Appointment Television

Netflix has us wrapped up in its warm, all-enveloping tendrils again this week - first, a chat about the choose-your-own-adventure-style Black Mirror outing Bindersplitch, and then we clean up our act with Marie Kondo. SHOW NOTES: How Butterspread came together: https://www.wired.com/story/black-mirror-bandersnatch-interactive-episode/ Other, possibly better, Twine-based text adventures: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/power-to-the-people-the-text-adventures-of-twine/1100-6402665/ Video Games Did It Better: https://www.slashfilm.com/black-mirror-bandersnatch-criticism/ WOW LOTTA BUMPERSTINK LINKS THIS WEEK: https://www.vulture.com/2018/12/black-mirror-bandersnatch-all-endings-explained.html What happens when a whole city KonMaris all at once: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-and-off-the-avenue/the-marie-kondo-effect-reaches-beacons-closet

We love Killing Eve so much that our entire episode is a book club spectacular. In this episode we discuss episodes 3, 4 and 5 of Killing Eve, and only immense restraint keeps us from spending the whole time quoting every line from each episode just so we can marvel at it again. 

Our year end/year beginning extravaganza is here, and we’re doling out the fake awards left and right! We go over genres like “best statement necklaces” and “time my mom was most right,” before continuing on to talk about how we want to watch TV better in 2019. SHOW NOTES Sisters (the TV show): https://www.netflix.com/title/80994108 The Durrels in Corfu: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/the-durrells-in-corfu/ HBO’s Barry: https://www.hbo.com/barry Who What When Where Wine shirt: https://www.etsy.com/listing/647913474/who-what-when-where-wine-chidi-good Killing Eve: https://www.hulu.com/series/killing-eve-c9d3b601-54db-42d1-a1ed-8950cea491b1 Prue Leith on her love of necklaces: https://prue-leith.com/my-love-of-necklaces/ Kathryn on Last Man Standing: https://www.vulture.com/2018/09/last-man-standing-is-unexpectedly-warm.html Superstore, again: https://www.hulu.com/series/superstore-727810b8-e54b-4f01-9381-a79ab5661bf7 GLOW: https://www.netflix.com/title/80114988

Here at Appointment Television, we want you to ring in the new year the best way we know how: by making sure you've turned off motion smoothing on your and every other television you have access to. Accordingly, Andrew does a deep dive into what exactly motion smoothing is, and we all talk about how unexpected it was to find Tom Cruise as our guide to this question. Then it's time for a festive holiday book club: Killing Eve!! We talk about the first two episodes this week, and spoiler, we really like them. 

This week, Margaret watches some television! And tells Kathryn and Andrew about it. Then, we go through a list of the winter 2019 shows that we’re the most excited to see.

In the long-awaited follow-up to our recap of A Christmas Prince from last winter, we bring you a full episode of coverage on A Christmas Prince 2: The Royal Wedding. We were deeply concerned that the Netflix Christmas movie would fail to live up to the, um, glories of the first one. But never fear - it is just as silly and awkward and nonsensical as the original. 

This week, we finally hit the last of our good and bad fall TV shows: Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and the NBC medical drama New Amsterdam. We don’t come away loving either of them?? But that’s how it goes sometimes. SHOW NOTES: On Nick Bakay, fellow Kenyon alum and voice of the original Salem: http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x1071.html New Amsterdam sucks: https://www.vulture.com/2018/09/new-amsterdam-nbc-review.html New Amsterdam still sucks: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/11/new-amsterdam-nbc-show-physician-distrust-bellevue/576712/

We sweep toward the ignominious end of our book club of the first season of The Newsroom! No one is particularly happy to be here, but we are *extremely* happy it's done. 

Happy Thanksgiving! Please enjoy this entry from our archives, an episode where we discuss standalone episodes and our favorite TV theme songs. 

In this week’s show we complain for exactly as long as we want about the terrible bewildering interfaces we all need to use to watch TV right now, and then we talk about some good shows you should watch: Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, and Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act. SHOW NOTES: Samin Nosrat’s “beauty uniform”: https://cupofjo.com/2018/10/samin-nosrat-beauty-uniform/ The Patriot Act/Queer Eye Crossover Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFhRONeopbQ How Hasan Minhaj fits into our culture of performative dunking: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/29/661624301/hasan-minhaj-breaks-through-dunk-fatigue-with-patriot-act

We're joined by guest Christina Tucker this week, who covers from Kathryn (who got very sick on that recording day) and bravely subjects herself to watching three episodes of The Newsroom. Before we talk about that, though, Christina, Andrew and Margaret chat about their earliest TV crushes, a discussion that involves Christina waxing rhapsodic about Angie Harmon on Law and Order. Then its... you know. The Newsroom. Again. 

Kathryn battles through illness as we answer our way through YOUR most pressing TV questions! What TV tropes do we love? Which TV parents would we choose as our own? And what were our favorite shows a decade ago? All that and more, during a wonder respite from The Newsroom! SHOW NOTES All of our questions, laid out in order! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G31R0Urzme9gtocIq8qqaoIwsY-rptWMlyod7GHRHQk

Lest we sully any other TV topic with proximity to a discussion of The Newsroom, this week our entire episode is dedicated to episodes 2, 3 and 4 of season 1 of Sorkin's disastrous work. There is much yelling, and gnashing of teeth. 

This week we come back for another GoodOne/BadOne, in which we debate the parameters of The Purge TV series and are... surprisingly OK with God Friended Me, as dumb as it is. SHOW NOTES The Purge: http://www.usanetwork.com/thepurge/episodes?cid=ps_ThePurge__S1Launch_2018Q3_ God Friended Me: https://www.cbs.com/shows/god-friended-me/

It's an episode full of ups and downs, as we discuss the delights of the second season of American Vandal (and also its few detractions, none of which are seriously troubling), and then turn to kick off our Newsroom book club with a discussion of the pilot episode. Gradually we begin to wonder why we have done this to ourselves, and Margaret goes on a glorious rant about "McKenzie McFucking McHale." 

This week, we watch two of our new fall premieres for an old segment newly christened Good One/Bad One. The Good One is The Good Cop, a Netflix show which is vaguely pleasant and generally inoffensive. The Bad One is Manifest, a vaguely Lost-flavored high-concept drama with an interesting premise and bad execution. Also, Kathryn does a Tony Danza impression that shows that when you shoot for the moon, even when you miss, you land among the stars. SHOW NOTES: The Good Cop: https://www.netflix.com/title/80157073 Tony Danza on The Good Cop: https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8475886/tony-danza-the-good-cop-theme-song-josh-groban-interview Manifest: https://www.nbc.com/manifest?nbc=1 The Bad Fan Theory Internet Strikes Again: https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Reactions-Manifest-Season-1-Premiere-45311040

It's a bevy of badness this week, alas. We talk about the recent upheaval at CBS after Les Moonves's MeToo moment finally arrived, and point out some recommended reading for this era of revelation and anguish. We also have a recommendation for other guys who've been the subject of MeToo allegations who are now trying to creep back into the public sphere, which is: don't!  From that cheerful topic, we move on to some more lighthearted yelling about TV journalists, namely, terrible depictions of female journalists on TV. Because it's a fest of awful, we also introduce our next TV bookclub... THE NEWSROOM.

This week we evaluate the new era (in the US, at least) of the Great British Bake-Off, which is still at the very least a Good British Bake-Off. Then we try to talk about other reality television shows but mostly end up yelling about the Bachelor again. SHOW NOTES Where to find all of Noel Fielding’s shirts: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/great-british-bake-off-2018-noel-fielding-shirts-where-how-to-buy-them-ranked-a8534251.html The New Jersey Life of Macaroni Rascals: http://travel.cnn.com/tokyo/none/macaroni-rascals-mtvs-jersey-shore-comes-japan-490032/ The Great British Baking Show on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80063224

Andrew, compelled by a patron’s dollars, watches an episode of professional wrestling; Margaret and Kathryn learn a lot about someone named Joey Ryan and also that wrestlers can be like the Dred Pirate Roberts. We then have a chat about what makes for a good TV narrator, in which Kathryn gesticulates for a while about the new Lifetime series You, and we debate the relative merits of Carrie from Sex and the City versus JD from Scrubs.

This week, a return to a time-honored tradition: we run down a bunch of fall TV shows and we each pick a good one and a bad one to watch. Enjoy! Or don't!  SHOW NOTES:  Whiskey Cavalier: https://abc.go.com/shows/abc-new-shows/news/shows/whiskey-cavalier-coming-soon-to-abc Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: https://www.netflix.com/title/80223989 The Purge: http://www.usanetwork.com/thepurge/cast My Brilliant Friend: https://www.hbo.com/my-brilliant-friend New Amsterdam: https://www.nbc.com/new-amsterdam You: https://www.mylifetime.com/shows/you/about God Friended Me: https://www.cbs.com/shows/god-friended-me/ Manifest: https://www.nbc.com/manifest