Good Place Podcast, Jay & Miles X-Plain, and Guilty Pleasures

[shadowkat]

1. The Good Place Podcasts with Marc Anthony Jackson

Shawn is the head of the Bad Place. And he recaps each episode, and analyzes all of it, and invites writers and actors to help him. The above one -- has D'Arcy Caden (Janet), and the writers of the episode, Josh Seigal and Dylan Morgan. Must have for D'Arcy Caden fans --- come on, you know who you are. This is my X-mas gift or Hannuakha gift to you -- you can thank me later.

Reminds me of The Succubus Club for Buffy, but much better done. (Caveat, I don't like Podcasts. I can't just listen to something -- I have to interact with it or I get bored and start doing something else at the same time.)

2. The other fun podcasts -- if you are a fan of the X-men, is Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-men, Because Someone Has To .

3. Guilty Pleasures:

These are basically the cultural things that I find deeply comforting and entertaining, and have a life-long weakness for...but they tend to be non-mainstream and most people just don't get.

* X-men comic books and graphic novels ( I fell in love at the age of 18, and never fell out..)
* Romance novels -- specifically historicals
* Superhero television shows and movies and to a degree comics
* Daytime Soap Operas (fell in love as a pre-teen, I blame my mother)
* Japanese Anime
* Musical Theater and Musical films...often based on Musical Theater. (If it's a musical, I'll watch it, even if it is a bad musical)
* Star Wars movies
* Science Fiction/Fantasy novels and television series and films
* Rock Operas..

Comments

Highlights of Good Place Podcast #36

[cjlasky7]

Thanks for this!

Must have for D'Arcy Carden fans--come on, you know who you are.

Heh. Yes. Yes, we do.

-- At the start of the podcast, Ted Danson (as Michael) gives us some fun facts: the favorite podcast in the Good Place is Mozart and Jimi Hendrix talking about music; the favorite podcast in the Bad Place is Josef Stalin recapping The Bachelor.

-- When he was running through the plotline of S3 for the actors, Carden could tell Michael Schur had something special in mind for her from the tone of devilish glee in his voice. Her reaction to the pitch for "Janet(s)": "Is there a word that means both 'terrified' and 'honored'?"

-- The entire cast did a full (recorded) run-through of the episode, so Carden could work on the dialogue and blocking on the week off. (Future S3 DVD extra!)

-- The Good Place podcast specializes in fake commercials. This week's entry was for Ugly Mike's Pulled Meat, another Jacksonville nightmare of a restaurant. You could pick out a dozen health code violations from the audio alone.

[Separately, I heard the Nick Offerman Swanson Safe commercial, with Offerman reprising his Parks and Rec character of Ron Swanson. The best part of that one was a court-mandated warning at the end telling people not to be stupid enough to lock yourself in the safe. Yes, we're talking to you, Jason Mendoza.]

-- Janet's boundless void was actually a relatively small stage (40 sq.ft.?) painted bright white, with the connections from the walls to the floors rounded off (i.e., no corners). The illusion was so effective that Carden was terrified of crashing into the walls during the shoot.

-- In his only scene in the void, Danson took one look at the four poles standing in for the four Janets and muttered, "Oh, this is NOT going to be fun." Carden's response was pretty much: Gee, thanks Ted. But Danson did insist that the rest of the cast should be on call in case Carden needed help. Aw. Thanks, Ted!

-- The staging for the big romantic kiss at the end was so complicated that Carden called it "The least romantic thing EVER." At one point, Carden and Kristen Bell laughed in their mouths from the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

-- The scenes with Stephen Merchant (Wernham Hogg represent!) were filmed in the abandoned offices of Countrywide Financial, lending a chilling RW spin to a fanciful tale of bureaucracy run amok. (Well, maybe not "chilling": during the first few days of filming, the air conditioning broke down, and it was over 100 degrees in California.)

-- If you're wondering why Drew Goddard hasn't been in the credits much this year, he was off filming a movie.

-- This episode was supposed to air in January 2019, but Schur convinced NBC to move it before the break, so Carden wouldn't miss out on awards consideration.

-- Marc Anthony Jackson took a sort of pride in the fact that the Soul Squad knew it was time to leave Earth again when Shawn came through the portal. (He is an excellent host, and he has a great voice for audio streaming...)

Re: Highlights of Good Place Podcast #36

[shadowkat]

Thanks for the recap. I gave up rewinding half-way through. I listen to podcasts...and I might as well be listening to white noise. No audio memory whatsoever. Also I tend to mishear things.

Yet, I torture myself with conference calls at my workplace, go figure. Then again conference calls are different -- they require interaction.