still the place to be

I joined a Zoom meeting at work a few minutes early last week, which is always a dangerous time. There’s just enough silence for small talk, and just enough audience for someone (me) to say something.

Someone noted the size of the meeting. “It’s the place to be,” he said.

And before I could stop myself, I chirped in: “Like Green Acres!”

Among people of a certain vintage, this is a layup. The phrase practically demands the response. A few people chuckled immediately.

The younger employees? Blank stares. One of them actually asked what I meant.

Someone else (thank God it wasn't me) helpfully explained the premise of Green Acres—big city lawyer moves to a farm, chaos ensues. He even quoted the opening line of the theme: “Green Acres is the place to be…”

By then, more people had joined, the moment had passed, and we got down to business. But it stuck with me.

Because if a perfectly good Green Acres reference now requires a footnote, maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s time for a reboot.

The Premise Aged Into Relevance

In the 1960s Green Acres was a fish-out-of-water comedy. Oliver Douglas leaves his Manhattan law practice to live his dream on a farm, while his glamorous wife wonders what on earth he’s thinking.

In 2026, that’s not a joke. That’s a lifestyle pivot.

The modern twist practically writes itself: Oliver doesn’t give up his law practice. He just relocates it.

He’s now a remote worker. A Zoom lawyer. A man with three monitors, a hotspot, and a deep belief that he can have it all—peaceful rural life and high-powered professional relevance.

But the farm disagrees.

The Zoom Problem

This is where the show lives now.

Oliver is presenting to clients while:

• a chicken walks across his keyboard
• another one pecks directly at the camera lens
• a goat quietly chews its way through his Ethernet cable mid-sentence
• a rooster times its crowing to land exactly on his most important point

He tries to maintain composure.

“If you look at page—no, sorry, that’s…that’s not a slide.”

He thinks he’s handled it. He never has. The animals don’t respect the meeting. The meeting doesn’t respect the animals. And Oliver is stuck in the middle, insisting that everything is “under control” while the screen share drops and something feathers its way across the desk again.

The joke isn’t that he left the city. It’s that he didn’t. He brought it with him—and the farm refuses to cooperate.

Life Off the Call

And it doesn’t get better when the laptop closes.

Oliver expects:

• restaurants that answer the phone
• stores within walking distance
• cell service that exists

Instead, he gets:

• limited hours that seem more like suggestions
• One restaurant called the Wagon Wheel, with fifteen items on the menu
• a general store that may or may not have what he needs
• a drive that is longer than he thinks it should be, every time
• a signal that drops the moment he needs it most

He sounds, frankly, like an entitled snob.

“There has to be somewhere that delivers.”
“There isn’t.”
“Within…what, ten miles?”
“Within…reality.”

Meanwhile, the locals:

• plan ahead
• fix things themselves
• understand that some problems don’t have immediate solutions

They’re not struggling. He is.

And they’re amused.

Who’s Actually the Joke?

It’s easy to remember Green Acres as a show that made fun of the locals.

That’s not quite right.

Yes, the townspeople were eccentric. Surreal, even. But they weren’t simply the butt of the joke. More often than not, they understood how their world worked far better than Oliver did.

The real joke was Oliver:

• convinced he knew better
• armed with logic, law, and confidence
• and consistently out of his depth

He tried to impose order on a place that ran on its own rules—and lost that battle over and over again.

In other words, the show wasn’t “city vs. country.”

It was certainty vs. reality

The Reboot Gets to Lean Into That

A modern version doesn’t need to flip the premise—it just needs to sharpen it.

The locals aren’t fools. They’re competent in ways Oliver isn’t.

• They understand land, systems, and consequences
• They navigate rules Oliver doesn’t even know exist
• They don’t explain themselves unless necessary

Oliver, meanwhile, still thinks he’s the smartest person in the room.

He knows contracts. They know what happens when contracts meet weather, animals, and time.

And every version of this town needs someone who operates by a completely different set of rules. In this one, she’s less a stereotype and more a force of nature—and Oliver, naturally, has no idea how to handle it.

The Cast (Because This Is Where It Gets Fun)

You don’t reboot something like this halfway.

Oliver: Jason Bateman

A man who insists everything is under control while nothing is under control.

Lisa: Jennifer Aniston

Not the fish out of water this time. She adapts faster than Oliver—and may quietly thrive.

The HOA President: beloved character actress, Margo Martindale

Runs everything. Never says she does. Never needs to.

If you’ve seen her in The Americans, you know the energy: calm voice, measured delivery, and just enough steel underneath that you don’t even consider pushing back.

She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t threaten. She just states things.

“Your grass is out of compliance.”

And that’s it. No explanation, no escalation. You don’t laugh. You don’t argue. You go get the mower.

She represents the rules—not the written ones, necessarily, but the ones that actually matter. The ones everyone else already understands.

With Oliver, she’s patient, but not indulgent:

“That’s not how this works.”
“Legally, I—”
“This isn’t legal.”

With the rest of the town, she barely needs to speak. Things get done.

And when she and Aubrey Plaza share a scene, there’s a sense that they both understand something Oliver never will—and have no particular interest in explaining it.

The Real Estate Agent / Something Else Entirely: Aubrey Plaza

She starts out as the real estate agent who sells Oliver the dream—“charming,” “rustic,” “full of potential”—and then never quite leaves.

After that, she’s just…around.

Sometimes she’s handling paperwork. Sometimes she’s enforcing something. Sometimes she’s advising Lisa. Sometimes she’s just standing there, observing.

Oliver, increasingly unsettled, eventually asks:

“What do you do?”

Her answer never changes:

“I’m involved.”

No one else finds this strange. The town accepts it completely. Only Oliver needs an explanation—and he’s the only one who never gets one.

The Neighboring Farmer: Keith Crocker

The kind of guy Oliver thinks he understands immediately—and completely doesn’t.

He looks like exactly what Oliver expects: pitchfork, overalls, the whole thing. But unlike Oliver, he actually knows what he’s doing.

He doesn’t explain much. He doesn’t need to.

“You’re gonna want to fix that.”
“Fix what?”
“…that.”

He shows up, gives just enough guidance to keep things from collapsing, and then moves on. The rest of the town treats him as entirely normal—which, in this town, tells you everything.

The Local Who Shouldn’t Be Underestimated: Brent Spiner

Seems like the most stereotypical country oddball—until he casually proves he understands everything better than Oliver does.

The Free-Spirit Neighbor: Paz de la Huerta

That “different set of rules” character. Always just around, always slightly disarming, and always treating Oliver’s sense of order as optional.

She flirts with him—casually, persistently, without much effort. Oliver has absolutely no idea how to handle it. He overcorrects into politeness, then into formality, then into mild panic.

Nothing ever comes of it. That’s not the point.

Lisa, importantly, is not threatened in the slightest. She understands exactly what’s going on and treats it as just another part of the landscape. If anything, she enjoys watching Oliver squirm.

“She likes you.”
“I wish she didn’t.”
“Why? You need the attention.”

Which, of course, only makes it worse for him.

The New York Paralegal (The True Power): Kate Micucci

Never leaves the office. Keeps the entire legal operation functioning. Solves problems before Oliver knows they exist.

The Agricultural Inspector: Christina Zuber Crocker

Shows up when things go wrong. Which is always. Takes everything completely seriously.

For those who remember her from The Bloody Ape—where she memorably played “Lady Who Has Her Car Stolen by Ape”—this would be a chance to show off her full comedic abilities. We got a glimpse there. Here, she gets the runway.

She doesn’t joke. She doesn’t react. She just documents, inspects, and enforces—no matter how absurd the situation.

“I’m going to need you to account for the poultry.”
“Don’t take the whole cake. That’s for everybody.”

It doesn’t matter what the situation is. The tone never changes.

And the Theme Song…

You don’t mess with it. Update it, remix it, rearrange it however you like—but there are two lines that are non-negotiable.

It has to begin with “Green Acres is the place to be…”

And it has to end with “Green Acres, we are there.”

Everything in between is up for grabs. Those bookends are not.

Because if you’re going to bring it back, you might as well get the part right that everyone remembers—well, everyone of a certain age.

Final Thought

The original Green Acres didn’t just laugh at the locals. It laughed at the guy who thought he had everything figured out.

A reboot doesn’t need to change that. If anything, it needs to make it clearer.

Because in 2026, we have a lot of Olivers—confident, connected, convinced we can drop into a new world and master it immediately.

And if someone makes that show?

I’ll be there.

a small plunger for a long night

At some point in the late 1990s—back when I was in Midtown five days a week and “busy season” meant we all just silently agreed we lived at the office—I found myself in possession of (OK, I went to a hardware store and bought) a small plunger. Not the industrial-strength bathroom kind. This was a modest, kitchen-sink model. Discreet. Almost polite.

That evening, while working late at my desk, I discovered that it adhered quite nicely to my forehead.

Now, a normal person might remove it at that point. But it was a long day, the numbers weren’t getting any friendlier, and for reasons that made perfect sense at the time, I decided to leave it there and continue working. I imagine I looked like a unicorn, if unicorns specialized in spreadsheets.

A few colleagues walked by, took it in, and reacted the way New Yorkers tend to react to anything slightly unusual: they shrugged and kept going.

But then one of the secretaries passed my cubicle, saw me, said something in Greek (to be clear, she was an immigrant from Greece, so it's not as if the shock suddenly taught her a new language). It did not sound encouraging, and the fact that she fled immediately afterwards didn't help.

About a minute later, my boss came over. He looked at me—plunger still firmly attached—paused just long enough to process it, chuckled, and walked away. I could hear him explaining it to someone: “He’s just having fun.”

Which, in fairness, I was.

cinema history class: the hunchback of notre dame (1923)

The session: Happy (Belated) 100th Birthday to the Phantom of the Opera
Keith shows us three classic Lon Chaney silent films and a documentary about his career

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 3: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
Directed by Wallace Worsley

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I'd seen a few versions of Hunchback, and I knew of this version. But I had never seen it before.

Plot Synopsis:
In medieval Paris, the deformed bell-ringer Quasimodo becomes entangled with a kind gypsy dancer and his cruel master, leading to betrayal, persecution, and a desperate attempt to protect her within Notre Dame.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
I keep running into the same issue with these Lon Chaney films: I don’t quite know how to place them within my own movie-watching framework. I’m a product of later decades, with different pacing, different storytelling rhythms, and a whole different visual vocabulary. So when it comes time to “grade” something like this, I’m always a little unsure whether I’m judging the movie…or my own expectations.

That said—Chaney is just phenomenal. The makeup alone is astonishing; not just technically impressive, but expressive. He doesn’t just look like Quasimodo—he moves like him, hunching, climbing, contorting, until he really does seem like some living gargoyle perched on the cathedral. And the spectacle around him is just as striking. The massive sets, the crowds, the sheer number of extras (apparently thousands were used for some sequences) give the whole thing a scale that’s hard not to admire. The acrobatics, especially in and around Notre Dame, are genuinely thrilling to watch.

Oddly, though, for all that, Chaney doesn’t always feel like the central figure. The story sprawls a bit, shifting attention around enough that Quasimodo sometimes feels like part of the tapestry rather than its clear focal point. Maybe that’s intentional, maybe that’s just how storytelling worked then—but it stood out to me.

The bigger issue is the length. It just goes on. And because of that, there are stretches where it drags, and I found my attention wandering more than I’d like to admit. Maybe that’s on me; maybe audiences at the time were more attuned to this style. Either way, it’s there.

Still, I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. The ambition, the visuals, and especially Chaney’s performance carry a lot of weight. Even if it doesn’t fully land for me as a complete experience, there’s enough here that feels groundbreaking—and still impressive a century later—that I’m comfortable giving it a strong grade.

And Joe rated it a 10.

cinema history class: phantom of the opera (1925)

The session: Happy (Belated) 100th Birthday to the Phantom of the Opera
Keith shows us three classic Lon Chaney silent films and a documentary about his career

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 2: Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Directed by Rupert Julian

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I'd seen a few versions of Phantom, and I knew of this version. But I had never seen it before.

Plot Synopsis:
A mysterious, disfigured man secretly living beneath the Paris Opera House becomes obsessed with a young soprano and manipulates events to make her a star. He haunts the opera with threats and sabotage while demanding her devotion.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
I’m very aware, watching something like this, that I’m bringing a 1970s–1980s movie brain to a 1925 film. I’m used to decades of technical advancement—better cameras, better editing, better everything. But that’s kind of the point: those later filmmakers got to stand on the shoulders of giants. Lon Chaney didn’t have that luxury. And yet, the visuals here are striking in ways that still land. The sets feel expansive, the compositions are deliberate, and the famous moments don’t feel like museum pieces—they feel like someone figuring out, in real time, how to make cinema unsettling.

And then there’s Chaney himself. The performance is great, but it’s the makeup—and how it’s used—that really sticks. The design is grotesque, but it’s the interplay with shadow that elevates it. The face isn’t just revealed; it’s unleashed. Even now, you can see how carefully it’s staged for maximum impact. It’s not just “good for its time.” It’s good, period.

There’s also a rough edge here that I kind of appreciate—something that later, code-era movies tended to sand down. This version feels a little more jagged, a little less concerned with smoothing everything into something polite or morally tidy. The tone can lurch, the emotions can spike, and the whole thing has a slightly unhinged quality that works in its favor. It feels closer to something raw and theatrical, rather than something carefully regulated.

All of which makes it hard for me to “grade” in the usual sense. I’m not really comparing it to its contemporaries—I’m comparing it to everything that came after it, which isn’t exactly fair. But given how much of this feels foundational—how much of it is first draft of the language of horror filmmaking—I’m comfortable just going with a 10. Just like Joe!

cinema history class: he who gets slapped (1924)

The session: Happy (Belated) 100th Birthday to the Phantom of the Opera
Keith shows us three classic Lon Chaney silent films and a documentary about his career

This is not a trailer in the way we think of trailers, but it was the best I could find. As near as I understand, trailers (as we know them today) weren't really a thing when this movie was first released.

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 1: He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Directed by Victor Seastrom

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Never heard of it.

Plot Synopsis:
A brilliant scientist is betrayed by his patron and humiliated in front of society. Years later, he reinvents himself as a clown whose act revolves around being repeatedly slapped—turning his personal disgrace into public spectacle. Beneath the performance, he harbors unresolved pain that erupts when he becomes entangled in a dangerous romantic triangle at the circus.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
Before getting into He Who Gets Slapped, I have to note something about the clowns. These are not your standard cheerful, balloon-animal-adjacent clowns. The makeup—especially on Lon Chaney’s titular character—is sharper, harsher, and just…off. The corners aren’t rounded into smiles; they feel pointed, almost weaponized. Combined with Chaney’s intensely expressive face, it creates this constant sense that something is about to snap. I spent a good chunk of the movie convinced he was going to go completely psycho and take everyone down with him—and honestly, if this had been made in the 1970s, I’m pretty sure it would have, with Chaney going full Charles Bronson on the entire cast. The film never quite becomes that movie—but it absolutely wants you to feel like it could.

And that ties into something else: this is a tough one for me to “grade.” It sits so far outside my usual movie-going experience—the pacing, the acting style, the visual language—that I’m never quite sure what scale I’m even using. I can recognize what it’s doing, and I can admire it, but translating that into a neat little number feels almost beside the point.

The story itself is actually very simple. Betrayal, humiliation, reinvention, and then things spiral from there. No complicated plotting, no twists for the sake of twists—just a straight line from emotional wound to inevitable consequences. If anything, that simplicity lets everything else—performance, visuals, mood—do the heavy lifting.

Speaking of betrayal: I hated the professor’s wife. Truly. No nuance, no sympathy—just a straight shot of “I hope this ends badly for you.” So when her boyfriend ultimately leaves her, it lands as deeply satisfying. It feels deliberate, almost moral in its structure, and—this may be my imagination—it has a kind of Russian-literature flavor to it. Actions have consequences, and those consequences are not gentle. And that kind of makers sense, given that the movie was based on a Russian play.

Visually, there are some striking touches, especially the recurring spinning world imagery. It’s simple, but effective—a literalization of disorientation, ego, and collapse. It sticks with you.

But make no mistake: this is a miserable film. Not “bittersweet,” not “melancholy”—miserable. It’s steeped in humiliation and emotional damage, and it never really lets up. Add in the unsettling clown imagery, and it becomes genuinely disturbing in places.

At the center of all of it is Chaney, and he’s incredible. The man was doing things with makeup and facial expression that still feel advanced. Every look, every twitch of the mouth, every stare—he’s completely magnetic. You can’t take your eyes off him, even when you might kind of want to.

Also worth noting: the score in the version we saw was excellent. With a silent film, that matters a lot, and this one absolutely enhanced the mood without overwhelming it.

Joe missed this one, but we all know how that would have gone. He’d have given it a 10. Frankly, I’m pretty sure he’d give anything with Lon Chaney a 10. And you know what? He might not be wrong.

cinema history class: the navy vs. the night monsters

The session: Spring is in the Air, and the Plants are Growing
Keith shows four movies about carnivorous plants.

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 4: The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966)
Directed by Michael A. Hoey

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Never heard of it.

Plot Synopsis:

On a remote Pacific island, a Navy meteorological team encounters a mysterious outbreak of fast-growing, seemingly intelligent plant life that begins to overrun the base. As the vegetation turns aggressive and traps the personnel in a tightening perimeter, the sailors struggle to understand what they’re up against—and how to survive it.

Plot:
Watching The Navy vs. the Night Monsters is a bit of a slow burn at first, with a lot of foggy confusion and people talking past each other before the movie really finds its footing. There’s a stretch early on where you’re bracing yourself for pure nonsense—but then the film pauses to actually explain itself, and surprisingly, it more or less holds together. Once the premise is laid out, you can see the bones of a legitimately solid 1950s-style sci-fi concept hiding underneath the murk.

And when it works, it really works. The carnivorous trees have a certain pulpy menace to them, and the scene where a sailor loses his arm lands with a jolt that feels a notch above what you’d expect from something this obscure. For a moment, you can glimpse the movie it could have been.

But that’s where the frustration creeps in. This is clearly trying to be one of those classic mid-century sci-fi entries—isolated setting, creeping threat, military response—but it never quite escapes the feeling that everything is happening in a space the size of Keith’s projection room on a low-attendance night. Characters stand, sit, or crouch and deliver dialogue because there’s nowhere to go, and the film leans heavily on stock military footage to fake a scale it simply doesn’t have.

And that’s the real issue: not that it’s bad, but that it’s small. The idea deserved something bigger, more kinetic, more alive. Instead, it feels like a promising blueprint that never got the resources—or maybe the confidence—to fully build itself out.

Still, you can’t help but think that, in some alternate universe where the vines stretched just a little farther and the sets were just a little bigger… Joe would have recognized the potential and given it a 10.

cinema history class: the woman eater (1958)

The session: Spring is in the Air, and the Plants are Growing
Keith shows four movies about carnivorous plants.

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 3: The Woman Eater (1958)
Directed by Charles Saunders

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Never heard of it.

Plot Synopsis:
A reclusive scientist living in London secretly cultivates a strange carnivorous tree he brought back from Haiti, feeding it human victims to sustain its growth -- hoping that it will provide a serum to bring the dead back to life. 

Plot:
The Woman Eater is a title that, until now, I would have confidently placed in the “probably terrible and rightfully forgotten” bin. And yet—surprise—it’s actually pretty good. Not just “good for a low-budget ’50s sci-fi flick,” but legitimately solid when you stack it up against some of the better-known entries in the genre. Which raises the obvious question: why is this one so forgotten? I don't have a good answer for that question; it's probably a combination of factors. I'll just blame it on the commies.

The centerpiece, of course, is the tree. And what a tree it is. It’s this wonderful, slightly ridiculous creation—part nightmare fuel, part something that wandered in from Lost in Space. Keith shared a great behind-the-scenes nugget: the original prop was destroyed shortly before filming, forcing the production team to whip up a replacement on the fly. By all accounts, the backup wasn’t as polished—but honestly, that might have been a blessing. The result lands right in that sweet spot of giggly-scary: unsettling enough to work, but just off-kilter enough to make you grin.

What really elevates the movie, though, is that it gives us actual characters. I went in expecting cardboard cutouts whose sole purpose was to be fed to the foliage. Instead, I found myself oddly invested. The scientist’s obsession, the assistant’s trickery, the romantic subplot—it all hangs together better than you’d think, and it makes the inevitable doom feel earned rather than perfunctory.

And there’s Tanga. It’s never entirely clear why he agreed to accompany the scientist from Haiti to London, but his presence adds a steady undercurrent of menace. The drumming, in particular, is a nice touch: simple, repetitive, and just creepy enough to suggest that something very wrong is always lurking nearby.

Plot-wise, this is more coherent than expected. The story actually makes sense from beginning to end, without the usual “wait, what just happened?” detours that plague a lot of these films. It knows what it’s doing, sticks to it, and manages to be fun along the way. And, in its own odd little way, it’s mischievously sexy—never explicit, but definitely aware of the pulpy appeal of its premise. We can thank Vera Day for that.

All of which is to say: this is an enjoyable, better-than-its-reputation piece of ’50s sci-fi/horror that deserves relatively high marks. But a 10? I’m sorry. I don’t see it. Joe, of course, gave it a 10.

heavens to betsy! the perfect spinoff for better call saul

One of the most delightful things about the Breaking Bad universe created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould is that even minor characters feel like they could anchor their own show. But there’s one pair in particular who practically beg for it: Craig and Betsy Kettleman.

Yes, I am proposing a full spinoff about the Kettlemans.

And it should be called Heavens to Betsy.

Think about the possibilities.

Betsy Kettleman is one of television’s great comic creations: wildly ambitious, absolutely convinced of her own brilliance, and completely incapable of recognizing how bad her plans actually are. She’s a schemer who lacks two critical tools for scheming: patience and intelligence. Her plots are always just a little too loud, a little too obvious, and a little too reckless.

And yet she barrels ahead anyway.

Craig Kettleman, meanwhile, is the perfect comedic counterweight. He’s a timid, slightly bewildered man who knows the plan is terrible. You can see it in his face every time Betsy explains the next brilliant idea.

Craig: “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Betsy: “Craig.”
Craig: “…okay.”

And off they go into another catastrophe.

What makes the Kettlemans funny isn’t just that they commit crimes—it’s that they commit crimes in the most amateurish way imaginable. Remember early on in Breaking Bad, when Jesse and Walt stole a barrel of methylamine from a warehouse? I'm talking about that level of incompetence or worse. They’re not criminal masterminds. They’re not hardened operators. They’re the kind of people who would attempt a sophisticated fraud scheme after reading half an article about it online.

Every episode practically writes itself:

1. Betsy hatches a bold new plan to “get what they deserve.”
2. Craig raises mild objections.
3. Betsy steamrolls those objections.
4. The plan spirals out of control in increasingly ridiculous ways.
5. Craig suffers the consequences.

And, crucially, there is a running gag.

In every episode of Heavens to Betsy, the Kettlemans have a lawyer.

Not the same lawyer.

A new lawyer.

Betsy insists on hiring “top legal talent” to support whatever the current scheme is. The lawyer—who is invariably competent, cautious, and increasingly alarmed—spends the episode trying to explain why what the Kettlemans are doing is illegal, inadvisable, or both.

Betsy interprets this as negativity.

Or worse, a lack of vision.

By the final act, as things are collapsing, the lawyer is urgently advising them to stop, to cooperate, or at the very least to not say another word.

Betsy responds by firing them.

On the spot.

“We need a lawyer who works with us, not against us.”

The lawyer exits, stunned.

Craig, watching this unfold, realizes—correctly—that the lawyer was the only thing standing between them and total disaster.

It is, of course, too late.

For example, imagine an episode where Betsy decides the Kettlemans should start a “consulting service” helping small businesses reduce their tax bills. Her plan is to charge huge fees for advice she mostly invents on the spot.

Craig points out that neither of them knows anything about tax law.

Betsy reassures him that “tax law is just numbers.”

Within a week they’ve accidentally advised a client to commit three different felonies and attracted the attention of both the IRS and the state licensing board. Craig spends the episode trying to quietly undo the damage while Betsy insists the problem is simply that they “need better branding.”

Or imagine another episode where Betsy decides the family should get into real estate. She’s convinced the key to success is buying distressed properties cheaply.

Unfortunately, the property she finds is cheap because it’s currently being used by an extremely unfriendly criminal organization.

Craig realizes this almost immediately.

Betsy insists they have “every legal right” to renovate it.

Things escalate.

Rapidly.

And then there are the moments where the Kettlemans brush up against the larger world of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul—without having the faintest idea what they’re dealing with.

In one episode, Betsy becomes convinced that they need to “scale up” and start working with more serious, high-level operators. Through a series of wildly misguided assumptions, she identifies Lydia Rodarte-Quayle as a “corporate logistics expert.”

Which, to be fair, is not wrong.

It’s just…incomplete.

Betsy aggressively pursues a meeting—emails, voicemails, an unsolicited “proposal packet” with color-coded tabs and completely nonsensical projections. Craig, meanwhile, is quietly unraveling.

The meeting, when it finally happens, is excruciating. Betsy pitches something like “regionally optimized embezzlement services for mid-sized municipalities,” while Lydia stares at her with a mixture of confusion and alarm.

By the end, Lydia is taking steps to ensure she never hears from these people again, while Betsy insists this counts as a “successful first contact.”

It does not.

Or worse: Betsy decides they need “muscle.” Not because they actually need it—but because, in her mind, serious businesses have muscle. Through a chain of terrible decisions, she ends up attempting to establish a relationship with associates of Jack Welker.

Craig immediately understands that this is not a situation they should be anywhere near.

Betsy interprets their hostility as a negotiation tactic.

She responds by trying to out-negotiate them.

There has to be a scene where Betsy is confidently explaining payment structures and “long-term partnership opportunities,” while everyone else in the room is trying to figure out who these people are and why they are still talking. Craig, sitting next to her, looks like a man actively reconsidering every life choice he has ever made.

The resolution, of course, is not success.

It’s survival.

They walk away convinced they’ve taken a bold step into the big leagues.

They have not.

And then there’s the episode that really defines Heavens to Betsy.

In the aftermath of the Wayfarer 515 plane collision, Betsy becomes convinced that what victims’ families need is “financial guidance.”

Specifically, theirs.

She creates a “support and recovery service” to help families manage settlements and “maximize outcomes.” In practice, it consists of vague advice, homemade pamphlets, and a fee structure that is both confusing and aggressively expensive.

Craig immediately senses this is a terrible idea—not just legally, but morally.

Betsy reframes it as compassion.

“Craig, we are helping people.”

They begin reaching out with unsolicited mailers, awkward phone calls, and deeply inappropriate in-person visits that somehow manage to be both overly cheerful and wildly tone-deaf.

Every interaction goes badly.

Craig tries to scale things back. Betsy insists the problem is “messaging.”

Naturally.

What makes it work is that the Kettlemans never quite grasp why people are reacting so negatively. Betsy thinks it’s a branding issue. Craig understands, dimly, that they’ve crossed a line—but doesn’t have the backbone to stop it.

The inevitable result isn’t profit.

It’s consequences.

And a hasty retreat.

Followed by Betsy insisting that “the concept was sound.”

What would make Heavens to Betsy work is that the Kettlemans would never become competent. In a franchise full of masterminds, professionals, and terrifyingly disciplined operators, they would remain exactly what they are:

People who wander into crime the way someone wanders into a glass door.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And the audience would know, from the moment Betsy unveils the plan, that this is going to end horribly.

The only suspense would be how.

In a universe famous for brilliant criminal strategists, Heavens to Betsy would give us something even better:

The world’s least competent crime duo.

Which is exactly why their show would be amazing. And it's exactly why Joe would give it a ten!

cinema history class: island of the doomed (1967)

The session: Spring is in the Air, and the Plants are Growing
Keith shows four movies about carnivorous plants.

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 2: Island of the Doomed (1967)
Directed by Mel Wells

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Never heard of it.

Plot Synopsis:
Unsuspecting tourists to a remote island, guests of a reclusive botanist, start dying one by one.  They uncover the terrifying truth as they struggle to survive. 

Plot:
On a tropical island science has gone very, very wrong—and, against all odds, the plants steal the show. Seriously: the plant design is by far the best thing in the movie. It’s creative, vaguely (and sometimes not-so-vaguely) sexual, and just grounded enough in reality to feel almost believable. You keep thinking, “Okay… this is ridiculous… but also… kind of impressive?”

Structurally, Island of the Doomed is actually working from a very familiar horror template: a group of people trapped in an isolated setting, unable to escape, getting picked off one by one as tension (theoretically) builds and the survivors scramble to understand what’s happening. That formula has powered countless effective horror films—and here, the twist that the killer is a sentient plant is genuinely one of the movie’s stronger ideas. On paper, that should be enough to carry things.

Unfortunately, the movie takes its time getting to anything worth caring about. We spend a long stretch with a collection of characters so unlikable and dull that I eventually found myself rooting less for their survival and more for their creative demise. Others in the room saw it as a slow burn, though I had some trouble seeing it that way. There are hints of style along the way—the opening credits feature animation that feels like it wandered in from a Pink Panther short, and at various points I caught flashes of James Bond film series swagger and the campy energy of Batman—but none of it quite coalesces early on.

Then, near the end, everything finally clicks into place. When the character I will charitably refer to as “Miss Bitchypants” has her run-in with the plant monster, the movie suddenly wakes up. From there on out, it delivers the kind of action, tension, and outright weirdness you’d hope for from a premise like this. Even better, the closing act reframes some of the earlier material in a way that almost—almost—makes the slow build feel intentional.

In the end, the final act is what saves the film. Not too little, but definitely too late. Still, I walked away thinking: there’s a better version of this movie hiding inside the one we watched.

Of course, none of that stopped Joe from giving it a 10.

when i'm the only one who shows

There are five regulars in Keith’s Thursday night film class. Five distinct personalities, five different rhythms of laughter, five overlapping commentaries that somehow turn even the dumbest movie into a communal event. It’s a small enough group that every absence matters—and last week, the math got weird.

Dave and Ethan are both out for a while (reasons respectfully unblogged), which brings us down to three. Bobbo, meanwhile, was on his annual pilgrimage to Battle of the Alamo—because of course he was—so we knew he’d be out. That left Joe and me -- and Keith, of course.

And then Joe didn’t show.

No explanation as far as I know. I showed up expecting to see him, and Keith gave me the news: "No Joe." So for the screening of From Hell It Came, the attendance sheet read: one student, one instructor, and one extremely judgmental tree monster.

I’ll say this: it wasn’t a bad experience. Keith and I leaned into it. There was as much back-and-forth as usual. more running commentary, more room for my particular silliness. At one point I even found myself doing a passable Bobbo impression—snapping my fingers to match the background music, which felt equal parts tribute and séance. The movie itself, as previously documented, was gloriously stooopid, and that helped.

But it was also undeniably strange.

I sat in the middle of the room instead of in my usual spot on the side. There was no one to my left. No one to my right. And no one behind me. Keith, as always, took his usual spot off to the side, watching the screen at that slight angle he seems to prefer, beer in hand, like a projectionist who wandered into his own audience. The physical geometry of the room stayed the same, but the energy was different.  Not better. Maybe not worse. But different.

It got me wondering about the logical extreme: what happens if no one shows up?

Would Keith still run the class? Deliver his intro to an empty room? Let the movie play while he sits at his angle, occasionally chuckling, then wrap it up with closing remarks addressed to the void?

I asked him.

The answer: no. No performance for the ghosts of cinema past. He wouldn’t go through the motions. He’d probably still sit there with a beer and watch something—but it wouldn’t be class. No preamble, no postgame analysis, no ritual.

Which raises the next question: what happens to the movie we missed?

Turns out Keith is a completist. If nobody shows, the film doesn’t just vanish into the ether. It gets rescheduled. We’d watch it the following week, even if that throws everything off. The syllabus bends; the canon remains intact.

There’s something oddly reassuring about that. This isn’t a conveyor belt—it’s a shared experience, and if the “shared” part disappears, the experience doesn’t count.

Still, I hope we don’t test that hypothesis.

Because as much as I enjoyed my one-man screening—my brief turn as the entire audience—it drove home something essential: these nights aren’t really about the movies. They’re about the reactions, the interruptions, the running jokes, the accumulated weirdness of a handful of people who have watched far too many obscure films together.

Take that away, and even a killer tree monster starts to feel a little lonely.

cinema history class: from hell it came (1957)

The session: Spring is in the Air, and the Plants are Growing
Keith shows four movies about carnivorous plants.

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 1: From Hell It Came (1957)
Directed by Dan Milner

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Never heard of it.

Plot Synopsis:
On a Polynesian island, they executed an innocent man. To take his revenge, he rose from the grave in the form of Tabanga -- the tree that kills. 

Plot:
Grading From Hell It Came is surprisingly difficult. On the one hand, it’s objectively kind of a piece of crap. On the other hand… I had a pretty good time watching it. It’s the kind of movie where you spend most of the runtime shaking your head, but you’re still entertained enough that you don’t regret the experience. In the highly technical terminology of cinema criticism: it’s dumb, but it’s fun-dumb.

One thing that struck me immediately is that the supposedly South Pacific island natives look suspiciously like white guys from middle America who wandered in from a Rotary Club meeting. Some of them even have neatly trimmed 1950s sideburns. The effect is mildly surreal. It’s as if the island culture evolved entirely within a suburban barbershop in Ohio.

Tonally, the movie is all over the map. At times it feels like an episode of Gilligan's Island—the tropical setting, the earnest-but-goofy dialogue, the sense that everyone is one coconut radio away from a sitcom plot. Other moments veer closer to The Three Stooges, though notably without the eye-pokes and frying pans. Instead you get a lot of characters wandering around looking confused while a homicidal tree lumbers toward them.

And speaking of wandering around, we get a classic movie quicksand scene. Now, I’m perfectly willing to forgive the usual cinematic misunderstandings about how quicksand works. Movies and television have been getting that wrong for decades, and at this point it’s practically a tradition. But what I cannot forgive is the fact that this particular patch of quicksand is emitting steam. Steam. From quicksand. Why? Is the island built on top of a geothermal spa? Is the quicksand boiling? Is Tabanga running a sauna franchise? The film offers no explanation.

The monster itself, however, is actually pretty good. Tabanga—the vengeful walking tree—is a genuinely memorable design. The bark-covered body looks convincingly wooden, the branch-like arms are nicely creepy, and the face has this magnificent carved wooden frown that gives the creature a weirdly expressive look. If you were six or seven years old and watching this in a dark movie theater in 1957, I can absolutely see how this thing might have scared the hell out of you.

Another pleasant surprise is the score. For a movie this goofy, the music is oddly effective. It’s dramatic, atmospheric, and sometimes far better than the scenes it’s accompanying. The composer clearly understood the assignment even if the rest of the production occasionally wandered off to chase butterflies.

The movie also has a faint but unmistakable anti-nuclear message, which was a staple of 1950s science fiction and horror. The suggestion is that atomic experimentation has tampered with forces that humanity doesn’t fully understand, helping unleash the monstrous Tabanga. It’s not exactly subtle, but it fits comfortably alongside the era’s broader anxieties about radiation, mutation, and mankind’s enthusiasm for pressing buttons labeled “DO NOT PRESS.”

And yet… damn, this movie is stooopid. I mean that affectionately, but still: stooopid.

For this particular screening, I also had a unique viewing experience. For various reasons, none of the other regulars could make it, so I ended up being the only person in the class. Watching a movie like this alone is a strange thing—you don’t get the shared laughter, the groans, or the running commentary that usually makes these nights so much fun. Keith did kind of make up for it, reacting with me -- more actively than he usually reacts when the room has more people in it. I can’t say for sure how everyone else would have rated From Hell It Came, but I do know one thing: Joe would have given it a 10.