Weekly Recap — 4/2/21
Stitcher has a plethora of podcasts worth listening to. Each week, we’re giving you new episode recommendations from some of our top shows to help keep you up to speed and ease the pain of the pod discovery process.
How Did This Get Made? “Zack Snyder’s Justice League (w/ Griffin Newman, David Sims)”
What’s more momentous than a movie crossover of beloved superheroes?? How about a crossover of some of your favorite podcasters in one show?
This week on How Did This Get Made? Hosts Jason Mantzoukas and Paul Scheer (June Diane Raphael was absent for this one, which Scheer says is probably for the best) join forces with Blank Check podcast hosts Griffin Newman and David Sims. But unlike on Blank Check where Sims and Newman dissect the filmographies of directors whose early accolades awarded them a “blank check” in Hollywood, the crew teams up to examine Zack Snyder’s Justice League: aka the “Snyder Cut.”
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the full, recut version of 2017’s Justice League, a film that ended up in the hands of Joss Whedon, leaving both audiences and critics disappointed. An online movement urged the release of the Snyder cut and Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the result.
To prep for the four hour long movie, Mantzoukas watched the three hour long Batman v Superman extended cut (which he calls “so insane”) along with the Whedon cut of Justice League.” For those of you complaining that you just watched the Snyder cut, fuck you,” he says. “I watched all of it.”
All four podcast hosts agree that the Snyder cut was better than the original Justice League theatrical cut. They argue that the character introductions in the recut movie brought a clarity of the emotional arcs for superheroes like Flash and Cyborg. “Cyborg is literally the heart of the movie in a way,” Scheer says.
Simms initially refused to watch and discuss the movie due to his being on paternity leave, but admits he soon realized being a new dad was actually a perfect time to watch it. “What I think I didn’t realize was newborn babies are very demanding, but they are very immobile, so you are actually kind of watching a lot of TV,” Simms says. This made the Snyder cut one of his baby’s first movie experiences.
At one point Simms draws a comparison between the superhero flick and The Little Mermaid, saying the drumming octopus reminded him of Sebastian the crab. But Mantzoukas was quick to cut him off and tell him he wasn’t going to let him “get a plug in” for his recent Blank Check miniseries about Disney animated films.
Listen to the episode to hear the crew discuss why Whedon was a poor choice to finish the original Justice League, the bizarreness of Amber Heard switching from a British accent to an American one, and how Aquaman keeps obtaining shirts while walking out of the ocean.
Spanish Aquí Presents — “What You’re Selling Is Vibes (w/ Doggface)”
If you never saw 2020 viral sensation Nathan Apodaca (aka DoggFace) then I’d like to know what rock you were hiding under. Apodaca struck gold when he posted a now ubiquitous video to TikTok last year of him longboarding on a highway, drinking an Ocean Spray Cranberry juice, all to the tune of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams.
And this week the Spanish Aqui Presents crew brought him on as a guest. After discussing their various “sliding doors” situations from their lives (Raiza wouldn’t be on the podcast if she hadn’t been cut from a Harold team, Oscar wouldn’t have pursued comedy if it weren’t for a dance injury) they brings on Apodaca, who, if not for his uploading of one video, life would be completely different.
Apodaca delves into his journey from working at a potato warehouse to hitting TikTok fame. He says he started uploading after his daughter showed some videos of people his age doing a dance. He figured he could do that too. So he did. “Does she get a percentage of your cuts?” Raiza jokes.
The crew asks him why he made this particular longboarding video and Apodaca says he was on his way to work when his car broke down, something that happened frequently. His workplace was close so he took his famous cranberry juice and longboard and filmed himself. “It was one take, straight down the highway.” The crew reminds him how working actors and comedians rarely get it right in one take. He says he had no idea it would become as big as it did, quickly soaring past a million views and putting Fleetwood Mac back on the charts.
Listen to the episode to hear about Doggface selling his viral video as an NFT, how he embraces the unexpected in life, and his answers to the question everyone is dying to know: Can he do a kickflip?
WOMP It Up! — “Transmission from Sicily”
“We’ve missed you. I think you’ve missed us.”
A recent tweet from the WOMP It Up! Twitter announced that our favorite intern and teacher were back! “You didn’t think we’d forgotten about you? An all new Womp It Up! is in your feed, Wompsters!”
It’s been two years since the last episode (not including the Live episode from 2020) aired, but now intern Marissa Wompler (Jessica St. Clair) and her mentor/co-host Charlotte Listler (Lennon Parham) are back and they are recording from a meat locker in Sicily, Italy.
On this week’s episode of Womp It Up! Marissa and Charlotte reveal they chose a meat locker because it’s the most enclosed space and all the “cured meats will soak up the extra sound.” Now they are back and surrounded by cow and admit they are “riding out this pandemic in style” in Jersey Mike’s meat cooler.
In this episode we learn a lot about what exactly Marissa and Charlotte have been up to. This includes traveling the world, literally dropping an album in the desert, and mostly being “on the loose” and on “the down low” during the pandemic while being on a diet of only processed meats.
The duo were able to take over the BBC’s Woman’s Hour and transmit a live episode featuring a ”Hot Topix” segment which quickly jumps from trying to figure out what Bitcoin is to wanting to be Pamela Anderson to using Baloney as a mask.
The reemergence of the 17-year-old intern and the teacher we all know from Comedy Bang Bang make another classic episode. Though there was no guest this time to play any characters, it was still a great one.
Listen to the episode to learn why Charlotte burned Marissa’s passport and Marissa’s brilliant rendition of “Dongs for Sale,” the song that was definitely in Mary Poppins.
— Ian Goldstein
