#tim simons

*falls to knees*

*sobs hysterically*

I’ve made it through the first seven episodes of the pod—which includes the appearances by Tony Hale, Reid Scott, and Anna Chlumsky—so I feel like I’ve listened enough to have an opinion about it (if anyone else is actually listening to this podcast…if you are out there and actually listening/watching, please stop by my inbox.) 

It’s aggressively fine. Nothing groundbreaking, but a reasonably enjoyable listen. The hosts are clearly professionals at being funny, and of course there’s plenty of lovely and entertaining behind-the-scenes information. I do hope they bring Armando Iannucci on (and I imagine they are trying to get JLD on as well, but she is of course very busy). It’s interesting to note the different interpersonal dynamics between various combinations of cast members. It’s also *very* obvious why Tim Simons jumped on the celebrity rewatch podcast craze…he’s a total fandom nerd! (I say this with great respect) He loves thinking about his favorite tv shows, he is clearly very Internet savvy, and he’s interested in politics, so it makes sense to me that he feels like the driving force behind this podcast. (it is very clear now that Tim Simons is absolutely the kind of person who would go look up fanfiction about the show he was on--which, btw, professional writers are legally prohibited from doing, but I guess actors aren’t.) 

I like each episode opening with a recording of a political gaffe, and the trivia game has surprisingly not been as annoying as I normally find these cheesy bits. I don’t *love* the strict scene-by-scene recap of each week’s episode…it leads to interesting conversations and anecdotes, I guess, but too often we also get stuck on banal chatter like “okay what happens next? oh right yes, then Selina goes into her office and closes the door, and Gary and Sue have a conversation about X Y Z which was really funny because A B C” interspersed with all the “ums” and “ahs” of live speech. (Maybe this is a Kast Media thing, because they also do it on the OC Bitches podcast). Maybe there isn’t a good way to recap a tv episode scene by scene on air, though, especially if you aren’t going to air audio or video clips. 

I have two qualms/issues with the pod, one kind of nitpicky, and the other more serious. First, I wish they talked more about the relationships between the different characters. Not just Dan and Amy—although obviously if this were MY podcast there would be a weekly segment on that front—but Selina and Amy, Selina and Dan, Selina and Gary…most of the “big” moments in each episode get dissected on a comedic and political front, but not necessarily on a narrative front…usually it’s the guests who end up providing insight on character relationships, like Anna Chlumsky talking about Amy’s relationship with Selina in the context of the fake miscarriage scene. (I can’t help but find it…interesting that the first mention of Dan and Amy’s particular *thing* came from one of the guests, Pete Grosz, who played Sidney Purcell—his episode was great). Maybe this will change as we move into the later seasons, though, since in S1 a lot of the character groundwork is still being laid. 

My second, bigger qualm has to do with the podcast’s emphasis—mainly via Tim Simons, it has to be said—on the “progression” or “journey” of the show’s characters toward their worst S7 versions. The words “nihilism” and “dark” have been thrown around quite a bit in relation to where the characters end up. Usually at least once an episode Simons will point out a moment or character action and say something like “I feel like here you get a sense of just how dark/Machiavellian/crazy/evil this character can go” and sort of frame it like a “preview” of the later season (S7 in particular clearly feels separate to the cast compared to the others). Like Amy’s deal with O’Brien in Episode 4 was framed that way, as well as multiple Selina moments, and in one episode Walsh and Simons had a whole debate about whether or not Selina was showing actual remorse for a gaffe she committed compared to later seasons when she wouldn’t even care. There’s a lot of talk about how Selina is still trying to honor the agreements and exchanges she makes with other politicians in a way that obviously disappears in S7.

While I understand, obviously, the impulse to look at the show as a whole and examine all the different character arcs over the course of the seasons…the difference between the early seasons of the show versus the later seasons is not strictly a question of good vs bad vs mad and powerhungry. Sure, some pretty dark shit happens in S7, but early in S1 we have Amy making a deal with a white supremacist, which is pretty damn dark too! It’s not about the “scale” of all the different morally gray/Machiavellian political calculations that are made by the characters (although I can see why some people might try and frame it that way). It’s about how the whole entire ingredients and structure of the show’s political and interpersonal worlds changed so completely, a totally different approach to plot and narrative. It’s about how in S1 even the smallest decision by Selina had political stakes and in S7 all the action took place in a vacuum with no consequences.