The Office (U.S.) - "Pilot" (Patreon Preview!)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Release Date: 04/21/2025
Nickelodeon’s Doug (Patreon Preview)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Matt has assembled his friends Wade Hymel and Patrick Perot to do a deep dive into Nickelodeon's Doug—specifically, the episodes "Doug Can't Dance" and "Doug's Garage Band." In this free preview from the longer premium episode (available on Patreon: , Matt, Wade, and Patrick explore the long history of the TV show and of Doug himself, both before, during, and after his show on Nickelodeon. Created by Jim Jinkins, Doug is a show that looks great, sounds even better, and its humor and sensibilities have aged beautifully. We chart the history of Doug himself—his long pre-series life as...
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172. Charlie’s Angels (2000)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
The year is 2000. You are a 12-year-old boy. You spend your days watching Total Request Live and hoping they’ll man up and play “Stellar” by Incubus. You spend an inordinate amount of time choosing the coolest song lyrics to leave as your AOL Instant Messenger away message. And you head out to the cinematorium to see three women kick ass in Charlie’s Angels. You like it a lot, but you have difficulty explaining why. Well, revisiting it 25 years later, it’s actually pretty easy to see why: It’s kind of just a straightforward, fun, slightly silly action movie. In Drew Barrymore, Lucy...
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171. FernGully: The Last Rainforest
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
They thought they were making a movie that would save the environment and destroy extractive industries. Instead, they made a generation of millennials horny as hell for cartoon trees. FernGully: The Last Rainforest is a fascinating mid-budget animated film that presents a mighty counterweight to the Disney behemoth of the early 1990s: Modest in scope, budget-level pop songs, and an anti-capitalist message Disney would never allow (unless James Cameron does it). And it’s not a great movie, but it’s very good, and the animation is extremely impressive. And everyone jokes that Avatar lifts...
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Final Thoughts on The Rock + Answering Listener Questions!
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
We weren’t expecting this miniseries on Dwayne Johnson to be so relevant, but as he debuted his “new look” at the Venice Film Festival and began his awards season campaign, Laci and Matt react to the news of the week and unpack his public comments. Johnson reflected on his own career with many of the thoughts we’ve had as we’ve gone through his filmography. Is he sincere about it, or just being a good politician trying to win an award? Does he mean it when he says he was ready to pivot to “serious acting” or he was forced to by having so many consecutive box office failures? And...
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170. Jungle Cruise (Summer of Rock)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
This is the end, beautiful friends. We conclude the Summer of Rock with the much-better-than-I-remembered Jungle Cruise, a movie we abruptly pivoted to covering after trying to watch Black Adam and giving up out of boredom. We cover the history of movies based on theme parks, the rocky production of Jungle Cruise, its unfortunate failure at the box office, and then we go through the movie itself, trying to figure out if this is one of The Rock’s better late-career performances or if he’s being carried entirely by Emily Blunt. The Summer of Rock is our summer 2025 miniseries covering...
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169. Hobbs & Shaw (Summer of Rock)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
They went and made a dang spin-off to the Fast & Furious franchise, and it made a ton of money, and there's no chance it'll ever get a sequel because no one liked it. Especially not Matt. Matt is utterly miserable talking about Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019), but Laci's able to help him get through it by diving in to all the messy drama surrounding Dwayne Johnson's feud with Vin Diesel that led to Luke Hobbs getting exiled from the main Fast & Furious series of movies. Next week: Jungle Cruise (2021) The Summer of Rock is...
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168. Baywatch (with Caleb Hogan) (Summer of Rock)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
There were big expectations in 2017 for the Baywatch movie. 21 Jump Street had shown that raunchy, irreverent takes on cheesy '80s and '90s TV shows could earn bofo box office, and with the dual star power of Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron, it looked as if Baywatch couldn't miss. But critics hated it and the movie was a flop at the box office, canceling Paramount’s big plans for a Baywatch Cinematic Universe. So, what happened? And is the movie really as bad as its reputation? What does this movie think it is? Is it a raunchy R-rated comedy that wants to mock its source material? Or...
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
We're off for the week but here's an extensive chunk from our premium episode to tide you over till then. It's a spoiler-filled discussion of The Fantastic Four: First Steps with our guests Neophyte Reviews and Screentime Kota. The Summer of Rock resumes in one week with an episode about Baywatch (2017)! Another MCU movie has arrived, and Matt’s being a real Ebeneezer Scrooge about it. Neophyte Reviews and Screen Time Kota join the show to try to convince him not to be such a grump and to welcome things like light and joy into his heart. And so, we have for...
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167. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Summer of Rock)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Sony made a sequel to Jumanji, that sad Robin Williams movie from the ‘90s, 22 years later? And it made a billion dollars? And everyone liked it?? It’s true. And as a result, every time a movie studio makes a questionable legacy sequel this is why. They’re telling themselves: “It worked with Jumanji.” It’s why Disney is putting out a Tron movie this year. Well, the thing is, the movie needs to be good! And Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle IS good. It’s a very likable and winning comedy. It’s just kind of a lackluster blockbuster. But what a fun...
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166. Pain & Gain (Summer of Rock)
Load Bearing Beams: A Movie Podcast
Pain & Gain is Michael Bay’s magnum opus, a razor-sharp dissection of the American id. This movie has it all: Con artistry, prosperity gospel, and drugs, drugs, drugs! It also features career-best performances of Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg, and Anthony Mackie, and it’s easily Bay’s best movie. Indeed, it’s a look at an alternate career for Johnson where he could play interesting, complicated, vulnerable characters like he does in this movie. Instead, he made a bunch of movies with big cars and/or gorillas. Still, Pain & Gain is an absolute blast and we had a...
info_outlineEnjoy nine free minutes from our Patreon-exclusive episode about the pilot of the American Office. Hear the full thing by subscribing at https://patreon.com/loadbearingbeams for $5/month.
Matt and Wade go through the pilot episode of the American Office. They compare their personal fandoms of the show and how deep their knowledge runs, and then briefly discuss how the show was adapted from the British series created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, its rocky first season and slow ascent into a megahit, and its lasting cultural legacy.
And as for the pilot itself, which is generally not well regarded, Matt is surprised at how solid it is, how good a job it does at setting up the series, and how fully formed the main characters already are.
The Office was created by Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant, and developed by Greg Daniels. It stars Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, and Jenna Fischer
The pilot is directed by Ken Kwapis & written by Greg Daniels (adapted from a teleplay by Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant)
Original air date: March 24, 2005
Source:
The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History by Andy Greene (2020) - https://amzn.to/4juDN9i
Hear Wade's incredible album WHO SAID THAT? on Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever else music is streamed. Or you can purchase the album from Bandcamp.
Follow Wade on Instagram: @wadealready
Music credit: "Never Trust a Bat" by Rural Route Nine. Listen on Spotify (https://bit.ly/3QBjavP), Apple Music (https://bit.ly/49PunSv), or YouTube (https://youtu.be/o7SivxabpYI).
Live cover of The Office theme song by Better By Design, one of Wade's bands. Watch it in full: https://youtu.be/y4gVPgdVWY4