Oh, welcome to the OC bitches, it's your turn, Rachel. Oh, welcome to the OC bitches.

I'm chewing. Oh, oh, chewing on a podcast. Oh, no. Okay, everybody.

Rachel and I have a few episodes that we're doing. We're calling them cultural episodes. And

I just want to say that when Rachel, you called me to do this podcast, the very first thing I did

was get this book. So we'll talk about it because our guest today from his early years as a columnist

as at Tony soprano's favorite newspaper, the star ledger to present day as Rolling Stones chief

TV critic. It's been said that Alan Seppinwall has changed the nature of television criticism

and is the acknowledged king of the form regarding his weekly episode recaps and reviews.

Alan was an early OC a holic and even wrote a book entitled Stop Being Hater and Learn to Love the

OC. And next to Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage and he is the foremost critical expert on the

OC and Rachel, you and I could learn a lot from him. So welcome, Alan Seppinwall.

Hey guys, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming on.

It's my absolute pleasure. Nothing I like more than to talk to someone who can just give Josh

Schwartz hell. Oh, Josh, that guy. I've had about enough of him, I think.

Well, I guess one of my first thoughts was, you know, how does one become the television

critic for Rolling Stone and how did it all begin? All right. Well, let's let's see here. Let's

let me see the shortest and least tedious version of this I can tell. I went to college in the 90s,

the internet was a new thing then. So the idea of writing for the internet was a novelty and I

wound up writing a lot about a TV show called NYPD Blue and nobody was doing stuff like that at

the time and it helped me get a job at the star ledger writing about television. And so I was doing

that for a long time. I went up writing several books, including the one you mentioned, Melinda,

then I went online for a while to a couple of sites called Hit Fix and Up Rocks and eventually

...