Ever since their old video blog (She Made Me Watch This), I’ve been a big fan of Sarah Warn and Lori Grant’s particular brand of pop culture commentary. (Sarah is of course the former editor of afterellen.com, Lori’s her girlfriend.) They’re super smart, rather funny, aren’t overly critical (except when something’s sexist or racist, etc.), and are generally pleasant to watch.
So, I had high hopes when I found that they started a podcast – and wasn’t disappointed, either.
It’s called Small Screen Stakeout, and it’s pretty much the same sort of thing as She Made Me Watch This – plus more web series talk, minus the bunny rating system. Which is to say, it’s pretty fun. And very long – which I rather like. (The first episode is 99 minutes long, the second 61).
So, digression on long podcasts:
‘Traditionally’ – although podcasts have only really been around for about 10 years – not much time for a tradition to be created – but still traditionally, podcasts are supposed to be short, 10 minute or so rapid fire gems of entertainment. Except, it never seems to work out that way. You get the intro, random introduction, they hammer their way through the thing, and it’s over. There’s just no time to say anything, and to make things worse, they’re forced to make it dense with information. Which means you have to listen carefully, and can’t do too much else (or you’ll miss it!). On the other hand, with something long and rambling (like Small Screen Stakeout), you can listen and read, write, etc., so in the end, it takes less time to listen to an hour podcast than a 10 minute podcast! Plus, there’s lots more there, so you can always find something entertaining and it’s not such a waste if it’s not particularly good overall.
In other words, Rambling = good!
Anyway, the latest episode was just posted here, and I have to say that it’s quite good so far (even if they do talk about American Idol a lot…)