The Toy Department – Episode 327

In Episode 327, Madden and Kolsky debrief on Kolsky’s weird morning before locking in on:

  • The latest from The Challenge: Ride or Dies (2:40) and the critical error made by the Underdogs in the latest daily challenge…
  • The documentary Woooooo! Becoming Ric Flair on Peacock (19:20) and how the apparently-still-not-retired wrestler makes for a very compelling subject, even if many of the stories have been told before…
  • The Netflix film White Noise (27:05) from director Noah Baumbach and how it fails to really finish any thoughts despite starting an awful lot of them…
  • Netflix’s new spy series The Recruit (32:35) and Noah Centineo as a leading man/action star…
  • Homework for next Friday (37:00), including: the movie She Said on Peacock, the new series Kaleidoscope and the newest season of Last Chance U (both on Netflix)… and OF COURSE the next episode of The Challenge: Ride or Dies…

The Toy Department – Episode 92

In Episode 92, Matt Kolsky and Derek Madden waste no time with pleasantries as they jump directly into:

  • A heated debate over the second season of Netflix’s Stranger Things (0:45) and whether it is in fact any good at all…
  • The new Noah Baumbach film The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (27:15) and whether it qualifies as bad-time entertainment or somehow rises above that distinction…
  • Madden’s experience at the Arcade Fire concert (38:40) and how all things must end…
  • The 2017 World Series (48:10), the compelling storylines and the future of baseball…
  • The series finale of HBO’s The Deuce (58:55), Kolsky’s confusion over the length of the season and the storytelling style of David Simon and company…
  • The first two episodes of season eight of The Walking Dead (1:06:30) and how the show seems to have lost its direction and momentum…
  • Homework for next week (1:13:30) including: the new (apparent) network sensation The Good Doctor, the also-about-an-autistic-character Atypical, and finishing Netflix’s Mindhunter before an interview with Stacey Roca, the actress who plays Nancy Tench…

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