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It’s later in the day (or night) than usual, but we got in a Firewall & Iceberg Podcast just under the Monday wire. Dan and I talk a bit about the experience of watching last night’s Grammys, review the return of “Cougar Town,” the HBO debut of Gervais and Merchant’s “Life’s Too Short” and Netflix’s original wiseguy-in-Norway series “Lilyhammer.” We also answer some of your mail, which gives us a chance to check in on some freshman series we haven’t discussed in a while, and also for me to gush over Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin. (Apologies in advance for that segment.)
The line-up:
The Grammys (00:00:45 – 00:15:35)
“Cougar Town” (00:15:40 – 00:29:50)
“Life’s Too Short” (00:29:50 – 38:45)
“Lilyhammer” (00:38:55 – 00:51:10)
Listener Mail – “Person of Interest” (00:52:00 – 00:59:05)
Listener Mail – New shows we’re sticking with (00:59:05 – 01:07:25)
Listener Mail – LINSANITY (01:08:15 – 01:20:45)
As always, you can subscribe to The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast over at the iTunes Store, where you can also rate us and comment on us. Or you can always follow our RSS Feed, download the MP3 file or stream it on Dan’s blog.
And as always, feel free to e-mail us questions for the podcast.
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Being deep on the other side of How I Met Your Mother’s generational gap about Ewoks, I really appreciated the opening song this podcast.
Regardless of whether or not she’s one of the better things about the show, and I realize that it’s very much an ensemble, I think Cougar Town would get higher ratings if it were called The Courtney Cox show.
Sincw my email didnt make the cut appatently, ill throw it out here:
Maya rudolph is hosting snl and one of her noted impressions was whitney houston.
Will there be a whitney sketch, as a tribute to her not a parody or satire? Will they show whitney clips? How will snl handle it?
They talked about this during the Grammys discussion.
Mark – The sentiment of your email made the cut! The actual email just didn’t. But your email was definitely the impetus for the tangential discussion of the Rudolph SNL during the Grammy talk…
-Dan
Cool. I havent listened yet. I was going by the posted rundown.
Yeah, I pretty much felt the same way about Life’s Too Short in the beginning (Neeson and Depp are hysterical). Now I just think it’s pretty bad. And I didn’t even liked their movies, so I’m starting to worry if Extras and The Office are all they can do.
I think the podcasts and the radio show and the cartoon are the best thing theyve done apart from the office.
Blashpemy. The Office was great, but Extras was the pinnacle. The cartoon stuff is decent, but a step back.
How come you
Did you forget about Homeland during the “new shows” segment, or did the fact that it’s season ended disqualify it?
That segment was about new network shows we hadn’t discussed since September and whether we had stuck with them. We talked about Homeland a bunch throughout its season and devoted a long segment to its finale. Everyone knew that we kept up with it and what we thought.
Wait a minute…the grammys and SNL are relevant topics of discussion to large segments of the audience? The grammy ratings were equivalent to 40M viewers?!?
To paraphrase the best comedy on television, I better get back to the stargate so I can return to earth. The chevrons are locking! Also, joke about setting the dial on my Delorean to 1988.
I like spectacle as much as the next guy BUT Nicki Minaj was epitome of self-indulgence. It didn’t offend me on any sort of religious or moral standards level but it did offend me on an artistic level. Regardless of what Dan says the object of art is NOT to get people talking- it’s to create something of value.
It was trash.
Bryan-A – I may need to relisten, but I’m *pretty* sure I never said anything resembling that “the object of art is to get people talking.” I may have said that the object of a performance at an award show is to get people talking, but I don’t think that’s the same thing, since even the best award show performances don’t usually rise to the level of “art”…
-Daniel
Alan, did you say Lin was the first Asian born NBA player? Wasn’t Yao Ming first? I’m not sure where he was born, since I’m not a big NBA fan
No, he’s the first American-born player of Asian ancestry, I believe. (Though I think there may be an asterisk or two with that.) There have been a number of other Asian players, most famously Yao, and the first Asian player in the league was actually Wat Misaka, way back in the 1940s, also on the Knicks…
Though now that I’ve looked up Misaka, it suggests he was born in Utaha, so I’m not entirely sure where the whole “first Asian-American” thing comes from. Will have to research further.
Grammys: I liked the tweet from @andylevy – “If Nicki Minaj was trying to make a point, it didn’t work. If Nicki Minaj was trying to make music, it didn’t work.”
Was it just me, or did Paul McCartney look like Dana Carvey doing an impression of Paul McCartney?
SNL/Maya: I agree, Maya should simply sing a Whitney Houston song. Barring that, have her introduce a clip of Whitney singing on the show (similar to what they did when Roy Orbison died).
Cougar Town:
It’s not that people are hearing about the actors, the comedy, and story lines, and would otherwise watch … but are refusing to watch anyway, only because of the title.
It’s that certain content is implied by the title (i.e. older women chasing younger men), which makes some people believe they “know what the show is about,” and in turn they “don’t NEED to find out about the actors, the comedy, and the story lines” in the first place.
Well put about Cougar Town. The title is a problem for the same reason it was originally chosen. It’s instantly evocative of a particular subject matter. It’s not like Person of Interest or Justified, this is a title that attempts to tell you all you need to know in two words.
I’m looking forward very much to House of Cards on Netflix. I love the original series when it first came out and watched it again recently on Netflix streaming and it holds up. Machiavellian political scheming is pretty universal but I hope they can make it as sharp and wicked as the BBC version. 26 eps versus whatever much smaller number the original was suggests big changes though …
Although it’s true that Cougar Town was originally about Jules dating younger men, it also had a double meaning in that the local football team is called The Cougars. If they’re not going to change the title, maybe they should re-introduce this concept and have Bobby become a coach for The Cougars. Or maybe have Tom get killed by a runaway cougar.
If they’re not going to change the title, they should come up with a way for it to make sense. Kind of like in “My Three Sons” (I know, going way back), when Rob left the show to join the army, but before he did, he impregnated his wife and she had triplets, so at least the title of the show could be applied to one character within the show.
Maybe they could add the kim bauer’s cougar to the cast.
@mark. Good idea!
My best guess for a maya sketch for whitney houston on SNL before her death was to do a parody of NBC’s “whitney,” but staring whitney houston and bobby brown.
Why does SNL HAVE to do something in tribute to Whitney Houston? It’s not like Alec Baldwin or Tom Hanks died. She didn’t have an extensive relationship with the show. Why do they have some obligation to recognize her death with a treacly song sung by an impressionist? That’s not a tribute, that’s exploitation of the person’s death, in my book. It’s not like they’re going to do anything irreverend with it, and by the time they’re going to do anything, it’s yesterday’s news, a week old, and is really just tacky.
They don’t HAVE to, but she was an absolute superstar, and she appeared on the show. She should at least get the Roy Orbison treatment.
I do like the aforementioned idea of using her as NBC’s “Whitney.”
Count me among the LINSANE…
Dan needs a girlfriend, or something else besides TV to live for. Seriously Dan, you always sound so depressed and non-committal about everything. You should date that chick from the LA Times.