Top Plug of the Week

For the TL;DR folks among you — FLOP TV is BACK!

Get a Season Pass here -- all shows at a discount price!
 
FlopTV is our full season of SIX MONTHLY VIDEO LIVE STREAMS, where we do TV-sized versions of our live shows. Last year was so much fun, we felt we needed to bring you… THE SEQUEL.

From September 2024 to February 2025, on the first Saturday of each month at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific, we’ll be beaming into your computers live with all-new bad movie shenanigans. This sequel-season’s theme? BAD SEQUELS! We are nothing if not MASTERS OF BRANDING!

And, like every sequel, Flop TV has made a few changes this time around! It’s still a fun-size version of our usual shows, with one presentation (rotating from show to show among the peaches), a discussion of the movie, and a question or two from the audience, but we’ve ALSO added a few fun extras along the way. Tune in to see!

Let’s get to the fun stuff. HERE’S THE SLATE OF SHOWS WE’LL BE DISCUSSING:

Saturday, September 7 - ROBOCOP 2 - What happens when you make a sequel to RoboCop, but you swap original director Paul Verhoven for Irvin “Sure I Made The Empire Strikes Back but I Also Did Never Say Never Again” Kershner, and screenwriter Ed Neumeier for comics wingnut Frank Miller, who replaces the anti-corporate/law-enforcement satire of the first with more straightforward robot copaganda? Let’s find out!

Saturday, October 5 – BREAKIN’ 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO - The film with perhaps the most famous subtitle in sequel history! But it’s more than just a silly title reference – it’s also a classic in the “we need to save the community center by putting on a show” genre, and a neon-colored breakdancing blast that lifts Fred Astaire’s “dancing on the ceiling” routine, in a way that’s honestly pretty great in its own right!

Saturday, November 2 - CADDYSHACK 2 - It’s the sequel that takes what was honestly already one of the weaker Lampoon-meets-SNL comedies of the 80’s, and – instead of the original’s Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, and Bill Murray – subs in Jackie Mason, Robert Stack, and Dan Aykroyd. It’s bound to be just as good, right? Right? Where are you going?

Saturday, December 7  - HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING - During the production of Highlander 2, the economy of Argentina (where it was shot) literally collapsed, and the investors took over the production. That usually results in a coherent, artistically successful movie, right? Roger Ebert said “This movie has to be seen to be believed. On the other hand, maybe that's too high a price to pay.” 

Saturday, January 4 - SKI SCHOOL 2 - The least “big” movie on our list fulfills our “some garbage skiing-based sex comedy we remember from the 80’s” quota for the year! Will Dan retell the story of how he was in a play in college with the sister of Ski School 1&2 star Dean Cameron? Probably!

Saturday, February 1 - TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 2: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE - Finally! Finally we can learn the secret of the ooze! What IS it? Is it what made the turtle costumes of this sequel look so much cheaper than the ones in the first TMNT movie? Is the ooze the smarm exuding from Vanilla Ice as he performs “Ninja Rap?” Is it just what mozzarella on a delicious sewer pizza does? We have to know!

Enough fun stuff! You want the boring logistical details? You can have them too! You can purchase individual show tix for $7, or a discounted $35 for the WHOLE SEASON, which is like getting one episode for free! (plus some small ticketing fees. We don’t love ‘em either, but we’re not set up to sell tickets on our own. We’re just a small Pop and Childless Man and Childless Man organization!)

Can’t watch live? NO problem! Your ticket also gets you access to a video recording of the show, so if you want to catch up later in the run, you can! If you decided to get a season pass later in the run? That gives you access to everything you missed!  This access is exclusive to ticket holders.  Recording link will be e-mailed to you the day after the live show, and the shows will ALL stay available on-demand until the end of the Flop TV season (end of February 2025). ACCESSIBILITY: Closed captioning will be enabled on both the live show and the recording, and you'll be able to toggle it on/off for yourself.

We’re so happy that the first FlopTV season was a success, and we can bring it back again this year! Whether you’re dipping in a la carte for the movies you care most about, or taking advantage of the price break with a season pass, we hope to see YOU at FlopTV TWO (“The More You Know” flies across the screen.)

A Quick Bite - A Bitqui, If You Will

I’ll be honest, that plug was LONG. It had a lot of juicy info in it, to be sure, but it went on for a while! So my apologies for keeping the “fun” part of the newsletter short this time around. In honor of FTV: The Sequel, here’s something the internet always loves — a listicle!

There are plenty of lists of “best sequels” online, so you’ll find none of that here! Instead we’re giving you something else — The Definitive List of Best Squeakuels!

1. Coming in at the top spot, it’s ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKUEL! This picture has everything you’d want from a squeakquel, in that it’s the second movie in the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise and has the word squeakquel in the title!

   And that’s it!

But we’re a bad movie podcast! We can’t talk best movies without talking worst movies! So let’s get to our The Definitive List of Worst Squeakuels!

1. Pee-ew! Oof, what a stinker! ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKQUEL goes wrong in so many ways! From the creepy CGI to Jason Lee’s “Dave” being pushed aside for new human lead Zachary Levi, this has to be the worst squeakquel of all!

Well, that’s our definitive rundown of the best and worst squeakquels, but let’s all hope upcoming release Frankie Freako gets a “freakquel” (perhaps with an expanded role for three unnamed podcaster/voice actors), so we can be back here for our list of best freakquels next year!

Next on The Flop House!

Hear ye on main!

8/17 - We discuss the rare Disney misfire, 2023’s oddly-generic animated non-hit, Wish!

8/24 - Stuart leads a mini where we decide the best movies to show a visitor from another time, to help them understand modern society.

Supplemental Materials

If you enjoyed Elliott’s top meats mini “The Chop House” but lamented that you could not see the visuals, then turn those lamentations into rejoice…entations! Here’s a shot of all the slides you missed!

Extra Credit

Elliott continues to discuss The Power Broker with 99PI host Roman Mars and famous guests like Conan O’Brian, AOC, and Power Broker author Robert Caro himself over on the 99% Invisible podcast feed!

Dan was just on his brother John’s podcast, Sophomore Lit, to talk about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Will that episode be out by the time this newsletter drops? Dan is legitimately unsure!

Boys on the Side

Keep checking out Elliott’s Hercules series from Dynamite Comics!

Dan recently launched his personal newsletter “Dan McCoy’s Special Interests.” Here’s an excerpt from the first installment:

For more, sign up on his site: danmccoyinterests.com

Stuart continues to do model painting streams on his Twitch channel, and he’s gonna do another “Slop House” cooking stream with Dan towards the end of the month. Here’s his schedule in handy “screenshot from his TikTok account” form!

You Made it to the End!

You deserve a cookie. Unfortunately, we can’t send one via email, so here’s a very old picture of the peaches instead!