This Show is Awkward

Recorded during Hanukkah 2021, Michelle finally finds menorah candles after searching four grocery stores. The victory comes halfway through the holiday, and her next challenge is remembering the potatoes and onions for latkes. Henrique Couto asks how the candles fit, why a full box contains so many and whether people still use oil menorahs, leaving Michelle to explain her own practice while repeatedly reminding him that a search engine is not a substitute for context.
That setup preserves the original notes’ joke about Henrique finding everything Jewish funny, but the humor comes with a warning. Their improvised searches wander into novelty merchandise, wordplay and stereotypes that can be insensitive or offensive. Rather than reproduce slogans or slurs, these notes foreground Michelle’s personal Hanukkah experience: finding the right candles, choosing colors, counting what the holiday requires and hoping to make potato pancakes before it ends. Her answers describe her traditions, not rules for every Jewish listener.
The episode’s other major discovery hook is a reaction tour through strange 1990s commercials. Henrique and Michelle revisit Pop-Tarts flavor clouds, Duracell’s plastic people, a surreal Pokémon live event, baby dolls with bodily functions, classic Super Soakers, Burger King choices, animated pizza, Mentos, Capri Sun and a Casio label maker. The brand names identify archival ads discussed in the recording; the segment does not claim those products, prices or promotions are current.
Label-maker envy leads to QR codes, personalized household labels and the ethics of stealing office equipment, all firmly in joke territory. The live-show experiment then drifts through pajamas versus “soft pants,” holiday-horror atmosphere and videos of unusually calm robbery victims and failed thefts. An early pet update also contains Henrique’s premature belief that Chicano’s tumor was benign; the following episode corrects that assumption, so it is not repeated here as fact. The result is a loose holiday livestream mixing Hanukkah frustration, commercial nostalgia, pets and increasingly elaborate internet detours.
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Recorded just after Thanksgiving 2021, Michelle and Henrique Couto compare two very different holiday tables. Michelle maps out stuffing, rice pilaf, broccoli casserole, marshmallow-topped yams and a crowded dessert spread, while Henrique champions mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, cornbread pudding and his mother’s twice-baked potatoes. Cranberry preferences, potato skins and a family pie order from Frisch’s Big Boy turn the meal into a playful regional-food argument.
Henrique’s exhausting holiday continues through two family dinners and a late movie night with friends. The annual double feature pairs Planes, Trains and Automobiles with Dutch, then everyone stays for the 2021 horror comedy Black Friday. He explains why the retail-worker setting hit home, why the gathering lasted until 3:30 a.m. and why making potato latkes was less appealing when they could not be served straight from the stove.
Then the title’s “talk” becomes a real announcement. After 108 conversations, the hosts explain that this was the final episode in the show’s original podcast-first format. Their 100th-episode livestream had been fun enough to inspire a looser interactive version built around audience participation and reaction videos. As described in this 2021 recording, live video would happen when their schedules allowed, archived video would remain available and edited audio would continue on the podcast feed.
The episode also checks in on Michelle finishing Squid Game after a social-media tease spoiled part of its mystery. A final Hanukkah tangent finds her searching Wegmans for menorah candles and explaining that the holiday begins the previous evening on the Jewish calendar. Thanksgiving food, seasonal movies and a format experiment make this a transition episode that still sounds unmistakably like Michelle and Henrique.
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Content warning: this 2021 conversation includes childhood bullying, homophobic harassment, physical assaults, school-shooting context and discussion of pet surgery. Henrique Couto recalls being pushed down stairs, struck by a heavy library door, spat on during bus rides, targeted with prank calls and followed home. He explains why adults telling him to fight back could not solve the problem, and why fear eventually led him to spread a dangerous rumor about carrying a stun gun after Columbine.
Michelle remembers confronting two classmates through angry voicemail messages, but she also describes how difficult it can be to decide whether an experience “counts” as bullying. Together the hosts compare physical intimidation with psychological cruelty and ask what bullying looks like after school. Henrique argues that adult bullies often present themselves as outsiders while using lies, gaslighting and backhanded compliments against friends or coworkers. Michelle recognizes similar dynamics without naming private people or treating disputed workplace stories as settled fact.
Henrique applies that lens to independent filmmaking. When A Bulldog for Christmas reached Walmart, some colleagues framed their congratulations as moral criticism or accusations of selling out. He distinguishes a stranger’s negative review from personal manipulation by someone who knows you, then credits sincere messages from viewers and friends with helping him continue through financial and creative uncertainty. Former classmates who later apologized for bullying also earn his respect for acknowledging the harm and risking rejection.
The episode opens while Chicano is undergoing growth-removal surgery. Earlier heart monitoring had changed the anesthesia plan, and pathology had not yet established whether the growth was benign or malignant. Community help with unexpected veterinary bills and Michelle clearing time to keep Henrique company provide an immediate contrast to the bullying discussion. A recent visit with a longtime friend in Georgia reinforces the same conclusion: cruelty can follow people into adulthood, but dependable friendship and specific encouragement still matter.
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• Email the hosts: [email protected]

Content warning: this 2021 conversation includes childhood bullying, homophobic harassment, physical assaults, school-shooting context and discussion of pet surgery. Henrique Couto recalls being pushed down stairs, struck by a heavy library door, spat on during bus rides, targeted with prank calls and followed home. He explains why adults telling him to fight back could not solve the problem, and why fear eventually led him to spread a dangerous rumor about carrying a stun gun after Columbine.
Michelle remembers confronting two classmates through angry voicemail messages, but she also describes how difficult it can be to decide whether an experience “counts” as bullying. Together the hosts compare physical intimidation with psychological cruelty and ask what bullying looks like after school. Henrique argues that adult bullies often present themselves as outsiders while using lies, gaslighting and backhanded compliments against friends or coworkers. Michelle recognizes similar dynamics without naming private people or treating disputed workplace stories as settled fact.
Henrique applies that lens to independent filmmaking. When A Bulldog for Christmas reached Walmart, some colleagues framed their congratulations as moral criticism or accusations of selling out. He distinguishes a stranger’s negative review from personal manipulation by someone who knows you, then credits sincere messages from viewers and friends with helping him continue through financial and creative uncertainty. Former classmates who later apologized for bullying also earn his respect for acknowledging the harm and risking rejection.
The episode opens while Chicano is undergoing growth-removal surgery. Earlier heart monitoring had changed the anesthesia plan, and pathology had not yet established whether the growth was benign or malignant. Community help with unexpected veterinary bills and Michelle clearing time to keep Henrique company provide an immediate contrast to the bullying discussion. A recent visit with a longtime friend in Georgia reinforces the same conclusion: cruelty can follow people into adulthood, but dependable friendship and specific encouragement still matter.
Links

• Email the hosts: [email protected]

Recorded in November 2021, Henrique Couto has finally started Squid Game and Michelle is several episodes ahead. They discuss the show’s early portrait of debt, gambling and desperation without revealing its later twists, then compare its present-day competition with other death-game stories. Henrique is especially struck by the protagonist winning money rather than simply losing it: the occasional victory helps explain why gambling remains so dangerous. Michelle weighs that reading against the anime versions of the genre she already knows.
Parasite becomes the next Korean screen-story flashpoint when Henrique discovers Michelle has never seen it. He insists on sending her a copy and praises its class conflict without revealing the plot. Their exchange turns the source note’s vague “Korean cinema” promise into a specific conversation about Squid Game, Parasite, subtitles and why both stories connect economic pressure to character choices. The hosts’ opinions belong to this 2021 recording, not a definitive survey of Korean film or television.
A separate movie tangent finds Henrique reviewing Marvel’s Eternals. He finds the large cast difficult to connect with and interrogates the story’s rule that its heroes may fight alien Deviants but cannot intervene in human history. References to the Holocaust and Hiroshima make this section potentially sensitive, while discussion of the film’s international edits and theatrical prospects is preserved only as dated commentary. Michelle also describes transferring to a more supportive workplace and relearning how much authority her supervisor role actually carries.
Finally, a consumer dog-DNA test rewrites Henwolf’s origin story. Despite repeated guesses that she was part Saint Bernard, Collie or Australian Shepherd, the reported four-breed result identifies Boxer, pit bull, Chow Chow and German Shepherd ancestry. Henrique studies possible relatives, coat traits, her barrel chest and a family tree dominated by breeds she barely resembles. He treats his explanation as amateur speculation, gives Wolfie the new nickname Bruiser and abandons confident predictions before Chicano’s results arrive.
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Recorded after Halloween 2021 and the season’s first Ohio frost, Michelle and Henrique Couto compare trick-or-treat turnout in their neighborhoods. Michelle welcomes younger families and celebrates her mother finally exhausting a huge candy supply after moving to a more walkable area. Henrique also sees more small children than in previous years. Hearing them laugh and play after trick-or-treating convinces him that elaborate decorations are worthwhile and that Halloween, however much adults love it, still belongs to kids.
Henrique recounts an all-night local horror event followed by a Halloween spent answering the door in a bloodied hospital-patient costume. Fog, green lighting and his position behind the window made the effect scarier than intended, although one fearless child proudly announced that scary movies could not frighten him. Four rolls of gauze also left Henrique sore and hiding a real forehead cut beneath the fake blood—a discovery he made only after repeatedly trying to scrub the “makeup” away.
Technology supplies a second nostalgia thread. A noisy printer revives Michelle’s story about once mistaking printer sounds for an intruder, while a garage hard drive unexpectedly reveals digital photos last saved in 2004. Henrique remembers paying extra for Kodak Picture CDs so he could build websites before scanners and camera phones were commonplace. The hosts also check in on Michelle’s home-inspection plans, including historical coursework in termites and radon, without turning the conversation into professional advice.
Michelle’s Halloween viewing includes an unnamed comedy-horror anime about a girl who sees spirits and survives by pretending she cannot. She also finally watches Trick ’r Treat after Henrique sends it to her, prompting memories of a compressed Freddy Krueger marathon during her shoulder recovery. Anime gives way to Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Pluto TV rotation and Jean-Luc Picard’s repeated torture stories. Candy, costumes, aging technology and comfort viewing make this a distinctly post-Halloween catch-up.
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Full spoiler and content warning: Michelle and Henrique Couto dissect Halloween Kills from its 2021 release through the ending, including graphic fictional murder, mob violence and suicide. Michelle likes the film but prefers Halloween (2018), especially its stronger comic balance and more complete story arc. Henrique reads the sequel as a deliberate bridge to Halloween Ends: the townspeople’s final attack appears to stop Michael Myers, only for him to rise again, suggesting that the Shape is more than an unusually durable man.
The hospital pursuit supplies their biggest thematic debate. Haddonfield residents turn fear into a mob, mistake another escaped patient for Michael and help drive an innocent person to his death. Henrique defends the repeated “Evil dies tonight” chant as purposeful rather than accidental camp, tracing it to a “Love lives today” donation sign earlier in the film. Michelle appreciates seeing how the town responds to decades of trauma but hopes the franchise has completed this part of the mob story.
Franchise fan service becomes both evidence and reward. The hosts discuss returning characters, callbacks to earlier Halloween timelines, the Silver Shamrock masks from Halloween III, the alternate history of Tommy Doyle and the recreated Dr. Loomis. Big John and Little John stand out because the film lets them become funny, affectionate residents of the Myers house before killing them. Michelle agrees that making victims quickly likable gives the violence weight instead of treating every death as disposable spectacle.
That care explains why Henrique embraces the movie despite its unevenness. He compares the approach with reboots that borrow a famous title while discarding the source’s identity, including the Rob Zombie Halloween films and a later Friday the 13th adaptation. Michelle connects the problem to manga-to-anime projects made without affection for the original work. A closing candy update identifies strawberry bonbons and peanut butter kisses from their prior Halloween conversation, providing a sweet exit from a long discussion of Michael Myers, grief and murder.
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Recorded in October 2021, Henrique Couto celebrates replacing an off-brand 65-inch television with his first name-brand set, a 65-inch Samsung QLED. The smart remote automatically recognizes his 4K Blu-ray player, Roku and soundbar, while HDR makes new Halloween restorations look dramatically different. One feature keeps distracting him: automatic dimming during dark scenes. He buys a traditional remote and enters the television’s service controls to change it, a personal experiment described here rather than recommended technical guidance.
A search for what makes OLED displays “organic” sends Michelle and Henrique into chemistry they openly do not understand, eventually producing the episode’s joke that televisions must be made of people. Michelle’s real news is more grounded: a former instructor has offered her home-inspection work in Pennsylvania. The opportunity gives her an email address, a path to field experience and a reason to pause plans for her own company, but it also activates her fear of disappointing an employer before she has completed a single inspection.
Halloween planning takes over from there. Henrique has stocked four giant bags of candy, programmable lights, colored floods, fog and barking dogs for a front-door scare. He remembers past costumes inspired by Tourist Trap, Leatherface, Ghostface, The Purge and Dr. Giggles, plus the year he sat motionless beside the candy until a young ninja approached. Michelle prefers handing out candy beside ghosts and fake spiderwebs, and the hosts compare nostalgic strawberry-wrapped sweets, orange-and-black taffy and neighborhood trick-or-treat traditions.
For seasonal viewing, Henrique rotates Trick ’r Treat, Murder Party and John Carpenter’s Halloween while waiting for visitors. He also reviews the 2021 Slumber Party Massacre remake, praising its playful reversal of slasher conventions while distinguishing a loose reboot from a scene-for-scene remake. Michelle contributes a haunted-house story about an insurance adjuster calling a landline that an unseen older woman seems to answer. New screens, a new career and old-fashioned Halloween mischief make this a technology-heavy spooky-season catch-up.
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Recorded in October 2021, Henrique Couto shares the making of Beggar’s Night, a six-minute Halloween horror short created as he began easing back into production after a long interruption. He explains why his supporters had asked for more short films, how the project fit his plans to rebuild a regular filmmaking rhythm and why a night shoot in the woods offered the right experiment for a seasonal story.
The behind-the-scenes centerpiece is Henrique’s attempt to power modern LED film lights with portable battery banks. He describes the brighter hard-source lighting, the tradeoffs of working far from an outlet and the practical frustration of navigating a dark set between takes. A garage cleanup full of costumes, props and equipment extends the filmmaking conversation, as does his hope of eventually reviving Popcorn Fodder. These are personal production recollections, not electrical or set-safety guidance.
Michelle and Henrique then turn toward Halloween traditions: pumpkin patches, squirrels that attack jack-o’-lanterns, competing trick-or-treat dates, trunk-or-treat events and the ambition to become the house that gives away the best candy. Their jokes about Mischief Night, egging and smashed pumpkins lead to the spontaneous phrase “pipsqueaks and Melvins,” which became the podcast title but is not the name of Henrique’s film.
The episode also captures Michelle’s slow 2021 home-inspector licensing process, including a request to clarify errors-and-omissions insurance paperwork. Henrique anticipates Halloween Kills, while Michelle recommends the found-audio podcast Within the Wires. A 1988 Nickelodeon Halloween special featuring Marc Summers and magician Lance Burton completes this lively mix of independent horror filmmaking, seasonal nostalgia and creative friendship.
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Recorded in October 2021, Henrique Couto and Michelle follow their live 100th episode by comparing the movies, television and podcasts carrying them into spooky season. Henrique has just returned from Cinema Wasteland and settles into a spoiler-light review of Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass, praising its isolated-community mystery and the complexity of its religious themes without revealing the story’s central surprise.
That review opens a broader Mike Flanagan conversation spanning Hush, Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor. The hosts debate long episodes, binge-watching and the strange claim that modern audiences lack attention spans when popular movies keep growing longer. No Time to Die, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and the approaching release of Halloween Kills all enter the discussion as 2021 viewing plans rather than current availability advice.
Michelle recommends Within the Wires, the found-audio anthology set across an alternate world and connected to the creators behind Welcome to Night Vale. Henrique’s enthusiasm for hidden stories inside ordinary media leads to alternate-reality games and an idea for a multipart Weekly Spooky production. Their watch list also includes American Horror Stories, Creepshow on Shudder and Only Murders in the Building, the comedy-mystery starring Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez.
The conversation closes with a snapshot of Michelle’s home-inspection business preparations. She had arranged Pennsylvania radon-inspection support while waiting on a New Jersey application that required additional proof of her exam and insurance. The hosts’ remarks about radon are jokes, not health or professional guidance. Together, the episode offers a 2021 time capsule of horror streaming, audio fiction, true-crime comedy and two friends trading recommendations.
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