The Incomparable

NBC’s “The Good Place” recently completed its fourth and final season. We send off this instant television classic with a discussion of its view of the afterlife, philosophy, and dumb jokes. Did the final season’s shift in perspective work? Did the final episode provide the closure we wanted? Shut up, Glenn!

Make more mutants! Comic Book Club re-forms to discuss “House of X”/”Powers of X”, a paired set of comics miniseries that are an exciting new take on the X-Men. If you’re an old-school mutant fan who has been out of the business for years (like Jason), these 12 issues are a great read. They’re all available in a single collection, and the issues are also now rolling out weekly on Marvel Unlimited, so there are plenty of ways to partake. We discuss the politics of mutant separatism, the wisdom of backing up souls to a hard drive, the difference between Xavier and MLK, the many lives of Moira MacTaggart and how they free us from the burden of continuity, and much more. Finally, Moisés advises us on what to read among the follow-up series that were released in the wake of this book.

Climb aboard your spaceship and prepare your skin to be sparkly, because we’re discussing “To Be Taught, If Fortunate,” a novella from Becky Chambers, a writer we enjoy quite a lot. This is a story about science, adventure, sacrifice, and the difficulty of being away from home for a very, very long time. An interesting crew of characters explores strange, new worlds—while trying to fit in biologically. Sometimes it goes really well, and other times it doesn’t. Also: What are we reading?

On the occasion of our 500th episode, our most prolific panelists of all time draft their favorite episodes of The Incomparable and suggest new drafts for future episodes of the podcast.

Step into the alien architecture and watch out for death slugs, as we discuss season four of Amazon Prime Video’s “The Expanse.” We’re happy to have our characters saved from the clutches of the SyFy channel, but how has the transition to streaming been? Why are alien planets so much like quarries? Why is Avasarala so competent and unelectable? What shenanigans is Bobbie Draper getting into on Mars? Listen, or be spaced.

Grab a tracking fob and saddle up a bluurg, because it’s time to discuss “The Mandalorian,” the first live-action Star Wars TV series. Why is the show’s main character always wearing a mask? How much merchandise money did Disney forego in order to keep Baby Yoda a secret? Is the Mandalorian capable of providing an environment in which Baby Yoda can thrive? Why is serving tea so civilized? We’ve got to get us one of those jet packs.

Hi Bob! We continue our early 2020 survey of late 2019 TV favorites with “For All Mankind”, an Apple TV+ series from Ron Moore about a NASA space program that has taken some dramatic turns since Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to set foot on the moon. We discuss the show’s balancing modern themes with its alt-historical context, how purely fictional and fictionalized historical characters fare, the merits of a weekly episode drop, lunar FaceTime and fax machines, and where it all might be headed in as the show’s second season (perhaps) reaches the 1980s.

There was a lot of great TV released in 2019, but if you ask us, there was none better than HBO’s “Watchmen”, which took a classic comic and tried to match it as a modern TV series. We discuss how the series dealt with race, superheroes, empire, masks, eggs, and legacy. Also: Will there be a second season? Should there be? Nothing ever ends, Adrian, especially if the spin-offs remain profitable. The initial file upload was broken in a spectacular way. Delete and re-download if you experience weird audio after 29 minutes.

Happy New Year! Another year has gone by, but we don’t want to miss the opportunity to take one last look back at 2019, as our most frequent panelists of the year share some of their favorite works and discuss their favorite Incomparable moments while we play some classic 2019 audio clips.

Our trilogy of panels about “The Rise of Skywalker” concludes with a discussion of the film’s themes, how Kylo Ren keeps sliding into Rey’s DMs, whether you can ever have enough “Star Wars”, and how “Star Wars” is a little bit like “Seinfeld.”

Our panel of rebel podcasters, striking again from their hidden base, present another perspective on “The Rise of Skywalker.” Why does James want to see evil droids? Does Liz find Ben Solo or Kylo Ren more intriguing? Can Chip be satisfied with the ending to this generation-defining saga? Why are we in the midst of a global Porg shortage? Guest host Antony Johnston will seek the answers.

The Dead Speak, and so do we! It’s our first panel reviewing “The Rise of Skywalker.” Can this film bear the gravitational pull of the eight previous Skywalker Saga films? Does it provide a proper ending? We discuss Rey’s parentage, Finn’s increasing abilities, Poe’s lessons in leadership, whether Kylo Ren can possibly be redeemed, Zen and the Art of X-Wing Maintenance, how the film balances honoring Carrie Fisher with serving Leia’s character arc, and much more.

Get out your flask of maple syrup, warm up your Lite Brites and Etch-A-Sketches, and check the Clausometer, because it’s time to tell the story of Buddy the Elf. It’s 2003’s “Elf”, the modern Christmas classic starring Will Ferrell. What are the theological implications of the seven levels of the candy cane forest? Why so many “Lord of the Rings” references? How can James Caan and everyone else at the publishing company be so bad at their jobs? Wait a second… this isn’t maple syrup!

Though Disney’s purchase of Fox clears all final hurdles in terms of rights to the original “Star Wars”, there’s still no way for anyone to watch the historic theatrical cuts of any of the original films. Instead, the new Disney+ streaming service now offers a 4K Special Edition with even more changes to the beloved classic. Is this the definitive version of “Star Wars” for the rest of eternity? Does Disney’s assumption of the franchise provide a new hope? Can Disney honor history and give fans what they want without negating George Lucas’s insistence that his Special Editions are the only editions? What is “Star Wars” and what will it be in the future? In this episode, we solve the whole thing. You’re welcome.

Old Movie Club finally takes on the big one, David Lean’s 1962 epic “Lawrence of Arabia.” Sand! Endurance! Men! Camels! Violence! Anticolonialism mixed with racism! Omar Sharif redefines thirst in the desert! The real romance in the movie without romance! This is a movie that builds myths with one hand and undermines them with the other. This episode has no overture, but there will be a brief intermission.

Our Book Club reconvenes to discuss “This Is How You Lose the Time War”, a beautiful novella about the relationship between two time-traveling operatives in a multiverse-wide struggle. Also, Erika keeps stuffing us full of food metaphors. Plus: What are we reading? This episode will go down like ice cream on your brain tongue.

We live in a world of film sequels and franchises. And yet, some films we love, that were certainly worthy, never received a sequel. This episode attempts to correct that, but in order to create we must also destroy—and name the film sequels we would like to eradicate from memory. All of these momentous decisions are made via the most perfect decision-making process yet devised: a draft. This episode is so good, you’ll be begging for a sequel.

In this final appendix to our Summer of Spider-Man, we watch a movie that’s probably much better than you’ve heard—2012’s “The Amazing Spider-Man.” Yes, it wasn’t necessary to re-tell Spidey’s origin ten years after the Tobey Maguire version, but you know what? This movie does it better, Andrew Garfield is pretty great as a mopey skateboarding Peter Parker, and Emma Stone is a fun and smart Gwen Stacy. We also discuss “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” which is a movie that reminds us of Batman movies—the really awful ones.

Watch movie. Do podcast. Repeat. We’re pretty sure this is our first time discussing “Edge of Tomorrow,” but can you ever really be sure? Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star in this film about fighting an alien invasion through countless iterations of a single event. But unlike “Groundhog Day”, the origin of the time loops is key to the plot. If you haven’t seen this one yet, you’re missing out on one of the decade’s most under-appreciated sci-fi films. Watch movie. Do podcast. Repeat.

It’s almost Halloween and we’re watching a horror movie! As recommended by Steve Lutz 475 episodes ago, it’s a Canadian tale of girls becoming women, and women becoming wolves: “Ginger Snaps.” We discuss parallels to “Buffy”, connections to “Orphan Black”, and ultimately whether this film can live up to its feminist aspirations or if it’s yet another case where a girl is punished for becoming a woman—er, werewolf.