The Incomparable Mothership

A long time ago we used to be friends, but I haven’t thought of you lately at all—until you got that new series at Hulu, anyway. We’re discussing the UPN/CW classic series “Veronica Mars”, featuring Kristen Bell as a teenage noir detective trying to solve her best friend’s murder with the reluctant help of her disgraced private-investigator dad. If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth a watch! We discuss season one of the show in detail (including revealing who the murderer is at the end), but don’t discuss much at all about the next two seasons and don’t touch at all on the contents of the fourth season that just premiered.

Our Rocket Surgery crew returns to the current decade to discuss Tim Burton’s billion-dollar 3-D smash hit, “Alice In Wonderland.” What if everything you remember fondly from Lewis Carroll was turned into a catchphrase? Why so much eye stabbing? Who is the Jabberwocky and what has it done with the Jabberwock? What does Johnny Depp bring to his role of a mild hat enthusiast? When did Monty give up and start reading IMDB trivia? Nobody mention how big the Red Queen’s head is!

Fresh from the theater, we tackle “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” We consider the lighter side of the death and resurrection of billions of people, the unique position this Spider-Man has in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the value of various surrogate dads. We’re also surprised at how interesting Mysterio turned out to be despite the fact that he’s Mysterio.

For 4th of July week we’re going to the beach — Amity Island, to be precise. Old Movie Club takes on the original summer blockbuster, 1975’s “Jaws”, directed by some kid named Steven Spielberg. Two of our panelists have never seen it! But we all learn some important lessons about how much blood the human body contains, the ins and outs of tourism marketing, and how the most important part of the journey is the sharks we met along the way.

If we told you that there was a 1990s movie starring Martin Sheen’s brother featuring a post-apocalyptic world of skateboarding, sword-wielding Jedi dudes, would you believe us? Well, you shouldn’t, because we made it up on the spot. Concluding our trilogy of improvised “Rocket Surgery” episodes, this is “Last Dance of the Devil’s”, a film so bad that its title is mispunctuated.

Our survey of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of Batman films concludes with “The Dark Knight Rises.” It’s clear why fans of the gritty darkness of “The Dark Knight” might have been disappointed with this film, because it’s strange in many surprisingly comic-booky ways… and we kind of love it? We discuss the choice to have the film’s primary villain have his mouth covered and speak in surround sound, the competence of Selina Kyle, the steadfastness of Michael Caine’s Alfred, the heir apparent earnestness of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the proximity of certain middle-eastern rendition sites to Gotham. If you miss this episode, look for us in a café in Florence and give us a nod.

Our cinematic survey of Batman rolls on with Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.” Nolan’s film was a huge hit and remains well loved, but how does it hold up on rewatching? Our panel found a film overflowing with ideas, sometimes to its credit and sometime to its detriment. Is this really two movies jammed together into one? Why was Rachel Dawes re-cast? Why does Batman hate dogs? Turn on your sonar vision and find out!

If you’re not watching “The Magicians”, you’re missing out. This is a TV series that started off fine, but then became spectacularly good with its third and (just completed) fourth seasons. We take some time at the beginning of the episode to try to entice new viewers to watch, and then dive into the shocking events that occur in the most recent season. After all, sometimes you’ve got to be a fish.

Climb on a dragon and join us for our traditional breakdown of the just-completed season of “Game of Thrones.” Did the story reach a satisfying conclusion? Were the character arcs consistent? Did the structure of the season satisfy us or undercut our assumptions about what the show was really about? And what is to become of the Night’s Watch? One last time, we go to Westeros.

For some reason, this seemed like a good time for our panelists to get together and draft their favorite and least favorite TV series endings of all time. We’ll wager that there are opinions you’ll disagree with and shows you’ve literally never heard of.