Thanksgiving is a strange holiday. It has a history many would rather not celebrate, and for some at this point its a holiday mostly dedicated to letting people know you love them and eating an ungodly amount of food – immediately followed by a nap on the shoulder of your nearest relative.
It is a holiday where many create their own traditions around the holiday. Some watch the same movie every year, some watch a football game, and one group of people releases a podcast about “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2”
“Til Death Do Us Blart” is a podcast made up by a mixture of two others. Justin, Travis and Griffin McElroy -of comedy advice podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me – host with Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery of “The Worst Idea Of All Time – a podcast where the hosts watch the same movie every week for one year.
As the “Til Death” of the title implies, the hosts assert that they will continue to do the podcast until they die, at which point they will be replaced by a successor. The hosts also state that the podcast will be released “every American Thanksgiving until the end of time.”
The rules for the continuation of the podcast give an absurdist twist to a podcast already bases in the concept of the hosts torturing themselves with Kevin James’ movie about a bumbling and honestly dickish mall cop.
With each year, the hosts put forward new meta-narratives and theories about the movie. One such theory is that a “shadow man” is dedicated to ruining Blart’s life, in a narrative they’ve created with an almost Lovecraftian sense that some dark and unknowable force is dedicated to destroying the man
Somehow, the hosts’ discussion turns the movie from crappy comedy to existential horror populated by a ghost boy, an evil peacock, a Vegas-based Black Lodge and an evil Ocean’s Eleven team bent on stealing Van Gogh paintings from the Wynn in Vegas.
The third episode released on Thursday, this Thanksgiving, and Griffin took the time to sync the movie with Pink Floyd’s seminal “Dark Side of the Moon,” with some very funny results.
While I have watched the movie now for two years in a row and followed it up by listening to the podcast, it is absolutely not necessary, nor is it something I would endorse to another living human being. That being said, it does make for a highly enjoyable experience mixed with the podcast.
I recommend checking out the podcast, or even considering it next Thanksgiving.