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- [00:00]
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- [00:21]
Glenn Weldon
Steve Carell is a hapless writing teacher at a small New England college in the new HBO comedy series Rooster. His daughter teaches there too, and she's the subject of campus gossip because her husband, also a teacher, just dumped her for a student.
- [00:34]
Linda Holmes
The show's got a great cast, including Danielle Deadweiler and John C. McGinley, and one of its creators is Bill Lawrence of Scrubs, Shrinking and Ted Lasso. I'm Linda Holmes.
- [00:45]
Glenn Weldon
And I'm Glenn Weldon. And today we're talking about Rooster on Pop Culture Happy hour from npr.
- [00:53]
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- [01:17]
Glenn Weldon
more@applecard.com joining us today is Kristen Meinzer. She co hosts the nightly A Bedtime Podcast for Pop Culture lovers. Hey, Kristen. Welcome back.
- [01:26]
Kristen Meinzer
Hey Glenn. Hey Linda.
- [01:27]
Glenn Weldon
Great to have you. In Rooster, Steve Carell plays Greg, a writer of pulpy crime novels who gets pressured into teaching at the college where his daughter Katie teaches art history. She's played by Charlie Clive. She's just been dumped by her husband Archie, played by Phil Dunster. He's a narcissistic historian who's having an affair with a student named Sunny. She's played by Lawrence AI. Daniel Deadweiler is Dylan, another writing teacher with whom Greg has lots of chemistry. And John C. McGinley is the College president. The show's co created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarsis. I've already listed Lawrence's history, but you should know that Tarsis was the showrunner on Alex Inc. That show where Zach Braff was a podcaster. Remember that, Linda? We've seen the first six episodes out of ten. What'd you think of Rooster?
- [02:10]
Linda Holmes
Yeah, I really liked this. It's not as good as shrinking, but it reminds me a lot of shrinking. It is about a bunch of people, most of whom do very foolish things at times but are basically decent and are basically trying. You mentioned Matt Tarsis and made this sort of oblig dig at Alex Inc. But I Don't see Alex Inc. In this at all. What I see is shrinking. And I see the other. One of the other things that Matt Tarce has worked on in the past, which is my very beloved Sports Night. And there are people who get very impatient with shows where people are basically nice and basically trying. But it is my sweet spot. Shrinking is probably my favorite show right now as far as what I think it is trying not only to do as a comedy, but also kind of do in the world. I think I really welcomed this. I was afraid at first. Obviously, you put something on a college campus, you're gonna get like, the older. He's a novelist who's, like a writer in residence, so he's not a traditional college professor at all. But you get that, and you feel like, is this gonna be, like, humorless feminists who don't want you to say mankind? That is not what this is. Right. He does get himself in trouble a lot. But the show, to me, is very clear that those are his missteps. And it does not really villainize the students. It recognizes, I think, the generation gap and some of the different expectations without making the students bad or, you know, wrong to be challenging him on certain things. I appreciated that a lot. Basically. This really worked well for me. Like I said, I'm not going to say it's as good as shrinking, but that's an extremely high bar. I did enjoy it quite a lot, and I like Steve Carell in this mode, so.
- [03:48]
Glenn Weldon
All right, Kristin, what do you think?
- [03:49]
Kristen Meinzer
I agree with a lot of what Linda is saying here. It is like shrinking in a lot of ways. We have a dad, we have a daughter. We have both of them doing the best they can. Not many women get to be with
- [04:00]
Glenn Weldon
their father while they watch their husband
- [04:02]
Kristen Meinzer
make out with someone. Yeah, we're pretty lucky. They screw up a lot. In some ways, daughter is more evolved than dad. In other ways, dad is kind of a kid figuring stuff out. But I will disagree with Linda on one point where she is saying, this is a show about nice people. I'd say about half the show was about nice people. We have Steve Carell's character and his daughter's character. And we have Danielle Deadweiler, who is fantastic in this. Annie Momolo, who plays the assistant to the president of the college, I also think is a delight when she shows up on screen. I was so excited to see her in the show. They are just a delight. They are good people. But I would say everybody else on the show is not a good person, and they do Terrible things. And they're narcissistic and they're smug and they're flawed. Crystal, can you send me a student?
- [04:50]
Glenn Weldon
Fil?
- [04:51]
Kristen Meinzer
Gracie Shaw. She says she has adhd, but I think she's just lazy and a little dumb or she's really struggling. Let's all root for her. They suffer from that malady that a lot of people in academia suffer from, which is like all these kids, they love me and they want to be my best friend and they want to sleep with me, and I'm going to do all of the above. And I am not qualified for this job, but I am going to take great pride in not letting anyone else have this job. There's a lot of that in the show, too, which is as somebody who used to work in academia, I used to be an adjunct professor. I used to be an admin in more than one department in a university. I really enjoyed how the show depicted all of that nonsense, which just when I worked in it made me shake my fist at the sky constantly. But in how it's depicted on the show, it made me laugh and laugh and feel such cathartic joy.
- [05:42]
Glenn Weldon
Okay, well, I'm vibing with you, Kristen, but it came down very differently than you did because I really didn't like this. And I kept wondering why. I mean, I like this cast Daniel dead while there's on my tv, that doesn't happen enough. That's great. I even like the characters in isolation and sometimes when they get paired off, you know, I think they bounce off each other. Well, what I didn't like was the show. The. The sensibility of the show, the organizing principle, the approach the show is taking. Because I expected Linda, given the setting, that there would be some boomer academia is woke jokes. And there are a few where the students and faculty, as you mentioned, they correct Greg. And the message there is that these are tiny infractions that don't matter. Running gag is that he often gets called before the world's most toothless academic disciplinary panel for tiny misunderstandings. And I think if those jokes were better or fresher, but they just came to came at me as like the most basic lazy jokes that could have been made 40 years ago before we called it woke, back when we called it PC. And the show keeps devoting some energy to that. It sincerely believes that that's a comedy vein worth Mining in 2026. Meanwhile, and here's my issue, these characters have no professional boundaries whatsoever. They do six really stupid things an episode that would get a teacher in the wereworld so very, very fired. And they just. Here's the issue. They just skate by. And I'm coming at this because I taught writing at the high school level and the college level back in the day, back in the late Jurassic. And watching this show did not make me laugh. It gave me low key panic attacks. And in a later episode, Greg tries to encourage his daughter to, quote, unquote, connect with students the way he does. And at that moment, I had to get up off the couch and walk it off, because I get that it's a comedy, and I get that people make bad choices in comedy, but there is no accountability here. There are no consequences. It becomes, and I don't think it's doing this intentionally, it becomes kind of a satire of privilege. The idea here is to create a frictionless environment where the characters can be human and mess up and have foibles like you guys were talking about and have it be funny and heartwarming. But the notion that arson can happen and have people shrug it off, that a teacher can hook up with a student, and everybody's like, oh, that rascal. A thing happens involving a live Zoom interview that would ruin careers forever. But there's not even a toothless disciplinary pedal about it.
- [08:03]
Kristen Meinzer
I have to disagree with you, Glenn. I feel like academia is filled with stories of people getting away with murder for as long as academia has existed, including in this day and age, unfortunately. Yes, there are infractions that are called out now that didn't used to be called out, but a lot of this stuff is just part of this world. And the show, like I said, at least laughs at how horrible that is. And it does call out people for being narcissistic.
- [08:30]
Glenn Weldon
Sure. Why is this happening to me?
- [08:32]
Kristen Meinzer
Is that rhetorical, or do you want an actual answer? I can take it. I think it's because some people see you as a narcissistic with a punchable face. Case in point.
- [08:41]
Glenn Weldon
Do people see me that way?
- [08:42]
Kristen Meinzer
Some people do. Do you see me that way? No, not all the time. I don't think the show is saying, this is easy. This is a good thing. I don't think it's saying that. I just think it's showing how ridiculous this system of privilege is for a lot of the people who get to benefit from it.
- [08:58]
Glenn Weldon
I'll give you this much. Then the great Rory Scovell would come on as the cop, and I'd be like, I'd watch his show. No, don't do that. Don't tell me how to do my police work. I Don't tell you how to write your rooster books, do I? Okay, but I'll tell you what. If I did, I would have the guy do karate, maybe. Wouldn't that be fun? Why can't I be watching his show? Robbie Hoffman as Sonny's roommate. Same deal, more of them, less of literally everything else about this show.
- [09:22]
Linda Holmes
For me, I think one of the reasons why I saw this so differently than you did is that I felt like the Steve Carell character was presented as, you know, less like, oh, these are meaningless infractions. And he gets dragged in front of this disciplinary committee. It's more that, like, that is partly what accountability for him is, is that when he says something that is poorly thought out. Right. He's a novelist and a writer in residence. He's not accustomed to academia. He's not accustomed to these sort of systems. And so when he gets called in and he has this experience of them saying, basically, you can't do that, and he says, essentially, you're right. It was an accident, but you're right. And then the question becomes, is what you crave in that situation for that person, punishment, punishment, punishment?
- [10:11]
Glenn Weldon
Or.
- [10:11]
Linda Holmes
Or is it more meaningful to see that this is somebody who is trying not to make the same mistake twice? And one of the scenes that I thought was most important for me and for how I received the show was a moment where he's asking the students about their favorite writers. Somebody names a writer who it's clear he doesn't. Whose work he doesn't know. That is sort of embarrassing for him. He is embarrassed by that. There's no. Like, these kids with their woke. Whatever. And in a later episode, with zero kind of attention called to it. Zero. Like hanging a lamp on it, he has started reading a book by that writer. And I think, for me, they are signaling to you. It is his job to get better at all the stuff that he is getting told he's doing wrong. And I will say I probably was more prepared for some of the things. Things that are bothering especially Glenn, but perhaps bothering both of you because of shrinking. Because the way that shrinking started involved Jason Siegel also observing no professional boundaries whatsoever as a therapist. Right. He did a bunch of things where it's like, you can't ask a patient to move in with you. You can't, like, you know, you can't do any of this stuff. You can't go along with somebody who's getting in a physical. I mean, just a lot of stuff that, like, you can't do that. But for me, it all Turned out to be going somewhere interesting and good. We have not talked that much about the Danielle Deadweiler character. I think because it happened so early. I feel fine saying, they go out and have drinks together. They really like each other. They kind of hit it off. At that point. He's just a visiting writer. He's just doing a short visit and whatever. She sort of invites him to come in. They go back to her house and she says, do you want to come in? And for once in the freaking history of this kind of scene, when a man who is much older than a very beautiful, much younger woman has her saying, like, do you want to come in? He's like, do you know how old I am? He treats that like, what are you talking about?
- [12:21]
Glenn Weldon
Not.
- [12:22]
Kristen Meinzer
No, do you know how old I am? It's your lucky day, Grandpa.
- [12:30]
Glenn Weldon
Oh. Oh, Dylan, you are gorgeous and funny and so, so smart that I feel even dumber than usual.
- [12:41]
Linda Holmes
The fact that they seemed to recognize that the logical response from him is to find that something that he questions, because why would that be the case? Rather than the sort of, well, everybody obviously wants to sleep with me. It's also not true that everyone wants to sleep with him. Right. You know, he has this sort of semi flirtation with her and he has somebody else who he meets. Right. But it is not a thing where, like every single person who he bumps into and every student and all those people are like, oh, you're so dreamy. Like, they don't. I don't know, I felt that what it was doing was a little bit more subtle than. He does whatever he wants and nothing. There's never any accountability.
- [13:25]
Kristen Meinzer
Yeah. I feel like the people who don't get accountability are the characters I can't stand on the show. Although I enjoy the people, I can't stand in my anger at them. Steve Carell's son in law who cheated on his daughter, he's insufferable and terrible, and yet he's a good character for the show. And Steve Carell's bosses, they're terrible people, But I enjoy watching them on the show. Steve Carell's ex wife, who's terrible and yet a delight when she's on screen, she's so fun. But I would say that I agree with Linda in that Steve Carell's character, actually, even when he's screwing up badly, we can see he's trying to do the right thing. Whereas the other characters, you know, the villains of the show, I don't ever see them actually trying to do the right thing in A convincing way. Almost every time they do the right thing, it seems more self serving than trying to do what's right.
- [14:15]
Glenn Weldon
Yeah, I guess I don't really have a sense of who Greg is. And this is main character syndrome, right? Because I mean he loves his daughter, he writes pulpy books, the writing advice he gives happens to be really crappy. Is that a character? I think if you feel any goodwill towards him it's because it's drafting off the fact that he's played by Steve Carell. And one of the t I've seen from I think the Hollywood Reporter maybe is that Greg wants to be more like the character he writes about, Rooster. And if that's a thread in this show, I did not pick up on that at all. Did you guys get any of that?
- [14:43]
Linda Holmes
It comes along eventually.
- [14:45]
Kristen Meinzer
I agree with you, Glenn. I think that this is a guy who wishes he was more like Rooster isn't really the point so much as he's the outsider. He's our entry point into this messed up world of privileged academia. He's the guy who never went to college. He's the guy who writes page turning pulp paperbacks. And he doesn't belong in this world in a lot of ways. And he's going to grow as a student of life, as a student of academia by being here in some ways actually by hanging with the students and being part of their world. And so even though he's there to save his daughter, in some ways he's the one who's the student who's going
- [15:24]
Linda Holmes
to grow the thing that makes him most like that. And this is where maybe I would disagree that any goodwill toward him comes from it being Steve Carell. I think there's also goodwill generated by the fact that he is fiercely, fiercely devoted to his daughter. Very much wants to stick up for her when he feels she's being, you know, unfairly treated. There are a couple of moments where he's just overwhelmed with anger on her behalf. And I think that does happen to parents sometimes. But I think at the same time he also, there are also some scenes, I think his early scenes with Danielle Deadweiler. I think he's funny, I think he's kind of self deprecating in certain situations and has some self awareness. And I think he sort of, as Kristen I think said very well, he doesn't really belong in this setting. But I think he is somebody who is willing to work toward being better at what he's being asked to do. Both as a parent, you know. Cause he's still really Smarting from his divorce from his daughter's mom. And that's still really kind of pushing down on him in some serious ways. So, I don't know. I guess I felt like there were other reasons to like him besides just, you know, just that it's Steve Carell.
- [16:40]
Kristen Meinzer
One thing I will add, though, just to be, you know, on the same page as Glen here, the way you felt, Glenn, like, what is the show about and how it's kind of unfocused. It is a little chaotic. I will own up to that. But I did feel the same way at the beginning of Shrinking as well. And I felt the same way with Bad Monkey. It was a little chaotic, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit, despite the chaos.
- [17:02]
Glenn Weldon
Yeah, Bad Monkey is another show that the showrunners worked on. What did you think of the John C. McGinley character? He plays the president of the college. I kind of thought that character was at least supposed to have a sharper edge, maybe a political edge to him or something, because right now he's just kind of stuck with. Is old, doesn't understand green initiatives. He's playing that guy. I thought that was. The character was supposed to have maybe a sharper point of view. Was that just me?
- [17:29]
Linda Holmes
I did not read him that way. I read his story as being partly about how difficult and ultimately they come around to having some more explicit conversations about this that he. I mean, certainly he engages in a lot of very silly behavior. Right? Very John C. McGinley kind of behavior. But I think eventually they come around to him. Him kind of. His point of view is that he is exhausted from having to say no and disappoint people in all the ways that an administrator of any large institution constantly has to. And so I think you get a lot of him kind of triangulating. I'm going to kind of try to make this deal and move this situation around in this way, because I have these things that I'm expected to do and take care of that are unpleasant and difficult. And he wants to do the Green initiative, but he also wants to do other things. And he also wants to kind of get Rooster to stay and teach because he thinks it's gonna be good for sort of the school. But at the same time, to me, I ultimately found him to be much more sympathetic than he was at the beginning. He ultimately gets involved in mentoring somebody, which is something he seems to take really seriously and really care about. I think I felt more of a character there, maybe, than you did.
- [18:48]
Glenn Weldon
I'm taking this too seriously. I think I just like it's just given me flashbacks to things. It's a world I'm glad I'm out of.
- [18:54]
Kristen Meinzer
Ditto.
- [18:55]
Glenn Weldon
Do think there would be repercussions in the real world, but this isn't the real world.
- [18:59]
Kristen Meinzer
I'm looking forward to seeing where it's gonna go. I haven't finished the show yet and I really, I'm cheering for several of the characters. I want all to go well with Steve Carell's character, his daughter Danielle Deadweiler and Amy Mamaolo. I just, I want everything to go well for them. The rest of them, eh?
- [19:15]
Glenn Weldon
Alright, well, tell us what you think about Rooster. Find us on facebook@facebook.com PCHH that brings us to the end of our show. Kristen Meinz or Linda Holmes, thanks for being here. You gave me some stuff to think about.
- [19:26]
Kristen Meinzer
Thank you, thank you.
- [19:27]
Glenn Weldon
And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free. So please go find out more@plus.NPR.org happyhour or visit those link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Hafsa Fathoma and Mike Katsuff and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. And hello, Come in provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all next time.
- [19:57]
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- [20:51]
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