We've arrived! It's the season seven finale to determine the next super mondo champion of champions! Sure, this game opens with a round based on sweaty wordplay, with round two building into a series metatextual mashup clues that combine multiple mediums. And yes, it culminates in a lightning round where the leaderboard is constantly shifting. But this is the finals, darnit, so returning champs Liz, Derek, and Matthew are all operating at a very high level, so the competition cannot be more tense. I had to stop writing this episode description to go pat myself down with a cool wet towel just from recalling how intense everything got. And I'm working from home today, so I forgot to put on Old Spice, so now the sweat has really cooked up a nasty stench in my general vicinity. And when it comes to straight up B.O., I wouldn't necessarily say that everyone loves their own brand 🤢. So I'm gonna go take a shower and let you listen to this incredible season finale on The Great American Pop Culture Quiz Show.

NOTES

⚠️ Inline notes below may be truncated due to podcast feed character limits. Full notes are always on the episode page.

🦸🏻‍♂️ Yes, Steven Tyler did a gig with Valiant (that would be the Bloodshot company) superhero Shadowman. Who is not cool enough to be Nightman.

⚖️ Can’t use it in the My Champion round, but when Nick and Nora actually did have a family reunion in The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), people got murdered. And the later Thin Man movies really weren’t fun for anyone.

🌹 We want to assure our Listen To Sassy fans that we would accept "W. Axl Rose" as the correct form of his name.

🛳 If you’re not sure about the connection between Tom Cruise and boat-based servitude, you might be happier for it.

🏃🏻‍♂️ Farrah Fawcett didn’t have a big role in Logan’s Run, but she was in there, as Holly 13. You know, the girl at the New You Shop.

💞 The Rebound scorebreak. The Rebound: hey, remember when Justin Bartha could be the lead in a romcom? [7/10. No. I don’t remember that. Wait, is that Catherine Zeta-Jones?]

🏆 Janet Jackson has 10 Video Music Awards; Lauryn Hill has 8 (four of them from 1999).

🪗 The Weird Al song with "I Touch Myself" is 1992’s "Polka Your Eyes Out".

👄 Oh, boy. We’re going to get more email about the correct pronunciation of Constantine.

📇 Tarsem Singh is known professionally as just Tarsem.

💊 The Matwix scorebreak. The Matwix: Yeah, no one needs to see Elmer Fudd waking up in a Matrix pod -we’re all kind of OK with this one getting memory holed. [5/10. Warner is memory-holing a lot these days. Yes, The Matwix is real, and really memory-holed.]

🔫 Man, we don’t ask enough questions about Lorenzo Lamas and Renegade.

🦅 Falcon Crest isn’t a spin-off of anything: it was envisioned as the inverse of The Waltons. But it does have Lorenzo Lamas!

✍️ Liz writes for Consequence

🐦 Liz is on Twitter

👩‍💻 Liz has a website!

🎞 Derek does movie riffing at Down in Front.

🔇 And you can see him live with Forgot to Mute.

🎙 See him live at Logan Square Improv.