Ryan Sheely and Matthew Wrather overthink the latest Gossip Girl and Glee, including micro- and macro-storytelling and whether Glee hates women.

This is the second episode of a new podcast. We will eventually spin it off into its own feed. If you hate it, just ignore the supplementary episodes and they’ll go away soon. If you love it, sit tight for instructions about subscribing to the new feed.

There will be no spoiler warnings and there will be many naughty words. If either of those things bothers you, don’t click!

Reactions to the show? Suggestions about what to call it? Email us or call 20-FAT-JOG-01 (that’s (203) 285-6401).

Download the Podcast Supplement (MP3)

[Enjoy today's guest post by Cracked regular Dan Seitz]

TRON is, on the surface, a fairly simple Hero’s Journey story, common in the effects-heavy ‘80s. Man is somehow zapped into computer, man meets a girl and a hero, man fights the Man and triumphs. But beneath that is a relentless religious text, one perhaps uniquely aligned to the zeitgeist of the 1980s, that we’ll elucidate here.

Behold his flaming chariot

Community may be the new show that I was most interested in.  Glee is the one I was most excited about, but I pretty much knew Glee would be awesome.  I hoped Community would be awesome, but I had my doubts.  First, while I have always suspected that Soup host and Community star Joel McHale is hilarious, it’s a long way from “suspected” to “known,” just like it’s a long way from making fun of Kim Kardashian to actually, you know, acting.  Second, Chevy Chase.  Third, Chevy Chase (although let’s be fair:  Chase’s lifetime batting average is still somewhere around .42).  Fourth, I tend to be a lot more demanding of my comedies than of my dramas, or even my dramedies.    I’ve given Dollhouse a full season (and counting) to get its act together, but I watched two episodes of The Big Bang Theory, laughed once, and banished it from my DVR.

So while the premiere of Glee had me feeling excited, I sat down to watch Community feeling anxious.  I really wanted it to be good — what if it sucked?  Luckily, my fears were unfounded.  It turns out that McHale can act, (although we’ve yet to learn whether he can act like a character that isn’t identical to his persona on the Soup).  Chase is funny, probably because his character is such an unmitigated jerk.  The writing is sharp, so most of the jokes work, and the brisk, almost overcaffeinated pacing ensures that the ones that fall flat don’t overstay their welcome.   If I sat down to Community feeling anxious about whether it would be any good, I stood up afterwards feeling anxious about whether they’d pick it up for next year.

Now, what you’ve read so far is pretty much a review.  Which would be fine, really, except that if you were privy to the cigar-smoke-filled rooms (uh, email threads) in which the OTI staff plots the future of our website, you would know that Overthinkingit is Not a Review Website.  That’s right, we have a “not list” just like Wikipedia! Or to be more accurate, we don’t, but we could.  Overthinkingit is Not A Review Website.  Overthinkingit is Not Paper.  Overthinkingit is Not Managing To Sell Many of These T-shirts, For Some Reason.  Wait, where was I going with this?

Oh yeah.  This post needs to be something more than a review.  The preceding paragraph added a pointless digression, a random pop culture reference, and a bout of self-obsessed naval gazing (all important parts of the formula, to be sure), but I’m still lacking any actual analysis.  Let’s see what we can do about that.

Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel and Mark Lee to overthink Roman Polanski’s legal and moral trouble, cultural hysteria and hypocrisy, the reasons reality is different from fiction, and the deeper meanings of Crank 2 and Glee.

Tell us what you think! Leave a comment, use the contact form, email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401.

Download Episode 65 (MP3)

Is it just me, or does Glee get more brilliant with every episode?

Is it just me, or has there not really been a worthwhile movie since Inglourious Basterds? (Anyone seen The Informant!?) — Wow, that’s a lot of punctuation.

Is it just me or have we not really seen any major new music released in the last month or so?

Is it just me, or am I totally out of the cultural loop? Take me to task here, in the open thread.

Overthinkers, raising the bar like the flag at Iwo Jima
Dropping you haters for your rhyme misdemeanors
Snooping outside the studio, that’s where I seen ya
Bite our style, your throat burns like you’re chugging drain cleaner …

… and so on.

Diss tracks are a staple of hip-hop, what with its premium on credibility, freestyling, lyricism and ostentatious display. But hip-hop didn’t invent the diss track. Hardly.

So we rounded up the Overthinking Posse – the Lenza, the Fenza, Ol’ Dirty Perich and Stokesface Killah – to crack the deepest wax on the block. I’m talking deep in the record crate, son. I’m talking old school.

What, Overthinkers, is the Best Diss Track Prior to Hip-Hop? SOUND OFF.

And stay tuned to the end for a verdict from our Surprise Celebrity Guest Judge!

Guess which group is LESS likely to get into college?

(NOTE: Mild spoilers for the Harry Potter series follow.)

First of all, let me make this clear: if you want to learn magic, there is no better place than Hogwarts. That may seem like faint praise, since your only other choices are Durmstrang, which is borderline evil, and Beauxbatons, which is French. But Hogwarts really does seem to turn out top-notch wizards and witches.

That being said, I wouldn’t send my kid there if you used the Cruciatus Curse on me. (Okay, maybe then.)

[CORRECTION: The original edition of this article confused John Von Neumann with Werner Von Braun, and very unjustifiably referred to Von Neumann as an “Evil Nazi.” Von Neumann was neither Nazi nor Evil. We hear he was a pretty cool guy, and we wish A Beautiful Mind had been made about him instead. OTI very much regrets the error.]

Great heroes are often defined by their villains. Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader. He-Man had Skeletor. U.S. Grant had Robert E. Lee.

But some heroes aren’t defined by their villains, they’re defined by their shiny, brushable hair, their many collectible colors, or their gracefully molded haunches.

Designing villains for heroes that go around saving planets or slaying dragons is easy — some good ideas might begin with a dragon or something that could destroy a planet, not necessarily in that order.

But in the maddening crush to narrativize, syndicate and cross-market every collectible under creation, every once in a while, somebody, somewhere has to confront the one of the most daunting challenges a character designer can face.

How do you make a villain for a hero who doesn’t do anything? Maybe you start with something like this:

Today, we discuss one of the most compelling answers anyone came up with for that question: The Smooze, the sentient Grey Goo that terrorizes the prancing protagonists of 1986’s My Little Pony: The Movie –

Ryan Sheely and Matthew Wrather finally realize a long-held dream when they train their overthinking on Gossip Girl, Glee, and other shows about the sex lives of teenagers in this pilot episode of what may turn out to be a new podcast.

Reactions to the show? Suggestions about what to call it? Email us or call 20-FAT-JOG-01 (that’s (203) 285-6401).

Download the Podcast Supplement (MP3)

At first blush, the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” may be one of the most inane song ever written (Cracked.com certainly thinks so). The lyrics basically consist of a series of non sequitur party-related cliches. (Then again, I suppose that description could apply to most pop songs. But I digress.)

In other words, it’s the perfect candidate for Overthinking It’s “Musical Talmud” treatment, in which we subject the lyrics of pop songs to a level of scrutiny they really, really, don’t deserve.

The party starts after the jump…