The Worst Idea Of All Time - Overlooked and Undercooked: 01 Pilot (w/ The Boiz)

Episode Date: August 9, 2019

Rob considers replacing his incompetent personal assistant Jamie with his punctual and detail minded stalker, Steve. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

so tim would you say that rob schneider has uh challenged the tv model such a good question um yeah in some ways he has because some things you take as read on television like if you self-fund and write your own thing that you're going to um produce and star and you usually write yourself quite heroically but uh by hook or by crook rob schneider has painted himself as a bit of a baddie i think uh there's there's no necessarily helping that he's he's from the adam sandler school of um well of comedy, I guess. But he's essentially fulfilling a similar role to what Adam Sandler does in movies

only with less charisma. If you could imagine. And his wife exudes charisma. She's so great. I love his wife. So let's broad strokes what's going on in... Oh, that's good. Just a bit of atmos.

In Real Rob, it is a format where we are introduced to Rob Schneider's real life, which is sort of dramatized, and it's interspersed with bits of his stand-up, which, you know, undercooked, I think, would describe those portions of the show. Also interspersed with, to cover his tracks, sort of... Small pieces to camera? Reality show or documentary style pieces to camera performed exclusively by Rob Schneider

or his wife, whose name... Patricia. Patricia. And what's his... The assistant? Yeah. Oh, I can't remember the assistant's name. The whole first episode centres around

his assistant being bad at his job. To the credit of the show you looked at me like i said that wrong no no i'm jumpy i tell you i just watched this first episode i'm jumpy it's a pilot you know pilots famous for struggling to find shape and form it's more like a representation of what the show could become that's true because in a pilot you've got to introduce every character you've got to introduce every character. You've got to show everyone who's going to be in there eventually. Cram them in.

And as promised in the Deadspin sort of informational teaser, the four characters to whom we are introduced, Rob, Patricia, the assistant, and the stalker, all feature prominently in this episode. That's not to say... Are we going to hang out with them the whole season do you think those four characters that's it can i tell you one of the

reasons that i thought this might be fun as i saw in a trailer that i watched a while ago i remember seeing norm mcdonald arrive in one of the boy you love that episode and i was like follow him into a garbage dump. I very well may have. You know what? Norm's just a good guy, I guess. To go on all of his friends' awful projects. Oh, I'm sure he's getting paid for it, you know? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, Norm's famously not that good with money.

Is he not? Well, he's got a gambling problem. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, he's known to have lost everything he has twice. Really? Oh, yeah, big time. Shit, that's got a gambling problem. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, he's known to have lost everything he has twice. Really? Oh, yeah, big time. Shit, that's awesome.

The man is a wild card. But he should not be playing with cards, wild or none. The movie, sorry, the TV show is not without its moments. Like, unsurprisingly, if you get 30 minutes of airtime and you script gags for the whole 30 minutes, some of them are going to land. Yeah, totally. I thought the stalker guy was kind of a fun character actually the stalker is this um he does quite a lot of sort of physical comedy and they've made him look all goofy with weird big

coke bottle glasses and a weird mustache and he's just sort of um creeping around when you first see him and i'm like yeah i'm okay with this this is all good it's such a low bar to clear though like it's a stalker archetype dude i am so easily impressed this is the thing you've got to remember i like i enjoyed the movies i robot and chappy anything with the robot i'll enjoy there's no robots in this show real robot real robot the cold open we impressed by the cold open rob and his wife in bed this is the moment to grab the audience by the short and curlies and say here we are stick around you're in for a good trip this is the tone and the entirety of the cold open was built around the

idea that rob has poor hygiene because he scratches his balls and goes on his phone and touches his face too much and patricia was a little cognizant that she is breastfeeding their young one and she didn't want the bacteria from rob to be on her breasts and rob was so keen to touch her breasts that's right he was keen he was like a dog with a bone and good on him they're a married couple and they negotiate that he may touch her right boob not they don't say breast they say boobob. It's a funnier word. But no nipple. No nipple, Rob.

But he just can't help himself. Exactly. And then there lies the comedy. That was the first, you know, one of the first moments I realized that this TV show might take place in the real world was Rob said, you go straight for the nipple. Everyone does.

Everyone does. It's racist. And I don't think he's too far off it no i think he's making acute observations about biology and the human form but because you know it's it does follow this the seinfeld model loosely or early day seinfeld where they the the stand-up is thematically meant to be linked to what is taking place yeah that's true except that so here's a big problem in this show real Real Rob. Whenever we jump to his stand-up, he's usually making fun of his wife using sort of a Mexican archetypal voice

and always plays himself in the act-outs that he does as this real cool, calm, and collected dude. But the thing is, we've met his wife and she's really charming. Well, like, there's a hard cut from a scene with his wife to him doing stand-up, doing an impersonation of his wife. You gave us the information five seconds ago. We've've already seen her and she doesn't sound like this she sounds really lovely and quite reasonable and you paint her on stage as this this cartoon character this harpy from mexico and you are the villain i don't know if you know what you've done

here but you've made yourself the bad guy in the gag he's all his stand-up is you don't know if you know what you've done here, but you've made yourself the bad guy in the gag. His stand-up is... You don't see a single shot of an audience member in his stand-up, which suggests to me maybe he could have just recorded it in front of a brick wall. Oh, really? And laughed at. No, surely he got into a club.

This is Rob Schneider. He's been a working stand-up for decades. What is Rob Schneider? You know, when we... What is Rob Schneider. He's been a working stand-up for decades. What is Rob Schneider? You know, when we... What is Rob Schneider? When we talked about doing this, we told Alice Nen and Rose Matafao, Boners of the Heart fame,

and the first thing Alice said was, is that punching down? Yes. Which is a jolly good question because Rob Schneider is not among the more successful in the Sandler bag. He's still doing fine. Yeah. Presumably.

He made this show. And do you know what? Maybe I should cancel the podcast right here, 10 minutes into the first episode, because, boy, if there's one thing I hate, it's people just randomly shitting on people trying to do things. And Rob's trying to do something here. He's trying to put a show together. He is together he's trying to shake up the business model of hollywood so let us remind you about how timbo and guy guy do business on the podcast platform uh just like the worst idea of all time we're not here to shit on rob schneider we're here to watch his show and and and try and figure it out a little bit you know you can sort of i mean you can see

loosely the the grab bag of spare parts he's tried to put in one place yeah to make this show work do you how are you feeling in terms of your hope level for where this season's gonna go honestly measured against my previous podcasting experience of documenting watching something there's room for growth here because the show gets to keep moving forward there's potential yeah i mean comedic potential i i did for a 30 minute episode of a tv show i was when one of the frames was out of was out of focus and tim said did they find focus during the frame then and he rewind he rewound it and he was right, but save the fact they didn't find focus.

They were just looking for focus for a whole shot that made it into the episode. But when you did that, we were 24 minutes in and I was taken aback. There was five minutes left in the episode. It dragged a little bit, but not as bad as some other stuff that I've watched. We move around a bit.

There's lots of different locations, which is good. At least he didn't skimp out because this is self-funded and make this like a three-room sitcom sort of an affair. No, he goes out a little bit. He creates a false book within the show that he is promoting at a book launch. He goes to his own book signing. That was actually a good laugh from both of us. He would sign the books.

He'd sign them, you can do it, and then do a signature, because you can do it, Rob Schneider's most famous line. But then he would laugh quite like, I've decided you can do it. He would do like a sustained 10-second rolling laugh at the very idea of how funny it is for him to sign you can do it, which is brilliant. It is brilliant when you consider he must have been signing that for 20 years now, you can do it. Which is brilliant. It is brilliant when you consider

he must have been signing that for 20 years now, I would say. Well, that was the other gag that worked. At the top of the show, one of the first moments we see of Rob in the wider world outside of his home is arriving at an airport and a fan says,

hey, Rob, can you sign these? And gives him two burned DVDvds one of which is juice bigelow yeah and the other is the extra features of juice bigelow yeah that was funny that's funny that was good that was legitimately i think the only joke that worked in the in the uh in the whole episode that was 30 minutes in duration yeah so help me God. Oh, no, the other one. Yes. Rob Schneider. Prove me wrong, Guy Montgomery. Rob Schneider pitching. So within the show also, he is pitching a show. So he's essentially within the show pitching the show

that we're watching. But he goes to a meeting with the head of Fox Comedy or TV or something. And the first thing they say to him in the middle of the meeting, they say, and do you have to star in it? That gag works. Yeah, that was funny. You're right.

You know what, guy? You're right. There were twice the jokes that worked that I originally thought in this half-hour show. Any time Rob Schneider exercises any sort of self-awareness. But you notice that the gags and every kind of nice moment comes from someone else, never from Rob. Real damn shame.

Yeah. I saw shades of a poor man's Billy Crystal in Rob Schneider. It's because I saw When Harry Met Sally recently. It's because he's a sad clown. You know? And Billy Crystal, as he got older, that's what happened to him. He became a sad clown. And I think Rob Schneider's always had a lot of sadness about him.

Don't you think? Did you like Rob Schneider as a teen? Oh, yeah. I remember enjoying deuce bigelow i thought it was funny when i was you know 13 or whatever any it was other sort of movies that were canon the animal i never saw the chick i never saw the animal i did see the hot chick the hot chick i think i just thought it was sort of bizarre and silly the animal I had mates who really... The hot chick had the opportunity to be interesting because he swaps bodies.

It was Freaky Friday, but gendered, right? And Rob Schneider. The animal, the romantic lady he egged against was like a breakout star from the first season of Survivor. That is awesome. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Rob Schneider really is trying to shake up Hollywood.

And I want to call her Colleen, although that might not be true. I'm going to double check if I've got that name correctly. It doesn't sound right. I was a big fan of Little Nicky when I was a kid, and he makes a brief little cameo in that with his famous line, You Can Do It. We were recording this in Melbourne during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Rob Schneider was meant to come out.

You know that? Yeah, he canned his show. And it's like it wasn't billed as a comedy show or stand-up or anything. I think it's a speaking tour. I think he does quite a lot of that these days. Colleen Haskell. Oh, nice one. She was a contestant on the first season of the American reality show Survivor in 2000.

The Animal came out in 2001. How crazy was it that Survivor got as big as it did? Makes a lot of sense. It's a great format. I mean, in that first season especially, to get to watch people be duplicitous, like that was 2000. That's 18 years ago.

That was groundbreaking. God damn. We didn't have anything like it back then. And now everything's like it. Cooking shows are like it. That's right, yeah. Cooking shows aren't actually about the cooking it's about how well you can manipulate other people cooking shows are so little about the

cooking these days and so much about manipulation and and and conniving backstabbing there needs to be like team shit going on in cooking shows i'm speaking so out of school i don't watch any of those cooking shows no i like it i like your idea though i don't watch any of those cooking shows. My Kitchen Rules. I like your idea, though. I don't watch any of the cooking shows either. One of the jokes that Rob Schneider delivers as a stand-up comedian in this show, Real Rob, is because his wife, as a plot point, is trying to start a small business. She says she's never been to a good male strip club.

She likes the idea of it. She's going to create the first decent male strip club. Yeah, male strip club as in it's like a strip club full of males aimed at women punters. And he sort of segues pretty clumsily into a stand-up bit he does about men being afraid of the sexuality of their partner, the previous sexual history of their partners. And he's like, ah, you know.

When you refer to it like that, it makes it sound so much better than what the joke actually was. It's like, thematically, it's about, you know, sexual empowerment of women and how men are afraid of a sexually empowered partner. Well, no, that's not what Rob is saying at all. So, yeah, I might have put too much window dressing on it. Rob's joke is the following,

and he ums and ahs so much through it. That's what really caught me off guard. There's a lot of guys out there who get very uncomfortable with their wife's previous sexual history. Not me. My wife used to live with a guy. I'm no idiot.

I'm not naive. I'm sure they made out once or twice. People are really uncomfortable with it. Cultures are uncomfortable with women's sexual history with it cultures are uncomfortable with women's sexual history the taliban are uncomfortable with women's sexual history they stone them to death i i think it would be better if they just maybe threw one stone you're a whore did someone call me a whore that is the laugh line that is the point. His big gag is that under Sharia law, only one stone should be thrown at a woman who has premarital sex.

Sharia law is not a pronunciation from New Zealand, by the way. That's just how Guy says Sharia law. Yeah. Did he say Sharia law? How did he say it? I think Sharia law. I think that's how everyone says it. I didn't mean to nitpick,

but I noticed that guy and I'm draw attention to it because other people will have noticed it too. You're right to nitpick, but I mean, it's an incredible, it's, how does the show make you feel? Like emotionally,

like you watch it, everything gives you a feeling, you know, if I, if I choose to read it correctly, it's inspiring. The idea that one man with such middling talent can make it this far up in the Hollywood food chain

to create his own show. Yeah, gives you hope. Along the way to make several feature films. Like, I remember thinking he was funny. But, yeah, I mean, why wouldn't it give me hope? Doors don't open for everyone. There's no guarantee one will open for either of us. But if Rob Schneider's out here shaking up the show business model by self-funding this abysmal

television show yeah what are netflix doing buying the rights to this well this is i'm very interested as i always am in the economics of this enterprise like so it says it's described as self-funded by rob schneider so he kind of put the production together do you reckon he recouped that money by getting it on Netflix or do you think this is a deal where he maybe lost a little bit of money on the first season he at least lost a little bit of money

let's not forget in 2012 Rob Schneider also had a more traditional sitcom that was following sort of network rules called Rob how did that do do there's no information about budgets here that sucks i want to know about the money we can do some research between episodes uh rob was a sitcom that premiered on cbs in january 12 2012 and ended on March the 1st, 2012. Oh, Rob.

That sucks. On May 13th, 2012. Hey, you can't win them all. John Mulaney, one of the funniest stand-ups around, he didn't do any good in his... CBS, Kansas News, but he's gone on to do funny things since. Yeah, I know. He learned. I'm trying to give Schneider the benefit of the doubt here.

Only one episode in, guy. We can't start off negative. No, we can't. Where do you go to from there? Wow. Just more negative. He had, in the sitcom, Rob, he had Cheech Marin, who is of Cheech and Chong fame. Holy shit.

Playing his father-in-law. Is he still alive? Yeah. Fantastic. Look, all of that to say, this is not the worst pilot I've ever seen. It's certainly not the worst pilot i've ever seen it's certainly not the best part i've ever seen the show what is the best pilot you've ever seen cheers yeah it's an incredible pilot oh i had a good one crap what was it fuck i can't remember there's a i think it's a i can't remember it's like a kid's show well damn it if i remember

i'll i'll let hey a little tease for episode two i'm gonna brainstorm and figure out what that dope pilot was i love it well that is uh episode one of overlooked and undercooked no hold on we i think we should give it a rating or something you know we should write each episode out of a hundred give it a percent 40 percent we should both say it at the same time so our ratings don't color the other rating that comes second you say yours i'm giving the pilot this first episode of real rob i'm going under 35 35 you had shots out of focus the color saturation is pretty ballistic. Everyone looks like they've got radioactive glowing eyes. So far, Rob, real Rob is scoring 37.5%.

You want to know what the saving grace is for me so far though? Patricia. She's awesome. There is no saving grace for me at this point. Oh, guy. It's over the curiosity and the knowledge that a Norm Macdonald cameo is impending. So I look forward to it. A lot to look forward to.

We're going to dig through that cameo. We're going to get the best pilot that's ever been from my brain to your ears. We're going to be back in the second episode after we watch the second ep of Real Rob.