Joel did not watch American Idol like he promised last week, so Jason had every right to call him names. They did, however talk about a certain singing show that ended this week, along with a whole bunch of TV-related stuff:
- We started with The Voice finale, and how it became more about Christina Aguilera vs. Tony Lucca than about singing or who won,
- In the middle of that discussion, we talk about how it seems like the watching experience of a lot of reality shows really suffers when you don’t follow things on Twitter, blogs, and other online sources,
- Then we turn to the endless slog that is America’s Got Talent, and why Joel thinks that Howard Stern will not only not take over the show, but be a pretty good judge,
- Joel then marvels at how Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Bump worked once again, this time for Maurice Sendak, only a few months before the great children’s book author/illustrator passed away,
- We then talk about the prospects of Cougar Town shifting to TBS (which was confirmed today). We speculated whether the cast would have to take pay cuts (which won’t happen) and discuss why this show will be so important to TBS,
- We then have our now-weekly Mad Men talk, where we talk about some of the episode’s obvious symbolism, some ominous foreshadowing that might be a red herring, and why we didn’t buy Alexis “Rory Gilmore” Bledel as a put-upon sixties housewife,
- Finally, we preview a few things we might talk about next week, like why the NBA and NHL playoffs have lost their luster, very serious cartoon reboots, and how websites are back doing the “everyone in the office” model of journalism.
You can listen to the podcast above (if you don’t hear anything, fiddle with the volume slider), download it via this link, subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via iTunes. You can also find us on the Stitcher radio app for smartphones and iPads.
By the way, the bumper music is “Trevor Trailer Trash” from the late, great band Cropduster.
Joel Keller
Joel Keller is one of the co-founders of Antenna Free TV and co-hosts the weekly AFT Podcast. A long time ago, he left a career rebooting servers to write about TV and other fun stuff (though his ulterior motive was to write off his cable on his income taxes). At the time, he was writing for the late, great site TV Squad, where he eventually became editor-in-chief. Since those heady days, he's written about TV and other topics for The New York Times, The A.V. Club, TheAtlantic.com, Fast Company's Co.Create, Vulture, Zap2It and elsewhere.
