Matthew Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Shana Mlawski, and Matthew Wrather overthink your listener feedback.
Want new episodes of the Overthinking It Podcast to download automatically? Subscribe in iTunes! (Or grab the podcast RSS feed directly.)
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment, use the contact form, email us or call (203) 285-6401 to leave a voicemail.
My favorite “oh, it’s that guy!” moments are when I see a Broadway actor in a minor role on a TV show. I actually remember watching that episode of Smallville with Amy Adams.
My favorite “that guy from that thing” is Glenn Morshower, AKA “that general/cop/agent from a bazillion movies and TV shows.” Scroll through his credits on IMDB and be amazed at the number of times a rank appears in his characters’ names:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0607703/
In this regard, he is rivaled only by Michael Ironside, AKA Captain Michael Ironside of the USS Ironside.
Thanks for taking two of my questions. There was a lot of topics covered, which left me with lots of things I wanted to say, but maybe I will forget some of it because it is the middle of the night.
I had intended the Sherlock Holmes question as a jumping off point for a classic Overthinking It comedy make-em-up session where you come up with humorous, facetious pop culture ideas. Instead, you took it seriously and provided substantive conversation like a bunch of jerks. I actually started writing a pilot that was sort of a gender flipped Sherlock Holmes. I say “sort of” because it was overtly a gender flip of Zero Effect, which is itself a takeoff of Sherlock Holmes. However, I didn’t finish it because, combined with my spec Psych I wrote, I realized I am bad at writing mysteries. Then I wrote a novel about a lady private detective because I didn’t learn my lesson.
I don’t remember if her name was ever actually stated when discussing Elementary, but Joan Watson is played by Lucy Liu, future robot. I haven’t seem Elementary, but I am curious about it, because I tend to very much like Sherlock stuff, and have seen pretty much everything, including the movie where he teams up with Alan Arkin as Sigmund Freud.
Speaking of Lucy Liu and Sherlock Holmes, I don’t know if it happened in Star Trek, but I do know that Professor Moriarty showed up out of a holodeck on Futurama, along with Attila the Hun and Evil Lincoln, which ties in to the Lincoln conversation.
Let us not forget the Prime Suspect remake in America with Maria Bello and that hat she wore.
There is no such thing as a “good Jumanji.” Also, Robin Williams definitely had a beard when he came back from the board game world. I mean, he couldn’t shave in there, and he’s Robin Williams.
Amy Adams was also on TV on multiple occasions on The Office, where she played Jim’s short-lived girlfriend.
Since I’ve watched so many TV show and movies, there are a million “that guy” actors I’ve grown an affinity for, but to take this idea on a slightly different track, there were two appearances made my folks on Law and Order I enjoyed. First, Stephen Colbert was a bad guy on an episode, in a pre-Colbert Report world. It still blew my mind when I saw him. I think it was from when he was also on Strangers with Candy (which had an appearance from the bass player in Pavement, which was awesome in its own right). Second, Michael C. Maronna aka Big Pete from Pete and Pete was also a bad guy once.
In regards to Community, I was of the mind that Harmon should pick off where the show left off, particularly since, you know, Chevy Chase isn’t on the show anymore. But then Harmon made those comments that completely excoriated the fourth season, and I starting thinking that maybe it would be best for him to try and eschew it, if only for the sake of his seemingly tenuous mental and emotional well-being.
We all know at this point that Kanye and Kim named their child after their favorite Elijah Wood movie.
I wrote something recently that may veer into the “Fan Fic” realm, but, as somebody who is at least tangentially within the world of TV script writing, I get to call things “spec scripts” and “pilots” and such. Anyway, in the Simpsons episode “Who Shot Mr. Burns Part 2” at the beginning of the episode they reference the Dallas shower thing that Belinkie mentioned, where Smithers is dreaming that Mr. Burns hasn’t been shot. His dream then turns into an episode of a show called “Speedway Squad” where he and Burns are detectives on the hot rod circuit in 1965. I wrote a pilot for it. However, I feel vindicated because one of the guys who wrote that episode agreed to read it.
I do believe that is everything I had to say. This was a fine potpourri episode. Kudos on being able to keep it together and going strong for five years. My podcast ended because of logistical issues that probably have hindered the OTI podcast in the past, but since it was just two people that led to it falling apart. So, if I had any podcast advice to give to that one person, it would be have more than two people involved.
I just realized an excellent source of entertaining actor appearances is Mystery Science Theater 300. This is more about seeing any actor you recognize in a less than stellar movie, which happens more often than you might think on that show. And by “any actor” I mean Donald Pleasance. Puma Man!
I accidentally shorted MST3K a zero, and felt the need to make amends. Donald Pleasance is also in Warriors of the Lost World.
That seems like good podcasting advice Chris – for some reason, I picture it as building a superteam. If your Justice League only has Superman and Batman, it might be an awful lot of work week-by-week.
The gritty reboot of Felicity is called Alias.
If you found the concept of Sherlock being done with a Truman Show style framework, perhaps I could recommend the uniformly excellent BBC ‘Jekyll’ which is ripe for over-thinking, and just plain good.
In an interesting twist (at least for me), Christopher Meloni is my ‘Oh, that guy!’ from the HBO classic: Oz (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), rather than SVU, which is what I assume most people remember him from.
Slightly off-topic, but in the spirit of mashups / fanfic: I was wondering how often you considered having guests on the podcast? I keep thinking that http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/ would be the perfect guest to have on. I was also thinking Fenzel (if I recall correctly) occasionally makes reference to Merlin Mann, who would be a perfect guest for any number of topics.
There would probably be a considerable amount of cross-over in audience interest areas between Overthinkers and those two potential guest’s followings.
The Sherlock / Truman Show idea reminded me of a story in Neil Gaiman’s _Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?_ in which we learn that Bruce Wayne is insane, and all the supervillian crimefighting business has been an elaborate charade put on by Alfred and his actor friends to humor Bruce and keep him occupied.
That’s interesting. Recently, there was an episode of The Simpsons entitled “The Dark Knight Court” where Mr. Burns decides he wants to be a costumed vigilante “Fruit Bat Man.” So, Smithers goes around paying people to let Burns “foil crimes.” The episode also features a guest appearance by Janet Reno as herself.
I wonder if this was at all inspired by Gaiman’s story, because Gaiman appeared as himself in a recent episode as well called “The Book Job.”
There is a female Sherlock in Doctor Who!
The name of Kanye/Kardashian’s prophecy child of doom would OBVIOUSLY be Yeezus. That is all.
Belinkie said it would be cool if there were some 1930s version of The Avengers to mashup with the Marvel/Whedon superheroes and the 1960s wacky spies Steed & Peel (starring Macnee & Diana Rigg or Fiennes & Thurman).
Well actually, there was a singular “Avenger” with his own pulp mag from 1939-42, one season of a radio show from 41-42, and a few revivals in the form of novels and comics in the 1970s and 1980s. Like Doc Savage, The Avenger had a handful of sidekicks with their own specialties. As a group they were called “Justice Inc.”, but the pulps, radio show, novels & comics were usually promoted as “The Avenger.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenger_(character)
Olderthinking it,
Rob
Re: fanfic, I’m still working on Little Heist in the Big Woods, in which Pa assembles a crew to break into Grandpa’s root cellar and boost all that gold he got from running gambling hells in Chicago. Planning to put that in an anthology with my Joseph Conrad fanfic/retcon/mashup “Lord Jimi”, and biographical fanfic “Agnes Moorehead – Spy Smasher.”
SHANA! I was going to say Rene Aberjonois!!!! He played bit parts on more than one Star Trek series, then got the regular role of Odo on Deep Space Nine. He weaves in and out of his roles seamlessly. He was also the skeleton in The Last Unicorn. Heart.
So then my other, Oh, That Guy! actor is Dylan Baker.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0048414/
He can go from an exceptionally empathetic military adviser (Thirteen Days) to a perverted sociopath (The Good Wife) without missing a beat. But I never friggin’ remember his name.
Keith David is the voice of Goliath in Gargoyles, folks. Woot. I also love him in Volcano.
I agree that if the character of Sherlock was switched to a woman, it would lead to a lot of difficult writing to do and absorb- the sexism in the system would be difficult to realistically portray without making Sherlock herself come across as helpless or something; likewise, since part of the character is the entirely meticulous and analytic mind, the emotional disconnect would fall too easily into the stereotypes and tropes of cold-hearted “bitches” and harpies that only care about themselves and their own interests. Which yeah, runs opposite of the “all women are emotional blobs” stereotypes, but both exist, and I could see that happening easily. And also, I’m sure that any fan criticism would probably devolve into visceral misogyny and sexism that would probably be worthy of vomit bags.
Willow+Little Miss Sunshine+Inception.
Fenzel, your “reboot” sounds a lot like Rise of the Guardians, except with cereal characters instead of holiday figures.
SHANAAA! Didn’t you know? They’re rebooting Sailor Moon in Japan right now, for serious! Naoke Takeuchi is basically helping them write the new episodes of the show- she and the animation company, Kodansha, have been dropping lines about it at cons and stuff for a few months, ever since the 20th anniversary celebrations they had all over Japan earlier this year (God, I can’t believe it’s 20 years old… ugh…).
I think since the Highlander reboot has been started and stopped for quite some time, that should get it for reals.
K-name: Kahleesi. It’s been done, and I wonder if they already did it. http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2013/06/26/2459399/
*Naoko