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Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather celebrate the last podcast of the year with the themes that made 2024 what it was. Lee defies gravity, Wrather buys reading glasses, Belinkie revs up his chainsaw sword, and Fenzel steps back for a logo 3. It’s not a year in review, because who could review it all, and it’s not a look forward to 2025, because who wants to spoil the surprise? We talk synchronic vs. diachronic framing of virtuosity and ask what Wicked has in common with the South Korean political crisis and what Warhammer 40k has to do with the Babysitters’ Club. It may be more than you think!

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Episode 860: Babysitters 40k originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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Mark Lee, Matt Wrather, Peter Fenzel, and Matt Belinkie, Hannukah preparations notwithstanding, triangulate and ascertain the True Reason for the Season with the freshest of holiday treats: 2024 Christmas movies. It’s a ginger-spiced promenade from the Rock to the Lohan and Hallmark to Hell and back, through approval, myth, family, heroism, and the worst kinds of miracles. Emotions run high, hopes rise and collapse, and we haven’t even cracked open the egg nog yet!

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Episode 859: There’s a Right Christmas and a Wrong Christmas originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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Hot on the heels of our discussion about Sequel Culture, Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee and Pete Fenzel re-enter the arena to discuss Gladiator 2. In the halcyon summer of 2000, it seemed to some people that liberal democracy had won a final enduring victory, and the original Gladiator’s framing of tyranny versus republican virtue didn’t seem like biting social commentary. Twenty four years later this sequel gives us essentially the same plot, but its endless speechifying about the lost dream of democracy and rule of law feels painfully on the nose. But what are the different strategies the movie presents for countering that tyranny? Meeting violence with violence? Organizing political resistance? Or the Denzel Washington option: chewing the scenery while seizing control of the rickety institutions of state from the inside? We don’t learn very much about real Roman history from this movie, but we might learn something about our future.

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Episode 858: We Want To See the Gladiators. It’s a Movie Called Gladiator. originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Pete Fenzel do something boldly original and never to be repeated: talk about pop culture trend pieces written by actual newspapers. In the immediate aftermath of seeing Moana 2 and Gladiator 2, it’s time to chat about the cluster of think pieces around Hollywood’s huge reliance on sequels this year to make up both the top and bottom of its litany of accomplishments. Beset by a category too all-consuming to be useful, we present a taxonomy of sequels, overthinking their similarities and differences, and tracking the relationship between franchise and oeuvre as creative voices move in and out of the mouths of favorite characters. Plus, the extent to which sequels may or may not be parties, the lessons about remakes movies might be logistically unable to learn from stage plays, and “That Gollum, he’s so hot right now!” Are you up and coming, here and now, or down and going? Did anyone see Bad Boys: Ride or Die? Listen to this week’s episode to find out.

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Episode 857: Does Gollum Have to Do Gollum Things? originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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Pete Fenzel and Matt Wrather hold a storied two-hander on Ted Danson’s new Netflix retirement home spy sitcom, A Man on the Inside, which rides the lines among funny and solemn; easy and challenging; and polemic and hagiography. We dig deep on the “All the World’s a Stage” monologue from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which is heavily featured in the show, and broaden the conversation to the literary project of using storytelling to inspire humans to find common interest and empathy in their shared condition and mortality. Comedic floors come up, by which a baseline of silliness might be established to soften the cruelty of jokes and satire. We talk sandwiches, specifically those in their 40s and 50s caring for both aging parents and growing teenagers. Matt updates us on his transition into fatherhood and the experience of reading to his daughter, while Pete goes off about dementia, compassion, and dignity in all stages of life. The question as to how exactly this show will manage a second season will have to wait for another podcast.

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Episode 856: Warehousing People originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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Matt Wrather makes a surprise stop in from parental leave to join Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee and Pete Fenzel as we discuss The Onion: its history, style, and modes of satire through the years. We overthink the A.I.-threatened art of clever photoshopping, the dialogue between image and text, doing topical humor on news figures with zero impersonation, and good-natured, tragic pathos. With the Onion back in print and proposing to expand its media empire with an acquisition of InfoWars, will everything that was old and funny become new again and also funny? Plus, a question of the week on our greatest hits for children’s bedtime stories, and a blazing take from area new father that 9/11 may have changed American culture.

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Episode 855: I Like to Consider Myself a Local Man originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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After six years as the only Overthinker to appreciate these masterpieces, Pete Fenzel has finally convinced Matt Belinke to watch the Tom Hardy Venom movies. And it’s just in time, as Venom: The Last Dance is here to escort the series to its Comic Book Death (and inevitable resurrection). What follows is Matt and Pete’s deep dive on the whole Venom trilogy and its four pillars: amazing relationship-driven character scenes, shockingly deep cultural and psychological symbolism, plots that make no sense, and brutal comic book violence. It’s the rare series whose best parts are its filler, the best in-your-head “Space Oddity” singalong you’ll see in an IMAX movie theater with 12 people in it this year, and our second new movie in two weeks with a direct stand-in for Randy Quaid’s character in Independence Day. The discussion topics are symbiotic tendrils pulling us forward – away from parasitism, toward healthy attachment. And unlike these movies, we don’t bite anyone’s heads off.

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Episode 854: Venom’s Superpower Is Friendship originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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Mark Lee, Pete Fenzel, and Matt Belinkie check in with the mother of all cinematic franchises, Godzilla. After 70 years and 38 films, how can the big guy possibly surprise us, much less move us? Well shockingly, Godzilla Minus One from 2023 got a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, and earned an Oscar for Best Special Effects. We break down exactly how Godzilla reinvented its future by reimagining Japan’s post-war past. We also recall some of the series’s history, such as a 1969 movie in which a little boy meets Godzilla’s son, who is being bullied by other monsters.

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Episode 853: Breath of Atomic Fresh Air originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Pete Fenzel make their vague dreams into iconic realities by overthinking The Greatest Showman. Is it a concept album with spectacular visuals and only a loose plot, or a symbolic visual poem packed with bangers? An idealistic romp about a great historical cynic, a flagrantly inaccurate yarn about a man who might have loved it, The Greatest Showman asks us to consider the difference between dreams and lies, and whether a dream must come true to matter deeply. For its subject, it also offers inadequate ramp-up or justification for a man’s obsession with and exploitation of “human oddities.” Watch the happiest movie about Hugh Jackman stealing bread, and come overthink it with us! This is the Greatest Podcast!

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Episode 852: What Is P.T. Barnum’s Dream? It’s Just Dreams! originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]

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Podfather Matt Wrather is notoriously adverse to scary movies. But as he is still on paternity leave, Pete, Mark, and Matt B overthink “Trap,” a movie that is about being a dad both explicitly and metatextually. Is it a good movie? No, it is not. Its premise is nonsensical, its structure is disjointed, and it exists largely to showcase the questionable pop music and even more questionable acting talent of M. Night’s daughter. But it is also deeply fascinating, because you don’t often see a movie that’s bad because the creator had too MUCH creative freedom and not enough studio executives to hold him back. This is the “Megalopolis” of thrillers. And underneath all the silliness are some interesting ideas about parenting. How do we balance our parent self with our other, more private selves? In a way, don’t ALL dads sneak off to the bathroom to use our phones to check on our murder victims? More importantly, did M. Night Shyamalan really cast Hayley Mills as an inside joke just because she starred in “The Parent Trap”? Because that’s crazy.

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“The First Movie About Pop Music to Nail Its Mediocrity” – New York Times

Episode 851: The Parent Trapper originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]