It's here! The podcast of the summer is here...in late August. The boys convene to discuss Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the film that dares to use the same word twice in its title. How disgusting is it? Why does Donatello sound like he's 5? How does Seth Rogen get away with whitewashing Bebop? Mutant Mayhem raises a lot of questions that Ronnie and Jazz try to answer. This makes Rise of the TMNT look like "Return to New York".
To discuss America's love affair with drone warfare as depicted in the Criminal Minds episode "Killer App", we once again turn to Thrawnderdome's Daniel Daughhetee.
It's another Deliver The Profile. This time somebody's hot for teacher in "I Love You, Tommy Brown" as Teri Polo seeks to reunite her felony-riddled family. It's more Season 7 garbage.
Another episode of Deliver The Profile. This is the skeeziest episode yet if you can make such a claim.
Rossi grapples with his ex-wife's mortality as the team grapples with a guy drowning and resuscitating his victims in "Epilogue". Also during the show, Ronnie and Jazz briefly review Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and talk about how night fishing is grade A loser behavior.
Ronnie and Jazz confronts bad mothers on "From Childhood's Hour", another Season 7 episode of Criminal Minds. There's really not a lot to this one besides Rossi reconnecting with his first ex-wife. Do we get to see some old people sex? Listen to the episode to find out.
It's the school shooting episode of the show. "Painless" also involves an unsub who feels no pain. Why these two plotlines were conjoined is beyond the hosts. "Season 7, eh, whatever" summer continues apace.
The boys discuss the furrytastic new Transformers, Rise of the Beasts. Do the beasts rise or do they not? Does this belong in the canon of classic Brooklyn films? Is this superior to the Michael Bay movies or not? All these questions and more will be answered in the two plus hours Ronnie and Jazz expend on this thing.
Take out your gloves and start pounding a slab of meat because it's a boxing episode! In "The Bittersweet Science" some guy is going around beating people to death because he could've been a contender, or his son is dying, or something. Charles S. Dutton guest stars in the episode. It's Season 7. It's terrible. You know the drill by now.
Race war! It's race war time as the BAU goes to San Bernardino to investigate a series of home invasions that seem to be racially-motivated. What does the dipstick who directed Atlas Shrugged Part 1 have to do with this? It's exploitative, racially dicey--it's Criminal Minds all right. It is disquieting how this episode echoes the racial grievance campaign that sent Trump to the White House. Can Criminal Minds be prescient of anything? Is there something going on there? Listen to find out.
Ronnie is actually enthusiastic for once. He's on drugs in case you wanted an explanation. It sure has nothing to do with "Middle Man" itself, a miserable torture porn excursion smack dab in the middle of Season 6 that pits a lone exotic dancer against a coterie of rapist dipshits, one of whom was a Seann William Scott relative in an American Pie direct to video sequel. (Being a serial killer is probably less shameful.) Ronnie and Jazz also put forth their controversial opinions of sex work.
Back to early days with Season 3's "Scared to Death", Ronnie and Jazz chat about a Scarecrow unsub who precedes the literal Scarecrow unsub on the show. As the podcast title indicates, Mandy Patinkin's Gideon has just departed the show and a decent part of this hour is the show dealing with his absence. Ultimately, though, no actor is bigger than the machinery of exposition and dead idiots and other stupid shit.
Back to business as usual as Ronnie and Jazz delve into "A Shade of Gray", one of the rare killer kid episodes. Witness Fake Kyle Chandler's bullshit plan! Listen to the boys do offensive Irish accents for most of the podcast. Hear them posit an altogether better slasher franchise than Halloween. Most of all, be happy everyone's back on their Criminal Minds bullshit after detours into cinema and other television shows.
Not a Criminal Minds episode, but Gotham Knights fits comfortably in the Deliver The Profile remit by being poor television badly told. Why do they keep making Batman shows without Batman? Who the fuck is Turner Hayes? Where's the Robins anybody cares about? The CW's latest and least greatest foray into cheap superheroics plumbs new depths of awfulness. Listen as Ronnie and Jazz dissect the last stand Warner Bros is mounting before the CW is consumed by airing of the LIV tour. Remember that, the Saudi Arabian golf tourney? It's about the only thing more reprehensible than how this show dispatches Batman.
When is a movie barely a movie? When it's The Super Mario Bros. Movie, apparently. Although Ronnie and Jazz did not find it unsettling on par with the Sonic movies, they sure didn't like it either. From needle drops to uninspired voice acting, this film has all the markings of an Illumination picture. The best thing you can say about it is it's so short you might as well keep your coat on. Ronnie and Jazz spend the podcast positing better versions of the movie and positing what went wrong.
Four time guest champion Dr. Daniel Daughhetee asked for a "hard" episode of Criminal Minds, so he got a Season 2 of Beyond Borders thing titled "Obey". It's about a guy who kills people after being shot in the head and left for dead in an open grave. It takes place in Jamaica. Yes, it's racist. Why wouldn't it be? Also, Jack worries about his son in Mexican prison and the IRT has to deal with TEAM BUILDING. There's so little to this show that by the end of it Ronnie is just regaling Daniel with tales of other episodes of this shit.
Lois & Clark & Chris & Ronnie co-writer Chris Ludovici almost convinces Ronnie to give up doing the podcast. It's an existential crisis of an episode, folks, starring "The Fatigues" Seinfeld guy and a whole lot of belt stranglin'.
Tribute To The Shield Month ends with neither a bang nor a whimper, just another daaaaaaaay of podcasting. "The Big Wheel" is about an OCD man who kills blondes and is definitely not just a ripoff of Peeping Tom, the Michael Powell classic. Did that have a blind kid who got around by clicking? Didn't think so. In other news, Jazz is back from the vacation he chronologically starts taking next episode. It's not as confusing as it sounds.
In this Tribute to The Shield episode, the boys welcome Ronnie Gardocki himself, David Rees Snell, to the show. Too bad he has a nothing role in a nothing episode ("Remembrance of Things Past"). Like, we're talking Season 6 nothing. There's so little to talk about the boys spend a digression on the NBC hit La Brea, that's how bad it gets. Otherwise it's a geezer on geezer showcase as Joe Mantegna fights an unsub with dementia. It really should not be this difficult.
This episode has it all: a digression about something President Trump said last year, a possibly good episode of Criminal Minds, and the guy who played Stathis Borans in The Fly and the quite possibly underrated The Fly II. There's so much incident it unfortunately overshadows our Shield alum this week, Catherine Dent. And she's doing things with her role. She's trying the Texan accent!
In "Tribute to The Shield" month, the boys take a look at episodes of Criminal Minds that featured cast members of The Shield in them. First is Season 4's "Demonology", in which a blast from Prentiss' past threatens to push the show into Touched by an Angel territory. Also starring: James Remar! It's a lot more boring than it sounds, but Ronnie and Jazz make some hay out of it.
Fresh off the victory lap that was completing Season 16/Evolution of Criminal Minds, Ronnie and Jazz use the momentous Episode 250 to discuss another serial killer thriller: FOX's 2013 magical mystery tour THE FOLLOWING. Starring Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy, THE FOLLOWING is about a drunk FBI agent trying in vain to stop a shitty English professor from amassing a cult of serial killers who more or less exist to help him write his sophomore novel. Natalie Zea and some secret not gay gay guys also star. It's classic Poe, dudes. Also: listener questions!
It's over. Criminal Minds Season 16 is over, the manhunt for Sicarius is over, Doug Baby is over, it's all over until they start shooting again and we must begin contemplating Season 17. "Dead End" boasts a number of highlights, from apparitions to Josh Stewart having to deliver expository dialogue like a person. Of all the finales, it definitely is one, complete with stupid, stupid open ended ending that Ronnie and Jazz will no doubt speculate over.
The penultimate episode has occurred, and it's just as disappointing as you might expect. Rossi interviews Sicarius' wife! Rossi interviews Sicarius himself! Flashbacks galore! Ronnie is overcoming sickness and may possibly be fucked up from DayQuil. Who knows! Who cares. The important part is this season is blessedly almost over, and there's no tension because they're not going to kill off one of the six cast members. Joe Mantegna is the wrinkly face of the franchise. Come on.
In Episode 8 of Evolution, Sicarius kidnaps a woman from SECOND Street and later pawns her off to sensational character find of 2023, Hang Man. In other news, Shemar Moore is a father, JJ's kids are hideous monsters, Garcia is in a better mood now that she's gotten laid, and Rossi takes a Pacific Northwest trip because why not. It's a bad episode but a good podcast.