The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - American Teen Dramas - From Sunnydale to Riverdale

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel have emerged from Discworld and are now exploring the worlds of speculative fiction. This week, Joanna has a new book out! Francine interviews her about it!American! Teen! Dramas!Buy it here: Shop — Joanna Hagan (for signed copies)Pen and Sword Books: American Teen Dramas - Hardback American Teen Dramas - Bookshop.orgFind us on the internet:BlueSky: @makeyefretpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretDiscord: https://discord.gg/29wMyuDHGP Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on BlueSky @2hatsjo and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:the gilmore girls at spirit halloween - TikTokThe Shooting AKA Dear Sister - YouTubeBuffering the Vampire SlayerPodcasts | Joanna Robinson Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I accused a spoon of being homophobic earlier because it fell on the floor. That's all right, no, as long as we're keeping the old ways alive. Hello and welcome to The True Shall Make You Fred, a podcast in which we were reading and recapping every book from Terry Pranchist's Discworld series, and now we're usually wandering down the corridors of speculative fiction, but we're doing something else today. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carol. What are we talking about today, Francine?

Well, today, Joanna, we are talking about a book written by a lovely young person. whom I would like to introduce you all to called Joanna Hagan. Hello, everybody. I'm a very skilled interview, but luckily, I'm lying and I'm not lying now when I say that you're a very skilled author, and you've done another one.

I've got a second book. My difficult second album is out now, American teen dramas, from Sunnydale to Riverdale. I really wish I made the title shorter because I have to remember to breathe before I say it. Ah, yes. And listeners, you can come on the journey with us, but I'm afraid it does have spoilers.

Are we going to try and avoid spoiling the shows that you spoil comprehensively during your book during this episode? I'll try and avoid major spoilers. I'm not going to avoid all spoilers because then I can't really talk about anything ever. No. Okay. Well, if you regret saying something afterwards, you can always tell me. Yes, we can just be really long.

And I will not bleep it depending on my mood. It's fine. But yeah, we're going to talk about my new book today. I'm excited. Is it out? It is out now. It is available on all, well, on the places you can buy books. It's in bookshops. I'm reliably informed. It's on my

publisher's website, pen and sword.com.com. It's on the bad online book buying place. It's on my website, Joannahagen.com.com. Where you can get signed copies. And I've got one. I'm not sure when we're releasing this episode, but from December 1st, it's going to be on sale. It's a book that I have written that I'm quite excited about. All right. Well, um, what's about? It's about American teen dramas from Sunnydale to Riverdale. So each chapter focuses on a different show. It starts with Buffy and goes all the way to Riverdale and goes through lots of other places like Gilmore Girls,

the O.C., supernatural, glee, vampire diaries once upon a time. This is nearly a beat poem. Yeah, it kind of is. There's a lot of making of stuff, and there obviously it's making off for all of these shows, but it's also a history of the way we talk about television and the way that's changed in the history of fandom and how we share television together,

and it's really cool. A lot of the stuff we've been chatting about in very vague ways and now it's what's the nicer word than coagulated? Cohesive. It's all in one place.

It's in a place, it's in a book. It's very nice. So why teen dramas as a book topic? Because this is a little nicheer than the last book. Yes, because the first book was Friends and the Golden Age of the sitcom and the whole point was writing

about one of the most popular shows of all time. And all the surrounding, very popular, but general interest shows. This is definitely a more niche. It all starts with Buffy as so many things do in my life, as they must, as kind of our podcast did and me being a bit gay around the ears and all the other stuff. I was thinking about what to do after the friend's book because I did want to write another sitcom book, and that's what I'm working on at the moment.

But a lovely friend of the pod, Mark Burrows, suggested I try and write something else in between, so I'm not sort of in a russ of writing about one thing. And I started thinking about Buffy. It's one of my favourite shows of all time. But I was thinking about the things I love about Buffy, and I realise there's this whole collection of shows that are seen dramas that are kind of weird and niche and at the same time they have these huge passionate fandoms around them and they have these huge pop culture influences they take in pop culture and reference it and become pop culture themselves they influence music they influenced fashion and I thought that was really interesting and really cool and these are despite them being so influential

these are not shows that talked about in hallowed tones this isn't you know the sopranos these are considered kind of weird and put in a little corner in a box and so I wanted to open that box up and really talk about them in much more detail. Open Pandora's box, might we say? I'm pretty sure that happened in at least one of these shows. I'm trying to, I'm rewinding desperately in my head because definitely at least one. Probably one tree hill,

rather than thinking about it. So obviously Buffy, massive for you, quite massive for me even. Which, apart from Buffy, were the ones that you loved as a teenager. What did you come into this with an abiding of already? The O.C. was another big one because a bit like Buffy, it was one I used to, I started watching with

my mum and my sister and that's obviously because I was slightly too young to probably be watching some of it and there was definitely some of it that went over my head. Not by much. I mean, I was like 12 or 13. Yeah, yeah. But there were bits that were going over my head and it was very grown up and it was very fun and I didn't quite guess all of the jokes. I did obviously then on I used to rewatch. So that's a big one. Gilmore Girls is a huge one for me that I got into in my late teens. I was 18. And I used to, it was airing on like E4 or one of the local things at the time, just constantly every morning it was on at the same time and just working through and it would get to the end and go back to the beginning. So I think I started somewhere in the middle of like

the third season. But it was just on at the time I was getting ready every day and I got kind of religiously obsessed with it. And we did, I think, probably double our talking speed, thanks to Gilmore Girls. Yes, no, that definitely had a big effect on us. It was a very effective show again it was very impactful despite it never having a massive audience and do you still love them now you've had to rewatch like all these shows haven't you as part of the research for this book yeah did you enjoy them mostly i will say there's and i hope it's not obvious when you read the book there's probably one show i rewatch because it was in the process of rewatching all of these that i liked less and i think i've enjoyed that show less on every rewatch which is um glee oh yeah yeah it's hard now it's hard to watch it the same way. It definitely has a weird thing now because like multiple actors have passed away slash had quite big controversies about them.

It's quite cursed. And also because I realized when I was watching when I was working on this book and watching it, it's one of the only shows in this book that was on like quite a big popular network as I suppose to a small niche network. And so that changed a lot about how manufactured it all felt. Yeah. And I think it kind of fell down in comparison to these like less manufactured shows. Yeah, no, that's fair.

No, I think it didn't come across, I think, in the way you're hoping it wouldn't. I try to be fairly objective about it. But you can only be so objective when there are some clear, obvious truths, like that show went kind of, I mean, these shows all went off the rails. I didn't finish it. I never finished technically. That's okay. Yeah. I think that's definitely okay.

Were there any that you watched for the first time during the research process? Yeah, there were a couple of big ones. One Tree Hill, which didn't even get its own chapter. No, it didn't. I noticed that, the amount I heard about that. But I felt like I still needed to watch it and have a lot of content. I didn't watch all of it. I will say, I watched, I think, the first five seasons,

and then I started picking out, like, more obvious key episodes. It's nine seasons long. The one that was getting its own chapter, and I knew going into this, I had not seen it before and would need to watch all of it for the first time, was supernatural. As if you hadn't watched Supernatural, though. I'd watched, like, the first few episodes, and I just could never get into it. It wasn't really for me.

But you were clearly the... I'm such the target audience. The type cast of the Tumblr fandom. I was on Tumblr on the time, at the time, you know, when it was kind of at its peak in, like, I'd say like 2012. Tumbling, as it were. I was tumbling. And I just, I tried a couple of times and I can never get into it.

And then by the time I was sort of willing to give it another go and, oh, actually, it's gone on for quite a while now. That's a lot to catch up on. I'm not sure I can. And then eventually it just got away from me. So I watched it all for the first time for this book. It's 15 seasons long, Francie. It's the longest show in this book.

And there are. American seasons too. They aren't reasonable. Yeah, these are like 20, this is 20, it's over 300 episodes. Supernatural is the only show to straddle both like 2007 Rice of Strike and COVID. It went on for so long and I watched all of it in about a month. I got to, I was like eating sleeping. You were insane. It broke me a little bit. It was fun though, and I will say I came out of this book, working on this book, really, really liking the show. Oh, good. And binge watching and I do not recommend binge watching 15 seasons of an American show in 30 days. It does mess you up a little bit mentally, especially, it was all I was doing.

It sounds like a really fun thing. Like, oh, your job for a month is to just watch TV. But when you know you have to get through it and then do a lot more work, it's quite frustrating because it's a process that you can't speed up in any way, shape or form. Within the standout shows, I think you did a really good job of describing some of the standout episodes that either, like, triggered my memory or gave me enough that I could either choose to watch clips or not. What to you, like the standout episodes of Team TV, if any? So like Buffy is the obvious starting point. Yeah. So Buffy, I think there's three that are like infamous when it comes to Buffy,

which is Hush from season four, which is an episode that has almost zero dialogue. There's like five minutes at the beginning and a couple of minutes at the end. Apart from that, there's no dialogue. The body from season five, which is an episode that has only dietic. What is that? So diagetic sound is sound that sort of exists within the universe. So it can be music if it's playing from, say, a radio or some speakers or something, footsteps, dialogue, that sort of thing. Non-diagetic sound is like the score or voice over, that sort of thing. So this is episode with absolutely no score, no music. And it's also incredibly, like that's not the gimmick of the episode even. The episode is an incredible meditation on grief and how it affects you in those very first moments and makes me sob, obviously, like a child every time I watch it. And then, of the other big Buffy one, once more with feeling the musical episode from season six, because

it wasn't the first ever television musical episode. I think Ali McBeal actually might have that honour. But, or the first I can think of in sort of modern times, there's probably some old of interesting ones that had like individual musical numbers. Yeah, yeah. But it was the first

to kind of do it in this really massive, like we effectively made an entire Broadway show. Yeah. And also somehow made it work as part of the story of the show. It was more than just a gimmick. Do you remember watching that for the first time? Yes, very clearly. This was, so it's season six,

it's near the beginning, and this was at a time where I didn't always get to watch new Buffy episodes as soon as they came out, because I was still technically a little bit young for it, I'd say. So my mum and my sister were kind of pre-screened them and decide whether I could watch them or not, but we knew the musical episode was

coming, and there was no doubt that I was watching that on the night it aired, And we got microwave popcorn and we sat and like we were pointing out, although that's a reference to that and the background things. And yeah, it was a really an amazing experience. That's nice. And it's nice that you had a family full of media enjoyers. Yes, and nerds.

Very much nerds. I mean, my mom was a massive trekkie. Like, I was always going to go to the same direction. It's in your blood, Joanna. I had a Star Trek mother and a Star Wars father. I was only going one way. Oh, the real, the capulets and the... Capulets and the Monguis.

And one of the Buffy episode that doesn't get talked about as a big iconic one enough, but I think deserves to be as Restless, which is the season four finale. Okay. And it's because Buffy had this big, big bad structure. There was a sort of Monster of the Week episodes, but there was an overarching evil every season

that would be defeated in the final episode, and that happened in season one, season two, season three. And season four, they defeat the final evil in the penultimate episode. And Breastless, the finale, is just a bunch of weird extended dream sequences. Oh, wow. With then also a ton of foreshadowing stuffed in. Right.

Including like a very big thing that happens right at the beginning of season five. And it's just, it's great. It was a risk, it was a massive risk to do it to go, oh yeah, we're going to finish early and then just do a really weird episode for the season finale. Yeah, it's like a much cooler version of a clip show for the end of the season, right? Yeah. And then running through, I don't have an example for every show, but for a few of them.

Gilmore Girls' Season 6, Episode 22, which is the finale of that season, Partings, which lots and lots of plot stuff happens. But there's a running D plot in the episode that the main busker of Stars Hollow has been discovered and a way. So loads of other buskers appear. And it's great that they found room in this 45-minute episode

to stuff it with musical cameos. I mean, Sparks, Yola Tango, Sonic Youth, which led to one of my favourite footnotes in the book, which is if I had a quid for every time Sonic Youth appeared in a 2000s teen drama with the word girl and the title, I'd have two quid, which, you know, not much, weird, it happened twice. Can I nominate a Gilmore Girls one? Yes. Do you jump, I jump, Jack? Is that what it's called? Oh, it's an excellent episode. Yeah, that's season four, and this is Rory is investigating a secret society at her school, and at least we're going to this very surreal episode, which is taken to this rich kid camp out and eventually jumps off the top of a very high school.

scaffolding in a formal gown. I feel like that's the one we used to watch a lot together. Yeah, we did. Definitely. It's an excellent episode. I also want an honorable mention for Gilmore Girls at the opening episode of season five, say goodbye to Daisy Miller. Not really an iconic episode, but it has my favourite Emily Gilmore moment of all time,

which involves her getting into a fight with her husband declaring she's going to go off to Europe and drink two glasses of wine with lunch. And when her husband says, only prostitutes drink two glasses of wine with lunch, she replies, then, buy me a boa and drive me to Reno, I am open for business. And then I feel more of the icon that you are. Really, the, you've trifled with me, I'm off to the pyramid, goodbye of our age. Exactly.

Exactly. And then, yeah, a few other ones. The O.C. Season 1, episode 7, The Escape, which is, if you've seen the O.C, you might know as the Tijuana episode. What's great about this is Fox tried this new thing with launching the O.C. Because normally new shows start in September. they launched the OCE with like a mini-season in August that was seven episodes long

and then it went on a month-long hiatus and came back. So that seventh episode had to end in a massive cliffhanger and it does. It ends with a character overdosing in Tijuana and this very iconic shot of her being carried in her future love interest arms down a dirty back alley. And it doesn't sound great on the surface, but the idea of seven episodes into a brand new show having to effectively create a full-blown season finale that involved going and shooting on location in Mexico. Oh, wow.

And then still having to do a whole season of television in a show that was also had a brand new showrunner who had not ever had a job like this in TV before. So just for that alone, it's a fantastic episode. I'm trying to think of the other iconic, a supernatural has, so the great thing about supernatural is because it ran for 15 seasons, they got to do so much stupid, not stupid. They got to break form a lot. And I think the form breaking episodes are the really iconic ones. So there's so many

There's an episode where they get stuck in kind of a TV world and have to hop between genres And so they're in a medical drama and a sitcom There's one where they accidentally go into another dimension Where they are their actor selves Except they're their big selves But in the dimension they're their actor selves And they literally break through a fourth wall

They did a whole episode from the point of view of the car Like the iconic car baby The 67 Chevy Impala They shot a whole episode from the car's point view. But possibly my favourite has got to be fan fiction, which is the 200th episode, season 10, episode 5. And so as a way to do a lot of these meta jokes in the show, there is a book series within the show that is about the brothers. And it's a whole plot point of it coming from this guy is actually a prophet. It turns out it's actually God. It's a whole thing. Yeah.

But these books become really popular. So people don't necessarily know the brothers are the characters in the books but they are and the book series has a lot of very passionate fans and they used this to kind of winkingly take the piss out of their own fandom and it was all very in good fun and fan fiction was kind of a musical episode it's the brothers investigating disappearances at a school that's putting on a musical but the musical is written by the people at the school and based on the books and therefore based on this show about us by yes it's very is this show about us and it was it was really nice because it was massively taking the piss out of fans but also a massive love letter to them and to like the popular ships in

the show and there's lots of nods to that and stupid little acronyms that were popular on Tumblr and it was a nice way of the writers really being in conversation with the fans of the show. That's nice. I mean speaking off that, right from the beginning of the book, right from the beginning of the genre I suppose, with my so-called life and Buffy, we kind of see the really early stages of internet fandom culture. Massively, yeah. Does it, well, first of all, did you enjoy having a look through that? Did you do your own little archaeological?

Oh, it was so funny. God bless the Internet Archive, really, for helping me get onto the old forums. And places like I talked about in the book in the Buffy chapter, The Kitten Board, which was a specific Buffy forum that was very popular with the queer fandom and lots of, you know, Willow and Terror fans on that one, obviously. it's amazing to look at because it's really different from how we talk about television now and it is this really early form of fans finding each other. I was kind of at the end stage of forums as it started to all get a little bit more centralized,

I don't know, I don't know, Matt. I just think we were in maybe the second phase, like, GOCTs and that was still very much thing when we were. Yeah, that's true. I was on, I was, by more centralised, I mean, like, it was hosted on places like LiveJournal. I was definitely online, yeah, yeah, definitely. Not the, as independent as some of the websites were. but they were still very independent forums within that so I was a bit part of this fandom and not as intensely as some people were

and it was really fun to dive back to and see the way the conversations happen because a lot's changed but also a lot hasn't people have found different places to argue about things and maybe different delivery systems for their opinions like now it might be I also know that I'm not a teenager anymore so I don't know how teenagers are talking about television it's difficult yeah because I'm not one I don't like thinking about that but I haven't been the teenager for quite some time, Francine.

It's been a while. Do any of the, like, threads and that that you read stand out as like a... I mean, there's one solid thread that runs through almost everything, and that's just shipping wars. Ah, yes. It's just who should be together. Not, as I had to clarify at the beginning of our podcast, anything to do with international trade. No, nothing maritime about these shipping wars. Dreadful.

With the kitten boards, because I think there was already... a bit of a focus towards a very specific ship there. On a more serious note, it was very interesting to see the discussion. This is a spoiler, but there is a major queer character death in Buffy, and this is something, the writers were active on these boards. Joss Whedon was active on these boards. And this was something that was like being talked about before it happened in a kind of, please don't do this way.

And, you know, the early iterations of the burial gaze trope and the conversations around it when it happened and the reaction to it, it was really interesting to watch. Can you explain briefly what the very your gay's trope is? It's that queer characters in television are often treated as disposable and are more likely to be the first ones to die because they're sort of secondary to the main plot because queer characters are very rarely the main characters. Yes.

And it's an unfortunate trope that has been going for a really long time. I think in the Vampire Diaries chapter, I talked about, you know, a rare pair of queer... Sorry, that's very difficult to say. A rare pair of queer characters. A rare pair of queer characters. C-shells, a rare pair of queer characters. characters. But I found some stats at the time and this was via through looking old Tumblr stuff

and then Pink News had actually done a piece on this on the number of queer characters killed in a single year on television and this was around I think 2014 I want to say. I could be wrong about that and it was something like in the space of about six months there had been at least six or seven different shows that have killed off queer characters. Not as many straight characters have been killed off on those shows in that time. Yeah. So it's not a problem that existed in the 90s and stopped when we started getting a bit more accepting of queer people. Although obviously we're not integrated with teen fandoms of today, we are still integrated with some media fandoms, particularly obviously disqualified, although I think we're slightly removed

from the internet discussion side of it these days. Yeah, I think that's the best. Yeah. Sanity. Have you noticed, well, basically, when you go back, can you see the beginnings of the millennials that we have followed and become? Is there a thread? There's definitely a thread. One scary thing I see about the fandom culture I do interact with mostly is Reddit or TikTok. Those are just the social media I happen to be on the most. So it could be very different in other places. I definitely feel like I see a drop in media literacy because there's a, I start seeing criticism now of kind of, why didn't these characters just do this as a criticism of the writers,

as if the writers didn't think of that? Yeah. Which I think maybe misses the point of television a little bit. Yeah. But there's other threads I can see. The fandom is not always a really positive place. When I joke about the shipping wars, they were sometimes very vehement. And there was a lot of parasocial attachment to those relationships that definitely was occasionally quite negative.

I think on the whole, fandom's a wonderful, positive places to be a part of. Yeah. But the negative, because of that, the negative stands out a bit more. Yeah, that's fair. But there's a lot of other threads I see. They're really in-depth discussion, the way people will find each other. I think it's become more acceptable to sort of have found family and also to treat people you make on the internet

as part of that found family because we are so much more used to being connected online as opposed to maybe growing up being on live journal that was like, well, don't tell you a real name to people. Yeah, yeah. And do you feel like the kind of rise of the technology behind this and the rise of the teen drama genre are connected as in it would have been hard to have such

dedicated fandom without the internet and therefore it would have been hard to drive these oddball shows forward. Oh absolutely. If it, you know, fandom's coming together. There's a lot of stories of fandoms coming together to try and save their shows and that involved being able to connect on the internet. Like the first ever big online fan campaign to save a show was my so-called life and it would have worked if Claire Taines had also been down for doing another season. Yeah. But she wasn't to be really creative these campaigns, didn't they? There were, I know with Angel the Buffy spin-off with that getting cancelled. There were mobile blood drives to try and get media attention that people hired Billboard's when Roswell, which was definitely

not a big enough show to have its own chapter in this book and it didn't really get to fit in much of the others and I wish I could have written more about it because I did also watch that as a teenager and it was a great show. Was that a spin-off from something? No, but there's been reboots and sequels since I think it was based on a book series originally. It was an early book-to-screen pipeline. But yeah, with Roswell, there was a whole campaign of sending Tobasco packets because that was a massive plot point on the show. There was a lot of this stuff. There was really passionate outpouring. So yeah, fans being able to organise and find each other like that, that came with technology and that helped drive

these shows forward. And also, writers being able to interact with those fans. That's a big part of it, isn't it? That had a big effect on how television was being made because writers started spending time on these boards and especially when it started becoming more, more centralised. with stuff like television without pity which reviewed a lot of different shows and the point that started as a Dawson's Creek kind of hate watchy site and then it sprawled into this massive media

thing writing about all sorts of shows and the point of it was to be snarky but you definitely could see almost fandom influencing the shows that they were talking about and you can see the points where Rice's maybe choose to take a step back and not pay that much attention to the fans because it's getting a bit silly now. That was the recent

drama with an author did something like comment on a poor review, didn't they? They commented on poor review, but they were very nice about it, but then lots of people seemed to be annoyed at the author for... Yeah, I didn't understand this, really. Yeah, I sort of... And then maybe the author was also problematic because maybe they'd done something else on the internet, and I decided not to learn more about it. Close the Pandora's box.

Again, I think that was a plot point on the Tree Hill. It's very important that we only purchase resellable cans of worms these days. Did you know that a Pringles lid fits perfectly on a can of worms? Excellent. And that's why I eat Pringles. No free ass, not sponsored. Real side. It's been a while since we had a properly off-topic food tangent.

I tried today, Thai green curry pringles. Yeah. They are so good. Do you like Thai-green curry? It didn't taste of coriander. Oh, then yes. It tasted exactly like Thai-green curry, but it didn't add it toriending. taste. I'm going to have to try these. I'm going to seek them out. That's going to be my little.

Oh, I tried. B&M is selling them at moment, at least. I may be able to do. Excellent. You know those lint truffle things? Oh, yeah. I haven't had them before, but they do a dark chocolate mint one now. Oh. They're so good. I have to go out for Jack. Where did you find out? I think just like Tesco and stuff. It's like a spherical after eight. It's a really good experience. Oh. More things should be spherical. I've always said that Christmas snacks are better even if they're the same snacks because they come in tubes. Yeah, twiglets. The tube of mini twiglets is my favourite Christmas snack of all time. Give me that again, but put it circle. Put it circle. I didn't want a bag of twiglets.

I want a tub of twiglets. A tub of small twiglets. I want to be able to hold my palm flat and I'm feeding a horse. I'm not going to say I've never done that while eating twiglets. Anyway, American teen dramas from Sunnydolls are over now. I'm so sorry. I have no idea what we talking about. Pringles, can of worms. Fandum, online fandom. Fandum. parasociality and authors and writers interacting. There we go. Now, were any of the teen dramas we're talking about affected by the unfortunate tendency of authors, writers,

to keep an eye on fandoms and change the plot to make sure they don't guess? I don't think they were massively affected by the make sure they don't guess trend. I think there were like very unguessable completely off-the-wall stories, but that was less to do with keeping an eye on fans have more to do with the fact with these shows just burned through so much plot. They kind of had to throw everything.

Yeah, that's a recurring point, isn't it? Yeah, it came up. It was a big one. I talked about it in the Vampire Diaries chapter where because this was one of the biggest shows on the network at the time, the network were therefore selling more ad time. So it had to have more ad breaks. But each ad break needs to be like an act break and it needs to be a moment. Yeah.

So with the Vampirees, when you take into account like the kind of opening, going into the titles and then the ad breaks, they had to, and then the end moment, they had to have six of those per episodes. When you need six gasps an episode, you're going to burn through plot. The gasps, I guess. One, two, three, four. This is how you end up with tribrids, vampire, werewolf, witch combos. That was a can of worms. I chose not to open, despite your provocation by putting it in a footnote and telling me not to. That was one of the hardest things about writing this book, because these chapters, they are not recaps of the shows I'm writing about. I'm reliably informed by a couple of reviewers that the book is enjoyable even if

you've not read that they've seen the shows. Yeah. Although, unless you really care about spoilers. But yeah, these aren't. No, it is. To be fair, I love reading about shows I've never seen. So this is perfect for me. But I've never watched the, what's the murder one? Pretty Little Liar. Yeah. I've watched a two-hour film about someone talking about it. Yep. I will set you off deliberately, so you explain the entire plot of a season of a show to me, so I have to watch it. I love other people telling me how stuff went. There's a bonus at the end of this episode, I'll drink a second glass of wine and then try and explain the family tree and once upon a time to me.

But yeah, that was the fun bit, but also the hard bit about writing this book, is that I needed to say, and the writers chose to do this thing and these things happened because of this off-screen, but that meant I had to reference stuff that was happening in it, which meant occasionally just in a footnote, I'd have to say a thing, like, Don't worry about it. Okay, so this is because the character was a vampire werewolf, which, tribrid, or it got bad in Riverdale. I had to edit a lot of those footnotes down because there was some half-page footnotes where I was just trying to give context for like a joke and how this related to fandom or pop culture. I might have to watch Riverdale, but I would like to watch it after I finally

watched Twin Peaks because I feel like it's a successor, having seen neither of them. I have not seen all of Twin Peaks but I've seen enough Twin Peaks to know it was a massive direct inspiration What I find hilarious is Riverdale took inspiration from Twin Peaks and from the work of David Lynch's whole from the start

They did a specific episode called Lynchian This is the episode where we referenced David Lynch And it's like, you've been doing that for four seasons at this point Fish don't have a word for water Pike down It's a good episode I can't remember anything that happens

A linchpin of the whole thing. Oh, of franzine. Yeah, that did seem mental. Yeah, the things that happened. Riverdale was a weird one because it wasn't one I had not seen before, but it was one I had fallen off around the fourth season, I think. And then I'd sort of seen bits on the internet, because I'm on the internet,

about sort of things that were happening on Riverdale and sort of went, oh. And you know, it's sort of like, it's sort of like if you see updates about an ex, but it's not when you feel bitter towards, and you're sort of glad they're doing well except if that X had sort of run away join the circus somehow become one of the horses in the circus

and then also learn to fly. Yeah, exactly. It was very that. Have you doing well out there, Mick? I was sort of watching it, and it was also, it's a bit that, you know, boiling a frog thing. The temperature does come up gradually. So when you're at the point where a comet is heading towards the town

and everyone's got superpowers and you're sort of going, well, no, actually, I can kind of see how we're going, got there because way back in season one when it was a murder mystery, it didn't make any sense, Francine. Fantastic. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it anyway, even though it sounds dreadful. I will say, in Riverdale's defence, one thing I really like about it is that it went completely batch it and it did it with a straight face.

Yeah. At no point did the show acknowledge that it had gone mad. It just kept increasing the madness. as well as something like One Tree Hill where the writers kind of just started going oh my God they're not stopping us speaking of iconic episodes

I knew going into One Tree Hill this comes up in like lists of most insane things that happen in teen dramas biggest plot twist in teen dramas that there is an episode where a dog eats a transplant hot that a character desperately needs I knew that was coming I assumed

starting that watch that that would be the story of the episode. Yeah. The episode, yeah, that's the, I would assume that there's a whole episode about that. I finally got to the dog eats a transplant heart episode. It is in the soft open. It is before the credits.

It is barely a sea plot for the rest of the episode. It is something that happens and then the, and then the show happens. And I read like a whole oral history of writing the episode. The rest were like, yeah, we just, no one said no to us. And we thought if we did this, they'd find, say no to us, but still no one's not to us. By the final... We were acting out to get your attention. Again, this is a, this is not one of the supernatural shows in this book. This is a show about a small town and two half-brothers that have a rivalry over basketball. There are

cheerleaders. It is a very normal show. By the final season, one of the main stories in the final season is one of the characters getting kidnapped by Russians. That's fine. Because he tried to hire a certain basketball player. At least they kept it within the basketball realm. Yeah, no, I mean, they did keep it basketball. There is a whole episode where two of the characters are in comers and walking around as ghosts. Lovely. It's incredible.

There was also a whole story arc. I'm sorry, at this point, this is just therapy for me from watching this. There was a whole story arc where Pete Wentz from Fallout Boy, playing himself, dated one of the characters. This wasn't like Pete Wentz playing a character. This was Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy, as Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy dated one of the high school girls for like three episodes. That's a good segue into music. Yeah. I got a square.

What the hell? You talk a fair bit about how music either helped boost a show or the shows helped boost the music. Yes. Obviously having teen audiences is going to make music maybe a bigger part of it than for other shows. What are some of your favorite instances of that? Oh, so many. So a lot of these shows as well had like a live music venue or found a way to make live music,

which meant they could get like guest bands in. So Buffy had the bronze. One of my favorites from Buffy, although it's super depressing, is Michelle Branch, goodbye to you, which is used at the end of a certain season six episode. And it's one of those weird episodes where it's very funny and lighthearted.

And then the last five minutes of the episode are emotionally devastating. Oh, those are all very difficult to watch, aren't they? Yeah. Duffy did that well. And it has this song and it's Michelle Branch performing at the bronze, but then the music goes between dietic and non-diagetic as it plays over a montage of very sad things happening.

There's loads of good music in Buffy. Obviously, the O.C. was huge. The O.C. introduced a music venue called the Bateshop in the second season. This was part of how the killers actually broke America, because although they're an American band, they did much better in the UK. Mr. Briseardt. But they were struggling to do as well in America, and they appeared on the O.C. And I think they did three songs in the whole episode, and maybe one scene where they're sort of

chatting a bit. They did that with a lot of the music acts on there. And it helped push Mr. Brightside up in the charts and get it closer. That was a huge one. Death Cab for Cuti were in the O.C. Because one of the actors was a really big fan of them, so they wrote that in for his character. And that was a weird one, because they already had, like, a very devoted fandom, like, at one of those bands where the fans aren't just fans, they're like obsessed

in a good way. And so then obviously they got a whole new fandom because of the O.C. And they were sort of having the OC attributed to their success and they were having to say in interviews, like, no, we were doing quite well already. And, you know, I love all of our new fans, but we do also love the large amount of fans we already

had. Yeah, yeah. And there was a backlash about this as well with popular some like bands that were getting popular of saying, no, the Arctic Yeah, the Arctic monkeys turned down. They said, we don't want to be one of those OC bands. Well, yeah, look, what happened to them? No, I've never heard of the beginning.

Yeah, no. I think they didn't need it. I was going to say, did they break America? I'm pretty sure they did. I think you're right, they must have. Yeah. And then you had, the show became so influential musically that Coldplay had a new album coming out. Alex Bitzavis, who is the music supervisor for the OC.

I just did an iconic job all round. Yeah. and Josh Schwartz, who was the showrunner, were invited by the record label to come in, listen to the new Coldplay album and pick a song, and that was their song to debut. And they picked Fix You. And the record label went, are you sure? That wasn't going to be a single. What?

Yeah. So Fix You was only a single because of the O.C. And it became the background of every GCRC drama students over the dramatic play. Not to mention, they turned Glee down twice. before finally saying fine you can use fix you in a very painful, awkward scene. Get over yourself, Chris Allen.

Yeah, so the O.C. was a huge one. And then you obviously have the what you say of it's all. What to say? Was that actually on that scene? Yes, so the original... It wasn't like overlaid later in the meme.

No, the original song by Image and Heap they really liked the song she was like sort of someone who just made this on her computer at home she wasn't even signed to a record label Alex Budzavis came across it and really liked it again this was when online was becoming a new space to share music as well

kind of this was before it all then got locked down again and Napster got sued and iTunes became a thing we're around this kind of space in history which is an interesting tech space but Alex Fitzsavis heard it really liked it and said can I use it so they use it twice in the episode There's a funeral scene where the sort of main verse of the song is playing. And then you have this iconic moment at the end of the episode where Marissa shoots Trey

and there's like a slow motion freeze frame moment as just, what you say? And then Andy Sandberg's there somehow. And then it was Parade on SNL, the Dear Sister sketch, which we'll link to down below and obviously watch that. We know you've all seen it. Please go watch it again. It's so great. It's like, you know, how people are separated by time and space, but they look up at the moon and know that their loved ones looking at the moon.

I would like you all to look at Andy Sampo journey. But then Jason Derulo sampled the song, what you say? And then in Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage after the O.C. went on to make Gossip Girl. And this is appropriate. It's Thanksgiving today. There is an iconic Thanksgiving scene where everyone is sitting around and eating. And slowly everyone's.

everyone starts shouting all of these horrific. I know you're pregnant. I know you're sleeping with my husband. I know you didn't really have cancer. And I'm thankful for that. As the Jason Derulo version of the song plays, and that was them nodding back to this song. They had made iconic in the first place in their first show,

and I thought that was really great. Lovely. What are you thankful for, Joanna, as it's Thanksgiving. Let's have a bonus. Oh, God. You didn't prepare me. Make it within the teen drama, if you like. Oh, okay.

I'm thankful for Buffy. I'm thankful for Gilmore, I'm thankful for the O.C. And then I'm kind of thankful for supernatural, but it did break me mentally and not so thankful for Glee. Kind of thankful for the vampire diaries, but Nina Dobrov should have been paid for. Very thankful for once upon a time

and confused about Riverdale still. Amen. Wait, is that how that works for on Thanksgiving? It's fine. It's just grace, extended grace, I think. Extended secular grace. Extended secular grace. My... Drag name.

Oh, I wrote down a couple from your book, actually. Is this drag-lady? I wasn't even going to bring these titles of your sex tape. Well, I'm not sure. I think this might be a Panic at the Disco track title, The Disappointing Fate of Cordelia. Yep. Broke the bulb so quietly, you would be forgiven for not hearing the crack.

That's a fall-up. Yeah, sex tape. All fall-up voice on title. Oh, that's who I meant, I think. Yeah. The disappointing fate of Cordelia though Yes Right, run with that

Okay, so we mentioned briefly Roswell Yes Which was a show that you would have liked to talk more about But didn't have the space, the time, the mental stability Sorry Are there any other shows like that? Oh, there's so many

By necessity skim over My publisher really did not give me an unlimited word count Which I'm quite upset about And if you actually see the planning document for, before I even pitch the book, just trying to plan the chapter break, like which shows we're getting their own chapters. It is weird, extensive, colour-coded, never to be seen by another human being. It is boundaries like this, of course, that stop you from writing about dogs eating transplant hearts before you even get into the main meat of the book. I managed to get the dog eating the transplant hearts. You actually get that in there.

Yeah, no, I got it in there. So a couple of the big ones, Dawson's Creek, couldn't quite, the main reason shows were cut is because, there were a couple of points. There's a big timeline of this book, for see, I'm starting in the mid to late 90s with Buffy. I'm ending in the early 2020s with Riverdale. I wanted to make sure I was nice, yeah, I wanted to make sure I was kind of nicely spread across this timeline. And there were a couple of points where

there were big concentrations of shows and so that was where I had to make cuts. So Dawson's Creek was one that couldn't get its own chapter as a result and I felt very bad about that because it is an iconic teenage show. But it also pretty much ran concurrently with Buffy. That's the guy from Don't Mind the Being. James Banderbeek from Don't Mind the Bitch in Apartment 23, yes. And lots of other famous.

I mean, Katie Holmes, God, I love Don't Touch the Bitch in Apartment 23. I'm always going to be angry about that. Yeah. Chris and Rissa also turns up in a few shows in this book. Oh, really? Oh, lovely. I love her so much. Yes. So, yeah, Dawson's Creek was a big one. One Tree Hill, there was an earlier plan where that did have its own chapter.

and I would talk more about the kind of more sports-focused teen shows, and I would talk about Friday Night Lights in there. So when I had to take out the One Tree Hill having its own chapter, that meant Friday Night Lights kind of fell by the wayside, which I feel bad about. Pretty Little Liars was one. I would like to have talked a lot more about that. That was nearly there in place of once upon a time.

Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. That's a hard one. It's a tricky one to talk about on its own, and also every other main focus show in this book is a network show, and that's a cable show, which is like an English listener might not sound like a big difference. But it was quite a big difference in production. It was going to just take me in different direction.

And then there was a whole chapter that actually was in the pitch, but I cut when I was writing the book, which was going to be about the Arrowverse, which was the collection of sort of DC television that was on the CW. Was that like Smallville and that? Well, Smallville was before that. Smallville was like 2000 to 2010, but this is Arrow Supergirl.

There was sort of a whole block of shows that all interacted with each other and I got as far as starting to watch a few things and researching it and I immediately went, this is much too broader scope to put in a chapter. This is its own book and it's just slightly outside of my remit. I felt guilty about casting it because that was where I was going to talk about Smallville and that meant Spill again fell by the wayside and it's got to mention. It definitely got mentioned. I think I shoehorned it a little bit into the Riverdale chapter because it is, you know, I got to talk about comics to screen still, which was the important thing.

But I would like to have talked about it a bit more because it has a lot of the things the other shows have of it being very weird and obviously getting to have fantasy and supernatural elements and great music like just the pilot episode of Smallville had not just a song by The Calling but like an obscure album only track from The Calling

which I can't remember what the song is now but it's from the first album I used to listen to the album a lot Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Sorry, no offense. No, I am aware of the vibe I give off And it is someone who was a teenager Listen to the Calling a lot

But yeah, so Smallville was another cut I feel worse about cutting Smallville Than cutting the other DC shows I think I was right to cut those But yeah, publisher not giving me An unlimited word count And then trying to cover quite large swaths of time That's why One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl

Sort of got folded in with the OC Because that's all one time period Things that ever were Going on with that theme You talked a little bit about some of the attempted spinoffs from these shows and I never heard

an inkling of any of these Backdoor pilots I love a backdoor pilot Is that what it's called? Yes No title of my nothing Don't worry about that

Title of my everything So All right I think going in order and therefore Reverse order and paragraph I've written this down

What was Jess from Gilmore Girls Oh, I can't even remember. It was called something like Windrush. Yeah, yeah, not Windy, Sun, Sunset. Yeah, it has, I can't remember the name of it. It's California weather. Yeah.

A backdoor pilot is where they sort of start creating a spin-off. They create a pilot for it, and either they put it in the main show to see how audiences react to it, or they make it, it's not going to get made, so they just use it as an episode of the show or fold it into an episode of the show. Got it. So some backdoor pilots do go on to be successful spinoffs, but most of the time it's if you're watching a show and wondering why there's a weird episode with a bunch of actors,

you never see it again. It's a failed backdoor pilot. So yeah, Gilmore Girls had the story of Jess going to California and meeting his dad. And it was just like Stars Hollow, but also sunny. And for some reason, that one just didn't really sell. No. That was an actual episode of Gilmore Girls, was it?

It was completely gone from my mind. at the end of the must be third season because it's just third season is normally when they graduate from college in teen dramas they follow a nice type pattern

then there's always the season four is bad because it's an awkward college season and then they figure out a way or the gas leak or all the gas leaf in the case of community

I mean there was also an awkward college season they were already in college they were that determined to follow the trope this whole drama it's two weird points in a teen drama

there's the season four or the awkward college season. And then there's, I don't think I use the phrase in the book, but the five, six, seven curse. Which is if a show gets to go past five seasons, there will be a thing where because of contractual reasons, the show goes weird. Someone had a contract that only lasted to the end of season five or season six.

They lose an important character. And they have to rewrite the entire show. So Gilmore Girls, the whole of season seven is weird because they kind of just took the show away from the showrunners. after some negotiations went bad the full story's in the book The Vampire Diaries is a massive one Nina Dobrev who wasn't just the main star of the show

she played multiple characters in the show because of doppelgangers I watched some of that with you at some point it was very confusing I can only imagine it's more confusing if you get rid of that one actor with everyone yeah exactly

she also was not getting paid enough for doing what she was doing considering she was paying multiple so she stepped away and they suddenly had to the big one is once upon a time the final season, a huge chunk of the main cast decided not to be in it anymore. And that meant they basically had to reboot the show.

Yeah. Anyway, sorry, yeah. Sorry, other backdoor pilots that I love the sound of. Valley Girls. Valley Girls, this was Gossip Girl. Again, it would be season three because it was the prom. They used it in the prom episode when the show wasn't picked up. But it was a flashback to the 80s.

And it was the mum and the sister in the main show as teenagers in the 80s. in California starring Kristen Ritter. Oh wait, why in California, though? This is the problem, isn't it? They keep trying to make them in California. There were story reasons why they were in California. But yeah, so it's starring Kristen Ritter, who we mentioned was in Don't Trust the Bitch in Department 23,

had previously been in Gilmore Girls, and Britney Snow was the other character. And it was, I feel like the reason that one wasn't picked up, it was really lent into this cartoonish 80s nostalgia it was a very fun watch if you just watch the episode where it's incorporated into the main show but this would have been i want to say about 2009 2010 80s nostalgia wasn't big then if they'd done it like yeah if it was five or six years later if we're in the era of stranger things i think it could have really worked i'm even starting the eye up shoulder pads again i do like a shoulder pad a power suit in the 80s but i do that we were there for

I love 80s workwear in graphic design. I am not a lot about the rest of the aesthetic gels with mine, but. I'm not saying I dress like it very often, but the Madonna material girl, 80s aesthetic is something I have a deep, deep fondness for. Anyway, yeah. Of all the never picked up spin-off, do you have one that you'd like kill to see? There was one, I think Supernatural went on for so long. There were multiple backdoor pilots, but there is one that focused on they managed to kind of get all of these really great female characters in the show who hadn't yet been killed off in horrible ways and get them all in one room and have them hunting monsters together and I would have really liked that to be a show because

I did love all of these characters and it was nice for it would have then actually do think most of those characters did survive to the end a lot of female characters did not survive on supernatural that show was not a really very feminist piece no and one of the guiltiest in the bury your gay stakes, unfortunately. That was the whole thing about that. Oh, yeah, I talked about that quite a lot of it in the book. But yeah, that one would have been really great. And then, yeah, I think Valley Girls for the 80s nostalgia,

and because it was Kristen Risser and Brittany Snow in around 2010 when they were sort of at the height of their powers. Oh, beautiful. Were there any successful ones? Yeah, a big one was Vampiree is actually, they spun up, the vampire diaries spun off into the originals and it was very much, if vampire diaries is Buffy, the originals was Angel. It was the torchword to the vampire diaries, Doctor Who, it was that sort of thing. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. So it was a bit more grown up. It was set in New

Orleans. It took the original family who had been introduced in the show and moved them to New Orleans and gave them all their own stories. And that went for four seasons, I think it outlasted. It was good. They were all very handsome. I think, which really helps. They cast very attractive people with not necessary. They all had English accents. They weren't all English. And the English accents were bad enough that even the one who was English and had a real English accent did not sound like he was doing a real English accent.

Like when we try and do an impression of someone and somehow it sounds like we're doing a fake accent. Yeah, very that accent. But if you ignore the accent work, it was a really fun show. And they did just enough crossovers for it to work. that does sound fun going back to teen dramas generally yes a lot of these are supernatural not as in the supernatural or they're supernatural or they're just straight up x-bilesic they're they're at least a step left of reality yeah why do you think this works so well in teen dramas particularly i think you go back to buffy and you look at it the idea of buffy was was partly let's

subvert all the horror movie tropes. Let's have the tiny blonde girl who gets chased down and killed be really capable of kicking ass. But then he also went, well, let's use all of this hellish stuff as a metaphor for actual high school things. So you lose your virginity and then the guy turns out to be horrible the next day, uh, except what if it's to do with the vampire losing his soul or, you know, prom's going to be hell and someone has made some and natural hellhounds to attack prom. Um, some of it's not as relatable. I don't think many people, people have the mayor turn into a giant snake on graduation day. But those metaphors were all part of Buffy.

It was this idea. Yeah, let's take high school as hell and make that really literal. Let's have coming, before, you know, they introduced actual queer characters into the show. There was a big coming out scene where Buffy comes out as a slayer to her mother. And it is written as a coming out scene. There's a, have you tried not being the slayer? Yeah.

And I think that's why it works. I think once you take away that level of. reality, you get to look at really human things, and because you get to put another lens on it, you can almost dive deeper into it. That's interesting. It sounds a bit like an author, I know.

And even the shows that aren't supernatural, you look at something like Gilmore girls or the O.C., they still had this slightly to the left of reality element to them. There was something Yeah, the Gilmore Girls was mad. Yeah, well, the Gilmore Girls, it was it wasn't as massively

groundbreaking as something like Buffy, because Buffy was kind of the first, like, supernatural show aimed at teens. Yeah. And, you know, there was supernatural stuff on network television and sci-fi, obviously. I mean, Star Trek was huge, and The X-Files was a massive precursor to Buffy. I don't think Buffy would exist if it wasn't for Mulder and Scully. Yes, another thing we can thank the beautiful Jillian Anderson for. And we have so much to thank her for.

We do. Every day. It is Thanksgiving. The Gilmore Girls was groundbreaking because it was, what if we make a sitcom an hour long? this is a big thing with network television you know it was if it had a half hour time slot it was a comedy it was a sitcom if it had an hour long time slot it was a drama that's how network television still kind of works but especially did it this time when it came to fictional storytelling and ummmy sherman paladino who created the gilmore girls was a comedy writer yeah she'd come from sitcom she came from rosan her husband who ended up co-show running um girl's with her came from family guy huh yeah and she was in the wb which is the network at the time pitching comedies and then sort of

throughout this oh yeah and i sort of have this idea about her mom and daughter who were close and suzanne daniels who was who she was pitching to at the time head of the wb who is married to gregg daniels who co-created the american office sorry just everyone's good yeah loving it everyone's very connected yeah Suzanne daniels said great can we make it an hour long and amy sherman paladino actually like took that quite personally she She was like, do you not think I'm a good comedy writer then? And she was like, no, I just think there's room to explore it. It sounds like a drama.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she was, okay, cool. Yeah, I'll make it an hour long, but it's still kind of going to be a sitcom. And it is. It doesn't have a laugh track. It wasn't filmed in front of a live studio audience.

But it's, it is a sitcom. Yeah, you have to suspend your disbelief during a lot of it. Like, you know, it's made fun of in a lot of sketches and that. And I laugh along with it. But you just have to ignore stuff like they go, they're late. for school and work every day, but they do have time to stop off for an hour drinking coffee. There is obviously a troubadour that dumps into them every day. No one in this town works enough to earn a living, that kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly. I'm completely fine with the surrealism slash just total lack of realism in the Gilmore Girls, except for the kitchens at the two inns. That's not what a professional kitchen looks like in any way, shape or form, and there should not be that much random produce out on tables. Oh, you don't take a bite of a peach and put it back in the pile? No. Jackson, lovely.

No, I don't do that. Greenhouse wears today. That's exactly how she sounds. Shut up. Yeah, no, that's fair. I've sent you up before and I think you liked it, but there's a pair of women on TikTok at the moment pretending to be Lorelei and...

Oh, yeah, no, I've seen it. I know exactly you're talking about, and they're very funny. It's my fucking favourite thing at the moment. But also, you want to talk about pop culture impact. Like, I can't think of that many people who have seen all of the Gilmore girls. But every autumn, it comes around, like, this massive looming monster, the Gilmore

girls' aesthetic, the coziness. The la la la la la's. I can hear it. And then again, music, they went, oh, rather than having a score and a soundtrack, we're going to hire one very talented singer to effectively create, like, the background music that's running in these two women's heads all day. And then we're also going to occasionally use her actual songs in the show and have her appear as one of the buskers in that season six episode I talked about.

Yeah, it is cool. I mean, I didn't realize until, again, I saw, I think, a TikTok person, almost making fun of it. But the different lars that come with different types of scene. Yeah, it's like its own language. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's very, to the point where you hear certain lars and you know, like, oh, shit, that person's depressed about that boy. That's the season three. Right. In contrast, then, and kind of going nicely from Gilmore Girls, which straddles the two, what's so good? compelling about small town America. Why do we love it? Because we do. It's so weird. I hadn't thought about it before I started pitching, again, pitching this book. I started coming up with funny subtitles for the chapters and I was like, oh, well, Sunnydale's got to be welcome to Sunnydale because it's that iconic sign. And then I was like, wait, Gilmore Girls has that iconic sign, welcome to Stars Hollow. And then the OC, like a famous line from the pilot is welcome to the OC, bitch. I've got a whole folder full of welcome to random towns in America signs now

and I love it and like this isn't stuff we grew up with is the thing is it like it's not like for Americans this might seem like an obvious question what's so compelling about small town America while we grew up here you know it's the familiarity we've never lived in a small town America no we've lived in small town England which is a very different flavor of it is yeah I never bump into a troubadour anymore. No, I mean, we do walk by a busker. Oh, yeah, climate change just got rid of the troubadours. But it's, but yeah, buskers and troubadours, not quite the same family.

Less strolling. Yeah, yeah. It's like how an American Robin isn't actually a Robin. Yeah, yeah. Our Trugas aren't actually Trubadors. It's just that guy with the spoons. Anyway, yeah, what's like a morning about small town America? I think there's the very cynical looking at it from making a network TV show perspective,

which is if it's set in a small town, we need. four sets we need the high school or not for yeah we need a high school we need a couple of bedrooms and then we need a third place they all we need a place they all go hang out that isn't the high school we need the bronze or a coffee shop yeah we need a third space for them so from that sense it makes sense to set something in a small town because then you can have those specific sets and it's cheaper and actually the set that was used for stars hollow was one that was just kind of already lying around on the wb lot if you watch I hadn't realized this I when I was like on the Friends book I watched the Seinfeld finale for that chapter

and there's a bit where they land in a small New England town and I was looking at and I went that's fucking Stars Hollow that's the fucking gazebo right and it was just they used a random set from the WB lot and then it became Stars Hollow after that. There's so many interesting facts you could learn about a certain other show if you would ever explore that particular show of a interesting small town America set that's been used I'm any other. Is this you want me to watch Desperate Housewives? Yeah, no, I will watch Desperate Housewives.

You know what we need to do is we need to set a date and say, like, I'm going to watch one or two seasons and then we're going to podcast about it? Yes. That will motivate me to watch it. The only way I can get to Anna to do anything with me now is I'll promise to podcast about it. Yeah. Every time we go to coffee, I just bring a little microphone. We don't release those.

I tell her I release them. God, I hope you don't release those. Coffee is the place we talk about things we can't put on the internet. I'm going to get sued. No. Anyway, yeah, so small turn America. I mean, yeah, there is the very obvious. It's cheaper to make sure if you do it that way. There is also the more obvious.

There's something about everyone knows each other, but only to a certain extent. Yeah. There's something about all being at the same school and therefore and going to the same place and knowing where each other lives that makes it very hard to hide and makes it force a lot of things into the open. And that's very compelling. So it's not just convenience, it's finding a way to force people into proximity and digging drama out of that, which you don't necessarily need to do if you're also getting regularly attacked by vampires, but it's kind of fun.

Yeah. And then you get a show like Supernatural, which comes in the middle of the book and which, because once I had the idea I wanted to subtitle every chapter with Welcome to, I landed on a couple shows. That didn't work for, like Supernatural, because that's not set in one place. It's a road trip movie. And I realized that kind of worked because they go through small. towns over and over again and they are the strangers they are the outsiders and they see everything from the outside and get to find the other thing that doesn't fit and take it away and a lot of those small towns also do look the same because they

mostly show in Vancouver if you know you'll you'll start noticing also if you watch a lot of these shows in the in quick succession like the woods that are sort of surrounding the area in Maine in once upon a time are identical to the woods sort of surrounding the area in Riverdale because they are the same woods in Vancouver. Are they also the X-File Woods? They're also the X-File Woods. They are also...

X-Files and Supernatural shared a director of photography who sadly passed away about four seasons into Supernatural, but yeah, there was overlapping people working on the show. And yeah, they're also in pretty little liars. There are certain things of, like, there are overhead establishing shots in Riverdale that are also used in pretty little liars and once upon a time.

Because Vancouver is cheap to film in. So much of my, like, mental image of what American woods looks like. It's actually just forest in Vancouver, yeah. The funniest bit is there is an awful, well, delightful in its own way,

spin off from Once Upon a Time, called Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. Yeah, I read a couple of reviews after you, you quoted a couple and they sounded so like, vehement, I was like, oh, yeah, now I want to watch that. I don't know what's wrong with me. It wasn't amazingly well received,

But the funniest bit of it is they blew all the CGI budget on about three locations. And so for the rest of it, it's just the same Vancouver Woods that they're walking around in all the other shows, except they've just plonked some big prop mushrooms around so that it's Wonderland. It's like that AI-generated Willy Wonka. It is. It actually is sort of flunker-land. That's actually what got fed into that LLM. Yeah. It was just once upon a time in Wonderland.

Aladdin and Jafar are our main characters in it. okay that's fine i can do that jasmine was in once upon a time wasn't she and a different aladdin yeah oh okay yeah i don't remember aladdin and a different jafar i remember any of the men in once upon a time i remember a couple of them rumple's stills can i remember sorry yes because it's the guy from um uh what's train spotting yeah and i suppose i remember the singing pirate yes because he's very handsome yes the fact that also all of these shows can be connected it is a very, very close degrees of separation. There's a running footnote in the book

that almost every show can be connected to the OC by one actor and the ones that don't connect to the OC by one actor do at least go to kill more girls and therefore get to the OC in two. And a lot of them connect to both by just one actor. Amazing. Yeah, it's really useful knowledge if I'm ever in a hyper-specific pub quiz.

Speaking of hyper-specific pub quizzes, quick, far round. Ooh, yay. Best musical episode. Oh, Buffy wants more with feeling. Fair enough. There's no question. Are half hour or hour episodes better for a teen drama? Oh, our episodes.

These are all, all of these shows are 45 minutes. Oh, okay. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Because if it's a half hour, it's a comedy. It's a sitcom. Okay. Dean, Jess or Logan? Oh, Logan in the original show, but Jess in the year in the life, the reboot.

What did you think of that? Sorry, tangent. I like that it wasn't all very. happy. Yeah. There were bits, it needed editing and maybe replacing some of the stuff like the musical, which really dragged on with actually good stuff, and it fell victim to the curse that all reboots fall to of, we must mention that iPhones and Tinder exist now.

Yes. But most of all, I thought it was good. I like that Rory is a hapless millennial, because that is exactly what that character would be doing. Yeah, they didn't try and polish over the fact that she was not going to succeed with the attitude she had. Yeah. And I could forgive almost anything

for the sake of the way they brought the Sam Phillips song Reflecting Light back at the end for a certain sequence of events. Lovely. It made me very happy. Best Glee cover. Oh! Sorry, this is meant to be really rapid fire.

Oh, it is smooth criminal. Specifically, it is Santana and Evil Gay Guy from other school who went on to be in one of those CW. DC superhero shows Grant Austin in really good outfits in a room full of

just chairs with two people aggressively playing cellos singing this at each other somehow this is she's recording this to force a confession out of him where he put some rocks in a slushy and threw it at someone and scratch someone's eyeball why they're using the song Smooth Criminal to do this

I cannot explain. Yeah, it's a very lumpy criminal. It is the most sexually charged cello-backed Michael Jackson duet between a gay man and a lesbian yep but genuinely like especially you know

Naira Rivera God rest of soul probably had the best voice on that show so I highly recommend looking at that's up and also the Adele mashup of it's her singing again and it's someone like you mashed up with another Adela song I can't remember the name. Rima has it I'm going to put it up for Honourable mention, Gwyneth Paltrow, was it, forget you that she did?

Yeah, simply because that is what spurred our short-lived, but I'd say intense crush on Gwyneth Paltrow as teenagers. Yeah, that involved us hungover watching Glee really fancying Gwyneth Paltrow and then learning literally anything about Gwyneth Paltrow and going, oh, no, never mind. Yeah. It's very easy to be impressionable when you're hungover and 17, and then. A couple years later, you go, oh. Yeah, I remember a couple of years later. That is one of my all-time favorite movies. A couple years later, someone, my partner at the time,

gifted me Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook. And the logic was sound. It was, I know you fancy Gwyneth Paltrow and you like cookbooks, but this is goop, Gweth Paltrow. There is like no sugar, saturated fat. There's nothing in the book. Rubbed piece of crystal on your temple. Yes, have some air.

I think I've still got it. somewhere and oh no i think i've given it to a charity shop by now i did keep it for a while and just get it out for last cursed item in a charity shop yeah i'm sorry if anyone ever buys that anyway first glee cover that was my fault sorry uh see everyone says run joey run but i think that's in the so bad it's good category i'm going to go anytime will sings anything uh because it's very creepy i don't remember hating him that much on our first watch of this that's because we were teenagers and hadn't developed that fear of unhealthy older men the same way we have by growing up and realizing that those men are gross because we're the age that they would be now.

Yeah, why is that older man getting so emotionally involved with these children? Yeah, I'm going to specifically say bust a move for the dancing with cheerleaders or the song song song because it was just bad. Yeah, and I'm sorry, that's unforgivable because the song song is a piece of fucking genius. Exactly. There weren't even teenagers in the room for that when he ruined it. got to put your fucking back into singing that song. Yeah, and despite the presence of John Stamis,

I am also going to say the entire Rocky Horror, glee episode they did. Yeah, that wasn't great. Best finale of one of these shows, and that can either be season or show finale. You did give me these questions in advance, and I tried really hard to be objective and not just pit my favour, but it's fucking buffy. It is one of the greatest season finales of all time.

The way it takes everything, thematic from seven seasons. And this is the finale, is it? The final episode chosen. The actual final season gets a lot of fair criticism. It's not the best season of the show. But the finale, it takes every thread

ever from the show. It helps that by the time Buffy got to that point, although there have been some contract weirdness and changes and characters killed off, they managed to have pretty much everyone available that they needed to have for it. They even got in a little fan servicing moment with Angel Wright at the

begin, they kind of got it out the way in the first five minutes so then they could tell the story. And yeah, it just pulls everything together and has this really, really beautiful speech that Sarah and Michelle Geller delivers. I love that idea of like the writer's kind of putting those things like, kiss, kiss, right, done happy, right, can we tell the story? Yes. Well, you're going to get the kissing. But it had to happen. Yeah, I know you're right, it did. Oh, this is difficult because there's a few. in advance in Duran's defence here. There's a few controversials.

I'm going to go Gilmore Girls because it was not what was originally intended. I didn't know those original words were meant to go there. Yeah, and I think it would have been better. That would be great. Yeah, the last four words in the revival were meant to be the last four words of the show in the original final seventh season,

but because the show was kind of taken away from Amy Sherman Palladino because of contract dispute. yeah it was made by someone else so the whole season kind of bad this is one of those like the five six seven curse shows and the finale especially is just such a kind of nothing burger and despite the fact that there is a certain scene that makes me well up a little bit overall it's not a good end to the show because it doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than a half a fucking second yeah um i think you're right i can't weigh in on some of the other shows on account of of not watching and not intending to watch them? There's a couple of controversial ones. The supernatural finale, famously, very controversial. People did not like. I even made it into my consciousness.

Yeah, and I will not necessarily defend it. I agree with why people don't like how it ended. However, I think if they had done what they planned on doing in that final episode, which involved bringing back a lot of guest actors. and having a big party with the band Kansas playing, Kansas who did the song Carry On My Wayward Son, which is the unofficial theme song, it would have been fine.

I think everyone could have gotten over the fact that the story wasn't great because it would have been such a love letter to the show. But COVID. Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah, you couldn't do that for a bit, could you? Yeah, and unfortunately, they had already had to do a massive hiatus with about five episodes left of the season because of COVID. They had to film it. So they had to do it.

Very strict back. No Kansas. no guest stars. How long did the X-Files run? Oh, I don't remember now. Because it's weird when you get to the end of the X-Files and start again. If there's a long-running TV show, I love watching the last episode, then the first episode. I'm not necessarily going to start the whole thing again, but I love watching, I love seeing like what changed in that stark contrast.

And oh my God, they were so baby for a lot of them. Yeah, they were so baby in X-Files. And then I'm guessing to see if natural must be. Oh, it's so weird, yeah, because it's 15 seasons. And again, it's the boiling of fraud. especially if you binge watch the whole show in a month you don't really spot the ageing and then you go back and watch the first episode again

if you bear in mind Jared Padalaki was in Gilmore Girls before he was in Supernatural he basically went right from one to the other so he was really baby-faced and then just got cheekbones really quickly yeah oh wow with X-Files I feel like you can tell when David Dukovny discovered cocaine quite clearly

oh yeah the cheekbones suddenly like skyrocket up and the actual cheeks follow right in. Whereas Gillian Anderson, I think, just looks the same to doll. Yeah. She has aged. Yeah, she has aged, but she's... I don't think she ever got, like, genuinely, I don't think she got less attractive. That's not me, fan girling, I don't think.

It's bizarre. No, she's just super attractive. Once Upon a Time was the other controversial final season slash finale, because, as I said, it pretty much got rebooted. So a lot of people think it should have just ended rather than trying to reboot it with a lot of the main cast on. I didn't talk about it too much in the book because I try not to get too opinionated,

but I am a staunch defender of the final season of Once Upon a Time. I actually quite like the reboot structure and also part of the reboot structure involves Lana Perilla, the evil queen from the show, wearing a tank top for the majority of the season, and that alone makes it worth it. Yeah, okay. No, no, that is why I'm a staunch defender of that season.

There's Lanaparilla's in a tank top. There's also, I quite like the weird subplot where Alice from Wonderland, different Alice from Wonderland than the one from Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. She's also kind of Raponzel and Captain Hook's daughter, except it wasn't really Rapunzel exactly. It's a thing. Okay. These are the nature of the footnotes in the book.

The nature of the footnotes. But anyway, she ends up in a lovely little gay relationship with Robin Hood and Wicked Witch of the West's daughter. This has nothing to do with this list. I've got, but I've just remembered something you said earlier and I want to revisit it with some trauma. Did you say that supernatural's formed the Omegaverse? Or was that a difference? Yeah, because I am aware of that completely against my will

thanks to TikTok server and be up some weird fucking ads. Yeah, so a quick, very short overview for our dear listeners slash viewers that the Omegaverse is a fictional universe mostly based around pornographic, wolf-based fanfiction slash just fiction. It's wolf porn, but it's its own fictional universe with a lot of very strict rules about how the wolves...

And I think they're kind of people in it, right? Yeah, no, they're like... But they're not like necessarily werewolves. It's a whole thing, okay? And it did come from... The worst bit is, I knew this before I started writing the book. Yeah, no, I knew it before I read that. And I don't like that.

I have to decide. because Supernatural also isn't technically a teen drama and I'm denied about whether or not it had to be in the book but once I realised I was really going to talk about fandom and online fandom I could not not put Supernatural in the book because Supernatural was online fandom

I'm just surprised you managed to avoid putting Sherlock in any depth no I think I mentioned Super Who Lock and I talked about Doctor Who in a couple of places because that's a big thread I mean Doctor Who is a parallel isn't it yeah yeah or at least modern Doctor Who exists because of Buffy.

But anyway, yeah, I knew if I chose to put in the supernatural chapter and I was talking about fandom, that I would have to at least very briefly explain that a fictional universe about humanoid wolves fucking was going to have to go in the book somewhere. Every time that we have looked on A.03 for fun titles of fan fictions, There have been at least a few tagged Omegaverse. Yeah.

A.O3 was a handy metric when working on the book, just as a kind of how popular is a ship. Yeah. It's not super accurate because of the AO3 was founded after Buffy ended, so using it for Buffy ships and stuff. It's not accurate. It was Fanfiction.net around. Fanfiction.net was, that was where I got.

That was earlier, and that's kind of gone now. Is it? I think it technically still exists, but A.O3 is a lot more protections for writers and... Right. Fanfiction.com. That was around when I was a teenager and that's all I'll say about that. Yeah, that was where I started reading. Definitely never posted any fan fiction, but... Oh my God, if I can find that. Mate, it's not under my name, you'll never find it.

I'll know it. There is nothing on the internet that connects me to some of the bad writing. Oh, really? francing this is the history of espionage wikipedia page you're over again I haven't there's a prize at the end of this one sorry carrying on so fanfiction dot net was the earlier thing but a.03 is what I used as a metric to kind of look at how popular

ships were within shows while I was writing this book cool and then another step back towards the quickfire round how do we get here from worse for not oh there was my fault i just completely changed the subject yes yeah so um shuffling my index cards here uh please watch desperate housewives with me how did that get in here yeah we've had that right sorry um friends to lovers enemies to lovers or a secret third thing i love enemies to lovers i'm not going to pretend i don't yay slash friends to enemies to lovers or friends to lovers to enemies or some combination yeah that my secret third thing is all of the above

and I am very much thinking about Buffy and Faith here. Okay. Where it's kind of friends to rivals to like lovers because there is a large portion of time unaccounted for in the episode Bad Girls where they definitely went and fucked. Okay, yeah. So yeah, friends to sort of rivals

or rivals to friends to lovers to enemies. You like them to take the full journey? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's friends to lovers but only if there's lots of yearning. I do love it. to lovers for more of the, you know, sparking.

Yeah, pressed up against the wall with a knife to the throat, but like in a hot way kind of thing, enemies to lovers. Friends to lovers, good for yearning. I also feel very strongly, just in general, in life, that you can only call it a love triangle if it is actually between three people, all of which have the potential to fuck. Thank you.

And that is why. Thank you. Buffy Angel Spike is a love triangle. Yes. However, Vampire's, Elena, Damon, Stefan. not a love triangle. Because David and Stephanie wouldn't have bugged. Yes, because they are brothers.

Sorry, I don't remember any of these people's relationships. They were, as far as I was concerned, as I've said, the men were all the same person. And a lot of the women actually were the same person. Yeah. There was, when I, when the book was being edited, lovely Melanie, fiancé of friend of the pod, Mark Burroughs, so fiancé of friend of the pot was my editor

and she did a really amazing job. Oh, cool. And when I got the first round of notes back from her, there was a sentence in the vampire diaries chapter. And I can't remember what the sentence was, but she basically put a note on it saying, this sentence doesn't make any sense to me, but I don't know if you've mistyped something or if it's just the vampire diaries. And I had mistyped something. The way I had written it, it was sort of like, and the brothers were also both this person. And I meant to say, and the brothers both dated this person.

But she did believe for a second that that was also just a plot point of the vampire diaries. but I do need to check. Oh, I love that. Okay, I'm going to end with a couple of slightly more in-depth questions. Yes. Can you, and I know you did in the book, but for the benefit of this podcast, could you explain some of the changes that came with streaming? And how, if at all, it's changed the reality of fandom?

I mean, it was a massive change. The first really big change that happened was when Netflix first became a streamer, because it was the first big streamer. before that it was a DVD rental service one of their business models was to buy seasons of shows from networks so as soon as it finished airing on a network the whole season would then drop on Netflix

and they famously had a huge deal with the CW which is the network most of the shows in this book are on and this was around the time of the vampire diaries so it became less important to networks to get live on the night viewers because they were selling the shows to streaming so they weren't making all their money from advertisers buying ad space based on the night viewers. Okay.

Which is how networks historically have made most of their money is through selling ads. So the more popular a show it is, the higher in the ratings on the night, the more they can sell the ad space within the show for. Okay. And then with streaming, that stopped being the case because that wasn't the only way for the networks to make money. They could now sell it to streamers. And that was really important because streaming, even before Netflix became, a streamer networks were trying to figure out ways to put the shows online or sell them on iTunes,

which is why the 2007 Right to Strike happened, to put it in really simple terms. A few years were getting used to, I'm not going to just watch something. I'm not going to make sure I'm home at 8 o'clock on a Thursday every day to watch my show. Because if I miss it, eventually, like, it'll be online. Or I can, because the stuff went online, not legally, before it went online legally, and the networks figured out how to make money from it. we were all out drinking on Thursday nights at this point exactly

Thursday was the new Friday so yeah so the original event of streaming was really was kind of a net positive because it meant networks had another way to make money it meant they were willing to let shows last a long time because they were like yeah it's probably it may not be getting the viewers we'd like it to get right now but Netflix will still buy it

we have this big billion dollar deal so we get and shows will build audiences if they get to last more than the season yeah where it started to fall down was and you can really pinpoint it with Riverdale, actually, is Riverdale was originally on the CW. It was being sold to Netflix, but CW's parent company, HBO Max launched,

or it might have been called HBO Go at first. I can't remember these things changed. Basically, the point where all the other companies that weren't Netflix, when Netflix are making lots of money and they're buying our stuff to do it, so why don't we do our own streaming service and basically let's invent cable a second time. Yeah, and they just reinvented themselves. Yeah, yeah. and so they made lots of different things

and so Riverdale was doing and its potential spin-offs and stuff were doing really well on Netflix and then they went oh we've got this new spin-off called Katie Keene let's put it on our new streamer HBO Go or Max and no one watched it because no one had that streamer

and that audience were not purchasing a new streaming service to watch one show because the audience were teenagers it was one thing having Netflix because that would generally be a family thing with like multiple accounts within a household but if parents didn't want HBO go

they weren't going to buy it for their teenager just so they could watch one season of a Riverdale spin-off so that's kind of the point where streaming then started having this negative effect because suddenly it wasn't as lucrative for networks to sell shows so then it was not as lucrative

for networks to make shows because people were watching stuff on streaming but and then we started canceling stuff after one season again and then we started cancelling stuff after one season and then the other downside with the streaming

thing is when you have streamers starting to make their own shows. So I've got this very on the brain at the moment, Stranger Things, which I didn't really enjoy when I tried to watch it. I've tried a couple of times. I like the first two seasons. I like, I kind of like the first season and then I gave up somewhere in the middle of the second. It just, it wasn't for me. But my partner loves it. The new season has just come out. So we've been rewatching it. We just started season four. When these shows release and binge drops, it stops being very good episodic television like it just becomes we made a 10-hour movie and then we just cut it into chunks a bit yeah but it's kind of expected you're going to watch it all and I think it's killed

the writing skill a bit and I'm ranting about this because I'm looking at the runtimes for season four which my partner and I have just started and going the finale should not be two and a half hours long yeah my partner's like isn't it cool they got to make a movie and I said it's television so no yeah they should have worked out how to break up the story into hour long chunks yeah and that's more of a personal preference I remember talking about this with you a long time again now and you didn't quite have that view you thought it was cool

that you'd fuck about the length I think no I still think it's cool that you can fuck around with episode lengths I think the bear is one of my favourite shows and it's well first two seasons at least is a great example you can have because you can fuck around with episode lengths the bear has in the first season

there's a 19 minute episode that all takes place in real time and it is so tensely incredibly well written that it also has me like breathing heavily and I need to go and sort of cry in a walk-in fridge for half an hour after I watch it. Which is quite inconvenient now. Yeah, because I don't actually have access to a walk-in fridge.

I should lock myself in the air in cupboard. It's not the same. Less slabs of raw meat in front of me, admittedly, which is quite nice. Anyway, and then the following, we get to have an episode that is 45 minutes long, and despite the gimmick of being stuffed with cameos, completely ignores that gimmick in favour of, again, being just incredibly well-done, dramatic storytelling. but both of those episodes are episodes

I can say that episode of the bear I can say the seven fishers episode of the bear Whereas I have admittedly binge watched it But I have over the last few weeks Binged three seasons of Stranger Things and embarking on a fourth I can't really

The only episode Yeah there's one episode I can point to as an episode And it's the backdoor pilot That everyone fucking hates I don't remember that What's that? It's in season two Where

11 goes off on a little adventure by herself and yeah that was a backdoor pilot was it I don't know about these things so for me I'm just like that was a weird episode carry on I mean it was a backdoor pilot slash we need a reason that the character with all the powers isn't there at a crucial moment

but it was a backdoor pilot that yeah Gandalf from the ballrog yeah gotta find a way to take him out the action it's been happening for years but yeah so that's effective story it's Fettneri and the lizard Fett Nari is the lizard

Benari is the lizard Anyway in the book I go into much more detail about the impact streaming had on television as a whole Good Because I feel strongly Okay

To end then at the beginning Yes The book intro talks about buffering Which we have discussed before It's very popular A very good TV recap show About originally buffy Yes buffering the vampires

They have They're sort of running two main tracks, which is the X-Files, where they're recapping the X-Files, and then once more with spoilers, which is they're going back through Buffy a second time, but now they're allowed to have spoilers. Okay. God, they love Buffy, huh? It's a delight.

But what are they? Like, this is more your realm than mind. I say that aware, more or less, that I do co-host a podcast with you, it does discuss media. Yeah. But I don't go that far into, that's not true. I'm really into Taskmaster at the moment, so I've been listening to that podcast the whole time.

But what other media discussing media do you like? Because you know a bunch of these. I do listen to quite a lot of these. Most of the ones I listen to now are on the Ringer podcast network. Basically what happened is there's a podcast room, a big fan of called Joanna Robinson, who guested on buffering a couple of times. And I found some of her other podcasts.

and yes also a very good writer if you're into Marvel she's got a great book she co-wrote called like MCU the reign of Marvel Studios that I highly recommend it's like a great media history book also by my book American Teen Dramas from Sunday Dars Riverdale interesting yeah we should talk about that sometime yeah yeah Joanna Robinson ended up on The Ringer

she co-hosts a show called House of R with Mallory Rubin and so these are not following one specific shows but talking about lots of nerd culture staff and a mix of going back on things and talking about new things that are out which is a lot of what I listen to so highly recommend House of Art they're a delight

and they've been doing episodes like best 25 villain speeches of the 21st century across sorts of media and best musical moments of the 21st century and that's been very fun to listen to they're also doing Buffy at the moment

because one of them's not seen it before and is watching it for the first time all the time what year is it? It's all about Well, that's, there is a Buffy rebucombing. Her Michelle Gellar and had dead eyes. Only on that mug to me, clearly.

Only on my Buffy coffee mug in real life. She's got very lovely eyes, even when she's technically dead in Buffy. Hey, she's died twice. So, yeah, so House of ours, big one. And then also on the ring out, the watch is one of my favorites, even though that's, again, not a specific show. It's two guys talking about kind of entertainment news. And then they'll have a couple of shows. They're sort of recapping and some interviews, which is Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald.

I think and it's a very fun one where I enjoy it even if in the episode I don't religiously listen to every episode but if they're listening talking about

at least one thing I think I'm interested in I'll kind of listen to the whole thing and they are so intelligent with how they talk about media it makes me feel

smarter listening to it yay at the moment one of the ones they're talking about is Pluribus which is a new show on Apple TV

that I highly recommend it's so fucking good seriously it's amazing you should watch it okay it's made by Vince Gilligan who created Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul,

but before either of those things who worked on the X-Files and it's kind of, what if invasion of the body snatchers was also a deep searing portrait of one very flawed human being. Oh, God. It's so good.

It's also deep and hilarious. Okay, okay, as long as I'm saying some of that. And yeah, the Midnight Boys on the Ring of 2, and then The Storm, which was a podcast, Joanna Robinson co-hosted on with Dave Gonzalez and Neil Miller, and they're now doing their own thing after she moved to the ringer so when it started it was the storm of spoilers and was a lot of Game of Thrones podcast then they became the storm and did a lost rewatch which they kind of

during the pandemic and that was weirdly kind of help keep me sane lost it was a great pandemic show as in a great show to rewatch during the pandemic yeah I think everyone needs if they're going to binge watch lost it has to be during weird point I binge watched lost when I was very miserable in Australia Yeah, that's a good place to do it Especially because a lot of it's in Australia Yeah, and then stuck at home during a pandemic Is I would say another good

What was quite nice is it was during the pandemic But they spread it out, they were doing one a week And so it was like my weekly treat Of watching an episode of Lost And that's nice I like kind of going back almost to network television times Where packing my day We got one episode

One in a week Fuck, that's what I wanted to add to the quick fire around Oh yeah binge watch One a week I'm a one a week person apart from you've made yourself career where you have to binge watch everything

I am I don't get rid of it I'm kind of glad of it I think if I had gotten into Supernatural I would have fallen off with the weekly thing but binge watching it did and having to watch all of it in one month and now I'm like actually I'm a really big supernatural fan it's fine

sorry I mean yay but not yeah you're just upset because eventually I'll make you watch Supernatural I don't know I you pick your battery quite well, and 15 seasons. Yeah, I think it's beyond me. I reckon I could get you to watch

like choice episodes from each season. I think I could get you a pretty good overview in like a season's worth of episodes. You get a frog boiling water me. Yeah, yeah. And then eventually you go, well, I wonder what happened in between that. Yeah.

And where's the episode from the point of you look at the car? Oh, no, turbo hell. Put that omega down, you handsome angel. Yeah, no, that was like two episodes before the season finale, but basically, yeah. Yeah. That was effectively exactly what happened on the night of, God, what was it, Super Putin election? Weirdly enough, huh, those were the days.

That story's in the book, dear listeners, I'm not going to try and explain Superputin election. We lived it once. On this podcast. We lived it once. We read it twice. So, yeah, media podcasts, lots of stuff in the ring at House of Arthur Watch, Midnight Boys and Prestage TV. the Storm Oh and the Empire Diaries

is a very fun Vampire Diaries Recap-y watch for a long one that I also recommend Lovely Good stuff Sidebar not linked to anything in this book

but obviously I'm now working on a book about the office so I've been listening to Office Ladies which I've also developed a real soft spot for Oh good I'm glad

It reminds me a little bit of us just in that it's A it's two very close friends and B they very often go off on tangents and do random mini deep dives on topics I'm learning quite a lot

about things I wasn't expecting to learn about listening to this podcast. Is it Pam and Angela? Yes. They're very good friends in real life. Have you watched the paper yet? No, because I'm saving that for when I'm working on that chapter of this book. Oh, yeah, for anything.

I'm sure I will have quite a lot of opinions when I watch it, so I want to save it for what I can immediately write about them. Yeah, I want to watch it pretty much just for Tim Key, but I think I'll like it despite myself. Yeah, it looks good. Not even despite myself, really. I do think it's a really fun concept. I'm just naturally really resistant to new stuff.

shows. I'm dreadful. I recognise that myself. I am either willing to dive in straight away or put my foot down and shant, which is why I'm quite glad I've got into these covering lots of media reviewy ones, because it's like, all right, if at least three different, like, shows on this network are talking about this one show, it's probably worth watching. So when I saw the name pluribus come up a lot, I thought, fine, I'll check out the first two episodes because It was a double premiere, and then I was really obsessed. Nice. Turned out they were right.

Critics are right about what things are good. You should probably shout out all of our fellow Terry Pratchett and Discworld podcasts. Oh, yeah. I was mostly focused on stuff that's kind of linked to what I write about. But yes, also Desert Island Discworld, which includes an interview with Joanna Robinson. They're all twice together. She went on and talked about Wintersmith. Hi Pratch chat as well, lovely people.

Who watches The Watch? Radio Molforg. Yes. All the greats. All the greats. There's a few new ones that have cropped up as well. We're oldies now. There's a really nice person in our Discord

who's been talking about their new one and has even recommended me a couple of episodes start with. And I'm going to, I promise. We are going to, we promise. We're going to. There's only so many hours in the day, guys. Keep going to start new sewing projects so I can listen to more podcasts. Yeah, speaking of, I was kind of expecting this

to be a shorter episode than usual, but it is now 20 to 10. Yeah. So you ask me questions. No, I can keep going. But I feel like we should probably end it for, well, A, our bedtimes and B, I do need to edit this. Yeah, that's good point. And see, I can keep asking you about American teen dramas forever, but you do actually have a book out about that. We should probably plug instead of me just making you tell me the whole thing. Yeah, that might be a good idea. So American teen dramas from Sunday does a really. I just read it and I'm making you tell me again. Sorry. mate I just wrote it I'm quite happy to talk about it also I think I've done quite well considering I think the last time I read this is when I signed off on the final proofs and

that was a couple months ago who would you recommend your book to Joanna if you are interested in TV if you're interested in any of the one shows in this book you will probably actually quite like the whole book because there is it's just it's fun it's overlap it's nice knowing how things work in context if you got this far into this episode if you got this far into this episode I would definitely recommend it if you know anyone who loves any of the shows in this book Buy it for them. Christmas is coming up if you just want to support me, please buy it.

No, that's silly. But genuinely if you are any flavour of nerd and you're kind of interested in how things work and the little bit of the underbelly, you'll like it. Yeah, agreed. It's a very good book, Joanna, well done. Thank you. American Teen Dramas from Sunnydale's Riverdale.

Available now. And I mentioned at the top of the episode, all the places you can buy it, but as I have mentioned, Joanna Hagan.com.com.U.K. copies, which will be on sale as of the first of December. Very exciting. Yeah. So books on sale, links down below, and I'll sign them.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Truth Shall Make You fret. I've just decided to launch into the outro with no prior preparation. If you want two followers on the internet, you're going to have to listen to Joanna, because I'm aborting this attempt immediately. Thank you very much for listening to this. I normally have this in front of me, and I don't say that's the if I can do this. I usually have the show notes at least. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of The True Shall Make You

Frette. We'll be back properly in December with some fun stuff, which I'll tell you about properly in our next proper episode. If you would like to follow us on the internet and all sorts of places, you can join our Discord. There's a link to below. You can follow us on Blue Sky. No, I'm not going to try and list all these off because I genuinely can't do it from a moment. These are linked in the show notes. It's fine. Mainly the important thing is for this episode to go to Joannahagen.org. And buy a copy of American teen dramas from Sandale to Riverdale. And if you do read the book and if you like it, please review it in public places like the bad book buying websites. It helps other people find it. And I'm beholden

to the cursed algorithm. And until next time, dear listener, just like the Rupert Giles Research Assistance did. And you really are going to have to read the book to get the context there. I thought you were going to pick the other line.