0:01-18:08: Greetings! Tech shenanigans abound since Graeme has a new computer and a temporary workaround for recording, so we apologize right here at the top of it all for any diminishment in our normal recording standard. But fortunately, part of the reason for the workaround is that we are once again graced with the presence of crack critic Chloe Maveal! But first, listen to the stories of Graeme’s working situation pre-new computer upgrade and remember, we will not be held responsible for any resulting nightmares if you do! Anyway, if you like hearing two people wonder if they’re just old and having one extra person on the side vigorously nodding, this is the call for you! Discussed: Overton Windows and Titty Windows; the mistake of complaining in front of Graeme; and more.
18:08-31:36: This episode was recorded on what would’ve been Jack Kirby’s 104th birthday, so it’s only natural for three comic nerds to talk generally about what part of Kirby’s legacy they want to see continue, and more specifically about the most recent Kirby they’ve (re-)read and/or their current fave. Discussed: OMAC #1 (OMAC!), The Demon, New Gods, the drama in Kirby’s facial expressions, Dingbat Love and the reconstruction of Soul Love (which is currently 50% off through the end of August!), Kamandi, The Eternals, and more.
31:36-40:50: It’s that time in the podcast where Graeme talks in vague terms about something he’s read that isn’t out yet and how we should keep an eye out because he thinks it does something very interesting. (I should’ve initial capped all that and turned into a ghastly acronym but oh well.). This time around: Infinite Frontier (probably issue #6?), which turns to Jeff talking about reading the first few issues of Heroes Reborn on Marvel, Chad Nevett’s thoughts about it in his awesome newsletter, and more.
40:50-45:51: Speaking of critics who are generous and those who are unforgiving, Graeme has a point about last week’s Drokk that still confuses him—we both really liked Volume 27 of Dredd: The Complete Case Files but we spent the bulk of the episode by and large complaining about the stories that didn’t work? Why? Can Star Trek’s Ensign Tolstoy help explain it? And another good reason to check out the comments on our show notes (especially on Drokk!)
45:41-59:10: I won’t explain how we got from Dredd to Fugazi to this great story from Chloe but it all makes sense, trust me. A cameo appearance from someone’s noisy car engine distracts us into talking about the current tenor of their Portland neighborhood. Also discussed: The Fast & The Furious films, cassette mixtapes, the secret story behind Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 and who’d we cast in the film, and Jeff’s “parody comic” dreamed up at 5am while half-asleep and half-high, and….pride shame?
59:10-1:02:25: Normally, I do my best to hide the break in our conversations but here it can’t quite be helped, in part because you’d miss a couple of funny jokes, I think? And also because it’d be really hard to rethread an edited conversation’s passage back into talking about the latest work from Tom King without it. Discussed: the latest work from Tom King (and its six month echo currently being explored by Jeff on DCUI); and more.1:02:25-140:27: And here’s the meat of the episode: two lovers of reality TV (Graeme and Chloe) have a conversation with the reality TV non-lover (Jeff) about Below Decks: Mediterranean for which Jeff watched the first four episodes of Season 1 of what he thought was the main Below Decks show (it wasn’t) and which G&C thought he’d be watching Season 6. (Nope!). Nonetheless, we find enough common ground to talk about how little common ground we actually still share about reality TV? Discussed: Below Decks Mediterranean, Captain Sandy, Malia White, people fucking up, schadenfreude, attractive people, how very tightly constrained narrative needs nevertheless involve narratives, people being “big trash bags”, I’m With Busey, Fboy Island, Love Island, Wandavision [?], Too Hot To Handle, soap operas, non-downer DNA, and more.
1:40:27-2:01:53: Chloe mentioned pride shaming close to the top of the hour and it seems like a good time to bring it back up and break it down (but…is it? We’re genuinely not sure!). Nonetheless, Chloe does her best! Discussed: Jackass, The Underground Railroad, The Anna Nicole Smith show, the relief of letting go, Uno, and Malia White from Below Decks: Mediterranean.
2:01:53-end: Closing Comments—with a twist! Look for us on Stitcher! Itunes! Instagram! Twitter together and separately: Graeme, Chloe, and Jeff! Tumblr, and on Patreon where a wonderful group of people make this all possible, including Empress Audrey, Queen of the Galaxy, to whom we are especially grateful for her continuing support of this podcast.
Next week: Another Wait, What?! (Wait, what?)
A little bit of cutting by your life? A little bit of pasting by your side?
https://theworkingdraft.com/media/podcasts4/WaitWhat325.mp3
It’s lovely to have Chloe back on the show – I hope the vertigo has gone now – but I really wish you’d spent more time with regular Wait What subjects – we have a little bit of Tom King (still no Supergirl talk, sadly) but otherwise it was Dredd, who has his own show, and Below Decks, which only one of our regular hosts actually cares about. I feel bad, but I packed in after about five minutes of talk about a so-called reality show I tried on the recommendation of Graeme and switched off after 15 minutes.
Suddenly I’m missing the sex manga.
Sorry, it wasn’t your cuppa, Martin! Never feel bad for pulling the plug on us, especially if we go on and on and on in the wrong direction.
I do hope you’ll tune in next week however—I suspect there’ll be a lot more talk up your alley though I apologize—I really may not get to Supergirl until it hits DC Universe Infinite which is still some time away…
(I probably will have more sex manga to talk about, though!)
I’m also a reality TV hater. Not for any snobbery reason (I mean, I watch professional wrestling for fuck’s sake), but because I find it utterly tedious. I’ve sampled quite a few shows, but all of them (even the “good ones” like Top Chef, Drag Race or Great British Bake Off) are edited in such a way that I just can’t pay attention. There’s those obnoxious speedup/slowdown cuts, lots of repetition, lots of reaction shots. And even if you are watching commercial free, they still do the structure of show something, cut to commercial, and then show that same thing again.
I never understood it until one day I realized that most people are watching these shows while doing something else; cooking, folding laundry, talking with their friends, playing on their phone, etc. I just don’t do that. I haven’t watched TV that way since I was a kid in the 90s. Basically as soon as you could torrent TV shows or buy them on DVDs, I’ve watched TV the way I watch movies in the theatre: in utter silence with my eyes rarely leaving the screen. Anything that doesn’t work when watched that way just doesn’t work for me. Reality TV is the biggest offender in that regard, but I also have a hard time watching multi-cam sitcoms and TV procedurals for the same reason. They just aren’t dense enough.
I reckon I’m reality TV agnostic. It’s like watching sports, if I’m with someone who wants to watch it, I can enjoy it, but never make space for it by myself. Most of what I watched was with my late mum, cooking and dancing shows. I think that kind of program became easier towards the end of her life. A variation on what Ed said, it was harder for her to concentrate for sustained periods. On a (to me, anyway) somehow related note, I remember my shocked feeling when Ruth, my wife, told me she didn’t read every word in a novel. She’d skip parts if she was a bit bored. I’ll stop reading a book if I don’t like it, but this was just something that had never occurred to me. The shocking things you miss about your loved ones.
Wow, I never even conceived of skipping parts of a novel. What a profoundly alien concept.