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This week on the world famous GLoP podcast: A meditation on “touchy” Joe Biden, TV shows of the 70’s and 80’s (and a deep dive into the Maude theme song), and –against the strenuous objections of Rob Long– the inevitable Game of Thrones preview segment, and another edition of What Are You Watching?
P.S. Yes, we know the featured image is recycled. EJ was working (his real job) today.
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I await my $1000 check — lactose-intolerant so can’t act on the ice cream suggestion.
Please DM me for the mailing address, and meanwhile I’ll think about signing up with Donor’s Trust.
Also — Rob’s commentary on GOT is without parallel!
[Nothing to see here.]
Game of Thrones talk puts me to sleep more than anything else on this show, even Bea Arthur/Maude. Some may consider that a character flaw, but I disagree.
But I think it was Rob at one point in the past, who said that people didn’t watch Maude to see Maude (Bea Arthur). They watched it to check out Adrienne Barbeau who played her daughter.
Why did anyone have Manson in their homes? Wasn’t he always a freak?
Exit music: I’m Only Sleeping by The Beatles.
And bonus snore at the very end.
An analysis of the Maude theme song is clickbait for me.
I appreciated Rob’s declaration that I am too nerdy to be in a show about people trying to create a Lord of the Rings TV show.
I am too, but I remember the show ONLY because my parents wouldn’t allow the kids to watch it (they didn’t watch it themselves, either).
I’m surprised they didn’t tell the Bea Arthur joke.
When Pod mentioned David Duchovny and Aquarius, and shortly thereafter the dearth of American actors who can write, I thought he might circle back to Duchovny, who is an American actor/writer. I’d be interested in what you New Yorkers think of his latest, very New York novel, Miss Subways….
The Long View:
-Discussion of unsold pilots from the ’70s/’80s and Maude: riveting. Or rather, it’s acknowledged self-consciously that it’s probably boring to the generations younger than him, but still he plows ahead.
-Discussion of a current very popular show: snorifying.
-GoT started soooo long ago (eight years) that discussion of it is booooring. Much better a show that ended 41 years ago. (To be fair to Rob, Maude probably pulled in way more viewers per ep. than does GoT today. But it’s not exactly a dispositive point.)
Also, I want my grand as well.
FWIW, I’m fine with all of the pop culture discussion, even though I don’t watch GoT. I could’ve lived without the Biden stuff.
Not CoC complaint at all!
No, it’s not close:
Connecting Jonah’s comments in the opening and the discussion of ’70’s TV shows, I find business models fascinating. Whether you’re selling ball bearings, cars, cosmetic surgery (and its constituent parts), or entertainment. Once Jonah deciphered that the salespeople for cosmetic surgery were talking like other sellers of luxury goods, I would find that conversation fascinating. Rob’s explanation that stage actors were better than film actors at certain kinds of television, and his explanations of how scripts are sold, is the type of business information that I enjoy hearing from him.
I so want the White Walkers to win. Everyone else is so tiresome on that silly show. Winter should come already, for crying out loud!
[Edited to correct my overly-hasty reading.]
That’s impressive, if true. Is that billion spread across the final series of shows, or per-show? But what’s the average for the two shows over their runs? I’d still guess that Maude had far more viewers on average, at least against the early seasons of GoT, but I was also assuming that having HBO would limit the number of viewers relative to broadcast T.V. in the U.S. back then. Do folks in other countries get to watch it for free/without HBO? Or is that billion comprised mostly of those who pirate the eps?
The shoe one? Don of the Don and Mike Radio Show would tell it a lot and I was thinking about it during this episode.
Hearing the theme from the hyper-odious Maude I suddenly wished the White Walkers would win and end it all.
FWIW, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_(TV_series)#Episodes), Maude averaged about 24.5 viewers per episode over its first four seasons, and the range between the lowest-rated of the seasons versus the highest was 23.5 to 25.0. The last two seasons tanked.
For GoT, there’s a lot more variation between seasons, again, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_of_Thrones_episodes#Episodes.) The first season averaged 2.52 per episode, while the last 10.26 (which is amazing for an HBO show), with the others somewhere in between, but steadily growing after the first season, and a significant jump from season 3 to 4. Overall, so far the average viewers per episode spread over the series is 6.14.
Differences:
Domestically, though, it looks like Maude was seen by a much bigger percentage of a smaller American population when it was broadcast, and since consumer VCRs were nonexistent to nascent back then, it means that households actually had their TVs tuned to the show when it was broadcast. Again, for whatever that’s worth. I mean, I’m going off of Wikipedia.
“We were having a conversation about__for no particularly good reason” is the premise for this show.
I’m your last listener, laying on my bed on the opposite side of my room from my computer.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz!
Best sleep i ever had
Better ending for Game of Thrones than “Fade to black, cue Don’t Stop Believin'”.
Have one fo the characters get hit in the head, cut to the clip of Bob Newhart waking up in bed next to Emily, saying “Emily, Wake up – You won’t believe the dream I just had!”.
Then fade to black.
As Rob has mentioned on several occasions, a show today can be a “huge hit” with a small fraction of the audience a show might have had in the past when there were just 3 major networks.
I always thought the theme from Maude was a catchy tune. Never really watched the show.
I doubt many people are watching GoT in 40 years like Star Wars. I think it age out quickly. I watched the 1st season which I though was okay, and it did motivate me to read the 5 books (which stop at approximately the end of season 3). I don’t see those having the staying power of LotR either. Just not timeless enough.
Maybe “nobody” is concerned about Pete Buttigieg accosting young GIRLS, but…
Not that one, this one (WARNING: LINK NOT CoC COMPLIANT AT ALL!).
Oh, sure, I understand that—30 years ago a show with GoT’s numbers would never have made it more than a few episodes, but it’s a smash hit for HBO. (It’s the biggest hit they’ve ever had, right?) The number crunching was just trying to shed light on how many people watched either show.