Alex got sick and our schedule needed a little bit of rearranging while he got better. Enter Jordan Manse, not heard on this show since his impressive performance during our Passengers episode, here to help Julio with a bonus entry! We discuss movies we liked in 2024, movies we are rooting for in the upcoming Oscars, and movies we are excited about in 2025. Enjoy!

(And don’t worry, the Halloween: Resurrection episode will be out in a week or so.)

The would-be money match of the season comes early as Chris Leben and Josh Koscheck square off to see who gets their bus ticket home.

On road to the bout, diversions into the rise of Dave Bautista as well as the historical dominance of the wrestling base in MMA provide interesting discussion.

Julio checks in on where he stands about half-way into the season as our story's next monster heel rests just ahead.

We already name-dropped Daredevil and Hitchcock in the Contrarians Corner write-up, so let’s reference our friend Peter Bogdanovich in Real Talk, because… wouldn’t he had loved this elevator pitch? But what happens when director Sriram Raghavan takes ANDHADHUN in a different direction? Do we have an overload of reversals here? What’s with the ending? We get into it in this Real Talk segment!

What happens when a fan of Marvel’s Daredevil tries his hand at a Hitchcockian yarn? Lots of critical love, in the case of ANDHADHUN. Listen to Alex & Julio tackle another Tomatometer 100-percenter as they examine the ethics of fake blindness!

As absurd as it may sound, the Ultimate Fighting Championship may be nowhere near the juggernaut it is without this episode of television.

We have arrived at one of the most insane episodes in the 20+ year history of TUF. It's time to hit the town and fear the consequences.

So, ask yourself: Are you a Koscheck? Are you a Bobby? Are you a Leben? Are you a Nate? Are you a Diego?

As Team Liddell's domination continues, Chuck (fairly easily) gives up one of his light heavyweights to give Coach Couture a crack at.

We watch Diego Sanchez fight a guy from Boston while Julio's anticipation of a possible Leben-Koscheck showdown grows.

Elsewhere, we recap an obstacle course from hell and talk about that Monday Night Raw from Japan.

They did it. Those madmen (and madwomen) at The MCU actually did it and pulled all the strings in the world to get a sort of live-action Spider-verse movie to close out Tom Holland’s first Spider-Trilogy. Can this work for anyone who doesn’t have decades of emotional investment in Spider-Man as a movie character, and perhaps even more so, anyone who doesn’t have decades of attachment to his comic book adventures? The answers - and more! - lie in this Real Talk segment.

You could argue that the world was in such a bad emotional place around Christmas 2021 that critics and audiences would have embraced the most transparent attempts at capitalizing on feel-good nostalgia. And they did, as SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME scored a 93% Tomatometer score purely by referencing past Spidey adventures. Listen to Alex & Julio as they resist the combined charm of three Peter Parkers and complain about MCU magic!

The journey continues as we finally step into the cage. Before we can get there, though, we have to explain weight-cutting to an incredulous Julio.

We discuss the tough (and hilarious) road to our first fight of the season and reminisce on some of the weight blunders the sport has seen.

In addition, we add music of the era to the weekly format as Steve consults the Billboard Hot 100!

The team challenges kick off as our journey of The Ultimate Fighter continues. What does sawing a utility log into pieces then reassembling it have to do with fighting? We put our minds together and try our damndest to figure it out.

In this episode, we meet our host, Willa Ford, we have a heated discussion about asparagus, and we learn that no one trains harder than UFC fighters (and that’s a fact).

We also dip into some Strange Brew and, most importantly, find out if Coach Carter is still #1 at the box office.