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On the podcast this week, Steven and Sean are trying to win ourselves a girl. Oh, if we only had a mustache! This week, it\\u2019s Seth MacFarlane\\u2019s 2014 film, A Million Ways to Die in the West.

Okay, quick, let\\u2019s get the plot of this thing out of the way. Ahem. There\\u2019s Albert, a man who lives in the Old West, but hates that time because everything\\u2014literally everything\\u2014is trying to kill you. Who would want to live in a place like that? His best friend is named Edward, who\\u2019s in a relationship with a selectively prudish prostitute. He\\u2019s in love with someone who doesn\\u2019t love him back because of how he feels about the time. What, he doesn\\u2019t want to shoot guns and he runs a sheep farm? He\\u2019s not much of a man. He meets a beautiful woman named Anna. She\\u2019s in a relationship, albeit a terrible one that she wants out of, with the most fearsome gunman in the West, Clinch. What\\u2019s a person like Albert to do, except fall in love with Anna, prove that he\\u2019s at least somewhat capable gun handler, and gets the girl in the end.

Reductive? Sure, but then there\\u2019s not a huge amount of depth to this story. However, I don\\u2019t think there needs to be. This isn\\u2019t Casablanca, dang it. It\\u2019s a film where people die from farts, doctors are more likely to kill patients than save them, and others unleash vile torrents of feces into hats.

This film knows exactly what it is, and we love it for that.

That\\u2019s what makes this a peculiar B-movie bonus episode. On the one hand, the film currently has a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it\\u2019s clearly not a film with a particularly great or important story. To take a critical look at this film is to ensure it\\u2019s a blunder of a film.

I think that would be a mistake, though. This isn\\u2019t a film that\\u2019s trying to be anything more than it is. That is to say, it\\u2019s not trying to have much substance. It\\u2019s trying to bring some humor into our damn lives, especially at a time when the world isn\\u2019t feeling too great. Sometimes we just need some foolish escapism, with low stakes and Neil Patrick Freaking Harris doing a song-and-dance number about mustaches.

In that way, this film is a\\u2026 masterpiece? Yeah, why not?

(Recorded on April 05, 2021)

Links to Stuff We Mentioned:

A Million Ways to Die in the West - IMDb

A Million Ways to Die in the West trailer - YouTube

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - IMDb

A Million Ways to Die in the West - Rotten Tomatoes

Seth MacFarlane - IMDb

The Sisters Brothers (2018) - IMDb

Bonanza - IMDb

Bonanza Theme Song - YouTube

The Exorcist - IMDb

Projectile Vomit scene | The Exorcist - YouTube

Ted - IMDb

Ted 2 - IMDb

The Orville - IMDb

Westworld - IMDb

Saved by the Bell - IMDb

Dennis Haskins - IMDb

Bill Maher - IMDb

Jamie Foxx - IMDb