Appointment Television

This week, we're checking in with how TV is handling its uncomfortable task of depicting a pandemic that requires hot actors to cover 1/2 of their face. Spoiler: they aren't doing great! We start with a long, harrowing, collective look at the opening episode of Bull and its terrifying demon CGI baby and then continue on to touch upon: Black-ish, Super Store, The Good Doctor, and a handful of other programs. Obviously, Kathryn wrote about all of this really brilliantly. She also wrote astutely about the sexual harassment Eliza Dushku experienced on the set of Bull, a subject we touched upon at the beginning of the show.

All three of us definitely showed up this week having seen every minute of both of the shows we’re discussing—Showtime’s intriguing The Good Lord Bird, and HBO’s weird-ass mystery box drama The Third Day.  SHOW NOTES The Good Lord Bird: https://www.sho.com/the-good-lord-bird The Third Day: https://www.hbo.com/the-third-day

Let's check in with what's happening on network TV! Specifically, let's check in with unscripted network TV: the reboot of Supermarket Sweep and this high-drama season of The Bachelorette. We've asked our beloved games corresponded Craig Getting to return so he can weigh in on the Sweep update; in a shocking turn of events, everyone gets very animated. 

In this episode, we discuss Andrew’s Good One/Bad One pairing: AMC’s Soulmates, which we all liked a little bit more than we were expecting and The Comey Rule, which was even worse than we could possibly have imagined. Along the way we discuss Sarah Snook and her acting partner, her butt, whether Andrew and Kathryn would soulmate test despite being married, whether Margaret is doing something remarkably unprofessional around minute 5, the propensity in American culture to confuse a man being tall with a man being possessed of character, just what can render one nostalgic for The Newsroom, and what Aaron Sorkin needs in order to climax sexually. IT’S A REAL ONE, Y’ALL! Enjoy!

For our belated good one/bad one episode week, we pull off what is known in podcasting circles as the Queen’s gambit—by watching the show The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix and then talking about it! We also watched Ratched, which is obviously the bad one.  SHOW NOTES:  THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT: https://www.netflix.com/title/80234304 RATCHED: https://www.netflix.com/title/80213445

Margaret definitely does not cry at all in this discussion of the conclusion of Never Have I Ever, a show that's really about grief and fathers who die and the kind of ripple effect that has for every member of the family. Nope! Zero crying. Also Kathryn definitely remembered to select the correct microphone, and that's why her audio sounds exactly as good as it always does. 

On this week’s episode, we introduce an important concept from Our Last Tapes: The Old Type, the official name for our periodic episodes where we open the creaky haunted vault of Ancient Television and bring forth a mummified TV corpse to examine. THIS WEEK, in honor of the SPOOKY TIMES in which we all live, we discuss The Addams Family (snap snap). Learn: what Kathryn’s 6-year-old thinks of it, which joke of Andrew’s makes Margaret bark with laughter while also saying “That’s so dumb”, and what piece of taxidermy Margaret most wishes she could have for herself. If you would like to sample some of the episodes discussed, they can be found on MGM’s YouTube page and on one of those largely made-up streaming platforms that’s called like Luna Network-- search on your Roku, it will know what I’m talking about. And, last but not least, please check out what the Addams family’s living room looked like in color or the weird musical spoof on said family that Margaret listened to frequently as a child (start at 3:58).

We begin this episode by taking the opportunity to respond to one more item from the mailbag, a very thoughtful email that expands on some of our discussion from our previous conversation about the cultural context of Never Have I Ever (and notably, how ill-equipped we are to see some of it!) Then we jump back into the show, with our discussion of episodes 5, 6, and 7. 

This week's episode begins with a funeral, but like, the kind of funeral where no one is surprised or sad? Then we talk about this year's off-feeling season of Bake-Off, Kathryn's latest weird dick show, and a bushel of listener questions. SHOW NOTES: RIP in peace Quibi: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/21/21527197/quibi-streaming-service-mobile-shutting-down-end-katzenberg GBBO on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80063224 John Explains Everything: https://www.hbo.com/how-to-with-john-wilson

In this lightly frankensteined episode, we discuss both a piece critical of Never Have I Ever (in a segment recorded last week), episodes 2, 3, and 4 of Never Have I Ever, and the myriad glories contained in what shall from here on out be known as The Lost Tapes (recorded just last night). And, as a bonus, we have a snippet of a song from a band to which Andrew so kindly introduced us last night.  

Thanks to a change in our recording setup last week, the episode we intended to release today (our next TV Book Club installment on episodes 2, 3, and 4 of Never Have I Ever) does not exist. INSTEAD, we are bringing you a rerun of a Golden Oldie: the team recommends their favorite shows for watching with only 80% attention and then, then. Then we dedicate ourselves to dunking on a terrible procedural you probably forgot existed: Deception, where the world's top magician uses his sophisticated understanding of SLEIGHT OF HAND to solve major crimes that inexplicably demand said expertise. We hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane and will be back with our regularly scheduled episodes next week.  SHOW NOTES: Sports Night: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165961/ Justified: http://www.fxtv.com.au/justified Elementary: https://www.cbs.com/shows/elementary/ Pitch: https://www.fox.com/pitch/ Timeless: https://www.nbc.com/timeless?nbc=1 New Girl: https://www.fox.com/new-girl/ Terriers: https://tv.avclub.com/terriers-

The quarantine Emmys were ... good?? We are as shocked as the next person, but we spend most of this episode discussing what made the socially distanced pandemic awards version of the Emmys so much more compelling than the regular version. Afterwards, we turn to a brief conversation about the role of seasonality in TV plotting, which is mostly an excuse for Margaret to mourn about the cancellation of Stumptown. Stumptown! Why were you taken from us! 

We answer some questions from our vaunted Tumblr ask box, which Margaret swears she won’t get upset about but then she totally does. It leads to a discussion of how important objectivity is to reviews and whether it exists at all (hint: it isn’t and it doesn’t). Then, we talk about the first episode of Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, a teen comedy that is definitely narrated by tennis legend John McEnroe. SHOW NOTES: Ask Us Questions On Tumblr, You Cowards: https://atvpodcast.com/ask Never Have I Ever: https://www.netflix.com/title/80179190 John McEnroe Gets Mad, This Is Just One Of The Times When This Happens, Also When Are We Getting A Movie Where Matthew Rhys Plays John McEnroe, I’m Just Saying, No That Shia LeBeouf Movie Doesn’t Count: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ransFQVzf6c&t=4s

This week we have: sad dirgeses about two recently announced cancellations, bad one picks from the fall TV lineup in which we have the deepest confidence, good one picks about which we're.... like..... IDK.... maybe!!!??!?! about, more uncertain squeaky uptalk than you can shake a stick at, and a full minute of Margaret explaining a driving game called cows that anyone other than Margaret would surely have trimmed out of the episode, but it's too late for you hos as neither responsible host was here to intervene. Links of pertinence:  Venture Bros. cancellation High Fidelity's cancellation, Alison Herman's thoughtful observations on the shortening lifespans of streaming TV shows, and the creators' interview about where they intended to take Season 2.  Kathryn's Bad One Margaret's Bad One Andrew's Bad One Margaret's Good One Andrew's ... goood one??????? and Kathryn's Good.... one? And!! Our new TV Book Club: Netflix's Never Have I Ever, watch the pilot for next week!  And, last but never least, pleas

Inspired by the absurd, impossible inescapability of 2020, we decide to take a trip to TV past. A fateful trip. A three hour tour, if you will. (Okay fine, this episode isn't quite that long.)  First we have a chat about our own personal histories with Nick at Nite, and then turn to the bizarre phenomenon of Gilligan's Island. At one point, the fact that the castaways are able to bake a pie renders Kathryn speechless for over a minute. 

This week, we talk about the bizarre experience of watching a COVID-era awards show (in this case, the VMAs), and then we talk about the first episode of HBO’s Lovecraft Country. It’s a horror show that is surprisingly tolerable for people who don’t normally like horror! And it’s an interesting way to deal with the fact that HP Lovecraft’s work is both foundational to the sci-fi genre AND written by a deeply racist dude. SHOW NOTES: Kathryn on the uncanny valley VMAs: https://www.vulture.com/2020/08/vmas-2020-took-place-nowhere.html Lovecraft Country on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/lovecraft-country

On this week's episode we discuss CBS All Access's most recent addition to its Star Trek universe of shows, Lower Decks, which is different from the Bravo reality TV show BELOW Deck contrary to... one of your hosts' expectations-- bet you can't guess which!! HOWEVER, according to Kathryn, the two have more similarities than you might expect! THEN we branch off into an omnibus of Fall TV we're anticipating and at least one show Andrew would like to leave at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. In said omnibus, we discuss the following: Fargo, S4 The Next Marajuana Millionaire The Undoing The Bachelorette, which has been subject to Some Shenanigans!!! this upcoming season The Crown, S4 City So Real PEN15. S2 Miss Scarlet and the Duke Star Trek: Discovery Leslie Jones's Supermarket Sweep (and our aspiration to be the first ever three person team on said show) The Bridgertons 

It's a round robin of short topics this week, including Harley Quinn, why is Louis CK back, the joys of watching Perry Mason get fucked into the crevice between a bed and the wall, and whether Lovecraft Country is too scary for wimps.  Then, Andrew and Kathryn go head to head in the important debate of our time: are the title credits of Babylon Berlin actually a DVD menu screen? 

Friend of the show Craig Getting joins us this week to explain what the deal is with televised sports in this time when, really, no one ought to be playing any kind of sports at all. Then, in anticipation of the Supermarket Sweep reboot, we talk about some of the episodes of the old show that went up on Netflix not that long ago.  SHOW NOTES: This is just how sports audiences look now: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/26/21339029/virtual-baseball-mlb-nba-fox-sports-coronavirus Supermarket Sweep on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81289176

We're surprised too, but yes, apparently television is still doing the Emmy awards this year! Not even a global pandemic can keep Jimmy Kimmel from telling us about how important television is, before then making a few lame jokes and leaving.  Anyhow, in this episode we discuss our reaction to the 2020 Emmy nominations, but first we have a long chat about the state of television production five months into shutdown. Turns out the picture is pretty bright ... for New Zealand.