Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - The Young & The Breakfast | Quick Question Ep. 315

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

The guys talk Stranger Things Season 5, do the bleak math of middle-aged drinking, and the perverse little happiness spike that follows a truly harrowing puke. Speaking of puke,  the guys discuss the sacred childhood joy of sick-day daytime TV (Judge Judy supremacy, soap operas as emotional concrete) and finally, Daniel and Soren spiral into TV industry doom: Netflix getting into the podcast game, prestige TV existing only as a side quest for tech companies, and the impossible task of ending a beloved show without stepping on an internet landmine—aka Finale School. 00:00 Introduction and Podcast Dynamics02:32 Reflections on Aging and Drinking05:22 Hangover Remedies and Personal Experiences08:16 The Nature of Vomiting and Its Aftermath11:06 Parenting and Children’s Fear of Vomiting14:00 Nostalgia for Childhood Illness and Daytime TV17:35 Soap Operas and Acting Experiences26:28 The Unique Challenges of Soap Opera Acting33:33 The Evolution of Television and Soap Operas40:43 The State of Modern Television51:52 The Art of Writing and Ending a SeriesThanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring. RocketMoney.com/qq. Reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.Thanks to Fabric for sponsoring. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/QQ. Policies issued by Western-Southern Life Assurance Company. Not available in certain states. Prices subject to underwriting and health questions.Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

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This is a commercial message brought to you by GoFundMe. all right the answer's not important I'm just glad that we can talk tonight So what's your favorite Who did you get? I'm one of your host

If there's an answer, they're going to find it. You clicked on this so you know what it is Soren Bui is the co-host Hey man. Hey, how's it going? I'm Sornbui. I heard recently in an article, listening to an article, I guess. I heard that the death of podcasts everyone thinks is that they're all becoming so video heavy

because now so much of the podcast is dedicated to talking about visual things that the two people are doing and it's ruining it. So I've taken matters into my own hands and I've decided to, for this particular podcast, look like complete shit. Excellent. I was going to not call that out because I think you look awesome like always. But this is such a wonderful peek into what you see when you look in the mirror. I just got back from a workout and a run. I'm looking a little flushed, a little bit worse for wear. Healthy as hell, man.

The elasticity of my face has sagged because I've been running. You know that look. And the dehydrated look where your eyes start to sink back into your head. I got all that going on. So you're not going on anything. We talked about our running body issues last week, but it's never really a bad time to bring it up. Just how good I feel after a run or a workout. And I think this should be the best that I look, too. And it's just not.

Your skin looks like such dog shit after a run or a workout. And it's so unfair. It's such a bummer. It's also you're, I think that there's something happening with spinal compression. I just look impressed. I'll come back from an eight-mile run thinking I'm going to look in the mirror and see this like trim, svelte guy. And I look like a painting of a bulldog in my face. There's just like just so many saggy things that I guess I shook loose with gravity.

Yeah, yeah. And then they stay loose until like they have to like, they have to firm back up throughout the rest of the day, I guess. Daniel, part of also the reason that I look like shit is because I went out, drinking with friend of the show Sam Bergen last night. Oh, great. You're like your annual drinking. Yeah. It's so far and in between where we do this drinking that the bar that we always agree to just go to.

We don't even say what bar we're going to. We just say, hey, do you want to do it this weekend? We agree to do it. That bar has been closed for six months. We didn't know. What a bummer. So we had to go to a different one aptly named Old Man Bar and did some drinking there. Not a ton, but like three solid drinks.

Sure. And I felt like shit. Felt like shit this morning. Didn't feel, didn't get like the joy of it last night. It wasn't like, I'm crazy drunk. This is the best. Isn't that the thing, Soren? Isn't that just a fucking thing that at this age will do our little drinking and you don't

even get the good part of the poison? You don't even get the tiny bit of euphoric near death. that drinking gets you as per contract, you just get shitty feeling the next day. You spend money and you sleep horribly. And then the next day you've lost several steps. And it's like, but what is it? But usually there was a tradeoff where for some amount of my life, I was someone else. That's gone.

You're never going to get that again. It felt like I was borrowing from tomorrow. Every time I got drunk, I was like, I'm using up so much. goodness of tomorrow for tonight. And that's, it's feeling really good, and I understand the tradeoff. And then tomorrow, yeah, then I'll suffer. That's tomorrow's problem. But, yeah, I no longer get that.

And you know what it is? I'm realizing that age is pushing me towards ecstasy and Molly. Wow, cool. Because I'm not getting the same thrill I used to get from alcohol. And I'm like, well, where am I going to get it? I got a, I need some other upper. Well, I guess it's, I guess alcohol is a downer. But I need some other stimulant and I know where to get it.

And so this is the fault of time, honestly, that I'm going to start doing more ecstasy. It is the fault of time. You jumped right over like what I've observed in the world, which is an increase in THC drinks and gummies. You've bounded over that straight to ecstasy, which I kind of have. appreciate. I respect that you want some part of it to still be illegal. Yeah. And do you like, I mean, I hope that you also appreciate that where I landed is this tiny little line between that and cocaine. And I'm not, I'm not going to go to cocaine. Cocaine is crazy. You can't get into cocaine in your 40s. That's nuts. That's sad. I think that's a problem. Yeah. I don't like the narrative there. But getting into, to see in your 40s is a, it's like a really, A novel idea.

Yeah. Yeah. People are going to talk. Okay. So I did drink. I woke up this morning feeling like shit. And I think, I don't know. I think everybody gets different types of hangovers because we've definitely been together

where we were in South by Southwest or somewhere. And we do a lot of drinking. And the next day, like bacon, for instance, our good friend Bacon would, he's so hungover. But he's like, I got to eat something. And I'm like, I. Eating is the very last thing I can possibly do right now. I'll throw up if I even look at a menu. So everybody kind of handles it differently.

And I'm curious, Daniel, are you a thrower-upper? Are you a yacker? No. You don't do that. No. In like the days that you're talking about when we would drink a lot at Southby, I feel like, and this is like a 20s thing. I think my strategy was, oh, man, I'm so hung over.

I need hair of the dog. Even if I don't completely trust the science on that, I was like, let's go to breakfast so bacon can get like a lethal amount of chimichangos or whatever the fuck he was doing. Chele-a-kely-lis. And I was like, and I will just get just something to keep me, keep me stable, like a morning margarita, something like truly insane and inexcusable, not even one of the like, socially acceptable morning drinks. Right.

It's like, oh, it's a bloody Mary. It's kind of like soup. I'd be like, let me get a coffee whiskey, please. And then maybe if I just stay just drunk enough, just long enough, the hangover will give out. We'll just, we'll lose to me because I have more dog in me. Yeah, it thinks, oh, I'll just kick this down the road. Yeah.

I shouldn't approach him right now. There's no way he's going to deal with this right now. He's drinking a whiskey. I'll talk to him later. Yeah. Hangover's like, I got other places to be. I can't wait around for this guy. And did it work?

Does that feel like it was a cure that actually worked for you? I mean, it did. But again, like, there were so many things that I did in my 20s and early 30s that I thought were like foolproof systems. But I think it was just youth. I think there's nothing doing these days. Do you have currently? do you have like a

something that you think works for you to cure a hangover? No. Probably the closest people are going to be really mad about this, but probably the closest is time and running. Like if I am able to run, if it doesn't like shake my brain too much

to the point of crushing pain, then I'll go for a run. And if I can't run, like if I take a step and my whole body vibrates, then it's just, you know, I just have to sit in bed, stay or a computer until it's another day because there's really no managing it if I can't run. I agree with you. And it was something I discovered. We went to a birthday party of Michael Swames long ago. And it was in a, we were in a hotel in San Luis Obispo. And I don't remember why we were celebrating his birthday there. But we drank a lot. And the next day I felt like such shit.

And I was like, I think the only way to fix this is to just start moving, like, and really, really hard. And so I hated the idea of it. It was going to hurt my brain. But I was like, what's the worst going to happen? Am I going to die? And then that wouldn't be so bad. I feel terrible. And so I just started running.

And it was a terrible run. It was a terrible, slow jogging run that felt like shit. But gradually I started to feel. feel better on it. And that also doesn't seem to match the science because I think you're depleted of a bunch of nutrients when you're hung over. It's like that's the whole the toxins all leech that shit out of your

body. So you're first of all you're dehydrated, then you're missing a bunch of I don't know, some of the numbers of bees that you're supposed to get, K's. But somehow like running and just getting oxygen going fast through my body and pumping blood, I start

to feel better. And so I can come back from a run and be like, okay, now I can start. Now it's okay. I don't feel nearly as bad. But I vomit so regularly. It is like regularly. Yep. Do you hate vomiting or are you like, do you like it? Wow. Are you into it? Are you into it? But, 2026, there's no middle ground, there's no nuance. It's just lines. I guess if those are my choices, I'm into it. I just don't vomit a lot.

It's just not, it doesn't rear its head in my life. The only times I'm really vomiting is when I've been drinking. And the next morning, that's my first instinct now. I think it was because I did it so much when I was younger. My first instinct is like, I need to throw up to feel. better and just it and like little things that set me off like just brushing my teeth I get a little too far back on those molars and immediately I'm like here we go like it's my body's ready to throw up and and and I think the reason is like the experience itself sucks the experience itself is like you can't breathe for a little bit there's stuff coming out of your done to get too visceral but like there's stuff coming out of your nose and throat the same time and you're like your airways are blocked for like a short period of time and time where it's essentially you're being waterboarded by your own, uh, digested food. And, but I'll say that once you get that out and then you like blow your

nose and you brush your teeth, that feeling of euphoria after throwing up, that's like the closest I've ever got to, to real happiness. It's especially, uh, because I don't vomit that often. It's, it feels extra good because, the the prelude to it is unfamiliar to me like I will

I think I could think of like a year and a half ago or so my birthday a couple years ago maybe where I was drinking a lot and waking up all through the middle of the night with like crazy dreams

and like the thing that your body will do where it's not letting you go to sleep it's not giving you any piece. Like your brain is just like, for me, it would be like a repeated phrase in my brain over and over again or like, like, just like a chunk of, uh, music that's not resolving. That's the punishment. It's what it feels like, because your brain is like, get up, get up, get up. And I keep like, like, like, burping and it's like, what is this? This could be anything. What's going on? Am I going

crazy? And I'll, I'll let it torture me for a while. And then once I throw up, I'm just like, oh yeah, that's right. My body was sending every message it could to let me know that it needed to get some poison out and now I'm better. I wish I would have just not only am I better because when I'm trying to sleep and my brain is like

you gotta get up you gotta get up you gotta get up in the morning I was like no let me see if I can if I could just if I just sleep I'll feel better and my body is like motherfucker I know better than you do

I know what's gonna actually make you feel better get out of bed right now and I was like no maybe if I just I think I might know pleasant thoughts I'm in something

Sometimes that I will say that if I feel like shit and I go back to bed, it does. I can recalibrate by sleeping more. But if it honestly, I get the same thing as you where in the early morning after you've been drinking guaranteed your body's just like, get up. Get up. You fucking sack of shit. I do that little like toe rub together where I'm like just trying to like stay comfortable. And like that's like a very calming thing to just like rub your toes around your feet over them each other. and you're just like, just nothing is working.

Just you feel awful. And then, yeah, you get up, you throw up. And I'll say once I've thrown up, I feel better than I've ever felt. Sure. It feels like an accomplishment, first of all, because it's so harrowing. And then afterwards, you feel like you did something. You're on the road to recovery. And that you get the immediate, because you felt so bad, you go from feeling so bad to good,

that that rise is like, I can, ah, this is it. I'm chasing this dragon the rest of my life. If you're anything like me, you are planning for a baby right now, which means among many, many things you are taking a look at your finances and having to answer seemingly easy,

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Good. Well, I'm glad. you're starting your day. It's just about 2.30 in the afternoon where I am. And it's not crazy early where you are. No, it's certainly not. Yeah, I think that I'm maybe done with drinking. Everything is pointing me towards that, too. We had, I turned 40 this week. My wife got catered food to the house and had my family come out and my wife did a very cute thing where she, she collaborated with my brothers to get a bunch of fancy beers and got like the little beer tasting kits and brought a brewery to the house essentially so it's got to like my brothers and my dad my mom all

sampling tiny beers out of glasses like you do at a brewery it was great fun feeling a little bit tipsy and then in the morning uh the same pattern of not vomiting not like uh just just like just like feeling like shit just feeling a little bit crummy a little bit sadder and madder because I pumped my body full of depressants and sluggish and just like blah and gray and with plenty of good memories of hanging out with my family but no memories of like being so tipsy that it was it was like that things were funny or things were were sillier or more fun and I feel like that's been par for the course like don't the the times I I drank a lot in the last 12 months that I feel like I can count on one hand.

It's been par for the course of just like, well, that didn't really get anything for me. And the day after is worse. And it just seems like this keeps happening. I should learn a lesson at this point that, like, I'm famously in my 40s. I don't think drinking is for us anymore. I think it's for the kids. And I'm not going to jump to ecstasy or gummies like everybody else. So I guess I just, it seems as good a time as Eddie to let you know, Sorrent,

that I'm thinking of getting into CrossFit because I need something. I need something to do my body. You and I jumped in completely different directions. We jumped in very different directions. You're going to do CrossFit. Yeah, it sucks. I guess I understand that. I want to take care of your body.

Because it's, you know, the thing that I think we both. want when we think like, oh, you're going out on a night of drinking with Sam or whatever I'm doing. It's like, I'm going to do the things that I used to do in the past. And that's just not on the table for us anymore. It's a real bummer. It's not a bummer. It's good. It's the way that like the... But we had so much fun. I mean, I think back to our times when we go to like Webby Awards in New York and stuff. And like we get so, so drunk in a foreign city. Yeah. We went to Chicago and we got drunk and went to the aquarium.

And it was like the best day of my life. But yeah, I don't know that I don't, I'm not getting the same reward from it. And so I'm like, well, where will I get that reward? Harder drugs. Yeah. Much harder. That's a reasonable conclusion to draw. I don't know.

I mean, I'm sure I could Google on incognito mode. But I don't genuinely know. where I could find ecstasy. If I, if I, if I, if there was an emergency and I needed to get my hands on some. Or you would die. I don't. Yeah. Some sort of crank situation.

Yeah. You had to have Molly immediately. Yeah. I, you know what? I don't either. I, I, I, I'm really dependent on the other, unlike generous people in my life. Yeah. But that's probably for the best, too.

If I had a source, I'd be doing it. And I don't think that's probably very healthy. Yeah. What should our podcast be about today, Soren? I'm vomiting. My children are terrified of it. They're terrified of vomiting? Yeah.

Yeah, like in her way that's it's it's it's borderline a problem. Like my daughter is so scared of it that then there's like certain foods that then she become scared of because she'd vomited once and some of that came up. Wow. And so you have to kind of like talk them back into it. It's like it wasn't the food. It was like you had a sickness that was at the same time as you were also eating this. The food didn't do it.

And then any time that she, her stomach hurts at all, she's very like crying, concerned that she might throw up. But we had a night where she was sick. I was, I slept in, my son slept downstairs. I slept in my son's bed and she slept on a pad on the floor with a towels all over it and a bucket next to her because they can't be trusted to throw up in properly. Like, they don't feel it the same way we do, and they know they're ready. And so occasionally she would.

I could sense that it was coming. And so, like, I would get her up, prop her over the bucket and hold her hair back, and she would just start, like, crying. And then she would start throwing up. And I was like, I know, I know, I know. But, like, it's going to feel like you're dying. It's going to feel like you're drowning. These are the things, but we're going to get it all cleaned up.

We're going to get it out. And then we're going to get it cleaned up. And then everything's going to be okay. And I promise you're going to feel better. And trying to convince a kid of that is really rough. And it was like a rough night of her just throwing out, throwing up, waking up, throwing up, throwing up. She never wants to do that again, obviously.

That was a miserable, like the worst day of her, the worst night of her life. And so she's so scared that it's going to happen again. And she's scared of that in bloody noses. There was something, I feel like growing up, if you were really sick, sick enough that your parents, like, put a bucket next to the bed. That felt like royalty to me. That was just, they're bringing the toilet to me.

Like, truly a bucket next to the most comfortable place in the world. My parents would, especially if I was very sick, you could just, like, spend the day in their bed and just, like, be sick in a nice, big comfortable bed. And then there's this little magic bucket that I can vomit into. And then later it would be cleaned by the people. By the help. That's the servants would come and get it. Yeah, I loved, I would sleep. I was allowed to sleep on the couch downstairs in the living room if I was sick.

And that meant I got to watch TV. I could watch TV until I wanted to go to sleep. And like that was growing up having very regimented amounts of TV and suddenly having free reign over it. Oh my God, something there's, now that we're both closer to death than anyone's ever been, we can officially transition into a podcast where we talk to the young people about how they don't they don't know what life is like and kids you kids listening to this podcast you have no idea what it was like to be home from school on a weekday and realize there's a whole different

ecosystem of television that exists it's stuff that's only on during it's all the all the soaps and all the mori and all of the the weird other daytime talk shows. You don't totally understand. All this food network stuff that was just hidden from you because you're at school all day. And then you just get to just watch Mori and only like kind of understand what's happening. And just like, look at all the people in the audience for this Jerry Springer fella. They love it.

They are eating this. These are some of the meanest people I've ever seen. And look at all these people out in the daytime screaming. This is, there's a whole other world. Why aren't these people in school? I don't understand. Watching Judge Judy was like, oh, I get to watch this mean lady yell at people. And I don't suffer any of the consequences.

I love this. I can watch this for days. Hey, it's 2026, New Year, New Year. Do you got any New Year's resolutions? I do every year. I promise myself I'll be more present, and I promise myself I'll stop procrastinating on the important stuff. Life insurance was one of those things I avoided thinking about, because I'm going to live forever. Until I realized it's actually quick, affordable, and essential.

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and it may not follow you if you leave your job. Fabric has partnered with Gerber Life, trusted by millions of families like yours for over 50 years. There's no risk, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can cancel at any any time. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com slash QQ. That's meetfabric.com slash QQ, M-E-E-T Fabric.com slash QQ. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company. Not available in certain states. Price is subject to underwriting and health questions. Yeah, it was, it was really exciting to discover, other than soap operas. Soap operas really bummed me out when I was a kid. But watching

any other kind of daytime television was like, I want to be sick forever. I love this. I have, that's interesting that soap operas bummed you out. I have lately been thinking that I would really like to be on one for a little while. Why?

There was this interview that Michael B. Jordan did with David Letterman on his Netflix show because he, at some point after the wire, but before Friday night lights, he did all my children he did the the best one he was

soren this might shock you he was Erica Kane's son he was Susan Lucci's son on all my children he is quite an actor and to hear him talk about his experience on that show and it's something that I should have

just intuitive but I never did because I never thought twice about soap operas is that they're filming over a hundred pages every single day. And like the stuff you film on Monday is on television Tuesday. So you're not doing it live, but you're not getting a lot of takes. You're just like you wake up and your job is to act sometimes good writing, mostly pretty bad writing and like a very weird, specific kind of acting.

Like it's rare that you, that someone stands out as like, this person is such a good actor on general hospital that they make the transition to like prestige stuff. It's just very specific. The skill of being able to memorize a lot of stuff very quickly, hit your marks and look, you know, deliver the right face in the camera at the right time and then just move on. It seems like a really fun challenge. It doesn't necessarily seem like an acting challenge. It seems like an endurance endeavor that I was just like. I didn't realize that they were.

I would like to do like a semester on all my children and just like come in for a little while and do all the stuff and then leave. Just to experience it. Not for them. This isn't for people. This isn't like I don't want to be famous or anything. And in fact, there will probably come a day in the middle of a take where we're like, I think I got what I needed out of this. I'm going to see you guys later. I don't want to do this anymore.

But I didn't realize that they were shooting so much and so fast that you were getting. new dialogue every single day, but you're getting like 100 pages of it. If you're a main character, well, obviously, you're not getting all that, because there's no such thing as a B story. They're all A stories, but you are still, you're a pretty big chunk of it and you've got new dialogue every single day. Yeah.

Which makes sense. I mean, like, those, I don't know if, if soaps have, like, seasons. I don't know if there's ever, I used to watch all my children with my mom every once in a while because she would tape that show and I liked hanging out with my mom so we would watch it together

and every once in a while a character would like go to rehab or go to jail or have to flee town and then they come back later and there's always some like crazy explanation for it in retrospect it's just like hey I need to go have I need a vacationer like I need to

the person who plays the character is having a baby and and just like I need to go have that baby so the writer's like all right you took a trip Bermuda Triangle Lost at sea That's it

And then they're just gone for a little bit And then they come back It's probably helpful It's probably helpful for the writers To be like Oh thank God something new Okay Okay let's come with a reason why you're gone

This will be fun You got kidnapped Yeah You were kidnapped Yeah I think that that's Or coma Comas I guess are pretty common

Coma's so good I would watch Young in the Restless With my mom We called it Young in the Breakfast That's pretty cool. Yeah. We would eat top ramen with some steamed spinach on it,

and we would watch Young and the Restless, and I can still tell you most of the characters' names. But I found it to be profoundly sad. And I don't know, like, maybe you're really more willing to kind of wallow in sadness when you're young, but I remember the feeling associated with it is not like because it was my mom

or like the time that I was sick or anything like that. The show itself felt, so, because it's so raw. It's like over direct dramatized and it's, everybody's got these huge problems and everything. It felt very heavy in a very sad way to me when I was young. They never, they never just chill out. No.

It's, it's, it's not like television today where there's 10 episodes of a show and one of them sucks shit because it's a flashback episode. It was, everyone is just having problems all the time. Maybe the Christmas. episode everyone smiles there was an episode there was a season one year where um and i know all my children isn't the craziest of soaps but in the all my children universe santa claus is real and one of the characters and that that reveal was a fun one and it was it was their christmas episode so not only is santa real but like the guy who it turns out as santa we thought was a jerk but he's got

but that was like his cover so no one could could catch on the fact that he's santa so So that reveal coupled with it just being Christmas, all the characters were in good moods. And it was like, this is the one day a year where Erica and her estranged daughter, Kendall, are nice to each other. And Alec and Sam are nice to each other. And all of the other characters are just like, here's a fucking music box for you, Janet from another planet, the serial killer, who I guess is my nanny now. Apart from that. Apart from that. everyone, no one gets to chill.

There's never an episode where one of your favorite characters is like, I'm at the spa today and things are fine. It's always I'm at the spa and the doctor or the masseuse is my ex and they're trying to murder me kind of thing. It is really stressful. Everybody's always scheming too. Everybody's got designs and there are scenes, maybe this is what it is,

is that there are scenes that are supposed to be joyful and fun. somebody's finally got their kid that they haven't seen in five years and they're going to play football with them. But it's on a set. So you're like it's supposed to look like outside, but it does not look like outside in any way. And so it's like a weird, bizarre world of the outdoors. And they're supposed to be having fun, but it doesn't look fun at all. Like it looks rough. And the type of things that they're talking about, it's all, none of it, they don't know what fun looks like.

They don't know what like just like chilling out and having a nice time. is, I don't think. And so, or the actors have just never played that. And so it never feels right. And it feels, everything just feels kind of wrong. It's like a dream. It's like a really sad dream. They're throwing a football in long pants and long polo shirts.

There's no wind. They throw once and then they put it, they tuck the ball and just start talking. Like, we'll just keep throwing. They got to throw once because those actors are like, listen, I've got, I've got 80 more pages. I can't, I can't talk. and catch you at something's got to bend please I'm just gonna I'm gonna hold it like the Heisman guy that's part of football right they hold it sometimes um yeah I I I can't I couldn't I didn't I would never purposefully watch one today if I was like the middle of the day and I

still had that that itch to go back and watch some daytime television if I could like go through broadcast television and so popper was on I'd turn it away as quick as I could it's just it's It's too sad. I don't actually for sure know, and I'm not going to Google it right now on the show. I don't know, like, if there are still soaps. I feel like I saw headlines throughout the last couple years of soaps getting canceled, like these long legacy shows getting canceled. I don't know if it's all of them.

It's certainly, it's a bummer. It makes sense that they would be canceled. That doesn't mean it's good for life or the industry or anything. I just, I don't support it. But it does make sense that like if the business model of soaps was to fill several hours of television every single day for sick kids staying home or for stay at home, whomever, that as a business model doesn't make as much sense now when people don't need to, when we have, everyone has every streaming service and you could put on your own version of background noise or comfort food. which is what I think a lot of those soaps were. It was background noise for, you know, while you're doing chores or whatnot. And I just don't think that that we need that anymore, unfortunately, which is, it's a bummer.

If the thing I'm saying is true, it's very sad. I guess you're right. I think that, I mean, every show has sort of become that, right? Because they're, except for prestige television, the majority of the shows are designed to be watched while you're also scrolling on your phone. the same time. Like you don't have to pay too close attention. Yeah. And so I wonder if they've all just become more soap-like.

I don't know. I have to put some thought into it. I do too. I mean, one of the things that you can see the direction that of our ridiculous industry is headed in. This is, I want to be delicate about this because I don't want to impugn the work of our friends at eye heart, like Robert Evans and Jack and Miles

and Sophie and all of our actual friends at IHeart Radio. But you see or maybe you didn't see, maybe our listeners didn't see, but Netflix recently struck a deal with Spotify and IHeart to start airing their podcasts on Netflix, which a deal that a few years ago would have seemed insane to me because Netflix is TV and podcasts are years. But like we've seen that every podcast, somehow all of us got the memo to pivot to video around the same time.

And everyone's putting their podcasts on YouTube. And a lot of people were watching podcasts. Like, that's how they were consuming it, was on YouTube, just having like this thing sort of playing in the background the way that us and our moms would have soap operas playing. in the background. And Netflix is like, ooh,

I want to get in on this YouTube thing, too. So they're just going to start putting, um, putting the video component of podcasts on Netflix as a thing you could just put on instead of,

uh, listening to it or instead of like watching a show on Netflix. When I said I was going to be delicate, what I, the only thing that I held back is I think this sucks shit. I'm so unhappy at it. It's such a bummer. Yeah.

So sad as like the direction of our industry is is going to be governed by YouTube and Netflix. And it's entirely organized around what occupies attention for the most amount of minutes. And it's like, oh, people are going to be fine. People's favorite thing is two people talking into microphones in the background. So let's just make the whole network that. And then soon that'll just be all. content. It does.

I mean, I feel like such an old guy. But when I hear that there's like a hunger still for long form content, I go, my ears perk up as a writer, as a television writer. And then when the next words are for long forward content of two people sitting at a microphone and just talking to each other, I'm like, oh, I don't even know what the world is anymore. Like, I don't. No. And when I see it's like, like, oh, they've got a deal where they're going to put Bill Simmons's podcast. on Netflix and you can watch it live and like Bill Simmons's show is is a fancy host talking doing like topical sports stuff and pop culture stuff with a

guest and it it kind of seems like that's a late night show that where you don't have to pay union wages to writers or your crew yeah oh shit Uh-oh. Oh, it's bad. It's real bad. They figured it out. I think about the shows that I enjoy watching. The shows that I like, so I'm watching The End of Stranger Things and it's season five of it.

And I hate it. I hate everything about it. I was going to say, like, that seems disconnected from the way you started this sense. When I first started watching that show, the first season of it, I was really enamored with it. I thought it was so good. I thought the premise of like a lost kid and then his friends go looking for him and find the wrong child in the woods was so fucking cool. And it had like a really good, so strange atmosphere to it, had a good feel and like the capturing of the 80s without being too over the top with it. All I liked the first season a lot.

And there's a good mystery to it. And since then, it's just like I've hated it and hated it and hated it, but I have to finish it. and other shows like they would consider successful like Fallout I think is a successful show

and I love Fallout like I love watching I never play the game but I'm into it and what will end up happening is that I think like oh this is this is really a successful show

and then I will look at the numbers and I'm like oh nobody else in the world is watching this but me this is so niche like these guys are barely holding on every single season with the exception of stranger things

I think that's different but the shows that I do actually enjoy joy and that have like lasting power, no one else is watching them. No. And it's just fallout is, uh, it, it gets to exist. Because Amazon feels like doing TV right now and they want to win some awards. And if they don't win awards or if they just decide next year that they don't want to do TV,

they'll make tanks. They'll do something else. It's like these. Yeah. They can do whatever they want. Apple is too, like severance. Like severance is, oh, what a fun little thing you're letting the kids do on the side of this. of this other tech business.

Yeah. Thank God that it's not getting in the way of your ability to sell phones and gambling apps. The second Severance gets in the way of you selling gambling apps. They were fucking toast. There's no more TV that's allowed to be made. And it won't even matter to them because not only they're making millions and millions no matter what, but fucking we're the only ones watching that shit. The numbers are so dreadfully low across the board for television.

and like prestige television that it's like, oh, no one actually gives a shit about big stories, except maybe the five of us. It's wild. The clarity that we have coming from crack.com and like seeing numbers and living on numbers every day, whether it's article views,

website visits, or streams on YouTube or an O player. We just had so much birds eye view of our numbers and numbers. analytics that we know because if you're not staring at it all the time you might everyone knows what numbers are bigger than other numbers but you might not have context for something so when i'm looking at uh milanis late night show on netflix everybody's live and they come out with

and they're like oh and their first episode got 200,000 views i'm just like oh fuck we are That's not enough. Someone's getting fired and cracked. That can't be. Yeah. I look at when I found out the ratings of American Dad, I was like, that can't be right. Like, that's a television. Are they low?

That's crazy. Well, they're lower certainly than our crack numbers. You would write a hit article was 2 million views. Or you do an after hours and guaranteed you're going to get like somewhere between 1 and 10. Yeah. And so you know you're working in the millions and you're never working in the millions with television unless you're talking about the Super Bowl.

It's stranger things. Are you finished? No. So I'm glad that you don't like, I mean, it's, it sucks. We're talking about how there's not making good things anymore. And then here's like a high budget, high concept show that we're not being kind to. But I don't think it's good. And I thought it was really good in the beginning.

And it was very funny. It's weird feeling like an alien. and feeling like I'm one of the only people who doesn't like it. You feel like you're in the upside down? I feel like I'm in the upside down. There's a, do you care about, I want to talk about something.

I'm in the very end of it. I'm in the very last episode. Will has a big like coming out scene finally where he tells the whole town, everyone he's ever met is going to sit them down in the middle of the action and tell them that thing that they all already know, which is that he's gay,

and they're all fine with it. and it's great. There was, I found myself very interested in the aftermath that episode because there are a lot of articles saying that this episode got review bombed, which is the term that people use when bad actors, like people with bad intentions will mobilize

and write a bunch of negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic and everywhere else that you can write reviews, not because they actually were fans engaging with the show who thought it was a week episode, but because they're trying to, like, mobilize for some political reason. You know, like, I got it. You were review bomb the Snow White movie because you don't like Rachel Ziegler personally.

And so you just, like, write a bunch of, you get your army to write negative reviews. And so there was a lot of press coming out after that episode. There was like, people review bomb the latest episode of Stranger Things. And I was like, well, I don't, I don't know if it's review bombing if the show is bad. Like, like, how do we, how do we even know what's really different? And a lot of the, so I was at first against the articles, I was like, I might just be bad. But then I read some of the reviews from people who were like, this is not about will being gay.

I don't care. I'm not, I'm not, like, hateful. This is just bad writing. I didn't like the scene. Grounded to a halt and it seems stupid. I'm glad that we all knew Will was gay. This isn't about that. It's just about the writing is bad.

And now me, Daniel, I'm on the other side of things. We're like, well, where the fuck were you last season? Last season was bad too. What do you idiots want? I agree that it's bad. It's not suddenly bad. You know what the problem I foresaw with or didn't foresee, but that I think it was happened with Stranger Things

is that early on it was sort of borrowing. from a lot of nostalgia and a lot of 80s movies in a way that felt homagey but wasn't ham-fisted about it they were just sort of like we're gonna we're gonna set something in that vibe yeah and you're just gonna sit in that and then all the ones since then it's like it's it's so borrowing so hard that it feels uh almost like plagiarism like there was like a season that where there was basically just a freddie kruger season they they had the Terminator in the show. They had a guy with sunglasses,

a muscular, I think German guy with sunglasses and a leather jacket and like crop top hair or a crew cut or whatever Arnold wore in Terminator 2 and he was just like this menacing machine of destruction for a season. And it was like, season one they were like using they were paying homage to Spielberg and Stephen King with like fonts

and like they would cast Carrie Elwis and like remember Carrie Elis you liked him this is like a little wink to your past and then season three it's like look it's the it's the this is the it's the terminator look do you remember the Terminator arguing over crystal Pepsi yeah like it's so it's so rough it's like it no longer is adding to the story at any capacity it's just like hey remember hey remember yeah which is feels very pandering and I don't care for it. Anyway, this mostly recent season,

I have a lot of the same issues with it that I have with the haunting of Hillhouse and like that whole series of horrors, which is that they pull people aside in the middle of a big emergency to just be like, now you two have to hash something out or you can't go on.

There's some emotional thing that you two have to figure out together or there's no, the story can't move on. And I'm like, that's not true. A lot of this is just bullshit. It feels like filler to me. It feels like somebody writing because they have to hit a page count

as opposed to just like tell the story. And the story, then the story gets confused too. I'll give you like the prime example, which is when they, I don't know, maybe this is hard because people haven't seen it. What do you mean? People haven't seen it.

Just looking at the numbers. Strange thing's finale has been seen almost 1,400 times, Saurin. It's the biggest hit. Okay. Nancy and Jonathan are up on that roof. She shoots through whatever the wall of this black hole is. And then they start melting for some reason.

And they're like stuck in this room of melting plastic, it looks like. And they're trying to get out, but they're also having a deep conversation about their relationship. And then all of a sudden there's like, they know that the other, the people that they're trying to get to are downstairs. They've been trying to get out of this door that leads downstairs to their friends. And then after they have this conversation, some banging happens on the door.

Somebody's trying to break through the door, and they're very scared. Because that could be anyone. Like, no, you're not even paying attention to your own rules. They wanted to get out of that door. They know who that is on the other side. You're trying to create this dramatic tension that doesn't exist.

The same with like the kids when they're being followed through the woods. They're like, oh shit, will we follow it? I hear sticks. And like, you know, this is going to be a dodge. Like the minute that whoever comes out of that is going to be on our side. Because they don't set it up that way any other time. They're not like, the work has not been done to like set the groundwork that that could

actually be something dangerous following them. Because it's never happened. It's never been like, we hear sticks. Oh, no. Oh, no. What is this? Oh, it is something bad. It's always a dodge.

It's like a fake out. It was one of the monsters sneaking through the woods, accidentally stepping on sticks. like they do. And so I'm like watching and they spend a lot of time with like with them thinking they're about to die. Nancy and Jonathan thinking they're about to die as somebody, something's breaking through the wall. And I'm like, we know who's coming for you. That's a good thing. You should be shouting. Thank you. It's us. We're here. Anyway, I don't like the show. I think that the long drawn out scenes where people have to fix their relationships in the middle of the world ending is is tough. And you know,

what? I'll say there is ways to do that. There are like really cool ways to do that. You can still get a lot of that piping in and it doesn't have to be, you don't have to pull away from the entire story to do it. It seems lazy to me. It seems hard to end a show that a lot of people like. So it's, I don't want to be too negative about it, but I, I, there's a, it's been, done well by people before. So it's not impossible. And I feel like you've just got to, if I'm ever making my own show at some point

and people, all these ifs, if television continues to exist. And I'm allowed to keep working. And if I get to make it. And people like it and people watch it. I feel like I would send all of my writers to some kind of finale school

that I would also attend where we were just like let's just sit and get the casket, everybody, whoever is going to be involved, let's just like sit, watch our favorite endings,

talk about what we liked, talk about what we didn't like about the ones that we didn't like and see what lessons can be learned and still try to just like make a good show. I don't know. It seems...

It's ear right. It seems like it should be easier. And I'm hearing with Deadwood or something like that, there are shows that didn't get the, somebody did have that. Somebody had a finale in mind, and then they could never do it because shows rarely get that far.

So we're all very clumsy at it when you actually get the opportunity. You show that's so successful that you get to choose when you leave. Man, suddenly nobody knows what to do anymore. So like, well, we didn't expect to get this far. And now also you have the consequences of the internet too, where there are people who are pitching.

Every idea you could have conceived of, somebody put that on a message board somewhere already. And so the idea doesn't feel like yours anymore. And so you're constantly like searching for things that feel brand new and still feel right for the story. But you're all these mind field in front of you of ideas that people have already put out there. And you're like, well, I don't want to do theirs.

I want to do mine. And then inevitably you end up with something that's not as good because they've thought about it just as hard as you have. They love your show. I like thinking about, Tina Faye and Anthony Jezelnik. I mean, it's from Tina Faye's book, Bossy Pants, where it's like right after she finished either mean girls or 30 Rock.

She was like, what am I going to do next? What am I going to do next? And her advice to herself and to Jesulnick and to anyone reading it was like, take six weeks, take six weeks off. because if you do the next thing immediately, then it's going to be like a reaction to the last thing where they're trying to distance yourself from it or trying to one up it.

Or it's going to be something that's like, oh, I want to show that I can like stretch this completely new muscle. Take six weeks. Separate yourself from it. Distance yourself from it. And then come back and you will most likely at that point be making the thing that you're supposed to make. like, just like applied to his stand-up career where he would like,

he put out a special of, of his brilliant, dark one-liners that, that he's built his career on. And then took six weeks, came back and did more of those things, knowing that like, if he had just kept going,

he would think, like, how do I evolve myself? How do I change myself? But you need some kind of, like, distance to, yeah, to learn.

Sometimes you need the distance to learn. No, I need to do the thing that, that I need to, like, a good episode of television. I need to treat this like another episode of the show that I'm making and not like the big finale of the show that I'm making.

Interesting. Yeah, I like that. I think that's, it certainly is, it works in our environment. If we have hiatuses, you'd be like, oh, yeah, during my hiatus, that's what I was doing. I wasn't just like fucking around and wasting time. I was gaining perspective. Yeah.

And like our hiatus is, our, are helpful at last week tonight, I think, and our show is very different from any of these shows, obviously. But always towards the end of the season, writers get a little bit antsy and a little bit punchy for, like, how can we blow up the show that we are now a tiny bit sick of? And you get to the finale, and we have lots of grand pitches for, like,

wouldn't it be great if we did this crazy pivot or something? and a great thing about our show is that every episode still needs to be about a thing. You know, we're not going to be Netflix where they're suddenly going to give us two and a half hours with last week tonight finale to like close any loops or anything because our show is a top of a news show. So it's like, look, no matter the audience doesn't know or care that it's our season finale. It's still like they're going to tune in to see like what is the thing to make us sad this week to bum us out. and we deliver that and go out with us a tiny bang and then take a few week hiatus to come back and to come back not sick of the show

and not thinking about, you know, we just did 30 episodes of this show and by episode 30 we're ready to reinvent the wheel. Take some time off, come back and be refreshed and remember that, no, your job is to not reinvent the wheel. Your job is to deliver the show that your audience wants that you've been delivering without necessarily repeating yourself. Yeah.

There's still an appetite for it. Just keep doing it. All right, everybody. That was our vomit episode. Thanks for listening, as always. If you liked our theme song, that's by me, Rex. If you like this podcast in general and you want to watch it while your kid is sick, I guess, Yeah, you could do that on YouTube still.

And if you like this podcast so much that you want to listen to more of it than you currently know exists, you can follow us on. You can be a Patreon subscriber and you get a little extra doses of this. And I feel like the podcast in general. That's thanks to Gabe Harder. He's our sound engineer, editor, producer. He's everything. And I'll see you later. Netflix, if you want to license our show, I wouldn't be upset about it.

Netflix, you might own the other show that I work for by the time this episode comes out. I'm not totally sure. I think there are two companies, honestly. And I'm pretty sure you are one of them. All right, bye.

All right, bye. Quick question for you, all right. I want to hear your thoughts and know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right? The answer's not important I'm just glad that we could talk tonight

So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When do I be? I remember. What's it up? Where did I be, Daniel O'Brien? Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're going to find it.

I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here.