Rooster

Steve Carell is a writer of pulpy crime novels and a hapless new writing teacher at a small college in the HBO comedy series Rooster. His daughter (Charly Clive) is also a teacher, and she’s the subject of campus gossip because her husband just dumped her for a student. The show’s got a great cast, including Danielle Deadwyler and John C. McGinley, and one of its creators is Bill Lawrence of Scrubs, Shrinking and Ted Lasso. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

  Steve Carell is a hapless writing teacher at a small New England college in the new HBO comedy series, Rooster. His daughter teaches there, too, and she's the subject of campus gossip because her husband, also a teacher, just dumped her for a student.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  The show's got a great cast, including Danielle Dedwyler and John C. McGinley. And one of its creators is Bill Lawrence of Scrubs, Shrinking, and Ted Lasso. I'm Linda Holmes.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  And I'm Glen Weldon. And today, we're talking about Rooster on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 2:15Speaker 01

  Joining us today is Kristin Meinzler. She co-hosts the nightly bedtime podcast for pop culture lovers. Hey Kristin, welcome back.

• 2:21Speaker 05

  Hey Glenn, hey Linda.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Great to have you. In Rooster, Steve Carell plays Greg, a writer of pulpy crime novels, who gets pressured into teaching at the college where his daughter Katie teaches art history. She's played by Charlie Clive. She's just been dumped by her husband Archie, played by Phil Dunster. He's a narcissistic historian who's having an affair with a student named Sunny. She's played by Lawrence I. Daniel Dedwiler is Dylan, another writing teacher with whom Greg has lots of chemistry. And John C. McGinley is the college president. The show's co-created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarsus. I've already listed Lawrence's history, but you should know that Tarsus was the showrunner on Alex Inc., that show where Zach Braff was a podcaster. Remember that? Linda, we've seen the first six episodes out of 10. What'd you think of Rooster?

• 3:05Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I really liked this. It's not as good as Shrinking, but it reminds me a lot of Shrinking. It is about a bunch of people, most of whom do very foolish things at times, but are basically decent and are basically trying. You mentioned Matt Tarsus and made this sort of obligatory dig at Alex Inc., but I don't see Alex Inc. in this at all. What I see is Shrinking and I see the other, one of the other things that Matt Tarsus worked on in the past, which is my very beloved Sports Night. And there are people who get very impatient with shows where people are basically nice and basically trying, but it is my sweet spot. Shrinking is probably my favorite show right now, as far as what

• 3:46Linda Holmes?

  I think it is trying not only to do as a comedy, but also kind of do in the world. I think I really welcomed this. I was afraid at first, obviously, you put something on a college campus, you're gonna get like the older, he's a novelist who's like a writer in residence, so he's not a traditional college professor at all. But you get that and you feel like, is this gonna be like humorless feminists who don't want you to say mankind? That is not what this is, right? He does get himself in trouble a lot, but the show, to me, is very clear that those are his missteps. And it does not really villainize the students. It recognizes, I think, the generation gap and some of the different expectations.

• 4:27Linda Holmes?

  Without making the students bad or, you know, wrong to be challenging him on certain things, I appreciated that a lot. Basically, this really worked well for me. Like I said, I'm not going to say it's as good as Shrinking, but that's an extremely high bar. I did enjoy it quite a lot, and I like Steve Carell in this mode, so.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  All right, Krista, what'd you think?

• 4:44Speaker 05

  I agree with a lot of what Linda is saying here. It is like Shrinking in a lot of ways. We have a dad, we have a daughter, we have both of them doing the best they can. Not many women get to be with their father while they watch their husband make out with someone.

• 4:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, we're pretty lucky.

• 5:00Speaker 05

  They screw up a lot. In some ways, daughter is more evolved than dad. In other ways, dad is kind of a kid figuring stuff out. But I will disagree with Linda on one point where she is saying this is a show about nice people. I'd say about half the show is about nice people. We have Steve Carell's character and his daughter's character, and we have Danielle Deadwyler, who is fantastic in this, Annie Momolo, who plays the assistant to the president of the college. I also think is a delight. When she shows up on screen, I was so excited to see her in this show. They are just a delight. They are good people. But I would say everybody else on the show is not a good person, and they do terrible things, and they're narcissistic, and they're smug, and they're flawed.

• 5:44Speaker 08

  Crystal, can you send me a student file, Gracie Shaw? She says she has ADHD, but I think she's just lazy and a little dumb. Or she's really struggling. Let's all root for her.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  They suffer from that malady that a lot of people in academia suffer from, which is like, all these kids, they love me, and they want to be my best friend, and they want to sleep with me, and I'm going to do all of the above. And I am not qualified for this job, but I am going to take great pride in not letting anyone else have this job. There's a lot of that in the show, too, which, as somebody who used to work in academia, I used to be an adjunct professor, I used to be an admin in more than one department in a university. I really enjoyed how the show depicted all of that nonsense, which just, when I worked in it, made me shake my fist at the sky constantly. But in how it's depicted on the show, it made me laugh and laugh and feel such cathartic joy.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I'm vibing with you, Kristen, but I came down very differently than you did because I really didn't like this. And I kept wondering why. I mean, I like this cast. Daniel Deadwiler's on my TV. That doesn't happen enough. That's great. I even like the characters in isolation. And sometimes when they get paired off, you know, I think they bounce off each other well. What I didn't like was the show, the sensibility of the show, the organizing principle, the approach the show is taking. Because I expected, Linda, given the setting, that there would be some boomer academia is woke jokes. And there are a few where the students and faculty, as you mentioned, they correct Greg and the message there is that these are tiny infractions that don't matter. The running gag is that

• 7:18Speaker 01

  he often gets called before the world's most toothless academic disciplinary panel for tiny misunderstandings. And I think if those jokes were better or fresher, but they just came at me as like the most basic lazy jokes that could have been made 40 years ago before we called it woke, back when we called it PC. And the show keeps devoting some energy to that. It sincerely believes that that's a comedy vein worth mining in 2026. Meanwhile, and here's my issue, these characters have no professional boundaries whatsoever. They do six really stupid things an episode that would get a teacher in the world so very, very fired. And they just, here's the issue, they just skate by. And I'm coming at this because I taught writing at the high school level and the college level

• 8:03Speaker 01

  back in the day, back in LA Jurassic. And watching this show did not make me laugh. It gave me low key panic attacks. And in a later episode, Greg tries to encourage his daughter to quote unquote, connect with students the way he does. And at that moment, I had to get up off the couch and walk it off because I get that it's a comedy and I get that people make bad choices in comedy, but there is no accountability here. There are no consequences. It becomes, and I don't think it's doing this intentionally, it becomes kind of a satire of privilege. The idea here is to create a frictionless environment where the characters can be human and mess up and have foibles like you guys were talking about and have it be funny and heartwarming. But the notion that arson can happen and have people shrug it off, that a teacher

• 8:46Speaker 01

  can hook up with a student and everybody's like, oh, that rascal. A thing happens involving a live Zoom interview that would ruin careers forever, but there's not even a toothless discipler in your panel about it.

• 8:58Speaker 05

  I have to disagree with you, Glenn. I feel like academia is filled with stories of people getting away with murder for as long as academia has existed, including in this day and age, unfortunately. Yes, there are infractions that are called out now that didn't used to be called out, but a lot of this stuff is just part of this world. And the show, like I said, at least laughs at how horrible that is. And it does call out people for being narcissistic.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:25Speaker 05

  Why is this happening to me?

• 9:27Speaker 09

  Is that rhetorical? Do you want an actual answer?

• 9:29Speaker 07

  I can take it.

• 9:30Speaker 09

  I think it's because some people see you as a narcissistic [BLEEP] with the punchable face. Case in point.

• 9:36Speaker 07

  Do people see me that way?

• 9:37Speaker 09

  Some people do.

• 9:38Speaker 07

  Do you see me that way?

• 9:39Speaker 09

  No, not all the time.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  I don't think the show is saying, this is easy. This is a good thing. I don't think it's saying that. I just think it's showing how ridiculous the system of privilege is for a lot of the people who get to benefit from it.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  I'll give you this much. Then the great Rory Scoville would come on as the cop and I'd be like, I'd watch his show.

• 9:58Speaker 10

  No, don't do that. Don't tell me how to do my police work. I don't tell you how to write your rooster books, do I?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:04Speaker 10

  But I'll tell you what, if I did. I would have the guy do karate.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 10:08Speaker 10

  Wouldn't that be fun?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Why can't I be watching his show? Robbie Hoffman as Sonny's roommate, same deal. More of them, less of literally everything else about this show, for me.

• 10:17Linda Holmes?

  I think one of the reasons why I saw this so differently than you did is that I felt like the Steve Carell character was presented as, you know, less like, oh, these are meaningless infractions and he gets dragged in front of this disciplinary committee. It's more that like, that is partly what accountability for him is, is that when he says something that is poorly thought out, right? He's a novelist and a writer in residence. He's not accustomed to academia. He's not accustomed to these sort of systems. And so when he gets called in and he has this experience of them saying, basically, you can't do that. And he says, essentially, you're right. It was an accident, but you're right.

• 11:00Linda Holmes?

  And then the question becomes, is what you crave in that situation for that person, punishment, punishment, punishment? Or is it more meaningful to see that this is somebody who is trying not to make the same mistake twice? And one of the scenes that I thought was most important for me and for how I received the show was a moment where he's asking the students about their favorite writers. Somebody names a writer who it's clear he doesn't, whose work he doesn't know. That is sort of embarrassing for him. He is embarrassed by that. There's no like, these kids with their woke, whatever.

• 11:39Linda Holmes?

  And in a later episode with zero kind of attention called to it, zero like hanging a lamp on it, he has started reading a book by that writer. And I think for me, they are signaling to you, it is his job to get better at all the stuff that he is getting told he's doing wrong. And I will say, I probably was more prepared for some of the things that are bothering. Especially Glenn, but perhaps bothering both of you because of shrinking, because the way that shrinking started involved Jason Segel also observing no professional boundaries whatsoever as a therapist, right? He did a bunch of things where it's like,

• 12:21Linda Holmes?

  you can't ask a patient to move in with you. You can't like, you know, you can't do any of this stuff. You can't go along with somebody who's getting in a physical, I mean, just a lot of stuff that like, you can't do that. But for me, it all turned out to be going somewhere interesting and good. We have not talked that much about the Danielle Deadwyler character. I think because it happened so early, I feel fine saying they go out and have drinks together. They really like each other. They kind of hit it off. At that point, he's just a visiting writer. He's just doing a short, like, visit, whatever. She sort of invites him to come in. They go back to her house and she says, do you want to come in? And for once in the freaking history of this kind of scene, when a man who is

• 13:03Linda Holmes?

  much older than a very beautiful, much younger woman, has her saying, like, do you want to come in? He's like, do you know how old I am? He treats that like, what are you talking about?

• 13:16Speaker 07

  Not, no. Do you know how old I am?

• 13:20Speaker 10

  It's your lucky day, grandpa.

• 13:22Speaker 07

  Oh, Dylan, you are gorgeous and funny and so, so smart that I feel even dumber than usual.

• 13:35Linda Holmes?

  The fact that they seemed to recognize that the logical response from him is to find that something that he questions? Because why would that be the case? Rather than the sort of, well, everybody obviously wants to sleep with me. It's also not true that everyone wants to sleep with him, right? You know, he has this sort of semi flirtation with her and he has somebody else who he meets, right? But it is not a thing where like every single person who he bumps into and every student and all those people are like, oh, you're so dreamy. Like, they don't, they, I don't know. I felt that what it was doing was a little bit more subtle than. He does whatever he wants and nothing, there's never any accountability.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I feel like the people who don't get accountability are the characters I can't stand on the show. Although I enjoy the people I can't stand in my anger at them. Steve Carell's son-in-law, who cheated on his daughter. He's insufferable and terrible, and yet he's a good character for the show. And Steve Carell's bosses, they're terrible people, but I enjoy watching them on the show. Steve Carell's ex-wife, who's terrible, and yet a delight when she's on screen. She's so fun, but I would say that I agree with Linda in that Steve Carell's character actually, even when he's screwing up badly, we can see he's trying to do the right thing. Whereas the other characters, like, you know, the villains of the show, I don't ever see them actually trying to do the right thing in a convincing way.

• 15:06Speaker 05

  Almost every time they do the right thing, it seems more self-serving than trying to do what's right.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess I don't really have a sense of who Greg is, and this is main character syndrome, right? Because, I mean, he loves his daughter, he writes pulpy books. The writing advice he gives happens to be really crappy. Is that a character? I think if you feel any goodwill towards him, it's because it's drafting off the fact that he's played by Steve Carell. And one of the takes I've seen from, I think, The Hollywood Reporter, maybe, is that Greg wants to be more like the character he writes about Rooster. And if that's a thread in this show, I did not pick up on that at all. Did you guys get any of that?

• 15:38Linda Holmes?

  It comes along eventually.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  I agree with you, Glenn. I think that this is a guy who wishes he was more like Rooster isn't really the point so much as he's the outsider. He's our entry point into this messed up world of privileged academia. He's the guy who never went to college. He's the guy who writes page-turning pulp paperbacks. And he doesn't belong in this world in a lot of ways. And he's going to grow as a student of life, as a student of academia, by being here in some ways, actually by hanging with the students and being part of their world. And so even though he's there to save his daughter in some ways, he's the one who's the student who's going to grow.

• 16:20Linda Holmes?

  The thing that makes him most like that, and this is where maybe I would disagree that any goodwill toward him comes from it being Steve Carell. I think there's also goodwill generated by the fact that he is fiercely, fiercely devoted to his daughter. Very much wants to stick up for her when he feels she's being... You know unfairly treated. There are a couple of, you know, moments where he's just overwhelmed with anger on her behalf. And I think that does happen to parents sometimes. But I think at the same time, he also, there are also some scenes, I think his early scenes with Danielle Dedwiler, I think he's funny. I think he's kind of self deprecating in certain situations and has some self-awareness. And I think, I think he sort of, as Kristin, I think, said

• 17:03Linda Holmes?

  very well, he doesn't really belong in this setting, but I think he is somebody who is willing to work toward being better at what he's being asked to do, both as a parent, you know, because he's still really smarting from his divorce, from his daughter's mom. And that's still really kind of pushing down on him in some serious ways. So I don't know. I guess I felt like there were other reasons to like him besides just, you know, just that it's Steve Carell.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  One thing I will add, though, just to be, you know, on the same page as Glenn here, the way you felt Glenn, like, what is the show about and how it's kind of unfocused? It is a little chaotic. I will own up to that. But I did feel the same way at the beginning of Shrinking as well. And I felt the same way with Bad Monkey. It was a little chaotic, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit despite the chaos.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bad Monkey is another show that the show owners worked on. What did you think of the John C. McGinley character? He plays the president of the college. I kind of thought that character was at least supposed to have a sharper edge, maybe a political edge to him or something. Or because right now, he's just kind of stuck with is old, doesn't understand green initiatives. He's playing that guy. I thought that was the character was supposed to have maybe a sharper point of view. Was that just me?

• 18:24Linda Holmes?

  I did not read him that way. I read his story as being partly about. How difficult, and ultimately, they come around to having some more explicit conversations about this, that he, I mean, certainly, he engages in a lot of very silly behavior, very John C. McGinley kind of behavior. But I think eventually, they come around to him, kind of, his point of view is that he is exhausted from having to say no and disappoint people in all the ways that a, an administrator of any large institution constantly has to. And so I think you get a lot of him kind of triangulating, I'm going to kind of try to make this deal and move this situation around in this way because I have these things

• 19:09Linda Holmes?

  that I'm expected to do and take care of that are unpleasant and difficult. And he wants to do the Green Initiative, but he also wants to do other things, and he also wants to kind of get Rooster to stay and teach because he thinks it's going to be good for sort of the school. But at the same time, to me, I ultimately found him to be much more sympathetic than he was at the beginning. He ultimately gets involved in mentoring somebody, which is something he seems to take really seriously and really care about. I think I felt more of a character there, maybe, than you did.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  I'm taking this too seriously, I think. I just, like, it's, it's just giving me flashbacks to things. It's a world I'm glad I'm out of.

• 19:49Linda Holmes?

  Ditto.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I don't, yeah, do think there would be repercussions in the real world, but this isn't the real world.

• 19:54Speaker 05

  I'm looking forward to seeing where it's going to go. I haven't finished the show yet, and I really, I'm cheering for several of the characters. I want all to go well with Steve Carell's character, his daughter, Danielle Deadwyler, and Amy Malo. I just, I want everything to go well for them. The rest of them, eh.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  All right, well, tell us what you think about Rooster. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Kristin Minz or Linda Holmes, thanks for being here. You gave me some stuff to think about.

• 20:21Linda Holmes?

  Thank you.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show on public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free, so please go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour, or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Hafsa Fathama, and Mike Katz, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. And Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.

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  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel? That's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu. This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message: What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com.