Because neither Jason or Joel watched all that much of the Olympics, they decided to bring on someone who watched a lot of it: Jason’s wife, Kelly Hughes. She did a good job giving us an idea of what NBC did well and what they screwed up, and she even listened as we prattled on. What did we talk about?
- Was NBC’s primetime Olympics show as annoying as the press it got would indicate? It seems like it was, but it seems like NBC doesn’t care,
- Also, we talk about NBC’s jingoism, and if it was bad for those who watched,
- Then we talked about the closing ceremonies, and how basically NBC ruined them by a) using Ryan Seacrest and b) cutting it off — even though it was on tape delay — to show Animal Practice,
- Speaking of which, we then talk about two of the comedies that NBC introduced during the Olympics, Go On — Matthew Perry in a lighter version of Community — and Animal Practice — a show that needs to tamp down the silliness,
- Then we talk with Kelly about her fandom of USA shows, and why they’re so watchable despite being pretty standard-grade procedural dramas (the upshot: good looking stars and slick visuals),
- Speaking of procedurals, Joel lambasts CBS’s fall pilot Vegas for laying on a thick procedural layer on top of what could be a good show,
- Then we talk about the last two episodes of the first season of A&E’s Longmire, a procedural that at least has a pretty decent backstory and high stakes,
- Finally, talk about the “train robbery” in last Sunday’s episode of Breaking Bad, and why it was good despite the fact that a lot of leaps of faith had to be made to get there.
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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.
