Podthoughts by Colin Marshall: “Remember When”

Posted by Maximum Fun on 18th January 2009


This selection comes straight from the recommendation thread on the forum. Max Funster anabur wrote of the podcast’s hosts that “you can tell they do it just because it’s so fun for them,” which sounded promising indeed; if there’s one thing that separates the podcasts that peter out before you unsubscribe from the podcasts to which your subscription peters out first, it’s passion. Apologies for using such a clichéd term, but it’s true. It’s no accident that passion is the first of the Three Ps of Podcasting: Passion, Production and, uh… Potency.

From minute one, it was obvious that, for their subjects of geekery, Remember When‘s [iTunes link] Jay and Parris have passion to spare. One might say the show itself is the child of a sheer passion overflow, a spillage of excess enthusiasm. While the guys are better known for their video game podcast UncleGamer Radio, one of its episodes veered straight down the pop culture path without so much as a backward glance, prompting the genesis for a spinoff show focusing entirely on movies and television.

Unfortunately, it almost immediately became evident that, whoever this podcast is made for, that person is probably not your Podthinker. First, he hasn’t viewed a narrative TV show — much less sprawling stuff like The Shield and Battlestar Galactica, two Remember When favorites — in years and years. Second, though almost any film talk piques his interest, this is a setting where The Dark Knight, Iron Man and Tropic Thunder dominate the best-of-2008 lists. For a man almost entirely unable to get with Lord of the Rings, The Matrix or Star Wars, it’s a little disheartening to load up the first episode in the playlist and hear the opening strains of an intense, probing, detail-oriented discussion of Revenge of the Sith [MP3].

That said, it’s obvious even to someone unstirred by the popular sci-fi, fantasy and superhero trilogies (and quadrilogies) of the late 1970s to the present that Jay and Parris know their stuff. And it’s not just that repeated re-watchings embedded all the facts firmly into their brains; they also seem to care. Whether Mace Windu did or did not recieve a worthy death scene may forever remain a matter of active inquiry, but it’s not because these guys are asleep at the switch. By the same token, would the Riddler fit into Christopher Nolan’s Batman universe? Can the standard-issue Kurt Russell performance truly convey the character of Wyatt Earp? Which is the better Indiana Jones, Raiders or Last Crusade? If you can think of no questions more pressing than these, this is the podcast you want. (None of this is meant to sound culturally high and mighty; when Parris started talking about The Last Dragon, Krush Groove and House Party, your Podthinker could not have been more down for it.)

Remember When‘s most entertaining feature is a semi-regular one where Parris, evidently the more cinematically experienced of the two, assigns Jay one of his favorite movies to watch. This is usually some well-worn classic of the past couple decades like Caddyshack [MP3] or The Blues Brothers [MP3. If the opinion Jay forms is not properly worshipful, Parris threatens to hop a plane from Los Angeles, fly down to Dallas where Jay is, and regulate. All this is reminiscent of the best of Experts and Intermediates, which, if you recall, is the podcast that prompted your Podthinker to come up with the genre name TTWGBAC, or Two Twenty/Thirtysomething White Guys Bullshitting About Culture. Remember When would be the ultimate expression of the very essence of the TTWGBAC, but for the fact that Parris’ non-whiteness would throw the abbreviation off. Oh well.

Vital stats:
Format: TTW/BGBAC
Running since: April 2008
Duration: 50m-1h50m
Frequency: erratic
Archive available on iTunes: all

[Podthinker Colin Marshall is also beyond down for both Wild Style and Style Wars, and will discuss both via e-mail at colinjmarshall at gmail. Discuss Podthoughts on the forum here or submit your own podcast for the next by-Max-Funsters column here.]