When spinoffs get too weird

Summary

TV Is Good — Episode Summary Episode: When Spinoffs Get Too Weird
Hosts: Alan Sepinwall & Kathryn VanArendonk
Date: July 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively installment of TV Is Good, TV critics Alan Sepinwall and Kathryn VanArendonk explore the question: "What happens when TV spinoffs go off the rails?" Their current focus is Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, a decidedly odd and much-maligned new addition to The Big Bang Theory universe. To put this bizarre spinoff in context, they recall some of TV’s most notorious and mismatched spinoffs—The Brady Bunch Variety Hour and Mrs. Columbo. The episode closes with a spoiler-laden deep dive into the finale of Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Lestat.

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Main Discussion Points

1. “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe” — The Big Bang Theory’s Wildest Spinoff

Starts ~[06:29]

• Synopsis & Premise

  • Follows minor Big Bang Theory characters Stuart, Barry Kripke, Denise, and Bert Kibler in a post-apocalyptic, multiverse-hopping sitcom. Stuart owns a comic book shop amid chaos. An alternate-universe Stuart tasks them with fixing their reality by tracking down a “magical MacGuffin box” ([09:09]).
  • Each episode is an excuse to drop the ensemble into a new, often nonsensical alternate universe—a blend of pop culture riffs, tired sci-fi tropes, and surreal gags.

• Critical Reception

  • Kathryn’s immediate verdict: “I will spoil you now: it’s bad.” ([02:24])
  • Alan: “The answer to the question at the end of the episode is going to be no” ([02:40])
  • Both criticize the lack of character depth, emotional investment, or comedic substance. Kathryn describes watching as a “grim death march.” ([07:13])

• On The Show’s Problems

  • Unlikable, Flat Characters: Minor characters get zero development or affection from writers. Kathryn: “I came away from this feeling like, somebody needs to airlift Lauren Lapkus out of here.” ([15:06])
  • Lazy Alternate Timelines: Alan: “The writers…have put zero effort into any of these alternate timelines other than coming up with the idea for them.” ([17:02])
  • Empty Fan Service: The embargo on episode details was only about not spoiling cameos, not plot—emphasizing the creators knew there was no narrative substance ([18:02]).
  • Smug, Metafictional Tone: Kathryn likens the tone to a Deadpool knock-off: “The sort of smug self-satisfaction of the presentation…so, so pleased in lieu of actually doing the show.” ([20:05])

• Memorable Quotes

  • Kathryn: “We gotta cool it with the multiverses.” ([25:55])
  • Alan: “There is no juice left to squeeze in the idea of parallel realities.” ([26:28])
  • On the overall verdict:
    K: “No. It’s so bad.” ([25:55])
    A: “As Chilli would say in my favorite episode of Bluey, the Magic Claw, none of those things are happening.” ([27:57])

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2. When Spinoffs Break the Mold: “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour” & “Mrs. Columbo”

Starts ~[29:46]

The Brady Bunch Variety Hour

Subsection starts ~[31:25]

• Context & Premise

  • One of several wild Brady Bunch spinoffs—a surreal 70s variety show that inserted the entire Brady family (minus the original Jan actor) into a musical/comedy spectacle, backup dancers and all.
  • Alan defends the premise by referencing canonical moments when the Brady kids perform as a band (“The Silver Platters”), arguing, “One could argue…the kids are interested in pursuing singing careers…Character-wise, there is reason—it’s ironclad.” ([43:07])

• Kathryn’s Experience

  • Stunned delight at the show’s “babyface” musical numbers and the sheer absurdity of the premise, including clowns swimming underwater ([38:41]).
  • Notes the actors frequently play against their own familial relationships: “It’s like Greg Brady is talking about how hot his sister Marcia is…Eat your heart out, Game of Thrones.” ([40:52])

• On Surrealism & Commitment

  • Alan: “Robert Reed hated being on the Brady Bunch…but he agreed to do this [the variety show] and gives it his all.” ([44:34])
  • Kathryn: “That is the kind of commitment that no one on Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is bringing.” ([44:45])

Mrs. Columbo

Subsection starts ~[47:01]

• Premise

  • Born from NBC’s desperation for more Columbo content, Mrs. Columbo is reimagined as a young reporter solving mysteries while her husband is off-screen. Original Columbo creators and Peter Falk were opposed.
  • After poor reception, the show kept getting rebooted with different names: “Mrs. Columbo”, “Kate Columbo”, “Kate the Detective”, “Kate Loves a Mystery” ([53:29]).

• Reception

  • Audiences rejected it outright—viewers didn’t want to see the iconic “unseen wife”.

• Memorable Stories

  • Kathryn shares her own Kate Mulgrew encounter: “She told me that she liked my pants, and that’s why I went to that college.” ([51:53])
  • Alan: “This is a real Ship of Theseus situation, right?” ([53:57])

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3. Classic Spinoffs: Successes, Failures, and the Nature of TV Hope

~[55:11]

• Spinoffs can wildly succeed (Laverne and Shirley, The Jeffersons) or become infamous misfires.
• Kathryn: “There’s no way to predict when these things will work and when they’re going to fall down…You can be as likely to end up with a Mrs. Columbo situation as you are with the Jeffersons.” ([55:11])
• Alan: “Proof denies faith. If you know your spin-off is going to work, where’s the fun in that?” ([57:00])

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4. Spoiler Talk: “Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Lestat” Finale

Starts ~[57:28]

• Season Overview

  • The show’s narrative gives up on clarity and doubles down on emotional “vibe”. Kathryn: “It required giving up on ever really knowing what was going on at any given point.” ([58:08])
  • Alan: “I was emotional. I didn’t understand what was happening a lot of the time, but I was too emotionally engaged to be bothered by it.” ([59:17])

• Key Finale Takeaways

  • Spectacular emotion: The séance scene with Claudia’s spirit berating Louis and Lestat is called out as a highlight ([62:07]).
  • But the finale loses narrative control: “The first time in the season where I’m like, I can’t keep up with what they’re talking about.” ([65:52])
  • Plot confusion: “I have lost track of…the stakes at this point. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be hoping or not hoping for.” ([66:49])
  • Daniel and Armand’s romance felt unearned: “Did you buy that Daniel would actually, like, be in love with Armand? No, no, no, no.” ([70:28])

• Closing Thoughts

  • Despite the messy finale, both critics remain on board for future seasons, valuing the show’s willingness to take wild creative swings, even if not all of them land.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe”:
  • Kathryn: “Grim death march.” ([07:13])
  • Alan: “You can just sort of picture everyone in the writer’s room…‘What if magic is real?’ and everyone fist bumps and goes to lunch and they don’t come back.” ([17:21])
• Spinoff Despair and Hope:
  • Alan: “If you are the creators of a hit long-running broadcast network multicam comedy, you can buy your own nation when it ends. They don’t need to do this.” ([22:03])
  • Kathryn: “It’s a testament to the human spirit just waking up again and being like, let’s try another one. Maybe this one will work.” ([56:25])
  • Alan: “Proof denies faith. If you know your spinoff is going to work…where’s the fun in that?” ([57:00])

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Key Timestamps

• [06:29] — Deep Dive: Stuart Fails to Save the Universe
• [29:46] — What Makes a Spinoff TOO Weird? (Classic TV context)
• [31:25] — The Brady Bunch Variety Hour breakdown
• [47:01] — History & Pain of Mrs. Columbo
• [57:28] — Spoiler Discussion: Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Lestat
• [74:48] — Wrap-Up: Final verdict on “Was the TV good?”

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Upcoming Topics

• Next week: Liz Meriwether’s Furious (Hulu) & New Girl episode “Cooler” ([75:14])

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Summary Verdict:
This week's episode uses a disastrous Big Bang Theory spinoff as a springboard into a thoughtful, highly entertaining discussion of TV spinoff history, blending hilarious criticism, deep TV lore, and affectionate nostalgia. The hosts shine most when chronicling classic TV’s strangest detours, finding hope and humor in the genre’s persistent weirdness. The spoiler segment on Vampire Lestat continues the theme of flawed but ambitious TV, closing the episode with the kind of nuance and warmth that keeps listeners coming back.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[A]

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[A]

I'm Alan Sepinwall. I'm a TV critic.

[C]

I'm Katherine Vanarindonk. I'm also a TV critic.

[A]

We're friends and neighbors and we love to talk about TV with each other.

[C]

And so now we're gonna talk about it with you.

[A]

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.

[C]

Is the TV good for our current segment? This week we're gonna be talking about the new Big Bang Theory spinoff, Stuart Saves the Universe.

[A]

Stuart fails to save the universe, fails

[C]

to save the universe. And and in keeping with the style of the opening credits sequence of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe in which there is a spoiler in every opening credit sequence, I will spoil you now it's bad.

[A]

Yeah. The answer to the question at the end of the episode is going to be no. Although maybe it'll be yes, based on what we talk about later. Because for our classic segment this week, because Stuart Fails to save the universe is so odd relative to the Big Bang Theory, we will be talking about several other incredibly strange spin offs, including the Brady variety hour and Mrs. Colombo.

[C]

Yes. I can tell you right now that I enjoyed the Brady Variety Hour so, so much more than I enjoyed. Stuart Fails to save the Universe and we're gonna keep it.

[A]

You're giving it all away, Katherine. Like, why is anyone gonna listen to the rest of the episode?

[C]

Why would you keep watching Stuart fails to save the universe after in the open? Like, by the way, Gary dies. Like, why? Why?

[A]

Spoiler.

[C]

That's what it says.

[A]

I mean, admittedly, the do not reveal list had nothing to do with the plot of the show and is entirely with the cameos on the show, which

[C]

for reasons that we'll get into, we'll get to that.

[A]

But in addition to that, you're going to get a bonus third segment this week because we have both seen the finale to the vampire Lestat, which was one of the subject of our early episodes. And so now we'll get into a bit of spoilers about how the season ended and how we feel about it.

[C]

So the housekeeping up top we'll keep pretty short. We want to remind everybody that we have a Patreon that we really enjoy doing because we've been talking about classic episodes of TV shows that we really, really love. We just recorded our Leftovers episode. We're going to be talking about The Leftovers Season 2 premiere, Axis Mundi. It was a really great conversation. It was really fun. As per usual, doing those makes us just want to watch the show that we're talking about.

[A]

But instead, we had to watch Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. So we could talk about it with you here. Yes, let's at least have some fun with that.

[C]

Grueling. But also, I mention it because those conversations are so fun to record and we just really want to thank everybody who subscribes to the Patreon. We really appreciate you. And if you have not checked that out yet, please do so you can find us at tvisgoodpod on Patreon and also help vote for the things that we're gonna be covering in the future.

[A]

Yes, we're nearing the end of July. August is coming up. TV slows down a bit. So we just wanted to preview and obviously a lot of People go on vacation. Some of the stuff we will be talking about, not all of this is set in stone because it'll depend on embargoes and screener availability and all of that. But we'll definitely be doing the Return of Ted Lasso and we will be pairing that with Sports Night, another classic sports comedy. We will at some point be talking about the new HBO series Lanterns, based on Green Lantern. We will be doing, I think for our next episode, the Hulu series Furious, which is created by new girls Liz Merriweather. So we'll also be talking about a new girl episode. We'll be checking in on the FX Comedy Adults. some point, perhaps we will be able to do Star Strange New Worlds and our previously promised discussion of Babylon 5.

[C]

But if not, Babylon 5 will happen. It will happen. It's just a question of when and in what context.

[A]

Yeah, prime has a new YA drama called Sterling Point, produced by several of the producers of the oc so perhaps there will be a paired discussion of YA shows like that. We'll figure it out. There's definitely gonna be a lot of fun stuff, even when the stuff is not great, as the thing we're talking about next might not be. We hope that the conversation will still be fun and lively and we will be here every Monday with all of that. What is our current show, Katherine?

[C]

We are talking about Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. I think I had mentioned this before, but the 12 punch of watching the Hawk and then Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is one of the more grim TV experiences I've had recently.

[A]

Hold on, hold on. Before you lament too much, I have to remind you we were plotting out what are we going to do for the rest of July. And we had several options for this episode. I think we might have. This might have been The Star Babylon 5 Week. I know, and I told you because I'd seen it before you this show was a train wreck and I don't have the exact quote. I'd have to scroll back through our text, but I believe you said something like train wrecks can be a lot of fun.

[C]

They can, they can. And I do maintain this will be fun to talk about, but yes, but I think my review currently contains the phrase is Grim Death March.

[A]

So, yeah, sounds about right.

[C]

Okay, so Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is the third spinoff of the long running and much beloved Chuck Lorre sitcom the Big Bang Theory. The first two spin offs are Young Sheldon, which is a single cam comedy, and it's sort of a sweet Prequel Young Sheldon is exactly like it sounds in the title, Sheldon Cooper as a child. The other spinoff is more recent. It's called Georgie and Mandy's First Marriage. Checked out a couple of episodes of that at the beginning when it premiered, I think last year and found it to be exactly like a multicam CBS sitcom is going to be. It was just.

[A]

But it's taking people who were introduced in a single cam sitcom and now putting them in multicam, which. Okay, yes, A lot of stuff going on with Big Bang as a franchise.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So Stuart Phil's To Save the Universe is really the cherry on top of a lot of stuff going on in the Big Bang Theory franchise. It follows four of the kind of minor character, and I mean really minor character people from the Big Bang Theory. Kevin Sussman, who plays the comic shop owner Stuart. Stuart Bloom, I think his name is John Ross Bowie as the. He's really annoying guy who speaks with a speech impediment. His name is Barry Kripke. Lauren Lapkus as Stuart's ex girlfriend Denise. And Brian Posen as Bert Kibler.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, Kibler. He's a geologist at Caltech who you see periodically on Big Bang Theory.

[C]

Yes. So the Big Bang Theory creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady are back. There's also a superhero, superhero movie writer Zach Penn. And it is a sci fi comedy. It is not really a sitcom, although it is still a sitcom in a lot of ways that it does not want a cop to. And this is one of the big problems with it. And so the premise of this show, I'm gonna just. Very quick, here's what it is. Stuart is the comic book comic center of Pasadena still exists in a post apocalyptic future. And Stuart is still running it and all of the gang is still there. And Stuart from another universe pops in to the comic center of Pasadena and is like, hey, this was never supposed to be this way. There's a. We shouldn't be like, there shouldn't be giant moths who eat people. What you need to do is find a magical box, a magical MacGuffin box that's at Caltech and you need to do something to it. And then of course, inevitably the part where he explains what they have to do is all like. And they can't understand it. You have to do something to it to fix everything. And Stuart's like, why me? And he's like, I don't know. And so they find the box and they press the giant red button on the box and they go blip into Another multiverse that has some other bizarre new characteristic. And every episode is the characters, the minor characters nobody actually really wanted to spend that much time with. From the Big Bang Theory, going into all of these other like, universe weird universe scenarios. There's a couple main types of weird universes. There's pop culture reference universes, there's over worn and under considered sci fi trope universes. And then there's like body humiliation ritual universes that have something to do with animals and. Yeah, that's the show. That's the show.

[A]

Okay, so before we do that, let's step back for a moment. What are our thoughts on the Big Bang Theory, which is arguably going to be the last ever monoculture hit sitcom.

[C]

I certainly watched some of it because it was such a monoculture. It was also I was in grad school in sort of the heyday, although it ran for quite a long time,

[A]

12 years, I think.

[C]

Yeah, I was in grad school for a lot of that. And I was going to like, TV conferences with academics. And one of the regular talking points was like, you know, it's kind of the same conversation that pop TV critics also have and we continue to have, but has changed dramatically with television over the last couple years, which is like, why do we. We want to write about Mad Men when the thing everyone is watching is Big Bang Theory? This kind of. It was one of the early sort of points of that discourse being like, every single person is watching Big Bang Theory, but they're. But like, nobody is writing about it. I did watch, you know, not. Certainly not a lot of Big Bang Theory, but I checked in with it occasionally over the years. My enduring final feelings about Big Bang Theory were that I think I covered the finale of the show for Vulture and was really frustrated by the way that they ended the characters and the way that like, marriage and pregnancy and sort of the dynamics of that finale and like, what sorts of things were being rewarded.

[A]

I completely forgot about that. Like, Penny does not want to have kids and then at the end she's pregnant and she's fine with it.

[C]

Yes. And I was so mad about it. And I remember that mostly because I became a Fox News talking point briefly because of the thing that I wrote about. And then a lot of people started posting pictures of tater tots and pears in my replies, which I learned meant tots and pears. Like thoughts, like cockney rhyming slam slang for thoughts and prayers. Like they were like, trying to. Anyway, culture is great and it's in a really healthy place.

[A]

Yeah. Everyone's totally normal. Totally normal. I've seen more of it than you did. It was one of my wife's favorite shows. When it was on. It was a real sort of comfort food show for her. I remember when it started. The pilot episode is sort of infamously terrible. And that was not even the first pilot episode. They shot a different one with a different actress as the beautiful woman across the hall. I don't even think she was called Penny at that point. And it was just, like, super. I don't even want to call it misogynist. It was just so dumb. And it had no interest in the interiority of any of the characters. And it was clearly making fun of Sheldon and Leonard and the girl, and especially even when she became Penny was just an airhead, oblivious to how badly Leonard was lusting after her and all of that. And over time, over the first couple years, they began to realize, oh, we've got Jim Parsons here. He's clearly very gifted. We can do a lot with him. They also began to realize Kaley Cuoco is more than just a beautiful blonde woman, and she makes a really good sparring partner for Parsons. And then I forget if it's season three or season four. They start adding two additional female characters, and suddenly the show becomes much more balanced, it's more thoughtful. There's still some wrestling between, are we laughing at or are we laughing with these characters? But for the most part, it became more affectionate towards everybody. And interestingly, the character who the show kept laughing at was Stuart. Like, Stuart becomes more prominent as kind of like a nerd heat shield, where it's like, you know, Wolowitz is awful, but at least he's not Stewart. And so now, after all of this time, they have built a show around Stewart. I like Kevin Sussman as an actor. I really love John Ross. Bowie on Speechless. Brian Posen, usually fun when he appears in things. Lauren Lapkis.

[C]

Super talented Lauren Lapkis. I came away from this feeling like, somebody needs to airlift Lauren Lapkis out of here.

[A]

All right, so, one, you've got these really thin minor characters for whom the writers do not have nearly the level of affection. Two, the Denise on the show is not the Denise from our timeline. It's the whole thing where they meet this Denise in the second place they go to. And I forget if she even has ever met Stuart before or just knows him and doesn't care about him.

[C]

I think she does. I think she has, yes.

[A]

But he brings her along with them on their additional adventures, and. And he keeps Acting like they have a history together. And it's. It's like they're doing some kind of Vertigo thing. And I'm not even sure that the writers of the show are super aware of what they're doing. And there's no real consistency to how they write her or how they write that relationship. So that's a. You've got thin and mostly unlikable characters and Kripke is awful, awful, awful. Why? It's like they've been doing this for 17 years. Why is John Ross Bowie still doing speech impediment jokes?

[C]

Yeah. So the premise for him is that he liked Denise. Is also alternate universe Kripke? Sort of.

[A]

Yes. Or he's the real Kripke, but in the alternate timeline he is sort of like become given into all of his worst impulses.

[C]

Yes. He's become the supreme ruler of this particular branch of the first timeline. Yes. Of the multiverse. And their whole problem in the first episode is that he doesn't want to help them because he actually likes things the way it is because he is the supreme ruler of the universe. And so you take that guy who also like the opening joke, he keeps trying to say his own name and nobody understands it because of his speech impediment. He just keeps saying it over and over again. And they keep being like, what? What, what? And then they're like, great, he's one of your main characters and we now get to spend the rest of the show with him.

[A]

Okay, so that's problem number one. Problem number two is the writers of the show have put zero effort into any of these alternate timelines other than coming up with the idea for them.

[C]

Barely that. Barely that. Because some of them are like, I don't know. Telepathy?

[A]

Yes. You can just sort of picture like everyone is in a writer's room, like, what do we do next? They're looking at the whiteboard and someone goes, what if magic is real? And everyone fist bumps and they go to lunch and they don't come back and the episodes are like 20 minutes long, which to a degree is a relief, but also speaks to the fact that they've just put no effort into that. There's barely any story. There's one episode towards the end where, like, they find themselves in a multicam sitcom, which is kind of calling back to the origins of all of these characters, but even that's half assed. Like, it doesn't look like a multicam sitcom. It's just them doing stuff. And you hear a laugh track in the Background.

[C]

Yes. One of the things that I found really revealing was that the embargo, like, it says, try not to spoil stuff. But, like, the exact. The actual things that they want people not to be revealed is who is a cameo in the show. And they have a list of all the cameos for every episode. They don't say anything about, like, don't talk about this plot point or don't talk about the nature of this universe that he goes to an episode 8 or something. And I realized as I was sitting there looking at that embargo list, it's because there's no plot in the show. Like, there are no. There's no stakes where they're like, if this doesn't happen, then this won't happen. And there's. There's. From the beginning, the whole joke is that he's not sure what he's supposed to do with this magical box that they find, and they don't then sit down and create rules or, like, even consistent consequences where, like, you do this, but then this happens. It truly is just like a. It's like a giant Magic 8 ball that they just shake. And that something happens over and over and again randomly. So the only thing that has any kind of juice to it as far as, like, a surprise or, like, a thing to look forward to is like, ooh, what other characters from the show will show up? What other, like, nerd culture figures will have agreed to take a paycheck for this? And so that's what they've got as far as, like, don't reveal.

[A]

Yeah. And it's sometimes, first of all, we can't say who is there and who is not. We've been asked not to do it, and we will abide by that.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

I will say, for the most part, it's the people you would expect from Big Bang Theory to come back. And for the most part, the people who don't come back are the ones you would expect. It's not like 100%, but it's a lot of that. And sometimes they are just playing their character from the show. Sometimes they're not at all. Sometimes it's just, oh, hey, she was on Big Bang Theory, now she's playing something else. And it's just.

[C]

It's.

[A]

You know, I always hate, like, quoting south park too much, but it's the whole thing's like, remember Barry's. It's just. Hey, recognize her? Great.

[C]

Yeah, it's a tough hang already. Like, just all of that stuff. I think the other layer of it that you really can't express what it feels like to watch the show without getting into is the sort of smug self satisfaction of the presentation of the whole thing. If it were just this kind of like, yeah, it's a spin off, like, I don't know, we threw a bunch of stuff at the wall, whatever, and then they're not really trying. It's like, well, that's a bummer. But it also has this whole veneer of like Deadpool ass nonsense where it is so, so pleased in, in lieu of actually doing the show. It's like it sort of did a whole song about how stupid it is to have done or cared about the show at all the time. You know, it's like the cool kid who didn't do the homework and is like, homework sucks. And you, you suck for liking it and caring about these sorts of things. So the opening credit sequence, as I mentioned, has spoilers in it all the time, which is kind of funny given that there's no interesting spoilers for the show. But they also, like, the messages keep changing in the opening. Like the Chuck Lorre title card bit, which is quite familiar. By the end of the season, the title cards are like, it is just like messages for Chuck Lorre's dog. Just truly. Who is this for? Who finds this entertaining? And as we talked about a little bit, the end is a big metafictional. They go back to a multicam finale that is really frustrating because it also feels like something they didn't even spend that much time on thinking about how that would actually work or how to pull it off in an interesting way. And it just feels like it is so shot through with self. Self loathing that they're trying to cover up with like, ha, we don't care about this. And you don't either.

[A]

Okay, so then, then this, we're again, we got to pull back a little bit. How did this happen? Like, clearly a Laurie and Prady do not need the money. If you are the creators of a hit long running broadcast network multicam comedy, you can buy your own nation when it ends. They don't need to do this. And obviously Laurie likes to work and he's got a lot of different shows on. Leanne is coming back to Netflix either now or very shortly after this.

[C]

I have a weird fondness for Leanne Morgan. I'm not gonna go out on a limb and be like, she's incredible. But that's a perfectly fine.

[A]

I like the Kominsky method. You know, it's like, I did not. But you know Okay, I like some Laurie. I don't like others. But the point is, like, usually when he's doing a show, you sort of tell either I really wanted to work with these actors, or I had this idea or whatever. Clearly, nobody making the show is into this. And it's also so far afield from what Big Bang Theory was. You look at Young Sheldon, and even if Young Sheldon is a different format from Big Bang Theory, it is still. We are gonna take the most beloved aspect of the other show, and we're gonna explore how he became that way. And we're gonna do it with, like, sensitivity, but also comedy and fun. And it's like, you love Sheldon Cooper. Jim doesn't wanna play the character anymore. We will have a kid do it, and Jim will narrate now and then. And then Georgie and Mandy. It's like, all right, well, people like these characters on Young Sheldon. Young Sheldon himself is now at the age where, like, you can't really do it anymore.

[C]

We've gotta move on down on its knees, begging us to keep making some other Big Bang Theory thing.

[A]

Yeah. So we'll do this. And it's at least in sort of a similar vein and tone to what Big Bang Theory was. This is so different. And, I mean, like, maybe if you just loved Big Bang Theory solely for the nerd culture, and there's, like, scenes where, you know, Stewart and Kripke are talking about, like, comic book tropes, maybe you'll care about this. But it's just like, you know, I had, like, a relative come over to visit one day while I was watching one of the screeners on my iPad. And they love Big Bang Theory too. And they go, well, what are you watching? And I paused it and I explained, and with each passing sentence, they were like, no. Why would they do that? No, it's just. I. You know, I don't like that. It's so. If nobody cares and it's so, like, off brand, why does this exist?

[C]

I mean, I am curious if even some of the lead performers are excited about this, because the performances don't feel like people who are having fun. They also have this odd, stilted quality to them. Like they have been sort of shifted directly out of a multicam and then stuck in this sci fi setting, but without actually adjusting any of the, like, timing of how to dialogue or, like, how to sort of move through space. So you have this. It sort of looks like they're cardboard standees just sort of shuffling through all these. All these backgrounds. And. And I. I don't know what the pay situation is for Comic Book Guy on Big Bang Theory. Like, I hope everyone is financially doing okay, but it does seem like Sussman

[A]

was actually promoted to, like, main cast for the last few years, so. So I'm sure he's doing fine. He and Bowie are friends. I think they've collaborated a lot on, like, writing stuff. So maybe it's just, hey, we get to keep. We get to keep working together. I don't know. But it. Again, to quote my family member, why would they do this?

[C]

It's really unpleasant. Really, really unpleasant.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So. Yeah. So, Katherine, I'm gonna get it out in front of it now because we'll revisit it later. Is the TV good?

[C]

No. It's so bad. And I also just want to, as a footnote, be like, we can't. We gotta cool it with the Mal Multiverses.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing. So, like, when was it Strange Matter? The Apple show with Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Dark Matter. It's like, that comes out, and it's coming out after everything, everywhere, all at once. It's coming out after Rick and Morty's been on the air for years. It's coming out after the MCU has, like, devoted this last few phases to the multiverse saga. There are so many multiversal things. And that was, like, two years ago.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And so now we're coming on another one of these. There's just. There is no juice left to squeeze in the idea of parallel realities where everything is a little bit different or it's different in one big way.

[C]

Yeah. It's so tiresome to expect me to feel surprised when another version of somebody pops in and is like, there's multiple universes now. And most of the time they end up having the same problem, which is if there's multiple universes, then every possibility exists, which means, of course, there's one where beloved character didn't die. And of course, there's one where, like. And so it feels like a way of immediately explaining to me that there are no. That nothing is permanent in the storytelling and that there are no stakes that cannot be reversed. And so, especially in the context of drama, I find multiverses to be almost immediate way of removing anything that I care about. As far as, you know, how things go forward for a comedy, it could kind of work to do something like this because they essentially treat it like a sitcom. They sort of just show up in this new scenario and hang out. But it would require then that you do the sitcom things, which are that I want to spend time with these characters, these characters want to spend time with each other, and that the sort of humor of it is the thing that works. But instead, like, none of those things are happening.

[A]

No. As Chilli would say in my favorite episode of Bluey, the Magic Claw, none of those things are happening.

[C]

None of those things are happening. Yeah.

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[A]

Stewart fails to save the universe is weird. But is it the weirdest spinoff relative to its source material ever? Because a lot of the time a spinoff is exactly what you would expect. You're taking like one or two supporting characters from a show. You're moving them into a new setting. The tone more or less feels the same. Frasier Crane leaves Cheers, moves back to Seattle. You can absolutely see the DNA from one to the other. You know, Archie Bunker's next door neighbor George Jefferson from All in the Family moves on up to the side and it's the Jefferson Jefferson's and it still feels like it's from the same people. Law and order gives you svu. It gives you criminal intent. It gives you trial by jury. It gives you conviction, which was an attempt to do like a young adult soap opera in the Law and Order universe. And nobody liked that because again, it's like you want to stay on Brand. Then some of them feel so far removed from the original, it's hard to understand how anyone thought this was a good idea in the first place. Sometimes it works. There's a Happy Days episode where Robin Williams, like, then unknown, plays an alien named Mork from Orc, and he, like, tries to enslave Fonzie, and it makes no sense and it has no business being on Happy Days. And yet it's young Robin Williams being a genius. And so they made a spin off about Mork in present day Boulder, Colorado, dating a. Not even dating at first, just meeting a contemporary woman named Mindy and she's teaching him about humanity. And that was Mork and Mindy. And it ran for a number of years and helped make Robin Williams a star. But like anything short of Robin Williams level talent, I don't know if anyone would have thought to do that. So we're going to talk about two shows that seem like very odd choices to spin off a hit. What are those, Catherine?

[C]

The first is the Brady Variety Hour, which was the second of actually. There's like a stunning number of Brady spinoffs I had heard of but never actually seen the Brady Variety Hour. So we watched the. How much of this show got made? Like, how many?

[A]

I think it's a whole season. I can look up how many episodes it was, but it ran for a little while.

[C]

We just watched the first one. I began texting you screenshots of the clowns swimming underwater to be like, what the hell is happening right now? But the thing is, I had more fun than Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. So you know what? Like, we'll talk. We'll talk about it. What? What's the other one, Alan?

[A]

Okay, the other one is Mrs. Colombo, about which when I mentioned it to you in a conversation, your face lit up and you basically said, do not tell me anything else about this. I want you to explain it to me.

[C]

I don't know anything about Mrs. Colombo.

[A]

Yes, yes, sorry. So we'll get to that. I'm not even going to do a lead up yet. It looks like there were nine episodes of the Brady Bunch Hour, but sometimes it was also called the Brady Bunch Variety Hour.

[C]

Great.

[A]

Other Brady Bunch spinoffs. First of all, for those of you who don't know, the Brady Bunch was a family sitcom from the late 60s and early 70s, created by Sherwood Schwartz, the man responsible for Gilligan's island, which was the subject of maybe my favorite segment of the podcast so far. Go back and enjoy that one if you haven't listened to or watched it yet. It's family sitcom about a blended family, Mike and Carol Brady. They each have three children of their same gender, and they come together and the boys and the girls have to learn how to get along, and they have all kinds of crazy adventures, like the youngest daughter Cindy's dog, Tiger runs away or. Or they build a house.

[C]

Too much detergent in the. In the washing machine.

[A]

Yeah, I literally had a Brady Bunch moment like that last night. I. I washed my wife's red dress along with a bunch of whites, and I thought, all right, if it's in cold water, I'll be fine. Nope. No, no, no, no, no.

[C]

Wow.

[B]

So.

[A]

Yes, yes, but no. But in the Brady Bunch episode, I believe Greg's hair turns orange. It's the last episode of the show, and it infamously was so stupid that Robert Reed, a classically trained actor who played Mike Brady Brady, refused to be in it. Mr. Brady is not in the last episode of the Brady Bunch. He had a very complicated. He had a complicated history with the show. He would, like, write these long letters to Sherwood Schwartz talking about, like, dramatic theory and, like, you know, how the show could be better.

[C]

I love it. I love it. Brady Bunch, I will say, is also an important milestone in TV history because it was. It is one of the major shows where you saw people, married people in a bed together.

[A]

I believe it is the first.

[B]

The first.

[C]

There are not that many examples. And so it was certainly the first successful one. I think technically there was when I researched this revulture for something. There is one from the really early era of TV, from the 30s, but we don't even have recorded. Yes.

[A]

So we can't confirm it.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So like Gilligan's Island, Brady Bunch is one of those shows that was not a huge hit when it was on the air and just was in syndication forever. So if you're a member of Generation X, you can recite the plot of all of these episodes very, very easily. There was a bunch of spinoffs. First, there was an animated series, Brady Kids. This was part of a Trend in the 70s of every popular primetime sitcom gets an animated spinoff featuring talking animals and. Or time travel.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

So the Brady Kids had both of that. They had, like, you know, Wonder Woman's very first appearance as a character on television is in an episode of Brady Kids. They have, I believe, a talking minor bird who helps them travel through time and do other magical stuff.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

So that's why then in the late 70s, early 80s, they did a TV movie reunion called the Brady Girls Get Married where the two older sisters, Marcia and Jan, get married, one of them to longtime fiance, one of them to a guy she just met. And then they do a spin off where the two couples have to share a house together.

[C]

Gotcha.

[A]

And do not get along, obviously. Then in the 90s, there's another reunion movie, A Very Brady Christmas, which does like shockingly good numbers and convinces cbs. Oh, there's like, there's a Everybody loves the Brady Bunch, let's do a new show. And rather than just let's, let's return with another multi camera sitcom with Brady hijinks. The Brady's is an hour long dramedy featuring storylines like Bobby Brady is now a NASCAR driver, gets into a bad accident and becomes a paraplegic.

[B]

What?

[A]

Marcia has a drinking problem? No. Yes. These are things that happened. Okay. Again, it's, it's, it's this sort of.

[C]

See, I love television.

[A]

TV is good even when it's bad.

[C]

I mean, Stuart fails to save the universe.

[A]

Okay. Then years later, all of the kids come together. The kid actors come together for an HGTV show, I think called A Very Brady Renovation, where HGTV bought the exterior Brady home and the actors then had to like remodel the interior to look like the house on the sitcom.

[C]

Yeah, I think I remember this one. Yeah.

[A]

There were also the movies with Shelley Long and Gary Cole as Carolyn Mike Brady in the 90s, which are very funny, which is this postmodern thing of what if the Brady Bunch characters from the 70s lived in the real world of the 1990s. And how weird would that be? Those are good. Then they kept doing them.

[C]

There's a TV movie or they go to Hawaii. There's like a cursed tiki thing.

[A]

Yeah. Which is a plot from the TV show, which they then I think did in the second movie. And then they continued as a series of TV movies for a while. And one of them, Mike Brady runs for president. Gary Cole does a shockingly good, like Robert Reed impression. So. And that's, that's where Christine Taylor, you know, first showed up as Marcia. All sorts of things. There was a stage show which again is sort of making fun of the ludicrousness of it. So it's been very elastic.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Nonetheless, the most elastic version of the Brady Bunny Bunch is the Brady Variety Hour created by Children's Entertainment 70s stalwarts Sid and Marty Croft the men behind such shows as HR Pufnstuff, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and Land of the Lost Catherine. What is the Brady Bunch Hour about?

[C]

Okay, as I said, I. I only knew that it like the. The title, right. Brady Bunch Variety Hour. I had sort of, maybe I had seen screenshots from it. So I sit down, fresh as a daisy, no idea what is about to happen. What I discover is that they begin with our Brady Bunch family, except for fake Jan, which we'll talk about in a second.

[A]

Yes, yes, yes, this is important.

[C]

And they are singing Babyface and they are doing the least amount of choreography available to a human being while also being described as dancing. And I'm like, okay, what's happening? Like, they're wearing sparkly variety show hours. They're doing a musical number like, where am I in the World? What's going on? And what I quickly discover is, oh, I love this.

[A]

I love it so much.

[C]

Themselves. They are the characters from the Brady Bunch. Like, they are still Marcia and Bobby and Jan, fake Jan and everything, but for some reason they have a variety show which doesn't make any sense in the context of who they are as characters. Because he's an architect.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And she's Florence Henderson.

[A]

She's a homemaker. Yes. She's a homemaker in a house that also has a full time housekeeper.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Alice, who is not in the Brady Bunch Hour.

[C]

She is in the end of the episode. She comes in and chides them about not being hip with the times, which is a great Alice joke. And so the idea of the Brady Bunch Variety Hour is that they, as they say in the show, know really why they have a variety hour, except like, they wanted it to happen. And Tony Bennett is there.

[A]

Tony Randall.

[C]

Tony Randall. Tony Randall is there for some reason who comes in. And they think that Mike sucks. They think that Mike is bad in the Variety hour and is stinking up their musical numbers. And they are debating whether or not to kick him out. And then they have this awkward argument in front of Tony Randall while going in and out of a Variety, as it says, as like, the genre suggests a variety of experiences, including a like Grease era roller derby bit where they're all speaking with this bizarre sort of super stylized New York accent and going like a. And then like slicking back their hair. There's that one.

[A]

Hold on, hold on. We can't move on from this yet because this is, I think, my favorite thing in the Brady Bunch. Okay. They are in character. So they are all. They're six Siblings.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And they're appearing in this sketch where, like, the guys are 50s greasers, including Mike Brady, and the girls are, like, 50s, you know, young women.

[C]

Yeah. What is that?

[A]

And the greasers are ogling the young women and talking about how hot they are.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And so it's like. Like, you know, Greg Brady is talking about how hot his sister Marcia is. And obviously, many Brady Bunch fans have had theories, like, you know, did the actors hook up? Would the characters have hooked up? You know, they're not biologically related. It's, you know, Game of Thrones.

[C]

Eat your heart out.

[A]

Yeah. We talked fanfic in our last episode, I'm sure. Like, there is Greg, you know, Marcia slash fiction out there right now.

[C]

There is, for some reason, a bit. Oh, yes.

[B]

Let's see.

[C]

Archive of their own. I'll just scroll down this a bit.

[A]

Okay. While you're doing that, I need to go back, though, because I need to defend the premise of the Brady Bunch Hour.

[C]

Please do.

[A]

In the final season, maybe final two seasons of the show, they do several episodes where the Brady kids form their own musical act and they record songs. And one of them is, they call themselves the Silver Platters, and they record a song. It's like, we're gonna keep on, keep on, keep on, keep on dancing on through the night. It's. And then the other one is about, like, they're going to record a new number. And the problem is that Peter's voice is changing, and it starts cracking on every lyric, and they don't know what to do, and they're going to kick him out of the group. And then Peter writes a song about, like, it's called When It's Time to Change. And so in the chorus, his voice cracks as he goes, then it's time to change again. If you're Gen X, you can recite all these lyrics by heart. And so, canonically, the Brady kids are interested in pursuing singing careers. There's another episode where Greg briefly becomes a rock star named Johnny Bravo entirely because he fits the suit that the record company has created for the character of Johnny Bravo. So one could argue that the idea that the kids, you know, for whom their parents are endlessly devoted and will do anything for the kids are like, mom, dad, we want a variety show. Dad, please quit your architecture job. Let's move to a house in Malibu and we'll do a variety show. I can go that far. How they would get this show on the ABC Television Network or NBC, wherever it was, that I cannot explain to you.

[C]

Sure, sure.

[A]

But character wise, there is reason. It's ironclad.

[C]

Ironclad. Absolutely nothing amiss here. I think actually, all I will say is that, yes, there is Brady fanfic. That is all that needs to be said.

[A]

Thank you. Thank you. That's as far as you should go.

[B]

Great.

[C]

Yes. So they are then doing this variety hour. Everyone is wearing the sparkly, sparkly, sparkliest outfits imaginable. There are clowns that are swimming underwater. For some reason. This is used mostly as a little interstitial bit. But to. Some of the bits are very, very short. Like between bigger numbers. There is a moment where Florence Henderson gets to really let her. Like, they're kind of putting their best foot. They're like, one's good. We accept this one will be good. And she seems really devoted to it. But then there are also repeated bits where they're just. Because there's a pool there, a swimming pool there for some reason. So they're just constantly, like, shoving each other into this pool. And then this becomes a laugh line repeatedly.

[A]

And it's just. It's so delightful to me that again, Robert Reed hated being on the Brady Bunch. He loved the kids. He liked. You know, he liked Florence. He just hated the material he was getting given. And he found it completely, like, unrealistic. And that was always his thing. It's like we, you know, for comedy to work, there needs to be some level of reality. And yet he agreed to do this.

[C]

And there is a moment where he is dancing with such commitment. And I noted it because everyone else is kind of doing again baby face with just truly hands back and forth.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And sometimes it's like he will look into the camera and be like, yeah. Yes, I, Mike Brady, am truly crushing this right now. And that is the kind of commitment that no one on Stuart fails to save the universe is bringing.

[A]

Yes. It's really good. We gotta talk about fake Jan. Because the thing about all of the spinoffs, other than maybe the animated series I haven't checked on, this is the only later Brady project scripted that everyone is in is the Brady Girls Get Married TV movie, movie. Eve Plumb, who played Jan, is not in the Brady Variety hour. There's a different Cindy in the very Brady Christmas TV movie than the original Cindy is back for the Brady's. But there's a different Marcia. So it's not actually Maureen McCormick who has a drinking problem. It's somebody else. And I mean, the Simpsons made fun of this when they did their Simpsons spin off showcase, which is a parody of this. And Lisa is replaced by sort of like a generic, bubbly, know, blonde. And that's kind of what happens here. It's just like the, you know, the most bland, conventionally pretty person who has none of the weirdness of Jan Brady whatsoever.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I would say that it's a loss and it's palpable. But there's so much spandex and there is so much glitter and there's so much fringe and there are so many swimming clowns that honestly, I think you can get pretty far without if unless obviously for the people for whom Brady Bunch is carved into to your brains, you see it and you are immediately frustrated. I, a Brady dilettante, came to this and was like, that doesn't look so familiar. But I was immediately distracted by many other moving lights and colors.

[A]

Now, here's the question. When a lot of the time when we go back and we look at an old thing, your response? And my response is, okay, I need to watch all of the rest of this.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Are you going to pursue the additional eight episodes of the Brady Bunch variety hour?

[C]

I think the next time I feel like dropping acid, this is the best imaginable ch. I don't currently have that on my calendar, but you never know.

[A]

Can I come over when you do?

[C]

Sure.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So the other one we picked is less weird in terms of form, but is very weird in terms of the idea.

[B]

Great.

[A]

Please tell me this is Mrs. Columbo.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

First of all, for those of you who don't know, Columbo is one of the great comfort food shows in television history. Peter Falk plays Lt. Columbo, a very rumpled cop in the LAPD. The show is an open mystery where you see the murder committed at the beginning. It is almost always done by some rich and powerful person who goes out of their way to contrive a fake alibi. So it's I'm going to do some gimmick with an answering machine to make it seem like I was far away when the murder happened, that kind of thing. 20 minutes into every episode, Peter Falk rose up in his beat up Peugeot, his rumpled trench coat, cigar, et cetera, and just speaks very strangely and absent minded. And the killer takes him for a fool and he immediately figures out you're the killer and spends the rest of the episode slowly but surely tricking the killer into implicating himself or occasionally herself. Just one of these hall of fame TV performances by Peter Falk. Yes. You watch him do everything. Among the recurring bits on the show is that Lt. Colombo whose name you never hear, although every now and then you can see on his badge that it's Frank talks constantly to the killers about his wife, Mrs. Colombo, and he tells stories about, like, here's this sauce she made, or here's this trip we want to go on. There's an episode that takes place on a cruise ship, and I don't remember why, but, like, either we never see Mrs. Columbo on the cruise, or she somehow missed the cruise and only Columbo is on it. Yes. Regardless, you never, ever see her. It's sort of like Vera on Cheers or Maris on Frasier. One of those. Those famous characters. And there was often a theory among Columbo fans, does she actually exist? Or is this just something like a way in which Columbo, again, makes himself seem like a dim bulb to endear himself to the killers so they will not realize how he's tricking them? We don't know. The show runs from, I think, 70, 71 to 78. They stop. NBC wants to sort of have new Columbo material. And so Fred Silverman, the head of NBC at the time, the man who greenlit some of the greatest TV shows ever and some of the worst TV shows ever, including Super Train while he was at NBC, which was the Love Boat, but it's on a train. Yes. Fred Silverman gets the idea. Well, what if we actually see Mrs. Colombo?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Okay. Several things happen. Peter Falk says, this is a bad idea. Don't do it.

[C]

He's a smart guy.

[A]

Levinson and Link, the creators of the character, who've written or produced the show for decades now, say, this is a terrible idea. Don't do it. Silverman makes clear, I'm going to do it. So they say, all right, well, if you're going to do it, you need to cast an actress of some stature who you would buy as Peter Fawkes, equal and peer. And they say, what about Maureen Stapleton? And Fred Silverman says, no, I want someone young and hot. And so he hires Kate Mulgrew later. Yes. You love Kate Mulgrew, right?

[C]

I do love Kate Mulgrew.

[A]

So this is young Kate Mulgrew, long before she was Catherine Janeway or everything. I just. Your. Your face. You're so happy right now. I'm so happy for you.

[C]

So happy.

[A]

So this Kate Mulgrew, back when she's sort of like, she's got this real young Katharine Hepburn kind of vibe, hadn't really done much. And so they decided, all right, well, it'll be. We will see. She will be Kate Columbus. Lieutenant Colombo will never be around. He'll always be traveling on business or doing a case. And Kate is like a reporter, you know, they have a young daughter, and the daughter is now old enough that Kate can go back to the workforce. And she's working as a reporter, and she's uncovering.

[C]

It's very modern woman, you know?

[A]

Yes, exactly. And she's uncovering different cases, you know, so there's one or the very first episode is like she has an intercom system in her house that she uses to talk to the dog daughter, and somehow it, like, gets crosswired with an intercom at a neighbor's house.

[C]

Sure. I just watched. Here's a murder being committed. Yep, yep, yep.

[A]

Okay, so that's one. And it's like Columbo. It's a series of TV movies that rotates in with others, so there's not a lot of episodes per year. And it will shock you to learn, Catherine, that the audience that loved Columbo did not like Mrs. Columbo.

[C]

Wow. Wow.

[A]

They did not like the idea of Mrs. Colombo. They did not like the existence of Mrs. Colombo. Colombo. We want Mrs. Colombo to exist in our imagination. We do not want this woman with this young Boston Brahmin Energy to be Mrs. Colombo. We do not believe that she would be married to Peter Falk.

[B]

This looks pretty good.

[A]

Yep, yep, yep. You found the poster. Stop Googling, though, because I got.

[C]

I just wanted to see Kate Mulgrew.

[A]

That's not even how she looks on the show.

[B]

That's.

[A]

That's a very glam shot.

[C]

It looks way too hot for, like, that to have been what was actually happening. I just need to say that Kate Mulgrew, when I was on college tours, was also on the college that I was on because her kid was looking at that college, and I, as a high schooler, was wearing my new express pants, and she told me that she liked my pants, and that's why I went to that college. There were other reasons, but that was a pretty important one for me.

[A]

Wow. That is maybe the best celebrity encounter story I've ever heard. Every now and then, kids, it's okay to meet your heroes.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

So, all right, it's time to retool. Kate gets divorced. She goes back to her maiden name, Kate Callahan. They. They. They start phasing out the idea that she was ever married to Frank Colombo. There is a. She is now. She was married to a different LAPD Lieutenant Colombo.

[C]

What?

[A]

Yes. I I, I. This part I'm trusting the Internet on because I've seen it in enough different sources, but like, they make references to, like they give him a different first name and she will mention him briefly. And it's not supposed to be Peter Falk anymore. They've retconned Peter Falk out of the show, even though he was never physically in the show to begin with. But you would see his Peugeot and you would occasionally see the Raincoat, but it's still Columbo. She was married to a different. She's married to a different cop who she then divorces and is a single mom solving mysteries.

[C]

Okay, okay.

[A]

Along the way, they change the name multiple times. It is Mrs. Columbo then. Apologies to anyone who's an expert if I'm getting the order wrong. She is then Kate Colombo.

[C]

Uh huh.

[A]

Then it is Kate the Detective. And then finally it is Kate Loves a Mystery.

[C]

Okay, sure, sure.

[A]

They, they were good. They were doing everything they could to keep the patient alive. This is like Dr. Robbie flogging Jake's girlfriend on the day of Pitfest. Like, I refuse to allow this idea to die.

[C]

That's even though it's not the, I mean, it's real Ship of Theseus situation, right?

[A]

Yes. Y just, it's Kate Mulgrew. And I think there's like 13 episodes over two seasons. And finally, no matter what they tried, the audience was like, we do not want this. Stop giving us this.

[C]

How do you change the name that many times? 13 episodes over 2 seasons?

[A]

I don't know. And here's the funny thing is, if you watch, all the episodes are on YouTube. And my guess is that they are all at some point, the package of 13 episodes must have appeared in the 80s or 90s on a basic cable channel like Lifetime or A and E. And so they have consistent branding. So all the corporate credits on YouTube say Mrs. Columbo.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

All right, you can find, if you Google them, newspaper ads for Kate Loves a Mystery, for Kate the Detective and Kate Colombo.

[C]

I want to now find, own and frame a newspaper ad for Kate Loves a Mystery.

[A]

All right, I'll send, I will send you a link after we're done, or you can look it up.

[C]

Great.

[A]

But yeah, so this is, I mean, on the one hand, this is much more in line.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

With Columbia, it's an open mystery. You know, it's someone who everybody underestimates. So in that respect, it makes sense that they would do it. Yeah, but the audience was so clear, the actor was so clear, the Creators were so clear, don't do this. And they did it anyway.

[C]

Yeah. This is the thing about. I mean, spin offs as a whole, as a TV specific phenomenon are so fascinating and so fraught and it's almost like you have to. There's no. There's no way to predict when these things will work and when they're going to fall down. Like, I would love to be able to say you have to go completely weird and oddball in order for them to work and be Mork and Mindy or frankly, Brady Variety Hour, which I still found charming while also baffling. But, like, that's not the case because they can. They can completely fail that way. You also can't get too close to whatever the original thing was because then you're just constantly reminded that you're not watching the original thing. It is funny that they are so constant throughout TV history, given that their track record is so mixed. So, so mixed. You are. So you're as likely to end up with a Mrs. Colombo situation as you are with, you know, any of the spinoffs that are actually like the Jeffersons. Yeah.

[A]

Laverne and Shirley was more popular than Happy Days for a while.

[C]

What a beautiful, beautiful facet of this genre and humans inability. It's a testament to our. The resilience of hope. Right. It's a testament to the human spirit just waking up again and being like, let's try another one. Maybe this one will work. It's really.

[A]

And yet that's.

[C]

But that hope. Hope isn't hope. If there's success all the time. Time. There's no point. There has to be Mrs. Colombo, in order for there to be something like. But maybe in the future.

[A]

Proof denies faith. If you know God exists. You don't have to believe in God if you know your spin off is going to work, you know.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Where's the fun in that?

[C]

Where is the.

[A]

Where.

[C]

Where is the joy of discovery? Where Robin Williams. Doesn't happen if you don't have Mortgage Mindy. Right.

[A]

Exactly.

[C]

Well, many thought. Many existential lessons to be taken here. One of them is don't make Mrs. Colombo.

[A]

No. But do employ Kate Mulgrew because she's wonderful. Yes, yes, yes. All right. We've done current, we've done classic. Every now and then we'll do three segments in a show. We want to do some spoilers because we really loved Vampire Lestat. When we talked about it much earlier in the run, I think we'd both seen four episodes of the Point. We're now done with the seven episode season, this is going to be spoilers. So if you like the show but are not caught up or you're interested in catching up on the show, we would recommend listening to the earlier episode and save this for later. We're going to spoil the hell out of it. What did you think of the season overall? Let's leave the finale aside for a moment. How did you feel about season three of Interview with the Vampire? Season one of the Vampire Lestat had

[C]

a great time with the season, but it required giving up on ever really knowing what was going on at any given point. And that was kind of true in those first few episodes. It became only more so by the end. And I don't, I don't say that as a knock on it like it is more about the experience of watching it than it is about exactly tracking who is trying to do what to whom and how all of the relation. It's a Vibes based show first and foremost and you should not try to get away with that. Most of the time it fails like in Stuart style versions. But when the vibes are this exquisite, it kind of doesn't. You are. You can coast for quite a long way.

[A]

And.

[C]

And it is the rare example of a show where I rarely had any idea what was going on. And I was like, that's probably a me problem. Like I. I feel like they know what's going. That's enough.

[A]

Yes. I kept thinking, all right, am I not paying enough attention? Do I have to have read the books? And often that drives me nuts with a show. I really felt there were times in Game of Thrones where it would absolutely be. You're failing at your job here because you're expecting anyone to follow this scene to have read the source material. And yet there was just something about the approach they took to. To it and specifically about the performances from Sam Reed and Jacob Anderson where I kind of didn't care. Like I was emotional. I didn't understand what was happening a lot of the time, but I was too emotionally engaged to be bothered by it.

[C]

Yeah, I had the same feeling. It's also not boring. Like even though I sort of. It was difficult for me to be tracking. So there's a. The framing devices that you're listening to to these. The failures which are these recordings by Lestat about his experiences. And you are shifting the perspective from the first two seasons of the show. The storyteller is now Lestat instead of Louis. And so the characterizations and like the motivations and what is trustworthy as a narrator has changed quite a lot. And Lestat is wildly unreliable narrator. And so sometimes you're watching a thing and you're like, that's not actually what happened. And that sort of thing happened, happens enough that it's hard to remember what exactly did, did happen. The music is great and fun. Sam Reed in particular, as we mentioned and the first time we covered this is so good and freaky as Lestat. And the tone is never like grim, scoldy. It's never the sort of thing where it's doing all of this plot and then it's like, haha, ha, you, because you didn't follow this, don't have any idea what's going on because it will quickly slide along to some other thing.

[A]

This is all good. And I really, for a lot of it, I was so impressed by the way they would do sort of this kaleidoscopic memory approach where, you know, you'd have like. You'd be in like three different timelines at once with five different characters bouncing back and forth. And maybe it was confusing, maybe it wasn't, but it was so emotionally resonant. You know, where you're sort of. You're seeing Lestat revisiting the moment at which he was turned into a vampire and how that's framed like sexual assault. And you're also at the same time seeing Louis dealing with the vampire who assaulted Claudia. It's just all of these things happening at once and it could be so intense. In the penultimate episode, they hire a witch.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Mayfair Witches. Is that what they're called?

[C]

Yeah, that's one of the spin offs of this show that.

[A]

Yeah, but I don't believe it's a character from the Mayfair Witches show.

[C]

Yeah, I don't think so.

[A]

They hire a Mayfair witch and she does a seance where she brings back Claudia's spirit. And the two guys are trying to get closure with her and she ain't fucking having it. She hates them both so much she tears them to pieces. It's astonishing. Like, the emotional places the show can go to.

[C]

Her performance is incredible. But their performances in that sequence also when they are going through this journey of like, they're so hopeful and expectant and then they're so crushed. And then they're both trying to be like, justifying it to themselves or excusing it, and then they can't. And then they're even more crushed. Like it the way that that emotional experience plays out and also the way that they. So there's a lot of TV and film that is super therapized therap there. It is so heavily laden with really simplistic, rote, psychological, particularly trauma narratives. We haven't really talked about this on the podcast. I am sure we will be doing. You know, it comes up quite a bit.

[A]

Have you heard that there are some TV shows lately that are really about trauma?

[C]

They're really about trauma. And Lestat has every reason, and this whole sequence has every reason to be like, this is really about trauma. And in fact, those performances and the way that they are written are they treat it sort of like they're in couples counseling or marriage therapy. Like the way that they're talking to each other about that experience, except that it is so conscious of how tiresome the whole trauma narrative is. They are being made fun of by the show while also really seriously caring about how they actually feel. Everything is just wry enough that you're not stuck in this plodding, sort of overly sincere place, which the show is not. That's not where this show lives. It's not its zone, man. Really good. Really good.

[A]

So then we come to the penultimate episode ends with Daniel and Armand, who are somehow now in love. And we gotta talk about that. Yeah, Daniel and Armand and one of the guitar players in the band whose name I keep forgetting because the band members are non characters.

[C]

Larry, I think.

[A]

No, Larry was the brother. I think this is.

[C]

Larry was the brother.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, Larry's the brother who Armand, like, hypnotizes into jumping off subway platform. They conspire to, like, decapitate Lestat and Louis. And in the finale, Lestat's head is in a bowling ball bag which Daniel has brought to a bowling alley. And Lestat, like, has gone into his memory palace or whatever and is like, being put on trial by the ghosts of his past. And everyone he's ever hurt to decide, like, whether he has lived a good life or something or whatever. And meanwhile, you have Armand has Louis head in the back of a kosher butcher shop and his. His decapitated body nearby. And he's like, you are going to confess all of your sins to me or else I'm going to take Regina, who is this Claudia doppelganger who we discover he basically pushed at Louis. It's not a coincidence. And he's like, I'm going to cut Regina's head off and I'm going to sew your head onto Regina's body. And that's what you're going to be from now on, so you better do this. I think there's Some extraordinary moments in this finish alley. I didn't understand half of what was fucking happening. No, it's so much worse than any of the. It's like the first time in the season where I'm like, I can't keep up with what they're talking about. And therefore, it's so much harder for me to emotionally invest. Even though Sam Reed and Jacob Anderson are just killing it.

[C]

Yeah, I had the same experience. They're so good with imagery and with. With creating these really overwhelming experiences. There's a moment where, like, Daniel's head comes in through the ceiling of the memory palace trial that Lestat is having, and you're just like, wow, that is so disorienting and bizarre. A lot of the imagery around Louis being stuck on this spike and the Claudia who, is, like, reacting to him, overwhelmed him. Really effective. But I have lost track of, if you will pardon me, the stakes at this point. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be hoping or not hoping for at this point.

[A]

And you can't remember as they're bouncing around through Lestat's history, like, wait, what was his conflict with this person? In what order did this happen? So, like, there are certain things you understand, like his mother, Gabriella, you know, still. You know, Jennifer Ehley's still killing it. Like, obviously, she has abused him. And the big revelation of this is it finally he has this catharsis and realizes she has always been abusive to me, even before we both became vampires, and I need to cut her out of my life. So you follow that. But there's so many other things that they're revisiting. And I'm like, wait, who's the woman in the tuxedo? I. I mean, and I didn't. I rewatched. I watched the first two seasons not that long ago, and it was still a struggle to get through that. So then when he's having these different. Different emotional moments, no matter how good the acting is, it's a lot harder to access it. You know, the big moment between Louis and Armand is Louis finally agrees to write his confession and he's dictating it. And he starts talking about how, like, Armand was enslaved centuries ago when he was just a child. And I kind of remembered that they had talked about that before, but clearly not with as much detail as the show wants. Wanted me to.

[C]

Yeah. It also then leads to this moment where Lestat is transitioning from the long table of this trial into a concert. And the concert is tied to this whole great conversion thing that They've been kind of hinting at the whole time that this is going to be. They're going to. This cataclysmic vampire event is going to happen with this concert. But we're so deep into dreams and sequence that I like, it's not actually happening for real. And I kind of wanted to be back in a place where somebody was physically in their body again at the end of this show so that I could at least understand this body is moving through space and this one is doing this other thing.

[A]

And I did at least appreciate that in the climax, Louis Brother returns, who dies by suicide in the very first episode of the show. And. And that's sort of this fundamental part of Louis backstory. And it's this thing where I've always wondered, did that, like, did he do that on his own or did Lestat push him? And the fact that he's there in this moment where Lestat is surrounded by his victims, maybe that's what that means. Or maybe Lestat just feels guilty about it. I don't know. But just the appearance of him was really, really powerful. And then finally, he has his epiphany. We come back to the real world, and suddenly every problem has been solved by Raglan James, played by Justin Kirk

[C]

from Talamasc, having a great time.

[A]

Okay, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. What the fuck is Raglan James doing?

[C]

I don't know.

[A]

Are there two agendas the same? No.

[C]

I don't know. I don't know. I don't. I don't know. I. I need this show to just start again fresh so that I can be like, okay, here's who the people are.

[A]

I don't think they've ever done a good job of explaining this. And it's. And it's one thing. Think if it's just, hey, Justin, Kirk's coming in here having a fine time bantering with one of our leads. I'm down for that. I got no beef with that. When Raglan James is, like, the most important plot point of the finale, I have to have some clue about what he is on, about what he wants, and also whether what he wants is the same thing as his mysterious organization wants. And I shouldn't have to watch what, by all accounts is a really bad spin off about Talamaska to understand that.

[C]

Yeah, no, I think that's a reasonable request.

[A]

All right. And then the other beef I have. Did you a buy that Daniel would actually, like, be in love with Armand?

[C]

No, no, no, no.

[A]

Okay. Did they. They did not do the work on that at all.

[C]

It's always been a struggle when that character is meant to be sincerely, emotionally. Like, he's so good at the skepticism and the like.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

The place where he's sort of tilting, where you're like, does he believe or doesn't he? And any place where he's actually emotionally overwhelmed by someone, I'm like, no, he's not. He sees through them.

[A]

Yeah. So you a, have to believe that he has fallen in love with Armand. And I didn't. I'm still. I'm not even 100% sure I believe that Armand is in love with Daniel, even though the flashback episode to them in the 70s is one of the better episodes of the show. So there's that then a lot of what Armand is doing is happening, happening off screen. You know, he returns. He is.

[C]

He's working steps. We don't know.

[A]

He's working the steps. He's trying to do the amends. And he seems like, to be better, but no, it's all like a scheme to get his revenge on Louis, and it involves Alex, the guitar player with no personality. It's a problem. And regardless of, like, the romance of it, I do not, in any level whatsoever believe that Daniel would feel so hurt by Lestat fucking around with him in the making of the documentary that he would agree to be part of this scheme. Daniel would not be this angry. No.

[C]

Well, he's also. The Daniel that I like is the one who's super cold and pragmatic about things. Like, he would be trying to work some angle to his own advantage. And watching that happen or watching him be foiled once again would be the delight of it. And to have him then be this sort of less lesser partner character I found on Rewarding.

[A]

All right, so we're on the same page about the finale. Often when you get a TV season, especially of a serialized show like this, where the finale is a letdown, it kind of sours people's view of the whole season. Do you think less of Lestat this season, of it having seen this finale or not?

[C]

I don't. I think the show has always skated by on this place of it shouldn't really work. And so when it then does not actually work, it feels unsurprising and also not necessarily indicative of whether it couldn't work again. I had the unfortunate realization that Matt Berry should have been in the band, and that really is the thing that I now feel most strongly about this season. We can never Take that back. I think short of a multiverse do over a situation, this wrong can never be righted. And that's my big beef against the season. But that's a. That's a me problem, and I accept that. And it's the kind of show where I'm like, good for them for trying something absolutely batshit, you know?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, I admire that they took a swing. I think they missed pretty wildly on it. But, you know, Lestat, I mean, he even has a line in the finale like, you know, at least I tried things. And so, look, I respect it. It didn't work, but I respect it. I will very gladly be back whenever we get the next season of Lestat. And obviously, there's a cliffhanger about whatever goes wrong in Lestat's concert and why Montreal is now ruined and whether the vampires have just conquered the world. But also, I'm not sure how things function if the vampires conquer the world, because don't you need humans to feed on?

[C]

But push that down, I'm sure an Anne Ricehead can tell us what that means.

[A]

Oh, that's the last one. When they're in the last part of Lestat's vision and Louis Brother looks up at the sky and is clearly having a conversation with the Almighty and says, yes, ma', am is the God of this universe Anne Rice.

[C]

Yeah. Yes.

[A]

Yes. Okay, I like that. That was a very nice touch.

[C]

Yeah, it's cute.

[A]

Okay, I asked you this. After Stuart fails to save the universe, I'm going to ask you again. Now that we have talked about Lestat, Mrs. Colombo, and the Brady Bunch variety Hour, Catherine was the TV this week.

[C]

I am willing to go out on a limb and say that at various points, all of the TV we talked about in this part of the show has been or had the occasional closeness to being good, sort of a little bit, kind of.

[A]

I will accept that. Next week, what is the current show we're talking about?

[C]

Next week, we are going to be talking about Liz Meriwether's Furious, which is coming out on Hulu, and we are going to be pairing that with the New Girl episode Cooler, which I have not revisited in a while, and I am looking forward to. And I'm also really looking forward to talking about Furious, which I think is an interesting show.

[A]

Yes. And New girl Cooler, Season 2, Episode 15. Well, I mean, I'm sure we'll be doing more general New Girls discussion as well, but we're trying to focus it in what many people consider to be the best episode of the show. New Girl is streaming on, I believe Hulu and Peacock. You don't have to do the homework, but you can. You can find my [e-mail] and Katherine'[e-mail] my Rod Serling book A Journey into the twilight zone with TV's first visionary is available for pre order right now and you can also if you present proof of purchase pre order we will send you an essay I wrote about my favorite episode of the Twilight Zone and why it's the best. You can find links to all of that stuff in the show notes and

[C]

if you want to get in touch with us directly, you can do that through email. We [e-mail] you can also come talk to us on bluesky or other social media platforms. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. I was looking once again at those ratings and really being really feeling appreciation for everybody who has taken a second of their day to just be like boop. This was a fun experience. We really appreciate it. It is of course the only way to beat the algorithm.

[A]

And we hate the algorithm. But we love tv. Even when TV gives us something like Stewart fails to save the universe.

[C]

Yeah, that's how strong our love is. Thanks to Joe Kennedy for our theme music, Kate Bergener for our artwork, and Riley Routh for editing.

[A]

And thank you for listening.

[B]

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