October 31, 2025 • 56 mins
We pull the curtain on what happens when iconic slashers, demons, and haunted houses try to survive network constraints, syndication deals, and the long tail of serialized storytelling. From cursed antiques pitched as Friday the 13th to Freddy Krueger moonlighting as a wisecracking host, we map the distance between brand recognition and actual fear.
We start with the bait-and-switches: Friday The 13th: The Series builds a curiosities procedural with zero Jason; Freddy’s Nightmares promises lore, then delivers scattered anthology entries dulled by shoestring budgets; Poltergeist: The Legacy trades domestic dread for secret-society casework. Then we pivot to the exceptions that actually land. The Exorcist honors the 1973 classic with a tense, character-led investigation, only to be tripped by Friday scheduling. Scream shows how one choice—the Ghostface mask—can fracture a fandom, even as later seasons sharpen the writing. Hannibal ascends to high art with operatic psychology and lavish imagery, yet rights and platform mismatches undercut its momentum. And Bates Motel demonstrates the winning formula: focus the lens on character, build pressure season by season, and let the performances carry the myth.
Along the way we talk budgets, censorship, licensing, first-run syndication, and the invisible hand of distribution that can doom or save a show. The takeaway is simple: film-to-TV horror works when it protects core iconography, leads with character, and fits the platform’s reality; it fails when a famous title is glued to a mismatched premise or neutered by constraints. If you care about how fear translates from a two-hour shock to a multi-season slow burn, this one’s for you. Enjoy the ride, then tell us your favorite or most painful adaptation, and don’t forget to follow, rate, and share to keep the conversation going.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
When television is good, nothing.
Not the theater, not themagazines, or the newspapers,
nothing is better.
But when television is bad,nothing is worse.
I invite each of you to sit downin front of your television set
when your station goes on theair and stay there for a day
without a book, without amagazine, without a newspaper,
(00:21):
without a profit and loss sheetor a rating book to distract
you.
Keep your eyes glued to that setuntil the station signs off.
I can assure you that what youwill observe is a vast
wasteland.
That comes from Newton NormanMinnow.
In a speech given to theNational Association of
(00:42):
Broadcasters Convention on May9th, 1961.
He was the chairman of the FCC.
And now a second quote.
Television.
That's where movies go when theydie.
That's from Bob Hope in hisopening monologue of the Oscars
on March 19, 1953.
There's likely few more fittingmetaphors for today's topic than
(01:05):
of the fate of JenniferCaulfield from A Nightmare on
Elm Street 3, Dream Warriors,which, following the events of
part two, finds Jennifer underthe care of Dr.
Neil Gordon at Weston HillsPsychiatric Hospital.
She, along with Kristen Parker,Will Stanton, Taryn White, and
Joey Kursil, are the last of theElm Street kids, i.e., the only
(01:26):
children stalked by FreddyKrueger left alive.
In that scene, Max, an orderlyat the hospital, warns Jennifer,
who wants to be a TV actress,about watching too much TV, and
she says and says she shouldread a book instead.
She insists on watching to keepher entertained and awake, but
her tiredness gets the best ofher.
In her death scene, she isliterally pulled into a
(01:49):
television by Freddy andsummarily slaughtered.
The reason that is so fitting isbecause we've shown over and
over again that turning horrorfilms into TV shows is a fool's
errand.
Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax.
I'm Skip.
Yes, I did this because I wentdown a rabbit hole of really
(02:12):
strange, sort of in the vein ofour episodes about monsters and
about Tales from the Dark Side,other horror shows that sort of
cropped up during that era.
That's why I discovered thingslike Friday the 13th series,
Freddy's Nightmares, PoltergeistThe Legacy.
(02:33):
And so I thought I would breakdown why, or at least how, most
of those interpretations offranchises, horror franchises
specifically, being turned intotelevision sucks real hard.
Oh, at least two of those aren'trelated.
I'll explain.
There are exceptions, and someof them are legitimately good.
(02:56):
Most of them are recent, buteven the good ones aren't well
known.
We're gonna start with Fridaythe 13th, the series.
It was created by Frank MancusoJr.
and Larry B.
Williams.
The thing is, it was originallycalled The 13th Hour, because
it's not related to Friday the13th at all.
It ran for 72 episodes, which isactually pretty good.
(03:17):
Mancuso Jr.
never intended the show to belinked to Friday the 13th at
all, but the studio wanted toutilize the idea of Friday the
13th, which is that itsymbolizes bad luck and curses.
And so the production companythat headed it up wanted to tie
in Jason's hockey mask into theseries, which is kind of crazy
(03:38):
because that didn't even show upuntil the end of the third
movie.
They kind of dismissed that ifthey're going to have to adopt
this name and this moniker,they're just gonna let it stand
for itself.
Already you're kind of atconflict with your own concept
now because of the interferenceby the studio.
Mancuso Jr.
was afraid that mentioning anyevents from the films would take
the audience away from the worldhe was trying to create.
(04:01):
So the decision to name the showFriday the 13th was because he
believed that a Friday the 13thmoniker would better help to
sell the show to networks.
This was all in syndication,first run syndication.
We talked a little bit aboutthis in our episodes about Star
Trek and about what was it thatuh but like Hercules and Xena
(04:22):
and all that kind of stuff.
Those were all syndication.
Okay.
The first run syndicationdoesn't really exist anymore.
I mean, it does, but only formid-afternoon talk shows.
The first syndication run showswere basically just not produced
by an actual network.
They were done by studios andthen shopped around.
(04:42):
That's how Star Trek, DS9,Voyager, TNG were all first run
syndication.
Enterprise was the first onethat was run again by a network
because UPN still existed backthen.
But in this era, you didn't getyou had no studio support and
you had to sell your show to anetwork.
Even Desi Lu Studios, they did alot of first-round syndication
stuff.
Because back then, productionstudios ran everything.
(05:05):
But they figured if they namedit Friday the 13th, maybe it
would be more appealing to anetwork to pick it up.
Um Right.
(05:27):
I remember checking it out too,like very briefly.
This was around the same time ofthe, you know, the success of
things like Creep Show and Talesfrom the Dark Side, and you
know, later monsters, but therewas a glut of these kinds of
things happening at this point.
(07:56):
That all of the items arecursed.
So they're already kind of likeevoking like needful things kind
of thing, or there are a lot oftropes about this, like you
know, you know, a cabinet ofcuriosities type situation, or
each item in there has its ownstory.
SPEAKER_01 (08:18):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00 (08:23):
Mm-hmm.
So then they work together torecover said objects after
they've been bought, and thenreturn them safely to the shop's
vault.
After Lewis's death, his shop isinherited by his niece, Mickey
Foster, who's played by LouiseRoby, and her cousin Ryan
Dalian, played by John D.
Lemay.
(08:43):
They don't want to keep thestore, and they sell off many of
the cursed antiques beforethey're stopped by Jack Marshak,
who is Lewis's childhood friend,a retired stage magician, world
traveler, and occultist, whooriginally collected many of the
antiques before they becamecursed.
It's like the Warren's The NextGeneration.
The Warren's babies.
(09:12):
So the show follows thoseprotagonists as they hunt down
these cursed antiques, which areusually in possession of people
who have discovered their magicpowers and are unwilling to give
them up, and they want to usethem for some sort of nefarious
purpose or whatever.
Every episode they kind of likedo the whole they get it back,
there's an ironic punishment orwhat have you.
Then they get them back and theybring them back to the store
(09:32):
where they put them in a vaultbecause these objects are
oftentimes indestructible.
You can't just throw it in afire or chuck it in the trash.
So they do a Ghostbusters typething and they lock them in a
vault, which is designedspecifically to render the
objects inert in the object'spowers.
The magic that it that theobject generates or uses is no
(09:56):
longer effective.
And you know, and then they havea a big part of it is that they
have a manifest that was writtenby Lewis, who holds a huge list
of all of the things.
Basically, he's just adocumentary and watcher type
character.
Yeah, well, I could go into someof the episodes, but who cares?
The show ran for what threeseasons in syndication.
(10:16):
To be honest, I think the reasonit was canceled was mostly
because they're not in directcontrol of what network buys
them up.
So there's no network comingdown on them saying you're
canceled.
It's just that no one would pickit up again, essentially.
It kind of ran its course.
It wasn't based on Friday the13th.
And Friday the 13th movies werecoming out at that time.
(10:39):
It was a little confusing,people were not into it at that
point.
When that aired, during thatpoint in which that aired, Jason
takes Manhattan had come out in1989.
They did that in Waxwork too,didn't they?
(12:04):
Oh, it's definitelyproto-supernatural, Monster of
the Week stuff.
Like proto, no, what's the GrimWarehouse thirteen or that other
one?
Dresden Files.
But the show kind of ran itscourse.
Uh funny enough though, MancusoJr.
also produced Friday the 13th,part two, all the way through
(12:24):
Friday the 13th, Jason TakesManhattan in 1989.
A year before the series ended.
And some of the actors, likeJohn D.
LeMay, who played Ryan, he wenton to star in Jason Goes to
Hell, The Final Friday, not thesame character.
And one of the guest stars, JohnShepherd, played Tommy Jarvis in
Friday the 13th, A NewBeginning.
(12:46):
And one of the episode directorswas David Cronenberg, who then
also appeared as an actor inJason X.
I know.
It's just like when Cronenbergwas a character in Star Trek.
That's weird.
So we don't have to get into toomuch of the details.
(13:06):
You can see it, it's kind ofonline.
It's a show that happened.
It has nothing to do with JasonVoorhees, it has nothing to do
with Crystal Lake.
But it kind of fits more intothe Halloween 3 season of the
Witch scenario, where these bigfranchises could have done
Monster of the Week stuff.
Halloween didn't need to be justabout Michael Myers.
(13:30):
And in Halloween 3, they kind ofproved that.
Halloween 3 has over time gottena huge cult following, and
Honesty's is more well regardedthan when it came out.
Especially looking back on howmany terrible fucking Michael
Myers movies came out afterthat.
The Halloween series as afranchise could have been great
if it were Monster of the Weekas a movie franchise.
(13:51):
Or at least a slasher of theweek or a horror of the week
type.
Which is what the X-File shouldhave done, by the way.
Yes, in movie form.
If they were going to continuein movie form, they should have
been Monster of the Week, notchasing down this terrible Chris
Carter bullshit that didn't goanywhere and doesn't make any
sense.
That they abandoned and thencame back to, and then ugh.
(14:23):
Right, oh you mean like thefirst X-Res movie?
Sure.
Yeah, that's what it felt like.
Let's move on to.
Oh man, this is unfortunate.
So in preparation for this, Iwatched several episodes of this
(14:45):
yesterday.
Freddy's Nightmare.
I'm sorry, Freddy's Nightmares.
Well, I mean, that's kind of thepremise.
A lot of people refer to it as anightmare on Elm Street the
series, but the official name,and this is so funny, the
official name of the show, asseen on graphics while I was
watching the show, Freddy'sNightmares, Colonel A Nightmare
(15:07):
on Elm Street, Colonel theseries.
How many colons do you need?
unknown (15:14):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (15:16):
As a personal anecdote, this show was an
anthology series, weirdlyenough, from also in First Run
Syndication from October 8th,1988 until March 12th, 1990.
Each episode was introduced byFreddie Krueger, played by
Robert Anglin.
The interesting structure of itis that each episode featured
(15:38):
two stories.
The first half hour would be onestory, the second half hour
would be a different story.
That part really doesn't matter,it's just how they formatted it.
The first episode actuallyfeatures Freddy before the
events of the original Nightmarein Elm Street.
It's directed by Toby Hooper,who of course did Texas Chainsaw
Massacre and sort of kind ofdirected poltergeist, even
(16:02):
though Steel Steven Spielbergwas over his shoulder the entire
time.
And it's really bizarre becauseobviously those movies are
extremely graphic.
They're very violent.
I mean, Johnny Depp explodinginto a column of blood is, I
mean, pretty explicitly violent,but somehow they figured out how
to make it a ready for TV notcensored show where they
(16:26):
actually explore in the firstepisode the crowd mentality, the
uh the the lynch mob that killsFreddie Krueger.
I don't know why you think thatwould work in like a PG format.
That seems a little bizarre tome, but the weird thing is that
the show starts out with showingthe origin of Freddie, which
they have shown, and so when youwatch the show, you'd think
(16:48):
like, oh, this whole show isgoing to be the origin of how we
get to where we are later.
And if that show were madetoday, that's exactly what it
would be.
Instead, only a handful ofepisodes from then on actually
feature Freddy.
It's essentially an anthologyshow.
That's exactly what he does.
He becomes the Crypt Keeper.
(17:08):
He introduces these and hascommentary between act breaks
and introducing each episode.
It was produced by NewlineTelevision and Stone Television.
It was originally distributed byLorimar Telepictures, which, if
you're Jake and Isaac, we haveseen the title cards for that a
thousand times.
After Lorimar Telepictures wasacquired by Wonder Brothers in
(17:29):
1989, War Brothers assumed thesyndication rights.
Then in 1996, Warner Brothersacquired Newline Cinema, so they
held both the production anddistribution rights.
So if they wanted to make moreepisodes and put them out, they
were the only people who could.
So New Line Cinema, which hadoriginally put out Nightmare on
Elm Street, they didn't want tomake a series with a regular
(17:51):
cast of characters interactingwith Freddie because they felt
like, well, he's going to killthem.
What's the conflict there?
That does make sense.
But they also didn't want to doan anthology series in its
normal sense.
So they decided to do theCryptkeeper type approach
instead.
Each episode does take adifferent story, but they all
(18:12):
take place, well, at leastoriginally, take place in the
town of Springwood, Ohio, and onElm Street.
I watched an episode the otherday with it actually has a fuck
ton of people in this show.
You know what the funny thingis?
I was going to say that exactphrase.
(18:33):
God damn it.
Yes, with Lori Petty as a as atrack star in high school in
competition with, well, anotherbig 80s and 90s bit actress.
Name we can't remember now, butthe entire premise is that it's
something about how her mom wasan athlete and died during, I
(18:54):
guess, her whatever her.
Okay, well, you say that.
Lori Petty somehow finds thiscrystal amulet thing.
You do randomly, right?
She every time she like looksthrough it and then like
daydreams, whatever shedaydreams about, which is
(19:16):
usually revenge plots, theyactually happen, but you don't
see, just like with Nightmare onElm Street movies, they happen
in their mind, and then thatperson ends up dying.
At one point, she like wants herhistory teacher or whatever to
shut up, and then so during herlittle spell generates cotton
(19:36):
that keeps coming out of hismouth, and he can't get it out
fast enough to keep fromchoking, and he dies on the
floor.
The logic is fast and loose.
Let's just say that.
Then hilariously, in the in theepisode, her rival is faster
than her.
She beats her at like the Idon't know, 100 meter or
whatever.
They don't really say.
(19:57):
When she gets this amulet, shefinally has the confidence to
win and to beat her rival.
And then at one point, herboyfriend takes away the crystal
because he's like, Well, I knowyou can do this on your own.
And so they do the next trackmeet, which is supposed to be
the trials to make varsity orwhatever.
(20:18):
And she and her rival race, andyou know, they have a ribbon at
the end of the race, and thatribbon, because she doesn't have
the crystal and because she'sdone certain things that have
killed people, it takes her headoff.
She went straight into it andshe gets decapitated.
Which, of course, is in her mindbecause that's how the logic of
(20:41):
Nightmare on Elm Street works.
When they cut to real life,she's actually fallen and broken
her neck on some sort of likefootball training equipment or
whatever.
It didn't really make a lot ofsense, but I see where they were
going.
They were trying to say that inthe Friday the 13th movies,
there is a logic setup.
I don't think it's very wellfollowed in any of those movies,
(21:05):
but there is a logic setup, andwithin it, you can play with
these different concepts andideas that have nothing to do
with Freddy.
Unfortunately, the show is verypoorly regarded.
It's considered one of the worsthorror TV shows of all time.
No one really likes it, no onewatched it.
(21:26):
I didn't know it existed.
Basically, it was just bad.
And most of it had nothing to dowith Freddy.
However, there were a lot ofreally cool guest stars in the
show.
There were people like MariskaHarkaday from Law and Order SVU,
John Cameron Mitchell, who diduh Headbug in the Angry Inch,
Brad Pitt, yeah, he was inthere.
(21:48):
Obviously Lori Petty, MarcoLemo, who was Gold Ducot on DS9,
Sandal Bergman from Conan, who'salso from Overland Park, by the
way.
Jeffrey Combs, George Lazenby, aJames Bond, in one movie.
That fucking counts.
It's actually a pretty goodJames Bond movie.
(22:08):
Well, it's an entertaining JamesBond movie.
I don't know if it's good.
SPEAKER_01 (22:13):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (22:17):
At least 25, yeah.
So, John Kenneth Muir in hisbook Terror Television places
Freddy's Nightmares as the worstof the horror television
programs between 1970 and 1999.
I know that's very specific.
He found the series havinguninteresting stories, and that
its production was so low thatit appeared to be homemade and
(22:40):
it completely wasted the talentsof Robert Angbland, which I kind
of, after watching it, I have toagree with.
It's extremely low budget.
It's do you ever see Overdrawnat the Memory Bank with Raoul
Julia that they did on a MSD 3K?
It's in that vein.
It's really, really, really,really low budget.
(23:08):
Not good.
I tried, it's bad.
It's it's hard to watch.
Especially since they don't, youknow, they start off with the
Freddy thing and then don'tcontinue it.
Then don't do it.
You know what I mean?
Don't make your first episodethe epic adventures of Freddy
Krueger, and then stop.
And even that episode doesn'twork.
(23:28):
It's not good.
If you think the other nightmarein Elm Street movies are low
budget and low rent, you'venever seen the floor.
Alright, the next is PoltergeistThe Legacy.
Oh boy.
I have spent a long timewatching this.
Yeah, it sucks.
It ran on Showtime from April21st, 1996 to August 21st, 1998,
(23:52):
and then later on the Sci-FiChannel.
It basically follows members ofa secret society known as The
Legacy and their efforts toprotect mankind from occult
danger.
So we're talking Hickman'sShield.
We're talking The Watchers.
Also syndicated, but onShowtime, after its third
(24:15):
season, it was canceled, butSci-Fi Channel picked it up and
continued for another season.
The idea is that the rulinghouse is like their main base or
whatever, and it's located inLondon.
And in the sixth century, thelegacy was established to
collect dangerous and ancientknowledge and artifacts, solve
paranormal problems, and protecthumanity from supernatural
(24:36):
evils.
Over time, the membershipexpanded around the world.
I mean, there's a lot of these.
I mean, maybe back then it wasbreaking new ground, or at
least, I don't know, relativelynew, but we've seen this shit a
lot in key culture over the lastlike uh.
(25:00):
Good question.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Except Freddie Symmares wasabout Freddie Krueger.
He was at least involved.
Jason Voorhees never showed upin Friday the thirteenth.
(25:57):
Though it is the only one inthat sense of that era that
actually did tie into itsoriginal source material.
So I don't know what that says.
But Freddy's Nightmares at leastadhere to the branding in a way
that instead of just beingco-opted by the brand.
And Robert England was in everyepisode, at least as the host.
(26:20):
I mean, at least it has that,but it is also worse than either
of those other shows.
It's not good.
No.
When it comes to uh PoltergeistThe Legacy, it did get
cancelled, obviously, but therewere talks where Sci-Fi Channel
(26:41):
was gonna pick it up in 2000.
In fact, they had put out therethat they they were putting a
possible show out calledPoltergeist The Beginning, and
they started pre-production inlike 2001, but they never
materialized, and Sci-Fiabandoned it in 2002, which it's
around the time they were inre-production for Battlestar
(27:02):
Galactica, so I think they chosewisely with that.
Now that's not to say that everyversion of this is bad.
Sometimes horror movies turnedinto TV shows actually work, at
least to some extent.
For instance, The Exorcist TheSeries, created by Jeremy Slater
for Fox, is a direct sequel tothe original 1973 film and
(27:26):
ignores the film's, let's saytroubled sequels at best.
Alfonso Herrera and Ben Danielsstar as a pair of exorcists who
investigate cases of demonicpossession.
It's kind of a cop body movietype scenario, but for
exorcists.
(27:50):
Yes.
Well, and they also referencecharacters in the first film.
Because I've seen it.
I actually really I personallyenjoyed the show.
The first season, at least.
Max Vonsido's character, theyactually referenced, but he's
dead, you know, the in in theshow.
Well, uh not not really.
(28:11):
I mean it's like, well, itdoesn't really matter.
It premiered in September of2016.
The second season premiered inSeptember 2017, each having 10
episodes.
But unfortunately, before thedue date of its renewal, it was
canceled in 2018.
It was conceived as, and this isa quote from Jeremy Slater, who
(28:34):
wrote the pilot quote, apropulsive, serialized
psychological thriller followingtwo very different men tackling
one family's case of horrifyingdemonic possession and current
confronting the face of trueevil.
It actually had rave reviews andwon a bunch of awards, but it
was on Fox, on Network TV, andon Friday nights, which is kind
(28:59):
of I know what Fox thinks theywere doing because the X-Viles
originally was on Friday nights,and that worked, but since then
that has not been the way thatthose kinds of shows work.
It was 30 years before.
In the second season, eventhough the first season it was
okay ratings-wise, the secondseason averaged very, very
(29:20):
poorly.
It rated very poorly on theNelson.
Who even uses that anymore?
But basically they got rid ofit.
But that's Fox for you.
I mean, because the rest ofdevelopment got canceled after
three seasons, even though itwon fuck tons of awards.
No one knew it existed.
Which is actually going to be athread throughout the next of
these shows.
Scream the TV series, developedby Jill Lotegvol.
(29:45):
Scream the TV series, developedby Jill Blotovegel, Dan Dworkin,
and Jay Batty for MTV, and thenBrett Matthews for VH1.
Boy, we're gonna have to getinto that.
Was a series produced byDimension Television.
And MTV.
In its first two seasons, it wasset in a fictional version of
the town of Lakewood, Colorado.
(30:07):
And it followed the travails ofEmma Duvall, a teenager who was
linked to horrific events in thetown's past.
The killer's obsession starts totake hold after a brutal murder
in the present.
Emma finds herself in the centerof the conflict.
I mean, it's kind of, you know,you know how it goes.
Whatever.
(30:27):
That's two seasons.
SPEAKER_01 (30:35):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (30:41):
Oh boy, are we gonna get to this?
Yes, I'm gonna get to it in justa second.
I promise.
Then let's go off.
It also has a third season,which follows the story of a guy
named Dion Elliott, a localfootball star in Atlanta, who's
tormented by other things he'sdone in his past, yada yada
yada.
(31:01):
The show originally premiered inthe summer of 2015 and was
renewed for a second season veryquickly.
Then in November of 2015, it wasannounced that the showrunners
would be stepping down due tocreative differences.
This is a red flag.
Michael Gantz and RichardRichard Register doesn't sound
like a real name, replaced themfor the second season.
(31:22):
And then in October 2016, MTVrenewed the series for a
six-episode third season andannounced the showrunners would
be replaced again.
And in April 2017, MTV announcedthat Queen Latifa would be an
executive producer for the thirdseason through her production
company Flavor UnitEntertainment.
(31:45):
I did not know that was a thing.
It was announced then also thatthe series would transition into
being an anthology series, andthis time on VH1, and be renamed
Scream Resurrection.
All of these are good signs.
So audiences kind of knew fromthe first trailer that the show
(32:06):
was doomed, because let's behonest, the Scream Mask is now
one of the most iconic horrorvisuals, right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:16):
Ghostface.
SPEAKER_00 (32:39):
That doesn't work.
So for some reason, MTV made acreative decision to introduce a
new killer with a new mask.
Not the ghost face mask.
You can't hear the face palm,but the original screen
(33:02):
director, Wes Craven, says helet MTV use his name in
association with the series inthe form of executive producer,
but he actually had littleinvolvement.
Initially, he expressed hisapproval of the redesign of the
mask and hinted at its originsand possible plot significance.
So, like what they were doing isthey were going out there and
they were they were touting theidea that the reason the mask
(33:26):
was different had to do with theplot that was to unfold.
That didn't work, and no onecared.
And also, I don't necessarilythink that it was genuine that
that was that that was theiractual reasoning.
Initially, Craven expressed hisapproval of the redesign.
(33:46):
However, he eventually walkedthat back when critical reviews
of the show became less thancheery.
Quote, in general, we didn'tmess with the mask at all.
It's something we didn't try tochange.
When Freddie Krueger and the NewNightmare, I felt I probably
should have stuck with theoriginal face, because they
changed his face a little bitfor New Nightmare.
(34:06):
With Scream, we just let GhostFace be Ghost Face.
Sometimes you realize thatsomething's not broken, so don't
fix it.
And that was the course we tookon all Scream films.
Don't mess with it.
It's perfect.
I knew it in my bones thatGhostface was a unique find, and
I had to convince the studiothat they had to go an extra
(34:26):
mile to get it.
And the reason for that is itwas created by a New York-based
novelty company called Fun Worldin 1991.
The original what we can nowcall Ghostface mask was first
conceived as a Halloween costumemask, obviously, by a woman
named Bridget Slayerton Linden.
And the look was mostly inspiredby the ghosts from some of those
(34:50):
old 1930s black and white MaxFleischer cartoons, and a little
bit from Betty Boop.
It was then mass-produced foryears as part of what Funworld
called the Fantastic Faces Pack,and then later licensed by the
Weinstein Company, who producedScream.
Now, Funworld VP Alan Gellerclaims that he created it
(35:12):
himself.
Okay.
Well, it just sounds like anasshole trying to like discredit
a woman.
MTV insists that the change wassimply a creative decision to
take the franchise into, quote,a darker, more modern direction.
This comes from Mina Lefebvre inan interview with Entertainment
Weekly, quote, if the screenmovie mask was the more plastic
(35:34):
version, this one is a moreorganic looking and frankly
darker version.
So it sounds like PR.
Rumors persist that MTV justdidn't want to pay for the
licensing from either Funworldor through the Weinstein
Company.
Yep, yeah.
Yeah, something rings true.
Now, season one of the show got52% on Rotten Tomatoes, 57%
(35:58):
score on Metacred.
Not bad, really, I guess.
No, not great.
Season two received a 92% onRotten Tomatoes.
Which is incredible.
(36:23):
Yeah.
But the problem was that nobodyactually watched the show.
That's kind of the through linethrough all of these series.
Unfortunately, for season three,where they had more upheaval, it
got a 40% Rotten Tomatoes, soit's not great.
In an article on comicbook.com,man, I wish we had had the
(36:44):
foresight to snag that domainname years ago.
Writer Kathleen Delgado wrote,There was something different
about it.
The youthful vibe, the quickcuts, and the discussions about
digital identity and cancelculture, even in an early form,
hinted that this production wastrying to do something bold.
It wanted to be more than just ageneric slasher.
(37:04):
It wanted to be relevant, butthe timing, execution, and
behind-the-scenes drama doomedit.
What was supposed to be acontemporary revival ended up
being a strange, unstable, andultimately forgotten experiment.
The movies in the franchise workperfectly in two hours, but in a
serialized format, the pace anddepth of the characters require
much more care, something thatthe adaptations didn't always
(37:28):
get right.
That is your middle ground.
And now we're gonna get to theactually good.
The top tier.
(38:15):
I always just wish it wasMichelson.
Because I wanted Michael Madsenand Mads Michelson to start a
sitcom together where they livetogether called My Two Mads.
My Two Mads is never gonnahappen.
Oh man.
Yeah, he died.
Yeah, he died.
unknown (38:35):
Fuck.
SPEAKER_00 (38:36):
And this is how weird this show got.
Spanish American chef andrestaurateur Jose Andres was
tapped as the series, quote,culinary cannibal consultant,
and advised the crew on properprocedure for preparing human
flesh for consumption.
That's real.
(39:05):
Yep.
Who knows what long pig tasteslike?
It's like getting Rachel Ray totell you how to cook your dog.
She's got all that dog food outthere.
The series premiered on NBC inApril of 2013.
Its first two seasons won theSaturn Awards for Best Network
(39:26):
Television Series, while bothMickelson and Dancy won Best
Actor, with Lawrence FishburningBest Supporting Actor for season
two.
In the third and final season,the show won the inaugural Best
Action Thriller TV Series Award,which sounds extremely specific,
while guest star RichardArmitage won Best Supporting
(39:46):
Actor.
Now there is a list, if you goon their like Wikipedia, there's
an enormous list of awards thatthe show won, or at least was
nominated for, and it'sextensive.
It only won for a handful, eventhough those are impressive.
It was nominated like a thousandtimes for nearly every category.
(40:07):
It's extremely well regarded bycritics.
Brian Fuller originally plannedfor the show to run for seven
seasons.
The first three of originalstuff, the fourth covering Red
Dragon, or Manhunter, dependingon what you like, the fifth
covering Silence of the Lambs,and the sixth covering Hannibal.
And then the seventh would beanother additional original
(40:28):
storyline.
However, after the secondseason, and I'm guessing this is
a lot to do with networkinterference, Fuller stated that
he envisioned the show to runsix seasons all of a sudden,
incorporating the booksdifferently than he originally
planned.
Then season three would usematerials from Hannibal Rising
as well as Red Dragon, and toinclude a different origin story
(40:48):
for Dr.
Lecter.
And that season also eventuallyadapted elements from the book
Hannibal.
He knew the right wings on thewall.
It was not going to go sevenseasons.
He intended to include othercharacters from the book,
including, for instance, ClariceStarling, if he could obtain
rights from MGM, which he neverdid.
(41:08):
In a touch of irony, and ifanybody's ever listened to the
show, and I don't want to haveto explain this again, Gillian
Anderson was cast as Dr.
Lecter psychiatrist.
Kudos to you, sir.
Kudos.
Originally, NBC executives hadpushed for John Cusack or Hugh
Grant to be cast as HannibalLecter.
(41:29):
John okay, John Cusack?
No.
After watching Heretic, I'mkinda like and also like, I
don't know, basically everythingJohn Q I mean, everything if
Hugh Grant has done in the lastlike 15 years.
Okay?
Maybe?
SPEAKER_01 (41:50):
Oh, okay, explain.
SPEAKER_00 (42:20):
Yeah, he's the aweshocks.
Well, he's talking to you,scratching his eyebrow because
he's nervous talking to youboyfriend thing.
SPEAKER_01 (42:34):
Well, yeah.
Spoiler alert.
SPEAKER_00 (42:53):
Wait, which one?
Because he's he's also in theMan from Uncle, and he's great
in that too.
He's the MI6 head in Man fromUncle.
SPEAKER_01 (43:51):
Robin Williams famously did it.
SPEAKER_00 (43:57):
A lot of actors have tried this, yeah.
Fuller originally planned forthe show to run seven seasons,
like we said.
The studio wanted Hugh Grant orJohn Husack, which is
ridiculous.
Even though, like we were justtalking about, Hugh Grant did
have a renaissance, mostly toattract views.
I mean, it wasn't about anythingother than the fact that James
Spader had just started theBlacklist, which is kind of the
(44:19):
template that that NBC waslooking for.
Because the blacklist, who caresif that show was good or not?
It did well.
Spader was in it, and so theykind of figured, let's go with
that.
Interestingly enough, DavidTennett had auditioned for the
role of Hannibal Lecter, and Ireally, really would have liked
to have seen what he did.
(44:40):
2015, yeah.
Fuller really wanted Tennet, buthe thought that Mickelson was
more intimidating, which he'sright.
He would have made it aninteresting lecture, but he's
right.
Mickelson is way moreintimidating and way more
terrifying, actually.
And so they went with Mickelson.
But then on June 22nd, 2015, NBCcanceled Hannibal after three
(45:02):
seasons because nobody watchedit.
You know why?
Here's my guess.
It was on NBC.
That's what I'm getting to.
There was no Peacock.
Peacock didn't exist yet.
(45:22):
Right, but here's the thing.
So you're getting into somethingaccidentally really important
here.
After it got canceled, Fullerinitiated talks with Amazon and
Netflix to pick up the show.
They did have meetings withNetflix, but since during the
run of Hannibal on NBC, therewas no NBC streaming service.
(45:44):
They had signed an exclusivedeal with Amazon, which had
lapsed.
But Netflix decided to pass onit because they thought they
were gonna have to get into likea battle with Amazon and their
exclusive holdings of theiroriginal streaming thing.
They didn't want to get intolike a legal battle with it
because they were gonna have tolike fight Amazon on the excuse
(46:04):
Amazon had the exclusive forthose seasons.
If Netflix had shown newseasons, they couldn't show the
other seasons that had comebefore.
So nothing happened.
So on July 11th, when asked toelaborate, Fuller commented that
Netflix could not renew theseries because Amazon had its
exclusive streaming rights andthat Amazon wanted to renew the
(46:25):
series but wanted an immediatedebut.
But Fuller wanted more time towork on the scripts before shoe
day, which is fair.
He stated that he and theproducers were exploring a
possible feature film to getaround the streaming problems.
So the show, while extremelywell regarded and critically
acclaimed, but on network TV, Ithink failed.
(46:48):
If it had been on somethinglike, I don't know, FX or HBO or
something, it would have worked.
It would have been great, itwould have gone for a long time
and maybe had a movie.
But because it was on mainstreamnetwork TV before Peacock
existed, it failed.
But then there's executiveproducer Martha DeLorentis, yes,
of the DeLorentis'.
(47:09):
She blamed online piracy for theshow's cancellation.
Okay.
Quote (47:15):
When nearly one-third of your audience for Hannibal is
coming from pirated sites, youdon't have to know the calculus
to do the math.
That's an odd statement.
If a show is stolen, it makes itdifficult, if not impossible, to
fairly compensate a crew andkeep a series in production.
That's bullshit.
If it were online, they wouldhave watched it.
We've proven that over and overagain.
(47:35):
But that's that.
We've got one more.
Bates Motel, based on thecharacters from the 1959 novel
Psycho by Robert Block.
And then, of course, obviously,the famous film that aired on A
E, there's your first red flag,from March 18th, 2013 to April
24th, 2020 or 2017.
It was developed by CarltonCughes of Lost and other JJ
(47:59):
Abrams Project's fame, CarrieElrin, and Anthony Cipriano.
Now, on July 5th, 1987, amade-for-television film written
and directed by a guy namedRichard Rothstein, titled Bates
Motel, which is a direct sequelto Psycho, appeared on NBC.
It started Bud Court, LauriePetty of Freddie's Nightmares
(48:22):
fame, and Moses Gunn wasintended to be a pilot for a
proposed TV show that for somereason featured supernatural
elements.
But the series was never pickedup by the net.
I don't have any evidence thatthis was a direct tie into the
baseball tale show on AE, eventhough it was NBC.
(48:42):
NBC Universal owns AE.
I think it's more of a parallelthinking type scenario.
But when this was proposed, AEchose to forego a pilot.
Fuck it.
We love this.
And they opted to go straight toseries, ordering a 10-episode
first season.
All in all, Bass Motel would bethe longest-running original
(49:03):
scripted drama series in thechannel's history.
The first season received a highpraise.
On Metacritic, that season holdsa score of 66 out of 100.
Rotten Tomatoes, the season hasan 84 percentage rating, and the
second and third seasons havevery similar, if not higher.
The fourth season on RottenTomatoes has a 100% positive
(49:24):
rating.
It only went for five seasons,then it kind of ran its course.
That one was canceled, I thinkhonestly, because it just kind
of narrative-wise ran itscourse, but it was considered
one of the greatest shows of thedecade.
Just like Hannibal, Roger Ebertcalled Hannibal the greatest
drama on television when it wason.
This show got incredibleratings, was extremely well
(49:45):
regarded.
So there are times when itworks.
Apparently, though, that onlyhappens at a very small window.
Because most of these are justare they're just bad.
SPEAKER_01 (50:02):
True.
SPEAKER_00 (50:12):
I think the only glaring example that's why I put
them in the order I in which Idid was the Exorcist series.
Because I watched that when itwas on, like when it as it was
coming out, I liked it.
I thought it was good.
And it was a direct sequel tothe original Exorcist movie.
But you're right, I mean thereis more source material, there's
more lore other than just themovies.
(50:34):
In fact, with Hannibal, it kindof ignores the movies.
It just goes straight from thesource material.
The So when it comes to horrormovies adapted into TV, I don't
know.
If it's not a if it's not basedon a bad property or just
straight up a money grab youslap the label on, maybe you can
do something with it.
But most of them don't.
(51:07):
I'm waiting for Hellraiser tothe series.
Then I'll really be interested.
Let's see how you do that shit.
I'm sure they have.
(51:40):
Anyway, well, that's all shewrote.
It was, in fact, murder.
Murder was the case they gaveher.
Oh, that I'd watch.
Oh yeah, no, that there's a showhave waiting to happen.
(52:07):
No, that's brilliant.
So let's let's take theHarbinger of Death, Jessica
Fletcher, and let's put her onin cameos because, like, I
remember I've been watching somemurders you wrote, and Tom
Sellick's Magna PI charactershows up in the show.
They do a bunch ofcross-promotional cameos.
So I'm interested in this.
(53:24):
Nightmares?
Oh.
Five bladed fingers.
SPEAKER_01 (53:42):
We've always said it.
SPEAKER_00 (54:35):
By by that he means I'll tell you later.
Uh no.
Uh what you should you'll getit.
I'll send you a newsletter.
Please, ladies and gentlemen,make sure you have cleaned up
after yourselves to some sort ofa reasonable degree.
Make sure you have cleaned upthe blood, the gore, the
viscera.
Make sure you have covered yourtracks after your bloody
rampages.
Make sure you have uh tippedyour bar staff, your KJs, your
(54:58):
DJs, your podcasters.
Make sure you support your localcomic shops and retailers.
And from Dispatch Ajax, we wouldlike to say Godspeed, fair
wizards.
When television is good, nothing.
Not the theater, not themagazines, or the newspapers,
nothing is better.
But when television is bad,nothing is worse.
I invite each of you to sit downin front of your television set
when your station goes on theair and stay there for a day
without a book, without amagazine, without a newspaper,
(00:21):
without a profit and loss sheetor a rating book to distract
you.
Keep your eyes glued to that setuntil the station signs off.
I can assure you that what youwill observe is a vast
wasteland.
That comes from Newton NormanMinnow.
In a speech given to theNational Association of
(00:42):
Broadcasters Convention on May9th, 1961.
He was the chairman of the FCC.
And now a second quote.
Television.
That's where movies go when theydie.
That's from Bob Hope in hisopening monologue of the Oscars
on March 19, 1953.
There's likely few more fittingmetaphors for today's topic than
(01:05):
of the fate of JenniferCaulfield from A Nightmare on
Elm Street 3, Dream Warriors,which, following the events of
part two, finds Jennifer underthe care of Dr.
Neil Gordon at Weston HillsPsychiatric Hospital.
She, along with Kristen Parker,Will Stanton, Taryn White, and
Joey Kursil, are the last of theElm Street kids, i.e., the only
(01:26):
children stalked by FreddyKrueger left alive.
In that scene, Max, an orderlyat the hospital, warns Jennifer,
who wants to be a TV actress,about watching too much TV, and
she says and says she shouldread a book instead.
She insists on watching to keepher entertained and awake, but
her tiredness gets the best ofher.
In her death scene, she isliterally pulled into a
(01:49):
television by Freddy andsummarily slaughtered.
The reason that is so fitting isbecause we've shown over and
over again that turning horrorfilms into TV shows is a fool's
errand.
Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax.
I'm Skip.
Yes, I did this because I wentdown a rabbit hole of really
(02:12):
strange, sort of in the vein ofour episodes about monsters and
about Tales from the Dark Side,other horror shows that sort of
cropped up during that era.
That's why I discovered thingslike Friday the 13th series,
Freddy's Nightmares, PoltergeistThe Legacy.
(02:33):
And so I thought I would breakdown why, or at least how, most
of those interpretations offranchises, horror franchises
specifically, being turned intotelevision sucks real hard.
Oh, at least two of those aren'trelated.
I'll explain.
There are exceptions, and someof them are legitimately good.
(02:56):
Most of them are recent, buteven the good ones aren't well
known.
We're gonna start with Fridaythe 13th, the series.
It was created by Frank MancusoJr.
and Larry B.
Williams.
The thing is, it was originallycalled The 13th Hour, because
it's not related to Friday the13th at all.
It ran for 72 episodes, which isactually pretty good.
(03:17):
Mancuso Jr.
never intended the show to belinked to Friday the 13th at
all, but the studio wanted toutilize the idea of Friday the
13th, which is that itsymbolizes bad luck and curses.
And so the production companythat headed it up wanted to tie
in Jason's hockey mask into theseries, which is kind of crazy
(03:38):
because that didn't even show upuntil the end of the third
movie.
They kind of dismissed that ifthey're going to have to adopt
this name and this moniker,they're just gonna let it stand
for itself.
Already you're kind of atconflict with your own concept
now because of the interferenceby the studio.
Mancuso Jr.
was afraid that mentioning anyevents from the films would take
the audience away from the worldhe was trying to create.
(04:01):
So the decision to name the showFriday the 13th was because he
believed that a Friday the 13thmoniker would better help to
sell the show to networks.
This was all in syndication,first run syndication.
We talked a little bit aboutthis in our episodes about Star
Trek and about what was it thatuh but like Hercules and Xena
(04:22):
and all that kind of stuff.
Those were all syndication.
Okay.
The first run syndicationdoesn't really exist anymore.
I mean, it does, but only formid-afternoon talk shows.
The first syndication run showswere basically just not produced
by an actual network.
They were done by studios andthen shopped around.
(04:42):
That's how Star Trek, DS9,Voyager, TNG were all first run
syndication.
Enterprise was the first onethat was run again by a network
because UPN still existed backthen.
But in this era, you didn't getyou had no studio support and
you had to sell your show to anetwork.
Even Desi Lu Studios, they did alot of first-round syndication
stuff.
Because back then, productionstudios ran everything.
(05:05):
But they figured if they namedit Friday the 13th, maybe it
would be more appealing to anetwork to pick it up.
Um Right.
(05:27):
I remember checking it out too,like very briefly.
This was around the same time ofthe, you know, the success of
things like Creep Show and Talesfrom the Dark Side, and you
know, later monsters, but therewas a glut of these kinds of
things happening at this point.
(07:56):
That all of the items arecursed.
So they're already kind of likeevoking like needful things kind
of thing, or there are a lot oftropes about this, like you
know, you know, a cabinet ofcuriosities type situation, or
each item in there has its ownstory.
SPEAKER_01 (08:18):
Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00 (08:23):
Mm-hmm.
So then they work together torecover said objects after
they've been bought, and thenreturn them safely to the shop's
vault.
After Lewis's death, his shop isinherited by his niece, Mickey
Foster, who's played by LouiseRoby, and her cousin Ryan
Dalian, played by John D.
Lemay.
(08:43):
They don't want to keep thestore, and they sell off many of
the cursed antiques beforethey're stopped by Jack Marshak,
who is Lewis's childhood friend,a retired stage magician, world
traveler, and occultist, whooriginally collected many of the
antiques before they becamecursed.
It's like the Warren's The NextGeneration.
The Warren's babies.
(09:12):
So the show follows thoseprotagonists as they hunt down
these cursed antiques, which areusually in possession of people
who have discovered their magicpowers and are unwilling to give
them up, and they want to usethem for some sort of nefarious
purpose or whatever.
Every episode they kind of likedo the whole they get it back,
there's an ironic punishment orwhat have you.
Then they get them back and theybring them back to the store
(09:32):
where they put them in a vaultbecause these objects are
oftentimes indestructible.
You can't just throw it in afire or chuck it in the trash.
So they do a Ghostbusters typething and they lock them in a
vault, which is designedspecifically to render the
objects inert in the object'spowers.
The magic that it that theobject generates or uses is no
(09:56):
longer effective.
And you know, and then they havea a big part of it is that they
have a manifest that was writtenby Lewis, who holds a huge list
of all of the things.
Basically, he's just adocumentary and watcher type
character.
Yeah, well, I could go into someof the episodes, but who cares?
The show ran for what threeseasons in syndication.
(10:16):
To be honest, I think the reasonit was canceled was mostly
because they're not in directcontrol of what network buys
them up.
So there's no network comingdown on them saying you're
canceled.
It's just that no one would pickit up again, essentially.
It kind of ran its course.
It wasn't based on Friday the13th.
And Friday the 13th movies werecoming out at that time.
(10:39):
It was a little confusing,people were not into it at that
point.
When that aired, during thatpoint in which that aired, Jason
takes Manhattan had come out in1989.
They did that in Waxwork too,didn't they?
(12:04):
Oh, it's definitelyproto-supernatural, Monster of
the Week stuff.
Like proto, no, what's the GrimWarehouse thirteen or that other
one?
Dresden Files.
But the show kind of ran itscourse.
Uh funny enough though, MancusoJr.
also produced Friday the 13th,part two, all the way through
(12:24):
Friday the 13th, Jason TakesManhattan in 1989.
A year before the series ended.
And some of the actors, likeJohn D.
LeMay, who played Ryan, he wenton to star in Jason Goes to
Hell, The Final Friday, not thesame character.
And one of the guest stars, JohnShepherd, played Tommy Jarvis in
Friday the 13th, A NewBeginning.
(12:46):
And one of the episode directorswas David Cronenberg, who then
also appeared as an actor inJason X.
I know.
It's just like when Cronenbergwas a character in Star Trek.
That's weird.
So we don't have to get into toomuch of the details.
(13:06):
You can see it, it's kind ofonline.
It's a show that happened.
It has nothing to do with JasonVoorhees, it has nothing to do
with Crystal Lake.
But it kind of fits more intothe Halloween 3 season of the
Witch scenario, where these bigfranchises could have done
Monster of the Week stuff.
Halloween didn't need to be justabout Michael Myers.
(13:30):
And in Halloween 3, they kind ofproved that.
Halloween 3 has over time gottena huge cult following, and
Honesty's is more well regardedthan when it came out.
Especially looking back on howmany terrible fucking Michael
Myers movies came out afterthat.
The Halloween series as afranchise could have been great
if it were Monster of the Weekas a movie franchise.
(13:51):
Or at least a slasher of theweek or a horror of the week
type.
Which is what the X-File shouldhave done, by the way.
Yes, in movie form.
If they were going to continuein movie form, they should have
been Monster of the Week, notchasing down this terrible Chris
Carter bullshit that didn't goanywhere and doesn't make any
sense.
That they abandoned and thencame back to, and then ugh.
(14:23):
Right, oh you mean like thefirst X-Res movie?
Sure.
Yeah, that's what it felt like.
Let's move on to.
Oh man, this is unfortunate.
So in preparation for this, Iwatched several episodes of this
(14:45):
yesterday.
Freddy's Nightmare.
I'm sorry, Freddy's Nightmares.
Well, I mean, that's kind of thepremise.
A lot of people refer to it as anightmare on Elm Street the
series, but the official name,and this is so funny, the
official name of the show, asseen on graphics while I was
watching the show, Freddy'sNightmares, Colonel A Nightmare
(15:07):
on Elm Street, Colonel theseries.
How many colons do you need?
unknown (15:14):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (15:16):
As a personal anecdote, this show was an
anthology series, weirdlyenough, from also in First Run
Syndication from October 8th,1988 until March 12th, 1990.
Each episode was introduced byFreddie Krueger, played by
Robert Anglin.
The interesting structure of itis that each episode featured
(15:38):
two stories.
The first half hour would be onestory, the second half hour
would be a different story.
That part really doesn't matter,it's just how they formatted it.
The first episode actuallyfeatures Freddy before the
events of the original Nightmarein Elm Street.
It's directed by Toby Hooper,who of course did Texas Chainsaw
Massacre and sort of kind ofdirected poltergeist, even
(16:02):
though Steel Steven Spielbergwas over his shoulder the entire
time.
And it's really bizarre becauseobviously those movies are
extremely graphic.
They're very violent.
I mean, Johnny Depp explodinginto a column of blood is, I
mean, pretty explicitly violent,but somehow they figured out how
to make it a ready for TV notcensored show where they
(16:26):
actually explore in the firstepisode the crowd mentality, the
uh the the lynch mob that killsFreddie Krueger.
I don't know why you think thatwould work in like a PG format.
That seems a little bizarre tome, but the weird thing is that
the show starts out with showingthe origin of Freddie, which
they have shown, and so when youwatch the show, you'd think
(16:48):
like, oh, this whole show isgoing to be the origin of how we
get to where we are later.
And if that show were madetoday, that's exactly what it
would be.
Instead, only a handful ofepisodes from then on actually
feature Freddy.
It's essentially an anthologyshow.
That's exactly what he does.
He becomes the Crypt Keeper.
(17:08):
He introduces these and hascommentary between act breaks
and introducing each episode.
It was produced by NewlineTelevision and Stone Television.
It was originally distributed byLorimar Telepictures, which, if
you're Jake and Isaac, we haveseen the title cards for that a
thousand times.
After Lorimar Telepictures wasacquired by Wonder Brothers in
(17:29):
1989, War Brothers assumed thesyndication rights.
Then in 1996, Warner Brothersacquired Newline Cinema, so they
held both the production anddistribution rights.
So if they wanted to make moreepisodes and put them out, they
were the only people who could.
So New Line Cinema, which hadoriginally put out Nightmare on
Elm Street, they didn't want tomake a series with a regular
(17:51):
cast of characters interactingwith Freddie because they felt
like, well, he's going to killthem.
What's the conflict there?
That does make sense.
But they also didn't want to doan anthology series in its
normal sense.
So they decided to do theCryptkeeper type approach
instead.
Each episode does take adifferent story, but they all
(18:12):
take place, well, at leastoriginally, take place in the
town of Springwood, Ohio, and onElm Street.
I watched an episode the otherday with it actually has a fuck
ton of people in this show.
You know what the funny thingis?
I was going to say that exactphrase.
(18:33):
God damn it.
Yes, with Lori Petty as a as atrack star in high school in
competition with, well, anotherbig 80s and 90s bit actress.
Name we can't remember now, butthe entire premise is that it's
something about how her mom wasan athlete and died during, I
(18:54):
guess, her whatever her.
Okay, well, you say that.
Lori Petty somehow finds thiscrystal amulet thing.
You do randomly, right?
She every time she like looksthrough it and then like
daydreams, whatever shedaydreams about, which is
(19:16):
usually revenge plots, theyactually happen, but you don't
see, just like with Nightmare onElm Street movies, they happen
in their mind, and then thatperson ends up dying.
At one point, she like wants herhistory teacher or whatever to
shut up, and then so during herlittle spell generates cotton
(19:36):
that keeps coming out of hismouth, and he can't get it out
fast enough to keep fromchoking, and he dies on the
floor.
The logic is fast and loose.
Let's just say that.
Then hilariously, in the in theepisode, her rival is faster
than her.
She beats her at like the Idon't know, 100 meter or
whatever.
They don't really say.
(19:57):
When she gets this amulet, shefinally has the confidence to
win and to beat her rival.
And then at one point, herboyfriend takes away the crystal
because he's like, Well, I knowyou can do this on your own.
And so they do the next trackmeet, which is supposed to be
the trials to make varsity orwhatever.
(20:18):
And she and her rival race, andyou know, they have a ribbon at
the end of the race, and thatribbon, because she doesn't have
the crystal and because she'sdone certain things that have
killed people, it takes her headoff.
She went straight into it andshe gets decapitated.
Which, of course, is in her mindbecause that's how the logic of
(20:41):
Nightmare on Elm Street works.
When they cut to real life,she's actually fallen and broken
her neck on some sort of likefootball training equipment or
whatever.
It didn't really make a lot ofsense, but I see where they were
going.
They were trying to say that inthe Friday the 13th movies,
there is a logic setup.
I don't think it's very wellfollowed in any of those movies,
(21:05):
but there is a logic setup, andwithin it, you can play with
these different concepts andideas that have nothing to do
with Freddy.
Unfortunately, the show is verypoorly regarded.
It's considered one of the worsthorror TV shows of all time.
No one really likes it, no onewatched it.
(21:26):
I didn't know it existed.
Basically, it was just bad.
And most of it had nothing to dowith Freddy.
However, there were a lot ofreally cool guest stars in the
show.
There were people like MariskaHarkaday from Law and Order SVU,
John Cameron Mitchell, who diduh Headbug in the Angry Inch,
Brad Pitt, yeah, he was inthere.
(21:48):
Obviously Lori Petty, MarcoLemo, who was Gold Ducot on DS9,
Sandal Bergman from Conan, who'salso from Overland Park, by the
way.
Jeffrey Combs, George Lazenby, aJames Bond, in one movie.
That fucking counts.
It's actually a pretty goodJames Bond movie.
(22:08):
Well, it's an entertaining JamesBond movie.
I don't know if it's good.
SPEAKER_01 (22:13):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (22:17):
At least 25, yeah.
So, John Kenneth Muir in hisbook Terror Television places
Freddy's Nightmares as the worstof the horror television
programs between 1970 and 1999.
I know that's very specific.
He found the series havinguninteresting stories, and that
its production was so low thatit appeared to be homemade and
(22:40):
it completely wasted the talentsof Robert Angbland, which I kind
of, after watching it, I have toagree with.
It's extremely low budget.
It's do you ever see Overdrawnat the Memory Bank with Raoul
Julia that they did on a MSD 3K?
It's in that vein.
It's really, really, really,really low budget.
(23:08):
Not good.
I tried, it's bad.
It's it's hard to watch.
Especially since they don't, youknow, they start off with the
Freddy thing and then don'tcontinue it.
Then don't do it.
You know what I mean?
Don't make your first episodethe epic adventures of Freddy
Krueger, and then stop.
And even that episode doesn'twork.
(23:28):
It's not good.
If you think the other nightmarein Elm Street movies are low
budget and low rent, you'venever seen the floor.
Alright, the next is PoltergeistThe Legacy.
Oh boy.
I have spent a long timewatching this.
Yeah, it sucks.
It ran on Showtime from April21st, 1996 to August 21st, 1998,
(23:52):
and then later on the Sci-FiChannel.
It basically follows members ofa secret society known as The
Legacy and their efforts toprotect mankind from occult
danger.
So we're talking Hickman'sShield.
We're talking The Watchers.
Also syndicated, but onShowtime, after its third
(24:15):
season, it was canceled, butSci-Fi Channel picked it up and
continued for another season.
The idea is that the rulinghouse is like their main base or
whatever, and it's located inLondon.
And in the sixth century, thelegacy was established to
collect dangerous and ancientknowledge and artifacts, solve
paranormal problems, and protecthumanity from supernatural
(24:36):
evils.
Over time, the membershipexpanded around the world.
I mean, there's a lot of these.
I mean, maybe back then it wasbreaking new ground, or at
least, I don't know, relativelynew, but we've seen this shit a
lot in key culture over the lastlike uh.
(25:00):
Good question.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Except Freddie Symmares wasabout Freddie Krueger.
He was at least involved.
Jason Voorhees never showed upin Friday the thirteenth.
(25:57):
Though it is the only one inthat sense of that era that
actually did tie into itsoriginal source material.
So I don't know what that says.
But Freddy's Nightmares at leastadhere to the branding in a way
that instead of just beingco-opted by the brand.
And Robert England was in everyepisode, at least as the host.
(26:20):
I mean, at least it has that,but it is also worse than either
of those other shows.
It's not good.
No.
When it comes to uh PoltergeistThe Legacy, it did get
cancelled, obviously, but therewere talks where Sci-Fi Channel
(26:41):
was gonna pick it up in 2000.
In fact, they had put out therethat they they were putting a
possible show out calledPoltergeist The Beginning, and
they started pre-production inlike 2001, but they never
materialized, and Sci-Fiabandoned it in 2002, which it's
around the time they were inre-production for Battlestar
(27:02):
Galactica, so I think they chosewisely with that.
Now that's not to say that everyversion of this is bad.
Sometimes horror movies turnedinto TV shows actually work, at
least to some extent.
For instance, The Exorcist TheSeries, created by Jeremy Slater
for Fox, is a direct sequel tothe original 1973 film and
(27:26):
ignores the film's, let's saytroubled sequels at best.
Alfonso Herrera and Ben Danielsstar as a pair of exorcists who
investigate cases of demonicpossession.
It's kind of a cop body movietype scenario, but for
exorcists.
(27:50):
Yes.
Well, and they also referencecharacters in the first film.
Because I've seen it.
I actually really I personallyenjoyed the show.
The first season, at least.
Max Vonsido's character, theyactually referenced, but he's
dead, you know, the in in theshow.
Well, uh not not really.
(28:11):
I mean it's like, well, itdoesn't really matter.
It premiered in September of2016.
The second season premiered inSeptember 2017, each having 10
episodes.
But unfortunately, before thedue date of its renewal, it was
canceled in 2018.
It was conceived as, and this isa quote from Jeremy Slater, who
(28:34):
wrote the pilot quote, apropulsive, serialized
psychological thriller followingtwo very different men tackling
one family's case of horrifyingdemonic possession and current
confronting the face of trueevil.
It actually had rave reviews andwon a bunch of awards, but it
was on Fox, on Network TV, andon Friday nights, which is kind
(28:59):
of I know what Fox thinks theywere doing because the X-Viles
originally was on Friday nights,and that worked, but since then
that has not been the way thatthose kinds of shows work.
It was 30 years before.
In the second season, eventhough the first season it was
okay ratings-wise, the secondseason averaged very, very
(29:20):
poorly.
It rated very poorly on theNelson.
Who even uses that anymore?
But basically they got rid ofit.
But that's Fox for you.
I mean, because the rest ofdevelopment got canceled after
three seasons, even though itwon fuck tons of awards.
No one knew it existed.
Which is actually going to be athread throughout the next of
these shows.
Scream the TV series, developedby Jill Lotegvol.
(29:45):
Scream the TV series, developedby Jill Blotovegel, Dan Dworkin,
and Jay Batty for MTV, and thenBrett Matthews for VH1.
Boy, we're gonna have to getinto that.
Was a series produced byDimension Television.
And MTV.
In its first two seasons, it wasset in a fictional version of
the town of Lakewood, Colorado.
(30:07):
And it followed the travails ofEmma Duvall, a teenager who was
linked to horrific events in thetown's past.
The killer's obsession starts totake hold after a brutal murder
in the present.
Emma finds herself in the centerof the conflict.
I mean, it's kind of, you know,you know how it goes.
Whatever.
(30:27):
That's two seasons.
SPEAKER_01 (30:35):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (30:41):
Oh boy, are we gonna get to this?
Yes, I'm gonna get to it in justa second.
I promise.
Then let's go off.
It also has a third season,which follows the story of a guy
named Dion Elliott, a localfootball star in Atlanta, who's
tormented by other things he'sdone in his past, yada yada
yada.
(31:01):
The show originally premiered inthe summer of 2015 and was
renewed for a second season veryquickly.
Then in November of 2015, it wasannounced that the showrunners
would be stepping down due tocreative differences.
This is a red flag.
Michael Gantz and RichardRichard Register doesn't sound
like a real name, replaced themfor the second season.
(31:22):
And then in October 2016, MTVrenewed the series for a
six-episode third season andannounced the showrunners would
be replaced again.
And in April 2017, MTV announcedthat Queen Latifa would be an
executive producer for the thirdseason through her production
company Flavor UnitEntertainment.
(31:45):
I did not know that was a thing.
It was announced then also thatthe series would transition into
being an anthology series, andthis time on VH1, and be renamed
Scream Resurrection.
All of these are good signs.
So audiences kind of knew fromthe first trailer that the show
(32:06):
was doomed, because let's behonest, the Scream Mask is now
one of the most iconic horrorvisuals, right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:16):
Ghostface.
SPEAKER_00 (32:39):
That doesn't work.
So for some reason, MTV made acreative decision to introduce a
new killer with a new mask.
Not the ghost face mask.
You can't hear the face palm,but the original screen
(33:02):
director, Wes Craven, says helet MTV use his name in
association with the series inthe form of executive producer,
but he actually had littleinvolvement.
Initially, he expressed hisapproval of the redesign of the
mask and hinted at its originsand possible plot significance.
So, like what they were doing isthey were going out there and
they were they were touting theidea that the reason the mask
(33:26):
was different had to do with theplot that was to unfold.
That didn't work, and no onecared.
And also, I don't necessarilythink that it was genuine that
that was that that was theiractual reasoning.
Initially, Craven expressed hisapproval of the redesign.
(33:46):
However, he eventually walkedthat back when critical reviews
of the show became less thancheery.
Quote, in general, we didn'tmess with the mask at all.
It's something we didn't try tochange.
When Freddie Krueger and the NewNightmare, I felt I probably
should have stuck with theoriginal face, because they
changed his face a little bitfor New Nightmare.
(34:06):
With Scream, we just let GhostFace be Ghost Face.
Sometimes you realize thatsomething's not broken, so don't
fix it.
And that was the course we tookon all Scream films.
Don't mess with it.
It's perfect.
I knew it in my bones thatGhostface was a unique find, and
I had to convince the studiothat they had to go an extra
(34:26):
mile to get it.
And the reason for that is itwas created by a New York-based
novelty company called Fun Worldin 1991.
The original what we can nowcall Ghostface mask was first
conceived as a Halloween costumemask, obviously, by a woman
named Bridget Slayerton Linden.
And the look was mostly inspiredby the ghosts from some of those
(34:50):
old 1930s black and white MaxFleischer cartoons, and a little
bit from Betty Boop.
It was then mass-produced foryears as part of what Funworld
called the Fantastic Faces Pack,and then later licensed by the
Weinstein Company, who producedScream.
Now, Funworld VP Alan Gellerclaims that he created it
(35:12):
himself.
Okay.
Well, it just sounds like anasshole trying to like discredit
a woman.
MTV insists that the change wassimply a creative decision to
take the franchise into, quote,a darker, more modern direction.
This comes from Mina Lefebvre inan interview with Entertainment
Weekly, quote, if the screenmovie mask was the more plastic
(35:34):
version, this one is a moreorganic looking and frankly
darker version.
So it sounds like PR.
Rumors persist that MTV justdidn't want to pay for the
licensing from either Funworldor through the Weinstein
Company.
Yep, yeah.
Yeah, something rings true.
Now, season one of the show got52% on Rotten Tomatoes, 57%
(35:58):
score on Metacred.
Not bad, really, I guess.
No, not great.
Season two received a 92% onRotten Tomatoes.
Which is incredible.
(36:23):
Yeah.
But the problem was that nobodyactually watched the show.
That's kind of the through linethrough all of these series.
Unfortunately, for season three,where they had more upheaval, it
got a 40% Rotten Tomatoes, soit's not great.
In an article on comicbook.com,man, I wish we had had the
(36:44):
foresight to snag that domainname years ago.
Writer Kathleen Delgado wrote,There was something different
about it.
The youthful vibe, the quickcuts, and the discussions about
digital identity and cancelculture, even in an early form,
hinted that this production wastrying to do something bold.
It wanted to be more than just ageneric slasher.
(37:04):
It wanted to be relevant, butthe timing, execution, and
behind-the-scenes drama doomedit.
What was supposed to be acontemporary revival ended up
being a strange, unstable, andultimately forgotten experiment.
The movies in the franchise workperfectly in two hours, but in a
serialized format, the pace anddepth of the characters require
much more care, something thatthe adaptations didn't always
(37:28):
get right.
That is your middle ground.
And now we're gonna get to theactually good.
The top tier.
(38:15):
I always just wish it wasMichelson.
Because I wanted Michael Madsenand Mads Michelson to start a
sitcom together where they livetogether called My Two Mads.
My Two Mads is never gonnahappen.
Oh man.
Yeah, he died.
Yeah, he died.
unknown (38:35):
Fuck.
SPEAKER_00 (38:36):
And this is how weird this show got.
Spanish American chef andrestaurateur Jose Andres was
tapped as the series, quote,culinary cannibal consultant,
and advised the crew on properprocedure for preparing human
flesh for consumption.
That's real.
(39:05):
Yep.
Who knows what long pig tasteslike?
It's like getting Rachel Ray totell you how to cook your dog.
She's got all that dog food outthere.
The series premiered on NBC inApril of 2013.
Its first two seasons won theSaturn Awards for Best Network
(39:26):
Television Series, while bothMickelson and Dancy won Best
Actor, with Lawrence FishburningBest Supporting Actor for season
two.
In the third and final season,the show won the inaugural Best
Action Thriller TV Series Award,which sounds extremely specific,
while guest star RichardArmitage won Best Supporting
(39:46):
Actor.
Now there is a list, if you goon their like Wikipedia, there's
an enormous list of awards thatthe show won, or at least was
nominated for, and it'sextensive.
It only won for a handful, eventhough those are impressive.
It was nominated like a thousandtimes for nearly every category.
(40:07):
It's extremely well regarded bycritics.
Brian Fuller originally plannedfor the show to run for seven
seasons.
The first three of originalstuff, the fourth covering Red
Dragon, or Manhunter, dependingon what you like, the fifth
covering Silence of the Lambs,and the sixth covering Hannibal.
And then the seventh would beanother additional original
(40:28):
storyline.
However, after the secondseason, and I'm guessing this is
a lot to do with networkinterference, Fuller stated that
he envisioned the show to runsix seasons all of a sudden,
incorporating the booksdifferently than he originally
planned.
Then season three would usematerials from Hannibal Rising
as well as Red Dragon, and toinclude a different origin story
(40:48):
for Dr.
Lecter.
And that season also eventuallyadapted elements from the book
Hannibal.
He knew the right wings on thewall.
It was not going to go sevenseasons.
He intended to include othercharacters from the book,
including, for instance, ClariceStarling, if he could obtain
rights from MGM, which he neverdid.
(41:08):
In a touch of irony, and ifanybody's ever listened to the
show, and I don't want to haveto explain this again, Gillian
Anderson was cast as Dr.
Lecter psychiatrist.
Kudos to you, sir.
Kudos.
Originally, NBC executives hadpushed for John Cusack or Hugh
Grant to be cast as HannibalLecter.
(41:29):
John okay, John Cusack?
No.
After watching Heretic, I'mkinda like and also like, I
don't know, basically everythingJohn Q I mean, everything if
Hugh Grant has done in the lastlike 15 years.
Okay?
Maybe?
SPEAKER_01 (41:50):
Oh, okay, explain.
SPEAKER_00 (42:20):
Yeah, he's the aweshocks.
Well, he's talking to you,scratching his eyebrow because
he's nervous talking to youboyfriend thing.
SPEAKER_01 (42:34):
Well, yeah.
Spoiler alert.
SPEAKER_00 (42:53):
Wait, which one?
Because he's he's also in theMan from Uncle, and he's great
in that too.
He's the MI6 head in Man fromUncle.
SPEAKER_01 (43:51):
Robin Williams famously did it.
SPEAKER_00 (43:57):
A lot of actors have tried this, yeah.
Fuller originally planned forthe show to run seven seasons,
like we said.
The studio wanted Hugh Grant orJohn Husack, which is
ridiculous.
Even though, like we were justtalking about, Hugh Grant did
have a renaissance, mostly toattract views.
I mean, it wasn't about anythingother than the fact that James
Spader had just started theBlacklist, which is kind of the
(44:19):
template that that NBC waslooking for.
Because the blacklist, who caresif that show was good or not?
It did well.
Spader was in it, and so theykind of figured, let's go with
that.
Interestingly enough, DavidTennett had auditioned for the
role of Hannibal Lecter, and Ireally, really would have liked
to have seen what he did.
(44:40):
2015, yeah.
Fuller really wanted Tennet, buthe thought that Mickelson was
more intimidating, which he'sright.
He would have made it aninteresting lecture, but he's
right.
Mickelson is way moreintimidating and way more
terrifying, actually.
And so they went with Mickelson.
But then on June 22nd, 2015, NBCcanceled Hannibal after three
(45:02):
seasons because nobody watchedit.
You know why?
Here's my guess.
It was on NBC.
That's what I'm getting to.
There was no Peacock.
Peacock didn't exist yet.
(45:22):
Right, but here's the thing.
So you're getting into somethingaccidentally really important
here.
After it got canceled, Fullerinitiated talks with Amazon and
Netflix to pick up the show.
They did have meetings withNetflix, but since during the
run of Hannibal on NBC, therewas no NBC streaming service.
(45:44):
They had signed an exclusivedeal with Amazon, which had
lapsed.
But Netflix decided to pass onit because they thought they
were gonna have to get into likea battle with Amazon and their
exclusive holdings of theiroriginal streaming thing.
They didn't want to get intolike a legal battle with it
because they were gonna have tolike fight Amazon on the excuse
(46:04):
Amazon had the exclusive forthose seasons.
If Netflix had shown newseasons, they couldn't show the
other seasons that had comebefore.
So nothing happened.
So on July 11th, when asked toelaborate, Fuller commented that
Netflix could not renew theseries because Amazon had its
exclusive streaming rights andthat Amazon wanted to renew the
(46:25):
series but wanted an immediatedebut.
But Fuller wanted more time towork on the scripts before shoe
day, which is fair.
He stated that he and theproducers were exploring a
possible feature film to getaround the streaming problems.
So the show, while extremelywell regarded and critically
acclaimed, but on network TV, Ithink failed.
(46:48):
If it had been on somethinglike, I don't know, FX or HBO or
something, it would have worked.
It would have been great, itwould have gone for a long time
and maybe had a movie.
But because it was on mainstreamnetwork TV before Peacock
existed, it failed.
But then there's executiveproducer Martha DeLorentis, yes,
of the DeLorentis'.
(47:09):
She blamed online piracy for theshow's cancellation.
Okay.
Quote (47:15):
When nearly one-third of your audience for Hannibal is
coming from pirated sites, youdon't have to know the calculus
to do the math.
That's an odd statement.
If a show is stolen, it makes itdifficult, if not impossible, to
fairly compensate a crew andkeep a series in production.
That's bullshit.
If it were online, they wouldhave watched it.
We've proven that over and overagain.
(47:35):
But that's that.
We've got one more.
Bates Motel, based on thecharacters from the 1959 novel
Psycho by Robert Block.
And then, of course, obviously,the famous film that aired on A
E, there's your first red flag,from March 18th, 2013 to April
24th, 2020 or 2017.
It was developed by CarltonCughes of Lost and other JJ
(47:59):
Abrams Project's fame, CarrieElrin, and Anthony Cipriano.
Now, on July 5th, 1987, amade-for-television film written
and directed by a guy namedRichard Rothstein, titled Bates
Motel, which is a direct sequelto Psycho, appeared on NBC.
It started Bud Court, LauriePetty of Freddie's Nightmares
(48:22):
fame, and Moses Gunn wasintended to be a pilot for a
proposed TV show that for somereason featured supernatural
elements.
But the series was never pickedup by the net.
I don't have any evidence thatthis was a direct tie into the
baseball tale show on AE, eventhough it was NBC.
(48:42):
NBC Universal owns AE.
I think it's more of a parallelthinking type scenario.
But when this was proposed, AEchose to forego a pilot.
Fuck it.
We love this.
And they opted to go straight toseries, ordering a 10-episode
first season.
All in all, Bass Motel would bethe longest-running original
(49:03):
scripted drama series in thechannel's history.
The first season received a highpraise.
On Metacritic, that season holdsa score of 66 out of 100.
Rotten Tomatoes, the season hasan 84 percentage rating, and the
second and third seasons havevery similar, if not higher.
The fourth season on RottenTomatoes has a 100% positive
(49:24):
rating.
It only went for five seasons,then it kind of ran its course.
That one was canceled, I thinkhonestly, because it just kind
of narrative-wise ran itscourse, but it was considered
one of the greatest shows of thedecade.
Just like Hannibal, Roger Ebertcalled Hannibal the greatest
drama on television when it wason.
This show got incredibleratings, was extremely well
(49:45):
regarded.
So there are times when itworks.
Apparently, though, that onlyhappens at a very small window.
Because most of these are justare they're just bad.
SPEAKER_01 (50:02):
True.
SPEAKER_00 (50:12):
I think the only glaring example that's why I put
them in the order I in which Idid was the Exorcist series.
Because I watched that when itwas on, like when it as it was
coming out, I liked it.
I thought it was good.
And it was a direct sequel tothe original Exorcist movie.
But you're right, I mean thereis more source material, there's
more lore other than just themovies.
(50:34):
In fact, with Hannibal, it kindof ignores the movies.
It just goes straight from thesource material.
The So when it comes to horrormovies adapted into TV, I don't
know.
If it's not a if it's not basedon a bad property or just
straight up a money grab youslap the label on, maybe you can
do something with it.
But most of them don't.
(51:07):
I'm waiting for Hellraiser tothe series.
Then I'll really be interested.
Let's see how you do that shit.
I'm sure they have.
(51:40):
Anyway, well, that's all shewrote.
It was, in fact, murder.
Murder was the case they gaveher.
Oh, that I'd watch.
Oh yeah, no, that there's a showhave waiting to happen.
(52:07):
No, that's brilliant.
So let's let's take theHarbinger of Death, Jessica
Fletcher, and let's put her onin cameos because, like, I
remember I've been watching somemurders you wrote, and Tom
Sellick's Magna PI charactershows up in the show.
They do a bunch ofcross-promotional cameos.
So I'm interested in this.
(53:24):
Nightmares?
Oh.
Five bladed fingers.
SPEAKER_01 (53:42):
We've always said it.
SPEAKER_00 (54:35):
By by that he means I'll tell you later.
Uh no.
Uh what you should you'll getit.
I'll send you a newsletter.
Please, ladies and gentlemen,make sure you have cleaned up
after yourselves to some sort ofa reasonable degree.
Make sure you have cleaned upthe blood, the gore, the
viscera.
Make sure you have covered yourtracks after your bloody
rampages.
Make sure you have uh tippedyour bar staff, your KJs, your
(54:58):
DJs, your podcasters.
Make sure you support your localcomic shops and retailers.
And from Dispatch Ajax, we wouldlike to say Godspeed, fair
wizards.
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Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.