TV Guidance Counselor
TV Guidance Counselor Episode 26: Kumail Nanjiani
- Wait, you have a TV? - No, I don't like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide, you don't need a TV guide. ♪ Tell me to let it ♪ ♪ Tell me to let it ♪ ♪ Tell me to let it ♪ (upbeat rock music) - Hello and welcome. It's Wednesday, which means it's time for a brand new episode of TV Guidance Counselor. I am Ken Reid, your TV Guidance Counselor. And I wanna welcome you to the show. It's a great episode this week. This is yet another episode from the series of episodes that are recorded out in Los Angeles recently. And my guest this week is Kamal Nanjiani. You might know Kamal from Silicon Valley, very funny, Portlandia. He's on a ton of podcasts, including his own podcast that just started fairly recently about television called the X Files Files. And he has a pretty fascinating story about TV guide that I think you'll enjoy. So sit back, relax, and listen to this week's brand new episode of TV Guidance Counselor with my guest, Kamal Nanjiani. (upbeat rock music) Kamal Nanjiani, how are you, sir? - Good, thank you for having me. - Oh, thanks for doing it. This is normally when I welcome people to my home, but I'm on the West Coast and we're at Meltdown and a comic book store that this comedy shows is pretty close. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's sort of like home. - Yeah. - I realized like I had to tell my GPS that this wasn't my home. - Yeah, it's like you're here so much. - I'm here more than, you know, 'cause I've been moving almost every year. - Right. - And so to the GPS, this is the most stable. - It's like, it's a good thing, man. Just move in there. - Yeah. - And to you. - It's nice here. - It is nice here. - What I began was, you know, Kevin Eastman, you know who that is? - Yeah, yeah, he's from Massachusetts. - Is he? - Yes. - Creator of Ninja Turtles, this very room he set up, he was moving from L.A. to Florida, just kind of like with his family. And his whole office, he recreated his whole office in this room and in that space over there. And he basically was selling the entire office, like all the furniture, like tons of toys. - Like a weird art installation slot from the market. - Yeah, but he was selling everything. So he had like a ton of DVDs, a ton of VHSes, like posters, original Ninja Turtles art, other art, heavy metal stuff. - Oh yeah, 'cause he owned heavy metal. He used to, so out in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is in Western Mass, I think he's from Maine originally, but he used to own the single "The Words and Pictures" museum out there. And it was the only comic museum in the world. - Oh really? - It didn't last a long year. 'Cause he used to own a company called Tundra, that was based out of there that published a lot of stuff. - Oh yeah. - And you could just go out there and it was an amazing comic museum, but it's in the middle of nowhere, like no one could go there. - Yeah, he was married to Julie Strange. - Julie Strange, yes. - From Penthouse and Playboy. - And heavy metal, she was, yeah. - She wrote an autobiography called "Six Foot, One and Worth the Climb." (laughing) - You don't have to convince her so that we know. - Yeah, we know you're worth the Climb. - Exactly, yeah, I don't think you need to say that something like that. - Penthouse lady. - Her whole, her reasoning behind why she's so outgoing is because she fell off a horse when she was 10 and got complete amnesia and had to re-learn how to do everything. So she said she unlearned all the insecurities you get in the first 10 years of your life. - Also, she grew to look like a gorgeous amazon. - She looks like an amazon princess, yeah. That's probably more a factor than the amnesia. - But Kevin Easton is an awesome guy. He would like hang out here all the time. - Oh wow. - So we interviewed him on Meltdown once, just like on stage brought him up. - Right, look. - And he was selling the first ever drawing he did of the Ninja Turtles. - Wow. - For $600,000. And I think that he just didn't want to sell it. - Yeah. - So that's why he priced it. - Just priced that high, depending on buy it. I wonder if they-- - I bet nobody made that. I mean, but they had a ton of awesome stuff. - Oh, that's really cool. - A big Ninja Turtles fan. - But he sold a Ninja Turtles. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he had a piece of it, I think. But then whoever was a playmates or Archie or whoever the toy company owned it, Mirage Studios and then got bought by 700 different people. - Yeah. Well, Peter Laird, he bought it from Peter Laird years and years ago. - Right, right. - And then he was the main guy. And then he sold it not too long ago. - Right. - He sold his piece of it not too long ago. - Cashin' out, that's a pretty good ticket. That's better than the Cash for Gold ads that the right way-- - Yeah, Cash for Ninja Turtles. - Yeah, Cash for the Turtles. - Yeah, Cash for IP. - Yes, that's pretty good for you. - So you picked an issue from 1994. It's the week of November 12th. And you were looking for an issue from the first week you were ever in the US, which we actually dug up, which we'll flip through in a moment. But you thought it was '94, but then realized it was '93. So obviously you didn't grill up in the US. I don't know if that's obvious, but I know that we probably know that. This isn't the first place people have heard that. - Yes. - And you grew up in Pakistan. - That's right. - And what kind of TV did you even get there? I assume you didn't get a lot of US TV. - We actually got, well, this is, we used to get some stuff, you know? We used to get the big stuff. We got like Knight Rider. - Right, Elf. - Elf. - We did get Elf. - Really? - Yeah, we got Elf, we got Knight Rider, we got some British stuff. But we just assumed that whatever we got was the biggest hit here. So for the first couple of years, I was making a lot of picket fences references. - Right, right, right. - And people were like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" - Not everybody watched picket fences. - No, not a huge show, at all. And Emily was like, "What the fuck do you do this?" And then she was in my family and they were making picket fences references. So like, and I met this guy from Australia. Same thing, picket fences was huge over there. - It must have just been cheap to send to forms. - Must have been, 'cause it wasn't really cheap. - 'Cause it wasn't a hit. But like we never got Seinfeld. We got, we got Baywatch. - Obviously. - Everyone got Baywatch. - Everyone got Baywatch. - So basically in Pakistan, we had one channel. - Okay. - PTV, Pakistan TV. - Yep. - And then we had nothing for a long time. Then we had the first non-government-owned channel came out and they were the ones who started shooting. Like, so PTV would show like, they'd show like 18, night writer, big stuff. Mostly Pakistani shows. And then we got our second channel. I forget how old I was. And I forget what that was called. But they would, you know, suddenly we had two channels and it felt like, you know. It's a whole new world now. Yeah. - Going from one to two is the biggest leap possible. - Well, that's 100% more channels. - I mean, that's a lot. But like going from 40 to 80, doesn't feel as intense as going from one to two. - Yeah, even 100 to 200. - Yeah, it's nothing. - Yeah. - One to two is one. - One to two is huge. - That is huge. - Suddenly there's a whole button on your TV that you can use. - Yeah, you can actually change the channel. - I remember like the volume on the thing was all, you know, worn down, but the channel one. - Right. - Was like completely pristine. You never needed to use it. Like why even turn it off, just turn it down. - Yeah, you just turn it down. - Yeah. - So we got the second one and that was, I can't remember. I can't believe I can't remember. And so with that, then they bought a lot of like British shows to us. That's when we got like faulty towers. - Okay. - And the show called. - Rent a ghost. - Rent a ghost, yes. - Rent a ghost. - Rent a ghost was a BBC series. It was a comedy about people who basically worked with a ghost to like rent about to haunt things. - Yeah. - Like a reverse ghost busters. - Yeah, yeah. It was like these. - But really cheap. - Yeah. It was like three or four ghosts. - Rent a ghost. - Yeah. - Rent a ghost. - Yeah. And we got that and we got like, you know, like only. - Only fools and horses? - Not only fools and horses. We got that later, but some mothers do have them. - Some mothers do have them. - Yeah. Some mothers do have them. - Really racially sensitive show. Some mothers do have them. - What was weird about it? I don't even remember. - It was very, that was a '70s BBC show where they had people basically in brown face playing Indians. - Oh. - That was like the neighbor. - Remember that. - Yeah, it was huge. There was a lot of shows like that. - You know what? I watched 48 hours last night for the first time. - Yeah. - Nick Nolte is a racist in them. - Oh, absolutely. - And it's not as big a deal as it should be. He calls Eddie Murphy. He calls him watermelon for a big chunk of the movie. - Yeah. - The N word with the ER at the end, not the A. - Right. - And he also, what does he call him? He calls him like, he's like, racist to him the entire. - I wonder if those were all his ad-libs. - Yeah, I got, can I do one take, I want to try. - One for me. - Yeah. - This was for the watermelon. - So then we only had two. And then we got PTV two. So the government was like, we need another one. So then we had three. And we had three for the longest time. And then eventually to start getting dish. - Right. - And when we got the dish, that was when it exploded. - You get anything. - We got, yeah. There were these channels called Star. It was called Star TV. And it was a whole network of channels. And we got like Baywatch and we got MTV. And that's when it sort of exploded. And that was probably, I was 12 or 13. - Which is the prime time for that kind of thing. - Oh yeah, that's amazing. - And when you, when they would show these US shows, were they subtitled or did they dub them? - I think they were subtitled, they weren't dubbed. They were subtitled and they would cut stuff out. - Really? - And I remember there was a certain period. So if you drank, if characters got a beer in the fridge, that's out. - They would cut that out. - They would cut out beer, alcohol. And I think at a certain time, there was a little period where they were also cutting out cigarettes. - Okay. - But then they, 'cause we were a lot to have cigarette ads on TV. - Right. - Almost the entire time. There was a little period where it went away. And that's when they took that out. But the regular channels would take out like people drinking and stuff. But when we got the dish network, that wasn't sort of opposite by the government. Then you could have everything. - Everyone went nuts. - We never had nudity or anything. - Right, but then after that makes sense because in '93 is when Pakistan had the great drunkard plague where all the kids were getting drunk. - Oh yeah. Totally. Exactly. - They were wearing shorts. - Yeah, dudes wearing shorts and getting drunk. There were rumors that if you went up and you made your dish face a different direction, then you could get Russian porn. - Oh really? - No one ever was able to do that? - Yeah, no, but when the guy would be up there like sort of moving the dish, like let me know when it looks good. I would always be there like hoping for it. - Yeah, it looks bad. Keep moving it. Keep moving it. - Yeah, there it is. - What was the biggest Pakistani shit? Was it like a Pakistani sitcom or like a really? - Yeah, there were sitcoms that were big. Like the biggest show that ran forever. I don't know if it's still on, it was a game show. It was called Nilamka, which means like auction houses. This sort of had an auction theme, but it would be like people from the audience would come on and they had to draw a face and then audience would vote on what was the best. He would have like interviews. So that was pretty big. The shows, the American shows that got huge there were-- - Pick offenses. - Pick offenses, that was later, that was the dish. Earlier was A-Team, MacGyver. - So action stuff. - Air wolf, night rider, action stuff. That's what translates the best. - Yeah, absolutely. And that's probably the most accurate view of America, I think. - Yeah. - Cars fighting. - Cars fighting, a lot of shooting. - Yeah. - And then Matlock was big. - Right. - Later she wrote. - Okay, so all the hour long shows, really. - A lot of the hour long shows. No real half hours, I think. - I wonder if comedy just doesn't translate as well, culturally. - You know, there might be a problem with the places, like I was in the UK performing, and they know friends, but they don't know Seinfeld. - Yeah, Seinfeld was very obscure in the UK. So I lived in the UK, my wife's from England, and I started doing comedy over there, and I lived there for a while. And yes, Seinfeld would be on, it was on like Friday nights at one in the morning. - Really, yeah. - It was a really obscure culture. - They didn't know Seinfeld. - But friends was on like four times a day, every day. - So when I was there, and Australia, same thing. Like two broke girls is huge. - Right, right. - They love Big Bang Theory, it's huge there, but they don't know Seinfeld. They know Leno, but they don't know Letterman. - Yep, Letterman's on ITV3, which is like some obscure thing. Yeah. - But what was interesting was Australia is similar in that they only have like 10 or 12 channels. So if you do a show in Australia, you're a celebrity overnight. - Yeah, the whole country knows you. And I imagine it was like that in Pakistan where everyone was on that one channel was the biggest star in the world. - Yeah, we had a lot of like hour long, sort of serialized dramas, but there would be like mini series. - Right, right. - There would be like 20 episodes and it'd be one story that it's done. - Would they be like historical stuff or would it be like modern? - Modern stuff, I didn't watch any of the historical stuff. A lot of like, a lot of shows about how evil rich people are and poor people are good. - I like that, I like that. Even though rich people finance the show. - They're making the show. - Yeah, yeah. - I know there was one show, there was like a kids show and there was a guy who would sing with the guitar and he was an actor who was in some other stuff. And he lived on our street and I would sing out. - Oh wow, look, look, that's that guy. Did you ever approach him or like a design graph or anything? - No, he was a nice guy. Like people would play cricket in the street and sometimes he would play. He was just like a long guy. - I never talked to him really though. - Wow. - He seemed like he would be around, yeah. - So the first time you came here was in '93 and you had mentioned that, what did you come here for, for school or? - Just for vacation. - Just for vacation. - My parents and my uncle was in New York. - Okay, Queens. - Queens, New York and you bought a TV guy. - Well, they had TV guys. - They had ones? - Yeah. - They had like, you know, they had the box and they had every channel. - So you must have lost your mind. - Oh yeah. I mean, I did that thing when they would leave. If you like, you know, if you flip to the pay-per-view channel for a second, you would see like green wavy boots. - Yeah, the back and forth. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - A lot of back and forth, right hand and left hand. - Yeah, I had this kid, when I lived in England actually in my dorm room, there was some, some frat dude from America for some reason was there. This kid named Pete and he was really mad that he went to England and all his frat buddies went to Australia and he was just like moped all the time. And I had a TV in my dorm room that I was stealing cable from the pub behind the dorm room. - And they were okay with it? - No. I just spliced it and fed it to her. - Oh really? - Yeah. And I would get scrambled pornography. And you know, I would leave my dorm room 'cause sometimes people would go in there and watch TV 'cause I had the only TV. 'Cause you need a license for a TV in England, which is really weird. - I think you need a license for a TV in Pakistan too. - Do you really? - Yeah, because the government makes sense, yeah. Did they have guys in vans with sensors that would drive around in England? They could tell if you had a TV in your house. - Oh really? I know when we had to buy another TV, we had to like get a license for it. - Then it's less if it's black and white and even less if you're blind. You pay like a smaller fee. - Blind people getting TVs or something. - You might want to hear it. - Okay. - Get a radio. - Yeah. But this kid, he's sitting on my bed and he's flipping back and forth on the-- - And you were there? - The porn, I was out and I came back and he's in there and he goes, I don't know if that's an elbow or a titty, but I like it. And I was like, get out of my room. Like what are you doing? - I'm so gross. - It was horrific. So let's jump in on the one you picked and then we can flip to the one from the week you were here. But so this is November 12th, 1994 and it's got Scarlett O'Hara on the cover. I don't know if you're a big gun with a wind fan. - I never saw that movie. - You haven't really missed much. You haven't really missed much. - Really? It's always on the list of five best movies. - It is, but it's really southern and I think it's a long and boring. When I used to work, actually in the UK, I worked at Turner UK and Ted Turner had a screening room in the building that would just show gone with the wind all day. Like you could just go in and watch it. - Okay. - Yeah, it was very weird. So eight o'clock Saturday night, would you go? - I went with two to flip back and forth. I call this the Boner Hour. - Excellent. - And I'm going with Baywatch and House of Style. 'Cause it's hard to pick. - Yeah, absolutely. I was maybe the world's biggest House of Style. - I love that show. I mean, I loved it. - I loved it. I saw this one had a Cheryl Crow. - Yeah, Cheryl Crow, they go shopping with Cindy Crawford. I specifically remember this one. They go and buy boots. Yeah, they go buy boots on Melrose app. - Really? - Yes. It was right when she, Cheryl Crow broke. - Yeah. - And I was like, she's talented and really hot. - Yeah. - So it was, it was her and Cindy Crawford going to all the vintage stores, buying boots and vintage clothing on Melrose. - I loved House of Style. I mean, 'cause this was, this isn't the period when we get the dish and now we have all the channels. - You get MTV. - And Cindy Crawford comes into my life and she's a big impact. - Yeah, a lot of teenage boys really became men when she was-- - Yeah, oh my God, yeah. - Really, really. - And that show, I had magical mold. - Exactly, exactly. And I had a weird respect for that show. Like if someone was like, oh, I'm like, hey, this is House of Style, we're not watching it for that reason. - Yeah, exactly. - I wanna watch Todd Oldham, real poster, a coach. - And Baywatch, I was just a huge fan of it. I've seen a ton of Baywatch. - There's a Canon and Hobie Buchanan. - Hobie Mitch, this one Mitch helps an FBI agent played by Kathleen Kinmont to stake out the beach house of a mobsters girlfriend. - Okay, I don't remember that one, but what I did love was that when shit went down at the beach, it wasn't the FBI or the police did anything. It was always the lifeguard. - Always the lifeguard. - There was one I remember where there's a, and what are the lifeguard houses called? The little-- - Yeah, the little beach houses. - Yeah, whatever they are, where they're hanging out, there's like a bad, they've got hostages in there. And the FBI can't do anything, and Mitch burrows underground, comes out under it, and then just takes everyone out. - Which is a classic lifeguard technique. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, I mean, if someone's drowning, a lot of times they'll burrow under the sea, and then come up for the other side. - Yeah, it seems hard. But yeah, how does he know how to dig? And share that plan with the FBI, they could help. - Yeah, or if you don't share, they might think you're one of the suspects and shoot you. - Yeah, I could very well have it. - But, well, it worked out okay. And I was a huge fan of, I loved Mitch, I loved Hobie. - Yes. - Really Hobie, did you identify with him personally? - Of course that was Hobie. - And weirdly that show, I didn't really watch much for the TNA, and it wasn't a huge panel. I just liked the show. - I'll admit, it was kind of an engaging show. It was like MacGyver, and those shows, it was always someone in peril. There was a lot of action. - Yeah. - And I also kind of liked the soap offer aspects on it. - Oh yeah, do you remember that Brunette, didn't she had eaten by a shark at one point? - Yes, yes, he did. So that was in the first season, yet not Yasmin Bleece. - Not Yasmin Bleece. - Yasmin Bleece came later. - She came later. - I, and then when she came on, then it was TNA. - Then it was ultimately my favorite. - Yeah, so we had Alexandria Paul, who was in Christine, the John Carpenter movie, yeah. - Yeah, she died. - She died, she got eaten by a shark. - Yeah. - And Billy Warlock was in the show, who was-- - Who's Billy Warlock? - Billy Warlock in Dark Care. No, he was in the first two seasons. His father was Dick Warlock, who was a Hollywood stuntman. - I have to look for something because I remember that name. - Yo, recognize him. - 'Cause I always, that name, you can't forget the name Billy Warlock. - Oh, yeah. - I mean, that sounds like a stage magician. - That's a fucking great name. - Did you ever see Baywatch Nights? - Oh, Billy Warlock. I know this guy. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I watched Baywatch Nights a little bit. That was like Baywatch meets X-Files, right? - Yes, it was completely insane. - Billy Warlock. - Oh, there he is. It's a shirtless new one. - She was the guy that was in silk stockings. - Oh, that was-- - Eddie-- - Oh, that is name on the show. - I can't think of his name, but he was like kind of a dickhead. He was like the brashy young guy, he was like the, thinking he was better than Mitch kind of guy. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that guy too. - Yeah, he was a smarmy. He was smarmy in the best possible way. - And so I was a big fan of that show, and Yasmin Bleett when she came on. - Yeah, I loved that show. - I loved her, and she was the reason I saw Basket Ball. - Really? - She was the reason I saw it, and I think her for it. - She's in batch hip now. - She's not doing well, I think she got arrested for some kind of DUI. - I met a bunch of times. - Yeah. - Speaking of that era, I met Carmen Electra recently. Very nice, and that's great. - She seems really nice. Did you ever hear how she got famous? - How? - She was a, her real name's Tara, Patrick or something. - She told you what it was. It is, it's sort of like-- - It's very Irish-sounding, and she was just some dancer at a club, and Prince went there, and he was like, your new name's Carmen Electra, and here's an album I wrote for you. - Really? - She put out this album. - And became famous. - And became famous, yeah. - She had a single called Get On Up that was like a rap single. - Wasn't she on Singled Out? - She was, she replaced Jenny McCarthy, and she was on Baywatch prior to that. - Yeah, okay. - It's Carmen Electra. - Yeah, Carmen Electra. - In Burbank on Magnolia Ave, there is a store that sells wardrobe from movies when they're done, and they have three of the bathing suits from Baywatch there. - How much? - They're probably not that much. They're very faded, yeah. They're in a glass case, and you could buy them. One of them is-- - Oh, that's why they're faded. - Yeah, yes, yes. Yeah, they're not displayed properly. They should have got the UV blocking glass. - Yeah. - I didn't want to say anything to them, but I don't want to tell them how to do their job, but they are there if you want to see them in person. It's not that far. I would have gone with Baywatch, because House of Style MTV had like four shows, and they showed them 700 times. So I definitely would have-- - Oh, so you would have seen that. - I would have seen it maybe three or four times that day, but I was the world's biggest. I used to write them letters. - House of Style. - Yeah. - About what? - Just like how great I thought the show was. - I mean, it was great. - Yeah, it was great, but I was 13, and I'm like, they need to know. - That's really nerdy. - That is super nerdy. Yeah, I can't imagine anyone wrote the letters. - Oh, wow. - Yeah, they were just like, ooh, yeah. - Oh, my God. - It's pretty bad. And so that's an hour-long show, so we go to nine o'clock, and what are you going with? - Well, I'm saying if I'm done, okay, nine o'clock, I picked, it sucked because the 8.30 Pete and Pete was on to yourselves, maybe I'll switch over if it's a great episode, great show. - Yeah, and I only discovered that show a couple years ago. - Yeah. - At that time, I was not aware of the show. - Yeah, I wouldn't imagine that show would translate to other countries. - Yeah. - It's such a weirdly American show. - It's so weird, but now, and it still holds up. - Oh, absolutely. It's very timeless. - But what I picked at nine was Ren and Stimpy. - Yes. - One of the weirdest, greatest roses cartoon shows ever. - Both these sort of kids shows that are like sort of targeted at adults, kind of, yeah. - Yeah, Nickelodeon really, so for the-- - Oh, yeah, they used to be so edgy. - Amazing, so the first 10 years-ish of Nickelodeon, they didn't do a lot of original content. They basically just bought foreign shows and showed Canadian and British shows. And in the late '80s, they started producing their own stuff. And really, around 1990s, when they put out all the Nicktoons, the first four Nicktoons, Pete and Pete, and all these shows that-- - What's Nicktoons? - Nicktoons were their brand of cartoons. You had Rugrats, you had-- - Oh, you mean Nicktoons. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Doug and the-- - People love them. - Yeah, and so that was their thing, they were like, yeah, we're doing our own thing, and we weren't just buying other shows. - I did crazy shit. - Yeah, and it was crazy, and you couldn't believe they were getting away with this stuff. It seemed like no executive was in charge. No one was looking at the stuff they were doing. And that didn't last too long, but I think people our age were kind of in the sweet spot of being able to get that. - Perfect. - Yeah. - Perfect. - Yeah, Renn and Snippy is such a great show. And Saturday Night Nickelodeon's was called SNCC, was Saturday Night Nick. - Uh-huh. - Normally at eight o'clock on any night of the week, Nickelodeon switched to Nick at night. That's when Nick was over for the day. - Yeah. - And so it was really weird for them to say, on Saturdays though, we go till 10. - Yeah, which is exciting though. - Yeah, kids were like, yeah, that's for us. So yeah, Renn and Snippy is a great pick. Nine o'clock, did you stick with it? - That was nine. - Oh, I mean, nine 30, did you stick with it? - Uh-huh. - I thought, are you afraid of the dark? - No, I went, I was, this is crazy. I was a big, one of the shows we got over there that we thought was huge was Grace Under Five. - Yes. - So you watched Brett Butler's special? - I watched Brett Butler's special. I was a big fan of Grace Under Five. It had William Pickner in it, do you remember him? - Yes. - I mean, he's amazing. - Yeah, I like it, and it also had Dave Thomas from SCTV, which SCTV's one of my all-time favorite sketches. - Yeah. - He was the pharmacist. - Sure. - It was like maybe her love interest. - Yeah. - And uh, this is-- - Strange brew. - Yeah, exactly. Strange brew's such a great movie. And this was her Showtime comedy special, and this was the comedian delivers her trademark biting humor for an audience in Portland, Oregon. - Do you know she was homeless for a while? - Yes. - That's a long ago? - She has a crazy life story, even before that, and then after. - But now doesn't she? Just like a night, like Thursday night, she performs every night, every week at some quality. - Does she really? She burned every bridge on Earth. - What happened? - So she was in the tabloids at the time. Her show, they touted her as the next Roseanne. That's kinda why she got Grace Under Five. - Yeah, she's sort of like a blue collar breast. - Yeah, absolutely. - Older white lady. - She's like the white Roseanne. - Yeah. - And so the show was having all these problems. She was always having people fired. - Well she was. - Which Roseanne was like that. - Roseanne was like that too, and I wonder if Brett Butler just was like that, or was kinda like an arms race between Roseanne, but she was having a show around her fired, and an actress fired. She had one of the kids who played in one of her kids fired and recast. - Really? - Yeah, so there was. - I didn't know any of this. - And then she went to rehab partway through the show, and some seasons were like a half order, 'cause she was. - She was a mess? - Yeah, it was a pretty good hit here. - Yeah. - But then, 'cause of all of these problems, it just trailed off. - Yeah, yeah. But it's funny that you'd be like, biggest star in America, probably Brett Butler. - It's weird, the shows that, and I was looking through it and I realized like all these shows that you used to watch, they were like, sort of important to you that you don't think about, they're gone. - Oh yeah. - I don't think anybody thinks about Grace Under Fire. - No, that shows gone. - That show definitely didn't go into syndication. It's not a show people were like, oh my favorite episode of Grace Under Fire, no one's ever said that. - That's gone. - But it wasn't a bet, like it would be on, I would enjoy it. - I watched it. I liked it. - It wasn't bad. - Yeah. - So then we move on to Sunday night, eight o'clock, what'd you go with? - Okay, so I picked, and you'll see. I did not have a rebellious streak. I just loved whatever shows my parents and grandparents love. - Okay. - So I was a big fan of Matlock and Perry Mason and Murder, she wrote. - So you can like all the old people solving current sources. - Finding for justice. - Yes, yes. - An old person is pursuing justice. Little Camille is on board. - So you an only child or you have siblings? - No, I had a younger brother. - Did he, would he be on board with that as well? - We watched the same stuff. - Okay. - 'Cause we didn't really have, we had one TV. - Right, so you all had to compromise on-- - Yeah, everyone had to make a decision. But Murder, she wrote, I loved, I loved Murder, Mystery shows, and Murder, she wrote was awesome. But Matlock, I remember, I watched so much Matlock. - Well, he was surly. - He was surly. - Yeah. - And I remember the one episode where it turned out that his person was guilty. - Yeah. - And then he sort of did it so that he almost framed her best friend and then she comes out and is like, "No, no, no, I'll," so he did the right thing. - Yeah, it was a dark night of the soul from Matlock. - Yeah, 'cause he can't, you know, go, that's like he gets just barred from the-- - Yeah, it's just his ass is on the line. I don't think, he might even said that. I'm not gonna lie, I ask on the line. When you and your family would watch these shows, would you do it in silence? Or would you speculate on who the murderer was? Would you all be trying to figure it out? - We didn't talk. - No talk. - We would just watch. - If someone tried to talk, would they be like, "What are you doing?" - I don't remember that, but I do know that still to this day, I'm very, very like don't talk during anything. And when I went with Emily, I remember one of our first days, you went to a movie and she said something to me during the movie and I was like, "Uh-oh, this is a big red flag." - Yeah. - And the movie was Prairie Home Companion. You remember the video? - Robert Altman, yeah, 2006. - Yeah. - Yeah, 2006. - Lindsay Lohan is in it. - Lindsay Lohan's in it. That's a good movie. - That's a pretty good movie. - It was Robert Allison, isn't it? Josie Riley. - I invited myself along to the HBO, Aston Comedy Festival in 2006, because the Walsh brothers had gotten into it, so I tagged along and Robert Altman was there, showing Prairie Home Companion, and I got to talk to him for like a minute. But it was like two weeks before he died. - Oh, geez. - And he would seem very feeble, but it was really cool to just be able to-- - Wow. - Thank you for all these movies. "Murgy Rilt" this night is an unexpected romance that awaits Chicago Place, Charlie Garrett, Chicago Place, that doesn't make a sense. On a high stakes assignment and Martinique, that doesn't sound that exciting to me. - It's just another episode of "Murgy Rilt". - Jessica and a friend find themselves on a playground for the rich, where someone is playing a deadly game. (laughing) - That could be the description of every episode. - Every single episode, every single episode. You did pass up Lois and Clark, which was-- - You know what? I did consider Lois and Clark. I did consider-- - It's completely forgotten now. - It is completely forgotten. - It was huge, yeah. - So I totally, totally did consider that. - It was the first sort of comic book thing that women watched. - It was, well, that was kind of a problem with it, is that I always wanted it to be a little more guy than it was. - Yeah, there was not a lot of action on it. - Dean Kane. - Dean Kane, that's right. Probably the best Superman. - And what's her-- - Terry Hatcher. - Yeah, Terry Hatcher. - She had made a movie right before that with Andrew Dice Clay called "Brain Smasher", a love story. - And didn't go great. - Didn't go great. - Okay. - Got Lois and Clark, and they never had super villains on it, which really bothered me. - Yeah. - It was more the romance story. - It was more romance, that's why I didn't. - Yeah, I wanted to connect. - I even enjoyed the "Super Boy" series in the '80s, more than that. - Oh, really? I don't remember that. - It was made at Universal Studios, Florida. - Really? - It's pretty wonderfully bad. It was a syndicated series. It was on for five seasons. - One of my first crushes was "Supergirl". - Oh, yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, absolutely. - I think that's probably everyone had a crush on "Supergirl". - The which version, though, the film version? - The film version. - Yeah, so how in Slater? - Hell of Slater, that's who it is. - Yeah. - Yeah, I remember there's a scene where she stops her bra, and I'm like, you don't have to do that. - You're supposed to. - Yeah. - That should be one of your powers. - Yeah. - If you ever meet her, you'd be like, you know, I just, years ago, I thought, what does Slater look like? - She looks really good. I met her at a convention a couple of years ago. She was in an episode of "Supernatural" about two years ago. - People love that show. I've tried, I haven't gotten it. - It's silly. It's a silly show. The first five seasons have some good stuff. You know who wrote some of the best episodes? Ben Edlund, who created "The Tick" and wrote for "Een." - Oh, really? - Yeah. - People love that show, right? - Yeah, I mean, it's definitely called falling. - It's got a big called falling. And it's definitely a teenage girl show, but there's some interesting stuff in it. Some of the episodes are terrible. - It is a teenage girl show. - Yeah. - It's about two hot brothers. - Exactly fighting monsters. - Yeah. - I was in line, my wife and I were in line waiting for the Friday the 13th remake, and to see that in movies, and there were some teenage girls behind us, and they-- - The new one? - The new one, yeah, which is pretty good. - I know Jason from that. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - Oh, it's Mears. - Dark Mears. - Dark Mears, yeah. And it's pretty good. It remakes basically the first three movies in one movie. - It's pretty good. - Yeah. - I totally thought that would, like, get the stands franchise started again. - I thought so, well. - And the dead. - Yeah, and Jared Petalucky from "Supernatural" was it? - That's right. - So these teenage girls knew him from that, and this girl goes, "What is this movie?" And she goes, "I think it's a remake of some, like, "super old movie about a haunted lake." - No way. - Yeah, how do people not know they were especially dumb? - Yeah, they were especially dumb, and they were, like, 15. - But a 15-year-old's no friend. - They should know, and then one girl goes, "I hope he was wearing a T-shirt in it," because he never wears those enough on "Supernatural." It looks so hot. - (laughs) - It's like, "This is what they're concerned about." - Perfect. - So you were watching that for an hour, and at nine o'clock, what are you going with? - I go with "Married with Children," 'cause that was a show when I visited the year before this. The idea of sort of, like, a raunchy comedy was so crazy to me. - That would never air in Pakistan. - No, that would never air in Pakistan. I remember one of the jokes they did was really funny, was he has to, something happens, and he has to get a circumcision, or he gets a circumcision by mistake, and it's, "I believe it's Ross, bro," or somebody, so he's like, "You know, I can't get an erection." - Right. - Nothing works. - No, like, he's, no, if he gets an erection, it's horrible 'cause it's dangerous. - Oh, good to yay. I'll turn the stitches. - The whole episode is like, it's about how he can't, he should not get an erection. - It's just fighting the boner. - He's fighting a boner, which to me was so crazy that they did that. - That is, that's pretty extreme, even for marriage. - Yeah, and that was a later episode. - There's one way on the cover is, I think it's Ross, bro, or somebody, and his friend says, "Hey, look, his hair looks "kind of like a vagina or something, "and you hear a pink," and he's like, "What's that?" - Scrubbing. - And he goes, "A stitch." Like, he, yeah, I was like, "Oh, yeah." - Oh, my God, I can't believe that's on TV. And then, of course, Christian Applegate. - Who doesn't love Christian Applegate? - And the mom, both hot. - Ridiculously hot. - Both Ridiculously hot. - I always was like the least realistic thing on this very silly cartoonish show, is that Al's like, "I do not wanna have sex with her." - Yeah, crazy. - I'm like, "Whoa." - What was a show that felt like a marriage with children rip off, and they had like a puppet that would cover-- - Apple ever after, and the puppet was voiced by Bobcat Goldthwaite. Nicky Cox was on the show. - Nicky Cox. - Yeah, it was on the WB when it first started. - And it was a rip off of marriage children. - Complete rip off of marriage. - That's true, right? - Yeah, I remember that. - Marriage With Children, to me, it was a show I always watched growing up, and I've tried to re-watch, and it's just like embarrassingly terrible, but it seems like a show made by a foreign country to make fun of America. - We loved it. - We loved it. - Yeah, I imagine that's what-- - Nailed it. - That sport, well. And that show has actually been remade in over 60 countries. - Married With Children? - Yes, there's a guy who put together a website of all the foreign married with children's with clips and photos, and it's hilarious. - Wow. - Like you can Google like the foreign marriage with children remakes, and it'll show you all the different ones in all the different countries, and it's one of the most remade American shows in other countries. - Such a cynical show. - Absolutely. - Everybody hated everyone. - Everybody hated everyone, and everyone was a bad person. - Everyone on that show was a terrible, terrible person. Yeah, it did not reflect well on Americans or people in general, and in this one, Jack Hacksaw Reynolds, Bubba Smith, and Ken Stabler try to turn Alan to a tackling dummy when his big mouth brings on a grudge football match of a high school alum. I remember this one. - That sounds like a good one. - That was actually a pretty good one, 'cause he was always talking about the polk-high game that he won, and that was the height. That was one thing I really did like about that show, was it was a guy who peaked in high school. - Yeah, and knew it. - And who's the biggest loser now. And he never saw that kind of thing. - They were all assholes and idiots, absolutely. - Yeah, you never see that. That was great. - No, it was a very odd choice. 9.30 would you go with? - I went with a show that I sort of barely remember. The George Carlin Show. - Terrible show. - What was the show? - So basically-- - I have vague memories of it. - So first of all, it was way too late for George Carlin to have a sitcom. This was like the almost end of his career. And it was basically like they took cheers and they took taxi and mashed them together to make a show for him. He played a taxi driver who hung out in a bar. - Oh, okay, that's great. - It's literally the plot of the show. - Oh, okay, that's great. - And they had a very good supporting cast. I mean, Alex Rocco was in it. It was a really great supporting cast. They had good writers. It just didn't work, it just wasn't good. I think I saw, I think I remember being excited about it and watching a couple of it. What happened was when I would come to visit in America, I totally bought into all the hype for new shows 'cause I was not used to that at all. Like it's time we never had like, there's a new show coming out. There was no ads, nothing like that. - 'Cause you only have one station, you don't need to advertise. - Yeah, and even most like products, like we didn't have multiple brands of products. Like with cookies, there were like, there was like basically two companies and only a few flavors. I remember with Juices when the second company started. So like most products, the brand names was just like one kind. - You just got what you got. - You got what you got. - And then you don't need to advertise 'cause why? - So it was weird to me watching like commercials for so much stuff. Like most of the commercials on TV, like I remember there was like fertilizer commercials and stuff 'cause there's also targeted at like farmers and stuff. - Right, right. - And it's one channel. So there's no real targeted advertising. - It's everybody. - Our demo is everyone. - Yeah, so we get like one ad for like a juice for kids and then one ad for fertilizer and toothpaste. So there weren't really a lot of different brands. So I loved American advertising when I came. - And you must have been very vulnerable to it. - Oh yeah, I thought, yeah, the claims you like, it must be true. This is the best thing ever. - I remember coming and then I talked to you about this. It's like, you know, that shows, and that was like 98 or something. So I'd already moved here. I remember when that show they were hyping it. I was like, oh, good time. - This show's gonna be the best. - Yeah. And that show they-- - It was like an L.A. Seinfeld. - It was an L.A. Seinfeld. But they also tried to get sort of the friends type too. - Oh, yes. - But the main, it was like four hot girls, but they were like L.A. Seinfeld. - Yeah, they were like not likable. - No, everyone was a bad person on that show. That's when the shift started to happen. You know, Seinfeld was obviously a big influence on that. Then all the protection shows were just awful. - Not even heroes, just anti. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, just anti. - So you were like, the George Carlin show's got to be the best thing ever. They were hyping it up here. - Yeah, but I barely remember it now. - When you would get here, would you just try to soak it as much as you possibly could? - I watched so much TV when I was here. I told you, this was earlier, but I watched the Batman The Animated series every day. That was like the best, one of my favorite shows. - It's still very, very good. I still think that the Paul Deany Bruce Tim DC animated animations are the best comic book adaptions that have ever been done. - Yeah. - Justice League, Just League Unlimited. - Yeah, it's gotten into those. - If you like Batman, it's-- - Justice League, It Just League Unlimited. - It's fantastic. - And someone's here and there, it looks awesome. The hard thing is, with my wife, that is a tough sell. - Yeah. - Yeah. - We watched most of our TV together, that is a tough sell. I know a lot of those new, like, Marvel and DC animated stuff is supposed to be pretty good. I sort of made her watch the one, it's sort of like, it's the Green Lantern one, if it's what it is. - Yeah. - First in flight or first flight. - First flight, yeah. - It's still like training day. - Yeah. - But with those guys, she liked that. - Yeah, she liked that, she would like Justice League Unlimited because it's like a better version of that. - Okay. - And it's serialized here. - It looks so good. - It's really great. - The animated stuff I really got into, this was already, it was X-Men, that X-Men. - Yeah. ♪ Da na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na ♪ - When you would go back to Pakistan, would your friends, I'll be like, tell us what you watched. - Sure. - 'Cause he had tales from-- - But the thing is, I was way more into pop culture than anybody else. - Right. - So I had some friends who were into it. Like, one guy I know, his parents got divorced. And his dad lived in America, or his mom, no, his dad lived in America and his mom lived in Pakistan. So he would go to America all the time. - Right, right. - He lived with his dad. And so he always had the best stuff. And right around when Batman came out, he was the fucking king. - She got decked out. - All the Batman stuff. - Yeah. - So he had a Game Boy, you know, he was fucking cool. - Oh, wow, this kid was cool. - Yeah, this kid. So that could give a shit about pop culture. But a lot of the other kids really did. And that was like the rarity of stuff. - What would the other kids do? - Don't go out and play, dude. - 'Cause that's crazy. - Sports. - That's doing cricket. - Yeah, cricket. - A lot of cricket. - A lot of cricket, yeah. - Would cricket be on TV? - Yeah. - All of it. - So I imagine like, when-- - I love watching cricket. - When cricket was on TV, no one was in the streets. Like everyone was just in watching cricket. - One cricket's on TV. It's one channel, that's all their show. And it's pretty fucking great. - Yeah, so if you want to go streaking or rioting-- - That's what the-- - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, exactly. - But don't drink or smoke. - That's when you want to burn your corons in the streets. - Absolutely. So let's move on to Monday night. The saddest night of the week is I always say, because you've gone to school, you've gone to work, you really need something to take your mind off it. - I'm watching eight to 10, or two parts Star Trek The Next Generation with Q. - Really? Did you always watch Star Trek The Next Generation? Did that make it over to Paxton? - Yes, Star Trek The Next Generation did make it over. - Did the original series air over there? - So Star Trek The Next Generation was on one of those, either, you know, PTV or one of those three Amazon. - 'Cause it's quality total. - And they aired it completely out of order. - Right. - So, you know, Tasha Yorda, spoiler alert, and then she's back the next episode. I was like, oh great, that was just the idea of-- - It's been some holodeck thing. - Yeah, the idea of serialized stuff didn't really, 'cause all the shows we watched, they sort of showed everything out of order. - Right. - So I always thought that these are like hour long things. Like two partners would be out of order, you know, random spots all the time. - Do you think there was incompetence or just not caring? - Just not caring. - Yeah. - They just didn't care. - Right, right. - It just showed me. - Don't say sorry anyway. - As long as I'm watching it. - Right. - So then when she was back, 'cause I had a huge crush on Tasha Yorda, huge crush, came back next episode. - Oh, thank God, she's fine. - Yeah. - So, big fan of that show, and then later when we got the dish, 'cause now, 'cause, and it was one of those where we had T.V. from like 9 a.m. to like 10 p.m. and at 10 p.m. this is the Pakistani national anthem. - We just shut off. - No T.V. - Oh God. - No T.V. at night. It's like the, boom. - That terrifies me that prospect. - Yeah, so it's just like a clock on the screen, just mocking you. - Just mocking you. - Nothing, nothing, yeah. Yeah, remember when this was something? - Yeah, yeah. - This is nothing now. But when we got the dish, now it's 24-hour T.V. - So did you just stay up all night? - Game changer, everything's different. And they would show, every day they would show a Star Trek The Original series. - Right. - And then I really got into that, and I loved that, - Right. - Because that's very, I never got that into, everyone I know watched Star Trek The Next Generation. - Oh, you didn't get into it. - I couldn't get that into it. I like The Original series 'cause of the weird sixties-ness of it, really appeal to me. - Oh yeah, so weird. - My wife's a huge Star Trek The Next Generation fan, so I've been sort of re-watching something. - That's amazing. - It is a good show. What do you think set you on that path for being really into pop culture when you're a kid, unlike the other kids you grew up with? - It is interesting. I don't know. I mean, I would watch a movie every single day in an American movie, and my dad would go to the store and just get like seven random movies, and I'd just watch one every day. - Right, I used to do the same thing. - Every after school I'd watch a movie. - But the Pakistan movies. - Yeah. - I'd do an after movie every day. - Wow, that sucks. - Yeah, yeah. - These movies are four hours long, nothing happens. - So your dad was kind of into it too? - My dad was big into movies. - Okay. - We sort of had a room where we had like movie posters up on the wall. - Oh, nice. - And I remember when, so every movie in Pakistan was a bootleg. - Right. - Every single movie. - Every year. The first, one of the first movies that was officially released in Pakistan, this one company started actually like getting licenses and selling them in the actual box. - Right. - So like my friend, the same guy I was telling you about, when he went to America, he got the Ninja Turtles movie in the slip case. - Oh yeah. So we were like, wow, he's for legit with this thing. - That was cool. Yeah. And before that they had an ad for Pizza Hut. - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - Absolutely. - Do you remember that? - Oh yeah. - Playing baseball. - I didn't have that until, I forget what year it was, but it, like, so they started releasing these VHSes. And one of the first movies was Star Trek Generations. - Okay. - So that was '97, it must have been. - Was it '97? - '95 maybe. - '95. - Yeah. - Probably. - That's late. - Yeah, pretty late. So that's when those movies started coming out. And what was the question? Why did I get into pop culture? - Yeah. So if everyone else is into sports or going outside, what do you think set you on the path to be into the pop culture stage? - I just, I don't know. I mean, I think it was the early, early stuff that I really loved was like Ghostbusters. - Right. - Tea. I don't know if my cousins being sort of into it, but then I got way more into it than anybody else. And video games. I got way into TV movies and videos. - So you really gravitated towards sci-fi stuff from the start. And you don't really even remember sci-fi horror. Really, really loved that stuff. - What was the first American thing you remember seeing? Do you remember a specific thing? - I mean, when I was a little kid, the early memories I have, I had an aunt in Singapore and I'd go to Singapore all the time. - Yeah. - The early, early memories I have are like V. - Yeah. - The original V. - The original series. - Loving that. - She ain't thought of eating the guinea pigs. - Oh, yeah. - She's oddly arousing. - Yeah. - Hot. She lives in Australia now and records albums. - She does? - Yeah. - She was like a Diana. - Diana. - Yeah. - She was hot. Robert Englund was on it. So I remember that as one of the early, super early things. I remember Smurfs very, very early, loving that. I remember, no Knight Rider, I have like very specific memories of. So this is like the snack, the little bits I remember are V and Smurfs. - So pretty contemporary stuff. And both shows about oddly colored weird things. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Invasive, oddly colored species. - Yeah, and great, great, great shows, both of them. - So it was cue, everyone seems to love cue the most. - I love cue. - I love cue, yeah. - I love cue. - He was just an omnipotent guy, kind of fucking with everyone. - Yeah, his whole thing, they were like, "Oh, let's just make an episode where there are no rules. "Bring cue." And that's a two-parner. - Yeah. So I probably wouldn't have watched that then. I'd probably check it out now. But I definitely think I would have watched the nanny. - Oh, wow. - I had a thing for Fran Drescher. - Really? - At the time. - I had a thing for her too. - I'd throw it on, you know, no big deal. - Yeah, she was hot. - Yeah. - In '30, I'm probably gonna go with Blossom, a show that I enjoyed. - I never really got into Blossom, Emily, my wife, love Blossom. It was a teenage girl show, by far. - Yeah. - I mean, I figure, "Hey, I'm doing house of style, might as well go with Blossom." I also had a subscription to Sassy Magazine. - Oh, she did, too. - Yeah. - But she's a woman. - Yeah, yeah, that's the big difference. - That's the difference. - That's the difference. - That's the big difference. - I did, yeah. I used to get my sister subscriptions to these girls' magazines, but the Sassy one I got in my own name, and they sent me as a subscription gift. These like mailing labels that said "Miss" can read. - They were like, "There's no way." It sounds like a guy there, but there's no way. - There's no way. There's no way. - Yeah. - Kendra read. - Yeah. - So I thought, you know, "Hey, I'm learning about women." - Yeah. - Yeah, that was my excuse. - So Star Trek was big, and honestly, this week I'm gonna show off a little bit. Patrick Stewart tweeted at me. - That's pretty awesome. - Just last week. - The first time ever. - And all of them were right. - Of course. - Yeah. - And he's excited he can't be a fan, even though he never liked the next generation. - Yeah. - No, he likes the Silicon Valley, the HBO show online. So he tweeted at me in my judge, and he said the show was officially hooked. Big fan, brilliant. - So that's- - And I almost cried. - That's a good end to talk about how weird was it for you the first time you actually were on television, and realizing that the reach of that is international, and these things are airing everywhere, and there are people like Patrick Stewart, who you're- - That's home. - That's crazy. - The Patrick Stewart thing is crazy. I haven't been on a few TV shows, but nothing really that is like, has any sort of international appeal, like Franklin and Bash, I was on for three years, that did okay here. I think it aired in like the UK, did okay, I recognize from it a little bit, but that's a different. - Orlando has a very American show, I don't think it has much of a lot of saying. But Silicon Valley, it's interesting, I'll read reviews of it in Italian. It's just started airing in the UK, or it's about to start, it just started, it's airing in Australia, it's airing in Sweden, it's airing in Dubai. - Do they dub them, or subtitle it? - I know that there's like a Spanish one. - So if you've seen your self-care? - I haven't seen the Spanish one, I want someone to vine it. So it's interesting. This is the show, I think, partly because it's HBO, and it is a fairly broad show. I think it's sort of airing in different countries, so that's sort of exciting. - Will it air in Pakistan, have you ever been on television in Pakistan? - I don't know, you know, it's honestly, it's weird. I don't think people in Pakistan are really aware of me, my family. But I don't think even kids that I went to like high school with and stuff are really aware of me, because I did like, I've done like Letterman and Conan, I don't think those shows air over there, I think like Leno does. So it's just sort of been, I don't think Franklin Bash airs over there. So, but I think Franklin Bash airs, aired in Dubai or something. I don't know. - So it's weird to live this sort of double life almost, if you go towards your family or the people that you know growing up, where you know, over here you're a television star, and they're the, you know, doesn't really register. - Nobody, I don't think, yeah, and every now and then I'll get a thing where like, oh, this show is a Pakistani guy in it, you know, like, Elle India, did like a little thing on me, even though I'm from Pakistan. - They're like close enough. - Close enough. It really is like that. They look hard for that shit. So, so that's, it's interesting. I don't think like my family knows over there, obviously, but I don't think anything is really sort of translated. - Do you think it really, it really sinks in with your family though, because they get how the scope of it, or they're just kind of like, oh, I just think males do it, you know. - I don't think, I don't think my family back home really gets it. My family here kind of gets it, but they feel weird about it. Like for Silicon Valley, they had like billboards up in New York, NLA, with like all our faces on there. - Yeah. - Yeah. And so, they just never brought it up, but then when I went to their house, they had like, a print out of it and they framed it. - Right. - And they'll get excited about weird things, so they'll, they won't ever bring it up. Like it had been airing for a couple of weeks, and I was like, Mom, did you see it? And she's like, yeah. And then she didn't say it with 30 seconds, and she was like, it was good. So, so I think it's weird for them, they have no like, in to the life I've chosen. - Right. I just, I just don't think it makes sense to them. I don't think they necessarily disapprove. They don't, not that they approve. - Right. - Far from them. - They just don't understand it at all. - There's no way for them for it to really make sense. - They have no frame of reference for approval. - It doesn't make sense to them. - What was the first thing you did that people recognized you from, like the first time you got recognized from something on television? - I think the, I've done little stuff here and that, but really Portlandia was the one that I think, and Portlandia is weird because you do it and people don't find it for another year because when it hits Netflix is when people find it. - Right. - So I'd done that, and I really liked what I did on that. And then it was, I was like, well, I guess people didn't really watch that show, but then a year later I started getting recognized. And for a long time, you know, if I go to the middle of the country, it's Franklin and Bash, like Ohio is Franklin and Bash, Iowa is Franklin and Bash, but if I go to like, you know, Portland obviously, but like San Francisco, Austin, like sort of the big cities, the hip towns, it's weird, but the hip towns, it's Portlandia, I said, well, people know me from it. - Was there, was there anyone you've worked with yet that you used to watch on a show that was really like, just freaked you out having to talk to me? - Well, I mean, I was a huge fan of my judge, you know, he wasn't on those shows, but I was very aware of who he was, like, when we started getting MTV, Bevis and Butthead. I loved that show and I loved Office Space. So that's been pretty-- - Did you watch "King of the Hill?" - I didn't watch "King of the Hill," but I loved "Idiocracy, Office Space," and Bevis and Butthead. I've seen some "King of the Hill." I really, really like it. - It's good. It's good. That show is so under the radar because-- - It's such a weird show. - It's been for, like, 12 years and it was just always kind of there, like the number. That's a show that I feel like would go to other countries and someone would come over and think it was, like, bigger than the Simpsons because it was on for so long and people were like, "I don't really know anything about that show." - Yeah, but people who love it really love it. It was almost like, they didn't need to be animated. It was a pretty grounded show. - Oh, absolutely. It was very, very realistic in a lot of ways. - Yeah, of course I watch "Saved by the Bell" and "Mark Paul Gossler" is in fact on the back, so that's-- - Yeah, that must have been weird. - That must have been really weird. Did you ever bring it up to him? - Yeah, he'll talk about it. He's not one of those guys who's like, "Don't bring it up." He'll tell you stories. He's totally fine. He understands it. - Yeah, that's pretty cool. - He understands that that's a big cultural thing. - Yeah, I feel like if you are him, you have to. - Yeah, but then there's some people who are like, "You know how Don McLean won't play American Pie?" - Yeah. - "Mark Paul will play American Pie." - Yeah, he'll play American Pie. - He's not even asking them. - That's right. - And he'll do the whole thing too. - He is surprisingly good at it. - You have to wait to shoot for half an hour 'cause he started and he can't stop. Tuesday night, eight o'clock would you go with? - Okay, so it starts at 8.05. I went with Tails from the dark side, the movie. - The movie. - So this is on TBS. TBS is Ted Turner's network at this time. He had a brilliant idea. Start everything at the '05s. And his idea was if you watch one thing on that station, you're pretty much stuck there all day because by the time it ends, all the other states have already started. - It's pretty genius. - It's pretty. That's sort of evily genius. - It is evily genius. - What an amazing idea that he had. - But it's also tough 'cause if it's like eight and you want to watch something, something starts at eight, something starts at 8.05. - Yeah. - You're hedging your bet there that they're gonna stick with your thing. - But that's genius. - So I love Tails from the dark side of the movie. Did you ever see the show? - I did. I loved... One of my favorite types of shows were those sort of a half hour... - Horror anthologies. - Yeah. - Tails from the crypt. - I don't know. Tails from the dark side. What was another one? - I have Freddy's Nightmare, his monsters, amazing stories. - Amazing stories. - Yeah. Twilight Zone, the new Twilight Zone. - Yeah. What Twilight Zone? What was... It was like Tails from the dark side. There was one that was to me really, really, really scary and it was almost really difficult for me to watch. And I can't remember. - Friday the 13th, the series? - No. I always think it's like the opening credits had like a tree. - That's Tails from the dark side. - Is that Tails from the dark side? - Negative. - Yeah, that's the TV show. - That mankind lives in a world that what he believes to be. - Yeah. - That's the one that was too scary. - That's Tails from the dark side. - That one was too scary. - And they did have some legitimate scary episodes. - Yeah. - Some of them were very bad. Some of them were very silly. - There was one. I don't know why I got into my skin, but there's a woman who moves in or a guy moves in and next apartment or the phone keeps ringing and he's like freaking out and then he ends up eventually dies and then his phone starts ringing. - Yeah. - I like those shows because there wasn't... I love horror. I always hate it when they're trying to explain it too much. - Yeah. - In that half hour format, you can't explain it. - Just the highlights. - So it's just sort of, well, I just like that this crazy shit happening. I don't need like, you know, the explanation is never interesting. - Well, that's one of the reasons I never got into sci-fi because, and I forget who this quote it is attributed to, but they said basically the difference between horror and sci-fi, the same things are happening, but sci-fi explains why. - Yeah. - And that's kind of why I didn't get into it because it would sort of, it wouldn't be as scary or just like, oh, there's, you know, even if it was some bullshit pseudo science explanation, it still would sort of ruin it. - Well, that's why I liked sci-fi that was, you know, like Star Trek. - Right. - That's not, that's a different kind of sci-fi. - Yeah. I mean, it's basically a Western show. - Yeah. Totally. - Yeah. - Totally. - Or a space opera. So I would have gone with Wings, which was a show that I loved. - Sure. - I love the Hackett Brothers. I saw "Chills from the Dark Side" the movie in the theater. - Oh, wow. - I loved it. "Cat from Hell", which has from the New York Dolls and "Buster Point" from David Scrooge, right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's very, very good in that. - Jody Rose, my friend, was a very funny comedian, just lent me this movie again because I was at his house. He just, he's a huge horror fan and, you know, I love "Creep Show 1" and "2", of course. - Yeah. - And he was like, you gotta watch this again. - Yeah. - So, Christian Slater, Christian Slater with the "Mummy", which is based on a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story. - Oh, is that right? - Steven King's story, an Arthur Conan Doyle story, and Debbie Harry's really good in that movie. - Yeah. - And that movie, rather. - So you have got that. - I'm actually gonna watch that tonight. - You should. It's very, very good. One of George Romero's finest films. - Oh, yeah. They consider it a, he said, they consider it a trilogy, "Creep Show", "Creep Show 2", and "Chills from the Dark Side", they consider it all part of the same movie. - Yeah, "Creep Show" is, I love that movie. I love that movie. - Is that the, which is the one where Stephen King is the kind of guy? - The loads of death at George Romero, yeah, it's the first one. - What a great name. - So sad. - It's comedic, but by the end you're like, "This is really depressing." I waited on him once when I worked at the Steakhouse. - I think it was nice. - He was super nice. He drives down from Maine to go to the Red Sox games, and he would stop at this awful Steakhouse I worked with every time, 'cause it had been there for 60 years, and he always get a filet mignon and a grape nut custard and a Diet Coke, and he, he gave me my tip in $2 bills for some reason. - Oh, that's cool. - I still have them. I didn't spend it, so I gotta, I gotta keep them. So Wings is on for an hour. I'm going with that, I would not have gone with Frasier at the time, I was gonna go with Magnum PI. - Okay, I looked at Magnum PI. - Yeah, I watched it all the time. Anytime it was on. - I looked bad. - I think I was mesmerized by his mustache. - Yeah. - Short. - Wednesday night, eight o'clock, what are you on with? - I'm going with 90210. - I could never get into it. - You never got into 90210? - No, no. - Oh man, I love that show. I love that show. - That show started the same week as The Flash. - Oh, and I love The Flash. - I love The Flash. - I got The Flash over there with the Dawson's dad. - Yeah, John Wesley's ship. - John Wesley's ship. - And Mark Hamill was on it as the trickster. - That was a good show because that was the first time I saw on TV, I think. - A superhero costume that actually looked good. - I thought The Flash outfit looked really good. - It was, at the time it was the most expensive television show I ever made. - And is it the first one where they have that syringe that makes people into mutants and the doctor guy? - Yes. - I thought that looked so good. - Yeah. - What, the show looked great, it was obviously very influenced by the Burton Batman movies. - Yeah. - And it was quite a tone that works for The Flash, I think. - I guess I didn't see The Flash because I would have picked that over 9/2. - It wasn't on this year, but it started. So when The Flash started, 9/2/1/0 started. So the first year of both those shows was the same year. And they were on at the same time. And so I went with The Flash. And all the kids at school went with 9/2/0, and by the time The Flash ended, I was a year behind. I couldn't catch up. - Well, that's the difference. Because in Pakistan, we got them on different nights. - Yeah. - Maybe I should have lived in Pakistan. - Did Flash only last one? - Oh, yeah. That's still the advantage. - Yeah. - Flash 9/2/1/0 on different nights. Everything else. - It'd be funny if someone emigrated there. I was like, "What brought you to Pakistan?" - Yeah. - They're like, "Well, Flash and 9/2 are on different stations." - Ah, they don't. - We don't have DVRs. - Yeah. - Flash and it lasted one year. - Yeah, less than a year. - Was it a flop? - It wasn't a flop. Well, it was sort of a flop. But the problem was it was really, really expensive. - Fancy. - So the costumes alone cost a million dollars. - And the question that lady doctored you. - Yeah, Samantha Pays. - She was a Max Hedger. - She's British. - She married Corbin Burnson later. - Oh, are they still together? - They're still together, I believe. She kind of quit acting after that. - She shows up, I saw her in something else. - Not too long ago, but it was an older thing. - Yeah. - Very pretty. - She's very pretty. She always seemed really smart and kind of fancy. - Yeah. - She had a great voice. - Yeah. - She was playing basically the same character in Max Hedger. I don't know if you ever watched that. - No, I never did. It was a huge year? - No, it was a big bomb. It was on NBC and Brendan Tartakoff. NBC used to be the worst rated network. - The guy's voice was the name. - Yes, the manimal. - Yeah, he did. Manimal and misfits of science were Brendan Tartakoff's. - That was a huge show there. - Misfits of science? - Yeah. - I'm into Pakistan. I love that show. - Yeah, I remember the electricity guy. - Yeah, Johnny Bigger. - Johnny Bigger. - I, for years, I don't know. - Johnny Flash. - Johnny Flash, I think it was, yeah. And then there was the Iceman. Kevin Peter Hall, who played the Predator, was the guy who grew. - Oh, he could press the back of his neck and be small. - Yeah. That show, and also Willie from Elf, wasn't it? He was like a boss. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - Misfits of science. - That guy's great. - Max Wright, I think his name is. They had jackets. They had misfits of science. - That guy. - The satin jackets and troubles, I believe. - He had some child pornography troubles while he was on the show, ghost writer. - Wow. - The PBS show, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. - I think they said he was, yeah. - Yeah, like, math, and like he was, that's bad. - Yeah, yeah. - I think that him and Yasmin Blythe were hanging out. But I always wanted to misfits of science jacket. Like one of these, it was like a purple satin jacket. - Yeah. - That's a science. - I remember this was pretty early on. I don't know if I'd quite hit puberty, but seeing Courtney Clark and being like, "That is the most beautiful woman in the world." - Oh, yeah. - And this was, that was before she was in the dance from the dark video. - Yes. - She was a psychic. But her powers would change however they needed them to be like, "She's telekinetic. Oh, no, no, she's psychic. - Oh, no, no, no, she, yeah. - I love it. - It was a great show. - Flash was amazing. - It only went like seven episodes. - What? Okay, so remind me of this. I remember hearing about it and never watched it be excited, but then it sort of fell away. 'Cause in Pakistan we get snippets of information. - Right. - There was gonna be a Robocop TV show. Did that happen? - It did happen. There were actually two Robocop TV shows. So there was a cartoon, which had a huge toy line behind it. - Not the cartoon. I know the cartoon. I had the toys. - Yes. - It was a live action, an hour-long syndicated series that was mostly made in Canada called Robocop. And it lasted one season. It wasn't very good. It was one of those deals where they did a two-hour pilot TV movie, spent all the money on the special effects, and then just recycled those same shots for the whole year. V did that as well. So V started as too many series, and then was an ongoing series. The ongoing series, they just recycled all the shots from them. - Okay. - It got really, really, really bad. Wednesday night, eight o'clock, what'd you go with? - That's 90210. - Oh, that's right. 90210. So in this particular episode, Brendan is caught in the middle when Jewish students protest the scheduled campus appearance of a controversial African-American order and a demonstration disrupts Kelly's photo shoot. - I mean, the stakes were really high until the photo shoot came in. How were those two stories? - I have no idea. - We're going to start with this big sort of, I mean, that's interesting, Jews against, like, Jews who are, like, black people are being white, Jews are being white, this is interesting. - Yeah. - And then it fucks up the photo shoot. - These issues are ruining racial tension, ruins photo shoot. - White people photo shoots. - The weirdest thing is, so that's the TV guide synopsis, but in the ad for 90210, you know that night, it's just a sort of a, well, I don't want to see sexy pictures or spelling. - I mean, there's no such thing. - No, but it says she always planned to wait until her wedding night. But tonight, there might be a sudden change of play. - That has nothing to do with the racial tension. - No, I'm wondering if there's a screw up here or if they just thought that wasn't worth mentioning. - Oh, my God, that seems pretty big. - Yeah, yeah. - Wow, okay. - So I'm into that. - So what's interesting is that the show here, Models Inc, which is on Models Fighting Crime, Garcel Beauvais, isn't it? And I know her. She was on the front of the bench for a couple years. - Had you ever seen Models Inc? - No. - See, Models Inc would have been great for you because it was like House of Style meets the 18th. - Yeah, there were a lot of these shows where like Models would sort of fight crime Europe. - A VIP? - You know what I loved? Cover up? Do you cover that show? - Cover up was very good, yes. - That guy killed himself by mistake. - Yes, yes, John Eric Hexum was his name. - Yes, he, with the prop gun, put it in his head. - Yes, he thought it was filled with blanks. - Yeah. - His voice was always too deep, like it weirded me out. He was on a show called Voyagers. That was before Cover up. That was basically-- - John Eric Hexum. - John Eric Hexum. - Not in 311. He, and he, the Voyagers was almost like a U.S. ripoff of Doctor Who. - Okay. - And it was about a time traveler who basically kidnapped this kid and they went to a different time traveler. - And he was a time traveler. - And he was the time traveler. - That's interesting because I remember watching that show and the second season started and it was a different guy and I was like, "What the fuck?" - Yeah. - And I didn't find out for years. There were rumors that it's cool because everyone watched the show. - Yeah. - 'Cause that was on the PTV or whatever. - Right. - That was not on the camera. - A weird show for them to show on that. - So everyone watched it. - And then, 'cause whatever show aired, everyone knew. - Yeah. - And it was years later. Years later, someone at school or something had like a newspaper clip that was like, "Hey, look." 'Cause there were rumors that he was in a Russian roulette game and he died. - Russia comes up quite a lot. - Yeah. Well, they're the bad guy. - Yeah. So what actually happened was he wasn't the brightest guy from as far as I can tell. And someone-- - His story would illustrate it. - Yeah. - The final story of his life. The poor guy, so someone was like, "Hey, John, Eric Hexton. Stop waving that gun around. It's dangerous." Anyway, it's only filled with blanks and put it to his own head and fired on it and killed himself. - And died three days later, which is horrible. - Yeah. - 'Cause a blanks gun is still a gun. - There's still stuff coming out. - It just doesn't have the metal projectile. - Yeah. - That's the only difference. - It's still a blast. - Yeah. You don't put fire next to your head. - So that was a real bummer. - That was huge. I mean, that was a huge news story. - Or was it? Was that a big show? - The show itself wasn't that big, but the news stories. - It was the lead of a TV show. - Huge. - I didn't know that that was huge. - Yeah. - Well, that's why they didn't cancel it. They had the second season because it was almost the best advertisement for the show. - Oh, huge. - Which is terrible, but when the show started airing again with the new guy, it was huge. - He was actually British for Australian or something. - Yeah. It was huge for like three weeks, and then people liked the show's terrible. - Okay. - Love that show. - Yeah. So Model Zinc was a good show. Now, this whole night, I'm going with a movie. - Where is it? - I'm going with the network television premiere of Steven Seagal's Above the Law. - That's a good movie. - That's a good movie. - I love this movie. Sharon Stone, Pam Greer, this is from his finest trilogy of Above the Law, Out for Justice and Mark for Death. - Yeah. Those are all great. - I could watch those non-stop. - I liked a direct-to-video. That was a good one. - Yeah. Direct-to-video on the shelf. - Yeah. - Not in theaters. - Yeah. - Those were all arguably weird things. - Yeah. - So nine o'clock would you go with? - I went with Kung Fu, the legend continues because I thought that was, yeah. I thought that was really interesting that they sort of took this whole thing, and then they sort of restarted it. - Yeah, they did. And so David, it was like a sequel series, basically, which really didn't come into Vogue till maybe 10 years after that when you started getting stuff like Degrassi in the new 90210 and those sorts of things. - Yeah. - There was a weird phenomenon in the mid-80s here where you had the new, so you had the new monsters, the new Lassie-- - The new Ghostbusters. - The new Ghostbusters. - The real Ghostbusters. - The real Ghostbusters. - Yeah, you had the new Leave It To Beaver, the new Addams family, the new Gidget. They were all of these new versions of these-- - New Coke. - New Coke. New Wave. - You had all these different things. - That's right. - But this was a true sequel series, so this was connected to the original. - Same guy. - Same guy. - And he was sort of mentoring this new Kung Fu expert, and it is a terrible show. - Yeah, but I remember watching that. So this is a-- - I realized I would decide whether or not I liked a show before I started watching it. - So even if you didn't like it, you didn't want to be wrong? - I just sort of convinced myself it was good. So if you hit all the things I like, I'm going to like that too. I was begging to cover up, you know what I mean? Do you know what other show was being in Pakistan? Auto Man. Do you know Auto Man? - Really? So you got all the NBC garbage that-- - That was a bad show? - It wasn't-- - It was not a hit. - Auto Man was night rider when instead of a car, it's a robot. - He's a robot, and he has a thing called cursor and flies around. - It's like Tron, basically. - Huge show over there. I even remember the name of the guy, Walter Nebuchar. - Yeah, that was a huge bomb here. - Huge bomb? - Did you get shows like The Wizard? - The Wizard? I was going to bring up The Wizard next. - So you were a little guy who makes magic to it. - So you got all the shows that were huge. - The Wizard was huge. - Wow, this is fascinating. - The Wizard was huge. I was going to bring up The Wizard, yeah. - The Wizard was very obscure here. - Really? - Yeah. - All of these hour long, like really high concept, crazy shows. - Loved all of them. - Did not do well here, and they were all expensive. Maybe that's why they were trying to recoup some of their losses by selling them to all their countries. - Yeah, because I mean, those are big sort of, you know, primacy shows that were translated. Wow. - So it was good, that's crazy that you brought up The Wizard, Manimal, Automand, Huge Show. - The Office of Science. - The Office of Science, Huge Show's over there. I just thought of another one that I thought. - So when kids at school would be like- - Do you have a Nighthawk? - Nighthawk. - Streethawk. - Streethawk. - Yeah. - Streethawk. - Mantis. Did you get Mantis? - See, I just saw Mantis in there. I don't remember what that was. I didn't get Mantis. - It was like a '90s version of Streethawk. - Yeah. - It was on Cybert Channel. - What was the show? It had the guy who was Flash Gordon in it. - Sam Jones. - Yep. - And he's in a truck. - Yep. - And it's like sort of like a night ride above the truck. - Oh, yes. - And there's a copter that comes out of it. - Yeah, it's not Air Wolf. It's called Thunder Road or something like that. - I'll remember the name here. I'm gonna look. What's that guy's name? - Sam Jones. - Sam Jones. - Yeah. - Sam Jones. - Yeah, I'm gonna look at something that was a huge show over there. He's got this big semi. - So kids would come into school and be like, "Dude, do you see The Wizard last night?" - Oh, yeah. - Wow. Didn't know it was huge. Was that TV show that obviously not a big show here? - No, no. Nobody watched The Wizard. Nobody watched The Wizard. - But the one with the truck even. - No, that was not a big show either. All of these shows were pretty obscure and considered huge flops and it's blowing my mind that they were huge in Pakistan. - The highwayman. - Highwayman, that's it. - That's it. - Yes. - The highwayman. - You don't want another show that's big over there that I don't know much about? Or he was a show called Dark Justice. - Dark Justice, yes. - A guy who was a judge by dead, his hands were tied so he'd never let the bad guys out. - He'd land to you at night. - And at night he would go get the guy who had to let off and all he would do is, his hat was in a ponytail and he'd take his glasses off and let his hair out. I'm like, "Wait, you're the fucking judge that just let me out." - That was a Canadian show. - Whoa, really? - Yeah, so a weird thing that I believe CBS did in the late '80s, in the summer they had a programming block that they called Too Hot to Sleep. - Too Hot to sleep? - They would show these sort of sexy crime shows at night. So Silk Stockings, Dark Justice aired their show called Nick Knight that starred Rick Springfield as a vampire cop. - I don't know that. - They were all of these sort of-- - Amazing. - I'm surprised that didn't do on pecs nonsense. - That sounds amazing. - Yeah, so Dark Justice is one of those shows, did you get Midnight Collar? - No. - Oh, that's what that. - Midnight Collar starred Lumberg from Office Space as a guy who ran a sort of sexy radio talk show giving love advice and then was also a vigilante fighting crime. - Yeah. - Midnight Collar. - There were so many shows, but he's also a vigilante fighting crime. - Yeah, and I've never met a vigilante, I don't know if you have. - I mean, I haven't, but we needed one in Pakistan. - Yeah. - That's why we watched all of them. - Yeah, you needed a hero. - Yeah, we needed a hero. - That was the biggest song there. - That's from coverup, isn't it? - I need a hero. - Oh, hell, they're not for a hero. - Yeah. - Coverup. - So, Wednesday night at nine o'clock you're going with models, oh, come for the legend. You passed up models, Hank, you really missed out. I'm watching Above the Lara all night. - Yeah. - We move on to Thursday, eight o'clock, what are you going with? - This is a show I really, really loved and I was one of those where it hit all my buttons. I don't know if I actually loved it or if I just loved it because it hit all my buttons was, I'm watching Hercules in the maze of the Minotaur. - Ooh, yeah. Not a great show. - I loved it. - I loved it. - The Kevin Sorbo. - Kevin Sorbo. - It was, like, weirdly contemporary. - Oh, yeah. - Like, just a sack. - It was sassy. - Yeah, they were sassy. - I loved that show. - In a lot of ways it was ahead of its time, I think that a lot of cartoons are very influenced by Hercules' sorts of shows. Disney cartoons now are like, "Oh, no, you didn't." - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like all that kind of stuff. - Yeah, it was a lot like that. - It was produced by Rob Tapert, who's one of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell's good friends. So that whole-- - Bruce Campbell wasn't Briscoe County, it sort of had the same kind of vibe. - Yeah, '92. - Yeah, Briscoe County was great. Yeah, it was set in the old West, but very sci-fi as well. - Yeah, it was sci-fi. - What a snarky, smarmy, waz-ass-- - Yeah, which is what this was, yeah. - I think what happened was, the Briscoe County was on Fox and was a bomb. - And it almost-- - Really? - Yeah, it was a big cult hit, but it only lasted the one-- - It's like everything that Bruce Campbell's done. - Pretty much, yeah. And so all the burn notice lasted a long time. - Oh, yeah. - I love burn notice. - Well, if you love the A-team, I feel like burn notice, it's the A-team. - I've never seen it, but I shot something in Miami and the whole crew was the burn notice. - I mean, if you like the A-team, you'd love burn notice. - Okay. - It was basically burn notice, and Jeff Donovan is from Massachusetts, so I'm always have a-- - It seems like Jeff Donovan, is it? - Jeff Donovan. - Oh. - No, not Jeff Donovan. - Yeah. - It'd be funny if someone did a video of burn notice with Jeff. And then his crew was just the puppet. - He is just the puppet, so yeah. - So this-- where was I talking about there? Oh, so I never really watched those shows, but Briscoe County's new news is a huge flop on Fox, so that production team basically then moved to syndication and did it on a lower budget. - Right. - And did Zina and Hercules. - Okay. - And all these shows where they managed to get them out that way without this sort of network brown sticking their nose in, which was a smart way to go about it. I would have gone, however, with my so-called life. - Okay. - I don't know that show. - Keeping with my teenage girl, me and teenage girls, same wavelength on everything except talking to each other. - Yeah. - Yeah. - But I love this show. It was very angsty, it was very 1994. - Jordan Catalano. - Jordan Catalano. - Jordan Catalano. Everyone. I didn't have a crush on them. - Yeah. - You know, she was on this show as sort of the troubled teen. - Okay. - This was right after she did People Under the Stairs. - Okay. - And it was a great show. - And movies on TV all the time. - People Under the Stairs. - Yeah. - A disturbing movie. - Yeah. - A lot of Twin Peaks cast members in that movie. - But yeah, that's right. - Downtown LA, that's where it takes place. - Yeah. - But my so-called life is a huge one. And this one, Angela kisses off studying to spend time making out with Jordan Catalano. - Okay. There it is. Isn't that every episode? - Yeah. It's in the mainstream. - Yes, absolutely. Hercules and the movies. - It's a teen. It's a movie. It's two hours. - Yeah. So this, the other thing about these Hercules, you know, is the way that they introduced them was they sold these made for TV movies as pilots, but sort of back door in the middle. - Well, you know what I also loved? I was a big Archie comics fan. - Right. - And there was, do you know there was an Archie movie and TV show about it? - Yes. Welcome to Return to Riverdale. - Return to Riverdale and back. - Yeah. - Lauren Hutton plays. - Lauren Holly plays. - Yeah, Betty. - Yeah, Betty. - Yeah. - It's hot. - Yeah, they did it. - And she's from Picket Fences. - Absolutely. - And Dragon the Legend of Bruce Lee. - I never saw that. - She plays Bruce Lee's wife from that movie. - I mean, she's in, you know, down the door and stuff. - Yeah. - She's great. - But right then I was like, so I loved that. - Yeah. I loved that Archie thing. That was a, that was a failure. Unfortunately, it didn't go to series. - Yeah. 'Cause they're grown-ups. - Yeah. - People want to see Archie the way we've never seen an Archie live action. - No. - Give us Archie not grown up. - Archie Gillis was pretty close. - Oh, really? - No, but I wanted to be called Archie. - Yeah, Archie's in river. They did some good animated shows. Although I didn't like Archie's weird mysteries. You ever see that cartoon? - No. - It's Archie fighting. It's basically supernatural. - It's like Archie. - With Archie. - We mean X-Files and Archie. - It's more like supernatural. - Okay. - Yeah, yeah, it's not great. - Front and arms recall past adventures as they have to battle an evil man beast who's as ugly as his heart. Anthony Quinn plays Zeus. - You know what this feels like? This feels like a movie that they padded out with clips from older episodes. - Yes. It's a clip show movie. - Yeah. - That's pretty brilliant economically, but. - Yeah, that's two hours of programming. Well, the little Camille is in. - You're into that. - Yeah. - Did that air impacts them? The Hercules? - No. That did not air over there, but when I visited I would watch it. And we would get like, if you go to find a video store, you could get like tapes of stuff. - Right, right. - If people like taped from America with the commercials and everything. - Really? Add a video store? - Yeah. - With the commercials and everything. - That's, I would have loved that. - And it'd be the same one. So it would be like five or six, you know? Like I saw, that's how I saw a lot of the Spider-Man cartoons. - Right. - Which ones were the early 80s with Firestar and Ice Storm or the 90s? - Well those, but I'm talking about the 90s ones. Those, you know, those were there, but it was the 90s one where I was like the first time I remember superhero part two and like looking, like right around when X-Men was coming out. - Yeah. - That sounds so X-Men too. - Yeah. On these, on these bootleg things that you read. - Yeah, with the ads in the middle. - That's great. - Sometimes you can see the guy hit pause and then on pause. - That's funny. - Yeah. - That's very, one of my other weird hobbies in addition to collecting TV guides is I collect old TV broadcasts. So I go to fleaMarkets and get VHS tapes and I transfer them to DVD. And I have probably 10,000 DVDs of broadcast with commercials and all that stuff. - 10,000 DVDs? - Yeah. - How do you get these tapes? - I've been doing it for about 20 years and I would get them at fleaMarkets or an eBay or I'd ask my friends, did you ever tape something off TV when you were a kid? - Oh yeah. - And they do it to me. I transferred for them. - I mean that's what I love. Like when you go on YouTube and you find some weird fucking, you know, a cable access thing that like aired once and went away. - Yeah. - When I was 12, I had a cable access show about comic books. - Did you? - And we had Frank Miller on. - What? - We had Dave Simon. So in 1991, no one cared about comic books. And so I would just write these guys letters, like they were House of Style, and they would say they'd do the show and when they would come to Boston, they would be on it or they'd do a phone in the music. - It's fucking amazing. - Karen Berger from Vertigo. She was on. - Oh wow. - I had Rick Veach on because he lived in Vermont and he had just got fired from Swamp Thing. It was pretty, it was pretty great. - Wow. - I wish I had tapes of it. I kind of also wish I don't, I'm glad I don't have tapes of it, but yeah. - I would love to see it. - Yeah. Some weird cable access. So nine o'clock, you know what I'm thinking. - That's a two hour thing. - That's a two hour thing. - But what I did love was a Seinfeld and Matt Lockeron. - Yes. Which is a tough choice. - Yeah. That's a tough choice. So I don't have it because I'm already listening. - You checked out. - He's on his way to the Minotaur. - I would have watched Seinfeld absolutely at that time and it's an hour of Seinfeld. So I would have-- - Yeah, I saw that. That's awesome. - I think the final night of the week, what are you going with at eight o'clock? - I'm going with Family Matters, which I loved, loved that show. I'm not happy about it. - Yeah. - I'm not happy about it. - I understand. Now this show was not a good show and by 1994 it was the full-on Erkel show all the time. - Is this when Stefan Erkel was around? - Yes. This was when Erkel was inventing like cloning machines and time travel machine and it got a show that started out as a blue-collar family sitcom turned into one of the most ridiculous things ever. - Yeah, fucking stupid. - Stefan Erkel. - Stefan Erkel. This one is Erkel's life flashes before him atop Paradise Bluff when Myra hands him an ultimatum and Harriet rates her mate and discovers Carl needs to spice up his technique at barbecuing. - You know what? - That's another clip show, isn't it? - Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah. - Absolutely. - Yeah. - This was-- it's the week before Thanksgiving. - Yeah. - They're just stoning it in at this point. - Yeah, I would have gone with a show that would have intrigued me called ancient prophecies too. - Two. - And this is the two hours special. - We didn't get to all the ancient prophecies. - Right? - We didn't have enough time in the first two hours. - Yeah, there's so many of them. - And this is David McCallum host the sequel to Last Season Special included alleged contact with the dead through ancient Greek oracles, a tribal rite of passage ritual and modern-day mirror gazing and which reflections of the deceased are said to illuminate the future. Also predictions from the Hebrew Kabbalah and the late Paul Solomon, an Oregon couple of claims to have been guided by spirits into the future to see the changes to the US landscape. - There it is. - I would love to watch that. - I love watching like, I watched a lot of like Nostradamus specials. - Oh yeah. - Man who saw tomorrow. - Yes. - Exactly. - Exactly. - All that shit. - Did you ever see the late great planet Earth? - No. - It was a documentary made in Japan, but it was made for the US market. Orson Welles really at the, totally drunk talking about like where the Earth is going and it's just this doomsday prophecies. Is it just, is it based on anything or is it just him sort of thing? - This is what's happening. - Some Japanese guy wrote it and so it's, he's just reading, he's like, it's predicted that 1991 the Earth will be encased in marshmallow filth. Like just and he just goes. - Poor guy. - Poor guy before Transformers of the movie, that's what he had to do to survive and then died. So I. - In the crowd. - You did. 8.30. What are you going with? - Boy meets world. - This show I liked the first couple seasons. - Yeah. - And then it got as a, it became a friends report. - Huge question to Penga. - Yeah. Well who didn't? I mean everyone pretty much did. Mostly everyone had questions on William Daniels as well. - Wasn't writer strong in it? - Writer strong wasn't it? What a fake name. - What a great name. - What a great writer. - Writer strong. - That's what happens with kid actors to get to pick their names and then fucking settle with it. - Well. - So the writer strong writer, no. - No. - Writer strong. - Writer strong. - And this one, when Corey can't muster the nerve to kiss to Penga at a party, he takes a lot of heated school and vows to never date again. - Was this like a big, was this in the school newspaper? - Everybody knows. - Everyone knows. - If you didn't kiss a girl, go around campus. I mean, we weren't talking about the wizard. We had to talk about who didn't kiss. - I'll land. You guys had so much more. - We really did. Step by step. Did you go with it nine? - No. Turn back one page and you'll go with, you'll see my favorite TV show of all time. - X files. - Gotta go with X files. - So when did you first see the X files? - When we got the cable thing, the satellite, we got X files. And so it was probably a couple of seasons in by then, right? Did you? - Yes. I, again, they sort of had the amount of order, I think, so I watched a lot of it. - That's a tough show to watch out of order. - Probably around 94 is when we got it. - Okay. It's too too far. - No, no, no, no, no. And I remember, you know, I've re-watched them. I just started re-watching it for the fourth time. - Right. I do that with three days. - No re-watching it for the third time. - Right. - Watching it for the fourth time. - Watching it for the fourth time. When I first re-watched it, I remember thinking that I'd seen most of it. - Right. - So, favorite show of all time. This is 94. So this is pretty good. - Yeah. I mean, Jillian Anderson. - It's pretty good right now. - Wow. - Do you watch Hannibal? - I haven't seen her. She on it. - She's on it. It's a great show. - I've heard great things about it. - It's a great show. - Yeah. - And she looks great. This is another British mini-series called The Fall. - Yes. - That's on Netflix instant. That's really, really good. - With her British accent. - Yeah. You know, she talks in a British accent all the time. - It was 12. - Yeah. - It is very weird. - It was so strange when I saw her first on like Conan and was like, what are you doing? - What are you doing? - You were done. - Yeah. - Well, so John, what's his name? Was Captain Jack on Doctor Who? - Captain Jack Harkness. - Yes. - Yeah. - He's Scottish. - Yeah. - And he turns it on and off like it's nothing as well. - Yeah. - John Barrowman. - Did you? - Yeah. - Yeah. I love the X-Files. I definitely watched it at this time. - I mean, at that time, just X-Files. Nothing else. What does it say? - I mean, there's a lot of audiences discovered a dormant life form in the hottest place on earth. They made a terrible mistake. - Yeah. - This is the first episode with a sentient oil. - Yeah. - Black. - Which I really like that whole storyline. - Yeah. But there was definitely a definite point where I was maybe 17 and I was like, they don't know what they're doing. There's no plan here. - No, they introduced like multiple kinds of alien races. I think it's pretty good until the movie. - Yeah. - The movie I like. - I saw that on a date. - As a fan. - I don't know why. - The girl was like, "I don't know what's going on." - Fight the future. She'd never seen it before. - No. We went to the theater and saw her. She'd never seen-- - I don't like this. - She'd never seen the show and didn't understand anything and was like, "We can never. This will never happen." - And then season six is pretty good, a lot of great because you could see that there's sort of like the expectation of the movie's done, the big storyline that let go of it for a little bit and there's a lot of great like quirky weird run-offs. - Which were always my favorites. - And then it's bad. - And I can't believe you ever watched French. You would absolutely love it. - Yeah. I don't know. I watched the couple. I know a guy. I know a guy. He would go to open mics in Chicago. His name is Mark. - Valley? - Mark Valley. - Yeah. - You know, he's a comedian. - Yeah. - Or was. - He was in the first season. He was also in Human Target. - Yes. Human Target. He was the star of the Human Target. - Yeah. - Which was the second Human Target series. The first one starred Rick Springfield in that role. - Again. - Yeah. - Keeps coming up. - Keeps coming up. - Yeah. - Yeah. He's great on that show. I think he might be a little too old for Kevin. - Yeah. - If you would play a great, like, when if you did a story with an older Captain American. - Yeah. - Perfect. He was on a show called Keene Eddy that I really liked. Which was a US-UK co-production. - Keene Eddy. - Keene Eddy. He played a US cop that got transferred to London. - Uh-huh. - And, uh, and, um, Sienna Miller's in it. - Oh, she's beautiful. - Uh, really funny show. Really funny. And a lot of British comics. - Yeah. - Like, Alexi Sale doing, like, serious roles. - Oh. - It's a great show. It only lasted one season. - Uh-huh. - And it's really, really good. - He's really good, Mark Valley. - It's very funny. So, that's the end of the week. But, as you know, TV Guide, it is not just informative. It has opinions. - Yeah. - And it cheers. And it cheers. - Yeah. - Let's see if you agree or disagree. We're about 50-50 this week. Cheers to Frazier for bringing Cheers Alumni BB New Worth back for another guest cent. Okay, with that. - Uh-huh. Sure. I like BB New Worth. I was never begin to, um, never really got into Frazier. - I loved Cheers. Didn't like Frazier. - Yeah. - It's something about it was off-putting. Cheers to NBC for having the unmitigated gall to offer Roseanne the opportunity to host their TV bio of her, one of two bios she's badmouthed every chance she had. I don't remember that, but- - I don't know what that's about. - That seems kind of bitchy about something I don't understand. - Yeah. Cheers to Nielsen Media Research, the ratings people for responding promptly to a task force finding that African-American viewers were underrepresented in their national audience sample. - This is just them sucking off their- - Pretty much. - I mean, the Nielsen ratings are so- - Scuse. - Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the other thing is, they might not be watching TV. Clearly, they're disrupting fashion shoots. - Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And Jews are there too. - Yeah, I mean, but they probably wrote it. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Jears to an annual tradition we really hate, reruns just a few weeks into the new season. - Oh, I agree. - Yeah. - You're all on board and- - Yeah, what? I've seen this- - Yeah. - Cheers to the Disney Channel's fifth American Teacher Awards, the Oscar cast for Educators, packed with celebrity presenters like Alan Alda and Melanie Griffith. - That's not something that's stuck around. - Nope. Not interested. - It's pretty bad when the Kids Choice Awards go longer than the American Teacher Awards. - Teacher Awards? - Yeah. - What is that? - How would you even vote for that? - Yeah. - How good were you at teaching that? - Everyone, all the kids would hate everybody. - Yeah. - Yeah. I really believe that you knew about history. - Yeah. - And finally, Jears to too many too cute transitions into commercials during NFL's broadcasts. - Yeah. Do not give a shit. - Yeah. - I'm indifferent to Jear. That's where we go there. - Yeah. - Well, you're welcome to have the TV God of the first week that- - Oh, thank you. I will take it. - It's got Dolly Parton on the cover, which must have been quite a- - Oh my God. - Oh my God. - We're going to entrance to America. - Yes. Well, thank you so much for doing this show. - Oh, thanks for having me, man. - You're welcome. - That was super fun. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ - And that was our episode with Camille Nanjiani. I think that was very entertaining. Very fun episode. He's a great guy. He's very funny. Definitely check out his X Files Files podcast and look for the meltdown with Camille and Jonah on Comedy Central very soon. A couple of housekeeping things. On our Brendan Boogie episode a couple weeks ago, yes, I do know that Mickey Rooney is dead. You caught me. We recorded that episode prior to his death. And I just didn't edit out the reference. So I do know that he's dead. It just happened before. So you caught me. In all the news, congratulations to our winners of the contest we've recently had on our Facebook page. We sent out a sealed clapper, as seen on TV to somebody. And someone got a copy of an original shooting script from the show out of this world. So please like us on Facebook and you could win some fun things like that. I have plenty more prizes to give away. Email me at Ken@icamery.com. If you have questions or comments or ideas for the show, I love hearing from you. Make sure you subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or SoundCloud. Whoever you hear the show, tell your friends. Rate the show. Review the show if you like it, which if you've gotten to this point in the episode, I presume that you do. And we'll see you next Wednesday on an all new episode of TV Guidance Count. [MUSIC]