigger than life and previous seasons get atomized is really fascinating to me but I don't

“I do agree with you I agree with you about like the the telling of the story though yeah I think”

that I think that what you just did is incredibly compelling argument for the trait the fate of entreatment of those characters and it takes nothing away from you know cigar radia and Ken Lung delivering arguably two of the best performances on the show this season I just have the feeling that there was more there and there simply wasn't room for it and that has continued this throughout like I was trying to think about aspects of the show that have been sacrificed for

the complete you know the grafting of an entirely new body onto an existing body of a show there is a version of the season that I'm sure they they've discussed or explored we can ask them about this and their reasons why they chose not to do this but starting this season with the breakup of Jonah and Whitney and Whitney taking over and then turning it into a bank and then we are in real time as he's recruiting our characters into positions of power also the house of cards

can fall down within an episode and a half it's a lot of legwork as opposed to starting the show with tender as you know too good to be true already and then we join it and we suddenly have access to it's inner working so there was a choice there to start that from scratch with the season yes one of the things that have been some of the things that have been sacrificed along the way in the service of this becoming a show about global finance and fraud and also international

espionage and journalism is none of these characters have any home or personal life anymore

of themselves to become these full-time brain warriors in this arena that you know normal

yeah they've written peer point inside of a hotel it's smaller and smaller rooms and but it's like there is no there's no separation between like I'm going home now Harper lives that hotel Eric lives in a hotel like these guys like they are just now these people who haunt these sort of in-between spaces of fork and home there is a it's incredibly bleak as a human being watching the show to watch a show and and and and and I don't think the comparison

to the succession argument is is that you weren't making this but I mean the larger argument that what these are bad people I don't think these are bad people these are husks of people they're not good or bad they don't have they're not full lives they don't exist they don't do anything Harper doesn't live anywhere Harper doesn't want anything other than dominance this is also where you start to feel the lack of a rob who was too soft for this world

ultimately he was a romantic it's as was directed where you start to feel the loss of the old

“Rishi voice remember Rishi became a prominent character in the show because Mickey and Conrad”

discovered that with the ADR they could just pump jokes into and otherwise sterile environment we've lost that voice and we've lost those jokes it is hollowed out in a way that is quite bleak and I know you have another revelation but I I just was feeling it so deeply in this episode that that pit you know I love that I love that because I think it's really real I think it's I think that I've been searching for a foothold emotionally on this season in the past it's been

it's been evident in the past it's been rob's attachment he has been in the past it's been Harper's sort of paternal obsession with Jesse Bloom whatever it's been like this kind of recognizable thing that you you've seen in other shows you've heard another stories these people all

“openly being like I am a construction and the only thing that's keeping me from self-imulation”

is a total victory or moments of euphoria or basically like women's sherbert and fluorescence as

Henry puts it you know and living in this euphoria either of success or excess and I think that that is in an uncomfortable place to be for 60 minutes a week sometimes but as like I love it as an idea I love it as an idea too I'm just I'm struggling with the week two weeks you're struggling with week two weeks vacation I've been particularly because in episode like this which at one on the one hand feels like it's designed to be totemic and iconic and have these enormous

mythological faults I mean there's a line that made me stop in my tracks because I was like we and there are many lines in the show where I'm like what but then it's slowly like what is the line about look at yourself you're wavering at the scale of Valhalla like these are elevated you know um uh yeah elevated say so elevated scale but in practice in the naughty busyness of these 59 minutes I was experiencing it as one scene after another of characters making speeches to each other

and yes and look we have we have the tapes we have the records I am a huge fan of the way these guys write dialogue of the way these guys constructs seasons of television I struggled with this episode and the moment that I was the hardest for me in the midst of it was Eric goes on CNN with Whitney and under the harsh studio lights of what is meant to be the real world you know not their shadow world that they exist in full of you know hotel club sandwiches and glory holes like

actually the cleaglites are on and they're doing the public story they quote "sonsuit each other" and say more you know Valhalla yeah shit I was hungering for a moment of pros I guess to kind of like rather than the public right now because in the greatest point these people continue to talk at each other and I want them to actually talk Henry's off the wagon realizing

“that life is not worth living if you don't have euphoria uh he and Whitney go out to a nightclub”

I guess you know a London sex love where did that dance you stick your dick and some stuff

I'm reading surprise here that's not I don't know it it's just um they did kind of no show

it really does nightlife like this no show does like these people getting after it and communicates

“the feeling of it and honestly no no show really does morning after this way and I thought that”

their their canal conversation was a highly of this episode but I guess Henry's personal relationship to substances and his relationship to his sexual identity and his marriage and just Henry in general is a something I wanted to discuss with you he has plenty of middle class friends which I thought was nice um just well it's top of mind the show does remain elite and it's confidence in just dropping references to things that prove its bona fides and confuse

96% of listeners like elite reference to top jaw uh I thought that was great and the worst possible

moment you know there wasn't like there wasn't even time for you think the top jaw guys were like they mentioned us an industry I hear exactly let's see the exact moment when they do do you

“think eating with Todd is like oh dodged a bullet there like finally um really really low key”

reference to chilturn burning down thus there not be anywhere to have fun anymore respect that yeah the Henry thing I mean kid Harrington is phenomenal in the show and it is it is interesting to think about all of the characters and all the performances in the light of the Ken Lung interview because one of the things that I really have admired is that there have been moments in watching the season of the show where I am personally confused as to where and when these

characters are in their emotional journey with themselves and with each other and the actors appear completely confident now they seem to be great actors and famously this is a very collaborative set and that Mickey and Conrad are very available to the actors and very close to the actors so they're there to you know make sure they know what's going on but clearly they they understand where they are in the story which is a which is a good thing and a helpful thing as an anchor

um do you feel does your more liberal attitude towards the speed the run of play here does that apply to just talk about Henry to talk about where Henry has gone in this season in a relatively short amount of time and specifically the state of his marriage because the the whispered down the line skepticism that opened in the episode was interesting but also to me felt a little reductive that Harper tells yes and yes as fuck you then yes tells um Henry and Henry says fuck you

and then Henry goes to Whitney and he's a little Whitney and Whitney's like fuck an A yeah well said it turns out Henry emotional storyline performance great depth that he contains fantastic

“but in terms of where he is and what he's doing and how angry he is at Yasmin I think he's”

angry because he wants to be whoever he wants to be at that given moment and he doesn't want anybody to tell him not to um and I don't think that he and Yas are capable of being some any any given Wednesday we can we can go out and have a normal night like they they're either like crying making up with each other or fighting but I don't think they're capable of being the couple that I want I think Yasmin projects out across decades of you know wealth and power

in the UK aristocracy I think she wants that I think she wants to project forward a a new stability that she lost with her father and Henry is like I can barely keep myself alive and if I'm not feeling not only like the main character but the prince who was promise like I literally have to be the guy who's out there saving the world with an app then it's not worth doing nothing is worth I just don't even want to get out of bed all I want to do is crush up pills

under my combat boots and sort of off or discord I die one of it's Loki brilliant things about

the way the characters is presented is he is always in costume not at his costume birthday party which is

telling and that was his lowest moment but he is always wearing the corporate swag he was wearing the the loomie swag he was wearing the tender swag when he goes to the rough trade club or whatever that ends up being he looks like he's always been there yeah you know he always and when he gave his speech like at the events in the previous week he is you know the shirt is unbuttoned just so the sleeves are rolled up he always looks the part because he himself is you know um terror five

Harper's done her presentation yes him has been calling him and she finally gets him and it's

“just like I can't believe you're doing this to me again tells you everything you need to know about”

their relationship um where are you with the Harper of it I I think that the Harper card this is happened before in previous seasons I think that the Harper um the centrality of Harper to this season will emerge in the last two episodes um stern toe is now just stern again um he's and she has done what Eric prophesized she has become a world killer you know she is able to stand up in front of people and just be like I make it so I've declared that this is both you know in the market

response I saw some people online um critiquing the fact that there was no evidence evidence that she

was really presenting a lot of evidence she was just like it's a you know house of cards

on top of Ponzi scheme and that was like enough for people to be like oh okay um but I don't think that that speech that she gave I think the whole point was that she was supposed to talk about

“like women in finance and instead used it as a pivot to talking about like yeah she said I think”

that I hope you'll indulge me like instead of talking about whatever I'm going to show you a woman doing her job yes yeah um I don't really I don't I the jury still out at Harper while his performance am I even talking about I'm talking about the character and what she's doing this season because she is a little bit I think that they have left her emotional or character journey a little bit to the side as they have focused on Henry yeah there is no I mean

it's all off screen and look we I'm fully aware of the the inconsistencies here we started this podcast by saying you know what dunk is dunk we don't need to know his traumatic origin story and then we get to Harper and Harper character who I quoted this last week said in the season my trauma was traumatic and that's enough of that I admire that I think it's a strong choice particularly the way TV has gone the last 10 or 15 years but you also have to deal with the consequences and

if everything that is emotional happens to the character off screen or you shred a card and you take a phone call um that's asking a lot of the performer and it's asking a lot of your writing to have enough ballast to support her in all the things that she does so sometimes I just don't I'm confounded there's a difference between someone a character who surprises everyone by zagging as Harper has done in the workplace and then there's been moments the season where I've

been actively confused like when Eric is delivering his his speech on CNN and it cuts to Harper

and she's like wow she's like she's basically like look at God and I don't understand what he's doing

that's I don't understand what's notable about that I didn't fully get the power of what he was doing and why was landing on her and we then ended in a place that again supports the nihilistic these are shells who I love the analogy used to have lost their fastball and this is what happens to failed men version of Eric but it also we have to say that this has been a four season intensely intimate relationship that ends with a disappointment and rejection that felt

it didn't feel final it didn't feel ultimate it felt of a piece with ways that they have argued and fought before you mean the last scene I'm not and I want to be careful because I'm not criticizing the choice I don't think these characters were ever bound for a hug you know I don't think that that was the nature of it and it also might not be done you know we said last season there's no way we she's on the show again there might not be a way of the Eric is on the show

right it is smart that they keep us guessing on that score but I felt I was disappointed that I didn't feel more in that parting because I wasn't on I wasn't confident

“in my read of where everyone was in that moment I think that the argument that I would make in”

favor of how that relationship concludes even if it's disappointing for people who are find Harper and Eric to be the most fascinating relationship in the show of of which I've often counted myself as one of their number is that the reason Harper is good at what she does if you accept that premise is because she is invulnerable because she has nothing to be vulnerable there is nothing about her family there is nothing about her love life there is nothing about her past

I mean yes she in previous season she was trying to cover up her she didn't have the degree that she said she had maybe she wanted to hide certain aspects of her of her history or biography but I don't think she's like that anymore and I don't think she cares about anything other than winning

from the office or doing things like having sex with Whitney it has seen that takes on a whole new kind of layer of symbolism from earlier in the season she's only exists to do one thing she's a shark and Eric for as much of acumen as he may have and for the 10 million they threw in and for all that stuff he's vulnerable he's he has things to lose and he can see in right in front of him like

everything he stands to lose if this tape comes out the kids never going to speak to him again

“you know and I think that that is how we may want the hug and we may want the the catharsis”

between Eric and Harper but it's an indication of like one's built different yeah I think that's you know the more we talk and I appreciate your level headedness on this I I imagine that if and when I rewatch the season I will be more enthralled by the possibilities and the expansion of the world well you know everything that I'm saying I'm like here's this theme or here's this idea

here's this way I think this may be I don't disagree that there are clunky lines that there are times when I'm like this didn't quite connect or make sense like it's not a flawless series or season but I don't think that there's a show in TV that makes me think well 100% I agree and

“there's even a you know essentially a throwaway scene where they get to also like get a couple shots off”

at Trump and there's the American guy there and Chloe Perry delivers this withering put down and when you get a moment like that I'm like the audacity of the show to be all the things that it's been and also in its own very specific British way takes something from the wire in the sense of it's all connected and everything in this show the phones in peer point and the data lines are connected to every other building in London and in the world and the

audacity and imagination and creativity to say are show runs the length of these cables that it is connected this isn't just about these people you know trying to get ahead or trying to

to get off or whatever the first season could you reduce to I think it's commendable and exciting

and so a scene like that which we almost it's we we barely have a moment to register as the as the car zooms past it is really fascinating and then you dig a little bit deeper into the like to the meta data and you're like you know that so much of the season's ideas and themes are inspired by the real life wire card fraud and that happened in Germany then top piece from New York about it that that I remember reading at the time and it takes on a different relevance when you

why after you've watched the show as well you know that there's you can read that and so much of it is about well Germany like Angela Merkel walked to this profoundly fraudulent riddled with

“Russian intelligence company up to President Jean was like you should do a deal with them because”

they're the pride of Germany primarily because Germany wanted to be in the FinTech space and they wanted to do it and they want the narrative so to read that article as Mickey and Conrad did and say well what is England want and what would it be like in England and how does it become an English story by tying in the aristocracy and and and and tabloid culture and everything else that it did is remarkable and thrilling and works from a top level so it is in the spirit of two

episodes remaining it is it does feel a little pivish to be like these things aren't working for me but the project is remarkable this show can be anything it wants to be but there are costs to that look you put in a button on stuff outside of my window the uh there was arc is about it happened yeah there's like flash play we just got flesh flood warnings here in the studio that's after the fire alarm stop going off so if this is our I'm gonna let you guys figure that out our last show what a way to go

you know if people have questions about industry I'd love to hear from our listeners about how they're feeling about this season um send us your emails the watch it's Spotify dot com thanks to Kai

thanks to Kai uh hopefully I'm feeling better and I'll be in studio on Thursday you're amazing

shout out day quote that's what it was it was day quote it wasn't that oh weird hole in my bathroom