Episode 31 – FUBAR (2023) with Carol and Dave Brouillette

Heroes Don’t Retire. They Reload.

This month, we’re joined in the studio by not one, but two guests, Carol and Dave Brouillette of the late Hands Free Football soccer podcast, and suffering through all eight episodes of the Arnold-helmed Netflix series, FUBAR!

For decades, CIA operative Luke Brunner has been living a double life. To his suburban family, he’s been a traveling salesman of exercise equipment. But this work cost him his marriage and strained his relationships with his adult children. Now with retirement looming, Brunner looks forward to the chance to possibly winning back his ex-wife. But when he’s called back into action for one last mission, he’s shocked to discover that his daughter Emma has also been working in espionage for years. Now they must work together to take down an international arms dealer, repair their relationship, and keep their work and home lives separated.

Episode 30 – Twins (1988) with Sam Mulvey

Only their mother can tell them apart.

This month, we’re learning the first rules of a crisis situation with returning guest Sam Mulvey of KTQA 95.3 FM radio, and exploring the first installment of the Schwartzenegger/Reitman collaboration trilogy, the wholesome eugenics comedy: Twins!

Genetic superman and polymath Julius Benedict, raised on a utopian tropical island, learns on his 35th birthday that the government experiment that created him in the 1950s also created a twin brother, Vincent, who was sent to a Los Angeles orphanage. Reunited with a sibling seemingly his opposite – a short, balding, and cynical car thief –  the kind and naive Julius drags his brother on a road trip to find their long-lost mother, previously believed dead. Along the way, they run afoul of loan sharks coming to collect, a high-paid assassin, and discover a loving family they never knew they had.

Episode 29 – The Villain (1979) with Dave Brouillette

Vile, virile, vivacious, venomous, varied, voluptuous, versatile, venturesome, vibrant, vulgar, vast, vunniest vilm of 1979!

We’re strapping on our seven shot six-shooters and stocking up on barrels of glue and giant boulders with Dave Brouillette of the Hands Free Football podcast to talk about the underwhelming screwball comedy western from the beginning of Arnold’s career: The Villain!

Hapless outlaw “Cactus” Jack Slade is blackmailed by a scheming banker into robbing a cache of money from a business partner’s buxom (and sexually frustrated) daughter, Charming Jones, who is trying to return it to her father. “Cactus” Jack is going to steal every last trick from Wile E. Coyote’s playbook, but he’s got to get through a certain musclebound Handsome Stranger, oblivious to both the robbery attempts — and Charming Jones’ advances!

Episode 28 – Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) with Carol Brouillette

Choose Your Fate.

This month, we’re joined by Carol Brouillette of the Hands Free Football podcast, and returning (one last time?) to the franchise that made Arnold Schwarzenegger the king of Hollywood in the legacy sequel, Terminator: Dark Fate!

Twenty years after the events of Terminator 2, a young woman living in Mexico City finds herself targeted by two time travelers from an entirely new post-apocalyptic future. One is Grace, a cybernetically-enhanced soldier from the human resistance with orders to protect her, and the other is a new model of Terminator programmed to… you know. But help is soon found in the form of an older Sarah Connor, who saw her son John murdered soon after she prevented SkyNet’s creation, and from the very familiar-looking T-800 Terminator who killed John and spent the last two decades developing a conscience.

Episode 27 – Raw Deal (1986) with Joe Preti

The system gave him a raw deal. Nobody gives him a raw deal.

We’re back! This month, we’re slicking back our hair and dodging cakes with Joe Preti, and infiltrating the inner circle of the mostly-forgotten organized crime action flick: Raw Deal!

Disgraced ex-FBI agent Mark Kaminsky is living in exile as a small town sheriff when he’s contacted by an old mentor from the bureau. Thirsty for revenge after his son was killed protecting a witness in the Luigi Patrovita mob trial, he sends Kaminsky deep undercover — and off the books — into the Patrovita inner circle. Now this one-man wrecking crew must enact bloody revenge and perhaps earn his job back in the FBI.

Episode 26 – Pumping Iron (1977) with Dave Brouillette

“Blood is rushing into your muscles and that’s what we call The Pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute, and it’s really tight – it’s like somebody blowing air into it, into your muscle. It just blows up, and it feels really different. It feels fantastic.”

This month, we’re hitting the weights and getting a good pump with Dave Brouillette, as we bench press the 1977 bodybuilding docudrama that got Arnold noticed in Hollywood: Pumping Iron!

Cameras document – or is it dramatize? – the lives of the world’s leading bodybuilders as they prepare to compete for their sport’s top 1975 amateur and professional championships. One is junior high school teacher, Mike Katz, who aspires to the title of Mr. Universe. Another is shy underdog, Lou Ferrigno, who hopes to flex his way to the title of Mr. Olympia. But to do that, he must topple the reigning five-time returning champion, a certain popular and charismatic Austrian, just a couple years away from Hollywood superstardom.

Episode 25 – Junior (1994) with Kirby Green

Nothing is inconceivable.

This month, we’re enjoying some franks in a blanket with longtime friend of the show, Kirby Green, and re-examining the much-maligned and universally-panned Arnold Schwarzenegger pregnancy comedy: Junior!

After his miracle fertility drug, Expectane, is rejected by the FDA for human trials and the university has terminated his funding, research geneticist Dr. Alex Hesse is ready to return home to Austria to start over. But his project partner, obstetrician Dr. Larry Arbogast, has a radical idea to prove their drug works: an off-the-books experiment with a human subject – Alex himself. Now the world’s first pregnant man, Alex must cope with his changing body, a new romance, his fluctuating hormones, and a growing emotional bond with his baby.

Episode 24 – Maggie (2015) with Chelsea Rustad

A father’s duty is to protect his daughter.

This month, we’re joined by author and chair of the Puget Sound Socialist Party, Chelsea Rustad to explore perhaps the most unexpected and interesting departure from the expected Schwarzenegger oeuvre, an independent zombie family drama: Maggie!

As civilization buckles under a deadly zombie pandemic, farmer Wade Vogel retrieves his runaway teenage daughter, Maggie, after she’s been infected with the incurable virus. Hoping to spare her an inhumane government quarantine and struggling to cope with his inability to protect her, Wade brings Maggie home to care for her in her last days. As her condition worsens, Wade wonders if he can bring himself to do the unthinkable.

Episode 23 – The 6th Day (2000) with Michael Warbington

They picked the wrong man to clone.

After more than a year, we’re back! We’re backing up our syncords and eating some nacho-flavored bananas with the Camp Director and President of Camp Quest NorthWest, Michael Warbington, because this month we’re talking about the near-future sci-fi thriller: The 6th Day!

After a case of mistaken identity, charter pilot Adam Gibson returns home to find himself replaced with a clone. Suddenly, he’s on the run from seemingly unkillable cloned assassins and marked for death by a powerful businessman who must keep his illegal human cloning program a secret at all costs. Now Adam must team up with his own clone to save his family, uncover the truth, and prove his own identity.

Episode 22 – True Lies (1994) with Rebecca Friedman

When he said I do, he never said what he did.

This month, we’re joined by Rebecca Friedman of Ask an Atheist to revisit the always thrilling and often problematic action-spy comedy that reunited Arnold with director James Cameron, True Lies!

To his wife Helen and their young daughter, Harry Tasker is a boring computer salesman, always away on one of his dull business trips. But Tasker has been living a double life as Harry Rinquest, globe-trotting secret agent and counter-terrorism operative for the secretive Omega Sector. But the lies separating Harry’s two lives crumble as Helen is suddenly thrust into a plot involving a Middle Eastern terrorist cell, stolen nuclear warheads, and a beautiful femme fatale. Now Harry must save the world, rescue his daughter and revive his troubled marriage.