Hey guys - it’s your pal Gethard here with another over-sharing update on what goes into converting a public access television show into an actual basic cable show and all the anxieties that come with that. While I can’t promise that the television show will topple all expectations of what television is and will bring the traditional entertainment industry to its knees, what I can promise is that I will be very publicly emo about the process as we try.

This week we visited our new studio for the first time. It was bonkers magoo.

The first thing I need you guys to know is that this studio is perfect for us. It is underground. I don’t mean that in a “it’s off the grid from mainstream culture!” way, I mean it is in a building where you get on an elevator and tell it to go two levels below earth’s surface to enter. It is an actual underground bunker and that seems totally fitting for us.

There is not a single window in the entire facility. I love that. Our writer’s room starts up in a few weeks and that means that by and large from March through August our writers will not see the sun. That’s rad.

We have always felt like mutants in the world of tv, and now we are actually living like mole people (in the metaphorical sense of what the stereotypical mole people reference means and not in the literal sense that in New York City the homeless sometimes feel so marginalized that they seek to actually live underground, which is very disturbing and sad and as I learned through the documentary Dark Days sometimes inspiring.)

Hallie and JD and Duke and Dru and I met up to take a look at the facilities. Our purpose was to decide what would go where - which rooms would be for writers, producers, band, etc. And to just in general see the place.

Here’s a picture of JD on the actual studio floor. You can also see the back of Duke’s head. Sorry I look stoned in the picture. I have no idea why that is, I haven’t done drugs in years.

Here is a picture of Duke and Dru in the biggest office we have available to us sitting behind a giant desk. This is officially the last time they will be able to pretend they are going to be in a nice office with a nice desk. They will be relegated to a writers’ room that will house five more people, is half the size, and that I assume will be filled with Hot Pocket wrappers and empty Mountain Dew cans almost immediately.

I had to pick an office for myself. I picked the smallest room that has the worst lighting. There was this real tiny shitty desk in there and the people who run the facility were like “We’ll switch this out for a better desk.” And I was like “No, fuck that, I’m keeping the tiny desk.” I don’t know why. I think I work at my best when I feel like things are bad, so while I am intentionally moving to a nicer facility with a chance to put some money behind the show, I am actively seeking to have my own personal comfort level stomped out from the very start.

It was weird to walk around this big empty facility knowing that in a few weeks all my best friends are going to make their job hanging out there. It felt good. Thinking about that also made me feel like we aren’t going to fail.

Being there for some reason reminded of a memory I haven’t thought about in many years. Back in the day I did a sitcom, as some people who follow this blog know, since many other people on TCGS have made fun of me about it and I often in the early days of public access talked about how insecure that failure made me feel.

And I remembered one time being on the set of that show, and doing a bunch of takes, and feeling in over my head. And a friend was on the floor that day and we walked to my dressing room during a break and I remember distinctly saying to him “I don’t know if I’m a leading man.” And he was like “You are.” But I remember feeling like something was way off about that.

And on the floor of the new TCGS studio this week I was standing there and that memory popped into my head. And I immediately thought “I am still not a leading man."

But this time it made me laugh, because we have built a world that embraces people who are not leading men. And a platform that gives opportunities to people who don’t look like starlets, and to people who don’t want to fit into archetypes, who are too green or too weird or too off to really show up on the general pop culture radar very often. I’m really proud of that.

And I think the people who watch the show, who live and die for the show, they’d be the first to say that they’re not leading men and leading ladies either. They either can’t or choose not to identify that way. (Some of them don’t call themselves leading men or ladies because they don’t believe in black and white simple views of gender, too, which is also rad.)

And I think the reason I laughed at those thoughts bouncing off of each other is because I’ve fought really hard for five years only to feel exactly how I felt back then - kinda insecure and like I’m in over my head. But somehow I’ve managed to build something and have met people and we’ve all come together to strengthen this thing that’s a safety net exactly for all the insecure people in the world who feel like they’re in over their heads.

It’s five years later and as a person I feel so much the same - except for the fact that I feel stronger and more empowered, because I’ve found my tribe and my tribe has found me. And some of that tribe are people who will actually be producers on my show. But some of that tribe are kids in Kentucky and Pittsburgh and Brazil who call in to let us know they’re with us and a part of this thing. Part of that tribe are people who have emailed in and never called. And most of that tribe, I’m starting to sense, are people who watch from afar and never reach out, but whose strength is still felt by us as we’re inside this thing.

Being on set, I felt all that stuff and I realized that this is becoming real. I felt that in a tangible way for the first time. And it hit me that we have a chance to get this thing right. But unlike many years ago, that desire to get it right no longer has anything to do with my own ego or desire to find self-validation. It’s now born out of a desire to make the tribe proud, and to make sure they have an even bigger platform to shout fucking louder.

- Geth

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