‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ Episodes 1-3: Your (Not So) Friendly Neighborhood Jon Hamm

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Speaker 3 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 3 I don't know why that intro was so aggressively enthusiastic for me, but here we are to talk about your friends and neighbors.

Speaker 2 Could I posit a guess, Joe? Is it because

Speaker 2 your internal life is crumbling and you're trying to put on a brave outward appearance for your many rich neighbors?

Speaker 3 You'll hear a more sardonic voiceover version of the intro as we go forward.

Speaker 3 We are here to talk about your friends and neighbors, neighbors New Apple TV Plus show.

Speaker 3 We are here to talk about the first three episodes of the season. They did a double premiere drop last week.
We were

Speaker 3 not around to cover it, but we're here to catch up with you here on episode three. We are uncertain as of right now exactly what our cadence of coverage is going to be for this show.

Speaker 3 It's going to kind of depend on y'all. If you are loving your friends and neighbors, let us know.

Speaker 3 And I guess I just want to start out with a big picture question, Ramahoni. Did you like the first three episodes of Your Friends and Neighbors?

Speaker 2 I did. I found it honestly like pretty well balanced.

Speaker 2 I think it hits a very particular sweet spot of just kind of biting and acidic enough that it can have its like moments of cultural commentary and it can take the pot shots at the ultra wealthy, but also so much sugar that if you are ultra wealthy, you could probably enjoy this show and probably enjoy it in like a ball-busting sort of way.

Speaker 2 Like John Hamm, I think, is a great avatar for that kind of exact zone of threading the needle totally of what the show is trying to do.

Speaker 3 That is fascinating to me because I feel like it slightly tilts on the wrong side of biting satire to sugar for me.

Speaker 2 The wrong side being too much sugar.

Speaker 3 I guess like not enough.

Speaker 3 If the premise of this show, which maybe I'll tell folks if in case they're listening and haven't watched the show yet, is John Hamm plays a character who, you know, has done everything, quote unquote, everything right, gone to Princeton, got the right job, got the right wife, got the right car, had the two kids, got the increasingly large house and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 And then everything has just crumbled around him. His wife has cheated on him.
He's, he's getting a divorce through a complicated series of moves. He has lost his job.

Speaker 3 And he is, as Rob alluded to, trying to save face with his friends and neighbors by not sharing how financially dire that is for him.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we go in and out of the various houses in his very, very well-to-do neighborhood. He lives in this enclave

Speaker 3 where

Speaker 3 everyone knows everyone, and they all barbecue together, and they have kids that are relatively the same age, and they have parties at each other's houses and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 And we're doing, you know, spouse swaps and all this, you know, the privileged class enjoying their privileges, but also John Hamm. At the end of episode one, spoiler for the end of episode one.

Speaker 2 I mean, we're covering episodes one through three, so I think it's fair.

Speaker 3 I'm traumatized from The Last of Us.

Speaker 2 We're treading very softly all around spoilers right now.

Speaker 3 He starts stealing from his neighbors

Speaker 3 as a way to finance his

Speaker 3 new life and stealing things that they won't miss that are obscenely, obscenely valuable. And that concept I like.

Speaker 3 When that kicked in at the end of episode one, I had a really tough time with the first, I would say, quarter

Speaker 3 to half of episode one.

Speaker 2 It's quite talky and quite talky in a way where you're being talked at.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm going to circle back to that. When we got to, oh, because I didn't know the premise.
I don't know. I just did no research.
I came blind to this show.

Speaker 3 I've since done some research, but I was like, oh, this is the premise he's stealing from his friends and neighbors. Like, that's fun to me.

Speaker 3 I love a heist. I love a gentleman thief.
Like, that sounds quite fun.

Speaker 3 Okay. So to go back to the talkiness, the monologues,

Speaker 3 what we get sort of back to back,

Speaker 3 we get a cold open of

Speaker 3 oops, murder or death at least. Yep.
And John Hamm falls into a pool and the record scratch and he's like, yep, that's me.

Speaker 2 Hey, bet you're wondering how I got here.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 then we get this bar encounter.

Speaker 2 The classic double cold open.

Speaker 3 Which

Speaker 3 that was the nadir for me. That bar encounter was the bottom of my enjoyment of the show.
And then we get this rewind of with some Uncanny Valley digitally de-aged John Hamm of like

Speaker 3 his life leading up to sort of this moment. I did everything.
This is not my beautiful house. It's not my beautiful wife, like sort of thing.

Speaker 3 So yeah, the bar scene, very like two quippy-quippy characters monologuing on each other. And then the sort of

Speaker 3 him talking about the American dream and how it failed him back to back, tough for me.

Speaker 3 Everything from there is up, up, up. Um, so tell me how all of that landed with you.

Speaker 2 I would say monologuing at each other is maybe kind because it's a lot of John Hamm's character, Coop, going on an extended monologue.

Speaker 2 And Liv, this woman he's talking to, like, has her banter and has her moments and gets to have some good lines, but she is very much a participant in his speech.

Speaker 2 And that sequence, I did not particularly enjoy.

Speaker 3 I I also just like hated her character in that scene. I was, you know, she was like trying to be so quippy cool in a way that I like so cool girl in a way.

Speaker 3 And then what rolls out after that, and again, this is, this is where I should have learned my lesson from Fleischman is in Trouble, the FX show that came out last year, which does a really good job, really, really good job of trying to

Speaker 3 like present a story that's poor, poor, pitiful Jesse Eisenberg until later it shows you all the shit that Jesse Eisenberg did to get himself into the situation.

Speaker 3 And this show is alluding to that with various characters being like, Coop, don't you think you had a role to play in like your wife's infidelity and this and the other thing?

Speaker 3 So, like, I am trying to keep my powder dry on that. But

Speaker 3 in that first quarter of that episode, when he gets fired by Corbin Benson and like all this sort of stuff like that, the implication is it's like a false me too moment, which just really bothered me a lot.

Speaker 3 And even though they're, you know,

Speaker 2 spinning the top on that one around i was just sort of like in this economy we're doing like a false you me too narrative i i my hackles were definitely up on that so it's it's quite a delicate like subject matter to wade into for a show that i would say is not quite delicate overall like i i enjoy some of the characterizations i enjoy some of the dynamics on the show as you're saying overall this idea of an ultra wealthy person who loses their job and turns to petty theft is appealing.

Speaker 2 And you get to see him in the way that you see in shows like Breaking Bad or in shows like Weeds, this like a person who doesn't know how to be a criminal getting slightly and incrementally better at being a criminal.

Speaker 2 And in Coop's case, I think in a really self-destructive way, right? This is not a clean job. This is him

Speaker 2 breaking into a friend's house, smoking weed, sitting in their theater room, enjoying some of their delights because he knows they're going to be out of the house.

Speaker 2 But it's, it's not surgical what he's doing. And so the blundering thief part of the story, I'm really enjoying.
The Me Too elements are not great.

Speaker 2 and i'm i'm i don't know how to read or how to feel about the fact that that character live is still in the show and she's being kind of strung along as she might be kind of part and parcel of this litigation that he's pursuing to try to get his job back or get some money i guess mostly to get money um on the one hand it's good that they're not just like disposing of her or they didn't they didn't turn her into a careerist like oh i'm gonna leverage this sexual encounter with coop to try to get this job like she really didn't want any part of it and if anything i i think the the one area on this in which i would give the show credit is it seems pretty aware of the fact that Coop does not seem to care that much about this woman.

Speaker 2 He is so self-absorbed with his own life and how he gets his piece of the pie that when she brings up the case of, um, if you have this lawsuit, I'm going to get dragged into it.

Speaker 2 My career is going to be thrown like for an incredible loop. I'm going to be painted as the bad guy here, really fundamentally.
He doesn't seem terribly bothered by that.

Speaker 3 And so, yeah, it's, it's getting into tricky territory, but he seems like somebody who the show is aware is not suited for that tricky territory at least okay yeah i really want to okay this is that's such a good point i want to come back to sort of the likability of coop which i don't need a character to be likable but i like that you brought up

Speaker 3 because i i definitely several times wrote down sort of like golden age of television anti-hero narrative.

Speaker 3 You know, this is of the weeds breaking bad madmen,

Speaker 3 you know, era of television. This feels like something that would have been on FX.
Like, I just like, or Showtime is a good call.

Speaker 3 Like, I really feel like I recognize this story, and it's not a story where it's slightly out of fashion.

Speaker 3 And that doesn't mean it's not something I want to watch, but it is maybe something that I feel like I've seen what it has to say. And that is, that is sort of where I am with that.

Speaker 3 I want to go back to Jonathan Tropper. So, Tropper, who is the creator of the show,

Speaker 3 was a novelist and then became a TV showrunner.

Speaker 3 He wrote This Is Where I Leave You, which was turned into a film.

Speaker 3 This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper is a book I always confuse with Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. They're two different books, but a novelist.

Speaker 3 And then he co-created, or he created Banshee, a show I actually really liked, and Warrior, a show I really liked. And those are two sort of like...

Speaker 3 His books are very this, very sort of like upper middle class family problems, infidelities, talkie sort of stuff.

Speaker 3 And then Warrior and Banshee, which were much more sort of like genre swings outside of that concern. This is a return to sort of his novelistic form.

Speaker 3 And what he said in a panel that made so much sense to me is that this was an idea he had a really long time.

Speaker 3 And he had written the first hundred pages of this book and then decided to make it a show. And I was like, okay, we're hit with monologue, monologue, monologue, monologue at the beginning.

Speaker 3 I'm like, this is the first hundred pages of the book that he had written. And now, and then as it goes on, it's being transformed more and more into like actual TV storytelling.

Speaker 3 But on the like talky front, both Amanda Peene and Olivia Munn in interviews have compared Tropper's writing style to Aaron Sorkin, someone that they have both worked with.

Speaker 3 And I'm curious, as a Sorkin head yourself, do you agree?

Speaker 2 Or what do you think?

Speaker 2 They have worked with, with all due respect to both of them, who I like quite a bit, versions of Aaron Sorkin, who I would not say is prime Aaron Sorkin if we're being respectful about those properties.

Speaker 2 Like Studio 60 is not, is not it.

Speaker 2 And the newsroom, although I think Olivia Munn's character on that show evolves evolves over time and she kind of finds her place in it, and I definitely appreciate that arc.

Speaker 2 Also, not necessarily the most resonant stuff. And at its worst, I think Your Friends and Neighbors has some of that.
But I actually, I think the bantering style does mostly fit.

Speaker 2 And it works better in some contexts than others. And I think once we get out of some of those initial scenes, it sort of finds its footing.

Speaker 2 And so it's hard to tell how much of that is. Am I bumping on dialogue or am I bumping on narration or am I bumping on overall framing?

Speaker 2 Like the show is trying to do out of the gate with the with the narration, which is John Hamm narration, something we know he can do. He has done successfully on other shows.

Speaker 2 I would say some of this narration is played at 1.25 times speed for some reason in a way that I don't understand. And it's going for a sort of like big, short, wolf of Wall Street fight club.

Speaker 2 I am the smart, smarmy guy talking over this, telling you how the world is. And even some of the visual cues are very fight club, right?

Speaker 2 It's like the straight out of the Ikea catalog parallel of, let me show you all these luxury goods um i don't know how to feel about that stuff sometimes it really works for me sometimes it feels like a lot and this is a show that i think that's where i am overall uh we are three episodes in we have i would say five or six different jokes about objects in the show being a metaphor i can be a sucker for that but it's also a lot at this stage.

Speaker 3 Was the toilet like where you're like, this is where I leave you? Like, this is

Speaker 2 the bottom for me.

Speaker 3 The voiceover is so interesting to me because I also wrote, I wrote Fight Club Down 100%.

Speaker 3 I wrote American Beauty Down. There's like a lot of American Beauty in here.
And

Speaker 3 I,

Speaker 3 and Sunset Boulevard. And so like Sunset Boulevard, because A, Coop is a character who loves to watch classic cinema.
B, we start with him in a pool and he's like, yep, that's me.

Speaker 3 And the only thing that's ever done that perfectly well, record scratch, yep, that's me, is Sunset Boulevard.

Speaker 2 But like, well, so for the record, is this you saying that blood sport is classic cinema? Obviously.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to get you on the record about it. Thank you.

Speaker 3 Thank you. I've long wanted to get my blood sport takes off.
But I think that

Speaker 3 I think the voiceover is so interesting because

Speaker 3 they were talking about sort of reinventing the voiceover. And I'm like, I don't, I don't think you have.

Speaker 3 But what it offers, I guess, is the idea is that John Hamm's, the voiceover narration, the yep, that's me, bet you wonder how I got here, is an omniscient all-seeing already knows how this all played out.

Speaker 3 So we're hearing his sort of wry delivery on top of Coop's sometimes frantically fumbling actions. And I'm not opposed to it.

Speaker 3 I just don't think it's necessarily like the freshest thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 And it can be too clever by half sometimes.

Speaker 2 I think where I am finding more comfort in the show and the momentum in the show is, as you described, the more conventional TV storytelling of it when we get into the rhythms of the crime and even the rhythms of the domestic dramas.

Speaker 2 I love that this is a show about adults making adult mistakes.

Speaker 2 And fundamentally, like that's a great place to ground this, even in something as kind of like exotic as this like ultra wealthy neighborhood in which everyone is understandably obsessed with brands in a way that feels very true to life and feels very uh you know like it's channeling into the consumerism that the show is commenting on and ultimately that john ham's character is literally stealing from these people and so there's there's a lot to mine there.

Speaker 2 But, like, that's the part of the show that I'm enjoying more than anything is just the actual, like, let's tell the story about the guy stealing the things and not let's do the narration from the guy about stealing the things with the added context of whatever perspective he thinks he's providing.

Speaker 3 So, there's a couple elements as he gets deeper and deeper into the trouble that he is creating for himself.

Speaker 3 We've met the character of Lou, played by Randy Danson, who has not only encountered Coop at her place of business, but has now infiltrated his home and knows where he lives and met his sister, who we'll come back to, etc.

Speaker 3 I like her a lot. And there is an implication.
I don't, I have not watched Beyond Episode 3,

Speaker 3 but I was curious why Amy Carrero, who plays Elena, Nick's

Speaker 3 housekeeper, I suppose, domestic worker,

Speaker 3 is in the main cast.

Speaker 3 And we only really kind of meet her in episode three and i was curious about that and then we get the end of episode three and you get the gun click you know the the gun sound on him and i'm like it's gotta be her right it's definitely her yeah and i'm definitely curious how she is going to like

Speaker 3 hopefully get involved as like an accomplice like that sounds fun to me like this idea of that she might be an accomplice to him uh amy has talked in interviews about how she was like reluctant to take like she had made it a

Speaker 3 like an idea in her career that she did not want to play like you know, a housekeeper at some point in her career as a Latin actress. She's like, this role is really fun and juicy.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so they're all like kind of teasing, like, something really fun and juicy is coming for her. So, I'm excited to see how she works in.

Speaker 3 And Olivia Munn's character,

Speaker 3 as someone who started as a waitress and has been sort of married up into this world versus everyone else who comes like via the Ivy League into this world,

Speaker 3 those

Speaker 3 little like tiny class tensions or

Speaker 3 encounters are more interesting to me than the privileged class enjoying their privileges or rich people behaving badly or

Speaker 3 poor, poor, pitiful me,

Speaker 3 my daughter can't afford this like thousands,

Speaker 3 like dollar

Speaker 3 dermatological thing that she doesn't need. Like

Speaker 3 that, as the show gets closer and moves into that world, I think I will like it even more. That makes sense.

Speaker 2 I really enjoy Olivia Munn's character overall, I think, is a great like breath of fresh air into the show.

Speaker 2 And especially now that we're seeing her and Amanda Pete's character, Mel interacting more directly, right? Like they are part of this big group of ladies who has the self-defense class.

Speaker 2 That is, by the way, Chekhov's self-defense class. Somebody will be moved, using like a grapple on Coop at some point in this season.
Like, I feel like it's inevitable.

Speaker 2 But I really like their dynamic together. I really like seeing those characters bounce off each other.

Speaker 2 And I like seeing overall Sam, who again is Olivia Munn's character, like trying to grapple with how to express that kind of wealth.

Speaker 2 there's something so perfect about her showing up to that self-defense class in the like loueve sweatshirt that is like perfectly relaxed fit but also probably costs like three thousand dollars um these people know how to flex their wealth in exactly the right way and i think she although she has a different background is showing that she knows how to get around the country club lifestyle as well but what i love is isn't a man a piece character mel wearing her princeton sweatshirt like of course that's that's you know something you can't buy you had to have been there you know i think that's a great That's a great point.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that

Speaker 3 Olivia Munn is so interesting because this is an actress that I have,

Speaker 3 she's a celebrity that I have had real ups and downs with

Speaker 3 in my time as a pop culture person. And

Speaker 3 I loved her in the newsroom. The newsroom was like this like real revelation for me where I was like, Olivia Munn,

Speaker 3 not really a huge fan. And then I just thought her character Sloan in the newsroom was like the best part of the newsroom.

Speaker 2 What are the newsroom power rankings in retrospect? I mean, number one is obviously the single moment in which they informed the pilot of the plane about Osama bin Laden. Correct.

Speaker 2 Number two is Olivia Munn, probably. Number three, Alison Pill, I want to say.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm trying to do that. Thomas Sadowski is

Speaker 3 up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 A real mixed bag, the newsroom. But as

Speaker 2 you're alluding to,

Speaker 2 Olivia Munn is great in it. And like one of the genuine, like bright spots of that show.

Speaker 3 And I think she's great in this. I think she's wonderful in this.
Again, for all my mixed feelings, I think she's really talented at exactly this level of like subtle comedy.

Speaker 3 I have a lot of empathy for her character and

Speaker 3 her like

Speaker 3 sense, you know, you mentioned earlier, and I do want to circle back to Coop,

Speaker 3 obviously, but like her.

Speaker 3 Her vulnerability around him, like, you know, her

Speaker 3 like being so ready to be like, oh, you want me to leave? Or you want to leave? This can be be over. What is this even?

Speaker 3 Also, the way their sex scenes are filmed is like very interesting to me because

Speaker 3 there's this like awkwardness to it, which is not what you would expect from like Olivia Munn, like absolute

Speaker 3 10 out of 10 stone cold stunner. So

Speaker 3 it's really funny. Let's talk about Coop.
So

Speaker 3 I was watching an interview where the interviewer said, the thing that I love about your character, Coop, is that no matter what he does, we like him.

Speaker 3 And I was like, Ooh, that's not my experience with Cooper.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what show is that from?

Speaker 3 So I'm wondering how you feel about Coop. Where are you with Coop?

Speaker 2 I find him pretty deeply unlikable in a way that as a TV character, I appreciate. I almost would

Speaker 2 welcome them trying to make him less likable.

Speaker 2 Or in particular, I think what I'm chafing against is, you know, we talked about Olivia Munn coming into the show and the energy that she provides it, you know, the energy that Amanda Peet brings to the show, the energy that Barney, who's Coop's like best friend and business manager, which it, I think it says something about somebody when their best friend is their business manager.

Speaker 2 And I'm not sure what the order of operations there was, but you can suspect. Really funny, really

Speaker 2 welcome presence.

Speaker 3 Only like the funniest part of the whole show. Like really, really good stuff.

Speaker 2 Really, really terrific.

Speaker 2 I love Lena Hall on this show, who plays Coop's sister Allie. I don't know what show she is in

Speaker 2 because all of her scenes seem so disconnected from everything else that's happening. And Coop's relationship with her seems so disconnected from who he is with everybody else.

Speaker 2 And so like, is that the sort of like equalizing olive branch where they're trying to get us to like this character more? I don't really understand the role that it's playing in the show as of yet.

Speaker 2 I'm glad every time she's on screen, I just don't know who that Coop is because the guy we're spending time with for the rest of the show is not likable really at all.

Speaker 3 I love her.

Speaker 3 I love her, especially like in her aunt role in episode three, as she's like helping her nephew through his drug trip and stuff like that. I thought all that stuff was good.

Speaker 2 Very relatable, needing help out of a bathtub.

Speaker 2 That's real. It's a deep recline and SWAT squat.

Speaker 2 It's tough scenes for all of us.

Speaker 3 A real 30s moment for her. But like

Speaker 3 I did write down saving the cat. Like, this is the moment when like Coop shows up to like help her out and is kind to her.
I'm like, yeah, this is like a,

Speaker 3 and it was funny. I was talking to Andy and Chris a little bit about like their feelings on the show.
And Andy was like, oh, the sister piece.

Speaker 3 And I was like, well, I like the sister piece a bit better than Andy does.

Speaker 3 But like,

Speaker 3 it's, it is, uh, it's straight out of an FX show that I love that was canceled soon, Terriers.

Speaker 3 Like, it's a, it's a Terriers plotline of like the sister who needs this added care and what she does for this character who is doing questionable things and also divorced from the woman that he loves and kind of wants to get her back.

Speaker 3 It's a, there's a lot of Terriers in

Speaker 3 the dough here, but

Speaker 3 I like like her

Speaker 3 I like all of her scenes so like I I don't I don't like that I feel like I'm being slightly emotionally manipulated

Speaker 2 I'm enjoying it as it's happening if that makes sense that character is just so effortlessly likable yeah and I get why you want that for balance I just want to see kind of how they tie all these threads together where all these things come into play and and her getting to interact with coop son hunter i think is starting to tie these stories together a little bit more closely Will they pay off?

Speaker 2 I don't know. Overall, I think the kids are like,

Speaker 2 those are very recognizable child figures to me, this like very pampered tennis-playing princess daughter, who I think also has some great moments and great lines.

Speaker 2 And Headphone's Kid is such a real phenomenon that I appreciate the show wrestling with in that way.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I don't know what to make of that family dynamic, like the overall wrestling between Coop and Mel about their kids and kind of like who gets to do what.

Speaker 2 And of course, like we got to talk about Nick's place in this. Just one of the most nominative, determinative performances of all time from Mark Tallman playing a former NBA player.

Speaker 3 I am so excited to talk to you about Mark Tallman. This was marked in my notes as like, can't wait to hear Rob's take on this.
So, Mark Tallman, Tallman, Tallman is his name.

Speaker 2 Literally, Tallman.

Speaker 3 He's a former athlete

Speaker 3 himself,

Speaker 3 playing

Speaker 3 an NBA player and gym franchise owner, Nick Brandis,

Speaker 3 as

Speaker 3 someone fluent in the world of the NBA, is this a recognizable person to you?

Speaker 2 Are you ready for my John Ham opening monologue at you? Yes.

Speaker 2 And I encourage you to introduce me your own witty banter. Yeah, anytime you like, Joe.
Okay. This was a whole journey for me.

Speaker 2 Here's what we know about Nick.

Speaker 2 He played critically for Team USA in the 2004 Olympics. Joe, how familiar are you with the 2004 Olympic men's basketball team?

Speaker 3 What do you think?

Speaker 2 I don't know. Maybe you're a secret Olympics head, and I don't know.

Speaker 3 It's a strong 0% there for me.

Speaker 2 But you do lock into an Olympic storyline once in a while. And if nothing else, the 2004 Team USA basketball group is one of the great disappointments in American basketball history.

Speaker 2 A classic like did not send the players they should have sent, got undermined and upset by ultimately superior team playing, but maybe inferior talent.

Speaker 2 And so him displaying his bronze medal, which is what the USA won in Athens in his trophy case, very good, also gives us a critical clue as to who might be on this team.

Speaker 2 Very limited pool to now draw from. He's wearing number 15 on Team USA, which is Richard Jefferson's number.

Speaker 2 Now we're starting to get somewhere. There's like a certain physical similarity between Nick and Richard Jefferson.

Speaker 2 He has a championship ring, which Richard Jefferson also has, but he played for the Knicks, which Richard Jefferson never did.

Speaker 2 Played for the sort of crosstown, but really cross-state then New Jersey Nets.

Speaker 2 He's also a three-time all-star, which Richard Jefferson never made the all-star team.

Speaker 2 And so Knicks, plus multiple all-star berths, now I'm thinking, plus 2004 Olympics is the Stephon Marbury, a kind of Knicks complicated legend who then went on to a very successful career overseas, particularly in China.

Speaker 2 Then we see Nick Dunk in this episode with an ease that I would say is Richard Jeffersonian and not what a 6'2 Stephon Marbury would be doing post-playing career. It just doesn't really add up.

Speaker 2 That man is not 6'2.

Speaker 2 And so then I'm looking at Amanda Pete, who is, by my detective work, 5'7 is the most accurate read on her height that I can find online.

Speaker 2 I would describe their side-to-side comps as he is 1.2 times Amanda Pete's height, which would put him in the 6'7, 6'8 range, which is well in Richard Jefferson territory.

Speaker 2 All of which is to say, I think we're really getting at a Richard Jefferson comp here with a couple of Stephon Marbury,

Speaker 2 like,

Speaker 2 you know, know, some breadcrumbs to throw us off the trail, but ultimately Richard Jefferson is the answer.

Speaker 3 I mean, round of fucking applause for NBA scholar Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 3 So a couple of things I learned from that. Number one, he is indeed a tall man.
Like tall man is quite correct. Number two, I guess, oh, this is a question.

Speaker 3 If he is a Richard Jeffersonian sort of character,

Speaker 3 what should that tell me? How does that inform how I'm thinking about this character?

Speaker 2 It's tough because I think what it tells you is one quite successful, but not mega indisputably famous and successful.

Speaker 2 One of the details I bumped on is you see in his trophy case, like a GQ cover, and someone who is a Richard Jefferson-level NBA celebrity probably isn't GQ cover famous necessarily.

Speaker 2 Maybe there's something about him that sort of transcends that. Maybe there is a public life that's a little larger than the game.

Speaker 3 Was there anyone on the 2004 team that you could see on the cover of GQ?

Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely. Like this was famously like LeBron James's Team USA debut.

Speaker 2 So it had like some huge NBA stars on that team in their right, but who were a little bit either miscast or kind of too earlier in their careers to be those figures.

Speaker 2 And ultimately, the fact that he is a mere three-time all-star and not like a 10-time all-star puts him in a different category.

Speaker 2 I'll also say temperamentally, Richard Jefferson is a little more cutting than I think our guy Nick. Nick seems...

Speaker 3 Affable.

Speaker 3 Quite pleasant, quite affable, is really making an effort to at least mend some kind of fence with coop whether that can be done or not i i think richard jefferson is a little more biting than that here's what i loved about how thank you for that uh absolute masterclass rob um it's just incredible stuff from you um here's what i love about the way that the nick character is sort of rolled out um he is this like sort of

Speaker 3 Coop replacement, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 The kids don't love him, but like he is this coop replacement in many ways, is affable.

Speaker 3 I did think he was living there until it's revealed that he's not. And then I did think that Mel was much more into him until it was revealed that maybe she kind of isn't.

Speaker 3 And I think that's all really interesting because there's like Nick's great and it's quite status for Mel.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, what a what a thing to move on from your husband to and all this sort of stuff like that.

Speaker 2 And all the ladies at the country club are sort of like oggling him as he swims across.

Speaker 3 Quite excited, quite excited. But like that Mel

Speaker 3 has him is

Speaker 3 what mel needs in this moment to feel like she has attention but not seemingly what mel probably wants to keep in the long run given especially this

Speaker 3 burgeoning

Speaker 3 mel deeply identifies with her troubled teenage patient so she keys car's sort of darkness to her that seems like it perhaps matches the darkness inside of coop and and so there is this idea that like i mean i i think their scenes together are incredibly good Amanda Pete and John Hamm

Speaker 3 and her sort of

Speaker 3 it's tough because I really like Mel until she's cast in the role of like slightly nagging wife coming to you for more money sort of thing, which doesn't seem like it matches other parts of her, you know, like it's very confusing to me.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 when they

Speaker 3 are together and she's talking to him in a way where she's like,

Speaker 3 I know you. I see you.
We know each other sort of thing.

Speaker 3 And her talking about to Olivia Munn's character about like not feeling seen by him and not getting attention from him.

Speaker 3 And this is something that she did just to feel seen and feel like she had attention. Like all of that, that rollout, I think, is really good.

Speaker 2 It is really good. I would also watch a whole show that is just her in therapy, taking the destructive ideas of her patients and trying them to see if they help her personally.

Speaker 2 I think that's a great premise for a show, to be be honest with you.

Speaker 3 That's another Showtime show entirely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 I really like Amanda Pete a lot. I'm tempted to say welcome back, but she's been kind of fluttering in and out of various things for a bit.
Like, she hasn't completely disappeared.

Speaker 2 I think the last thing I saw her in was something that has a similar shape to this in a lot of ways, which is Brockmeyer. Did you watch that show Brockmeyer? Oh, I love Brockmeyer.

Speaker 2 Really enjoyable show in which she's also cast opposite sort of like a broken, although slightly more comedically pitched man in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, it seems to be Amanda Pete's zone. She is asked to fix these people or at least to go exist with them.

Speaker 2 The nag part, I hope, gets toned down over time. I hope there were just a little fewer, like fewer scenes

Speaker 2 pitched to that effect. The problem is, I think the reason that those scenes are there is they're trying to ratchet up the sort of like pressure for Coop to steal more stuff, right?

Speaker 2 Like he needs to feel the financial stress from somewhere.

Speaker 2 And he's feeling it from Barney, certainly, who is reminding him at every instance, you only have like a couple of months' worth of of money to actually live the way you want to live.

Speaker 3 And you have me, you have to pay me.

Speaker 2 You got to pay me. At some point, you have to pay your best friend to be your best friend.
And Mel is there to say, yeah, your son, who you don't pay attention to, needs a drum kit.

Speaker 2 Hey, your daughter, who actually wants to play tennis for Princeton,

Speaker 2 she needs some tennis lessons from a pro. That said, John Hamm's forehand looks pretty fierce.
I think our guy can play.

Speaker 3 He can. John Hamm can play tennis and golf.

Speaker 3 This is like the best John Hamm moment I saw on the various like panels and interviews that I watched around this is

Speaker 3 he they were talking about like, we need to find something that John couldn't do, but we have like he can golf, he can play tennis, like he can drink, he can do all this stuff.

Speaker 3 And John was like, oh, I'm just incredibly white.

Speaker 2 Like that's that's it.

Speaker 2 That's all,

Speaker 3 which is really funny. But

Speaker 3 yeah, all of that, I think it was honestly, it was the dermatology moment that I was just sort of like, really? Like the tennis pro thing, I'm kind of like, okay, we're trying to get into Princeton.

Speaker 3 Yeah. The pressure's on.
I understand that pressure cooker. Like I grew up in Marin County, California.

Speaker 3 Like, I understand like all of that, how that can just sort of cook your brain of this is the only thing, this is the only thing that

Speaker 3 equates to winning.

Speaker 3 We have to get into Princeton or else, you know, we're worthless.

Speaker 3 But yeah, it was the dermatology thing that I was just sort of like, I don't know. And, and almost like, I would almost rather hear that from the kids.

Speaker 3 Like, if his daughter was like, I need this procedure.

Speaker 3 And he was like, I don't know how to say no to my daughter who I love and have, and have brought up in this pampered world where if she asks for a thing, I give it to her.

Speaker 3 So that request coming from her would just sit a lot easier for me than coming from Amanda P's character who seems quite sensible in so many other ways. She does.

Speaker 2 And if it's coming from the daughter too, then you get the different character motivation of he's trying to connect with his daughter. He gets to spend less and less time with.

Speaker 2 And, you know, in the way that sometimes divorce or divorcing parents do, you know, you're trying to shower them with the things that they want so that you can maintain the bond that you have.

Speaker 2 But that dynamic isn't there. It is literally just Mel asking for money a lot.

Speaker 3 This latest episode for Hunter, this like party storyline for him,

Speaker 3 really helped crystallize that character for me.

Speaker 3 He was just sort of like vaguely there, vaguely wants a drum kit or whatever, but like his, his relationship with his aunt, him seeing his aunt, him seeing his grandparents in a certain way was like all really good stuff, I thought.

Speaker 3 And then, yeah, him going to this party, having this horrible drug trip, feeling mortified and embarrassed, and having his aunt, like, come help him. All of that stuff really, really worked for me.

Speaker 3 I did write down, though, early on,

Speaker 3 uh, and again, this is TV and we should be patient and watch things roll out, but I remember in this earlier era, this golden era of television, of the anti-hero television, there were all these like trend pieces about the shitty teen characters on like homeland or the good wife or like whatever it is.

Speaker 3 And I was just like, are we we going to avoid that trap or are we going to fall right into it? Like, where are we with this?

Speaker 3 So I think we're moving in the right direction.

Speaker 2 But what do you think?

Speaker 2 Well, within the context of the show, this is where it helps to have Coop himself be as unlikable as he is, is that the team characters by association and by comparison, they seem like relatively good hangs.

Speaker 2 Like, yes, Hunter is quite shy and quite quiet, and he is just starting to understand the power. of being in a band and what it can do for your social life.
Very critical. Don't take the mushrooms.

Speaker 2 I got to say, for us to

Speaker 2 the foresight for us, Joe, on our The Last of Us pod, to create an email address that was thisisyourbrain on shrooms at gmail.com, and then immediately walk into this show, show and see Hunter's brain on shrooms, unable to drum.

Speaker 2 Not great for your sense of rhythm, it turns out.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was like, this would go

Speaker 3 two ways as the guy who pushed it on and like either you transcend into another, I was like, how's this going to go for Hunter?

Speaker 3 Is he going to have this like transcendent musical moment and then, uh-oh, it's like just shroom,

Speaker 3 o'clock all the time, or is it gonna go very badly for him? Just realizing in this moment, because Coop Cooper is his is

Speaker 3 Andrew Cooper's last name, that this kid's name is Hunter Cooper is like

Speaker 2 that's that's not it,

Speaker 2 you can't do that to your son, it's tough, Tori Cooper. Okay, okay, that is Hunter Cooper, Victoria Cooper, fine.
Hunter Cooper,

Speaker 3 that's really that's tough.

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Speaker 3 So let's get back to the sort of like

Speaker 3 question of

Speaker 3 class and the time we find ourselves in now. John Hamm has been.

Speaker 2 What time is that, Joe?

Speaker 3 I can't afford eggs a clock.

Speaker 3 Katy Perry's going to space.

Speaker 3 John Hamm has been exquisitely media trained to talk about this show as if it is like a cutting commentary on like the Elon Musks and Donald Trumps of the world, that it is here for the people who are out here struggling and losing their jobs and all this sort of stuff like that.

Speaker 3 And I'm just sort of like, I'm not sure I see the vision the way that John Hamm is presenting the vision here.

Speaker 3 For me, it feels like he's like, this is the right time for this show, the way that Obama versus McCain was the right time for mad men. Like, this is, this is the right era for this show.

Speaker 3 I'm like, this feels

Speaker 3 a few years too late for me. It might be.
Katy Perry going to space and we're murdering, you know,

Speaker 3 execs in the street. And like, all this stuff is going on with the billionaire class that, like,

Speaker 3 I don't know. Like, it's, again, like, this is, I was, I am born and raised in Ring County, California.
Like,

Speaker 3 I have come from this world and I just am like, this, is this the temperature of the country right now? Is there a possibility for this show to be that for people?

Speaker 3 And, like, I don't know if it's hypocritical for me to bump on it for this show and not for something like White Lotus when both are trying to convey a sense of,

Speaker 3 you know, you're miserable, like these things will not solve the misery inside of you.

Speaker 2 Well, you haven't bought enough of them yet. One more watch, I think, might do it.
Might do it.

Speaker 3 Might just do it. I don't know.
Like, what do you think about that, Rama?

Speaker 2 I think. For one, this is a much more pleasantly watchable show than White Lotus is, right?

Speaker 2 Like White Lotus, I think, wants to make you uncomfortable, not just with its commentary, but even just how the characters act and behave. There's some of that here.

Speaker 2 And I will say, Coop is much more confrontational

Speaker 2 in some of these settings, like much more directly will call out whatever he sees as being bullshit, whether you agree with it or not. But overall, I think the like the temperament of the show, right?

Speaker 2 Like where it is most comfortable, the zone it's trying to exist in, it's just like a comfortable watchability as we're easing through this story. And yeah.

Speaker 2 There's this cultural commentary on the side that I don't think is quite biting, as we alluded to up top, and is quite sugar-coated at times.

Speaker 2 I don't mind it, but I don't see it as us like, we're not going to come out 10 years from now unless this season does a dramatic change of pace and change of tone and say, oh, this is one of the really resonant pieces of our time.

Speaker 2 This really tapped into that thing in the zeitgeist.

Speaker 2 Like, it's, it's talking around and about things that we talk around and about, but it's doing it in a way that I don't think is exactly where any of us might want.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I'm, I almost feel like the mushroom zombie show is doing doing a better job of like reflecting

Speaker 3 our feeling or severance. You know what I mean? Like

Speaker 3 there are shows that I think are doing it, and I'm not sure that this is. And it doesn't, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 Like this can be a sort of desperate housewives-esque like piece of candy if you want it to be. That's fine.

Speaker 3 I just think it's interesting that they're out there saying like, this is really holding up a mirror to something. And I'm like,

Speaker 3 I haven't seen it yet.

Speaker 2 They got to sell a show. They're doing it.

Speaker 2 Popolo is out here saying that about Megalopolis.

Speaker 2 We all have something to do here. We all have a part to play.
And for us, I think it is saying,

Speaker 2 yeah, like, I think

Speaker 2 the line that they're trying to walk makes the show very watchable, but I don't know that it makes it super resonant. Like, I enjoy the show.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be keeping up with it and seeing what goes on, particularly with some of these criminal element storylines

Speaker 2 as we wade deeper into Terrier's story, as you cited it. Like, that's kind of where I'm excited for the show to go.

Speaker 2 The other parts we'll kind of wait and see and see how our opinions of them change over time.

Speaker 3 I wanted to ask you on the sort of visual

Speaker 3 front. So Craig Gillespie of Lars the Real Girl, Itanya Fame, directed the first two episode.
Greg Yetenis, who we interviewed for Presumed Innocent on this feed, directed the third episode.

Speaker 3 How are you feeling about the way in which the show

Speaker 3 looks or uses framing to tell his story?

Speaker 2 I'm enjoying it. I think it's a very well-shot show.

Speaker 2 And I think what I'm I'm trying to figure out is how am I supposed to feel about the way that, in particular, the like incredible consumerism of the show is displayed?

Speaker 2 Because it is clearly like in the target, right? Like in the crosshairs of what this show is trying to hit and talk about.

Speaker 2 But it also wants to show you in loving commercial fashion every element of this Rolls-Royce, right? Like it is, it is loving of these objects in a way that these people are loving of these objects.

Speaker 2 And so like capturing that in the filmmaking is a really delicate balance. And I think there are some scenes, again, where it really hits for me.
And

Speaker 2 the commercialism and the dissection of, you know, why wine snobs are obsessed with this particular bottle or why you can't pour like a glass of bourbon in this neighborhood without getting a TED talk.

Speaker 2 Like, all of that stuff, I think, really, really hits. But then you get into an extended car commercial.
I'm like, are we going to do this every episode?

Speaker 2 Like, is this, is this such a critical part of the visual language of the show where we're going to stop, segment, go into catalog mode, go into infographic mode?

Speaker 2 I think it's still trying to modulate, it feels like your friends and neighbors is how much to do those things.

Speaker 3 I think it's, have we

Speaker 3 exceeded one per episode? I feel like it's one per episode.

Speaker 2 It's about one per episode so far. I imagine, like, every time he stops in to shop around one of his friends' closets or wine cellars, we're probably going to get something like that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's two watches and a bottle of wine, I think, is what we've seen so far. I will say,

Speaker 2 wad of cash. Don't look, cash money in these times, it's not nothing.
The dollar is not feeling great, but it's something.

Speaker 3 I think that

Speaker 3 in terms of like, this is delicious candy to be consumed or a delectable pot brownie to be consumed.

Speaker 3 The shot of John Ham in the wine cellar watching his neighbor fuck her sister, her daughter's boyfriend. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then later hearing from her husband, like. how good their marriage is at Nick's party.

Speaker 3 But his face, like Comedy Ham is, is delightful. And so, like, Comedy Ham in that moment is just like top tier.

Speaker 2 Great stuff. We've been waiting for complicated frontman John Ham to return to television.
But in the meantime, I would say he's played primarily two parts.

Speaker 2 One, great comedy appearances in all sorts of doses, and also various like law enforcement officers. Like, that's that's basically what he's been doing.

Speaker 3 It's interesting in this last year, like our producer Kai pointed out that we could just recycle the John Hamm's nipple rings at gmail.com email address that we had for Fargo for this show if we wanted to.

Speaker 3 He shows up in Fargo, he shows up in Morning Show, and he showed up in Landman.

Speaker 2 He literally called into Landman. We're being honest about it.

Speaker 2 That is what his role is.

Speaker 3 He called in more frequently than Demi Mort did.

Speaker 2 So, you know,

Speaker 3 but he

Speaker 3 he's playing like

Speaker 3 the heavy. You know what I mean? He's playing the villain in the morning show and in Fargo

Speaker 3 and Landman, like slightly less so, but you know, still a villain because he's an oil tycoon. I need to parse this with you.
John Hamm is not someone I have ever found likable.

Speaker 3 I,

Speaker 3 in like any of his characters, I enjoy his characters. I find them compelling.
Don Draper is endlessly compelling to me, honestly. But like, I never liked him.

Speaker 3 And I, and so when John, I thought what John did in Fargo was phenomenal, like this, like him leaning into

Speaker 3 this thing. So like as a person, I don't know him.
He might be like apple pie and sunshine. This is nothing, this is not, not on John Hamm as a person, but like

Speaker 3 likable

Speaker 3 is a root forable is never really what I'm going for. And I'm curious, like maybe we can play a little Bill Simmons like casting what ifs.

Speaker 3 The story is that Jonathan Tropper wrote first 100 pages as a novel and then decided to shop it around as a TV show, took a meeting with John Hamm, and then went home and wrote the pilot script and wrote it with John Hamm in mind, right?

Speaker 3 So, this is tailored for John Hamm. But is there another actor that could be in this role where

Speaker 3 maybe I joined a robbery?

Speaker 3 Don't I'm not as like immediately out on Cooper the way that perhaps the show doesn't want me to be out on Cooper.

Speaker 2 I think that's the question: is how much does the show want that? Right?

Speaker 2 Because I agree with you that John Hamm plays a lot of very deeply unlikable people, but part of what makes Don Draper work is there is a there's like a pure competence at his job that I think is very charismatic for a lot of people.

Speaker 2 And you like, you see him, you see him in a pitch meeting and you're like, I would follow this guy anyway.

Speaker 2 And then you see him go home and you're like, this is the most contemptible man who's ever lived.

Speaker 2 And like that contrast, like him in a suit presenting in a certain way is part of what makes that character so effective.

Speaker 2 And I think there's a part of that here where just by putting John Hamm in front of us, someone who looks and acts and behaves like John Hamm, even when he's acting in something, is going to make him a borderline kind of likable in the way that like famous, attractive people are likable in a lot of cases.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And then you see what you can get away with.
Like how far can you pull that character down to

Speaker 2 make us bend the line of what we're willing to go along with? Because we've seen he's going to end up in a pile of blood. I'm guessing he didn't kill that guy.
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 Feels like we fell down the stairs accidents or something.

Speaker 2 And clearly, he's stumbling into a bunch of stuff that he didn't intend to, right? There's the like SAT

Speaker 2 guide or SAT, the answer key, I should say, in the drawer. Clearly, he walked in on this affair with his neighbor and her

Speaker 2 gentleman, gentleboy caller.

Speaker 2 And then, whatever it is that's going to happen with the dead body.

Speaker 3 Dental boy caller is an extremely cursed phrase.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for entering.

Speaker 2 The show did it. I'm just calling it how I see it.

Speaker 3 They have cast James Marsden for season two of this show.

Speaker 2 Ooh.

Speaker 3 And I'm like,

Speaker 3 is Marsden actually like closer to?

Speaker 3 Because I agree. I mean, like, Don Draper is an all-timer character.
And I, I, like, I love watching Don Draper.

Speaker 3 And to your point, I love getting transported by Don Draper inside of a, uh, an ad pitch and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 Anyway, um, last thing I'll say on the Don Draper to uh Andrew Cooper trajectory, and this is something that John Hamm said in an interview that I did really, really love: is that he was saying Don Draper was responsible for selling the American Dream.

Speaker 3 Andrew Cooper bought the American Dream.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 it didn't pan out for him.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, this is how you sell a fucking show.

Speaker 3 I was like, that is good shit, John Hamm.

Speaker 2 Give this man a slide remote. Like, he knows how to cook up there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I get it. All right.
Anything else you want to say about this

Speaker 3 show before we head out?

Speaker 2 The one thing we didn't really talk about, Joe, is sort of the corporate undermining angle of this.

Speaker 2 Like, we talked about the lawsuit, but it seems like the subplot between Coop and his former boss, who sort of played him and and sort of set up this situation, is like being positioned as a pretty important plot line for the season.

Speaker 2 You don't cast Corbin Bernson to doing nothing, you know, not to just sit in a room and make a couple calls and occasionally pour himself a glass. There's got to be more to it than that.

Speaker 3 That's some real John Ham inland man energy from Corbin Bernson, I guess, in this

Speaker 2 show.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'll be intrigued to see how that pans out. I have actually one last really important question for you.
Please, would you rather go to

Speaker 3 drunken weed brownie self-defense

Speaker 2 tonight?

Speaker 2 Or we're playing

Speaker 3 basketball one-on-one so hard that someone snaps their leg?

Speaker 3 I rewound that several times to understand the angle of how that happened. But anyway, are you at, are you going to Nick's house or are you partying with the ladies?

Speaker 2 Nick's house feels a little cursed. And I think that was true before the compound fracture, but even after it.
And look, that stuff does happen to basketball players sometimes.

Speaker 2 It's very traumatic to a degree that I don't think the people in that room were adequately expressing.

Speaker 2 Very, very striking to see someone's bone poking through their leg like that. But let's take that part out of it before that starts.
A lot of rage happening.

Speaker 2 A lot of just like weird conversations that I don't know that I necessarily want to be a part of. A lot of selling and hawking $30,000 luxury toilets.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't know. Not my vibe.

Speaker 3 No to the toilet party.

Speaker 3 Are you hanging out with the ladies or are you just going to stay home?

Speaker 2 I think I'm staying home watching. Gentleboy, gentle boy caller.
No. No, I am not the gentle boy caller in this case.
But

Speaker 2 I don't think I'm welcome in that space.

Speaker 2 They're doing their thing. They're there for a glass of white wine, a pot brownie or two, some canopies, and some light to medium rough housing.
And I'm not going to stand in the way of that.

Speaker 2 I don't want to intrude. So I'm going to stay home.
Me and John Claude Van Damme are going to have a great time. My bowl of pasta, I don't even know what kind of sauce he put on that.

Speaker 2 It doesn't look like Coop can cook very much, but you know, desperate times. Sometimes you just got to rough it.
A little buttered noodle.

Speaker 3 Okay, butter noodle and some blood sport. Sounds good.
Genuinely, all of their parties seem slightly cursed to me.

Speaker 3 Like, I don't really want to go to any of those backyard barbecues, nor do I want to go to the club.

Speaker 2 But like, let's rewind it. The initial barbecue where we're putting crab legs on the grill.

Speaker 2 Now we're talking. Like, Nick, Nick knows how to throw a party, and some of these other people know how to throw a party.
I just think that particular night,

Speaker 2 everything was going off the rails. Toilet night,

Speaker 2 cursed being locked into a wine cellar, watching, again, gentle boy collar and this woman you know go at it. Like, it was just one thing after another.

Speaker 2 I don't think, I don't think anything that night was going to go well once Coop left the house.

Speaker 3 All right. So stay home

Speaker 3 with your butter noodles and your and your Jean-Claude Van Dam.

Speaker 3 Thank you to Rob Mahoney. Thank you to Kai Grady.
Thank you to Justin Sales. And we will be back with more of something.

Speaker 3 But certainly the last one is thank you so much for all of your emails that you've already sent us.

Speaker 3 To what is the email address, Rob Mahoney?

Speaker 2 This is your brain on shrooms at gml.com. But also email us at prestige TV at spotify.com anytime you like.
And I would say in particular about this show, Joe, about your friends and neighbors.

Speaker 2 How are you feeling about it? What is resonating with you? Which of the two parties would you like to participate in and why? I want to hear all those takes.

Speaker 2 And we're trying to figure out exactly how we want to continue along with this show. So it helps us for sure.

Speaker 3 Perfect. All right.
We will see you soon.

Speaker 2 Bye.

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