Waking Up With The David Letterman Show

Dave 0:27 This is the Extra Extra Hot Great Podcast, episode 402 for the April 4th, 2026 weekend. I am news anchor chit chat David T. Cole, and I'm here with quiet switchboard Sarah D. Bunting. Sarah 0:45 Just like I like it. Dave 0:47 And one knife chain to a table, Tara Arellano. Tara 0:50 Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Dave 1:01 Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Extra, Extra Hot. Great. It is that time of the month again. It is time for the Forsenning Pool, in which your suggestions are thrown into a giant bingo ball of that. And one comes out, and that's the show we talk about. And this week's Forsenning Pool selection comes from Aaron, who has forced us to watch The David Letterman Show, Season 1, Episode 2. Not the late-night David Letterman Show. This is David Letterman's morning show and he wanted us to watch it because, well, we wanted to see a David Letterman in his embryonic state. And so that's why we are here. Quickly, Chen check in before we get into any details. Should people watch the second episode ever of the David Letterman show, Tara? Tara 1:47 Yeah, I thought it was really interesting. It also feels like the first episode. So I wonder if it's like just technically episode two because there was a pilot that never aired. Dave 1:55 I read something and I was a little confused about, but it's very possible the way that is phrased. Yes. Tara 2:01 It's very interesting. Dave 2:02 Sarah. Sarah 2:03 I don't know that you need to watch the whole thing, but because it comes with commercials, it was definitely a time capsule, like time machine back to childhood. I mean, I enjoyed it, you know, for various reasons that we'll get into. The whole thing might not be necessary for scholars. Dave 2:20 I agree. Yeah. As a historical curiosity, I think it does not fail. and having the ads in there. Once again, Chef Kiss is the person that did not edit those out. You got to do that. If you're putting retro shit on YouTube from a TV tape, we want to see all the commercials in that video. Okay, so the show is a little off from what we're used to. It is very much of the same ilk as his late show, which probably explains why it didn't last long in the daytime because it is not the right vibe for people in the morning to watch. What were your first impressions of this versus that. Tara 2:54 To me, it definitely feels like the late night show instantly. It opens with the real, apparently, NBC switchboard operator addressing the camera and saying, doing a bit that's obviously scripted. That's like, we hope you like it because if you don't, I'm the one that gets the calls. I don't want to hear them, which really feels like something he would do on both of his later late night shows of like making the crew part of the experience. And that is part and parcel of like the head writer here is his then partner in life, Meryl Marco. And so I think they their comic sensibility carried through from here to the late night shows, which she wrote on for many years, including, I believe, after they broke up. Dave 3:33 Yeah. Sarah, what do you think of that? And also, did you clock or did you expect David Letterman to be a little bit not confident in his output? I would say here. Sarah 3:43 This is a really strange choice by the network, honestly, to put him on in the morning. But I think that's just sort of like where it was for his career at this point in 1980 that they're like, we need to find something for this guy to do. And this is the slot that opened up. But the morning show vibe is so different from what we think of as the Letterman vibe. And my sort of chief, not even complaint, it was just interesting to watch it like that. He's trying to do this like warm, welcoming, like you're halfway down a cup of coffee and you're hearing about the weather opening monologue. And it's like, this is not you at all. And throughout the show, you can sort of see him trying to like adjust the controls of his own snark, I guess, to that he's like, well, this is what I actually want to say. But, oh, I should like track back to this more generalized, gentle vibe. And it's just not this shoe does not fit. Apparently, once they got once they knew they weren't going to be on anymore, he just like let it rip. And then people were like outraged that they were taken off the air. but it's just like absolutely not what you even the lighting is wrong like it looks like a late night show that had to move to a game show set because of water damage and then there's like the musical guest on a morning show okay well. Tara 5:13 They do that sometimes you see that on live and on today so. Dave 5:16 The first thing that we're really shown is letterman up in the rafters or whatever you call it, where the audience is sitting. And we're so used to daytime studios today being evenly lit throughout the whole thing. And everything looks like a cosmetics commercial. But then like it was only still half lit and they're spending a good chunk of time at the start of the show in this sort of brutalist concrete audience area that is only half lit compared to everything else. And it was just like, whoa, it kind of felt like how 50 shows in the 80s felt. And now here we are looking back on something from 1980. And you're like, wow, Wow, things were just not up to snuff as far as production goes. Oh, and by the way, I just forgot this. This is one month after Mount St. Helens, if you want to put this in a historical perspective. Tara 6:00 Okay. Dave 6:01 All right, so shall we get into the actual things? Tara 6:04 Let's do it. Dave 6:04 I'll run it down. All right, so after the switchboard cold open, we get the theme music, which of course is jarring because it's sort of a jaunty morning saxophone filled thing with stills of Letterman being a goof throughout his day. And Sarah D. Bunting, I told Tara this last night, but did you track who created the theme to this show? Sarah 6:25 No. Okay, everybody, who likes the Doobie Brothers? Tara 6:28 Because we got one of them. Dave 6:32 Michael McDonald wrote the theme. Sarah 6:34 Oh, boy. Dave 6:35 To this show. Sarah 6:36 Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Dave 6:38 I get what you're saying, Sarah, about the moments where it is completely jarring to us knowing the late-night Letterman to see his performance in a daytime situation. But there are, I think, moments where you see that DNA that will become Late Night with David Letterman. And the first one of those indicators to me is when they're just doing his intro and it is like, and now here is David Letterman, the man who loves tap dancing, but isn't sure what it is. It's very much like the man who knows what color your underwear is, which is my favorite one from late night. So I think you get little pieces there. And the first big thing he does is the crowd work in the audience. Like I was talking about very dark and very 1980s. There's a guy named Gary in the audience. We know he's named Gary because he's got a shirt that says Gary on it in that giant Cooper black font with flawed letterings. Tara 7:31 Love it. Dave 7:32 So you know exactly where you are. You know exactly where he bought that at the mall. The first thing he does is he is looking for volunteers to track minutes for this show. And at the end of the show, to bring this person on to go over what happened on this program. And the first person that he talks to is a woman from Long Island, I think should have been the minutes keeper. Tara 7:56 For real. Dave 7:56 She was really good. Let's hear that. Do you mind standing? What is your name? Sally Bastoff. Sally Bastoff. Tara 8:11 Woman in years. Where is Valley Stream? Long Island. Oh, I'm sorry. Long Island. Why are you sorry? No, I'm sorry. It's not your fault. No, I know. Dave 8:23 Long Island Lady 1, Letterman 0. Tara 8:26 Yeah, I'll just say overall in this production, It's a beautiful cornucopia of regional tri-state accents. When the author Hester Mundus comes out, she's got a wonderful accent as well. Sarah 8:39 Mm-hmm. Dave 8:40 And then the next big thing for the show, and I found this absolutely fascinating and bewildering, is they bring out Edwin Newman to do the news. And we're used to today on a show, they just throw to some guy elsewhere in the building for the news report from the typical news desk. But what they've done here is they've made this poor guy sit on the set of Letterman in his own little small desk with a little news update placard behind him and deliver the news to this morning audience and David Letterman. It was weird. I don't think he's used to chit-chatting with Letterman, which happens after he gives the news. But before we get to that, I just want to highlight this little item about North and South Korea, which I thought was very funny. North Korea and South Korea met in the truce village of Panmunjom for talks reunification. Little was said about that. The meeting was devoted mostly to name calling. Tara 9:36 I've been in that meeting. Dave 9:38 There is a way this guy talks about the news that is slightly folksy and uses language we're not used to hearing now when it comes to news reporting that I wish they would. when they're going over all the inflation indicators and they're just saying, yeah, your bread's going to cost more, but your gas won't and stuff like that. So it's like, what is this? What straw chewing news anchor guy do we got here? I kind of loved it. Sarah 10:03 It was very Sam the Eagle to me. Dave 10:06 So after that North Korea bit, Ledman gives them some chit chat and you can tell it's not rehearsed or scripted. They're just going off the cuff and neither one of them is very good at it. Nope. And then Edie McClurg, Edie McClurg comes in playing the Edie McClurg character she has been playing for, I'm going to guess 50 years now, Megan Bank. She comes in and I'm not quite sure what her pretend role is supposed to be. She's cleaning the desk to start out with, but I think she's just like a busybody on set. I don't think she has a role. She comes in for a moment to prime her for her later appearance in the show. She doesn't really do much at this point. First guest, Jane and Michael Stern. Tara, you seem to know who these were before I did. Tara 10:47 I sure did. I was surprised they were doing- I totally did. Yeah, they're the authors of the Encyclopedia of Bad Taste. I think that's probably what they're still best known for, which I remember checking out from the public library when I worked there. Dave 11:01 Which is what, exactly? Tara 11:02 The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste? Dave 11:04 Yeah. Tara 11:04 It's an encyclopedia of bad taste. Dave 11:06 Okay, but what kind of stuff's in it? Tara 11:08 It's like a comedy. It's like a comical reference book where they... It's sort of like our... Sarah 11:13 Like, long flamingos. Tara 11:14 Yeah. Sarah 11:14 Dolly Parton, I think. How dare they? But Velvet Elvis's. Stuff like that. Tara 11:20 Like it's leopard print on the cover. Sarah 11:22 Dictionary of Kitsch. They actually got divorced in 2008, but they still work together. Tara 11:27 Good for them. Sarah 11:28 And write together. And they had a gourmet magazine column for a while. I was delighted to see them doing guest shots. I kind of felt like they were pretty culty. I didn't realize they were as well known or sort of plugged into the monoculture. 45, 50 years ago. So that was cool. Tara 11:48 Yeah, I thought the same thing. I didn't realize their legend went back that far. So I was surprised. Dave 11:53 Yeah. So they're here to promote two of their books. One's called Road Food, where they just go sample a whole bunch of restaurants and tell you where to eat if you're doing a road trip across America. And the other one is called Amazing America, which really just sounds like a book form of roadsideamerica.com, where they're telling you, where's the muffler man in this state? And what magnetic hill do we have? those kind of attractions, which I am all here for. I love that shit. Tara 12:17 A hundred percent. But it's really a sign of the times where it's like, wow, imagine writing up roadside places to eat in a, book like and expecting them to still be open you know six months after your publication date i wouldn't but that's how shit was then. Dave 12:32 Tell that to everybody who lived in la in the 80s and 90s who had the giant thomas map guide that's true on their passenger seat it's just the way we had to deal with shit back then true. Sarah 12:42 Some people still swear by them. Dave 12:43 Michael stern looks like every 1980s movie accountant that ever did go on screen he's got those almost circular red lucite framed glasses. He's not a threat, but you hate him anyways. That kind of role. Tara 12:58 I was thinking Michael McKean is Mr. Green in the Clue movie. Dave 13:03 Oh, yeah. Tara 13:03 He had that vibe to me. Yep. Dave 13:05 They say they went through 12 cars during their travels to write where to eat across America. They ate funeral pie, which I didn't know anything about before this. Apparently it is Sarah D. Bunting, cover your ears. Raisin pie. Tara 13:20 Yeah. Dave 13:21 Pennsylvania and Dutch. And then they have another one, which is a whole bunch of roadside attraction stuff. They talk about, you know, the giant ball of twine, Cadillac Stonehenge, a lot of stuff you knew about. But they were pretty good, I thought. Like today we would put out bullshit phrases like media trained and that kind of stuff. And they weren't, which was good. I mean, they knew what they were doing and they actually were able to retort to Letterman. But they still seem pretty genuine. when they didn't seem like all their corners were smoothed out. Tara 13:49 It also tells you a lot both about where this show was in the firmament of pop culture, but also just how differently shows like this were produced that the lead guests would be a pair of authors who are not celebrities. You would never see people like this on Live with Kelly and Mark. I mean, probably ever, but if they did make it on, it would definitely be at the 10 to 10 slot, not leading off. Dave 14:13 Well, I think half the guests of this episode are their writers. So that also tells you who they were able to get for their first week, which is nobody. Next little thing is they did a poll to figure out the average height and weight of their audience here in 1980. Average height, five foot two. Average weight, 121 pounds. Ouch. Tara 14:36 Now, that's self-reported. So let's assume some people are rounding down. Dave 14:41 Okay. Even if you added 20 pounds to that average. Tara 14:44 Yeah. Dave 14:44 Somewhere around 70 to 80 pounds off what you do today. Yeah. Tara 14:49 Probably. Dave 14:50 And then they bring up one of their writers, Bob Sarlott. He looks like Herb Tarlick and Fred Willard had a baby. Tara 14:57 Yes, he does. Sarah 14:58 100%. Dave 14:58 But is neither. He was a writer on the show. Tara 15:02 Yeah. Dave 15:02 He is the waiter in Star Trek IV, the voyage home in old San Francisco. I found this out by going to his site, bobsarlot.com, with the copyright date at the bottom, 2002. Tara 15:15 Lovely. Dave 15:16 Where he had a video of his appearance in Star Trek 4, but I couldn't play the 4.5 megabyte WMV file of that scene because I didn't have the ActiveX plugin the site was expecting. Tara 15:29 Dave. Dave 15:30 So I think maybe he hasn't been keeping up on his maintenance, only his payments to the host. Tara 15:36 Perhaps. I remember seeing this guy on the late night show for sure. He was like in the regular mix and was probably on the level of like, someone dropped out. Can you come and do five minutes on the show? So by the time I saw him, he was quite gray. So it was fun to see him in his youth. Dave 15:50 I did find that Star Trek clip by means. Let's hear it. Tara 15:54 When I went to see Star Trek 4, I expected to see William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and all, I've seen a lot of performances in my time, but. Dave 16:37 Oh, you little bitch, Maltin. Sarah 16:41 This is the most recent. Dave 16:44 So Bob Sarlett is doing like standup bits from the chair and I can never do standup bits from the chair. Tara 16:50 Well, certainly not on a morning show. That's something that comics do on late night shows all the time. Dave 16:55 I know, but it never really works for me. It's called standup. It's not called sit down. Tara 16:59 I agree. Dave 17:00 There's some audience questionnaires. A jazz singer pops up. He has a little television where he tells you what's playing on all the other channels. Channel two has Alice. And then he brings on an author of, no, he's not a monkey. He's an ape and he's my son by Hester Mundus, which is also, I think, one of the Knights of the Round Table. I'm not sure. Tara 17:20 I'm just going to say, I had Hester Mundus and it took a lot of antibiotics to knock it out. Sarah 17:25 Yeah, there's a cream for that. Dave 17:27 Hester Mundus adopted a baby ape, a chimpanzee. Tara 17:32 As you do. Dave 17:33 In New York City... Without knowing that chimpanzees grow, but for a while, she was taking care of it in her apartment with her husband. The chimp's name is Boris. Thoughts? She seemed kind of dumb. Tara 17:48 I didn't think she seemed dumb. Dave 17:50 The way she's telling the story about how she got hoodwinked into this by nobody seemed odd to me. Tara 17:56 I mean, I think she was probably naive. I watched the Nim Chimpsky documentary on HBO whenever that happened years ago. Dave 18:04 But if you were going to buy a monkey in New York City, first of all, stop. Second of all, though, well, never mind like the co-op board. But just how do you not look in like, how long do they live? How big do they get? I don't know. Like, how do you feed them? All this kind of stuff. Tara 18:21 I just think there was a moment in the late 70s when people thought they could do this shit. Because it wasn't the only example of someone trying to raise a chimp or an ape to do things human style. like she goes on at length about he uses the toilet for example but he wears diapers she says so because letterman's one of his first questions is what about the smell fair question i would wonder that as well in a high rise on presumably the upper east side or whatever yeah. Sarah 18:48 There was a lot elided that we heard about this place where you could go and pet exotic animals and the next thing I know, we have an infant chimp. It's like, the next thing you know? How high were you? Tara 19:03 Did they put it in the car when you weren't looking? Sarah 19:05 The point where it's sort of like, now he lives at a preserve, I assume, in England. Or, like, not now. I assume he is no longer on this side of the chimp veil. Dave 19:16 We lost him in 2024. Yeah, he was at a zoo in the UK. Tara 19:21 We miss him. Dave 19:22 And I read the BBC article about his death. No mention that he was ever in New York City or that he lived in this crazy lady. Tara 19:29 Wow, that's that's not white. Dave 19:31 White from the record. Sarah 19:32 She says that he had to leave because she was pregnant again. And so then he went to live at a place where chimps should live, I assume, in England. And it's like it's not like you could Google where can I send this chimp I already shouldn't own. Tara 19:46 Right. Sarah 19:47 Who do you call for that? Like, did you get out your brick of a Yellow Pages and start calling chimp rehoming? Like, I don't think that was in there. So I'm glad it all worked out. I mean, I hope it all worked out. And it wasn't something where cops and animal control showed up and were like, you can't be this person. You just can't. Tara 20:08 There's no talk about like, how did this chimp that was raised as your son adapt to being back around other chimps versus in an apartment? and they sort of touch on it when she says that people at the zoo wrote to her to say that he didn't have any interest in mating which she took to mean they were implying that he was gay and her answer was that all of the chimps they were offering him must be ugly like what is happening here like you're really oh this is a lot going on like he. Dave 20:40 Is depressed the chimp mother version of that mom from Law and Order that was egging on her artistic son. Tara 20:46 When he was on the with the buzz box with the buzz box for David yep that. Dave 20:52 Was a weird segment I don't know she seemed like she was a couple marbles short of a full bag to me. Tara 20:58 If anyone has read this book like if you saw it at a flea market because I don't know how else you would find it like please get on the discord and tell us about it because I don't want to read it but I would love it a precy. Dave 21:08 All right next up is Will Schreiner. Tara 21:11 Yeah. Dave 21:12 Yes, exactly. Will Schreiner immediately steps on Dave's intro to get right to his couch bits. He just couldn't wait. So I looked him up. He had a short-lived syndicated talk show in the late 80s, lasted about 100 episodes, got canned, not even one season. In this segment, he is doing like a rapid fire version of Dream On from HBO where there's footage and he's making punny jokes on whatever that footage is, trying to like tell a story through trains going through tunnels and flappers dancing and monkeys washing stuff and things like that. Terrible. Tara 21:47 Yeah, I remember him doing this on the late night show, too. And one of them is little Amy Carter greeted the guests and it's a shot of a chimp. It's like, really? We're still doing this in 1980? Fuck off. Dave 21:58 Not popular with the audience either. Tara 22:00 I think the smarter way to do this, and again, for a late night show, is like when Conan used to pretend he was driving his desk around and they would put footage behind him, like he was driving through crazy scenes. That's the funny way to do that has some energy versus just a guy talking over old stock footage. Sarah 22:19 Right. Dave 22:19 Then Edward Newman is back with a news update. Edie McClurg is back, showing you how to make your David Letterman scrapbook. And holy cow, flop, flop, flop on the dock for that whole thing. Tara 22:30 God. Dave 22:30 Audience completely silent. David Letterman couldn't really save it. Nothing was happening with this one. Just didn't work. Tara 22:38 Yeah. And I guess like how they sold this was it's going to be a hybrid, you know, standard morning breakfast TV show and a sketch show, which I think is why we're seeing her and Sarlat and whoever else. but it's like, this is not what the form wants to do at nine in the morning on a Wednesday. Like this is just. Sarah 22:57 This isn't the vibe. Dave 22:59 Yeah. Sarah 22:59 And it's not really what he wants to do either. Like there's so many different parts of it in which he like he never totally got comfortable, I would say, with like the interview portions, but he at least learned from past mistakes. But in this particular iteration, just the mistakes and then also would allow himself to get sidetracked. Like he had an interesting conversation, I think, with the newsreader about what it's like to be traveling with the president. Edwin Newman was like not prepared for that line of questioning. And then it's just sort of like, this is not a matter for live TV. Tara 23:35 Right. Dave 23:35 We bring back Esther Satterfield, jazz singer from earlier. And then at the end, Carol gets to do the minutes very poorly and gets cut off for time. And then that's it. We are done with the episode. Interesting curiosity, I thought. Study of contrast between this and his eventual late night. You could definitely see a lot of the DNA, though, in his late-night show. Sarah 23:59 Oh, yeah. Tara 23:59 Yeah, that's what makes it an interesting Curio, is that, like, how much of the things that didn't work in this format, they were like, we're just going to try them again because we like them. Like, how much this is personality and taste-driven for him and Meryl Marco, which I have always admired. Even the parts where it doesn't work, I still think he is so charming. I just love him. I love him so much. Dave 24:23 In addition to the actual show, as mentioned, the YouTube video did include all the regional NBC house ads and national ads shown during this 90-minute show, I think. Yes. Tara 24:37 Yep. Dave 24:38 So let's just do some highlights. The first one is a local ad. It is for 21st century health spa. Favorite part of this, beyond just the talking heads having all the hair in the world, is the first guy actually flubs the name of the store and they didn't give him a second take. Tara 24:55 Why have so many area men and women joined 21st Century Health Spa? Well, I joined 21st Century. Dave 25:20 $6.99. That's right, only $6.99. Call or stop by your nearest 21st Century Health Spa today. Weird that they called it a health spa in 1980. I wouldn't think they were there yet, especially because this place just seems like a shitty gym, but they're just calling it a hell spot. But I didn't think we were there with the language yet. Tara 25:36 I'm sure I've talked about this before, but around this time, my mother belonged to a gym in Regina Hold for Giggles, and it was a ladies' gym. There was another one that's advertised in this episode as well. I forget what it's called. But hers was called Spa Lady. So this is what they were called. Dave 25:53 Is there curves still? Is curves still a concern? Tara 25:55 I think it still exists. I don't know. Sarah 25:57 Oh, yeah. Dave 25:58 I think you're thinking of Elaine Power's figure salons. Tara 26:00 Thank you. I am. Dave 26:01 That comes later. Yeah. All right. Moving on. My second ad is for Sheriff Lobo. On Lobo, the senator's up for re-election until he's dead. Bad! He's a stiff competitor and still running. It's the biggest cover-up since Watergate. Tara 26:19 I missed that. Dave 26:21 Yeah. Sarah 26:21 I mean, we often talk fondly about the monoculture and how, in some ways, that seemed like a better, easier time culturally. But, oh boy, was there a downside? And the downside was shit like this would just get greenlit and be on. And you would have to watch it. Dave 26:40 Look forward to Dad on the soundboard. Tara 26:44 But also like making a Watergate reference. That was six years ago at this point. Like just this is how long stories hung on. This is why people were still making new coke jokes in like 1988. Dave 26:56 My next clip is for Ragoo. I'm just playing it because, man, we just don't get jingles like this anymore. Commercial songs. and this one is great and it's sort of like the Gilligan's Island of sauce ads because it's telling you everything, All right. Pop quiz. Hands on your buzzers. First one to buzz in is ragu, this ragu product for spaghetti. Sarah 27:46 Yes. Dave 27:46 It is not. Tara gets the point. Next one is for a product called complete and see if you can get through the pronunciation of a certain word without wanting to blow your brains out. Here we go. My furniture had two personalities. For this furniture, I needed polishes. Tara 28:04 Furniture. Cleaners. Now my furniture care is finally complete. Introducing new complete. It cleans and polishes all kinds of furniture. Sarah 28:14 From my good wood to my vinyl, chrome, plastic, and complete leaves no greasy film to streak or smear. Beautiful. Dave 28:22 At last, a polish, a cleaner. Furniture care is finally complete. How did she get the last one right after fucking it up the last seven times? Furniture. Tara 28:32 I think that's an accent thing. We also hear Edie McClurg saying, like, Tuesday. This is just like an accent that has not survived into our era. Or maybe it has. I just don't go there. Dave 28:42 I accept that it is a regional accent. I'm just telling you. I don't want to hear it. Tara 28:47 We should say, this seems to be ripped from a Detroit area NBC affiliate. Sarah 28:53 Toledo. Tara 28:54 Was it? Oh, okay. I saw something about Wayne, so I thought it was in Detroit. Okay. Thank you for the correction. Dave 28:59 Next ad, no clip. It's for Topol toothpaste for smokers. Tara 29:03 Oh, yes. Sarah 29:03 Excuse me tooth polish. Dave 29:05 Yes thank you it's the guy who smokes through the cloth smoke through the cloth so you can see the stain horrifying next ad is for home pride bread and i'm only mentioning it because right at the start of it before we we pan over you know the the feast and we see all these freshly cooked veggies and the knife picks up i'm not going to exaggerate five cups of butter and smears them over the veggies before we even get to the bread and the bread is like butter infused. That's the whole shtick. But oh my God, everybody's getting a heart attack at that meal. Tara 29:39 We call it the good morning butter. Dave 29:42 Basically. There's an ad for No Pest in which bored housewives just lay into the guy that's doing the door-to-door pest removals. Like they're abusing this poor fellow. And we may hear more from No Pest at the end of the show. Who's to say? Tara 29:57 Yeah. And it's a bunch of random women. And then the last one is Ruth Buzzy. Oh, really? Yes. Sarah 30:02 Oh, yeah. Tara 30:03 Just like doing a not-celebrity endorsement of No Past. Dave 30:08 The next one is for Arm & Hammer baking soda for your fridge. It eliminates fridge orders, and they will need it because inside the fridge, when the old slobby husband opens it up and you see uncovered Camembert cheese, one loose cantaloupe half, an open jar of sauerkraut, like the lid is just not in the fridge. and then they appear into the freezer and there's a pint of ice cream with a lid half off. So enjoy that freezer burned ice cream, I guess. You wouldn't need so much Arm & Hammer baking soda if you just covered your fucking food, put it in a Tupperware container. You fucking slobs. Tara 30:45 Can't believe there wasn't just like a random fish in there as well. Dave 30:48 Yeah. Tara 30:49 Fish was in a different commercial that was for chips, of all things. I mean, fries. Dave 30:53 I suspect Tara is going to cover the six or seven or perhaps 12 laxative ads that we saw during this later in the program. We've got an ad for Al-Anon and not making fun of Al-Anon. Do what you need to do, of course. But here's the ad. If your wife has a drinking problem, you can see what it's doing to her. But can you see what it's doing to you? Contact Al-Anon. There's this guy in like a 1978 suit at his office, nowhere near his wife, by the way, snapping a pencil. Tara 31:22 He's having a hard time. Dave 31:24 He's having a hard time. Sarah 31:24 Like, it's a morning show. So you don't have to go this hard. Tara 31:30 We don't want to hear about codependency right now. We're just trying to have our coffee, speaking of which. Dave 31:35 And then lastly, I have an ad for Nescafe. And the visuals are dudes doing things on boats, racing boats. If you think decaffeinated coffee has, the world. Tara 32:15 Relax. I thought this was an ad for decaf. Sarah 32:18 Although his mug was cool as hell. It was the globe with the frosted glass. I was like, I'll take the mug and everything else about this ad needs to chill. Oh God, those crystals. Dave 32:30 Were your husbands gay? Crazy ad. Just like, what is happening? I mean, I understand what's happening. The marketing says not enough men are drinking our Nescafe copy because they think it's for the ladies, but how can we macho this up? I know. Boats. And that is it for the ads. Thank you, Aaron. Fascinating look into a little piece of TV history. And thank you, YouTube guy, for keeping the commercials up. Tara 32:59 Yes. Dave 33:07 Alright, it is time for Ask E-H-G-G. Also, I don't know if you knew this, Michael McDonald wrote this too. Tara 33:15 Oh, wow. Sarah 33:18 What a talent. Dave 33:28 Taking it to the questions. Here we go. We don't have judgment this week. First question is from Damon. Which impossible reunion show would you like to make happen, Tara? Tara 33:40 Just because it's top of mind because we finished watching it not very long ago, but the Mary Tyler Moore show. I believe all of them are no longer with us and we miss them. Sarah. Sarah 33:51 Yeah, I want a Beverly Hills 902.0 reunion with the entire first season cast, mostly because I want to hear from Luke Perry and Shando about what the idiot blondes were really like. So truth serum for everybody also. Dave. Dave 34:05 Magnum PI, one last case. Of course, we can't do it now because we lost Higgins and TC and Magnum and Rick are 92 years old. Even if it was like set in 2002 or something like that, they bumped it up and that would have been great. But yeah, not to be. Aaron, Aaron's back. What classic game show should be rebooted as a BritBox mystery. Sarah. Sarah 34:27 Joker's Wild. Joe, J-O-E, Kerr, K-E-R-R, that is. Detective Sergeant Kerr is trying to find a serial killer of the extremely organized puzzle creator sort you only find on the TV and has to keep solving trivia riddles along the way in the style of the original Joker's Wild. Dave. Dave 34:47 I got one that is basically already there. Do you remember when I was talking about the UK game show Bullseye. Tara 34:54 Yes. Dave 34:55 Half darts, half trivia. Tara 34:56 Of course. Sarah 34:57 Mm-hmm. Dave 34:57 So it's that, and then it's basically the last act of an Agatha Christie mystery set in the pub while all the suspects play darts. Sarah 35:05 Sure. Dave 35:06 But don't forget about this. There was a killer on that show. Do you remember me talking about that? So we actually have a murderer from the game show that can be in your Burt Box mystery. All the elements are there. You just have to write a cohesive story around it. Tara 35:21 Mm-hmm. I mean, this was the one that my first note this week was, what, again? Because occasionally that's, I just got to get it out. So I'll say to tell the truth and then three question marks. I mean, I guess it's kind of a mystery already that you're trying to solve. So this one was hard for me to, you guys had better answers than I did. Because I had a hard time visualizing what was expected or how that would work. Dave 35:48 Oh no, Tara fainted. Where did her answer go? We'll never know. Moving on, Diatho, do Transformers need medical insurance or do they need car insurance? First one, then the other. Tara 36:01 But I don't want to get into the whole the car is a universe and whether they have guts or who is driving them or any of that shit. We've already litigated that in the 2000s. But Transformers are not organic matter, I thought. So I would say car insurance. Dave 36:18 Yeah, but the question is, I think, if you get injured in your humanoid form, you're not a car. So does car insurance, will they cover your costs? Tara 36:28 Right, but you're more a car even in your humanoid form than you are a person. Dave 36:33 Are you saying they don't have feelings? Tara 36:34 No, I'm saying they don't have guts. Dave 36:39 All right. Tara 36:39 Sarah. Sarah 36:40 Car, next. Dave 36:42 You're both wrong. You're both a little racist. Tara 36:45 Whoa. Dave 36:46 Against robot people. Okay. Sarah 36:48 Excuse me. I'm 5'10". I'm a big racist. Tara 36:52 Don't put that on the soundboard. Sarah 36:54 No. Dave 36:57 Elf Cubed. Elf Cubed. What show would you be stoked to see shooting in front of your home? And what uncredited extra walk-on role would you want to play? Tara 37:07 I mean, the no fun answer, which I'll just get out of the way, is I don't want anything shooting in front of my house. It's a huge pain in the ass. I might have places to go. I mean, we all know I don't, but they don't know that. I would like the freedom to go somewhere. Dave 37:22 At this point, I just want to ask you, do you know the purpose of the Ask ESG segment? Tara 37:27 I have a fun answer as well. I'm just saying this is in the spirit of, I mean, this is long ago now, but when it's like if you get a multi-pack from Costco, which do you drink first? you're most hated. We all had real answers for that. That said, Dave. Dave 37:42 Oh, no, Tara fainted again. Tara 37:44 Where'd the answer go? 9-1-1 Lone Star. I'm way in the background in an ambulance with a silver blanket around my shoulders. And I will say this question did remind me of the time two Halloweens ago when there was a car accident almost right in front of our house. Dave 37:59 Oh, yeah. Tara 38:00 Right, like during trick-or-treating. Dave 38:02 Yeah. Tara 38:02 And first responders did come. And the offending party came to the house to try to find out if we had seen anything. And I didn't. I only saw the aftermath of it. They were like trying to collect people to speak on their behalf. Dave 38:17 The weird part is all the first responders were vampires. Didn't end well. Tara 38:22 Dave. Dave 38:22 This pretty much happened to me, not outside my home, but I'm going to give you this answer. I was on 30 Rock. Tara 38:27 Oh, yeah. Dave 38:28 One day I was walking down Broadway and I was walking in front of the David Letterman Late Show, CBS, at Sullivan Theater. And they were shooting an episode of 30 Rock, the one where Tracy meets Kenneth after he becomes a page at CBS. And they have a conversation next to a taxi outside of the theater. I saw that filming and I stopped and I was on like that little strip in the middle of the road, the little concrete medium. I watched the episode and you can see me extremely out of focus as a turquoise blur in the background on your left-hand side. So look out for me next time. You watch that? Sarah? Sarah 39:06 The Gilded Age and my dog Bear would play a hat. Dave 39:11 Elsus. And with an E, like many of us would love for a spatula city to be real from UHF. What fake property would you want to see developed into a TV show, Sarah? Sarah 39:23 Well, I don't think it needs to be a show, although I would watch it if Starlin Harjo or Vince Gilligan ran it. But Stevie Nicks' Fajita Roundup from SNL is a restaurant that I want to eat at, including the performances from Lucy Lawless as Stevie Nicks. Gold Dust Woman Teenie, please make it a double. Tara 39:41 I'm going to keep saying it until someone on the production listens. Kill the Bear launched The Beef as a workplace sitcom set at the sandwich window with characters that like each other and are having fun and aren't suicidal. Dave. Sarah 39:57 My sandwich? Yes. Dave 40:00 Just because I want to see how they could possibly expand the universe. My vote is for the Will Ferrell starring Bitch Hunter from 30 Rock. Just how could they ever go any further than they did in that? I would just like to see them try. It would probably be bad. Wendy, I'm beginning to think about planning a game night for my 55th. I will definitely include celebrity. I may do running charades. I'm wondering what else you suggest, games or otherwise. So my advice is, yes, those two games are very fun. Get those out of the way first when everybody's there, because then you get those weak people that start peeling off And those games work best with a very large group of people, especially running charades. If you have like 15 people who are running charades, it's super fun. And then as your count dwindles, you can go to maybe split off the two separate games, put some Drawful 2 up on the TV, have some people playing their phones. That's always fun. I don't really have any like other party game suggestions for you along the lines of celebrity or charades. Sarah 41:02 I don't really either. Um, if you like card games that are pretty easy to learn and durable in terms of people like Dave mentioned, peeling off to go pee or leave, um, they can hand off their seats between rounds. So try Oh Hell, a bunch of different ways to score it, pick the one you like. Uh, it's also known as fuck your buddy in some regions. Uh, it's been a family and party game that we've, uh, enjoyed for decades. Tara 41:26 Yeah, I also thought of Jackbox games. I think Drawful is good to just have going as people are arriving. Dave 41:32 Yeah. Tara 41:33 It's a good warm-up game and people can like casually just join and leave and stuff and it goes fast. Definitely do celebrity and or running charades probably as quickly as possible while people still have a lot of energy. But then as it's winding down and the less hardcore people have left, Quiplash is really fun for when everyone is like loose and has... Dave 41:54 Punchy. Tara 41:55 Yeah, they're punchy. they've gotten to know each other a little if they haven't met before and they're ready to sit down, but they're still ready to laugh and be ridiculous. Dave 42:03 Radish cake. What's the piece of advice you have given over the years? Tara, wise sage advice. Tara 42:08 So boring, but true. Don't read the comments. Just don't do it. There's no good reason to do not. Dave 42:15 You're listening, Aaron Sorkin? Tara 42:15 Yeah, seriously. Sarah. Sarah 42:17 Don't lock your knees. Good advice, literally, like say if you're in a summertime wedding party and good advice figuratively. Just try not to get too locked in about how you want things to go because that's never what happens. Says the nationally ranked control freak. Dave. Dave 42:33 Don't eat that. Sarah 42:36 Didn't. Dave 42:37 Say it was good advice although usually it is good advice jovial gent what's a lesser known song from a popular band that you like sarah. Sarah 42:46 This isn't exactly obscure but i think baby you're a rich man by the beatles is uh undersung possibly as it were i think it was like the outro for the social network actually so it's not like obviously it's not obscure because it's the Beatles. But Magical Mystery Tour just as a whole tends not to be as talked about as other albums doesn't feel like. And there are some under discussed bangers on there. Just my opinion. I learned that Mick Jagger allegedly sings backup on Baby or Rich Man. And once you have read that, you cannot not hear him on the track. It's just my opinion. So go check it out. And no, nobody buried Paul. Dave. Dave 43:26 My selection is the closest thing I could find to a song version of the pop culture media that Sarah D. Bunting likes to consume. It is called murder tonight in the trailer park by the cowboy junkies. And it is a song about a woman getting murdered in the trailer park. And then everybody's sort of being lucky lose. And then the cops coming and what they discover and all that kind of stuff in a catchy song. Tara 43:48 Why don't you just play the clip? That's also the Beatles. And that's probably my single favorite Beatles song. It's called It's All Too Much. And the reason partly probably that it doesn't get into the mix on greatest hits and so forth is one, it wasn't a greatest hit. But two, it's a George song. It was a single with only a Northern song on the end of it. But you can also hear it in Yellow Submarine. I've never heard anybody ever talk about this song. And I'm not just saying like, that's my favorite. So that can be interesting. But I really, I really love that song. Sarah 44:54 I had another George song in the in the running. Tara 44:58 Yeah. Sarah 44:58 Actually, Blue Jay Way, which is like a sort of a weird song and very Georgie, but not in that sometimes annoying Georgie way. So good choice. Tara 45:07 Thanks. Dave 45:07 Steel Mill Eric has our last question. My 82 year old aunt mentioned last night she enjoys watching The Waltons and Bonanza on MeTV while she's knitting. what shows will MeTV be showing when we're all in our 80s so I guess that would probably be late 70s and 80s shows so I'm going to assume The A-Team, Remington Steele, Magnet P.I Murder She Wrote, maybe a little Knight Rider in there, but those type of shows. Tara 45:35 Oh, I went with shows from the 90s when I was really paying attention to what I was watching on TV versus just whatever happened to be on if I was in the room. So Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier, and ER were my picks. Sarah. Sarah 45:49 Good choice. I went with Little House, Columbo, Cheers, and Roseanne. Tara 45:54 Oh, yeah. Cheers. Good one. Dave 45:55 Mademoiselle Caroline has our Ask Ask EASG question this week. It is. You can travel through time to be there in person for an important TV moment. What do you choose and why? Go to our Ask Ask ESG channel and Discord, put your answer there, or you can email me directly, david at cole dot F-Y-I. We'll be back soon with judgment. Dave 46:20 It is time for the extra, extra hot great Tiny Cannon presenting this week. It is Adam Grossworth. Adam Grossworth here to submit a moment from Smash Season 2, Episode 8 to the snappy. Tara 47:25 For over a decade. And that's why I think it belongs in the snappy comeback Tiny Cannon. Thank you, Adam. Sarah, why don't you go first? Sarah 47:34 I think I will, since I have less familiarity with the smash verse, a word I should never say again. I don't know. Maybe it's because I just made this joke about someone in my neighborhood the other night or that I just watched Candyman. But I feel like this is kind of a bog standard response to someone saying a name twice, but it's like, say it again and they'll appear. Like, it just seems kind of like a knee-jerk response. Dave 48:02 I was going to ask you, too, is there something more to this that I'm missing? Do I understand the origin of this or something? Tara 48:09 Oh, about Lea Michele? Dave 48:10 No. Well, yeah. Is there a connection between her and this? Sarah 48:14 I mean, the fact that it's Lea Michele also makes it funny. It would be like if, I don't know, a Golden Girls character was like saying it in reference to... Dorothy. But like, yeah, like the particular name does make it add a little value, I guess. It's not that it's not a good bit. It's that it's maybe only good and not tiny canonical. I don't know the Smashverse. So Tara, why don't you talk on, speak on that? Tara 48:41 Yeah. I mean, the Lea Michele part is just, this was when she was on Glee. So I think she was kind of a punchline already, just as there was no separating her from her character in that show as like a grasping, try-hard type, which I think is probably what people, you know, at least then, possibly now, they might think worse of her now, actually, but just think of her as a personage in the Broadway sphere. Dave 49:07 The only thing I know about her is that rumor that was going around that she couldn't read, which I still find really funny. Tara 49:13 It's still going around and it is still so funny. But yeah, I agree with Sarah. I kind of don't know either. I get that there are some and I will not say whom's to have a personal connection to the object of this comeback. I don't even necessarily think this is the best joke in Smash, and I just randomly, like, Googled, you know, best quotes from Smash and came up with this. This is in the episode The Dramaturg, where Julia is getting advice on the Marilyn musical from a dramaturg, and he's marked it up like crazy, and she asks, was there anything that you liked? And he takes a beat and says... I think Marilyn Monroe is an interesting subject for a musical, which is a better line. It's not as snappy, but like that's a better punchline to that setup. Dave 49:59 And let's keep in mind that Adam Grosworth is Smash's number one worldwide fan. Tara 50:04 Yes. Dave 50:04 I thought there was going to be more to the joke that I didn't appreciate because I was not Smash conversant. But apparently that's not really the case out there. And I didn't think it was that funny. So sorry, Adam. Let's make this official. I'm glad this is airing later because as we tape this Adam's coming on the show soon to talk about The Muppet Show yep he's. Tara 50:26 Not gonna hear this and we never saw him again we love you Adam. Dave 50:30 Alright let's put this the official vote Sarah D. Bunting what say you. Sarah 50:35 I see where you're going with it but no Tara. Tara 50:38 Yeah no for me as well but bring us more smash stuff because I think it is a rich text alright. Dave 50:43 For sure I'm gonna say no as well so unfortunately Unfortunately, this means Derek's snarky response to Jimmy from Smash. You are hereby not inducted into the extra hot, great, tiny, snappy comeback canon. Dave 51:11 It is time for our not quite top 11 lists. Reach bringing something to the table. It has almost 11, but not quite. I'm going to offload my list to David Letterman, who we talked about at the top of the show. Here we go. One of the greatest moments. It's the very first top 10 list ever from late night. So because these things are so popular and such solid network. Tara 51:51 Will be late night's top ten words that almost rhyme with peas. Okay, number 10, we have heats. Number nine is rice. Now I lost my place. Where were we? Oh, number seven is ties. Number six is needs. Number five is lense, number, number three is kind of a surprise, nurse, number two, we're getting very close now, is leeks. Dave 52:44 Rhymes with P's, according to our poll, is meats. That was five years after the episode we were talking about earlier. Tara 52:57 Amazing. I remember the book. I read that book cover to cover like four times. Dave 53:02 Oh, my God. Tara 53:02 Got it from the public library. Dave 53:04 Yep. I don't know why. Almost rhymes with peas is such a fucking funny concept. All right. Sarah D. Bunting, top 11 list. Not quite. Sarah 53:13 Not quite 11 March National X days that TV shows should start using for holiday themed episodes instead of the holiday themes that they have been using, like Christmas and Valentine's Day. Number one on March 4th, Marching Music Day, founded by Drum Corps International in 2017, just for Tara, which only begins to make up for these villains declaring the entire month of November National Raisin Bread Month. How dare they? I am asking. Tara 53:42 Fuck you. Sarah 53:43 Seriously, get bent. number two march 5th absinthe day and multiple personality day showrunners are strongly advised to combine them so that the drinking of bootleg absinthe leads to dissociative identity disorder awareness number three march 10th mario day yes the super one number four march 11th funeral director and mortician recognition day this one's for you 9-1-1 franchise guys. Number five, March 13th, open an umbrella indoors day. Why not? Number six, March 16th, freedom of information day. Surely a boon to all the network procedural staffs. Number seven, March 23rd, near miss day and puppy day. Another one that would make a better combo than singly, but which I will allow us to celebrate by getting tattoos of Morgan from the Mindy Project covered and Puppies. Number eight, March 24th, Cocktail Day. Number nine, March 28th, Something on a Stick Day. And March 31st, Tater Day, which I am co-opting and bundling with baseball's opening day, which happens around the same time, as in, see you later, it's a tater. One said about home runs, and that's my list. Tari. Tara 54:55 Nice. Also, like Dave, I was inspired by our lead topic, and my not quite top 11 list is the not quite top 11 afflictions you can address with products advertised during the David Letterman show. Counting them down. Number 10, constipation standard. You're going to need Metamucil. Number nine, arthritis. Bizarrely, you're going to need anicin for that. Number eight, dry skin. Get yourself some Pond's cocoa butter. Number seven, liver spots or freckles, porcelana, who else? Number six, constipation that did not resolve itself with Metamucil. Go ahead and escalate that to Senecott. Number five, nicotine stains. We already talked about it. Topol, the smoker's tooth polish. Number four, food stains on your dentures, obviously denture cream. Number three, itch, lanacane. What kind of itch? That's your business. here's what's also your business number two malodorous Tara 55:55 genitals get yourself since summer is eve and finally constipation for her correct all yeah great what. Dave 56:06 Your pants are wet. That's funny. Tara 56:17 Whose pants are wet now, huh, big boy? Sarah 56:26 Mine? But enough about me. Hello, Grandpa. We're so glad you're here. We wish that you had been here for our discussion of David Letterman. 1980 morning show. We talked about advice that we've given. We gave advice on game nights. We hope TV writers would celebrate Tater Day instead of Valentine's. It was like an hour plus of show and we had a great time. It would be even greater with you along for the ride. So if you can bump up that pledge, if you can't, I too just got a heating bill and it was giant. We get it, let's enjoy today's extra credit topic together, all of us. Power ranking the cast of Law & Order Criminal Intent. Criminal Intent was sort of the redheaded something or other of the Law & Order-verse, concerned itself with the Baroque crimes investigated Baroquely by Bobby Gorin and the rest of NYPD's major case squad. It premiered 25 years ago, and it took its final about 15 years ago, so it seemed like a good time to check in with some of the top line cast and rank them. Sarah 57:34 Quick reminder of how this works. We're looking at the top 12 criminal intent actors this time as listed on IMDb. We each assign them a ranking one through 12. The first place is gets 12 points. The second placement gets 11. On down to last place with one point. I will total everyone's points at the end. The four cast members with the fewest amount of points will be killed. Just kidding. Not really. I will total everyone's points at the end. We'll see how we think the power works in the criminal intent cast list. Sarah 58:08 So here's who we're dealing with. Catherine Irby, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jamie Sheridan, Courtney B. Vance, Leslie Hendricks, Eric Bogosian, Chris Noth, Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Nicholson, Saffron Burroughs, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Annabella Sciorra. Let us begin with Catherine Irby. She appeared in the most episodes of this fine program. Tara, start us off. Tara 58:36 Okay. She is one of a bunch of ladies in the middle slash bottom of my list. She's still around. She's not really in anything I've seen lately. And sadly, she is less of a name brand actor than others that we'll be talking about shortly. So she's pulling up the rear of the lady detectives for me. I do think she's probably due. Like other than this show, she never really got her due, I feel. She's, you know, like a Mare Winningham type and deserves a Mare Winningham type of comeback, reconsideration, get her in a movie from the weapons guy. I don't know, but I have her at ninth with four points. Sarah 59:18 Okay, Dave. Dave 59:19 Here's my methodology, broadly speaking, because I watched the very first episode of this and then did not watch any more. So I'm not conversant with the show, but I'm obviously conversant with a lot of the actors here to a point. And then it drops off and I have no fucking idea. So the top half is a true power ranking. And then it sort of like dissolves into how do I know this person? Do I know this person? Then there are a few at the bottom where I'm like, nope, no idea. Okay, Catherine Irby is the very last of the people that I feel like I could rank, honestly. And the only reason is because she's the lead of the show we're talking about. So among the people that I actually can rank, she's the lowest of that strata. So like Tara, she is ninth, which is worth four points. Sarah 1:00:12 Yeah, she plays a detective, Alexandra Eames, who mostly is standing around listening patiently while D'Onofrio is D'Onofrionic sing. You know, she works about as much as you'd think for a 60 year old New York actor. I'm not sure if she does more theater stuff. Some of these people do. But, you know, her, I think she's underrated on the show in terms of holding her own on a screen with the D'Onofrionics. She has continued to pop up in the Law and Orderverse occasionally, but I don't think she had much more juice than you guys did. I had her in eighth with five points. All right, next up is the D'Onofrionic. Sir himself, Detective Robert Gorin, famed for bending in half at the waist and peering sideways into the souls of suspects. He knows a little bit about every single goddamn thing. Dave 1:01:08 I thought you were talking about that episode of Homicide he was in. Sarah 1:01:12 Oh, yeah. Dave 1:01:14 Bent at the waist. Tara 1:01:15 Looking at everybody sideways. Dave 1:01:16 Fits. Fits. Sarah 1:01:18 Yep. Different deal. Anyway, he maybe is the biggest name, but I'm not sure how that's going to affect his power rankings now in terms of what he has done since the show. He might be the highest profile person, but we'll see how it all shakes out. Tara, where'd you have D'Onofrio? Tara 1:01:37 Well, I have him in third place. Returning to the Daredevil franchise, I think it was a smart move for someone who seemed like he might be in a fallow period. We didn't stick with that show, but the revival on Disney Plus that's on now. but people like it. He was funny and scary in an Oscar buzzed movie last year. Caught Stealing was one of the better things about that. You can see that on Netflix if you haven't watched it yet. And I think he's a guy that people are, you know, happy to see and stuff. So 10 points for me, Dave. Dave 1:02:08 So I also placed him third. So far, Tara, we're exactly the same. The reason for that is the two names above him, I think, just have more power to get something done. I think Vincent D'Onofrio is sought after for a certain type of role, and I think that gets him a certain amount of juice. But without saying the two above him, I think they can get projects done or get into projects they want to be in. So third for 10 points. Sarah 1:02:37 He has been playing Vincent the Chin Gigante in Godfather of Harlem. He's had some good, juicy roles. He seems to be working as much as he wants to. I think he will always work because of his early career, but possibly because of his distinction in this role as a know-it-all weirdo who occupies space in a certain way. I think he has the career he wants, in other words, and has been decorated for it. I had him a little higher, but not number one. I had him at number two with 11 points. Next up is one of the captains, the longest tenured captain of the major crimes unit. It's Jamie Sheridan as Captain Jimmy Deakins, sometimes with an eyepatch, sometimes without. Tara, start us off. Tara 1:03:34 Okay, well, I see that he has not had a credit on IMDb since 2022. That may mean he's not working or, you know, as much as he would care to, or it may mean he's retired. I don't know his life. I did, however, had to take a second and remind myself whether he was still alive. He is, as of this recording on January 29th, touch wood, but that probably is not what you want if you're him. So I have him 10th with three points. Dave. Dave. Dave 1:04:03 Here is the first of the ones where I'm like, I don't know. So congratulations. Tied with two others for last place in my ranking. Tara 1:04:12 Oh, wow. Dave 1:04:13 One point. Tara 1:04:14 Whoa. Dave 1:04:14 Best of journeys to you, sir. Whoever you are. Sarah 1:04:20 Okay, but you can't have three people with one point. Dave 1:04:23 No, we're doing it. Sarah 1:04:24 All right. I don't care enough to fight with you about it. Thank you. I also had him in fifth place because I think he's just not working anymore. And who knows if he retired or if he did, why he has a certain fed captain look that meant that he could work pretty widely as that he was on Homeland. We also have Robert Clohessy, and I don't think we need them. I don't think we need them both. So next up is Courtney B. Vance, star of a pretty famous Law & Order Mothership episode and here playing ADA Ron Carver. He was in just as many episodes as Jamie Sheridan, 111, left the show in 2006. Tara, where do we start with Courtney B? Tara 1:05:07 Well, I will say I don't want to see slash hear him voicing a character in a live-action Disney remake, which he did in Lilo and Stitch last year, but I guess that's the world we live in, unfortunately. Being married to Angela Bassett might get him into more rooms than he would be in otherwise, but I still have him in the bottom of the top. He's number five for me with eight points. Dave. Dave 1:05:34 I don't know. I got him number two. I think he, yeah, I think he's still in demand. I think he's doing shit and I think he's, he's got some juice. Is he getting those art house film roles that D'Onofrio tends to get outside of doing comic book shit for Marvel? Maybe not, but I think he is more bankable. So that's why I gave him the edge. Tara 1:05:59 Wow. That's crazy. Okay. Dave 1:06:00 All right. Sarah 1:06:01 Yeah, I had him at fourth with nine points. I think he does have juice. I think he has done some pretty prestigy stuff. It's not necessarily stuff that I watched, but I thought he made a good Johnny Cochran in American Crime Story. Lovecraft Country he was in. He has that distinctive delivery. He has a top flight stink eye. I think that he has a good career and in this group is doing okay. So that's where I have him. Next up, oh my God, this is always the one that throws the spanner in the works. Tara 1:06:35 Yeah. Sarah 1:06:35 Sometimes with law and order rankings that you're like, who? And they were just like someone wheeling a coroner's cart through the back of a scene. But I am speaking, of course, of my former neighbor, Leslie Hendricks, M.E. Dr. Elizabeth Rogers, who had 110 episodes on the show throughout its run and, of course, elsewhere in the law and order verse. Tara, what do you think about my neighbor who jinxed the 2016 election while vaping? Tara 1:07:04 I did not care for that. I, you know, you sort of set the table for me. She has not had a credit on IMDb since 2020, other than the Law and Order franchise, where she has played this character in multiple different titles. I think I've only seen her in one other thing, which is the Netflix one season show, Living With Yourself with two Pauls Rudd. She would be at the absolute bottom of the pack for me, if not for someone else who ruined his own career and life by being a pig. Sarah 1:07:31 Spoiler. They have spoiled my list as well. Tara 1:07:36 I had a feeling. So I have her 11th with two points. Dave. I think I know. Dave 1:07:43 Coming in at last place is Leslie Hendricks. No idea who she is. I think she and Jamie can go get a cup of coffee. One more to join at that table later on. So one point, bottom of the list. Sarah 1:07:59 Next up is Eric Bogosian, Captain Danny Ross. He was the captain after the mysterious Jamie Sheridan. He had 61 episodes on the show and I think is not known for this. Like sometimes I forget that he was on it. And when he got cast, I was like, Bagoche, wild choice. But it worked for me. I think he was my favorite of the captains. Tara, where have you got him on your list? Tara 1:08:23 I have him fourth with nine points. I think it's very cool for him to be part of the interview with the vampire universe. It's too bad. He does not get to do any of the fucking, just the sucking. Also cool to have been Succession's Bernie Sanders analog, as well as being Uncut Gems. He's, you know, made himself a nice niche. And for someone with such an angry young man career narrative, he is remarkably unproblematic. So nine points, fourth place for Eric Bogosian. Dave 1:08:56 I put him at fourth. Like, he's not starring in anything. He's not leading anything, really. But he's in a lot of stuff. And he's just like one of those character actors that always elevates, not elevates, always lends a certain tone to a project that needs it. Like, he was in Interview with a Vampire. And just sort of that, like, deadpan, 80s-style, don't-give-a-fuck kind of attitude really lends itself well to a matched project. So I think he is sought after not getting the big roles, but I think he is consistently working, which is, you know, power in Hollywood. And at this point, I'd like to say, you know, I'm bad with names. What name do you think I confused Courtney B. Vance with and why I placed him second? Tara 1:09:43 Oh, no. Sarah 1:09:45 Sophie B. Hawkins? Dave 1:09:47 No. Tara 1:09:48 Alice B. Toklas? Dave 1:09:49 I don't know. I thought Cerling K. Brown. Tara 1:09:52 Oh, no. No, someone else from American Crime Story. Sarah 1:09:56 Yeah. Dave 1:09:57 So the name initial name thing. I unfortunately didn't go by photos and I just, oh yeah, I know that. Tara 1:10:02 Well, you're locked in now. Dave 1:10:03 I'm locked in now. Tara 1:10:04 Good call. I was really, that's why I was so surprised. Dave 1:10:07 You're welcome. Thank you, name blindness. Sarah 1:10:12 Wow. By Boghossian ranking, I had him actually slightly lower than you guys. I'm a little surprised, but only a little. Fifth place, eight points. Interview with the Vampire, Billions and Succession. He's still writing. He's got like, he had a reading that he did last month. He's like still doing his thing and has managed to like bend the culture to his things will in a way that I think is by design. So I admire that. And I am always happy to see him. He's very distinctive and and a good egg. I hope doesn't doesn't seem to be problematic. Like you said, unlike Chris Noth, who reprised the role of Detective Mike Logan for 36 episodes on Law and Order Criminal Intent. I don't think this will take long. Tara, where do you just as a formality? Where do you have Mr. Noth? Tara 1:11:07 Well, he's exactly where you think he's in last place with one point he had to spend a several day news cycle explaining a bitchy instagram comment he made about sarah jessica parker as we're recording this like a couple of weeks ago this is january 29th he's in showbiz jail and i guess that's all i'll say about him in jail he does have upcoming projects but i think they're just probably made by weird cranks and we'll go straight to video on demand and we will never know about them wow dave good. Dave 1:11:34 I knew there was something up with him that he was sort of persona non grata now he is a bit above some other people's name recognition obviously because law and order is a big deal here so i'm putting him eighth five points. Tara 1:11:47 Whoa okay what. Dave 1:11:49 Do you mean whoa um. Tara 1:11:50 Nothing getting. Sarah 1:11:51 Love well it's a bad feedback he apparently has none but okay at least i remembered so you don't know how numbers. Tara 1:11:58 Work. Sarah 1:12:00 Why do we fucking bother having a system? Tara 1:12:02 Where'd you have a prank? Sarah 1:12:03 Plaid. Fuck you. Tara 1:12:05 Tearing us apart. Sarah 1:12:07 Okay. But seriously, folks. Yeah, he really has been in showbiz jail. It does look like people are starting to forget. He has a bunch of upcoming stuff listed on the IMDb. If he hadn't been a grabby, boozy problem, apparently for decades. And like him staggering home from one of the clubs he owned in the village was like known by the 90s. He had the juice and he could have kept these things going, but he got fired from everything. It does look like that worm is turning, but not for me. So dead last one point. Tara 1:12:41 Yeah. Sarah 1:12:42 And then we have perhaps a controversial casting. Detective Zach Nichols, played by Jeff Goldblum, of all things, and he played jazz piano during episodes. I enjoyed this performance. I thought it was kind of sexy and weird, but that's what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about the power rankings. Tara, where did you put Jeff Goldblum? Tara 1:13:04 Well, considering he was Oz in a huge franchise that had a promo budget bigger than some countries GDPs this is of course in Wicked he returned to his other franchise Jurassic now World a couple of years ago he's very charming on talk shows he's like a true original in the Christopher Walken mold with you know triple threat talents so forth can it last who knows what the future might bring I'm just saying I hear things and I've been waiting a long time It's time for them to be more widely heard, but that's not happening. So therefore, I have him in first place with 12 points. Dave. Dave 1:13:43 A man who's looked at the career of Chris Noth and said, I got to get people on this. Tara 1:13:48 Yeah. I got to get ahead of some shit and start writing some checks, I guess. Dave 1:13:53 Yeah. National Geographic's knocking, yeah, I better do that. Better just do it now. Tara 1:13:58 Yeah. Dave 1:13:58 Yeah. Jeff Goldblum, I think he's number one. I think he's probably the most powerful person on this list. you know, now, maybe in the future, who knows what the future will bring. It's not for me to say. Tara 1:14:09 Nope. Dave 1:14:09 I used to collect Zach Nichols when I was a kid, you know, put him in the cardboard box. Can I get a Zach Nichol from every state? I got 47 of them. They're still missing three. So if you know, if you got some spare Zach Nichols, I'm looking for Delaware and the Dakotas. Sarah. Sarah 1:14:26 I only had him in third 10 points i had heard some things also i don't know if we'll ever really hear hear them in a we don't get sued way so let's just say he eats hamsters, satire yeah and you don't know where those hamsters have been or do you, I think he's maybe not the most discriminating at doing these picks. Like, why are you still doing realtor commercials? But okay, like he has his choice and that's the definition of power in this context. So good for him. All right. Julianne Nicholson, who played Detective Megan Wheeler for 24 episodes in the latter half of the show. I feel like she was on it for a lot longer than that. and I didn't think she would have the career that she had after it. But Tara, what do you think? Julianne Nicholson. Tara 1:15:20 She's everywhere. She's in wonderful, well-regarded indies like Janet Planet. And then last year in Hacks and Paradise, she had two of the most wildly opposite TV performances of the year and got Emmy nominations for both of them. She won for Hacks for playing Dance Mom. We'd love to see a former sassy model thriving and also a later in life recognition of a woman's town. She's sort of in her Laura Dern Renaissance era right now. So I have her in second place with 11 points. Dave. Sarah 1:15:52 Nice. Dave 1:15:53 So good news. She will not be joining the former two at Starbucks drinking coffee as I originally had because I don't know who she is and I will refuse to find out. But I like the way she chops vegetables. So I'm giving her three points for 10th place. Tara 1:16:08 Okay. Okay. Sarah 1:16:10 Julianne ah i see this is baffling just don't really know why i bother sometimes but uh okay i had her at number one wow because i think she really leveled up after criminal intent and i wanted to respect this sort of like not just the power like she is everywhere like you said she was in paradise she was in mayor of east town winning time the weird owl movie i was the only one who watched red road but i did watch it and she was extremely good in it and i wanted to acknowledge sort of the slope rating like that how much higher her springboard sprang compared to other people after the show because i liked the character fine but i also thought she was kind of me and i didn't expect her to be the kind of acting force that she was on say like when she. Sarah 1:17:04 Showed up on Boardwalk Empire. I was like, really? Her? She was excellent as a real person who was kind of a crazy story of her own. So that's why I had her there. I feel like we're still going to be muddling around in one point land as far as Dave is concerned, because next up is Saffron Burroughs, who played Detective Serena Stevens. Wait, she did? Yes, she did. Tara, speak about it. Tara 1:17:28 Yeah, she is having a career completely outside of my notice, it seems. I don't think I've laid eyes on her since her season of You and then she came back for a second in like a social media post in the final season. But she is still very beautiful in English. So she could show up in a Kenneth Branagh Poirot movie or something of that sort. And it wouldn't shock me. I have her in seventh place with six points, but I will be honest in terms of the one point land, all three of the last people we're going to be talking about are all sort of samey for me. So this was a game of inches. Dave. Dave 1:18:07 How dare you say that about one of the stars of Deep Blue Sea. Tara 1:18:11 Tara? I know. I know. Dave 1:18:13 That's why I know her. I know she's been in other stuff. I'm like, oh, yeah, she's from Deep Blue Sea with the Smart Sharks. Tara 1:18:18 Yep. Dave 1:18:19 Smart Sharks are coming to get you. I had really a toss up between her and two other actresses here where they were very close. So I went by who was I able to identify the quickest and then how is their career sort of going or not? Like have they done stuff since that moment? So Deep Blue Sea was a while ago. Tara 1:18:43 Yeah. Dave 1:18:43 Not as long ago as some of the other ones. So I'm actually getting ready to be outraged, putting her at five. Tara 1:18:49 Whoa. Dave 1:18:49 For eight points. Tara 1:18:50 Okay. Sarah 1:18:51 Wow. Dave 1:18:52 Yep. Sarah 1:18:53 Holy shit. Dave 1:18:54 That's why they call me the monkey branch. Sarah 1:18:55 I had her in ninth, four points. I liked her pretty well in this role. I was the only one who did. I thought she was brilliant in you. She was in Mozart in the Jungle, which apparently went on for a while. Amazing. Tara 1:19:10 Yeah. Sarah 1:19:10 And she's always going to work in international thriller limited series as like a section chief with a secret. Like she'll be fine. So yeah, four points for her. Yeah. Okay. So here we go. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who played the final captain, Zoe Callis, in 2010. I mean, this is not going to make any of the opening paragraphs of her obit, although I hope that's a long time away. But yeah, as far as her power, Tara, talk about it. Tara 1:19:44 Yeah, she's one of the many people on this list who did Blue Bloods. We could be probably doing more for her but she's in dick wolf's rolodex judging by her three episodes of law and order organized crime last year and that's not nothing he's got a lot of shows but she is getting into the probably upper echelon of like dill considered a bankable woman versus just an old lady you can write off as like yeah basically june squib even though they're probably like 30 years apart So I have her in eighth place with five points. Dave. Dave 1:20:22 She was originally higher when she was Obi-Wan Kenobi's wife and not who she actually is. Tara 1:20:28 Nope. That's Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Dave 1:20:30 I tell you, I'm bad with names. Tara 1:20:31 Yeah. Dave 1:20:31 So she dropped down to sixth place for seven points. It's been a long time since the abyss, which is immediately where my mind goes. And if nowadays she's doing blue bloods and the like, you know. Tara 1:20:42 Yeah. Dave 1:20:43 Number six. Sarah 1:20:45 Yeah, I also had her in six, seven points. You know, I think she is working to the extent that she can. It really is sort of weird that she in recent years has been in stuff like Blindspot and Law and Order Organized Crime. But I think she does have a Dick Wolf, late middle-aged lady lane now that's like she's a vice president or an attorney or someone's mom who used to work in who used to be on the job or whatever. Dave 1:21:15 She leads an NGO. Tara 1:21:17 Yeah. She should be getting Joan Allen cast offs. Like she's that's her level. Sarah 1:21:22 I think. Yeah. And the final person on our list, it was like a really a judgment call as to who got which slot here in the middle. So let's wrap things up with Annabella Sciorra, who played Detective Carolyn Barak. She has come back in that same role. She's now a captain in like the Bronx or Queens elsewhere in the Law and Orderverse. And, you know, we we know her for other things. Some good, some not. The bad ones are not her fault either. Tara, start us off with the last lady on the list. Where does she rank? Tara 1:21:53 I shall. Well, she's one of the many people on this list. Many of the, I'll say the many women and Courtney B. Vance, who's like a steadily working character actor who probably deserves better that they're not getting. She certainly deserves better than Tulsa King, which I bet was not especially well paid because it's a streaming show versus a network show. But I think she still has a lot of goodwill and cred from things like Jungle Fever and The Sopranos. So let's get her in a Sundance movie that shows off how good she still is. I thought she was very well cast in her small but good recurring role in Glow, for example. But I have her in sixth place, seven points. Dave. Dave 1:22:35 Did I see her boobs in The Sopranos? Tara 1:22:38 Probably. Dave 1:22:39 Was she one of Tony's bewildering paramours? Tara 1:22:42 She was. She was the car saleswoman. Sarah 1:22:44 The most bewildering. Dave 1:22:46 All right. Well, I think this is the same as Sarah's. I put her seventh with six points. Her burrows and Obi-Wan Kenobi's not-wife were very blurry borders between all of those. Tara 1:23:00 For me as well. Dave 1:23:01 Yeah. Tara 1:23:01 Yeah. Dave 1:23:01 Sarah? Sarah 1:23:02 Yeah, that's where I had her. Hollywood really owes her after Harvey. It owes a lot of people after Harvey. She has worked steadily. I have a feeling that she's doing exactly as much as she wants, but... I wouldn't say she necessarily has pull. I'm not sure she wants pull. I don't know where to, but I just didn't know where to put her as a result. So I put her one behind. Master Antonio. All right. So let's begin at the bottom so we can end on a high note. Sadly, my vaping neighbor, Leslie Hendricks, is in dead last with only five points. chris chris knoth to my disappointment is tied with jamie sheridan at the second to last second to lowest slot seven points and then oh it's really too bad because i feel like she put up with a lot on that set probably and based on a what a realtor birdie told me when she was looking for an apartment after divorcing terry kinney she put up with a lot from that guys well any who we probably deserve to give her more than 13 points, but we didn't. Next step up is... Dave 1:24:12 Did you actually say who it was? Tara 1:24:14 Yeah, Catherine Irby. Dave 1:24:15 Oh, okay. Sorry. Tara 1:24:15 Sorry. Dave 1:24:16 I didn't hear it. Sarah 1:24:16 Yes, I didn't. Saffron Burroughs is the next step up with 18 points. And then we have a tie at 19 between Obi-Kanobi's not wife, Mary Elizabeth Mastretonio and Annabella Sciorra. And then here right below the podium is another tie, 26 points, Eric Bogosian and Julia Nicholson. And now our medalists, Courtney B. Vance, Sophie B. Hawkins, and Sterling K. Brown, all carrying a bronze medal with 28 points. Denofri Onyx, only good for a silver medal, 31 points. And the champion of criminal intent Hollywood, Jeff Goldblum with 34 points. Tara 1:24:58 That feels right. Dave 1:24:59 Yeah. Sarah 1:25:00 Fascinating. Dave 1:25:01 Just for the record, if I didn't fuck up who that was, I think I would have put him fifth. Tara 1:25:06 That's where I had him. Dave 1:25:08 Yeah. Tara 1:25:08 We were mostly aligned. Dave 1:25:09 Okay. Tara 1:25:09 Mm-hmm. Dave 1:25:12 All right, guys, that is it for another episode of Extra, Extra Hot Great. We started our day with a look at The David Letterman Show before answering your burning Ask EHG questions like, what TV reunion would we like to see? And what game show should be a BritBox mystery? Adam could not smash his way into a tiny snappy comeback canon when we knocked out three not quite top 11 lists and wrap it all up with the power ranking of the cast of law and order criminal intent next up it's something all right you betcha we're listening i am david t cole and on behalf of tara ariano i. Tara 1:25:56 Don't care how dirty it is as long as the food's good. Dave 1:25:59 And sarah debunting there. Sarah 1:26:01 Is no step two. Dave 1:26:02 Thanks for listening we'll see you next time right here on Extra, Extra. Talk great. Tara 1:26:20 Mosquitoes ridiculous yeah that's ruth buzzy. Dave 1:26:26 That's ruth buzzy yeah good for her this.