A+ Inbox LIVE! #22: I Hate That So Much!

feature image background via Yvonne on Insta

Hi there! It’s time for our 22nd episode of A+ Inbox LIVE! If you’re a first-time listener, A+ Inbox LIVE! is where Riese, Heather, Yvonne, Rachel and I usually choose two or three questions from the A+ Priority Inbox and answer them live on a podcast, using amateur recording equipment and very little editing! It’s casual and honest and very 2006. You can dig back into the archives for previous episodes to feed into your ear canals.

On this week’s show, we’re skipping the inbox and talking about TELEVISION. We’ve been watching an awful lot of it lately, and damn if some of it doesn’t just drive us crazy! Lucky for you, two of us are television experts and the other three of us are full of opinions regardless. A small note: we started off recording with a special VOIP recording thing, and it was cool and great, but then it stopped working. So! Then we switched back to our old recording method. I tell you this because there’s a noticeable shift in audio quality after the first couple of minutes, and now you know why!

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A+ Inbox LIVE! theme music and interludes by Stef Schwartz

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Laneia

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69 Comments

  1. I don’t know if it’s my computer or? But I’m not hearing anything at all for several minutes, the soundcloud box isn’t loading as usual either, I don’t see the time bar thing.

  3. There is just no way Rory Gilmore is a good writer. It’s impossible.

    In kind of that vein a thing I hate is when they make a character an “artist”. It never works, because obviously nobody is going to waste their actually decent stuff on like Joey Potter’s Capeside Mural or whatever so everything they make is frightening garbage. Plus the way fictional characters talk about “art” is even worse than when real people do.

  5. s w e e p s w e e k b a b i e s

    Female Character Throws Up

    “omg r u pregnant”

    In the scenes from next week, but then it’s like, a non issue in the actual episode

    Or WORSE when they GO THRU WITH IT and then you have this goddamn BABY in the show, the worst

    • Babies ruin TV shows.
      I stopped watching black-ish because of Chris Brown but I would’ve stopped anyway because of the baby

  6. Episodes that are all a dream or somehow retcon themselves at the very end ; i don’t care what level of subconscious drama gets revealed ; it is a waste of my time

  8. Adults playing impossibly glamorous teens creating insane examples for how teen girls should aspire to look (while actual teens are modeling women’s wear, creating insane expectations for how adult women should look)

        • Remember that time Caitlin had a sex dream about Ms. Avery? It’s too bad that they didn’t go full queer with her but it was a pretty risqué episode for 1987.

          • Allow me to refresh your memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI9RNOGHqYY

            This episode is a master example of 80s progressive Canada, from the lesson about famous women throughout history to “That essay you wrote on Native peoples was just excellent.”
            If this episode had been made now, it would have ended with Baby Butch Caitlin and gal pal Susie making out in the dark room and Ms. Avery riding off into the sunset with her ‘roommate’. I also suspect that Kathleen was secretly gay and that’s why she was fixated on Ms. Avery…

    • Adults playing teens is more because of labor laws. That one I can understand

      • Canada also has labor laws. The kids on Degrassi also have a less socially isolating experience than child actors on other shows.

  11. Plots that hinge entirely on a broken cellphone

    Over-reliance on overdubbed narration (SHOW DON’T TELL!! SHOW DON’T TELL)

    “this is my daughter, she’s played by an actress two years my junior”

    Starting highschool show in junior year so we inevitably have to suffer through at least two shitty seasons of college

  12. “quirky creative fun” character who is intended to be charming but actually is just insane or an asshole (Lorelai Gilmore LORELAI GILMORE)

  13. OK so my main issue with Lorelai Gilmore, besides everything, is that she seems like the kind of woman who’d say

    “I don’t have many female friends bc women are always bitchy to me!! :/”

    when the reality is that they don’t like her because she’s a child who probably compulsively flirts with their husbands

  14. HIPAA VIOLATIONS

    Jungian therapists

    Freudian dream analysis

    Therapy as a very literal plot device for getting someone to make the easiest goddamn step towards an emotional goal (usually boning another character)

  15. The best fanfic ever is still Especially Heinous: 272 views of Law & Order SVU, which I’ve linked before, is I believe published in a book, and was written by a reader of yours; it is what my browser opens up to as a homepage

  16. I love episodes that are a pastiche of different film genres which is probably why I loved Community so much

    I also am a huge sucker for episodes where the will they / won’t they have to pretend to be together

    I’m cheesey like that

  17. I love it when the person who starts as this one dimensional villian becomes the best / funnest character on the show

  18. OMG I thought of one. When (especially with teenagers) they never wear the same piece of clothing more than once. It’s just so unrealistic it drives me mental. Where do you get that clothing from? How do you afford it middle american teen? It’s like the coffee thing Heather mentioned. Everytime I think of it I’m pulled out of the world.

    I need that “it’s just not realistic”.

    • The thing that pulls me out of the show because it’s just not realistic for me is driving and parking. Like on the original 24 Jack Bauer would get from Santa Monica to downtown in 20 minutes. It’s LA, this should be a whole episode of Jack Bauer just sitting in traffic.
      Same for Game of Thrones. How did Varys get from Mereen to Dorne so fast? Or Littlefimger showing up to save the day in Winterfell when he was nowhere near it?

      • Hannibal drove from DC to Baltimore, murdered a man in a very involved way, set another person up for said murder in an even more involved way, and then drove back to DC, in rush hour, in approx four hours

        And I Call Shenanigans

        Also wolftrap, VA isn’t desolate farmland anymore & hasn’t been for decades

  19. Back to things I hate : the CBS procedural formula that involves the emotionally unavailable father figure, the hot blonde woman, the hot brunette woman*, the nerd, the hot guy*

    *may or may not also be the one POC on the show,

    the medical examiner, and the gothy tech girl who is white but has an ethnic last name, is the heart of the show

  20. But also shows that have an extended “should we have a baby??????????” plotline btwn two adults in their forties that never even hints at “CAN we have a baby????????” like physically. Like CAN YOU?? IF WE MUST HAVE THIS TIRED ASS PLOTLINE WHY ARE WE NOT ADDRESSING THIS

  23. I LIED ONE MORE:

    Very Special Nostalgic “A Look Back At…” Clips Episodes where, instead of writing an actual episode, theu write a series of interactions wherein characters say

    “remember when…” followed by a literal flashback to shit I’ve already seen from a previous episode

    Again, I love Community for taking this premise & making it weird with out of context flashbacks to shit that didn’t happen within the show

  26. TV Tropes I hate: Doppelgangers or evil twins. Never inventive, interesting or funny. Also the moral lesson imparted is often heavy handed and obvious.

    • I thought evil lesbian vampire Willow was an exception to the never interesting. I was quite interested in a character’s alternate personality being “kind of gay”.

  28. Also: The groom (or bride) who panics at the last minute, but goes through with the wedding anyway. This trope is really overdone. If you are having serious doubts, you shouldn’t go through with it, and if your doubts can be soothed away with a brief conversation with your best friend (or parent or ex or whoever) then shouldn’t you have had that conversation BEFORE THE ACTUAL WEDDING DAY?

  30. Also: Almost all “makeover” tropes end up making me so angry. Even if at the end the character decides they like themselves just the way they are.

  31. Also: macho guy who finds out that he has a kid he didn’t know about that ends up on his doorstep and he has to *gasp* BE A DAD. Inept parenting is played for laughs, because how can any macho guy reasonably be expected to know how to make a meal? Or change a diaper?

  32. Heather, if you like clever pets, I recommend The Littlest Hobo, a quaint Canadian program about a dog who helps people in need/solves mysteries. If he’d been on Pretty Little Liars he would have figured out A’s identity faster than Dana died of cancer.

  33. I can’t even begin to estimate the number of times I’ve been pulled out of a show by 555 numbers.

  34. Oh, another thing: Lack of consequences for actions (personal and professional), and implied or explicit forgiveness of someone/something really fucked up.

  35. Any chance you guys could post a curated fanfic list? I’d love some recommendations.

  36. That long, long silence after Rachel said she hated Michael and liked Rafael…

    ALSO, @RACHEL, WHY THE HECK DON’T YOU LIKE MICHAEL? YDY but also, Michael is the best, I’m so confused by this.

    • hahaha i do know about the spoiler, more or less! mm to me michael is boring, and falls into the category of male partners on tv (and in life) whose main draw is that they don’t actively suck? idk i’m only like four episodes in but so far he’s boring and kind of sulky and tries to convince jane to quit her job and his spanish is terrible, try harder, michael

  38. Yes to episodes that revolve around people getting stuck with the power out. There’s a great Jhumpa Lahiri story in Interpreter of Maladies that revolves around that setup.

  39. These inbox live posts are the only things that can make me sit down and fold my laundry. I was worried about this one spoiling a bunch of things I haven’t watched, but you guys did a great job not doing that. And that is maybe my favorite feature image so far.

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