Extra Hot Great

Sometimes American remakes of British comedies are big hits, like The Office! And sometimes they're not, like Taskmaster. Where does The CW's take on Would I Lie To You? land? Panel show aficionado Dan Cassino returns to discuss it. Around The Dial takes us through Minx, The Ultimatum, Beforeigners, Julia, and Atlanta. Dave S. uses his Extra Credit to challenge us to reinvent the dating show à la The Courtship (except...good). Listener Françoise pitches the Top Chef All-Stars episode "Restaurant Wars: One Night Only" to The Canon. Then after naming the week's Winner and Loser, tag! It's on to a Game Time full of taglines. You won't want to miss this one, and that's the truth! GUESTS

Roxana Hadadi is back to talk about the latest minor Marvel superhero, Moon Knight, and whether an inconsistent premiere outweighs the charisma of Oscar Isaac in the lead role. Will TV's usual difficulty portraying gods apply to this series? Should Ethan Hawke's cult-leader subplot have gotten cut entirely? And is Dave a crackpot for thinking it's enough already with animated tattoos? After we went Around The Dial with Julia, How We Roll, Eye Candy, Tokyo Vice, 30 Rock, and The Andy Warhol Diaries, listener Laura prayed that we'd vote a second-season episode of The Righteous Gemstones into the Canon. Capote's "swans" won, sci-fi shows lost, and Game Time turned into a case of sibling rivalry. Strap yourself to your podcast player of choice: it's an all-new Extra Hot Great. GUESTS

Hulu apparently felt that the Michelle Carter "texting suicide" case hadn't been sufficiently covered by a Lifetime movie and a multi-hour documentary, so now its latest scripted true crime series, The Girl From Plainville, is taking its turn; Stephanie Early Green returns to discuss it. Around The Dial takes us through Music Box: Listening To Kenny G; Is It Cake?; Love On The Spectrum; and Mare Of Easttown. Amelia S. challenges us to forcen TV characters with TV episodes -- to delight ones we like and torture ones we don't. Stephanie presents the Detroiters episode "Hog Riders" for induction into the Canon. Then after naming the week's Winner and Loser, it's on to a real character of a Game Time. Take a break from yelling to everyone you know about Hulu's taste level and listen to us do that instead! GUESTS

Do you know what time it is? It's Game Time -- except THIS time, all our Valued Guests were drawn from among our Patreon supporters, and they're playing in a mini-tournament with your co-hosts as their lifelines. Listen to find out who defeats all their opponents and emerges victorious! TOPICS Game Time:

Brittany Luse took a break from co-hosting FCN and HBO Docs Club to talk about FOX's newest silly-competition reality show, Domino Masters -- and we all found lots of reasons you should probably just watch "topples" on YouTube instead, including weak chemistry, weaker jokes, frustrating lack of camera coverage, and drama that doesn't come from the craft. Oh, and: it's about 38 minutes too long. We did better going Around The Dial with Winning Time, Survivor, select Euphoria episodes, Top Chef: Houston, and Fast Foodies, and then Tara drove us around New Jersey for awhile with her Ramy Canon presentation. Fighters won, Baby-Sitters lost, and we were poets and didn't know it during a rhymin', Dave-pointy Game Time. Remind yourself how "GOAL" is spelled and join us for an all-new Extra Hot Great! GUESTS

With Sarah unexpectedly out for the week, it's a slimmed-down installment of the podcast (no Canon or Game Time) -- but fortunately Eve Batey is here to bring her expertise in both San Francisco and true crime to join our discussion on The Dropout! Around The Dial takes us through Our Flag Means Death, The Courtship, the Late Night With Seth Meyers Corrections series on YouTube, Vikings: Valhalla, and the latest on 9-1-1: Lone Star. Mlle. Caroline asks us to pick non-canonical middle names for TV characters. Then we name the week's Winner and Loser! Get your blood sugar up with a cookie (or two) and join us! GUESTS

After almost 12 years, the original Law & Order has been revived at NBC for its 21st season, and superfan Mark Blankenship has returned to The Blankenship Chair to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through Super Pumped, Love Is Blind, Reacher, Bug Out, and Worst Roommate Ever. Ilan cashes in an Extra Credit to get us to propose our finales for series that ended badly, or didn't really end at all. Carlos makes the case for inducting the series premiere of Mare Of Easttown to The Canon. Then, after naming the week's Winner and Loser, it's on to a Game Time with two separate, not really equally important rounds. No need to get down to Centre Street: we've brought our latest podcast right to you! GUESTS

Two Cents Plus Tax co-host Krystal Farmer came by to talk about The Endgame, an overstuffed and underwhelming procedural that tries to do too much and is assembled from the spare parts of too many early-aughts shows. Why do networks still make shows like this? Do we need The Endgame if we still (seriously!) have The Blacklist? And how is Fedorova writing on the sticky side of Post-Its? We fared better going Around The Dial with Severance, a Married At First Sight update, Creamerie, Inventing Anna, Inside The Mind Of A Con Artist, 9-1-1: Lone Star, and Reacher, and gave TV characters (and hosts) some drugs for Extra Credit. Listener Michael hoped we'd visit Cougar Town with a Canon election before Dickens won, Erika Jayne lost (...again), and we answered the door to a hell of a season-clinching Game Time. No need to blackmail the Homeland Secretary -- an all-new Extra Hot Great is all yours. GUESTS

We love it when our listeners submit Canon pitches so much that we're considering not one but THREE in this special episode. Will Karen's pitch on The Odd Couple rack up the requisite odd couple of votes? Will Doug Dale's advocacy for Work Of Art: The Next Great Artist move and challenge us? Will we make holiday dreams come true for Dave in Chicago and his case for Pee-wee's Playhouse's 1988 Christmas special? Listen and learn! TOPICS The Canon:

With so much TV either taken up by the Olympics or getting out of their way, we took our own stab at counter-programming: for our last episode before Valentine's Day, we're each forcening each other to watch a TV episode with "love" somewhere in its title. Dave assigns Sarah "The Secret War" from Love, Death + Robots; Sarah challenges Tara to take on the ABC Afterschool Special "It's No Crush, I'm In Love"; and Dave endures the series premiere of Tori & Dean: Inn Love. Following all our reports, it's on to a Non-Regulation Game Time that you might find for sale at a love...shop? Grab your Valentine, or just treat yourself, and listen! TOPICS Lead Topic:

Waiting for Impact and Truu Stowray host Dave Holmes stopped by for the first time to talk about Pam & Tommy, Hulu's prestige miniseries about Pamela Anderson, Tommy Lee, their whirlwind romance, and the sex tape seen 'round the world. Is the story of Seth Rogen's stiffed (...heh) contractor the real heart of the tale, or is it the Pam/Tommy romance? Is the mid-nineties soundtrack intrusive? And should that penis have talked? We went Around The Dial with Somebody Somewhere, The Real Dirty Dancing, The Museum of Home Video, The Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour, We Need To Talk About Cosby, and 9-1-1: Lone Star before marinating in the Zwick-Herskoverse with a Once & Again Canon submission. _Law & Order_s won, Showtime lost, and we married bands and TV shows in a musical Game Time. Look it up on Alta Vista: it's an all-new Extra Hot Great. GUESTS

Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes has crossed the ponds -- and crossed to a new network -- to launch his new period drama The Gilded Age; Mark Lisanti returns to discuss whether it will please members of the Felloweship of fans. Around The Dial takes us through American Auto, Abbott Elementary, Ozark, Season 2 of Cheer, Peacemaker, 9-1-1: Lone Star, and a brief mention of Toast Of Tinseltown. Erica S. asks us to invite several TV characters over for dinner and very specific kinds of discussion. Mlle. Caroline pitches "Redemption," the first-season finale of The Mandalorian, for induction into The Canon. Then after naming the week's Winner and Loser, it's on to a Game Time that brings that Christmas in July feeling to January. Send your servants back downstairs and join us! GUESTS

For this special episode, we have selected 27 very memorable TV mustaches to do battle in our Thunderdome. Listen to find out which of them vanquishes all its opponents! TOPICS Lead Topic:

Resident Amazing Race expert Jessica returns to the guest chair to talk about the legendary reality show's unique thirty-third season: how it handled an 18-month interruption, whether we expect more from its production than we do from other shows, the true-crime connection that's somehow charming, and whom we expect to win. We went Around The Dial with the new Joe Millionaire, Married At First Sight, Letterkenny, Yellowjackets, and 9-1-1: Lone Star before celebrating a Tiny Triumph for Tara going back to March of 2021. Greg L. asked us to Pop Culture Veto TV properties before we went Down Under for Jessica's Canon submission from The Letdown's first season. History won, gas lost, and we boarded a rollercoaster of series highs and lows for Game Time. The world is waiting...for this all-new Extra Hot Great. GUESTS

So...the original plan was to watch the 1979 miniseries Backstairs At The White House -- even though, at nine hours, it's longer than some actual series are these days. Then Dave and Tara got less than half an hour into it and pulled the plug. Dan -- who did watch it -- tells us what we missed, but then we just roll on past that to a trio of Non-Regulation Game Times! Who knows the most about TV actors who share names with U.S. presidents, and about original songs from TV episodes, AND about reunion movies made years after the series that spawned them went off the air? This special episode's games leave no one in doubt! GUESTS

EEHG 097: Extra Hic Great We challenged our listeners to get us to 1000 Patreon supporters by December 15, and they went above and beyond. Your reward? This drunk episode. Author, screenwriter, and sake enthusiast Pamela Ribon joins us as we discuss Bridgerton, the first Shonda Rhimes show to hit Netflix. Which of us found its 1813 society romances compelling? The answer won't surprise you! Around The Dial takes us through How To With John Wilson, the feature film We Are Little Zombies (available to buy or rent on all the platforms), NBC's revival of The Weakest Link, and Taskmaster NZ. A WILDLY compromised Dave pitches the Peep Show episode "Shrooming" for induction into the Canon; then after Dave crowns the episode's Winner and Loser based on who's most drunk, it's on to the most shambolic Game Time ever. Pour yourself a LARGE cup of Christmas cheer and listen! GUESTS

Being The Ricardos, Aaron Sorkin's latest project as a big-screen writer-director is...also very much a small-screen project, so we are claiming it. Look, it's about TV (specifically, the stars and making of I Love Lucy) and it's kind of on TV (members can stream it for free on Amazon Prime Video), so IT COUNTS. Anyway: joining us for the discussion is actual film critic Tim Grierson! Around The Dial takes us through film-to-TV adaptation Finding Magic Mike; TV-to-film-back-to-TV adaptation MacGruber; Insecure; How To With John Wilson; Dead Asleep; and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. John Potts asks us to choose a TV getaway for our next imaginary holiday. Ilan brings us back to the TV-to-movie pipeline with a Canon presentation on The Simpsons episode "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie." Then we name the week's Winner and Loser before closing out with a Game Time that really decks the halls. No need to arrange a multi-cam setup: this podcast is for your ears only! GUESTS

Novelists and Go Fug Yourself editors Heather and Jessica are back to talk about the Sex & The City...update? reboot? whatever you call it, you can also call it And Just Like That. And you can ALSO call it "tone-deaf," "cringey," and "a clumsy character assassination," as the legendary HBO sit-rom-com returns with a bunch of new characters, and one very notable absence. Is there anything to relate to here? Does the show, as it used to, still do a couple of things extremely well while being exhausting the rest of the time? And couldn't they just have given Samantha COVID? Later, Dan Cassino was NOT a crackpot for suggesting that many Netflix properties would benefit from a faster watch speed, and then we went Around The Dial with Love Life, Live In Front Of A Studio Audience, The Big Leap, The Monkees, and Call My Agent!. Listener Laura hoped there wouldn't be "Bad Blood" between her and the panel when she submitted yet another X-Files ep for the Canon. Yellowstone won, wasting the court's time l

HBO's latest British miniseries import is Landscapers, telling the story about Christopher and Susan Edwards and their, er, unorthodox gardening habits; we tell you whether we thought it was, heh, fertile ground for drama. Around The Dial takes us through Annie Live!, Money Heist, Baptiste, and Hawkeye. Elenore pitches the Drunk History episode "Civil Rights" for the Canon. Then after naming the week's Winner and Loser, we close out with a Game Time that's live from New York, featuring surprise Valued Guest Taylor Cole. Join us for all the dirt on Landscapers and so much more! GUESTS

It's the return of the EHG Thunderdome! This time we're sending 27 HBO characters of our choosing into the Thunderdome to see who is the last character standing. Will it be the horse from Luck? WILL IT?! TOPICS Lead Topic: ⛈ Selective HBO Character Thunderdome NOTES