The Incomparable

It’s a classic sitcom! It’s a Marvel movie! It’s both! It’s the first Disney+ MCU show, “WandaVision.” And it managed to be a walk through television history while simultaneously being an exploration of the stages of grief. Plus, an android in a turtleneck! We break it all down, from where Wanda and Vision go from here to what Monica Rambeau, Darcy Lewis, and Jimmy Woo should be doing next. Tune in, won’t you?

Is this the end of Miyazaki Club? Probably not, but we’ve reached the end of our survey of all the feature films he’s directed with “Porco Rosso,” the story of a pig man, the airplane he loves, the woman he doesn’t feel worthy to love, and the seaplane pirates who terrorize the Adriatic after World War I. There are lots of clouds and planes and boats, as you might expect.

The sixth season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” features dark and unpleasant themes, a painful magic-as-heroin allegory, and creative decisions that manage to be cruel to both the show’s characters and its audience. But there’s also a musical!

We discuss the latest season of Amazon’s “The Expanse,” which separates its main characters for storylines all across the solar system. How well does that approach work? How do Amos and Peaches differ? Why should Alex never be a detective? And do we hate Marco Inaros the appropriate amount?

We’re using our powers over space and time to capriciously right wrongs throughout movie history. That’s right, it’s the Bad Best Picture Draft, in which our panelists will select a Best Picture Oscar winner, take its statuette away, and hand it to a more deserving winner.

Miyazaki Club gets weird with “Ponyo,” a story of a fish who gets the taste of human blood, lives in a bucket, can cure all diseases with a lick, and just wants to be human. Also there’s a plot for the sea to sweep away humanity, and the Moon comes perilously close to Earth. But cute!

After a long gap, our Book Club reconvenes, and if they can remember Micaiah Johnson’s “The Space Between Worlds,” they’ll recommend it to you. It’s a story about identity and society set across parallel worlds that are even more similar than they initially appear to be. Also, what else have we read lately? Curl up with a good book and keep an eye out for parallel-universe warlords!

From Canada comes “Letterkenny,” an unlikely comedy series about rural hicks, burnouts, and hockey players that’s hyper-verbal, charmingly prone to a donnybrook, and one of the funniest things we’ve watched recently.

Let’s fly! Our panel discusses the just-completed third season of “Star Trek: Discovery,” including new characters, future technologies, turbolifts that are bigger on the inside, and how Saru is very much like Poochie.

This week we’re discussing Pixar’s “Soul,” a film about the meaning of life, but also occasionally a wacky comedy about a talking cat or a dream pirate! But mostly the meaning of life. Watch out for the great Bug Zapper in the sky!

It’s time for our annual look back at the year gone by, and what a year it was! Still, we managed to watch, read, and listen to some great stuff this year. As is our custom, our panelists and listeners pick favorite Incomparable episodes and moments. This year, a panelist gets stuck inside a clip, and then Jason has to explain the Skeletor Clip Loop to a first-time Clip Show panelist who is not sure it really exists. It does—and 2021 is the year we fight back.

Is this the way? We break down the second season of “The Mandalorian,” which sees our title character struggling with his own identity as a Mandalorian as well as coming to grips with the important task of protecting the child that he’s been caring for. What’s the difference between good and bad fan service? How many different spin-off shows were being set up this season? And we workshop a Baby Yoda sitcom.

The Kilmas season reaches its peak with a fantasy film about a fellowship of people small and large who must journey far at the behest of a wizard, carrying something that may lead to the complete destruction of a kingdom. Except the thing isn’t a ring, it’s a baby. It’s 1988’s “Willow,” a charming movie with swords, sorcery, brownies (the bad kind), love potions, cartoonish snowballs, magic acorns, dangerous dragons, and even a magic trick or two. Merry Kilmas, one and all!

Kilmas rolls on with Val Kilmer’s first screen role, as the Elvis-like Nick Rivers—who is sent to East Germany and falls into a plot to destroy NATO submarines. But don’t sweat it, this is “Top Secret!”, from the same people who made “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun,” so it’s really all about the jokes. So many jokes. We rave about some, and remain extremely perplexed about others. But you know who makes the whole thing work? Yep, Val Kilmer, that’s who.

Merry Kilmas! We begin our seasonal celebration of actor Val Kilmer with one of his most mysterious works, 1996’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” You’ll go in wanting to see Marlon Brando and David Thewlis, but you’ll exit talking about Goat Man and Dog Butler and why the last half hour of the film makes no sense at all. It’s a legendary disaster of a movie, and maybe that’s what Kilmas is all about!

Pick up a baseball bat and climb into the Woodie car that’s bigger on the inside, because it’s time to discuss HBO’s “Lovecraft Country.” This is a breathtakingly ambitious multi-genre anthology series with recurring characters. It’s about race and sex and society and love and hideous supernatural monsters. It’s set in the Jim Crow era, but also the past and the future and other planes of existence. And if you like the genres that we cover on The Incomparable, it’s worth your time.

Happy Life Day! To celebrate this important occasion, The Incomparable hereby presents a commentary track, to be viewed alongside The Star Wars Holiday Special. You’ll need to find the Holiday Special via the usual rebel channels. We watched the version with ads in it, so if you find a different version, pause the show during the ads.

It’s silly draft time! In this episode we’re drafting TV series that only lasted a single season. No, miniseries and unaired pilots and shows that got a second season don’t count! Also, everyone gets “Firefly.”

Game over, man, game over! We return to the world of xenomorphs and Weyland-Yutani Corp. as we discuss 1986’s “Aliens,” James Cameron’s fascinating follow-up to the Ridley Scott original. We discuss space marines, alien-friendly elevators, white milky blood, and subsequent Alien movies that are very much uncanonical.

It’s one of the best things on television right now. It’s “What We Do in the Shadows,” a show that honors vampire lore while placing them in ridiculous mundane situations. A mockumentary sitcom featuring vampires might seem like an entry from TV Mad Libs, but this show (based on an indie feature film also by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi) uses its stellar cast and sharp writing to create a bizarre world of energy vampires, complaining familiars, new-age witches, and—the horror—local politics.