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- [00:00]
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- [00:35]
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- [01:35]
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- [02:49]
Alan Sepinwall
I'm Alan Sepinwall. I'm a TV critic.
- [02:51]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I am Catherine Van Arundonk. I am also a TV critic.
- [02:54]
Alan Sepinwall
We are friends and neighbors and we love to talk about TV with each other.
- [02:57]
Catherine Van Arundonk
And so now we're gonna talk about it with you.
- [02:59]
Alan Sepinwall
That's right. This is the TV is Good podcast. And every week we're gonna look at one current show and one classic show as we try to answer an important question.
- [03:07]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Is the TV good for our current segment? This week we are gonna be talking about the new Hulu thriller Furious from New Girl creator Liz Meriwether.
- [03:16]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes. And because it's so weird that Liz Meriwether is now making crime thrillers, we decided for a classic segment, we're going to go back and talk about New Girl.
- [03:25]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes. Yes, New Girl. We're specifically going to be talking about the Season 2 episode Cooler, which I remembered, but I did not really remember. You know what I mean?
- [03:37]
Alan Sepinwall
Oh, it's. We're going to have some fun with that.
- [03:39]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah. Yes.
- [03:41]
Alan Sepinwall
First, before we do that, this episode is coming out. It is the first Monday of August. Welcome to August. Which means that it's also the day of our next Patreon episode in which we talk about the season two premiere of the Leftovers. Axis Mundi. Incredible episode of tv. Totally normal conversation. Every Patreon episode so far has been very normal, very chill, very low key, so relaxed.
- [04:05]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I didn't have a total blackout. And then talk about a garbage disposal scene. Like 10 second garbage disposal scene for like four minutes.
- [04:14]
Alan Sepinwall
It was. I don't know that four minutes. That might be a little. A low total.
- [04:18]
Grow Therapy and Aura Ad Voice
Sure.
- [04:19]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Look, look. That garbage disposal moment is wild. It's so good. It's so good.
- [04:24]
Alan Sepinwall
Save it. Save it for the Patreon subscribers. If you do want to subscribe to the patreon, that's@patreon.com tvisgoodpod we are. Because we've now dropped our latest episode. We're posting a poll. It may be up by the time you're hearing this. Maybe later in the day where we're going to ask for people to choose the subject of our September episode because the September episode will be coming out on Labor Day. What do we think we should do, Katherine?
- [04:46]
Catherine Van Arundonk
We are going to be talking about something that is happening inside a workplace. We haven't exactly figured out what of those episodes we are going to put up for you to consider and vote upon. But the kinds of things that we are thinking about are The Wire, Season 2, although technically I think the Wire Season 4 could also be related to. There's some.
- [05:08]
Alan Sepinwall
There's some teachers union stuff in there that's less exciting.
- [05:11]
Catherine Van Arundonk
That's less exciting. Um, we are thinking about shows like Party down and potentially our beloved Halt and Catch Fire. Not to like put my thumb on the scale or anything, just mentioning that that might be something we might consider talking about.
- [05:24]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah. So we're again, as always, we're recording way in advance. So by the time you're hearing this, there will actually be a poll set and either published right now or later today. But we hope you will check that out. Katherine, you wanted to talk about gilmore girls for 60 seconds. I'm taking my phone out. You're gonna have to talk like a goddamn Amy Sherman Palladino character in order to do this. Are you ready? I'm starting it.
- [05:48]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah, go. Okay. I have been watching Gilmore girls with my 12 year old daughter and it has been really fun to revisit, but it has also been a really wild experience in remembering one of the most obvious things about that show, which is that they speak very, very densely and the scripts were like a billion pages long. And this is of course the thing that you say about this show if you're going to talk about it. So it's not particularly interesting observation. However, the thing that I realized as I was watching it this time is that there's also no external plot. Plot point that happens is something that happens as the result of a conversation. Like there are almost no events that people then have to react to. Every major thing that happens is because somebody said something to somebody else and then that person had a feeling about it. And I love that kind of television. And why is there not more of that television happening? And Alan was like, it's the lowest stakes TV of all time. And I was like, no, it's the highest stakes TV of all time. Because this is a much more interesting way of experiencing how people interact with each other. And yes, a lot of the references are dated. And I've been watching my 12 year old be like, what the hell is Blue Man Group? And I'm excited about that. See, I'm done.
- [06:49]
Alan Sepinwall
You did it. Nicely done. Yeah. I suspect at some point in the life of this podcast, we'll be going on at greater length about Gilmore Girls. So that was just a taste. Bravo.
- [06:59]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Thank you. Thank you. Okay, yeah, let's talk about this Hulu series. It is Hulu, not fx. Do I really understand when something is one thing and the other? No, I don't. I really don't. But in this case it's just Hulu. And it is a new TV series from Liz Merriweather we mentioned, best known as the creator of New Girl, but she has also made a specifically limited series since then, including the Dropout, which is the Theranos limited series. Starting Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes. Really fantastic. I think the best take on that material, although there are a billion different biographies and other docu series and things about that story, that's the one to watch, I think, if you're gonna. If you're interested in the Elizabeth Holmes situation. Merryweather also created more recently Dying for Sex, which is a limited series starring Michelle Williams as a woman who has cancer. And the discovery of her terminal diagnosis spurs her into considering sexuality and sort of discovering herself before the end of her life. This new Hulu series is an interesting turn for Meriwether because it feels, it is like it's so unlike the kinds of things that she has made in the past. And also it's so like television. Like it's such a bog standard. Like, oh, it's a cop drama. What is it about the cop drama? Well, there's one charismatic interest, interesting damaged detective, and there's a interesting serial killer with something strange going on. What do you mean? Will their lives intersect in unexpected ways? And, and so I think one of the the things that we want to talk about is how this is and does all of the things that you expect from that genre, but still has these flashes of Merryweatherness and an attempt to define exactly what that is. It stars Emmy Ro, who plays Alice Black. She's a former cop turned FBI agent. Why did she become an FBI? An FBI agent.
- [09:16]
Grow Therapy and Aura Ad Voice
Guess what?
- [09:17]
Catherine Van Arundonk
There's some trauma and she begins investigating a string of murders which she thinks are all connected. And everyone else thinks she's crazy. Who is right? Who can say? It also stars Scoot McNary as her friend who is still a cop, not an FBI agent. And Lola Pettigrew, who plays the charismatic serial killer who you see from the beginning as a killer. So it's not really a question about who she is. And Quincy Tyler Bernstein, who plays the FBI agent who's sort of mentoring slash partnering with Emmy Rossum. And Jake Lacy. He is a boyfriend of some kind. What flavor of boyfriend is he? Who can say? Based on any past Jake Lacey roles,
- [10:03]
Alan Sepinwall
we got to do like at least 10 minutes on the whole Jake Lacey project.
- [10:07]
Catherine Van Arundonk
The whole Jake Lacy project. A fascinating, a fascinating project. So I mean, those are kind of my introductory comments about Furious. The thing that I will say is I, I had already heard from my colleague Roxanna Hadati, that she was really into this show. And so I came into it with an, an expectation that it was going to do more things than it said on the, on the outside, on the box and, and was. And that that expectation was met. But I do think it's pretty easy. And I think you had this experience, Alan, where you like, watch the first episode and you're like, okay, it's a cop drama, like, what, what's going on here? And then tap out. So we're going to talk about, about that a little more. All right, Is that, did I miss anything? How do you feel about that?
- [10:53]
Alan Sepinwall
No, I mean, the only, the only thing you missed is where we should start anyway, which is this is a remake or an adaptation, whatever you want to call it, of a 1980s movie thriller called Black Widow, which starred Deborah Winger as the FBI agent and Teresa Russell as the femme fatale. And the, the differences in the movie, she is marrying wealthy men, killing them, taking their money, changing her identity. It's entirely about like making bucks and like having thrills. And that's it. Here it is a revenge plot. The Lola Pettigrew character has some darkness in her past. There's a lot about sexual trafficking and every one of the men she is going after were in some ways part of what happened to her. First of all, have you ever seen or had you ever even heard of this movie before you got to furious, literally? No, I feel like I might have seen it just because, you know, when you grow up in the 80s, there's like all these movies that play on HBO five times a day and so you see all sorts of things that you would otherwise never have had any interest in. And Theresa Russell was hot. So maybe I've seen it, but I, I have no memory of it other than like the trailer where Deborah Winger says the Black Widow, she mates and she kills. But I definitely remember that. Again, it's, it's about money and it's about thrills. So I don't know that like you could do an eight episode Hulu series where it's just she's, she's trying to earn cash here, so they've given her personal stakes in it and they're trying to deal with this larger sociological problem of sex trafficking. Did you think that worked?
- [12:24]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah, I mean, for me, like your description of that film, I recognize the relationship between those two stories. I understand that it is a source text, but this doesn't Feel to me like, oh no, I need to make an eight episode series. Here is the traumatic backstory that I will give her in order to fill out how this source text into a television show. For me, this feels like I am interested in telling a story about, about taking a cop narrative and then from the inside telling a story about corruption and misogyny and the way cops are both performing and implicated by all of the violence that is inherent in that culture. And it is a. An extremely feminist, rage filled and sort of attempting to peel back the damage that happens when you are full of rage kind of story. And so it does not to me seem like the kind of thing where they were. It's so. It's so obvious when a traumatic backstory has been stapled in to stretch out a thing. And that's not the like stapled in impulse here. It's the germ of the idea and it is more to. It feels more to me like this other text was like, look, we just started with a framework, but we already had these other ideas that we wanted to explore.
- [14:05]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah, I mean like the tragic backstory is the show. It's not like padding. It's all built around that. And. And she's going for that.
- [14:13]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes.
- [14:14]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah.
- [14:15]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I also don't know how about in the, in the original film, how the, the characters are written or what actually happens in it, but the thing that you discover pretty quickly about Emmy Rossum's character and. And Lola Pettigrew's character is that they share all of these similarities and both is who they are and how they do and do not relate to the people.
- [14:41]
Alan Sepinwall
Wait, wait, wait. Would you go so far as to say that they're not so different?
- [14:46]
Catherine Van Arundonk
They are not. They're not so different. But the, but the way that they tease out all of those ideas in this show is it's so, it's so funny because they're not so different. Is similar such an exhausting detective criminal trope. Right. Like you see it time immemorial. It is. You're like, what? That's crazy. They are using that idea in order to explore these systemic situation around both of them. And it's not that they're not so different as people. Like, they are probably very different as people. It's that a lot of very similar things have happened to them and how they then react to those circumstances, which I found to be a much more compelling version of that story than the like, they're both damaged dudes who just, you know, they don't like their Their mommies were mean to them, and. And now here they are smoking on street corners and just. They're breaking all the rules.
- [15:56]
Alan Sepinwall
Hey, hey, hey. Show some sympathy to the guys who had difficult mothers. Tony Soprano had a hard childhood.
- [16:05]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I know that he did. I know that he did. And I'm not here to denigrate anyone's, you know, experience of their hard childhoods, but I liked the execution of this because it is both very much like the genre that I know and often love, and it is a more comfortable watch for me as somebody who, like a lot of us, have become increasingly wary of and skeptical of and, in fact, actively frustrated by how much cops take up time on television.
- [16:41]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah, like you said, it took me a while with this one. The first few episodes I watched, I'm like, okay, I like Emmy Rossum. We'll talk about her. Because that's really a fascinating career. I liked Lola Pettigrew in the FX miniseries say Nothing. I think that's the only other thing I'd seen her in. I think there's a lot of, like, good, well cast, supporting people. We need to talk about that, too. But it did feel like, okay, if I've not seen this exact thing before, I've seen so many things like, 90% like this that I don't know that I want to necessarily be spending eight hours in this world going into the grimiest, most awful details of, you know, sex trafficking and sex crimes. There. There's a running bit in the show where Amy Rossum is trying to join this unit that deals with these kinds of things, which is run by Quincy Tyler Bernstein's character, Nora. And. And there's like a special locked room in the office where you can go in to watch videos and look at other super sensitive evidence. And, like, only agents within the unit have codes to go in there because they do not want anyone else to have access to this stuff. And Amy keeps trying to get her own code, and Nora keeps saying, why do you want this? Why would you want to look at this? What is. What the fuck is wrong with you that you would want to be assigned to this unit and look at this stuff? And there are parts of this show where I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with any of us who would actually want to watch eight hours of this? And obviously, it's within a heightened genre context. So you have, you know, teeny little Lola Pettigrew running around and, like, drugging and manipulating men who are vastly bigger than her. One of her targets is played by Rob Delaney. Who is bigger than I am.
- [18:23]
Catherine Van Arundonk
One thing about a Liz Merriweather show, she's gonna have somebody like Rob Delaney, ideally Rob Delaney himself, do some weird sex.
- [18:33]
Alan Sepinwall
Rob Delaney's so good in dying for sex, by the way. Dying for Sex. Awesome. Highly recommend. Also on Hulu. Yes, but so there's. I mean, so there's the exciting genre elements, but there was also the sense of, like, do I want to go down this path and explore this? And then because you wanted to talk about it for the podcast, I kept going. And it did grow on me. And I think around the fifth or the sixth episode, the story started going to places I wasn't necessarily seeing it going. And it's really interesting for a while. And we'll talk about the finale, but it wasn't quite what I expected, especially in the way that they start shifting the dynamics between Rossum and Pettigrew. But let's talk about Emmy Rossum, because she's interesting. She was an ingenue, beautiful. They put her in the Phantom of the Opera, sort of this disastrous, reviled Phantom of the Opera, and it seemed like it had killed her career. Dead, as so many beautiful ingenues before them had been put in the wrong project. And that was that. And then she went up on Shameless, the Showtime show. And it's like she's playing this character who has had to hold this dysfunctional family together. And it's often a goofy comedy, and you've got William H. Macy just being drunk and high and dicking fucking everybody over, and Jeremy Allen White getting into shirtless bare knuckle brawls and all sorts of other shenanigans. And then in the middle of this, there's Emmy Rossum, like, just being utterly miserable and anguished and upset and trying very, very hard to keep everybody else alive and safe. And it was this really raw and vulnerable performance that made me say, holy shit, who is this person? And then I realized she was the one from the terrible Phantom of the Opera. It was really. It was a nice turn and it was a really great performance. And I did not love Shameless, but I watched it mainly for her and for Jeremy Allen White. And when she left, I stuck around a little bit longer, but not much, because she was almost entirely my interest in that show. And since then, she's. She's tried to seek out interesting material. Not all of it worked. She did another Hulu thing that was about Angelique Evangeline, something like that. Like the woman who's famous for being on the billboards in Los Angeles. You know, she's tried transformational things. And when I heard that they were doing this, I was like, huh, Amy's playing the FBI. She's playing the Deborah Winger part and not the Teresa Russell part. Like, wouldn't being the femme fatale, the killer, be more of a challenge? And you're like, no, you watch this. And that's. This is the part because Alice is so fucked up. She has had to deal with so much crap. She is so self destructive in her own way. And it's a really, really good use of a lot of the things that Emmy can do.
- [21:15]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes. It is also one of those classic. She was known for being beautiful and now she is wearing what looks like no makeup. It is not no makeup, but it is certainly looks like no makeup. She has the least done hair. She is not dressed like a woman who is attempting to attract any kind of attention from anyone.
- [21:43]
Alan Sepinwall
Her character literally doesn't shower. This is sort of an important character point.
- [21:47]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes. And there is a classic take me seriously now trope for particularly women who are known to be, you know, the sort of transformational ugliness is a little bit of the pattern that can happen there. And yes, it is, and I don't want to say an easy move, but it is a familiar one. I think part of what works so well about this is that first of all, the show around her is quite, quite good. It is not just that there is this like, oh, what if she doesn't rely on being pretty anymore? But also when she is not relying on being pretty, like she is so great in this role that is often requires her to be quite still. She gets, as the title suggests, you know, really angry, really invested. But it is not a flashy performance. It's not like she's doing a lot of. There's not a ton of emotive close up work. And even when there is, she's not delivering this where you're sort of, oh my God, like, how does she pull off? It is a very straightforwardly open and deliberative kind of performance of this woman. And it is almost resentful of every time the camera is on her, which is appropriate for what this character is and how she is sort of presented in on screen. But I found it to be much more compelling than the typical like, what if, what if hot lady not hot for a, for a moment kind of role. Yeah, yeah.
- [23:46]
Alan Sepinwall
It's hard to be a hot lady who's not hot, much as it's hard to be a man with a difficult
- [23:50]
Catherine Van Arundonk
mother with a Difficult Mother. The, the. I mean, the show that I thought about a lot as I watched this was unbelievable. The Toni Collette Mary Weaver Netflix series also starring Caitlin Deavere Dever.
- [24:05]
Alan Sepinwall
I think it's Deaver. It's. You got Weaver and you got Deaver.
- [24:08]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah, sure. Which is a show I loved and has a similar sociopolitical perspective of the cop genre that it is operating inside. And also what happens when women are at the center of a cop genre story instead of your classic lone wolf detective. And in particular, what happens when there are. There are women who are sincerely invested in justice who then discover that the system that they are a part of is actively undermining any attempt to, you know, find something like justice. And that, to me is a really like it. That is a high compliment for me. I. I found unbelievable to be one of my like, favorite cop dramas of the last. I probably. How old is that show? A decade about.
- [25:04]
Alan Sepinwall
It was. It's. It's a little less than a decade because I reviewed it for Rolling Stone and I started there in 2018. That's. That's how I chart time is. What job was I in at the time?
- [25:13]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Sure. Yeah. And this show, to me, I think has a. Is a really similar, very thoroughly thought out understanding of like, who these people are, what genre. This is what we are trying to say about these people and this genre.
- [25:29]
Alan Sepinwall
And this time I loved unbelievable 2 just to prepare people, like, that's a very button down and realistic show. This is elevated genre. It's dealing with a lot of real issues and stuff. But you still have Lola Pettigrew running around in various wigs, doing various accents, you know, with her trusty hypodermic needle, which she can whip out at a moment's noticeable. You know, there's a lot. It's a lot larger than life and a lot more genre than the other one was. I think a lot of it's effective. I think the best parts of it are the parts you're talking about where it's dealing specifically with the nature of what Emmy has to deal with and what her boss has to deal with. And also what the Lola Pettigrew character's backstory is.
- [26:13]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes, yes.
- [26:14]
Alan Sepinwall
I think that's really potent. The plot, my interest in it kind of comes and goes. And the finale to me was a little underwhelming in part because it does this thing that you get with a lot of streaming series these days, which is we're adapting a movie. We've now told our version of the entire story of the movie. But what if there was another season?
- [26:34]
Catherine Van Arundonk
What if there was another season?
- [26:35]
Alan Sepinwall
What if there was another season and the setup for another season? On the one hand, the scene in which they're setting it up, Emmy Rossum is incredible. And on the other hand, I got to the end of it and I'm like, do I want to watch a season that's about that? I don't.
- [26:49]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I mean, I certainly would because I'm warmer on this show than you are. But also, I. I feel like the other show. It's so strange to have the two comparisons for this show be this. On the one hand, it's unbelievable. On the other hand, it's Deadlock, which is one of the most. The. The funniest, most like deliberately satirical strangers. Australia.
- [27:14]
Alan Sepinwall
Tell the people what Deadlock is.
- [27:15]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Deadlock is an Australian series. It's set in Tasmania about two cops. I mean, it is. It is your classic cop partnership, serial killer situation, but it is also. It's happening in what is essentially like a lesbian commune, colony, artist colony. And it is so funny and so dumb, but then also has to do perform that turn toward the end where you are like, this is so stupid. But I am also now actually caring very much about the mortal peril that these people are in, and I want to know who did the. The. This crime. And it has. Similarly, it is about women, female cops, sexual harassment and assault and misogyny. And there's a very funny but also quite dark sort of surprise about who the killer is and what that killer's motives are at the end. And for me, Furious kind of nestles in an interesting spot in between that super grounded, unbelievable on one side and this super heightened, very funny cop comedy thriller on the other, because it has all this Liz Merriweather stuff around the margins of it. And it is. I kept coming into this being like, how much of this is gonna feel like her previous work? And the place that you find it is, I think, in casting, which we can talk about more in a second, particularly of the minor characters. But also you just get these strange little bits of dialogue and people have these odd textures to them that are more considered more interesting, more unexpectedly funny. There's a lot of kind of funny cop dynamic stuff happening in the workplace. Issues then would be more than. It makes something like this feel like something I actually do want to keep coming back to rather than plotting darkness over and over.
- [29:29]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah. One of the other FBI agents, there's this scene where they're like, in an argument with the cops because law enforcement agencies are Always territorial and always beefing. And one of the cops is something really, really crude about something anatomical and a very little literal FBI agent says something along the lines of, I don't understand what you just said. Do you mean you have an extra joint in your taint?
- [29:51]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah.
- [29:52]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes.
- [29:53]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah. And a lot of the time they're like, anatomical and strange. One of the first times I noticed it is in the first episode. They are questioning a witness who is like an older teenage boy, maybe. Yeah. And he's there with his dad, and he has been flashed. And they're like, and what did you see? And he's like, I just saw her vulva. And they do an interesting. They're like, what? And he's like, actually, generally what we mean is vulva, not vagina. Vagina is a different part of the body. The vulva is what we see on the outside. And they're like, okay. And he's like. And so then the dad says, I think you should call your dad. And then the kid goes, I have two dads. It just is this, like, none of that really needs to be there. But, yes, you have this completely different sense of who all of these people are. And like, do we need any information? No, but I am relieved to have had that bizarre moment. Everyone becomes more of a person in those little scenes.
- [30:46]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes, I like that. And you mentioned the casting before, and I just recently saw the Odyssey, and one of the things that I liked about it is basically every single role is stunt cast. So Jon Bernthal shows up. You don't need to write a thing for Jon Bernthal about who Menelaus, the character he's playing is, because it's Jon Bernthal. He shows up. You know his deal. You know, it's every. Every single character in the small character in the movie is like that. And this is obviously not to that scale. You're not getting people as famous as the supporting cast of the Odyssey. But it's still like, Scoot McNary is the good guy who nobody respects.
- [31:22]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I've never seen that before, is so good, though. He is giving a plus. Scoot McNair. He is scooting his way all around this show. He has a super thick New Yorkie accent. He's just looking concerned and grizzled at every possible turn. I. Yes, I Love a scoot McNary.
- [31:44]
Alan Sepinwall
As. As we mentioned, if you have Rob Delaney into some kinky shit, you know, he can do that in his sleep. And so you. You're able to establish people right away. Jake Lacy.
- [31:55]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah.
- [31:55]
Alan Sepinwall
Here's the thing. Once upon a time, Jake Lacey was like being positioned as new Krasinski. They literally brought him in as a character in one of the later seasons of the Office. And he was framed as. This is what Jim was like when he first got here. And at a certain point in his career, he suddenly started being like, the guy who you think is going to be the sweetie and is, in fact, the most entitled, insufferable dick you have ever met.
- [32:25]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes.
- [32:26]
Alan Sepinwall
Why has this happened?
- [32:27]
Catherine Van Arundonk
It's because he's good at it and because he's figured out that there is something about his screen Persona where when he smiles, you're like, what a nice guy. Wait, I should cover my drink. Like, there is. He is just. He is very good at the twinkling exterior that you immediately buy when it turns out that he is not a particularly nice person. And, yes, it has become an overworn trope at this point when you discover that, in fact, Jake Lacey is. He's a baddie. But still, he showed up in this, and I was like, he's going to be the bad boyfriend, wasn't he? And he was the bad boyfriend. And I was like, yes, do it.
- [33:20]
Alan Sepinwall
Give the people what they want.
- [33:21]
Catherine Van Arundonk
That's right. That's right. There's also Quincy Tyler Bernstein, who plays Nora, as you mentioned, who's so good. And it's part of why I remembered and was thinking about Deadlock, because there's a. There's an element near the end where she starts wearing a bunch of Hawaiian shirts. And I was like, that's what this reminds me of.
- [33:38]
Alan Sepinwall
And she's singing karaoke. And it's. On the one hand, she's a tragic character because all of the stuff that she's had to, you know, deal with in the course of doing a career in sex crimes has completely broken her and make her. Made her an alcoholic. But it's also funny, like, they're able to find that sweet spot where a lot of what she's doing is really ridiculous, while always 100% connected to the fact that, like, her life has been destroyed and she can't really feel anything. And this is how she relates. She's so good. She's my favorite part of the show, I would say.
- [34:08]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I do also love Steve Way, who is incredible. He. I know from Rami, who plays Rami's best friend in the show. Rami, yes. He is a disabled actor who is in a wheelchair who also uses a variety of apparatuses to help him be in the world, inhabit the world. And he is disabled in this show and you don't fully understand his relationship to the Lola Pettigrew character. And then it just sort of shifts later. He's so funny.
- [34:49]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes.
- [34:49]
Catherine Van Arundonk
And also able to be in a relationship with that Lola Pettigrew character that feels markedly different and really important for how you understand who she is is. So that by the time you get to the stuff that you were talking about before in episodes five and six, you just have this different perspective of, of her and his, like, agency and how he relates to her. Fascinating, lovely storytelling. Incredible cast.
- [35:25]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah. I mean, it's all good. We haven't even mentioned, like, Hope Davis is in this, which means, of course, that Campbell Scott is also in it because I think it's legally required at this point. If you hire one, you have to hire the other. And they're playing the exact roles you would expect each of them to play.
- [35:37]
Catherine Van Arundonk
100%.
- [35:38]
Alan Sepinwall
Okay, before. Before we go, we haven't really talked about Lola Pettigrew, who, again, I only knew from. From say Nothing, where she was very good, even though I had mixed feelings about the show as a whole. How did you feel about her here?
- [35:48]
Grow Therapy and Aura Ad Voice
I thought she was.
- [35:48]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I thought she's good. She has to pull off a. Almost like a sexy, like the serial killer thing, but also the, the spy thing, the changing identities and finding new ways to get into different scenarios as she's running away from evasion. Different hair colors and, you know, looks. You get the idea. Different Personas. And I think she's quite, quite good at doing all of those things. I, I was always more drawn to Emmy Rossum in all of those scenes than I was to Pettig. But it certainly didn't detract from my appreciation of the show. I just found that Emmy Rossum and Quincy Tyler Bernstein and Scoot McNairy were always the people who I wanted to be spending time with.
- [36:43]
Alan Sepinwall
And it sounds like if they're able to do another season, you are there front and center for it.
- [36:48]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah, that does seem like the place that they would be going, which I hope that they do. I saw some interesting pre release coverage of this show where they were like, it's Meriwether's first continuing series since New Girl. And I was like, that's bizarre. But then I thought about stuff like Dropout and Dropout and Dying for Sex and which are like, you know, limited series. And this feels like it really kind of should or maybe even could or should have been a limited series. But I, I would like it to come back. I like, I like Liz Merriweather on my tv, which is a point that we will be returning to very shortly.
- [37:33]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes, just in a moment. I like Liz Merriweather on my tv. I like a lot of these performances, so I'm not opposed to seeing what they do with it. I just will say that in the moment I was very skeptical that okay, this is what we want to do now.
- [37:54]
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- [39:34]
Alan Sepinwall
If you were to have told either of us in the fall of 2011 that 15 years later Liz Merriweather would be making prestige streaming dramas about criminals and people dying and such, we would be confused. Some of that confusion would have been the fact that it's 2011 and there were no original streaming dramas at the time, and we would have said, wait, what? What's that? Mostly, though, is because Meriwether in that moment was best known as the creator of the new Fox hit New Girl, which was a solo showcase for the adorkable Zooey Deschanel. That was a word you heard all the marketing.
- [40:05]
Catherine Van Arundonk
That's a word that existed It's a word that existed.
- [40:08]
Alan Sepinwall
There was. There was a TCA panel for the show in the summer of 2011 where I believe the question was asked of Zooey Deschanel, Zoe, when did you know you were adorkable?
- [40:20]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Our crimes, our crimes against humanity will never be prosecuted.
- [40:24]
Alan Sepinwall
It's a variation on the the old TCA trope of when did you know you were funny.
- [40:30]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I'm not gonna guess who asked that question, but I have thoughts.
- [40:33]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes, there's one person who very often asked all the variations of that. So New Girl begins as a solo showcase for Deschanel, who plays a sweet, goofy, overly emotional young woman who is just out of a long term relationship and winds up moving into a downtown LA loft with three bros. Played in the pilot by Max Greenfield, Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. Damon Wayans was also doing Happy Endings at the time, so he went off to do that. They bring in Lamorne Morris as a different roommate. Eventually, later on after the episode we're talking about, Damon Wayans comes back and for a while there are five people somehow living in this loft. What episode did we pick to specifically focus on?
- [41:09]
Catherine Van Arundonk
We picked the season two episode Cooler because it is often on the top of the list of like best New Girl episodes. It has a lot of the things, really all of the things that are what New Girl did the best. I also need to take this opportunity to just be very clear about my relationship with New Girl, which is that I was not fully on staff at Vulture at this point. I had been freelancing and was doing a lot of recaps for Vulture. I was recapping Jane the Virgin and at some point, I think quite early in my, in my Vulture employment, I was asked if I could start recapping New Girl. This was much later in its run where stuff got a little bit less, you know, did not have quite as much juice as it did before. And I was recapping, to be clear, Jane the Virgin and Transparent. So it was, it was a very different mode of the kinds of stuff that I was like thinking about and working on. And I showed up, I rolled up to these New Girl recaps, not particularly enjoying my job in that, in that context.
- [42:31]
Alan Sepinwall
It's, it's tough when you're recapping a show that is not that great anymore.
- [42:37]
Catherine Van Arundonk
It is also not a show that lends itself to recapping.
- [42:42]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes, no, sitcom recaps are much. It devolves into this was funny, this wasn't. And that's not the most satisfying thing to Write or frankly to read.
- [42:51]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Which is why I don't really do
- [42:52]
Alan Sepinwall
a lot of it anymore.
- [42:53]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I have not gone back and read those New Girl recaps. I do not particularly want to, and I don't really think any of you should either. It is not the best way to engage with a show like this.
- [43:03]
Alan Sepinwall
Catherine, you want to encourage people to click on your stories, get them clicked.
- [43:08]
Catherine Van Arundonk
No. And like, I. I remember being really pretty consistently annoyed by what was happening on the show at that point and the sense that you had, like, come to a thing after. After the peak of its appeal. But also, like, that's not really how sitcoms should be. Like, engaged with they. They. Their best of them is in a group for the most part. Like, you don't piece apart except for these, like, brief moments where you're like, holy, that is an incredible episode, which this one is. The experience of. It is like the long term hanging out with your friends, right?
- [43:44]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes. And the 2010s was like the decade for the hangout comedy because you had New Girl, you had happy endings. There was, you know, to a degree, you had Broad City, although that was a little bit more plot driven. But there was a whole bunch of just here's a bunch of appealing goofballs. And you don't need a story about them. It's just fun to watch them interact.
- [44:04]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I had been quite frustrated by the adorkability stuff at the very beginning of this show as well. Rubbed me quite the wrong way. So what I want to say is I have come around on a lot of New Girl, but. But also as a kind of legacy situation, not necessarily on a point by point. Every single episode is a. Is a sparkling diamond. It's a sitcom. It's not how it. That's not how these things work.
- [44:30]
Alan Sepinwall
All right, so there's. We need to start there with the adorkability thing, because if. If you knew Liz Merriweather, especially at that moment in time, she was Jessica Day. Like, she wore the. The big glasses. She was sort of charmingly awkward in the same way that Jess was. I spent some time in the New Girl writers room a few times, and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later, but like, she was really pouring a lot of herself into the character that Zoe was playing. And the fascinating thing is if you go back and you watch that pilot, it is like, it is all a Zooey Deschanel vehicle. There are these other people in it. I remember when I was doing the Firewall and Iceberg podcast with Dan Feinberg Our opinion was both, like, we cannot tell what any of the guys deal is, other than the fact that Damon Wayans Jr. Yells a lot. So they had no personalities. And by the time we get to Cooler, which is only midway through season two, it has not only become a full ensemble, but an argument could be made that, like, Jess is now the straight woman.
- [45:25]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes.
- [45:25]
Alan Sepinwall
And, like, almost all of the comedy is being generated by Johnson Greenfield and Lamorne Morris.
- [45:30]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Oh, it's so like this episode. Going back and watching it, I was like, you know, New Girl. It's a great. It's a good show. Like, particularly early in those seasons, there's a lot. And then watching this was like, we didn't know how good we had it.
- [45:46]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes. So Cooler. What's happening is Schmidt has recently broken up with Cece, is struggling to get over that Nick is just the most glorious weirdo of all time. He has just. A neighbor's package has been delivered to their loft containing a raincoat that he really, really loves, even though everyone keeps pointing out that it is clearly a woman's coat.
- [46:10]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Which, by the way, watching then you're wearing a woman's shirt. Joke on the hawk. I was like, this feels so hacky and boring. Why? And then I was like, what? All right, because they did. They were doing this joke so much better decade ago on New Girl. Yeah.
- [46:24]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes. All right, so this is going on, and basically Nick and Schmidt really need to get laid and they want to go out for the night. And they specifically tell Jess, do not come. You're the cooler. Anytime we're out anywhere trying to score with women, you mess it up. And we get a little. We get a few flashes to how that happens, which are funny. And so they insist on leaving her at home. They go out. We discover that Winston has great difficulty talking to women and just bombs over and over again. And then a seemingly engaged woman played by Brenda Song, takes pity on him and just starts chatting him up and trying to give him advice. And meanwhile, Nick and Schmidt are competing to win the affections of a gorgeous woman played by supermodel Brooklyn Decker, who, it turns out, is really attracted to, like, losers. And so it's.
- [47:10]
Catherine Van Arundonk
They're trying to out specific flavor. Like, you can't just be. It's not that they want. She is attracted to, like, guys who have no jobs and are. And are gross. It's that she's attracted to depressing tragedy.
- [47:24]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes. All right, so the. The two guys are trying to out tragic each other. Eventually, they all come back to the loft and Jess is now determined, like, Nick, I'm gonna get you laid, trust me. And the way in which she's going to get him laid is she brings back a recurring element on the show that was introduced in the previous season in an episode with either Dermot Mulroney or Dylan McDermott. Nobody knows for sure, but science cannot.
- [47:49]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Science is no way.
- [47:50]
Alan Sepinwall
It is a drinking game that the Loft mates have invented called True American. The rules of it are never clear. I asked the writers on the show multiple times, do you have a list of the rules of True American? And their answers were always very ambiguous. I choose to believe that they didn't, but it would be kind of fun if they did. And so they're playing True American and a bunch of things happen and eventually Nick and Jess have to do seven minutes in heaven. And suddenly you start to realize, oh, is there something between them? Have you ever on before seen in a sitcom 2 People who spend a lot of time together and aren't sure if they're attracted or not and aren't sure if they're a couple or not? Is that, is that something you've encountered?
- [48:29]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Kathy FROM this is a brand new idea to me. I have never in my life. No. I mean the idea this is also feels like a remnant of an earlier time. But the idea of the will they won't they for quite a while on TV was this surprising point of tension because it, it was like here's this thing that when it works is the. Is the most powerful substance on earth but can also be ruined so easily. And there are all of these tales of like the shows that do it well and the shows that, that have like missed their ability to negotiate this super important substance. And it is largely a remnant of like network plotting that doesn't happen anymore because it requires like the, the, the fraught thing about the will they won't they is that you have a 22 episode season to fill. And so you are trying to like seed these things without pointing to them too early or too late. And then what happens after they get together? And then you still have 22 more episodes in another. Like these, these are. It's sort of like when you look back, you know, it's like reading about the Corn laws and they were like, how did they deal with the, with the industri was coming to them? Like this is. This is not the economy that we live in anymore. But it's so quaint to return to when it works.
- [50:05]
Alan Sepinwall
It's really good. The problem is it often it gets like codified you know, the Paul Sims, you know, longtime showrunner of what we do in the Shadows, who I will always still think of as the creator of the the 90s NBC sitcom news Radio. And I would love to talk about News Radio at some point.
- [50:21]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes.
- [50:21]
Alan Sepinwall
During the run.
- [50:22]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Legend.
- [50:24]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes. So newsradio came on on NBC a year or so after Friends. And by the time it came on, NBC executives had decided that because of the success of Friends, every sitcom now had to have a will there, won't they? It was not an option. Figure one out. I do not care if one of the halves of this couple is very blatantly queer coded. They have to get together. And there were several of those. Paul Sims decides, you know, wouldn't it be funny to upend expectations? And in the pilot we've introduced the idea that Dave Foley and Maura Tierney might have chemistry. And just in the very second episode, they have already slept together and now they're dealing with what happens after that. And the executives at NBC told him flat out, do not do this. We do not want you to do this. He did it anyway. And as a result, News Radio is, I believe, the only sitcom of that period to never once air on Thursday night. Because they're like, they were done with him after the second episode of the show because he did not go along with the formula. Yeah, yeah, but obviously it did work on New Girl, especially because there's a moment at the end of Cooler. Very special. We'll get to it. I mean, can we talk about Jake Johnson, please? Can we talk about.
- [51:39]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes.
- [51:40]
Alan Sepinwall
What a glorious weirdo.
- [51:42]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Well, I think, I think so. Yes. There is something incredibly special about Jake Johnson. We talked about him on the very first episode of this podcast because we were talking about Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed where he plays the sort of ex husband. But looking back at this, I was realizing that part of what makes this show work so well is that you have, you have Zooey Deschanel, you have these three guys. All of them are insane idiots. They do not bear any resemblance to any human being you have ever met in your life. They have. There are buckets of quirks just sort of walking around somehow in a self propelled fashion. And yet they are all. And I have seen each of these three men be astonishingly hot in other contexts, texts and full of charisma. And like you, suddenly incredible. Just sexual chemistry with people. All three of them. Just this morning I was going to say I was algorithmically served in front of my face. A trailer for the new. There's a upcoming, like teen drama Your mom has cancer. I'm pretty sure Sonny. By starring Sunny Sandler, Adam Sandler's daughter. And the dad is played by Max Greenfield. The wife is Melanie Lynskey. The dad is Max Greenfield. He looks the best I have ever seen a Max Green. Like, I was like, oh, my God, what is happening in the. In the Max Greenfield space? I have to do some revisiting. And there is something about how well that this show, from a casting perspective, was able to find these three guys and be like, they can pull off all of the weird comedy beats and they can do these. Like, they are dating. But we are laughing at how bad they are at dating all of them. And they are able when necessary, and particularly Jake Johnson, able when necessary, to flip this switch and be like, what? Has this been under my nose the whole time? Which is the juice of the will they, won't they, right? Like, has this been here this whole time and I just haven't been seeing it? And that, I think, is so much of the magic of this show is their ability to be these ridiculous, heightened characters. And then just when you need it, they're like a person who you have all of these feelings about. Real feelings about.
- [54:20]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah. And so there. There's the scene where Jess and Nick are stuck behind the door and they're not allowed to come out until they've had a real kiss. And eventually, even Jess's boyfriend shows up, played by David Walton, who was on, like, six other 2000 and tens hangout sitcoms at various points. And even he is cheering them on because he thinks it would be hilarious for them to do it.
- [54:39]
Catherine Van Arundonk
The bit is that it is so stupid that these two people would kiss because there's so nothing in between them. And so everyone's just yelling, kiss, kiss, kiss.
- [54:47]
Alan Sepinwall
On the other side. Yeah. And literally Nick, like, climbs out a window to avoid having to do it.
- [54:52]
Catherine Van Arundonk
This is also such good writing. I was looking at this whole sequence again because they start out being goof goofballs, right? They. If the first thing they do is just send a picture where they are kissing, like, their tongues are touching each other's faces. But it is so silly. And, like, they're making weird faces. And everyone's like, that's not real. Do a real one. And she keeps being like, just kiss me. Just do it. Just do it. And he's keeping. Keeps trying to start it. And then he keeps stumbling over himself again and again and again. It's like, I can't. No, it shouldn't. There's something and he can't articulate what the problem is. And then he will sort of start to come in, and she's like, no, that's weird. Don't do it like that. And he. And every time she. But it's her telling him, like, just do this and get it over with. What is the problem? And he is the one who keeps saying, this is. I can't. There's something. Why don't you. No, it shouldn't. And the longer it goes on, the more you're like, what is this problem? Why can't he make it happen? And then, yes, does literally jump out the window rather than do it.
- [56:00]
Alan Sepinwall
And then we come to the very end of the episode. It's later that evening. Everyone's gone to bed. Jess comes out to get something to go to the bathroom, and Nick is wandering the halls as well. And he pulls her aside. And I forget exactly what he says, but it's more along the line, I think he. Does he even say anything, or does he only say it after?
- [56:18]
Catherine Van Arundonk
The loft setup is. Is one of the things that works so well about this show because they have this large hangout space in the middle, but then there are all these bedrooms that are kind of off the side, often directly apart, across from each other with the doors. And so she is in her bedroom with David Walden, the boyfriend. He's in his bedroom with the other. And they sort of come out. They. They resolve the thing with the. With the raincoat, because a woman comes to claim the raincoat, and he's like, oh, I was a different guy with the raincoat. I had more confidence. And she's like, you know, whatever. And she goes to go back to her bedroom where her boyfriend, half naked, is there already. And Jake Johnson just goes, I just think it should have been like this. And then grabs her. And they have the most insane sitcom kiss I think has ever been filmed. I had seen this many times. Like, I. I remembered generally the arc of this and how it goes, but watching it again, I was like, this is like a Pulitzer Prize level.
- [57:21]
Alan Sepinwall
Oh, my God.
- [57:23]
Catherine Van Arundonk
It's. It's so like. And it doesn't have that sense of them looking like they're eating each other, which sometimes can happen when the kisses get really aggressive. It is so emotional and so overwhelming. And then it's done. And then the camera just stays. And then he leaves. He turns around and goes back into his room, and the camera just stays on her face while she attempts to process what has just happened.
- [57:47]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah, no, it's great. And, you know, I And other people have, you know, often made the observation that, like, you could have Jake Johnson, Oscar Isaac, and skinny David Krumholtz playing brothers, and it would be completely plausible. And obviously Oscar Isaac would be the. The hot and charismatic brother. Jake Johnson, in this moment would give him a goddamn run for his money.
- [58:05]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah, it's. It is partly. It is impressive just as a physical performance and the, like, chemistry that they are able to do, but it is the Jake Johnson thing where his goofball ness hides this other element of him. It is like a Clark Kent Superman thing, but without any glasses bit happening. He just suddenly is Superman and. And then he puts it back away and you're like, where did it go? Oh, my God. And, yeah, it's.
- [58:40]
Grow Therapy and Aura Ad Voice
It's.
- [58:41]
Catherine Van Arundonk
It's incredible.
- [58:42]
Alan Sepinwall
It's really good. And there's just so many. Everybody gets a good bit of business in here. Even Cece, who is also mostly a straight woman character. There's this good subplot where she is. She is now trying. After failing with Schmidt, she's decided, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna get myself an Indian boyfriend, that she's at a movie with a guy. And, like, it just. It keeps going poorly through no fault of either of theirs. There's just a lot of misunderstandings. Everyone's good. Winston being unable to talk to women, like, again, you want to talk about, like, the dumbest, most tired sitcom trope. I mean, that was literally all that Raj on Big Bang Theory had going years was he literally went mute when in the presence of women, unless he was drunk. And at a certain point, even the writers on Big Bang Theory were like, okay, this is too much. They couldn't cure Kripke's speech impediment, which we complained about last time, but they could at least cure that. But the way in which they write it for Lamorne Morrison, especially, just the way he plays it, like, the way he's like, like words are coming out half formed, barely audible. It is so, so funny.
- [59:47]
Catherine Van Arundonk
And. And Brenda's song is so good as the sort of woman who is watching him flail all over himself. You, uh. Like, aside from how absurd it is that any of them, like, they bring all of these quite hot people to the apartment and they're like, now we are going to play the most in, like, this game that is Calvin Ball, but with American history, and they're just screaming Smoot Hawley. And then, you know, Dwight Eisenhower. And then you have to run around in three circles naked. Like, it just is. It's Very, very funny, but bit for a game. I am charmed by it every time. But the fun part of this one is that watching all of these outsiders who have no idea going on, what's going on, be as baffled by it as you, the viewer, are. And it is always funny to me when you have these bizarre friend group dynamics, and our delight in them is feeling like we are a part of and inside the joke of all these bizarre friend group dynamics. And then you get outsiders to come in and watch them, and you get reminded again of how. How bizarre and. And incestuous and. And overlapping and just all the strangeness that's happening inside this friend group. It's very. It's very charming.
- [61:08]
Alan Sepinwall
All right, so the last thing I want to talk about before we. We say goodbye is Zooey, because, again, this was a Zooey Deschanel vehicle. It's called New Girl. She sings the theme song on all the initial marketing. It was just her. You would not even know that there were dudes on this show. And, like, the early stories are all entirely about Jess crying, Jess being weird. The guy is not understanding how to talk to Jess. And almost all the comedy was driven by that, as you would expect when the creator of the show, Liz Merriweather, was sort of, like, investing a lot of her own personality and her own quirks into this. And then at a certain point, like, you start realizing, oh, these guys are funny. Will give them stuff, too. But it's so strange that, like, it flips to this degree. And there's a bit in the episode where the guys are at the bar having difficulty talking to women. And then you cut back to a quick montage of. Of Jess alone in the apartment, and she's freaking out and doesn't know what to do and can't be by herself. And she's trying things like she runs across the. The loft, you know, bottomless, and then she runs across the loft wearing, like, bottoms as top, that kind of thing. And it's funny and it's charming, but it's still, like, it's very rare to see a show that is conceived as a star vehicle get hijacked to this degree by the second bananas.
- [62:26]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah, it is. The closest cop I can think of is Cougar Town. Oddly, there is something about. I mean, it's not quite the same thing. It is more like. Because that.
- [62:39]
Alan Sepinwall
Because Courtney Cox, another 2010 hangout comedy. Thank you.
- [62:42]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes. Because Courtney Cox was already, you know, a star, but it is almost like Zooey Deschanel's protagonist and her Adorkableness was like a premise in the way that Cougar Town had this very high premise beginning. And then both of those shows were like, this premise is a prison. And they were able to escape out into. These are weird people who enjoy spending time with each other.
- [63:10]
Alan Sepinwall
Yes. But you get to a point, if not at the time when you started recapping it, sometime before that, where it's not that Jess stops being funny, it's that Jess's role is almost entirely in support of the guys.
- [63:25]
Catherine Van Arundonk
She's like the mascot somehow.
- [63:27]
Alan Sepinwall
Yeah. She's just sort of like trying to get Nick out of his head. She's trying to encourage Schmidt to be less of a douchebag. Our friend Miles McNutt has this theory that Winston is in fact a serial killer. Yeah. And, you know, maybe she's trying to keep him from doing that, but it's, it's, it's just, it's odd because I think she is funny and charming, but there's just so much less of her as the show goes on.
- [63:47]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Season three of Furious. Lamorne Morris, serial killer.
- [63:53]
Alan Sepinwall
Holy shit. Oh, my God.
- [63:55]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
- [63:59]
Alan Sepinwall
But I do, I think TV is better when Liz Meriwether is doing something with it. You know, Dropout was of the, of the various, like, prestige fact based miniseries that we just got a ton of in the late 2000 and tens and early 2000s. That was one of the better ones. And Dying for Sex. Wonderful. Also on Hulu right now, Highly encourage you to check that out. Michelle Williams, Incredible. Rob Delaney as another perv. Like sweet. Oddly sweet as the creepy sex guy.
- [64:27]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yeah.
- [64:27]
Alan Sepinwall
And New Girl, you know, I, I watch this and again you run into this thing. We do it all the time when we do these classic segments of. How much do I just want to go back and watch more New Girl?
- [64:37]
Catherine Van Arundonk
I definitely want to watch more. I'm not going to watch the whole thing. That's not that.
- [64:40]
Alan Sepinwall
But I will at minimum. Like, I'm just going to, you know, do some YouTube highlights. I will again watch the Gave me Cookie. Gotcha. Gave me Cookie. Gotcha cookie scene, which is the most incredible delivery by Jake Johnson of all time. But it's. Let's get it to it. Catherine, was the TV good this week?
- [64:54]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Good tv. It was a good TV week.
- [64:57]
Alan Sepinwall
What are we talking about next week? Take a minute. Take a minute. You'll be okay. It'll be all right.
- [65:05]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Next week we're going to be talking about Ted Lasso.
- [65:09]
Alan Sepinwall
Somehow Ted Lasso returned. Should it have. We're not going to say we may or may not have seen episodes of it yet, but we will be talking about Ted Lasso and we will be pairing that with a look back at another classic feel good TV comedy about sports. Aaron Sorkin's TV debut with Sports Night, which I should have looked up already where it is streaming. I don't know that we're even going to peg it to specific episodes.
- [65:34]
Catherine Van Arundonk
No. Yeah.
- [65:35]
Alan Sepinwall
All right, hold on. You talk for 30 seconds while I
- [65:38]
Catherine Van Arundonk
be perfectly when we're not podcasting, we are writers. I am@vulture.com you can read a written version of how I yelled about Stuart Fails to Save the Universe Universe. You can find Alan's writing at his newsletter whatsalan watching.com and Alan's rod Serling book is available for pre order and you can find all those links in the show notes and my Blue book will be available for pre order shortly, so you can look forward to that.
- [66:07]
Alan Sepinwall
Sports Night is available for digital purchase. It is not currently on any streaming platform. If you want to watch it, you can. If not, I suspect in the year of our Lord 2026. A lot of you, even if you've never seen the show, understand what Aaron Sorkin's deal is and we will talk quite a bit about about that.
- [66:24]
Catherine Van Arundonk
Yes, we will.
- [66:25]
Alan Sepinwall
All right, so if you want to get in touch with us directly, you can find us@tvisgoodpodgmail.com I'm going to do the thing that Katherine does every week. Please, if you like the show, want us to be able to keep doing it. Want us to be able to reach out to a larger audience which will help us keep doing it. Please remember to whatever platform you're watching or listening to this on Rate Review, subscribe like because the thing about the world is the world is full of people, many of them weird and quirky people who may or may not live in a loft in downtown LA and wear women's raincoats. And yet so much of our lives as people these days are ruled by the algorithm. And so the way, the only way to beat the algorithm is to sort of do the things it's asking you to do so that the the humans are elevated by it. And you know what? We do not like the algorithm. But what do we like, Katherine?
- [67:17]
Catherine Van Arundonk
We love television. Thanks to Joe Kennedy for our theme music, Kate Bergener for our artwork, and thank you to Riley Rose for editing.
- [67:25]
Alan Sepinwall
Thank you for listening.
- [67:37]
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Alan Sepinwall
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