AFT #138: ‘Louie’, ‘Mad Men’, ‘Halt and Catch Fire’, Ann B. Davis, ‘Game of Thrones’ and More

Joel and Jason are back from a week off, and they talk about the Louie "controversy", the Mad Men finale, Canadian TV, Halt and Catch Fire, Game of Thrones and more.

KC Bailey/FX
http://antennafree.tv/podcasts/Antenna_Free_TV_Podcast_138.mp3

Joel’s back from a “relaxing” vacation (spent in another country nursing a very injured thumb), and we’re back talking TV:

We start by talking about Jonah Hill’s apology tour and why it’s good to see but unfortunate he needs to do it in the first place (00:00 – 05:30),
Then we talk about Joel’s trip to Montreal and what he experienced watching Canadian TV. We also discuss the quality of current Canadian shows and why the Canadian networks license current American shows when most of the people in the country get American networks on their cable systems (05:30 – 14:05),
Then Joel talked about how he ripped open his thumb and the gross way in which it was fixed (we mark this one separately so the squeamish among us can fast forward through this) (14:05 – 15:35),
Then we talk more about what each of us did to pass the time last week and the odd Edward Snowden interview on NBC (15:35 – 20:40),
We then talk about the midseason finale of Mad Men, why it set the show up well for the final episodes in 2015, Robert Morse’s song and dance and why Matthew Weiner wrote it, and why Don Draper is redeeming himself even though it seems like his life is unraveling (20:40 – 36:45),
Joel caught the premiere of AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire, and the parallells to Mad Men are uncanny. Joel just wonders if the stakes are high enough (really? The “exciting” race to build an IBM PC clone?) to make for good drama (36:45 – 49:50),
Then we talk about the big battle on Game of Thrones last week and what it means for the fans and the final two episodes (49:50 – 54:30),
Then we discuss 24 a little bit, and then realize that Howard Gordon will have three active shows once Tyrant starts on FX (54:30 – 56:00),
We then marvel at how John Oliver is already killing it on Last Week Tonight, to the point where he crashed the FCC’s comment servers. And this is on a show that its host admits hasn’t really discovered itself yet (56:00 – 1:04:00),
Then we talk about two late-night cancellations: Arsenio Hall and Pete Holmes (1:04:00 – 1:14:25),
Orange is the New Black‘s second season will be on Netflix within mere hours, and we talk a little about where the show left off last season (1:14:25 – 1:16:55),
We don’t really go in depth about executive news, but we talk about Kevin Reilly leaving FOX because he was so in our faces with the whole “let’s ditch pilot season” thing (1:16:55 – 1:27:00),
Then we discuss the passing of Ann B. Davis and how she basically left show business after The Brady Bunch. We talk about how leaving the business for awhile after playing an role like that really helps people have a better perspective on being so known for it (1:27:00 – 1:40:05),
Finally, we talk about the conclusion of the “Elevator” arc on Louie and the very uncomfortable episode “Pamela Part 1.” We discuss why people need to separate Louis C.K. the writer/director/producer/comedian from Louie the character on his show, and why the uncomfortable scene with Pamela needs to be taken in context. Then again, people are likely taking the show way more seriously than Louie even is, which pretty much is par for the course when a show is deemed “important” by the internet criticism machine (1:40:05 – 2:11:32).

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