On this week's episode, inspired by Kathryn's excellent essay on the subject, we are discussing POLICE ON TELEVISION and why, by and large, they are not doing great things for society. Along the way, we make some important stops at:
- Normalizing Injustice by Color of Change Hollywood
- Critics' Conversation: Is TV Afraid to Tackle Police Brutality or Just Unable to Do It Well?
- How police censorship shaped Hollywood, and how pop culture changed policing
- Opinion: Shut down all police movies and TV shows. Now.
- 46 Stops: The Driving Life and Death of Philando Castile from Code Switch
- #127, The Crime Machine, Part I -- Reply All
In lieu of one short topic this week, we each bring a short topic and then promise to only talk about our topic for 2 minutes each. Somehow, though, the first segment is 17 minutes long.
Then it's time for the end of the Twilight Zone book club! This time we joke a lot about pool players and the system in heaven where you have to show up as a ghost to constantly defend your titles.
hello hi yes hello guess what hi we finally did our last good one/bad one combo!!!!!! for the spring season!!!!! we put it off for so many weeks BUT THIS WEEK wasn't one of them, so here it is! OUR EPISODE! We talk about The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart (not worse than Cancel of Dads, but LONGER) and Run (ultimately not as good a one as we hoped by god, Merritt Weaver is so beautiful, so do we even care?). Join us to learn how chamber ensemble music camp is like The Bachelor, whether Margaret's gaydar is working, and how long Margaret will attempt to communicate non-verbally before recalling she is making a podcast and must instead articulate her thoughts.
The second season of What We Do in the Shadows is one of the precious few shows left that still has new pre-pandemic episodes rolling out every week, so we talk about how great it is. Then, it’s back to the Twilight Zone, to watch some all-time series high-watermarks (S03E08, S01E08, S05E03).
What We Do in the Shadows (Hulu): https://www.hulu.com/series/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-0b10c46a-12f0-4357-8a00-547057b49bac
Vulture’s 50 best Twilight Zone episodes: https://www.vulture.com/article/twilight-zone-best-episodes.html
Did you know there will still be some TV this summer? There will! Not very much, but the summer won't be a complete content desert, and we're going to run through a few of the things we're hoping will give us some welcome summer distractions.
We also talk about the Parks and Rec reunion episode. We were not big fans, alas, but we use it as a springboard to talk about what we think works about this kind of sad event TV and whether anyone really wants a Very Special Covid Episode. (We think probably not.)
This week we return with another mind-blowing visit to The Twilight Zone, with a special (coincidental) emphasis on stories where women are driven mad by happenstance. Also we have small complaints we just gotta get off our chests ok???
SHOW NOTES:
Stumptown: https://abc.com/shows/stumptown
The Last Dance: https://www.espn.com/watch/catalog/2806434b-1deb-4c5c-aae0-04b1ab8eebf7/the-last-dance
The Bold Type: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-bold-type-45c40273-0742-4324-af23-db4a484b3af3
Vulture’s list of The Twilight Zone episodes: https://www.vulture.com/article/twilight-zone-best-episodes.html
Hello, fellow quaranitine madness sufferers, and welcome to the latest ATV.
Is Margaret once again recording with the wrong mic this week? She sure is, and she blames Zoom. She's not sure what Zoom has to do with it, but she's still confident they're at fault.
We also talk about the new Who Wants to Be a Millionare? and the myriad ways in which it's the worst. We debate if any Late Night Jimmy other than Kimmel could have saved it. Margaret's mic? It's the still the wrong on this whole segment!
AND THEN we talk about Mrs. America! Margaret's mic remains bad but her ability to pronounce Schlafly and Abzug on her very first try is so impressive that maybe you'll stop noticing.
At the end of the episode, Andrew suggests that we might edit part of the show so that it flows more smoothly and Kathryn, bless her shining head, says "....we'll see."
You will see that we didn't, proving that once again, Kathryn is always right.
This week we roll out a new a new TV book club, the top 10 episodes of The Twilight Zone! We definitely told you about this book club in previous episodes, and we gave you plenty of warning this was coming on our social media feeds. If you're feeling at all gaslit about that, keep in mind that it's very thematically in keeping with a book club on The Twilight Zone.
Before we dig into our first Twilight Zone episode (season 4's "On Thursday We Leave For Home"), Kathryn shares some brief thoughts on Quibi.
This week we talk about the things we have been watching since we’ve been stuck in our houses with our televisions. And then, appropriately, we talk about the TLC reality show Dr. Pimple Popper. We also talk about Law & Order SVU a lot? Which is confusing to Andrew but clearly he's out of his element and should be forgiven for it.
SHOW NOTES:
Mrs. Maisel: https://www.amazon.com/Marvelous-Mrs-Maisel-Season/dp/B06VYH1GF7
Batman: The Animated Series: https://www.dcuniverse.com/videos/batman-the-animated-series/65/season-1
Evil: https://www.cbs.com/shows/evil/episodes/
The Bold Type: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-bold-type-45c40273-0742-4324-af23-db4a484b3af3
Stumptown: https://www.hulu.com/series/stumptown-70cc8703-43db-4d87-96ae-146a4ed81d3f
Law & Order SVU: https://www.nbc.com/law-and-order-special-victims-unit/episodes
Dr. Pimple Popper: https://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/dr-pimple-popper/
In solidarity with the many parents in our audience currently navigating the... joys... of having their children with them all the time, Margaret and Andrew handed the reigns over to Kathryn this week for Good One, Bad One Jr. We got to watch one good show that her 2-and-6-year old love and one bad show they love. We also took this as a chance to reflect on the shows of our youth, the wild origin story ascribed to the titular ghostwriter of the PBS show Ghostwriter, the myriad ways that both Muppet Babies and Ghostbusters misrepresented the more adult brands from which they were derived, why Rockapella appeared to be the only acapella group on Napster, and the two genders of childhood in the early 1990s: enormous calf-grazing baggy shorts and tiny bike shorts.
In our first Good One / Bad One segment of the spring, we bring you a relatively thoughtful conversation about David Simon's Plot Against America and then a very, very, very silly one about NBC's new series Council of Dads.
In today’s episode: first, we are joined by a special guest! Our pal Kamille Washington (AKA Kamillio) is tapping in again, this time to liberate Kathryn from the burden of watching Fox’s newest absurd reality TV show, Flirty Dancing. In addition to discussing this very dumb and very pure program, Andrew, Margaret, and Kamille design their own Frankenshows out of the discarded parts of reality TV shows past, and:
- Nearly end one dear friendship of many year's existence by means of a very bad (but also inspired???) joke
- Discuss how we would use an illegal knife barge
- Observe all the narrative theory you did NOT learn thanks to Kathryn’s absence
- Ponder what Jenna Dewan No Longer Tatum's hair smells like
- And, at the episode’s very end, hoist one's self on one's own petard by dragging a person who may have posted an episode of the show at 9 AM instead of 6 AM only to forget to post the very next day's show until 1 PM (!!!!)
Hopefully, you find all of the episode as satisfying as Margaret found the very last bit.
This week, for some reason we open the episode by talking about a tweet for ten minutes (though it DOES lead to a fruitful recounting of our past juvenile delinquencies). Then, we return to one of our most reliable content mines, digging up good ones and bad ones from the spring 2020 TV calendar to watch and discuss later.
SHOW NOTES:
The tweet: https://twitter.com/LisaMMcGee/status/1237785183631413248
Run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jwEiXdJGKM
The Plot Against America: https://www.hbo.com/the-plot-against-america
Mrs. America: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIpTIPKTOkU
Council of Dads: https://www.nbc.com/council-of-dads
The Bachelor Presents: Listen to your Heart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachelor_Presents:_Listen_to_Your_Heart
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? https://www.vulture.com/2020/01/who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-reboot-jimmy-kimmel-host.html
For this episode we're joined by our lovely friend Kamille Washington to discuss the final season of Bojack Horseman, a show that even animation-phobic Kathryn has to admit is pretttttttty good. First, though, Kamille and Andrew kindly offer Kathryn a place to briefly and enthusiastically yell about Babylon Berlin.
Margaret choosing blindness while watching Love is Blind
In today's episode, we talk, of course, about Netflix's terrible, wonderful new reality TV show Love Is Blind because Margaret's brainworms demanded it, and Andrew indulgently complied. THEN, we move on to discuss the unusual-- and excellent-- standalone episode of Apple TV+'s new video game development sitcom, Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet (aka Mythic Raven: Banquet Quest) and how different kinds of standalone episodes function narratively within the runs of their respective shows. For, as Andrew points out, the absolute, first-ever time.
Kathryn had, predictably, written a number of great pieces on all of the above subjects for Vulture. Please enjoy her essays on:
- on the gorgeous-- perhaps un-replicable-- messiness of this first season of Love Is Blind
- the questionable hosting levels of Obviously, Nick Lachey and his wife Vanessa, who looks like she was famous before she was her wife, but for what, we will never recall nor research.
- and, last but not least, standalone episodes within the runs of High Fidelity and Mythic Banquet: Questlove's Raven
And, for the true diehards: when Craig claimed our wheels were up and when our wheels were, in fact, up.
This week’s episode is our recent live show crossover event with Overdue at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. The Appointment Television and Overdue crews gather together to discuss the recent TV adaptation and compare it to the book from which it (and the film, and the ill-starred musical) sprung. Whether we figure out the relative superiority of books or TV as competing artistic formats is left up to the listener.
In a truly impressive and unusual turn of events, Margaret does a startling amount of homework to bring us a glimpse at some of the most interesting queer TV out there right now. Sadly she insists on calling this the "queer TV qorner" even though "qorner" is an objectively unlovely word to look at. We give particular focus to Showtime's Work In Progress, which is new and especially great.
This week we revisit CBS’s Evil, the Good One/Bad One entrant that has burrowed into our brains this year. Then, continuing down the CBS All Access rabbit hole, we talk about the first episode of Picard and how it will and won’t please fans of The Next Generation.
SHOW NOTES:
THIS WEEK, we have some special treats for you!
First, as our improbably long bumper will inform you, we have a live show in Ohio coming up on Thursday, February 20th! Andrew, Kathryn, Margaret, and Andrew's other podcasting family Craig Getting (with whom he makes the exceptionally popular book podcast for teens, Overdue) are going back to the college that made us (summoned, perhaps, by a calling bell*) to debate the all-important question: which is better, TV or books? The show will start at 7:00 PM and end at 8:30 PM and you can find all further information right here: bit.ly/booksortv
Now with THAT out of the way, our second surprise! Andrew is only to be found in the first 6 minutes of today's episode, after which he is replaced by our beloved pal Christina Tucker of The Unfriendly Black Hotties, Pop Culture Happy Hour, and Autostraddle to discuss her deranged darling, The Morning Show. Is it good? Why does it think UBA sounds like a real TV network? Why is Christina so obsessed with Jen Aniston??? How would Christina rank all of Jen's breakdowns in this first season? Tune in and find out!
*(Andrew is in this video, 5 points to Gryffindor if you can spot him)
This week, the first order of business is a rundown of shows ending in 2020, and a plea to any listener who actually knows what's happening on Supernatural to please tell us about it. (Very briefly).
Then, inspired by shows like Watchmen, Succession and with a gimlet eye cast toward The Witcher, we talk about weekly release schedules in the time of the Netflix binge. Weekly releases: we like them! And not just because we don't have time to binge shows on the weekends anymore!
Andrew’s baby started throwing up on him mere minutes before we were supposed to record so we present to you: Margaret and Kathryn’s BONNET WATCH. It’s about period shows where people wear bonnets. Certainly, this makes it easier to appreciate what Andrew adds to or subtracts from the podcast.
SHOW NOTES:
Sanditon: https://www.vulture.com/2020/01/sanditon-review-jane-austen-pbs-masterpiece.html
The Good Lord Bird: https://www.sho.com/the-good-lord-bird
Bridgerton: https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/bridgerton-shonda-rhimes-netflix/
Fun facts about John Brown: https://npg.si.edu/learn/classroom-resource/john-brown-1800-1859
This week, we bring our discussion of Lodge 49's first season to a close, talking over episodes 7, 8, 9 and the complete and utter collapse of capitalist structures they represent. In the process we also touch upon: Bruce Campbell's most famous film role (his cameo at the beginning of the movie Congo, of course), the two types of people you find in corporate training seminars, the questionable efficacy of suicide threats as a debt reduction strategy, and the undeniable elan of flinging a silicone boob push-up at your former manager. We hope you've enjoyed hanging out with Ernie and Dud as much as we have.
A first for the ol' ATV crew this week! We chat briefly about Dickinson, which is far away the weirdest, funniest, strangest, best thing you can watch on Apple TV+. And then we're joined by its creator Alena Smith, a TV veteran who talked to us about the show's juxtaposition of period setting with modern vernacular, the experience of making a show for Apple, and about the big Dickinson-Cats crossover happening in Season 2. (Kidding! Or are we??)
Happy 2020, everyone! We're taking a week off, but just in case your resolution involved listening to more of us, we've dug up a classic episode from our archive! In episode 90, our first listener Q&A, we A some of your most pressing Qs (from 2017). Most of these answers are probably still applicable! Most of them.
It’s a Boxing Day miracle! As we do every year, we revisit the kingdom of Aldovia (now with much more about its history and geography revealed) to spend time fixing the simple and improbably Christmas-oriented problems of its royal family. This year, Aldovia needs to ratify a treaty with a neighboring fictional kingdom to avert war, and Queen Amber gives birth to a bouncing baby four-month-old.
SHOW NOTES:
Christmas Prince 3: The Royal Baby on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81029841
Our first Christmas Prince episode: https://atvpodcast.com/post/168783737692/episode-121-a-christmas-prince
And our second: https://atvpodcast.com/post/181075876090/episode-171-a-christmas-prince-2-the-royal