EP. S2E47 — Mega Mid-Year TV Roundup w/ Jason Mantzoukas

Ashley Ray [00:00:29] Welcome to TV, I Say with Ashley Ray–your go-to podcast for discovering what to watch on TV and getting behind the scenes insight from the people who make the shows you love. Today on the show, I’m joined by one of my favorite past guests–a friend of the pod at this point. He came on last December to reveal his underrated TV hits of last year. And now he’s back to talk about our favorite hits for halfway through 2023 because there’s been so much TV. You’re missing a lot of things. So welcome to Jason Mantzoukas. He is back to talk about his favorite shows. I don’t think I even need to introduce you.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:01:01] You don’t even– You can just completely abandon the intro. Let’s go. We’ve got a lot to talk about.

 

Ashley Ray [00:01:09] Right? Do you need me to say, like, “A comedian, blah, blah blah”?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:01:11] No. No. There is more important things than my credits.

 

Ashley Ray [00:01:17] Yeah, come on. I do want to remind you listeners; you can still donate to the WGA. We are still on strike.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:01:23] Yes.

 

Ashley Ray [00:01:24] So if you want to donate to Hollywood crew members in need, please hit up the Entertainment Community Fund. That’s entertainmentcommunity.org–and more important than Jason’s credits.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:01:32] We’re going to be talking about a lot of incredibly well-written shows, many of which–if not most–fall under the WGA. We are both striking. We are out there on those lines, supporting the strike.

 

Ashley Ray [00:01:46] You were at Netflix this week, I think, with the Big Mouth team.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:01:49] I was with the Big Mouth group. The animation day at Netflix.

 

Ashley Ray [00:01:53] Yeah. Netflix is Rowdy. It’s the rowdiest place to go strike.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:01:59] It’s pretty good.

 

Ashley Ray [00:02:01] That’s the one I tell people, “It’s kind of a party.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:02:02] Yeah. Yeah.

 

Ashley Ray [00:02:04] So how have you been? There’s been so much TV this year. You feeling overwhelmed?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:02:08] You know, I am feeling overwhelmed. I will say, like, I approach television now like it’s part of a job I’m doing. Like, I have a list, and I keep a list–a list of things to watch. And I keep up. Like. When I was preparing to talk to you, I just consult my media diet list–which is everything that I watch I write down. But there now comes along with it all a degree of anxiety about, like, “Oh no, I still have X number of episodes of such and such.” I’m also a completist. So, if I watch enough of a thing–even if I’m not enjoying it that much–I have to finish.

 

Ashley Ray [00:02:50] I have to finish it, which is why I finished the last three episodes of Duncanville, which aired eight, nine months ago.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:02:57] Oh, wow.

 

Ashley Ray [00:02:58] Finished it last week. I was like, “Oh my God, there’s still three episodes I didn’t finish.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:03:01] Oh my gosh.

 

Ashley Ray [00:03:02] So, Fox’s Duncanville–had to get it done.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:03:05] Yeah, you gotta check that box. And I find I find now TV and some other stuff–comics and some other things–that operate in that same world now is something that gives me so much joy but also a degree of constant stress and anxiety such that I’m like, “Well, I’m not really in the mood for this right now, but I gotta watch it–two full episodes of it–because otherwise I’m going to fall too far behind. Whatever it is.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:03:32] Yeah, just this week I realized I totally forgot Dark Side of the Ring Season Four premiere was three days ago. I had no idea. I was like, “How did I miss this?”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:03:43] Worst will be sometimes I’ll tune into something, and I’ll be like, “Oh, has such and such come out yet?” And not only has it come out–the full season has. So suddenly there’s 12 hours of something that just now demands that I start watching it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:03:58] Yeah, that was for me Rise of the Pink Ladies on Paramount+.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:04:02] Oh, gosh. Yeah, I didn’t get into it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:04:05] You were into this Grease prequel?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:04:08] I wasn’t into the Grequel.

 

Ashley Ray [00:04:09] Yeah, the Greasequel. It. It won me over.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:04:14] Did it? Wow.

 

Ashley Ray [00:04:14] I’m on their side. Like, I love those girls now. Like, they’re my sisters. I need 80,000 seasons of the show. But by the time I realized it was going, I was like, “Oh, there’s just fully, like, ten episodes out.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:04:27] Are we just now in full on 2020s nostalgia for the ’60s and ’70s nostalgia for the ’50s? Like, we’re now multiple steps fully removed from all of that.

 

Ashley Ray [00:04:45] Yeah. I’m like, “I just want three streaming things, and I want them to tell me what’s on TV from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. every night. And that’s all I want.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:04:55] It is exhausting–just going through stuff to talk about. And then, because I know you, you watch a tremendous amount of stuff. And you also are incredibly present tense about what you’re watching. Rise of the Pink Ladies being a perfect example. But how often are you picking up and engaging in something from the past or something that someone is like, “You know what? I think you would like…” You know, like, let’s just say, for example, you’d never seen Lost.

 

Ashley Ray [00:05:28] I’ve never seen Lost.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:05:30] Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay. Now, will you engage in something–a show like that–knowing there’s a lot of it, there’s a lot of it to get through, and there’s a whole discourse around it? Or is that, like, just too much work?

 

Ashley Ray [00:05:46] Yeah, some of it, I’m like, “I missed the boat.” Like, there’s too much. Lost is one of the ones where I’m like, “I missed the boat. I’m not part of the conversation.” That article just came out that was like, “Oh no, actually it was all evil.” So, I’m just going to stay away. But then there’s, like, The Sopranos where that one I’ll get to, you know? But that’s, like, the treat. It’s like I wait for that two weeks out of the year when everything’s on hiatus, there’s nothing new, and I look around and am like, “I can finally watch this.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:06:17] So you’ll schedule that kind of a show, then? Okay, okay. Got it. Because I also find the thing that is killing me is I get so excited to dig into shows from the past, some of which I’m rewatching once again. You know, your West Wings, your Gilmore Girls…

 

Ashley Ray [00:06:36] Oh, yeah. I’ve been rewatching Gilmore Girls.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:06:39] Oh, yeah. Always. I’m always rewatching Gilmore.

 

Ashley Ray [00:06:41] Always. Always that, 30 Rock–they’re always just constantly playing somewhere in my house.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:06:48] But it really then becomes a competition for: “Oh, there’s a new episode of blank that I’m watching, and I’m so excited. But I also am, like, six seasons deep into Doctor Who, and I have–I don’t know–12 more seasons to go. So do I need to knock a couple of those out?”

 

Ashley Ray [00:07:07] Yeah. It’s difficult to balance. And as a TV expert, I work with a strict calendar. I try to keep certain genres to certain times and days. Documentaries–a lot of listeners might know I do my documentary weekends, where I try to binge everything that was, like, Investigation Discovery, or this new Amazon Prime doc that came out about the Duggar family.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:07:32] Now, I wonder because for me, I… And it sounds like you do something that I do as well, which is certain types of shows or programming is relegated to certain times of day.

 

Ashley Ray [00:07:46] Oh, yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:07:46] Like, “This is a day show,” versus, “Oh no, I’m going to wait to watch one of my favorite shows in primetime or what I consider primetime.” But if I’m just going to burn a couple of episodes of, you know, an HBO doc or something like that, I’ll do it during the day.

 

Ashley Ray [00:08:06] That’s like a chore–folding clothes–in the background hearing, like, “When they cut her face in pieces. And it’s like, “Okay. That’s fine.” I would say, though, The Curious Case of Natalia Grace is a doc that came out this week. It’s six episodes. And it’s the new, like, Abducted in Plain Sight. It is the new doc that is going to, like, capture the world because it is so, so crazy.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:08:31] What’s it on?

 

Ashley Ray [00:08:32] It’s on Max and Discovery+ and maybe Hulu if you have Hulu with live TV. But it is about this little girl

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:08:44] Probably FUBU and Tubi.

 

Ashley Ray [00:08:44] Probably on Tubi, Pilot, PTV, Murder TV…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:08:49] “Murder TV.” Is there a channel called “Murder TV?” Please. If not, like, let’s start it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:08:55] Yeah. I would bet there’s a murder TV. But Natalia Grace–she was this girl who was adopted, and she had, like, all these genetic disorders that made her, like, grow differently. She was a little person. It was very hard to tell how old she was. And the family that adopted her was like, “She’s six.” And then all of a sudden, they were like, “Hold up. This little girl’s not a little girl. She has a period. She’s clearly, like, 22 years old. We’re getting her re-aged.” They go to court, have a doctor’s note that’s like, “Yeah, this girl’s 22,” and get the girl re-aged. And so, they’re like, “She’s 22. She lied to us.” They get her an apartment, and they’re like, “Peace. Live your life.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:09:39] How long had she lived with them?

 

Ashley Ray [00:09:42] She had lived with them for two years at this point.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:09:44] Oh, so not very long. Okay.

 

Ashley Ray [00:09:46] Not very long.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:09:47] But also two full years is… That’s a long time. But it wasn’t like they’d spent, like, ten years– Okay. Got it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:09:54] And before that she hadn’t been with her family for long. She had been bounced between all of these different orphanages because she came from Ukraine. So, you know, the first two episodes of the doc, you’re like, “This family. Oh no. Oh, goodness.” And then you realize, like, they interview the people who were around her when she was living on her own, and they’re like, “So it was weird because she wrote like a child and she talked like a child and she played like a child. And she didn’t know how to do laundry or cook or do anything. And I think she is a child.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:10:26] What?

 

Ashley Ray [00:10:27] And then they slowly reveal that this family lied to get her re-aged and the whole time she was legitimately a child.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:10:36] No!

 

Ashley Ray [00:10:37] Yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:10:38] Ashley, what are you telling me?

 

Ashley Ray [00:10:40] She was a child. They left her alone in an apartment. She was ten years old.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:10:42] Wait, so the villains… This isn’t: “She’s a scammer.” They’re the villains.

 

Ashley Ray [00:10:49] But then the popular story in the media was just, like, “She scammed them. She forged documents. She’s a bad person. “They made that movie, The Orphan, which was, like, about an adult girl who gets adopted and murders people. And everyone was like, “That’s her. See? She’s evil.” And then the family she’s been with now has lived with her for ten years, and they’re like, “She’s a kid. Like, she’s clearly 17 years old.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:11:14] Oh my God. Oh my God. That is chilling.

 

Ashley Ray [00:11:19] Yeah. And that documentary–three nights–they did two episodes a night. Totally messed up my TV schedule this week.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:11:28] That sounds wild.

 

Ashley Ray [00:11:29] Yeah. I can’t stop thinking about it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:11:34] Yeah, of course. That’s really…

 

Ashley Ray [00:11:37] Yeah. So that’s at the top of my watch list.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:11:39] I don’t like any of that. That is tough stuff.

 

Ashley Ray [00:11:43] And the adopted dad is in the documentary… It is one of the most insane performances in a documentary since we got the Fyre Fest doc, where that guy was like, “I almost sucked dick for water.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:11:59] Oh, God.

 

Ashley Ray [00:11:59] This is beyond that level. Like, he doesn’t realize for so much of it, he’s on camera. And he’ll be like, “If you want me to do a tape crying, let me do it again.” And it’s just like, “Bro.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:12:16] We really are in a period of time–both societally and in what we watch–of, like, big villains. Like, we now are just surrounded everywhere you look by villains–people who are exhibiting overt villainous behavior. And that’s wild. That’s a wild place to be in–to look around and be like, “At every level, systemically, we are surrounded by mustache-twirling villains who aren’t even interested in covering it up–who are just like, ‘No, no, no, I’m enjoying this.’”

 

Ashley Ray [00:12:59] They show these lawyers, like, working on the case and being like, “Look at that girl dragging a trash can. She has to be an adult.” And it looks like a child struggling with a trash can.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:13:06] Oh my God. Can you imagine you’re a kid who comes from Ukraine and, like, this is what…? I mean, like, this is crazy.

 

Ashley Ray [00:13:15] Don’t worry. They interview the birth mom, so…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:13:17] Oh, wow.

 

Ashley Ray [00:13:18] I don’t want to spoil it. No spoilers on TV Club.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:13:21] No spoilers.

 

Ashley Ray [00:13:22] Yeah, but that’s the top of my list.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:13:24] Yikes.

 

Ashley Ray [00:13:25] I want to dig into your list. I believe the listeners probably, for this episode, don’t care about what I’m watching. They want to know what you’re watching.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:13:33] Oh, no. You know what, though, Ashley? I care about what you’re watching because you are watching stuff like this docuseries you just said that don’t get on my radar. So, please let me know. I want to hear your list.

 

Ashley Ray [00:13:48] It’s just my mom and I watch Investigation Discovery. That doesn’t get to everybody.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:13:53] Well, now that it’s Maxed out–now that it’s Maxified.

 

Ashley Ray [00:13:55] Now that there’s no borders between cable channels anymore, we’ll see what happens. But I like what you said about watching certain shows during certain times of days because for me, if I hadn’t been watching this documentary for days, it would have just been a lot of adult animated shows because I like to watch those during the day and the morning. Like, starting my breakfast with Bob’s Burgers…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:14:21] Bob’s Burgers, Great North…

 

Ashley Ray [00:14:27] And I know you don’t want to see your own horn here, but HouseBroken.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:14:31] Oh, yeah. HouseBroken. Absolutely

 

Ashley Ray [00:14:33] I’m loving. HouseBroken.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:14:35] Oh, I’m so glad. That’s great.

 

Ashley Ray [00:14:37] It just seems like everyone is having the most fun voicing characters.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:14:40] It’s a blast. It’s a blast. I mean, the cast is, like, all murderers, you know? Sharon Horgan, Tony Hale, Sam Richardson, Nat Faxon, Clea DuVall…

 

Ashley Ray [00:14:53] Maria Bamford.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:14:54] Yes! One incredible performance after another. It’s great. It’s a super fun show. Those table reads are hilarious. We do them all on Zoom. And it’s, like, everybody in their little boxes, just screaming those crazy voices at each other. It’s very funny. I love that show. It’s great.  You know, I’m so glad it’s now in the Sunday night Fox lineup.

 

Ashley Ray [00:15:16] Yeah, it’s in the official lineup. I felt like that first season, I was screaming at people to realize it was on. And now people are like, “Oh, yeah. It’s that show that comes on with The Great North and Bob’s Burgers. And I’m like, “Yeah. See?”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:15:29] I will say that’s the thing that’s really hard, too, because I’m also a voice for a character on Star Trek: Prodigy, which is an animated show–one of the animated Star Trek shows–that skews a little younger. The characters are all teenagers. It’s an incredible show. It’s beautifully animated. Great young people. Adventure storytelling. It’s a blast. It looks great. It’s tied into all of the Star Trek mythology and canon and all that stuff. But because it lives on Paramount+ and not everybody has Paramount+, it really exists in a space where I feel like it doesn’t get enough attention. I feel like HouseBroken needed to be in that Sunday night Fox lineup to get the eyeballs.

 

Ashley Ray [00:16:16] Animation domination. Come on.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:16:18] Yeah. There’s all these shows that I feel like are incredible but are not well serviced by the service that they’re on. You know/

 

Ashley Ray [00:16:27] And one of those, I think–and it was on the list that we have compiled for you–is Digman! Have you been watching that?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:16:36] Digman!–incredible. Love Digman!

 

Ashley Ray [00:16:38] It’s so funny.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:16:38] Incredible first season. Neil Campbell-created show, who’s a Brooklyn Nine-Nine writer and a super funny UCB guy. You know, great writer. Andy Samberg.

 

Ashley Ray [00:16:51] Mitra Jouhari. Just an incredible cast. And then it’s on Comedy Central, and my friends are just like, “I don’t even know how to watch Comedy Central anymore.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:17:00] Yes! You know, because I’m 50 and still have cable, I’m watching it. But everybody I tell–I’m like, “Hey, are you watching Digman!?” They’re like, “Wait, I didn’t even know that was on. Where is it?”

 

Ashley Ray [00:17:12] How do I get to it?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:17:12] And I was like, “It’s on Comedy Central.” And they were like, “How do I get to that?”

 

Ashley Ray [00:17:16] “Is there still a Comedy Central app?” Kind of?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:17:19] It’s a mess. It’s a fucking mess.

 

Ashley Ray [00:17:22] And I have Hulu with live TV, so I was able to see it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:17:25] Oh, okay.

 

Ashley Ray [00:17:26] But we only get the episodes for a certain amount of time, I guess, because now every time I open, it’s like, “Digman! is leaving in a week.” And I’m just like…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:17:33] That’s infuriating. The process now is infuriating almost on every level. And how proprietary all these companies are means Apple TV won’t let Netflix have any of their stuff. So, you really have to… For a passive experience–to sit back, relax, and watch your shows–you have to be so much more active now than ever before.

 

Ashley Ray [00:18:02] How are you feeling about the shift to Max? Have you been diving into Max?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:18:08] You know, I haven’t as much. You know, I downloaded it because I’m watching Doctor Who–like I mentioned–but also because the new season of one of my absolute favorite comedies, The Other Two, has started Season Three.

 

Ashley Ray [00:18:21] And they made you download Max to get the next episode of The Other Two. And I was like, “You got me.” And you had to watch the new episodes of Clone High. So, I was like, “Fine. I’ll get Max. I’ll do it. And I hate it.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:18:35] “And I’m annoyed.” I’m absolutely annoyed. I think it’s absolutely absurd. The UI is ridiculous. Although HBO Max’s UI was also terrible and crashed constantly.

 

Ashley Ray [00:18:47] But now it’s like, “You’re crashing, and you’re also putting, like, MILF Island in front of me? Please.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:18:55] It’s a mess. It looks like a cacophony of nonsense. I look at all the tiles that are up there, and I’m like, “Is this for me, or is this just ‘here are random shows!’”

 

Ashley Ray [00:19:10] “Here’s a thing we made. Here’s what Zoe’s Deschanel eats.” And I’m like, “So that’s the thing? That’s the show?”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:19:14] Because everybody now has a show about what they eat and where they go.

 

Ashley Ray [00:19:20] And some of them I watch. You know, Padma Lakshmi–I could watch her go anywhere AND eat anything.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:19:25] Forever and always. One of the greats.

 

Ashley Ray [00:19:27] One of the best. Chillin Island? Don’t know that I needed to see the…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:19:33] I don’t know what that is.

 

Ashley Ray [00:19:34] It was, like, the rapper from Das Racist–the group that was popular in 2012.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:19:40] Yeah. Sure.

 

Ashley Ray [00:19:40] It was the hype man–the guy who didn’t rap. It was him and his other friend, who was a failed rapper, traveling. And it was just kind of like, “Why are we following them?”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:19:55] I watched a bunch of the Eugene Levy one–the thesis of which seemed to be: “Eugene Levy doesn’t like to travel.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:20:01] Yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:20:03] And I was like, “What a bold step? What a bold move to be like, “I really would rather be home. But here I am. I don’t want to be here.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:20:12] And now there’s one with Rainn Wilson where the whole concept is just like, “He loves to travel. He’s so happy about it. That’s the whole show.” So, let’s get to one on your list. You started with The Other Two. I want to talk about it because I think it’s the best comedy out right now.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:20:38] It is.

 

Ashley Ray [00:20:39] And this season is killing it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:20:40] This season is incredible. They started with a great show, but every season has leveled up to a degree that I really feel like this is really one of the best comedies of the last bunch of years. It’s a show that I find really dials in a tone that is so difficult to do, and they’re doing it so nimbly and so effortlessly, which is they are careening between absolute absurdity and crazy jokes–really funny, outrageous jokes–and then in the next scene, truly a heartbreaking, emotional moment that lands, that isn’t sold out by a joke, that isn’t… They are allowing these characters to exist both emotionally true to themselves, so you are on board for that journey. But then they are also letting them just be buffoons. You know? Heightened, heightened extremes that are deeply funny.

 

Ashley Ray [00:21:45] Yeah. I feel like this season has been the season of Cary, the gay villain. I’ve loved seeing Cary just slowly, slowly break down and lose every principle and moral.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:21:55] And all of it because the thing that’s driving him towards it is he’s in a relationship with an actor who’s method so remains in character all the time. So, each episode. His boyfriend is in a new project. So, in a bunch he’s, like, a Christmas virgin or something like that. It’s so funny.

 

Ashley Ray [00:22:21] AIDS play might have been my favorite episode.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:22:24] Oh, my God. The AIDS play thing was so funny. But again, that’s a perfect example. The absurdity of that bit and then the real emotion that is happening for, like, Brooke and Lance, which is you’re watching Brooke blow her incredible relationship up.

 

Ashley Ray [00:22:44] I’m glad to hear you’re a fan of Lance, too.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:22:46] Oh, the best. What a great performance. What a great character. Incredible.

 

Ashley Ray [00:22:54] So good.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:22:56] That actor I also liked in She-Hulk as well.

 

Ashley Ray [00:23:00] Oh, yeah. He was really good in that. When he is Lance, I just can only see him as Lance. He is so Lance.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:23:07] Well, it’s also, like, iconically… It’s such an iconic character in that show–a singular character in that show. And maybe I’m wrong, but I also feel like it’s one of the first times I saw him. So, Lance is really baked into how I see that actor… for better or for worse.

 

Ashley Ray [00:23:25] Yeah. And I think when he’s introduced on The Other Two, you think he’s going to be made fun of–you think he’s not going to, like, be around for long. You’re like, “Okay, this is just, like, the guy that is dumb–they make fun of.” And by Season Three, he’s the family.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:23:41] He is the heart. He is literally the heart of that show. He’s the heart of the show in a way that is so compelling and so wonderful. The show is fantastic. And I mean, this is a show in which… I mean, Molly Shannon’s in this show, Ken Marino’s in this show. Every episode has guest stars that are home runs. It’s a great show.

 

Ashley Ray [00:24:01] I could talk about it all day. Every single performance, I’m like… Oh, and when Ken does…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:24:04] Oh!

 

Ashley Ray [00:24:05] But there’s still so much TV to talk about. Okay, what’s next on your list? What do you got?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:24:10] What else do I got? I mean, while we’re in the half hour, comedy, sitcom space, I’ll shout out Season Three of Party Down.

 

Ashley Ray [00:24:20] Heck, yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:24:20] That came out earlier in the year. Also, absolutely gangbusters–jokes, jokes, jokes. Loved it. So funny.

 

Ashley Ray [00:24:29] So far for me, I think the best reboot I’ve seen. It was like no time had been lost. It was just as fresh, just as funny, just as tight.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:24:38] And I really liked that the time that had passed since the last season… I don’t know. What was it? Ten years ago, or something? I don’t know when Party Down was. Ten years ago, probably? I liked that they picked right up, dialed right back into Party Down–the architecture of Party Down–but they let all of the characters have growth and emotional stuff. And they let everybody get to a place where now they could play different colors in different tones. And that, I thought, was great. It wasn’t just: “Here’s more of the same.” It was: “What if all these characters had grown in these ways in the last ten years, but we plugged them straight back into the format,” which was great.

 

Ashley Ray [00:25:21] Everything with Henry teaching just hit perfectly for me. And another one where I’m kind of like, “It being on Starz? How do I even get Starz now?” I totally forgot about that network, and I just got it for a Party Down.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:25:40] Yeah, there’s been a bunch of shows that I’ve engaged with the platform or gotten a service simply to watch that one show.

 

Ashley Ray [00:25:48] Just one show. And I’m like, “You’re canceled in a month and a half.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:25:52] Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the other one that was like that–because I also had to get Starz for the Party Down–was one of my dad’s TV shows, which was Steven Knight’s SAS: Rogue Heroes.

 

Ashley Ray [00:26:05] No idea what that is.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:26:07] Yeah! That’s right. Oh, what a treat that I can say something that you’ve never heard of. That’s truly rare.

 

Ashley Ray [00:26:14] What is it? And what is it on?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:26:15] Steven Knight made Peaky Blinders. He did the most recent Great Expectations that was on Hulu. He did a series… This is, like, in my full-on dad TV… Justified. Slow Horses; loved that new season. Bosch. Bosch: Legacy. All the dad stuff I watch SAS: Rogue Heroes is a World War II series that’s basically about the creation of the SAS, which is British Special Forces.

 

Ashley Ray [00:26:43] Okay.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:26:45] And so it’s Steven Knight’s version of a war story. So, it’s, like, desert combat, charming rejects, who all are getting drummed out of the military, who all get brought together because of their exceptional weirdness makes them great at kind of guerilla warfare style stuff. And the needle drops are all like, “And here’s some AC/DC,” It’s all incongruous music for a blast of a show. And I say that even though the latter half of the season has some of the worst fake beards I’ve ever seen in history.

 

Ashley Ray [00:27:23] Yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:27:24] Like, so much so that I was like, “I don’t care if the real men had beards. If these guys can’t have beards, don’t have beards.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:27:31] “Take the beards off.” I love that. Okay. What platform is it on?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:27:37] Oh, I think I had to download, like, Epix for it or something like that. I had to download another whole thing for it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:27:44] Epix is… I don’t know. I thought they were doing comedy. I know they put out, like, a Wanda Sykes comedy special a while ago.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:27:51] Oh, wow. They also did a show that I loved a couple of years ago that only ran for one season, but it was a great season. And it was Steve Conrad’s show, Perpetual Grace Ltd.

 

Ashley Ray [00:28:06] I didn’t see that one.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:28:07] Okay. Did you watch Patriot on Amazon? The Steve Conrad Show, Patriot? So, it’s a great, like… That’s one of my favorite shows of the last 15 years.

 

Ashley Ray [00:28:17] That sounds like a dad show.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:28:18] It’s a total dad show.

 

Ashley Ray [00:28:21] Patriot? Yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:28:22] Yeah. It’s about a guy who’s a CIA agent, whose handler is his father. And it’s split between a spy craft show because he’s having to do this CIA mission, but the way that he has to do it is he gets put undercover in an industrial pipe company as an employee of an industrial pipe company, so that he can travel with that company legally to countries and go and kill people and do operations in Luxembourg and all these places that this company has business. The company doesn’t know he’s a CIA agent. And so, part of the show is like an office place comedy where he’s pretending to know about industrial piping. And part of it is a brutal, stressful spy craft show. It’s a blast.

 

Ashley Ray [00:29:16] I would watch this.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:29:17] It’s a phenomenal show. There’s two seasons.

 

Ashley Ray [00:29:20] Yeah, I would watch this.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:29:21] It’s a great show. And then after that show gets canceled, Steve Conrad does another show called Perpetual Grace Ltd that’s very similar–uses all of the same cast. It’s, like, a down and dirty crime story, except he adds to the incredible cast Sir Ben Kingsley, Jacki Weaver, Jimmi Simpson. The cast is nuts.

 

Ashley Ray [00:29:40] Okay.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:29:41] And it’s a crime story, like, on the southern border.

 

Ashley Ray [00:29:45] How did they get this budget?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:29:46] I know. And it’s expensive. It looks expensive. It’s crazy. It’s great. These are not recent shows.

 

Ashley Ray [00:29:51] Amazon Prime Video–they’re spending billions out here, and they’re not pulling this off.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:29:59] I don’t need billion-dollar Lord of the Rings franchises. Don’t need it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:30:02] I don’t need the Wing of Time or the Wheels of Time or whatever it is.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:30:06] Yes, I don’t need that either. You know what? Give us another season of Paper Girls, you fools.

 

Ashley Ray [00:30:11] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my producer is saying Epix is now MGM+… maybe… he thinks.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:30:17] Ooh. Okay. So, I bet it’s there.

 

Ashley Ray [00:30:19] Maybe check out the MGM+ app.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:30:22] Yeah. Oh, boy. Why? What the…?

 

Ashley Ray [00:30:25] It’s so much.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:30:26] I’m sorry. Those were both old recommendations. But SAS: Rogue Heroes is a new one. Also, I love Peaky Blinders. I’ll throw another thing out there that’s not an old show. It’s a new show that I absolutely adored, but it very much scratches an old itch for me. And that was Poker Face.

 

Ashley Ray [00:30:44] Poker Face was amazing. I loved Poker Face.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:30:48] I loved every element from it because it felt like TV from when I loved watching TV as a young person. It felt like old episodes of Magnum P.I. or Rockford Files or Columbo, especially. That kind of case of the week detective rooting around in a small town. It felt like Columbo meets the old Incredible Hulk series. You know, traveling town to town.

 

Ashley Ray [00:31:16] I miss shows where it’s like, “They have a skill. We don’t know why, but you just trust the skill.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:31:23] I loved it. And I loved that it wasn’t so heavily serialized. You know, as much as I love all of our longform storytelling TV narratives that we now, like, exist inside of and spend all of our pontificating, and “Who’s that?” and “What do you think about this?” and “Do you think they’re going to go here next or there next?”–and all of the discourse around so many of these shows, especially these big IP shows. I love a show where it’s like, “She drives into a town, meets somebody… Or actually, first somebody gets killed, then she arrives and meets somebody, and then a friendship is born. And now she has to solve the case.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:32:08] You keep waiting for the moment it’s like, “Oh, this is when she’s going to stay in a place.” And there were so many guest actors where I was like, “This person is so amazing. There’s no way they’re just going to kill them off.” And then they do.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:32:20] Nope. “See you later.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:32:21] I love that. Like, let’s bring back TV with real stakes, okay?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:32:25] I agree. 100% because, I mean, I think it’s really fun to just be inside of her world and not have to worry about, like, “Oh, we’re also tracking these three other people.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:32:39] “And their stories or, like, her history or ‘What’s her relationship with her mother? And how’d she end up–?’”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:32:44] Don’t care.

 

Ashley Ray [00:32:46] Just care about don’t the car, the next town. Let’s go. So, I am eagerly awaiting season Two. On your list, you had Shrink–Apple.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:32:57] Yes.

 

Ashley Ray [00:32:57] How did you feel about that one?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:32:59] The Tim Baltz–? You’re talking about Shrinking.

 

Ashley Ray [00:33:02] Oh, wait.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:33:03] I’m talking about the Tim Baltz show.

 

Ashley Ray [00:33:07] Which is on Peacock and is amazing.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:33:09] Yes. This is an old show.

 

Ashley Ray [00:33:11] Yeah. This is another show that was originally on Seeso. Seeso doesn’t exist. And then we thought it would be gone. But luckily Peacock bought it. It is so good. I watched it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:33:22] That show is hilarious.

 

Ashley Ray [00:33:22] It’s so funny.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:33:23] I’m a huge fan of Tim Baltz, who’s the star and creator of that show.

 

Ashley Ray [00:33:28] He’s in Righteous Gemstones. If you don’t know who he is, he is the fiancé, I guess, of the daughter.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:33:35] Of Edi Patterson’s character.

 

Ashley Ray [00:33:37] And he is so good in this.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:33:39] He’s incredibly funny. And it also is a show that has an element… He’s an improviser. You know, I know him from UCB improv circles. The show is full of his kind of peer group of Chicago improvisers, which delights me. And there is clearly an element inside of the sessions where they are improvising, which is always funny. The cast is great. The show is a blast. There’s only one season of it, sadly, but it’s absolutely worth checking in on because it’s a great half hour comedy, full stop.

 

Ashley Ray [00:34:17] And it’s set in Chicago. It actually really does get the city pretty accurate. I complain a lot about Chicago inaccuracies. And they really do get it here.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:34:26] Oh, yeah. You had strong words for The Bear.

 

Ashley Ray [00:34:28] I did. I had strong words for The Bear. And they’re not making those mistakes here, okay? You’re not watching Shrink and you’re like, “How come he’s near the brown line when he’s in this part of town?” No, they get it right. And it’s been getting confused with Shrinking, which is on Apple TV. And both plots are kind of similar. Like, Shrink is about a guy who isn’t a therapist yet, but he’s doing kind of, like, intern hours in his garage.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:34:56] He has to… I can’t remember what the number is, but he has to do, like, 2,000 hours of free therapy in order to qualify to get his license. But to be clear, he’s terrible at it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:35:07] Horrible at it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:35:08] You know, he’s really, really bad.

 

Ashley Ray [00:35:10] Horrible at it. And then Shrinking is a guy who was a good therapist who suddenly decides to start being a bad therapist.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:35:17] Yeah. And I have not watched that at all, so I can’t speak to that. I’ve not engaged with it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:35:23] All you do on Apple TV is Slow Horses.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:35:25] And some of the documentaries, honestly.

 

Ashley Ray [00:35:29] I don’t do their documentaries.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:35:31] I think they’ve got one… The one that I watch… I think I’m right that it’s Apple TV. They have one called Make or Break. I watch a lot of documentaries that are about things that I don’t care about but I find interesting story-wise. So, it’s a docuseries about the professional surf circuit. So, like, one episode will be the rookies, one episode will be the veterans, and one episode will be one particular event or this or that. And it’s just great stories inside of a sport that I truly don’t care about–I don’t follow. I don’t know any of these people. But it’s kind of like 30 for 30 in the sense of, like, “These are great stories, just full stop.” So, I’ll watch it, even though I don’t have any interest in the sport itself. I’ll watch it just for the story. If you then turned on an event of surfing, I wouldn’t watch it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:36:30] It seems boring to me. I wouldn’t know what is good surfing. “You stayed on board.” I don’t know.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:36:35] Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I’ll watch the stories around it all day.

 

Ashley Ray [00:36:41] I do do a sports documentary if it is scam or crime involved. I’ve been watching the second season of Rich and Shameless, which this season is totally authenticated. I think it’s TNT, but it’s also on Max. The first season was about just scammers all over the world. They went into the guy who did Girls Gone Wild and, like, how he fell from grace. And then the second season is all about different athletes. So, they look at Dennis Rodman and how this lady, like, scammed millions of dollars from him. And I had never heard about this story, but it was, like, in the last ten years. And she’s still in prison.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:37:22] Oh, wow.

 

Ashley Ray [00:37:23] It’s about how easily he got scammed by this family. There’s an episode about Hulk Hogan and the whole Gawker thing, which was really good.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:37:32] That’s interesting.

 

Ashley Ray [00:37:34] But I’m always just like, “Oh, I don’t know anything about the sports part of this, but I love the crime. That’s great.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:37:40] And I feel similar. I’ll watch anything that has a great story to it. I really don’t care about the sports of it all. And I find, too, it’s funny… I’ll sometimes be telling someone about a sports documentary that I watched, and they will have full knowledge of the whole story because they follow sports. And I’ll be like, “I had no idea that this crazy thing happened.” And they’ll be like, “Wait, really? That was, like, the biggest story ten years ago.” And I’m like, “Wow. I had no idea this was crazy.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:38:17] “I don’t do the sports, so I did not know.” But you get me the docuseries, and I’ll sit right there. And I’m like, “Now I know who Manti Te’o is.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:38:27] Yeah. You’re right, though. I barely engage with Apple TV+ or whatever it is.

 

Ashley Ray [00:38:33] Why do you think that is?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:38:36] Very little of it, really, do I find… Everybody talks about that kind of homogenous look to a lot of it–that it all feels too similar and none of it feels… I don’t know. Even things that I feel like I should check in on, I haven’t yet. High Desert.

 

Ashley Ray [00:38:58] Oh, yeah. I want to check in on that one.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:39:00] I want to look at that. Silo also looks interesting to me. But interestingly they’ve now been out for weeks, and I have not yet watched either of them.

 

Ashley Ray [00:39:07] I’m not hearing people say anything about it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:39:10] Exactly. So, I don’t know what that is. It’s not sticky, I guess.

 

Ashley Ray [00:39:15] I feel like Ted Lasso overwhelmed so much of Apple’s marketing that it was just, like, all Ted Lasso. Like, that was the Apple TV show.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:39:24] Yeah that’s true.

 

Ashley Ray [00:39:25] Now that it’s maybe done, I’m hoping maybe these other shows get their chance.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:39:31] Yeah. I guess I wonder… Yeah, that’s kind of it. You’re right. I don’t hear a lot of people– Because I listen to you talk about TV. I listen to a lot of other podcasts where they either talk about TV all the time or just every once in a while, they’ll talk about what they’re watching or do recommendations or whatever. And almost never do any of these shows that we’re talking about–Silo, Shrinking, High Desert–with the exception of Slow Horses, which is truly fantastic… Very few Apple TV shows pierce the kind of cultural zeitgeist. And that is shocking.

 

Ashley Ray [00:40:13] Except for Ted Lasso.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:40:15] Yes, I’m sorry.

 

Ashley Ray [00:40:16] It’s so hard.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:40:18] Wait, was Bad Sisters–?

 

Ashley Ray [00:40:19] Yes, it was. That one was good.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:40:21] Okay, I really thought that was great. And again, another show where every time I mentioned it casually to people, they’d be like, “Oh, I’ve never heard of that. What is it?”

 

Ashley Ray [00:40:31] Yep.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:40:31] And that, you know, really is interesting to me. That tells me two things. One–there really is no cultural awareness that Apple is making shows beyond Ted Lasso. And two–I use Apple TV as one of my main interfaces because Apple TV… You can bundle– Not bundle…

 

Ashley Ray [00:40:54] It has all the apps in it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:40:56] Yes. So, like, my Hulu shows will show up there. My Amazon prime shows will show up there. Everything–with a couple of exceptions–will be in the Apple TV lineup. And then they smartly will advertise around that with their own shows and blah, blah, blah. So, I’m seeing Bad Sisters because I’m going to Apple TV to watch Bosch. I mean, since last we spoke, I’ve watched literally all of Bosch.

 

Ashley Ray [00:41:26] And that’s… There’s what now? Bosch and Bosch: Legacy. Is that two Boschs? Is that, like, a son-dad Bosch situation?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:41:30] It’s dad-daughter.

 

Ashley Ray [00:41:35] Oh. Okay, 2023.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:41:37] Oh, if you’re wondering if there’s a kid Bosch, there’s a kid Bosch.

 

Ashley Ray [00:41:39] And it’s a lady.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:41:42] Oh, it’s a lady kid Bosch.

 

Ashley Ray [00:41:44] Okay.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:41:44] I want that to be the next show. Lady Kid Bosch.

 

Ashley Ray [00:41:50] I didn’t even know Bosch was a dad.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:41:54] Oh, yeah. Bosch is out in these streets fucking.

 

Ashley Ray [00:41:58] Wow. I don’t know what Bosch is about. Let me guess what I think Bosch is about. I think it’s, like, an FBI agent who plays by his own rules and he has his own theories and he’s going against the grain and sometimes he’s getting in trouble, but most of the time he’s right. But then he realizes he can, like, do better outside of the system.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:42:33] Okay. So, I mean, so, so, so close. Like, I mean, all of the personality stuff–you’re dead-on.

 

Ashley Ray [00:42:42] He does play by his own rules.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:42:43] He plays by his own rules–pushes the edge–but he’s always right. All that stuff–true. He’s not an FBI agent. He’s just a straight up Hollywood homicide detective. He’s just a, like, street level cop. Not a uniformed cop, but, like, a homicide detective. In the series, you don’t see this. But at some point, in the past, one of his cases was turned into a movie. So, he also has, like, a beautiful house in the hills. You know, he got, like, a paycheck at one point. So, there’s a bit of, like, flashy kind of… He lives in a modernist house in the hills, but his mother was killed when he was a child. He grew up in, like, youth homes and orphanages. He’s had this brutal life. So, part of the early seasons, he’s always concurrently solving the case that he catches Episode One of that season, but he’s also in the background trying to solve, in the early seasons, his mother’s murder.

 

Ashley Ray [00:43:54] Of course.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:43:54] In later seasons, it’s these other cold cases that he’s never been able to get traction on or whatever. And so, they’re straight procedurals. They’re, like, an elevated one-hour procedure. You know what I mean? That is what it is. It is pretty humorless, I’ll be honest. Bosch lives in a world where no one cracks jokes. It’s really funny.

 

Ashley Ray [00:44:19] I feel like that would–yeah–make it very funny.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:44:23] Oh, it’s deadly serious to a degree that is sometimes hilarious.

 

Ashley Ray [00:44:26] Do you think in the future Bosch’s child will have to solve his murder?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:44:30] Oh boy. I would love it. I would love it if Maddie Bosch has to solve Harry Bosch’s murder.

 

Ashley Ray [00:44:38] That’s Bosch: Next Generation.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:44:39] But it’s a great show. It’s an incredibly rich cast. The late Lance Reddick–R.I.P. a legend, a true… like, one of the most wonderful, sweetest men–is in it as the police chief. Jamie Hector from The Wire. Marlo Stanfield from The Wire. Bosch’s partner, Jay Edgar. And he has his own– As the series goes on, he has his own huge storyline that is fascinating and super interesting.

 

Ashley Ray [00:45:09] I mean, you’re kind of selling me with this cast now.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:45:11] Oh, it’s pretty great. Amy Aquino. And then they bring in people. Mimi Rogers is in there. They bring in people every season as the bad guys, and it’s kind of Justified in that way. You’ve got your core group, and then each season’s case brings in a bunch of good guest stars.

 

Ashley Ray [00:45:32] This will be put on my list of, like, “Someday I’ll watch this on a hot summer week.” And then a week later, I’m like, “I’ve watched every episode.” And it’ll be ten seasons in.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:45:44] Try it as an afternoon watch. You might enjoy it. It’s like Poker face, actually; it feels like old school TV.

 

Ashley Ray [00:45:54] But without the jokes.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:45:55] But without the jokes. Yes. It feels like old school TV. It feels like a really good version of, like, NYPD Blue or one of those kind of procedural one hours. But it’s just better.

 

Ashley Ray [00:46:09] I need something to take the place of The Goldbergs in my heart and in my screening time.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:46:14] Oh, I don’t know if…

 

Ashley Ray [00:46:17] So I can slot it into my Goldbergs slot.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:46:20] Holy shit. Replacing The Goldbergs with Bosch is hilarious.

 

Ashley Ray [00:46:24] Feels like a lateral move to me.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:46:26] Oh my God. That’s very funny.

 

Ashley Ray [00:46:45] You also had on your list This Fool, which was also on my list, Season Two will be out in July.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:46:51] So good. Show is incredible.

 

Ashley Ray [00:46:53] It’s incredible. And it’s getting lost in Hulu. And I know The Bear is going to come out and everyone’s just going to care about that again. But watch This Fool.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:47:01] Not only to say that in terms of, like, the siloed nature of what is Hulu because these are FX shows. And what’s getting lost in this shuffle is FX is the only network that’s still willing to make comedies–that’s still out there making hard, funny shows. And I mean, that’s a hyperbolic statement because we just said Comedy Central is doing Digman! or… Max has got The Other Two.

 

Ashley Ray [00:47:25] Yeah, well, they have Digman! and they seem to be focused on animation, but they canceled all of their live action shows.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:47:33] I know. It’s crazy.

 

Ashley Ray [00:47:34] It doesn’t look like they’re going to renew Nora from Queens, so…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:47:37] Oh, is that right?

 

Ashley Ray [00:47:38] That’s what it’s looking like. Who knows what’s happening over there? But I would imagine because WB has ended a lot of their animated stuff and there’s this weird Adult Swim, like… some cartoons on Comedy Central that are re-aired there are actually owned by Sony, which is under the Max umbrella or whatever. So those shows end up there instead of on the Viacom app, which is Paramount.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:48:08] Isn’t it interesting, Ashley, that in this podcast where here we are, simply trying to talk about and turn people on to great TV, we have to spend so much time digressing to try and explain to people how and where they can watch these things–now versus six months ago versus six months from now?

 

Ashley Ray [00:48:33] They might not even be on there.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:48:36] It’s such a crapshoot.

 

Ashley Ray [00:48:37] Yeah, Disney bought Hulu–or they owned it already–but now they’re combining them into one app. And they’re like, “Oh, we don’t want the Disney stuff next to your gross FX shows that are about sex.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:48:47] Yeah. “We can’t have The Little Mermaid next to Pam & Tommy.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:48:51] And so Hulu’s like, “Okay, let’s get rid of it.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:48:57] And it’s a real shit show because the other thing that people are doing is–whether it’s, you know, Zaslav at HBO or now Disney is starting to do it–starting to just pull shows off of the servers. So, if I even told you one of my favorite shows of the last ten years was Infinity Train–the animated series Infinity Train–you couldn’t go watch it. It’s not there anymore. It’s not just canceled, it’s erased. And that’s heartbreaking.

 

Ashley Ray [00:49:27] It’s so sad. Did you watch The Premise on FX? It was the B. J. Novak show.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:49:32] No, I did not.

 

Ashley Ray [00:49:34] It came out last year. It had Tracee Ellis Ross, Ayo Edebiri–

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:49:37] Oh, wow.

 

Ashley Ray [00:49:37] So many people. It was incredible. Didn’t really make a lot of waves. And then they just took it off. Like, I’ve been trying to recommend this one episode to people, and they’re just like, “It’s not on there anymore.” It’s just gone forever.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:49:54] I don’t understand that because you’re not allowing people to discover things later and for things to have moments later in time, you know? You’re really saying, “We’d prefer this have never been done.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:50:08] “We’ve spent all the money, and we wish it just didn’t happen.” And it’s like, “Okay, just three whole seasons of Dollhouse.” I have multiple friends now who are just like, “All of my projects have been taken down. Every project I’ve worked on.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:50:21] Yeah. I was on an animated series that started at TBS that went to HBO Max called Close Enough–an animated show called Close Enough from J.G. Quintel and all the team that did Regular Show. It was an incredibly funny show. Gone. Done. Forget about it. See you later.

 

Ashley Ray [00:50:41] I never got to watch the last season, and I’m just like, “What? Okay.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:50:45] It was great.

 

Ashley Ray [00:50:46] Well, thanks for rubbing it in my face. I’ll never know.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:50:48] Yeah, you missed it. But all this to say, what an annoyance that we can’t just rave about things and you as a listener can’t just plug it in…

 

Ashley Ray [00:50:57] And just go watch it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:50:59] Right? And to that end, how this started was trying to talk about This Fool, which is, you know, one of very few, I think, funny shows–like, truly funny half-hour sitcoms–one that’s primarily focused on jokes. You know, Chris Estrada–great standup. Hilarious show. It’s a hilarious show. I maybe preferred… Not “preferred” because I loved them both… But see, this is how much This Fool didn’t penetrate. Last year, Michael Imperioli turned in two incredible performances. One that he got tons of accolades for–White Lotus Season Two. The other is This Fool. And nobody was talking about it. And what a missed opportunity to be like, “Look. Michael Imperioli is doing all this great stuff.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:51:52] Look at his range. He is playing a man who lives in a van and is, like, willing to have sex to save his community center. Like, if this show aired on NBC or something five years ago even, it would have been an Abbott Elementary-level hit. We would have a three-season renewal.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:52:13] There are a handful of shows–some of which we talked about the last time we spoke–that because of the way things are structured now and how things are going, people just are not made aware of them the way they are on network TV. And these are all shows that, to me, feel like they could be on network TV. And in fact, This Fool or South Side or Killing It–the Craig Robinson, Claudia O’Doherty…

 

Ashley Ray [00:52:45] Which has another season coming out. I had no idea that it has one. I just happened to follow the cast.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:52:52] Exactly. These are all shows that should just be network sitcoms. This is what we should be watching as a network sitcom now. And we don’t, and it’s this weird dissonance where these incredible shows are getting lost in the black hole that is the internet or whatever–this gaping maw of just stuff.

 

Ashley Ray [00:53:14] This would be the next one on my watchlist, but my favorite, I think, TV black hole is Freevee on Amazon Prime Video.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:53:22] I’ve got two shows on there to talk about. Let’s go.

 

Ashley Ray [00:53:24] Okay. Jury Duty, Primo, Sprung…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:53:28] Yep. Primo. Great. I’m going to throw out High School. Have you watched High School, the Tegan and Sara show?

 

Ashley Ray [00:53:33] No, I didn’t watch that one yet! I’ve known Tegan and Sara had a show on there, though, and I was like, “I gotta do it.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:53:40] It’s great. And to be clear, like, this is a show… What I love about both Primo and High School is because I love a coming-of-age story. American Born Chinese–also on my list. That’s a great coming of age story as well. But Primo and High School are both high school-set, young people, coming of age stories–sitcoms that are great. So, the Tegan and Sara one is their story as kids. Clea DuVall made it, and she plays their mom. And it’s these two incredible young actors playing them. They’re twins. If you know Tegan and Sara, they’re a Canadian twins singing group.

 

Ashley Ray [00:54:29] Yeah. They’re one of the first bands I saw in concert when I was in sixth grade.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:54:32] Really? Oh my God. Oh, then you gotta watch the show.

 

Ashley Ray [00:54:35] I loved Tegan and Sara

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:54:37] So it’s about their high school years. It’s kind of their story. I’ll be honest, I do not know a lot about Tegan and Sara. Full stop. And I love this show. In other words, this isn’t a show for fans of their music, although I’m sure it’s accurate.

 

Ashley Ray [00:54:56] I’m sure there’s jokes where they’re like, “How about we meet in the living room?” And you’re probably like, “I don’t know what that is.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:55:02] I have no idea. But it’s not a for fans show. It’s just a straight high school coming of age story that’s very sweet and very funny and is a blast.

 

Ashley Ray [00:55:11] See? Okay, that’s going on my list because we have Never Have I Ever coming back soon. That’s another coming of age show I like. And I’ve just been kind of biding time since I finished Primo so fast. I watched it all in a day.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:55:25] Oh, wow.

 

Ashley Ray [00:55:26] It’s got such a good ensemble.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:55:26] It’s a blast. Love it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:55:27] I wish I had savored it a little more or it had been released weekly like Jury Duty because I was just like, “I want to talk about it.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:55:37] I feel like if that show had been on NBC, ABC–any of those networks–people would be losing their minds. People would be flipping out over all the uncles. There would be all this, like, “Which uncle are you?”

 

Ashley Ray [00:55:49] “Which one’s the hottest?”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:55:51] Yes.

 

Ashley Ray [00:55:52] The mean one.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:55:52] There would be a discourse around it. And as of now, this is a Mike Schur produced, Shea Serrano written… This is a noisy show that should have more–

 

Ashley Ray [00:56:07] It should have tons of noise. There should be a press cycle.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:56:11] And similar–I know we’re kind of going back and forth between live action and animation and blah blah, blah–I felt the same about Digman! You know, here’s an Andy Samberg starring animated comedy that’s hilarious, that has a great cast, that’s absolutely outrageously hysterical, and I’m not hearing anybody talking about it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:56:29] Nobody’s talking about it. And that’s also how I felt about Little Demon if you caught that one.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:56:37] I didn’t watch it, though. I know what it is, but I didn’t watch it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:56:40] Well, guess what? You can never watch it because they took it off of the app. They never even said if it was canceled or renewed. They just took the first season off the app, and it was like, “Okay. So, I guess it’s done then?”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:56:54] That’s fucking absurd.

 

Ashley Ray [00:56:56] What do you got on your list? What else? What else?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:56:59] What else? I’m trying to go through and edit as we’re going. Anything else on your list?

 

Ashley Ray [00:57:04] Yeah. I have been watching Platonic. We did a lot of Apple TV talk. And I think it suffers from the same issue of seeming too similar to other Apple TV shows, where it’s, like, centered around this, you know, nice white guy–who’s middle aged–having a middle age breakdown, and then some nice girl helps him. But it is just crazy because Apple TV has the money to hire good writers, and it looks good. So, it’s like, “Technically, yes, this is an intriguing story. That was a good joke. It’s all, like, by the template. This is a good show.” But there’s some spark missing.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:57:47] Well, yeah, isn’t that interesting? These companies–Apple and Amazon specifically–have all the money in the world. You know what I mean? And how they’re choosing to spend it is fascinating because both of them are building libraries, you know? They’re starting from scratch, and they are building libraries. And the way they’re choosing to build their libraries is pretty wild. Like, all of this stuff that is this first wave of Apple TV is–I’m going to say–confounding in terms of what is the identity of this network.

 

Ashley Ray [00:58:26] This platform. I don’t know. I’m waiting for Severance to come back.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:58:35] Oh, sure. Yeah. Of course.

 

Ashley Ray [00:58:37] And now that Ted Lasso is done, I don’t know that Platonic is enough to keep my Apple TV membership active.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:58:46] It’s pretty interesting. And Amazon is even more interesting, I feel like, because they began by saying, like, “Oh, we’re the home of Transparent and some of the shows I was mentioning earlier, like Patriot.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:58:58] And the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. That’s the one.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:59:01] All these kind of auteur-driven, smaller stakes, almost indie, you know, in terms of, like, some of the creators came from indie film world and stuff like that. And then they kind of seem to scrap that entire ethos and were like, “Now? We make billion-dollar franchises. We just do mega IP.”

 

Ashley Ray [00:59:23] “We spent $10 million on Citadel. That’s what we do. And then our good shows–we’ll put them on Freevee, where people have to watch commercials. And it’s very confusing as to how it’s even a separate app with a different name.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:59:38] It’s confounding. But you know what? They’re giving me my Bosch, so I’ll take it.

 

Ashley Ray [00:59:42] They’re giving you Bosch.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:59:46] Interestingly, Bosch: Legacy is a Freevee show.

 

Ashley Ray [00:59:46] Was Bosch?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [00:59:48] No. Bosch… Amazon Prime. Bosch: Legacy? Freevee.

 

Ashley Ray [00:59:50] Is that, like, a step down? See, to me, I feel like Freevee is where they throw shows they don’t like that much.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:00:00] It’s interesting. I think because they’re good shows, they’re moving them to their ad supported tier, so they’re making ad money on it. It’s basically a way to… Because Bosch: Legacy also has half of the cast, so it’s a cheaper show. And I think that’s their way of, like, keeping some things going or keeping budgets down or something is to be like, “Oh, this will be on Freevee.”

 

Ashley Ray [01:00:25] Yeah, but I would guess there’s something where it’s like, “Because it’s on our ad supported something, we pay less, you have to do as much for residuals or whatever.” There’s all those kind of stupid loopholes.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:00:35] Something like that. But that’s the thing. Those fast channels–the ad supported channels–it’s just TV. We’re just going back to that. I mentioned American Born Chinese, which I’m loving so far.

 

Ashley Ray [01:00:53] I haven’t started it yet.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:00:54] I’m halfway into… I’m not halfway. I’m maybe three or four episodes. I can’t remember how many they’ve put out. And it’s great; I’m having a blast. Again, I love a coming-of-age story.

 

Ashley Ray [01:01:12] Yeah. But there’s a superhero element, right?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:01:14] Exactly.

 

Ashley Ray [01:01:15] I love that.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:01:16] Not necessarily a superhero element, but sort of a superhero element. A mythological hero element or something like that if you want. And it’s great. Really interesting. Beautifully shot, and, you know, incredible performances. It’s, you know, most of the cast from Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s a great show. I’m really enjoying it.

 

Ashley Ray [01:01:40] That’s Disney+.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:01:42] It is Disney+. Yes. Yes. There are some big shows that I love.

 

Ashley Ray [01:01:49] Disney+ only gets me with the big shows, like WandaVision. They really have to keep it up for me to go, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:01:57] Yeah. This last season of The Bad Batch–which is one of the animated Star Wars shows–I thought was phenomenal. I

 

Ashley Ray [01:02:08] I feel like they have so many Star Wars shows over there. I’m missing half. Like, I’m always just like, “What do you mean there’s a new thing? Now I gotta watch Andor?”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:02:16] Oh my God. Andor is incredible.

 

Ashley Ray [01:02:18] “I just watched the other one.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:02:21] Watch Andor if you can. Andor is maybe the best Star Wars of the last 20 years.

 

Ashley Ray [01:02:28] Well, then that… Okay, that’s gonna get me to watch. That’s a heavy claim.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:02:32] With a caveat. With a caveat. How into Star Wars are you?

 

Ashley Ray [01:02:36] I’m very into Star Wars.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:02:38] Then Andor is truly, I think, the best modern Star Wars story. Full stop. It’s incredible, I think. For me, all the other Star Wars–whether it’s the sequel trilogy or The Mandalorian or the animated shows… Clone Wars, Rebels–I love Rebels. Star Wars: Visions, the one-off anthology, anime, animated shorts that they’ve done. There’s a lot of stuff that’s great, but Andor is–from a storytelling point of view–the show that I don’t have any problems with. There’s no element of it that I’m like, “Well, I love all this, this doesn’t work for me. I don’t know. I’m not wild about it. This show, I was like, “Top to bottom. Everything’s fantastic.”

 

Ashley Ray [01:03:37] Okay. I was afraid I’d be disappointed because, like, I just feel like there’s so much happening that sometimes people are like, “Oh, this one was good, or this was just Disney clearly trying to make money.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:03:51] Here’s how I’ll set it up for you because this might help you understand, I think, why it’s so good. This is a series, rather, that is the direct leadup to the events of Rogue One, the movie. It stars Diego Luna. It’s a Tony Gilroy written show who made Michael Clayton and the Bourne movies–an incredible writer–one of the best writers of this generation, I think. And he’s writing an incredibly devastating story about rebellion and about what it means to stand up to tyranny. And it is–to be clear–not for kids. It is the first Star Wars show in a long time that has no little kid characters, no cute– It is a brutal story.

 

Ashley Ray [01:04:51] Okay. I thought it was another Disney kids show that happens to get adults into it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:04:58] Not at all. It’s the opposite.

 

Ashley Ray [01:05:00] Okay. If we’re talking adult TV, I’m in.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:05:03] I think it’s Lucasfilm’s attempt to make a Star Wars for the older people that doesn’t have overt entryway for young people

 

Ashley Ray [01:05:14] I was kind of tired of, like, Star Wars for babies. I just… Yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:05:22] Same. And I watch it all. I’m watching the kids show–the literal kids show–the animated kids show. But this is not that. And I think you’ll really like it if you like Star Wars.

 

Ashley Ray [01:05:33] I love Star Wars, so now I’m going to do that. Don’t think I’ll do the animated show, but Andor…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:05:37] No, no, that’s fine. But Season Two of Visions, which is just a series of individual animated shorts–both seasons, I think, have been terrific. And as all anthologies, they’re kind of uneven. Some episodes are better than others. But the ones that are good, I think, are incredibly… Some of them are devastating in story, and some of them are just dazzling in animation.

 

Ashley Ray [01:06:04] Okay, I’ll check that out, too, because I love an anthology. I love that kind of style. But I wanted to talk more about the Clone High reboot.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:06:14] Yeah! Great.

 

Ashley Ray [01:06:15] We’re four episodes in now. I’ve really been enjoying it. I think it’s a really refreshing take on the show. They’ve updated it in ways–some they clearly had to, and some that are just really exciting. I will say that for so long I thought you did the voice of Gandhi.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:06:34] Oh, funny!

 

Ashley Ray [01:06:36] I was always like, “This sounds like him.” And then I’m finding out recently it was Michael McDonald from Mad TV.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:06:41] Oh, I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s funny.

 

Ashley Ray [01:06:44] Even more problematic. I totally forgot that the reason the show was canceled was that one character.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:06:52] Oh, I didn’t know that.

 

Ashley Ray [01:06:53] A bunch of people were like, “The way they’re depicting Gandhi is offensive. We don’t like this.” So that’s why MTV didn’t bring the show back. So, in the reboot, that’s why Gandhi is still frozen.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:07:04] Still frozen. Yeah. Okay. That’s crazy. How funny. What a weird thing. No, I’m enjoying that show. You know, I’ll take any Lord and Miller anytime, anywhere. It makes me happy. And again, I’m enjoying shows–like This Fool, like South Side, like Letterkenny–that are jokes and are interested in poking and prodding and putting jokes in places that might be uncomfortable or weird or funny. I’m a little tired of what I feel like is the feel-good comedies–the comedies that are softer, sweeter. And don’t have–

 

Ashley Ray [01:07:53] You can say it. It’s the Ted Lassification of TV. That’s what they call it, you know?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:07:57] Yeah, it really is. And I do think it’s because we were having such a hard series of years that I think people wanted to tune into something that wasn’t hard or prickly or difficult to get into. They wanted that, you know, warm bath of your Ted Lassos or your other kind of shows.

 

Ashley Ray [01:08:21] Apple TV, I think, just took it too far when they were like, “How about instead of 30-minute episodes, each episode is an hour in the final season.” And it’s too much. It’s too sweet–too corny now. And I think 2023 is the year of the hard comedy. We got It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia coming back.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:08:39] Great.

 

Ashley Ray [01:08:39] Like, The Other Two has been killing it. It’s the year of the 30-minute comedy. Like, we’re doing it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:08:47] Thank God. I was so happy when I was making my list that I was putting so many half hours on there–that I wasn’t just still stuck in a cycle of really solid one hours, although I have been watching a lot of them.

 

Ashley Ray [01:09:05] There are some big ones.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:09:07] That’s the thing that I feel like in these last few years I’ve really been hungering for–shows that are, you know, funny. Funny like Gemstones is funny. Like, hard jokes funny. And I feel like these shows–This Fool, South Side, Letterkenny, The Other Two–these are funny fucking shows that I’m so glad they’re out there. But I need people to watch them.

 

Ashley Ray [01:09:36] I need people to watch them. We got another season of Righteous Gemstones coming out this month. I need people to watch it. All of these shows that we’re saying should sweep the Comedy Emmys nomination category. But will they?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:09:49] Absolutely not. The number of people that I have told, “Have you been watching This Fool?” and they have no idea what I’m talking about. Or the number of people who I have said, “Are you watching Craig Robinson’s show?” and people are like, “He has a show?” It’s absurd. And that’s disheartening because there’s all these great comics who are doing great shows, but they get no… Anyway, It’s so interesting. Everything comes back to how hard it is to get to watch these things. And that narrative is in between you and I just telling people to enjoy it.

 

Ashley Ray [01:10:27] Yeah, it’s like the studios don’t want us to enjoy these shows. And we’re fighting the good fight to enjoy these shows. We’re waking you up. Join the Rebel Alliance of people who are watching all the shows.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:10:40] Please. Please! I’ll throw out a couple of more things just as we’re wrapping up. One of my absolute favorite shows–and this show is funny, but it’s not necessarily a hilarious, big, hard comedy–but one of the most, I feel like, human stories being told on television is Somebody Somewhere.

 

Ashley Ray [01:11:03] I love Somebody Somewhere. Yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:11:05] Bridget Everett’s show on Max.

 

Ashley Ray [01:11:06] Just got a third season renewal, so…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:11:08] Incredible performance from Bridget Everett. Incredible performance from Jeff Hiller. Like, truly fantastic Jeff Hiller performance. Just one of my all-time favorites.

 

Ashley Ray [01:11:17] And that one is on HBO, but it got so lost in the shuffle of, like, Barry and Succession that, like, no one even noticed the finale, and it was beautiful.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:11:26] It’s truly a wonderful show. And I really urge people to… It’s a small show. It’s really a very human story in a way that I feel like a lot of people don’t get access to those stories. And this one is just incredible. It’s a beautiful show. It’s a half hour, but it’s not a sitcom necessarily. It’s absolutely worth everybody getting into because it’s fantastic.

 

Ashley Ray [01:11:55] Bridget Everett has done something so just original with it. It’s just so good. And I did not think it would get renewed, honestly, because it’s just not the kind of show that that platform seemed interested in making these days. So, when we got that third season renewal yesterday, I was very, very happy.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:12:14] Yeah. No, I absolutely agree. I was as well. It’s one of those shows that I’m so happy when the new episode is out. I’m so happy to be in their world with them going through all of the trials and tribulations of life. And I don’t want to take away from it. It is very funny. It’s a very funny show.

 

Ashley Ray [01:12:34] The last moment of the finale probably got one of the biggest laughs of the year from me.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:12:38] I don’t want to promote it as if it’s a, you know, sad… But it’s about people dealing with stuff. But it is funny people dealing with stuff. So that being said, like, it’s an absolutely must-watch.

 

Ashley Ray [01:12:54] Yeah. You still feel for their friendship. It’s so good. What else you got? We gotta get all the recs out for the people.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:13:00] I’ve been watching a lot of the Agatha Christie TV adaptations.

 

Ashley Ray [01:13:04] Oh yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:13:05] So Hugh Laurie did one called Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, which stars Will Poulter and Lucy Boynton and Hugh Laurie.

 

Ashley Ray [01:13:13] I haven’t heard about this at all. Is it on AMC?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:13:16] Incredible. I don’t know. It’s either on AMC… It’s on BritBox. Not to brag, but I have BritBox.

 

Ashley Ray [01:13:25] That’s a fancy one.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:13:28] So I can watch all the British detective shows that I want. That was great. There was another one that had Bill Nighy in it and a bunch of other great people. No, no, no. Bill Nighy was the other one. Charles Dance was in And Then There Were None, which Sam Neill was in. That was also a great cast. They’re just great. You know, it started when Poker Face ended. I was like, “I’m loving the whodunit element of this series.” And so, there’s all of these great Agatha Christie adaptations that are about, you know, two or three one-hour episodes. So, it’s kind of like a movie, but told episodically.

 

Ashley Ray [01:14:12] I feel like British TV–they’re so good at a detective.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:14:14] So good.

 

Ashley Ray [01:14:15] They’re so good at it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:14:17] Really very good. I will throw out a documentary that’s absolutely fantastic for us and our business, especially. The prolific character, wiretapper, private investigator, Anthony Pellicano–who went to jail for 17 years–had a podcast called Sin Eater: The Crimes of Anthony Pellicano, which I loved.

 

Ashley Ray [01:14:43] I watched this one. It’s on Hulu. It’s part of The New York Times Presents on Hulu series.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:14:50] Correct.

 

Ashley Ray [01:14:51] That one was so good. I had never heard of this man. And I was just like, “Yeah, what do we do about this?”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:14:57] Yeah. So, I had heard about him, and I was like, “This is everything I want.” It’s wall to wall characters–him, all the lawyers–it’s crazy. He was the private investigator wire tapper that Hollywood moguls and stars would use to investigate each other, to just commit crimes…

 

Ashley Ray [01:15:24] Hide things.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:15:25] On behalf of the studio, yeah.

 

Ashley Ray [01:15:27] There’s a whole thing with, like, Chris Rock.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:15:28] Blackmail people.

 

Ashley Ray [01:15:30] Trying to hide a dalliance with some woman he was cheating on his wife with. You hear all the video of the guy being like, “I can tear this woman apart. I got you.” And it’s like, “Oh no.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:15:42] It’s nuts. The whole thing is nuts. And it’s just a wild character study. And it’s especially interesting in the kind of Hollywood of then, which is only 20 some odd years ago, versus the Hollywood of now, which is really kind of what we’re talking about, which is tech. We’re talking about we work in tech companies now. All this problem we’re having, talking about streaming and all this stuff–this is all because of the disruptive nature of big tech in our business.

 

Ashley Ray [01:16:14] And now it’s, you know, celebrities don’t need an Anthony Pellicano to eat their sins. They just go on Instagram, do a live, and say something nice. And then we’re like, “Okay. We’re over it.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:16:24] Yeah. That same series–New York Times Presents–also had a great documentary about J Dilla, the producer and beatmaker from Slum Village and from this iconic run of hip-hop albums.  An incredible character and incredible documentary about him and his impact and influence called The Legacy of J Dilla. That’s a fantastic episode.

 

Ashley Ray [01:16:52] Yeah.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:16:53] Really liked that. Because so many people were talking about it, I had never watched Picard–the show Picard. And everybody was talking about it. Paul Scheer especially kept telling me that he loved it and he thought I would as well. Just Season Three–he was talking about Season Three. “Picard. Picard. Picard.” And I was like, “I haven’t watched Seasons One and Two. That feels like a lot.” But I caved. I started watching Season Three.

 

Ashley Ray [01:17:23] You skipped One and Two totally?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:17:24] Turns out, didn’t need to know. It’s fantastic, Ashley. The show is a blast.

 

Ashley Ray [01:17:30] Really? I can just skip two whole seasons?

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:17:33] I did. And I don’t think I’m missing much of anything. And I’ll go one further, I do know that a lot of this series is making references and callbacks to old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager… I don’t know any of those shows. I know nothing about that stuff. And I’m still having a blast because it’s basically–I didn’t know then, but it’s perfectly dialed in to where I’m at right now–a whodunit in space.

 

Ashley Ray [01:18:04] Okay.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:18:07] Picard and the old crew need to solve a mystery. And that’s what happens, and it’s great.

 

Ashley Ray [01:18:12] I’m going to do it. I rarely do a show out of order, but for you, I will watch Picard from Season Three.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:18:18] I’m the same because I really wrestled with it because I was like, “Am I going to have to watch these first two seasons just to do it?” And so many people were like, “Don’t do that,” because the first two seasons aren’t… It’s different showrunners. It’s a different style. It’s a whole thing.

 

Ashley Ray [01:18:31] Yeah, I did two episodes of the first season and just didn’t really get in.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:18:35] So did I. Same.

 

Ashley Ray [01:18:36] I was like, “Okay. Whatever.” I didn’t want to pay for Paramount+ anymore.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:18:39] I’ll shout out just a couple more things. I Think You Should Leave–Tim Robinson’s incredible sketch show–is back for Season Three on Netflix. It’s next level hilarious.

 

Ashley Ray [01:18:51] It’s still just so good. I don’t know how they just keep getting better and better.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:18:54] And it makes me… You know, I still watch Saturday Night Live every week when it’s on–not when it’s on–I watch it, though. And I still have such an appetite for sketch comedy. And so, I’m so happy I Think You Should Leave is there. This year, History of the World, Part II came out. Full disclosure–I was on an episode, but it was a great, great sketch series. And then one of my favorite comedians right now, Jamie Demetriou, who does Stath Lets Flats, the British show.

 

Ashley Ray [01:19:31] So good.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:19:31] The British comedian who was on Fleabag You would recognize him; he’s been in a lot of stuff. He did a special for Netflix that’s just sketches. It’s a comedy special, but it’s just sketches.

 

Ashley Ray [01:19:42] Yeah, it’s called The Life of Jamie or–

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:19:43] A Whole Lifetime.

 

Ashley Ray [01:19:45] I loved this when I saw it. My favorite sketch is, like, the teenagers who are trying to force themselves to have sex. And it was so good. And I thought, “Oh, everyone’s going to talk about this. People know Stath Lets Flats.” And it just got lost.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:20:00] Zero. It didn’t make a dent. Again, I’m shocked. It didn’t make a dent to comedians–to my peers who I’d be like, “Hey, have you watched Jamie Demetriou’s sketch special? And people were like, “What are you talking about?” That’s shocking.

 

Ashley Ray [01:20:18] It’s like we don’t have the same media channels or TV sites writing about these things. Like, eight years ago, The A.V. Club would have been all over that.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:20:27] Oh my God, everybody would have been freaking out. And that doesn’t exist anymore. And then I’ll just shout out a couple last things. I know we’re wrapping up.

 

Ashley Ray [01:20:38] You’re the one with the out, so…

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:20:41] Genndy Tartakovsky–incredible animator–creator of everything from Samurai Jack to I think he was part of the Powerpuff Girls. He did the original Star Wars Clone Wars short series. He did the Hotel Transylvania movies. But in recent years, he did a show for HBO Max called Primal that is an incredibly beautiful, animated show about, like, a Neanderthal man and his best friend who is a T-Rex. And it’s an incredible show. I can’t recommend it enough.

 

Ashley Ray [01:21:19] I’ve heard about that one. For some reason I thought it was on Prime.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:21:23] No, it’s on Max now. And there’s two seasons of it, and it’s phenomenal. There’s no dialogue because obviously nobody speaks. So, it’s beautiful just visual storytelling. It’s beautifully drawn. Everything about it is great. But that is merely to set up… That’s a great series. Please, everybody watch Primal. But he has a brand-new show that has just started. There’s only four or five episodes. And it’s called Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, and it is incredible.

 

Ashley Ray [01:21:56] That sounds insane.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:21:57] I cannot recommend this show enough. It is my favorite show right now that I’ve been trying to get everybody into. It is also on Max. And I don’t even want to explain what it is because, frankly, it’s too difficult to explain. But it’s an incredible fantasy adventure show–forces of good versus forces of evil.

 

Ashley Ray [01:22:19] Oh, I’m looking at the description, and I’m in. “A young girl unwittingly infused with magical ability…” I’m in. All I need to read. “Young girl,” “magic”–I’m in. Yes.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:22:29] Exactly. Both of those–incredible. Unicorn: Warriors Eternal and Primal. Alone Season Ten is about to come out. And just the anticipation–I couldn’t be more hyped for Alone Season Ten.

 

Ashley Ray [01:22:42] I finally got into Alone since we last talked.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:22:45] Ohh! Yeah!

 

Ashley Ray [01:22:45] I got into it. I did Season Nine, and then I’m just going to hop into the new season. I’m ready.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:22:51] Have you done any of the older ones?

 

Ashley Ray [01:22:53] No. Everyone’s like, “You should go back.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:22:56] You should. You absolutely should go back. But don’t just go back to any and all of them. If you want, offline I can tell you the seasons that I think are pretty incredible because there’s, like, four seasons that are fantastic.

 

Ashley Ray [01:23:10] That’s all I want. Give me the highlights.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:23:10] And then there’s a couple of other seasons… Everything’s good. It’s a great show. But there are a couple of seasons that just don’t work as well for me.

 

Ashley Ray [01:23:19] Okay.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:23:21] So Alone Season Ten. And then I want to shout out two movies if you don’t mind.

 

Ashley Ray [01:23:25] I’ll allow it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:23:26] One of which is because it’s related to a TV show that I want to shout out because I love it, even though it’s not recent. Did you watch the TV show We Are Lady Parts on Peacock?

 

Ashley Ray [01:23:38] Yeah! Love We Are Lady Parts. I was really hoping we’d get more episodes.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:23:41] Obsessed with We Are Lady Parts. The writer and director, Nida Manzoor, from We Are Lady Parts has a new movie out called Polite Society that is incredible. If you liked We Are Lady Parts, the tone is very similar. And I know I’ve said, “It’s a great coming of age story” about a thousand times today. But it’s a beautiful coming of age story for these two sisters who live in London and the lives that they’re living and how they are kind of diverging from each other and trying to get back– I don’t even want to get into it too much other than to say it’s a beautiful story. It’s a hilarious story. It’s a great, great movie.

 

Ashley Ray [01:24:30] With a strong TV background.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:24:32] With a strong TV background. And then the next one–I will also tie it back. You know what? This is unrelated to TV, but I want to hype it because I want it to get more attention because I’m a huge fan of rom coms. I’m a huge fan of rom coms in a way that I fear we just aren’t doing them anymore. I’m talking about, like, real rom coms that feel engaged and like I feel like there’s chemistry–not like, “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?”

 

Ashley Ray [01:25:10] “These two opposite side people…”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:25:12] It’s not a gimmick rom com, like, “Uh oh. I picked up the wrong hatbox from the cleaners, and now I’m in love with this guy’s hat or whatever.” It’s really just people meet, and the rest of their experience is compelling in chemistry and funny and visually interesting. The movie is called Rye Lane. Raine Allen Miller is the director. And it’s a British movie. Small, rom com, beautiful. It’s on Hulu. It’s streaming now. It’s absolutely terrific. I cannot recommend it enough. The music is great. It’s visually stunning, I think. It’s beautifully written. The performances are fantastic. The young actors who are in it are so compelling and have such genuine chemistry, it doesn’t feel like, “Well, in order to get this movie made, we need one of the actors from this list and one of the actresses from this list. And we’ll put them together, and that’s the movie.” This feels real. It feels like a good, compelling story.

 

Ashley Ray [01:26:19] Yeah. Hulu has a lot of good original movies right now. Another good rom com they just did–it came out in February–is Three Ways.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:26:29] Oh, I don’t know it.

 

Ashley Ray [01:26:29] It’s really good. The girl from Degrassi is in it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:26:33] Oh, okay.

 

Ashley Ray [01:26:34] But she plays this girl who has just fallen for someone she thinks could be the love of her life. And she thinks that she’s too prudish. So, to seal the relationship, she decides to have a threesome. And you see it from each person’s perspective. And it’s so funny.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:26:51] Oh, I’ll watch that. Oh, great.

 

Ashley Ray [01:26:51] It’s so funny. It is a rom com in a way that you don’t expect. And you’re just like, “How did we get here? But I love this.”

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:27:00] Oh, that’s great. And I’ll shout it out, even though it’s not recent–although hopefully we’ll get more of it–a rom com TV series that I loved is Starstruck, the Rose Matafeo show.

 

Ashley Ray [01:27:10] Yes.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:27:12] It’s on Max. There’s two seasons of it. And it’s kind of a reverse Notting Hill. What if a woman has a one-night stand with a guy she realizes is a famous movie star? And then what happens then? You know, that’s a very simplistic way of setting it up because it’s a lot more. It’s about this lead character and her kind of figuring out who she is and what her story is.

 

Ashley Ray [01:27:36] Where she wants to be.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:27:38] I think that show is dynamite.

 

Ashley Ray [01:27:39] It’s so good. I hope we get more. Who knows with what they’re doing over at Max? But I want to thank you for joining me–for sharing all the TV you love.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:27:50] Always.

 

Ashley Ray [01:27:51] I feel your passion for it. I got the passion. We’re getting people to watch TV.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:27:56] Come on! I would love for the audience that is listening to this to reply to you and tell you what they thought of the stuff we’re recommending. I want the feedback. I’m not on social media, so don’t try and tell me about it. Tell Ashley about it.

 

Ashley Ray [01:28:13] Tell me about it.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:28:14] So I can be vindicated.

 

Ashley Ray [01:28:15] Yeah. So, thank you so much for joining me. If you’re listening, you know all the things to watch with Jason. And also listen to How Did This Get Made? He’s not on social media, so, you know, tell me.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:28:26] Yeah. But I will say, if you’re out there, please be watching Housebroken Season Two Sunday nights on Fox and Star Trek: Prodigy.

 

Ashley Ray [01:28:35] Yes. The finale has not aired yet for Housebroken. Watch it. Last episode, there was actually a reference to Alabama Jackson, the show I wrote on.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:28:47] Oh my God! Nice.

 

Ashley Ray [01:28:47] Yeah. There’s an Illinois James joke. That was a reference to our show no one watched. So go watch Housebroken. It will tide you over while Bob’s Burgers is gone.

 

Jason Mantzoukas [01:28:57] Please watch Star Trek: Prodigy. I would appreciate that. We need those eyeballs. And if you’re worried about a show that you like or you want them to make more of it, set your TV or your iPad to just autoplay all the episodes in a row because the number that these streamers are looking at isn’t the number of people who are watching the show. It’s the number of people who complete the series. So, the completion rate–I hate that I’m having to say this on this podcast–it matters. So please, if you like a show–even if you think you’ll watch it later or whatever–autoplay the whole season so that those numbers exist so that hopefully we can make more of these shows.

 

Ashley Ray [01:29:44] I want more housebroken. I absolutely love it. Thank you for joining me. And, yeah, we’ll be back next week with another episode. TV, I Say with Ashley Ray is an Earwolf production made by me, Ashley Ray-Harris. It’s engineered by Abby Aguilar, produced by Scott Sonne, executive produced by Amelia Chappelow. And our original theme song is by RaFia. It means so much to me if you go rate, review, subscribe. Follow TV, I Say. Let us know what you think and tell your friends. Share with your Golden Girls. Tell your Boys. If you love my TV recommendations, let everyone you know know. For special TV Club members, join my Patreon. And you can also find my full archive of ad free episodes of TV, I Say over on Stitcher Premium. Use Promo code “tvisay”–all one word–for a one-month free trial at stitcher.com/premium.