Stephen King and Entertainment Weekly go back a long ways. The pair's relationship began with a handful of grouchy letters to the editor in which King excoriated the magazine's film critics. Kin's barbed words, however, only motivated the outlet to recruit the author — after he reviewed a Harry Potter book for them, the editors asked him if he'd want to like his own monthly column. In July of 2003, the Pop of King, a full page of King's pop cultural musings, debuted.

In June 2023, The Losers' Club was initially going to discuss the column in one fell swoop in their Patreon-exclusive Archives series. However, after reading through the first year and change, they discovered there's too much brilliance, too many bad takes, and too much pure bile to not spread this out a bit. 

In this episode, Randall Colburn, Jenn Adams, and Dan Caffrey travel back to 2003 and 2004, using King's comically acerbic reviews, recommendations, and takedowns to discuss how that era of culture resonates two decades on. 

Topics include horror (obviously), poptimism, The Passion of the Christ, baby boomers, gradeflation, movie quotes, death, pet peeves, and Mystic River (the man would not stop with Mystic fuckin' River). And this is just the beginning.

Want more? Become a member of The Barrens -- patreon.com/thebarrens -- for more installments of The Pop of King, in addition to a fourth episode dropping later this month.

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