Listen: Firewall & Iceberg Podcast No. 148
Dan and Alan talk 'Revolution,' 'Glee,' 'Mob Doctor,' 'Guys with Kids' and more
Happy Wednesday, Boys & Girls!
After the promised early-week delayed, it's time for a review-packed installment of The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast.
In this episode, we preview NBC's "Revolution" and "Guys with Kids," as well as FOX's "Mob Doctor." We also review new seasons of "Glee" and "Boardwalk Empire." And we answered a piece of mail, just for kicks.
Next week, we'll be delayed for Rosh Hashanah, but expect plenty more reviews and whatnot as things start to get REALLY busy!
Here's the breakdown:
Second episodes of "Go On" and "New Normal" (00:01:10 - 00:02:45)
"Guys With Kids" (00:02:50 - 00:11:30)
"Glee" (00:11:30 - 00:22:35)
"Boardwalk Empire" (00:22:35 - 00:35:40)
"The Mob Doctor" (00:35:40 - 00:45:25)
"Revolution" (00:45:30 - 00:56:50)
Listener Mail - Worst Characters, Best Shows (00:57:40 - 01:13:20)
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.]
And as always, feel free to e-mail us questions for the podcast.
A long-time member of the TCA Board and a longer-time blogger of "American Idol," Dan Fienberg writes about TV, except for when he writes about movies or sometimes writes about the Red Sox. But never music. He would sound stupid talking about music.
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Login or create a HitFix account Login Signupandythesaint
September 12, 2012 at 6:38PM EST Reply to CommentMarc Blucas thanks you for your support.
sauloccl
September 12, 2012 at 7:16PM EST Reply to Comment... Speaking of actors who could be on better shows, let's talk about Revolution with Billy Burke and Giancarlo Esposito!
filaphresh
September 12, 2012 at 8:01PM EST Reply to CommentOn bad characters on good shows, how about Wesley or Counselor Troy on Star Trek: TNG? I'd say Serena Southerlyn was a terrible ADA on Law & Order, but that's more of a bad *actress* on a very good show than a bad character on a great show.
On Everybody Loves Raymond (which I like a lot less in retrospect than I did at the time, so maybe it's not great), I hated when they started focusing on Amy's relatives in Pennsylvania. They were fine as an obstacle to Robert's proposal, but in the last season they were in every other episode, and I didn't find them funny at all.
You can name a dozen characters in The Office's latest seasons (most notably DeAngelo), but that's because it's not really a great show anymore.
And I'm with Alan on Grandpa Simpson
odessasteps Jay Thomas on Cheers
September 12, 2012 at 8:55PM ESTLeonard Nimoy on Mission:Impossible
Hot Lips on MASH
Hymie the Robot on Get Smart
Wrangler Jane on F-Troop
filaphresh @OdessaSteps: Really? I think Margaret had a lot of good stories on MASH. I was trying to think of MASH because it had so many characters, you'd expect there to be a few duds.
September 12, 2012 at 9:10PM ESTI did want to add Brendanawicz on Parks and Rec, though. Getting rid of him was a clear gain for the show.
Liz
September 12, 2012 at 10:02PM EST Reply to CommentI'm happy to hear that Michael Stuhlbarg has some decent material in Boardwalk Empire this year. I always thought he was really underutilized.
And I don't know if Boardwalk Empire is a great show, but let's just say it is for the purposes of this conversation. My least favorite character (now that Lucy is gone) is easily Van Alden. The Prohibition Terminator routine was sort of entertaining at the beginning of the show, but even halfway through the first season, I got tired of the character hitting the same bug-eyed, crazy beats over and over again. In comparison, Rothstein is twice as intimidating with about one-quarter of the effort.
eakawie
September 12, 2012 at 10:35PM EST Reply to CommentTerrible character on a great show - Romo Lamkin on Battlestar Galactica.
On another subject, I'd be a lot more interested in The Mob Doctor (or even Mob Doctor!) if it was a dark comedy. I think there's a really good show to be written along the lines of "Saul Goodman, MD" a thoroughly sleazy, corrupt money-grubbing doctor mixed up with the mob and other criminals, hounded by a string of ex-wives, and always one ethics complaint away from losing his license. That's a medical show we haven't seen before.
Marquan
September 13, 2012 at 2:22AM EST Reply to CommentNo love for Jesse Bradford in Hackers?
JedyKnight
September 13, 2012 at 10:44AM EST Reply to CommentThe Good Wife "not even a good show".. oh, Dan, Your words hurt so deeply.
Plus, i would disagree, i dont know if it is a great show, but i believe is in the top 5, or top 3 best dramas currently on a broadcast network television.
And seen how Alan drops in on episodes from time to time, i think he agrees is not a bad show, so im a little sad he didnt even attempt a soft defense of it.
mrbilliam But even the top 3 best dramas on broadcast network television would not make the top 5, or possibly even top 10, of the best dramas on all television.
September 13, 2012 at 11:44AM ESTmrbilliam Actually, what WOULD be considered the best current network drama? Am I forgetting anything obvious?
September 13, 2012 at 11:46AM ESTHatfield It's clearly NCIS, Mr. Bill
September 13, 2012 at 12:11PM ESTdan JedyKnight - Those weren't actually my words. I said "or often not even a very good show." There's a difference. I never said it was a bad show, either on this podcast or any place else. "The Good Wife" is, fittingly, a good show. Sometimes it's a very good show.
September 13, 2012 at 12:17PM ESTHopefully that takes away some of the hurt!
-Daniel
Hatfield
September 13, 2012 at 12:10PM EST Reply to CommentI'm pretty sure Alberta Watson/Erin left midway because her daughter was crazy or something, but she definitely didn't die. That was when Michelle Dessler came from Division or something to take over, followed by Bill Buchanan that same season. Bill was always ok, though, after the initial requisite jerkiness, and when he did eventually die it was as Jack's equal, not the way George Mason or Lyn what's-his'face (Astin) went out.
Of course, the greatest one ever was Ryan Chappelle, Paul Schulze's utterly loathsome bureaucrat who displayed some actual brains and investigative drive in Season 3 before Paul Blackthorne's Stephen Saunders ordered him executed, leading to that gut-wrenching moment with Jack in the junkyard. Man, I miss the good moments from that show.
sepinwall When 24 was good, it was great. And when it wasn't... cougars.
September 13, 2012 at 12:20PM ESTHatfield Yeah, you could probably just say "Kim" and be just as correct, though cougars and Kevin Dillon were certainly the nadir.
September 13, 2012 at 12:28PM ESTOh, I just remembered another one! Your guys' buddy Eric Balfour, when he came back for season 6 or whenever it was, lied about being in charge to spare Marisol Nichols during one of CTU's endless hostile takeovers, and immediately took a bullet to the face.
sepinwall Amnesia was only tangentially Kim-related. The show did a lot of stupid stuff, and a lot of stupid Kim stuff, but it's intersecting sets.
September 13, 2012 at 12:33PM ESTPrettok Everybody always brings up the damn cougar, even though it was only onscreen for a five-minute commercial break cliffhanger.
September 14, 2012 at 12:36AM ESTMeanwhile people have forgotten about some really awful 24 stuff, like President Palmers romance with his doctor girlfriend and her crazy ex-husband. That crappy storyline dragged on for six whole weeks and never led to anything! I would have gladly watched a whole pride of courgars come along and devour those characters.
dan PrettOK - When speaking of "24," "Cougar" says in one word everything one might want to say in paragraphs or chapters. It's synecdoche for all things. It's not just a reference to that one lonely cougar.
September 14, 2012 at 1:02AM EST-Daniel
ekstraextra
September 13, 2012 at 4:58PM EST Reply to CommentRe: Worst Characters
Jon Seda on Homicide.
I know he got a lot of hate at the time. Though admittedly by the time he was introduced, the show's days of greatness were behind it. When I googled "jon seda homicide" just now, the third result was: "We hate HOMICIDE's Paul Falsone page". Heh.
MattJ
September 14, 2012 at 4:35AM EST Reply to CommentI should preface this by saying I don't intend it as an accusation of hypocrisy or a "gotcha" moment or anything, I just thought it was interesting hearing you talk about Boardwalk Empire being under-served by budgeting its characters for particular episodes rather than spreading it out incrementally. This was pretty much the criticism/suggestion made about Game of Thrones last season, if I remember correctly (and one I agreed with)—that it would have been better to get all of, say, Dany's story in a more concentrated dose. So, I am wondering, is the difference just that BE should at least in theory have a more overlapping world than GoT? I certainly take Dan's point about it seeming to diminish even the *possibility* of interaction, and of course not seeing the episodes it's hard to talk about it as anything other than abstract. Just thought it was an interesting topic/discussion.
dan MattJ - A couple people off-line have mentioned the GoT comparison and I genuinely don't remember where I came down on that when it came up in discussion. I think the distinction I'd make is exactly the one you make there: If Dany's off Over the Sea and Jon Snow's off Up North, there's no chance that Tyrion is just gonna randomly drop by their storyline one week to say hi and, in fact, because I've read the books, I know exactly when or if Tyrion is going to stop by. But if Chalky and Nucky are in the same city, I like the possibility that interaction might occur.
September 14, 2012 at 11:41AM ESTEither way, I don't know that I'd take an absolute stand on storytelling like this anyway. If the story is consistently well-told, it can be as geographically fragmented as they want it to. I barely notice. I think what I noticed this season was how rigorously on-and-off the supporting storytelling was and therefore it felt more clumsy than perhaps it was last year? Dunno...
But yeah, Boardwalk and GoT are clearly similar cases, if not identical...
-Daniel
Ln
September 14, 2012 at 4:45AM EST Reply to CommentAnne on Parks and Rec. Obviously she is not Lyla Garrity bad, but she is consistently much less interesting than any other character on the show. I actually think you could send that character to Manyville and people would barely notice.
Cousin Larry Appleton Anne is more a case of being really bland, than flat out terrible. In fact, in the first 2 seasons, she seemed to have a clear point on the show as Leslie's BFF and link to the outside world.
September 14, 2012 at 7:36PM ESTI think Chris is the worst character on the show. He started off decent enough, but his character has been repeating the same beats over and over, and has had a few flat out awful stories (Jerry's daughter for one).
Bgklein
September 14, 2012 at 9:19AM EST Reply to CommentI'd say a solid 60% of the characters who were on "Veronica Mars"
Prettok
September 14, 2012 at 6:24PM EST Reply to CommentI never understood West Wing fans' problem with "Mandyville". If the show was supposed to be a realistic portrayal of life in the West Wing, shouldn't there be staff coming and going all the time? What is so traumatic about one woman's departure to new horizons elsewhere? Why would she continued to be mentioned? It's not the same as the eldest Cunningham child on Happy Days. He was family. So his disappearance was weirder.
And was Mandy really that unpopular? I didn't watch the first season; but how disliked could a character really be if her absence was so heartfelt that the fans coined a term (mandyville)to describe it?
Dr. Dunkenstein
September 15, 2012 at 4:54AM EST Reply to CommentAm I missing something or isn't Betty Draper essentially the poster child for this?
Jim --- !map:HashWithIndifferentAccess
September 15, 2012 at 3:30PM ESTbody: |-
Yeah, couldn't believe they left her out. A necessary character, who needs to look like January Jones, and they do a good job of working around JJ's limitations, but her weakness as an actress makes her presence painful sometimes.
As much as I love Cheers, Lilith and Bebe Neuwirth, the writers had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do with Lilith once BN became a regular. As great as some of her lines/stories were, it never made a lot of sense that she was sitting in the bar in the middle of the day, drinking coffee and writing in a little notebook.
And when Taxi let Andy Kauffman do that split personality thing they really let a great show go off the rails.
dan Dr. Dunkenstein and Jim - I *like* Betty Draper. I don't love what she's become or what she was in this past season, but in the balance, I think she's been an interesting character who was well rendered within January Jones' limitations. So no. I would personally never have included her in the category, hence my leaving her out of the discussion.
September 15, 2012 at 6:19PM EST-Daniel
Sarah
September 15, 2012 at 11:40AM EST Reply to CommentRe: Bad characters on great shows - How about the Charlize Theron character (Rita) from Arrested Development?
erika_herzog
September 16, 2012 at 3:23AM EST Reply to Comment"it's not like i'm hebrew averse!" this cracked me up!
September 16, 2012 at 3:38AM ESTsepinwall I liked Corinne just fine. She had a story purpose when she appeared, and Ryan didn't force her into the show when she wasn't needed. Fay Furillo virtually never had a good excuse to be at the precinct.
September 16, 2012 at 2:02PM ESTWaltEagle
September 16, 2012 at 1:53PM EST Reply to CommentSo are you guys pro-Brother Mouzone then?
Tom
September 16, 2012 at 3:29PM EST Reply to Comment80% of the participants of every professional wrestling show.