It was a big week in the good, old USA and Dean and Phil discuss some of the most fascinating historic milestones achieved through the week’s midterm elections. That dovetails into Phil sharing tales from his second “Around the World in 80 Minutes”, what he hopes might become monthly year-round as both a stage show, and perhaps as a radio show? Good friend and frequent contributor (and occasional guest co-host) Yoshi Kato writes in with a question about the difference between Visual Effects and Special Effects. Dean and Phil have a ball answering the question before rolling up their sleeves and appraising four quite different films: the indie pandemic-era comedy Save Themselves, the critically-acclaimed, box-office disappointment Minions & Monsters, the Olivia Wilde-directed sleeper hit sex comedy The Invite, and the Jimmy Kimmel-produced Netflix documentary SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of.

Following what many people seem to feel was the longest January on record, your friends in podcasting return to get February off to a good start, freewheeling their way through a variety of topics, including the closing of the most odd airport in the world, the reasoning behind Quentin Tarantino’s move into live stage work, a listener’s response to Dean and Phil’s dismissal of Oscar Best Picture nominee A Complete Unknown, and the influence David Lynch had on great Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin. Dean and Phil take a deep dive into two films that figure prominently on many year-end Top Ten lists (Hundreds of Beavers and The People’s Joker) and they discuss two films that are NOT eligible for inclusion on their own lists (La Chimera and Midway). Finally, good friend of show Marc Hershon drops by to share a disturbing story about a screenwriting AI and to suggest two recent television shows.