Read It and Weep

The podcast began when Alex decided that his comedy routines would be better if he knew how to make jokes at the expense of Twilight, but he had no intention of diving in by himself. So he rounded up Chris and Ezra, two of his old college friends, and persuaded them to read the book and discuss it with him over Skype. And the rest is history.

The purpose of this podcast, pure and simple, is to trash things that the hosts feel need to be trashed.

Each episode tends to be broken into segments, many of which have specific themes. There is one feature, however, that appears in all episodes: the Compliment Sandwich. In a Compliment Sandwich, every participant gives two things, one at the beginning and one at the end, that they liked about the work being considered. Alex came up with the Sandwich, apparently spontaneously, in the very first episode on Twilight. After the first compliment, the work is fair game for whatever they can come up with. Another regular segment is Lightning Bonus Round, but it only occurs when the topic is a movie.

Not to be confused with the Disney made-for-TV movie of the same name, though they did an episode on it, or the My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic episode of the same name.

This podcast provides examples of:

 * Accentuate the Negative
 * Armor Is Useless: Stormtrooper armor was mocked in Episode 73 - The Star Wars Holiday Special.
 * Clip Show: Episode 100 featured fans instead of the normal hosts.
 * Living MacGuffin: In Episode 89, "Betsy Bird and the Search for the Lost Alex," the entire episode is spent trying to find Alex, who got stuck in the worst kids' book ever.
 * Physical God: In Episode 93 - The Shack the podcast theorized about the neighbors God might have if he were living in a shack. A decently friendly Satan was clearly one of them. As was Harry a well-intentioned guy who grows too many rutabagas.
 * Running Gag: There's a lot of them.
 * Chris is often accused of being racist.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: In Episode 90, "Atlas Shrugged the Movie," the guys spend a good amount of time making fun of the movie poorly envisioned the world of 2016. Ezra also adds that it's clearly a Bad Future since the only cell phone provider is T-Mobile.