Family. What is family? Is it the family we choose or the family we’re given? And what if in searching for our family, we learn that the real family is the friends we made along the way? These are the kinds of questions we are confronted with Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 (2017) and its companion Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996).

Notes:

• Sovereign citizen
• Fox paws
• Home Alone (1990)
• Where is my super suit?
• Kick the Dog
• Zune
• Except I didn’t say fudge
• Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
• Halting problem
• Oracle machine
• Barber paradox
• Smash Mouth - All Star

We interrupt this chronology to bring you, hot off the presses, are freshest takes on the newest MCU movie, Captain Marvel (2019)! We follow the adventures of Vers, a Kree special agent with maybe more to her story than first meets the eye. After a mission goes awry, she finds herself on the remarkably futuristic world of Earth in the 1990s.

Notes:

• ?מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה מִכָּל הַלֵּילוֹת
• The 1990s
• AltaVista
• Los Angeles Metro Rail
• Green Line - Los Angeles Metro
• Douglas Station (Los Angles Metro)
• *record scratch* *freeze frame*
• The Elder Skrulls
• The Star Wars Chanukah Special
• The Right Stuff (1983)
• Peter Cushing in Rogue One
• Going in Style (2017)
• Live-action Lion King (2019)
• Cat scratch disease
• Toxoplasmosis
• Uno

Strange. Dr. Stephen Strange. Marvel’s Master of the Mystic Arts. We enter a new area of the Marvel Universe as we track the progress of a cocky, New York surgeon with an authentic American accent as he learns that maybe there’s more to life than the notoriety one can get as some big shot physician after his practice is cut short after a disastrous crash leaves him without full control of his hands. Backstreet Coverband is Doctor Strange (2016). Meanwhile, Phineas and Ferb know what they’re going to do today! They’re going to unwittingly assist their pet platypus’s evil nemesis finish an invention to travel to an alternate dimension! All this and more awaits us in Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension (2011).

Notes:

• Baseball Catchersmitt
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Eidetic memory
• Ironic. He could save others from death but not himself.
• Barber paradox
• Blind men and an elephant
• Swish and flick!
• Benedict Wong
• Unbreakable (2000)
• Defibrillation
• Kafkatrap
• Suicide Squad (2016)
• Ghostbusters (2016)
• The Avengers (1998)
• Satoshi Nakamoto
• Thor and Darryl
• In medias res
• Right-hand rule
• Ordering a Pizza - Rick and Morty
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Convoluted plots! Questionable moral frameworks!k Uncomfortable relationships! Captain America: Civil War (2016) really does have everything which is what makes it arguably the best of the four Avengers films thus far released. But as the Avengers must grapple with the choice as to whether they should give up their autonomy and accept supervision, in Kim Possible: So the Drama (2005), Kim is faced with a choice of equal magnitude: who she should take to junior prom. So much drama, it couldn’t even be contained in two hours!

Notes:

• Millenials
• Blades of Glory (2007)
• Segway
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
• Trolley Problem
• Endor Holocaust
• The Lion King (2019)
• Jim Rash
• Community
• Alfre Woodard
• Black Panther (TV series)
• Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
• Binging With Babish: Chicken Paprikash
• Citizen’s arrest
• Sovereign citizen movement
• Stop it. Get some help.
• Waluigi
• Jet bridge
• The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
• I understood that reference
• Kim Possible (2019) trailer
• Drew Gooden on Kim Possible
• Rocket Surgery
• ”Brain Surgery” - Mitchell and Webb Look
• ”Are we the baddies?” - Mitchell and Webb Look
• ”We live in a society”
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

He's a thief with a heart of gold. He's down-on-his-luck. He can't keep a job. (Baskin Robbins always finds out.) But Pym Tech is trying to unleash the powers of shrink tech onto the world, and Hank Pym needs someone who's willing to get down to their level and stop them! Paul Rudd is the Ant-Man (2015). Meanwhile, Wayne and Gordon Szalinski's wives both really need vacations from their husbands. But through an entirely unforeseeable series of events, it turns out they may have to stay home after all in Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves (1997). The stakes have never been smaller!

Notes:

• ICPC
• Edgar Wright
• Every Frame a Painting
• "Edgar Wright - How to do Visual Comedy"
• Peyton Reed
• 1989
• Coning
• Centrifugal vs centripetal force
• Bay Bridge
• BART
• Muni
• r/EmpireDidNothingWrong
• Juicero
• Rick Moranis
• Dark Helmet

Wouldn’t you know it? You create one network of killer robots to save the Earth from its greatest threats, and all of the sudden, it realizes that humanity’s greatest threat is itself and therefore must be destroyed. Apparently, Tony Stark never took the right classes in ethics or morality. Good thing we’re here to pass judgment on him as we review Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). And speaking of being hoisted on your own petard, we turn towards another mad science experiment gone amok as we also consider the ethical ramifications of letting your scientific research into the hands of hamster-like villains with Leroy & Stitch (2006).

Notes:

• The Star Wars Chanukah Special
• Military-industrial complex
• Peace for our time
• “I Got No Strings”
• Fair use
• Chekhov’s gun
• Cincinnatus/George Washington
• Black Dynamite (2009)
• Man of Steel (2013)
• I was unable to find anything about doping in wood chopping competitions 😢
• Robot or Not
• Sokovia
• Stitch! (anime)
• Hawaii Five-O
• Aloha Stadium
• Pro Bowl
• The Ring (2002)

Things are getting cosmic, as we review a James Gunn short film about a small boy coping with the loss of his mother. Then, for some reason, they decided to tack on some weird space movie after it. Who knows what they were thinking in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). But perhaps we should look beyond what we see. And beyond the Guardians, it looks like I can see Timon and Pumbaa finally get to give their side of the story in The Lion King 1 1/2 (2004).

 Notes:

• Loudoun County, Virginia
• Marvel Super Hero Island
• Universal/Marvel Deal
• Walkman
• “The Corbomite Maneuver”
• Philosophy of Identity
• Death of the Author
• Laika
• Howard the Duck
• Guardians of the Galaxy — Mission: Breakout!
• Figment
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
• MST3K
• Julie Kavner
• Marxism

Steve Rogers is adjusting to twenty-first century life when a mysterious figure arrives played by the same as actor as his childhood friend and comrade-in-arms Bucky Barnes. Given the MCU's proclivities against using the same actor twice for different roles, who could it be? Also, what are the ethics of eliminating millions of people for securing world peace? And why doesn't Steve take the Circulator bus to get from the Mall to Roosevelt Island? We tackle all of these questions and more in this episode as we look at Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). But the past is catching up to more than just Cap as we also turn to look at ursine mating rituals in Brother Bear 2 (2006).

Notes:

• Porsche
• DC Metro
• DC Circulator
• The Dark Knight (2008)
• Sir Michael Caine
• Morgan Freeman
• Edward Snowden
• Elevator safety
• Height of Buildings Act of 1910
• Rosslyn
• NSA Headquarters
• Genius Bar
• Bohr model of the atom
• WarGames (1983)
• Tape Archive
• Operation Paperclip
• Rogue One (2014)
• GoldenEye (1995)
• American Graffiti (1973)
• Phil Collins
• Tarzan (1999)
• McKenzie Brothers
• Rick Moranis
• Dave Thomas (actor)
• Dave Thomas (Wendy's)
• Buffalo buffalo
• Tomás de Torquemada
• Strom Thurmond
• IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth
• Giant panda
• Red panda
• Raccoon
• Jim Cummings

In the spirit of the season, we are giving thanks for our bountiful harvest. In this case, it’s our bountiful harvest of Oreos. We have six different varieties, from classic to megastuf to peanut butter, and we are trying to settle the question, “How much is too much stuf?” And don’t worry. There isn’t too much time spent in the show just chewing Oreos directly into the microphone.

Notes:

• Oreos
• Double Stuf Oreos
• Oreo Thins
• Megastuf Oreos
• Uh oh! Oreos
• Peanut Butter Oreos
• Red Velvet Oreos
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie Oreos
• S’mores Oreos
• Birthday Cake Oreos

And now we have six basically uneaten boxes of Oreos that we have to do something with. Oh, well.

It's the one we've all been waiting for! Everyone's favorite MCU movie! That's right, it's Thor: The Dark World (2013). Get ready for some action-packed hijinks as Nathalie Portman spends most of the movie in a coma! But while we're returning to Thor, let's also review The Return of Jafar (1994) and see what our good pals Iago, Aladdin, and Jason Alexander are doing.

Notes:

• The Core (2003)
• Battleship (2012)
• Your Highness (2011)
• Black Swan (2010)
• Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
• They ask you how you are and you just have to say that you're fine when you're not fine
• The IT Crowd
• Chris O'Dowd
• Richard Ayoade
• Relevant xkcd
• Days of the week - Germanic tradition
• London congestion charge
• Stonehenge
• Mind the gap
• Edward VIII Abdication Speech
• Othello
• Hand (unit)
• Blockbuster
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Luke Cage
• American Vandal

Attributions: "Mind the Gap" by the London Sound Survey