July 21-27, 1990

This week Ken welcomes film producer and host of the Hollywood Gold podcast, Daniela Taplin Lundberg.

Ken and Daniela discuss growing up in show business with an actress mother and producer father, producing Mean Streets, La Bamba, hating Coach, Murphy Brown, Action Jackson, the teen TV stars of the 80s and 90s, Hollywood poor, going to events for the food, Doogie Howser PI, the movie guide in the back of TV Guide, Premiere Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Tom Hanks, Bosom Buddies, telling stories you think make you look good that don't actually make you look good, Different World, Wonder Years, Square Pegs, Northern Exposure, Beauty and the Beast, The Facts of Life, backdoor pilots, Ken's trivia weak points, TV Horror Hosts, NBC Pictures, target audiences, SNL's best cast, Life Goes On, Our House, Newhart, The Elliot comedy legacy (Bob, Chris, Abbey, Bridey), loving thirtysomething and Sisters, Battle of the Network Stars, Who's the Boss, Living Dolls, Mona, Charmed, Head of the Class, Hollywood it couples, Brad Pit, not connecting with Neil Patrick Harris, Silver Spoons, Jason Bateman, Ricky Schroeder being mean to you, Cosby, Grand, mid-season replacements, loving Bonnie Hunt, disliking Full House, being social on Friday Nights, Miami Vice, the beauty of Crime Story, before they were stars, the greatness of not binging shows, and My So-Called Life. 

December 8-14, 1979

This week Ken welcomes former Farside singer/guitarist, voice actor, and all around good dude Popeye Vogelsang to the show.

Ken and Popeye discuss disrespecting the Fonz, leaving a legacy, where Potsy and Ralph Malph ended up, knocking out Paulie Shore, nicknames, ADR, voicing for video games, smoking, putting allen wrenches in cigarette filters, low tar, lower tar, even lower tar, growing up in Orange County, 80s SoCal punk rock, Watt, being innocent, Dick Cavett, SCTV, the greatness of Dave Thomas, Christmas with Cigarettes, how all women love Robert Redford, The Jane Fonda Workout, piledriving, non-sequitur movie ads, "coming this Christmas", Norman Fell, putting two names in alphabetical order incorrectly, Hanna Barbera characters singing We Are Family, Farrah Fawcett and Jeff Bridges in the beloved Christmas classic "Somebody Killed Her Husband", candlepin bowling, The Return of the Pink Panther, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, being confused by Heart playing with Smokey Robinson and Olivia Newton John, A Charlie Brown Christmas, 8-Tracks, menthol, getting interviewed by Ali G, Surgeon General C. Everett Coop, Happy Days, The Wild Wild World of Animals, Fight or Flight, Lorenzo Lamas, Chuck Berry's weirdness, Real People vs That's Incredible, whistling through your navel, washing coins, Donahue after dark, Doug Henning, how you can't top Martin Short, boxing head injuries, Laverne and Shirley, the god like powers of Michael McKeon, Lenny and the Squigtones, Dom DeLuise, renting VHS tapes to Donny Osmond, Rockford Files, Jaws 2, Summer Without Boys, 30 Minutes: the kids version of 60 minutes, the Christmas miracle of Adam Rich, subversion on television, how massive Hart to Hart was in the UK, being a Presto household, never having to do laundry thanks to promotional t-shirts, and the value of just screwing around. 

This week Ken welcomes the fantastic author (The Keeper, The Reformatory, The Wishing Pool), Screenwriter (The Twilight Zone), educator and producer Tananarive Due to the show.

Ken and Tananarive discuss how they are doing these days, how allegory serves marginalized people, genre pieces, growing up in Florida, reading your first Stephen King novel at 16 (The Shining), Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, the golden age of sitcoms, Columbo, Emergency!, recognizing an indigenous person on TV, when Emergency 1 was replaced by CHiPs, when a show that isn't a show for kids becomes a kid's show, Randolph Mantooth, writing fan fiction, out of control foley on Dragnet, hyper real fire fighting, loving it when the lead character gets injured, using your journalism credentials to interview Randolph Mantooth, no answering fan mail, Satanists, Starksy and Hutch, learning story structure, sad sitcoms, playing TV themes on keyboards, Good Times, being raised by civil rights activists, ripped from the headlines plots, representation on TV, how 1970s TV may have been more progressive than today's TV, Made for-TV Movies, Roots, Holocaust, V, pitching a fascist takeover of the united states, Donald Mantooth, The Seekers, Kliph Nesteroff's books, The Night Stalker, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, how human evil is the scariest, not understanding the motivation of hate, Jordan Peele, laughting through the end of the world, Get Out!, the comedy and horror connection, how hard it is to break into show running, the difficulty of getting ANYTHING on television, Horror Noir, how to pitch, Fugue State, Tony Todd (RIP), the greatness and intent behind Stephen King's work, Japanese Animated Horror, Pokerface, Elsbeth, needing to watch stand up to unwind and Ken's Candyman/Good Times mashup.

April 11 -16 , 2004

This week Ken welcomes Bridge 9 Records and Sully Brands impresario Chris Wrenn to the show.

Ken and Chris discuss their shared Boston punk rock history, the 2004 Red Sox World Series victory, regional variations, Ken's complete lack of sports knowledge, very specific niches, T-shirts that are hard to explain, building a community space, the sports punk rock overlap in Boston, vending outside of Fenway park, how weirdly horny 2004 was, JJ Jackson's death, being stuck in traffic outside a game, John Sayles, indecency on television, the Janet Jackson Justin Timberlake Superbowl incident, the Red Sox vs Yankees rivalry, the long history of novelty sporting sayings in New England, Stephen King's book about the 2004 Red Sox season, Fever Pitch, The Celtics, Mel Gibson, Quantum Leap, Outlander, the TV on DVD phenomenon, offensive cigarette discount stores, Ms Pac Man, Running your own dorm room video store, Gilmore Girls, working at Tower Records, making art projects, Yao Ming, when terrible things make money, The Town, DIY ethos, when TV Guide switched formats, and Romeo Must Die. 

May 2-8, 1981

This week Ken welcomes the amazingly talented artist, painter, and kindred spirit Eric White to the show.

Ken and Eric discuss mutual friend Moon Zappa, BYOTVG, Eric's last solo show in NYC, worshiping garbage, saving things meant to be thrown away, Made for TV movies, Someone I Touched, Real People, That's Incredible!, Jefferson's flashbacks, prog rock, a mythical 1970s, TV things that terrified us as children, 1973, Chaka, The Kroft Bros, SCTV, magazine design, SNL, making deals with your parents to watch TV, Jim Henson, the mystery of Central time, Solid Gold, not having a subscription to TV Guide, CHiPs, Ripley's Believe it or Not, Jacque Cousteau, nature shows, streaming, the bizarre first year of SNL, Mr. Bill, WFMU's Best Show, things that only aired once, Archie Bunker in the electric chair, Sharpling and Wurster, the infamous episode of Too Close for Comfort, the infamous episode of Little House, Dick Cavet, Iggy Pop and Bowie on Dinah Shore, the trauma of the final episode of M*A*S*H, Charles Nelson Riley, Lady Elaine Fairchild, not knowing who bought your paintings, Star Trek, Happy Days, Night Gallery, the paintings from Night Gallery, the complicated TV watching politics involved in navigating divorced parents, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Sha Na Na, the creepy real life end of Bob Crane, how sad The Architects of Fear episode of The Outer Limits is, the opening credits to Mystery, Edward Gorey, Mork and Mindy, Waltons, renting a VCR, Blade Runner, being obsessed with miniatures, Barney Miller, Sneak Previews, and the glory days of PBS. 

FALL PREVIEW ALERT

FALL PREVIEW September 13-19, 1997

This week Ken welcomes certified TV Genius, Saint behind the Strategic Sitcom Reserve, the man behind the Sitcom People Twitter and co-host of the Random Access Television Podcast, Zach Wilson. 

Ken and Zach discuss Plex, the Jackie Thomas Show, the mystery of how Zach found TVGC, how sometimes things just make sense, Zach's early love of comedy and sitcoms, capsule reviews, jumping from show to show, the "no more than 10 episodes" rule, Suddenly Susan, NBC's late 90s Monday Night Lineup, The Naked Truth, Ken's love of Tea Leoni, the bizarre second season opening of Working, George and Leo, Sleepwalker, 90s Marvel Comics, Kurt Fuller, The Good Wife, The Good Fight, the end of Saturday Night action shows, The Profiler, The Pretender, chasing that Law & Order Money, Total Security, Ed O'Neal, all the James Browns, the weird horniness of 90s Rolling Stone, The Mystery Science Theater Hour, Ally McBeal the half hour sitcom, not getting Ken started on Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr, the tv to movies transition, Eugene Levy, people overlooking people being awful people if they like their show, the trend of sitcoms about people trying to make it in Hollywood, when everyone wanted to be the Gen X Dick Van Dyke show, when drama drags down sitcoms, Tony Danza, Taxi, John Larroquette Show, The Walking Dead, Between Brothers, US remakes of UK shows, Coupling, when a Scott Baio show was so bad it was canceled before it even aired, having never watched the US Office, Meego, Step by Step, Gregory Hines, the late days of TGIF, You Wish, Larry King falling asleep on the air, Crimes of Passion: One Hot Summer Night, real made for TV movies or fake made for TV Movies, Dean Cain, confusing Gary Busey and Nick Nolte, Jack Elam, The Emmys, True Lies, hitting the bottle, bringing your own TV Guide, Michael Palin's travel specials, how Al and Wilson are great sitcom characters that redeem Home Improvement, how Zach doesn't love 80s punk, Wings, how Bonnie Hunt never clicked with Zach, SCTV, Clifford, Space Ghost Coast to Coast and how it changed the world, only playing characters that have the same name as you do, The Pits, the weird decline of multi cam sitcoms, the laziness of cutaways, Superior Donuts, and Zach's fantastic podcast Random Access Television. 

August 15-21, 1987

In a shocking move, this week Ken welcomes a guest BACK to Reid Manor for a LIVE recording not via satellite, it's old friend, author, bass player of Pete Holmes' favorite Boston punk band and fellow punk rock kid, Tripp Underwood.

Ken and Tripp discuss what it means to be "from Boston", suburban posers, being only the second person to record an episode at the house since COVID hit, Building 19, Tripp's "Have a Cheap Day" book, local discount stores, the RI Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, Ann & Hope, duckpin bowling, algorithms, having a computer guy in your corner, COVID pandemic driven nostalgia, newspaper ads, parodies, 80 year old nana's, artists, Mad Magazine, the original Building 19 flier artist, being yelled at on Facebook by old men, the importance of going through the Sunday Boston Globe as a kid, when Ken gave everyone in the audience a wrapped copy of Kate & Allie Season 1 on DVD at a show, buying a gross of items, TV Preachers, Isaac Asimov reviewing ALF, being on tour in a band, TV merch, discarded merchandise from canceled shows, the marketing, Ken's sick burn against Social Distortion fans, 227, Hunter, Spencer for Hire, Barry Crimmins, Elvis' set list creation, The New Adventures of Beans Baxter, Mr. President, Married...with Children, FOX Weekend Television, Duet, Open House, pogs, friendships fueled by references, the Valerie saga, Newhart, Get a Life, Rockford Files, when TV dads are creeps, Growing Pains, anti-heroes, One Crazy Summer, Christie Elise, MacGyver, Cosby, Cheers, being a "Diane and Woody", cast replacements, trying to guess which Boston area towns, within Rt 128 that various Cheers characters come from/live in, how short TV shows without commercials are now, Family Ties, Garfield, Garfield's 9 Lives, Mr. Belvedere, Barney Miller, progressive 70s shows, Danny Arnold, and the strange Boston protective positive insulting intolerance. 

AND buy Tripp's Building 19 Book, "Have a Cheap Day" here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/145948273839?

2024 Halloween Special!

October 17-23, 1998

Happy Halloween! This week Ken welcomes Allison Pregler BACK to the show, and Phelan Porteous to the show for the first time.

Ken, Allison and Phelan discuss Allison's return to the show, the illusion of time, Ken's household's love of Phelan and Allison's videos, The Baywatch Hulu documentary, E! True Hollywood Stories, The Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors without the Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors, Nova Scotia, Canadian TV Guide, Canada's love of staples, what US channels they get in Canada, SNL's black face shame, re-watching all of SNL from the start, the lost years of SNL, Billy Crystal, Fear on SNL with Donald Pleasence, why Hersheys thinks change is bad, lazy "homemade" recipes, is Blue Velvet a horror movie?, ex's names tattooed on you, Dracula Knives, a very special Baywatch, TV's depiction of autism, dolphins, animal husbandry, Santa themed wrestlers, Zanta, Halloween Wars, challenge cooking, the disappointing nature of KISS, the shock at Gene Simmons not being on Baywatch ever, Jeremy Piven's balls, Balls Mahoney, people named Bumper, Getting Personal, Jon Cryer's sitcom trenches, the world's greatest Tim Burton interview, Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place, Spooky Specials, Alien Voices, when Fred Savage was Groucho Marx once, best ever costumes, homemade little mermaid costumes, MTV, Much Music, naked babies on TV, My Little Pony rip offs, Adonis' and his tiny Jeep, Walmart Associates, Wind on the Water, The Working Girl sitcom, The Net Sitcom, Xena, the evil Xena, when Ken told Jerry Bruckheimer he didn't like his movie, WWF Wrestling, Kate Mulgrew surprising AOC, 7 Days, Quantum Leap, Beetlejuice, Otherworld, Sliders, House II, Charmed, Werewolves, Buffy, whodoneits, Robin Hood Men in Tights, Michael Jackson's strange questions, John Landis, Sabrina, Ken's crying at the death of Flealig in Babe II, and the strangeness of Red Green. 

June 23-29th, 2008

This week Ken welcomes the very funny comedian behind the new album ,"Country Queer," and the podcast, "Y'all Gay," Ali Clayton.

Ken and Ali discuss growing up with exotic pets, unique regional accents in cartoons, Bugs Bunny's Brooklyn twang, the North Carolina drawl of "The Andy Griffith Show," Andy Griffith's surprising acting range, "A Face in the Crowd,"  Dr. Oz's bizarre Senate campaign, the age-old debate between New York and Chicago pizza, Denise Richards' unexpected shift from the silver screen to reality TV and OnlyFans, experiences with eccentric pets ,bizarre reality TV shows, the absurd premise of "Paralyzed and Pregnant", "20/20," and pet grooming competitions.

February 15-21, 1992

This week Ken welcomes the NY based writer, comedian and actor Laura Merli to the show.

Ken and Laura discuss being a rare person who didn't grow up in Boston or go to school in Boston yet lived in Boston, taking the first job you get offered, growing up in New Jersey, commuting to NYC, panes of glass falling from the Hancock Tower, growing up with the TV Guide channel instead of the physical TV Guide, Jury Duty, the underappreciated chemistry and skill of Regis and Kathy Lee, The Crash Test Dummies, the best chemistry on TV, Chicken Soup, Jackie Mason, how TV Guide thinks most stand up sucks, diversity in comedy, Def Jam, how the major female comedians in 1992 were mostly the same ones in 2022, Paula Poundstone, Communism, shirtless Jacksons, Julia Sweeney as Pat, when sketches don't hold up, lazy comedy, SCTV, how sometimes on a very rare occasion garbage you buy in a TV Guide does actually go up in value, buying everlasting love, Golden Girls, The Winter Olympics, when Hockey is billed last, peaking at 19, Mary Lou Retton, America's Funniest People, never agreeing that the winning video on American's Funniest Home Videos should have won, the serious episodes of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, how you are either Rope or Summer Rental, The Astronomers, inspired by true stories made for TV Movies, convicting Charles Manson, The Women's Super G, Muppets Night at the Museum, Roseanne, Robin Williams as Mork from Ork, Jason Priestly as Teen Priest, Baptism by Lips, Drexel's Class, Digital Underground, The Boy Who Could Fly, handing out condoms at shopping malls, country music variety shows, The Civil War, complaining about PBS, the KGB's view of the Cuban Missile Crisis, University by Television and hating to see good looking people on TV.

November 2-8, 1996

This week Ken welcomes Denver Comedian Geoff Tice to the show.

Ken and Geoff discuss how Denver become a comedy hub reminiscent of Boston's golden era,being both a comic and graphic designer, Colorado's vibrant comedy scenne, Comedy Works,expert insights on the evolution of comedy flyers and the quirky charm of '90s TV Guide advertisements, legendarily bad TV shows like "It's About Time" . underrated gems like "Spin City.", the unique charm of Australian TV and shows like "Beyond 2000". John Cleese's timeless classic "Fawlty Towers," . the controversial airing of an officer-involved shooting on "Cops" . election night of Bill Clinton's second term, sports highlights, peculiar TV movies, the impact of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 on today's media landscape. and "Cheers and Jeers"