Now We Know

The NBA Finals are nearly upon us, and for a lifelong Warriors fan like Chris, it's just another chapter in a seemingly impossible dream. Which is why he decided to celebrate by dipping two decades into the past, to a game between Golden State and the hated L.A. Lakers all the way back on April 20, 1999. And your favorite Warriors are all here! Erick Dampier! Chris Mills! Terry "Top Cat" Cummings! Bimbo Coles! Settle in for the jump ball.

This time, Kevin brings forth Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, a cherished late 80s single-season sci-fi series with a fake Darth Vader, a million-dollars-per-episode price tag, and a particularly brazen kid's toy tie-in gimmick. But you know what they say: Kid Kev gets what Kid Kev wants ("nobody puts Kid Kev in the corner" would've also been accepted).

Chris finally plays his ace in the hole, and Kevin simply wasn't prepared for it: Death and the Compass, a 1990s film adaptation of a Jorge Luis Borges story of the same name. Kid Chris was blown away by this low-budget, highly dissonant, Peter Boyle-as-mystic-detective indie film some 20 years ago, but what to make of it now?

This week, Kevin pulls from the vault a truly bizarre relic of the 1980s: Small Wonder, wherein a cookie-cutter American sitcom family welcomes a robot daughter to the mix. Come for Vicki's incorrigable japes, stay for grandpa's anti-robot bigotry!

Baseball season is finally upon us! And so, Chris decided to take Kevin ― and all San Francisco Giants fans ― back to a particularly harrowing time, a full eight years before the start of their golden, shimmering championship dynasty. Specifically, the 2002 World Series, perhaps the most ignominious moment in the franchise's history, and the formative experience of Chris' life as a sports fan.

As winter turns to spring, Kevin brings us a 1990 film set in rural Ireland that seeks to plunge viewers into a permanent emotional frost. Namely, The Field, starring Richard Harris, Sean Bean, John Hurt, and Tom Berenger. Spoiler alert: Richard Harris is really protective of his field, and young Kevin was not prepared for this desperate, squalid, and decidedly leprechaun-free tale. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Unfortunately, Kevin is ailing, and as such the boys weren't able to whip up a brand new episode this week. But they'd never leave you high and dry without your content ― feast your ears on the decidedly lo-fi, previously unreleased Now We Know pilot episode! This was recorded in late 2017, the very first bit of Now We Know ever produced. And it concerns what was, at the time, the lowest-rated episode of The Simpsons on IMDB: Lisa Goes Gaga, from the show's 23rd season.

The very same week Nickelodeon announced it's rebooting Are You Afraid Of The Dark? in October, Kevin and Chris watched a trio of episodes of the 1990s original, a children's creepshow classic of the first water. But how does it hold up all these years later?

In the crossover episode of a lifetime, Colleen from WikiWhy leads Kevin and Chris on a journey through The Borrowers, one of her childhood classics. And to be clear, this is the one with John Goodman, and the gross cheese spray, and baby Draco Malfoy, and that scene where Arietty scoops the ice cream with her hands.

Don Bluth classic The Sceret Of NIMH has charmed, vexed, and harrowed children the world over for decades, including a pint-sized Kevin Werkheiser. Will Chris, who's never properly seen it before, fall similarly under its thrall?