Dumpsterpiece Theatre

Episode 100: The Centennial After nearly three years and a genuinely alarming 1.1 terabytes of backed-up audio, Dumpsterpiece Theatre hits its 100th episode and celebrates the only responsible way: by refusing to watch a single new thing. Instead, Scott and Liz take a victory lap through episodes 51–100, ranking the best and worst of the bunch, hate-watching a reno show that should be under federa...

Episode 99: Horse Sense We saddle up for a 1999 Disney Channel offering starring Joey Lawrence and Andrew Lawrence - but, in a genuine travesty, not the third Lawrence brother, who is relegated to an uncredited cameo as a cowboy giving the stink-eye at an airport. Horse Sense follows Michael, a spoiled Beverly Hills college kid who's flunking class, gifting his trust-fund girlfriend Gina anniv...

Episode 98: I'll Be Seeing You by Lurlene McDaniel Dumpsterpiece Theatre cracks open a 1996 Lurlene McDaniel paperback and finds exactly what you'd expect: overdramatic teenagers, medically detailed suffering, and one girl's heroic commitment to making everything worse for herself. I'll Be Seeing You follows 16-year-old Carley Mattea - hospitalized with an infected broken leg from...

Episode 97: My Life with the Walter Boys (S1E4-5) We return to Silver Falls, Colorado for another hearty helping of Walter Boys, where seven teenage boys, one transplanted New York City girl, and approximately zero well-developed supporting characters continue to grind their way through a love triangle nobody asked for. Episode 4 is titled "Nineteen" (there's a reason, you'll fig...

Episode 96: Leaving Las Vegas Dumpsterpiece Theatre takes a sharp detour from its usual diet of romantic comedy slop to tackle a genuinely good (and devastating) film. Nic Cage plays a Hollywood screenwriter who cashes in his severance check, packs a suitcase full of liquor bottles and heads to Vegas to drink himself to death. Elizabeth Shue is the escort who falls for him anyway. It's bleak....

Episode 95: People We Meet on Vacation Netflix rolls another rom-com off the assembly line with People We Meet on Vacation , and this one checks so many formula boxes we're officially proposing trope bingo cards. You've got your opposites attract, your one-bed situation, your rain kiss, your declaration of love blocking traffic - the works. The anamorphic lenses make half the shots look li...

Episode 94: My Life with the Walter Boys - S1E2-3 We're back in Silver Falls - population: one of every kind of person, apparently - for episodes two and three of My Life with the Walter Boys . The chaos of the pilot has not subsided. The character count has not decreased. The timeline still makes no sense. And somehow, nobody in this house has thought to split the bathroom schedule between tw...

Episode 93: After Ever Happy We're back in the After -verse with the fourth installment, "After Ever Happy" - a title that is grammatically, philosophically, and spiritually baffling. Picking up immediately after the bombshell revelation about Hardin's biological father, we watch our favorite rage-fueled protagonist do what he does best: set things on fire. Specifically, his mom&...

Episode 92: Danielle Steel's Star (1993) We're back in the Danielle Steel cinematic universe with "Star" - one word, one syllable, maximum trauma. Peak 90210 Jenny Garth plays Crystal Wyatt, a 16-year-old aspiring singer who catches the eye of Spencer Hill, a Vietnam vet who's also finished law school. Cue the jailbait math: if he went to Nam at 18, served, then completed und...

Episode 91: My Life with the Walter Boys S1E1 We're kicking off a new series, and it's Netflix's My Life with the Walter Boys - a chaos tornado of unexplained children, green screen car rides, and production choices that suggest the insurance company had some very strong opinions about open flames. Based on the 2012 YA novel (3.76 on Goodreads, so you know we're in for quality), th...

Episode 90: Young Einstein G'day and Happy New Year! We're kicking off 2026 with Young Einstein, the 1988 Australian fever dream where Albert Einstein is reimagined as a Tasmanian apple farmer who invents the formula for putting bubbles in beer (E=mc²), discovers rock and roll by watching kids play hopscotch, steals Newton's laws, and invents surfing for good measure. This aggressively...

Episode 89: Christmas on the Alpaca Farm Jingle Balls, everyone! We're diving into Christmas on the Alpaca Farm , a beige Lifetime movie (well, Canadian Lifetime) that's so formulaic, we literally had AI recreate it - and the results were disturbingly accurate. Jessica is a New York fashion designer dubbed the "Christmas Sweater Queen" who sources her alpaca wool from a small hol...

Episode 88: My Oxford Year Welcome back to Oxford (yes, again) where Netflix serves up another ambitious American woman whose carefully planned life gets derailed by British architecture and a charming TA. Sofia Carson plays Anna, a Cornell grad with a Goldman Sachs job she deferred - did we mention Goldman Sachs? Because the movie certainly does, repeatedly - to study Victorian poetry for a year....

Episode 87: Home for the Holidays Welcome to Home for the Holidays , where Jodie Foster directs a 1995 Thanksgiving drama that raises conflicts and resolves... well, almost none of them. Holly Hunter mumbles her way through a holiday weekend with Robert Downey Jr. (in his heroin phase), Dylan McDermott, and Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson herself). This is cinema that asks "what if nothing reall...

Episode 86: The Wrong Paris Welcome to The Wrong Paris , where Miranda Cosgrove trades her metal welding torch for a reality dating show catastrophe, and Frances Fisher (Rose's disapproving mother from Titanic ) finally gets the role she was born to play: Netflix rom-com grandmother. This is cinema, people. What You're Getting Into: Dawn (Miranda Cosgrove) is a hip country artist saving mo...

Episode 85: The Summer I Turned Pretty S2E7-8 (Season Finale) We're finally closing out Season 2 of The Summer I Turned Pretty , and buckle up - these episodes are annoying in ways that even we didn't expect. Where's the action-packed finale energy? Buried under repetitive arguments and questionable parenting decisions, apparently. What You're Getting Into: Belly drunk-dials her mom after the hous...

Episode 84: The Map That Leads to You Welcome to the beigiest movie we've ever covered, where nothing happens except a Hemingway novel, Victor's stolen cash, and KJ Apa sleeping in an overhead train bin. Join us as we follow Heather and Jack's European "find yourself" tour that's so surface-level it makes a puddle look deep. What You're Getting Into : After meeting on...

Episode 83: The Summer I Turned Pretty S2E5-6 We're still drowning in Cousins Beach drama where the Fisher boys discover that trust funds require actual lawyers (shocking!), teenagers commit light breaking and entering at a country club, and someone thought spray-painting a soon-to-be-sold beach house was peak party energy. What You're Getting Into:  Aunt Julia pulls a speed-moving miracle...

Episode 82: Danielle Steel's "Daddy" (1991) We dive into the soapy melodrama of 1991's "Daddy," where Patrick Duffy graces VHS covers in questionable states of undress, timeshares are apparently the worst financial decision you can make, and mysterious housekeeper Agnes materializes whenever someone needs to ask if anybody's hungry. What You're Getting Into: Oli...

Episode 81: The Summer I Turned Pretty S2E3-4 We're back at Cousins Beach where apparently nobody understands basic estate planning, Junior Mint plushies carry the weight of metaphorical significance, and Aunt Julia has access to the world's most efficient moving crew. What You're Getting Into: The beach house is up for sale because Susanna's half-sister Julia inherited it (somehow...

Episode 80: Fire in the Sky (1993) We've hit the big 8-0! To celebrate our octogenarian status in episode years, we're diving into alien abduction territory with DB Sweeney's post-ice skating career in Fire in the Sky . Based on the "true story" of Travis Walton's alleged five-day extraterrestrial vacation in 1975 Arizona. What You're Getting Into: A logging crew witn...

Episode 79: The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 Episodes 1-2 We're back at Cousins Beach! Well, sort of. Join us as we dive into the messy aftermath of Season 1, where Belly's love triangle has officially imploded, Susanna has passed away, and everyone's dealing with grief in the most dramatic way possible. What You're Getting Into : Belly's grades have tanked, she's been d...

Join us for Episode 78 of Dumpsterpiece Theatre as we tackle 1973's "The Holy Mountain" - Alejandro Jodorowsky's fever dream masterpiece that makes Zardoz look like a Disney film. This is what happens when someone reads every philosophy book ever written, takes a lot of psychedelics, and decides to make a movie about it. What You're Getting Into: Scott drags Liz through two h...

Join us for Episode 77 of Dumpsterpiece Theatre as we wrap up Emily in Paris Season 2 - where champagne sabering goes horribly wrong, pregnant bosses eat their way through every scene, and fashion shows at Versailles somehow involve twerking in fancy underwear. Key Moments: Camille's dad literally loses a fingertip while sabering champagne, spraying blood all over Emily's face in the most...

Join us for Episode 76 of Dumpsterpiece Theater as we fall back into the After universe with " After We Fell " - where a 38-minute drive counts as long distance, Bulgarian doctors deliver devastating medical news, and Hardin's tattoo collection looks like he lost a bet at a flash sheet convention. Key Moments: We document the Great Actor Swap of 2021 as literally two-thirds of the ca...