Transcript of AE 1407 - Goss - What TV Shows Were We Obsessed With As Kids?

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally Down Under here in Australia or non locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English, so it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at Aussie English, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time.

Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

We should do what you've been watching recently. I've had a few things that have been rippers.

Oh, really?

Yeah. That you've been shitting on.

And I'm not shitting on. That's my usual. You know, if if I, if I last three episodes, I'm usually okay. But if something can't grab my attention in the first three episodes, I give it up and go, why should I put the effort in?

It's interesting. I guess it's such a subjective thing...

Of course it is.

Why it gets some, some people's attention and not others. But the thing that I find funny is quite often you have that attitude towards things that otherwise objectively seem to score really high.

Yeah.

So like we, I guess we should probably introduce the issue. A knight, A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms is like the latest instalment of Game of Thrones, and I guess.

It's the 100 year prequel.

Yeah yeah yeah, yeah, well, it's really good. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was amazing. I've actually liked it more than the, is it House of The Dragon?

Oh, House of the Dragon was tedious.

It's just- House of the Dragon for me. I like it insofar as it has all this really cool action and the sort of.

But that's all it has.

Yeah, but the characters..

Actions with no consequence.

Well, no, there's consequence, but the act, all of the characters are so... I guess the criticism of, of Game of Thrones quite often is that everyone's grey. There's no, there's no good, there's no bad. Everyone's somewhere in the middle. And anytime someone truly white, good, comes up, they die.

Yes.

That's, like constantly done, right?

You knew the bad guys were always going to win that. Until the good guy turned bad and killed all the bad guys.

Yeah.

And that's exactly what happened.

Yeah. And the same. So like, that's the biggest issue with, with yeah, with House of the Dragons, it's that they're all kind of unlikeable.

It was just, yeah I found it like it was just a last person standing.

Yeah. I mean, and I will watch it and I do somewhat enjoy it, but I, I've watched a few sort of critics talking about it recently and comparing it to A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms and saying, it's so good that they've just returned to this type of story that is smaller on scale. It's fewer episodes. It's much more contained in terms of like, it's this good hearted, dumb knight who's trying to do the right thing.

And it's only only four characters.

Yeah, well, there's a handful of...

Peripheral stuff but.

And he's just going to a tournament and trying to win that tournament. And it's kind of win everything or lose everything. If he loses, he loses everything he's got. And if he wins, he effectively makes it. You know, in terms of going forward as a knight for the rest of his life. And it's just a nice little container...

I agree, the premise I think is really good, which is why I started watching it, and I haven't written it off, but I've got three episodes in and just went, that's actually, well, it's two episodes worth. The first episode in any TV series.

Is always just the intro.

The pilot is always just the intro. It's setting the premise, introducing the plot line, and introducing the characters, or at least the key characters. But the second episode was utterly pointless.

I can't even remember the specifics, but...

Exactly. And then the third episode was they could have done in five minutes.

I think, so. Wasn't the, was the second one where they were introducing all of the main players? Right. Or was it mainly all those different...

All the different knights...

The different houses..

All the different knights..

Different knights.

Yeah.

And interacting...

But again they didn't. But they didn't do much with them. You sort of. Oh that's the name and that's the face. And then there was very little background. There was no reason why this person was going to be important.

My, my thing that I mentioned to you was more and this is the side of it that I think you don't like anyway. It's more about sharing that world on a smaller scale. So instead of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, where you're there's all these big characters and all these big areas in different places, and you keep zooming back and forth, back and forth and seeing just, just the key moments of like, oh shit, this happened. And then boom, we're back down here and now this big thing happened. This is more like all the everyday drudgery. It's just a little slower. Well, it's it's in the one place and you're following the main characters kind of the majority of the time.

And I quite like that idea. But it was one of those things where once you've got that idea, you can actually make things happen, but they haven't. I will, I will.

Watch the rest of it.

But but again, it's one of those ones where it didn't, it didn't offend me enough to throw the phone across the room. but it was one of the ones where I wasn't driven to because I'm a binge watcher of TV binge watcher. If I get hooked, I'll just keep going. And, you know, and that's weird for, well, maybe it's the natural reaction to somebody who grew up with particularly stories, long term sagas on TV and TV shows where it was once a week.

Yeah.

And, you know, Thursday night at 7:00, you'll get the next episode or whatever. And you go, I'm gonna wait another week until I get the next hour of this thing. So, when you get hooked, you're binge watching your thing, but I haven't. I can't binge watch this. Because I can't. I get to the end and go. And again, there's no cliff-hangers. There's no reason to immediately go, oh, show me, show me Episode 4!

The next few episodes, because there are for those, those most interesting ones, and they've scored like 9.7 or 9.9. So I think you're like...

But they're going to score. They're going to score. There's only people who are scoring and depending on which one you use, if you use IMDb, yeah, IMDb is probably the most reliable. Rotten Tomatoes, nothing scores of 5 or 6. They always score 2 or 9. But yeah, IMDb's probably a reasonable thing, but.

Yeah.

It will score well amongst people who persist with it and like that, that, you know, the fantasy world.

Well, but usually it is pretty like. So what have they got here? The. Yeah. So Episode Five. The most recent one was 9.6. The one before that 9.6. The one before that 9.1. And then the earlier ones. The second episode was 8.4 and the first was 8.2. So either way, it looks like it amps up.

Yes.

You know, so it should. For episode four and five, we should get.

By the time you get to episode four and five, you've only, the only people who are watching it are the ones that are already hooked on it and enjoying it. So and the only thing that can happen is that they do a disastrous, you know, this isn't an ending. This is the middle of the season, but a disastrous ending like they did on Game of Thrones. And every fan just, you know, canned the last season.

Mmhmm. I know. What I would give for them to remake that.

They're never going to remake it.

I know, but you would just be like, it's funny because they would probably make money on it.

Oh, it would!

It was too big to fail?

But but it's a very expensive show to make.

Yeah. So anyway, I'm watching that and I'm really enjoying it. And then I'm having a look here. What else have I been watching? I think I binge watched some, I can't remember. We did one of these recently. Did we mentioned Pluribus.

No.

Did I mention that one?

No. Pluribus.

That's, uh.

That was really good. That's by the makers of Game of, um, of, um, uh, Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. And it's effectively this show about this radio wave signal is coming through space, and it gets transcribed, and they work out that it's coding for DNA. And these effectively, the human race, when they accidentally transcribe it and put it, inject it into mice, someone gets bitten by a mouse and then everyone effectively becomes this hive mind. Of like all joined, they can all, everyone's mind is all the same. And, but there's one woman who isn't. And.

Of course.

The alien is like this ethical that, I don't even know how to describe it as an alien. But everyone in this who's become part of this hive mind is like they have this ethical code of the whole point of this is to reduce suffering and, you know, pain and everything like that. We're all still here, but we're obviously in this state of hive mind and no one is individual anymore. Everyone is exactly the same, and there's no talking. They just all go around getting all the food they need. They don't use electricity during the day or at night or whatever. They all sleep in really public, like, arenas and stuff on the ground to just conserve space and energy. Anyway, so the whole series is about this one woman, who wasn't converted for one reason and trying to work out how to convert everyone back.

Right. And go and do the..

Yeah, exactly. And they can't force her to become one of them so they can only, they're trying to research how to convert her.

Right.

And then when and if they get it they'll kind of allow her to decide.

And she's trying to work out whether or not...

How to undo them.

Yeah, exactly. So it's just really fascinating medical implications...

Again. Yeah. If not just ethical implications. But I like that where there is a, there's a challenge on both. It's not just evil against good. It's that both think they are right and they're both trying to get towards an end, which is completely conflicting with the other side's end. So.

It's really funny too, because there are all these characters in it that she interacts with who are theoretically all the same hive mind being, right. And yet you find yourself initially disliking a bunch of them and then coming around and kind of starting to like them. And as a viewer, you kind of like them as individuals, but you keep forgetting that they're...

They're all the same! Yeah.

It's like there's this woman that she interacts with...

We're all individuals...

This, this super cute, kind of like 40 something year old Polish American actress. And initially you sort of like, oh, she's so annoying. And then you start to really like her. And I guess it's because of what they go through, all of the different things because it's just..

Like, presumably there as a new entity that's evolving as well because they're, you know, as a hive mind or a joint entity. They will be evolving because they will be and I haven't seen it, but I would assume that would be the, the storyline in there is that they are starting to learn.

I don't know. So it seems like and again.

Otherwise..

I don't remember all the specifics.

They're just replicators from Stargate.

Yeah. I hope it's, you know, spoiler warning, guys, obviously for any of these episodes. But there's going to be a second season, and I have a feeling what they will discover in the second season is that the hive mind is just programmed to set up, sending that signal out again, and it ends up effectively just draining all the energy on the planet. So it'll, it'll be this catastrophic thing of I think she'll get to the point of wanting to join the hive mind and then realise that they're actually, like on a doomed ship, and that that the hive mind is going to be spending all this energy in time trying to set up the next radio dish to send out the energy in some different direction where there might be another planet to absorb. And that's their sort of evolutionary sequence of spreading through the galaxy.

Yeah. Look, it's a it's a really interesting conundrum among in developing science fiction television shows, where you set up, this is a premise with a clear ending.

Mhm.

Either she wins or she loses. Yeah. And do they get to the end of season one. And that's the answer. In which case season two is effectively wipe everything that happened in season one. And then try and come up with another premise based on the same structure.

No, I'm pretty sure..

It doesn't work. And there's a whole lot of them that just don't work like that. Whereas the sort of science fictions that have been really popular, you know, TV wise and things like Star Trek and Stargate, where even though there is a particular conflict that's going on. The conflict is not absolute, and so that you can reach an ending to a season and have some sort of conclusion, but the conclusion is not absolute. So when you get to season two, there's a cliff-hanger and you move on and you and things might change. Whereas when you the lot of those seasons where you or shows where you get to the end and you go, well, that was unsatisfying. And the reason it was unsatisfying is because, you know, they had to leave something for six and second season. Lost is a classic example of it.

Yeah.

Really good premise, but it should have been one season and they should have either got off the island or died, and that should have been the end of it. But by the time you get into polar bears and dinosaurs on a tropical island, and, the writers have just lost the plot because...

I'm not opposed to having dinosaurs or polar bears on the island, but at least explain it and pay off. The problem with the polar bear thing was this thing came running out of...

Just one episode, and then.

And then it was gone! I know!

Never talked about it again. And you know what the- Ah, man. But have you heard that Stargate's coming back, apparently? Via Amazon.

Um, it's on Netflix.

No, as in they're..

Oh, you're..

Doing a new Stargate series.

Is Amanda Tapping in it?

Hopefully. I don't know, you would have..

I love Sam.

You would have to find a way to write it and bring back the old characters in one shape.

Yeah, funny. Speaking of Amanda Tapping and TV shows, I've actually been watching a Canadian show that she's been directing a lot of the episodes of.

Mmhmm.

And it's just a procedural cop show murder mystery show called Murder in a Small Town, and it's set in Gibsons, which is on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia.

Mmhmm.

Which.

Have they got a place called the Sunshine Coast?

They do. It's on the West Coast, but it's, it's mostly only accessible by ferry, or you've got to drive hundreds of kilometres to get around to it. So it's a ferry ride from Vancouver. The only irritate- well, it's it's it's not high drama, but the only really irritating thing about it is clearly with Canadian TV, they are selling to an American audience. And so they actually specify it's set in Gibsons, they name it as Gibsons. They show maps of it as Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast. But there is this sort of implied thing that it's actually somewhere in the United States, because they keep talking about, oh, he's from out of state. You know, there are no states in Canada. It's a province, you're morons! And you go because it's just, it's a language thing that you go, oh, surely Americans have grown up a bit by now, and they can actually realise that this can be just as entertaining from Canada. Everybody knows it's made in Canada.

There's a whole bunch of those things though, where because the film filming industry over here is so much more affordable. American films are quite often made on the..

In the Gold Coast and in Sydney.

Yeah, and northeast Australia, and they have all the cars. They put them on the wrong side of the road and you see these movies and you're like, this fucking eucalypt trees everywhere like this is clearly the Australian, you know, bush.

Yeah.

And yet they'll have like all of our stop signs and all of the, but just the cars are on the other side of the road. And you're just like, really? Just like.

Yeah, but you know, but you know, if you're a. Well, in that case, they're actually Hollywood studios that are making American films in Australia. But this show is clearly Canadian. But they're still selling to the American market, so they have to Americanise it. So that's a bit irritating. But otherwise it's a good show.

I always wonder with something like that, if they're just the executives are overthinking it and they're like, the American audience won't be able to handle anything that doesn't seem Americanised, and therefore they make it all that way. And so the assumption then after that is..

It just has to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yeah. Exactly. So like really like...

That's the only thing we have sold. Not the only thing we could sell.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, well, we can't change now.

The other interesting part of the show is that the main character is played by one of Donald Sutherland's sons, Kiefer Sutherland's half brother.

Yeah. Okay.

Um, and it's the first thing that I've seen him in. He's been around for a while, but, uh. But if you close your eyes, he sounds exactly like his father. It's really weird. You just go. I know that voice.

Yeah.

Whereas Kiefer doesn't sound like his father at all, but.

No. That was interesting. Yeah, his dad was the guy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That original movie, wasn't he?

Yeah?

He was the, um. Oh. What was the guy's name? Who, like, taught her how to fight vampires?

Yeah, he was the original Slayer teacher.

It feels so weird getting older and seeing a lot of these younger actresses and actors that, you know, fell in love with when they were late teens, early 20s..

And now they're 50!

They're like 50, 60 years old. And then all these ones that were like adults when you were a kid dying.

Yeah.

You know, you're just like, what the?

My. My teenage crush was Natalie Wood.

Yeah.

And Natalie Wood's been dead for 30 years, and you go. She died in her late 40s. I think she'd go now. I'm nearly 70.

She was born in the 30s.

She was.

So she was just a an actress. Was she in these big films back then?

Yeah. Yeah. So she was a child actor.

Yeah.

And then a teenager. Didn't do much as a teenager, but then she really hit it big in her 20s in the 1950s.

Yeah.

50s and early 60s. She was, she was probably the biggest star in Hollywood.

Yeah.

Interestingly, though, she was the one who broke the, the studio model in Hollywood. Because back in those days, the- you were signed to a studio, an actor got signed by a studio, and they were just given scripts. So you'll be in this movie and they'd make ten movies a year.

Yeah.

And they would just have to do them. And she refused.

Wow. Okay.

And they still had to keep employing her because she was such a big name. And she just said, no, you're not going. That's rubbish. I'm not playing that part. I'm not doing that.

She was in Rebel Without a Cause.

She was.

With James Dean.

She was indeed.

So they both died pretty young, obviously.

Yeah, well, he died in his 20s. She died in her 40s. Fell off a boat.

Wow. She's in a movie called Brainstorm.

She is.

Which has...

It's the last movie.

What's his name again? Christopher Walken.

Yeah.

And they're both pretty young in that. That was 1980.

Christopher Walken was on the boat when she died.

How did she die? She drowned or something?

She drowned. Fell off a boat.

Yeah.

Drinking?

Yeah? Yeah.

What else are you watching? Dad? What are you enjoying?

Well, funnily enough, and one of the things that I was thinking of as a topic and maybe we can extend now or tell me we can do it in another episode. Was favourite TV shows from your childhood.

Mhm.

Because mine are all now 60 years old and I just recognised that the other day when Thunderbirds, which is. This is a big statement. Thunderbirds is the best television ever made.

What is Thunderbirds?

It's a, it's a marionette. So puppet show made in the mid 1960s. And it was done as, it was a, the the characters on the plot in it are five brothers and their father. Their father runs an international rescue agency. And so anything that goes wrong anywhere in the world.

It's pretty much the first Paw Patrol.

Pretty much it is. Except Paw Patrol is rubbish. Sorry to all the six year olds out there. No, no. Thunderbirds was huge in the mid 60s. But the. But it's all done with puppetry. So it's not cartoon and it's not acting, but it was puppetry and small scale live action. And it's genius the way it was made, and the storylines are trivial, but it was made for kids. But unlike Paw Patrol, adults can watch it as well because it's got an adult humour in it.

Yeah, I guess it's a lot like Bluey.

Exactly.

In that sense, they don't really cross over thematically, but yeah.

But yeah, it was just, it was completely revolutionary.

So there's always these, these characters came out to destroy the world or whatever. And these guys are pilots that they all have their own ships.

They all got their own spaceships, rockets, underwater things. They've got these sort of sci fi tools. It's sort of like, you know, James Bond tools that will solve every problem.

And Inspector Gadget.

Yeah, but they have to get there to do it. And it's all done with puppets.

You can find it online. It looks like it's on YouTube.

It is. Yeah it is. It's on all. It's just been released. 60th anniversary release.

Well, there are only two seasons!

Yeah.

Oh, wow. I didn't realise it was only two seasons. I always assumed that it just went for ages.

It only went for two years.

Wow. Must have been a lot to make.

I think it was just too expensive to make. That was and I'm sure the and it was a it was a British couple who came up with the idea and they eventually got bought by an American TV company.

Yeah.

To release it in the States.

So it's funny that you say...

The voice acting is American voices, except for two characters, which are British.

Yeah. It's funny you say TV shows from when we were kids. A lot of the ones I remember watching were probably ones that you watched when you were a kid.

Because I remember seeing Thunderbirds. We also had like Looney Tunes, which would have been from,

Oh yeah, what, the 50s. Was the 50s?

Yeah. What was the guy's name that did all the voices on that.

Mel Blanc.

Yeah. Mel Blanc. And then what else? The Brady Bunch was another one.

Yeah, that was 70s. Um, Gilligan's Island.

MASH and...

MASH was 70.

It's funny how many of those just got replayed on TV all the time. I guess they were just affordable to be able to buy the rights?

And they bought. Certainly Gilligan's Island ran for about 20 years. 30 years.

As in, it had that many seasons.

They- no...

Or they just...

It only ran for about four seasons.

Yeah okay.

But it just kept going. They just kept. And and I know the like Australian studios or Australian TV channels would just buy it. Well, we'll buy it to run four times and they'd run it, drop it for a year and then run it again.

Yeah. Well, it used to be there would be those shows in the morning. Things like Looney Tunes, Thunderbirds and that. But then. Yeah. And then in the evenings during the week you would get home and I think probably from like 5:00 onwards there were certain shows and I would, you would usually be juggling between Channel 7 and Channel 10 because there would be like Home and Away and Neighbours, these Australian shows, which I think Home and Away is still going, Neighbours is...

Neighbours finished a few years ago.

Yeah. And then so Neighbours would be at 6:30, Home and Away would be at 7:00. Neighbours was on Channel 10. Home and Away was on 7. But then there'd also be like MASH before that, which was about like the Vietnam War. Was it the..

Nah, Korean War.

Korean War.

Yeah. And that was from the 70s.

And that was, the MASH was about doctors on the front line, right? Or like, you know.

MASH is Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So that was that. And then...

It's still. You know, that's still the most watched TV show ever, per capita.

Yeah.

In American TV history.

Why? It was just that good?

It's that good. It's brilliant. I, I sit there, you know, you must be able to find it and start with series one, episode one, and just work through it.

Yeah.

Because it went for about ten years. So.

Side note, do you know why they switched in surgical operations? I think in the early 20th century they used to all wear all white so that you could see blood. Why do you reckon they switched to green?

Because it's easy to launder.

No.

No?

It's about your vision.

Oh.

It is.

Yeah. Red-green colour blindness.

No, it's not about that.

What?

It's the contrast. If you look at white with a dark colour on it, your eyes do that thing of, you know, when you look away and you can see the inverse?

Yeah. You just. Yes.

And so the issue is all these surgeons that were doing surgery were looking at white, these big contrasty colours.

Yeah, looking at red, and they were seeing green.

And they wouldn't be able to see what they were doing properly. So they had to switch to dark, to...

Green and blue.

Red and blue and green.

Isn't that funny? I had no idea. I was chatting to one of my students recently. He's a surgeon, and had seen that fact and he's like, yeah, we all learned that in first year. And I'm like, what? There you go. I had no idea.

No, no.

But it seems to make sense. Anyway, yeah. So for me, I don't know. I was watching a lot of those ones. Brady Bunch as well was on in the evenings.

Yeah.

And then we had things like if we were...

Brady Bunch was horrible.

If we were sick at home from school during the day, there would be like, Oprah, Judge Judy and, Jerry Springer.

Or Days of Our Lives and The Bold and The Beautiful and the young and...

That trash. They were the sort of what...

They were, the absolute soap opera things.

Yeah, where It was just like...

I used to. It used to amuse me to watch. I don't think I've ever watched a whole episode, but every now and then you'd be. You'd walk in the room and it was on, or you'd watch an ad for it or something, and they were so cheaply done because they're all done entirely in studio.

Yeah.

And often different, but often...

And that's it...

But but often they were done where you didn't even have two actors in the same place. So all the conversations were over the phone. So you could just be recording one actor in a studio, right. Here's your 20 lines for this episode. You're done in 20 minutes and you're out. Gone.

So weird that that I don't know. There aren't really those shows around anymore, right? Like, I don't know, I assume they probably are in the US, but in Australia I haven't seen it. It's probably because I don't watch normal free to air TV anymore.

Australia's never made one of those middle of the day soapy things because we had you know, you've already mentioned Home and Away and and...

Neighbours.

Neighbours, which were prime time half hour.

At least they did it on scene too, like you would be at the beach or in the forest or outside in the yard or whatever. Like it wouldn't just be in the studio. There were studios, you know, they would have their different shops or whatever that were studio sets. But but yeah, I don't know. And then besides that, for me it was probably Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z.

Mhm.

I'm trying to think, what else. Rugrats. That was a big thing.

Yeah I like Rugrats.

Rugrats and then...

Rugrats was the Bluey of the 1990s.

Yeah, it was just a feel good kind of.

Yeah. And it was young...

It was made for kids, but it was also made for adults.

Yeah.

There's a lot of adult humour in it.

The traumatising thing is an adult watching it now is realising that all the parents are younger than you.

Yeah.

In that show and I remember watching it as a kid and thinking, these people are so old. It's such a weird thing. I think that's your 30s. Your 30s is realising that everyone under the age of 20 now sees you like you see 60 year olds.

Yeah, my my grandfather once told me, he said, you know, you're going to get old when you get breathalysed or pulled over by a policeman who is clearly younger than you are.

Yeah.

And that happens in your 30s.

It's a weird...

Cop is 22. You know.

It's just weird seeing people younger than you who are incredibly competent.

Who's 25..

In a certain field and you're like, so theoretically...

A bank manager, and they're 20 years younger than you.

Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. I was chatting to one of my friends from school and he's like, I'm about to become a partner at the accounting firm. And I was just like, fuck. How old are we? Like, I was like, good grief, dude. I remember when we were younger and you're like, yeah, that's probably like ten, 20 years away. And now it's like, yeah.

Well, now it's 10 or 20 years away.

No. That's it. That's like.

I know it's that realisation that you've caught up with your own life.

It's interesting thinking about the shows that will be like this for our kids, though. Keep thinking they're probably going to be things like Paw Patrol, Bluey.

Bluey will, I think. And this is the old cynic in me, the grumpy old man. And everybody has the...

Grumpy old man.

The grumpy old man in them, even the grumpy old women. But that that, nostalgia, is the rose coloured glasses of nostalgia. And, you know, Gilligan's Island was complete and utter rubbish. And so I wouldn't hold that one up, but other shows like Hogan's Heroes as an example, Hogan's Heroes would stand up. Now, it's that clever. There's a lot of there's a lot of these...

I see nothing...

Yeah, I see a lot of the inherent it's not racism because it's, you know, same race Germans, but there's a lot of inherent.

Bigotry.

Bigotry in it, which probably wouldn't stand up in a woke world that we have now.

Oh, there's 100 of those shows that are from that period.

But it's it's.

Like Fawlty Towers.

Yeah, but it's clever.

Yeah.

It's funny. Now, that was a show made for adults, not for children.

Yeah.

But the cartoons were clever. You know, there's Rocky and Bullwinkle and yeah. You mentioned, you mentioned the, you know, the Bugs Bunny cartoons and things. They're just clever. The modern stuff isn't. There's...

A lot of it...

There's a moral message in them, which you sort of go, yeah, but that's try...

Almost like the moral message is an excuse for producing crap that keeps people glued to screens and makes money.

Yeah.

Because really, what it's become about isn't necessarily "let's make a really good quality show people will enjoy watching inherently". It's "how do we make sure no one leaves their seats and they watch more ads", or they pay for this. Like watch your kids watch a show like Bluey versus Paw Patrol. Paw Patrol will, they won't miss, a single shot won't last more than three seconds.

Yeah.

It's pretty rare for that to happen. And so watch your children watching the show and their eyes don't leave the screen.

Yeah. They can't because..

It's because everything's changing.

Constantly changing.

Whereas when you watch something like Bluey or, you know, put on a show that they're not necessarily that interested in and you're or, you know, what would you say? Not, not not interested in, but like slower.

Yeah.

And they'll disengage from it a little more. They're not sort of zombified staring at the screen. So I think that's the horrifying side.

Yeah. And look, a lot of that stuff is just purely designed by formula.

Yeah, 100%.

Completely done by formula.

There's look, there's a whole bunch of those shows though, that's like.

They're all the same.

We've got different trains and they can shapeshift and then they save the world. And there's like the red one, the blue one, the yellow one and the green one. And then now we've got different robot dinosaurs. Yeah, the red one, the blue one, the green one. You're just like, oh my God, guys. Like, it's so funny how they're like, we gotta take two things that kids love, like dinosaurs and robots and make it one thing and they're gonna save the world. You're just like, ah, this is so contrived.

Yeah, well, yeah, well, everything's contrived, but TV wise. Well, visual media is contrived, but it's.

I feel like that's probably the curse of getting older, too. You kind of like have that constant "Simpsons did it", "Simpsons did it".

Rocky and Bullwinkle did it.

Yeah. There's this constant like, I've seen this. This isn't novel. This is just copying someone else who did it a certain amount of time so that...

You can get a very limited number of novel ideas for stories.

Well, they almost wait there. Like, is it been two decades yet? So the next batch of people watching won't realise.

Yeah.

Anyway. All right. This one's drawn on, but it has. I hope you guys have gotten something out of it. Yeah. Anyway, see you next time.

See ya!