Fireside Chat with Tim Johnson (Johnsonverse)
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Fireside Chat with Tim Johnson is an American talk/sketch show that premiered on February 27, 2011, and airs on WBC. Starring Tim Johnson, the show features announcer and sidekick Belle Armstrong, and music performed live on-set by Chloe Johnson and a group of musicians known as the Fireside Band.
First announced in 2010, the series has been critically acclaimed for its skits, humor, and hosting, although it has seen controversy for Tim's viewpoints, mainly his political views. It has been renewed to a twelfth season in 2022.
Premise
In addition to featuring sketches parodying a vast array of subjects (for example, Darrell Hammond reprising his role as Donald Trump from Saturday Night Live, having been replaced by Alec Baldwin on the latter show, Tim portraying a stereotypical millennial who thinks the world owes him a living, and Belle Armstrong playing a valley girl named Ella who exploits various valley girl stereotypes to commit various crimes, starting with defrauding Mitt Romney's campaign during the 2012 presidential election; another recurring sketch is Tim playing the grandson of Johnny Carson's character Carnac the Magnificent, with much of the same mannerisms such as tripping during the intro and cursing the audience when they react negatively to a joke), the show also features Tim sitting down and talking in a serious tone about recent events.
It's also in these serious talks that Tim has expressed many of his controversial opinions. He also reviews various non-Johnson shows, movies, and games, which are intentionally biased for comic effect; occasionally, though, he'll give a positive review to something he personally found good (such as Crazy Rich Asians and Undertale), or viciously tear into legitimately bad works (for example, his entire review of the now-banned Teen Titans Go! was a fifteen-minute rant against the writing staff for directly attacking and insulting their critics, and also theorized that the series was being used as a weapon to kill any show the Cartoon Network higher-ups deemed inappropriate or unprofitable, as well as the twisted morals being used to poison the minds of children and turn them into criminals; this episode aired days before Johnson acquired CN and Tim's theory was proven right, and another episode featured a review of the modern seasons of Family Guy (Seasons 7 to 18) in which he famously called them "the result of a once-clever show having been reduced to a steaming piece of s**t that would've gone on the Western Animation section of the 'So Bad, It's Horrible' page on TV Tropes had it not been for the first four seasons and the fact that it somehow still has a fanbase"; once Johnson acquired 20th Century Fox, Tim quoted this line during the announcement that Family Guy and The Simpsons would cease production after three final seasons each that he would personally oversee).
Each episode has Tim talk to seven celebrity guest stars, with a performance by the Johnson Band, along with another performance by a musical guest star.
Seasons
| Season | First aired | Last aired | Episodes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | February 27, 2011 | December 25, 2011 | 44 |
| 2 | January 1, 2012 | December 30, 2012 | 53 |
| 3 | January 6, 2013 | December 29, 2013 | 52 |
| 4 | January 5, 2014 | December 28, 2014 | 52 |
| 5 | January 4, 2015 | December 27, 2015 | 52 |
| 6 | January 3, 2016 | December 25, 2016 | 52 |
| 7 | January 1, 2017 | December 31, 2017 | 53 |
| 8 | January 7, 2018 | December 30, 2018 | 52 |
| 9 | January 6, 2019 | December 29, 2019 | 52 |
| 10 | January 5, 2020 | ongoing | 37 |
Broadcast history
COVID-19 pandemic
When the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic spread to the United States, Fireside Chat initially taped without an audience, with the applause and background laughing being provided by offscreen crew members. In addition, Chloe and the other Johnson Band members were set six feet apart from each other. However, when quarantine orders were put into place, Johnson instead started filming the episodes in his living room (with a chair next to his fireplace), with the guest stars communicating with Tim via Zoom. These episodes are labeled with the subtitle Under Quarantine, in a signature below the show's logo. When the state started loosening those orders, the show reentered production in the studio, with the seats set farther apart and a lack of an audience, while the house band played on a socially distanced platform.
Reception
