Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Pop Culture Happy Hour: The Regrettable Television Pop Quiz Returns

Your television doesn't have to look like this. But there's no guarantee what we're offering you will be <em>better </em>than this.
shaunl
/
iStock
Your television doesn't have to look like this. But there's no guarantee what we're offering you will be better than this.

It's been a summer with a lot of good movies, to be quite honest. Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Girls Trip, The Big Sick. But you need a break from even the best movie binge, especially when some of them are ... you know, kind of sad and explode-y.

We figured, therefore, that there was no better time to lift our own spirits — and hopefully yours — by bringing back the game we played when we taped our first episode back in 2010: the Regrettable Television Pop Quiz. And there was no one we wanted to play it with more than Sam Sanders of NPR's It's Been A Minute. Sam came into the studio and, just like the rest of us goofballs, he brought a clip of a show, and we all tried to guess what it was. We had a great time with Sam and found out how he turned off his brain during campaign season, and we closed it out with a round of What's Making Us Happy This Week. Sam is happy about a soundtrack that's really a playlist, Glen is happy about a movie he didn't expect to like, Stephen is happy about a movie he used for a temporary escape, and I am happy about a clip you gotta see.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.