Spoiling Ourselves

This week, we watched Alias! Did you know that you're qualified to be a super secret agent if you can build a small jenga tower, akin to a baby's toy? Neither did we! Did you know that Alias pivoted from spy drama to renaissance science magic? Neither did we! Do you know the secret identity of the Hot Dog Man? We do, but we'll never tell!!!

With Lia off on a mission to the North Pole, Jack, Sam, and CJ sit down to talk about Wilfred, the American version of an Australian TV show about a man who hallucinates that his neighbor's dog is a man in a dog suit. Because the show stars the lithest, littlest boy in all of Hollywood (Elijah Wood) we spend a good chunk of the episode just talking about Lord of the Rings. But we also start our own cult, and we discuss what sort of horrible humans-cosplaying-as-animals we hallucinate on a daily basis. We're also willing to create our own version of MoviePass, but only if everyone donates $6 Billion to our Patreon

This week we watched Iron Fist (or Danny Rand and the Big Punch), the recently cancelled Marvel/Netflix joint. Iron Fist is a rare show that burned very, very faintly for almost all of its run, until it burned so bright in its last 30 seconds that it spontaneously combusted. What superheroes would we want to defend the outer boroughs of NYC? How much of our tax money should go towards public bathrooms? Is Scrooge McDuck the wealthiest superhero? Plus - a sleeper contender for the worst episode summary we've ever done!

This week, we need you to imagine you're listening to hit podcast sensation Spoiling Ourselves, and Jack, Sam, Lia, and CJ are covering the Backyardigans, a children's television show from Nick Jr. that Lia watched as a teenager. Did you do it? Great! We forgot to hit record when we first sat down to do this episode, and it definitely threw us off our game a little bit. Also, CJ finally wins a bet after wagering all of his points, and the genres of music this singing, dancing children's show tackled were absolutely ridiculous. Join us, won't you?

This week, the Spoiling Ourselves team investigated Monk, the USA network police procedural that ran for 8 seasons. He's a detective, but with OCD! A real Sherlock Holmes character if Sherlock Holmes had OCD. We talk about our biggest phobias and how they would help us solve crimes, CJ wins a lot of games and then gets dragged down to earth by his own hubris, and 3 separate William Shatners guest star simultaneously. You're not going to want to miss too much of this episode, but I guess if you missed a little it wouldn't be the worst thing.

This week we watched Mad Men! Don't worry - we're doing this show complete justice. No math-intensive runtime games, clown burglars, or human-robot-hybrid child armies fighting for Disneyland in this episode! We're professionals. And CJ is a killer whale!

This week on Spoiling Ourselves we are very, very sorry because we watched Zoids: New Century, an anime about giant animal mechs battling each other for sport. Again, we apologize, but CJ just hasn’t seen all that much television. We talk about Japan’s fondness for nuclear weapons allegories, and we also focus heavily on the Judge-bots responsible for refereeing the Zoids battles, the only characters in this show who REALLY mattered. Plus, we celebrate the career of the hardest working voice actor of our generation, Richard Ian Cox. What a guy!

We took a month off! Did you miss us?! We're sure you did. This week, we watched Grounded For Life - a show no one has heard of except for Lia, who owns 2 seasons on DVD. Tune in for the best ways to blend in at children's beauty pageants, Santa Claus and the Flashback Boys, and the legend of the Bone-thin Man. Hooray!

This week, we were devastated to learn that Jean Claude Van Johnson had been cancelled after only one season of six episodes. Having all been huge fans of the pilot when Amazon released it as part of its pilot competition, we gave the show a viking funeral Spoiling Ourselves-style. We all loved the hell out of this show, even though a lot of the humor was probably lost on us because we had seen maybe two Jean Claude Van Damme movies between the four of us. What is JCVD's real name? Just how deep does his filmography go? Fuck around and find out!

This week, we watched Friends with Benefits! No, not the 2011 movie Friends with Benefits. No, not No Strings Attached, the also-2011 movie with the same plot as Friends with Benefits. We're talking about the TV show that ran from August 5th to September 16th of 2011 - THAT Friends with Benefits. Come for this show's exuberant sexism, and stay for our heated debate on the best way for a human to overpower a horse. Cheers!