What better way to kick off the holiday season than with a mini-episode-in-name-only that involves ranking all the TV Christmas shlock we’ve watched over the last few years? THERE IS NO BETTER WAY. DO NOT SUGGEST OTHERWISE. Anyway, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris spend a long time mulling over a list of festive made-for-TV ephemera to decide once and for all which ones might actually approach something close to “being a good movie” and which ones are more “shit.” And much like the movies we discuss here, we’ll also be covering a Christmas movie that pretty much no one has heard of (don’t worry, you can find it on YouTube!) for our impending Holiday Spectacular (and natch there’s a drink recipe too)!
Tag Archives: mini episode
100.5 – A Why Watch Retrospective
Nothing is more spine-chillingly terrifying than a look back at the past! SPOOOOOOKY!!! To commemorate doing one hundred movies (yeesh) for this podcast, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris look back on their favorites and least favorites. Everyone has different definitions of these things and some people chose more than one because, you know, we like to shake things up here. Naturally we also briefly cover our next movie that we’ll tackle and we SPILL THAT TEA (or hopefully don’t because that would make a mess) with the tea-based cocktail that will accompany it. To one hundred more (I mean, sure, why not aim big)!
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99.5 – Pitcher’s Mound – Jukebox Musical: What’s Up, Doc?
At long last, closure! Our jukebox musical mini-episode miniseries comes to a manic conclusion with the ultimate theatrical cop out- a jukebox musical based on a movie. That’s right, for Brendan’s turn he’s taken the Great American Songbook-esque tunes peppered throughout the 1972 Peter Bogdanovich screwball throwback What’s Up, Doc? and attempted to turn them into the spine of a theatrical adaptation. There’s also some other changes in there, so don’t worry, it’s less lazy than it sounds on paper. We’re also prepping for our annual Halloween spooktacular (and 100th episode), and we can think of no better way to do so than by getting pretty drunk for the occasion so be sure to try out the cocktail we’ll be making for it.
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98.5 – Pitcher’s Mound – Jukebox Musical: The Bacchae
As our summer murder mystery miniseries has ended, our entirely different mini-episode miniseries is still well underway, and in this episode there’s a lot of ancient drama served up with it. This time, we continue our individual jukebox musical pitches with Chris stepping up to bat. Get ready for a lot of 80s alternative / pop / punk mixed in with some ancient Greek drama- a night of theater with plenty of singing, dancing, and messy dismemberment! Also we introduce our lower stakes movie for September and an equally lower stakes cocktail to accompany it, because we all know things will get more hectic as the holiday season kicks in so for the love of god can’t we just relax for a bit now???
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97.5 – Pitcher’s Mound – Jukebox Musical: Underclass Heroes
As summer draws to its unbearably hot closure, we dust off an old mini episode topic chestnut, Pitcher’s Mound! That’s right, that thing where we pitch a movie, or in this case, a MUUUUUUSICAL! A jukebox musical, point of fact. The first of three (!) mini episodes kicks off with Leigh pitching her very specifically-focused punk rock jukebox musical featuring a lot of music you might remember from the early 2000s and such. Sorry about the air conditioning, to repeat, it was VERY hot. Almost as hot as the ticket sales will be when this baby hits Broadway! Also we announce our final Summer of Murder Mystery movie and the drink that will accompany it, wot wot.
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96.5 – Getting Dahled Up
Hey, did you hear about how the UK publisher of the Roald Dahl books did some weird overcorrections that no one seems to have asked for and removed words like “fat” or the mystery of why women might wear wigs from their most recent editions? Or how Disney apparently is censoring language from the streaming version of The French Connection, lest you be shocked that New York cops in the 70s tossed around racial slurs? Well, we did and we decided to talk about it, so please Hollywood allow us to record introductions to this sort of material placing it in context, our prices are cheap. Also we introduce the second movie of our Summer of Murder Mystery and the drink we’ll be guzzling to make it feel like a well-paced plot.
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95.5 – Raiders of the Lost Media
In this Why Watch mini episode, we’re living in the Land of the Lost! And by that, we mean we live in a world where we were initially promised that streaming content online would allow unimaginable access to movies and television, only to find shockingly that we actually live in a world where exclusive content can be taken down and hidden on a hard drive somewhere to suit the whims of large horrific media conglomerates. While the concept of “lost media” is nothing new, we seem to be entering an entirely different way of classifying things as such. For example, what happens when you spend a bunch of time and money making a Batgirl movie, then your new corporate overlord decides to bury it in a box somewhere for tax purposes? Anyway, we use recent events stemming from these sorts of decisions as a springboard to talk about a variety of topics related to what happens when you can no longer watch something legally (or indeed, if you’re not allowed to ever see it at all). As is fitting for such a mysterious topic, we also reveal the theme of our summer block of movies along with an old-timey drink to accompany our next subject, which will surely bring you back to the time when media was mostly considered lost because no one thought to record it or left the film in a shoebox in Argentina or something.
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94.5 – Hot Takes for My Real Friends, Real Takes for My Hot Friends
As the weather starts to heat up, the temperature of our takes go right with it! Get all warm and toasty with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we present a deeply-held opinion in the form of an absurdly hot take, and then attempt to defend it calmly and rationally. Slip on your oven mitts before you pick up your phone after listening to this, because these takes are… rather hot!* Also as per usual there’s a new drink recipe to accompany our next movie, so be sure to listen to that far more lukewarm bit before you scald yourself on these takes, babyyyyy!
*Editor’s Note: These takes may be less hot than previously stated.
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93.5 – The Great Gamification
It sure seems like video games, the hot new trend among today’s youths, are here to stay! In fact, it seems that these have become so popular, they’ve started to transform motion pictures into video games! It’s true! Granted, some of these adaptations have been… questionable in quality, to say the least. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they think back upon some of the video games we’ve played based on movies, and then have a discussion about what video games based on movies we’ve covered for this podcast might be like. How many of these shitty rom coms could have been mildly more interesting dating sims? Find out! And speaking of shitty rom coms, we kind of have one of those coming up next, and trust us, you’ll want to be drunk for this one.
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92.5 – Looking 2.5 Score
For our latest mini episode, we present part two of a part two mini episode. No, just go with it, it’s okay. Rather than cover all of our second Looking to Score discussion from four weeks ago as one long episode, we decided to do it in two for your listening convenience. This time, we’re ostensibly covering a piece of orchestral dance music by Stephen Sondheim and a ballet piece reconceived in a wildly different context for an animated movie. Also, we bullshit a lot about our next movie without having even seen it and introduce a cocktail that (much like said movie’s protagonist) should undergo a fascinating transformation as you watch it! Please, sip slowly for full effect.
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91.5 – Looking 2 Score
Our oft-featured discussion on film music (and music from other forms of media) returns with a mighty vengeance in our latest mini. LISTEN, won’t you, as we discuss some scores used in both movies and video games and try to avoid having this episode taken down for copyright infringement by talking over the music. It’s hard! Also, next episode will tackle a movie that seems to be a beloved cult classic in some way but none of us had actually seen until recently. Naturally, we’ll be drinking a themed cocktail to help us get through a potentially-messy 80s fantasy world.
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90.5 – K-Drama Conundrums: A Love Day Special
Look, Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and we couldn’t think of any rom com con(versation)s to have, so Leigh very kindly whipped up yet another round of our patented (patent pending) game where we have to decide what titles are real and what ones are fake. But THIS time, there’s an eastern Asian twist to it, as all the titles are for K-Dramas (or J, or other countries, there’s fertile ground here). As Brendan and Chris know not a lot about this topic, it becomes a real guessing game and so anyone could win! Not that there’s anything to win here, but still, bragging rights are something. Also, our re-evaluation of the Kate Hudson canon continues with our upcoming February rom com episode.
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89.5 – The Closing of the Year VI
That’s right, we’re back again with our end-of-the-year lazy finale episode, the Closing of the Year! Listen in as we talk about the previous year, including favorite and least favorite movies and drinks, and discuss a little bit about what the next year will bring. More themed summers! Crazier cocktails! Long lost lovers reappearing during multiple weddings! And a moratorium on made-for-TV holiday romcoms that will go into temporary effect after our first movie of 2023, so don’t worry, we’re not planning some sneaky wild stealth retheming of our podcast or anything.
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88.5 – Hallmark Christmas Movie Generator Game II
In which we play round two of last year’s winter party game, the Hallmark Christmas Movie Generator Game! We’ve got all the same hats and slips of paper, but this time with a NEW category to make our titles even more cumbersome and difficult to find when scanning through a list of vague nonsensical titles on Hulu. Naturally, we also introduce the subject of our 2022 Christmas Spectacular, where we finally dip our toes into the made-for-TV holiday movie cesspool. Truly, it was destined to happen. Unsurprisingly there’s still yet another mulled wine cocktail to accompany it, because why wouldn’t there be.
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87.5 – Pitcher’s Mound – Modern Updates of Classic Lit
Yes, we’re sorry, we know it’s Halloween but we have no more ideas for Halloween mini episode topics. We’re open to suggestions! Until then, we’re going to do another Pitcher’s Mound mini where we each pitch an updated modern adaptation of a classic piece of literature / drama. That’s right, until Hollywood gets its act together and makes the teen comedy version of Cymbeline that we’ve all been clamoring for, we’ll just have to put our own ideas out into the ether. So please, don’t steal our contemporary high school version of The Great Gatsby. It would just be impolite. Also next up, we tackle the oldest movie we’ve ever covered (and also possibly the shortest) in our return to the Disney animated canon, this time focusing on their middling ’60s output.
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86.5 – Superheroes, Rebels, Elves, and Dragons, Oh My!
Part of the Golden Age of Television™ we now find ourselves inundated with is that so many large conglomerates are now spending absurd amounts of money on streaming-friendly television extensions of their media brands. What does this mean for you, the viewer? Well, it means that right now you’ve got four separate franchises (Marvel, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and Lord of the Rings) currently screaming for space amongst your literal and figurative bandwidth. And much like the alignment of the planets that portends a seismic shift in Disney’s Hercules, all four of them have something launching at about the same time. Join in with Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss the four shows represented by these terrible mega-corporations and what ones they think are worth your eyeballs glazing over for. Also, we announce our upcoming Halloween Spooktacular movie- truly, the only thing more frightening that the capitalist nightmare we find ourselves trapped in.
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85.5 – Pitcher’s Mound – YA Our Way
We say hello to our movie for next month and bid farewell to our Sweet and Sour Summer of Teen Angst with the inevitable conclusion that actually, we could do it way better than the pros. We’ve each come prepared with a pitch or two of our own for the next big YA franchise for some second-rate director to snatch up and butcher into a mid-budget movie, and the buzz words are flying. Upstairs/Downstairs in space? Black powder fantasy with dragons and tech? Twin Peaks Americana meets fairy tale? The Goodreads commenters will have a field day with this!
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84.5 – Sorry Not Sorry for Watching
At long last, our horrible secret comes out- it turns out we thought some of the movies we suggested for this podcast were actually good and just used this whole thing as an excuse to force a discussion about a “bad” movie we secretly liked. We air our dirty laundry to each other and confess our deepest truths about movies like The Girl from Monday and Tomorrowland and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As part of our sinful confession, we also reveal our next and final Sweet and Sour Summer of Teen Angst movie and cocktail, so hold on to your gendered clothing for this next episode.
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83.5 – Blasé YA
As part of our process of determining movies for our Sweet and Sour Summer of YA Angst, we went through several lists of movies based on young adult novels that never quite took off or flopped miserably. Naturally, we ended up watching multiple potential candidates and came across several movies that we found fascinating in some way but didn’t merit a full discussion. Maybe they were actually good! Maybe they just sucked so much that no one wanted to talk about them! Anyway, on that note, please enjoy our discussion of three YA novels that were not the hits the studio may have hoped they were- 2014’s Vampire Academy, 2016’s Fallen, and and 2018’s Every Day. Which one of these was the secretly good one? Hint: it’s the one we spend the most time talking about! Also our summer of teen angst continues unabated with our next piece of country-fried cinematic supernatural nonsense (and yet another lemonade cocktail to accompany it).
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82.5 – Part of That World
Summer is finally here, and with it the exciting promise of traveling to new locales (or just sitting in front of the air conditioner on your phone watching movies, both are good options)! Using that as a starting point, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris decided to talk about the fictional worlds of films that they’d most like to live in and why. Will Leigh deign to visit Brendan when he moves to Coruscant? Listen and find out! Also we kick off our summer movie and drink theme, and all the sweet and sour vibes it entails.
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81.5 – How Sweet Is Your Boi?
For this mini episode of Why Watch, we tackle one of the cultural zeitgeist’s most pressing issues- who are your sweetest bois? Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as they discuss their favorite gentle boys of pop culture, those sweet boys who are defined by their willingness to show kindness and help others rather than immediately punch the shit out of someone (look, some of them also do that too but hey, all gentle behavior must have limits). Also our next full-length episode’s subject is brought up along with an accompanying cocktail that will hopefully sort of look like electricity or Tesla coils or magic, I don’t know, there’s options here!
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80.5 – Not-So-Fantastic Beasts
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79.5 – Mock Musicals
We return with the third leg of our “guess what’s real and what’s made up” game, this time focusing on that finest of all American art forms, musical theater! Well, some would certainly argue that, at least. Join Brendan as he quizzes Leigh and Chris with a list of musical titles as they determine which ones are actually professionally-mounted musicals and which ones are titles that Brendan thought sounded vaguely plausible. I mean, can you tell what “Flahooley” is? Who can, right? Also we plan out our next movie and a suitably smoky cocktail to accompany it.
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78.5 – Faux Femme Fatales
MORE GAMES! The people (by which we mean we) demanded it, and so we delivered. We go now to round two of our guessing game in which Leigh and Brendan try to determine what woman-featured thriller movies Chris has made up versus which ones are actual films. Also as always we announce next episode’s movie, one of the ugliest and crappiest big-budget movies ever to be committed to some hard drive in California, and the very thematically-appropriate tea-based cocktail that will accompany it (and hopefully numb the pain).
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77.5 – Tailor-Made Media
Have you ever encountered something so directly suited to your desires, something so attuned to your tastes, something that you can’t possibly imagine anyone else responding to as passionately as you? If so, you’ve got some ego, buddy! But still, we’re going to discuss this sort of thing anyway. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we talk about some specific forms of media that feels tailor-made to our own preferences. As usual, there’s a lot of tangents and we talk about our impending Valentine’s Day rom-com phantasmagoria (with the customary winter spritzer cocktail as well).
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76.5 – The Closing of the Year V
Our beloved (?) annual tradition continues! It is the end of the year and we are all very tired, so for the fifth time we look at the year in review. The movies! The drinks! The movies and drinks yet to come! Also we’re doing that Taron Egerton Robin Hood movie next, so maybe consider renting that piece of crap.
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74.5 – Unexpected Hits
With Halloween in our rearview mirrors and the evil demonic spirits we brought to our mortal realm after spending the night in that haunted house safely turned to statues when the first rays of dawn touched them, we can focus on the future: movies that we thought would suck but then didn’t! Now that we have created a Horrible New Normal and studios are starting to put bloated expensive crap back in theaters where it belong, Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss movies they saw that they fully expected to not be good but somehow were. You can call this the Paddington Principle. Also we start preparing for our next full-length episode, with a few old friends returning for a movie no one has ever heard and a autumnal update of a hardboiled gumshoe standby to drink along with it.
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73.5 – Classic Film or Classic Flimflam
In our latest minisode game premise, Leigh combs through the dregs of forgotten early cinema for movie names that seem just implausible enough and combines them with a list of her own fictional titles, then forces Brendan and Chris to wrack their brains in an attempt to determine which ones are real and which ones are fake. Games are fun and they don’t require all of us to do preparation for an episode (just Leigh), so we hope you like this frivolous bit of nonsense (and that you still like things similar to it when we try to do it again at some point). Also we try a really bizarre flavor of ice cream from a local ice cream parlor because why not and we introduce our upcoming 2021 Halloween Spooktacular movie! It sounds pretty crummy! Get spooked!
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72.5 – Dream for a Nostalgiac
As the Summer of Weddings closes, we decide to put some fresh eyes on some of the depictions of adulthood from movies and TV we watched and loved as kids versus how we feel about them today (surprise, we hate them!). Mostly, it’s a great excuse for Leigh to force Brendan and Chris to watch the truly cringeworthy film Dream for an Insomniac. Perhaps it should have been obvious to 12-year-old Leigh, but any movie that sets you on a beret phase is probably not a movie you should be sourcing any aspirational ideas of adulthood from.
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71.5 – Romcommification
In which we take nonromcom movies we already watched for this podcast and romcomify them, so there are romcoms where we had naught but noncoms to begin with. Rom!
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