Too Much TV

Josh and Jeff
  • 5.0 (1)
  • TV Reviews
  • Updated Bimonthly

Too Much TV is a weekly podcast where two former college roommates, Josh and Jeff, unpack the standout shows you should be watching.From buzzy cultural phenomena to quiet streaming masterpieces, they break down the biggest episodes, argue over what’s working (and what isn’t), and highlight the storytelling, performances, and moments that stick with you. Expect spirited debate, quick recaps, unexpected recommendations, and occasional deep dives into craft—perfect for casual viewers and devoted TV obsessives alike. Tune in to discover your next obsession and get a smarter take on the shows everyone’s talking about.

  1. 6d ago

    Lanterns S1 EP7: The Jordan Boys' Legacy

    We're calling this one the homework assignment episode, because that's basically the theme for the whole thirty minutes. Episode 7, "Jordan Boys Legacy." Second to last of the season, and neither of us feels much different than we did last week. There are real flashes of a good show buried in here — the "good arm kit" callback to Hal's dad actually landed, and it's proof the writers can do this when they try. But it's surrounded by so much filler that it barely registers. The core problem, and we finally put our finger on it this episode: the show doesn't have a throughline. No central mission pulling everything forward, just a bunch of disconnected elements we bump into. Case in point — a five-minute detour to a pep rally deciding which college the sheriff's son is going to play football at. We don't need it, it doesn't move anything, and it's genuinely bizarre that it's in a Green Lantern show at all. We compared it directly to Dark, where literally every scene had a purpose, and the gap is stark. On the actual plot: Hal's hologram thinks the sheriff killed him, and Jeff rewatched her reaction and picked up on something beyond shock — some other emotion underneath it. We floated theories (did she do it, did he do it to himself, echoing his dad's suicide) and landed nowhere concrete. Then there's the wormhole trip to Anton's homeworld, which looked genuinely cool on screen, the reveal that the Manhunters gassed an entire civilization into turning on itself, and finding Sinestro conveniently waiting there with zero setup for how he escaped prison. Our best theory: Hal had something to do with it. Our worst theory, which Josh fully committed to: Superman freed him, he had an affair with John's mom, and there's a half-red-half-black bastard Lantern sibling out there. Take that one as seriously as it deserves. We also get into why we think this whole season might just be feature-length setup for John Stewart's appearance in Man of Tomorrow — and Josh's prediction that the payoff is one single throwaway line in that movie that only people who suffered through eight episodes of this will actually catch. Genuine bright spot: Sentry Hal is one of the best parts of the show, and they clearly know it, since he's noticeably younger and less weathered than present-day Hal. The small moment of him begrudgingly cheering for John's terrible high school football team because "it's his team" was legitimately sweet. We close it out checking IMDb live on the show — the series sits at 7.8, but nearly every individual episode is rated above 8, one at a 9. Neither of us fully understands how that math works, and also: this is not a water cooler show. Nobody's talking about it. One episode left. We're trying to stay hopeful, but we've said that a lot at this point.

  2. Sep 23

    Lanterns S1 EP6: Lights out

    Last episode felt like a season finale. This one felt like a fart. That's basically the review of Episode 6, "Bad Optics." We fully closed the loop back to episode one — Hal is dead, or "dead," we still don't know — but after the high-octane pace of last week, this one was almost nothing happening. Hal barely appears, and he was genuinely the most interesting character on the show, so losing him for a stretch is a real problem regardless of whether it's permanent. Guy Gardner shows up for about five minutes and is somehow still the best part of the episode. We both loved him in Superman and we're already fantasizing about a scene where Hal, John, and Guy are all in the same room together. Also: Sinestro is in a place called Spazkaban, which is, and we mean this, the funniest line the show has written so far. We spent a chunk of the episode trying to figure out what this show is even promising us. If John accepting the ring at the very end of the season is the whole payoff, we're not sure eight episodes of buildup for that is worth it — and we're both a little worried we're going to get roped back in anyway the second John Stewart shows up in a Superman movie. The real material this episode is John's family. Turns out his brother calls him "the Chosen" as a nickname, which is both hilarious and deeply telling, and the more we dug into the parents forcing this singular goal on him his whole childhood, the more it explains why nobody in that family talks anymore. Our read: he said no to the ring, and that's the actual rift. We also caught John not eating meat at dinner despite claiming he does now, which either means something or means nothing, we genuinely can't tell anymore. The mystery elements aren't landing for us. A good whodunit gives you four or five real suspects to argue about. This one gives you a town that hated Hal, zero actual leads, and a "don't tell anyone you were here" line that might mean Hal saw it coming, might mean nothing. We compared it directly to House of the Dragon, where even small choices had visible long-term consequences, and Lanterns just isn't doing that yet. The stuff that happened in Rushville over the last four episodes doesn't feel like it's paying off into anything. Also: if you've booby-trapped your own front door with a shotgun, maybe emphasize the "use the back door" part a little harder. Two episodes left, and by our own admission, we've been saying "fingers crossed for next episode" for a while now. Episode five was genuinely good, and that's the only thing keeping us fully in. The next two episodes have a lot of lifting to do.

  3. Sep 15

    Lanterns S1 E5: Lights Out

    Jeff genuinely thought he was watching the finale by accident. He wasn't. But this was, hands down, the best episode of Lanterns so far, and the first time we both actually felt the urgency. Zoe is dead. Will Macon is dead. The whole town is basically wiped out. And somehow the goodbye scene between them landed even though we didn't care about Will three episodes ago. Turns out he spent his entire life hiding her, learning her language and backstory well enough to impersonate her as a decoy, fully knowing it wouldn't fool anyone who checked for a heartbeat. That's love, apparently. Or something. We're still not totally sure who the good guys are here, which might be the show's whole point. There's an "alien hit squad" (Josh's words, not the show's), a former lover of Zoe's who couldn't conceive with her, Guardians who call an entire failed civilization "a mistake," and a small town that's apparently just an armed militia loyal to Zoe because she heals everyone and nobody there gets sick. We counted the factions out loud on mic and lost track somewhere around six. Also covered: the funniest scene of the season (Hal fake-flirting his way into an alien squad by claiming he and Will "did a lot of coitus"), the genuinely great green-goggles action sequence, Hal using the ring to protect John mid-fistfight (a small moment that tells you everything about who he actually is underneath the bitterness), and John rejecting the ring at the end, which might be the season's real turning point disguised as a throwaway beat. Then we went down a full Green Lantern lore rabbit hole neither of us saw coming, including the exact year the character was created, how many Lanterns exist across the whole Corps, and the full color spectrum of lantern rings, up to and including a literal Sorrow Lantern powered by a man whose fiancée left him at the altar. We did not make that up. Also, some fun Batman easter eggs buried in this episode that make us wonder how connected this DC universe actually is. Stick around to the end, because Josh's rapid-fire lantern color rankings are genuinely one of the funniest tangents we've recorded.

  4. Sep 9

    Lanterns S1 EP4: The Weenie

    This week: Lanterns Episode 4, "The Weenie." Yes, that's the real title, and yes, we get into why. We think we're finally past the exposition stretch and into real forward motion. John was genuinely funny this episode, the gun shop scene, killing the vibe at Disneyland, and Hal's reaction ("did you just make a joke?") had us cracking up. It feels like John's figuring out that matching ten percent of Hal's energy without betraying who he is might actually be the move, and Hal seems to like him more for it. Then there's the naked scene. We won't spoil the specifics, but let's just say it's a very human kind of weird, not an alien kind of weird, which somehow spirals into a genuine conversation about how often men talk about their own anatomy compared to women. You're welcome. On the mystery side: Zoe supposedly dies in an explosion, and I'm calling my read vindicated. She's still the Manhunter, and either that blast was staged or Manhunters just can't be killed that easily. Jeff's not convinced Will Macon is cleared either. We also dig into the excellent detail work, the digging machine John builds off a single drawing, Hal's read on people during the interrogation scene (the man has genuinely great instincts, even if he's kind of an a*****e about it), and the John's accent slips through moment that I only caught because a YouTube Short pointed it out to me. Sinestro continues to be the villain we can't help but like, even though neither of us trusts him for a second. Jeff's officially on record liking him, with the disclaimer that he reserves the right to take it back the moment Sinestro does something horrible. We also get into the theory that Hal might not even be the real Hal anymore, and our predictions for the next episode, including whether that "alien hit squad" is actually as sharp as they're supposed to be.

  5. Sep 1

    Lanterns S1 EP3: OutKast

    We were both lukewarm on last week's episode of Lanterns, and I've seen people online calling episode three the worst of the season. I think that's mostly racists being racists, but Jeff, who is not racist, still didn't love it either. His complaint: the interview scene has a super advanced intergalactic police force dropping applicants through a portal onto a stack of mattresses. Weird for the sake of weird, and it pulled him out of the episode. Fair point. I hadn't even considered someone had to set those signs up. But this was a real backstory episode for John, and it delivered. Turns out the apple off the head thing wasn't his dad, it was his mom, and honestly, they're both completely psycho. The theory we land on: dad might be a little jealous, since he wanted this life himself and never got it. Training your kid to be literally fearless is insane parenting, and it's exactly the kind of thing that makes his older brothers call him "the white kid" in the car, which, yes, I laughed at. The alien encounter scene might be the best racial commentary the show's done yet. To a species with only twelve members who all look the same, human racism makes zero sense, "when you say black, do you mean brown skinned?" is the funniest line of the episode. We get into a tangent about how the ultra powerful lose touch with small human details (George H.W. Bush and the grocery store scanner, basically), and whether the Guardians would even have a concept of "family," since John has to explain it to them. John completing a nine month solo sniper mission and then just watching Hal casually walk in and blow the whole thing up in five minutes is one of the funniest and saddest moments of the series so far. We debate whether that's psychopathic behavior or something closer to an athlete raised by a parent who wanted it more than the kid did, and whether John secretly wanted this life all along, which is why he's not resentful. Then the John versus Hal comparison: John will probably be the more technically gifted lantern (the art school background tracks), but rigid, by the book, humorless. Hal is worse at the craft but plays it smart, unconventional, street smart. We get into what Hal actually did wrong to fall from grace, whether it connects to Sinestro, and a Foundation comparison: Sinestro as dusk, Hal as day, John as dawn. I hope they run with that. And the most important discovery of the episode: John doesn't eat meat and is somehow more jacked than both of us combined. Bugs and berries apparently build a serious physique. We're still hoping this pays off. If it doesn't pick up soon, we might struggle to hit thirty minutes on these recaps. Next week we're finally catching up on Ted Lasso, three episodes at once.

  6. Aug 25

    Lanterns S1 EP2: Trust Fall

    We're adding a second show to the rotation: Lanterns, the new HBO Green Lantern series. We didn't cover episode one last week, so we're doing episodes one and two together. Honest verdict up front: it's fine. It started pulling us in by the back half of episode one, and by episode two we're both genuinely interested. We're staying with it and we both think it's going to get better. Kyle Chandler is the standout as Hal, basically playing a drunk, jaded superhero who's over it (very Hancock energy). The sheriff nails him: he's not fearless, he's lonely. And the man lives in a gorgeous mansion with nothing in it but a bed and a single fold-out soccer chair. I've got a theory that something scared Hal and that's why he's losing the ring — "are you afraid" gets said twice, and it might be a Mjolnir situation where he's simply no longer worthy. We get into the John and Hal dynamic (is he training a partner or hazing an errand boy?), the fact that they're somehow sharing one ring, the ring charging like a cell phone and telling you it's at one percent, and the apple-shooting intro with John's military dad that was intense as hell. Also the funniest exchange of the season so far: John admitting he might have slept with a guy's wife and Hal responding with pure "wow, Junior, I'm impressed." Then the big detour: why does the DCU keep falling flat when Marvel worked? Our theory is depth. Iron Man had layers you got to know over multiple movies. A lot of DC characters have a title and a power set and not much else. Though we'll admit Superman and the Pattinson Batman both had real arcs, so maybe they're learning. Plus: our Manhunter theories (I say the sheriff, Jeff is honing in on Zoe), that excellent interrogation scene with the Harry Potter and Obama questions, and the fact that this show has barely scratched what the ring can actually do. Also: anyone who has a militia in a TV show is a psychopath. That's just true. Next episode we're back to Ted Lasso, episodes three and four, out Friday.

  7. Aug 19

    Top five favorite TV shows of all time

    This week we're doing something different: our top five favorite shows of all time. Favorite, not best. That distinction matters, because at least one of mine has not aged well and I knew I'd have to defend it. We also didn't share our lists beforehand, so every pick is a genuine reveal. Jeff comes out swinging with Love, Death & Robots at five, and honestly? Banger. We get into the box-of-chocolates gamble of every episode, the ones that feel like someone animated a dream (Jibaro, Fish Night), and the time I showed Zima Blue to my sixth grade class and a student went home and watched ALL of them. My mistake. My five is Friends, and I stand by it. When you're fifteen and everything with your parents is friction, that show is a warm place to land. From there the lists split hard. Jeff takes Lost (he knows he's getting roasted) and Community. I take Top Gear UK, which is really a show about three friends doing terrible things to each other with cars as the excuse, and Invincible, which might be recency bias but I don't care. Season five next year. We'll be there. Then we both flip our number two cards over and it's the same show: Game of Thrones. And it would be number one for both of us if the ending didn't exist. I watched that finale and legitimately had a bad day. Who has a better story than Bran? EVERYONE. Everyone had a better story. Number one splits us one last time. Jeff goes The Office and makes the case that Steve Carell's performance is the greatest comedic acting of all time, timing and facial expressions included, then defends the show against the Jim-bullies-Dwight criticism. I go South Park, the show that masquerades as stupid humor while being smarter than almost anything on TV. The Wheel of Fortune episode, the Scientology episode with the "this is what they actually believe" banner, thirty years of walking lines nobody else would even approach. Just don't start with season one. Please. Thanks for hanging with us on this one. Special shout-out to Jeff's mom for listening all the way through!

  8. Aug 14

    Ted Lasso

    We're mixing it up. No more House of the Dragon (for two years, anyway) — this week we're starting Ted Lasso. I binged all three seasons in about three weeks and then went straight into the first two episodes of season four, so we spend the first stretch talking about what makes this show work. Jeff put it best: Ted Lasso the show has the same effect on you that Ted Lasso the character has on people. It takes a while to warm up to, it chips away at your defenses, and then it wins you over like almost nothing else can. We're both pretty cynical guys and it got us anyway. I got teary at the end of season three. There were also multiple scenes that made me want to look away from the screen. Both things are true. We get into why a show this warm still feels made for adults, the Colin and Isaac episode, Ted distrusting therapy while functionally being everyone's therapist, and how nobody in this show is perfect but everybody handles their problems in a way we genuinely admire. Also a brief detour into how none of the soccer would ever actually work. Nathan becoming head coach of West Ham? Zero percent chance. Then season four. Jeff watched the first two episodes twice and said the first pass felt like a fever dream, like why are we reopening a box that was so neatly closed? By the second watch he was warming up again. I'm nervous they had lightning in a bottle. We both think the show is smart to bring back the coaching staff without dragging the male players along. The best material this season so far is Rebecca. She stands up and says "women are the future," and then Coach Chilton asks if she ever considered a woman for head coach, and Rebecca has to say no and swallow it. Watching a character discover her own bias on screen is exactly what this show does better than anyone. Was she wrong? We go back and forth and never really land, which is the point. Plus: Roy Kent is based on a real player (Roy Keane, look him up), Rebecca and Keeley passing the Bechdel test in the best way, and a genuinely interesting tangent about ACL tears in women's soccer that turns into a bigger conversation about risk, bias, and why women's sports are still climbing. Going forward we're covering two episodes at a time. Ted Lasso is lighter than House of the Dragon, so it's less about picking apart every scene and more about the overall vibe and what it's trying to say.

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About

Too Much TV is a weekly podcast where two former college roommates, Josh and Jeff, unpack the standout shows you should be watching.From buzzy cultural phenomena to quiet streaming masterpieces, they break down the biggest episodes, argue over what’s working (and what isn’t), and highlight the storytelling, performances, and moments that stick with you. Expect spirited debate, quick recaps, unexpected recommendations, and occasional deep dives into craft—perfect for casual viewers and devoted TV obsessives alike. Tune in to discover your next obsession and get a smarter take on the shows everyone’s talking about.

Information

  • Creator
    Josh and Jeff
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Too Much TV
  • Show Website
    Too Much TV