TV Hot Take - Watcher's Puppet History

Back in 2016 Buzzfeed started a new show called Unsolved. It started with true crime and starred Ryan Bergara and then Shane Madej joined in. They then added in Supernatural and both shows appealed to my murderino nature and deep love of abandoned spooky places. I was hooked pretty quickly.

Then Buzzfeed tried a show called Ruining History hosted by Shane but never continued it. But as a person who loves weird history as well, this tickled my fancy quite a bit.

In 2020 Ryan and Shane started a company along with Steven Lim, started a production company called Watcher (after an episode of Unsolved) and started to make their own shows.

One of those shows - Puppet History.

First, I should way I have Puppet History t-shirt because my son knows I love this show so much. So I am just putting out there this is a fan’s perspective. This is a delicious mix of weird history, rigged game show, cursing puppets and a varying genre musical conclusion to summarize the moral. It’s weird, fantastic and funny as hell.

It seems like it shouldn’t work. For dozens of reasons. In one episode there is a God puppet. And yet, this is a wonderful corky show filled with warmth that makes learning history really quite entertaining. One thing that I hated as a kid was how boring history was. It made no sense. It was dates and wars but rarely covered the why and impact of decisions made. And yet, we all know that we are living history and know that it isn’t boring, so how could the past be that boring?

As I got older I realized it wasn’t history that was boring, but how we teach it. My role models I now name were never mentioned in history books but shaped history more than they were ever given credit. Agrippa alone shaped so much of western history and yet most give his bestie all the credit for his accomplishment, Augustus.

This show focuses in on exactly this type of history. And it then makes it even better by having these ridiculous and adorably wonderful puppets. I would literally have any of these on a bookshelf without any hesitation. The quality of these are surprisingly good.

But honestly, the songs. I can’t even begin to describe appropriately how hysterical and good they are. It is a low key flex showing the talent involved that these take to make. Go check it out.

So, yep, highly recommend. :)

TV Hot Take - Dropout's Um, Actually

There are certain memories from my childhood that firmly are fixed as a generational memory almost as much as a personal one. And staying home sick and watching game shows and soap operas during the day are something nearly everyone my age can relate to. There is also the memory of Jeopardy being on after dinner. It was too late for cartoons but too early for Must See TV and it was Trivia Pursuit without needing to find the little triangles.

Oddly enough, College Humor/Dropout scratches the game show memories better than anyone else for me with their various shows. One of the shows - Game Changer is fantastic and wonderful and definitely worth the watch.

But the one that is a must watch in this household is the hysterical Um, Actually.

A show that reads statements about various nerdy topics in which the contestant has to find the error in the statement and call it out by first stating the phrase Um, actually in true pedantic fashion.

There is an element of pride to getting these right as you obviously play along. In many ways similar to Jeopardy, you feel your geek cred get validated. But on top of it, it is a wonderful way to learn about new properties to watch/read/play along with learn more trivia about things you love.

It is such a delightful show that we bought the at home game off their Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wiggles3d/um-actually and will probably buy more for certain family members for the holidays. It is such a fun show, one you can watch with younger geeks. There is cursing but honestly, who cares about that anymore.

Let me know if you try it, would love to find some folks to play the game with when it does get released.