768. Escape from the Multicurse: Groundhog Day
Added 2024-09-20 13:00:15 +0000 UTC
Our three co-hosts are stuck in the multiverse and need to get back to their home universe. Clearly, the only way to do that is to explore our cultural obsession with multiverses, alternate timelines and parallel worlds, and tie it all into a conversation about post-modern art, pop culture, and the lessons these stories teach us. Also, each episode, one of them is an asshole who will probably sabotage the whole thing.
This week we discuss 1993’s Groundhog Day!
Features:
Michael Swaim: https://twitter.com/SWAIM_CORP
Adam Ganser: https://twitter.com/therealganz
Abe Epperson: https://twitter.com/AbeTheMighty
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Comments
In some timestreams, such rapid positive engagement with my post causes me to upgrade my membership tier. I’m kidding. It’s every timestream!
Scriptmonkeys
2024-10-03 21:18:04 +0000 UTCYou're not being an asshole! That was a great way to tell us that. You're the Besse.
Small Beans
2024-10-03 20:45:08 +0000 UTCThen I “hearted” my own comment to close the asshole loop—not to be confused with the sex toy.
Scriptmonkeys
2024-10-03 16:47:23 +0000 UTCJust to make sure the assholes are represented in the comments, it’s Herman Hesse (hess-uh) not “Hess”.
Scriptmonkeys
2024-10-03 16:44:07 +0000 UTCTime loops function s a multiversal branch point, only we get to see a version where the person feels free to actually indulge in almost every option.
Jared Linder
2024-09-28 04:56:45 +0000 UTCHoly shit, Swaim. That was incredibly impressive.
Ryan (Kanserus Bone Saw) Bowdish
2024-09-24 17:55:05 +0000 UTCThrowing me under the bus! Classic bad Abe opinion! Believe better things in videos Abe! 😎❤️
Adam Ganser
2024-09-23 20:06:02 +0000 UTCI definitely wrote maybe 2 of those, haha. It definitely was whoever was around and available. I think Adam wrote a few with me in the them because he took pleasure in making me do stuff in front of camera. Also, you were typically in the ones you wrote, so it's entirely possible I wrote the arguments you hated! - abe
Small Beans
2024-09-23 19:54:15 +0000 UTCI find myself holding my breath every time Swaim is barding
Brian Smith
2024-09-23 16:33:27 +0000 UTCYou could, but it would likely be structured like Happy Death Day or Edge of Tomorrow, in that the stakes are avoiding a very bad outcome for yourself or others.
Liam Thompson
2024-09-22 21:24:13 +0000 UTCBravo, Michael Swaim
Anthony Gordon
2024-09-21 15:02:31 +0000 UTCAnother really good screen writer set up and pay off example that I think Abe would appreciate would be the cooler in Tremors. At the introductory scene at the beginning of the movie Chang points out that he thinks the bearings might be going out on his freezer, and Val is ready to take a look at it immediately while Earl has a schedule that he wants to keep to, which in the scene works to develop their characters, but later on it’s used as a reason that the Graboids figure out where everyone is and then break into the store. I always thought that was a real subtle good use of writing.
Steve Snyder
2024-09-20 20:16:27 +0000 UTCI really could’ve used conversations with you guys about 20 years ago when I was taking my humanities classes in college. I never really understood how to have conversations about art, but hearing Mike talk about art in an incredibly artistic fashion (rhyming) turns up my envy meter to maximum. I’m definitely gonna have to listen to more of these. No offense, but Abe being in them always made me hesitate to listen to these. Not for any good legitimate reason, it’s just that I disagreed with a lot of his takes in a bunch of Today’s Topics back at Cracked. He probably didn’t even write those, so it’s incredibly prejudice of me not to listen to his new stuff, I’m going to remedy that.
Steve Snyder
2024-09-20 19:55:16 +0000 UTCI had the same experience with my wife trying to watch Anchorman not too long ago. We both really remembered it being funny from way back in the day, sorely disappointed.
Steve Snyder
2024-09-20 19:51:05 +0000 UTCI'd say Palm Springs and that one episode of Stargate SG-1 don't involve ending the loops by doing things an exact way like Groundhogs Day. Maybe also those one episodes of Legends of Tomorrow and Supernatural too.
Oliver Allen
2024-09-20 18:35:38 +0000 UTCYess! Been waiting for this one, can't wait to dig in later tonight
Philip Reinhardt
2024-09-20 18:30:28 +0000 UTCYou! You're the one who is a nerd, Jasper!
Small Beans
2024-09-20 17:47:16 +0000 UTCFucking nerds
JasperParse
2024-09-20 16:27:35 +0000 UTCthe next few eps should be groundhogs day too, for the bit
Michael E McDaniel
2024-09-20 15:54:55 +0000 UTCI'm not sure you could have a story about a time loop without the ~modern day. For most of human history, most people's lives were basically the same each day, surrounded by the same small number of people, doing the same tasks each day and each year over and over. You hunt and gather, you plant your crops, you know everything about the three dozen people in your hamlet. You need a sense of progress before you begin to fear repetition.
Searcher
2024-09-20 14:16:01 +0000 UTCYou mentioned how jarring it was that these characters from that time are such pricks. I felt the same way about anchor man recently. I loved that movie 20 years ago. But seeing that the joke is just “look how sexist we are! Isn’t it funny how overtly sexist we are and how evolved we all actually in real life and society?” I laughed at the movie for about the first 10 or 15 minutes cause of nostalgia, but it started to feel pretty dated pretty quick.
Colin Harrington
2024-09-20 14:09:42 +0000 UTC
