Shocking! Lurid! Tawdry! A History of American Scandals

It was the slap heard around the world. No, not the Oscars 2022. We're talking Los Angeles 1989 when Zsa Zsa Gabor was pulled over for expired plates and ended up embroiled in a three-week trial that made Depp v Heard look boring.

How did the Hungarian personality wind up in an El Segundo jail doing clerical work? Why was the nation so transfixed by the story of a woman slapping a police officer? And why didn't we ever get the Zsa Zsa memoir written from her dog's point of view? Mark asks all of these questions and only answers a few of them in this week's episode.

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Designing Women was hardly the first show to feature clashes between performers and producers (go read about All in the Family some time). But the very public war between creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and breakout star Delta Burke included Emmy nominations, fat shaming, and a secret Barbara Walters special that no one involved with Designing Women knew Delta had filmed until it aired. Dixie Carter got dragged into the fray along the way, while Annie Potts and Jean Smart wisely stayed out of it.

Join us as Mark walks Kasey through the history of Designing Women, why Nacogdoches is a key part of his favorite joke, and what Dixie Carter had to say in a TV Guide cover story meant to do damage control. And yes, Mark bought a copy on eBay just for this episode. 

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

We're living in a golden age of Martha Mitchell content, and we couldn't be more delighted.

Fresh off the success of Starz's limited series Gaslit, Kasey walks Mark through the life and scandals of our favorite Watergate whistleblower, who was discredited as a drunken grotesque by the Nixon administration as she tried to tell everyone who would listen that Nixon and CREEP were involved in the Watergate break-in. 

From her appearance on Laugh-In (where Lily Tomlin shunned her) to her imprisonment in a California hotel room by bodyguards to the chrysanthemum arrangement anonymously sent to her funeral that proclaimed "Martha Was Right," here is the wild, unlikely story of an Arkansas woman who spoke up, spoke out, and then slipped into semi-obscurity for decades.

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Not to fear—neither Kasey nor Mark have encountered a career-ruining scandal or a stint in the pokey. (Yet. Everything is always a yet.) What they are doing is taking sümmer off from researching and recording! So, as Judy Garland told her audience at Carnegie Hall, "You can have an intermission. And you can smoke or drink or whatever you do at intermission, and I can't wait to see you again because you're divine."

We can't wait to be back in your ears this August!

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

Political sex scandals are a dime a dozen—although certainly, uber-conservative John G. Schmitz's sex scandal (involving a secret second family) is one of the more tawdry ones.

So conservative that even the John Birch Society told him, "Nah, dude, you're too intense," Schmitz's wife was known as the "West Coast Phyllis Schlafly." Their political careers were effectively ended when his secret family was revealed—but that's not the end of the story! Tune in as Kasey walks Mark through what happened and the shocking twist that sees one of the most scandalous tabloid stories of the '90s make a surprise appearance.

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

Over the last decade, Helen Keller went from a saint to a hoax—which means the real woman has long been lost under the hagiography and now the TikTok deniers.

Among other things: Helen Keller was a devoted socialist who starred in a silent movie about her life and had her eyes replaced with glass ones. But the most telling scandal involving Helen and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, is one that happened when she was 12 years old and newly famous. The story spiraled quickly out of control, becoming national news and resulting in Helen facing a hostile tribunal and eventually succumbing to a nervous breakdown and vowing never again to write fiction.

What happened? Why was a 12-year-old subjected to this kind of treatment? And what did Mark Twain have to say about all this? Mark walks us through "The Frost King" debacle.

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

Odds are you learned about The XYZ Affair during high school history class (even mark did, and most of his high school education came courtesy of movies screened during class). But in retrospect, the whole scandal of John Adams' presidency feels underwhelming compared to our everyday political scandals now. That is, until 2017, when the fallout of The XYZ Affair finally exploded in a national controversy. 

Let Kasey walk you through what happened, why it wouldn't have seemed like that big of a deal, and why now John Adams' administration led to the first major scandal of Trump's presidency. 

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

"Bring me a unicorn!" was the rallying cry for VC funders in Silicon Valley during its glory days, and apparently the demand from network execs looking for new content. Because over the course of a single month, we were treated to Hulu's The Dropout, Apple TV+'s WeCrashed, and Showtime's Super Pumped. 

All three are based on real-life disruptors that promised to revolutionize medicine, real estate, and taxis. All three failed to varying degrees. But we already know those scandals: Kasey and Mark want to talk about the accent and voice work that these series boast at their cores. From Amanda Seyfried's riff on Mira Sorvino in Romy and Michelle to Anne Hathaway delivering the best performance of her career as Rebecca Neumann to Uma Thurman as Ariana Huffington, these are the performances we need to discuss.

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

At last! After premiering three episodes of investigative documentary series The Way Down on HBO Max last year, the exposé of the Remnant Fellowship and its founder, Gwen Shamblin, returns for a two-part update. Has it gained anything in the aftermath of the series' revelations? Did we need another two episodes about the church and the ways in which it preyed on the vulnerable? Probably not! But then, we also didn't really need Netflix's 4-episode Bad Vegan or Hulu's 3-episode Captive Audience (to varying degrees). But Kasey and Mark watched all three series, and they have some Thoughts about this trio of shows retelling real-life bad behavior.

Logo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw

Sean Young looked poised to be a star in the 1980s. She appeared in Stripes, she was the love interest in Blade Runner—instantly achieving icon status—and she was great in thriller No Way Out. Then she got cast as Vicki Vale in Batman. That should have brought her career to the next level. Instead, it was the beginning of the end.  

Years of addressing bad behavior and refusing to flatter male egos had set the stage for Sean Young to be made a Hollywood pariah. And the match that set off that fuse? He refusal to accept that Batman Returns director Tim Burton wouldn't even see her for the role of Catwoman after she was forced to drop out of Batman due to a fractured arm. 

Mark Peikert walks us through the no-nonsense behavior that primed Hollywood to gleefully take down a woman who refused to play the game, leaving us to wonder what could have been for Sean Young.  

Sean Young on The Joan Rivers Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfPTlZeVxW4 

Logo: Jessica Balaschak  Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store MusicLogo: Jessica Balaschak

Music: Caveman of Los Angeles by Party Store Music

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUI6fTwkYm8UEv4sLaC9ytw