Join some of our Agents for a cozy in-person recording. They are cozied up in Christmas sweaters and Santa hats (really) and surrounded by snacks (or the remains of them). They have paused in the middle of a Christmas movie marathon to tell you about their favourite Christmas movies and try to answer all your holiday movie questions: Why are there SO MANY Christmas movies? What makes a good one? What makes them angry? What would they like to see improved? Why are we eating so many snacks? Come listen in and then go on your own festive mission with the Official Agents of S.M.O.O.C.H. Holiday Movie Bingo Cards.

Christmas Movie Discussion and Recommendations

Annette Wierstra with Kirsten Goruk and Erika Ensign

*What our Agents are Watching: *

Find us on Twitter @agentsofsmooch and tell us about your Holiday Movie Bingo games.

Become a member because the Incomprehensible Agents of SMOOCH did new commentaries for A Castle for Christmas and Princess Switch: Romancing the Star just for our members.

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Our Agents who knit and crochet convene for this mission about our favourite pop culture knitwear. Instead of talking about lovers, we are talking about something that we love. Join us as we discuss our fibre art origin stories and things that we like to knit or crochet. So often during missions, our agents end up talking about knitwear and wardrobe and whether or not Christmas sweaters are good sweaters. This mission is a grand experiment that lets us fawn over pictures of knitwear so we can discuss what we like (or don’t like) about cable-knit sweaters. Yes. Of course, we talk about THAT sweater. And the longest of long scarves.

Knitwear Love

Annette Wierstra with Amanda-Rae Prescott, Erika Ensign and Kelly Guimont

In no particular order and with extra items that we liked but ran out of time to discuss, we’ve provided an extensive list of links so you can see pretty knitwear too.

Thanks to members Rachel and Marlene and listeners Katy Beth, Megan, Sarah, Heidi, and Riley for helping do some of the research for this episode.

Erika’s Long Scarf Blog

Annette’s MA Knitting Research Blog Posts:

Doctor Who

13th Doctor Scarf

Red striped Shada scarf or Season 18 scarf

Jo Grant’s striped sweater And also

Leela’s literal fisherman sweater in “The Horror of Fang Rock”

Rose’s Boomtown scarf

Amy’s Vincent & The Doctor lace scarf

Amy’s red cable scarf (Pandorica Opens)

Amy’s Night Terrors striped scarf

Amy and Rory’s Christmas Sweaters

Knives out

“This sweater needs its own spin-off movie”

Marta’s Scarf

When Harry Met Sally

2019 Little Women,

The Mandalorian, Mon Cala fisherman

Harry Potter

Fringe, Olivia’s black cable knit hat

The Dude,

Outlander

All the Claire things:

S1 Brown mittens/arm warmers

S1 neckwarmer

S5 Claire cowl

S3 Claire modern knitted coat/hat

All Creatures Great & Small

DISHONOURABLE MENTION - Zardoz

Listen to the Incomparable Rocket Surgery Episode about Zardoz

Schitt’s Creek, Hello David.

Anna and the Apocalypse, Light Up Sweaters

The Holiday

Kate Winslet’s Scarf

Gilmore Girls also had some great scarves throughout their run and hired a knitting company to design some

Singing in the Rain, Knit dress

Hunger Games

Black Panther, Nakia’s Scarf:

Their Finest

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The Agents who have gathered for this mission really like The Matrix. Like really like it. We even like the sequels like it. And they are all very excited for the fourth installment dropping this December. We’re here to decide if this trilogy is really is as smoochworthy as we remember. Is it our destiny to find The One in The Matrix? Be ready for wild speculation about numbers and the upcoming fourth movie. Forget blowing up helicopters and buildings, we blow our own minds.

The Matrix Trilogy

Annette Wierstra with Sarah Hendrica Bickerton, Sandra Wong and Erika Ensign

Keanu Reeves reporting on Teddy Bears.

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Our Agents are wrapped in flannel and grooving to grunge for this mission. Get your video dating profile ready because today we are all Singles. This beloved 90s romance classic from Cameron Crowe brings back fond memories of a bygone era. Our Agents delve into whether or not this movie is romantic even if it is packed with romance and whether or not that building actually has an elevator. Join us as we reflect on the technology of the past and speculate on what the modern-day sequel would look like for these characters.

Bonus Mission: Can you guess what are Agent Jean MacDonald’s two crushes in this movie?

Singles Movie

Annette Wierstra with Kelly Guimont, Jean MacDonald and Sarah Hendrica Bickerton

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Join our Agents for our second OcTOMber mission. This time we join Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain in a haunted house story: Crimson Peak. This beautiful gothic horror, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, is full of tension and just enough scares to please our Agents. The Agents go on side missions about Burn Gorman and sink repair. They heroically save the dog through headcanon. Help us ponder burning questions such as: How do you pronounce “magnate?” What is Hiddlestuff? Is this a vampire movie? Who knows?! You will have to listen to find out.

Crimson Peak

Annette Wierstra with Julia Skott and Erika Ensign

If you like this movie, Erika recommends the novel Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

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Welcome to OcTOMber! Our two-part celebration of spooky romances starring Tom Hiddleston. We open with Only Lovers Left Alive, starring Tom, Tilda Swinton, and Mia Wasikowska as vampires. This is more of a melancholy installment in the vampire genre, but it is sexy and funny in a slow-burn kind of way. Our mission is stacked with lovers of this movie who are delighted to introduce it to our director. Be warned! They are ready to lure you into this world of lovers too.

Only Lovers Left Behind

Annette Wierstra with Sandra Wong, Kirsten Goruk, Moisés Chiullán, Aaron Allan and Heather Berberet

Find Heather’s story in the recently released anthology, Shaking the Tree: Brazen. Short. Memoir. https://www.amazon.com/Shaking-Tree-Brazen-Short-Memoir/dp/0997441321/

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Did anyone ask for this? NO! But we did it anyway, first just for our members and now we release it to all our listeners. After we watched all the Twilight movies together, we had to do the Twilight FanFic come 50 Shades of Grey. This is definitely an NSFW and not safe for little ears episode of drinking, giggling, and entertaining each other when the movie fails to. There was pre-drinking. There will be much disdain. No one will actually know what is happening but when do we?

Are we sorry we did this? Maybe.

Will we do the rest of the movies? No. Not even for you, dear listeners.

Incomprehensible Commentary: Fifty Shades of Grey

Annette Wierstra with Kathy Campbell, Tiff Arment, Jean MacDonald and Moisés Chiullán

Things we Love and Love to Hate

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Our Agents are taking a short vacation. In the meantime, you can revisit our very first mission. We start with little pre-episode reminiscing about the past 18 months of Agents of S.M.O.O.C.H and then return to our inaugural Valentine’s Day episode. We celebrated the holiday of love with a draft of our Special Agent’s favourite romance movies paired with a romantic dessert. Will we pick your favourite romance? Maybe Probably not. But we promise it will be delicious.

Romance and Dessert Draft Revisited

Annette Wierstra with Quinn Rose, Moisés Chiullán, Kathy Campbell and Jean MacDonald

And in case you want to revisit some of our other episodes, we’ve linked to some of the movies that we mention here and have since discussed on the podcast.

Bride and Prejudice

Some of our Other Favourites

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It is time to close our Summer of Love with one last summer wedding with 2001’s Monsoon Wedding. It is a multi-generational family story of love and romance set at an Indian wedding. The story shows us a glimpse into the life of this family and household as they prepare for the wedding. Bringing together family members from far-flung reaches of the globe awakens the drama and ultimately brings us to our happy ending. We sidetrack into Indian weddings generally, all the beautiful wardrobe changes, and just missing weddings generally.

*Trigger warning: Sexual assault, 26:00-31:30 when we discuss Ria’s storyline.

Monsoon Wedding

Annette Wierstra with Shelly Brisbin and Trisha Sarker

Listen to our Bride and Prejudice episode from earlier this summer.

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In our continuing Summer of Love, join our Agents as The Wedding Date. This 2005 film takes the classic pretend lovers trope and mixes in family drama and secrets. Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney lead the cast as the estranged sister of the bride and her hired escort. The Agents side track into a lament for the lack of modern, middle-brow romcoms in theatres (even in non-pandemic times). Join us as we montage our way into our perfect wedding outfits as we try to answer the ultimate fashion question: who should change when your outfits are too matchy matchy?

The Wedding Date

Annette Wierstra with Kathy Campbell, Jean MacDonald and Shelly Brisbin

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