The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Sweet Magnolias'

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

'Sweet Magnolias,' the current no. 1 show on Netflix, seems to be crafted from a mix of the WB, Lifetime, and the streaming service's algorithm to create a perfectly pleasant and bingeable show. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Juliet Litman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to TV concierge. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm joined by Juliette Lidman. We are here to help you navigate the crowded TV landscape. And today we are talking about America's sweetheart. The number one show on Netflix. Sweet Magnolias, brought to you by Juliette Lidman Productions. J.L. Tell me why people should be watching Sweet Magnolias. For starters, it's the number one show on Netflix. So if you want to feel relevant with, I'm going to guess the women in your life, then you should be watching Sweet Magnolias. Additionally, it's kind of like if Netflix took the DNA of the WB in the year 2003, crossed it with the motor behind the Hallmark Christmas movie industry, and applied three completely separate wardrobes to their three stars, and we're like, boom, we got a show. And that's sweet magnolias. it's so strange and odd.

And I wouldn't say good, but I also, like, I'm excited to watch the whole show. I'm watching with my mother, and we've landed on a cadence so that, like, we'll watch some together, some apart, but, like, not tear through it in one day.

That's good. So it's like a book club. Which is, I think, is a really good way of interpreting it because it has a lot, it's clearly catered towards women, and I would say most book clubs are with women. I feel like this show taught me a lot.

Oh, wow. What'd you learn? Number one, if I want to sell a television show in this town in 2020, I just have to name a character, Maddie. 100%. All you need is a Maddie and you're good to go in. I'm going to be like, so it's a heist movie and they're going to be like,

oh, we've got a lot of those. I was like, the main character's name is Maddie. But her name is Maddie. She's a divorcee and she loves a glass of wine in the afternoon. This show is, you hit on it. It's that Hallmark Channel Lifetime thing. And I think that I'm starting to really come to terms with what Netflix is becoming. Netflix is tons of things and Netflix is a tech company as much as its content company.

And it's obviously the main storefront for stand-up comedy right now. And it's got all this other programming docs. They make originals. They make action movies. They make blockbusters. They make prestige television. But Netflix's bread and butter right now is recreating the experience of channel flipping on cable 10 years ago and stripping out all the bad parts.

Oh, wow. Fascinating. That's really interesting. Because this did remind me of sort of like, basic cable with the Netflix shine. And there's so many pieces of other shows that I personally have watched. It also very much reminded me of a show from late in 2019 called Virgin River, which similar to this show is based on a book.

And I think it had like a built in female audience that was expecting it. And it also laid the foundation of kind of like a world you can build on. Like the foundation of Sweet Magnolia is we haven't explained it. But if you haven't watched yet, and like I'm honestly shocked that's number one on Netflix. But like I shouldn't be. but the show is about three friends who are from Serenity, South Carolina, who are all in sort of like different life phases. And it's about like their friendship lifting them up and getting them through hard things.

So there's Maddie played by Joanna Garcia, who is the divorcee with a full on made well wardrobe. And then she has two best friends, one of whom is like a restaurateur and is like being stalked by an employee. She just fired. And another one is a lawyer who is like deciding who gets. to have custody of like some kids in the town. Her birth as a lawyer is very wide.

And it has like the small town vibe of Everwood. It has the kind of like, we're a bunch of friends helping each other out of the popular show on NBC, a million little things. And then it has like the weird Hallmark channel like zombie vibe. And I don't even know how else to put it. But it's such a, it's so generic,

but also incredibly specific at the same time. It's just, it's like a mutant born out of Netflix. And there's 10 episodes, and it's just so weird. People want to watch procedurals. People want to watch reality TV. People want to watch shows like this. I think that, like, ultimately, especially when I think we've all been on the ground down a little bit,

there's something kind of like narcotic about watching a show like this. Same thing with Outer Banks, which I actually liked quite a bit. You know what you mean? But Outer Banks is essentially like an incredible game of TV magnet poetry where you're just like Goonies, O.C., a little bit of this, a little bit of this, a little bit. bit of that and it's like bang that's a show. Yeah. It's like Outer Banks is like generic teen soap with hot people

and the sepia filter from Instagram. And treasure hunting. And treasure hunting. Right. And sweet magnolias is like generic soapy show for a mom anywhere in America. It's like for the undecided voter essentially. It's sort of like whoever hasn't decided who they're voting for for president is also probably watching this show.

plus me. Like, and that's the thing. Like, at its core, there's such wide universality to it. Juliet Littman, swing voter. The things that we just need to discuss this show. One of them is Chris Klein is also in it. And what is Chris Klein playing?

Like, who is he playing? What is he doing on this show? I haven't seen him in a while, uh, in any kind of public way. So it was a little bit of a shock to the system to see him basically returning to, the screen as like young Harry Dean Stanton.

Like he is full on now gotten to like middle age character actor now, which is he needed to take basically like a decade and a half out of the public eye to go from I'm in the Chris Wars. He was the original Chris of the Chris Wars in some ways to I'm now like middle age divorced dad who is essentially the heavy of the show for now. Let's just table his character for a second. But Chris Klein went from like lovable jock in American. pie.

Yes. To one half of potential America's sweetheart couple when he was Danny Katie Holmes. Yep. He was dumped for the Church of Scientology and Tom Cruise. Then he had to like disappear for a while. I don't know what he was doing. And now he's back playing like a weirdly inscrutable and kind of mean doctor father who's cheated on Joanna Garcia made well model in sweet magnolias.

and as if the entire Chris Klein experience in the show weren't enough, his new TV pregnant baby mama is played by Jamie Lynn Spears. It's a fucking time warp to 1999 with Chris Klein and Jamie Lynn Spears. It's like taking a collage that you made out of Us Weekly 20 years ago and just putting it in a television show now. It's so weird. And yet, like, I'm definitely, you know, I'm in the swing rotor demo for this show. but like Chris, you are not.

I'm not. The reason I checked it out was because I was so curious about what this service is doing right now because I think that Outer Banks was a very eye-opening experience to me. I think it was one of the more enjoyable TV experiences

that I've had this year, although it would come probably, it would be very hard for it to make it into my top 10 of shows this year. But I've definitely like actively looked forward to the point in the evening where I'm going to turn on an episode of Outer Banks.

and that is something that is wild to me because I think that is what network television used to be and that's what basic cable used to be was the person who was kind of going about their day and was like, oh, you know what's on tonight? That show. And I don't understand why something like Sweet Magnolias is like, why isn't that on other shows,

like on other networks now? Like why has ABC turned its back on this as like a possibility? It's a great question. I think that part of it has. to do with the binge, right? Like, if you had to go week to week on this show, would you sit with it? I'm not sure.

That's a good question. That's a good question. Because I was in a million little things watcher for season one. And I think it's because they basically caught up with it. I only had to go wait to week on a few. I couldn't get through season two. And, like, again, I'm the demo. I love a network drama.

I love, like, friend groups. Like, I love all of this shit. But for mediocre to bad shows that are just completely plot-driven, very little nuance, performances are fine. If you have to wait week to week and you're given so many other options, like, I don't think you do it. But if you can sit down and watch all of it, then I think you're like, yeah, sure. And obviously, you know, the Netflix ratings, rankings, whatever they are, are just

like, we have to take their word for it. They slap a number up on it. And you're like, okay, cool. Me and millions of other people are watching this. And so who's to say? But they obviously have an interest in pushing it because they do think people are watching the show, whether it's number one. or not, and whether that's total minutes consumed or a number of starts, like, who knows.

Yeah. But there is, like, an interest in promoting this kind of show. And that's, like, pretty meaningful. It's a summary show that came out over the first summary weekend, you know, on the calendar year. Like, obviously for people live in California, that's not the case. But, like, it's this official start of summer as Memorial Day weekend. I think it made sense that this popped because you got a lot of people kind of trapped

at home, maybe just looking for something to grind through. and watch. So yeah, I mean, it's the show that meets the moment, I guess. I'm not, definitely not saying like, we're going to be talking about this in four-year consideration conversations. No, we're not. But I am marveling at it. You know what we should do? We should make a point to check in on these rankings because I think that right now, when we do this pod, we're getting a little like, oh, that's interesting. This made number two or this is number one on Netflix's rankings. I'll be curious to see if it's there at this time next week. Interesting, because the Outer Banks has really hung around. Like that, that one. And Tiger King and

Ozark all stuck around. But when Space Force comes on Friday, is anybody watching Sweet Magnolias next week? Right. Right. And I will say my mom and I are both saving it because we're both insomniacs. And so it's really easy for us to tear through shows

because you've got a lot more hours to watch television if you're like trying to just pass time from like 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. So that's why we're both holding it, holding back. But I think probably most people who watch the show have finished it already. Because it's also like,

it ends on like a quasi-cliff. It's just, it's so funny. Also, I will say, like, the male heartthrob on this show. He's from Grey's Anatomy, which again is like right in my sweet spot. He played, he had a really big scene to I would walk 10,000 miles as like a proposal. He did like a flash mob proposal to that song in like three, three years ago. So it's just sort of like, for me, it's like I'll just mainline this shit. Like I love, I love a soapy show like this. I just was shocked by also the writing. I just need to say, I think the writing is below average. But for all the other elements that we mentioned, it kind of doesn't matter if you can just tear right through it. Yeah, I mean,

everybody speaks in clipped monologues about the state of their lives constantly. Yeah. And also, like somebody's ordering a coffee and like, they'll just be like, how is it that I can bring families together but not raise a family of my own? And you're just like, you're just getting a coffee. Like, what are you doing? One last note about this. This is definitely the most overtly religious show I've seen in a really long time. Yeah. A lot of references to God and a lot of scenes in church, which I thought was interesting. That clearly is from the, book because that's not really part of like the Netflix playbook, but I wonder if it will work in its favor. It's a different kind of programming than I'm familiar with and I watch a lot of

fucking television. I think that they are apolitical when it comes to that stuff. I think that ultimately like Netflix is like we're the, we're the TV guide, we're the TV guide and the network, but we're not really like shaping an identity for a viewer because their viewer is anybody who could possibly log in Netflix. It is. They're not looking for a specific demographic of person. So you can literally find a Brazilian crime show and a Brazilian soap opera on Netflix. So it's like, if you're looking for stuff, you're going to find it. Right. Netflix is a wonder. What a mystery box. Sweet Magnolias, the number one show on Netflix, the number one show in Juliet's heart. Until next time, I am Chris Ryan for Juliet Libman. This is TV Concierge. We'll talk to you

tomorrow.