S08.E02: Having A Ball

We're moving on to the Altair IV Division here in season 8 as Mike, Aaron, and Tarn enter the ring to secure a spot in the playoffs. Round one is a fairy tale beginning for this episode, as we quiz our players about different actresses who've played "Cinderella" or some version thereof. Round two takes a turn towards violence as we look at pop culture characters who've popped up as playable characters in various fighting video games. All this, plus an electrifying lighting round to cap it all off.

NOTES

⚠️ Inline notes below may be truncated due to podcast feed character limits. Full notes are always on the episode page.

❤️‍🔥 Dusa is a disembodied Gorgon head that you can romance in the game Hades. Wild.

🕛 Billy Wilder’s Midnight is an amazing screwball comedy.

👠 Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella was originally written for TV, and was only later put on stage.

🏀 The Bulbasaur scorebreak: Bulbasaur – is anyone picking Mudkip as their starter? Anyone?

💥 “Birdboy beatdown” is a reference to the time the Joker beat Robin to death with a crowbar.

⛓️ Comedic actor John Laroquette was indeed the narrator of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

🤖 Harlan Ellison got a credit in Terminator because it was real close to one of his stories.

🐢 The ninja turtle Michelangelo doesn’t have nunchucks in the UK version, where it was replaced with a “turtle line.”

👻 Jeffrey Dean Morgan did indeed play a maybe-ghost on Grey’s Anatomy. It is not fondly remembered.

💦 The Many Waters scorebreak: Many Waters: in case you thought the religious content in the rest of the Wrinkle in Time series was too subtle.

🪶 The e.e. cummings poem from In Her Shoes was called [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

⚠️ Oddly for a kid’s show, Gravity Falls was heavily inspired by Twin Peaks

🕹️ Mike develops short video games!

🐦 As of recording, Tarn is still on Twitter