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 undergrad AND law school... we're looking at a minimum seven-year age gap. But sure, let's give her a heart-shaped necklace from Zales and tell her not to marry someone who doesn't deserve her.

The first 20 minutes are an escalating trauma speedrun: Dad dies of pneumonia, brother-in-law rapes her in the barn, mom doesn't believe her, Crystal grabs a shotgun, and her brother Jared catches a stray bullet trying to intervene. Tom's response? "Call the sheriff, honey." On himself. Then Crystal hops a bus to San Francisco like nothing happened.

What follows is 15 years of star-crossed near-misses, time jumps that would give Christopher Nolan whiplash, and a love triangle featuring Terry Farrell (filming Deep Space Nine simultaneously) as Elizabeth - the power-hungry Wall Street fiancée whose father tells her not to make Spencer "feel any worse" after he cheats. Spencer disappears to China for earthquake relief... for TWO YEARS. Crystal gets a sleazy manager named Ernie who ends up murdered (she definitely did it). And somehow, through it all, Jenny Garth doesn't age a single day while Spencer gets... reading glasses.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• "Who the F is Trang?" - a character mentioned once, never explained, universally despised by Crystal's mother
• "Get your fingers out of the ham!" - the wedding reception line that launched a thousand questions about leftover logistics
• The violins vs. thunderbolts breakup speech that contradicts itself mid-sentence
• Director Michael Miller's signature move: the slow-motion post-coital fall-back-onto-the-bed shot (he directed Daddy too - the man has a brand)
• Elizabeth's father essentially saying "he cheated in a different zip code, it doesn't count"
• Spencer reading Crystal's Dear John letter while comforting a random Asian child in China
• Crystal's son is named Zeb. Short for Zebulon. We will not be taking questions.
• "You didn't tell me about the boy." "You didn't ask." - Crystal, mother of the year
• The Variety review noting that every scene except the sex scenes lasts "about as long as a commercial"

Behind-the-Scenes Gems: Jenny Garth didn't do her own singing - that's Megon McDonough, a folk singer who opened for John Denver at Carnegie Hall at age 17 and was a founding member of "Four Bitchin' Babes" (real group name). Craig Bierko, who plays Spencer, famously turned down the role of Chandler Bing on Friends despite Matthew Perry telling him to take it. Career choices!

The Verdict: More bananas than Daddy, with time jumps that make zero sense and a body count that includes a brother, a rapist, and a sleazy manager. IMDb gave it a 5.6, which feels generous. At least Daddy had Ben Affleck.

Coming Up Next: We're diving back into the After series with the fourth installment, After Ever Happy. The blurb promises "a shocking truth about a couple's family" and Tessa withdrawing from "absolutely everything, even her soulmate." So, you know, light viewing.

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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), this is the fish-out-of-water tale of Jackie, a Type-A New York princess whose family dies in an accident that is never explained. Piano falling from a crane? Helicopter crash into the Hudson? Fashion atelier inferno? Since the show doesn't tell us, we're left to speculate.

Jackie gets shipped off to live with the Walters - a Colorado ranching family with eight biological children spanning a 20-year age gap, two cousins whose backstory remains a mystery even after two full seasons, and a casting director who apparently reached into a bowl of people soup and started pulling. The "twins" look nothing alike. The children look nothing like the parents. And presiding over it all is Mark Blucas - son of Blucas, of the ancient Blucas line - poking an unlit grill with a spatula because liability is a thing.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• The glass of "lemonade" that looks like warm piss
• Mark Blucas grilling on an obviously unlit grill
• The green screen car scenes so tight they can't even show the vehicle from outside
• Grace's mid-episode recap of all the Walter boys, proving Matt Damon right
• The prop snake that's "insanely smaller" when the kid picks it up versus when Jackie held it
• Uncle Richard's Jos A. Bank special with the oversized jacket
• Cole emerging from the pool in slow-mo glory
• The spaghetti dinner where Mark Blucas dumps a colander of noodles that maybe feeds six people into a bowl for thirteen

Production Deep Dive: Filmed entirely in Calgary, Alberta. Zero Colorado. The school looks like "a generic office park in Glendale, right next to the heating refrigeration business." They can't show what sport the boys are watching on TV because the TV is literally behind a wall. The empty ice cream bag prop. The styrofoam container that could never fit in that refrigerator. This is the Temu version of Summer I Turned Pretty.

The Verdict: Four and a half dumpsters. It's generic, it's tropey, the acting is questionable at best, and the casting is baffling. But we've got nine more episodes to go, so we'll see if that needle moves.

Coming Up Next: We're going back to Danielle Steel with Star (1993), starring a young Jenny Garth as a San Francisco singer struggling to achieve stardom. Because apparently you had to pay your dues with a Danielle Steel movie to make it in the '90s.

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Metacritic

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 Australian film was a childhood staple for one of us, and we're diving back into the slapstick madness brought to you by a man who legally changed his name from Greg Pead to Yahoo Serious.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• Preston Preston, the mustachioed villain who steals Einstein's formula and screams "There's a bushman in my carriage!" at the train conductor
• Marie Curie infiltrating the asylum to rescue Albert by wearing a "very convincing hat and beard" and pretending to be his father - straight into the men's showers
• The kitten pie scene that traumatized an entire generation of children (don't worry, Albert saves them from the oven just in time)
• The lunatic asylum featuring zombie-like inmates shuffling in circles, a very masculine nurse, and mystery green slop for dinner - "This is how I thought all asylums really were as a kid"
• Darwin presenting at the Academy of Science with his beagle, while Sigmund Freud's date is literally his mother
• One of the Wright Brothers is inexplicably Black

The Yahoo Serious Rabbit Hole: We dig into the wild story behind the man himself - from art school expulsion to DIY filmmaking to a spectacularly failed lawsuit against a certain search engine. His GeoCities-era website still exists and it is a journey. We also settle the debate: is Yahoo Serious the Australian Carrot Top or the Australian Pauly Shore? (Spoiler: yes.)

Credits Deep Dive: We combed through the end credits and found some absolute gems hiding in there. Let's just say the crew included some very specific "specialists" and one very distinguished beagle.

The Verdict: Zero dumpsters. Yes, really. This is pure nostalgia fuel - goofy, slapsticky, and packed with random animals (cockatoos, wallabies, bearded dragons, koalas, kittens in pies). It's no Citizen Kane, but honestly, have you tried sitting through Citizen Kane? Rosebud is a sled. There, we saved you two hours. Go watch Young Einstein instead.

Coming Up Next: My Life with the Walter Boys - a Netflix series that will have you tearing your hair out at the decisions these characters make. It is very much a dumpster piece. Prepare yourselves.

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