Extra Hot Great: This Week In TV

Over New Year's, we treated our Patreon supporters to a very important thought experiment: if 27 Smurfs entered Thunderdome to compete in battles to the death, who would be the last Smurf standing? Now, we are turning our minds to the same question...but with Muppets from The Muppet Show . Naturally, we had to bring in an expert to consider the question, which is why Adam Grosswirth of the Muppetu...

We're thrilled the third time was the charm for our guest Alison Herman, as we all dug into the pro-cooking kids' show from the Obama-tainment industrial complex, Waffles + Mochi . We talked about "variety" shows for children, whether Mrs. Obama is as stiff as Mochi is adorable, and supplemental tomato facts before going Around The Dial with Step Up: High Water , kid 90 , Allen vs. Farrow , Greek...

As part of the relaunch of CBS All Access as Paramount Plus, the original Season 1 cast of The Real World has reunited in their old Soho loft for a limited series, so we got back together with our former Real World recapper Kim Reed to discuss the series premiere! Also on the Paramount Plus tip, Tara also has to stress that she is not a crackpot for being irate that Oprah's interview with Harry an...

Brandon is back to talk about last weekend's Brutal Bridesmaids and its strange lack of bloodshed, plus ugly bridal fashion, an emergency male-stripper substitution, and realistic wedding-party cliques. We went Around The Dial with Close Enough , Punky Brewster 's reboot, Search Party , Murder Among The Mormons , and Dave's 911 Lone Star report before re-imagining legendary episodes of TV as Lifet...

After illness prevented her from making her earlier booking, LaToya Ferguson has returned to talk about another show she feels passionate about: The CW's Superman & Lois ! Is she all in on this latest iteration of the Man of Steel and his family? Listen and find out! Around The Dial takes us through It's A Sin , Cherries Wild , In & Of Itself , the full-throated endorsement of Firefly Lane...

Austin HQ had a water pipe burst on record day so we celebrate with two EEHG about other bad things in your house. EEHG 094: Dave Forces Everyone To Watch The 1974 Made For TV Movie Bad Ronald Bad Ronald lives in a hidden room in the house you just bought. What a weirdo! EEHG 096: Tara Forces Everyone To Watch Crawlspace When the search results for Bad Ronald included another TV movie called Crawl...

Fametracker's own Adam Sternbergh (oh, also the New York Times 's but whatever)(hee) is back to discuss The Equalizer , the perfectly acceptable re-imagining of the '80s classic. Whom on the panel did the new verzh win over with casting coups, origami tradecraft, and similarities to Leverage and Blindspot ? Who called it the three-camera sitcom of cop shows? And is anyone setting their DVR to watc...

With our intended guest and Firefly Lane expert LaToya Ferguson forced to bow out (we'll re-book her again ASAP!), your co-hosts muddled through on Netflix's new middlebrow book adaptation to the best of our ability. Around The Dial takes us through the late Quibi sitcom Mapleworth Murders , Hulu's Canadian import Jann , HBO Max's Danish import The Investigation -- and Borgen , with which it share...

Our esteemed colleague, "Pot Ledom"-ologist, and Long Island native Dan Rogge returns to analyze Edward Burns's thoroughly mediocre Bridge & Tunnel , about the post-college lives and loves of six suspiciously hot high-school friends...none of whom can seem to master the accent. A huge music budget (and equally large commitment to the sex scenes) can't make up for stilted dialogue, anachronisti...

Marvel Studios has kicked off its slate of TV series with WandaVision , a sort-of spoof of classic sitcoms starring a couple of Avengers. What's actually going on? We don't know (though Dave has theories), but Caroline Framke is here to talk about the two-part premiere! Around The Dial takes us through The Good Lord Bird , Call Your Mother , Season 2's new Batwoman , the Premier League of football...

The regular panelists had to forge ahead without esteemed colleague Kathryn VanArendonk in our discussion of Dickinson 's second season; that's the bad news. The good news is, we all like Apple TV's imagining of poet Emily Dickinson's life and loves with lots of swearing and twenty-first-century slang. How DOES the show balance the demands of historical fact with flights of fancy, and not take its...

We're off this week but we've glued together three episode forcening, uh, episodes from our Patreon supporter bonus podcast Extra Extra Hot Great. EEHG 076: Listener Forcening: The Big Bang Theory Patreon supporter Sharon Johnson had us watch The Big Bang Theory S07.E03: "The Scavenger Vortex," writing, "While I'm aware that it's not well thought of among the EHG family, BBT is one of my all-time...

To help get you through our holiday break, Tara wrote a special festive version of her fan-favorite (...is it?) Non-Regulation Game Time: it's Wrapping Paper Tube Tunes! Some original holiday songs from TV shows; some covers; all comfort and joy. Please enjoy this gift from us to you, and don't try to return it. TOPICS Game Time: 🎁 Wrapping Paper Tube Tunes NOTES 🗒 Full episode notes can be found...

Stephen King's 1978 novel has already been turned into a miniseries once, but it's time for this generation to get its own, apparently? So CBS All Access has made one, and Roxana Hadadi is joining us to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through The Flight Attendant , Celebrity IOU , TKTK, The Wilds , and Season 2 of The Mandalorian . Mlle. Caroline presents the Parks & Recreation episode...

First-time guest Kamille joins us for a conversation about Tiny Pretty Things , Netflix's new Center Stage -with-teens ballet thriller (?), and while she watched the whole thing, neither she nor the fulltime panel thinks it's good. But aside from the wretched VO, suspect acting, unwelcome parallels to 13 Reasons Why and decided un-Frenchness of cartoon villain Lauren Holly, is TPT a good time-wast...

Hulu and Canada's kids' broadcaster YTV have brought the world a new adaptation of the nearly-100-year-old boy detectives Frank and Joe Hardy, and we've enlisted Adam Grosswirth to join us in discussing it! A super-sized Around The Dial takes us through Selena: The Series , Nurses , Jingle Jangle , Dolly Parton's Christmas On The Square , the original '70s version of The Hardy Boys , and Gangs Of...

The panel is contemplating three user submissions for the Canon this week, starting with the extremely highly rated, extreeeeemely looooong series finale of MASH . Lindy makes a fascinating parallel between [ waves hands vaguely ] All This and the world MASH portrayed, but is the episode's status as a historical reference enough to earn it a medal of honor? Next, we're sampling a first-season Stra...

After 15 seasons on two networks, Supernatural has finally hunted its last monster, and our French friend Caroline Lefloch is joining us to bury the series finale in an unmarked, shallow grave. Around The Dial takes us through I Hate Suzie , Peacock's sequel to Saved By The Bell , Agatha Christie's Poirot , and new looks at the D.B. Cooper case in both History's Greatest Mysteries and HBO's The My...

It might not be Olivia Colman's highest-profile streaming series this week, but Apple TV+'s Becoming You , which explores how the first 2000 days of our lives shape our futures, is perfectly on-brand: expensive, gorgeously shot, and not quiiiiite essential. Omar returns to the guest chair to talk about the series' limited concept of diversity; whether the show made him miss his kids' first years;...

Perhaps you feel the 2020 holiday season should start a little earlier than may be strictly traditional? So does Netflix, as it brings us all Dash & Lily , in which a pair of adorable teens who've never met use a red notebook to challenge each other to dares all over New York City. Internet Boyfriend taxonomist Esther Zuckerman jumps over from Thrillist to talk about it! Around The Dial takes...

EHG's Dave and Game Time veteran Dan Cassino along with host Taylor Cole welcome Tara, Sarah and Mark Blankenship for a special crossover episode with The Great American Pop Culture Quiz Show ! Tara, Sarah and Mark battle it out in TV trivia modelled after a typical Extra Hot Great episode! We'll open with a new release for the week, go Around the Dial with a game about shows that change networks,...

What if Big Little Lies , but in New York City and with no point? That's kind of how Emily and the regulars all felt about The Undoing , the latest Nicole Kidman-David E. Kelley collaboration for HBO; we admired the workmanship, while not really understanding what sets it apart from BLL (besides the quality of the wigs), or buying Kidman and Hugh Grant's chemistry. Will any of us be successfully c...

Netflix's new import is a miniseries set in Franco-era Spain and revolving around a just-returned college grad and his Mexican ballerino friend. How does Lázaro's arrival tear the community apart (with lust)? Will Ellis joins us to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through Social Distance , The Conners , Selling Sunset , Australia's Next Top Model , and HBO's A West Wing Special . Will prese...

Disney+ and NatGeo decided to remake beloved '80s Mercury-astronauts epic (and earlier Tom Wolfe book) The Right Stuff as a series...and Adam Moussa decided to talk about it with us, a choice he may regret, because the four of us struggled to care. We struggled even to tell various astronauts apart, even, when we weren't wondering why this needed to be made, whether we should recommend For All Man...

Showtime's latest docuseries is a deep (maybe too deep) dive on L.A. comedy club The Comedy Store, and first-time guest Brandi Brown -- herself a comic -- is joining us to talk about it! Around The Dial takes us through Emily In Paris , Polar Bear's Café , and Paramount's doc I Am Richard Pryor . CoreyAH challenges us to cast the Hallmark Christmas movies of tomorrow, today! Then, after her succes...