The Review Show

We're celebrating 10 years of The Whatnauts with an end of the year "grand prix" because you can call anything a grand prix, there's no rules stopping you! Two people talking about pizza can be a grand prix!! Kyle sees a chicken. Melissa sees a big glove. Between the two of us, we've seen Tenet 3.5 times and Interstellar 1 time and we're going to try to understand both. We also give out the yearly...

Episode 332. This is our final episode of The Review Show (we'll still be doing the same thing next year under a newly formatted feed) and we're looking back on over 300 episodes with lists! Lots and lots of lists! We talk about our favorite movies, shows, comics, and audio dramas, biggest surprises, best villains, opening credits, needledrops, robots, stunts, and celebrities playing themselves. W...

Episode 331. In our final regular episode of The Review Show, we talk about the haunting final season of The Americans. Philip has left espionage behind to focus on the legitimate family business to disastrous results, Elizabeth is in over her head with more demanding assignments, and Stan is finally realizing the spies he's been looking for may be his own neighbors. We discuss the pattern of brok...

Episode 330. Season 5 of The Americans sees Philip and Elizabeth juggling multiple cover stories, while Paige willingly turns towards espionage and Henry tries to stand on his own -- at the worst time possible. We discuss the great tragic comedy of Henry turning out to be the ideal American boy while his parents weren't looking, the wildcard Mischa storyline, the wedding, if anyone could ever trul...

Episode 329. We're back to our ongoing coverage of The Americans, talking about season 4. Philip and Elizabeth have to make choices that will devastate the lives of their unwitting informants, while Paige struggles under the pressure of keeping her pastor from revealing the family's secrets. We theorize about what the show will do with Henry and how he'll finally learn about his family's double li...

Episode 328. This year's Halloween episode is on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a British comedy series from 2004. In this show within a show, Garth Marenghi is a horror author who writes and stars in a series about a cursed hospital, trying to deliver spine-tingling tales on a shoestring budget. We discuss the structure of the hospital drama intercut with fake interviews with the fictional creators...

Episode 327. We continue our mission with The Americans, talking about season three in this episode. Philip and Elizabeth are conflicted about revealing their spy history to their daughter Paige, and struggle against the constraints of their orders from The Centre. We discuss sad sack Stan, all the sex missions weighing on Philip, Elizabeth and the old woman in the repair shop, if Mischa is even r...

Episode 326. We finally begin a show that's been on our mutual to-watch list for years: FX's 2013 spy drama The Americans. "Philip and Elizabeth Jennings" are undercover KGB agents who have been embedded in the US since the '60s, living as a married couple, raising children, and trying to fit in as a normal '80s suburban family -- and their cover is tested when an FBI agent moves into their neighb...

Episode 325. To prepare for Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie One Battle After Another, we watched his 2012 drama The Master. A volatile vagabond crosses paths with a charismatic scholar with a cult-like following, and the two men form a bond that threatens the scholar's family and community of believers. We discuss the shifting power dynamics of who exactly is "the master" of any situation, the su...

Episode 324. We read Secret Identity by Alex Segura, a prose novel set in the world of 1970s comic book publishers. Carmen Valdez is a publisher's secretary trying to break in as a writer, and when she finally gets the chance to introduce her own superhero, her co-creator winds up dead and her name is missing from the comic's byline. We discuss the myriad mysteries in this book beyond the whodunni...

Episode 323. We read the first two volumes of The Terrifics, a DC story featuring fan-favorite characters from James Gunn's Superman, in a format that feels more like Marvel's Fantastic Four. The best of both worlds! Mr. Terrific, Metamorpho, Plastic Man, and Phantom Girl find themselves literally stuck together -- if they're more than a mile apart from each other, they'll all explode -- and have...

Episode 322. We watched the first two seasons of Poker Face, the mystery comedy show created by Rian Johnson for Peacock. Charlie Cale is a cocktail waitress on the run from her casino's mob goons because of her uncanny ability to tell when someone is lying. She travels across the country trying to keep a low profile as she takes odd jobs and stumbles into mysteries. We discuss the feast of charac...

Episode 321. For our annual Nicolas Cage weekend, we watch our earliest Cage yet in 1987's Raising Arizona. In this Coen Brothers caper, an infertile couple kidnaps a baby from a family of quintuplets, intending to raise him on their own, until criminals and manhunters get in their way. We discuss the movie's sincerity, the iconic chase scene, the tattoo mystery, John Goodman screaming, and how ev...

Episode 320. We bring our racecar nonsense to The Review Show by watching the 1971 movie Le Mans, set in the real 24-hour motorsports endurance race through the French countryside. We discuss the film slowly building anticipation before the race actually starts, Steve McQueen's movie star identity intertwining with cars and motorcycles, waxing philosophic on the roar of the engine, and watch spons...

Episode 319. We quick-change into our capes for an episode on Richard Donner's 1978 Superman: The Movie. This has all the classic Superman iconography you know and love, plus a complicated real estate scheme where Lex Luthor wants to sink the California coastline to make a new one. We discuss the strange pacing that makes you wait nearly an hour to see Superman in action, the surprisingly sincere...

Episode 318. We return to the world of Valiant comics to read the first three volumes of Faith, from writer Jody Houser. Faith has always worked with a superhero team, but now she's setting out on her own to live in sunny Los Angeles and fight crime her own way, while keeping up a day job as a pop culture blogger. We discuss Faith's important role as a plus-size superhero and how the story doesn't...

Episode 317. We want to believe in this week's episode, a look back at the The X-Files movie from 1998. This movie, sometimes known under the subtitle Fight the Future, was released in theaters between seasons 5 and 6 of the TV show but tells a standalone story. Mulder and Scully are fighting for their careers, their lives, and their connection to each other as they're embroiled in a plot to relea...

Episode 316. It's a Review Show first as we try to dissect a sketch comedy show with no traditional narrative, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. This show premiered on Netflix in 2019 and made a mark with its focus on absurd escalations to everyday awkward interactions. We discuss how the show reflects a post-pandemic lockdown hyper-awareness of social interaction, the lack of recurring...

Episode 315. We watched the 2016 comedy I Was a Teenage Wereskunk, an homage to 1950s B-movies made on a shoestring budget. A teenage boy is sprayed by a magical skunk while he's trying to look at boobs and now he turns into a murderous skunk monster whenever he gets horny. We discuss how the movie is a deft parody of a variety of genres, the tiny house, the sexy pancakes, our new favorite charact...

Episode 314. We pay tribute to the late director David Lynch by watching his 2001 film Mulholland Drive. An aspiring actress finds a mysterious amnesiac woman hiding in her new Hollywood apartment, sparking a close bond between the two women, and a search for truth and identity. We ask whether it's possible to spoil the ending of this inscrutable movie and discuss its origins as a failed TV pilot,...

Episode 313. It's finally here: the episode where Kyle makes Melissa watch a Gundam. We watched Mobile Suit Gundam I-III, three movies on Netflix that are abridged compilations of the original 1979 TV show. In a war-torn future, young Amuro Ray finds his way into a mech suit and struggles with the moral conflicts of becoming a soldier losing members of his newfound family. We discuss how Gundam is...

Episode 312. We read the first two volumes of the Love Everlasting, from Tom King and Elsa Charretier. This is a psychological horror comic about a woman who finds herself trapped in a series of stereotypical romance stories, never sure when she's really falling in love and when she's just going through the motions trying to get out of this story and escape. We discuss the variety of vintage roman...

Episode 311. We catch up to the current season of For All Mankind, as the show reaches the 1990s and begins the race for Mars, with a private company launching its own voyage alongside the USA and Russia. We discuss how the show has proven itself adept enough at drama in the early seasons to earn a few wild comedic moments now, having one specific human villain, and spending too much time on setup...

Episode 310. We watched the first two seasons of For All Mankind, an Apple TV+ drama that looks at an alternate world history where the space race never ended, with each season jumping forward years to see a new era of exploration. We discuss the balance of tense space missions with equally tense interpersonal drama at home, how the show feels sprawling but also limited in only showing us the Amer...

Episode 309. We're talking on Sunshine, and don't it feel good! We watched the sci-fi thriller from director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, about a space mission to launch a nuclear bomb that will revive the dying Sun and save Earth from death by ice age. The mission is thrown into chaos when the crew hears a distress signal from the first ship who attempted this mission and failed under mys...