Ben Adams, Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, Shana Mlawski and Matthew Wrather prepare to tackle Tom Cruise’s latest, Edge of Tomorrow!
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Your Panel
- Ben Adams: @badamsnavy
- Mark Lee: @goestotwelve
- Peter Fenzel: @fenzelian
- Shana Mlawski: @ShanaMlawski
- Matthew Wrather: @mwrather
Wait, you were in a time loop and you didn’t use it to change the question of the week and ask Harvey Fierstein to check in from the Tony Awards?
This was not nearly as successful as the in media res podcast. Sorry, guys. I love you and I’m willing to be alienated and confounded to a great extent but after the first 5 resets this started to feel torturous. I made it to the end but only because of my great affection for all of you.
I thought it was a little tedious at first, but as it progressed I got more and more entertained. Very enjoyable =-)
This was probably better than the movie. (Though that’s not really fair, having not seen it. Oh phooey! THIS COMMENT IS RUINED!)
This was probably better than the movie…
Should have seen this coming from the comment in the last episode that ya’ll would NEVER do anything like the In Media Res podcast again. But I didn’t.
Thanks for giving me a profound sense of unreality at the beginning of this workweek, only enhanced by the fact that I listened to this episode during my commute after watching (due to time constraints) just the beginning of a Magic: the Gathering-themed humor video also featuring a time loop. Perhaps I’m stuck not in a time loop but with the experience of watching other people’s time loops.
“In this case the author literally is dead which is unfortunate.”
Kudos.
I agree that this wasn’t as enjoyable as the In Media Res podcast, probably because it looped so often that you had to spend too much time on the conceit at the expense of new content. I think you even forgot to plug MikeR’s excellent guest post on the parrallel universes of Groundhog’s day (link not in shownotes).
That said, I like that you guys are experimenting with the format, as long as you keep the experiments at a reasonable frequency, I would encourage you to continue with them. I can stand a little bit of Experimental Noise Collective if it can help make an excellent show better.
P.S. – Bring back Clichemaggedon.
FUN FACT: We recorded this episode a little bit outside our normal schedule. MikeR’s excellent post was approved and scheduled after this episode was recorded.
That’s also why this episode didn’t mention the Tony Awards, and why it assumed Edge of Tomorrow was going to be bad, even though the reviews that came out late last week said it was actually quite good.
Once, on a red-eye greyhound trip across the midwest, I was fortuitously in a bus with overhead TVs. as we entered the bus (around midnight), the film _Predators_ began to play. I was stoked, as I wasn’t particularly tired, and I had not seen this (at the time) recent addition to the franchise. As the bus lurched out of the station, the movie started again from the beginning. Weird, I thought, but nothing to be concerned about.
I could not have been more wrong.
Every time the bus bounced over a pothole, or took a turn too hard, there was a “chapter back” button being pressed on some mysterious remote somewhere. And so that is how I spent five hours watching the first twenty minutes of _Predators_ again and again and again.
Everyone else on the bus, with the (possible) exception of the driver was asleep, but I have always had a hard time passing out when there is something on a TV in front of me. I tried my best, and perhaps I briefly slipped into uneasy, Adrien Brody filled dreams. When we stopped in Des Moines, I was able to find and unplug the DVD player, but ever since, I’ve been haunted by this feeling that any day now, when I’m least expecting it, I’ll jolt awake on I-35 south, and once more, watch Alice Braga hang from the top of a pit trap, waiting for Adrien to save her, just as he’s done a thousand times before, and as he will continue to do, until the end of time.
This is amazing!
I laughed out loud at this comment, read it out loud to my girlfriend, and she did as well. Good show.
hanks guys.
It was still a better greyhound trip than the one directly after the Iowa Caucuses, when a Ron Paul supporter kept trying to tell me how Fannie Mae and the EPA had implanted everyone with RFID tags so that they could track us from satellites.
That’s pretty terrible. My worst was a midnight trip across eastern Washington state trying to sleep while literal drug deals were going on behind me in the crowded bus.
A bit stressful to listen to somehow ( the drama was REAL! ) but I heartily approve.
Also;
You guys give me the wierdest inspirations to do the weirdest things…
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-9Ox4QHFSzos/U5ZidRPAFuI/AAAAAAAAAjw/_fbzd1uJTtM/s400-no/English%2527s+Guide.gif
Eh, I had to stop it in the middle. I don’t know if Pete was on it and playing along or just pissed because he really wanted to talk about the movie but I cringed so many times I finally stopped the podcast to not get stressed more.
Oh, I was definitely playing along, but I was also engaging the old acting muscles and being pretty dramatic about the situation. I knew about halfway through that it was getting emotionally intense and eventually softened it up and backed down a bit.
But yeah, this was intentionally dramatic. I wasn’t actually upset.
You did too good of a job, then. Or maybe I didn’t pick up on your call back to Murray’s character. I haven’t seen Groundhog day in years.
It still does not change the fact that I get “Why are mommy and daddy fighting?” vibe from it.
Obviously I’ve never met you in real life Pete, but from listening to you podcast all the time, I would imagine that if you were ever actually caught in a time loop, you would have a hell of a lot more fun with it.
I’m right in the middle and I, for one, love how Pete is acting in the same way that Bill Murray’s character is in Groundhog day. Huge props! Also, repeated catch phrases are great.
BINGO!! Good catch!
I’ve finished the episode and I would say that it got better the further in I was. The time loop trope itself probably wouldn’t be able to carry the podcast (as can be seen from other comments) but the fact, that you’ve incorporated a story into it and made it into a kind of rendition of the movie, was what made it really enjoyable for me.
Thank you for not being afraid to experiment like this from time to time.
Colour me suitable alienated and confounded!
Don’t suppose we get a podcast supplement with actual non-meta discussion of the movie? From what I’ve been hearing it seems to be fairly well-liked in its exploration of some interesting game and time-loop tropes. To the forums I guess? That would require me to actually see it however :/
Yeah, when we recorded this episode, the reviews for Edge of Tomorrow weren’t out yet — but they look pretty good, and I hear the movie is actually solid. Maybe we’ll actually get around to seeing it!
Whether it makes the podcast or not, I know we have at least some legit Edge of Tomorrow content planned. Watch the site for it in the coming days.
I tend to download and listen to the podcast as soon as I wake up on a Monday morning. This led to a really disorientating first hour to my day.
It was jarring and weird, but I couldn’t help laughing along with each iteration and each Fenzel-based breakdown. Good job, guys.
I work for a newspaper and did see Edge of Tomorrow to write one of the positive reviews. The film is worthy of a good over thinking. Specifically, I would like to hear more thoughts on how this movie is similar to lots of modern video games.
I absolutely adored this episode. I was late getting to read it, but managed to listen to it while I was grocery shopping yesterday. Which made the other people in the canned goods section look at me strangely for my giggling.
I definitely wanted to give Fenzel a hug about halfway through.
Great podcast, and somewhat enlightening (if repetitive) discussion. When asked what pop culture “thing” I could relive again and again, I thought of the movie “Starship Troopers.” I read the book several times as a teen/young adult. The movie is very different in tone, but it’s the absurdity of that which makes it enjoyable for me. I also had fun attending the RiffTrax live screening.
My favorite time loop TV show episode was Stargate SG-1 “Window of Opportunity.” At the end, they do not hazard a guess about how long they spent in the loop, but similar to Bill Murray the characters learned complex skills which would have taken a while. (Also, Amanda Tapping looked especially lovely in that episode.)
Just revisited this episode after a long time and it TOTALLY holds up!
On the first hearing (back in 2014) my reaction was similar to that of other commenters: applause for the effort and ingenuity, but discomfort actually sitting through the whole thing. And I wondered what happened in the interim to change my view…
1. Knowing what’s going on makes it easier to enjoy and appreciate all the nuances of each iteration.
2. I actually watched Edge of Tomorrow, and enjoyed it so much that it made me enjoy this podcast by association.
Way cool, you guys!