Watchcast Schedule for the Next Few Months: Movies Based On (and in) TV Shows, and Twin Peaks Returns! (Patreon)

Greetings, Nextlanders! I hope you have been enjoying this short break between Twin Peaks seasons. I know many of you are anxious for us to finish the fight, so to speak, with Cooper and the gang, and we're not far off! We've got a few more weeks of movies before we kick off Twin Peaks: The Return, and our upcoming slate of films is as close to a theme I could reasonably build around Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me without making the single most depressing month in Watchcast history. For the rest of April, we'll be watching a slate of films all based on, and within the respective universes of television shows. Tonally, this one's gonna be all over the place, but I think we'll have fun? Hopefully?

For this scheduling post, we'll be listing all of April's movies, as well as our tentative schedule for our watch-through of The Return. It's possible some things might shift slightly with Return episodes, as I'm plotting out fairly far in advance here, but if we do have to shift anything around, we'll make sure to make clear note of it on the patreon and in the episodes themselves. And now, without further ado, here's what we've got coming up.

Monday, April 8th: Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996)

Kicking off our month of movies is the cinematic debut of a pair of cartoon idiots that had a major influence on my dumb ass as a kid, Beavis & Butt-Head. This is a show that has endured in the decades since its initial run, with two different revival series and a recent film showing that even many years removed from its heyday, people still want to watch horny dipshit teenagers wreak havoc on the world. While this podcast is about Do America specifically, we'll also talk at length about our histories with the show, the video games, and the various controversies around the show. And if that's not enough, you'll get to hear my best attempt at a Beavis & Butt-Head impression. That's gotta be worth a listen all on its own, right?

Where to Watch

Monday, April 15th: Dragnet (1987)

Time to knock out another movie that Vinny and I have a bad habit of quoting in just about any context we can think of. If you've ever heard us reference PAGANs or the virgin Connie Swail, then finally you will know what the hell we're talking about. This comedy adaptation of the dry-as-the-desert Jack Webb TV series is, to my mind, one of the more ridiculous endeavors of '80s cinema. There's just about no reason to take something like Dragnet and do it like this--but do it like this they did, and what you end up with is a movie that feels like it's paying tribute to Dragnet by pissing all over it. But that's fine! There's some fun, goofy stuff in this movie, and Dan Aykroyd's sincerely great riff on the Jack Webb thing anchors the whole endeavor. Plus we'll get to talk about that Dragnet rap song. Did I mention there's a Dragnet rap song? There's a Dragnet rap song.

Where to Watch

Monday, April 22nd: Mission: Impossible (1996)

The movie that launched one of the biggest action franchises of all time, and for my money still the best of all the movies in this franchise, Brian De Palma's M:I is at once a killer stand-alone thriller, and a fascinating attempt to update the '60s TV show for a '90s audience. Now, don't get me wrong. I enjoy and appreciate the ever-escalating number of ways Tom Cruise has seen fit to try to obliterate his own body via stunt work in the later sequels, but those movies are also going for something completely different tonally than what this first movie lays down. I'm not sure that either of the guys have seen this one, or any of the M:I movies, so this should be a fun introduction.

Where to Watch

Monday, April 29th: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) and The Missing Pieces (2014)

We can't get to The Return until we've experienced Fire Walk With Me. That would just be silly. So here we are, with what I will call definitively the darkest chapter in the entire Twin Peaks saga. Roundly rejected by both critics and audiences when it debuted, Fire Walk With Me seemingly put the final nail in the coffin for all things Twin Peaks. However, as tends to happen with these sorts of things, the film has gotten a reappraisal in the ensuing decades, especially in the wake of The Return. That said, it's not hard to understand why audiences hungry for answers following the show's unceremonious cancellation would be upset at what this prequel story does. While it does considerable work to depict events we've only seen flashes of during the series, and adds quite a bit to the lore of the world, it's a movie that could not care any less about leaving an audience satisfied. Instead, what you get is a wildly disorienting and gut-wrenching depiction of Laura Palmer's final days. Sheryl Lee's performance is the stuff of legend, an excruciating and astonishing tour de force of horror and trauma.

With all of this said, I have to give all the content warnings in the world for this one. This is a movie that depicts and addresses childhood sexual abuse in a way that will undoubtedly be deeply upsetting to some viewers. When I said this was the darkest entry in the Twin Peaks lineage, I wasn't being flip. If these sorts of depictions are triggering for you, you may want to sit this one out.

---

The other piece of this is The Missing Pieces. Essentially a collection of deleted and extended scenes created for the film's Blu-ray release, The Missing Pieces includes some interesting additional context for certain characters that appear within the film, and if I'm remembering correctly, some of this stuff ends up being referenced in The Return.

The way we're going to do this is to give Fire Walk With Me its own stand-alone episode, then once we've recorded that, I'm going to have the guys watch The Missing Pieces, and we're going to do a shorter bonus episode that just focuses on that material. Barring any setbacks, we should be posting both those episodes on the same day.

Where to Watch (NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, the only place you can stream both FWWM and The Missing Pieces is via The Criterion Channel.)

Following FWWM and The Missing Pieces, we're going to take a one week break from the show, as I will be on vacation. We will kick off Twin Peaks: The Return the second week of May. Here's the tentative schedule as I currently have it.

• May 13th: Parts 1 & 2

• May 20th: Parts 3 & 4

• May 27th: Parts 5 & 6

• June 3rd: Parts 7 & 8

• June 10th: Parts 9 & 10

• June 17th: Parts 11 & 12

• June 24th: Parts 13 & 14

• July 1st: Parts 15 & 16

• July 8th: Parts 17 & 18

Again, I don't normally plan out this far in advance, as schedules could change, but for now at least put these down in pencil on your calendars.

We'll announce what we're doing for the rest of July and beyond when we get there, but we've got a lot of watchin' to do between now and then. As always, we thank all of you who are watching and listening along with us. I'm looking forward to taking these final steps on the Twin Peaks journey with all of you.