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Culture Gabfest - The Culture Gabfest: Utter Tosh Edition

Slate Culture Feed

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.22K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2012

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Slate critics Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner and Dana Stevens discuss the new USA series "Political Animals" starring Sigourney Weaver, the Daniel Tosh rape joke controversy, and Dana's lack of interest in all forms of games.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

The Slate Culture Gab Fest is sponsored by The Grizzly Meter,

0:03.9

a new collection of thriller and mystery novels brought to you by Amazon publishing.

0:08.9

And by Audible.com, a leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment.

0:14.4

Listen to audiobooks whenever and wherever you want.

0:17.5

Get a free book when you sign up for a 30-day free trial at Audiblepodcast.com slash

0:23.2

culture fest. The following podcast contains explicit language.

0:34.2

I'm Stephen Metcalfe, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Utter Tosh edition.

0:38.9

It's Wednesday, July 18th, on today's program, The New Hour Drama on USA Network's Political Animals, starring Sigernie Weaver, the Daniel Tosh rape joke controversy, and finally, Dana Stevens and her inability to experience games as a normal human being.

0:54.6

I'm joined by Julia Turner, Slate's deputy editor. Hi, Stephen. Hey, Julia, how's it going? I'm good. What, utter Tash? What is utter Tosh? Tosh. You don't know the Britishism? Tosh. I mean, I can glean that it's like a British word for... Rubbish! Quaddle. Boulder dash. Baldor dash. Rubbish. Utter nonsense. Tosh. In this case, maybe we've found its eponym. Right, Dana. Hey, Dana Stevens, Slate's film critic. Hello, Steve. Let's begin with political animals. It's a six-episode mini-series running on the USA Network in which Sigurney Weaver portrays Elaine Barish, a divorced former First Lady and current

1:28.6

Secretary of State.

1:29.8

Juliet, there have been noises made by Sigernie Weaver and I think the creators of the show,

1:33.4

this isn't meant to transparently be the Clintons, but clearly those of the associations,

1:38.6

any normal viewer is going to bring to the show.

1:41.5

What did you make of it?

1:42.9

It would be great if someone made a great TV show

1:45.8

that took you inside the Clinton marriage and Hillary's subsequent political career. But I'm

1:51.4

afraid this is not that show, largely because Sigourney Weaver is great as this Hillary-esque

1:57.7

tough cookie with a heart of gold. But the guy who plays her husband, Karen Hines,

2:03.1

portrays Bill Clinton as this charmless little boy, I think his actual character's name is

2:09.2

Bud on the show, who's such a bald type that feels like he's out of a different TV show than

2:15.5

Sigourney and has none of her nuance. And it's hard to understand why they were ever together.

2:20.4

And has none of the charisma or complexity or fascination of the actual Bill Clinton. And not that he has to be a copy of Bill Clinton, but I didn't really think it was Karen Hein's fault. He's pretty bad in his accent, his southern accent, is pretty embarrassing. but mainly it was just that the show didn't give Bill Clinton or the Clinton's marriage

...

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