Richard Crouse

In this week’s episode of Entertainment Is Broken, Richard Crouse and Sarah Hanlon head back to Oz to poke at Hollywood’s favourite security blanket… the sequel. Are follow-ups actually good for storytelling, or just very good for spreadsheets?

Along the way, Richard also shares something a lot more personal than box office numbers: a major health scare that hit in the middle of recording last week’s episode. From there, the show pivots from billion-dollar franchises to the simple fact that none of this matters much if your health falls apart.

Listen for Free here: https://pod.link/1855097197

Inside the episode

Richard and Sarah dig into:

• Wicked: For Good’s billion-dollar moment
  Why Universal is already quietly building the “Wicked Cinematic Universe”… and whether that’s exciting, inevitable, or just exhausting.
• Sequels vs storytelling
  Are follow-ups expanding worlds or just recycling IP until the wheels fall off?
  • When sequels work: Incredibles 2, Finding Dory, Zootopia 2, Star Trek’s new shows, the King of the Hill revival.
  • When they absolutely don’t: from Jaws 3D to remakes like the new Hand That Rocks The Cradle that bring nothing new to the table.
• Comfort food culture
  Richard makes the case that sequels and remakes are the entertainment equivalent of meatloaf: familiar, comforting… and maybe crowding out anything that asks us to try a new flavour.
  If the internet promised we’d all get giant “Martians from Mars Attacks” brains, why do we keep using it to find more of the same thing we already like?
• Nostalgia vs originality
  Is Hollywood just giving people what they want, or training us to stop wanting anything else?
  Sarah defends sequels that evolve with the times, while Richard worries about the space they take up on the cultural shelf.

This week’s headlines

Before they dive fully into sequel madness, Richard and Sarah run through a packed slate of entertainment stories:

• Jimmy Cliff remembered
  From The Harder They Come to a soundtrack that helped make reggae a global force, Richard looks back at a genuine titan and what it meant that his film ran for over a year in one New York theatre.
• Donald Glover’s health scare
  A stroke, heart surgery, and a reminder that behind every “tour cancelled” headline is a human being whose body just called time out. Richard connects it with his own Bell’s palsy diagnosis mid-podcast last week… and why health really is the only non-negotiable.
• Guns N’ Roses back on the road (again)
  Axl, Slash, Duff and co are returning with Canadian dates, some new music, and, apparently, shows that actually start on time now. Miracles happen.
• Farewell to Udo Kier
  The ultimate “I know that guy” actor, popping up in everything from art-house classics to Armageddon. Richard and Sarah unpack why he made bad movies better and good movies unforgettable.
• Joni Mitchell & Nelly Furtado get their flowers
  Lifetime honours at the Junos for two Canadian icons, plus Richard’s story about Joni, a cigarette, and a very polite attempt at enforcing no-smoking rules that did not go as planned.
• Graham Linehan’s harassment case
  A British comedy figure cleared of one charge, found guilty on another… and a frank conversation about harassment, hate, and how hard it is to separate “beloved creator” from the harm they cause.
• Richard Branson’s loss
  The death of his wife, Joan Templeman, and what it means to be the public face of an empire while someone else is holding your life together offstage.
• Michael Cera & Pamela Anderson in small-town Ontario
  Cera’s directorial debut, Love Is Not The Answer, is shooting in Carleton Place with Pamela Anderson in a leading role. Richard shares what it was like to host her onstage post-documentary, and why her current reinvention feels a lot like a long-overdue course correction.
• Jay Kelly, streaming vs cinema, and James Cameron’s line in the sand
  A discussion of the George Clooney/Adam Sandler/Laura Dern dramedy Jay Kelly, why it feels like a throwback to mid-2000s grown-up movies… and whether streaming-first releases should be chasing Oscars in the same way theatrical films do.

So… do we really need another one?

By the time Richard and Sarah circle back to sequels, they’ve landed on a pretty simple tension:

• Sequels can absolutely be great.
  They can deepen characters, speak to the moment they’re released in, and give artists a second (or seventh) swing at a world they love.
• But when they’re treated as a safety net instead of a creative choice…
  They become a way to avoid risk, to feed nostalgia on loop, and to crowd out smaller, stranger, more empathetic stories that don’t come pre-branded.

Or as Sarah puts it: the problem isn’t that we get another one… it’s when “another one” is the only thing we’re allowed to get.

Listen to the episode

In this episode of Entertainment Is Broken, you’ll get:

• Smart, funny, slightly exasperated sequel chat
• Deep-cut film and TV references you can steal for your next argument
• A reminder to go see something without a number in the title
• And a host doing the show with half his face temporarily offline because… show must go on