Owls Only: An Adult Swim Podcast · Owls Only

Tender Touches with creators Dave Bonawitz, Maxime Simonet, and Lauren Payne

March 25, 2024·1 hr 19 min·3 clips

it was, and he's like, it's always in Greek restaurants, or whatever he says. They always got Branzino! That's the

The episode opens on the ridiculous romantic violence of Tender Touches and on the fact that it is airing late at night on Adult Swim. The group treats that detail like both a shared joke and a shared burden. They talk about the show as something that still has a pulse because people keep carrying it around in memory. There is also plenty of talk about who should have been there for it. Cho comes up as the absent figure everyone keeps joking about, and that absence becomes its own running bit. The tone stays affectionate even when the jokes get blunt. A lot of the fun comes from people who know the same corners of Adult Swim culture talking over one another and finishing each other’s thoughts. The conversation keeps circling the weird logic of the network’s fandom. There is a bit about an executive and a golf course sighting, and it lands because it sits in that fandom-specific space where a tiny detail can carry the whole bit. That is the level of specificity the episode likes to live at. It does not pretend these details are minor. It treats them like the real material. From there the talk slides into a messier, more personal register. Someone describes running away, hiding in a car, and not wanting to go into a crowded place. Another thread turns into a late-night writing session. The writing idea is about AI image generation that can finally get hands right, and then the whole thing mutates into a broader sci-fi premise about artificial intelligence and a guy who cannot quite stop doing what an old college roommate wants from him. The idea is rough, funny, and half-formed in the way an actual late-night story pitch tends to be. The conversation does not force it into shape. It lets it sit there as evidence of how the speakers think when they are loose and tired and a little too open. Then it pivots again into memories about older episodes and old arguments, including bickering that only makes sense if you were already in the room when it happened. That gives the episode its texture: it is not a polished interview about a show, but a living record of people remembering the show through their own history with each other. By the end, the plugs arrive almost as an afterthought, with the hosts talking about social accounts, Rat Cousin on Twitch, Fish Center socks, and how much fun it is to have everybody together. The episode closes in the same spirit it started with: messy, friendly, self-aware, and deeply attached to the weird ecosystem around Adult Swim.

As heard by us

A loose, insider-heavy Adult Swim conversation that treats Tender Touches like shared folklore.

It stays on Tender Touches as an Adult Swim show, then widens into backstage lore, fan memory, and the shared mythology that tends to gather around a cult favorite.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want Tender Touches talk that turns into a whole Adult Swim hangout.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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