The Always Sunny Podcast - The Gang Goes Jihad

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

It's been fun, but it hasn't been funny.

Wait, are we rolling? Yeah. Okay, let's get into it. It's 9.30 in the morning. Yeah, it sure is. 9.30 is, I believe, the time that we said we were gonna meet for this podcast. This is becoming a trend.

Yeah, no, Rob was pretty adamant about the 9.30. By the way, I've been here since 8.30, you know? Okay, why'd you do that? Well, I dropped my kid off at school and that whole thing was done by 8.15 and it's here. And he just flew here. And I was, you know, I'm here. He goes to school not so far from this office.

So, I figured I'd come in, get a little work done. Sure, get some coffee in you. Get some coffee in me, yeah. Are you on your first or your second cup of coffee? No, God, no, no. I have had a thermos of coffee. And then I was like, Jesus, I wanna get some more coffee. I can't do that anymore, man.

I've cut way back on my coffee. Anyway, Rob's late. Now, before we started rolling on this, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, here we go, it's 9.30. 9.31. 9.31. 9.31. 9.31.

Guess what? I was here and nobody told me that the garage, I have to go to the lower garage, not the upper garage. Oh, so it was a garage error. It was a garage error, I was on time. Well, no, see, on time is when you don't know which garage it is, you get there a little bit early. So, just in case there was another garage.

Make sure that you have time to make the mistake of going to the wrong garage. It wasn't, you still made a garage error? I was told it was the upper garage, and it wasn't. Oh, you were told it was the upper garage. You lied to them about the garage place. So, there's the upper garage, there's the lower garage. Who are we yelling at?

They have us in the basement. Who are we yelling at? It's already been done. The gang goes, the gang goes Jihad, the gang goes Jihad. Jihad, about 15 years ago. Yeah, I sure did. You know, one of the things I noticed in the episode as I was watching it, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah.

George Bush was the president. Yeah. Well, yes, we talk about that. Yes, we do. We've been through three, four presidents. Yeah, four presidents. Oh my God, that's too, we've been on for too long, guys. We gotta stop.

What do we do about it? We've been through five presidential terms. Yes. Because Barack Obama, of course, was elected twice. Two terms. So, theoretically, it could have been five presidents. Well, we started, right, we started during Bush's second term.

Yes. Right. And then Obama won twice? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, oh man. Wow. Okay, all right. Yeah, we've been on a long time.

You sure did. I love this episode. You did? I think it held up. I do too. I think it holds up. I think it was pretty funny, pretty great. Yeah, I thought it was all right.

Yeah, no, it was great. There's a lot of yelling. Is there a lot of yelling? Yeah, there is a lot of yelling in this one, yeah. Yeah. And I remember hearing a lot of people say like, well, that shows just people yelling at each other and they're right.

Yeah, they're right. I mean, we were yelling funny things at each other in this one. Well, yeah. I mean, I think the people who like our show like how we yell at each other. It's fun, I guess. I was thinking about that bit where we come out

of the back door and he's put a fence up, the Josh Samberg who played that. But it's hilarious. But, and I was trying to remember, because I can't remember anything. Now, had we scripted that we freak out or did we just, in the thing, we're like, oh, there's a fence and that's the joke.

I don't think we scripted that we freaked out to the degree that we were freaking out. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously we pushed it, but like, but we're always going to push. But I'm like, that's such a great bit that we go out there and there's a fence. But then beyond that, we panic. We just, you know, we feel claustrophobic.

I would like to go back to the script because I think that the joke was just that we walk out, we see that there's a fence blocking us in and that's the end of the scene. Yeah, probably. Yes, there was a fence and we're like, he put up a fence. He put up a fence and yeah.

Well, we're downtown, we went through all this work, we put the fence up, let's do something with it. Let's yell. Let's yell about it. Let's scream. I mean, let's scream and yell about it. Well, I will say it was one of our things from the very beginning of the show

that we thought could set us apart from other shows was that it was never my line, your line, your line, my line, my line, your line, my line, your line. It was always like, my line, oh, you want to talk? And then if you, because like the thing is, is like in a real conversation, the second you have the thing that you want to say, there's a very good chance you're going to cut me off.

You know what I mean? Oh yeah. You just did it. Yeah. Yeah. You got to jump in there. You got to get in there. Yeah, we're always talking about it.

As actors, like sometimes we talk over each other too much and you're like, I have a funny line. I'd really like to get it out. I'm looking for a space to get it in and I can't get it in because everyone's talking about it. You know, there's another thing I noticed that we did in that episode, which we've talked about that we did in the bar

or we had music playing the bar. When you go into my apartment with Frank and I and we're cooking up the grilled charlie or whatever it is, we have just like a cartoon playing in the bathroom. You don't see it. And I like that. It creates some atmosphere. I think it's something we stopped doing.

Yeah, it was like, we liked the idea of saying that this 30 year old man, Charlie Kelly, is constantly watching cartoons in his apartment like a little child. That scene is so funny. It is funny. It is really funny. It's the idea of a grilled charlie.

It just suggests like history, that you have like a sandwich that you make. It's a ridiculous thing. The way you're dressed is funny. And Ann Archer is so amazing. Yeah, she's right. It's very funny in that scene. It's so funny.

You know, I think we've mentioned too where we just absorbed each other's mannerisms and stuff. I do something in that where I have my hands kind of back on my hips. And I was like, oh, that's the posture that you do. That's a Rob thing. When you're hitting on the woman at the funeral in season five, which I was love.

I love you do that. I was like, oh, that's the thing. I probably stole it from the movie. No, no, no, Rob, you did it in the home movie. In the home movie? Yeah, that's been a thing. That's been a thing of yours for a very long time. The hands on the hips and like thrusting

like in a very awkward sort of stance. Like an awkward power stance. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a wherever I move. Drifting off you guys, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Well, osmosis. So funny. I thought that episode was, I thought that scene in particular

was so funny. I thought Ann Archer was amazing. I thought the slap across your face was great. Yeah, that was great. I remember we were trying to get her to actually do it. Yeah. Oh, to actually slap you and she wasn't comfortable with that? I can't remember.

I don't remember that. She did get me once. Yeah, but I don't think that's the one we used. No, that's not the only thing. Maybe it just wasn't the best take. Yeah. Yeah. Well, something else that's interesting about season two

was, and I don't remember, I mean, when we were writing season two, somewhere along the way, we decided to serialize the show. Not that we were necessarily committing to it being a serialized show every year, but there's a continuity. Yeah, that episode ends sort of open-ended, which is something that we didn't really do again

until this year. We did like little bits of it here and there. Yeah, well, I think we were what we were trying to explain. Frank is coming apart of the gang. Oh, that's why we did it. Yeah. That's why we did it. We wanted to slowly integrate him into the gang

and so things. Buying the bar. Yeah. That's right. How about this? Do you remember us having a conversation, the three of us, as we were writing the episode? And because we would call the episodes,

the gang finds a dead guy or the gang does this, the gang does that. And then if you recall from the conversation that the characters are having in the cold open, we're referring to ourselves as the gang. And then I remember writing it and us going, wait, should we, as the characters, know that we're the gang or should it just be a show thing?

So we actually write that. We wrote that in to the scene where you're saying, you're not a part of the gang. And then Frank is saying, let your sister become a part of the gang. And Charlie and I are going, what are you talking about? What gang are you talking about? In my head.

So that was like a compromise, I think, that we made. Oh, really? Yeah. That we made. And it's very fun. I prefer it. It's a good bet. It is a good bet.

But it's an example of us very early on getting just a little bit meta. You know what I mean? But I think we always had that tendency. And then what else about this episode? I thought the story came together really well. Yeah. I like that.

And it seemed like it was a big effect that we did at the very end. Oh, well. Right, the explosion. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see it again. No, it wasn't. And like you see.

So somebody like lobbing debris at us. Yeah, that's a little. Yes. But the reverse shot of that. We had some serious flame bars on that building. Yeah. Nowadays, we would do that all CG, because it's safer, I guess, and cheaper.

But that was real fire. Yeah, that was real fire. No, we wouldn't do CG fire. We did real fire this year. Yeah, like one little flame bar, but then we'll enhance that. Yeah, you enhance it in post. Yeah, you double it, triple it in post or whatever. But yeah, I don't know if people know what flame bars are.

Like, so in that scene, when you see the building on fire. Flame bar. There you go. You get it. It's a bar of flames. Fine, we won't talk about it. Now, guys, this is the first episode where the name of the episode comes first.

We didn't do that before. Before it was, it's always sunny in Philadelphia, would come up right after the cold open, and then we would do the title after that. Now, whose idea was it to start putting the title of the show first? Do you guys remember? I don't.

No. Sure don't. Yeah. It makes sense, though, because we would often do some very, very on-the-nose ending to a cold open, and then boom, the punchline to the joke would be the title of the episode. So it made sense to do that next.

But you guys don't remember whose idea that was or how that came about? No, I just want to try a bunch of different things in editing. I do know that this is probably one of the first or earliest times where we started setting up the fact that the characters are somewhat cartoonish insofar as they could get hit.

I remember having long conversations about this. The previous episode, we got hit by a car, right? Or a couple of the characters got mowed down by a car. And then we're like, what are we going to have them in? Casts for how long from that episode is the next episode taking place? Is it a day? Is it a week?

Is it a month? We got to a point where it didn't matter anymore. But in this episode, we had to establish Frank as being a part of the bar. So we just had them cutting their casts. Our compromise was, no, they'll be fine. We'll just have them cut their casts off in the first scene. And then I think we have Frank wearing a boot.

And that's it? Yeah, that's all that's mentioned. But the boot is great. The boot is great. The boot adds so much to that episode. If we weren't establishing Frank as a character and slowly integrating him into the bar, we would have just showed up in the next episode with nothing.

Yeah. What are you thinking about, Rob? Your eyes just went up to the ceiling. Yeah, you drifted up to the. You drifted. You were looking up to the ceiling, which always tells me that you're thinking about something. You had a joyful memory about that.

I was just thinking about how much fun shooting that episode was. I remember being outside. We didn't do a lot of night work in season one, did we? I can't even remember. But I remember feeling like we were finding our stride. And it wasn't as much fighting. I remember the first season, not fighting, but we were creatively collaborating

and trying to find the show. So the first season was really tough. And I feel like the second season got a lot easier. And so at night, when we were outside shooting that scene where we were throwing the toilet paper, I just remember that being really fun. Yeah, it was really fun. Well, it was also, yeah, it was like, during those days,

I don't think we did it that night. Or maybe we did, I don't know. We used to start nipping at some alcohol when we were shooting night scenes. I think at night shoots a lot of fun if you're not going, if you're not seeing the sunrise. It starts getting unfun once you get past midnight. But once it gets dark, it's like...

Especially if you're in your mid to late 20s. Have you guys ever toilet-papered somebody? Like their house? Yeah, or been toilet-papered. Yes. Trees for sure. Sure, trees. I mean, I don't know about houses.

Yeah, trees. Time to get it over a house. The day before Halloween used to be like, go destroy your neighborhood day. Yeah. So did you guys have that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, all right, we're about to,

the kids are going to get some candy, but before that happens, let's make... Let's destroy our neighborhood. Let's make them feel as though society's holding on by a tenuous thread here. We used to do a fun trick where we would pull stop signs out. Oh, good. That's good, right?

That is good. Yeah, that was a good trick, fun trick. Boy. I know, just the kind of thing I think about now, and I'm like, what in the hell? I can remember one specific Halloween where there was word that one of the kids in the neighborhood was going around with bags of shit

and throwing them at you. So we were out causing trouble, but being like, man, I hope I don't run in that too. The bags of shit guy? Yeah, and throwing bags of poop comes back in this episode. We used to also do this thing where we would drive by a mailbox and somebody would hang out the passenger side with a baseball bat

and just smash mailboxes. What if everyone's ever like, it's taking that swing and then their arms just flew off? Like the mailbox, they like... The mailbox won? Yeah, like some guys like, guess what, motherfucker, I'm gonna reinforce this mailbox. You know?

Yeah, right, right. I'm sure it has happened. Yeah, and just take the kids arms out. Put some type of explosive in there, so they don't take the whole thing. Oh, that'll do it. That'll do it. That'll do it.

Take the whole car out. We accidentally, me and some friends, decided to light a fire in somebody's front lawn and ended up lighting their entire front lawn. In Alabama. In Alabama. Well, okay. Let's dig into that a little bit, shall we?

Let's avoid that one, actually. You're just trying to have fun. You know what I mean? You're just gonna have fun. It's the long history of that kind of fun in Alabama. No, no, no, hang on a second. There was nothing like that. It was, we were.

What were you burning? What were you burning? We were to anything. Anything we could get our hands on. Sure, okay. Not people. Two pieces of wood. Two pieces of wood was what we were thinking, yeah.

Oh, that's what you guys were thinking. Oh, that's interesting. That's an interesting stereotype. You guys wanna talk about how you're stereotyping Alabama. You guys wanna talk about that for our fans in Alabama? You were telling the story about how you were burning things on people's lawns in Alabama. No, no, no.

I'm saying burning things on people's lawns. I said burning their lawn. I said burning their lawn. I said burning their lawn. What was it? Hey man, I just burned their lawn, okay? Yeah, yeah. It was a white people's house, by the way.

Okay, in case you're wondering. Okay. Hey, I have a question for you. By this point where we still shoot, we were still shooting in the Barclay Hotel, right? Yeah, I think so. I think so, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

So have we talked about the Barclay Hotel? No. Well, the Barclay Hotel is this downtown hotel, which probably when it was built in 1925, was the Cats Meow, right? Like that's the place where everybody wanted to stay, the movie stars and whatnot. This is where all the headcats.

I'm irritated by the fact that you said the Cats Meow. I like it. It just, I like that. All the headcats. It just, yeah. All the headcats. It didn't feel right. We wanted to get down at the Barclay Hotel.

Yeah, yeah. And then sometime probably in the mid 60s to 70s, that turned into a, well, you can live here if you want. I'm guessing it was around that era. I actually believe it was Charlie Parker, famous jazz saxophonist. I think that was his spot. That was where he, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He would stay there when he was in town. Oh. Now he was also famous for. Music. And I don't think, was he heroin? I believe doing excessive amounts of drugs. Right? I don't know that good.

I'm just proud of you. I don't know that about Charlie Parker. Maybe that's, I'm stereotyping jazz musicians. You can be stereotyping again. Okay, fair enough. Now we're getting to, now we're digging deep. We're digging deep. Who's the guy that Ethan Hawke played in that movie?

Miles Davis. Come on, man. He was into the heroin for sure. Miles, yeah. Miles, big time. Oh, okay. Well, anyway, the Barclay Hotel eventually became the kind of place where you could live

and or just buy a few nights or buy a few hours, I believe. It still exists down there. It's the kind of place. Is that where they found a body in the water? Well, in the water type, it's a different one. But it's, yeah. Excuse me, they found a body in the water. Oh, you don't know about this?

Yeah, in the drinking water. This is spooky shit. So they have like images of this woman going up to the seventh floor. She's acting very strange down to the first, up to the seventh, down to the first. And then that night they find her body in drinking water. Oh, no, sorry.

It's so much more sinister. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. People are, one, it starts before that, where people are like, why is this water taste weird? Oh, God, they were drinking her. It smells bad and it tastes weird and it's like a different color. And then they went up and they were like,

Wait a minute, when you say the drinking water, you're implying that that was not also the shower water in the bath water. Yes, all of that water. Yes, all of the same water. Okay. Any tap water in one of these CD hotels is already suspect.

Yeah, that's right. And they went up there and they found a body in there that had been decomposing for a few hours. The woman had been going up and down and up and down. And then they have all the security footage of weird shit. It's very creepy. Well, wait a minute, what is, I can't, I'm trying to follow the...

And then there are people that go and try to recreate the steps to see who died. But are you saying she put herself in the... No, of course not. Why was she going up and down? Was she going up and down so much that somebody got irritated and killed her and put her in the water tank?

Well, she couldn't have watched the document. She couldn't have been trying to avoid it. She's up, she's down, she's up and she's down. She's driving me crazy. And then somebody just murdered her and was like, I'm putting her in the water, basically. And I think you just made yourself suspect. Well, I'm just saying it would anger me as well.

In 1930s. I think it was also a suggestion that she was mentally ill and that maybe she committed suicide. It's all very strange. Yeah, but then it was like, how do you, you can't get in the tank anyway? How do you get into a fucking water tank? You don't.

That's the thing. Well, no, no, but how, like if I was like, you know what, I'm gonna hop into my water tank at my house. How would I do that? No, at the water tank probably you could at the Seashell Hotel. No, one of those big ones on the roof that looks, that looks like a water tank.

Yeah, yeah, it's on the roof of the thing. It looks like a little house. Looks like that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. It's great for stashing a body that you want people to then later drink. That is the thing.

There was a guy who was like, I want people to drink her. Like, you know what I mean? I don't want to just kill her. I want people to drink her. It was. So psycho. Yeah, it was that person. Oh, God.

Anyways. Anyways. Anyways. There had to be like a really ghoulish guy there. You were just like, I know it was him. I just can't prove it. Look at him, look at him. He wants me to drink people.

I can, you can see it in his eyes. I can see it in his eyes. He wants me to drink people. I'm just saying. Drinks some people. All right. But anyway, the Seashell Hotel and the Barclay Hotel are very similar.

Yeah. Very similar. Like, if you found out that you were drinking people at the Barclay Hotel, would you be surprised? No. Not in the slightest bit. Not in the slightest bit. And that is where we found Charlie's apartment.

Yeah. A perfect sense for them. And we essentially, yes, we brought in, at the time, we brought in furniture and things like that and set design. But I don't think we changed anything else. We didn't change the molding, the floor, the rug. No. Were the walls maybe even painted that color?

Yes. I think they were. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because we didn't have enough money to go in. Strange blue. Wow. So that room still exists. I wonder if it looks the same.

Because we started building the set a few years after that. It's probably like people are paying like $2,000 a night to stay there. It looks like downtown is so different now. It's crazy. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not that street.

Not that area. Yeah, that's still tough. I think that's still. Dan Addeus directed all 10 episodes of this season. Wonderful director. Mostly known for drama. Almost exclusively known for drama, which we preferred. Because we didn't like it when directors tried

to make things funny. And we found it made it less funny. So we just wanted somebody who could shoot a story really, really well. And Dan Addeus was extremely talented. And we needed somebody who could pull off essentially shooting all 10 scripts as if it was one big script, because we only had Danny DeVito for 20 days.

And then it ended up being what, 25 days? No, I think he gave us way more than that. 30. Yeah, I think after the first three days, he was like, oh, these guys are fun. And this is, yeah. Yeah. Because originally, I think he gave us,

he was like, he got me for 20 days. And we're like, holy shit. We had to shoot all of Danny's. I think originally it was 15 days. It was 15. The wee weeks. 15 days, yeah. OK.

Yeah, we had to, so we had to front load all the Danny scenes we shot pretty much first, with a couple of exceptions, I think we threw in some things for locations and stuff like that. Because do you guys remember the first scene we shot of the whole season? Season two?

Season two, sorry, yes. No. No. If I am not mistaken, it was the scene that we have where we're sitting in front of the lawyer played by Ravi Patel. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that could be right.

I believe that was the very first scene we shot of the season. And one of the things I know, this is pure vanity. I decided to get a haircut before we shot that season. And my guy just cut my hair way too short. And I hated it so much. And I remember that. And then you're locked in.

Yeah, I'm locked in. And I just remember that being the very first scene and trying to figure out how to make my hair bigger. Your hair was small. It was so small. I was wondering what you were wearing. I noticed that was like, I had a bracelet on. Did you have a bracelet?

Yeah, yeah. Just like a little black string. This was the first time I noticed. And I don't know if I did this in the first episode of season two, but certainly in the second episode, I did notice this that I had on blue dickies and black boots, which I then proceeded to wear and continue to wear for the next 14 seasons.

Are you going to try to keep your, like I'm probably going to keep my army jacket and sneakers that I've worn through the whole thing? We need to keep them. They were mine when we started this show. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. They were even mine when we finished. Yeah, right.

Yeah. Well, dickies, I just actually, I brought a few pairs of dickies back in today to give back to wardrobe, because I don't think I'll be wearing those consistently. But I mean, maybe one day they'll go up in the Smithsonian. What do you think, Glenn? Oh, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, no doubt about it.

Everything about this show has been celebrated widely by great institutions such as the Smithsonian. So that would be consistent with that, I think. So absolutely, I think that's going to happen. Let's talk about my buddy, Ravi Patel. Yeah, I quite enjoyed him in that scene. He's great in the scene. He's great.

I love that guy. He and I did a short film together after season one of the show. And that's how I got to know Ravi. And then we cast him on the show because he's great. And Ravi and I are still very good friends. I love that guy. I miss him.

He moved to Nashville. He's still in the biz. He just decided to get the hell out of Los Angeles and move to move his family to Nashville. So I'm kind of missing that guy. But yeah, Ravi was great in that. And he also has by I'm going to do a plug. I'm going to do a plug for his HBO show.

He did a show. They only did four episodes. Really quick. Are they paying me anything? No. OK. So Rob. Yeah.

I'm going to do a plug for Ravi's show. I'm going to do a plug for Ravi's show because it's great. I'm not getting anything out of it. Yeah, that's OK. You don't have to. OK. It's called, Do You Patel a Pursuit of Happiness? And it's great.

It's for Ravi. Ravi, what is it called? I believe his name is pronounced Ravi. No, no, no, no. The show. Ravi Patel's Pursuit of Happiness. OK. Idiot.

This is just like the show where we talk over each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember getting in an argument with Mr. Dan Addeus about that anarcher scene where she comes in. Do you recall this? What were you arguing about? What was your argument? Well, the director traditionally directs the episode

and then gets his cut of the episode. And then the writers and producers come in and post. And we had quite an argument about that specific scene where he. In editing? Yes. Yes. OK.

We had cut it significantly down because we felt it just worked best in the form that you see it today. Right. And Dan felt as though we had really butchered the scene. And voiced it, which is fair. And voiced it, which is right. But then we were like, great, thank you very much. And we're going to air it like this.

And then he pushed back. Yeah, and then he pushed back on that. For the folks at home that maybe don't know this, in films, the director has much more agency. Except for, well, if he's got final cut. Some directors get final cut. But usually there's a big P producer that comes in and he gets final cut.

Or she? No, usually it's the studio or, you know, like it's Walt Disney or whatever it is. Right, they get the final cut. But the director is the big man on campus or woman. Or they are them. Oh my god. On a film, Jesus Christ.

Human, the big human on campus is the director. Well, they may not identify as human. It's the big entity. Maybe this is a boring part of the podcast. Or maybe this is something people find interesting. But even though it seems like it's a lot of fun to make the show and it is, and it seems like we're laughing and having a good time all the time,

we're constantly fighting with each other. Like constantly. But I use the word fighting. I mean, disagreeing with each other. We're not, once we realize that our egos are getting involved, which they have, which they do from time to time, then we have to check that. But it is a constant negotiation.

Yeah. It's negotiating with each other. I wouldn't say that it's fighting. Because that implies that we're just having major disagreements of personality. And that's never happening. Maybe if it's happening once a season, we're having the three of us sit down and say, hey,

I have an issue with this, that, or the other thing. And it usually happens in the writing process. And it usually gets settled in an hour discussion. And then we move on. But on set, it's all a creative discussion. Totally. Totally. Well, nobody's ever yelling at each other.

But I guess the point is that we're always navigating strong opinions. And we're constantly compromising and working with one another because we respect each other. But that doesn't mean we roll over, right? So everybody feels strongly about. But to your point that you were just saying, Charlie, there's usually at least one big blow-up every year

that we have to go our separate ways that for a day or so and then come back and then have a conversation or like, I got to shoot you guys like a text and be like, I'm sorry, I fucked up. But this year, I don't think we had that. No, not yet. No, we did. We did?

We did. We were, it was something early in the writing where we sat down and we hashed out. It was sort of the same frustration we usually get in the writing process. And then we were saying, we should do this on the podcast. What was that? It was, the gist of it was, you were getting frustrated.

Me, Rob. Yeah, you, Rob, were getting frustrated. That checks. Yeah, that tracks, definitely. Because you had a story thing you liked and Glenn and I were. Oh, I know what it was. Go ahead. Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt him off.

He just cut you off, dude. No, he said, dude, do you see that? He just cut you off. Hold on, he's deflecting. Don't let him deflect. You just jump right on top of Charlie. No, we were mad at him. We were mad at him.

Don't deflect. Doesn't he always do this? No, no, but it was, it was that we couldn't get, we couldn't get, you wanted to just get something done. It was frustrating for you to sort of have to slow down because we were like, no, this isn't good enough. And it was exhausting because you were like, in my mind, I know it works.

I remember what it was. I did, too. Oh, you did it in the castle? Yes. OK, so we had a, we had a sequence in a castle. Give it away. OK, yeah. Don't give it away.

Well, well, OK, all right, all right. We have a sequence in a castle that turns bad. And Rob had a very specific idea of how that should be executed. And to be fair to him, that was the, that was the idea that we, I think, had in the break, right? So that was in the break. That was in the story break that came out of the writer's room

and the outline and all that. And it was executed that way. And when Charlie and I read it, we just were like, it felt to us as though it was derivative, right? Or something that we'd done. It was something that we'd seen before or something we'd done before in our minds. And in your minds, it was like, no, this is different enough.

Or it's different, maybe totally. You can attest to your own point of view on this. But you were like, I know this works. Why are we creating extra work for ourselves? Why are we fixing something that I know works? No, but the argument came out of you wanting to say, all right, fine, then you guys just do it. I don't, and we, and us saying, no, no, no, I know it's

exhausting, but we don't want you to just say, all right, fuck it, you guys do it. Right. We want to have the argument because we know we'll get to the best place. And the justifiable frustration of 15 years of that, you know, of that is exhausting. But that's sort of a recurring theme, which is that to pull

this off the way that we do, it's an exhausting process. Yeah, there's a lot of push and pull. And we're constantly trying to figure out how to streamline and take that stuff out to make the process easier so that we can have, so theoretically, so that we can have more fun. And we don't always totally disagree on where that line is. Like I would say that Rob, you tend towards, let's just make things easier for ourselves.

Not that you're not concerned about quality. You are. But one thing you've brought up before is that sometimes those big blowout arguments or those big fights, those things that take a lot of energy and time to discuss, well, maybe when all is said and done, make the show 1%, 2% better. And in your mind, you're like, that's not worth it because I've got a life and I've got sanity and I'm 44 and I've got

my blood pressure to worry about. You know, like, you know, and that's fair. And I tend to come down on the side of, you know, I would rather have those arguments and potentially make the show 10% better and then maybe be okay with it if it only makes it 2%. Yeah, where we're always negotiating or where I'm negotiating it in my mind is when I feel like we're making it 1% to 2% different.

Yes, that is true. Because better is in the eye of the subjective holder. Yes. Well, better is in the eye. Of the two against one. Of the two against one. That's what we've always agreed to. So.

We've always agreed to and it is a fantastic process creatively and I will say on things where I've not had it. I have sorely missed it. But yeah, other than that, I don't think we had any. I feel like that argument was. We're also so used to it now that we probably don't even notice it as many times as we have those things. That was the shape of argument that we had for like three,

four years. But I don't remember older ones, what they were about. Do you guys? Oh God. Older arguments, like big, like arguments about stuff. Yeah, I don't really remember any of them really. I don't feel like we had that many of them. We did.

Really? Oh, we've had so many. So many, so many. What about? They were less of. We weren't as capable of communicating, I think. So we would just get pissed off and walk away. But I can't remember.

When we were younger and more insecure and maybe felt that we had something to prove to the other person. If they felt like, you know, there was a. It's almost like, I mean, almost like a. This person thinks he's smarter than me. You know what I mean? And I have to prove that I'm just as smart and creative as the other person.

You know what I mean? Almost like there was this thing of like, not competitive, but you know, when you dig your heels in on something because you feel like it's when your ego slips into it. And we've gotten much better about recognizing when I'm fighting for something that I want because my ego can't let it go versus. I really genuinely think that creatively this is the best

decision. We've gotten a lot better at at figuring out when it's our egos instead of the when it when it's not a creative discussion anymore. It's it's just a digging my heels in because my egos hurt. And that that's something honestly, that's something that I think that has served me in my real life too. Through doing that so many times and putting myself putting

our being in uncomfortable arguments with people that I don't because I don't like confrontation. But but getting comfortable with being in those confrontations has made me able to face that kind of stuff in my personal relationships to been therapeutic for me. I don't feel I don't recall ever feeling like that from either you guys and always feeling like it was about a sense of what is the best version of this TV show and digging in on that

but never ever really feeling like it was like an ego thing but always like strong opinions about like, well, what's going to make this work or not work, which I think is great. Yeah, you know different strokes for different different interpretations for different off to go through and make a list of all the things that we've used to fight about. I mean different interpretations for different beings. Hmm, you know, doesn't have the same ring to it.

Does it? What does something have to be? Hmm, right? That's that's that's a can you got I can't I truly can't remember what any of the arguments are about. Can you actually remember those? I mean, I can remember this season because it was only a couple months.

It's usually about you not being able to remember stuff. Well, okay, let's talk about this. Let's talk about let's talk about this is the first time we ever sang a song. Oh, yeah, we came up with the idea of like what we thought it was very funny. The idea of that wasn't scripted. Right?

That was us like sitting here at the bar waiting for Frank to come in. We should do something. Yes. Well, and the thought was what's the most nonchalant follow up to having blown up a building next door. That's a good bet and possibly being you know, because the you expect it to come into the next scene and be like,

what are we going to do guys? We got to make sure that we don't there's no fingerprints. We got to make sure, you know, like how do we cover our asses here? We're going to we're going to be in big trouble. But no, we're in the bar working out the harmonies to the extreme song more than words. Yeah, and I thought that was very funny.

I'd forgotten it watching it. And yeah, me too. Totally forgot about that. I thought it sounded pretty good too. Yeah, we did sound pretty good. I read this episode if if if I'm thinking about the first episode where of season one where my thought after watching it was, hmm, I wonder why people like the show or started

to watch the show. I watched this episode and I was like, I wonder why more people didn't love the show. Why aren't people watching this show? Because it's good. I think I do say I've always said this. I really do think that the look of the show is a bit of a turn off.

Yeah. Yeah. The name, the title, the title stuff, the title stuff, but also like I think our sense of humor is very specific and sometimes it takes people a second to go. Oh, okay, I still think there are some people who just don't get that the joke, what the joke is. Like, I mean, right.

I've often talked about how I had to watch the kids in the hall three or four times before I before it finally I was. So I would watch that show and I'd be like, this is so stupid. This is so fucking dumb. I don't get it. You know, even as a kid, I was like, so juvenile and dumb. Like the jokes are just dumb. And then like the fourth or fifth time something clicked.

I don't remember what sketch I was watching something clicked where I was like, oh, it's dumb on purpose. They're they're smart making a show about they're making a show doing sketches about dumb people. And then it became funny to me. A lot of my favorite things to watch, you know, movies, whatever are things that get better much significantly better on your second or third watch.

Right. People often that was why the Big Lebowski wasn't a big hit right off the bat. That's a great example to see that movie. Yeah, the more you watch it, the more you get out of it. Yeah. And what a, you know, what a terrible business model that is to like make something that you're like, well, the next

time you watch this is going to be better. But you know, lots of very popular movies that could never sit through again. Well, also, but I all all the great ones in my opinion, like on your first viewing, you're like, huh? But it's not like it's not like anyone. I don't think anyone consciously goes. Nobody's going to get this the first time around, but I mean,

nobody consciously, you know, you're just layering things in that are subtle and then right and hopefully doing something to. But I mean, I think any time by the way, a lot of people probably watch those movies and totally get them the first time. Yeah, it's probably just a statement. I find it to be the same thing with music to where I'll listen

to an album from a band that I like and you know, there's will be like one or two songs on there. I'm like, I'm just not into that song, but I forced myself to keep listening to it as I listened to the whole album through from beginning to end. And oftentimes those songs that were not very good to me at first become my favorite songs and the ones that I listen to the most because they I don't I don't know what that is.

It's like when something's really catchy right off at the offset, it's like it gets old faster, you know, but when something takes a little bit more like time and work to kind of sort of like suss out what makes it special. Sometimes sometimes that has more staying power, I don't know in my in my experience. And I also find if you use music as an example, like whenever you talk to those like musicians, whether they're like Kings

of Leon, like huge or imagine dragons and I'll ask them like when like they're writing in the music. They don't think of themselves as big pop stars or big rock stars, nor do they think of themselves as like niche. They're just like, I'm making what I make. I don't know what it just seems to like and I feel like that's kind of I feel like I don't think of ourselves as niche even though we are.

I'm just writing what I think is funny. So I think everybody is going to think it's funny, but they don't. There is some truth to that in terms of you're making something that plays by its own set of rules and those rules are completely intangible and you're looking at it and you're either saying, ah, this isn't following the rules or this isn't adding up to, you know, what it's supposed to add up

to, but there's no like pie chart of like, this is what an episode is. This is what a story is. It's just something like you've internalized, I guess, from watching other things and it either feels like the thing or it doesn't. And when it doesn't, you can't really point a finger at anyone or anything.

You're just killing yourself. You're like, why doesn't this compute? I mean, it's, this is why I'm a bit like I'm always, I over use the word authentic because it's, it really is true for me that I don't like it when I feel like a musician or show or a movie is doing it for me. I want the musician or the band or the show. I want it to be that they are doing something that they love

and they almost don't give a shit if anybody else likes it. I want to feel like they could care fucking less if I like it. There's a weird middle ground in there where it's like you can, you truly can make a movie or an album for no one and then you'll listen to it and you'll be like, right, this is for now. Well, no, no, no, no, but I'm that's, that's yes. And, and that does exist. I mean, you know, certainly where somebody makes something

that's purely for themselves and it's absolute trash because it literally is only something that person could enjoy. Yeah. But, but, but I think what I'm, what I'm referring to is when you feel like a band, they just write the best, the coolest shit that they can come up with that, that they really mean something to them and is like fucking awesome for them. And, you know, then can't understand why nobody else likes

it and then there's a few niche people who do or in the example of Imagine Dragons or Kings of Leon where they're just writing something like, I don't know, this is like this. We think this fucking kicks ass. And then they put it out into the world and the world agrees. They're like, this does kick ass. This is great. And that's where, you know, you get extraordinarily lucky

because you've done something authentic to yourself and then it's a, it's ironically something that makes you very successful. And I mean, in our, in our case, we made a show, we were always making a show that I was just trying to do something that I thought was funny, that I thought was funny that, and that I thought, and I enjoyed making you guys laugh and that's all. And I was like, I'm going to let that just be the barometer, right?

If it's making us laugh, fuck it. That's what we'll do. You know what I mean? And we did that from the beginning and I think most of it was because we were, at least for me, I was fairly convinced that, that it probably wasn't going to catch on and then it wasn't going to work. So I was like, so I want to go out doing something that I'm

proud of. And then it did work sort of, sort of, sort of worked. Yeah. Well, guys, this has been fun. It's been fun, but it hasn't been funny. Um, maybe it doesn't always need to be funny. Were you laughing? I was laughing earlier.

Here's what we're going to do now. Now we're going to go and we're going to sit and we're going to look at an episode and we're going to sit the three of us and we're going to look at an episode. When you say look at an episode, we're going to edit. We're going to edit. We're going to edit. We're going to get in the editing room.

This is our first day in the editing room of season 15. Yep. Um, we've watched a little bit. We've already given, Charlie and I have given notes on a few cuts. Yeah. They didn't ask me, they didn't ask me to come. No, it's always good to have fresh eyes. Yeah.

Always good to keep fresh eyes. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Let's go with that. Well, we can maybe even lock on today. We'll see. I don't know, maybe.

I don't want to put any pressure on the door. Put one to bed here. You know. Well, we just put everybody else to bed. So why don't we put one of the episodes to bed? All right, Glenn! All right! All right, Glenn!