I loved the 9 club.
My take:
Chris is a really good host and his "arrogant i don't skate anymore" schtick was pretty funny. He's actually a good leader and keeps stuff on track.
Kelly as the bubbly positive guy and 411 fanboy is great.
Roger as the crabby deep knowledge skateboard insider added tons of texture.
Experience crew:
Steezus is great. Non California perspective, good takes, funny af
Eldy is a clown, but there's room for a clown with 5 guys
JW is a 1000% positive, buttery perfect replacement for any of the three dudes who aren't Crob or Rog, which made him the ideal guest.
But replacing Rog with JW fucks up the whole texture of the show, Crob has no go-to guy for facts (hence all the stupid dead air bullshit) and the whole flow of the show is not as good. If they ever go back to real episodes, they will really suffer for not having someone who actually was paying attention to something other than their own career over the last 20 years asking questions.
My guess is that Chris is hardcore chasing the YouTube dream and felt like JW drew better than Rog, and my other guess is that Rog passive aggressively was like "ok fine kick me off" and left on-camera piece. Chris also sounded super disingenuous when he explained about Roger being demoted.
You can feel tension now that wasn't there before and it's lame. I like all 6 dudes, but I haven't been able to watch a non-Rog episode. I'm pretty much done which sucks because I've watched every episode, even the bad ones. I have no podcast in my life now.
I was thinking of sending back my mug in protest, but I want to try to stay positive. I wish them all well, but they no longer have any authenticity and I don't need to watch PG video of dudes saying rad skateboarding is rad. I can just watch Skateline, get some fucking humor, and catch my links there.