I felt a little guilty listening to It's Not Only Football: Friday Night Lights and Beyond on Thursday.
Co-host Scott Porter started by explaining why they had last week’s guest (Glen Powell) on and how great it was. Yes, that’s the one I skipped last week. I even put the episode synopsis in one of my posts here and wrote about how uncompelling it looked to me.
Mae Whitman asked Scott if he’d remembered to ask Glen about a weird audition she did with him that required her to hold an aging, wilted salad, but he hadn’t. See why I want Mae there for the interviews? Even when Scott raved about why the interview was so terrific, I remained untempted. Would a tale of soggy lettuce with Mae Whitman have helped? Yes. Yes it would.
Scott said that in addition to the many people they’ve already booked who worked on the show, they also plan to have famous guests on who are just fans—he threw out the fun fact that George R.R. Martin is one, and yes, I would totally listen to him (or another FNL disciple, Lin-Manuel Miranda) talk about Friday Night Lights for an hour with Scott, Zach Gilford, and Mae.
Mae wasn’t on the show either. She’s a superfan who’s officially connected because FNL and my beloved Parenthood (on which she played Amber Holt) share a showrunner (Jason Katims). There were quite a few actors who were on both even though they didn’t play the same characters, and the shows definitely existed in the same fictional universe.)
There was even a crossover:
(That links to the episode on Hulu, where you can watch all of Parenthood as well as Friday Night Lights. If you only know Michael B. Jordan from his current superstardom as an action star, check out his beautiful, subtle performances on these shows. He’s brilliant.)
Anyway, I apologize to Glen and fans of Glen. If he one day becomes a favorite of mine, I’ll have his episode to go back to when I can properly appreciate it.
In the meantime, listening to Scott, Mae, and Zach talk about each episode adds some zing to my Thursdays. They’re all superfans, really, and hearing them re-discover the show as I rewatch every week is a treat.
When I finished that, I was hankering for something new and suddenly remembered the existence of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. Sometimes I forget about his podcast, then see it pop up in my feed and take a look to see which good guests I’ve missed. I am always rewarded.
This time, my reward was Jason Segel. I’m a big fan of his show Shrinking and I’m not quite sure why, because it’s about a lot of really bad therapists. My mom was a therapist and I have spent much of my movie and TV viewing life being annoyed by how therapists are portrayed, but Shrinking has won me over. Everyone on it is great, and seeing Harrison Ford in a comedy fills me with delight.
Last night I listened to his Conan interview, then watched the latest Shrinking episode. Jason Segel double feature!
I laughed VERY hard a whole bunch of times. I can’t remember if my loudest one came from his detailed description of the naked-on-the-couch break-up that inspired Forgetting Sarah Marshall or the kid at the screening for The Muppets whose only dislike was “Gary’s face” (Gary is Jason’s character in the movie), and I related to the whole “I’ll show them” philosophy losing meaning when you can’t figure out who “they” are anymore.
Also, Conan said in five words what I’m always describing in unnecessarily wordy paragraphs: Rage turned inward is depression.
I listened to Jane Fonda next. She’s 30 years older than I am, and as my birthday approaches, checking out the viewpoints of older women who are still growing, learning, and changing feels like a good call. Jane told Conan about her (famous) fame-hating dad (Henry Fonda) getting so upset by a fan asking for an autograph that it ruined his whole day, and Conan immediately speculated on how he’d fare in the selfie era. Jane and I both thought that was pretty funny.
I think she’s amazing. I was hoping to go see her new movie with Lily Tomlin on my birthday next week, but apparently all the movie theaters near my dad have decided to ONLY play the new John Wick movie that day. I was outraged by this and asked my husband about it.
Me: Aren’t all John Wick movies about Keanu killing people who were mean to him?
Dave: Um, sort of.
Me: And why do we need MULTIPLE John Wick movies? Have you seen any of them?
Dave: Yes.
Me: So is that what they are? People kill Keanu’s wife or his dog or something and he has to go kill them? And then in the next movie it happens again?
Dave: Well… there is an ongoing story that progresses. And he sort of wishes he didn’t have to keep killing people all the time, but then he has to.
Me: That’s what I thought.
Poor Dave. He was just pouring a fresh cup of coffee and suddenly he’s defending the existence of the entire John Wick franchise.
Yesterday was Friday, so please check out the newest episode of All Access Star Trek. We covered news (including Michelle Yeoh’s Oscar win at age 60, hello!) and reviewed the new episode of Star Trek: Picard, which had an especially glorious guest star.
If you like it, please do Tony and me a big favor and write a nice review on Apple. I’ll consider it my birthday present.
Have I mentioned yet that it’s almost my birthday?
I loved this post SO MUCH. It’s so marvelously conversational and entertaining!