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. It's heavy. We watched it so you don't have to, though in this case you probably should.

We run the inflation math on a 1995 hooker, debate whether a liquor store can legally sell one man that much alcohol, and try to figure out how someone survives weeks without food on nothing but bottom-shelf vodka and the occasional screwdriver. There's a spirited defense of Nic Cage as a legitimate actor, an Always Sunny comparison that writes itself, and a motel called the Whole Year Inn that Ben's booze-addled brain reads very differently. Scott shares the tale of a Vegas cab driver who handed him a brothel catalog before he'd even left the airport, and we learn that Nic Cage turned down the role of Harry in Dumb and Dumber to make this film - a casting what-if that briefly breaks our brains.

Peak Moments:
◆ Ben packing for his big move: every bottle of liquor in the hotel room goes in the suitcase. Clothes? One shirt. Priorities.
◆ The rental agreement that comes with a very specific monthly payment arrangement. "I accept your terms."
◆ A poolside romantic getaway that goes sideways when Ben tries to retrieve his "drinky" and obliterates a glass table. "I'm like a prickly pear."
◆ Julian Lennon shows up as a bartender. French Stewart is apparently somewhere in this movie as "Businessman Number Two." Neither of us spotted him.
◆ A cab driver delivers one of the most callous lines in film history to a visibly beaten woman. We are not okay.

The Tangent Files: A discussion of first-person-POV spiral movies produces a surprisingly deep list including Elijah Wood as a serial killer, a Tokyo drug dealer who experiences the afterlife through his own blinks, and a dance troupe whose sangria gets spiked with LSD. We also learn that the author of the source novel got his start writing an episode of Rugrats - and was disgusted by the editorial changes. There's a Laserdisc rabbit hole involving a rumored unrated cut, eBay listings between $200 and $1,000, and the open question of whether you can even find a player anymore. Scott may or may not be shopping.

The Verdict: A well-acted, well-written film that makes you never want to drink again. One of those movies you see once and say "I'm good." We put it in the same category as Requiem for a Dream Too heavy for the dumpster scale, so Liz decides to debut the Potato Poll instead. This one's a blue potato.

Coming Up Next: My Life with the Walter Boys - a hard left back into our regularly scheduled programming, assuming we can remember any of their names. Cole, Alex, Benny, Qbert, Filthy Dave, Dirty Sanchez... we'll figure it out.

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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 like someone smeared Vaseline on the camera, and the title doesn't make any sense. We have thoughts about that.

We dig into the When Harry Met Sally parallels, debate whether you could actually lock your keys in a 2016 Subaru, question why a man in his early thirties throws out his back from a gentle reach, and have a serious disagreement about saxophone in music. There's a chainsaw-carved Bigfoot that becomes the emotional backbone of the entire film, a wedding officiant making some bold wardrobe choices that nobody acknowledges, and a climactic romantic scene that one of us believes got completely torpedoed by wooden acting. We also spend some time on the logic of chasing a jogger through a neighborhood when you could simply wait on his porch.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

◆ A gas station wishing well that exists solely as a plot device to strand our leads at a motel with - you guessed it - only one room available. The other room has "a big stain on the floor." Subtle.

◆ A proposal that happens with suspicious speed after a friend-zoning. We have opinions about the ethics of this.

◆ One of us gets genuinely distracted by an outfit involving red cowboy boots and what can only be described as genie cosplay.

◆ Mr. Yeti: therapist, confidant, load-bearing emotional prop. You'll understand when you see it.

◆ The big romantic payoff features the line "You're not a vacation to me. You're home." We award it the Pulitzer it deserves.

The Tangent Files:

A casual mention of Jameela Jamil playing Poppy's boss spiraled into a full investigation of her coming out as "sapiosexual" - which, as far as we can tell, just means having standards. This led to the discovery that the opposite is called "morosexual," that Jameela once had an accidental orgasm DJing on top of speakers at a farmers' ball, and that WebMD has an entry for all of this. We also revisited the legendary Tuscan Whole Milk and Three Wolf Moon reviews on Amazon - one of which is miraculously still live with 3,100 reviews including "In the beginning God created the heavens and the shirt." A Niagara Falls hotel tangent revealed bed bugs, a $200 fine for eating a sandwich at a public table, and the fact that Canada will not let you keep the Do Not Disturb sign up for more than a couple of days.

The Verdict: It doesn't make your eyes bleed, but it doesn't make you feel much of anything either. Taylor Swift is contractually present. The title still doesn't make sense. 2 out of 5 dumpsters / 3 out of 5 dumpsters.

Coming Up Next: Leaving Las Vegas - Nic Cage drinks himself to death in the desert, Elizabeth Shue is a seen-it-all hooker, and we may or may not end up doing a full Battle of the Vegases.

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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 two floors until now.

Episode two kicks off with a prank war. (Bleach requires dwell time. This is not up for debate.) This also prompts a detour into some deeply questionable personal hair history - we're talking bleached locks, a thin mustache, and a chin strap that lasted approximately one week but has lived rent-free in someone's memory ever since.

Meanwhile, Silver Falls continues to flex its improbable progressivism via the Lark Café, which is apparently serving vegan flapjacks and quinoa-based items to a population of football-worshipping ranchers without a hint of irony. Nobody questions this. Nobody should have to.

Episode three, "The Cole Effect," brings us homecoming - and with it, the show's most accurate nature documentary moment: Alex carefully constructs a romantic straw-loft moment with Jackie (pulling exactly one piece of straw from a girl completely covered in the stuff), only for Cole to materialize like an apex predator and force the cheetah to slink back into the tall grass. He warmed her up for you, man. That's just tragic.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• Jackie's bleached hair is magically back to normal by the next morning. She apparently found an exact L'Oreal match for her hair color, purchased it, applied it, and dried it before going to bed - all off-screen and without comment.
• Mark Blucas probably did not actually drive the bobcat. They took the keys out. They put the sound in post.
• Cole auctions himself off at the homecoming fundraiser with full crowd-work energy - and a grandmother outbids everyone at $500. She's not dead yet, and she knows what she wants.
• Haley's solution to a cash-strapped wedding: sell the dress. Will's response: dramatic exit. The dress was kind of fugly anyway.
• The family's vet is being paid in persimmons. George has thoughts about this.
• Cole is failing every class. The school has not contacted the parents. Nobody is checking Canvas.
• Alex and Cole have apparently both liked the same girl before, with Cole always winning. Isaac's reaction: "Again?" The drama is geological in depth.

The Tangent Report: A conversation about the Walter family's apple farming operation - and their catastrophic moth infestation (not moss, moths, like "I love lamp") - spiraled into a full live reading from AppleRankings.com, where the Arkansas Black Apple earns a 23/100 and the descriptor "a teeth-shattering oddity," and the Newtown Pippin apple pulls a 19/100 with the tagline "Long Island's sand-filled condom" - and somehow ranks #3 for cider. The Sweet Tango, for the record, is nearly perfect. The Holy Grail.

Coming Up Next: People We Meet on Vacation - a Netflix rom-com featuring Alfie from Emily in Paris, the girl from The Good Place, and Cameron from Ferris Bueller. It looks bad. We can't wait.

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