Summary
Poppa’s House Episode 3 deploys some formal flourishes as it reaches a turning point in the story.
“Podcast” feels like the episode that Poppa’s House has been building to since it started. The mixed-bag premiere established the premise, and the second episode fleshed out the dynamic. Episode 3 takes the sitcom’s most essential underlying ideas and runs with them in a slightly new direction, taking Poppa and Ivy away from their oppressive corporate backdrop and letting them flourish as new partners – business only, at least for now – in a venture they control.
It’s easy to vilify any corporation these days since they’re all doing the same things. You could make a checklist, even. So, for fun, let’s do that:
- Poppa doesn’t own his own likeness.
- Poppa’s likeness and voice are being used to create promos using AI that he hasn’t signed off on.
- HR has a litany of “anonymous” complaints that are essentially being wielded as kompromat to keep Poppa in line.
- Thanks to all of the above, and the vague threat that corporate would be quite happy to proceed with his show with only Ivy as the host, Poppa is stuck.
With the writing on the wall, Poppa quits. Ivy takes over as host, but after a couple of call-ins complaining about Poppa’s absence, and a similar abuse of her likeness with AI, she also quits.
The underlying theme here isn’t exactly subtle, but Ivy reiterates it later when Junior and Nina conspire to get Poppa and Ivy back together. The push to corporatize every facet of society is a net negative. It drains the soul out of everything, planes individuals down to their most basic components – their voice, their likeness – and uses them to churn out garbage. When Ivy was in college, Poppa’s show helped her get through a bad breakup. Without him being allowed to run that show however he saw fit, to say and play the music he wanted, that would never have happened.
Poppa’s House Episode 3 is titled “Podcast” since that’s where Poppa and Ivy decide to go from here. And it makes sense. The long-form podcast is the most free form of personal expression we have now, untethered from corporate hegemony and shareholder appeasement. In a format that they can control, Poppa and Ivy can do and say what they want. They can create the kind of show that once changed Ivy’s life. And, ideally, they can work on their relationship too.
This feels like a pretty obvious turning point to me, and it’s easy to assume that the first two episodes were just getting us here. It makes much more sense as a premise. And while I still think about 50% of the jokes don’t land, I continue to admire what this show has to say beneath all that.
And for the first time, I noticed some formal flourishes here that I think paid off. In a B-plot, Junior is trying to win $50K by submitting a documentary to a festival. The theme is “something that inspires him”, so he decides to follow Poppa around all day, filming his life, with help – reluctantly, and then saucily – from Nina.
This means that sometimes Poppa’s House Episode 3 takes the form of that documentary in talking-head interviews with Poppa, Ivy, and eventually Junior and Nina. It also shows us both of the AI-generated promos from Poppa and Ivy, both shilling ridiculous products that neither of them would willingly endorse. The promos aren’t funny, but the little shifts in the sitcom formula lend a bit more to “Podcast” than previous episodes have had.
I’m still mixed, but I think we’re heading in the right direction.
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