Too Much TV

Josh and Jeff

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. Oct 12

    The Best of The Office - Part 1

    This week we’re doing something way more fun than Lanterns. Jeff’s favorite show of all time is The Office, so he picked five episodes from across the seasons and I ranked them from fifth to first. The hard part is that they’re all funny, but two of them are all time top five Office episodes. Number five is The Lover. Michael starts sleeping with Pam’s mom, and the whole episode is everyone telling Pam “you want him to be happy, right?” Jim knows first, his deer in headlights face is one of his best, and “that could have gone one of two ways, but I never expected her to get upset” is peak Michael. We also talk about the mallard subplot, one of the rare times Dwight gets the better of Jim. Number four is The Convict. Prison Mike, purple bandana, gruel, Dementors, and an accent that sounds like Al Capone. We get into how this one plays today (the joke is Michael’s assumptions, not the person he’s wrong about), why every millennial knows this scene, and why Jeff has to look away from the screen when Dwight bends over with the money in his back pocket. Martin quits at the end. Honestly, fair. Number three surprised both of us: Pool Party, the only episode without Michael. James Spader as Robert California, Erin and Dwight’s chicken fight, Andy’s ring missing its center diamond, and Gabe looking like a praying mantis. I stopped watching after Michael left, so this was a great surprise. We also talk about whether a workplace sitcom can only run so long, and how Always Sunny gets to go anywhere. Number two is Stress Relief. I watched it live after the Super Bowl, and the fire drill might be the best cold open in the whole show. Stanley, “Save Bandit,” the CPR training, David Wallace being the most patient man alive, and then the roast, which is hard to watch and also “Boom, roasted.” Michael throwing full loaves of bread at no crows on the playground might be my favorite moment. Number one is Dinner Party. Jan is the best part of it. The candles, the song from Hunter, the tiny TV, Michael sleeping on the ottoman, and the vasectomy line everyone knows. Jeff also tells you to watch the ten minutes of bloopers, which are as funny as the episode. Jeff gives his quick ranking (Convict last, then Pool Party, then The Lover, with Stress Relief just ahead of Dinner Party), and we agree the top two are interchangeable. Rewatching these made me realize The Office has some of the funniest writing I’ve ever seen, and Michael Scott belongs in any conversation about the funniest characters ever. Next week we’re doing the best Game of Thrones deaths, and after that, five South Park episodes. Jeff also wants me to try a few episodes from after Michael leaves, so we might do a best episodes without Michael show down the road.

  2. Oct 6

    Lanterns S1 EP8: Dirt and Stars

    We finally made it to the end of Lanterns, and this week we're closing the book on the season with the finale, "Dirt and Stars." (I couldn't remember the title, which tells you how invested I was.) Here's the twist: Jeff really liked it. He had the show at a C going in and bumped it up to a B+ on the strength of this episode, and it mostly came down to Hal's last lines. I thought the episode was fine and the show stays a flat C for me. We both agree the ending was sweet, though. John's "I love you," Hal's "I think you'll be way better at this job than I ever was," the wink, and the flight across the lantern all landed. It's bittersweet because it isn't really Hal, and I think killing off such a well cast character is both a bold move and a bit of a wasted opportunity. Jeff also felt vindicated about the pep rally he ranted about last week, since it turns out Noah matters. We still have questions about him, though. If Zoe is a Manhunter and Noah is a Manhunter, why does the sheriff's dad skip a generation? Are Manhunters programmed to rule? Noah's casual path to power (get famous playing football, run for Congress, run for president) is both hilarious and probably accurate. We get into why Hal feels so guilty when the town benefited from Zoe, why the Guardians would be the villains from Rushville's point of view, and why Guy Gardner would ever notice a light in Nebraska. Guy is a tool, but he's our tool, and "What's up, Homes?" has been living in my head. Sinestro gets a whole segment as the show's biggest wasted potential. He spent the season looking like a sunburnt old man, but Jeff is convinced it's Palpatine style bait and he's coming back in a big way. We also dig into his point about fear and evolution, why Hal's "don't be afraid to be afraid" is the better philosophy, and why John's oath at the end of the episode really works. Then there's Sheriff Carrie, who shoots Hal after his "we're going to Guadalajara" speech. We debate whether Hal would really have handled a mother and her son that badly, and whether Carrie's reaction made sense. By the end we were both sort of on her side. To close, we hand out final grades, talk about why a show can look exactly like HBO and still not read like HBO, and get into why superhero universes are so hard to build well (Marvel's island full of writers planning ten years ahead, anyone?). I'm glad we watched it. I'm also glad it's over. Next week is something way more fun. Jeff sent me five episodes of The Office, we're both ranking them, and we're comparing the funniest lines. After that, South Park.

  3. Sep 29

    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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

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.