Book Retorts

This week we look back (fondly?) on our epic time with the Dan Simmons series Hyperion. It's the end of the semester and Professor Sam has prepared a surprise final exam for his students Danielle and Filip. Let's see how much they can remember as they fill in the blanks and answer questions about the entire series. Maybe Professor Sam gets some answers wrong too, it's that challenging of an exam! Then we have the oral presentation portion of the test as our students present their favorite, and least favorite, things from the books. Lastly, we have some final thoughts on the series as a whole to finally put an end to this journey. So join us as we try to pass the test and earn our degrees. If you want to take the exam yourself, you can find it here on our website, just send it in for a grade and if you pass, you can proudly proclaim you have a degree in Hyperionology from Book Retorts University! Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Danielle goes dystopic with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. This 2020 prequel to The Hunger Games follows the charming romantic misadventures of Cornelius Snow; the charismatic ne'er-do-well who brought us such classics as failing to kill Katniss Everdeen, destroying his own despotic regime, and not understanding the plight of the common man. Flashback to teenage Cornelius who has been tapped for the prestigious role as mentor in the tenth annual Hunger Games. Once wealthy, his family has fallen on hard times and thanks to the promise of a monetary prize to the mentor of the best-in-show tribute, he is in it to win it. Unfortunately, he gets assigned the suckiest tribute: the girl from district 12. Bummer. Just kidding. She sings! And wears colors! And has a weird affinity for snakes! Cornelius can work with that. Unfortunately, though ten years into the Games, they are shockingly ill-run and Sam and Danielle have THOUGHTS. The Gamemaker is more concerned with creating mutated animals that will not help them keep their dystopia in check, they did not invest in an event planner, and nobody has thought to feed the tributes. Oh no, what's a boy who needs to win the Hunger Games to do? Join Danielle and Sam as they try to make kid-to-kid combat funny, discuss their ideal dystopian regimes (spoiler: they'd be excellent at organizing The Hunger Games), and deep-dive into the mind of the innovative young man who is just trying to help his country be as successful as it can be.

After three long years, Sam finally wraps up the Hyperion saga with the grand finale of The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons. Aenea has taken her show on the road and is spreading the love with her magic blood. Raul, who finally got a taste of it, is tripping: hearing the voices of the dead, chatting with the cosmos, seeing auras (irrelevant), and apparently he can hear every thought and feeling of everyone ever. Privacy? Who needs it. Doesn't matter though, because Raul, the worst choice for the future leader of humanity ever, spends the entire finale trying to figure out who else Aenea slept with (spoiler: it's future him, obviously him). You'd think all that blood power would make that solvable much more quickly. Anyway, for reasons, Raul and Aenea show up at the Vatican where they make out in the back of St. Peter's Basilica during Holy Thursday (as you do) and then Aenea cuts that short to call the Pope an abomination. They immediately get attacked by the Pope's minions, and shockingly, Raul's killer chess moves do not help, and they're separated, both kidnapped and taken into custody. The church, learning literally nothing from their own history, torture and poison Aenea, dead set on making her martyr Jesus. And Endymion, FINALLY, makes it into the stupid cat box he's been in for two books. Also, the Tree of Pain goes on a road trip. Toot! Toot! Will our two heroes make it out alive? Will the Tree of Pain fulfill its destiny? Will Raul ever be less exhausting? Haha, no. Join us for the epic conclusion of a story three years in the making as Sam finally gives us answers we never wanted for things we didn't need to know and Filip, our reluctant guest, finally gets his curse lifted (or does he…) Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Danielle returns to Disney Channel original movies with the 2021 movie Under Wraps. We're back on the DCOM train, baby, choo-choo! And not just any DCOM the very first DCOM ever, or rather, the remake of the very first DCOM. Gilbert, Marshall, and Amy are your average 12-year-old kids getting excited for Halloween when they decide to break into their neighbors home because they saw a moving van out in front. Solid kid logic. Inside they find an anthropoid coffin, and when Gilbert uses super kid strength to open it, he accidentally resurrects a mummy. Fortunately, the mummy, dubbed Harold, is a pretty chill dude for a mummy that's hitherto been dead for thousands of years. Marshall is so stoked to have a mummy friend that he decides to put him in a movie for a class project that is, bafflingly, a fictional movie about a mummy. But starring a real mummy. Kids, man. Anyway, it's not all fun and games as the neighbor wants to get the mummy, which he stole from a museum, back, and he's nobody's mom! He resolves to track down Harold and kids, who learn that Harold only has three days to be placed back to sleep in his anthropoid coffin or he'll die. Again. Sam is not convinced it really matters. Anyway, Shenanigans ensue, there's some mummy dancing (yes, really), and our kids get into a whole lot of trouble. However, in the end we all learn the most valuable lesson of all: If your mom seems indifferent to your existence, maybe her new boyfriend will care about you.

Join us this week for another of our world-famous shorts "Opinions on Simmons" where—you guessed it—we read opinions on Simmons! Dan Simmons, that is, the indelible author of such works as Hyperion, Hyperion 2: Shrike Boogaloo, Endymion, and More Endymion. Sam, trying his best to avoid the epic conclusion to his three-year Hyperion saga, has asked for more time to get his shrikes in order. In lieu, we scoured the internet for reviews (both classy and sassy) to share. Each book in the Hyperion Cantos gets 3 reviews, but spoiler! One of them is for another sci-fi epic entirely. Can we figure out which reviews are about Hyperion or does all sci-fi sound exactly the same to Danielle? Find out this week with…Opinions on Simmons!

Danielle goes big for St. Patrick's Day with the (probably mildly offensive to Irish everywhere) 1999 mini-series, The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns. When American, Randy Quaid, heads to Ireland on a mysterious work trip, he gets more than he bargained for when he realizes he's sharing a home with a leprechaun (Colm Meaney, obviously). He makes quite the impression on the small town (and Sam), when he immediately peeping-toms his beautiful neighbor, then trespasses on her property, and then somehow talks the town priest into taking his side when she complains; it's fine though, they're love interests. That can't matter less, however, because he quickly gets involved in the easily-prevented war between the faires and leprechauns. These immortal folk, who control all of nature, are forever at odds. When the fighting grows between their kind and Mother Nature starts to suffer, well-known Irish comedian Whoopi Goldberg (????), as their despotic Great Banshee, flies in to make it way worse by giving them the curse of mortality. When Princess Jessica of the fairies and leprechaun Mickey Muldoon, son of Colm Meaney, fall in love at a (possibly racist) masked ball, they soon realize that mortality will be the death of them (duh). Will these two kids make it? Will Whoopi Goldberg ever figure out her Irish accent? Will Randy Quaid end up behind bars where he likely belongs? Or will the war destroy them all and nature itself? The stakes have never been higher (and less necessary) this week on Book Retorts.

The Rise of Endymion - Part 5

Danielle pulls a Spook Retorts in February as she recaps the “best horror movie of 2024,” Abigail. Cue a mysterious stranger who has put together what Sam argues is definitely not a heist team to kidnap a ballerina child for a ransom amount that makes no sense. Stolen from her home, Abigail (titular ballerina child) is taken to a gothic mansion in the woods to spend the night. The (not) heist team has one job: to babysit. Spoiler: it does not go well. They quickly realize that Abigail is the daughter of the mythical crime lord, Kristof Lazaar, and he may be out for blood. As the (not) heist team begin dying one by one, in increasingly and absurdly gory ways (hello exploding bodies), they begin to wonder if not everything is as it appears. And Abigail, channeling her inner Kevin McAllister, gets in on the fun. Get ready to pump up the tunes (Swan Lake, specifically), put on your ballet slippers, and join Sam as he guesses every single possible plot option, somehow getting them all correct and all wrong at the exact same time.

We continue the never ending saga of The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons from 1997. We return with…more exposition! And special guest (and trauma buddy) Filip, from the Mind Duck Books podcast, who is in the anger stage of Hyperion Grief. Raul (rhymes with Tall) has arrived on a mountain planet that probably has a name but only one of us knows it (spoiler: it's Sam). Due to time debt (and shenanigans) Aenea has aged up and that's good news for Raul because he's into her. But in a really gross way where he keeps referencing his paternal attitude towards her and how she used to be a child. Please stop, we're begging you. Back on this mountain planet, they go to a big soirée with the Dalai Lama. Aenea is apparently smarter than him, because she's smarter than everyone, but oh no! There's also a lot of bad guys there partying too, and despite her best disguise (a veil) they recognize her and try to start some rumble snaps. Luckily, the Shrike is back in action! And by back in action we mean he shows up, says hi, and leaves. They somehow get out of there and have some more sex (oh, did we not mention that? They're having sex now). And then mixed in, there's lots of mountain planet time where we follow Raul around as he doesn't learn anything Aenea is teaching her disciples, so therefore, we as readers still know nothing. Who needs to know the reasons or plot of a book? Not us. This absolutely infuriates Sam, like to the point that this is the part when Hyperion officially broke him. So join us this week for some much needed group therapy! Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Danielle starts the new year out strong with the another entry in the Ice Planet Barbarian series by Ruby Dixon with the 2015 book Barbarian Lover. We're back on the Ice Planet, which probably has a name, and the tribe with the wayward girls is chugging along. Many of the girls are paired off and pregnant, fortunately we're spared the horror of an alien pregnancy as we follow Kira, who's single. Kira's not out of the woods yet as one of the tribes men is determined to mate with her despite not resonating yet, but Kira refuses his advances because she's afraid she'll never resonate because she's barren. And if you think Kira's struggle with her infertility and finding a place in a society that is just all about procreation would make for an interesting story, you're going to hate how this ends. Anyway, Kira also had a translator device implanted in her head by the kidnapper aliens and it starts going off, warning Kira that the kidnappers are back for their wayward cargo. So Kira and her romantic interest (and a few others that don't really matter) set out to another crashed alien spaceship that just so happens to be the ship the brought the barbarians to this ice planet. Remarkably, it's still working and speaks perfect English, and knows enough about humans to perform a surgery on Kira to remove the alien implant. You'd think a ship this useful would be used even once more by a society struggling to survive, but infuriatingly, Kira and the others just kinda forget about it. Anyway, the kidnapper aliens have already found them, so it's up to a fresh out of surgery, and recently laid, Kira to save the day!

We start the new year with part three of The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons from 1997. We return with...exposition! In a very long scene on the popesteroid, Pope Hoyt brings in Councilor Albedo to explain to the various church leaders that Aenea is carrying a literal engineered virus that will spread through humanity, kill off the cruciforms, and then evolve humans into the Ousters. This is apparently a bad thing? So to combat that, they have been putting billions of people without cruciforms in stasis and stashing them in the labyrinth worlds in a plan that the TechnoCore promises totally isn't evil, swearsies. Anyway, remember all that stuff about the three warring factions in the TechnoCore? Yeah, apparently that's not really the case so just forget all that. This revelation just about breaks Fillip's spirit. Meanwhile, Raul spends an interminable amount of time floating through the atmosphere of a gas giant in his kayak looking at clouds. Eventually, he's eaten by a giant cuttlefish thing, but then we just join up with Raul after the cuttlefish flings him through the next Farcaster to end up back with the Consul's ship. The fact that we spend no time with Raul in the cuttlefish is the most baffling thing since the fact those things on that ice planet were called "wraiths". Anyway, Raul and the ship head off to find Aenea, but conveniently, meeting her will incur a five-year time debt, so she'll be an adult by the time Raul arrives. Those noises you here are Danielle gagging at the thought, and frankly, we're all on her side. So we enter part two of the book on a real downer, will Raul and Aenea finally meet up? Will it be as creepy as we fear? Probably! Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Danielle ends our Winter Bizarre this year with the 2023 Eddie Murphy movie Candy Cane Lane. Chris is your average Christmas obsessed man living in the one neighborhood in Los Angeles which goes full Candy Cane Lane with a house decorating contest each year. After losing his job and then conveniently learning the decorating contest prize this year is one-hundred-thousand dollars, Chris goes off the deep end to win. He drags his young daughter along, instead of taking her to school, and finds a random Christmas store under an overpass. Totally normal. Inside, Chris manically spends way too much money on a massive tree of indeterminate height, and many other decorations, to win that competition. Chris is pressed by the store owner, Pepper, to sign the receipt without reading the fine print, which should be a red flag, but then somehow when he's given the tree it's been been collapsed into a large tuna can for transport, and that fact he is sanguine about all this shows just how much he's lost touch with reality. Now the movie takes a sharp turn towards lunacy as all the ornaments on the tree, which depicted the Twelve Days of Christmas song, come to life and escape, and Chris learns that Pepper is a rogue elf dishing out vigilante Christmas justice and he has to collect the golden rings from the song lest he be turned into a Christmas figurine forever. So Chris battles a truly ludicrous amount of birds and maids a milking to prevent himself being served some piping hot justice cocoa. Happy holidays!

The Winter Bizarre is back! And Sam kicks things off with the truly insane movie A Karate Christmas Miracle from 2019. This movie opens with Jesse, an average ten-year-old boy who has given himself the task of earning a black belt in karate by Christmas, which is like six days away. He believes that doing so will bring his father back, who was kidnapped a year ago by a clown who committed a mass shooting in a movie theater his dad was at. And if you think this movie has anything insightful or sensitive to say about any of these topics, prepare for disappointment. In fact, this movie barely addresses them, and spends the vast majority of its runtime following Jesse's mom, Abby, as she pals around with a psychic law professor trying to determine if her husband is still alive. Look, we're sorry, but there's no way to describe this movie that doesn't sounds like we had a stroke while writing this. Neither Danielle nor Sam are prepared for this movie or the absolutely ludicrous twists and turns it takes all to arrive at an ending that leaves Danielle perhaps more angry than she's ever been at a piece of media Sam brought to her. Truly, the real Christmas miracle.

It's the time of year again, and the thankers are back! This year Danielle and Sam take some time to think back to their childhoods and recall the media they consumed as kids that they are thankful for. So relive with us some of our best and most traumatic childhood memories.

Danielle is back on the Disney Channel Original Movie train with the 2000 made for TV movie Phantom of the Megaplex. Pete is the 17 year-old assistant manager of the small-town megaplex, which has somehow just scored hosting the premiere for the next major blockbuster. Unfortunately, the owner has just informed senior manager Shawn the he's being passed over for the role of the general manager in favor of the owner's son-in-law. Shawn doesn't seem too distraught by this despite this being a truly terrible move by the owner. Anyway, the day of the premiere Pete brings his two younger siblings to the theater since they're still showing movies despite the insane fact they're hosting a Hollywood premiere in a mere few hours. That's when strange things start happening in the theater: The projectors spasm, wind blows, Shawn goes missing briefly, then goes missing again! That's when Pete's younger brother becomes convinced they're being haunted by the fabled Phantom of the Megaplex, who may actually just be the projectionist or someone, or an actual ghost! Needless to say Pete is on the case, and by on the case, we mainly mean doubting the Phantom is real while trying to clean up all the messes in time for the premiere which is, and this can't be stressed enough, the same evening this megaplex has been going about business as usual. So stay tuned to see if Pete can unmask the Phantom, and also to learn the best name Danielle has ever given to a character, probably.

After a short break for recovery, we're back with part two of the Dan Simmons novel The Rise of Endymion from 1997. After far too many weeks, Danielle is back, and so is our far more optimistic guest co-host Filip from the Mind Duck Books podcast. The first thing our intrepid hosts attempt to recall is how the story started in the previous episode. It is a surprisingly difficult challenge for all three of the hosts, and it's unclear if that has more to do with the time since the last episode, or the story itself. Considering the opening of this episode has our first ever correction on the podcast, we'll let you be the judge. As Sam dives into this new episode we open with the reappearance of the Shrike! It's back on Mars and dropping sick beats and ripping the cruciforms out of people. Meanwhile, Raul is suffering tremendous pain which turns out to be a hilariously dramatic kidney stone. He's staying with a local religious group with a name that's hard to spell and harder to say, and spends most of his time in drug induced dreams that are heavy on exposition. Also meanwhile, Father Captain de Soya is on the forefront of the crusade against the Ousters, and it is so brutal and cruel that, unsurprisingly, de Soya has second thoughts. That's all well and good, but the real surprise of this episode is how thoroughly Filip's optimism withers over the course of the story when confronted with all the amazing nonsense thrown at him. We promise that's fun and not depressing! Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Spook Retorts is back! And this year Danielle is starting us off with the venerable Halloween franchise with the third installment from 1982: Season of the Witch. If you love Michael Myers and the deep lore of the Halloween movies, then you're going to have very ambivalent feelings about Halloween III, which is the first (and last) of John Carpenter's planned anthology series of Halloween movies. When an elderly toy maker is able to escape murder thanks to a well placed block of concrete on a chain, he stumbles into a hospital clutching a Halloween mask and raving about a disaster. When the old man is successfully murdered just a little while later, Dr. Dan and the man's daughter Ellie are on the case! Why not the police, you ask? Well, so did we, and we received no answers. Anyway, their investigation leads them to the company town of the Silver Shamrock company, the manufacturer of the Halloween masks. Not only are Silver Shamrock selling the masks, they are absolutely blanketing airwaves with catchy commercials for their masks that literally counts down the days until Halloween. And what are these fabulous, amazing masks? A witch, a pumpkin, and a skeleton. Wow, so original. However, not everything is as it seems, as nine months earlier one of the bluestones was stolen from Stonehenge in an unbelievable heist that would have a made a much better movie. Clearly, some nefarious and mystical mayhem is afoot, and it all culminates in making Sam super angry about a plan that seems utterly pointless, and the unfortunate dearth of witches despite the promise of the movie's title.

This week, Danielle brings the 1999 Sarah Michelle Gellar film Simply Irresistible. Amanda is a chef in New York City who owns a failing restaurant because she's a terrible cook. While at a street framer's market, Amanda is bullied into buying a basket of crabs and then has a chance encounter with Tom, the manager of the big department store who's also opening a restaurant in that department store for some reason. It should be noted that these chance encounters, and basket of crabs, is all being orchestrated by Gene O'Reilly, a kinda guardian angel/cupid figure who doesn't actually matter that much. Anyway, later that day, Tom ends up at Amanda's restaurant with his girlfriend. Amanda prepares the crabs she bought for Tom, but one escapes and takes up residence in Amanda's kitchen. Now, there is an assertion by the movie that the crab is magic, Sam has doubts that the crab is special in any way. Anyway, Amanda's food sends Tom into waves of ecstasy while it causes his girlfriend to dump him. Soon, he and Amanda are dating, or at least hooking up in a magic sugar mist (yes, really), and Tom is so obsessed with Amanda's food he steals it off of random people in his store. The usual rom-com shenanigans and misunderstandings ensue, but each is filtered through a bizarre and surreal lens of fantasy, and also there's a crab there that just kinda watches Amanda grow into the chef she was destined to be, and find love along the way? Who cares! Tell us more about that freaking crab!

Sam finally begins the final part of the the Hyperion Cantos with the 1997 book The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons. It's finally here! The last book in the absolutely bonkers Hyperion series, and in desperate need of help our intrepid hosts have called in Filip from the Mind Duck Books podcast for much needed moral support. We kick off with Danielle doing a frankly astonishingly good summary of the previous book to catch everyone up. Still, Filip does have a few questions that Sam has no answers for, of course. The book begins with the pope dying and being, inevitably, resurrected in some possibly retconned way where Paul Duré resurrects first but is then murdered by Cardinal Lourdusamy. Regardless, Hoyt is reelected pope and declares a crusade on the Ousters! This greatly upsets the newly reinstated Father Captain de Soya, but he takes command of one of the new Arch Angel warships anyway. Meanwhile, Aenea and Raul are on Earth, it's been three years, and Aenea's mentor, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, has just died. Aenea declares the architect camp experiment on the Earth over, and tells the other apprentices that they must return to the Pax and risk death because... Well, she never really says why, but it sure seems important. Then she gives Raul an abbreviated biography of the real Frank Lloyd Wright for yet more inscrutable reasons. After that, she tells Raul he needs to go alone back down the Tethys river in a kayak to find the ship they crashed, and then meet her and A. Bettik later. Raul is unhappy about this, but sets off down the Mississippi anyway to begin his journey. Back in the Pax, not only is the Pax fleet anticipating the return of Aenea, so is the TechnoCore, which has dispatched four what are essentially terminators, including Rhadamanth Nemes, to kill her. The Pax Mercantilus is also looking to nab Aenea so they can engage in some political machinations and replace the Vatican as the ally of the TechnoCore. Does this book need yet more plots now involving complex political schemes? No, but it sure is fun! In conclusion, Sam is super angry we don't spend more time with the Ousters. Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

On the final short of our summer break, Sam has a new game for Danielle, that's a lot like some of our other games (look, there's only so many ideas we can have). In this game, Sam finds weird entries in popular franchises and has Danielle guess which of the three descriptions is the real deal. This is another game where we might not be very good at it, but Sam does come up with some excellent ideas for The X-Files episodes.

As our summer break continues, we're back for another round of Sequel Shenanigans! In this game Danielle and Sam present three possible sequel titles for media franchises they covered and the other person has to guess which is the real sequel title. They're not very good at the game but they do come up with some great ideas for sequels, so we think it evens out.

Book Reshorts: The Quiz: Back in the Quizzaddle

While Danielle and Sam are on their summer break, they have some very special shorts so as not to leave you destitute. This time we're back with the Panic! at the Recall game where our beleaguered hosts try their best to summarize the past media they've shared in under a minute. How bad are they at this? Not great! It's a lot of fun, and definitely leads to the conclusion that our hosts should maybe listen to their own podcast on occasion.

This week the crabs are back as Danielle shares the 1978 Guy N. Smith novel Killer Crabs. We open in Australia where local fisherman Klin is super upset, and maybe a bit racist, about the Japanese poachers stealing his fish. After refusing the siren call of a woman to instead indulge his hatred of the poachers, his concerns are quickly replaced as the fisherman becomes the fished! We're of course talking about giant killer crabs as big as a small car! Or an elephant! Or two sheep! While no one can agree on the size of these crabs, they all agree that, despite the events of the last book having happened, no one has heard about these before. Luckily, Dr. Cliff Davenport, now a renowned crabspert, is here from Britain to help. Has he brought the amazing poison used to defeat the crabs last time? No, but he has brought humanity's oldest and greatest weapon: Fire! But before easily dispatching of the crab menace we first need to take a brief detour into an entirely unnecessary but amazing plot about a bank robbery, stolen identity, the world's most insatiable woman, and Harvey Logan: Game Hunter. While no one can explain how these crabs keep getting around the world's oceans unnoticed, we are sure of one thing: We're super delighted that they do so we can read these books! Huge shout-out to friend Filip of the Mind Duck Books podcast for helping us find these amazing books. Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This week it's Sam's turn to share a Disney Channel original movie with the 1999 movie Smart House. Ben Cooper is your average 13-year-old kid completely distraught at the loss of his mother and so desperate to keep his family from changing further that he sabotages his dad's attempts at dating. You know, healthy stuff. Ben isn't only a severely troubled kid, he's also a computer nerd and spends all his free time entering online contests, the most recent of which is to win a smart house. Ben, of course, wins, and this smart house his family moves into is amazing and can do pretty much anything including using its terrible tentacle arms to harass the local paper boy. It was apparently entirely built and programmed by one woman, Sara, working for a company that does...something, though nothing related to this house it seems since they basically give it away and never look back. At first, Pat, the house's AI, is amazing, making smoothies and cleaning up messes, but when she starts to glitch Ben's dad calls Sara in, and uses that as an excuse to date her. Ben is not having this and decides to reprogram Pat to be all the mother they could ever need (yikes!) and, setting aside how a child could reprogram this technological marvel, Ben clearly needs immediate therapy, as is common for most of the characters in our media. Things, predictably, go haywire from there, and then we are left to wonder if Ben's family can survive Pat's intense mothering, and if Ben will ever address his deep grief and trauma over the loss of his mother. But as this is a Disney movie, instead of therapy we get the delightful 90s pastiche that warms our hearts, including Ben and his friends performing a choreographed boy band dance. Even better, there's a rat named Butler here to help!

It's finally time for the finale of the Thai drama Ready, Set, Love (เกมชนคนโสด)! When we last left off, our group of contestants had decided it was time to create a revolution by exposing the TV show as rigged. Why the populace would suddenly rise up against the government because a realty show wasn't entirely real is not explained. Anyway, their first step is to try and make Chanel win the next game. Considering the whole thing is supposed to be rigged for Chanel, the fact that they feel the need to make Chanel win anyway really speaks to how poorly the powers that be are rigging the game. Anyway, Sam has major issues with the next game as a concept, but regardless, Chanel wins and the the conspiracy group manages to get a secret recording of her mother admitting to rigging the games. However, Jenny busts the conspiracy wide open, somehow, and makes them all return to the game except Valentine, who she has arrested. Valentine escapes and magically manages to find her way into the facility where all the mothers who had been unwilling to give up their sons are being imprisoned. As she flees with the footage of the facility she's shot off a bridge and falls into a river. Meanwhile, Day's sister May is taken by the government to a hospital and magically cured of her disease. Chanel's mother explains to Day that this was done, and that she better get in line and play the game right, although since May was already cured, she really has no leverage. Day does not pick up on that fact. As the final game nears, can our group find a way to be with the ones they love? (Hint: Not if they're Bovy) Will they escape this repressive regime? Will Sam finally a get a game in the show he actually likes? Find out all that and more in this thrilling conclusion!

This week Sam brings Danielle the 2003 direct to VHS film Inspector Gadget 2. If you fondly recall the original 1999 film starring Matthew Broderick, or even the Inspector Gadget cartoon, then you're leagues ahead of Sam and Danielle who only have the vaguest notion of what happened in that first film. Will that stop them from speculating wildly using only the sequel as reference? Absolutely not! So it's time for a new film and and a new Gadget played by French Stewart. He's apparently made Riverton so crime free after locking up Claw that he's bored out of his mind and arresting anyone for the most minor infractions. Things don't stay tranquil for long as Claw escapes from prison and prepares for a major heist: Steal all the gold from the Federal Reserve Bank which has recently relocated to Riverton for...reasons. But to complete this first heist, he needs to complete three smaller heists to steal materials to make a super-weapon. Sam hates this plan. Meanwhile, Gadget is eager to go after Claw, but is taken off the case by the chief who hates him because he's constantly glitching and, even though the police made him, they refuse to fix his glitches since he's just a "prototype"; just amazingly cruel. Anyway, he's replaced with the fully robotic (and unnecessarily sexy) Gadget 2. While Gadget accepts this, his niece Penny (parents' status: unknown) pushes him to investigate anyway. Meanwhile, despite Claw stating that he had all his assets seized when he was arrested, he manages to put together some amazingly complex bowling-pin themed gizmos to accomplish his heists. Why is he suddenly a bowling-pin themed villain? That's an extremely good question! So join us to see if Claw will succeed in his insane plan, if Gadget will redeem himself, and especially if Gadget will find a way to either have sex with the new Gadget or accidentally inspire her to start the robot apocalypse.

Danielle takes us back to the dystopia this week in part two of the Thai drama Ready, Set, Love (เกมชนคนโสด). We rejoin Day and the rest as the games continue on the set of Ready, Set, Love. Well, there's one game for the show which is far too few for Sam's liking. However, Day finally realizes she knows Sun from when he was a runaway child and they became friends. At the the same time, Valentine realizes that Almond is her long-lost brother that was stolen from her family just after being born. Also at the same time, Paper is introduced to a radio program by City Ground, a resistance movement against the government, and starts texting the singer on the program somehow. Don't ask how. Later, Day, Sun, and Paper all sneak out to visit The City, which is surprisingly easy to do, they even have a hilariously impractical car waiting for them in the woods as if by magic. In the city, Paper spends time with his maybe crush, the singer from the radio, who explains that he, and the other members of City Ground, tried to start a revolution, failed, and decided singing the same song on the radio once a day was the next logical course. Valentine is caught sneaking around by (there are so many freaking characters in this) but Valentine reveals to her that the government has been stealing male babies and drugging or imprisoning the parents if they refuse. Jenny, pregnant with a boy, is so distraught she just kinda lets Valentine go. Around this point Sam realizes that, like most dystopian fiction, the government is so freaking dumb at holding power, and that if he and Danielle weren't so lazy, they'd figure out how to do it right. Regardless, Paper, Day, and Sun meet up with Valentine to start planning the next revolution!

This week Sam shares with Danielle the 2023 fantasy movie The Secret Kingdom. Peter is your average mopey teen with crippling anxiety and a bubbly younger sister. His family has recently arrived at a new house. We say "arrived" because the real mystery of this movie starts right away as Sam and Danielle try to figure out if the family is moving there, or just there to clean, or what. this mystery is compounded by the fact that when a moving truck arrives the dad drops the bomb that surprise! Their home was foreclosed on, so what does that makes this place? This utterly irrelevant detail completely baffling our hosts really sets the tone for the rest of this movie. Soon Peter's sister Verity manages to get them both transported to a magic, subterranean kingdom inhabited by large, bipedal pangolins. Verity somehow already speaks their language, and soon Peter is blessed with the pangolin tongue when one of the creatures literally sticks their tongue in his ear. Peter is—surprise, surprise—the chosen one, the prophesied king of the pangolins who must go on an epic quest to defeat a creature of pure evil called the Shroud. How is Peter to do this? Why a fetch-quest of course! He needs to find five pieces of a broken clock hidden around this forgotten world and then fix the clock which will defeat the Shroud. Somehow. No time for questions, they have a quest to do! So off Peter, Verity, and their pangolin companion Pling go through this actually stellar looking world to find the pieces in a quest so utterly simple that it angers Sam and forces Danielle to repeatedly ask "Why couldn't a pangolin do this?"

This week Danielle returns to the Thai dramas with the 2024 series Ready, Set, Love (เกมชนคนโสด). In an alternate world where a mysterious disease has not only wiped out most men but also made the male birthrate plummet, the only way the to figure out who the precious few men will procreate with is a reality dating show competition. If this makes as little sense to you as it does to Sam, get ready for a wild ride. Day is your average food loving girl with no interest in the impending reality show competition that will pair five lucky women with five of the available men. Why pair each man with only one woman? Don't ask reasonable questions, this show has no time for your logic. However her spunky, cancer-riddled younger sister May enters her into the lottery to be on the competition since she's obsessed with the men in the way only a tween can be. Day reluctantly agrees to participate to get her sister the autograph of the main hunk Son (get it? subtlety!). When she learns that if she wins, her and her sister can live in the fancy estate for the men called The Family and her sister will receive the best medical care possible, she goes all in it to win it. Making the baffling choice to abandon and betray an alliance with some of the other girls immediately, Day secures her spot on the show. Son is at first utterly uninterested in her, but when he sees she has a specific necklace Son realizes he's met her before under mysterious circumstances when they were children. So join us for an episode that has Sam completely hung up on the fact that the future of the human species is seemingly being left up to a reality show competition.

It's finally here, the finale of the 1996 Dan Simmons novel Endymion! Where we last left off, Father Captain de Soya had been called back to Pacem to receive new orders and a new crew member. It turns out the pope has been having visions from "God" that have told him the location of Aenea on Sol Draconi Septem. The pope is also declaring a crusade against the ousters, and everyone knows crusades are always a good idea. The new crew member, Rhadamanth Nemes, is a type of super solider being created for this crusade, though de Soya has reservations. Meanwhile, Raul an the others are still with Father Glaucus waiting to make their trek across the wraith infested surface to the next Farcaster portal. The Chichatuk return and they gear up, finally ready to face the wraiths (a name Danielle still has massive issues with). Anyway, they cross the surface and leave through the Farcaster never having even seen a wraith, and Sam is incoherent with frustration. Just after they leave, de Soya and his crew arrive in the system, but while he's still resurrecting, the obviously non-human Nemes heads down to the surface to try and murder Aenea. She uses the same kind of silver skin-suit that Kassad and Moneta had, and she gets to work, murdering Glaucus and the Chichatuk, and shooting flashlight beams out of her mouth much to the delight of both our hosts. Sam is ecstatic that here, in the last part of the book, the plot has finally shown up in full force, and things only ramp up from there as the story races towards an exciting conclusion, then smashes into a wall with a bizarre coda. Honestly, it's the best that could have been hoped for.

This week Danielle brings book four of the Hardy Boys Case Files series by Franklin W. Dixon from 1987: The Lazarus Plot. The Hardy Brothers are back! Joe is still sad about the expoldification of his girlfriend Iola, so he and Frank have taken a camping/fishing trip to unwind. However, it's there in the woods that Joe sees someone who must be Iola! The Hardy Men follow the girl's trail and come to a seemingly abandoned house that was actually the location of the Lazarus Clinic, which is occupied by the Lazarus group which has some nebulous connection to the terrorist organization The Assassins. The Hardy Duo are immediately captured and the Lazarus Leader puts on an amazing show for them where he inexplicably introduces each of his evil employees and describes their evil plot instead of, you know, killing their Hardy nemeses. Their plan is to use plastic surgery and brain chip implants to copy the Hardy Sleuths and use these bonus brothers to infiltrate the government anti-terrorist spy organization known as The Network. They revived Iola to kill the Hardy Lads, but then when they failed to kill them in the woods for reasons too dumb to elaborate on here, they decided to capture them instead for yet more reasons that make no sense and only serve to infuriate Sam. So join us for another rip-roaring Hardy adventure that's as fun as it is stupid!

This week Sam brings the penultimate episode of his deep dive into the 1996 Dan Simmons novel Endymion. When we last left off, it was implied the our hero Raul was dead, thought this was obviously not the case. This part open with us learning how Raul escaped death, both at the hands of the human Pax soldiers, and the jaws of the rainbow sharks. Although well armed, Raul refuses to shoot any of them (sharks or people) but that's okay, Aenea and A. Bettik have swum out to where Raul was drifting in the infinite ocean to save him, so no worries. The trio escapes through the Farcaster portal and find themselves on Hebron. There no signs of life, in fact it looks to have been recently abandoned in a hurry. Raul is infected with something he picked up in the ocean, so they spend a few weeks recuperating before moving on. After the next portal, they emerge in a vast, but quite sealed, cave of ice on a planet so cold that the atmosphere is broken. This about breaks the limit of Sam's ability to suspend disbelief, and is quite angry that everyone isn't already dead. Meanwhile, Father Captain de Soya conducts a thorough, but inconclusive, investigation on Mare Infinitus. He determines that Raul was there, and has identified him by fingerprint, but not much else. He decides it's time for him and his crew to venture to an Ouster controlled world to find Aenea, and wouldn't you know it, he picks Hebron. But psych! They never make it there as their ship is pursued by Ousters and makes run for it before they can be resurrected. De Soya wakes up on Pacem, where he faces a very brief inquisition before being told he's being sent back out on his search again. Meanwhile, Raul comes up with an incredibly stupid plan to escape the ice cave that, even more incredibly, some how works. This leads to yet more dead-ends until they abandon the raft and explore the tunnels through the ice. It's here they encounter humans living on this world, but will they be friendly or dangerous? (Friendly, immediately they are extremely friendly, sorry for the not-so-spoiler). So join us for possibly the angriest Sam has ever been at a media piece he's presented. Fun!

This week Danielle brings the 1998 Danielle Steel novel The Klone and I: A High Tech Love Story. Stephanie is your average middle-age mother of two whose husband is a complete tool and decides to divorce her for petty reasons. Luckily, Steph is not one to be kept down, and during a brief trip to Europe she bumps into Peter, who works in bionics. That tidbit will become very important later. Anyway, Steph and Peter start to date seriously, ever her kids are generally on board. However, it's not long before the unthinkable happens: Peter has to go on a business trip for two weeks. During his first night away, Steph is surprised to see a very strangely dressed Peter show up at her apartment. Peter insists he's actually Peter's robot clone and prefers to go by Paul Klone, a name that nearly breaks Sam. Steph decides this is some elaborate joke, even after some surprisingly acrobatic sex and a call from an out-of-town Peter explaining he sent his clone over because he couldn't fathom her being alone for two entire weeks. Our baffled hosts draw two conclusions from this: First, that Peter has a very low opinion of Steph and maybe all women, and Second, Steph does not seem to be all that bright. Eventually, Steph comes around to the idea that she's also dating Peter's significantly more outgoing clone, or klone if you will. Sam will not. Steph is mildly torn between her love of Peter and the excitement of Paul, and yet no one seems concerned that this supposed top secret prototype robot clone is running amuck, stealing Peter's credit card, crashing his car, and flying across the country to surprise Steph whenever Peter's out of town. Sam finds it difficult to care about the perfunctory love triangle when the facts of the clone gets virtually no attention. So join us this week for a book that is amazingly at once completely goofy and also, somehow, far too serious.

This week Sam brings us part four of Dan Simmons' 1996 book Endymion. It's been a while, but we're back with more Hyperion! It's been so long, in fact, that Danielle has completely forgotten everything that happened in the previous episode including the title, though to be fair, there wasn't really all that much going on. Raul, Aenea and A. Bettik are all trapped on some mysterious jungle world after barely escaping the Pax by fleeing through the hitherto non-functional Farcaster portal. The Shrike makes a brief cameo, but immediately leaves without dropping any sick beats, which is a huge disappointment. Aenea and crew decide to raft down the river to the next Farcaster, which gives Raul time to feel paternal towards Aenea, which is just all kinds of gross given what we know of their future. They get caught in a storm and "Yee-haw!" a bit, as you do, before finally ending up through the other portal and onto Mare Infinitus. Their big plan is to drift aimlessly across the infinite ocean and hope they come across the next Farcaster portal. Infuriatingly, this works. However, Raul needs to make a brief detour to distract some nearby Pax so they can sneak by. Meanwhile, Father-Captain de Soya and his crew spend two months hopping around to eight different planets, and Sam insists on telling Danielle about each one, even if they don't matter, because he loves sharing the pain. Eventually, de Soya comes to Mare Infinitus where he hears about an attack a few months ago by a single man. This, de Soya correctly concludes, was Raul, and he's delighted to have his first lead in months. Unfortunately, Raul was killed in the attack, or at least the book tries to make it look that way, but since Raul is the one "writing" the book, it's not much of a fake-out. So join us as we delve deep into the relationship between Raul and Aenea, and into more Keats poetry and philosophy (finally!), and, most importantly, try to find out just why we're being told about those fly-cycles!

This week Danielle brings part two of the 2023 Thai drama La Pluie (ฝนตกครั้งนั้น ฉันรักเธอ). When we last left off, Tai had just seen Phat being kissed by Phat's ex-girlfriend. Shocking as this is, Tai does the adult thing and talks to Phat to clear up any misunder- Kidding! He throws a tantrum and runs off into the mountain wilderness with no jacket or water. Unsurprisingly, by the end of the day Tai is not doing well and everyone else is very worried. Luckily, it starts to rain so Phat hears Tai's voice, and Tai somehow guides them to his rescue. In a missive twist, Lomfon also hears Tai (and maybe Phat?) in his head. This weird, three-way soulmate phenomenon will go criminally under-examined in this story and is, frankly, a massive missed opportunity to end the show with a throuple. Anyway, drama ensues as Lomfon thinks Tai might be his soulmate, Tai's bother Thian is hurt by Lomfon's lack of interest in himself, and Phat becomes uncharacteristically jealous and codependent on Tai. Luckily, the wild coincidences have come to a middle as the following items are revealed, listed here in no particular order: Lomfon was saved from being hit by a car several years ago by a mysterious stranger he's been in love with ever since. That mysterious person turns out to be Tai. Phat had a next door neighbor several years ago that was going through a rough time since his parents were getting divorced, so he had his grandmother smuggle notes of support back and forth between them, but they never met in person despite literally sharing a fence. That mysterious person turns out to be Tai. Sam basically gives up at this point. Anyway, the rest of the story is pretty much your typical drama shenanigans playing out until everyone is happily paired off. However, Sam and Danielle do create an amazing alternate story about Phat trading a cured animal to a little girl in the style of a back-alley drug deal, so keep an eye out for their next book: Big Phat: Animal Health Dealer.

This week Danielle brings the first part of the 2023 Thai drama La Pluie (ฝนตกครั้งนั้น ฉันรักเธอ). Tai is your normal twenty-something, except he has a not-uncommon condition where when it rains he goes deaf, except for the voice in his head which is his soulmate and they can talk in their heads, but only when it's raining. Got that? As amazingly bonkers as that premise is, unfortunately, the first half of this series isn't all that interested in answering the many, many questions Sam and Danielle have about this horrifying universe. To make matters worse for Tai, his parents, who are also voice-in-head-when-it-rains soulmates are getting divorced, and it's caused him to reject the soulmate voice in his own head and he refuses to meet that mystery man. The concept of time, as usual, is a shambles in this TV show, especially as it's told primarily through flashbacks, but at some point Tai takes a cat to the vet and discovers the super-hot veterinarian Phat is actually his soulmate, and he starts to regret rejecting him. There are also some shenanigans where Tai hears Pat making-out with someone (what a constant horror-show this world is) and pegs him as a bit of a playboy. At another point, Tai's ridiculous brother Thian blows up at someone named Lomfon in a bookstore for picking up a book. Tai's smooths things over but, uh oh, it looks like Lomfon may have a crush on Tai, but double uh-oh becuase Lomfon and Thian are in the same film class and Thian might have a crush on Lomfon. It's at this point Sam taps-out and all but begs for the high-school relationship drama to end and the crazy rain shenanigans to resume. For better or worse, Danielle leaves him wanting more as she promises that part two ratchets up the insanity. But just before ending, she leaves us with this cliffhanger: Tai, after hooking up with Phat, accidentally walks in on him being kissed by his ex-girlfriend, dun dun dunnnnnnnnn! Join us next time for the thrilling, and truly insane, conclusion.

This week, Sam rounds out the Winter Bizarre with the 2007 ABC Family movie Holiday in Handcuffs. Melissa Joan Hart (character name unknown) is always trying to please her very demanding parents, but this year she's excited because she's bringing her successful boyfriend to the family Christmas trip to a rural log cabin. However, after tanking a job interview, Melissa is dumped by that same boyfriend mere hours before they were supposed to leave. What's a girl to do? Easy: Kidnap the nearest available man, in this case Mario Lopez (character name also unknown). This sets Melissa on a wild ride where she has to convince her family that the very-much-not-happy-to-be-there Mario is actually her boyfriend, so they can all just get off her back, okay. This is, obviously, a perfect plan, and through a series of truly convoluted events, and aided by some remarkably oblivious family members and a Mario Lopez who could really be doing more to escape, Melissa mostly manages to keep up the ruse. However, things start to get serious when Melissa sees how much her family all love Mario, and Mario develops Stockholm Syndrome. Crazily enough, the movie doesn't end when Melissa gets busted for kidnapping, but somehow there's still a lot more to the story. Other highlights include: A strange family tradition involving a "key master", a surprise interest in art from both characters, some sporadic narration, and a drunken grandmother threatening to shoot police officers with a flintlock pistol. Seriously, this movie is just all the bananas.

Danielle kicks off our Winter Bizarre/Switcheroo season with the 2021 Hallmark movie Next Stop, Christmas. Angie is your average New York doctor whose life is terrible because her parents are divorced and, despite having good friends, is single. The horror. Luckily, the universe is here to fix Angie not living the life planned for her. More specifically, Christopher Lloyd gives Angie a magic ticket so that when she gets on the train to Yonkers, she falls asleep and wakes upon a much older train ten years in the past with her then boyfriend, soon to be rejected fiancée Tyler. Angie is, understandably, upset but goes with it and decides to use the opportunity to enjoy her last good Christmas (in her mind). However, things are not as rosy as she remembers as her parents are having marriage issues and she's oblivious about how distant she is from her sister. It's around this time that they run into Angie's childhood friend Ben, and here's where Sam smells a love triangle, but it's really more of a Ben pining over Angie for far too long, verging on creepy. Angie quickly deduces that her rejection of Tyler's proposal is why she's back in time, and she also decides to parent trap her mom and dad into fixing their marriage. She accomplishes this in the most ludicrously infuriating way, but for some reason still isn't returned to her own time. This tees the movie up for an ending that is so full of dread and psychological horror that Sam and Danielle can only conclude that the powerful time-imp Christopher Lloyd is exacting revenge for a stiffed tip.

Duck Books had us on as guests for his episode on the book Slugs. During that episode he had a quiz for us where the winner would receive a box of various snacks and treats from Japan. Sam won (though Danielle disputes the results), but he said he was going to send each of us a box anyway. Well, he made good on that threat so we decided to podify those boxes of snacks! So join us as we open, taste, and greatly enjoy a wonderful gift of snacks from across the ocean. Warning: This episode contains some minor sounds of chewing and eating, misophones should probably skip this one. For context, check out the Mind Duck Books episode where Filip, Danielle, and Sam all discuss the book Slugs on which this movie was based. Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back in record time with part three of the 1996 Dan Simmons novel Hyperion. Danielle makes a much better showing this time, recapping the previous episode with aplomb. After letting Aenea escape after emerging from the Time Tombs, Father Captain de Soya is regrouping in the Parvati system with his Swiss Guard commandos to capture Aenea when she arrives. During the journey, Aenea and Raul spend some quality, and slightly creepy, time together. Skinny dipping is involved. Anyway, Aenea essentially improvises a plan where she threatens to kill everyone on her ship if de Soya doesn't let her escape. Not willing to risk it, de Soya agrees, but then just tracks them to their next destination in Renaissance Vector, a heavily fortified Pax world, so it doesn't seem like much was accomplished by this whole gambit. While waiting again for their arrival, de Soya starts having dreams about Aenea as his daughter, and this is where Danielle starts feeling completely over this whole story. Really, it only gets more infuriating from there, as the method in which the ragtag crew lead by a child escape yet again is absolute nonsense. It may be short, but this episode is especially dense with nonsense, raising perhaps the biggest question of the series so far: How the heck is the river Tethys still flowing?

The Great Switcheroo is back, now with a Winter Bizarre flavor! Danielle and Sam have each selected three holiday media options and their co-host must choose one for their Winter Bizarre episode. Sam has taken pains to find several time travel holiday movies to keep the Hyperion theme running, while Danielle has found, somehow, another holiday moving featuring a pro-wrestler for Sam. But will either of them pick those options? Find out on now, and then tune in during the Winter Bizarre to hear how they enjoyed their choices.

After a spooky hiatus, Sam is back with more of the 1996 novel Endymion. The biggest fallout for Sam's diversion into Slugs is that poor Danielle is left completely unable to recall anything that happened in the first part of Endymion. Luckily, not much went down, so it's on to part two! Father Captain de Soya has returned to Pacem, and after a brief resurrection and Mass, he meets with some of the top brass of the Church. He's informed that the Pax somehow knows that Brawne's daughter Aenea is scheduled to emerge from the Time Tombs in the near future. De Soya is tasked to retrieve the child when she appears, or pursue the child wherever she goes until he does capture her, and then return her to Pacem. De Soya is assured that no harm will come to her, only that she will be saved. Despite finding that not so reassuring, de Soya heads out to take command of Pax forces to capture a child. Back in Endymion, Endymion (the person) is back from exploring the city. During dinner, Martin assures Raul that he's going to be grossly outmatched and outgunned in his attempt to rescue Aenea. However, Martin has a secret weapon, that just happens to be the same secret weapon that always appears: the old Hawking mat! So Raul grabs his apparently essential tricorn hat, hops on the mat, and speeds through the labyrinth to sneak into Time Tomb valley. In the valley itself, de Soya readies his troops as a massive sandstorm rolls in, which can only mean one thing: DJ Shrike is on his way! So the big questions remain: Will Raul rescue Aenea? Can they escape the Pax? Will Danielle remember any of this next time? Hopefully we'll find out!

Danielle concludes Spook Retorts this week with the cult 1998 movie The Faculty. It seems like a perfectly ordinary day at an average high school in Ohio: The coach (Robert Patrick) is raging at the football team and stomping sprinklers, the teachers are complaining about the lack of funding for everything except the football team, and a new girl (Laura Harris) joins the school which is populated with your typical cliques. While looking for a scoop for the school paper in the teachers' lounge nerd kid Casey (Elijah Wood) and cheerleader Delilah (Jordana Brewster) seem to witness the murder of the school nurse (Salma Hayek) at the hands of other faculty members. Of course, by the time the police show up everything is back to normal, but the kids are convinced something's up. One clue is a worm one of them finds outside and which is immediately identified by the science teacher (Jon Stewart) as a strange, aquatic parasite. The students realize the faculty have been drinking tons of water, so clearly something like this parasite is infecting them and trying to take over the world. After jumping to this conclusion, not once do they question the logic of a a creature starting its invasion in Ohio of all places. Anyway, later the students are attacked by the science teacher, but learn that if you stab one of them in the eye with a pen full of drugs made by burnout-genius student Zeke (Josh Hartnett), they die. The students, proving that if jumping to conclusions was an Olympic sport they'd all have gold, surmise that the drugs must be deadly to the parasite, and also there must be, as freaking always, a queen parasite they can kill to immediately save everyone with no repercussions. So our motley crew of unlikely friends immediately put in action a plan to save humanity by...doing some of Zeke's drugs. Things don't really go much better for them from there, but what did you expect from Ohio? Check out Danielle and Sam on Rewatch Recap podcast discussing the Snick show Roundhouse. Find it on Twitter @dustin_holden, Instagram @therewatchrecap, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Slugs

This week Danielle completes a double-feature with the 2007 movie Blood and Chocolate. Hold on to your hats werewolf fans, because we're back with lycanthropes! If you hoped this movie shares more than a name with the book, prepare to be greatly disappointed. This time, our much more adult werewolf Vivian is in Bucharest, and while breaking into a werewolf church (go with it) she runs into Aiden, a graphic novelist making a new book about werewolves, of course. Aiden is super into Vivian but she doesn't feel the same at first. That's the boring stuff, the crazy stuff is that now the city seems to be run by the werewolves now called loups-garoux. They also seem to abduct people, possibly criminals, to hunt for funsies. Vivian is not into the hunts, but her cousin Rafe is, and the pack leader Gabriel really don't like humans at all. Also, he wants to dump Vivian's aunt Astrid to hookup with Vivian, but now it's somehow even creepier than in the book. Anyway, as you might expect, Vivian and Aiden start dating in secret, but that secret doesn't last long. When Gabriel finds out, he sends Rafe to confront Aiden in the bone cathedral (Sam's favorite part) and utters possibly the greatest line in cinema history. While the plot seems thin, that's because the movie is just stuffed full of irrelevant werewolf lore that Danielle loves and Sam is just confused by. So come learn if the movie is as good as the book (spoiler: it's not). Oh yeah, there's also a prophecy, but it super doesn't matter. Enjoy!

This week Sam takes us back to Hyperion with the1996 Dan Simmons novel Endymion. Hyperion is back and Danielle is thrilled! Picking up around 274 years after the conclusion of the previous book, Endymion opens with some narration by a man named, wait for it, Raul Endymion. We learn that Raul grew up on Hyperion, did a bunch of odd jobs, and eventually ended up leading a duck hunting expedition that went disastrously wrong. Raul is blamed for the temporary deaths (remember those cruciform parasites? They're back in a big way!) of the people he was leading on the hunt and is sentenced to death. However, just as he is about to be executed by just one of many overly complicated death machines to appear in this book, he is in fact only rendered unconscious. It's also important to note that in the years since the "Fall" a new theocratic government has taken over lead by the Catholic Church and based around the gift of immortal life via the cruciform parasites which they now control. When Raul wakes up, he's in the ruined city of Endymion (yup, it's a city too!) and, notably, not executed. He is soon brought to see the nearly mummified, but still living, poet Martin Silenus who wants to give him a job. Brawne Lamia's daughter, the One who Teaches, disappeared into the Sphinx Time Tomb when she was 12, over 260 years ago. Somehow, Martin knows she's scheduled to emerge in just a few days and wants Raul to retrieve her and keep her safe from the Church and its military arm the Pax, who also somehow know this schedule and want to kill or capture her. Speaking of, Father-Captain Federico de Soya is pulled off his task-force hunting Ousters (still considered an enemy) to engage in some secret mission of the utmost importance. If you're feeling lost in all of this, you should probably go back and listen to all the Hyperion episodes again; it won't help, but they're pretty fun! Check out Sam and Danielle on the Mind Duck Books podcast episode about the Fall of Hyperion. Find Mind Duck Books on Twitter @mindduckbooks, Instagram @mindduckbooks, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This week Danielle brings the 1997 Annette Curtis Klause novel Blood and Chocolate. It's not even Spook Retorts yet and Danielle is bringing the werewolves! Vivian is your average teenage werewolf who just moved to a new town because her family was chased away from their previous home by an angry mob that burned down their home and killed a bunch of her pack, all because the group of teenage boys in her pack had been murdering a few of the people in that town; total overreaction. Anyway, since her dad was the pack leader (don't worry, Sam doesn't let that bad wolf science slide) they pack needs to pick a new one, and the expected top dog (ha!) is Gabriel, who's also dating Vivian's mother. As for herself, Vivian has a picture she made published in the school journal next to a story by some boy named Aiden about transforming into a wolf. Vivian is disappointed to learn that Aiden isn't another werewolf, just a nerd who dresses like a hippie, but Vivian decides to date him anyway, much to the dismay of her pack and especially Gabriel who, in addition to dating her mother, is also kinda into her, and it's all kinds of gross. The other problem is the teenage boys in her pack are still up to their shenanigans and not at all regretful about all the murder, so we're sure that won't cause any problems. Finally, in Sam's favorite scene, Vivian decides to reveal her wolf side to Aiden and it does not go well. Distraught, Vivian blacks out from having wolfed-out too hard and wakes up the next day to learn there's been a murder. Afraid she's losing control, and might cause her family to be uprooted again at the very least, Vivian starts to panic. But first, she stalks her ex and then trashes the room of his new maybe-girlfriend, because teenagers. So we hope you enjoy this very out of season spooky book where the scariest part about it is the patriarchy.

This week Sam brings Danielle the 1983 animated rock adventure film Rock & Rule. In the distant future, mutant animals have taken over the planet, and they only want one thing: To rock out! Well, most of them do. Semi-retired super-rocker Mok (who looks like an old rat version of David Bowie) wants to find a magical voice that will activate the Armageddon key so he can summon a monster of destruction from another dimension for reasons that are spectacularly unclear. Anyway, when Mok's magic ring (just go with it) detects the voice of down-and-out rock band member and rat singer Angel's voice, he knows he's found the right person. So he promptly kidnaps her and escapes in a zeppelin that transforms out of his home (this movie is bananas). They are perused by Angel's band mates, including her kinda boyfriend Omar, who follow them to Nuke York on a rescue mission. However, Mok has both tricks and magic up his sleeve to thwart them, so they're in for a real fight. If this movie seems light on plot, that's because it's heavy on rock with many original songs by Cheap Trick, Lou Reed, Debbie Harry, and Iggy Pop. It may be short, but Sam certainly has a blast with this insane animated rock-venture, and Danielle is just amused to hear Sam reciting so many lyrics. There's only one question left: Are you ready to rock?!

This week Danielle brings Sam the classic 1993 Nora Ephron movie Sleepless in Seattle. Sam, the Tom Hanks character henceforth referred to as Tom to avoid confusion, recently lost his wife. In his grief, he decides it's a good idea to move him and his eight-year-old son to Seattle from Chicago. Also, Tom is an architect because he's a romantic interest in a 90's movie. Anyway, in Seattle Tom's son calls into to a national radio therapist show (somehow this isn't Fraiser) to lament that his dad hasn't found a new love in the mere 18-months since his mother died. Coincidentally, Baltimore based...journalist? Annie (Meg Ryan, of course) hears the radio show and immediately becomes creepily obsessed with Tom despite already being engaged to the perfect man: future president and ghost mansion owner Bill Pullman. Annie decides to abuse her journalistic position and also hires a private investigator to track Tom down. She also writes him a letter saying they should meet on the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day, so she's gone full wacko. Tom, meanwhile, has begun dating a lovely woman, but his son is determined to break them up because he read Annie's letter and thinks they should be together instead. And here's where the movie takes a hard turn into crazy town. Annie lightly stalks Tom and his son, his son continues to be a jerk and manages to run away to New York. Annie is also just the worst to her fiancé, who's just the nicest and best person, as she waffles back-and-forth about whether she should run off to the Empire State Building to maybe meet a man she has only heard on the radio and dump Bill Freaking Pullman. So join us to hear Sam and Danielle lose their minds as they try to figure out why anyone would root for these people to get together.

This week Sam brings on the Disney with the 2023 direct to streaming movie Crater. In the not too distant future, humanity has just gotten kind of bored with Earth and decided to invest everything in a new planet Omega. This movie is not about that, instead we follow some kids, and specifically Caleb, living in a mining colony on the Moon. Caleb's father recently died in a mining accident, and since his mother died a few years earlier, Caleb is awarded a one-way trip to Omega, hooray! Only Caleb doesn't want to go to Omega and leave all his friends behind. Friends like Dylan, Marcus, Borney, and the new addition, Addison. Caleb's father always told him about how he used to take Caleb's mother to visit a special crater, so Caleb and his friends decide to steal a rover and take a road trip during a meteor storm lock-down. They make their way across the moon's surface, stopping briefly to play baseball (sure), and then also to use their oxygen tanks to play jetpacks (what?!). The jetpack game, predictably, goes awry, but once everyone is back safe inside the rover, they head to an abandoned model home showcase to restock. It should also be mentioned that, although this is a largely upbeat children's movie, this society is freaking dark. We learn that the miners on the Moon are essentially indentured servants laboring for a ticket to Omega that never comes and passing down that burden of servitude to their children. There's also no entertainment on the Moon, no books or music, the children only learn about mining in school, and are never allowed to leave the small colony dome. And lest you think Earth is doing any better, Addison recently moved to the Moon from Earth after her parents divorced and her mom took her younger brother to Omega (a 75-year trip in stasis) so then her dad took her to the moon to spite her mom. Absolutely terrible. Anyway, the children continue their adventure to the crater, but what they find there is totally bonkers, as is the ending of this movie which left both our hosts completely baffled.