🎧 The Missing Middle-Zone Shows
Rob Long on what makes an ideal restaurant — and TV series
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The best TV shows are like the best restaurants, says Rob Long: familiar, comforting, and just stylish enough. Not everything needs to be a tasting menu or guilty junk — sometimes you just want a steak, buttered broccoli, baked potato and a laugh. So in this era where prestige and junk reign in both food and TV, Rob asks, where are all the Hillstones and Houston’s?
Transcript here.
Nickodell was great. I used to have a regular gig at Raleigh Studio, just across Melrose from Paramount: three straight weeks of toy commercials for an ad agency in San Francisco that kicked off early every January. It was a good job in that three weeks at commercial rate added up fast -- but lighting an endless succession of tiny plastic toys hour after hour, day after day, week after week got old in a hurry. The head agency guy was name "Ralphie," a short, squat barrel of a man with a bullfrog's throat-sack that puffed out from his lower neck all the way to his chin, and had a reedy, high-pitched voice that sounded as if it was precariously balanced on a big bubble of phlegm.
Needless to say, Ralphie was very enthusiastic about those toys.
So when our lunch hour finally rolled around, I'd flee across the street with my crew to share a giant Caesar salad and a pitcher of martinis -- a blissful 45 minutes of badly needed laughter -- after which we'd stumble back to Raleigh and spend the rest of the day desperately trying not to fall asleep.
Ah well, that was then, and Nickodell is no more. A real shame, that.