About this episode

In Episode 449, Madden and Kolsky discuss various new TV shows and a brief mention of soccer.

In Episode 449, Madden and Kolsky have a brief and unfortunate conversation about Arsenal’s star-in-the-making Max Dowman before putting soccer away to discuss: The second episode of Top Chef: Carolinas (2:15), with a very high level of cooking all around and an emerging favorite, plus a few thoughts on Padma’s new show America’s Culinary Cup… HBO’s new Bill Lawrence/Steve Carrell show Rooster (31:10) and its charming combination of comedy and drama… Netflix’s new horny dramedy Vladimir (35:25) and the now-incredibly-overused trick of showing us a potential endpoint in the first ten minutes of a series… Nicole Kidman’s new Amazon show Scarpetta (43:05) and the weird middle ground it finds between police procedural and family drama… The ABA docu-series Soul Power (50:50), the wild and crazy ’70s times in basketball’s upstart league and where the show may have missed some things… Homework for THREE weeks from now, April 8 (1:04:05), including: the next few episodes of Top Chef, Apple TV+’s Imperfect Women, Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat and the third season of Lisa Kudrow’s HBO series The…

Topics covered

• Top Chef: Carolinas
• Rooster
• Vladimir
• Scarpetta
• Soul Power
• The Comeback

Keywords

• soccer
• cooking
• comedy
• drama
• docu-series

More episodes of The Toy Department

• The Toy Department – Episode 452 · April 22, 2026 · 49 min
• The Toy Department – Episode 451 · April 15, 2026 · 56 min
• The Toy Department – Episode 450 · April 8, 2026 · 1h 2m
• The Toy Department – Episode 448 · March 11, 2026 · 1h 6m
• The Toy Department – Episode 447 · March 6, 2026 · 43 min
• The Toy Department – Episode 446 · February 20, 2026 · 45 min

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