Pop Culture Happy Hour - Rooster

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Steve Carell is a writer of pulpy crime novels and a hapless new writing teacher at a small college in the HBO comedy series Rooster. His daughter (Charly Clive) is also a teacher, and she’s the subject of campus gossip because her husband just dumped her for a student. The show’s got a great cast, including Danielle Deadwyler and John C. McGinley, and one of its creators is Bill Lawrence of Scrubs, Shrinking and Ted Lasso.Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Steve Corel is a hapless writing teacher at a small New England college in the new HBO comedy series Rooster. His daughter teaches there too, and she's the subject of campus gossip because her husband, also a teacher, just dumped her for a student. The show's got a great cast, including Danielle Deadweiler and John C. McGinley, and one of its creators is Bill Lawrence of Scrubs, shrinking, and Ted Lassow. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Rooster on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is Kristen Mineser. She co-hosts the Nightly a Bedtime podcast for pop culture lovers. Hey, Kristen, welcome back. Hey, Glenn. Hey, Linda. Great to have you. In Rooster, Steve Carell plays Greg, a writer of pulpy crime novels, who gets pressured into teaching at the college where his daughter Katie teaches art history. She's played by Charlie Clive. She's just been dumped by her husband Archie, played by Phil Dunster. He's a narcissistic historian who's having an affair with a student named Sunny.

She's played by Lawrence Eye. Daniel Deadweiler is Dylan. another writing teacher with whom Greg has lots of chemistry, and John C. McGinley is the college president. The show's co-created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarsis. I've already listed Lawrence's history, but you should know that Tarsus was the showrunner on Alex Inc. That show where Zach Raff was a podcaster, remember that? Linda, we've seen the first six episodes out of 10. What did you think a rooster? Yeah, I really liked this. It's not as good as shrinking, but it reminds me a lot of shrinking. It is about a bunch of people, most of whom do very. foolish things at times, but are basically decent and are basically trying. You mentioned Matt

Tarsus and made this sort of obligatory dig at Alex Inc. But I don't see Alex Inc. in this at all. What I see is shrinking and I see one of the other things that Matt Tarsus worked on in the past, which is my very beloved sports night. And there are people who get very impatient with shows where people are basically nice and basically trying, but it is my sweet spot. Shrinking is probably my favorite show right now as far as what I think it is trying not only to do as a comedy, but also kind of do in the world. I think I really welcome to this. I was afraid at first, obviously you put something on a college campus. You're going to get like the older, he's a novelist who's like a writer in residence. So he's not a traditional college professor

at all. But you get that and you feel like, is this going to be like humorless feminists? who don't want you to say mankind. That is not what this is, right? He does get himself in trouble a lot, but the show to me is very clear that those are his missteps. And it does not really villainize the students. It recognizes, I think, the generation gap and some of the different expectations without making the students bad or, you know, wrong to be challenging him on certain things. I appreciated that a lot. Basically, this really worked well for me. Like I said, I'm not going to say it's as good as shrinking, but that's an extremely high bar. I did enjoy. I did enjoy. it quite a lot. And I like Steve Carrell in this mode. So.

All right. Kristen, what you think? I agree with a lot of what Linda is saying here. It is like shrinking in a lot of ways. We have a dad. We have a daughter. We have both of them doing the best they can. Not many women get to be with their father while they watch their husband make out with someone. Yeah, we're pretty lucky. They screw up a lot. In some ways, daughter is more evolved than dad. In other ways, dad is kind of a kid figuring stuff out. But I will disagree with Linda on one point, she is saying this is a show about nice people. I'd say about half the show was about nice people. We have Steve Carrell's character and his daughter's character.

And we have Danielle Deadweiler, who is fantastic in this. Annie Momolo, who plays the assistant to the president of the college. I also think is a delight when she shows up on screen. I was so excited to see her in this show. They are just a delight. They are good people. But I would say everybody else on the show is not a good person. And they do terrible things.

and they're narcissistic and they're smug and they're flawed. Crystal, can you send me a student file? Gracie Shaw. She says she has ADHD. But I think she's just lazy and a little dumb. Or she's really struggling. Let's all root for her. They suffer from that malady that a lot of people in academia suffer from,

which is like all these kids, they love me, and they want to be my best friend, and they want to sleep with me. And I'm going to do all of the above. And I am not qualified for this job, but I am going to take great pride in not letting anyone else have this job. There's a lot of that in the show, too, which as somebody who used to work in academia, I used to be an adjunct professor, I used to be an admin in more than one department in a university.

I really enjoyed how the show depicted all of that nonsense, which just when I worked in it made me shake my fist at the sky constantly. But in how it's depicted on the show, it made me laugh and laugh and feel such cathartic joy. Okay, well, I'm vibing with you, Kristen, but I came down very differently than you did because I really didn't like this. And I kept wondering why, I mean, I like this cast. Daniel Deadweiler's on my TV. That doesn't happen enough. That's great.

I even like the characters in isolation and sometimes when they get paired off, you know, I think they bounce off each other well. What I didn't like was the show, the sensibility of the show, the organizing principle, the approach the show is taking. Because I expected, Linda, given the setting, that there would be some. Some boomer academia is woke jokes. And there are a few where the students and faculty, as you mentioned, they correct Greg. And the message there is that these are tiny infractions that don't matter. The running gag is that he often gets called before the world's most toothless academic disciplinary battle for tiny misunderstandings. And I think if those jokes were better or fresher.

But they just came at me as like the most basic lazy jokes that could have been made 40 years ago before we called it woke. back when we called it PC. And the show keeps devoting some energy to that. It sincerely believes that that's a comedy vein worth mining in 2026. Meanwhile, and here's my issue, these characters have no professional boundaries whatsoever. They do six really stupid things an episode that would get a teacher in the world so very, very fired. And they just, here's the issue, they just skate by. And I'm coming at this because I taught writing at the high school level and the college level back in the day, back in the late giraffe.

And watching this show did not make me laugh. It gave me low-key panic attacks. And in a later episode, Greg tries to encourage his daughter to, quote-unquote, connect with students the way he does. And at that moment, I had to get up off the couch and walk it off because I get that it's a comedy. And I get that people make bad choices in comedy, but there is no accountability here. There are no consequences. It becomes, and I don't think it's doing this intentionally, it becomes kind of a satire of privilege. the idea here is to create a frictionless environment where the characters can be human and mess up and have foibles like you guys were talking about and have it be funny and heartwarming.

But the notion that arson can happen and have people shrug it off, that a teacher can hook up with a student and everybody's like, oh, that rascal, a thing happens involving a live Zoom interview that would ruin careers forever, but there's not even a toothless discipline in your panel about it. I have to disagree with you, Glenn. And I feel like academia is filled with stories of people getting away with murder for as long as academia has existed, including in this day and age, unfortunately. Yes, there are infractions that are called out now that didn't used to be called out. But a lot of this stuff is just part of this world. And the show, like I said, at least laughs at how horrible that is. And it does call out people for being narcissistic. Sure.

Why is this happening to me? Is that rhetorical? Do you want an actual answer? I can take it. I think it's because some people see you as a narcissistic with the punchable face. Case and point. Do people see me that way?

Some people do. Do you see me that way? No. Not all the time. I don't think the show is saying, this is easy, this is a good thing. I don't think it's saying that. I just think it's showing how ridiculous this system of privilege

is for a lot of the people who get to benefit from it. I'll give you this much. Then the great Rory Scoble would come on as the cop and I'd be like, I'd watch his show. No, don't do that. Don't tell me. how to do my police work. I don't tell you have to write your rooster books, do I?

Okay. But I'll tell you what, if I did, I would have the guy do karate. Wouldn't that be fun? Why can't I be watching his show? Robbie Hoffman, as Sonny's roommate, same deal. More of them, less of literally everything else about this show, for me. I think one of the reasons why I saw this so differently than you did is that I felt like the Steve Correll

character was presented as, you know, less like, oh, these are meaningless infractions, and he gets dragged in front of this disciplinary committee. It's more that, like, that is partly what accountability for him is, is that when he says something that is poorly thought out, right? He's a novelist and a writer in residence. He's not accustomed to academia. He's not accustomed to these sort of systems.

And so when he gets called in and he has this experience of them saying, basically, you can't do that. And he says, essentially, you're right. It was an accident, but you're right. but you're right. And then the question becomes, is what you crave in that situation for that person, punishment, punishment, punishment? Or is it more meaningful to see that this is somebody who is trying not to make the same mistake twice? And one of the scenes that I thought was most important for me and for how I received the show was a moment where he's asking the students about their favorite writers. Somebody names a writer who it's clear he doesn't, who's, who's

work he doesn't know. That is sort of embarrassing for him. He is embarrassed by that. There's no like these kids with their woke, whatever. And in a later episode with zero kind of attention called to it, zero like hanging a lamp on it, he has started reading a book by that writer. And I think for me, they are signaling to you. It is his job to get better at all. the stuff that he is getting told he's doing wrong. And I will say I probably was more prepared for some of the things that are bothering, especially Glenn, but perhaps bothering both of you, because of shrinking, because the way that shrinking started involved Jason Segal, also observing no professional boundaries whatsoever as a therapist, right? He did a bunch of

things or it's like, you can't ask a patient to move in with you. You can't, like, you know, you can't do any of this stuff. You can't go along with somebody who's getting in a physical, I mean, just a lot of stuff that, like, you can't do that. But for me, it all turned out to be going somewhere interesting and good. We have not talked that much about the Danielle Deadweiler character, I think, because it happens so early, I feel fine, saying they go out and have drinks together. They really like each other. They kind of hit it off. At that point, he's just a visiting writer. He's just doing a short, like, visit, whatever. She sort of invites him to come in. They go back to her house and she says, do you want to come in? And for once in the freaking history of this kind of

scene, when a man who is much older than a very beautiful, much younger woman, has her saying, like, do you want to come in? He's like, do you know how old I am? He treats that like, what are you talking about? Not. No. Wow. Do you know how old I am? It's your lucky day, grandpa. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh, Dylan, you are gorgeous and funny and so, so smart that I feel even dumber than usual. The fact that they seemed to recognize that the logical response from him is to find that something that he questions? Because why would that be the case rather than the sort of, well, everybody obviously wants to sleep with me? It's also not true that everyone wants to sleep with him, right?

You know, he has this sort of semi-flortation with her, and he has somebody else who he meets, right? But it is not a thing where, like, every single person who he bumps into and every student and all those people are like, oh, you're so dreamy. Like, they don't, they, I don't know. I felt that what it was doing was a little bit more subtle than he does whatever he wants and nothing. There's never any accountability. Yeah. I feel like the people who don't get. accountability are the characters I can't stand on the show, although I enjoy the people I can't

stand in my anger at them. Steve Correll's son-in-law who cheated on his daughter. He's insufferable and terrible and yet he's a good character for the show. And Steve Correll's bosses, they're terrible people, but I enjoy watching them on the show. Steve Correll's ex-wife who's terrible and yet a delight when she's on screen. She's so fun. But I would say that I agree with Linda in that Steve Correll's character actually, even when he's screwing up badly, we can see he's trying to do the right thing. Whereas the other characters, like, you know, the villains of the show, I don't ever see them actually trying to do the right thing in a convincing way. Almost every time they do the right thing, it seems more self-serving than trying to do what's right. Yeah, I guess I don't really

have a sense of who Greg is, and this is main character syndrome, right? Because, I mean, he loves his daughter, he writes pulpy books. The writing advice he gives happens to be really crappy. Is that a character, I think if you feel any goodwill towards him, it's because it's drafting off the fact that he's played by Steve Carell. And one of the takes I've seen from, I think, the Hollywood reporter maybe is that Greg wants to be more like the character he writes about Rooster. And if that's a thread in this show, I did not pick up on that at all. Did you guys get any of that? It comes along eventually. I agree with you, Glenn. I think that this is a guy who wishes he was more like Rooster isn't really the point so much as he's the outsider. He's our entry point into this. messed up world of privileged academia. He's the guy who never went to college. He's the guy who

writes page-turning pulp paperbacks. And he doesn't belong in this world in a lot of ways. And he's going to grow as a student of life, as a student of academia, by being here in some ways, actually by hanging with the students and being part of their world. And so even though he's there to save his daughter in some ways, he's the one who's the student who's going to grow. the thing that makes him most like that, and this is where maybe I would disagree that any goodwill toward him comes from it being Steve Carell. I think there's also goodwill generated by the fact that he is fiercely, fiercely devoted to his daughter. Very much wants to stick up for her when he feels she's being unfairly treated. There are a couple of moments where he's just overwhelmed with

anger on her behalf, and I think that does happen to parents sometimes. But I think at the same time, There are also some scenes, I think, his early scenes with Danielle Deadweiler. I think he's funny. I think he's kind of self-deprecating in certain situations and has some self-awareness. And I think he sort of, as Kristen, I think, said very well, he doesn't really belong in this setting. But I think he is somebody who is willing to work toward being better at what he's being asked to do, both as a parent, you know, because he's still really smarting from his, divorce from his daughter's mom, and that's still really kind of pushing down on him in some serious ways. So I don't know. I guess I felt like there were other reasons to like him besides

just, you know, just that it's Steve Correll. One thing I will add, though, just to be, you know, on the same page as Glenn here, the way you felt Glenn like, what is the show about and how it's kind of unfocused? It is a little chaotic. I will own up to that. But I did feel the same way at the beginning of shrinking as well. And I felt the same way with Bad Monkey. It was a little chaotic, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit despite the chaos. Yeah, Bad Monkey is another show that the showman has worked on. What did you think of the John C. McGinley character he plays the president of the college?

I kind of thought that character was at least supposed to have a sharper edge, maybe a political edge to him or something. Because right now he's just kind of stuck with is old, doesn't understand Green and He's playing that guy. I thought that was the character was supposed to have maybe a sharper point of view. Was that just me? I did not read him that way. I read his story as being partly about how difficult. And ultimately, they come around to having some more explicit conversations about this.

That he, I mean, certainly he engages in a lot of very silly behavior, right, very Johnson-McGinley kind of behavior. But I think eventually they come around to him kind of his point of view is that he is exhausted from having to say, no and disappoint people in all the ways that an administrator of any large institution constantly has to. And so I think you get a lot of him kind of triangulating. I'm going to kind of try to make this deal and move this situation around in this way because I have these things that I'm expected to do and take care of that are unpleasant and difficult. And he wants to do the Green Initiative, but he also wants to do other things, and he also wants to kind of get Rooster to stay and teach because he thinks it's going to be good for sort of the school. But at the same time,

to me, I ultimately found him to be much more sympathetic than he was at the beginning. He ultimately gets involved in mentoring somebody, which is something he seems to take really seriously and really care about. I think I felt more of a character there maybe than you did. I'm taking this too seriously, I think. I just like, I, It's just giving me flashbacks to things. It's a world I'm glad I'm out of. I don't. I do think there would be repercussions in the real world, but this isn't the real world.

I'm looking forward to seeing where it's going to go. I haven't finished the show yet, and I really, I'm cheering for several of the characters. I want all to go well with Steve Corral's character, his daughter, Danielle Deadweiler and Amy Mollo. I just, I want everything to go well for them. The rest of them, eh. All right. Well, tell us what you think about Rooster. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PC.

That brings us to the end of our show. Kristen Mines or Linda Holmes, thanks for being here. You gave you some stuff to think about. Thank you. Thank you. And just a reminder that signing up for pop culture, Happy Hour Plus

is a great way to support our show in public radio, and you can listen to all of our episode sponsor free, so please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Hufza Fatima and Mike Katzoff, and edited by our show under Jessica Reedy. And hello, come in, provides our theme music.

Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon and we'll see you all next time.