The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Kirby Jenner’ Is the Best Thing on Quibi

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Is Quibi actually good? Kate Halliwell is joined by Danny Heifetz to explain why he loves the streaming service and tell you about his favorite Quibi shows, including ‘Reno 911!’ and ‘Kirby Jenner.’ Hosts: Kate Halliwell and Danny Heifetz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

and welcome to TV concierge, a daily podcast where ringer staffers help you navigate the crowded TV landscape. I am Danny Heifitz, and today I am joined, honored to be joined by Kate Halliwell to discuss Quibi, which is a platform for people who want to watch an entire episode of television while they take a poop. Usually on TV concierge, we discuss television episodes or seasons or shows, but today we are talking about a whole platform and whether it is worth. your time. But first, Kate, how are you doing today? Danny, I'm great, but I can't believe I'm talking about Quibi again. I have to tell you. We did it on T-Time. They've done another watch. I keep thinking that my Quibi watch is over and then you came into my life and brought it back. And I resent you for that. But I'm along for the ride.

Someone has to be talking about Quibi because nobody else knows it exists. At any point and any time in the world, there is one person talking about Quibi. And today, it's you and I. I have to say, we kind of have a world of skeptics right now. Quibi has kind of become the laughing stock of the internet, but I'm told that you're here to make the case for why Quibi is actually good. So why don't you give me your one sentence pitch on Quibi? It's free. It's free for 90 days.

It's free for 90 days. And then you can cancel your subscription. But they give you three months for free. That's my pitch. Like just try it. Okay. Try it. Okay.

Honestly, that makes sense. All right. So let's talk. Talk about what Quibi is for, you know, the three people online who have not heard about it. First of all, if you haven't heard about it, God bless you. Quibi is just, it's bite-sized television. They actually named it Quibi for quick bites, which is really dumb. But it's just really short television.

It's kind of like the studio, Hollywood Studios, Disney executives answer to our broken attention spans, which mine is now feeble. And so basically what they've done is they've, you know, like a sitcom, you'll watch. There's like an A block and then a commercial and then B block and then C block. Basically, they just decided to make three episodes of television, but they make an episode just the first break. So instead of a commercial break, that's the end of the episode. And then so there's sitcoms that are like that. And then there's reality shows, documentaries. Everything's less than 10 minutes.

Most of them are like six or seven minutes. There's like eight to 10 or 12 installments. And it's great. You sit there, your channel scroll. And it's just, it goes really fast. It's enjoyable. It's kind of like a really highly produced YouTube playlist. Right.

So why is it different than YouTube? It sounds like YouTube that you have to pay for. The biggest criticism of it is it's not different enough. That's definitely the biggest criticism. But I think the answer of what they were going for was YouTube has just, I mean, it's the biggest video streaming platform in the world. And it's mostly been outsourced to amateurs for 15 years. I mean, obviously it became professionalized over that time period.

But they're like, what if we just throw a shitload of money into it, production value stars? And they did. And that's kind of the cool part is you've got pretty. high quality videos, but also it's the amount of people on Quibi is unbelievable. It really is. So just to give you an idea here. LeBron James, Chance the rapper, Chrissy Teigen, Liam Hemsworth, Christoph Waltz, Bill Murray, Jennifer Lopez, Idris Elba, Will Forte, just to give you a taste.

Right. That's like a small percentage. I mean, they have A-lister's just out the ass on Quibi. It's wild. So that's the biggest difference I would just draw with YouTube is it's a lot of these celebrities and for recurring amounts of time. But honestly, the thing that I love is. about it is it's kind of like channel surfing again. That's the part of it that's so wild that it's

so different than watching the rest of TV because it has just scrolling through it, I was just blown away by the amount of shows they have, like just how much content is on there. Again, Chrissy's court, which is like Chrissy Teigen, but she's Judge Judy and the tagline is the cases are binding no matter how unqualified the judges. There's Reese Witherspoon narrating a cheetah documentary about two cheetahs who were abandoned by their mother. There's Anna Kendrick dating Dan Harmon's talking sex doll. I don't really get that one. I have some notes on that as well.

Okay. But there's so many shows, so I guess I can't say this enough. It's free if you just cancel after three months. And there's all this stuff out there. It's wonderful. What are some of the specific shows that you've watched and enjoyed? Okay. So I have tried a lot of them.

Ones that I'm going to shout out. Okay. There's a mentalist goes inside the mind of Rob Grunkowski. there is flipped, which is Will Forte and Caitlin Olson, who's Dee from It's Loeis Sunny, are like these HGTV house flipping hosts.

Is it a reality or is it? No, it's a sick. It's like a comedy. So these HGTV hosts get kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel and they have to design tunnels under the U.S. border. Okay, that's a pretty fine concept.

Actually, I'll admit it. There's blackball. There's a whole thing on the Donald Sterling saga with the LA Clippers where the owner made racist comments and then had to sell the team. But they have interviews with Doc Rivers, who was the coach at the time. Chris Paul, like the players who haven't really talked that in depth about it since. They're all in this documentary, which is amazing. There is punked with Chance the rapper. The first episode, he makes Megan the Stallion think her dog is gone. It's unbelievable. A gorilla. You didn't mention the

man in the gorilla's too. I've seen this one. This one was at the screening that I went to. Liam Hemsworth is like a guy with terminal cancer who's just he agrees to be hunted by billionaires in Detroit and Christoph Waltz is managing him so you just have Liam Hemsworth running, dodging random murders. Again, so the point of Quibi is that all these things out there and nobody knows about them except for me.

I'm the only person in the world. I'm watching this Liam Hemsworth, Christoph Waltz movie and I'm like, has anyone else seeing this? Nobody knows it exists, describing it to people. They're like, what the hell are you talking about? And all I want to say is,

haven't you seen bar architecture? where they build homes, but for dog houses and people's backyards? No, it's unbelievable in this TV environment where everyone's like forcing TV down your throat and telling you

you have to watch this, you have to watch this, to discover completely new stuff that nobody's ever seen before and then move on. And it doesn't matter. You don't have to finish it. You don't have to do any.

It's freedom. I feel free. I'm so happy that you feel free. My question is, isn't the problem. I think a lot of people have pointed to this as being the reason that no one has heard about Liam Hemsworth being hunted by Krutts off Waltz,

because one, you have to watch it on a phone, there's no screenshoting, there's no screen capture, there's no way to share Quibi memes or gifts or videos or share any of this content online without, I guess, taking another phone and filming your phone illegally. Yes, that's true. I am not here to defend Quibi's business practices. They funded $2 billion for paywold YouTube. I'm not here to defend that. What I'm saying is there has been $2 billion put into a bunch of content you can access for free for three months. And like, why the hell not? It's like, was movie pass a good business?

I don't know. I'm not a scientist. But that's not my job. It's the Robin Hooding of they took $2 billion from these studios and they spent it. So like, watch Chrissy Teigen. Her mom is the bailiff. It's great. You know what I mean?

Like, hello, bulletproof and boogie with offset where they shoot guns at cars. Like, what do you want? My question is, these are, this is like A-list talent. These are great people that we love. We got Sophie Turner. She's this show called Survive. Idrisalba has like a stunt driving show. There's all this talent.

That one's dumb. And I feel like they wasted their time. All right. They didn't waste their time. So there's two ones that are exceptional. And if you do download quibb... And again, all you have to do, do the three-month trial.

If you download... I highly recommend two in particular. They've rebooted Reno 911-1-1, which is this very fast-paced series of bits, which is perfect for this kind of format. The other one, that I cannot recommend highly enough and is by far the best one on the platform

is Kirby Jenner. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. About keeping up with the Kardashians as if Kendall Jenner had a twin brother. But it's a parody of keeping up the Kardashians. But all of the Kardashians are in the show. All of them. So like the first episode is Kirby,

this guy, Kirby Jenner being like, I didn't want to do a reality show. And then my mom said, yes. And it just goes and Chris Jenner's and it came up came is in it. And it's mind blowing. They're all making fun of them. It's the perfect show. But here's my point. I'm watching this. I'm six episodes in. No one knows this exists. I'm alone. I feel like I'm the only one who heard the tree fall. It's like the Kardashians fall in a forest. And I have no one to talk to about it. So please download Quibby and talk to me about Kirby

Jeter because I'm alone. I'm really sad for you, Danny. And I think you're right. I think there are a lot of issues with Jeffrey Katzenberg's whole handling of this. He had an interview where he like blamed the failure of it on the pandemic, was like people would be watching TV on their phones if they were still commuting. Whether or not you believe that is true. I personally don't. I think it's, I think you're right. There are some gems on Quibi. And it's kind of like, why not? It's three months. It's free. You're right. Look, maybe this is the worst business decision of the whole year. I don't know. But it's kind of like the Titanic wreckage. If you could just stroll through it. I'm not here to comment on the

architecture. I don't know how or why this was built. I'm just saying if you stop in and look at the views, it's beautiful in here. It's great. You don't even have to put down a credit card if you don't want. Quibi is the Titanic and it's great for the first month and it all goes down now.

And watch it before it's synced and completely unreachable. Okay, I think that's a pretty good place to end. I mean, I don't think that the Titanic is necessarily a good place to end, but I think that's apt metaphor for our situation. I'm honestly a little bit convinced as a quibi skeptic.

So thank you for opening my eyes. Absolutely. Please enjoy the bliss of pure discovery. All right, guys, thanks for listening to TV concierge. That was Danny Hyvitz. I'm Kay Owlo. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart?

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