Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - family leave week: "The Inspectors Inspectors" Episode 1

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Please enjoy this treat from Alex and Katie! It's the first episode of "The Inspectors Inspectors", never before released to the general public. (To hear all six episodes -- and counting! -- please visit https://maximumfun.org/join/ )

Hey folks, this is Alex. I'm with Katie and you're listening to a special week in our lives. Yes. Basically, right? Yeah. Yeah. We are taping this prior to either of us having a baby. That's right. But we are both on parental leave for a few weeks. Yes. And excited to bring you folks some like feed drops past bonus things that have never been out there and other fun stuff to listen to while we each have babies. Yeah, we did try, like, we thought about maybe putting the newborns on the microphones and having each of, having the Schmidt baby and the golden baby sort of do a, do a podcast. Yeah. We were advised by doctors not to do that. So. Right.

Not that it's bad for the babies. It's that the babies are anti-science. And doctors were like, we don't want that out there, man. They're going to start. Hawking protein powder and conspiracy theories. I feel like baby cast, though, would be really popular. Like, I think it would do a lot of numbers. I think it'd blow Joe Rogan out of the water, to be honest with you.

Steal his entire audience. It would be the most of a delta for a podcast between not that popular, just in audio, extraordinarily popular as video. You know what I mean? Like, just seeing babies, people would be like, woo. But the audio, they'd be like, hmm, this all right. I don't know. But we just have, we have the same setup, right, with like the neon signs and the curtains.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and just have the two babies just not knowing what's going on, crying about things, just like normal podcasts. But the neon doesn't say the title of the show. It's just baby syllables. Yeah. Like, go-g-g-g-g-a-g-g-ha. Yeah, Gagga. Yeah.

This is also one of the first things we're taping after we told you folks were having babies. And you've all been so kind, especially celebrating our heirs. I loved how Katie put it when we had asked. Having airs is great. So thank you. That's right. It's cool. An heir to the SIF fortune.

Two heirs. Oh, if only. It's the like first week of our leave here. We have a treat for you. It's never been outside the member feeds. It's the first episode of our different podcasts, The Inspectors Inspectors. That's piss. We want you to enjoy it while we take some rest.

The United States Postal Inspector, Inspector Service. Yeah, it's a great show. It's high quality. So we mostly just talk about what a quality show it is. And it doesn't have any weird. kind of incestual undertones over it. It's not strange at all.

Yeah, we've made six of these so far. And of course, members have heard this and thank you so much for being a member and especially sticking with us as our families grow. And the premise of the inspectors' inspectors is that the U.S. Postal Service produced and funded a edutainment TV show in the 2010s.

It's from like, it was on CBS, the actual TV channel. It started in 2015. they used your tax dollars to make an edutainment crime drama about postal inspectors. And it's a truly baffling television show. So we recap it. That's it. Yeah, it's just an explanation of a show that, you know, it's a miracle it exists. I think.

I don't know how it is a true sort of lost media thing at this point now because it used to be available. on Brigham Young University for free. You could watch it because it's like, it's family friendly because there's no like, none of the characters know what sex is. That's true. That becomes increasingly clear as we made the show too. The first episode we're only sort of surprised

and then it really gets going. It's the most Mormon show that doesn't actually have any Mormons in it. Yes. Zero Mormon intention. Yeah, no. It's got extreme Mormon vibes, though. They just, like, act like, um, sex is not, is not a thing. Drinking is doesn't exist.

Like none of these, it's a universe in which the vices that Mormons do not approve of just simply do not exist. So, um, so they love it. Yeah. And like the violence is like a guy gets like a little boo-boo on his head and he has like a big band-aid on it. And he's like, ouch. Oh, no, a boo-boo.

So, yeah, it's very family friendly. So now it's like, now it's only on Purefix. Yes. The Puritan version of Netflix, which sounds like a joke, but that's literally what it is. I would rather watch a streaming service run by people from the 1600s. It would be so distinctive and interesting. Purefix, less so. It's Purefix.

Those who bring you, God's not dead one. God's not dead two and God's not dead three. Right. Three very righteous movies. The 10th one's just called Not Dead X. Yeah. They really kind of spread it out. Undeader than ever, God, the movie.

Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's a relic. Yeah. And please enjoy it. And we are planning, I should say in general, we are planning five weeks of these special releases and saying hi to you. And thank you so much for bearing with us as family time happens. And so also please enjoy this never before released broadly episode, episode one of The Inspectors, Inspectors.

Asbest. Hey, folks, welcome to The Inspectors Inspectors, the only podcast recapping the TV show titled The Inspectors, which was a recent TV show produced and funded by the United States Postal Service. I'm Alex Schmidt. I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Hi. Hi there. We might actually be the only people who have seen the inspectors. So we're mainly going to recap the show. I also looked a little bit into postal inspections and they claim more than a million people watched this show. I guess week to week they made 106 episodes and folks it was on CBS like a real. They made 106 episodes? Yes. Today we're talking about episode one, but there are 106 episodes of The Inspectors. I...

No, it happened. Alex, I've never doubted you on the show up until this moment. I don't believe you. I just had a siren in the background. I think it's because you sent the authorities to catch me from their lives. There are extremely popular shows that get canceled on Netflix. And this show has 106 episodes. Yeah, and they made it with government money.

It was on TV from 2014 to 2019. So it's also not like I'm not pulling something from the turn of the century and that's why nobody's heard of it. This is a recent CBS weekend morning's television show called The Inspectors. And it's about the postal inspectors and a young young lad with gumption who aspires to be a postal inspector someday. Yeah, folks, why are we making this podcast about the TV show The Inspectors? Great question. Yeah, I would also like to know this, Alex. Yeah, partly to be weird and fun and mainly to thank you, because here's the thing.

We are making this as our special bonus weird thing for the maximum fun drive in 2024. And if you're able to hear this at all, it's because you support maximum fun. Ideally, you support secretly incredibly fascinating, the podcast that we really make. And we already make a bonus show every week. So we said, what else can we do that is strange? And I thought, can we do a strange thing about the U.S. Postal Service? Because the first episode of SIF was about U.S. post offices. A strange and legal thing was like, at first we had a bunch of ideas.

Then we kind of had to whittle it down a little bit. Right. I was going to do Mission Impossible down a wire into a post office and steal something. And I think if you did that, the postal. inspectors would have jurisdiction. They would be the ones to come after you. I tried to mail Alex to Abu Dhabi. Like, he's a normal.

Yeah, but I was like, we've done a lot of SIF stuff about like U.S. mail and U.S. postal stuff because it truly is SIF. It's in the background of life in the United States and nobody examines it. Yeah. And I also feel this is interesting very internationally because you wouldn't think any postal service in any country would do this. but it turns out the United States Postal Service funded a scripted television show. Yeah, it's, it sure is on TV, folks, and it sure is a show.

Yeah, because it ended in 2019, so if you're, like, functional enough to hear a podcast. Right. You were around, you know? Not putting a lot of faith in, um. And babies. Babies. Toddlers. Feel like we're losing our toddler demographic here.

Yeah, no, it was a show and it was on television. Yeah, like when I grew up in Chicago, CBS was Channel 2 and there wasn't a Channel 1. It's the first channel had this show. Anyway. Yeah. And the thing is, folks, our very real recap podcast is covering episode one of the inspectors. You don't need to have seen the inspectors to follow along. Yeah.

And the other weird thing is, if you want to see it, you can see it for free anyway. in the world. Because is it on a logical destination for streaming like Paramount Plus that's attached to CBS? No, it is on BYUTV.org. Brigham Young University, which is, it's a Mormon university, correct? Yes. And according to the about page of BYUutv.org, it's not explicitly Mormon. And it is a free TV channel run by Brigham Young University and they show BYU sports and stuff. And all the branding is clear about like finally a service for families, unlike the everything else, you know. Family friendly show without hot drink in it. So is a catch our caffeine episode if that was confusing.

Anyway, go on. Yeah. So it wasn't, but it wasn't produced by Mormons, right? You could have fooled me. Exactly. It has been dumped onto a Mormon streaming service that I had never heard of. And so any of you can go watch. It's like 20 minutes long.

The first episode of The Inspectors will link it for you if you want to see it. It's not great. And it's not great in a lot of really interesting ways. I love it. It's thrilling. Yeah. So I do, I personally enjoy the United States Postal Service. I like mailing letters.

I like receiving letters. I like the fact that we have a postal service and it more or less functions well. I think they deserve money. This show is an interesting use of that money, I would say. Right. And we'll just like touch on the production background as we talk. When this show was made people in Congress and in the Democratic Party that's usually in favor of spending money on good things.

We're like objected to it. Like Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri said, quote, I know postal inspectors do great and important work, but I'm not sure they need to be sponsoring a scripted TV drama. And then she went on to say, like, we're closing post offices in my state, Missouri and around the country, and we should keep the post offices open and not make a not very good CBS show. Yeah. I always feel a little bad making fun of, I mean, genuinely bad TV shows or movies because I can tell, you know, I understand as like another person who works sort of in the creative industry, it's hard and I can see where effort went into it. And like it's just sometimes when something is crafted by committee, which is what.

this seems to have been created. Like, it is focused grouped. It is focused grouped into oblivion that there is no chance for it to be good, really. And I don't necessarily want to denigrate the individuals who worked on this show, like the actors and the writers. Like, I think they probably did the best they could given what the mission was of the television show. Yeah, I agree. It's still super bad, though.

It's still really, really bad. But I think they, there's just no, there's no way. Because like, I'm thinking, well, how could I improve it? Maybe, like, be a little more tongue in cheek, be, you know. And it's like, yeah, but it's being funded by the U.S. Postal inspection agency. So you can't really, like, make fun of them or make fun of your, like, it, they are, they, I could tell there was basically no room to do anything other than what this show.

was. I agree. And let's do, let's do a recap of blow by blow what happens in the TV show The Inspectors. Let's, let's do that, Alex. In order to recap it, I'm going to play the audio of the first 20 seconds of the show, because this is one of those TV shows where they tell you the entire premise of the show in a voiceover or theme song right at the beginning. Yeah. And so, like, I got turned into a dog. And until I help a hundred people, I won't be human again. Yeah, like the good version is Avatar the Last Airbender and the bad version is almost every other show

including this show. And it's like the Beverly Hillbillies theme song. I got turned into an airbender and I won't be turned back into a dog until I help 100 people. And we're calling it Air Bud, right? No one's used that title yet. Oh, yeah.

Nothing in the rules says you can't explicitly can't use the term airbud again. But folks, here is, obviously there's footage in the show, but here is the first 20 seconds as spoken in character by the character of Preston. Here we go. I'm Preston Wainwright, and this is my mom, Amanda. She's a United States postal inspector,

which means she solves any crime that uses the mail. My dad was an inspector, too, one of the best, until I lost him and the use of my legs in a car accident. Now I'm following my own dream with an internship in the crime lab and the help of my best friends. Together, we are the inspectors. So, yeah, that's the entire setup. You might have noticed that, like, this is a show about U.S. Postal Inspection Crimes, but there's also a lot of, like, massive grief in the setup. Fun.

Yeah. Why? Yeah, it's, man, I just... What? You know, here's the thing. Like, I feel. like this is an attempt to create a focal point of trauma so that you can have conflict. Yes.

The problem is everyone in the show who is not a scammer is literally perfect or maybe has a little bit of OCD, which is something I would like to talk about being someone who is actually has patent pending for. formally diagnosed with OCD. It's a fun little thing that happens in shows sometimes where it's like, I need my coffee perfect. Anyways, we'll talk about that later. Like the main character is representing, to some extent, the experience of being wheelchair-bound after an accident. And then also there's a Just for Laughs character with vague OCD named a bitch.

And I'll bet you didn't feel super represented by that guy doing weird, wacky jokes about it. Well, actually I did, but that was just lucky of them to get that, that I will hunt you down and get mad at you if you don't refrigerate peanut butter. Totally me. But the thing is, I think that having like a story that revolves around someone who is wheelchair bound or has a disability or went through some kind of trauma or grief, nothing wrong with that. In fact, good, good stuff. Like, that is a good thing to do. Yeah. It feels weird when it's not done well because then it's like, and here's a plot thing, right? Yeah.

See, here is a struggle. This produces conflict, right? And it's not like organic or actually a look into sort of the struggles of someone who is like newly disabled. You know, I don't, I didn't get any of the complexity that might go along with that. Just kind of like, you know, he will just literally say like, I am worried about my future interactions with my fellow students. And like, I have a dream. And I will not let my troubles get in the way of my dream. Yeah.

It's like, it's like trying to, you know, use some like very complex, potentially good thing as a vehicle for like, bland mayonnaise, you know? Like imagine, imagine a nice baguette. And you're like, well, this baguette is a vehicle for the mayonnaise. It's like, well, no, I'm more interested in the baguette. Now I've just slapped a bunch of mayonnaise on it. Yes. It's like if just straight up an advertisement for a brand of mayonnaise was like,

and he's cheating on his wife and going to murder the guy or something. Like they're just trying to like find crazy human drama to make that. That would make me possibly rethink my stance on mayonnaise if they started advertising it by having like just like adultery in every commercial. I did. I picked too good of a plot line. Yeah. I would love to see that. Or it's like we're doing an ad for ketchup and have you considered historical bombings?

Like what? No. Stop. What? It's just you don't. I know you're trying to put human drama alongside your infotane. Because this show is also infotainment for teens about postal crimes. Right.

Like teenagers specifically. Yeah, it's weird. It's strange to go like, I am grieving a parent and I am coping with being, you know, newly disabled and adjusting to this new life. And by the way, these are the services that the United States Postal Inspection Service provides. Yeah. Yeah, because also I want to shout out but then criticize one TV show. It's last week tonight with John Oliver.

They're the only other thing I have found that covered this TV show existing at all. They did a short segment about it in 2017. That's great. And they also really fail to capture any of the weirdness of it. They just say, isn't it weird? The Postal Service did a show. And then they did some like gags with celebrity cameos where if like, oh, what if real TV shows talked about postal crimes? the actual show is weirder than all of their jokes.

The thing is like if you had a show about the postal service or even like this one is specifically about like the postal inspection service that like. Right. There's no mailman. Say the actual name because I feel like I've been butchering the name of this agency every time I try to say it. Been right. It's the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the acronym is U.S. P-I-S. So one more letter than U-S-P-S. Us piss.

Us piss. You sure. It's us piss. So, I mean, I think a show about us piss could actually be good. And I think that it could be good by not taking itself too seriously, being kind of tongue and cheek. And while this show attempts comedy, it's not like, it's not tongue and cheek not taking itself serious comedy. It's here's a setup and a joke. Isn't this a good-natured character having a real chuckle with his mother?

Right. So yeah, it doesn't quite work. You know, I mean, like Brooklyn 99 is an example of a show that's like a comedy show about a police department that kind of doesn't take itself too seriously. You know, I think there would be a way to do it. The problem is because this is more or less like infotainment, I think that they would be extremely hamstrung by the fact that if they made fun of us piss, they would get their funding removed. Wow, because that's true. And then by making it at all, people are also trying to remove their funding and just trying to defund the service in general. Like there's so many angles from which people are trying to remove the money.

Maybe that's why they've pumped out so many episodes. They're just like, we have it right this second. Put up a fake set quick. Like go. I am saying this as a fan of the United States Postal Service. I used to do sort of like. sort of merch like selling like art and stuff and I use the United States Postal Service like almost every day when I would like sell art, sell stuff I would make.

I think it's amazing that you can like very affordably just send something to anywhere in the country. It's amazing. It's a really important service. God, this show sucks so bad in weird ways. It sucks so weirdly. Yeah. Let's do the blow by blow. Of the suckage. So episode one is called Crackin Cards. Crackin cards is the name. Yeah, Crackin. And it's because the main crime in this crime drama is that college students are being

scammed in a way where they're tricked into giving up a couple thousand dollars off of their debit card. That's a card cracking scam, which is real. And that's something they deal with. And boy, did I not see the twist coming of, wow, who, who, done it. We open on basically a crime police station interrogation room. Yeah. Where one of our main characters, Amanda, the mother of Preston, she is a postal inspector and she's questioning a victim of debit card withdrawal scam who says they had $3,000 taken from them by someone fooling them and tricking them in the way that card cracking works.

Yes. The classic, like we're sitting across from each other. at a metal table. I don't know if that's always the case in a situation like this. Like if you're talking to someone whose crime has been done to them, I don't think you'd be in an interrogation room. I think you might be in a more comfortable setting so that they feel more at ease. Might not be a cold metal table.

One of my favorite things about this scene is that, okay, how do we show, not tell that this character is caring and warm, even though she is a postal inspector, she, like, very conspicuously slides a box of tissues towards this student. Like, it is, like, I don't know how you make it so, the most over-the-top sliding of a box of tissues that I've ever seen, and I didn't realize that could be over the top.

Yes. I know less about postal inspections by watching this, because I don't know if they interrogate people this way. It seems like fake crime show stuff. I don't know. And my other favorite thing is when the scene starts, they do a little text, Kyran on the bottom of the screen telling you that you're in the Postal Inspection Service HQ. And it types onto the screen with that noise and that look of like the Jack Ryan TV show or Jag or like Zero Dark 30 or something.

Like it's the fully military like Zulu this time, you know. Which would be really good and really funny if this show. was allowed to take the piss out of you piss, but it's not allowed to do that because it's so funny. Yeah, it'd be so funny. If this was like, if this show was like kind of making fun of these people kind of taking themselves really seriously over, you know, I mean, like these are like obviously credit card cracking and these things are are serious issues.

But like it, I'm thinking of, you know, the whole vibe of hot fuzz where it's like these police officers in a small town and he's chasing swans and he's taking it super seriously. Something like that would be really funny. They can't do that because their whole point is to make the U.S. Postal Inspection Service look cool. Yeah, and the hardest form of cool, which is make it look cool to teens. Yeah. Like good, good luck grown adults working on a postal budget.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, they feel teens. I know you like that Timothy Shalabit and, you know, tactics, but have you thought about becoming a postal inspector? It's kind of like a cop, but not an ACAB cop. And they'll push you Kleenex, right? Pretty heartwarming and still cool.

Right. And, yeah, we meet Amanda doing this. Then she talks to her partner, Mitch. And Mitch is a very serious-faced man. who will be comedy beats of being particular about coffees and peanut butters and other, like, tiny, just being prickly things the rest of the show. To give this show credit, they don't call him OCD, which, you know, fair, good, good and fair. They're not pulling a monk where it's like, you know, this guy has OCD because he likes his peanut butter a certain way. Now, to be fair, I do have OCD and I do like my peanut butter a certain way, but that's just because that's me.

That's not my OCD. Yeah, he's like this, the, I guess the archetype of the like, I'm the uptight guy who does things by the book and I need my coffee a certain way and I'm cold and I do not know how to interact with other people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like this show is just astoundingly serious all the time. And then they know because of like a writing class or something that you need to put in comedy too. And so just all the beats are serious. And then there is random attempted comedy in between. And the main way is that Mitch is like, you put the wrong milk in my coffee.

I can't drink it. That's weird about me. Like it's just random. Yeah. Like first year TV writing student like comedy timing where it's like, I didn't expect old Mitch to pop up at that very moment to contradict the fact that he really is that bad. He really does like his organic peanut butter refrigerated. And so do I, but it's not because I have a CD.

Yeah. So like first scene ends with Amanda and Mitch walking down a hall in front of the biggest logo for a law enforcement agency that's ever been printed hastily. Just a giant star. It is a dais. It is an emblem. And then the second scene of the entire show is far stranger once it gets going, because we get military typeface of Wainwright home, Arlington, Virginia, Amanda Wainwright and her son Preston live in this home.

And the scene starts very dramatic and emotional. It is Preston doing a workout that is probably physical therapy, and his trainer is a double amputee veteran. His legs have been amputated. And they have just like a really serious talk. about like how's it going in college and where are you going in life and stuff. There's also a giant hashtag of the inspectors on the screen at the bottom the entire time. They want you to tweet about this.

Yeah. So again, like I think having representation and television, not just representation, but just interesting stories about people who are disabled or newly disabled and like how one copes with that in an interesting, realistic, and like, you know, like, I think that would be that's great and that's important. And there's, you know, it's, it's like, I don't know why it is so hard to get like a TV show or movie that does this well. It's like either done, it's like either done in this very like, corny, like tear jerky way where it's like they don't, They don't make it feel like a realistic issue or it's just kind of like window dressing.

It's it's strange and the show does not do a good job of it in my opinion. Yeah, same. It's very, the whole show is like a very special episode in a bad way. And then also takes weird swings into either postal crimes or bizarre interactions between humans. because maybe the weirdest part of the whole show is like Preston and his trainer had this very serious talk about him losing his legs in the military and like how Preston's doing with life. And then Preston's mother, Amanda, enters the house. Everybody briefly checks in on her emotions and then talks about how hot she is. In particular, her son.

They really linger on this. And one issue you discover immediately with this show. is that the character of the grieving mother and the character of the grieving son are played by performers who have some chemistry. It is so, oh my God, thank God. I'm so glad you said it, and I didn't have to bring it up.

Thank you, Alex. The whole time, so I... They're vibing the entire show. I watched this with Brett to my husband, and I just kept joking that this guy, like this kid is, the actor who plays the side. I was like, man, isn't my mom a mill? My mom's a total milf, don't you think?

Man, look at my mom. She's such a milf. Mom, you're such a milf. It is bizarre. The chemistry between, it is like, it is the Folgers commercial stretched out over 20 minutes between a mother and a son. And it is not good. It's almost exactly that commercial. Oh my God.

It is almost exactly that commercial. It's so strange. I just kept, I mean, I don't know what. kind of words I can use on this respectable podcasting program, but there are words in psychology one could just use to describe this relationship. And it's not good. It's not good, folks. Yeah. Oh, right. The U.S. E. PIS, right? There we go. There we are. That's the team. man wow the director missed that one or maybe intentionally did it i don't know i don't want to make any baseless accusations it is weird it is so weird and like there are scenes right

there are scenes where he's like man isn't my mom cool and then he stares at her like a little too long with a little like fire in his eyes it's and then he has this very like unconvincing crush on a classmate, but like, it doesn't really seem convincing. And then when he talks about his mom, it's like, man, my mom's speech was just, oh, it was so cool. Don't you think so?

Jason, don't you think so? No, you think my mom is like really hot? I'm, I feel like we both were like, are we weird or is this here? Yeah, I thought like, maybe it was me. I thought like, you know, reading too much into it. Yeah, no, no. No, it's, I don't.

I don't even know if it's subtext. It's just text in there. Also, what is the best apology gift that I can send, Brett? Would it be candy? Would it be flowers? Sorry, I made you watch the television show about you piss, where there are intense edible overtones that seem hopefully unintentional. The second or third line that Preston says to his mom at all is she says some stuff about

I feel like I'm not on my A game at work, you know, because I'm back from grief leave from my husband, your father tying. Yeah. I don't think it's called grief leave, but yes. Oh, I. And then here's what Preston says back when she's like, she just says, I don't know if I'm on my A game at work. He says, quote, mom, your A game never went anywhere. You made it through one year leave. You stayed in great shape.

You're going to be the same great teen leader. you always were. And when he says, you stayed in great shape, he, like, eyeballs her up and down. Yes. His eyes widened. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, if this show is a comedy and it was about this son that keeps saying, like, my mom's a milf, somewhat funny, maybe in the right context.

Right. Yeah. I mean, like, remember in a, remember an arrested development, the whole, like, relationship between. Oh, God. What's, yeah, between. Oh, Buster and Lucille? Or the cousins? The thing is, yeah, the thing is it's like, I don't know how they meant.

Like, obviously this issue is not typically something the joke about. They managed to do it in a way that's like not abhorrent and it was funny. Yeah, it is strange. I don't want to impugn the character of these actors or actresses. I think this was just, it was unintentional and it did not get noticed through. Any of the stages of shooting or editing or sound mixing or writing, nothing. Nobody seemed to kind of, or maybe they all noticed it, but like us, they're like, I don't, am I. It's not, maybe it's just me.

Maybe I'm just like the weirdo here. So, yeah, it's unfortunate. Also, he, like, cooks her dinner and it's just that whole, oh, man, it's all so strange. Also, little details like he cooks her dinner. He uses a glass dish. He's holding it with his bare hands. There's no like, you know, like what? Is this a freezing cold thing of green beans and chicken?

You expect me to believe you can hold that with your hands? No. I can buy that a young college man can non-sexual comment on the physical fitness of his own mother. I'll stay with you there. But a cold casserole dish, no. That in a later scene, Preston makes dinner. for the two of them. And I think they're playing it as this is how it works if you're in a wheelchair.

But no, like you said, he has a glass dish with no protection on his bare lap. And then his mom, like, comes to pick it up off of his lap from pretty close and could be wheelchair stuff, but it feels edible on this TV show. It's weird. I get the sense that they were kind of trying to go for, like, this sort of patronizing, like, see, like people who have disabilities can cook. too and it's like yeah we know

like what why are you why is this scene so forced and awkward like it just feels kind of weird and patronizing and I think I think that weirdness like the the forceness of it inadvertently creates this edible overtone

sorry not edible edipal I don't know how to say words good yeah when food is edible it's edible edipole It's an incredible edible edible meal I did not expect to talk about this on a TV show about the United States Postal Inspection Service Alex Yeah so thanks for that

In the first like corridor it's like are the grieving mom and son hooking up oh my god And then we swing back to new totally serious dialogue where Preston says quote I'm going to walk again mom and then I'm going to be a postal inspector And we learned that he has been an intern while in college. He's like in college. He's also an intern at U.S. Postal Inspections. And then he speaks of his dream of working for postal inspecting like it is climbing Mount Everest.

He at one point fully compares it to the life of Steve Jobs and the life of the Wright brothers in terms of taking on a challenge that seems impossible. Yes, he does. I know they work hard and train hard, but I think you can just go. do that job. It is a, more or less. I'm certain it is a

more difficult, intense job than the one that I have. Same, yeah. Also, I am so, I am so confused by the subtext there that somehow he needs to be able body

to be a U.S. postal inspector. I don't, like, maybe that's not what they intended. Like, like these are two goals of mine, but it's just confusing. It made me think, like, wait, do they not let people who are disabled be postal inspectors? That seems weird and

discriminatory. So I do not, I didn't get that. Like, from that, like, what I got was, like, maybe there's a rule. Like, you can't be a postal inspector if you are disabled and you can't walk without, like, a walking aid or wheelchair. But I don't think that's true. Imagine if you could be in a wheelchair and work for this government agency. Can you imagine it? Like, yes, they make buildings accessible. And he's interning in the lab where you're not chasing anybody. Like, sure. Yeah, I'm, yeah, it just, it's, again, it's like, I think they are making a genuine attempt to be sort of like, hey, let's explore these complex issues and like have inclusivity in our show.

But then it just, it's like they don't grieving and being in a wheelchair and going for a job that you have an ambition for. It's like, I mean, yeah, a lot of people do that. It's like, can you imagine cooking a nice meal for your mother and winking at her and looking at her? And it's like, okay, wait, where are we going? Wait. What? What are we going with this? Excuse me.

Everybody imagines that, right? Right. Right. Yeah. I really, again, I am assuming the best of faith of everyone who created this show. I do not think it was intentional. and it's sort of like when chat GPT comes out with something really out of left field because it's like an amalgamation of a bunch of different human thoughts all forced into a funnel

and spat out that's what I think happened with this show and so like individuals may have tried really hard to like make it work but then when you have sort of like all sorts of basically parameters that you're forcing this creativity through it you get at a pull overtones almost every time and I don't know why. It's a ghost in the machine. Yeah. The internet's into that. That would explain everything if this was chat GPT,

but it's from 2014, so it's not. Yeah. Or was it? From here, there's a rapid fire set of scenes in our postal inspection crime plot. We have Mitch at a desk who is mad at a coworker for eating chips. And then Amanda comes in, they see a fake social media profile that he made to try to bring out the debit card scammer.

On the most realistic social media website I have ever seen. There is pictures of people's faces, inboxes on the screen with likes and dislikes. Yeah, unnamed social media. We all know it. Then Mitch is weird about coffee and we go to commercial break. When we're back from commercial break, it's Preston on campus being a very real college student. And he and his two friends, his love interest and his funny black friend, they talk about like yeah oh man yeah like there's uh yeah so like it's man there's a lot of

tropes that are let's let's just say problematic um in terms of like they're very chat chagipt it's like what you would just spit out from the just all the all shows yeah it's just like it's like could we maybe like have more personalities that people can have when They're not like the main character white guy. Also maybe even give the main character white guy more personality traits. It's, yeah, it is just like, it's not, you know, they're not really trying anything innovative here. Exactly, because they're not trying anything. And then also three college students talk so they can establish that there's a pattern of debit card cracking on campus.

And then after Veronica, the potential love interest leaves, there's a like broken exchange. between Preston and his black friend Noah, where they're like, they're trying to do some kind of funny thing about Preston has a crush on Veronica, but it comes out as Preston starting to describe dreaming about her. But then he says they were at a laundromat. Yeah.

It sounds like he's about to describe a wet dream he had about their, uh, their, their friend that they have grown up with. Uh, and the guy's like, man, like,

Veronica's like a sister. to you and he's like yeah but we were like at the laundromat and it sounds like he's gonna describe a sex dream to again they are mutual friends with this young lady and i am like i was actually kind of excited because we were getting away from the weird mom stuff yeah but then they talk about a leopard right like and even like people proceed to have romance with a childhood friend that's everybody's older and everybody's single. Like it's not that weird even. As long as it's not your mom.

As long as it's not your mom. I was like, okay, great. We're getting away from the mom. And then it's like, and we're at the laundromat. And it's like, and then a leopard asked me to, you know, use a machine for a quarter or something. And it's like, uh, we're the writers just like, wait, we can't make this seem like a wet dream. So we've got to add another thing in here. So it's going to be a leopard.

And then the friend has like. this realization of like the leopard wanted your help with washing to help it wash out its spots. And it's played off as if this is going to be a big revelation of like it's spots. I know who did the credit cracking, but it's nothing. It's, it's goddamn nothing. It doesn't mean anything. It's nothing. It's just there.

Yeah. Yes. And it's as just jointed as we sound. Like it's like. It is. I don't even believe. I do not believe they were on the same set together. It is so straight.

It sounds like someone like had to, it was like as if someone wrote a script by being fed one previous line of the script and being like writing a second line after this. It's like a party game you play sometimes like, you know, write a story together where you only see the preceding sentence. Yeah. Exquisite corpse, I think it's called. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. And then also that they were not in the same room together and also that they were forced to talk to a.

like uncanny mannequin that made the actors feel uncomfortable. It was, I am, I was worried about like the well-being of these actors in this scene. A thousand percent. So that scene just ends extraordinarily weirdly with Preston being like, no, no, no,

I dreamed about us doing regular laundry and then there was a leopard. And then from there we get a scene in the crime lab. And Amanda is with our forensics expert, Georgia, who is one of her best friends. who I think seems low-key like maybe the best actress in the show. Like the- Yeah, I agree. Yeah, really good, actually.

So suddenly we get, and again, I'm not necessarily blaming the actors and actresses in the show when they, I mean, when they were given something that seemed to be generated by some kind of like committee of robots. Yeah. But yeah, I was like, wait, okay, she can actually, she's acting pretty well. And then it kind of, well, the scene breaks down. Alex, I'll leave this to you to explain. Yeah, so here's what the chat GPT did. There is really just two lines of we looked for maybe security footage of the debit card scammer, but he had a hat on so we don't know who it is. And then the two of them have many lines about how much pain Amanda is in about her dead husband, who was also a post-auntary.

the inspector like her. And so every inch of the office reminds. They were partners. Yeah, they were partners. They were partners, which again, so I am very confused about like office policy because I do not believe maybe this isn't true, but I kind of don't believe you would be allowed to be partners with your spouse. I know there are a lot, there are likely a lot of like HR issues that might arise.

Like I do not know of any like, I don't know because like there's there would be like a concern maybe about like nepotism, you know, like, I don't know, like, if that would be, like, cool or not. Yeah. Once again, we know less about actual U.S. postal inspections that we did before. And, like, she's like, she's telling, like, it gets really modeling. Like, it gets, like, she talks, like, she tearful. And this actress, like, she's, she's doing a fairly decent job with, again, like, what

she's given, which is, like, weird whiplash in terms of tone. where she goes from me, she like has to go from being like, huh, we're in a goofy kind of sitcom type show. Not sitcom, but, you know, just like a tongue and cheek kind of like show. And then, like, they were only a few yards away from the house when the accident happened. Like, they were almost home. And it's like, what the, what is going on with this show? It's like, it's like they're, like, trying to suddenly inject something that's like truly heartbreaking, right?

Like the idea that your loved one almost made it home but was killed before. it's super modeling. The actress is doing a fairly good job, like trying to portray emotion. And then they're like, oh, here comes your goofy partner, like complaining about peanut butter. It's so weird. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, they, then they rounded off with just Mitch banging a spoon on the window of the room and saying, hey, you got to refrigerate peanut butter and then commercial break. And that's it. I do often like to interrupt someone expressing grief by complaining about peanut butter because I like it refrigerated also. I eat my peanut butter with apples. And so what I like to do is when I see someone having a tearful conversation with someone else, I bang on the window, explain that peanut butter should be refrigerated.

And I think that helps. Yeah. And the rest of the episode, basically, but it's just more rapid fire beats of the crime and rapid fire random comedy because you're just supposed to do that. The next scene is the erotic family dinner where Amanda gathers the meal off of Preston's lap. And then we find out they're both tracking this case because Amanda's investigating it and Preston goes to the school and also wants to be an inspector. So he's like off the books looking into it too. And then there's one comedy joke of my black friend ate all our leftovers and possibly our pet fish is the punchline.

Back to the crime lab. It's Preston and Georgia. Georgia supervises Preston's internship. They briefly talk about the case, then talk about him not being interested in a social life because he just wants to intern in postal inspections. He demonstrably has two friends. Count them. Two. Two.

And they're the two types of friends, a funny black guy and a girl you secretly love. Those are the two kinds of friends for every white male. And she has a crush on a jock. Yes, she does. It's too bad. Preston is thinking about the case. He has a sudden flashback to something his dad told him while his dad was still alive about how to solve postal crimes. And then we jump back to the crime lab.

Preston says, thanks, dad out loud. And does a series of typing on a screen. Alex, I know we are trying to get through the plot of this, but I do have to point out that in the flashback with his dad, they are playing foosball. It's like, oh, nice score, kid. anyways, this is how you solve crime at the Postal Inspection Service. It is the wildest conversation between a father and his son that I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah.

And his tip is to look for patterns when you're investigating crabs. Like, is that a tip? I think that's just what you do. Now, ha, that was real nice shot, kiddo. You really got that foo's in my ball. So listen, when you're investigating, getting... You're investigating crimes. You should go after the criminals.

Yeah. Don't have sex with your mother, son. If I pass away, do not have sex with your mother. All right. Good talk, champ. If I ever die, remember, your future trader will also have a vibe with her. And it's much more age appropriate and it's legal. So do that.

Yeah, so then Preston, like, types on his screen and he has that fake social media network open and just all but a couple of pictures fade away and he says that's it and then in a next scene he tells noah that they need to catfish the potential debit card scammer not romantically but for like you can scam me too by going to the president's cafe the popular pizza joint never say never Alex I there I this this actor whatever direction he was given like he does seem a little bit coy with the like the the the perp uh in a way that's like that's true i'm just a i'm just an innocent college lad who well i could use a little extra money if you know what i mean golly that is true i forgot it's also yeah maybe he acts in the form of just

viving with anyone who's at a scene with him yeah that's a connection so yeah uh So, and, you know, they're like in, they're in this, like, they're in this, like, what is it, like a soda pop shop, I don't know, pizza parlor, like where the kids hang out. And they're like, looking around for the perp. And he's there with, like, I don't know, like a couple of his, couple of girls. And was his crush there, I don't remember. And his goofy friends like, being goofy, being like, hey, maybe that guy is the perp. And he's like, oh, old waiter. And it's like, uh-huh, you're so funny because you're bad at this.

And it's like, gosh, who could have been? And then pops a guy with slick back hair and a blazer. And he's like, hey, kids, would you like to get some extra money? Yeah, yeah, it's exactly that. And this thing is Preston is going to pretend to be a gullible college student with a new credit card. He loudly tells the room he has fantastic plastic, which is a nickname for a debit card. Apparently. And he loudly says, I'm a college guy now, so all bets are off while he buys pizza for other people in the restaurant.

Yeah. Man, I love having rich parents. I can just get a lot of, a lot of pizza with this here fantastic plastic. Man, I do not have a good sense of fiscal responsibility. Yeah, like the scammer guy says that the scammer guy went to the business school of the college. And the Preston's response is, I don't know much about money myself. Man, I'm really bad at detecting scams. You know, like if someone was to scam me right now and make me participate in some kind of scam, like a scammer would scam, I wouldn't see it coming.

And then the sting, his plan for the sting is he will just keep the guy talking long enough for Noah to come over and take a smartphone photo of. the guy's face because then Preston will give that illegal evidence to his mom so she can complete the case. Right, which is illegal evidence. And also, but then Noah gets a case of the, you know, the spicy colon, I guess and has to go to the bathroom. Yes. Is stuck in the bathroom with what I can only assume is horrific diarrhea. They don't say that in the show, but like, you know, it's like the whole plane.

is a sting operation, but then he goes to the bathroom in the middle of it. And it's like, it must be diarrhea. It has to be diarrhea. I wish they went that far. Again, the show could be funny. I wish if, yeah, if it was a comedy and like all of the things we're saying, like, were comedy beats. Yeah, and instead, Preston is like extremely obviously texting under the table.

And Noah just keeps saying, I can't come. I'm in the bathroom. Sorry. and then the scammer guy lays out an extraordinary convoluted thing of I have an out-of-state check for $6,000. If you give me your debit card to deposit it, I'll only take $4,000. You can have $2,000, then you have more money. It's such a scam and pointless. And out-of-state checks, you just need to wait for a week or two.

It's not even hard. So why would he give up $2,000? Anyway, the guy is still there when Noah comes back. Noah, the funny friend, runs into the roof. saying, all right, show me some teeth, people, and points his phone at just the scammer. And then the scammer, very creepily, seizes Noah's phone, deletes the picture of it, and says, you want to take someone's picture, you ask their permission, and leaves. Yeah, I, uh, again, he could have taken a picture from across the room, you know, like,

not loudly announced it. But man, his, but the thing is they did do their due diligence in the script writing. They set up this friend as being very goofy. So what a goofball. I should cut in George Lucas saying it's like poetry or something. Like it all, it adds up. So then the scammer guy steps out of the diner and we discover that Amanda and Mitch had been doing a stakeout with that first victim in the car with them.

And she IDs him and they get out of the diner. the car to grab him and arrest him. And the next scene is them hauling him into the postal inspector police station. Like cuffed, I think. Yeah. And he is like, you got nothing on me, coppers. Again, this show would be so funny if they had fun with the thing that nobody's heard of postal inspectors.

But instead, the guy says, who are you anyway? The FBI? And Mitch says, I told you, we're postal inspectors. And then here's what Amanda says, we're your worst nightmare. We've got a 98% conviction rate. You're about to raise it to 99. About postal inspection. That's not how percentages works.

That's not how percentages works. And then so also in the small about a research I did, it turns out that stat is basically copaganda. They don't actually have that conviction rate. Yeah. Also, here's the thing. A really high conviction rate is bad. Okay? Because get this, get this. It means that your justice system is likely corrupt. Like if you have a 99% conviction rate, that means that there are probably a lot of innocent people getting convicted. It's like this is like the kind of stats that we talk like when we talk about like authoritarian countries where like they have like a 99% conviction rate. That's a bad thing. That indicates the system isn't working.

So kind of good news, that status apparently from the USPIS website, but they frame it as a historical rate and don't cite anything? You know what's weird is I've been on UPIS dot com and I didn't see anything like that. It's a very different website than what you're describing. Yeah, they frame it as a historical rate and don't back it up. And then they do annual reports for this organization. In 2022, their conviction rate was around 92%. In 2021, it was less than 74%. It's like you said, it's good news that they don't actually convict 98% of the people they arrest.

Yes, that is a bonkers thing to brag about because it indicates massive justice system breakdown. Yeah. So the show in one specific instance does sudden copaganda. Really fun. And then we cut to the Wainwright home where Amanda is showing Preston a security camera pick of Preston. illegally trying to gather evidence about the crime. She says he can't butt in like that. He's just like chirpy and like, but I'll be an inspector someday.

So it's cool. And then they do a coda of Amanda saying she'll make breakfast and Preston saying, you burn cereal comedy. And then the camera pans to a family photo of the living dad and the living mom, Amanda. And then a young kid with super blonde hair who does not look like Preston, but is apparently the kid they found to be. him in the family photo and that's the end of the scene. Like they got a young kid in the photo.

My understanding was that this accident happened recently because she recently went on bereavement or grief leave and like he's going through physical therapy to adapt to life with his disability. Again, this happened recently. Why are they like lingering on a photo where he's like a kid? It just, it doesn't, it serves no narrative purpose. It's like, oh, see, their dad is watching them from heaven. And it's, it's strange, man.

It's just like, like these are like the topic of grief and, you know, going through a traumatic, going through a traumatic accident and grief. It's like, that's like, you know, when you're trying to play it not for like in like a comedy, right? Like, and you're trying to play it for like a serious thing. It is uncomfortable when it is not done well. Exactly. And speaking of discomfort, next and last scene of the story is Amanda in a college lecture hall lecturing to the whole campus about debit card cracking, right, to protect them. And Preston cannot shut up about how his mom is a milf and like elbowing his friends and

like, don't you think, don't you think my mom is hot? Don't you think my mom is hot? Yeah, he keeps talking about how amazing she is. And Noah says she's like the female J. Edgar Hoover. And then says like a Jane Edgar Hoover. And they laugh about it. Wait, isn't Jay Edgar Hoover? Hmm.

Well, he allegedly cross-tress. But also, yeah. Okay, yeah, but that's not what. And also he was allegedly a bad guy. Alex, I think that any kind of gender expression is a good thing. That's not why. That's not why I'm going like. It's not Jay Edgar Hoover a bad guy.

Exactly. Like every college student in America either doesn't know who Hoover is or knows who he is and has heard he might be a bad guy. Like nobody is like our hero, Jay Edgar Hoover. That milf of my mom, she sure is a Nixon. Right. Yeah. And then they like briefly bring in the college student love interest. He says her date was bad and we yuck it up about maybe Preston.

as a chance. He was just so shallow and only talked about himself. Man, I wish that I knew someone who was deeper. I am more interested in someone for their personality and kindness and their desire to become a postal inspector. And the guy is like looking after her with like sort of not quite the same like lustful intensity that he looks at his mom, but somewhere around there. And his friends like, in your dreams, man, is like, why?

Why would it be in his dreams? It seems pretty likely from episode one. It seems extremely reasonable. Again, like we haven't really talked about it because I think talking about the Edipole stuff makes it a little bit awkward. But the actor who plays Preston is a very conventionally attractive young man. Yeah, it looks great. Yeah. And like he has a jaw that could like crush, I don't know, concrete.

So it's like, why is that weird? Yeah. Yeah, and then that is how the story ends. And then over the credits, we get the actress who plays Amanda. Her name is Jessica Lundy. By the way, she won a daytime Emmy for this role. Hell, yeah. I love, wait, what?

Repeat that. Jessica Lundy won the 2016 Daytime Emmy in the category of outstanding performer in a children's or preschool children's series. This is a children's series? Yeah, it's intended for teens. are younger. And the one really interesting thing from the John Oliver piece is they found out that according to the actual ratings, the main audience is 50 or older.

So, uh, whoops. I mean, because of the hot mom, because of the milf. Makes sense. You can't serve milf and expect that Delphs aren't going to watch. Dilfs or milts. Sorry, I do want to be, um, inclusive. And so speaking of DILFs, over the credits, there is a full-an PSA. It is the actor introducing the real chief postal inspector of the United States at the time, Guy Cattrell.

And then he gives a message about USPIS is our nation's oldest federal law enforcement agency. You've got to watch out for scams. Each episode of our show will tell you about scams and crimes. Stick around. If someone tells you something that sounds too good to be true, it probably. is. Yeah, and then they made 105 more episodes.

So, you know, folks. I thought, I just, I, I, I am having trouble, like, conceiving of that, Alex. That is the most shocking thing I've ever heard you say. Somehow they contain it all on the servers

of BYUutv.org. I don't know how they do it. But the thing, we've talked about all the issues with it. Also, by the way, it turns out U.S. Postal Inspectors do like huge crimes. Apparently in 2017 they solved or solve huge crimes. Oh, a little difference there. Yeah, I'll just say that again.

No, no, no, don't. You leave that in. You leave that in. You let them see. You let them see how the sausage is made. That's true, yeah. We're getting real on the inspectors' inspectors. Getting real.

Like in 2017, they completed an investigation of all kinds of scams run through Western Union wire transfers, and they forced the return of more than $600 million. And in 2020, postal inspectors arrested Steve Bannon for defrauding people who thought they were donating toward a U.S.-Mexico border wall through scammy Republican operations. And it's real. They deal with, like, drugs and major financial fraud and mail theft in a really problematic way. And then the TV show is, a college kid might lose a couple grand. out like what to be now now Alex to be fair we have not watched all other 105 episodes

so maybe they do get to the Steve Vannon thing in later episodes oh Preston taken down taken down a Nazi sleeper cell through the you piss I guess a lot of vaunted TV shows I hear about people will be like it gets really good in the later seasons like if this one does that Holy cow. Maybe. Sure. I don't know. I'm tempted to watch the last episode just to see. But there's a lot of other things I could do in that 20 minutes, like laundry. You could read a chapter of a book.

Counting ceiling tiles. I could massage my dog's cute little footsies. There's a lot of things that I could pack in 20 minutes. Not to be too much of a PSA at the end of the show. But we made this to, again, say thank you for the Max Fun Drive. And we have a lot of goals for things that we really expect people to be excited about, like digital arts and live streams we're going to do and stuff. But if we really, really knock out our goals, one of them is to make an additional episode of the podcast, the inspectors, inspectors.

We will watch more of this show if enough of you donate to maximum fun. Please don't. Please don't donate. Don't listen to Katie. Do it. Don't listen. No, please. Guys, just, shh.

Alex, could you, is there's, there's, it looks like there's like something over in the, I'll leave. Guys, please, no, don't donate. Don't make me watch more of this television. I'd better, I'd better go check on the nothing Katie described. Step, step, steps, steps. Door slam. Is that a scamable college student over there?

Guys, seriously, if you donate and I have to watch more of this Godforsaken show, I don't know what I I'm it's going to be tough to like deal with the clear sexual tension between this fake college student and his fake mother it truly was the inspectors 99 conviction rate baby