The Screeners are back yet again to stare into the abyss of media and see if it stares back—and if you recognize that reference, our main event is right down your alley. If you don’t...listen anyway. We managed to record an episode within a month of the last one; we feel we deserve some credit.

Anywho...Jump Cuts.

The Segment Formerly Known as Jump Cuts

Every episode, the Screeners introduce the rules of their lightning round, then they proceed to ignore those rules. It’s become a tradition at this point. We blame Chad, right? Sure, why not? In fact, the first two topics this time took so long that they’re the only “jump” “cuts” we have this episode. They’re doozies, though.

As you may have noticed if you pay attention to video games or browse the Internet from time to time, Titanfall, the new darling of the Xbox One, was released last week to much hype and fanfare. Chris and Chad went to the store immediately and begged to have their money taken; Josh, however, is slightly more stubborn (in case you hadn’t noticed...and if you hadn’t, just ring your call button, and Tommy will come back there and hit you on the head with a tack hammer, because...but we digress).

Josh’s Titanfall question is more of a challenge:  Convince him to buy the game without threatening to stop being his friend just because you tired of Call of Duty after 10 minutes and want to play with the new shiny. Are the others up to the task?

After the first-person shooter dust settles, Melody shares some updates about her adventures in self-publishing. The Great Darkening made a sizable splash on Amazon due to some smart, persistent marketing, and she’s willing to share a couple (though not all, of course) of to-launch-book.php#">her secrets.

This Just Looks Like the Main Event…

...but it’s really all the main events we’ve ever done and will ever do, all at once, in a super-position.

That’s right; we’re going to talk about True Detective, or at least mention 20% of the discussion material the HBO phenomenon has to offer. Is it catharsis? Is it a virus? How much, if any, of our genetic programming is worth keeping? We’d tell you, but reading as much Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as it would take for you to understand the answer is enough to drive anyone mad.

And that’s about all we can say if you haven’t seen the show. Seriously, go watch it, then get back to us. This episode will still be here. In fact, this isn’t the first time it’s been here.

Back to the Flickchart!

The Screeners’ Flickchart rankings have gathered dust, and for good reason. Josh’s complete inexperience at watching movies combined with everyone else’s terrible taste and sense of nostalgia once led to The Mighty Ducks topping the charts for several months. Its reign of terror was finally ended by Back to the Future, which is better, but by how much?

Well, once more into the breach. Join us for our final segment as Josh recuses himself from matchup after matchup, and Chad experiments with Flickchart’s “hipster cage match” setting, which only pits Nicolas Cage and Mel Gibson movies against Reese Witherspoon oeuvres to see how many times users will ironically vote for Face/Off.

And that’ll do it for this episode. Join us next time for a completely controversy-free conversation about Darren Aronofsky’s Noah.