Pop Culture Diner

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Tayshia, Week 11 2020 has dealt us quite a hand, but it's not done with us yet. First we had to sit through a two-night finale of The Bachelorette that could have definitely been, at the most, a one-night 3-hour special. We didn't even get an ATFR because of the pandemic! Despite having a fan favorite as The Bachelorette, this finale was a little lackluster and con...

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Tayshia, Week 10 I'm gonna be honest. It was a really long week, I'm in a race to the finish line for winter break, and I lost all the stuff I wrote for this episode, but I promise it was really witty and fun. Just enjoy our extra-long episode and join us next week!

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Tayshia, Week 9 A few exciting things happened this week. We get to see the conclusion of the 2-on-1, which was ultimately unsatisfying. Ben and Noah are both the worst, and if I was Tayshia, I would have let them both go, but kudos to her for maintaining a little more tension and suspense, I guess? I can and will break my TV if Noah makes the final 4, I swear. Ste...

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Tayshia, Week 8 This is the week we've all been waiting for. Or was it? We did get to find out how Steve's Polish Thanksgiving dinner went. We also finally get to see JoJo as the interim host (but do we, really?) And we see more of Ben and that guy who looks like Bob from Twin Peaks than we ever needed to see. All in all, it was a mixed bag of an episode. Sammi is...

Ice Scream Sunday: Two Sentence Horror Stories What happens when you take horror stories that were originally two sentences and stretch them out into 20-minute episodes? Exactly what you think would happen. On this episode, we analyze the first season of these stories, talk about the ones we like the best (and the ones that needed the most work), plus the time we think the episodes should have tak...

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Tayshia, Week 7 I think it's clear to everyone watching that Tayshia has much more chemistry with the men than Clare did. She was so laser-focused that it wasn't fun for anyone watching, and even less fun for the men competing. Luckily, Tayshia has turned all of that on its head. She seems to have decent chemistry with a few of the men. The only question now is whi...

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Tayshia, Week 6 We have very different views on what makes a grown-ass man versus the production team at The Bachelor. These things include: Running errands Figuring out the tip for a 16-top party Discussing heavy topics and offering advice, or just a good ear But apparently, we are way off, because we did not include breakfast in bed or basic math problems. Our ba...

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Tayshia, Week 5 Welp, we're finally here. The first full week of Tayshia coverage, with the exception of that little Clare segment, and the men couldn't be happier! Many of them were quick to tell Tayshia they were HAPPIER this way. They wanted it to be her, and lo and behold, they got what they wanted! I guess Clare did, too, so it all worked out. We discuss Benne...

Ice Scream Sunday: Trick 'r Treat So, the way that podcasts work is that we record them in the past, and you get to listen to them in the future. In this case, we recorded this on Saturday, not long after the latest election news, but you'll be listening to this on Sunday. So if anything really strange happens between now and then, this is why we didn't address it. What we did talk about is our en...

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Clare, Week 4 Fair warning, the first part of this is about the election and subsequent results, because this is the only thing that's on our mind right now. But we also promise to tie it into the theme of The Bachelor, promise promise, double promise! But really, the big thing that happened this week was Clare choosing Dale and leaving the show, only to be replace...

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Clare, Week 3 So we're really not sure if we're exhausted or if this particular season is exhausting. It's probably both, to be honest. There's not much to get into this episode, outside of understanding that the show has been already over for 2 weeks, Dale won, we all want this part to end, and we are excited for Tayshia. But we do throw love at Kenny and Bennett,...

Rose Plate Special: Bachelorette Clare, Week 2 It's Week 2, and we're already sick of a lot of things. We're sick of how everyone's talking about the pandemic. Sick of Clare being so...Clare. And sick of a lot of the men on the show. So to shake things up, we brought on a guest podcaster! We had such a great time with Lineve, so here's our promise to you - If we get a few more 5-star reviews on Ap...

Rose Plate Special - Bachelorette Clare, Week 1 While Steve and I disagree on a lot of things in terms of contestants, we do agree on one thing right at the beginning of the episode - The first 30 minutes are completely unnecessary, and even anger-inducing. Why did they have to be so dramatic with quarantine? Why do they have to trivialize a pandemic? Just tell us the precautions you took and let'...

Rose Plate Special - Clare Crawley Preview Episode Listen, Sammi's going through some stuff. We're 7 months into this pandemic, she hasn't really left her house, and she's resorting to buying clothes from Bachelor Nation contestants to fill the void. You get what you get in this episode. We talk a little bit about our predictions for the premiere, we talk about some of the latest news in Bachelor...

Ice Scream Sunday: Behind the Mask - The Rise of Leslie Vernon Sammi here. I know Mandi dogs on me in this episode because I've been pleasantly surprised with a lot of her picks, but really, she should take it as a compliment! I keep thinking I'm walking into one type of movie, and her picks leave me so pleased with a different kind of movie than I expected every time. With Behind the Mask, I thou...

Ice Scream Sunday - What We Do in the Shadows What We Do in the Shadows is one of those very special movies that hits all the right beats for a mockumentary without being too corny or over-the-top, does impressive special effects with a minimal budget, and opened the door to so many other things. We have been blessed with a lot of Taika Waititi greatness in recent years, including one of Sammi's a...

Classic Seasons - Juan Pablo Oh, Juan Pablo. What could we say about you that hasn't already been said? You proved yourself to be the ultimate fuckboi, turning off women left and right. But look at the gifts you gave us: The "it's OK" meme, Andi Dorfman, Sharleen, and, because they won't let us forget it, Clare Crawley. We go back in time, one last time, to recount the classic season that we have...

Rose Plate Special - Classic Episodes: Nick Viall Most of you who know us know that we have a lot of Wisconsin ties, and in fact, live in Wisconsin right now! We are exactly the types of people who should love Nick just because he is showing people his illustrious home town of Waukesha (that he conveniently leaves for dinner in the Milwaukee Art Museum). But try as they might, we just can't seem t...

Rose Plate Special: Classic Seasons - Jason Mesnick Jason picking Molly was the shock heard 'round the Wisconsin (OK, and the country). While Sammi may not have watched it in real time, it was the season everyone in the state was talking about. Listen to our recounting of this classic season featuring Jason Mesnick, Naomi and her weird bird mom, intense women, no real villians, and we look at Jill...

Rose Plate Special: Classic Seasons - Ali Fedotowsky If you like a podcast episode with a LOT of tangents, this is the episode for you. We talk about the season, of course, but we also dive into a variety of other topics, include Sammi's confusing over Married at First Sight, her past thick eyebrow trauma, and Younique MLM sales huns. Ali Fedotowsky was one of the first Bachelorettes to really mak...

Ice Scream Sunday - Wes Craven's New Nightmare What do you do to bring back a character that was killed off in a popular horror series? Turn it into a meta story where the mythical character wants to cross over into the real world. Brought to life by the person who did so in the first place, and gate-kept by the character who glued the series together. That tracks! Listen as we dive into this grea...

Rose Plate Special: Classic Episodes - Brad Womack We'll scream this from the mountaintops - Justice for Brad! Brad Womack was one of the most standup guys on The Bachelor ever, who just decided to let his honesty and integrity drive him forward, and for that, he was punished with the slap heard round the world. We are here once and for all to set the record straight: Brad deserves justice and red...

Ice Scream Sunday - The Cabin in the Woods Sammi here again. I picked The Cabin in the Woods because it is one of my all-time favorite horror movies. And one of my favorite things about it is the meta nature of the story (for those of you who haven't already watched this movie, please stop reading now and watch it immediately, because the entire movie is a spoiler by its very nature). Hi to everyo...

Ice Scream Sunday - Copycat This is Sammi, you guys, and I really boned it last episode. I remembered The Bone Collector being such a good movie, and it wasn't, it really wasn't. Now, I know we released this on a Wednesday, but we did try to record on a Sunday, I swear. After a few technical difficulties, here we are with a great new episode! I really don't think you can ever go wrong with Holly H...

Ice Scream Sunday: The Bone Collector Memory is a funny thing. We really do tend to look at the past through rose-colored lenses. The nostalgic angle we put on things that happened a couple decades ago gets fully exploited by sites like BuzzFeed, and yet, we fall victim to it all the time. The Bone Collector is no different. On a rewatch, we both realized that there were many parts of the movie th...