Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GLEN WELDON, HOST:
How and why does a TV show get its hooks into you? What is it about a show that turns you into a bitter-ender that keeps you dutifully watching every last episode, long after the chewing gum has lost its flavor, long after the train has jumped the tracks, even when you know it's not good, but for you, anyway, it's just good enough to muddle through all the way to the finale? I'm Glen Weldon. Today, we're talking about TV shows we've watched in their entirety, despite our better judgment, on POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WELDON: Joining me today are the core four - my fellow POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR hosts. Linda Holmes. Hey, Linda.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Hey, Glen.
WELDON: Aisha Harris. Hey, pal.
AISHA HARRIS, BYLINE: Hey, there.
WELDON: And Stephen Thompson, my friend. How are you?
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Hey, buddy.
WELDON: All right, we're not going to pussyfoot around here. We will have much to talk about. Let's get right to it. Linda, what is your pick?
HOLMES: Well, my pick - it's funny because in the intro, you made this sound like something that would drag on for years and years and years and years, like the people who watched all, like, 68 seasons of "ER" or whatever. But - of whom I do, by the way, know some of those people. But I chose something that didn't drag on for quite so long, but certainly dragged on far past when I knew it was a bad idea because that happened in the first five minutes of the 2003 Fox show "Married By America." Now...
THOMPSON: Woo.
WELDON: OK.
HOLMES: ...I have made mention of this show (laughter). I have made mention of this show on the podcast before. It is important to understand that in 2003, when this show premiered, we were three years-ish after "Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire?" which was Fox's sort of big, controversial beauty pageant/nightmare, you know, dystopian nightmare of a, quote-unquote, "reality show." And this was a modification where there were a group of single people, and the - and I'm cutting out a lot of steps because, believe me, there were a...
THOMPSON: So many.
HOLMES: ...Lot of steps. But single people had their friends and family choose a person for them to "get engaged to," quote-unquote. And so then they got engaged, and the scare quotes are enormous. The air quotes are blowing your hair back. So they got up on stage at a live - it was sort of like a live pageanty-type of an event. They got up on stage and with the woman sticking her hand through a hole in a sort of screen so that the guy could put the ring on it because these were, of course, all straight couples.
HARRIS: I don't remember this part...
HOLMES: Yeah.
HARRIS: ...Of this.
THOMPSON: Yeah.
HOLMES: It's the woman...
THOMPSON: The hole is, like, at crotch level.
HOLMES: Yeah, the crotch-level hole...
WELDON: OK
HOLMES: ...That the woman stuck her...
WELDON: All right.
HOLMES: ...Hand through so that the man could put the ring on it without them seeing or meeting each other. And then they would take down the screen and the people would meet. And there were, I think, like, five couples, I think. They sent them off to a - like, a resort hotel to spend time together and decide whether to actually get married. And there was a prize where they were going to win, I believe it was a car and a house if they actually got married, which, if you think about it, is perverse in the extreme.
THOMPSON: Oh, sure.
HARRIS: Yes.
HOLMES: But the thing that made it really special in the end...
WELDON: OK.
HOLMES: ...Was that, in the end, no one got married. So it was a show called "Married By America," in which no one got married. Which the entire point of it was supposed to be these people are committing to marrying someone they've never met, which, of course, was not true and should not be true, and was completely made up. So the show came to nothing with the exception of the fact that it was very, very low class, I guess I would say. I don't tend to think of myself as someone who's bothered by low-class reality TV. But for me, this was the low point for class and reality television in some ways. Lower, I would say, than "Fear Factor" because those people...
WELDON: OK.
HOLMES: ...Just ate - like, if you're just eating bugs or doing something gross, you're fine tomorrow. If you're hiding in the closet on your fake wedding day on national television because the bro that you're supposed to marry broke your heart 'cause you really decided that you fell in love with him and he doesn't love you, that's going to stay with you for a while. So the biggest reason why I stuck with this for all, I don't know what it was, six episodes, eight episodes. I had an excuse, which was I was watching this for work.
WELDON: OK.
HOLMES: Right?
WELDON: OK.
THOMPSON: Right.
HOLMES: This was something that I covered, and so I was getting, you know, I was on an assignment with that show. But honestly, even if I hadn't been, it's possible that I would have stuck with it because at the time, you know, 20 years ago, I think I had a bigger appetite for just the kind of train wreck-y, I can't believe I'm watching this kind of thing, which now when I start to get that feeling, I'm just like, OK, something actually bad is going to happen either now or later, and I'm going to turn away from this before it happens. And the funny thing is I know one person on the entire planet who watched this show besides me, and it's Stephen, so - and this was before we met. This was before we knew each other.
WELDON: Now, Stephen, this feels like a show that was not made to entertain, but instigate. It's aimed to be water cooler television to launch think pieces and get a lot of hands ringing and tongues clucking. I understand the curiosity gets you in the door. Even morbid...
HOLMES: Right.
WELDON: ...Curiosity gets you in the door as car wrecks cause rubbernecking. But what keeps you there? As a fellow bitter-ender for this show? What kept you there, Stephen?
THOMPSON: Like "Love Is Blind," the current show that has a lot of "Married By America" DNA...
HARRIS: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...To it...
HARRIS: It does.
THOMPSON: ...It was one of those shows that was sort of unintentionally interesting or that stumbled into revelations about the way bad couples can fall into patterns in ways that I did find sociologically interesting. But it is an objectively terrible show. It is a show that has absolutely no idea what it wants to do and kind of changes course and changes the definition of what it's even supposed to be trying to accomplish over the course of that season.
WELDON: Yep.
HOLMES: Yeah. The only other thing I would say about this show, and I think we've probably now talked about it more than anyone's ever talked about it in history. There are a number of reality shows from this period, and this is one of them, that have been kind of memory holed in a certain way. You can't find it. You can't stream. You can't even find, like...
WELDON: Scrubbed.
HOLMES: ...Press releases and photos as easily as you can for most things. They have really tried to take some of these shows and sort of suck them into a hole of, we never did that, that never happened. You can't just find it. Like, you think Disney stuff's in the vault. Now, this is in vault.
HARRIS: I did find what looked like the final...
HOLMES: Oh, did you?
HARRIS: ...Episode on...
HOLMES: Yeah.
HARRIS: ...YouTube.
HOLMES: I would believe that.
WELDON: Now, Aisha, I was looking over our prep talk, and I noticed that a few of our picks are older shows from a time, you know, before Peak TV, before streaming. And I figure that makes sense because now it is so easy to abandon a show mid-season because so many other shows are just waiting for you. But your pick (laughter), your pick is more recent. It premiered before Peak TV, before streaming, but it is still ongoing and yet and yet and yet, you are still watching it. You defy my thesis. Tell me what your pick is.
HARRIS: Dude. So this might as well be called "Aisha's Guilty Pleasure," because, yes, I am still watching it. And that is "Teen Mom 2." No...
WELDON: Two.
HARRIS: ...Not "Teen Mom," the original iteration, but "Teen Mom 2." Although it has recently been merged with the OG series and is now called "Teen Mom: The Next Chapter." There's also "Teen Mom: Family Reunion," which, like, it's a whole thing. I'm still watching it all.
HOLMES: What is the difference between "Teen Mom" and...
THOMPSON: Yeah, what is the difference?
HOLMES: ..."Teen Mom 2"?
WELDON: Yeah. Please.
HARRIS: OK. So, yes, I have to give a little bit of context here. So, first of all, "Teen Mom" is a franchise - yes, it's a franchise - within MTV. It's a spin-off of another TV show known as "16 and Pregnant", and that premiered in 2009. And that was a docuseries, kind of in the same mode as, like, "True Life," where it was, like, every episode was about a different teenage girl who got pregnant, and then it follows her pregnancy, and then often there's the partner, the boy, the boyfriend or the sometime boyfriend who's not pulling his weight and he's - they're both immature and then they have the baby at the end.
Now, "Teen Mom" and "Teen Mom 2" and every other part of the "Teen" franchise, those have been spun out of that. And in the case of "Teen Mom" one and two, they came out of those "16 and Pregnant" episodes. So they picked, like, five or six young girls or women, and they got their own series. And so with "Teen Mom 2," you know, it originally started with Jenelle, Chelsea, Kailyn, Leah. They are all from different parts of the country, and they are raising kids. And these - some of these kids now are about to turn into teenagers themselves or are teens. Like, this is how long I've been watching this show. And I've had to do a lot of soul-searching as to why A, I started watching it to begin with, and B, why I'm still watching it all these years later.
But I think what's kept me watching is I have become somewhat invested in these women's lives and how some of them have really been able to seem as though they've stepped up in many ways and they've found partners and found some happiness. And the show sometimes will deal with some very interesting issues in a reality show way but in a way that kind of feels relevant to what's going on. And it's just - it's a mess. And any show that, like, has Dr. Drew Pinsky as a, quote-unquote, "expert" to host the reunions they have every season, it's not a show to be trusted. I do think that, to some extent, they're exploiting these things.
One other final thing I will say is that it's really interesting to track these women and the - like, the side hustles they have. It very much kind of aligns with the Kardashian effect and, like, the era when we were - people started becoming famous for being parents. So like "Jon & Kate Plus 8," it kind of, like, came out in that same era, the rise of mommy blogs. And now all of these women have, like, fashion lines or, like, makeup lines, and they have their own podcasts, and they've turned being a mom into an entire...
HOLMES: Yeah.
HARRIS: ...Influencer pipeline. It's just so fascinating to me to watch that. It's similar to "The Kardashians" but on a different pay scale. I mean, they're not - they're getting paid, believe...
HOLMES: Right.
HARRIS: ...Me, but they're not getting paid - they're not Kardashians.
WELDON: Well, this is the thing because any time you watch any reality show, your feelings about it are a lot more complicated than it would seem on the surface. People who think - the people who watch "The Kardashians," you know, it's aspirational. It's not necessarily.
HARRIS: No.
HOLMES: No.
WELDON: And people who watch "Housewives" - it's aspirational. It's certainly not because the people are indulging into camp. But this is one of the reasons, Aisha. I had a question when I saw that on the prop doc because, I mean, you have said on the show several times that you do not plan on having kids. I didn't. I don't. I'm happy. And the last thing in the world I'd want to do is fill out my free time watching other people have kids...
HARRIS: Well...
WELDON: ...And interacting with kids. So are you watching the show just as a narrative that unspools, or are you relating it to your own life in any way?
HARRIS: For me, I think it's just I - it solidifies my decision not to have children. And, like, this doesn't look fun. Like, nothing about this looks fun. And...
WELDON: Yep...
HARRIS: ...I really want someone - I would love for someone to do a study of these kids 'cause I think this is the first generation of kids that has literally grown up on, like, having cameras in their face as long as they were sentient. And so I feel as though these kids have had cameras in their faces and been aware of, like, being recorded all the time since they were coming out of the womb. Like, and I - I'm very curious to see five, 10 years from now what they are like, and if there's, like, a study that can be done to sort of compare that to also Gen Z, who has basically grown up online as well. So I just think it's a really interesting, for lack of a better word, the cliche, like, social experiment that I would not wish on anyone, but I do find it entertaining, for better or for worse.
WELDON: No, for better or worse, I get that. Now, Stephen, you picked a scripted series, and I'm grateful for that because, spoiler alert, I also picked a reality series. And if we'd all picked a reality series, I think we'd be sending the wrong message because it's possible for terrible yet bingeable, you know, that's not the sole province of reality TV. There's plenty of lousy scripted television that you can't step away from. So, what's your pick?
THOMPSON: So what I ended up picking was a scripted series and a scripted dramatic series. Now, Glen, when you pitched your question to Aisha about, like, you're watching this during the height of Peak TV. Let's think about the shows that were on the air in 2016 and 2017 that I could have been watching other than every single episode of the ABC drama "Designated Survivor."
WELDON: Yep, you're the one.
THOMPSON: Which starred Kiefer Sutherland as a cabinet official who is, you know, set off in a remote location during the State of the Union address that the president gives, and there's a terrorist attack, and everyone is killed. And so Kiefer Sutherland becomes the president of the United States. And it's a compelling premise. It's a show that I thought would be a hit. It certainly had this kind of big pedigree behind it. The network was really behind it. It got a ton of promotion. The problem is that this show could go in a number of directions, right?
Like, it could be a government drama about process. It could be an FBI thriller. It could be a conspiracy thriller - right? - like, unraveling the mystery of how this happened. It could be kind of a police procedural. It could be "The West Wing." It could be a light kind of "Spin City"-style political comedy. You know what it chose to do? All of those things simultaneously. And it was a complete disaster. This show - which ultimately ran three seasons - two on ABC and then one more on Netflix - this show, in three seasons, had five different showrunners.
WELDON: OK.
THOMPSON: And the experience of watching the whole thing was, like, every few episodes, you would just imagine this game of telephone in which, like, a new person took over with no regard for what came before it and then just decided to completely redefine it in their own image, only to get sacked, like, six episodes later, at which point that process would start over again. There is a Wikipedia page for this show that is so thorough, just listing the dozens and dozens of characters who are, like, deeply entrenched in intrigue only to get written off or killed two episodes later.
Look - you look at the cast of this thing at - like, at one point, Aunjanue Ellis was on it. Like, there are all these, like, great people kind of just, like, coming and going and dropping off. Suddenly, it goes to Netflix and they're swearing. It is just, like, 14 different shows. It is completely inscrutable. If you asked me to describe, like, give some sort of summation of what happens over the course of 53 episodes, it would be completely impossible, and yet we watched every episode. We - it was like appointment TV. We didn't watch it, like, as it aired on network television with commercials and stuff, but we would stream every single episode, and it was bad.
WELDON: The phenomenon you're talking about here, Stephen, is that of the soap opera, is that of the comic book. It is a continuous ongoing narrative that must in itself constantly regenerate and reinvent itself. And that's why people keep watching soap operas. It's tell me a story. Tell me any damn story.
HOLMES: It also kind of sounds not that far off from, like, "Scandal." I mean, "Scandal"...
THOMPSON: Sure.
HOLMES: ...Was kind of all over the place, too, after season 2 or 3, and it was just ridiculous. And that's also another political kind of show in that way. Just super ridiculous.
THOMPSON: I do think there is something to be said for a show that is trying to do too much instead of a show that's not trying to do enough. And I think, in some ways, that kept us watching in ways that a show that was kind of repeating itself might have just kind of driven us away.
HOLMES: Sure.
WELDON: I mean, this is the phenomenon - we talked about this with the show "Revenge." It just kept getting bigger and weirder and stupider and more off the walls, and that in itself is compelling.
THOMPSON: "Revenge."
HOLMES: "Revenge" TM.
WELDON: All right. We're going to go back to reality with my pick, a kind of reality, in a way. This is a reality show called "Boy Meets Boy" from the year 2003. Just to put this in some kind of cultural context, that's one year after "The Bachelor" premiered. So there were a lot of imitations springing up and it premiered on Bravo. And again, to think of where Bravo was. This was two weeks to the day after "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" had premiered, but about a year before the launch of "Project Runway." So that's kind of where Bravo was at this cultural moment.
The premise - you take this basic-ass masc-for-masc guy named James. He is fit. He is conventionally attractive. He is facially symmetrical. He is square-jawed. He is a young, cis, white, gay man with dimples for days, but no discernible personality. I mean, this guy was every guy you'd see out at a bar in D.C. in 2003. He was a pair of capri pants made flesh. Not so much a snack as a bologna sandwich with a glass of tap water. That's this guy.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: That guy has to choose a boyfriend from a group of 15 men. He'll be helped in this endeavor by his friend Andra, who was very protective of him. Good for her.
She's staying with James in this amazing house in Palm Springs. The 15 dudes are staying in a different house in Palm Springs, and unbeknownst to James and Andra, some of those prospective suitors, seven out of 15 of them, are straight. So if, in the end, James chooses a gay man, they will win a cash prize and a trip for two to New Zealand because it's 2003, "Lord Of The Rings" - New Zealand, New Zealand, New Zealand. If he chooses a straight man, James wins nothing - the straight guy gets 25K. So...
HOLMES: Wow.
WELDON: But also, it's just insulting. I had notes, right?
OK, so from the jump, leave aside the ethical murkiness of the - of not revealing the premise to your people 'cause that is competitive reality TV. That's just baked in. Note also that there are straight men, and there are gay men, and that's it.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: I mean...
WELDON: It's 2003.
THOMPSON: Yes.
HARRIS: It was 2003.
THOMPSON: Everyone is...
HARRIS: Yes.
THOMPSON: ...One or the other.
HOLMES: That is true.
WELDON: Any acknowledgment of bisexuality, pansexuality, fluidity. There are two boxes, you will pick one.
HOLMES: Well, if you pick one of the straight men, there is no chance that he actually has any attraction to you or that there's anything genuine about the connection between you or anything like that because he is a straight man.
WELDON: The entire premise is jokes on you.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: So the producers, the gay producers, they felt they were doing good work.
HARRIS: It's the Black - what was that where the white guy pretended to be Black for - in the '60s and then...
THOMPSON: Oh.
WELDON: Oh, yeah, yeah. "Black Like Me."
HARRIS: It's, like, this is what it feels like.
HOLMES: Oh, "Black Like Me." Yeah, yeah, yeah.
WELDON: Yep, totally "Black Like Me."
HARRIS: But for gay men (laughter).
WELDON: Here is one contestant. This is Wes, who is making the point about how they are shattering stereotypes, and his confessional happens to be - just so happens to be intercut with footage of everyone out at a karaoke night.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BOY MEETS BOY")
WES CULWELL: There's always going to be stereotypes about gay men not being athletic, gay men not being masculine, and I think this show blows that out of the water.
WELDON: The smash cut. I live for the smash cut. It's like, yeah, we're out here shattering stereotypes. Have we got news for you. That's - so the producers were in on it, right? The producers knew exactly what they were doing. But look, the premise of the show was to prove that gaydar doesn't exist, that - in this crazy, mixed-up modern world. It's an antiquated notion - gaydar. It's reductive. Maybe it's even homophobic. That's their thesis, but they didn't argue it fairly because the producers, of course, it's reality TV, they stage every weekly elimination so that whoever James chose, there'd still be a mix of gay and straight men in the house. And if they really believed in their premise, they would let James choose whoever they wanted.
When they did tell him later in the season, you know, the producers had narrowed it down to three contestants - he reacted. And if the moment of his reaction had happened today, it would have been memed within an inch of its life, not because of his reaction, but because of his complete lack of one. You're going to hear a silence in this clip, a seven second silence. And I want you to realize that that silence contains nothing.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BOY MEETS BOY")
DANI BEHR: Of all three final mates, Wes, Brian and Franklin, one of them is straight.
JAMES GETZLAFF: Wow.
HOLMES: Did he say wow?
THOMPSON: Wow.
HARRIS: Wow.
WELDON: He said wow. And I am here to tell you that perfect, sculpted, vanilla pudding face of his does not move. There is nothing behind the eyes. They do not widen. They do not flash. They are lifeless eyes, black eyes like a doll's eyes. It is utter passivity. But let's get back to the whole notion of the show, OK? The organizing principle is that gaydar is not a thing. It's stereotypes. It's reductive. All gay men are different. Gaydar doesn't exist. Except for the fact that, b****, it so does.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: I tested myself. I invite the listeners. You can find the first episode of the show on YouTube. Episode 1, they come out of the house, and they introduce themselves to James one by one. And I haven't seen the show in 19 years, and I remembered nothing about it except how awesome the Palm Springs real estate is. They come out. And I checked my instant - like, instant takes against the Wikipedia page, which tells you who who is and what's what. And I'm here to tell you, I'm not lying, 15 for 15. But in the end, you'll be happy to know that he chose Wes, the gay guy from the clip who was talking about shattering stereotypes.
HOLMES: I thought you weren't going to tell me what happened. I was like...
WELDON: No. No, no.
HOLMES: ...What are you doing?
WELDON: So they won the money, but they did not take the trip to New Zealand together. They took it separately.
THOMPSON: Oh.
HOLMES: Oh. OK.
WELDON: It's bittersweet.
HOLMES: You know, it's possible that they just didn't want to commit themselves to one person at that moment, and you know why? Because it's raining men.
(LAUGHTER)
WELDON: That's right.
HOLMES: I rest my case.
WELDON: Well, we want to know what TV shows you begrudgingly watched to their conclusion. Find us at facebook.com/pchh. And that brings us to the end of our show. Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, Aisha Harris, thanks to all of you for being here.
HARRIS: Thank...
THOMPSON: Thank you.
HARRIS: ...You.
HOLMES: Thank you, Glen.
WELDON: This episode was produced by Rommel Wood and edited by Jessica Reedy. And Hello Come In provides our theme music, which we will all just sit here and listen to the very end. Thank you for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.
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