Extra Hot Great: This Week In TV · Extra Hot Great: This Week In TV

586: Clowning Around With It: Welcome To Derry

October 29, 2025·1 hr 23 min·6 clips

The hosts sing a deranged theme song about a fucked-up town in Maine before diving into the Pennywise prequel.

Can a kid be kept underground? That nasty little question gives the cold open its bite, and the panel wastes no time poking holes in the dread. The mood is Halloween-ish, sure, but nobody is lighting candles for the mythology. David T. Cole, Sarah, Tara Ariano, and Josh Gondelman move with verdict-first energy, treating scary TV as something to test, tease, and sometimes respect. Welcome To Derry is the comparison on the table, especially for shows that either earn their grit or just wallow in grotesquerie. Josh's praise for The Lowdown is pointed rather than gushy: Ethan Hawke as a freelance journalist and rabble-rouser, a racist Southern dynasty, a governor's race in Oklahoma, and a suspicious suicide with non-suicide notes. He likes that it feels adult and propulsive without taking the ugliest possible route just because it can. That is where this panel gets interested. Lore does not get a free pass, especially when the past shows up only to explain the present with a lazy thud. Sterling Harjo gets credit for avoiding that trap. In the bit described, the past and present sound equally alive instead of arranged like exposition furniture. Then Taskmaster barrels in. Josh points to season 19, with Jason Mantzoukas as the first U.S. resident competitor, as a good place to start. The closing recap is pure Extra Hot Great traffic control. Married at First Sight, a 2002 Stephen King interactive CD-ROM, The Lowdown, Taskmaster, canon business, winners and losers, and a non-regulation game all get waved through before Talamasca, The Secret Order takes the bonus-episode slot. It is messy on purpose, like TV criticism around a crowded table: horror skepticism, comedy detours, oddly precise affection, and zero patience for a spooky premise coasting on vibes.

As heard by us

A horror kickoff that keeps sliding into sharper TV detours.

Extra Hot Great starts with Welcome to Derry, then uses it as a way into broader TV talk instead of keeping things boxed into one recap. That loose shape suits the hosts, who move through jokes, doubts, and production notes without much fuss.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a Welcome to Derry chat that keeps getting cheerfully hijacked by side quests and detours.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Extra Hot Great: This Week In TV