Listen: Firewall & Iceberg Podcast No. 169

Dan and Alan talk 'Zero Hour,' 'Cult,' 'Scandal' and more

By Daniel FienbergWednesday, Feb 13, 2013 4:35 PM

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Happy Wednesday, Boys & Girls!

I was out of the country on Monday and traveling back yesterday, so it's time for a delayed mid-week installment of The Firewall & Iceberg podcast.

[As Sepinwall warns, there won't be a podcast next week. I'll probably remind y'all. But... yeah.]

By pushing a tiny bit of material from next week into this podcast, we got to discuss both of midseason's craziest [awful] new shows in "Zero Hour" and "Cult." We also discussed HBO's weekend Beyonce doc and answered a few questions, including one that let us talk for a long time about the current season of "Scandal." Oh and after taking a while off, we reinstated a favorite podcast segment: Why NBC Sucks Now.

Here's today's breakdown...

"Zero Hour" (00:01:10 - 00:13:40)

"Cult" (00:13:40 - 00:28:30)

"Beyonce: Life Is But a Dream" (00:28:30 - 00:36:25)

NBC's return to suckage (00:36:25 - 00:53:50)

Listener Mail - The Rise of "Scandal" (00:55:05 - 01:11:30)

Listener Mail - Who gets to end shows? (01:11:30 - 01:18:20)

Listener Mail - post-Super Bowl "Elementary" (01:18:25 - 01:24:30)

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And as always, feel free to e-mail us questions for the podcast.

Firewall & Iceberg - Podcast 169

Daniel Fienberg
Executive Editor

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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Other Scott

My favourite part of every Podcast is when one of you makes a serious point, and then the other one proceeds to undercut that point by saying something ridiculous. In this Podcast, it tended to be Alan undercutting Dan's point and it was often with something referring to Nazi clocks. But Dan has done it to Alan often enough as well. It is entertaining. I keep waiting for someone to get sincerely annoyed, but I don't think its happening any time soon.

On a more serious note, it is almost as if CBS didn't really think that post Super Bowl slot meant anything, so they just aired something. And they may be right, I think the last show that really got permanently boosted by that slot was Grey's Anatomy. But you'd still think they'd try something with a little more oomph than they actually aired. Elementary might have been fine with a better episode, but I think Person of Interest would have had the best shot at getting the most out of that slot if they could put a really good episode in there. Still, CBS is the most successful network, so I'm not going to pretend I could do a better job than the people running it.
February 13, 2013 at 8:09PM EST Reply to Comment
- Marquan I actually think that if CBS had just shown last Thursday's episode of Elementary instead it would have been a much better showcase of what the show is like, and it wouldn't have screwed up the continuity.
  February 13, 2013 at 9:01PM EST
WagonWheel

They actually cover what happens when the doctor switches timezones in Do No Harm. He tells his old girlfriend that he wants to fly to the other side of the earth so that the bad personality can have the day and he can have the night. So I assume he's on some kind of 12 hour cycle.

Not sure if he adjusts to leap seconds.

I think there could have been a much better version of the show if it hadn't stuck itself to a 12 hour clock, the evil personality had actually been evil and the evil personality had started off in control. In the first scene, the protaganist wakes up covered in blood after his personality has been suppressed for 5 years. He knows he has only a short time before the bad personality takes over.

Each episode could have some immediate peril, perhaps there's an orphaned child he has to save before he loses control, as well as advance an overarching quest to retake control of his life.

In short, Do No Harm would have been a better show if it had been a completely different show. But at least I learnt a new fact about monkeys.
February 14, 2013 at 5:18AM EST Reply to Comment
tigger500

I'm surprised that you guys didn't suggest the disproportionate blackness of Twitter might have been a reason while Twitter helped Scandal (perhaps only a little) in a way that Twitter wouldn't help a white show. That said, I dislike the show tremendously.
February 24, 2013 at 11:38AM EST Reply to Comment
- dan Tigger500 - While Twitter is, indeed, used by a disproportionate percentage of African-Americans, any sort of causal linking between that and the accelerated growth of "Scan dal" begs WAY more questions than I like to in analysis. I don't know the exact racial demographics of "Scandal," though I'm sure I could learn that. But I don't know the racial demographics of the people who discuss "Scandal" online. I don't know how that number differs from the racial dynamics of the people who discuss general TV online. And I don't know how much of the Twitter conversation represents new viewership or what the racial dynamics of that new Twitter usership/viewers is. I don't know how to associate those demographics with any of the other shows credited with Twitter-based viewership boosts -- "Pretty Little Liars" is probably one of the only viable examples.
  
  It's just too many things that I don't know... But could that have a *little* to do with it? Sure.
  
  -Daniel
  February 24, 2013 at 2:50PM EST