The Toy Department – Episode 449

In Episode 449, Madden and Kolsky have a brief and unfortunate conversation about Arsenal’s star-in-the-making Max Dowman before putting soccer away to discuss:

  • The second episode of Top Chef: Carolinas (2:15), with a very high level of cooking all around and an emerging favorite, plus a few thoughts on Padma’s new show America’s Culinary Cup…
  • HBO’s new Bill Lawrence/Steve Carrell show Rooster (31:10) and its charming combination of comedy and drama…
  • Netflix’s new horny dramedy Vladimir (35:25) and the now-incredibly-overused trick of showing us a potential endpoint in the first ten minutes of a series…
  • Nicole Kidman’s new Amazon show Scarpetta (43:05) and the weird middle ground it finds between police procedural and family drama…
  • The ABA docu-series Soul Power (50:50), the wild and crazy ’70s times in basketball’s upstart league and where the show may have missed some things…
  • Homework for THREE weeks from now, April 8 (1:04:05), including: the next few episodes of Top Chef, Apple TV+’s Imperfect Women, Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat and the third season of Lisa Kudrow’s HBO series The Comeback…

The Toy Department – Episode 426

In Episode 426, Madden and Kolsky spend entirely too long on Kolsky’s new cold brew coffee formula before shaking it off to discuss:

  • The police-procedural-style crime drama Dept. Q on Netflix (4:30) and why one of our hosts loved it and the other turned it off…
  • Apple TV+’s fire-crime-drama Smoke (10:05) and how, again, one of our hosts loved it and the other turned it off…
  • Some love for the newest season of The Bear (18:00) and what it looks like to make essentially perfect television…
  • Some soccer transfer talk (31:20) as the Club World Cup Final against PSG looms for Chelsea…
  • Homework for TWO weeks from now (44:00), including: the return of Michael C. Hall in Dexter: Resurrection, the new Charlize Theron action movie The Old Guard 2, Lena Dunham’s new show Too Much on Netflix and the Bosch spinoff Ballard on Amazon Prime Video…