The Incomparable

667 This Show Was Weird, Right?

We go 20 minutes into the future and 36 years into the past to discuss ABC’s cyberpunk drama “Max Headroom.” For a show with an 80s pop-culture icon as its title character, it’s actually a prescient satire about where our culture was (and still is?) headed. Even more than three decades later, its discussions of data security, the right to privacy in a technological age, artificial intelligence, and even deepfakes are still state of the art. (Non-American viewers who thought this was the show where Max Headroom introduced various music videos… uh, no.) Catch the wave and join us, won’t you?

Host Jason Snell with panelists Cicero Holmes, Moisés Chiullán, Monty Ashley, Warren Frey, and Austin Rich.

665 Defragment Your Data

They said that “Star Trek: Picard” wasn’t just going to be a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” reunion show, and that turned out to be true, at least about the first two seasons. We review the show’s just-completed third season, which brought us the emotional and nostalgic moments we craved, introduced an assortment of new characters we liked (or didn’t), and introduced some plot elements that we puzzled over.

664 The Book of Bo Katan

We gripe because we love! We break down the third season of “The Mandalorian.” Is burying part of the story in another show doing a disservice to this one? Why are there so may plot threads that seem to go nowhere, or get resolved in an anticlimactic fashion? And, despite all that, how did we all still have a good time?

663 A Lot of Ocean

Our Book Club begins our walk through awards shortlist reading with two Nebula Awards nominees for best novel, “The Mountain in the Sea” by Ray Naylor and “Spear” by Nicola Griffith. One’s a near-future thriller about sentient octopi, the other’s an Arthurian fantasy with a few twists.

Next time we’ll be reading Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher and Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. If you’re on Goodreads, you can also join our Book Club there.

662 Bipedal Murder Robots

Everyone laughed at the title, and many laughed at the over-the-top violence, but 1987’s “RoboCop” turned into a sleeper hit that kickstarted a major franchise. We revisit Paul Verhoeven’s first and best big-budget sci-fi satire.

661 Sad Banjo

Sure, she’s a human lie detector, but she’s also a murder magnet who’s running from a guy who seems to want her dead. We enter the world of Rian Johnson’s “Poker Face,” where Natasha Lyonne is both Columbo and The Fugitive.

660 The Monocle Test

Old Movie Club throws itself into the turning wheels of justice with two legal films from 1957, “12 Angry Men” and “Witness for the Prosecution.”

659 Infested With Love

Grab a backpack and get ready to siphon some gas—we’re setting out from the safe zone on a quest to find opinions about the first season of HBO’s video game adaptation, “The Last of Us.”

658 Nowhere In Time

Avoid stepping on butterflies, step into your time machine, and go kill your grandfather—it’s time for our Time Travel Movies Draft! We select favorite films from all corners of the time-travel genre, from time loops to historical shenanigans to nonsensical plot twists.

657 A Cloud Atlas with 12 Monkeys

Our Book Club reads “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel, a beautifully written story set in multiple timelines that—like her earlier novel “Station Eleven”—frustrated some, but not all, of our panelists. We also recommend a lot of other books to read!