Jimmy O. Yang (performing a bit)
speaker
225 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Jan 2025
Jimmy O. Yang (performing a bit)’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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We had to kind of stop ourselves from having her go on too much because we could have done it in every episode and had plenty to make fun of. Lovingly, lovingly, I should add.
Castellanata, yeah, from The Simpsons, yes.
You're quite welcome.
Monty Python and Monty Python's Flying Circus, Saturday Night Live, Letterman, Cheers. So, you know, early to mid 80s comedy shows were the ones that I was raised on. My mom only let us watch when we were kids, only let us watch an hour of TV a week. So I had to really choose carefully. And then as I got older, obviously those rules were lessened in severity.
So I started watching more and more and more comedy. But those are the main influences on me were Letterman, Monty Python, SNL, Cheers, and then later Conan, I think, as I got into high school.
I don't know. It's a good question. I mean, possibly. I mean, I kind of respected the choice to limit the amount of TV that we watched. You know, it's funny to think about now when everyone is carrying a phone in their pocket that can show them any piece of video that has ever been created anywhere in the globe.
But at the time, there was still this kind of vague sense for people in my parents' generation that like TV rots your brain. And I've had this conversation with a lot of folks my age is like – a lot of writers my age is like some people gorge themselves on TV and watch hours and hours and hours a day. And some people were like me, were like their parents are very restrictive. I don't think –
there's any discernible difference in how people turned out, which kind of gives me a little bit of hope when my son is watching TikTok all day and my daughter is watching YouTube tutorials about how to apply makeup or whatever. And my wife and I get worried, but it's like, well, this is the same stuff that people said about TV when we were kids.
And the truth is, I've talked to Amy Poehler about this. Amy Poehler watched tons of TV and was obsessed with TV. And I know a lot of writers and performers who felt like that and watched a ton of it. And I don't sense any real difference in the way that people's personality is developed based on how much TV they watch. So I'm kind of hoping the same applies to the modern era.
Yeah, I mean, the biggest change, obviously, is just the shift to the streaming model. The Office, we did 28 episodes one year, I think, or maybe 30. The typical season was 22 episodes or 24 episodes, and now a season of TV is eight half hours, usually. And that just completely changes the way you tell stories, right?
The advantage TV always had over movies was you could, in success, watch a set of characters live and change and grow over many, many, many years. And now you're talking about, you know, maybe two seasons of eight episodes and then you're done. So TV writing is much closer to movie writing, I think, than it was when I was first breaking in. There's nothing you can do about it.
That's the world we live in. But I do mourn a little bit the loss of the old system. I think during COVID, people revisited old shows that had 200 episodes, like Friends and Cheers and whatever.
Yeah, and The Office, right.
Yeah. And you can sit you could sit during covid and watch an episode every night for five or six months. And that was incredibly valuable and I think brought people a lot of comfort. That's what we're losing. And that's what I mourn the most about the new system is we're just sort of losing what to my mind was the the inherent advantage that TV storytelling had over movies or anything else.
The timing of that was so perfect, though. Terry, comedic timing was A-plus on that statement.
Well, just by asking the question, you're sort of answering it, right? Because the work that I do is incredibly fun. Like why wouldn't I work? It's sitting in a room with a dozen really funny people writing stories and making jokes. Like that barely counts as work to me.
It's not that it's not hard and it's not that it doesn't come frequently with anxiety or disappointment in the way that any job would. But my goodness, if you can't enjoy yourself with the job I have, there's something deeply wrong with you. And by the way, there are many people who can't enjoy themselves with the job I do. And there are things that are deeply wrong with them.
And that's why, you know, that's why there are a lot of therapists in Los Angeles. But I can't believe I get to do this. It's a miracle. It's incredible. And I, you know, I do it because I love it and because it's so fun. And Not doing it, it's not like you're saying, you've dug a lot of ditches in your life. Why do you keep going back and digging more ditches?
It's like the things I do are inherently enjoyable and collaborative and wonderful. So why wouldn't I keep doing it? It wouldn't make any sense to stop.
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
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