Appointment Television

This year's crop of fall shows is small but potent. Look forward to watching each of these good and/or bad shows with us over the next few weeks. This is an episode that MOST of us came prepared for.   SHOW NOTES: Y: The Last Man on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/y-the-last-man-9fb2d79b-1280-48be-b185-f989b9c9519a   Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol on Peacock: https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/dan-browns-the-lost-symbol   Foundation on Apple TV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/foundation/umc.cmc.5983fipzqbicvrve6jdfep4x3   La Brea on NBC: https://www.nbc.com/la-brea   The Big Leap on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-big-leap-f6dc6023-2033-491e-a336-b9920735fb26   The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/the-problem-with-jon-stewart/umc.cmc.4fcexvzqezr25p9weks6sxpob

Although Margaret could not be with us for this episode, when it was time to check in with season two of Ted Lasso we knew that we'd be in capable hands with our friends Christina Tucker and Sophie Brookover. They join us this week for a conversation about the ups and downs of both Ted Lasso and Ted Lasso discourse, and they have a couple recommendations for what to watch. We cover such topics as: Sam! Whether this show has conflict! The experience of watching serial television! And, alarmingly, we attempt to discuss sports. 

We're back, glory be! On this week's episode we're discussing a shocking revelation in the world of children's TV programming, the debatable delights of Doc McStuffins, and the absolutely established joys of Hulu's new original series Only Murders in the Building (with its gloriously Ephronian setting). 

There is also a second segment to this episode, in which Andrew, Margaret and Kathryn all pitch imaginary TV shows about good journalism, and as per usual Margaret has an eerie number of truly fantastic TV ideas. But the main event here is that a patron forced Andrew to watch a truly awful TV show called Do No Harm aka Dr Facehands, and it was magnificent. 

With five weeks of Ted Lasso remaining and no new Schmigadoon to watch, we suspect many of you might be looking for some new way to make the most of your Apple TV+ subscription. So, for our first Summer Hiatus Rerun, we're sharing the interview we did with Dickinson creator Alena Smith in January, 2020. Consider this our pitch for letting a little corseted chaos into your life.

We take a brief detour into the wacky world of Robert and Michele King to talk about how Evil Season 2 is going, then we do some fantasy casting of Broadway actors in Kings' projects before wrapping up our Feel Good TV Book Club. Also: we're taking a break! We'll be posting some reruns over the next few weeks and we'll see you all in September. EVIL on Paramount+: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/evil/ Feel Good on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80241545

This is episode two of our Feel Good book club, where we discuss episodes 3 and 4 of season one. Serious topics are considered, including: does George still suck as much, what is Mae's stand-up actually like, and also how is Lisa Kudrow *this* good at her job?  But before we get there, we bring up a topic that requires careful, detailed thought. Which one of us would suck the least if we were contestants on Survivor? 

On this week's episode, we introduce a new segment (name TBD) where we tell you how to get the most out of one month with any minor league streaming service. In honor of Ted Lasso's season 2 premiere last Friday (a glorious event to which we devote some time and attention), we've focus our first session on Apple TV+. Come for the earnest advice, but stay for the absolutely harrowing fuck-marry-kill the discussion occasions.

On this week's episode we begin our TV Book Club on Netflix's Feel Good, a show where extremely charming queer people make exceptionally poor decisions, but first: we answer some questions from our Tumblr ask box. Margaret goes long on the subject of library school, we all discuss the scam of terminal master degree programs (recently documented more thoroughly by Anne Helen Petersen), and then-- the true highlight-- we each share an embarrassing story we've not previously told on the podcast. 

RIP to The Bold Gripe, a segment we loved briefly and too well. You'll never guess what those goofy media types are up to in the finale! After we fully dunk on that whole situation we turn to the new HBO series The White Lotus, a show about rich people at a fancy resort but most importantly: a show with Jennifer Coolidge in it. 

On this week's episode of Appointment TB, we present unto you: CHAOS. Our exceptionally loose agenda is Andrew discusses Patreon Supporter Gerald's $7 pick, the late and sometimes lamented GCB and Margaret invites viewers to return to her Queer TV Qorner by mentioning some exclusively gay content in Marvel's Loki and finding a very particular queer framing for HBOMax's Starstruck. But in actual fact, you'll find our discussion a lot weirder and more wide-ranging than this brief summary can communicate, including the explicit nonsense that NPR specifically paid someone to remove from Margaret's discussion of Loki last week. 

You are *not* going to believe what happened on The Bold Type. It's the kind of thing you can see coming in retrospect, and yet it is so fully implausible that our minds are truly blown by it. Then we chat about Everything's Gonna Be Okay, a show we continue to love so, so much. 

On this week’s episode, we celebrate reaching 300 episodes by talking about a bunch of other shows that have also reached 300 episodes! We also talk about Supernatural for what feels like an eternity; we’re not apologizing for it but we do think you should be aware of it going in.  SHOW NOTES The Simpsons on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/the-simpsons/3ZoBZ52QHb4x Supernatural on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70143825 Grey’s Anatomy on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/greys-anatomy-bfd6ba83-5fff-46f8-abae-76f1796c1c8e

In this week's episode Andrew catches us up on this season of The Bold Type (in what we hope will be a continuing segment) and we discuss episodes 5, 6, and 7 of Everything's Going to Be Okay, with which we are all falling ever more deeply in love. Along the way we touch briefly upon the issue of shows that exist in the same fictional universe, Andrew's secret superpower, and tease what's coming up in our Very Special 300th Episode.

This week's episode - Moon Show! (Technically the name of this show is For All Mankind on Apple TV+ but we're no dummies, we know the best name for it is Moon Show). Girls5Eva! Facts about Playboy bunnies in space! Also featuring: a brief but intense digression about Pringles! 

Everyone is charmed by episodes 2, 3, and 4 of Everything’s Gonna Be Okay (hereafter EGBO), and Kathryn recommends some shows to people for the first time in a while.  Everything’s Gonna Be Okay on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/everythings-gonna-be-okay-f30e3e01-ccb4-46c3-8802-5117f8dc2f13

In today's episode, we mix it up with M*A*S*H, from its less-than-great actual pilot to the S4 premiere that Margaret's friends insist is the true pilot, with a special detour to discuss the particularly strange journey to creating Trapper John, M.D.

Most of this episode is a discussion of the lovely but slightly uneasy Peacock original show Rutherford Falls. It's a readily lovable show but also the thing at the very center of its DNA is centuries of genocide - a tricky, tricky tone to land, and the show mostly does it!  At the beginning of the episode, though, we do a little chatting about TV starting to come back this summer. Hooray, television! But there's a very important PSA we need to note: in this episode Kathryn suggests that it's possible the Netflix show Halston might be good. This episode was recorded before she saw that series. Halston is *not* good. We regret the misleading implication. 

In today's episode: due to overwhelming demand from either many of you or (more likely) one of you many, many times, we're getting Kathryn's assessment on HBO's newest Murdur Durdur show, otherwise known as Mare of Easttown. And then we commence with installment #1 of our newest TV Book Club on Freeform's dramedy Everything is Gonna Be Okay, the second season of which has recently begun, prompting a profile of Josh Thomas to run in The New Yorker, which was subsequently turned into high-quality audio content with help of Margaret, but which she did not leverage into a close friendship with Josh Thomas--- YET.

The short segment this week is a patreon recommendation for cozy mysteries! But the long segment is a discussion of the Australian preschool show Bluey. Spoiler: Bluey is amazing. SHOW NOTES A Bluey piece in the Australian outlet The Saturday Paper - https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/culture/television/2020/04/11/bluey-creator-joe-brumms-dog-days/15865272009678