The Karen & Ellen Letters

Josh Hallmark creates a brilliantly funny and entertaining series that balances humor and insightful introspection. Karen and Ellen are exasperatingly persistent in their naive entitlement concerning their renter’s rights and expectations.

It started out funny, and now I just want to uncover the mystery with you. This is such an intriguing listen. A nice reprieve from my typical podcast listen.

This was recommended in the Normal Gossip subreddit. The storytelling style became very remarkably difficult to follow in the second season. This could’ve been a well-crafted, one season’s worth of amusing episodes in more capable hands but instead I really felt strung along by the tangents, repetition and lack of narrative offered by the podcast in the second season. However, I was already invested so I saw it through. I wanted a conclusion, which you hardly get. The narrator presence was ridiculous, virtually no help to the listener in terms of parsing all the content, and super navel gaze-y. In top of that, the production was jarring. For example, there would be no audio cue to tell the listener we were moving from one post or segment to the next but then sometimes they would be separated by a full minute-plus musical interlude. The volume levels were jarring. The fact that this is so highly rated makes me think the people rating it were fans of the original blog or friends with the creator. Idk, they allude to an original podcast, so maybe I’m missing something. I wish I would’ve skipped this one.

And I am already hooked!