Drat Pack

With Valentine’s Day less than two weeks away (we regret to inform you it is now too late to maneuver reservations at any decent restaurant), Leigh, Brendan, and Chris return to the old romantic comedy well to see what bitter muddied water can be drawn from it. And boy, is that bitter water muddied with things like incest, vague mob dramas, and reincarnation! That’s right, our movie this February is 1989’s Chances Are, starring Cybill Shepherd as a grieving widow and Robert Downey Jr. as her daughter’s love interest / the reincarnation of her dead husband’s soul. Nothing complicated here! We kick around a lot of the nonsense thrown onto this movie, but namely, “why would anyone want to create a movie where a dead man comes back to Earth and is split between romancing his daughter and his wife?” Not to mention the resolution! We’ve also got some hot tea-based cocktail to accompany this to keep us both warm and too drunk to reconcile the deeply upsetting intricacies of the movie.

It’s time for another mini episode and with another mini episode comes another game… sort of! Instead of an actual game, we’re doing a draft of our top four fictional characters in media, just a list of some of the best ones out there! Leigh, Brendan, and Chris go serpentine and snatch up our faves while trying to avoid stepping on anyone else’s toes. On top of that, we’ve got our annual Valentine’s Day romantic comedy episode coming up soon, so we talk about the deeply bizarre movie we’ll be covering in two weeks (along with a wintery cocktail to warm our hearts when the movie cannot).

We’re ringing in 2026 with a bit of the ol’ Bayhem- specifically, 2005’s The Island, directed by explosion auteur Michael Bay and starring two Ewan McGregors, two Scarlett Johanssons, and one of almost everybody else. Suggested for discussion as an example of “dumb entertainment,” the movie is mostly notable for 1) Michael Bay’s take on what seems to be at heart a 1970s conspiracy sci-fi thriller 2) an out-of-character financial flop for Bay and 3) being the focus of a lawsuit by the creative team of 1979’s Parts: The Clonus Horror, which it (allegedly!) rips off pretty aggressively. Listen in as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss all this and more (like what vague plot points really just don’t make a lick of sense) while imbibing on a wintery cocktail. Sadly, we could not get Aquifina product placement for the drink.

The year is nearly over! It’s closing up shop! Slam it shut, baby! Close that year! As is our wont, we recap the year and talk about the best and the worst of what we watched and drank. It’s low key! We’re also kicking off 2026 with a big expensive sci-fi / action mess, so listen up for more info about that. Happy holidays and happy new year, be cool and nice.

It’s Holiday Spectacular time, and what better way to celebrate than by watching a movie that was… mostly well received? Leigh, Brendan, and Chris’s reason for the season this year is 2022’s Happiest Season, Clea DuVall’s Christmas romcom about a lesbian couple who find themselves terrorized by both the straights and the trappings of the holiday. But why did Chris suggest that we this ostensibly good movie when the Jim Carrey Grinch is still allowed to exist? Can you enjoy an otherwise solid movie when the central crux of the plot is so troubled? What the hell are Victor Garber’s political leanings? Will Brendan enjoy seeing footage of his beloved childhood mall? Well, it wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t wrap up all these questions with a festive bow AND enjoy a toasty seasonal cocktail while doing it. Happy holidays, everyone!

It’s late November aka prime “let’s circle back to this after the holidays” season and what better way to both blow off responsibility and get ready for Christmas than by doing a full mini episode of our snack food review game “Eat It or Beat It?” That’s right, there is no better way. Join Leigh, Brendan, and Chris as we eat a lone pumpkin spice sweet in remembrance of the autumn, gimmicky Christmas candies, and even some weird holiday amalgamation of sugary confection from across the pond. We also briefly go into our upcoming Holiday Spectacular movie (it’s neither a Hallmark OR Lifetime one this time!) along with the cozy hot cocktail we’ll be downing whilst cinematically going home for the holidays.

Return to the distant year of 1985 which will in turn return you to the distant year of 1962 with a forgotten comedy that finally dares to take the piss out of that sacrosanct topic, the Peace Corps. Naturally, this could only refer to the comedy Volunteers, a movie whose most lasting contribution to modern culture was ensuring the birth of Chet Haze. Listen in on your old-fashioned ham radio as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about Tom Hanks’s spot-on old money New England accent work, what jokes manage to still hold up (shockingly, not the ones where an east Asian character keeps mixing up the letters R and L), and why all the heroic characters will probably still be killed by villainous vengeance-seeking gangs as soon as the credits roll. And hey, we knock it out of the park again with a pretty great cocktail to make this whole ordeal feel like less of a chore than it was!

It’s Halloweek, and since we already blew our scary podcastical load on The Mummy Returns last week for the spookiest of all holidays (next to Arbor Day), we decided to do a lil Halloween game to celebrate it. Anyway, maybe you haven’t noticed but Hallmark is slightly dipping its white Canadian 90s celebrity toes into making movies for Halloween with the same sort of bland competence it brings to Christmas. As is only right given that we have played our patent-pending the Hallmark Christmas movie generator game multiple times before on this podcast, we’ve decided to do a spooky version where we attempt to make the blandest, safest Halloween-themed movies possible while still drenched with the trappings of the season. Join us for a few rounds of this old favorite, and naturally we also briefly kick around our upcoming movie and cocktail combo. Happy Halloween / blehhhhh!

It’s our Halloween Spooktacular, baby, and nothing says the spooky season like a limp underbaked sequel to a blockbuster action / horror-adjacent blockbuster based off of a 1932 Universal Studios monster movie. Naturally, we’re talking about 2001’s The Mummy Returns, a movie that proves there’s nothing scarier than a vain attempt to make lightning strike twice (or a CGI Rock scorpion centaur, take your pick). Slip into some comfortable gold body paint as Leigh, Brendan, and Chris discuss what the deal is with sequels in general, how Jonathan got screwed over here, and why the Scorpion King is even here in the first place. Plus, we have a themed cocktail that’s really great! Like, one of our best! It’s SCAAARY how much we liked it! Anyway, happy early Halloween!

What started off as a vague idea of making up a YA movie or book molted in discussion to become something else and sometimes that’s okay! Leigh, Brendan, and Chris talk about young adult media, be it books or movies- what they are comprised of, what makes them work, and if we can identify them when we see them. We’ve also got our Halloween Spooktacular rising like a full moon in the distance, with a suitably SPOOOOOKY movie being featured (eh, not really) and a suitably DELICIOOOUUUS cocktail accompanying it (we hope).