Happy Friday, everybody! Time for a new video installment of Ask Alan, where I take your questions about the past, present, and future of TV. Though we’ve been on a weekly schedule for a while, this is the first new one I’ve recorded in over a month, during which time my beard temporarily vanished and then returned.
First up this episode is a question about which TV therapist has a worse relationship with their patient: Rebecca Bunch’s on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or Elliot Alderson’s on Mr. Robot? This of course prompted a trip down memory lane, and though my impulse was to pick a historical winner from close to home, I realized another fictional shrink had it far worse.
After that, I talk about the tradition of TV characters who are often discussed but never seen. There are, of course, many subcategories of this, from the ones who exist only in the descriptions of others to ones who appear as unseen voices to ones who appear in part but not in whole.
Finally, I talk about the erratic ways kids’ TV shows are scheduled today, and consider whether — in a world of On Demand, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, apps, and websites — scheduling even matters for your younger TV viewers.
As always, you can send me questions via email, to sepinwall@uproxx.com, or tweet at me with the hashtag #AskAlanDay.