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[0:00] Mo Brady: You're listening to Fosse/Verdon from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Mo Brady. And I'm Aaron Albano.

[0:27] Mo Brady: Welcome listeners to our miniseries, recapping episodes of FX's Emmy-winning limited series Fosse/Verdon. In the show, we see an inside look into two time periods on Broadway, a literally more historic Broadway where the characters reside, but hidden under that layer we find today's Broadway, through which our modern artists interpret that story. We're going back episode by episode to see what this love letter to vintage Broadway tells us about greater truths in the industry. So let's dive in and talk about episode 2, Who's Got the Pain? Aaron, give us those stats.

[0:59] Aaron Albano: Who's Got the Pain? premiered on April 16th, 2019. Like the pilot, it was written by Steven Levinson and directed by Tommy Kail. As always, the numbers featured in the episodes were choreographed by Bob Fosse himself, but were reconstructed by members of his artistic progeny. Dana Moore recreated the choreography to Who's Got the Pain and Whatever Lola Wants, and Lloyd Culbreth recreated the choreo and rehearsal staging for Two Lost Souls. All the featured songs in the episode, including Heart, in addition to those previously mentioned, are all from the musical Damn Yankees, with music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. Featured in the rehearsing cast of Damn Yankees are a legion of Broadway vets, including Ryan Vandenboom, Kyle Brown, Darian Krego, Haley Fish, Shanika Gooden, Afra Hines, Evan Kasperzak, and Adrian Lee.

Rounding out the cast performing Heart are also Broadway's P.J. Benjamin, Brian Calley, Nick Blamire, and Aaron Kabourick. The viewership for this episode was down from last week all across the board, with a live viewership of 425,000 and a DVR viewership of 597,000. The total viewership was 1.023 million, down 321,000 from the premiere. At least it's still in the millions, though.

[2:14] Mo Brady: And what happens in this episode, Aaron?

[2:16] Aaron Albano: During production of the film of Cabaret, Joan Simon is so glad that Gwen and Bobby have escaped to Majorca with them for some time away together. But Gwen has been burned by Bob one too many times, cheated on so often that she practically has a script in place for how he will apologize. He doesn't see why he shouldn't be able to see his German translator girlfriend on set and then come home to Gwen, and offers that she should be able to do the same. But Gwen isn't the cheating type, or at least she isn't now. We flash back to 1955, when Gwen learns that her new Broadway musical, a baseball-themed show called Damn Yankees, will be choreographed by a young talent named Bobby Fosse. She's concerned that he won't be dark enough for this modern-day Faust, but the producer promises her there's a real sense of humor in his work.

Gwen swallows her pride and agrees to a work session with the young upstart. After making small talk about each other's significant others, Bob begins to teach Gwen the simple but seductive steps to Whatever Lola Wants. They bond over witty banter and their childhoods working in burlesque houses, and Gwen, obviously, lands the job. The new team quickly begins seducing each other in the rehearsal room as well as the bedroom, until it becomes too complicated for Gwen to be fooling around with her choreographer behind the back of his ailing wife. Things get more complicated when the Damn Yankees producers threaten to cut Bob's Act 1 finale because it isn't ending with audiences in the show's pre-Broadway tryout in New Haven.

Knowing he has to prove himself to both the creatives and the critics, he wakes up Gwen in the middle of the night and takes them both away from their respective spouses to get to work on a new number. Working through the night, Bob and Gwen are out of ideas. That is, until the pianist suggests a silly mambo, and Bob realizes that the lighthearted number can be a cover for characters in agony. And with that, Who's Got the Pain is born. But while Bob is solving problems on stage and making a name for himself with Gwen as his new muse, Bob's current wife, Joan McCracken, lets Gwen know that this scene has been played out before, when Bob left his first wife for her.

[4:31] Mo Brady: So we're in now.

[4:32] Aaron Albano: We're in.

[4:33] Mo Brady: We're in it now. I mean, let's, let's, okay, so we did, what is it, 32 episodes of Smash. So, and this is only eight episodes. So this is like being in episode five of season one. That's how fast we're getting catapulted into the story.

[4:48] Aaron Albano: And yet it all works. The amount of, like, meat in this episode is so good and satisfying just as TV. I loved this episode. Did you like this episode?

[4:59] Mo Brady: I really did like this episode too. Maybe because we didn't have to do so much establishing this episode is a little confusing, I think, because even though when I read my description in like chunks of time periods, those are interspersed in the teleplay.

[5:17] Aaron Albano: It's a lot of jumping around for sure.

[5:19] Mo Brady: But the ideas that are being presented throughout this episode are so intelligently laid out that they make very excellent television in my opinion.

[5:32] Aaron Albano: Oh, 100%. My first, well, do we finally get to say how good Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams are?

[5:37] Mo Brady: Yes, go ahead. You are allowed to say that.

[5:41] Aaron Albano: They're fantastic. They're so good. And they're so grounded. And they're so just compelling in these roles that like, what I found most striking about the episode was that with the cliffhanger of last week, when she's walking up to the hotel room with the Gorilla in hand, we know what happens or we can surmise what happens. But the fact that they don't show us and just rely on the audience's perception of what happened is probably some of the strongest storytelling of this team, where I'm like, oh, you trust your audience. And I think that's a really great way to approach this show.

[6:17] Mo Brady: Gwen, when she's confronting Bob on the beach in Majorca, it's all through this metaphor. She does not talk to him with actual facts about the infidelities in their relationship. She uses this metaphor of it being a scene, a scene that's been played before you've skipped to the part. Let's move on to the line where you say this, which is so brilliant and so insidery. I wonder if so, I hope everybody gets it because it's really it does sound like these people how these people would talk because theater is their vernacular.

[6:50] Aaron Albano: Yes, right. Yes, that is 100. That's where I was gonna go. I was like, it's so cutting because this is their language. Their lives are so entwined with their industry, that this is how she can get to him most.

[7:04] Mo Brady: I also feel like that scene, the beach scene, could be like the Oscar nomination scene that they play when they're like, Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon in the imaginary Fosse movie. You know, it's like the 11 o'clock scene that would take us into the final moments of the movie. And yet here it is in episode two of an eight-part series. Like we're getting like whammed with the conflict.

[7:33] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Joan Simon is the ride or die of our dreams.

[7:38] Mo Brady: She's go for it. Tell me.

[7:40] Aaron Albano: I just I mean, I mean, there's nothing to say. I mean, from episode one and then this episode, like, that's the best friend we all want, man. This relationship is arguably in two episodes, the strongest one in the show.

[7:53] Mo Brady: Funny you say that because I don't disagree, but I feel like Joan McCracken is so dropped in. Susie Meisner, the actor who plays Joan McCracken, is like so real. I feel like from that very first moment we see her in the bed and she's like, oh, yeah, how late is it? I didn't realize.

[8:10] Aaron Albano: Yes.

[8:11] Mo Brady: I was doing crossword puzzles like she is not acting.

[8:13] Aaron Albano: Oh, no, not at all.

[8:14] Mo Brady: She is just being I'm like, who is this woman? She's friggin amazing. And of course, she's a Broadway vet. She was a dancer on Broadway in Guys and Dolls, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, How to Succeed.

[8:25] Aaron Albano: Sure.

[8:26] Mo Brady: She was in the Chicago movie like she's like, and she doesn't dance a lick in this show. But man, she is so dropped into a reality. I mean, Joan McCracken scenes. We'll get to the bathroom scene in a minute.

[8:41] Aaron Albano: You're cracking.

[8:42] Mo Brady: Nice.

[8:43] Aaron Albano: But don't change.

[8:44] Mo Brady: There you are.

[8:45] Aaron Albano: Yeah. Let's let's go back to our thesi. Is the multiple is the plural of thesis?

[8:50] Mo Brady: No, thesis.

[8:51] Aaron Albano: Thesis?

[8:52] Mo Brady: There's one thesis, two theses.

[8:54] Aaron Albano: I graduated from college, friends, and I dropped out twice. This is where we are. All right. Our first thesis of Fosse/Verdon is the question of Bob being the puppet master or Gwen.

[9:07] Aaron Albano: Yeah.

[9:08] Mo Brady: What I think is interesting is that this episode very clearly takes us back to the time when Gwen was the puppet master.

[9:17] Aaron Albano: Yeah, she was the head honcho for sure.

[9:18] Mo Brady: Gwen is sitting across from Hal Prince at the diner just came off of her first Tony win of the decade for Can Can. Right? She's the star.

[9:28] Aaron Albano: Yes.

[9:29] Mo Brady: Right?

[9:30] Aaron Albano: She is.

[9:31] Mo Brady: And yes, there's like male female dynamics going on of like, I'm a woman, you're the Hal is a man, Hal is the producer, but you definitely feel like she she's bringing some ego in.

[9:42] Aaron Albano: Well, 100%.

[9:43] Mo Brady: Well, I mean, I think the energy around the diner scene, yes, I feel like just time period, all of those dynamics exist. But this feels like a meeting of equals where he's telling her like what's going on with the show. She's like giving approval and not giving approval. And when he brings up this newcomer, Bobby Fosse, she's like, what happened to Jerry? Jerry Robbins, Jerome Robbins. She's on a first name basis with all of these like musical theater icons. And she's on par with all these people. And she's like, who's this kid?

[10:17] Aaron Albano: What this scene establishes is her strength and her power dynamic within the environment that this industry is at that time.

[10:27] Mo Brady: Of course, like, argument could be made that she's never gonna say like, get rid of him. Like she doesn't have that kind of power. Because this is a white cis male industry in 1955, still arguably in 2020. But like, she knows who she is. She knows the power she wields. And she has learned how to navigate the system in which she finds herself in what is equivalent to like Galaxy Diner with Hell Prince.

[10:58] Aaron Albano: Yeah, it's great. And then and then we get to this audition, this audition scene, which is so good, remarkable.

[11:06] Mo Brady: So good price of like a monthly subscription to FX alone. This scene is worth that.

[11:12] Aaron Albano: Like it's so good. There's like two scenes happening at the same time, right? There's the audition. But there's these like two very dropped in characters that have goals and tactics and they're not showing their cards. The power struggle is palpable in the room.

[11:32] Mo Brady: I mean, even just the fact that like, Gwen begins, like she opens, she walks in and she's like, I love your wife.

[11:41] Aaron Albano: It's these two titans asserting dominance. First thing Gwen says when she walks in the room is, I love your wife. Second thing she says is, I didn't see your show. I'm so sorry. I'm like, damn, this is a woman who knows what she's doing. I was really struck by the moment.

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[23:16] Mo Brady: To keep up to date with next week's recap, be sure to watch Episode 3 of Fosse-Verdon, Me and My Baby.

[23:19] Mo Brady: You can find episodes on Hulu.

[23:21] Mo Brady: The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady.

[23:25] Aaron Albano: And by me, Aaron Albano.

[23:27] Mo Brady: There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now.

[23:29] Mo Brady: One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and the second is by becoming a Patreon member at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist.

[23:32] Mo Brady: Please follow The Ensemblist wherever you listen to podcasts, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at bpn.fm, the home of Broadway Podcast Network.

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[23:37] Mo Brady: Thanks for listening, everyone!

[23:40] Mo Brady: Until next time!

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