Mark Lee somehow made it through middle school, high school, and college without ever reading or seeing Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s classic 1949 play. His only context before the curtain came up at the Winter Garden Theater for the Tony Award winning revival currently on Broadway was a vague sense that “it’s about capitalism” and the SNL sketch where Will Ferrell exclaims, “I drive a Dodge Stratus!” By the end of the show, he came away shaken and quaking with anticipation to talk about it with his co-host Pete Fenzel, who’s written his fair share of English papers on the topic and seen several different productions of the play.

Pete and Mark spend much of the episode comparing the current Broadway production starring Nathan Lane with a 2000 production starring Brian Dennehy in the role. Dennehy is a mountain of a man playing a mountain of a man, while Nathan Lane, who currently inhabits the role on Broadway, is compact and elastic, visibly shrinking and growing as the play slides between the broken present and the golden, half-imagined past. The 2000 production has a more naturalistic presentation, while the current one has a more surreal quality, detached from any sense of an actual home or any specific “post-war” period. A Starbucks cup, a 60’s automobile, and a Black attorney appearing before the Supreme Court all have small but significant impacts on the experience of watching this production.

In addition to production choices, Pete and Mark dive deep on the complex interplay between playwriting and psychology, the immigrant-ness of the Lomans, and the perspective of being dads while watching this show. Parenting advice is given, in terms of how not to cope with life’s challenges and pass on trauma to your children.

Correction: although the play was caught up in McCarthyism and the Red Scare of the 1950s, the McCarthy Pete was referencing in this discussion was activist writer Mary McCarthy, who criticized Arthur Miller for hiding the Loman’s Jewishness.

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Further Reading

• Brian Dennehy Death of a Salesman 2000 Showtime TV Movie
• Dysfunctional Family Dinner – SNL
• Bakugan
• Lewy Body Dementia
• “Death of a Salesman”: Deracination and Its Discontents by Julius Novick on JSTOR
• On Mary McCarthy’s criticism of “Death of a Salesman”

Matt Belinkie, Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matt Wrather broke the One Wish Willow and it paid off, as a slate of fresh horror comedy has captured the attention of the moviegoing public and the zeitgeist at large… but to what end?

Following on Matt and Jordan’s recent two-hander on Backrooms, Belinkie shares his take on Obsession, which has become not just the hit film of the day, but something of a popular moment of connection, speaking to something deep and current in the culture, especially among young people, and particularly young women. To bring folks back into movie theaters together, the current moment in horror comedy seems to speak to not just shared fears, but shared relationships with fear, and a need to mirror to one another an understanding of a fearful reality that might be too seldom honestly discussed in good faith in society at large.

The Overthinkers propose candidates for this resonance, particularly in contrast to the broad cultural distaste for recent power fantasy tentpoles The Mandalorian and Grogu and Masters of the Universe, as well as a nadir for tentpole comedy that seems to accompany this zenith in tentpole horror.

Do you worry about problems? Yearn toward solutions? Veer toward thrill or safety? Listen to the episode, and make your One WIsh come true.

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Further Reading

• Backrooms, Liminal Spaces, and Gen-Z Anxiety, by Joseph Bernstein in the New York Times
• Obsession and the Rise of Incel Horror: When Men’s Entitlement Becomes the Monster, by Emma Cieslik in Ms. Magazine
• Roger Ebert’s 3 ½ star review of Matinee (1993)
• Why Did Hollywood Stop Making Comedies, a Statistical Analysis, by Daniel Parris, from Stat Significant on Substack
• New He-Man Movie is One of 2026’s Biggest Box Office Bombs, by Zack Zwein on Kotaku
• Dying of Laughter: The Intersection of Horror and Comedy by Dani Bethea on Dread Central

Peter Fenzel greets Mark Lee and Matthew Wrather with a rare “triple bang” Mike Breen impression and a report that, fifty-three years later, the New York vibes are good (give or take a flaming bus or two). The crew gaze upon a victory podium where the coach abandoned his speech to lead a rendition of “Who Let the Dogs Out” to overthink their own irrational allegiances.

Mark nurses a still-unhealed 1996 wound over Braves–Yankees; Matt, asked as a boy “what’s your favorite sport” and never “what’s your favorite emotion,” reps a Los Angeles he doesn’t technically live in; and Pete makes the case for hating Victor Wembanyama strictly for basketball reasons rather than anything that would survive contact with reality.

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Further Reading

• The origin of the term “Knickerbocker”
• Charles Barkley & not being a role model
  • His SNL Monologue
• The 1996 World Series (Wikipedia)
• Jose Alvarado (basketball) (Wikipedia)
• Robert Frost, “Carpe Diem”
• “Jose Alvarado after winning the Finals” (YouTube)
• LeLacheur Park at UMass Lowell

Matt Belinkie takes the hosting chair for the first time in nearly 20 years of the Overthinking It Podcast, an event so cosmically disorienting that he and Jordan Stokes spend several minutes trying to figure out which of the regular hosts they’re each a bizarro duplicate of. And that sets the scene for Backrooms, the A24 horror film directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, adapted from an internet phenomenon that began as a single photo of a Hobby Town under construction posted to 4chan.

This movie, in some ways, is not what you’d expect to get when you give a solo Youtube creator the budget to go big. Because Kane actually chooses to go smaller, rejecting an early screenplay focusing on a shadowy corporation exploring the complex and narrowing his focus to two people: Clark, a divorced, failing furniture-store-owner-who-wanted-to-be-an-architect, and his therapist Mary, who turns out to be — arguably — the actual main character because she’s the only one who gets flashbacks. Building on the lore, the Backrooms turns out to be a psychic funhouse mirror that makes flawed copies of whatever (or WHOever) it makes contact with. It starts with a pile of furniture with too many legs and eventually leads to the horrifying “still lives” — warped shells of human beings who don’t even complain when you eat them. While most people would run for the exits, Clark finds this world where he’s finally in total control more and more seductive. Is it messing with his mind, or was he twisted inside to begin with?

Also discussed: Silent Hill 1 vs Silent Hill 2, the film as a critique of capitalism and/or AI, and why the inevitable Backrooms 2 faces the Lost problem of having to eventually cash the mystery check.

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Further Reading

• The Backrooms (Found Footage)
• The Oldest View
• People Still Live Here

Matt, Pete, and Mark donned their discursive beskar armor and swore an oath to never take off their podcasting helmets before going to the theater to watch The Mandalorian and Grogu. This is the way, we were told. And yet despite Baby Yoda’s cuteness and the surprising depth of the incredibly swole Rotta the Hutt, we all found the movie to be unsatisfying for many different reasons. Mark argues that the movie was fundamentally set up to fail after Mando was denied the samurai/cowboy path by his corporate overlords and forced to take custody of a small child. Pete found the action sequences empty and pointless, noting that Mando acts like a Nazi hunter without any real internal conflict. In a surprise twist, Matt actually wished there were more Mandalore-lore, or at least any sort of depth to the plot and character development. Everyone agreed that Ludwig Göransson’s score was the high point of the movie. Maybe go listen to that on Spotify instead of watching this movie. Or just watch Season 2 of The Mandalorian again.

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Further Reading

• The Mandalorian and Grogu soundtrack on Spotify
• The Mandalorian Season 2 on Disney+

Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matt Wrather follow their discussion of Zizek’s theories of cinema and desire to a definitive practice of cinema and desire, the late 90s teen romcom classic, Ten Things I Hate About You. Discussing a movie that not so much “holds up” as “remains excellent despite its deplorably cringe rap scene,” the three celebrate the movie’s craft along with its art, breaking down its style of iconic visual storytelling that make its comic types alongside its heartfelt leads feel resonant and effortless.

Recapping the key structural expectations of 16th and 17th century theatrical moralizing and the ways Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew falls shorter than short by modern standards (mostly around gender), the three delve into how Ten Things strives to rebuild a classic the way it should be, while running into its own lampshaded moral inadequacies, also characteristic of its time (mostly around race).

But even that fails to undermine legendary work by an all-star cast, led by immortal turns by Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles. Sometimes you write “iconic” more than once because it is the best word for the situation. As too are the film’s wall-to-wall needle drops.

All that plus consideration of hot-tub-as-luxury, and also balcony-as-luxury, not to mention that great yonic privilege indicator: hot-tub-on-balcony-as-luxury, which may or may not have been all that expensive 27 years ago. But this podcast is not “10 things I hate about inflation.” That’s every other podcast.

For your own challenge, join us on the Discord with your own version of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 141: “In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes.” And see if you can one-up a fictional 90s high schooler and write an actual sonnet.

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Further Reading

• 10 Things I Hate About You
• Written by
  • Karen McCullah Lutz
  • Kirsten Smith
• Heath Ledger
• Taming of the Shrew
• “The Taming of the Shrew – Meryl Streep – Raul Julia – Kiss Me Petruchio – 1978 Subs – Remastered 4K” (YouTube)
• The English Vogue of Prologues and Epilogues, by Autrey Nell Wiley, in Modern Language Notes, Volume 47, No. 4, April 1932, on JSTOR
• Julia Stiles
• List of Awards and Nominations Received by Allison Janney
• “Hypnotize” (YouTube)
• “10 Things I Hate about You” (The Poem)
• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 141 (Wikipedia)

Peter Fenzel, Jordan Stokes (for his sins, an academic), and Matthew Wrather overthink The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, a film essay written by and starring Slovenina philosopher/psychoanalyst(?) Slavoj Žižek. Žižek has forgotten more about Lacanian psychoanalysis than Lacan ever knew, and that makes this film essay (and its spiritual prequel The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, also directed by Sophie Fiennes, sister of He Who Must Not Be Named) a wild ride. Someone get this man a Kleenex. At the intersection of film, politics, and culture, Žižek’s offers provocative, not to say unhinged, takes on how cinema shapes and reflects cultural ideology.

But at least we get to hear directly from an academic figure whom Wrather is always name-checking. And yeah, he kinda does have a point about Titanic.

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Further Reading

• Slavoj Žižek – Wikipedia
• The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (IMDb)
• The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (IMDb)
• Lacanian Psychoanalysis – Wikipedia
• Post-structuralism – Wikipedia
• Jaws – Wikipedia
• Titanic – Wikipedia
• The Searchers – Wikipedia
• Taxi Driver – Wikipedia
• Sophie Fiennes – Wikipedia

Pete Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matt Wrather emerge from the toxic jungle to save humanity from its warmongering ways through incredible acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Inspired by Mark’s successful family trip to the movies to watch My Neighbor Totoro, the Overthinkers turn their attention to a different Studio Ghibli film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Although it has many more stabbings and weapons of mass destruction than Totoro, both movies do feature at least one adorable woodland creature.

The panel explores the many artistic and thematic elements that makes this movie such a timeless classic: Hayao Miyazaki’s mastery of the canvas, expressed in the deliberate motion of drifting clouds and the kinetic geometry of the wind itself; Joe Hisaishe’s sweeping and stylistically diverse score; the vascular horror of the God Warrior embryo; and the symbolic power of a last bastion of humanity sheltering in a wrecked vessel, under siege from all sides.

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Further Reading

• • Watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind on HBO Max
  • Steven Chow: Actor, Producer, Writer
  • Joe Hisaish: Composer for many Studio Ghibli movies
  • Did Hayao Miyazaki really send a katana to Harvey Weinstein as a threat?

“Let them cook,” they said. So we did, and we watched. Matt Wrather and Peter Fenzel welcome the third season of “24 in 24,” a serialized one-day reality cook-off that is both the farthest and closest distance among cooking shows from actual cooking. Inspired, they track their personal tastes and influences in cooking in life and on the screen.

From the Championship Season rise of Guy Fieri’s Tournament of Champions and the era of cooking competition it has ushered in, back to the stand and stir classics of their childhoods, Matt and Pete talk about what is real about the depictions of food on TV, what is fantasy, and what comes all the way around again. They discuss their methods for making omelettes, their small-screen favorites, and at one point compare Yan Can Cook to streaming an EVO Fighting Game Tournament.

They also venture into the comforting tangible world of physical cookbooks; their favorites for guidance, their favorites for storytelling, and why Shaq is smiling so much holding that enormous cheeseburger. Why wouldn’t he?

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Further Reading

• Watch a Sneak Peek: ‘24 in 24’ Season 3 Comes to Food Network With Major Twists: Here’s everything you need to know (for some definitions of “you need to know”) on Food Network, April 8, 2026
• Guy Fieri Shares Inspiration for Food Network’s Groundbreaking Tournament of Champions, by Walter Scott on Parade, February 27, 2022
• “Stand and Stir” no more: Food Network hosts are mastering the art of the short-form cooking tutorial, by Ashlie D. Stevens on Salon, November 23, 2016
• How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food, by Mark Bittman on goodreads
• Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, by Michael Ruhlman on goodreads
• Shaq’s Family Style: Championship Recipes for Feeding Family and Friends, by Shaquille O’Neal, Rachel Holtzman, Michael Silverman, and Matthew Pierkarski, on goodreads
• Auguste Escoffier and his classic, Le guide clinarire, on Wikipedia
• Let her cook, on reddit

Matt Belinkie and Peter Fenzel gather to kick off summer movie season the only way they know how: by completely failing to talk about the movies they planned to discuss and instead spending over an hour unpacking the mythological architecture of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Along the way they ask the questions no one asked them to ask: Why doesn’t Rosalina just go find Peach? What are the stars even for? And why did Bowser let his son build a universe-destroying gun without so much as a stern talking-to?

The hosts argue that the Mario movies aren’t really psychological dramas but mythological ones, stories where Peach’s lost star-sister and Bowser’s tragic indulgent-dad arc operate less like character beats and more like foundational symbols of the civilization that takes its children to the movies. Bowser, it turns out, may be the antithesis of Mario and Donkey Kong’s distant fathers from the first film. He’s so desperate to be liked by Bowser Jr. that he’d let the fabric of reality unravel rather than enforce a bedtime. He doesn’t help his kid grow up, he reverts to his villainous archetype.

From there, the conversation pinballs into the broader question of how Hollywood adapts things that were never designed to make sense. The 1993 Super Mario Bros. film is held up as the cautionary tale — a movie agonizing over how to justify two plumbers stomping on the heads of mutant goombas (although to be fair, a live action Mario movie was always an uphill battle). The hosts triangulate between three adaptation philosophies (the Grounded, the Sonic Hybrid, and the Full Embrace) and wonder where the upcoming live-action Legend of Zelda will land given that its audience wants more lore, not less.

Finally, the conversation drifts — as these things do — into a long reverie about Saturday morning cartoons, the scarcity of media in the pre-streaming era, Turbo Teen’s Cronenbergian transformation sequence, and the surprising revelation that GoBots actually came first. Plus: a preview of Dune: Part Three and whether Dune Messiah’s deliberately unsatisfying anti-climax can survive the jump to a summer blockbuster.

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Further Reading

• Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore | Rotten Tomatoes
• Moana 2 was originally a Disney+ TV series
• Bowser Jr.
• Dry Bowser
• “Do the claws hurt when they come out?”
• Saturday Morning Cartoon Schedules Archive (Wikipedia)
• Turbo Teen Transformation Supercut
• “Phantom Pilot” | ALF: The Animated Series | FULL Episode: S1 Ep1
• GoBots predated Transformers