Prodigal Planet (GAM015)

## Hosts

Noah Lugeons

Eli Bosnick

***Prodigal Planet*** is the fourth film in the *Thief in the Night* quadrilogy. Proving that there's no such thing as "too bad to jump the shark", the final installment in this series continues the adventures of David, who managed to survive the last movie *after* encouraging the four-year-old to get murdered. It's the story of a scrappy band of survivors cast upon the hellish aftermath of fiction's tidiest nuclear holocaust, in a desperate effort to get the McGuffin to the place before the time while perpetually babbling about Jesus as often as possible.

### **Opening Phrase**

Where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema in order to put horrors like cancer and Sandra Bullock's Oscar into perspective.

### **How Bad Was It?**

Well, if you watched the previous movies and you thought to yourself, "Man, there's not enough conversations about Jesus", you're in luck, 'cause this movie is 95 percent people driving and being like "Well, I'll tell you… I'm gonna… I thought of another reason you're going to hell, and I would like to talk to you about it." This is basically—listen, I know everyone just got through Thanksgiving—your crazy Christian uncle, who you had to be like "Yeah, I'm mean uh… flagellum, huh?" That's *this*, except they all played dress up. They all played dress up and they all had parts, but really it was just your crazy uncle Jerry, who wants to tell you "Well, I… where you do get morals from?" I don't know Uncle Jerry, I get em from you. You hit your wife!

### **Notes**

* Fourth in the "Tribulation Saga", proceeded by *A Thief in the Night*, *A Distant Thunder*, and *Image of the Beast**.*
* Filmed on location in New Mexico (in color).
* Apparently there *was* a lightning storm, because Heath was back the next week. [Or was he? *Skeptic*.]

### **Jokes**

* "See, I disagree. I think he went *extra* crazy. Like, he just kept talking and they were like, 'This is *gold*. We gotta give him a writer's credit!' He was like, 'And you know what else? Joel says "Give unto me the wheat, for if you take the wheat from me, I'll slap you right in your fat little bitch mouth."' 'Just keep rolling—keep rolling, this is gold.' It's like *Waiting for Guffman*. He's the Christian Parker Posey." (20:39)

* "What?! Well, first of all, I'm like 'He's gonna make her suck his dick', and I was totally into it. I was all about it: I got myself out; I got some lube; I sat on my thumb. I was ready, and then he was like, 'So, are you a Christian?', and I've never had a boner die faster. I've run into a relative at an orgy, and I've never had a boner die fast—what do you do in those situations?" (28:05)

* "Let me give you an idea how bad this stupid fucking code is. The code was something like 'a group of people will sing' or 'voices will rise' or something like that, and what *that means* in this code is 'if you use this special magic hymn tone, the computer will blow up.' And David figures that out from reading 'raise your voices' or whatever: he realizes 'Oh that must mean that when I play this tone for the worldwide system unit linkage chip, it still blow up all their computers.' He also says at one point 'binary words, which are really numbers.' Binary words? It's really fun to listen to someone who doesn't understand something explain something they don't understand via a script that was written by someone who doesn't understand it to someone who doesn't understand it." [The concept of *Citation Needed*.] (1:02:24)

### **Interstitials**

* "Eternity" (7:57) [Song]
* *Prodigal Planet: A Love Story* (1:27:03)

### **Tropes**

* A World Without Black or Brown People
* And Then the Apocalypse/Rapture Happens
* Vaguely Heard of Jesus
* Not Christian Enough
* Heroes are Villains, Villains are Heroes
* Persecuted Christians
* Computers/Technology is Evil
* Dollar in the Sweat Jar

### **Links**

* Episode on Audioboom
* Trailer on YouTube
* IMDB