The Toy Department – Episode 399

In Episode 399, Madden and Kolsky prepare to overcome a late recording time and Derek’s long week before diving into:

  • The latest from The Challenge: Battle of the Eras (1:50), CT falling, Laurel spiraling and whether the 40th season is living up to expectations so far…
  • The Alex Garland film Civil War (25:50) — how it is ultimately just a movie about photo-journalism and whether it leaves things on the table by not wading deeper into more significant themes…
  • Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber’s rote Netflix rich-people-and-murder drama (35:35) and whether its insignificance hurts its watchability…
  • Peacock’s Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist (41:50) and our hosts curiously split views on the end product…
  • The spectacular Alex Gibney documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (46:55), all the wonderful tidbits it delivers on one of the greatest television shows of all time and the price of genius…
  • Homework for next week (57:50), including: another episode of The Challenge: Battle of the Eras, actually watching the film Challengers, Netflix’s new action flick Rebel Ridge, Max’s new DC Comics effort The Penguin and a check-in on the second season of FX’s The Old Man…

The Toy Department – Episode 113

In Episode 113, Derek Madden teaches Matt Kolsky about the history of One Shining Moment before they discuss a variety of television entertainment, including:

  • Judd Apatow’s Garry Shandling documentary on HBO (5:10), The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, which both guys found gripping and moving, and leads to some discussion of the impressive quality of recent documentaries…
  • A check-in on Kolsky’s project of catching up with Showtime’s Billions (24:35), which is going swimmingly and has him very excited about getting current with the show…
  • The new FX series Trust (35:45), which examines the Getty kidnapping story — the debut impressed both Madden and Kolsky considerably, particularly the performance of legendary actor Donald Sutherland (make sure you listen to the end of the pod for additional thoughts on Danny Boyle’s direction)…
  • The conclusion of season 2 of Amazon’s Sneaky Pete (41:20), whether the show held the level of season 1 and where it may be headed in the future…
  • The new Alex Garland film Annihilation (48:00) and how it succeeds as a sci-fi thriller without drawing too much attention to its own accomplishments in diversity…
  • Homework for next week (56:50), including: the season 2 premiere of Legion on FX, the series premiere of The Last OG (starring Tiffany Haddish and Tracy Morgan), finishing Wild Wild Country on Netflix, and the new HBO film Paterno (starring Al Pacino)…

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