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Loving the partition!

Sean and Hayes talk to ADAM CONOVER about ruinsing everything.

TruTV used to be courTV. Chew on that.

I can deal with Rowena being a killer, as nonsensical as it was. What really pissed me off about Rowena is that she was a terrible journalist. I've been a journalist for more than 20 years, so bear with me because this is the culmination of years' worth of frustration at how journalists are portrayed in movies and on TV. In just the opening scene, Rowena breaks one of the cardinal rules of journalism: We can’t pretend to be someone we’re not in order to get a story. It’s just not allowed. She's also not allowed to hack into a dude's computer and record him without his knowledge. Granted, you can absolutely say that an individual reporter could break the rules, but Rowena brings this story along with Miles to their editor and they’re transparent about how they got the illicit recording of the senator admitting his affair. Miles says it’s legal, but it’s not. Had Rowena recorded the conversation herself on a recording device she brought with her, OK, that’s legal in New York (though she still couldn’t pretend to be an aide; more on that in a sec). You can’t just tap into someone else’s computer and steal private information that way, which is what Miles did to get that recording. In the real world of journalism, there was the infamous Chiquita case in Cincinnati in 1998. A reporter wrote an explosive exposé on Chiquita International that detailed how it secretly controlled a ton of independent banana companies and how its ships had been used to smuggle cocaine. The story was huge news and at first heralded as a great piece of investigative journalism, a story that took its two reporters a year to investigate. But then it came out that one of the reporters hacked into the company’s phone system to get thousands of voicemails upon which he based his reporting. Because he got those voicemails illicitly, the newspaper renounced the story within days and paid Chiquita more than $10 million. No editor anywhere in the U.S. would put their paper in that kind of position, and that’s exactly the position Miles was putting his boss in. As for Rowena pretending to be an aid, let's look at the landmark Food Lion case in 1992. In that case, two ABC journalists lied on employment applications, providing false references and lying about their educational and employment backgrounds. Based on those lies, they were hired by the Food Lion grocery store chain and exposed unsafe, unhealthy and illegal practices committed by the store -- including selling old meat so rancid that it had to be cleaned with bleach to mask the odor. Whether the allegations were true didn't ultimately matter because Food Lion sued ABC in federal court. I'll spare you details of the years-long court battle, but long story short: A federal court found the ABC producers had trespassed. Today, any remotely reputable boss in this country would squirm if a journalist failed to identify themselves as a journalist, and not just on employment applications. Sure, someone can say something in public, and if I overhear it, I can absolutely report it. But I can't pretend to be something other than a journalist in order to get info that I then report. It's a no-no. Some other "oh, COME ON" moments for me: 1) How does a supposedly top-rate journalist have the know-how to apparently be one of the best investigators in the country yet needs a colleague to set up her damn email account?! By 2007, several newspapers had dropped to a few days' publication because the web was, y'know, a THING. BlackBerry had been plaguing us with work emails since 2003, and Apple's iPhone was released in 2007, the year this movie came out. Perfect Stranger treats the Internet as though it's as nascent as did The Net, and that movie came out 11 years earlier. 2) She kisses the guy she's investigating. I'm so sick of every Hollywood depiction of journalists showing them seducing their sources. We can't do it! We'd be fired and banished from the business. It's sticky enough if you start dating a source after you've covered him. You cannot make out with him and then write a story about him. It's way past unethical. 3) There's no way any hard-hitting reporter would leave her phone at the table when she went to the restroom at the restaurant. (I'm referring to the moment Harrison checks her text messages and sees Miles' incriminating note about the computer.) When you're mid-story, you take your phone everywhere. I've interviewed plenty of people in public bathrooms, in my bathtub, crouched at the end of my dad's driveway on Christmas ... (Insert Jason saying, "Brag" right about here.) Cell phones were a pretty big part of our jobs even in the sepia-toned age of 2007. She would not have left it behind. And even if she had, she sure as hell would've noticed Harrison kept it beyond that. He pulls it out midway through their drive home. No friggin' way. I'd have scoured that restaurant from top to bottom by then looking for the thing. I mean, maybe it's possible I'm supposed to believe she wanted him to find the phone ... But I don't see how that would assist in her end game. And the final thing is: It feels like this movie was written for a 20-year-old to play the Rowena role. It would have translated better if she had been someone new to the profession making rookie mistakes and being a technological idiot. Instead, Halle Berry is a 41-year-old woman who should, in theory, have some 15-20 years experience by now. She should be a pro but she acts like a newbie. In that sense, the whole thing felt like bad casting.

this was a great episode I saw recently on instagram that Sean was playing the game Codenames. Thats a really good game!! If you like Codenames, there is a similar game called Decrypto that's also great, especially if you have a group that has played Codenames a lot and loves it. It's also less than 20 US bucks. I was able to play it for the first time by bringing it to Thanksgiving and the family had a ball with it.

Oh my god I'm so sorry everyone!!! I had so much to do yesterday that I forgot it was this week. Ok so I was going to pick my favorite Disney movie Mary Poppins to celebrate the new one coming out but it's really expensive on Amazon and I couldn't find it free anywhere and would feel guilty about making people pay. So instead we're going to do another Disney musical ... Which is fully free on YouTube The costume choices alone in this movie... the kings suit alone! We are going to talk bout that SUIT!

I know I'm late to the party on this one, but I just wanted to add in my two cents concerning this film and the franchise. My love for Rocky as a character and in the films themselves is nearly boundless, warts and all. There are flaws in all the entries in the series but I am able to enjoy them all to differing degrees (V being the big exception), and they all have my whole heart. That's part of why I waited so long to post here, as I did not want to be too vociferous in my response. I could go on, so I will focus specifically on something Amy said about Creed that I profoundly disagree with. When Rocky gets cancer in that film, I believe it would have been the weaker choice, for both the film and the character, if he would have forgone treatment, if he had given up, and died. It might have provided some narrative symmetry with Mickey dying, but Rocky giving up is anathema to the spirit of the character and the themes in this film and the original. Sure, Rocky almost always needs help to stay the course, but he always comes through in the end. It is the same with Adonis. They both need each other to make the more difficult, the stronger choice. They have to find the strength to not only fight for each other, but to discover (or rediscover) the self-worth to be able to fight for themselves. Rocky needed to learn how to value himself again, that his life mattered (so he could train Adonis, sure, but also so he can live). Just because he's no longer the titular character doesn't mean his story is now worthless. Adonis loves him, and sacrificing himself because his own fight would be a distraction would be a betrayal of that love, not supportive of it.

Look, I don’t know codenames, decrypto or your family, but they all sound very nice. Do you know what else sounds very nice? I do. it’s this episode. If anyone hasn’t listened to it, I’d say go ahead and do so.

learn from the best

No worries! You made it in (and hopefully remembered your birthday) so...

Oh god I am so sorry @Cameron H. . Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

I was entirely considering the Leslie Ann Warren (1965) version of it for my pick! I watched that one sooooooo many times as a kid. I remember this came out when I was in high school. I think I saw it at the time, and I'm looking forward to revisiting it! p.s. the 1965 version is on Amazon Prime

First, @Cameron H. I'm deeply sorry for your loss.

seems a bit vain, but who am i to argue?

And Adonis says as much in the film. I think that's right. Honestly, most of Amy's criticisms of Creed are pretty baffling to me.

I'm not so sure. If that's who I think it is he built the Titanic. Not a good history there...

Again I'm so sorry for being so late! I forgot it was this week. I forgot my birthday is next week too so...

my impression of the boys doing a record without an engineer:

New episode tomorrow. There’s been speculation that there’s no guest, no engineer and especially no kevin. Just 4 hours of the boys being the boys. I don’t know if that’s true, but it probably is

Did anyone catch that the baby's name is "Rowen" whereas the movie's main character's name is "Rowena?" I don't think anyone on the episode pointed that out. Sure would hate to think that these folks bought tickets to the podcast taping, watched the movie beforehand, went into labor before they could go to the show, and subconsciously named her child after this horrible movie.

I was thinking the same thing.

The one thing I still do not understand is why Grace was able to keep blackmailing Ro. I would think Ro would have done her research. First yes they killed her father but it was out of self defense. He was abusing Ro or at least seemed to have a history of it. Since when the mother attacked and killed the father it was more out of reaction to what was happening and protecting her daughter she committed manslaughter rather than a planned murder. If it was only manslaughter then the statue of limitations in New York is 5 years, which means Ro and her mother would be immune to Grace's blackmailing before she graduated high school.

I hope you all will subscribe to Paul's new show on Stitcher Premium! (Shout out to my BF for making this for my BFF, "that girl" with the question; I was sitting next to her! )

First interaction between Hill and Rowena: Hill: "Boo" Rowena: Surprised, she jumps up, turns, and grabs at her chest. She giggles while she tries to catch her breath. Hill: "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you." You slithered up behind her and without prompting, said "Boo." If you weren't trying to scare her, then what exactly were you trying to do?