The Point Radio: Still UNDATEABLE Still Funny

UNDATEABLE has returned to NBC with more fresh comedy and a few changes, all detailed for us by cast member Ron Funches and creator/EP Bill Lawrence. Plus ORPHAN BLACK saves the comic stories in February.

In a few days, we circle back to BATES MOTEL for a talk with Norman Bates himself, Freddie Highmore. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

The Point Radio It's Mike Raub. Undateable is back for a second season on NBC and creator Bill Lawrence and cast member Ron Funches are along to talk about just how this year is a little different. Plus Orphan Black storms into comic stores and makes a lot of noise. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. If you caught any of the first season of Undateable last year on NBC, well then you know it was a bright spot.

And what pretty much was a comedy wasteland on primetime television. Now it's back for a second season and if you're among those who haven't seen it, well let's get started. I went to cast member Ron Funches and said please describe the show for us. Okay, Undateable is just about a group of friends who are kind of weird from one reason or another for different reasons. They can't get dates or haven't been able to find the same love. So they kind of group together and try to help each other out. But end up kind of making it work. It's pretty much just like my real life and my real friendships. I think people can relate to it. Sometimes we can be kicked down by the outside world and we have that group of friends that we turn to. This is what that show is about.

And it's just really a bunch of comedians just making fun of each other for about half an hour. One thing that makes the show work is the relationship between the cast off screen. I think it's just that you see our genuine friendships on the show. We all kind of knew each other beforehand. At least the four stand-up comics did and the rest of the work is kind of easy to love. And we just kind of hang out with each other. Like that bar that we hang out on the show, like when they call cut and we just get lunch. We just come back and sit down and eat together and keep making fun of each other. There's genuine friendships on the show. Like Chris and Brent who play the two main characters. They've known each other for over 10 years. Like they're their genuine best buddies.

So I think you just see that on the show. And no one knows how to make fun of you like your best friend. And so that's what you see on this show. Two best friends constantly busting each other's chops. It's a really funny show. Show creator and executive producer Bill Lawrence goes a little deeper than that. Yeah, you know what? Not to just risk my credit. For me, the first show I ever created was called Spin City. It was a multi-cam. Much like undateable. The two things I brought, the main things I brought from all those shows to this show is one is I really like it when the characters on a show are actually friends. And they actually care about each other. And they don't just sit around and get each other crap. You know? And act mean and snark at each other. They're kind of a support group.

And I hope people that like my shows like the fact that it actually seems like the people are friends in real life. You know, one of the ways that we cast undateable, believe it or not, and it's a fun story that I always tell. And I can't even tell if people believe me. The reason I think the show has palpable chemistry is these four stand-ups were all friends for years before the show even started. And Bianca knew them too. Because when you do a multi-cam and modern TV you have like four or five episodes for people to feel like, oh there's chemistry and everybody loves the cast. And the cast all likes each other. And I just thought if you got people that were friends in real life, it would actually show.

And then the other thing, especially from working with people like Mike Fox or Zach Braff or Neil Flynn or Donald or Sarah Chalk or you know, Scrubs and Coop. One of the things I've done on all those shows is when I was a writer at first I would just write the jokes and the lines and then I'd want the actors to say them word for word. And Mike Fox was the first one to teach me that more often than not if he wants to change it or say something different, it's going to be funnier than what I wrote. And then later when somebody says they like it, I can just take credit for it, which is super fun. And so to bring the spirit of improv and playfulness that we had on those other shows, the two things of undated people are clamoring to get in because everybody that's seen one knows we've got four stand-up comics, improv actresses and comedians on the show.

So instead of just watching a scene put three times, the cast does the scene once the way it's written. And then the second time nobody has any idea what they're going to say. And half the time it's super funny and unusable because it's filthy, but half the time it's super funny and usual even if they have to stop the scene in the middle and say, hey, we have no idea how to get back to what the scene's about. And I actually grew up in the audience in between takes and asked them which jokes they responded to and whether stuff went too far. It's really kind of a thing that we started doing back on Spin City and Scrub Stiff.

They told me there are a couple of changes in this new season. One is a pretty important new cast member. The joke's biggest change is it's no longer on in the middle of the summer, twice a night, you know, like when nobody really watches TV. The biggest change on the show is for me, we have a new cast member. Her name is Bridget Mendler. She was the star of Good Luck Charlie.

I've enjoyed watching her torture all the comics, you know, because all these young people are on Twitter and Instagram and social media and kind of pursuing their own brand and fame level. To have a 21-year-old girl, you know, come onto the cast and immediately be more famous and popular than all of them. I've enjoyed watching it drive them slowly insane, especially the male comics. Chris Thorea, when he introduces her, he always says that when I first met Bridget, I didn't realize how lucky we were to get her, but I have a 14-year-old daughter who is never really good about coming to the show.

And the second I'm like, hey, is Granny Bridget Mendler now a regular? She went nuts because not always the girl who starred Good Luck Charlie, but she's got her own recording career as a pop star. And my daughter said she's getting an award this week because her music video online just got 100 million views. And I'm like, oh, I think you made 100,000. And she's like, no, no, no, it's 100 million.

And I just can't believe. Yeah, no, I can't believe. So to me, for her to come on and play, she plays the younger sister to the bar kind of a girl that grew up in tough means in Detroit. And her optimism and kind of youthful spirit and how good she is at this medium have really changed the show overnight. And she's all in, too.

I mean, one of the things people can check out, she immediately wrote a song for us that they put a video out. And I think only a couple days ago, it's already got, it's called Undatable. You can see it on YouTube or NBC.com or on her own Facebook site. But I think in the two days, she put it up. Five hundred thousand people have watched it.

So it looks like music is going to be a big part of the new season. If you watch my TV shows, I'm a sucker for music. You know, scrubs. We had an a cappella band. We had Colin Hay.

We had, you know, Josh Raden singing live. We had tons of indie music and same with Cougar Town, even back in Spin City. Bridget is a recording artist. Not only will the cast be singing, but much as it is in real life, whenever they do it drives crystal insane. And, you know, one of the things we're really leaning into is the second that you have, you know,

talented people like Bridget and Brett, who are both, Bridget's a very successful recording artist. That's why the voice was nice enough. You know, when she wrote this song, we did a video for it. You can see it online anywhere. And we're doing cool, fun stuff like that.

One of the things NBC is going to release is Bridget and the cast are going to be musically synopsizing our episodes every week. So, you know, the way that people used to kind of go online and read a recap, we're doing it musically with the cast. So we're kind of we're kind of leaning into it just because everybody other than Chris is a huge man anyways. So a lot of the show takes place in a bar. So there are naturally some comparisons to Cheers.

So for Ron Fudge's, is he Cliff or Norm? I'm definitely Norm. I'll take that and meet Norman. I have no problem being compared to one of the greatest shows of all time, even if we fall up short to that. It's fun to hear anybody even compare us to that.

And it's just, yeah, I mean, I think in that way that it's just a nice, you get a nice home vibe, the nice vibe of you, you would want to hang out with us. Because we're fun people to hang out with. It's just, I keep saying fun. That's pretty much what the show is. There's a lot of shows with too much drama to me.

And, you know, and even when they're supposed to be comedies, there's still a lot of drama. This show is a straight up comedy and has some heart to it. But it's just like a straight up comedy. Do undainable episodes every Tuesday. See more at NBC.com and catch up on season one right now at NBC on demand.

Here we go with the latest in pop culture. So Vester Stallone is coming to television. Well, at least behind the camera, he's going to executive produce a new fitness competition show called Strong, which stands for start to realize our natural greatness. The series is set to debut later this year on NBC. The number one comic sold in comic stores in February belongs to IDW.

Some other interesting facts took place when you put together the numbers for sales in January. And that includes more growth from image and a pretty stable month for Marvel sales as well. We'll run down the entire report and give you the top 10 best selling comics for the month coming up. More of those redesigned costumes for DC characters have made it to the Internet. This time, they're new ones for flesh and Green Arrow as well.

The Green Arrow costume will debut in issued over 41, which comes in June. The flash costume debuts in number 41, which also comes late in the month of June. Both are a little similar to the TV versions, especially the flash. And of course, that joins the old ones already out there for Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, all taking place at the end of the Convergence miniseries. The relaunched Ninjak has become a sellout for Valiant Comics.

First issue that landed in stores just a few days ago is already sold out. A second printing is on the way that will appear on the shelves at the same time as the second issue of Ninjak. And that is April 22nd. By the way, this sellout marks the honor of being the biggest Valiant debut comic since Rai number one, which came out in 2014. Coming in June from Dynamite is Shadow Number 100.

If that confuses you a little bit. Well, they got to that number by adding together all the miniseries, the one shots and everything that Dynamite has published involving that character. A special issue contains material by Michael Useland, Matt Wagner and Howard Chacon. It'll be in stores in June. On the ever changing front of movie reboots, it looks like there's some life being breathed into a possibility of the Crow coming back to the big screen.

Now they're talking about casting and the one name that seems to be coming up over and over again is Jack Houston from Boardwalk Empire. Meanwhile, Kevin Smith announced over the weekend that he's planning on a mall rats to although it's pretty far down on the list of his projects of currently are led by the third clerks, which is said to be were completed sometime later this year. It was a great month for comic books for sales in comic stores as 2015 continued to be the growth year and the number one comic came from well, pretty unexpected source growth was double digits for the month. Comics were up a whopping 20%. However, graphic novel sales for the month were a little flat when compared to those in 2014. Market shares were pretty much the same as they always have been with Marvel still way over DC almost 13 points ahead with 38% as opposed to just about 26% and image trailing at number three with just about five and a half percent.

Your top 10 best selling comics in stores for the month of February begin at number 10 with Justice League 39 from DC silk. Number one came in at number nine amazing Spider-Man number 15 was the number eight best seller at number seven. Second issue of Darth Vader from Marvel at number six amazing Spider-Man number 14 number five was Batman number 39 second issue of Star Wars from Marvel came in at number four. Spider-Gwen number one was the third best seller second best seller was Darth Vader number one from Marvel. But the number one comic in storage in February came from IDW and that due to a big boost from the great. It was orphan black number one. As for now we're back in a few days. We're going to circle back to Bates Motel this time to talk to Norman himself Freddie high more joins us to talk about this new season and of course there's lots more pop culture as well all waiting for you on websites like ComicMix.com.

Michael Davis world.com get the point radio.com and the iTunes five guest directory. Follow us on Facebook Twitter and Instagram to under the point radio and then be back here in a few days. Dot com.