God Awful Movies - 569: Mobsters and Mormons

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

This week, Dan Beecher of Data Over Dogma and Thank God I'm Atheist joins us to keep Mormon Movie Month rolling along with an hour and forty-five minutes of uninterrupted stereotypes -- I'm talking about the movie, not Dan's commentary.Hear more from Dan on Thank God I’m Atheist and Data Over DogmaIf you’d like to make a per episode donation and get monthly bonus episodes, please check us out on Patreon: http://patreon.com/godawfulCheck out our other shows, The Scathing Atheist, The Skepticrat, Citation Needed, and D&D Minus.Our theme music is written and performed by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Giraffes on Mars. If you’d like to hear more, check out their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EvilGiraffesOnMars/Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/

So now we're going to check in at prison and see if we can find this movie, a plot. No, we can't. No, we can't. Hensi 3 meets with the boss, but all they do is, he goes, hey, you know, what about that thing? And he goes, don't worry, boss, we're going to kill Carmine real good when we find him. Hey, why would I say that thing? And then I say that thing for everything. And then you have to respond in equally vague.

And he's like, do you mean the murder? We're going to do the murder thing. Hold on. Is somebody on this line? Hang up. Yeah, we're doing the murder. Awful movie. Welcome back to the Gamcast,

where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema because apparently we can't help it. I'm your host, No Illusions, and sitting 700 miles to my immediate left as my good friend Heath and right. Heath, welcome back. Mormon Movie Month. Let's do it. Yes, moving into week two, Eli is taking the weekend off to complain about never getting time off, but in his stead, we're excited to welcome back, the co-host of Data Over Dogma,

and thank God I'm atheist, as well as a Mormon movie movie Month OG Dan Beecher. Dan, welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Your Mormon Sherpa for the day. Yes, exactly. And holy shit, well, we need one again this week. That's what we say for Mormon movie month. Yeah. I mean, well, what's fun is that this week, you two who have lived in New York

can be like the Sherpa on the other side of the mountain and we'll meet in the middle. Yeah, sure. New York, Philly. Yeah, we'll tell you all about accurate Italian American culture. Yes. Yes, exactly. Which this movie has in space. Oh, absolutely. Very exciting. Right. So tell us, Heath, what will we be breaking down today? We watched mobsters and Mormons. It's the story of accidentally showing how Mormons run Utah the same way the mafia runs their thing. They're trying to do a contrast, but they don't realize they're doing a comparison.

You're right. Oh, believe me, they don't even realize you don't even realize how. how true that is. That's something I've been saying for a long time. And we can explore it as we go through. But literally, you show, listen, you show up at a Mormon wardhouse and you say, like, you know, within the first five minutes, you say something like, hey, I need a plumber. I got a leak of the thing. By the end of church, you will have three numbers and like, I got a guy is a thing. Yeah. The mosanostra. There you go. And Dan, how bad was this movie? Well, if you low, all the fun mafia lingo from the Sopranos, but you wish

there was way too much of it, and it was just jammed into the dialogue at random intervals and spoken by people who put ketchup on their spaghetti because Ragu is too spicy. You will love this movie. Guaranteed.

It's nice fellas. Oh, well done, sir. I was going to go with the Heavenly Father Father, but I thought that was a little too esoteric. I like it. I like it. But yeah, nice fellas is a fucking winner. So there's anything you want to nominate this one for being the best, it being the worst at?

Well, I have two, if you will indulge me. The first one is just best, worst, I know everybody in this movie. Really? As someone who is an actor in the Salt Lake area for many, many years, I focused on stage work, so I didn't do a lot of film work. But I know so many people in this movie, including one of my first acting teachers. So I'll be able to sort of supply, some interesting sort of behind the scenes inside baseball if that comes up.

About all the acting choices they make in this movie as actors. I cannot explain those. I'm afraid that is beyond my ken, but I will at least tell you like some things about the people. Yeah, they're mostly very nice. I will say that. But my other best worst, if you'll indulge me because this is a bit long, but it's best worst cast IMDB entries because. Almost every person that I ended up looking up who had more than three credits had the most insane, like, whiplash-inducing credits list.

And it was all in the same basic proportions. It was 30% Gam Mormon movie months. 30% Hallmark Christmas specials because Hallmark films a lot of stuff here. Yeah. 30% walk-on rolls in legit Hollywood stuff. And then 10% maybe. be porn? It's the weirdest.

Brother James, for example, I'm just going to run through a couple of these. I'm sorry that this takes up time, but it's so good. Brother James, who ends up being the bishop at the end of this thing. Oh, wow, spoiler alert. I'm so sorry, you guys. It ruined the whole movie. Right, exactly.

He had such turns in Gam classics as last week's, the RM, the singles ward, and the best. two years. You'll remember all of those. His hallmark titles include, and I promise you, all of this is true. Christmas Wonderland, Christmas made to order, matchmaker Christmas, Christmas hotel, a cozy Christmas inn, and a journey to Christmas. I made none of that up. Okay, seriously, if you graph like actor skill and the word Christmas in their I and D. Right. Yes. Yes. I think you've hit on something. That's interesting.

I think you've hit on something. Like the milk toast quotient goes like skyrocketing. He has done some Hollywood entries, including NCIS and a two-episode arc on NCIS Los Angeles, netting him a spot on the coveted IMDB list. Again, I'm not making this up. Actors who have appeared in two out of three NCIS shows. Of which he is one of two of the, our cast members who made that list.

Really? Just so that you know. Wow. And then he was also in my modern family and the Christian Bale movie, Vice. And then he has titles like Smoker and the Ten Virgins. Interesting. I don't know what those are. The one I'm going to get to really quickly.

I'm sorry. I know this is taking too long. But Sister Means, our gossiping sister means, she was on a bunch of gam movies, including passage to Sarah Hemla, Book of Mormon movie. She was on Hallmark Christmas movies galore. She was in Iron Man 3. I don't know how that happened. And then a film called Dick Dixter.

Okay. Now that's a different type of relationship on IMDB. If you have Dixter on a lot of your entries, I feel like that's a different relationship. Yeah. I don't know. Amazing. You can have a lot of fun on IMDB with these Mormon movies. That's all I'm saying.

That you can. Yeah. So I was going to go with Best Worst Leading Extra. So the main character of this movie is heavy number two. two in any real movie, but they wheel him into fucking Salt Lake City and they're like, he's Matt El Pacino, you know, and suddenly he's a leading man.

And the guy has the acting chops to really crush heavy number two, right? But they've just said, oh, well, you know, he can do emotionally, he can do comedy, he can really do it all. He can't. Listen, I don't know if we're, we were watching the same movie,

but in this context, he was fucking, he was Pacino. But by comparison, To those around him, he was exactly what this movie needed. And when I was looking for good acting, he was the guy I was going to. All right. Any Italian American goes to Utah and they sound like, hua, all the time. It's like everything they say in relative terms.

Yeah. So I was going to go with best worst FBI map and really just best worst FBI. The FBI organized crime unit is in this. Every decision they make is truly insane. Yeah. But in particular, they have a map on the wall in one scene with yarn and pushpins. And it seems to be showing, like, where the mafia is. Apparently, there's big mafia hubs in Iowa, Nebraska, and of course, Utah.

Well, yeah. Yeah. No kidding. The part that confused me most was, why the yarn? It's all the mafia. Like, you just need to put yarn between every person. push pin. It's all one thing. That's nothing. But you have a specific lines.

What I saw in that map was all of these pushpins are where they've put someone in witness protection. So all a mafioso has to do is take one picture of that map and then all the everybody's covers blown. Should we have an answer key that's very large

and on the wall? And hanging on the wall. Of our witness protection. Should we be worried that you can see this through the window outside? No, it's fine. It's right. Right. All right. Well, I'll tell you what, we've got a lot of casual bigot our way around on this one. So we're going to take a quick second to plot our route, but we're back in a flash with all the stereotypes that are mobsters and Mormons.

All right, everyone. Welcome to the writer's room for mobsters and Mormons. Get excited. Yeah. All right. So here's the basic idea. This mafia guy from Philly is going to end up moving to Utah with his family. Oh, you're done. Oh, okay. Cool. So it's like a culture clash thing. Yeah, kind of like crocodile Dundee, but with the mob instead of crocodile. Exactly.

Exactly. Okay. So let's brainstorm some stuff to focus on. So just like, you know, shout them out. Okay. Money laundering and tax evasion. Taking a cut from everyone's income. Yeah, yeah.

But safe communities for their own people. Yeah, no, that's true. They really are. Also, loan sharking? Yeah, big credit operation with huge interest. Yeah, yeah, yeah, way worse than like Visa or MasterCard. Let me tell you. So much worse.

Lots of, also lots of homophobia and racism. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But a little cooperation with the black community in the 70s. Good point. That was nice. Yeah, yeah. That was nice.

Okay, anything else? Long history of bloody conflict everywhere they go as they spread from New York across the country. Okay. Perfect. Yeah, great stuff. You know what? Let's take an early lunch. we'll come back and we'll come up with some,

some mafia stuff to make the contrast. Yeah. Hey, dirty soda shop. Nice. Liquid lunch, am I right? You're in the biz. Show biz. Raw.

Oh, biz. Hey, Noah. What's with the beach umbrella, picnic basket, golf clubs, and skateboard? Well, Heath, summer's almost over and I'm trying to make the most out of it. By playing wind-powered skate golf while eating sandwiches because I am in. You know I'm in for that. No, that does sound fun though. No, but I'm just trying to squeeze in as much different summer freedom as I can before it's too

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Up front payment of $45 for three month, $90 for six month, or $180 for 12-month plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only, greater than than $4. 50 gigabytes may slow when it is busy, includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. All right. That's awesome. I'm a little behind of my 230 lack of digital stone skipping, but I'll get to it right after that. You're bad at relaxing. Yeah. What's your secret, man? What do you do to relax? Nothing. It's brilliant. And we're back for the breakdown and we're going to open up on the city lights of

Philadelphia, the city you think of when you think of the mob. I love that the two title cards that come up for the production companies are Halestorm, who produced like half of Mormon Movie Month. Yeah. And South Jersey Productions? Yeah. I call bullshit. Some BYU grad named Brantley thought it would be cool to name his company that,

even though he's never been east of Denver. Pork roll productions? Nah. So then we eventually resolve on a couple of Apple look. We basically resolve on Carl the Pug of Peggocorn complaining about his coffee, right? Oh, yes. Smash cut straight to sin. We get a coffee cup. Yeah, I do want to point out that that, that that opening where they're just, they just do this sort of cool jazz and city flyover, it proves that 2005 Mormons have caught up with the trends of 1980s Meg Ryan Romcoms.

Yes, congratulations to them. They're all the way up to the 80s by 2005. They've come a long way, baby. Yeah, they're all probably up to 2005 now. Yeah. Also, the one name I noticed in the credits, Britney Bateman from Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Dan, do you know her? She's one of the ones I do not know, alas. Yeah. And of course, if you've been listening along for all of Mormon movie month, yes, that is the same Real Housewife of Salt Lake that we had on last week's episode as well. So, yeah, so the gangsters are all gangstering. And the gangstering they have to do is they've got a rat that they've got to take care of who's like in the bathroom where they drag him out to beat his ass they pull him out from under the stall like they grab his I was like are they going to rape the

groom at this wedding I literally had no idea what was happening this was a crazy choice like like if you're gonna I wanted to see the reality of pulling somebody out mid shit from under there's a smear and now there's now there's mommy guys just being like ah all right I guess I I don't want to make a janitor and wipe his ass or something. Somebody has to clean it up. Yeah. Okay. We all have to smell this.

Are you still going? Go get Rocco. Somebody's got to clean this guy. So, yeah. But apparently when they did the jewelry heist, this guy lifted a couple of necklaces for it. So they're going to rough him up a little bit. Now they've got to go get the necklaces, but they've got nothing to tie him up with. What a hilarious comedy premise.

Well, and we start the racism really early here because he's like, they're like, where did you stash him? And he starts with saying, I got a buddy. He owns a Hajimart. Yeah. That's going to come back in a hilarious and horrifying way. That's going to be way less racist than the thing that's going to happen when we see it. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. So, and then the main character is one of these gangsters. His name is Carmine, but later his name will be George. So, you know, keep up. But Carmine goes to see the boss.

And the boss, this is like mid job, right? Mid them dragging the sky out. He goes to see the boss. And the boss is like, hey, I'm. I'm promoting somebody else over top of you in case you ever need a reason to screw me over. Yeah, a lot of fun. And this is, by the way, where we start with,

where we really launch in with packing in as much gumba slang as we can possibly get in. Absolutely. But nobody's doing it right at all. Like, except our main guy, I feel like he gets it kind of right. But, like, he's one of two real Italian humans in this entire movie. Right. And so, like, everybody's saying, like, not for nothing this.

And, wow. It never plays. It never actually lands right. No. So, okay, so Carmine gets done talking to the boss. He goes back and damn it, if his wacky henchmen haven't mummified this guy with duct tape. Think about how many fucking ways, like, they don't have anything to time. Think about how many funny fucking things that you could tie this guy up with and they ended up with duct tape.

Jesus fucking price, people. Although I will say the little bit where they're like, no, he can hop, hop. You know, that bit worked, I guess. high fives all around guys come on the visual thing that's good people are gonna laugh i don't know Mormons are so fucking nice that i always feel the need to like let them though in their movies

where they get it right i always feel the need to go like but this part actually was funny Mormon's fair they had one or two they had a couple yeah we'll put the duct tape thing on the fridge for like a week so now the gangsters are leaving but as they're loading this guy into the trunk

some FBI agents are surreptitiously snapping pictures of it Yeah, Fed's taking picks from 100 yards away with a 50 millimeter lens. Yeah. That's making like the big cloud of smoke and like, pf. Yeah. It's so obvious. Hold it.

Click. Yep. Yep. But the gangsters get to the store and then we racism while we're there. Oh, my God. White guy dressed as Yasser Arafat. Like, come on. Take that target dish towel off, Kyle.

You're embarrassing yourself. Oh, my God. And then there's the black guy who owns the store. who is so much worse at acting than the rest of the cast. I thought maybe he was like a famous Mormon or something. Like this was a cameo? I think it's just the only black guy

they could find. They were just thrilled that they could find a black. They have lots of Lamanite friend, Dan. Yeah. And this is it. Yeah, as we'll find out, they're all tonging. And he speaks only in shouting for his two lines of shouting. It's fucking nuts.

But they do get the necklaces back. and just as they do, the cops show up. Yeah. So they take Carmine downtown and they put him under the lights. Yeah. This is one of the first, oh, that's my friend. The guy that's wildly overacting as agent number two or whatever. Oh, sure.

That's a guy that I know. I've known him for a long time. And I regret to inform you, this is him being subtle and pulled back. Is he? Okay. Yikes. So, yeah. they have their back and forth here.

And what we have to get to, of course, is eventually we need Carmine to be in witness protection. So this is the scene where they finagle out his willingness to rat out his gang. Right. So he's going to testify against them. He's going to go in witness protection. And then we cut to the news like telling us this all post fact. I laughed at this.

So amazing. We see the news and it was like, Angelo Marcello got ratted out, big trouble. And then they're like, Carmine the beans, Pasqualee, here he is. He's the rat. Here's a picture of him. Here's his fingerprint. He's in witness protection. Well, he will be when we're done showing this picture.

It does feel like that does. That undermines the witness protection scheme. A little bit. A little bit. Here's Carmine naked with all of his tattoos. Carmine's get around for us. We're sending him to Salt Lake City in case anybody needs to know. Right, right. if you want to send him a letter. So we cut to Carmine with his wife and his teenage son. And we have to have just, like every time we see this family,

we have to have them yell at each other constantly because they're not Mormon. And that's how non-Mormons are. Their entire script is, oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

And I have to say that my friend Jeanette, who played his wife, for a. very not Italian woman did an okay job of being an Italian wife. I thought I was proud. If she's an SLC native, I never guessed. At no point in the movie

did I think, see, I mean, other than the fact that she could pronounce exactly zero of the Italian words that they kept having to put in. Yeah. Maybe she went method and moved to Pennsylvania. I'm just saying Consigliary does not have that many syllables.

No, it's okay. You got to relax out the syllables, y'all. So, okay. So then the FBI agent comes in and they've got their new names, right? They're going to be George and Linda Cheesman and the son is Patrick. Right. And they're all thrilled about it. Yeah.

Well, they try to do some humor with nobody liking their names, but all they really do is a weird bit of homophobia when the kid doesn't like Pat because it, quote, goes both ways. Yeah. Yeah, they often aim very clearly at a joke and then manage to miss and only hit some sort of bigotry. So that's a theme throughout the film. It's like bigoted jokes without the jokes. Yeah. And the FBI guy is like, no, you can't, you're cheeseman.

You can't change. We already printed the name tags and everything. You're fucking cheap. We put it on the news that you're cheesman. Shit. Right. Yeah. Oh, damn it.

Okay. Now you can. You send them. And they're like, well, so where do you? where are you sending us? And then we cut to a scene that like, I guess we're supposed to just recognize as Utah. Right.

They don't like do SLC International or anything like that. It's just like somehow you can smell it. You're in the Jet Blue Terminal. You know what's going on. This is a Delta Hub motherfucker. We're rolling deep. Are you all cool with that with not supporting your native Mormon Jet Blue company?

Yeah. We had a couple actually. but they've been, the other ones have been sucked up by other airlines. Oh, okay, but Delta partnered with Amex and Amex is a Mormon company, big one. So like, okay, I'll allow it. There you go. So, okay. So they also, they meet their handler, I guess.

I have him down as special agent Mormon the entire time. Yep. He's just the Mormon FBI agent that's going to get him settled. And they literally went hard on the most boring person they could possibly find on this one. I'm not sure like me. I feel like they were attempting a bunch of different things with this character, including a bit. They thought they were doing a bit where he just always explains Mormonism and over explains it to people who don't care.

And instead, they just were very obviously trying to squeeze in a bunch of explanations about Mormonism. And they forgot that there was, they forgot to make it a bit. They forgot to make it funny. Yes. No, they have him settle like three shower arguments that they think they win in their heads against people who ask about Mormon stuff. Exactly. Well, and the humor that they're trying to get out of this guy is like he's very understated. So they like make a bunch of polygamy jokes when he shows up.

And the joke is supposed to be that he just like, he's like, oh, actually, no, the Mormon church no longer practices polygamy. And he just takes it really seriously. But the end result of the joke being that he's humorless is that the scene is humorless. Yeah, yeah. they literally do not know how to film a humor. A movie? They have not quite sorted out. They can point cameras at things,

but they haven't sorted out how to make a funny. Yeah, because there's like a couple of times when the movie's funny, but even then they'll like have someone shit on the joke and end the scene too late or something. Yeah. Yeah.

In this scene, they try to make a joke where it's like, the setup of the scene is, you know, hey, do you do you do polygative? And then, no, I don't do polygamy. And then the punchline is beans, Carmine, George, whatever his name is,

saying, polygamy, I, 12 wives, I can't even handle one or whatever. Like, that's his punchline. Yeah, that's the joke. But, like, in the middle of this setup and punchline, they throw in this, well, actually, polygamy is not something that is practiced by the current Mormon church.

And in the history of the church, it was practiced. But now it's not, like, And he's like, I got a fucking punchline here. Yeah, exactly. They're like, they just kill everything that they try. It's sad. Guys, we got to go straight to Andrew Dice Clay, Don Rickles, or else this scene's going to be stupid and annoying.

So, oh. There it is. At this point, I wrote my notes. So we cut to a Mormon temple and then Dan went through and furiously scratched out temple and added the words, these are just called churches or boardhouses. I was trying to save you the embarrassment. Our temples are actually really impressive. This is just like a normal house.

This is just a normal church, you guys. So don't get it wrong. Obviously, I would hate for you to. We have so much gold. Sorry. They do. Like the downtown Salt Lake Temple is like Smog's K. It is. It really is.

You guys should come. Next year in the springtime, for most of 2027, you can tour the downtown Salt Lake Mormon temple. Oh, wow. You might want to think about another tour stop here in Salt Lake. Fuck yeah, man. Some intel. So, okay, so we cut to this

Mormon church and they're singing Mormon hymns, which is the worst of all the utterances. Oh, my God, you guys, they chose their best hymn. They chose the list. Really, this is the good one. This is the upbeatest that they get. The lyric for real is literally

happy are we, happy are we? And it still sounds like a funeral dirge. It does. How did they do that? It's pretty amazing. So, and then this is actually the plot of the movie and it's so stupid that I missed it, right? But as they're singing to him, Bishop Harrison gets a page, right? Because it's 2005. He gets a page. He's got a family emergency. And now Brother Michael is going to have to take over for Bishop Harrison. And the plot of the

fucking movie is that brother Michael's not so sure about that. Well, geez, shucks, that's going to be a lot of responsibility. What if the microphone's not at the right height when he comes up to the booty? Well, That's four goddamn minutes of humor. That's what that. They shall. I will say that this is, this is, this is, it is a Mormon deep cut because all the Mormon wards had these pulpits that raise and lower. And there is a little control panel that the bishop has access to.

Okay. So the bishop just suddenly, like every time a new speaker gets up to the pulpit, it just goes, it's so, okay. This is a real thing. That's a real thing. Like yanking it, yanking the malfunctioning pulpit off of its hinges and slamming a guy in the face isn't real. Right. But that pulpit lots, like they were going for something that was like actually a real thing.

That's such an insane thing. That means they have like, there must have been a meeting at some point where somebody was like, hey, we can get just a mic that adjusts. And then like the ward boss was like, we're levitating the floor. I don't know what you just said. We all have to have a floor levitation, very expensive system. It's, uh, believe me, I used to love going, when I went to church, I would go up after meetings. When everybody had left, it would be like, I want to have the button. Will the button work now?

Yeah. Right. But they, they try to do their comedy bit. And yeah, like you said, the guy gets smashed in the face because it gets pulled out. Right. But it never works as a comedy bit. It's only plays as like a tragedy. Like, I don't know.

Show the broken nose and like, like, commit to your comedy. Right. Like, how that guy get hurt over and over again in the movie or something. Or just like have somebody do the sermon while he's like right there being like, oh, my fucking no. You are like, heart and blood. Oh. Don't look. Yeah.

Any of these are good options for a comedy, but they forgot. Yeah. No humor in this. I forgot about that part. So, okay. So then we get Bish, uh, Brother Mormon. Brother Michael, that's it, getting home. And he's just sure nervous about stepping in for the bishop while he's away.

So this is where we meet the love interest from last week's movie, Brittany Bateman. She is Kate in this film. Sister pregnant. She is. And it's great. They did get, I mean, obviously they shot it here, but they definitely got Mormon neighborhood correct. You got foothills, tracked homes, minivans. And the kids just pour out of that minivan.

Dan, like it's a clown car. So, and then we also are introduced to the gossipy neighbor, the nosy neighbor lady. This is Louise. She's one of the IMDB credits that we got from Dan to open things up. And she's heard about this new family moving in to the neighborhood. And she's got to get the goss on that, right? Did you guys zoom in on the foresale sign? They noticed that the foresale sign had a soul.

on it and it would be easy to miss it, but I happened to pause to write something right while it was on the screen. It's kind of amazing. First, the sold sticker is very, very obviously just handwritten on white gaffers tape. They just found, you know, the teamster on set with the best handwriting. Well, you just put a red dot on it with like a little sticker, like a gallery. And the sign was clearly just from a real realtors. for sale sign, but they couldn't leave the name Prudential on there.

So they got a marker and like changed the letters. So it said Brudemiel. Jesus Christ. Lazy fuck. Why would you just make it into like prudent? Yeah. It would you do like a complicated version. Yeah.

It's amazing. So we cut to the family, the witness protection family, George, Linda and Patrick all moving in. And George is disappointed because the house. sucks and he's awful. Yeah. He's like, it's funny because the gag for this is supposed to be he's

really rough around the edges and very like, you know, in your face and and, and mean sometimes, but it's like that East Coast playful kind of mean where it's actually humor or whatever. And they never hit. He's just an asshole. He's the whole time. Up until like

a third of the way through Act 3 at which case, at which point he, the movie is just like, now you like him. And I'm like, no, I don't. He's a fucking asshole. Why did you? Yes, you do. Yes, he's going to paintball.

Fuck you. Yeah, he played paintball with his kid. He's good now. So I will, I'm leaning his way on this. Right. He's at his house and he looks outside and a bunch of Mormons just decide to start picking his stuff up and moving it into his house for him. So he goes and he punches him in the fucking face for grabbing his shit, which I would do too.

Like, honestly, even if you're just trying to help me unload it, if you start grabbing boxes of my property without me like specifically knowing about it. Yeah, I'm going to punch you in the fucking face. I wanted one of the Mormons to get a big box of dildos and sex toys and shit. Go, oh, no. People are going to grab shit wrong. They're going to like grab the table by the thing that makes it loose. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't just grab people's stuff. That's not cool. I do like the moment when somebody made a joke to the Mormon g-man about, you know, being Amish. And he had this moment where he was like, those guys are weirdos. It was cute. Yeah.

So, okay, so sometime later, nosy neighbor lady is bringing a plate of cookies. George is eating cereal off the coffee table like a fucking savage or or heath, like a savage or heath. Okay. I enjoyed what he was doing there. Yes. He's got his bowl of cereal. He's got the gallon of milk right there on the table and a container of chocolate syrup right there on the table. So that's good stuff.

But you got to bring the cereal. box to your spot too if you're going to do that. What are you going to just reload more milk onto your existing cereal? That's crazy. No, you pour just the right amount of cereal and milk and jog the syrup and then you eat and then go next. Yeah, exactly. Stupid. So yeah, but and then George is like, I do love George in this moment as very like, eh, fuck Mormonism, right? And, and nosy neighbor lady gasps upon realizing that they're not Mormons. And so I guess what we're supposed to be seeing here is that she's the bad Mormon. And now we're going to get the good Mormons. Brother Michael and Kate are going to come over that night and be like

how Mormons should be upon meeting Normans. I don't know what you call him. Okay. Yeah. So nosy neighbor is supposed to be like a bad character, but she's nailing. She's the only one in the community who's doing the like shitty, but she's right this time thing of like, I don't know if like this guy seems like a murderer. And he is. She's right this time. Let's keep our eye on this one. And this is the part where they offer the couple of drink. Uh-oh. What wacky hijinks will ensue now. Surely they won't try to serve them alcohol

because we've already established that they know all the stereotypes about Mormons. Right. Like he has been non-stop stereotyping Mormons. Surely he's not going to offer them a beer, right? And then a coffee and then a Coca-Cola. Which then they turn around and they're like, you know, oh, we don't drink beer. Oh, we don't drink coffee.

and then they go, we don't drink cold drinks. Oh, I think they said cola drink. Yeah, I think it was cold drinks. Dan's like, God damn it, they're getting worse. No Mormon in the world has ever said either. They don't say cola drinks either. You know, it's just like he offered them a Coke and a Diet Coke. They could just say, we don't drink caffeine.

It's fine. Yes. Okay, but that's honestly not out of the question. If you told me that like, oh yeah, Mormonism requires tepid drinks only. I will say this, carbonation is pretty exciting. Yeah, right. Well, yeah, but that's the other thing, too, is that their answer is just bat shit fucking crazy. Right?

They don't say, oh, we don't drink caffeine. Kate goes, while some people within our community do choose to drink cola drinks, we have opted not to. And it's like, why the fuck, can't you just talk like a human would talk? Yeah. So, and we also, we haven't established this, but Patrick, the son is very upset that the house doesn't have a satellite dish because he needs his fucking HBO. So then we get the scene where he's like, he's going to go steal the satellite dish off of another house because that's going to get you HBO. He knocks on a neighbor's door out of the blue and says, hey, do you know the house across the street with all the expensive stuff?

Would you mind telling me a shifty teenage stranger that family's daily schedule and pin codes? When will they be home? May I borrow your ladder? Also, do you have roof tools? Yes. He literally says that. Yeah, he goes, do you have a ladder and power tools? Yeah, I guess they think that's a punchline or something. Hilarious. And then, so right after we meet him, we have to meet, or see him, rather, we have to meet his love interest, right?

The girl next door. Now, for some reason, they've chosen to make this girl the sister of brother Michael, despite the fact that she's approximately the age that, like, his oldest daughter could have been. Yeah. I was so, I didn't realize that she was his sister for two-thirds of the way into the fucking Many, many scenes. Because everyone, the other thing is that everyone in this movie mumbles everything. And I hadn't turned, I hadn't turned the closed captions on yet.

So I didn't catch a third of what was being said here. This was such a strange choice. Yeah. So we have like Aunt Julie, who's like 15 years old and the aunt of the kids in the house because her brother, Michael, is the dad in the house. And we also get a really quick thing. I guess it's a Mormon detail, but it's not a good one. She's like, yeah.

So my parents abandoned me while I'm. a teenager and they live in Philippines now because they're doing some missionary bullshit. Which isn't a Mormon thing. That never like what they do is they send old couples whose kids have all left the nest and they they've started fighting with each other and they hate each other now. They send them off to be mission presidents in far away lands just to get them out of the ward. Just to just you know what I mean. And so like no, if they have a teenage daughter, they wouldn't have sent.

But for some reason, they've just, it is amazing how many times this movie doesn't do Mormonism right. Really? Well, they don't do anything else, right? So, yeah, I guess I don't know why I should expect them to nail that shit. It's about appreciating Italian-American culture. Oh, I guess this is what the movie's really bad. So then we got Michael and Kate going to bed and talking about how they need to do more to Mormonize the neighbors and the wife is talking about how bad the sister, the kid, the daughter,

not daughter's sister that we just met was and she can hear her through the one, it doesn't fucking matter. None of this goddamn fucking matters. Here's what you guys wouldn't have been tuned into in this scene. There's a problem showing Mormons going to bed, which is that they can't show like garments, which most Mormons sleep in their garments, their underwear,

and women don't wear bras to sleep. So like if she's just in a thing, like, so what their solution was, I don't know if you noticed it, she was wearing 12 layers to bed. She was wearing literally a shirt over a long sleeve thing. And it was down basically. Could I be wearing any more clothes?

Remember friends? Yeah, yeah, that was good. But it was literally like, nope, we can still see dimples. Throw another layer on. Yeah, right, right. And he's wearing a t-shirt with buttons on it and full athletic warmups. I would have to be, I would have to set my AC to 20 to wear what they wore to bed. God, it's being,

Being a Mormon seems so fucking uncomfortable. But yeah, but they decide that they're going to invite the new neighbors over tomorrow and try to help them fit in. Despite them repeatedly making it clear they want to be left alone. Yes, exactly, exactly. And Kate ends the scene by saying the cheesemans will fit in fine, given the predictability of this fucking movie. That means the next scene is going to be them not fitting in fine. So before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break, but we're back in a minute with even more mobsters and Mormons. All right, guys, welcome to the second writers were meeting for mobsters and Mormons.

Ray or whatever. Azzar. Cool. Guys, guys, I hear the vibes. I know it's been a tough slog here. But when I pitched this idea to the members of my war, they all said the jokes would just write themselves. And that's a direct quote from the mission president. Yeah, I'm starting to think, man, that that's just an expression.

I think? I think so, yeah. Biddle sticks. Language. Sorry. Don't apologize to us. I'm sorry. Jesus Christ.

So what are we going to do? I mean, guess we could just do the movie without jokes. It's a comedy movie. You're suggesting we put out a comedy movie with no jokes in it? Yeah, I feel like the audience is gonna notice. Counterpoint.

The audience is Mormon. That's a really good point. Oh, yeah. We're not even allowed to have senses of humor. And we're back for still more of this shit. We're gonna rejoin the action with George leaving his house and his boxers like they do in Philly. Just a very common thing that everyone back east does. Yeah, I think the movie thinks that non-Mormans are all like just mostly naked and fucking most of the time.

I think so. Yeah. paper, whatever. As evidenced by him in snow boots, a parka and his boxers. Yeah. And the first thing he says to this, well, he goes to steal his neighbor's newspaper,

gets caught. And then just, you know, like when you're stealing something from somebody and you get caught, you just strike up a conversation. Yeah, just from making fun of him and his religion. Yeah. And tell him that you want to fuck his wife. That's always fun. Yeah.

So then we get him. He's loading up on gas station coffee, and I wrote my notes. I bet he doesn't care for it. They've made a big thing about how he's a coffee snob. Yeah, that was supposed to be a huge, like, oh, the culture clash. The Mormons don't know the coffee. But they really didn't play it well for that at all. No, because this is basically where it starts and ends.

Yeah. Right? Because he tries the gas station coffee and he's like, oh, this is awful. And I'm like, if you're a fucking coffee snub, you know good and goddamn well, the gas station coffee is going to be bad. Right. The gas station coffee in Philadelphia is amazing. So, you're wrong with this?

And also, the Mormons make shitty coffee gag would work better if he hadn't already just demonstrated that he rejects the coffee of literally everywhere. Yeah. Like the first scene, he rejects the coffee. You're right. Yeah, it's a fancy restaurant. It's a hundred dollars a plate and I can't make a good cup of coffee. And it's like, okay, this guy just doesn't like coffee.

Right. Yeah, clearly. Just slaps the gas station coffee on the counter and then slaps it off the counter. This is nothing like the wah-wah. Fuck you. Fuck your religion. Oh, this poor cashier, this actor, this guy was a deer in fucking headlights. Is this a friend of yours, Dan, this cashier actor?

Oh, my God. The kid whose eyes are literally three centimeters apart. No, I do not know that kid. Yeah. And then he's like, the coffee's bed. And the kid's like, I don't know about coffee because I'm a Mormon. He goes, well, give me a lottery ticket. And he's like, I don't know about that either because I'm a Mormon.

Right. They can't do anything right. Okay, fair enough, though. Like, that's actually a good thing by accident about Utah, right? Like, they don't do lotteries. That's like a bad thing to do in a state. It's a bad, yeah. So that night, they're going to dinner with brother Michael and Kate, right?

They're going to sister, Kate, I don't know. And on the way over, George is complaining about the lack of gambling options in Utah. Hilarious. They're fighting. And the Mormons don't have the intellectual or the emotional, or the emotional, like acuity to know what to do with people who are arguing on their porch. Right. Yeah.

Well, Morvins don't argue with each other. If only there was a philosophy that says lottery and gambling is dumb and says that black people have souls. If only that existed. Right. And then they do, I guess this is sort of a callback in the minds of these A-Dadey writers,

but like they brought you-who's for everybody. I thought that was sweet. I thought he couldn't figure out what they drink. So he brought something that they could drink. from his culture. I thought that was actually a cute little moment. I'd be excited if people brought U-Hoo to my house. I would be good with coffee and whiskey too, but like,

You-hoo, sure. Yeah. We brought U-Hoo-Hu. You shake it. It was very funny. Yeah. Also, can I just say, they invited other people over too.

So they invite this family over and then they, don't do this. People don't, if you invite me over and you don't warn me that you've also invited other people over, I'm going to be very uncomfortable for the whole night. I'm going to walk in and be like, nope, spin right around. Yep. So I want to make it clear because the people,

the other people they invited were people of color. So I want to make it clear to the audience that that's not why, right? It's just the fact that there's extra people that we weren't expecting. I mean, person of color. Yeah. Well, that's right. The wife was white and all of the children were mysterious than white. Hold on.

I don't know that he's a person of color. He's a person of Tungan. Yeah. And he makes that very clear. Right, right, right. I am not a Lamanite. Carmine, George, whatever, is like, so, black guy, what the fuck are you doing? And the guy's like, I'm actually not black.

I'm Tongan and I was like, what's happening? What is this? Yeah. Is this like a distinction in Utah culture? Well, I mean, Polynesians are different from African Americans. Oh, okay, that much is true. Okay. And also, like, Polynesians are plentiful.

here in Utah. I don't know if you know this, but the Mormon Church made a big play for Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, like all of the, all these Polynesian islands. And they were very successful. Yeah, because they didn't have internet yet. Like, everybody had internet but them. And so the Mormons went there. So there are a lot of Polynesia. That's why, like, the BYU football team is all, every name on the BYU football team ends in Angi or something. You know what I mean? So or young. Yeah. Or young, right. Yeah, well, right.

Okay, so why would a Tongan go to Utah that? To play football, I suppose. Yeah. Well, to be to go to the motherland, you know, to go to the motherland. They literally at one point, we, we do not have time for me to get into all of the, all of the rabbit trails. I want to go down right now. But there was a city, a town that was made for Polynesians out in the middle of the desert. Amazing.

Called that they called Yosepa, which is Hawaiian for Joseph. and it did not have sufficient anything. And it was separate, but it was equal. That's literally it. It was like, we don't want the browns coming and mixing with us. So you guys go all the way out there. And they went, so they went from paradise to the literal desert. It was a lot of people died.

Anyway. Oh, wow. Okay. Well, thanks for injecting that at the end of our comedy. A lot of fun. A lot of fun. Thanks. So then George makes fun of fat people for a while.

you know, we have some, we have some fat jokes. And then after dinner, everybody moves into the living room to check out Kate's scrapbooks, guys. I hope you can handle that excitement. Hey, quit the dinner party. Oh my God. I would have walked around and said, nope, because you had the extra people you didn't tell me about. And then you're like, hey, photo album time.

Nope. Absolutely not. Like, I don't even know you. Can you imagine trying to, like somebody's showing you their fucking, like, you don't even know them and they're showing you their fucking scrapbook? Why would I care about any of this? I don't feel like you guys are really picturing how scalloped the edges of each of these photographs is. I think you really have to get a sense of the vast, like, array of pinking shears that are available to these people.

Okay. The scrapbooking artistry that is a factor. As we will learn, there's an entire industry that has grown up around this. And it is apparently just printing money. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, hey, look, when you can't do anything fun, you have to do some damn thing. Yeah. So, although I will say this scene was somewhat safe, this is the one where Linda tries to say consignary. Well, she tries to say consulieri, which is how an Italian person might say that word. But she says, Oh, they say we're counselors to the bishop. Because, you know, Brother Michael and Brother Tongan are counselor, our first and second counselor in the first and second counselor in the Bishop Rick. And she goes, oh, like a consigliari. And I was like, okay, you've added way too many

syllables. The YouTube closed captions weren't even going to try for that one, man. So yeah, and then we cut upstairs where Patrick is in, what was the girl's name, Julie? Julie. I never figured that out. Julie, the 15 year old. I learned that when Heath said it. Yeah. But yeah, so, but Patrick and Julie are hanging out. In her bedroom? In her bedroom. Excuse me. I expected her brother to walk in and say, you kids better not be soaking in here. Yeah, right, right. No, it's funny because I wrote my notes.

I'm like, are Mormons okay with that? And then Michael comes in and he's like, no, Noah, we are not okay with this. She's going to get a very stern, gentle correction. Yes, yeah. But yeah, so the dad kicks him out and Patrick is very respectful because he's actually digging this whole Mormon thing, right?

They're having a good influence on him. Hey, bro, can you jump on this bed real quick? It didn't make sense. Two of us. So really it was just me jumping on the bed and him laying there. I don't know. So then we all had downstairs

to eat cake and be boring together. And this is a weird moment too where like Brother Michael says, so Patrick, are you going to go out for any sports? And Patrick is like, sports?

What are these sports of which you speak? Yeah. It's like you've never heard of anything. Like they don't have sports in fucking Philly? They made, he literally made him list sports. Yes. Like what?

What sports? He's like, well, baseball, for example. Well, here's the thing in the Italian-American community on the East Coast, especially, like, we assume that Mormons have special Mormon sports. Like, you know, Mormon wrestling, but it's different than wrestling. Yeah, right. It's like soaking.

Somebody jumps on the map beside you as you do it. But they correct that for us, so that's good. Yes. I'm Italian-American, apparently, right now. Yeah. So, and then all the kids come in and they want George to read them a story because that's a, great comic premise. An Italian guy reading a story?

Yeah. And here's the thing. He does a good job. He's a good story. He's very engaging. He ditches, he ditches the book. He's like, I know the story of the three pigs. I can do this by myself. He throws it. And then he's really fun and engaging and tells a story. And it lasts like, you know, 20 times longer than it should have.

Sure. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, this. This is instigated by the fact that five to ten children, I couldn't tell how many, come instantly running up to him. They've never met him before in their lives, yelling, Brother Cheesman, brother Cheesman, read us a story. And they all just plop down at his feet with no invitation. Well, and it's almost just though the kids are like,

this is a good comedy premise. Yeah, yeah, literally. That's the weirdest thing ever. He does the story. and then, you know, it's his bit where he gets wildly inappropriate and he starts talking about how, and then, you know, the last pig calls up his buddies and a big Cadillac shows up and out to jump his buddies, these other pigs, and they,

boom, they blow the head off of the wolf and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I have to admit, I like this punchline. The punchline was pretty good. I like this punchline. Who were those guys? Oh, they were my cousins, the guinea pigs. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty soft. A little racist, but like mild racism in the context.

It's a lot. Compared to what we've gotten. It's his word. And the kids are like, yay, you're allowed to say that. That's great. Yeah. But yeah, so the big bad wolf is running a protection racket. And so before the murder part happens in his story, the Mormons are on board with the story he's telling.

They're like, they hear him say like, you know, sure, we'll be unfortunate if something happens to that straw house. The Mormons are like, yeah, we got to do that for tithing. Yes, right, yeah. Right, no, this is just like us. But the thing about this is that, yeah, we spend five goddamn minutes with him telling us the story of the Three Little Pigs gangster style. But it fits in no way with the character that we've established that he is up to this point, right? Now, like, it serves the purpose in the story that we're supposed to say, oh, he is a big softy after all, but it matches in nothing at all that we've seen of him. Well, and it's immediately negated by the fact that.

he tells a murder story to children five and under. Right, right, yeah. Before that, he's doing special voices, and he's like, yeah, he's absolutely nailing it. Yeah. So, okay, so now we're going to check in at prison and see if we can find this movie, a plot. No, we can't.

No, we can't. Henshi 3 meets with the boss, but all they do is, he goes, he goes, hey, you know, what about that thing? And he goes, don't worry, boss, we're going to kill Carmine real good when we find him. Hey, why would I say that thing? when I say that thing for everything?

And then you have to respond in equally vague. And he's like, do you mean the murder? We're going to do the murder thing. Hold on. Is somebody on this line? Hang up. Yeah, we're doing the murder. It kind of does ruin the whole coded phrases thing.

And like if there's one thing that we know from mob movies, they're good at coded phrases. They know how to shut the fuck up and not say the thing out loud. Right. But Mormons are writing it and they do not know how to shut the fuck up. those Mormons. So I guess that must be it. So all right. So now we're going to check in on Linda, she's at Catholic Church and the Catholic churches there are so empty.

The Mormons really just don't tolerate other religions very well. The literal nobody else is at the Catholic Church except for Linda and the priest. That gag felt mean spirited. Yes. It felt like ha ha ha fuck you Catholics.

We have all the religion here. Right. It was a very weird thing to do. According to that map with the pushpins in the yarn, there's a bunch of mafia stuff in Utah. I don't understand how there's no Catholic church. It should have been all stool pigeons from the mafia. Right. Yeah, exactly. So then she gets home and by now George has alienated all the neighbors and they closed the door and draw the shades when she gets near. Or they're just bigoted against non-Mormons, which is how it plays.

Yeah. I mean, I think what's great is that they manage to make sure that nobody is, like you cannot walk away. from this movie thinking anyone is cool or good. No. Or nice or anything. They're all just dickheads who don't respect each other's boundaries. They don't like, like there's nobody that comes away clean on this thing.

No. So, okay. So now the neighbor, brother Michael, has gotten Georgia job working at the lumber store. Oh, the Shmome Depot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Shmone Depot. Yeah. So yeah, and he's not working very hard and he's not doing it very well. Yeah, he's not working

at all. He's just standing there drinking coffee and watching while Brother Michael does all of the work. Yeah. And that's hilarious. Right. And the writers of this movie were like, okay,

it's going to be really funny. Because Carmine from Pennsylvania can't cut wood. He's not a Mormon? What's he going to do if he has to cut wood? They won't even work. I don't know how to do this. He'll just hit himself in the face. I don't know what they do,

but they can't cut wood. Yeah. They literally have a customer come up to him and say, hey, can you cut this in half? And he's like, I don't and he's like Have you never used a saw before? And he goes,

Not on wood. Hey! Forget about it. Get it? I murder people and I cut them into pieces and put them in the woods. Get it? Like, you know, the murder and the dismemberment, you know? Yeah.

Get it? So, okay. So then we're back in the neighborhood and nogy neighbor Louise catches up with pregnant wife Kate. Right? And she's like, I saw that. that your fucking sister-in-law who everybody

thinks is your daughter was talking to that cheeseman boy and he's not a Mormon isn't this kind of a Romeo and Juliet type situation? You know, I don't think they can, uh, but Kate puts Louise in her place because she's the good Mormon. Yeah.

Maybe by the end Louise can learn about pluralism from the invasion of Catholic white people. Yeah. Right. Right. Diversity has really hit Salt Lake City hard in this movie. Yeah. So, okay.

So George ramps up his first day at work, but he doesn't want to work 40 hours a week at a full-time job, damn it. Oh, my God, he throws such a goddamn fit. He's sitting in his van going, how do you people do this? Like, what are you talking about? You didn't do anything.

You just stood there and drank coffee all fucking time, man. What are you talking about? I mean, he's not Mormon. Like, good honest work was invented by Mormons. Oh, that's right. The religion founded by Joe Smith. It's actually, they give it to you when they give you the gift of the Holy Ghost. Oh, interesting.

You're baptized, and then they lay hands on your head, and they say, go and do thy work forever. Yeah, then you do some yard work, yeah. But then he sees a scrapbooking store, and he has an idea. So they have this what they're quite certain is a comedy bit, because he's dressed up, right? He's in a suit. In such a good disguise. And a mustache. Yeah.

He's running a scam. It's like he's pretending to be with the scrapbooking union and he's coming around looking for union dues. Yeah. Look, I don't want to get too pedantic about it, but it's a right to work state. No one's fallen for this shit. There's no unions.

There's no unions. Literally she would just, when that swarthy man walked into that store, she's already dialed 9-1. And the second, he says something like you owe me money, she hits that other one. Yes.

I got a tonggan in here. I got a tongue and I'm pretty short. Yeah. But yeah, he's doing a shakedown, but like Utah style because it's at the scrapbooking place. I was like,

okay, if this lady wakes up with like a scrapbook horse in her bed. Oh, that'd be interesting. There is humor to be in. Yeah, it's right,

right. Yeah. It's okay. But then meanwhile, Linda's at the grocery store trying to find some gobble, but they don't even know what that is. Nobody on this set knows what that is.

She can't say it. Capacola. It's Capacola. Gabacol. Yeah. So they say Gabagool. That's fine. But she says, she's clearly embarrassed to try to say it every time Linda

tries to say it. She's like, do you have gabacola? No, not boiled ham. I want gabacool. When you're trying to be nice to somebody from another country who has a name that you can't really do and you just can't commit to it either. Yeah. Hey, what were you saying?

And they're pretty sure it's just ham anyway. But then, so she's breaking down emotionally from this one. Michael and Kate happened upon her. And they're like, hey, what's the matter? And she's like, Mormons are such great people. It literally is this obligatory thing that where they write how great they are. And yeah. So Linda looks up and she's just like, I just can't imagine.

I just don't know why you people are so fucking great. Right. But her whole issue right now is that Mormons have strangled any chance that she has to socialize without joining their religion. Right. Right. That's why she's lonely and broken and breaking down. Her problem is exactly the opposite of Mormons are nice. Yeah.

She's also crying because they don't have capricola. Hey, is it because it has cola in it that you have? Maybe. So we can have Cavalhares drinks. Yeah. Yeah. So she's discovered that Mormonism has the secret to happiness and peace.

That's nice. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then we cut to George. He's at home watching some TV. He gets a phone call about his son hitting somebody in wrestling practice. This is here primarily because he has to make a short bus joke because there was a type of

bigotry we hadn't gotten to yet. Oh my God. It's just they keep making their main guy less and less likable. And it's supposed to be in service of like the arc of the story where it becomes likable at the end. And they just, you

shut too far, man. You went way too far. The arc's going to have to be so big at the end. Right. We went to, we painted ourselves into a huge arc here. You know, I appreciate that when an author's got the guts to give you a truly unlikable character and

then try to redeem that character, I'm like, wow, that's a big fucking challenge. go for it and shit. But this writer, I don't even think they realized what they were doing. No, right? No. I think they thought it was funny the whole time. Yes.

Yes. I think they were like, oh, well, you know, he's got some good racism, though, at least. I mean, look, we've all seen the Mormon movies. We all know that there's going to be racism. There's going to be sexism. There's going to be as many isms as they can pack in there. Abelism and, yeah. But this time they put it in somebody else's mouth.

Right. It's the other guy that's the racist and then all the things. So we got away with it. So then we cut back to Mormon church where the nosy neighbor lady is singing, like she's singing a bad song annoyingly, but I wouldn't say that she's singing badly. It's kind of weird. It is an annoying interpretation of the song,

but I got to say, they nail Mormon church in this moment. Did they? Because it is both like someone's performing, as you say, singing well, and yet it is the most painfully boring thing you could possibly sit through. It's really fucking bad.

And here's the other thing. I don't know how this happened. It's your movie. You get to make some choices here. They chose a boring building for Mormons. Like Mormon isn't. Mormon buildings are inherently awful buildings. You don't have to push it any farther.

You can find the best one. Yeah. And really try to put your best foot forward. why would you choose the worst one? It doesn't make any sense. The movie's trying to make Catholic church and Mormon church different, and they have nothing. They went with like boring and bad singing.

Well, yeah, the Catholics just have better windows. So, yeah. And then, of course, what's happening here is that the neighbors have invited Linda and George to church with them today because she's like, oh, you know, you're not making any friends. Well, that's because we're bigoted against every religion but our own. Why don't you come to church and then you'll have friends? So George is like suffering through the boring Mormon church. Is he suffering?

Because he's having a great time. He catches the eye of the neighbor lady across the street and starts making kissy faces at her. And like she like, she becomes very traumatized and she actually harasses. Yeah. She huddles into her husband's arms. And then he does make kissy faces at the woman who's singing.

And she gets all flustered and everything. he's having a ball. He's a dick. Yep. Sure is. But he's having a great time. I will say it does kind of make me want to go to a Mormon church and distract whoever's speaking or singing by making faces out of him or whatever. Maybe not sexually harassing.

Yeah. Yeah. But like catching their eye and like, you know, boo or whatever. Just do a big wink, you know. Yeah. Make them wonder what just happened. So, okay. So now we're at school and Julie has decided to invite Patrick out skiing.

but when she goes to do it, he's talking about how he actually really liked Mormon church and he wants to go paintbo and with the Mormons this weekend, so she's not into him anymore. I get it. I also love that at one point, we're back to trying to run the coffee gag that they never actually commit to.

The Carmine loves coffee, and that's his big thing. And he goes, The Beans because of how much he loves coffee. He's called the beans because of coffee beans. That's his nickname. And so Patrick's like, dad, he's obsessed with,

coffee. This will come up. Like he's like, I got to, I'm online to buy my dad some coffee because he can't find the coffee that he likes here. He grinds his own beans. And they make it like that's a big deal. Like nobody in the world grinds there. Just because I don't, have these filmmakers ever met a non-Mormon? If they haven't, that would make a lot of sense. Just ask somebody a question about what coffee is. Because people grind their own beans. though. Right. Like I think even having like coffee curiosity is probably seen as like a road to sin. One wonders what brown liquid they were making him drink while on set. Right. Grind curious. Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah. Post them. So now back home, it's dinner time and Linda got a pizza, but it has pineapple on it. That's a 40 fucking minute gag right there. He doesn't like that idea. I mean, we can be honest about the fact that it's

Italians back east freak out way too much about pineapple on pizza. Like everybody. I don't get this one. Everybody frees. I'm a New York pizza guy. I have had pineapple on pizza. It's pretty good. What's the problem? And if you don't like it, that's fine. Like nobody likes all of the pizza toppings.

You just don't get that kind of pizza. What are we talking about here? Yeah, well, it's the most boring fucking gag imaginable, but they can't talk about any of the fun stuff, right? As Eli is often want to say about Mormon movies, when you can't talk about sex, and you can't talk about drugs and you can't talk about coffee and you can't talk about anything fucking fun.

You're left making jokes about food. That's the only thing that's left for these people. So, okay, but Patrick tells his parents that he's going to go paintballing with the Mormons and George doesn't want to go paintballing and so he marches off like an asshole. Yeah, he is right. Paintballing in the cold sounds miserable.

It does. That seems like the worst damn time to do paintballing, yeah. So then we cut to George. He's scamming a different scrapbooking business out of with a different scam. Now he's pretending to be part of a charity. Yeah, he's really found a gold mine in these checks notes.

Independent mom and pop scrapbooking stores. Yeah, they're loaded. They're fucking loaded. Like their margins, they all went out of business five seconds after this movie was made. Like, there's no money there. Nope. But he's managed to scam enough money out of this

to go to Rio. So we see him booking a trip to Rio de Janeiro by himself, he's going to abandon his family. Yeah, what's he doing? I don't know what the plan here is. Maybe he's going to go stash all of the money that he's scammed in a bank in Rio. I think he's supposed to do. He's buying a one-way ticket. So I think he was supposed to just be escaping to Rio and abandoning his family, just in case we liked him too much. This never comes back. It's sort of dust. But yeah, right, and no meaningful way.

He did that really, like, charming short bus joke. So it was confusing. start to go this. We had to make sure. We're not arcing back yet. Bend it back. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then we got to the scene where Patrick finds out that his dad lied about why he couldn't go paintballing. Like brother Michael asked him, hey, do you want to go paintballing? And he's like, no, I got a doctor's appointment. And so again, the movie thinks it's going to do a humor set up. So Patrick's like, oh, yeah, no, his doctor's appointment. Yeah, he's going to have a colonoscopy. And they're like, oh, that involves the butt. Ha, funny. Yeah, I don't know what they think a colonoscopy is. Because

The gag here is just like, oh, I'll show my dad by saying that he's going to do something really embarrassing. Okay, so go say he's going to, you know, get his herpes treated or his- Right. Get his dick reattached because he ripped it off, dripping off too hard. He's getting a penis enlargement or anything. But, like, colonoscopy is just the most. I've had a colonoscopy. These Mormons think that it is the most embarrassing thing that could ever happen to a human being. I guess, yeah.

It's actually great. waking up from a colonoscopy is like that that is the best high you got to drink that shit if they give you beforehand nothing is nothing is worth that day before day before is pretty awful but waking up after it is great okay was this where michael was it michael who tells the story about like okay but i know somebody who had a colonoscopy and they they found like a rare buffalo nickel in there in his ass like what what are you talking about right now again we would yeah when you can't do real humor. So, okay. So now we're back at the school library where all the cool kids hang out. And Patrick comes over to talk to the love interest. And he's like, hey, you've been really weird

lately. And I'm like, is that a scene on the cutting room floor or something? But Julie's mad, apparently, because Patrick wants to hang out with her brother more than he wants to hang out with her. This is where I finally figured out that Michael was her brother. Yeah. And because she says the phrase hanging out with my brother 15 times. Yes. Why do you want to, you're always wanting to hang out with my brother? Why would be hanging out with my brother be fun? I don't like hanging out with my brother. You want to hang out with my brother.

Don't say it again. Yeah, right. We can have sex. We can have sex. We can have sex. Just don't say it. And this kid keeps doing that Patrick is maybe the worst at the Italianese. Like he keeps saying all of the sounds of like, not for nothing and blah, blah, blah. But it just sounds like...

Forget about it. This is just Braden from West High School. This is not a kid that, like, has ever, has ever even met an Italian person before this movie. Exactly. So then we cut to George at work, and he gets a call from Special Agent Mormon, or actually Special Agent Mormon shows up.

And they've got to talk. It turns out that the FBI just found his dad's body, his dad was apparently killed by the mafia way back when he was a kid. and the movie apparently thinks we have enough of an emotional connection to this character to give a fuck. Yeah. Well, they couldn't find a way to make him have a change of heart. So they pulled a, they pulled a Deuce X dead at the bottom of a well. I guess, yeah. What do people do? People sad, dad, dead. Sad dad, dead. There we go. We found it. We're done. We found it. Lunch. No problem. All right. Well, this movie expects us to give a fuck about. about this asshole George now,

so we need a minute to recalibrate, but first let me give Act 3 the hard sell. Will Patrick ever face a consequence for stealing the satellite dish? Will George ever face a consequence for scamming those scrapbooking stores? Will anyone ever face a consequence for anything? Not really, but stick around anyway

for the stakesless conclusion of mobsters and Mormons. Okay, but which stakes in this movie where the stake president? Which heaven planet do land on? Yeah, there you go. There you go. Okay, fellas. I do like the latest draft that we've got, but I want to sell our religion a bit more.

Really make it pop. So what are the best parts of our Mormon community that we can highlight? What about paintball? Oh, is that a Mormon thing? Payball? Yeah, sure. Okay. Okay, paintball, I guess.

What else? Something's going to get the whole audience on board. You know what I mean? Pizza with pineapples and ham. Nice. Everybody loves that. Yeah. Universal agreement on that. Great. Right. That one down. Pineapple. Okay. Maybe just like one more thing. But I'm thinking like bigger picture, like a big picture thing about us. What about our welcoming spirit of pluralism and acceptance? Yes. Preach, brother. We love diversity. That is perfect.

That is perfect. All right. You know what? Holiday coming up tomorrow. Let's call it early and head home. Thanks, boss. Appreciate it. You got it.

So what you got going for Turkey Day? Oh, nothing really. Your son's not coming over with the family. Oh, I disowned him for being gay. And he won't let me see the grandkids, so. That's crazy. Sam'sys. Great minds, right?

Anyway, I might listen to some. some Dennis Prager. You ever listen to him? I love him. I really feel seen. Totally. Me too. Yeah. I like it when he cries a little bit. Yeah, me too. It's best when I'm also crying. When I'm crying too, yes, in the dark, by myself. Yeah. All right. See you Monday.

Okay. See you Monday. Sorry. See you Monday. Yep. Holding it together. Sure are. And we're back for still more of this shit. We're going to rejoin George chatting with Michael at work. And I guess this is where they think that they're pulling the trigger on the colonoscopy bit.

Yeah, I guess the coin bit didn't panic what they wanted. So they're like, we'll revisit. We'll bring it back. Yeah, I'm starting to think they have no idea what a colonoscopy is. Like, they just don't, they just don't, they know that it involves a butt, but like, they don't actually know. I think they think it's butt surgery. Yeah. But it's not, it's looking inside.

It's not a surgery. Because Brother Michael is going out of his way. Look, I know you're probably too. terrified right now, but it's going to be okay. I had a cousin who survived one, and so I think, like, we're not talking cancer here. What are you doing? Right. If you get hard during it, it doesn't necessarily need a day.

It probably does. But it doesn't, it's not for sure. Like, if you go have sex with a woman after that, it helps. It cancels out. It cancels out. Yeah. So, yeah, but George doesn't want to talk about that. And eventually he breaks down and he says, you know what?

I don't even have a doctor's appointment. I just don't want to hang out with you fucking Mormons. And then we get, and this happens so often in Mormon movies, in Christian movies in general, but in Mormon movies especially, where he goes, why are you people so damn nice? Because that's everybody's problem with Mormons, guys, is that they're so nice. Yeah, it's nothing to do with the fact that this guy has repeatedly asked

to be left alone and no one is respecting those boundaries at all. No, it's the problem is they're just too darn kind. Well, and then the movie has to actually address the real problem. Because he's like, you know, we're not trying to convert you to our religion. And I'm like, aren't you, though? Yeah, the fuck you are. You invited him to your goddamn church. Sure would be unfortunate if you didn't become Mormon while you're going.

That's what's happening. Yeah, constantly. That is literally, every moment of every day, all they think about is, how am I going to make the non-Mormons be a Mormon? Right. Absolutely. And then he's like, you know, but all these people around you, they sure are some judging bastards and he gives him the no true Mormon argument. Yeah.

Yeah. Really weird. And then he's like, look, I just want to be friends because I think you're a great guy. Based on what? What the fuck would make you think that? Why? What are you talking about? I mean, I know Mormons are gullible.

Yeah. You did bring him, you ho. That's a good point. The first three quarters of the three little pig story. Like half my friendships are you who based. Okay. All right. No, it's fair. That's how me and Heath bonded, yeah. And so, but they have their fight. And then he goes to his car and he sadly looks over his dad's stuff from the FBI agent.

And now he's a good person, y'all. Yeah, boy, that change of heart thing happens quick. It does. You got, he don't blink. Yeah. And so, and now we check in. We go to Patrick at home and he's watching some TV. And he hears some furious paintballing outside. So he goes outside. and he sees that his dad has a paintball gun and paintball gear. He is going paintballing.

Yeah. So they shoot paintballs a little bit in the backyard together. And they're both good at guns because Italian, obviously. Yeah. They hold it sideways because Italian, I guess, too. They have genetically good aim. Yes. Those Italians, yeah.

And then so he's like, oh, you know, it's going to be cold out there. We'll have to start a fire. Go fill this thermos with gas. And I'm like, that is such a sloppy fucking setup for late. Like later on we're going to use that gasoline to set a bad guy on fire. No, we're not. This will never come up again. It is a weird.

Yeah. Okay. I think they wrote something that went horribly wrong in real life on the set. And they had to cut whatever fucking happened. And they forgot to take out this line. Or are we supposed to piece it together that like they left that in the minivan, wink, wink for later? I can't. That's actually amazing writing that you just did for them.

No, it isn't. That would make absolutely no sense. That would make even less sense than leaving it out. Relatively amazing writing. Yeah, exactly. The basis for comparison is not strong. Right. So, yeah, so a thing happened and then another thing related to it happened, that would be a step up.

Yeah. There is at some point fire in the movie. There is, now that you mention it. Yeah. So, but as Patrick is filling up his gasoline, Thermas, a couple of Mormons on bicycles show up to missionary him. Yeah, which is so weird.

Listen, George is right. George makes some comment about like, what are the missionaries doing here? He's right. Utah is where they send missionaries to die. Like, this is not a good, unless they're pretty girls, in which case they send them to Temple Square to train. Sure, yeah, yeah,

to avoid Eli. Yeah, sucker Mormons into, or non-Mormons into becoming Mormons. But yeah, it's a bad gig. Yeah. And that's both of their missionaries look 35 when missionaries are supposed to be like 19 or whatever. Sure. So yeah, but Patrick lies to the missionaries.

Dad is very proud of him. Hey, are you doing like a Chekhov's gasoline thermos over there? Nope, I sure am not. We will never see this again. Become Mormon. So we head out to the woods. Everybody's out there gathering for the big paintballing

where they're dividing into red team and blue team. And boy, once they launch, they get started. Everybody's terrible at paintball. Sure are. Which is funny because they're trying to set it up as like, this is a thing that we Mormons all do. We do it all the time. It's a lot of fun, blah, blah, blah.

And then I guess nobody told the actors because it's just like half of them are shooting, but the gun is pointed at the ground or at the sky or what. It's just. I thought, yeah, nothing good there. I thought at least they would have Carmine have like a Tommy gun for paintball all of a sudden, like Al Capone and be like good at it because it's Italian, you know, but they don't even do that. Or just like walking. through the woods just one after

another. Ping, ping, ping, ping. That's what I was ready for. Right, right. That he was going to be assassinating everybody in the game. No, they do absolutely. So they start off like a montage. I wrote, so now we get our paintballing mont and it was over. Right? It's 14 fucking seconds long, but the important plot elements are

A, George has to go take a shit when it all starts, right? And he's not about shitting in the woods. Yeah. And B, Michael, Brother, Michael and his kid got paintballs right away. Yeah. Instantly. This is another culture clash.

You know, Roman Catholics have toilets in the woods before they play paintball. But, you know, the Mormons have to see each other shitting at all times just in case they take it off. Yes, okay. Yes, that's right. It didn't even occur to them that that would be weird to any other. I will say this. And Heath, I think you can appreciate this. Dropping a deuce at the beginning of the game, decent strategy.

like let them all kill each other for a while while you're just like, hey, time out here. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, absolutely. And then walk out when, when a bunch of them are already dead. I've never done that exactly what you said. And you have freshly shit and they haven't. So, but then they, they have the scene where they're like, George and his son, Patrick, and they've grabbed the kid that shot Michael and his son,

and they're shaking him down to figure out where the enemy team's flag is. Okay, this was terrifying. Yeah, I thought he was going to try and extort Robbie for union dues. Right. But he didn't do that. That's what it looks like. Robbie, this little kid, he's like 10. Yes.

And he's crying. Yes. And they like shake him down. They take his granola for no reason out of his pocket. They steal his snack. And they make him tell like where the other team is and where they set up their base, which I don't think you just, it's over. there. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, it's wherever it is. And then you go get it. And they're like,

oh, they're behind us. Well, we see them behind us now. We turn around. Like, it's nothing. So here's the thing, though, is that this setup could be very funny, except for the kid is too good of an actor. And he actually feels like it really feels like they're just bullying this 10-year-old kid. Yeah, they're not doing the comedy. Oh, they're doing a kid who's genuinely being traumatized. Please don't actually put my head in a bunch. What is that? Yes. Why don't you say that?

I'm 10 years old. What the fuck? He's headed up. Do you have a vice here? What? So, okay, but then, you know, on the strength of George's child bullying, Team Blue wins. Well, and they do have, we can't skip over,

probably the only gag that I actually laughed at in the entire thing, which is that he, George and his son walk away from shaking down this kid. And he says, leave the gun, take the granola, which I thought was a great. Okay. That's where the bar has been set now. Wait, you know, it's a godfather reference. It's fine. Yeah. Whatever. Oh, and they don't shoot the kid. I guess this is them being nice. They're like, but we have to get you out. So we're going to slap a paintball onto your chest and smear it.

So Carmon does that. But now he's technically out because he's shot in the hand. If friendly fire counts in paintball, and I think it does, right? Then now you have paint on. Like, yeah. This is bullshit. Yeah. Cheating. There are rules. This isn't numb. This is Utah.

So he takes that day to celebrate their paintball victory. He takes his wife and his son out for dinner and an Italian place because he's a good dad now, right? But they don't know real Italian food around here. Yeah. He says, hey, I'm going to take you out. I want a Panzerati. And the kid and his son, Patrick says, baked or fried. Well, since I'm going to throw a fit in the next scene about.

how panzeratis are just the fried version of a baked calzone. Probably that. Yep. Like, how does this kid, like, oh, I'm right. Yeah, so they have this whole scene where he's like, I'm going to go back there and show you how real Italian food is cooked. And I'm like, yeah, you probably should have established that he could cook earlier in the film, but okay.

This is so stupid. He goes back to the kitchen and, like, shows the Utah chefs how to make real Italian. That's like, you know, like how I go in the back and I can make whiskey at a restaurant If they don't have the whiskey because I'm Irish. And the way he does it is nuts. Because he takes dough. It's a pizza place. He takes pizza dough.

But the order of operations that he does is insane. He's like, take your dough. Now punch it in a few times. Now roll it out with a rolling pin. Then make it back into a ball. Then throw it three inches in the air. And boom, a perfect thin flat circuit. Who would have thought?

Yeah, right. So, yeah. So he makes the, there's no fucking human. in it at all. He just makes a fucking calzone or whatever. And then we go back to the table. He's with his family. They're all enjoying it. And she's like, what's gotten into you? And he's like, act three. Yeah. I guess. I would say I'm really turning a corner as a better dad. Am I not? Because the Mormons are so goddamn friendly. I think that's what's doing it. No, that must be a. So yeah.

So then they give Catholic Church another try that the family does. Womp, womp, womp. Catholic Church is worse than Mormon church. Ha, ha, ha. Nailed it. Rule 2's. And then we go back to the prison. It turns out that they found Carmine, they found George

based on his coffee preferences because they know the fancy coffee that he really likes. And there's only one person that started ordering it somewhere in America right after the trial. Yeah.

Some mafia henchman is like, I did internet and I found Carmine's coffee at an address in Utah. You remember how, our Cozanostra, we hired an IT guy. Well, I hadn't hacked the coffee company. Well, actually, he quit because we said a lot of slurs.

But then we got a different guy. And he hacked, he interneted for us. Yeah. So then we meet henchmen. Because this guy's just fucking henchman three in my nose. So he has henchmen. We meet sub henchmen six and seven. They're staking out George's place.

Yeah. So this is where I got to say that rock, Rocco's the fat guy. That is my old acting teacher from many, many years ago. The guy who likes the fry sauce? Yeah, the guy they have him eating because if he's not eating, how will we know he's fat? Yes. But what's funny about him is he's a real Italian guy from Rhode Island.

Like he's the only East Coast Italian guy other than the main dude in this whole thing. He must have been furious for the Italian. filming watching everybody else. I feel like everybody should have been furious. I feel like, I feel like the guy that played Carmine, they must have had to pay him an extra 50 bucks every day, every time they're like, hey, dude, do that other stereotype that we want you to do. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Can you add a into this one too? Okay, Dan, question for you about Utah culture. It is claimed here in this moment that fry sauce, which is ketchup and mayo, if I'm understanding correctly, the claim is that fries

was invented in Utah, and I think it was in like 1940. Is this like an actual part of like proud culture of Utah? Okay. First of all, and this is, now you're touching on my people. So I'm going to have to defend them a little bit and just say that no, fry sauce and Utahans will say this. And I don't know why. It's more than ketchup and mayo.

It is more than that. And every restaurant has their own recipe. And so there's good fry sauce and bad fry sauce. You get some liquid smoke in there. You get some different things. There's spices. There's a good fry sauce is very different than just ketchup. Nothing more than ever has spices.

It's an awesome book. You're an asshole. Yeah. Stop being a dick about it. Okay. But yes, it was invented in Utah. But like, how do you use the word invented for that? Because, like, I think mayo came around, you know, 1750 and ketchup like.

There's spices. Keith, there are spices. It's like you're not even listening to me. Heath, it's like you're not. Next time you're in Salt Lake, I'm taking you on a tour and we're doing 12 different dry sauce places and you're going to you're going to learn. We're going to do a fry sauce crawl. That's probably a Mormon thing actually.

Yeah, you probably do that. All right. I've done it. I've done it. Yeah, guys, we desperately need to move off the fry sauce. We could be here all day. So, so yeah, but the bad guys see George coming out of his house. So now they give chase, right?

Now, luckily, George is always wearing a track suit. So he's ready to run at a moment's notice. Yeah, 100%. But eventually he ducks into a Mormon church with the batty's hot on his tail. Yeah, he apparently changed into his track suit from his church clothes that he was just because he must have been. Oh, right. Yeah, right. Yeah.

So he had time to do that. Or went to church in his track clothes? No, we saw him. It's a tear away suit right over the track suit at all times. Oh, there you go. He sleeps in that. Yeah, that makes sense. So, and then there's actually the probably that I thought the funniest moment in the movie

when the sub henchies go into the Mormon church and your old acting coach goes, I think they're gonna put a curse on us or whatever and he does the sign of the cross or whatever. Oh, I missed a thing, by the way, about him. He's an East Coast Italian. He was also a Mormon. Sure, yeah.

He was like that the actor who played was a Mormon. I assume that everyone other than the main character in this movie was a Mormon. That's just my assumption. Yeah, probably. But it is weird to have an Italian-American, like East Coast Italian American Mormon. That is, it feels odd. Sure.

So okay. So then they got this bit where like all of them wind up in the same Sunday school class together. And again, it's like it's like someone told them, you know, the jokes will write themselves. And then they just sat there looking at the script waiting from to sprout. Because nothing happens here. Right. Again, this is a good comedy setup. Gangsters in the middle of chasing each other find themselves in a Mormon Sunday school where they have to act.

normal for a second. But they don't do anything. They're just like, oh, I must leave this room now and they run away. I mean, they do have a moment where every Mormon knows is wrong. Again, they're doing Mormonism wrong and for no in service of nothing where the guy, you know, Sunday school has started and the guy says, well, do we have any visitors here? Dude, you know everyone in that room. You have been in, You've been coming to the same people in that room for 15 years. There are three Italian guys in track suits in that room. What are you doing? Just ask them what their names are.

Or just do the Mormon curse. Do whatever the American thing. Do the never-ending story centuries thing. They blast them when Italian people come into a building. Absolutely. So, yeah, so they run away. Rocco is now locked the keys in the car, so they have to steal a couple of bikes. They're hilarious.

Well, yeah. Again, a gag they do nothing with, but just as they're about to catch up with him, Special Agent Mormon gets there and saves the day. And so they slam into his car. He pulls up and they slam into his car and they're on the ground. And then he rolls down his window and puts the gun out the window and goes, FBI, freeze. Like, why didn't he get out of the car? That would make more sense.

Were his little toes he's going to get cold? Like, what was happening? It was the weirdest thing. Yeah. And so we cut to the next scene where those guys are now in custody and the family is meeting with Special Agent Mormon. And he's going like, trust me, there's going to be a finale. I was like, okay, well, the movie's done now.

Yeah. What I love is that what he proposes is, okay, we've got a plan. You guys just, look, we caught those guys, but they don't know we caught them. so they're going to send somebody else to get you. Right. So stay here. Yeah. And get got.

Sorry. Right. And we'll get the people right when they get you. You, the FBI. Yes. Witness protection program. So we're going to spear you with a hook. You're going to use me as bait to get another pair of low-level henchmen.

That is the idea. That's the way I'm going to keep getting them because eventually they're going to send the high-level hedgeman. You're not, it's like you're not hearing. We're going to try to protect you. Can it be like a wacky shenanigan? So I'd be shocked if it weren't. All right.

I'm in. I'm in. I'll be bait. So, okay, so now they're all at a big cookout, right? Being bait. And George is going to like give a speech to all the Mormons about how he kind of thinks they're pretty cool. Yeah. He stands up and does a toast, which is apparently a bridge too far for like gossipy lady.

Yes, for nosy neighbor Louise. She says, She doesn't let her family do it because it, the appearance of evil, because you normally do that with alcohol? Like, what are you talking about? That's, yeah. I honestly, I'm surprised. You're surprised. I thought that you were going to explain this one to us, that it was a big thing.

Let me tell you something. It is correct in the sense that, like, Mormons are perennially spooked. They're very easily spooked by foreign cultures. So, like, I guess it is, it is plausible that somebody would be like, ah, that feels like a. don't do the cheers. Will we come Tongan or whatever? Well, so honestly, I thought, I didn't realize that it was because it was like alcohol.

I was thinking it's because he spoke Italian at the end, and she's like, oh, that sounds like devil talk. Something like that. Oh, yeah, he says, Chentiani. Porcena los dos. That could be both. Absolutely. Yeah.

So, okay. So, but then they hugged their way out. Love interest girl makes up with Patrick, because, you know, the movie's almost over. Julie, Julie was the character's name. But then as they leave, Their van explodes. Yeah, this got really dark.

It did. It did because, like, we know that, like, they're not dad, but, like, the movie plays it, like, yeah, and then they blew up and died. And then they play it like that for the rest of the, like, next scene or two. Yeah. Yeah, I genuinely, I was like, oh, they're going to just be like, anyway, Mormonism worked out. That would have been a great ending.

We're like, you know, you cut to him the Mormons, baptizing the charred corpses. Oh, there you know. Anyway, Mormonism worked out for Utah. Today is a good day. Let me tell you something. If this had gone on and they never found out that they were still alive, they would have been baptized for those people. That's 100% of the thing that would have happened.

So, yeah, and then we see the news, and the news is like, yeah, no, the total explosion totally worked. They're all dead. Everybody's dead there. They were in the witness protection program, if you can believe that shit. Also, can I just say that this is before AI. they had actual blow up a van money. Apparently, yes.

They blew up a van for real. This was not CGM. It did not look stupid. It looked like a van and a thermos. Like, yeah, it's a decent budget. So, but yeah, then we get nosy neighbor. She's on the phone going, I knew there was something wrong with those non-Mormons.

You know, they were criminals. And then they give the sister and the wife of Brother Michael the one thing that any small town, small time Utah actor desperately wants, they both get a crying scene. Yes. Oh, bad actors love a crying scene. Don't they, though?

They probably gave up half of their pay just so that they could do the crying scene. Yeah, and then so, and they have a little service for them, or not a service, but they, they like honor them at the beginning of the service. And then we get the stakes of the movie, right? Because they see. This is so weird. This is what the movie's about, apparently.

So they're like, Bishop Harrison, he's not going to come back because of his family emergency. So now we want to let brother, we want to put Brother Michael in charge and then they're going to vote. Yeah, he's going to get called up to the big leagues. This is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So it's great. We're getting like Mormon sea span for local politics here out of nowhere.

I don't know why. But the wind up was crazy too because Bishop, whoever comes up. And he's like, yeah, so, you know, really sad about the family. getting exploded. Let's, well, let's baptize them. Okay. Moving on, Bishop Harrison has to move. So we're talking about this now. C-SPAN. Yeah, yeah, all in favor. But before we can see how the vote works out, we cut to the Cheesemans at the airport, right? Because they're fine. Yep, because they're still alive. This is the first time the movie admits that to us. Right. But we hear from Special Agent Mormon, he's like, yeah, no, we'll get you guys to your new location in a minute.

but I thought you might like to know about the internal politics of the Mormon church near where you lived. And he's like, why the fuck would you think I would want to know that, man? Truly insane. Okay. But here's what's being implied plot wise. The FBI faked their death. Yes. So just to be clear, the Federal Bureau of Investigation intentionally did a huge van explosion right next to a church full of people.

Yes. Yeah. Yes. No other way to fake this death. Absolutely not. And we watched these people get into the van beforehand, so they must have had like a tunnel underneath it that they were getting into or something. Right.

We're going to build a trap door. Oh, you know what? The Mormons have a lot of these. Okay. This is works out. Tom Cruise comes out and he's like pulls off his faces. He's like, I wasn't a Mormon the whole time. I've been.

I feel like we're making this complicated. Can't we just move them? No. No. We got a blow them off. Yeah, obviously. Which wasn't their plan, by the way. The plan was for them to be bait, but I guess they changed the plan on us.

Can I just say, though, that of all the outrageous, like, completely implausible, just absolute garbage plot lines in this movie, the one that is the absolute least believable thing in the entire film is that Mormons would, when they vote to. on a bishop or whatever, they're not actually voting. It is perfunctory. It is just raise your hand if we vote and we all raise our hand.

It's never, no one has, in the history of the world, it is not at all believable because what they learn from Agent Mormon is that half of the congregation voted against Michael becoming bishop. Yes. This has never,

he would have had to have a beer in it. his hand. Right. Yeah. Well, but the reason, though, is because he brought gangsters into their midst. I mean, there's just no chance. This is, like, guys, it's like a real swing ward

scenario. It was like 50, 50. Yeah. Just crazy. It's not a vote. It's not a vote. They say, they say vote, but it's not. And that's just crazy. The whole thing's crazy. Yeah. Well, so, okay. So now we cut to the, they're having like a meeting about like,

what everybody thinks and why they voted against him, right? They're trying to get the consensus here. And that's going to be like, again, this is the big finale of the fucking movie, this argument about whether Michael gets to be Bishop. Yeah. Yeah, it's an argument about whether Michael was too nice to the exotic Pennsylvanians.

Yes. Outsiders that came into town. Yes, with Carl the Pug of Peggycorn accents. Yeah. And so George shows up, right? His family shows up fresh from being dead. Apparently the FBI, who just spent all of that money blowing everything up and all of this time planning it and whatever,

they're like, oh, you know what? Never mind. This is important. This is, this is what? A stake presidency is its take here. Wait, are you going to, this feels risky? Are you going to give a really good dramatic speech when you burst into this and span meeting? They're, because they were minutes from getting on their plane, literally minutes from getting on their plane out of their.

Right. David, we'll rebook the flights. I'll rebook it, but you're on thin ice car. on mine. But also, so then they show up. And luckily, though, as Dan can tell you, when they have Mormon meetings, if a non-Mormon shows up with relevant plot information, they just let him, they have a podium actually set up for him to speak at that no one else was using when they taught.

Listen, they are the most, Mormons are so passive-aggressive that anyone who walked into their building and got loud would freeze them all like deer in headlights. All right. They will let you do any. You can make them sign away the deed to the church. Oh, yeah. If you're loud enough at them and they're not expecting it. They were scared of his swarthiness.

I get it, yeah. I wanted him to, like, get up there to do his big speech, and then the podium just shoots up and hits him in the face. Oh, that's amazing. Explodes. Motherfuckers can't do a callback. So, yeah, and then, but he says, you guys are all bad at being Mormons.

I'm better at knowing how to do your religion than you are. But Michael was really good. at it and then he leaves. He's the best of all of us. Yeah. Vote for Michael. Yeah. Yeah.

He actually gives one more nod to like Mormonism very specifically to. He's like, I'm not very really. I don't know if the Mormon god is for sure the real one. But there I, you got to admit lots of great evidence recently in our lives for that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So then we cut to Michael's family at dinner.

The doorbell rings and the fucking the family that's supposed to be dead. shows up, right? They explain the whole plot. And they tell Michael he won the vote. Yeah. Yeah, congratulations. You have a unpaid job. Yeah, congratulations. Your life just got so much harder. Yeah, exactly. And you don't get any compensation. Is this a big deal? Because they show the initial shot of the James family and they're all like sad and mope and like the kids are almost weeping because like dad's their neighbors just exploded. First mate or second mate. Oh, no. I think that's supposed to be they're still bummed about the neighbors getting blown up. That makes a little more sense.

Okay. It seems like they're like, we're going to get evicted tomorrow if we're not the children of a first mate. There you go. Let me tell you something. If there had been a vote where half the congregation had said, no, you don't get to be our bishop, I can't imagine a greater Mormon humiliation than that. Like literally, that is that is as shockingly awful as it could get in Mormon terms, for real. They just all drink poison. They would have forgotten all about the van blowing up because this would have rocked their world.

Okay, maybe I'm wrong. I could be wrong. Thank you. Support. So they all have a big Mormon hug. And then George leaves envelopes with refunds for all the people he ripped off with his scrapbooking scams. Refund checks? Yes.

Is that how crime works? That's what he says. You do crime. And then if you want to give back the money, you issue checks. Like a personal check? Is that? That's apparently how it goes. And it's also a very good thing that he kept

detailed accountings of how much he stole from each of the stores and what the names of the store. Well, you know, criminals are wont to do that. They keep really good books, those criminals. Yeah. One more question on official Mormon procedure. When they do one of these elections that you say is definitely not an election. But in this fantasy world, would you get a do-over if there's a big speech by an outside

character? Is that how this works? Yeah, obviously, 100%. Okay, clearly. Duh. Okay. Weren't you even paying attention? So, okay, so then we time cut six months later and damn it if they didn't open a scrap booking store, which makes no fucking sense, but you know, you know. I mean, it's all the money that he stands to make.

He can see how profitable they were, I guess. Plus, he knows how to unionize everything, so he's so. Sure. Yeah. And then they, he, some Mormon mission. comes in and now he's nice to the Mormon missionaries, even though he didn't become Mormon in the movie. Tiny little detail,

but their new fake names are Donnie and Marie. I think it was Mary, but I was like, Donnie and Mary? I missed that. Pretty close to clever. Okay. All right, well done.

Those are Mormons, so yeah. Yeah, and they have sex together just like this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, well, Dan, thank you so much for hanging out and helping us translate this movie It's always great to have you around. It's always a pleasure.

And while that does it for our review of mobsters and Mormons, that's not going to do it for the episode just yet, because we still need to put Mormon movie month on hold for a week for the sake of our live show. So Heath, tell us what's on deck? That's right. Live from our nation's capital, we have a movie by Residential Candidate for 2028.

As of this week, Tucker Carlson, we're going to be watching the end of men. Heath? Yes, that's the thing with the testicle tanning. Okay, all right, that was going to be my question. Awesome. All right, so with that to look forward to, we're going to bring episode 569 to a merciful close. Once again, a huge thanks to Dan for all his help today.

Be sure to check the show notes for a link to data over dogma. And thank God I'm atheist if you'd like to hear more from him, and you do. And an equally huge thanks to all the Patreon donors to help make the show go. If you'd like to get yourself among their ranks, you can make a per episode donation to patreon.com slash godawful. And thereby earn early access to an ad-free version of every episode. You can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review and by showing the show on all your various social media platforms.

You've enjoyed this show. Be sure to check out our sibling shows the scaling a thesis, citation needed D&D minus, and the scrap to grat, available wherever podcast live. If you have questions, comments, or cinematic suggestions,

you can email god off a movie's at Gmail.com. Tim Robertson digs care of our social media. Our theme song was written and performed by our Ryan Slotnik of Evil Droughts on Mars. All the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer Morgan Clark and was used with permission. Thanks again for giving us a check of your life this week

for Heath and Wright and Eli Bosnick, I'm an illusion, promise to work hard to earn another chunk next week. Until then, we'll lead you with the American graffiti clothes. In the spirit of pluralism, Utah would go on to host many delightful events with TPP USA. Young Julie James moved to the Philippines where she gave birth to a beautiful, dark-haired, olive-skinned boy, safely away from prying Mormon eyes. The Tongan guy was never even considered for that promotion. Weird.

One, two, three, four, five. All right. That's fucking awesome. Yeah, right? It really feels like where it almost feels like a cult at this point. It is a cult. Yeah. I like it.

The cult of Morgan. The book of Morgan. There you go. I feel like his book would be less boring. It would be hard to be more. Yeah, right, right. No, exactly. It almost necessarily must be less boring.

If it's just a letter W over and over again for 400 fucking pages. All work and no play makes Joseph Smith a dull boy. Wait, that was Alma, right? Jesus. All right. Pardon me, sorry. Have you had dirty soda? Is it good?

I refuse. I mean, like, I've had soda with stuff in it, but adding sugar to soda, I don't need the diabetes. Thank you. Yeah, there's already plenty. All right. Interstitial 2. This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment,

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