As You Know

We finally discuss everybody's favorite lovable Jewish-coded Alien Life Form, try to understand the comedy standards of the recent past, and ask whether or not it's actually good to end your show on a cliffhanger.

This week we're talking about everyone's favorite made-for-TV movie star, Columbo. With a run spanning over three decades we get to talk about everything from Steven Spielberg to The Crystal Method and get a surprise AYK all-star committing a murder. But most of this episode is just Columbo impressions.

We finally learn what that show they used to run ads for during the NBA playoffs is. It's Claws, the comedy-drama about South Florida nail salon workers getting involved in organized crime. Hank from Breaking Bad plays a bisexual southern gangster named Uncle Daddy. Other things also happen.

The twisted lapsed Catholic mind of Matt Ciani has made us watch the long-running religious anthology show Insight, which had many famous and cool contributors who we did not see or hear from. But we did get to look at a lot of paintings before seeing the story of a young couple embracing chastity.

We're turning the clock back to the 1950s, when rural programming dominated CBS and a collie named Lassie began a two-decade run as a cultural icon. What if we told you this show was surprisingly intense and then bizarrely experimental? And that Timmy never fell down a well but was threatened by an ape with a bomb?

Mmm whatcha say? Special guests Geoff and Audrey are joining us to talk about The O.C.? The goated teen drama? Well that sounds swell.

We enter the Tommy Westphall Universe to take a look at the acclaimed medical drama St. Elsewhere, which has one of the most famous finales ever and launched the careers of Howie Mandel, Ed Begley Jr., David Morse and some guy named Denzel Washington. Somehow this all results in boredom.

Ten years after the debut of Girls, we're still looking up what Lena Dunham said and we shouldn't have. Does the show about the daughters of wealthy people trying to enter adulthood in Brooklyn hold up? Were its myriad controversies worth arguing about? And most importantly: where is Lamby?

Disaster has struck As You Know studios. First of all, we had to watch Wife Swap, which was repulsive. But also we failed to coordinate which episodes we were watching. You would think the premise of this podcast (watch the first and last episodes of tv shows) would be quite simple, but it's not! This show got rebooted multiple times and Stephen has no sense of temporal reality! So the four of us...

"What's the deal" with Seinfeld? How does perhaps the most greatest sitcom of all time look when viewing its very unfinished feeling pilot? Is the finale brilliant or terrible? And what level of sociopathy do you really have to be at to find the show relatable?

It's Ian's 30th birthday and we got him the perfect gift: a discussion of Spike TV's greatest original series, Deadliest Warrior. Who would win in a fight between an Apache and a gladiator? What about a horde of zombies vs. three vampires? Some idiots slapped some ballistics dummies around to determine the answer on the network that brought us the Guys Choice Awards.

Matt's journey through cable detritus leads us to our first Discovery Channel reality series, Storm Chasers, which depicts a bunch of idiots spending four seasons trying to film the inside of a tornado.

Stephen's attempts to make Matt like animation continue with the beloved long-running series King of the Hill. How does the slice-of-life sitcom hold up after a decade off the air?

I'm not Johnny Knoxville, and welcome to podcast. Our first foray into non-narrative television covers Jackass, which has gone from nadir of culture to four-quadrant delight in two decades. Hear about our favorite stunts and our own adolescent Jackass moments, including Matt's several near-death experiences.

We return to the world of sitcom spin-offs and finally discuss Norman Lear with the iconic series The Jeffersons, a popular and transgressive show that nonetheless got a raw deal from the network.

It's time to discuss...[colossal sigh]...Party of Five, the wholesome family drama that launched the careers of Matthew Fox, Neve Campbell and Lacey Chabert. This was allegedly a beloved show, but did anything actually happen? Also remember when San Francisco was like this?

Our special guest and paranormal investigator Paul Vine (of Thimk) joins us for a long discussion of a truly iconic show: The X-Files. Ian gets to learn how many insane plotlines of the show really exist. And we get one of the steepest quality drop-offs between pilot and finale that we've ever covered.

As winter turns harsh we turn to the beach, as it's time to discuss possibly the most popular scripted series of all time: Baywatch. We watched 3 hours of glistening hard bodies so we could talk about them with you, so please slow-motion run, don't walk, to your podcast platform of choice.

We enter the dark web for the second "season" of AYK, armed with a new theme song and elite hacking skills as we discuss CSI: Cyber. Patricia Arquette won an Oscar right before this piece of shit premiered and (temporarily) killed the CSI franchise, but not before terrifying your grandparents with its tales of online baby auctions.

We return to the teen TV well with Kevin Williamson's iconic series Dawson's Creek, the horniest show in the world with the most meta ending we've covered so far--as well as the breakout roles for Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams.

We return to Gotham City for the cyberpunk future of Batman Beyond, a show with a theme song that still slaps and several instances of Batman definitely killing people. We also pause to talk about House of Gucci and wonder if Stephen will ever properly use the term "deus ex machina."

We have come back to the Prestige TV well to discuss one of the most acclaimed shows of the 2010s: The Americans. Can Travis score a rare podcast victory with a show that everyone likes? He may have to resort to espionage and disguise work to convince the cohosts.

We're winding the clock back to the 1980s to discuss the original Equalizer series. Before there was Denzel Washington and Queen Latifah, there as Wicker Man star Edward Woodward as a freelance...odds-evener? Every guy you've ever heard of was on this show at some point too.

Since we did a podcast series on all of Friday Night Lights, it was only a matter of time before we discussed Kyle Chandler's original starring role, Early Edition, where he gets tomorrow's newspaper today and has to prevent disaster. A show that somehow had four seasons and 90 episodes and fittingly had its finale air two weeks before it was supposed to. Bad Irish accents and Chicago stuff abound...

We're dialing it way back for our Halloween recording with TV Land favorite The Munsters--soon to be a feature film directed by Rob Zombie! This show only has three jokes repeated ad nauseam so we got sidetracked heavily. You'll get the gist of it.