A Podcast I Don’t Have Time To Make

I think Andy Warhol put it best when he said that in the future, everyone will have a podcast for 15 minutes. Maybe that’s not exactly what he said, but it sure seems like the truth. In 2020, more than a million new podcasts launched. And most of them failed. If you’re going to put the resources into making a podcast, you’d better have the time, motivation, and energy to do an exceptional job and then be totally fine with it not taking off. Most people with a good idea for a podcast don’t have that much time, motivation, and energy.

At this point, we’re so far beyond peak podcast that this isn’t even a particularly novel observation. But it does give me an introduction to telling you about a podcast I’ve thought about making over the years but never had enough time, motivation, and energy to clear the bar for actually making.

Skatchamagowza!

Skatchamagowza! is a weekly TV rewatch podcast focusing on great TV shows that were canceled due to terrible ratings. Season one recaps all 13 episodes of the 2002 Fox comedy Greg the Bunny. (If someone already did this as one of the million podcasts launched in 2020, nobody tell me.)

Greg the Bunny took place in a world much like our own except that puppets (aka “fabricated Americans”) are creatures who live side-by-side with humans. The show was a workplace comedy about a particular group of humans and puppets who produce a kids’ TV show called Sweetknuckle Junction.

Greg the Bunny starred Eugene Levy as the director of the show-within-a-show, Seth Green as his son Jimmy, Sarah Silverman as a network executive, and Dan Milano as Jimmy’s roommate Greg (the bunny) who Jimmy helps get a job on Sweetknuckle Junction.

It sounds stupid. The trailers looked stupid. And it kind of is stupid. But it’s also very smart and hilarious.

My podcast would have a co-host to banter with (who?), and hopefully we could find some guests who worked on the show. Beyond just straightforward recaps, these are some of the topics we’d discuss on Skachamagowza!:

• Greg’s eyes change during the show. In some episodes, they are buttons. In some episodes they are more realistic. And sometimes he has a mouth, and sometimes he doesn’t. Which is the better version of Greg? And what in-universe reason can explain the change?

• In the episode “Rabbit Redux,” Dottie (played by Dina Waters) wears a turkey costume. The DVD audio commentary for that episode makes the claim that the costume is the same one Paul Simon wore on Saturday Night Live. But I’ve looked carefully at both costumes side by side and I don’t think they’re the same.They’re similar, sure. But Paul Simon’s turkey has a different design for the tail, and the wattle looks like a totally different material. And Paul’s wings are a different color than his body, while Dotty’s are the same color. Paul’s also has a turkey head. So what’s going on? Was the commentary wrong? Did they get bad information about where their costume came from? Or was the costume modified? This is the kind of crucial investigation I would conduct on Skatchamagowza!

• What happened to Tardy? Tardy was a turtle puppet. He’s named Tardy because he’s a turtle so he’s slow and arrives late, but also because he’s slow like, um…Look, Christina Ricci said it, not me. I was gonna say he’s slow like Ralph Wiggum. But you get the idea. Anyway, after the show was canceled, the show creators went to retrieve all their puppets, and the Tardy puppet was missing. Gone. Stolen. Nobody knows what happened to Tardy. Maybe we could crack the case and find him.

After the first season about Greg the Bunny, we’d follow it up with seasons about other cancelled shows I enjoyed that nobody watched like Karen Sisco and Journeyman.

The podcast name Skatchamagowza! comes from a running gag in Greg the Bunny about a catchphrase Greg and Jimmy tried to popularize in high school but that never caught on. I’m doing my part. I use “Skatchamagowza!” as an exclamatory remark in my everyday life, and I keep waiting to hear someone else use it. But nobody ever does.

One problem with the name is that I can never spell it consistently. I have to Google it for the spelling every time.

Come to think of it, it’s a terrible name for a podcast.

What about you? Surely you’ve had an idea for a podcast. What was it? Did you ever start it? Plan it? Maybe you were one of the millions who launched a podcast and gave up? Tell me about it! And do you have any pressing questions about Greg the Bunny that I should explore on my maybe-someday podcast? Let’s hear it.

Until next time!

David