Appointment Television

We're back again! This time with a "Fall 2023" edition of Good One Bad One, which we started recording pretty late in the season and have finally gotten around to releasing even later. (November hit hard this year, listener.)  We've got a great lineup for you this season! Presenting the Good Ones: Apple TV+'s The Buccaneers Hulu's Goosebumps Showtime's The Curse And, of course, our formidable Bad Ones: Paramount+'s Frasier reboot NBC's The Irrational Paramount+'s Lawmen: Bass Reeves

In which we finish our miniseries on Citadel and attempt to wrestle with what, exactly, we have brought upon ourselves. 

Is watching this show not unlike descending into pure mindless sensation? Like a sensory deprivation tank, but as a TV show? Also why on earth does the Priyanka Chopra-Jonas character make these choices?! They're such bad choices! 

Extra Hot Great co-host and TV critic extraordinaire Tara Ariano parachutes into our Citadel series this week, to help us break down exactly what is going on in all these flashback sequences where characters look and act exactly the same way they do in the "present day." This episode moves the season's main story forward by roughly 37 seconds.

It's so hard to remember any individual thing that happens in an episode of Citadel that I'm not sure how we keep sitting down and having a conversation about it, but our journey continues, flying forward with the inevitability of a super-spy on ski-boots.

We gently encouraged you to tell us whether you wanted us to watch more of Citadel, and you gently encouraged us back, so here we are with another episode about this dumb, dumb show where nothing is as it seems but in a super predictable kind of way. We'll watch all six episodes of Citadel season 1 on Amazon, one at a time, posting on Thursdays(ish). 

We saved the best and the worst for last this year! Mrs. Davis is a little zeitgeisty and a little head-fake-y and a lot of fun, while Citadel kind of wants to be all of those things and isn't any of them? Also if three or four dozen of you tweet at or email us I guess we'll fuck around and watch the entire first season of Citadel, don't disappoint us! 

In this week's (comically belated) episode, we're tackling Kathryn's Spring 2023 GOBO picks, the shoulder devil and should angel of the Mom TV genre: The Diplomat (good, currently streaming on Netflix) and The Last Thing He Told Me (preposterous, not in a fun way, currently streaming on Apple TV+). In addition, we take some time off from discussing wood turning, houseboats, and even-weirder-than-Sweeney-Todd Stephen Sondheim musicals to discuss the current writer's strike in Hollywood and what's driving writers' discontent. Listen and enjoy and pretend this came out on Thursday like it was supposed to! 

Daisy May Cooper's Am I Being Unreasonable is fascinating and strange and maybe (probably) doesn't work? Particularly because we all get into an argument about who we're supposed to be sympathizing with and why! But one thing's for DANG sure, and it's that Am I Being Unreasonable is a more interesting and successful show than Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies! 

We're back gang!! This time we pick through the spring 2023 TV season to find shows to hang our hopes and our anti-hopes on. Next week! Prepare to watch Am I Being Unreasonable on Hulu and (ugh) Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies on Paramount+.

It is our final GOBO of this run, in which we discuss NBC's Quantum Leap and ABC's Alaska Daily. We promise to send you out on much skepticism about the wisdom of building a new Quantum Leap machine, and also a few thoughts on The State of Journalism. 

Star Wars TV shows need to learn how to do episodes. So Help Me Todd is, so help us, not our worst-ever watch, even though it's very goofy and stupid. Classic bad one!!

Hello poppets! You're in for a treat with this one, posting up juuuust in time for everyones' commute home from work. We gather together to discuss Margaret's GO and BO: Reboot (GO) and The Vampire Academy (BO) and the vast majority of the episode is us trying in vain to figure out the vampire rules of a poorly written show to which we may or may not have paid much attention. Margaret gets sent to horny jail by minute 18. 

Have you heard? People love giant fantasy series! They really do. Or at least, they definitely WATCH giant fantasy series, and whether or not they love them is maybe beside the point? In any event, we're doing a free space Good One / Bad One episode to discuss both House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power, which are your two choices for overstuffed fantasy extravaganzas this fall. No one gets mad about anything. 

Ah, the promise of a new TV season. Maybe one of the premieres will be one of your new favorites! Maybe you'll watch something so bad that you can make yourself mad years later just by thinking about it. The world is alight with possibilities!  We're back for a FIVE-episode fall engagement! This week we'll announce our picks, and next week we're going to do an obligatory Oops! All Fantasy episode about the House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings shows. 

We wrap up this season's round of Good One/Bad One with one entirely predictable bad one (Amazon's Lovestruck High) and one pleasantly surprising good one (Paramount+'s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds). See you in the fall! 

This is, fundamentally, an episode about life's most existential questions. Some of those questions are fairly simple: what is good TV? How many shows about the same true crime murder is too many shows?   Some of those questions are much more complicated, like "if a time traveler poops in the woods and Steven Moffat is the showrunner and he changes the rules of how the story works so that detached parts of the time traveler's body follow him around through time and space ... what are the implications for Thanksgiving?"

This week, Margaret reopens her Queer TV Quorner to discuss OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH and then inflicts THE COURTSHIP upon Andrew and Kathryn. Its vastly superior predecessor Regency House Party is also discussed.

Did you miss us? Whether you did or not, we're back again with our spring 2022 edition of Good One/Bad One, along with some notes about what we've been watching while we've been gone.  GOOD ONES:  Our Flag Means Death: https://play.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYf3LzwJV98JifQEAAAAO Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/star-trek-strange-new-worlds/ Candy: https://www.hulu.com/series/candy-2ce80ed9-7ab6-44de-8434-f7dadb6ec11b BAD ONES:  The Courtship: https://www.usanetwork.com/the-courtship Lovestruck High: https://press.amazonstudios.com/us/en/press-release/lindsay-lohan-unveiled-as-the-official-voiceover-o The Time Traveler's Wife: https://www.hbo.com/the-time-travelers-wife

You don't have to go home but you can't stay here.  SHOW NOTES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGytDsqkQY8

This week we watched the unredeemable mess that is Netflix's Father Christmas Is Back, starring Frasier from the show Frasier. You'll miss us when we're gone. 

In this week's episode, we take our final dive into the Ask Box while it's still Appointment Television's ask box. Himbos, endings, and what we would do with nigh unlimited funds are all discussed, among other things. And Margaret barely even cries, it's really impressive how brave she is.

It's the final SYMBOL [final countdown riff goes here].   It's got everything - it's got death! It's got pyramids! It's got degrees, but not celsius or fahrenheit degrees, some OTHER degrees! It's got resonance, and kissing (terrible kissing), and oh yes - it's got symbols. 

Andrew has watched Amazon's Wheel of Time adaptation, because you don't read a 14-book fantasy series and not watch the TV adaptation. Then, the three of us are whisked back to the magical world of Dan Brown, where everyone is always in on the scheme and all the evil masterminds are named "Zachary." 

On this week's show, two reoccurring segments: the first return of "We Were Wrong About-- OR WERE WE?" (subject this time: Apple TV PLUS) and the final iteration of The Old Type about, inevitably, I Love Lucy. We discuss the episode "Lucy Does a Commercial" (which we all watched together) and then in turn the episodes "Lucy Thinks Ricky is Trying to Murder Her," "Job Switching," and "Lucy Meets Orson Welles." And speaking of our man Orson, here is the wine commercial outtakes reel of which we speak in the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvxwf1jxdaM. Trust me, you WILL want to watch it. Love, The Podcast. 

In this episode of ATV, Robert Langdon visits a quarry, and that is how we know that this show was our destiny! Also featuring: bad arm casts, Dell desktops, pyramid tops, masonic squares, CIA psychics, and some Netflix metrics reporting! 

On today's episode: Andrew and Kathryn spoil one particular scene of the new season of Succession for Margaret (terminally behind on all television) in a segment Andrew's eloquently dubbed "Jesus CHRIST, Kendall Roy," resulting in what we must assume is a record number of shell-shocked "oh BOY"s for any single episode of the podcast. Then we introduce a new retrospective segment: "We Were Wrong About-- OR WERE WE?", wherein we revisit opinions of old and see if any of our minds have changed since they were initially formed. Our first topic for reexamination? Well, it's only our least-popular opinion ever: Nailed It, the show only we appeared to dislike. WERE we wrong about it? Only by listening to the show can you find out.

This week we continue our final TV Book Club selection, carefully studying and then improbably deciphering the ancient secrets of episodes 2 and 3 of Peacock's Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

This week's episode is mostly a conversation about some important podcast business things. We love you all so much, and we hope you'll forgive us for all the many thoughts and feelings and also some truly bad pretend podcast titles that are all stuffed in here. We expect to hear from many of you lovely weirdos in the tumblr box, and we will treasure each and every one of those messages except for obviously the ones that are mean or gross.

On today's episode, we examine the last of our Fall 2021 Good One-Bad One pairs: Foundation, on Apple TV+, which is a perfectly acceptable good one, and La Brea, on NBC, which proved much more fun to chat about than it was to watch (please don't watch it). Join us as we answer the big questions: WHO at NBC is in the pocket of big tar pits? If you'd like to hear Andrew talk about the book version of Foundation on his other podcast, the link is right here: https://overduepodcast.com/episodes/2015/3/9/episode-103-foundation

If you subscribed to Paramount+ (née CBS All Access) for one month, what would you watch? Our answer to this question is complicated by the fact that Paramount+ actually has a back catalogue, but the short version is that you should start with Evil and work your way out from there.

It's the second installment of 2021's fall Good One / Bad One, this time discussing the new FOX drama The Big Leap, and Apple TV+'s news/comedy/journalism/the fact that we don't know what to call it is part of the problem here/discussion show, The Problem With Jon Stewart. In this episode, Margaret has many problems with Stewart, Kathryn and Andrew have fewer problems, and everybody agrees that there are zero problems with Scott Foley. 

In today's late-because-of-water-heater-chaos episode, we discuss three key things: The origin of the name Peaky Blinders (in which Margaret and Andrew each invent new terms) The pilot of Hulu's new adaptation of Y: The Last Man (which Margaret likens to this extremely timely and relevant cultural property) And then the gonzo excellence of Peacock's adaptation of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol

This year's crop of fall shows is small but potent. Look forward to watching each of these good and/or bad shows with us over the next few weeks. This is an episode that MOST of us came prepared for.   SHOW NOTES: Y: The Last Man on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/y-the-last-man-9fb2d79b-1280-48be-b185-f989b9c9519a   Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol on Peacock: https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/dan-browns-the-lost-symbol   Foundation on Apple TV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/foundation/umc.cmc.5983fipzqbicvrve6jdfep4x3   La Brea on NBC: https://www.nbc.com/la-brea   The Big Leap on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-big-leap-f6dc6023-2033-491e-a336-b9920735fb26   The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+: https://tv.apple.com/us/show/the-problem-with-jon-stewart/umc.cmc.4fcexvzqezr25p9weks6sxpob

Although Margaret could not be with us for this episode, when it was time to check in with season two of Ted Lasso we knew that we'd be in capable hands with our friends Christina Tucker and Sophie Brookover. They join us this week for a conversation about the ups and downs of both Ted Lasso and Ted Lasso discourse, and they have a couple recommendations for what to watch. We cover such topics as: Sam! Whether this show has conflict! The experience of watching serial television! And, alarmingly, we attempt to discuss sports. 

We're back, glory be! On this week's episode we're discussing a shocking revelation in the world of children's TV programming, the debatable delights of Doc McStuffins, and the absolutely established joys of Hulu's new original series Only Murders in the Building (with its gloriously Ephronian setting). 

There is also a second segment to this episode, in which Andrew, Margaret and Kathryn all pitch imaginary TV shows about good journalism, and as per usual Margaret has an eerie number of truly fantastic TV ideas. But the main event here is that a patron forced Andrew to watch a truly awful TV show called Do No Harm aka Dr Facehands, and it was magnificent. 

With five weeks of Ted Lasso remaining and no new Schmigadoon to watch, we suspect many of you might be looking for some new way to make the most of your Apple TV+ subscription. So, for our first Summer Hiatus Rerun, we're sharing the interview we did with Dickinson creator Alena Smith in January, 2020. Consider this our pitch for letting a little corseted chaos into your life.

We take a brief detour into the wacky world of Robert and Michele King to talk about how Evil Season 2 is going, then we do some fantasy casting of Broadway actors in Kings' projects before wrapping up our Feel Good TV Book Club. Also: we're taking a break! We'll be posting some reruns over the next few weeks and we'll see you all in September. EVIL on Paramount+: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/evil/ Feel Good on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80241545

This is episode two of our Feel Good book club, where we discuss episodes 3 and 4 of season one. Serious topics are considered, including: does George still suck as much, what is Mae's stand-up actually like, and also how is Lisa Kudrow *this* good at her job?  But before we get there, we bring up a topic that requires careful, detailed thought. Which one of us would suck the least if we were contestants on Survivor? 

On this week's episode, we introduce a new segment (name TBD) where we tell you how to get the most out of one month with any minor league streaming service. In honor of Ted Lasso's season 2 premiere last Friday (a glorious event to which we devote some time and attention), we've focus our first session on Apple TV+. Come for the earnest advice, but stay for the absolutely harrowing fuck-marry-kill the discussion occasions.

On this week's episode we begin our TV Book Club on Netflix's Feel Good, a show where extremely charming queer people make exceptionally poor decisions, but first: we answer some questions from our Tumblr ask box. Margaret goes long on the subject of library school, we all discuss the scam of terminal master degree programs (recently documented more thoroughly by Anne Helen Petersen), and then-- the true highlight-- we each share an embarrassing story we've not previously told on the podcast. 

On this week's episode, we kick off our new TV Book Club with Episodes 1 & 2 of Feel Good, but FIRST we introduce a new segment (name TBD) where we tell you how to get the most out of one month with any minor league streaming service. In honor of Ted Lasso's season 2 premiere coming out this Friday (a glorious event to which we devote some time and attention), we've focus our first session on Apple TV+. Come for the earnest advice, but stay for the absolutely harrowing fuck-marry-kill the discussion occasions.

RIP to The Bold Gripe, a segment we loved briefly and too well. You'll never guess what those goofy media types are up to in the finale! After we fully dunk on that whole situation we turn to the new HBO series The White Lotus, a show about rich people at a fancy resort but most importantly: a show with Jennifer Coolidge in it. 

On this week's episode of Appointment TB, we present unto you: CHAOS. Our exceptionally loose agenda is Andrew discusses Patreon Supporter Gerald's $7 pick, the late and sometimes lamented GCB and Margaret invites viewers to return to her Queer TV Qorner by mentioning some exclusively gay content in Marvel's Loki and finding a very particular queer framing for HBOMax's Starstruck. But in actual fact, you'll find our discussion a lot weirder and more wide-ranging than this brief summary can communicate, including the explicit nonsense that NPR specifically paid someone to remove from Margaret's discussion of Loki last week. 

You are *not* going to believe what happened on The Bold Type. It's the kind of thing you can see coming in retrospect, and yet it is so fully implausible that our minds are truly blown by it. Then we chat about Everything's Gonna Be Okay, a show we continue to love so, so much. 

On this week's episode, we celebrate reaching 300 episodes by talking about a bunch of other shows that have also reached 300 episodes! We also talk about Supernatural for what feels like an eternity; we're not apologizing for it but we do think you should be aware of it going in.  SHOW NOTES The Simpsons on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/the-simpsons/3ZoBZ52QHb4x Supernatural on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70143825 Grey's Anatomy on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/greys-anatomy-bfd6ba83-5fff-46f8-abae-76f1796c1c8e

In this week's episode Andrew catches us up on this season of The Bold Type (in what we hope will be a continuing segment) and we discuss episodes 5, 6, and 7 of Everything's Going to Be Okay, with which we are all falling ever more deeply in love. Along the way we touch briefly upon the issue of shows that exist in the same fictional universe, Andrew's secret superpower, and tease what's coming up in our Very Special 300th Episode.

This week's episode - Moon Show! (Technically the name of this show is For All Mankind on Apple TV+ but we're no dummies, we know the best name for it is Moon Show). Girls5Eva! Facts about Playboy bunnies in space! Also featuring: a brief but intense digression about Pringles! 

Everyone is charmed by episodes 2, 3, and 4 of Everything’s Gonna Be Okay (hereafter EGBO), and Kathryn recommends some shows to people for the first time in a while.  Everything’s Gonna Be Okay on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/everythings-gonna-be-okay-f30e3e01-ccb4-46c3-8802-5117f8dc2f13

In today's episode, we mix it up with M*A*S*H, from its less-than-great actual pilot to the S4 premiere that Margaret's friends insist is the true pilot, with a special detour to discuss the particularly strange journey to creating Trapper John, M.D.