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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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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Episode 89: Christmas on the Alpaca Farm

Jingle Balls, everyone! We're diving into Christmas on the Alpaca Farm, a beige Lifetime movie (well, Canadian Lifetime) that's so formulaic, we literally had AI recreate it - and the results were disturbingly accurate. Jessica is a New York fashion designer dubbed the "Christmas Sweater Queen" who sources her alpaca wool from a small hole-in-the-wall farm upstate. You wouldn't have heard of them. She's very indie about it. Enter Andrew Flannery, the farmer himself, whose acting ability could not carry him out of a wet paper bag. When Jessica's fashion house fires Flannery Farms for not keeping up with demand, she rushes to the farm to save both their businesses and maybe, just maybe, find love among the fleece.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• Jessica entering her office and literally throwing her coat and bag at her assistant like she's the Queen of England - "my PA will take care of it"
• We debate whether shearing our cats Obi and Elvi for belly fur sweaters would be haute couture or an allergy nightmare
• Andrew Flannery's wooden performance throughout - Matt Wells has extensive IMDB credits including Schitt's Creek, but romance films are clearly not his forte
• The fashion house wanting to throw away "faulty" sweaters instead of, you know, donating them to homeless people or selling them to a bargain retailer
• Andrew's intense commitment to fiber purity - absolutely no blends allowed in his fleece (this becomes the entire personality of both the movie and the AI-generated versions)

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The AI Experiment: We fed the premise into Claude and Grok to see if AI could recreate this paint-by-numbers plot. Results: disturbingly close. Claude generated "The Alpaca Before Christmas" featuring Jack Winters who "explains micron counts with surprising intensity" and once ended a relationship over an alpaca-cashmere blend scarf. Grok's version titled "Alpaca My Heart (Only If It's 100% Pure)" featured Blake Harrington yelling at alpacas, calling acrylic "the devil's cotton," and dramatically hurling skeins into fireplaces. Both AIs independently created characters named Winters and included an alpaca named after Christmas (Jingle and Prince Fluffington the Third, respectively). The movie might as well have been written by ChatGPT.

Alpaca Facts Corner: Did you know alpaca fleece has fewer scales than sheep's wool, making it less itchy? It also has no lanolin. Baby alpaca is comparable to cashmere. We were very concerned about whether Flannery Farms incorporates guard hairs into their fleece - "they have integrity, dammit!"

The Verdict: It's background noise Christmas - the kind of movie you put on while baking cookies or wrapping presents just to feel festive. Not enough happened to make it comedically bad; it was just bland. The chemistry was nonexistent, the acting from the male lead was painful, and the obsession with 100% pure alpaca fiber was the most interesting character trait in the entire film. As predicted, AI could have written this and honestly might have done a better job. At least then we'd get someone dramatically hurling yarn into a fireplace while screaming about "big yarn."

Coming Up Next: Young Einstein (1988) - Yahoo Serious's Australian masterpiece about Albert Einstein inventing the formula to put bubbles back in beer and creating rock and roll. It's been decades since either of us has seen it, Scott found it on a weird eBay site, and the entire plot summary is one sentence. Throw another shrimp on the barbie because we're going full Outback in the new year.

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Episode 88: My Oxford Year

Welcome back to Oxford (yes, again) where Netflix serves up another ambitious American woman whose carefully planned life gets derailed by British architecture and a charming TA. Sofia Carson plays Anna, a Cornell grad with a Goldman Sachs job she deferred - did we mention Goldman Sachs? Because the movie certainly does, repeatedly - to study Victorian poetry for a year. Her greatest challenge upon arrival? A single flight of stairs. Truly inspirational.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• Anna's voiceover declaring "everything was going according to plan until it wasn't" as she faces... one flight of stairs with a suitcase
• The ChatGPT-perfect Oxford bucket list written in impeccable handwriting in the middle of her Moleskine notebook - fish and chips listed right alongside the Bodleian Library
• Anna not understanding the chip shop guy asking "haddock or cod?" - a joke that would work better if England spoke a different language
• Netflix's cliché checkbox: the snarky gay neighbor whose first line is insulting her shoes
• The pub that's completely normal until the camera pans to reveal it's actually a drag karaoke bar - "like going to Fridays for bottomless margaritas and finding out it's drag night"
• Jamie refusing to take his shirt off on camera for four months of relationship montage, then finally having a Patrick Duffy-style love scene right before he dies
• The 750th anniversary gala at Oxford looking exactly like a high school prom

The Oxford Cinematic Universe: This episode marks the hosts' third trip to Oxford, following Surprised by Oxford (featuring Rose Reid). They note both films have suspiciously identical shots of campus and wonder how anyone actually attends classes there with all the film crews. Also discovered: Oxford Blues (1984) starring young Rob Lowe - a gender-swapped version where an American guy pursues a woman to Oxford. It's going on the list.

The Hatfield House Deep Dive: Jamie's childhood home is actually Hatfield House, a Grade 1 listed Jacobean estate built in 1611 where Queen Elizabeth I learned she would become queen. The current owner is worth £345 million. There's a controversial £50 annual charge just to walk the grounds.

The Verdict: It's Surprised by Oxford meets The Map That Leads to You - another film where a hot guy with a terminal illness white-fangs the protagonist. The cancer subplot comes out of nowhere, the illness is barely shown convincingly (he's dancing and drinking at galas!), and the ending montage of Anna completing Jamie's dream European tour alone is genuinely devastating - even if Scott was mostly ready for the credits to roll. The library fetish jokes write themselves, and we're apparently not done with Oxford yet.

Coming Up Next: Christmas on the Alpaca Farm - finally available in our region! A woman quits her New York fashion job to make sustainable luxury knits with a single dad alpaca farmer. He's very serious about not using blends. 5.8 on IMDb. 90 minutes of pure Lifetime holiday magic.

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Episode 87: Home for the Holidays

Welcome to Home for the Holidays, where Jodie Foster directs a 1995 Thanksgiving drama that raises conflicts and resolves... well, almost none of them. Holly Hunter mumbles her way through a holiday weekend with Robert Downey Jr. (in his heroin phase), Dylan McDermott, and Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson herself). This is cinema that asks "what if nothing really happened?" and got a surprisingly stacked cast to go along with it.

What You're Getting Into: Claudia (Holly Hunter) gets fired from her museum restoration job, immediately makes out with her elderly boss, then flies home for Thanksgiving. Her daughter Kit (Claire Danes) announces she's about to lose her virginity, her free-spirited brother Tommy (RDJ) shows up with his "friend" Leo Fish (Dylan McDermott), her uptight sister Joanne resents being the responsible one, and her parents engage in quiet desperation disguised as marriage. Nothing gets resolved, everyone goes home. Roll credits.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• Opening with seductive egg yolk handling during art restoration that looks way more sexual than it should
• Claudia's mystery cold that serves absolutely no narrative purpose and is never explained
• Tommy taking Polaroids of his adult sister in her underwear - twice - which is just weird on every level
• The turkey flying off the platter onto Joanne's lap, followed by Leo and Claudia intentionally spilling all the juices on her dress
• Aunt Gladys's unhinged monologue about kissing the dad back in 1952, leaving everyone at the table mortified
• The "food and making out" scene where Leo and Claudia get intimate with turkey sandwiches and cranberries in the dark - which awakens something in Liz about incorporating food into playtime
• Tommy casually outing himself as having been married to Jack for three months, which no one knew about

The Baltimore Deep Dive: Scott provides extensive commentary on the Baltimore filming locations throughout, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, BWI Airport (with its red pillars), Memorial Stadium in the background of the parade scene, Moravia Road, Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery, and even finding the actual house on Google Maps.

The One Good Scene: The dad watching old home videos in the basement and telling Claudia about taking her to watch planes take off when she was little. He talks about looking at old footage and not recognizing himself, saying "that wasn't me at all, that was some other guy." This moment resonates deeply and leads to a philosophical discussion about aging, nostalgia, and feeling disconnected from your past self. It's the only emotionally genuine moment in the entire film.

The Thanksgiving Food Debate: Extensive discussion of optimal Thanksgiving dishes including the great stuffing divide (in-the-bird soggy vs. prepared separately), whether you need turkey for it to truly be Thanksgiving, scalloped vs. au gratin potatoes, Scott's sobriety streak facing its biggest test, Popeyes' $99 pre-cooked Cajun turkey, sous vide turkey taking 8-12 hours (or days for short ribs), and the optimal plate-loading strategy. First things on the plate: Scott goes for turkey, Liz goes for in-the-bird stuffing with gravy.

The Verdict: Is this a profound meditation on family dysfunction or just a movie that chickened out of having anything meaningful to say? The film wants credit for being "realistic" about messy families but really it's just conflict-averse. The dad's scenes save it from being completely aimless, but otherwise it's a vignette pretending to be a movie. As Scott puts it: unresolved conflict is the entire point, which feels less like an artistic choice and more like the film just gave up.

Coming Up Next: Back to Oxford (for the third time!) with My Oxford Year starring Sofia Carson. Another ambitious American woman finding love at a prestigious British university because Netflix apparently has a template for these.

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Episode 86: The Wrong Paris

Welcome to The Wrong Paris, where Miranda Cosgrove trades her metal welding torch for a reality dating show catastrophe, and Frances Fisher (Rose's disapproving mother from Titanic) finally gets the role she was born to play: Netflix rom-com grandmother. This is cinema, people.

What You're Getting Into: Dawn (Miranda Cosgrove) is a hip country artist saving money in a literal jar to attend art school in Paris, France. When she gets accepted but can't afford tuition, her reality-TV-obsessed sister convinces her to audition for "The Honeypot" - a dating show where contestants can choose between the bachelor or cold hard cash. Plot twist: the show flies them to Paris... Texas. Yes, they spend $120,000-180,000 on private jet fuel just to circle in the air for nine hours and land 45 minutes from Dawn's house. The math isn't mathing, but at least the production budget went somewhere.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• Dawn keeps her Paris fund in a glass jar in a barn instead of investing it like a sensible hedge fund broker, missing out on years of compound interest
• The "Honeypot" show's fundamental flaw: contestants can choose the money AND still date the bachelor after filming, making the entire premise economically nonsensical
• Miranda Cosgrove's character is a metal artist without the massive blacksmith arms typically required for the job
• Trey McCallum III has an eight-pack - which we determined is two abs too many (six is fine, people)
• The mechanical bull challenge where Lexie requests "low and slow" mode and basically gives a lap dance while everyone else got violently thrown off
• A mud-pit catfight between Dawn and Lexie during cowboy boot camp that's exactly as ridiculous as it sounds
• Cowboy Magic horse shampoo product placement that we actually applaud for authenticity
• The shirtless horse-washing scene shot exactly like a bikini car wash, complete with slow-mo and wind machines

The Cast Reunion: This movie features half the cast of To All the Boys I've Loved Before, including Emilia Baranac (Jen) and other familiar Netflix faces, because apparently Netflix has a Rolodex of actors on speed dial for these productions.

Reality Show Economics: The Honeypot's premise makes zero sense. Why would anyone choose the bachelor when you could take the money AND date him after production wraps? It's double-dipping on winnings, and we spent significant time calculating the flawed game theory. Also, they're apparently offering $20,000 just for appearing, plus challenge winnings up to $10,000. For a dating show filmed in Texas.

Technical Complaints: Scott goes on an extended rant about Netflix's chromatic aberration lens choices, the weird smearing effect in their cinematography, and how they intentionally make things look less crisp to avoid the uncanny valley of high-resolution filming. Also, the band at the bar is hilariously out of sync with the music.

The Verdict: Solidly mid. A respectable 6.1 on IMDb and a 2.5-3 dumpsters from us. It's not the worst thing we've ever seen, but it's so beige and formulaic that it blends into every other Netflix rom-com. Miranda Cosgrove is more enjoyable here than in Mother of the Bride (where she played an Instagram-obsessed bridezilla), mainly because she has a bigger role and isn't just being entitled. The movie is "meh" personified - nothing particularly standout, nothing particularly offensive. Just... beige.

Coming Up Next: We're headed to Oxford (again) with My Oxford Year, starring Sofia Carson. It's another movie about an ambitious young American woman who goes to Oxford University and meets a charming local who changes her life. Yes, this is the third Oxford movie we've encountered. No, we don't know why everyone keeps making these. The cast includes Catherine McCormick from Braveheart as the token older actor, and a bunch of randos. Netflix rom-com formula remains intact.

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Episode 85: The Summer I Turned Pretty S2E7-8 (Season Finale)

We're finally closing out Season 2 of The Summer I Turned Pretty, and buckle up - these episodes are annoying in ways that even we didn't expect. Where's the action-packed finale energy? Buried under repetitive arguments and questionable parenting decisions, apparently.

What You're Getting Into: Belly drunk-dials her mom after the house party spirals out of control, leading to Laurel discovering the trashed beach house and her daughter's multi-day lying streak. What follows is a masterclass in awkward stage combat (seriously, someone get these actresses into Patrick Duffy's slap seminar), circular arguments about grief and responsibility, and somehow zero consequences for destroying an entire house.

Peak Dumpster Moments:

• The slap heard 'round the world, delivered with all the conviction of a middle school theater production
• Belly's earth-shattering revelation that Conrad once asked Jeremiah for his blessing (we're still trying to figure out why this matters so much)
• The grand revelation that Susanna's estate plan was... nothing? She thought it was all handled but apparently Massachusetts inheritance law had other ideas
• Conrad's villain era featuring passive-aggressive car harassment in the rain and emotional manipulation that would make a soap opera proud
• Steven letting Taylor take his prized Honda Civic - true love, folks

The Inheritance Mess: After an entire season of wondering why this house situation is such a disaster, we finally learn that Susanna DID try to handle it before she died, reaching out to lawyers and Aunt Julia about the trust. She just... thought it was resolved? Meanwhile, everyone discovers that apparently no one in this family understands how property law works, and we're left with more questions than answers about capital gains taxes and why Susanna didn't just buy Julia out in the first place.

The Love Triangle Status: Belly and Jeremiah finally kiss (he initiates it in the book, she does in the show - crucial distinction, obviously). She seems pretty decided about being with Jeremiah by morning, though the book keeps it more ambiguous. Conrad continues his campaign of making everyone uncomfortable, proving that being pre-med doesn't automatically make you emotionally mature.

Parental Apology Tour: Laurel apologizes to Belly for slapping her, then apologizes for being a "zombie" for four months while grieving her best friend. Belly faces exactly zero consequences for lying, partying, and destroying a house. We have thoughts about this parenting approach, and none of them are particularly charitable.

The Volleyball Subplot: Taylor spends both episodes trying to get Belly to volleyball camp like it's the most important thing in the world. Spoiler: Belly eventually goes, and the final scene features her playing volleyball while contemplating her uncertain but hopeful future. This entire subplot doesn't exist in the books because it doesn't need to.

Book vs. Show: The adaptation stays mostly faithful, with key differences including Aunt Julia's absence from the finale confrontation, Conrad having two finals to study for in the books (psych and biology instead of just biology), and who initiates the kiss between Belly and Jeremiah. The show's ending is less ambiguous about Belly's choice, while the book keeps readers guessing a bit more. Both end with Belly's line about the future being unclear but still hers.

Coming Up Next: We're diving into The Wrong Paris starring Miranda Cosgrove - a Netflix rom-com where someone confuses Paris, France with Paris, Texas for a dating show/art opportunity hybrid that makes absolutely no sense. The premise is older than dirt, the director's resume includes Irish Wish and various Hallmark Christmas movies, and the producer worked on House Hunters. This is going to be spectacularly bad, and we cannot wait.

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