A Degree Absolute! episode forty-two: "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"

It's a Y2K-pop extravaganza as Chris and Glen emerge from their unplanned and unannounced hiatus to dissect 72-year-old Patty McG's brief-but-memorable guest appearance reprising the role of Number Six for (the final eight minutes of) the Season 12 Simpsons episode "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes." Cowabunga!

The Simpsons, season 12, episode six — "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"

Written by John Swartzwelder

Directed by Mark Kirkland

Originally aired December 3, 2000

A Degree Absolute! episode forty-one: "Brass Target" with Keith Phipps

Our guest Keith Phipps is not just a sterling critic and a dad — an essential component when we cover a movie as openly paternal as 1978’s post-WWII espionage thriller Brass Target . He is also the author of new book examining the career of a singularly idiosyncratic actor. A Degree Absolute! endorses Keith’s book Age of Cage absolutely.

And Brass Target? Well, minute-for-minute, it has the most undiluted Patty McG purity rating of any film we’ve covered save perhaps for Braveheart. It’s much harder to find but worth the hunt for those such as we. Invest in physical media, people.

Brass Target

Screenplay by Alvin Boretz, adapted from Frederick Nolan’s novel The Algonquin Project

Directed by John Hough

Released December 22, 1978

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

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Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

A Degree Absolute! episode forty: The Prisoner 2009 (second half) — Darling, Schizoid, & Checkmate

It's More Talk About A-Frames and Holes as we slog dutifully through the back half of The Prisoner's 2009 Jim Caviezel-and-Ian McKellen-starring update. It turns out Chris did review Serenity, the Steven Knight film he referes to 54 minutes into this episode. Read that review if you wish!

Darling, Schizoid and Checkmate

Written by Bill Gallagher

Directed by Nick Hurran

Initial airdate: November 15 & 16, 2009

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Write or send a voicemail to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-nine: The Prisoner 2009 (first half) — Arrival, Harmony, & Anvil

We’ve got good news and bad news for you, Villagers: After a long sojourn examining Patty McG’s eclectic-not-checkered filmography, we’ve returned to Prisoner content… in the form of the 2009 Jim Caviezel-and-Ian McKellen-starring update. At Glen’s suggestion, we are devoting a mere two episodes to this six-episode series, because inflation. Who’s hungry for a wrap?

Arrival, Harmony, and Anvil

Written by Bill Gallagher

Directed by Nick Hurran

Initial airdate: November 15 & 16, 2009

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Write or send a voicemail to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-eight: "A Time to Kill" with Linda Holmes

Matty McC meets Patty McG, in the battle you didn’t know you wanted to McSee!

A Time to Kill, the fourth big-studio adaptation of a John Grisham legal thriller to hit theaters in a 37-month period during the first Clinton Administration, is not a great showcase for our man Patty McG. There are just too many high-caliber, high-profile, and high-maintenance players in its stacked cast, and probably too much studio pressure for him to get away with anything weird. (Braveheart, released 14 months earlier, was a long time ago.) Company-man director Joel Schumacher seems to have saved all his creative chits for putting nipples on Batsuits in this era, turning in a serviceable but unshowy piece of work the summer in between Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. He sure does like to spray his actors with baby oil, though.

The good news is that our friend Linda Holmes is back this episode, lending her quadruple-threat expertise as (in increasing order of significance) a Sandra Bullock expert, and Grisham expert, an actual-albeit-no-longer-practicing lawyer, and of course as a world-class critic to our examination of the picture. Join us, won’t you, on this jurisprudent journey back to nineteen-niner-six.

A Time to Kill

Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, adapted from John Grisham’s novel

Directed by Joel Schumacher

Released July 24, 1996

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-seven: "Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend" with Jordan Morris

Terrible fonts! Racist tropes! Puppetty brontos! A doomed marriage! A movie that was made for no one! Plus Paddy McG phoning it in with hardly a single trilled R! Listen, and catch the opposite of a fever!

Prolific podmedian & Eisner Award nominee Jordan Morris joins us to carbon-date a seminal document of his dino-loving youth, Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend! Starring Rachel the Replicant, The Greatest American Hero, For He’s a Julian Fellowes, & Patty McG as the heel.

Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend

Screenplay by Clifford and Ellen Green

Directed by B. W. L. Norton

Released March 22, 1985

A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-six: "All Night Long" with Casey Erin Clark

MOOR COWBELL! Slip into your cardigan, roll yourself a jazz cigarette, and prepare to savor one of Patty McG's most sinister heel turns as our lovely theme-song singer Casey Erin Clark joins us to deconstruct All Night Long, director Basil Dearden's 1962 adaptation of Othello set in the London jazz scene. PLUS! Casey draws upon her expertise as a voice coach and musician to examine several of McGoohan's most distinctive vocal performances, and presents her findings to the court.

All Night Long

Screenplay by Neil King and Paul Jarraco

Directed by Basil Dearden

Released February 6, 1962

A Degree Absolute! episode thirty-five: "Kings and Desperate Men"

A movie for McGoohan die-hards that creator Alexis Kanner the Once-Boxed sued the makers of Die Hard over! Paddy McG and Kanner! Squaring off, with a Montreal radio show as their Thunderdome. A film with all the makings of a taut thriller involving hostages, a building wired with explosives, and McG in fine form: Rolling them Rs! Slamming them consonants! Playing drunk! Almost evincing sexual-adjacent desire! Features more overlapping dialogue than if you played Nashville, A Wedding, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller all at once!