Celebrities, Stop Taking Our Jobs

Celeb-hosted TV recap podcasts are fun — but also signify a worrisome problem.

Here are the words that broke me: How We Made Your Mother.

And when I say “broke,” I mean tipped from annoyed to actively angry. How I Met Your Mother’s Josh Radnor and the show’s co-creator Craig Thomas are joining the exhaustive list of people revisiting their popular TV series via recap podcasts. And reading that HIMYM was the latest show to jump on the bandwagon filled me with rage.

Which sounds silly, I know. But let me explain.

It’s not news that we are drowning in TV recap podcasts hosted by cast members: The Office (Office Ladies), This Is Us (That Was Us), Melrose Place (Still The Place), Will & Grace (Just Jack & Will), Glee (And That's What You REALLY Missed), Saved by the Bell (Zack to the Future) ... and I’ll just stop there. I counted close to fifty, and I’m sure there are even more.¹

But how did we get to the point that nearly every TV series that aired in the past thirty years is getting the “today’s episode is brought to you by Squarespace” treatment? And why does this matter beyond the realm of podcasts? How does it, in fact, preordain a worrisome trend impacting journalism and critical thought?

I’d posit the rise in TV recap podcasts largely stems from the success of fan-hosted ones, especially Gilmore Guys. The show, hosted by Gilmore Girls superfan Kevin Porter and first-time viewer Demi Adejuyigbe, had a lightning-in-a-bottle factor in that they launched their podcast in October 2014, specifically timed to when the series became available to stream on Netflix for the first time.

The duo’s charisma, combined with the impassioned Gilmore Girls fanbase hungry for new content, turned what could have been just another fan podcast into a sensation, even receiving coverage in the New York Times. Midway through the Gilmore Guys run, Netflix announced a new Gilmore Girls limited series, A Year in the Life. The popularity of the podcast was largely believed to be one of the factors for why the series was revived.

What was once Kevin and Demi cracking each other up became a podcast that attracted stars such as Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson, the show’s writers and other members of the creative team, as well as beloved comedy stars like Paul F. Tompkins and Jason Mantzoukas. (Eventually, Patterson would start his own Gilmore podcast, “I Am All In.”)

One of Gilmore Guys recurring guests, Song Exploder host Hrishikesh Hiriway, was inspired to start The West Wing Weekly in 2016, in which he teamed up with West Wing star Josh Malina to do a recap podcast. And like Gilmore Guys, West Wing Weekly attracted the drama’s stars as guests, as well as showrunner Aaron Sorkin and West Wing superfan Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Three years after The West Wing Weekly launched, Office Ladies made its debut. The podcast, hosted by Office stars who are real-life BFFs, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, quickly became a megahit, attracting more one than million listeners and spawning a #1 New York Times bestselling book. ²

Soon, many (many) TV stars who had long-running series identified a new career niche and added “podcast host” to their resumes. And these podcasts are appealing in that the hosts’ behind-the-scenes tales, shared in a chummy atmosphere, makes listeners feel like they are entering Hollywood’s inner sanctum.

But there is a drawback too. It’s not just that hearing actors talk about a show that went off the air years ago is like attending someone else’s college reunion: the inside jokes can get too insidery, and the fawning remembrances can soon become boring. It becomes an echo chamber of actors and writers complimenting each other, with diminishing returns.

There is also the simple fact that a lot of actors haven’t watched their own shows. Unlike a diehard fan, they likely can’t recall a lot about specific plot points or other details. Many of the stars’ experiences are limited to what they saw on set, without the ability to provide deeper analysis.

The TV podcast recap can become an endless litany of anecdotes by the people who made the show, which means those involved lack objectivity about what they worked on—especially when it comes time to discuss criticisms the series received during or after its run.

Every TV show is an artifact of its time, and recapping them can mean wading into some dicey territory. For example, Gilmore Guys hosts and guests did not shy away from criticizing Lorelai and Rory’s blinkered views on their privilege, as well as problematic jokes and lack of meaningful diversity in its cast.

On HIMYM, Barney Stinson was a slimy lothario whose manipulative hijinks were played for laughs. How much Radnor and Thomas will delve into the writing of Barney, and reckon with his characterization throughout the series, remains to be seen. But it’s hard to imagine it would be with the objectivity that the topic deserves.

*

I’m going to take you behind the curtain of MOPC HQ. My friends all write nonfiction books about film and television shows. As a fiction writer, I think of our group chat as a graduate-level course on nonfiction writing about pop culture. The stories they share are eye-opening, giving me an appreciation for how much diligence and painstaking research goes into their work. Because their goal is to provide a historical record, not just about the TV show or movie, but the cultural context it was created in and why the work endures beyond the time it originally aired.

Yet there are times they run into a frustrating roadblock: the creatives involved decline to give interviews about their experiences, which of course is their right. But increasingly, rather than talk to biographers and critics, the stars want to keep their stories to disseminate themselves.

Now you might be asking: Why can’t there be Gilmore Guys fan podcast³, a Scott Patterson-hosted Gilmore podcast, and a journalist-penned Gilmore book?

Well, it’s the celeb-hosted project that sucks up all the oxygen. A fan-hosted How I Met Your Mother podcast won’t get nearly the same money, resources and attention or money compared to a star-hosted show. And crucially, this same concept applies to biographies and documentaries.

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, who has published eight nonfiction books about pop culture, including Sex and the City and Us, Seinfeldia and So Fetch, has noticed a marked change in stars’ interest in interviews since the podcast boom.

“It’s been noticeably harder to get celebrities to participate in the time I’ve been doing this,” she said, referring to the publication of Mary & Lou & Rhoda & Ted, her first book of the kind, about The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which came out in 2013. “No one was doing TV books or making podcasts then.”

Yet book deals about pop culture are getting harder to come by if an author cannot guarantee they will have the cooperation of key cast members and creatives.

We’re already seeing the costs of journalists being muscled out of their jobs in favor of stars (or the stars’ estates) wanting to maintain iron-fisted control of their narratives.

Ezra Edelman won an Oscar and a Peabody Award for his acclaimed 2016 documentary, O.J.: Made in America. Among the glowing reviews was this from the Los Angeles Times: “Historically meticulous, thematically compelling and deeply human, O.J.: Made in America is a masterwork of scholarship, journalism and cinematic art.”

In telling O.J. Simpson’s story, Edelman was also telling the story of the societal and cultural forces that shaped Simpson and turned his murder trial into one of the defining news stories of the nineties.

Edelman’s follow-up project was a comprehensive, nine-hour documentary about Prince for Netflix. But Netflix canceled The Book of Prince at the behest of the late singer’s estate, due to their claims that the project was rife with inaccuracies.

In a recent interview, Edelman countered these claims during an interview on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. “[The estate] came back with a 17-page document full of editorial issues, not factual issues. You think I have any interest in putting out a film that’s factually inaccurate?” Edelman said.

According to the New York Times Magazine, the “editorial issues” lie in the fact that the doc is transparent about Prince’s darker nature. Questlove, one of the only people to ever view the doc, says the documentary shows Prince as both “extraordinary and a regular human being who struggled with self-destructiveness and rage.”

Netflix shelved Edelman’s documentary and is developing a new one that will likely have the cooperation of Prince’s estate. And the filmmaker noted that the cancellation of The Book of Prince speaks to a larger issue impacting journalists like him.

“Right now, we live in a culture and in a documentary universe, and in some ways in a journalistic universe, where the subject gets to dictate who they are to everybody," Edelman said. "My issue is that in trading for access, you now have a lot of companies and filmmakers making deals with the subject, sanitizing their story and or their image.”

“I think the danger and the problem I’m finding is that what’s the compromise?”

Increasingly, book projects and documentaries need a celebrity’s participation in order to get greenlit. Which means we’re getting a sanitized, and at worst, self-serving depiction of the subject. And so while it might feel nitpicky to decry the existence of Beyond the OC, 9021OMG and their ilk, what I’m really sounding the alarm about is how cultural criticism is being eroded in favor of slick, celeb-sanctioned projects and hagiographies.

Right now, journalism is becoming devalued in relation to how much it is needed. Critics, journalists and historians have never been more important to combat growing misinformation and manipulation of the truth. So the next time you settle in with your favorite TV recap podcast, keep in mind what we’re also losing each time we listen to an actor chuckle about an on-set memory.

In a perfect world, everything could co-exist. But not when we’re living in a world where the voices that matter the most are the people with the most money, the most social media followers...or the ones who have recorded the most Squarespace ads.

---

The Ministry Recommends…celeb-hosted podcasts we actually like

Jennifer: Given that “Severance Viewer” is currently 96 percent of my identity—yeah, that number is a reference—I love The Severance Podcast with Ben Stiller and Adam Scott. This is a special case for celeb-hosted podcasts about television shows, in that the series is an ongoing puzzle-box show that has us fans desperate for any and all information we can get. Yes, there is a bit of fawning between Stiller and Scott as the showrunner and star, and with their weekly interviewees from the cast and crew. But I’m willing to endure that to hear their recollections of shooting onsite in a snowy hellscape in Upstate New York or learn more about Michael Chernus, the actor who plays the spectacularly self-involved self-help author Ricken Hale, or Dichen Lachman, whose Ms. Casey/Gemma turns out to be the skeleton key that could unlock the entire show. Or not.

That said, perhaps the Gold Standard of recent TV podcasts was HBO’s Succession Podcast, a contemporaneous weekly look at the family business drama hosted by journalist Kara Swisher, and with all the access that an authorized podcast provides. It was the best of both worlds, allowing insider info shepherded by an experienced journalist who could provide the insight and editorial judgement to keep things on track.

Thea: Long after The Good Place ended with a beautiful, magical, gut-punch of a goodbye, I still find myself putting on episodes of the show’s official podcast The Good Place: The Podcast. Hosted by Marc Evan Jackson (Sean), episodes are so wonderfully nerdy about the specifics of the show — the writing, the production design, the acting, the music, the editing and the philosophy. Jackson is a studied host who does his homework and examines the nitty gritty bolts and screws that make up the world. As a very hungry TV obsessive, this makes my heart glow. Much like its television counterpart, the podcast is not only a warm hug, but a smart, sharp, makes-you-think warm hug that’ll have you coming back episode after episode.

Kirthana: I only listen to two celeb-hosted podcasts, and they are equally delightful. Speaking of Severance, it’s a blast listening to fellow R.E.M. superfan Adam Scott nerd out with Comedy Bang Bang! host Scott Aukerman about their favorite music, starting with U Talkin’ U2 to Me? After covering U2’s discography, they moved on to R.E.M., The Talking Heads, and most, recently Bruce Springsteen. And speaking of The Good Place, D’Arcy Carden (who played Janet) has her own podcast called WikiHole, in which she invites a trio of comedians to answer trivia questions based on interconnected Wikipedia entries. This is a real fun one for trivia heads like me, while also laugh-out-loud funny too.

What is your favorite TV podcast? And what do you think about celebrities increasingly occupying the podcast recap space? Let us know in the comments!

1. For this story, I’m only addressing podcasts recapping shows that have already concluded their runs. And there’s a reason for this, which you will see later on.

2. In fact, the podcast has been so popular that even though Office Ladies already recapped all seven seasons, last fall they began re-recapping the show from the very beginning.

3. A few words on what makes fan podcasts worth your time: One of the pleasures of being a listener of a podcast like Gilmore Guys, Slayerfest 98 (Buffy the Vampire Slayer recaps) and Watch What Crappens (Bravo show recaps), is that you get introduced to very funny, talented hosts and guests who have interests outside of these shows. Rather than being insular and tending to the flames of a singular fandom, the fan-hosted podcast can open you up to new people and pop culture. At their very best, these podcasts foster a community that exists not just because of a TV series, but beyond it.