So... Alright - Hot Tv Takes

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Geoff gets passionate about the current state of tv. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info to Kraken dot com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See Kraken dot com slash legal slash PRU dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. And check it out. So I said I'd be doing a Q&A and I got a ton of great questions in from you guys. People sent them in to ericatjeffsboss.com.

That's the email address for this podcast. I also got a ton of hot dog stories, people sharing the best hot dogs that they've ever eaten in their lives. And they were so fun. And I got so many of them that I just picked some of my favorites and I think I'll probably just do some sort of a, I don't know, combination of all of the things. But for right now, I'm coming in at the end of the day.

We had two surprise recordings today. I knew that I was going in to record two pieces of supplemental with Regulation. They were both Halloween themed and they were very fun But then we it didn't take much talking I was gonna say we talked ourselves into we we realized that we could play left for dead as well And so we sat down and we hammered out Two left for dead videos which ended up being you know

The first one maybe 45 minutes in the second one like an hour and a half or so. Very exhausting. And anyway, it ate into my soul right time. So for this episode, I wanna address one thing that was asked, I don't remember who asked it. Actually a few people asked it in the email. So I'll just do this, we'll just get this out of the way.

People wanna know what TV shows I'm into right now, what I think you should watch, what's good on television right now. I'm gonna be honest with you, not a fuck of a lot. It's kind of a desert for TV right now. I think it's a combination of, things get real rough in the summer, like summer into fall anyway.

It's kind of the dead zone for sports and for, you know, scripted and unscripted television. You get your summer replacements some. But none of those old rules even really stand anymore, right? Because with streaming, it's everything's just turned on its ear. But I think with the, you know, with the strikes and then studios really ramping down production, I was watching a TikTok earlier today that, listen, I watched a TikTok that said this.

I haven't, I'm gonna Google it. I'm gonna Google it right now. I would hate to misquote it. How much is film and TV production? Yeah, domestic film and TV production in the second quarter of 2024 was down 40%. So yeah, essentially down 40% in the US from pre-strike levels.

And then of course, a lot of productions are moving overseas. Ireland's become a real hotbed for American television production apparently a lot of unscripted stuff getting shot in Ireland so There's not a hell of a lot coming out right now You know a lot of a lot of the people I follow in

social media and and via the press are saying that we're about to enter into sort of a death of reality TV, that the bottom's really fallen out of it. That it's kind of had its heyday and social media. You know, it's funny, YouTube and streaming services affect traditional television. And now things like TikTok and Instagram and I guess YouTube are affecting unscripted television. Nobody wants to watch reality TV anymore because they have it in the palm of their hands in a much more digestible way directly from the The people that they are entertained by right so I think that we're gonna see a bit of a bit of a reality TV desert

And obviously there'll be the the the old mainstays right survivors not Survivor's not going anywhere, Amazing Race isn't going anywhere, Big Brother I don't think is going anywhere. I really, every fucking year I try, I tell myself this is the year I get into Big Brother and I just can't do it. Emily and I made it through one season of Celebrity Big Brother and that was mostly just because Chris Catan was so fucking weird.

I had to tune in just to see how fucking weird he was gonna be episode to episode. I gotta get into that show though, because there just, there aren't that many others. I'm pretty done with the Bachelor, Bachelorette franchise. I hang in a little bit for Bachelor in Paradise, because it's my kind of trashy. There has been no word on a new season of Temptation Island,

which is my favorite reality TV show. Heard no new words on new stuff like Ultimatum. I know that Love Island still going strong. I hate to say it. I know that Below Deck and all of its many forums is going strong, but I I just got burned out on the format of those shows. And once the format kills you, it kills all of the blowdecks across the board. Right. Sailing to Australia, to Mediterranean, to the bog standard. I don't know. Once you watch like four seasons of that show and you get it locked in, it's you just you can see it coming.

And it's kind of boring. Unfortunately, I wish I could get back into it. Maybe I try. You know, I should try. I should get back. Just see. I should see. I bet the chef is going to be difficult and will threaten to quit about halfway through. Just a hunch. Anyway, all that aside, I have been watching like four things, kind of four things. Any and all sports I'm into now, I am completely and totally like fully into the WNBA. And so that has been a huge help in this period of time after the NBA is, after the NBA summer league is over

and before really before college and NFL start there. It's just, it's a desert of entertainment for sports fans. UFC keeps me going strong. Sometimes there's boxing thrown in there as well. But WNBA has really, really just captured my imagination and my entertainment. I will watch almost any game. Obviously, I follow all the stars.

I had kinda decided to throw in with the Liberty because I like Brianna Stewart, and I do enjoy watching them, but man, it's about Asia Wilson, right? But what a fucking phenomenal season she and the Aces were having, and then of course, how do you not watch the Aaliyah Boston-Katelyn Clark connection, and then obviously, Angel Reese in Chicago.

It's just like, there's so many different narratives, there's so many great players, there's so many rookies, there's so much young talent. It's just like, it's an explosive time in that sport. And so I've been enjoying that quite a bit. And then UFC has been pretty fucking good lately. I don't know if that's your jam, but the more I watch, I've always been a big boxing fan my entire life.

Grew up watching Mike Tyson as a kid and and then fell in love with Roy Jones Jr. And then fell in love with Manny Pacquiao and then fell in love with Manny Pacquiao and then out of love with Manny Pacquiao later. But have always loved and followed boxing. And then it took me a long time to get into UFC, but now that I have, and now that I'm into it, into it, man, it's pretty fantastic. Outside of that, it's been, you know,

there's not been a lot going on, except for the Olympics. The entire summer was the Olympics, and then of course the Paralympics Now so there is a actually and it's I don't know what I was bitching about There's a lot of sports even during the non sports period. There's a lot of sports pretty fucking lucky now that I think about it The other shows that I have been like tuning in week to week if you have never watched the show alone I Cannot recommend it highly enough. It is basically each season, if you're not familiar with the format,

they take 10, for lack of a better word, survivalists, I guess. People that could live off the grid, want to live off the grid, like to go out and just subsist. Not like subsistence farmers, although a lot of them are, but people that just want like go out into the woods and see how long they can survive, right? And they put them in like these incredibly remote places, typically up in Northern Canada or Alaska.

This season was in the Arctic Circle. I think it's the second time they've done the Arctic, maybe the first. And it's basically, the way it works is they take the 10 Arctic, maybe the first. And it's basically the way it works is they take the 10 people, they spend some time there getting to understand, getting trained on native flora and fauna and like what animals they're allowed to hunt and kill

and what they're not and local customs and stuff. And then they just take a helicopter or a boat and drop them off in the middle of nowhere like at a shoreline About 10 to 15 kilometers away from the next closest person so they're spread out over You know like easily a hundred hundred and fifty kilometers. There's no way they can run into each other and see each other There is a show on Netflix season 2 just started. I haven't watched it yet. I'm reminding myself about it now I'm jazzed about it. It's called Outlast. And it's kind of like this flipped on its head

where they put the people closest together, like maybe a kilometer apart, and they encourage them to find each other. There are no rules. Create alliances. Go and fuck with the other people. Steal their food. Break all their stuff.

Tear down their shelters. Make them quit. It's very Lord of the Flies. I watched the first season with like intense interest and by the end it just kind of bummed me out for people, if that makes sense. Like every person was worse than the last and I just kind of hated to see that.

And so I'm sure season two will be good. I'm sure it'll be good, I'm sure it'll be good, but I'm a little trepidatious to watch it just because of how how much season one kind of bummed me out by the end Just like you know people got real gross you know and and and we're able to justify it pretty easily Anyway, so alone. They're there out there isolated. They can bring ten items with them, so they usually bring the same stuff They bring like a tarp, they bring fish hooks, they bring like paracord, so they can make like fishing nets and stuff.

They bring typically some kind of an axe or a hunting knife of some kind, and or a saw, like a handheld saw, and then they'll bring a bow and arrow, almost always. I think I've only seen like one or two people not take a bow and arrow and they usually get like, I don't know, I want to say like seven or eight bows. What? Seven or eight arrows. So they have to maintain control of them, which is kind of funny because invariably

every season on day two, some guy sees a grouse like up in a tree and is like, oh, fuck, I can hit that. And then he shoots his arrow up into a tree and It disappears into the woods and then he misses the grouse and loses one of his eight arrows and is now fucked Or you know for that arrow at least That happens a lot or sometimes they'll shoot at a beaver in the water and then be like, oh there there goes my arrow floating away And then they smarten up over time Okay.

And then they smarten up over time. Anyway, so once they're there, they just have to survive as long as they can. The way you win is by being the last person to quit. Actually, by not being the only person not to quit. They are all given like a little like sat phone and at any point in time, they can just open it up and hit the button to call the number. And as soon as you call the number, you say, I'm quitting.

I hit the button, I'm quitting. And they will come pull you out immediately via whether it be for medical reasons. Like I saw a guy this season stab himself. He fell on one of his arrows and sliced up his thigh pretty fucking good. He had to medevac himself out. Sometimes people will quit because they just, they can't handle the isolation of it. It's He had to medevac himself out. Sometimes people will quit because they can't handle the isolation of it. It's always interesting to see how it affects people,

people that think they're gonna be, like people come in real gung-ho, and then there have been some people that have been very strong survivalists that have had no trouble getting food and have been like able to build amazing shelters, and then by week two, they just cannot be alone with their thoughts.

It drives them crazy, and they quit to go back to be with their family or just to be around other people. It's really interesting. It kind of runs the gamut. You see, mostly it's people collecting as much food as they can, trying to hunker down like a bear for the winter, and then just slowly starving and trying to maintain as much of your food stores as you can through the lean periods. Like at the beginning. There's animals everywhere You could potentially catch a moose or catch shoot a moose or a bear or whatever animal

You're allowed to hunt out there beaver all kinds of stuff deer If they're that far north Or they'll be like you can't kill weasels because they're protected or whatever anyway And then they'll try to bag one of those If you get like a moose or a bear, then you gotta essentially have enough meat for the winter. And it's about trying to last potentially through the winter. They typically dropped off like right at the tail

in the fall. So they have like maybe three weeks of decent weather. And then they fish like crazy. They fish until they can't put their nets out anymore. And then you basically hunker down until there's enough snow to freeze the water over, and then they go out and they dig holes in the water, and ice fish, right? And try to catch like hares and stuff

with like little wire traps out in the woods through the runs and stuff. I mean, it's mostly about people like living day to day. If I don't get a fucking grouse today or a fish, I'm gonna have to quit. I'm at the end of my rope. I've tried everything I can think of. Everything has gone wrong for me. And then they get it and they have this huge personal triumph.

You share in the joy, you share in the pain when it doesn't work out for them. And you just watch these 10 people and it's such a psychological minefield because you don't know how the other people are doing. There's no communication. The only way you know it's over is when they tell you it's over. So this these shows go, I think it's gone as high as a hundred or right around a hundred, maybe a little more days. But typically I want to say they average around 70 to 80 days.

And by like day 30, it's, you know, five degrees Fahrenheit, 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and they're in a little hut that's typically dug into the ground or built into the side of a, I don't know, some sort of a rock face or boulder or something. And with this tiny little heat source, as much fire as they can safely have in there

without burning their place down and allowing for the smoke to ventilate, because that's always an issue. And then they basically just sit there, and I think maybe every two weeks, maybe once a week or every two weeks, the medics will come and do a health and safety check. They'll weigh them, they'll check their vitals,

make sure they're not in any kind of danger because at some point these people are starving. Even when they're eating, they're starving because they're not getting full nutrition, right? Like there's this thing, you can starve eating meat and that happens a lot, especially if it's lean meat. They're always trying to catch certain kinds of fish or beavers, things that have high fat count

because that helps keep you healthy longer. Anyway, at that point, that's your only interaction with humanity and they're always scared, especially after about the first month, they get really scared when the med check comes because they're scared they'll get pulled. It happens all the time.

They'll be like, listen, man, you've lost 75 pounds in three weeks and you are blacking out, you cannot continue. You got to go. And they'll pull them out. And so they're always scared about this. And they are truly alone. I didn't mention this, I assume it's, I guess I thought you would figure this part out. But they have to film everything themselves, right? If I didn't, I didn't say that early enough.

There's no camera crew with them. They're taught how to film everything themselves. They have a bunch of batteries and hard drives that they have to hump around with them and they download footage and they leave, they leave it in caches that the people will then come and take. And so the people are seeing their whole lives. The medics are seeing their whole lives.

So you can't like trick a medic because you're having to like give these testimonials and you're documenting your life as it's going and then you're Shipping this stuff back so they know coming in like this dude's been dizzy right or whatever or he's having stomach cramps throwing up a lot of vomiting warned you now Every season there's gonna be like a vomit episode where two or three people just get sick at the same time Or they sync it up to get it out of the way, right? And I would say most of the time they don't survive it.

I'd say like one in three people will come out of that okay and continue on. Hamburglar, why are you calling? Rubble, rubble. McDonald's has a new biggest burger called Big Arch made with two 100% Canadian beef patties, a new delicious sauce, and all the McDonald's flavors you love, and, wait, you want me to help you get it? Rubble! Come on.

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and every kind of animal you can think trying to steal it from you, which is a losing battle for almost everyone every time. And you just watch people kind of go slowly nuts which is a losing battle for almost everyone every time and You just watch people kind of Go slowly nuts while they try to live as long as they can in the middle of nowhere in a harsh Arctic climate This season I think it was season 11. It just ended was easily the best season of

Alone I've ever seen I've seen every season. I've even tried my best to watch some of the spin-offs. They have like skills challenge spin-offs. I've never been able to get into those. I have watched Alone New Zealand and that's pretty good. And I started Alone UK, but I didn't make it very far for no other reason than I just, I just forgot about it. But this season of Alone US, the most recent Arctic Circle, is if you're looking for a place to start is definitely the best season of Alone US, the most recent Arctic Circle, is if you're looking for a place to start, is definitely the best season of the show.

There are probably four people that you just fall in love with and you just desperately want to win, and you just watch one of them win and the other three heartbroken. And it's a real emotional roller coaster. It's really fascinating. It is not what you think it is going into it, you know?

It's got a lot of heart and there's a lot of insight into it. You get to watch people go on some really fascinating journeys of self-discovery and really helps the people on the show. They figure it out in about three weeks, whether they make it three weeks or a hundred days, they figure out like what is important to them in their life and it gets crystallized.

Anybody that's having, a lot of people go on the show to find clarity, they find it almost immediately. It has gotta be a pretty powerful experience because you watch it transform lives, watch it transform people's way of thinking. And it's pretty, it's pretty fantastic. But I recommend that if you haven't seen it. For more fun based reality TV, I begrudgingly started watching this show on USA called The Anonymous. And the only reason I started watching it is because an old friend of Achievement Hunter

is one of the contestants, a guy named Marcel. He's a streamer now. Goes by basically I Do Work. Really nice guy. And I was like, oh, I wanna see him on TV. And so I started watching it. It has a pretty awesome cast. It's got one of the guys that, okay, well first off,

it's a reality competition show that features mostly famous reality adjacent competitors. One of the guys won Big Brother, one of the people is related to a Survivor winner, one of the guys is a guy from, is one of the guys that put on Fire Fest, and there's just a bunch of people that are like tangent, there are people that are like,

and this plays into the game, like ex-FBI interrogators, that kind of stuff. The game is, they put, I think it's probably like 16 or 20 people, I can never keep count, in this crazy house in the middle of this mountainside. Like it's absolutely gorgeous. Like imagine if Calabasas, there was only one house in Calabasas and the rest of it was just

the gorgeous hills, right and they They all live together and then there are these pods built into the ground and each person goes into their own individual pod Coolest set you've ever seen in your entire life. I looked it up. It's actually in Spain I think they filmed all of this in Spain in these two like kind of famous houses over there a square house and a circular house And they're just like um they're fucking amazing And I don't know how much of it is real and how much of it is set dressing like the little pods they go into in the ground might be three feet deep and then they they just have to like

You know kneel down on their knees until the shot clears And they pull them back out and just put them in a room at a fucking Weston I don't know, but it looks so the looks so the first thing you'll notice is the production value is so high, especially in twenty twenty four, when budgets for reality TV are being slashed. Right. It's fucking crazy how good the show looks. And they put all these people that have reality TV or celebrity experience in some way.

Or some sort of an interesting job that makes them uniquely good at this. And then they throw them all in their pods. In their pod, they let them pick an online moniker, right? Like a lipstick or a lion or a flamingo or a race car, right? Just a little pixelated race car. Then they just start talking shit on like a,

I don't know, like an internal version of Slack, like the game's internal version of Slack as those people, and try to figure out who the other people are, and like, that person kinda sounds like Craig to me. I bet Craig is Flamingo, right? And then they do these competitions together to try to win money, and there are invariably people that are better at the competitions, and people that are better at the competitions and people that are weaker at the

competitions so then They all go into their little pods and they vote one person to be eliminated Then they announce all the people that got voted to be eliminated say there's three one day and maybe the next day there's six And then all those people are potentially up for elimination And then all those people are potentially up for elimination Except for potentially the first person who wins or finishes whatever the challenge was earlier They typically get some sort of an immunity typically they're unable to be a nominated for elimination, right? And then everybody that's nominated for elimination everybody else they all sit down and they take a test and this test is kind of like the mole right the shows kind of like

Kind of like the mole meets right? The show's kind of like, kind of like The Mole meets Traders, meets Big Brother in a way. It's an interesting mish-mash. The Trust, if you watch that on Netflix, or the one, I can't remember the name of it, they did it in three different countries that I saw, France, Germany, and then the US, where they put all the people out,

they put them in a mansion, and then they make half of them go live in the woods, and then they fight to get in the mansion, and then the people, and then they make half of them go live in the woods, and then they fight to get in the mansion, and then the people in the mansion fight not to have to go live in the woods, and then one person wins money somehow at the end. Kind of feels like a cross between all those shows. Anyway, so they go into their little pod,

and then they take a test on who they think each person is. Like, oh, I'm pretty sure that the race car is Jenny, and Raheem is the Daisy, or whatever. And then whoever did the best on the test I'm pretty sure that the race car is Jenny and Raheem is the Daisy or whatever and Then whoever did the best on the test becomes the anonymous and that person picks from the people nominated for elimination to eliminate then

They all stand around outside and they find out who got eliminated the person that gets eliminated They're like Carol you have been eliminated by the anonymous and nobody knows who the anonymous is it's just the person you only know if you're not the anonymous, right and Then Carol goes up there and she goes well, it was a pleasure to play with you all I had a lot of fun Why watch out for race car? I think that that person's tricky. And by the way, you guys knew me online as Daisy. And or I guess that was Rahima. You guys knew me online as the envelope, you know,

and you're like, oh, fuck, she was the envelope. I could have sworn it was Billy, you know, or whatever. And then they just do it again each week. And it is, it took me three episodes before I was fucking hooked. But now that's something between the production value and just like the way they have. Pulled a lot of the best elements of a lot of different reality TV shows and cram them together. It's working for me. I really wasn't expecting to like it, and I really, it did not hook me in the first two,

but I'm telling you, by episode three, I was fully into it, and it's still going now. I think episode six just came out as of this recording, so it's not even over yet, if you wanna watch it and catch up. The other show I've been watching is, it's scripted, it is the Netflix show The Perfect Couple with Nicole Kidman and Liv Schreiber, and it is,

what was that Apple show? The After Party. It is, it's like the serious version of season two of The After Party. If you watch that show, the Apple comedy show, well, the hook about that show is that each each episode is told by a different member of the after party's point of view, right? That's not necessarily what happens in this show. But the point of the after party is that they are at a wedding season two of the after party, at least they

are at a wedding and someone dies at the wedding and then they have to figure out if it was nefarious And if so who killed clearly it was nefarious who killed the person at the wedding perfect couple same thing, but not funny. It's Exactly what you would expect if you like pretty little liars if you like if you like Nicole Kidman and anything in the last Like 10 years. I feel like this is the role that she has just slid so effortlessly into where she's like incredibly sophisticated, well put together, powerful, capable, like kind of like the fulcrum of her universe and then just trying to keep all of the pieces of her life together while events outside of her control

desperately try to spin them out. It's exactly that and it's good. I like Liv Schreiber, he's a fucking turd in this show in a fun way. He's very different. The last thing I saw him in was Ray Donovan. Very different than his Ray Donovan character. It's also got Eve Hewson in it,

who I was not familiar with, but looked familiar to me somehow. So Emily and I looked her up, and she is Bono's daughter. Who knew that Bono's daughter was an actor? And she is, she's pretty good in it too. As well as there's a bunch of people in it. I have no idea where it's gonna go.

Oh, Dakota Fanning, is it just me or is Dakota Fanning having a fucking moment between Ripley and this? She has been on fire with performances. She is so good in this. I don't wanna say anything about her character. I don't wanna spoil it, but she's easily my favorite character in the show.

Are not a lot of sympathetic characters in this show at all. One of those, kind of like White Lotus in that way. But she would be one of them, I would think. At least I respect and understand her character in the show. So I've been watching that, and I think I'm only three episodes into a six episode series.

Hopefully it's good, hopefully, or hopefully it continues to be good. It's been pretty fun so far. And the one thing that I'm definitely not watching, but I am subjected to every day of my life is my wife's current obsession, the West Wing. She made it all the way through Sopranos and next on the list was the West Wing, which is great,

but man, is it a lot of fucking West Wing. So I've never seen the show before until this I I've now seen a Lot of bits and pieces of a lot of West Wing seems seems like a good show I guess Probably need to give you guys a song of the episode because I feel like we have run But I feel like we I don't know if you can hear these barge or something I feel like we have run a little long. I tell you what easy one song of the episode is

Reasons by built to spill built spill one of my favorite bands of all time they definitely are right up there with like dinosaur jr. And pavement and I don't know all of those bands of that era that Modest Mouse that kind of pull off like alcoholic broken-hearted nerdy white guys from the late 90s. I don't know if it's their best song but it's the one that I think of first every time I think of Bill to Spill so Reasons by Bill to Spill. Great beginning to a song. Just starts awesome.

I love the lyrics, the way it begins. You arrive and I'm on fire. That's such a cool line. I would love to be cool enough to say that not being copying somebody in my life. You know what I mean? I'd love to be able to think of a line like that. You arrive and I'm on fire.

All right. This is the end of the show. What?