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Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, stars and creators of PEN15 join Scott to talk about their show in 8 words or less, slushies, and the Family Feud hosts. Then, publicist Seth Berkowitz stops by to talk about representing MoviePass. Plus, Perry Gordon, mogul and CEO of Motorville Records drops by to talk about some of his ‘60s hits.

Were they confused by that line? I must have missed that. But, yeah, 100%, he’s asking to be mercy killed. He’s been hanging there crucified, blind and bleeding, for what appears to be days. Furthermore, if Brody went the traditional crucifixion route, which is likely, he would have also broken Cusack’s legs. This would be more painful and would have expedited death by asphyxiation. And, considering Brody is portrayed as one of those cruel and psychotic Romans in the vein of Caligula, there’s also a very good chance that he got even more exotic and shoved a stick up Cusack’s dick - something that has been reported as a thing that happened to some crucifixion victims. So, like, I get they thought it lame that Chan didn’t put more effort into saving Cusack, but honestly, there’s not much he could have done for him. Homeboy was already dead.

Surely, if this is done, it falls under the "Thank God This Was Made" category.

Maya is humbly downplaying the fact that her dad is one of the greatest modern jazz drummers of the past 40 years. In fact, when Scott introduced her, I was like, "Huh, someone else has that last name." Nope, same family.

Hehe, I love the pic of Maya, a split second before getting freaked the fuck out by Photographer Matt

I think the biggest problem with this movie is simply not understanding what the Silk Road was. The history of the silk road is hundreds of year long and this movie take place about 200 years into it. A quick and dirty summary of the whole thing is China was kinda closed off until the Han Dynasty. They sent out people to deal with nomads, they started encountering other nations who had horses that were better than Chinese horses, the Han Dynasty opened trading up with the west in an exchange of good, culture and knowledge. In fact the "silk road" was not a singular road but rather a series of routes of trade from Turkey all the way to Korea. It was loved by everyone. It brought silk to the west and horses to the east along with a bunch of other goods and religion. It ended hundred of years later because the Ottoman empire in Turkey closed their boarders and maritime trade took over. In Dragon Blade Adrien Brody's character reveals he didn't want the child emperor but rather to seek control of the silk road. This makes no sense. It is thousands of miles long. If he gain control of one point of it he'd upset China and the Roman empire. He could collect a tax from traders going through his "city" but that's about it. There was no way to control it and if he did it'd be a small section for a short time. If he took over the route and caused problems it would just end the route like it had in the past. It was a no win scenario for him.

There is a line (again maybe cut from the American edit) when they encounter the two armies at the start and identifying them and what language they speak. I think it is a given that the Silk Road Protection Force is versed in various languages. What I find strange is that it seems that Jackie Chan is the only character than can speak Latin. Or that he knows enough to have some broken communication with them. However, his second in command that betrays them, Yin Po, met Adrien Brody's character and made a very complicated plan with him to set up the Silk Road Protection Force and take over the area. So Yin Po knew Latin as well? He seemed to be speaking much better "Latin" than Jackie Chan as well.

The gang seemed confused by the idea of massive armies sending out a champion to fight a battle for them. Daniel concedes that this probably happened, but everyone agreed that it probably didn't happen until later in history. First of all, I don't feel like the idea that each side would send out a champion is really all that crazy. The rationale being: if our very best guy can beat your very best guy, then ultimately, we'd would probably win the battle anyway, so why bother with all the bloodshed? As far as it not happening until later in history, according to Judeo-Christian history, the story of David and Goliath (perhaps the most famous example of this kind of thing) was said to have occurred around 1025 B.C. - approximately 975 years before the events of this film. Whether or not you believe in David and Goliath as historical fact, it would have been a story circulating for almost a millennium. To me, that at least suggests that the idea of sending out a Champion to fight a proxy battle for your army wasn’t something that would be completely unheard of at the time.

About that, I was annoyed by the quality of the slow-mo. Was it just my copy, or did it seem like they shot the movie at too low of a framerate to produce smooth motion?

The in-universe language barriers in this movie drove me insane. I've seen enough Jackie Chan movies to know that he can deliver lines in English, even if he has a strong accent. And yet, when he's speaking to John Cusack he has obvious grammatical errors. I'm pretty sure he's reading the script correctly, and that the writers of Dragon Blade wanted to emphasize that Hua An and Lucius speak different languages. Ok, except... The dialogue in this movie is already so bad. The only thing that could make Hua An's monologues less inspiring was the addition of grammatical errors. Were we supposed to think Huo An had never heard Latin before? In that case, is Lucius teaching him the language by speaking louder and gesturing? Or, are we accepting that Huo An has to have learned some Latin to get by as a Silk Road Protection Force Captain? Well then it would have been so easy to put in a line explaining his near-fluent speach instead: "As more Romans are traveling the Silk Road, I decided to learn Latin." Or, just gloss over it and write the best dialogue you can! It's not like they're trying to explain why the Roman centurions speak english, except for when the sing in actual goddamn Latin. Were the modern-day scientists actually speaking Latin?

First of all, I just wanted to say that I thought Erin and Daniel were fantastic guests! I loved the energy they brought, and I really hope that they can be brought back sometime in the future. In defense of John Cusack's accent work, or lack thereof, I have to admit that I was totally cool with it. The movie had already made the decision that English was going to equal Roman/Latin, but back then, just because someone was "Roman," didn't necessarily mean that they were "from Rome." The Roman Empire stretched from the Portugal to the Middle East and from the British Isles to Africa. Once a culture was conquered by the Romans, they weren't expected to completely abandon their native language, so I'm sure that a pure "Roman accent" would be pretty hard to pin down. I mean, how many accents are there in the America? Hell, accents can change within the same state. So, maybe, in the world of Dragon Blade, to show a difference in class, Roman's born in Rome - like Brody's character - have English accents, while Roman's born in Gaul or some shit have a more Chicagoan, every man type of flavor. The fact that they all sing in Latin still makes no fucking sense though...

I’d have to say the star of the film was Adrian Brody’s wig. It had a real Mary Tyler Moore vibe. To quote June: Is this a movie?

When Great Wall came out, Matt Damon got a lot of shit for this Chinese movie being whitewashed. I remember articles at the time saying that getting any big American Hollywood star to be in a Chinese movie for Chinese audiences kind of legitimized the movie to a degree. It wasn't that Matt Damon injected himself into this; it's that Chinese audiences thought that was cool. I'm not sure American audiences have a cultural equivalent. Stunt casting an international star in an American movie typically only works for international audiences or for 1% of Americans.

I know this won't mean much to anybody because most everybody probably watched the American edit, but they talk about the couple that bookends the film in the international cut. Yes while they use satellites and computers to reconstruct how the city looked there is a plaque that they uncover that basically gives a brief history of the city. This combined with the fact that it is mentioned they found out about the place from a book and legend would imply how they knew the story and the computer wasn't telling them the story. Their reason for lying about it is still a mystery. However the craziest part is how in just under 2000 years the city that seemed to be on level ground in the desert went to being in the snow covered mountains. That's the craziest part about the bookends.

I will back up everything you are saying here. I can only go by what I know from my friends and people I've met but most people do not know accents. I should say people who study English or particularly like a certain country will notice a difference but the average person will think it's all English. There might be "He sounds different than him" but not the the point of thinking about country of origin. Also, unless again they know English they will be reading the subtitles at the bottom of the screen and not so much care about how they sound. It's more about the look of the person and also a hollywood name. Which I find odd because I don't image John Cusack is a huge draw in China. I think it is more about "we have a hollywood star" than anything else.

Not to necessarily defend this movie or John Cusack's performance, but I think I can at least explain it. They mention in the show the movie made $121 million but it only made $74 thousand in the US. So, I speculate this movie was never meant to be seen outside of China. Part of that means that there's simply cultural stuff that doesn't translate to Americans. Chinese audiences might simply want a different experience than what we're looking for. Anyone who has dug deep into foreign film has probably run into a movie that was a smash in its home country but simply doesn't work in the US due to different expectations (I'm sure Cam Bert can give us examples of Japanese movies). So, does anyone know how this did critically in China? Was this Chinese Transformers 2 or Chinese Mad Max Fury Road? But a movie never being seen outside of China might explain John Cusack's lazy performance and accent. There are lots of celebrities who do commercials or bad movies in foreign countries because it's easy money that doesn't ruin their reputation in Hollywood. I know I can't pick up accents in a foreign language and I suspect Chinese audiences can't tell a Chicago accent from what Italian accent Cusack could have put on. So, no real need to do an accent if no one in the intended audience will even notice.

Humorist John Hodgman (Judge John Hodgman, Vacationland) joins Scott to talk about secret families, what he did to prepare for officiating a wedding, and his career as the character “Monica Geller” on Friends. Then, Alimony Tony stops by to sing some of his parody songs. Later, odds and ends man Rupert Sharp drops by to promote his home services.

Early contender for best episode of the year, here.

Per Scott on Twitter, yes.

"Just really like a ... what do you call that on the--you would know this, you're a painter--when you do the painting that's not a triptych necessarily, but when you're doing a wall and it goes from one color down to a darker color but it blends?" Since the word that Scott Aukerman was looking for wasn't "gradient", is it possible he meant "Ombre"?

Possibly the best opening 2-3 minutes ever.

The "What" from "Who's on First" is supposed to be a homonym for the name Watt. As in Reggie WHATS?

I approve of the Jermajesty based humour.

Is Alimony Tony the first catchphrase-inspired character on the show?

Oh no, what an entrance, how do I delete a double post, oh no oh no oh no. ( I figured out how to edit so this will be fine for now )