Overthinking It Podcast

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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)]

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Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee step slowly up to the wrought-iron knocker on the old oak door of this haunted mansion we call a podcast and knock three times to welcome Halloween! The door creaks on rusty hinges to reveal a bowl of tricks and treats: the spooky-scary and the spooky-silly. These three fathers wonder then on the meaning of Halloween costumes for children: the scary, the aspirational, and the ones with retirement plans. Discussions follow of our favorite scarecrows at the crossroads of ghoulish and gigglish, from remembrance of Crypt Keepers past, to blazing hot takes on a chilling corpse of a topic: The Addams Family versus the Munsters. Are scary things here, or are they yet to come? You’ll have to wait and scream!!

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Episode 850: We Don’t Respect The Munsters, and We Don’t Respect the Monkees 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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Against all odds, Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, and Mark Lee have reunited in tribute to the upcoming Oasis tour. Inspired by their once-intense but now fatigued, even deadened feelings for “Wonderwall,” they discuss the phenomenology of overplaying, the art of giving up on song meaning, and the erosion of phonetic memory, as they pertain to classic rock, arena rock, boy bands, proto-Romantic poetry, and, of course, the seminal album What’s the Story Morning Glory? Canonical tracks such as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and Smash Mouth’s “All Star” are considered, elevating this podcast episode from merely music celebrity news to True High Art. Bonus “Wonderwall” performance, for Members Only.

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Episode 849: Let’s De-Wonderwall This 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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In the 21st century, Dame Maggie Smith was celebrated for her portrayals of Hogwarts’s Professor McGonagall and Downton’s Dowager Countess Violet Crawley. But decades before that, she won two Oscars for movies that are now so obscure you can watch them for free on YouTube. What ties together her body of work is a delightful ability to express everything her character can’t say, and to show us how a sense of duty and propriety can restrain us but also empower us. Pete and Belinkie discuss her career highlights and especially California Suite, which won her a second Oscar in 1978 but has not aged well at all (Bill Cosby jokes about drugging someone with sleeping pills, yikes). Wrather makes a special appearance to update us on parenthood and tell us about seeing Dame Maggie on stage.

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Episode 848: She Was Always What Was Going On 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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The Bachelor franchise has been chugging along for more than 20 years now, in a neverending ouroboros of broken hearts and moonlit dinners surrounded by hundreds of tea candles. Audiences want to see the fairy tale romance, and don’t seem to mind the awkward fact that the large majority of Bachelor couples break up shortly after the cameras stop rolling. Now, hot on the heels of the first Golden Bachelor (married in a televised special in January, divorced in April), ABC is giving us 61-year-old widow Joan Vassos and 24 suitors. And Mark, Pete, and Belinkie step out of a metaphorical limo in search of a rose, and some answers. How does aging up the formula change our experience as viewers? Is it okay for these people to want to be on TV, or is that not “the right reasons?” And why does Belinkie insist that this show pairs excellently with Warhammer 40k?

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Episode 847: If You’re Into 60 Year Old Dudes, This Show Is the Best 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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Overthinking It has been obsessing over, and often lamenting, the Terminator franchise going all the way back to the regrettable 2009 entry, “Terminator Salvation.” The latest entry to the franchise, “Terminator Zero,” is a Netflix animated series and is much better than Salvation and subsequent movies, but not without its issues. Matt, Pete, and the Internet’s Leading Authority on Terminator, Mark, stare deep into the anime eyes of the show’s heroes and villains to unpack its philosophical musings on the human condition, the many reasons why brilliant scientist Malcolm Lee is a terrible dad, and the meta-commentary on a franchise that seems fated to telling the same story of robots chasing humans over and over again.

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Episode 846: My Neighbor Kokoro 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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Beetlejuice is such an iconic character that it’s easy to forget how weird and confusing he is (for starters, his name is actually spelled “Betelgeuse” according to his own tombstone). In this episode, Mark, Pete, Jordan, and Matt Belinkie (your substitute Matt) try to figure out if we’re dealing with a wily trickster demon or an impulsive idiot. We also look at the Deetzes, Manhattan transplants that combine the narcissism of the art world with predatory Reagan-era capitalism… which might actually be grimmer than the eternal DMV of the afterlife. And then there’s Otho, a gay character who seems to be an important stand-in for the gay screenwriter. Ultimately, this is a fun little dark comedy with surprisingly deep insights about the difference between simply BEING alive, and HAVING a life.

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Episode 845: My House Is Haunted; This Is a Great Business Opportunity 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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Once Matt Wrather heads off to parental leave, Overthinking It will be staffed entirely by parents. In the last podcast before this happens, this selfsame Impending Dad Matt, Peter Fenzel and Mark Lee each bring their own choice for “End of an Era” culture for discussion. Pete speaks on Ben Stiller playing a Gen Xer making his lasts grasps at youth, paired against the meteorically rising Greta Gerwig in Greenberg; Mark muses on the heady days of Hamilton in vivo; and Matt, in a grand parting stroke to alienate and confound, tells a personal story about a discussion he had 25 years ago about the first part in the Histoire des Treize (a.k.a. The Thirteen) section of La Comédie Humaine: “Ferragus, chef des Dévorants,” by Honoré de Balzac. It is his last joke that is not a dad joke.

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Episode 844: The Letting Go of Cool 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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Peter Fenzel, Jordan Stokes, and Matthew Wrather examine the Netflix series called The Decameron, which does bear some loose resemblance to Bocaccio’s similarly-titled work of medieval literature.

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Episode 843: Rip the Spike out of the Peacock 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)]