The Review Show

Episode 163. We're continuing our coverage of the German time travel drama Dark, talking about season two. Jonas travels forward another cycle to 2052 Winden, decimated by an accident at the nuclear power plant, and back to 1921 Winden, where the Sic Mundus society is beginning to take hold. He teams up with the older version of himself to try and prevent the cycles from repeating, but they strugg...

Episode 162. We read both volumes of the 2019 Doctor Doom comic from writer Christopher Cantwell and artist Salvador Larroca. Doctor Doom has been framed for the destruction of a moon base designed by Reed Richards, and has no choice but to turn himself in and plead innocence. As he attempts to secure his freedom and keep Latvaria safe from political turmoil and a war at its borders, he's also hau...

Episode 161. We watched the 2017 Hulu original show Dimension 404, a fun sci-fi anthology of stories about technology and how it can affect our lives for better or for worse. The show covers dating apps, 3D movies, video games, surveillance cameras, and more, with protagonists dealing with loneliness, the desperation to win, or just the need to share your favorite 90s cartoon with your friends, bu...

Episode 160. Alan Busbee joins us to talk about the Netflix original anime comedy The Way of the Househusband. Tatsu was known as the "Immortal Dragon" of the yakuza, a top-notch gangster who survived every fight. Now he's left crime behind to marry a busy career woman and devote himself to domestic life, bringing his mob boss mentality to grocery shopping, cooking dinner, and doing the laundry, a...

Episode 159. We're starting another monthly series covering one show through to its conclusion, talking about season one of Netflix's German sci-fi drama Dark! It's 2019 and a small rural town is struggling after the disappearance of a local boy. Tensions rise as more kids disappear, and we see how this has happened before in 1953 and 1986. There is a time travel portal hidden in a cave in the woo...

Episode 158. We watched the 2020 movie The Kid Detective, a very dark comedy from writer and director Evan Morgan. Abe Applebaum started a detective business out of his treehouse when he was a kid, and successfully solved over 200 cases… but couldn't solve the disappearance of his secretary, fellow middle-schooler Gracie Gulliver. He's never forgotten about that case, even now as a struggling man...

Episode 157. We watched the new Netflix original movie The Mitchells vs. The Machines, from some of the creative team that brought you Into the Spider-Verse and Gravity Falls. Katie Mitchell loves her family but has never quite fit in with them, and she's excited to go to film school and be surrounded by people who understand her. The family tries to bond during a road trip across the country brin...

Episode 156. We watch the 2018 anime film I Want To Eat Your Pancreas. It is an emotional tale about a boy who befriends a girl is his class who is dying. The story focuses on the relationship that blossoms between them and the lasting effect it has. This one will make you cry. Click here to watch a video of this episode. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Episode 155. We read the first two volumes of the the comic book The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. The world is obsessed with a book series about boy wizard Tommy Taylor, and this has made a minor celebrity out of Tom Taylor, the author's son and supposed inspiration for the literary hero. He becomes the center of a media storm when he's both accused of being a fraud and announced as th...

Episode 154. We're concluding our monthly series on Halt and Catch Fire with its fourth and final season! It is now 1993 and teenage Haley has inspired Gordon and Joe to create a search engine website that users can make into their home on the internet -- but Donna's investment firm is working on the same idea. Cameron's video game career is faltering and she is trying to find new professional and...

Episode 153. We watched Guillermo Del Toro's 2013 movie Pacific Rim. Huge monsters are suddenly rising out of the Pacific ocean and wreaking havoc on coastal cities. Humanity bands together and creates equally huge robots known as jaegers to fight against the kaiju, piloted by cybernetically linked partners. A veteran whose brother died while linked to him and the adopted daughter of the jager pro...

Episode 152. This week we listened to the audio drama horror story In Another Room, presented by The Violet Hour and adapted from E3W's immersive theater experience. Paranormal investigator Wendy Morrow stays the night in an infamous haunted mansion and becomes trapped there, seeing over 130 years of ghost stories play out in front of her -- and the ghosts can see her too. Each episode focuses on...

Episode 151. In honor of our 151st episode, we're revisiting our childhoods this week watching Pokemon: The First Movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back! Mewtwo is a new Pokemon engineered by Team Rocket scientists, cloned from a fossil of the ancient Mew. He awakens to incredible psychic power and an existential crisis -- why was he made? what is his purpose? how does he fit into the world as a clone? He inv...

Episode 150. We're back for more relationship drama and crooked business dealings in Halt and Catch Fire season three! Mutiny is growing in San Francisco and Cameron and Donna see conflicting paths for the company, which could derail further progress if they don't find a way to compromise. Joe's new company is launching its own anti-virus software, built on programming that should be credited to G...

Episode 149. We watched the Netflix original movie The Devil All the Time, a Southern Gothic tale set across the 1940s to 1960s following several interconnected families. Following the tragic deaths of his parents, young Arvin is sent to live with his grandmother, who has also adopted the orphaned daughter of family friends who died under mysterious circumstances. Arvin grows up protective of his...

Episode 148. Alan Busbee from Crossplay joins us to discuss season one of the superhero anime My Hero Academia. In a world where 80% of people are born with a "quirk," Izuku Midoriya wasn't. He's dreamed his whole life of being a hero like his idol All Might, and is determined to make it into the hero academy even if he doesn't have any superpowers. When he gets the chance to meet All Might in per...

Episode 147. To coincide with Wandavision, we read the 12-issue comic series The Vision from writer Tom King and artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta. The Vision has created a synthezoid family of wife Virginia and twin teenagers Vin and Viv, and they're attempting to settle down in the suburbs of Washington, DC and lead a normal life like the humans around them. But when a foe comes calling and one of...

Episode 146. We're returning to the tech drama Halt and Catch Fire to discuss season two. The Giant has brought Cardiff Electric enough success that they've been bought out by another company, leaving Gordon with a huge paycheck to fund any personal project he can imagine, but he encounters some mental roadblocks to getting any idea off the ground. Donna and Cameron are working around the clock to...

Epiosde 145. We return to the Valiant comics universe this week to read all three volumes of Livewire from writer Vita Ayala. Amanda McKee is a super powered human known as a "psiot" with the ability to interface with all kinds of technology, giving her the codename Livewire. After the government declared all psiots to be executed, she retaliated with a nationwide blackout, allowing her friends to...

Episode 144. For Valentine's Day, we watched season one of the Korean drama series Love Alarm. Jojo's high school is obsessed with a new app called Love Alarm that can read your feelings and "ring the alarm" of your crush whenever you come near them. Jojo doesn't need an app to tell her how she's feeling: she has a crush on the hottest boy in school, literal fashion model Sun-Oh, but may also be i...

Episode 143. This week we watched the 2008 crime film In Bruges, written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Ken and Ray are two hitmen hiding out in picturesque Bruges, Belgium after a job gone wrong, awaiting further orders from their boss. Ken welcomes the opportunity for sight-seeing while Ray is dying to escape the city and the guilt over innocent blood on his hands. As they await judgement in t...

Episode 142. We're starting another monthly series watching one show from beginning to end, discussing season one of the drama series Halt and Catch Fire, created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers. It's 1983, the dawn of the home computer age. Salesman Joe MacMillian leaves IBM on bad terms and goes to the small Dallas company Cardiff Electric, determined to make them into the next...

Episode 141. Gino Viteri from Crossplay is joining us this week to talk about the Netflix original drama The Queen's Gambit. After the death of her mother, young Beth Harmon is sent to an orphanage where the kids are given tranquilizer pills to keep them docile. The brightest spark in her life is her chess lessons, and Beth develops prodigious skill at the game. She begins a whirlwind career trave...

Episode 140. We listened to an audio drama this week, season one of The Amelia Project, created by Philip Thorne and Oystein Brager. The Amelia Project is a secret organization that you can call if you want to fake your own death and start a new life. Each episode is a case file recording between a new client and the unnamed Interviewer, exploring the client's problems, how they want to "die," and...

Episode 139. This week we read the 1989 DC Elseworlds comic Gotham by Gaslight from Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola, and we watched the 2018 animated movie adaptation. This is an alternate universe take on Batman where he patrols the streets of Victorian era Gotham City, protecting it from Jack the Ripper. The comic sees more of a focus on Batman as the "world's greatest detective," while the movi...