The Press Box - This Week in Ringer Culture, Including the Chappelle Specials (Jan. 2-5, 2018) (Ep. 412)

Episode Date: January 6, 2018

This Week in Ringer Culture features ‘Bachelor Party’ discussing their early favorites among this season’s 'Bachelor' contestants (00:46), ‘The Bill Simmons Podcast’ with Pete Holmes discussing his HBO show 'Crashing' (04:53), ‘Damage Control’ discussing the backlash following Dave Chappelle’s two new Netflix specials (09:44), and ‘The Watch’ discussing the Golden Globes (16:02). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

to this week in Ringier culture. I'm Liz Kelly, bringing you the highlights from the Ringer podcast network. This week on the site, we covered the Will Smith movie Bright, the new ABC show Grownish, and the do's and don'ts of the upcoming Golden Globes. You can check it all out on the ringer.com. All of our clips this week are TV related, but we are starting out with two pieces of exciting news. First, The Bachelor is officially back as of this Monday, and secondly, our very own Bachelor Party podcast is now on its own feed. I hope you all have your brackets prepared. My money is for sure on Lauren S. On the first episode back, Juliet Lippman and former Bachelor Ben Higgins discussed some early favorites among the women. What does you think about

his women? Like they seem like a pretty good bunch to me. Like there's a couple that I was like, okay, I want to know more about her. Want to know more about her. Like I already said, I was really into how Jacqueline said the word therapist, which is not a real word, however, seemed appropriate in the moment. And I also, as someone who doesn't like small talk and like, I just want to get into it. I was really into how she was just like immediately like started psycho analyzing him and like made him talk about his feelings. And that was like also seemed like real Ari, although he had a canned dancer. She was like, why do you think this will be different for you than last time? And he's like, well, I think I'm more of a man now and I was a boy back then. Like, okay, not a

girl, not yet a woman. Thanks, Ari. But I did I did like that she like kind of got right into it. And I also really like Tia, the woman that Raven recommended because she came with a small weaner dog because she's from Wiener, Arkansas. I'm Tia. Yeah. Hey. I'm actually from Weiner, Arkansas. Okay. I can detect the accent.

Yeah. I know you're going to have a lot of girls here tonight, and it's going to be hard to kind of keep track of everyone. All right. So I have a little gift. Where is this gift? It's right here. It's actually a little weiner.

That's hilarious. Yeah, please tell me you don't already have a little weiner. I do not have this. That was one of the best opening lines. I mean, it was really good. And I would see, I think I saw on his Twitter, like he did. just totally missed it. Like he didn't, at the time he was so nervous, he wasn't even listening.

I wish he would have responded. I think Ari's women are absolutely beautiful. I think they're, like you said, there's a lot of them that have very little legitimate jobs or careers or lives outside of this show. And so I think that's a really great dynamic. You've already seen some kind of like intense personalities come out and some personalities that I think will cause conflict. We got to talk about Chelsea.

On that note, we need to talk about Chelsea. And my number one thing about Chelsea is not only she. the early villain. She looks like Olivia. Doesn't she look like Olivia? I mean, just like Olivia. And it's, I mean, yeah, yeah. Let's talk about it because I have some thoughts. You've got thoughts and I want to hear them.

Because you, you know what they're going for with this girl because she's so much like Olivia. This is the thing. And I'll say it and I'll keep saying it, I am not under contract. Like what you saw in her is what she was doing during the show. I bet if you ask the women that were there on night one, a lot of them would say, yeah, we were confused by why she was saying the thing she was saying, why she was so aggressive. There's obviously that personality type that is just like, it is the Olivia personality type,

the ones that, you know, they're leaders, they're strong, powerful people. But when they see something, they're going to go and get it no matter what the cost and no matter what anybody else is thinking around them. Because I don't know if they actually take a second to stop and think about what anybody else is thinking about. Right, right. my confusion is this way every year. And I don't get how they do it because I've lived in this thing. And I see that it's not scripted is these women or these men who go on the show fall into the same storyline every time.

Like, how do you not know that you're the villain? Like, you're the girl that gets them first and you're the girl that goes and gets them twice in one night. Like, you know what that's going to look like. And you know what that is. I wish Ari had been like, girl, if you're. you're coming back a second time, you're going to be the villain. It's already, it's already been written, basically. Like, that is just the fast track to having people not like you. Exactly. And I don't, I don't understand how that continues to happen year over year, over year,

over year. Like, when it happened this time, I just, I shook my head. I said, well, then we have it. And we know what the story is going to be with Chelsea from here on now. Yeah. Also, she's a real estate executive assistant per her online bio. So I feel like they're going to get a lot of traction out of that as well. Like, oh, he's in real estate. She's in real estate. She's, you know, she's really pushing to be with him. It's just, it's a lot. We have more TV talk next on the Bill Simmons podcast,

where he spoke with comedian Pete Holmes about comics as lead actors and his HBO show crashing, which returns for his second season, January 14th. Check it out. There's how many comedy TV shows about a comedian have there been? Too many. Too many, but I would also, I would argue not enough, too. Yeah, no, I know.

Because you're like in the comedy world, is a totally different show than just like Seinfeld. He's a comedian, but he wasn't a comedian in that show. Right. It was a very loose thread, but it wasn't about a comedian. Yeah, I'm totally joking. I don't think there are too many. I think one of the reasons there are so many.

And crashing is different because it's on the ground. Yeah. It's not a flyover of stand-up comedy. It's like, here's what it would be like literally to walk up to a club and say like, hello, I'd like to do your open mic night. Like, that's a scene. And then like showering and getting. ready and being nervous and running the joke by your friend.

These are all scenes. Like, we're really going in real time. As in real time is tolerable and pleasant. But what were we saying? What was the... I was asking. Why there's so many shows about it. Yeah.

I think one of the things that's interesting is that, like, comedians will always be compelling leads of vehicles because they're funny. They have an excuse to be funny. You ever watch like ER and you're like, why are these doctors so funny? They're all hilarious. Yeah. All these quips.

Yeah. It's just like kind of a buy. It takes you out of it a little bit. Which, who cares? You're watching ER. But I'm just saying, comedians, I can be funny when my wife is leaving me because I'm a comedian. Not only is it okay. It actually serves the story.

It actually tells you why she's leaving me because I won't stop making jokes. And we like that. But also comedians, almost like in the sopranos where Tony is going to therapy. A stand-up is going up on stage. So you're seeing their inner. world presented. I think that's one of the reasons why, even though it's not the most relatable profession, people can project themselves onto it because a comedian just wants to be heard and respected and actually loved for their thoughts and for their feelings, which even if you're

an architect or chef or schoolteacher or a mother, you know, stay-at-home mom, you still have that desire and you can still project it onto a comedian. It's a pretty empty vessel to go, oh, there's a funny guy trying to come grow into his life. You know what I'm saying? And he's making jokes while he does it. Okay, even though I'm not a comedian, I can relate to this person and I'm not sure why. But I think that might be why. It's interesting that Jed came back to this after funny people, which was, seemed like that was his way of diving into this whole world. I know.

And now he's back. And he also is a comedy special on Netflix. Called The Return. Yeah. I sometimes, you know, you think about like, how I met my wife and like, what if I hadn't, you know, what if I hadn't gone to the club that night or whatever? I sometimes think, like, I pitched crashing to Judd on the set of train wreck.

And when Jed was on the set of train wreck, Amy Schumer was going to the cellar. And Amy Schumer was like, you should come with me to the seller. And the seller's the best. And Jud went up and he got the bug again. It's like the free sample. Yeah. Get a little bug in it. And the hook is in him again.

So here's Jed after like, I think it was like a 10 or more year hiatus from doing standup, started getting into it again. And then I come in, we knew each other just a little bit. He had done my podcast, a live episode. And I came in, I flew to New York just to pitch him the show about a guy starting in standup in New York while he was a guy starting stand up again in New York. So the fortuitous, fortuitiveness, fortuitousness, whatever. It was very fortuitous.

It was fortuitousness. Fortuitousness. Yeah. Fortuitousness. That's the name of my band. No one comes. Fortuitousness. Two, three, four.

Still water. Is that what they're called? Still water. Feverdog. We're big. We actually play fever dog at the end. All both bands together. It's really amazing.

And he shocks by the microphone and falls over and I go, I don't like this movie. Just like I can't believe how fortunate I was to, because that's what you hope. When you're talking to a big dog like Judd, you hope that what you're selling or trying to paint in his mind, he has some frame of reference for it. Yeah. And the fact that he did. And the fact that it was while Judd had, Judd's always doing like several movies he's producing, maybe when he's directing, and then a TV show. And there was like one slot open that I didn't even know to make another show. And that was his limit.

I really got in under the wire. next up dave chapelle dropped two netflix stand-up specials over the new year to divided reception this week on damage control justin charity and cam collins discussed the backlash that followed something that i never thought i would see in my lifetime which is a dave chappelle backlash cam you want to explain why we've arrived at a dave chappelle backlash what what the sort of discomfort with dave chappelle's newest material since last spring has been. My sense of other people's anger is that Dave Chappelle, over the course of these four specials, has very adamantly shown that he is not as attuned to the 21st century as he was to the 20th seems to be a disappointment grounded in the fact that he was once our best, smartest, most on it critic, particularly for black people, but also for, you know, for a lot of not black people, right? But like, particularly for black people, but particularly working in a black comic tradition, this is a guy who seemed to have a lot of the right answers about race

in particular. I don't think he's always had the right answers about things like gender and sexuality, but there seems to be a sense with which we would expect him to be better than he currently is at parsing these things, because what he is so good at is, like any great comedian, right, he's really good at taking our peace up positions about these things, turning them on their head, making them grotesque, and making us reevaluate how we feel about these things. It seems that he has not really done a lot of soul-searching about how he feels about, for example, trans people,

victims of sexual misconduct. He has loose. He k-humor now. It's very modern. It's very topical as his comedy always is. But I think people are disappointed that he is not really doing anything to turn these things on their heads. He's just reiterating what seemed to be. bad prejudices.

In a broad sense, that seems to be what I'm getting from people. Is that fair? That is fair. And in fact, so these latest specials are weird, right? They follow the original specials from last spring. Right.

Where he starts really going hard on jokes about transgender people. Right. Those jokes alienated a lot of people. Yes. So in these newest specials, especially in equanimity, which is the longer special,

I would say by far the better special of the latest batch. He refers back to those routines. And he does some bits that are about people not reacting well to his humor about transgender people. And he uses basically those bits as set up for new material about transgender people that is, it's not, I would say it's slightly smarter, but still horrendously. It's insensitive, insensitive is such a blah word. It's really incurious. And if I were to be brutally honest, the only reason I ever been mad at the transgender community

is because I was at a club in L.A. And dance with one of these niggas for six songs straight. And then the lights came up and I saw them knuckles. I said, oh, no! And everybody was laughing at me how world star. He seems very incurious about transgender people, even when he sort of, Chappelle pads up these jokes by saying, look, I don't mean to imply violence against people. If you come to my show and you think my jokes are a call for you to commit violence against transgender people, don't fucking come to my show again, right?

He tries to do that. That's his way of sort of explicitly meeting those criticisms of his last material halfway. Right. It's not just weird because, oh, this is a comedian on stage making hackish jokes about transgender. people. It really is the particular thing that Dave Chappelle is otherwise this guy that you look at and think he is basically a cultural critic by way of stand-up comedy. He is sharp. And so it's weird to watch such a sharp guy be so dumb. It is, I think it's a fair pushback. You know, as much as I, you know, as much as I'm Mr. You know, why do you think artists are going to be morally correct in

the first place? There is an extent to which for a great extent to which for Chappelle, it's like, it's not that he's wrong about these things. It's that he's not really being the comic that we know that he is about these things, that he's not being smart about taking these things and doing the critique that he does, right? It's like he's so smart about something like race for the most part. But these are issues, and he knows this because this is why he's still telling jokes about them. Like Caitlin Jenner, it's like, this is a chance for you to do the Chappelle thing,

which is where you take this. and make all of us reevaluate it, right? Make all of us think about the language that we use, about the violence that we do or don't imply. Like, he has a quote in the bird revelation, one of the specials where he says to other comics in the audience, you have a responsibility to speak recklessly. Otherwise, my kids might know what reckless talk sounds like,

which is just from him a cop out, right? Like, it is nothing but that. Even as I'm, even as I, there's a part of me that, sees the value in what he's describing. That is not a defense against him being so grotesque in this case, I don't think. When we say that Dave Chappelle is smart about race, what I would mean by that is that he has such a, you know, he can make light of some really morbid stuff in the history of American race

relations. But he clearly has this very real and rehearsed and studied sense of pain. Yes. And dispossession and alienation. And you get that in his comedy about race. It's personal. And so it's not just that. It's not just smart versus not smart.

It's empathetic versus sociopathic. His sense of transgender people. And a lot of his humor about gender, I'd say, over the years, not just the specials. That seems to come more so from a place of supreme distance. The Golden Globes are on Sunday. So this week on the watch, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald share their preview of the award show. It's interesting. I think the globes are.

less effective predictors of the state of the Oscar race than the... I think the globes have more influence on the TV races and the TV prominence, actually, than they do in terms of the movies, because, as we always have to say when we discuss the Golden Globes, they are voted on by a shadowy cabal of international figures who have zero to no credibility whatsoever and can clearly be bought off by bribery or flattery or both. I'm glad that you've remembered that that's your line. That should just always be an aster. Here's the six years of you saying that.

It should just be an asterisk. I shouldn't have to say it, but look, here I am. That said, it can play a part in momentum in the other races in terms of, like, the actors, in the performance races. But I do think the guilds and the critics awards are more generally, are there a better predictor of the Oscar race. But I think that what you're speaking to, look, I mean, the movie races, the Oscar races in general for the last decade have been divided between the big movies that feel like Oscar movies and the other small. movies that might be quote unquote better. What's interesting this year, and I think we're not going to see it reflected in the Golden Globes because, as you said, they're separated by category, is this creeping sense

of conservative backlash among some voters. It's being covered on Hollywood blogs, and Mark Harris is talking about this a lot on Twitter, where it's not just that people are saying Get Out isn't among the best movies of the year, but they are saying, no, we did this last year. that we were politically correct last year and that we as if giving Best Picture to Moonlight with some act of charity. Yeah, I saw something that was, I think, on Hollywood elsewhere. There was like an interviewer, the producer who was just like, I don't put get out in the

same category as like 12 years of slave as if any movie starring or made by black people has to somehow be in this, where you wouldn't say that about, you know, the post and. It's troubling. And it also speaks to the kind of insidious, not capital, R racism or, or, um, capital M misogyny or whatever you want to talk about it, that exists in otherwise left-wing Hollywood. I mean, to me, the experience of seeing Dunkirk and what it did to me emotionally and visually

is comparable to what Get Out did to me emotionally and just how I felt while watching that movie. They were both masterpieces of sensation, right? Get Out deserves to be there. The thing to remember then at the end of this conversation, is Golden Globes are crazy, man. Like, because someone who feels like me, who may be a quote-unquote journalist from Belarus and voted,

maybe that vote for Get Out pushes it over the top. Don't be surprised if you get to the end of the Sunday night and Shape of Water wins a bunch of awards. Low-key, Shape of Water got the most nominations. So, like, I just miss me with Del Toro stuff, but, like, you know. Did you see that movie? I just don't like Beasts, man. That also goes on your no list?

No cartoons. No. no like I'm fascinated by this beast that's not like my vibe you know what I mean like who cares who cares it's what you're saying is that's not relevant to your concerns yeah like you're not worried if she's falling in love with a fish monster because like or if the fish monster is like the key to the cold war or whatever we got going on here what if the fish monster's got a soul I'm sure it does I mean spoiler I guess it does I haven't

watched it yet but so all right so before we get going no I will because I want to get to black mirror I just want to ask you just real quick but a prediction for best drama because it's crown thrones stranger things handmades this is us yeah i just want to say obviously i'm more interested in the in the tv side yeah um and in general like seth meyers is hosting this is going to be an interesting night it's going to be a fun night the golden globes are much more fun to watch generally than the emmys or the oscars the golden globes love love making news they love making stars and that generally happens with the tv nominations where what they love to do is get in front Your man Freddie Highmore about to have his moment.

Impossible. Yeah. Because they nominate shows after four months of being on the air. They give such a jump on the Emmys. So, you know, generally you can pick the winner of these categories by what's new. Okay, that's it for this week. You can find the full-length versions of all of these podcasts and subscribe at the ringer.com slash podcasts.