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So, I was only recently introduced to HDTGM, but I got Stitcher Premium and have now listened to all 215 episodes (watched Serenity last night and listening to 216 today) in a matter of a few months. I decided to wait until I had listened to them all before joining the forums, so here I am. Now I just need to get used to waiting for new episodes.

I don't have it handy, but I recall the line about the step-father's profession at the end was that he was "in construction." I didn't take that to mean that they weren't actually wealthy, but rather that the step-father was mobbed-up — which would explain his overall affect, propensity to violence, and the inability for the son/mother to seek "justice" through traditional channels.

The one thing I know is she was dancing with him because his previous partner quit during the movie (not shown but said) and he was the "best". Vanessa wanted solely to win. (Not that it's a knock. That was her character until the very end.) UPDATE: That makes me wonder who was her partner up to that point? I don't remember ever meeting him.

Correction: The kid did not make the game, but was modding it by adding in characters that represented his dad, mom and stepdad. That's explained when nerdlinger gets to Dill and tells him about the game being basically a bunch of minigames set within this island world, with fishing being one of the more popular ones and the favorite of the son. But with the son modifying the game so that he could play out this fantasy, the game was trying to combat that kind of intrusion by doing things like having the nerdlinger give Dill a uber-fish finder, the son of the store owner coming back to town because he was "lucky," and even Djimon's character paying some locals to beat the stepdad up so he didn't come to the boat. With modding, it can be done so much that the game becomes unplayable because it get's bogged down with extra data and items that it didn't forsee being a part of its coding, and what this kid was doing was basically loading a code from Grand Theft Auto complete with murderous spouses, escorts, drunken tourists, and the ability to kill, into a game of Club Penguin, and the code of the original game was trying to level itself out as to not become unplayable, before whatever gobbledeegook about the kid being god was said to nerdlinger and he decided to help out Dill. As for the various M. Night clues there were quite a bit of them, and they were pretty easy to see knowing the twist beforehand. Things like the opening scene being an aerial run over the ocean up to Dill's boat was a bad opening cutscene, the camera pans were laggy changes in camera angle due to the modifications to the game, the side mission of finding Diane Lane's missing cat, the offering of better bait or equipment were microtransactions, and how all of the townspeople are NPCs in that they just talk solely in mission prep dialogue to the fact that there are only really maybe 10 people on the island and never more than 4 on screen at once. Even scenes where Dill isn't present like the ones with the mom and stepdad in the hotel are pulled from expansive sandbox games like GTA and Assassin's Creed where expository scenes are shown to the player outside of their character to give them a bit more backstory before moving forward in the game. What I found funny was that this movie is basically a film version of a second opinion that was read during the Jack Frost episode where the writer wrote that they put a snowman together in the hopes their dead dad comes back like the dad in that film. It's like Stephen Knight heard that and thought, "I can make that movie but I'll update it with video games."

Just about to start the episode, but in case nobody mentioned BAKER DILL = BAD KILLER

As a programmer, I have a thick skin for software nonsense in movies. So when Mr. The Rules was explaining the twist I was ready for some strained metaphors, and it wouldn't be too interesting to hear about the painstaking process of a thirteen year old googling "how to program a game". However, one metaphor that drove me crazy was this bit that Mr. Rules shoehorned into his Catch The Tuna explanation: "The lighthouse. Light/dark. One/zero. The fundamental process." I understand that "ones and zeroes" is a 75% of what people know about computers, sure. What I don't like is how it misconstrues lighthouses! A lighthouse doesn't blink on and off. Even in the background of that scene it's clear that the light is always on while it rotates in a circle. So it doesn't have two states of "one/zero" at all. You could argue it has at least 360 states, one for every degree of rotation, or more depending on how high-fidelity the kid has made the graphics in his MILF-banging simulator.

Gotta agree with @Cam Bert that it’s not a problem with the movie itself, but with the AFI list, perhaps it’s criteria. The full criteria list is on the list’s Wikipedia entry, and two of them are: Historical significance: A film's mark on the history of the moving image through visionary narrative devices, technical innovation or other groundbreaking achievements. Cultural impact: A film's mark on American society in matters of style and substance. Both of these strongly imply “Trailblazers and influence on other films.” The list is lousy with films that are those things but aren’t great by themselves today, but are hugely influential on other films. The original list had Birth of a Nation on it, for dang’s sake. But it just feels like too many of the voters gave too much weight to these two criteria out of the seven. TV Tropes has an enormous page for what I was just talking about called “Seinfeld” is Unfunny.

I just want to comment on Amy's comment that Job's was using Pixar as a way to advertise his computer company. He was kicked out of Apple in 1985. He was not asked to be the CEO and return till 1997. At the time of the film was released he was CEO & President of Next Computers - they no longer were selling computers but were mostly involved in Internet software applications. Next didn't even have an animation software application to sell. Yes there were Apple tie ins with subsequent Pixar releases but Disney also helped sell cereal and shampoo... Amy's complaint that Jobs was only interested in selling computers is hard to legitimize as Pixar didn't use Apple.or Next computers to render the animation or even imply they did.

That’s all well and good, but how do you expect to recoup the tiny-umbrella cost‽

I've had two albeit similar-ish ones and @tomspanks use to be a cat!

For whatever reason they tend to make it real lemony. Also, tzatziki without the dill is like rock without the roll.

This! If I'm making something with raw garlic (like tzatziki or hummus), I always cut the cloves in half and remove the germ to temper its pungency.

I've considered adding an avatar before but I made my choice.

The way they served up the step-dad to be killed was particularly hilarious to me. Here they were, alone on a boat...He had been beat up all to hell, was drunk as shit, was being a complete belligerent asshole, talked direct shit about Dill's kid, and there was even a line somewhere about the only police being out of town. The only thing that would have made it better was for him to have gotten accidentally covered in chum while counting a huge wad of cash and spouting off about having no parents or siblings.

joined a new band

But then they couldn't have given us the gem: "a hooker who can't afford hooks."

I don't have the time now, and I don't want to just repeat what everybody has been saying but I have had strong feelings about this being on the list and maybe this is the episode I was looking forward to the most. I will give the TL;DR of it all now, and hopefully tonight bang out a tirade but to me everything that is wrong with the AFI Top 100 is summed up with this movie being on the list. It shows that a) series/trilogies are singularly represented to stand for the franchise, b) first is always best and nothing else is considered unless you are a well known or respected name c) "cultural importance" and actual pop culture impact are often different and d) genre token representation. Should a computer animated movie be on the list? It the grand scheme if it truly is one of the best movies then yes, if it's there to just represent "advancements in CGI" then maybe because it did kill traditional animation in a way. If you have to include one, should it be Toy Story. No.

"Why don't you kill yourself?" - Scott Aukerman