Chaos hits the precinct when the Captain finally takes his first vacation in twelve years, leaving behind an empty office, an unwatered ficus, and a mountain of overdue paperwork. But before the Gumshoes can enjoy a rare moment of peace, something far more sinister slinks out of the shadows: Dirty Deborah.

Deborah the precinct archivist breaks into the captain’s office, swipes his entire wardrobe (including three identical short-sleeve dress shirts), and steals his badge. By the time the detectives discover her, she’s already strutting around the bullpen in Hardcastle’s clothes, barking orders, and claiming the captain personally put her “100% in charge, no take-backs.”

She gathers the Movie Gumshoes, Detective Jared “Ballistic” Jackson and his overeager rookie partner Jonathan “Sourdough” Manno, and issues their new assignment: “Review Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny… or you’re all suspended!”

Convinced the film holds “clues” about Hardcastle’s whereabouts (it does not), Deborah forces the detectives to dive into Indy’s final adventure. While Jared tries to keep the investigation grounded, Sourdough becomes obsessed with uncovering whether time travel is admissible in court, and Deborah keeps interrupting with questions like, “Can Harrison Ford legally punch Nazis without a permit?”

As the Gumshoes break down the plot, dissect the action sequences, and debate whether the de-aging tech should be charged with impersonating a younger man, they begin to suspect Deborah’s real plan: distract them long enough for her to pawn the captain’s badge.

In the end, the precinct is restored, order (mostly) returns, and Dirty Deborah flees out a bathroom window, leaving behind only a trail of sunflower seeds and a forged memo appointing her “Deputy Queen of Cinematic Operations.”

In this episode of Movie Gumshoes, Jonathan storms into the precinct with breaking news: the owner of The Skin Job—Tortilla Flats’ most questionable strip club—has allegedly landed on the Epstein list, and the FBI needs them to detain him. Jared, sensing immediate danger, complications, and probably glitter, decides they need a training refresher on how to apprehend a high-profile suspect without getting sued, shot, or slimed by alien goo.

Naturally, there’s only one cinematic case study that fits: Bugonia (2025), Yorgos Lanthimos’s dark, deranged black comedy remake of the Korean cult classic Save the Green Planet!.

Jared assembles a full case file:

• The film’s two amateur abductors who are very sure their CEO target is a world-ending alien
• Emma Stone as the possibly extraterrestrial tech mogul
• Jesse Plemons absolutely committing to “kidnapping with conviction”
• And a reminder that “proper suspect apprehension” and “Yorgos Lanthimos movie” rarely overlap

As they break down the film for tactical (and questionable) guidance, Jared and Jonathan attempt to extract real-world lessons on handling powerful people, reading red flags, and not accidentally starting a hostage crisis.

By the time they finish, one thing is clear: They are absolutely not ready to detain a strip-club owner under federal suspicion. But they’re going to try anyway… and hijinks are inevitable.

In this episode of Movie Gumshoes, the detectives dive into the neon world of Tron: Ares, which is the third film where Jared Leto stars as Ares, a program sent from the digital realm into the human world, directed by Joachim Rønning and filmed under the codename “Dust Bunny” in Vancouver. But while they investigate, Jonathan quietly battles his own crisis: his AI girlfriend, Synthia.exe, has left him, and he must accept that—like Ares, some things have to step into reality. As they discuss lightcycles, the legacy of Tron: Legacy, and the film’s themes of programs becoming human, Jared urges Jonathan to do the same: let go of digital love and try dating someone with a pulse. In a bittersweet moment, Jonathan deletes Ari-Elle, wiping their “shared memory,” and admits it’s time to leave the Grid behind. The case concludes not just with movie facts, but with Jonathan taking his first step back into the real world.

The precinct is in chaos. Detective Santiago the precinct's top detective, legendary for solving three cold cases before his morning coffee, has vanished without a trace. The Captain calls in the only dimwitted duo reckless enough for the job: Detectives Jared “Ballistic” and Jonathan “Sourdough” Manno.

The Captain delivers the bad news: Santiago has been spotted in the Junk wearing a velvet robe and chanting under the stars with the secretive Cthulhu sex cult known only as The Knight Stars in area. Word is he’s been completely brainwashed, body present, mind somewhere in the tentacles of madness.

Knowing they’re out of their depth in eldritch erotica and ancient sea gods, the Captain orders the Gumshoes to do what they do best: movies. Specifically, every piece of pop culture featuring Cthulhu, cults, or detectives who smoked too much and saw things man wasn’t meant to see.

Their first assignment? HBO’s forgotten gem “Cast a Deadly Spell” (1991). Private detective Harry Philip Lovecraft, (Fred Ward). The strange but affluent Amos Hacksaw (David Warner) trusts Lovecraft because of his distaste for magic, and he recruits the private eye to track down an ancient text. Harry's seemingly straightforward task becomes complicated when he realizes that the object of his mission contains curses that Hacksaw hopes to use for world domination.— it’s practically a training video for this case.

When a battered Atari cartridge turns up at the precinct labeled “Top Secret — Project Cloak & Dagger,” veteran detective Jared “Ballistic” Jackson and partner Jonathan “Sourdough” Manno are called in to decode it. What starts as a simple nostalgia trip soon spirals into a full-blown Cold-War mystery — complete with imaginary operatives, vanishing fathers, and a kid convinced he’s living inside a spy movie.

As they dissect Cloak & Dagger’s strange blend of childhood fantasy and government paranoia, Jared suspects the film is really an allegory about the Reagan-era arms race and latchkey loneliness. Sourdough, however, is convinced it’s about trust — between father and son, agent and double agent, gamer and game. Their investigation leads from a dusty VHS rental case to a shadowy arcade in San Antonio, where they interrogate the ghost of Dabney Coleman’s dual roles like he’s their missing witness.

Between analyzing the film’s heartfelt delusion and its surprisingly brutal finale, the detectives debate whether Cloak & Dagger was warning us about spycraft, screen time, or the blurred line between imagination and evidence.

In the end, the case file reads: “Suspect: Reality itself. Motive: Escapism.” And as the closing reel spins, Jared mutters, “Maybe the real top-secret project was learning how to grow up.”

A string of bizarre restaurant robberies leaves staff tied up like Sunday roast, Detectives Jared “Ballistic” Jackson and Jonathan “Sourdough” Manno stake out the Feedbag Restaurant to catch the elusive Tangler — a criminal with a flair for knots and perfect timing.

But when Dirty Deborah joins the operation with her case files (and questionable expertise in ropework), tensions rise faster than fryer grease. After Jared realizes the case mirrors Roofman (2025), the trio decide to “take a quick break” for research — only to return and find the Tangler’s struck again, leaving nothing but rope burns and an empty safe.

Now the Gumshoes must scramble to explain to their Captain why their big bust turned into a night at the movies. Is this the most tangled case yet… or just another knot they can’t untie?

When the Movie Gumshoes set out to investigate Ben Leonberg’s haunted-house dog flick Good Boy (2025), things go sideways before the opening credits roll. Rookie Jonathan shows up with what he proudly claims is a new K-9 recruit named Ballistic—Jared’s old nickname from his wilder days. Trouble is, the “dog” turns out to be a rabid coyote swiped from behind the Feed Bag dumpster. Within minutes, Ballistic bolts, tears through downtown Junk, and bites a stripper outside the Skin Job.

With chaos spreading and animal control nowhere in sight, Jared decides the best way to keep the rookie’s spirits up is to get back to the real case: dissecting Good Boy down at the Dinoplex. The two detectives hunker into sticky theater seats, joined by their favorite local informant, Dirty Deborah, who’s furious that the bar inside the theater didn’t even bother to card her.

Between sips of flat gin and the distant sirens chasing the escaped coyote, the trio comb through Good Boy’s evidence—its dog’s-eye cinematography, its tragic loyalty, and the lingering question of what makes a “good boy” when the world goes bad. By the end of the night, they’ve got theories, a few laughs, and a live-animal warrant waiting for them back at HQ.

In this hard-hitting case of Movie Gumshoes, Jared and rookie detective Jonathan lace up their boots to investigate The Long Walk (2025), Stephen King’s chilling dystopian tale brought to the screen by Francis Lawrence. The precinct archivist Dirty Deborah joins the case file, adding her broken moral compass to the mix. Together, the trio dissect the film’s oppressive atmosphere, Cooper Hoffman’s standout performance, and the devastating psychological toll of a contest where stopping means death. While Jared and Jonathan debate the pacing and adaptation choices, Deborah zeroes in on the fleeting humanity between the Walkers and the uneasy ethics of watching suffering for sport. Brutal, relentless, and thought-provoking, this episode asks: how far would you go when survival is the only prize?

Back at the precinct, Jonathan can’t help but strike up a conversation with the Captain. He explains that he sees himself and Jared like Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett in Hollywood Homicide—two detectives with double lives. “They’ve got homicide,” Jonathan says, “we’ve got movies. We clock out of real cases and moonlight as movie investigators. Same thing, just cooler jackets.”

The Captain humors him, but Jared isn’t buying the comparison. To prove a point, Jared dives into the history of Hollywood Homicide. What he finds makes the precinct corkboard creak under the weight of red string: the film was loosely inspired by the wave of high-profile hip hop murders in the 1990s. Jared lays it out in grim detail—Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, and a string of unsolved killings that defined a generation of rap. The glitzy buddy-cop comedy suddenly looks like a tone-deaf cash-in on real tragedies.

Jonathan still insists the movie has charm (“I mean, c’mon, Ford chases a suspect while on a cell phone call about real estate—classic!”), but Jared hates it. To him, it’s another Hollywood example of turning genuine pain into popcorn entertainment. The precinct is split: is Hollywood Homicide just harmless buddy-cop fluff, or a tasteless exploitation of unsolved murder cases?

As the detectives argue, one thing is clear—the Gumshoes can’t even investigate a movie without digging into the real crimes hiding underneath.

Jonathan and Jared hit the Dinoplex theater to catch the pint-sized Toxic Avenger reboot. But before the mop-wielding mutant can even clean house on-screen, a disgruntled patron stands up mid-show. He tells the whole crowd they’re “better than this movie” and urges everyone to walk out, claiming it’s nothing but a waste of time.

Now back in their office, the Movie Gumshoes sift through the fallout. Between the walkout drama, the questionable legacy of the Toxic Avenger, and the tangled history of its production hell, Jared and Jonathan have to decide: is this radioactive reboot worth avenging… or was the loudmouth patron right all along?