This week, Margaret lays out in detail JUST how frustrated she is with "the one piece of the Shondaverse [she] still engage[s] with on a weekly basis," which is just as vitriolic and frustrated as you'd expect.

After that, we launch into our next TV Book Club selection, the pilot of FX's The Americans. Spies are more fun than lawyers, at least in this episode. 

This week, we start things off by dipping into our mailbag to talk about your excellent Gilmore Girls podcast comments, and we brag about our amazing, personalized line of ATV cocktails. Then we turn to the big event: an epic, TV vs TV sitcom-themed battle, in which we pass around the white powdered judge’s wig to adjudicate some of the most vital sitcom debates of our time. Which is the best sitcom theme song? Who is the worst Kramer? And why does Margaret apologize to the guy from the B-52s? 

We kick things off this week by talking about the three weird tricks that TV shows employ to write pregnant actors into their shows, whether they're working it into the plot, hiding it, or otherwise.

Then we wrap up the Bunheads epoch of our TV Book Club segment. We mourn a show that was cut down in its prime, simultaneously praise and puzzle over its perhaps-fatal quirks, and like ranch chips.

It’s the height of awards season, and inspired by Ricky Gervais’s performance at the 2016 Golden Globes, we have a discussion about watching awards shows. We consider the distasteful parts of following celebrity culture, and Kathryn and Margaret try to convince Andrew that celebrity gossip isn’t just dumb fluff. We have a wide-ranging discussion about the social usefulness of celebrities, and return to the way awards shows give us a stage to work out Big Issues. Finally, we turn to this year’s Golden Globes to ask, "Ricky Gervais - what happened to you?” 

We introduce a special new feature, the ATV Bulletin, where we address important news of the day (or, you know, news of the last couple of days). In this short episode, we discuss the recent announcement that Sutton Foster will appear on the Netflix revival series of Gilmore Girls. In addition, Margaret brings us an extremely important question to consider: which citizens of Stars Hollow would have a podcast, and what would that podcast be about? 

This week, Kathryn's sister Laura joins the gang to help talk us through life as a teenage ballerina. It turns out Amy Sherman-Palladino's Bunheads gets a lot of the details right, even if the dances are a bit too polished for this age and skill level. 

Bunheads really finds its feet in this run of episodes—in between singing its praises, we also talk about how we approach shows that have been recommended to us by others. Do we actually watch them, and how do those recommendations change our viewing experience? 

In honor of the Super Bowl this week, we have a wide-ranging discussion about sports and television, featuring returning guest and Overdue podcast brother Craig Getting. We talk about all the ways that sports fandom can be troubling, and all the things that make sports such compelling televisual entertainment. Highlights include: our personal sports narratives, Margaret’s description of cultural sports fandom, what it’s like to follow athletic careers like soap operas, and eventually we actually let Craig talk about football. 

This week, Andrew shares with the group his continuing love of Masterchef Junior, which leads to a mini-celebration of that rare animal, the Non-Cynical Competition Reality Show.

After that it’s back to the TV Book Club mines for episodes 4-8 of the Freeform (nee ABC Family) one-season wonder Bunheads. Does the show get past its rough opening episodes? So all the teenagers start to feel like fully realized characters? Is “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” originally a They Might Be Giants song? We answer all these questions and more!

Margaret, Kathryn and Andrew answer a listener mailbag question and discuss all the many nuances of when it is and is not okay to talk while watching television. Andrew reveals a rule in his house about what you’re allowed to say while watching Game of Thrones, and Margaret discusses the tricky ins and outs of being a veteran watching with a newbie. They then turn to the main topic: whether streaming television is a new genre and how binge-watching changes our opinions of shows. This topic is spurred on by Alan Sepinwall’s interview with Transparent creator Jill Soloway, James Ponewozik’s piece Steaming TV Isn’t Just A New Way to Watch, It’s a New Genre, and Willa Paskin’s discussion of binge-watching Master of None.

To help kick off 2016, we talk about our TV-related resolutions. For Andrew, it's to watch more of the shows Kathryn and Margaret have recommended to him; for Margaret, it's to be more like Andrew.

Then we move on to our TV Book Club discussion of the one-season wonder Bunheads, created by Amy Sherman-Palladino of Gilmore Girls fame. It's a rough start to the series - the setup is awkward and the first few episodes are consumed with making it work. But rest assured, it gets better.

We kick off the episode with the brief return of our Bashville segment, in which Margaret (surprisingly!) praises a recent change on the ABC series Nashville. Next, we turn to our primary discussion of the week, a concept we call High Wire TV. We define this idea in a few different ways, and consider the broader pitfalls and possibilities of TV that tries to do everything all at once. Andrew talks about Game of Thrones, Kathryn praises Jane the Virgin, and Margaret brings up How to Get Away with Murder and the broader Shonda-verse. All of this feeds into Kathryn's growing realization that she has way too many thoughts on this topic, and we end with an introduction of our new TV Club series, the ABC Family show Bunheads. 

In this week’s ATV, we discuss the new Netflix Christmas special, A Very Murray Christmas, and the inherent flaws in a celebrity Christmas special built around a depressive, alcoholic character who’s not great at singing. We also talk about the Christmas special as a genre and touch on some of our favorites, including A Colbert Christmas, the Rankin and Bass classics, Charlie Brown, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. 

We then inaugurate It’s a Wonderful Life as a retroactively official TV Christmas special, and move on to discuss some of the emotionally fraught aspects of the holiday. Margaret and Andrew were gift receiving monsters at one point, Kathryn cried at the wrong part of Bridge to Terabithia, and we make some space for those of us who are just trying to muddle through somehow. 

Special guest host Craig Getting of Overdue fame joins us this week for a discussion of game shows, those reliable workhorses of the daytime-and-early-evening TV landscape. We talk the hosts and formats we like, and the ones we think we would do the best on.

Craig also tells us about his (sometimes faulty) strategies for solving Wheel of Fortune puzzles, and the time he was robbed of the chance to be on the show.

This week we discuss The CW’s new series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Margaret is a fan, and Kathryn and Andrew have some reservations. Margaret tries to assuage their fears by discussing the show's strengths, and Andrew admits he has liiiiitle a crush on Rachel Bloom. Kathryn’s generally weary of television’s depictions of women as “crazy,” but she’s willing to give the show more time.

Then we move on to a slightly unfortunate TV vs TV, in which Kathryn and Margaret have a misunderstanding about the nature of the debate before finally settling on TV series most damaged by their jokey ironic titles. Margaret argues for the cut-down-in-its-prime one season series Trophy Wife, while Kathryn chides Andrew for his complete disinterest in a good show just because it's called Cougar Town. 

On this week's episode, we dig into the recent Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Star Trek reboot announcements and share our deepest hopes and fears. We also share the shows we'd actually like to be see remade, though the list of properties that are ripe for a reboot that aren't already being rebooted is getting short.

Next, we move on to a midseason checkup on some of the shows we mentioned in our overview of Fall TV. For Margaret, it's Supergirl, which is well-intentioned even if it's sometimes a little too on the nose. For Andrew, it's The Muppets, which is still frustratingly milquetoast. And Kathryn has unexpectedly found herself drawn to the TV continuation of the film Limitless, something that spawns a limitless number of jokes.

It's Thanksgiving, and we're here to discuss the beloved holiday tradition of the Thanksgiving-themed TV episodes. Kathryn loves them, Andrew is dubious, and Margaret is a happy medium. Kathryn goes long on the relationship between bottle episodes and the Thanksgiving structure, and we discuss Friends, The West Wing, and Bob's Burgers among other holiday classics. 

This week we have kick things off with a discussion of the comedian-driven sitcom, inspired by Aziz Ansari's Netflix original series Master of None and Louis CK's excellent FX show Louie. You really should watch both of them.

After that, we wrap up our TV Book Club series on the first season of Black Mirror, a show that we ultimately didn't like as much as some people do. The last installment, "The Entire History of You," takes an interesting premise and squanders it on a tired old story while asking us to sympathize with a questionable dude in the process. No thanks?

We open our episode this week with a discussion about the earliest shows we can remember watching even thought we either hated them or hated ourselves for watching them. Andrew has an ongoing love/hate relationship with The Simpsons, Margaret remembers a specific season of Must See TV with stunning clarity, and Kathryn has fallen back into a dangerous Tyra-themed habit.

Andrew and Kathryn then turn to a TV vs TV debate about the best television to watch when you're in a nondescript, underwhelming hotel room. For Kathryn, it's all about the magic of HGTV, while Andrew argues for anything that involves a mystery box of ingredients or Gordon Ramsay. Judge Margaret's wisdom prevails. 

We kick things off this week with a discussion of the Bechdel Test and its strengths and weaknesses as a method of evaluating the kinds of shows we talk about. It's useful sometimes, just not always.

Then we launch right into our next installment of TV Book Club, this time about the second episode of Black Mirror. This episode included a more fully realized sci-fi dystopia, but its treatment of its female characters is more than a little problematic. It also kind of borrows its main point from the movie Network.

Join us for our Spooky Halloween Spectacular! Margaret, Kathryn and Andrew discuss what TV-themed costumes they would create if they had all the time and money in the world. Margaret has a brilliant costume, Andrew's costume choices require some very specific facial hair, and Kathryn reveals that she is truly terrible at coming up with costume ideas. 

Kathryn then returns to her controversial judicial podium to decide between Margaret and Andrew's compelling arguments for best TV Halloween episode. It's a very spooky nail-biter. 

This week’s show sees the return of Hatewatch Watch, here renamed “Bashville” because of all the hate that Margaret has to aim at ABC’s Nashville.

We then move on to the newest installment in our TV Book Club series, the first episode of Black Mirror. It is, how you say, not what we were expecting. Andrew also explains the art of faking an orgasm, which you should be able to use if you ever find yourself in a Black Mirror-esque situation.

This week, we talk about sitcoms and social issues as Kathryn makes Andrew and Margaret watch The Carmichael Show and they wonder what the heck she was thinking. Once we're all on the same page, Kathryn discusses the way The Carmichael Show reminds her of Norman Lear's All in the Family, and we talk about the importance of having TV shows on the air that we don't necessarily like.

We then turn to a show Kathryn bets you did not know existed: ABC Family's Monica the Medium. Andrew reveals that he has witnessed a medium reading, Kathryn recommends a ghost-hunting realtor, and we agree that Margaret would make a great medium. 

This week we continue our examination of fall TV by jumping into the first two episodes of ABC's The Muppets. Our verdict is mixed but mostly negative, and we share our concerns about the show's tone and format.

We move on to a mailbag about Kathryn's controversial ruling last week, and then close out with a talk about TV tropes and why it's not always bad when they work out.

We're also trying a new experiment: for the next few weeks we're going to try posting slightly shorter shows every week rather than one long show every two weeks. If it goes well for us (and you!) we'd like to keep doing it, so let us know what you think.

(Apologies for Andrew's audio this week, there was a mic problem that clears up about a third of the way in.)

Kathryn moderates a debate between Andrew and Margaret about TV's best, primarily non-sexual female friendships—Kathryn must choose between Abby and Ilana from Comedy Central's Broad City or Emma and Maggie from USA's Playing House. 

Then, Andrew tells everyone about a gem of a show from former professional wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura, the show bids a fond farewell to Terriers, and we make our next TV Book Club announcement.

Andrew, Margaret and Kathryn add on to the pile of fall TV previews with a rundown of new series they're excited about, new series they just don't quite get, and returning shows they're looking forward to seeing again. After a brief dip into the mailbag, TV Bookclub returns with a discussion of episodes eight, nine and ten of the much mourned one season wonder, Terriers.