Transcript of The Jets, 'Rebel Ridge,' a Great 'Sopranos' Doc, and Deion’s Rocky Year Two With Sean Fennessey and Van Lathan

Coming up, we're going to be talking about the Jets and Deon and the Super Bowl halftime show and Tyreek and a whole bunch of pop culture stuff next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network. Put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. It was from our Rewatchables 1999 series that we recorded a few years ago. We did the sixth Sense. That was with Sean Fentacy, Chris Ryan, and Jason Concepcion, an old friend. We recorded that in 2019. It is the last old episode we'll be running this year. It's a new episode, but old in the fact that we did it five years ago. Everything is new going forward, starting next Monday. You can watch all of it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. You can watch all the clips from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. We did our inaugural Guest Aligns with Cousin Sal on Sunday night, and that was super fun. I tape the podcast you're about to hear on Tuesday morning, heading into Tuesday night. So if anything happens in the debate tonight, that's completely insane. We We didn't know about it. Sean Fentacy is up first.

We're talking Jets, Mets, Nicks. We're talking a little Rebel Ridge with him and Van Lathen as well, and then a lot of Sopranos because there was a really great documentary on HBO about the Sopranos that we wanted to hit. Then Van stuck around and we talked about Super Bowl Half-Time show and Deon and Tirek. There's just a lot going on in this podcast. It's really good. It's all next first.

Our friends from Pearl All right, on Sunday, I texted Sean Fentasey and I said, win or lose on Monday night, you have to come on and talk about the Jets.

Normally, we just do rewatchables pods together. And I feel like every time you come on this pod, you're either They're tortured or super excited about the Jets or the Knicks. So now it's Tuesday, and the Jets game couldn't have gone worse, and I'm sorry.

Thanks for having me back. I think last time I was here, I was screaming about Joel Embiid, and today I'll be screaming about Robert Salah. So thanks for having me.

Oh, let's go. So Robert Salah, I looked this up. He's now 18 and 34 career. There's 201 coaches who have coached 50 plus games, and he's 183 in winning percentage now. He's in the bottom 20 all time. Cool. And it's an amazing list, Sean, that Hugh Jackson is on that list. Netbo Baby David Shula is on that list. Joe Buhgel, Mike Nolan, the guy who used to wear a suit on the sidelines for the Niners. He's on that list. The one and only Romeo Crinnell, he's on there as well. And now Big Shop, Bob Salah. Are you out?

It's hard to say. They just got their asses kicked by what may be the first or second best team in the NFL. I can take a deep breath and recognize that they played a road game on Monday night football against an absolute juggernaut and maybe the best coach in the NFL. But man, they looked not prepared, and their defense got their asses handed to them. He was completely outcoached, made zero adjustments. Obviously, I've been waiting a long time to root for a quarterback like Aaron Rodgers, and that was okay. That was pretty good, that experience. But the defense, which is, I think Troy Akeman used the phrase vaunted defense nine times last night. They looked mediocre at best.

Well, you said this because you were texting our inner circle chat, and you were like, I don't understand this jet's love at all. Our defensive line is going to be terrible. Why don't people notice that we lost Huff? We added Reddick who doesn't play. People are going to be able to run the ball. You basically laid out every single thing that happened in the game.

So it's a It's a tricky situation because the whole defense is designed around not blitzing and having a strong pass rush and having lockdown secondary. For the last two plus years of the solid scheme, it's worked really well because they've had Bryce Huff, who is an undrafted free agent who they developed into an incredible pressure guy. They've had John Franklin Myers, an incredible run stuffing defensive end. Quinnen Williams has emerged as one of the best defensive tackles in the league. They also had Quintin Jefferson last year, who put a ton of pressure on the quarterback. They lost Quintin Jefferson. They They lost John Franklin Myers because they traded for Hassan Redik, so they couldn't keep him on the cap. And then lost Bryce Huff to the Eagles, who very smartly then traded Hassan Redik, who was asking for a lot of money, to the Jets. Redik didn't play last night, and they're otherwise down three of their six best defensive linemen. Of course, they got their asses handed to them by a running back that no one had ever heard of until 6 hours ago. Salah didn't make a single adjustment in the game, and they were playing a bunch of nobodies on the defensive line, too.

Undrafted free agents, guys you've never heard of who couldn't keep up last night. For somebody who follows the team very closely, it was clear that the defense was going to take a step back. The hope was that the offense would take a step up. It just wasn't enough of a step up, I guess. I mean, eight consecutive scoring drives, apparently, that's a record for the San Francisco 49ers. Have you ever seen anything like that? No. It was horrible.

I thought they were trying to start the game. We're going to run the ball down San Francisco's throat and keep our defense off the field. Seemed to be the plan, but they couldn't really run the ball. But they had that one drive, and we were texting about it. It was like, Oh, that's what we thought we were going to get with the Jets. Rodgers making quick decisions at the line. Wilson was open, and it just seemed like the right mix. And then it just went away, and we never saw it again. I thought, so Rodgers looked better than Cousins. Cousins was a statue in that Pittsburgh game. He just couldn't move around. Rodgers could move around a little, but it wasn't the same mobility that he used to have. Now, he's also 40, and he's coming off a big injury. But I thought there were moments when he just seemed like he wanted to get rid of the ball versus actually trying to zoom out and create time, which he used to be great at.

I think the one interception that he had is pretty uncharacteristic for him where he was trying to force it into Garrett Wilson. You could see it was because he was a little jittery in the pocket. He really didn't want to get hit, but his arm is still money. He was making incredible throws, that free play, TD to Al Lazard, and also that throw on the sideline to Alan Lazard. Those are insane. I've literally never rooted for a quarterback who could make a throw like that in my entire life. So watching that stuff was really fun. But this is an offense that is coached by the Immortal Ned Hackett, the run-run past King, running on first down on nine of the 10 drives that they had in this game. What the fuck is he doing?

That was bizarre. The Red Run Pass King, is that his nickname?

I mean, it is to me and all Jets fans this morning. If that guy was calling the players, and it seemed like he was, that was just a master class in playing in the San Francisco's hands because they had a really stout run defense. And Brees Hall, who's explosive, was just getting jammed at the line nonstop. I think he averaged 2.8 yards of carry. This is one of the most explosive players in the NFL. So that was really disappointing to watch.

You spent a lot of money in the offensive line, too. It was interesting when they brought in the backup and they were talking about how he was 20 years old, and I was thinking he was three and a half years older than my son.

That is true. Braille and Allen, he's a beast.

Yeah, talking shit to the grown man on the Niners. I thought that was amazing. Kevin Wilds pointed this out, and I didn't think it was true, and I looked it up and he was right. Rogers hasn't thrown for 300 yards since week 13 of the 2021 season, which was December 19th, 2021. Do you want to guess what the number one movie was that week? I'm going to put all your interests together. Say- December 19th, 2021. There were some December 17th releases, too. There were Wednesday, Friday releases that week.

God, that's just late in COVID times.

It was right when they were like, Hey, come back to the theaters. And meanwhile, there was a new strain of COVID coming out. Well, I'll give you three.

Okay.

Spider-man, No Way Home.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

West Side Story. And House of Gucci. House of Gucci was the one that really hit home to me because it felt like that movie came out nine years ago.

Yeah, I think that one was a November release. I will I think Spider-Man: No Way Home is the number one movie at the box office.

Back then?

Yeah, that weekend.

But I'm just saying, to put that in perspective, those were the three movies that came out during Rogers's last 300-yard game.

Was he an absolute kook by then? I guess he was, right? He was immunized and all that bullshit.

What's it like to root for somebody who could be described as an absolute kook?

Thanks for asking. Throughout the entirety of him not playing, it hasn't been pleasant. But when he was throwing the ball, I was into it, man. I was like, Whatever, ayahuasca, vaccines, I'm not thinking about that. What I'm thinking about is darts down the sideline. That was just thrilling. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of the stuff that he's done in the public eye. But for a 40-year-old guy, even if he still hasn't thrown for 300 yards in over three years, it's clear that he's not over. He's not done. He's not cooked. I mean, the Niners are good, and he was able to score on them a couple of times. He made Al Lazard look like an NFL player, which is something that Zack was never able to do. I'm not completely out on Aaron Rodgers. I don't know how you could be after that game. I do think they also have a cupcake schedule coming up. There's a world in which they're doing very well. I still think this is a deeply flawed team, though. I'll be honest, you know when I really started getting nervous is when you started gassing them up six weeks ago.

I was like, Oh, no. Why is Bill on them?

This is not good. I think that was the right instinct, especially after watching Miami, who got completely outplayed for Almost that entire Jacksonville game and then would have been down 24/7, ETN fumbles, and then the game just flips. And then Buffalo is barely holding on against Arizona. It just feels like whoever can get to 10 wins in the AFC makes it. The Jets next three? They're at Tennessee. Tennessee is terrible. Home for the Pats and home for Denver. I feel like if you come out of that 0-3 after that Pats game or 1-3 after the Denver game, there's some solid possibilities at that point.

I was wondering about that, too, if he would be canned. It's a tricky one because I think the Pats are going to be a little better than people think. The Jets are also playing three games in 11 days. I have no idea why the NFL just... They have a 40-year-old quarterback, and they schedule them to play three games in 11 days. They also have a lot of nationally televised games on the schedule this year. And if they're not good, again, that's going to seem very strange.

Yeah, that Pats game is a Thursday. So they go at Tennessee and then home for Pats four days later.

Yeah, that's really not ideal. I don't know. I mean, that looked like a nine, eight-win team last night. It just looked like a mediocre team. If they are a mediocre team, my prediction was that they all get fired at the end of the season and Rodgers retires. Does that seem right to you? What do you think based on what you saw?

I'm not ready to go there yet. He had that one throw to Lazard down the sidelines that made me realize, Oh, there's nobody quite like this guy in the league. He pulls a couple of throws out that I don't think anybody else in the league can make. It feels like he can still do that. It feels like he can still go to the line and be like, They're doing this, so we should do this. I mean, this is what happens in week one and week two. The Niners just might be... Their defense might be just awesome this year, and maybe we were not going to realize that for three more weeks. I think the Pats game is a little dangerous. That's the I'm trying to figure out, especially the Pats are home for Seattle this week, trying to figure out how real that bangles win was. I read everything. I watched the game again. The defense looked like 2001, hats on the ball, everyone flying around defense. And they had a pass rush, which I had no idea they were going to have a pass rush this year, especially with Judon and Barmer out, but they do.

And then they were really able to run the ball on the right side, which I don't think... Ramondre was, I think, one of the best runningbacks in week one, if not the best one. So the way they ran the ball against Sintze, I think they could do against the Jets. I agree with you. And I think they could pressure Rodgers. So it's a little bit of a scarier game than maybe I was counting on. I thought the pats were going to be Reprehensively bad, and they're not.

I thought that there was one crazy moment, like a real sliding doors moment in the Pats game where Burrow threw the countdown. I think it was in the second quarter that got called back. And then he threw another pass over the middle to the tight end that got punched out at the six-yard line and fumbled. I thought if they went in and scored there, the angles might have been rolling down a hill. I agree. That didn't happen. But I was watching the pats closely because I was like, I need the pats to not be good for once in my life. I was like, Oh, fuck, they're good. This is really not ideal. That was when I started texting you and I was like, Okay, so the dolphins looked bad and they pulled the game out. The bills completely turned their act around in the second half and looked dominant in the second half of the game. The pats are going to be tough, and they played hard for Mayo. And even though the Jets have ostensibly an easier schedule, man, every team picking them to go 12 and 5 or 13 and 4, that just doesn't feel right.

It doesn't taste right somehow based on what they've done. Also, Joe Douglas, who did pick Gareth Wilson, who did pick Sauce Gardner, who did find Jermaine Johnson at the end of the first round of a draft. He also picked Zack Wilson second overall. He also waited too long to add a veteran quarterback to the team. He also has now taken two consecutive first-round pics that I don't think are going to contribute to this team really all that much this year. Will McDonald last year and Olu Fashinou on the offensive line this year. It's like what we used to say about Belichick. It's like you keep taking guys in the first and second round that don't contribute. That's going to catch up with you. Those guys are not really playing that much. So this is a team that doesn't have as much depth as you want.

The thing I didn't like out of all this stuff they did, because the Giants did a version of this, too, where they paid draft compensation to get somebody who played the exact same position as the guy they just could have kept or just signed. The Giants could have just signed a free agent. Instead, they paid a to trade for Brian Burns. And then Jets just could have kept Huff and maybe even just also kept Franklin Myers. And instead, they paid a draft pick to go get Redik. I don't understand the logic of that. I would never want to give up a second-round pick if I could have the second-round pick plus Huff.

I think if you are a cynical Jets fan looking at the strategy, they felt like they built Huff out of nothing, and they thought they could do it again with other guys. And so they didn't want to overpay for a guy who doesn't play against the run who's a positional switch player who only basically rushes the quarterback. And so they were like, We can find another Huff. We can find another Huff. And then they lost Huff. And then they were like, Shit, we got to get another Edge player. They freaked out as a little bit late in the game, Howie Roseman Just.

That's another red flag. If the Eagles want your guy, that's probably a red flag. I totally agree. Because they have pretty good taste in players.

I totally agree. Joe Douglas used to work for Howie Roseman. So that whole thing just smelled funny to me from the beginning. All my Eagles friends, of course, have been taunting me about it all summer. I feel shitty about that. That being said, I don't know. Given the schedule, given Rodgers, given Holland Wilson, there are definitely going to be games where they're going to win 30 to 10. I have just not seen a lot of games like that in my life. Actually, there was an amazing stat that I read, which is that they had games in which they scored three offensive touch downs just twice last year. They actually scored three offensive touch downs last night. It's going to be a better offense for sure. Even Tyrod Taylor, he looked pretty slick last last night in garbage time. I enjoyed that.

I also enjoyed it. I've always liked him. I've always been rooting for him ever since he was almost murdered by the Chargers team doctor. I'm also not out on this Jets season. I think one of the things is they're built to have a lead. They're one of those teams where it's like, once we have a lead, we can run the ball, we can do play action, and then on defense, we can just rush and blitz and do all the Sal stuff. So yesterday was a worst-case scenario. Also, once the Niners realized If they could run the ball, that's the most terrifying team in the league when it's like, Oh, you're letting us run for six yards of carry, and now you have to start moving guys up to try to stop the run. Great. This is what we're good at. So it might have just been a perfect storm. We've seen week one overreactions. I'm not out of them yet. Wilson and Hall are amazing. You have two awesome weapons.

They are. One of my big takeaways from the game, and this is something we've talked about a lot over the last two years, there was no Jets pass rush whatsoever last night. But Brock Ferdin was slinging it.

Yeah, he was. He looked good. They even dropped a couple of plays. Well, the famous stat of the Jets haven't made the playoff since 2010. That's winter 2010. I realized We first met and exchanged emails in 2011, and we've worked together since 2012. Maybe I'm the problem.

Time to quit. Should I put in my notice this morning?

Maybe we just should have a more distant relationship. Larry Maybe David quit the Jets.

Did he, though?

I think he did.

But if they go 12 and 5 this year, is he back in?

I don't know. He's my dad's age. When you hit your mid-70s, you just started, you just started going, Fuck it. So he's claiming he quit, but I also think he watched the game yesterday. So I don't know. We'll get a TBD. Maybe he'll come on the pod. It's a bummer that the Jets didn't win because I was so excited to take your high from the Jets game and then spin it against you with the Knicks and Julius Randall just ready to single-handedly sabotage the Knicks season. I was ready to do that. We can do that in a month, though.

That's not going to happen. What do you mean?

Well, he was upset his jersey wasn't in the window.

Playmaking firepower. That's what we need in the playoffs, and that's what Julius Randall provides for this team. It's going to be fine. I'm not worried.

Who are the two unhappy guys that aren't going to be playing in crunch time every Knicks game? Have they figured that out yet? And will they have special seats?

I I don't know where Divo fits in. I don't know where Dante DiVincenzo fits in the lineup, honestly.

He's got to be so bummed out. Yeah, he's turned into a 20-minute-a-game guy. I'm sure he'll be psyched.

He bombed 11 threes in a playoff game. Remember that? He's going to get eight minutes a game given this roster. I don't know. Whatever. They got Mikael Bridges. That was awesome. Come on, they're good. You can't make me feel bad about the Knicks. They're good.

Josh Hart, all of a sudden, now just a 20-minute-a-game guy. How's his ego going to handle that?

Josh Hart had an incredible Simmons-esque tweet yesterday, Bill. It was, None of my parlays hit. Football is so back.

Josh Hart did that? Yeah. Nba odds right now, by the way, we have You're next. Have the fourth best odds on Fandil, 9:00. Eastern Conference, You're next. Tied for the second best odds, plus 4:40. This is The highest they've been in since the late '90s.

Are they ahead of the Bucks?

Yeah.

So let me try to guess. Is it Celtics, Nuggets, Sixers?

Celtics Sixers-Nicks for the East.

Yeah. What about in the West?

Well, for the Championship, Celtics, Thunder right after the Celtics, then Sixers, Knicks together. Yeah, people are in on the Thunder this year.

We're really going to miss Isiah Hartenstein. He was awesome. I like that guy.

He It seems super fired up to be part of the Thunder with Caruso, too. Thunder is going to be really good. I think they're live for the Wednesday and all that stuff. All right, so you're not giving up on the Jets. You're super optimistic about the Knicks. Then Mets, are they play-offs? What's happening with the Mets?

I was wondering if you were going to ask me. I mean, honestly, they might be the most exciting and resilient Mets team of my adult life. This has been a crazy season. They're like 55 and 29 since May 30th or something. They've been on an insane run. They're in a really, really tight playoff race right now. And it's the same goddamn problem where when the Knicks get good, of course, the Sixers and Celtics are really good. When the Jets get good, of course, the Bills and the Dolphins are really good. And in the Mets case, the Phillies are a juggernaut, and the Braves will not go away. The Braves are missing their ace pitcher, Spencer Strider, out for the year. They're missing their reigning MVP, Ronald Acuña. They're having a huge down year from Matt Olson. They're missing their star third baseman, Austin Reilly. They're keeping up with the Mets, which is killing me. But you know what? I always bitch about not having a super-duper starter root floor and not having these great legendary players. Over the course of the last four years, Francisco Lindor turned into it. He just turned into it. He's a legitimate MVP candidate.

The entire fan base has flipped on him. He had a really bad first year where he was doing the thumbs down thing and the fans were turning against him. But man, he's just been freaking nails for three years in a row, and this year has been his best season. Just a joy to watch. Just an old school, plays 162 games a year shortstop. He's a wizard defensively. He sits for every goddamn interview after every game and says, We got to be better. I got to be better. He's clutch. Just really cool to root for somebody like that. I've been still in on baseball this whole year.

Good son analogy, you're holding the Phillies and the Braves, and you only have the strength to pull one of them back on the cliff and drop the other one. Who do you drop?

Well, I should drop the Phillies.

Who would you want to see dropping into the abyss of the rocky ocean?

I should drop the Phillies because they're in first place. But honestly, I hope the entire Braves organization mistakenly gets on Titanic 2.0 and just sinks into the bottom of the ocean soon. I just can't deal with the Braves. I'm sick. The Braves have been haunting me for 25 years, so I don't want to see them anymore.

That's our Mets, Jets, Nicks update from Sean Fanteci. We're going to take a break and come back. Van Lathen and Sean and I are going to talk about the Sopranos documentary next. Kick off this NFL season with a win on FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook. Right now, all customers get a profit boost every single NFL game day. That means you can pump up your grid iron winnings multiple times a week. Fanduel. Tons of ways you can get in on the NFL action. You can bid on money lines, spreads, player props, much, much more. It's early in the week, so we're looking at the overcorrection lines, which to me, Jacksonville minus three and a half right now against Cleveland and whatever the hell we're getting about from Deshaun Watson these days. That line seems low. Jacksonville should have won last week. Week. Then Miami at home, basically getting a point and a half against a Buffalo team that barely held off Arizona. Those seem like the two overreaction lines. But with simple live betting, lightning fast bet settlement, and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. All I have to do is visit fanduel.

Com/bs to download FanDuel today. You must be 21 plus in President Select States or 18 plus in President DC. Opt-in required, bonus issue does not withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including token expiration. See terms for both offers at sportsbook. Fanduel. Com. Gambley problem? Call 1-800 Gamble or visit rg-help. Com. All right, Sean Fentacy is still here. Van Lathen is joining us. We're going to talk a little pop culture, the three of us. Sean, you did your podcast on Rebel Ridge on the Big Picture. I did. This week, which I watched. I woke up on Saturday morning and my wife was like, I'm going to sleep late. I'm like, great, you should sleep late. I just watched all of Rebel Rich. It was great. It played all the hits. I thought it struggled in the middle. It's probably about 15 minutes too long, which I feel like I'm saying about every movie, but I really enjoyed it, and I thought the lead actor was great. Van, what did you think of Rebel Rich?

It wasn't what I expected. I expected it to be a display of this man's physical force and him beating the hell out of people who have wronged him. The movie had layers I didn't expect it to have. And just really a fantastic performance. I watched the movie and I thought, There's my Black Batman. I'm serious. I was like, That guy, there's my Black Batman. The movie actually ended up being a really great script, a little long, but I was really pleasantly surprised. I had heard the gas on it was so crazy that I didn't think it could possibly live up to it, but it did.

Sean, where Where did he come from? What's his background? And did you know he had that performance in him?

Definitely not. It's a really amazing A Star is Born situation for him, but he's done some work. He was in Barry Jenkins's The underground Railroad, the Amazon series. He played the rapper in the M Night Shyamalan movie Old. That rapper's name was Mid-Size Sedan.

Oh, Mid-Size Sedan. That's okay. Yeah.

He's done a few things here and there. It's a crazy story about that movie where it originally started its production with John Boyega from the Star Wars movies in that role. And he left the movie under somewhat mysterious circumstances. And he was replaced by Pierre, who's a British actor who most people haven't seen before. And man, he's a badass. I mean, he is just... The Batman call is really fascinating. Chris had something similar because of the way that his character doesn't try to injure anybody. He's not trying to murder anybody while he's doling out justice. He's got this very disarming quality physically, but he holds the screen. Sometimes you see a guy who's very still on camera and just looks into the camera and you're like, That guy's got it. And Aaron Pierre is the actor's name. He's got it.

Yeah, I felt I'd never really had a movie experience with him. I had to Wikipedia him about halfway through the movie, and of course, he's fucking British, man. We just can't win. We can't win. Where are the American actors?

Kalika went.

Kalika literally went, Oh, he's British.

And I was like, What? I was like, What? He's like, Oh, my God, he's British. But you know what's funny? When you go back and you watch First Blood, it's obviously the movie that it's going to be compared to.

Because it ripped off the same premise? Is that one of your reasons?

It's inspired by. Yeah.

Okay.

But when you go back and you look at the subsequent Rambo movies, John Rambo movies after First Blood, Rambo is the most compelling when he's fucking shit up, when he's shooting or setting stuff on fire or beating people up or whatever. But in First Blood, it's not that way. He's most compelling when he's just going, Why are you doing this? What's with you guys? The most compelling part of it is this guy being in a different situation where these people are trying to take advantage of him and him just pushing back against them. And that tension is the most... And that's the same thing with Rebel Ridge. Rebel Ridge is not at its most compelling when he's getting busy. Those aren't the best parts of the movie. That's fine. But it's most compelling when he's this close to Don Johnson and they're talking and they're testing each other. And the psychological part of the movie is the stuff that makes it work, which is hard to do in a movie that's based around this ex-marine beating people up.

Well, that's what the first 20 minutes of First Blood, which we did on the rewatch was way back when, but it's so brilliantly constructed. Sean, what was the theme of the big picture? Was it Garbage Revenge?

Yeah, just like all revenge movies where somebody's been openly wronged. And this movie has a perfect, openly wronged civil asset forfeiture first 10 minutes of the movie. And you're like, God damn it, what's these cops? What the fuck, man? Yeah.

So I would have called that. I like Openly Wronged. The other version of that as the, Oh, man, just leave him alone. Because that's first blood, right? So just leave him alone. He wanted to see his buddy. He just wants to get some eggs. Can you just leave him alone? And it's like, Oh, they won't leave him alone. Oh, they're really not leaving him alone. Oh, boy, here we go. But I think what I deliberately didn't read anything about this movie. I just assumed it was going to be the, Oh, he's going to get... Here we go. He's just going to beat the shit and kill people. And let's go. Let's get a body count going. And it zag really hard on that. And it seemed really, like Van said, really interested in the cat and mouse dynamic with him and my guy, Don Johnson. 40-year anniversary of Miami Vice Season 1, one of my favorite TV seasons of all time. He creates Sunny Crocket, who becomes the model, the first semi-antihero. It's not quite an anti-hero, but there's some DNA in there that goes. The only thing better than Don Johnson is evil Don Johnson, who we've seen a couple of times.

I was going to add you. Evil Don Johnson. I've always felt like, I don't know why Don Johnson didn't have a better movie career. He's really good in Tin Cup. He's really good in the Hot Spot. He's been consistently. When you see him, you're like, Oh, Don Johnson. I like Don Johnson. I like when he taps into his evil, Sean. Good villain.

He was a hero on that TV series, but his best work is by far when he plays a bad guy in movies. I mean, he is an awesome bag, or at least a sleez bag.

Well, wait a second. In Miami Vice, he was a hero of the dark side. That's true. He had a drinking problem. He went against the grain. He was like that one of the first, Are you going to play by our rules or not? That created It seems like Sonny Crocket was one mentor away from being a drug dealer himself, right? Yeah, he thought about it. Yeah. He had the boat. He had an alligator. He was like, if things go sideways, I could also go the other way. What were you going to say, Sean?

There's an amazing scene in this movie outside of the hospital where it becomes clear that what they did was wrong, and they're trying to make amends to put the tiger back in the cage. Don Johnson in that scene, when he's explaining what he's willing to do for the Aaron Pierre character, and the Aaron Pierre character trying to hold it in and not just strangle Don Johnson, high class stuff. I personally wanted to reach through the screen and smack Don Johnson in the face. That's how you know you're a good villain.

Yeah, it's weird because they released this movie the same weekend as a Perfect Couple or The Perfect Couple, whatever it's called, with Nicole Kidman and Liam Schreiber, which don't think I didn't watch all six episodes of that, too. It was a really big Netflix weekend. And The Perfect Couple was just this this new genre of TV we've now created based on season one, A Big Little Lies, where it's like, Rich people, a murder, a famous actress. Wait, there's a zag. Who was the one who got murdered? Oh, it's this person. Oh, these people did it. No, they didn't. Oh, there's a big event. We're just AIing that now. If people are afraid of AI, watch Perfect Couple because that's AI. But then all of a sudden, decided it was a black comedy in the end. My wife and I, we watched all six episodes and we were like, What the fuck just happened? Why did this show exist? I still was mildly entertained by it. But then Rebel Ridge was, I thought, really good in a movie I would have paid to see in a movie. Van, you would have paid to see that in the movies, right?

Yeah, it would have been hard to get me to go see it, though.

Yeah, that's the issue.

Because it didn't have a star or you didn't like the theme?

Because it didn't have a star. The movie looks like paint by numbers. If you just look at the trailer, it looks like the You Fucked with the Wrong Person movie, which is what these movies come down to. Even to make me watch it, Chris wouldn't stop. Chris wouldn't let it go. I've never seen Chris Ryan this excited over something. This is like, if the Sixers won the Championship, he was really like, Man, have you seen it? The next day, Van, did you get a chance to watch it? He's like, Van, did you get a chance to see Rebel Ridge? He was really in it, and he almost never- You didn't know Chris turned Den of Thiefs because it was like that on fucking steroids in HCH when Den of Thiefs came out. His recommendations are always so good for stuff that's Van coded that he knows I'm not like, so I had to check it out. But it would have been hard for me to get… Because I did not hourly recognize Aaron Pierre, and it would just been tough to get me to go to the theater to see the movie. I might have seen it after word of mouth, but Netflix was probably easier sell for a lot of people.

Would you put CR over me with text recommendations of pop culture content?

I'd have to think about it, but CR- God, this really hurts. But he goes into the deep cuts, though. See, he gives some things that... He goes, Bam, Lioness. Got to see it. Then I watch Lioness, and Lioness is fantastic. You have never seen Lioness. We're talking about the whole Taylor Sheridan DNA connection here between- I know, but that's not fair.

Cr is just blind season tickets for the Taylor Sheridan universe. It's very true. Whatever that oil show is, it doesn't matter if it's good or not. Cr is going to watch that one.

He's so fired up for Landman. Are you guys up on Landman? This is the next Taylor Sheridan show that's coming out. I don't know what the details of it are.

There's another Taylor Sheridan show that's not the oil show, or is that the same show? What's the show with Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Hamm? That's Landman. Oh, so that's the oil show. Yeah.

I like to pronounce it like Grantland, Landman.

Jon Hamm's evil billionaire oil guy and Billy Bob Thornton's trying to keep it real in the fields, and Demi Moore's involved. That's Landman. I love Billy Bob keeping it real. I'll watch every episode just for the record.

Taylor is a fantastic storyteller. He really is, especially the first season of Yellowstone. But how many times can he go back to the well with the super rich?

People are still discovering event. I just talked to my dad this weekend. We had our annual pre-Jets conversation, and we were like, How are you feeling? How are you feeling? And then he just spent the rest of the time, him and my stepmom, telling me that they knocked out 1883, they knocked out 1923. They're on the third season of Yellowstone, and they're thriving. They're trying to watch the Duton saga chronologically in order.

Wow, almost like Godfather starting in the 1910s. Exactly. Oh, I like that.

They were loving it.

Created. He's figured it out. I don't understand how he's so prolific. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and it does feel like he's the guy from Limitless. He found some pill that allows him to just write every episode of five TV shows at the same time. There's no other explanation.

Do you know what's funny about mentioning that? I feel that way in the opposite about Don Johnson. I wonder how bad Don Johnson wanted it. I don't know because... And I'm not saying that he's lazy or nothing. I'm just saying that Don Johnson, every time you see Don Johnson on screen, you go, I could have used more Don Johnson. You think about roles that Don Johnson could have played. To me, my favorite scene of Rebel Ridge was when the WiFi is out in the thing and they're trying to figure out what the acronym means for him. They're trying to figure out that he's a badass and he's outside talking. That is such a well-played scene. Don Johnson has this thing where he does it in the scene where you can't think of another actor who would have done it like that. It's right there. But I don't know if he wanted to, in that era of hyper competitive Hollywood star, it doesn't seem like he was out there trying to be everywhere at one time. It seemed like he was very selective, and he picked and choose a little bit.

I got to say, that's one of the best modern versions you of the internet in a movie I've ever seen, where in that moment you're talking about when they see MCMAP, where it's the Marine Corps Martial Arts program, and the female cop is looking at the Wikipedia and she's like, Uh-oh. I think his picture is on the Wikipedia. I was like, Wow, we are in. This guy is the man.

I follow Don Johnson on Instagram. It seems like he's got a great life. He lives somewhere warm and sunny. He's unlike wife number 4. They have a kid who played high school basketball. He does He's walking talks. Really? Yeah, he just seems to... He'll post pictures of him having coffee. He lives somewhere warm in California, and it just seems like he has a great life. When you're Sunny Crocket for five years, what else is next? You were the greatest TV cop, I think, of all time. I have him number one still, Sonny Crockett.

Bill, I got to confess something to you.

You never watch Miami Vice?

No, I have. I've seen it. I'm not as into it as you, but I understand it's important to you. But no, four months ago, you were like, You need to start doing walk and talks when you get out of movies. You need do the movie Bites, instant reaction.

I wanted to do that. Yeah, what's that pizza? The Dave Portman Pizza Show. I wanted Sean to do one bite, one take. One take. He just comes in 50 seconds, just hot on a movie. I was kidding, by the way.

When you said it to me, I was so mad. I was like, you would degrade me and make me an animal on social media. Then honestly, the last few times I've seen a movie, I was like, Bill is early on to something. I should be doing walk and talks outside the movie.

Sean, you should do it with the people.

Yeah, Yeah, right outside the theater with the building behind you, and you just grab a viewer and it's like, All right, it's time for one take, Sean Fennicey.

Hey, guys. Cinema Sean here outside the marquee of the Grove. I'm here with the people. We just saw Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Guys, what do you think?

I would watch every episode. What was the title I had, though? It wasn't One Take. It was something like that. I can't remember.

It was good. I was really mad when you said it. I was like, You must think I'm such a schmuck. But you were right, as usual.

Well, I just You see how many movies a week? 20?

No, not that. A lot. I see a lot of movies. 10, 12?

The fact that you were trying to get this motherfucker to walk around after he had seen the movie.

No, I wasn't. I was joking. But I knew it. I planned the seed. I knew it would buck him.

It did annoy me.

When does it end, Bill?

Sean, what 2024 movie are you the most excited for Dan and I to see?

Maybe even We were just talking about Saturday Night, and I do really want you both to see that. I'm very interested. Bill, you are a shaman, a guru of Saturday Night Live history. I know too much.

If I could remove one thing from my brain that probably... If your brain's an iPhone and it gets filled up and you don't want to buy any more hard drive stuff for your brain, I would remove a lot of my Saturday Live knowledge. There's nothing to do with it. I have nobody to talk to about it.

Just to set your expectations, they do put a lot of stuff that all doesn't happen in that night into the movie. There's a bunch of SNL history, but I thought it was a pretty cool movie. I haven't seen Gladiator 2, but I'm ready for Gladiator 2 to take over. I've talked to two people who've seen it, and they were like, Get fucking ready.

Really? Oh. Yeah. Really?

Interesting. Yes.

One person I really trust, too.

I would have bet that that would have been a let down in some way.

I mean, maybe I'm hyping it up too much for people now, but I was told, Get ready.

Wow.

How old is Ridley Scott now?

Eighty-four.

Oh, my God.

I think he's older than Biden.

Wow. Older than Biden.

Should he run on a Democratic ticket, you think, Ridley? He was not born in the US, unfortunately.

Gladiator 2. What about that Selena Gomez movie?

I saw that. Emilia Perez. I saw it at Telly Ride. It was interesting. It's a movie that is about the Desipar Cedos in Mexico and is also a musical and is also a trans Coming of Age story and is also a movie about a lawyer. So it's a whole lot of movie, guys. Damn. Complicated movie.

She's getting some best actress buzz, I noticed.

I don't think that's going to happen. Zoe Saldana, though, she of Lioness is in that movie, too. And she's dope. She's really good.

Hey, Van, was Rebra Ridge the movie you always wanted Michael B. Jordan to make?

It's funny. What I thought about John Buega leaves the film. He basically just checked out at his hotel and just walked away, right? That's what they said. They cast Aaron Pierre in two weeks. Within two weeks, he was on the film. And you can tell Because that might be another reason why some of the action scenes aren't super well choreographed, and he's not doing high-level martial arts and all of that stuff because he's really a ground and pound type of guy. Normally, it takes a little while to train you up to do all of that. But I was thinking, if you lose John Boyega, what made them go right to Aaron Pierre? What made them say, Okay, we know we got this guy. What made them go right to him? I was thinking about other guys that could have been in that role. That's the role that if Mike or another actor of that ilk kills that role, it really does a lot for their profile. That's a star-making term for him, if you ask me. I'm now interested in him. He carried a whole movie kinetically and really showed a lot of dimensions. I don't know why some of the Black actors stateside, they don't really trust them with roles like that.

The thing I've been saying about the Rebel Ridge in particular is that it's a Steven Seagal movie with a New Yorker subscription. It's a movie that is really smart, but is basically just there's an indestructible force that is barreling through this town. And that's not really it. There are a few actors who pursued those. Speaking of Netflix, Chris Hemsworth has the extraction movies. They're somewhat similar. They're like, this is a man on a mission. He's been wrong somehow, and he's got to get to the end of the game. But they're hard parts to do. It's not easy to carry a story like that and make it seem credible. The fact that we bought into Steven Seagal for 10 years doing that, it's amazing.

Oh, I'm still buying. Shooter with Mark Wahlbergs like that. The Marine with John cena. Might have watched that a couple of times.

Underrated movie to me, man. Yeah. Shooting is pretty ridiculous. I mean, but that's a fun movie. All right. But don't besmirch Sagal, though. Hey, anybody seen Richie?

Yeah. How dare you?

Anybody know why Richie did Bobby Lupo? Seagal was a lead He just asked that while he's beating people up. I'm like, Seagal was the man, bro.

Sean was like Ruiz with Brock Purdy on Segal. Meanwhile, Segal was elite. All Segal did was win games. He just went 13 and 4 every year for seven years.

He's made 1.7 good movies, in my opinion.

Hold on. Let's take a quick break, and then I want to talk about the Sopranos, Doc. Now it's time for a special part of today's episode sponsored by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. My friend, NFL Sunday Ticket. Awesome features to help you stay on top of all the action like MultiVue, MyFriend, where you can watch up to four games at once or layer on stats and fantasy views to track your favorite teams and players. When you bundle NFL Sunday ticket on YouTube TV, you get access to every game every Sunday. That's It's the most live NFL games all in one place. Local and national games on YouTube TV. Nfl Sunday ticket for out-of-market games excludes digital-only games. Device and content restrictions apply. All right, now that we got that out of the way, YouTube TV has crowned me their CMO, Chief Multi-View Officer, to help pick the top four games of the week that you should watch with Multiview. We have 10 early games this week. That's right. You heard me. Ten. We need Multiview more than ever. Here's what I picked. Tampa, Detroit. We're going to have some offense. I want to see if Tampa is a little bit for real or not really.

And Detroit is the best team in the NFC. New Orleans, Dallas. That has the potential to be a Derek Carr. I sucked you in for one week, and now things are falling apart. I'm excited for that one. Seattle, New England. Is the New England defense for real? We're about to find out. They're home, too. And then last but not least, Green Bay, Indy. Who's playing quarterback for Green Bay? Is it really going to be Malik Willis? Will it be somebody else? Is Green Bay season about to go south? I think those are four best. Of course, with the Multi-View builder, this year, you can even customize which four NFL games you want to watch. So you don't even have to listen to me. You can just do your own. Just log in, select, build a Multi-View, and pick out the four games you want to watch. Thanks again to our friends at NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. Don't miss a minute of the action. Watch every game every Sunday when you bundle NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. You can sign up today at youtube. Com/bs, local national games on YouTube TV, NFL Sunday Take a for out-of-market games excludes digital-only games, device and content restrictions apply.

So I asked Van to watch The Sopranos, a two-part documentary that's on HBO. It's about David Chase. It's called Wise Guy. I love The Sopranos. It's my One of my three favorite TV shows. I'm not ready to make a list, but it's in whatever- What are the two?

It's The Wire and what? No? Is it The Wire?

White Shadow is still up there for me just because it was my first favorite one. Soprano's Wire, Curve, Herb, Larry Sanders. There's a bunch. But it's on the shortlist. I thought I knew everything about the show, and then Alex gave me this documentary about it. Starts out slow for 20, 25 minutes. Then once we start to the making of the show and the auditions, all of a sudden it becomes the most entertaining doc, and I was just really into it. I'm probably on the highest end. I think Sean's lower. Van, where are you?

I thought it was fantastic. I think that I was able to take a little bit of the early stuff a little bit more because you had warned me. Because if I'd have thought in any way that I was going to sit down, and no disrespect to the man, and watch an hour and a half on David Chase, I would have been livid, right? Yeah. But it's so imperative that the documentary does that because I was actually unaware of what a biography The Sopranos was for You needed that context. But the minute that you see, I just don't care. I love this show so much. The minute that you see 10 different guys reading for Chris and you see actors that you recognize, other Italian American stereotypical actors, like every mob dude that had been in a movie that you had seen past, present, or future, trying to read for each one of these parts. You can see Michael Imparioli there and why he nails it. You see the moment in David Chase's head that he goes, That's Chris. The entire thing was like a narcotic.

Well, how about they do Livia, the Tony's Mom? They show a bunch of people doing for Tony's part.

Who clearly didn't understand the character, right? Nancy Marshawn clearly understood what they were going for, and you just see how the show could have gone wrong. It almost gives you a little anxiety, too. They could have made one wrong decision, it seems like, and the Sopranos wouldn't been the Sopranos. It's like, the show gets you high.

That 25 minutes sequence alone, Sean, was why I would recommend this doc for literally anybody who likes this show. I thought when they were showing the auditions, we've seen that stuff. Some of those auditions for movies we like and TV shows are on YouTube. I've never seen it cut that way, where it's like you're just watching all these people and then the person is like, oh, he's going to get it. It's Michael Imperial. He's going to get it. But the way they cut it, it's like, oh, this is why he got I understand. There's pieces of Christopher, just him in that room. I thought that was so fascinating. Have you ever seen anything pull that off quite like that?

Not specifically in that way. I think it's because they were willing to like, luxury in a lot of different parts of the development of the show that most documentaries don't. Usually, when you see something like this, it's like 90 minutes, and it's cut together pretty tightly, and not everybody sits for it. And they just had an incredible treasure trove, I think in part because the show, as the doc, really, really smartly positions, is this is the show that changed TV. It's something that you hear people say, but you don't realize until you hear Chris Albrecht talking about where HBO was at the time, until you hear David Chase talking about how he feels completely unshackled from writing this show the way that he had to write all these network TV shows that he was writing beforehand. So you get to see that in the casting, they get to make different choices. The Nancy Marshan stuff is so cool because she has this consciousness of her persona as an actress, where she's always playing this buttoned up woman. She's always playing this prim and proper woman, and she's been being asked to cut loose and be basically the villain of this show and be this woman who never gets out of her nightgown, who's raging against her son.

Nagging Italian.

Yeah. I mean, all that stuff is great. I personally, my favorite stuff, though, was the stuff that you guys were a little bit bumped on at the beginning, the chase stuff, because it's just really unusual to watch somebody who has been so therapist. He's He's been in so much therapy, basically be forced, almost against his will, to recite his therapy to a camera and Alex Gibney. I didn't think that the convention of being in the chair necessarily was perfect between him and Gibney, but the stuff that he had to say about how he put his life into that show. Then also in the making of the show, how he forced his psychology onto his writing staff and onto his actors. This sense that this unease between him and Gandalfini, this unease between him Robin Green, this unease between people not really knowing where he stood. Him basically being Tony, the way that he led, the way that he was brilliant, the way that he was flawed, this mirror of his greatest creation and the way that he worked, I thought was so cool to see.

Some of the stuff I knew, I thought you put that well, by the way. Some of the stuff I knew, like HBO trusting Chase's vision and ultimately hitting this point where they're like, Fuck it. To make the show you want to make, we got to trust this person, which has been a hallmark of HBO's strategy really ever since, where they're just like, Here's one guy. There's no consensus. There's not six people giving notes. We're just going to trust this person's vision. We believe in it. But That part was cool. I thought the episode 5, which I knew a lot about already when they go to college and Tony's going to kill somebody in Witness Protection, and how horrified HBO was by that. They had the two executives, Chris Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss. Basically, you can't do this. Nobody is ever going to like this person again. You can't have them commit a murder. He's like, No, you don't understand. He has to commit a murder. This show's about a mob. He's got to do this. He's a bad guy. Then they find this uneasy alliance of, all right, well, the bad guy, the guy that he's killing has to maybe do something to make him a little more menacing, then it's okay.

But Caroline Strauss said, When you hit that impasse with a show creator, you you just have to go with it, which I thought was a really cool point because I think a lot of networks would have fucked that part up. No, he's not killing somebody. If he doesn't kill that person in that episode, the rest of the show can't happen the same way. Then the other thing then was, Chase at some point could have probably ended the show quicker and made movies. I thought the part two of the doc was about, he realized this was it. This was This was the thing he was put on Earth to do in the seat of the end, and this was going to be his legacy. And he just said, Fuck it. I love this universe. I don't want to leave it. And he kept going. But I couldn't believe that he had never thought about putting an end on it until Chris Albrecht, the executive, was like, Hey, have you thought about how this is going to wrap up? Was he just going to keep going and going? I don't know. Those are my biggest revelations. What did you take from it, Van?

Well, number one, I I just thought it was interesting when you put his career in context of when the Sopranos comes out. Because you know that conceit where the cop walks into his captain's office and he goes, Hey, I can go get this guy, but you got to let me do it my way. Then they turn him loose, and then he goes and he conquers. That doesn't really happen in real life. In real life, you got to work with a lot of different people. But This guy was this guy telling his story his way, and he was able to clear everybody out. He was not a powerful television figure before that. He was a guy that was on his last chance before he went and did something else. He was able to tell his story in exactly his way, and it became this huge, huge deal.

He seemed prickly to work with, too, which made it even harder.

Totally. It did not seem like some of that stuff... Bro, some of the stuff where they showed them on set and he's talking to the actors, it did It did not seem like they were having very much fun when they were talking to David Chase. It didn't seem like that. But everything about the show that I didn't know because I started watching the Sopranos when I'm 19, and it seemed like automatically everything was perfect. When you saw James Gandoffini as Tony Soprano, you go, Oh, okay. I've seen that guy a bunch of times. It's time for that guy to get a shot. You know what I mean? That guy is in true romance. That guy's in get shorty. It makes sense that somebody gave him something where he's the guy now. The Mexican. Right. Where all of this stuff had to happen, for all of it to work out in this really serendipitous way, it's not an accident. It's timing, but it's also a lot of hard work and a lot goes into it, and the show could have very easily been bad. I think the weight of the show and how that became evident to the cast after a while.

Everyone thought they were just doing another mob thing. Everyone thought that they were doing some... They were buttoning up the great era of mob content that's really over now, right? Yeah. Almost an homage or one last gasp of it. But then the weight of the show became evident to them as they read more scripts, as they got deeper into their character, as they understood just how genius and brilliant the execution of the show was and what that meant to all of the actors and how that changed their lives. It's very inspiring. The best documentary is to me are the ones that make me go, Hey, I want to be like that guy, or, Hey, I never want to be like that guy. That inspires some type of emotion out of you. It really deepened my appreciation for the Sopranos. I do a rewatch per year, and now I'm going to get started early. Normally, I start over the holidays, but I'm going to do it now.

Yeah, that's how I thought as well. It deepened my appreciation for a show that I already really, really, really loved. There was stuff that I learned so many things that I didn't know, like little subtle stuff, like the cast reading the scripts worried that this was the episode where they were going to get knocked out of the show. They're going to get killed, yeah. And how they tried to lobby for him to basically not kill Big Pussy because they liked the guy. I'll get him a season 2. Even stuff like Chase, that little tidbit about how HBO called it 6A and 6B instead of a seven season because they would have had to give everybody raises. It's like, Shit, man, he's still pissed about this 18, 19 years later. The Gandolfini stuff, I thought was incredible. I've always been fascinated by him. I read all the major Soprano books and pieces, and it just seemed like it got really complicated the second half of the show with him as he was just putting too much of himself into the character and putting too much of the character into himself. I thought what Van said earlier about how Chase was...

Or Sean, you said it. Chase was putting pieces of... He's basically a little bit the mayor of Tony. But then Gando Fini was also the mayor of Tony. So you have three different people that are all the same crazy, volatile, up and down, fucked up person, and they're all steering the ship that has 250 people. I didn't know a lot of that stuff. Did you know that stuff, Sean?

Not nearly as much. I think I always understood that there was this uneasy alliance, this tension between Gandalfini and Chase's creation and Chase's point of view on the character. One, the image of him giving the eulogy at the funeral is devastating. That moment is so painful. I thought that was awesome. Just incredible stuff. It's so sad. Then there's one other really interesting Gandalfini moment, which is that moment when it's revealed that he has been holding out in contract negotiations. But when he comes back and he finally comes to a deal, he gives each of the cast members $30,000. But then they ask Edi Falco on camera, and she's like, I didn't know that, which means she didn't get $30,000 from James Gandolfini, where I was like, Hmm. Gandolfini was a complicated guy, and he seemed to have complicated relationships. That's obviously not just one of the signature TV performances, but one of the signature character creations. You can put that with actors on stage, great cinematic performances. Tony Soprano resonates so deeply in the consciousness of culture. But he and Chase, as open as Chase is about so much in his life, you still don't totally get to the bottom of what it was between them.

He doesn't totally put to words what their union was, where their dissenting moments were.

How tormented it was. Yeah, it almost felt like... I felt like Chase was holding back in the interview, didn't you? It did. There was some stuff he wanted to say that he was like, That guy's dead now. I'm not going to say this. But yeah, he seemed really conflicted about it. The eulogy had never been shown. It's not on YouTube. Nobody had seen it. It's so raw and so emotional. And you could see like... I also had forgotten that they made the movie together in 2012. So it was this guy that he had this crazy, complicated relationship with, and yet he still couldn't quit him. And he decides to make a movie, and it's like, I need my movie. James Gandolfini, the guy that had this crazy thing.

He's so good in that movie, and I love that movie. I have to say, I've always loved it. We were working together when the movie came out, though. I remember I wrote about the movie for Grantland because I was like, no one cares about this. And I think this is such an interesting film, Not Fadeaway, it's called. And it's feel basically ignored, even though it's him doing the other half of his interests. It's him doing 1960s American rock and roll culture plus European filmmaking styles. That stuff is all in the Sopranos, but it's all layered underneath mob stuff that that band was just describing, this end of an era mob stuff. For me, movie dork that I am, I love that he was always filtering that stuff into The Sopranos. The Sopranos is a weird show. It's a really unusually structured and told show.

Lorraine Rocco's interview was really good, too. Maybe I knew this and forgot that they wanted her for Carmella, and she wanted to zag because she felt like she had already played that character and wanted to be Milfie. But she tells that whole story about the rape episode. And how she stopped reading it. She's like, Why would you do this? Why would you do this to my character? He's like, Just keep reading, keep reading. That choice and that final word and everything the way that was constructed, I thought that her fork in the road moment is like, should she... It's probably a top three Sopranos episode, but it's also easily the most difficult one to watch. I didn't even like when they were showing the clips from it in the documentary. The other one that I thought was It just shows how crazy Chase was. He would get these people together. He would throw out their first five best ideas because he felt like the sixth idea was like, What is that formula? Take your first five ideas, they're going to suck from on, that's when we'll go. They would write on a whiteboard all night.

He would get up, add to it, and then wake up three hours later and just wipe off the whiteboard. It just sounded like, we've talked about this sometimes when now in the 2020s, everybody's rightly so, trying to be a lot more functional in a work environment and have a lot less stress and a lot less discord. And yet you see this show and it's like this show was a fucking maniac show to work on, and it led to true greatness. Right? Then you think, was that one of the reasons it was truly great?

We're probably going to get watered on art because we're... I mean, just the reality of it. We're going to elevate citizenry and citizenship and people, but we're going to get watered down art because there's a certain madness that goes along with it. There was one part in the first part of the documentary where you can track the show, literally physically with the change in James Gandoffini. He becomes this brute. When the show first starts, he's dashing, almost, to the degree that he could be. But as the show moves on, his fingers get fatter, he gets baldder, he becomes Tony Soprano.

The volume of his breathing goes up throughout the season. I always noted that.

Yeah, it's almost like the Shining with Jack Torrance. By the end of it, he's just in a fucking bathroom on a show of himself.

He's just strangling people, right? Yeah. There's a clip from inside the actor studio where Lipton is talking to him and he starts to answer the question and the crowd starts to laugh. They think he's doing Tony Soprano, but he's not. He's just talking. There's a point where, and that's another source of the friction, that's a point where he completely rests the character away from what it was before, and it starts to become more in line with who and what he is. And I really feel like that happened to everybody else as much. I feel like for everyone else around it, they were in his orbit, and they were circling around the weight of what he was doing. But it got a lot darker. I can't even remember the episode. I can't point to the episode where Tony becomes a complete total aspect hole where he completely breaks bad because I keep reaching for Tony Soprano throughout the entire season. I'm looking for the shred of goodness in him no matter what. I know what he's been through. I know he has mental health issues. I know he had a fucked up relationship with his father, with his mother, his sisters out there.

So no matter how bad he gets, I keep searching for the good in him till the very end. I believe... Tony is outwardly racist. You guys know how I am about this. And it's one of the funniest scenes in the history of the show. The guy is standing there looking at Tony, and Tony is being outwardly- Oh, Meadow's boyfriend. Meadow's boyfriend, right? He's being outwardly racist towards him, and I give him a pass. I understand him a little bit. I mean, I don't. I'm like, Tony's a racist, but I'm like, It's Tony Soprano, because there are other situations where You see him getting along with... It's complicated. He's complicated, and more than any other character, I buy into his complication. Bro, we don't do complicated well anymore. We do either you're a good person or you're a bad person. You're trash or you're cool. You're canceled or you're active. The complicated characters, we don't do them anymore, and the complicated people, we don't really do them well anymore.

They show us the Gloria Trillo stuff, too, in the documentary, and That part of that show is as far to the edge, I think, as I've gone with Tony, where he's so violent and so hateful towards her. But also the show is like, this woman is also crazy. This woman is also unwell. The show is-They're just bad for each other. Yeah, and they're so destructive. But he keeps finding himself in all these destructive situations. It is him really.

He's seeking it out. Yeah, exactly.

He's searching for his mother. But you get it, though. It's like they've done enough of the groundwork for you to… It's like a reverse Luke arc. Luke comes from being a guy. I don't know anything. By the time jedi comes around, Luke can do everything. Tony actually starts out benevolent and ends up D arth Vader, but you understand.

But he was always D arth Vader, I think, is part of the point of the show. It rope-ed up us with the first few episodes. It was always in there.

But see, it He was always in there, but I'm not sure if he was always D arth Vader. I think he had to make a choice as more was hoisted upon him because think about it, tremendous loss. Jackie dies. There's all it is, there's a power struggle. He had to- His family tried to put a hit on him.

I think that was probably the breaking bad moment, right?

Right. I think he He has almost a second adolescence, I'd say, during the show as he grows from Mafia kid, capo to boss. And by the time he becomes Thanos, he doesn't feel like there's anyone who can touch him or hurt him.

The reason I was always... I'll always defend Tony, not that they need my defense, but every decision he made on that show, and I think this was one of the things that comes across in a documentary that Chase was passionate about, Gando Fini was passionate about. The decision was always authentic to Tony, the character, and what he would do. I remember even Sex in the City, which is a show with way lower stakes, had that season when Kerry Bradshaw starts having an affair with Mr. Big when he's married and gets caught and Mr. Big's wife falls and breaks her tooth. You just never looked at her the same because it was like, I- Listen at you. I thought you were- Bill, you bad bitch you. Well, I I thought you were a different character than this, Kerry Bradshaw. I believe in you.

What? You like the Manolo block? Bill, I want to get here. Listen at you.

Okay. I didn't realize. Here's the thing. From an authenticity standpoint?

Manolo Vladek-Fill. That's good.

I thought they did it because it was a good arc for the season and not because it was authentic to that character. I didn't think she would do that. I think with Tony, the entire time in the Sopranos, all the decisions that he made, I was like, Yeah, he would do that. Yeah, I get that. And that Breaking Bad was the same way. You understood the methodology behind their decisions. If you can nail that all the way through a series, that's, I think, the hardest thing to do. That's why Breaking Bad did it. Mad Men, when Mad Men started to get a little rocky there in the last part of the show is because we were like, I don't understand what Don Draper is doing here. He's over the map. He's doing this, now he's doing this. And I I always felt like the Tony was authentic. Can we talk about the season finale stuff? I mean, the last episode because- Can I say one thing that still gives me about Tony, though?

Just one thing. Yeah, go ahead. Killing Chris. I guess I get it, but I was still agaced. Every time I watch it, I still am like, That was a hell of a decision right there. I don't know if I sometimes totally buy that he would have made just the snap decision to kill Chris like that.

I don't think it was a snap decision, though. I think it was building up to that for 20 episodes, and he was like, This guy's a bad apple. He's going to continue to haunt my life, and I have a chance to just eradicate this now. I think it's consistent- Because that's what it meant to be me or him.

Yeah, it's consistent with what happens in mob culture as well. I don't think that that's such a leap. I think the other thing, too, Chase was always very direct, even in interviews at the time, that he was like, Tony Soprano is evil. He kills people for money. You do not lose sight of the fact that even though you love him and even though Gandalfini is such a compelling and in many ways lovable character, he's evil. This is the absolute darkest layer of society that we are portraying in this movie. It doesn't mean you can't have empathy for the experiences that he's had as a person, but don't lose sight of the fact that he will kill his own family to protect himself. I never really bumped on any of that stuff in the show when I was watching it because I was like, he's a figure of Satan, really, in a lot of ways.

The one line he went across was, he is at one moment, I think the show is called Night Cat, when they had that great argument with Carmella. He puts his hand up like he's going to hit her, and then he ends up just punching the wall over and over again, which is showing the documentary. It's like the one line he won't cross, he even hits AJ. I guess he would never hit Meadow. But basically, he's going to on the bingo card of bad TV people, he's going to do all the bad things. But that seemed to be the one line they would never cross on the show. The season finale, which came out 17 years ago, and now I really like. It really made me mad when it happened. I thought they did a nice job of framing some of the decisions, some of the behind the scenes stuff, some of the cinematography they did. But I thought, I forget with the second director, I thought he made the key point when he was basically saying, This is art. You want people to keep talking about art after it's over. Every TV show just ends in 20 minutes later, you move on to something else.

And David didn't want to do that. And I was like, holy shit, what a great way to put it. Because we're still talking about it 17 years later. I got an argument with Sal about it six months ago because Sal is still mad 17 years But has that moved up the rankings for you, Sean? That last episode?

I liked it at the time, even if I didn't totally understand what he was doing. I find it is the documentary does a really good job, I think, of effectively recreating those final seven or eight minutes of that episode, which are so compelling in the way that it's cut and you're always looking around the corner of the frame to try to figure out what's going to happen next, the way it lingers on the guy who goes into the bathroom, the way that the door is always open coming into the diner. The tension in that framing is just a great filmmaking. Set aside the fact that we don't actually, quote unquote, find out what happens to Tony or his family. It's so, so, so well done. Then I think the way you frame the bill is exactly right, which is like, it's still interesting to pick apart and to think about and to try to better understand. I think that the show is so emblematic of the shift in television to a ambiguity and a moral gray that we weren't ready to accept something that didn't say either this guy died or the show got canceled and we'll never know what's going to happen to them.

This was something effectively totally new. And the show was often compared to great novels. And that was the ending of a great novel, that there was a interpretive quality to it that holds up to this day. So I really, really like it. I'm very pro the Mad Men finale, personally. I did it with Greenwald on Stick the Landing. I still think that's right up there in the conversation, to your point. But the Sopranos ending, I think, still works brilliantly.

I think at the time, I felt manipulated because I felt like the tension that Sean is describing in the last couple of scenes that I deserved a payoff. That after making me, Meadow is trying to park a car and all of this stuff is happening, I'm like, My God, my heart is racing. Like, something's going on, and then it just goes off. I'm like, Man, you're fucking with me. And that's something that show would never do. The show didn't used to do that. It didn't use to fuck with you in that way. Also, I think that the DNA of the show being so grounded in mob culture and depictions of that, you always get a resolution when you're watching something in the Mafia. Somebody goes to jail, somebody gets killed.

Or somebody rats out everybody else and goes in the witness position.

Somebody rats out everyone else. Sophia Coppola's character is mercifully killed. You always get it. But here you didn't get that. You didn't get an out. You didn't get a morality lesson. In funny games when he goes, Hey, the minute that the guy picks up the remote and rewinds the TV that you guys should have cut the movie off because you know that there's no way that these people can survive now and you're just watching to see how they die. I'm like, Don't indict me. You made the movie. You know what I mean? And so with the Sopranos, you're looking for some resolution that's going to make you either feel better about the world that you just devoted six years to or eight years to or worse about it, and you don't get it. You get what you get in life, which is there it is.

Everyone dies and nothing is clear.

That's it. That's it. You get... I mean, it's how it happens, and they don't bail you out. You have to make a decision for yourself why the Sopranos were so good to you. Why Tony resonated so much with you, why you wanted to see the villain win, why you care so much about his family. They don't give it to you. They don't give you the big bad wolf. They don't give it to you. At first, as a younger man, I needed it. Now, I really appreciate that they didn't do it because that's not the way the world works.

I've also rewatched this show I think I've done three or four rewatches at this point that I really appreciate now how many things they threw into that final episode that were either callbacks to stuff from earlier or full circle stuff. They did a good job in the documentary, pointing out, he says in season one, he has the toast to the family when the power is out or already's restaurant. He says, Hey, it's the little things. It's these are the good moments right here. Then in the last episode, AJ brings that up. He's like, Didn't you say once, it's all about the little moments, the good moments? That's what... Tony's like, Oh, did I say that? I don't even remember. You realize, Oh, this guy's been full shit the whole time.

That was great. Had you put that together before? I hadn't put that together.

I did the fourth rewatch, I finally realized. But to expect somebody to get that in the final episode in when the show has been on for eight years. Nobody's going to get that. Yeah, it's really cool. But I thought that was pretty neat. The other thing I never noticed, but he pointed it out, was how Tony kept entering his own POV and how they filmed it that way where he kept going in and how the stuff that Chase had seen over the years that shaped that. I thought that was pretty cool. It was nerdy filmmaking. But anyway, I thought it was worth watching. I wish they had interviewed more people. I wish it had been three parts, not two, but for the Sopranos. Dan, I'm feeling another rewatch coming on. I haven't done it since summer of 2022.

I don't do a full... I rewatch in some capacity every year. Sometimes I don't do a full rewatch, but I get to a point to where there's... Really, the reason why I rewatch it all the time and the why or two is because there's so much content that it makes me actually less selective.

You pick stuff through stuff, new stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, new content that's- No, no, no.

What I'm saying is there's so much content. When I put on HBO Max, I get paralyzed by all the choices and I go, I'm just going to watch The Wire season 3.

My wife put it. She said this before. It's not a new point, but when we were watching the documentary last night because I made her watch it with me. She was like, Really miss these people. We haven't done a rewatch in a couple of years. I feel like all these people are my friends. She said that there are certain TV Shows like that where you're like, I'm getting together with my friends again. Christopher's back in my life. I thought it was a good way to put it. I thought that was one of the reasons the sex in the city crushed on Netflix because people were like, Oh, yeah, I missed these four. I'll run these back. I think that's a hard place for a TV show to get to. What's weird is The Sopranos, one of the most violent show about an evil character. You wouldn't think those were friends. Same thing for The Wire. It's like this is a world you wouldn't think you'd be like, Oh, these are all my friends. But that's how I feel about The Wire, too. Anyway. All right, Sean, we're letting you go. You have stuff to do.

Van, you're sticking around. We got one more segment.

Thanks, Bill. Go, Metz.

Thanks, Sean. All right, since we have Van on the pod, we got to rip through a couple of topics. Deon Colorado, go.

Getting as bad as it could possibly get right now.

You predicted this this summer.

Yeah, it just didn't seem like a lot of the issues that were present on the team from last year had actually been fixed. You're looking at the same stuff. You're looking at offensive line problems, you're looking at defensive line problems, you're looking at the inability to cover. The team is, of course, very top-heavy. I'm not saying anything that anybody hasn't said. Even some of the guys that broke out in the first game of the season, Jimmy Horn did not do really that much against Nebraska. It seems like in a situation with him, he really shows out against lesser competition, against competition where guys can and maybe the scheme is better. He has some problems. But more so to the point now, when you look at Colorado, I'm starting to see stuff that maybe I didn't see as much last season on the field. Travis Hunter in that game against Nebraska, where they were thoroughly dominated, seemed like he was fed up. He wasn't actually believing... Because one thing I will say is for all the struggles that they had last year, you saw some cracks and stuff like that in terms of the coaching staff and stuff.

But the team seemed like they had a great bond between them. It seemed like they were okay with one another. There was always some different dust-ups and you heard stuff coming up, but it wasn't until the summer that you got this All this information about just how fractured the locker room could be or might be. Now you have to wonder what's going to happen with the Colorado experiment, and you have to wonder where it's going.

Why do people care so much?

Because it's interesting.

If you had to condense it down in one sentence, why do people care about this team that's basically a below 500 college football team?

Because we love Deion Sanders. There are a couple of people in every sporting generation that rise to the level of mythic figure. And Deion Sanders is one of those people. Deion Sanders is a guy that locked down one half of the whole field, becomes a huge pop culture star. Primetime. He's great at baseball. He's great at football. He's a generational athlete, but he's not just a generational athlete. He's a generational talker. He's a generational cultural figure. He's a generational style figure. He just means something to someone. And then to see Deion Sanders's maturation when he's finished with his playing career and he becomes a leader and a man of God and a family man and a father, you just believe that Deion will win at whatever Deion decides to do. And he will win. Deon Sanders will win. What will happen is this. Travis Hunter will get drafted high. Shadr will get drafted high. Deion Sanders will walk away from Colorado, tens of millions of dollars richer than what he was when he got there. And his son will go to the NFL, and his adoptive son will go to the NFL. Deion Sanders will win.

The question is whether or not Colorado will win, whether or not they will be markedly better after Deion Sanders leaves. Besides the financial, I'm talking about on the football field, and I don't think that they will be.

I liked it last year. We talked about it a year ago because I just hate the college sports infrastructure. I was so excited somebody was coming in and was just like, Fuck this, and just blowing it up and zagging in the hardest possible way. I was like, I hope this works. Now, a year later, it feels like we're headed toward what you just laid out. It's going to get a couple of kids drafted. He's going to leave. I don't know what's next for him. What's next for him?

I mean, it depends. If he wanted to continue to be a college coach, remember, he had great success at Jackson State for what they were doing at Jackson State. He won the swath twice. It's not like he hasn't ever been successful as a college coach. If he wants to continue to be a college coach, and broken record, everybody is saying this, it would take the demonstration of building a program that may contains a competitive and structural consistency that people can believe in. Deion Sanders and Matt Rule came in at the same time. He beat Matt Rule last year. He beat Matt Rule last year because Matt Rule is the coach of Nebraska. He beat Matt Rule last year because Nebraska turned the ball over a lot. Also, there was a little fool's gold in there. But now when you look at the team, one team was essentially 28 points better. The game was 28-10, but it wasn't that close. One team was way better in the trenches at doing the little things, made less mistakes, the entire nine. So it seems that one way is winning over the other way. So Deion Sanders would have to prove that he could really do this at this level, and he just hasn't proven that yet.

He's proven that he can be noticed, that he can be disruptive, that he can garner headlines, that he can win in spots or have success in spots. But he has yet to prove that he can win consistently at that level. And it's just a fact.

Yeah, you're basically running your own little mini-corporation. Yeah. I mean, the reality is- It's a little harder than where he was in the first job.

There are all kinds of guys. For example, Marcus Freeman right now at Notre Dame. Great young coach. Notre Dame ends up losing a weird game every single year that they shouldn't lose. They just lost Northern Illinois. They lose tomorrow. Should they lose to a three and nine Stanford team? And you wonder, what is it about this guy's process? Brian Kelly at my school, at LSU, my beloved LSU Tigres, we come out stagnant and flat at the beginning of the season, every single year, we lose big games when the lights are on us. And you wonder, not that Brian Kelly can't be a successful coach. He's one of the most successful coaches of his generation. But what is it about these guys, this process and preparation to where they lose in situations like this, or they can't get over the hump in situations like this. And Deion Sanders doesn't have nearly the accolades or the winning percentage of those other two guys. But if we're asking those questions about those guys, we're certainly going to ask those questions about him.

Well, a year ago, you came on and we were talking about if this Colorado thing keeps going the way it's going, what's next for Deion? I think you did a top five programs you'd want him to take over. Now it feels like the ceiling of that is You'd have to be moronical.

You'd have to be a moron. What it looked like at the time was this. What it looked like at the time was that Deion Sanders had the ability to catch lightning in the bottom and make everybody want to come to where he was and participate in this. And that he was going to attract the best athletes. He had Travis Hunter. He was able to get Travis Hunter to not go to Florida State and come to Jackson State. So you felt like his ability to do that was going to turn a situation to where he didn't have as many resources as some of these other programs and make Colorado automatically competitive, which it looked like. Tcu, Nebraska, it looked like he could do more with less. Now, it's starting to look like that he can do less with more because the school has been financially successful. They're getting all eyes on them every single time. The lights are on Colorado. The attention is there, but the team can't function. So it doesn't look like resources are an indicator of how good of a coach or how good of a job he's going to do. So if he ended up at Florida State or if he ended up at a Notre Dame or any other places where these coaches are, quote, unquote, on the hot seat, which I don't think Norvell or Freeman is actually on the hot seat.

But if he ended up in any of those places, it doesn't look like he has the institutional consistency to run them well. I'm not saying that that's true. It's year two for Deion. But I'm saying the team, it's not just that the team is losing, it's how they lose. They lose at the fundamentals of football. You lose at the things you have to do right. Yeah. So it's really right now, outside of an opening game loss, the loss that they had to Nebraska, I mean, Bill, that's as bad as it can go. For all the people out there that... Because there's a part of this that you shouldn't I say this because there's a cultural loyalty to Deion. I love Deion. I love what he's been able to do. Love him as all of that. But if you're looking at the results on the field, he hasn't proven that he's a great coach at this level. It's just a fact.

It might be a level below. We'll see. What's your biggest college football story right now? Thing you care about the most, not LSU?

Besides LSU, a couple of things. Number one, I care about the relative lack of strength that we're seeing in the SEC. The parody of college football is really interesting. We've had a couple of years now where I think things are changing a little bit.

So top 25 parody or top seven parody?

No. I mean, when you look at the game now, I think NIL and the transfer portal have leveled the playing field to a degree to where I don't see the monsters just beating people's heads in. Last week, something of an anomaly, but you saw Northern Illinois beat Notre Dame. You saw Boise State. In Austin, Austin, one of the toughest venues to play in all of sports. You see, Oregon need a late field goal to beat them, right? You see Cal beat Auburn. Normally, when you match up an Auburn team with a team from up there, Cal kids, they're too busy protesting to care about football. So normally, when you match them up, you see them get just dominant. It's just not the the name anymore. I think it's interesting to see where college football is going with the transfer portal, with NIO, and with a lot of the athletes that are coming out of the South, decided that they're going different places. You might see a change in the guard in terms of the power structure of the entire thing.

Well, I'm sure it's much harder to have continuity these days. Then also a coach, what's happening in Boston College right now, everyone in Boston is all excited because Bill O'Brien came in, turned it around, and it just feels like overnight, you could Have a contender. All right, next topic. Tyreek Hill, how big of a story is this going to get over the course of the week? We're taping this on a Tuesday morning Pacific time.

I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal. I think I think that, just to be honest with you, I think that we've made our decision about this issue. What happened to Tyreek Hill is a shame. You can look at the video and you can see the cops overreacting to what happened.

To say the least.

To say the least, right? You can see that happening, right? I think that there was a legitimate time in NFL sports culture where there was an opportunity to leverage the power of the American athlete in order to really address some of the issues that they face as being Black men in society. I think we put it on I think that with Colin Kaepernick and just the entire... So interesting that that happened around the same time that the Super Bowl stuff was getting involved. I think that around that entire time, you guys can say... People can say whatever they want about Colin Kaepernick and what they think about him as a man or what they would have done or whatever. The important thing was that the conversation was being had about who these guys are and what these guys are when they're not in jerseys. The conversation was being had, and it was important a conversation to have. To be honest with you, when the NFL made the deal that they made with Roc Nation, people turned the page on it. That was a singular thing that happened. People turned the page on it. People said, Okay, well, now Roc Nation is involved with the NFL.

There's no way that Jay-Z and Roc Nation would be involved in anything that is less than nutritious for Black people for this cause. So however way, whatever way you have to say, Kaepernicks wants to still be in the league, so it must be okay. Jay-z is here now with Roc Nation, so it must be okay. So Tyreek Hill saying now, I saw him on CNN saying that, I want to make a change. I want to do this. I want to figure out a way. We didn't done everything that we can do. We've protested, we've done all of this stuff, and none of it has worked. Well, we haven't seen any of it through because we've chosen, as a society, in my our opinion, our entertainment over our humanity and dignity. We chose football. And it's when I say we, I'm talking about Van Lathen Jr, the average person. We chose football. We chose entertainment, we chose tradition. We chose the game that our fathers and mothers gave us over dignity and over humanity and over what it would mean to envision a society where Tyreek Hill would not have been treated like that. This is for everyone.

I've seen videos of... When we talk about police and culture, we often racialize it and make it about the way Black Americans are treated by the police. But when we're talking about policing and getting to the center of what we expect from people who are supposed to serve and protect, the poor white boy from Denham Springs, I'm talking about all types of different people who run up against cops who feel entitled and who use their authority to cross lines. I'm not going to be hyper verbose. I'll stop here. But what I'll say is, we'll forget about this. Tirek, he will catch touchdowns. We'll move on. We've already made our decision, and our decision was that we loved football more than we loved a fight for dignity or humanity.

It felt like there was a similar thing from late 2010s all the way to maybe 2014, Ray Rice range, when it felt like every year, the NFL had some issue or controversy that made all of us go, It sucks to root for this league, right? And I ended up getting in trouble. It's been with one of the things. But the concussions, especially, felt like it was going to be such a big part about how we talked about football going forward. Were we signing up to watch these people basically get their brain mushed? They had to figure this out. They figured it out to some degree. It's still a really violent game. At some point, I think all of us had to look in the mirror who love football, and it's like, Am I signing up for this or am I not signing up for this? I know they made it safer. I know they put some effort into it. It's still not that safe. I went through it when my son was playing football there for a couple of years. It's like, Am I complicit that I like this? It feels like in 2024, post-COVID, people are like, You know what?

I love football. I miss football. There's this other stuff that comes with it, and that That's just what's going to happen.

Couldn't be more right. And by the way, we can sit here and talk about football. We make the decision every single day. You make the decision when you pick up your iPhone. You make the decision when you go out, when you eat food. You make the decision every single day. You make the decision. You choose a little bit over what's convenient and what you like and what makes you feel good. You're not here for that long. You'll be dead way longer than you will be alive. And you make the decision every single All day. The only thing that I ask from people or I ask for myself is just to understand that that decision was made, to understand that Tyreek Hill was pulled over and treated that way by the police. And you care about that because he's going to go out and catch touch downs for the Dolphins. But there are going to be other people that look all kinds of different ways, but particularly Black people that is going to be in that same situation. You won't even have the opportunity to care until it's on video in front of your face, and then you have to decide what America that you want to live in?

So it's like, it's nothing like when I saw it, I'm like, oh, well, that's obviously a problem that still exists. It's obviously something that's still going to happen. Even in the NFL, Structurally, the NFL is a racist league. Structurally, it is. And the only reason why I say that, I'm not even talking about Colin Kaepernick and how he was blackball and how his career was taken away. The NFL had a different set of parameters that it to judge Black players cognitively. When it came down, these guys were awarded money. Structurally, that is a racist conceit.

They had to create a rule to have people interview coaching candidates that It's a different way.

Right. At the same time, once again, like we talked about before, it's complicated. So much of the workforce is Black. It's enriched so many young Black men. So many people are in different It's not an easy answer. It takes nuance to have the conversation. But more than that, it takes bravery. And I think we lost our bravery when the kneeling and the movement there dissipated. We chickened out, but we got our football back. And once again, I'm not letting myself off the hook here, not in any way, shape, or form. I can't understand why, but during the pandemic, when I saw bubble basketball and I saw sports, even with no people in the crowd, it made me feel like the world was going to be okay. It literally did. It made me feel like, Oh, my God. Okay, how could the world end if they're playing basketball in Orlando?

They're structure again. I have basketball games to watch.

You know what I'm saying? And it just By the time I realized that the moment had passed, I had pulled my same gear back out.

Any thoughts on the Super Bowl halftime show before we go?

Oh, my God, man. The thoughts that I thought was congratulations Congratulations to Kendrick. Well, boy, we know how to spend some mess. We relitigated Lil Wayne's whole career. We relitigated Kendrick's career. It was Kendrick against Wayne. Actually, it wasn't Kendrick against Wayne. Those guys are fine. We know that. But it was like, Rock Nation against Young Money. All of this that goes back to one video that started this entire culture of rap beef from my 20 years ago. This whole thing has to do with that. It's just so funny to me, man.

They picked Kendrick, and it's like, of course they picked Kendrick. Other than Taylor Swift, he's the single hottest musical star we have right now. He's having a moment. It totally makes sense that he would play there. I went there in, I think, 2013, Beyoncé played. I was there when the Pats won their first Super Bowl in 2001, you two played. For the most part, they just pick an artist that makes sense for the city. I guess when it was in LA and they did the whole homage to LA hip hop, I think that maybe made people think that was a new model going forward. But to me, having Kendrick played the Super Bowl made total sense.

But what do I know? Let me ask you a question. I'm going to make you the head of the NFL right now.

Yeah.

Would you allow Kendrick Lamar to play Not Like Us in its entirety or the more controversial parts of the song at the Super Bowl where he's calling Drake the P-word and all of that stuff. Is that a Super Bowl-appropriate song? He's got to do it in some way. Would you come and say, Okay, you can't call him this. You can't say this. Because there's going to be a lot of Americans, a lot of people know about this, but there's going to be a lot of Americans watching the Super Bowl, knee deep in some nachos going, Drake likes young girls? What is this? I didn't hear about it. You know what I'm saying?

I think what happens because if you follow the Super Bowl halftime show, it's usually a montage He's going to play nine songs. So he'll play 90 to 120 seconds and not like us, but then it'll move into some other things. I think it'll organically solve itself. I think if he put the Drake parts into the halftime show, that's about as aggressive of an act as you could do with The Half-Time Show. And by the way, is Roger Goodell really going to have an opinion on this? Have you seen the people around him? He's going to... Yeah, we better talk to Kendrick about not like us. I'm pretty sure he doesn't probably know the inner workings of what's going on in that feud. What's crazy to me, though, is that it felt like this feud, which dominated 2024, it felt like it was on its last legs. And now we're going, it's not even mid-September yet, and we're just going to be talking about Super Bowl halftime now coming up. This is going to get probably more buzz for a Super Bowl halftime show than anything I can remember. Normally, for a couple of years, nobody even wanted to play the Super Bowl halftime show because they didn't pay you anything.

It was more expensive for the artist for themselves to do it than what they got paid. Now it feels like it's back in the biggest possible way. I don't ever remember a discourse like this about the halftime act.

It's funny. Drake said something Drake said he made a vague reference to round two as if he was going to kick it back off again. This was a couple of years ago. Everybody was like, Come on, man, let it go. We don't need a round two. You He lost pretty decisively, and he did lose pretty decisively. Guys, it's okay. He lost. People lose. Jordan missed shots. Your favorite people, he lost. It's decisive. Over. Swacked. Not like us. Maybe the biggest diss record in the history of hip hop. Definitely top five. Anyway. And so after he says that, Kendrick Lamar ends up doing the fucking Super Bowl. It's one thing to have your diss track ringing off in the clubs. It's one thing to have your track as people's ringtones back in the day. But to do the diss record at the Super Bowl in front of the entire world.

The biggest audience you could possibly have.

Nuts. Flawless victory is over. Pack it up. Everybody come back in 2025 with your best albums, and let's see what happens.

You can hear Van Lathen on the Higher Learning podcast with our friend, Rachel Lindsay. You can hear him on the Ringerverse as well, and you can hear him every once in a while on the Rewatchables. We're due for another one at some point soon. Good to see you, Van. All right, brother.

Good to see you, too.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Sean Fentacy and Van Lathen. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Creenton for producing as well. Don't forget, you can watch clips from this episode on the Bill Simmons' YouTube channel, and I will see you on this feed on Thursday. Must be 21 plus in President Slec States for Kansas, an affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President DC. Gambling problem, call 100 Gambler, or visit rg-help. Com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat in Connecticut, or visit mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma. Org, or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support, Massachusetts, or call 1877-8 Hope, NY, or text Hope, NY in New.