Syndicated with Lesley and Ben

Th-Th-Tha-That’s All Folks! Syndicated is still running, but that concludes our season on adult animation! Moving away from the all the serious subject matter and existentialism of our previous picks, we’re covering something a little goofy for the end of season two, Mike Tyson Mysteries! Talking pigeons, gentlemen ghosts, auteur theory, tight comedy writing and a lotta lotta jokes about Cormac Mc...

Syndicated w/ Lesley and Ben is coming to the end of our second season and that means its time for another round of Staff Picks! This time, it’s Ben’s turn to talk about a problematic fave as we deep dive into the elaborate world building of Venture Bros. We get to talk about our favorite character designs, the charm of old animation, the beginnings of Adult Swim and Patrick Warburton. Not all com...

Sneople at the Movies co-host, ParaScience investigator and fashionable enthusiast of Dungeons and Dragons, Ezra Kaye joins us to talk about the runaway success of Critical Role and its animated adaption: The Legend of Vox Machina. Is it a prequel, a spin off, an adaption or a remake? We talk about the nature of adaptions and how to adapt a work with a very specific lore and feeling (Dungeons and...

Infinity Break Marketing Director and local 30 Rock enthusiast Jay is BACK and so are we to talk about Tuca and Bertie. It only seems fitting that Lesley and Ben cover Tuca and Bertie for their adult animated season since they got their start together analyzing Bojack Horseman! We talk about Lisa Hanawalt and Raphael Bob-Waksberg and their career growth, fawn over Steven Yeun and talk about the wi...

Jeff Martin returns to Syndicated with Lesley and Ben to bring us a show from the pits of hell, Ugly Americans. We talk about the Comedy Central show’s potential and how it ultimately missed its mark. Turns out Ugly Americans suffers from protagonist syndrome, but we still find time to applaud its character design and background animation. We talk about the minor tweaks we could make to this show...

It’s time for another Lesley Yates Staff Pick! Lesley suggests The Midnight Gospel to Ben and your two hosts talk about its unique format and psychedelic animation. Ben is awed by the puzzle box of trying to figure out how they sourced the audio from the interview with Duncan Trussell and Drew Pinsky and Lesley loves the original style and liquid animation of the show’s visuals. Plus, we talk abou...

Lesley and Ben are joined by our friend and Lesley’s fiance, Héctor Gonzalez to tackle our first Adult Swim show, THE first Adult Swim show, Home Movies. We talk about the charm of the show’s macromedia flash player animation, the hallowed days of Newgrounds, manga, Questlove’s theory of creativity, Ben’s confusion over Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the CW, the power of amateur artistic expression, the...

Your Mission, if you choose to accept it, is to listen to Lesley and Ben learn the ins and outs of Archer from our guest, Gabriel Dover! We talk about Archer’s creative version of continuity across its anthology format, the limited animation methods the show deploys, as well as character growth and sincerity in an otherwise zany and violent cartoon. Plus, we’d have failed in our duties if we didn’...

Lesley and Ben are flying solo this time and taking a trip to the moon! We’re covering Futurama - the Fox animated series that became a Comedy Central series that became a Hulu Original Series! We talk about voice actor equity in the wake of the John DiMaggio Bender news, although this episode was recorded before DiMaggio announced that he was going to join the cast of the show anyway. We take tim...

For this episode of Syndicated with Lesley and Ben, your hosts are taken to school by past guest Peter Vulfranc of These Days Are Ours to talk about Clone High, the one season MTV animated shows about the high school lives of clones of JFF, Abe Lincoln, Cleopatra, Ghandi and Joan of Arc. It’s a nostalgic ride as we talk about the jokes that don’t need to be made anymore, the art of background illu...

Lesley and Ben are resurrecting back from the dead with a new episode of Syndicated for the new year. We’re joined by OSTeam’s Max to talk about the hit Netflix animated action show, Castlevania. We talk about the show’s video game origins, the video game animated adaptions we’d love to see, the delineation between this Western adult animation and anime (including talks of an upcoming anime season...

Out of Arlen, Texas and into the vastness of space, Lesley and Ben are talking about Lesley’s staff pick, the interdimensional Adult Swim comedy, Rick and Morty. Lesley and Ben have very different reactions and experiences with the show, Lesley started watching more recently and loves the show, while Ben used to love the show and bailed after the McDonald’s Szechaun sauce incident shook his faith...

Lesley and Ben are hopping in the car and taking a quick drive down to Arlen, Texas, to talk about the 1997 Fox Animated Sitcom King of the Hill. We’re getting right into it with Ben’s first staff pick of the season and talk about everything from this show’s realistic politics to the silhouette principles of character design, suburban comedy and to Hank and Peggy’s weird neighbors. Plus, Lesley gi...

In our Season One Finale of Syndicated with Lesley and Ben, we invite Video Games Are Good’s Nate Hermanson to talk about his wonderful soccer boys. We talk about Apple TV+, why Nate says this show feels like a sports anime, workplace comedies that showcase management vs supervisors and bosses and the weird sports commercial origins of Ted Lasso himself. All of this and an examination of character...

For the second to last episode of our first season on Workplace Comedies, Lesley and Ben talk about America Ferrera for the second time in this series. Instead of the entry-level world of Superstore, we’re visiting the high stakes world of fashion in Ugly Betty. We talk about the show’s Columbian origins, how the world of fashion and fashion marketing has changed so drastically in only ten short y...

Lesley and Ben invite back Rachel Collins to talk about the oldest show we’ve covered for Synidcated, The Dick Van Dyke Show. We get to talk about the shows two comedic leads, Dick van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, the messy business of making politically groundbreaking comedy and the historic transition from vaudeville to television and how the vaudeville origins of the medium of television are stil...

It’s the workplace comedy to end all workplace comedies. No, not The Office, and no, this isn’t the end of the season. We’re covering 30 Rock. Sorry for making that so confusing. Lesley and Ben invite IB’s social manager, Jay, on to talk about 30 Rock - NBC’s smash hit and self-referential sitcom about the making of, well, NBC television. This is our fourth episode about the making of entertainmen...

Lesley and Ben take a break from talking with Jeff Martin, author and artist behind Hell, Inc, about a workplace comedy to talk about a workplace comedy with Jeff Martin, author and artist behind Hell, Inc! This time we talk about the seven-season Comedy Central hit Workaholics featuring three actors whose names are near-indistinguishable from their characters. It gives our crew a moment to talk a...

Lesley and Ben are thrilled to welcome workplace comedian Jeff Martin author and artist behind Hell, Inc to talk about the theatrical world of NewsRadio. We chat about playing jokes to the audience, laying the ground work for NBC’s critically acclaimed run of workplace comedies and the historic resumes of Phil Hartman, Maura Tierney, Stephen Root and Dave Foley. Where did you learn about Dave Fole...

Lesley and Ben are happy to welcome new staff officer Rachel Collins to the Syndicated basecamp as we talk about M*A*S*H, the long running eleven season war workplace comedy set during the Korean War. We talk about the undeniable stage presence and authorial edge of Alan Alda, the narrative complexities of running a sitcom for eleven years, M*A*S*H’s rotating cast of a dozen recurring actors and h...

Ben shows Lesley one of his favorite television shows, the short lived Starz original comedy Party Down about a group of caterers struggling to make it in Hollywood. We talk about the fantastic comedic power of Ken Marino and Jane Lynch, Rob Thomas’ little Easter eggs, and the weird pocket of 2010 celebrity on display in Party Down. We also talk about comedies with a note of melancholy at their co...

Lesley and Ben are on their own again to talk about the NBC ensemble comedy Superstore, about a group of employees of a big box chain struggling against an endless tide of customers and interpersonal drama. We talk about the suspicious lack of working class workplace sitcoms, our weird relationships to our workplace, Tom Hanks movies, and of course, Black Friday. All this and more as we cover Supe...

We’re joined by Chris Khatami (Spec Script) to talk about Better Off Ted, the biting satirical look at corporate office culture and product development. This is our first episode where we’re covering a workplace comedy set in an actual office, so there’s plenty of talk about cubicles, elevators and open office floor plans! The stuff you’ve subscribed to us for! For real, we talk about what used to...

We’re joined by Peter Vulfranc (TroubleShooters, These Days Are Ours) to talk about the Slings and Arrows, the Canadian television show about the inner workings of the New Burbage festival - a fictional Shakespeare festival staffed and captained by all sorts of artistic egos and one, very real, ghost. We watched Season 2, Episode 4: “Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair.” We talk about ensemble casts, th...

STAFF PICK: Who doesn’t love television about television? Lesley and Ben explore Ben’s staff pick, The Larry Sanders Show, an HBO produced show about the making of the fictional Larry Sanders Show - a 90s talk show. We talk about Letterman and Leno, the rise and subsequent fracturing of the Late Night market and compare and contrast plenty with 30 Rock. We admire Rip Torn’s weird face, talk about...