The Worst Idea Of All Time - 1: Acupuncture & Spring Rolls (Overlooked and Undercooked S2E1)

Episode Date: October 12, 2019

Rob's back. Guy's back. Tim's back. And he's angry. Writer/producer/director/star/auteur Schneider is up to his old tricks, driving around LA, laughing at someone who has bone cancer and personally overdubbing Asian characters HE CAST with HIS OWN voice. In their accent. I'm not kidding. It's hell to be back. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the second season of your favorite podcast, Overlooked and Undercooked. A critical review of Rob Schneider's Netflix show, Real Rob, written by Rob Schneider, produced by Rob Schneider, starring Rob Schneider. Directed also by the great Rob Schneider. Isarring Rob Schneider. Directed also by the great Rob Schneider. Is it really? Yeah. Fuck. This is one of the first questions you have to ask

because it's written by the three stars, Rob and his wife and Jamie. It's entirely insulated from external critical eyes. On one hand, this can be how auteurs work. Auteurs work. Welcome to the show, everyone. That's the beautiful baritone of Guy Halifax Alexander Montgomery. Have I got it around the wrong way?

Yeah, it's Alexander Halifax. And then his surname, Montgomery. Have I got it around the wrong way? Yeah, it's Alexander Halifax. And then his surname, Montgomery. Yeah. I am Tim Batt, and we are in the bowels of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. And that can mean only one thing. We have to watch and review every episode of Rob Schneider's Netflix project. episode of Rob Schneider's Netflix project an episode

if only you could see the face that Monty just gave me so every subsequent episode to this we'll be featuring hopefully a new guest comedian but as is tradition the boys kick off alone and what

better way to start the day than with season 2 episode 1 of Real Rob, released in the year 2017, an episode called Acupuncture and Spring Rolls. How do we unpack this, Monty? Because I've just been very angry for the last 32 minutes. I think the best way to do it is to maybe describe what they have attempted to, the story that they've attempted to tell yeah so do you want to just tell me what you what you would describe as the plot of

this episode here's what went down um in this important episode of internet television firstly we established that rob and patricia are moving um because they're i don't know why i don't know i've no idea it's not mentioned and it doesn't matter but jamie the assistant um the long suffering assistant to rob schneider is helping rob move a large um what would you call it, dresser? It's not a bureau. Large dresser. Yeah. Like a legit wardrobe, really. It looks like a stand-up wardrobe. Trying to get it up some stairs.

Can I say, within one second of you seeing Jamie on screen again, the first thing Tim said, wouldn't it be great if Jamie got killed this season? Yeah, I said, I wonder if they'll kill him this time. That'd be really cool. I sort of imagine a South Park-like world where they just, because this is sort of what they did in the first season, where they just constantly just, you know,

throw physical and mental problems at this character. Yeah. To the point that, you know, almost breaking point. But because it's so cartoonish, their portrayal of humanity is so negative and cartoonish, he always bounces back. I think it's quite existential.'s it's like nietzsche jamie is the fallen state of humans that is sort of inescapable for us all we are just suffering at the hands of the an indifferent

universe yeah that constantly throws stuff at us rob schneider is um in this analogy i guess a very indifferent god anyway um predictably he gets fucking owned by that dresser you better believe and an incredible piece of physical comedy great practical effects rob in the middle of moving this huge dresser up a flight of stairs takes a phone call from his wife who he discovers is working on a commercial set. She's the face of a furniture company and he didn't know that this was happening. They've got pretty poor communication in there.

I think the reason they have poor communication is so that they can create the illusion of plot and dialogue. If he already had that information, I literally don't know what they'd talk about. I don't know what there is for these two to talk about, not just in the show, but in their real life. They appear to have no chemistry whatsoever.

No chemistry, nothing in common. And what's insane about that is this is Rob Schneider's real life wife. Absolutely. And so he takes a phone call. He forgets he's moving a huge dresser with Jamie in spite of his consistent loud protestations. And then eventually he He gets fucking owned. Yeah, eventually he leans on the dresser

while he's on the phone. Blam! It's actually not a bad piece of physical comedy, and it is satisfying to see any character in this movie just get totally leveled. Yeah. And this guy gets fucked up. He does.

He does, which triggers the sequence of events where Rob is right back into his ranting, which is a kind of real life slice of his personality about the woes of um western medicine and how it doesn't actually solve any problems it just takes the pain away using painkillers so he decides to um rob trucks jamie in the car and takes him to a um acupuncturist that he knows and this is the first of so many examples in this episode of interstitials, which is Electroswing, which was cool for seven days in 2014. I think Electroswing is evergreen in the world of Rob Schneider. And I think, you know, when you see people walking with headphones on, do you ever wonder what they're listening to?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. How many people do you think are listening to electro swing out there the schneiders the schneider heads uh in melbourne i don't think anyone is yeah i think they're too cool although i i was in a um cafe that was basically a parody of itself the other day which was playing electro swing and i was like is this ironic or are we are we doing this is this for real and they were playing like electro swing covers of you know good songs and then they just started playing richard cheese oh that's pretty good so i was like maybe this is just a comedy cafe i don't know um so uh uh he said rob schneider drives as represented by two minutes of sort of, how do you describe that camera technique?

I think it's called hyperlapse photography. Yeah, he's driving past a lot of low-rise kind of strip malls, and they arrive at his old doctor, Dr. Shen, and this is probably one of, I haven't re-listened to season one, but I remember there was some pretty abhorrent treatment of characters who weren't rob schneider yes uh but they go into this doctor's sort of warehouse and it's not as he remembers it it's been that his doctor died 10 years ago of bone cancer and uh his daughter the doctor's daughter has been which we can all agree is a beautiful premise for a joke like that's That's just fertile ground for comedy.

Died of bone cancer 10 years ago. Oh, I thought he got better. Oh, I thought he got better. But as though to elevate the opportunity for laughs, instead of entrusting the dialogue that he has written to the character who's been hired, presumably a Chinese actor because it's a chinese medicine you know play hall i guess yeah and that character struck me as kind of gender ambiguous which i thought was sort of cool of rob and then i got very worried he's really he's redubbed in

adr all of their dialogue doing his best like i don't know if his best is american chinese accent and it is yeah it's like you it's crazy it's it sticks out like a sore thumb it's insane but yeah so first it didn't match up very well and and guy just said have they overdubbed the dialogue here i was like oh yeah it doesn't match up. And I was like, oh my God, that's Rob Schneider's voice. Why is Rob Schneider doing a China voice over the top of an actor who he hired? This is fucking insane. When you've got a vision, you've got to make sure you control as many of the elements

to realize that vision is possible. It's like he's doing Rodney Dangerfield from the 70s in 2017. If the vision is to trample on anyone who isn't Rob... And this is something you pointed out as well. Rob Schneider, you have to imagine in this show, knows he's not representing himself very well. Yeah, absolutely. I think he knows enough about comedy and storytelling

from doing all those Sandler films. Credit where it's due. He did a couple of his own successful films, which we enjoyed because we were 13. We've spoken about it, yeah. As an adolescent, I thought that Rob Schneider was potentially one of the greats. Never Meet Your Heroes on Netflix.

Yeah. But, yeah, so I think he knows enough to be like, okay, people want to see flawed characters. So he gets himself who is already in real life a horrible human being and dials it up. A very conflicted human being. But then he marries it with all these real world opinions that he actually holds as a human being,

like that he's not that fond of Western medicine. He's an anti-vaxxer i remember we did that episode with snedden about that yeah yeah great youtube video so all that to say you go well this guy is wholesale an idiot and it's it's confusing to know like what line he's playing with the with the real world stuff like because you just throw out everything he says a because it's ridiculous on its face but, because you just throw out everything he says, A, because it's ridiculous on its face, but B, because you're like,

well, you've already built this deplorable character. So why are you giving any of your real world opinions to him? Well, because it is still a representation of himself. Chris Kattan makes a cameo. He's also a washed up former SNL star. He was in a movie called Corky Romano, I believe. Oh shit, was he Corky? Yeah.

That movie, I never saw it, but it had a fucking shit hot marketing campaign. Do you remember there were bus backs, there were huge billboards going, who is Corky Romano? Everywhere. And in New Zealand, we didn't have SNL, so no one knew who the fuck this guy was. It was just some random movie. But those ads everywhere he was that so rob gets a job in this episode uh voicing over a starfish and starfish

wars and uh they uh i don't know they have like a sit all the comedic premises there are about three different premises they set up in this movie none of them get off the ground because none of them have been given more than a second's thought so i suppose they have some sort of improvised argument rob schneider and chris katan over the premise of the voice that he's doing because starfish wars is not an animated movie as rob believed it's just footage of a fish tank which is in the vo booth booth with him and he's got a camera pointed at a starfish in a tank. He's the voice of the starfish. Which is kind of cool. I'd actually

I'd watch that. Well that's Fish Tank Fish Tank Live isn't it? Yeah. Is that what it's called? Fuck something like that that adult swim show. Yeah.

When it's done well you know great. Oh absolutely. But Rob Schneider's just playing against Rob Schneider in this instance. So they get in an argument

and it's you know guys it's the little things that really fucking get you. So what's his name? Chris Catan. Yeah, Chris Catan, yeah. He walks in. So he, in this series, he's playing like the recording engineer. Yeah, but also some sort of creative visionary, you've got to imagine, for the level of intensity he brings to their argument.

Yeah, it seems like it's his film, maybe maybe and he's just doing all of it or something. So he comes into the booth to make a microphone adjustment, which is moving the pop shield, which is like a meter away from the microphone. And the adjustment that he's making is he's like blowing on it to get rid of dust or something. Yeah. And it's just like, you guys guys like everyone involved in this knows how this equipment works why why be incorrect in this way because it's it's both very and so the whole thing also not for comedy like it's not funny the entire operation is so janky they also represent you see his wife uh is it patricia yeah she's on you see her on set she's shooting this commercial job

and this is the one comedic premise with Promise where you see the setup for the take. You see the actual take. You see the people around Video Village watching the take. And then Rob sort of stumbles into the background. Video Village, by the way, because you just skimmed right over that, is where you have a bank of a few monitors

so that you've got a director, usually the main producer. Everyone can see what's happening. Two clients, first aid, everyone can see. He stumbles into the background of frame and you're like, all right, what crazy thing is he going to do here? Like I was genuinely like,

oh my God, they've done it. They found the framework for a gag. And then he just stands stationary in the background of frame until someone notices and goes, what's that guy doing walking through frame? And I was like, you fuck. They did everything. They did everything.

They did everything. And they didn't even, this is the thing, they didn't even know that they'd stumbled into an actual gag. The episode charges on, Rob does some homemade acupuncture on Jamie. Oh, well now, hold on, hold on. I think we should a little bit dig into that whole back and forth. So Rob Schneider is there. The whole purpose of this scene

is so that Rob can get in the way. And it's so frustrating. It's so fucking annoying. He does little thrown lines. He talks to them about the cameras they're using. Takes pop shots at Red for some reason, which is a camera manufacturer. And he's...

Yeah, just... It's like he understands that comedy comes from conflict but you can't just have an argument like there's got to be a comedy sort of reason for it oh yeah he's just but he's just being fucking annoying well this is i think this has been the downfall of his career is that i i genuinely think he doesn't understand the framework or function of comedy i don't think he does either understand the framework or function of comedy. I don't think he does either. He thinks that if he's just annoying and he finds that amusing to himself,

that other people find that amusing. But he's just a nightmare. He's a fucking nightmare. But all the characters are nightmares. They're all unlikable. But they're all born of his. I've got so much more time for literally everyone else in this. They've got, by hook or by crook, some redeeming features.

Jamie, I genuinely just can't help but feel empathy for because he is so put upon. Nah, I think he's an adult. He's got to look out for himself. Jamie's got to know better than to continue coming back for more poetry. I'm not saying I love him. I'm not saying he's my favorite character in, you know, fiction. But I'm saying in this show, Rob Schneider is on a unique plinth of fuckwit. And no one even comes close to the disdain I hold for him.

Well, yeah, look, that's his maybe. But he's so unlikable that anyone who chooses to be in his immediate orbit, you know, consistently, I have no sympathy for. His wife, his daughter, maybe some, they get their daughter to do some child acting, and it is the worst. They have not taught her how to speak. So when she goes to deliver her dialogue, she doesn't round out any of the sounds. She just opens her mouth and like you know noises pour forth which is all good you're a kid but like if you're in a show you have to be able to she doesn't know how to nod she doesn't know how to talk i don't mean to criticize a five-year-old

but i feel like everything's fair game here yeah and okay this next bit's going to be a bit mean but like she looks too old to be speaking like that. Absolutely. And I think they've used their real daughter, I think, and like, maybe just, you know, have enough self-awareness

to not do that. Who else would hire out their daughter for this? So look, Tim, amongst all of this, because it's been a pretty mean-spirited conversation so far,

and not without, you know, not without being able to justify it. Yeah. But I have found a news article from January 20, 2019. You could not be, like, without being able to justify it. Yeah. But I have found a news article. Okay.

From January 20, 2019. You could not be, like, more low energy right now. You're literally horizontal. Yeah. You have a laptop on your belly. Real Rob will be returning in 2019. Fuck off! For season three on Netflix around the world. We've been keeping track of the upcoming series,

and this is what we know about the next season of the Rob Schneider comedy. Shut your whore mouth. So far. Are you making this, is this real? If you've not seen the comedy, allow us to bring you up to speed. The series is based partially on the real life of Rob Schneider.

It's akin to series like Louis C.K.'s show called Louis, and Aziz Ansari's Master of None. It's exactly the same as those two shows. It differs from the aforementioned shows by being a bit more quirky and shot in a sitcom fashion. Season 1 dropped in 2015, with the second follow-up season in September 2017. Before we begin, most of the news of the upcoming season comes from Twitter, and specifically from the show's main star. Unfortunately, while we were putting this article together, Rob decided to wipe all of his tweets.

The reason for the deletion was because of his ongoing problems with how comedians are treated, specifically all the controversy surrounding Kevin Hart. Wait, what? So this news article Has already taken An incredible turn This is so weird Has Real Rob Been renewed for season 3?

Yes How does Rob Schneider's Brain fucking work? Real Rob is returning And soon too We don't know exactly When season 3 of Real Rob Was picked up

Because the show's production Is handled by Rob Schneider's Own production company Rather than Netflix fully However on twitter the earliest official mention was back in december 2017 further evidence of the renewal is from an interview conducted in december 2018 although they didn't divulge any new tales we did hear about the process that goes into the writing the show specifically my wife and jamie are the writing partners they ask me for stories and i tell them stories.

And the next thing I know, whatever the rest of that comment is, it's redacted. That really blows my mind. I think if this show was slightly more skillfully made, more people would watch it and if that happened you would um be aware of the level of racism that rob schneider is bringing to netflix and there would be a fucking boycott it is due to his own ineptitude that he has managed to sail through to get this renewed twice well yeah because no one's no one's watching it i don't understand what's going on and actually we got a little clue as to what well not really a little clue but we may now know what netflix is getting out of this obviously the first season sucked massively it's terrible show but netflix have gone look i don't think this is

costing us very much money guy and i oh look at that bit of sound um posited that there was actually the money was going in the opposite direction whereby rob schneider would hand both the show and a bag full of money to put it up online to netflix which is not the normal chain of events this still makes sense to me and that well we almost saw it so for almost a full minute of this episode rob schneider is watching narcos the um netflix original show and he gets he gets addicted to watching it. That's a whole scene. And there's nothing really that comes of it. There's no real reason to put it in there.

But it's just him spending a whole day watching Narcos. And then articulating how addictive it is to his wife who arrives home and goes, you haven't been watching TV. How long have you been watching TV? And he articulates he's watched a whole season of Narcos because it's just so Moorish. I hope

every episode will feature him watching a full season of a different Netflix original series. And Netflix have, well I guess he has, they've put a lot of Narcos right there on the screen. It's a lot of violent show. Yeah it is. Did you not watch it?

To Rob's credit, it's fucking good. I really enjoyed it. That first season's dynamite fucking good i really enjoyed it shout out to rob shout out to netflix um but they've superimposed netflix on top of the they've comped it is what that's called is very obvious and very poorly done and it's just like fuck man fuck you so i've found this whole operation netflix really i i mean this from the bottom of my heart. Like, this is a super offensive show and it shouldn't be in the world and it absolutely shouldn't be on Netflix.

Like, Netflix needs to take some responsibility. They actually need to nix the third season. It's great for us, like, maybe there's the possibility of us doing this again, but for the good of the world, fuck no. It's not necessarily great for us. So I found the rest of the interview in which that comment was redacted. So I know Real Rob's base, this interview,

based somewhat off your real life experience. Can you tell me about the writing process and decision process of what to include from your real life? Just the most embarrassing stuff we try to put in the show. The stuff that makes me look like a complete and utter jerk that's what usually stays in my wife and jamie are the writing partners they ask me for stories and i tell them stories and the next thing i know there are new episodes i've had kind of a crazy life in and out of show business the bit and this is a telling sentence the best comedies are always the ones where the people look like assholes.

So there's an element of control. There's an end goal that he's working towards. Everything's measured though, right? For something to be watchable, it's like, yeah, we want to see an asshole, but he's got to have some redeeming features. And he doesn't have any. Rob's character in this doesn't have any it is so funny to me that he says new episodes just appear i so who's writing them do you think because what i see is um do you know it's got to be jamie i think it is

and he's written the character as he feels he's sort of somewhat represented like a caricature of what his relationship to rob is in the real world makes perfect sense so they're probably um not even distant metaphors like he probably has been physically injured at work um oh there's like a one of the storylines in this episode is about the fact that rob is um he stopped paying for jamie's insurance even though he's in his employer just to save some money and that feels pretty real yeah that feels like that's something jamie put in so i'm thinking what happens is rob schneider they've booked out like a little workshop room a little studio burbank they drive out there rob turns up for 45 minutes of a nine hour working day um with a coffee will um roll in the door do that thing where he knows

he's very very late so he'll start um ranting about how every part of this isn't his fault and some guy cut him off and there was this thing at the dry cleaners and that will be 15 minutes then jamie will say um oh man i'm so glad you're here that what an awful day you've had that's so terrible um hey so rob can you tell me about that time when that thing happened you mentioned once and then he'll just say the story and then he'll leave and that's his day and then jamie has to turn all of this into working scripts under, I imagine, a really tight turnaround. And I don't think he's gotten any help from anyone because Rob doesn't want to pay for that. His wife maybe just to try and sell.

Jamie probably writes even more ruthless scripts than what we see. And then his wife tempers them because she doesn't want to put Rob's worst face out into the public eye. I'd like to ask you, a question we asked a guest last year and one I'm curious in. How do you feel about this? Do you think we're, are we punching down?

Well, we did make fun of a five-year-old moments ago. Yeah, absolutely. We were punching down then. Yeah. She,

she is related to rob schneider yeah so oh so what are you saying that justifies it no but it does mean i don't feel as bad about it as i otherwise would yeah i think we punch how intelligent how intelligent is rob schneider not he's not intelligent yeah okay if we're all right if if we're if that's the scale if that's the measuring stick we're using then yes i think we are both smarter than rob schneider and i think we're punching down and i am not afraid to say that you and i are both a lot smarter than rob schneider i think that's why he's an anti-vaxxer. He doesn't have a critical brain. He's not curious about the world. He just sort of reads random shit online and absorbs all of it.

And he's a very talented, or at least was at one time in his life, a really talented performer. But he shouldn't be writing anything. No. Or he shouldn't be responsible for creating the stories that are written into episodes. He shouldn't be helming his own show. And what do you mean? The director-producer side of things?

No, I think it's probably a little thin, perhaps. Do you know what is impressive, though? Yeah. They do get made. They do get made! That is fucking true. Because there are so many... There's's like i don't know i don't know quite what this articulates but there are so many moments when i watch this where i'm like how

can you like how does everyone keep going for sure but they just do yeah they do the episodes just keep happening we'll fix it in post yeah i would i would pay significant amounts of money to interview an editor who worked on this because I guess they're part of Rob's company though. So maybe they've sort of drank the Kool-Aid as well and they're in there. Like how much money is he worth? I don't think he could be worth very much, right?

So his production company isn't probably like, you know, it's not like, what's Adam Sandler's production company called? Happy Madison. Happy Madison, where it's not like um what's adam sandler's production company called a happy madison happy madison where it's constantly up and it's it's just pumping out new stuff all the time rob schneider's one probably comes up for this show and they sort of bolt on according to celebrity net worth.com rob schneider's net worth is $15 million. Yeah. That doesn't seem like a lot in the scheme of things.

I mean, I'd fucking love to be with something else. That's enough to have the infrastructure that, you know, you can have a lot of people in your employ inside of a production company, so it could all be in-house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The reason this show exists as this unique and disgusting beast is it is entirely insulated from outside critical eyes. Hey, one thing I will say for this season, it looks like they've sorted out the colour correction issues.

Like no one's eyes were glowing blue. And they have devastatingly, I think, probably for the better of the show, but to the detriment of the podcast, they have taken out all the interstitials. So they've taken out the talking heads interviews. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. They've taken out the stand-up on the soundstage.

But, Guy, you don't know. That could come back. Because in the first season, they were playing so fast and loose with keeping that. It was like one episode, there wouldn't be any of that. And then the next episode, it would open with that one stage. I'm hoping that they do bring him back because it's like respite from the incompetence of storytelling.

So true. He's showcasing all the ways in which he doesn't understand how narrative works it's like if you got a box of chocolates that were all um cyanide but they were different flavors of cyanide so like even though you're eating deadly poison at least there's variety within that that's what the same flavor but they've just got different shapes. Well, no, because you... Yeah, yeah, okay, maybe that's it, yeah. They all taste like almonds that will kill you, but some are triangles, some are diamonds, some are circles.

And we're simple people, so that's enough of a trick to be like, oh, look at this variety box of chocolates. I just can't stress enough to you you our dear listener how many cutaways to that weird like driving thing with the electro swing there is it happens about seven times inside the episode and they last for quite a while it's to it's to establish uh location it's not movement it doesn't It doesn't establish any location I think I think you'll agree with me on this

He has promised a certain Duration Of either the season as a total Like a minute count Or a second count To Netflix Or on an episode basis And they're just

They're having to Fucking throw it all at the wall To get it across the line To me it feels like Those scenes are put in While his brain boots Like to me It feels like we are trapped in his living nightmare, and those scenes are his brain booting up the next big grand idea he has.

That's literally, those are buffering scenes, where we're in his head, and he's like, Chinese doctor's warehouse, and then suddenly you're there. By the way, that when they go into that acupuncturist, everyone's eating dim sum at the same time. And so the joke here is that he brings Jamie in and they, and so remember,

this is Rob Schneider doing a Chinese accent, narrating around all of the things that he's saying of all the different styles of acupuncture and treatment. And the joke is after he sees each different one, he says with dim sum and there's dim sum lying around everywhere. Yeah. Maybe the reason he had to dub that audio over was not because he didn't believe in the performance, but maybe the performer was like,

I'm sorry, Mr. Schneider, I absolutely cannot deliver these lines. Yeah. And so they cut around it. Fuck, man. Yeah.

Yeah. I reckon you could be right. I was so angry watching this. You were. Fucking furious. Yeah. You swore a lot. Yeah.

Sorry. No, it's okay. It's just like, you know, it's episode one, man. Yeah. Hey, we're doing this all in one day, guys. This is going to be such a journey. I'm excited. I genuinely am excited to see how this goes.

I'm excited to hang out with all of our cool different comedy friends who are going to join us on this journey. I'm really excited about hopefully restoring a bit of normal blood sugar because I haven't eaten yet and I'm a little peckish, which was not a good way to come in. Yeah. I'll say this. I'll leave you with this.

Western medicine doesn't know how to heal anything. They just treat symptoms and drug you up. Thank you.